#if we all worked for ourselves in community we’d be so much better off

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

So my best friend (F28) and I (F26) have been friends for seven years. We met on an rp site and hit it off right away. After a lot of issues with other people on the sites and the sites themselves (tbh it was a real shit show, they were controlling and excluded others and kinda homophobic) we left and just kept rping ourselves. We mainly do this over whatsapp, instead of writing long posts we just do quick messages and it’s fun like that. Again, this has been going on for SEVEN YEARS, rping with a quickness that was like…. A response every 10 or 15 minutes. Predictably, this made us somewhat… codependent. It’s something we’re aware of and that I’ve spoken about in therapy and that I’ve been trying to work my way through. I’ve recently also been diagnosed with ADHD so I realized that my dependence also partially stems from it being quick dopamine fixes and being very constantly stimulated.

Additionally, the way we rped was not always the healthiest. We’ve recently noticed that at the start of things, we used it to work through a lot of issues that we were having (darker storylines tended to really coincide with moments where one or both of us were having a hard time). It was a both drown or both rise sort of situation, I guess. Recently, we’ve both been doing much better and we noticed our stories tend to be much happier and lighter. Fluffier if you will.

One of the things that bothers me most is that I feel likeI tend to be the one doing the heavy lifting on this friendship. I’m the one that finally got her to go to therapy, I’m the one helping her fix issues in her life and find ways around problems, I’m the one keeping track of storylines and plots, I’m the one checking up on how she’s feeling. Like, I honestly can’t remember a moment where she’s asked me how I’m feeling unprompted by a comment I’ve made.

RECENTLY things have gone to shit. On my end. I noticed some months ago that things started to change. She was going through a hard time with some things and so was I, but while I tried to be supportive and help her while also dealing with my own shit, she never even asked about me. This kept going on for a while but I didn’t want to say anything and sound self centered. However, when I’m going through a hard time, I tend to rely on us doing some RP just to keep my mind occupied and have something nice through the day. It’s not healthy and I try not to say anything, but she knows this anyway. Answering usually takes less than a minute and she’s always on her phone. We used to answer every ten minutes and then suddenly it was taking her four hours to answer. Sometimes even just once a day. So while I was annoyed at this, I was also sort of worried because this had never happened before. It kinda came from two sides. On the one hand, I was really feeling the absence and I started feeling like an afterthought, and on the other hand I was worried about what was keeping her so busy that she hadn’t mentioned. (Full disclosure, whenever we thought we’d take a while to answer we would send a brb or let the other know we were in class or at work etc, so unexplained absences weren’t common). So like I knew she didn’t owe me anything, but a head’s up would be nice. I feel like I would have been less bothered by all of it if she’d just let me know she’d be gone for some days.

Things came to a head about a month ago, I told her I didn’t wanna do rp like this anymore because I honestly got bothered every time and it wasn’t healthy, and that she’s going through a hard time but so am I and that while I’m considerate of her issues she’s never as considerate of mine. She was hurt and apologized and said she’d try to communicate better (and that we’d put the rp on hold which I get and it’s fine, or I want it to be fine) but then… she didn’t. Now, she barely sends me a hi once a week and keeps saying I’m still her best friend she’s just going through stuff and is trying to stay off her phone. But I know she’s texting people because our common friends tell me they’ve spoken to her and I honestly can’t see how hard it is to send a “hi how are you” when I’ve already messaged first to check up on her.

AITA for being upset and angry and wanting clearer communication on this?

What are these acronyms?

[mikauhso]

Small fandom rant, feel free not to read.

I don’t really care what an artist has done as a person, unless they’re like literally hitler or someone who you’d punch in public for their crimes, I find it a bit sad and annoying how so many artists online are willing to tear down someone else’s art to say “I did it better.” It’s one thing to give constructive crit in good faith, and it’s another to make an OC-ified version of canon out of your love for something, but creating something out of spite will almost always ring hollow for me. I see so much good art duct taped to posts about how “here I fixed it” or “lol you can’t draw” and I think back to the time when I learned the phrase, “you’ll attract more flies with honey than vinegar.” It disheartens me to see artists and people I’d know to be kind and constructive not extend the same kind of care hey show irl to someone online based on their parasocial relation to them. It’s such a low-stakes game and people will act like a mid show having characters they enjoy is the end of the world, and in doing so will take personal snipes and make insults at the art instead of addressing the actual problem head on, because it’s easier to derail and funnel attention and love towards yourself instead of ask that others improve. I love redesigns born of love. I love rewrites that try to see an artist’s vision, but at a certain point I wonder if people even like what they’re making art about or if they’re slapping something recognizable over top of it in order to ride trends.

The internet normalizes clout chasing to the point where I feel like we do it almost instinctively. That little insult or sly comment at the end of a post, that’ll sway people to your side. Saying why you don’t like some person despite not knowing them. It’s valid to have your opinions but I wish people would act like they would in the real world. You wouldn’t go around and scream at someone who you saw post this one thing one time. You wouldn’t punch someone based on a rumor, or verbally berate them in a restaurant. Yet people post so much shit online and it’s so normalized that we don’t even register it as a sign to log off anymore.

I feel like social media is something incredibly important for communication, but it’s currently designed in a way that centers ourselves and how much dopamine we can get, whether it’s at the expense of others, ourselves, etc. And we’re part of the problem too, we refuse to change and recognize that maybe internet points aren’t worth it and maybe it shouldn’t matter what people think of us. And maybe it’s an opinion I have but I shouldn’t judge someone based on what fraction they put out on the internet of themselves. Maybe I should cook myself a snack or go out for a walk or sit on the balcony or in the yard, talk to a friend face to face. Again, I love what the internet has done for accessibility but every accessible thing is locked behind a service designed to ignore vitriol and anger towards one another.

I guess I fall prey to this too, but I’ve seen this pattern happen again and again and again. There are people behind everything that’s made, and unless it’s ai or something stolen, an artist put their time and heart into it. It’s part of the game to have tough skin but I wish it didn’t have to be a necessity because of spiteful people.

I guess I should add an addendum, this is about a pattern I’ve seen in many a fandom. This isn’t about the morality of a show’s crew or whatever, that’s a conversation for another day that I’m not getting involved in because the personal lives of others are no business of mine. Hah, there I go again. But in all seriousness. I’ve seen it in Hazbin Hotel. I’ve seen it with High Guardian Spice. Velma. Steven universe. The owl house. Any new show I’ve seen come out where someone decides to have a moment and say “I will create out of spite and a need to be seen.” I wish artists didn’t feel the need to ride trends and that we’d value each others’ work as much as something put out by Disney. But that too, is a post for another day.

[stories-from-the-shaded-moon]

Whumptober Day20

(Found Family)

:)

For years he’d searched. He searched to find even a hint of that. He searched for new friends, he’d found them. He searched for a new home, he’d found it. He’d searched for a new family, but he could never truly feel…free around others, not even his Zelda.

But he could feel free around them. He was free when he was with his brothers. Maybe they’d facepalm or scold him, but he never felt like he had disappointed them like he had everyone else.

Everyone else wanted a stoic hero, one who could jump over every hurdle effortlessly. He was not that hero.

He rode on top of bears and deers, he used seal surfing as a means of fun, not duty. He didn’t want to be stoic or too calculated. He didn’t want to be anyone’s doll. He wanted to be Link.

They let him be Link. In turn, he let them be Link too.

Link was a hurt kid who always dreamed of being that stolen child again. Here, together, they were all allowed to be that stolen child again. Malon even said that Time smiled a lot more around them then he used to at all. It made them happy to hear. They made cookies that night.

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything better.”

“It’s better than nothing. It’s so much better than nothing.”

The two were separated from the rest during an ambush. They were captured and taken away. They were able to escape, but Wild’s Slate wasn’t working and Sky had no real form of communication.

They settled in a cave carved into the side of a mountain and planned to stay there until morning. They had a fire going, but it was still so cold. Wild was thankful for the white cloth Sky kept on him. Maybe he still felt bare, but at least there was some barrier.

Sky sat closer to the fire, trying to warm himself up. The rain outside had helped with their escape, but it didn’t help their body temperature. Wild would say that it even plummeted.

The cuts and bruises on his skin didn’t make this experience any better. Wild was sure that Sky was thinking the same. Yet, Sky still held that smile no matter how tired he was. Part of Wild felt envious that Sky could smile so easily.

“Sky?”

Sky turned to Wild, his eyebrows raised. “Yes?”

“Where do you think they are? Do you think they’re looking for us?” Wild asked, wrapping himself tighter in the off-white fabric.

Sky stared at Wild for a while, his eyebrows furrowed. “Of course they’re looking for us. Why wouldn’t they be looking for us?”

Wild looked down, pushing himself in on himself. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re tired of me.”

“If we got tired of you, we’d be tired of ourselves. That’s how I try to see it at least,” Sky said. Sky moved to sit never to Wild.

“Are you in that, “I’m a mistake” era?” He asked.

Wild raised eye eyebrow. “What?”

“What I mean is,” Sky started making random motions with his hands. “are you constantly overcome with thoughts about how worthless you are?” Sky stared him in his eyes.

“I guess,” Wild looked down.

Sky hummed and scooted closer to Wild, wrapping his arm around him. “You can talk to me if you want to. Don’t strain yourself, yeah?”

Wild leaned on Sky’s shoulder, the sailcloth around him so much warmer. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“A lot of things,” Wild whispered. “You had to carry me and fight at the same time. I was just dead weight.”

Sky ran his hands through Wild’s hair. “I’d do it again if it meant that you would be safe.”

“You got stabbed twice.”

“Nothing a red potion didn’t fix.”

Wild groaned. Sky giggled and rested his head on top of Wild’s.

“You’re so difficult,” Wild grumbled.

“It’s fairly hard to gaslight someone into hating you. Especially if they already love you,” Sky’s voice had a snarky edge to it.

“You don’t love me.”

“Why wouldn’t I love you?”

“Because I’m a fucking idiot.”

Sky’s laugh echoed through the cave. He sprung up from his sitting position. Wild got cold all over again. “You say that as if I’m not also an idiot!”

“You’re not an idiot…”

Sky’s laugh only increased in volume. He curled into himself, gripping his stomach. Wild wondered what was so funny.

“I’m probably more of an idiot than you are!” Sky’s laughing turned into giggles as he sat back down.

“I doubt that.”

Sky laced his fingers in Wild’s hair and pulled the younger’s head on his shoulder. “What have you done to think yourself as the most idiot of Links?”

Wild grew quiet for a few seconds. “I fai-“

“You didn’t fail. It wasn’t that you weren’t enough. It’s that your enemy understood what was going on. You once told us that those Divine Beasts were used against him before. None of that is your fault,” Sky rubbed Wild’s back. “You saw that everything was crashing down and yet, you fought until the end. All of you fought till you couldn’t or didn’t have to.”

Wild felt Sky’s demeanor change. “Sky-“

“I’m the idiot. If not for my dumb mistake, none of you would’ve been consigned to the fate you were given. You are in the presence of a true lizard-minded fool.” Sky’s chuckle was dry.

Wild brought his hand up and pushed Sky’s head onto his own. They sat there for a while. Surrounded by no sound but the crackling of weak fire.

For years he’d searched. He searched to find even a hint of that warmth, and maybe he’d found it. He could feel free around them. He was free when he was with his brothers.

Wild pulled the sailcloth tighter around himself. “Thank you, Sky.”

“Of course, Champion. You always have me.” Another few seconds of silence passed.

“I love you, Sky.”

“I love you too, Champion.”

[multiplicity-positivity]

i don't know if you guys are going to be able to help us but I don't know who to turn to,

Just for context, I am part of a newly discovered system, we have known that there are multiple people around it's been a couple of years but it was just recently that it was suggested that this might be caused by a disorder, but this is something that only a couple of other alters know about; our host knows about us and has interacted with us before but he is in deep denial over it.

Anyway, recently I have been trying to organize things and manage our inner world but we are having quite a few problems with communication and acceptance over this condition and it's starting to leak into the host's everyday life; (like for example we aways suffered from headaches due to switching but it's been getting more frequent and it makes our host (or anyone for that matter) to be completely unable to function properly, which leads to other health related problems); I know I should seek a therapist or a doctor to talk about this but medical care at the moment is pretty much impossible because of monetary and trauma related reasons so I am not sure how I should go about this; I just want to take care of my system and our host but it is just getting a little too much and I am lost I don't know what to do.

I am here looking for some advice from people that understand system related issues like this but it's completely okay if you guys can't help us, and my apologies in case you already answered any other ask like this.

Thank you.

Hi! So we know you said you couldn’t seek therapy or medical help, but we’d like to pass along something that often gets repeated for us in therapy.

We’ve been doing trauma work over the past 8 months or so. It is grueling, exhausting, and depressing work. We regularly get overwhelmed and reach a point where we’re not able to function. When it gets to this point, we don’t talk about trauma in therapy until we’re feeling better. It’s all about prioritizing our health and well-being, and that can’t happen if we’re always pushing ourselves in therapy and in our everyday lives without taking breaks to check in and relax.

Even if y’all aren’t doing trauma work, something very similar may be happening. You might be trying to take on too much at once, causing your system to suffer as a result. If learning about and trying to manage your system is making it difficult for you to function, you very well may need to pump the brakes for a while. Spend some time not focusing on your system. Learn a new hobby, watch a show or play a video game, and let your system’s inner workings sit unconsidered for some time. After your system has had a chance to calm down, and you’re not stressing out over your plurality as much, it may be safe to continue your efforts. But pushing yourself and your system too hard too fast can absolutely cause your system to get burnt out and have more difficulties recovering than normal.

So definitely our best advice for y’all would be to take things slow! Don’t push yourself too hard, and if it’s getting difficult to function, pause your efforts of in-system work until your system is feeling better. Do something you enjoy for a while and try to relax. Your system isn’t going anywhere - it’s okay to take your time figuring this out. And going slowly/taking your time with this will have huge benefits for your whole system. There’s no rush to get everything sorted and figured out ASAP. In fact, rushing like this can be detrimental (and it sounds like it’s had some negative effects on your system!).

For your host in denial, we have a post specifically for dealing with denial - maybe it could help put his mind at ease and take the pressure off the rest of you a little bit:

We’re wishing you the best of luck with this! We really aren’t a good stand in for therapy or medical treatment, though we understand you may be nervous to seek treatment if you’ve been traumatized in the past, or entirely unable to afford it. We hope that soon you can get the help you need for your system - there are gentle, trauma-informed therapists out there who could handle your system’s situation with kindness and grace! Until you’re able to access something like that, though, we’re wishing you peace, comfort, and plenty of rest! Good luck with everything, and remember to stay hydrated and take plenty of breaks!

🌸 Margo and 💫 Parker

[goodnightmemes]

CARMILLA SEASON ONE SENTENCE STARTERS (PART ONE)

Lines taken from episodes s01e01 - s01e19 of the web series Carmilla. Feel free to change as needed. Part two is here.

❛ Nothing, not even the homecoming goat sacrifice, disturbs the pursuit of knowledge. ❜

❛ I passed the test! 62%. Which is pretty cool. It’s like a gentlewoman’s C. ❜

❛ This is our college adventure, come on! ❜

❛ And how is the Jäger-bombinatrix doing this morning? ❜

❛ And really, why does anybody do anything? ❜

❛ I found it next to a pile of ick that started growing mushrooms the next day. ❜

❛ Don’t judge. My dad thought I’d use an iPhone to send high-resolution selfies to potential stalkers. ❜

❛ If an incident is in progress, please dial 4815 or activate the nearest blue tentacle phone. ❜

❛ To report an escaped entity or poltergeist activity, please press - ❜

❛ Fine. I’ve got three weeks of a journalism class and I’ve seen all of Veronica Mars. I’ll find her myself. ❜

❛ I don’t know, things just got so foggy after the alchemy guys released, you know, the fog. ❜

❛ I’m your new roommate, sweetheart. ❜

❛ Oh, this is not happening. You are not my new roommate! ❜

❛ Boom! Revenge is mine. ❜

❛ See? Blood.In the milk container. ❜

❛ This is like, a death threat, or a health code violation. ❜

❛ Well, there’s no denying it’s a little…odd. ❜

❛ How many people you know take Type O with their Chocoa Crunch? ❜

❛ Are you really gonna try and pretend this isn’t a total freak show? ❜

❛ Oh, see, surviving. Yes, I like that plan. ❜

❛ A lot of problems can be solved through good communication. ❜

❛ A lot of problems can also be solved by taking hair and blood samples to figure out exactly what kind of freaky it is you’re dealing with. ❜

❛ You filled a milk container with blood as a prank? ❜

❛ It was food coloring, and…and corn syrup. ❜

❛ That bunched-up little face you make when you’re angry is hilarious, buttercup. ❜

❛ I kept on having the same dream before. ❜

❛ And the darkness is in my eyes and in my throat and I can’t breathe, and … ❜

❛ I-I’m sorry, I can’t be here anymore. ❜

❛ I really hope that it passes over you and I hope it doesn’t touch your face. ❜

❛ Are you really so damaged that you’re incapable of caring about anything? ❜

❛ You’re a child. And you understand nothing. Not about life. Not about this place. ❜

❛ You know what? The sooner you stop playing Lois Lane, the better off you’ll be. ❜

❛ No, I’m not just gonna give up. ❜

❛ So, maybe that’s just how it is, but that does not mean that I have to accept it. I deserve better. [ name ] deserves better. Hell, even you deserve better. ❜

❛ It’s a town hall meeting! Remember your training, we’ve got five minutes! Run, run! ❜

❛ Sometimes a girl’s gotta manufacture her own excitement, you know? ❜

❛ We should be reinstating our night marches. ❜

❛ And then the Zetas piped in with this chant that pretty much sounded like “pizza or death”. ❜

❛ I think we’d make a pretty great team. ❜

❛ Yeah, a team. You and me, absolutely. ❜

❛ Hey, is that fish in your hair? ❜

❛ It is very, very nice of you large, large gentlemen to offer to keep me safe, but as you can see, I’m in my room. Snug as a bug in a rug. So, you’re good to go. ❜

❛ If I decide to go wandering down some dark alleyways late at night, you guys’ll be my first call. ❜

❛ Get the hell out of here before I feed you each other’s spleens. ❜

❛ Dude, she bit me! That is so not cool. ❜

❛ Guess that’s it for the truce, then. ❜

❛ We have been working nonstop and, not that we’re geniuses or anything, but I think we’re really close to a breakthrough. ❜

❛ I think my brain has melted. ❜

❛ Chocolate is comforting in the face of epic failure. ❜

❛ And what kind of thrilling adventure do we find ourselves on now? ❜

❛ This is so childish. You’d think we were still six. ❜

❛ Schadenfreude isn’t very attractive. ❜

❛ But I so had it coming, didn’t I? ❜

❛ God, this age doesn’t understand obligation. It’s like an undersea anchor; impossible to escape. ❜

❛ They’re the ones using dander collected at parties to seed an immense interconnected fungus throughout campus. ❜

❛ Apparently, it’s a communications experiment. Or, maybe a really complicated risotto recipe? I don’t know. ❜

❛ Sorry, I just forgot that I have to be anywhere but here. ❜

❛ Oh, no. You are entirely too sweet ❜

❛ But you’ve got to admit it looks pretty hinky. ❜

❛ Confronting her has historically been about as effective as using bug spray on Voldemort. ❜

❛ Oh, wow. That’s…why are you wearing warpaint? ❜

❛ Come on! Why are the hotties in this room always trying to hurt me?! ❜

❛ That is unfair, okay, cause I’m here out of the, like, bro-ness of my heart, alright? ❜

❛ So, has it even occurred to you that while you’re duking it out, nobody is actually out there protecting anybody at all?! ❜

❛ Ah, it’s mostly just paintballs and anchovies. I’ll talk them down. ❜

❛ It just seemed so real…like…that weird moment of clarity during magic hour or the moment right before a car crash. ❜

❛ I was in my room and there was something in my bed. Something under my bed. This dark, prowling thing without a face. ❜

❛ I tried to pull the blankets over my face to hide, but the darkness started seeping through them like blood, more and more, until I was drowning in it. ❜

❛ Well, dreams are supposed to be strange. Last night I dreamt I was trapped under a bed. ❜

❛ But, just a dream. No reason for all of this…twitchiness. ❜

❛ There is no twitching. There is an absence of twitching. ❜

❛ You know, if it’s really making you so miserable, I could get you something to help you sleep. ❜

❛ That’s uncharacteristically considerate of you. ❜

❛ Yeah, well, I just don’t want you losing it and torching all my stuff. ❜

❛ The results are starting to look profoundly WTF. ❜

❛ I know Silas has some quirks, but I’m pretty sure spontaneous combustion, super strength, and an all-protein diet weren’t options on my roommate form. ❜

❛ Your Snape/Ron fic’s still on the screen, spaz. ❜

❛ It’s a charm or whatever. To help with the bad dreams. ❜

❛ So, in the spirit of all this newfound closeness, maybe you could tell me where you go all night? ❜

❛ Mmm, well, I have to keep some of my secrets. Otherwise, I’ll lose my air of mystery, won’t I? ❜

❛ Oh, you know, I miss my dad, I have papers due. I’m about to be my roommate’s next victim. ❜

❛ Come on. Let’s get you changed into something with a little less whiff. ❜

❛ Everything in your fridge is made of glucose and palm oil. I’m surprised you don’t have scurvy. ❜

❛ As soon as we got there, everyone was leaving the building, and yes, as the sun went down, we started to hear something…skittering. ❜

❛ Before you realized the staircase wasn’t in the same place anymore? ❜

❛ Before we realized we might have gotten a little turned around. And that most of the computer monitors we could see were warning us to “Run. Run now”. And the skittering was getting closer. ❜

❛ We created a flamethrower using a lighter and some mace. ❜

❛ I get a text that says “Come quick. Stuck in Library. Bring fire extinguisher” ❜

❛ Okay, yes! It was stupid, and we’re lucky that you didn’t have to save our souls. ❜

❛ Well, yeah, but we know she’s a vampire. I mean, we’ve known that since the blood in the milk container, right? ❜

❛ You all knew I was living with a vampire and nobody said anything? ❜

❛ She’s not a vampire. There’s no such thing as vampires. She’s a…light-averse octogenarian with extreme hemoglobin deficiency and really good skin. ❜

❛ My roommate is an honest-to-Lestat vampire. How do we stop a vampire? ❜

❛ No! No! We can’t immolate everyone that [ name ] thinks is a supernatural creature. ❜

❛ Well, I have an idea but you are not gonna like it. ❜

❛ Okay, explain to me again how offering yourself as bait to your blood-sucking roommate is not the worst plan ever devised by womankind. ❜

❛ Well, the fact that a terrible plan is our only plan is not really a selling point. ❜

❛ You guys know that I can hear you, right? Maybe instead of peanut gallery-ing you can help me figure out how we trap a vampire? ❜

❛ How do we feel about bear spray? ❜

❛ What would Mina Harker do? …Get bitten. Mina Harker would totally try and act all alluring to the bloodsucking fiend and totally get bitten. Let’s not do that. ❜

❛ Looking at the stars. It’s comforting, to think how small we are in comparison. All the lives we’ve led, the people we’ve been, nothing to that light. ❜

❛ “Black as the pit and terrible as the night was Bagheera”? I always loved that. It’s beautiful. ❜

❛ Behold: Vampire bait! ❜

❛ Don’t you look like a virgin sacrifice? ❜

❛ Parties should be a shimmering moment of possibility, not a collection of brutes around a piece of flaming driftwood. ❜

❛ Feels like more than that. Like something seen underwater from a great distance. ❜

❛ God, I’m a nostalgic idiot tonight. ❜

❛ Maybe I don’t feel like sharing you right now. ❜

❛ God, what am I doing? Naive, provincial girl. Entirely too tightly wound. Such a cliché. I oughta know better. ❜

❛ I oughta know better. And yet…there’s something about you. ❜

❛ Also, I got my head smashed into a table, if anyone cares. ❜

❛ There is not allowed to be some new horrible thing! ❜

❛ You know, at times like these a dude needs to be with his bros. ❜

❛ Well, don’t look at me. I didn’t want to kidnap anyone to begin with! ❜

❛ Definitely not untying angry vampire. ❜

❛ You can’t just keep a hostage in your dorm room! ❜

❛ I”m sure there’s all sorts of things we could figure out through some minimally-invasive probing. ❜

❛ It’ll seem dire once they start your tribunal. ❜

❛ So the sooner you ‘fess us and tell us what’s going on, the better this is gonna go for you because we have got…a spatula, and a stapler, and we are not afraid to use them. ❜

❛ You cannot seriously think we’re dumb enough to believe you’re innocent just because you say so. ❜

❛ Look, if I were really a vampire, would I just stay here, tied up, proclaiming my innocence as some sort of trick? ❜

❛ Yeah. That’s completely exactly what a vampire would do. ❜

❛ Do I strike you as the type of person who plays well with others? ❜

❛ Uh, we’re rehearsing a skit. Uh, yeah, the torture scene from Arsenic and Old Lace. Mmm-hmm, yeah, there’s a torture scene. ❜

❛ I hear they have a great collection of straight-jackets and tranquilizers. ❜

❛ I swear, if one more of your broken-hearted study buddies comes knocking at the door, I’m gonna start spritzing them like cats. ❜

❛ No, no, no! Please don’t die, please don’t die, you stupid vampire! Here, look, I’ve got blood. ❜

❛ The experience of being held captive by a clutch of imbeciles for something I didn’t even have the pleasure of doing is humiliating enough without having you wipe me up like a dribbling child. ❜

❛ Wait, you thought that was me trying to eat you? ❜

❛ Oh…Oh! So, when you were hitting on me, you were really hitting on me? ❜

❛ Could you just stake me now? Cause I think that would be less mortifying than this conversation. ❜

❛ If you want us to trust you, you have gotta tell us your side of the story. ❜

[yooniesim]

Hey Yoonie, I hope this doesn’t come off as annoying or anything but I just wanted to thank you for being so outspoken and eloquent about paywalls and poor quality cc.

There’s a Discord server I’m in where we“fix” CC by lowering poly counts, making proper LODs, adding hat/boot chops etc and reupload it. Sometimes we’ll have people join just to tell us it’s disrespectful to creators to edit and redistribute their meshes but we just link them towards the UGC and a post about the dangers of poorly made CC and continue on. But at one point a CC creator joined and asked us to stop editing their stuff. We showed them several of the issues with their CC that we tend to fix and offered to help them learn how to correct them but they doubled down, and I guess they posted about it somewhere because we had several trolls join just to harass us. It came to a point where we felt like we’d have to close up shop and start over somewhere else. Eventually, it died down but those events made me realize some things.

Why should we have to fix someone else’s stuff that people are paying real life money for because they person they got it from doesn’t care enough to fix it themselves or learn how to make it better? I just found it so frustrating that I took a break from the server and the community in general for a few months because I was so demoralized by it all. In that time I found your blog and it helped remind me why I joined the server in the first place

Keep being awesome and don’t let the haters get you down!

Thank you for sharing this and being kind, nonny! It's not annoying at all! And thank you for taking the time to work on that cc. The internet can be a disgusting place, especially when money is involved. Sometimes we gotta take breaks for ourselves cos it's just too much. But at the end of the day you're just helping others and doing what's right. So keep that in mind and don't let them get you down, either! 💜

[liquorisce]

i dreamed i left you [5]

pairing: eren x mikasa

rating: E | read on ao3| chap 1

summary: “Mom’s dead,” his voice cracked, slightly. “Dad failed at protecting her, and now he thinks this is the only way to protect me."

“The truth is, there’s no way to protect anybody from this life. It’s like poison, and it flows out onto the streets, unchecked. And it flows in my blood,” he said bitterly.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to comfort him. The workings of the Mafia were completely unknown to me. I wish I could tell him something crazy like, Why don’t we just run away, Eren? You and me. Fuck the Mafia. Fuck your Dad. We could just. Take a boat and sail across the ocean to someplace far away. I bet Eren would say something like that if our roles were reversed.

But I’m not Eren. I’m Mikasa. So I just placed my hand over his and hoped that even if it was a measly source of comfort, it was something. 

MIKASA

I’d never really imagined I’d be the damsel in my own story. Not that I didn’t enjoy a good shining knight romance every now and then, but it’s more that I was raised not to believe in them. My mother, despite her own secret love story with my father, took every opportunity available to prepare me for what she called the truth of this world: all men are scum. To that accord I was enrolled in every community self-defence class you could think of, and in college, I even enrolled in boxing. Made me feel strong and kind of badass, and honestly my abs were my pride and joy. 

I was never sure what to make of my mother’s absolute truth, but in spite of all the strength and badassery, here I was: sitting naked in a bed with silk peach sheets, bandages on my cheek, and bruises on my legs, my body still recovering from painkillers. It tells me two things: 1) You can’t throw a punch at a bullet and 2) Everybody has a damsel moment. No matter how many karate classes you go to.  

My body felt sore, not just from sleeping for more than 24 hours, but sore from my very indiscreet tumbles in the same bed with my own shining knight, who by the way, was woefully absent from the scene. Despite my utter frustration with the larger picture, I can’t ignore the nagging irritation I felt at the fact that he wasn’t here beside me, that he’d somehow woken up and extracted himself from my limbs— Eren used to tell me that I’m like a cat, because I would curl myself into him and throw my leg over him while I slept— and left. 

Instead of waking me up with his lazy kisses, the prodding of his member, and the rich promise of a repeat of the night before us, he just decided to leave me. I can’t tell if I’m offended or bereft. Perhaps both. 

It wasn’t an unreasonable expectation, per se. We’d done it countless times, woken up to continue where sleep had interrupted us the previous night. He used to like it, from what I recall. Used to turn me on my side or on my front, so we could enjoy ourselves despite the practicalities of morning breath. He would place kisses on my neck and down my spine, as he spread my legs and slipped inside of me. 

I plop my head back into my pillow, wrapping the blankets around me in denial. I was being an idiot, which seemed to be very much in character for the past couple of years. If fifteen-year-old Mikasa could see herself now, she would be appalled. The perfectionist that my mother had sculpted wasn’t meant to be unemployed and crashing on friends' couches. She certainly wasn’t meant to be getting shot at. And she would have known better than to keep running back into the arms of a man she had sworn not to get involved with. But as I buried my nose into the silk-covered pillow and inhaled the scent of him, I knew that even she would have crumbled.

Snap out of it, Mikasa, I told myself as I slid off the bed and stretched. My back hissed at me. It could be the drugs, or the excess sleep, but I could tell the soreness in my lower back had a very distinct cause. Something to do with the way he’d asked me to hold on to the headboard and angled my hips onto his cock, thrusting and thrusting until I’d sobbed with pleasure. 

Eren was not gentle with me last night. And I hadn’t asked him to be. 

In fact, I remember distinctly begging, pulling his hips closer to mine, as I mumbled, “I won’t break.” 

“I said I wouldn’t ravage you, Mikasa…” He murmured. But I could hear the weakness in his voice, temptation glinting in his too-large eyes. 

“Neither of us is particularly good at sticking to our words, are we?”

I didn’t mean to sound so accusatory, but I think that did something to him. He gave a short laugh, his tongue touching the bow of his upper lip as he watched me. “I forgot how blunt you were,” he said bitterly. 

Before I could even retort, he had me pinned against the bed, with my legs spread around him. I was naked but he was still wearing his jeans and sweater. His inflamed gaze raked over my body, from my eyes, to my neck, to my breasts, and then lower. I could feel his gaze heating up my engorged lips. 

He held me down with one hand as the sound of his zipper coming undone tortured me. It made the deepest parts of me melt, turning liquid in anticipation. I watched with heavy-lidded eyes as he took himself in his hands, giving himself a few jerks. He brought his middle finger to his mouth and dribbled some spit on it, and then brought it down to the head of his cock, lubricating himself. “I don’t need that though, do I? You’re soaked already.” He licked his lower lip. “I can see it.” 

Wantonly, I brought my fingers between my legs, breathing harshly as I brushed against my clit. “Then what are you stalling for?” 

Even now, as I stare at myself in the mirror, there is a persistent fuzzy tension in my limbs, my breasts feel tender, and I can still feel a remnant throbbing between my legs. The sheets are crumpled where Eren had lain beside me, a dent in his pillow, and the state of my body was probably proof that he had been here, on top of me, inside of me. A purple bruise bloomed on my collarbone. 

From what I can remember, Eren had latched on to it and laved his tongue against that spot until he appeared pleased with his handiwork, divested me of my shirt (his shirt) and spread me out on the bed like I was a feast that was made for him. 

I don’t think I could even catch my breath. Not when he went down on me until I came, embarrassingly quickly, not when he kissed me senseless, and not when he flipped me onto my knees and said, “Here, use a cushion, I don’t want you to hit your head,” before he entered me. (The pillow didn’t help much last night.) I don’t think there was a single coherent thought when he fucked me last night, over and over, groaning into my shoulder as he released inside of me. It’s like he drove it all out of me, the hesitation, the regret, the what-the-fuck-am-i-doing-here that the rational part of my brain screamed at me. Oh, he shut her up good.

But last night was different. Even though he played my body like a well-loved instrument, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but notice that he was startlingly quiet. After the initial exchange between us, the room was silent save for the indecent noises that came from his mouth when he devoured me.  And that was strange because Eren… he talks when he makes love. A lot. He says some of the filthiest, most embarrassing things I can never even think of, and every time he does, it makes me turn liquid between my legs. “You taste good today,” he’d tell me, licking the finger that was just inside of me, his tone casual as if he were discussing dessert. Or “You look so good, all fucked out like that,” after making me come many times in a row. Or something else that I would blush to death over. 

Eren barely said a word to me last night, not after he took me to bed. Not until we finally finished, with me curled up onto my side beside him, his hand caressing my hair gently: “Sleep well, Mikasa,” were the only words I got from him. 

I don’t know how I feel about it, to be honest. It’s hard to sort out my feelings towards Eren. It feels like a wild, beastly thing that resides inside of me. It’s even harder now that we are where we are, and I feel nervous to go anywhere near it, to even attempt to tame its wildness. 

I pat my cheeks spiritedly and find something to wear. I don’t feel like moping about today in bed, painkillers be damned. Not doing anything feeds an anxiety inside of me that was cultivated by my perfectionist mother, who would never let me stop as a child. It was always, have you done your homework, Mikasa? Or What about dance classes? You should stay flexible! 

Or, It feels like you have a lot of free time, Mikasa, perhaps you can help out at the restaurant a little more. 

Growing up with the frenetic pace my mother had prepared me for, adult life felt startlingly empty and slow. 

Eren was nowhere to be seen, but I spot the jeans he wore last night lying haphazardly on the floor, looking exactly as they did when Eren kicked them off. 

He has never been the particularly tidy sort; I wonder if he has someone picking up after him now. He used to have a host of women at his beck and call to keep house and they all fawned over him as if he weren’t a Don, but a spoiled child who they wanted to keep spoiling.

Underneath them, I find the white shirt from last night that I’d worn for much less time than it had spent on the floor. As I begin to fold his pants, something falls out. It’s a photo, I realise, as I peer down at it.

When I flip it over to the picture side, I freeze. You know some moments that are so precious to you, you remember them like they happened yesterday? Like you can replay the conversation without missing a beat, you can remember every expression, every smile and every frown. Well the picture in front of me was from one of those moments. 

It was probably silly of me at the time, but that night, I’d been giddy with excitement. Something in the air told me that it would be the night of our lives— I, the quiet girl, with no connections and no influence, who was never invited to any of the parties thrown by my substantially wealthier peers, was finally invited. And it was a school event, so my parents, for once, wouldn’t forbid me from going. They had even set aside some money to buy me a dress. 

It was a soft peach, strapless knockoff with an inverted label. The other girls were probably wearing Chanel and Gucci and other names that I couldn’t pronounce, but I look at my blush-laden cheeks and my lipstick in the picture, and it transports me back to that night. I remember feeling it slink over my skin and looking at the mirror stuck at the back of my door, and thinking to myself, wow. I didn’t know even I could look like this. 

I remember when I got out of the taxi that night, I couldn’t stop smiling. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t being picked up by a date in a fancy car. I was here, and in the distance, I could see my two idiot best friends, waving at me. Well one of them waved, the other stood with his hands in his pockets and gave me a small smile. That night was meant to be our last rodeo in those stone grey walls, amidst a crowd where none of us truly fit in. I was just a seventeen-year-old girl filled with the sentimentalism that from then on, our lives were going to change drastically. 

I wasn’t wrong. Nothing ever really felt the same after that night. 

<hr>

MIKASA

(17 YEARS OLD)

“You’re smiling an awful lot today,” Armin remarked. I shrugged, smiling at him some more. “What happened to the loner girl I befriended two years ago?” He teased. “You’re practically unrecognisable.”  

“Thought I might give the fitting-in thing one last shot.” A group of girls giggled to our left as they posed for pictures. Their clothes had that shine that came from fancy labels and air-conditioned boutiques, and their hair looked like somebody had spent plenty of time on it. I tried not to feel self-conscious beside them, in my knockoff dress, which was bought off of a street vendor, my self-styled hair and the blush and mascara that I’d borrowed from my Mother. Suddenly I wonder if my makeup even went with my dress. I had no clue. I had nobody to twirl in front of before I left the house today, nobody to tell me if I looked alright. 

“You look nice, Mikasa,” Armin said, shaking me out of my funk. He gave me a genuine smile and linked my arm with his. Armin had his insecurities, but I admired the way he felt at ease in this place, even though he often told me he didn’t fit in. Perhaps that’s what he’s at ease with, his visible difference from the crowd. I wish I could be happy with myself that way. 

“Oi,” he says, smacking our other friend on the back of his head. 

Eren looked up from his phone and almost growled. “What?” 

“Mikasa looks nice. Doesn’t she, Eren?” 

I sucked in a breath, feeling instantly mortified at Armin’s prompting, and pinched his arm, shooting him a distressed glare. 

Eren blinks, clearly not having expected that. “Um. Yeah,” he says, slowly. I can feel his large green eyes staring at me, and it makes me feel warm. I bite my cheeks, trying not to feel awkward at his forced acknowledgement. “You look nice, Mikasa.” 

Suddenly I feel horribly insecure about how I look. I wonder if Eren would look at one of the selfie girls, in their pretty chiffon dresses and tell them they looked beautiful. Or breathtaking. Or even just nice, but unprompted. I chew at my lower lip. It was pathetic just how much I wanted to hear those words from him. 

Eren, on the other hand, really looked beautiful. His hair was still messy, but now it seemed to be purposefully so, and he wore a suit that really highlighted how much his body had changed since I first met him two years ago. His arms filled out his blazer in a way that made me embarrassed even for noticing. He had grown taller, taller than me. I now came up to his chin. “Thank you, Eren. So do you.” 

“And you,” I turn to Armin quickly, wanting to hide my slowly reddening cheeks. “You got a piercing!” 

“I did!” He had wanted one forever, and it seemed he had finally slipped out and gotten it. 

“Your grandfather…?”

“Hated it.” Armin smiled gleefully. “It’s fine. I’m going to look like such a snacc in college, and it will all be worth it. I won’t be able to hear his snide comments over all the hotties telling me how cute I look.”  

“It does look amazing though,” I tell him seriously. “Also your haircut!” Armin had really gone in for a makeover. His hair was shorter now, to show off his piercing, I assumed, but it also showed off the sharp angles of his face, making him look older and handsome. 

He sighed. “I appreciate you, Mikasa, but I really wish a cute boy would notice me the way you do.” 

I slap him playfully on the arm as we walk into the hall. The pillars were draped with satin in the school colours of peach and gold, the opening in the old dome-like ceiling allowing the moonlight to mingle with the rest of the lighting.

Tonight was the Leaver’s Dance, the annual dance the Academy threw graduating students, shortly before the end-of-year exams. It was a celebrated occasion in a very celebrated school, so it was grand in a way I should’ve expected, considering all the students in designer clothing. I’d seen one of these things at my old public school, and it was basically held in the gymnasium, decked out with balloons and streamers, tacky banners and a very shoddy school audio system. 

But at Trost Academy, the dance was held in the Pantheon, which was the name they gave to a huge hall decorated with paintings of famous alumni, and pretentious sculptures. They’d shelled out big to build a structure that was meant to pay tribute to the original Pantheon in Rome, but honestly, the uselessness of the structure was astounding. Aside from a few important speeches and yearly events, it went empty for the most part. Although I had heard that they rented it out for weddings occasionally to some very wealthy people. 

It was open on two ends, one was the front lawn where we entered, and it opened out onto a little manmade lake, in the back. Most days it just collected weeds, but tonight it looked gorgeous, what with the full moon and everything. “Feels like I’m in a fancy upper society gala, and not a school dance,” I mused out loud. 

“At a gala, we’d have alcohol,” Eren says, rolling his eyes. “Not this,” he scrunches his nose as a waiter (there were waiters!) comes by with a tray of non-alcoholic sparkling wine, “... fake shit.” 

“Eren, it’s a school event. None of us are allowed to drink. What did you expect?” 

“Oh this is exactly what I expected, Ar, don’t worry. And that’s why I came prepared.” He winked at us, before setting down his glass and walking towards one of our classmates. 

I didn’t like the way he winked. It smelled like trouble, even though I felt a little flutter in my stomach when he did it. I watched him as he walked over to a group of boys from our class. There was a confidence in his gait that he’d acquired more recently, his long legs filling out like the rest of him. 

I’d never hung out with that crowd very much, it was mostly sons of really important businessmen, all of whom, Armin told me, had ties to the Mafia. Either their businesses were dirty, or they were, and they owed something or the other to the Families of the Underground. I frown as he thumps the back of one of them— Franz, whose father owned some steel plants north of the city. “Since when did he get so chummy with them?” I think to myself. 

I didn’t realize I’d spoken around until Armin said, quietly, “Eren has changed, Mikasa. It’s time you accepted that.” 

I took a sip of my fake champagne. There was a hardness to his voice as he said it and it made me sad. “I feel like it was just yesterday that the three of us skipped school to go to the beach.” We took Eren’s car and a crate of beers (and some non-alcoholic ginger beer for me) and drove two and a half hours southeast of Sina. I was a nervous mess because not only did I have to lie about school and mess up my perfect attendance, but I had also never before, left the old walls of this city. 

Don’t you want to see what’s out there, Mikasa? Eren had asked me. The ocean is beautiful. I think you’d really like it. And then quieter, when Armin wasn’t there, he said, I’d really love to show it to you. 

I was powerless against him, really. Anything he asked of me, I wanted to give. And that terrified me and thrilled me, in equal parts. 

“Really?” Armin says, bitterly. “It was over a year ago.” And then filled with a quiet sort of disdain, he says, “It’s been a year since he was initiated into the Underground. Do you remember that?” 

I twirled a finger around my hair. “I remember.”

It’s not really something I could forget, considering that I’d been there that night. I hadn’t known it was an initiation or anything, just that it was a party hosted at the Kruger mansion, and that my parents were called for catering. I didn’t even know Eren would be there. 

After hauling an extra carton of ingredients for my parents, I was just leaving through the little backdoor in the kitchen when I spotted him. He sat on a bench almost hidden by the overgrown bougainvillaeas of his uncle’s garden. 

ONE YEAR AGO

“Eren,” I said, surprised. 

He whipped around to see me, looking equally shocked. “Mikasa,” he greeted me. 

He didn’t sound particularly happy, though. He sat on the bench with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, his hair looking like he’d run his fingers through it many many times. “What are you doing here?”

“My parents are catering for the, um,” I gestured vaguely up at the main house. “... Event. I just came by to restock them with some stuff.” 

I shuffled my feet nervously. Eren never really brought it up, but sometimes the sheer difference in our lives would stare me in the face so blatantly it was hard to ignore it. His family lived in huge mansions like this— this one was his uncle’s and from what I’d overheard, had 12 bedrooms, a swimming pool, a manicured garden with a little pond, and a kitchen the size of my entire house. They threw the parties and we were the staff. 

He wore a black shirt, black jeans and clean white shoes. He looked so put together in front of me, who was dressed in just overalls and a white t-shirt. In my defence, I wasn’t expecting to run into anybody.

“So, you’re here for the party?” I asked. 

Eren removed the cigarette from his mouth and gave me a clipped laugh that made me feel silly for some reason. “I guess you can say that.” 

I felt weird standing in front of him like that. Eren, who was normally friendly and chatty, his eyes full of fire, seemed dull and strangely contrite. “Well, you seem to be busy, Eren,” I told him awkwardly, “I should go.” 

“Do I really look busy to you, Mikasa?” He asked sarcastically. There’s a cruel line to his mouth and I don’t like it.

“Well no, actually,” I said, annoyed with his attitude. “You look bored as hell, and I thought of chatting a bit, but you’re acting really pissy and I’m only paid to bring the food, not to deal with your shit.” 

I regretted it the moment I burst out at him, and that, unfortunately, was the side effect of my very inconvenient crush on him. But regardless of how pretty he was, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his tantrums. They were entertaining at best when they were directed towards other people, but it hurt to be at the receiving end of it. 

He didn’t make any move to apologize, so I turned around to leave. I’d never really hung out with Eren on his turf, and I never realised he’d be so different. At school, he was just a sweet, temperamental, and surprisingly, totally down-to-earth boy. But now… There was an unapproachable, mean quality about him that unsettled me.

“Wait, Mikasa. I didn’t mean—” His dark green eyes found mine under the moonlight. “If you don’t have to leave… I would really appreciate your company.” 

I hesitated, but because I don’t have much of a spine or self-respect in front of this boy, I turned back. Eren shifted to the side, giving me some space on the bench beside him. 

It was a small bench so when I sat next to him, our legs and arms brushed against each other. I could already feel my cheeks growing pinker. Thank heavens for the darkness. 

“Sorry,” he said, looking straight at me. “I’m in a weird mood tonight.” 

I stared at the glowing end of his cigarette, unable to meet his eyes. “I noticed. Do you want to talk about it?” 

Eren hmm-ed, not saying much. I watched him lift the cigarette to his mouth, taking in the way his long fingers held the stick between them, like a V. It looked kind of elegant, honestly. 

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I went for a sort of neutral ground since he clearly didn’t want to answer my question about his mood. 

“I don’t.” I watched him remove it from his mouth, pursing his lips to blow out the smoke. “Not really. Zeke gave me one today.” He scoffs. “Another gift on my eve of becoming a man, I suppose.” He extended his hand, “Would you like a puff?” 

“I… have no idea how to even take a puff, Eren.” 

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not rocket science. I could show you.” Then he lifted the cigarette to his mouth again and inhaled. I watched as his mouth expanded a little and then he blew the smoke out. It covered his face in this hazy, mysterious way. And the infatuated fool that I am, I thought it made him look even prettier. He turned to me again and said, “Wanna try?” 

My eyes lingered on the filter, at the little wet ring his mouth made on it. I thought about taking the proffered stick from him, about putting my mouth where his just was. I shook my head, hoping to death that he didn’t notice how much I was staring. “No, thank you.” 

“You’re a good girl, Mikasa,” he said, somewhat wistfully, before stubbing out his smoke. 

I fought the flush that crept up the side of my neck. I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t know why those words made me feel the way I did, strange inside my stomach like I was dissolving from the inside. I watched Eren as he stared straight ahead at the reflection of the moon on the little lily pond. We were the same age, stupidly sixteen, but he seemed different today. Older, somehow. More aware. “You’re a good boy too, Eren,” I mumbled, clinging to some stubborn belief inside of me. Perhaps it was the image of the boy who showed me the ocean, the boy who said so sweetly that he wanted to show it to me. But even as I said it, it felt wrong, like Eren was standing on the precipice of something terrible.

He laughed again, and this time I could tell it wasn’t meant to be mean. His eyes were bloodshot, I noticed, and his mouth was stained a darker colour. There is a sweet smell of woman’s perfume that mixes in with the cigarette smoke. “Are you okay?” I asked, one more time, my voice sounding strangely raspy. 

“Today was my initiation, you know.” 

“I’m not from your world, Eren. Remember? I have no idea what that means.” I smiled at him, hoping to lighten the mood, but Eren was still sombre. 

“It’s the day I get initiated into the Underground.” He showed me the gash on his palm. “I took a blood oath in front of my family today. Promised them that the Mafia will always come first.” 

I kept staring at his palm. The cut was red and angry, and I didn’t know how he was sitting here in front of me, unfazed and not in pain. “Eren,” Horror bled into my voice, “Doesn’t it hurt?” 

“I’ve had a lot to drink, Mikasa. I can’t really feel a lot right now, to be honest.” 

“But– It’s pretty deep, Eren, shouldn’t you at least get it dressed?” 

“Men don’t need doctors apparently,” he said, amused with himself. I did not find it funny. 

“This is ridiculous—”

“Do you hate me now?” He asked, quietly. “I know how you feel about them. About us.” He corrected, hastily. His eyes were covered in shadows. I wish more than ever that I could read them. 

“Never.” It’s true, my feelings for the mob that ruled my world and terrorized my family were spilled to him in confidence, and at the back of my mind the knowledge of his oath twists and turns, restlessly. But even so, I could never hate him. Maybe my feelings for Eren were just a childish infatuation, but somehow I knew beyond a doubt, that hatred was something I would never feel for this boy. 

He gave me a small smile, looking largely unconvinced. “You say that now…” 

“Why did you do it?” I asked. “You were never really a fan… of this lifestyle.”

“Yeah, you can say that.” I’d heard his disdain for the Mafia, for his own Family, so many times— over lunch with him and Armin, when we’d hang out after school and they would talk about cleaning up the streets someday. “I didn’t have a choice in the matter.” 

“Mom’s dead,” his voice cracked, slightly. “Dad failed at protecting her, and now he thinks this is the only way to protect me.” 

My heart hurts for him. I was there when Eren received the news that Carla died, two weeks ago, and I saw him run out of class with the police officer who came to get him. She was apparently found in her room with a bullet in the middle of her forehead, naked, with bruises all over her body. The police never revealed any information about the perpetrator. To be honest, I still could not imagine what kind of an effect that has on a person. Knowing that your mother was brutally murdered, and probably as part of some larger agenda. Even with the rickety relationship I had with my mother, I knew I would be devastated. 

“The truth is, there’s no way to protect anybody from this life. It’s like poison, and it flows out onto the streets, unchecked.” That’s the boy I knew, I thought to myself, the boy I believed in stubbornly. “It flows in my blood,” he said bitterly. 

“It’s not like you to bow down to fate,” I said. He was Eren Jaeger, after all. My loud, defiant, bratty schoolmate. He never listened to anybody. 

“My dad is head of the Families. I don’t think I could have escaped this, even if I wanted to. I was just,” he looked angry suddenly, angry at the world, angry at himself. “... being stupid. Like always.” 

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to comfort him. The workings of the Mafia were completely unknown to me. I wish I could tell him something crazy like, Why don’t we just run away, Eren? You and me. Fuck the Mafia. Fuck your Dad. We could just. Take a boat and sail across the ocean to someplace far away. I bet Eren would say something like that if our roles were reversed. 

But I’m not Eren. I’m Mikasa. So I just placed my hand over his and hoped that even if it was a measly source of comfort, it was something. 

He looped his pinky into mine and it made me smile. I guess it was something after all. 

“Anyway, to answer your earlier question. Yes, I am here for the party. It is in fact,” he pauses dramatically, “my party. For my initiation.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yep. Contrary to popular belief, this shit doesn’t happen in dungeons or secret underground lairs. The ceremony is five minutes and then it’s just an excuse for the Boys’ Club to get drunk and get laid. So my Uncle is hosting the party basically.”

He cringes as if he shouldn’t have said the last part, and looks at me apologetically. I ignore the strange feeling inside my chest. Eren didn’t have anything to apologise to me about. 

“Aren’t you a bit too young for your Uncle to be getting you drunk?” I intentionally ignore the second bit about him getting laid. Surely he didn’t mean that about himself. Probably the other men. I didn’t even want to think about with whom, especially since Eren called it a “Boys Club”. 

“I’m old enough to kill now. That’s what they’ll expect of me soon,” he says flatly. “So I’m old enough for every other party trick.” 

He runs a hand through his hair. I now had the unshakeable feeling that somebody else had run their hands through his hair already that night. “They don’t care that I’m just a stupid little kid,” he was saying, but I couldn’t help but notice the faint smudge of lipstick under his jawbone. “In their eyes, I’m a man now.” 

There was an odd feeling inside of me, and I wasn’t sure if it was jealousy or disgust. I moved my hand away from Eren. 

“I just wanted to do dumb teenage things, you know.” He looked at me like I was supposed to empathise.  But my eyes kept drifting to the smidge of red on his skin. “Sneak some weed into school and smoke it in the bathroom before Math class. Sneak into a university party, stay out beyond curfew and get lectured by Mom.” 

Eren was rambling now. I don’t know what to say or how to feel. “I didn’t even—” He looked at me, an odd expression on his face. “Whatever. Fuck it.” 

“What is it? Tell me.” 

He shakes his head, biting his lip. I suddenly feel irritated. “You told me that you were going to become a killer but you won’t tell me what “dumb teenage shit” you want to do?” 

He looked embarrassed, and it was too dark to tell, but he might have been blushing. “I’ve never even kissed a girl.”

Oh. 

Eren and I were really close friends, but we didn’t discuss this type of thing much. From my point of view, it was obvious why. There was little point in me bringing up my hopelessly unrequited crush to my object of affection, and having Armin in on my secret was torturous enough. And for the little over a year that I’d known him, Eren had never brought up this stuff either. 

“Really,” I said, my voice hoarse. The idea of Eren wanting to kiss a girl was doing something to my brain. Like short-circuiting it, perhaps. “I figured that might have been part of the whole Initiation Experience.”  

Something harsh flashed in his eyes. “Nope.” He said, contritely. 

Then why do you smell like a woman?  I should have asked. But what came out instead was a result of months and months of hopeless, repressed pining that made me squash down details that I deemed unimportant at the moment. “Is that. Um.” The words weren’t really wording in my brain right now, and it was kind of mortifying. “Something you want to do?” 

It all came out kind of fast, and it was highly absurd. Just because he insinuated that he hadn’t been kissed doesn’t mean he would want me to kiss him. Even though that’s all I’d been thinking about ever since he said the words. 

“Yeah,” he said awkwardly. “That’s what I was saying. I think.” 

I could not stop thinking about it. It was horrible. I was a horrible friend. Here he is, pouring his heart out to me, and one mention of the word kiss, and I could not stop thinking of what it would be like, if I said, I could kiss you, Eren, and just leaned over, and placed my lips on top of his. And oh, maybe he would like me to use some tongue or—

“Mikasa,” he said, quietly. Eren’s voice is suddenly soft. His hand has moved over mine. I can see his eyes glimmering in the moonlight and it is on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I have always thought he was really, really pretty. “Eren,” I said instead, sounding all raspy and full of want. 

“You haven’t kissed anybody either.” 

My throat felt strangely dry. I guess he meant it as a question, because how would he know? But trust Eren, to make it sound like a fact. As if he were so certain of this. Certain about me. I shook my head, no. 

“Is it alright if I kiss you, Mikasa?” 

I felt like my heart was in my mouth. Surely if I spoke right now, he would hear it. If I told him the words right now, he would see it, beating so terribly fast for him, and he would know it was ripe for the taking. But I looked into his eyes, and despite everything he had told me, everything I suspected, and every terrible detail of the terrible life that awaited him, I could only see an innocent yearning. 

“Yes,” I whispered. But Eren— I don’t know if it was arrogance or impatience— almost kissed the words right off my mouth. His hand tightened over mine as he leaned across to me, and he angled his face sideways, as he placed his lips above mine. Eren’s lips were an irresistible contradiction; they tasted like alcohol and cigarette smoke but they felt soft like cotton candy, and I felt myself getting lost in its sticky sweetness.

I’m not sure if he moved first or if it was me, but when I came back to take a breath— because how do you breathe when you’re like that? When your heart has almost stopped still, and you are filled with the essence of somebody you like so much, you don’t want to replace it with air— he leaned towards me again and captured my lower lip with a soft suck. 

His eyes were closed and his face looked so serene at that moment, so earnest, that I think that was the moment I realised that what I felt was love. 

[buttercupsfrocks]

Yo, tumblr.

Some thoughts I’ve been having of late to accompany yet another variation of this Monki frock, from last year’s summer sale, if memory serves me correctly. What can I say? When something works, why fix the dang thing?

I miss Fatshionista. For those who weren’t acquainted it was a livejournal community that, at its zenith, boasted about ten thousand members worldwide, mainly cis women and trans folk; all fat, most political about fat, and all of the mind that fat people should be better served for clothing options. While the community had its fair share of drama around hot button perennials such as cultural appropriation, it also provided plenty of food for thought. I did at least as much shutting up and listening as I did rolling my eyes, which is saying something at my age. Not that I was my age back then but I was still at least 20 years older than everybody else on there. Or why I lurked for a year before sharing my first OOTD. But it’s that aspect of Fatshionista I miss the most, the honest feedback, the helpful advice, the pooling of resources like whether anyone had tried their luck with such and such a brand, and if so what its merits or shortcomings were.

As the internet morphed and the fatosphere grew, the community went in one of two directions. The most politicised became the next wave of activists, penning blogs that spawned newspaper articles and book deals; while the style mavens started blogging and collaborating with the fashion industry, firstly as as models, then as designers, and consultants. At the time many criticised this commercialisation whereas I felt more positively inclined. By my reckoning the more our community made inroads into the mainstream, the more clothing options we’d have. The more clothing options we have the better we feel, the better we feel the more confident we become in our right to take up space and advocate for ourselves in other areas, eventually resulting in a societal shift in the way fat people are perceived and treated. Idealistic? Sure. And probably not in my lifetime but, to quote the zeitgeist, every ending has a beginning. 

These days, however, I’m beginning to think those who lamented the commercialisation of fatshion had a point. Bloggers became vloggers, influencers, and content creators, shilling for anyone who asked, and all the while claiming to give honest reviews. (Ever read a bad one? Me neither. Or why I turned down Bon Marché and J D Williams). And amidst all the shiny!shiny!new! and lucrative brand collabs, genuine honesty slowly bit the dust, along with the ingenious hacks, instant feedback on quality and fit, and most of all the celebration of true, diverse personal style. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still 100% less pernicious to fill my feed with than mainstream ladymags and sometimes I even get to see women with my body shape. But, just like the mainstream ladymags, it’s exclusively youth oriented. And a depressingly unimaginative, cookie-cutter interpretation of youth at that. And, while I’m aware of how predictably get-off-my-lawn that sounds, I have had a gutful of balayage, beachy waves, drag queen contouring, porn-mandated bald poonani, fake tan; and nail, hair and eyelash extensions. Femininity has never been so prescriptive, performative or oppressive in my lifetime and I was born in the sodding 50s. 

As static images on Insta are superceded by reels, and the next even fresher means of flogging fashion waits in the wings to replace them, has the plus size retail landscape changed all that much since Fatshionista? For the better in terms of online resources, though larger and infinifats are still often short-changed. On the other hand there are literally no dedicated plus-size bricks and mortar chains left in my city. Evans, Elvi, Simply Be, Taking Shape, and Anne Harvey are either online or defunct, and we never had a Yours to begin with. All the big stores with plus-size departments bit the dust on the high street aeons ago, and any mainstream chain that wants our custom still won’t stock the clothes in store or show them on plus sized bodies on their websites – even those that target an older demographic. Which is why Seasalt, Boden, and White Stuff can continue to whistle for my hard-earned dosh. Though there’s always the stand alone Marina Rinaldi boutique where a plain neoprene sweatshirt will set you back £290. 

Or perhaps not.

…which circuitously leads me to the other thing that’s been chomping at my gusset of late. Ethical shopping bores. Don’t get me wrong. I habitually recycle, have shopped secondhand since I was 15, and have jetisoned ocean polluting sponges and clingfilm for life. I draw the line at Ecover washing up liquid mind; it’s rubbish. (See? Honest to a fault). No, I’m talking sustainable clothing labels. Well, the few that deign to make plus sizes in any event. I’m talking clothes you have to take out a mortgage on. You can start guilt-tripping me about buying my clothes from places I can afford when fat women enjoy the same plethora of choice that straight-sized women have. And I swear if I have to read one more sentence with the word “intentional” in it, I’ll boak. If most of the vloggers spouting this holier than thou hooey really only bought two items a year when their predecessors were hanging in ribbons, they’d have mighty short careers. But maybe a wardrobe full of five hundred quid Selkie backhanders doesn’t count. 

It’s intentional alright; on the part of the brands who’d go tits up in short order if their customers didn’t buy owt from one end of the year to the next. What it isn’t is honest. 

Here endeth the rant.

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

Out-of-luck Lockdown: Part 1.

Wow...More units are here than I thought there would be.

They just need time to prepare. Then they’ll do a huge sweep of the lab until they find what they’re looking for.

Yo, Kaede! Shuichi!

Huh?

*Some familiar voices are heard nearby, which Kaede and Shuichi turn to see.

How’s that new upgraded spear treatin’ ya?

We came to help!

Yeah!

Oh great, you guys are here! That’ll make things a lot easier.

We still helping soldiers get ready. Once they done, we go into lab.

Your friends seemed pretty insistent upon helping out. I appreciate that bond, so I decided to let them tag along.

...If it’s all the same to you, Mrs Chairwoman...I was actually hoping that we could get a head start on the investigation by ourselves.

Yes, myself and my two allies here are of the same mind. We’ve already set up our individual forces at each lab exit, and were hoping to explore inside as soon as possible.

Is that so?

Yeah. We kinda got a feel of the layout and we’re currently the only three with the map. I’m not expecting we’ll find much, but we need to get this place sorted out as much as possible. Before Zetsubou arrive.

It’s true that we’re on a time budget. I guess we’d better let them go.

Yeah, I trust Kuripa to stay on top of this sort of thing. Daffy as he may be, he knows when to switch into work mode.

Psh...Thanks Boss...

Just one more thing before we depart. What happened with Hikaru Ando?

I can answer that.

*Setsuka joins the group.

Doc has been detained in one of the nearby camps we set up. We’ve actually brought down Doctor Kimura to take a look at him.

Seiko’s here?

We might not be able to communicate with her, but we know we can trust her with this sort of thing. She’ll find a way to get that parasite out of his system safely and soundly.

Despite our insistence that she should step back, Ms Eden Owari has decided to accompany her.

Eden can stay. Like I said, Ando would have gotten away if it wasn’t for her.

I suppose that’s all I needed to know. Try and get the doctor fixed up as soon as you can so we can get as much information out of him as possible.

Will do, second Chairman.

Catch you guys later.

*Munakata and Kaede head off, but before they can leave, Shuichi grabs Kuripa and whispers to him.

You three seem to be getting along well.

I’m just as surprised as you. Turns out we make a pretty good team.

...

Kuripa, listen...Something doesn’t feel totally right about this whole situation. I get the feeling bad things are gonna happen soon.

Why, because we’re winning? Makes sense. Every time we win lately, it comes at some kind of cost.

Look, Kaede trusts you. They aren’t as much of a threat on their own, but the Monokubs still may have some tricks up their sleeve, and they’re still in there. Not to mention, Zetsubou are probably on their way.

Please...Promise me that my and my girlfriend’s trust in you isn’t misplaced, ok? Please, make sure she stays safe.

Of course, of course. I get why you’re saying this. I haven’t given you much reason to believe in me lately.

But I promise I’ll protect her.

*Kuripa waggles his finger, then pursues his allies.

[Zetsubou HQ, shortly afterwards]

YOU IMBECILE!

...

*In the main lobby of the base, Akira Tsuchiya sits lazily on the sofa, as Mikihiko barks angrily in his face. Yukari, Celeste and Tsumugi stand nearby, baring witness to this interaction.

I think you fail to realize just how important that facility was to Zetsubou’s goals, and now the Future Foundation are clearing it out! We’ve even lost Ando, our one source of producing more parasites!

Because of your laziness, the Future Foundation got into the lab, and our plan to brainwash the cities has gone kaput! What do you have to say for yourself!?

...Yes...!

Huh...!? Wait...

*Mikihiko suddenly notices something, reaching over to Akira’s ear and yanking out an earpiece. He listens to it and hears the sounds of Japanese horse racing through it.

That’s it! I’m killing him! Lady Shirogane, permission to kill!

*Mikihiko grabs an ice pick from the table and thrusts it towards Akira’s eye, who doesn’t even flinch.

Denied! *sigh* Mikihiko, I appreciate it, but let me take care of this.

*Tsumugi goes and stands over Akira.

You mad at me too, lady?

Not as mad at you as I usually would be.

Let the Future Foundation have this victory. They haven’t stopped us. They’ve only delayed the inevitable.

What do you mean?

I had figured it would take a fair few more years to set up the game for Survivor. We’re going to move towards the final phase soon enough anyway.

Once that happens, we’ll have plenty of time on our hands. All we’ll have to do is repeat our process. Capture Ando and brainwash him again.

Besides, I’m sure the Doctor will cooperate once he finds out we have his darling daughter with us. We aren’t done and dusted just yet.

I agree. This victory is a trifle compared to our successes over the Future Foundation.

Still, don’t you think we’re getting a little cocky? We lost Emilia Feng and our weapon supply not too long ago. Even if we can replicate Feng’s procedure, don’t you think the numerous victory’s the Future Foundation have over us is concerning?

I joined this group and betrayed them because I believed you had the potential to give me exactly what I want. Now there’s no going back. So don’t you go letting me down, Shirogane.

Your feistiness is appreciated, Celeste. And believe me, I intend to reward you for it.

For now though, Akira, keep an eye on that lab. If anything big comes up, you know what to do.

Sure. I’ll take a look now.

OW!

*Akira lazily gets up, steps on Mikihiko’s foot on his way past, and checks the large monitor in the corner.

Hm...Now THIS is juicy~

What is it Akira?

Looks like the FF went back inside the lab to scout, see if they could find any parasites left over.

Then just tell the Monokuma’s to tear them apart!

I can’t. They already destroyed all our units in the lab. According to the vital signs, only the little one’s are left.

The Monokubs?

Yeah, those guys. Not much they can do on their own without those exisals up and running right? And that’s gonna take some time.

Ooh...Akamatsu’s really taking this seriously. She just dipped her hand in a whole box of sludge!

...!?

What did you just say...?

Huh? Wh-What’s with the scary face?

*Everyone looks towards Tsumugi, concerned.

Akira...who is in that lab? Some soldiers?

No, not many people actually. Just three targets. Kuripa Kurafto, Kyosuke Munakata and Kaede Akamatsu.

...!

*Tsumugi suddenly turns her back and starts pacing back and forth, her body slightly trembling.

M-Mugi-chan? What’s wrong?

Lady Shirogane, are you alright? You don’t feel well?

Akira...

*Tsumugi raises her head.

Activate the complete shutdown of the lab, enable all defense mechanisms and the plating on the large doors. Now.

What...!?

*Tsumugi’s request surprises even the stoic hacker. Everyone looks towards her with surprise.

Wh-Why?

Just do it...! Now...!

Lady Shirogane, if you’re hoping to trap the Future Foundation inside, wouldn’t it be best to wait until a few more soldiers step in?

Yeah, none of the people Akira mentioned are even targets. We should wait until Kirigiri and Saihara go back inside or-

I SAID DO IIIIIIIIIIT! DOOO ITT NOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWW!!!

!!!??

!!!??

!!!??

!!!??

*Everyone panics as Tsumugi suddenly screams out her command. Akira frantically goes to his monitor and types something in...However...none of the operatives realize they are being subtly watched.

...Oh no...

You find anything?

Ah!? Uh...no, no, nothing here...

...You alright?

Yeah, I’m fine just...Just a little jumpy is all.

It’s true that danger could be lurking around every corner. We shouldn’t let our guards down.

♪ *Hirari hirari mekuri mekuru! Sutoorii sutoorii! Kidoairaku sewashii!* ♪

Uuuh I think that’s mine.

*Kuripa picks up his phone.

‘Ello ello? What’s the situtation?

Uchui: KURIPA! GET OUT OF THE LAB!

Uchui!?

“Uchui!?”

Kamukura is calling you...!?

Shirogane is activating a shutdown on the lab! Get out of there NOW or you’ll be trapped in!

*He hangs up.

What the fresh hell?

*BLARE!* *BLARE!* *BLARE!*

!!!??

!!!??

!!!??

*As soon as the call ends, a loud alarm suddenly sounds out, and all of a sudden, heavy shielding shuts over the lab doors.

...That’s not good...!

We’re in trouble, aren’t we?

LET’S MOVE!

[yungviry]

Today I’m feeling a bit off, just in general. I’m sitting here in this random ass parking lot just thinking over the last few years I’ve had and my romantic experiences. Not very many of you ask me. Some would argue and say the contrary but in terms of actual romance, I’ve only had a handful of partners. Just now I was thinking about my first boyfriend, a mere 8 month relationship, and still get a bit tear jerked by it. Not necessarily in the sense that I miss him, more so with the words he left with me. Right after we broke up he called me a slut. Said something about me just fucking anyone and everything. I’m not the kind of person to fight with someone when it’s pointless, I merely will stay quite and agree. No energy exerted, no satisfaction. But it stuck with me. I am just a slut, I will just fuck anyone. And for about a year or two I proved him right. Accumulating bodies just for the sake of smoking with a cute face. Giving myself up to dudes that only wanted pussy and I only wanted weed and penis. I was asking strangers to send dick pics to scope them out and then arranging to meet if it was worth the ride.

I’m not going to lie, I did have fun to an extent. Unfortunately it was only when I built a relationship, similar to a friendship with the men I fucked. I knew none of them were relationship worthy, but the ‘platonic’ nature of their likelihood made it addicting. I enjoyed the thought of having friends I could dump myself into. These friendships served as a way for me to express my feelings and worries, literally from the one relationship I had experienced. I was upset what can I say. I loved getting to retell my escapades to my homies. They indulged in them as much as I did. Men love to hear all the nitty gritty like the ladies do.

I do miss some of my old chums, one in particular. Had we’d been better about communicating ourselves maybe we’d still be cool. Has probably my most loyal rump buddy for the longest. I appreciated his honesty and vulnerability at times. He had his own difficulties in life, and was comfortable mentioning some with me. I saw him get his own place, move up the ladder in his work, get a new car. Most definitely he was a slut, but so was I. And I appreciated how free he was about it too. Had he not been a bitch I really do think we could have been some kind of friends. Just something to get off the chest for right now.

[donotscratchyoureyes]

Is He A Scummer Now?

Pretend it's 30th July 2022, the eve of the 2022/23 season. The bleach is dry on the toilet where the remains of the previous season were dumped. We have a nice new, young and progressive manager who is going to be backed come "hell or high water" by the board. There's a lot to look forward to for sure. 

Wherever you are at this time, I fly into view in a DeLorean time machine, and as the gullwing opens I say "by the third week of November Rob Edwards will be managing Luton Town' and then I vanish as quick as I appear. The news I imported upon you would be more shocking than the fact I have a time machine.

Yet, here we are living with this exact reality (not the time machine, the other bit). Our beloved Rob Edwards is now a 'scummer'. Or is he?

There was an enormous fanfare surrounding Edwards appointment, mainly it has to be said from Watford's official communication channels. In a previous piece I mentioned how it felt like too much at the time. "This had better work", we all thought, and until 26th September it seemed to. Then, from out of nowhere the 'Pozzo Push-out-a-tron 5000' fired up and he disappeared faster than a tube of Pringles at a Weight Watchers meeting.

  This caused, understandably, a rather negative reaction from the fans. "But" they cried "you promised to back him come hell or high water!" and before they could open their social media accounts to relay this dismay another announcement was made about his successor. All very unromantic and colder than pecker of a penguin.

The reason we felt Rob's sacking was harsh at the time was that he'd only been given 11 matches. The results were a bit 'meh' but when you buy into a new philosophy you realise these things take time. We'd probably even give him a couple of seasons or so under that premise, wouldn’t we?

A few months and a few decent results later, we find ourselves at the World Cup break fourth in the Championship. Slaven Bilic has now managed more league games than Rob and has to be fair to the guy caused an uptick in our fortunes.

Rob, bless him, ultimately, sits along side a bunch of managers that didn't cut it at Watford. He's milling about with the likes of the second coming of Quique Sanchez Flores and Claudio Ranieri. That sounds harsh but it's reality. He isn't likely to ever have a statue placed outside our ground, no roads will be named after him, he'll never be freeman of Watford Borough.

  Why then do some fans see his next employment as some kind of betrayal? Watford weren't loyal to him, why should he show loyalty to Watford? In fact he probably has every right to stick two very large fingers up at us. Further he is only 39 and the start of his managerial career. He could have decades left as a head coach, and only 11 weeks of that will he be remembered as being at Watford.

  Yes, at first the news was a bit "erm...hang on what?" but personally I hold no grudges towards a young and likeable manager wanting to progress his career further. Obviously if he pulls off a tactical masterstroke on April 1st I will be extremely pissed off and ignoring every piece of post-match media to the fullest extent. But some of the comments I'm seeing on various social media channels are way over the top. He hasn't left us to join them. He's been sacked by us and needs a job. Fair play I say. You need some balls to take over the local rivals to the team you were just in charge of, and, dare I say it, as much as we can't stand the guy, Nathan Jones is going to be a tough act to follow at Kenilworth Road.

  So is he a scummer? Only if they beat us on April Fool's Day and finish above us in the table come the end of the season.

[possiblyscrewed]

I’m not really sure how to express this but I’m like, getting worried about how much pressure there is in the lgbtqia+ community to have the right politics and be inclusive of and working for everyone at once or gtfo. 

I feel like there’s this really black and white inclusion good exclusion bad thinking, which completely ignores the fact that too much inclusion becomes exclusionary. When you bring a coalition of people with as disparate experiences as our community together, it is impossible to be sensitive to every single identity with every single statement. We’re expected to be inclusive of literally mutually exclusive experiences, like dysphoric vs nondysphoric people and sexual vs sex repulsed people at the same time. The best solution would be allowing people to just speak on one subject and not have to explain how their statement also includes a completely different experience or be labeled an exclusionists. But instead the solution thus far seems to have been to decide that people with more historical representation in the community are the ones who are wrong.

And like, it’s fucked that it’s progressive to be a dick to anyone in the community, but especially so because the community was historically made up of people who had no other option. The trans community wasn’t historically made up of primarily dysphoric people because they all got together and decided to shit on and exclude nondysphorics. It’s because they lived in a society where the decision between coming out as trans or killing yourself could reasonably trigger a cost benefit analysis. Of course the people who did come out would primarily be people who had severe dysphoria and absolutely had to medically transition.

There was a time on tumblr when nondysphoric trans people would actively and intentionally seek to trigger dysphoria as a way to “stick it to the man” (trans people who were suffering more than them). I don’t know when or if that ended because as a result I unfollowed almost all the trans people I had previously followed, as well as a large group of cis people who would boost those fucked up takes in the name of allyship. But because being trans is a big part of my life and something I am still healing from, I still needed to interact with other trans people. So I found myself in a closed forum for transmedicalists or “truscum” (this was in like 2013). Aka people who to this day are told not to interact with basically anyone from the community because it’s supposedly so evil and exclusionary (but intentionally triggering dysphoria and making the community functionally uninhabitable for severely dysphoric trans people was inclusive and good). 

And yes, there were certainly trolls. But the vast majority of people I interacted with were people who had been and were hurting, and their ideology was based primarily on the (imo reasonable) question of “how can these people be a part of my community when they are intentionally hurting me?” They saw exclusionary politics as protecting themselves and their community. How can we be expected to embrace people who are proudly saying they can’t relate to our problems? Who see us as the enemy, when we are still healing from the pain that they keep triggering in us? How is it that we cannot have a safe space to discuss the very thing that we feel makes us trans?

And I guess the big thing about that experience is, I agree with transmedicalism. That is how I experience being trans. I don’t agree that it’s the only way to be trans. And I often wonder, if we as a community were better about allowing closed spaces, would it be possible for me to have a community of transmedicalists who feel similarly to me? Where we can meet in a closed space to discuss our experiences of being trans with people who understand, and trans people with different views on it can meet in their closed space and talk about their experiences, and then we can all meet in the big trans space and discuss only things that don’t pit us against each other. 

Like I said I don’t see a lot of trans drama on my dash anymore. I don’t know if that means it’s gone or it moved or I’m just avoiding it. But I see a lot of things that I find reminiscent. Ace positivity posts that are more about putting down/villainizing sexual people. Diatribes about how anyone who is bothered by the word queer is wrong and bad. It feels like every post about the historical community that I see is followed by a self congratulatory “see, this is why people who don’t like to be called queer are wrong.” Lots of people participating in “debates” that let them congratulate themselves for being enlightened, but about ideas that should never be legitimized by debate, like if aces belong in the community or whether it’s ok to say you wouldn’t sleep with trans people. (it’s ok to not sleep with trans people, it’s not ok to say it).

I don’t know how we get there, but to me a truly inclusive community would involve a lot of closed forums. There are things you can and should say to people who share your experiences that you absolutely should not say to your allies. It would involve more cracking down on exclusionary statements, but it would also require people to recognize that exclusionary statements are anything that makes people feel uncomfortable being in the community. That includes “white gay” posting. It includes anything that attacks any member of the community, even the ones you think are privileged. Even the ones you think have earned the attack. 

In my ideal community we would respond to those with “I’m sorry you’re still hurting, but what you’re saying is harmful to other members and this isn’t up for debate. It sounds like you would be more comfortable spending more time with people who share your identity rather than trying to police someone else’s.“ And we would all have to genuinely participate in some closed communities, to ensure that it’s not all just people who can’t handle the larger community.  

And idk if something like this is at all possible, but it feels so much better than the alternative where anyone who struggles is cast out. The less it is ok to express terf-like thoughts, the more it is necessary to become a full terf to be heard. The majority of conservative people in our community are young and were raised that way, and they’re trying to cling to their family and their experiences. And the more that the broader community becomes accepting, the more successful they’ll be at remaining conservative. 

We can’t thoughtcrime these things away. There are well intentioned people who have genuine struggles with what we’ve currently

termed inclusivity. And they absolutely don’t have the right to take that out on people who can be harmed by it. But if we want to actually be about building community then we have to work to build maintain and safe spaces for them to work through it. 

[nothankyousirr]

my opinions on the different mbti types (from an intj)

enfp - you can be good to hang around in moderation. i appreciate your charitable nature; how you aren’t one to pass judgement, but that also leads to a lack in understanding one’s depth. i appreciate how easy it is to befriend you, you’re able to keep the conversation without any expectations on my part to contribute, and although you can be stupid and impulsive, it’s to a point where it’s almost fascinating, which makes it somehow nice to be in your presence. in moderation, of course. you can be very draining at some points.

entp - you’re funny to watch, but actually conversing with you can be...confusing? i do appreciate your ability to see things from other perspectives, but sometimes you need to take a step back and understand the overall reasons behind those perspectives. confidence is important, but don’t get too over zealous, we all have things to improve on.

enfj - i cannot understand you. at all. you’re so nice, it seems like you have some sort of ulterior motives. i do not trust you, you are just so warm i feel like i’m being judged every time i talk with you, or are even in the same room as you. your general demeanor is just so kind it’s threatening, you need to be less optimistic.

entj - a lot of people hate you, which i can understand on their part, but i appreciate your approach to things. with every entj i’ve met, no matter my friend’s/peer’s opinion, we’ve always had a mutual understanding of some sorts. although, i do see a lot of naivety; which i’m 99.9% sure none of you will ever admit. i admire your drive, your confidence, and things along those lines, but some words of advice; you can’t change anyone. as hard as you try, some people are just stuck the way they are, unfortunately. it’s something i’ve had to learn as well, but a lesson i think would do you well.

infp - you are adorably killing yourselves with every move; like small puppy who’s favorite toy just happens to be laid perfectly in the middle of ongoing traffic. your impulsivity hurts me deep inside. please, just try to be aware of your surroundings, at least a little. i know, ironic coming from me, but it’s all i could ask. think out your actions, just a bit. i know life may suck, but take it upon yourself to change that, instead of just falling victim to your own hurt. i wish i could just pick you up and live your life for you, it hurts to see you do these things.

intp - i like you. your humor is refreshing as well as your insight, you just cannot stay organized. you take pride in your discombobulation; your lack of care, which confuses me. because of that, it’s hard to empathize with you when you have troubles, because it could’ve been easily prevented. it makes me upset for you when i see you do this. it doesn’t come from a place of trying to overly pressure you, rather a place of care. i hope that can be acknowledged.

infj - i enjoy your presence, you are just are hard to get. i always seem to upset you in some way, so i implore you to be better at communicating those things. your productivity and insight is very much appreciated, i feel your anxiety is holding you back. we all experience anxiety, it’s a valid human emotion, of course, but don’t let it dictate your life. confidence is important, you’re allowed to acknowledge your accomplishments. also, i implore you to think deeper in terms of morality. why do you believe those things? what is the axiomatic rout of those morals? by understanding that, you gain a better understanding of the people around you. the people you deem to be bad, may think they’re good by their own definition.

intj - from one intj to another, i feel like there is a lot to grow on. we tend to be very book-smart, but oblivious when it comes to how people work, including ourselves, but just because those things are acknowledged from mbti posts and whatnot, that does not give any excuse to avoid improvement. knowledge is important if we ever want to achieve our goals, and having that insight can make things a lot easier. as much as it seems like time is easily slipping away from us, taking control and trying to pick up on those details we may normally be ignoring, may teach us something valuable. it’s also important to take care of ourselves. i find routines are an easy way to remember to do so. having designated times for everything helps maximize the amount of time to get things done, while also taking care of your needs. and give yourself breaks. having fun, relaxing, etc. can also be productive in itself. not everything that’s productive isn’t what’s directly seen as such.

esfp - you can be a lot. its very hard for me to truly understand you, and i get the impression that you feel the same about me. i feel like there’s a lot of miscommunication. we’re practically complete opposites, not just literally (intj-esfp) but in practice as well. what you find fun and what i find fun is so drastically different from one another, i feel like it’s impossible to truly have a meaningful time with each other. from both parties.

estp - i like your confidence. your humor as well. i feel like we get along quite well, although it can be hard at some points because i tend to live in the future a lot, while you’re the “go with the flow” type. that is appreciated, though, and i feel like there’s a lot to teach each other. that’s just a matter of taking the time to communicate with one-another and be understanding.

esfj - i like you, from the sidelines. i appreciate the way you think, i’m just not sure if that is reciprocated. i tend to come of very strong, which i think is quite anxiety inducing for you, but you’re very passionate about the things you enjoy. i do think it’s important for you to have more insight, though. the world is vast, and an understanding of it can be very beneficial to you. 

estj -  your drive is commendable. you’re very confident, know what you want, which i appreciate. i do think it’s important to take a step to think about things further to acknowledge the nuances in things, instead of dismissing them as confusing. not everything is as blunt as you’d like, and may take a bit of critical thinking to truly understand. things happen, yes, but why may they do that? is there anyway to prevent the things you don’t like from happening? those questions are something i think are important to keep in mind.

isfp - for lack of a more kinder way of saying this, i dislike you. i wouldn’t go as far as to say i hate you, but i am very frustrated with you. you tend to dismiss things for the main reason of someone just “being that way” without taking into account any other factors that may come into play for that behavior. with the isfps i’ve met, you’ve seen my behaviors as “trying too hard to be a certain way” or “pretentious” without truly understanding why i act the way i do. it gets frustrating. your very confident, but in thoughts that are lacking in insight. take a second to learn about what you’re talking about before you say things. for my own sanity.

istp - even though you seem like you’re about to kill yourself with your approach to things, you always some how get it done, which is respectable, yet fascinating. you’re surprisingly very fun, even though from the outside i wouldn’t think we’d be at all close friends. you’re not one for deep conversation, rather the kind of conversation that always leave’s me feeling refreshed. it’s important to sometimes take a break, and you’re the type of person that i can easily have that with.

isfj - you’re very adorable. your moral standpoint to most things can be a bit frustrating at some points, but you make up for it with your kind demeanor; a genuine kindness as well. your happiness and drive to help people is a commendable quality, just don’t let people walk all over you. you tend to be a bit too charitable, when sometimes it’s okay to recognize that people just aren’t the right match for you. it’s okay to take care of yourself. i know i come off strong and that can be a bit intimidating, but i promise that it comes from a place of care. be confident in yourself. to truly be able to take care of the people around you, you need to take care of yourself first.

istj - i respect you and your approach to things. i think there are a lot of things we can learn from one another. your ability to easily figure things out from your surroundings is admirable, and it’s interesting the way your mind works. i haven’t met many istjs (of my knowledge) but i think we’d get along quite well from the information given to me.

[writingwithcolor]

Iam wanting to write a story about a girl who has asthma, a learning disability and is considered by society to be less than average. She is also a little over weight. When she has been given immortality other immortals shun her and want her dead. To escape from this she goes to a martial arts temple in China. She is also an American. I was wondering how I could incorporate both cultures in my story?

Overweight Chinese American girl with asthma & learning disability, martial arts, & China

Disclaimer: I’ve written this response assuming that the main character herself is Chinese or Chinese-American. 

Some stuff I’d like to discuss point-by-point:

Being an Asthmatic

Asthmatics don’t exactly have the best representation in media, so I’m worried about a non-Asthmatic writing a story where the main conflict is centered around the MC’s method of coping with ableism.

Especially considering how we’re portrayed as stereotypical nerds/geeks for not being absolute athletes (haha maybe because pushing ourselves that far will literally result in an asthma attack-)

I have a feeling that in addition to the point where Chinese people are already stereotyped as nerds, having her be asthmatic as well does mean you’ll have to be more careful in how you present her. We already have the whole “model minority, East Asian = nerd” thing going for us.

Being “overweight”

America’s definition of “overweight” looks different for all kinds of people! 

Someone who’s statistically considered “overweight” by American standards might pass as being “average” (in American standards once again) and vice-versa! The existence of the word actually insinuates the existence of an ideal weight-- pretty fatphobic.

If you mean to say that she’s fat, chubby, and/or plump, then do so. Don’t dance around the term just because it’s deemed ‘undesirable’ by our Eurocentric beauty standards. 

(Additionally, being chubby is associated with the nerd trope as well. More to watch out when developing her character.)

Mod Rune mentions the specific way you’ve phrased how as a result of her being overweight and asthmatic, she’s “considered by society to be less than average” and she’s shunned/wanted dead specifically for these two reasons.

Being disabled =/= incompetency or being less than an abled person. Once again, an OwnVoices situation would make sense; However I would still worry about infantilizing Asthmatic/chubby people this way.

The plot… oof.

I’m worried that your method of combating the already-delicate conflict (that she’s looking for a way to cope with her feelings of inadequacy induced by ableism/fatphobia), is pretty insulting. You specifically word her trip to China as an “escape” which I feel could have a much better reason-- your excuse as is sounds to lead into a story of “refinding myself at the home of my birth culture” or something like that- especially with the fact that she’ll be doing this at a martial arts temple. A very cultural aspect of China.

Martial Arts?

That being said; Even though a Chinese martial artist does feel rather stereotypical, it does help with asthma (source: me and Taekwondo)

Specifically, according to this study from NCBI on the correlation between asthmatic children and Taichichuan, results have shown that “12 weeks of Tai-Chi-Chuan could improve the pulmonary function, decrease airway inflammation, and improve quality of life in children with mild asthma”.

However Northern Shaolin, Hung Ga, Wing Chun, and other Chinese forms of martial arts could work as well! Please do research on the specific techniques and differentiate between them. Appropriating Chinese martial arts on top of the fact that it’s already rather tropey- very bad.

A different plot?

Perhaps don’t send her off to China to quote, "escape from how other [immortals shun her and want her dead]". 

I think a better motivation for this change in landscape would be “She wanted to train to get stronger and improve her health with how it was negatively impacted because of her asthma.” 

The thing with a lot of disabled people is that-- we don’t want to have to “keep up” with abled people. We don’t want to need to take all these extra measures just to be able to function ‘normally’ (or at least the one defined by society). I feel that the motives in your original plot panders to that idea that she must get stronger or else she’ll never be accepted by the other immortals. A Chinese-American asthmatic myself, I’d much rather see her self-worth measured through her own growth as an individual than how well she ‘fits in’ with non-asthmatics.

Marika mentions that people also often do martial arts for culturally-relevant exercise-- so this could also be a way for her to reconnect with her birth culture.

Sophia also mentions that being overweight has little on one’s skills as a martial artist; So it shouldn’t be used as an argument as to why someone shouldn’t be taking on a certain expertise. (Seconded, as someone who did kendo: some of the better kendoka were overweight and had more precision than I did --Jess)

Incorporating TCK Culture:

Look for stuff written by actual Chinese-American third-culture kids!

Every little part of life- from the stories parents tell their kids before bed to the kind of food we eat daily- is 100% influenced by both our caregivers and the community we live in. For me personally, we’d have hotpot dinners with other Asian families during the Lunar New Year and I’d typically be sent to Chinese school on Sundays as well. 

Mods Jess and Lesya touch up on some TCK elements in this ask as well! (Wanting to Learn More About Culture Because of Chinese Name) However your MC celebrates her cultures will also depend on how assimilated into America her family is.

Like I said earlier: look for materials that Chinese-American TCKs and immigrants have written! There’s no better way to learn about certain customs than getting them from the actual source.

My ending thoughts!

These are honestly traits that I’d love to see more, as an asthmatic Chinese-American myself who has done martial arts in the past, haha.

Be extra careful when a ton of your character’s traits are found in East Asian (Chinese) caricatures! Be sure to flesh her out as a three-dimensional character as this description that you’ve given us (regarding her conflict) makes me go >.>-- I don’t like it as is.

Give her motivations for herself that aren’t purely to conform to others (per the submissive Asian girl trope). Having a bullied Asian girl does feel like it plays into this, so please don’t have her measure her worth as an individual based off of the standards set by abled people!

Do tons of research on Chinese martial arts! Marika mentions huge points below that I want you to consider when giving her a specific speciality-- just saying “a martial arts temple” doesn’t cut it. 

(As always, any reader feedback/additions would be appreciated!)

~ Mod Emme

These are my thoughts as someone who has practiced various styles of Chinese martial arts. 

While the quality of the instructor and the student’s efforts are crucial, I think you need to be clear on the following:

The style of martial arts your character will be doing

Their physical limitations

The type of learning disability they have. 

Different fighting styles suit the limitations of different body types in different ways

A person who is overweight may find styles with explosive movements that put weight on vulnerable joints like the knees to be painful. Styles that favor stable stances may be more feasible than those that emphasize movements with lots of air time, crouching and jumping.

A person who is inflexible will need a style that encourages them to keep limber to avoid getting hurt.

A person with diminished lung capacity will need a style that safely challenges their endurance.

Different learning disabilities might make certain styles more or less difficult to learn

ADHD may favor fast fighting styles with complex move sets and a wide variety of weapons.

Issues associated with memory retention may make styles that emphasize sparring easier than those that focus on memorizing forms

Make no mistake, the culture of a style will be as much of a consideration for your character as the Chinese and American cultural influences. Do your research, and inquire with practitioners as to what styles would work well for your characters. 

The tumblr blog How to Fight Write would likely be a good resource on the physical logistics of different styles. 

- Marika

[allthingslinguistic]

How we made a better podcast website for Lingthusiasm

We recently redesigned the website for Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics which I've been making along with Lauren Gawne and a team of excellent people for the past 5 years. 

As part of the process, we did a lot of research and thinking into what a podcast website could and should contain. The more I talked with people about what their goals are when visiting the website of a podcast, the more appreciation I developed for website design as a way of communicating with people. Just like how we design a Lingthusiasm episode itself to bring people through an interesting linguistics topic regardless of their level of familiarity with previous episodes or with linguistics in general, a podcast website needs to work for multiple types of visitor. 

We'd been meaning to redo our website for 2 of those 5 years. And the more I talked about this project with other people, the more people I found who also had a website they'd been meaning to make, or revamp, or had recently made or revamped. In the process of researching what podcast website visitors want and trying to find great podcast websites to model ourselves on, we learned that many podcast websites aren't actually as useful as they could be, so I decided to write up what we did and what we learned, in the hopes that it'll be useful to other people who are interested in podcasts or web design more generally. 

Or, if you prefer clickbait summaries, You'll Never Believe We Made This Website Using Tumblr! (Ahem. Sorry about that.) Here’s a little preview:  

A Theory of Opacity

The Problem

The Background

The Research

The Goal

The Design

The Implementation

The Results

The Takeaways

The Thanks

Step 1: A Theory of Opacity

Podcasts have what's often called a discoverability problem: it's hard for prospective listeners who might like a particular podcast to know what's out there. 

I propose, however, that this problem is not unique to podcasts, and that we could understand the nature of this problem better by calling it opacity: the degree to which you're able to try before you buy without committing a substantial chunk of time, money, or effort. For example, books have a higher opacity than newspapers, despite both being text, because it's easier to read through some news articles before buying a physical paper or online subscription. Books, even when you can leaf through the first few pages, are often designed to be a unified rather than a modular experience, so you don't know before committing to it if the premise that seems intriguing on page 1 is going to pay off well a few chapters later. Even if you're getting access to the book itself as a gift or a loan, the time that it takes to figure out whether you're enjoying it is still rather daunting. Similarly, buying a product in a store often gives it a lower opacity than buying the same product online, especially items like clothing. 

The opacity of a product is a big factor in how you need to think about connecting it with the people who might be interested in it. My local grocery store does not need to invest effort in figuring out how to reduce my opacity with respect to, say, lemons, because I already know what a lemon tastes like and what I might use it for and the lemons available to me in Canada are all really much of a muchness as far as quality goes. Anyone who has somehow made it to adulthood without trying a lemon can already do so in a very low-risk way by ordering most cold drinks at a restaurant, so further free lemon samples probably aren't going to move the needle much and they should try a different marketing strategy. But, if the grocery store starts stocking a fruit that hasn't been commonly available in Canada (say, soursop), or which is commonly available but comes in widely varying qualities (like peaches), they would probably find it helps with sales to reduce the opacity of the fruit — by providing free samples, cutting one open so I can see what it looks like inside, providing selection instructions on how to know when it's ripe, or even hand-selling me on why I might want to try it (as happened to me many years ago with Honeycrisp apples).

In mature markets, you can often tell the opacity of a product category by noticing which ones have opacity-reducing ecosystems around them. Books have tons of factors which aim to reduce their opacity, from the blurbs and cover art on the book itself to the reviews and recommendations in the broader book ecosystem. It would be sort of ridiculous to imagine an ecosystem like this around newspapers (hey, seven public intellectuals have each written a sentence about why you should try the New York Times! here's my top 10 list of newspapers you should try this summer!). 

Podcasts are also relatively opaque, because of their length and the increased demands of the audio format, even though they're often free. And one big thing that's opaque about podcasts is the question of why the podcast website exists in the first place.  

Step 2: The Problem

The first problem that needs to be solved when considering a podcast website is figuring out who it's for. See, the normal way that most people interact with most podcasts, most of the time, is through their chosen podcast app. I see this at conferences: people who've had an interesting conversation with me and are excited to find out I have a podcast will pull out their phones, search for the podcast name in their app, and follow it right from the app, no website involved at all. This is why many podcasts don't really have great websites, and sometimes even don't have a website at all, because you can really can get away with it for a while.

But getting away with something doesn't mean it's actually great tactics, and in the case of podcast websites it's not. That's because, as we found through some surveying, while the median listener of your podcast doesn't use the website, there are two very important outlier groups of people who do use podcast websites, and you really want to help both of them. The tricky bit is that these two outlier groups are on completely opposite sides of the median, in terms of their relationship with your podcast. 

Prospective listeners

The first group is people who have never listened to the podcast and they're checking it out, maybe considering listening, maybe looking for a transcript instead, maybe trying to decide whether they're willing to accept an invitation to guest on the show, maybe they're a journalist who's considering covering the show, maybe they're clicking over from social media, maybe they've just stumbled across the name of the show and they've googled it trying to figure out like, what its deal is. They're not sold on the show yet (that's why they're not in the podcast app!) but they're actively in the process of deciding whether they want to get into the show, and so it's super useful and valuable to give them a compelling answer to the "would I like this?" question in a centralized location which you have full control over. You're halfway there because they've managed to find you already — wouldn't you want to help them over whatever remaining hurdles they're wondering about?

Big fans

The second group of website visitors are people who are really keen on the podcast and they're taking the leap into becoming even bigger fans — or they're big fans who are returning to the website regularly. Maybe they're visiting the shownotes page for extra reading, maybe they're looking for a platform-agnostic link that they can send to friends or students to try to get them to listen, maybe they're looking for social media profiles or bonus content or merch or to find other fans, maybe they've reached the level of fandom where they're determined to consume every scrap of content you've put online. Again, this is a great group of people! You really want to help them! It's good for your show if fans have an easier time giving you money, buying merch, finding any extra content you've made for them, sharing the show with prospective new fans, and otherwise engaging with you more deeply in the way you're looking for.

Even if, just to pull random numbers out of my hat, 80% of a podcast's listeners aren't visiting the website on any given month, helping that (say) 20% through a website gives you disproportionate impact because website visitors are at a liminal stage: mostly people with the potential to convert from prospective listeners to actual listeners and from median fans to highly engaged fans, both of which are things every podcast wants.

Therefore, you need a podcast website. And crucially a website that somehow miraculously works for both complete newbies and die-hards. No pressure. 

This was the situation we found ourselves in when we decided to get serious about revamping Lingthusiasm's website earlier this year. We'd known we had this problem, and we'd even done twitter polls and threads to confirm our assumptions about the two types of podcast website visitors based on our own experiences visiting the websites of other podcasts in our own podcast listening lifecycles. Now it was time to solve it.

Step 3: The Background

But first, a brief orientation to the previous state of Lingthusiasm's website, which had been the case for its first five years of enthusiastic linguistics podcasting. Lingthusiasm's original website was formatted as a blog, with each new episode and transcript (and occasional announcement post) appearing as its own post in reverse chronological order, plus some static information showing up on the sidebar, which also contained menu links to static pages like "about" and merch. 

Originally, there hadn't been that many episodes or static pages, so this layout sort of worked, but as they'd kept growing, this became an unwieldy experience for everyone except the median listener, the one who shows up at a podcast site already interested in the show and just wanting the link to the most recent episode. But as we established, the median listener is less likely to visit the site than either the newbie or the superfan. Plus, because each episode had its own shownotes page, the median listener generally visited the site when prompted to by the link to each new episode page as shared on social media — they weren't going to the homepage really at all. So, while we wanted to preserve the episode pages, which were serving their purposes completely adequately, the main, first homepage, the thing you find if you google "Lingthusiasm" or click the link in our bio? That part was begging for improvement.

Let's scroll down a bit. Sooo much text. Side menu bars...not great. And is the most recent thing we've posted (in this case, a transcript) really the first thing a new user wants to see? Who knows… 

There was one further complication: our whole site was hosted on Tumblr. Making a blog-based site have a static homepage is very straightforward on, say, WordPress. Maybe now that Automattic has bought Tumblr, it'll become an option there too one day (if there are any Tumblr staff reading this post, hey, drop us a line, we'd love to chat). But for the meantime, we were on Tumblr with Tumblr's existing feature set, and we didn't particularly want to leave. Partly, that was just because it would be a pain to migrate our existing site over somewhere else. 

But a bigger part is that both Lauren and I as cohosts had well-established blogs on tumblr, Superlinguo and All Things Linguistic, long before we started the podcast, so having the shownotes posts live on tumblr let us both reblog them easily to our followers, not to mention letting our followers continue sharing and spreading them (which they do!). Tumblr is actually our second highest social platform in terms of followers, just after Twitter and higher than Instagram or Facebook. And it's much more link-friendly/multimedia-friendly than most other social media sites, with no algorithm to fear, so we're actually quite happy to keep investing in Tumblr. Just...not at the expense of the website being easy to navigate as a website. 

But the mitigating factor here is that Tumblr has been around long enough that it has an extensive library of themes people have made for it, and it also has no qualms about letting you dig around, MySpace-style, in the html and CSS for free. So, maybe it'll be possible after all...

To recap, the challenge: make a website that would be a great experience for two very different types of users, all on a platform that was really designed to facilitate us doing no such thing. We commissioned Liz McCullough (different spelling, no relation!) to help us with further research on what the website needed to accomplish, investigation of which tools we could use to build the improved site, and finally the implementation that would bring the goals and the tools together. 

Step 4: The Research 

We did three things to assess the current state of our podcast website and how well it was working for its visitors. 

1. User testing 

In early stages, when we knew we needed to improve the website but not exactly how, I was talking with my friend Julia Evans about how we were working on this problem, when she very kindly volunteered to take a look at our current site and narrate her first reactions while I looked over her shoulder. This was very helpful! 

Not only did Julia's reactions highlight (again) how bad our mobile experience was, and how our list of static pages was long and made the eyes glaze over, but she also made a couple of very concrete and useful observations, such as that we weren't highlighting the existence of transcripts enough and that people other than instructors might be interested in a list of episodes by topic, which resulted in us splitting out the "teaching" page into a more general "episodes by topic" page and a more instructor-focused "teaching" page. 

2. User survey 

Since having one person look at the current website was already providing useful insights, we decide to do a survey about what people in general are looking for in a podcast website, which I ran in a rough-and-ready way from my twitter account, using a mix of twitter polls and highlighting people's comments to see if they would prompt further replies. Obviously, the people who follow me on Twitter are not a balanced sample by any imagination, but since they're likely to over-index for "people who are interested in my podcast", I figured this was an acceptable sampling bias.  

Here are a selection of the helpful comments we got from people about what they do (or don't) use podcast websites for: 

When I was collecting ling podcast eps for teaching reasons I visited websites (including the lingthusiasm tumblr) to look for things like transcripts and lists of episodes by topic otherwise as just-a-listener I rarely if ever do

I listen to podcasts all the time, at work, on my commute, and at home. I simply forget there is a website to visit, so I’ve never gone to one. This is actually reminding me that there have been some podcasts with web pages I meant to visit to get more of the story!

Both transcripts, and "more info" but specifically links in the shownotes. 

I'm kinda also looking for community. (I'm thinking about starting my own podcast so my perspective is both a fan of yours and figuring out my own plans.)

For me, it's always one of three reasons: 1. I heard about the podcast somewhere and want to get the official feed URL to subscribe to. 2. An episode doesn't have thorough enough embedded notes and I want more info on something mentioned. 3. Looking for how to support it (💰).

Never. But I assign a LOT of them (including yours) and students who don’t already listen to podcasts on apps on their phones actually go to the website to listen.

Both ends of the spectrum of engagement for me: Trying a one-off episode of something I won’t subscribe to or going deep on show note links for something I listen to religiously.

I really only use a podcast's website for two reasons - to learn more about the show if I've just heard of it and am thinking about starting to listen; or if I've enjoyed a show for a while and want to find a link to their merch (for shows that don't include this in the notes.

The vast majority of the time I’m visiting a podcast website is because they’ve invited me to the show and I’m doing a “Do they align with my morals & values?” check.

A podcast website is the best place to figure out if you like a podcast before committing to subscribing.

There were also quite a few comments about how people visited podcast websites looking for transcripts and for more information in the shownotes, such as the spellings of names, links to websites or books mentioned, links to merch, and further reading. Both of those two things the Lingthusiasm website was already doing, so this was nice validation for us! 

However, since we can tell from stats that new fans often go back and listen to all of the old episodes, it seemed that an area for improvement would be doing more to help people get to transcripts and shownotes pages for archival episodes, rather than only highlighting the most recent shownotes and transcripts blog-style

I also asked a few survey-style questions of what people use podcast websites for, which resulted in agreement that recommending a few starter episodes for new listeners would be useful (even though most podcasts aren't doing it yet), the vast majority of people just visit a podcast website once or twice (not for every episode), and mobile is somewhat though not resoundingly more popular than desktop. 

3. User profiles 

Based on people's responses to the twitter survey, plus private conversations and our own experiences as podcast users, we had Liz McCullough, as her first step in redesigning the website, do an audit of our old website with potential user scenarios extracted from the twitter thread, an assessment of how well the mobile and desktop sites accomplished those scenarios, and proposed solution where applicable. Here's a sample of what one scenario looked like: 

Scenario: I’m clicking a link from social media.

Mobile: At the time of testing, the most recent post is a transcript, so I don’t immediately even understand that this is a podcast (just something with “episodes”).  I have to scroll down a little bit to see a playable episode and down a LOT to see anything else.  I might never make it there.

Web: If I’m looking, I can more readily understand what this is, given that the “about” section in the right panel is viewable without scrolling.  Still, the most recent post takes up most of the space.

Solutions: splash page or prominent tagline near the top?

It's not really necessary to belabour how much the old website failed at most of the scenarios (here's the whole report showing how much it did), so instead I'll just give the list of our user situations (with a few additions that didn't make it on the report but were considered in subsequent design), in case this summarized list might help people:   

I'm clicking a link to the main site page from social media.

I've clicked a shownotes link from social media and now I'm wondering what else is going on with this show

A friend sent me this link and said I'd enjoy the podcast. 

I've heard of this podcast (potentially to do an interview or cover them) and I just want to figure out what their deal is and maybe contact info if I decide I like their deal

I googled "linguistics podcast" and ended up on your site. 

Someone recommended your podcast and I don't actually listen to podcasts but maybe if there's transcripts? 

I've encountered something else that suggests I'll probably like this podcast but what I don't like is typing things, can I just get a link to where it lives in my podcast app? 

I'm a student and my teacher/professor told me to listen to Episode Number Whatever 

I'm a teacher/professor and I'm trying to find that episode I vaguely remember from two years ago to forward to my students slash I want to see if there's anything else that's relevant for them 

I'm not able to listen, but I regularly read your transcripts

I've heard a couple of recent episodes, liked them, and now I'm trying to decide if I should go back and listen to more 

I listen all the time and want those sweet, sweet shownotes 

I listen all the time and heard you mention merch on the show and now I want to find it! 

I listen sometimes, but I really like what you're doing and want to support you

I've listened to all the main episodes and I've been told there are bonus episodes somewhere and I want them!!!

I've become a huge fan of this podcast and now I want to talk to other people who are into this thing as well! 

Liz's summary points are also useful: 

The current web site experience is heavily dependent on the most recent post.  (On mobile, this is probably pretty much the only thing that people see.)

Ideally, there would be better architecture pointing people to where they might want to go, especially on mobile.  A bit of structure would help a lot with the long-list-of-links problem.

It might be helpful to create some kind of “new listener” page for the truly uninitiated (which seems likely to be a decent portion of views, based on Gretchen’s poll).

I think it was especially helpful to have third parties involved at the user research stage, from having Julia as a friend doing a quick set of real-time reactions, to my twitter followers replying with what they looked for from a podcast website, to hiring Liz to do an audit of the site and how well it was serving its various types of users (note that Liz is a relative newcomer to the podcast and wasn't involved in creating or maintaining the previous website, so she hasn't had time to get used to its quirks and start taking them for granted, which I think was useful!). 

In any case, what we've extracted from this user research is that there's a largely U-shaped, bimodal distribution in terms of who's visiting Lingthusiasm's website (and, we suggest, the websites of most other podcasts) — the new/prospective people and the people who know they already like us. This is the scenario that I described at the top of this post, but the research at this stage was what enabled me to figure out that earlier thing which I'm presenting out of order.

Step 5: The Goal

So, now that we've figured out the two primary groups of users that were being under-served from the Lingthusiasm website, plus a few more specific scenarios, we can work on what website elements would help them and how to integrate those into a cohesive website together. 

The first thing we realized is that our two website user types had very different emotional relationships with us as a podcast, and thus with what they'd be willing to put up with on our website. Prospective listeners had essentially zero relationship with us: if we didn't show them signs of something relevant early on, they'd bounce and never come back. Die-hard fans already knew us and liked us -- if the first thing they saw on the site wasn't quite for them, they'd keep digging (especially by following the menu bar). Moreover, existing fans were also particularly likely to have other prospective listeners in their orbits: you know how, when you get really into something, and you want to persuade all your friends and family to try it too? So highlighting early on some persuasive/descriptive information about what the show was like and who might be into it was actually the most useful thing to do for everyone who'd be likely to visit the website. It's directly useful for prospective listeners and makes the site an extremely forwardable summary of why someone might want to get into the show, which is something that die-hard fans might not have come looking for but can appreciate when they get it.

Now that we know we need to persuade, we need to determine what information people find useful for deciding whether or not they want to get into a podcast. Bearing in mind that the internet is a big place and a show can be very successful by appealing strongly to a fairly specific niche, so we knew that helping people make an effective and accurate decision for them is better than promising to be all things to all people only to disappoint when people actually start listening. 

Personally, when I hear about a new podcast, what I want to know is two things: one, do I like the premise? and two, does it execute on the premise well?

Lingthusiasm has a decent premise: many people like two-person conversation-style podcasts where you learn things about nerdy topics, language is something everyone encounters and therefore something people are often curious about, and half hour monthly episodes is a reliable but not overwhelming posting schedule. But where it really wins or loses is in execution: ongoing-host conversation style podcasts in general only work when the hosts have genuinely good chemistry, when the editing is invisible but effective, and when, crucially, the hosts actually make the conversation as interesting and funny as promised. This is why people pull out their phones and subscribe to Lingthusiasm after I talk with them about linguistics for five minutes at a party — because I've just given them a proof of concept. We can (and do) give proof of concept like this on social media through short audio clip posts, but it's pretty hard to get people to hit play on an audio clip if they don't know anything else going in. 

As I talked about at the beginning of this post, podcasts are a relatively opaque format. Like with a book, most people require opacity-reduction mechanisms for a podcast — they don't just pick it up and hit play or start reading, they need something or even several things to convince them. Think about it like the difference between a movie and a tiktok video. If a friend sends me a tiktok with a very vague message like "omg", I'll probably just watch it no questions asked, since it's so short. But if the same friend is trying to get me into a show that's 10 seasons long, I'm really going to take a lot more convincing. This is why trailers and reviews are a thing for long videos and not short ones! 

There are many opacity-reduction mechanisms that podcasts already use to attract new listeners, like creating short clips, soliciting reviews, and doing guest spots on other shows, in addition to the obvious things like art and descriptive text. But one way of reducing opacity that was particularly on my mind from my experience with the book world for Because Internet was the idea of doing podcast blurbs. After all, there are certain characteristics that are just more credible if someone else says them about you: in our case, we needed to establish that we're trustworthy sources of information as hosts, but also that we're genuinely funny and engaging. So we looked back through various reviews and recommendations that people had made of Lingthusiasm over the years and picked out a few sentences that covered these points to feature on the website.  

(Other podcast styles may have different priorities in terms of what proof their prospective listeners need: for example, interview-based shows rely on the interestingness of their guests, and so don't need to invest as much in demonstrating host expertise or chemistry — in this case, something like highlighting a few well-known guests might be appropriate instead.)

Step 6: The Design

Okay, so what does it look like in practice to make a podcast homepage incorporating various ways of breaking down opacity for new listeners but which also is still useful and not off-putting for fans who want to do a deep dive? 

Let's break down the elements of the new Lingthusiasm homepage (click to see the live version), which, hey, doesn't look like a blog anymore! Look, Ma, it's a grown-up website! 

Small top menu bar - most people will skip over this automatically because it's a standard UI element, but it contains a few useful navigation links for returning fans and persists through the page, if people realize they don't want to be scrolling

Cover photo - with "Lingthusiasm: a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics" so you know where you've ended up

Narrow banner - with links to the show's feed on all the major podcast platforms (not just Apple Podcasts), so if you're already sold on the show and just came here for the link to the feed, you're not wasting too long hunting (it's not practical to link to the entire long tail of indie podcast apps, but including links to the most popular of them, and the direct rss link, signals to sophisticated podcast listeners that we're on all the other places as well) 

Next block: okay, you stuck around below the link to the podcast apps, that means you'd like more about what the show's like? 

Three short quotes from other people attesting that yes, we actually know our stuff, yes, we're actually for a general audience and not boring, and yes, we're even funny. All of these things are difficult to believe if people assert them about themselves, so we decided to borrow a page from book blurbs and let other people assert them for us.

A longer description of what the show is like, with the beginnings of a few logistical details like our schedule

The tagline at the very beginning and the longer description make a sort of sandwich around the testimonials, effectively saying "here's what this show is trying to do, and here's how people think it succeeds."

A grid of six navigational icons, leading to episodes, transcripts, and bonus episodes, plus about, Patreon, and merch. These boxes are partly for the existing die-hard fans, saying "hey, you scrolled through some text that maybe you didn't read particularly closely because you already know how to describe the show, here are some nav boxes that'll take you down the rabbit hole!" But putting the boxes here after the description also lets them be useful for the first wave of prospective listeners, the relatively easily convinced: "okay, you liked this description? here's how to get to the episodes" as well as media/scoping people who might not actually be intending to listen but who are looking for meta details such as the existence of transcripts or a link to the about page. 

Three suggested starter episodes - An additional nudge for prospective listeners who are sorta interested enough to keep scrolling but not quite enough to click through. The episodes are not consecutively numbered and also have clearly signposted transcript links right next to them, making the point that episodes can be listened to in any order and reminding people that we have transcripts. This also increases the value of the homepage, which now also functions as a "where to get started" link for both us and existing fans trying to drag their friends down the rabbit hole.   

Email newsletter signup box - At the bottom of the static page itself, for fans that are die-hard enough to want to scroll through this whole page before clicking any nav boxes. It's our firm conviction that there's no point in bugging people about the email newsletter signup before they even know what your thing is. 

Below the static elements, and partly for technical reasons (more about technical details in a bit), we have the original new episode posts that comprised the entire homepage of the original site, in reverse chronological order. For new listeners, these are a few easy to click "play" buttons if they want to start listening right away. And in case any of our existing users were actually listening by navigating to the homepage once a month and clicking play on the most recent episode (our stats suggest there were very few of them), this behaviour is still possible.  

Plus, at the very bottom, we have a pretty standard footer with more descriptive text and social media links. We assume that most people follow us on social media through some combination of being a super keen fan and/or seeing us in their feeds while already there, so we don't need to hard sell social media on our website.

This deals with the problem of the homepage not being useful for newcomers or people who want to dive deep into the show. We also had to deal with the navigation — having one menu bar with all of the static page links was getting unwieldy, and would be entirely too large in the mobile-friendly top floating menu bar of the new theme (previously the menu had been a static sidebar, which is kind of okay on desktop but really bad on mobile). 

To figure out how to pare down the navigation, we looked at all the static pages and decided which ones thematically went together and a rough path that people might logically want to take from one to another. For example, "people" (the page with bios of our team) and "FAQ" naturally went under "about", "episodes" could also contain transcripts and bonus episodes, and the page recognizing Patreon supporters above a certain tier could be a sub-page of "community", the page that describes our discord server. Since taxonomies are hard, we also created redundancies by cross-linking sub-pages where we thought that people might reasonably desire multiple paths to them, such as linking to our crossovers page from both "about" and "community".

So far, so good. We made a rough paper sketch containing these broad elements. Obviously, because I'm showing you live screenshots, you know that we did accomplish this, but if you're someone who knows things about website design and is mostly here because you're like "okay, but I can't believe they did this on TUMBLR" this next section is for you. (If not, y'know, feel free to skip to the following section.)

Step 7: The Implementation

Now, how we actually accomplished this given the design limitations of Tumblr.

The hardest technical element was in figuring out what our most promising option was for creating the landing page, not just the blog view. We knew we needed something static to articulate what the show is and where the additional content for fans is, but we also had to integrate it with the existing blog side, which we had no intention of getting rid of as it's still very useful (each of the shownotes pages and transcript pages is a blog post). 

Three options that we considered and ended up not opting for, in order from least to most complicated.

Use Tumblr's pinned post feature. We could make a post with basic descriptive and navigational elements that would be pinned at the top of the site, above the most recent episode/transcript post. This would have worked okay, but the menu bars were still cluttered and not great on mobile, so we would have had to do this and also find a new theme. Also, Tumblr's post formatting isn't great at things like "putting two images beside each other" or "links that aren't just static in-line text" so we would have had to hand-code that into a pinned post anyway...at which point we were also looking into other options.

Host the static homepage somewhere else entirely. For example, we could make a nice-looking static homepage somewhere like WordPress, and then mess with subdomains to get two sites hosted in different places to be seemingly unified. This wouldn't have been too bad for a new project — we could have pointed lingthusiasm.com to the static site and then hosted the tumblr posts under something like posts.lingthusiasm.com. However, since we already had five years of post links pointing to lingthusiasm.com/post/etc, we weren't especially relishing the prospect of setting up a whole bunch of redirects to make all those links still work. Alternatively, we could have hosted the new static homepage under something like home.lingthusiasm.com, but then we would have faced the inverse problem — we also had 5 years of linking people to lingthusiasm.com as the main show site and there wasn't an obvious way to get them to stop expecting a decent homepage experience right there.

Mess with Tumblr code to try and get the homepage to be a static page. According to an eight-year-old answer on Quora (definitely not at all a dubious method of getting tech advice), there's a block of posts snippet that you can delete from your tumblr theme which gets rid of the reverse-chrono list of posts and then you can hand-code something else there instead. We did actually try this method, on a separate "sandbox" tumblr account that we set up to test things without breaking the main Lingthusiasm site. Unfortunately, while it did remove the posts block as promised, it also broke all of the tag pages (such as), which apparently depend on the same posts block code snippet. We're not actually sure how much our users depend on the tag pages, so we briefly considered just going for this option, but it would have been highly inconvenient to us as hosts, because we use our own tag pages a lot. And besides, it would have left us, again, hand coding the new homepage from scratch, which again, seemed like a bit of a waste of time when there are plenty of nice, newer themes that are already doing a much better job at being responsive on mobile and other useful things. 

The one thing that became apparent when we were paralyzed by which, if any, of these tedious, inconvenient, and aesthetically dubious options to pick, was that regardless of how we solved the static landing page issue, we definitely needed to find a new Tumblr theme with better mobile support and better menu options.

So we started looking at themes first. The approximate plan was to see if we could find a theme with a better header/menu/mobile situation, and then perhaps use a pinned post to fill in a few more information/navigation options. But since we had static landing pages on the brain, and the dubious Quora answer seemed to indicate that something in this vein might actually be possible, we decided to try some search terms around static homepages or landing pages as well. 

In the end, we managed to find exactly two themes which had already figured out how to put a bunch of stuff above the posts on your tumblr homepage, which seemed basically close enough to a static landing page for our purposes. Perhaps even better, since, after all, some people do find the most recent few static posts useful (they normally point to the most recent episode and transcript, plus any announcements going on). Both themes were from 2017 and by a user called Cubxanh, of which we bought the one that seemed more flexible, Phoenix 2.0. (Yes, it seems obvious to say "just google the type of theme you want" but I've subsequently managed to not be able to find these themes again on subsequent googling, despite knowing they had to be there, because I forgot the precise search string that produced them, so trust me when I say this was Advanced Search Skills.) 

The theme was a very good start, but by no means the end of the process. The Phoenix 2.0 theme template contained a lot of modular customizable elements (slideshows! carousels! buttons! ribbons!), including many we didn't need and others that we wanted to move around or repeat more of. So the next task we hired Liz McCullough for was to make these modifications and in general figure out how to translate the general design vision we'd had (testimonials, navigation elements, starter episodes) into the assets available to us from the theme. Liz reports from the other end of having done all of these tweaks that the relevant bit of code is {block:HomePage} {/block:HomePage} and is actually documented on Tumblr's official custom themes variables lists. It's not clear to either of us why there are only two themes we can find that seem to make much use of it, but perhaps most people aren't mule-headed enough to want to reverse engineer "a website that doesn't look much like a blog" out of "a website platform that's pretty determined to be a blog" which, I mean, is very sensible of them. 

Fairly early on, we realized that the Phoenix 2.0 theme contained a navigation box asset which would be useful for our purposes, but that it looked much better in the demo theme because it had consistent-looking art inside it as the icons. The specific icons from the theme didn't depict the elements we needed (and they would have been the wrong aesthetic anyway), so we decided to commission some icon-style art assets from Lucy Maddox, who we've worked with before on art for merch, in Lingthusiasm colours and vibe. This hasn't been in the initial plan but made a huge difference as far as the overall professionalism of the website. Liz also made the various podcast player icons all have a consistent size and colour scheme, which made them look much nicer together. Finally, we'd also updated our big splash cover photo a few months earlier with a new one in higher res, with an eye to it looking better on the new website.

We made the initial website draft on a "sandbox" tumblr account (an extra one that no one follows), which enabled us to test how all the custom theme elements and mods would interact with Tumblr's defaults pretty thoroughly before making it go live, so we were able to experiment with layouts and generally break it and fix it lots of times before transferring it over to the main site (where the subsequent fixes were a lot more minor). We're still tweaking the content on some of the other static pages, but a website is never truly "done", only live, and the core navigational design elements are all indeed live now. 

Step 8: The Results 

Our primary goal with the website redesign for Lingthusiasm was to improve the experience of several existing groups of people who were visiting it already, so we didn't particularly expect to see results immediately. That said, we've noticed in the weeks since the website redesign went live that we seem to be getting a modest but noticeable increase in website visitors. It's not quite clear why — it's consistent (i.e. following our usual weekly cycles) so it seems to be unlikely that it's linked to sharing activity. Perhaps google has noticed that the site is displaying better on mobile?  

User feedback has, unsurprisingly, not generally noticed that the site was on tumblr in the first place, which was of course the goal, although it's also anticlimactic. (The few people who've told us they were surprised to find out it's tumblr have been very gratifying, thank you.) Nonetheless, despite the efforts that it took to find and customize a new theme to this extent, it was still much easier to just update the theme rather than changing our whole hosting platform. (And as far as I can tell, our actual tumblr followers haven't even noticed anything at all!) 

The biggest result of having spent nearly two years talking and thinking about a website redesign is that we now have a much clearer sense of what people are looking for when they're visiting our website, which results in having a clearer idea of how we talk about Lingthusiasm on social media and in other places — especially the insight about how podcasts are an opaque format and how we need to reduce opacity in order for people to be more encouraged to try it out. 

At first, we felt kinda sheepish about how long it took us to redesign our website. Surely we could have gotten around to doing it faster? And I mean, to be fair, part of this was just other projects coming up that were higher priority than redesigning an already adequate site — the research time was very spread out over an initial few months, and the active redesign time was about 6 months. But also, now that the new site is live and it's led to conversations about redesigning websites with various people, it seems like this is actually a fairly normal amount of time for it to take to redesign a website, at least if you're a mid-sized, mid-level indie internet project like Lingthusiasm. That's because the things we thought we were exceptions for are actually normal: everyone who's redesigning their site is doing so amid other projects (whatever the thing is that the website is for), and in conversation with an existing tech setup of some kind, which often involves making various kinds of adjustments based on what your tech tools are capable of. 

Finally, the thing that takes the longest in a website redesign isn't so much the poking at the html and css and so on, but actually figuring out what should go where, largely by trying some version and changing your mind. It's like how writing a book isn't constrained so much by your typing speed, more by your researching and thinking speed. And it's actually good to do that thinking gradually over a longer period of time and by talking with people rather than rushing in and getting distracted by how much whitespace to add. It's relatively easy to hire someone to help with the tech or art aspects, but visual design won't be much good to you if you don't have a clear understanding of the more complicated side, the user experience design. 

Step 9: The Takeaways 

The best website is a website you'll actually maintain. It doesn't matter how elegant your website design is, if the information on it is several years out of date because getting into the update thingy is just such a pain or you need to start a whole email chain to get a minor typo fixed. But on the other hand, if the appearance of your website is irritating you so much that you never want to update any of the information, that's also not great! There's no single optimal design or tech setup, but there is knowing yourself first and your users second, and picking something you'll be able to live in comfortably and invite other people into as well. And this often means using some combination of existing tools, help from others, and things you do yourself. For us that meant, well, a highly bespoke tumblr setup.  

Think about how opaque your thing is and what you can do to make it easier for people to have a sense of what they might be getting into. Do people still need education on what a podcast is or how to listen to one? Increasingly less. Are they always going to need a compelling description and indicators that you can execute well on your premise? Yes. (Everyone knows what a book is and yet books still put a lot of effort into what's on the cover.) 

Therefore, if you do nothing else to improve your podcast website, have a beginner-friendly description of your show in a prominent location, rather than just making your website cater to existing fans. All current fans had to come from somewhere, and prospective listeners were the biggest group of visitors in our survey. A few suggested starter episodes is pretty easy to implement too. Getting reviewers people have heard of is a challenge, but you know those reviews you're constantly asking people for? Picking a few reviews from ordinary listeners that really seem to get what you're trying to do with your show could be a useful idea. (Protip: go for specific comments, like "I had no idea there were so many interesting things to learn about linguistics but now I can't get enough", over nonspecific endorsements that could be said about any show, like "omg this is the best ever" — while flattering, they don't tell a prospective listener very much.) 

If you're at a later stage and looking for things that can level up the appearance of your website, I can't emphasize how much commissioning art for various UI elements made ours feel fancier. Also, link to several podcast listening platforms, more than just Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It's better for your show if your listeners aren't just tied to one app, because it insulates you somewhat from any one tech company's potential shenanigans. 

Some other podcast websites we looked at while coming up with ours included Darknet Diaries (the best designed of the substantial podcast websites we encountered) and Gender Reveal (a good lightweight podcast website).

Step 10: The Thanks

With thanks to Julia Evans for extensive discussion of website desiderata, to Manish Goregaokar and Eaton for comments, and to Lauren Gawne, Liz McCullough, and Lucy Maddox for their work in making the thing! 

If you enjoyed this incredibly long post about the implicit social functions of many website design elements, perhaps you’d be interested in the Lingthusiasm episodes on the implicit social functions of small talk or when people have different expectations around overlap. Or maybe you’d like this series on the implicit social functions of conferences and making virtual conferences more social. 

[littlemixnet]

To me, a good ally is someone who is consistent in their efforts – there’s a difference between popping on a pride playlist or sprinkling yourself in rainbow glitter once a year and actually defending LGBT+ people against discrimination. It means showing my LGBT+ fans that I support them wholeheartedly and am making a conscious effort to educate myself, raise awareness and show up whenever they need me to. It would be wrong of me to benefit from the community as a musician without actually standing up and doing what I can to support. As someone in the public eye, it’s important to make sure your efforts are not performative or opportunistic. I’m always working on my allyship and am very much aware that I’ve still got a lot of unlearning and learning to do. There are too many what I call ‘dormant allies’, believing in equality but not really doing more than liking or reposting your LGBT+ mate’s content now and again. Imagine if that friend then saw you at the next march, or signing your name on the next petition fighting for their rights? Being an ally is also about making a conscious effort to use the right language and pronouns, and I recently read a book by Glennon Doyle who spoke of her annoyance and disappointment of those who come out and are met with ‘We love you…no matter what’. I’d never thought of that expression like that before and it really struck a chord with me. ‘No matter what’ suggests you are flawed. Being LGBT+ is not a flaw. Altering your language and being conscious of creating a more comfortable environment for your LGBT+ family and friends is a good start. Nobody is expecting you to suddenly know it all, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfect ally. I’m still very much learning. Even recently, after our Confetti music video I was confronted with the fact that although we made sure our video was incredibly inclusive, we hadn’t brought in any actual drag kings. Some were frustrated, and they had every right to be. You can have the right intentions and still fall short. As an open ally I should have thought about that, and I hadn’t, and for that I apologise. Since then I’ve been doing more research on drag king culture, because it’s definitely something I didn’t know enough about, whether that was because it isn’t as mainstream yet mixed with my own ignorance. But the point is we mess up, we apologise, we learn from it and we move forward with that knowledge. Don’t let the fear of f**king up scare you off. And make sure you are speaking alongside the community, not for the community. Growing up in a small Northern working-class town, some views were, and probably still are, quite ‘old fashioned’ and small-minded. I witnessed homophobia at an early age. It was a common thought particularly among men that it was wrong to be anything but heterosexual. I knew very early on I didn’t agree with this, but wasn’t educated or aware enough on how to combat it. I did a lot of performing arts growing up and within that space I had many LGBT+ (mainly gay) friends. I’ve been a beard many a time let me tell you! But it was infuriating to see friends not feel like they could truly be themselves. When I moved to London I felt incredibly lonely and like I didn’t fit in. It was my gay friends (mainly my friend and hairstylist, Aaron Carlo) who took me under their wing and into their world. Walking into those gay bars or events like Sink The Pink, it was probably the first time I felt like I was in a space where everyone in that room was celebrated exactly as they are. It was like walking into a magical wonderland. I got it. I clicked with everyone. My whole life I struggled with identity – being mixed race for me meant not feeling white enough, or black enough, or Arab enough. I was a ‘tomboy’ and very nerdy. I suppose on a personal level that maybe played a part in why I felt such a connection or understanding of why those spaces for the LGBT+ community are so important. One of the most obvious examples of first realising Little Mix was having an effect in the community was that I couldn’t enter a gay bar without hearing a Little Mix song and watching numerous people break out into full choreo from our videos! I spent the first few years of our career seeing this unfold and knowing the LGBT+ fan base were there, but it wasn’t until I got my own Instagram or started properly going through Twitter DMs that I realised a lot of our LGBT+ fans were reaching out to us on a daily basis saying how much our music meant to them. I received a message from a boy in the Middle East who hadn’t come out because in his country homosexuality is illegal. His partner tragically took their own life and he said our music not only helped him get through it, but gave him the courage to start a new life somewhere else where he could be out and proud. There are countless other stories like theirs, which kind of kickstarted me into being a better ally. Another standout moment would be when we performed in Dubai in 2019. We were told numerous times to ‘abide by the rules’, which meant not promoting anything LGBT+ or too female-empowering (cut to us serving a four-part harmony to Salute). In my mind, we either didn’t go or we’d go and make a point. When Secret Love Song came on, we performed it with the LGBT+ flag taking up the whole screen behind us. The crowd went wild, I could see fans crying and singing along in the audience and when we returned it was everywhere in the press. I saw so many positive tweets and messages from the community. It made laying in our hotel rooms s**tting ourselves that we’d get arrested that night more than worth it. It was through our fans and through my friends I realised I need to be doing more in my allyship. One of the first steps in this was meeting with the team at Stonewall to help with my ally education and discussing how I could be using my platform to help them and in turn the community. Right now, and during lockdown, I’d say my ally journey has been a lot of reading on LGBT+ history, donating to the right charities and raising awareness on current issues such as the conversion therapy ban and the fight for equality of trans lives. Stonewall is facing media attacks for its trans-inclusive strategies and there is an alarming amount of seemingly increasing transphobia in the UK today and we need to be doing more to stand with the trans community. Still, there is definitely a pressure I feel as someone in the public eye to constantly be saying and doing the right things, especially with cancel culture becoming more popular. I s**t myself before most interviews now, on edge that the interviewer might be waiting for me to ‘slip up’ or I might say something that can be misconstrued. Sometimes what can be well understood talking to a journalist or a friend doesn’t always translate as well written down, which has definitely happened to me before. There’ve been moments where I’ve (though well intentioned) said the wrong thing and had an army of Twitter warriors come at me. Don’t get me wrong, there are obviously more serious levels of f**king up that are worthy of a cancelling. But it was quite daunting to me to think that all of my previous allyship could be forgotten for not getting something right once. When that’s happened to me before I’ve scared myself into thinking I should STFU and not say anything, but I have to remember that I am human, I’m going to f**k up now and again and as long as I’m continuing to educate myself to do better next time then that’s OK. I’m never going to stop being an ally so I need to accept that there’ll be trickier moments along the way. I think that might be how some people may feel, like they’re scared to speak up as an ally in case they say the wrong thing and face backlash. Just apologise to the people who need to be apologised to, and show that you’re doing what you can to do better and continue the good fight. Don’t burden the community with your guilt. When it comes to the music industry, I’m definitely seeing a lot more LGBT+ artists come through and thrive, which is amazing. Labels, managements, distributors and so forth need to make sure they’re not just benefiting from LGBT+ artists but show they’re doing more to actually stand with them and create environments where those artists and their fans feel safe. A lot of feedback I see from the community when coming to our shows is that they’re in a space where they feel completely free and accepted, which I love. I get offered so many opportunities to do with LGBT+ based shows or deals and while it’s obviously flattering, I turn most of them down and suggest they give the gig to someone more worthy of that role. But really, I shouldn’t have to say that in the first place. The fee for any job I do take that feels right for me but has come in as part of the community goes to LGBT+ charities. That’s not me blowing smoke up my own arse, I just think the more of us and big companies that do that, the better. We need more artists, more visibility, more LGBT+ mainstream shows, more shows on LGBT+ history and more artists standing up as allies. We have huge platforms and such an influence on our fans – show them you’re standing by them. I’ve seen insanely talented LGBT+ artist friends in the industry who are only recently getting the credit they deserve. It’s amazing but it’s telling that it takes so long. It’s almost expected that it will be a tougher ride. We also need more understanding and action on the intersectionality between being LGBT+ and BAME. Racism exists in and out of the community and it would be great to see more and more companies in the industry doing more to combat that. The more we see these shows like Drag Race on our screens, the more we can celebrate difference. Ever since I was a little girl, my family would go to Benidorm and we’d watch these glamorous, hilarious Queens onstage; I was hooked. I grew up listening to and loving the big divas – Diana Ross (my fave), Cher, Shirley Bassey, and all the queens would emulate them. I was amazed at their big wigs, glittery overdrawn make-up and fabulous outfits. They were like big dolls. Most importantly, they were unapologetically whoever the f**k they wanted to be. As a shy girl who didn’t really understand why the world was telling me all the things I should be, I almost envied the queens but more than anything I adored them. Drag truly is an art form, and how incredible that every queen is different; there are so many different styles of drag and to me they symbolise courage and freedom of expression. Everything you envisioned your imaginary best friend to be, but it’s always been you. There’s a reason why the younger generation are loving shows like Drag Race. These kids can watch this show and not only be thoroughly entertained, but be inspired by these incredible people who are unapologetically themselves, sharing their touching stories and who create their own support systems and drag families around them. Now and again I think of when I’d see those Queens in Benidorm, and at the end they’d always sing I Am What I Am as they removed their wigs and smudged their make up off, and all the dads would be up on their feet cheering for them, some emotional, like they were proud. But that love would stop when they’d go back home, back to their conditioned life where toxic heteronormative behaviour is the status quo. Maybe if those same men saw drag culture on their screens they’d be more open to it becoming a part of their everyday life. I’ll never forget marching with Stonewall at Manchester Pride. I joined them as part of their young campaigners programme, and beforehand we sat and talked about allyship and all the young people there asked me questions while sharing some of their stories. We then began the march and I can’t explain the feeling and emotion watching these young people with so much passion, chanting and being cheered by the people they passed. All of these kids had their own personal struggles and stories but in this environment, they felt safe and completely proud to just be them. I knew the history of Pride and why we were marching, but it was something else seeing what Pride really means first hand. My advice for those who want to use their voice but aren’t sure how is, just do it hun. It’s really not a difficult task to stand up for communities that need you. Change can happen quicker with allyship.

Jade Thirlwall on the power, and pressures, of being an LGBT ally: ‘I’m gonna f**k up now and again’