sewingsparky

[sewingsparky]

I think I've unconsciously made some decisions based partially on the feeling that I don't deserve to be happy. I have definitely done things with the awareness of a bull in a china shop, hurting the people around me. I can both be grateful for the people in my life who want me to be happy and also feel that I don't deserve it. That's how I can be in a really good place overall and still know that depression will always be a part of me.

[sewingsparky]

While Kirishima is discovering that he can in fact purr and ear scritches feel FANTASTIC, Bakugou experiences his first Gay Panic.

[sewingsparky]

Watching Hamilton on Disney Plus. Looked up Hamilton portraits. They all like @michaelsheenpt to me. Now I would really love to hear sheen do a few of Lin Manuel's lines.

[sewingsparky]

Dream last night.

Trying to establish a relationship with an energy species that sometimes goes parasitic. Somewhat insulated from everyone else. Trying to find ways to reverse the effects of energy creatures turning parasitic. Visible blue electric arcs happen when creature turns parasitic. They usually don't last more than a fraction of a second. The longer the energy arcs, the worse it is for the person. If not caught, the person experiences a gradual loss of identity, memory loss, no personality to speak of, but capable of performing tasks, reasoning, creative thinking, but increasingly out of touch with everyone.

Then at the end of the dream, a deeply disturbing new development. One of us that had carried a connection with the energy beings longest without incident was found to be hiding a lot of energy arcing. Very short, but ongoing, unceasing. Friend suddenly shuts down like a machine.

"I am gone. I did this willingly to give them a voice to speak with. Please listen." And I woke up.

[sewingsparky]

Some eaiser variations of push ups to help you build the strength to do a traditional one!

[sewingsparky]

That smells has a name. It's called Petrichor. Dr. Who taught me that.

The earthy smell of rain is one of the most divine scents I’ve ever beheld.

[sewingsparky]

I don't have ig and my depression along with my physically demanding job will cause me to inactive for weeks. I do very much appreciate you though @grumpytrans

do u ever wonder if 99% of ur followers are either bots or super inactive blogs bc ya boy has a few thousand + nobody is sending asks or talkin to me so……. to the maybe 10 or 11 followers reading this, i love u

[sewingsparky]

Grooming starts with making you happy! They want you to feel very comfortable with them. They want you to feel like you are special to them. Later, when they ask you to do something a little unusual, it doesn't feel like a big deal. By the time it's stuff that makes you uncomfortable, you will feel like you're in too deep to say no.

You. Can. Always. Say. No!!

If they are really your friend, they won't ask again. If they are grooming you, they will wait several days and ask again. Ramp up the things that make you happy and make you feel special, but eventually they will always come back to wanting you to let them cross that boundary.

Know the signs for yourself. Know the signs for your friends. Friends don't ever just leave to make you feel bad. If someone your age is creeped out by an older friend, consider they might have a really good reason.

You can always say no. And if they keep pushing, leave.

People over the age of 25 being allowed to exist on Internet spaces and not be shamed for having normal hobbies: good

Minors being able to exist in Internet spaces without being harassed or groomed by creepy assholes twice their age: also good

These are not conflicting viewpoints!

[sewingsparky]

Aww yeah!!

Commission for @sewingsparky who asked me to draw Vash the Stampede in Papyrus’s battle body, that was pretty fun to do X’D

Art© @little-noko

[sewingsparky]

For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.

In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.

Why is that important?

Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.

Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?

Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?

Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?

All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?

Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?

Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”

The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.

There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King’s It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.

Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a transman? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the transmen who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?

[sewingsparky]

I've Done All Of These So Often, I Avoid Meaningful Relationships And Have Completely Forgotten How To Make Friends Without Screwing It Up: a fully immersive 5D experience daily starting from when I wake up

I Was Trying To Be Funny But It Came Out as Really Mean: A 5-part documentary starring me.

[sewingsparky]

15 fucking years of randomly vomiting in the night before I got diagnosed with acid reflux. Probably had that all my life because other pain and discomfort that I just accepted as a part of life went away as well.

Hey, unpopular opinion, apparently. But people don’t just “have pain for no reason” doctors say this all the time (especially to women and chronically ill people) and the truth is, Thats literally not possible. Even if your pains are psychosomatic (a word I hesitate to even use because of the way its used so often) there is a reason you are having those pains whether its mental illness, abuse, etc. If your doctor consistently tells you that “well some people just have pain for no reason” get a new doctor. That’s a doctor who is not going to give a shit what your actual symptoms or experiences are.

[sewingsparky]

And if you think it's optional, you're going to have some bad baking experiences.

Preheating an oven is like foreplay for baking. You can’t just stick it in, you have to get it all hot and ready first.

[sewingsparky]

Link and Link Jr are having it out.

[sewingsparky]

That just sorta hit out of no where.

sorry not sorry (credits to @arianwen44 for the artwork)

[sewingsparky]

I know that!!! I wrote a long long piece about how I absolutely know that my self hate is all lies but there are times it doesn't matter cuz those lies can so damn loud inside my own head.

Maybe there are some people out there who haven't heard this yet but for a while, the fact that "knowing" this didn't make the voices shut up just made the feelings of self hate a little more real.

The feelings are there, and they are real but they are still lies and that is something I will probably have to live with forever.

love yourself ok

[sewingsparky]

From the book Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes

The Birth of Venus, William-Adolphe Bouguereau