#(this is a joke i know reddit is basically fine)

[professionalchaoticdumbass]

if it’s not too much trouble, could you share a bit about how to better support closeted/ just-cracked trans women?

Okay this is going to be a fairly long response, be warned. Its also based off personal experience (or lack of positive experience) from how I'm treated irl. also its 4 am some of this may be less coherent than I want but whatever.

The basics: name & pronouns. Ask who its safe to use these in front of!!! Dont out someone to their parents or partner or boss!! Otherwise use these as much as possible. Avoid deadnames and dead-pronouns as much as possible too - I am fine with being they/themed over he/him and prefer a nameless "later, nerd" to "bye, deadname". sometimes its unavoidable but many times its not. this is 101 stuff but I see lots of people forget it.

Going out and about: GO. WITH. HER. A LOT. She fucking needs it. Go clothes shopping together and teach her how to pick out good clothes/outfits and how to at least begin to decipher the mess that is sizing. Find her a "spinny skirt" (pleated mini skirt or skater skirt, forgot the exact one but anything similar to those) if she really wants one, I dont care how cringe you find the memes this is more important than Reddit Bad jokes. IF YOU ARE ABLE TO, TAKE HER TO THE WOMENS WASHROOM WITH YOU. yknow how girls go to the bathroom in groups for safety? yeah trans women need triple that safety and nobody provides it like ever, even other trans women. change that and be that safety. also, if youre like ordering food or at the cashier, always use the correct pronouns even if misgendering happens. if she gets a "what would you like sir" from the waiter, you are going to say something like "she would like a cheeseburger with fries and a fountain drink". this will save her ass from a lot of awkward correcting.

transitioning & hrt: if she needs a space to wear femme clothes safely, invite her over or go out together. try to avoid places where people she's not out to frequently go. for hrt, if you already accessed it HELP HER AS WELL. the amount of people who are like one step removed from pulling the ladder up behind them with regards to hrt is insane. so much "fuck you got mine" attitude in this community. anyways, DESCRIBE THE PROCESS YOU WENT THROUGH, STEP BY STEP. mention specific doctors, clinics, etc. if you do diy, mention the provider, what to look for on blood work, how to take it (injection, gel, etc) and send relevant articles/pages, about each part, not just the hrt wiki home page. if you have a prescription, mention ANY AND ALL procedures you went through to get hrt. psychologist? readiness assessment? any other screening process? DESCRIBE IN DETAIL WHAT YOU WERE ASKED AND HOW YOU ANSWERED. this can literally be a life saving thing. treat that information like the death star plans and she is the rebellion. precise motherfucking details. similar thing for any surgeries like ffs, tracheal shave, various types of bottom surgery. if you and her are going through different systems (say, you got it under 18 as a youth and she's 22 and no longer qualifies for that, or she wants diy while you have a prescription) then look up third party anecdotes as well. reddit is great for this as they often have city specific trans subreddits which lets you look at local doctors/clinics/providers & shipping. if she gets hit with dysphoria, "you are valid" CAN help new girls but as a half closeted girl for the past three years, I know I'm valid already thank you very much. dysphoria is different to each person, just be there to comfort her, help distract if nothing else. Teach her to shave if she wants, offer to do her makeup if you know how (some tutorials are made by and for trans women btw! check those out if you can). if she wants to order things online, anything from a flag to a dress to diy hrt, but can't for fear of outing, OFFER TO BE THE RECEIVING ADDRESS AND PASS IT ON IN PERSON. you can also try setting up a PO box away from home. covering some costs can potentially help lower suspicion but only do this of you have the money. in general just be a safe & informative helpful person who is willing to stand by her side.

Other general tips:

- if you are transfem yourself you will know and experience many of these things. do not withhold information like others do. did you have another trans person in your own life who helped you out when you first cracked? if yes, now its your turn. if no, then dont let her lose out on that too. actually support your sisters for once.

- if you are having sex, she may want to be submissive and/or bottom more as these are often "forbidden" when youre male. if thats compatible with you then try to accommodate that, and throw in some gender affirming stuff like a "good girl". praise kink often works well here, but always ask first. teach her how to bottom if she wants. AFTERCARE holy shit aftercare. yeah that should also be at least skmewhat gender affirming. dont skip out.

- the self doubt spiral: "you are valid" are the three words that get way more use than they really should. "valid" is so vague that its near useless. if you can, find the specific root (e.g. "I feel like a pervert cuz I get euphoria boners when I wear a sexy dress") and respond with counter examples that tell her she belongs, she is a woman, e.g. "youre not a pervert, plenty of cis women feel similar and enjoy dressing sexy as well". this is mainly for self doubt not other types of dyphoria.

- she will probably be really fucking depressed and possibly even suicidal at some point. usually close to egg crack or after a shitty experience. personally, I have a lot of passive suicidal thoughts where I dont wnat to make any attempts but wouldn't mind if I vanished, if it weren't for a few things. try to be there as a rock in the stream for her to hold onto during depression. it is fucking rough and in the words of bill withers, we all need somebody to lean on. eventually we will all stand tall together.

I am sure there's more but I think I covered most of the points I wanna make.

[formosusiniquis]

Am I the Asshole?

Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington; Robin Buckley/Original Female Character(s); Steve Harrington/Original Character(s); Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson WC: 6052 | Rated: T | Tags: Modern AU, Reddit AU, Some AITA typical terrible people, QPR Steve & Robin, NB Steve, NB Robin AKA the Stobin AITA fic

r/AmITheAssshole u/HufflepuffHero94 9yrs ago AITA for being concerned about my girlfriends living situation?

Context: My (20F) girlfriend (18F) is amazing. She's a polyglot linguistics major, speaks three languages fluently and she's completely self-taught, a genius basically. We go to the same college (Midwestern Liberal Arts college) where we met in the marching band. Now R, my girlfriend, is from a small town. Like the kind of small town that they make jokes about in sitcoms, she isn't really online (so I'm not worried about her seeing this) because she claims they didn't even have the internet until she was in high school. She isn’t really “out” because of this. It’s like she lives in this semi-closeted space like some kind of TV queerbait character. It's not really a problem, I mean she’ll tell people we’re dating if they ask and all of our marching band friends know but when I ask about it she says it’s because it wasn’t really safe in her hometown growing up. But it’s 2014 not 1980…

Even though R is a freshman she’s in special accommodations. Instead of living in the dorms like the school usually requires she’s got a small, studio apartment just off of campus. A perk considering how awful living in the dorms is. R is a pretty private person and super studious. Most of our dates have been in the library or a study date at the coffee place on campus. She’s not big on PDA, she says she’s trying to get better at it but she’s still only sort of out and I’m her first real girlfriend. I was psyched when she asked me if I wanted to go with her to her apartment to study, said her best friend had a never fail study method that she was eager to try (and when she told me what it was I was pretty eager too).

R can’t drive, so when I pull into the parking lot of her complex she notices something and says her roommate hasn’t left for work yet. I’m a little confused because like I said she lives in a studio apartment, but she just brushes it off and says something about asshole parents and this being what they could afford when some money fell through. She’s sent me snaps from her place, so I know it’s pretty cozy so I tell her it’s fine. Obviously I’m concerned about what the set up is going to be like when we get up there but she insists that dingus (her words) will only be there for another couple minutes before they have to leave for work and that Stevie (again her words) is her best friend in the world. They moved here together from the same small town or something.

To give R credit, she’s definitely done the best she can with the space. When I walked it it definitely felt as homey as it does in her pictures. The door opened up into the kitchen and living room and she’s got those spaces divided off from the beds with one of those Chinese paper divider thingies. Anyway to make a long story short it turns out her roommate and best friend Stevie is actually a whole dude (19). He comes out, gives her a look and asks her if “us girls are planning a sleepover” and if he should make himself scarce for the evening. R says she doesn’t give him shit when his “special friends” come over and after that I kinda stopped listening. I slipped off into the apartment looking for the bathroom and that’s when I saw how their “bedroom” was set up. Twin beds INCHES apart, they might as well be sharing the same one.

Here’s where I might be the asshole. When her “friend” finally cleared out I told her the truth. I didn’t know how comfortable I was hanging out in her place where she lives with a guy. I do live in the dorms but I’ve got a single right now. I asked her to move in with me so she wouldn’t have to be in this situation. I guess it maybe sounded like I was dissing her friend, which I was but I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I just think it’s weird that she won’t come out to anyone and is also living with some guy! I told her I wasn’t interested in being an experiment and if things were serious then she would want to move in with me.

That’s when she kicked me out and called me an asshole. But really I don’t think I’m being a dick for being concerned that she might just be jerking me along while she plays lesbian so she can tell her boyfriend about it at home. Even if nothing is going on I'm just worried that living in this kind of environment isn't safe for her. I mean this guy is probably just pretending to be her friend to get in her pants, I think the fact that they're from the same small town means she can't see that. I really think she would be better off if she moved into the dorms with me aita?

u/otpsnotbrotps NTA

u/foreplayisntreal NTA guys and girls can't be friends. If she even is a lez and a katy perry wannabe then roomie is just biding his time til she's ready to be converted

Read the rest on AO3

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

reposting one i read on reddit that got removed but i just need to know what tumblr thinks:

AITA for finishing in my girlfriend during the full moon, thinking it was not possible for her to be fertile?

I know the title sounds weird, but I promise this isn't a shitpost, metaphor, or a joke. I (20M) was raised by a single dad, never knew my mom who left me as a baby, and growing up I didn't really have many female (or male, tbh) friends.

The reason I say this is that I don't know all that much about female anatomy; yes, I had sex ed in school, but seriously don't remember anything except "wear a condom", basically.

I met my girlfriend "Beth" (21F) in college and she's the best. It's my first relationship, her second. We've been together for a little more than a year now, and had sex for the first time about half a year ago. After the first couple times, Beth told me that she has a really regular and average period that she's been keeping track of with an app since she was literally 14, plus in the last few years she also started taking her temperature to get even more accurate results; I didn't understand exactly how this works, but she was so reassuring and confident I didn't question it.

Ok, now this is where I might start sounding like an idiot... So she told me her period is an extremely regular 28 days, and she has literally only strayed from this pattern once since she was 14. I also am aware that moon cycles are 28 days. (Correction here: since this incident, I Googled and it's actually about 29 days... but that's besides the point I guess.)

Women tend to be associated with the moon, like Artemis; I truly, deeply believed that the moon phases and all women's menstrual cycles were inherently connected, but just like, different women had their more fertile days with full moons whereas for some it corresponds to a different moon phase, like the new moon, and this is why women differed.

So the reason Beth told me about her period being super regular is that she was confident she knew when she was or was not fertile, and told me she wanted me to finish in her on safe days. We've been having sex like this for the last four months where she tells me the window of time she's safe, she's happy, I'm happy, it's working fine.

I started noticing that the moon tends to be really full and bright every time we have unprotected sex, maybe not necessarily always on a "true" full moon, but definitely around that time. I made a mental note that my girlfriend is a "fertile during a new moon (when you can't see the moon)" sort of girl. If you're wondering why I never just outright asked her about this, it just seemed really obvious to me and I didn't see the point in talking to her about something potentially a little embarrassing for no reason.

June 3rd was the most recent true full moon, and I decided to sort of surprise her by inviting her to my apartment and just pouncing on her wordlessly as soon as she came in. She was into it, we had sex, I finished inside her, she didn't complain or stop me at all.

While cooling off, she remarked that she didn't remember telling me about her safe days in a while, so I must be tracking her period, which she actually thought was sweet lol. I said, "well of course it's a safe day, the moon is so bright". She asked me what I meant, and I said something like "I know you can't possibly get pregnant during a full moon".

She seemed really confused and started getting a bit tense, questioning me more, and I, also confused, started explaining to her about the moon cycle thing I fully believed up until that moment.

This is where she freaked out completely, jumped up and asked me if I was a complete moron. She started yelling at me and freaking out about how insane and irresponsible I was for finishing in her. I was truly shocked I had no idea what to say, especially because it WAS still truly a safe day, but she actually just grabbed her stuff and stormed off before I could do anything.

Well, after she left I googled a bunch of stuff and yep, turns out I'm completely incorrect. That being said, it WAS still a safe day for Beth and she wasn't actually upset about me finishing in her or anything, just the reason I did, I guess. So, AITA?

So generally I don't want to rerun posts from reddit unless it's your own story, but we'll make an exception just this once

What are these acronyms?

[moodymisty]

Anon that talked about Fulgrim here. The same thing is happening to Yvraine. Also this a rant sorry

She's such a cool character. I'll say that I haven't read any books on her, I only watched some yt videos and read her wiki page. But from what I gathered, she's a total badass who'll do anything for her people. Then why she's just left as "Guilliman's eldar gf"? Because the people who say those sorts of things don't know how to see female characters. The elf being paired with the humans is essentially an ancient thing now and it also comes from this. But, at it's core (and in the case of Warhammer), it's fetishization.

Let's take a closer look at this: Guilliman is, obviously, the golden boy of the Imperium. He's an hard-working and logical man, in many of the main he is the main character or an incredibly important character. Of course, somebody will relate to him, they'll say: "he's just like me". Then comes Yvraine. She's from a different cultures, she looks much different and she, and her kind, are considered barbarians. She and Guilliman develop an "partnership" on a bases of a treaty but they still hate eachother. They tolerate one another for the good of their people. These people, who previously related to Guilliman, will toy with plot so Guilliman, basically them in this context, will get the xeno big titty gf and live happily ever after. They do this because they fetishize how different Yvraine is. They want the main lead to get the girl, essentially.

I've seen on Reddit (god forbid) people actually ask if this relationship is canon. They depict Yvraine as an hungry whore for the human dick. This went to the other Primarchs too. They make a list of which xeno races would be most compatible with each primach. Fir example, I've seen a lot of art showing the Khan and Lelith Hesperax together. My brother in Christ, that woman hates with all her heart pregnancy and pregnant women. I seriously think she's a lesbian (if it isn't canon already). Poor Khan is stuck in the Warp, probably wanting to go back to his sons. He'll not look at an Drukhari and say: "I'll smash that" 💀. Lelith won't fall at her knees begging for his cock, she'll already either have fought him or is fighting him.

Sexualization is completely fine. Hell, I fantasize about the Primarchs or other characters from any piece of fiction all day long. But when this fanon headcanons become canon to some people, I think we should tone it down. I laughed at the Guilliman x Yvraine jokes in the beginning, but these jokes should just stop, they're unfunny now 😕

The Yvraine x Guilliman is totally canon guys posts are always so insane to me because, they've literally spoken twice. Shortly after guilliman woke up, and before Yvraine left. And Guilliman was very firm in saying 'thanks for bringing me back, but that's it. please leave.'

Like there was no UWU THANK YOU YVRAINE~ and no OOOOO~ MON'KEIGH ~

Like i don't mind the shitposting to be clear. If people want to ship it or meme about it thats fine i don't fucking care, what's frustrating is now that it's been a few years since that event happened, people are coming into the fandom thinking that this stuff is like, actually real. And they have some political secret romance going on and Yvraine is going around getting that primarch dick on the reg. And yeah the fact that she's one of the few female characters i'm sure doesn't help matters.

I just wish the memeing wouldn't blend into people's actual interpretation of the lore, like it has with a lot of fans. Brain melting literally.

[desire-mona]

dead poets society chars but i assign them random things ive seen happen on the internet / random videos or posts i remember (not based on anything it is genuinely at random):

neil - tony crynight's fnaf animation series which i dont entirely remember the plot of but i'll try to describe. so basically its fake mangle lore to say that mangle is the way they are (all broken and shit) because Mangle kissed Foxy and Chica got jealous so she took a Machete to Mangle to Mangled them. and then the gang tries to save mangle or whatever

todd - fluffle puff, someones pink fluffy mlp oc who was in lesbians with chrysalis (i think thats her name, i never watched mlp). mosy notably known for the animation to pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows. also the creator is a pedophile i think

charlie - sorrow tv and his entire existence. sorrow tv was a youtuber who made videos reading out reddit videos in silly voices. there was a whole posse of youtubers who did this, and he was the most popular just bc his voice acting was rly good. i still watch him every couple months even tho he hasnt posted since 2021.

cameron - does bruno mars is gay? i think about cameron man door hand hook car door every day, so i obviously need to point to my third favourite silly trying to be serious sentence. most ppl know this from game grumps but im not linking a game grumps video on here. rumour come out!

knox - venturiantale, the youtube channel usually consisting of 4? siblings playing gmod together usually. the channel itself was ran by this guy named jordan i think? and his siblings has their own channels. i knew them best for their fnaf gmod videos and their fanmail videos. turns out they were all very christian? and the whole family was abusive and way deep into said christianity if i remember correctly, one of the siblings who left first made a video on it. the venturiantale channel hasnt posted in like 2 yrs and the slow death was kinda sad to see bc he (jordan) blamed it all on The Algorithm.

meeks - that one nagito komaeda kinnie back in Whenever it was cutting off their finger to. i guess prove that they were a nagito kinnie frfr? if u dont know danganronpa lore then nagito gets his hand cut off and replaced with junko enoshima's hand because sheeeee got... executed? i wont lie i dont remember this part of the games story sorry. but essentially that one person was like I Gotta Do That........ anyway im jk the audio was faked and nothing actually happened + the person is fine LAWL

pitts - the key of awesome's parody of tiktok by kesha called glitter puke. theres no lore to this the key of awesome is / was ? a silly little song parody channel. this video was made in 2010 and it kinda shows in some moments but other than that it holds up. just checked and the key of awesome is Not still going, it ended 6 years ago and the last video was actually rly good and genuine

keating - onma island is buried a treasure chest. ok so basically mr beast made a video talking abt a private island and he buried. a treasure chest for a viewer to find. during the video he said "on my island is buried a treasure chest" but it sounded like "onma" which this one youtuber (pinely) found rly funny. it became an inside joke with his friends (one of whom got a tattoo) which then became a lowkey meme. mr beast even tweeted it so. good lord thats a lot of links sorry there isnt a know your meme page or anything

chris - i dont have any links for this one sorry, im just gonna tell the story and u have to believe me when i say i swear it happened (its very a believable fandom story im sure you will). so back when the genshin impact was still in its fairly early days (late 2020-early 2021) the phrase "hear me out" to refer to characters n stuff started becoming popular I THINK at the same time. so people in the genshin fandom were like hear me out with increasingly more heinous shit. started with characters, then npcs, then enemies, then bosses, then weapons, the stamina bar at one point, etc. a lot of these were jokes or straight up bait but back then (maybe now too - i havent been part of the genshin fandom for a LONG time) people took bait far more often than they didnt. so it became a "genshin fandom bad" gotcha to point out That One stamina bar post.

ginny - $300 junko enoshima wig! sorry for double dipping with danganronpa it was just the first fandom i actually started like. on purpose noting fandom happenings with + a lot of shit happens in that fandom. this one cosplayer who at the time was called snowthesaltqueen / badguyincorporated started selling pre-made (and styled) junko enoshima cosplay wigs for $300. which WOULD be fair (i think? idk how cosplay commissions work) if said wig was styled well or quality at all, but what was ACTUALLY provided was a rly basic wig base and few clips with no note or no nothing, and rly flat. like on purpose. like that was "the styling". also you may recognise this cosplayer for 1) getting in trouble when they did a cosplay photoshoot (danganronpa cosplay funnily enough) in a graveyard, posing ON a gravestone. 2) KILLING SOMEONE. they were screwing around with a firearm and fake pointing it at someone and then they accidentally shot them.

i could do this forever like actually. i have SO many internet stories in my brain its actually bad.

[queenlua]

it's funny how, when i was in college, one of the reasons i decided not to go into academia

was because i did a semester of research with this computational linguistics research prof who i really liked

and the [redacted research project] went totally fine, but i couldn't shake the feeling of "ok tho, this seems to mostly consist of doing some funky transformations on the corpus of The Entire Internet, which is cool and all, but it doesn't feel like i'm... adding... much... to our understanding of the universe? doesn't this feel like Garbage In, Garbage Out to anyone else? sure, it's kinda neat that i can do some funky transformations on stuff i pulled from [basically-Reddit], but that's all it is?"

and then, years later, LLMs blow up and it's like. joke's on me buddy, do you know how much hype you can milk out of doing a couple funky transformations on stuff you pulled from Reddit

[decaying-scourge-real]

"Heh... Don't worry about the rot-like creatures over here. These ones won't hurt you."

This is an ask blog for my Rain World iterator oc, Decaying Scourge! (or DS)

DS uses any pronouns and is aroace.

(NEURON DIVIDERS BY @prismsoup)

"Hm, yes... Rules. Everyone has rules of course."

1: Do NOT send explicitly nsfw asks. Romanticness or suggestiveness is fine but it won't really do anything to her other than annoy her lol. Don't send any nsfw directed at me either cause I don't think you want to be a pedophile. (GORE DOES NOT COUNT AS NSFW. I FUCKING LOVE FICTIONAL GORE LMAO-)

2: Don't ask me to say all his lore unless you're willing to wait a few days for me to write an essay about it.

3: Basic dni. Pedo, incest, zoophile, anti-fur, anti-therian, and supporters of them. Also dni whoever that person was that called me a r***rd on my main blog (main blog = @florathegnarpian) for liking regretevator. NSFW blogs are fine as long as you aren't being nsfw here.

4: Obviously, no jokes about serious topics like grief or suicidal thoughts. Jokes about DS's grief for her some of her infected creatures are fine go as wild as you want. No exceptions will be made for jokes about suicidal thoughts or my irl grief. (can't believe I need to put that last sentence there, but there's been multiple occasions where people on places like roblox have made jokes about my grief that made it pretty blatantly obvious that they were trying to make me depressed.)

5: Please. No death threats. I cannot stress enough how urgent I am to put this rule onto all my blogs when their pinned posts are done. I have gotten a death threat or some form of "kys" a total of about 8 or 9 times throughout my around 5 years of being on the internet, 1 death threat physically said to me irl which is so far back in my memory I can hardly remember it anymore, and one physical threat from my shithead cousin.

"You must at the very least know what I look like, huh?"

(BASE BY u/JuniperRainz ON REDDIT)

"I suppose you will likely depart now. No creatures to infect after all, then..."

[greatwyrmgold]

I saw a post about "gamers" the other day, which pinged off some videos I'd watched and thoughts I'd had the other other day, which lead to me writing this post.

What the heck is a gamer?

In the literal sense, a "gamer" is someone who plays games, usually video games. And unless your definition of "video game" is needlessly restrictive, this is a pretty trivial label.

It's like calling someone a hamburger-eater. Eating hamburgers is normal; most people do it occasionally, and exceptions have specific reasons not to (like not wanting to eat meat or fast food or not living near a decent burger joint or whatever), which are more significant (or at least unusual) labels than hamburger-eater.

Video games became ubiquitous in the Global North with the proliferation of smartphones, on top of the already unremarkable presence of video game consoles and PC games. "Gamer" in the literal sense has been irrelevant as a label for at least a decade. So why do we still use it?

Well, part of it is because we're stubborn and cling to labels that have stopped being useful, or even labels that were never really useful. (Citation: Pluto isn't a planet. If this post breaks confinement, you'll see evidence in the notes. Less fun citations can be found outside.) And part of it is because proud gamers want to prove their L337 status to others, and that only works if L337-ness has a level that looks like a word.

But also, there's a certain pattern of behavior associated with the term "gamer". Competitive, defensive of their hobbies, callous towards others, openly bigoted towards marginalized groups (or at least vocally insensitive about them), etc.

But why are they "gamers"? Not everyone who plays a lot of video games is a "gamer"; I play more video games than I should, and I absolutely love making fun of "gamers," a group that I don't consider myself part of (at least for the purposes of those jokes).

Moreover, plenty of people in other fandoms perform "gamer" behaviors. Look at redditors, or anime fans, or anime fans on Reddit. Or look at the Star Wars fandom and its reaction to...basically everyone in the sequel trilogy who wasn't either a white male or coded as similarly "default". Or the D&D community, whose most outspokenly assholish members mock both video games and any attempt to make their favorite game friendlier to marginalized groups (e.g. the backlash to acknowledging racism baked into racial Int penalties or the existence of a homebrew combat wheelchair).

Granted, D&D is still a game, and plenty of fans of anime or Star Wars also play games. Many of the people I'm discussing also play more video games than average, and hence fit into a literal definition of "gamer". But we don't call them gamers because they game more than non-gamers. I'm willing to bet that plenty of the assholes aggressively defending the prevalence of slavery in isekai anime play video games and TRPGs way less often than me, but they display "gamer" behaviors way more than me.

So why do we call them gamers?

The answer is probably a combination of inertia and GamerGate. Inertia is obvious; we're used to calling those assholes "gamers," and people know what we mean when we talk about how shitty gamers are, so we keep calling them "gamers". And we started calling those assholes "gamers" in part because of GamerGate, an extremely vocal and unfortunately influential movement, which emerged as people were starting to realize how pointless the traditional meaning of "gamer" had become, and which sought to actively police who could consider themselves a "gamer".

In a sense, they won. I mean, obviously they won in the sense that they started a series of historical dominoes that (currently) ends at QAnon, the January 6 insurrection, and heightened hostility for various minorities. But also, they won the definition of "gamer".

You want to keep women, POC, queer people, and progressives from being "gamers"? Fine. Now gamers are cock-goblins who shout slurs at people playing TF2 wrong. Nobody likes gamers any more, and the video game market treats them as more and more of a niche market. You still have to put up with the people you hate, though. You just get to say they're not real gamers, and get mocked by people for your futile gatekeeping. How do you like that?

[elderemorune]

What a week.

TW: Suicide discussion ahead. Please be kind to yourself and don't read if you're not in the headspace for it.

A family friend passed away this week. I first learned about it a couple of days ago. Her name was Emily, and she was a lawyer. Damn fine one too. She and I weren't especially close, but I'd ask her legal questions on occasion, stuff like "Hey, how does founding an LLC work?" or "Hey, I just learned about this really cool business idea, can you point me to someone who can help me work out what I'd need to do for it?" It was professional, and I didn't know that much about her.

What I do know is that she suffered from chronic pain, and didn't have any tools to effectively manage it. The stuff that deadened the pain's addictive, and with doctors basically not prescribing opiates at all if they can help it, she was left in the lurch. Eventually it became too much to bear, and she just couldn't do it anymore.

She leaves behind a husband and children, whom are all kind and gentle folk. I recall meeting her partner at a baseball game with my dad once, he was a swell guy. Shook my hand firmly and made jokes about an ex-con marrying his lawyer. She just gave him a withering look, said "Don't be an ass, I don't even practice criminal law!" and we all laughed.

The pain overtook her, and it's hard to blame her.

I mean, can you imagine? Body aching all the time, no reprieve except when you're asleep? Doctors telling you you're engaging in drug seeking behavior simply because you'd like to have one good fucking day, just one?

My wife lives that life too. She's constantly in pain, her body fighting her at any given moment simply for the sin of having been born to parents who ardently refused to have her medical issues treated when she was a child, her dad and stepmom chiding her doctors when they said "She has a hormone imbalance brought on by precocious puberty".

"Oh she doesn't have anything wrong with her, she's just lazy and fat."

I'm digressing from what I wanted to talk about, sorry. That woman's been through a lot, and it's so hard not to get mad about it. Especially right now. I worry so much about her pain levels that I keep her supplied in marijuana and do everything about the house to the best of my abilities just to limit it as much as I can.

And while that's the worst thing that happened this week, I can't really say the rest was good. I mean, in comparison to suicide, sure I guess, but you know.

It's fucking weird when one finds out that your mom didn't actually want to be polyamorous again.

Oh yeah, my folks were poly in 2019, and that blew up massively in their faces for reasons that are not mine to share.

Anyway, I came to find out that my dad lied to my mom about how he met his girlfriend, Sarah. He said he met her on Reddit, but had lied about taking his dating profile down. He takes phone calls from Sarah every night at 5:00, when he's supposed to shut his office down and stop ignoring my mom for the day.

My mom has no desire to meet Sarah. Says "I can't, I'll hate her, and she hasn't even done anything wrong. I don't want to meet her."

As a polyamorous person in a monogamous relationship, there is a right way to do this, and a wrong one, and FUCK is the wrong one lying to your partner about it. I mean shit, I did that three fucking years ago! And while I would absolutely state that my behavior three years ago was of a significantly different (read harsh, mean, unkind, abusive), it started this way. With a lie.

Sure he came clean, but there's nothing that can be trusted about this relationship now.

So I finish talking to my mom about this because I have other shit to do and being angry at my dad for yet another reason isn't doing me much good. She closes out with this:

"Thank you for caring about me and having my back and being my amazing and wonderful son."

To wit I said "Well it's not like I can be anyone else, right? :P"

And completely unprompted, she says "Well you could be my amazing and wonderful 'child' instead of my son and you would still be the same as far as I'm concerned. I would still love you just as much. You're one of my favorite people."

For those who aren't good at speaking white suburban mom, this translates to "I would still love you if you were trans."

What? I'm still confused by this. About once a year, I sit down and take a mental inventory, you know, see who I was this last year, and compare that to who I want to be. That includes taking stock of my gender identity. That part of the process generally amounts to "Am I comfortable in my body? Yes? Good.", but if it were different then that's fine too.

Like, I'm not GNC, I'm not genderqueer, I'm just queer.

Apparently, because trans folks often use this term to refer to themselves, my mom had simply assumed that I was among that crowd.

Again, what? What a fucking leap of logic, mom! Well, at least we know you're an ally.

And also, I'm honestly crossing my fingers with the hope that you'll divorce dad. I love the two of you, but fuck are you awful for each other.

What else happened this week? Hell, I can't remember. Wednesday was weird, but I think I already talked about it previously. That shit with Ruth was a hell of a thing. I told my wife that I'm not going to any family events that Ruth is gonna be at unless my nieces are there. Then I'll just ignore Ruth and play with the kids. They fuckin love me. Hattie, my oldest niece, makes fun of me for "Talking too big" when she brings up God. They don't like Ruth either.

This is already getting kinda long, and I've got work to do, so I guess I'll update some other time.

Please be kind to yourselves.

[jimmycarterghostland]

The Flaws of VE Schwab's novel "Vicious"

Before I begin, I need to say that I loved Vicious. But I hated the sequel book, Vengeful. And as much as I like Vicious, nothing is without flaws, and I want to bring up my dislikes about Vicious. Maybe some of my opinions about it haven't been discussed by anyone else before.

What I didn't like about Vicious:

1 The overly comedic tone. I'm not a fan of comedies. I prefer more serious works. Comedy can be great, but sometimes, it can make a piece of fiction suffer. It's hard to take something something that should be serious seriously when there's a noticable comedic tone, which Vicious has.

In Vicious, there's humor in pretty much every chapter. And all of the characters are funny and witty in a way. It makes the quality of the novel suffer, because the characters are too similar. Plus, the dark tone in Vicious would've been darker if there was little to no humor. It would've made the novel better. The series is called Villains. But the Marvel's Cinematic Universe type of tone in this series ruins it a bit for me. You never want to make all of your main characters be funny.

One comic relief character is fine, but the excessive amount of humor in Vicious is very "try-hard". It's forcibly witty. Which makes it annoying. In my opinion, Schwab should've given all the jokes and humor to the character Mitch. Everyone else should've been more serious, especially Sydney, who should've been more depressed, considering she got shot by her sister's boyfriend. Her own sister tried getting her killed. Sydney should've been more sad throughout this novel.

Basically, Vicious has a Joss Whedon sort of tone. And I'm not a fan of that kind of humor.

If I had written Vicious and wanted to insert some comedy, but not too much of it, I would've made one comic relief character. I can tell Mitch is the main CRC. So, I would've given him all the jokes in his dialogue and his narration. Only his chapters would've had the humor, though. This is actually how I tend to insert humor in my creative writing these days. I only make the designated comic relief characters say jokes and have humor in their POV chapters. The characters who aren't CRCs rarely joke around. With my method, you get humor, but never too much of it.

I wish Vicious were more of a grim novel. I would've enjoyed it more if the characters weren't cracking jokes like too many fictional characters do these days. Especially because of the influence of the humor found in the MCU. Vicious had too much humor in it. It reminded me of a Reddit post I read once, where the original poster was clearly trying too hard to be funny. There was a lame "joke" in just about every other paragraph. It was irritating.

2 Sydney and Serena's parents. It bugs me how they're rarely mentioned and don't matter to the plot at all. Apparently, they were those emotionally neglectful sort of parents.

Regardless, I hate that this book didn't include them or explain why they're neglectful to their daughters. It's not so bad that Victor's doesn't get fleshed out or anything, because he's an adult. Sydney is a child. Her parents not being concerned about her is "hand waved" away. They think she's still with Serena. So, no need to check on her.

This whole thing just feels weird. Schwab could've done something with this. It gets worse in Vengeful, because the parents are absent in that book too. I don't remember them looking for her or anything. The absent parents trope is heavy in this series. For everyone. It's like nobody in this duology even has parents. Bizarre.

Sydney and Serena having neglectful parents was a cop-out. It was also a case of bad writing, because it presents some issues.

3 Victor's plan to kill Eli. Victor had no actual plan to kill his immortal, self-regenerating former friend. He wanted to kill him, but he had no real method of doing so. What exactly was Victor's plan in that final battle between them? He knows he can't kill Eli. But he wants to. The whole thing is ridiculous, because Victor pointlessly tries to kill Eli. He never has a real plan to do it, either. When Batman wanted to kill Superman, he used kryptonite. As far as Victor knows, Eli doesn't even have a weakness. His ultimate goal was always to kill Eli, though.

The quality of the book goes down because of this. You would think Victor is smart enough to not fight Eli without a plan, but that's exactly what he does anyway. And it gets him killed. Another instance of bad writing. Victor trying to kill Eli when he knows he'll just heal is something that doesn't make sense when you think about it.

4 Are ExtraOrdinaries all over the world or just the area Eli is in? The way the book makes it seem, people with superpowers(EOs) only live within driving distance from Eli. He's clearly not murdering the ones who should be in China, Alaska, Mexico, etc. Like Victor, Eli has an unrealistic plan, and the author tries to hide it from the reader by not mentioning how the plan is unrealistic. More bad writing.

5 Serena's jarring change of mind. In one flashback chapter, Eli wants to kill Serena's sister, Sydney. She doesn't want him to kill Sydney. We are never shown Serena deciding that maybe Sydney should die. It's jarring, and the fact it wasn't expanded upon is terrible writing. We get the reasons why Serena believed Sydney needed to die, but we don't see the transition from her wanting to protect her to her being okay with Eli killing her. This should've been expanded upon. Sadly, it wasn't.

6 Serena controls people's minds, but when she tells Eli to "wait", he shoots Sydney anyway. There's no excuse for this one. What Serena tells people, they will do it. Eli should've waited. This is an annoying plot error. Schwab broke the rule of her own superpower system.

7 Detective Stell is hesitant about believing Eli is a hero, even though Serena tells him to believe it. This is another instance of Schwab being inconsistent with Serena's power. Stell shouldn't have been able to delay his agreement that Eli is a hero. He should've nodded right away.

8 Sydney should've been more depressed that her older sister tried to have her killed. Sydney doesn't seem all that bummed out that her sister's BF put a bullet in her arm during an attempted murder attempt. It's weird. I understand fiction can suffer when a character is being overemotional, but there's such thing as being underemotional. Sydney treats the murder attempt like it was a minor inconvenience. Strange.

[ask-the-websites-themselves]

RULES: -No being mean, we are real people -No asks about politics and how the websites are run this is not the blog for that -Uhhhmmmm you can ship the websites n send asks about those ships just no incest Newgrounds and MySpace (played by @orchidsinmylungs )

Tumblr and Deviantart (played by @thegirlever )

And Twitter and Tik Tok played by (@ghostlyplacetobe )

And YouTube played by (@glitchylaptop )

And Reddit played by (@wwindblumee )

And Vine played by (@breakcoreboxcat )

And Wattpad played by (@naturalharmoniac )

And AO3 played by (@webluvbot )

Facebook, Musical.ly, 4-Chan and Lolcow are also here but are not played by anyone.

Newgrounds and Myspace are married, and their kids are Facebook, Tumblr, and Youtube. Tik Tok, Vine, and Musically are siblings. 4-chan and Lolcow are twins Wattpad and AO3 are siblings. So uh I wanna say that Newgrounds is a Flordia man. You will find this bitch riding an alligator drinking piss poor beer singing fucking two trucks.

MySpace is the slightly chiller parent, but you can bet their children grew up with near constant raves in the house. She used to bake those cookies with rock sugar on top and everything. It was just chaotic but y'know...caring

Facebook is a boomer despite being fairly young bitch you are barely in your thirties and are posting minion memes and those stupid boomer comics. Hates the internet, and thinks he is better then everyone else.

Youtube used to be fun, and they still can be, but they feel forgotten and left behind so they cranked up their hard assery to try to survive. They think they have evolved past the need for that distasteful stuff their father insisted on filling their house with...but they do really miss the creativity. They need to eat though~!

Tik Tok appears to be a sweet if a little hyper and maybe a little crigey but in an endearing way, but they are secretly pure evil. They will sell your organs on the black market for a quick buck, and will do anything to be the top dog always. They don't care about who they hurt.

Vine used to be the funnyman, just a goofy little guy. You want something light hearted? Vine was who you talked too. They are very missed, but their ghost lives on because everyone loves them.

Musically was fairly more edgy then Vine, but was just very chill. I dunno I have like nothing for them mate.

Reddit knows everything, and if they don't know it they'll find it. They have an opinion on everything, and they have no filter about it. Yes, in fact you are the asshole. Chronically online, and they often forget real life is a thing.

Deviantart is a mix of chaotic oc (do not steal) and actual serious artist. They'll give you boatloads of art tips, but they do NOT tolerate tracing. They are slowly dying, and are desperately trying to be relevant again. They are terrified of fading to obscurity

4 Chan and Lolcow are twins, and they are "nice guy" and nice girl" respectfully. You do ANYTHING they dislike you are getting doxxed, but damn do these guys have the craziest stories. They also have interesting inside jokes n such. Just...careful around them.

Instagram in a basic white girl. That's it. So is snapchat.

Wattpad has peeped the horrors and revels in it. They collect the stupidest ass tropes but God are some of their stories good (most of them are ass though sorry) they also work in the fanfic library, founded by their mother Fanfic.net (she will be missed)

AO3 has peeped the horrors and is only alive to continue to properly shelve them. They are slightly more serious then Wattpad, and a little more grown up, but they still have some weird shit in their desk. They also have carnal knowledge of the most infamous fics

Tumblr is....chaos. they are literally held together with silly string and glitter glue. They spout bullshit 24/7, no one likes them, everyone likes them, they live in a constant state of agony, they are completely fine, they are the hellsite beloved.

[h3adsh0t]

Hey, I’m making this post on this new account real quick because I think I really need some advice or something. Please try to read everything. If you have any advice or questions or comments to give me that may help me, even just a little bit, please dm me.

So, just for some background about me, I’m 16 years old and just got into my junior year. I live in Louisiana with my mom, stepdad, and half brother. Also, I’m a straight (bi curious) boy.

I don’t know why, but for the past year now I’ve been having a lot of really shitty suicidal thoughts and all that. I don’t know if I wanna go to any therapy or my parents or any friends about these thoughts though. Everyone I open up in front of anybody for any reason, I just start crying a lot. And I completely hate crying in front of anyone because I’m scared they’ll think I’m some scared or selfish pussy that can’t handle simple things or anything like that.

I’ve always been incredibly shy and introverted so I usually always worry about what basically anyone thinks of me. Anytime someone at school even glances at me, they look away and that makes me think that they think I’m ugly or look weird or something. Anytime I walk past someone in the halls and hear people laughing, I always think they’re laughing at me for either my hair looking shitty, me being a bit chubby, or something else.

I’ve never been popular in school. I feel like most people in my grade just kinda know who I am but don’t care enough to talk to. I’m just the guy they look at and say “oh it’s that guy”, and then move on. And I’m honestly fine with that. I’m fine with being the quiet kid who just wants to do his work and go home. The problem is that my school is filled to the brim with gangster-wannabe type kids who just never know when to leave people alone. And I never wanna tell them to go away or leave me be because I’m scared they’ll get mad and hit me or something or just give me dirty looks I guess. I genuinely feel like I can’t go anywhere in that damn place without getting harassed by a bunch of asshats.

I never really leave my house outside of school. I still need to learn to drive and I’m planning on applying at Subway soon for a first job. I spend most of my free time at home either binging YouTube, TV, Movies, Anime, Cartoons, playing video games, working out in the evenings, and a lot of sleeping.

I also think I might have a few undiagnosed mental disorders. Whenever I’m alone by myself, I just talk to myself. I constantly imagine myself in different scenarios and situations. It might be BPD but idk. I have a fuck ton of weird interests that most people are not into, especially around where I live.

I’m also really scared of my adult future. I want to eventually go to Full Sail Uni in Florida and become a successful screenwriter. A lot of my family calls me really creative so I think it’d be a good job for me, plus I just like making stories and writing in general. However, there’s a ton of more things I’m terrified of. I have no clue how things like taxes, insurance, business deals, applications, the DMV, bills, basically anything having to do with just being an adult scares me. I can do the basic shit like laundry, washing dishes, cleaning, sometimes cooking, etc. But everything else just scares me.

When it comes to friends and relationships, I think I have probably some of the worst trust issues on the planet. I’m constantly scared of going over to friends’ houses because I think they’ll judge me for something dumb, so I never really go over to any of them and I just stay home all day. I’m also incredibly scared of getting into any relationships with girls because these days, everytime I go on twitter, or Reddit, or TikTok, I feel like I’m seeing some new story about people cheating on each other and not being faithful. Or I’ll see another story about people dating someone as a joke, or a dare, or just to mess with them. It’s made me so terrified of dating out of fear that it’ll happen to me too, or I’ll say something bad or too weird and they’ll think I’m a freak and leave, or something will happen and they’ll have to move. And it sucks because I wanna be able to just hang out with my friends without stressing. I wanna be able to date something sweet and kind and caring and fun. I wanna be with someone that I can hold and take care of on their bad days. I want someone I can be weird with I guess. I just want people who I know won’t leave me.

I don’t know why I’m so damn anxious all the time. I don’t know why I’m stressed. I don’t know why I’m scared. I don’t know why I’m so shy. This is just kind of how I am.

I’m sorry for making this so long, I just really needed to get this all off of my chest and I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. If you have any questions or anything, please feel free to DM me at any time.

Love to all of you and I hope you have a good rest of your day. Or night.

[guessitrunsinthegenes]

i was being deliberate about not actually naming them lol but i guess its okay since they did interact publicly. its just they seem similar in a way that could make sense for dating. i like angela and damien both seperately and i also enjoy them together in videos but lets be real they are very different people with contrasting interest/social circles. im just realy suprised there are people who legitimately hope they could get together, it seems so far fetched to me. (again not talking about liking their on screen dynamics) i understand i guess finding the idea of them together hot becouse you like both of them, but realisticly? thats such an odd match lol. even seemingly small things like imagining angela trying to get into damiens very loud home decor and general interests/aesthetics makes me laugh. maybe this i coming from more of a teens idea of a relationship where you "go out" together because you find somebodies smile cute and dont think about much else? again im not attacking you guys i dont think any of this trully matters in the grand scheme of things IF that part of it stays relatively small and hidden in places they wont see but i wanted to voice my confusion a litte bit. (also not to go there but damien dating another smosh co-worker?? why would you want that kinda stress for him -and for her! im sorry but i would consider him an idiot if he tried to that again lol)

sorry i completely missed that that was your intent, they interact basically every stream at this point so i figured it was fine to mention with that! specifically with the home decor point with damien and angela, angela made her own joke about that in their first reddit stories with the whole "i'd never invite my work friends over to your place, i know i work at smosh but my finance bro friends" or something like that with what the story was 😭 i don't personally have any relationship experience to know what can and cannot work and i also am not a shipper i just like you said, want this to stay in places they can't see. i will always straight up delete hate but i'd rather any shipping be directed here/my youtube comments rather than places either of them directly look at! and with the another smosh co worker point for damien, i do completely get the possibility of stress with that! i wouldn't personally consider him an idiot for that but i cannot imagine the comments about it would be pretty if that ever did happen 😭

[fierytakeferdinand]

Twitter was even worse for society than Facebook

The Medium restricts the message.

You cannot have an audio-visual blockbuster spectacle in a book, and you cannot have the thrill of an online game in a movie.

Likewise, you cannot have an intelligent discussion on Twitter.

The character limit forces summarizing, and summarizing means simplifying, and while that is a good thing and brevity is the soul of wit and all, it’s not the soul of intelligence nor being correct. In fact I would argue that being any degree of correct requires verbosity, it requires detail, knowledge builds upon knowledge and referencing past knowledge as assumptions is an important detail to include in any thought-out thought to avoid unintelligent refutations that arise from the refuter’s own ignorance.

Is it any surprise then that public discourse is such a cesspit when we chose to prioritize wit over intelligence? Is it any surprise that the website which is a perfect fit for short, simple, emotional, controversial, scathing remarks that elicit equally simplistic, emotional, limited-by-design responses in people contains exactly that?

This “town square” — as Musk calls it — is a popularity contest, just like a real town square indeed, and wit wins every time, but we all lose.

It is effectively a formalization of the same kind of circlejerky model of communication that is emerged on sites like 4chan with it’s fast-moving temporary nature of content generation. It’s what you get when everything boils down to memes. And memes are fine, fun, even, but memes should not comprise public discourse.

Verbosity alone does not comprise intelligence, but it is part of what makes an intelligent point. This in itself is a simplification of course, it depends on context too, you can make a brief intelligent point when prior knowledge is assumed, such as at an expert conference targeted at a field where people are likely to already know the basic assumptions, but same cannot be said for public discourse, and that’s the context I am referring to here.

The other key ingredient in why Twitter sucks in particular is the audience. Why does it matter if people say dumb shit online? People have done so since the beginning of the internet, witty, memetic remarks are the backbone of internet communications. It matters for one reason: the audience.

I’d like to arbitrarily and broadly divide the internet into two groups: Real Life and Online.

Real Life internet is primarily concerned with IRL matters, this is your local pizzeria or amazon or ebay.

Online internet is primarily concerned with online matters, this is your [insert game here] forum, niche tech interest stuff and simple hangout spaces like imageboards.

When it comes to social media, I would say that the majority of sites like Reddit, Tumblr and most imageboards fall into the latter category. They are sites with their own culture, their own in-jokes, things that exist only on the internet and have only ever existed on the internet.

“The Thomas Jefferson Miku Binder image” or “SHYGDDT” don’t mean much to the average person in real life, nor should they. Things like The TSUKI Project or the VRC ERP/FBT communities — as far as the exposure to average everyday people goes — should remain in the form of Vice articles where people read about the latest wacky strange thing the “weird” people are doing.

Whereas sites like Facebook and Twitter are used by The Masses™: you can complain to customer support for your local store on twitter, you can find your local real-life communities and services via Facebook. Hell, nowadays you can buy physical IRL stuff right on Instagram. Likewise celebrities and politicians also use these sites to promote and earn very real money and power in real life.

I think we can agree that discussions regarding real life matters then, things that impact people’s physical existence should probably have a tad more nuance than online shit-flinging contests about the deeper meaning of some episode of Star Trek or gushing in image macros about Skyrim’s batshit lore.

When in fact the opposite had happened. People who are not “internet people” but people primarily concerned with IRL matters were coerced into dumbing down the average level of discourse into memetic content, repeatable simplistic catchy witty bite-size chunks of thoughts that can easily be made to mean anything and adopted by communities foreign to the original by the very platforms they post on, namely one platform — Twitter.

Facebook is vile too of course, and all platforms amplify even the worst of takes to a global audience, but it’s really Twitter that put the power of the image macro in the hands of your local klandma.

Those people talk, and thus also to an extent think of real life like online people used to do with random nerdy discussions, and considering how toxic that can get — when combined with the fact that Twitter is also primarily about IRL stuff — Twitter is the most toxic website on the planet.

Stumbling upon gore as a kid is absolutely nothing — and I mean nothing — compared to the sanity hit of reading the vile insane shit of an average boomer on Twitter present in minority hate groups that don’t even exist yet and knowing that those people mean it and are going outside and voting based on those beliefs, beliefs crafted by memes in 240 characters or less.

Were Twitter just another content-sharing site for bite-sized miniblogs about what you ate this morning it would not be an issue, but clearly, this is not what it has become, and I’m not sure whether Dorsey or anyone at Twitter is to blame per se, but it’s a shitty situation is all I can say.

On the other hand, Reddit is like the alternate universe good version of Twitter — at least in some subreddits — where verbosity and being thorough is not only allowed, but even encouraged through culture of effortposts and the site’s own features of embedding links within text.

Perhaps it speaks to flaws within the human mind itself that made Twitter be the bigger site.

The best thing we can do to our corporate owned town squares of today is to destroy them all and perhaps rethink the whole idea of public discourse with real consequences before we turbo-charge it with technology.

Give the internet back to furries with magically infinite disposable income and content creators that earned nothing, and blatantly ripped each other off for the sake of cool, I say.

There is also an argument to be made for stewardship of the internet, but that’s for another time.

EDIT: Wanted to clarify that I don’t think Twitter invented shitty discourse, a point I briefly touched on in my “just like a real town square” remark but it’s worth discussing because it is in my belief one of the key web sites that undermined the internet’s potential to improve discourse.

[dead-blogwalking]

an essay full of heather duke headcanons for someone on insta that I randomly saved

-was the therapist friend before Veronica came

-also the reason why she doesn't wanna open up about her problems

according to u/YumiGumiWoomi on reddit:

"Heather McNamara doesn't wanna speak up because she's scared how others will take what she's saying, terrified of the negative opinions of others.

Heather Duke doesn't wanna speak up because she knows what'll happen if she does. She'll be mocked, or harassed, or told to shut up. Because that's what Heather Chandler always did to her."

(Stan them for commenting this)

-so you know how in act 2 when she became the new chandler? well Veronica and Mac were the new heather duke's, colour wise and everything else wise

-the only reason why she took chandler's position is bc she didn't wanna get picked on again (that's why she replaced her after "shut up heather" said my heather Mac, she wasn't ready to, but had to do it)

-so in candy store when Mac sings "'corse if you don't care, FINE go braid her hair", referring to Martha, duke has a braid in her ponytail bc she cares about Martha also but cant show it (like ram)

-has problems just like how (some are kinda the same) heather Mac but doesn't say it because she thinks she'd get mocked and stuff

-like highlighters

-so in yo girl she says "just another geek trying to imitate the popular people and failing miserably", I know it refers to ram, Kurt and the other heathers, but somehow I first thought of duke

-not a hc, but she's literally the only character in heathers to not attempt un-aliving themselves, or faked it, which makes me concerned

-shes basically a reserved heather Mac

- is in honors class, but is dumbed down because of hangouts with heathers -was the "gifted kid", which is why she's depressed and burnt out

-has mixed feelings about Veronica, she likes her as a friend, but is scared that she will take her position and she will be in veronica's position (evidence in her cut solo in big fun)

-had a reputation for being the good student until she became part of the heathers

-after Veronica, she's the last person to join, the other 2 heathers have been friends for quite a while (evidence in beautiful when ms Fleming gives the detention)

-least close compared to the other heathers, she is usually alone reading a book -big introvert vibes -loves dark humour, but no one laughs at her jokes and are usually concerned -nerd -doesn't know where she belongs, believes she is too dumb compared her honours class students, thinks she's not good enough for the heathers, and believes she doesn't work hard enough for the year book -burnt out because of yearbook -needs people's approval, after chandler dies her effort for approval goes to veronica -theres no way she's straight -way nicer when chandler's not around

-has naturally wavy hair, but is frizzy when she brushes it and her wave pattern is damaged because she keeps on curling it -is that one friend that has every emergency stuff (first aid and period products) -the only reason she likes having Veronica around is because chandler becomes nicer to her (proof because in beautiful, chandler mocked her, because it was only between the heathers, and there were only some shut up heather's for the rest of the musical) -best gift giver ever, and remembers everyone's birthdays (she puts effort into chandler's gift bc she needs her approval and also mac's, because she likes it she's happy) -pissed that people cared about Mac and Martha's problems and not hers -hates miss Fleming to the day that she dies -if someone yelled "I hate you!1!!1" to her, she would reply with "omg same !" -has reading glasses, which is why she reads mostly at home (there was one pic in the movie where she did have them, so I have a point)

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Repost: Ask on Fanfics and Why I Side-eye Them

Anonymous: I'm so fascinated by your views about fan fics. Is there a reason you side-eye them?

**

Hi anon,

Story time. 

Some years ago I read a post on Reddit about this woman who deeply admired her boss’s boss. He gave ‘alpha vibes’ apparently. So she wrote fics based on him, kept his real first name and the real names of other related people. She wrote y/n fics, smut fics, two gay fics at some point, did a whole genre of fics with all sorts of kinks with him as the main character. At one point, two other co-workers who knew that guy also started reading the fics and recognized who it was based on. They formed a group where they discussed him, how they imagine he fucks, how they imagine he’d ‘take care’ of them after ‘losing his temper’ at them. This guy was married and had two young kids btw. The fics spread among the lower female staff and somehow a community formed of people just fantasizing about this guy, dissecting his behavior based on how they’d seen him depicted in fics, a real person, their boss. Of course, somehow it got to HR. The fics were incredibly graphic (or maybe pretty tame cause I’ve seen some wild ass tags on ao3 ngl). The guy was brought in during the investigation and he was apparently so hurt that nearly all the younger female staff had opinions about him (and his wife) based on those fics, that he cried (not exactly alpha vibes but ig that’s not the point here). He left the company two weeks later while that woman was given some weeks of unpaid leave if I recall correctly. No harm done.

***

I think I’ve mentioned in passing that while I have nothing against ff, I can’t really read them and not for lack of trying on my part. I don’t think I’ve ever become so interested or enamored with a story that I’d like to see the characters in more scenarios than what’s in the canon. For fictional characters I’ve had very limited success getting into their fics, and for real people I have virtually zero interest.

I remember about 2 years ago when I was just really starting to pay attention to some pairings, I was in this SOPE gc and people were looking at me funny cause I said I don’t read ff. Not reading fics isn’t a big deal, it doesn’t make me special or even all that unusual, but there’s just this assumption that if you’re curious about a pair, you want to read made-up scenarios about them and imagine them doing all sorts of things. Fics based on real people aren’t bad in and of themselves - I’d wager at least 50% of respectable literature is based on real people in some way - but I’ve noticed very worrying behavior from even the most well meaning people, if they’re heavily into these sort of fics.

Now, this is definitely an unpopular opinion given how fics comprise like 90% of how female-dominated fandoms engage with the fandom’s subject, but I think the moment you repurpose another real human being as merely a character in a fantasy without that person’s consent or input, I think you’re already beginning to toe a very fine line. It’s how people can make such stupid analogies like accusing a real person you don’t know of queerbaiting. Applying a term used for character tropes on a real person and essentially erasing the humanity of whoever you level that accusation against. 

It’s not lost on me either than an overwhelming amount of these fics are self-insert smut fics and if I was more cynical I’d say quite a lot fans are here because BTS makes them horny and not particularly because the music moves them so. And this would explain a lot of what counts for ‘discourse’ in some spaces, which are either solely centered on eroticism or just betraying a fundamental ignorance/disconnect from the stylistic and music decisions, lyrics, and performances or even the stated motivations of the members. Basically, I think there’s some empirical evidence that a lot of us are investing in Svakom or Hitachi with BTS as the demand driver.  

(This was probably a joke.) No judgement here. All seven are hot as fuck and they seem like genuinely cool guys.

But, I wonder… People write these fics to depict them, use their real names (not even their stage names which exist as a demarcation proxy between their personas and their personal lives), rewrite and redo the real relationships and interactions these real people have, imply the personalities in the fics are true to life for real people’s characters, and so, 

Is anyone really surprised when thousands of people are taking bottom/top tropes and using that to assert the character and personalities of real human beings they don’t know? 

Or should we be scratching our heads when we see grown ass adults projecting, quite blatantly too, on someone else? 

Should I even mention how my irl friend and I were playing BTS MVs on youtube one day while baking and had autoplay on. We came back several minutes later to see yoonmin moan compilations and AUs next up according to youtube’s algorithm. Millions of people are watching random people moan into a mic and imagining it is Park Jimin and Min Yoongi.

(I’m laughing but should we not be ripping our robes, pouring ash on our heads and gnashing our teeth at our woeful, sexually repressed natures? And all the batteries that haven’t been recycled?)

/jk

We already know how shippers especially struggle with boundaries but one more observation I’ll add here is that every extremely abusive solo stan or akgae I’ve seen that calls themselves a non-shipper, has been one that either writes or obsessively reads fics. Even some otherwise 'rational ARMYs' I've seen completely lose the plot once they heavily get into these sort of fics. Writing fiction requires spending a considerable amount of time inhabiting the headspace of your character. You have to know his motivations, his fears, his desires, and if you’re basing it on a real person (you don’t actually know), it’s very easy to see how blurring boundaries are the rule, not the exception.

Now some will say “well BTS are celebrities, they’ve signed up for this”…. 

Are you sure? 

This isn’t a rhetorical question. Let me know what you think after this.

***

There’s much ado about parasocial relationships in k-pop, but like everything else, I feel a lot people just toss this word around without actually understanding what it means. 

It’s one thing to speculate about their music and what they’re like based on interviews they’ve done and clips we have, but I think if you respect someone, you will be mindful about how you discuss them and what you discuss about them, regardless of the space you do that in or how ‘removed’ you think they are from it. Like I hope people would do for anyone else. It’s one thing to think SOPE, kookmin, and VHOPE might be together, another thing to invest time and effort detailing how exactly they get tangled up in bed in some fictional universe. Idk it’s kinda like wondering how Rihanna has sex or how long Barack Obama’s dick is, then writing 6,000 words about them both fucking with Michelle watching and people paying to read that… 

Again, it’s a free country. Read and write what you like. Personally, it’s not something that’s ever appealed to me. And after several suggestions from friends with recommendations of fics to get into, all that’s done is make me wonder if these actions are as harmless as we think they are, and also informed me of the nearly 2,000 tags covering only pregnancy that people are apparently into.

Originally posted: March 3rd, 2022 12:58pm