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wotay27166 · 2 months ago

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The (crappy) art of Freakycare

Much like I did in my initial 'final farewell' post (which turned out to not be final post at all because so much shit happened afterwards), I want to focus this post on an aspect that other people have not talked about - the art itself on the new freakycare blog. A lot of other people have talked about how KC refuses to take any accountability and trying to shed culpability, her refusal to acknowledge or apologize to any victims (Emsody being the only one who received so much as a 'sorry' from KC, has since been redacted with the removal of the post from the main blog), or the fact that she has very openly gone all in to publicly post her secret canon material (and pathetically begging proshippers to interact with every post, hungry for attention).

Before we continue I would like to link the donation/commission links of some of the affected victims of KC and her associates: Commission Jeremy Donate to Chaosblast Donate to Toynbeck Donate to Aobasgirlfriend

As well as the response of people KC directly groomed/victimized in light of the new blog (more may be added in the future):

Chaosblast's response (archive) Imani's response (archive) Maddie's response (archive) Fink's response (archive)

And, to any KC bootlicker supporters being like 'errm you wouldn't have found the freakycare blog unless you were looking for it, checkmate antis' I'll copy/paste what I replied to one who was harassing an anticare poster:

Related accounts get recommended to people due to tumblr's algorithm, don't be stupid now. If people follow interact with sparklecare and related tags/blogs, freakycare will come up too because a lot of you goons who post with freakycare tags also have posts on your blogs tagged with sparklecare AND cometcare (some even posting freakycare with those two aforementioned tags in the same post). If the same person is posting with the same art style and the same characters no shit the algorithm will show people. If people had to go out of there way to find it, it is unlikely it would've been found instantly by people. Also peep you, this supposedly anti harassment pro shipper going out of their way to harass and bother this person who's explicitly tagged their post as anticare. Hm! Curious! Maybe you should heed your own mantra and block/move on and curate your own experience by muting tags! But you guys are all hypocrites so who's shocked.

Without further ado, let's talk about how the quality of KC's art has taken a significant dip, especially comparing it to the initial Cometcare, which Freakycare directly parallels. I will not be going for the content itself, I'm sure I would be a broken record saying 'sexual harassment and covert incest is not cute or funny at all, and 'the way it's framed as a normal light hearted thing is abhorrent' over and over. Considering the first 'arc' is also called 'coming out' I think directly comparing being incestual to coming out as queer is quite frankly incredibly insulting.

Rushed art

We'll start with the most basic observation - the art is very rushed. There a distinct lack of care when comes to various aspects of the art that is most evidently seen in the inconsistency in how the frills on Ally's dress lines up between panels, nor how the bow does not connect properly. They are inconsistent and change wildly between panels that are right next to each other. It looks terrible.

Missing features

In various panels very basic assets of the character's design are just not there, such as Ally missing a star on her cheek so she has 3 instead of 4, the sleeves missing their frill lines, and Sly constantly missing the glasses' temples. Below you will also see Ally's whiskers disappearing periodically.

Copy/Paste job

It is actually not uncommon for artists to use the same panel with minor altercations between panels. HOWEVER, this is something that was not in the original Cometcare, as KC used to redraw the same pose entirely between asks. In Freakycare, however, this copy/pasting of panels is used extensively. Much less effort and in some cases, the erasing of the previous panel hasn't been done properly so there's distinct leftovers between them in the lineart.

Imprecise lineart

The lineart often doesn't connect properly or overshoots where it should stop. This also leads to things like weird dents in Ally's facial stars patterns.

Bad anatomy

Anatomy is of course subjective depending on style, but at the very least one would hope for consistency, or things making sense connecting to the body wise.

Cometcare VS Freakycare

Cometcare first, and then Freakycare second. I don't think it's controversial to say I think the art in Freakycare is worse in every single way. The shapes are much wobblier looking, the anatomy is worse, the character figures look stiffer, the speech bubble placement is less cohesive, etc.

In conclusion, this is quite literally slop. It is sloppy, rushed, and little care has been put into the art. I feel even if you are a proshipper incest lover, your standards should 100% be higher - this is the garbage you settle for? I guess quality doesn't matter when to someone who enjoys this content, the mere notion of incest being present is like having keys jangled in front of one's face to entertain them. It is no exaggeration to say not a single panel has any care put into it. KC is capable of better art, she just doesn't have a reason to try anymore. KC thoroughly rinsed money out of her former fanbase through patreon, and the merch drops - anyone left doesn't care.

KC gave up working on Sparklecare, and turned her back on the people who loyally enjoyed what came before for this. It is sad that the instant gratification from people who clap like seals for anything 'problematic' has caused KC's art and writing to degrade significantly. KC does not care what people think or believe, and that 100% extends to the victims of her and her associates. KC feels no remorse for doing things such as retraumatizing a fellow victim of incest in Imani, or triggering her partner so bad new alters of a traumagenic system were created to cope in Chaos, or willfully ignoring those who have reached out about her groomer pals. To KC, her fictional animals matter more than the real people she has hurt.

In addition I would argue this outright unsafe for KC to be doing, considering her family home living situation. Being back publicly to do so has further put a spotlight on her, and her actions.

Look who's in the likes, Woofles who groomed a 15 year old and is a self admitted pedophile/zoophile. Jk-tech too, who you may remember actively defended Oddballs, the real CSEM trafficking site. This is the type of person KC wants to cater to now.

And the greatest irony of all of course, is how page 161 from Sparklecare V2 directly calls out behaviour like KC's.

If you want something like Sparklecare or Cometcare to fill the void and not support KC, there's always the various projects by former fans.

In the future a few month down the line when more former fan projects are out I may make a second/continuation post promoting them.

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louisjude · 1 year ago

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Honestly -

Most of these ‘fans’ do not like Buck for Buck. They have created a version of him in canon and anything he does that doesn’t fit it it’s OOC for them, even if it is exactly how he’d act (case in point: The BT scene on 710). They, somehow, cannot accept Buck has changed and matured and is not the same guy he was during S2/S3. Hell, he’s grown alone during S7 alone. Discovering a part of himself has done wonders for him.

Likewise, I truly believe the only representation they care about or want is if it comes in the form of Buddie. They cry on how Henren is being ignored and how it is BuckTommy’s fault, but when have they ever shown care or interest for them beforehand? They use them as part of their argument without giving them proper attention. They don’t care we now have great mlm representation on screen in a show like 911, they’re just mad because it is not Buddie.

And I do suspect they became this mad this fast because they do see the potential of BT and they know this can very well be a LTR for Buck. Ofc we don’t know what will happen, but if we look at it from a neutral POV, we all can see the seeds being planted for Tommy to be there for a while. They’ve made creative choices with him that they haven’t made with no other LI that really sells it for me, to be honest.

(Including giving them a particular sound for everytime they have a moment, but I digress)

I do agree with you - I care about Buck being happy. I was quick to get on board with BT because I have never seen Buck act so giddy and into someone. And so far, I think Tommy is matching him really well. We’ll see what happens in Season 8, but I would be surprised if they break up during it, even more so if it is ep 3/4, which arguably will be right after the start of the season (assuming they go for a multi eps opener)

If I'm being honest, the toxic side of that part of the fandom feels very reminiscent of certain subset of another fandom I'm apart of that I do not want to delve into because I've already done so many times.

get ready for a long response

I came into the 911 fandom as bvddie shipper, I still love the ship itself, idc if it ever goes canon because fanfic exists, edits exist, fanart exists. I love eddie and buck as separate characters respectively and I do not need them to be together enjoy their relationship whether it's platonic or romantic.

I think a lot of the loud, toxic shippers cannot separate them. Listen I think the co-parent jokes are hilarious and cute, but when it comes down to it in reality of the show, buck is not chris' parent. he's like an uncle, so many ppl grow up with their parents friends as their "aunts and uncles" and that's exactly how I'm viewing chris and bucks relationship ever since I've come down from the bvddie high of analyzing everything and putting meaning behind every little piece of dialogue or set design or just like anything. I can acknowledge 911 is not a blockbuster franchise that has months or years of thought put into meaning behind set design or clothing choices like other fandoms I'm apart of that absolutely have so much thought and time put into them for things like that.

bvddie in itself is a great concept. absolutely you can read into scenes as being romantic even if they never were intended that way, that's what we do as fans. I completely understand why ppl see them as endgame because they're absolutely allowed to think that. but us bucktommy shippers are allowed to also talk about why we think bucktommy is endgame. I think that's another issue ppl are having is being able to curate their own feed, if you don't want to see people talk about one of these topics then block accs, block tags, keep your peace!

buck and tommy absolutely feel as though they have been written to last from what I've seen so far so tommy leaving so quickly would feel weird and like a punch in the gut to the journey buck as made. he made the effort to be with tommy even after everything went south. tommy made the effort to show up for buck. we are shown them being on very good terms by the season finale, like, we are probably intimate with one another and are in our cute honeymoon phase type of good terms. having them break up so early would be another Ali/Natalia moment and like, I just am tired of the same story being repeated for buck.

If they really were going for bvddie endgame, I think it would have been done this season. tommy wouldn't have been brought in at all or wouldn't have been involved in the plot outside helping rescue bobby and athena. they didn't need kim there, they could have built on eddies catholic guilt for his queer arc, they could have written what people were theorizing with the bachelor party where buck and eddie ended up kissing while drunk which could have spurred their relationship to begin and still have eddie go through a crisis and found a way to have chris still leave for texas (if they wanted to stick with a cheating arc, it could have been marisol & chris walking in on buck and eddie kissing) like there's so many things people theorized that genuinely would have been great ways to have bvddie be endgame but literally none of those things happened and instead we got buck in a stable, happy relationship with tommy that has been set up in a way that absolutely can have them going through all sorts of things from strengthening their relationship to testing their relationship. tommy can absolutely be integrated into the plot as much as karen is if not more. all I can say is why throw away such potential when you already had the other potential there?

also as an eddie diaz defender, they can never make me hate eddie diaz, I just want to see him not feel this constant need to find a new mom/wife when he's never had time for himself EVER. he needs therapy, he needs to build back trust with christopher, he needs to stop searching for this perfect woman because if there's someone out there for him they will find him eventually. I really want eddie to focus on chris and himself and stop worrying so much about what his life should look like per his family/what society thinks his life should look like.

I truly cannot stress enough how much eddie needs to fix himself and his and chris' relationship before jumping into another romance, whether it be buck or anyone else.

on the other hand, buck deserves to be loved ANYWAYS. tommy is already showing potential to just love buck anyways despite anything that happens, that he'll do anything for him, that he can be his rock. gerrard can definitely be smh to shake them up, no couple in this show is safe from anything no matter how in love and happy they are. it's time for buck to have his madney, bathena, henren moments with his own love interest. buck deserves to be happy with tommy, to go through the hard times with him, for someone to love him no matter what and that absolutely does not take away from how important buck and eddie's friendship is. people cannot seem to grasp that unfortunately and it's sad.

in other words, im so tired of people acting like they are superior over ships. I truly am.

#bucktommy #911 abc #asks

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syoddeye · 23 days ago

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regarding your last message on spoilers for the warren - do you feel this is the downside of over-reliance on tagging(not you specifically, but just in general across all fandom)? I LOVE ao3’s tagging system on one hand, but on the other, I feel like people want every single thing tagged that happens from start to finish so they know in advance if they want to read the fic or not. Which…valid! I understand people just don’t vibe with certain things or find other material triggering. But sometimes I feel like it teeters into like…over disclosure or that it takes away from the reading experience. Sometimes, you’re SUPPOSED to be surprised or shocked if something happens to a character.

yeah, i get what you’re saying. i also love AO3's tagging system. it's so helpful for filtering content, especially when it comes to avoiding stuff that's triggering or upsetting, or simply fall outside of one's interests.

but for my own writing—i think there's a balance between content warnings for safety, and tagging every single plot point just so people don't feel caught off guard emotionally. to me, part of storytelling is the unknown. it's okay to not know exactly what you're walking into sometimes, especially in dark or horror fic. i am not in favor of foreshadowing everything in the tags.

that's where i think the reader's own discernment comes in. if you're choosing to read something suspenseful or unsettling, then it follows that some parts of the story are meant to shock, disturb, or confuse you. you have to be okay with not getting immediate answers—or possibly never getting them at all. (i personally love horror stories that leave things open-ended or unexplained. it's part of what makes them stick.)

for the warren specifically, this is why i labeled it no archive warnings apply, included a note that tags will change on the first chapter, and added heads-ups at the top of any chapters where major tags are added. if someone needs full disclosure or wants every possible tag up front, those notices are there—they should see them and choose to skip.

(does that always happen? no. but that's also why i don't feel bad if someone skips warnings and tags, then gets upset. i did my part. it's not fair to be mad at me for not doing theirs.)

i don't think it's anyone's fault. it's a kind of a symptom of how people interact with works now. people want to curate their experiences really tightly, which makes sense, god knows i do too, but i personally believe it can also dull the impact of a story when you know too much going in.

it's tricky. i try to be respectful of boundaries while still keeping the spirit of the story intact, which sometimes means letting people know, hey, this is dark and upsetting, but not laying everything bare before they've even read a line.

i'm completely okay with people skipping my stuff because of that. i'm not going to spoil major plot points in the tags just to make everyone comfortable. that, in and of itself, is impossible.

#sy asks

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damnfandomproblems · 1 year ago

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Posting a compilation of responses to Fandom Problem #5234

Anon:

PLEASE watch the Contrapoints video on Twilight. It is by a trans person named Natalie Wynn.

(anon includes a link to a YouTube video titled "Twilight | ContraPoints")

This video has changed the minds of tons of people who initially thought Twilight was "rape and stalking abuse", by explaining the history of where all this panic comes from and why people are drawn to dark fantasies. It changed my mind and I'm hoping it'll change your mind too.

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Anon:

going through every point bc this personally ticked me off for literally no reason but i have nothing better to do. so. sorry if this seems overly pissy /genuine. (also typed this in my notes app so sorry for the lack of italics/caps in place of italitcs) 1. not wanting to see incest/whatever isnt purity culture. blocking tags/accounts that make you uncomfortable is something that is HEAVILY ENCOURAGED. the only people i have ever seen discouraging this are antishippers. what IS purity culture, however, is saying that EVERYONE ELSE should not make something because it makes you personally uncomfortable. as someone who was literally raised within purity culture, that is exactly the kind of shit they say. 2. fiction DOES affect reality! but not in the way you think it does. yes, propaganda works! but that is because it is specifically constructed to convince people of a certain view. representation is important because people who arent cishet white men exist and deserve to see themselves in fiction. but i think the best way i can explain it is this; if you were to watch Hannibal, would you automatically assume that cannibalism is okay? what if you watched a John Wick movie or Deadpool? Is mass murder okay? the answer is obviously an astounding no, because you are able to think about the media you consume. this is expected of any media that isnt literally a show aimed at children. There's at least one media btw. i'm not entirely sure about Hannibal because i've never seen it. 3. that is literally a coping mechanism therapists recommend. those are all UNHEALTHY and SELFDESTRUCTIVE coping mechanisms. you cannot compare the two. 4. if you are getting mad about porn then that is an entirely Puritan viewpoint. 6. "make the story frown upon it." if you cannot gauge for yourself that these things are bad then you should not be engaging with those stories. 7. last point isnt a proship issue, its a jerkwad issue. people who dont tag things are dicks, at least we can agree on that. however if someone doesnt tag something it is on you to block them. YOU need to curate YOUR online experience. (it may also be worth it to KINDLY send an ask about it. its the same as tagging flashing. sometimes people just dont think about it and sometimes people are doing it on purpose to be a douche. you need to block the latter as they are not worth your time or energy.) Last point was something you did not mention so im not including it in the list itself; if you were to ask a proshipper if they supported pedophilic/incestual/abuse relationships irl, they would most likely say no. If they say yes then they are just a pedo/someone who is okay with incest/an abuser. those people are not bad people because of the fiction they consume/create. they are bad people because they want to hurt people and do not see anything wrong with it/are not willing to see why they are in the wrong. apologies for any typos, ive reread through it but i tend to miss things.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Anon:

Op really just compared writing fictional scenarios with fictional dollies, a method of processing trauma that is recommended by psychologists and actually -is- effective at helping people process stuff, to alcoholism, street drugs, and socon which can and do kill people. You ever seen someone withdraw from alcohol abuse? I have. You actually spoken to a psychologist about friends who write things to cope after being raped at a party? I have. Are you still a clueless child? Yes. So take your moral panic and shove it. You're a kid but if you want to get involved in serious adult conversations, you need to be prepared to accept discussing serious, real things. You can't even look at a rapefic without getting triggered (I use this word in the proper sense, not hyperbolic sense) and ascribing blown-out-of-proportion, emotional judgments on people who, if you passed them on the street, wouldn't stand out to you at all. Because these are normal people. This to me is a huge sign you're just not ready for this kind of conversation.

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Anon:

"...really ticks me off how someone can say "It's really fucking gross how you wanna see a minor and an adult make out" and proshippers can be like "UGH PURITY CULTURE" Like, how is not wanting to see pedophilia and incest purity culture. Especially when you're a minor. dumbass I was a minor when I wanted to se OCs modeled after myself hooking up with the hot adult leads from my shows. I wasn't stupid enough to think it was OK to happen in real life but if Dream of the Endless was in an arranged marriage with my OC for reasons I wanted to see it. Like. "Minors" have sex. A lot. And yeah, age gaps can be problematic in real life but on paper? Who cares? It's fake. It's not real. It's a story. Acting like minors are sexless little angels until the day they turn 18 is crazy. Minors want to see boning and they want to see people their own age boning, and sometimes they want to see people their own age boning That Old Man or Milfs or 1000 year old vampires or whatever. Not even gonna bother with the rest. Others can get that.

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Anon:

Where to even start here? I guess I should start by saying that proshipper doesn't mean what you think that it means OP! It doesn't mean that we support incest or pedophilia, it simply means that we're anti harassment. I don't like incest or pedophilia. It's weird to me, and yet one of the most popular series, Game of Thrones, features both incest and pedophilia. Romanticizing villainy? Can I ask what your definition of romanticizing is? What if the story revolves around the villain? Like Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes? Are stories like that not supposed to exist? What about the anime and manga called Overlord? What About Hannibal Lecter? What about the Joker movie? Do none of these have any value? Do you expect the villain to deadpan into the camera every 10 minutes confessing that he knows his actions are wrong but he's doing it anyways? And if the writers don't make their characters do this, are you going to accuse them of condoning their characters actions? Because I think it would be pretty dumb to make a villain out of character for the sake of, "I know this is wrong, but I'm doing it anyways!" Do you want no villains in stories? Is that what you prefer? For everything to be sunshine and rainbows all of the time? Because that would be really boring. Are there any true heroes without a villain. A bad coping mechanism? Really? So now you're a psychologist who knows everyone on the planet that knows exactly what everyone needs to get better? Coping mechanism looks different from person to person. What is important is that the coping mechanism helps you process your emotions and what happened to you and sometimes it is helpful to write your emotions out in the form of writing and sometimes that can be fanfiction. I am someone who had been diagnosed with trauma and depression and I'm currently doing therapy for this and taking medicine. You know what's helped me all of these years before I started going to therapy on a regular basis? Characters with a lot of baggage like me. They can be hero or villains. I don't care which it is. If they have a tragic back story and I'm all over that. Fiction doesn't effect reality? It can and sometimes does. You're right. But you know who's problem that is? Your parents, the school system, and whoever else never taught you that fiction is fiction. That characters aren't real. If your parents let the TV or Internet babysit you growing up instead of being a parent and teaching you right from wrong, or being able to tell fiction from reality, well then that is the fault of your parents. Do you know who's not at fault? Stranger on the Internet. We're not here to hold your hand, you are not entitled to that. It is up to you to curate your own experience and mind your own business. If you don't like something, blacklist the tag, block the person posting it or log off of that site and find something else to look at. You think you've debunked everything, but really you're just naive and living in a fantasy world. The world is not an idealistic place, nor will it ever be and that is why these stories exists to begin with. Covering up everything that is bad in the world won't ever make it go away and that is reality. Period. Let people cope the way they need to, and unless you have degrees in psychology, you have no right to tell people what they can and cannot enjoy. Again, I myself would never write or read about some of the things that you've posted about OP, but will I continue writing about my trauma? I sure will, because it is something that I am still dealing with many years after it happened and I'm sure others will do the same with the things that they've had experience with, too.

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Anon:

OP, one of your top posts is an AO3 reference and contains a link to an AO3 fic. In case you didn't know, AO3 was directly created to be a host for fanworks that got censored by other sites. Functionally, it is an archive, like a library. And like libraries, it hosts anything that is legal to host under US law. One major driving factor behind AO3's creation was the "Livejournal Strikethrough Boldthrough", an incident where "concerned parties" successfully lobbied to get Livejournal, a site that hosted writing, to remove its "yucky fics". Guess what? Gay fiction got removed in the process because, surprise, certain parties found that yucky too. (I'm talking about conservative groups who are obviously very anti-gay and anti-LGBT.) Here's one post about it: https://pretentioussongtitle.tumblr.com/post/624690560646676480/like-wathever-antis-delete-your-blogs-pls-thx So... You can't say you're okay with calling to censor things, without looking at the full picture and where it ultimately leads. You're asking for a lot of collateral damage. And like someone else said, engaging in discussions about heavy, adult topics with strange adults on the internet (and most of us are adults, OP) is very dangerous. There have been a lot of cases where someone has cried foul about certain kinds of fictional writing, only for an "anti proship" person to walk up to them and groom them, and it worked because the kid was under the pretense that the person was a "safe, good person". Please do not put yourself in danger and get out of the spaces you frequent.

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Anon:

It's interesting you use Lolita as an example of what to do "right" when it comes to depicting things. You believe tons of media must be censored or kept away from the light of day, yet Lolita is an example of what to emulate to prevent that from happening? You would be very shocked to discover Lolita is among, if not the, most notorious piece of fiction for censorship groups to attack. So I really don't know if you fully understand what it is you're arguing for, here. You're just a kid, so I'm assuming you haven't actually read Lolita. That's the first thing. The second thing is, given the fact virtually all people who are invested in censoring and banning media actually hate Lolita, but you seem to have a totally opposite, 180-degree opinion about it, I have to wonder if you've happened to find a lot of random stuff from around the internet, but have yet to actually put it all together and cross-check everything to see if it actually makes sense. There's a lot of stuff in your post that is either plain out wrong, poorly strung together, or contradictory.

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Anon:

I'm going to look real tinfoil-hatty in two seconds, but I swear some of y'all antis in the notes are following tags like "pedophilia" and "incest" and that's the only reason you found this confession. Cause I haven't seen half of you here before. And if so, that's kind of weird. I hope I'm wrong. To be fair there's no way to confirm either way but I just thought it was funny because I can see it happening if not for the antis here, than for others. Gotta get that daily dose of outrage.

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Anon:

""Fiction doesn't affect reality" So why is representation so important? Why has propaganda worked so well?" you're taking this statement too literally. fiction obviously affects reality. if you cry over your favourite character's death, well there ya go. fiction has just changed reality. it made you feel sad things. representation is important because it makes those represented feel acknowleged and because it makes their existence more known to the world. propaganda is designed SPECIFICALLY to heavily affect reality. a doujin artist does not sit down and think "hmm. today i will draw a loli hentai to turn people into paedophiles". ""Well I'm not gonna become a murderer just because I've seen people murder in pieces of media" Name one piece of media where murder was portrayed as unironically, fully okay." as someone not well-versed in shooters, fortnite. murder is encouraged in fortnite. the point of the game is to kill people. i'd also like you to name one piece of media where rape is portrayed as perfectly fine and dandy. ""I'm coping with trauma" Well that's an awful coping mechanism. If you have been traumatized by incest, abuse, or pedophilia, why are you creating/consuming content where those are all romanticized?" because the fact that they're not alone in their suffering is comforting to them? as an abuse victim, i like characters with abusive parents. it gives me a character to sympathise with and characters to absolutely loathe with all my being. now that i think about it, i like that i'm not suffering alone. other people acknowledge the things i, and other victims, have to deal with. there are other reasons, but that's one i thought up ""You're ableist for criticizing our coping mechanism!" ... You know what else is a coping mechanism? Self-harm. Alcoholism. Excessive drug use. Those are frowned upon EVERYWHERE, because they're self-destructive. So why is thinking adults and minors should be cute together (sometimes real life adults and minors, but I'm not gonna get into the whole RPF discourse because RPF is even more fucking disgusting) suddenly okay?" there is a difference between doing things that being actual harm and because the latter is harmless. besides... isn't this circular logic? this argument is based on the conclusion you draw from it. "proshipping as a coping mechanism is bad because proshipping is bad". ""Rule 34 and gross ships is always gonna exist!" In our current world, bigotry is always gonna exist. Doesn't mean we should stop getting mad about it." bigotry excludes a specific group of often-innocent people for no reason. rule 34 is just porn of fictional characters. completely incomparable ""I'm exploring unhealthy relationships in fiction!" Okay then! That's great! Don't romanticize it. Tag it accordingly. Make the story frown upon it. Lolita, the book, frowned upon the pedophilia and thought it was disgusting. Do that." nobody romanticises anything. most loli hentai just... depict a loli having sex. it doesn't depict it as this amazing thing that you should dp. most lolicons that talk nabout wanting to fuck... idk, klee from the funny gacha game don't actually wanna have sex with kids. it's omly romanticised in-universeww, if you will. it doesn't say anything about it being good to do irl. and on nhentai, we use tags. we have a lot of 'em, including the recent 'kodomo doushi'. you jujst have to take a look at the tags section of a doujin and search for any tag you may not want you can also filter them in the search bar. we tag our shit, it's just your fault for being an irresponsible fuck. "But you're not gonna do that, are you." we will. the importance of tagging can NOT be stressed enough anon, i am gonna be blunt here. you are not smart. you did not debunk shit. god will slam the pearly gates of heaven on you for this post

#fandom problem 5234 #response to previous problem #mod sf

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muraenide · 1 year ago

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This miiiiight be oversharing personal sentiments a little bit but...

Ever since I changed my rules to include an explicit list of what I'm going to write on this blog instead of just a simple, brief statement saying "dark things will be present here" and started actively following people or mutuals of mutuals whose muses or writing I am genuinely interested in/have spiked my interests, I've grown a lot happier about the contents and people I'm seeing on my dash.

I felt like tum.blr rpers have grown incredibly judgemental and incapable of minding their own business. People all around me seem to have shifted their energy onto focusing on offending as few people as possible instead of trying to actually have fun, and the rpc has become a weird circle for activism when it shouldn't have been used as a medium for (false) activism in the first place. Not all of us are here to make a point or to establish a legacy. In fact, most of us are just here to have fun and scratch an itch in the brain or fill in gaps that canon source materials haven't been able to provide. But the idea of this is incomprehensible to some people who are actively ruining the rpc and making everyone fear that they're walking on eggshells while they spiral into a depressing state of existing to not offend anyone instead of existing to have fun.

I've lost count of the number of times people tell me that I'm on a DNI for "writing with pro.ship.pers" or "writing romantic ships with an adult and a minor" (<- said ship is between a 17 y.o. and a 19 y.o.) sometimes it's also ships about fake incest.

(Just as an aside, I've grown so desensitized by being on DNIs that it's no longer something to feel anything about. I'd just go through their rules with a very confused expression if to see what they took issue with. Most of the time I don't even know the mun personally.)

I've gotten more hate directed at me for writing fake in.cest rather than real ones, which is not only baffling but also incredibly ODD bc the fandom "decides" what is good and what is bad, which reeks heavily of manipulation and toxicity in my opinion. Fandoms aren't governed by a single party or a monolithic authority that decides its rules. Fandom rules are made by the community, and in every community, there should be different rules, made to ensure everyone is comfortable and feel inclusive. That is what makes fandoms special and detached from reality. Yes, you're entitled to not want to interact with certain content for reasons no one else is entitled to know unless they have your consent, but you're definitely not entitled to silence/stomp out everyone to cater to your whims or risk getting hate/harassment. Which is why I heavily encourage tagging content as-is instead of denying the nature of said content and praying that no one notices because that is the best way to make it difficult for people with different preferences and tastes to co-exist.

And ever since I changed my rules and actively followed people again, there has been a variety of content on my dash with varying tags. It's honestly very stimulating and uplifting, and if I firmly believe if a mutual were to take offense to anything I write or choose to interact with, it's on them as they clearly did not go through my rules when they followed/followed back. Additionally, I tag all my things.

A few months ago, my dash was exhausting, and boring, everyone (or most of my mutuals) was scared. Now I see posts getting tagged "necrophilia cw". I'm very happy for both my mutuals and their muses for striving for the peaks of how far fiction writing and the imaginative side of the mind can go.

I'd highly recommend anyone who has been in a similar situation to list down your dos and don'ts so your mutuals will know what to take to your tables and what to not. Personally, it felt like my dash had curated itself and it's been very pleasant to be on tum.blr lately even if I still have to vanish for a few more days due to inrl.

I think about my dash very often this week and I love all of you guys for being here and showing me your brainrots/muses! 💗💞💓

#𖦹 ⋆꙳ ⁄ ooc.#rant cw

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offtorivendell · 8 months ago

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Just wanted to tell you that I love your account ❤️ and I was curious how you manage to stay so positive in the middle of this ship war

Aww thank you so much! 💜

I'm definitely not perfect, but I mainly try to trust my own judgement and reading comprehension, and keep to my fandom bubble when possible.

I can compartmentalise almost to a fault, so while I know there's always a chance that I'm wrong about Elriel (and more than a chance that I'm wrong about my theories, as they can get very crackish/specific lol), I don't let it take anything from the enjoyment I get chatting about theories with my fandom friends. That's what I'm here for, the rest I just do my best to either laugh about or ignore.

At this point my Tumblr feed is (mostly) Elain and Elriel based positivity, at least with regards to SJM. I've curated my bubble, filtered out any tags I don't want to see, try to avoid the drama, and chill. If we get Elain's book next, then brilliant, but if not, I'm pretty much at the point where my enjoyment comes from my friends and theorising with them rather than the source material itself (I think that's about as negative as I'll get, because I do find the fandom negativity exhausting, hence I typically stick to private chats with friends, with the occasional foray into the subreddit - doing this has allowed me to separate the books from a lot of the extraneous bullshit). Also, I'm very lucky in that, while I've always loved/will love reading, fandom is more of a nice little bonus to my life; I don't rely on it too much in the grand scheme of things. If I "get my way" with Elriel then great, but my happiness isn't contingent on that.

So yeah - and not to be too "00s self help wisdom" - the enjoyment I experience from my current level of fandom participation is more about the journey than the destination. Don't get me wrong, I do hope I'm right about at least some things (thankfully HOFAS suggested that I may be on a few of the right tracks, so fingers crossed), but if I'm not then I am well and truly past the point where I don't care all that much. There's no point in stressing too much about what SJM will or won't write, because it's not going to change the end result. So why do that to yourself? Just have fun with your fandom friends (whether that be theorising, making art, whatever) and let others do the same, vent in private if necessary, be kind, and hope for Elriel the best. 😉✌🏻

Thanks for stopping by anon! Have a brilliant rest of your week.

#otr ask #otr anon #fandom positivity #don't put all your reading eggs in the one basket #is probably another way to put it lol #i hope we all have more than one author or series we enjoy reading #and a lot more good things going on irl as well #personal #sort of

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eskawrites · 6 months ago

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fic writer tag game

i said i wasn't gonna talk about the charmed au for like the fifth day in a row but oh look now i have an excuse to do exactly that, thanks for the tag @elizabeth-mitchells

How many wips do you have currently?

honestly for things i am actually actively working on it's mostly just the charmed au. but i also have outlines for a handful of thriving in the apocalypse pieces, plus uhh 2.5 celebrity fake dating au things plus a couple wicked fics that i have notes for but haven't actually started but that's for a different account

Which one are you finding the hardest to finish?

thriving in the apocalypse! man, most of that series was outlined/drafted back in 2022. the ronance fandom feels so different now! the meta is different, the focus is a lil different! it's weird going back to some of those notes and trying to figure out what exactly it needs to end up being

What does it usually look like when inspiration strikes for you?

that gif of kermit with a typewriter. little arms flailing. that me

i have also been known to gasp out loud whenever i figure out certain plot points or something, but my roommate is also a writer so this hasn't proven to be as embarrassing as it could be. yet.

Do you curate playlists for each fic or is your process different?

hmmm i do make playlists for a lot of stuff (the charmed au has one, raise dead had one that i didn't make, cfdau has multiple). but when it comes to actual writing i just have one massive writing playlist i usually listen to (except for the cfdau. that was written almost entirely to its own playlist and it was absolutely an outlier because of it)

Do you go balls to the wall and write as you go or are you more organized?

i would not say i'm organized, but i do always have, like, multiple pages of notes and outlines and stuff before i write. pretty much any fic that isn't a one-shot has two separate documents dedicated to it. the cfdau had a document for notes and outlines, a document for written scenes, a document organizing the timeline, and a document for the actual story itself (it also lowkey has changed the way i write so now my stories have even more notes/outlines than before. the charmed au has an outline that took me a solid fucking week to make. it's ridiculous)

i never know who to tag and some people have already been tagged um um um how about @smileweakandwrong and idk, whoever else wants to do this!

#writing things #charmed au #and the unceasing presence of #celebrity fake dating au #that shows up in basically every aspect of my life these days #no regrets

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mla0 · 7 months ago

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hi, im a svtwt main whos looking at tumblr as maybe another place i can go to for the community bc its rly bad on x/twt. is it more chill here? anything i shuld know + is it better than twt

I'm going to be honest, in my experience just about any other site is better for virtually any community over Twitter... I've only very vaguely scrolled around on the slenderverse community on Twitter, and it feels like it's 70% infighting and the rest of it is confined to that 30% margin. There looks to be so much harassment and general toxicity, as though people on there have never learned how to be decent to their peers before, which I guess is expected of modern-day Twitter and its "culture."

I've never been a user of that site basically ever, but it seems rancid to me. So, I think Tumblr is a better choice (the community on Bluesky is new and small like the site itself, but it's also very chill over there so far, and unlike Twitter, the blocking and muting on that site is fantastic)

Now, sometimes shit happens, discourse spreads around, but I think it's a lot easier to ignore than it is on Twitter. First and foremost, since there's tagging on this site that drives almost all slenderverse content, it's very easy to filter out just about anything you don't like (I have dozens of ships, and even characters, filtered out on my dashboard, and I only click on them to view them if they're posts by someone/something I like). The main dashboard is also not an algorithmic one, and if you do have the "For You" as default, you can just change it, so random bullshit won't just get thrown at your face to drive more engagement and rage from the community.

If you're a desktop user, or you use mobile Tumblr on a web browser instead of the app, you can even use the extension called Xkit Rewritten, and under the tweaks extension you have the option to entirely hide filtered posts, so they just completely disappear instead of even warning you. There's another extension that allows you to hide an individual post, no matter where it pops up. XKit is AMAZING.

Ignore the discourse, curate your dash/filters, respect people's boundaries, be nice to fellow community members, be respectful to and about the creators of these series like Dylan, Evan, Valeria, Troy, etc., and I think you'll have a good time here. I've been in the community for almost a decade now, under various accounts and on different sites, and the moment I learned how the filtering worked, and I matured enough to realize 99% of infighting is a complete waste of time, I don't think anything bad has come my way. Tumblr gives you some tools to make it easier, and so does XKit- so learn how to use them!

And have fun ^_^

#Anonymous #slenderverse #inbox

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toomanythoughts2 · 11 months ago

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do you consider yourself proship

Hi Anon. 👋

So, I'm going to be as specific as I can to answer this question so as to not misconstrue anything.

I do not follow the "Proship/Antiship" discourse as I believe it does more harm than good for the fandom at large.

I have watched from the sidelines what it has done to fandom on Tumblr, Twitter, Tiktok, and Instagram. This type of discourse has alienated, harmed, and scared genuine fans away from fandom. From what I have witnessed, I believe that this type of discourse has caused major harassment issues within fandom under the guise of good intentions. While the identifiers at first might have started off as something positive (A way to quickly pinpoint which blogs you'll mostly likely get along with based on shipping preferences), I do believe that is has turned itself into a tool to harm people. This does not mean that anyone who labels themselves Pro/Anti harm people or participate in the discourse itself, but that the discourse surrounding the identities have caused major issues. Whether or not you believe that to be true, understand that this is from my perspective.

I do not consider myself either one of these titles. I'm never going to label myself as one of them. As someone who has been here since before the "Mishapocalyse" of 2013, I have watched fandom literally evolve with the new generations. I have watched trends rise and fall, edits about different presidential elections starting with Obama, I've witnessed the creation of "Nice shoe laces." "Thanks I got them from the president." I have learned a thing or two about fandom, how it grows and changes and shifts.

And I have also learned how to curate, support, and ignore to create a safe space for myself in fandom.

As my pinned post states, I believe in a "Ship and Let Ship" mindset. I do not tolerate hate or bullying. If you want to label me as something, you can label me as "Anti-Harassment". Or, you can label me as "Pro-Blocking." I firmly believe in curating your fandom space around the blogs and people you enjoy listening to, enjoy looking at, and enjoy involving yourself with. For every fandom space I enter into, I always tell people what I'm about and if they don't enjoy that, then I always tell them to please block me. There is no point in being unhappy or being annoyed by my presence in your fandom space. I have also done the same thing, where if a person writes out what they're about and I don't like it, I block them. I've been a Season 1, Izzy Hands stan on Twitter before. I know exactly how to curate my fandom space.

Life is much too short to not block blogs that you don't like. Fandom space is what you make of it.

I do not condone shipping harassment, anon hate, bullying, or doxing. I do not believe in stalking blogs or screenshotting posts to edit them or dog-piling. I do not think it is valuable to spend our precious free time (less of which you have the more you grow) hating and harassing others about ships that you may not like or agree with. If you don't like something or if you don't agree with it, block that blog. You deserve to have a safe place within fandom that makes you happy.

This is not to say that I like or agree with every ship I encounter. There are plenty of ships in plenty of fandoms I have been a part of that I didn't or don't like. Not once though, have I ever harassed or harmed a person over a ship. I learned how to curate my space so that I wouldn't see these ships. Blocking and black listing tags helped me avoid certain areas of fandom. For that, I created positive and rich online spaces where I could grow and enjoy my part of the fandom. These spaces were the best parts of my childhood.

This doesn't mean I can't stop liking a ship once I got into it. Many ships that I once shipped as a child or a teenager (or hell, even last week), I can look back on and go, "Oh, actually, maybe I don't like this after all." I am allowed to grow and change my mind on certain ships the older I get. All people are allowed to change their minds.

Anon, my blog here is simply to have fun, write my little posts, and put up my crudely done art. The Metalocalypse fandom has been incredibly kind to me these last couple of months, especially as a new fan of the show. I truly have so much fun every time I log on here and look at the engagement within the tags. I have not been on Tumblr in a long time so to see such an active community, a kind and thoughtful community at that, it fills me with happiness. I forgot how much fun creating and being a part of a fandom community like this can be. I enjoy creating and talking and learning and sharing and laughing with others about our silly little band. I am eternally grateful for every bit of engagement within the community, no matter how small or large.

Anon, I would not enjoy my life on Tumblr nearly as much if I did not curate it that way.

I am 26 years old, Anon. As an American woman, I have a good 53~ years left in me before I croak, less than that if I am unable to get healthcare. I simply do not want to waste a moment of my free time worrying or getting upset about things I can not change or ships I don't like. Especially not when there is so much more to the fandom that I do like, that I love. I want to spend my time surrounded by a community that I enjoy being around and enjoys having me around.

My dear Anon, I will not label myself as either one of these identities. At any time that you look at my blog and do not enjoy my presence, I implore you to block me. Curate the space that you want based on their presence in the community, not by an identifying marker.

I'm sorry if this isn't the answer you're looking for but, to me, it's my honest answer to your question. Have a good day, Anon.

Ok, bye, love you <3

Tl;dr: Love what you love. Block what you don't. Enjoy your life. Curate your fandom space.

#anon #to the person who sent me this i hope this answers your question #anti-bullying #pro-blocking

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iamafanofcartoons · 2 years ago

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i'll be real. you blazed a post onto my dash. i'm gonna block you. rules are rules. figured i'd help you out before i do.

you really want to know why the youtube algorithm is bad? positive feedback loops. not positive as in good, but positive as in they grow larger over time.

youtube's recommendation algorithm is partially based off of what it learns from users. it takes in all kinds of data on what users watch--the uploader, the title, the tags, the thumbnail, the description, anything it can glean from the audio and visuals, whatever. you name it, google's probably holding it. they dont have yottabytes upon yottabytes of data for nothing.

importantly, though, is that they also keep track of what the user watches Next. see, google (as with most social media that uses an ad revenue model) will run studies, where they try out different experimental algorithms created from viewership data on different users and see what is more likely to get users to click through. how they create these experiments is pretty complicated, and i'll save you the technogore. think of it as making tons of algorithms that each think different combinations of aforementioned viewership data at different amounts are the reason why that viewer made their choice, then projecting that onto all users to inform future suggestions. trust me, that's the easy way to think about it.

what makes it a positive feedback loop? well, recall that i said the algorithms are created on viewership data. the successful one(s) is/are then used to inform future recommendations. that data is then used to further experimentally tweak the algorithm. the choices user make influence the algorithm. what influences the choices users make? the algorithm. as time moves on, the algorithm becomes more and more biased until youtube decides to make more dramatic changes to influence things in a different direction (remember the change to favor runtime? then to favor watch-through?)

here's where i get all communist, and why i felt compelled to write all this. youtube isn't fixing shit about this system. why would they? people are clicking through recommendations at insane rates! they're watching more videos! and sure, a general societal right-wing bias might have positive feedback looped into turning the website into a facism pipeline, but google is making so much fucking money from gathering an insane amount of information from users that can be used in ad targeting the whole time. even if youtube itself struggles with profitability, even if people like. kind of say stuff about the problem but never really do anything about it at a large scale, even if people are being redpilled, why should google care when they make more money than anyone could even comprehend? until capitalism is overthrown, there will be a shit algorithm.

blocking channels is a start, but there will always be more shitty things to block (just like how there's always blazed posts for me to block the OPs of). apps that bypass youtube accounts and privacy loss (youtube vanced and newpipe) are privacy tools first, kind of hit or miss when it comes to the algorithm. never looked into the source code of them, but, if you ask me, it's either some amalgamation of everyone's recommendations who use those apps, a "default" algorithm, or one that's kind of tailored to you as youtube slowly worms its way into identifying you by your device and ip address.

point is, dont hold your breath waiting. keep looking for tools, keep spreading the word, keep finding ways to support content you like so the artist isnt reliant on ad revenue. dont keep throwing your money at tumblr, though, they really dont need it. they really never needed it. buy yourself a nice fuckin sandwich. everybody deserves a nice sandwich.

god, i'm going to look dumb if my ask gets deleted when i block you in five seconds. you have a good night.

Soo...yeah....this was based on this post

Basically I'm sick and tired of people like Manga_Kamen, Vexed Viewer, WatermelonCube, and other people raging about how they hate something that others like, and how people are supposed to hate what they hate.

I just wanted to give people the opportunity to remove those hate videos from their search results, so that they can at least find what they're looking for, using Youtube search.

#youtube #youtube search #rwby youtube #youtube algorithm

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simpxxstan · 3 years ago

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After I'm Gone (k.th artist au)- Chapter 2

pairing: taehyung x oc

genre: romance, some smut, fluff, LOTS of angst

trope: childhood friends to lovers au, artist!taehyung, love triangle

summary: after being inseparable for all of their school years, when taehyung leaves suddenly one night, life becomes unbearable for flora. she thinks that living without him is suffering, but little does she know that when he crashes back into her life, it’s going to be much worse. especially when he arrives with a gorgeous wife. will fate ever stop being so cruel to her? will she ever find true love?

rating for this chapter: none.

rating for the series: 18+

word count: 3.3k

warnings for this chapter: mild cursing.

warnings for the series: sporadic smut, heartbreak, (some) dishonesty in love, verbal fights, mention of untreatable illnesses, death of a character (not oc, nor taehyung), depression, alcoholism, smoking habits. will add more warnings if required to the chapter itself.

a/n: OOF my exams are finally over, phew. thank you for reading the previous chapter! going to upload all the remaining chapters that i have written till now right now! will be updating more regularly now! will also update my masterlist soon (phew my tumblr really needs attention) so you can check out all the stories that have been cooking in my head till now, which i'm going to start work on real soon. also umm should i make a banner? i see all my favourite writers on tumblr make them for their stories but like idk whether to make or not? let me know your thoughts! also, i wrote this chapter while listening to this: it hits ALL the right spots! (christmas tree is such a gem! i love how ALL of tae's songs fit some romance trope of the other mwah tae) ANYWAYS enough of my rant. would recommend you to do the same while reading too, if you can listen to music while reading. would really appreciate any feedback! thank you so much for reading :)) here you go, @ggukkieland, since you wanted to be tagged!

_____________________________________________________________

She sat, a frown plastered on her face, staring at the sky, where the clouds were darkening. After that night, Flora had cut off ties with all of her school friend group. She had shifted to a college that was deeper in the mainland of the continent, far away from London where she had lived for all her childhood years. After college, she had shifted jobs. While her boyfriends never stayed for longer than six months, none of them had approved of her wishes to become a museum curator. After being brilliant in mathematics, how could she go into something as mundane as museum curation? Had her parents been with her, they would have looked down upon her as well.

That was why she had leaned into Taehyung so much- he had accepted everything she wanted without any qualms. He had accepted her mundane dreams, he had given her unconditional comfort when she needed him, he had never questioned her choices.

Of course, the others would not be like that. She was certain that she was going to face the wrath of her school group when she faced them after ten years. She had never managed to open social media accounts. She had changed her number, and only when necessity of feeding herself and paying bills rose, she came back to London.

Her friends would also wonder why she had cut off ties with them in the first place. Maybe they had never got to know? Surely a tiny event like that, amidst all of that winter night partying, had slipped their attention. They had been eighteen, no one could be expected to remember events from that long ago. It was just a shame that she had never forgotten. Flora had been bad at forgiving all her life.

In truth, if they got to know her side of the story, maybe they would understand why she had done what she had done. But somehow, deep inside her, she feared that they would all side with Taehyung, and she would be alone again. These ten years, she had been alone- but being around friends and being alone would be even worse.

She would now have to come up with excuses to make up for all her errors. Could she refuse the invitation from Aisha, simply say that she had prior engagements, and avoid everyone? She could easily do that. However, after that, there would be no chances of ever reconciling. If she turned down Aisha's invitation, it would be the end of any chances her enjoying some friendship in this life.

That left one option- going and facing the reality, whatever would come.

She would have to don her armour, hide her broken heart and dark circles from the world, and wear something nice so that nobody would get a hint of her real life. It would be just a one-night affair, done and dusted. After this, she could restrict conversation and anything to calls or texts, and her life would move ahead just as before, without any new interference.

A thought that she had purposely subdued and ignored for so long finally arose. What if Taehyung was at the party? She immediately shook her head- she knew very well that he was a world-famous artist now, and hardly ever visited London except for shows and art exhibition appearances. There was very little chance that he would be able to turn up at the party at all due to his busy schedule. Also, if he was coming to the party, Aisha would have said his name because she knew very well how close Flora and Tae had been as friends, but then she had not corrected her either when she had hinted her that seven people would be there at the party...

Her phone beeped, a text had arrived.

Maycrest Apartments, 212 Russel Road, next to Sugarberry Café. Please come! We'll be waiting for you from 6 pm :)) -love, Aisha

Now there was no turning back. Flora would have to hunt for a good dress, put on her lipstick, wear a smile, and be ready to face the reality.

The day had just got gloomier. She got up to make another cup of tea, and finish the book she was reading.

_____________________________________________________________

"Good morning, Mr. Han!"

"Mornin', Dr. Flora!"

"Please don't call me Dr., Sir!"

"Well, I don't mean any offense. But you should be given the respect you deserve, shouldn't you?"

Flora smiled widely at Mr. Han, taking her place at the desk opposite to him. The sun was pouring in beautifully through the windows of the room, which stretched from ceiling to floor. Mr. Han was a specialist in post-colonial war artefacts, while she was in charge of the Eastern Art Galleries. Days like this were her favourites- she would hardly have to sit at her desk- instead, she would spend the day cataloguing different pieces across the galleries, basking in the sunshine, occasionally sipping her coffee, and then finishing the article she had been writing about the revival of traditional Mongolian artwork in recent times.

Except that today was not going to be such a day.

The sunshine and the caramel macchiato did nothing to cure the constant throbbing pain she had felt in her forehead ever since she had woken up. Flora had realised that everything would be alright only after she got over with the party.

She began an email, with the title: "Request to Leave Early". It had been weeks since her last such mail. The last time she had sent this mail, she was going on a date with a guy who was interested in old cinema, like her. Fifty minutes into the movie, she had found him all over her neck, and sworn never to go over to anyone's house to watch films since then.

The reply to her mail came after an hour. Not in a written form, though. Her boss, the Director of the Asian Studies department of the museum came barging into the cafeteria, where Flora had been chatting with her colleagues, and literally announced to everyone, "Flora's going on a date. Mrs Hardy (referring to the lady who ran the cafeteria), please give her an extra donut today, from my side!" Everyone at the cafeteria roared with cheers and laughter. They were not laughing at her- no, they all liked her way too much to laugh at her for going on dates very rarely. Rather, they were celebrating that maybe now Flora would laugh a little more and spend fewer nights with statues of old emperors.

Flora shook her head, all the while smiling too. Nothing could stop Lauren, her boss. Lauren had first met Flora at a café- she was there for a blind date, while Flora had simply been going about her work. Lauren had mistaken Flora to be her blind date- it was not until they both had finished a glass of wine that Flora had admitted the reality to Lauren, but the latter had just been further encouraged to talk to her. That was when Lauren had learnt about Flora's passion in art and history, and after seeing her high educational qualifications, instantly offered her a job at the museum to relieve her of her rather boring (but safe, as many of Flora's boyfriends had said) job as an analyst crunching numbers all day. Till date, Flora was grateful to Lauren, who had also become her closest friend in the last few years, and in return, she agreed to go on all the endless blind dates, reading workshops, open mic nights, music concerts, spa sessions and other "relaxing breaks" that Lauren took her too.

Lauren walked over to her, a blueberry donut in her hand, and smiled widely.

"What's happening, babe?"

Flora graciously accepted the donut, and bit into it hungrily.

"I'm not going out on a date-" Then she stopped midsentence to purposefully tease Lauren, whose eyes now widened in anticipation. Keeping Lauren in suspense was so much fun, Flora wished her heart would not melt when she saw Lauren's puppy eyes, and tell her the rest of the tale.

"It's a party. An anniversary party. Of a couple from my school friend circle."

"Oooh", said Lauren, sitting down next to Flora, and eating a bite of the spring roll that Flora had bought for lunch. "Good for you. Mingle with your school friends. It might help to solve a lot of the blocks you have in your mind. Especially clear the air about him a little." Lauren always referred to Taehyung as "he" and never by name. Since she knew everything about Flora's past, she knew exactly how sensitive the topic was.

"Yeah, I thought so too. Might be a refreshing change from your boring ass."

"Mind your language, Dr. Wescot!"

They both laughed out together and Flora chuckled, "Sorry, Boss!"

"No but honestly. Go for it. You got this. Don't be stressed. I can see that a permanent crease has appeared on your forehead- I'm sure it's the stress. Please don't freak out, okay? This had to happen some day. Better sooner than late."

"Hmmm." Flora focused on the donut.

"What hmm. Don't hmm at me. Flora, don't you go lying today. The truth may sting but never leaves burns."

"It's easy for you to say that, Lauren. Your nature demands you to not be shy."

"Yes, maybe it is a bit easier for me. But I need you to try as well. Remember, these are your oldest friends. If they're calling you over after so long, they must really miss you. They care for you, don't break that trust."

Flora sighed deeply. "Okay, Boss."

Lauren smiled, her serious demeanour vanished instantly.

"What are you wear-"

Flora smirked, "I knew you'd ask this!"

"Of course I have to ask this because I know you haven't thought of it yet."

"No, actually I have. I have a grey cocktail dress, I might wear it tonight."

"Grey? Oh my god. Does it have any glitter?"

"Glitter? No, of course not. 27 year olds don't buy glittery clothes."

"27 year olds who spend their days with silk paintings and classic gothics don't buy glittery clothes." Lauren bumped Flora's head gently with her fist. "Do you own any clothes in a brighter colour?"

"Umm, yeah?"

"Such as?"

"Well, I was also considering this green dress I had- but it's velvety and too shiny, really I don't think it's fit for an Anniversary party. Plus it's a little tight since I've gained quite a bit of weight since then."

"Fuck you- what's wrong with a little bit of shine for any party? Also, you haven't gained weight, darling. You've just defined your curves better."

"But-"

"You're wearing it. The green dress. Do you have any jewellery?"

"Jewellery? Now this is getting hideous."

"No, it's getting sexier. Tell me!"

"I don't know about jewellery. I don't remember what I own, which is not much by the way. So don't get your hopes up."

"Yeah fine. Just wear your maroon lipstick, and you'll be good to go."

"Ugh, you won't ever understand my style will you?"

"No. And I don't need to. I love you even with your terrible style."

"Huh, yes Boss." Flora dug into her spring roll, chewing quickly. She had a lot of pending work still left. If she had to leave for home at 4 pm, she'd have to finish her scheduled tasks quickly. But clearly, Lauren was not of the same opinion.

"You know what? Go home right now. It's gonna take you ages to find that dress. Go home right away."

"But-"

"No buts. I dismiss you from work for the day, as your Boss. You have to leave, now. Else you're gonna be fired." Lauren looked at her with dagger eyes, her eyeliner prominent in the light.

"Umm, fine. I'll have to leave work pending then."

"Nothing that cannot be finished tomorrow."

"Okay. Okay. Got it, Boss." Flora laughed at the satisfied look that spread over Lauren's face. She would always get her way through any situation.

_____________________________________________________________

It was not until an hour later that Flora realised that finding a different dress that was good enough for first impressions, was a futile effort. She had only a few dresses, as she had always been more comfortable in skirts and jeans. While brown and grey were apparently not party-worthy, it left her with just the green velvet cocktail dress and another maroon dress, which did not fit her well. Without any choice, she settled on the green dress, put on some skin-coloured stockings, and silver heels. She had managed to find her grandmother's emerald bracelet and some silver studs. Hopefully it would not be too dressy.

Flora had always dressed simply. But she couldn't do that today. Today, she had to look her best. Her most glorious. That would be her armour, hiding her weaker self.

After stuffing some essentials in a small bag, picking up a light coat, and dabbing her lips with her favourite shade of wine, she stepped out of her house. She was carrying a small present for the couple- it was a set of couple brooches she had bought earlier that day. As far as Flora knew Dane, he really liked wearing fashionable things, especially jewellery. The brooches would be perfect gift for them. She hailed a taxi, and quickly got into before the panic hit her again and she changed her mind. It took barely fifteen minutes to reach the location, while she constantly stressed on the lies she had carefully formulated in her mind about why she had cut off contacts suddenly, how she had been, what she had been doing all these days, why had she chosen to work at a museum- the questions were endless.

Why was her mind so blocked with fear? Why was that fear of meeting people coming back again? These were not even new people, they were her old friends who just wanted to reunite with her. But friends knew more than strangers. That was the root of her fear.

Once she had reached the place, Flora carefully got out of the taxi, and walked carefully to the apartment. Thankfully, there were no signs of rain today, the sun had been quite generous all the day. The sun was setting quickly, the stars barely visible in the sky, covered by wispy clouds of smoke and water. She walked into the apartment, rising up the stairs until she reached a door which said "Aisha-Dane Taylor". She took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. Biting her lip, she hoped her hair had not been too ruffled by the wind. She could hear soft music even from the other side of the door. Thank god she had worn her coat, it was getting cold because of the wind.

The door opened suddenly.

Aisha gaped at Flora for an entire minute, while the latter gulped visibly, letting out a tiny "Hi?", before Aisha wrapped her in a tight hug, almost making her trip in her heels. Once she was in Aisha's arms, Flora squeezed her eyes tight as the former screamed in her ears, "YOU'RE HERE!" Flora began to wriggle out of her grip, as both of them started laughing. "Yes, of course I'm here."

Then they stared at each other for a long minute. Nostalgia hit Flora hard. Aisha was still exactly the same. Dark curls falling on her shoulder, bangs covering half of her eyes which were already tiny in a beautiful eye smile, carefree yet so peaceful. Ugh, it felt good to be back with people who had stayed strong with you even through some of your worst days.

"Hi." Flora whispered, afraid to break this moment. So many memories from high school flooded back. Aisha had taken her to their first house party, that time they had gone on a picnic after bunking class, their girls trip to Alderney Island, every time Flora had helped Aisha sneak out of her house to help her meet Dane at night, every memory came rushing back. It was overwhelming but so beautiful at the same time. Flora was thankful for that stroke of luck when Aisha had called her, and she had agreed to come to the party.

Aisha moved back a little, smiling widely and Flora threw a quick glance at the background- she could see a couple of balloons, some streamers, some lights, a tall woman wearing a flowery golden dress that looked very expensive, and ... a man, the same height as her, his brown curls hanging low on his nape, and his structure built in such a way that he looked broader than he was. His figure looked oddly familiar, but he was facing away from her, and Flora refused to dwell on him too much while a glowing Aisha was standing right in front of her.

Aisha giggled, "Your hair looks nice! I never thought red would look nice on you- but now I'm glad you've dyed it!"

"It's not red, I have tried to keep as much brown as possible." Flora asked.

"Yes, yes, that's what I meant. And I really like the result!"

"Well, I'm glad. All these months, I have been waiting for your approval only, Ma'am!"

"Aww, yes of course my girl. Uhh, come here."

She hugged Flora again, and both rested in that pose for some time. When they finally parted, Aisha said, "Come inside. You look so so good, girl! Come and see the rest of the group, we were all waiting for you!"

Slowly they shut the door and stepped in. As soon as they went in, Dane arrived in front of them. Flora looked around the rest of the room. It was lit up with warm white lights and fairy lights hung from the ceiling. She could hear a lot of chattering from the other end of the wall. Dane hugged Flora instantly, "Hello! If it isn't our Flora! God, where have you been?"

And there began the questions. She had expected this, and had an answer ready. It was almost slipping out from her tongue as smooth as butter, when Aisha stopped her midway by saying, "Oh Dane! Don't bother her with such questions right away. We have the whole evening for that! Let her first meet up with everyone. It had been ten years, after all."

Dane smiled and nodded, and Flora let out a momentary sigh of relief. But it was not to last long.

"Aisha?"

A deep voice, smooth like whiskey, and dark like the night, asked that simple question. It came from deeper in the room, and made all heads turn. As Aisha moved out of her line of sight, Flora saw something which sent her heart reeling and left her lightheaded as if she was being choked out of breath.

Somewhere in the surrounding, she could hear, "Oh, Flora, I forgot to tell you! You're not the only one who's reuniting with us today after 10 years- Taehyung's here too!"

Everything else went into blur immediately, as nothing but one face shone out from among the crowd. Those familiar brown locks, those arching cheekbones, those dark coffee eyes which knew every secret of her soul. That face that had haunted her nightmares for years. That face that had been the substance of her deepest fears and darkest desires. She knew she was ruined forever when she saw that face returning into her life.

The said face was now openly staring back at Flora. Everyone else had become an afterthought in that one second. In those milliseconds, so much unsaid passed in the air, electrifying it. A tiny word escaped from the lips, without thinking.

"Flora?"

She had no words to respond except:

"Tae?"

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cherry-gemz · 4 years ago

Text

Summary: Harper Kelly is an American college senior studying abroad. Looking for adventure and fighting against the clock of graduating, she finds herself meeting a mysterious and handsome boy from London.

Pairing: Henry Cavill x OFC

Rating: PG-13, language

Word Count: <800

A/N: When writing this a/u, I originally had Will in mind, but then also Mikey. Eventually it morphed into Henry, but if he went to Uni and was never famous. So all three personalities I guess lol. We'll see how this goes.

Tags: @romereadingshop

**************************************

Prologue

Spring Break, the week before it really. That’s when it all started. Or ended. I can’t tell which it is it these days. Living the semester abroad in the UK was entirely a different mindset. Besides just trying to understand the pub menu’s, the slang (what exactly is a bollock), adjusting to the metric system was a mindfuck.

Being at Uni was all it hyped up to be. I low key wanted to be the mysterious American girl that the local boys would love to get to know. I soon realized my American citizenship wasn’t a personality, and had to think quick on my feet who I was at 22. I guess that’s why I wanted to go abroad my last year of college: It also was a way to run from adult responsibilities and my parents who wanted to know if I’d ever grow up.

Being the younger sister to the cookie cutter, amazing and perfect on paper Brynn Kelly, was hard to live up to. I fell flat with disappointment with everything that I tried. Brynn was beautiful: from her honey, brown eyes to her cute little toes. Boys, no men loved her. And she was wicked smart, too. Like ridiculously smart that she got a full ride to Davis and I went the state way, to East Bay. I was lucky to even get in - it was my safety school and I changed my major three times until finally landing on History.

My parents thought that major was a joke in itself. What are you going to do with a History degree, Harper? My dad would ask, quite knowing the answer. Nothing. I can’t teach, I have no qualifications to curate. That’s why I’m blowing off steam in London until I have to graduate to figure things out.

Don't get me wrong, I don't find myself unfortunate looking. I actually think I'm quite attractive when I put in the effort. I just have a hard time trusting people and even little less faith that there are unselfish motives underneath it all.

My flatmate Megan is a glass half full kind of girl. Megan is a lot like Brynn in ways that men flock to her. They must read off her positive energy and bubbly persona. Plus it doesn't hurt that she's a total babe. She has the most amazing auburn, long hair. It’s gorgeous; even I want to touch it. Her cafè complexion is to die for. She won the jackpot on diversity of genes: she says her father is part Latin with her mother’s side being Egyptian. I dunno where the hair color comes from, but it’s a magnet to free drinks and dinner that's for sure. The men in London love her accent since she was born in Madrid, she’s the mysterious one, not the American who calls football, soccer.

The night I met Henry was not a night I was to be out. I had to study for an exam the next day for European History 4c. I will tell you I was not ready, so when Megan coerced me to go to a party at some flat of a guy she knew from English, I shouldn't have gone. Plus I was still dating Andrew back home.

Andrew and I had been dating for over eight months before I had decided to study abroad. He was the type that hadn't realized how cute he was, but very flirty when he wanted to be. He had asked me out a few times before I finally said yes. It wasn't like he had pressured me or made me uncomfortable, I just didn't really see him like that. We were friends from a mutual class Freshman year and then it turned into something more. I had lost my virginity to him and we had talked about moving in together for the last semester. That was until I decided at a spur of a moment to apply for the abroad program.

He was obviously upset at my decision, he had every right to be. But something was begging me to try something else, to see something new. And I figured, before I settled down with Andrew (who I indeed did love), I owed it to myself to find out. We said we'd try long distance, and so far it's been working. We'd facetime each other at odd ends of the night, send naughty sexts during class, and he said he'd try to make it out for Spring Break.

But it was that fateful night that I had decided to forgo my studies the week before Spring Break and frolic in mischief with Megan, and found myself meeting the most intriguing, painstakingly handsome London Boy.

#henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill x ofc #henry cavill au #college #university #college au #london boy

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theelliottsmiths · 5 years ago

Note

I honestly didn't really know where else to send this, so I'm sorry if this is a bit strange. I've been in the R+ fandom since I was like, 11, and have always really looked up to Till because of his ability to make music and poetry from his hardest moments, as well as the other members of the band for their talent and perseverance. Now after all the new Lindemann videos, Till The End, and the whole blood/piss thing, I'm starting to feel a bit icky for lack of a better word. (cont)

Apologies if this sounds... preachy. Consider ignoring me and just turning into a Richard/Emigrate Stan account exclusively. Or Flake, he's not very problematic and there's a lot to dive into.

This is completely understandable and I'm sorry you're having to experience it. Because of the nature of Special Interests/hyperfixations and just general feelings of dependance, I guess you could say, anything disappointing or otherwise bothersome is going to be harder to ignore. That's mostly just me expressing my personal experiences with similar things (including the recent Till stuff) but I'm getting the same vibe from this and I'm autistic, swapping experiences is kind of how we empathise.

Out of curiosity, have you tried just writing a big long ramble about how it makes you feel and why etc and just have a good deep messy cathartic rant? In a word document you can delete, or to me, or on your blog, or whatever else just really laying into him and his decisions and why it's bothering you.

For the record, I think this comes with idolising or even just liking pretty much anyone. There is always a point when you realise there's something disappointing because people are multifaceted and morally grey and generally very strange creatures. The things you liked and admired are still there. Their history hasn't changed just because Till has been making some iffy decisions. In some ways I think that's what a lot of the recent stuff is about, him trying to show that idolisation never turns out well because humans are human and it's hard to see the nuance when you're eleven so it can be even more jarring with that background.

It's totally possible to separate the art from the artist in this case: Till being Nasty doesn't actually change his poetry or his work with Rammstein. If it feels necessary you can do what we Sylvia Plath/Anne Sexton/HP Lovecraft fans do to acknowledge the unsavoury aspects whilst still enjoying the art itself, though in his case it's not bigotry or abuse, it's just Grossness, which is arguably easier to reconcile.

You could also try just completely blocking that side of it off and making yourself a bubble of the stuff you still enjoy: Tumblr is great for being able to curate your experiences so blacklisting words like Messer or Peter Tägtgren (which would hide Lindemann content without also hiding Till Lindemann) might be enough to give you space and time to digest it, or just generally distance yourself from it. If you'd like me to tag certain things so they're blockable I can do that. You don't have to engage with anything you don't want to.

If you do decide to leave it'd probably be a good idea not to delete blogs/accounts or anything since it's been such a longstanding thing you've invested a lot in and it's something you could potentially work through and come to some kind of peace with, if that makes sense. You have more options if you just leave it active and just ignore it than if you delete and regret it later.

At least a little bit of this is selfish, it hurts to see someone leave a community you love and it'd be sad for a lot of people to see you go, so I guess keep that bias in mind as you read my lukewarm I Think I'm Always Right take.

I love you and I hope you can find a way to reconcile or separate or whatever else will be most beneficial to your happiness.

#me rambling

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konkoa · 5 years ago

Video

One thing I'm curious about with the mindset of "all platforms rise and fall" is what this means for AO3 itself in the future, since it was made specifically to prevent the need for this phenomenon.

But maybe it'll happen anyways? There are people who get so vehemently furious over AO3's donation drives, and who hate the lack of restrictions on content (so long as it is properly tagged). How many of these people don't know or understand why AO3 exists as it does, and as the years go on how will this ignorance spread? Will younger generations start thinking "this archive is not for me" and move elsewhere? Will AO3 remain when whatever alternative site people use or create meets its own inevitable fall?

Something else I wanted to address was the hub-like nature of fandom, and the pros/cons of such things. In its original form, fandom spaces were very single focused: you had your fanzines, email lists, geocities shrines, livejournal communities, etc. Then fandoms became less centralized with the rise of tumblr. Our feeds stream us content from the people we follow, who share whatever they're interested in and eventually move onto other interests while remaining on our feeds until we realize either "oh, we no longer have anything in common" or "hey, I want to get into that too". What this meant was that instead of people leaving the spaces that were for a specific fandom when they were no longer into it, leaving the remaining fans to continue as they were, the fandom experiences we curated for ourselves warped and shifted into things we no longer could recognize. The blog you followed for Homestuck became a Kpop blog, the blog you followed for Supernatural got into Doctor Who and Sherlock as well. Someone you were friends with moved out of fandom entirely. Maybe you're still following all of them, have dabbled in all the fandom rises and falls, giving your own followers Homestuck and Kpop and Superwholock and the things that are no longer fandom at all. Anyone else remember the days of fandom blogger vs hipster blogger? That rhetoric fell away entirely as the spaces were curated to our own interested became interspersed with all the stuff that would have also had it's own spaces before: from memes and to resources, aesthetics to politics, to awareness of all the good and bad of the world around you... and the realization that you now have an inability to escape to your fandom space to relax and unwind. I would say that this is what has led to the resurgence in hubs like discord.

And yet not all aspects of fandom are pulling away into our own nooks and crannies. In my experience, many fandoms have moved to twitter, which for me is like setting up a D&D game in the middle of church, or displaying your nudes on the television with the blinds wide open to a busy street at night. Celebrities use the same platform as the people who ship them with other celebrities! RPFandoms... there has to be a better way!

In some ways, it's good that fandoms have gotten so bold. No longer hiding away in fear of cease and desists. No longer hiding content warnings behind citrus fruit. No one who is in fandom bats an eye at shipping two men together (at least solely on the basis of it being gay). But have we gotten too comfortable? It seems like every year a new petition goes around for people to sign to protect our freedoms on the internet. Some things which on the basic level seem moral and just are very easily used to crush us: us as people, us as internet users, and us as fandom. Because we don't want another Livejournal style strikethrough that targets fiction writers and abuse survivors as though they were no different from predators.

This comment has gotten away from me. Before I end this I want to mention one of the problems I have with tumblr and twitter style fandom: the lack of archive. How so many fandoms are so hard to keep up with, to track down the past buried under poorly working tags, delete blogs, changed usernames, and years worth of scrolling. How it seems like "you had to have been there" to fully gain that insider knowledge, because there's a lack of ruins to prove that a particular fandom was a big deal. Sorry to anyone who arrives late to the party. It's been mentioned before how the lack of fan led archive for art is majorly unfortunate, desperately needed, but currently unattainable.

To wrap this up, I'm one of those people who is clinging to tumblr even as people are moving on to the likes of twitter. I have moved into discord for the newer fandom i'm in, but I do enjoy what tumblr was and is. Maybe I got lucky, and never saw the worst of the tumblr experience based on the blogs I followed. The state of my dashboard right now isn't really "fandom" at all if I'm being honest. But I know twitter is not the fandom space for me. I'll drop in now and again to see art, but for now and the foreseeable future, my fandom home base is AO3.

youtube

Hey y’all, remember that 2018 survey that almost 2,000 of you filled out?

Here is a video essay about the results as well as my general musings about the “death” of fandom LiveJournal, the rise of AO3, and the possible future of Tumblr. You’ll also find some TL;DR in the link above, or you can even read the entire resulting paper, published now in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction: “Moving Across Lands: Online Platform Migration in Fandom Communities.”

And for the serious TL;DR here’s the fancy chart again. :)

I’d love to know what you think! Feel free to reblog with how all this tracks to your own experience, or what your predictions are for the future of fan platforms.

#i was going to say something about fan wikis like are they still really a thing and what is the current stage of their longevity #plus i know some fandoms have wikis that are so bare that i cant even bare to think about it #anyways i dont know why i wrote so much #i just have a lot of feelings about fandoms and exoduses and loss of content

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