#I haven't been on any transphobic websites right???

[stressedbeetle]

very disturbed by the fact that when I googled "how many people have dsd?" the first site that popped up was a transphobic one. I didn't know it was transphobic at first but when I read more about it I realized it sounded just incredibly transphobic. So this is a warning guys

Stats for gender is run by "genspect" a transphobic and gender critcal organization that OFferS sUPorT tO pAReNts Of tRaNS ChILdReN

[asyncmeow]

how shinigami eyes works

first - the short version:

shinigami eyes is a browser extension that uses a fancy list called a bloom filter to identify people who can be considered transphobic or trans-supportive. a bloom filter is a kind of list that lets you check if someone is in the list, without being able to actually know the contents of the list. i go below into how it works, but the short version is Math™️, with a side effect of having false positives - thinking an item is in the list when it really isn't. whenever a social media username is detected (the exact method how depends on the website), it checks the username against that list, and applies some CSS to change the color of the text depending on what list the username is in.

the long version

shinigami eyes can be split into a few parts:

bloom filters

submissions

name highlighting

bloom filters

i'll start with the most complex part - bloom filters. the most common misconception about Shinigami Eyes is this: the filters are not updated in real-time. they are shipped with the extension which had last been updated since november 2022, according to the FF extension site. in other words: nothing marked since then can be seen by anyone other than who marked it. you can see that in the code here, where it loads the bloom filters from a data/[something].dat file included in the extension (but not in the github repo).

the following information about bloom filters is my summarized version of this page.

bloom filters are, in a slightly longer explanation than before, a way to know if an item is *not* in a list with 100% certainty, but there's a false positive rate that grows as more names are added to the list. a bloom filter of a single size is able to handle any number of items in the list, though. there's also the issue that you can't *delete* stuff from a bloom filter - you would need to regenerate it from scratch to do that.

now that the medum-sized explanation of what they are is done, let's go into how they work. a bloom filter is a set of n bits, initially all set to zero. to add items into the filter, you need a few hash functions, in this example i'll use h1, h2, and h3, with n=10. if I wanted to add the text asyncmeow to the list, i would do this: h1("asyncmeow") % n // n = 10, h1(...) % 10 = 9 h2("asyncmeow") % n // n = 10, h2(...) % 10 = 5 h3("asyncmeow") % n // n = 10, h3(...) % 10 = 8

after that, i have a list that looks like this (keep in mind that the list is zero-indexed):

[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1]

you can then check if something is in the filter by running the same hashing functions and checking if the result bits are set in the filter. you can access the bloom filters used for shinigami eyes by going to about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox in Firefox and clicking "Inspect" on Shinigami Eyes, then running bloomFilters in the console. as this could possibly change in an update, i don't want to go into how they are set up, and i haven't dug enough into how their bloom filter code works well enough to say anyways.

submissions

submissions on shinigami eyes are encrypted (as in - encryption separate from HTTPS), then posted to https://shini-api.xyz/submit-vote. you can see the code for this here. when you right click someone to mark them, their name is stored in the local data of your browser in an overrides property.

name highlighting

name highlighting is done by checking them against the bloom filters and your local overrides. if a user is present in either bloom filter, or present in your local overrides, they are marked accordingly. not much to it from there.

that's really it, i think? feel free to ask if you have any questions! nya :3

[zeroducks-2]

i understand that you didn’t have any harmful intentions when it came to your reblog about the mature filter, but that post was specifically about the mistreatment of trans women and how they are the ones most heavily impacted by the staff, whether they post actual mature stuff or not. you probably didn’t mean to, but your addition seemed to minimise the harm that transfemmes are put through and it most likely would have been better if you had made your own post instead of derailing another.

If you're the same anon who sent hate before, I'd appreciate you started out with an apology and I am not really inclined to talk to you, but since I care about the subject I will give it a proper response.

I respectfully disagree about how my reblog minimizes the harm that trans women are put through. Trans women are included in the queer community, and tumblr censors (or anyway attempts to) posts about the queer community in general - point which I think is worth considering while we talk about how posts about trans women get censored. We can have both the conversations at the same time.

It's like with the current politics in the US, UK and in many other countries: the main focus is on trans folks at the present moment, but truly what these people hate (these people: bigots, fascists, neo-nazis, right-wingers in general) is queer folks. Scratch the surface and everything comes out: the groups pushing for the erasure and criminalization of transness are against abortion, divorce, gay marriage, drag, otherness of any kind, and this is an important conversation to be had not because it's about taking the focus away from trans folks, but because it's about reminding everyone that we either stand together or we fall.

Tumblr's bigot tendencies reek of this. Posts that mention trans women get labelled mature, posts that show two men kissing get labelled mature, pictures of men in tasteful lingerie get labelled mature, and posts mentioning mlm or wlw love get labelled mature. These are all the same thing: queerphobia, so while we have a conversation about how tumblr censors posts about trans women, it's worth mentioning (mentioning, not overriding the original topic) that tumblr also censors other types of queer content, which demonstrates further how it isn't a bug (as staff tried to claim), it isn't any kind of fluke and it instead it's something embedded in the website's policies and in how they handle certain kinds of content in general.

That being said, I also don't think the post got derailed in any meaningful way. My followers (which aren't by any means a significant number by the way) know my stance in regard to trans issues and know that I myself am part of the trans community, and they're aware of the fact that I care personally about the topic. I have gotten a few likes on that post, maybe one or two reblogs, and the focus kept being on trans women's posts as it was meant to be, as in fact my addition meant to only be a reminder that yes, staff does this, they do target queer content, this is not a coincidence or a one time thing.

I might understand the contempt if I had said something like "actually it's not trans women, they're fiiine - the point is everyone else". But I haven't. What I'm saying is that yes they indeed do this to trans femmes, they do this all the time with queer content, we are not misplaced in our feelings of outrage. There is LITERAL PROOF that they do this, so we should recognize and be aware that when we engage with this site we also engage with a bigoted, transphobic & queerphobic staff.

There was no need to send me hate over it, either.

This is the post with my reblog, for reference.

[macrotiis]

You should check out photomatt's pinned post if you haven't already too.

I just rly want to say that what he lists as reasons he's not a transphobe are just the bare fucking minimum that someone like him should be doing for LGBTQ+ people.

Like no dude, you do not get a pass for having your company donate to LGBT charities or having genderless toilets or for supporting basic human rights.

That's all just baseline & expected. You do not get brownie points for that, it's barely even alliship because it is just the industry standard level of support companies are supposed to have for their LGBTQ+ workers.

Also none of that says that he is engaging meaningfully with LGBTQ+ people. In fact, I assume that he thinks that this is all he needs to do. Like the fact that he's continuing to use 'transphobia' here when it's very specifically 'transmisogyny' people are mad at him for shows that he isn't meaningfully engaging with what's going on & doesn't meaningfully engage with trans women in particular if he has any meaningful connection to any LGBTQ+ people & our struggles at all.

But blah. I can't shead a tear for a man who's a millionaire on a multiple month long vacation crying about the consequences of his actions, when his actions were to single out a disabled trans woman on a website he owns. A woman who had been facing a harassment campaign for months (let's be honest tho, she's been harassed ever since she came out as a trans woman coz that's just the reality of it), a woman who had her fully clothed selfies of her transition timeline marked as mature content, marking her very existence as unsafe for children or for the workplace, a woman who has been constantly provoked & bullied, so much so that she understandably reacted with frustration because she wasn't being heard when she was using all the correct tools provided to her by tumblr to make the harassment stop.

Like no dude, you don't get to make me or anyone feel bad for you when you contributed to the culture of abuse.

And yes, Matt singling out Rita is absolutely a transphobic action, whether he meant it as one or not, because he is opening her up to even more abuse, as well as every other trans woman on this site. He unwittingly just signalled to all actually outwardly transphobic & transmisogynist people on this website that if they can provoke trans people into reacting out of fear or anger & then get us banned for those reactions, that is okay by him.

I'm not saying he can't have his opinion on the matter, but he should've kept that opinion to himself. He should not have said anything about predestrogen being banned.

This is wildly unprofessional & it's very disgusting to me that he's continuing to spin this as him being the victim when again, he is a millionaire CEO of a tech company on a multiple months long vacation.

[britts-galaxy-brain]

even if the fanfic you say was written by lily was, that doesn't make her a predator. i wrote some horrible pairings between adults and minors when i was big into my artemis fowl phase and i've drawn characters in ways i shouldn't have before. lily having made mistakes in the past doesn't make her a bad person. ee all fuck up sometimes. it's not the important thing. the important thing is that she tries to keep attention off that kind of thing and limits sexual stuff to stuff we can all click off of. if i didn't want to see her stream or watch her videos or whatever, i could and can just hit the back button. yeah, i guess flashing is kinda cringe, but cishet dudes do it all the time and no one calls them predators. it's just a thing some people do. It's not great but it's not anywhere near as graphic as the stuff guys at my school do, joking about raping girls and who they wouldn't fuck even if they were too drunk to see straight etc.

it's maybe five seconds of boobs. that's NOTHING. and it's transphobic that people slam her for this but if guys at my school joke about wanting to facefuck me it's "boys will be boys lol". why should a trans woman get so much more anger for a sexual joke so much more minor? what has she done wrong that the cishet guys who i CANNOT escape with a simple click haven't? i've never seen her flash but if i did it's one click away from being out of my life. the old dude who stares at my boobs in the library is way worse than lily. if she wasn't trans no one would give a damn.

and for your information, she has messaged me after i sent her fanart - and we talked briefly about fanart and how to navigate the tags on a fanart website i use that she's unfamiliar with. that's it. there was nothing sexual, nothing inappropriate, no red flags. just a pretty normal conversation and then she moved on. she's not evil or predatory or whatever. she's just some woman on the internet. all she's guilty of is maybe having written some bad fics and showing a few inches of skin. i've been raped. i know what abuse is. "hey how do you exclude tags on this site anyway? i keep looking for ___ character and only getting art of them with ___" is not abuse.

...Oh my. Yall I'm gonna need some help here.

There are screenshots of Lily's old Tumblr where the first three were linked, Lily talked about it openly, she even used to have a NFSW blog dedicated to it despite the fact that its most notable plot point involved grooming and molesting children and a young teenager. There are also video clips of Lily herself admitting to writing it. She was writing the sequels long into her 20s, which is well beyond the age an adult should be writing about those ages.

The people at your school are just as disgusting and the fact that they aren't getting reprimanded immediately is a sad failure of the adults around you. The adults in your life should be taking that just as seriously as we're taking Lily's behavior. It is just as predatory and sick, and I'm truly sorry the adults in your life are failing at this. I grew up in a similar situation myself, and it was a huge reason I ended up getting involved with adults I shouldn't have been involved with. Much like you, it had become normalized in my head, and I justified the adults who were taking advantage of me. It didn't make it right. They were predators who knew what they were doing, and wanted to manipulate and use me.

Lily uses a lot of maliciously manipulative tactics to get her audience, notably people your age, to sympathize with her. It's a form of emotional manipulation. None of us are transohobic in any capacity, and at least three of the people who are or have called her out for this are trans themselves. Accusing us of transphobia is one of the many lies she tells her audience so she can pretend to be a victim, and manipulate her audience into immediately disregarding us. If she can get her audience to believe we're terrible bigots by playing into their emotions, they're less likely to want to look at the hard evidence and corroborating experiences many of us have had with her.

Anon, I can promise you Lily has been lying to you to keep you around for her own selfish purposes. None of us are right-leaning in any capacity. Many of us are trans or otherwise not cisgender. Many of us aren't straight. Many Natives have spoken out against her. Many black people have spoken out against her. Kinksters have spoken out against her. Just about every group she performatively fights for has called her out for horrendous misinformation, racial fetishization, promoting extreme violence, pathological lying, smear campaigning, sockpuppeting (that she still does to this day by sending herself fake anon asks on a regular basis), zoophilia, and pedophilia. The last two have more than enough hard evidence out of her own keyboard to back up.

I'm truly sorry for what you're going through IRL. What those boys around you are saying is still predatory, still disgusting, and should absolutely be addressed by the adults around you. The fact rhat they aren't doesn't mean what those boys are doing is normal or okay. And it certainly doesn't mean what Lily is doing is normal or okay. People like Lily prey on people in your situation, who unfortunately haven't been shown that this behavior is abusive and horrible. This is what she relies on, and why she refuses to set up a revenue stream on a more adult-oriented website. There are many popular sites where she could be openly sexual with other adults and get paid well for it, but she refuses to go to those sites. It's because she gets off on the audience she has now, which consists of a lot of minors in situations like yours. Her and I are the same age, and I can tell you what she is doing is not something someone our age should EVER be doing. Period. It is predatory, she knows full well it is predatory, yet she's doing it anyway and lying to people so she doesn't get caught.

Please be safe, anon. I know it gets heavy as all hell dealing with what you're dealing with. There are people out here that genuinely do want you safe and I hope you get out of your current environment soon.

[aeternamente]

giving money to tumblr will just show them that the changes they are making are good. unless you like the twitter layout they're trying and you like censoring trans women then pop off ig. also op is pro-life and transphobic

Ok I'll answer this. I mean, I figure you're probably a roving askbox spammer sending this to any blog you find mentioning crabs, and you probably won't even see my response, but my response isn't really for you.

So yesterday I went into the crab day tag just to confirm that today was the right day, and I saw all of the criticisms you bring up, and how people were talking on both sides of the crab day issue, and ultimately I came out of it still pro-crab day.

The meat of the issue, I think, is the effect that our money has on tumblr making the changes we want, and I've been convinced that the whole "don't give them money because they haven't yet done what we want" argument is backwards. Because tumblr is going to make their site more palatable to the people their money IS coming from, not the people their money COULD BE coming from if they're perfect unproblematic angels (which they will never be for everyone). If the money isn't coming from us, it's coming from advertisers, who will push for more censorship and don't give a shit about accessibility, so the situation we're looking at is not one where the userbase actively withholding money is going to make a positive impact.

As for the layout, I've been on tumblr for a decade. Do you know how many layouts have come and gone in that time? There's always a vocal group of people who hate the new one, but I just figure out how to get to all the things I want to get to and move on with my life. Actually I like this one a bit better than the last one, but mostly I don't care.

And I did see people talking about the person who originally came up with the idea for crab day, and I looked at their blog and it is indeed a dumpster fire, but the idea went beyond that person very quickly, and ultimately the way I figure, a good idea is a good idea, it doesn't really matter who came up with it.

So yeah, I spent 3 bucks and gave someone crabs, and I blazed a post a few months ago, and I bought a domain for one of my side blogs. I think it's a good thing for us as users to establish ourselves as a viable way to fund our own platform, and that this will lead to us having more of a say in how this website operates, not less. I could be wrong, but that's the conclusion I've come to.

[jimmythejiver]

Warning to anyone following me

Starting June 1st, I have the blog queue set up that goes all the way to November about U.S. Politics and Election 2024 and the importance of voting. I've been collecting these posts for some time for this year and declining to post many of them sooner for many reasons.

Our government has been doing fucked up shit overseas. I know to ask anyone on this website who don't live here or have relatives abroad to read the callousness on which we must pick which evil leader gets to pass the bomb and missile fundings is insensitive and anti-human. I know that my comfortability in living in this still ableist, transphobic, anti body autonomy system doesn't ultimately matter when people outside of the United States are being slaughtered and people within our borders have been stripped of their rights longer than I've been alive. I know that almost 300 years we haven't solved racism, colonialism, Imperialism or any of the ills this country's been found on and that a bloody revolution is supposed to solve this until opportunists and traitors squash that too.

My point and rambling aside is that as my good friend reminded me when I was going off the deep end in room scrolling and doom posting, "we're all suffering." I'd add still some suffer more than others abd that must be acknowledged if we're to dwell on these topics, but it is a weaponized a silencing tactic too.

In a better world I'd solve more if these problems with direct action and keep posting pleasant shit and leave the politics off this site. I'd prefer it. What I'm seeing instead is the deja vu of 2016 and viral misinformation and false facts that are used to keep us in a despair fugue of "fuck it it, nothing matters." I lived through how that turned out.

So once again I'm no one's daddy and I can't tell you what to do and you can stay home or spite vote for the candidate I hate more or go third party. I just hope you (the leftist american voter who is registered and able to vote) is informed of your decision. The rest of you where this does not apply, have a guilt free day.

For anyone who does not want to see this content on your dash, I implore you to blacklist tags like: Politics, Election, Election 2024, Voting.

Otherwise I'll keep trying to reblog art, writers things, animals and other things I find neat and interesting because we all need joy and a breather in these times.

If I ever move into a place where I can get my scanner out and have space for creative outlets, I hope I can get to posting some my art and pick up full time fanfiction writing again.

[fqirycollective]

Debunking Common Fakeclaimer Claims pt. 2

cw// mentions eds

Based on our previous "Debunking Common Fakeclaimer Claims" post and inspired by many people who have decided to fakeclaim us recently, here is our newest addition to this "series." (It's not really a series? Maybe it is? I don't know.)

"DID is super rare."

It is rare, I agree. However, it's not quite as rare as people think. The statistic of 0.01% isn't right, and I've only seen it on a website or two. That is compared to multiple other /trustworthy/ websites that say it's 1% to 1.5% diagnosed. This does not include systems who haven't noticed something's wrong (obviously doesn't include the system community because we all noticed), systems who are misdiagnosed with different disorders, systems who are seeking diagnosis, systems who can't find a /good/ professional, and medically recognized systems. did-research.org states that in older studies, it's been 0.01% to 0.05%. However in recent ones, it's been anywhere of a 1% to 1.5% prevalence. It also says that the combined prevalence of all system types in 5.2%. This is one of the most trustworthy websites in DID research, so I'll believe it over some rando on the internet with no sources to back their claims. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568768/,

https://did-research.org/did/basics/prevalence, https://www.sane.org/information-stories/facts-and-guides/dissociative-identity-disorder,

"[insert source] introjects?"

TV shows, movies, games, books, etc. get more common with time. Certain ones will stay around. When fakeclaimers say this, they mean how the source is popular. But if it's popular among singlets, why would it also not be popular among systems? Because we're aliens or something? (/s) Logically speaking, as things get more common, more people will learn of it and watch/read/play it. This includes systems. So as more systems watch/read/play the source, introjects from the source will become more common. Having an introject from a popular source doesn't mean people are faking. Instead, it likely means they discovered the source through the system community (or in general, really) and consumed it. After which, it's possible to split from it, even if not currently consuming it while splitting since your brain has been exposed to the source. (You can't split because you watched something, but you can split if something stressful or traumatic happens later on/during. You don't have to currently be consuming the source to split from it, however it is more likely if that happens.)

"This [about a source] came out [any amount of time that isn't more than a year] ago. Introjects already?"

Seriously, I've seen this happen for sources that came out months ago. Why is it so hard to believe that a system consumed a popular source and something since then was stressful/traumatic enough to cause a split? Why is it so hard to believe that systems online aren't currently being traumatized? Many systems, ourself included, use the internet as an escape. Without the internet, without new shows and books, our life would literally be empty. We would have nothing to turn to during traumatic times. I can't even imagine our life like that, it would be so much more difficult. My point is, it's not so hard to believe that systems use the internet and new sources to escape from stressful and traumatic things happening to them. Splitting from new sources is no reason to fakeclaim.

"They use xenogenders/neopronouns."

First of all, singlets use them too. Secondly, that's both ableist and transphobic. Many neurodivergents use xenogenders and neopronouns because it's the best way to describe their gender, or they just feel most comfortable with those pronouns. Some systems, us included, have alters who are nonhuman and experience gender differently due to so. Zora, a child of Aphrodite from source, is prettygender. Because her mother is Aphrodite, and we experience a hard time describing gender already because of neurodivergence, not only is it logical to our brain but it also makes her happy when her gender is pretty. (Also, you don't need to be neurodivergent to use xenogenders and neopronouns unless ir was coined in mind or specifically for neurodivergents. I just mentioned neurodivergents in this part because it, along with the nonhuman part, is why we have a hard time with gender.) Point is, systems may use xenogenders and neopronouns for a variety of reasons and fakeclaiming solely based off that is transphobic and ableist.

"So many disorders.."

Did you know that if you have one disorder, it's very likely you'll have others? Sometimes, it's even required. (For example, you must have PTSD to be a system.) Then you'll have those comorbities as well. Take this as an example. You have ADHD and were abused to the point of PTSD/C-PTSD. People with ADHD naturally dissociate to some level, even without stress. Because of the dissociation trauma also brings, it forms a system. Trauma also causes anxiety disorders and depression. Not to mention, ADHD is also common with many other neurodivergencies like autism and dyslexia. That's 6 right there. Then you add in the likelihood of other disorders caused by trauma like eating disorders and personality disorders. Hypothetically speaking, if you developed one from each group, you would have 8 disorders, from trauma and being born neurodivergent. (This is 100% hypothetical, I'm just trying to make a point.) Then you would have comorbities with all those disorders as well. Point is, it's not impossible for a system to develop many disorders.

"You can't purposefully trigger alters out."

Without good communication or therapist help, it can definitely be very, very difficult to trigger other alters out. However, it isn't impossible. Sometimes, systems may notice that doing certain things or talking about certain things or to certain people can pull alters closer to front. Triggers aren't always trauma related. For example, one of our littles is triggered out by a specific thing that little kids typically like. It's not trauma related, it's just how it works. There are definitely also trauma related triggers as well. But anyways, after identidying those triggers, other alters may be able to trigger them out using those triggers. It won't always work, especially during times of stress and/or trauma, but it isn't impossible.

"You weren't physically or sexually abused."

This has to be the one I hate the most. As a system who was likely both (one for sure, another suspected but not confirmed), that has no indication of the validity of the system. Not only are you dismissing the fact that the main purpose of being a system is to hide trauma from the host and protect them so they can live life as normal, but it's incredibly insensitive and inaccurate. They trusted you enough to tell you their trauma and you're basically saying that the way they reacted isn't good enough and that them being a system is them being overdramatic about it. That's basically what this claim boils down to. But again, also incredibly inaccurate. Let's take some quotes from some websites. "The main cause of DID is believed to be severe and prolonged trauma experienced during childhood, including /emotional/, physical, or sexual abuse." "Dissociative identity disorder is associated with /overwhelming experiences, traumatic events,/ and/or abuse." Basically, the abuse doesn't have to be physical/sexual or abuse at all (as stated in the DSM-5) in order to cause a system. Just repeated and with a disorganized attachment to your guardians. https://aamft.org/Consumer_Updates/Dissociative_Identity_Disorder.aspx#:~:text=Causes,emotional%2C%20physical%20or%20sexual%20abuse., the DSM

[meggannn]

Can I ask, what's the beef with Greg Ellis and Mark Darrah? I haven't been keeping up with BioWare in general and the Dragon Age fandom & company division in particular (I'm more of a Mass Effect person) so all I noticed is that two big names (were?) quit a few days ago so I am genuinely puzzled at that exchange. Did Ellis get screwed over by BioWare/Darrah somehow or is he doing some unfounded shit-stirring?

Oh for sure, so I don’t know all the details, but I’ll try

Greg Ellis

Greg Ellis is the voice actor for Cullen, a character who is in every Dragon Age game. the actor has been a pretty shitty person for a while—I’m sure there’s a callout post for him somewhere on tumblr—but he’s the British equivalent of a Trumper, transphobic, hosts a podcast/contributes to/does audio readings for a right-leaning website that complains about liberals and universities, often gets into fights with LGBT+ folk on twitter and block them (so many that a lot of DA fans couldn’t read his tweets today lol).

[ID: Greg Ellis tweet: “I praise @Ayaan for supporting @jk_rowling in standing her ground. They are heroes of our times. /end ID]

[ID: Greg Ellis tweet: “Today on The Respondent @GreggHurwitz discusses the challenges of identitarianism on college campuses. /end ID]

From Wikipedia: Identitarianism: “The Identitarian movement or Identitarianism is a post-World War II European far-right political ideology which asserts the right of Europeans and peoples of European descent to preserve the culture and territories.”

[ID: Greg Ellis tweet from June 2018: Indicative of our current culture that I tweet about inspirational free thinkers & up pops a trolling SJW who can’t separate me from my work. Conflating my inclusive & equitable opining with a video game character I voice is SJW indent politicking full blown.”

Greg Ellis tweet replying to a disappointed fan who was upset about his support for Trump: “Speaking ‘on behalf of thousands of fans’ of a video game & suggesting I ‘broke their hearts’ because I support ALL who hold Presidential office is ludicrous. VG fandom is not exclusive to LGBTQ or those not hate filled about @potus. I believe in equity & inclusivity.” /end ID]

to demonstrate how much of an attention-seeking child he is, Ellis also likes to tease his fans with hashtags and get them up in a tizzy to gain followers, tagging things #Cullennites and #DA4 just to wind up bait-switching and actually talk about something completely different, or maybe even nothing.

[ID: Tweet from Greg Ellis, I don’t have the date but I believe this was from spring of 2018: “I’ve been officially authorized to disclose details about the game only when I reach 10k followers. I feel like a puppet. Will you help pull the strings? I’m positively itching to share. #videogame #announcement #cullenites” /end ID]

Beef with Mark Darrah

I think what specifically started his beef with Mark Darrah was this summer, Ellis tweeted in support of Ayaan/JKR (above), resulting in a lot of upset fans replying to him. He got in lots of fights with them, blocking several, prompting fans to make more tweets expressing anger/disappointment about DA4/the future of Cullen, and even tweet at other Dragon Age developers asking if Cullen could be recast if he comes back at all.

Mark Darrah made a tweet saying basically nothing substantial about it, but he said: “It’s important to us that the people we work with are aligned with our BioWare values. This will be apparent when we’re ready to announce what actors will be lending their voices to the game.” He even replied directly to a few fans throughout the tags/search results who were concerned, including @theherocomplex​ which I saw, so it’s a safe assumption he was at least taking the anger seriously.

Ellis replied to the public tweet: “What r the @bioware values @BioMarkDarrah? Don’t the loyal #Cullenites & @dragonage fans have a right to know? Don’t u have a responsibility to tell them? DO u support cancel culture? Do u support defamatory comments like this? Careful how u answer ~ u might lose ur job”

I mean, it’s pretty ballsy to threaten a lead creative at a company responsible for a chunk of your fame when your character’s arc is effectively over and they don’t need to have you in any games anymore... there are tons of crappy British actors out there to replace you, and it’s not like they don’t already have Gideon Emery in a dozen different wigs, lmao

What Happened This Week (Dec 3 and Dec 4, 2020)

Mark Darrah was, until recently, a staple in the Dragon Age team. A lot of people were worried when his resignation yesterday came out of the blue, and Casey Hudson (also a lead creative/big name) also resigned from the Mass Effect team at the same time, which to me is pretty concerning.

Yesterday after the news broke, a fan asked Darrah if his beef with Ellis might have had anything to do with his departure (basically asking if it was a forced resignation): “If this has anything to do with a recent blowout with a VA from Inquisition who publically called for @BioMarkDarrah to be fired, I'm going to be so sickened and disappointed by this company for siding with bigotry.” Darrah replied with just “lol” which to me was a little concerning, because if you read it sarcastically, it seemed to imply the drama with Ellis did have something to do with it. without proof, it’s difficult to say, and of course Darrah and Hudson gave polite goodbyes but are silent on the real reasons that prompted them to go.

Today, Ellis has managed to convince himself that he did get Darrah fired, likely over the stink he raised about Darrah publicly for siding with LGBT+ fans over him. but in his replies to that, Darrah mentioned pretty open skepticism in his tweets that Ellis would ever be rehired by BW again, so.... maybe the Ellis drama is not it. IDK.

TLDR: basically, Ellis is a bigoted right-wing voice actor who picks fights with fans who call him out, and he is still coasting off the attention highs he got from voicing a highly controversial video game character in a franchise that hasn’t hired him since 2014. in summer 2020, Ellis threatened Darrah’s job (not at as if he has any power to threaten him with), basically because Darrah stood up to him, and now that he no longer has to play civil as a BioWare employee, Darrah finally snapped and called him out on twitter for being unprofessional and implied Ellis wouldn’t be asked back to BioWare anyway even if Ellis WAS the reason he left. other Dragon Age developers (who still work at BW) are liking and replying to Darrah’s tweets with supportive gifs/emojis, so I think it’s a fair to say Darrah’s attitude is prevalent in the company but current workers just can’t say anything, and they do not want Ellis back again.

[trans-advice]

I'm 4 months on testosterone (ftm) and I basically pass as a 15 year old dude. I'm 23, and will be applying to jobs soon. I haven't gone through the process of changing my name and gender on my papers yet, so I have no clue how to go about applying to jobs without outing myself. I'm not really trying to be stealth, but I don't want employers to know right off the bat. I'm also not too sure if I pass enough to not me questionable. My voice is still pretty high. Any advice for applying to jobs?

I've never hunted for a job (basically I... can we not get into why? -- ok) so I can't give you that angle about job hunting. I haven't heard anything from the others... So I'm going to say our followers may have more advice on passing & working with people at a job.Okay. I would suggest this: get your clerical information changed. Passing helps you avoid discrimination & b$hit when laws won't help you. Granted, I hate the ideology of passing. However, from a branding perspective, you know who you are, you should get the clerical paperwork to match you as much as possible, so that you consistently communicate your brand.Therefore, driver's licenses/state IDs, social security, passport IDs (which are now necessary considering some state's policies on ID cards brought up during trans panic 2016), birth certificates. Get as many gender markers corrected as possible. Especially the Social Security one since taxes & background checks that go through Social Security have the potential to out you to transphobic jerks & organizations.This stuff had been easier in the Obama administration and while I haven't heard of our shit getting attacked, state level (& even local) governments make a lot of these laws too. Therefore I can't sure on how effective this can be, but generally the sooner you get started, the better it'll be. And as a helpful tip, your birth certificate is governed by the state where you were born. So like if you were born in Tennessee, Kansas, Idaho, Ohio & Puerto Rico, changing your gender marker on your birth certificate is not going to happen.This link is helpful, though some pages haven't been updated for a couple of years (say 2015). Therefore it's much better to look up the policies surrounding your identification documents separately. Your state(s)[1] will have its policy stated on their website I'd presume. You can come back asking for help reading the documents for your state if you need. Obviously we can't take responsibility with legal advice, but we can try to​ help like a friend would.http://www.transequality.org/know-your-rights/Sorry, Good luck, Peace & Love,Eve## PS:[1] State of birth &or State of residency.