#cliquey over there

[aa-carnivorousfatality]

I'm alive. And remembering why I don't really write in the sonic rpc anymore.

[eddiegettingshot]

look away im being so so mean

[xoxoemynn]

I'm glad you feel at least a teensy bit better after sleeping. I feel pretty out of it. I've had a few weeks of ups and downs that have left me pretty exhausted before this news.

I hope you don't mind me leaving a message here. I've never been part of the fandom community, just outside of it, so I'm not even really feeling the 'at least we still have each other' sentiment. Ofmd helped me revive my creativity after years of not creating anything when I used to do so much. I'm still slower at it than I used to be, but it's a start. It's something.

Ofmd gave me the strength to come out at work, to be myself in most parts of my life rather than just carefully cultivated moments. I've found strength I never knew I had. Ffs I'm doing diversity training information stuff now??

I feels good. Feels great. And I really don't think it was a long shot to think that a successful, critically acclaimed show would get rescued. (I did wonder if making it very clear how valuable it was made HBO have an insane asking price but I hope not)

And I know s2 ended neatly (thank god) but I was so on board with Jenkins' view of "the will-they-won't-they is the least interesting part of a romance". Because you never see the payoff! It's just oh they're together now, the end, and you don't get to experience the characters as a couple. The story was the development of Ed and Stede's relationship, and a 3rd part would have given us the full scope of that.. *sigh

Idk I guess I'm just at a bit of a loss. Feeling empty. I was already struggling posting my work, or thinking how to adjust how I do it, because I don't feel its good enough for this fandom (which in my very limited experience feels very clique-y? If you're not in with the cool kids then no one cares and I'm too old for this!) It's all a bit "what's the point" I guess. I expect it'll pass but aaa, man. Y’know. Rant over, thanks for reading ^^'

The deepest of sighs, the tightest of hugs.

I feel you. Starting work today with swollen eyes and a tired heart. It sucks. This all just really sucks. And yes, I'm so grateful we got the show at all, I'm so grateful for the cast/crew, I'm so grateful for this fandom and the friends I made along the way. But this show, that did EVERYTHING RIGHT, ended before its time. And there's no getting around that just really, really sucks.

You're right, I don't think it was ridiculous to believe our renewal efforts might be successful. Because it SHOULD have been! It was a beautiful show with a passionate fan base that was also viewed very favorably by critics. In any sane world, OFMD's renewal would have been a given. And it's not silly or stupid to hope for good things to happen in a world where so often good things don't. The solution to the world being a shit show isn't to just bow our heads and accept it. It's to keep hope alive because yes, it might turn out different this time! Beautiful things deserve to be cherished, and that's what we did and will continue to do with OFMD. OFMD wasn't canceled due to a lack of love. It was corporate greed, pure and simple, and unfortunately that's a really difficult evil to fight against. But we still gave it our all, and people and the industry took note. That's no small feat.

And the show did so much for all of us! I'm so happy it gave you the strength to come out at work and live more in your authentic self. That's huge! That's the power of good art. And that's something studio heads can never take into account while they plug figures into their calculators and huff and puff about the numbers not being there.

I do hope you'll post your work, and share whatever you feel comfortable sharing. We really are of all skill levels here, and I've found genuine love of the show/its characters > the most technically well-written fic on the planet. I do hear what you say about it feeling cliquey, but for what it's worth, I also think it's very welcoming to newcomers? I realize that sounds like a contradiction. But I do think people have just kind of naturally formed little social circles of their friends and it can feel hard to break into, especially if you're an introvert like me. But I think if you start just getting in people's inboxes or reblogging with tags that show your personality/opinions/whatever, you'll start naturally forming those groups on your own. I'd also really recommend the OFMD Fic Club server if you're trying to get the courage to start posting your own work. It's a really supportive community there of people who've been posting for decades, as well as those who are just beginning to plan their very first fic.

Anyway, this is getting long and rambling so I'll end it here, but please know I'm sending you SO much love. It sucks right now but we'll get through it. And my DMs are open if you ever just want to chat. 💕

[aqours]

my feelings on ritowa have always been kidna ambient bc like

i didn't care much about it in yashahime s1, like i even told myself "when they get more development i'm sure i'll ship it more"

then s2 came and it did happen and i started liking it more also the ritowas carved out the only non-toxic space filled with flame wars, infighting, and terfs in the entire fandom so there was that although it's still not something that gave me like, specific brainworms or seek out or anything and i definitely felt i was more one-sided and more of a "towa will probably fall in love with him in the future" and like i don't really seek out fics or art that's specifically ritowa although i enjoy it and like seeing it when it's on my twitter tl without really seeking it out (i still follow a lot of yashahime people on there even if i'm more divorced from the fandom now)

but

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGH

"I will be your knight."

THE MANGA ACTUALLY REMEMBERING WHEN RIKU OBSERVED THAT TOWA IS SOMEBODY WHO ALSO DESERVES TO BE PROTECTED NOT JUST SOMEBODY WHO ONLY EVER PROTECTS OTHERS WITHOUT CARE FOR HER WELL BEING

A PRINCESS AND HER PIRATE TURNED KNIGHT...

so now i'm just

YES ACTUALLY

YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH GIMMIE

GIMMIE MORE OF THE PRINCESS AND HER PIRATE TURNED KNIGHT PLEASE

[deepseacityunderground]

do you ever meet a person whos like a grown adult like a grown ass adult in their thirties and yet their social maturity is stuck at like. 16

[troonwolf]

thank you for speaking up about the cult tactics used in the pro endo community. even though i Was mostly syscourse unaligned leaning anti, the pro endo community gave me a really bad vibe. seeing a lot of shit they say screamed “cult” to me too but i didn’t feel comfortable enough calling it out because i’m not a cult survivor and i don’t know a lot about cults. i was also never pro endo so it’s not like i could speak from personal experience either. so i kind of brushed off my gut reaction and told myself i’m overreacting about something i don’t know a lot about. so i’m glad to know more now and know that the pro endo community does harm beyond what i even initially thought. i’m definitely more anti endo now because the pro endo community is absolutely the anti vaxers of the neurodivergent community. also notice how many of them support the demedicalization of autism too. idk if you remember that but i’m referencing specifically the time a few months ago when some prominent pro endo bloggers were jumping down the throats of autistic anti endos because they called their autism a disability.

Ty for your input anon! Interesting to read other folks perspectives and experiences on all this.

The funny thing is I literally only started talking about how I myself am a cult survivor because everytime I try to talk about cults in the system community, people have this knee-jerk reaction of having to respond to you with essays on how unless you're a cult survivor, you shouldn't be talking about cults.

Now first off that's obviously not true and pretty stupid. Tons of academic professionals and researchers and etc who are involved in widening our understanding of cults, were not themselves victims of cults. That's like saying I can't talk about the black plague because I wasn't there.

But literally just to make people stop having that response to me I was like welp guess I'm gonna have to talk about specific details of my trauma of being lured into a doomsday bunker in the mountains by my mother even tho both sides of this debate are constantly talking about how we shouldn't pressure people to have to talk about or reveal their trauma.

The idea of cults and cult victims have a weird status of reverence in the community, we're almost treated like a mythological creature. "Oh no, don't talk about cults! There might be a...*whispers* cult victim here...." It's very very bizarre.

Cults are an age-old phenomenon with tons of research put behind them. We actually know a fucking lot about cults. Saying you need to have been in one to be able to understand them is ridiculous.

Comparing this to other things: you don't need to have been abused as a child to have a good understanding of child abuse. We have a pretty informed understanding of what child abuse is and how it functions by this point. You can still call something out as being child abuse without having experienced it yourself.

With that said I'm glad there are people who understand my point, but honestly after this experience I've concluded both sides of the anti/endo discourse are a bunch of clowns who just want a tumblr pvp social club. People are involved literally just to be part of the community, whether anti or endo. Folks actual reasons for being against endos is dumb shit like "they're just dumb teenagers who don't know what they're doing", when if that's really the case then why are you "anti" in the first place? Idc what dumb teenagers are doing, why do you?

I hate endos because they cause harm but most people in this discourse legitimately seem like they're just anti-endos because they think it's cringe and want to be a cool tumblr hater.

[1eos]

Miss Kendra. feel free to not answer but what kinds of zines are you applying to? Fanzines? Original art zines? (as a fellow zine enjoyer who has also been rejected quite a few times-)

99.9% of the time it's fanzines 🤔 only bc the original art zines i come across the themes are like so specific and in a vein i can't relate to lollllll like i am not the intended audience for the weird gay girls and the bugs they love zine 😭😭😭😭😭 i need to find a zine that no one is applying to bc that's literally the only way imma get in at this point

[lunanoc]

i thought i'd seen all the Bad Takes this fandom can generate atp but no 🫠

when i say people only like being in it bc they can play a giant themed dnd game, i mean it. otherwise there wouldn't be people seriously suggesting fan fiction (that's conveniently only written by themselves and their group of friends ofc) as an entry point into a fandom for newcomers who've never interacted with the source material in any way so they can get a solid grasp of the characters rather than idk. the source material ???

with all due respect, why would you ever use fan fiction and fanon perception as the basis of your own perception of characters and stories rather than the source material its derived from, knowing fanon is always going to be skewed and give you biased secondhand information. and why would you ever suggest it in the first place?

[untitled-byler-blog]

sometimes I want to be popular and other times I rather enjoy flying under the radar

[snekdood]

Yknow what makes me reaentful? How ive been sexually abused so much growing up, no one did shit besides shove me off to a therapist, ive been promised by feminist spaces that ill have a place to heal within them, and as soon as my abusive ex tries to smear me and project their behavior on to me by accusing me of doing that shit too, all the sudden everyone acts suspicious, and i still dont get any of that promised healing. Its hard not to feel like my ex did this intentionally to prevent me from having a space to heal. And its my issue with the "believe victims" narrative because it seems to me like people dont actually want to believe victims but to believe the victims they *like* and *agree more with politically*. If people can just say whatever about someone and you feel obligated to believe them because "believe victims", its very clearly going to be exploited by abusive people, and while i dont think we should stop per se, we need to have some sort of actual system to vet who is and isnt telling the truth, like a pseudo-courtroom. At the very least let everyone and their side of the story actually be heard. Bc idk how you guys plan to believe two victims at once who are accusing eachother other than throwing your hands up and picking one or deciding that we're both bad, which doesnt seem very fair to me since people seem to looove demonizing me for no discernable reason.

[si-cucumber]

I am so sick of being sucked into work drama, y'all.

I'm fucking autistic. If you have a problem with me, you can't look at me and smile and be like "yeah no problem :D" and then five minutes later talk shit about me behind my back. If you say you're good, I'm gonna assume you're good. If you want my help, accept my offers for help :D Or you know....ask.

I really don't understand it. How am I supposed to correct the things I'm supposedly doing wrong if no one tells me anything :D

[enigma-the-anomaly]

we all know I’m ill about ishimondo but even ignoring that I think the first danganronpa might be my favorite? Honestly the first and second are really close, but the first one just has a certain feel to it. Like it’s the very first, it was the guinea pig, the testing of the waters, so it has a sort of wildness to it, like “throw things and see what sticks”

idk, I just like that fuck it we ball vibe it has, and without the burden of past games it doesn’t feel the need to be more shocking and more out there than what came before it. It isn’t trying so hard to have every character be wild and exaggerated. It has problems for sure, but it also has an energy that’s just fun, like “this is new and exciting and weird and we know it, just follow along and we’ll see where this goes”

idk, it just has a really special place in my heart

[pizzaboat]

Kinda getting sick of every post I make being ignored on a certain discord server...

[simpingresponsibly]

dtblr talking about how good it was that certain blogs left because it makes it less cliquey here... is the irony not lost on y'all 💀

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

please tell us more about your mad theory about the tories getting rid of Sunak?

So the Tories currently have two (2) major problems.

Problem the first: they are about to lose power as soon as the GE rolls around, which it must do by January 2025 at the absolute latest. And the country is baying for one sooner.

This is very much preoccupying their minds at the minute. The rich and powerful will never willingly let you vote away their wealth and power, and to put this into perspective, the Tory party has ruled this country either jointly or alone for over a decade at this point. One of David Cameron's strategies as leader was to focus on recruitment of young and exciting diverse Tories into the party, which is how we got such stellar entries as Liz Truss and Priti Patel and Suella Braverman. These are MPs, therefore, who have never known political life outside of being on the winning side. They are seeing the end of the gravy train in sight, and they are taking it as well as you'd expect.

This is why the infighting is so rife (partly; bear with). The main thing they care about right now is making the party electable again, and fast.

But...

Problem the second: like all good fascist dictators, when Boris Johnson came to power, he fired everyone who said anything bad about him for disloyalty, and promoted all his personal friends. This is how we got such stellar entries as Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees Mogg and Michael Fabricant. But THAT'S an issue because saying bad things about BJ is basically what intelligent people did, because the man was a useless blundering oaf who killed horrifying numbers of his own electorate via the world's second worst mismanagement of a global pandemic. So removing anyone who criticised him meant, in very real terms, removing the only Tories with half a brain who were even a fraction capable of doing joined up thinking required to run a country. Like, fuck every Tory with a cactus, obviously, but they did at least used to have competent, high calibre politicians, however evil and grotesque they were. David Cameron should die in a cesspit, but he was capable of remembering to put the bins out (before wage cutting the refuse collectors).

And therein lies the real problem: okay, BJ is gone, the party is in ruin, they're staring down the barrel of the most humiliating election defeat in history. They need someone competent that they all like who can take the reins and make people like them again.

But who's left?

There's no one. There's no one left. Not just because the remaining Tories are too low calibre to lead; they're too low calibre to even be able to pick someone without shrieking like cliquey little harridans on the playground about how the wrong in-group got in. Half of them are still BJ loyalists who hate anyone who criticise The Great Brexit Leader. The other half hate BJ for managing to make everyone hate the Tories so much that they're in this mess. Both halves are willing to sabotage the chosen leader of the other, locked in a battle of mutually assured destruction.

So how does Sunak fit into this?

He's unpopular in the party to a truly staggering degree, and not much better in the eyes of the public. He's tried to take a centrist stance on BJ, but that's actually just pissed off both sides. He did manage to stabilise the economy somewhat after the appalling mess Liz Truss threw it into, but he hasn't actually fixed it - we're still mid-cost of living crisis, we're still inexplicably not rich after Brexit like Boris prommied, inflation is still at an all time high as public services crash. The public hates him.

And he hasn't made the public stop hating the Tories. That petition calling for a GE is great, because it won't happen - BUT, it does force the issue to be debated in Parliament with opposition parties getting to stick the boot in, which means the humiliation continues. The Tories are starting to get desperate again.

And because this lot of Tories are, as mentioned, utterly terrible low-calibre political idiots, their response to this pressure has for the last four years been to oust the leader and get another.

And the first letters of no confidence have been sent into the 1922 Committee already. The devil moves fast, but knuckle dragging Tories with a fifth of a braincell each move faster.

And thanks to the absolute fucking state of them all... I cannot believe I'm saying these words, but genuinely the best person they have left who could possibly do the job is, of all fucking people, Michael Fucking Gove, and it won't even be him because he was mean to Boris once.

So yeah. I reckon Sunak may be out in six months. Fuck knows who we get instead. Probably Penny Mordaunt.

[dr3amfyr-e]

modern!jace thoughts ( wc. 600-ish )

i have a jace parasite living in my brain <3 i’m cooking up a part two ( i cooked it up )

jacaerys who studies literature and linguistics at university — on the pre-law track. he’s such a diligent student, a frequenter of libraries and study rooms. ( but he doesn’t really have to try that hard, it comes easy, it’s aggravating )

he lives in the nicest dorm on campus, probably private housing.

jacaerys who wears glasses :3 but only when he must, makes an effort to put contacts in every day. but some days are just glasses days. ( they’re the sliver squoval wire framed ones )

jacaerys who prioritizes hygiene, he’s so clean. (i’m a jon girl at heart, i can acknowledge that he is not squeaky clean. jace is squeaky clean) jace has a skincare routine and a haircare routine. he’s using olaplex and cerave and that super expensive moisturizer. he knows how to defuse and gel cast his curls, he’ll happily do yours too! i firmly believe he uses an electric toothbrush AND HE TAKES CARE OF HIS NAILS

jacaerys who attended a private school until university, and started playing competitive football ( ⚽️ ) at age 10. he plays in college too, but he’s not as serious about it.

lucerys attends the same private school and plays for the same team, so jace practices with him ( it usually ends with a physical altercation, think the sword fight scene ‘what. was. THAT?’ )

jacaerys who likes animals, and LOVES his dog. vermax lives at home while he is off at school, but when jace gets a place of his own the dog will come with. he walks him every morning and evening and takes him for runs most days over the summer. vermax sleeps in jace’s bed, and he takes up a good portion.

jacaerys who is SO oldest daughter coded. he’s driving his siblings around. taking joffrey to pediatrician appointments and picking him up from school. going to all of luke’s football games and rhaena’s violin concerts.

chronic over achiever, he has to be his mothers favorite daughter- what, who said that?

mama’s boy jacaerys who looks up to her more than anyone. he’s bragging her up to anyone who will listen: in his gender and women’s studies class like, “my mom is a ceo! 🙋” “my mom is married to a woman! 🙋”

he would defend his mother’s name with his life. he’s getting into fist fights at social events, ryan atwood style. ( no he’s not, but he really wants to )

jacaerys who can be mean. he doesn’t mean to be, he doesn’t want to be — he hates it. but the world he grew up in was exclusive, and cliquey, and competitive.

he’s good at controlling it, thinking before he speaks. because he’s not a mean person. he’s good, and kind, and gentle. but, it comes to the surface when he goes into defense mode.

he made luke cry once, and started journaling to channel his emotions.

english/history person jacaerys. he’s hopeless at helping his brothers with their math homework.

when his mother married his late grandfather’s former wife he started reading lesbian theory to cope. and he liked it! he borrows baela’s feminist theory books, they bookclub.

jacaerys who, unfortunately, does participate in performative reading. omg nooo don’t come talk to me while i’m reading didion and wearing pearls and mewing 🧏

jacaerys who has a really expensive digital camera and also a really expensive film camera. he likes to post his pictures on his instagram ( no one cares )

all of his social media accounts are private because he doesn’t want to be the internet’s next eligible bachelor.

jacaerys who cries when he’s frustrated.

jacaerys who tolerates his step-brothers, but not very well or with much enjoyment. he has way more in common with alicent than he’d like to admit ( quintessential horrifying step-child experience of being mistaken for your step-parents biological child ) he likes helaena, though! they’re kind of bestie

he separates puzzle pieces by colour for her and looks at all of her art and knows all of her favorite bugs. ( he’s always wanted a sister )

jacaerys who is a fantastic boyfriend ( i’ll get into this later ) (( i got into this ))