#the fandom they should be an example of what being chronically online looks like

[achaotichuman]

After extensive research (looking at my moots reblogs and my own) I have come to the conclusion that this is what the pro vs anti side of ACOTAR actually looks like.

Anti side- We believe that SJM isn't good at portraying the themes she uses in her stories, and she doesn't do her characters justice.

Pro side- We believe SJM is good at portraying the themes she uses in her stories, and she does do her characters justice.

People who are insane and should not be a reflection of either side- IF YOU LIKE *INSERT CHARACTER* YOU DESERVE TO FUCKING DIE!!!!!

This post was sparked by this post, @wingsdippedingold

[olderthannetfic]

I always see people who have never been antis, talking about/questioning how some antis even ARE antis when you look at their taste in media - ie the ever famous joke of "Hannigram is #problematique" "but it's a show where he eats people" or whatever.

I thought I'd weigh in as someone who could, hypothetically, be called an ex-anti (which, thankfully, nothing ever really came out of it - it was just very 2014 keyboardwarrior-esque behavior of me being a chronically online young adult who would share posts in a group chat making fun of certain shippers, or reblog posts about how 50shades is The Most Problematic Media Ever to exist -- basically I was an anti with anti-lines of thoughts, but i never, like, a ran a Shipping Discourse Blog or whatever)

For me, personally, it was a few different things. I can now see how it's incredibly hypocritical that teenaged me shipped Light/L, while still thinking that Dramione was Bad And Abusive. It ultimately boiled down to a) being pretentious, and b) just not understanding media or what proshippers REALLY believed, with a side of c) not realizing that nuance exists. like i was pretty late to join tumblr, I think I immigrated here during PEAK "yourfaveisproblematic" era which definitely did have an impact on my opinions and my tastes.

to elaborate, a.) being pretentious. i mean this one just kinda goes without saying. "I engage in media in a way more intellectual way than you do, don't you know that? You're a filthy and disgusting person who writes Snape/Hermione because you're an actually disgusting pedophile IRL who would probably date your own student that you're abusing if you could. Meanwhile, I'm a very smart, good, and pure person. When I read Uncle Vernon/Harry, I'm doing it in a G-d honoring whump way that clearly condemns abuse, incest, and rape. Unlike YOU who only writes harmful stuff as a way to get people off :/"

(as an aside, i think this line of thinking will ALWAYS be present in fandom and popculture in some way, sadly. ie the recent trend of people hating on booktok bc the books are 'trashy' and how these porn addicts should read real classic literature instead.)

as for b.), not understanding media - i cannot emphasize enough that i was GENUINELY stupid and disconnected enough to think that proshippers REALLY WERE pro-All Of The Degenerate Dead Doves That They Wrote.

why did i feel this way? why did i understand that Lolita clearly isnt pro-pedophilia, but for some reason i thought that someone shipping weecest was? well, first of all, i think that fanfiction is (generally) seen as Less Serious than classic literature, and fandom is a fun place, so i guess i somehow thought that every fanfic/fanartist who wrote Problematic Things, especially Problematic Things that they portrayed as Sexy, really DID enjoy the thought of that Actually Happening To Real People.

and i think THIS is the bulk of why antis ARE antis. i'm not calling them all stupid - i do think BEING an anti is stupid, but at the same time, there are people who are truly smart and good-intended people who just have some really off color opinions about, like, homestuck ships or whatever. Lawlight is okay because notebooks that kill people don't exist so it's IMPOSSIBLE for the Harmful Aspects of Light/L to be romanticized! but schoolyard prejudiced bullies DO exist and are a REAL problem so Drarry is BAD (*truly completely unaware of the fact that there's 'realistic' aspects of the Light/L dynamic and 'unrealistic' aspects of Drarry - such as, for example, Hogwarts arguably being even MORE of a fantasy setting than DN is.*) I know that media literacy is the hot buzzword of the year to throw around in 2024, but, like, i really did not have media literacy.

as for c.), not realizing nuance exists - ok "nuance" might not be the best word here, but i dont know how else to describe it. like, each time ive typed the word "problematic" out in this ask, i've done so in a very tongue in cheek/ironic/retroactive way, but, like, those posts about how Everything Is Problematic, Including Your Fave ARE true. and i didn't like the fact that my favorite media or favorite person might've Made A Mistake! i need to Talk About Its Issues Because I'm So Betrayed That My Dear Sweet Comfort Media Would Do This To Me. I Need To Prove I Clearly Condemn It.

like, i legit morally could not justify reblogging a twilight post without adding in the tags '#this is my guilty pleasure it sucks that the books were so racist though' or whatever. Most people were lucky enough to avoid that line of thinking, but there was an actual group of people who felt a genuine need to virtue signal all the time, partly bc, hey, they WERE passionate about talking abt #issues in media, but also bc of a subconscious fear of If You Reblog A Singular Piece Of Hetalia Fanart, You're Literally A Nazi And Will Get A Callout Post Written About You.

and during all of this i was at the tail end of my high school experience (yes i know im younger than most of your audience, ha). i was going through A Lot emotionally, going through a lot of life changes, and lived in a very . . . interesting household/place where i couldn't do ACTUAL good in the world that i was passionate about. so to make up for the fact that i was genuinely in no place to do legit activism, clearly i had to save the gay community by arguing about johnlock queerbaiting or whatever.

^ and honestly i do think that is the position of most antis. theyre isolated and cant seem to do Enough in the Real Scary World so they have to resort to talking about how bad of a person someone is for "shipping abuse", bc theyre not in a situation where they could, for example, ACTUALLY fight the good fight to end abuse or raise awareness for it.

There was way more to it and way more that I could say, if I wanted to, but this post is long enough as it is and probably doesn't make much sense.

I feel bad for antis, honestly, or at least the ones who are antis in the way I used to be.

--

Oh yes, passionate young fools who think they can at least fix the internet if not their lives make up most of the cannon fodder. Some of the ringleaders are just mini dictators and wannabe cult leaders, but most anti-leaning types are just traumatized or clueless, even a lot of the ones who do serious damage and don't just mock shit in private with their friends.

[comikadraws]

Sorry, but there are some misinformations in your latest ask, which i would politely correct (I'm not attacking you).

Itachi in general is a more loved character than Sasuke, by the general public and naruto's fans. For example; on tiktok (a very popular app used by billions of people on daily basis) he is the only naruto's character that gets viral every week here with everybody loving him (hardly the otherwise happens) meanwhile Sasuke there is not that much popular or loved, in general he is very much slandered here and ignored unlike Itachi. For the daily accounts on Twitter you have to put in consideration that the daily Sasuke account has been active since 2022, meanwhile the Itachi's one since months ago and just in these recent months they started to blow up. For the Naruto's polls; Itachi was #1 in a poll in which japanese people's favorite character is and Itachi was #1 and in the 99 poll Itachi was #2 not because his fanbase mass voted, But because has too many stans and in general he is loved [ i should inform myself on more polls ].

And for tumblr.... Most naruto's fans on this site are frighteningly chronically online, Most of their takes are awful and almost every character suffer from getting horrible takes on their name.. and Sasuke stans found their way on this site. Also Tumblr is is not even remotely close to the popularity of Twitter and Tiktok and Itachi stans are not chronically online to do the shit Sasuke stans do on daily basis on this site. And Sasuke lost so many polls on this site, which i find it funny, They're always in every character's business and yet they can't even get their fav to win a poll.... That's hilarious.

Thank you for reaching out, though I actually have to disagree with you on a couple of points there. I hope you don't mind.

Purpose of the Statistics

First of all, I admit that my post was very Tumblr-centric and that experiences might vary a lot between platforms. Tumblr is currently my primary social media platform due to its versatility. This is also why most of my experiences relate to this platform, on which Itachi hate is rampant, and Sasuke endorsement is the standard.

My previous post was mostly focused on Sasuke being a beloved character (in opposition to fandom's perception that he is hated). This is especially true for fandom spaces (ie. Tumblr, Ao3, and Twitter to a degree - I explain why these spaces in a minute) and how his fans act like victims on this platform while, ironically, victimizing other characters and their fans. They seem to believe that hating on one character somehow uplifts the other and that they are "justified" because Itachi doesn't receive "enough hate".

And of course, of all the platforms to unload their frustrations on, they choose Tumblr. The one where they are the furthest thing from being a victim.

How to Measure Popularity?

But back on topic. Measuring popularity is a complicated thing. As you correctly pointed out, popularity varies in nature (ie. quantity and quality), and between platforms (influenced a lot by the platform's features and target audiences). This can also impact social media statistics, which is why character polls are probably the most reliable data to work with.

But not all polls are equal, are they? Look at that one popularity poll on Tumblr in which Sasuke lost to Ten-Ten or the one where Itachi lost to Yamato. It is not always the intention of respondents to measure popularity. Sometimes it is to troll. Sometimes it is to chase a reward.

Naruto 99

While it is an official poll in which Itachi managed to outrank Sasuke in terms of popularity, the Naruto 99 poll is also peculiar due to its voting conditions. Respondents were permitted to vote once EVERY DAY (giving fans both the ability to vote for multiple characters or pile votes on a singular character).

Additionally, fans were given an incentive to vote, which is the promise of a designated one-shot manga. This is what, in the end, caused minor characters like Sakumo and Shisui to show up in the top 10. It's because they are characters with grand reputations and/or importance to the plot but a severe lack of content.

However, Sasuke is the deuteragonist of Naruto and still a major character in Boruto, regularly receiving content. The blanks are 99% filled for Sasuke - with official manga content, even! With Itachi, content is so scarce that people are completely capable of distorting his intentions of being a Konoha bootlicker and a genocidal sociopath.

So it was most definitely not just popularity that influenced the poll results - It was curiosity.

Other Official Popularity Polls

It becomes more apparent that the Naruto 99 poll results likely don't reflect reality very well when looking at previous Naruto polls. In all previous polls, Sasuke has consistently gotten better results than Itachi.

Itachi's popularity usually improved alongside his plot involvement (most notably his debut in chapter 139, Sasuke's memories starting chapter 220, Itachi's battle with Sasuke starting chapter 383, and Itachi's reveal starting chapter 396). While there's been a sharp decrease during the Tenshi Bridge Arc (likely due to his lack of plot relevance), Itachi's popularity largely appears to be mostly stable during the latter half of the manga.

Aside from plot involvement, Itachi's popularity was also influenced by sympathy, as it managed to climb up the furthest (excluding chapter 107 because it was before his debut) after the truth reveal. Sasuke's popularity experienced a similar improvement after the Uchiha Massacre flashbacks.

But now, ever since that last poll (and especially since the manga's conclusion), Sasuke's character has only become more sympathetic with his return to Konoha and mentoring of Boruto. Itachi, meanwhile, didn't appear in the manga in the past 10 years. It is rather unlikely that, of all things, Itachi's popularity increased rather than decreased in comparison to other characters.

Fandom vs Fanbase

Now, even assuming that Itachi's general popularity is, indeed, higher than Sasuke's, this does not have to reflect the fandom experience on every site (which is what bothered me so much in my previous post). The reason is that there are multiple types of fans more common on different platforms - namely "fandom fans" and "fanbase fans".

Fandom members are those who interact with other fans regularly by contributing their creativity and/or expertise. But that requires space for discussions, writing, and posting pictures. Tumblr fulfills all of those criteria! Platforms like Ao3 and Twitter/X also allow for worthwhile fandom interactions. Ao3 allows for posting fanfic. Twitter/X allows for discussions and sharing fan art.

Additionally, neither Ao3 nor Tumblr are known for any form of algorithm, meaning that fans need to make a conscious effort to seek out content. It requires effort and involvement that not any fan has.

Then there are casuals and, how theheirofthesharingan likes to call them, "dudebros". They are mostly consumers. And even when they are creators, they take less of an interest in characters as "people" (ie. their personality, psychology, etc.) and therefore usually don't really interact with the fandom platforms to analyze and appreciate them. They are part of the greater "fanbase" but not the "fandom".

This often causes them to adopt the ideological standpoint of the source material. Characters who are not outright explained may end up misunderstood. Real-world parallels remain unnoticed. Ask a dudebro whether the Uchiha Massacre (a genocide) was justified and they might just answer "yes".

Like you said, Sasuke fans are way more active contributors to the fandom. Itachi fans are more active consumers. What I and other Itachi fans perceive is that, usually, Itachi has more "casual" and "dudebro" fans, likely due to his characterization as a "hero" or "martyr" by the narrative. Sasuke, meanwhile, suffers under the stigma of being an antagonist with complex trauma responses. To understand and appreciate him, a lot of effort is required, actually.

At the very least, this is the explanation that makes sense in my mind. It is a fact that the sites most known for fandom activity (ie. Tumblr and Ao3) have more Sasuke content than Itachi content, even if the general public might hold different opinions.

Itachi's Popularity on TikTok

TikTok is actually what I personally consider to be a space for "dudebro" or "casual" fans. The videos I see there are primarily song edits, focusing on vibes and aesthetics. They are cool but they are not deep or particularly big additions to the fandom. This is perfect for dudebros and casuals who are not looking for complex, in-depth content (or maybe not even fandom content at all but just canon content). Same dudebros and casuals who have a hard time getting to like Sasuke.

While this is just a hypothesis of mine, Itachi's popularity on TikTok might also be the result of "market saturation". Two types of market saturation, actually.

First, there is actually a great supply of Sasuke content already thanks to the manga and anime alone. In the case of Itachi, the manga ended 10 years ago. The anime 7 years ago. There has barely been any official content, hence the desperation for fan-created content.

And second, while I cannot confirm with 100% certainty (because TikTok's search feature sucks and always hides posts from me), Itachi content might go viral more often than Sasuke content, but Sasuke content might still get uploaded with greater frequency. Hence the #sasuke tag has 6.2M posts and the #itachi tag has 3.7M posts.

While this might also instead just be the result of Sasuke offering more source material to make edits with, the unequal amount of Itachi vs Sasuke content might create a certain "exclusivity". This might pile Itachi fans on just a few TikToks rather than spreading them out over multiple posts, causing disproportional view numbers.

There's a similar phenomenon on Ao3. Fandom content there does not rely on canon material for its generation. Its frequency mostly relies on popularity, not source material. Yet, the amount of Sasuke-centric fanfics stands in a 3:1 ratio with Itachi-centric fics.

However, the first couple of Itachi-centric fanfics still have more kudos than the Sasuke-centric ones. But that only applies to the first couple of fanfics. The obvious explanation here is that Itachi fanfics are scarce, hence fans don't get to be choosy (the other explanation is that people just really like crossover fanfics, because that's what the two most popular Itachi-centric fanfics happened to be, haha).

Itachi's Popularity on Twitter

It is absolutely true that the daily Sasuke account is older than the daily Itachi account. The claim that the daily Itachi account has only been around for a couple of months is incorrect, though, as it has been around since August 21st of last year. So more than a year, actually. Doesn't change that daily Sasuke has been active since March 2022 (2.5 years), but I felt like pointing it out.

Of course, follower counts might develop in either direction. Maybe the daily Itachi account will gain an additional 35k followers on top of its current 6k within the next 1.5 years. Regardless of which, I've actually got another source for comparison to offer, which is the daily Naruto account.

I looked at Sasuke and Itachi posts between August 1st and September 16th (today) and compared like counts. On average, Sasuke posts received 8488 likes, whereas Itachi posts received 5569.

Either way, the fact remains, namely that on Tumblr Sasuke content is more popular both in terms of consumption and contribution. And the disproportionate hate is what I am hoping to get rid of.

If not... blocking spree. I am no longer willing to deal with people who find that bullying and shit-talking is a fine behavior while also being hypocrites about it.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

I think the way you worded the Spotify situation was a bit victim-blamey 💀 in your post, you made it sound like ARMYs response to the Spotify fiasco was justified—it certainly wasn’t—and completely glossed over the disgusting behavior from ARMYs. I think this fandom has a big problem with trying to force BTS into this role of victim when that hasn’t been the case for years, and ARMYs really need to give it up. BTS aren’t underdogs anymore, they don’t need protection. The fandom as a whole looks bad when they respond this way to petty shit and, in a way, it makes BTS look bad, especially when they go on talk shows (James Corden, for example) and almost commend ARMYs’ protective, bullying response. Idk, this whole Lisa/SPOTIFY/Jungkook situation has left me with a bad taste in my mouth; it’s difficult to reconcile the image BTS has worked to portray with the behavior of a large portion of the fandom.

***

Lol Anon,

I mean, I was just writing off the cuff responses without going into detail…

You sent this just off the back of my latest post and it’s very easy to respond to so here you go:

I see your comment as just another extension of stan Twitter rhetoric from chronically-online siloed environments where people forget this is not just about BTS vs. Blackpink. I hope you realize you’re thinking exactly like the factions of the fandom you’re calling out when you frame it this way. Because why is gross negligence and incompetence from the music establishment towards artists being framed as “victimhood” to begin with? Why introduce charged moral language into a situation of clear corporate exploitation of a system that is opaque and ripe for manipulation, impacting artists from Mitski to BTS to Taylor Swift to Omalay. I find it interesting that in a situation where there was no excuse for a supposed numerical mistake to happen not once but twice in less than 24 hours, your impulse is to blame the fandom’s response, more concerned with how it looks, than the fact that Spotify manages a broken system on which millions of artists’ livelihoods depend.

If you want me to sit here and talk about ARMYs dragging Lisa and Blinks dragging Jungkook, the nasty spirit and behaviour towards the artists from everyone involved and how that’s disgusting and wrong etc, sure I can do that, but (1) why should I waste my time on it when every other blogger and/or pundit is already doing just that? You’re better off going to another blog for that content because I’m doing better things with my time here. And (2) why bother with that when the situation implies something significantly more serious? Because if Spotify cannot accurately count streams for something “fun” like Wrapped, what happens for more impactful things like Royalties?

Because in all the noise, perhaps you didn’t notice in Spotify’s vague apology that their statement did not mention the specific artists affected by their ‘numerical’ mistake. If it indeed was down to tags, BTS certainly aren’t the only artists affected. I already saw changes to my playlists following Spotify’s statement, to smaller African artists I support. Imagine if ARMYs didn’t have the knowledge to develop systems to accurately track these stats, they’d have no tools to point out the error and that’s if they’d notice it anyway.

If you’re looking for who to blame for your victimhood narrative, if there’s one at all, I fail to see how Spotify’s ignorance and lack of responsibility is not the root of it.

As to your wider comment of ARMYs always seeing BTS as underdogs and how that’s wrong, that’s yet another k-pop narrative that is stupidly reductive. In my opinion. The music establishment has survived with tactics that are nakedly exploitative because not enough people can look beyond fanwars in their stan environments to look at what is actually happening in the real world.

- Taylor Swift is a white American woman who with all her privilege still had a real battle with the music establishment to own her music.

- There’s a class action lawsuit from music fans in Canada, including ARMYs, against Ticketmaster’s exploitative practices.

- Taylor’s fandom as well as ARMYs are responding to the US Senate to investigate Ticketmaster and Live Nation for the sorts of ‘numerical errors’ that blatantly abuse the system.

- Bad Bunny’s fandom has been dragging Jeremy Erlich all over Facebook and Twitter for weeks now for the way that platform deleted concert showings in favour of Drake.

- Just as when the VMAs this year also had their ‘numerical mistake’ curiously also in favour of Blackpink, and just as with Shawols two months ago responding to a music magazine’s insensitive mention of Jonghyun’s suicide, what I saw yesterday was ARMYs writing thought out responses with verifiable facts and figures asking Spotify to correct their mistake. They spammed Twitter, email, and Spotify support channels.

All these are just very recent examples of artists and fans from everywhere rightfully responding to an establishment that has no excuse.

I hope by now you realize how silly and reductive it is to apply the mention of underdogs towards artists, anywhere, relative to the current music establishment. This is obviously more than that, it’s more nuanced than that, and the balance of power firmly rests with the establishment.

Much like my post about k-pop stans thinking wanting success in the largest music market in the world is driven by ‘xenophobia’, I think you’re applying the ‘BTS are not underdogs’ narrative in a situation that frankly simply does not call for it. There’s bigger fish to fry but if you’re stuck on fanwars and ARMY shooters acting a fool on Twitter, Blinks staying true to form and doing the same, I certainly agree with you Anon, but I’ve been into k-pop for a decade - I’ve seen 1st and 2nd generation k-pop stans physically assault people getting out of the subway on behalf of their oppas, I’ve seen them partner with real life Nazis to get people killed, so I guess I have a slightly different perspective on what makes a fandom look bad enough for me to comment.

[glitt3r-litt3r]

hi! i'm doing a presentation on the impact and community of tumblr for my media studies final and i wanted to reach out to my mutuals and fav blogs with some questions that relate to my topic. i would so totally love and appreciate if you could answer some of these for me.

it would be so totally rock and roll and awesome and amazing and i'll literally love you forever and ever and ever! :)

thank you thank you thank you!!!!

the questions(i know it's a lot, i'm so sorry):

1. how is tumblr different from other social media platforms?

2. how has the tumblr community affected you as a person/online presence?

3. do you feel more inclined to post more personal or private aspects of your life and or opinions on tumblr rather than other apps? as in do you feel you are less likely to be judged on tumblr than other platforms?

4. what are your favorite aspects of tumblr?

5. what would you do if tumblr got shut down?

6. what are some things that only tumblr bloggers would know/understand?

or

7. are there certain traditions on tumblr that you think other media sites wouldn't understand?(an example being our site wide celebration of the ides of march)

8. what are some of the largest fandoms/inner communities on tumblr? are you apart of these fandoms/communities? if yes, what is that like for you?

9. do you find tumblr to be educational in terms of academics? among other things such as politics and general life experiences?

10. all in all, how has this app changed your perspective on social media, the world, your life, and so on.

11. why do you think people should download tumblr?

12. what's your favorite and least favorite part of being on tumblr

please add anything else you find to be important!!

HiHi!! of course i can help <3

1. One key difference i've found from Tumblr vs other apps is the kind of niche community finding. When I first joined Tumblr it was because I knew there were ways to find exactly what I was looking for which was at the time for fandoms that i participated in. I wanted character analysis, fanfiction, discourse on the themes. On Tumblr I don't feel inclined or forced to share like I do sometimes on other social medias and I really enjoy the way reblogging works here! Being able to add onto a persons thought with your own has been super fun and cool.

2. So there's two kind of answers for this. The online community as a whole is very intense for people and I find that Tumblr has lessened that pressure by allowing this sort of allowing me to share my thoughts under categories that make sense. I think it's also helped my writing skills because as everyone who follows me knows I write fanfiction duhh!! But the kind of writing I see here, the critique/praise I get, even just asking followers what they want to read makes me a better writer.

3. Definitely feel more inclined to share some stuff like my opinions on certain aspects of media. Also it's great for being anonymous because unlike instagram that's used to connect "people you know" I use Tumblr to exist with people I don't know as we engage in whatever we like which is part of the allure. If i wanted to be known on here I could but the fact that it's not forced is nice.

4. Art, fandom, memes. People are hilarious and I get to see it and giggle. I also love the ways we get to interact around movies/books/shows almost like everyone's already friends.

5. die. or something less dramatic like be really upset and long for the days which I could use Tumblr freely.

6. The importance of support through reposting/reblogging people's works. This site isn't instagram or tiktok, liking something isn't enough for artists/writers to get recognition on here. Reblogging opens up their art to an entirely different community than if it just remained on the original persons blog.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that there's definitely bad stuff on Tumblr it's not a perfect site at all. I've seen some really terrible discourse from some chronically online people that made me feel like my brain was gonna leak out of my ears lol. Good thing is, I scrolled away and it didn't cause real harm because I have media literacy and can understand when someone's wrong vs just hurts my feelings.

I love Tumblr a lot, she's like an old friend to me and I hope I don't ever lose that feeling.

[canichangemyblogname]

What the fuck is wrong with these bigots:

This person OBJECTIVELY CAN get pregnant because he was assigned female at birth and has a functioning uterus and ovaries, and that reminds you of mLm furry fanfiction porn?

When I tell you TERF brains have been rotted by hate worms and internet memes, I mean it. They are incapable of analyzing the world outside the “edge lord” anti-SJW memes that they’ve repurposed for their transmisogyny, fandom, porn and fanfiction.

Plus, their rhetoric is untranslatable to an audience not steeped in internet fandom and meme culture because these people primarily communicate in dogwhistles and coded references (contrast this with feminist theory, which is relatively understandable, widely communicable, and quite teachable to people in and out of the feminist community because it relies on ideas and a framework rather than “being in the know”). There is a reason they talk so much about being “peaked,” which is the moment of radicalization when the coded speak makes sense to them and they can communicate discreetly with the in-group. And they often point to those very anti-SJW transmisogynistic memes and Reddit threads as what turned them.

This loaded language and their very black-n-white way of thinking only helps contribute to the constriction of knowledge and lack of critical thought in these circles. Their further rejection of rational and critical analysis—especially of the ideological ends of their moral statements and consequences of their moral framework—only helps reproduce this. And it so often comes across as chronically online.

For example: they see a pregnant trans person and they immediately think of porn, specifically, a genre of fanfiction porn that is often incredibly transphobic. No one outside “internet fandom culture” is going to understand this. You’re only signaling to those who are already “in the know.”

And what’s *ideologically* WILD about this? This is a trans man. One of those “trans-identified females” they insist are women *because* the people of this demographic were born with uteri and have or had at one time the capacity to get pregnant and birth children. Every time they clown trans men and trans reproductive autonomy and justice, they reveal their own deep-seated misogyny.

Tell me. What’s pornographic about someone who you insist is a woman being pregnant? Quickly. Just the fact he uses pronouns you don’t like him using? Or is it the fact he doesn’t look “feminine” enough for you? Which is it?

Or is it just the fact he can get pregnant at all? Something which your lot insists is a uniquely “divine” thing which should be revered and protected rather than stigmatized and made increasingly dangerous. How does this rhetoric that compares pregnancy to porn do that, exactly? How does it help make pregnancy safer? How does comparing pregnancy to mLm furry fanfiction porn meaningfully challenge patriarchal rhetoric around pregnancy and it’s fetishization? Quickly.

You lot say that trans people are erasing the corporeal and material oppression of women by making space for their own reproductive and corporeal liberation, and yet you’re going to compare the corporeal reality and material condition of a fellow “mature bipedal primate with the ability to produce ova and capacity to bear children” to mLm furry fanfiction porn? The hypocrisy is insane. Just further proof rad fems and trans-exclusionary radical fascists don’t care about women or women’s liberation, they only care about harassing, making fun of, and repressing trans people. Their only goal is to try and score social and political points by throwing a marginalized community under the bus. And they think they can do this by making us look “chronically online.”

Meanwhile, they’re saying trans men are “omegaverse” irl. And yet they think we’re the problem? They think we’re the joke? Get a new fucking obsession. Take up a hobby. Get a life. Touch grass.

[rituhhh]

besides the vast amount of reblogging i have done in the past few hours i also want to vomit my own unnecessary thoughts into this hellhole for a total of 2 people to read:

this is my mini case study of dreams face reveal and it’s consequences on society

1. first, i want to establish the mcyt fandom as something that was perhaps not at first mainstream, but currently is bordering on if not already mainstream. simply seeing the numbers on dreams face reveal stream proves this point. why do i want to establish this? because mainstream fandoms get more criticism than small fandoms. immediate examples are mha and stranger things, both of which are HUGE and have not only the stereotypical neurodivergent nerds within the fandom but also many marginally attached fans that are likely to be “normal” people (excuse my use of that word, you get what i’m saying here). because these are mainstream, people have a much better view inside the inner workings of how fandom operates, including our most “weird” behaviors. people then proceed to stretch those out of proportion, essentially saying all fans act a certain way or using it to prove the morality/maturity of a certain fandom. this is exactly what happened here with dream’s face reveal: it was blown hugely out of proportion and people mock the behavior of fans and insult dream’s looks. of course, there are more reasons why this got blown out of proportion, which i will get to in a moment.

2. the people affected by these insults to dreams looks aren’t just dream himself. people who look like dream are not going to be happy with themselves after the internet runs them through. of course, dream’s feelings are important as well. at the same time, by social contract as an influencer dream did kind of, in a convoluted way, consent to public criticism. that doesn’t mean that’s what OUGHT to be true, but in the current world that is what is true. anyone who posts anything online is automatically consenting to the consequences of their post, whether or not it’s a completely unbacked insult. this being said, a. i don’t think that we should be judging people’s character or how good their content is by their physical beauty and b. it’s just not a nice/morally correct thing to do. dreams content isn’t any less good or bad because of how he looks. further, the people using dreams “problematic” behavior as an excuse to be mean are not only perpetuating the idea that ugly people are bad, they also don’t understand the absolute bullshit that is the twitter label of “problematic.” i’m not saying that nobody is deserving of criticism, but just because someone says someone else did some marginally bad thing on the internet ten years ago does not make them an evil person. there are people who have done much worse things and people can change. of course, each individual draws that line of what is truly intolerable in a different spot, but i want to warn everyone that you should not believe everything you see on first sight and that you need to think with your common sense brain and not your chronically online brain when weighing what is a genuine moral sin. finally, regardless what you think of dream and whether he deserves it, think of the other people that will actually see your post and feel worse about themselves. is your post a generalization about ugly people or a group of people with a certain facial feature? if yes, then be careful.

3. it is important to note that dream did hype up this face reveal a lot. not only does the social contract thing i described earlier ring true, dream did explicitly advertise his face reveal as a big huge spectacle, and thus he must bear the consequences of that. i do note that it’s unfair to say that he wasn’t at least pressured into face revealing, but it is something that, after he decided to do it, made it a very big show.

4. if i have more thoughts i will let you know :)

[thebibliosphere]

So I'm currently unemployed because I got fired for taking too much sick leave (it was legally sketchy blah blah blah but in the end I just can't work and take care of myself and investigate my mystery health problems at the same time). So I've been spending more time writing!

I really admire your writing and loved Hunger Pangs. I'm looking forward to the poly elements developing and I'm wondering if you have any advice for writing about poly. I've made one of my projects a snarky take on "write what you know" ... Apparently what I know is southern gothic meets Pacific northwest gothic, chronic illness pandemic surrealism, and falling back-asswards into threesomes.

I know this is a very open-ended question and I don't expect an answer, I'm just curious about it if you have the energy. As a writer, trying to write honestly / realistically about polyamory/enm, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what's different about portraying monogamy or nonmonogamy in books, romance or erotica or otherwise.

I'm trying to read examples but it's hard to find examples that fit the niche I'm looking at. Excuse me if this question is nonsense, it's the cluster headaches.

I'm sorry to hear you've been dealing with all that and solidarity on the cluster headaches. But I'm glad you're finding an outlet through writing! And I hope you're happy with an open-ended ramble in response because oh boy, there's a lot I could talk about and I could probably do a better job of answering this sort of thing with more specific questions, but let's see where we end up.

There's definitely a big difference between writing polyamory/ENM (ethical non-monogamy) and what people often expect from monogamous love stories.

Just even from a purely sales and marketing standpoint, the moment you write anything polyamorous (or even just straight up LGBTQIA+ without the ENM) you're going to get considered closer to being erotica/obscene than hetero romances. It's an unfair bias, but it's one that exists in our society. But also the Amazon algorithm and their shitty, shitty human censors. Especially the ones that work the weekends. (Talking to you, Carlos 🖕.)

So not only do you start out hyper-aware that you're writing something that is highly stigmatized or fetishized (at least I'm hyper-aware) but that you are also writing for a niche market that is starving for positive content because the content that exists is either limited, not what they want, or is problematic in some fashion i.e. highly stigmatized or fetishy. And even then, the wants, desires, and expectations of the community you're writing for are complex and wildly varied and hard to fit into an easy formula.

When writing monogamous love stories, there is a set expectation that’s really hard to fuck up once you know it. X person meets Y. Attraction happens, followed by some sort of minor conflict/resolution. Other plot may happen. A greater catalyst involving personal growth for both parties (hopefully) happens. Follow the equation to its ultimate resolution and achieve Happily Ever After. 

But writing ENM is... a lot more difficult, if only because of the pure scope of possibilities. You could try to follow the same equation and shove three (or more) people into it, but it rarely works well. Usually because if you’re doing it right, you won’t have enough room in a single character arc to allow for enough growth, and if ENM requires anything in abundance, it’s room to grow.

And this post is huge so I’m going to put the rest under a cut :)

There's also a common refrain in certain online polyam/ENM circles that triads and throuples are overrepresented in media and they may be right to some extent. Personally, I believe the issue isn't that triads and throuples are overrepresented, but that there is such minuscule positive rep of ethical non-monogamy in general, that the few tiny instances we have of triads in media make it seem like it's "everywhere" when in actuality, it's still quite rare and the media we do have often veers into Unicorn Hunter fetish porn. Which is its own problematic thing. And just to be clear, I’m not including this part to dissuade you from writing "falling back-asswards into threesomes." If anything, I need more of it and would hook it directly into my brain if I could. I'm just throwing it out there into the void in the hope that someone will take the thought and run with it, lol.

I’d love to see more polyfidelitous rep in fiction, just as much as I’d like to see more relationship anarchy too. More diversity in fiction is always good.

Another thing that differs in writing ENM romance vs conventional monogamy is the feeling like you need to justify yourself. There's a lot of pressure to be as healthy and non-problematic as possible because you are being held to a higher standard of criticism. Both from people from without the ENM communities, and from the people within. Granted, some people don't give a shit and just want to read some fantastic porn (valid) but there are those who will cheerfully read Fifty Shades of Bullshit and call it "spicy" and "romantic," then turn around and call the most tooth-rottingly-sweet-fluff about a queer platonic polycule heresy. That's just the way the world works.

(Pro-tip for author life in general: never read your own reviews; that way madness lies. I glimpsed one the other day that tagged Hunger Pangs as “ethical cheating” and just about had an aneurism.)

And while that feeling of needing to justify yourself comes from a valid place of being excluded from the table of socially accepted norms, it can also be to the detriment of both the story and the subject matter at hand. I've seen some authors bend so far over backward to avoid being problematic in their portrayal of ENM, they end up being problematic for entirely different reasons. Usually because they give such a skewed, rose-tinted perspective of how things work, it ends up coming off as well... a bit culty and obnoxious tbh.

“Look how enlightened we are, freed from the trappings of monogamy and jealousy! We’re all so honest and perfect and happy!”

Yeah, uhu, sure Jan. Except here’s the thing, not all jealousy is bad. How you act on it can be, but jealousy itself is an important tool in the junk drawer that is the range of human emotion. It can clue us in to when we’re feeling sad or neglected, which in turn means we should figure out why we’re feeling those things. Sometimes it’s because brains are just like that and anxiety is a thing. Other times it’s because our needs are actually being neglected and we are in an unhealthy situation we need to remedy. You gotta put the work in to figure it out. Which is the same as any style of relationship, whether it’s mono, polyam or whatever flavor of ENM you subscribe to* And sometimes you just gotta be messy, because that’s how humans are. Being afraid to show that mess makes it a dishonest portrayal, and it also robs you of some great cannon fodder for character development.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to my current pet peeve in how certain writers take monogamous ideals and apply them to ENM, sometimes without even realizing it. The “Find the Right Person and Settle Down” trope.

Often, in this case, ENM or polyamory is treated as a phase. Something you mature out of with age or until you meet “The One(tm).” This is, of course, an attempt to follow the mono style formula expected in most romances. And while it might appeal to many readers, it’s uh, actually quite insulting. 

To give an example, I am currently seeing this a lot in the Witcher fandom. 

Fanon Netflix!Jaskier is everyone's favorite ethical slut until he meets Geralt then woops, wouldn’t you know, he just needed to find The One(tm). Suddenly, all his other sexual and romantic exploits or attractions mean nothing to him. Let's watch as he throws away a core aspect of his personality in favor of a man. 

Yeah... that sure showed those societal norms... 

If I were being generous, I’d say it’s a poor attempt at showing New Relationship Euphoria and how wrapped up people can become in new relationships. But honestly, it’s monogamous bias eking its way in to validate how special and unique the relationship is. Because sometimes people really can’t think of any other way to show how important and valid a relationship is without defining it in terms of exclusivity. Which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how ENM works for a lot of people and invalidates a lot of loving, serious and long-term relationships.

This is not to say that some polyam/poly-leaning people can't be happy in monogamous relationships! I am! (I consider myself ambiamorous. I'm happy with either monogamy or polyamory, it really just depends on the relationship(s) I’m in.) But I also don't regard my relationship with a mono partner as "settling down" or "growing up." It's just a choice I made to be with a person I love, and it's a valid one. Just like choosing to never close yourself off to multiple relationships is valid. And I wish more people realized that, or rather, I wish the people writing these things knew that :P

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. I hope this collection of incoherent thoughts actually makes some sense and might be useful. 

----

*A good resource book that doesn't pull any punches in this regard is Polysecure by Jessica Fern. It's a wonderfully insightful read that explores the messier side of consensual non-monogamy, especially with how it can be affected by trauma or inter-relationship conflicts. But it also shows how to take better steps toward healthy, ethical non-monogamy (a far better job than More Than Two**) and conflict resolution, making it a valuable resource both for someone who is a part of this relationship style***, but also for writers on the outside looking in who might have a very simple or misguided idea of what conflict within polyam/ENM relationships might look like, vs traditional monogamous ones.

** The author of More Than Two has been accused of multiple accounts of abuse within the polyamorous community, with many of his coauthors having spoken out about the gaslighting and emotional and psychological damage they experienced while in a relationship with him. A lot of their stories are documented here: https://www.itrippedonthepolystair.com/ (warning: it is not light material and deals with issues of abuse, gaslighting, and a whole other plethora of Yikes.) While some people still find More Than Two helpful reading, there are now, thankfully, much, much better resources out there.

*** Some people consider polyam/ENM to be part of their identity or orientation, while others view it as a relationship style.It largely depends on the individual. 

[quinnfebrey]

i think hating on the boys and s2 is the most chronically online take on media i've seen recently... people (on twitter especially) have started seeing media as pure comfort or something that should be completely tailored for them instead of letting it go in different directions than expected and challenge them. like if you can't accept the fact that not everything is always going to be exactly how you want it at least have the decency to leave media like the wilds and its fandom alone and go read fanfiction

yup. one of the reasons i love writing and reading fanfic is bc it allows me to essentially explore whatever i want

a potential post island where dot and fatin move in together? there’s a fic for that! a pre island where shelby and dot were secretly best friends? there’s a fic for that! a total au where toni is a lawyer and shelby was accused of murder? there’s a fic for that! fic is awesome bc it allows you to look at characters you love in various scenarios or alternate universes, and you can essentially make them say and do whatever you want

but fanfic is still just fanfic. the real show is going to be different, for better or worse, and just because it’s not fulfilling your specific expectations doesn’t mean it’s bad work

i think it’s so important for people to remember that sarah and amy didn’t pull the wilds out of their asses one day and get an amazon deal. they know how to write characters and plot and build a world that’s sustainable and purposeful. we would all love to see our dreams for the characters and show come true, but the truth is it would likely be lacking in a lot of technical writing aspects, plot cohesion, and overall arc. they have the vision they do for a reason

they have, what, four seasons planned? and they’ve had the other island in mind since season 1? to act as though bringing in the other island as a concept is bad writing or bad creative choices when you actually have NO idea what their end goal is is presumptuous, rude, and quite frankly just naive. i don’t know how many times i’m going to say it, but any kind of media making comments on feminism and the patriarchy without purposeful and comparable male characters WILL fall short

it must be so frustrating for sarah and amy to see one of their most successful works torn apart by random people on the internet that have probably never taken a non-mandatory writing class in their life.

to be clear, criticism is always valid. if the boys island ends up being pointless, and s2 ends up being a disaster, and there are actual things to criticize regarding character choices, plot holes, etc., i have no issues with people disliking that. for example, i AM worried about how they plan to fit everything into s2, especially considering even within s1 there was a lot more development i thought was missing. but im not going around saying that it WILL be lacking in season 2 because... it hasn’t even come out yet

there is a difference between expressing concerns and actively degrading something that barely even exists yet. all the criticism coming from nothing other than the fact that s2 isnt going to be every single thing you want to see just comes across as entitled and naive

[olderthannetfic]

Re, this anon: https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/719669829313953792

Yeah, well... that's the point of a bunch of internet activists: they throw the stone and hide the hand, screeching that, if you're doubting their innocence, you're an imperialist racist who should never be allowed on the internet.

Stitch, the person they're picking up a lot of their schlock from, is a master in this: they attack people, and the moment those who got attacked ask what they've done that's wrong or ask to have a one-on-one conversation with them, they shut everything down, screenshot whatever they received, block the person, and then go on Twitter whining about being a victim of racism because their words weren't listened to like the Gospel. Over and over again.

After the TOG racefaker scandal broke, I went through her blog and, just as I had expected, she too followed the same modus operandi: attack, screenshot, block, cry about being a victim of racism because people didn't let her insult them and demanded explanations about her ranting, wannabe-academic, posts.

They're not the only ones who do/did this, but these are the two examples of constant "harassment is good if I do it, but I'm the only victim and the others deserved it" cycle that come to my mind as of now.

When you're looking at End OTW Racism, you have to expect the same thing. They don't have answers, they don't want to have answers. This whole movement (horribly organized, horribly promoted, horribly everything) is nothing but a huge stroke of ego for its organizers.

You know how antis accuse others of being racist or pedophiles or whatever else because, that way, the accused cannot defend themselves? This is the same thing: if the OTW doesn't address their manifesto, then they're racist because they refuse to acknowledge it; if the OTW does address their manifesto, then they're admitting that they didn't care about racism until the moment they were called out on it and their concern regarding racism within the OTW is manufactured.

It's a win-win situation for them because, no matter how much you try, if you don't fully and absolutely agree with them, you can be branded as racist.

If you scroll through the End OTW Racism tag on Twitter, you'll see plenty of people (and especially the organizers), tweet stuff in the same vein as "I went to olderthannet's Tumblr and oof," not so subtly accusing all the people who raised valid concerns and asked valid questions of being racist.

I'm also not the first person who mentions this, but Stitch does seem to be heavily involved with the project, and even if they weren't, their words have been used to build the manifesto, and they amplified this crap through one of their Teen Vogue articles.

Now... not only Stitch is known for acting in bad faith, attacking creators of colors, branding them as Uncle Toms, purposefully making fun of them if they don't agree with them and sending their followers to attack and harass, but, just in April, they were being dragged because of another article they wrote, in which they compared writing fics about bad fictional characters to worshiping serial killers. Weeks before that, they were being dragged because their fanbase of antis discovered that their fics included incest, something that goes greatly against their preachings.

How big of a coincidence is it, that Stitch needed to have their image cleaned of all sins and suddenly a group of people drops a manifesto and hashtag about racism in fandom, founding a movement Stitch fully and absolutely agrees with and can rave about for days on end? A movement that offers very vague answers and plans, and those creators attack anyone who doesn't immediately agree with them, to the point that no questions can be ever asked about it?

Unless I'm shown actual evidence that Stitch isn't involved with this, nothing will convince me that End OTW Racism was launched for any reason that isn't to rehabilitate Stitch in the eyes of their chronically online audience.

--

[utilitycaster]

Oh man, now I'm DYING to see your perspective about the High Richter Heist incident and the convo the Nein had in the tavern afterwards. There was soooo much fandom angst over that. 🤣

You know, that's interesting on a couple levels because I did not realize there was that much fandom angst and also I had to look up the tavern conversation in the transcripts because I honestly couldn't remember it. Like, again, wasn't really in the online fandom yet, but I don't remember this feeling blown out of proportion on Talks the way I did bowlgate so I don't have much of a take on the fandom response itself. I think that's for a couple of reasons:

1. I think this was a much more confrontational scene with a much more physical threat that wasn't really resolved then and there (it was, much later on) and therefore it's a little more justified that people would react.

2. This happened earlier on in the campaign and we knew even less about the two characters at that time so it was much more speculative.

3. The Zauberspire was attacked immediately after and they found a Kyrn warrior in the sewers so like, there was other stuff to talk about on Talks.

4. I made a post...last week I think (time is a weird soup) about how, for no apparent reason, Liam seems to attract people who either HATE his characters (and sometimes him) or people who think his characters (and sometimes him) can do absolutely no wrong ever and both of those sides will come up with wild-ass conspiracies that ignore, you know, canon. The same is true to a slightly lesser degree for Marisha and her characters, and it is not, as far as I have seen, true for any other cast members, and I do not know why this is but I give all those people a wide berth because all of them on both sides have terrible nonsense meta to justify their nonsense, creep me out with their utter lack of parasocial boundaries, or both. Which is to say Beau and Caleb interactions blew up in ways others didn't, I think, because of that.

Anyway, all that aside Fjord was at least mostly in the right, and Caleb said as much later.

To give the summary for anyone who's read this far going "what the fuck are you talking about": during the theft of the High Richter's mansion, Caleb went to steal a scroll and Fjord summoned his sword, telling Caleb to leave no trace. Nott then pulled her crossbow on Fjord, who started getting ready to cast Eldritch Blast, but then the High Richter came back, Ulog used the bead of fireball taking out him and the High Richter, the towers got attacked, and so the whole situation did not so much as resolve as got interrupted by like 5 things. Also it didn't matter than the scroll was missing because the High Richter was dead.

Then, in the next episode, after the party had escaped, seen the towers, had their encounter with the Kryn soldier, stolen the beacon, dealt with Dolan and Horris, and Caleb chose to spend the night in the basement of the Leaky Tap guarding the beacon, at which point the party had a discussion with Nott about Caleb's choice to steal.

Fjord, Molly, and Beau all agreed that Caleb and Nott were in the wrong - that stealing a scroll was an extra clue that could have put them in danger, and in fact did delay their exit. (Jester was pretty neutral on the whole thing, in that she both trusted Caleb and Nott but also felt hurt by a lot of what Nott said in response).

It's again a choice that makes sense for all the characters! Fjord, Molly, and Beau all had pretty strong beliefs regarding sticking by your crew, and Caleb and Nott at the time were pretty sketchy! Fjord was definitely very aggressive, but it was an extremely time-sensitive situation (ie, you can't take 10 minutes to hash this out mid-heist) and being very aggressive was a flaw Fjord had earlier in the same way Caleb was sketchy. Both had control issues and were secretive and chronic liars, and I think both of them realized their similarities early on but weren't able to talk through it in a healthy manner for a long time. Meanwhile, of course the chronically broke wizard whose only goal at the time was to learn to bend reality is going to steal any spell scrolls he can find and damn the consequences. Like, when I say Fjord was in the right I do mean in that context he was looking out for the group and sticking to the plan, and Caleb was endangering the others, but also I can't fault either of them for acting the way they did.

I feel that this didn't come up so much in fandom later because it got addressed very directly with the characters, both during the heist in Uthodurn and on the boat after the party in Nicodranas, in which Fjord admitted to his control issues and Caleb to his untrustworthiness.

But like, again...if someone cannot comprehend that characters in a show might sometimes disagree in ways that would not be used as a good example of behavior on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, they should probably not be watching a genre that is known for like, tons of violence. "Can't we all just get along" is a nice sentiment in real life, but man does it make for terrible TV.

[devondraws]

Megastar shippers are mad again :o!! big shocker

TW ed // abu$e // Megastar clearly // a$sault  // $elf H@rm

So it’s been made clear to me I was ‘exposed’ on Twitter for hating Megastar here's the main thing. none of yall expose me, I'm open about hating this toxic abusive ship, I don’t hide it and I never once have. You don’t need to censor my name in fact, I prefer you don't. I never said or would ever to say to a victim, I have no regard or sympathy for what they went through especially not as one myself through multiple abusers. What I DONT have sympathy for is disregarding other victims for your arguably coping strategy. I would take away anyone's abuse if I could, but when you choose to ‘cope’ by promoting, fet!shizing, and romanticizing the awful terrible experience that is abuse, I will tell you to your face the damage you do to others. 

I’ll start with the big argument, it’s a coping mechanism, but coping doesn’t mean good and it is VERY dangerous to think so. One of the many I coped with the abuse from my longest abuser was starving myself and not taking my medication. It made me feel strong, and feel like I was in total control, but that did not make it good. Especially being chronically ill, I was quite literally abusing MYSELF. When it comes to a much less physical way, I coped by making fun of others when I was around 13-15 especially ‘SJWs’ I made fun of kids that are autistic (knowing I was myself but not wanting to admit to that mentally) I made fun of people really who just weren’t like me, furries, band kids, scene kids. It was a lot of self-hatred and it did in a way heal me and do what I wanted it to do a coping strategy but it wasn’t okay, it wasn’t good, and importantly it was intensely unhealthy and worsed what I went through in the long run. Heres where Megastar shippers may be shocked I did megastar. Not long, but I did, around the age of 11-12. I idolized it, and I listened to the fandom really, I said it made me feel good and it made me happy hell I even said I wanted a ‘Megatron’ in my life. Boy did I get one. and because of the ship at that. I met a much older girl and we would DM on Insta, she sent things I shouldn’t have seen and audios I shouldn’t have heard. She said outright I was her ‘Starscream’ and that Megatron did ‘he had to’ to keep Starscream as his own and that he did what he did out of pure love and I ate it up. If being abused love I wanted to be abused, I just wanted to belong. But looking back the fandom's idea and admiration for megastar was very bad on my 11-year-old mind. KEEP IN MIND the show is not for adult audiences, I was a targeted consumer and I listened and learned from the adults, from the fandom, as any child does. So when I saw both the fet!ishzation of MLM and of abuse. I learned that to be normal. And from that, I learned that to be how I should COPE when I’m sad, I should be just like them because everyone says they are happy. I'm not the only, though other people's stories aren't my to tell, I can say they mention a$sault, physical abuse, mental, etc. I shouldn’t have to explain to mostly 15-25-year-olds, why that's not true and why just because you cope with something doesn’t make it healthy.

A second big ‘argument’ I see is, ‘fiction doesn’t affect reality’ ‘it’s fictional’ ‘its a cartoon’. I don’t understand this ‘debate’ because we have seen SO. MANY. TIMES. OF. FICTION. AFFECTING. (guess what) R E A L I T Y. Take, for example, finding Nemo and both the mass flushing of pet fish and also the mass abuse of Clownfish because every child wanted a ‘Nemo’. We see this again when we look into dinosaurs actually! In mainstream media the idea of dinosaurs being scaly, reptile-like, etc. that's not true and we’ve known it's not true! Dinos are ‘speculated’ to be feathered and colorful hence why they came to be BIRDS. But that idea, because we saw in movies, stuck. And most people who don’t research (and that's most people) only saw the fictional version, that version is what stands out in their minds, to them that is a dinosaur. After 101 Dalmatians so many, I mean SO MANY, kids wanted a Dalmatian. They are amazing dogs but the thing is they need a little more training, well parents didn’t want a real dog they wanted a movie dog, a cartoon dog, and so they got puppies. When those puppies grew and became ornery and no effort was put in place to train them, they were given away in mass. We KNOW fiction affects reality, we know human brains can’t process some fictional characters (especially in anime) as cartoons. We cry over fiction, we laugh over it, we learn from it, we put morals in it for kids, I don’t get why some people still argue it doesn’t happen and I’m not going to argue with ignorance. 

Essentially here's the points. You CAN cope with Megastar, but you shouldn’t, it provides no actual help it can actually soften you to abusers, it warps the idea of abuse, it romanticizes it, (a big part of it is YOAI which is fet!shizaton of MLM) and it NORMALIZES it by being commonly consumed and a large part of the Transformers, and TFP’s specifically, fandom. Fiction DOES affect reality what you do online, say online, show online, especially to minors, is heavily altering to a mindset and to people in correlation with what's being shown. You can hate me all you want, censor my name all you want, but no one is arguing besides ‘I like it and I said so’ you can say so, I can’t silence you and I wouldn’t, but when you neglect and turn down what is blatant problems and obvious issues in front of you? That is no problem of mine :)

You ship abuse and if you are gonna keep doing it, at least own up <3

(also you guys can ship abuse without it affecting reality but I can’t make a joke hrm hmm)

edit: for context for the last part I made a joke about STARSCREAM killing megastar shippers. I said killing yes but how is that death wish did yall really think i was like. bout to summon the guy I’m confused by you guys make it make sense.

Edit 2: in the future i WILL clarify jokes better ill put that slash thing i think its /j. To me and my friends it was and still is obvious but i understand the concern. Ive gotten multiple ACTUAL threats of being doxed, assulted, etc. so clarifying wasnt a need in my head and ill be better at doing so next time i totally get how to some people specially those with truama it could have been seen as scary and im sorry i didnt clarfiy as i should!

[rivetgoth]

I had this friend I met in the Hetalia fandom in like 8th-9th grade who was like, a lot older than me (I was like 12-13 when we met and she was like 17 or so), and we were REALLY close for a really long time, we'd talk and call every day and it got to a point where she was really dependent on me in this awful way where she would like constantly threaten suicide if I didn't answer her texts fast enough and shit like that. She was really rich cuz her dad was a doctor and one time she bought me an entire fucking Xbox One (I did not ask for it like... I'd always been a PlayStation gamer LOL) because she didn't have anyone to play Halo with her. My family still has it and uses it as a DVD player/Netflix machine.

Anyway the really batshit thing about this person (BESIDES the fact that she was like, definitely a pedophile who loved shota and frequently sexted me after she'd turned 18+ and I was like 14 and she also had both a bestiality and incest fetish that she'd talk to me about constantly — I was a kid I had no moral concept of anything and just liked being edgy and feeling mature) was that she was like. A chronic liar who constantly faked identities. And for years after cutting off contact with her I would look back and realize that she had faked even more than I had noticed at the time. The thing is, I knew for sure she wasn't lying about her home life -- Her address, what she looked like, her dad's profession, her age, her house, her pets, etc, were all things I had proof of. But when I knew her she was constantly remaking her Tumblr to escape drama she'd start, and she would constantly make side blogs under pseudonyms and pretend it wasn't her (sometimes it would be random shit like aesthetic blogs under different names or ask blogs for characters or smthn, other times it was like, callout blogs for people she had gotten into drama with where she would pretend to be someone else defending her). I assumed back then that I was always going to be in on it, because she would always tell me whenever she made one of these fake accounts, and sometimes she would encourage me to make a new account too as a sort of roleplay thing where we both pretended to be people we weren't... Until I learned that she wasn't always telling me. Every so often, I would become mutuals with a new account who would start messaging me about my interests and strike a conversation with me. Then something would slip and my "new mutual" would admit that they had actually been my friend all along... Which should have made me immediately cut contact because that's weird as shit, but I was young and she was a close friend, so I would just sorta accept it.

She ended up being like, horrifically transphobic. She got run off her blog twice for being specifically transmisogynistic, first insisting that she was allowed to headcanon canon trans women as feminine men and then on her next blog insisting that lesbians couldn't be attracted to trans women. I was still young and closeted and she was one of my closest friends and was constantly messaging me that the situation was making her suicidal and she was just wording things wrong and totally supported trans people and people just weren’t giving her the benefit of the doubt and she was still learning so I tried to just stay out of it without losing her. Then... I came out as trans lol. She stopped replying to me when I first came out and then made a bunch of vents on her tumblr about how much it upset her and about how “using he/him pronouns for AFAB people is triggering” for whatever fucking reason. She told me her “best IRL friend” who she had introduced me to once on Skype but who never logged in again after and who refused to ever do a group call or anything (definitely another fake account) said that it was irrational for me to expect my friends to respect my pronouns so soon after coming out and that I shouldn’t be upset if I get misgendered. Then she apologized but told me my name and pronouns would never fit me. As you can imagine, as a little baby trans kid who was closeted from my family and terrified of even having come to terms with being trans, I didn’t really have a great defense.

Soon she started being really woke like 2014 style Tumblr SJW to save face, she came out as nonbinary and told me in private it was because she felt bad when people called her cis during discourse (she absolutely wasn't nonbinary) and she coined a "new sexuality" that was "attraction only to people you perceive as feminine, regardless of how they identify" -- what this actually meant was "attraction to cis women and not trans women." She ran an aroace help blog despite not being aroace? And made a bunch of pride flags that I still see around sometimes to this day. She would start fights a lot and try to out-woke people and got into a bunch of drama with other SJW types of the day, got into a bunch of drama with TumblrInAction and Mogai-Watch and shit like that, and she claimed for a short while that she had a headmate (FWIW I totally believe DID is a legitimate thing but like. Trust me on this one.) who was transphobic and that it made her so sad, she told me that it was actually that headmate that had been transphobic before, and every so often her headmate would front out of nowhere and misgender me and use really abusive language like calling me a cunt or a bitch or whatever. She started making these "intersex nonbinary" OCs who she would constantly make porn of under the guise that they were representation for LGBT people who were just like, extremely fetishistic cuntboys and dickgirls (they were “intersex” to explain why they could be “girls with natal penises” or “boys with natal vaginas”).

At that same time, she somehow always managed to have these random, very sporadically active trans women mutuals who were apparently amazing friends of hers, who shared some interests with her but also would defend her when people brought up her past, with these long-winded “Well, I’m a trans woman and I think what she said is perfectly justified and everyone makes mistakes and she’s always been a good ally!!” Then one day some trans woman received an ask from her account where she claimed to be a “black trans woman” (she was, of course, a white cis woman) and she freaked out and claimed she had “been hacked by TiA or 4Chan to make her look bad” — I realize now she had just been sending anon messages pretending to be things she wasn’t and forgot to hit anon LOL. Late in all of this she also got into a bunch of hot water for being really antisemitic and saying she didn’t trust Jewish people because they were just like Christians and like, 5 seconds later she came out as Jewish and wrote this whole long sad vent about how she had had internalized antisemitism and then started going by a random Hebrew name LMAO.

In the end the final breaking point was when I found her secret TERF blog, where she had been making posts for months about how trans men are just insecure women who are trying to escape misogyny by stepping on the backs of “fellow women” and using me as a fucking example, and also saying that me not coming out as a trans man had been “basically rape” since she had been SEXTING me when she was 18+ and I was 13-14+ and that it was traumatic to know someone she had trusted was secretly identifying as a man LMAO. She was also obviously saying all sorts of transmisogynistic things, but also had these really bizarre fetish posts about wanting trans women to fuck her...? I confronted her about it and she literally fucking out of nowhere told me that she was in the emergency room with a mysterious illness that might kill her and she was allowed to have her phone but due to privacy laws couldn’t send a picture as proof. While “in the hospital” she deleted the TERF blog and her personal blog. I had known her for literal YEARS at this point (we had met when I was 12-13 or so and by the time we no longer spoke I was a few months from 17), and I was completely stunned to fucking hear this person trying to pull “I’m in the hospital with a deadly disease” at being confronted for some shit like that LMAO. I made a post about it on my public and another “trans woman friend” of hers logged in to vehemently defend her by saying that there’s nothing wrong with AFAB women being untrusting of trans people because female oppression is uniquely traumatic and that there’s nothing wrong with women expressing their sexuality by sexting minors as long as the minor consents and that I was the real predator for “hiding that I was a man” (remember, I’d been a 13 year old closeted trans boy), before never logging in again... 😭 One of the last times we ever talked was when she demanded I refund her for the fucking Xbox and I refused.

Anyway, the long-term aftermath of that is that a few people online (in some random cringe areas of the internet) who archived some of her antics still think that I also wasn’t a real person, since they caught onto how much she lied about too, so they think I was also a sock puppet and I have no interest in clarifying and making myself known to those people LOL. I have no fucking idea where she is now, she deactivated everything after her being a TERF came out. There’s like, so much more to that I could say because I knew her for YEARS and, like I said, she was one of my “closest friends.” Her parents had wildly expensive pure bred designer dogs that she would make Vines of. She wrote Beatles real person fan fiction. For her birthday one year I made her a shirt on Zazzle with an inside joke about one of her OCs... does she still have that? Either way, she was easily the most batshit person I’ve ever known closely online and I will forever associate the Hetalia fandom with people like that.

[dimancheetoile]

Rant time (and a fucking PSA too)

(cw: this doesn’t relate to anything personal, mental health-related, or any kind of sensitive content. this is about a fandom thing, so there shouldn’t be anything triggering in here. just to be cautious though, content warnings for strong language, swearing and general angry-ness on my part)

ok so here’s the thing. i know the naruto fandom. i’ve been in it for thirteen years, though not all of it on tumblr. i’m lucky to be part of the older community, where all the people i interact with are adults, mature and sensible, who are able to have constructive conversations about the characters we like, dislike, like despite their flaws and dislike despite their qualities. 

now, i’m writing fanfiction because i enjoy it. i enjoy putting down ideas that make me happy, that make me think hard and deep about what i like about the world and translating that into stories i feel are interesting and thought-provoking. 

most of my stories can be classified as being a part of the meta-fandom, let’s call it that way, where adults are discussing deep subjects around konoha’s government, financial stability, working system, casts and clans and workforce, where you come out of a discussion feeling like you know more than you did before. that’s what i enjoy writing about, that sort of deep worldbuilding. i love writing it like rae loves her fluff, y’know? that’s just my thing.

i can’t control who reads my stories like i can control who i interact with on tumblr. and even then, sometimes i get pos on tumblr, so i’m not safe from them anywhere. but generally, as most of you know with g.o.d for example, the worst offenders are on AO3 and tend to be horrible people in comment sections. and that shit happens:

ok so apparently i am “basing their relationship on hating sasuke”. great. i never did that. learn how to read. this is a crackfick based on a stupid, comedic concept, and ino proposes to sakura in a joking manner. now if you’re allergic to sarcasm, it’s not my problem. but here’s what i have to tell you, and every single person who ever read or will ever read my stories:

IF YOU ARE A SASUKE STAN, YOU SHOULD NOT READ MY STORIES

I REPEAT

THIS IS A PSA

IF YOU ARE A SASUKE STAN, YOU SHOULD NOT READ MY STORIES

aside from a few exceptions, he is rarely treated well in my works because he is a character i dislike greatly. now, here’s the thing. i have taken great care in warning people about this. i have written an entire page, linked on my blog, about the content i write about, and more importantly in this case, a list of characters i don’t like. here’s what it looks like:

this list hasn’t been edited in YEARS. so it’s not my problem if you go to read my stories and don’t find a sasuke fan. and i mean, if it was just the one comment, i would never even consider writing this post. except it’s not.

(yeah, i’m not blurring their name, i regret having blurred the name of the commenter above but i did it a while back and deleted the comment so i don’t know who wrote it. reason why is, this shit is public. i don’t condone harassment, and i don’t need people to defend me, but if they didn’t want people to read their comments, they would have gone in guest mode. however if i see anyone being shitty back instead of engaging in polite discussion, i’ll delete your comment, ok?)

now what do you noticed here? yeah, those are two comments posted ON TWO DIFFERENT STORIES.

my take on sasuke is tired? you’re sad at my treatment of sasuke? on TWO DIFFERENT STORIES? yeah, do you a need a fucking reminder that i dislike the character a real fucking lot? DONT FUCKING READ MY FICS OMFG IT’S NOT HARD TO UNDERSTAND. LEAVE INSTEAD OF LEAVING COMMENTS.

(and btw, those are not the only comments this person left me, and most had the same kind of tone to them)

so let me repeat something real quick.

If you like Kishimoto’s Sasuke, don’t fucking read my fucking stories. If you don’t like my fanon version of Sasuke, be it when he’s the bad guy or when i try to redeem him, don’t fucking read my fucking stories.

there are literally countless stories online of this fandom, where sasuke is viewed in a much more charitable light than i ever will, and that, imo, he will ever deserve. this man is a piece of shit and his tragic past is not an excuse for it. newsflash people, i have chronic depression, i’ve survived sexual assault and i had an abusive childhood, and shocker, i’m not a psychopath with zero capability for remorse, empathy, human decency, healthy relationships and respect, like your precious emo boy. your tragic backstory is not an excuse for horrible, abusive behaviour, and if you think so, you need therapy. slapping that kind of behaviour on a fictional character, then defending it, doesn’t make it suddenly okay either.

i don’t need those kind of comments in my life, i don’t want your fucking concrit and unless it’s been asked, don’t fucking give it to authors unprompted. if you’re not happy with what you’re reading, buy a fucking book, or even better, browse the endless catalogue avaibale for free online, written by passionate people who pour their heart into their stories. next time you feel like being a fucking asshole, shut the fuck up and go write your own stories instead of whining about other people’s works.

ok rant over now.

[wellknownwolf]

I want to move into a new phase in my relationship with fandom, as I mature with new experiences. I'm not sure what exactly that looks like though. What is your take on the parasocial affection inherent in an RPF like Rhett & Link? Or even the deep attachments that can form with fictional characters? Or a desire to emulate fantasy worlds? I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable with all this, it's just that it's been a long time coming, and once I got started I couldn't stop. - Natasha (5)

First, let me post the full question, since it came in 5 parts:

Hey, it's me again. Your 'mystery inquirer', as you so adorably dubbed me. You're right, I had forgotten I'd sent in that ask. Just now, I couldn't help but think about a scene from Life After, as I am wont to on a frightfully regular basis, which is what got me back here. When you said you pondered over my seemingly simple, banal question for a good while, and wrote out a beautifully thoughtful answer like you always do, it made me happy.

Your narrative voice is similar to my own, and it made my chest ache in a certain way to have gotten such a response to what felt like a random shout out into the abyss (though it obviously wasn't, I sent it directly to you, I guess it's more what it felt like taking a chance on a conversation with a random stranger online). And now I'm cringing a bit at how melodramatic all sounds. But I'm committing to it, anyway. That's the beauty of anon, eh?

Wolfie (is it presumptuous to call you that? Please do forgive me the liberty I'm taking), I must admit. I'm quite envious of this community you have with @missingparentheses, @lunar-winterlude, and other wonderful people. Since childhood, I've been head over heels in love with fandom. Not a specific fandom, I've been a traveller through dozens, but fandom in general. I've read probably thousands of fanfics, spent countless hours daydreaming about beloved characters and their stories.

To the point where, in my most recent and worst depressive episode, it may have been for the worse, if I'm honest. Escapism and yearning to the point of impairment, engendering a sense of constant bereavement. But it's taught me so much about life and its wonders, I can't write it off as just some damaging habit. It's such an integral part of who I am, a deeply curious soul (shout out to my Enneagram Type 5-ers out there!). But I don't anyone to share it with, and it can get quite lonely.

I want to move into a new phase in my relationship with fandom, as I mature with new experiences. I'm not sure what exactly that looks like though. What is your take on the parasocial affection inherent in an RPF like Rhett & Link? Or even the deep attachments that can form with fictional characters? Or a desire to emulate fantasy worlds? I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable with all this, it's just that it's been a long time coming, and once I got started I couldn't stop. - Natasha

.....................................................................

Thank you for giving me so much to respond to, Natasha.  Thank you for continuing to reach out.   I accidentally wrote something like a paper in response to your thoughtful question.  I even conducted a little research and cited a source.  ENGLISH TEACHER, ACTIVATE!

Also, for what it’s worth, I feel at times that I communicate exclusively through shouts into the abyss, so it’s a language with which I am at home.  In fact, it is this very technique, this experiment with intense vulnerability at the hands of a virtual stranger, that earned me one of my absolutely most-treasured friends: @missingparentheses.  I have poured out a great deal of my own melodrama to her, and she has received it and reciprocated it in a way that, three years later, continues to teach me how to be a better friend.  In short, I’m a firm believer in diving straight in when it comes to new friends.  Cringe not; I’m on board.

So let’s dive.

R&L is really only the second “fandom” with which I’ve been involved.  Third, if we count my preteen obsession with ‘N Sync (and considering how much wall space I dedicated to their posters and self-printed photos, we probably should).  My point is, while I don’t have much experience with the community facet of fandom, I do relate to your feeling of near-obsession.  Or clear obsession.  

I know the feeling of escapism you’re describing, and I know the yearning and melancholy that can come on our worst days, where we feel like “real life” will never measure up to the color and brilliance of the worlds we spend so much time considering. These worlds, these characters and their relationships, their challenges, victories, and defeats all seem so purposeful: they’re the plot points we use to craft the stories in our heads (regardless of whether we’re writers at all).  It can be much harder to view ourselves as protagonists worth analyzing, viewing and reviewing through new lenses, perhaps because we’re warned against navel-gazing, perhaps because our self-perception just won’t allow for it.  Maybe a little of both.

But yes!  It teaches us!  We DO learn about life, other people, love, risk, all kinds of things through what we consume in these fandoms, so I would never classify it as a “bad” thing.  We hone our imaginations and learn to pay attention to our own emotions as we recognize feelings from our favorite shows, games, books, and characters arising in ourselves.  

I used to be a little afraid of the fact that I was always telling myself stories, internally imagining myself as someone else, a player in the worlds I often loved more than my own.  I suspected that someday, somehow, I would be caught playing pretend all the time in my own little ways.  I was a bright and ambitious young woman, so why would I give so much of my mental energy to such frivolous pursuits?

In my first semester of graduate school, though, I learned from a Lit. Theory professor who intimidated the hell out of me that we all do this.  We’re all telling ourselves stories all the time, some of which are true and close to objective reality, some of which are more subjective to whatever fantastical (or fandom) material we last consumed.  I’ve whispered my own dialogue in the shower, but so have you whispered yours in your head (if not also out loud in your shower!).  And through this act, however it is performed, I have made those worlds part of my own.  So have you.  In this way, they are real, and I no longer feel fearful of being “found out.”  

When we have those moments of doubt, though, when we wonder whether we’re going too far, it probably stems, at least partially, from the “us v. them” divide between fandom and mainstream society.  We love our little worlds, but we also feel that twinge of anxiety that we might be bordering on obsession, that our guilty pleasure might be discovered and we will be socially punished for it, namely, as Joli Jensen writes in “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” because “the fan is characterized as (at least potentially) an obsessed loner, suffering from a disease of isolation, or a frenzied crowd member, suffering from a disease of contagion. In either case, the fan is seen as being irrational, out of control, and prey to a number of external forces” (13). According the consistent covert (and overt, at times) messages of the mainstream, “[f]andom is conceived of as a chronic attempt to compensate for a perceived personal lack of autonomy, absence of community, incomplete identity, lack of power and lack of recognition” (Jensen 17).  Yikes.  That doesn’t feel good to admit about ourselves, does it?  

Luckily, it’s bullshit.

Treating “fans” as others (outsiders, people who can’t form relationships or find fulfillment in the “real world”) “risks denigrating them in ways that are insulting and absurd” (Jensen 25).  Those who take this stance, who see fans as victims of hysteria or desperate loners, do so in order to “develop and defend a self-serving moral landscape.  That terrain cultivates in us a dishonorable moral stance of superiority, because it makes other into examples of extrinsic forces, while implying that we [members solely of the mainstream] somehow remain pure, autonomous, ad unafflicted” (Jensen 25).  In short, that us/them thinking just makes people feel better about themselves by pointing out an easily-identifiable “other.”

 I have also grappled with the concept of parasocial affection, particularly with R&L.  I was well into writing my first Rhink fic when the thought crossed my mind, “Oh my god, what if I actually met these people someday?  How would I look them in the eye?  I’d feel like a crazy person (again)!”  From the safety of the Midwest, I laughed off the thought.  And then a year or so later, they were announcing their first tour. And I was still writing, here and there, still deep in my affection for them, sometimes wrestling with the thought that I’ve devoted so much energy to people who would never know I exist.  

It doesn’t matter that the attachment was in the most obvious, tangible ways only one-sided.  As an adult who is ever-learning how to navigate the worlds of her own creation and the ones over which she has far less control, I view my intense attachment to characters both real and fictional with deep fondness.   And while I may not receive affection or attention directly from the sources (R&L, fictional characters, sports teams, who/whatever we build fandoms around), I am still earning some very real rewards for my involvement: Because of them, I found my way to a participatory culture in which I was supported and encouraged to express my creativity.  This gave me the push and interest that I needed to hone skills that have not only made me a better writer, but also a better teacher and mentor.  With fandom comes the ability to immediately strike up a conversation over shared interests. With fandom comes a sense of belonging in what we have proven is an awfully divisive world.  

Right now, I’m consuming far less fandom-related material than I did a few years ago.  I don’t really watch GMM anymore and I’m on a break from Ear Biscuits (though I still love it), Gotham ended over a year ago and I’m not in the habit of reading fics right now, and I can’t yet play the remade Final Fantasy 7, so that’s out for me, too (though I know I will fall deep into that well once the game is in my hot little hands).  This all happened by itself.  I never consciously moved away from these sources; I just floated on to other interests and other levels of interest, knowing that if and when I wanted to dig back in, I could always come back.  

I used to feel quite sad at the thought of someday “moving on” from these intense interests.  I couldn’t fathom somehow falling out of love with those bands, actors, or video games.  But for me, the transition into wherever I am now has not been painful in the least.  I’m glad I knew the intensity that I did, and I’m happy with the distance I have now. And there’s a good chance I’ll be fanatic about something else someday.  I’m looking forward to it!

 Here are some responses that I couldn’t organically fit into my essay:

Yes, you can call me Wolfie if you’d like.  That name started with @missingparentheses (her second appearance in this answer!), and quickly became a reminder to not take myself too seriously.  

Second, I don’t think I know any other Type 5s!  I’m a type 8. 

Also, here’s my MLA formatted citation for the Jensen source:

Jensen, Joli. “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization.”   The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, Routledge, 1992, pp. 9-29.

[maesterkenobi]

how I run my blog

Tagged by: as usual I’ve stolen it from @mynameisanakin  Tagging: no one, i am too lazy and i follow like 14 people so. just do it if you want to.

SPEED: is not my forte. I try my best, but there are several factors that work against me in this aspect: 1) I’m a chronic procrastinator 2) I’m scatterbrained 3) I have more than one blog 4) I almost never write replies that are less than two paragraphs and I want it to make sense and be good and be enjoyable for my partner, so it takes time. I almost never reply the same day (MAYBE on discord, because there my replies are way shorter and it’s mostly to my best friend), and you’re lucky if I reply within a week. I really try to be faster on this blog because I made a promise to myself (and I was doing okay until the whole virus thing happened and I ran into a bunch of personal problems) AND I am keeping a low profile on this blog so it doesn’t get overwhelming. Long story short, if you are looking for a super active daily replies partner, I am not it for you. If you’re okay with waiting for a while but getting more developed stories and longer replies in turn, then we should talk :)

REPLIES: Are on the longer side on this blog. I don’t really have the patience for one liners because they tend to go nowhere and then feel like bread crumbs of randomness all over my blog. They’re okay sometimes, but more often than not they feel like crack. Writing replies is really exhausting for me sometimes, but I try to force myself because I WANT to do it, I’m just having issues concentrating on one thing at a time so it takes me forever.

STARTERS: I don’t write welcoming starters because 8 out of 10 times they get ignored or are so random that they lead nowhere. If someone writes me a welcoming starter, it depends on the content but usually I’ll try to make it work for me and reply. I don’t often like starter calls because most people write absolutely pointless starters. For example they’ll write a paragraph of explaining what their muse did all day (unrelated to my muse), then walk into some random place they’ve never been to (e.g. a shady bar) and suddenly get surprised by my muse being there, and/or, my personal favorite, say something like “what the hell do you want from me”? Which I struggle with for several reasons. One, if you create a setting but don’t bother explaining why we’re there, you put the entire weight of explaining that (aka creating the actual setting) on ME, but you add an additional complication by making it something that I didn’t come up with, so now I have to introduce a world YOU invented with 0 idea of why you chose that particular location in the first place. Second, you put my muse in a situation that makes no sense for them and again force me to explain that, without even giving me a good reason to. And third, I play very different muses, but most of them are going to lose interest in the conversation immediately if the first thing you say to them is rude af. So, yeah, I actually really struggle with most random starters. Please just plot with me and then I will love you forever for writing me a plotted starter that I know will not create 400 questions in my head that I then have to bother you with, which makes me feel like a nuisance. (Or at least keep the setting neutral? Or try to come up with something that seems reasonable for my muse? I always try to do that and when I am unsure, I message the person who liked my starter calls.) Speaking of which, I rarely post starter calls, because.. well, like I just kind of explained, it’s comes with responsibility and work. And I’m lazy.

INBOX: is open for memes at all times, and questions of any kind. I often don’t get notified, so I sometimes see certain messages months later - when that happens, I usually don’t reply anymore if they’re anon because I’ll assume that person forgot or isn’t even around anymore. Sorry about that! It’s an issue I’ve had on several blogs and I don’t know how to fix it. Anon hate is deleted without comment, unless I feel there’s a point in replying to it publicly, or if it’s entertaining. I don’t roleplay via inbox and therefore any “ic” questions or interactions posted in there will be treated as a one-time meme, if I can reply to them at all. Asks of sexual nature from complete strangers will usually be ignored because Obi-Wan isn’t the muse for that at all. As I’ve stated in my rules I only roleplay with mutuals and therefore won’t roleplay with someone I don’t follow, even if they ignore that rule and start rping with me via inbox. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but I have these rules for a reason and I ask that people read and respect them.

SELECTIVITY: I am selective with whom I follow because I have limited time and energy for this blog (and all my blogs) and therefore find it irresponsible and pointless to accept 600 followers and threads when I know I can’t possibly reply to even 10% of them. Before I follow someone (back) I look at their blogs; in particular at their writing (to see if I like their style and their portrayal), their rules (to see what they like/dislike and if our general understanding of the RPC, roleplay, and in a way social interactions in general go well together), and sometimes their OOC posts to get a feeling of how the other person is. (Obviously I also sometimes don’t follow back when I don’t know the muse or fandom at all.) Blog rules and ooc posts can say A LOT about a person, and there are plenty of people in the RPC (in any fandom) that quickly rose to tumblr fame with shiny graphics and fancy formatting and dozens of well-developed verses and headcanons, but they straight up suck as people outside of writing. My rules state very clearly that I discourage hateful comments, mob mentality and callout culture, and unfortunately many “popular” blogs use exactly these tools to execute their power (which comes from being admired for all the wrong reasons). So, I know many people think being selective means you only pick partners with fancy graphics and poetic writing, but for me it actually means I want decent human beings as partners. I don’t give a shit if you format your posts (as long as you cut them) or if you have a blog with a fancy theme, or just a rules google doc, or if you use icons or not. If I like your writing and you seem like a nice and reasonable person, I’m good to go. If you talk to me about dogs I’m even better to go.

WISHLIST: I always try to have one because I find it very helpful when looking for plot ideas with new partners. I will look at yours if you like a plotting call or something too, but I know not everyone has a wishlist~

HONEST NOTE: I’m not a teenager anymore and I’ve been rping for over 14 years. I work with lots of strangers, I study for a job with lots of strangers. I think about philosophical concepts a lot, about morality and human behavior and I’ve come to the conclusion that kindness, empathy and compassion are some of the core values every single person should focus on to make the world a better place. I have no patience and no interest in engaging in the absolute toxic and harmful hate movement that’s taken over this website (and other social media platforms) in whatsoever way. Occasionally I’ll make a salty comment about it, but only because I’ve had it up to here. I am here to enjoy fandom the way I used to, and the way it used to be meant to be enjoyed - not to completely ignore real issues like world politics, economical and environmental crises, in order to entertain witch hunts on people who happen to enjoy a fictional ship that isn’t 300% approved by puritan statutes of the 1600s. I am responsible for the content I seek out online, and so are you. Does it suck when I see something I dislike? Sure. Is it the fault of the person who posted it? No. Especially not when I read their rules first, like I’m supposed to, and they clearly state that the thing I dislike will appear on their blog. And even if they didn’t, it was my choice to go on their blog and look at their content. If you can’t handle taking responsibility for the content you seek out online, then you are probably not old enough to use the internet unsupervised. I am free to write, read, and post on my personal blog whatever I want, as long as I am not breaking the law. Liking a fictional ship that involves an age gap? Not illegal. Liking a fictional ship that involves siblings? Not illegal. Liking a fictional ship in which one party was abusive to the other at some point? Not illegal. Liking a fictional character who killed your fave? Not illegal. It’s fictional. Get over it. And if you really think that seeing fictional characters or ships online that YOU consider “problematic” is hurting people in real life, then you should join those politicians who burn books that are “corrupting the people’s morals and minds”, who ban video games because they “make gamers violent”, and censor songs from the radio because they “present biased views on people of public importance”. Please reflect on your behavior. Destroying someone’s life because they liked something you don’t, telling them to commit suic/ide, ruining their chance of making friends who maybe share their love for a ship or character.. that’s bullying. Some of the cases I’ve seen on here were so severe, they qualify as serious cyberbullying and should be reported to the police. I don’t give a fuck if you hate Rey/lo or Damon Salva/tore, or the Joker. You don’t go and send someone messages telling them to kill themselves because they RP it. Because that is the real crime. And finally, if you feel the need to “educate” someone you consider “problematic” for whatever reason and you actually approach them - make sure you’re actually there to educate and discuss, not to throw an opinion at them and get aggressive when they don’t immediately magically agree. Because chances are they won’t. If you choose to open a dialogue, make sure it IS a fucking dialogue and not a condescending monologue. Learn how to shape an argument, find evidence to back up your claims - because not only will you become better at talking to people in any kind of situation, you’ll also maybe realize that your opinion wasn’t as well-founded as you thought.