#anyway. bites tongue on the specifics but rants vaguely.

[marklikely]

i wonder if this site has actually reached critical levels of being annoying lately or if i just haven't been on as much as i used to (especially earlier this year when i left entirely) that now ive snapped out of the feedback loop and can fully see how annoying tumblr culture actually is.

[dareistodo]

Chilly and winksy - winksys dreams come true when madders has to go home over international break

It’s not that Harry hates Madders, because he really doesn’t. He doesn’t hate anyone - apart from the odd Arsenal fan who’s barbed insults about Spurs wriggle under his skin more than they should - so he definitely doesn’t hate Madders.

He actually quite likes him. He’s loud and brash and Harry likes that in people, especially when their loudness and brashness is funny too, and Madders can make Harry laugh for hours. He’s like every other boy Harry’s friends with, a spin-off of the same brand Harry is. He likes Madders. They get on fine.

It’s just that Madders, being loud and brash, demands a lot of attention. Specifically that of Ben. And that’s fine too, because they’re best friends and Harry knows and respects that and he’d never worm his way into it, just like he wouldn’t with Marcus and Jesse or Dele and Eric, but international break, when Gareth actually deigns to call him up, is the only opportunity he gets to see Ben and he wouldn’t mind having some of that time concentrated just on them. Him and Ben.

He thinks about it wistfully as he watches Ben across the players lounge when they’re all crowded in upon arrival, buzzing off each other with beams and firm handshakes before reality sets in and they argue over who took the last fried egg at breakfast and whether that tackle was really a pen and, actually, we should’ve beaten you, why are you screaming at me for saying that?

It’s the equilibrium that makes Harry smiley and happy, hovering around Danny even though Danny glares at him sternly for it from the very corner of his eye whenever they’re left alone just the two of them again. Harry just smiles sheepishly and shrugs and Danny sighs but stays where he is, shielding Harry, despite being even shorter.

Madders is ruffling Ben’s hair which is soft and wavy and thick, falling into his eyes with the highlights Harry spent 30 minutes taking the piss out of with increasingly creative insults and that he still doesn’t really like. He doesn’t mind that, though, because he still wants to play with the little strands that curl on his forehead when he pushes it back even if he doesn’t like the colour that much.

*

Ben grins at him, skin all glowy from the breakfast buffet hot plates and Harry has to bite his tongue and call himself some choice names in his head for being so ridiculous. He tears his next piece of toast off so aggressively he splits the piece in half and it thuds to his plate in a little shower of black crumbs because he didn’t realise the toaster here was so powerful. Ben slides into the seats opposite him and puts his sliders over Harry’s trainered toes and slides a piece of perfectly cooked toast onto his plate with a grin.

“Shocking culinary skills, mate.” Ben scoffs, waving a forkful of cooked tomato in his direction and Harry feels his cheeks pink as he laughs.

“Even I can cook better than that!”

Ben chuckles and immediately turns to Madders to berate him, shoving and prodding him with firm fingertips all over his arms and chest and Harry sighs, slumping down into his seat as Ben’s feet leave his under the table and Madders sits down next to Ben with a cursory smile shot in his direction.

*

“The only way you can survive is if one of us nets a free kick. You picking me or Winksy?”

Harry perks up at his name, essentially galloping the short distance from Kane’s shoulder to Ben’s side. Barkley is glancing between them, sizing them up, face set solemnly. Harry starts giggling as his deliberation drags on and Ben shushes him playfully, pinching his hip. Harry instinctively pushes into his side and now they’re pressed together hipbone to hipbone.

“Chilwell.” Barkley declares, looking over his shoulder for support and then Sterling is agreeing, and then Sancho and Harry’s trying to smooth out his scowl.

“Hey.” Ben teases him, pinching him again, the soft skin stretching across his waist now. “First to get it wins. Prove ‘em wrong.”

Harry hasn’t scored a free kick in his life. Maybe he would’ve done, if people had asked him to more, but he’s Harry Winks and he has no reason to be in front of goal, so no one’s ever bothered to ask him to be. Sure, he can get on the end of a cross when the cogs of his brain tell him to run at the right time but his accuracy is shocking. He can barely hit the dartboard playing darts.

But Ben is ruffling his hair, so softly he’s really just stroking through it gently, and Harry sighs all warm and content and nods. He vaguely hears everyone cheer but it’s background white noise to the buzzing that’s Ben teasing him, praising him, wishing him luck all in the same short breaths.

“We’re diabolical.” Harry giggles 10 minutes later, stomach aching from laughing so much, pitch in front of them an obstacle course of failed balls. Their audience left after the first few failed attempts but Ben kept on setting them up and Harry kept on playing along, because he loves that he’s the one making Ben laugh right now. Even if it’s through his own incompetence.

“Oi!” Harry turns, breathless smile still plastered on his face, and Madders is jogging towards them, going for the ball Ben just set down and of course, strike clean as a whistle, he bangs it into the top corner with a smirk. Ben wolf-whistles and clambers on Madders’ back and Harry wanders back off to hang off Danny’s elbow, knowing his time in Ben’s spotlight has run out.

*

“What did you think of the series finale then, eh?” Ben asks, flopping onto the settee beside him with a soft thump. He immediately stretches his legs out so his calves are crossed over Harry’s legs folded neatly in front of him. Harry leaves a hand around his calf and tries not to squeeze.

“Of Peaky Blinders?” He asks, wanting to tuck the bit of hair covering Ben’s left eyebrow behind his ear as he watches it tickle his eyelashes. Ben nods, jaw working at the chewing gum in his mouth.

Harry launches into an eager monologue, hand gestures and eyebrow movements although his palm wrapped around Ben’s leg never leaves and sometimes when he’s caught in the middle of a sentence, he puts pressure in his grip without thinking and he can feel Ben’s muscles tensing. He tried not to think about that as he bemoans the ending and how he really, absolutely cannot abide cliffhangers.

“I actually quite like ‘em.” Madders declares, arms crossed over the back of the sofa, fingertips dangling in front of Ben’s face. Some of those fingertips brush back the hair Harry wanted to tuck behind his ear. “Keeps it interesting, innit?”

Harry’s mouth opens and closes a few times before he shrugs, realising he isn’t being listened to anyway because Madders is telling Ben about what Mings just said over at the pool table and Harry knows the conversation is open and he is very much invited but he still wriggles out from under Ben’s legs and trundles over to Trippier watching telly, even though his comments about Poch make Harry’s skin hot and itchy with anger, and he really couldn’t give a shit about how difficult it is learning Spanish.

*

He’s just on the phone to Dele with a little summary of the goings on and every single comment he has heard about Dele since his arrival, getting a little bratty when he sulks about how Madders is always around Ben and Harry never gets any of Ben’s attention and how badly he just wants him to himself, just for a little bit, when there’s a knock and then a thud at his door. Harry leaves his phone on the bedside table, Dele still snapping away about why he couldn’t give less of a fuck about Harry’s pathetic Ben issue when he’s sat on his arse at home, and opens the door to Ben, grinning breathlessly and already wandering in.

“Oh, hi, Del.” Harry hears him call over the muffled ranting still echoing from Harry’s phone. There’s a beat of fuzzy quiet before silence, Dele hanging up. Harry snorts.

“Madders’ got a little cold.” Ben tells him, lying on his side on Harry’s bed, already reaching for the remote. “Load of fuss about nothing, complete wuss, but he’s been sent home.”

Harry has to sink his teeth into his bottom lip to keep from smiling, making the appropriate sympathetic noises and asking the right questions until he’s lying on his side next to him, curled in so they’re facing each other. Their knees touch and Ben smiles at him, soft and quiet and Harry wriggles closer until his head is pressed under Ben’s chin and Ben’s fingers are stroking through his hair and he can feel the gentle rumble of Ben’s laugh as they chat and tease each other. When Ben’s distracted with the telly, Harry unlocks his phone and texts Madders, get better soon, mate, hope ur alright x and tosses his phone away as Ben strokes the soft skin at the back of his neck.

[fair-fae]

You know, I'm not a drama person, I don't like it, but it came up on my dash so much that I kind of had to read it. All of that nonsense could've been avoided if you didn't even take it to the public. Judging people for THEIR characters that THEY made and can do WHATEVER the hell they want with them? Oh woo ho good job, you're so popular for taking the "barrage" of it. No. all it did was prove that you're a D-bag and I've got a nice, long list of people to block now and avoid contact with.

Okay, anon. I haven’t bothered setting the record straight with most of this shit, because I know folks like you will continue to believe what you want to believe and hear what you want to hear, just like you’re doing now. But I’ll bite. You’d think all of you getting onto your soapbox about how you shouldn’t judge or attack others wouldn’t keep talking shit about a situation you know nothing about and/or are terribly misinformed about. So I’ll enlighten you with what actually happened.

A while back, the person in question got into an argument with some people on the RPC, trying to tell them that their interpretation of the lore was wrong. Rather than leaving it at that, when he effectively got shut down there, he proceeded to take a screenshot of the conversation and post it on his tumblr, complete with a rant about the people who disagreed with him, their opinions are so wrong and awful, how dare they disagree with him, etc. essentially playing the victim when he was the one to try to badger them for their opinions in the first place. He also left their names, icons, signatures, etc. in full view.I responded and told him he probably shouldn’t be trying to harass any other people about the lore considering his own character concept (thus, you would think, making my opinion on his character pretty clear). Why? Because it’s fucking true.I don’t give a shit about the lore or whether anyone follows it. Probably every single one of my own characters at least bends the lore. But at least have the self-awareness and respect for your fellow role-players to say “yeah, my character breaks the lore” or not get your jimmies rustled every time someone says “oh, yeah, his character is lore breaking.” You wanna break the lore? Cool. Own up to it. And if you do break the lore, don’t try to force everyone else into following it–especially when you can’t even admit you break lore and instead stretch the lore to try so hard to justify your entirely lore-breaking character concept. Don’t try to heckle people for presumably doing what you do but won’t admit. Granted, these people weren’t even breaking lore anyway, which makes his insistence that they were even more ridiculous.So after some excuses about how he was trying to start some intellectual discussion or something and not just drag these people despite featuring their identities and primarily just complaining about them throughout the post, he admitted he should have at least edited out their names and apologized. Great! You’d think that should be the end of it. I didn’t have anything against him at that point, but also had no desire/reason to associate with him, so I didn’t. A couple months go by. Some post comes across my dash. A girl in the community is doxxing her online ex-boyfriend in a callout post about him for unexpectedly breaking up with her because she “thinks” he was lying to her about serious issues and “believes” he was cheating on her. Because I’m a loud and opinionated person, and because that’s some heinous thing to do, I spoke out against it (via a post on my own blog without naming names, mind you, because I’m not going to hijack someone else’s post with negativity or call them out by name). The girl found it, assumed it was about herself, flipped out, and then of course I was the bad guy for saying doxxing isn’t okay. And then the person in question joins in. Not even to discuss the topic at hand, but to dredge up the old drama about how I was so mean to him and he did nothing wrong, etc. A pretty crappy 180 turn for a person who apologized and made it seem like there were no hard feelings, but whatever. Someone saw that he obviously didn’t like me, and seized the chance to try to talk shit and spread rumors because they knew he’d give them the platform. They sent him some anon about how I hate women (lmao). And of course, he published it, with no skepticism or disagreement, only more commentary about how I’m mean and awful. I went to respond, only to find myself blocked. So I went on about my life because it’s not that big of a deal, but hey. The moment you talk shit about me, especially in a venue where I can’t respond, especially facilitating some lies and BS rumors, especially after leading me to believe we’d made amends–you aren’t off limits. You don’t get spared niceness and politeness. Is that mean and petty? Probably.¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’ve never claimed to be a nice person.Now, to the horrible, awful thing I did to make this “public.” Fast forward to yesterday. I’d kept my mouth shut and left him alone. In a section of the RPC that doesn’t get a ton of traffic, largely because you have to make an account on the website and then manually opt in to this specific forum, several of us were discussing an absolutely awful person which is an unrelated story I won’t get into. Someone asked something along the lines of, “Are you guys talking about Underaged Looking Allagan Voidsent Chimera Demon Guy?” I responded with basically “No, we’re not talking about Underaged Looking Allagan Voidsent Chimera Demon Guy.” And that was it. We moved on with the conversation because he wasn’t who we’d been talking about. His name, tumblr, server info, in game race, class, etc. was all never given. No identifiable information beyond a very brief and tongue-in-cheek description of his RP character comprised of words taken directly from his own wiki, tumblr info, talk of his own character and RP posts.Someone saw the conversation, and based on our intentionally shitty description, was able to accurately guess who we were talking about and send him an anon to tell him about it. You’d think that would be pretty telling about his own RP, and this anon’s interpretation of it. He answered the anon in a long rant about me that featured both my in game name and my tumblr handle. In case you need me to spell this out for you, he went public with it first. I’ll also remind you that I was blocked, so I wasn’t/couldn’t be following him, and I was not properly @tagged in this rant, so I never would have seen it unless someone told/linked me, or someone I follow eventually reblogged it. And I honestly can’t imagine the level of narcissism it takes to write a long personal post full of wangst and victim-playing every time you hear a person had something negative to say about you or your RP character (not even by name–and by picking words from his own descriptions of his character), especially a person you have had issues with in the past and who you openly shit-talked yourself prior. Who does that? Lord knows my blog would be overflowing. Not everyone will like you, especially not people you jabbed at first. Especially not with an off the wall RP concept. Especially not with you trying to pass that concept is lore abiding and just “unusual.” Especially not with you trying to tell other people they’re “wrong” about the lore. Especially not with your character being a squicky, walking fetish and immortal jailbait. And that’s not even touching other things people have told me about this person that rubbed them the wrong way. Move on with your life.However, I found out about the post thanks to the OP himself when he unblocked me just to send me the link to the post and then before I could even read/respond to the post, sent me a barrage of IM’s still playing the innocent victim which is grating enough on its own but also included him straight up lying about ever posting/saying anything about me, insisting he’d done nothing to me, had nothing against me, this was so out of the blue and uncalled for, etc. When I pointed out this wasn’t the case, that I had seen and read the posts firsthand because blocking me doesn’t prevent me from seeing his posts, he began to lie instead about the contents of said posts and pulled some gaslighting bullshit about how I had just “misread” them, all the while either willfully or coincidentally not seeming to understand anything I said to him (I mentioned him publishing the anon about how I hate women at least twice and the response was always “I never said you hate women!!” Well no shit). He kept insisting that I had “gone behind his back” and that if I had a problem I should “say it to his face” despite the fact he’d had me blocked and that I’m not a douchey enough person to try to contact him despite that, and despite the fact that he had “gone behind my back” and not “said it to my face” twice now prior, and had done just that with his post about the folks from the RPC as well.He also insisted that the tumblr post was meant just to innocently “bring the issue to my attention to clear things up” despite me having no way to see it on my own unless by coincidence, and despite him proving to be willing and able to send me IM’s instead, which you’d think could render the need for a public post moot. When I pointed this out, he promptly deleted the post, lest anyone else see through his bullshit to what he was really trying to do.After my initial response to his wall of IM’s, he sent another wall this time with more insults and accusations, and promptly blocked me so I couldn’t respond. So yes, I made a vaguepost, I know, how awful, how dare I. A vague post vague enough that only someone who had seen his post, or who heard about it from him otherwise, would know who and what it was referencing. Until he responded to it himself, that is and unblocked me again to send me more angry messages to which I responded by permanently blocking him instead because this game of blocking and unblocking sure was getting old.Cue his charming friends sweeping in to tell me to eat a dick, making false accusations against my RP partner and I, sending me threats on Discord, telling people I flashed my breasts for money, etc. And the other person? The one who brought him up in the first place who I had only been responding to? Whose name he was given, was aired in the same public post on his blog as mine? As far as I know, she hasn’t gotten any hate, probably not a single message. And I’m glad, because she shouldn’t get any, she doesn’t deserve it. But at the same time, sure seems sketchy that the person who did the same exact thing as me–and who did it first–has not provoked anyone’s ire, not even been messaged. The public post in reply to the anon who named her, even, was aimed 100% at me. Now isn’t that funny. It’s almost like this was an excuse for people who already had beef with me to try to take shots at me and pretend it was justified. It’s almost like all you anon keyboard warriors don’t even know how this started or what actually happened.And now I’m going to talk about something else. You cannot do “whatever the hell you want” with your character. RP is a two-way (or more) street. There is a real person behind each and every character. These people are looking for fun just like you, and are every bit as deserving, and your fun shouldn’t impede on theirs. We are all allowed equal parts of fun.So when people play their weird ass lolicon/shotacon/pedobait characters, who is having fun? What if the other person in the RP was sexually abused as a child and you’re dredging up terrible old memories for them and making light of their pain? What if they’re a parent worried for their child, or worse, the parent of a child who’s already been abused? What if they’re an actual pedophile and seeing you RP this is tempting them, making them think they’re desires are normal and okay? Hell, what if they’re a goddamn ordinary person who finds it creepy and uncomfortable?What if the fetishized, futa ERP avatar is interacting with someone who is trans or nonbinary or intersex IRL? What if it’s triggering them (in the genuine, real sense of the word)? What if the walking affront against the lore character talking about being an Voidsent Half-Primal Garlean Spy in the middle of the Quicksand is ruining everyone’s immersion–particularly when they refuse to play along as others respond realistically IC and try to kill them or arrest them or kick them out? What if the OP af infinitely-stronger-than-everyone-else-around-him character is making the RP unfun for every other RPer involved because their characters can’t do anything but get beaten up or bow to his whims unless they stoop to godmodding or suddenly beefing up their own character?People can and will judge your character. Those judgments are usually best left kept themselves or quietly shared between trustworthy friends. But when your character trespasses on the OOC fun of the role-players around you? Sorry, my guy, people have every right to speak up. And all this nonsense? All this nonsense was a small handful of people who were already pretty nasty showing their true colors and getting told to pipe the fuck down. A pretty good outcome, if you ask me. So, please, block me, anon. My life will be better without idiots like you in it, and the same probably goes for anyone else you intend to block. Your nameless, ignorant, anonymous presence will not be missed–or noticed, for that matter.