#the way people on twitter say they’re friends in the same group like that somehow makes it better

[sunmisbf]

if i find out ten’s solo had a low budget so taeyong’s could be better i will be enlisting in the 10vely vs tyongf war

[xplrvibes]

some people on twitter are getting really mad at colby for apparently ‘ditching’ shea for his new girl saying shit like oh he led shea on and now he’s pushed her away lol

they’re fully acting like he’s committed an awful crime like why are they cancelling him 😭

(side note - i’m actually, whole heartedly convinced that half of the fandom genuinely hates colby and everything he does fills them with rage lmfao)

This is going to be a one and done, on this topic. I don't like Shea, don't like what she's doing. Never did like her, as you all know, because she has been an absolutely awful and manipulative bully and generally trash person over the years and I don't want her taking up too much space on my blog because of it.

But I felt the need to just put this out there before I move on, so here we go, behind a cut for anyone who doesn't want to hear it lol.

You know, I find this whole "taking Shea on her word all of a sudden" thing interesting.

According to Shea, they had a 10 year (even though he was still living in Kansas 10 years ago) "on-again, off-again thing" that was "mostly just talking" and was "never official," although it was "almost dating, but not official" for 2 years (even though there hasn't been a 2 year period where Colby hasn't been at least seeing someone, if not hooking up).

She doesn't seem to know any of his friends and not a single one of them follow her on socials - in fact, most of them unfollowed her several years back. Of particular note is the fact that Sam, after all these years of her being Colby's future wife, still hasn't followed her back...but has followed several of the other girls Colby's been linked to over the years, including M.

She never seems to have a clue about what is going on in his life and has been promising (and not delivering) fans content with Colby for years now - including her telling everyone that her and Colby were going somewhere to film a documentary in January of this year when Colby had already told everyone on xplrclub that he and Sam were going to be in Vegas or in Texas filming in all of Jan and then in Australia for most of Feb. She promised to have him on one her streams on a day when he was actually in Hawaii, then another day when he was actually in Kansas visiting family.

She hasn't been invited to a single party or group gathering of theirs since 2019, save for one time when she visited Colby and Sam in Las Vegas - which came across as very awkward, given the above.

She complained about never getting invited to snc's Halloween parties - you know, the ones that have 500-1,000 invitees and snc have claimed include an invite to every single person they know and are friends with? Yet Colby's soul mate gets left on the list somehow, 6 years running?? (One year he had four different past flings there at once. But the future Mrs. Shea Brock just didn't make the cut somehow)

Oh, bonus: she once told a gc full of her fans that Colby asked her out, but she turned him down because she valued the friendship too much. Funny how those turns tabled.

Colby meanwhile, has never hidden that he considers himself single, does not think he's met "the one," uses Raya to find dates, hooks up and has flings....he's not just pretending to be single, he IS single.

So. to recap: They have had a 10 year friendship and emotional bond that Shea deluded herself into thinking was more. Colby comes around her again after having had a cancer that could've easily rendered him unable to have children, and her grand idea is to tell this guy she freely admits she was never even dating that she wants to cash in on some vague promise he may or may not have actually made to her about getting married and having CHILDREN???

I'd have left her ass, too.

But sure. He's the bad guy. By the way, to hear Shea tell it, Colby did the same thing to her that Sam did to Kat. But all the people trashing Colby were the first ones in line to defend Sam from big bad mean Kat and her hurtful words because "he wasn't ready" and wah wah wah. Isn't that funny...and on par.

So yes, lol. Most of the people pissed about this are using any excuse put in front of them to trash Colby cause that is the only enjoyment they get out of life. Trust me when I say they are backing the wrong horse with Shea. She's not the hero victim y/n sainted good girl she pretends to be.

[olderthannetfic]

On the subject of blocking, I think entering a new fandom and blocking a huge section of it straight away is self care at this point. If I read any post along the lines of "if you like this fictional thing then you are..." I block immediately. If a friend knows the fandom, I follow their advice and block the people they suggest too after a quick scroll (I know a lot of people do this). Fandom isn't a community anymore. It's finding a small handful of people to enjoy the thing with and hiding from everyone else.

I read a post on Twitter that talked about how old school fan culture was dying, and how preemptively blocking/antis were killing fandom because it was forcing people to engage and communicate less. I was sad to realize I was part of the problem, but I've had so many bad experiences. I preemptively block based on a particular ship and two characters in A fandom, because of how horribly disgusting the fans are (to each other, to people who like something different, and the content they create is often squicky/poorly tagged). I realize this is almost "anti" behaviour (judging people's character for their fictional tastes), but it was endemic. I don't harass, I walk away silently and filter them out. So hopefully not as bad?

The final straw for me was the "antis in disguise". People who profess to love Dead Dove content (and also write it), but then are aggressive/vile to people who like/don't like different characters, forms of canon, etc, and have extensive trigger lists in their servers, while telling people the right way to fandom (which is to only like what they do). For me, the only "right way" is to let people love their thing and don't harass, while making content for your thing. I was in one for an IP where hunting, death and murder were a huge part of the narrative... and death is on the trigger list. Any and all mentions of it. Yes. Even "that's so funny, I'm deceased".

I'm sorry for the ramble. I have a lot of feelings about being guilted for blocking and setting up boundaries. Especially one person using their RSD to claim they were being bullied! Fandom is mad these days. Mad!

—

I die laughing every time I see someone who thinks they’ve been around a long time but who is somehow still such a n00b that they could say blocking kills old fandom culture.

You know what kills oldschool fandom culture? TWITTER

It’s short form quips. Oldschool fandom was interminable tl;dr. It’s open and public. Oldschool fandom was invite-only with dense webs of social connections required to access it and a natural result of being in it. Some people took their old friendships to twitter with them, but if they want to know why things feel different now, it’s because they went to that piece of shit website. That’s not the fault of the rest of us.

Back in the day, m/m shippers often found a little group of their own people and hid from the haters. Those few tragic souls who liked whatsherface from the last season of Beauty and the Beast did the same. Anime fans weren’t always in the buddy cop fandoms and vice versa, except for FAKE. Fandom has never been just one community. That’s an illusion born of nostalgia and planting one’s head firmly in the sand.

You know what forces people to communicate and engage less? Platforms that make them feel unsafe. Randos being able to turn up in the comments to go “Well, actually!” without the poster having any ability to keep them out. And sure, antis are part of that, but we’ve always had haters of other sorts and always had to get rid of them in order to have a civil discussion.

Denying dickheads access to your time does not kill communication.

If someone on twitter actually meant what you’ve written about above, then they’re clueless. If they want oldschool fandom culture, they need look no further than their own pen. Post long-ass “thinky thoughts” (and use cringe-inducing terms like “thinky thoughts”) and oldschool culture will come to you… And maybe, while you’re at it, figure out if oldschool means LJ culture, forum culture, FFN culture, mailing list culture, Usenet culture, fanfic convention culture, AMV editor culture, 80s multifandom zine culture, 70s Star Trek zine culture…

[barbiegirldream]

It can’t be overstated that queerbaiting allegations directed at Dream are apart of one of the most vile and long standing homophobic harassment campaigns I have ever seen. And I need to break it down because it’s genuinely insane. 

Queerbaiting is defined as “a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBT representation.” The reason hinting at but never following through on queer representation in fiction is problematic is it invites in queer audiences and then treats them like they are stupid and dumb and unwelcome for their queer readings of the content. It is not the act of flirting between characters that is harmful but the treatment of real people that comes from the studios who are gaslighting them. 

Dream and George could never be queerbaiting because they are real people who do not market their friendship and have never once tried to convince anyone they are dating. There has never been harm done intentional or unintentional to queer people for engaging with DNF because Dream and George are not corporate entities trying to use queer people. They’re young men who have with no direct intentions formed a large community of young queer people. It is clear that in the start Dream and George expected young boys to be fans of them but they got so much more. And they are welcoming and kind and always try to give the most support they can to their incredibly diverse audience. 

Furthermore real people can never be representation in the same capacity as a fictional character because fictional characters are moldable and shapeable to be as all encompassing as possible. Expecting a real person to represent anyone other than themselves is setting them up for harassment and failure. As well it is dangerous as bigots are often trying to establish a monolith of how ‘those people are.’

Now all of this established one can’t help but be confused as to why Dream alone is attacked for his flirty nature. Dream is the only one in the entirety of his very flirty friend group to face any repercussions for ‘queerbaiting’. Dream is also one of the few (openly) non straight members of his entire friend group. 

People who are inherently uncomfortable with seeing a man express affection and desire for other men are looking for a way to make him stop. The purity culture and respectability politics mindset is an immediate giveaway for a bigot though people still spout off these rhetorics at Dream. But queerbaiting that’s a fun new terms all the baby liberals know is a negative word. It also is not immediately obvious in meaning and why look anything up if a twitter thread can tell you. 

So queerbaiting what can they say it means? Well to them baiting someone into thinking you are queer. How do you do that? You flirt with people of the same gender implying you have some same sex attraction to them. Why is this bad? No need to explain everyone knows queerbaiting is bad and we’re not explaining why if you don’t get it you hate gay people. 

Online spaces are so caught in always doing the right thing and saying the right thing they don’t even stop to realize what they are saying. Because what so many so called progressives are arguing is that it is fundamentally wrong for a young man to express any same sex attraction with his friends because someone might think he’s queer and that’s bad. Like that is just homophobia. 

None of this is to get into the fact that homosociality becoming normalized by heterosexual people is proven to lower gay panic. Gay panic as in thinking someone is gay and lashing out up to the extent of murder and arguing that you panicked in the face of homosexuality. This defense is something people have used in a court of law to defend their homophobia. But if it becomes more normal for men to express their love for other men without fear of being called gay it makes the world safer for queer people. 

We have somehow looped so far around in queer theory in the mainstream that people are completely seriously arguing that the potential of being perceived as queer or in a queer relationship is inherently bad. 

[ghostie-my-beloved]

could you possibly do a dream team fighting over the same darling, and decides that then one who capture the darling in a manhunt will win them/the darling, whiest the reader aka the darling is just terrified trying to run away?

chasing the rabbit

Synopsis: The Dream Team have their eyes on a certain prize. That reward is trying to escape their grasp, which is something they will not allow so easily

Pairing: manhunt!Dream / manhunt!George / manhunt!Sapnap x GN!reader (they/them)

A/N: This was the very first request I got with the Dream Team! It was very fun thinking of how to go about with this. I hope this will satisfy all of the Dream Team stans out there <3 (Art credits go to @/beauty_get on Twitter and SAD-ist)

TW: Depictions of violence and hunting, arson, gore, slight yandere/obsessive depictions (it could be taken however way the reader wants to see it though)

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There was no where else to go. You had to keep running from them.

Poor little unfortunate you just had to encounter this hunting team, at the worse time possible as well.

The Dream Team. A notorious manhunting team known for setting up their little chase-the-mouse games, all “for fun” as well. That’s what considered fun in their definition at least.

People have learned to stray away from this group of dangerous and rowdy boys, including yourself. And still, you still somehow managed to rope yourself into their little shenanigans.

One of the members of the trio, who goes by the name of Dream, has taken a special interest in you. And by that, he’s gotten very intrigued by you. And no one really knows why, not even yourself. You were just some random person that was trying to live their life, distancing yourself from any form of trouble. But that could no longer be avoided when you got dragged into their plans.

Dream and his other friends, Sapnap and George, decided to bring you into one of their little “games”.

All you have to do, is outrun them and survive throughout the woods for a full 24 hours, and make sure to not get caught. Simple enough, right? If you made it, they would leave you be. But if one of them one, they got to keep you to themselves.

Well, let’s just say these boys turned this game of hide-and-seek, into one of the most thrilling manhunts they’ve had in a long time. You were the prize after all, and a very valuable one at most.

Their little game that they deemed, “Chasing the Rabbit.”

The one who had started it all. The one who had the idea to bring you into the manhunts

Dream was the one who decided to tie you into his little plans. Tagging his friends along into the act as well

He found it both entertaining and adorable, that an individual like you could struggle so much against him, yet it almost didn’t do anything for your favor

The thrill of getting close to almost capturing you for himself, only for you to slip away last minute, absolutely frustrated him. But he also loved it

This is what a manhunt is supposed to feel like. The feeling of danger and excitement surging through your veins. Dream would do anything to experience this feeling

When Dream first noticed you, he took an interest in your mannerisms and actions, and he wanted to see how you’d react in a situation like this

“They’re an interesting one.” Is all he said to his best friends, George and Sapnap. And he wasn’t wrong, you were doing relatively well for a beginner

You weren’t crying or screaming like how many people expected, but outwitted all of the boys with what little survival knowledge you had. And Dream absolutely loved it

He wouldn’t hesitate to give you scars and bruises while trying to catch you, even though it twinged his heart with slight guilt

It had to be done though

Anything to catch the rabbit.

George. The one who’s usually the voice of reason within the trio

So when he heard about the idea of Dream bringing in some random person that they didn’t know personally into their games, he was against it as first

Of course, the two younger men forced the idea and he naturally had to comply with their plans

However, after finally getting fully immersed into the game itself. George soon started to enjoy the experience. Not as much as how Dream was enjoying it, but he was most definitely entertained

He would use his knowledge and skills with a bow to aim precise shots to try to get you to slow down, even tipping some of the arrows with potion effects

There were times where he almost caught you, but he would let you get away on purpose last minute

Mostly because he felt bad, but also started to grow fond of you through this strange form of “bonding time”

George himself wasn’t so sure on why he thought of it like that, but he believes it’s just the way they’re interacting is how he sees it as “bonding”

Even then, he never missed the occasional excited looks on your face as well during the hunt. He also knew you were enjoying it times, whilst being terrified at the same time

He found it cute, not gonna lie

Maybe this new game wouldn’t be so boring after all.

Finally, the certified pyromaniac of the group. Sapnap

A rambunctious and reckless boy, the youngest of the trio had stars in his eyes at the mention of a new game to play

And with someone completely new to the concept of manhunt as well? Sign him up

He was about ready to just explode everything on the spot, he couldn’t contain his excitement

A new game? Great! And with a new person as well? Even better! In Sapnap’s eyes, the thrill of playing a game with a new person gets him all hyped up

When he first saw you, he thought you were drop dead gorgeous. Not even kidding, man’s was practically drooling over you

He quickly got over it, and focused on the game. And boy did he get hella competitive about it

He would start off with setting the forest brush ablaze with his torch, in order to close in the gap on you. Dream and George were hacking and coughing from the smoke, but Sapnap came prepared with the right gear

The youngling would then get closer and closer to you, watching as you were swiftly trudging your way through the thick and foggy smoke, before grabbing your wrist in triumph

Sapnap felt so proud of himself in that moment, but before he could announce he had caught you, you caught him off guard

With your quick thinking, you managed to outsmart him by throwing a quick potion of invisibility onto the ground, and slowly making your way away from Sapnap, using a wet towel to prevent you from coughing

Stunned from the move, and slightly hazed from the effects of the potion, Sapnap could only sigh in embarrassment while George and Dream laughed hysterically at him

This new guy wasn’t such as much of a newbie as he seemed

—

“Awwwww, Y/N~!! Just give up now! There’s no where else to go!”

The familiar voice of a certain masked man sung from behind you, as he was closing in on you. He was running fast, faster than you even. You sucked in a sharp breath and focused on the path ahead of you.

You swiftly ran through the grassy terrains, adrenaline coursing through your veins as you ran with all of your strength. Plant life blossomed throughout the fields, and wildlife could be seen very easily. It would’ve been a great landscape to relax in if it weren’t for the trio chasing you from behind.

George was only firing arrows at you skillfully, some of them grazing your delicate skin while the rest of them whirred past you and blazing speeds. Meanwhile, Sapnap was only chasing after you at equal speed to you, throwing occasional daggers at you to try to get you to slow down. You only scoffed at their little attempts to get you to stop running.

“You boys are gonna have to try harder than that if you want to catch me!!” You yelled out to them, only to have a burning feeling pierce your lungs painfully. It was only then you realized how much stamina you were losing. You can’t afford to waste your energy, otherwise they would catch up to you.

“Come on, Y/N!! It won’t be so baaad~!! Just let us catch you, darling!” Sapnap commented playfully, the usage of a nickname throwing you off completely. George could only sigh and Sapnap’s antics and aimed an arrow at you, directly shooting you in the leg.

“Bullseye.”

You squeaked in pain and tumbled down to the grass, clutching your leg in pain. You then started to panic, and you tried to crawl away, but you were too late, as the sound of hunting boots clanking together already indicated that you lost the chase.

“Well well well. Would you look at this? The little rabbit finally got caught.” Dream commented sneakily, making you let out an annoyed breath.

“Rot in hell, don’t speak of me like I’m some pet.” You snide at him, but Dream could only chuckle deeply.

“Oh is that so? You certainly seem like one to me. An adorable one if I may.”

“Excuse me?”

Dream only sighed and put his foot to your back to make sure you didn’t try anything funny. He then shifted his face closer to yours, a little too close if you may, but you would be lying if you said you didn’t find his cockiness the slightest bit attractive.

The other two then approached Dream from behind, a little salty that he got to you first.

“Ah, so I guess we finally have a winner for this game, huh?” George stated.

“I believe so.” Sapnap replied.

You only looked up at the three boys, seeing the sly smirks of the two boys behind the masked one, while Dream only chuckled and spoke up.

“Looks like I won now, huh?”

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[tarosin]

The great adventures of y/n, Tommy, Jack and Tubbo

Requested:yes/no

Pairing: Platonic jack/tommy/tubbo/reader

Summary: another day another adventure

Content warning: cursing / I didn't proof read

An: reader has bright unnatural hair I wrote a lot, I can't figure out how to add read more on mobile I'm sorry

The music you were currently listening to was interrupted by the discord group notifying you that you have a new message.

Tommy: Y/N HOW BUSY ARE YOU TUBBO HAS COME TO VISIT AND JACK IS HERE

y/n: I mean I've currently got hair dye on but it’s being washed off and dried in around 20 minutes, why?

y/n: WAIT TUBBO?!?!

tubbo: oh yeah I forgot to tell you

y/n: how did you forget you know what nevermind, I’m glad you’re here :]

jack: we should be here in an hour so you have plenty of time to get ready

tubbo: what colour dye y/n

y/n: you’ll see soon enough as apparently, you’re all showing up at my house

Tommy: I suggest you wear comfortable shoes

y/n: I am terrified

Tommy: you have nothing to fear... for now

•••

luckily it had only taken you just over 40 minutes to get ready giving you roughly 20 minutes to prepare for the adventure ahead. or so you thought, as soon as you sat down ready to check your phone the sound of Tommy and tubbo laughing could be heard from your room, jack sent a message “hey we got here extremely early I’m sorry there’s no rush the others have been distracted by dreams music :)”

grabbing a backpack from next to your bed you had quickly chucked your phone and purse into the bag unsure as to what you’re going to need today.

•••

as soon as you opened the door you were met with an ecstatic tubbo who instantly pulled you into a hug unable to contain their excitement of seeing their friend

“I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN AGES YOUVE CHANGED SO MUCH LOOK AT YOUR HAIR”

“I look exactly the same”

“Now I’m no genius y/n but last time we spoke you didn’t have unnatural hair”

you paused for a moment as tubbo had a point the last time you and tubbo were on face time your hair was classed as a natural colour however today as a fuck you to your school which didn’t allow unnatural hair you decided to dye it your favourite colour.

“you raise a fair point now if you don’t mind releasing me from your grasp I have to lock the door so no one gets in”

•••

“Tommy unlock the door let tubbo and y/n in”

“Y/N YOU'RE HERE- HOLY SHIT YOUR HAIR! JACK ARE YOU SEEING THIS”

“Hello to you too Tommy”

“well if we weren’t going to get noticed at the shopping centre earlier y/ns bright fucking hair will definitely cause people to notice us”

“oh I’m sorry I didn’t expect to be going shopping with a bunch of Minecraft streamers today”

“don’t you stream Minecraft?”

“This isn’t about me jack”

the trip to the shops was surprisingly relaxing y/n sat at the front listening to jack sing along to songs playing on the radio, however, it was clear the boys had something they weren’t telling y/n which became evident through Tommy and tubbo bickering in the back of the car about who was going to tell them. it was a relatively short journey due to the fact you lived close to the city centre

•••

“let’s go shopping boys” Tommy practically yelled to everyone, tubbo held his phone in your direction then looked towards you, nodding at him you grabbed his phone and began recording

“I'm vlogging”

Tommy walked over “YEAHHHHH”

walking past cex you had to put up with Tommy making sex jokes until you made it to game, you stood holding back your laugh as you filmed Tommy and tubbo fighting about who’s paying whilst jack went off to buy a Minecraft squishy and mug despite everyone’s arguments against it. soon enough fans came over asking for photos with you all once the group of fans left jack took over recording for tubbo whilst you went off to quickly buy some games that you could play on stream.

•••

“want a wig bro? jack!”

the four of you walked into the shop, you couldn’t help but stand in awe looking at all the bright colours already questioning what colour to dye your hair next the sound of Tommy and jack being amazed pulled you out of your thoughts

“Gogy goggles, I’m actually buying them”

“i wan’t a pair”

“no, you’re getting a wig jack”

“I don’t want a wig I want George”

“y/n has bright hair and they’re not complaining”

“what do you have against people with colourful hair jack hmm?”

•••

“I'm not happy”

“you look lovely jack”

“we’re getting so many looks”

tubbo stopped everyone to ‘fix’ jacks wig which resulted in everyone laughing once you had finally stopped laughing you noticed tubbo had walked off and you were convinced jack had randomly decided to record strangers until you saw tubbo going up and down escalators

“oh there he goes again”

“pov you’re thinking about bees”

“where to next boys?”

Tommy pointed towards the lift

“Is this a lift for us”

Tommy noticed the safety sign and automatically made comments about it

“keeping us all safe is what I would say if I wasn’t carrying a knife”

“oh same Tommy”

“look you can see me”

taking that as an invitation to join the vlog you stood behind tubbo and pointed at the sign again and looked at Tommy and jack

“keeping us all safe is what I would say if we weren’t about to do this-“

the three of you went to jump up and down

“NO”

the four of you quietly left the lift however you were convinced that the public heard Tommy comment on having a knife and you threatening to jump as once the lift opened everyone was staring at you but it could also be due to the fact you had brightly coloured hair and somehow convinced jack to keep the wig on, you all spent a long time trying to convince Tommy to get a new outfit, eventually you went into another shop a certain keyboard caught your eye

“I’ve found my home, ill stay here at the gamer bunker”

you decided now was the perfect time to sneak off to buy the keyboard that had caught your eye, once tubbo noticed it was too late you stood holding the bag with your purchase leaving you stood in the middle of the shop defending your purchase to him claiming that it was a business expense and not just because you thought it looked cool.

“you told me you wanted to save your money”

“it lights up tubbo and it fits the vibe of my room”

Tommy placed his arm on your head treating you as an armrest as you were shorter than him and he knew it annoyed you

“they have a point tubbo it lights up”

once the recording ended you made your way back to the car

“say y/n you wouldn’t mind if me Tommy and jack stayed the night as tomorrow we were thinking-“

“sure thing”

“YESSSSSS”

•••

the next day you were woken up at 9 am by Tommy stood at the foot of your bed

“hi y/n”

“WHAT THE FUCK- oh hi Tommy Jesus christ do you know how horrifying that was to wake up to”

“Sorry bout that but if I didn’t wake you up now you’d only wake up in the afternoon and we need to go soon I’ll leave you to get ready”

you noticed a note was next to a jumper on the floor ‘hi, thanks for letting us stay the night I really liked your hoodie so I decided to wear it today here’s mine in exchange- Tubbo :D’

normally you’d be concerned that someone stole your hoodie as you live with your parents however today was an exception once you were all ready you set off jack pulled into a McDonald's drive-through so you could all get breakfast

“nice hoodie y/n”

“Thanks, someone took mine and decided to make a trade”

“you’re welcome”

the journey was quiet again you sat next to tubbo in the back Tommy sat at the front screaming at jack and trying to distract him and people around you decided to took a picture with tubbo who now had his arm wrapped around you as it was rather cold in the car and posted it to Twitter ‘@ ranboosaysstuff wish you were here :D’ less than a minute later you received 2 notifications ‘ranboosaysstuff replied to your tweet: same’ ‘ ranboosaysstuff has tweeted: *the spongebob gif*’

•••

soon enough you all arrived at mint golf to say you we’re excited would be an understatement

“can I get the shortest club you have”

you stood hiding your face in the jumper tubbo left you whilst you laughed a few minutes later you received a call from ranboo the others said they’d sort everything for you whilst you answered

“what’s up tall one”

“stay safe okay”

“ranboo it’s mini-golf I’m not fighting criminals”

“yes but I know how clumsy you are”

“first of all rude second of all fuck you third of all jealousy isn’t a good look on you” you managed to say through laughter

“jokes aside please come to the UK boo”

“oh sure I’ll go book a plane ticket now” *ranboo ended the call*

ranboo made jokes like that before however this time sounded a lot more serious and you had no idea why he called you so you made a mental note to call him again later. once with friends again you were met with Tommy telling the worker all about you all

“yeah we’re big on the influencing”

“What on earth did I walk in on”

“no time to explain let’s go golf”

you were handed a club and a ball and were dragged away by jack

•••

tubbo joked about getting a hole on one as soon as it was his go, you bet £10 with jack he wouldn't

“hand over the money y/n”

you looked at Tommy who was now recording you handing jack the money “so today we have learnt to not underestimate your friends and that gambling is bad. you lose your money to a tall bald guy”

to put it politely you and Tommy found out that mini golf is not your calling in life

“ill stick to streaming“

“you’re both losing by the way”

“yeah well- why and how does tubbo have soup”

tubbo stood cradling the soup as though it was a child

“Some things I can’t explain to you”

you stood tilting your head to the side questioning where the hell he got soup from

“eh”

“soups like a small child I take care of it as if it was my own”

you couldn’t contain your laughter at this point the confused faces of your friends alongside tubbos happiness of soup sent you over the edge so you decided to just sit down before you fall as your knees were already weak from laughing too much

“where did you get the soup from”

“I manifested it”

•••

after a few solid minutes of arguing over soup you and Tommy dropping the phone you all continued with bowling.

“tubbo get out of the way of my dream ball”

you stood recording jack cheering him on tubbo had different plans and kicked the ball away resulting in jack giving up and copying what you had been doing most of the rounds, after missing the hole 3 times each go, picking up the ball and placing it in the hole however again he missed

“you can’t be serious”

“golf isn’t for everyone big man”

Tommy took the phone from you to record “pov you’re me golfing”

•••

“how do we get across there”

“probably the bridge”

Tommy pulled to rope moving the bridge across the gap

“Why thank you, Tommy, wouldn’t have been able to do it without you”

you laughed

“you're extremely welcome y/n it was extremely easy because I’m a big muscly man”

golf was finally going well till you hit the ball a bit too hard causing it to go over the fence tubbo was able to get the ball back

“I’ve been watching a lot of doctor shows” you stood amazed at how far you made the ball go

“see the issue is its mini golf. if this was regular golf I'd have got a hole in one I'm telling you”

•••

“I'm never being in your vlog again”

jack looked at you and tubbo who was now laughing at you pretending to worship the can of soup in the hole

“Tommy please come back”

the rest of the game was chaos, you kept missing the hole then claiming to rage quit golf tubbo and Tommy kept making jokes jack left his drink somewhere then had to go back and find it, no one had been paying attention to you which allowed you to take the score sheet and make it so you had won the game eventually he game was over you had declared yourself the champion of golf despite the fact everyone was better than you including Tommy

•••

the journey back was chaos you called ranboo who claimed he only called you to plan a video/stream with you however it was clear that wasn’t the reason tubbo whispered to you so no one could hear

“I think he wants to be here with us I think he’s jealous”

you laughed and nodded

“of course”

eventually, you all made it back to yours, ranboo said goodbye to everyone then ended the call now it was time for you to say your goodbyes. since your love language was physical touch you hugged everyone. As you walked into your house Tommy yelled “Y/N HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT PLANES”

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E138 & 139 (May 25, 2021)

Hello, you lovely people! It’s Tuesday and it’s time again for TM! Tonight’s guests: Marisha Ray & Liam O’Brien! The first picture that pops up when you google his name to check the spelling for the thousandth time is him with a shaved head, which is a wild look.

Ah! According to Dani, this is likely the last Zoom Talks! I’m so happy to hear this! They complain about Laura’s internet freezing constantly whenever she was about to say something exciting.

This episode is sponsored by The Elder Scrolls Online. As I’ve recently resumed my Skyrim run, this makes me crave it all over again.

Liam talks about having to drop everything to start the Zoom call, then having 27 minutes of technical difficulties before they could even begin recording. Augh, same hat.

Beau navigating the Astral Sea & Cognouza was empowering and unsettling. “This is the coolest! Uh oh.” It’s like seeing a new piece of RL tech come out and thinking about how it will change everything, then immediately thinking about how it’ll be abused, like deepfakes.

The first interactions with the Somnovem was overwhelming. They started fighting gnolls in a medieval towns and are now fighting interstellar beings. For Beau, it felt like talking to a really drunk friend. I actually love how she phrases this. “To me, it definitely felt like when you talk to one of your friends when they’re really drunk, and you’re like, ‘oh, I see what version of this person I have right now.’ And then you catch another version of that person on a shit day, and you’re like, ‘ah, I get it, you’re having a shit day.’ But then you catch them when they’re all put together and holding it down, and you’re like, ‘okay, you only hate yourself on the fringes.’ I get that. I found the Somnovem relatable.” Dani: “I too am just a collection of different emotions just barely hanging on by a thread.”

Marisha was able to put the pieces together of the ninefold emotions pretty quickly.

They do a whole tape-review bit after Brian mispronounces Yussa that is amazing. Aside from that, the M9 are glad they got him out of the city. It felt like a die-in-the-Matrix situation for him.

Liam kind of always suspected Matt would dangle the time-travel carrot in front of him. He honestly doesn’t know which way he’d go now. “For a long time, Caleb was like, ‘this doesn’t exist, so it doesn’t matter.’” It’ll probably be a mental coin flip if it comes down to an in-game decision.

"The dice are a CW producer,” when it comes to Beau & Yasha fighting each other.

They can’t remember another prolonged encounter bleeding into another encounter directly since Thordak/Raishan & Kevdak/the herd.

Cosplay of the Week: cattheterrible on Twitter with a beautiful Yasha.

Liam thinks Matt did a great job making it feel like a pressure cooker in terms of balancing their approaches between Lucien’s party & Cree. They’re also both very pleased that their plan with the threshold crests worked - it’s one of the few plans they’ve had across two campaigns that worked. (Honorable mentions they pull: intuit charges, Gelidon, Yenk/Vorugal from C1. “Will Friedle was a better [tactician] than all of us that entire campaign.”)

As far as the nine eyes on everyone go, “we’re all just one metaphysical garbage disposal.” Omar starts barking and they joke the dog will be SAG-eligible before Dani. Ha!

Just the idea of Aeor as a relic of history is massively important. They might die at any point, but if they live, Caleb thinks it’s so important to preserve that history Indiana-Jones-style, especially since it was obviously more advanced as a civilization.

Marisha wonders if they can bring forward the piece of Lucien that is Molly. “It’s a fractal. It’s that full molecular crystalline structure that’s repeating and recurring, and even if it’s several times removed, it still feels like part of the same thing. But maybe a different version, a different timeline of what Lucien is was more or less Molly, and can we Spiderverse the fuck out of this? Can we somehow recall that programming from whatever’s buried? [...] It’s like how moving things to your Recycling Bin doesn’t really clear them from your hard drive.”

Fanart of the Week: mellifera38 with a beautiful Lucien pre-tentacles. The card award shenanigans come complete with massive fireworks green screen display, a rainbow unicorn, a cease and desist letter, eagle wings, lasers, and a PHYSICAL CARD in his hand oh my gosh, to celebrate the final Zoom Talks.

Liam is glad Essek was there to help out with the dunamantic elements of their fights. He’s doing a lot to redeem himself. Liam is also thinking a lot about endgame, long-term repercussions of how this would affect the kingdoms.

Marisha finds the weasel being Artagan adorably traumatic and hilariously tragic. Not only was this poor weasel getting dragged to hell and back, sometimes his personality gets shoved to the side to allow Artagan in. Poor thing, ha! Liam talks about one aspect of the game is that you learn things about your character as ago and then apply it backwards; “We ragged on this weasel so hard, that Matt was like ‘fuck you guys, he’s alive because there’s a fey prince inside him’ and made it retroactive through time.” He’d noticed it for a while, but because there was no downtime in Aeor, there was never a chance to casually bring it up. Beau’s confirmation of seeing something weird about the weasel was a relief that he wasn’t crazy.

It’s a lot of pressure to be the “face” of the party, especially considering Beau’s CHA stat is low. Now it feels like siblings deliberately pushing Lucien’s buttons, except with the full recognition you’re poking a nuclear bomb. It’s honestly been fun, though - she loves being a smartass to people she should ABSOLUTELY not be saying things to. In Caleb’s mind, Beau is the closest thing the group has to a responsible hero. Cad is a great sage, but Beau does what she thinks is the right thing that needs to be done.

They both laugh at this being Matt’s love letter to FF games. They should have been ready for the transformation and the amazing spectacle of the whole thing.

And that is that is that! Brian thanks the guests, Dani, and the crew. “We did it! We did Zoom. Thank you Marisha especially, and our amazing production team for figuring out a way for us to be able to do this from home and make all the artwork and everything so awesome. Thank you to everyone who has touched the show in some way and helped us do it from home.”

Is it Thursday yet?

[venhedish]

In light of a certain wincest-adjacent blocklist making the rounds and some friends of mine getting smacked with the purity hammer, I have things to say for anyone who would like to listen!

In my experience, antis are more concerned with the rush they get from being angry and feeling morally superior than they are with actually engaging critically with us, the text, or themselves to understand why they feel the way they feel.

This is not actually about the incest thing and it never has been. Incest in the SPN fandom is being used as a dog-whistle to draw a dividing line between us and them, and it’s that shitty black-and-white thinking that tons of young people are falling victim to because it’s wrapped up with a bow that presents a neat little package: incest bad. We can all agree on that, can’t we? But what’s so insidious is that this new-Victorian purity movement is only cloaked in a signifier of moral purity. What it actually is is a giant, authoritarian flag waving in the air, inviting the anti-intellectual to join together behind a concept that sounds righteous on the surface but is actually being used to bully, harass, and harm people who are often already marginalized out of their own communities.

One thing to look out for in particular that absolutely fascinates me is the way language is used as an exclusionary, self-selective force that reinforces these boundaries. Go to any one of the big heller/anti-wincest blogs and look at the way they talk to each other. To be clear, almost all groups will eventually start developing a shorthand that makes them easily identifiable to each other, but sometimes I’ll check out that side of tumblr and legitimately feel like we’re speaking two different languages.

This is a really common thing that happens with political and religious movements and it’s happening here for similar reasons! If you’re on the fringes of fandom and you like destiel and you join tumblr or twitter or wherever these communities are active and you do a search for your ship, you’ll find some blogs that seem really cool and have interesting stuff to say, but they’re full of in-jokes and weird terms and meme language. And because you want to fit in—to understand the community you’re joining—you dive deeper, you search back through history and pick up pieces here and there until you finally get it. And by that point, you’ve basically indoctrinated yourself. You’re doing their work for them, essentially.

This kind of thing is done on purpose for two reasons: it helps to signify that people using this language have passed a litmus test that proves this person is one of us, and it makes it harder for the outsider to engage with you on even footing. I mean, this sounds fucking ridiculous, but how the fuck is an intellectually honest person supposed to engage critically with someone who attacks them by calling them J*red-kin??? (I just made that up but I can 100% imagine a heller using it as an insult). I’m not saying this is done on purpose in the SPN fandom. I mean, maybe a little by people who are shit-stirring on purpose, but this kind of thing just happens and it’s very hard to catch on to. We’re all guilty of it. Language is crazy flexible and always shifting and we flex and shift with it as popular phrases come and go.

Look, all I’m saying is that if you actually think about the response to wincest from the heller community, you realize how flimsy their platform really is. Reading and writing about fictional brothers fictionally fucking each other harms no one, and anyone with a brain who actually cares knows this! That’s why the anti-wincest crowd isn’t citing articles or research about the dangers of portraying incest in fiction – because they don’t exist! We can, of course, talk about the impact that uneven power dynamics in real life incestuous relationships have on victims of such abuse, how most people who are sexually abused are abused by a family member, how to be aware of grooming techniques and watch out for red flags that point towards abusive behavior. But we don’t! Because that’s 👏 not 👏 what 👏 it’s 👏 about 👏

Instead, it’s just an overflowing bandwagon jammed full of empty ideas and a lot of people getting hurt because of it. Innocent – let me say it again: INNOCENT people who are exploring sexuality, trauma, relationship dynamics, and just plain old having a good time minding their own business in an ethically safe and victimless way are being threatened and harassed and told to die. Wonder which one is actually more damaging and morally bankrupt. 🤔

Anyway, imagine a world where the purity police got their way. There’d basically be no safe literature left. Nabokov? Cancelled. Rushdie? Salinger? Ginsberg? All cancelled. Imagine antis whole-cloth discarding hundreds of years of religious tradition because of all the shit the gods got up to! This is the same line of thinking that made a generation of moms believe that violent video games led to real-world violence. Fiction has never, ever, been meant to only tell pure stories. The whole world of literature would be narrowed down to, like, a couple cautionary tales and picture books if anti culture could somehow actually reach the inevitable praxis of its desire. 

Taboos have always been sexy. It’s okay to explore them through the medium of fiction. It’s literally the safest, most ethically responsible thing you can do. Please, please don’t let a functionally illiterate hive-mind convince you otherwise!

For an amazing resource to learn more about anti culture and how troubling it is, check out @freedom-of-fanfic. It’s an awesome blog to browse if you’re even a tiny bit interested in this kind of thing!

[trippin-over-my-fandoms]

I’ve seen this done before but here are my modern!rdr2 social media headcanons for the Van der Linde gang.

some of these are LONG and then some are shorter. doesn’t mean I love any of them any less however. I just did my best with all of them. 

* I treat the gang as family especially for my modern au 

Dutch

frequently uses Facebook and has dozens of friends he doesn’t even know. like if he gets a friend request he’ll accept it. John tells him he might as well just make his page public and Arthur pleads with him to make a facebook PAGE so that his random friends will stop liking posts that Arthur tags Dutch in. 

Dutch has no idea how to make a facebook page. 

he also has a Twitter and a massive following at that. He’s VERIFIED. 

all of his twitter posts are vague though

are they a joke? are they political? is it what he’s eating for lunch that day? literally no one knows.

Hosea

also has facebook but doesn’t use it because why does he need to look at pictures of events he was at. he only uses it to see things he didn’t partake in

also has snapchat but just to keep up with the kids 

because life360 was too much to deal with for everyone

and snapchat is cool

also he can and will spam you with bitmojis 

Arthur

used to use facebook a lot but stopped because he was tired of his posts getting likes from people he didn’t know and friend requests from people Dutch was friends with. 

plEASE

he has a private facebook for a reason, he doesn’t want other people to know his business. 

he also has an instagram but anything he posts on facebook also goes on there. it’s not aesthetic or pretty or anything and he doesn’t even caption over half his pictures. 

he literally only uses social media so that his friends and family know he’s alive

has snapchat because of Hosea but barely knows how to use it 

doesn’t get why everyone wants to use snapchat when teXTING AND CALLING ARE RIGHT THERE

John

the question is what doesn’t he have.

john has been trying to make it big on social media since youtube came out.

his youtube used to have videos on it but he deleted them because they were cringy and arthur liked to send them to the group text. 

plays twitch games on the weekends and sometimes with Jack but he thinks most of the subscribers are there for his kid since most of his solo streams don’t do as well

has a twitter, doesn’t follow Dutch, literally envies that he’s verified. 

he’s tried everything but no matter what he does nothing pans out

uses tiktok to promote twitch streams

instagram feed is mostly selfies of him but 99.9% of the time he’s wearing sunglasses and the caption is some random quote 

also has facebook but only to appease Arthur and Dutch, he doesn’t even have a profile picture. Claims only boomers use it. 

an avid reddit user. if he’s got problems he’ll go to reddit. claims reddit saved his life. everyone’s tired of the story so they stopped asking. 

also uses snapchat more than he should and the only social platform he has more than 100 followers on. 

Charles

same as arthur and has both facebook and instagram and posts the same on both except his are pleasing to look at. 

they’re unintentionally aesthetic 

he uses a psd on all his pictures and won’t share what it is

has monthly life updates that start with some inspirational or deep quote and then text that pushes the instagram word limit

also has a deviantart , has shared psds there before , constantly tries to convince Arthur to get it. 

used to use tumblr but he forgot about it

Abigail

the definition of a facebook mom. 80% of her facebook posts are about Jack or parenting. 

Instagram is similar but also different, she’s actually a relatively successful influencer with over 1,000 followers. 

all of her friends and family (who have instagram) follow her

has snapchat solely for the cute bitmojis and to send John adorable snaps of Jack playing with all the fun filters. 

she also won’t take a selfie unless it’s with snapchat because she no longer trusts her own camera. 

also uses pinterest and has a collaborative board with all the ladies. 

but in general, on her own, she has too many boards. she uses pinterest for EVERYTHING 

Sadie

bold of you to assume she uses social media. 

she does just not a whole lot. 

checks it once in the morning and once at night. 

except pinterest because how dare Abigail get her into it. but even pinterest she only uses in downtime. 

has facebook and instagram but there’s maybe only five posts.

if anything she’ll post on her story

will only snap Abigail and Arthur otherwise she doesn’t use snapchat

all of the social apps are mostly offloaded on her phone anyways

if she needs to know anything she just checks the group text which she has on do not disturb because they text way too much. 

Molly

she’s verified on instagram 

it’s also the only social platform she’ll use, which frustrates Dutch because he wants to be friends with her on facebook

but she’s happy with just instagram 

she keeps it simple 

and the main theme to her posts are fun outfits in her ever expanding closet

the other posts are usually of plants that she’s managed to grow. she’s not the best at being a plant mom but she’s still a good one to the ones she’s managed to keep alive. 

the only thing she contributes to the pinterest board are her own pictures of her plants which are overly aesthetic. 

Karen

started out with a normal instagram account then made a spam account which she ended up using way more often.

all of her posts are extremely chaotic

and usually reposts from her snapchat

has a reddit just to troll John

reposted his cringy youtube videos to reddit and got hundreds of upvotes

if you wanna see the most raw and chaotic videos of Arthur and John then she’s the one to follow. 

also if you wanna see Abigail when she’s not all put together. 

is the reason there’s so many memes in the collaborative pinterest board

Mary-Beth

has a instagram but also has a second instagram for art and book reviews

or basically anything she’d post on her tumblr

which is her second most used social

also uses facebook but only because she is an admin for one of those multifandom blogs. 

also begs Arthur to get a deviantart. 

uses pinterest most but only second to Abigail

literally the queen of pinterest DIYs

Micah

has twitter

as far as anyone else knows that’s all he has

maybe he has snapchat?

maybe they saw him on snapmaps once? 

all he ever does with twitter though is retweet anything Dutch posts.

yet somehow he has so many followers. 

Lenny

anyone who has snapchat has streaks with Lenny

even Hosea who doesn’t understand why it’s a thing

he also posts a lot on facebook but it’s mostly travel or vacation photos everyone is just a tad jealous of. 

Lenny always seems to be busy but still has time for streaks with his friends. 

he’s also an up and coming youtube vlogger

Sean

also has reddit to troll john

but he also legitimately uses it too. 

he’s also really popular in the minecraft subreddit , don’t ask

also has twitch and also has way more subsribers than John

and a youtube which he’ll upload (overly edited) twitch streams to

everyone subscribes to him but they don’t tell John that.

also has a tiktok and is up to date on all the trends because of course he is

Kieran

got facebook when he was 10 and just never left.

literally doesn’t use any other social media

he’s not in the group text either so he has to facebook message Arthur to know what’s going on. 

but he shares a lot of memes and cute pictures of animals

he used to follow Dutch but unfriended him when he was the only thing he ever had on his activity feed. 

Susan

has facebook but claims she doesn’t have time to use it

Arthur knows this to not be true because she will like a lot of his posts. 

she’s also guilty of liking every single picture in one post or album. 

Arthur has also caught her looking at memes and using recipes she finds on there. 

also part of the pinterest board but never contributes. 

Trelawny

he has an account for everything

like

litereally

everything. 

even whatsapp and linked in and kik

even tinder

the only one anyone knows about are his facebook, twitter, and instagam

but there’s no posts on any of them except twitter

he’s also verified

but for unknown reasons

any posts on his facebook are ones he’s tagged in

he’s also in a lot of facebook groups

Strauss

runs a subreddit

a paid facebook admin of several pages

the only person who actually knows this is Dutch because Strauss has told him about it

he has no online presence whatsoever out side of those.

Javier

spotify king

has over 500,000 subscribers on youtube

uses instagram but as another platform for his music

edits his own album covers

top tier playlists too

Tilly

aesthetic queen

the most put together and pleasing to look at instagram feed next to Charles. 

uses pinterest a lot as inspiration and for making moodboards.

also uses tumblr to share moodboards

part of the sims global community facebook group

she keeps saying she’s going to start a youtube vlog but hasn’t yet

keeps trying to convince John to let her help him with his youtube.

she also uses twitch to play minecraft and sims

oh and she set up a minecraft server for everyone

Bill

facebook boomer

that’s it

I don’t know how else to put it

probably shares heavily republican posts

Swanson

didn’t use social media until tiktok.

he doesn’t do dances or anything but he does post weirdly obscure and chaotic videos that end up trending on more than one occasion

it’s usually drunk ramblings in his car that end up being hilarious

or videos of the others almost dying or ending up in the ER

Pearson

facebook boomer but make it cool.

also shares conservative posts but less offensive ones compared to Bill’s

likes almost every post any of his friends share

also comments on them too

Uncle

does he have social media? no one knows for sure. 

yet somehow he knows what’s going on

even if nobody can find any of his social accounts or have ever seen him using one before let alone doing anything on his phone other than playing cheesy mobile games.

[findingjoynweirdstuff]

I have been redirected from lost to ask you about the peaceful ways of this fandom before antis attacked (/hj) cuz as a new person, all I know is discourse.

Oh, hello! (and hi Lost o/)

I can’t imagine what it’s like for new fans joining just now. I am so sorry, hope you’re still finding it fun enough even with all the hell?

It’s kind of hard to conceptualize how big mcyt’s gotten in recent months to be honest. Every time something from this fanbase breaches containment I’m reminded of how painfully visible it all is.

Now...I wish I could tell you about “the good old days” and how they were so good and peaceful and calm, but I think that’d be looking at things through rose-tinted glasses.

To be honest, the thing about sparking up the discourse and the hatred isn’t even that it’s new. It’s just more constant.

My first exposure to DSMP specifically, and I’ve said this before, was the Pizza Hut situation. DSMP wasn’t really it’s own fandom yet? But, the time that I started actually watching and getting more engaged and following along was...well, a bit on the topical side, actually, but it was #kickschlatt. Mid-July 2020.

My memory of it isn’t perfect — it’s almost been a year now — but to sort of illustrate my point about how the discourse isn’t new but the places it’s coming from are, this situation sparked a huge conflict not really between mcyt fans and non-mcyt fans, but between dttwt, sleepytwt and schlatt’s fanbase. It was a hellhole of infighting. Sleepytwt were angry about Dream banning Schlatt, dttwt pulled one of the first instances I can recall of actually getting a negative hashtag about the SMP trending, which all the CCs thought was immature. But the damage had already been done since everyone mistakenly thought Dream had banned Schlatt because of the hashtag, which...yeah. 

It wasn’t pretty.

The thing about this discourse is that it’s been around for a very, very long time. It’s just that twitter’s not really made much...progress? They’ve just been repeating the same mistakes over and over again as if it would actually end up better this time somehow. They even got a #kick_______ hashtag trending pretty recently and as far as I can tell, most of them hadn't even been there for #kickschlatt. They were repeating history not even knowing they were doing it, and just like last time, it was an ineffective mess that didn’t actually help anything. 

And that, to me, is the big problem here. 

I know we joke about Twitter discourse being six months behind Tumblr, but honestly I don’t think it’s even that? It’s not really that they’re lagging behind so much as they’re just... completely stagnant, really. They haven’t gotten better in a year, they’ve just gotten larger.

It’s the same thing a year later. The thing about it nowadays, is that it’s just the same old crap but more. It’s #kickschlatt but a new one every fucking day.

#kickschlatt didn’t work because CCs aren’t obligated to listen to Twitter, and I really wish the community had learned from that. Instead, they’re just trying it again. Criticism is fine, but you just can’t expect people to always see or hear that critique.

CCs are not your friend. Like, genuinely. Not just for the meme, but actually. And I’m not saying that because of that they’re immune to criticism or something, but when you have people trending ‘tommy neg’ and saying that Tommy’s running from his problems because he’s leaving the app for his own mental health? That he HAS to be listening to them shouting at him or otherwise he’s some sort of horrible person?

That doesn’t sit right with me. 

Like, not to bring out the dreaded p-word, but it kinda strikes me as a little...y’know...slash parasocial. CCs don’t have to listen to you. They aren’t obligated to talk with you or interact with you. You can have discourse and civil discussion amongst yourselves as a community without the CCs even being involved! Hell, that’s how it works on Tumblr. We talk amongst ourselves, we disagree sometimes, but never do we expect a CC to be here watching us saying shit.

Saying that “complaining about Twitter = complaining about minorities” just rubs me the wrong way because like...Twitter’s a platform. It’s a specific community. Minorities aren’t specifically limited to one fucking bird app. When CCs complain about Twitter, trust them to mean that they’re complaining about Twitter.

Yeah...I dunno. Maybe I’m being pessimistic. Maybe it has gotten better in SOME way, but I just haven’t seen it. It’s just gotten more frequent. It’s just gotten nastier and more mean-spirited. For every person trying their best to be helpful and actually educate, there are ten more voices screaming and shouting and drowning them out. The thing about Twitter is that you can’t have a conversation with an angry mob. You can’t turn to a buzzing hivemind of anger if what you’re looking for is guidance.

The thing about the “old days” isn’t that they were without conflict and completely peaceful. It’s just that you had some time to freaking breathe. Nowadays it seems like even something so universally beloved like MCC’s been tainted by that toxicity.

Everybody’s just...angry. all the time.

It’s the natural life cycle of a fandom, I think. When it grows large enough, eventually it’ll have to deal with more and more negativity and hate. Unfortunately for us, a large part of the fandom is on Twitter, which is just...the straight up worst platform you could possibly choose to deal with discourse on.

Tumblr isn’t perfect, but jesus Twitter is built for toxicity. Which is how you get situations like this. It’s how you get entire groups of CCs leaving the app because sooner or later, it gets too toxic to deal with. 

So, here’s a little piece of advice:

This won’t be the last time. 

The next controversy will come, and then the next one, and the next one, and the next one after that. Heck, you probably already know that.

And you know what?

You, a random fan, are not obligated to care about every single thing that happens. Because if you feel like you have to keep up with every little piece of discourse, sooner or later you’re gonna burn yourself out.

So sit back, take a deep breath, relax if you gotta. Fandoms are for fun, not for stress, and I hope you find that here.

(Sorry if this got a little long and rambling!)

[hepalien]

Shrunkyclunks (Modern Bucky/Cap Steve) Fic Rec

Hate Sex & Hair Protocol by @maddiewritesstucky - Mature, 1.8k

SHIELD Agent Bucky, UST, Enemies to Lovers (in Steve’s head), Humor

They’re all full of shit, Steve decides.

His team don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, running their mouths about the way he and Bucky look at each other; the tension that seems to be at a constant near-snapping point between them.

'It’s called annoyance' Steve wants to yell in each of their faces, loud and one by one. It’s the pain of having to exist every day in close proximity with someone who drives you out of your fucking mind.

---

In which Steve discovers that ire and desire may just exist side by side in his brain.

Stop interrupting my grinding series by @rohkeutta - Teen, 2.5k

Nurse Bucky, Wrong Number, Fluff, Humor

“I tried to call Sam,” Captain America says, bewildered. He’s sprinting like Usain Bolt and doesn’t sound even a little out of breath. Fucker. “Who’re you?”

“Someone who’s watching you live on TV,” Bucky tells him as the tiny patriotic figure on the screen takes the turns like he instructed. Bucky should probably be a lot more freaked out about this, but honestly? After a tour in the Middle East and six years as a nurse in New York, even this isn’t enough to ruffle him. One sees a lot of shit in the ER. “Also, you better hang up now, that thing is behind the next bend.”

“Uh, okay,” Captain America says. “Thanks?”

“Whatever,” Bucky says, disconnects the call and turns the TV off to get ready for his shift.

Save a Horse, Ride a Captain by @galwednesday - Teen, 2.7k

War Vet Bucky, Meet Cute, Fluff, Humor, Modern Howlies

Bucky tapped him on the shoulder, swaying back and forth a little as he waited for the man to turn around. “Hello,” he said, and then promptly forgot what else he was going to say, because this guy was fucking beautiful. “Wow. Good face.”

Two of the guy’s friends, a man wearing a suit that fit so well it had to be bespoke and a man with a cute little gap between his front teeth, started cracking up. The petite redhead sitting next to them cocked her head to the side and pulled her phone out of her handbag. Beautiful Face just looked kind of pained, so Bucky redirected. He was a gentleman. He could take a hint. No hitting on beautiful guys who were uncomfortable with that sort of thing, no matter how lickable their jawlines were.

“Hello,” he repeated, doing his best to mind his manners. “I’m very sorry to bother you. Can I have a piggy-back ride?”

You Make My Heart Skip A Beet by @musette22 - Teen, 3.8k

Chef Bucky, POV Outsider, Fluff, Humor

“I made soda bread.”

Steve lets out the 6’2” supersoldier equivalent of a squeak. “Oh, I love soda bread,” he says eagerly, rolling forward on the balls of his feet like he does when he gets excited. “My mom used to make it all the time when I was growing up.”

The tips of Barnes’s ears turn red, and he mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “I know.”

more under the cut

Cafe Au Écoute by @littlesystems - Teen, 3.8k

Coffee Shop AU

No matter where Steve goes, there's always the chance that he'll overhear a conversation about himself - or rather, Captain America. This coffee shop is no different. The fact that he keeps eavesdropping well past the point of plausible deniability is another matter entirely.

#TweetMeDaddy by StarSpangled - Teen, 4.1k

SHIELD Employee Bucky, Misunderstandings, Crack, Humor

Coulson, for his part, stares up at Bucky with such a betrayed look of frozen horror that Natasha actually goes the extra step and presses another button, capturing the moment and airdropping the photograph to her phone for posterity. When he speaks, his voice comes out as a hoarse whisper. “Why…?” He swallows and starts again, trying for some semblance of normality. “...Why would you tweet something like that?!”

“If you must know, sir,” and somehow he manages to make ‘sir’ come out with the same inflection most people reserve for ‘motherfucking son of a bitch’, “it’s because I have a difficult time doing my job when my job involves monitoring the man with the best fucking ass in the United States of America.” He slowly lowers himself back into his seat until he’s at eye level, making extreme eye contact with Coulson until Coulson turns away to make mortified eye contact in Natasha’s general direction through the one-way glass. Natasha would take another picture, if she weren’t too busy catching Steve’s red-faced sputtering. “Sometimes, I vent to my Twitter followers. Sometimes, it’s about hot men with washboard abs. Can I go now, or do you need a graphic description of how I pleasure myself at night?”

at first chance i'd take the bed warmed by the body by @spacebuck - Explicit, 8.2k

YouTuber Bucky

This close, Steve can see exactly how beautiful his hands are. He’s never really noticed before, or at least he’s never really had a reason to notice, but the man’s hands are large, tanned like he works outside all day. There’s an endearing callus on the heel of one of his palms, and Steve can’t quite work out when calluses became endearing.

Steve pauses the video. Swallows hard. Casts his eyes around for anything that’ll keep his mind off the hands on his screen, off the words inked into those hands, the delicate shape of a bird’s wing, the curling edge of a vine.

He looks down. The name of the channel is right there, blaring the man’s name right into Steve’s brain until it feels like he’s known it all along.

Bucky Barnes.

OR: the one where Bucky's a youtuber who solves puzzles on camera, and steve's smitten and horny

Came with my cool (I dropped it) by @liionne - Teen, 9.2k

Yoga Instructor Bucky

"When you said I need to loosen up, I didn't think you meant literally."

"I meant it every way. Mentally, emotionally, and physically." Natasha says, and thrusts a yoga mat at him.

there once was a diamond by bloobeary - Teen, 11.3k

Fluff, Thanksgiving

"You," Becca seethes, and hits him with a wooden spoon. "Could have told me," Hits him again. "You were dating Captain America." Final hit, Bucky laughs. He supposes he deserves it, giving her no more information than the fact he was bringing his boyfriend to Thanksgiving dinner at her house and then showing up with Steve.

Salt by littleblackfox @thelittleblackfox - Mature, 12k

Bakery AU

The cinnamon roll is gone in four bites. Four indecent, jaw-unhinging bites, and Steve sucks the last traces of lemon and icing from his fingers with a low, throaty sound of satisfaction. He glances up at Bucky, who is leaning against the counter and watching him with avid fascination.

“Um…” Steve says around his index finger. There’s still a little icing on the bed of his fingernail, and he stops trying to work it off with his tongue.

“You know those movies where the girl eats an eclair or something, and it’s really, like, sexually charged?” Bucky asks.

Steve pulls his finger out of his mouth. He’s never seen that kind of movie, but the thought of Bucky eating an eclair is certainly… well, it lingers. “Uh?”

“Yeah, well that was the exact opposite.” Steve scowls, and Bucky cackles gleefully. “You are something else, Steve.”

Leg Day by Brokenpitchpipe - Explicit, 12.1k

Gym Thot Bucky

“So talk to him,” Sam says.

“I can’t,” Bucky groans. “I can’t, Sam, I. He just.” He fluffs his hair up and stares at Sam, distraught. “I want him to bench press me.”

“Okay, so it’s serious,” Sam interprets. “Got it."

(Or: The one where Sam is Bucky's long-suffering roommate, Bucky is a hot mess of a millennial, and Hot Steve spends far too much time on the Lat Pull-Down machine.)

Art Nouveau by voluptuous_panic - Explicit, 12.2k

Bartender Bucky, Tattooed & Pierced Bucky

Steve's on the worst date of his life. At least the bartender's cute.

much tattoo about nothing by @deisderium - Explicit, 14.5k

Tattoo Artist Bucky

Steve Rogers gets a lot of email requests, but never one like this: James Barnes wants to use his healing factor to practice tattoos.

Turns out tattoos give Steve boners.

No Wonder There's Panic in the Industry by sprinkle_of_cinnamon - Not Rated (I’d say Mature?), 20.5k

Stark Industries Intern Bucky, Team fic, Humor

In which Bucky Barnes and his BFF, Clint Barton, are NYU interns for Stark Media Group competing to be Pepper's favorite.

Or alternatively, the time Bucky assisted the P.A. team on the Steve Rogers piece and ended up (adopted) with a contact list full of Avengers.

Life of the Party by @aggressivewhenstartled - Explicit, 21.6k

Superhero Impersonator Bucky, Mistaken Identity

“You know, kids,” Steve heard from the backyard, “one of the most common threats a superhero has to face is inside an active volcano! We’re going to have to work on your evasion skills, so for the next five minutes, the floor is lava!” This was met by a sudden spike in both volume and pitch from the small children as they scrambled onto every raised surface they could find and immediately launched themselves right back off.

“I’ve never seen actual lava in my entire life,” Steve said, vaguely offended.

“You got a superhero impersonator for The Falcon’s niece’s birthday party,” Sam said, incredulous. “The Falcon, who is an actual superhero.”

Trust Enough by @geneticallydead - Explicit, 23.3k

Misunderstandings

“Saturday. Yeah, that’s good,” Steve says, and actually scuffs his shoe at the ground. Like a ridiculous shy superhero damsel. “Say eight? I live-“

“Yeah, big building with the A on it,” Bucky says, and can’t help a big stupid grin. Steve stares at him, looking a little dazed, and after their whole conversation it’s only now that Bucky’s brain catches up and realises Steve finds him quite attractive. So. Win for Bucky.

“Let me get your number,” Steve says finally, after they’ve stared stupidly at each other for about three hours, taking out his phone.

So they exchange numbers, and then Steve says he should go, and Bucky agrees, and they kind of stare at each other for a bit more, then Steve actually does go, but not before taking Bucky’s hand and squeezing it warmly in a way that makes Bucky want to shiver all over. Then Steve is gone, and Bucky is standing alone in the alley, grinning to himself.

Right up until the moment he remembers that Steve thinks Bucky is an escort he’s just hired.

Well fuck.

The Roommate by layersofart, Niitza - Teen, 28.6k

War Vet Bucky, Roommates AU, Humor, Fluff, Angst, Team fic

In which Steven G. Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, gets a roommate. Who rapidly turns into his "roommate"—in the euphemistic sense of the word.

It takes SHIELD and the rest of the Avengers an absurd amount of time to notice.

Brooklyn Baby by sprinkle_of_cinnamon - Mature, 33.7k

Coffee Shop AU, Modern Howlies, Mistaken Identity, Team Fic

In which Bucky is just trying to live life and enjoy his unofficial official table at the obnoxiously hipster coffee shop but some guy named Steve stole his spot.

Or, the time that Bucky unintentionally befriended the Avengers and had no idea.

Never Talk to Strangers by mambo @whtaft - Teen, 40.4k

Grad Student Bucky, Slow Burn

Never Talk to Strangers: or; How a Forgotten Childhood Lesson Led Bucky Barnes to Appreciate Charlie Chaplin, Befriend an A.I., Slip on Soap Bubbles, Be Mistaken for a Succubus, and Try to Woo a Superhero.

Sinking Our Teeth In The Heart Of The Sun by fallendarlings @pressrestartwrites - Explicit, 102.8k

Single Dad Bucky, Kid Fic, Slow Burn, Domestic, Fluff, Mutual Pining, Steve has Autism

Bucky Barnes never intended to become a single father at 25. But life has always enjoyed kicking him while he's down and it's showing no signs of stopping. A chance meeting with a brick wall of a guy named Steve in the formula aisle of the grocery store leads to a friendship it seems like both of them need. If only Bucky could remember that's all they are- friends. If only Steve didn't slot into their lives so perfectly and look so good spoiling Bucky's daughter (and Bucky, despite his protests).

Oh, if only Steve didn't turn out to be Captain America.

Steve Rogers is wandering around a world that he doesn't fit into, fighting for a government that he doesn't trust, just because he doesn't know what to do with himself if he ever relaxes long enough to actually think about anything other than the next mission.

And then came Bucky Barnes and his newborn baby.

More recs

[themollyjay]

The Myths of Forced Diversity and Virtue Signaling.

In my novel Mail Order Bride, the three main characters are a lesbian and two agendered aliens.  In my novel Scatter, the main character is a lesbian, the love interest is a pansexual alien, and the major side characters include a half Cuban, half black Dominican lesbian, a Chinese Dragon, a New York born Jewish Dragon, and a Transgender Welsh Dragon.  In my novel The Master of Puppets, the Main Characters are a lesbian shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborg and a half black, half Japanese lesbian.  The major side characters include three gender fluid shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborgs, and a pansexual human.  In my novel Transistor, the main character is a Trans Lesbian, the love interest is a Half human/Half Angel non-observant Ethiopian Jew, and the major side characters include a Transgender Welsh Dragon (the same one from Scatter), a Transgender woman, a Latino Lesbian, an autistic man, three Middle Eastern Arch Angels, and a hive mind AI with literally hundreds of genders.  In my novel The Inevitable singularity, one of the main characters is a lesbian, another has a less clearly defined sexuality but she is definitely in love with the lesbian, and the third is functionally asexual due to a vow of chastity she takes very seriously.  The major side characters include a straight guy from a social class similar to the Dalit (commonly known as untouchables) in India, a bisexual woman, a man who is from a race of genetically modified human/frog hybrids, and a woman from a race of genetically modified humans who are bred and sold as indentured sex workers.

Why am I bringing all of this up?  Well, first, because it’s kind of cool to look at the list of different characters I’ve created, but mostly because it connects to what I want to talk about today, which should be obvious from the title of the essay.  The concepts of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’.

For those who aren’t familiar with these terms, they’re very closely related concepts.  ‘Forced Diversity’ is the idea that characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are only ever included in a story because of outside pressure from some group (usually called Social Justice Warriors, or The Woke Brigade or something similar) to meet some nebulous political agenda.  The caveat to this is, of course, that you can have a women/women present as long as they are hot, don’t make any major contributions to the resolution of the plot, and the hero/heroes get to fuck them before the end of the story. ‘Virtue Signaling’, according to Wikipedia, is a pejorative neologism for the expression of a disingenuous moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character.

The basic argument is that Forced Diversity is a form of virtue signaling.  That no one would ever write characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males because they want to.  They only do it to please the evil SJW’s who are somehow both so powerful that they force everybody to conform to their desires, yet so irrelevant that catering to them dooms any creative project to financial failure via the infamous ‘go woke, go broke’ rule.

What the people who push this idea of Forced Diversity tend to forget is that we exist at a point in time when creators actually have more creative freedom than are any other people in history.  Comic writers can throw up a website and publish their work as a webcomic without having to go through Marvel, DC or one of the other big names, or get a place in the dying realm of the news paper comics page.  Novelists can self-publish with fairly little upfront costs, musicians can use places like YouTube and Soundcloud to get their work out without having to worry about music publishers.  Artists can hock their work on twitter and tumblr and a dozen other places. Podcasts are relatively cheap to make, which has opened up a resurgence in audio dramas.  Even the barrier to entry for live action drama is ridiculously low.

So, in a world where creators have more freedom than ever before, why would they choose to people their stories with characters they don’t want there?  The answer, of course, is that they wouldn’t.  Authors, comic creators, indie film creators and so on aren’t putting diverse characters into their stories because they are being forced to. They’re putting diverse characters into their stories because they want to.  Creators want to tell stories about someone other than the generically handsome hypermasculine cisgendered heterosexual white males that have been the protagonists of so many stories over the years that we’ve choking on it. A lot of times, creators want to tell stories about people like themselves.  Black creators want to tell stories about the black experience. Queer creators want to tell stories about the queer experience.

I’m an autistic, mentally ill trans feminine abuse survivor.  Every day, I get up and I struggle with PTSD, with an eating disorder, with severe body dysmorphia, with anxiety and depression and just the reality of being autistic and transgender.  I deal with the fact that the religious community I grew up in views me as an abomination, and genuinely believes I’m going to spend eternity burning in hell.  I deal with the fact that people I’ve known for decades, even members of my own family, regularly vote for politician who publicly state that they want to strip me of my civil rights because I’m queer.  I’m part of a community that experiences a disproportionately high murder and suicide rate.  I’ve spent multiple years of my life deep in suicidal depression, and to this day, I still don’t trust myself around guns.

As a creator, I want to talk about those issues.  I want to deal with my life experiences.  I want to create characters that embody and express aspects of my lived experience and my day-to-day reality.  No one is forcing me to put diversity into my books.  I try to include Jewish characters as often as I can because there have been a number of important Jewish people in my life.  I include queer people because I’m queer and the vast majority of friends I interact with on a regular basis are queer.  I include people with mental illnesses and trauma because I am mentally ill and have trauma, and I know a lot of people with mental illnesses and trauma.  My work may be full of fantastical elements, aliens and dragons and angels and superheroes and magic and ultra-high technology and AI’s and talking cats and robot dogs and shape shifters and telepaths and all sorts of other things, but at the core of the stories is my own lived experience, and neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are vanishingly rare in that experience.

Now, I can hear the comments already.  The ‘okay, maybe that’s true for individual creators, but what about corporate artwork?’.   Maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea.

The thought here is that corporations are bowing to social pressure to include characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males, and that is somehow bad. But here’s the thing. Corporations are going to chase the dollars.  They aren’t bowing to social pressure.  There’s no one holding a gun to some executive’s head saying, “You must have this many diversity tokens in every script.”  What is happening is that corporations are starting to clue into the fact that people who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males have money.  They are putting black characters in their shows and movies because black people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting queer people in shows and movies because queer people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting women in shows and movies because women watch shows and spend money on movies.

No one is forcing these companies to do this.  They are choosing to do it, the same way individual creators are choosing to do it.  In the companies’ cases the choices are made for different reasons.  It’s not because they are necessarily passionate about telling stories about a particular experience, but because they want to create art to be consumed by the largest audience possible, which means that they have to expand their audience beyond the neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white male by including characters from outside of that demographic.

And the reality is, the cries of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ almost always come from within that demographic.  Note the almost.  There are a scattering of individuals from outside that demographic which do subscribe to the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ myths, but that is a whole other essay.  However, within that demographic, lot of the people who cry about ‘forced diversity’ see media and content as a Zero-Sum game.  The more that’s created for other people, the less that is created for them.

In a way, they’re right. There are only so many slots for TV shows each week, there are only so many theaters, only so much space on comic bookshelves and so on.  But at the end of the day, its literally impossible for them to consume all the content that’s being produced anyway.  So, while there is, theoretically less content for them to consume, as a practical matter it’s a bit like someone who is a meat eater going to a buffet with two hundred items, and then throwing a tantrum because five of the items happen to be vegan.

The worst part is, if they could let go of how wound up they are about the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ they could probably enjoy the content that’s produced for people other than them.  I mean, I’m a pasty ass white girl, and I loved Black Panther.

So, to wrap out, creators, make what you want to make, and ignore anyone who cries about forced diversity or virtue signaling.  And to people who are complaining about forced diversity and virtue signaling, I want to go back to the buffet metaphor.  You need to relax.  Even if there are a few vegan options on the buffet, you can still get your medium rare steak, or your chicken teriyaki or whatever it is you want.  Or, maybe, just maybe, you could give the falafel a try. That shit is delicious.

[theangryjikooker]

What do you think about jikook relationship right now? It seems like they grew distant from each other and jm in general seems like in his own thing and distant from the group

I don’t think anything.

The only reason why their closeness is being questioned with alarming frequency is because of IG, and now everyone is expecting them to flaunt one another in order to have their insecurities about relationships they’re not in assuaged.

I also feel like this constant narrative of “Jikook are always together!” really doesn’t help because, sure, while there is truth in it, no one can really verify whether they actually are spending every waking moment together, and yet this narrative perpetuates this idea. So for all intents and purposes, this perceived “lull” between them could very well be normal for them, but it still wouldn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things.

Case in point: Memories 2020 when Jikook mentioned they’d gone out drinking. Literally none of us knew that they’d hung out until they mentioned it. No content on Twitter or Weverse—nothing. Were it not for Jimin biting Jungkook, that moment would’ve been lost into the ether. Hallelujah for drunken shenanigans.

Am I open to the possibility that they might be exploring adulthood separate of one another, in opposite directions? Sure. But I can only say that because once again, I don’t know them and what they’re doing in their personal lives, just in the same way that neither you nor I can say they’re not close. What do we know about them? Nothing.

I will scream this from the rooftops forever if I have to: We. Don’t. Know. Them.

But my issue with this type of question being asked is not because it’s being asked at all but because of the insecure (or smug, from the other side) undertones that are often attached to it.

And I really think this matter of closeness should be framed differently. What people are actually asking when they pose this question is, “Are Jikook still romantically close?”

Because these men are going to go their own separate ways one day and do things/carry on with relationships independently from one another, and guess what? They’re still going to be close. Unless an implosion of TVXQ proportions happens to them, BTS will be 7 for eternity.

So really, it’s the lack of romantic implications people are worried about, and while I find several things wrong with this, it’s extremely reflective of the mindset they have about what constitutes a romantic relationship.

None of the boys owe ARMY any explanation about the intricacies of their relationships with one another. I think people need to stop romanticizing what they think romantic relationships should look like, and I also think people need to stop expecting to be “fed” Jikook content in order to feel secure. I’m not saying people can’t miss them being seen or doing things together/mentioning one another, but you all have to stop equating visibility with closeness. It literally means nothing.

Side note: I hate sharing anecdotes because of the implication that it somehow makes what I’m saying more meaningful (it doesn’t), but it is somewhat relevant despite my experience being a drop in the ocean.

If a stranger were to look at my IG, amongst all of the photos I’ve posted, I only have one posed with a boy. Arguably not platonic. He is not my current boyfriend; the boy in said photo is my ex from years ago. I have no photos of me with my current beau, with whom I’ve been in a relationship for years now. Honestly? I don’t have a reason for it. My friends and family know who he is because they see him all the time, and he is the main feature in my photo gallery, but I just have nothing of him or us together on social media. It’s a big WTF for people who don’t know me that well and assume I carry a torch for an old paramour, or that I’m currently single, but I really couldn’t be arsed to do anything about it.

The way I cultivate my IG is clearly very different from how you, everyone else, and the boys do with your own IGs. And sure, for a lot of people, their IGs are an exact reflection of what’s going on in their lives and people they’re with. But at the end of the day, it’s near impossible to whittle down a person’s life to their social media account(s) unless you actually know the person.

[alltheselights]

I kinda of like how Louies was not allowed to call Louis mommy because most larries associated that role to Harry. Like shit because y’all have created this image of both of them in your heads people aren’t allowed to think other wise, Louis’ own fans who have no association with Harry can get hate on on Twitter and shunned by big larries on this app because some group decided that if they think Harry has mom energy than Louis couldn’t possibly be on the same wave length. It’s funny because those who see that type of comfort in Louis (which they have any right to) have only each other to defend but them people who see Harry as a mom can get away with them googoo gaga tweets or when they make actual weird scenarios where Louis has to somehow teach Harry how to fucking hold a damn cigarette for god sakes because he definitely is too innocent to know how to, like I even saw one where they acted like Harry doesn’t know what to call an aquarium cause he’s so 🥺🥺🥺 he calls it liquid zoo, tweets saying that Harry can only do this or that or play sports because Louis teaches him, or that Louis is someone that would stay put and watch football while harry shops because for some reason he is so macho that he can’t even like shopping (even though that is something that has been expressed as something he loves doing for so long by many people and himself!!!) because well only Harry can like stuff like that or abba, Louis’ friends are too macho to like stuff like that 🥺🥺. When these weird ass tweets are posted larries make it viral and foam at the mouth in the comments like awww. Larries are all ready to defend Harry being seen as soft to the point of being weirdly babied, same case is rarely set for Louis. Calling Louis tiny is babying him which makes no sense because Adults can be small lmaoo?? I’m 5’0 and super skinny do I suddenly become a child if someone says I am small like that makes no sense, what’s actually babying is thinking Harry can’t open a jar without Louis doing it for him they make shit sound like this weird father child relationship , where’s the outrage there. Like I don’t Stan Harry I don’t pay him any mind and I shouldn’t have to deal with freaks coming at us for viewing OUR fave in a way because they think someone we don’t even Stan plays that role. Like we don’t care.

I’m a Larrie so I’m not sure if this is meant to be addressing me too, but I don’t disagree with you. It’s uncomfortable how a large portion of this fandom has set Louis and Harry as polar opposites and basically views them as either a heterosexual couple or as a father/child relationship where Harry can’t function without Louis and his support. I’ve watched this happen over the course of the last few years especially and it’s very cringey, especially when you step outside of the fandom bubble and realize how completely insane their view and the stuff they say is. It’s considered normal here, but it shouldn’t be. And then if you’re a Larrie or a Louie who thinks of Louis as soft or mom-like or kind (all of which he is) or even just acknowledge his actual body, you’re insulted and harassed because apparently that talk is only acceptable if it’s about Harry.

Honestly, the key is to just block a lot of people and ignore any weirdos. A lot of the people who have this problematic view of Harry and Louis and who do the harassing are really pathetic, jobless people who will screenshot you and ratio you and talk about you on a weekly basis, but as long as you just keep with your friends and the people you get along with, you can say what you want and talk about Louis the way he deserves, as a multifaceted person who is soft and sweet and kind, and if people try to harass you for that, you can just block them and ignore them. They’re living in an alternate reality and have nothing better to do, but they really aren’t worth the attention. It’s frustrating to me too so I feel your paint and I’m sorry that you’ve been dealing with this too.

[pinkjiminssi]

So.. About That Hickey..

I think I’m still processing all of this and reminding myself I’m not dreaming 🤣 I seriously only got 3 hours of sleep last night and when I woke up the first thing I did was check twitter to be sure this “drunk bridal-style spinning hickey neck biting proudly showing off” moment actually happened!! 

.. I hate the way my brain works though. I was so happy that it took me forever to fall asleep, spent all day on cloud 9 despite being tired, .. and then my old nemesis, anxiety, stepped in. Well kind of. TBH if all of the MOTS ON:E Jikook moments we got happened with Jimin/anyone else or Jungkook/anyone else.. I would seriously be sitting here saying “well fuck.. I believe they WERE a couple, but looking at all of this it seems they are no longer together.” So really, this just confirmed what I already knew about Jimin and Jungkook: they’re a couple. My anxiety is over.. why? Why show us this? If they can cover all of JK’s tattoos, a hickey/bite mark/whatever we’re calling it should be super easy to hide. Sure it was just rehearsal.. but it was rehearsal with cameras rolling with every intention of releasing what was being filmed as future content. It could have (and some might argue should have) been covered.

Guys... I’m confused. And concerned. ❗❗❗ TW for drama, hate, homophobia, the usual anti issues

That “official” explanation.. again.. why? I’m assuming Jimin and Jungkook were asked and allowed to explain because of the chance of it being spotted and armys freaking out, so BH (or possibly even Jikook) thought to get ahead of the speculation by just being up front about it all.. but THAT explanation? I suppose it works for covering up the army panic of “Jungkook has a girlfriend?! *insert fangirl sobbing*” .. but that’s literally all it does (and only barely if you go looking at some of the anti’s reactions to it all). Really, all it did was draw even more attention and speculation. I mean.. this is, essentially, what we were told: Jimin and Jungkook were together the night before drinking, apparently without the other members as they didn’t seem to know all of this already (and they would have if they had been there), somehow hanging out and having drinks turns into Jungkook picking Jimin up bridal style (random but some of the k-army reactions on twitter were translating through google into “princess style” and I just think that’s so cute 🥰), spinning ensues, Jimin gets dizzy and wants Jungkook to put him down, ... and so he proceeds to do the only logical thing that any of us would have done in that situation... biting Jungkook’s neck? And hard enough to leave a mark the next day?? And instead of being peeved about it (like most of us would have been if our friend bit the crap out of us), Jungkook looks happy?? proud even??? 

And they arrived together the next day and continue to be cute and playful? 

I just.. I mean.. come on. First of all.. that’s a hickey. A bite leaves teeth marks. And one would assume a wild, drunken “let me down” chomp would be something that happens suddenly and ends very quickly. I know I for sure would drop someone on their ass if they decided to take a bite out of my neck (assuming I was even picking up and spinning around with one of my friends like that to begin with.. but let’s not even get into why that was going on at this point) .. but the way this bruised? Yeah. There were no teeth involved (at least not hard enough to leave indentations) and this took more than a couple of seconds of mouth-to-neck contact to still be that visible the next day. So.. in short. Jungkook arrives with a hickey, JK decides to not cover it up (or he would have shown up with it hidden and we see him get out of the car that morning with it clearly visible), BH staff sees it and also decides to not have it covered up and actually have it explained... and the explanation is “oh yeah Jimin just bit him, you know.. no big deal hehehe isn’t that funny?” 🤯 WHAT?! Yeah.. that’s totally normal, platonic behavior between adults...

I’m not saying Jimin and Jungkook are lying btw. I have no doubt it played out more or less exactly as they said with the exception of what they’re calling the end result. Jimin and Jungkook are fine.. I mean, what were they supposed to say? They’re not going to show up saying Jimin was sucking on Jungkook’s neck the night before. We’ll probably never know why Jungkook decided to not cover it up before arriving, but it’s his body and he gets to decide. It’s BH that has me so puzzled. Other than antis and people who refuse to see what’s literally right in front of their faces when it comes to Jikook.. who were BH expecting to believe the bite thing? Just among staff and the other members, it’s a laughable but safe “oh of course *wink wink*” explanation that allows everyone to carry on like normal. But to the public who don’t know them personally, don’t know their usual behavior and patterns, and who don’t have something like a non-disclosure agreement or professional courtesy preventing them from openly speculating.. it doesn’t fly. Pretty much everyone teen and up knows what a hickey looks like (either from having gotten/given one or at least seeing one on someone else in person or online). It’s immediately obvious what it is. And even if there was some uncertainty.. that it’s on his neck (instead of other easily accessible and less sensitive/stimulating locations) and just so happens to be right near his mole as it Jimin were aiming for it? Just another “too many coincidences” thing when it comes to Jikook.

Even antis on twitter couldn’t deny what it was and, so, had to resort to the “well I do that with my sibling and my uncle’s pet raccoon all the time it’s just family things” excuse and/or the “yeah well someone ELSE in the group (or a girlfriend) gave him that and they’re just covering by saying it was Jimin.” Oh. And the same old “it’s just fan service” excuse (as if Jungkook would let someone bruise his neck for the purposes of fanservice which, again, BTS has never done or needed to do. Forever pissed off that so many in this fandom act like Jungkook is a puppet doing whatever the “evil company” tells him to do regardless of his personal feelings or boundaries. The man has tattoos covering nearly every inch of his arm despite that being looked down on in Korea. At this point he can do whatever the fuck he wants). So.. why?? Seriously, why? This all could have easily been avoided with simple makeup.

When they’re doing official content they’re all literally followed around by a flurry of staff fixing hair, dabbing sweat, touching up makeup, etc. Even though it was rehearsal, staff were everywhere in the footage that’s made its way online. If they were worried that it would be seen in the background and “taken the wrong way,” just have the staff occasionally touch up the makeup. “Easy peasy lemon squeezy.” But instead of doing the obvious, BH decides to: not cover it, draw attention to it by asking about it and letting them continue to talk about it, go out of their way to get a camera on it, and then include it in the final cut of the content they sent out?

BTS is literally the most popular group in the world right now and BH has become a behemoth of a company that runs like a well-oiled machine. They’re not stupid; this was not a mistake. For some reason they wanted us to see this and, one would assume based on the lack of a more believable explanation, they wanted us to come to the conclusion that we all have: Jimin gave Jungkook a hickey. You know they have teams dedicated to monitoring reactions to content on social media. You know they know the dialog surrounding Rosebowl, Black Swan MMA, the Memories 2020 “almost kiss,” etc. etc. All of this got “jikook,” “hickey” and variations of their names trending for HOURS (in multiple countries and worldwide). 

Out of curiosity, I decided to check the trends at the time of writing this. As of 3 AM CST (about 24 hours AFTER the clips started showing up online), there was still a hashtag trending related to all of this: #FREEJUNGKOOK.. and the tweets being directed toward BH are.. disturbing to say the least:

While I agree that the boys should trend more often based on their talents and music.. what’s going on right now is a homophobic 💩 show accusing BH of “scripting” interactions (rather than.. you know.. Jungkook interacting with whoever he wants however he wants.. the usual “mindless puppet JK” narrative), trying to coordinate the mass sending of angry emails, trying to get people to stop buying paid content, accusing BH of taking advantage of the members.. I mean it goes on and on. And BH know what’s going on right now. They’re seeing the reactions... the good and the extremely negative. And still they let this out. And this is all not even CONSIDERING the mountain of other moments that made the cut on MOTS ON:E. 

(side note, the above pic just oozes happiness and it’s so cute I love it!! 😭)

So.. even though I’ve said it dozens of times already... WHY? W H Y? I’m an anxious person by nature and not very trusting. I believe Jimin and Jungkook and I don’t think they’ve been lying and pretending for “fanservice” all of these years. I respect them both too much as individuals and artists to believe that they would stoop to such tactics just to generate a little more “interest” and revenue. I’m suspicious of BH. BTS doesn’t need fanservice to get attention; literally all of 2020 and 2021 so far has proven that beyond a doubt. Even if they suddenly made the decision to do fs.. why not go with the most popular ship (taekook) or at least one that isn’t so hotly debated on social media (remove Jimin, Jungkook and Tae from the equation and you still have four members to “play” with who have much less potential to have fs devolve into a toxic crap show all over the internet). Showing us this will do nothing to help BTS as a group or Jimin and Jungkook at this point. In fact.. all it can do is hurt. Hurt BH, hurt the group, and hurt the individual members, heck.. even potentially hurt other BH/HYBE groups. I’ve already seen people on twitter saying they’re “done” spending money on anything BH or BTS puts out because they’re “sick of jikook in their faces and just two of the seven hogging all of the screen time.” Whether or not that “spending freeze” actually materializes into anything noticeable remains to be seen of course.. but the threat is there and always has been. What is the motive? And why now? As much as my “hopeless romantic” heart would like to believe they’re preparing us for Jikook to be “out” .. I seriously don’t think that is ever going to happen. Certainly not now at the height of the group’s fame, with them being given Presidential honors and ambassador status, and with military service still looming over them all. And let’s not forget... Korea is NOT a safe place for a queer couple. Letting us see and know what they did through what was released has the potential to put Jimin and Jungkook (and the other members by proxy) in danger. Sure.. BTS has never been hardline rule followers and have been breaking molds and shattering norms from the start, so “officially” having an openly gay couple in the group wouldn’t be impossible.. just... highly highly improbable. Especially right now... and I’m concerned. I don’t want to sound like the creeps I posted a screenshot of above throwing blame at the company. The boys chose to renew their contracts with the for a reason so we have to trust their judgement as a group... but still, I’m worried and I’m questioning what the purpose was here. 

[vinceaddams]

obvs feel free to keep this private, but I got recommended the UFH channel by a friend of mine, haven't gotten around to watching anything from it. I trust your judgement on the content, but my friend considers it her main resource 🙃 of course, since you only watched a few videos you might not be able to answer this, but was there any specific really bad/unacademic approaches I should keep my eye out for that my friend might have adopted? we work on a historical festival together so im concern

(I was going to answer this privately but then it got really long and turned into a post I want to post.)

Oh dear! Well, It appears that the lady behind that channel only cares about the 20th century, so maaybe she’s got good stuff on the 20th century at least? I don’t know, but the 2 videos that I saw were so incredibly awful that I’m highly suspicious of all her stuff. 

The first bad thing about her channel is that her videos all have a one or two sentence caption and nothing else. (I clicked on a few more just to check) No sources listed, no links of any kind except to her merch store. I don’t recall her mentioning any particular sources for any of the things she said in the videos either, she just declared them very matter of factly. 

Good historians cite sources! Bernadette Banners’ video on the history of PPE has so many source links she ran out of room in the description box and had to put the rest of them on a page on her website.  (Oh poo, now I feel a bit bad because I love Karolina Zebrowska but she really needs to do better with leaving source links. But she does talk about doing research, talk in a more nuanced way, and doesn’t present herself as an expert or academic, unlike the UFH lady.)

Good historians also embrace nuance, and aren’t afraid to say “I don’t know” or “I was wrong”. Presenting things in a “this person did this one big thing, and then this happened, and that caused this” kind of way isn’t good because history is more like “all these things happened and as far as we can tell it appears to have influenced this, which was also connected to this other stuff that we don’t know all that much about”. History is foggy and complicated, no matter how much the general public wants it to be simple.

Her description of herself also seems a bit... misleading? In her about page on youtube it says “Amanda Hallay, a college professor specializing in fashion, costume, and cultural history.” but if you look at the CV linked on her website the only degrees she has are in creative writing and art history. I’m not saying a person can’t be really knowledgable about something without a degree, but her whole online presence is about being a ���professor” who teaches this stuff so I find it weird.

And if the 1850′s-60s video is anything to go by, she presents things in a shockingly unprofessional way. She starts off by saying she thinks these fashions are ugly and ridiculous and that she has some “theories of her own” on them. @marzipanandminutiae has a post with a lot more about what was wrong with that video, and a few others I haven’t seen. She claims that hoop skirts were oppressive cages when in reality they were a liberating garment that allowed women to achieve full skirts without the heavy layered petticoats they wore previously. 

She posts a photo of a naked lady and says “Now lets start with a beautiful naked lady and cover her up with ugly and unflattering clothes. Now this sexy naked lady isn’t so sexy” I wish I was making this up but that’s almost word for word what she said. Along with a whole lot of untrue or exaggerated stuff about Victorian modesty. She says dresses with layered flounces were called “pagoda dresses”, which isn’t a term that anyone has ever used for those dresses. She says this is cut down from a longer video she uses for teaching class, and I find the thought of this being presented in a classroom quite appalling.

After spending about 95% of the video talking about womens fashion in an extremely condescending and disdainful tone of voice, she posts what appear to be the 5 biggest and most extreme examples of 19th century moustaches she could find, presenting them as if they were what every man looked like.

This part really grinds my gears, because she says “I haven’t said anything about menswear because there’s really not much to say.” She posts photos of suits from 5 different decades and says they’re basically all the same, and also basically the same as a modern suit. Excuse you, there is A LOT of difference between menswear of the 1850′s and the 1890′s. Yes the changes over the decades are more subtle, and the colours are often more subdued than in centuries past, but it is absolutely not (as she claims) “the century when men stopped doing fashion”.   I personally am not hugely interested in 19th century mens fashion, and can tentatively date things in the first few decades but after the middle of the century I can’t. But people who are interested and who study that era can tell the decades apart. Because they’re different. And there is SO MUCH to talk about! Suits for different levels of formality, accessories, waistcoats, sportswear, sleepwear, knitwear, swimsuits, loungewear, underwear, etc. are all extremely different from their modern equivalents. 

It’s perfectly fine to only study womens fashion if that’s what you’re interested in, but it is not okay to then declare that the history of mens fashion is worthless and nonexistent. Simply not being interested in a thing is no excuse for publicly shitting all over it. (I’ve seen people do this more than once. We already have so few men who do historical fashion stuff! Stop putting off newcomers who might be interested!!)

The fact that her online presence is so closed off is also highly unusual. Comments are turned off for her videos, and the only social media link she has is to a private facebook group. (There is also a link to a fb page, but it appears to have been deleted.) Turning off comments is of course the personal choice of the one posting the videos, but the fashion history side of youtube usually tends towards pretty decent comment threads, and people often have nice little discussions and learn stuff in them. Here it looks like she doesn’t want discussion, doesn’t want to be contradicted or asked for sources, doesn’t want to learn new things.

I had never even heard of this channel until I saw @marzipanandminutiae mention it, nor have I ever heard any of the many historical costumers/youtubers I follow mention it, yet somehow it has 55k followers? I don’t know the demographics that watch it (especially not with the comments turned off!) but I’d wager that videos like the 1850′s-60′s one I suffered through are mainly watched by people who like hearing things trash talked, rather than people who actually want to learn about fashion history. The same sort of people who loved that Beau Brummell twitter thread, which was also full of lies and unsourced garbage. People like to believe the past was way worse and grosser than it was because it makes them feel like we’re smarter and better now.

Lastly, the whole premise of the channel is just bad. Calling any one thing “The Ultimate Fashion History” is a bad idea. Her channel trailer says “Youtube’s number one channel for original fashion history content” “we’ve got it all, fifty thousand years of fashion history”. You can’t have one channel that’s the ultimate resource for ALL of fashion history! It’s a huge, HUGE subject, and even if she did do actual good research she’d barely be able to scratch the surface of fifty thousand years. That’s like saying one channel is the ultimate source for all of science, or all of music, or all of cooking. No one thing can come close to covering all of it. I will deign to admit that she’s at least right to call it “original”, because she has some very original lies I haven’t found anywhere else. 

Most people who study fashion history/historical sewing have one or several eras they like best and find most interesting, perhaps with occasional jaunts into other eras. This way we can focus and get a much better understanding of the eras that we find most interesting, rather than just a vague notion of everything. 

For example: I’m most interested in 18th century menswear, and so far have mainly researched and sewn 1785-95 stuff, and more recently some 1730′s. I usually focus on fashionable civilian clothing, so I don’t know as much about working class clothes, and next to nothing about military and other occupational dress. Even with this narrow area of interest, which I’ve been obsessed with for many years, I still have so much to learn! I could never make anything claiming to be the ultimate source for 18th century menswear, because I’m just one person focusing on some aspects, and there are other people out there who research other aspects of it and their work is just as important. It’s all so big and so much, even if you narrow it down to one era.

Amanda Hallay is basically holding up a bucket of saltwater and calling it the ocean.

I haven’t watched any of her 20th century videos, so maybe they’re better than the older ones I watched. I don’t know. (But even if they’re actually good they still don’t have source links.) Edit: okay, nope, turns out they’re just as bad! They appear to make up the vast majority of her videos, so if she’s most interested in the 20th century then maybe she should just... make her channel more clearly 20th century focused instead of trying to paint it as a channel for all eras?

TL;DR, the main bad things about that channel are:

Lying and making ridiculous claims, not citing ANY sources. Spouting easily debunked myths.

Stating things matter of factly without any nuance, even though history is foggy and complicated.

Being extremely judgemental about historical fashions and talking about how much she hates them and thinks they’re ugly, which really isn’t appropriate for a fashion history teacher. You can hear the disgust in her voice and it’s awful and I hate it.

Comments turned off on all her videos, leaving no way to communicate or have public discussions. Unknowing viewers are left to accept her statements as fact without any outside opinions.

Claiming one channel is the ultimate channel for an incalculably enormous subject. Says it covers 50,000 years of fashion history when it’s mostly just the 20th century.

I would like to add that I am not what I would consider an expert either, and have no formal education in fashion history beyond the one college class that was part of my 2 year sewing course. I have learned mainly from books and the internet, and as I said earlier I still have a huge amount to learn. I’m sure a more knowledgable historian could put things better than I have. 

But I’m confident in stating that primary sources are needed to back up a claim! Sometimes even widely accepted beliefs turn out to be entirely unfounded myths, like that one about doctors using vibrators to treat “hysteria”. Total nonsense someone made up in 1999.

Wow this post got way longer than intended. Anyways, yes, I do not like condescending slideshow lady.