#i didn't include the links because tumblr is weird about links

[writer-at-the-table]

Physiognomy is another one of those things we should be looking at critically, for anyone unfamiliar.

The simple, surface-level wikipedia definition is "he practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face." As a pseudoscience, it is related to phrenology.

Per the University of North Carolina's web project Race Deconstructed: Science and the Making of Difference, "physiognomy suffered from the biases of its practitioners, who tended to attribute positive qualities only to features associated with Europeans."

The same source also says "physiognomy could be used as a justification for treating non-white individuals differently, in society and in law."

There are also connections between physiognomy and eugenics, as well as between physiognomy and antisemitism- the "Jewish nose" stereotype and the character traits assumed to go with it is one example.

Given the ways that Dracula is described, both by Jonathan at the beginning and by Mina and others once he's in London, the connection between physiognomy and antisemitism should not be overlooked.

Indeed there is an academic paper on the subject, titled "The fear of the ‘Other’ and anti-semitism: Representations of the Jews in Punch and Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the light of rising English nationalism" by Stephanie Winkler of Oxford University available free online for anyone looking for something more in depth.

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Smiler’s Otherland -- Domains!

Hi everyone, I’m back on my Smiler’s Otherland bullshit! :D After making my initial “here’s my first ideas on the concept” post back in May 2023, I’ve been trying to get my thoughts organized regarding what Smiler’s Otherland should look like, more details about their weapons, how many outfits they need, etc. And now I’m going to share some of those thoughts with all of you! Because it’s my tumblr and you’re my captive audience. :p

So -- let’s start with the domains! Because you can’t have an Otherland without actual, you know, lands in it. So far, I’ve come up with four domains for Smiler:

Smile Street: The “hub” domain, or at least the domain any visitors would be likely to land in first, much like Alice’s Vale of Tears or Victor’s Living Dead Forest. This domain is arguably the "coziest," and allows Smiler to put their best smiling face forward. :D

-->As indicated by the name, it’s a long winding street lined with brightly-painted houses in all colors of the rainbow -- in fact, here, the shot of Towers Street from this The Smiler ad gives you a good idea of what I’m picturing:

Only, instead of just those spiraling yellow clouds in the sky, there's also a big yellow sun featuring a Smiler-logo face on it, as per this screenshot from this video on The Smiler mobile game: (WARNING -- the linked video does have flashing lights/strobe-like images starting about midway through!)

...maybe a little less overtly creepy, as this is supposed to be the friendliest domain, but you get what I mean.

-->And who lives in those cheery little houses? Why, the Advocates, of course! Who are based on these guys from The Smiler mobile game (screenshot from the same video linked above):

You know, just a little higher resolution. XD They're naturally very friendly, greeting visitors enthusiastically, and spend most of their time wandering around, trimming trees and hedges into spirals, having little get-togethers in each other's yards where they tell jokes and laugh a lot, playing various games with each other, painting big grinning faces on portable easels -- that sort of thing.

-->At the end of the street is -- well, the town SPIRAL rather than square, as the road just spirals in on itself until it stops at a big fountain full of glowy yellow liquid at the center. Around the outer curve of the spiral is a little cafe (which serves a variety of drinks and treats, though many of the drinks glow at least slightly, and the treats tend to have spiral decorations), a playground (with all the equipment painted with yellow and black stripes with occasional touches of purple and white), a general shop selling a variety of goods (which, yes, would basically be the shop from the Smiler Shop TV video, manned by Matt and Carol -- Smiler can put their parents into their Otherland, as a treat), and a train station consisting of a bright yellow covered platform with spiraling columns holding the roof up, a Smiler coaster car (like that seen above) for the "train," and tracks that start out flat but quickly spiral off into wild loops and twists (because, of course, the coaster itself has to serve as transport to the other two "nice" domains). Just a nice place to hang out, chat, and watch the spiral clouds swirl overhead. XD

X-Sector: Named after the section of Alton Towers that The Smiler coaster is actually in, this is the domain dedicated to Smiler’s interest in technology and chemistry (with the actual look of the tech ranging from more steampunky to more cyberpunky depending on the time period of the AU it features in).

-->The domain consists mostly of a big old lab, surrounded by a yard featuring grass made out of green wire, flowers made out of twisty bits of metal with stained glass leaves and petals, and simple conical trees (like the kind you might see in an old Playstation or XBox game before graphics really started taking off -- that Smiler Game screenshot above is roughly the right aesthetic). The sky here would be filled with swirling, spiraling yellow and black clouds, lit with the occasional flash of lightning. It's all very dramatic.

-->The lab itself is divided into two wings, separated by a main hall with lots of optical illusions a la the actual The Smiler station (with various changing patterns on the walls -- be warned, that linked video has a fair amount of flashing lights in it!). The left wing would be devoted to engineering and be filled with things like whirring little hypno-wheel gadgets, boxes with flashing lights, various skittering tiny robots, and other things of that nature. The right wing would be devoted to chemistry and have various workstations covered with bubbling flasks of liquid and hissing tanks filled with volatile gases -- though I'm really tempted to throw in a little bit of Willy Wonka flavor and have a big old waterfall of Joy Serum somewhere in here too. XD I mean, it feels like something Smiler would have -- maybe it flows into a giant pipe to provide the liquid for the fountain in Smile Street? Or perhaps it just serves as the "drinking water" for everyone there...

-->As for residents -- well, I suppose in addition to Advocates in lab coats tending all the various experiments, it would make sense to have Dr. Gladwell from the Smiler Takeover "Fear Test" show at the very least. After all, he is the Ministry's Chief Neurological Cortex Reprogrammer! :p The only thing complicating that is that I wanted to name Smiler's outfit for this area after him...but I suppose I could name it after his role in the Ministry instead... Anyway, the most notable resident here would naturally be the Marmaliser itself -- a big robot wandering around on its five limbs, looking for unhappy people to make happy and coming by the lab to have its Inoculator syringes and Giggler gas tanks refilled and its Tickler brushes, Flasher bulbs, and Hypnotiser wheels looked at and realigned as necessary.

Musical Mayhem: Hey, Victor wasn’t using the name :p This domain is all about Smiler's love of music and festivals and things of that nature, and -- as you might expect -- is strongly based around that whole The Smiler Takeover that Alton Towers did for the ride's 10th anniversary.

-->The domain itself is a giant fairground set in a field of glittery green grass under more of those yellow spiraling clouds, with a couple of black-and-white-cobbled looping paths winding through it. There are various carnival games scattered about (like the "Beat the Buzzer" game where you have to get a wire loop around a metal simplified Smiler logo without touching it, otherwise it'll buzz and you'll have to start again; hook-a-smiling-duck; bag tosses with grinning Smiler-logoed bags; one of those water gun games where you shoot Joy Serum at a target to make something rise up; etc), along with food stalls, comfy sitting areas, and carts where people can get balloons and little sparklers and trumpets to blow. As you might imagine, it's chaotic, but in a good way!

-->The dominant feature of the fairground, though, is a huge stage at the far end -- a bigger version of the Takeover's Celebration Stage, with all the smiley-face decorations but yellow curtains instead of red. There's a few rows of seats in front of the stage for people who want to sit down and watch, and designated "dancing spots" for those who want to dance and sing along. The dancing spots are generally more populated than the seats, as you might expect. XD

-->Again, the domain is mostly populated by Advocates from Smile Street, just enjoying the carnival -- but you can't have a Celebration Stage without Felix E. Lated as the star performer! :D (Again, Smiler can have their uncle in their Otherland, as a treat.) When he's not up on stage singing, he's wandering the fairground, encouraging everyone to let loose and have fun. Possibly Grin-Grin the clown (from the above-linked "Fear Test") also makes an appearance from time to time, creating balloon animals and telling ridiculous stories -- oh, and we probably should also have the contortionist and the magician from the "Meet The Ministry" stage show up too! All the performers for the Advocates to enjoy!

Sanctuary: Unfortunately for Smiler, as stated in the original post, we can’t neglect the spookier, scarier parts of the coaster’s theming -- and that means having a domain where everything is creepy and horrible, to represent their fears about going too far and actually harming people. And thus we have Sanctuary, inspired by all the Kelman-related materials, such as the Smile Always series and the Sanctuary scare mazes (a few clips of which can be seen in this informative video -- again, watch out for some flashing lights)! Hooray! :D

-->The area is a large, underground asylum, accessed by a pair of rusty metal swinging doors spray-painted with "THE TRUTH" in bright yellow (taken from one of the AR spots you could access with The Smiler Mobile Game back in the day -- there's a set hidden away in each of the other three domains) -- once inside, you're confronted with an absolute maze of concrete corridors, all painted a faded white. The place is not in good repair, with plenty of patches of exposed rebar and wiring on the walls and cracks in both the ceiling and the floor. The whole place is poorly lit, with buzzing yellow lights dangling from the ceiling and occasionally sparking or going out entirely. The only concession to color is in the various posters that have been hung up -- images of spirals with DO NOT RESIST written under them, photos of decaying animal corpses captioned with LIFE IS BAD, and various images of people with their mouths distorted into extremely creepy smiles. It's just a very unpleasant place to be!

-->There are two groups of people that live in this horrible location -- the first being the Corrected. These are the asylum's patients, dressed in tattered and dirty white t-shirts, pants, and dresses, who roam the halls and live in the various cells dotting the hallways. Most of them either have Glasgow smiles or various bits of machinery forcing their mouths into grins, and many also have at least a partially-shaved head and nasty scars on their scalps indicating brain surgery. However, the Corrected are all completely non-violent, either just wandering around doing their thing (vaguely giggling to themselves, drawing on the walls with whatever they can find, standing in small groups and laughing together) or hiding away from anyone they think is a threat.

-->No, the actual enemies of this area are the Staff -- the nurses and orderlies who run the place. The nurses are dressed in stained white uniform dresses, sporting dark circles around their eyes, vicious grins accented by dark lipstick, and long claw-like nails ready to take a swipe out of misbehaving patients; and the orderlies are dressed in similarly-stained yellowed scrubs, with the same dark circles around their eyes and vicious grins. The nurses carry syringes to stab unsuspecting victims, subjecting them to a variety of bizarre hallucinations; the orderlies carry shock batons guaranteed to bring patients to their knees. Their favorite activities are to stalk unwitting Corrected, then take them down while laughing hysterically. Not nice people at all!

-->And the person in charge of the whole shebang? Why, that would be Dr. Minister, a Kelman-like old man with a neat white suit sporting the Sanctuary logo, glinting glasses, and a smile that -- well, it's obvious the man's HEARD of smiling, but you're not sure he's ever seen it in action. He's insistent that everything he does for the Corrected is for their own good, and his ultimate goal is to turn Smiler into his apprentice/successor -- and Victor and Alice into Corrected. Smiler, as you might imagine, loathes this guy, and is absolutely terrified of ending up like him. :(

And that's everything I've got for now! It does make me slightly annoyed that I only have four domains for Smiler when Victor has five and Alice -- well, as per A:MR, the minimum is eight (presuming you don't count the Vale of Doom as separate from the Vale of Tears). But I do think that these four cover pretty much everything important when it comes to the coaster, it's themes, and all the events and attractions related to it. Next up, we have the weapons -- which, believe me, was a much easier post to make...

[singukieee]

—my all time favourite bts fics (pt. 1) ᯓᡣ𐭩

consists of my personal favourite bts fics that I've read countless of times. including those from other platforms, such as Wattpad, AO3, and Patreon.

For some works that are cross-posted between tumblr and wp/ao3, I'd only link them to the latters bcs I find it easier to read and navigate the stories on those. but I also tagged all the authors I know are here and linked the rest so you can check their blogs out yourself!

I'll also separate this list into several parts simply because there's too many... So it'd be easier for you guys to navigate!

red means unfinished

blue means finished

🗯️ editor's note

(sorted by alphabetical order)

A Place Called Home by @agustdakasuga

Having saved your own injured hybrid, you were determined to try and help any other hybrid that crossed your path who needed saving. But being a vet in a small hospital wasn’t enough for you. You wanted to do more, you wanted to make a difference. You wanted to give them a home.

Accidental Friends by Erakun06

Meet Bangtan, international superstars, the pride of South Korea, the love and hope in the dark of many lives, the role model and celebrity crush of so many people, and a group of people you often stumble across in your day to day life. You become acquaintances, slowly become friends, and- that's it. You are in a platonic friendship with Bangtan. Let me say it again. clears throat PLATONIC. Or One day, you meet a member of Bangtan, the next day, another, and another, and another, and one day, they become a group of people you often stumble across in your life. They become your acquaintances. Then your friends. Then your source of comfort, just like they are the source of comfort of millions of people in the world. What you didn't expect is that you become the same to them. It's inevitable. You are friends.

🗯️ a theme that I don't find much of, and this one was excecuted quite neatly I'd say

Ace For Hire by tokki-maknae

Who is Ace? Besides being the deadliest hitman on the market in the underground, whose really under the hood? The answers simple, well for you at least, because you are Ace. When you're not busy blurring yourself into the background noises of school, you were making a killing in the underground, both literally and figuratively. For years now Ace has become an infamous name among the other gangs and holds the reputation of being lethal and untouchable. But that all changes after a slip up that causes you to attract the unwanted attention of one persistent seven member gang. A gang that's been dying to know, who is Ace?

🗯️ badassss

At Your Service by @untaemedqueen

In which Yn is looking for an escort to accompany her to her nightmare ex and ex best friend's wedding, only to ended up falling in love with him.

Baby (you complete us) by @purpleyoonn

Soulmates were a common occurrence, so common, in fact, that the world sought an easier way to find your other half: A bracelet that would scan your mark and match you with those who shared your mark. Within recent years, soul groups were becoming normal, and your own bracelet said you have seven matches. Or where you wear your bracelet for ten years, and finally give up the hope you would find your soul group, only for BTS to put theirs on and see what they were missing.

Back Home by AlexLorchan / @alexlwrites

Secretly, he was selfishly hoping that you didn’t age well. Dealing with a small crush was easy enough when he was young and knew next to nothing about girls, when you were just a cute albeit slightly weird girl he had a soft spot for. But he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if his feelings came back with a vengeance while you were living together. God, he would probably lock himself with Jungkook until you went away. OR The one where, after living abroad for years, you move back to Korea and your old high school friend Namjoon offers you his place to stay while you get settled, casually forgetting to mention that: a) he still had a massive crush on you. b) he lived with six other guys.

🗯️ crack fic! my fave category and this one makes me giggle in both funny way and butterfly-in-my-stomach kinda way

Beauty of Love by @imnotlauriane

When you cross eyes with your soulmate, you get flashes of memories that have yet to happen. You can't see the same memory as the other and it can be either good or bad. It's not always terrible, but a thing is for sure. No matter what you do, it will happen. But are things always what they seem to be?

Between The Bloodshed series by @agustdakasuga

🗯️ this series... I just love. plot is super neat, relationship doesn't feel forced, etc etc

❶ Between The Bloodshed

Being a freelance doctor, this was just supposed to be any other job, helping a private client and taking care of him through his recovery. But you were not expecting to get caught in something so much darker that you would have to leave your life behind and build a new one.

❷ Everything Between Us

They left you hanging, they broke your heart. You didn’t get your happily ever after. But now they’re back and they’re searching for you to make things right. Could you look past the betrayal to take them back into your life and back into your heart?

Beyond The Stage by Alysheart

Alexis was going through the days simply. She was a college student in Florida, working towards her degree. When she scored tickets to the BTS concert in Korea, she didn't hesitate. She never expected to be soulmates with the seven idols.

Bound by Blood by PurpleQueenie

In a world where vampires and humans have to co-exist, where the line between tolerance and animosity blurs, how can you ever expect to get your happily ever after when your soulmates hate your very existence?

🗯️ love all the details, the slow burn, gosh just so good

Boyfriend For Hire by @remedyx

Unsatisfied with your life was an understatement. Being under the thumb of your father can have that effect. He wanted someone capable of running the company, but you wanted to pursue your passion. Countless unwanted blind dates and the threat of losing your freedom drives you to seek help from a group of individuals you'd least expected.

Breakthrough by Alphathyx

"My dreams haunt me like past memories that never existed" The Memory Dive, an invention that allows the user to dive into anyone's memories just from the collection of their DNA. Made by Professor Kim Seokjin, he created this device for the worlds secret service to solve mysteries that the ordinary field agents are unable to. With seven agents, ranging from ex military, to a university professor, college student and even a criminal, only these seven are able to use this machine to extract memories of others. They are also the only people that know how to escape it. Discover through their eyes of uncovering the darkest truths of the world, through the minds of victims.

🗯️ this one's super neat plot with complicated and technical world, just so good

Bright Colors and Loud Soulmates by Mostmouse

You resented soulmates, the whole damn concept. It just wasn't your thing, and you couldn't help but feel jealous of those who were born without soulmates, who could see the world as it was intended to be from birth. When you run into your soulmate, you're determined to stay in your own sphere of the world. Focusing on you. But, because nothing is simple in your life, it turns out he's one of seven - better yet, your seven soulmates are the globally famous band BTS. Because why wouldn't they be? OR you learn how to let your soulmates past your carefully crafted walls, and they’re more than happy to show you what a loving and supportive relationship should look like.

🗯️ a funny and cute one! (with extra h0rny characters lol)

BTS Office CEO AU by @jiminiesfavouritecolourisblue

You work for seven CEOs who have called you into their office due to a complaint

Can't Wait To See You Again by AlexLorchan / @alexlwrites

The one where Jungkook develops a huge crush on a Youtuber he found after falling into the rabbit hole of his recommended videos. Unbeknownst to him, you were also recommended to his hyungs. Unbeknownst to you, all across the world seven idols were slowly falling in love with you.

🗯️ I just love the concept of the boys being fanboys :3

Choco Bun by @nunchiimagines

When you moved to Korea after finishing college to continue pursuing latte art and baking, the last thing you were expecting was to open up your very own coffee shop under BTS Corp, Korea’s biggest entertainment service company for idols, models, singers, and more. Thanks to your hard work, creativity, and approachable personality you managed to become friendly with some pretty big named individuals as well as up and coming talent. As exciting and fun as it was for you, you slowly began to realize how much your 7 bosses weren’t particularly fond of this, acts of jealousy, pettiness, and aggression poking through in the most unsuspecting of ways. But what could 7 big named dragons want with a little foreign bunny?

Combined Beings by @numinousher

You are bullied on a constant because korea’s beauty standards do not fit girls on the heavier side. the bullying gets worse once a ceo is attracted to you and he mentioned you to the other 6.

🗯️ minus the bullying elements, this story is like a comforting sweet cloud

Comfort by http-lostforever

Hybrids have been introduced into society for a handful of years now, the fighting for their rights is still happening but doesn't look promising. But when one girl finds a hybrid in danger she jumps at the chance to help, yet what she didn't know was how upside down her life was about to become. But a word of advice, not everything is as it seems.

Could We Be Together Someday? series by BTS_Mommy / @babyboy-bangtan

🗯️ mann Idk what to write lol. this is another one that I've re-read thousand times, bcs some of the boys started as fanboys then became clingy friends. also yn's so supportive I just lovee.

❶ By Chance

A misunderstanding gone viral puts you on BTS's radar, which leads to a series of events that finally culminate with you meeting them for the first time.

❷ The Moments in Between

As you become close friends with BTS, you begin to realize that the feelings you have for them are slowly turning into something you're not ready to deal with. Unbeknownst to you, the same is happening to them.

Crave by sweetinsanityy

The boys don't do well with being controlled, but for their group, they'll bite their tongue and put on a smile for management. Yet when you, a new little rookie, stumble upon them, they're like a pack of hungry wolves. Or, the boys are all Doms and they want you to be their perfect little sub.

Cursed Fate by PurpleQueenie

The universe has designed soulmates- someone that completes you. But what happens when you don't have one but seven? And all you want to do is run in the opposite direction when you see them...

🗯️ queenie's stories are just so good, you should check them all out! this one also has such great details and writing.

Deep Down by sleepingbearandbunny

Jae, unlike everyone else, has nothing against the hybrid species. She likes being alone, where she is safe from ridicule and her controlling father. When a group of hybrids save her from some trouble, fate brings them together once more.

🗯️ a harsh and complecated world this one, so they went through a lot together and I love that!

PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | NAVI

[toast-the-unknowing]

on fanfic plagiarism

Almost five years ago, in January of 2019, someone I'd never met before reached out to tell me that one of my Pynch fics, "Word on the Street," had been plagiarized.

I remember that the stolen fic was posted in k-pop fandom, though not what specific band it related to -- I'm not into k-pop, or really into pop music at all.

I remember that the person who messaged me told me that they had found my fic because the plagiarist had a reputation for stealing fic, so when they'd posted a new story, this person had known to do some digging.

I don't remember what the plagiarist's username was. I remember scanning the stolen story, trying both to read every detail and to avoiding taking any of it in, because looking at that right-but-wrong, not-quite-there, uncanny-valley-ness of it made me queasy.

I remember being darkly amused that the plagiarist had cut out the reference to the main character suffering physical abuse at the hands of his father -- I guess it didn't make sense in the context of the new character. It's almost like the story wasn't written for him. It's almost like someone wrote the story about Adam Parrish, instead.

I filed an AO3 complaint, on the grounds that this was a blatant and unarguable violation of their plagiarism policy. Within twenty-four hours, they got back to me, and the story was removed.

It was a weird, uncomfortable, gross feeling, knowing someone had taken words I'd written and passed them off as their own.

But at the same time -- "Word on the Street" was a silly thing I dashed off pretty quickly, during a period of my life when I was doing a lot of writing. It hurt to have it stolen. It was a violation. But…I had other words, that were more important to me. Maybe that was a buffer.

-

Last month, about six weeks ago, someone I'd never met before reached out to tell me that one of my Pynch fics, "there's talk going 'round this town," had been plagiarized.

I was, bizarrely, amused.

I was less bizarrely furious. I was understandably, relatably, I would say rationally, furious. But in a way (and as always, when I say in a way, I am calling back to the scholars of overthinkingit.com for whom in a way is meant as the thing I have just said or am about to say is false) -- in a way, I was amused.

The plagiarist clearly did a 'find and replace' on the character names, to replace Adam and Ronan's names with those of k-pop characters. They did a bad job of it, since the name "Ronan" still appears in one paragraph and the name "Parrish" still appears in two paragraphs. The fic is here, in case anyone doesn't believe me, under the name "i do(n't remember)". At first when I complained about the fic on tumblr, I didn't mention the name, or which fic they'd stolen, because I was worried about anyone…I don't know, making a scene. I've stopped caring. AO3 user springguk is bad at find and replace and they should feel bad. About their computer skills, and also about their blatant plagiarism.

springguk also did some more edits to my fic, I have to give them credit for that. I wrote "there's talk going 'round this town" within a relatively short time span, for me. I tend to either finish things within one week, or else take several months. I believe this one took about five or six weeks completely to write -- I was very inspired.

(I was inspired, specifically, by the press coverage of Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves 'discovering' they might be 'accidentally' married. I mention that in my author's notes. springguk doesn't mention what 'inspired' them in their author's notes. I wonder how they talk about it with friends. They do, in their author's notes, include a link to their ko-fi, and a request that people buy them a coffee.)

If I'd taken longer with this fic, I might have made some edits. Even at the time, I knew I was being self-indulgent in letting the scene with my teenage female OC talk at such length with Ronan about what his non-canonical film career had meant to her, a person the audience didn't care about. But I had fun. I liked Fox. I didn't want to cut her, and what the hell, it was fanfic. I decided to self-indulge.

I was darkly amused to find that springguk did cut out the scene with Fox from their plagiarized version. Maybe springguk is a more disciplined editor than I am. Maybe springguk just didn't have a good k-pop character to map Fox onto. Maybe springguk didn't even realize that Fox was an OC. Do you know anything about the fandom you steal fics from, springguk? I can't help but wonder. Have you read The Raven Cycle? Do you care about teenage OCs who steal cars because of fake films that are clearly meant to be stand-ins for The Fast and the Furious franchise?

Maybe springguk just didn't give a fuck, because none of their heart and soul was poured into this fic. I cared too much about Fox. springguk doesn't care about a single word in the fic they published. Why would they? They didn't write it.

I'm being a little mean in naming them so many times. But I'm able to, this time, because although I filed a plagiarism complaint with AO3 six weeks ago, springguk's stolen fic "i do(n't remember)," is still available to read on AO3 to this very day. I don't have to wrack my brains to remember what their username was, or which k-pop band they recast my work with. I can just look at their fic with its 24 comments and 151 kudos. Hell, maybe that fic is even better than mine, if you don't mind that by cutting the sequence with Fox they've sacrificed a fairly substantial development in the romantic relationship, and also if you don't care that at one point the characters names switch from Jeongguk and Taehyung to Ronan and Parrish, because seriously, for fuck's sake, if you're going to steal a fic at least do a goddamn ctrl+f at the end.

I was mad. I was amused. I made a complaint that the AO3, six weeks later, has still not acted on. I mostly moved on.

-

Tonight, someone I'd never met before reached out to tell me that one of my Pynch fics, "while we're on the subject, could we change the subject now," had been plagiarized.

I wanted to vomit.

I was supposed to be playing Dungeons and Dragons online with friends tonight; I spent the entire call unable to focus on anything anyone was saying. I had to keep reminding myself that I was on camera and my face wasn't supposed to look like that.

"while we're on the subject, could we change the subject now" is the first of a series of, currently, twelve fics. skytoseungmin, the person who stole it to pass it off as their own work, knew this. Their stolen version was published as part one of a series, though they hadn't published any of the sequels. Presumably, they wanted to wait long enough to make it plausible they'd gone and written the follow ups, instead of just finding them.

skytoseungmin likely didn't know that this fic and this series are intensely personal. They didn't know that the apartment that Adam -- Seungmin, in their ill-gotten version -- lives in, that was based in part off of the apartment I lived in for a year in Pico-Robertson with talldecafcappuccino. They didn't know that the 7-Eleven Adam buys coffee at is the same one I used to tease talldecafcappuccino for buying coffee at. They didn't know that the strip club where Adam and Ronan have their humorously ill-timed romantic revelation outside of, that was the strip club I used to use as a landmark when giving people directions for how to navigate the confusing as fuck freeway exit I lived near, which once caused me to accidentally tell my highly Catholic parents "just go past the strip club and you're good!"

skytoseungmin didn't know that the apartment Adam -- sorry, Seungmin, thoroughly, they were better with find and replace than springguk -- lived in, was also based off of my ex's apartment in Palms, where I as the mere visiting girlfriend was never allowed to park in the parking lot. Where I would sometimes have to spend twenty or thirty minutes circling the neighborhood before I could find parking, often a walk of several minutes away. skytoseungmin doesn't know that when Ronan's car get towed from a McDonald's parking lot, that that was a specific McDonald's on Venice Boulevards, the same one my ex's asshole roommate used to just roll his eyes and say that I should park at. skytoseungmin doesn't know that I once wished passionately that I had just parked in that McDonald's parking lot and risked getting towed, on the occasion that a man followed me several unlit blocks from my car. skytoseungmin doesn't know that when I talk about how helping someone park is the truest love language there is in Los Angeles, that that was what I meant. Has skytoseungmin ever had to circle to half an hour to find parking in Los Angeles? Has skytoseungmin ever loved someone enough to do that, instead of saying, fuck it, they can come to me or we're breaking up? Has skytoseungmin ever loved someone in Los Angeles enough, to do as my ex did, and come running as fast as humanly possibly when their girlfriend called them whispering and crying on the phone, someone's following me, please, I'm scared, I wish I just parked at the McDonald's?

"while we're on the subject, could we change the subject now" is a very personal fic.

It isn't half as personal as some of the fics that come after.

skytoseungmin marked their plagiarized version of the fic as part one of a series. Were they planning on stealing part two, where I, through an alternate universe characterization of Ronan Lynch, dig into my experience of grief and trauma surrounding my grandmother's dementia? Were they planning on stealing any of the explicit fics, where I play with kink and desire in ways I haven't even exposed to my actual sexual partners, but where I felt able to through the guise of fandom? What else was skytoseungmin planning on stealing, with charming little author's notes apologizing for how they missed the fandom-relevant date they were shooting for, because they were so busy with exams, tee-hee! Why the excuses, skytoseungmin? how long does it take you to ctrl+f, even if you are more thorough about it than springguk?

If I seem too accusatory and mean-spirited toward skytoseungmin, well, the LA verse is a very personal fic.

And it's also, it turns out, only one of eight different fics that they stole from me.

I didn't even notice at first, to be honest. I was too stunned. But my friend Jessie, my Lady Galahad, went to my defense and clicked through to the author's page, while I was still reeling at the horrible possibilities of part one of a series. It turned out, of eight fics on skytoseungmin's author's page…I had written every single one of them.

Some were short and pretty lighthearted, things I hadn't had to invest too much of myself into -- like I said, sometimes, I can write a fic in under a week.

Other things…

They stole the space western AU.

I don't think I can articulate to any human being how much that hurt me, to look at it, to see.

I wrote that as a thank you gift for someone who donated to Fandom Trumps Hate.

I spent nearly two years of my life on it -- two years during which, because of mental health issues and life situation changes, my words per year dropped precipitously. I still haven't recovered. I still think of what a failure I am for not writing more, currently, actively, and I remember how the space western AU was both a symptom of that and a defiance of it: yes, writing has become fucking hard, fucking NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE, but I'm still doing it, goddamn it, you can't stop me, even if all I produce is the tiniest trickle of words a month. it can still add up, somehow, if we just keep TRYING.

To see the space western AU, casually nestled amongst a half dozen other fics that were all apparently casually dashed off in the same month…I know it was theft, I know it was a lie, but it still felt like a slap in the face, why can't you write this fast?

Jessie, my Lady Galahad, went on a campaign of commenting on all of skytoseungmin's (my) fics, and I am so thankful. The k-pop fans who heard Jessie have been reaching out, to her, to me, to each other on Twitter, and I am so thankful for them too. skytoseungmin has deleted all of their (my) fics on AO3, and their entire AO3 account, and their entire twitter, apparently. Maybe they were hoping to get enough clicks to parlay them into some kind of book deal, and they'd now rather give up what was a low investment effort on their part than be associated with accusation of plagiarism.

I suppose they can always start over with a new user name and someone else's fics if they really want to.

I suppose they can always start over with a new username and my fics, if they really want to.

And after all, AO3 has still not reached out to me about springguk, and "i do(n't remember)" is still sitting there. Maybe springguk is also going for a book deal. Who knows?

Why complain about any of it?

In a way* (and remember what "in a way" means), isn't it a compliment, if someone loves the words I wrote, even if they don't know it was me that wrote them? toast-the-unknowing and shinealightonme, if they're the same name (and they are), then why not springguk or skytoseungmin, too?

Am I making too big of a deal out of this? Does everyone just have their work stolen from them, all of the time? Is that simply the cost of doing business in an era and an ecosystem where we all can copy and paste twenty-four thousand words with greater ease than our ancestors could transcribe a single phrase? Are more prolific, more famous, more successful fan authors looking at my piteous cries and thinking, bitch, you've only been ripped off by k-pop fans ten times, come back when you have real problems?

And yet in a month, a year, a whole life phase of not being able to write as much as I would like to, because of my health, because of my work, to have someone else just casually pass off the words I have managed to eke out, as though they have no value, as though it were no more than photo copying a shitty flier to stick under a windshield wiper…

I can't imagine springguk or skytoseungmin give a shit how I feel about any of this. At best, they roll their eyes; at worst they laugh to know they hurt me -- and what's the difference between the two? I'll never know either way.

I know that some of the people they duped do care, and are also upset. That helps. And also, it doesn't help.

I just fucking hate all of this, and if all I have are words, and if my words are valuable enough for someone to steal, then here, here are enough of them to choke on. I know I did.

[lavalais76]

Jon & Sansa | Winter in my Heart

I am simply obsessed with these 2. All the Metas and Fan Fiction from you beautiful kindred souls makes me feel so alive! I appreciate each and everyone of you. @istumpysk and @esther-dot @starwarsprincess1986 @sherlokiness @stormcloudrising , you guys give me LIFE with your Metas.

I'm more of a book fan because the show did these characters no justice. We all know WHY. I hope you guys are ok with me posting all these sappy videos. Im sort of new to Tumblr, and I love it here. When I heard about the Kit and Sofie movie set at the time of "war of the roses" I became even more obsessed with Jon and Sansa.

They are obviously giving it away with this movie and trying to get the "Anti's" to get comfortable with the fact that these 2 are inevitable. Before Sansa appeared at Castle Black and even before the show begin I always wondered what the deal was with these 2. It just didn't make any sense, or as someone else put it: "Jon and Sansa are the LOUDEST SILENCE". I ALWAYS had that feeling that the girl in grey would be her. There isn't a single doubt in my mind.

I think something horrible will go down in the Vale and the Blackfish will help Sansa some sort of way to get to Jon. I read many Metas where they say Jon will come back from the dead a mindless beast, and he will have no POV. That's just impossible. Our main character/HERO a mute stuck in a wolf.

First of all I don't think Jon is dead AT ALL. I believe he is hanging on by a string due to blood loss and shock and possibly in a coma like Bran was at the beginning of the series. He will warg Ghost and find out many things about himself through Ghost while his friends (the wildings) nurse him back to life. Though VAL is not one of my favorite characters, some say she is a healer. That could be good for Jon.

Melsandra will probably burn Shrinee anyway because she thinks Stannis is dead. I also think Jon was drugged before the stabbings. The way he spoke of clumsily trying to retrieve LongClaw, and he just gave me a weird vibe. I DO NOT TRUST Satin guys. I know everyone loves him but if Jon were drugged, Satin always provided the drinks. Maybe I'm reaching too far, but that's just my gut feeling. Satin is Judas.

Cerci Lannister had plans on taking Jon off the Chess Board as well, so there is no telling if she orchestrated the whole thing or not. Whatever happens, it's gonna be real UGLY when Jon wakes up. Jon Snow as we knew him is definitely DEAD and died in the snow. The real BEAST is what we will have left of Jon. He will make the Hound look like a little poodle dog.

I do also believe he will be in those woods as Ghost while Sansa is being chased by Ramsay's hounds. He will definitely kill them all including whomever is with the dogs. There was a passage in the books if I remember correctly how when Ghost was a pup, and he was eating. A dog approached to try and steal his prize. Jon said the Dog was much bigger than Ghost, but all Ghost had to do was look at her and she ran away. Ghost got right back to his prize.

I've always wondered if that was a foreshadowing for Ghost fighting the hounds. Another thing, WHERE do Ghost go when Jon wonders of his whereabouts? Well, I'm almost done here Jonsa family. I hope I'm not boring you guys to death with this long book of a post I am writing.

I DO believe Sansa is the Girl in Grey and I'll die by that. I also think that after Ghost!Jon saves her, Brianne and Jamie or Brianne and Company will get her to Castle Black. The dying horse in my opinion is not a real Horse. It could be a person. We've already had the real dying horse with Alyas. Sansa doesn't have to be dressed in Grey either because so many other things links her to Grey.

I remember she had a green cloak in Kings Landing that belonged to the hound and if I'm not mistaken she also got on the boat with LF with that cloak on. Where is it? I do not know.

Anyway, Sansa will arrive at Castle Black shortly after Jon wakes up from his coma (refuse to believe he died and actual death) People will SAY he rose from the dead as they did Sansa when she left Kings Landing. It will be a myth, but people will believe it. Jon will NOT be the same. I believe he will have all of his memories which preserved in Ghost but he will become "THE BEAST" After he has "killed the boy." He would have tapped into his powers and possibly converse with Bran and Bloodraven.

Jon will probably forget what happened in the woods and in his wolf dreams but he will have the shock of his life to see Sansa Stark of ALL people come through those gates. She's come to the end of the world to seek HIM out. He will realize it was the wrong sister he almost got murdered behind.

Everyone will fear him at Castle Black. He will be a cold blooded killer with no humanity left until she walks through those gates. It's a craving Jon had (to see her again) but he kept that to himself. We know this from Ygritte, Alays and Val. He was looking for Sansa in all these women, and now the real deal stands right before him.

I'm not saying it's going to be an easy journey, but she will be the ONLY ONE to calm the beast. Jon will protect her of course (or steal her) but he will be mean to Sansa at first. He will eventually fall madly in love with her and vice versa. She will sing to him, annoy him, anger him, pacify him and Jon won't know what hit him.

They will fall in love because of what they both endured. Jon will be OVER protective of Sansa in the books, possibly locking her up in a tower like Stannis has Val, but this time there is a real princess in the tower that Jon WANTS to steal. I know I've reached my limits here. I am sorry for rambling or any errors, I'm just so happy to have ran across you fine people. If I didn't tag someone is because I don't remember the names and I'm still fairly new on Tumblr.

You guys are the BEST!

[florenceisfalling]

to my followers unaware of what the fuck im talking about re: toonimal, txttletale, and tyler

tw for csa and transmisogyny

edit: check comments after reading

toonimal aka ezra orena is a tumblr user who also ran a website for "big three" paraphiles (pedo/necro/zoo), including those who are pro-contact and including minors. this obviously led to a bunch of pedophiles sexually engaging with minors and exchanging abuse material.

ezra was already known for being pro-contact in some spaces and had been called out for it. ezra was thus banned on aethy, which is an 18+ proship website, i assume due to the following rules:

there was mild pushback to the fact that aethy also banned ezra's callout, not just ezra; however, this was due to the fact that spreading a callout about ezra's website would also spread links to a pro-csa space:

despite the aethy ban, ezra wasn't called out in the mainstream (to my knowledge) until more recently, when a super huge google doc rolled in with evidence of the abusive behaviors on his website

also despite this, when this doc dropped, some people targeted and doxxed a completely unrelated moderator of aethy for something they had no involvement in.

the google doc. is bad. i understand the good intentions, but it includes irrelevant fantasy as evidence and, more importantly, does not censor victim names. it also does exactly what aethy mods were seeking to avoid by providing a platform for this site, rather than sending it to the proper authorities and letting it get handled properly. statement from an aethy mod:

however, the doc includes lots of evidence for toonimal and his site's users being abusers. its Bad. really really really bad.

because many people did not know toonimal was advocating for abuse prior to the doc being shared, toonimal had some popular posts on tumblr.

one of these posts is a post about "killing the cop in your head" re: accusing people of being degenerate or dangerous over fetishes and kinks that are taboo. while the post might seem weird with the context that ezra is a pedophile, this post was incredibly popular among people who didn't realize. it was just a solid discourse post at the time:

in fact, i checked, and i reblogged this post back in the summer, before i knew that toonimal was advocating for pedophilic contact. this post was not part of some "niche pedophile community." this post currently has 19,000+ notes. it does not mention contact with children. it mentions kink and shipping. drastically different from the content on ezra's site!

and even if you did elect to check ezra's about page before posting, ezra isn't an "open" pedophile. there's a reason his site was secret.

neither of these things mention paraphilias. you have to click on a separate link in the about page to see the tags/warnings that mention lolicon (which is fiction anyway) or illegal paraphilias. even after clicking on those, ezra still upheld on tumblr at the time that he was anti-contact.

the above screenshot is from 3 months ago. now, ezra posts things in the pro-contact vein, but again: he was denying this three months ago. his post was popular even back six months ago. in fact, ezra denied he was pro-contact a week ago, but when evidence popped up he just resorted to insults.

now that we've established that ezra being a pedo was not common knowledge and his post was literally just a popular kink discourse post...

tumblr user txttletale aka healed, who is a trans woman, reblogged it with the following comment months ago:

and later makes a post expressing her opinion on games like stardew valley having somewhat problematic elements to them. in response...

random tumblr cis gay man gets mad and says that healed aka txttletale "markets incest shipping and loliporn as an inherent part of queer sexuality" because she reblogged the toonimal post with 19k notes MONTHS before ezra was called out

reread the toonimal post. there is no mention of loliporn.

even if there was, thats a drawing. its fiction. just like the farming simulator is fiction. who cares

roadhogsbigbelly then doubles down and says that, well, healed might not have mentioned loli, but ezra would support loli. the problem is, again, ezra was not even entirely open about this. why on earth would healed be endorsing that solely by reblogging ezra's post?

then, people start to accuse healed of being in a secret pedophile community with ezra and other popular trans women on tumblr, like predstrogen and maia crimew

a bunch of them notably being from a group of bloggers who love to harass people over stupid shit, be exclusionists, and make conspiracy theories about "closet pedos" and generally just talk shit about anyone they deem below them - especially tgirl bloggers

most of this harassment operates on the idea that healed was mutuals with ezra or aware of ezra's behavior, meanwhile she reblogged ezra's post 3 reblogs down a chain and literally didn't directly interact with ezra at all. neither of them followed each other

people also brought up healed's past controversies, most of which have been apologized for or were simply not fucking relevant

even if healed did follow ezra, the insistence that loli aka drawings is what is sooo sketchy about ezra rather than the fact that he had a site full of ADULTS INTERACTING SEXUALLY WITH REAL MINORS is absolutely fucking batshit

also healed has posted stuff against loli and proship fic/art before. healed literally doesn't approve of that stuff fucking anyway which is imo hypocritical to the kink thing but still proves the accusations against her are false

roadhog guy continues doubling down on how ageplay/cnc/incest shipping/etc is Bad; yet argues that pup play is fine. he thinks ageplay is pedophilia but zoophilia isnt a problem to this guy i guess

despite the fact that the guy who made the pedo website is a trans dude and the victims in the doc were overwhelmingly transfem, random trans women who had no idea ezra was a creep are becoming the main targets of a ridiculous harassment campaign. its such blatant fucking transmisogyny it makes me want to crack my skull open

the neotrances/tyler friend group continues to be weird about it, including getting furious that healed defended herself from pedophilia allegations rather than vetting literally every blog she interacts with or trying to needlessly battle against adults engaging in consensual kink

i hate all of this. so deeply

ultimately my opinions are

ezra has done so many completely fucking awful things and deserves every inch of the backlash he received. he deserves no support for all of this. avoiding him seems to be the best course of action at the moment. part of that involves letting the legal shit go down rather than trying to out-twitter him and his friends over sex crimes. his site probably already had feds on it tbh.

having paraphilic feelings isnt a crime, but involving real children is. genuinely fuck all of the adults on ezra's site

aethy and its moderators experienced targeted harassment over shit they were uninvolved with. this included doxxing and harassing their families. this is especially cruel since they seem to be one of the few sources of common sense in the situation

the targeting of healed, avery, maia, and others: completely just transmisogyny. this shit is insane and nobody should be held to the batshit standards they were held to. please pay attention to this shit and dont let it happen again. don't let stupid discourse un-person a trans woman for something she literally didn't do.

raging about loli/ageplay/whatever the fuck is completely stupid, especially in this situation. when faced with an actual group of pedophiles who are targeting actual, living and breathing children, why do people scream about the fictional expressions of abuse rather than the real-world examples of it?

again. so much of this is just transmisogyny.

fuck tyler and his little clique . all to hell

the people who spread the doc tended to treat csa as a joke. the doc put victims on blast. the doc mishandled evidence.

apologies for any inaccuracies im somewhat late to the ordeal

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hello, please don't take it bad because, through the question maybe the tone can be a bit weird also I know you talked about it hundred of times.

But as a Loumand enjoyer and someone who take them for what they were,creepy,toxic, unbalanced but also beautiful because i like good chemistry and no one can deny their good chemistry right? Jacob and Assad were beautiful together.

What i don't understand is why,i keep seeing from most of the fandom the reasons they don't like them is because they were toxic/weird dynamic, aren't all the relationships in the VC romantic or not,toxic/weird?

I promise i didn't make a fanfic in my head,i knew from the start we were watching a divorce but they still had some on-screen good moments?

They will still be important for each other lives in the future right?

I feel like most of the vitriol i see for them (not from you) is because Loumand feels like a ''threat'' (I can't find a better word) to the existence of the two main pairings.

I don't think they were because of the dungeon scene is a proof they were never meant to be but still I'm sure some people felt threatened.There no other reason i can see.

In the future they will be other weird dynamic between other characters and i can see them receiving such a treatment.

Also I know some Loumand enjoyers are the reason we are seen as the annoying part of the fandom including myself.

All good :) (your tone is fine^^)

Tbh I haven’t seen much of what you refer to (I barely make it out of my inbox and DMs right now 🤪) but I think what you witness now is the backlash after almost two years of “Lestat is an abusive racist and we cannot wait to see Louis in a healthy, wholesome romance with a POC character and nothing of Lestat anymore“.

Like, don’t misunderstand me, I‘m not saying you did this. But this definitely happened. The show never promised Loumand to be wholesome, but since it was commented on as healthy and wholesome on the podcast many took that as fact. Pointing out book canon things were met with “anti accusations“ (even by some I would have never expected it from). Suggesting that the “tale“ might not be correct was taken as racist, and abuse apology bc the black man was “made to be a liar“. No matter the cast and writers and crew comments on this. (But I‘ve been over this in my rant, it’s linked in my bio if you want to read it, not rehashing it all now).

And that for over 1,5 years. There’s comments on my fics you wouldn’t believe. And no pointing out discrepancies, nor book canon facts made any dent into these accusations. It was always argued that the show is its own thing - and that is true - and yet they have now circled back MUCH closer to the book canon than I had actually anticipated.

So.

I get that it’s hard right now? I have said before that I see Loumand as totally valid - but for me it is mostly later on, when it’s on equal level. I think it is totally valid to enjoy them now, too, while being aware of the manipulative layers and the fucked-up dynamics:))

Ultimately… there’s not much for you to do except curate your dash. Go and block haters freely, leave those voices that you like or that disagree with you on a respectful level.

Especially for future (also rather toxic) pairings that WILL come up this will be MO. :) Fortunately tumblr has some practical tools there. ^^

[sumerianlanguage]

Hello! I was wondering if you had any advice for writing a song in Sumerian? I have been writing lyrics for a bit and I have always been interested in ancient languages so I wanted to know how I should get started. I have some ideas swirling around in my mind as the music I have been writing is very soulful.

Hello! What an interesting question - I haven't done any songwriting in Sumerian myself, but I have practiced by translating modern songs into Sumerian, which I think gives a little insight. On my twitch stream we once translated Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen - a song that is not written for easy translation, it turns out! But it taught me many things about the interaction between Sumerian phonology/grammar and lyrical composition.

One thing I've learned is that sentences in Sumerian often use fewer words but more syllables to convey the same information. "I'd trade my soul for a wish" is seven syllables, but it's nearly impossible to convey the same meaning in Sumerian in less than nine: Zinga ashta shu gabalan. So if you write music with a strict syllable plan, prepare to convey less information per line; or to convey the same amount of info, prepare to sing "faster" (i.e. cram more syllables into a line).

Another important issue is that Sumerian sentences always end with a verb. This makes rhyming a different experience than in English - rather than having two "impact nouns" rhyme at the end of the sentence, common in many music genres, you instead have to rhyme the verbs, and often the verb conjugations. (Here's a post about how this functions in Sumerian poetry - I've linked the in-tumblr version since the on-blog version seems to be rendering out of order, and will also reblog it after this post.) Creative liberty with concept structuring can help: "You took your time with the call / I took no time with the fall" is most easily translated by making call and fall function as verbs: Ullabi gu numaden / Annga ullabi shuben "You didn't call me quickly / But I fell quickly", still a slant rhyme but helped by the fact that the first and second person conjugations ("you called", "I fell") often look identical.

Note that we can't rhyme ullabi "quickly" with the second ullabi since they're adverbs and can't end the sentence or clause. Though in my translation of the chorus, I use namga "perhaps" as almost a final exclamation in order to pull it out of the sentence and slant-rhyme with annga "however": Uda muraten / tumidim, annga / shidngu murabban / gu hemaden, namga "I met you today / a wild act, however / I give my number to you. / Call out to me, perhaps!" (Another really useful word in translating pop music is gana "let's go!" or "yeah!", which is an interjection and thus can stand separate from any clause like this.)

And one final tip: Keep your sentences simple! This is both because of the verb-final structure - Sumerian sentences don't "trail off" in the same way they do in English - and because English loves to use helping verbs, weird time-clauses, etc. that you rarely find in Sumerian. One long, languid English sentence is often best matched by several shorter, choppier Sumerian sentences. It's really hard to convey the combo of time-sequence and counterfactual in the phrase "before you came into my life, I missed you so bad", unless you're willing to spend a whole verse of the song to do so, so I ended up just simplifying it to Zae namtila ekur / Ngae namurashen "You entered my life / I wished for you a lot".

I hope that's helpful! Do check out my Sumerian music tag for more, including examples of actual ancient Sumerian lyrics (not to say "Call Me Maybe" isn't timeless and eternal in its own right). And let me know if you have further questions or any translation I can help with!

[cithre]

Compilation of Rebirth Symbolism and Tomura Shigaraki

Season 6 Bokurano OP

(I included this first because it's from the anime and therefore not necessarily meaningful, but it's very very interesting)

Moth/Butterfly Symbolism during the Endeavor Agency/PLF War Arc

This particular symbol is for his quirk operation, but it can still apply to his character going forward

Mt. Fuji

For this one I'm going to link to this post by Tumblr user Commander-Revin. Super cool theory and would make the location of the battle more important. When Mt. Fuji was introduced it struck me as a little weird to introduce it, give it stakes, and then not even have Tomura get close to destroying it? Sure it works for tension, but it would make more sense if there was thematic meaning.

General Pregnancy Symbolism

I'll start with the weaker points

9 users of OFA (9 months of pregnancy) + Tomura as the 10th user and the 10th month of pregnancy, which is the actual length of an ideal pregnancy

This could very, very easily be a coincidence, as the only actual textual connection would be if the power developing as each user trains it being interpreted as a metaphor for the growth of the child and that's a strech.

It is interesting to me that the whole crux of Izuku's plan is to 'save the child inside of him' which as readers we have context for but as a phrase on it's own is a bit suspect.

On to the vestige realm,

The Vestige world's design as a sphere is also very interesting as it looks very similar to a Ovum which is the 'egg'. I almost didn't include this point because it was brought to my attention by another user that I do not remember the name of. If you posted about this comparison please comment/reply and I would be more than happy to either credit you or remove this point from the post. But for now, just know that this is not my idea.

The OFA transfer

In my opinion the design of the vestiges here is very blunt

The appearance of the OFA vestiges is very suspect and then there's the addition of only one getting in? Hori you are not slick 😭

I'm worried this post will come off as creepy with the pregnancy symbolism but I genuinely have no ill intent with this post, I'm just very interested in symbolism especially for this series

[cyb-by-lang]

I kinda already commented and it felt weird to do it again? So I thought I’d ask here instead:

I just saw a post on tumblr that Batman did try to kill Joker and Superman stopped him??? And it was because Joker was somehow linked with Iran, and couldn’t be killed cuz it would start a war. And other Batkids also tried to kill Joker???

I’ve honestly always thought Batman didn’t kill Joker cuz he’s too popular a villain so it was just sort of waved off because of ‘Batman rules’ and publication reasons.

Is Batman almost killing Joker included in your fic? I have very little knowledge of the comics and hearing about newer versions overwriting previous stories makes me even more confused.

Congrats to you for having unlocked a secret level of rambling through deciding to send an ask rather than a comment. This would totally have ended up on AO3 below your comment. :p

And it is going below the cut because it's long as hell.

The scenario you've heard about was from the original run of A Death in the Family, which is the story arc where Jason was killed back in the 80s. In the aftermath of Bruce finding Jason dead (and Jason's birth mother dying shortly thereafter), he hunts for the Joker after realizing that the warehouse explosion didn't, in fact, kill the clown. Somehow (racism!) the Joker ends up being appointed as the Iranian ambassador to the UN. This was later retconned to the fictional country of Qurac, because even DC realized that was a step too far. In the scene after that fun little reveal, Superman is on hand to try and keep shenanigans to a minimum, the Joker predictably tries to gas the entire UN assembly chamber anyway, and then flees via helicopter. Batman, who has been trailing along this entire time in a rage, pursues.

He's planning to kill the clown. Superman, for reasons related to "we don't whack ambassadors and start wars," has been holding him back for the arc thus far. Helicopter pursuit turns into a helicopter fight, during which the Joker's henchman fires a spray of bullets that kills the pilot while everyone is on board and having a bad time. Batman exits the aircraft alive, intact, and furious, and doesn't give a single shit if the Joker died when the chopper hit the sea.

And then a month later the fucking clown comes back again like nothing happened. Only the entire setting has undergone a serious tone shift since Jason's death, which means you're gonna see a lot heavier, dramatic stories that have more significant body counts. Batman cannot get over the death of his son, because no, and eventually Tim Drake pops up in the middle of that death spiral with a hypothesis: "Batman needs a Robin."

He's not wrong.

He also doesn't go about it super gracefully, including an attempt to convince Dick to come back to the Robin mantle that goes nowhere, but eventually he convinces the Dark Knight to take on a third Robin. Unlike Dick and Jason, Tim is locked the fuck down for training and not allowed out in the field willy-nilly. And when he does go out, he is ferociously competent.

Incidentally, this is because the writers/editors realized that after the child murder storyline they'd just done, Batman had to have one hell of a reason to ever take on another kid sidekick. And they needed to try and drag the Robin role's popularity back up, since killing a kid sidekick was also a symptom of DC's tanking sales at the time; the whole thing was ultimately a publicity stunt. It was a bad idea and now we just live with it.

So Tim is, broadly, never portrayed as incompetent in any aspect aside from maybe high school socializing. I don't think he gets kidnapped even a tenth of the number of times Dick did during his decades-long career as Robin. Certainly never falls for a honey trap plot or anything like that.

But yeah, the meta reason why the Joker never dies is because he's an iconic villain who drives plots. But unless you step out of the main continuity, he's also never just been a "no-frills funny" villain since.

ANYWAY.

As far as the rest of the Batfam taking a swing at the Joker, there's one incident that I can recall off the top of my head.

Dick Grayson, currently Nightwing, wasn't especially close to Jason while he was alive. During Jason's original run, they had a cordial (if brief) relationship, but they basically didn't get any storylines together, so it's hard to really tell how strongly they bonded. After Jason died, Dick began experiencing...I wanna call them chronic night terrors. The idea is that a boy in a Robin costume is falling, and falling, and Dick can never save the kid.

I'm sure it has nothing whatsoever to do with his dead brother, no sir.

So, some time later, the Joker gets told he has terminal cancer by a psychiatrist who assumes that if the clown was convinced he was going to die, he might try reforming or something. A terminal turnaround. Lots of people do that, right?

He assumed wrong.

The Joker goes on an utter tear, doing all sorts of escalating villainy that starts with gassing everyone he can get his hands on, including other Arkham inmates. Somewhere amid this rampage, Robin III goes missing and the Joker cheerfully tells Nightwing that yeah, he killed the kid. And he has the gall to bring up Jason in the middle of all the gloating. By name. (The Joker knows Jason's name due to some nonsense involving Crane and Fear Toxin hallucinations and Batman in a prior story arc.)

And Dick

fucking

SNAPS.

Pummels the Joker right there on the floor. Barehanded. No sticks, no pausing, just beats him to death.

Two seconds later, a very alive (if hurt) Tim manages to get there and go "oh god what happened." Because Dick is not doing well! He has a crisis about killing a dude, no matter how terrible. He never thought he'd go that far.

Batman swoops in and resuscitates the clown. In the time between Jason's death and The Joker's Last Laugh, he has apparently decided that it's more important to keep Dick from suffering a breakdown than it is to kill the clown. DC editorial was gonna keep him alive either way, but whatever.

And now for the third part of my ramble.

As for Under the Red Hood, Jason's death is seriously streamlined for the film. In this version of events, none of the UN chicanery happens. Ra's al Ghul hires the clown for a distraction job while trying to crash the world economy (again) and whoops, the clown killed Batman's son. Crowbar, bomb, whatever. Before Jason's body can be buried, the League of Assassins steals it, hucks Jason into the Lazarus Pit, and now he's alive again!

Except, given how he died and how long he spent dead and how that interacts with the magic, he wakes up as a berserk ball of rage and pain, kills two of Ra's al Ghul's guards with his bare hands, escapes, falls into a river, and disappears.

...So much for making that whole thing up to Batman. The League of Assassins just quietly lets Bruce bury a latex dummy and doesn't ever bring it up.

Cut to Gotham, years later, when Red Hood is tearing up the place and Batman goes "Ra's al Ghul, what the fuck" and the whole story comes spilling out.

In A Ninja's Guide to Gotham, Jason's dropped hints in his narration that he was actually with the League of Assassins for a while, even before going 'round the world training with assassins and stuff. The Lazarus Pit just got him back to full functionality. So, you can assume it leans more on the comics' "spontaneous resurrection" scenario.

If Bruce ever tried to kill the Joker while Jason was dead, Jason doesn't know about it. And because we haven't been in Bruce's head, there's no indication either way.

(Bruce makes mention of how easy it would be kill the Joker in the film, but that he could never come back from doing so. It is not specified if he made the attempt or just thought about it a lot.)

I've been holding back on Jason's and Bruce's accounts of events because they're both owed a moment of dramatic catharsis (and shouting). You can generally rest assured that it'll be more likely to be a mix of events than a pure account of any one take on what happened in the warehouse that day.

Thanks for setting off an exposition bomb~

[sout999]

dear tumblr ,,⋋(•◇•)⋌,,

thank you so much for all the support on my top surgery fundraiser, whether it's donating, reblogging or just staying patient with while i boost the link multiple times. which i am going to keep doing! it's no understatement that this is the single biggest positive thing that's happening in my life, and the time i need your help most. so i'm making my voice heard as much as i possibly can to spread the word, and i appreciate all your help with it. it makes me feel loved as a person and not as a bunch of posts on a dashboard, i've been getting pretty isolated because of mental health stuff so even the small connection we have from your act of goodwill is really meaningful to me

i've been ok, mostly putting in work on my masters degree, although some of the 'work' included having a massive breakdown from months of burnout, and i'm currently in the middle of trying to get an extension and rework a large part of my project. mostly this is due to the subject matter of my work having had a lot of loaded cultural and personal themes, which, when being forced to think about nonstop for two years, while also moving in with the family member who is the source of a large part of all the trauma of it, was just too much. taking a stance to axe the project in its current form was hard and made me feel like a quitter but now i feel relief and realize it was an act of self love as well

so i'm trying to recover from that and see a way forward to a project i would like doing, but it's hard when your circumstances have left you this depressed. i'm also trying to become more mindful of the way i use social media because when i'm anxious i fall very easily into the numbness sink of scrolling social media just to avoid thinking... i've stared a daily list of Ten Things That Happened That Day That Didn't Happen On The Internet, although i never get to ten, and i dont think even pre-internet leon would have gotten to ten, but it's good to aim high and take notice even of the little things. maybe to some people this comes naturally but i have to be very deliberate about it. i think this article sums up how im starting to feel about the internet rn

i've cut most personal spending down as much as possible to save up to my top surgery, so i have to find fun things to do that don't cost money. i'm trying to sew because my partner knows a lot about it and can teach me (i'm currently trying to engineer the perfect underwear, weird hobby but it's actually an amazing dysphoria-buster because most store bought underwear that fits my ass is so feminine, to be able to make a piece of something so intimate be so personal is, omg, an act, of, omg, self love). i've also sold off some things to help save for my top surgery and doctor visits, i'm trying to not get rid of anything i will really miss but it's also an enjoyable feeling to imagine the item disappearing as it becoming a permanent part of my history and of my sexy flat boy body (~o_o)~

if i end up having some free time outside of my masters degree, my current dream project is making pixel assets. i think with all the cases of my art getting stolen and used without permission it would actually be really cool to put something together specifically for public use. i miss kaoani and flower banners and stuff. i dont know if i can ever make something so saccharinely cute and tidy but if anything it's a nice space to visit

did you miss me coming to tumblr to make long winded posts about nothing? hopefully when twitter falls we will all be on here reading each others paragraphs, hopefully i'll have more going on in my life and can write even longer ones. here is a nice drawing, and a link to the fundraiser once again :)

https://gofund.me/958124b6

[imagination-mess]

The Former Reject Demon (Demon!Touya) (3/6)

This is an alternative universe where demons can be familiar to witches or wizards to assist and, most of all, as protectors. Witches and wizards can create pacts with demons.

Word Count: 1.4K+ (3/7)

A/N: Tumblr has a limit on how much you can put in singular post. I was forced to put it into six different posts. If you wish to see a singular post about it, here is the link to Ao3. This part has some lore to the AU.

Precious Part

It took a little more than a year for him to find out about your family heritage. He always suspected that you came from a prestigious family, given that you lived comfortably and never took a part-time job, unlike other witches he had seen leaving campus with their demons in tow. But what he hasn't expected is that you actually come from a hybrid family that has dilated demon blood that runs through your veins. Your family bloodline can be traced back many generations, making your family the oldest active witch lineage.

It was starting to make sense why your family welcomed you with open arms, including the demon familiars of all types. He did feel like it was a trap every time he was forced to come with you during the holidays prior. They were nice to him and treated him as a family member. Everything that he always thought about your family being weird was starting to make sense. 

"I thought it was noticeable." You told him you were completely taken back by him staring at you as if you grew a second head. 

Timeskip University 

A lot of people were surprised that he had lasted this long since his body was literally burning and being held together by stables and snitches. 

Other demons have tried to intimate him to even attempt to pick on him, which resulted badly on their end. He isn't above using violence to be left alone, especially when they try to put their hands on him. You don't even bat an eye towards his behavior since it is becoming the norm, sadly. It comes with being reject demon. Within the demon society, reject demons deemed to be at the bottom of the demon hierarchy, regardless of their ability. That's what you have learned since Touya has become your familiar. 

You just fix him up using basic healing magic to heal his minor injuries, such as his burst lip and knuckles. You have seen the other demons that have tried to see their faces swell up with bruises, knowing Touya doesn't hold back his punches. There isn't a sign of burnt flesh either, meaning he doesn't take them seriously.

It also didn't take long for Touya to earn a reputation within campus, which made him even more isolated from the demons than he already was. Demons avoided him like the plague, which didn't bother him one bit. He was left alone. He has already learned to ignore the stares from strangers. It's the state of his body and clipped wings that bring him attention wherever he goes. 

Touya used to stay behind in your dorm during your time at the academy because he would get bored to death at class. He would just take a nap during class, but now he refuses to be left behind at the dorms. You have a feeling that he wants to learn more since the academy only covered the basics of magic and demonology. He is allowed to be in those classes, as you are familiar. That was the original plan. 

That was the original plan until all of the demon familiars on campus were forced to attend a few mandatory classes on campus, much to his annoyance, especially when they were early in the morning. The classes focus on several topics, such as self-control when it comes to temptation, such as the blood of witches and other species. There are too many incidents of demon familiars attacking their witches when they were at their most vulnerable in the year prior. 

There are a variety of witches' blood, including a mixture of hybrids such as fairy-to-elves witches that were exposed to him and other demons too. He is the only one who passed that section compared to the rest of the demons in the class. Demons react negatively to being outright feral. It was insane that some have such poor self-control. He barely passed, and he wasn't the only one struggling to stand up from his seat. 

That particular class mainly teaches about self-control, but it also covers how to identify blood types in order to track them in case of emergencies. It went over old cases of each blood type being presented in class. The three that are most sought out are human blood, mixed demon-human blood, and elf-human blood. The demon and human hybrid witches are right after the human witches' cases when it comes to attacks and ambushes. He paid very close attention to this part of the class since you have mixed demon-human blood that runs in your veins. It was starting to make sense. 

You have opened up to him about being hunted ever since you joined the Academy of Witches, and he has kept his guard up about everything the two of you were traveling to visit your family at the grocery shop. He has made eye contact with demons who were staring at you too long for his liking, especially those demons who were looking at you as if you were a meal. He knows those eyes too well, reminding him of the demon eaters in Hell. The craze looks into their eyes. A lot of them were cowards who turned away, deciding you weren't worth the fight, when he was giving them a side-dead glare behind your back while you were paying attention to what you were doing. You never truly noticed a difference with him since he is always guarding public spaces. It's normal for Touya to glare at strangers or just stare at people until they feel uncomfortable. They are forced to look away.

Demons hunt humans for food, but those who are hybrids between a demon and a human or an elf are often hunted for power. The stronger the witch is, the more power she provides to the demon that feeds off of her. It is mainly the reason why those witches go missing without a trace. If they are eaten by a demon, that gives them permanent power, unlike drinking their blood, which can be temporarily affected to permanent depending on the witch's and amount of blood that is consumed.

It was an interesting class, but the most dangerous after training in demonic spells. He didn't miss the way some of the demon teachers stood a bit close to him when they were pouring blood into the containers. They were expecting him to fail at self control. He isn't oblivious to the way the staff acts around him and stares at him whenever he is walking with you around campus and outside of the campus grounds. 

He is only a bit ahead of his class among his fellow demons. He already knew the basic demonic spells, which included defensive and offensive, but it takes a lot of energy. The spells that they are going over are the ones that you told him to memorize since he didn't come with you during your time at the academy. He never truly needed to put them into practice since he relies more on his elemental power than his demonic nature, but this class is making him learn and use it. 

These classes forced him to socialize against his will when it came to teamwork exercises. It was always the red winged demon that he got paired up with. Much to his distaste, he found out that you had become friends with the witch of that red-winged demon. 

When Touya and you came across the other witch with a red winged demon during a trip to the grocery store,. 

The red winged demon didn’t even try to hide his surprise upon realizing you were Touya's witch. You were intruding into Touya's personal space, yet Touya didn’t growl or swipe at you. Instead, he gently took the snack from your fingers with his teeth in an almost gentle manner, careful not to nibble your fingers with his fangs. He was carrying tote bags filled with groceries. He almost looks like a domesticated demon, compared to the rude and disrespectful demeanor he usually carries. God forbid anyone touches him, Touya doesn't hesitate to swipe, clearly hating any contact. Meanwhile, Touya stared at the red-winged demon with a deadpan expression while chewing on his snack and offering no greeting in return.

Later in the day, the red-winged demon tried to talk to him when you and his witch were talking in front of them. "I would have never thought you would be paired with h-." 

"Don't you ever shut up?" 

NEXT PART (4/6)

[solradguy]

Hey Sol! I remember quite a while ago, someone asked you about how to get into archiving stuff and you answered with a little guide of sorts of useful programs/websites/etc.

Do you still have that guide up? Is there somewhere I can learn more in-depth about how to begin archiving too?

Tumblr search is failing me and I can't find that post now... So! I'll type it again. Lately I've been thinking about writing some kind of "archivist's manifesto" type thing for my Neocities in an effort to hype people up about archiving and to guide them on how to do it. When I write that up I'll post it here too.

Here's a big post I wrote on how to scan books and where to upload them (this is also linked in the big GG masterpost that's in my pinned): https://solradguy.tumblr.com/post/722512206034501632/sol-radguy-scanning-guide

That guide also has some tips on photo editing that may be useful for non-book scanning stuff, like some free program alternatives.

I've tried finding professional guides on how to archive media but most of them are written for people looking to archive family photos/things and not web media or physical books. None of them have been very helpful, honestly. One thing they recommend doing that I think IS helpful though is the rule of 3: Keep 3 copies of an archive somewhere. A physical hard drive, cloud storage, a second hard drive stored separately from the first (in case of accidents/hardware failure), uploaded to separate file hosts, and printing new physical copies are some. Doing any 3 of those is highly recommended. I do the two hard drives and cloud storage/file hosts ones. My hosts are generally Archive.org, Neocities, and Google Drive.

Be very careful about trusting image hosting sites with valuable scan data because they come and go like the wind. Photobucket, Tinypic, Imageshack... They're either dead or require a premium to host files now, which doesn't help hobby archivists at all. Imgur's demise is on the horizon. It's just the way it goes with these due to how expensive and space-consuming image hosting is.

Absolutely 1000% do not ever use just Discord for archiving/hosting things. Nothing on that platform can be backed up easily or with automation, and the guys that run it have already made weird choices the community didn't want while also putting more and more things behind the Nitro paywall. I suspect they're going to kneecap image and file hosting some day soon, too.

For archiving someone else's files, something that helps greatly (if it can be done) is either including the source of the file in the file's name or writing a separate document with the sources and whatever other additional information there is.

Here's a basic example of some Sol images from my Sol folder:

The first two are from the Counterside collab event and then the second two are official art but the file names are descriptive and it saves time sourcing them for things later. For archiving fan art/fiction, the filename is a good place to put the artist credit. Something like [Artwork Title]-[Artist Name]-[Original File Creation Date].format ("Sol Badguy Missing Link - Daisuke Ishiwatari - May 14 1998.jpg," or however you wanna organize the folder) works good.

Windows 11 didn't like working with Japanese text in file names for some of the Vastedge stuff I archived and I had to translate/romanize them. If you can't read Japanese/source's language, just do your best (number them instead?) and include the native language text in a .TXT file if possible.

A more complex example from the Vastedge .TXT doc:

The Vastedge materials archive is pretty dense and had a lot of contributors so the first half of the .TXT document's just credits for who did what. This is useful for if something gets lost because we'll know who to go bother about it. Among other things.

The next section is a long stack of details about the files themselves. I won't paste the whole thing here, it's pretty long. It covers how the archive came to be, issues with some of the files, how the files were obtained, and some other stuff:

The last half of the .TXT doc is a listing of the folder contents. I included this for quick reference and because sometimes archives get fractured by people only reuploading certain parts of it. Future archivists or anyone else going through this archive now have a list of what should be in there and will know if something is missing.

Archive.org/Wayback Machine has a browser extension for quickly archiving webpages. I have that and WebP / Avif Image Converter by Nullbrains (Chrome, might be on Firefox?) installed to quickly archive pages and convert image files as I save them.

In summary:

Upload/store things in multiple places

Include credits wherever you can, however is easiest for you

Try to keep files in the most widely compatible formats (jpg, gif, bmp, png, tiff, mp3, mp4, txt, pdf, flac, etc). Google's .DOC, Clip Studio Paint's .CLIP, and similar file formats meant for a specific piece of software may not be supported in the future.

A bad/incomplete archive is better than no archive at all. Consider how exciting Sappho poetry fragments are compared to what it would be like if we didn't have anything. Don't worry about making it "perfect."

Hope that helps some!! I'll try to write the manifesto for my NC soon

[its-elvie-innit]

Dsmpblr stuff in one big archive post

The fake ranboo arg (run by a blog some people thought was ranboo or a kinnie. It never was, but instead was some sort of arg surrounding the ranboo lore. Multiple characters, like the Duke, duchess, and a discord server where people started translating the posts (which were all in ender, or minecraft galactic) (link to doc)

Minesonas, and then subsequently citizen memes. This was contained within three non-consecutive weeks, where people were discussing whether lmanburg had citizens or if it did, what would it be like?

People upset over ghostburs library being blown up. There were a lot of books in there important to a storyline, and some blogs were very upset they couldn't be archived

Mcytblr awards, which had a doc and everything (link)

DSMP sexyman!!!!! The competition one blog held to go over all the supposed sexymen in mcytblr, and if they were or not. The doc for this is here (link)

Dilfcourse (world sluttiest absent father) this went on prior to philza eventually finding out he was being called a dilf, and I think there may have been a poll (?) About who was the biggest dilf right after the one mcc with all new art of certain male ccs, but it also basically ended when philza got temporarily mad about tumblrites not wanting him on tumblr, and discovered dilfza. Then when he said he didn't like it, the entire "titty window" philza design disappeared and everyone stopped posting dilfza.

Philza nerfing a blog for an url (I think it turned out that tumblr did it? But it was still WEIRD) and EVERYONE got mad about it.

The one quackity kinnie blog? During this time, a ton of kinnie blogs popped up and the quackity one sticks in my head because it was kind of convincing

Drinnie. Another kinnie blog, I actually never knew if this one was real. It was more activ3 before I joined, but it was still a pretty large thing in small mcytblr.

Whatever we had going on with piss. I think dream started the pissbaby thing and it stuck. That was so big for so long

The split between dteamblr and dsmpblr. Also the protectiveness we kind of handed off between them. Being such a closely related fandom in the publics eyes, dsmpblr and dteamblr would both get hate anons about Dream and I still recall going to bat for them sometimes. Also the discussed "gnf sickness". I don't want to mention him because he's a horrible man and deserves jailtime but it was a part of it.

Mcytboundaries. Does anyone else remember that blog? That thing was so important in the first seven months I was here.

The death of kinnies. When those few kinnie blogs that cropped up started getting really upset over getting tons of copypastas and took them seriously. I remember being so annoyed at them because if you make a kinnie blog (NOT a roleplay blog) thats the culture!!! You knew that was going to happen!!!! Put a disclaimer in your bio or something gosh.

Beacon lamps sudden ubiquitous posts. Similarly with 420technoblazeit, sometimes there would be a joke that just stuck around because it was them who posted it.

This one's more recent, but those sootblr bloggers who kept having almost e-sex in random peoples notes. Even bloggers outside of mcytblr. What was up with those guys

Not wanting ccs on tumblr. Not an event, just the overarching opinion that it would be a bad thing. It slowly died off as an opinion during late 22, something that made me and a few other og mcytblrs very sad or hesitant because people would start sharing tumblr posts with the ccs. I remember It felt like the final death of og mcytblr to me

Does anyone remember if there was that one dsmp citizen server and if it actually happened???? That might be a fake memory.

Tubbo tumblr!! This is multiple events, but he mentioned he had one in early dsmp, and it kind of overjoyed people. Then, months later, he started scrolling on stream and people made posts (INCLUDING myself) about being so genuinely scared of him being online. Out of all of the "dsmper makes a tumblr" instances, I think this was the one with the most positive reaction.

Fuck dream hoodie (instagram) and mcytblrs reaction. Went in a really funny direction

Youtooz stealing mcytblr artists fanart

Hermitblr theory stolen by matpats yt channel and no reply

KARL HATEPOSTING. When for a month in 2021 everyone just HATED him for no real reason, maybe because of tftsmp?. I think it stemmed from two blogs, and then got its start in og mcytblr circles. I remember my ex mutual squid got too into it, it was really crazy. Why did we even do that.

Love or hosts.....love or hosts and the liveblogs...

The like, Hermitcraft vs Dsmpblr sudden dichotomy. One day I remember all of a sudden there were hermit blogs, and a few dsmp blogs after them, that started getting really pissy over people referring to dsmpblr as "mcytblr" because it wasn't the whole of mcytblr. Gosh that was so stupid and funny.

Those days people posted about crying over lost vods. Whenever someone did, it would catch like a virus and EVERYONE would start talking about how sad it was.

Kroger anon...Hearty anon...my loves. Hearty Anon was like the darling of mcytblr. I didn't even know they were a real blog I just thought they were like Kroger Anon. Always wanted one of those.

Finding out wooteena was like 11. Not actually eleven, but seriously everyone thought they were like an adult person I don't know.

Subtle, but the mcytblr friendgroups and different parts having beef with each other. It was really lowkey, but I'm sorry metfell and conarcoin and their whole deal had some real haters. thats probably because they were kinda mean sometimes.

INNITER OPRESSION. gosh I remember how giddy I would get defending myself over the url and saying it was just the first thing I thought of. If you had a certain url you were a magnet for sections of mcytblr in the silliest of ways I loved it so much. little cultural pockets for every streamer.

Mcytblrs reaction to the mcytwt trending writer. I thought that was so funny.

THE TUMBLR PODCAST. Those guys on tumblr that talked about us once!!!! On a podcast!!!! Similarly, all those times we dominated not only the trending page when there was a stream, but also the fandom reports tumblr put out about which keywords and tags were most popular. Whenever someone dropped down or moved up it was really "campeao del Mundo" in the mcytblr tags. And the slow decline and us being really really sad when a spot went -15...

DOES anyone else remember the triad. Mcyt reddit, Twitter, and tumblr. How Twitter thought we had a rivals to lovers thing but actually we just hated their guts. There was fanart and everything

When the Twitter refugees came over and the first wave was semi hate and semi welcoming. Everyone came around for the second wave, but the first exodus was 85% hesitant welcome and 15% vitriol and fear.

The discourse about calling them Twitter refugees??? Because refugees are "an actual thing" we couldn't call them that anymore. I just thought it was a little stupid.

Not a specific "event" but more a shift from analysis posts and liveblogs to art and headcanon posting. There was a time in the beginning where everyone theorized about anything and everything. As the dsmp aged and mcytblr grew it became so much more isolated, I still don't understand why people stopped using liveblog tags. Bring them back!!!!! Aurghh!!!!!!

When mcytblr (like nine people out of it) started going after some dude? I forget. But there was a harassment campaign, and death threats allegedly and some big blogs made a whole deal out of it and started saying how mcytblr was no different or better than mcytwt and I don't remember if it was justified or stupid. It was for sure after the first Twitter migration and possibly after the second.

Mcytblr crafting stuff. Such an awesome group of people. I think there's an archive for mcytblr crafts, btw, it's @mcytcrafts

Just about everything I remember, besides the discourse about tommy/others getting rid of the dsmp monuments or builds that had been there a really long time like the Wal-Mart and it being really heated for a while. By the time jack and tubbo started planting potatoes everyone was cool about the whole thing.

@mcytblr-archive

I don't want to write anymore :( I think like two of these are kind of my-circle specific but I'm unsure so I included them anyway. Hope it's useful!

Edit; Tapeworm post.

[indolamine]

hey y'all 🤍 here's a link for INFO on jiyeon, but i'll include some bullet points here with all you need to know. in case anything here sparks ideas for your muse and you'd like to work on a plot, hmu. i do prefer dscrd, so don't hesitate to ask. oh and i'd appreciate it if you could shoot me a dm first so my account doesn't get banned trying to touch base with the likes (say literally anything, hit me with a send it to me rachel if you'd be so kind). still, if you'd rather just hit like it's fine, i'll reach out once tumblr allows me!

jiyeon is what you'd call an Interesting Girl. someone you don't call or arrange schedules with, just happen upon. someone who never calls you but can be your best friend between 11pm and 3am. a fun girl, you just don't look too long.

both her parents are dead for all intents and purposes, which's proven to be a very character defining event in her life. one of her fathers passed away before she was even code, and the other chose to virtually die to work as a doctor for terrascape when she turned 18.

as single beneficiary to both her fathers, jiyeon found herself young, alone and newly rich. she's not particularly self destructive, but choices were made. luckily? for the most part, she was too stunned by grief and anger to blow away her fortune, which now affords her a cushy life she doesn't dwell too hard on.

she's emotionally stunted, still reliving the loss of her parents somewhere in her mind at every moment. she knows a lot of people, calls them friends but struggles to connect with them, blinking in and out of their lives. death is a constant thought, not quite a morbid fascination but more of a haunting. she knows, poor little rich girl.

she writes -- tries to, anyway. she's got some essays published, wrote for a column for a hot minute, it's her definitive trade of choice. but, and not to get too meta, the thing about writing is that you do have to write. that's the tricky part. merits were a good incentive, though once they're no longer an issue, she finds herself ignoring deadlines and putting off work on the novel she's been writing for the past 4 years. she instead "gathers experiences". she has many talents that she has no interest in seriously exploring, so she entertains herself while the high lasts.

between her writing and her party girl fame, at some point along the way she amassed a following on social media that she hesitates to cut loose. they make her more interesting than she, merely human, could ever hope to be, and she doesn't know how to kill the part of her that answers to their call. it's a lie when she says she doesn't look at what they say.

adult life for her breezes by in parties with half-friends and long bouts of reclusion. she wants to be a little of everything. she enjoys reading, skiing, playing silly little meta indie games about living in hyper realities. she doesn't commit to romantic relationships, yet enjoys the hunt anyway. she takes her time, and it never seems to align with anyone else's.

& here's a rolling list of canons that could also serve as potential connections for anyone interested, will add more as they come to me:

she once got involved with a couple for some brief months and it didn't end well

one of the few things she gets competitive about is skiing

she's fucked someone's significant other purely out of spite

she has a writing group whose meetings she misses often but she isn't the only one so she feels like it's a safe space

the person she plays a random weird rpg with incognito is maybe the most consistent relationship in her life, their chats can get very personal and strange and they can go weeks on no contact but go right back to where they left off

the events surrounding gyuok pique her interest because it's the first time terra residents could potentially be hearing from a virtually deceased and because he's essentially a virtual ghost which she thinks is neat

one of her published essays focuses on a celebrity she knows personally and doesn't portray them in the best light, which soured their relationship

[uselessheretic]

Harm Reduction in the OFMD Fandom: Izcourse Edition

I keep wanting to write something up about this, but getting stumped on how to even begin. Largely, because I already know exactly what bad faith arguments are going to be made off the bat, and I feel reluctant to clog down my writing trying to dispel every weird take about things I didn't say. So, it is what it is. If you have questions please ask politely and use a bit of critical thought beyond trying to find anything to grab hold on to contradict.

The Izzy fandom gets harassed. A lot. Nobody here understands why either. When referencing harassment, I'm most likely referring to either direct abusive messages such as anon hate through Tumblr, or talking about the OFMD through a holistic view that includes harassment through Twitter of common dogpiling, stalking, spreading of false rumors, the occasional doxxing, and other things. I'm including Twitter in this conversation because the world doesn't revolve around individuals on Tumblr, and for some of us, it's beneficial to talk about the greater context of fandom without assuming that we are blaming random Tumblr users for Twitter drama. That said, a lot of people use both platforms and the two of them are closely linked, especially since a lot of meta from Tumblr gets poorly replicated on Twitter.

So we're on the same page, the way I'm defining harassment is: The continuous or severe targeting of an individual or group through harmful behavior that includes physical threats, name-calling, impersonation, spreading malicious rumors, and encouraging others to harass a target. This is not an all-inclusive list, but I want to create a baseline for what I'm talking about. This also means things such as stating you dislike a character, responding to another's post to disagree, or speaking positively about a character. This also means that instances of conflict are not inherently harassment either, although this is murkier as we move through the gray area of "continuous or severe."

I'll also be using the terms "Izzy likers" and "Izzy crit" since those seem to be each respective sides more preferred terms and things like "Izzy stans" or "Izzy antis" can hold negative connotations. I'll also be referring to the anon hate received as from a singular person, unless noted otherwise, and as "L anon."

So, I guess let's dive into it?

I've seen the question posed a few times "Well, what do you want us to do about it?" when Izzy likers have brought up the topic of harassment or alluded to the fact that Izzy crits as a group contribute to this. It's true that our individual ability to stop harassment completely is an impossible task, however, there are actions that can be taken as a collective to reduce the amount of harm being done. I don't believe it's true that harassment is an aspect of fandom one must accept to be within it. I also don't think it's right to equate messages telling Black people to get lynched as the norm in fandom everyone has to deal with. I understand that anon hate is common throughout fandoms, but the vitriol and noticeable escalation of L anon is an anomaly that deserves to be taken seriously.

Actions I'm proposing (and will elaborate on) are for Izzy crits to STOP:

Minimizing the harassment of Izzy likers

Separating this harassment from greater conversations of misogyny, transphobia, racism, and antiblackness

Engaging with L anon unless it is to very clearly condemn him without caveats

Encouraging the association of liking Izzy as being an indicator that someone is racist, abusive, homophobic, etc

Using the #Izzy Hands tag as a place to post character hate, criticisms of Izzy likers, or to find meta focused on disliking him.

Minimizing harassment and distancing identity

This includes things such as suggesting that the harassment might not exist, that it isn't that bad, it's just a troll, turn off anon, everybody deals with this, and the idea that people are using discussions on harassment as an excuse. Minimizing harassment normalizes the behavior and continues a narrative that Izzy likers should expect to get harassed online. Downplaying the effects or severity dismisses the victims of it, and refusing to recognize that this is a form of passive endorsement.

I feel some type of way about this personally because I don't appreciate my experiences of racist harassment being treated as something I should just get over or normal in fandom. Like sorry to keep bringing it up I guess lol but like?

This isn't okay and it goes beyond "normal" fandom harassment and I feel like I'm going crazy having to argue that this isn't just something shitty that happens to everyone, but an awful, violent, and frightening message(s) to receive. It genuinely concerns me to see white people in fandom brush it off and make a choice to instead focus on the implications of shipping Izzy with his boss. It points towards a trend of dehumanization online where we no longer see people as people, but characters in our screen who have lesser value than our favorite blorbos. I cannot believe I have to say this.

Purposely separating L anon from identity is another way of passively justifying abuse. Whenever people brush off L anon, it's often in the context of anon hate happens to everyone and ignores the fact that more marginalized identities are getting the brunt of this which includes rape threats, suicide baiting, and overt antiblackness. It can often be followed with reminders that Izzy crits of color also receive racism. The thing is, saying that Izzy likers are receiving racist harassment, doesn't mean that other groups of fans do not. The harassment Izzy likers gets still matters, even if you don't view it as unique. It's concerning to hear white allies especially utilize this rhetoric as if they have a limited capacity of caring for poc.

Engaging with L anon

A lot of people do straight up delete L anon asks. On the Izzy likers side at least, there's been an uptick in people posting the hate they receive or collecting screencaps before blocking out of a necessity of proving that the hate exists. I think a lot of us would prefer to not have to do that!

It would help if Izzy crits made an effort to stop engaging with the anon unless it was to condemn his actions. Certain forms of engagement can be viewed as encouragement whether intentional or not, and it feels noticeable that in the last few weeks L anon has gotten increasingly violent.

You don't have to tell L anon that "I'm not even an Izzy stan so you have the wrong blog anyways" because this normalizes the idea that he should be focusing his attention on Izzy likers. You don't have to argue and justify to L anon that you actually dislike Izzy or prove that you're critical of him for the same reason.

You certainly don't need to tell L anon "I don't care if you harass Izzy stans" and it's insane to pretend like this is anything but a dick move.

Telling L anon "you act just like an Izzy stan!" or that they're "Izzy coded" reinforces to him that Izzy likers are abusers and racists, therefore affirming in his mind that they're acceptable targets.

Seriously, if your response is anything other than "sending these messages is fucked up and nobody in fandom deserves this for liking a character" then just block and delete the ask. Any amount of attention can be twisted into positive affirmation and adding on "harassment is bad" doesn't negate the impact of confirming to anon that you view Izzy likers as racist abusers.

Encouraging the association of liking Izzy as being an indicator that someone is racist, abusive, homophobic, etc

It sucks stop doing it. We can draw a difference between Izzy the character and Izzy likers. In the end, your interpretation of a character is yours and nobody can stop you from having it. Putting thought into how you frame meta, however, could help lessen this association.

Be careful with your language and ensure that you are referring to the character when discussing the show. "Izzy stans refuse to see that he's X" is an unnecessary statement when it can just be that "Izzy is X which you can see from scene Y." When there is a specific trend of harassment being justified via claiming a group of people is bigoted, it's worth the effort of minimizing feeding into that assumption.

Saying shit like "Izzy likers who are poc are desperate for white approval" is like for one really shitty lmao? But also feels bad in a climate where people are being called Candace Owens race traitors who should be killed.

There's a great article that touches on this and the way that even when someone isn't directly harassing a person, their separate posts in combination with others, reifies the idea that the victim in an appropriate target.

The author further elaborate in her research about third order or indirect harassment.

The examples she uses here are a bit more extreme, but this is the same framework she's utilizing in her article discussing harassment on the left and in queer communities.

When you answer L anon and say shit like:

or respond to concerns about racist targeting like this:

I am in fact going to feel some type of way about a week later seeing L anon increasingly escalate his behavior until I get six messages in my inbox calling me a race traitor bigoted cunt. It doesn't matter if you say "it's bad to be racist" when you're already confirming the idea that Izzy likers are the main exporters of racism in fandom which is explicitly L anon's justification for sending hate.

Tagging character hate

I still can't believe that this is an argument when it's a basic courtesy within fandom and has been for years. Tagging character hate doesn't constitute as harassment. However, it does exacerbate an already hostile climate between fans and allows for more conflict that could be easily avoided.

If a meta post is in the character tag then people are going to respond to it. It being tagged communicates that this is something people can respond, especially when you encourage people who agree with you to comment.

If you want less Izzy likers to respond to your Izzy meta then just stop tagging it as #Izzy Hands. It will greatly decrease the amount of interaction! Putting posts into the tag ends up baiting people into responding, continuing to draw out a conflict that nobody wants to be in.

If you don't like Izzy and you think he's too popular a character or his fandom is where you end up seeing the most toxicity come from please consider not going through his tag. If you instead look through tags of characters you like, you will be rewarded with content of that character. The character tag will not function adequately as a place to locate critical content for them, so just cut out the middle man, and stop using it because it's just pissing both sides off and "I have a right to be here!" is the dumbest hill to die on.

Using alternative tags for organization literally just makes things easier for everyone. Tagging things with #Izzy crit or something like #Dizzy Izzy allows you to have a space to locate similar posts without having to expose yourself to a group of people you don't like. It also provides an easy tag for people to block and avoid seeing on their dashboard. This is better than people just having mute the tag to filter out when going through his character tag, because it doesn't require an entire community to cater towards your need to post things in a tag on principle. People who are new to the fandom and just happen to like the character also don't have to be confused by seeing chara hate in the tag and going to argue with it.

It is good to center your fandom experience on things you like instead of being set on asserting your right to be within a space you don't like! I promise!