#I have so many things in that account that I would love to have back

[missfertileandferal]

lowkey super anxious to post this but im missing you guys so much <3

i plan on a solid return soon! i just wanted to get off my chest whats been going on:

Earlier this year, I dealt with an awful situation of my kinky stuff leaking into real life. My insane coworkers found my content and as I was serving on the clock, proceeded to show my customers and all the staff. then i was fired. Im traumatized to say the least but I over came it.

Come mid summer, I planned so step back for a little bit to move apartments no more than a couple weeks. What happened was both my job (i worked with close family friends so stressful) and a really bad situation with a companion found about my kink stuff. i never expected or was prepared for the humiliation, deception, and pain that would come from my fetish journey

My last job was such a loss. I had been blessed with a cute job as a medical office assistant without any credentials (i wasnt doing anything out of my capabilities of course) it was so peaceful and perfect compared to the drama of my last gig plus working with familiar people felt just like home honestly. Then I got covid. I was out for 2 weeks, at the same time i was moving into my new place. I tried calling them back to let them know I was cleared and ready to get back to work. I received a humiliating text. I was dismissed. That turned into a crippling anxiety of them confessing to my family what I do in my past time

The following week I was met with more disappointment. Ive said this before but I dont have many people in my corner. It used to suck to admit but I stand with pride now knowing those who are around me love me 100% regardless what I do or dont do.

One of my dearest dearest friends, who I had previously communicated what I do (not to a full extent they always respected it) called me very dramatically only a week before I planned to see them (they live across the country and we ALWAYS visit each other when in our cities) It still doesnt feel real tbh, the call only last 40 seconds. I was informed that “I was going on the wrong path” and could no longer be associated with. That’s alls that happened. 8 years down the drain

I was informed by outside sources that my hometown opps had gotten hold of my content (who my ex friend still associate with but I despise bc they’ve always been obsessed with me but in a bad way) and they had confronted him about being my friend. he pussied out and cut me off. they also mass reported my last instagram account😡🤬

I had to take some time back to seriously debate if these loses were worth it. I was swallowed with so much anxiety knowing that an uncomfortable amount of people in my zip code knew what ive been up to. its already complicated being into this and while at the same time not being in a plus size body. thats another conversation tho

That debate has turned into me accepting these events as the universe weeding out people/things that no longer serve me. This has shown peoples true colors, if I am not to be associated with because of my sexual freedom, body acceptance, and undoing of fat phobia then PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE.

Im recovering ❤️‍🩹 but my heart and hedonism can’t be helped. i love being a kinky lil gut slut. its helped me grow in so many ways from acceptance to living an esoteric dreamy life. i love all the hot girls and guys that i see on my timeline. they hype me up and vise versa. i love this little corner of the internet. my fellow freaks keep me going. i’ve been so on and off online but every time i come back to the sweetest words and support. thank you guys for your patience and consideration

my anxiety is to the roof as im typing. its crazy that these privacy problems havent been within the actual community. funny. if your still reading this I love you extra. ill be streaming on ig on my comeback day!

new ig acc @missfertileandferal💘

[alessiamalfoyzabini]

Happy Ending Masterlist

→ warning | All the stories in this series are yandere-themed, so they include 18+ and potentially triggering content (dubcon/noncon, violence, gore, explicit language, obsession and and many other dark things). I recommend these stories only to adult audiences familiar with this genre.

→ a/n | Hi, guys! Yes, Happy Ending is indeed becoming a series. I decided to create this official masterlist not only to help you know when the next stories will be released, but also to show you upcoming plots. Thank you for all the support you've given to both Happy Ending and Dark Moon. ❤️

→ available stories | Happy Ending || J.JK - Dark Moon || P.JM

→ side note | After Happy Ending all stories can be read in any order ❤️

Taglist is open: @katherine-kookie @btsuga-d @douknowbts @aiiselle90210 @fewercascade @mageprincess7 @m00njinnie @get-that-brain-working @whipwhoops @dragons-flare @takemeaway5402 @seokjins-luigi @pjmsneverland @jimincrystal @ajkwww @ungodlyjoon @hecateslittlewitchling @namjoonsbuspass @darkuni63 @xicanacorpse @jiminismine4ever @btssimplove @antisocial-mochi267 @reallygenerouskoala @velvet-stardust2002 @angelicsmilesworld @dabishou @ke1k029 @lennieharper @pantara

⤷ Introduction:

"Don't be shy, at the Dark Moon, every form of pleasure is allowed. Sweet promises overflowing with sadism are savored like candy in this sin-stained place. Go ahead, choose one of our gentlemen, or why not, maybe even all seven, and enjoy the show.

Just one piece of advice before you begin: don't cry."

➤ Story | work in progress...

➤ Role | Boss - Strategist - Public Face

➤ Nickname/Alias | Phantom

⤷ Summary | If sadness had a face, it would be his; you think this while your house is on fire.

➤ Story | work in progress...

➤ Role | Underboss - Handler - Enforcer

➤ Nickname/Alias | Seraph

⤷ Summary | He was the kind of person who could seduce with intelligence and culture; you would never have guessed that a monster was hiding inside him.

➤ Story | work in progress...

➤ Role | Sniper - Recruiter - Trainer

➤ Nickname/Alias | Nocturne

⤷ Summary | The shadow you used to see darting into your room at night when you were a child is back, now taller and more imposing… it's him.

➤ Story | work in progress...

➤ Role | Hitman - Torturer - Bruiser

➤ Nickname/Alias | Howl

⤷ Summary | A beast — that's what you thought when he raised his searing eyes to you.

➤ Story | Dark Moon

➤ Role | Hitman - Kidnapper - Torturer

➤ Nickname/Alias | Arctic

⤷ Summary | You had asked God for help, but the devil himself answered you; now accept the consequences.

➤ Story | work in progress...

➤ Role | Accountant - Dealer - Hitman

➤ Nickname/Alias | Eclipse

⤷ Summary | His smile had drawn you in, but it was the blood on his clothes that kept you by his side.

➤ Story | Happy Ending

➤ Role | Bruiser - Hitman - Torturer

➤ Nickname/Alias | Fyrius

⤷ Summary | It had started with sweet and innocent love, then everything was tinged with danger.

© | I do not allow the republication or editing of these stories by third parties; all rights belong to me. Anyone guilty of the crime of plagiarism will be reported and blocked. The same goes for those who take parts of my stories without my explicit consent.

[abnomi]

random assorted headcanons for Turbo because I like thinking and having fun !!!! 🎉

Read More to Find Out...or are you too scared?... i bet ur too scared ahaha youre too scared Lol! Hahaahaaa!!!

The steering wheel of his kart is covered in bite marks, similar to how one would bite their favorite pencil. he bites things to mark his territory because Nobody is gonna touch that unless they want all of his diseases (150+).

i just know he was fighting to restrain himself not to chew on any of the candy civilians

when it comes to music, he doesn't see the point of listening to it. he doesn't have enough patience to really take it in; to him, it's just a thing that exists and not much more than that ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ ∵⁠ )⁠_⁠/⁠¯

adding onto that point, this guy listens to metal clanking sounds and loud engine roaring for entertainment because he likes things that would overstimulate any normal person. turbo is incredibly sensory-seeking and will do anything for The Sensations

someone should take him to a heavy rock concert i think it would change him a little. keep that thang on a leash

related to being sensory-seeking, i think he would absolutely love running his hands over random textures. if anyone has run their hands along a wall while walking alongside it...He does that...If u know u know... he is SO stimmy its unbelievable. Unreal.

very pain-tolerant. he'll whine and complain about it for attention, but physical hurt really doesnt bother him much until it gets in the way of what he wants to do.

funnily enough, he is very picky when it comes to temperature. he can handle getting ran over but if its 1° too hot or cold he'll start nagging and nagging for it to go back to normal. turbo really needs his own enclosure i think it'd do him a lot of good

this is a more popular headcanon and its canon-leaning, but he's an artist :-] he usually sticks to graffiti art because its generally considered more "rebellious and cool" but he also sketches cars, design decals, and other stuff when hes alone!

i would love to see his process of character designing king candy because i dont think he really knew what he was doing

he was just like "ok what does a generic king look like. uhhhhh.... 1, old and jolly like santa claus.... 2.... uhh crown..... 3......... purple.... FUCK YEAH im so good at this!!!!🔥🔥🔥"

i just noticed how his design has like 0 actual candy motifs aside from his bow being a candy wrapper and his shoes having those little gumdrop end pieces. what was he THINKING

while King Candy has a lisp, i think it's a coverup for his actual voice because of how goofy and recognizable it is. Overall its the same as his regular voice, he just gets silly with it. i noticed that he still does retain some of his lisp when hes screaming his lungs out at Vanellope, however, so maybe he genuinely does have a lisp that makes itself known when furious :3

another thing i noticed is how he hisses his S's. very cool very cool the reptilian

@/tasticturbo made a post abt how he has tinnitus from the constant noise in his game and i couldnt agree more

AND THE PRESCRIPTION GLASSES. where did he get those...he needs to See

side note, the aforementioned account has made so many interesting analyses on turbo and theyre all so insightful. i recommend u check them out

i think he gets migraines from stress. constant buzzing or pain flood his head but hes like "IDGAF i need to DO something at ALL TIMES no matter what"

hes like a shark in that way. if hes not moving he'll die instantly. idk a lot about sharks or if thats how it works srry but im going off of what the Worms are saying to me and i dont have much to work with

i think a really big contributer as to why he lacks in the self care department is because he fails to notice that something in his body is wrong. hes far too distracted on something he thinks is more important than remembering to Eat Food or Drink Water or Wash Himself or

he's like "WHY DO I FEEL LIKE SHIT ALL OF THE TIME!!! I HATE MY LIFE" and he hasn't slept in 4 days

hes so me. Sorry.

i dont think turbo is necessarily suicidal, but the way he behaves shows a clear disregard for his own safety and wellbeing. he thinks that he knows what he needs but he really doesnt :-[ i think he has some kind of immortality complex, feeling untouchable and like nothing could get to him. as scared as he was when ralph was about to turn him into sloppy mush, he didnt take the threat very seriously. like it was some kind of joke

his kart regenerates every time his game starts up, so what if he smashed it into buildings for fun. He's the number one fan of car accidents. he is all about that shit

i think his living space would literally be a garage btw. its a place to sleep and a space for his car all in one!! he thinks its very convenient and awesome but i think he is coping. he has some old dingy stained sheetless mattress that he has never washed in his life and its covered in dirt and smoke particles. no wonder he has such heavy eye bags Dude Please

the turbo twins have a garage used in a similar way, and while its still pretty shitty, they still at least TRY to maintain it. they just fight a lot over who has to care of it. nobody taught them how to take turns ever

but this aint about them. maybe another day

i think that turbo would find comfort in garbage and keeping it around because its familiar to him. a big clean empty space would make him so mad and if anyone moves even an inch of scrap off to the side he will throw a fit. he generally doesnt pay attention to his surroundings but when its his personal space he is 1093 times more neurotic

i think the big empty castle he stole wouldve been a big transition for him. maybe it helped him clear his mind a little more to practice his tricky schemes...it helped him get more subtle

thats all i have for nowww ty for reading ^_^ if anyone else has any wacky ideas pleeeease tell me i would love to hear them!!

[lemotmo]

I'm not sure how you feel about getting these anymore but I thought this was hilarious so wanted to share for you at least to read even if you don't want to post. 😊

Q. I really was trying to hold onto the belief that the show wasn't going to make Eddie gay but it's really hard to see what other storyline is possible given those latest Ryan interviews. I would love to say gay or not the show would just keep Buck and Eddie as platonic best friends but there is zero chance of the show not pairing them together. They really did just use my man as filler until they were ready to tell the Eddie story. That's so gross.

A. Well, anon that's the point of a plot device. Their only reason for being is to move a larger story forward. By definition their filler characters. They have no individual significance or purpose. Their purpose is the story they're being used in. I've been telling you this for months now. Many of us have. He was never going to be anything more than a plot device. The show wasn't subtle about it either. It's been pretty much a connect the dots picture of plot device usage. Go back and watch his scenes in season 7 with this new found realization and I promise it will not be hard to see. And I agree, especially with the context the latest Ryan interviews gave, there's really not any other story it could be. He also confirmed they're not turning him into the new Bobby, and he's not siding with Gerard. So it was nice of him to debunk the latest round of ridiculous takes during the interview. If I could offer you a suggestion though I would encourage you to give the story a chance. If you pay attention to Eddie, and not your fandom people telling you to hate him, you will like him. After all there's a reason you all tried to hijack his entire backstory and history for Tommy. Let yourself enjoy the character those things actually belong too. Let yourself enjoy the actual story.

Oh Nonny! I feel joyous and happy whenever I get another of these posts in my ask box. While I'm asking people to not ask Ali any questions through my blog, I'm still perfectly happy posting her asks here. 😋

Especially since, for most of us, this is the only way to read Ali's posts and we do love her posts very much. So don't hesitate to drop something in my ask box. The only things I don't post about are the direct posts about the BT fandom, but Ali has told me she isn't replying to those posts anymore anyway, so that eliminates that problem.

As for the ask itself...

Yeah, so many of us have been saying this since day one. Tommy was only ever there to help Buck out of that closet. He was never really meant to be anything more than that. Sure, the change of the storyline because of the early renewal, gave Tommy some more time on the show, but that's where it ends.

So yeah, going back to rewatch the previous seasons, knowing what you know now? It will change the way you see Eddie and Eddie and Buck's friendship and maybe you'll find some joy in them. Just let it happen.

IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[weldnas]

-

[imaybe5tupid]

if you see absolutely anything that has kabru in it. And are unable to stop yourself from making it about L/abru (even when Laios doesn’t even appear or is irrelevant to the content in question!) and reduce kabrus entire deuteragonist-level character into wanting to fuck laios. I’m stealing something out of your house!!!!!

disclaimer: If you ship l/abru and gaf about kabru and don’t do this then this post isn’t about you 🤓

[sskk-manifesto]

:)

[dylanlila]

i cried SO MUCH and i am still crying, but i was in irl house's office today 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

[crossbackpoke-check]

about to be sooo nosy so. my apologies. but. morgan frost? girlfriend? do share (or don’t! again this is so nosy i’m sorry)

for legal purposes i can neither confirm nor deny anything about morgan and his girlfriend but afaik i think he’s single right now? at one point (within the past four years 😭) he did for sure have a girlfriend and that is the extent of my wag knowledge

[orcelito]

Took a few months but the situation at work is finally truly blowing up

I may or may not join in a workplace abuse claim against my old boss using old blog posts and discord messages of me venting as proof ☺️

It'd be me burning the bridge of having him as a reference later down the line, but honestly I think I can get by without him.

[merevide]

i be like. i’m fine about having virtually zero friends that wanna do things with me. i’m ok. and then i remember that i have no one to watch all my barbie dvds with 💔

[hussyknee]

Listen I love Ellen and Oscar but

June Claremont-Diaz 🫱🏽‍🫲🏻 Princess Bea

↓↓

✨ Parentification Trauma ✨

[quecksilvereyes]

oh my god do not click links in emails that tell you to verify your data or your bank account gets locked or click links in messages telling you your safety protocol is ending, like, tomorrow, you will get SCAMMED SO BAD AND YOU WILL LOSE A LOT OF FUCKING MONEY never ever let anyone pressure you into giving away login information especially to your online banking by creating a sense of urgency oh my GOD

some things to look out for

1. spelling mistakes. do you know how many rounds of marketing and sales experts these things go through? if theres a spelling mistake dont click it

2. not using your name. if an email adresses you with "dear customer" or, even worse, a generic "ladies and gentlemen", it is most likely not actually targeted to you

3. verifying or login links. even IF your bank was stupid enough to send these to customers, dont EVER click those. look at me. they can legally argue that youve given your data away and thus they dont have to pay you anything back DONT CLICK THAT FUCKING LINK

4. creating a sense of urgency. do this or we lock your account next week. do this or your ebanking stops working tomorrow. give us all your money in cash or your beloved granddaughter will get HANGED FOR MURDERING BABIES. no serious organisation would ever do something like that over email or sms. ever. hands off.

5. ALWAYS CHECK WHO SENT YOU THE EMAIL. the display name and the email adress can vary a LOT. anyone can check the display name. look at the email adress. does it look weird? call the fucking place it says its from. you will likely hear a very weary sigh.

6. if its in a phonecall, scammers love preventing you from hanging up or talking to other people to have a little bit of a think about whats happening. there should always be a possibility to go hey i wanna think about this ill call back the official number thanks.

7. do not, i repeat, do NOT a) call a phone number flashing on your screen promising to rid your computer of viruses after clicking a dodgy link and b) let them install shit on your computer like. uh. idk. teamviewer.

7.i. TEAM VIEWER LETS PEOPLE USE YOUR COMPUTER HOWEVER THEY WANT AS LONG AS THEYRE CONNECTED. IF YOU DONT KNOW FOR FUCKING SURE YOURE TALKING TO ACTUAL TECH SUPPORT DONT GIVE ANYONE ACCESS TO YOUR COMPUTER.

fun little addendum: did you know a link can just automatically download shit? like. a virus? an app you can't uninstall unless you reset your entire device? dont click links unless youre extremely sure you know where they lead. hover your mouse over it and check the url.

thanks.

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

Heylo my maggotsies... I'm sorry to do this but I have a thing that I really, really need to do (thank you Ash for helping me realise that) but I'm terrified to. so well. I'm going to make one of the posts (Neil reblogged me a couple of days ago so I feel pretty safe making one now since he only lurks by once in two weeks so this is as good a time as it gets to make a post and not expect many notes, yes I'm an overthinker and I'm actually scared of this getting notes).

Sigh. Here goes.

...I'm scared of even typing it.

Nope okay I can do this let's go.

If this post gets 1k notes, I'll look up jobs in design and film making that don't need a college degree.

2k notes, I'll sign up for an Alliance Francaise course so I can have another language on my CV, and I'll find a course that teaches me how to use design software.

5k, I'll look up distance learning alternatives, because just talking about physical college yesterday made me spend the whole morning and afternoon today in and out of nightmares screaming. Fuck.

10k, I'll tell my mum that I can't do the offline college. She's been talking to me about it, but I've been dodging because I'm not well-off and I really need to be earning and idk how to do that without college and I feel so guilty.

15k, I'll officially back out from the college (does that count as dropping out, if it hasn't begun? maybe half. i am a college and a half dropout, my 11th grade self would hate me and my 10th grade self would refuse to believe it).

I don't know what I'll do then. I don't know how to live as trans here in India, I don't know how to earn enough to be able to help my family, I don't know what I'm good at and I'm so fucking terrified. But. I spoke to @random-doctor-on-the-internet last night (I love you Ash you're such a fucking amazing human) and they made me realise that well maybe landing in a hospital with steroids to relieve an allergy attack because of exam stress isn't normal and so.

Well. Here I am. I know I can't do it, but I'm scared to risk everything, it's just not something people do here, dropping out. But also (TW s**cide statistics mentioned below the cut)... And so I've just. Got to do it, got to save myself and say no to college (cue say no to school, kids joke). Somehow be brave enough. And yeah.

To quote a financial express article: "In an alarming situation, a total of 7,62,648 suicides were reported in India between 2018 to 2022, Of this student suicides account for 7.6% at 59,239". Maybe if more people did say fuck you to the system here, that wouldn't be the case. That number could have been 59,240 (aside from everyone who wasn't counted and hushed up), that could have been me, and I don't want to put myself in that situation again. You know? Yeah.

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

Fandom can do a little gatekeeping. As a treat.

So I finally decided to archive-lock my fics on AO3 last night. I’ve been considering it since the AI scrape last year, but the tipping point was this whole lore.fm debacle, coupled with some thoughts I’ve been thinking regarding Fandom These Days in general and Fandom As A Community in particular. So I wanna explain why I waited so long, why I locked my stuff up now, and why I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a-okay with making it harder for people to see my stories.

Lurkers really are great, tho

I’m a chronic lurker, and have been since I started hanging out on the internet as a teen in the 00s. These days it’s just cuz I don’t feel a need to socialize very often, but back then it was because I was shy and knew I was socially awkward. Even if I made an account, I’d spend months lurking on message boards or forums or Livejournals, watching other people interact and getting a feel for that particular community’s culture and etiquette before I finally started interacting myself. And y’know, that approach saved me a lot of embarrassment. Over the course of my lurking on any site, there was always some other person who’d clearly joined up five minutes after learning the place existed, barged in without a care for their behavior, and committed so many social faux pas that all the other users were immediately annoyed with them at best. I learned a lot observing those incidents. Lurk More is Rule 33 of the internet for very good reason.

Lurking isn’t bad or weird or creepy. It’s perfectly normal. I love lurking. It’s hard for me to not lurk - socializing takes a lot of energy out of me, even via text. (Heck it took 12 hours for me to write this post, I wish I was kidding--) Occasionally I’ll manage longer bouts of interaction - a few weeks posting here, almost a year chatting in a discord there - but I’m always gonna end up going radio silent for months at some point. I used to feel bad about it, but I’ve long since made peace with the fact that it’s just the way my brain works. I’m a chronic lurker, and in the long term nothing is going to change that.

The thing with being a chronic lurker is that you have to accept that you are not actually seen as part of the community you are lurking in. That’s not to say that lurkers are unimportant - lurkers actually are important, and they make up a large proportion of any online community - but it’s simple cause and effect. You may think of it as “your community”, but if you’ve never said a word, how is the community supposed to know you exist? If I lurked on someone’s LJ, and then that person suddenly friendslocked their blog, I knew that I had two choices: Either accept that I would never be able to read their posts again, or reach out to them and ask if I could be added to their friends list with the full understanding that I was a rando they might not decide to trust. I usually went with the first option, because my invisibility as a lurker was more important to me than talking to strangers on the internet.

Lurking is like sitting on a park bench, quietly people-watching and eavesdropping on the conversations other people are having around you. You’re in the park, but you’re not actively participating in anything happening there. You can see and hear things that you become very interested in! But if you don’t introduce yourself and become part of the conversation, you won’t be able to keep listening to it when those people walk away. When fandom migrated away from Livejournal, people moved to new platforms alongside their friends, but lurkers were often left behind. No one knew they existed, so they weren’t told where everyone else was going. To be seen as part of a fandom community, you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. There can actually be benefits to lurking, both for the lurkers and the communities they lurk in. It’s just another way to be in a fandom. But if that is how you exist in fandom--and remember, I say this as someone who often does exist that way in fandom--you need to remember that you’re on the outside looking in, and the curtains can always close.

I’ve always been super sympathetic to lurkers, because I am one. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t socialize often. I know there’s plenty of reasons why someone might not make an account on the internet - maybe they’re nervous, maybe they’re young and their parents don’t allow them to, maybe they’re in a bad situation where someone is monitoring their activity, maybe they can only access the internet from public computer terminals. Heck, I’ve never even logged into AO3 on my phone--if I’m away from my computer I just read what’s publicly available. 

I know I have people lurking on my fics. I know my fics probably mean a lot to someone I don’t even know exists. I know this because there are plenty of fics I love whose writers don’t know I exist.

I love my commenters personally; I love my lurkers as an abstract concept. I know they’re there and I wish them well, and if they ever de-lurk I love them all the more.

So up until last year I never considered archive-locking my fic, because I get it. The AI scraping was upsetting, but I still hesitated because I was thinking of lurkers and guests and remembering what it felt like to be 15 and wondering if it’d be worth letting a stranger on the internet know I existed and asking to be added to their friends list just so I could reread a funny post they made once.

But the internet has changed a lot since the 00s, and fandom has changed with it. I’ve read some things and been doing some thinking about fandom-as-community over the last few years, and reading through the lore.fm drama made me decide that it’s time for me to set some boundaries.

I still love my lurkers, and I feel bad about leaving any guest commenters behind, especially if they’re in a situation where they can’t make an account for some reason. But from here on out, even my lurkers are going to have to do the bare minimum to read my fics--make an AO3 account.

Should we gatekeep fandom?

I’ve seen a few people ask this question, usually rhetorically, sometimes as a joke, always with a bit of seriousness. And I think…yeah, maybe we should. Except wait, no, not like that--

A decade ago, when people talked about fandom gatekeeping and why it was bad to do, it intersected with a lot of other things, mainly feminism and classism. The prevalent image of fandom gatekeeping was, like, a man learning that a woman likes Star Wars and haughtily demanding, “Oh, yeah? Well if you’re REALLY a fan, name ten EU novels” to belittle and dismiss her, expecting that a “real fan” would have the money and time to be familiar with the EU, and ignoring the fact that male movie-only fans were still considered fans. The thing being gatekept was the very definition of “being a fan” and people’s right to describe themselves as one.

That’s not what I mean when I say maybe fandom should gatekeep more. Anyone can call themselves a fan if they like something, that’s fine. But when it comes to the ability to enjoy the fanworks produced by the fandom community…that might be something worth gatekeeping.

See, back in the 00s, it was perfectly common for people to just…not go on the internet. Surfing the web was a thing, but it was just, like, a fun pastime. Not everyone did it. It wasn’t until the rise of social media that going online became a thing everyone and their grandmother did every day. Back then, going on the internet was just…a hobby.

So one of the first gates online fandom ever had was the simple fact that the entire world wasn’t here yet.

The entire world is here now. That gate has been demolished.

And it’s a lot easier to find us now. Even scattered across platforms, fandom is so centralized these days. It isn’t a network of dedicated webshrines and forums that you can only find via webrings anymore, it’s right there on all the big social media sites. AO3 didn’t set out to be the main fanfic website, but that’s definitely what it’s become. It’s easy for people to find us--and that includes people who don’t care about the community, and just want “content.”

Transformative fandom doesn’t like it when people see our fanworks as “content”. “Content” is a pretty broad term, but when fandom uses it we’re usually referring to creative works that are churned out by content creators to be consumed by an audience as quickly as possible as often as possible so that the content creator can generate revenue. This not-so-new normal has caused a massive shift in how people who are new to fandom view fanworks--instead of seeing fic or art as something a fellow fan made and shared with you, they see fanworks as products to be consumed.

Transformative fandom has, in general, always been a gift economy. We put time and effort into creating fanworks that we share with our fellow fans for free. We do this so we don’t get sued, but fandom as a whole actually gets a lot out of the gift economy. Offer your community a story, and in return you can get comments, build friendships, or inspire other people to write things that you might want to read. Readers are given the gift of free stories to read and enjoy, and while lurking is fine, they have the choice to engage with the writer and other readers by leaving comments or making reclists to help build the community.

And look, don’t get me wrong. People have never engaged with fanfic as much as fan writers wish they would. There has always been “no one comments anymore” wank. There have always been people who only comment to say “MORE!” or otherwise demand or guilt trip writers into posting the next chapter. But fandom has always agreed that those commenters are rude and annoying, and as those commenters navigate fandom they have the chance to learn proper community etiquette.

However, now it seems that a lot of the people who are consuming fanworks aren’t actually in the community. 

I won’t say “they aren’t real fans” because that’s silly; there’s lots of ways to be a fan. But there seem to be a lot of fans now who have no interest in fandom as a community, or in adhering to community etiquette, or in respecting the gift economy. They consume our fics, but they don’t appreciate fan labor. They want our “content”, but they don’t respect our control over our creations.

And even worse--they see us as a resource. We share our work for free, as a gift, but all they see is an open-source content farm waiting to be tapped into. We shared it for free, so clearly they can do whatever they want with it. Why should we care if they feed our work into AI training datasets, or copy/paste our unfinished stories into ChatGPT to get an ending, or charge people for an unnecessary third-party AO3 app, or sell fanbindings on etsy for a profit without the author’s permission, or turn our stories into poor imitations of podfics to be posted on other platforms without giving us credit or asking our consent, while also using it to lure in people they can datascrape for their Forbes 30 Under 30 company? 

And sure, people have been doing shady things with other people’s fanworks since forever. Art theft and reposting has always been a big problem. Fanfic is harder to flat-out repost, but I’ve heard of unauthorized fic translations getting posted without crediting the original author. Once in…I think the 2010s? I read a post by a woman who had gone to some sort of local bookselling event, only to find that the man selling “his” novel had actually self-published her fanfic. (Wish I could find that one again, I don’t even remember where I read it.)

But aside from that third example, the thing is…as awful as fanart/writing theft is, back in the day, the main thing a thief would gain from it was clout. Clout that should rightfully go to the creators who gifted their work in the first place, yeah, but still. Just clout. People will do a lot of hurtful things for clout, but fandom clout means nothing outside of fandom. Fandom clout is not enough to incentivize the sort of wide-scale pillaging we’re seeing from community outsiders today.

Money, on the other hand… Well, fandom’s just a giant, untapped content farm, isn’t it? Think of how much revenue all that content could generate.

Lurkers are a normal and even beneficial part of any online community. Maybe one day they’ll de-lurk and easily slide into place beside their fellow fans because they already know the etiquette. Maybe they’re active in another community, and they can spread information from the community they lurk in to the community they’re active in. At the very least, they silently observe, and even if they’re not active community members, they understand the community.

Fans who see fanworks as “content” don’t belong in the same category as lurkers. They’re tourists. 

While reading through the initial Reddit thread on the lore.fm situation, I found this comment:

[ID: Reddit User Cabbitowo says: ... So in anime fandoms we have a word called tourist and essentially it means a fan of a few anime and doesn't care about anime tropes and actively criticizes them. This is kind of how fandoms on tiktok feel. They're touring fanfics and fanart and actively criticizes tropes that have been in the fandom since the 60s. They want to be in a fandom but they don't want to engage in fandom 

OP totallymandy responds: Just entered back into Reddit after a long day to see this most recent reply. And as a fellow anime fan this making me laugh so much since it’s true! But it sorta hurts too when the reality sets in. Modern fandom is so entitled and bratty and you’d think it’s the minors only but that’s not even true, my age-mates and older seem to be like that. They want to eat their cake and complain all whilst bringing nothing to the potluck… :/ END ID]

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“Tourist” is an apt name for this sort of fan. They don’t want to be part of our community, and they don’t have to be in order to come into our spaces and consume our work. Even if they don’t steal our work themselves, they feel so entitled to it that they’re fine with ignoring our wishes and letting other people take it to make AI “podfics” for them to listen to (there are a lot of comments on lore.fm’s shutdown announcement video from people telling them to just ignore the writers and do it anyway). They’ll use AI to generate an ending to an unfinished fic because they don’t care about seeing “the ending this writer would have given to the story they were telling”, they just want “an ending”. For these tourist fans, the ends justify the means, and their end goal is content for them to consume, with no care for the community that created it for them in the first place.

I don’t think this is confined to a specific age group. This isn’t “13-year-olds on Wattpad” or “Zoomers on TikTok” or whatever pointless generation war we’re in now. This is coming from people who are new to fandom, whose main experience with creative works on the internet is this new content culture and who don’t understand fandom as a community. That description can be true of someone from any age group.

It’s so easy to find fandom these days. It is, in fact, too easy. Newcomers face no hurdles or challenges that would encourage them to lurk and observe a bit before engaging, and it’s easy for people who would otherwise move on and leave us alone to start making trouble. From tourist fans to content entrepreneurs to random people who just want to gawk, it’s so easy for people who don’t care about the fandom community to reap all of its fruits. 

So when I say maybe fandom should start gatekeeping a bit, I’m referring to the fact that we barely even have a gate anymore. Everyone is on the internet now; the entire world can find us, and they don’t need to bother learning community etiquette when they do. Before, we were protected by the fact that fandom was considered weird and most people didn’t look at it twice. Now, fandom is pretty mainstream. People who never would’ve bothered with it before are now comfortable strolling in like they own the place. They have no regard for the fandom community, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to. They want to treat it just like the rest of the content they consume online.

And then they’re surprised when those of us who understand fandom culture get upset. Fanworks have existed far longer than the algorithmic internet’s content. Fanworks existed long before the internet. We’ve lived like this for ages and we like it.

So if someone can’t be bothered to respect fandom as a community, I don’t see why I should give them easy access to my fics.

Think of it like a garden gate

When I interact with commenters on my fic, I have this sense of hospitality.

The comment section is my front porch. The fic is my garden. I created my garden because I really wanted to, and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to share it with other people. 

Lots of people enjoy looking at my garden. Many walk through without saying anything. Some stop to leave kudos. Some recommend my garden to their friends. And some people take the time to stop by my front porch and let me know what a beautiful garden it is and how much they’ve enjoyed it. 

Any fic writer can tell you that getting comments is an incredible feeling. I always try to answer all my comments. I don’t always manage it, but my fics’ comment sections are the one place that I manage to consistently socialize in fandom. When I respond to a comment, it feels like I’m pouring out a glass of lemonade to share with this lovely commenter on my front porch, a thank you for their thank you. We take a moment to admire my garden together, and then I see them out. The next time they drop by, I recognize them and am happy to pour another glass of lemonade.

My garden has always been open and easy to access. No fences, no walls. You just have to know where to find it. Fandom in general was once protected by its own obscurity, an out-of-the-way town that showed up on maps but was usually ignored.

But now there’s a highway that makes it easy to get to, and we have all these out-of-towner tourists coming in to gawk and steal our lawn ornaments and wonder if they can use the place to make themselves some money.

I don’t care to have those types trampling over my garden and eating all my vegetables and digging up my flowers to repot and sell, so I’ve put up a wall. It has a gate that visitors can get through if they just take the time to open it.

Admittedly, it’s a small obstacle. But when I share my fics, I share them as a gift with my fellow fans, the ones who understand that fandom is a community, even if they’re lurkers. As for tourist fans and entrepreneurs who see fic as content, who have no qualms ignoring the writer’s wishes, who refuse to respect or understand the fandom community…well, they’re not the people I mean to share my fic with, so I have no issues locking them out. If they want access to my stories, they’ll have to do the bare minimum to become a community member and join the AO3 invite queue.

And y’know, I’ve said a lot about fandom and community here, and I just want to say, I hope it’s not intimidating. When I was younger, talk about The Fandom Community made me feel insecure, and I didn’t think I’d ever manage to be active enough in fandom spaces to be counted as A Member Of The Community. But you don’t have to be a social butterfly to participate in fandom. I’ll always and forever be a chronic lurker, I reblog more than I post, I rarely manage to comment on fic, and I go radio silent for months at a time--but I write and post fanfiction. That’s my contribution.

Do you write, draw, vid, gif, or otherwise create? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you leave comments? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you curate reclists? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you maintain a fandom blog or fuckyeah blog? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you provide a space for other fans to convene in? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you regularly send asks (off anon so people know who you are)? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you have fandom friends who you interact with? Congrats, you're a community member.

There’s lots of ways to be a fan. Just make sure to respect and appreciate your fellow fans and the work they put in for you to enjoy and the gift economy fandom culture that keeps this community going.

[littlestpersimmon]

Am caught in a death spiral my lieges. I don't feel entitled to anyone's time, effort or resources but I feel so beat down. I am disabled, I am working so much I genuinely developed a hunched back. I am alone responsible for my autistic sister, her parentified sibling, and my two parents who are disabled with extremely limited movement. I have three jobs. I can't ask for help on twitter because people I work for follow me there. My work requires me to draw every day, without a day off, ever. I have a "morality clause" which means if I or the author I work with are deemed to be acting in any way the company thinks inappropriate, we are immediately fired and would have to return every single cent we have made. I feel at my wits end. My employers are american- but I am not. I live in the global south- government assistance in the Philippines is *nonexistent*

Last week I asked for help to pay for electricity. The other week I asked for help with my sister who had to be rushed to the ER.

I doxxed myself and posted medical info to this blog, so many strangers know my address, my legal name, everything just for me to be able to seek mutual aid- Wallah I do not want to be this person, but if anyone could please, pick up a print from my inprnt, or subscribe to my patreon, I already have 300+ drawings up there and I upload thrice to four times a month, or if you could send direct tips it would make a world's difference. I will try to open commissions next week but as the world is being plunged into wherever it is we are headed, it's getting harder and harder to get clients.

Currently myself dealing with housing insecurity- we only have a year or two to fix our traditional filipino house as it is falling apart due to the philippine storms and termites- *please* help me and my disabled family of three. I feel I am rambling now bc there's so much on my mind, on my plate, I've asked friends and my partner for help, my sister and my cousins and my friends are all I have. My mom's side of the family cannot help as they are all extremely poor themselves, and my paternal side of the family have emotionally abused me and have members that committed routine csa on me. I do not take any of the help I receive here for granted, and I'm sorry. Reblogs are off as I am asking for help from followers as I feel very ashamed / embarrassed/ humiliated to still be stuck in this dark place . Sorry and thank you again

Inprnt is having a sale rn, everything is like at 40% off!

And my tipping jars:

Sorry and thank you again. If you can't donate or purchase its OK, just please please please include me in your prayers, make mi shebeirach for my health so I csn continue to work, or any prayers at all for me. Thank you