#people on Twitter told me about it and I actually just don't care enough to do something about it lol

[justthemoonz]

I love this tweet so much

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for bitching about fics I dislike on my blog?

as a foreword, this is kind of a non-issue and no one's ever told me to stop, but I'm curious what other people think of fandom etiquette.

the fandom: a fairly small one. 2.4k fics on ao3 small. I recognize most people posting in its tumblr tag small. if I tell you the name of the source you'd almost definitely be able to find me small.

the source: pornographic, which means everyone involved is or should be an adult. it's BL with a switch MC, but the fandom overwhelmingly prefers bottom MC/top LIs (love interests), to the point where I've had people be astonishingly rude to me because my favorite character is a bottom LI and some of my friends have been outright harassed for the same. I used to not care about sex positions in the slightest, but now when I see bottom MC fanworks I can't help but remember how poorly I was treated.

the fics: wildly and inexplicably popular, even though they are, frankly, poorly written. it's eternal bottom MC turned up to 11, complete with copious amounts of OOCness in order to turn every ship into the worst ye olde yaoi gender roles dynamic you can imagine. it's things like MC, canonically a 23yo plank of a dudeguy, being written as a big titted milf in his 40s (which is made more confusing by the fact that one of the LIs is already a big titted milf). it's also things like the MC being written as disliking sex and having to be coerced into it when one of the most charming things about him is that he's a hilarious sex pest, or writing the LIs sexually harassing the MC when they really would never do that. I've likened it to replacing the characters with OCs that share the same name and my friends have agreed with me. I'm honestly convinced that the author and his readers don't actually like any of the characters if they feel the need to change everyone so thoroughly.

why I might be an asshole: it's assholish to hate on free fanworks, and I've bitched about these fics on my public tumblr blog. the fandom is small enough that there's a non-zero chance of it getting back to the author and a reasonable chance that fans of the fics have seen my bitching. I'm probably projecting the hostility I've received onto someone who's done absolutely nothing to me, and I am absolutely just straight up jealous that their fics get better stats than mine. I may also be being an asshole to myself, because being critical of other people's fics has made my hypercritical of my own.

why I don't think I'm an asshole: I think everyone has the right to be bad at things, but I also think everyone has the right to be a little hater. I don't put the fandom tag on these posts; they stay on my blog and my blog alone, and if later on I feel like I was unfairly vitriolic I'll delete the posts. I only post on tumblr because I'm certain the author in question only uses twitter, which dramatically lowers the odds of him stumbling across my posts. the fics are so popular that it's definitely possible that their fans would see my posts, but I think it's unlikely that they'd bother looking at my blog because 99% of my posts are about one of the bottom LIs. I have never and would never leave comments on the fics themselves, and I generally try to keep the bitchy posts to a minimum; it's far from a constant thing.

tl;dr - I publicly bitch about fics that (in my opinion) are poorly written and extremely OOC, under the assumption that it's unlikely the author would ever see it. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[traceofexistence]

After reading your post about Faye, I almost got a sense of deja-vu because I also had a similar rant about it.

Like that woman has been publicly out for a few years, privately even more (imo it was probably an open secret before she publicity came out). And no matter how "open" Thailand is for lgbtq ppl it's always a risk to come out, especially if you are already in a public light.

It's not Faye's, Yoko's, or 9star's problem that some people got "tricked" by other gl couple, and now in their opinion everyone is being fake and just doing it for "money."  And no matter how open and transparent any of them are (9star/fayeyoko), nothing is good enough for those people. Because like I've said they have been too delusional and were fucked over by other gl couples and their companies/studios.

So now that you have a openly out woman who is with a company that actually treats her and Yoko like human beings and doesn't rely on some stupid tricks so that they earn more money some people don't know how to behave. And in some instances are jealous because why couldn't my faves have company be like that. But that's just my opinion.

this

and because I'm weird like that I dont block the trolls I try to study their behaviour (knowing your enemies type of tactic on my party)

one particular on twitter was yapping about how Faye is in secret relationship with her salon partner (the way these assholes bullied that poor woman🤬) and she's cheating on her with yoko and yada yada yada, and how they are an excellent investigator. and their whole proof was couple of photos she had with Faye doing literally nothing LOL

so I looked at their older tweets, and boom they were a fan of another GL couple, and then they saw one of those actresses in pictures with a guy (again nothing explicit) and they started going off about how they were lied on, but to my understanding that other loveteam were like "we are single, we are phi-nong" the same way fayeyoko say (and I personally believe them because I simply dont ship)

so whether these people had "their dreams crushed" or they built a whole ass delusion to be mad about when it didn't come true is unclear to me.

and all the trolls I have seen look like they are disappointed from other GLs and apply the same bs on our girls

to conclude, I really do thing FayeYoko are nothing currently beyond phi-nong as they say

Faye has been saying she's single for years, that falling in love is hard for her, and be with people because she works too much, so I believe that

and Yoko doesn't care enough to lie about her status and she's been saying shes single since day one, and funnily enough the same trolls got mad that she said so again recently and called her names etc.

last but not least according to thai people, only very recently Thailand became somewhat open about LGBTQ. and still old people are conservative. coming out is coming out.

as for Faye, her family knew she was dating a girl early on. she said she didn't have to tell her mom, because her sister who (was very little at the time, asked her mom, and mom said "Faye is old enough now and she knows what she's doing" something along those lines and her baby sister told Faye back LOL so the cat was out of the bag soon, and her GF at the time was close to Faye's mom and sisters. her coming out to the public was around 2021~22 and after she got permission by the MGT boss, not to mention that with her coming out she paved the way for other MGT girls to be open up as well (two of her friends Lux, and Engfa for example)

[stick-ball]

pspspspsp Kevin's trauma and his choice to stay with Thea, why her why not someone else? How does it work considering his characters as whole books/ec , does it make sense or just feel "random"

<Picks you up like a little cat and smooches your head.>

This responce has been sped up by the people who asked Nora on twitter to break Kevin and Thea up, making me see red KillBill style, so:

For me, Kevin's and Thea's relationship makes perfect sense. Maybe it's the realist in me, maybe its the idealist in me, I don't care. When it comes to Kevin's traumas, I think that since most people can't really relate to a majority of them, they get all hung up on the one they most definately can, as in, his mommy issues. When we relate to something, it becomes a really big deal. And here we go! Thea/Kevin suddenly is feared to be toxic instead of being seen for what I think it is: finding love in a hopeless place.

The main issue i see discussed is the disproportion of power at the beginning of the relationship. The main concern is the age difference. I personally don't really get the hate about the age gap between them, because if you read the extra content you will know that while they met when Kevin was 14 and Thea 18, it's not like anything happened between them at that age? First, Kevin saw her as an impressive player, when he did actually see her. That wasn't all that often bcs from what I understand from the EC, Kevin and Riko trained with the Ravens sometimes before they joined the team but a big part of their training happened without them, as well as their life growing up was more detached from the Uni students than people seem to think. And honestly, do you think Tetsuji would just let all the freshmen know they signed into the Yakuza sportsTM? Methinks not, but be delulu if you want I guess. 💋

So anyway, from the EC, it seems like Kevin had a crush slowly build up for Thea over the years, growing from his appreciation of her skill and athletism. Considering how cold that guy is, it probably took him some time to realise, after his irritation at her romances (yeah hello she was dating people her age when Kevin was mooning for here as a pathetic teenage boy, bye bye Thea haters) with other teammates started having nothing to do with the fact it could result in the teams distraction during the game, bcs of their hormones and feelings, and turned to conscious jelousy. And here I have to applaud young Kevin because he did not even realise he was distracted from the game by being jealous. Knowing how oblivious Kevin can be about non exy issues, it likely took quite a while.

So what's next? The "getting together"? Kevin and Thea only started having a sort of physical relationship when Kevin and Riko were already freshmen for Edgar Allan, at 18/19.

Whoever wants to fight me on this being a toxic age gap, what exactly is your angle?

Anyway, Kevin was the one to initiate their relationship, after Riko was done with his distraction from the game and his focus on picking fights with Thea, and told him to sleep with her and get it out of his system. (And that's how i met your mother.) It wasn't much more than that for a long time, because having a relationship on a 12 hrs day/night full of training and uni and juggling two other teams on top of that as well as celebrity status literally sounds like the most insane schedule ever, so it's insane they even managed to talk privately at all.

Now, we circle back to the question, why Thea? Why not someone else? Well, first and fucking foremost, because Nora Sakavic said so. Second of all, because Jung and Freud weren't as stupid as imternet memes would have you believe. (Read their books, read all the books please, i can rec you like a 100 psychology texts, dont be shy)

To keep it short, we do base our attraction on the role models we have, one way or another. I saw enough of my friends pick partners that have the exact character quirks that make them just slightly like an after image of their guardians. Kevin doesn't really have a father model, but his mother? She's always going to be a huge part of his life, is it really so weird and dangerous, that he got infautated with a strong, driven, 4 years older woman, who's incredibly talented and just as determined as him? I don't think so. Is it unhealthy? Is it unsafe? As much as life is, I guess, no one is perfect, but I think he could've done much much worse for himself.

Why did Kevin decide to stay with Thea? I would find it pretty obvious, because she doesn't actually need him. She built herself, but she wants him. Even if she will never have the same fame and recognition in her career that he does. Being wanted this way must be really new for Kevin, who was always a trophy to show off because of his legacy, always a property. But Thea is not competing with him, she doesnt want to own him either. I believe his mother is as much of a role model to her, as to him. So, they have sex, when they want to, they talk - when they feel like it. They don't, well fucking fine, so they don't, they fall in love anyway. It's okay if exy comes first in the beginning, considering both spent a lot of time in cult mentality, I think neither is all that bothered as long as its not obsessive (we could discuss how reasonable it was of Kevin to ghost her for over a year and not tell her about how he broke his hand but thats a whole other essay).

What's really wild to me, is that I think the power imbalance in this relationship is the opposite of what many may think.

Kevin holds all the cards. Thea joined the Ravens as a 18 years old talented athlete, she was one of the only girls on the team, and the Nest was not a place to make friends, on top of that it was a mafia cult. She had everything to prove there, and no way of being prepared for all the grooming. On top of that, she knew nothing of the Moriyamas or even of what actually went down with the whole Perfect Court thing. Kevin knew everything, on top of that, up until he left, he had nothing to prove. He ghosted her, is it so hard to believe she accepted his cold shoulder in this dynamic, in which she obviously is not at the top of the foodchain? He kept secrets from her, is it really so hard to believe she was angry? I think neither of them was ready for neither what life at the nest was like, or for a relationship when it happened, but I also think they are incredibly lucky that they have eachother, their shared passion for exy, their daughter, their dog and friends from the dog park who can't talk about exy to save their lives.

I think Kevin was incredibly lucky for finding Thea, because maybe she did not know everything, maybe it wasn't easy for them, but they understood that Rikos death wasn't a one dimensional victory, that it was just as much of a tragedy for them, for Kevin. I'm happy with the canon and I wish more people appreciated this ship, as its very soothing.

As an ending fun fact, did you know I am the only person to make a playlist for Thea Muldani in all of spotify? Pretty insane if you ask me.

[thrown-away-opinions]

Reading up on some drama in the RPG community (not directly related to D&D this time) and getting the worst kind of deja vu. Stop me if you've heard this one before:

A clique of extremely mentally ill people with a history of being lying, backstabbing shitheads weasel their way into positions of power, fame, and authority within a community, even though none of them have actually produced anything worth a damn. Luckily they've got enough friends who will promote and glorify them as the most important people in the industry and protect them from public scrutiny on sites like reddit and twitter, that they never face any meaningful consequences for their actions, because it's more important that everyone listen and believe women and minorities, even when it's other women and minorities pushing back against them.

This was orchestrated through a few secret groups and forums that the public wasn't privy to and passed down through various useful idiots who would repeat the fabrications and spin, because they were told to. The inner circle of aimless psychos who guided these little crusades were mostly just enjoying the power trip more than having any sort of agenda, but publicly they'd claim it was about promoting diversity and intersectionality, etc etc.

Also, years after, even with most people still believing the various openly disproven lies and rumors started by well-known malicious psychopaths, people admit they knew it was wrong, but didn't want to "give the other side ammo" because they didn't want anyone to turn on them in the same way...

And a ton of people involved in this shit are or were SomethingAwful goons.

Where have I heard that shit before?

I might do a longer post about this later, but if you're curious, I'm taking about this excessively long medium post called "The Worst People You Have Never Met, or, What I Learned During A Four Year Academic Study of Online Harassment In The Dungeons & Dragons Community" which is mostly about the Zak Smith/Sabbath incident from a few years back and goes into exhaustive specifics that repeatedly amount to a bunch of people lying about one guy, who is by all accounts an exceedingly loyal ally to lefty/queer beliefs, being a sexpest and rapist and abuser. Mostly because a clique of queer personalities in the RPG community decided he deserved it and they were entitled to destroy him. Then the author of the article interviewed them about it and every single one of them admits it was bullshit and they were just making stuff up to be angry about and none of their claims had receipts.

The post itself is long to the point of being comical and the author has a lot of trouble disengaging what has likely been a decade or more of ideological conditioning. She'll sometimes go off on tangents about incels and how unthinkable it is to her that anyone would weaponize feminism and rape accusations for personal gain. But it's an interesting read if you just scroll past those sections. You'll probably need to in order to get through the damned thing in a reasonable time.

I don't really care about Zak. I was never personally invested in his story or the accusations that were leveled at him. Even when it was happening, my vague read of the situation from a distant vantage was that a guy surrounded himself with unstable SJW-types and then they turned on one of their own, as they often do. Turns out that was more or less right.

[nightshadehoney]

I never watched James Somerton's shitty Killing Stalking video because I was trying to be good to myself and avoid something that I knew would make me very angry. In fact, I never watched any of his stuff because the fact that he made a video like that was enough to discount any thing he ever had to say (also I heard about the Celluloid Closet plagiarism).

But man, is the James Somerton discourse bringing a lot of Killing Stalking-related feelings back up for me. Because I'm mad; I'm still so mad. There are a suprising amount of people on social media who are saying they never watched any of his stuff except for the Killing Stalking video. I'm annoyed not just to find out that the vid had that sort of reach and influence, but also because Somerton's unmasking hasn't seemed to make people reasses the validity of the kind of thing he was saying. People are just now being like "hmm I think this guy might have Issues With Women" but that doesn't warrant any reflection on what exactly the motivation is of people who complain about women enjoying a niche webcomic? Because I don't actually believe you're concerned about the influence of some obscure piece of media when you advertise its existence to your large audience many of whom had not heard of it and would never have heard of it but for your transparent outrage porn video. It's rage bait and the target was women that are perceived as straight. A big channel has publicized the fact that they excised a section that endorsed the opinions in this video from their own because they became aware of Somerton's plagiarism and dishonesty (presumably; if it was actually because they recognized his views were coming from a sexist place I would welcome a clarification). And you know, I don't think that's a good look actually. That you needed to be told he was a bad person and couldn't idependently put together that the misogynist man was saying misogynist things.

The comic ended years ago and the fandom has gone mostly quiet, but to this day people are still the peddling the"fujoshi/stupid teenage girls who don't know what's good for them are shipping these characters because they are too braindead to realize it's not a romance; it's a horror, two things I believe are mutually exclusive. I am smarter than all of these cringe degenerates" bullshit. It's in the comments of the hbomberguy video even; one comment was such a gross misrepresentation of the series that my friend needed to talk me down from getting into a pointless youtube comments argument (bless him) because these people are officially making me lose my marbles.

This narrative is full of shit, it's demonstrably not fucking true. You can go on the artist's twitter right now and its full of her retweeting shippy fanart of that pairing readers were apparently never intended to ship.

(I don't think Koogi knows or cares about James Somerton; she just reblogs the works of fans who tag her. This made me laugh though).

Now this is all speculation because he died decades before social media existed, but I think if Nabokov was alive today his twitter would not be full of Humbert Humbert x Dolores Haze fanart. And yet, I have unironically seen people compare shipping Sangwoo and Bum in Killing Stalking with the misreading of Lolita as a precocious sexual temptress more than once.

And this isn't me saying that Killing Stalking is the disgusting"pro-sexualized abuse" comic that tumblr purity police used to characterize it as either. One of these days I'm going to go truly bonkers and end up banging pots and pans on the street corner, yelling at random innocent passerbys about how stories about romantic and sexual relationships are not required to be Hallmark movies. You can make art about the negative, dark, and troubling parts of these feelings and relationships without creating a pat morality tale. You don't need to approach media analysis like your 7th grade teacher has assigned you an essay on explaining what a novel's "message" is.

Nobody, not the author and not the fans, genuinely thinks that Sangwoo and Bum have a healthy or aspirational relationship. This hypothetical person that does not understand the relationship is toxic doesn't exist. Because girls and women, even the ones having cringey fandom fun on tiktok or whatever, are not so stupid and naive that they are unware that breaking someone's legs and locking them in a muder basement is bad. The type of concern troll rhetoric Somerton employed in his video is directed near exclusively at women interested in men and there's a reason for this. Women are not responsible for abuse that men do to them; nobody is responsible for their partner abusing them. If I never saw people spit this bullshit again it would be too soon.

[wheeler-fan]

Hey, just asking you this as you're my only mileven mutual but like... this is a bs take right?

Anyways, love you <3

i saw that on twitter and tbh i skipped it bc i saw how many people were fighting about it and i didn't have time for this 😭

comparing trauma is wild. I hate it. The truth is that Will has so much trauma that it's hard to believe, i was even wondering if he actually remembers it all, like u know being possessed and all that stuff, cuz it's so much for a kid to handle. Beside of that, he loves someone that he knows he can't be with, he's scared that people he loves will leave him if they're gonna find out that he's gay, a guy died in front of him and he had to bury him in the desert (he's 15🎀)

the truth is that many, manyyyy milevens hate Will because:

1. he's getting into their fav ship

2. people are shipping him with a person from their fav ship

and that's stupid

I'm gonna be honest here, is he in my top characters? no. it's not that i don't like him i just don't really care that much if u know what i mean.

But he did literally nothing that could make anyone hate him for real- ofc some of his behavior makes me mad cuz I'm always on Mike's side but that can't make me hate Will in any way

but the fact is that- he's not even getting into mileven 💀💀 yk how it looks in the show, mike doesn't even know that Will is gay and that he loves him, And Will actually helped him a lot when Mike told him that he doesn't feel good enough for El. Will loves mike and el so much that hurting them is the last thing he wants to do.

It's just the fandom version of Will byers that makes everyone so mad (i hate him too😭) and it's nothing like Will in the show 😭😭😭

well anyway

will byers solos

[taffywabbit]

im also anti proship but calling rugrats porn drawings "child porn" really dilutes the severity of actual child porn. we shouldnt be confusing actual cp that hurts real children with just weirdos drawing porn of cartoon characters that happen to be kids, the two things are not at all on the same level

ok i suppose this was inevitable, i may as well get into it.

(CW for some discussion of CSA and child pornography, obviously)

first off, "i'm also anti proship but" is a terrifying way to start your message, and to go and follow it up with some extremely common proship copypasta i've heard a million times about "taking attention/resources/severity/etc away from real CSA victims" or whatever kinda makes me wonder how "anti proship" you actually are...?

kind of the point of this whole debate is typically that "proship" folks insist that fiction, or in this case "porn of cartoon characters that happen to be kids" as you put it, has no effect on reality or people's mindsets. and so-called "antis" like myself generally respond to this idea with something along the lines of "well it sure seems to affect the reality of your cock and balls", and point out how repeatedly consuming media with a particular focus or message has been shown time and time again to quantifiably influence the way people view the world around them, in ways that subsequently affect how they act, or desensitize them to things that might otherwise upset/offend them. y'know, like political propaganda! or blockbuster movies about killer sharks! obviously some people are going to be more resilient against that sort of influence when the real-world equivalent of "porn of cartoon characters that happen to be kids" is something so blatantly unacceptable, and nobody is really claiming that the impact of fictional CP is "on the same level" as its IRL counterpart.

but at the very least, most people who would be considered "anti proship" WILL tell you "hey, i'm not trying to say that you jerking it to twitter porn of Gwen Tennyson or Tails or whatever is LITERALLY THE SAME as committing CSA, but it's still really fucking concerning and creepy that the majority of your sexual fixations are all specifically cutesy vulnerable cartoon characters under the age of 12, many of whom also have canonical adult designs that you conveniently avoid in favor of sexualizing the ones that are barely old enough to learn long division. you should maybe do some introspection and figure out why that is and whether or not you're really comfortable with what it implies about you. personally i know I'M not comfortable with that shit and i'm not going to keep hanging around you unless you make some serious changes." except usually in my experience the conversation ends up being a lot shorter and ends in a block pretty quickly. like i'm not a psychologist and i don't keep a bunch of studies on hand to throw at you about how fictional CP is often a factor in grooming, but i DO have a brain and can pretty clearly see when someone is rationalizing behavior that will lead them to places i'm not willing to follow.

ANYWAYS to focus more specifically on the actual reason we're talking about this (which was, to be clear, a mobile ad Tumblr served me that depicted one of the dads from Rugrats having sex with his 3yo daughter): yes, actually, that shit IS illegal to create or distribute. it's not the SAME as literal photographs of real children, OBVIOUSLY, but it's still also extremely fucked up in its own right, and any reasonable person in your life would probably stop talking to you if you told them you got off to it.

don't believe me about the legality part? check this out:

so like, I GUESS you might get some legal leeway with cub furry art or sonic porn or stuff that isn't always obvious in how much it's intended to parallel real children? if you really care? but this ad was literally multiple illustrations of a human adult man having intercourse with a human toddler. it's pornography centered around openly fetishizing the sexual assault of a child by a parent. i fail to see how referring to that in shorthand as "child porn" is inaccurate in any way that matters.

and Tumblr is a US-based company, beholden to the laws shown above, so they are at least somewhat responsible when illustrated pedophilic incest porn gets shown to thousands of their mobile app users in an ad they got paid to display. THAT was the original point i was making in my post. but thank you for trying to derail it to interrogate my "anti proship" views or whatever, i have had multiple people send me fairly nasty asks about it in the past year and you finally caught me in a moment when i was already pissed enough about something else that i felt like going off about this stuff. sorry if you actually agreed with most of this and i came off as overly rude/harsh, but if that's the case then this response is for all the other anon asks and replies i've gotten too, i guess.

now we're all clear about where i stand and i hopefully don't need to talk about this again - it's kind of a fucking bummer to think about this stuff and i've been avoiding the subject intentionally. you are always welcome to just block me if you have a problem

[monsterswithimagines]

Undisclosed Desires - Part 6

Joe Goldberg x female!Reader

Summary: Twenty minutes before he would have met Guinevere Beck, Joe meets you instead. You intruige him, but it will soon become clear that there is something off about you.

Words: 845

Masterlist

Saturday can't come soon enough. I feel like this week has lasted an entire year.

Then it's finally Saturday morning. I'm happy to go to work today, because at the end of the morning shift, you'll be waiting for me. My reward for my work. You won't even mind that I won't have time to change out of my usual clothes - it's a deliberate choice on my end, because you like how I look. You told Nadia about it on Twitter just three days ago.

@MoonShadow_: waarom zijn jongens in boekwinkels altijd zo lekker 😭😭

Which translates to: why are boys in bookstores always so hot

I didn’t realize you were thinking this way, (Y/n). If I'd known, maybe I would have made a move already.

Candace wasn't nearly this hard to read.

Candace wouldn't have been worth all this waiting, though.

I'm not ashamed to admit that Candace was a wrong choice. I thought I saw something in her that wanted to be known by me, to be taken care of, but I was wrong. You, on the other hand, are unknown to almost everyone except your dear childhood friend. It must be so lonely. But when you're with me, you won't have to be alone anymore.

Ethan notices I'm distracted today, but he doesn't say anything about it. He's happy to take over the regular customer service duties if it means I'll run up and down the basement stairs carrying heavy books from eight to twelve. Ethan is the kind of guy who swears by a Kindle.

You'd never use a Kindle, would you? I can't imagine it. You buy books way too often to bother about something as asinine as digital reading.

Maybe if I tell you the Kindle is everything that's wrong with modern-day America, you'll laugh and agree with me. But then again, maybe you'll just think I'm a ‘gatekeeping dick’. That's what you called someone on Twitter when they said The Secret History was awful and that only insufferable, snobbish, self-absorbed, classist rich kids would ever think to read this shit. Don't kill me, (Y/n), but I kind of agree with the guy. One day you'll see my side.

I kind of agree with you too, though: the world needs to learn how to read again, it doesn't matter where they start.

I used to judge people for what they bought at Mooney's, but now I don’t anymore. At least they're reading. You're making me a better person that way. You're making me realize that even if people are just reading whatever bullshit they saw on TikTok, at least they're reading.

It's one pm, and you're late. I'm not too upset about it, though. You texted me about an hour ago.

YOU: omigod joe!!!

YOU: my boss is super pissed i forgot to send a client this important email

YOU: i gotta fix my mistake i might be like

YOU: 15 mins late

ME: Don't worry. Take your time.

YOU: 😅

I didn't reply to your smiley. What on earth am I meant to say to a picture of a smiling face? Besides, a smiley isn't worth nearly as much as your actual smile.

And there you are.

Only ten minutes late. It could have been worse.

You look flushed like maybe you ran here, and your hair is a mess so you've covered it with a beanie again, but you also look so happy to see me. I'm happy to see you, too.

You hug me.

“I'm so sorry,” you say. I'm not sure what you're apologising for, because I'm still trying to get over the fact that you hugged me. “I've had such a crazy morning.”

“You're not even that late,” I assure you, which is true. Candace used to be hours late, sometimes. Sometimes she didn't show up at all. “Do you mind giving me a minute? I want to wash my hands and stuff.”

I don't need a minute. I've been ready to leave for a while now. But I think you might need some time, and I can tell you won't ask for it.

“Yeah, yeah,” you say. “No problem.”

So I turn and I head to the bathroom. This means leaving you alone with Ethan, which may be risky. Ethan might say something stupid, or something about me. But then again, I don't think he'd ruin ‘getting some tail’ for me.

In the bathroom, I wash my hands and check my hair. I look how I always do after a shift at Mooney's, but I think that's fine.

You look beautiful, (Y/n). It's too soon to tell you something like that, but you do.

I emerge. You look calmer now. You're waiting in the office - Ethan must have let you in - sitting with your hands behind your head and your feet on the table. Stretched like that, I can see a bit of the skin above your jean shorts.

It's deliberate. You're taunting me.

“Hey,” you say. “All ready?”

You're wearing make-up. You don't usually wear make-up.

“All ready,” I agree.

[bioethicists]

Your post about unfollowing people who’re really combative online made me think about someone in particular. Apologies if this is out of nowhere so feel free to ignore.

If somebody (with thousands of followers) who isn’t a part of a specific marginalised group habitually seeks out bad takes regarding them to dunk on, isn’t that a little weird? I’m not talking about defending your friends when they’re facing discrimination or dunking on the main bigot character of the day, but regularly seeking out bad takes from small accounts that’d otherwise never seen the light of day.

It’s nobody on here I’m referencing. I feel a little crazy because this person gets heralded as a huge ally and has a lot of people in this marginalised group who’re really devoted to and defensive of them but it just really rubs me the wrong way because they seem really discourse-brained more than anything else.

yeah haha ironically i think some of the ppl on that post are seriously missing the point (which i probably could have made clearer) in terms of some of them are like. people who clearly think being told they're racist is the same as the type of behavior i'm talking about.

but also yes! this is more what i meant- people who are seeking out fights with those who would otherwise never get any attention! especially when it's takes that are NOT popular or the response is just totally disproportionate. or just building a social media brand off of over-exaggerated hatred/meanness towards people who "deserve it". it reminds me of all the cis people on here who constantly reblog shit about like... putting terfs in meat grinders but then never even lift a finger (or, more likely, are part of the mob) when trans women are sexually harassed or viciously bullied.

i don't think joking about harming bigots is some grand moral wrong, but it's often just gratuitous in a way where... are you actually expressing outrage or are you using the performance of outrage to get followers? what if that outrage is directly putting people in danger (e.g, if you find a terf with 45 followers + start sending her death threats, is that helping anyone or is it potentially provoking more violence, which you know full well you will NOT be the primary target of). i can see how this behavior can result in members of certain groups defending you, because if nobody has shown their willingness to defend you, isn't it refreshing to see someone who will? it's not so simple, either, cuz i do think ppl who do this do CARE, but i'm not sure the way that they care is sustainable or would hold up to a real, complex situation where allyship is needed.

it's so contextual + i'm not arrogant enough to pretend like i'm the one who can see the context right 100% of the time. this is a little sappy but i feel like the difference is whether the root of the anger is love/hope or if its fulfilling your own desire to lash out/release tension/look good. like "i'm pissed because i care about my trans siblings + it hurts me to see them treated this way + nobody else is saying shit for them so i'm stepping up" vs "raging online meets a need in me that i'm not willing to acknowledge + here's the perfect target". not exactly that simple but sometimes u can tell someone would be a kiwifarms bro if they didn't need social capital from a different crowd, ykwim (which btw we regularly learn that certain leftists will comb through + disseminate kiwifarms shit if it fits their vibe, which is an automatic red flag to me that you only care about drama, not morals)

it reminds me of how some "callouts" are clearly written with the intention of preventing harmful people from maintaining the power to do more harm (e.g x popular artist sexts underage fans) while many others are clearly written with glee about someone turning out to be Bad (e.g x popular artist has a private twitter that i, op, SCROUNGED to find, where they say horny things about genshin impact characters)

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

https://www.tumblr.com/yourtoradorasextendedwarranty/754963612882337792/antis-twitter-freaks-and-tumblr-crazies-seem-to

This is what you spend your time on? This? Defending your lolis? This is what you consider something worth spending valuable time on this earth for? Holy fuck, the human race is just cooked isn’t it. You people are actually serious about this shit.

It isn't "Defending Lolis". It's making a distinction between CP, and Loli which are not the same. NOT EVEN REMOTELY the same. As well as the people that see short women IRL, and deem them "Child Coded" because they are short, with smaller bodies/features and as such have to deal with people saying their partners are "Pedo" or "Pedo adjacent" or some bullshit like that.

No matter what you say Loli is in modern day is representative of, it's fiction. And no matter who fights me on this I don't care. And people have. Loli is a body type in modern day. People will say that's cope but it's not cope. Because Loli doesn't mean, "Child" or "literal child". And even though it's base word come from "Lolita" which I'm aware was also the name of a French film about a girl that was a minor, today that word doesn't have the same connotation. Lolita fashion for instance does not mean, "Minor girl fashion". And even the movie title itself didn't mean, "Minor Girl". It was just a movie name.

My point was never that "Loli good". I never said that. My POINT was that loli in modern day is a term to represent anime characters. Characters that are NOT real. Characters that are humanoid but not exactly human looking. I mean you have 14 y/o characters that look 20 and 50 y/o characters that might could look 18. But my supposed "Defense" of Loli is just saying it's literally just art of small bodied characters. If you ask me if I like it personally? No. I don't care about it. My issue is people that compare it to CP when it's not. And THEN translate that sentiment to real life to point at real women whose bodies would be considered "loli" if they were anime characters, and then told that they are not allowed to date tall men because their boobs are too small and they are too short.

And for the record. I was assaulted as a kid. I'd have preferred if he had been into actual child shota. Because MAYBE (though unlikely) I would not have been harmed. Anime is fiction. Dwarfs are fiction. Changelings are fiction. Other fantasy races that are short or small are fiction. And modern day norms according to twitter freaks are, "If I deem it looks like a kid it IS a literal child."

Except that ignores one very specific point. Which is Pedophiles. If Pedophiles were just into people that LOOKED like they could be "kids" then they could just date midgets or women with development disorders. Except for the fact that Pedos themselves are not in it for the body. They are in it for the power over another person and the innocence those kids have. Kids are easy to manipulate and they have an ignorance to them that makes them easy to control.

Fictional content does not give most of these people the thrill they seek. And if you listen to interviews with some of them in therapy sessions you will hear that.

My overarching point being. Real women are not fictional. Which was the broader point of my ENTIRE post. And that fiction and reality are NOT the same. So if that's "Defending" loli, whatever I don't care. Because you know what. Even IF Loli was about age and not body type (again it's not an age) at least it's not real people being hurt (and this is ignoring the difference between loli characters and lolicon). And anime characters again only look mostly human, but distinctly not human enough to qualify as realistic.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for telling people I don't care about fandom drama unless it somehow directly involved me? Maybe some people will read this and go "what? No???" And if that's the case I'm gonna be snickering to myself but I digress. I'm a digital artist trying to find my footing in this hellscape of an online environment with tumblr being broken as it is and twitter going down in flames slowly, DeviantArt supporting AI and I don't think I need to go on. For a long, long time I was a fandom artist however and one of the 'bigger' names in a fairly small community. I've 'fell off' as they say because of some beef with people I didn't choose to have but hey, tale as old as time with fandoms am I right? We mess up and move on with our lives. SO YEAH that aside, when you've been through stuff like that and grow up a bit you realize that it was all a pretty stupid waste of time and energy and now I'm in my mid-20s and would really just like to focus on my art. I still make fan art for this specific thing and like make fan art for basically anything I enjoy nowadays and just...spread out my skills more so I got a better portfolio and all that. I'm really just vibing so to speak. Then a while ago I got DMed by someone in my server about some beef they were having with another user in my server. The kicker is that none of said beef was actually taking place in my server but in another server owned by the person DMing me. It's as if you're the manager of a starbucks and the manager from the Burger King across the street comes in like 'Yeah your employee was being shitty in my Burger King so I don't think I'll be going to this StarBucks anymore >:(" Like, what do you want me to do with that information? I can't talk to someone about behavior I didn't even see any damning evidence of and I'm not going to accuse someone of something based on something a stranger said. Somehow this conversation went from me explaining that I'm not about to ban someone or adhere to somebody else's 'blacklist' over things I have seen no proof of, to the stranger DMing me that a lot of people 'are intimidated' by me or that I have them blocked 'for no reason' setting off my paranoia like no other. I had recently dealt with being ghosted by friends who turned around and posted a call-out (with zero evidence mind you, not a single screenshot because they in fact, wiped WHOLE ENTIRE chats as they contained proof of the opposite) and those people stalking me for WEEKS, had to start over fresh and everything. So naturally I didn't like this very much and bluntly stated that if I blocked anyone, it's probably for a good reason and that it's not my problem if that somehow hurt their feelings, I need to look out for my own safety online. I fear I was a little TOO blunt because I did say something along the lines of 'I'm sorry but I do not care, I'm too old for fandom drama not involving me, I'm trying to be professional.' and cut the conversation off because I was exhausted and uncomfortable. I've been told that this was a just a weird and wacky instance and that I didn't do anything wrong, that people who do think I did need to go outside and touch grass and all that but hyea, it stuck with me because I worry that people are badmouthing me behind my back a lot. TL,DR: Got told by a follower that other people in our very small community were scared of me, had them blocked for 'no reason' and that somehow hurt their feelings and that my reputation was apparently decided by what my individual followers behaved like in other servers and spaces because apparently one little spat was enough to have someone threaten to distance themselves from me all-together while I wasn't involved at all. So, I figured if anyone is an expert at these fandom shenanigans, it's gotta be the veterans of the tumblr court.

What are these acronyms?

[pumpumdemsugah]

Why are men so threatened by female friendships? There’s this thing on hell-site #2 (Twitter) where a woman asked what was the worst thing a friend has done to you. A bunch of ppl (mainly women) opened up and the men jumped in to be like ‘see? female friendships suck/are surface-level/etc.’ Like, a girl couldn’t even talk about how much she loves the female friendships in her life without a man being like ‘lol just wait till they get a man/till someone gets jealous.’

I don’t claim to know anything about male friendships, but I will say that from what I’ve seen, they aren’t very fulfilling. Men will say that they don’t even know their friends’ birthdays even after knowing each other for 8+ years. I saw a Reddit post where a dude said that he has a golf buddy that he’d meet up with every weekend for 5 years and that they’ve never had a conversation about their lives, but that that’s his best friend after his dog. I’m sorry, is that supposed to be a friendship?

And then in the same breath, men will complain about male loneliness and say they have no one to talk to about their issues.

Like, sure. Sometimes female friends can backstab each other and be jealous and talk shit and betray each other, shit happens. But they can also fulfill you and nurture you and care for you and support you through anything and everything, and I feel like that’s a testament to how deep female friendships can be. Friendships require vulnerability and knowing one another well. Male friendships (at least the ones I described) do not have that depth, so of course they don’t fall out or betray one another or anything. They don’t actually know each other well enough to even be able to betray one another.

To me, female friendships can be high risk and high reward. Women can hurt one another badly, but we can also love each other to the fullest, and it’s only because we let each other get close.

Idk, I’m drunk rambling, but moral of the story is that women’s friendships are very dear to me and I hate it when men talk shit about them.

Insecure controlling men love isolated women and miserable women. A friendless woman is usually not very happy

They like nothing more than to convince women we have nothing to gain by building bonds with other women. They want proof that we're to blame for all our issues so their behaviour is irrelevant. A lot of men struggle with the idea that women have the same interiority as them so can only ever caricaturise us, especially when we're imperfect and messy.

You're right, female friendships can be high risk high reward

It's one thing getting a day wrong but how don't you even know the month of your friend's birthday?? My memory is bad but so I have to go out of my way to remember birthdays but I go out my way regardless

The male loneliness "epidemic" is crazy because a lot of it is self inflicted or men thinking their negative feelings are more profound. How many women become mothers and barely have friends and no one gave a fuck, In fact people told them off because " you decided to become a mother"

There is a loneliness epidemic among all demographics because of how difficult the modern world can make it.

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

I've seen your posts (and other bloggers posts) about antis, and although i don't agree that anyone has the right to dictate what media people are allowed to enjoy i never actually believed that they could be that bad (since I'd never had any interactions with them) and thought their unhinged behaviour was exaggerated. Until I posted a fic with a controversial pairing and OH. MY. GOD.

I have never received this much abuse (and of such a vicious sort) in my entire life. I guess this serves me right for doubting other creators' claims of how awful antis can be. I could just never believe anyone could be this... this... diabolical. But now I'm experiencing it first and it is wild.

Like I'm receiving actual death threats? Because of a 2,000 oneshot? I'm being told that me and my whole family deserve to die slow and painful deaths because of the characters I shipped?? They're calling me a pedophile and an animal abuser because one of the characters I wrote about is a teenager and the other is a human-animal hybrid??? What?

Like, are these people ok? Are they mentally unwell? This is just... I'm in shock honestly that people actually think and behave like this. Holy hell. It's been a hug eye opener and not a necessarily nice one.

Sorry if this message was unwelcome, I just couldn't think of anyone else to share this with. I hope you're having a nice day/evening ❤

Hi hi anon,

Yeah, this is what it's sadly like, and in the most extreme pockets of anti-communities are people who have literally tried to murder other people over fictional characters.

It's truly unhinged.

You have people who just don't like what other people are shipping, which is fine and normal, we all have notps and things we don't like, and then you have the people who genuinely think it's okay to torment, harass, abuse, and bully another person based over something fictional, and those people need to be blocked.

These people coming after you anon, if they're on AO3, report every single one because it might take a while, but those people get banned from AO3. If they're on Tumblr, block but also consider reporting, because death threats get people banned and all anonymous IP addresses are logged on Tumblr's side. If it's on Twitter, block on sight. Don't tolerate them, don't give them the air to breathe, and make sure you get offline sometimes or go to online safe spaces and spend time with the people who love you for who you are, it's the best weapon against antis who have no idea who you are and feel like you're a great figure to bully and abuse.

Ultimately, at the very base of what an anti is, is someone who believes their emotion of 'don't like that' justifies them bullying and torturing other people over fictional characters. It is at its foundation completely delusional, and even people who get 'logical' about it are still going 'my emotions are real enough to justify hurting you over something that is a figment of our collective imaginations.'

Some of those folks are very young, and will grow out of it, and have just drunk the collective Koolaid, some of them are older and always wanted an excuse to bully others but feel 'righteous' and 'pure' for doing it. Some really believe they're doing the right thing, others know they're hypocrities but can be all the more vicious for it. There are many recovering antis, but they're often silent about the things they've done, or the ways they've tried to hurt people.

I'm glad you posted that story anon, but not glad about the response you're getting. Consider moderating comments if it's on AO3, just to choke out the antis for a while. And yeah, practice self-care, because abusers want to hurt and harm others, and if you feel hurt and harmed, the more you can act to look after yourself, the more you thwart their goal/s and give them the big proverbial 'fuck you' that they so desperately deserve.

They do, usually, die down after a while, especially the more they get starved out. They'll often hunt for more vulnerable people. But in the meantime you also might want to inform folks you trust irl that you're dealing with this right now, because antis are unhinged, and online abuse is serious. Take care of you!! <33333 I'm sorry you had to learn about this pocket of 'society' in such a horrific way.

Antis are the worst.

[separatist-apologist]

I once went to one of their inbox to tell them to please stop tagging elucien if their posts is just about bashing elriel and they basically told me to f*ck off and they can "do what they want" or whatever. I swear, these are the same little sh*ts that would complain about Elriels tagging elucien.

It's the fact that it's always the same 5 people that have literally no hobbies but complain about Elriels. They're lurking in the gwynriel tag too. They're covering the sweet content we're looking for with their bullshit posts.

"Look what these Elriels say-" NO I DON'T WANNA LOOK CAUSE I DON'T CARE! WHY ARE YOU STALKING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE???

I don't want to see the hurtful stuff they say about Lucien and Elucien, nor do I care about their theories and Interpretation. I blocked the elriel tag and some elriels so that I won't have to see their posts. Heck, I'm avoiding acotar content on Tik tok and Twitter just so I won't see anything elriel and anti elucien related. If I wanted to see anti elriel content, I'd go to the anti elriel tag. It's that simple.

The thing is, I also tried to be more open to the Elriel ship. I'm very confident in Elucien, but should Elriel be endgame then I want to be okay with it. However, these little shits that constantly shove statements from toxic elriels to my face make it very difficult for me. It brings me back to "Elriels are so toxic" thoughts.

Sry for the long rant. It just angers me.

Babe, I once told people to stop taking the bait and they told me to get off my high horse so I feel you on that. Is it getting on a high horse to say that not everything on the internet is made in good faith and by answering obvious trolls...you give them the fight they want? Wow you sure showed them.

But at its core, LB said it best. It's not a bipartisan system and you actually can't tell anything about a person based on the ship they like. If some folks had any self awareness they'd realize they are literally no better than the people they claim to hate and for every one person hyping them up, 8 others feel discouraged and burned out from all the negativity. A fandom can't sustain itself on pure spite- you need people who passionately love the series enough to draw art, write fic, create headcanons etc etc, and to that end you have to let go of the utter boring obsession with what is and is not canon.

I took screenshots of that post, and one person said "the author wrote it that way for a reason???" and to that I'd say, she wrote enough to make elriel a very popular ship, too. Are we picking and choosing? Are we saying you're not allowed to ship something if it isn't canon? No more Neris, no Rhysta, no Casslain, no Azris? And who gets to decide what is and is not canon? Someone on that post was discussing what "true" eluciens are, which excludes me along with a vast swath of other people.

I didn't elect any of these people to decide what I was allowed to write about or commission art for- Like the cherry picking so people can be faux outraged and then take screenshots of one of the most popular artists in the fandom, with a VERY distinct style to create a victim narrative that allows them to feel good about bullying is just overdone and boring at this point.

Anyway, I'll always advocate for blocking people and creating spaces that feel good. And I'll continue saying that if you hate something that much, you should stop engaging with it. No one is ever going to change my mind about elucien, I'm confident in my choices and even if SJM doesn't go that direction, I'll still be writing elucien like idgaf. The constant looking each other up to talk shit reeks of insecurity and boredom. Couldn't be me.

[mdhwrites]

Why Hasn't Anyone Corrected Me On Luz Intending To Tell Her Friends She Was Staying?

It has been a real sticking point for me with For the Future that Luz never told her friends, nor intended to, that she was staying in the Human Realm. It was the final nail in Lumity's coffin in my opinion because not only was she letting Amity go off to die, she was ghosting her at the same time. It still made Luz's morality look entirely dead. Like she was a monster who never cared about any of them.

Which, I mean, is still mostly true but it's a little? better now? Because yeah, at the end of the video diary, as a quick blip, she admits to planning to tell her friends that she plans to stay. It's even a scene I'd definitely already seen but somehow EVERYONE who has seen that claim, either here, on my Twitter or on my Discord NEVER caught it. And that does change the context, little as it may.

Because you know... Luz still is deciding that, despite blaming herself for it, she is willing to let EVERYONE die. Because the Collector is a small GOD. What she saw as she ran would be reasonable cause to believe that at least most of the Isles is dead and that there's no way of stopping him. So, instead of like in S1 when she would actually, you know, fix a mistake that she made, she decides to stay. She claims it's learning from her mistake but her 'mistake' is idiotic at best and hardly justifies the idea of completely abandoning her friends to their fate. It would justify asking someone else to lead, to make choices instead of her but uh... That never crosses her mind, does it?

In fact, her friends or the consequences of this action don't seem to cross her mind. She doesn't talk about how this means breaking up with Amity. She doesn't talk about how this will make it harder for everyone, who has planning with the idea that Luz would be there in mind, to actually face the threat before them. How this means never seeing Eda or King again. Nothing that someone who actually cares about the consequences of her actions should be taking into account with this.

It's why it only changes a little. The morality of this is still AWFUL and she's STILL not thinking about what she's doing in a wider context which is theoretically part of what she needed to learn from reasonably trusting someone who seemed nice enough and was in need of help, let alone because she needed his help as well. But despite that being her excuse, she's not learning. She's running. The task ahead is really fucking hard, unlike pretty anything she's done before (remember how in S1 the Conformatorium bent over and begged for help from this human girl who'd had magic for like a month and a half? And one of her glyphs for like a week at most?) and so fuck it. She's staying home with her mom.

And that's also why she goes because when her mom says she's going, it's either go or be homeless for Luz at that point. There is now no way for her to avoid her mistake and fix it. Even when she does go though, her goal is to save Eda and King. Once that's done... She's gone. And word choice here MATTERS. Her compromise isn't "Fine, I'll fix my mistake and save everyone and then leave." It's "I'll save the people I care about and then fuck off and leave." If they were both dead, she'd just turn right around and go, regardless of the fact that all of her friends ALSO HAVE FAMILIES HERE.

Seriously, why the fuck was she written like this? You had only three specials to write for but you're still making basic writing choices that are baffling from a character perspective. Unless of course, the point IS that Luz doesn't care about anyone else. That she is selfish and self serving. Camila doesn't even argue about that or bring up anyone else so what the hell Camila!?

So no, it doesn't fix that Luz's angst arc ruins her character. Period. There's no coming back from writing off an entire world as dead to you. No coming back from only caring about yourself and not even acknowledging your friends or partner and what they're trying to get back. All that matters is her. It still paints her as someone who is just not wanting to bother with all of this anymore and start fresh again, just now back in the human realm.

This sort of shit happened all the fucking time after S2A and the shortening doesn't explain away small dialogue changes that could have kept how likable Luz was in her character while still getting the plots they wanted. Instead... It really just feels like they didn't care and so Luz doesn't seem to care about anyone.

And yet in the end, she is only ever rewarded so... Fuck you got mine I guess.

======+++++======

This caused some issues with the blog I'm posting in the morning and so I've now finally watched, of my own volition, more than Twitter clips of For the Future. Making that now all three specials of S3. I'm even bothering to just watch this one just because it is the one I'm most in the dark on and reacting on my Discord.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.