#sorry if this sounds preachy

[woahjo]

hi! you can totally ignore this if you don't want to reply for whatever reason, but i still wanted to ask since i'm curious on other peoples perspective

i've never been one to self-ship (or at least not directly, like i def had some fics written with self insertion without realizing or made up scenarios in my head but never really put the label on it)

And I thought on why I did not want that label of self-ship put on my fav characters and myself, and ig my conclusion is that it just hurts me to put it in a way? like for me its a constant remind that they're fictional, which honestly hurts more than just doing a selfinserted fic and that's it, because once i finish the fic it's just another piece of media, nothing more to me, and i detach

but if i try to push myself to do something cute for self-shipping since everyone seems so content with it, i can't find myself doing the same because of what i just said, like even calling my favs f/o makes me feel a bit like shit lol. and tbh i think most people would disagree with me since what i see 99% of the time is people using selfshipping as a pastime or use it to cope but how do you manage to not hurt yourself when you remember it's only fictional? because i want to achieve that as well without getting myself hurt in the process.

so sorry for this being so long btw, i wanted to explain myself as best as i could

hi anon!!!

i understand you completely!! i think the bottom line of it is that if you don't like it, then don't do it, ya know? i don't mean that in the like "get out of here!!" sense, i mean it more so in the like.. if thinking inside of what the "box" might be for self-shipping, why not try thinking outside of it?

i know for me, i don't actually imagine my selfships to be "real" in any way. yes, my selfships are with me, but it's a version of me that more closely aligns with a story im writing about their relationship. i've noticed a lot of people have decently set lore with their selfships, but that personally doesn't work for me, so i tend to think in a more abstract way when it comes to lore. broad strokes, ya know?

im not sure if this makes sense, but my "selfships" often feel more like reading a book or watching a tv show with a pairing i really like than they do myself. the version of me that they're with is a character and i enjoy thinking about how that version of me might be paired with them, but they're never a full reflection of me. that's the sort of selfshipping that makes me happy. yeah sure, i don't really get to take part in the "what's your selfship lore!!!" conversations as in depth as i might want to, but that's just not part of what makes selfshipping enjoyable to me.

if i thought about my selfships as real, life sized human beings, i would also get SO sad they're not real, so i tend to imagine them as like... living in rooms in my head rather than something i can imagine in front of me. idk if that's how everyone thinks about their selfships, but that's how i do it!!! i carry the scenarios around in my pocket like bugs in a handheld terrarium.

as an aside,,, when it comes to writing, my reader is almost never a self insert. they have bits and pieces of me, but they're not a reflection of how my selfships tend to go. they are their own characters, just without a name or physical description. and it's purely for a similar reason. i'm not a novel protagonist. i don't have that sort of personality and sometimes it can bum me out to try and fit myself into a box that i think other people might enjoy (because that's not the real me).. so i don't! same goes for my selfships

anyway, all of this to say that if the box doesn't fit, out grow it. the nice thing about selfshipping is that there is no right way to do it and if thinking about it in the traditional way trips u up because it makes u sad that they're not real, switch up how you think about it :))

[yeagrave]

If there are any ideas here which spark an interest in a sketch I'll take it:

Jake wearing the Roosters top at the gym

Rooster without his moustache and the entire Dagger squadron freaking out

Jake meeting Admiral Kazansky and realising he's Bradley's father

Bradley using those legs and hips to dance...

Have fun with the drawing and never stop - one of my biggest regrets as an older person now is that I let my art skills languish away and I look back and compare to what I do now and yeah... sadness.

a little jakey for you!<33

I'm sorry you feel like that about your art :( Art is a hard skill to keep up with sometimes, but I believe it's re-learnable no matter what! I hope you can find happiness in it if you wish to do so :)

[area51-narutorun]

There is no point in trying to "educate" your favourite celebrities and authors about Palestine. There is decades worth of information about the genocide commited against Palestinians and if someone is advocating for some "peace on both sides" bullshit it's not because they're uneducated. It's because vocally supporting Palestine is getting people fired from their jobs, blacklisted, destroying their careers. If someone comes out with a wishy-washy "my heart breaks for the violence on both sides 🥺" stance, they have cynically chosen to prioritise their career over human lives. At that point, there is no point trying to educate someone because you want them to be a good person. Your focus shouldn't be on your favourite celebrity's personal moral journey. It should be on supporting and freeing the people of Palestine.

[hareofhrair]

Can I get serious about the walrus/fairy thing for a minute?

This is a fun, silly question and arguing about it is a good time. It's also a really good thought exercise and an opportunity to recognize and examine reactionary thought.

Fairies, factually, do not exist. This is a scientifically supported consensus belief.

Walruses do exist, and can be moved just about anywhere with enough money and determination. If I had Jeff Bezos cash I could hand deliver a walrus to each of your doorways. It is not physically impossible, just super unlikely.

So why do we *feel* like the fairy is less surprising?

Why do we dismiss something provably true, in favor of something provably false, that feels better?

This is the basis of reactionary thought. Feelings over facts.

I want us to use this as a chance to look at our instinctive, reactive response, and examine where that feeling comes from, and learn to distinguish justifications from an earnest examination.

Doubling down on how the walrus could never get to your house is justification, because no matter how improbable it would be, it will always be *more* probable than something provably impossible.

So where does the feeling that the walrus is less possible come from?

If you accept the premise that a walrus could get to your house, and fairies are not real, why does the walrus still feel more surprising?

Examine your reaction, and try to figure out where it's coming from.

[local-queer-disappointment]

Hey by the way trans solidarity means everyone and all the time about all of our struggles. It means seeing some ten year old's discord bio with microlabels and pronouns you don't understand and fully killing the urge to shake your head or roll your eyes about it. It means not piling on ridiculous community infighting that only benefits terfs. It means including nonbinary people in trans discussions and not grouping them as "women and-" and it means respecting those who want to stay closeted irl for safety reasons and it means accepting detransitioners and intersex people as people who often identify with our struggles (and sometimes even our labels). It means loving every single trans person regardless of transition status or ability to pass.

It means comforting a trans sibling when they're having a rough time, be it dysphoria or bullying or a family who finds them disgusting or a world who hates them for who they are. It means looking into their eyes and thinking, "I want to create a better world for you. I want to create a world where people don't make fun of the voice cracks trans men get from T, where people don't make fun of trans women's voices, where voices have no inherent gender at all. I want to create a world where bodies are just bodies, and anyone can change them as they want to, but it's never a requirement. I want to create a world where you and I will always be safe."

a world

where anyone

can change,

but nobody

has to.

[f0xy5o1]

Aaaaugh I hate that I have so much on my mind it gives me a headache. People need to stop acting like the Incredibox community is taking a metaphorical nose dive. We’re experiencing some heavy bumps in the road and we gotta treat it with maturity, saying that it’s falling apart fixes nothing. It all just sounds like noise to me. This fandom has been nothing but welcoming and beautiful and I’m going to stay despite its flaws and do what I can to make it less chaotic. The influx of new fans is making everything feel so crazy and unorganized and it does feel like a lot. But I still have faith that this isn’t as bad as it feels. Idk man I’m just talking for the sake of talking-

[oedipushansen]

my beautiful wife young adult fiction keeps getting bullied

[whump-queen]

look i dont know if you have seen this but it makes me incredibly sad if it is. idk if you know them but i see you posting a lot on here and thought you might be able to spread awareness on this? i REALLY hope it's not true because they are a great person and it worries me it might be real :( albino-whumpee.tumblr .com/post/715264004846747648/a-letter-from-moya

update: I have been informed as to what this ask is about and i’m, im not even sure how to react. it’s shock and that sinking black hole in your chest feeling. fuck every part of me is praying they’re recovering in a hospital somewhere, but if this really did happen, i’m fucking heartbroken for them, their family, their friends, everyone their life touched and everyone their stories and their smile impacted.

tone is so hard to convey on the internet but i’m crying as I write this. this will be several incoherent paragraphs as i’m in fucking tears

we had been mutuals for ages, but I didn’t personally know them that well. but i’ll miss them. fuck i’ll miss them. their stories, their drawings, their reblogs, their tags, that adorable vampire drawing they did on one of my posts a few months back—

we barely knew each other, but i fucking miss them. i’m crying. i’m crying knowing that they’re not here anymore.

my heart aches for the people that loved them personally, that knew them for all the things that made them special, that loved them for all the ways their energy touched the world and made it better.

i’m not saying this to make this about me— i’m saying this so that anyone out there who is having a really horrible time might read this and realize people they don’t even know love them. to you, if that’s you, please, hear me right now.

you have no idea the impact you have on the people around you. even the ones in your periphery. even the ones you’ve never spoken to personally.

they will miss you. they will cry and they will hurt in your absence.

if anyone out there needs a sign to stay, please, please I swear to you this is it.

[menstits]

isnt elynas confirmed to be a dragon bc neuv is his reincarnation (i know they used other word but i really dont remember) like hes pretty much confirmed go be a sovereign right??

Elynas is not the same creature as the hydro sovereign, elynas is a creature made by Gold/Rhinedottir just like durin. In the quest where the traveler gets to talk to his consciousness he explains himself that he was some kind of formless being floating across the darkness (likely somewhere in the abyss) until "mother" found him and gave him a body and brought him to teyvat (and he mentions having multiple "brothers" as well as having some mild form of control over abyssal energy even after his body died and only his consciousness stuck around since he uses said control over abyssal energy to generate the breacher primus species at some point after the melusines' unintentional creation in order to have them protect the melusines as well as his carcass where they built their village). Also the properties of his blood get compared by in-game logs to those of the blood of durin too so we can guess he's yet another one of gold's fucked up alchemy experiments

[charlataninred]

I. Have no idea how to talk to Lambert

[coyotebutch]

i think people are too scared of cringe. and of being embarrassed or being embarrassing. me included i have to fight back against it constantly and i still like cant share my oc stuff in chats i just dump it on a socmed website where no one will respond directly to me and i dont have to be as vulnerable. but like even outside of oc stuff and creating things im seeing people be like "i can enjoy spotify guilt free for a month and listen to whatever and not be worried about my wrapped!" and its just.. sad.. if youre embarrassed you dont have to share it, but why are you embarrassed? its music. i see this about everything and it makes me really sad, just have fun. if having fun is embarrassing to you i think you need to think about how you are perceiving things and also the people you surround yourself with, if your friends are going to make fun of you because you listened to some "cringe" music and it showed up on your wrapped then maybe you need better friends

[pixeljade]

You know what. When i was in my teens and 20's i always had a mentality that older folks not seeing my pount of view was because they were old-fashioned and stagnated. But now that im in my 30's i can see thats not all that it was.

Like these days, I see a lot of extreme rashness in 20-somethings and teens, where they think they're right, despite their thinking being based less on logically looking at things and more pissed at the lack of change in the world. Which is like, completely understandable! Especially when you look at the current state of society. But simply because you're right that things NEED to change doesnt mean your change is CORRECT, if that makes sense?

That last reblog kinda illustrates it perfectly. Millenials like myself, when we were in our twenties, used that desperate need for change to build the modern social justice movement; but in retrospect we also fucked up in several ways. We focused too heavily on individual cases, and individual responsibility, and things like callout culture became the centerpiece rather than solidarity and accountibility. And now, the next generation is taking the next steps, making those same mistakes; policing folks' language rather than trying to build networks to tear down the root causes. But telling them that is often useless, because they hear us Millenials saying "hey. That shit doesnt matter in the long run" and think "This is just them disregarding my Youthful New Take Styles".

Another great example was talked about at a panel i went to at SPX, where everyone was talking about how they were led to queer spaces and discovering their own identities, through HIGHLY problematic media in the early 2000's. And thats a lot of what I'm looking at now, with recently rediscovering an old hard drive of genderbend and bodyswap manga I was into before coming out. Theres lots of gender essentialism in them (I rolled my eyes at the characters in Kashimashi saying "I have to be with a boy now that im a girl"), but at the same time, I'd never have come out if not for that. And a lot of the people building better representation these days have shit like that to thank too.

I'm rambling now, but I guess my point here is that there's definitely a presumptuousness amongst youth that I think teens and 20-somethings could do to recognize. You dont know as much as you think you do. This is not a statement that older folks know better inherently, we don't, but arguing over who's more correct is pointless. We should acknowledge our limitations as humans, and start comparing our perspectives to get a better idea of the full picture.

[exsqueezememacaroni]

I’m so jealous, the band didn’t stick around to meet fans on the first date in Baltimore but it seems like they’ve gone out at every single other show 😭 I’m so sad I didn’t get to meet him, there was only a couple of us waiting there but they went right to their hotel apparently!

omg, don't feel too bad - i'll give you the quick (edit: lol) rundown of my experience: NYC: I didn't know where the backstage entrance/exit was until after the show, and I was too anxious about it all/too excited to talk to some folks I met at Zorn@70 to scope out trying to meet them coming in...after the concert, Scott and Trey came over to say hi, Dave, Mike and Trevor went straight to the car.

Montclair: it fuckn rained most of the afternoon...I get the feeling they went in for soundcheck early and then never went out again before the show. I had a long, chill, lunch/dinner. I think bc the venue was smallish, and maybe security wasn't like....super serious with their briefing, AND the boys had the day off the next day, AND there was a jazz festival the same day so they had to like, walk of shame/fame over to the parking lot where the vehicles were...Mike felt comfortable enough to say hi to folks on the walk...at the place I was waiting there was literally just me and one other guy (the obvious fan) with his gf. There were also maybe a couple of people waiting on the parking lot end? But I bet not a crowd at all. (That night I was just like....laser focused on getting the belt to Mike....I think everybody in the band did some fan-greets)

Boston: I kid you not, it was just pure dumb-fuck luck that we ran into them coming into soundcheck. All I was actually doing was showing off where the tour bus was parked (that I saw on the way to the venue) and taking a walk around the block....and there they were! Security stopped us, but again, I dunno, maybe because they had the day off before, maybe because Mike was loopy as apparently he hadn't eaten all day, maybe he knew he was getting his Pig and Hip friends in a sec so he was in a good mood, but he said yes when I asked if we could come say 'hi', and security let us through. After the show, I definitely did not want to bother them again, but I was super curious what the band would do, so I hung out after the show, but back a ways - everybody except Trevor got into the car and booked it pretty soon after the show (they had to drive to Montreal). Trevor for some reason came out much later and straight up chatted with whoever was left, and no one seemed to take any selfies, so I kind of wonder if they knew him or were connected to him in some way??

So like, out of three shows, only at one of them did the band as a whole (and mike at all) come out and say hi to fans. And to be honest, if circumstances had been slightly different, it could have been 0/3. It feels a little shitty of me to have this perspective, since I did get to talk to him twice (also to be super honest, he definitely did not recognize me the second time, why would he?), but I dunno...if things were different, and I didn't get to meet him at all, I would like to think that would be ok...these old fucks have to live that tour life (asshole-tight schedules, sleeping on coffin-sized bunk beds on the bus), they really don't have to come over after the show. I will say, I was NOT lucky enough to get a whiff of that bastard, so like, can't have everything!!!

[doodlebloo]

Believe me I hate Misfits as much as or even probably more than the next guy, but at the end of the day (when it comes to TubNet) it really matters what Tubbo is and isn't cool with, although I may have my own private opinions and/or thoughts about the direction things are going I'm not going to start openly criticizing the way TubNet is being handled as long as it seems like Tubbo is still in control of the project and is happy w the way it's going

[avenoirn]

I LOOOOVEEEE YOUR ARTWORK 😭😭 I especially love ur Zolu art.

I’m new to the Op fandom and have been reading the manga. (Almost done with Alabasta Arc I think)

Zolu is like always in the back of my mind but it was really just a quiet suggestion that I questioned why it wasn’t more popular. It’s so cute the like, undying trust they have for each other.

Also, the post you made about drawing what you want to draw and finding what makes you want to draw really inspired me a lot. I get worried sometimes about my artwork and skill but I gotta say, that’s the best advice I think I’ve ever heard.

😭 thank you so much for liking my art of them! It‘s something that makes me wonder too. Though at the same time I wouldn‘t take it any other way, I think their rs in general is shown very subtle but true enough that you can absolutely tell that they Do trust and understand each other from the get go, without words, etc. Which makes their bond very special to me

Ah I‘m glad to hear that! It‘s not really something deep but it really what helps me the most, finding joy in what you do is most definitely one of the most important things for you to sharpen your craft. Techniques, skills, and anything else can definitely be learned but before going through all of that, you gotta love what you do first. I think meaning plays a big part. Doesn‘t matter if it‘s ‚small‘ or huge, as long as it keeps you going.

[the-expatriate]

You've been here for so long and you've never caused any problems for anyone or let anyone push you around. I consider you a landmark on this site because of how consistent and kind you have been for literal years.

((Another one I'm gonna answer because I'll be honest.

There have been times where I've accidentally caused upset, and I'll hold my hands up to those occasions and I've actively made a conscious effort to learn from those mistakes.

It's why I absolutely value communication. If I'm not aware of making an error, I'll never learn. So if I do make some sort of mistake or accidentally cause upset, I'll never be an arsehole about it and I'll actively make the effort to improve.

As for the point of not being pushed around, unfortunately I have been pushed around and been put into situations where I should have known better and walked away. But over the years, I've learned a lot about people and boundaries and a lot about my own too. So now I'm not scared to stick up for myself if I need to. And if ever anyone wants to push you into something you aren't comfortable with or happy about, DON'T LET THEM PUSH YOU.

They can threaten you, they can try to coerce you, they can try to manipulate you, but you can do it and do not cave.

Lots of love from someone who's been here for 11 and a bit years <3))