#anyways seeing some interesting tumblr things on my dash which I don’t disagree with but I don’t agree either

[spicyicymeloncat]

My mind is a courtroom in chaos trying to determine if I agree with your headcanon or not

[fierceawakening]

I think Tumblr is thankfully a little over its “people with NPD are smol beans uwu” phase (or maybe it’s just that I’ve finally filtered that cadre of people out and those left are a bit more friendly to “demonizing people is bad! Obvi! but there’s also a reason many people find people with those traits difficult to be in close relationships with,” which is pretty much where I am) but I am Thinking about something

Some of you know that I’ve been following the Ruby Franke child abuse case. Franke was a Mormon influencer and mommy vlogger who was popular but who many people worried was overly harsh with her kids to the point of abuse. She had a close associate named Jodi Hildebrandt who at the time was a licensed therapist.

One of her kids fled Jodi’s home and had been severely physically abused (tied up in such a way it left deep wounds which were then “treated” with cayenne pepper paste), blowing the whole thing wide open. Ruby and Jodi both were charged with aggravated child abuse and both pled guilty to four of six counts and are awaiting sentencing.

Anyway people have been following the story, and one thing that’s become very clear is that Jodi was a profoundly unethical therapist and has a history both of abusing kids and of ruining adult clients’ marriages. It’s a mess and a train wreck and very obvious when you look into Jodi that she had a kind of cult leader personality. (People suspected she wouldn’t plead guilty just because she’s SO rigid about her beliefs in the videos.) I know the one true way to help kids grow, society disapproves but I’m right, etc.

And there’s one video of her that people watch for the shock of it. She is sitting with Ruby in the basement they used as a video studio, and she goes off on a rant that gets more and more unhinged as she goes on. She’s upset that she’s getting bad reviews on her videos and people saying her techniques are abusive, and she says something to the effect of “I’ve made it really easy to give us a five star review, but you guys aren’t doing it! Why aren’t you doing it? You need to go do it right now. We’re getting all these one stars and we need you to help us fix it.”

It’s fascinating for the complete lack of acknowledgement that anyone might just not like the content, or give one star because they disagree with the techniques. Especially when viewers were mentioning repeatedly that they were concerned the techniques were too harsh and could even be abusive. If someone thinks that about what you’re teaching, yeah, they’ll give one star. Should be obvious? But she’s just like “I don’t know why you all aren’t doing this. Go do it.”

Anyway I bring this up because I’ve watched a LOT of videos on this, and that’s included several mental health professionals watching the videos and debunking the supposedly revolutionary new techniques of Jodi’s as abusive discipline with a weird half new age half religious conservative polish on it.

And EVERY ONE of the reactions I can remember from trained professionals says “this behavior is a clear indicator of narcissism. I would absolutely be looking out for more things like this to make a diagnosis if I were asked to do so.”

What intrigues me here is the clear consensus, and how little it resembles what I’ve seen people here on Tumblr say being narcissistic is like, which as they describe it seems to be destructive perfectionism plus struggles to empathize with people they’re not deeply close to.

Which I dunno. I think this discourse has kind of faded anyway at least off my own dash, but… I dunno. I think tumblr can sometimes get very echo chamber y about what a particular illness looks like, and everyone can sometimes all jump on a less central symptom because some posts are going viral.

Anyway I found it very interesting to see the professionals focusing very much on someone literally demanding praise, an unusual behavior that most would find striking, when the talk of tumblr was all “oh I’m a perfectionist, just to a degree where I do myself harm,” which sounds a lot more like understandably shitty coping and not “wow that’s pretty out of touch yeah.”

I dunno. I guess my point is… we love the idea of personal stories and experiential knowledge because it fits our broader politics, but it’s worthwhile to check what the scholars have to say to make sure we’re not taking one person’s compelling account as the truth of the thing.

[olderthannetfic]

TY for your post on m/m ships, as it really gave me perspective I didn’t know I needed. I assumed or thought that the criticism of women writing (“fetishizing”) m/m came from the queer community itself. The equivalent of a bunch of girls going to a gay bar for a bachelorette party. I didn’t see the exclusionist propaganda behind that train of thought until reading your post. Thanks.

--

You are most welcome!

My experience has been that the vast, vast majority of cis gay men have no clue about m/m fanfic (which is produced overwhelmingly by women and even more overwhelmingly by AFABs, who contain a lot more than just women).

When cis gay dudes are told about it in a "girls write this stuff" kind of way, they usually respond that women deserve porn too, and isn't that nice. You do you, largely irrelevant person.

Cis gay men are the dominant force in queer media that's not self-published romance novels, indie games, and so on. While I'd never say they have a fair deal as compared to straight men, if you look at queer presses and film festival films such, it's the cis gay men who get the lion's share of the attention, content, and money. I think that's why some rando making even more niche queer content just doesn't bug them much. (On average. Obviously, no group is a monolith.)

To the extent that I've seen complaints, it's generally a few dudes whining in amazon reviews that some romance novel had men crying and not having enough casual sex. Real Men Don't Cry™ yadda yadda.

Only in places like tumblr do I see a ton of pushback from queer men... and it should surprise exactly no one that the queer men in question are often trans, very young, and are getting misgendered pretty badly in their offline lives.

I see the same kind of "I am the queerest one! Only I have a special license to ship!" behavior from nbs and bi women and gnc straight women and basically anyone else who's doing some combo of having a traumatized reaction to their offline life and pulling a Not Like The Other Girls Others. There's a dash of white knighting in the pattern and a dash of people not quite getting that they've found their people. They're not the only one anymore!

(I really cannot emphasize enough how much of this I think is a trauma response where people need to be The Only Valid Man or The Queerest or something because m/m fanfic is their thing that proves their often-contested identity, and they're still carving out a place for themselves in the world. Except then they end up trying to take that space away from others like themselves, and that's not cool.)

The older trans guys I know facepalm over this stuff and are like "Buddy, no."

I mean, there's variety in any demographic. Groups are not a monolith, yadda yadda. But fanfic "fetishizing" discourse does tend to track with being young and having your main queer community contact be online and/or with having a strong strain of radfem in your ideas about queerness and art.

--

People liken fandom (and BL/danmei pro media) to the bachelorette party thing--through cluelessness or disingenuousness--but the more relevant comparison is probably drag queens.

I really liked David Halperin's academic doorstop How to be Gay where he talks about queens "appropriating" from women (he uses the term more neutrally than we usually do) and how drag can be empowering and meaningful to gay men in its intended context yet still feel sexist, offensive, and alienating to a woman stumbling across it.

He spends a lot of time talking about literal representation vs. art that speaks to your insides instead of your outsides and why a lot of cis gay men still love things like The Golden Girls and various female icons or camp and allegorical media more than art that depicts men like themselves. Interesting stuff.

For free and online stuff, an oft-cited example is this dude, Jamie Fessenden's blog post about women writing "m/m romance" (i.e. indie selfpub romance novels like you see on Amazon, which are the US and a lot of the West's answer to BL/danmei). It's interesting to see this guy's perspective as an older cis gay man. (Well, I assume. Plenty of authors turn out to be liars, but he passes a sniff test, IMO.) I have a couple of points where I disagree with him, but I think he has some solid ideas overall, and he's putting his desire for more media of type X into practice by making said media himself.

--

Anyway, I do think the criticism often comes from "our own community" (with its many, many meanings). It's just laced with lack of historical perspective at best and ulterior motives at worst.

[harringtontmaa]

ok everyone, i’m going to talk for just a second about the potential dynamic between steve  &  billy hargrove,  &  why  i like to explore it. under a cut for those who are just not interested.  inspired by years worth of writing  &  character discussions with my beloved @hargrovetm​ ~

obviously i don’t think billy’s actions were good,  &  neither does steve.  i mean, who knows better than steve how dangerous billy really is ?   he stepped in to protect max  &  lucas both from him at the byers house,  &  would do it again.  there is no universe in which steve excuses billy’s actions that night, or says they were the right thing to do.  i’ve honestly never seen anyone argue that they were. but here’s the other thing :  who knows better than steve that sometimes humans do shit that is just plain not right when they’re not at their best selves ?  i mean, in s1, steve used homophobic slurs toward jonathan, insulted his family, including his currently missing brother, initiated a fight with him,  &  got him arrested.  he also behaved disgustingly towards nancy.  &  everyone loves steve’s redemption arc  —  me included !   i recognize those actions of steve’s as wrong,  &  so does he.  &  he goes back  &  does what he can to make amends,  &  he tries to do better from that point on.  which is all anyone can do as a human : try to be better than they were the day before. i know that in the canon, it isn’t implied that billy tries to make amends,  &  i suppose that’s the story the duffers wanted to tell.  but i also think that the whole point to rp is to explore what  might have  happened in canon if some elements were slightly different,  or to fill in the gaps between what canon gives us.  &  i genuinely feel like steve, of all people, might be among the only people in billy’s life willing  &  able to look him in the eye after that night  &  say :  what you did was wrong  &  you should feel bad for it,  &  you should apologize for it,  but you can also choose to do better starting right now, if you want to. who knows what might have happened if someone had said this to him, telling him directly that he is capable of changing, instead of just isolating him further ?   as of season 2,  billy is seventeeen years old  &  currently trapped in an abusive home environment.  as a survivor of parental abuse myself,  it rubs me the wrong way a little bit to imply that it is somehow “too late” for billy to learn to be better  &  start to heal, especially if he did happen to have someone who could honestly call out his unacceptable behavior without writing him off entirely.  &  based on his own growth arc  ( &  his sometimes too - forgiving nature in general ),  i think that steve is in a unique position to be able to offer that to billy. &  yeah, i like to explore concepts like this in rp with trusted friends.  of course, i do see why people would be triggered by billy as a character, but everyone deals with trauma in different ways,  &  what triggers one person might be healing for another.  if folks don’t want to see billy on their dash, they have the absolute right to blacklist / block / unfollow as needed to feel comfortable.  but i also know that the people who write billy  ( or write against him ) are full human beings with complex lives outside of tumblr. i don’t know most of them, but i personally can see how writing a character who is trapped in the cycle of abuse escaping that cycle  &  learning to grow could be extremely cathartic for those who have been in similar situations.  &  tbh, we should all just do our best to treat other users on this site with empathy anyway, regardless of our personal feelings on the characters they write. even making this post feels a little bit like kicking a hornet’s nest, because i know this is a polarizing topic for folks,  &  i absolutely am  NOT  looking to restart the same old discourse.  but i am also a bit sick of feeling nervous to post about their complex  &  nuanced dynamic that i think is interesting to explore  &  have been writing for years.  if you disagree with anything i’ve said in this post, i encourage you, as said above, blacklist / unfollow / block as you see fit.  there will be no hard feelings.  go in peace,  &  i genuinely hope you enjoy your tumblr rpc experience more for it.  &   if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this dynamic commentary turned rant about treating others kindly, thank you for reading.  i love you.  ♥️

[yossariandawn]

fanfic asks: 1, 4, 6, 9, 15, 20, 50, & 51!!

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in? Honestly, FDTD is the first fandom I’ve done anything approaching real involvement in! I was a long time lurker of many different fandoms, but this one is where I actually made accounts on the different platforms for myself, created stuff past a one off here or there (that mostly never saw the light of day lol) and actually interacted and even made friends in! However, if we are going for the first fandom I discovered, that would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

4. Do you regret getting involved in any fandoms? Since I’m only counting this one, nope! Though I will admit, several months ago I did start to see some of the rude or even nasty stuff that is scattered throughout probably all fandoms, directed at real people, normally over characters or ships. And I did make me think real hard about how much time I was putting into this, and whether it was something I wanted to continue to be a part of, even if it is pretty rare overall here. I decided to stick around, and I’m glad I did, but I definitely am trying to be much more conscious with disagreeing publicly when it comes across my dash.

6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in. FDTD SethKate. Shoot, the only other kind of involvement in fandoms that I have OTPs in are Falling Skies Hal/Maggie. The Punisher’s Frank/Karen probably get in on just a technicality, since as much as I love them together, I could see them being happy with other people, but ONLY AFTER the events of the show and the impact they had on each other. I did make some vid requests waaaay back in the day for Life With Derek vids, since I couldn’t make any myself at the time! Here is one I found, but it’s not great quality anymore for some reason, and isn’t shippy, lol It’s Casey and her supportive therapist Paul, which is something I loved (VERY MUCH IN A NON ROMANTIC WAY) And I shipped Derek/Casey pretty hard, but I’m not sure they really reach OTP levels.  And a fandom I am very much not in does hold the only other OTP slot I currently have (General Hospital’s Jason/Sam) which I talk about for question 20. The truth is I’m not really normally an OTPer, most shows I watch I couldn’t care less about the ships by themselves as long as I think everyone is acting in character and in interesting ways. Which is a prerequisite for me liking a show in the first place, so 🤷‍♀️

9. What are the best things about your current fandom? The people and the talent. AND THE SHOW, which I adore, for all its faults! But the people have really made this into something special.

15. Is there an obscure ship which you love? Hal/Maggie from Falling Skies probably qualifies for obscure, as there is shockingly little stuff for my favorite badass alien invasion resistance fighters duo.

20. Any ships which you surprised yourself by liking? OK, so this one may also count as obscure, they have a big presence on youtube but basically nothing on tumblr. Jasam aka Jason Morgan/Sam McCall from General Hospital. I don’t watch soaps as a general rule (not knocking them, by any means, they just rarely have stuff I am interested in, and the nature of the format makes it hard for me to stay invested) and when I first got cable I started catching glimpses of the late night reruns on the SOAP Network of some of the weirder ones, like Passions (haha thanks Spike for referencing it enough to catch my interest) and Port Charles, General Hospital’s confusingly related (but not really?) spinoff show. And then one day I noticed one of the Port Charles actresses (Sam!) was now on one of the big deal soaps, but was playing a different character! IN THE SAME TOWN?! but during the day, with less/no vampires and more/all mob antics. ANYWAY, end result is I got increasingly sucked into her storyline, and THEN THE JASAM STUFF HAPPENED, which it was so my kind of thing it’s not even funny. PARTNERS! IN CRIME! AND IN LOVE! BADASS SOFTNESS AND TRUST AND PEOPLE WHO LOVE AND PROTECT EACH OTHER AND THEN REALIZE WHOOPS WE’RE IN LOVE OH NO WHAT WILL WE DO. And the downside of loving a soap opera character or pairing is you just have to accept the fact that at some point they will become completely UNRECOGNIZABLE, either through characterization or actual recasting. 🤣 So while I did stop watching after the god awful “Sam sleeps with her stepdad and Jason has a secret love child” arc, I did tune back in for both their Mexico Road Trip Reunion and their (First) Wedding! And I still rewatch their 2004-early 2006 storylines on youtube, and I will always scan the supermarket soap mags for little glimpses into how things are going for them, which seems to be pretty well actually! They are definitely a real Legacy Couple now, and Jason the Original is apparently back too, which is nice.

50. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction? Spuffy 😂. I don’t know how I found the first fanfic I read (other than clearly way to much free access to the internet)  There’s a chance I was watching fanvids first, which led into finding out about fics. AND IN MY DAY THERE WAS NO YOUTUBE, so fanvids were much harder to find! RIP Buffyverse Database (i think that’s what it was called lol) But Spike was my favorite character on Buffy, and  I fell so hard in love with the IDEA of Buffy and Spike having a romantic connection and acting on it, right up until it started actually happening in Season 6. It was a wild ride for twelve year old me, but I learned a ton about what kind of things I like in relationships, and want kind of things I VERY MUCH DO NOT LIKE. And for anyone who likes Spuffy, this is completely a personal preference, not a dig at the couple. I do understand the appeal, it’s just didn’t end up being what I wanted it to be.

51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go! Ok, so this is a bit of advice with some rant mixed in! If you send anon stuff to a writer, please remember you are talking to a real person, and someone who has put themselves out there in some way enough for you to comment on. If you choose to go anon, the very fact of your anonymity means that the only information they will have are the contents of that one message you’ve sent, and that you’ve chosen to not take the risk of putting yourself out there in the same way the person receiving the message has. And if all you are sending in that message is a correction, or disagreement, or (in more extreme cases) even an attempt to police your fandom by telling someone else that they are participating wrong (meaning not in a way you agree with) then your message? May not be given the good faith extended to people who DO put themselves out there, however imperfectly they do it. Good and effective communication is so hard, I really understand, and it’s a skill that all of us are still learning and sometimes failing at. I’ve been really impressed by how I’ve seen people handle messages  I know I would not have been able to do with such grace! Personally, at this point the cons of anon stuff outweighs the pros for me, but everyone gets to make their own choice on how they handle their inbox thankfully! (anon asks can be toggled off and on, and you can even block anons instead of answering them!) But anon or not, we should all treat each other kindly, even people we disagree strongly with. And if you do, you may even change someone's mind or learn something new yourself. I know from personal experience it’s way more effective than the alternative, which doesn’t make it easier, but does make it worth trying.

Thanks for sending these in @alwaysupatnight! 💖💖💖

[citrineghost]

A Letter to WordPress

Dear WordPress,

Tumblr has been around for a good while now and many of us have been here since the beginning (or close to it). It’s become something of a comfort and a home base for many. You can understand then why it’s so terrifying and tension-setting when a new owner comes around.

This website has been through a lot of changes, very few of them good in recent years. I want to open up a dialogue from the user base about our feelings and desires surrounding this site, because to so many of us, not only its design and function, but its success and future are a big deal.

Obviously not all of the things I list below will be universal opinions, but I’ll try to outline some of the things I’ve seen the majority of users want. I’ll also throw in some things that are more personal, because I can’t claim to know everything the rest of the users want, but I can tell you where I see obvious problems.

First and foremost, here’s an obvious one. You can’t really go anywhere on Tumblr without knowing: we want the bots and the nazis gone. We need some kind of captcha system for every time someone wants to include a hyperlink in a post or response. Until the staff count gets higher, I would honestly suggest closing down the report system for everything but bots, nazis, and death threats/suicide bait.

Make NSFW content welcome again. Outside of porn bots, the pervasiveness of NSFW content is slim to none. As long as minors and those with ‘NSFW’ blacklisted aren’t seeing the NSFW content, there’s nothing wrong with it being here. A large number of the people posting NSFW content on here are artists who use this content to make a living on commissions. The ban has done nothing but make valuable members of the Tumblr community leave and take their art elsewhere. The focus should be cracking down on anyone who isn’t properly tagging NSFW content with ‘NSFW’. If the focus is put on that, the problem with NSFW content will be null.

Please keep Tumblr unintegrated with other social media. Most users will agree, the anonymity is such a huge part of what draws us to Tumblr. Other people only know what we tell them and it’s very appealing for our real life accounts (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) to be completely separate. When users want to share links to other accounts, they can do so easily with links on their blogs.

Replace ads with either, better, more sensible ads or members content. A large part of the ads on Tumblr make absolutely zero sense just by looking at them. Not to mention, they’re all completely unfit for the user base. I’ve seen weight-loss ads (harmful to the many people on the site recovering from eating disorders) and ads for products most people wouldn’t need or want until their forties. Most of the user base is 13-35, if I had to guess. I can tell you right now, you would make more money and the user base would be much happier if ads were removed in favor of members content. Adding a paid membership that allows users to gain access to new features (rather than restricting what’s already here) would be a huge boost in morale and company income. Use that income to improve the site. Don’t get comfortable making more than the bare minimum in profit until the website is functioning reasonably well. Hint: it’s not right now.

Keep the base functions of Tumblr. Don’t try and get radical, hoping big changes will excite the community. They won’t. We’re creatures of habit and we just want memes, fandom, and relatable nonsense. Keep reblogging, replies, customizable blogs, tags, and likes functionally the same.

Be receptive to bug reports and post change logs so that the community knows that they’re being addressed and fixed.

These are the obvious pleas of the community. Please keep in mind that the heart of Tumblr is in its users and if you ostracize us, there will be nothing left. We love this website and we want to see it thrive as much as anyone. We just don’t want to sacrifice the spirit of the community in the process.

Read more under the cut if you want to see some more of my own personal suggestions. I’d love for other users to sound off in the replies with whether they agree with any of the pleas or suggestions and also give their own!

Okay, so, here are some personal opinions that are by no means the voice of the community. I think they’re pretty sensible, but what do I know?

Change back the color. I hate this saturated navy color and I’m pretty sure a lot of others do too. I’m part of the disabled community and I know and have seen people saying that these extremely contrasted colors that were added are making their Tumblr experience worse. It gives people headaches due to light sensitivity and, frankly, it’s ugly. If you’d like to cater to those who are visually impaired/colorblind, that’s fantastic! Do so with an account setting that turns on higher contrast mode or adds patterns to things to make them distinguishable.

Add an option to blog suggestions and posts that have shown up on your dash from followed tags that says “Stop Suggesting This.” I’ve been suggested a number of blogs that I’m not interested in following. I don’t want to block the user, but I do want some different suggestions and for those blogs to stop showing up in suggestions. I’m also tired of seeing the same post twenty times from a tag I follow. There is currently an option that says “This particular posts sucks.” While I think that was a great attempt at catering to the community, I don’t want to use it because my intuition says that there’s a negative connotation. Does me saying the post sucks make it show up less for other people? Does it lose popularity? I can’t tell. The only thing I know is that I don’t want to say that a good post sucks just to make it quit showing up on my dash.

Implement some of the features that XKit uses. I would bet at least a quarter, if not more, of Tumblr users use XKit to make using Tumblr less painful. That shouldn’t be the case. Tumblr should have these functionality options available in dashboard settings.

A very hot take here that many might disagree with: Make notes viewable more like mobile has them. As it is, it’s hard to tell which ones I’ve seen on desktop. It can be tricky on mobile too, honestly, but it’s easier than on desktop. I would also heavily suggest making the unseen notifications darker so that they stand out and making a button to indicate that you’ve seen them.

Keep the dash, messages, notes, and profile as separate processes similar to how mobile has it. The trek all the way down the damn dashboard is a long one. I want to be able to see notes and messages in full size without losing my dash progress. When I switch back I want to be right where I was. I understand if this one isn’t possible or practical. It was just something I like about mobile over desktop but I’m aware that they’re two different beasts with different capabilities.

As far as the aforementioned members features, I do have some ideas, but I can’t guarantee they’re the best the user base has to offer. I’m sure others could think of better. Anyway, some things I’ve thought of are groups/clubs, digital currency, and separate dashboards. So, as it stands, You can have multiple blogs on one account. People can follow them separately. That’s fantastic. What would also be nice though, is being allowed to make separate dashboards. This would probably take up another chunk of server space, so I understand if it isn’t feasible right now, but I would jot it down. The ability to separate shitposts, aesthetic imagery, fandom content, and NSFW would be amazing. If you follow a huge number of blogs, like me, you could even make a friends dash so that you don’t miss your friends’ posts. It would just be a matter of allowing people to add and name their new dashboards. Then, when they go to follow people, it prompts them to choose what dash their content goes to. You could even simplify it by making the follow button default to the main dash, but adding a little dropdown arrow beside it. You could then choose which dash to add them to from a list. Below are some bad paint-drawn concept drawings.

Anyway, I hope this has all been helpful in some way. I’m fairly certain that WordPress will never actually read this, but it was cathartic to write and I hope it will be cathartic for someone else to read.

Sincerely, birb-ghost

[sheikah]

Ugh, I know what you mean about that ant*-darkling community, I've seen them around talking bad about anyone who likes Aleks. The Darkling is one of the most popular YA villains there is and I still remember how some of them were angry that Ben Barnes and the Darkling were the most talked about things when the S&B cast was announced (mostly everyone just thirsty lol). What we need to do, is to ignore them and make as much Darkling and darklina content as we can, and they can stay mad about it.

Oh, I couldn't agree more. Which was why my first reaction was to make my little gifset I posted haha. I didn't interact with or engage any of these people. I guess I was just surprised? Tumblr recommended a blog literally called "wehatethed*rkling" (don't want this to show up if they track a tag or anything lol). And I thought to myself, "Wow. That's a little extreme." So I went to the blog and the person is 100% serious. They're active, and though they appear to post content in addition to anti stuff, that's the url of their personal blog! And I scrolled a bit to find that they have a whole circle of people who are very passionate about being ant* darkling and/or darklina to the point that they're posting about this daily.

The only reason this surprises me is that it seems to be a bit of a moot point with a villain character. I come from the GOT fandom, for example, and there was a lot of anti content circulating, especially between stans of the leading ladies. And since those ladies were protagonists, the anti content focused on trying to prove how awful and evil Dany or Arya or Sansa was--because the stans of each of those characters defended them as heroes, and antis disagreed. There was no anti blog for, say, The Night King. Why would there be? He's a villain. With a character like the Darkling, I don't get why there are antis or what they are trying to prove. He's the villain. We get it. We know. He delivers dialogue specifically calling himself a villain. I get that and I like him anyway just like I like Anakin Skywalker and just like I continue to love Dany. It's not that serious!

I just blocked all of these people, so hopefully it won't really be an issue for me moving forward. It's just that it like instantly activated my fight-or-flight lmao because I was like, "Oh, no... not AGAIN." Because the bulk of my tumblr experience was dedicated to stanning Dany and Jonerys and that became all about discourse. My whole presence here was about being on the defensive. I was constantly answering asks both from antis and fans, defending Dany and trying to justify myself for loving her and shipping Jonerys. It ultimately became miserable. My whole experience with GOT became about the discourse. Every new thing that would happen in the series became weaponized either by antis or by those of us on the defense, and it made the whole experience less fun. So seeing that there is already a robust anti community before the show is even out is really disheartening to me.

I don't want to be that person this time. I'm hot blooded and impulsive and a huge flaw of my personality is that it's very difficult for me to drop it and move on when I see hate in my inbox or on my dash or in a tag I track. I'm DETERMINED not to be the wank blog when S&B comes out. I'm going to talk about what I love and that's it. I've been doing ok so far! I didn't engage with those antis and I've gotten about four anti anons since I got this URL and I've deleted them all instead of posting and trying to defend myself.

And that's the crux of the issue by way: having to defend MYSELF. Idgaf if these people trash talk the Darkling. The problem is that they take our interest in the Darkling and use it to make character judgments on our morals as real people. THAT is what's hard for me to ignore--people in my inbox saying I support grooming, paedophilia, and abuse because I like the Darkling. That's stupid, of course, and I'm getting better at breaking the habit of responding to that to defend myself. I don't have to! None of us do! This is supposed to be fun.

The only thing I will say directly addressing their wankiness, though, is actually related to what you said about Ben. You're right: it's all anyone talked about, and we were thirsting and celebrating. But in my brief trip down the anti rabbit hole last night I saw two very shocking (and honestly hilariously dumb) claims by anti bloggers:

1. We Darkling stans are mad that Ben was cast. Apparently we wanted someone young and boyish because we refuse to admit the Darkling is old as hell.

And I have to laugh because all I saw was widespread celebration and flailing over the casting news. Literally every single fan I've encountered is over the moon about this. Why wouldn't we be? And yeah, the Darkling is an immortal old guy. An overused trope I am still 1000% obsessed with. Happy to acknowledge that.

2. We Darkling stans will hopefully stop stanning him now that they cast someone "ugly" with a "patchy beard" to play him.

Yeah, you read that right. This person called Ben Barnes ugly with their whole chest and I honestly have nothing to say to that 😂

Anyway sorry this got so long! Like I said I'm going to try to be positive wrt this fandom and the stuff I like so I'm getting as much salt and sadness out as I can now, while we don't really have new content to discuss anyway 😅

[sasslightertm-a]

ooookay, so, some bullshit™ happened earlier this past week and I’m annoyed and pissed. incoming rant/vent under the cut (with screenshots used by permission).

As most of you who have been following me long enough probably know by now, there is a Charmed Discord server and I was in it for a while until I left in early January 2019, for reasons that will be discussed later. The main mod runs a few Charmed rp blogs here on Tumblr, we did have a few threads planned out together, and eventually after I left the Discord server it got to a point where I felt uncomfortable seeing her posts on my dash so I quietly unfollowed and deleted our thread I’d had in my drafts (which had been sitting there for months by this point anyway because I am slow af). Shortly after I unfollwed her, she unfollowed me without so much a message of “Would you be interested in continuing any threads?”.

This mod, while I was in the server, also created a venting/ranting group Google doc against another Charmed roleplayer who has been around for years and had been in the server as well but also left for much the same reasons I later did (namely, feeling unwelcome within the server). (The Google doc has since been deleted, I believe.)

Which brings me to the main point of this post. One of my close friends/mutuals noticed this mod and the roleplayer starting to interact again when both of them had unfollowed each other for months beforehand after the mod decided this roleplayer was Toxic™.

Uh-huh, sure, I find it very hard to believe you told her about the call-out Google doc and everything in it and she was perfectly understanding about it. I also have yet to hear an apology at all from this mun when 1) the most we would do is talk OOC anyway; 2) my Chris and Bilie were constantly ignored despite me showing interest in some of her wishlist ideas; and 3) any threads we did have would only get two replies in if I was lucky and were then dropped. So I unfollowed ages ago and moved on with other mutuals, and at this point it’s honestly not worth it.

And no, sorry, the server was not inactive when I left it back in early/mid January. Everyone was either in the general, headcanons, or venting channels And yes, any time anyone responded to me it was because I or my friend had said something they wanted to argue with or turn into a headcanon about their own next-generation muses. Also? For all y’all would squee over white US-American YouTuber cover artists or Korean boybands (despite none of you speaking a word of Korean), or the mod occasionally slipping into Arabic and then translating when one of us would ‘???’, the instant I try and share a cover by an amazing Turkish musical-theater singer who speaks German and does German-language musicals (said cover was in English, by the way), or the instant I would talk about something I learned in one of my German classes (despite most of my ancestry being, y’know, German [and for the record, said German ancestors came over to the States in the 1800s, so don’t even go there])... dead silence. 

1) oh my gods I’m howling. Thanks for admitting most of the people in the server hate me just because they found my fanfiction and that I like to write dark-themed fics and smut. Out of curiosity, was it one of my FF.net accounts (my main, my Charmed-fic-centric one, or my dark!AU Tenth Doctor-fic-centric one) or was it my AO3? (Also way to go for basically admitting that yup, you’re all a bunch of antis and really be drinking the evangelical fundamentalist Christian purity culture Kool-Aid.)

and btw, saying “complete transparency?” like that is just code for “I’m about to be a petty bitch and you’re not going to want to hear it, but too late.”

also, what, like none of you have ever wanted to write kinky smutty fanfic just because it’s fun and lets you work out various fantasies that may or may not be inherently transgressive? as far as I’m aware I was one of maybe two other people in that server who identify as asexual so don’t even try and say any of youse are sex-repulsed aces.

my smutfic isn’t even that kinky, but go off, I guess

tbh they also probably hate me bc I called them out over their misuse of the word “pedophilia” in regards to this one particular scene in a teen drama TV show between fictional teenage characters being portrayed by adult actors that airs on a network aiming for a 18 to 49-year-old demographic, and the mod and I would disagree over various things concerning US-American Wicca, but hey, it’s easier to just go after my fanfiction and say they hate me because of the fanfics, right?

speaking of that scene they were so up-in-arms about, don’t even try and tell me real-life allosexual teenagers are not horny and don’t have sex with other teenagers, because coming from a state with one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy (where more often than not both would-be parents are teenagers of or around the same age), I will not believe you

like, seriously, do NONE of you remember ever being horny and hormonal as a teenager, or...? 

2) Stop trying to make this an argument that needs to be won, because it isn’t. Also? By the time I left the Charmed Discord server didn’t even feel like a Charmed server anyway, so. There’s that.

3) My friend is right and she should say it.

A few things here: 

How does any of that sound accusatory when it’s true and my friend calmly laying out how she felt about the situation??

Again, stop trying to make this into an argument or personal attack because it isn’t. And not every single conversation is a debate that needs to be won.

“I was half joking”, uh-huh, yeah, riiiiight. Also? How is it any of your business how she decides to run her blog and curtail it so she feels safe on her own dash??? Especially when you don’t even follow or interact with her anymore?? Hell, I softblock people myself who are either inactive and just taking up my follower account, or are personal/fandom blogs who I just don’t want interacting with me. And if you follow me but don’t make any motion to interact, then yeah I’m probably going to softblock you too after posting a heads-up that I’ll be cleaning out my follower count.

And the best part??? Immediately after all this the mod/mun made a post on her blog saying how she doesn’t put up with passive-aggressiveness or manipulation. How the fuck is my friend/mutual being passive-aggressive or manipulative???? 

I’m sorry, but no, you do not get to do that. I see what you did there, and it is not okay. And I am glad I don’t have to deal with any of this mun’s bullshit anymore, or most of the people in the server, apparently. They blocked me solely because they found my kinky darkfic? Fine, great, it’s not like any of them ever interacted with any of my muses anyway and I don’t want to deal with them either. (But also... I made it clear on the server that I also write a dark eldritch!AU Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who and they all knew I have a sideblog for the canon evil version of Chris Halliwell so how exactly was it a surprise that I like writing fanfiction with darker themes and grey areas?)

Anyway, no, that language used on my friend was not called for at all. Neither was trying to make her out to be the aggressor when anyone who’s chatted with her OOC for long enough knows that even doing this much is hard emotionally for her. This was also not an argument that absolutely had to be won so quit trying to turn everything into an argument to make yourself look better. And ooh, boy, tone policing on top of that. That last response was classic “I know you’re right but I don’t want to admit it so I’m just gonna say something to make myself look like I came out on top.”

Nah. 

There’s the door. Make sure it hits you on the way out.

[laufire]

Some things I’ve received during my hiatus, and that it’s related to some worrying patterns I’ve seen recently on tumblr, have made me want to clarify a point. I’ve debated whether to put some of it behind a cut, since +1000 is on the longish-side, but fuck it. I think it’s important --or at least, important that you know this about me--, it makes me angry, and you’ll just have to scroll past it. And it’s a topic I’ll probably talk more about in the future, since it genuinely concerns me, even if not specifically in the same way or focusing on the same things I do here, so you might wanna be mindful of that *shrugs*.

I do not give a single fuck about whether B*llarke is “problematic”, or toxic, or abusive, or “immoral to ship” in any way. And the same can be said about literally every pairing. And if you ever try to harass anyone with those arguments (or any other, but I hope that goes without saying) --including shippers of my NOTPs--, I guarantee you, you won’t have me on your side.

Sure, I don’t like seeing it (and plenty of other ships) on my dash; that’s what filters are for. There are ships whose existence I prefer to ignore in its entirety, and I plan on forgetting them for the rest of my life.

In BC’s case, in particular, I –obviously, if you’ve read this blog– don’t want it to become canon. The way I see it, it’s a crack-ship (and not a very interesting one, AFAIC) between a character I like and a character I dislike, that’s entirely based on misrepresenting canon. Why would I care? But IMO the writers dislike the ship itself, so why would I worry either?

On top of that, I’m rooting for Bellamy’s narrative to be the dominant narrative (not as much for Bellamy himself –thought that’s a nice bonus–, but because it inevitably benefits my favourite characters: Raven, Murphy, Emori, Echo and Octavia), and the show has proven that’s antithetical to Clarke’s narrative prevailing (there’s a reason why every single season has put them at odds, in ways that effectively risk each other’s happiness, health and life). Historically speaking, things don’t end well for male leads that are put in romantic situations with women they haven’t chosen and put moves on by their own accord, and there’s plenty of evidence in canon that Bellamy doesn’t see Clarke in a romantic light –and it’s telling that, in fact, the writers CHOSE to cut out the one moment that could’ve hinted at it, back in season one.

Lastly, as I said, I think the writers themselves dislike the ship; not just aren’t interest in writing it, but actively dislike it. The first piece of evidence (if you plan on ignoring everything they’ve said about it, which already backs this opinion) is, frankly, that it hasn’t happened. Ships well-liked by the writers and supported by the narrative happen fast; lightning-fast in some cases. They likely don’t stay together, because narratives tend to follow a path of separation before the last-minute endgame (which might not happen; endgames aren’t a guarantee, even if there clearly are ships with better odds than others; BC, IMO, is the LEAST likely endgame possible out of all of them), but you better bet that dude is making his interest known ASAP.

Of course, writers in all of history of TV have written ships that they disliked, or at least ships that they only saw as filler and not “endgame material” (though I’m struggling with remembering another one that has the writers feeling so apathetic tbh). So yeah, there’s a very, very small chance of it happening, sure.

But have you ever tried to write a romance for a ship you hate? You probably haven’t, because the very idea it’s ridiculous. But imagine if you had. You would have hated every minute, I bet. And I don’t think any fans of that ship would find your story even remotely satisfying. Professional writers are exactly the same.

Even if the writers felt so worn down that they decided to go for your ship (which, IMO, would be a giant warning sign on itself; it’d be a mere symptom of their disinterest on their own story, and the show would be on its lasts breaths), what makes you think it’d make for a good story? They would half-ass it at best (and probably use it to troll you, out of spite), it would never get the genuine ~feeling that their preferred ships enjoy because, well. They don’t want it. They don’t believe in it. You can’t write with passion about something you don’t believe in, and passionless writing sucks literally every damn time.

And even all that? All that play-by-play essay I just gave you about why I don’t like the idea of canon BC? That still isn’t enough to make me hate on the ship. This can be said about plenty of ships across shows, books, etc., and I don’t talk about any of them because I don’t even remember them after I’ve moved on to the next thing.

But you know what I hate about BC? ITS FUCKING FANDOM.

They’ve proven to be one of the most dishonest ship-doms I’ve ever encountered, and probably one of the most numerous at that, which obviously only makes them worse (one day I’m going to talk about how these type of ships seem to attract assholes that know they can get away with shit due to the numbers and the attitude of those fanbases, but that’s another story).

Their numbers allow them to control the narrative within the fandom (and since canon doesn’t support them, they’ll outright lie about it), to the point were dissenting voices are ignored, disbelieved, and actively ridiculed and silenced, even when we’re pointing out actual scenes that support OUR reading and contradict THEIRS. They routinely act like characters like Echo or Raven don’t matter, while in fact feeling threatened by their relationship with Bellamy, and go into their tags full of condescending concern-trolling or outright hate. They harass other fans that dare to disagree with them, and they harass the actors and the creators of the show on a semi-regular basis.

A.K.A., they’re hurting real, living human beings.

There are hundreds of “toxic” ship out there (and am I the only one who, thanks to fandom, feel like many of these words have completely lost meaning? I truly hope that I am) that I never think or talk about, even if *I* personally didn’t care for or disliked them. By virtue of their small numbers (since a lot of those ships tend to be fringe interests in the already fringe medium that is fandom), most of the shippers usually mind their own business and simply go on with their lives, which I find to be the right attitude. Shipping (and character/show-stanning) isn’t activism, it’s born out of the fucking opposite impulses, IMO. Fiction is a place to explore anything and everything we wouldn’t even imagine doing in real life; there’s a reason why horror is such a popular genre, ffs. (and that’s mainstream, which means it has a bigger outreach and potential real life consequences (even if they don’t happen the way people think they do; fiction mostly reflects and maybe reinforces reality; it can’t create anything out of thin air). I cannot stress how few people read fanworks and how little they impact the real world).

If anything, those shippers have all my sympathy, because 9 times out of 10, THEY are the ones getting the brunt of the harassment. Like, I don’t give a single fuck about Reylo in one way or the other, to name one example (I’ve only watched TFA, which means I’ve missed the ~meaty part of their relationship, for one; but even if I remedied that, I thought both characters were deeply uninteresting, and I find KR painfully unattractive inside and out, so it’s likely I still wouldn’t ship it); but I’ve seen how its shippers got sent anti-Semitic slurs and gore pictures and were compared to school-shooters, and how its antis have effectively shielded a confessed rapist in their midst (and all that without getting into the general pattern of harassment/violent threats/suicide baiting that plagues the purity culture movement in this site; I can send you sources, if you don’t believe me), so those antis can go fuck themselves, tbh.

THAT shit is what I take issue with: hurting actual people. That’s ALWAYS going to matter more than the feelings of some fucking fictional construct, and I can’t believe that somehow became a controversial opinion. Bellamy or Rey or whom-the-fuck-ever doesn’t exist, they can’t get hurt, and the idea of their “feelings” taking precedence over the well-being or real people is fucking insulting.

(btw, don’t bother with any “but what about THIS gross ship/type of ships? you support THAT too?“ I’m not going to answer that and make myself a target for that bullshit, and I think this post proves this situation goes a little beyond something as clear-cut as “support” or “condemn” --among other issues, who am I to “aproove” or not any ship wtf--, but if you mean “are you against people who like it being attacked because their interests in fiction somehow prove they have ~nasty morals?”, then the answer is a resounding “yes”. What the fuck do you know about their life anyway)

[youngrevolutionary]

This is just a personal rant. Insecurities and fandom stuff. You're free to offer advice if you have any, reassurance if I'm doing something right, gentle criticism if you think I could do something differently --

I'm relatively new to RP and Tumblr in general. I don't have a deeply-rooted establishment with other users that go back years.

I don't have a huge following I don't... think? And honestly, I really don't care about how many people follow me, just how many people follow me who enjoy what I create and what I write on this website. It sounds like a canned response but I genuinely do mean this. I don't want to pad my follower count because... why?

Point being, I don't subscribe to age-old Tumblr RP/fandom 'rules' because I don't understand it.

When I joined Tumblr it was because someone reposted a thing I did for Zell from DeviantArt. They didn't credit me with a direct link, just said "Zell by SynnoveD" and moved on.

Honestly, I got a bit irked by that because the least they could do was link it back to my original post. But whatever, I got on, started a blog, and decided yay! I'll write my fanfic and post it here!

And it was received... somewhat better than I had anticipated. I was hella intimidated, truthfully. There were a lot of 'famous' fanfic writers that I admired so greatly who were liking my posts and following me back. I got starstruck over a few and when I found out about RP I dove right in and... well, here we are.

I never got into the whole... fandom culture thing. I've loved this game and the characters I write for 18 years and it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized there was even an active community with a collective interest for VIII.

I learned so much. I made so many new friends. I introduced new ideas (which I quickly learned were called 'headcanons' and I was even more ecstatic to hear about how so many people shared in the same thoughts and feelings that I had about Seifer and everything else.) I remember having conversations regarding a few of these 'popular' blogs where they had never considered behaviors about Seifer in the way that I had been all this time.

I was so happy. I found a 'home' online. That is until anons came.

And when anons came, they tore apart my fanfics. They told me 'No, Rinoa wouldn't do that.' or 'Squall would NEVER do this...' Headcanons were interpretations of a character, are they not? Why was it so wrong of me to portray the things I had in this light?

More came, more OOC talk in tiny IM windows happened and I quickly started to feel a bit pushed out because if I said one thing, then it would contradict this 'older, better' thing.

So I moved to RP, and I kept a few of these friends. But later, as I started developing Seifer, as I started gaining a presence and becoming a sought-after blog, people started distancing themselves from me.

What changed? Had my behavior been different? I did begin to feel extremely confident in my portrayal. Had that come off as arrogant and offended somebody? After a few toxic situations, I had to put my foot down in some cases for my own mental health's sake, had cutting bad people out of my life resulted in negative consequences? Because they were 'popular' or otherwise, influential blogs?

Last year began a huge shift in the fandom where suddenly I had become this horrible person and I didn't know why. Nobody would tell me. And then once the drama had subsided, after all the bullshit had died away, I started getting messages, people telling me things about a person I had blocked and the things they said and...

Goddamn. I'm just here to write.

I don't understand. I feel like I missed the whole 'here's everything you need to survive Tumblr and not offend anybody' lesson.

Anyway.

I feel shut out of my own fandom. I don't know if it's because the fandom is so small on the RP side or if I've written or made a headcanon that personally offended somebody... I just don't know. I feel so painfully self-conscious about writing ANYTHING in VIII because it's only a matter of a few days after where someone will post something to contradict what I've already written. And this isn't just with Seifer. God, I can't write anything unique on Zell either be in RP or fanfic community. I remember getting an anon harshly criticizing my decisions on how to write Zell in my epic fanfic.

No offense but none of us own these characters. We're free to write them as we see fit. If I can have a murderous/bipolar Zell, the fandom can have their bdsm semi-noncon SeiferxSquall lemons and Genderswap!AU's.

But back on topic -- Genuinely, sincerely, from the deepest part of my soul, I'm not here to intentionally piss people off. I don't want that. I want community and I want people to write together and just be happy and enjoy this amazing talent we're all capable of.

Just.... hgh. I'll delete this later, I just needed to write this out so it wasn't stuck in my head. Maybe someone will read this and have an idea, or know something and they can maybe fill me in on a part that I'm leaving out or missing.

And for future reference, if I ever offend you. Yes, you who have taken the time to read all of this -- if I ever offend or say something you disagree with or maybe make a comment that upsets you, I encourage you to come to me in private and let's talk. Can we please push aside our anxieties and insecurities and bring forward what is really bothering us instead of this dancing around the subject?

If you read all of this, thank you. I know it's a lot to write and I apologize for clogging the dash. I just needed to get this out.

I worry about me writing so much in my AUs and not focusing enough on VIII but how can I write in VIII when the RP community is so small and disagrees with my interpretations?

[mermaidsirennikita]

What do you think about this whole "anti culture" on tumblr? I understand disliking something and criticizing something, but anti culture is more than that-it's constantly hating on smh, it's trying to make people who like it feel bad, it's trying to claim some moral superiority (like "canon vs fanon", "my ship's purer/better than yours", "I ship problematic ship (PS) myself, but lecture others for shipping other PSs", etc.), it's sending hateful anons etc. It exists in almost every fandom.

I... have a lot of mixed feelings.  Obviously I have no issue with being argumentative (lol I answered a couple of anons in an argumentative manner today) but to me there’s debating and there’s actively seeking trouble and I’d prefer to stay out of that PERSONALLY because while I have a ton of opinions I consider some opinions more important to me than others.  Like, do I love every ship that comes across my dash?  Not at all.  There are many I loathe.  But it’s really not worth my time or energy to bitch about it.  I do. Oh, I do.  But most of the time that involves me messaging or texting my mutuals/friends privately.  I was more into being super loud about my fandom opinions a few years ago, but now I’d prefer to write a super fucking long essay that I’ve thought about for a bit vs. just dashing off a three-sentence post every few hours.  I also feel like I do a lot more of my talking in my tags, and that’s more private on Tumblr, you know?

I do think there are some incredibly problematic ships out there.  I ship some.  BACK IN MY DAY--and anyone who’s followed me for a long time knows this--I was like... the resident Incest Shipper.  I had about three or four sibling ships I just kinda circulated.  Obviously I abhor incest irl, but it was a problematic thing I shipped, and I still have some of those ships though incest isn’t popular on TV as it was a while back lmao and thus there is less for me to ship.  But the thing is that though I shipped these ships, I never romanticized them.  I recognized them as fucked up.  My canonical ending for most of them in my head was “they all die”.  I didn’t think it was okay.  I didn’t want anyone to run off together or *coughsaveWesteroscough*.  I called out my own problematic-ness and basically acknowledged that a lot of my interest in these ships was based on a) hot actors b) chemistry and c) my own interest in tragic ships and what is more tragic than people who can never and should never be together and will probably end up dead?

I do think there are limits.  Because the way we view fiction does reflect the way we view real life, and I think that if you are not shipping consenting adults with consenting adults, you are not in good territory.  Any ship that involves pedophilia, I don’t think you can defend with “it’s fiction, I know it’s wrong!” because there are plenty of kids on the internet who can fall prey to being groomed if they get involved in fandoms that are down and chill and groovy with pedophilia-related ships, and also that’s just... beyond.  Like, if the actors playing people you are shipping are an adult and a child, that is a real fucking child you’re sexualizing right there.  I don’t feel like I can explain the wrongness of this in comparison to other things, and it shouldn’t have to be explained.  It also, frankly, is a part of a very big issue online rn which involves children being groomed through subliminal messaging, not by anyone outright being like “want a candy bar little girl”.

There’s also an element of me that says... whatever.  Sure, you might get your feelings hurt because people are calling you out on shipping weird shit, but maybe you should.  If it’s perpetuating harmful ideas, if you’re writing fanfic that involves rape or a number of other fucked up shit that I see on here... be prepared to get called out.  Back when I shipped Cesare/Lucrezia on The Borgias, I think I was pretty tame, but I still got anon hate and I just kind of was like “yep figured I would anyway moving on”.  Buck up, buttercup.  Tbh, there is much worse than some of the hate I’ve seen people receive on here that they freak out over.  Much worse off your computer, to be exact.  And it’s not fair, maybe, but you should probably be prepared for that.  For me, nothing on here can be as bad as my real life has been for the past few months lol.  That’s not even the worst that my life has been, and many people have it 10000000000000000% worse than I do.  I think you do need to have a thick skin on here, because not everyone will agree with you and there will always be toxicity in fandoms.

But what is an “anti”, really?  Is it someone that disagrees with you?  We’re all against something, you know.  Obviously the biggest anti thing I see is anti-r*ylo, and I don’t super like that ship either though I don’t care enough to express my opinion.  Or anti-j*nerys, which I have expressed my opinion about a good bit.  Everyone has a problematic ship, but I think the issue that “antis” have with those ships is the weird cultishness around them, the insistence that they MUST be canon (when canon is hardly the end all be all) and the fact that they’ve sort of taken over large chunks of the fandom.  I follow “antis”, and I’ve seen people for their ships be twice as vicious as they’ve ever been.  People claiming moral superiority are hardly the only ones sending hateful anons.

Also, you can indeed shut anon off and if it’s a problem you should probably do that.

My opinion is basically: that sucks, check yourself and your own behavior if people call you out, some will be right about your own issues and maybe you can fix that, but also some will just be assholes to be assholes.  And while fandom is usually based around fiction that somehow reflects reality, as all fiction does, it’s not real.  That’s so important to remember.  It’s not real.

[clonerightsagenda]

May I ask for your opinion about this theory I saw? revolutionaryduelist (.) tumblr (.) com(/) post (/) 159067632817 (/) jake-english-is-the-most-intelligent-character-in

Ok so to start off I’ll say the writer of the theory seems like a very nice person but I think our perspectives, how we approach media, and what we look for in a story are just fundamentally different because I’ve disagreed with most of what I’ve seen of theirs that’s crossed my dash. And that happens sometimes. Different readers, etc etc. It’s not personal or anything. There have been some people where it was personal

That being said, just looking at the title of this, I’m not sure what the benefit of making this argument is? As they say themselves at the beginning, intelligence and ranking people by it is arbitrary and harmful for a bunch of reasons. But perhaps they’re trying to dispel the ‘Jake’s a useless moron’ narrative fandom and even postretcon canon seems to have embraced. I can respect that. Let’s read on.

I can’t tell if they’re trying to say Tavros intentionally acts the way he does to get people to take care of him? Because I’d disagree with that - after all, in Alternian culture displays of weakness can get you killed. It’s even stated that Tavros risks culling. I’d say his behavior reflects his genuine attitudes and beliefs in pacifism and kindness, which is in fact radical and dangerous by Alternian standards (and pisses Vriska off, because she cultivates her persona because she believes it’s the best way to survive, and Tavros surviving his way challenges the life and lie she’s built for herself.) And it’s Tavros’s radical kindness that gets the frequently listless dead to follow him willingly, even if Meenah takes it away from him. (I’m not saying he does it to be radical, btw. It’s just him, and he has no intention of being someone else. The one time he tries to act more like Vriska, it kills him. That honesty and enjoyment in his interests is not inherently childish. Kindness is not childish.)

But this post isn’t really about Tavros, so I’ll move on. It’s just that whenever someone mentions Tavros I remember I have Feelings.

I would totally agree that Jake’s adventure shtick isn’t 100% true. (After all, he’d rather stay inside and watch movies than fight monsters, although he does enjoy the odd scuffle.) The kid’s alone on a monster island; he needs some sort of coping mechanism. And when your friends are an heiress to a major corporation and two futuristic badasses, who doesn’t want to sound cool? But I’m not sold that it’s a deliberate tool of manipulation. I’ve always felt that Pages often get “written on” (blank page, haha, get it?) and that Jake as a Hope hero was particularly prone to people pasting their ideas and desires over him. So although he set up the adventurous badass front, he often felt pressured to be what other people expected of him. He also, like John, has a tendency to interpret a lot of stuff through media. I’ve read some really good posts about Jake’s gender weirdness re: coding, norms, and action films, but I do think his film consumption impacted his behavior to both act like a stalwart male action hero *and* the sexualized female prize. I’m not the Alpha kid expert, though. I prefer betas.  

Anyway, I’d say the next bit - the bit about Jake and Jane - is colored by both the theorist’s and my preconceived feelings. I’m aware they’re a DirkJ/ake fan, and while I’m not at all saying they’re misreading things, I do think that is going to affect how you read stuff. Similarly, my reading is affected by personal experience - my experience as an aromantic person. See, I read this and see something completely different based on my own lived experience. I see one of my deepest darkest fears.  

As you all know from either earlier posts or three sentences ago, I’m aro. And although this was never a likely possibility due to many of my qualities, I sometimes feared a friend becoming romantically interested in me. That would be disastrous. I wouldn’t be able to reciprocate, and I feared this would hurt them, hurt me, and probably ruin the friendship. This has impacted the way I’ve behaved - I was deliberately withdrawn in high school, I still have issues with platonic “I love yous” between friends, and I have literally had actual nightmares about this.  Anyway, when I read this, I saw someone who was terrified that their friend might be interested in them asking again and again trying to figure it out, trying to get permission to stop being worried, and then being relieved that they weren’t going to be put in a messy situation. I always felt that Jake felt extremely pressured because he picked up on his friends having romantic interest in him and he felt guilty about it, and he simply wanted to keep the peace. I don’t want to get into whether he had any feelings at all for Dirk, but I do feel that if Jane had spoken up, there’s a decent chance he would have dated her instead. I don’t think it would’ve ended any better though, since like Dirk I think she would have come to suspect he was phoning it in.

I’m not sure I’d say Jake is 100% aro (maybe arospec) but I do think in this situation he was unsure about how he felt, unwilling to really explore it, and preferring to just do whatever it took to keep the peace between his friends. Unfortunately, it blew up in his face. Welcome to the alpha session, kid.

Anyway, the purpose of that very personal tangent was to say I’m not saying their perspective is wrong, but because of my own perspective that I bring to the table, I read a lot of Jake’s romantic adventures in a very different light. And that’s ok. I will gladly throw my hat into the ‘Jake’s not a moron’ ring, although I don’t think he has to be proven to be a master manipulator to do that. He’s a kid. They’re all kids who make mistakes and communicate poorly and get confused sometimes. He just got kinda flanderized for it in fandom because a lot of the alphas in particular got flanderized, and the Prospit kids in canon got forgotten.

[hawkeyedflame]

i'm not sure if some specific people i follow never followed me back or if they did and then unfollowed me. a couple of them are people i talked to and i enjoy their presence on my dash and tumblr’s telling me they aren’t following me, even though i was... pretty sure at least two specific people were mutuals and now they’re not and i’m wondering if i did something to offend. it’s high-key stressing me out and i wish my anxiety would calm down because i’m not usually one to get worked up about other people’s opinions of me. but right now it’s really bothering me.

i don’t know if its because of my political opinions or something? like i know i’m right of center but i’m pretty moderate and i try to avoid that discourse nowadays anyways because i don’t like how it makes me feel. and i scroll through dozens of political/sociopolitical posts i dont like/agree with from people i follow because i still like and appreciate them overall and want to be friendly in spite of political differences. like that’s not the only thing about a person. i can think of three mutuals off the top of my head with whom i would disagree vehemently on certain subjects and i don’t see a reason to cut them off for that because i still think they’re kind-hearted people with good intentions, even if i don’t agree with the way their beliefs manifest. i still think they’re worthy of being respected as individuals and i don’t think something like a difference in opinion justifies ending an amicable friendship/acquaintanceship over. like even that person i vagued about earlier, i still follow them because i like their blog and overall i’m sure they’re a decent person despite that i couldn’t disagree with their political opinions more if i tried.

like i would get it if i constantly spammed political stuff but i only post a political thing like once a week maybe and i tag it so people can blacklist it... idk i feel like that’s a really childish reason to unfollow someone you had previously wanted to be friendly with? like i’m not a disrespectful person? i try hard to be really nice to everyone so i don’t know why i keep losing followers (unless they’re political bloggers who aren’t interested in my blog anymore, which is understandable, but i feel like it’s more than that).

i don’t know, its 2:50am and i can’t sleep because i’m anxious about everything. im being stupid just ignore me

[userpoe]

I was tagged by @fisforfulcrum thanks sweetie 😘

Why did you choose your URL?

I was really getting back into my sequels spin and wanted something short and snappy to change to, but I also wanted it to be connected to Poe in some way. Since all the good Poe urls were taken, on a whim I checked to see if zoriis was available. It was, so I changed to it and it...just sort of became my brand? I don't ever wanna change from it I don't think...unless a really good Poe url opens up anyway, which I doubt. And I get a serious seratonin rush whenever anyone refers to me by my url in the tags idk why.

Any side blogs?

I have my x reader fic blog @luminouspoes where I use to reblog all my recs + post my fics before I decided to move all my bullshit here. I'm also co-mod of @thedamereynetwork because I love my babies.

How long have you been on tumblr?

Since 2011/2012. I didn't really get active on here until late 2013, though.

Do you have a queue tag?

the classic and very original "queue". I use to do the snazzy quotes thing but I can never stick to one for very long. I've debated here and there making a new queue tag, maybe with a sw quote, but eh who has the spoons for that.

Why did you start your blog in the first place?

Initially back when, it was meant to help me with my nonfiction writing. Instead, Tumblr ended up being instrumental in me discovering fanfic and honing my fiction writing craft through that. I remade my blog a shit ton of times as a teenager, though, and the thing that kept me coming back was all the pretty content and my friends. Plus, where else am I gonna be this weird on? Twitter? Hell no.

Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

Because I thought the Poe emoji on the Star Wars app was precious. Then, for pride month, I decided to add the aroace flag behind him because well. I'm asexual and dubiously aromantic, and I hc Poe being aspec, so I thought it'd be nice. Did you know his second X-Wing kind of has the same color palette as the aroace flag? It's pretty damn cool still not Black One but cool

Why did you choose your header?

Because @abelmorales and @michaelperry are responsible for me falling head over heels with Michael Perry and I wanted to include (1) soft perfect angel teacher man on my blog somehow fjsjsjskss so soft af flannel clad grading papers Michael it was.

What’s your post with the most notes?

This Poe gifset here, which astonishes me given how many braincells I had to rub together to figure out how to phrase the captions (the irony, I know). I guess we have a thing for competency and forearms in this fandom?

How many mutuals do you have?

A few! Dunno how many dunno how one would know that.

How many follows do you have?

Too many, in my opinion??? There's almost 1.2k of you now and I don't know why you're all here but I appreciate it nonetheless.

How many people do you follow?

Little under 200 and most of those are inactive anymore. I'm pretty picky abt what I follow cos of my anxiety and also idk if you've noticed but most of my interests revolve around shit that's been over for several years. And a lot of blogs are really ship-oriented, and I just...don't vibe with shipping communities so I try to stay on the outskirts of all that.

Also I'm pretty guarded about who I follow due to years of casual aphobia being thrown around this site, and now wariness about how blogs act abt neurodivergent folk and characters

...but if anyone knows of any more active Oscar blogs that are nice abt Poe and the sequels or moffat era dw blogs...please let me know fjdksks my dash is always dead

Have you ever made a shitpost?

With my brand of humor I think most of my jokey posts kind of teeters on it. But I don't think I've ever outright done a shitpost.

How often do you use tumblr each day?

*coughs* pretty often. I'm a slow scroller, so it takes me awhile to get through the dashboard to start with and I also like checking the edit tags and then if I go through a blog I can end up going down a rabbit hole of looking through their posts or their tag about a show or movie or character I like and then whoops where has the time gone. But I'm kind of pulling myself away from scrolling so much on Tumblr, if anything so my dashboard is a little more active when I do hop on, and also so I can get some other hobbies in like writing or reading (working through the second to all the boys book rn!)

Did you have a fight with another blog once?

*laughs my ass off* no. I stick to my lane, if someone posts something that I'm uncomfortable with or I disagree with, I just... unfollow? I'm not interested in vague posting people either, I don't see the damn point. This is my little internet cottage and I don't see the point in fighting the village when I can just ignore them and care for fellow wanderers, ya feel?

Though, come to think of it, I have told off a fair few anonymous asks who were trying to bully my friends or mutuals but. I don't know if we can really count that or not.

How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

[wibbles hand] I think some can veer a little too closely to guilt tripping the readers, but if it's something really important, I understand the urgency.

Do you like tag games?

I do! They're a lot of fun, I just wish I had the spoons more often to do them. I also tend to freak out because I never know who to tag because I'm simultaneously worried I'll be annoying if I do tag someone, and if I forget someone I'll make them feel left out.

Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

First off, Laura's answer to this question is so damn precious I'm going to cry, love you babes. Second of all, I genuinely think all my mutuals are Tumblr famous. Like in my head I'm just like "that person is so fucking awesome oh my god they're so cool I bet they have so many followers they deserve it all their posts are exquisite". I love my mutuals and there's a good chance (see: yes) that if we're mutuals I consider u my friend in my head I'm just too shy to admit it out loud yet jdjdks

Do you have a crush on a mutual?

I literally get hearts in my eyes everytime I go down my dashboard. I am platonically kissing you all on the cheek and giving you cocoa. I love you.

no pressure tags: @bee-dameron @djarinsbeskar @michaelperry @abelmorales @starryeyedstories @misterrimpossible @exlibrisastra and @princedimitris and anyone else I may be blanking on

[stuckonreblogs]

directly copied to reply to- original post here: http://paula-deens-fuckboy.tumblr.com/post/156424800265/ok-but-how-are-you-going-to-go-around-saying-that ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Source: paula-deens-fuckboy Every decent human being in our race is against pedophilia, there’s no ‘high horse’ or entitlement here, it’s a basic moral line that most of our society possesses. The fact that you and your little pedo-patrol defense system don’t understand that doesn’t make the rest of society stuck up, it makes you all lower than the rest of us morally and intellectually. You’re the odd ones out, and you really don’t seem to understand that judging by how you think me shutting down pedophile culture is some statement of self supremacy. I have no RIGHT to criticize pedophilia culture? Actually, shockingly I know, I do. Everyone has the right of criticism, everyone has the right of reviewing product that is being sold, and most importantly- it isn’t just a right, EVERY adult is RESPONSIBLE for shutting down pedophilia culture in other adults. Not only do I have a legal right to criticize your useless friend but I have a damn good reason to do it. The fact that you think random magic AU’s or whatever are comparable to pedophile culture is another indication that you have absolutely no solid grasp of reality and common sense, as if we needed another. I don’t even know how to address your personal opinion, because you’re.. You’re too self-righteous and morally bankrupt to even argue with. This ‘youre bitter because “Sig” wouldn’t draw you art’ idea is so akin to that junior high ‘You’re just jealous’ argument, both are inaccurate silencing techniques. You’re all so damn entitled and pretentious that you dare think that nobody would speak out against “sig” if it weren’t for jealousy, that is batshit fucked up, this level of narcissism is so high for an average-to-mediocre tumblr artist who doesn’t draw anything interesting. To be honest, I didn’t know who “Sig” was until yesterday, when someone on my dash spontaneously reblogged their pedo shit, so this notion that I’ve got ulterior motives (because how could someone JUST be against pedophilia? That’s so whack) is absolutely narcissistic bullshit that you’re all using in an unsuccessful attempt to discredit my person. But it greatly interests me that you see “sig’s” client base/people who wish to purchase their porn, as inherently small minded and dense, and incapable of average debate. But hey, it’s easier to think someone is ‘just bitter’ than to admit and evaluate that you’re standing up for a pedophilic dipshit who isn’t a special enough artist to deserve this amount of your effort, right? Don’t project, it doesn’t hold up in debate. Not that Anyone Asked for your personal opinion, which is uneducated and unimportant anyways, but absolutely everything to do with it is evidence that you don’t have a single clue what you’re arguing against, your response is literally nothing, none of it makes sense. 1) You use the word hypocritical when it’s not applicable, 2) you pull a junior high argument which you have no evidence or back up for, 3) you try to bring my URL into it when it’s very obviously a blatant joke and isn’t applicable to the argument at hand. (But who could ever know that? How were you to know that someone isn’t actually identifying as a ‘fuckboy’ for a senior citizen from Texas? It’s too believable) 4) There’s nothing redeemable to read, to make those other 3 mistakes look less silly. You haven’t said a single thing that has lead me to believe that you have a merit-able argument to offer me, you haven’t made a single bound in convincing me that your side of the argument makes a lick of sense. All you can do is spout insults without fact because you don’t have any fact that you can actually back up. You have no sense of grammar, no sense of structure, you can’t make a point that could stand in any reasonable debate, and then you have the audacity to tell me I have a small mind. Now that, and please take this in as it is an important lesson for you to learn, that is hypocrisy. Do you understand what hypocrisy means now? Probably not but I digress. Absolutely everything you have said to me is hypothetical trash, you are a laughing stock, you’re an embarrassment to yourself and your friend and you’re making you both look like bigger jokes than ever, maybe you should hand the reigns over to someone with an IQ higher than that of a fetus. From.. Well, everything about you, I’m expecting your next reply to be something nonsensical… again. I know that you don’t have an argument beyond blabbering and whining and cheap cop-outs, or you would have included it in your first reply. I don’t argue with people who don’t have the basic skill to debate, I’m not willing to go in circles with someone who has absolutely nothing valuable to say, so don’t bother replying because I’m blocking you, as well. Maybe next time “Sig” will send someone who isn’t a complete embarrassment. Boy bye ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Okay, prefacing this with the understanding that some people are offended even by fictional/potential pedophilia, and I am not at all addressing everyone's beliefs here- my response to that is click unfollow, blacklist, and know it doesn't offend everyone. These comments are ment solely for this individual since they think a half ass rant at their callousness is the best I can do. As for your bloated ego, let me address the over stated drivel of your reply point by point since apparently the snap response of a pissed off rant struck enough of a nerve that you had to attempt to justify your forcing idiocy on other people. "every decent human being" clearly "decent" and "capable of separating fiction" are not on the same level in your brain here. an *intelligent* human being would be capable of understanding that this character was a work of fiction to begin with and therefore any depiction of them in any other age rage/gender/otherwise alternative form is as valid as the original. If we were discussing a *REAL* personage, your "decent" descriptor might have merit, but as we are not, its an invalid outlook. As that is the case, my original comment of "high horse" is indeed correct. Your attempts at forcing one "valid" view of a fictional peice of work are nothing short of you assuming your view is the only one that has the right to exist and that fiction has no right to do anything except mirror reality. You're not an activist shutting down pedo-culture, you're hiding in the kiddy sandbox of tumblr cutting people you think are safe because they aren't part of the real problem; you twist fiction into unacceptablity because you think you can hide your own emotional and intellectual failings behind big SJW wanna be movements. You have every right to criticize, but criticism and destructive behavior are two totally separate entities. You have a right to criticize ACTUAL pedo-culture, not what you as a individual take offense to and try to smother in a disagreeable outlook for your own justification at destruction. If your the buyer, you have a right to critique, you weren't buying it, so keep your nosy overbearing self the fuck out of it. Adults have a responsibility to protect children, not slink around and project their own destructive judgments on what they find offensive. Your only "legal" right here is to your freedom of speech, you have no legal bearing to decide what is moral or valid on a piece of art that is based on FICTION. If the art was titled after a real kid, and the image was clearly a sexual representative of wanting to have sex with a kid and with the disclaimer "oh they are 18 so its fine" slapped on, you'd have moral ground. It's not, you don't, so how about you reevaluate your grasp on reality vs fiction before you even try to find the gaps in mine. (also just a side note, fuck you for your pathetic attempt at demoralizing a wonderful person by calling them useless just because you take offense at me, come at me of you think that kind of behavior is warrented.) You have no place to address my personal opinion actually, thats the point. It's my opinion. You can dislike it, you can say I'm wrong, but its my right to say it and yours to disagree. I'm hardly self righteous, I'm a bitch and I know it. But you obviously think opposite of what you say if you think I can't be argued with and then go on for 5 more paragraphs. It's definitely junior high, l'll give you that, but considering your the one going "I don't like it so it shouldn't exist wah wah" I feel we have a shared stage there. And it was hardly meant to silence, it was meant to point out that your attacking a very talented person on the basis of "your likes" and the fact that "your an artist too" so there is some comparison of purpose there, sorry you didn't appreciate that. Who is this "all"? this is just me. So clearly I'm not the only who is getting the jealously vibe from your so called "arguments". And you continue to encourage this when you attack someone's skill set and choice of project in direct response to critism of your own failings and jackass opinionated ranting. Whether or not you knew who they were, I'd believe your actually against pedophilia, reasonable and moral people tend to be. You don't really fit either category to a T, but I'll take your candor in trying as a pass there. I, however, never implied their clientele was anything. I said the clients they REJECTED were small minded and dense, specifically YOU are small minded and dense. Other rejections seem to have taken it well enough that I would have to apologize for the vagueness of that statement. Oh, I am certainly not one for taking the easy road, I didn't choose to point out the other failings and things as I am doing now because it wasn't worth the effort. I am standing up against you specifically being destructive to one of the artists who make sure their art and adult content is not easily accessible to minors. And if you continue to make slandering remarks against them, I will point out that your making my point in that your jealous. *I* am the one here calling your bullshit, they have done nothing but create and image you have an issue with. Instead of coming for me, you have to keep tossing in that "they" are useless, "they" are a dipshit, "they" aren't special. Fuck you. You have nothing but disreputable and disgusting things to say, your opinion screams of jealousy. So either you can debate on provable points that tie to your opinion, and keep the badmouthing to myself since I am the one arguing here, or you can keep screaming jealous crybaby and whine more when I continue to call you out on it. No one asked, but it's my response so I can say what I like. Unlike you, I specifically noted it as a personal opinion with no reasonable baring on the argument. Your assumptions are scattered throughout your writing as if they are fact. Camouflage away, I ain't afraid to take responsibility for what I think, don't need to hide it in bullshit. 1) hypocritical, behaving in a way that suggests one has higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.- your claims that you have a moral standing of making art without pedophilia makes you better then an artist doing the same thing. Hmm. seems applicable. 2)junior high argument, clearly labeled as personal opinion therefore evidence not required, as just stated. 3) also labeled personal opinion, but its okay to be gross when its a joke in your opinion. Noted and disagreed with. It's juvenile and disgusting so fuck off with trying to justify it. 4) how is this a point of fact? again, separate opinion. I don't have to convince you of jack shit. I made that rant because I was expressing that you have gods awful intention as far as I was concerned and exercising my right to free speech. It was a rant and the fact you responded so aggressively means I hit a nerve, so *now* I am making legitimate claims and points. The fact that you'd choose to believe that was anything more then a venting of disgust with your behavior and assuming that it was all I was capable of is your own failing. These last few paragraphs are repetitive aggressions meant to extend your reply and make it look intelligent. Your making no points except to attack my person, again presented as fact. But to address the one valid comment- no one "sent" me, fucker. I typed this because anon is ridiculous and you can fucking come at me all you like cause I don't give a fuck. You, and anyone who thinks its right to attack over fiction, are WRONG. You are wrong to attack them, you are wrong to be destructive to a fictional community, and you are a jealous piece of shit that needs to stop trying to tear other people down because you can't get the same recognition without being a jackass.