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batmanisagatewaydrug · 2 months ago

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reading updates: august 2024

the good news is that I did a lot of reading this month, the bad news is that honestly? I think that my birthday month has had the biggest percentage of literary letdowns, duds, and outright bullshit than any other month of this year so far.

but at least there's plenty to talk about, so let's get going!

Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power (Devon Price, 2024) - uh oh gamers, we're starting on a doozy! I've enjoyed both of Price's previous books very much, but with Unlearning Shame I couldn't help but feel like I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I wasn't getting what I had signed on for. the issue, I think, could be corrected by an adjustment to the title, which seems to be promising a very broad tackling of the concept of shame and is therefore making some pretty big promises. in reality, the book is much more narrowly focused than that, interested primarily in the shame that arises in the activism-minded when they feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of awful things in the world and their perceived inability to do anything about it. fairly early on Price introduces an apparently relatable anecdote about himself and a friend having mutual breakdowns in a grocery store because they were both so paralyzed by the conundrum of trying to buy the most ethical groceries possible, and I realized this book was maybe not really for me or my particular experiences with shame. I think this book will be really helpful for a lot of people for sure, would love to pass it on to a lot of my freshmen, but overall it did not live up to the expectations I brought to the party.

A Separate Peace (John Knowles, 1959) - so I wanted to reread this because someone on here sent me an ask about, I don't know, my favorite required high school reading or whatever, and I said it was A Separate Peace but then I realized it's been over a decade since I read the book and I had to go see if it still actually held up. and god, does it EVER. this is such a brutal and heartbreaking novel, beginning in the last carefree summer that best friends and roommates Gene and Finny will experience before their final year at their boys' private school and their seemingly inevitable draft into WW2. although Gene is seethingly jealous of Finny's seemingly effortless charisma, popularity, confidence, and athletic prowess, the two boys are also inseparable - until a tragic injury changes the course of Finny's life forever. this book is a mess of unspoken pain, from the looming end of innocence on a global scale to the intimate ache of loving your best friend so, so much and having no healthy way to express it because you're a repressed little rich boy in the 1940s.

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea (Rita Chang-Eppig, 2023) - Chang-Eppig's debut novel follows the career of Chinese pirate Shek Yeung, also known as Zheng Yi Sao, immediately following the death of her husband, fearsome pirate Sheng Yi. you've probably seen a post or two about her floating around on this very hellsite, calling her a pirate queen and accompanied by this image:

Chang-Eppig isn't interested in portraying Shek Yeung as any kind of heroine or feminist icon; over and over again it's acknowledged that she's simply a woman who has survived massive hardships and will do whatever she needs to do to survive. manipulation? spying? extortion? torture? murder? you name it, she's done it, and she does not feel remorse. while the novel wasn't a knockout for me either in terms of plot or prose, it's nice to see an entry into the trend of "retelling" stories from history and mythology centered on women that isn't determined to justify every step a maligned woman ever made. Shek Yeung is what she is, and her story makes for a gritty, bloody adventure.

Victim (Andrew Boryga, 2024) - this book is pure sleazeball fun; if you've ever wondered what I consider a romp, this is it. Victim follows our manipulative king Javi Perez as he builds a writing career for himself by turning in one essay after another about racial discrimination that he never really experienced, inventing stories of hardship caused by racism and poverty from his college application essay to his school newspaper to the story that finally brings the whole lie crashing down when he stretches the truth too far. the novel is written like Javi's apology in the wake of getting #canceled, and while I do sometimes feel that this premise makes some of the writing seem a bit implausible (why would you admit that!!!) it's a fun setup for a scandal that would have been a bloodbath on the twitter of old. come get your mess!!!

Bad Girls (Camila Sosa Villada, trans. Kit Maude, 2022) - this is my first time reading Sosa Villada's work but OH BOY, do I need to seek out more. this is a skinty little novel following a dramatized account of the travesti (or transgender) women who live and sell sex in Córdoba, Argentina. the women build an unsteady but beautiful and magic-infused family under the protection of the ancient Auntie Encarna. the protagonist (who is named Camila Sosa Villada, no relation I'm sure) watches as her unconventional family grows, changes, and frays over time, struggling to find ways to stay afloat in a world that see them as disposable. Sosa Villada's turns of phrase are brilliant and searing, and she weaves fantastical elements so nimbly into her narrative that it's utterly believable to see women becoming animals and courting headless men in the streets of a modern city. strongly recommend for fans of Kai Cheng Thom's Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars.

Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism (Aileen Morteon-Robinson, 2000) - this book serves as a scathing literature review indicting Australia's white women anthropologists and feminist scholars for the ways in which they've dehumanized and discredited Aboriginal women, stripping them of the right to be authorities of their own experiences and barring them from a white-centered feminist movement. Moreton-Robinson's account is excellent, contrasting the wok of white women academics with the accounts of Aboriginal women to reveal exactly how massive the disparities in understanding are. as a USAmerican previously aware of Australia's colonial history but unfamiliar with the specifics, it was jarring to discover exactly how similar the mechanism of colonial violence are between my country and Australia, with countless genocidal parallels to be drawn. one particular highlight of the book comes via my purchase of a 20th anniversary edition, which includes a new post-script by Moreton-Robinson in which she dissects and responds to various criticisms of the book at its time of release, taking several critics to task for the belittling tone they used to describe her work and the tools white feminists use to absolve themselves of blame in the face of critique from women of color. fascinating and thorough articulation of Moreton-Robinson's point, and deservedly blistering. I love when academics call each other out by name.

The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance (Sabrina Strings, 2024) - so the thing about this book is that there are really good PARTS. Strings is still an excellent historical writer, and I found a lot to appreciate in, for instance, the segments on the history of Black American pimp culture and the analysis of Playboy and Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl. the more personal segments, where Strings contorts herself to fit her own failed relationships into the narrative she's building, are decidedly less consistent in their quality, with some feeling like they would have been better off staying between Strings and her therapist. there's a long and convoluted digression about Sex and the City, and a strange anecdote towards the end in which String recounts a phone call with a friend's college-aged son who, String believes, was masturbating during the call. a yucky experience, to be certain, but I'm not sure it justifies Strings filing a police report against the youth and his mother, who she accuses of having groomed her on the son's behalf. she also casually drops in the same chapter that she considers herself pansexual because she's attracted to trans men in addition to cis men? idk man!!! this book was so uneven that I found myself genuinely questioning whether Strings' first book, Fearing the Black Body, is actually as excellent as I remember it being. I'm pretty sure it is, but god it sucks to get shaken so hard that you have to wonder!

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures (Phoebe Gloeckner, 2002) - another book that I had to read for class, years ago! I read Diary of a Teenage Girl in one of my gender and women's studies classes in my undergrad, for a class with a title along the lines of Girlhood Stories in Fiction and Film. Gloeckner's novel (though heavily informed by her own life, she insists that it's a work of fiction) sees its young protagonist, Minnie, navigating a great deal of sex, alcohol, drugs in 1970s San Francisco. I started thinking about the book because I was listening to a trio of episodes of You're Wrong About in which Carmen Maria Machado guests to talk about the pervasive sham that is Go Ask Alice (great series, check it out) and I started thinking about Diary, which is so much less preachy and didactic and is, you know, actually drawn from a real teenage girl's diary, unlike Go Ask Alice, and lacking Alice's preachy didacticism. as a diary based on a real diary this book is largely lacking in any particular plot (the most consistent through line is Minnie's ongoing and tumultuous sexual relationship with her mother's 35 year old boyfriend), but if that's not a turn off then you'll find yourself rooting for Minnie to find her way all the way to the uncertain but ultimately optimistic conclusion.

One and Done (Frederick Smith, 2024) - okay, so. this is a romance novel that I picked up because I saw a review talking about how it's an incredibly realistic depiction of working at a university. now that's obviously an insane thing to look for in a romance novel, but I like romances, ESPECIALLY gay romances, and I work at a university, so I figured sure, I'll bite. spoiler alert: it's not great. I posted some examples of the prose here, and even if the two protagonists talked like actual human beings it wouldn't make up for the stale-ass plot or devastating lack of chemistry they have going for them. more like One and Glad to Be Done With This Book That Isn't Very Good, am I right, ladies?

Seduced (Virginia Henley, 1994) - guys, I'm gonna be so fucking real with you. this is the most batshit novel I've ever read, period, let alone the most batshit romance novel. this book was the winner of a poll I ran on patreon last month in which my wicked patreonites got to nominate romance novels of their choosing for my next reading project and voted amongst themselves to crown a winner, and against all odds and my own light attempts to sway the voters, Seduced won it all. this book has everything: a historical setting, a bold young lady disguising herself as her own brother, wildly unchecked orientalism, a murderous cousin, high society scandal, and some of the most torturous sex scenes I've ever encountered in my life. truly this write-up cannot do justice to what I have experienced; I've already promised by patreonites that I'll have to do a little youtube live in order to fully express the extent of my dissatisfaction.

and that was the month of August, babey!!!

#bookblr

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damnfandomproblems · 19 days ago

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Posting a compilation of responses to Fandom Problem #6020.

Anon:

If you want representation, create your own story Fandom is not activism

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Anon:

Except you people almost never racebend white characters. You racebend other minorities. You racebend anime characters with Japanese names who live in Japan and speak Japanese and have their whole family live in Japan with Japanese names and speak Japanese and claim that the original character was "white." You take characters who are half-black, half-white and say they "aren't black enough" and make them completely black, racebending the white parent ONLY for the sake of racebending their kid. You racebend half-black, half-Asian characters for the same reason, they "aren't black enough." The overwhelming majority of people who complain about racebending don't care about a character's race, they're pointing out YOU'RE ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY DOING THIS TO CHARACTERS WHO ARE OTHER MINORITIES, WHO DESERVE REPRESENTATION TOO, WHILE SLAPPING IRL PEOPLE WHO MATCH THE DESCRIPTION OF THE ORIGINAL CHARACTER IN THE FACE!!!!!!!!!

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Anon:

I am pretty sure that modern fandom was not created specifically by POC. It was created by majorly women who were really into Star Track, completely unrelated to any skin colour any of them might have had

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Anon:

“BLACKWASHING IS DONE WITH RESPECT AND LOVE FOR A CHARACTER AND THEIR FANDOM.” No, it’s done out of hatred of white people. If you really loved this character, you’d love him or her as a white person. If you can’t love a white character, you are racist.

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Anon:

Re: every single moronic anon screaming "BlAcKwAsHiNg IsN't ReAl YoU'rE jUsT rAcIsT, aNyOnE wHo SaYs AnYtHiNg BaD aBoUt RaCeSwApS oF bLaCk ChArAcTeRs Is RaCiSt! RaCiSt!! RaCiSt!!!": On twitter right now people are throwing a fit over official splatoon art of Marina having a slightly lighter shade of brown than normal. Again. AGAIN. AGAIN!! Miss me with this fucking bullshit! You clowns have said this for a decade now and EVERYONE can see right through you! Every time some artist draws a brown character one hexcode lighter because GOD FORBID ANY OF YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT LIGHTING EXISTS OR THAT MAYBE PEOPLE WANT TO EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT SHADES, there's a goddamn TIDAL WAVE of THE STUPIDEST, MOST HATEFUL PEOPLE YOU'LL EVER MEET screaming MUH RACISM at the top of their lungs. Harassing artists minding their own goddamn business (ESPECIALLY if they're from Japan!). Smugly taking the art and darkening with that utterly insufferable "Heh, I fixed it :)))" passive-aggressive attitude. Don't you sit there and fucking lie to me, you little shit. I've been on this hellsite since 2012. I've seen every single one of these """whitewashing""" controversies you neanderthals start and every single one of them has accomplished nothing except drive people away, piss them off, or inspired them to make ACTUAL Whitewashed art to show you what Whitewashing actually looks like and also to MOCK YOU. This is not pissing on my leg and telling me it's rain, this is grabbing ten of your buddies, telling them chug a gallon of water, circle around me, whip out your cocks, shower me in gold and then casually mock me for not taking an umbrella because "oh man it's so stormy out :)" Also Japanese twitter has had enough of your shit and they're criticizing you for acting this way and then shamelessly redrawing their characters as being black and acting like that's how they're """supposed""" to be because Asians just aren't """POC""" enough for you. Don't ever call anyone a "Colonizer" again, because that kind of shit is GENUINE Colonizer mindset because you self-righteous shitheads disrespect other cultures and can't leave people the fuck alone. THAT is why people get mad at you. It's not racism. It's NEVER been racism; it's because you're all insufferable twits who harass everyone around you over NOTHING and then have the GALL to be FLAGRANT HYPOCRITES ABOUT IT with an obvious double standard! Build a bridge and get the FUCK over yourselves!

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(Mod note: I'm unsure if this was intended as an independent submission or a response to the same problem, I'm assuming it's a response due to the timing and am posting as such.)

Anon:

One thing I find EXTREMELY odd about a fandom I am in surrounding an anime I like is the racewashing/blackwashing art, now I'm not gonna get into my opinions on racewashing because wether you support it or not you have to admit what I'm about to say seems really dodgy In this anime there are multiple main characters of mixed race, majority of them being half european half japanese, I'm not sure how much representation of mixed people there are in anime but I can only really think of 3 anime where there are main mixed race characters, most of them only having 1 or 2 mixed race characters, but the anime I am talking about has about 4 mixed race main characters For some reason this fandom absolutely loves to racewash these mixed race characters and barely does it to any other characters. They always make them fully black (not even blasian) and they say they do it to add "more black representation" to the anime Now there are many reasons I find this dodgy, 1 being that of course they only ever do this with the mixed race characters, (or at the very least these are the most popular characters to do this to) not the fully asian characters, not the fully white characters, not to any character of any other race/ethnicity, not even the non human characters who don't have a canonical race/ethnicity, only the mixed race characters Apparently a lot of other fanbases with half white half japanese main characters have these problems too, and a lot of real life mixed people say that the people who only ever racewash mixed characters imply that these characters are "too white for them", which is of course a very racist thing to say about mixed race people who are half white Another reason I find this odd is that, A. A lot of the anime is set in Japan, so of course a lot of the characters will be Japanese or half Japanese, and I'm not saying that there aren't black people in Japan, but obviously majority of the people who live in Japan are Japanese B. There are black characters in the anime! Main characters too, now I can't speak on how good the representation is as I'm not black, but from what I can tell a lot of black people love this anime and the black characters (not to mention a lot of the people I see who racewash the mixed characters are not black, most I see are white people) so I don't see the need to add more representation to the anime by racewashing non black characters, let alone racewashing the mixed race characters who also seem to have a small amount of representation in anime. Like at the very least if someone wanted to race swap a character they'd do it with one of the many white characters and not the mixed race characters, or at the very very least they'd make the mixed race characters blasian and not fully black, or draw the non human characters who don't have canonical races as humans and make them black or any race they want, like I don't get why they're so obsessed with making mixed half white half asian people fully black In conclusion: this whole thing just confuses me and gives off extremely dodgy and racist vibes

#fandom problem 6020 #response to previous problem #mod sf #reply compilation

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aeternallis · 1 month ago

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High-Context Culture at Play and Kim's Mode of Communicating // a rant

So, something I notice once in awhile when I go through the tags on Ao3 for KPTS fics are commentary on the lack of communication in the show—specifically, how Kim doesn't communicate. Tags such as, "Kim communicates, it's a miracle", "OOC because they actually communicate", "Kim uses his words", "Healthy Communication, so it's OOC", etc etc.

This isn't meant to call anyone out and mind you, this isn't something I've only seen in the KPTS fandom; tags like these are also used in a lot of danmei fics I see, as well as the sheer variety of anime/manga fics I've read in my time.

And ngl, when I see those tags...my gut reaction is often to feel that they sound very much tongue-in-cheek and somewhat mocking. Not just to the character himself, but to the narrative itself. It's a bit uncomfortable at times, reading those kinds of tags, even if I know to myself that there's likely no malicious intent behind it.

For what it's worth, I won't apply bad faith arguments on works of art and creativity, and I'm certainly not looking to police fic on Ao3, yknow?

Having said that though and just because I have yet to see a post talking about this topic explicitly, I also feel that it's important to some degree to understand how people communicate in Thailand, and Asia in general.

Mind you, I’m no expert in Thai culture, lemme repeat that yet again. They have unspoken social rules that I myself wouldn't understand because I'm not Thai, nor do I speak Thai. Asia at large, though sharing a unique set of many similar values, is not a homologous region; each country has a rich tapestry of history and culture and very much different from one another.

Yet, as someone who grew up in an Asian household who shares many of said values, I often feel like—when it comes to East Asian/Southeast Asian fictional characters at large—there has always been an unconscious, almost knee-jerk habit I often see in fanfiction to reshape their style of communication to a more western context, if that makes sense. As someone who used to translate doujinshi and Pixiv 小説 for fun, it was always noticeable and a bit jarring, once I moved over to read my fanfic of choice, yknow.

This isn't inherently or purposefully malicious in any way, but it can feel very dismissive, even if it's unconsciously done.

Thailand and most if not all of SE Asia operate in a high-context culture. High-context culture means that when we communicate, it’s not always so much the words themselves that matter, but the context surrounding those words: body language, tone, eye contact, a person’s social status, etc etc. The words sometimes only convey part of the intent, but it doesn’t convey everything. In some situations, the words themselves can even mean the exact opposite of what they’re trying to convey.

It's why so many misunderstandings happen between international fans on platforms like X, because the nuance is often lost in Google Translate.

On the other end of that, we can use Tumblr as the example: since this is mostly an English-speaking website, for the most part, this hellsite operates on a low-context culture, but is easily ignited with outrage based on seemingly high-context traits. LOLOL

This type of communication is not always easily translated into the subtitles, nor is it remotely perfect in any way. It can be quite complex, and hell, even in the context of its own culture, misunderstandings can and do happen all the time. And, as we've seen from the recent popularity boom of East Asian media from the past two or three decades to the American and western audience at large, some of the most compelling drama can come from these sorts of human error.

Besides that, if I’m being perfectly honest, almost always (one of) the source(s) of fandom drama when it comes to character interpretation is due to the nuances of the high-context culture the story takes place in that can have the loudest enthusiasts arguing back and forth.

This is particularly true for characters like Kim Theerapanyakul, who are meant to be portrayed as mysterious and unreadable.

(Lan Wangji and Hyakuya Mika are also a few that comes to mind in my personal experience, uh huh)

To be quite frank, it's why I personally avoid getting into any nitty gritty discussion when it comes to characters like Kim and LWJ, because they mean so much to many different people, as well as simply for the fact that I do not know everyone's emotional tolerance when it comes to disagreements. Lol What I'm saying right now can be taken to be hard-hitting fandom policing, when I'm really trying hard not for it to sound like that, nor is it even my intent. I'm not telling anyone that they're wrong or that they've misinterpreted the characters, but what I am saying, is that people in fandoms, especially for the English-Only Speakers at large, need to be more consciously aware of their cultural biases.

And before I go on, mind you, it’s perfectly okay to have cultural biases—we all have them, myself included, that's just a fact of life. No one is exempt from this, if anyone is itching to point fingers.

I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to say that if one is engaging in media that's not from their cultural context, it's good to be more aware of the surrounding cultural norms and values of that said piece of media when you apply your own interpretation to it, and especially when you may not be the intended audience.

It’s why “your headcanons are not my headcanons” is, I will always believe, a very good rule to adhere to, especially when peeps disagree with popular headcanons, so fandoms can be more respectful and tolerant of each otherrrrrrr when disagreements inevitably crop upppppp, but anywayyyyyy~

I’ve met enough expats who’ve lived abroad in my current line of work to say that trying to understand the unspoken social rules, norms, values, etc. of the foreign country they choose to live in is most often one of their biggest sources of frustration. Alas.

And, as a side-note: high-context cultures are in no way superior to low-context cultures. Both modes of communication have their pros and cons, and molds society in various different ways.

But I digress! An example of the high-context culture at play is the break-up scene in front of Kim's apartment, which I've seen a number of fic authors portray as a genuine apology from Kim:

Which—in terms of what was spoken, Kim did say he was sorry.

But let’s think about the context of the apology: he said the words as he was walking away, before pulling his arm from Chay’s grasp. He looks back at Chay coldly, and overall, his behavior is dismissive; from his body language alone, he portrays a picture of aloofness and treats Chay as an annoyance.

What he says is an apology, yes—but it's an apology with no sincerity whatsoever. It's why Chay broke down as hard as he did, because it's not just Kim's lies that had him reeling, it was the fact that in the context of how Kim dismissed Chay during that scene, it also heavily implies that nothing between them had ever been sincere. Kim completely reverses the understanding that Chay had of their friend/relation-ship and cuts it off completely.

And although what I'm saying may come across as "Duh, that's freakin' obvious," I also want to add another point: Kim would know the implications of what this non-apology is. He would understand the context in which he'd said those words. Whether he chose to regret them or not later on is up for debate, but it's interesting to see whenever fic authors use this scene as an excuse that Kim genuinely thought he apologized, just because he said the words out loud.

Do you see what I mean? In that scene, the canon's context is what matters, but I've seen enough fic where that scene is turned on its head and fic!Kim thinks and excuses himself, portraying the scene to somehow mean that it's the words that matter. The nuance is thus lost, so in turn, the emotional weight of that scene is also disregarded.

This is what I mean when I say that there is an unconscious habit some fic authors have in changing the communication style that the show is set in.

Because the reality is, Kim didn't apologize. He knew he didn't, and Chay most certainly knew he didn't. What he was communicating in that scene was entirely different from what an actual apology entails.

Be that as it may, the audience knows that the non-apology doesn't negate what he and Chay went through together in the show. He may have been lying to Chay for the majority of the story in regards to his involvement in the mafia, but it doesn't mean that the love and adoration he feels for Chay through his actions didn't come through. Kim may not have said much to Chay besides singing for him a (stolen) refurbished version of his own song, but it doesn’t mean that his intent wasn’t conveyed. It's why Chay cried the way he did, in that in some way or another, the song Kim sang is a reminder of everything that happened between them did have truth to it.

Just because they communicate in the way one may not be used to or unfamiliar with (especially in the low-context culture that countries like the US, Canada, Australia, etc. operate in), doesn't mean that they're not communicating to one another.

Healthy communication doesn’t always have to just mean “straightforward meaning in the words.”

When tags like the ones I mentioned earlier in this rant inevitably crop up, especially when it comes to characters who are non-American/British, one can't help but feel that their canon mode of communication is being mocked and made to be seen as inferior.

In which case, TL;DR, when one writes tags like these about certain characters, I sincerely hope that their cultural biases are in the forefront of their mind, and they're aware and humble enough to admit that there are some things that they may not understand in terms of the cultural context. And due to the fact that they do not understand it, hopefully not mock it in response.

#KimChay #KPTS meta #fandom commentary #on fandom #my rants #kim kimhan theerapanyakul #porchay pichaya kittisawat

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eti-mun · 1 year ago

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"You turned off replies on your desteil meme!!!!" Yes I absolutely did and let me explain to you why

People are stating iver and over to just Google the information. And that is fair. I get that. Look up the stuff for yourself, the meme is just supposed to be a fun header. I know that, I get that, I've been around these parts for over a decade I am not stupid and I'm not trying to make people spoonfeed information.

However, if a fuck ton of people are going to end up learning about a topic first through a meme, then the least the op can do is add the source of where they got said information from. From there, we have easy access to read the information, find more, and form our own opinion.

That's also a good way to ensure if the thing they credited to is actually a good source to get info from. From there people can let the op know if the website they got the information from isn't legitimate if it happens to not be. The Logitech Sue desteil meme being fake, but people blindly believing it anyway, is a shining example of why we need those sources. Not everyone is going to look up information, it's just a reality that some people don't seem to like to accept.

Im not trying to encourage people to only get their news from hellsite dot com, that is the worst thing you can do tbh.

What I am encouraging is the share of useful information on a site that claims to absolutely love when things are sourced back to the original material or credited properly

And all it would require is for the op to make like. 4 extra clicks.

With that said yeah, I don't like hearing a broke record. I don't expect this to get as seen as the meme, so I know I'm still gonna get backhanded comments, which is fine. But I just wanted to clear it up for the people who actually listen and understand what I'm trying to say.

Anyway have a nice day, add sources to things, please and thanks

#eti speaks #desteil #supernatural #titanic #oceangate

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copias-girl · 1 year ago

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Hey. I saw you deleted all the excitement/nonsense from the other day, wanted to check in on you. I realized that while I've been on this hellsite for 12 years and seen and experienced a great deal of my own anon drama, I forget how overwhelming & terrible it feels when it first happens to you.

I failed to notice that, in addition to being very new to this site, you're also only 18 (please note that this is not meant to sound condescending - tone is impossible to convey via text). I was a couple years older than that when I joined here, and I carried just as much excitement and energy into everything I posted and reblogged and quickly gained a reputation for myself. From what I've observed from your blog though, mine was decidedly...less fun & positive, so I got a LOT of anonymous messages telling me what they thought of me. I would spend a lot of time thinking about those anons and the terrible things they said to me, constructive or not, objective or not. It didn't matter how many support messages I got from friends or mutuals, or how much we mocked the anons or made light of the situation - I was angry, embarrassed, felt like nothing I did would fix it, and sometimes didn't want to log onto this site anymore, despite it being the only outlet I had to express myself in this way.

It is normal to focus on the small negative in spite of the overwhelming positive - healthy? No. But normal.

My point is: Please do not let this nonsense deter you from being you. Not everyone is going to like you, and that is totally fine. Not everyone is going to like how you post/reblog on your blog. Speaking solely for myself, I generally keep a more contained dashboard I can scroll through quickly at work, so I don't follow your blog, but I don't translate my personal feelings on how you blog into my personal opinion of you as an individual. Everyone blogs differently on this site, which is what keeps it interesting. I'm also not so chronically online to go out of my way to send you a 5-paragraph essay about consent or being hypersexual in a fandom for a gay Satanic band. Instead I'll send you a 8-paragraph essay trying to comfort you and to tell you not to despair, lmao.

I LOVE your enthusiasm about how you express yourself in your posts & reblogs, and it seems there's a shit ton of blogs around you that feel the same way & express themselves the exact same way. Don't lose that spark! Don't let them rain on your parade! [Insert another cliche phrase here]!

Take time if you need a break, but please understand you did nothing wrong. Everything said to you was someone's opinion they wanted to force on you to control how you behave because they themselves are terrified of the world around them and don't understand they cannot control others. Hopefully one day they'll realize how sheltered and, quite frankly, stupid they are. I did.

My advice: if you ever reopen anons and start getting those messages again, delete them and don't engage. Most of the time they're just looking for attention, to rile you up. Classic bullying tactics.

Or print out their messages and use them as firewood. Or toilet paper. Whatever works.

Lastly, you don't have to acknowledge this or publish this message if you don't want to. Genuinely, I just wanted to reach out and make sure you're okay and to attempt to longwindedly impart some advice from my own experiences over the decade.

You do you, dude. Fuck the haters.

Thank you so so much for this incredibly kind and comforting message ♥︎ I really appreciate it more than you could imagine, it even made me cry reading it. I feel like this message is a good closer for this situation, so I’m also going to use it as an opportunity to give a little PSA about how my blog will be operating from now on.

First of all, just thank you again. I’m honestly astonished because every single thing you mentioned is exactly how I feel. The hurt of it all despite getting so much support, the empty feeling of not wanting to go on tumblr anymore despite it being my only outlet. Tumblr was supposed to be my safe space, my escape, my home, and it really sucks because it honestly doesn’t feel like that anymore.

I think the thing that hurts the most is that literally no one reached out to me as a friend in the dms to tell me that I was bothering them. I’m not a mind reader, so if no one says anything then I assume I’m not bothering them. But I do pride myself on always being approachable, I’m ALWAYS open to people messaging me with their concerns.

It’s different when it’s some faceless anon who comes off as slightly passive aggressive. If someone would have just DMed me, I definitely would have put more thought into it and taken their suggestion. Since I haven’t been on tumblr long, I didn’t even know the difference between reblogging with a comment or reblogging with tags until literally just now during this whole situation.

I just feel like I’ve been serving spaghetti every night for dinner. 9 people say they absolutely LOVE it, but then I come to suddenly find out the 10th person doesn’t. But they never said anything all this time, so how was I supposed to know?

I’ve had two people block me who I thought were my friends. One who, during this situation, even said she’d always be there for me. Basically, she informed me that our mutual friend had been upset about my comments and apparently never said anything before this, so I reached out to that friend and apologized. She apparently got triggered by my apology, and they both blocked me. That hurt. A lot. And if I’m being honest I’ve been fighting so hard not to self harm during this time.

I feel like I’ve been treated like a malicious criminal over this, when in reality everyone should know damn well I’ve never done ANYTHING to deliberately make people feel bad.

And don’t worry, I definitely did not take the comment about my age to be condescending. In fact, I wish more people would have taken it into account. And the fact that I’ve only been on tumblr for 6 months, so I don’t really know much about it.

I have a life outside tumblr. I’m a student, and I’ve had to be a full-time caretaker to sick relatives who have now unfortunately passed away. I’m grieving. My father abandoned me and my mother, so I’ve had to take over doing all the things that he used to do.

I come on tumblr, I scream about everyone’s favourite satanic antipopes, I post some fics, and then I close the app and go about my life. I don’t research the history of tumblr and what’s deemed acceptable by certain groups of people. I’m a human. I’m a real teenage girl, with feelings. I’m able to be hurt, and triggered, and everything else. I know I’ve created a personality for myself on here, and I think people often forget that I’m a real girl.

I wish I could say I’m okay, but right now that spark definitely feels dampened into a sad little ember. Since this has happened, I’ve almost stopped eating entirely, and when I do eat, I immediately throw it right back up. My Mom took me out to eat and I threw up in public. This has honestly had my stomach in knots.

Today was the first day I actually didn’t feel nauseous. So hopefully time will heal this wound. I wouldn’t wish this on ANYONE, but I’m glad to see you got through it and made it out ok. I’m hoping for the same outcome for myself too.

Now for the PSA portion of this message (everyone please read):

Will I stop being unhinged? Hell no. But I will be moving any horny comments into the tags, as suggested by the people who had complaints. The absolute last thing I want to do is alienate people and make people uncomfortable. (I still have questions about reblogging with comments tho, for example, if I say something not horny should I still put that in the tags or is it ok to comment that?)

Secondly, my best friend suggested that I should just start taking my unhinged comments and making them into posts of their own, so I’ll probably do that too. I think I might tag them with some cheesy tag, probably a pun on nsfw (not sugar for work?) so that if you’d like to blacklist that tag, you can, and then your dash will be safe for scrolling at work or wherever. And you can just click ‘view post’ if you want to view it.

So, rest assured, the horny party will never stop! But since I’ll be putting my stuff in the tags, you probably won’t see it circulating as much as reblogged comments, so if you want to see me being unhinged, just come to my page and scroll through!

Also, I’ve gotten so many other supportive messages and I want to thank everyone for sending them in. I won’t be answering them, because I don’t want a lot of stuff about this situation on my blog. And this is going to be the last time I talk about this situation on my blog. But the supportive messages really do mean a lot to me, so thank you all ♥︎

I feel malaise, so I might still be absent for a little while, but I’ll try to get back in the saddle as soon as I can. I haven’t been in the best mindset to write, but I’m really going to try because posting fics and running this account genuinely make me happy.

Thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope to see you all again very soon

Love always,

Sugar <3

#wanderingchild #my lovely ghestie #ask box

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