#i would like to curate my online experience in order to never have to see anyone tagging gifsets of data with pleas for him to rail them

[hawkeyequeerce]

Man I keep looking for star trek blogs to follow, particularly TNG ones and I cannot resist the electric lure of my boy data....but it turns out I am unexpectedly made INCREDIBLY uncomfortable by blogs that are horny for data or lore :(

[saintsenara]

I really like Snape as a character. I made the mistake of mentioning that online. Someone asked me how I like a character is inexcusably mean to children when he is a position of authority around them and how he is petty, can be cruel and harsh teacher and his lack of patience towards Nerville and basically a list of all the mean/horrible stuff that he has said/done. What do you say when people ask you how you can reconcile liking such a character given all of cruel and hurtful things that he has said and done both towards his students and joined willingly a known blood supremacist terrorist group and said known slur towards his friend that is a member of a minority group? I find Snape to be a deeply compelling and flawed and complex character- that's why I enjoy seeking out Snape centric fics.

thank you very much for the ask, anon, and i'm sorry that people have popped off about you liking snape. it's an extremely tedious way for them to behave, since these people are fictional.

i must be honest, i don't really get asked to justify my fondness for the baddies - partially because i curate my fandom space in order to avoid it and partially because i must give the impression of not caring - but i've never found it particularly difficult to reconcile the fact that all my favourite characters are mass-murderers with the fact that i myself am not one...

the first - and frankly the most important - way that i do this is because i understand what genre conventions are.

it seems to me that this is the thing that really is the most lacking in the discourse surrounding the 'bad' characters in the harry potter series, with snape chief among them, but it’s absolutely crucial to understand:

snape is a mean teacher because harry potter is for children, and children do not want to read about sweet or competent adults.

[this is also the reason why the dursleys are horrible, or why hogwarts is such a dangerous and poorly-run school. if the series contained the line, a troll did not get into the dungeon and so harry did his homework, then any child worth their salt would be hurling the book into a fire.]

it must be remembered that child readers - for whom the text is primarily intended - will have a different response to the tropes and themes of the series than adults returning to it with their own experiences, and that adults' responses to the books are not responses that the books were written to provoke. this doesn't mean that adults' reactions are unreasonable - nor does it mean that adults shouldn't engage with harry potter, as my 300k words on ao3 attests - it simply means that it is not a flaw of the series that snape's behaviour is not addressed in the way that adults would like it to be. it's just genre.

because children tend to see the things in the series which horrify us as adults as considerably less frightening or problematic than we do ourselves. indeed, they often see interactions which we read as abusive, or as evidence of systematic cruelty, as simply unfair, and they are looking for retribution not in terms of legal punishment or wide-ranging institutional change, but in the character who is behaving unfairly getting their comeuppance, often in a comic way.

this is because fairness-unfairness is one of the primary ways in which children understand justice. as adults, we think with more nuance - but that doesn’t mean that our response to the text is better. in fact, we have a responsibility to understand the series’ genre conventions when we approach characters in our own writing - if you want to make snape a violent abuser, you actually need to understand all the ways in which the series shows him not to be those things.

snape’s relationship with his classes is written in a way which provokes the response in children that he is unfair, but not one which provokes the response that he is frightening - indeed, the story generally treats his "cruelty" as comic, at least until half-blood prince, and he often gets an embarrassing comeuppance when he tries to be sincerely malicious. [i.e. literally everything which happens to him in prisoner of azkaban.]

he is unfair, because he doesn’t tell malfoy off for misbehaving. he is unfair, because he doesn’t give hermione a chance to answer questions. he is unfair, because he is rude to harry [who, like any good child hero worth his salt, has no respect for snape and isn’t intimidated by him]. he is unfair, because he gives horrible detentions.

but no child character in the story ever seriously believes his behaviour to go beyond this - including neville.

neville’s fear of snape is caused by snape being unfair towards him - and, since neville is a character the text likes, snape therefore frequently gets his comeuppance for this unfairness. the incident where he threatens to poison trevor is horrible to read as an adult, but as a child the outcome - snape is foiled in his plan because of neville and hermione - is understood as triumphant. snape - an adult - is constantly outfoxed by his pupils - who are not adults - and children love to see that.

[similarly, it really should be emphasised that the text treats neville’s fear of snape as ridiculous. lupin laughs in his face about it in prisoner of azkaban, and neville himself admits that it’s silly and irrational. it cannot be seriously suggested - although i've seen plenty of people try - that snape is his boggart instead of bellatrix because snape sincerely frightens him more. he fears snape more than bellatrix because his narrative purpose in the first four books is to be comic relief - he’s a bit cowardly and a bit useless, and he provides a character for the child reader to feel braver and cleverer than.]

obviously, these incidents read very differently to adults - especially if you are an adult who has, knows, or works with small children. but if somebody complains to you about your favourite characters because they're upset by children’s literature without thinking about how it’s intended to be read by its primary audience... that’s not your problem.

but even beyond genre, i feel comfortable liking "bad" characters because i understand human complexity.

online, it is increasingly becoming a dogma that our attitudes are fixed and unchangeable. i feel incredibly sorry for young people nowadays, who often have to live in a state of hypervigilance in order to make sure that they never do or say anything cruel or ignorant. this must be miserable, because flawlessness is unattainable - not only for real people but for fictional ones as well.

the fannish desire to write someone like snape off as bad and unchangeable - alongside the accompanying tendency to minimise the human flaws of characters such as james and sirius - comes from the fact that snape, like many antagonists, holds up a mirror to us as the reader. and we may not like what we see.

snape’s life demonstrates that it’s very easy to be radicalised into joining a terror group - particularly for people who have experienced things like poverty, being othered, or being bullied. it forces us to recognise that people who end up involved in evil did not come into it fully formed - they started somewhere, and they often ended up where they did because of failures in societies and their institutions which we ignore because they benefit us. after all, hogwarts does nothing to prevent voldemort recruiting death eaters among its pupils, hogwarts does nothing to dismantle the oppressive class system on which the wizarding world runs - the school is the archetypal ivory tower, and the ministry is no better.

snape’s life demonstrates that it's very easy for people who are victims in some areas of their lives to be perpetrators in others. trauma is often not sympathetic and perfect victimhood does not exist. having experienced trauma means you have experienced trauma - it can still make you act like a cunt.

and snape’s life also demonstrates that it’s very easy to - without entirely intending to - do something absolutely terrible, and this is something which we should always be compassionate towards. because it’s going to happen to all of us - and, actually, our terrible deed could easily be something as significant as snape’s report of the prophecy. if you drive, for example, it takes one momentary distraction for you to kill someone. what are you going to do if the person you kill is your childhood best friend, whom you love?

well… you’re going to try to redeem yourself. and, like snape, you will learn that redemption is messy and often strange, and that people can show growth in some areas and lack it in others.

and the redemption point is important - the idea that snape is redeemed by the end of the canon text is something which lots of fans push back against. but it’s crucial to note two things:

the first is that one’s own capacity for forgiveness and the potential of forgiveness as a concept are not the same thing. you might never have been able to forgive snape if you were lily or harry or dumbledore, but that says nothing about whether anyone else can or should. the second is that forgiveness and redemption are not inextricably linked. one can redeem oneself without being forgiven.

my view is that approaching bad characters with nuance is actively beneficial for us, and that having a "problematic fave" is a good thing when it comes to our self-growth in the real world. if we believe ourselves to be immune to the sort of radicalising forces which would lead a person to other their best friend to the extent that they call her a slur, we will be easy to radicalise. if we believe ourselves to be incapable of making a dangerous mistake, we will be more likely to miss the clues that we’re about to. if we do not believe in the possibility of redemption for all, then we are going to have a very hard time when we do something bad, since we therefore have to believe in redemption for none.

thinking critically about oneself - both in relation to the media one enjoys and in general - is a protective act. learning to identify commonalities with bad people protects you. learning to recognise that you’re not always going to be good or right protects you. learning to accept that you’ll fuck up protects you. learning to be remorseful protects you. learning to forgive protects you. learning that the limits of your personal capacity to forgive is not the same as the potential of forgiveness protects you.

unsympathetic literary characters show us how to approach unsympathetic people in real life. snape is a brilliant example of what can be caused by failing to see the whole person - voldemort is evidently the only person who offers him a life-line, where dumbledore and the "good guys" in wizarding society do not. this is a lesson to us all - if we flatten people into good-and-therefore-worthy-of-help and bad-and-therefore-not, it’s a recipe for disaster...

but this is all very pretentious and philosophical. the main reason why i have no qualms about enjoying "bad" characters is because i’m not a cop.

the summary of the last point is - basically - that readers need to learn how to sit with discomfort in media, because discomfort within a fictional context is completely safe, and therefore it provides an outlet for people to think about themes or characters which are darker in a way which cannot cause actual harm.

fiction is not real life and fictional characters cannot harm you - and this is the case even if the fiction is about something which would or did materially harm you if it happened in real life. [this is doubly the case in harry potter because the harms upon which the series focuses are themselves fictional - the series’ blood-supremacy obviously reflects real-world examples of discrimination, but it is not something which any real person has actually experienced.]

this means that a reader’s reaction to something in fiction is always on them. authors have no responsibility to anticipate every single reader’s response to their writing - encountering something that upsets you in a fictional setting is your responsibility to deal with. [even if the author’s not tagged properly.]

snape may upset a reader for various reasons, some of which may be related to experiences of real world discrimination, but his existence cannot cause actual harm to any living person, because he and the society in which he lives are not real.

fictional crimes are not real crimes, and so, if someone tries to say that you shouldn’t enjoy reading about him because they don’t like it… they are a cop and you should have no respect for them. acab applies to the thought police too.

and knowing this gives us a powerful tool… i have no qualms about being criticised for liking bad characters because i just say acab and go on with my day.

just as you can’t cause anyone else material harm in your consumption of fiction, nor can anyone else cause you material harm just by criticising your choices - obviously, if they’re attempting to doxx you, or to cause any real-world repercussions because of your fanfiction tastes, that’s another matter - which means that you have the power to choose to be unbothered by unjustified criticism. it’s not even that hard! simply refuse to be upset!

curate your fandom experience without shame. post what you like. block and move on. filter assiduously. scroll past without engaging. don’t waste your time getting into fights. don’t answer comments which are rude. don’t feed trolls. delete messages. this is just harry potter!

and also be compassionate towards the fact that people don’t express themselves perfectly. if you are primed not to immediately get upset or consider yourself to be under attack, you will be able to read comments with more clarity, to look and see if you can find commonalities, and to answer them in a way which doesn’t escalate the situation.

[and always remember that a lot of the angriest and most righteous comments come from teenagers, and being a teenager is hell. be compassionate, as your fandom elders had compassion for you.]

[frannyzooey]

Hi Kelli! Tumblr errored out while I was sending this the first time so I think it didn’t go through but if you did in fact already get this feel free to ignore the duplicate! (Damn you, tumblr)

I really appreciated reading your thoughts on age gap a little while ago and had a follow up question for you. What are your thoughts on the idea I see circulating sometimes that age gap fics are alienating to folks who don’t want to read them or feel like they can’t identify with it? I never see myself as “reader” personally, but I know some folks do and would never want to perpetuate a problem or make anyone’s experience in fandom less cozy or welcoming. It’s definitely something that makes me nervous to post any of my writing (even the majority non-age gap stuff) especially in the Pedro fandom space, and I know the argument that everyone curates their own space and can choose not to read something probably applies here, but it still makes me hesitate.

I did not get this ask the first time! *shakes fist at tumblr*

FYI: the other ask, for reference ❤

So, I have not come across this particular sentiment but I have seen my fair share of hate on age gap for various reasons, and I wanna touch on a couple things in this ask because you are being so brilliantly vulnerable sending it in ❤

First off: the main thing I write is age gap: Weeknights, In the Dark, The Secret, Dave/Nanny, Dave/Intern, SDLN. Now let me tell you something else: I am 38 years old.

You would think that I wouldn't be able to identify myself in those stories because of my age: I'm not in college, I'm not in my 20's, I'm not some young, pretty thing. I also don't want to envision myself as a younger person, I also have nothing against aging and it's not because I secretly loathe older women.

It's the dynamic.

In truth, I find them soothing/cathartic to write about/read because they describe something that was missing for me at not only that age, but to some extent now as well: care.

To read about a situation in which an older person cares for and desires the younger one: that is something I seek out because I like it. I'm soothed by it, it's my favorite daydream, it's a situation that I have always been drawn to. I have always been attracted to someone experienced in the ways of the world taking care of me, in whatever form that takes shape in.

Will everyone in the fandom find it soothing? No. In fact, some might be triggered by it, or have their own life experiences that tell them it's inherently wrong, or like you stated above, for whatever reason they just don't identify with the desire to read about it.

However - I do. I'm not everyone, and I get that, but I write (and consume) for me, and for (hopefully) others who are like me to enjoy.

The act of sharing your work is a very vulnerable thing, and to pair that with posts about how some people will never be able to identify with the things you want to write about in a very shame filled manner of speech makes it even more scary, and I get that.

I really do, I've felt it and it’s a hard thing to have to see and feel.

However, in order to post online in any fandom, you sort of just have to say "self, this is important to me, so fuck it."

They can read it, or they can not: that's up to them. If they don't identify with it, then they can go seek out other media that they do identify with. If they don't like it, that's not on you. There are plenty of stories in which I don't identify with the reader for various reasons, but I either enjoy the fics for different aspects of the story, or I scroll on by.

I have a lot of opinions/theories on why people make posts like that but I won't bore you - at the end of the day, you create the content you want to consume, and don't let anyone make you feel bad about it. ❤

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Alright. My most recent foray into the Izzy drama has revealed to me that there is a problem in the Izzy stan community, and I love helping the less fortunate so I'm going to give the people a little crash course in how to use tumblr. Me and many of my mutuals have done some or all of the things that I'm about to show you in the interest of a more enjoyable tumblr experience. This is directed at a specific tumblr community but is universally helpful so if it breaks containment I am sorry.

We're gonna start off with the basics here. Blocking people. If you see a post you don't like. If you think a take is horrible. A person is just giving you bad vibes? HIT DA BRICKS my friends. You can never see another post from this person by clicking on their blog, clicking on the elipses, and hitting that block button. Thank you to my beloved mutual @ourflagmeansgayrights for letting me use your blog to display what I'm talking about.

I understand that some people might feel bad about blocking someone. You shouldn't tho. The person might find out and get a little salty, but you don't know them and they can't do anything about it so who cares? I personally have over 40 blogs blocked and honestly I should have more.

Next, onto something a little more challenging. filtered content. You're gonna want to go to your settings. here's a picture with the directions to the settings menu helpfully highlighted.

When you click on the settings it'll take you to a page like this

I have already scrolled down a bit. You can scroll down until you see the portions that I have ever so helpfully highlighted. You're gonna want to click the little pen icon on the far right. When you do it should look like this.

You're gonna want to type exactly what I've typed into that box, and then you're gonna want to hit that Add button. When you do it will appear at the bottom of your filtered tags list like this.

Congradulations. You don't have to look at another post that's mean to Izzy. I know I sometimes tag posts that are not that mean to Izzy as izzy critical because I know you guys will hate it and I want to spare you, so please. It's for your own good. and it takes about 20 seconds.

Finally, turning off anons. I've seen a lot of you complain about anon death threats. I get those too. I just delete them when they come in my ask box because I don't actually take them that seriously but if they're bothering you there is a way to get rid of them for good, and you are already half way there if you're in the settings menu blocking the Izzy critical tag.

On the side of the settings menu theres a little list of all your blogs. You're gonna want to select the one you don't want to get anons in. You have to do it separately for each blog but it's pretty easy.

It's gonna take you to a page where you can edit your blog. You want to scroll down until you see this

And then you just want to smack that second button. You can even smack the first if you don't want to receive questions at all, but if the anons are your problem I'd recommend the second one

Anyway, hope this helps, because literally everyone I know does some or all of these things in order to mitigate online harassment and curate our online experience. Obviously if someone really wants to harass you they're going to. Some of my mutuals with anon turned off have had people make burner accounts to message them. But the great thing about that is, you can just block the burner.

OH! I nearly forgot! There's one more thing you can do. Say you don't want to turn off anon, but you keep getting one really annoying bitch in your inbox and you suspect its the same person twice because of the affect or whatever. Guess what. If you click the three dots next to the message you can block them too!!! I've sent two nasty anons to the shadow realm this way. I would have sent more but unfortunately you cant delete the message after you do this so it leaves a number in your inbox even if it's not there anymore. I prefer to just delete them unless someone is spamming me.

Also if you don't like my tone in this post I'm giving you permission to use the information contained within this post to hit that block button babey. See you never. I'd love to be your first block. I'll pop your block cherry for you baby. It'll be so satisfying.

[sophia-sol]

I've been thinking some more about my gender presentation of late. I mean, thinking about how I dress and present myself to the world is kind of medium-key on my mind all the time, but this year I'm trying to more deliberately work on figuring out what kind of wardrobe and styling makes me feel happy and comfortable with myself.

And I've been making great progress with that, and it's very exciting, when I look at myself in the mirror and go "YEAH!!!" instead of just being like "well I have no arguments with this outfit."

When I was in my late teens, I stopped wearing pants. Full stop. Skirts or dresses all the time, for every occasion, in every weather. And I kept this up for….dear lord I just did the math and I think it's 10 or 11 years of absolutely no pants, with a couple years on either side with majority-skirts but occasional pants. At my peak I had a collection of over 50 skirts, most of them real statement pieces. I did the skirt-wearing for a number of reasons, some of which I was able to articulate at the time and some of which I wasn't.

But I think that ultimately one important facet of it (which I absolutely did not understand at the time) was that if I wore something so distinctly female-associated as a skirt, was known for it in fact, then I could experiment with gender in other ways without being concerned I would be seen as rejecting my assigned gender. I was wearing a big ol' flag of femaleness on my bottom half at all times! So I was able to inch towards a more masc presentation in other ways without totally freaking out and shutting myself down. (I mean, I still freaked out. I have a dreamwidth post from 2016 about how scary and forbidden it felt to wear men's button-up shirts, and get a more masculine haircut. Even with my skirts! But I was able to make those forays, despite the difficulties.)

But as I grew in my confidence in wearing more masc clothing, the skirt-wearing eventually fell by the wayside. By 2019, I was wearing pants one day a week, on fridays, feeling daring at the pants-featuring outfits I put together. And then the pandemic began, and I spent multiple years being able to wear anything on my lower half and not have anyone outside my household see me, and never having to use public washrooms. And freed of having to worry about what opinion people would have of my gender, I found myself almost never wearing skirts anymore. My default became men's pants and men's shirts, and I only bothered pulling out a skirt with the thought that I really ought to make more use of my excellent skirt collection, which by this point had been pared down to only the very best skirts.

But with my new default of men's clothing, I kind of ended up wearing just any old thing. Especially in the first year or so of the pandemic, I did not want to venture out into shared public spaces, so going to stores to try on clothes was right out, and I just ordered a few things online to fill in the basics of what I needed, based on what fit me and looked respectable and wasn't too expensive.

These outfits didn't exactly spark joy, but they were easy enough to wear, and felt comfortable, both physically and genderwise. And eventually I realized that it no longer felt comfortable to put on a skirt.

(did I maybe cry a bit at the realization that it was time for me to pack away my skirts? look, obviously I did, they were a huge part of my identity for so long, and I still love them, even if they're not something I want to wear anymore!)

But one of the other big things my carefully curated collection of skirts did for me was that they allowed me to dress in ways that were dramatic and visually interesting and off-beat, they enabled me to make statements with my clothing, and standard-issue men's clothing is uhhhhhhh not that.

So I've been working, of late, to develop a coherent and consistent and more me-feeling style and way of dressing now that I don't wear skirts. It's a work in progress, not least because the kinds of clothes I want to wear are hard to find! There are some significant gaps in my wardrobe to be able to fully make the clothing statements I want to all the time. But already I'm making enormous strides.

And dressing myself is FUN again, the way it used to be in the heyday of when I most enjoyed wearing skirts! I think I've spent the last 5 years at least not having fun with my clothing, when I always used to love putting together outfits. I thought it was just a casualty of growing older, but NO, I just needed to figure out a new approach to clothing that would make me happy again!

I don't know whether my current gender presentation will be a long-term or permanent thing for me. I used to derive a great deal of genuine joy from my wonderful skirts, after all! And it's impossible for me to have feelings about clothes that are siloed from society. I exist in a society, and my sense of how people see me based on my clothes is an intrinsic part of the collection of feelings I have about the clothes I wear. At least, it is right now. Who knows what will happen in the future! But for now: I'm having fun.

[brokentoasterrr]

ok listen this has been on my mind for DAYS now so i’m going to shout it into the void and we’ll see what happens.

i have a note on my phone that says “exclude tags ao3” where i have written down every single tag i don’t want to see when i scroll through my favorite ship tags. this means that i don’t see what i deem gross on my feed, because every time i go scrollin’ i make the choice to curate my online experience.

the ONLY time i have ever reported a work on ao3, it was because there was a fic rated teen with tags that were clearly explicit. i didn’t want to read it, i didn’t want to leave a comment on content i wasn’t going to read, so i reported it for the sole purpose of the creator getting a little nudge so they could rate it appropriately.

the amount of posts i see about content being reported because it contains a squick of someone’s is BAFFLING to me. it’s insane that people feel the need to censor content that presumably wasn’t meant for you anyway. you cannot go online expecting the world of fandom bending over backwards to make sure that you’re safe, because guess what! the internet isn’t an inherently safe space! in order for it to be a safe space, you need to curate your own online experience, and if you’re not mature enough to do that, you should not be online. if you cannot see a piece of fiction or art or video edit without feeling squicked, grossed out, angry, or even triggered, then you have to ensure that you do not see it again. not reporting content that is “problematic” or inappropriate or offensive.

and on that note, fiction is allowed to be problematic. it’s fiction. it is not real. i have read fics containing infidelity, age gaps, murder, drug abuse, what have you, and it does not reflect on me as a person, or what i do during my time offline. i have written violent, disgusting fics; fics containing drug abuse, toxic, abusive relationships, but never in my life would i want to embody or experience what i write. i don’t want to bang a married, muscular silver fox as someone who’s much younger, but reading it? why the fuck not, it’s not about me.

i absolutely do not want to read underage stuff, or incest, or mpreg. it’s stuff that i personally think is disgusting and, to some degree, problematic (incest and underage, to be precise, i find very problematic—the rest is just personal preference). in order to avoid it, i filter those tags out. what one person thinks or feels about one certain topic should not affect other people wanting to read/write it.

the lack of nuance i see in younger people when it comes to fandom and content is frankly insane. they seem to draw such a large parallel between the fictional world and the real world, to the point where they’re incapable of seeing and understanding that the two are not one and the same. you can like a character who killed a bunch of people, write fics about it and explore who they are and why they are the way they are, without agreeing with their actions, beliefs, and values. (coincidentally, the same people who despise problematic content like graphic violence or non-con, will also take the murder character and make it into an uwu smol soft boy who just suffered trauma so its ok he’s doing this loki regulus barty crouch jr need i continue but we don’t have to unpack all of that right now)

sometimes it’s fun to be a problematic little rascal and that’s okay, because the outlet isn’t real. the fic isn’t real. it doesn’t reflect on any personal feelings, desires, beliefs, etc etc etc. the art isn’t real. if it feels too real to you, then????? don’t consume it??????? you can’t watch hannibal and then write to the show producers telling them that they’re horrible people because the show about cannibalism and murder contains just that, when you could’ve just stopped watching hannibal and done something else instead.

curate your own online experience.

[vanillahub]

Please read!

Edit 1: You don't need to follow the hub*, but that'd be very helpful for me to check if we're still mutuals or not. Just please, make sure you're following at least one of the RP side blogs, and not just the hub.

*Addendum: If you use the "disable comments from people you don't follow" feature, then I ask you kindly to follow the hub and not just the RP side-blog. Because it prevents me from commenting on your posts, since the comment is coming from this blog rather than the side one. Failing to do this heavily affects the way I can engage with you and your blog/muses.

If I've followed you, it is for one of these blogs:

@galaccias - Star wars Multimuse (Not following new SW mutuals)

@healbellls - Pokemon Multimuse

@hxdrostorms - In limbo rn will be reworked into a Castlevania one

@santuxrio - Saint Seiya Multimuse

As of the 25th of February 2024, I've been prioritizing Discord RP over Tumblr.

Interested in Discord RP? Check out @vanirpads

In light of a new awfull trend across the RPC: I don't send any anonymous messages ever. If you receive any form of hateful message with my name attached, ignore and delete it. Without a doubt, it is someone looking to impersonate me, in hopes of sparking controversy. It is a shame this has to be addressed.

Rules highlights:

I'm a big supporter of 'tag & curate your online experience', 'ship and let ship', 'don't like don't read' (Dead dove don't eat), 'fiction can affect reality, but it will never be that', 'shipping/fandom isn't activism'. If you have any issues with these things, then this blog might not be for you.

I do send in passwords/anything that the mun requires, to let them know I have read their rules. But, unless specified, I'll only do that AFTER being followed back. Because I don't wish to make it seem like I'm "pressuring" them to follow/interact with me.

I reserve the right to unfollow and block anyone, I don’t owe an explanation for doing so. Do not evade it, nor send people after me in an attempt to score an answer for you. If you find out you’ve been blocked by me, move on like any other person would.

The same goes out to anyone following me, who wishes to break mutuals with! Block and unfollow to your heart’s content, IDC what you do in order to feel well. I’d much prefer being softblocked, so I don’t end up sending prompts or interacting with your posts/blog, without realising we no longer were mutuals.

Anonymous messages are permanently turned off.

There’s no pressure when it comes to interacting with my muses. As in, if you’re only looking to interact with one out of all the other options? I’m cool with that. The choice is yours, I’ll obviously try to offer as many as I can see fit for us. But I’ll never force anything upon anyone. And on that note: All I ask in return is to respect my grading system for muses (primary, secondary & tertiary/friends only stuff)! As mentioned in the directories, while I don’t mind HC asks aimed at those tertiary muses. Interactions and plots are reserved only for my long-time partners or friends!

Reblog karma is in effect, if I reblog a prompt from you I will send in something back. And I expect the same from you, if you do nothing but reblog memes directly from me without sending anything back, you will be blocked. I have a tolerance when it comes to mutuals, I’ll contact you to stop with it. However, I have zero tolerance for non-mutuals.  

I am NOT fictionkin nor self-insert friendly, I’ve had way too many bad run ins with them, and I want nothing to do with them! Mun =/= Muse, if you can’t understand that concept then leave. I’m NOT my muses, and I’m not here to judge anyone, but I'm also not here to fulfill anyone’s fantasies like that.

Non-mutuals: please refrain from sending prompts that have been  specifically tagged/marked as ‘mutuals’. They have been marked in such  way, for a reason. I get you may want to draw my attention to your blog,  however, that’s not the way to go about it (If you do this, I’ll likely  take it as an attempt to brute force your way into my boundaries. DMing  me is a whole lot better.). I take a while to follow people back, you can find more info in regards to  what I look into people’s blogs & take into consideration before  following back in my rules.   

I’m strongly against the idea of “if we’re mutuals, then we’re immediately friends!” (as it promotes an unhealthy sense of overfamiliarity, and it has put me in awkward situations in the past). So please, don’t go around calling me a friend, unless we’ve known each other and have been in constant contact for quite some time. It’s nothing against anyone, that’s just how I roll.

On following: If I don’t get followed back in my actual rp blogs after an week or so, I’ll take that as the person’s way of saying they aren’t interested and I’ll unfollow & softblock if they only followed the hub! Of course, I may contact the person in case they have already answered to my asks or other things.

If you’re someone who keeps adding new muses every other day, or is always making new blogs and quickly abandoning old ones (aka drifters or blog-hoppers). Then, it’s very unlikely we will mesh well as writing partners. It’s nothing personal, but this sort of thing doesn’t work well with me. I need rping partners, who wish to stick around for the long run. I can’t and won’t keep up with muns, who are always doing those things and clearly have other things in mind for RPing.

I don't have access to the Legacy editor only the new beta one. I'm using the new XKit trim posts, for my RP responses.

[dieamoric]

my official stance on the word queer

it is exhausting how 2 people have directly approached me over this and more have indirectly commented on it. please leave me alone and stop breaking my dni.

it would be infinitely more meaningful and worthwhile to instead of harassing queer teens or adults on the internet for using the word queer, being queer, or not calling queer a slur, that you instead either scroll past, block these blogs, or crack open archive.org or another queer history library online or irl in order to learn about the actual history of the word instead of parroting stuff that came before you from people who revel in the fact that you fell for their rhetoric.

queer WAS a slur, and is still used as a slur in various places, mostly the south in the US. i acknowledge this and understand this better than others, apparently, because i also acknowledge that it has, in fact, truthfully, been reclaimed by the entire lgbt community decades ago.

i refuse to let my oppressors use queer against me, because it's my word, OUR word, and using it for OURselves is empowering us and OUR community, and refusing to let our oppressors use OUR word to hold power over us

i am not censoring the word, i am not calling it a slur, i will never trigger tag for it, the most you are going to get is me outright tagging the word or using it in my post. please use the post and tag blocking function in tumblr settings for it's intended purpose if it bothers you.

when i say that my and others usage of the word as an academic term and an identity does not affect you, this is what i mean. you have the options to reduce the 'harm' you are experiencing at hearing or seeing the word to zero, and yet you seek it out. by purposely triggering yourself you are self harming? as somebody who does this too, you need to practice some self control against your impulses. ask a friend for help stopping you before you doomscroll or engage perhaps. back on topic:

when i call my community queer and refer to 'queers' or queer people, i am referring to people who are also queer and do not mind the word, or even like it. to me the queer community is one and the same as the lgbt community, but if you want to alienate yourself because of hangups with that particular word, then that's your prerogative.

queer is a neat little word to encompass a broad range of identities and people, i do not purposely go out of my way to refer to people individually as it because i am well enough aware that some people do in fact do not want to be called it.

majority of the people i personally talk to are either okay with the word, or have enough understanding and comprehension skills that they are aware that i am not using it as a slur when i say the word at all in reference to our either shared identities, or different identities.

when i say that queer is not a slur outright i am, not to be redundant, referring to how the entire lgbt community have re-adopted the word from our oppressors in order to empower, uplift, and find comradery ourselves under that label.

i am NOT saying that it has never been a slur, or that it still isn't used in a derogatory way here and there, or that it hasn't been used towards me in a derogatory way, because all of these things are true.

i am however saying that your insistence that it is a dirty word that should not be used as an umbrella term for an entire group of people, or that it hasn't been reclaimed by this entire group of people, and instead only ever individually, is in fact terf rhetoric. or radfem rhetoric if you want to get extremely pedantic with me.

i block people on sight who tag things like "q slur" or say that "queer is a slur" unironically without a single critical thought of where that phrase even came from. i block people who sui bait, mock, or otherwise harass people who say the same thing as me. i block posts i don't like, as well.

i do not care to hear your opinion. i am exercising tools available to me on this website to curate my own space so i may experience things the way i want to, without coming across something that makes me feel bad or stresses me out. i encourage you all to do the same if you adamantly refuse to do your own research, get out from your echo chambers, or realize there is more to just terfism than just hating transfems and trans women.

do not make it my problem. because it isn't. this is MY blog and you can all block me if you don't like what i say on it.

[h0neywheat]

I’ve been introspective about my relationship with the internet recently and its like, i like the internet! I like being able to connect and learn about other people from around the world! i like following and supporting talented people that i would never meet in real life! i like being able to access information and my interests immediately!

the internet is also an overwhelming hellscape that is a constant bombardment of information my brain will never adapt to seeing. what was a serotonin boosting moment can easily turn into threads and threads of horrible people. social media is designed to be addicting. things that make us angry are pushed to the top of our feeds in order to maintain engagement. the only way to escape is to step away but it’s so hard when the same thing that makes me so frustrated and overwhelmed is also the thing that connects me to friends and provides me access to endless entertainment. it’s hard to know when it becomes too much before it’s too late.

as someone that has used the internet as a way to escape “real life” troubles since I was a preteen, becoming comfortable with myself in “real life” instead of just online has put into perspective how necessary it is to unplug. I am allowed to be myself outside of internet circles and that’s some learning I really need to do. it’s a journey I’ve definitely started and have now come to a crossroad. yes, I can curate my online experience, but obviously things slip through the cracks. how much is my social media usage unconscious self harm and when can I recognize it’s time to put the phone down?

[heycolorwind]

New Years Resolutions 2023 | Countdown

Another year, another batch of resolutions. I’ve got the typical ones that I’ll list but there’s really just one I want to do. So let’s count them down! I didn’t do any of the resolutions I said last year so some of these are repeated from last year. Let me know in the comments what your New Years Resolutions are.

Start Writing a Book – I wanted to start this last year but never did. This is something I wanted to really focus on back in 2020 but the pandemic happened and a lot of plans were canceled. This is the year I feel we are officially out of the pandemic so after losing three years, I’m going to try to do things I wanted to do back in 2020 and this is one of the most important ones.

Learn Guitar (again) – I miss the outlet I had from playing music. I think it’ll do my brain good to reintroduce myself to my musical side.

Lose 100 Pounds – I got an exercise bike for Christmas. I think this will help me finally shed the pounds.

Write More – I miss writing so I’ve committed to writing at least once a day, either as a post here on Wordpress or my journal, which I typically ignore.

Get a Stable Writing Job – Once I’ve gotten my bearing writing again, I’m going to use these posts to try to get myself a writing job, particularly one at a publication I would like to work at. This will be my redemption after failing at GameRant.

Get 1000 YouTube Subscribers – My channel has been growing exponentially since last year. I’ve reached 100 subscribers so I would like to see if I can add another zero to that counter.

Socialize More Online / Offline – I need to get out of my comfort zone so I’m going to try to talk to more people, whether that’s on or offline.

Watch 12 Shows – I want to focus on having a good time as well as get influences from other media other than games and music so this goal is so I watch more shows on TV.

Read 12 Books – I’m hoping to read more, especially since I want to write a book so I’m trying to read roughly one book a month.

Finish 40% of the Games I Play – I play a lot of games and last year I easily blew past my 30% or more games finished so this year I’m bumping it up to 40%.

Watch 50 Movies – One movie a week. I don’t watch nearly enough movies and I want to change that. I tried to do this last year but it didn’t last. Attempt number two, I suppose.

Get Back into Comics – I don’t have a solid plan for this admittedly. I guess I’ll just try to read and keep reading series’ that catch my eye. I don’t think looking up new releases is really worth it since it makes more sense to begin at the beginning of the volume or at least the storyline so you know what’s going on. It’s like starting a show on episode 6.

Listen to 50 Albums – I fell out of music last year and desperately tried to catch up most of the year before I just gave up. I’ve decided to focus more on albums rather than singles so that this doesn’t happen again this year. This number, similar to my movies resolution, means I’ll hear about one new album a week.

Make Curated 2023 Playlists – Another way I want to keep up with music is with playlists. I did this back in 2017 and I really like what I did. Making monthly favorite lists and genre lists for the year is fun and I’m going to try to do that again. It’ll be on Spotify FYI. After experimenting with Apple Music and Tidal, I’m going back to Spotify.

Re-Enter The World – This is my big resolution of the year. I’m calling it; we’re officially out of the pandemic. So it’s time to get back out into the world. No more ordering food, I can go get it myself. No more relying on deliveries, I can go to the store and get things myself. I’m still going to wear a mask for the foreseeable future but I’m not going to let that stop me from going places. I’m not a social person to begin with but I still used to go out and do stuff. I want to get back outside and do that again.

[spade-riddles]

Submission: Adjusting expectations

Okay, guys. Wading in here where it’s possible no-one wants me, but … here goes. 

We - Kaylors - are in a hard place right now. People feel hurt, they feel hopeless. They feel like they were led on by the likes of Spade. I’m not here to invalidate any of the feelings that come from seeing Karlie and Taylor play out this charade.  

But I think we (collectively, as a fandom) need to take a breath and ask if any of this is really as bad or unfixable as we think it is. Because, for me, the recent stunting is hard to stomach but not truly surprising. On some level this is how I expected Karlie and Taylor to handle both the birth of the baby and the launch of the rerecorded albums. As much I wanted to believe in the idea of spring breaking loose and bringing with it a fervent revolution … I could see the pieces still in play on the board and I doubted it was coming. 

I think the problem is that there was a split between the optimist and pragmatist sides of the fandom, over the last year or so. To be clear - I’m not judging the optimist side of the fandom. Not at all. Taylor has pulled wildcard moves before, and emotions run so high in all this, especially with a baby involved now, that I don’t blame people for wanting to believe the best. But it reached a stage where some of the things people were trying to talk themselves into were just wildly unrealistic. And when that happens, of course you’re going to get hurt. It’s inevitable. 

But let’s really look at this for a second. We should have known that neither Karlie nor Taylor was going to be shaving her beard in March. Ditching Jerk right after or just before the birth would have been too soon for Karlie. It’s not unusual for a celeb marriage to fizzle out within a year of the birth, but before the baby even arrives? That would be weird, and would draw attention just when it seems Kaylor don’t want it. They just had a baby. That’s an adjustment in itself, and Karlie is suffering enough social media hate on top of that. I wouldn’t blame her for just wanting to take a break and lie low during this difficult time. And unfortunately, for Karlie, that means maintaining the status quo of the situation she put herself in with Jerk. She may be doing the bare minimum to maintain it, but if she wants to avoid attention, she has to make it seem like everything between her and her “husband” is normal. And that she’s trying to make it work, which I believe will be important later. Good people try to make it work, even in bad relationships. 

Toe wasn’t going anywhere either. Taylor had relied on him so heavily during the promotion of Folklore, with the William Bowery narrative, that she was almost backed into a corner. She had to give some allusion to his air quotes “creative input” and their so-called happy relationship, or her failure to do so would have become the story and overshadowed her night. The headlines would have either been break-up speculation or complaints that she didn’t give him his due. We think the cutesy coverage after she named him in her acceptance speech was bad, but negative headlines have a far longer shelf life and can take on a life of their own. They would have been worse. Whatever we might think of Taylor’s actions, Folklore is one of her best albums and she deserved to have her night. 

So, on to the announcement of the birth. This is a tricky one, and again, I completely understand why people reacted so badly against it. It was everything we as a fandom said we didn’t want. It was Jerk using the baby for personal good PR. But I have to be honest here. I always thought we were kidding ourselves believing he would NEVER be seen with the baby or implied to be the father. I do believe Karlie is doing her damnedest to minimize the digital footprint of his involvement and keep her actual baby out of it. But he was always going to get to bask in the glow of playing daddy for a while. It’s the trade off Kaylor made when they used him to shore up their closet. 

This is also why I increasingly suspect the timing of the announcement got the green light from Kaylor too. If Jerk was always going to be assumed to be the father of Karlie’s baby, then there was always going to have to be a birth announcement that incorporated him somehow - unless the girls were ready to answer awkward questions, and it doesn’t seem like we’re there yet. So the best way to minimize the damage is to have his moment of glory overshadowed by a bigger win for Taylor. It worked pretty well actually. Even on Kaylor blogs the stunt was mostly buried by Taylor content.

I know a lot of fans feel gaslit by all the hints, but I do think there’s a possibility Taylor really didn’t grasp how hurt Kaylors would be. From her perspective, she “fed” fans three times over that night. She gave us a beautiful performance, a gorgeous red carpet moment, and a win to celebrate. I think it’s possible she really didn’t realize the double whammy of stunting that night would make it all feel worthless for many.

Taylor is in an awkward position. As a consequence of Kaylor retreating into the closet, the support base for them has shrunk. (When I use the words “Kaylor fandom”, I refer to this support base.) I would say Kaylor fandom consists of two parts. There is a silent portion, who observe events and comment anonymously, but don’t say anything “on main”. And then there are the small corps of true believers, who think Karlie and Taylor are still together and the baby is theirs. This latter group do most of the actual talking about Kaylor, but they tend to be pretty battle-hardened. They’ve been around for years, they never believe any of the stunts and their capacity to be hurt by them is, as a result, pretty limited. These Kaylors criticize sometimes, but they tend to fall back in line eventually and mostly adopt a “let’s wait and see how this all shakes out” approach. The problem is that I would say these “chilled” Kaylors are the minority. For their own sanity they curate their blog experience and often don’t post the more negative anons they get. Which is fine, but if you were looking at it from the outside, I could see how it might create an impression that the fandom as a whole can roll with the punches. And for a lot of the silent majority, that’s not the case. 

But again, I can see how Taylor might not necessarily know that. She went quiet after the Grammys, when I might have expected more celebratory posts from her. If I had to guess, I’d say she didn’t expect the backlash. I’m especially noticing a backlash against her for allowing Karlie to take so many hits while her own reputation has never been better. And I can’t defend her on that one, except to say I hope she has a plan. But I understand where people are coming from when they say the songs aren’t enough and actions speak louder than words. It’s tough to watch. 

Still, we’re in a position we should realistically have been able to see coming. We should have known Jerk wasn’t going to be out of the picture immediately after the birth. This is one of those things nobody likes, but maybe we all just have to be patient on. I don’t see Karlie busting out of the closet to admit her marriage was a fake, or testifying to the FBI. I think she’ll just let her marriage quietly fall apart, as many real marriages did during the pandemic. And for that to work, she needs to make it look like didn’t throw away a family unit lightly. Hence the “I tried” post, the social media break, and the suggestions of spending time with Jerk’s family. All of this can be spun later into a narrative of Karlie having tried to make it work, only to never really be accepted. The hate online affected her mental health and she gradually realized how unhappy she’d become and decided she needed to break free and find her old self again for her baby’s sake. This is the most likely narrative for Karlie’s freedom and it’s one that could work - but it’s going to take time to unfold. Personally, I’m giving it a year. If we don’t see a separation by then, and definitive moves to a reunited Kaylor, I’ll be bowing out. I’ll still know what I believe the truth to be, but I won’t see the need to devote my energy to defending it. ,

Meanwhile, the masters rerecords are about to be released, and Taylor has invested a lot in their success. Because of this, I can’t envision her coming out until at least the big three (Fearless, 1989, and Red) have dropped. She might drop hints, but I don’t expect anything earth-shattering. Even the order of the album releases seems to confirm this. She’s breaking out the big guns first. 

I’ve seen people speculate that because Rep can’t be rerecorded until 2022, Taylor will hold off on any coming out until then. And I’m not so sure of that. Yes, people listening to the album for clues would give Scott and Scooter money, but if we’re being honest, a fair amount of people are probably listening to those albums already, regardless of the drama. Those sleazeballs are profiting from Rep, full stop. But if Taylor profits more, from her bigger albums, she still wins. And she can still put out a Taylor’s version of Rep with vault tracks and collabs, to seduce people away from the Big Machine version in early 2022. Honestly, I think there’s a good chance Taylor would consider this is a worthwhile trade-off anyway, if it meant she got to live a more open life with Karlie - and most crucially, begin to repair Karlie’s reputation. As children get older and the world begins to leave the pandemic behind, it becomes harder to live behind closed doors. I guess we’ll find out how Taylor finds the reality of such a life, and what she considers worth sacrificing to step away from it. 

All this to say: I can’t predict the future more than anyone else, but I don’t think the situation we’re in now is irreparable, and if we’re being really objective, I don’t think it’s even surprising. I do think Taylor should give us something, if she wants to keep us around. No-one can live on a complete absence of hope, and as I’ve stated, letting the fandom dwindle to this extent has its own dangers. But I think we also need to keep our time frames realistic, even if it means rejecting lifelines like the Spade riddles. We shouldn’t expect Karlie to be free of Jerk for around a year, and we shouldn’t expect Taylor to do anything much beyond general music promo until at least the big three have dropped. Sucks to say it, I know. But at least this way we won’t be disappointed, and if Kaylor do pull a wild card and move towards freedom, we can be pleasantly surprised. 

Just my two cents. 

___________________

Well written and fair arguments on our reactions and expectations. I had typed up more, but I will let others post their comments before I chime in.

[thelastloveralive]

FALL 21 : A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE 💌

PRELUDE 

I’ve communicated with my God more than ever these days and I believe I was guided to begin expressing myself and my life’s experiences through the creation of carefully curated playlists. It’s a direct path to hearing my heart’s voice and it allows me to communicate with the world without having to say a single word. SUMMER ’21 was just an assortment of songs that reminded me of him, for him. FALL ’21, however, was created to update my loved ones on where I am mentally and emotionally.

I genuinely believe the intro found me. I don’t even remember how I found it which is very unlike me, but I stumbled across it a day prior to the fall equinox. It’s a message to a saint. I pray that through my vulnerability, you can come to understand the strength that comes with it and love yourself as much as I loved you, and I mean every aspect of yourself. 

So here I am, bad news in hand and my heart on my sleeve.

I was patient. I thought that was the lesson the universe wanted to teach me at the time, so I waited and I waited and you still wouldn’t reveal how you truly felt. I believe the orchestrated instrumental on bad news perfectly captured my desperation to make things work, but eventually I had to take a step back and look at things from a new perspective and see was this something I still wanted. The first bad news I received internally was that I would have to bring our story to an end before it truly began. “Like a crip set, I got way too many blues for any more bad news.” Little did I know, the next delivery of news would change the entire trajectory of my life and would come in externally just four days before FALL ’21 was released. 

I. FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS

Dear June, in the simplest terms, summer was madness. HOV wrote you a letter for me. Please, believe me when I say no love was lost when I let you go, I just knew that I had to choose myself. I let you go because I knew that if it was our destiny to be together we would reunite and if not, I understood that all good things eventually have to come to an end. I think I also just needed time to accept that we’d never be more than what we were, even though it felt like the plan was for us to build something together. All of that went out the window when you wouldn’t admit that you felt it too.

Imagine me passenger seat in a friend’s car saying that it’s ended, but they’ve heard this entire spiel time and time again so they don’t know believe a word that I’m saying, but eventually summer had to end. After all, it is just a season. 

I began to grow more and more angry, but we all know anger is a secondary emotion. At times, I wished that I had left you alone in June, but then all the memories wouldn’t exist, and you’d only exist digitally, my lil NFT. 

If and when summer does end, I just ask you don’t try to forget about me. I know it’s hard to lose what we had, but don’t push the thoughts and memories away the way that you did me.

II. SHADOWS

During summer, I saw the same 3 people almost daily and things were cool, until they weren’t.  I was changing and growing and I acknowledged that these summer friends wouldn’t be coming into the next season of my life because I didn’t like the direction our relationship was moving in, so I communicated that, maybe not as transparently as I would now, but I’ve grown since then. In a fit of anger, I made a mistake grouping a loved one with the rest of their counterparts and burned a bridge that was still being built. I’ve since learned not to react when I’m emotional. I’ve been trying to stabilize my emotions more and more recently and I’m very proud of myself for the growth that I’ve experienced, but I’m aware that they still are not completely stable and I don’t think they ever will be.

Prior to this situation, I’ve never ended a relationship and had someone go online and defame my character, but I also understand that there was a lesson in all of this. If I would’ve truly known the person I was with I would’ve expected that. I believe there were a few lessons here, the main one being you only attract inauthenticity when you are not being 1000% yourself. 

A wise man told me don’t argue with fools cause people from a distance cant tell who is who. That being said I decided to leave it be and let people think what they want to think cause there was nothing I felt I needed to clear up. I know my truth and I know the truth about those that spoke on me. Again, anger is a secondary emotion.

I try not to allow people to bring that darkness out of me. However comma…it is always on stand by, I just hate to revert back to those ways. Generally and genuinely, if you don’t like me that’s fine, but you know…watch ya mouth. 

III. SOMETHING HAS TO CHANGE

Your future is a reflection of the choices you make in the present. If you’re asking for new outcomes you cant continue to do things that have rarely, if ever, benefitted you. Ask anyone whose known me pre-pandemic, I always said I’d never stop, but Kareem off the drugs. Kareem quit the weed. Love is all I need. 

God told me to stop long before I stopped and not to say I didn’t listen, but damn was it a battle. As I write this I’ve finally stopped completely and the last time I smoked was thanksgiving. 

“If it’s not how I want it, it’s just how i need it.” Sobriety may not have been what I wanted in order to reach new heights, but it was definitely needed. Tyler said “some of yall should put that fucking blunt down and go do what the fuck you know you need to do, do it for yourself” so now I will.

IV. PAPI’S HOME

OH SHIT! 

When making this portion of the playlist the intention was to really just talk my shit and manifest my bounce back, success, abundance, and peace of mind. Little did I know certain parts were prophecy, but we’ll save that for the winter breakdown.

I don’t need to say much else at this point the rest of this was for me and anyone else who listened and had certain lyrics stick with them.

“What a joy it is to be alive…Everyday’s another chance to get it right.”

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7pHhdZxd3zDx27J6wtQcE5?si=75cce1a576ed4c7c

[novelconcepts]

Jamie & Dani short prompt- Online Dating au meeting online and being from bad past relationship. Thank u

This is probably a bad idea. It is, isn’t it? Almost certainly.

Why is she here?

Dani Clayton has been playing this particular set of thoughts--bad idea, terrible idea, why would you do this?--on repeat for three days. Ever since setting up that dating profile. Ever since realizing there isn’t much use in setting up a dating profile if you’re not going to use it. 

Oh, it’s all fun and games, building the thing. Find a photo that accentuates all the best parts of your face--Dani, after an hour of careful consideration, wound up going with one that accentuated her hair, more than anything, but she suspects the same idea counts. Then, the profile. What do you like? Teaching, long walks, new experiences, bad coffee. What don’t you like? 

Men, she’d thought, and snorted aloud into her wine before settling on: Deep water, accordion music, expectations, being called Danielle. 

A little more flourish, tipsy keystrokes, a casually-framed short-version of her life. Perfect. And then...well, then you hit the publish button, don’t you? You decide, for better or worse, to jump off this diving board and see just how far you can stand to swim before the energy gives out on you.

The faces appearing before her hadn’t been bad, certainly. Pretty, most of them. Interesting, a few. Still, she hadn’t swiped right on any--once or twice, because she’d forgotten which way meant yes please, but mostly because no one seemed quite...right. Which, she’d thought, was silly. The whole point of an app like this is to cast as many nets as possible and see what comes up. The whole point is to have fun. 

But every time she’d hovered over a promising image, a woman who likes dogs, or plays the violin, or goes rock-climbing in her spare time, she’d thought of him. Eddie. Who had taken one yes to a single date, and tried to make a whole life with her out of it. 

Eddie, who had taken her two decades to pull away from. 

What if the women here were the same? Not Eddie, exactly, but--presumptive. What if they believed a swipe-right was as good as a marriage proposal? What if she got bound up in conversation, and then a date, and then a relationship with someone else who just didn’t fit right?

Left. Left. Left. 

And then: the mistake.

She hadn’t meant to swipe right. Exactly. She hadn’t planned, maybe is the better way of putting it, on swiping right. She’d only wanted to look at the woman’s profile a little longer. Only wanted to inspect the facets this woman had put out on display with almost resigned simplicity. 

Some people, Dani had by now realized, wrote poetry and paragraphs to describe themselves. 

Jamie Taylor had bullet points.

“Gardener. English. Likes: Plants. Stories. Tea. Dislikes: Bullshit.”

The end. That had been quite literally the sum of it. Gardener. English. No bullshit.

But the picture, somehow, Dani hadn’t been able to look away from. Not because of carefully-arranged lighting, not because of a curated model-clean image--but because the woman appeared to have posted the photo almost under duress. It came in profile, as though someone else had done the job, her head turned toward the camera as if interrupted. Her hands were buried in a flower pot. Her clothes were simple--a tank top, a silver chain resting against the jut of collarbones, a pair of worn-looking jeans with holes in the knees. Her eyes--some fascinating color Dani couldn’t quite place--looked somewhere between amused and irritated. 

She looked real. 

Stupid, Dani thinks now--because that was probably the idea, wasn’t it? This woman, Jamie, had planned to look exactly this way. Real. Vexed at the idea of putting herself out there. Reluctantly available. 

It was a ploy, certainly--but one that seems to be working, because not only did Dani accidentally-not-accidentally swipe right, she found herself texting the woman. For hours. She’d expected much less, had figured this Jamie person would be as brief in text as she had been in bio, but...

Jamie had talked to her. Willingly. Teasingly, with more humor than truth, maybe, but with no sign at all that she was sick of Dani’s questions, bad jokes, nervous assessment that I really don’t do this, I honestly don’t get it. 

I don’t, either, Jamie had replied, and that had felt like enough of a reason to keep testing the waters. Enough of a reason to keep the conversation going back and forth, back and forth, until nearly two in the morning.

Shit, she’d said. I need to be at work in four hours. 

Shame, Jamie had replied, her tone already searingly familiar over text. Own your own business, make your own hours. Far wiser approach. 

I’ll make a note of it for when I found an elementary school, Dani had replied, laughing. She hadn’t said she’d already been in bed for an hour, the phone resting on the pillow beside her head so she wouldn’t miss the buzz of a new message. It had seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, with wine-warmed blood and the happy haze of good conversation. Jamie made her laugh. Jamie put her at ease. Jamie might not have been real, but she felt real, and that was good. 

Better than anything she’d felt in years, if she was honest with herself. 

Still, when the next day had come and gone with no message, she’d thought, Fair enough. Jamie had been good virtual company for one night. It was more than she’d expected to get out of this app.

Far more than she’d expected, particularly when Thursday night rolled around and her phone buzzed.

Teacher, yeah? No school on Saturday?

Correct, Dani had replied, as amused by the out-of-left-field text as she was irritated with how her stomach had flipped over upon receiving it. You have figured out the complexity of the American school system. 

I am a genius, Jamie sent back, followed quickly by: Drinks tomorrow night? 

Drinks. A thing that people do. A thing that adult people do for date reasons. 

She isn’t real, she’d thought, even as her thumb was punching back: How’s 8? Miller’s?

A mistake. Definitely a mistake. Because the app had been a lark, and the conversation had been too easy, and the fact that she can’t quite pick out the colors in Jamie’s eyes from a single photo is making her crazier than she’d like to admit. 

A mistake, saying yes. A mistake, suggesting the local pub-like establishment around the corner, whose beer-and-burger specials had kept her fed on too many evenings spent working late. A mistake, because once this goes south--as it’s absolutely bound to, as everything Eddie-shaped always has--she’s going to lose her favorite hangout in the deal, too.

And yet: here she is. Standing at the door, wondering if the outfit chosen for the evening festivities--tight jeans, pink blouse, hoop earrings--is too much or not nearly enough. 

What am I doing here?

Maybe, she thinks with mingled alarm and hope, she won’t even have showed up. Maybe it’s all part of the ruse: look approachable, look human and normal, look a little too beautiful in the most grounded way possible--then, cheerfully, invite a woman to drinks and just don’t show. A fun story for whoever comes next. Can you believe she thought I’d want to meet her after one night of texting?

“Dani?” 

English, Dani thinks with a sudden rush of heat. Right. Somehow, she hadn’t quite been prepared for the accent, which--coming out of this woman, draped with languid ease at a table--is truly a little more than Dani thinks she can handle just now. The accent, combined with the mess of curls dragged back from her face, and a dress sense that manages to be both casual and deeply attractive at the same time, is...

“Jamie,” she says, her voice a little lower, a little more hoarse, than is truly necessary. The woman pushes up from her seat, a small-framed figure in a black button-down, suspenders, ripped jeans. She’s pressing a hand toward Dani, offering a firm shake as though they are business partners, not an off-the-cuff bad idea of a date. “You look--”

“Never been here before,” Jamie says, almost apologetically. She gestures for Dani to sit before dropping back down in a sprawl that implies exactly the opposite of what her mouth is insisting. “Wasn’t sure about the, ah, dress code.”

“You--you did fine,” Dani tells her, wishing suddenly she’d gone for a dress. Or a  different human body altogether. She feels too tightly-strung, too anxious for the easy smile on Jamie’s lips. “Um. You’re very. In person.”

“Very,” Jamie repeats, a hint of uncertainty in her voice. “Is very American for wish I’d gone left, after all?”

“No. No. Absolutely not. That.” Bit too forceful, she suspects, judging by the smile spreading into a grin. “No, it’s just--your picture didn’t--tell me you’d be so...”

“Clean?” Jamie suggests innocently. She raises her hands, wiggling her fingers in a small wave. “Scrub up fine, when I need to. Seemed to call for it.”

“And you...sure did answer,” Dani says stupidly. “The. Call, I mean. I’m sorry, I really don’t do this often.”

Something seems to soften in Jamie, her smile less teasing as she leans across the table. “Hey, no worries here. Same person you were talking to the other night.”

Dani nods, embarrassed, and flags down a server. Drinks ordered, she draws in a deep breath.

“I mean, I haven’t done this in years. Or. Ever, I guess.”

“A first date?” Jamie asks. When Dani doesn’t answer, she adds in a knowing tone, “A date with a woman?”

“Both,” Dani says honestly. “My last relationship was--well, I mean, we were engaged--”

Jamie whistles under her breath, reaching up to scratch her head. “Blimey. What happened?”

“He’s...him.” It’s too much to go into on a first date, too much to explain, even though talking to Jamie over text had been so dangerously easy. “My best friend growing up, but that was...growing up.”

Jamie nods thoughtfully, tilting her chin in thanks when the server deposits two full pint glasses and a basket of fries on the table. “Rough time, sounds like. I can relate. My last relationship also did not go well.”

“Was he also a man who thought you’d be all too happy to quit your job and take care of a bunch of babies?” Dani asks, perhaps a little too bitterly for the occasion. Jamie flashes another grin, sipping her drink.

“She was a woman who thought I’d be all too happy to take the fall when she got busted for possession.”

Dani gapes. “Oh. Oh--I didn’t know--I’m so--”

Jamie shrugs. “She wasn’t wrong. I was nineteen, and deeply stupid. Live and learn, as the poets say.”

“Which poets?” Dani asks, smiling a little. Jamie’s brow furrows.

“John...Lennon, possibly? Hard to say. Anyway, relationships are a chore and a half, but the greatest people in the world tell me thirty is too old to play musical bedframes, so. Here we are.”

No bullshit, thinks Dani approvingly. For what little she’d put into her profile, Jamie evidently hadn’t been lying about that.

“You haven’t been in a relationship since you were nineteen?”

“In my mind, I was still in the relationship at twenty-four, when they let me out. She didn’t agree. Found out she’d been married two years, by then.” Something darkens in Jamie’s eyes for a moment. She sighs. “Like I said. Not my finest. But I am, as they say, a shining beacon of reform these days.”

“Now, when you say they,” Dani teases, grinning. Jamie nods decisively. 

“John Lennon. Definitively.”

There it is, thinks Dani, watching Jamie pop a fry into her mouth. There, the easy roll of conversation from the other night. As though they’ve known each other forever. As though two people who have thus far failed irrevocably at relationships make a perfect match.

Easy, she thinks. Don’t go wild, now. 

“So,” she says, when the comfortable silence between them has grown a bit too comfortable for the setting, “who are the greatest people in the world? The ones who tell you thirty is too old for...did you say musical bedframes?”

Jamie laughs. The ring of it curls gently around Dani’s head like a soft hand, a sound she’ll find herself replaying later with a skipping heart. 

“Not many willing to put up with a grump of my caliber, but Hannah and Owen fight the good fight. So long as I at least pretend to try.”

“Let me guess. They set up the account for you?”

Jamie makes a sort of gesture in the air with the hand not holding her glass. “Threatened to bury me in puns and children, respectively, if I kept putting it off. Owen’s still grumpy about the photo choice.”

“I liked it,” Dani says without thinking. Jamie raises an eyebrow.

“Well, you did swipe as much. Mind if I ask why?”

Walked into this one. Still, she doesn’t mind as much as she probably should, not with the genuine curiosity in Jamie’s eyes. “You looked--don’t laugh.”

“No promises,” Jamie says, but with the gentle tone of one who knows exactly how much to tease before it’ll hurt. The idea warms Dani in a way she’s not quite ready to look at yet.

“You looked real,” Dani says. “Like you weren’t going to play games, or waste anyone’s time. Like you just wanted to be happy in peace.”

“That is,” Jamie says, holding out a fry for Dani to take, “sort of the idea, yeah.”

There’s an almost puzzled cast to her smile, like she didn’t entirely expect this answer, and is pleased by it at the same time. That same sense from the photo sweeps over Dani now--that this woman is authentic, even if she’s not always shiny, that she’s kind even if not entirely clean. That she doesn’t have any interest in muddled expectation or living a comfortable lie.

“And me?” Dani asks. She doesn’t entirely mean to--but she’s sure, in asking, that Jamie will answer. Jamie is unlike anyone else she’s ever met, the first person she’s ever known to meet each question head-on. 

“Honestly?”

Dani nods. Jamie seems to consider it, turning it over in her head as she twists a fry between her fingers like a cigarette. 

“All of it.”

“That’s,” Dani begins to laugh, “that’s not--”

“No,” Jamie says, and she isn’t smiling, exactly. Her eyes have a sort of shine Dani likes very much, but there is no hint of teasing in them now. “Really. All of it. You’re...very pretty, and that’s--but the way you described yourself. Like you didn’t care to be anyone in particular. You like new experiences, and bad coffee. You hate being called Danielle. I...I wanted to know why.”

“It’s not my name,” Dani says simply. Jamie gives a brief laugh, her hand moving across the table to lightly brush Dani’s fingertips. 

“I wanted to know why all of it. Why do you like bad coffee--”

“It’s the only kind I know how to make,” Dani says automatically. “Just sort of leaned into it.”

“--and teaching--”

“I want to make a difference,” Dani says. 

“--and where you most like to go on those long walks--”

“Anywhere I can breathe,” Dani says. Her fingers are hesitant, tracing the tips of Jamie’s. There’s something electric about this, about barely touching, about barely knowing someone and still wanting to give them neatly-packaged secrets shaped like the mundane. 

Jamie is smiling. “See, that. I like that. All of it.”

It’s nothing, Dani thinks reflexively. A collection of details. A sparse approximation of a life. Eddie knows all of this, and then some, and never matched up to knowing her.

But this woman, leaning across the table with one hand outstretched, looks so different. Watches her with steady interest. Is listening to every word Dani says, though the bar is growing crowded around them, and soon, conversation will become a task instead of a gift.

“Would you,” Dani says, feeling certain that some mistakes are not as bad as they seem, “like to take one of those walks?”

“Tonight?” 

“Yeah. Tonight.” Emboldened by the smile, by the curl falling into Jamie’s eyes, by the knowledge that she still can’t quite make out what color those eyes are, Dani takes her hand. It’s so easy, she thinks she could do it even without looking. “Right now.”

No bullshit, she thinks. No expectations. Just Jamie looking at her like she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing. Dani can’t blame her. This isn’t at all what she’d thought she was getting, walking in tonight. 

But there’s something about it--something about the feeling that she’s been here before, or should be here forever, or will always find her way back to a woman who looks at her just like this--that almost makes her feel brave. Almost makes her feel wonderful. She rises from the table, laying cash beneath her half-empty glass, and feels a pleasant jolt in her chest when Jamie follows without another word.

If this a mistake, she thinks as they step out into the brisk evening air, it’s one she’s hungry to make. 

[killianmesmalls]

On your comments about Jack: ye-es, in the sense that Jack is a character who definitely deserved better than he was treated by the characters. The way Dean especially treats him reflects very badly on Dean, no question. But, speaking as a viewer, I think the perspective needs to shift a little bit.

To me, Jack is Dawn from Buffy, or Scrappy Doo. He’s an (in my opinion) irritating kid who is introduced out of nowhere to be both super vulnerable and super OP, and the jeopardy is centered around him in a way that has nothing to do with his actual character or relationships. He’s mostly around to be cute and to solve or create problems — he never has any firm character arcs or goals of his own, nor any deeper purpose in the meta narrative. In this way, he’s a miss for SPN, which focuses heavily on conflicts as metaphors for real life.

Mary fits so much better in that framework, and introducing her as a developed, flawed person works really well with the narrative. It is easy for us to care about Mary, both as the dead perfect mother on the pedestal and as the flawed, human woman who could not live up to her sons’ expectations. That connection is built into the core of SPN, and was developed over years, even before she was a character. When she was added, she was given depth and nuance organically, and treated as a flawed, complex character rather than as a plot device or a contrivance. She was given a voice and independence, and became a powerful metaphor for developing new understandings of our parents in adulthood, as well as an interesting and well-rounded character. You care that she’s dead, not just because Sam and Dean are sad, but for the loss of her development and the potential she offered. So, in that sense, I think a lot of people were frustrated that she died essentially fridged for a second time, and especially in service of the arc of a weaker character.

And like, you’re right, no one can figure out if Jack is a toddler or a teenager. He’s both and he’s neither, because he’s never anything consistently and his character arc is always “whatever the plot needs it to be.” Every episode is different. Is he Dean’s sunny opportunity to be a parent and make up for his dad’s shitty parenting? Yes! Is he also Dean’s worst failure and a reminder that he has done many horrible things, including to “innocent” children? Yes! Is he Cas’s child? Yes! Is he Dean’s child? Yes! But also, no! Is he Sam’s child? Yes! Is he a lonely teenager who does terrible things? Yes! Is he a totally innocent little lamb who doesn’t get why what he is doing is wrong? Yes! Is he the most powerful being in the universe? Yes! Does he need everyone to take care of him? Yes! Is he just along for the ride? Yes! Is he responsible for his actions? Kinda??? Sometimes??? What is he???

Mary as a character is narratively cohesive and fleshed-out. Jack is a mishmash of confusing whatever’s that all add up to a frustrating plot device with no consistent traits to latch on to. Everything that fans like about him (cute outfits, gender play, well-developed parental bonds with the characters) is fanon. So, yes, the narrative prioritizes Mary. Many fans prioritize Mary, at least enough that Dean’s most heinous acts barely register. To the narrative (not to Cas, which is a totally different situation), Jack is only barely more of a character than Emma Winchester, who Sam killed without uproar seasons earlier. He’s been around longer, but he’s equally not really real.

I debated on responding to this because, to tell the truth, I think we fundamentally disagree on a number of subjects and, as they say, true insanity is arguing with anyone on the internet. However, you spent a lot of time on the above and I feel it's only fair to say my thoughts, even if I don't believe it will sway you any more than what you said changed my opinions.

I'm assuming this was in response to this post regarding how Jack's accidental killing of Mary was treated so severely by the brothers, particularly Dean, because it was Mary and, had it been a random character like the security guard in 13x06, it would have been treated far differently. However, then the argument becomes less about the reaction of the Winchester brothers to this incident and more the value of Jack or Mary to the audience.

I believe we need to first admit that both characters are inherently archetypes—Mary as the Madonna character initially then, later, as a metaphor for how imperfect and truly human our parents are compared to the idol we have as children, and Jack as the overpowered child who is a Jesus allegory by the end. Both have a function within the story to serve the Winchester brothers, through whose lens and with whose biases we are meant to view the show's events. We also need to admit that the writers didn't think more than a season ahead for either character, especially since it wasn't initially supposed to be Mary that came back at the end of season 11 but John, and they only wrote enough for Jack in season 13 to gauge whether or not the audience would want him to continue on or if he needed to be killed off by the end of the season. Now, I know we curate our own experiences online which leads to us being in our own fandom echo chambers, however it is important to note that the character was immediately successful enough with the general audience that, after his first episode or two, he was basically guaranteed a longer future on the show.

I have to admit, I’m not entirely sure why the perspective of how his character is processed by some audience members versus others has any bearing on the argument that he deserved to be treated better overall by the other characters especially when taking their own previous actions in mind. I’m not going to tell you that your opinion is wrong regarding your feelings for Jack. It’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it, it harms no one to have it and express it. My feelings on Jack are clearly very different from your own, but this is really just two different people who processed a fictional person in different ways. I personally believe he has a purpose in the Winchesters’ story, including Castiel’s, as he reflects certain aspects of all of them, gives them a way to explore their own histories through a different perspective, and changes the overall dynamic of Team Free Will from “soldiers in arms” to a family (Misha’s words). In the beginning he allows Sam to work through his past as the “freak” and powerful, dangerous boy wonder destined to bring hell on earth. With Dean, his presence lets Dean work through his issues with John and asks whether he will let history repeat itself or if he’ll work to break the cycle. Regarding Cas, in my opinion he helps the angel reach his “final form” of a father, member of a family, lover and protector of humanity, rebellious son, and the true show of free will. 

From strictly the story, he has several arcs that work within themes explored in Supernatural, such as the argument of nature versus nurture, the question of what we’re willing to give up in order to protect something or someone else and how ends justify the means, and the struggle between feeling helpless and powerless versus the corruptive nature of having too much power and the dangerous lack of a moral compass. His goals are mentioned and on display throughout his stint on the show, ones that are truly relatable to some viewers: the strong desire to belong—the need for family and what you’ll do to find and keep it. 

With Mary, we first need to establish whether the two versions of her were a writing flaw due to the constant change in who was dictating her story and her relationship to the boys, which goes against the idea that her characterization was cohesive and fleshed-out but, rather, put together when needed for convenience, or if they both exist because, as stated above, we are seeing the show primarily through the biased lens of the Winchester brothers and come to face facts about the true Mary as they do. Like I said in my previous post, I don’t dislike Mary and I don’t blame her for her death (either one). However, I do have a hard time seeing her as a more nuanced, fleshed-out character than Jack. True, a lot of her problems are more adult in nature considering she has to struggle with losing her sons’ formative years and meeting them as whole adults she knows almost nothing about, all because of a choice she made before they were born. 

However, her personal struggles being more “mature” in nature (as they center primarily on parental battles) doesn’t necessarily mean her story has layers and Jack’s does not. They are entirely different but sometimes interconnected in a way that adds to both of their arcs, like Mary taking Jack on as an adoptive son which gives her the moments of parenting she lost with Sam and Dean, and Jack having Mary as a parental figure who understands and supports him gives him that sense of belonging he had just been struggling with to the point of running away while he is also given the chance to show “even monsters can do good”. 

I’d also argue that Jack being many ages at once isn’t poor writing so much as a metaphor for how, even if you’re forced to grow up fast, that doesn’t mean you’re a fully equipped adult. I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I believe Jack simultaneously taking a lot of responsibility and constantly trying to prove to others he’s useful while having childish moments is relatable to some who were forced to play an adult role at a young age. He proves a number of times that he doesn’t need everyone to take care of him, but he also has limited life experience and, as such, will make some mistakes while he’s also being a valuable member of the group. Jack constantly exists on a fine line in multiple respects. Some may see that as a writing flaw but it is who the character was conceived to be: the balance between nature or nurture, between good and evil, between savior and devil. 

Now, I was also frustrated Mary was “fridged” for a second time. It really provided no other purpose than to give the brothers more man pain to further the plot along. However, this can exist while also acknowledging that the way it happened and the subsequent fallout for Jack was also unnecessary and a sign of blatant hypocrisy from Dean, primarily, and Sam. 

And, yes, Jack can be different things at once because, I mean, can’t we all? If Mary can be both the perfect mother and the flawed, independent, distant parent, can’t Jack be the sweet kid who helps his father-figures process their own feelings on fatherhood while also being a lost young-adult forcing them to face their failures? Both characters contain multitudes because, I mean, we all do. 

I can provide articles or posts on Jack’s characterization and popularity along with Mary’s if needed, but for now I think this is a long enough ramble on my thoughts and feelings. I’m happy to discuss more, my messenger is always open for (polite) discussion. Until then, I’m going to leave it at we maybe agree to disagree. 

[remythologise]

Hello! I found your blog via you amazingly summarizing all that's going on with the spn drama. Due to my schedules, rl stuff, some of the arcs that didn't vibe with me, my availability to find a place to watch...the rollercoaster I was used to with this fandom was more me binging it in a weekend to going months to over a year without watching it. I still haven't watched the last season(but with a fandom this big it's pretty impossible not be spoiled so I more or less know what happened) BUT oh great one I ask of thee for more information if you have it...other than being busy and whatnot, I'm not really one to keep up with the actors as well. So could you also maybe do a summary of all the stans? I'im seeing terms I haven't seen before. Who is Kelios(sp?)? Hellions?? probably messed it up but like...I guess what are the name of each legion? Who do they have alliance towards? What was their desires? Que paso?!?!?!?

Hi there! 'Some of the arcs that didn't vibe with me' me emotionally quitting Supernatural in Season 7 after they killed Castiel 😂 Anyway I totally get it, I went through the same culture shock mid-last year when I got back into SPN and tried to find where fandom was at! There's really a LOT of lore and content after 15 years though so I'll just do the broad brushstrokes based on my impressions and personal stereotypes PLEASE remember this is oversimplifying groups and individuals to tendencies and I'm very biased! Also important that there are sub-factions within sub-factions - again, I'm simplifying here!

I've also linked to the 'Super-wiki' in terms of some definitions because the Super-wiki has pages for them where the Fandom-wiki does not. Great introduction actually - only in the Supernatural fandom. There are two Supernatural wikis. One, through curation and twitter activity, supports BiBro/Wincest factions and does not support Destiel users. One is more neutral or Destiel-friendly (I don't know that the Fandom wiki has a personality/social media presence per se). You cannot make this up. There is a factional war... within use of fandom wikis.

Destiel faction

People who primarily ship Dean/Cas, love Castiel and (often, although not always) Jack, and the 'found family' of Supernatural as well as the brothers, and like the post s3 seasons too. Hated 15.19 and 15.20 for killing Dean and ignoring the other characters/narrative arc of the show. Nicknamed 'Destihellers' by the Wincest faction as a derogatory term, 'reclaimed' and shortened as 'Hellers', a nickname they use affectionately to describe each other. See more info on nicknames here.

Sometimes also ship ‘Cockles’ (the ship between Misha Collins and Jensen Ackles) although generally speaking they're more respectful of the wives of the actors than J2 shippers, who are notoriously responsible for... a vast series of insane-fan misdemeanours. Historically most were also good at keeping RPF to themselves and not harassing celebrities with it directly, although recently, particularly with younger twitter fans, that has not been the case.

Sub-factions:

The ‘Desticule’ or ‘Destiel tumblr’ - general grouping of Destiel-shipping tumblr users around 20-30 years old, usually LGBT+, most who came back to the show post-15.18 after leaving it for various reasons including getting sick of the queerbaiting. Funniest bitches alive etc. and responsible for the best text posts you’ve ever seen. Can also start stupid discourse and in-group drama when they’re bored.

'POLOL' - People of Lots of Letters, a discord group (of tumblr and twitter users) that ran on the assumption Andrew Dabb was playing a hugely intricate game of 3D chess to do with gnostic symbolism among other things, and would make Destiel canon. Have since had their own factional sub-wars and fallen apart a bit. Some of their meta was and is good and interesting! Some of it was wildly off the mark. Now generally insist that Dabb/the writers were all pushing for Destiel canon and the network is entirely to blame.

Twitter fans (TikTok edition) - younger fans around 18 and younger who (FOR REASONS BEYOND ME) started watching the show around 2018-2020. Definition of 'stans'. Tend to be very loud and aggressive on twitter when Events Happen, which like. I do get, because they've grown up in a completely different media environment and this kind of Dinosaur Politicking around LGBT+ issues is beyond them. Fancam central. Anyway stream #CASTIEL for clear skin!

Twitter fans (AO3 edition) - older fans around 30+ who kept going with the show but either don't have a large tumblr presence or just prefer twitter. A lot of fic writers, GISH-ers, and BNFs in this group. Some of them are very cool and reasonable in their opinions, some of them act like the younger stans. Some of them too accepting of what happened wrt 15.19-20 in my opinion, because, in contrast to the younger twitter stans, they grew up expecting Destiel to NEVER be canon or respected. 'Can't believe we got this far' etc.

Multiship faction

Multishippers or shippers of things not as large as the two main behemoths . Sub-factions based on shipping, e.g. Megstiel and Sastiel. I don't think these groups are very large though, and seem to have very little influence in the Discourse.

Wincest faction

LARGE overlap with the 'BiBro' faction and their opinions, which I'll get to. Ship Sam and Dean romantically. Often pretend to be BiBros on places like twitter and reddit in order for outside groups to take their opinions more seriously. 'Wincesties' etc. are derogatory nicknames given by the Destiel faction.

Sub-factions:

Multiship fans - ship Sam and Dean but respect Castiel/the 'found family'. Politically overlap with the faction of multishippers, I think. I don't have a lot of insight on this group of people honestly, but I know they exist.

Bronlies - the typical BiBro and 'Wincest' shippers most people think of, twitter user 'Kelios' is one of the would-be ringleaders of this faction - typically tend to be older white midwestern women. Historically have been pretty nasty on twitter (leading to Robert Berens, writer who made Destiel canon, occasionally subtweeting Kelios). Also tend to ship 'J2' - and take it very seriously as a legitimate thing that is really real. This is called 'tinhatting'.

BiBro faction

People who think the show should JUST be about the brothers, love Supernatural s1-3 and everything after it should have been just like Supernatural s1-3. Hate Castiel, Jack, and the 'found family'. Largely loved 15.20. Go to literally any comments section on any Supernatural article and You Will Find Them complaining about how the show should just be about the Brothers. Tend to be older, straighter, and more conservative/Republican (and male) fans. (I am aware that the definition of 'BiBro' used to refer to people who just liked the brothers but there's no definitional difference now in the discourse.) The Wincest and BiBro faction are generally much more wealthy than the Destiel faction (they being younger and more diverse/queer/left-leaning in general) and would be the biggest revenue generators at conventions etc.

Sub-factions:

Reddit bros - literally anyone who visits r/supernatural. Well, that's not fair - there are people who post reasonable opinions on there, but it's pretty rare and they get downvoted a lot. Like to talk about 'toxic Destiel fans' 'ruining the show' and how Dean is a straight man who is straight and could never possibly be gay. Might even think the confession was platonic despite all evidence to the contrary. I'm Not Homophobic I Have Gay Friends, But No Gays on MY Show!

Old Guard - group of older fans who overlap strongly with the Wincest faction, but might not necessarily ship Wincest.

GA faction

'General Audience' - These are the group of audience members that aren't 'online' so to speak; most watch the show on TV as a Casual Viewing Experience (are therefore also sometimes referred to as 'casuals'. Mostly their opinions tend towards BiBros, but they have a vast range of baffling views thanks to being Not Online and usually Not caring about Supernatural that much or thinking that deeply about it.

Sub-factions:

People who simply watch Supernatural on TV and then don't think about it very much after that.

I said they weren't 'online' but that's not entirely true; I'd probably classify people on Supernatural Facebook Groups as GA, along with friends of friends who post statuses about how 15.20 was a neat finale that wrapped up the series.

Conclusion

Supernatural is famously the show that appeals to both Republicans and Democrats, literally All Orientations, so there's a WIDE range of factions. However, most warring online boils down to Destiel vs. Wincest/BiBro - the war that started in Season 4 and has simply never ended. In terms of the 'actors' and their stans, in general, Wincest/BiBro fans love Jared, like Jensen, and dislike Misha. Destiel fans love Misha, like Jensen, and dislike Jared. Of course as with everything, there are variations and this is just a generalisation. But that's the summary of it, from my perspective!

This didn't even get into Sam girls, Dean girls and Cas girls. God. Anyway.

Hope that answered your question, anon!

[fallout-lou-begas]

Regarding @yesjejunus:

(mentions of rape, abuse, and trauma herein)

I have never made an effort to hide it on my blog before, but I want to make it clear that yesjejunus is my friend and I care about them. If you ask me, it should be extremely transparent to all onlookers that the attack against them this week is motivated by more of a personal grudge and obsessive vendetta than any actual concern for the "well-being" of anyone "endangered" by them, evidenced further by the poaching of personal information gleaned from defunct social media profiles for no actionable reason other than intimidation, the willfully outlandish misinterpretations of inside jokes between friends, and the mutilation of the definition of "grooming" and the excessive outright fabrications required to distort their friendship with some adults who happen to be younger than themself into allegations of predation on minors. Yejejunus has not ever actually done anything remotely justifying this punitive severity to any other human being, and if you have your own grievances about their art, then no one is holding, and no one has ever held, a gun to your head to force you to like them, or like their art or seek it out. The sheer volume of harassment that they have received for scarcely more than fanfiction and fanart that people can avoid on their own terms through proper tag filtering or blocking is frankly unjustifiable.

If you are upset by a work of art that you encounter in fandom or otherwise then it is not an interpersonal conflict between you and the artist. The artist has not harmed you, the artist doesn't even know you. Artists may have a responsibility to utilize tags and warnings appropriately on broad or big-tent platforms, and yesjejunus fulfilled this responsibility thoroughly, but ultimately an individual is responsible for their own artistic consumption and for avoiding the art that they want to avoid themself. If there is something that you are entirely incapable of seeing even a hint of without lapsing into some kind of retraumatization, and an artist tags art containing this thing appropriately, then the onus is on you to have it filtered out and the failure is on you if you have not. Assuming that every individual artist must be held "accountable" for whether their art could possibly upset someone or not, and assuming that any given individual is helplessly incapable of avoiding art that makes them upset, is a destructive perspective that flattens the ability of artists to create that which means a lot to them personally, lest their own experiences discomfort some hypothetical audience, and regardless of whether it may provide catharsis or revelation for another.

Additionally, to assume that any and all depiction of abuse of any kind is inherently an endorsement, or a "glamorization" or "fetishization," is to forget that discomfort can often be the point of a work of art, as it is in the case of horror. To be abused, or even to simply exist in an unhealthy relationship, is also to often endure complex, contradictory feelings in which hate and love and fear and dependence and violence and affection and misery and happiness exist hand-in-hand and even simultaneously. To treat portrayals of these kinds of relationships that embrace this uncomfortable nuance as "glorifying" them simply because it's not monochrome in a black-and-white morality play is both naive and insensitive. I also find the coercion of artists into disclosing their various traumas in order to "justify" their creation of their art, as if their trauma must be approved as sufficient by a committee, reprehensible; however I also do not believe that someone must inherently possess some form of trauma to depict it in art compassionately and meaningfully.

I also think that the mammoth amount of cognitive dissonance required to make this the hill that one dies on when the subject at hand is fanfiction and fanart of an 18+, rated-M video game series in which horrible and traumatic scenarios such as rape, slavery, domestic abuse, mass death, and graphic violence are depicted in abundance, and in certain ways with even less sensitivity or tact than the fanwork, shouldn't be lost on anyone, especially since you are far less able to excise these aspects from the source material than you are able to curate your participation in a fandom.

I want to reiterate that your opinions on yesjejunus, or me, or any user on tumblr or any artist on the planet are yours and yours alone to have. Who you follow, who you unfollow, who you block, and who you filter is purely your prerogative and you are encouraged to use any and all choices, tools, and mechanics at your disposal to avoid anyone that you wish, especially if it's for your own well-being. I wish that more people would utilize these options instead of cultivating a climate of fear and paranoia regarding who one “associates” with, and I do despise the term “associates” because it both reads far too much into a random reblog or reply, and reads far too little into a genuine friendship of mutual trust and care. Still, I am severely disappointed that I have to explain that the line is drawn at hounding an artist obsessively for years with flagrant disregard for their own trauma, blaming that artist for one's own complete failure to stop seeking out that which upsets them personally, and talking over or distorting the experiences and trauma of other people to suit one's own vindictive narrative, and this line has been crossed far, far beyond where it lays.

If you're offended or upset by this post then I beseech you to at the very least follow my advice in the previous paragraph and see yourself out, and may we only ever interact again at your deliberate discretion. If you refuse to do that and would rather call for my public quartering while using literally none of the myriad options at your disposal to remove me from your online experience at no charge, then go fuck yourself, and you may dislike my opinions but you can't un-laugh at my excellent shitposts.

Ed.: I would like to reblog this one more time add an addendum in order to bring attention to an update from yesjejunus themself about their side of the situation this week. They explain why they create the art that they do, as a method of coping with and processing their own trauma. It’s okay if you could not possibly imagine yourself coping with your own trauma, should you have it, in the same way. To label the creation of such art for such purposes as something inherently impermissible or ineffective is not only gravely insensitive but factually indefensible, and I must reiterate my own point that if how they do control their own trauma upsets or risks (re)traumatizing you, then why not ensure that you never see it by using the free and comprehensive blocking and filtering options available to you on this website instead of death marching someone who’s already deeply victimized? The word again is control. To control these traumas through fiction and art is an incredibly empowering, restorative thing, and to label this practice as nothing but harmful to others is to ignore the complex and multifacted ways in which trauma takes shape, or can be shaped.