fidisart

[fidisart]

Hello ,how are you 😞?

Please don't let me down,l want your help 🙏 My campaign is very weak 😭

I am Maram from Gaza. I ask for your help to save my life and that of my family. It is not easy to ask for donations, but the situation in Gaza is beyond imagination. Please help me with travel expenses and save my children’s future. To survive this disaster, donate or participate, save our lives from destruction, hunger, fear and cold 🍉🇵🇸🙏🏼🙏🏼💔💔.Please help me 😭my campaign is very weak please donate or share 🙏

My link has been verified: @beesandwatermelons - Line (207)

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list (431)

A small donation 15$ can make a big difference 🙏🍉🇵🇸, I hope you donate

❤️

[fidisart]

Hi there 🌱 I hope you are doing well. My name is Naser, and I’m from Gaza. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, but I wanted to share a piece of my story — because right now, it’s the only way I know to try and survive.

This war has changed everything. I lost my mother and my sister. Our home is gone. What used to be a normal life — school, family meals, laughter — has been replaced by fear, rubble, and silence.

Now, I’m displaced with my three younger brothers. I’ve become their protector, their parent, their hope. We sleep side by side and I try to make them feel safe, even when I’m scared too.

We are trying to raise funds to rebuild our lives — to find a safe place, to go back to school, to have something to believe in again. I dream of going to university. My brothers have their own dreams too — of being a doctor, an engineer, just being kids again.

If you’re able to support us by donating 💌 or even just sharing our campaign 🔁, it would truly mean the world. Every small act of kindness brings us a little closer to hope.

Visit my post

Thank you for taking the time to read this 🙏 And if you'd rather not receive messages like this, please just let me know and I won’t reach out again.

With love and resilience

❤️🍉

[fidisart]

Hello, my name is Saja. I’m a mother to a beautiful 8-month-old baby girl, writing this from a place I never imagined I’d be — surrounded by destruction, holding on to my daughter while the world around us falls apart. 💔

We used to have a home. 🏚 A simple place, but it was filled with love. Now it’s gone. What remains are memories, silence, and an overwhelming fear of what tomorrow may bring.

Each day, I wake up not knowing if we will make it through the next. My daughter should be learning to walk, to smile at strangers, to feel safe in her world — but instead, she’s learning to live in the middle of a war zone. 🕊️

I’m not writing this to ask for pity. I’m sharing our truth because silence won’t protect us. Maybe, through this message, someone will hear us — and care. 🤍

If you feel moved to share our story or offer support, it would mean more than words can say. Every kind act ripples outward. ✨

🔗 Donation Link 📌 Post Link

Thank you for taking a moment to listen. 🙏

❤️🍉

[fidisart]

Hi, my name is Mosab , I’m from Gaza, and like many here, I’ve lost more than I ever thought I could bear — my family, my home, my sense of safety, and the simple moments that once gave life meaning. 💔

I’m not writing this to ask too much of anyone. I’m sharing a piece of my story — not because I want sympathy, but because I still believe someone, somewhere, might care enough to listen.

If this message finds you at the wrong time, I understand.

I’m truly sorry if it feels like an interruption.

➡️ Please feel free to DM me if you'd rather not receive asks from me — I'll make sure not to contact you again. 🤍

✨ If you do feel moved to help — even by sharing — it means more than words can say.

Every repost, every bit of care, helps keep hope alive in a place that has seen too much darkness.

🙏 Thank you for taking the time to read.

📌 Post Link

Wishing you peace, healing, and comfort — wherever you are.

With deep appreciation

❤️🍉

[fidisart]

Had the pleasure to draw the cover for this one 🥰❤️

It's a must have for your 2025 👀✨

The 2025 Gentlebeard Calendar is now available for pre-orders! 13 artists have collaborated so that you can celebrate Ed and Stede's love all year long. All proceeds will be donated to the Rainbow Railroad.

Pre-order here!

There will be a Digital version available for sale in December when the physical versions are sent out.

[fidisart]

I've heard we're sharing the art we made for @becausethenightzine 👁️👄👁️

Enjoy 1 of 2 page art I did for the book (the other is too spicy) 🌶️ And the cover art without graphics!

[fidisart]

"I don't like the fandom content this person posts!"

Then unfollow them.

"I'm not following them, but they're in all the tags!"

Then block them.

"I blocked them but all the people I follow reblog their posts!"

Then unfollow those people.

"But I like their other content!"

Then add the person's username to your blocklist.

"But—"

No. Stop. Listen. You cannot control what other people post or how they interpret your favorite characters or what ships they like. All you can control is your own actions and your public responses. Block them, filter out their username, then post your own stuff to carve out a space for yourself and people like you in your fandom. You will be a million times happier if you focus on what you're doing and what you enjoy instead of on the people you don't like.

[fidisart]

I'm curious--how do you guys go about creating your OCs?

[fidisart]

In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

[fidisart]

Hello ! Thanks for bearing with me , I am a Palestinian educator from Gaza whose life is dire and gruesome. Nothing has left for my family except the hope you can support and help us. After 9 months of war we became exhausted, hopeless , desperate , and displaced. Houses and livelihood sources have been lost and gone with the wind. Things are driving us insane and made. The least level of life can't be attained. Healthy water and food have become a dream we need to realize. What worsens our life more is the constant bombings and killings. That is why I am asking in this post to help us survive this unbearable circumstances , moving from hell to safety and peace. Your support can help us be safe and alive so friends you can support us either by directly donating whatever you can or by sharing my campaign links so that generous people can know about our tragedy and pain. Remember your small contribution can make a big difference for the lives of many children whose heath gets worse and worse everyday. Let their life change and let them feel happy through your kind contribution.

https://gofund.me/9b764ae7

🖤🤍💚❤️

[fidisart]

what I would not give for a really good film adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray that could fully be about gay love and lust and friendship in a way that would make Oscar Wilde proud. Luca Guadagnino what are you doing next

[fidisart]

Can you see the Stony —> Gentlebeard pipeline?

Anyway, SteveTony in the year of the Lord 2024? More likely than you think (retouched an old one)

[fidisart]

HERE TO REITERATE THESE ARE OCs, NOT STUCKY

HERE YOU HAVE AN ANIMATION.

I usually don’t “rotoscope” but I loved this gif too much not to use it, and it was perfectly in character for my OCs. HAVE SOME GAY URBAN LOVE featuring Alan and Ben! 8D (I have some more of these, I will eventually post some wips too :3 )

[fidisart]

Thank you sm!!!

Here to reiterate one more time:

NOT!!! STUCKY!!!

Not the reposter captioning OC art as "more stucky", the fucking audacity 😭😭😭😭 Leave my OCs alone!!!! 😭😭😭😭

More Stucky. Kinda NSFW

[fidisart]

Aka: why is every neurodivergent meme relatable???

[fidisart]

I recently won a fic commission in the "Our Flag Means Pride" charity raffle by @adoptourcrew

Thank you to the hugely talented @ferventrabbit for donating her time and skills to writing this gorgeous piece for me 👏🔥 Go read it!

Thank you to Fidi @fidisart as well for the art that inspired it 💕 (give that some love too, linked below!)

Rating: E Summary: Ed notices Stede looking at him more than usual, leaving them both a bit hot and bothered. He proposes a failsafe plan to give them both a reset. What could go wrong? Set sometime between 2x05 and 2x06

[fidisart]

07/18-19/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Rhys & Rosie; Samba Schutte; David Jenkins; Taika Waititi; #FirstMateFriday: Con O'Neill; Vico Ortiz; Linds Cantrell; Alex Sherman & Alyssa Lane; Kristian Nairn; Rachel House; Erroll Shand; Jes Tom; WBD Status; ; Fan Spotlight: Cast Cards; Stede & Ed; Our Flag Means Fanfiction; Love Notes ; Daily Darby / Today's Taika;

Hey crew, sorry for the delay. I was going to finish yesterday's recap this morning, and then my draft got nuked again due to my computer crashing, so yeah two day it is!

== Rhys & Rosie ==

Rhys and Rosie are out at the AllBlacks Rubgy game! They're super excited for AoNZ vs Fiji!

Source: Rhys & Rosie's Instagram Stories

== Samba Schutte ==

So some of the news that came out of Florida Supercon last weekend was Samba revealed in a panel that there was supposed to be an official OFMD Podcast and it was in the works until WBD said they "ran out of money". You can read the Full Article here

== David Jenkins ==

Chaos dad came out and had some commentary as well regarding it-- and Samba had more to add.

Source: David Jenkins' Twitter

== Taika Waititi ==

Taika out and about!

Source: Rosie Matheson's Instagram

Annnd Taika just being goofy!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by i Licaoni Digital Studio (@i_licaoni)

Source: i_licaoni's Instagram

The associated Press released another interview with Taika and Jemaine!

and yet ANOTHER interview with Taika and Jemaine, this time with Brad Gilmore!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Brad Gilmore (@bradgilmore)

Source: Brad Gilmore's Instagram

== First Mate Friday: Con O'Neill ==

There's a new trend this week! Folks on twitter have started up #FirstMateFriday in honor of Con O'Neill! There are so very many lovely tributes to him! I was only able to fit a few in, but they're all beautiful, and full of so much heartfelt love, and I'm sure he is out there basking in it all right now! Thank you to everyone who sent him some love today (and thank you to the lovely folks below for letting me share them!) Also, special thanks to RudestFish on twitter for coming up with this love fest for Con!

Source: lividturkeys Twitter

Source: wndrngnomad's Twitter

Source: 1chloreen1's Twitter

Source: Tayleafy's Twitter

== Alex Sherman and Alyssa Lane ==

Our beloved writers/co-producers Alex and Alyssa were out in Mexico City! So nice to see them out and having fun again!

Source: Alex Sherman's Instagram

Alex also popped in to appreciate our darling @fidisart on twitter!

Source: Fidisart's Twitter

== Long Post is Long, Lots under the Cut ==

== Vico Ortiz ==

Vico wants to wish everyone a Happy #NonMonogamyVisibility Week! They shared a lot about their history with polyamory and lots of Garlic Soup on their Instagram Stories as well!

Source: Vico's Instagram

== Linds Cantrell ==

Lindsey Cantrell is the biggest sweetheart by the way and she's been so happy to be interacting with everyone in the OFMD community-- it was just nice to see her feeling included and loved (she shared this on her IG Story). If you don't already follow her on IG, please do, she always has super cool stuff to share, even if it's not OFMD related. <3

Source: Linds Cantrell's Instagram

== Rachel House ==

Rachel was out seeing Bob Tidicue!

Source: Rachel House's Instagram Stories

== Erroll Shand ==

New Episode yesterday of The Twelve on Binge!

Source: Binge's Instagram

== Jes Tom ==

Jes was featured on the "GOOD BOYS" Podcast: Episode 2: Model Behavior! Wanna listen in? You can check out their linktree.

Source: For Them's Instagram

Some photos from Jes' recent comedy show with Tessa Skara: Corporate Pride.

Source: TessaFuckinSkara's Instagram

== Kristian Nairn ==

Kristian is the special guest at Van Love Fest in Elvington Airfield, York!

Source: Kristian Nairn's Instagram

== WBD News ==

So many of our crewmates on twitter have been highlighting some big news with WBD. It sounds like they may actually be doing a split in the upcoming future. Lot of articles below with more info.

Warner Bros Discovery drafts break-up plan

Warner Bros. Discovery might split itself into two pieces

Cord Cutting Today Warner Bros. Discovery Selling Max? Here is What We Know

Why Warner Bros. Discovery Stock Jumped 15% This Week

David Zaslav's Come To Jesus Moment

Sources: Meowzawowza, Never Left Podcast, Ashley (seven_sugars), MrButtons294 on Twitter

== Trends ==

Always nice to see!

Source: Never Left Podcast's Twitter

== Fan Spotlight ==

= Cast Cards =

Naureemum S. was another one of the stand-ins in OFMD according to https://ofmd-crew.com/ - Thank you to @melvisik for giving her a spotlight!

Source: @melvisik's Twitter

== Our Flag Means Fanfiction ==

Are you going to be at San Diego Comic Con on July 25-28? Well keep an eye out for these free bookmarks from Our Flag Means Fanfiction!

Source: Our Flag Means Fanfiction Instagram

== Love Notes ==

Hey there lovelies! I hope the end to your week was good to you! A lots happened in the last 48 hrs, and I apologize I'm so late sharing some of it. Please let me know if I missed anything! I love how much people are really stepping up the love for cast members after all the Emmy stuff that went down. I see everyone just aggressively (I say affectionatly) loving so many of them and it's so heart-warming and uplifting. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but your love and kindness is so incredibly impactful. You may never get to see the fruits of your love (although the cast and crew does tend to show us they hear us) but know that every little bit builds up. Maybe someone was having a bad day, and seeing how much we love them gave them that extra boost to get through it-- you never know! There is an old greek proverb: "A society grows great when [folks] plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

That is really true about kindness and support and love too. You are sowing the seeds and roots of a better tomorrow, even if you yourself never get to see the branches and fruit that love produces.

Never let the harshness of the world dim your light lovelies. Your kindness and love moves mountains tiny bits at a time.

I hope you all have a wonderful, fairly uneventful weekend (unless you want it to be eventful!) and get some good rest <3

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

There is no theme tonight! Just Rhys being ridiculously hot, and Meow blessing us with this adorable Taika smile. Happy belated Meow Day! Rhys Gif by @ofmd-ann and Taika Gif by @blakbonnet!