#actually the most chronically online bunch

[asterin-jpg]

reddit is truly the most frustrating place to have an exchange w a stranger on, and i've been using tumblr for nearly a decade

[etoilesbienne]

at the end of the day my take is that every step of this has been made with very little regard to the victims it occurred to, and if that original callout everyone insisted on spreading maybe actually talked to ANY of the girls they were putting on blast or even handled the information it was presenting like the allegations they were rather than like a cutesy little gossip tabloid piece, maybe things could've come out different. the people with the most to lose here were the group of women who were tossed to the wolves in order to score points in an internet morality game by a bunch of chronically online losers.

[spacelazarwolf]

actually yeah i would like to talk about how other queer people specifically were the reason it took me so long to come out as a gay trans man

(this is really fucking long, but especially if you’re not a trans man or trans masc, i’d like you to read it all the way through.)

as a preface, i’m not a kid. i’m a fully fledged adult who has been in the queer community for about ten years now, both online and offline. most of the queer people i know irl are my age or older. i turn 30 next year. also before you use the words ‘chronically online’, consider the fact that the things people say online are what they actually believe and will take out into the world with them. 

anyway.

when i try to talk about transphobia directed at trans men and mascs from within the queer community, or lateral aggression from trans people who are not trans men or trans mascs (this is not just trans women and femmes, this includes any trans people who aren’t trans men or mascs. i have heard some vile shit out of the mouths of other ‘afab’* trans people), people often respond with “but cishets are the real enemy!!! they’re the ones causing all the actual damage and oppression!!!!!” and while i get the sentiment, that is where you’re wrong my friend. the thing causing my oppression isn’t cishets, it’s the cisheteropatriarchy. cishets tend to be the ones that chug that koolaid most readily, but queer people, even other trans people, have gleefully gulped down gallons of the stuff, and that specifically is what made it so difficult for me to accept myself and come out.

*i fucking hate the term ‘afab’ but this post is already so goddamn long

when i first entered the lgbtq community, it was on facebook in the early 2010′s. before that, i’d been stuck in a conservative small town and didn’t even know that not being a girl was an option. so obviously when i encountered a bunch of people that were like me, i was ecstatic and wanted to be a part of their community. because i still thought i was a girl at the time, i was immediately funneled into sapphic spaces. for the most part, they were great and lovely, i just felt left out because i couldn’t relate to the way they talked about their love of women. but i knew i was some sort of fruity, which meant clearly i was just repressing my attraction to women, so i needed to try harder to like women. some of this came from the things i’d heard in those groups, but a lot of it was just pressure from myself to deal with a reality that didn’t make sense.

the longer i spent in those groups, though, the more i ran into rhetoric like ‘men are inherently incapable of love and respect, it is impossible to be in a truly fulfilling relationship with a man’ and ‘masculinity is inherently evil and femininity is inherently good.’ some people tried to have nuance, but a lot, especially cis women, didn’t. in those groups, people were mocked for being in relationships with men, they were told that if they had a boyfriend they weren’t even allowed to mention it in the group because the group needed to be a ‘space completely free of men’, people were told that if they were being abused by a man then it was their fault because they should have been dating a woman instead, they should have known better. i was one of those people who was blamed for my own abuse.

as i started to realize that shit maybe i’m not a girl, there was a lot of pressure for me to make sure that i always stayed within the confines of ‘non man.’ because the second i slid over that line, it was over. i was lost. does that rhetoric sound familiar? it’s terf rhetoric, and the irony is that all of these spaces explicitly condemned terfs.

i was in a group for ‘non men’ and when people in the group came out as trans men, they were asked to leave. the network of groups that this one was connected to was of the mindset that trans men oppressed all nonmen, including cis women. the reasoning given was ‘it would be misgendering!!!!!!!’ but behind closed internet doors, the actual reasons were very clear. on a scale of ‘oppressed’ to ‘privileged’ it went trans women -> cis women -> trans men -> cis men, with nonbinary people being inserted into whatever category was most convenient for argument’s sake. 

after that, i stuffed my doubts down for years, terrified of crossing that horrible threshold from ‘nonman’ to ‘man.’ even now, i still cling to the term ‘nonbinary’ because it makes other queer people view me as a more complex person. as soon as i started tentatively using the word ‘man’ to describe myself without all the disclaimers of ‘but don’t worry i’m not actually a man!!!!! i’m still a person!!!!!!!’, the way people interacted with me changed drastically.

i was the exact same person, still non-passing, still gender noncomforming, still someone with a very complex relationship to gender because of my sexuality and being autistic, but because that word ‘man’ was there, suddenly people felt they had the right to silence me and speak over me. cis women who were being blatantly transphobic dismissed me saying ‘i don’t argue with men’, queer people dismissed me saying ‘stop mansplaining’ and telling me that regardless of my presentation, regardless of how i was treated out in the world, i was still privileged because i identified with the label of ‘man.’

i made a video on tik tok about how traumatic it was to come to terms with being a man as someone who has been hurt by cis men, and an old mutual of mine started tagging me in cis men’s videos about unlearning toxic masculinity, telling me i needed to watch myself if i was going to be a man. another mutual also shared in that trauma, and theirs was exacerbated by a racial element. i tried to make more videos about my experiences, documented by journey with top surgery, but as soon as i started speaking loudly about including trans men and mascs in the fight for abortion rights, everything went downhill.

terfs started to find my account and get my videos taken down. queer cis women claimed i was ‘silencing women’ and used the ‘trans man’ in my bio to claim ‘mansplaining’ despite the fact i am nonpassing and the world sees me as a woman. a trans femme stitched one of my videos to chide me for saying that repealing roe v wade affected trans men and mascs, because i should have been talking about how it affected trans women and femmes and the rest of the queer community, not ‘centering men.’ a trans woman commented on their post in my defense, and they deleted her comment. after that, cis women reported by account by the dozens and i was eventually banned. 

that’s when i realized, men hadn’t caused me trauma. the cisheteropatriarchy had caused me trauma. the system that had allowed my abusive ex to treat me the way he did, that allowed my friends to watch and say nothing, that allowed a woman who was a bystander in a public domestic violence incident to complain to us that we were ruining her day at the mall and threatening to call the police on both of us rather than standing up for someone who was literally publicly being physically attacked. the system that allowed cis women to say, quite literally, that because trans men and mascs were a numerical minority of the people who would be affected by the repealing of roe v wade that we shouldn’t be in the spotlight, that cis women should be centered, that it was somehow ‘misogyny’ to point out that anti-abortion laws quite literally would affect trans men and mascs more severely and in more ways than cis women.

women and other queer people may not have been the ones hitting me or writing these bills, but for years they were the ones telling me my abuse was my fault, that i was morally incorrect for being a man, that i could never love or be loved if i was a man, that i should sit down and shut up, regardless of how much my community was hurting and dying. that i would always be an afterthought, if even.

i think very often about two tik toks i saw of a trans masc person talking about transition, and one said “you spend the first half of your life being subjugated by the sins of men, then you transition and you spend the rest of your life paying for the sins of men” and the other commented about another user’s video saying “a beard, facial hair, stands in the way of this person being perceived as innocent and being perceived as capable of roofieing your drink.”

and i realized that’s part of why i’m terrified to go on t. completely separate from the fact that i have a career which relies on my voice so going on t would absolutely nuke that, i have already experienced so much aggression and isolation based on just identifying as a man. i cannot even begin to imagine how much worse it would get if i started to look ‘like a man.’ i have lamented the fact that i’m forced to lose my softness, whether i want to or not, that the very community that wants to break down barriers and liberate people are the ones who are forcing me into a box for the sake of convenience in online arguments.

and people can mock me and go on about ‘toxic masculinity’ all they want, but this is a hard truth about the community that we really need to start talking about, because i have absolutely no doubt that experiences like mine are what contributes to trans men and masc’s astronomically high rates of suicide, self harm, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, etc.

i feel more like myself than i ever have in my life. and i also feel more isolated than i ever have in my life. there was a moment where things finally clicked for me, and for a fraction of a second i was so excited. i wanted to share my revelation with my community and be celebrated. but then i thought back about the way people had talked about men, trans men, masculinity, loving men, and that little tiny moment of celebration was brought to a screeching halt. i realized that every other time i’d seen a gay trans man or masc come out and talk about their gender and sexuality, the responses had been peppered with ‘sorry for ur loss’, ‘ew lol’, ‘so u chose to become a man?????’, ‘omg u have to date men and be a man????? i feel sorry for u lmao.’

and now as i delve into the dating pool as a gay trans man, i see that all this online bullshit isn’t just ‘chronically online,’ it’s manifested in real life too. the way queer trans men and mascs are treated as entitled for wanting to date cis queer men, the way people respond if we say we’re unhappy with just being a hookup or a fling because we should be happy anyone wanted us in the first place. the way we’re treated as fetishizers and freaks, the way people specifically search through the ‘ftm’ tag on grindr looking for ‘sissy boys/femme bottoms/etc’ then get angry when you don’t respond to them. the way other queer people respond to you when you try to talk about this. the way trans men and mascs who can’t go on t are treated as less than men but also aren’t allowed to talk about their experience of someone perceived as ‘less than men’, the way testosterone is spoken about in queer communities as a poison, as something that makes you ugly and disfigured and gross and dirty when for so many of us it’s literally lifesaving medical treatment. the way we can’t talk about the things we go through without random cis people dragging trans women and femmes into it when, even though there are some concerning trends of lateral violence that need to be discussed, most of the aggression comes from cis queer women.

so when trans men make posts or host events or just do anything to celebrate trans manhood and masculinity, and your first reaction is to make fun of us, project your frustration with the cisheteropatriarchy, or respond with “we don’t need positivity for men”, i want you to think about the number of trans men and mascs who kill ourselves, and i want you to think “maybe i should not say this, maybe i should just do this one thing to make life a little easier for them, even if i don’t get it.”

[traffic-light-eyes]

lloyd hcs? i wanna hear them ALL

Oh boyyyy here we go. I think my LONG Lloyd headcanon post is still one of my top posts, so you can check that out there. I already know this is gonna take a while, so strap in. Dunno if I'll get to all of them or not because I still need content for the future, though.

He's a hungry kid. Always hungry. They don't know if he's having some belated puberty thing where he's hungry 24/7 365 or if it's just his heritage, but he's just. Starving. He gets shy about it, though, even when he knows that his friends would never belittle him because of it. He'll just shyly and slowly push his plate towards Zane and look at him with his big puppy eyes and a pout and Zane can do nothing but give him what he wants (you're spoiling him, Zane. - What would you do in that situation, Cole? He looked horribly pathetic, and I couldn’t do anything but give him another slice of pie.)

He is either chronically online or he has 0 knowledge of the internet. No in-between. For chronically online, his vocabulary mostly consists of tiktok references, and you can definitely hear Zane crying in the distance because he doesn't know what Lloyd is saying. For 0 knowledge of the internet, Jay and Kai make jokes and references to tiktok/reddit/Twitter/etc. and when Lloyd doesn't understand (and subsequently tilts his head like the adorable dragoni he is), you can hear Jay crying in the distance and the soft shushing voice from Nya as she tries to calm him down.

He will steal all shiny things. Shiny rock on the ground? Yoink. Jay left a particularly sparkly bolt on his desk? Well, it's Lloyd's now. Loose change on the counter? He'll take the shiny ones, thanks. He doesn't use the money. He just owns it. When Garmadon came back and saw his stash of sparkly things, he was like, "Ah, so you did inherit some of my genetics. I was getting a bit worried."

Contrary to popular belief, he doesn't own many plushies. Just one. It's a little stuffed tiger with half-off eyes and practically tearing at the seams. Kai won it in a claw machine for him back when he was a kid, and he will not part with it nor have any alterations to it no matter what. It's his and it has survived all the fires in the monastery, the crashes of the bounty, and the angry throws at the wall when Lloyd is mad (he immediately picks it back up and cries for throwing it). He remembers each mark, each missing patch of fur, every scratch on it stupid beaded eyes, and he treasures it. Because his brother got it for him.

He bought Jay a Hatsune Miku body pillow.

He's not a very good gift-giver, actually. If it was December, and he was tasked with some white elephant something he would perish at the spot. So, to combat that, he buys trinkets and things that remind him of his friends or things that he thinks that they'd like, and during the holiday or birthday, all he has to do is stuff it in a bag and put a bow on it. During the missions where they miss the holiday/birthday or if they're not close to his stash of presents, he gets really upset because he can't show them how much he loves them because nothing nothing can compare to the year of scouring shops and finding that cute little spoon engraved with Zane's initials that he found in a thrift store.

More of the gift giving: he's bad at showing affection or just verbally saying that he loves his friends, so he does the neurodivergent thing of just. Giving them pretty rocks or, like, soda tabs. Cole was horribly touched by the rocks, and now he has a shelf full of Lloyd rocks. Sometimes, to calm down, Lloyd and Cole paint the rocks. There's a cute collection of ninja look-alike rocks sitting next to their photos. When Lloyd was younger and everyone started gunning for his affection, Kai got a bunch of jars and wrote everyone's names on them. The person with the most soda tabs by the end of the year would have won the "Lloyd's favorite" award. The thing is, though, they never stopped doing it. When Pixal joined the crew, she was surprised to find herself a jar with her name on it with a purple soda tab.

Speaking of Pixal- a little after she joined, she realized that Lloyd had not finished school. When she had asked about it, she was told Wu was teaching him. She searched more to find out exactly what he was being taught. Lo and behold, it was exclusively ninja things or ancient, ancient history. And much to Lloyd's annoyance, she immediately stormed up to him and got him learning some algebra. She was not going to let him live his life without schooling. When she realized that he was having a lot of trouble with high school mathematics (because she had assumed that he was in the highschool age), she slyly went lower and lower in the education scale just to see where he left off. She was horrified to find he had not exceeded 5th grade math. No more than 5 minutes after his daily lesson, all of them (save Lloyd) had a nice, long conversation about his age and his schooling. She made it her life duty that Lloyd became one of the smartest gosh darned people in Ninjago.

On a lighter note, Jay and Nya sometimes have robot battles for fun. But. Not aggressive or combat related. They make robots do silly tasks like planting a flower or making a sandwich. They always make Lloyd judge who did it better because he has 0 clue the mechanics behind it, and he doesn't pick favorites. (Even if he's not trying to be his father anymore, he loves stirring up chaos by making each of them never truly beat each other by a lot)

He had a lisp as a kid. He didn't know it at the time, but it was because his mouth was unfamiliar with his sharp teeth. It makes him speak funny. For a while, he just didn't speak at all because he was embarrassed when the other darkleys kids made fun of him. He toughened out, though, and sat in his room, reading out loud to himself (occasionally with his kind roommate and friend Brad helping him) to correct his speech. To this day, he sometimes messes up words because he doesn't have proper speech therapy. But it's just another cute Lloyd thing to the team.

Mkay. I only did a few for just in case someone else asks for Lloyd stuff

[doodlemancy]

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhh

so here's the deal re: this fucking horseshit. god i hate this.

i, personally, have mostly given up on trying to dodge inclusion in AI datasets. the stuff i make generally isn't what they're looking for anyway and there's no real way to 100% avoid being scraped short of becoming entirely invisible online, which would um, lead to me having no money and dying. that's part of the cruelty of all this, but also, in a way, it's the same risk artists online have always taken; if you want people to see your work, you have to post it knowing that some of those people are fucking lowlife piece of shit scumbags who will try to resell it on redbubble or something for a quick buck. AI is just a new and exhausting way for garbagey people to stink worse. i am not in any way excusing that behavior or trying to imply people should not be mad about it or that we shouldn't condemn this move and fight back. "if you don't want your work stolen, don't put it online" is the kind of shitty Internet Tough Guy talk i've always hated since my dA days. it's as useless and heartless as telling people that if they don't want their bikes stolen, they shouldn't leave them at the bike rack. i'm saying that i, personally, will not let a bunch of soulless thieving shitheads drive me offline. i belong here. they belong in a wifi-proof dumpster.

nightshade and glaze eat my artwork alive. they make it look terrible. when you have to sell things on the basis that they look nice, it's a big problem when protective measures make them look like dogshit. my work is not a good candidate for these processes. even if that weren't the case, i don't have the stamina, especially right now while my chronic pain is flaring for the third month in a row and my adhd meds are scarce, to go back and shade/glaze everything, and it wouldn't work on reblogs anyway. given the way midjourney and its equally stinky siblings have already scraped years and terabytes' worth of image data from popular websites, it doesn't seem worth my time. if you think it is worth yours i am not going to like, yell at you. i am just one person. but i want to be clear about the kind of situations some of us are being forced into.

i think some of the doomsaying about AI and what it will do to us has been overblown-- they need you, for marketing purposes, to believe that someday their shitty robot will be as good at "drawing" and as practical to work with as a human-- but the consequences of "AI" (which is not even actually AI) are already real and visible and obvious to anyone paying attention. i unfortunately am not infinitely wise and powerful and therefore do not have an ideal all-encompassing solution to this deeply stupid problem that the Most Unlikeable Manbabies On Earth have imposed on us after NFTs fizzled out.

what i do have is a very large repository of nice anime and game screenshots i've taken, knowledge of many archives of nice public domain images, a computer that can run nightshade overnight or while i'm off doing other things, and, most importantly, near-infinite capacity for pettiness. i do kinda feel like the jury is still out on how well nightshade/glaze will work in the long run, but in the meantime, i suppose it wouldn't cost me a lot to... perhaps... every time i get Mad About AI™, channel that anger into dumping some thoroughly-but-not-spammily-tagged, high-quality, inconspicuous poison onto this godforsaken hellsite via a secret side blog. i could make a batch of poison ahead of time, keep it on my phone, use my Toilet Scrolling Time or my Public Transit Time to post and tag up an image here and there. it could be a fun challenge to try to make some pretty robot poison that some humans will still enjoy.

the other thing we need to poison at this point, IMO, is the word "AI" itself, by being loudly and mercilessly critical of any company that dabbles in it, the same way we all clowned on any company that pushed their luck with NFT/crypto shit a couple of years ago. we need to have every corporation terrified that association with AI will tank their sales and hurt their brand. AI must = number go down and lots of people screaming at you. companies will fuck around. we must provide the finding-out. we shouldn't have to. but we can!

so make sure to let tumblr know you hate this. maybe you could include this interesting link (tw child abuse) about how Stable Diffusion was trained on some extremely serious crime. or these screenshots of Midjourney devs just sort of admitting what their whole thing is, which i got here but which have kinda been spread all over since January.

spite and anger can be forms of hope. that's all i have to say, or at least all i'm willing to type with my left hand tonight.

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

The Caleb and Golden Guard Ghost or Illusion in For the Future is interpreted differently by fans and haters of Belos those who think he pure evil thought it was their ghosts haunting him for his sins while those who like him thought it was repressed guilt this has done nothing to help Belos’s reputation in the fandom and unless your chronically online those were illusions and to top it all off it was never mention again and Papa Titan dismissed him and some fans take his words as true. I think the Crew being vague on Belos Past and how sympathetic he is, is the main downfall of the show writing and one of the reason why Belos fans get bullied

I feel like that's just a problem with Belos in general; casual fans and those who dislike see him as simply evil and nothing more. But fans who were invested in the potential of his character and story obviously saw something more and the show was just vague enough to make convincing arguments that there was more to him.

It is extremely frustrating to have canonical facts such as the Wittebanes only becoming witch hunters to fit in, which has huge implications for their story and the themes of the show, only for that to never be mentioned again and for Masha to undercut their own story about how "little bro was jealous of big bro."

It feels like they're trying to have their cake and eat it too, by hinting at more subtle characterization only to ignore all that and have Belos act as their Generic Bad Guy Who Represents Societal Evils.

I don't think that the writing of Belos is the main downfall of the show, I think it's just a symptom of it. The show struggles with characterization by having characters not experience actual development but switching to a different character type. Eda goes from infamous criminal to Mama Eda but she doesn't spend enough quality time with Luz to justify the change. Lilith goes from intimidating head of the Emperor's Coven to history nerd who becomes besties with the resident joke character (let's also not forget how the show largely brushed aside the fallout of Eda's curse and Lilith having to share it just to atone). Hunter spends a few episodes as the Golden Guard and then he's Sad Boy Who is Abused. I've said before that the season 1 version (or first appearance in Hunter's case) of these characters are at their most interesting and unique but by the end, they're reduced to just generically nice people.

The villains, for better or worse, don't suffer this switch. They're exactly what they're presented as despite a few tantalizing details that would suggest otherwise. The end result is a bunch of characters who act as the plot requires them too, not because of actual character growth or dynamics.

On a separate note, I don't think Belos fans are bullied because his writing is sloppy. Even if he was more explicitly sympathetic, people would still find an excuse to harass fans. I think bullies just want to make people feel bad for engaging with media in a way that is different from theirs and no amount of "justification" can excuse that. People like villains, get over it. The kind of media and characters people enjoy usually has nothing to do with their morality. But how you treat real people certainly does.

[edensrose]

˚◞❀˳ a proper farewell

god that title sounds dramatic as fuck so let me just clear things up immediately: no, I'm not leaving tumblr, I will still be very manageable to reach and interact. what I am drifting away from is the tolkien fandom — and since this place, despite my hardships, has meant so much to me - I decided to give it a proper little farewell, to the people who made everything count. along with a little explanation for my decision while shedding light on my experience. ( I'll try to be brief )

I joined the tolkien fandom while writing for thranduil, it's here I gained my following in the fanbase and things went quite smoothly. however, upon beginning to write for mairon, then melkor and then later the ainur — I saw an increase in hate anons. something I have experienced before, natural of a multi fandom blog, but never to this degree. initially I assumed it was because I was simply growing larger as a blog, and perhaps that is the reason — but from what I noticed, I was battling with a bunch of chronically online people who simply could not handle my love for. . . "problematic characters"

I never understood it, really. I never saw other ainur blogs getting the hate I did - I guess I'll truly never know. had I done something? was my writing just not good enough? were my vibes off? over the time I've been called things like two faced, fake, a romanticiser of abuse, lazy for not filing out requests, been told I shouldn't write reader inserts, told to kms and other graphic incidents ( such as people sending death threats and actual gore to my inbox ). this branched from burner accounts to anons, and I could just never understand why me. a quick gander at the #clownon tag and you'll find some of the instances in which I've been harassed.

I genuinely thought my writing was the issue.

which demotivated me from writing for quite some time. could I have turned anon off? sure, but that would have meant that the anons I'd frequently interact with would most likely not come around anymore. it meant a decline in requests, it meant just a crippling factor to my blog in general, so I chose to ignore. but it got hard to eventually. I was bullied for liking a god with big wings just because for crying out loud.

I've tried to fake being okay. fake being strong and unwavering about the hate, but I just couldn't anymore. and that's okay.

it wasn't all tears and hardships though. I have made very good friends through the tolkien fandom, many of which I consider close. from @bluezenzennie to @kiatheinsomniac — @a-contemplation-upon-flowers , @cilil , @someoneinthestars and so so many more. it'd take me forever to tag and honestly my heart is squeezing so much listing these few down already. they made fandom fun, whether it was our silly little play fights or collabs or you name it. those of you that have spent time to tell me about your day on anon or send in the nicest of things. I haven't forgotten them, and I cherish them, but it's time for me to go

am I sad? fucking of course. a part of me found so much comfort here and in these characters. I've spent hours on end developing lore for aus or designing aesthetics for writing — just writing and pumping out content or blogs, everything and anything I could do. and while I don't regret those times - the way I've been treated in response hurts. which is why I've made this decision.

I'm growing as a person too. I'm writing a book now, I've got an oc blog to promote that book that I'm working hard on ( @valentine-cafe ) , things are looking good. does this mean I'm just gonna disappear? of course not. I plan on staying around, getting back into request writing ( for other fandoms ) and still interacting and supporting my tolkien moots and friends. will I be writing or creating content for tolkien? probably not. at least not in the foreseeable future. the characters I once loved and cherished have now been ruined for me. I've been made to feel embarrassed for loving manwe and namo to the degree that I have, and I don't see myself being able to write for ainur without thinking of all the shit I've gotten for doing so.

regardless, I'll be here still. and while I might not be your local valarfucker anymore, I hope to be your rose still 🩷 thank you so much for two and a half years, I love you all dearly

[accidentallyatekneecaps]

SAIKI KURIKO BEING THE YOUNGEST SAIKI AU (Aka real life kuriko au)

She uses she/they pronouns

They're a asexual lesbian

She doesn't have any powers like kusuo or smarts like kusuke

But She is the only saiki sibling to be emotionally aware

She is a first year student

She actually was doing an online program for awhile because she couldn't be assed to actually show up in person until her mom forced her to socialize more

She has eds and uses a cane from time to time

They are severely chronically online

They spent hours on Tumblr as a child and no one knew besides kusou since the rest of the family was so distracted by the son's

She used to be really upset that kusuke and kusuo got all the attention as a kid but as she got older she just used it to her advantage to do whatever she wanted

Kusou is really protective of her but doesn't let it show even tho everyone around him knows he is

Kuriko is seen as really shy to others around her but shes a massive cunt like the rest of the siblings

They speak English fluently due to being online at a young age and in cringe fandoms

Kuriko goes by k since she doesn't like the way it sounds but no one besides their online friends call them that

Kusou actually raised her more than her parents since they never really had to raise kusou or kusuke

Kurikos owns so many miku memorabilia

They have like a shelf full of vocaloid figures

They have a bunch of face piercings that their parents didn't notice they got (kusou shape shifted into their father so they could get it done)

Kuriko is massively emo, like the whole ordeal or being obsessed with mcr and other bands like that

Their autistic (wow shocker)

They once said to kusou that his psychic powers are just autism with a few extra steps

Surprising they are very social when they are around people they like and talk really loudly without realizing

When their alone they are basically mute, they won't say a word to anyone

They were forced to wear those clear piercings once her mom forced her to go to school at pk

They don't really enjoy school nor try in it

They usually just draw in their sketchbook all day

They hate kusuke and their father

They resent their mother a bit for willingly letting some of the things that happened in the family happen, tho they still love her a lot

Most people in the family are confused why the youngest daughter isn't at all like her brothers but the real thing is that she didn't get attention but she's aware of things so much that she doesn't hold it over the siblings but over the parents who should of been there

(au design)

Guy's maybe I was a little to silly

[luaspersona]

hey y’all, how have you been?

i know it’s been a while, and i know i promised a fic that was supposed to be posted earlier this month and that it’s been some time since i dropped a review. but a lot of stuff happened and i realized that i needed some time off. during that time, i reflected a lot and considered not returning, maybe only posting the seoul town road story and going offline for good. eventually tho, i understood how much i missed reading and how much i couldn’t really stop coming up with ideas and outlining some stories — i like this and for the most part, it makes me really happy.

but i wanted to talk a bit about the stuff that made me second-thought coming back. i wanted to be open about stuff that’s depressing and demotivating in this community, especially because i’ll change a lot of things about how i interact here.

this will be a long text, but it’s really important if you follow me. i wanna make it clear tho, before anything, that i’m speaking for myself here, and myself only.

⇢ the first thing i wanna say is that i’ll be generally less active. i used to think that in order to become a popular blog or whatever i had to be chronically online, posting all the time and all. after giving it some thought, i can't really tell if that's true or not, but the thing is: i don’t have the mental health for it. so i won't push myself. but also, if you write something and want me to read it, please send it to me! shamelessly and guiltlessly promote your work! i probably won’t see it on the feed, but i’m always open for recommendations, i just don't have the time to look for it anymore.

⇢ i’ll also go through my followers and block anyone who doesn’t have their age displayed or looks like a bot. no questions asked. this isn’t a blog for minors, and i wanna protect myself. understand how tumblr works if y’all wanna be here.

⇢ i will finish and post seoul town road soon. please be patient. 

⇢ lately, i’ve seen a lot of wonderful writers deactivate due to lack of interaction and support. i understand we’re here working, writing and sharing for free because we *chose to*, but it's hard to speak to the void. so please, don’t let this become a place where authors are talking to themselves while feeling unsafe due to plagiarism or hate. i understand the reasons why someone might be a silent reader, but... just don't make the authors you like feel alone, y'all (i can write some tips and general guides for reviewing and interacting with writing blogs if y’all are interested).

⇢ ok, so… i thought a lot about whether or not to talk about it. it was already super messy, even if i wasn’t online at the time and didn’t see it happening (i'm sorry if this is just repetition, and i bet y'all are sick of it). but ultimately, the main reason why i hesitated to come back was because of what happened to M, so i kinda need to vent about that.

M was one of the oldest blogs here, always open to chat and interact and doing god's work for our horny and sentimental souls (shape of your body is actually one of my favorite stories ever and made me realize a bunch of stuff about myself to the point where i quoted some of it to my therapist at the time), and y’all came for them in such a nasty, violent way, misgendering and attacking a person that, upon first being called out for writing something insensitive, was immediately open to discussion and hearing what y’all had to say (regardless if it really was insensitive or not, the discussion was more than welcomed by them).

what shocks me the most, is that y’all are supposedly from a fandom of a bunch of dudes who once wrote problematic stuff, but educated themselves after accepting criticism and changed. if y’all understand that our oppressions are systematic, y’all have to understand that everyone has stuff to learn and stuff to let go. i say that as a black woman, who once used to perpetrate racist shit because that was how i was raised and taught. i say that as a bi woman, who once used to perpetrate biphobic and queerphobic rhetoric because that was how i was raised and taught. i say that as a human being, who once used (and probably still do to some capacity) to perpetrate prejudice and problematic behavior because that was how i was raised and taught.

this is not to say we should forgive and forget whenever someone says stuff that’s wrong or suspicious, but sometimes people really don’t understand that what they’ve said is offensive or from a place of unfamiliarity (not sure if that's a real word), and if we gave the boys the benefit of the doubt and still supported them (and are now being rewarded with their care and attention) why can’t we do the same for ourselves? not to mention how transphobic most of y’all were, all while calling someone out for doing something you deemed problematic, like ??? fuck y’all tbh. seeing how they were treated, and learning about the tea blog made me physically sick. someone who has always been such a light in this community being dragged from one (debatable) mistake — which they acknowledged and apologized for — made me depressed af.

it all made this look like stan twitter, where every interaction feels like an attempt to expose someone and draw hate towards them. this makes me feel unsafe as hell. and i don’t know… this whole environment is not as it used to be. there were a bunch of nice projects i wanted to share, i was working on jade’s profile for a nice little thing i wanted to do to support the writing community, i was working on monthly recs, but… idk. i’m not saying i won’t do them, just saying it might take longer for me to feel comfortable here again.

⇢ i know i'm no one. i'm a little blog from the corner of our community, and i barely have enough followers for all of this to mean anything. but this is still my blog, and it's still a place that was supposed to feel good. and i want to have some control over it, even if no one cares necessarily.

anyway. i’m depressed, and i’m saying stuff i might regret, but. yeah. that’s it ig. i'll return slowly and i missed y'all, especially on discord, and i'm sorry for vanishing. i'll also be rb this for the next days to make sure that i reaches everyone i want it to reach.

[thepaintpirate]

I think Taz messed up a lot. I don't think he did research when he should have.

A while ago on youtube a bunch of people accidentally promoted scams because they didn't research the people that wanted to sponsor them.

I just feel this could have been the same issue and taz struggled to handle it. I know I would panic if i was getting sent de4th threats by people on twitter.

To the others. Iñaki is innocent the dude is dealing with some stuff right now due to a disaster in his country. People really just went for his throat.

Knowing that Taz and Iñaki have been attacked before OPLA came out just for being in the show. Makes you wonder how many people were just waiting for a moment to jump on them.

Honestly respect that. He should've done more research. I guess I'm being hopeful. There is however one thing I know and that's this shouldn't be forgotten and he needs to properly communicate with the people effected via social media that it was in fact not on purpose. He should've educated himself, he should also post in solidarity with Palestine to show he's at least trying. While people may tell me "this won't fix the war" it fucking will if you've seen just how effective posting is. Twitter is flooded and everyone always knows what's going on thanks to Bisan, Motaz and other reporters who value truth. Silence is violence, complacency is cowardice.

The attacking of Iñaki is VILE considering the earthquake. Those that see him, his posts and his portrayal of Luffy know he's a genuine guy. People using this situation to shit on the show are chronically online fools that should shut up and touch grass. Respect that not everyone likes the show, but openly calling people awful names because of it? Harassing them? Cowards do that, not one piece fans. Also the gate towards Iñaki always feels racial I wonder why 🤔

Anyways, I'm actually kind of glad most people agree somewhat with what I'm trying to say. Glad I've not been spammed yet lmao.

[syscurse]

I watched Dr. Robinson's lecture on social media & self diagnosed DID (didn't watch the Q&A part though). It was a surprisingly decent lecture for the complex subject it's tackling! I took notes throughout the entire video if anyone is interested & doesn't want to watch the hour long video (but I recommend you do so you can form your own thoughts on it).

Here's a link to the video.

My notes are under the cut. If you want, you can read a short version here.

Important to keep in mind: Dr. Robinson says that the TikToks he shares in the lecture are for illustrative purposes. He knows nothing about the people behind them, and he cannot verify who does or does not have DID. Further in the video he says that harassing or fakeclaiming people who say they have DID, regardless if they actually have it, does extreme harm. Despite that, it still feels inappropriate that they used these TikToks without permission, and without censoring.

The introduction starts off with describing how the DID patients in their clinic look nothing like the sensationalized portrayal of DID in media. People with DID experience distress & confusion towards their symptoms, which they are reluctant or ashamed to report. Many of their patients report feeling distraught/confused by online content where people promote DID symptoms openly in a fun, sensationalized way. For illustrative purposes, Dr. Robinson shows a TikTok of a person asking their partner to guess which alter is fronting. It's a bunch of clips cut together of them going "guess who's fronting!" in a different voice and their partner gets it correct every time, like a little game.

He explains how recently, many people are coming into the clinic self-diagnosing as DID. They do not have a trauma history and their parts are character-like. The symptoms they present are not typical to DID.

He shows a TikTok of someone changing outfits to music, with the caption asking to guess which system member is wearing what. Robinson says that these overt changes in wardrobe are not characteristic of DID. Nearly all patients with DID are reluctant to discuss their symptoms and conceal it. So this begs these questions: Do online influencers genuinely have DID? If not, what are they experiencing? And what role does social media play in self-diagnosis & the perception of DID?

DID is considered the most severe/complex trauma-related dissociative disorder. It involves symptoms of:

Depersonalization Derealization Amnesia Identity Confusion Identity Alteration At times, pwDID report experiencing someone in their mind who is "not me." At times, it feels like someone else is "driving" the body with a distinct set of thoughts & behaviors. Shifts are subtle or completely hidden. Dr. Robinson emphasizes that they rarely see obvious signs of switching or changes like what was depicted in the video earlier.

What's interesting to me is that he describes amnesia in DID as only being trauma-related… From what I understand, however, amnesia in DID can apply to everyday life as well.

He states that identity alteration (alters, switching) is the most sensationalized symptom of DID. Agreed. DID is not an alters disorder. "DID is really about the 'not me' experience." It is about wanting to get through everyday life without having to re-experience overwhelming trauma info.

He brings up media portrayals of DID like Split & the United States of Tara which have sensationalized the alters aspect of DID. This media has also perpetuated other myths such as the idea that pwDID are dangerous or extraordinary.

He talks about the development of DID. It's a posttraumatic disorder. Requires chronic, severe trauma during early development. In the absence of nurturing & soothing adults, the child internalizes aspects of their environment. The process of personality development is fragmented & those personality parts are anthropomorphized.

DID is really a disorder of hiddenness, he says. That's why it's surprising to see so many people online coming out and celebrating the diagnosis.

He uses a TikTok video of someone saying they got diagnosed with DID & that they're going to get a cake to celebrate. They literally ask the bakery person to write the phrase "happy DID diagnosis" on it. Omg I would not have the balls to do that… Tbh I don't vibe with thinking it's bad to feel happy/relieved about your diagnosis. I think more people should feel happy about it, because in the past it was so common to feel like a diagnosis was more like a death sentence. Robinson says that patients usually feel more fear after getting diagnosed, but that's not a good thing in my opinion.

The problem here shouldn't be that someone is happy/relieved they got an answer to their questions & a label for their pain. The problem here should be the sensationalization. It should be about how they boosted the entertainment value of it for profit.

He describes the history of DID being delegitimized. Freud decided it was false memories, then there was false memory syndrome. Etc. Etc. In the most recent decades, there has been so much more research & support for DID as a legitimate, trauma-based disorder. But many people still don't believe it and false memory controversy is still perpetuated. Robinson says that the recent trend of inaccurate social media representations is further delegitimizing DID.

At the heart of DID controversy there are two models for it: 

Trauma model: DID is trauma-related and trauma memories are true

Fantasy model: DID is unrelated to trauma, resulted from fantasy-proneness or suggestibility, influenced by social media or other factors, and trauma memories are exaggerated or simply not true

He discusses the neuroscience behind it! Researchers are finding that DID has a unique biological imprint, further supporting its legitimacy as a real, trauma-based disorder.

Robinson says that people with DID have always been online & had online communities. Yet, specifically in facebook, youtube, instagram, TikTok, and twitter we see an issue. They are a bit different because (on the monthly) the active users are up in the billions. They are also algorithm-based, so liking content on DID will result in your feed giving you more DID content. The pandemic has also further driven people to social media, too.

TikTok DID hashtags get billions of views.. Robinson says these views have grown by 200-400 MILLION over the past 4 months.

PROS of discussing DID on the internet:

Evidence & info on DID is becoming widely & easily available. More resources for people. This has created safe spaces online for people who are trauma survivors, researchers, & clinicians. With so much good information, many of the false representations & misinfo can be countered. This means that many people can self-diagnose accurately! There's been a general destigmatization of DID online. The dominant narrative is no longer skeptical.

CONS of discussing DID on the internet:

There is also more inaccurate information. Most of the time the representation of DID is wrong. This leads to inaccurate self-diagnosing. People (especially young people) may attach clinical labels to normal experiences. They may elaborate or manifest DID-like symptoms instead of acknowledging they have a different problem. COVID has made people more vulnerable to this. There is also significant online harassment & fakeclaiming towards DID influencers.

FAKECLAIMING HARMS EVERYONE WITH AND WITHOUT DID. Robinson says that fearing you may be faking is one of the most common symptoms of DID. Regardless if someone genuinely has DID or not, calling them fake will harm both them and all other people with DID.

Now, I find it a bit questionable that they are using uncensored TikToks in this lecture despite acknowledging that these people face elevated fakeclaiming & harassment... I get that it's for educational purposes but it feels especially inappropriate when acknowledging this.

Social media has dynamics that reinforce these uncharacteristic DID representations. It rewards people who create attention-grabbing content for likes & follows, regardless if the content is true. That's why you can't know if someone is faking just because of their uncharacteristic portrayal, because it's possible that social media is influencing them to express themselves in different ways. But, it's also possible that these dynamics are still contributing to an increase of inaccurate self-diagnosis.

He brings up someone called the ace system (?) who has generated millions of views. I have NO IDEA how to describe the TikTok he just played. It was like…snippets of different system members talking about their day? They talked about panic attacks and stuff. They also switched so much in just one day. Seems exhausting.

Robinson does say "it's possible that some social media influencers like the ace system(?) may be malingering or have factitious disorders" which I personally don't see as him doubting that person in particular. He's not saying THIS PERSON IS MALINGERING, he's just saying some people might be malingering but we really wouldn't know as onlookers.

Describing what malingering & factitious disorders are now.

Malingering: intentional reporting of symptoms for some external gain like money

Factitious: intentional reporting of symptoms, but not just for som external gain

For illustration of external gain (which isn't inherently malingering), he's showing the ace system's (?) merchandise website. Then a cameo account where you can book a personalized video from the system. Another TikTok system he showed earlier makes a reappearance, this time to show that they are selling hats that their system made.

Imitative DID is for people who do not actually have DID but genuinely believe that they do. They may benefit from psychological or social gain, which makes social media platforms the ideal platform for them to thrive. Claiming they have DID might provide them a sense of connection/community. They may struggle with their identity such as who they are in the world, what community they belong in, who they'll be in the future, etc. Robinson says that "the DID narrative helps these people explain frequent confusion about who they really are."

Dr. Robinson says that endogenic systems (which he also just calls plurality/multiplicity) can sometimes be an example of Imitated DID. He mentions Astraeasweb from the 90s claiming nonpathological multiplicity/plurality as an identity. He plays a new TikTok of someone telling people to look up The Plural Association and "welcome to the plural community" and tips on how to start system communication.

He says that people with DID don't choose this or wish for this. The symptoms are developed out of need for survival.

Endogenic plurality refers to any development of plurality that does not have a trauma origin. They promote their plurality as a healthy way of their mind working; an identity. Some of them don't identify as having DID, but Dr. Robinson says that many do (I personally think it's the opposite but *shrugs* he might be lumping all cases of imitative DID in there).

He says that more research needs to be done to see if endogenics are genuine DID, imitated DID, or something else entirely.

Dramatized, obvious switching is actually very rare in DID. Yet, it's very common in online videos. He shows a TikTok of someone sitting in a car who is "switching." They stare into space, close their eyes slowly, drop their head down for a while, then they lift their head up and smile. He shows another TikTok of someone who also drops their head down (it says "no one in the body"?) and after a long time, they lift their head up, start swearing(????), and then cheekily take their name tag off while staring at the camera.

Robinson says that in both of these examples we see an uncharacteristic awareness of the process of dissociation, because these individuals could actually plan for and videotape what was going to happen. He says the switches in genuine DID are subtle and often unnoticed by outside observers.

In imitative DID there is also an emphasis on elaborated parts. They lack the confusion & distress/conflict with these parts which is characteristic of DID. He shows a TikTok of someone showing Picrews of their parts. Then he shows another TikTok with someone playing guess-who trying to figure out who is fronting. So literally playing a game. "A game-like way of presenting symptoms that would be very distressing in genuine DID," Robinson says about that video.

There was a recent case study that interviewed people who were not given the diagnosis of DID and found that they were angry + relying on the diagnosis for connection & attention.

Once again, he says it's difficult to distinguish whether social media influencers are genuine, malingered, imitative, or something else. It's not something even professionals can distinguish as onlookers. We don't know anything about the people in the video examples except for what they put out online.

To conclude the lecture, Dr. Robinson says that accurate online information & professional education is MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER given the increase of DID awareness. Wrong info & poor representations delegitimizes DID and causes harm. We don't want it to undermine all of the progress in research in the recent years.

[omgthatdress]

Would it be alright to ask your sources on the corset mentions of training waists? I was trying to fact check for myself because due diligence, but all I'm finding are a bunch of either unrelated things, very old things (not first source old, i mean like, 80s bad research old) and unrelated SEO spam on costume knock off sites. I tried to look on the normal academic searches I do, and found a lot of articles debunking tight lace and waist training "myths" but non confirming them. I'm not sure if I'm just using the wrong keywords or looking in different areas, so I figured I'd just politely ask instead. I apologize if this is inconvenient, I'll keep looking in the meanwhile. Though I do remember reading recently in a historical recreations book that the reason so many extent garments are so small or thin waisted, is because those were often the gowns/pieces that were put away as a woman aged, or were too small to pass down to be worn and were instead given as family heirlooms, hence why most museums have pieces with so little wear and tear overall, and the ones that were worn often are normally more tattered or fragmented when found. It makes sense to me in that specific example itself, but as with most research into period clothing, finding first hand accounts of the hows and whys as to what was worn and by who or how, is next to impossible. x-x

uuuuuh it mooostly comes from years of looking at extant garments and just knowing shit. idk where I could really give you some primary documents related to it, other than I remember Laura complaining about wearing a tight corset in some of the Little House on the Prairie books.

Corset People are a particular sub-set of the online fashion history scene and they can honestly sometimes be kind of annoying? Like yes it's true that there's a shitload of myths about corsets out there, that modern period costume makers make shitty and inaccurate uncomfortable corsets that torture the actresses who wear them, and that for the most part, a well-fitted and decently-made corset will actually not only be very comfortable but actually help people with chronic pain, but to insist that no woman ever complained about her corset is equally inaccurate.

They weren't universally comfortable. In the period when tight-lacing was popular (1850-1914), the purpose of tight-lacing absolutely WAS about creating a desired body shape and it's kind of ridiculous to insist that thinness and achieving a tiny waist wasn't a part of it. They might not have been restricting your breathing and cutting your liver in two, but a tight-lace corset would have restricted your movement.

Again, it's only a small subset of women who wore tight-lace corsets, and only during a certain period in corset history, and it was very much related to her class and how much she was willing to suffer for beauty. Corsets are complicated and understanding them and their history requires a lot of nuance that some people just don't have.

[many-but-one]

hey just to let you guys know the term 'femboy' is an extremely derog term (i think some consider it a slur as well) for transfeminine folk. not upset, just informing you guys!

I mean. I have sometimes heard femboy used in the context of transfemme who don’t pass well, but mainly said by cis/cishet folk who ain’t part of the LGBTQ community. Femboy has been used by gay men or men who dress feminine who are not transgender for a very long time. Considering Dori was not referring to another trans woman or another person who did not consent to the term (she was using it towards herself because she used to consider herself a man who dressed feminine—a femboy—before she fused with a bunch of girls) I fail to see how that would be considered a terrible thing to say.

It’s like me calling myself a bulldyke/dyke, a faggot, or a tranny. I am all those things and I am well within my rights to call myself terms that used to be slurs used against us as much as I want. Reclaiming shitty things said against us has kinda been a big part of queer culture and lesbian/transgender history. No offense anon, as I know you were trying to give a heads up in good faith, this is hella chronically online behavior. Go hang out with some queer people at a bar and you’ll hear all kinds of words like that. Queer culture is by nature not “politically correct” and especially since this was aimed at ourselves and not calling anyone else the term without their consent, I’m gonna let Dori use whatever terms make her feel most comfortable in her skin.

For the record, femboy started as a slur around the 80s-90s and seemed to be used in conjunction with the term sissyboy, though the term femboy itself has existed for much longer. Femboys or men who use feminine expression have been around for a very long time—centuries, even, and in the mid-19th century the term femboy was coined to describe men who dressed femininely. Obviously derived from the word “feminine” and “boy.” The term gained traction as a reclaimed term (as the term was used to describe men as “incomplete men” who were not masculine enough to be “real men”) in the 70s and 80s with the rise of punk culture, and queer activists started reclaiming it to empower GNC individuals. I’ve personally rarely ever seen it as a derogatory term toward transfemme folks and our transfemme partner agrees that she’s hardly ever seen anything like that. And if it is a derogatory term toward transfemme folks, it was clearly not used in that way when Dori referred to herself as a femboy.

Don’t police the way we talk unless it truly brings actual harm to another person. We ain’t calling anyone else a femboy, Dori was calling herself that.

-Elektra🦂 (she/her) + K (she/he) + K (he/him)

[johannestevans]

The Precarity of Subscription-Based Income

We’re basically busking online. No wonder we have anxiety about it.

This piece is also on Medium.

So let’s start out by saying that in the scheme of things, I am doing okay. I am not starving, I am not at risk of losing my home, and most months I can afford all the medications and medical care I am prescribed without difficulty.

This is a piece intended for online artists and other creators to work through the emotions of this kind of precarity and insecurity — it’s not intended to make any of my fans or my regular readers feel guilty for not giving me more money, or to guilt people into giving me money when they do not have it to give.

In fact, that mutual — if not near universal! — feeling of financial anxiety is precisely what this piece is about.

I have one novel out, for which I do earn some royalties, but the vast majority of my earnings come from Medium and Patreon. All of my streams of income together — book royalties, Medium, Patreon, and scattered bits and pieces here and there — I earn about $1400-$1500 USD a month most months, sometimes less.

Previously I earned less on Patreon but I was earning more royalties on books then, but as time goes on you tend to reach a plateau on book sales as you reach the organic audience for that book — the only way I’ll get a bigger boost to sales now is if I get very lucky with a review on a big publication or, (this will likely come sooner), I finish up another novel.

Some months I earn more, because I earn a bunch of tips, or there was a big boost of sales to one of my books. Most months, that does not happen, especially now that Twitter has died off as a platform — when I did TweetFics that got big, I was often able to boost my tip jar, but now that Twitter’s lost a lot of its traction, that’s no longer a possibility.

It’s not terrible money. It’s actually more reliable as income than when I worked hospitality as a porter, where between my own chronic illness and injury, and hotels loving a bit of casual “accidental” wage theft, I’d often end up with less pay than I was expecting.

What I make is enough for me to live on, for the most part, and I know I’m very lucky to make that much.

I make ~€1300/a month ($1400 USD a month. About $350 a week), rent is €460 — after rent, I have about €210 to live on per week.

My asthma inhalers cost about €80. My testosterone, which I get every 12 weeks, costs about €80. Normally as per the Irish drugs payment scheme, I can get them at the same time and pay €80 for everything. It costs €35 — €50 to go to the doctor and get my testosterone administered, depending on if I’m also getting bloods done at the same time.

My teeth were majorly fucked up, and for a while the cost of my dental care was fucking destroying me, especially when I had to get surgery to remove some teeth, but thankfully I’m mostly on top of that now. I am dreading, on the other hand, having to start a different med to treat my arthritis or otherwise becoming injured or further unwell — I should be in physiotherapy, but the cost is prohibitive; my counsellor takes a voluntary contribution because I see him through a charity for rape survivors, and thank God, because regular private therapy is pretty expensive.

The cost of groceries in Ireland is… high.

To be honest, the cost of most things in Ireland is high, which is part of the reason I want to move back to the UK — with that said, because of the Artists’ Exemption for artists in Ireland, my income goes a bit further it isn’t taxed, I only my universal contribution. In the UK there’s no similar scheme, and the orchestrated fuel “crisis” where energy companies (and the politicians they went to school with) are hiking prices as high as possible to make record profits is even more hard-hitting than in Ireland.

I would love to say that that the tax exemption exists solely because Ireland is a wonderful place for artists, and because Ireland does so much to encourage its artists to create, to have time to create, to have money to create. Ireland is not perfect, but it absolutely does do that, it does try, and it does better than a lot of places. Ireland has a lot of initiatives in place for artists and I love and appreciate that so much!

But also, artists are often fucking impoverished, and very few of them make enough money to live on. Most writers in Ireland make a few hundred euro a year, let alone enough money to survive on.

I do. For the most part, I do make enough money to live on, and not just survive, but do okay. Yes, I panic about money every other week, no, I don’t put money away in savings or a pension scheme or health insurance because I simply don’t have the money, but mostly, I do okay.

And this is with writing being my sole income, without working another job at the same time. A lot of people are doing this sort of subscription-based work whilst being in full-time or part-time employment at the same time — and a lot of people are like me, who just physically can’t really do that, even though it would lead to mildly more economic stability.

I say mildly more because, let’s face it, wages are pretty low, not remotely in line with the cost of living, many hours are demanded from workers — often unpredictably — and bosses know that workers do not have much other option than taking their worst treatment.

Every time someone unsubscribes on Patreon or Medium, I notice, and I panic a little bit — and the thing is, the difference is only going to be, what, $2 or $3 a month? That’s an incredibly small amount. Yes, some people do subscribe on Patreon for larger amounts (for which I’m very grateful), but most people really can’t afford that much because they are also experiencing the weight of a cost of living crisis, the prohibitive cost of being chronically ill during a worldwide pandemic, the impact of not just wage stagnation but casual workers’ abuses, etc.

The amount people spend to subscribe to my body of work is equivalent to a few coins out of their pocket, and I’m constantly aware that many people can’t even afford that at times, which is part of why I have so much free fiction available and why I never guilt anybody for “pirating” my work.

But when people do unsubscribe and I get that moment of panic, I feel guilty for it — Hell, I feel incredibly guilty for wanting to make more money and working to make more money, because I know that every additional few dollars a month from someone on my subscription services is a real person who’s putting money my way.

And that feeling? That shame and guilt for wanting to make more money, because I want to make enough money to be comfortable and to be secure? That comes from knowing how many other people are just like me or are doing worse, and don’t even have the precarious security of income that I have.

So many of my friends gain their incomes from Patreon, Medium, or Substack, from regular tips on sites like Ko-Fi, or from sites like OnlyFans and JustForFans, etc.

We either earn money per item or piece of material (for me that would be book sales, but for others it might be sales of pictures or videos, pieces of art, online resources, etc), or we earn tips here and there on free content (which are inherently unpredictable, much like tips IRL for buskers and entertainers), or we have people who subscribe monthly or annually for a a regular amount.

As a “content creator”, regardless of what that content is, there is constant fear and anxiety.

Is this content appealing to a wide enough audience? Should I be appealing to a wide audience, or should I aim for a specific niche audience?

A wider audience means more people to market to who might give you money, but a niche audience means that while the audience pool itself is smaller, that audience is going to be more inclined to pay you, because they are starved for content otherwise.

I’m gay, trans, and disabled, and much of my work centres around gay, trans, disabled men — and much of my audience is of similar men or other queer and disabled people. Yes, it’s a smaller niche than the broader straight audience, and we’re far less likely to have as much money as straight abled people, but because there’s barely any work created with us in mind, people are more motivated to shell out for the content they crave.

“Content,” because while I’m an artist and an author and a creator, it’s not just about my actual fic, but also about “content” such as Tweets and asks and advice and funny posts and selfies, all of which are nebulously shoved into the same label of “content” for the social media mill, to be “consumed”.

I resent this language, naturally, because for the most part I don’t think a lot of my social media stuff is considerable enough to be content I would charge for, but also because it flattens all manner of art and material and acts of creation into one marketable word, and while it’s partly done because of the endless tread of capitalist nonsense, it’s also done because capitalism demands artists — and art — be defanged and made marketable.

But another piece of language that I really don’t like and avoid using myself is “donations”. I have a tip jar, and I’m grateful when people tip me, but they are tipping me because they enjoy some aspect of the entertainment work I do, whether that’s my Tweets or Tumblr posts, my movie reviews or commentary, my fiction, my selfies, whatever.

It’s not a donation. It’s not charity. There’s nothing wrong with accepting or needing charity, but it would bother me to solicit charity, because I don’t believe I am sufficiently deserving of it, and if someone’s giving money out of charity, I’d rather they give it to someone who needs it more than I do.

Some cishet people will absolutely feel guilty after reading some posts and be like, “oh, I’m gonna give some money to this trans guy on the internet to assuage my guilt about not doing enough to protect or care for trans people in my actual community,” and that’s annoying, but it’s not surprising — but cishet people’s guilt isn’t something that I really want to play on, because there’s other people who could and should benefit from it far more than I would.

But to other trans and disabled people, I’m absolutely not going to present myself as being on the brink of poverty, because I’m not! God knows there are enough grifters online who present a lot of their solicitations for money as charitable giving, either for themselves or others, in order to spin a profit — and more importantly, there are a lot more people who fucking need to rely on charity and/or reparations from the guilt-ridden who can’t produce the sort of work that I can on the scale that I do.

Which, this year I’ve been publishing a piece every week or so — a piece for me might be an erotic short or other short story, an essay or significant blog post, a serial chapter, etc.

I feel incredibly guilty when I struggle to put out a finished piece a week — ridiculous, given that that’s a lot for one person to put out per week, and is a lot more than many creators manage, but also?

In my back catalogue of published short stories and essays, there’s over 200 completed pieces, most of which are thousands of words long apiece, some being short novellas that are 20k+ long, all featuring a variety of different characters, tones, genres.

This isn’t even mentioning my serial fiction, where my serials together comprise of hundreds of thousands of words of fiction across a few genres and tones.

What do I have to feel guilty for? Why should I feel so much shame for not delivering “enough” to my audience, when I do deliver so much?

Because there’s a constant fear that if I don’t do enough (if I don’t do more than enough), that everyone will unsubscribe and either go to different creators or go to new people entirely. Because it feels like all my success as a creator is based on my personal performance and my goodness as a human being — because when we talk about being a “content creator”, a large part of the “content” being sold is oneself.

You’re not just selling your work: you have to sell your identity.

I have to sell that I’m gay and trans and disabled; I have to sell that I’m sexy and funny and confident; I have to sell that I’m witty and biting, but not too flawed in a way that will make people hate me and change their minds about financially supporting me. There are absolutely people who engage with my work — either initially or over time — because they find me personally sexy, which is fine, I am sexy!

But that’s a lot of pressure, and there’s not really a choice to opt out of that pressure to sell one’s self because of the constant grind of social media, the desperate need to stay relevant, and also to cultivate some form of parasocial loyalty from one’s fans.

So when someone unsubscribes on Patreon, there are so many initial fears — Did I do something wrong? Did I not post enough? Did I post too much of the wrong thing? When I said this, was it read as offensive or cruel? Was it taken out of context? Are people talking about me and deciding together that I’m not worth the money anymore? Do people hate me personally? Was I too gay or too trans or too disabled? Was I too horny, or not horny enough?

I don’t have OCD, but all of the above can really easily feed into OCD spiralling, and for many creator friends of mine who do have OCD and grapple with these sort of moralising self-analytical intrusive thoughts, it’s constant and really difficult not to think about.

And the thing is, those are all the wrong questions to ask.

People might well hate me or not think I’m worth the money, or I might be posting the wrong content at the moment, or they might have outgrown me or grown bored of my work, or they might find me dickish and annoying — that’s none of my business. None of those people are my friends, and they don’t owe me an explanation or an answer to any of those anxieties.

They were paying me money in exchange for being entertained by me, and if for some reason they stopped being entertained by me, then it’s right that they should stop paying and go do something else with their money!

But the more likely explanations for people unsubscribing are ones like this, because many people have limited cash to spend:

Recently I’ve been having to work a lot more hours and I’m not reading as much fiction as I did.

Recently I’m sick and tired and struggle to concentrate on fiction.

I’m subscribed to a bunch of creators on Patreon and Johannes’ work is the one I have the least time for/motivation for, so if I’m going to cut one out, it will be him.

I hate reading fiction on Patreon or I otherwise dislike the platform and so I’m just unsubscribing from all the creators on there.

I used to read a lot of this guy’s TweetFic because it was so easy to read, but his other fiction is harder for me to get into, and I can’t justify the cost for work I’m not engaging with.

I’ve read through all of this guy’s back catalogue quite quickly and I’m going to unsubscribe and come back to his work in a year or two when he puts out more work.

For a while he was writing fic about specific characters or in a specific genre that I enjoy, but he’s currently focusing on other things. I will return when he does my favourite things again.

Johannes is posting too much and I’m finding it overwhelming and it’s making me guilty that I don’t have time to keep up, so I’m going to unsubscribe and come back when I have more time.

I’m unsubscribing from Patreon so that I can subscribe on Medium instead.

Or many other reasons.

In short, every single person who is subscribed to me and my work on one of these platforms is a person with their own vastly complicated life and potential reasons for subscribing and unsubscribing. While I’m sure a handful of them might well be unsubscribing with the intention of punishing me or “voting with their feet” to go elsewhere, for a lot more, I’m sure it’s not really a thought.

It will be as simple as “I am spending money on this. Am I using my subscription and engaging (and enjoying engaging with) what the subscription is for? No? Then I will unsubscribe,” which all of us do all the time, and is quite natural!

This will be the case for people who subscribe to me for fiction, but also who subscribe to any other creators for art, for video essays or other videos, for essays and media analysis, for critical commentary, for pornography and erotica, for tutorials, for all manner of creators who earn money from individual subscribers.

How do we cope with that?

How do we remember that, when everywhere we go we’re blasted in the face with the principles of Hustle Culture and Grind Culture and whatever other awful euphemisms that are pushed at us? Where your identity is the work you create and the value you have, and whenever you’re not working, you must feel shame for being alive?

Once I have the trick of it, I’ll be sure to share it around. In the meantime, I do think that transparency and thinking out loud about the reality of the mental toll can help a bit.

If you can’t economically support your favourite creators, do remember that just sharing their work with others or engaging with it — via review or recommendation or just commenting and so on — also really helps them because that engagement boosts their reach to others through you, but also like…

I don’t think you should ever feel guilty if, for any reason, you can’t do that either. So many feelings of guilt or shame are already preyed upon by commercial forces for the purposes of gaining access to some of your money, and on social media, your attention and your emotion are reached for in the same way, and it just sucks.

In an ideal world, things wouldn’t be the way they are — in the world we live in, my goals are to make more money by reaching a broader audience and delivering a broader variety of work to click with that audience, and doing my best to avoid making anyone feel guilty in the meantime.

That’s the crux of it, I think — as a creator, I feel a lot of those horrible feelings of guilt and shame and anxiety because of the way our economy and my financial precarity exist, and what I don’t want to do is pass on those horrible feelings to fans so that they’ll give me money. Rich people use that cycle of emotion to accumulate as much wealth as possible — normal people just do it to fucking survive, and if I can survive without contributing to it, that’s what I’ll do.

[trickstarbrave]

i hate when ppl dont understand how intertwined all the fucked up systems of capitalism are. they present it as "take away [x] and things will work better!" when that damn well will not fix it. or they dont even realize the problem is actually capitalism not some other thing they have been fixated on

like. veganism argument: "we subsidize grains to feed livestock. if we stopped feeding livestock, we would have more food for everyone! the problem is livestock are eating too much of grains we could be eating"

a lot of the corn they are eating are byproducts of the ethanol industry. we are not in fact just growing huge fields of grains and refusing to eat them bc we can feed cows it instead. that would be way too costly. "subsidies" wouldn't cover it. at no point was the corn being grown for human consumption. most of the corn in the US is grown for biofuel. without livestock, we would not have MORE food to eat, we'd have a lot of leftover slop we have to toss out to slowly degrade in landfills.

its not the most healthy option to pump them full of byproducts. they should be allowed to forage and walk. but the problem is much more complex than than just "get rid of the cows to make more food for people!!" the cows eating the byproducts is whats making more food for people. not less. you can't just look at "grain products" and decide all of those were fit for human consumption. most of the stuff we feed farm animals is NOT fit for human consumption. for better or for worse.

and this is only one problem. some are relatively easy solutions (once all of the, yknow, capitalist incentive is removed) like how we have more houses than homeless people. just give people houses. except we should also look at: where are these houses being built, are they being built for quality and to last? because the answer is: they are built mostly in suburbs for cheap with lazy building standards and poor quality materials. we are tearing down homes with better bones and foundations for cheap, paper thin wood, new construction houses when many of them can be saved. these are homes far away from doctors and jobs that you actually need a car to get around to important places, so many people who don't have reliable transportation will still have many problems once settled in. to create more sustainable, walk-able communities and to have better public transportation we are still gonna need to tear a bunch of these down and rebuild communities, which is going to be a daunting task too.

food insecurity: okay we'll just give people food! except they might not have reliable ways to cook that food either. a lot of people who are food insecure grew up food insecure. they grew up in food deserts where microwave self stable meals were the norm. they might not have pots and pans or know how to find a recipe or make one themselves. many are chronically ill or disabled and don't have a lot of time and energy to cook. many people still think its better to give a food bank 10 cans of green beans that you forgot about and don't plan to use in donations rather than just giving the food bank 30 bucks.

idk. i dont really have an answer i suppose. i just wanted to complain about how messy and complicated these problems are. and i think if you're a serious activist you are going to need better, long term plans and big picture perspectives. these problems can seem incredibly easy to tackle on the surface to lots of online activists but are very complex issues to actually dismantle and combat. we can't just keep complaining and hope society collapses so we can rebuild from scratch. there is no after the revolution when everything will be good and perfect. no after the end of the world to pick ourselves up and make a utopia from the ashes. we gotta figure out the problem and start untangling it and deal with the first steps NOW. start with realistic goals. contacting local government. creating bettering, temporary solutions that are better than what we have now. disrupt the system bit by bit. get other ppl in on it. the world we wanna live in will not come to us overnight. we gotta build it brick by brick.

capitalism counts on it being too daunting of a task. they count on ppl just complaining and wishing it was better to sell them the solution without any real change. but real change has to come from small shit first. maybe start a community garden if you want a more sustainable community. make your own garden if you have the ability. collect rain water (YES ITS LEGAL IN ALL 50 STATES just heavily regulated in some. dont tell me its illegal in the US). create alternatives for companies you boycott. tell your local representative you want public transport and ask how to get it and rally your community for it enough that they have to bother ppl higher than them and actively have to start considering it. do ride shares. help out food banks with real stuff they ask for. look around your community for small problems you can address and find solutions.

[klarabohringer]

jungleprowler headcanons by yours truly

because nobody fucking posts about these two

Skye wears sweatpants to bed and wakes up to them all bunched up at her knees which makes Fade laugh in the morning, Skye absolutely fucking HATES IT

Their 'song' is Somethin' Stupid by Frank and Nancy Sinatra

Like many of Cypher's children's partners (Killjoy and Raze), Skye was given a quiz about her intentions with his child (aka Fade)

Skye tries her absolute hardest to bring Fade out on runs and hikes knowing she will say no

Adding on, Skye actually dragged Fade out into the wilderness and Fade, a chronically online person, fizzled into fucking dust at the sunlight

Fade reads Skye to sleep

Fade casually starts playing loud music that is absolutely horrid to Skye's ears but tolerates it

Skye's responses to Fade's jokes are just 'your mom'

Fade cooks when she's bored so Skye gets an unlimited supply of grilled cheese

Phoenix has tried stealing one and Fade, with a hot spatula, burned him while hitting his hand and man's didn't even flinch

Skye tries staying up with Fade to keep her company, unfortunately the 5 Hour Energy bottles did not do Skye justice and in fact made her want to bounce across the walls

Fade steals Skye's clothes when she's not looking

Fade is a comic nerd and only Skye knows

Skye sends her lovey paragraphs when she goes places without her and Fade just responds with "lol"

Fade has the most best home made remedies but BY GOD they taste fucking awful and Skye doesn't have the heart to tell her

Skye talks in her sleep and everytime Fade is actually about to fall asleep she hears Skye mumble something in her sleep and it kicks in like a fight or flight response

Skye is all about PDA and show off but Fade pretends to hate her, to the point Sage has told them to break up

Skye steals Cypher's tea for Fade to calm the fuck down because although coffee work's wonders, caffeine does cause anxiety

Fade loves rainy days and sits next to a window to hear it, Skye takes this chance to be cringe as hell and run out into the rain and hold up her phone with a random song playing staring at Fade.

Fade played Stray in the Valorant living room as Skye and Cypher watched. Cypher has a video of her breakdown after finishing it. (Taken from another poster)

They build legos together and actually have little lego selves, they made their dream house

Fade's the jealous type and gives everyone the side eye when they get too close to Skye

When Fade does sleep, she is found in random places of the Protocol with Skye's blanket on her, queue Sage walking into the kitchen bar area to Fade in the corner next to the fridge taking a snooze