#and in case I haven't made it clear

[gemgirl28]

How do you make friends in zutara fandom? It’s been really hard for me because I seem to find myself in bigger discords where it feels like everyone is in a clique and it’s hard to connect, and they talk so badly about people they don’t like to the point I’m afraid to say anything because I don’t want them to do that to me too. I don’t know if it’s gotten worse lately or if I’m just looking in the wrong place

Hello anon! First off I'm sorry you've struggled to connect with other people in the fandom. It definitely can be difficult when we are all interacting with each other online, but I hope you do make some genuine connections 🫂

I will say, making fandom friends in 2023 feels VERY different from 2020/2021 when I first got into fandom, and that is very much due to shutdown vs things opening back up. When I started engaging with the zutara fandom in August/September 2020 I was working full time from home doing a job that was often dead (read: I was online during working hours) and a part time job on the weekends that was soooo slow it allowed the brainrot to really sink in as I daydreamed about zk while working. Now I work in office a minimum of 3 days a week and while we are in our slower season, we still have a ton of work to do to prep for our busy season.

And that's just me! I know people who are engaging in other fandoms, have also had work ramp back up, have had family stuff that pulls them offline, etc. It's a different space than it was when I was first making connections with people (and I would be curious to see if anyone who was already online pre-Covid has written a dissertation about the waves of online engagement due to shutdown).

Also, I do struggle to make connections in larger servers, mostly because I get overwhelmed at the nonstop activity and end up muting them. I do think they are great places to keep up with fandom activity, like events, fanart, fanfics, etc, but for initially making friends I find it tough.

So all that to say, here is my personal method for making fandom friends (results may vary):

Engage with the same person over and over. Like their posts, comment on them, reblog with commentary/additional tags, just over and over engage with them.

They slowly start to engage back (liking your posts, responding to comments, reblogging your reblogs, etc.).

Slide into their dms and ask them how they are doing, then tell them what about them made you slide into their dms (I legit messaged someone that their vibes seemed nice and it worked).

Talk about fandom stuff but also about your interests outside of fandom (IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: DON'T SHARE IDENTIFYING INFO. I'm talking about things like fave foods and music, not where you live or your mother's maiden name).

Be friends forever.

Now that I'm reading that back it sort of reads like instructions for getting to know someone on a dating app. But also, if you aren't trying to fall a little in love with all your mutuals, what's the point?

tl;dr: It can be tricky making friends now that real life has ramped back up, but if you give it a little time and effort, you can make some great connections in fandom.

[iguessitsjustme]

For someone who doesn't want anyone's pity, Day sure lets everyone else do all of the emotional labor for him

[moon-jellie]

That old man wants to fuck that other old man so badly it's unbelievable

[carcarrot]

Russell Mael during the No. 1 In Heaven night of Sparks' 21x21 shows, 2008

[susansontag]

I’m still kind of confused about what to do about my brother... I have two competing impulses. one is just to forgive him and pretend it didn’t happen in the hopes he will keep his word and it will never happen again, but then there’s that inkling of what if it does happen again though? I’d never seen him like that before so who’s to say. and it wasn’t even just the physical aspect, like the way he was shouting at me, calling me pathetic etc, over absolutely nothing, was so unacceptable lol. and then the first impulse is like, he was just angry and you’re taking it too seriously. which maybe I am. but I was genuinely afraid and he was behaving so irrationally, like I can’t stress enough it had all been fine and he’d just started accusing me of stuff in the weirdest way, then began screaming at me. it went 0-100 just like that. and then I’m like, well isn’t this what siblings do? he punched me in the face when we were younger lol. but we’re both adults now, so him lording it over me like that feels different

[purble-gaymer]

oops my hand slipped

[loumands]

Currently experiencing distress after realizing some people not watching the show are apparently under the impression that IWTV is 'trashy fun and bad'. AMC will pay for their marketing crimes and we the fans need to apparently change our promo strategies

[pippastrelle]

Christ that moment when Tumblr recommends you the most antithetical post "Based on your likes!" and you're scrambling to find which asshole you unknowingly reblogged.

[thats-a-lot-of-cortisol]

There's been a post going around about the U.S. trying to get Switzerland to waive the Geneva Convention in favor of Israel. I've reblogged it myself.

This information is not quite accurate.

This HuffPost article describes the situation based on internal documents they saw; it's not an outright call to waive it, but they are guidelines (a "démarche", or "diplomatic initiative") for U.S. diplomats on how to pressure Switzerland into not hosting a conference, which Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, and the Human Rights Watch called for in a joint statement in late November 2023. Not saying that Israel should be immune from scrutiny by a conference, per say, just that it should be...ignored. Just as bad, in my opinion, and done in a much sneakier way (which we need to pay attention to; we all know how much politicians love twisting words).

This is not the first time the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" have been the topic of conferences, according to the HuffPost article. They linked to the International Review of the Red Cross about the 2014 conference, which references the 1991 and 2001 meetings.

[torterragarden]

4 more days let's goooo we got this

[indexcard]

one thing i will say is that when i was a child on the internet my demographic had pretty extraordinary powers of lying and/or i just moved in circles where everyone used the same memespeak so none of us really stood out, you would find out someone who talked exactly like you was 30 and just be like "oh okay," but these days it seems like kids on the internet will make their age clear and my response will be like yeah man i can tell

[wonderloste]

i have it written on like 5 different places across my blog very blatantly that i don't want pr-oshippers or ppl who support pr-oshippers in my blog space so can they pls stop invading it challenge

[alainas-sims]

Héctor’s Journal

Mr. Sullivan says if us boys really push ourselves, we can go to university, but come to think of it I’m not sure I want to. Not that my family has the money to anyway. I don’t think I’m smart enough and I don’t yet know what I want to be when I grow older. And I don’t have the patience to sit at a desk and study for another four years after high school! But I heard from Akira today that he is trying to get into Oxford University all the way in England! I would miss him terribly. Plus, my little cousin Pedro also started at our high school and I’m expected to be a good role model for him, even though his big sister’s smarter than me anyway.

I sat down and had a talk with my Papa and Uncle John, my biological father. John explained why he left for so long to work on the dam after my mother died, and I understood the sacrifices that he had to make. And Papa narrated his exploits as one of the town’s top crime bosses from his early bootlegging days during the prohibition. The stress of the Great Depression has eased a bit and it’s now easier for folks to find work without having to resort to crime like Papa did or having to move away like John did. But what will I be when I grow up?

[k1rishiki]

every once in a while i find myself daydreaming about what it'll be like when i'm a successful and widely celebrated illustrator/author/game dev/whatever the fuck it is this week. which is a completely normal thing to do btw. the thing is though, at the point in time the daydream is at, i've always already produced every miscellaneous project which is bouncing around in my head, so now i need something new for daydream me to be working on/promoting. slightly less normal thing to do but alright. the thing about daydream me is that the fame has gotten to his head, everything he touches is looked upon as gold, so the new games/whatever he's putting out are basically what i would put out if i was too conceited to know what kill your darlings means, and are a parody of what i would come up with. that's the part where this thought exercise (read: indulgent fantasy) takes a turn into insane person territory. the problem with this is that a decent percent of the time i get so attached to daydream me's conceited little projects that i miss the point where they're meant to be a literal parody of how my mind works and they become actual serious things i want to make some day.

[makerofmadness]

milk just followed yam around like “hey you’re my brother now” and yam just has to deal with it