#because discord is more like for actually talking to people and having conversations than tumblr is aside from messaging

[astraltrickster]

I feel we're at a point where we need to step back and consciously remind ourselves that posting ANYTHING personal online is a risk. It should be a calculated one.

Companies that run major websites HAVE to stay above board with the law, no matter how shit that law is, unless they're small enough to just dissolve and hide and pop up again under a different name later (usually meaning sole proprietorships) or big enough to be granted an unofficial "yeah we'll just look the other way because we want that sweet sweet lobbyist money" exception (in which case it's usually NOT gonna be the shit laws they're breaking). Meaning you should REALLY think twice about posting about anything illegal, and you should NOT be shocked when posts recommending illegal activity get nuked from a semi-major website.

This also means that if you're on a platform that's not DESIGNED for privacy - which, in many cases, includes the implicit purpose of enabling breaking certain laws the platform creators think are stupid, though they can't admit to it (just like how you can sell bongs in states where weed is still illegal but you have to SAY they're "for tobacco use only") - you have to operate under the assumption that ANYTHING you say can be intercepted and monitored. Again - unless the platform is explicitly there for privacy, unless your communication is end-to-end encrypted, unless the cops have reason to understand and believe that the logs don't EXIST, assume ANY platform host will hand over a complete log of everything you've said there and where you said it from to the cops upon request.

In addition, posting publicly about things that are typically protected by certain privacy laws can undermine the protection from those laws. "Reasonable expectation of privacy" is a legal term. You have it with things you say in private in your home. You have it to an extent with quiet conversations you have with a friend at a coffee shop. You DON'T have it with things you scream on a public street - and you DEFINITELY don't have it with things you post online with your legal name and actual human face attached.

I say this, because for the past few years I've noticed a disturbing trend of people assuming this is a uniquely bad EXCEPTION to a general free-for-all, and not...the rule. This is the default! This isn't a uniquely evil thing about Facebook or Twitter or Discord or anywhere else! It's not a "tumblr is secretly betraying us right under our noses" thing! This is just the reality of operating a website under the legal systems that exist! Even if it's a site whose operators' internal values are truly aligned 100% with yours, you STILL have to assume they're going to sing like a canary because, come on, do you really expect them to sacrifice themselves over one (1) user? Maybe a tiny forum of friends would, but no company is going to do that.

And that's not even getting into what happens when it's not a host/operating company or organization, but just some individual asshole other user with an axe to grind.

Tl;dr remember that We Live In A Society, stop expecting people and companies not to cover their asses, be careful about what you share online, and learn to use actual encrypted services. Sure, Facebook and other shitty entities like to pretend the internet is a super cool safe playground where all but doxxing yourself does more good than harm, but they're blatantly fucking lying. Talking about your disabilities is a risk. Talking about being queer is a risk. Talking about anything that might become illegal in your area is a risk. CALCULATE THOSE RISKS BEFORE YOU TAKE THEM instead of doing the shocked Pikachu face when your post of detailed instructions for how to firebomb a police station gets taken down and you get put on a list because you left it perfectly traceable to your real identity.

[blanketforcas]

🚩Cult and cultlike/toxic behavior: red flags in fandom 🚩

A non-exhaustive list inspired by my 10+ years of experience in fandom, both personal and second-hand. By sharing this, I hope to make other people more aware and able to protect themselves in the future. No fandom space or friend group is worth your mental health.

They claim they have secret information and use that to lure you in

They might either lovebomb you at first or make you (feel like you have to) prove your worth

The leader(s) of the group might not feel super approachable, at least not without fear of saying the wrong thing

They seem to create or point out a divide in fandom you’d never noticed before. Likely this divide isn’t actually there in wider fandom, or the need for it is wholly unnecessary.

They create an us vs them (outsiders) situation. Their group has the most knowledge and expertise, if others critique them it’s simply cause they must’ve heard false rumors. They are always the ones who are “misunderstood”.

Questioning statements from leaders/people with high regard in the group, is not without risk. You can get dogpiled, your intelligence put into question and gaslit about your own words and feelings.

You see discussions happen and get more heated, and at the end of that discussion the person on the receiving end of the things mentioned above ^ starts apologizing profusely and/or believes they are indeed stupid. However, if this person does keep defending their stance, they might get bullied or kicked out of the server/group chat

Too much emphasis on Being Right/having the correct take or theory – it may seem it has a higher priority than empathy and tactful communication

You need to have an opinion (their opinion), because silence equals condoning or agreeing with the “other side”

Everything is a moral issue. When everything is made out to be a high-stakes issue or reflective of everyone as a person, it's easier for the leader(s) to manipulate you.

You find yourself excusing people’s behavior because you agree with their point. The way they bring their argument forward and the tone they use, become subordinate to finding out the truthTM

There is such a thing as The TruthTM in every theory, discussion or analysis

If you don't Get It, it's cause you haven't "worked on yourself enough". Or it's cause you're not trying hard enough, or you haven't done enough reading, or you have blind spots only they can see.

There is a lot of conspiratorial thinking – maybe actors are trying to send us secret messages, maybe there is a Whole Lot You Don’t Know But We Do, Trust Us, maybe this or that person in fandom has tried to attack us and are planning a bigger attack,…

You barely/don’t have fandom friends outside of this group and if you do, you tend to intentionally (whether subconsciously or not) hide your experience from them. They wouldn’t understand the way they talk, they wouldn’t understand the way it works etc

They want to know a lot of your personal information. - might only happen once you get into higher ranks

You might get (more and more) specific “tasks”, it starts becoming a part-time job instead of a hobby/fun space to hang out with friends

Of course, these red flags are not always immediately visible let alone advertised when you join a group chat/discord server/twitter or tumblr bubble. They can also be nonexistent at first and show up later. Here are some general ways to stay vigilant:

Periodically check in with your values, if they might be changing & how you feel about that.

Keep an eye on the way people (and yourself) are being treated. Is it kind? Is it fair? Do you feel on edge all the time when you’re having conversations? Is your body more tense when you’re in this online space or when certain people are around? Be honest with yourself here.

Ask yourself: Is this space becoming my only coping mechanism? Am I spending too much time here? There’s no shame in spending a lot of time on things you enjoy, but do check in with yourself sometimes whether you are actually still having fun and if you are taking things too seriously or parasocialising a lot.

There's a lot of fun to be had in fandom and a lot of good that comes out of it - don't forget that. Keep seeking that. It's why we're here!

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for making a YouTuber feel uncomfortable? 

Here me out please, before you all make assumptions. 

A couple months ago, I(19F) began following a YouTuber that I quickly began to love. I won’t be saying the YouTuber’s name for the sake of protecting their privacy, obviously. I started to watch their videos(which were mainly about a story that she came up with, featuring her ocs) and enjoyed them all, enjoyed the ocs, too. This YouTuber is a relatively unpopular one, but not so unpopular that they’re obscure or completely unheard of, they’re just not one of the big names in the YouTuber community. I made a few amazing friends due to us being in the same fandom and both enjoying this YouTuber’s content. One day, I decided to write a fanfic for this person’s story featuring her ocs. I uploaded the fic to AO3 and made sure to credit the YouTuber with creating these amazing ocs. I then showed it to my few friends, who all loved the fanfic. However, one day I made the mistake of showing the fic to a mutual friend(now an ex-friend but that’s a topic for another discussion) that me and the YT both share, and she sent the fanfic to the YT without my permission. Now before y’all get up in arms, I didn’t mind at all that she had sent it to the YT, in fact, I actually wanted the YT to see. However I really wish that she had asked me first, because I would have been more than happy to show it to them! Unfortunately, a few days after I sent it to her, my other friend(let’s call her M) showed me an announcement the YT made on her Discord, in which she complained about people writing fanfictions of her ocs and “using” them in her stories without her permission. She also stated that she felt like she was losing control of her story when other people wrote fanfics of it, and that whoever wrote the fanfiction “didn’t understand boundaries”(even though she didn’t have this boundary before and also wrote in the announcement that she used to be okay with fanfics of her work, but now no longer is). I deleted the fanfic the moment I saw the post from my friend, but I was a bit disappointed since I never meant to make her feel uncomfortable and only wanted to show my love and appreciation for her story, and possibly get more people to check out her story as well. Still, I deleted the fanfic from AO3. 

Now, here’s where things get interesting. A while later, I joined the YouTuber’s Discord server, where I met many people that I got along quite well with and quickly befriended. I often engaged in conversations with them about the story, and often drew fanart of my favorite character and posted it to the art channel in the server(she’s okay with fanart of her ocs, just not fanfics). Now is probably a good time to mention that while I was in the Discord server(and even before that) I often talked about the story with my friend on Tumblr(not M, these are two separate friends) who did not have Discord but loved the story just as much as I did. We often talked about the story and how much we enjoyed it, and often came up with jokes and headcanons, basic stuff like that, that any fan would do. Anyway, back to the Discord, one of the rules of the server was not to be disrespectful or rude or malicious towards other people, and another was that if you received two warnings about your behavior in the server then you would be quickly banned from the server and no longer allowed to come back. I understood this and tried to conduct myself to the best of my ability. However, one day, I found myself mysteriously unable to access the server, and when I tried to rejoin, I was again unable to. I found out that the reason I couldn’t access the server was because I had been banned due to “disrespectful behavior”, “engaging in arguments”, and making the YouTuber(who ran the server) uncomfortable. I was confused, because I genuinely don’t remember ever engaging in rude behavior with anyone. The few instances(according to them) in which I had been allegedly rude or disrespectful to people were both genuine misunderstandings, and both times I had apologized for them and did not repeat the behavior. I also did not receive any form of warning before being banned, despite one of the rules being that you will receive two warnings before being banned from the server. Still, I apologized for my alleged hostility and asked if I could come back, however the YouTuber said no, and went on to add that not only was I rude to people in the server(which, again, were both genuine misunderstandings), but that she had seen my Tumblr conversations with my friends in which I talked about her story, and said that she was “wildly uncomfortable” with how “obsessive” I was with it as well as my favorite character in the story. This bewildered me to no end because the YouTuber did not have Tumblr and had never once ever mentioned being on or having access to Tumblr, so I did not expect her to see my posts(and even if she did, I did not expect to get banned for them as they do not violate the rules of the server). It made me wonder why she didn’t just talk to me and explain to me that she was uncomfortable with me posting about her work instead of just banning me altogether and not giving me a chance to defend myself. I ended up sadly and reluctantly deleting all of my posts relating to her story, and requesting my friend to do the same. I told M about this scenario, and she was enraged on my behalf, saying that the YouTuber probably was actually upset about my having written a fanfic for her ocs, and said that she didn’t understand me being called obsessive because I acted like a normal fan would(which I agree with). Some of my other friends have sided with me as well and told me that the YouTuber was acting petty, however some of my friends have taken a middle ground. None of them entirely condemned me, but that may just be because they are biased and don’t want to hurt my feelings. The mutual friend/now ex-friend(of course) merely told me to “self-reflect” and move on from the story. Regardless, the YouTuber now has me blocked, not just on Discord, but on Instagram as well, where I also reside. 

Reasons why I think I might be the asshole: I will admit that I have a tendency to really hyperfixate on things and get especially attached to fictional characters that I adore and resonate with, so I can see why that would make them uncomfortable. That being said… 

Reasons why I think I might not be the asshole: I genuinely wasn’t trying to make this wonderful YouTuber feel uncomfortable or be “obsessive” with the story. I merely wanted to show my appreciation for it in a way that I thought was normal for online fans, which included writing a fanfic, drawing fanart, and geeking out about the story with my friends(admittedly publicly). I had no idea that these actions would turn the YouTuber off, and merely wanted to show how much I enjoyed the story. I also was never rude to anyone in the server and apologized whenever a misunderstanding rose up. I never tried to be aggressive with anyone or cursed anybody out or tried to have arguments with people, so I have no idea where that came from. 

So, what say ye, oh wise people of Tumblr? Am I the asshole or not?

What are these acronyms?

[zebulontheplanet]

I get a lot of curious people wondering what my day to day life is like. Wondering why it differs from a low support needs person. I would like to preface by saying that my support needs themselves although are medium support needs, my needs fluctuate depending on my catatonia, mental health, physical health, etc. My support needs are complex. Please keep in mind that my support needs are on the low end of medium support needs. I will be answering some questions as well at the end.

Everyday looks different. Most days I’m trapped in bed for the majority of the day, some days I’m able to get up and walk around or go places. But, Here’s what a more typical day looks like for me at the moment.

I wake up, and lay in bed for a few hours, I usually scroll through tumblr, TikTok, or discord. I eventually remember to take my medication, and I take it in bed. I am almost completely independent with medication. I eventually get a pain reminder and eventually get up to use the bathroom and try and start my day if I’m not experiencing catatonia at that moment. I usually experience catatonia in the afternoon because I need to start tasks and so I freeze up so getting up to use the bathroom or start my day is very hard and usually takes me hours.

I then come back to bed and lay back down for a few hours. Later into the afternoon, I eventually wonder downstairs and bother my mother. She eventually makes me food if I ask or helps me make it. If I don’t have the spoons to ask or make food then I simply don’t eat. After eating, or not eating and just bugging my mother for a bit, I wonder back upstairs and back into bed. I usually lay in bed for the rest of the day scrolling through TikTok or tumblr, or discord. I talk to friends and my boyfriend throughout the day.

Later in the evening, I eventually get up again if I’m not experiencing catatonia again and don’t need prompting to get up, and walk back downstairs to bother my sisters or my parents. I eat dinner that my family cooks usually. I eventually get bored after dinner and go back to bed and spend the rest of my night there.

Some days are easier than others. Some days I take a walk with my family, some days I go out to the store with my family, some days all I do is lay in bed staring blankly at a wall. It really depends. This is just how my life looks more recently.

Some questions:

Who makes phone calls for you?: for now? I make my own phone calls with prompting and help making a script. However, due to recently starting to lose my voice more and more, that might have to change.

Who cooks meals for you? Do you make your own meals?: For now, my mother or my father makes about 99% of my meals. I can make simple things with prompting and help but usually don’t waste my energy doing it.

Do you have a job? What do you do with your day?: Most of my days are spent in bed or with family. I don’t work.

Can you bathe yourself?: This is actually something I’ve been consistently working on. The short answer? Yes. I can bathe myself. I just need again, prompting. Need lots of prompting. Grooming? That’s a different story.

What things can’t you do?: I can’t do most ADLs independently, I need help with virtually everything in some way. So cooking, cleaning, calling places, etc. I also need help with bathing and general grooming (brushing teeth, hair, clipping nails, etc)

How often do you use AAC?: As of lately? I talk maybe 10? 20%? of the time. I use aac in the house and outside the house. Outside the house I use aac a good 99% of the time, the other 1% I just do simple yes or no questions. Unless with friends then it’s a bit more of a conversation. In the house I either use aac, a mixture of very small conversation and sentences, or yes or no answers. My speech is very unreliable. Some days are good and I can talk a bit more than usual, and some days I can talk virtually nothing at all. Everyday though, I still struggle with speech in some way.

What activities do you do? What do you do for fun?: virtually nothing. I’m working on getting hobbies but I really struggle with hobbies due to catatonia and executive dysfunction. Hobbies have just never been my thing. I usually read, or write. I love writing.

I hope this helps give some insight and any questions or comments are welcome. I know there’s more I’m leaving out, but this has been what a general day in my life looks like lately. It’s hard. My support needs are getting more, and I’m needing more support. However, I’m taking it one day at a time.

[capegloam]

I used to be a close transmasc friend of yours but you have genuinely made me (and others) sick with your fake top surgery tattoos. It's disrespectful, it makes fun of and trivialises a symbol of progress/pride that relates nothing to you. Binding is damaging and painful, you have no idea the pain actually transmasc people go through daily, hourly, by the minute or second to bind. You have no idea the pain of personally growing up transmasc. It's layered and it's complicated and it is Not yours. It will never be yours. You are appropriating our pain. Its disgusting. You are going to lose many friends and make many enemies for this. Hope you have fun faking being transmasc, I see half of Twitter already believes you. I don't want drama with you, or want you to publicly share this or talk to me. I'm just sharing this with you because it has made me sick to my stomach ever since I saw it. And this is an action you need to seriously rethink. You need to publicly come clean on those posts that you are not transmasc. I can tell you've worded it so it's hard for people to tell. You are lucky I haven't publicly made a statement.

woke up today to all of these anons. unsure if they are all the same person but I'm going to treat them as such.

the fact of the matter is, my gender identity is more complicated than "i want to be transmasc". twitter is a horrible place to explain myself because of the character limit, and because i don't like justifying myself to people i don't know. Seeing as i've now been kicked/banned from a specific discord server i used to be in, i know exactly who this is, and i finally feel comfortable explaining myself fully. i know you, i care for you, and we're here on tumblr where i can actually sit down and write a proper essay. Thank you.

i'll break down my responses specifically to what you said, because I want this to be a good conversation.

(under the cut because its long, lol)

"it's disrespectful, it makes fun of and trivializes a symbol of progress/pride that relates nothing to you" — I derive no comedy from the tattoo. I didn't decide I wanted it lightly. saying that it "makes fun of" that symbol is categorically a misinterpretation of my earnest & sincere intent. I wear my heart on my sleeve, always.

saying that my experience "relates nothing" to the transmasc experience is a true statement. I started with a body I should've been comfortable in. The truth is—I was not—I am not comfortable with my body. I don't want a binary body. But my transition experience? was not anything like the transmasc one. I grew out my hair. I bought skirts and dresses. I began collecting earrings, all of them gifts from friends who love me. But when I approached HRT, I realized I wasn't happy with being a woman. I didn't want to get closer to a newer, different binary body. I wanted to be both, trans man and trans woman, simultaneously. I am bigender and nonbinary. to boil me down to "just wants to be transmasc" completely ignores the other half of me that wants breasts, that wants a feminine chest. my next step with my transition is, honestly, purchasing a breast form.

the issue now becomes, why get the tattoo if thats how i feel? if I still want a chest in some form or another?

because, I don't want my bare chest to be a source of dysphoria for that part of me. Remember, at the same time that I want breasts, i also don't want them. at the same time that I want long hair, i want short hair. at the same time I want masculine clothes, i want skirts. I am all of these things and MY PAIN is not being able to be everything combined all at once. It is, frankly, an impossible transition goal.

The scars take my natural chest and they turn it into something new that acknowledges my hypocrisy, that its not just the body of a man, that there is room for more, here. Just because it looks flat doesn't mean thats all it could be, or thats all it was. I want that symbol of transformation because I wish I got to transform. What is more "trans" than wanting to transform?

I will never be transmasc. That just doesn't properly describe my experiences, and it doesn't even fit my feelings about myself. But, at the end of the day, top scars don't belong just to transmasc people, they belong to nonbinary people too. AFAB people who don't seek being gendered one way or the other get top surgery, too. That's the group I feel closest aligned with, (except I want to be gendered both ways, simultaneously, rather than not being gendered at all).

ANYWAYS. thats the deep and thorough explanation of my gender i've been holding back from sharing on twitter. I don't even want to begin to imagine how many tweets long that thread would be LMAO.

back to breaking down your responses, sorry for the tangent. I felt that it was pertinent to illustrate how this tattoo is still a symbol of progress and pride to me, and how I relate to it through my experiences, so you can understand me. I still care about you. you will always be a friend in my mind, so you deserve it.

"Binding is damaging and painful, you have no idea the pain transmasc people go through" — I am well aware of the side effects of binding. They are the reason I didn't pursue HRT to obtain a chest, with binding as a solution for me still wanting a flat chest simultaneously.

That being said, I am living with the consequences of binding. My partner cannot breathe normally, and I constantly feel concern for his wellbeing whenever we need to do something physical (move furniture, walk uphill, etc.) BECAUSE of his history of binding. I know the damage it does.

"You have no idea the pain of growing up transmasc. It is not yours, it will never be yours" — this is true, though I could similarly say that you have no idea the pain of my strange feelings either. Just because we don't experience each other's exact pain doesn't stop us from feeling empathy for each other, for wanting better for each other.

The difference between us is—when I see someone in pain, i want them to do whatever they need to do to relieve that pain. when YOU see someone in pain—with MY pain, my strange pain that you don't understand (that you THINK you understand, but you don't)—your instinct is to use YOUR pain as a justification for hurting others. The fact that you're hurting is an awful one, and I am sorry I can't help you relieve it. But when you see another person happy because they've found a way to relieve some of THEIR OWN pain, it makes you angry. It doesn't make you happy that I found a way to transform my painful, dysphoric relationship with my body into a euphoric one.

as a community, we should rejoice and be happy when other trans people successfully make steps towards defeating their personal struggles with their body. We should be empathetic to each other's experiences. I understand your anger, but its not justified.

"You are going to lose many friends and make many enemies for this" — so far the only friend I've lost is you. all of my irl friends have been supportive, my partners are supportive, my online friends are supportive. Do all of them understand my complicated gender identity? No. I think maybe a lot of them think its a little stupid, honestly. But they're still happy for me. I'm very lucky to have friends who love me. I love them a lot, too, and they know it.

The enemies I've made from this don't know me, and I don't know them. They're not worth my time. You're different—YOU, anon, are worth my time. I know you. I care for you. Long after you have buried me in the ground for being a horrible person (in your eyes), i will still be thinking positively of you. I will still be rooting for you. That will never change.

"I don't want... you to publicly share this" — I'm sorry but you can't control what I do. If you wanted this to be private we should've had a private conversation about it. I was waiting for you to DM me and you never did. I wanted to have this conversation, and this is the place we have to do it, now that you've sent me these anons.

"I can tell you've worded it so its [hard to tell that you're not transmasc]" — This is true. I don't feel like spending 2 hours typing heartfelt responses to people I don't know on x dot com. (Thats how long its been, btw. I've been writing this for 2 hours now. Hopefully that stands for something—to help you understand how much I believe you deserve this explanation. I believe you deserve a lot more than what i've given you.)

I did not obscure my AGAB on purpose. I just think it doesn't matter and is not important enough to disclose. I'm nonbinary and I want a nonbinary body. That should be the end of the story, as far as the greater trans community should be concerned.

"You need to publicly come clean that you aren't transmasc"

quite frankly, its a little uncomfortable for you to assert that I should have to "come clean" about my AGAB. An interest in the genitals of trans people is something transphobes are particularly keen on. I think you should consider the parallels between your arguments and theirs. You still have some internalized transphobia to unpack.

I was there once too. I've already forgiven you.

Anon 2

I feel like I've already addressed your arguments here. I don't care what people who don't know me have to say about me. They don't know me.

You should consider your status as a popular furry artist, anon. Its not unreasonable to assume that people agreed with you purely because of your following. I've received supportive messages from several people I met in your discord server about my tattoo, so I can assure you that not everyone in your circle feels the same way you do.

Anon 3

I'm not lying about being transgender. Nonbinary is a transgender identity. Your interest in my AGAB, asserting that I need to come clean about it, is a transphobic assertion. Attacking a nonbinary person because you feel that they aren't being trans the right way is textbook nonbinaryphobia.

Anon 4 — "My binder made me sick today, i couldn't eat i felt faint and ill" — i'm genuinely sorry to hear that. No one deserves to have to endure that kind of pain for so long. You deserve better. You deserve to look at your body and feel happy. Everyone does.

"I felt sick remembering what you did. That you don't take transmasc pain seriously, or respect us" — I do take your pain seriously, and I respect you as a person. This long thoughtful post is evidence of that.

I understand the disgust you feel at the thought that someone would want to feel the pain you feel. But thats never what I wanted. Thats what you believe I wanted.

The truth is I have my own pain too. my own, personal, complex pain, which i've attempted to explain above. I shouldn't have to be burdened with explaining it to everyone who asks. I don't owe them my soul. I owe my soul to my friends and my partners, and I give it freely when asked by them. You asked. on tumblr dot com, my friend.

If thats not respect, then I don't know what is. Respect is a willingness to meet another person where they're at. I know that when you're hurting its hard to see the hurt you're inflicting onto others. Please trust me when I say I've been there, too. I've hurt. I've hurt others because my pain said that it was justified. I'm healing from it, from the guilt and the shame. I'm finally stopping the cycle of pain and self-hatred within myself. I hope you can get here with me someday, too.

I meant it when I said you'll always be a friend to me. I hope you take my words to heart.

have a nice day, thanks for reading 💛

[olderthannetfic]

/728571347409731584

Firstly, the person you're replying to only describe in-person experiences. Secondly, I've been to two universities in the US as a result of getting a scholarship midway through. At one, I was discouraged from attending the queer club on campus by the head of it, as I wasn't queer, I wasn't "really" aroace, I was just "a late bloomer". She informed me that everyone wants romance and sex sometimes. Aro and ace people want it less, she explained, to my face, standing ten feet from me, but they still want it.

No, it's not "only in online spaces". Queer people who use the queer segments of the internet do not only exist in darkened cellars they never emerge from. Teenagers and young adults go to college. It isn't 1998 anymore, pretending the internet and the physical world have zero overlap and what you read online cannot impact or shape your views is ridiculous.

You know how I know this? At my incredibly liberal university, where I live in a gender-inclusive nearly all queer dorm, not only have I heard two separate conversations at floor events about this where it was repeated by other queer students, including ace people, that ace people have sex and ace people do romance, with NO utterance of the word "sometimes", but today? Today, guys, gals and enbies, this Friday, this very fucking Shabbat, I heard it from a professor.

My Social Stratification professor said that asexuality is "a usually treatable condition" and "doesn't mean someone doesn't have sex, just that they have a low sex drive" and when I said some people don't have sex, she said "therapy can help" and topped it off with, "and of course they still masturbate frequently, so they're really not as different as people like to stereotype them as".

I don't. I don't masturbate, it's not fun for me. I don't long to fuck fictional characters or real people. I don't need therapy. I'm not traumatized. I don't have sex. I don't want romance. I don't find reading about it compelling most of the time, either. I don't need therapy for that, because you go to therapy for things that are negatively impacting my life, and actually?

I am aroace in the "wrong" way, a zero-sex, zero-romance, zero-masturbating person, and I'm happy. I like who I am. I like how I am. I have a good life at my dream university, with good friends, a nice room, roommates I like, a mostly walkable part of town, and I'm working on my dream degree to reach my dream career. I'm not huddled in the corner in the fetal position sobbing about the sex I secretly want or on my bed furiously masturbating to anything. I am not lying about my identity, my experiences, my thoughts or my feelings.

This professor is young, roughly 30. That means it's feasible she's been using tumblr for years, as it was popular during her teenage years, or she has been in the company of people who, via tumblr, Instagram, Amino, etc., have this idea of asexuality. And does that idea stay locked inside a computer somewhere? No, because the person who reads them doesn't. The people who read, internalize as truth and believe shitty online takes also exist in the real world. They have physical bodies they take to physical places and they open their mouth and say things, which are then passed onto other people who exist in the offline world.

"The only thing that [they] are seeing is internet wank" NO! The only thing you are seeing is internet wank, but there is not a mass conspiracy of college students across the USA to lie and say we're experiencing things we aren't, which would be the only explanation for so, so many ace people I know online talking in private on Discord servers, tumblr, in YouTube comments and in person having this same shared experience.

I genuinely don't know how people think no one could possibly have the same bad take offline that they do online. Q-Anon exists. January 6th happened. People get radicalized into beliefs much more absurd than this and act on those beliefs constantly and "no you just need to touch grass" is what you arrived at as a conclusion instead of "sometimes people are wrong"?

Though I say this with love, I mean it when I say that you don't just need to touch grass, you need to hug a whole hay bale.

--

[pinkgoblinshark]

Hey Skyblr, how we feeling about shared spaces right now? The more specific thing I wanna ask is: has anyone else been ticked off by how shared spaces seemingly shrank in terms of how many items you can place? I was inspired to make this post mainly because my friend (a more avid builder than I) has been complaining about it, but I've been tinkering with things and now its bugging the hell out of me too. What bothers me more is how seemingly no one on the Sky Discord (save for a small handful) or Tumblr seems to be talking about this, so I should start the conversation I suppose.

To start, before I began writing this post I was looking at the "shared spaces" tag to see if someone had talked about this before me. No dice, but I did come across this lovely shared space by skycotl-before-and-after. To try and prove that shared spaces shrunk, I tried recreating the space shown in their post. I don't have all the items they have, but that doesn't matter because I couldn't even fit the things I do have (these being the shelves, pots, manta plushie, and wind chimes) before maxing out on space.

For another example, I was looking through my Discord DMs and found a shared space I had made on May 9th of this year. I tried remaking it, and while I consider it to be less complex than skycotl-before-and-after's shared space, I still found myself not being able to place all of the items I could place before. Some configurations were more efficient than others, allowing for me to place more items, though the point is that I can't place all of the items I was able to before.

The final nail in this coffin is that from the Sky Discord, I have heard of the shared space size reductions resulting in people being unable to finish the final quest for the Remembrance guide. I could not go back and do the quest for realsies, but as a refresher, to complete that quest you need to place, at minimum: the wind chimes, the kettle, the potted plant, and the manta and crab plushies. With the size reduction, I found that I only had space for those first three items. You could probably do different configurations to fit the most items in there, but the point is that it seems like you cannot get them all in there, which means you would be totally unable to complete the quest.

Last thing I want to note is that how many items you can place seems to vary from place to place. In the Daylight Prairie Shared Space Shrine, I found that I could place 1 tent, 2 shelves, 1 wind chime, and 1 pot (possibly 2?) before maxing out on items. In the Birds Nest area using a spell, I found that I could place only a tent, a shelf, and 1 pot before maxing out.

As someone who wants to build up a collection of props to build with, this item quantity nerf frustrates not just me, but also my friend, who spent actual human monies on props they can't fully utilize anymore. With how few people I've seen discussing this though, I hope we aren't mutually going crazy...

[lucidfairies]

hi 🫡

. yes that is me embarrassing the shit outta myself (I actually sent that to a handful of girls)

i. for those of you who may not know, i'm maya. i'm 18, i'm typically a masculine presenting lesbian and I happen to be a she/her. I also am unfortunately asexual

• everyone meat riding rn about why I read and write so much smut as an asexual, I would love for you to know that I'm fighting a losing battle with hypersexuality! that is all I will be sharing on that matter thank you. •

ii. I'm proficient at finding people's instas whether they wanna be found or not!! if this relates to you, you may want to hmu.

iii. um I'm single if that wasn't clear from the kicker.

iv. I have severe Audhd and I have OCD but I don't really count that because you can't really tell it's there. I'm a POTS and scoliosis survivor

(can u tell idk what the hell I'm doing)

v. I will drop my socials if you so want them but I would prefer u DM me cuz I don't need my public insta in tumblr comments tbh (I have insta, tiktok, discord, snap, so on so forth)

vi. I'm still in high school LMAOOO pls I'm not less than eighteen guys don't worry but I aspire to be in the military but I'm taking a gap year

vii. I've been writing since like third grade but over quarantine my parents kinda banished me to our basement and I was doing a lot of things I shouldn't have been doing but now I'm sorta good at writing !!

viii. fics are kinda a side gig, I do write real shit here and there but there's genuinely no point so idk why I do it

ix. I'm what people like to call a whore except I don't fuck around I just talk to like nine people at once (hop off my dick rn)

x. I'm hilariously funny if you ever wanna strike up a conversation

xi. I'm down for ANY conversations. you wanna talk about what kinks some random bitch has based on their appearance? let's talk about it. wanna tell me about the sex you had last night? I'll go get a snack. I don't get triggered by really anything so if u need an outlet, I'm right here bb

xii. I actually have a massive gyatt

xiii. I can curl a lot of lbs and um I can bench some too and I guess do leg stuff (gym girlies rise)

xiv. I'm Jewish but not like Jewish my fam just is, I am probably one of the furthest things from religion and I don't hugely support organized religion (my fav way to describe it is being Jew-ish)

xv. I am a leftist through and through (pro choice, pro science, pro gays, Black lives matter, stop Asian hate, in case you needed clarification on that one) and I avoid knowingly being friends with Republicans at all costs

xvi. I am pro Palestine, nothing anyone will say or do could change my stance on that one.

xvii. I have a cat + dog

xviii. I don't get cold like ever cuz I ski in like 10° weather all winter

xix. I have Duolingo and if u wanna beef it out w a quest then I am definitely down for that because I will beat you (I'm learning Hawaiian and Hebrew)

xx. I'm fluent in German and speak it at home w the fam and I know some Spanish + French

xxi. juice boxes > anything

xxii. some more pics of me will follow whenever I stfu

xxiii. I stand at a whopping six feet tall but I swear I have short person energy

xxiv. if your snap score is more that 300k we can't be friends I'm sorry (mine is 100k suck my c o c k)

xxv. in my personal opinion I have huge dick energy but you're welcome to put me in my place (I'm a switch and I'll cook for you)

xxvi. best position is doggy but I can be persuaded into something different

xxvii. CUNT

xxviii. uhhhh I'm from the East Coast of America so l operate in EST time

anyway y'all here are some for faceless pics that are guaranteed to make u cream (see, hilarious)

god it's giving faggot 😓

anyway it was nice getting to talk about myself for a long time 🫡 feel free to make numerous comments about my life in the comments

sayonara sistas

[wilted3sunflowers]

just to say upfront You not have any right to repost my art at all, you got here through your own course of actions and only now you want to suggest possibly 'I.d.'ing them yourself?

Multiple people block you and you keep harassing them, literally having an account called blockdodger22, @'ing people and you think that's okay? You do not know how to have any etiquette online, much less talking to people in a clear concise way and then getting pissy with them for not bending over backwards for you.  You have no concept of being respectful.  You are behaving as an obsessive, stalking, creep. Flat out. How are you online and do not take a block and leave.  It is as simple as that.

You did not even start out our first 'exchange' with a clear message and goal.

You kept commenting under peoples posts just at random, especially after just freshly following them. Saying "Image description?" and myself included didn't understand what you're even asking about. Under multiple posts you asked me that and I didn't even know what was wrong with my description under my image until a friend told me you were asking for a description of the image itself not that you were questioning the actual description under my image.  Another person even brought to my attention you flat out said to them on their own post "Image description?" "I should not have to ask more than once." paraphrasing as you even mistyped once then corrected your typo. So much time to just correct that and comment instead of just. doing what you command of people.  What gives you the right to even demand any of that from anyone?  

Which is not even a proper exchange, it's you barking orders at people like they're a bot and not someone to converse with. You put your time and energy into continuing this act not just towards sme but multiple other people online. Instead of just bringing it up to someone and leaving them with the choice to try to do it or not. You do not get to demand what people put on their posts or not. If it has been such an issue do not follow them. For me I want to post my artwork with the minimal words i can because I'm tired. I want to post and go. This is an art blog. I post my art and I go. I do not even have a far reaching "platform" like you're trying to insinuate. If i did, i would've been able to keep up my patreon with enough money to comfortably have. But I didn't and I had to close my patreon because i could not grow it and all my energy went into patreon rewards with very little income for me and couldn't actually find the time to create what I wanted.

You want to act like this is me hating accessibility but this is you wanting to come on, annoy people unprompted, numerous times to random people on the internet and being blatantly rude and demanding and backpedaling as if this is an actual care. 

You are a rude and hypocritical individual coming up to bother people  in the name of "accessibility" . You do not genuinely care. 

People who actually cared would not go this obsessive, harassing, rude length. You spend more energy doing this than doing what you say you set that server out to do! In multiple times you wanted to 'contact me' you would post the same comment under over 10 posts with no clarity, I tell you i'm annoyed and with a broken keyboard with multiple people attesting because they're actually close enough to see me in discord servers and streams to see the broken keys you wanted to act as if you knew better. as if I'm the liar. you came onto my posts just to get snotty and bratty. So I of course block you. months pass, I get a new laptop, you use your blockdodger22 tumblr account and only THEN want to declare there's a discord server to 'help'. 

"But I literally sent you a link to people who will do this for you. And I'm in that server too. I'm in there helping people who care about accessibility." If this is how you act to random people online, why would I ever want to come into a server with you? If this is how you behave? Why would anyone? 

if you did care you would flat out be commenting on the image description you want to see typed out for yourself. As many people already DO on tumblr without any issue at all! you wouldn't have to do this fake song and dance.

 I've had multiple people in the past of my works,- typically only Steven universe fanart itself which i do not make a ton of, only adopts, They will reblog with the image description. They don't even have to ask, they just do it. Why? Because thats what they want to do and what they care about. You want to say "Oh I'm only trying to help, I guess you don't care about accessibility." You did not want to help, you wanted to make a mountain out of a molehill to random people online who are not influencers or even big time corporations. You are not treating anyone I see you come into contact with any respect or politeness.  

All you genuinely want is to either 

1. feel better about yourself thinking you're doing  good with something you're not putting the actual energy towards that you say is important to you. Like other people online, who do that thing and especially do it for artists unprompted because they want to SEE it being done and take the time for themselves. 

or

2. to look for a fight using these people as a smokescreen because you keep obsessively trying to get people's attention on their posts and then act automatically like you're in the right despite being nasty and rude online.

If you cared so much you would be putting your money where your mouth is. You would be putting your energy into putting all these image descriptions on these images that you want without all this fluff. But you don't, why? I genuinely don't care for an answer from you. I want you to leave me and everyone else alone.

There's people behind these screens, you don't care, you only care if people do what you say at a moment's notice. 

You want to say I don't care about people with disabilities for the fact I don't do one thing. One thing that only you have demanded of me in all my ten years on this blog.

 You're acting as if I'm bashing people online and saying they have no right to be here. As if I hate them. You're now just wanting to paint a broad stroke of me hating disabilities in general instead of the actual topic at hand. I make multiple characters with disabilities for myself and my adopts. That I myself have issues too.

 I am doing my own thing. I am simply posting my art. You are simply annoying the hell out of many artists myself included. 

This is a matter of me disliking you. 

Especially when I found out you are not only harassing me but people around me, other artists and even smaller artists at that! What gives you the gall and the right to be acting so self righteous when all you've done is act as a genuine dick to people. 

[the-rainbow-lesbian]

Hi @menalez, you know I thought I was being courteous by keeping quiet about my grievances with you and not airing them publicly but I guess that isn't mutual, if you really wanted to have a conversation with me you could've talked to me on discord, you're not blocked there.

when October 7th first happened I was unwell tbh and very confused, I thought the world went mad when a massacre against the Jewish state and Israelis (both Jewish and Arab but the majority were Jews and they were targeted for being Jewish) somehow made them hateful against Jewish people, even the diaspora, I was also very confused when the "feminists" of the world even the radical feminists remained silent on the mass rape used as a weapon against Israeli women or tried to deny and minimize it. This is gonna sound dramatic but I haven't been the same person ever since because I lost my trust in people, I don't trust anyone who has no sympathy for others based on their ethnicity and nationality.

and when I went to tumblr I saw that you were also sharing content from antisemites, although you tried to distance yourself from it, sure Hamas did kill babies and rape women, but it wasn't as bad as the media is making it out to be, as if there is a number of raped women and murdered babies that needs to be met before we recognize this as a genocidal act by Hamas? I tried to read what you shared and honestly the people you tried to refute (badly) made more sense to me.

I spent a huge portion of my time watching content about the conflict even when I am working, reading about it, talking to my friend about it, I sought out another friend of mine who is retired professor who has visited Israel multiple times to learn from her, I listened to Jewish people and Israelis and also to Palestinians, I shared articles from Palestinian authors and a Muslim woman about the war, I am reading a book by Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of Hamas' founders, I didn't listen to the ones who cheered on October 7th which is fair, terrorists and their supporters don't have integrity. so even though you said I "admitted I don't know shit" and I am "willfully ignorant" I am really not, I am not an expert, I wish I could read and learn more than what I am already doing but I work full-time on 5-6 hours of sleep then travel on the weekends to see my girlfriend, so I am sorry I didn't know much about Christian Zionists? I'd rather not run on my mouth over something I don't know much about, it doesn't make all of my other opinions invalid somehow. I've always been the type of person who tries to do at least some research before forming an opinion and being outspoken about it.

you also said I am brainwashed by my country's antisemitism and I am "rebelling" (which is so fucking condescending I am not a child trying to prove a point) but actually I never agreed that the holocaust was good and that Hitler was a hero like the majority of people around me did, even if I had problematic beliefs I would never agree with genocide. it's also interesting that you refer to this rightfully as propaganda but do you know which news channel was funneling this and playing in my house? it was Aljazeera, and you share from them all the time without a hint of scrutiny, of course anything Israel says must be met with scrutiny but anything coming out of Hamas and Qatar is trustworthy even though both are islamofascist that don't allow any freedom of press, very interesting.

so mena, as an Arabic speaker why don't you look into Aljazeera's Arabic websites and articles where they don't sugarcoat the antisemitism for the western audience and share them with your followers? or anything from Hamas' leaders? are you intentionally misleading them or just lazy? not sure which is worse.

I do have sympathy for middle eastern women and that includes Israeli women! Which is why I'll never support an Islamic state, they are the worst for women. There is more going on in the middle east than just western imperialism, not everything is the west's fault and even if it was we should have more accountability and not just overlook terrorism and other problems we have, prophet Mohammad didn't need Zionism or western imperialism to massacre the Jews of Banu Qurayza, which was so horrific I decided to fully become an ex-muslim after reading about it and I was questioning my faith for two years at that time.

You accused me of supporting genocide which is..... wow there is a lot to say about that, but I won't get into it now, you said this isn't in character for me as an "empathetic and intelligent woman" you're right, maybe the genocide accusation against Israel is blood libel and unfounded, because why would I support genocide? have you tried to read anything besides Qatar and Hamas approved propaganda? have you listened to other opinions in good faith without plugging your ears calling them Zionists (as if it's a bad thing to want self-determination and not be a dhimmi anymore) and blocking them?

I don't know where you get the audacity to say that I am ignorant and should do the "decent thing" and shut up, do you have any Jewish loved ones? do you worry about them on a daily basis because of antisemitism and how antisemitic hate crimes have increased to an insane level? I can't go a day without seeing new incidents reported, which you have ignored of course, because the only good Jew to you is a Jewish person who just affirms your beliefs so you can delude yourself into thinking you're a good person, but after that you don't really care, do you think antisemites ask Jewish people if they're Zionists before they harass and assault them? get off your fucking high horse, I don't owe you shit and you have no right to judge me, if anyone should shut up it's you, the rhetoric and the blood libels you share is the same fucking rhetoric inciting the increase in hate crimes, sincerely fuck off :)

[hollow-dweller]

Talk Shop Tuesday: as someone who is involved in a lot of fandoms (and has seen a lot of horrors), has there been a significant shift in how fandom is today compared to the “good old days” as much as people say?

there are. SO MANY.

to start and to be entirely clear, there is no good old days of fandom. there are things i miss about fandom tendencies of the past, which i'll get into, but as many many many marginalized fans have and will continue to say, Ye Ol' Fandom was as much if not more of a cesspit of racism, misogyny, and queerphobia as it is today. because fandom platforms were more diversified, they were also more gatekept--and i mean actually gatekept, not just "people are mean about this thing i like" gatekept. to an extent this was necessary--fandom itself was much more culturally stigmatized, and existed largely in a legal gray area, so fandom spaces needed to be semi-closed communities for their own protection. however, if you were a fan who tried to bring up systemic fannish issues--such as racism--you could and would be kicked out of whatever fannish space you were in, and there would very rarely be other places to turn.

also as a caveat: this is not anywhere CLOSE to a comprehensive view of the changes in fandom nor the myriad factors that contribute to those changes. fandom is a cultural ecosystem existing within a broader cultural ecosystem, and the ways those things interact with and inform one another are literally innumerable. anyone who claims they know the One Thing That Ruined Fandom is oversimplifying the issue. anyone claiming they know the Twenty Things That Ruined Fandom is oversimplifying the issue. fandom is a living system, and living systems exist in a constant state of change.

but broadly speaking, i think there are two major changes that have informed The State of Fandom.

Consolidation of Fandom Platforms

as mentioned, fandom used to exist as a variety of closed or semi-closed forum spaces, blogs, archives, and other websites, each dedicated to its own fandom or, more often, subsets of a particular fandom. authors/artists had their own sites, particular ships had their own sites, fic had its own sites, art had its own sites, discussion/meta had its own sites, and any or all of these could be hosted in any combination across any number of websites depending on the fandom. some of this was the result of the structure of the early internet, and some of it was, as mentioned above, a function of necessity.

as the internet evolved and fandom platforms became consolidated, this necessarily changed fandom norms and behaviours. the way we write fic is different because of the advent and dominance of ao3, the way we construct meta is different because of the nature of sites like reddit and tumblr, the way we build community is different because of sites like discord, etc. notably, most of the changes we've seen are not created by social media or mass fandom platforms, but rather enhanced by them. ship wank, whether masquerading as legitimate analysis or not, has always been a cornerstone of fandom--it like all things is simply much more accessible to people now than it used to be. the subdivision of fandoms into different subgroups, even within a ship or media, has also always been a thing--people form friend groups with like-minded people and that's normal, actually. the types of conversations and conflicts fandom has have not changed that much--just the places and manner in which we engage with them.

modern fandom platforms are both more accessible and more comprehensive than they ever have been--so fans can more easily than ever be exposed to different corners or subsets of fandom. but also. fans can more easily than ever be exposed to different corners or subsets of fandom.

The Scarcity of Long Running Media and the Dissolution of the Monoculture

the type of media that fandom now orients itself around has changed drastically as a result of changes in the broader media landscape, and this also changes fandom norms and behaviour. it is increasingly more rare for a fandom to develop over the course of years, because long-running serialized (or even episodic) narratives are becoming less common. tv shows especially are released with vanishingly short promotion cycles, and with less and less certainty of continuation. creators have to therefore hedge their bets--the binge model means there is no room to pivot mid-season if things aren't working out, and the lack of certainty around renewal means that seasons have to be relatively close-ended in order to try to deliver a satisfying experience. similar trends affect book publishing--we are seeing fewer and fewer multi-part series being released, and fewer books dominating cultural discussion in the way blockbuster series of the past have.

thinking of cornerstone megafandoms of the past (and present), we tended to see a couple essential elements that contributed to both fandom engagement and sustained fandom activity: they were released over a longer period of time, and they took up a larger portion of the dominant cultural landscape. the Harry Potter books were released over a period of ten years and were, of course, a huge cultural moment. Twilight was released over a shorter period of time, but was similarly a cornerstone of the monoculture, enhanced by the immediate and almost-eclipsing (heh) release of its movie counterparts. The X-Files was released over the course of, again, a decade, and they will be releasing new Star Treks until the mountains crumble into the sea and the stars turn to dust. these fandoms all have greater and lesser degrees of longevity and output, but they and fandoms like them all had the benefit of time and cultural dominance in order to enable the development of the fandom.

this is not universal (nothing i'm saying is universal), but fandoms nowadays tend to be a lot shorter-lived and migratory simply because they have less material to work with and less time in which to work with it. Voltron, as one example, was a megafandom that developed rapidly and burned out quickly, and while it had a decent amount of material, its eight seasons were released over the course of two and a half years. fannish momentum can only be sustained on so much material for a certain period of time, and fannish investment is necessarily going to be curtailed if fans live in uncertainty about the continuation of their favourite media.

this also is reflected in the type of fanworks that we see proliferating. while AUs were not absent from Ye Old Fandom, i do think they were a lot less common/prominent. the longer release cycles and difference in structure between releases (open-ended finales as motivation to hook viewers into the next installment that they knew/were pretty certain was going to happen vs close-ended finales that hedge bets if a series is cancelled) led to a lot more speculative fanworks set within the canon, imagining what was going to happen next. a famous example is of course the HP fandom's Three Year Summer--the period of three years between the release of the fourth and fifth Harry Potter books that was intensely productive for that fandom. fanworks in that period were famously long and plotty canon divergence/canon speculation works branching from the return of Voldemort in book four, and that tendency towards long and plotty canon-based or canon-adjacent fanworks persists within the HP fandom to this day.

fandoms nowadays do tend more towards works that are stripped from their canon contexts (the infamous coffee shop au, media fusion aus, modern setting aus, no powers aus), and while these works did exist in Ye Old Fandom, they were both more rare and their reach was more limited.

Some Kind of Conclusion Because This Is An Essay Now I Guess

to present a synthesis scenario: a particular trope is generated and popularized by one fandom. due to its presence on consolidated platform sites, it becomes ubiquitous within that fandom, spawning further derivatives, copycats, reimaginings, and variations. as people migrate from fandom to fandom, both as a result of the media landscape itself and the ease of doing so on social media/multi-fandom sites, the trope or AU spreads to other fandoms, and is again further transformed by those fandoms. this continues ad infinitum.

this pattern is not limited to tropes in fanworks--it is applicable to every element of fandom, from discourse to meta to creative works to behavioural norms. the state of modern fandom is interconnected to the platforms on which fandom is hosted and the media on which it is based. no longer is the one common unifying element of fandom the source media--the unifying element is fandom itself. this is why we see, for example, people stating they get involved in fandoms for media they have no experience with--they do not know the source text, but they know fandom.

i could literally go on and on--i didn't even touch on things like the destruction of the fandom fourth wall, or the relationship to the practice of filing off the serial numbers, or the existence of BNFs (actual BNFs not people like you seek who just Have Friends and Make Things), or the connection to nostalgia, or the relationship to commentary and analysis-based fandom outlets such as rewatch podcasts, or-

there are literally so many elements here. i could talk about this forever. i probably will be talking about this forever. please god someone let me out of here HELP-

[applejuiceyjuice-art]

i’m replying to this on my personal blog because i do not want to address this on the cloutchase blog. normally, we would delete an ask like this, but it bothers me too much personally.

it sounds like your brother is subscribed to “dead internet theory” which is a fringe conspiracy theory and total doomer talk. it basically proposes that the internet "died" in 2016/2017, and is or will be only made of bots that are generating content for other bots to engage with eternally, and that bot content makes up a majority of the internet in order to manipulate people. it is hyperbolic, using language like "everything online is generated by a bot and you are alone."

idk where he got the idea that it started with discord users, and we aren’t just going to take this information as fact for the sake of making content for our silly website gijinkas. it would be incredibly depressing and irresponsible of us to spread potentially dangerous conspiracy information like this, even if we somehow twisted it into the form of a joke (which we can't). cloutchase is moreso a celebration of the unique environment of the internet. (REMINDER: these are just funny ocs, and while there are serious conversations to be had surrounding actual problems with these sites, cloutchase is NOT the space to be doing so. read the FAQ.)

people believe in this theory because it “feels” true, the internet now feels fake and algorithmically produced and that nobody here is a real person. that’s why many people have nostalgia for “old internet,” where we remember a time where everything was seemingly user run.

but really the main difference between old internet and new internet is commercialization. inevitably, websites grew into businesses and businesses must generate profit. algorithms, advertisements, and ai are much more prominent than ever, flagging algorithms with human bias censor actual people, and so on. seeing and experiencing these things makes it kinda feel like nothing matters or whatever.

what’s actually important to YOUR experience online is asking this: is the majority of content you engage with generated by bots? no!!! you make it your own! the internet is massive, but we still find each other!!! there are REAL people behind this project and receiving your messages. we read everything, you know. WE aren't bots.

bots have always been around the internet, it isn’t a new thing. sure, we didn’t have sophisticated ai generation back then, but spam bots have always existed. malware spread through bots, some ARE bots. in some far off circles of the internet now, there are content farms and viewbotting, but here we are, meeting on this tumblr blog.

the internet will only die when its users decide to stop using it. is this not unlike the y2k scare?

[claudiajcregg]

Tell Other People About Your WIPs

make a list of all your WIPs with a brief description of each and then people can ask you questions about them and then tag other people.

Tagged by both @onekisstotakewithme and @miabicicletta 💜💜💜 Thank you, guys <3 I don't know who to tag that hasn't been tagged already. Interested? Tag, you're it! :) (Please do know that there are no set sections. Pick whatever you want. I went the deranged route.)

I have an outdated WIP list, and many others unaccounted for. This is just a selection of stuff I could see myself posting or editing/retooling to write something new. I love talking about my WIPs, about as much as I hate being perceived because they are not remotely interesting. (I also love knowing which ones people are interested in! I have an incentive to work on them!) (Instead of snippets, part of my feedback loop is sending actual rough drafts to get a sense of whether it's worth working on more.)

Multichapters, different levels of completion.

S5 Pregnancy AU. My main WIP. Can you believe I’ve had this idea for a year… almost to the day? I’ve been stuck since November bc I don’t know how I want this one to end, beyond a birth. (As I’ve mentioned in the past, I feel like this has legs to become a fluffy universe. I have ideas! Timelines!) Gist of it: CJ gets pregnant circa Zooey's kidnapping. How does it change S5? It's less angsty than you think.

Campaign bars, aka campaign conversations sometimes happened at bars in the 1998 campaign. Fun stuff. I need to pick it right back.

What Once Was Ours or the IM AU (2021), aka IM ends with a breakup. Not a WIP. Not a UFO. A secret third thing. (“Finished” but not edited, and I’m doubtful people would be interested. Probably bc of some bittersweet ~memories~ attached to it. I mean, I shared a third of it to discord and people couldn’t care less, at least after a while. Now, better IM AUs are being posted these days; I'm not in a rush.) 33 chapters. 150k words. I do reread it every once in a while, and I cannot put it down. But its 'age' takes me aback. If things had been different, I'd have posted this in H2 2021/Q1 2022 (or even the planned Q2-3 2021). But alas.

The “Almost Ready, question mark” Category

Another SVD prompt meme claim: what if CJ has the crush first. The thing is, I tend to write her as having a relatively obvious crush on him at first until something makes her wise up. So this is just some ridiculous, post-first-meeting thoughts. Most of it was written in one sitting! It kinda fits with something in the campaign bars fic, too.

Post birth, hospital story: A couple of hours after their bb girl is born. Pure fluff. Recently reworked it to make it less wordy. Still failed, but it’s better focused now.

Many ficlets – the few I did post on Tumblr that haven’t been posted to the story I’m collecting them in, plus a couple more. I'm thinking the ice skating one, Jan 22, a few post-eps I wrote last year, etc.

Ambitious Projects I don't think are happening right away (or ever), but probably have a detailed outline somewhere

(I put this up instead of last, because the next category has faves, but it's also a long one.)

Danny is back a bit earlier on s7. Toby leaks (or tries to leak? I always wavered) the shuttle to him, as he and CJ are getting closer.

Simon lives. How does his relationship with CJ evolve post-honeymoon phase? What is it like when Danny returns?

You’ve got mail AU. This outline had two ways the climax could go. I had fun.

Epistolary collab (?) fic. Probably an X + 1 fic. The only one with nothing written; don’t rule out writing it individually at some point.

And because this is so long already (but not as long as it could be)… A few more under the cut – more "I just want to make sure I like them" and "this meme reminded me I meant to pick those back up." And they are still not all. (How do you summarize seven years of writing?? I've only posted 20-something of them, lol.)

“Almost Ready (but I feel like I want to make changes to them) (might just redo them altogether)��

Haunted by the Notion, 2007 edition. My beta Ruth suggested this when she edited the other story, and I wrote it around then. It’s another Christmas dinner at Filomena, and, eight years later, things are different. I feel like it hits expected beats, and is just missing some oomph. Maybe. (As much as I do like it, half tempted to make it 2009. Or later.)

Heaven’s here…: A interrupted proposal. I’ve written many proposals over the years, and I love toying with different ideas and setups. Danny takes the lead here, but I’ve been intrigued by the idea of having CJ do the final twist.

5 to 6 am 'me' time. Another story inspired by last year’s rewatch that I wrote right at the start of it (so Jan 2023?). It has five short parts with five different years of what CJ describes in the pilot as her “me time.” This is one when I think one per year would be fun, but I don’t want to repeat myself.

One bed, “sexy” edition. An AU to a sort of AU (one of the drabbles from this summer) and… it's what it says on the tin. The world does not need to read my attempts at smut. If I didn’t put it in the previous category, it’s because I am not sure that I want to post it. (All the previous attempts are locked somewhere; unfortunately, someone loves this one and noticed when I tried to do that, lol.)

First baby kick: I remember writing this while in grad school (so, late 2017? First half of 2018) but I lost it, along other fic, when my laptop had to be reset because I used Bear to write back then, but didn’t have sync across devices. I rewrote it, and I feel like it's not the same, but still. It's sweet! Includes: Danny talking to the baby, domestic fluff, and… baby kicks!

“This meme reminded me they exist and I love them, so don't be surprised if they are posted before anything in a previous category”

(Lbr, if I added something about them in this post at all, it’s because they sparked some memory.)

Mosaic broken hearts: CJ, circa S4, jealousy. Prompted by a former fandom friend, back in my productive era (first half of 2021; before that friend just ghosted me.)

I can’t believe I captured your heart (pancake breakfast, three words and eight letters). For a while there, I edited it so much but then I fell off. iirc, it was part of some morning-related prompts I saw around that I tried to fulfill in 2018? 2019? And they had like internal progression. But this one was the best of the 3-4, and I kept tweaking it.

Green light of forgiveness (IM-ish) — there are many other IM/IM-Tomorrow snippets I’ve written over the years. I’m not sure if this one makes much sense, but I liked it enough.

Distance — I recall liking this one! Might have to bump it up. CJ is in Africa, Danny is at the Farm and sulking because they left off on some sort of argument. There is some Danny-Abbey friendship goodness here. I even have a second file that is “Distance - shorter version (it’s not)”

Danny writes fiction, shows it to CJ during her pregnancy and she’s into it. Technically written. I would probably try to take another stab at it. Third time might be the charm?

San Andreo phone call/fallout from ID. I just had the idea of CJ reaching out once things calm down. This is one of those fics I’ve written a version of every year or so, but I think there was one I liked quite a bit.

Terrible taste in men — a run-in with an OC ex of CJ. It was so dumb.

Fka Impatience - actually beta’d three years ago (by that fandom friend I've mentioned twice before… actually, three times) and “done”. I just think I’d change so much about it these days. It started being something else but ended up being a CJ-Toby friendship story in which they have lunch and catch up. But I would want to rewrite most of it now, and not just because it’s from like… 2019 (but finished in 2021).

I forgot this one initially! he's passing by, rare as the comet in my sky - 2? 3? times CJ thinks she sees Danny somewhere, and one time she does. (Which tried to work in the 'I remember shunning you' line.) I even wrote some sort of sequel later! Probably useless.

I said I would post a lightning round with fics that are either also done but not ready for me to mention them, or just… not done at all. The length of this post and how much I've spent on it is embarrassing. To give a general overview: in line with the nonsense I've been mentioning, includes phone calls at the end of S7, also a few friendship-focused fics around that time, too; present-day stuff; anniversaries; Hollis fundraisers; weddings; many ficlets, introspective thoughts, a “yes day” fic that's super sweet but needs better dares, the third memoir idea (the original one!!!!) that I had three years ago… And those are mostly the ones I had preselected, lol.

If you're interested, I can screenshoot this part in the notes app if you message me!

Anyway, this is embarrassing, and the worst part is that it's not all. fml.

[ruthlesslistener]

We sure do live in a society, don't we.

The anons sending you hate are doing my head in. Like, I can completely understand why they bristled at your initial response, because as someone who writes Ghost as an adult in a child's body (hi, Gently, my beloved fic that is drowning from my dead muse), I had a kind of similar "hey wait" response at first.

But then you CLARIFIED. You took the time to ask, listen and let others educate you on another POV. It may not have changed your own personal HCs (and that's OK!!!), but you clarified your meaning was not people like me - it was not the average person who spurred it - and that's all anyone can really ask for. You don't have to agree with or ask people.

The best part of fandom is taking bits and pieces of each other's ideas and using them to decorate our sand castles and make them our own. That means "I wouldn't spin it that way but I liked reading how you did it." It also sometimes means "Oh I cannot get behind that but I respect your right to."

I think it says a lot that people are on anon, rather than actually talking to you and giving you a chance to engage with them one-on-one. I'm not sure I would label them trolls. I think their feelings got hurt and they are lashing out because of it, in an impolite way, rather than stopping to listen to explanations. I am going to give the benefit of doubt and assume that ill-intent wasn't meant, and that the reason they're on anon is that anxiety has them going "if I say it on my main, I'm going to get flamed because I offended popular tumblr user." To that I say: If you weren't on anon, Aren could've replied privately to you, and likely would have. A one-on-one conversation can go a large way for trying to clear up misunderstandings.

TBH, I probably could've just sent all of this on Discord but I just am frustrated. Asks like the ones you received are why I am terrified of sharing my own headcanons, why I assume anyone asking me ANY opinions has bad faith, and why everything I say has a giant ass disclaimer on it with "THIS IS LIKE, JUST MY OPINION GUYS" and we shouldn't have to do that. We shouldn't have to sit and police everything that we say because Someone Might Twist It.

Anyway, sorry. I just needed to put this out here because I was about to blow up on my own blog. lmao

Thank you tumblr user grollow I appreciate it immensely and I agree with everything you said about fandom being a sandbox made more fun by people having different ideas that make things fun to play with. It's just that I've been off in my corner playing relatively on my own for a bit, which kinda fucks over the amount of context you get on things a bit. And also the miscommunication had the misfortune of landing squarely in the intersection between 'things I really don't like' and 'things that have a canon basis but lack canonical descriptive details', turning it into a shitshow. Which I really really fucking wish didn't happen, even if I did enjoy discussing the pros and cons of different mental interpretations of Ghost and was able to come to the conclusion that it's about as appealing to me as a slice of apple pie. Which is to say, I like certain bits of it and will gladly nibble at said bits, but if there's any other option out there I'd take it over pie anyday. It's not bad and I certainly do enjoy it in extremely specific context, but it also doesn't appeal to me in the slightest and there's certain parts that I refuse to touch altogether (the texture of cooked fruit makes me cringe and nauseates me, much like the idea of Ghost being an adult trapped in a child's body from a horror perspective incites panic). But that's fine, bc then I can just plop the filling onto a friend's plate for their enjoyment, and nibble away at the bits I like in piece. My dislike of pie doesn't extend to the people who enjoy it, nor do I get upset when my brother refuses to eat what I cook for him. He's picky, I'm picky, I've got no right to judge. He's just as valid for saying my cream cheese frosting is gross as I am for thinking him refusing to eat anything but mac n cheese and scrambled eggs is gross. Same concept with fandom here

(And honestly, my judgement on the whole minor/adult thing is seperate from Ghost as a character altogether. I'm of similar mind with Miquella of Elden Ring, who is canonically an adult trapped in a child's body. Having a relationship with him in his child form would be fucked up- hell, even Mohg goes for breaking the curse first, and Mohg is canonically fucking insane! This isn't something limited to just one fandom, it's a hard line I draw in fiction in general)

Also yeah, I totally would have just worked it out in private, but I get the feeling the anon thinks I'm running some sort of clique or something over here where I would have twisted it into clout somehow. Which needless to say, I would not fucking do. Can't say this enough, but I'm autistic as all getout and had to deal with that enough in high school so I have nothing but contempt for that sort of behavior.

[jingsyuans]

(this is the same anon talking abt the problem with unspecified gendered readers being feminized in fics as a male reader, jing yuan hyperfixee yada yada.. i'll start putting a little 🌙 emoji every time i make these asks bc i honestly like sending these in to have these sorts of conversations LOL)

here's my perspective in all honesty— i'm not someone who reads smut for the exact reason you specified!! sometimes i'll skim over out of pure curiosity and from what i see its like.. "this is not ____ what????" bc so many writers like to water down their personalities for the sex appeal like you said— like it'll be the BIGGEST of sweethearts and then they'll be written like some sorta discord moderator ☠️☠️

which, like i said, is a reason why i dont read smut bc i totally agree with you with the fact that i prefer reading stuff where it actually. feels like the character (like ur content.. mwah)

tbh — i don't really care if people don't write content specifically catered to males ! cuz like u said i understand the difficulty especially w/ smut when ur just super unfamiliar with it ++ writers will tend to project too, i just dislike when it almost misleads you when they say its genderneutral and then immediately uses pronouns or fem terms HAHA

(i will be dropping into your inbox from time to time bc i also like to ramble and not many of my friends like hsr so i have nobody to share my silly little headcanons and thoughts with.. :3)

Yeahhh lol smut is very... specific, especially on tumblr. It's taken me a long time to realize the different brands of writers on this site. There's a lot of blogs that have high followings, and I think it's more about quantity than quality. A lot of writers will write for several characters all at once, and there's a bigger demand for their writing because of their content and popularity. Hence, you're making things a lot quicker, focusing more on things like the quality of the smut rather than the portrayal of the character. Characters will get narrowed down into sections- dominant, submissive, or S&M daddy. Lol. It works for some people, but not really for me.

A little off topic but in the same breath of things being fem/neutral/male ... every so often when i browse tags, i see people complaining about how there isn't enough content for m!readers or neutral, sometimes I even see posts where people don't want fem aligned persons to interact with their posts period "because its not for you, you already have enough". That whole mentality bothers me. (I'm about to go on a tangent, and this is thoughts of my own, nothing to do with what you've said, just in case you think im talking about you or anything like that)

It's true that fem readers are the majority, and it's because women take up the majority of fandom. From most to least in every fandom to exist, its afab women, gender neutral afab persons, ftm men, and then in the lesser pool is gn amab persons. Somewhere in there is mtf and i have no idea where they lie in the pool honestly. This is just my observation from being in fandom for awhile and being ftm once upon a time (before people yell at me, im more comfortably genderfluid now and rather lax about my presentation and gender nowadays, but i used to be dysphoric and was transitioning strictly to male). It makes sense that AFAB readers are the majority considering the people behind the content. You come a long way before you realize that there's literally nothing wrong with this.

I used to get upset about lack of representation in fics as well, especially when i was transitioning. I was extremely petty and hateful toward writers that were in the majority and toward women in fandom. It wasn't until i decided to grow up that i realized this wasn't helping anything, it was just keeping me in a bad headspace to think that complaining and hatred was my answer. My answer was finding a community of my own and writing my own fics, feeding myself the content i wanted to read. Realizing it was nobodies responsibility to create content for me besides my own. Is it nice when you get lucky and find that content? Of course. It's such a wonderful treat. But you are not due that content, nobody on the internet should have the expectation they will be catered to. To believe they are owed it. We are owed nothing from strangers.

People need to realize that writers on tumblr or otherwise, for reader inserts or ships, we don't write for the audience. It's part of it, yes, because its fun to share and motivating. But its no one's responsibility to represent and carry a community on their shoulders. If someone is going to write fem aligned reader insert smut, that was birthed out of their desire to write it and eat it whole. It was made for them and expressed outward onto the internet for others to enjoy if they have the same interest. But it isn't anyone's responsibility or need to write for you, to write for GN readers if they dont want to. It doesnt make them transphobic or narrow minded. It will make YOU narrow minded if you believe you deserve content just because you're part of a minority and if you arent catered to, you're allowed to be spiteful.

Open mindedness goes a long way. I've become a lot happier ever since I realized that people lead their own lives, create their own content for the sake of making themselves happy, and I do the exact same. I don't owe anyone anything. The internet can become a hive mind and what seems like a reality of it's own, but truthfully everything is surface level. Nothing matters if you don't want it to. Catering your own experience is amazing once you realize you have the ability.

Anyway i rambled AGAIN. These are my thoughts. Have at them.