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caelum-in-the-avatarverse · 6 months ago

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Fandom can do a little gatekeeping. As a treat.

So I finally decided to archive-lock my fics on AO3 last night. I’ve been considering it since the AI scrape last year, but the tipping point was this whole lore.fm debacle, coupled with some thoughts I’ve been thinking regarding Fandom These Days in general and Fandom As A Community in particular. So I wanna explain why I waited so long, why I locked my stuff up now, and why I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a-okay with making it harder for people to see my stories.

Lurkers really are great, tho

I’m a chronic lurker, and have been since I started hanging out on the internet as a teen in the 00s. These days it’s just cuz I don’t feel a need to socialize very often, but back then it was because I was shy and knew I was socially awkward. Even if I made an account, I’d spend months lurking on message boards or forums or Livejournals, watching other people interact and getting a feel for that particular community’s culture and etiquette before I finally started interacting myself. And y’know, that approach saved me a lot of embarrassment. Over the course of my lurking on any site, there was always some other person who’d clearly joined up five minutes after learning the place existed, barged in without a care for their behavior, and committed so many social faux pas that all the other users were immediately annoyed with them at best. I learned a lot observing those incidents. Lurk More is Rule 33 of the internet for very good reason.

Lurking isn’t bad or weird or creepy. It’s perfectly normal. I love lurking. It’s hard for me to not lurk - socializing takes a lot of energy out of me, even via text. (Heck it took 12 hours for me to write this post, I wish I was kidding--) Occasionally I’ll manage longer bouts of interaction - a few weeks posting here, almost a year chatting in a discord there - but I’m always gonna end up going radio silent for months at some point. I used to feel bad about it, but I’ve long since made peace with the fact that it’s just the way my brain works. I’m a chronic lurker, and in the long term nothing is going to change that.

The thing with being a chronic lurker is that you have to accept that you are not actually seen as part of the community you are lurking in. That’s not to say that lurkers are unimportant - lurkers actually are important, and they make up a large proportion of any online community - but it’s simple cause and effect. You may think of it as “your community”, but if you’ve never said a word, how is the community supposed to know you exist? If I lurked on someone’s LJ, and then that person suddenly friendslocked their blog, I knew that I had two choices: Either accept that I would never be able to read their posts again, or reach out to them and ask if I could be added to their friends list with the full understanding that I was a rando they might not decide to trust. I usually went with the first option, because my invisibility as a lurker was more important to me than talking to strangers on the internet.

Lurking is like sitting on a park bench, quietly people-watching and eavesdropping on the conversations other people are having around you. You’re in the park, but you’re not actively participating in anything happening there. You can see and hear things that you become very interested in! But if you don’t introduce yourself and become part of the conversation, you won’t be able to keep listening to it when those people walk away. When fandom migrated away from Livejournal, people moved to new platforms alongside their friends, but lurkers were often left behind. No one knew they existed, so they weren’t told where everyone else was going. To be seen as part of a fandom community, you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. There can actually be benefits to lurking, both for the lurkers and the communities they lurk in. It’s just another way to be in a fandom. But if that is how you exist in fandom--and remember, I say this as someone who often does exist that way in fandom--you need to remember that you’re on the outside looking in, and the curtains can always close.

I’ve always been super sympathetic to lurkers, because I am one. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t socialize often. I know there’s plenty of reasons why someone might not make an account on the internet - maybe they’re nervous, maybe they’re young and their parents don’t allow them to, maybe they’re in a bad situation where someone is monitoring their activity, maybe they can only access the internet from public computer terminals. Heck, I’ve never even logged into AO3 on my phone--if I’m away from my computer I just read what’s publicly available.

I know I have people lurking on my fics. I know my fics probably mean a lot to someone I don’t even know exists. I know this because there are plenty of fics I love whose writers don’t know I exist.

I love my commenters personally; I love my lurkers as an abstract concept. I know they’re there and I wish them well, and if they ever de-lurk I love them all the more.

So up until last year I never considered archive-locking my fic, because I get it. The AI scraping was upsetting, but I still hesitated because I was thinking of lurkers and guests and remembering what it felt like to be 15 and wondering if it’d be worth letting a stranger on the internet know I existed and asking to be added to their friends list just so I could reread a funny post they made once.

But the internet has changed a lot since the 00s, and fandom has changed with it. I’ve read some things and been doing some thinking about fandom-as-community over the last few years, and reading through the lore.fm drama made me decide that it’s time for me to set some boundaries.

I still love my lurkers, and I feel bad about leaving any guest commenters behind, especially if they’re in a situation where they can’t make an account for some reason. But from here on out, even my lurkers are going to have to do the bare minimum to read my fics--make an AO3 account.

Should we gatekeep fandom?

I’ve seen a few people ask this question, usually rhetorically, sometimes as a joke, always with a bit of seriousness. And I think…yeah, maybe we should. Except wait, no, not like that--

A decade ago, when people talked about fandom gatekeeping and why it was bad to do, it intersected with a lot of other things, mainly feminism and classism. The prevalent image of fandom gatekeeping was, like, a man learning that a woman likes Star Wars and haughtily demanding, “Oh, yeah? Well if you’re REALLY a fan, name ten EU novels” to belittle and dismiss her, expecting that a “real fan” would have the money and time to be familiar with the EU, and ignoring the fact that male movie-only fans were still considered fans. The thing being gatekept was the very definition of “being a fan” and people’s right to describe themselves as one.

That’s not what I mean when I say maybe fandom should gatekeep more. Anyone can call themselves a fan if they like something, that’s fine. But when it comes to the ability to enjoy the fanworks produced by the fandom community…that might be something worth gatekeeping.

See, back in the 00s, it was perfectly common for people to just…not go on the internet. Surfing the web was a thing, but it was just, like, a fun pastime. Not everyone did it. It wasn’t until the rise of social media that going online became a thing everyone and their grandmother did every day. Back then, going on the internet was just…a hobby.

So one of the first gates online fandom ever had was the simple fact that the entire world wasn’t here yet.

The entire world is here now. That gate has been demolished.

And it’s a lot easier to find us now. Even scattered across platforms, fandom is so centralized these days. It isn’t a network of dedicated webshrines and forums that you can only find via webrings anymore, it’s right there on all the big social media sites. AO3 didn’t set out to be the main fanfic website, but that’s definitely what it’s become. It’s easy for people to find us--and that includes people who don’t care about the community, and just want “content.”

Transformative fandom doesn’t like it when people see our fanworks as “content”. “Content” is a pretty broad term, but when fandom uses it we’re usually referring to creative works that are churned out by content creators to be consumed by an audience as quickly as possible as often as possible so that the content creator can generate revenue. This not-so-new normal has caused a massive shift in how people who are new to fandom view fanworks--instead of seeing fic or art as something a fellow fan made and shared with you, they see fanworks as products to be consumed.

Transformative fandom has, in general, always been a gift economy. We put time and effort into creating fanworks that we share with our fellow fans for free. We do this so we don’t get sued, but fandom as a whole actually gets a lot out of the gift economy. Offer your community a story, and in return you can get comments, build friendships, or inspire other people to write things that you might want to read. Readers are given the gift of free stories to read and enjoy, and while lurking is fine, they have the choice to engage with the writer and other readers by leaving comments or making reclists to help build the community.

And look, don’t get me wrong. People have never engaged with fanfic as much as fan writers wish they would. There has always been “no one comments anymore” wank. There have always been people who only comment to say “MORE!” or otherwise demand or guilt trip writers into posting the next chapter. But fandom has always agreed that those commenters are rude and annoying, and as those commenters navigate fandom they have the chance to learn proper community etiquette.

However, now it seems that a lot of the people who are consuming fanworks aren’t actually in the community.

I won’t say “they aren’t real fans” because that’s silly; there’s lots of ways to be a fan. But there seem to be a lot of fans now who have no interest in fandom as a community, or in adhering to community etiquette, or in respecting the gift economy. They consume our fics, but they don’t appreciate fan labor. They want our “content”, but they don’t respect our control over our creations.

And even worse--they see us as a resource. We share our work for free, as a gift, but all they see is an open-source content farm waiting to be tapped into. We shared it for free, so clearly they can do whatever they want with it. Why should we care if they feed our work into AI training datasets, or copy/paste our unfinished stories into ChatGPT to get an ending, or charge people for an unnecessary third-party AO3 app, or sell fanbindings on etsy for a profit without the author’s permission, or turn our stories into poor imitations of podfics to be posted on other platforms without giving us credit or asking our consent, while also using it to lure in people they can datascrape for their Forbes 30 Under 30 company?

And sure, people have been doing shady things with other people’s fanworks since forever. Art theft and reposting has always been a big problem. Fanfic is harder to flat-out repost, but I’ve heard of unauthorized fic translations getting posted without crediting the original author. Once in…I think the 2010s? I read a post by a woman who had gone to some sort of local bookselling event, only to find that the man selling “his” novel had actually self-published her fanfic. (Wish I could find that one again, I don’t even remember where I read it.)

But aside from that third example, the thing is…as awful as fanart/writing theft is, back in the day, the main thing a thief would gain from it was clout. Clout that should rightfully go to the creators who gifted their work in the first place, yeah, but still. Just clout. People will do a lot of hurtful things for clout, but fandom clout means nothing outside of fandom. Fandom clout is not enough to incentivize the sort of wide-scale pillaging we’re seeing from community outsiders today.

Money, on the other hand… Well, fandom’s just a giant, untapped content farm, isn’t it? Think of how much revenue all that content could generate.

Lurkers are a normal and even beneficial part of any online community. Maybe one day they’ll de-lurk and easily slide into place beside their fellow fans because they already know the etiquette. Maybe they’re active in another community, and they can spread information from the community they lurk in to the community they’re active in. At the very least, they silently observe, and even if they’re not active community members, they understand the community.

Fans who see fanworks as “content” don’t belong in the same category as lurkers. They’re tourists.

While reading through the initial Reddit thread on the lore.fm situation, I found this comment:

[ID: Reddit User Cabbitowo says: ... So in anime fandoms we have a word called tourist and essentially it means a fan of a few anime and doesn't care about anime tropes and actively criticizes them. This is kind of how fandoms on tiktok feel. They're touring fanfics and fanart and actively criticizes tropes that have been in the fandom since the 60s. They want to be in a fandom but they don't want to engage in fandom

OP totallymandy responds: Just entered back into Reddit after a long day to see this most recent reply. And as a fellow anime fan this making me laugh so much since it’s true! But it sorta hurts too when the reality sets in. Modern fandom is so entitled and bratty and you’d think it’s the minors only but that’s not even true, my age-mates and older seem to be like that. They want to eat their cake and complain all whilst bringing nothing to the potluck… :/ END ID]

“Tourist” is an apt name for this sort of fan. They don’t want to be part of our community, and they don’t have to be in order to come into our spaces and consume our work. Even if they don’t steal our work themselves, they feel so entitled to it that they’re fine with ignoring our wishes and letting other people take it to make AI “podfics” for them to listen to (there are a lot of comments on lore.fm’s shutdown announcement video from people telling them to just ignore the writers and do it anyway). They’ll use AI to generate an ending to an unfinished fic because they don’t care about seeing “the ending this writer would have given to the story they were telling”, they just want “an ending”. For these tourist fans, the ends justify the means, and their end goal is content for them to consume, with no care for the community that created it for them in the first place.

I don’t think this is confined to a specific age group. This isn’t “13-year-olds on Wattpad” or “Zoomers on TikTok” or whatever pointless generation war we’re in now. This is coming from people who are new to fandom, whose main experience with creative works on the internet is this new content culture and who don’t understand fandom as a community. That description can be true of someone from any age group.

It’s so easy to find fandom these days. It is, in fact, too easy. Newcomers face no hurdles or challenges that would encourage them to lurk and observe a bit before engaging, and it’s easy for people who would otherwise move on and leave us alone to start making trouble. From tourist fans to content entrepreneurs to random people who just want to gawk, it’s so easy for people who don’t care about the fandom community to reap all of its fruits.

So when I say maybe fandom should start gatekeeping a bit, I’m referring to the fact that we barely even have a gate anymore. Everyone is on the internet now; the entire world can find us, and they don’t need to bother learning community etiquette when they do. Before, we were protected by the fact that fandom was considered weird and most people didn’t look at it twice. Now, fandom is pretty mainstream. People who never would’ve bothered with it before are now comfortable strolling in like they own the place. They have no regard for the fandom community, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to. They want to treat it just like the rest of the content they consume online.

And then they’re surprised when those of us who understand fandom culture get upset. Fanworks have existed far longer than the algorithmic internet’s content. Fanworks existed long before the internet. We’ve lived like this for ages and we like it.

So if someone can’t be bothered to respect fandom as a community, I don’t see why I should give them easy access to my fics.

Think of it like a garden gate

When I interact with commenters on my fic, I have this sense of hospitality.

The comment section is my front porch. The fic is my garden. I created my garden because I really wanted to, and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to share it with other people.

Lots of people enjoy looking at my garden. Many walk through without saying anything. Some stop to leave kudos. Some recommend my garden to their friends. And some people take the time to stop by my front porch and let me know what a beautiful garden it is and how much they’ve enjoyed it.

Any fic writer can tell you that getting comments is an incredible feeling. I always try to answer all my comments. I don’t always manage it, but my fics’ comment sections are the one place that I manage to consistently socialize in fandom. When I respond to a comment, it feels like I’m pouring out a glass of lemonade to share with this lovely commenter on my front porch, a thank you for their thank you. We take a moment to admire my garden together, and then I see them out. The next time they drop by, I recognize them and am happy to pour another glass of lemonade.

My garden has always been open and easy to access. No fences, no walls. You just have to know where to find it. Fandom in general was once protected by its own obscurity, an out-of-the-way town that showed up on maps but was usually ignored.

But now there’s a highway that makes it easy to get to, and we have all these out-of-towner tourists coming in to gawk and steal our lawn ornaments and wonder if they can use the place to make themselves some money.

I don’t care to have those types trampling over my garden and eating all my vegetables and digging up my flowers to repot and sell, so I’ve put up a wall. It has a gate that visitors can get through if they just take the time to open it.

Admittedly, it’s a small obstacle. But when I share my fics, I share them as a gift with my fellow fans, the ones who understand that fandom is a community, even if they’re lurkers. As for tourist fans and entrepreneurs who see fic as content, who have no qualms ignoring the writer’s wishes, who refuse to respect or understand the fandom community…well, they’re not the people I mean to share my fic with, so I have no issues locking them out. If they want access to my stories, they’ll have to do the bare minimum to become a community member and join the AO3 invite queue.

And y’know, I’ve said a lot about fandom and community here, and I just want to say, I hope it’s not intimidating. When I was younger, talk about The Fandom Community made me feel insecure, and I didn’t think I’d ever manage to be active enough in fandom spaces to be counted as A Member Of The Community. But you don’t have to be a social butterfly to participate in fandom. I’ll always and forever be a chronic lurker, I reblog more than I post, I rarely manage to comment on fic, and I go radio silent for months at a time--but I write and post fanfiction. That’s my contribution.

Do you write, draw, vid, gif, or otherwise create? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you leave comments? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you curate reclists? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you maintain a fandom blog or fuckyeah blog? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you provide a space for other fans to convene in? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you regularly send asks (off anon so people know who you are)? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you have fandom friends who you interact with? Congrats, you're a community member.

There’s lots of ways to be a fan. Just make sure to respect and appreciate your fellow fans and the work they put in for you to enjoy and the gift economy fandom culture that keeps this community going.

#ao3 #lore.fm #fanfiction #fandom history #gift economy #caelum rambles

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writinandcrying · 9 months ago

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TMNT HEADCANON / how the turtles text

A lot can be said from how someone express themselves through texting, so this is just some crack / light headcanons !

Not really based on a single version per say, more that turtles have been deprived of social interaction for the majority of their life and I think texting them would be an very interesting experience lol

Idea based on @avery73 last random turtle post (thanks for being one of our strongest soldiers and writing wonderful pieces 🫡) English is not my first language and I didn’t proofread this, if there is any grammatical erros pls don’t hesitate to tell me!

Mikey

🎢 Single texts

🎢 Just like this

🎢 Loads of it

🎢 You got 60 new messages

🎢 in the past 2 minutes

🎢 Loads of gifs too

🎢 And voice memos

🎢Oh look

🎢6 personality tests links

🎢What do you mean you won’t do it

🎢He needs to know what kind of cupcake you are!!!!

🎢 And music recs

🎢 Your phone won’t stop vibrating

🎢 for the next weeks

🎢 After you meet him (Honestly really annoying unless you have a crush on him)

🎢 For the latinos/latinas; if he EVER finds out about WhatsApp and the stickers. Oh you are so done. If you have an older phone that shit WILL blow up / malfunction for SURE

🎢 uses TONS OF EMOJIS !!!!! 😍😍😝🤪😋🤩AND CAPS AS WELL!!! 🥳😽✌️👅🗣️

🎢Mikey live reaction when you ask if he’s upset that you asked him to tone it down a notch with the texting on a busy day:

🎢 Will lowkey tone it down with the emojis when he finds out some ppl find it cringe, but with his angels cakes ???????? 🫵 YOU BET 🗣️ HE WILL SHOW YOU WITH IT 💋🫦💅🏻🤳🏼💃🏻🕺🏽🙈🦋🌺🧡🌚🌻🔥💥🌟

🎢Will accidentally send you some random ass emoji that wasn’t supposed to be on the context of the text, also the autocorrect is def not his friend

Mikey : how’s it going baby gorila

Mikey: babygirl*

Mikey:

Mikey: I’m sorry

🎢 adds emojis to very contacts in his t-phone:

Leo: Leader of the pack 🐺 🐢 🫡

Donnie: Eistein 📚🧬⚗️ (Raph also shares this name on his t-cell)

Raph: Murderous teddy bear 🧸 🧨

Splinter: Mafia Boss 🪤 (no one knows about this name tho)

April: Chanel N.6 🎤(or World of Apes 🦧 lmao)

Casey: New York Hockey League 🏒

Vern: Some dude (adds 🦅 so he knows it’s Vern and not “some random dude”)

Y/n: angelcakes pookie wookie baby boo boo love of my life !!!!!! 😍🥰👀🧚🏻‍♂️

🎢Mikey live reaction when Raph yells at him to stop flooding the chat, followed by mikey texting him “make me” (they are sitting next to each other):

Donnie

🔭Huge blocks of it in the speed of light. many topics, many questions and also explanations at just one sitting

🔭But won’t hold back on a smart ass short cut response for one his brothers (literally has the sharpest tongue)

🔭Will hardly uses emojis, only when it’s a single text to express an emotion (most current used emojis: 🤓when he does something impressive 💜: for y/n 🙄: when venting about something annoying Leo / Mikey / Raph did)

🔭Will want to discuss random ass problems he has encountered in his projects, in forums online, specially if you ever show interest in debating / doesnt hold back into showing your strong opinions

🔭 Has named their brothers as “Failed Lab Experiments” and managed to color code their messages (has the only t-phone that has this feature)

🔭Donnie creating the most unique and smartass way to charge his phone just cuz he can:

🔭Deadass his reaction when texting his crush 👀:

🔭 Has modified Mikey’s phone so he doesn’t have access to emojis for a whole week after his baby brother decided to spam him “out of no where” (after Donnie won consecutively 10 Mario Kart matches AND ate the last 2 slices of cold pizza)

🔭Result: mikey spammed EVEN MORE and only spoke to EVERYONE by Japanese emojis. Leo and Raph begged demanded that donnie install his emojis back cuz they were DONE with the whole situation

Failed lab experiment N.4: ( ๑‾̀◡‾́)σ" °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖° (♡´౪`♡)

Failed lab experiment N.1: Stop.

Failed lab experiment N.4: ┬┴┬┴┤ᵒᵏ (･_├┬┴┬┴ Failed lab experiment N.4: (;﹏;)

Failed lab experiment N.2: You stupid IDIOT Failed lab experiment N.2: look what you've done now he’s sad

🔭 Donnie also has to deal with his brothers thinking he is their personal Google (he will always answer their questions, even out of spite):

Failed lab experiment N.4: Donnie what’s a Cochlear implant

Successful lab experiment: A small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin.

Failed lab experiment N.4: :0 yikes

Failed lab experiment N.4: Okay thanks!!!!

Successful lab experiment: Stop asking me stuff when you can just Google it.

Failed lab experiment N.4: But I like talking to you 🙀😔

Failed lab experiment N.4: You are my favorite turtle Siri!!! 😉

Successful lab experiment: I’d prefer if I wasn’t... Also, why are you curious about cochlear implants?

Successful lab experiment: Mikey?

Successful lab experiment: Mikey!!!!!

(He still doesn’t know why)

Raph

🥊 Barely uses emojis. Lowkey barely texts? doesn't see the appeal to it, rather prefer to hang out with you 1 on 1 than being far away from you (will never ever admit to it. maybe after 3 years in a relationship)

🥊as a friend: he wont be the one spiking a conversation, but might keep going if he's truly bored (this is prone to happen during daylight / evening when they still can't go out) but will probably be the one to ask to hang out when he needs an outlet and such 🥊*sees messages* eh i'll reply later *completely forgets about it*

🥊 will effortlessly take the most breath-taking pictures of new york during patrol and send it to you 🥊 if you are already his s/o / someone he trusts: will most likely text you to ask about stuff (if you need anything or something he needs from topside) or to diss / vent / gossip about his brothers 🥊 will send embarrassing pictures of his brothers to you cuz he can't deal with that shit alone lmao

🥊 will either be pretty clueless with the most random ass stuff or out of propose just to tease you: y/n: jniasunoakpfa raph: what was that y/n: keyboard smash? raph: how do i do that y/n: just press anything raph: 7 🥊 Raph Live reaction as soon as he realizes he has feelings for you:

🥊 Also Raph Live reaction when he comes to terms with this feelings and has an excuse to ignore Leo (even if he doesnt like texting) just bc he can ignore Leo as he pleases:

Leo

🎏 Perfect texts 🎏 looks like an email/letter sometimes 🎏 to most people: 1 message with divided topics. pretty direct 🎏 when he can't reply right away: "Hello. I'm happy you wrote to me. I try to reply promptly but currently I'm not available at the moment-" Like omg bro RELAX. 🎏 to his s/o: 70% direct, the other 30% likes to send little reminders, either with songs or pretty things she has seen during a patrol with a "thinking of you" message. lowkey romantic when he doesn't even mean to be, def shows how thoughtful he is 🎏 prefers to call you rather than texting. especially if you are dating/has a crush on you he might not even realize why he likes calling you so much, until it hits like a brick that he just wants to hear your voice 🎏Leo when he calls you and doesn't know when to "intervene" / his time to talk back (god forbid he's unpolite and interrupts you):

lowkey him listening to April vent about smth dumb shit Casey did /any human friend venting and he doesnt know how to react lmao 🎏Just like Donnie, has favorite emojis and will only use it in specific situations (this will take time for it to happen, like after years Donnie first invented the t-phone and finally relized he didn't had to be so formal when texting): 🐢 when talking about team work or his brothers / 🪷 for meditating or mindfulness (thinks its peaceful) / 💙 for his boo and his boo only / 😏 only in a relationship, especially when he's feeling scipy (extremely rare for it to happen over text tho)

——————————————————————————

Group chat (more than one reaction)

💚 catching social cues irl can be hard, you are telling me there are hidden social cues in texting too??

💚 “Nah shut up” group, doesn’t care much about it and won’t change their ways: Leo, Raph

💚 Will research about it, will talk to every single human he knows (yes. you. Vern. Casey and April) Needs to know the social cues. NOW: lmao try to guess

💚 Also needs to know, but for meme reasons, he has to say up to date w the terminology/ slangs: another hard guess /j

💚 Oh btw, Donnie totally uses /j /Tw /srs terminology WHILE he texts fast AND huge text blocks. none of his brothers know how he does it

💚Will over use fresh lingo he has learned overhearing humans on patrol, shows, from his humans friends to the point it’s almost unbearable: Mikey 💚Live reaction of Raph and Leo trying to understand when Mikey or Donnie spamming the group chat with their extremely recent memes or hyperfixations:

💚the chat WILL be flooded with things related to their favorite basketball teams, show they want to see or dumbass pictures of their daily lifes, example: Mikey: *has sent an selfie*

Mikey: you know y/n

Mikey:If you’re fortunate enough

Mikey: your internal organs will spend their entire lifespan in absolute darkness

Mikey: but mine?

April: oh boy here we go

Mikey: Hasn’t. 😏😏😏

Y/n: Oh?

Mikey: *send another selfie flexing muscles* you see when you fight crime everyday-

Raph: yeah he shallowed a glow stick

#visually this looks a hot mess I apologize #did i add a bunch of my old incorrect quotes on this?#yes i did #i regret nothing #tmnt headcanons #tmnt x reader #2003 tmnt #tmnt bayverse turtles x reader #2003 tmnt x reader #2007 tmnt #mm tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles 2007 #giulia writes

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kaelidascope · 6 months ago

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Fandom and LGBTQ Hostility and My Experiences Trying to Exist in Both Spaces Online

I came into these spaces with a very strict rule that I would not react or do anything cancel-worthy out of an overabundance of caution. Digital footprints are dangerous. The things you say online will follow you around forever. I know that first hand. I’ve bottled up and stayed silent about a lot of things I’ve either witnessed first-hand or experienced because I was trying to maintain a clean online persona. I’m not an ‘airing out dirty laundry’ type person.

In light of recent events however, it’s gotten so bad that I can no longer sit here and not say something about how I feel. I’m disappointed and frustrated with the experiences I’ve had both in fandom and LGBTQ+ spaces and I can’t be complacent. I’m tired of getting treated like this, I’m fed up and I’m not going to put up with it anymore. I feel it’s important I voice what I’ve been watching and what’s happened and how I’m not going to tolerate it anymore by calling it out first hand.

This is a two-topic rant. They overlap in some instances, but it directly has to do with how fandoms behave in general towards each other on Twitter and Tumblr, and also how absolutely hostile LGBTQ+ individuals are nowadays to each other on the same platforms.

I come from a different generation and a different social media platform. I wasn’t on Twitter and Tumblr until last year. I’m not dismissing the fact that I may have missed out on decades worth of culture and social expectation. The places where I come from aren’t exactly fantastic either, but at least here, more queer people are interacting with each other with shared interests much more widely than in places like DeviantArt. The amount of culture and information I’ve absorbed in one year is more than I ever had within the past twenty years. It should be a good thing, and I’m disappointed that it wasn’t.

This is not the way I wanted to come out online to anyone. I’ve been figuring out where I sit on the gender and sexuality spectrum for a while now. I will not document a specific timeline for anyone because that’s nobody’s business but my own. Within the last year, I took a massive stride forward in exploring things I legally didn’t think I was allowed to. I expected backlash from cishets and the usual thing I see LGBTQ+ folks write essays over, about how the world hates us, but at least we have each other. Shockingly, the backlash didn’t come from straight people. It came from other queers.

I am 27 years old and I am entirely self-sufficient. I’m mixed Puerto Rican living in a red state. English wasn’t even my first language. I don’t have a network, so I’m teaching myself these things. I'm asking questions. I'm reading materials and expressions of self-experience and self-identity through fanworks and other autobiographical content. I'm actively trying to seek community and support through transgender and non-binary individuals with shared interests and so far all I've been met with is hostility and assumptions. So much so that I've now been made to feel like I'm on a timeline to figure it out so I can have a well-practiced, short introduction to copy and paste to every person who comes across me. And the only reason I even need one is so that they can make the decision to pass judgement over whether or not I'm allowed to speak, write, draw, wear, act, breathe the things I do. I'm disappointed. I'm anxious. I honestly feel more shoved into the closet now than I ever did before and I shouldn't be. Nobody should be treated this way when trying to figure out who they are. I probably won't even get an apology for the things that were said to me, either. I pride myself on the extraordinary caution I take to be politically correct, vetted through reputable sources, and as close to authentic as possible. And yet somehow I’m still getting called things like terf, transmisogynistic, triggering, when I’m fucking trans myself and all of my content gets vetted/REQUESTED by trans individuals. I get promised up and down that people are kind and welcoming in these sorts of spaces and honey, they aren’t. The people you choose to be friends with aren't as inclusive and friendly as you think they are. You don’t even know me and what body parts I have. The fact that you need to know in order to decide whether or not to treat me with respect is telling of an internal issue that has nothing to do with me.

I have no reference point. I live in a place where laws ban anything gender and trans. I have no local resources or community. I've barely met any LGBTQ people in person. If I have, they never came out publicly. Most of my queer exposure has been online, and the fact that I've seen nothing but angry, mean, exclusive and discriminating behavior without any sort of reasoning why other than selfish defensiveness, I don't know where else I'm supposed to go for support. Something a lot of you guys need to take into retrospect is anyone who identifies as LGBTQ gets shot where I live. We have sundown towns here. If you don’t even know what that is, good, but also that’s telling of your privilege that you need to consider when talking to others not from blue states. I didn’t grow up in an environment where we had these highly liberal culture points and the word ‘gay’ was never allowed to be said out loud. We did not have gay clubs in school. I'm about as fucking late to this as you possibly can get. The only reason I know anything about our history, representation, and barely anything about what's socially acceptable and what's not, is because of the internet. So many of you had the privilege of being exposed to this information as young as under the age of 10. I didn’t. Sue me for not immediately knowing what every gender label means right off the bat. Half that stuff isn’t even legal here.

I can't believe it's boiled down to the fact that I have to somehow justify my existence on this Earth and give an explanation that fits into predetermined boxes just to do anything to engage with other people. I have no time or space to figure it out. I’m disorganized and overwhelmed because I can’t ask questions about ‘can butches do this?’ ‘How versatile is transmasc/transfem?’ ‘Am I more genderqueer or do I fit under the trans umbrella?’ Gender and identity is fluid and ever changing. I have actually seen people harp and attack individuals for "defaulting" or "detransitioning" when they change their mind after giving this big coming out speech. It’s like support on these platforms is entirely conditional and a one-time thing. Y'all really expect people to wear the first style of shirt they buy for the rest of their life? Are we not allowed to do anything unless we know for sure? How’s college working out for you, for those who believe this mindset?

The vocally aggressive ones who use big words that contradict their statements can do, say, and be whatever they want. But people like me can't. The ones who have to straight pass in public to keep their jobs and maintain their life safely. Some of us have been on our own since 19 with no family support. Consider the environment someone lives in before assigning your harsh assumptions. I can’t just change myself on a whim without doing significant damage control. Half the jobs I work for don’t even allow unnatural hair colors. If we list our pronouns as anything other than our assigned sex at birth, it causes legality issues with taxes. The way I have to navigate how to explore my identity and also keep a roof over my head and my bills paid may seem highly conservative to most. It’s in no way shape or form meant to reflect disrespect on how others live and express themselves. I am doing the best with the environment I have. The way I do things is not meant to be read as a message of ‘you’re doing it wrong because you’re not doing it the way I do.’ None of us are wrong. That should not be the subliminal message here.

You know someone actually challenged me on that? Saying I was being harmful for purposefully straight presenting in public? Please research your country and state specific laws before you say that to me. If I could afford to live somewhere safer and queer-friendly, this conversation would be different. I am working on getting the fuck out of this state. But I don’t have a partner or parents money to default on. I’m doing this by myself. It’s not impossible, just a slow process.

I'm disappointed and fed up. I've reached my limit, and I don't really care anymore if someone uses this essay to try and cancel me 5 or 10 years from now when the world goes through another gender renaissance of terms and identities. I will not put up with being treated like this when you refuse to listen to anyone else other than the sound of your own voice. I’m trying my best to learn, adapt, and express myself. I do not need to be lectured or be called derogatory things just because you think I’m coming from a malicious place.

It’s not just about the hostility and gate-keeping behavior exhibited in online queer spaces. The same exact thing happens in fandom spaces too. People get pissy about queer headcanons and presentations so much to the point of taking it upon themselves to police the fandom and scrub it clean of “impurities.” I’ve watched y’all go through people's social media pages for any type of ammunition for justification of a personal grievance. It shocks me how much hyperfixation gets put on specific and morally harmless things when there are people out there writing diabolical shit way worse than what I have to offer. And y’all happily support them too but bark at me about what I make cus that author fits your social criteria and you assumed I didn’t. Don't think I'm ignorant to every single scrap of hate mail and harassment I've gotten over the past year and a half in my inboxes. Including the passive aggressive posts about my work, vague tweets, and discussions about me in discord servers. Over what? Have you actually read my work? If it’s actually as problematic as you say it is, provide me with a modern and unbiased example why this particular scene and execution is harmful. And not because you got triggered or disliked the kink, or read the summary/tags and assumed it was something it’s not. I don’t know how much more caution tape, massive warnings, obvious clear-cut tags (that were provided to me by queer individuals to PUT on there in the first place) out of insane amounts of caution I can do. I have always been willing to provide spoilers and explicit details in case someone is unsure how they’ll be affected by something I make. If you already don’t like it based on my warnings, that’s always been more than okay! My work is not for everyone. I’m getting tired of politely and respectfully saying please move on, because the message seems to be getting lost in translation. So let me be clear;

Get off my pages if you don’t like what I make. It’s not for you. It will never be for you. Dead dove. DO NOT EAT. PREFERRED DEMOGRAPHIC 25+ ADULT CONTENT RATED E FOR EXPLICIT. I can recommend so many other fantastic creators with better suited content for you! If I could hide my content behind a roped off section deliberately keeping you from seeing it, I would. BLOCK ME.

If your response to this section is ‘well then just don’t write it’. Honey, there’s people out here in the RWBY fandom writing trans incest actively commenting on all your shit and you respond back. A magic grimm-goo strap and monster smut featuring a transfem character (again, requested by literally 3 trans people and WRITTEN by one) should be the least of your worries.

I have actively chosen not to address the harassment and hate mail, because it's sad that half of you hate me so much you need to make a point of telling me so regularly. I sincerely hope moving on with your lives will grant you peace of mind. Truly.

This is why I barely interact with anyone. Nothing but hostility, harassment, and expectation to behave in ways I cannot emotionally commit to. I am exhausted, uninspired, and have such a bad taste in my mouth it's proving extremely difficult to want to do anything creative. It’s been worse with my recent exploration of my gender identity. Opening one door to write about certain things somehow, miraculously, closes ones I previously existed in. I’m practically getting kicked out if I’m not 100% one way or another. I don’t go out of my way to shove my content down your throats. Why you feel the need to come to me and tell me you dislike my existence because you read it, despite me stating this is not for everyone and probably not for you, doesn’t have anything to do with me. Idk what else I can do. Disappear off the face of the planet, I guess. That seems to be what the overall solution is when y’all find something you don’t like. I can't believe I witnessed grown adults in their mid twenties with self-proclaimed senses of rightness start a trend on Twitter to go through people's mutuals and their likes to see if they’re socially acceptable in Fandom spaces or not. That was fucking ridiculous. And especially not fair to those who had their private accounts leaked and put on blast when it was already behind an vetted follower wall. Believe it or not, people draw weird, lewd, diabolical shit. They’re actually being responsible by putting it behind a paywall, or some type of ‘proof of age before following’ requirement. It falls on the people who go on there, take screenshots, and post them publicly for minors and non-consenting individuals to see without filters what was previously hidden. It’s irresponsible and immature.

For fear of getting canceled by the Fandom, I moved all 600+ accounts I was following onto a private alt. I don't interact with my main anymore. I went so far into hiding and didn’t dare share anything about liking content made by people I wasn’t allowed to like, because that’s how cruel it is out here. It's honestly stupid I even felt like I had to do that. For what? People glazed over the brief moment of drama within a few weeks and went right back to posting the same shit they always have. They find new things to gossip about on their privs. New enemies to cancel on Twitter. New things to deem problematic and attack.

I will be heard with this letter. I don’t care to be associated with anyone who treats people like this. I don’t believe in it, I won’t support it, and I’d rather have a small circle of people who won’t be rude or attack other people for existing. I’m not going to sit here and take the abuse any longer. Leave me in peace. There is no reason any of this should be happening.

This is not meant to undermine the support I have gotten from the few who know what I'm going through and have given me the space to figure it out. I appreciate every question answered and insight provided as much as your abilities allow. I'm so grateful for it. I just wish it wasn't 2 people while everyone else is an asshole.

#Happy pride to me I guess!#LGBTQ+#RWBY #consider this my hiatus notice #do better #breaking my silence

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baileypie-writes · 1 year ago

Note

Could you please write a Velvet x reader where like the reader is also a famous pop star 😭🙏 take as much time as you need!

A/N ~ Sure! I’m burnt out from writing one shots, so I decided to do headcanons. I hope that’s okay! This also kinda has a love story at the beginning lol, I just couldn’t help myself. I had so much fun writing this.

~Velvet with a Pop Star S/O~

Fandom: Trolls 3: Band Together

Reader: Gender Neutral

Relationship: Romantic

Warnings: Jealousy(Velvet), rivalry(Velvet and Reader)

~ Velvet used to hate you. She despised you. She wanted to be the number one star, but you were giving her a run for her money. She would make little jabs about you in interviews, and would turn off the radio if one of your songs ever dared to reach her ears.

~ But her hate for you soon turned into interest. One of your songs was trending, and she kept hearing it over and over again. She thought she’d go insane. But the song started growing on her. She became amazed by your choice of lyrics and your singing style. But none of that mattered to her. You were her rival. She couldn’t become a fan.

~ It wasn’t until you and Velvet eventually got to meet that she started to like you. You were so kind, but still fully committed to being her rival. She was amazed by you.

~ You guys had many more interactions, and even followed each other online. Your guys’s friendship and rivalry caught the attention of many of your fans, causing them to start shipping the two of you. Velvet thought it was ridiculous.

That was until you asked her out.

~ She thought you were joking, but you were dead serious. And Velvet realized that so were her feelings for you. So you two started going out, much to your fans’s delight.

~ You guys are still very much rivals, but it’s all in good fun. You congratulate each other when one of your songs beats the other’s in popularity. The loser jokes about beating the winner next time, while the winner earns bragging rights.

~ Velvet expects you to attend all of her shows, and in return, attends all of yours. She prepares a special spot for you that has the best view of the stage. She takes every chance she gets to blow you a kiss or give you a wink from the stage.

~ Velvet secretly wants to have a shared concert with you. Singing with you on the same stage is one of her dreams. Bonus: it would also ring in a lot of money.

~ She loves posting pictures of the two of you on social media. Your guys’s fans love it too. They eat it up every time.

~ Speaking of your fans, they’re obsessed with your relationship. The rivals to friends to lovers story is just too good. There’s always at least one person at one of your guys’s concerts that holds up a sign with your ship name on it. Velvet loves it.

~ She secretly has a few love songs written about you. But she’s too embarrassed to release them. If you ever write one about her though, she’ll love it. It will forever be her favorite song. She’ll even make it her ringtone.

~ Over all, your relationship is really sweet and fun.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~baileypie-writes

#trolls 3 band together #trolls 3 #trolls 3 x reader #trolls 3 velvet #velvet x reader

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donutsbagels · 3 months ago

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I talked about this very recently on my Twitter, due to a less than favorable interaction I had here not even an hour ago. But since the issue occurred on tumblr, I will address it on tumblr. Now I will start off by saying that the love I received on Trini Miku has been overwhelming in the best of ways. To anyone that shared warm comments and reblogs on her— I appreciate all of you wholeheartedly. To anyone you sent me kind and formal dms about their appreciation for her, I appreciate you wholeheartedly. And to all the artists that went above and beyond to make their love for my other work known, which they found through the post— some of which I even became mutuals with, I appreciate you deeply. All of y’all’s kindness will not be forgotten. BUT— I’m going to be real right now, and I will ONLY say this once:

I DO NOT care what your idea of internet etiquette is, I will ALWAYS be a formal person when conversing with strangers. I don’t care if you’re an overly casual person by default, and I don’t care if a skill in formality is something you lack. Again, if we are mutuals/aren’t but you shoot a kindhearted dm/ or want to— this isn’t towards you. This is towards ANYONE who thinks that just because they followed me, that that automatically makes them entitled to being my friend. I am a stranger online, so are yall. NO ONE should be shooting me a random ass ‘yo’ in my dms, and being overtly casual with me, just because you follow me. Just because you follow me does not mean we are friends, and it doesn’t mean I want to be. Some of yall DESPERATELY need to remember what it’s like to converse socially like a normal human being. Just because you follow me does not mean you get to dm me ‘what’s up’ and try to pry how my day is going/how I’m doing— out of NOWHERE like you’re my fucking aunt. And it’s ESPECIALLY a new level of entitlement, to get pissy with me and catch an attitude when I ask for it to stop. That is some parasocial ass behavior, and BELIEVE me when I say— I am not the one. I will not tolerate it, I will not engage in it— and anyone who thinks they are entitled to my friendship because of a drawing and a follow button, will be met with the swiftest reality check/block— I PROMISE you. I am a grown ass 23 year old, who has full authority on who I choose to engage with on my own damn page. Again, if I’ve replied to your asks, your dms, or if you’re a new mutual of mine and we’ve had nice interactions— this ain’t about you. This is towards all who have, and plan on trying to cross a boundary.

#learn to act like a normal person online I beg you

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nickssidewitch · 6 months ago

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🔥 If The Sturniolo Triplets were Musicians 🪩🎤🎸 (Tarot Reading Kinda) 🔥

This is kind of based off of a random tarot reading and spiritual channeling I did recently, but also just something I brainstormed for fun!!

Don’t be afraid of sending asks of other tarot readings you would like to see, even if you would like a personal reading for yourself! I’m open to anything!

Enjoy! 🔥✨

🥶 Matt Sturniolo:

Genre(s): Pop; Soft Rock; Acoustic; some Hip-Hop features. That’s the type of music Matt listens to anyway, so he’s bound to stick to that quota. I can hear his music sounding similar to Olivia Rodrigo, Omar Apollo, Harry Styles, Shawn Mendes, Hozier, and The 1975.

Content of Songs: Introspective Views of Himself, Love, Friendships, Heartbreak, Emotions, Serious Topics such as mental health, and of course, the occasional sexy love-making anthem. Most (if not all) of his songs would be based on personal experiences around these topics. Some of them may be loosely based on observations of experiences that other people, like his friends or family, may go through.

Instrument(s) of Choice: Guitar, Drums, Piano. Matt would definitely eat up these instruments. He seems like a very hands-on type of guy, so having an instrument or a couple of sticks/mallets in his hand would satisfy that when it comes to the instruments he would choose. He would spend months learning and perfecting these instruments, and wouldn’t be afraid of performing with them on stage. He also loves the sound that a natural instrument brings to a song, rather than just electronic or manufactured sounds.

Specialty: Songwriting and Background Vocals (BGVs). He would be noted for his abilities to portray or express any emotion, time period, or setting in his songs’ lyrics. He would spend years of his career evolving his songwriting, and he could also win awards for songwriting alone. He’s also very good would stacking vocals and creating harmonies in the background of the main vocals. If you’ve seen/heard the way artists like Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Jacob Collier, Ariana Grande, or Charlie Puth stack their vocals, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

What Label?: He would sign with Columbia at first, amongst the likes of artists such as Harry Styles, Beyoncé, and Adele, but after a while (or when his contract ends) he will go off on his own and become indie.

Relationship with fans: Cordial with boundaries, but also intimate when meeting fans individually and privately. If you’re familiar with Harry Styles, for example, Matt’s interactions with fans would be quite similar. He will have online interactions with them, but that would decline as the years go by and as he grows in popularity. He would absolutely have a talk with a fan if he meets one on the street somewhere because he feels that a one-on-one conversation would be much more meaningful to that person than just doing autograph signings with a large group of people. He could also chat with a fan in their DMs if he saw something while scrolling through socials about them (i.e. if they painted a portrait of him he would send a DM to thank them, or if a fan randomly said something concerning about their mental health or living situation that randomly popped up on his timeline, he would send them a quick message of encouragement and possibly even help them out financially if need be). He also wouldn’t be afraid of hearing their feedback or criticisms on anything, whether music-related or not.

☔️ Nick Sturniolo:

Genre(s): Pop; Disco; Nostalgic, Experimental; House. Again, this is music that he enjoys to listen to, so it’s something he would be comfortable doing. That doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t branch out though. He could do a couple of acoustic songs as well if he was in the mood to do so (usually the sadder songs). It would have a sound reminiscent of the 80s to the early 2010s, but just very “Nick”. Dua Lipa is a good example of this, but honestly, no artists’ music sounds like the songs I hear in my head that he would make. Again, just very “Nick”.

Content of Songs: From super fun to sad, but nothing depressing. He wants people to feel good when they hear his songs, and wants them to have replay value, even becoming hits that will consistently be played even after his retirement from music.

Instrument(s) of Choice: Electronic Instruments. I feel like Nick would learn little bits of different instruments like basic scales only to do little tune-ups or music production fixes, but he is definitely not someone to play an instrument when he gets on stage or to do a stripped version of a song. He loves the sound of real instruments for sure, but it’s something about just having a universal selection of instruments at your fingertips with just a click of a mouse or tap of drum pad.

Specialty: Production and Music Videos. Nick would LIVE in the studio for days, even WEEKS, to perfect the ensemble of a song or the visuals of a music video. He already is a great photographer, videographer, and an amazing editor for YouTube videos, so why wouldn’t he excel at directing and editing music videos, especially his own? He might be the type to think that no other director, producer, or editor sees his vision for how he wants the video to play out, or hears the song the way that he hears it in his head. Even when he has to meet with other producers to master a song, he’s literally there overseeing everything to make sure they don’t mess up his stylistic choices.

What Label?: Atlantic Records, amongst artists like Melanie Martinez, Ava Max, Kelly Clarkson, Bruno Mars, Charli XCX, and Cardi B.

Relationship with Fans: Interactive, Protective, and Loving. It’s giving “ride or die”. If people come after his fans in a negative way, he will literally protect them and fight off anybody in their way. He’s also the type to interact with fans on social media and wouldn’t be afraid of taking pictures or videos with/for fans. He’s the type to make little games or clues about his next projects, just to stir the fans in a frenzy. He loves his fans dearly and doesn’t forget to say “I love you” with every post he makes, but if his fans are being naughty (i.e. running along with false rumours, posting him and a partner he chooses to keep private, being mean to other fandoms or artists), he’s not afraid of putting them in their place. He’s like the “Momma Bear” of the fandom and will give them tough love if necessary.

🦁 Chris Sturniolo:

Genre(s): Pop; Genre Fusions; Experimental; Hip-Hop/Rap features; some R&B. He’s a man of vast music taste, and so he’s a man of vast genres. He loves to experiment with different genres, even some that he’s only just heard of, and loves to fuse genres together to create something he would call “fire 🔥”. His music would song similar to Frank Ocean, Janelle Monae, RAYE, The Weeknd, Destin Conrad, and SZA. On hip-hop and rap features, he would sing in choruses or sometimes even do a little rap verse for fun, similar to how Justin Bieber does it. One wouldn’t be surprised if he blended his songs with genres like reggae, bachata, or any genre that isn’t your traditional “American” or “popular” genre.

Content of Songs: Love, Heartbreak, Enlightenment, Revival, Fun, Party Anthems. From his own love life, to having fun at parties, to feelings of renewing himself and evolving, Chris would be transparent about his life journey while also giving his audience a chance to have fun for themselves and live in the moment unapologetically.

Instrument(s) of Choice: Guitar, especially electric guitar; bass; electronic instruments. He has signature guitars that his fans know and love, and they even give his guitars little nicknames because of how familiar they are with seeing him playing them. Chris would even call his guitars those fan-given nicknames because of how much he would see them on social media.

Specialty: Live Performances. This man would OWN the stage. His presence would immediately have everyone, even the security guards of the venues, go into a trance. His award show performances would be one of the most talked about of the night, bringing you interesting visuals and new arrangements of his songs.

What Label?: Independent, but many labels would try to scout him. He would also maybe join a friend’s label.

Relationship with Fans: Very Interactive, especially before, during, and after live performances. He loves to interact with fans online, often trolling them about certain conspiracies they may come up with regarding his next projects. He loves to show love to fan-art, edits, and even music reactions on YouTube. He would go on Instagram Lives (or any other streaming platform) for updates on music, touring, etc. He would be the type to bring fans up on stage to dance or sing, or give his microphone to fans in the front row willing to sing their hearts out. He would make jokes on stage or interact with signs. Before and/or after shows, he would talk to his fans, have meet-and-greets, or do little Q&As during sound-checks. And yes, he would crowd-surf.

#sturniolo triplets #matt sturniolo #nick sturniolo #chris sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #nickssidewitch #tarot #tarot reading

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waxingrunes · 9 months ago

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your art is the most realistic art i have seen this fandom spit out i really wish you would make remus shorter and stop making oc’s

This is why I lose enthusiasm for you cunts.

Sick of defending a fucking drawing, a fictional character. Sick of the same agendas in this online world where Remus has to be this fucking wet mop of a man who has one singular personality trope of being obsessed with Sirius Black and wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Have you met real men? You ever interacted with your average Joe, who is a bit shy, bit awkward, bit of a weirdo but he doesn’t have to come with a pre installed stutter and helpless heart eyes and no other arsenal but a goo goo gaga state of mind for his love interest. You lot are unhealthily obsessed. Daily, fucking, bullshit, daily headcanons, daily this, daily that.

My Remus and Sirius are never going to change. What’s insane is the amount of ‘heteronormative’ claims I see attached to this debacle of height and size. I know a man, who is exceptionally tall, built, has had a boyfriend, and topped him the entire way through the relationship. He did not enjoy bottoming, and yet is a bisexual individual, nothing ‘stereotypical’ homosexual about him or his appearance whatsoever. In fact, he’s very much a Remus variant in my eyes; he is softly natured, introverted, and selective socially and STILL A STONY TOP. Real life, real person, not curated from a thread you found on Twitter and have swallowed up whole.

What happened to coming into a fandom space, making something and going, “that’s hot”. When did it become a space to make sure every representation was ticked, to make sure one character isn’t too this or too that. I’m not here to read the same stories or see the same art 100 times over. I fell in love with these two men and have since had a very solid image of them in my head and create art based off of those ideas. I don’t feel pressured to make sure I give my Remus certain soft traits to justify making him look the way I do. I don’t feel the need to advertise Sirius being this massively charismatic guy just to give him a personality because otherwise you might think he doesn’t have one, because of the slightly more feminine light I draw him in (which is misogynistic you dumb fucks). Just because, I draw my Remus tall and a buffed out lank, does not make him an ultra turbo Alpha. Just because I draw my Sirius smaller, does not mean he is a helpless twink. But here’s the secret nobody’s telling you— even if I did draw them like that, even if those were my holy canons and preferences for these boys, that’s okay. I’m here to create things that make me go, “fuck yeah that’s hot”, “hell yeah I want to see Sirius get pulverised by Remus and no I don’t want to see Remus get pulverised by Sirius and no I don’t feel the need to defend that”, “yeah I prefer tough love over easy love”, “absolutely love it when one of them is a dick to the other and there’s heaps of toxic tension, or maybe they’re both like that and they’re both sarcastic pricks that have to work it out”. I’m never going to adhere to the obsession of character moulds you lot have created.

Sick of this space being turned into a political pansy parade. It’s alright if you want to draw this gay couple with any features you want, hyper masculine, hyper feminine, somewhere in the middle, trans, prefer one of them topping, prefer them to be asexual, prefer them to be toxic and have grit (that’s my trope), or just want easy fluff. And it’s also alright if you’re just in fandom because you’re a bit perverted (like me) and wanted to explore that in a couple you found super fucking hot. Don’t let people use the word fetishise, don’t let people use the word heteronormative, don’t let people bamboozle you with big words and reams of bullet points to incite shame, don’t let people box you in, just keep watching the porn, keep consuming the porn, keep avoiding the shit you want to avoid, and enjoy what you want without shame.

#you’re all clapped #sirius #Remus #ask

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freewillacquired · 4 months ago

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PSA: Some important OOC things I need my RP partners to know

{out of mutations} Hello, everyone. I was just made aware by a (now former) friend that I unintentionally hurt them very badly to the point of them ceasing to write with me and to block me. That is absolutely their prerogative, and I don’t blame them at all for doing so, nor do I bear them any ill will for their choice. Everyone needs to cultivate their own safe spaces on this site and to do what is best for their own mental health.

However, the points that they raised in their final message to me were important and very much opened my eyes to how careless I’ve been with how I’ve conducted myself as an rper and a blogger, and as a friend in general. It also made me aware that things that I’ve been trying to handle on my own offline and to not let affect how I run my blogs or manage friendships… are things that I really need to make my friends and rp partners aware of, because they are having clear consequences.

You all deserve to understand how I work as an online person you connect with, so that you can each make individual choices on whether or not you wish to continue writing with me or interacting through messages in the future. I’ll place this below a cut, and if you read all of it, I thank you for your time.

I mean for this simply to be an informative post that will explain a little bit about what I’ve been going through lately and how it is affecting my ability to function online. Life has gotten very crazy for me, I am having memory problems, and I have way too much activity/muses/blogs. All of these things together have created some problems with how I interact with folks on this site, and so I want to explain a little so you all understand. If, after reading this, you decide that I am too high maintenance for you, that I can’t give you the level of writing or messaging interaction that you prefer, or if you have any other issues with what I say, I fully understand and support any decision you make going forward. I hope that by beieng a bit embarrassingly candid that I can prevent what I inadvertently did to my friend from ever happening again, because I feel absolutely horrible about it. Alright, let’s get into this.

I don’t go looking for new people to interact with on any of my blogs anymore. I’ve stopped following new people unless we actually start writing together, I never message new people because of my anxiety, and I don’t want to attract more activity because I’m not managing what I have now well at all. The past few years of my life have been disastrous for many reasons (work, family, health, etc.), and I am looking to downsize muses and blogs, so I don’t reach out to new people anymore. If they reach out to me, I do my best to accommodate them, because I have never been good at saying no or disappointing people as a consequence of my social anxiety. But otherwise, I don’t want to attract more activity when I know I already don’t have enough time and focus to maintain the activity I already have. So if you have followed me because of the rp etiquette of “if I follow I want to interact,” and I don’t follow back, it doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t want to write with you. Sometimes that is true. When I get followed I read the person’s rules. If I can’t find your rules, or if I see a rule that I feel I violate or would easily violate unintentionally, then I don’t look to write with you. However, there are times when someone follows and I think… oh wow, I’d love to write with them. But as I said, I have too many blogs/muses right now, so I feel it’s irresponsible to go looking for new connections when I don’t really properly maintain the ones I have. I don’t want to close my blogs for new interactions, per se, but I don’t go seeking out more activity either.

But the main reason I wanted to write this is to explain some issues I’ve been having with my memory lately. In the past four years, I’ve had Covid twice and I’ve been put on medications for an immunodeficiency illness, and both of those things have very much made my memory and my ability to keep track of things very poor. I am getting people confused on this site that I never did before, I weirdly repeat myself in posts, I am forgetting what I said in one thread vs. another, I’m forgetting to message people back, or I’ll promise to send in asks or whatever and then never do it. I also tend to get very confused between people who write the same characters, since all I have to go on is a url and an icon if I don’t know the person in real life. I’ve gotten rpers mixed up before because it’s all very jumbled in my head. Sometimes that makes people feel like I am being rude, inconsiderate, or that I don’t care about them, but that isn’t true. I genuinely just can’t hold onto thoughts and memories the way I could a few years ago. I’ve even had to leave my career field, for safety reasons because making stupid mistakes or forgetting to do things since my memory has been affected by Covid and my medications.

The issue of my memory is something that I’ve been in denial about because it’s a scary and upsetting thing, and I guess I’ve been trying to chalk it up to stress or whatever, but clearly that’s not the case, and I need to accept that I have a real problem. In recent months, I have not only gotten people mixed up, but I have done things like list the top 5 people of something and leave someone out, or say someone was the best or only person I wrote with when others write the same character, or replied to one person’s thread thinking I was writing to different person. Sometimes they are close friends of mine, or I’ve been writing with them longer than the ones I listed. Why would I not remember them? How could I screw things like this up? I don’t know. It’s disturbing to not be able to trust your memory, it honestly is.

When I don’t know people in person and all I see is a url and an icon, I sometimes get very confused. This has always been true for me, since way back with AIM in the 90s, but in recent years it’s been compounded by my memory issues. Thread plots and things get all jumbled in my head. I just wrote a thread the other day where I replied to someone and I thought I was replying to another person’s same version of that character. It was mortifying and I felt really bad. If this happens to you, or if I get your version confused in an OOC post, or if I compliment someone else’s version but not yours, it doesn’t mean your version is crap or doesn’t mean anything to me, it’s just that I’m having some focus and memory issues that are causing me to forget versions sometimes or to blend them together in my head. I will take greater care not to make such mistakes in the future, but when dealing with something like a buggy memory, it’s really hard.

People frequently change urls too, which is another thing that often throws me off, because then in my mind, it’s a totally different, new person until I have enough repetition to associate the new url with the person behind the old one. The number of blunders I’ve made recently with saying to people, “I’m sorry, who is this again?” has been staggering and very embarrassing for me. Like just having to ask that question is incredibly mortifying, but I need to do it more instead of trying to reply on my memory and then making very hurtful mistakes.

I have not been keeping up with things on this site as well as I should have in recent years, and that is a failing of mine. Personal relationships have suffered. Connections I’ve made here have fallen apart. I feel like it’s very much getting away from me in an overwhelming manner and I’m not sure how to fix it, other than downsizing blogs and muses, which I’m trying to do now. But that won’t fix my memory, so I’ll likely keep making mistakes even if I downsize. I ask that you please be patient with me, and if you think I’ve made a mistake or haven’t remembered something, please let me know. If doing that is too much trouble for you or you feel like you shouldn’t have to, I totally understand, and if you would feel more comfortable not interacting with me anymore, I respect your decision.

A word about how bad I am with messages… I have very bad social anxiety and messaging people sometimes causes me to have panic attacks or to feel very jittery or overwhelmed. For like, no reason. Even with good, close friends. It’s like…. brain, why. Because of this, I will usually not answer messages until and unless I am in a good headspace to do so. Or it could just be that I don’t have the time if it’s something I’m writing a really long reply to that I want to put adequate thought into. Whatever the reason, I frequently won’t answer right away because I need time to think of a response, or something else is making me anxious so I don’t feel up to replying. I fully intend to reply later, but then the poor memory kicks in, and I forget. Before I know it, I’ve sometimes got people angry that I have been ghosting them for months when I completely forgot I even got a message in the first place. I am kindly asking you to not take this personally. I’ve been doing a lot of this lately. Sometimes, to compound issues, this site doesn’t even tell me that I have messages in the first place, which for someone whose memory is screwed up, is seriously frustrating. I never ignore people unless I think they’re a bot, heh. So please, if you messaged me and I seem to just have completely ignored you, it's okay to message again and ask if I saw it. In fact, I encourage you to do that, because between Dumblr and my own memory, I have really been forgetting to message people back a lot lately, and it’s something I do feel badly about.

One thing I want to make very clear, is that I NEVER fault anyone for taking a hiatus, whether it’s three weeks or three years. Real life comes first, this is a hobby not a job, it should be fun, and if it ceases to be fun or feasible to keep up with then everyone needs to do what’s best for them, and I am perfectly fine with that. Hell, I’ve been taking more hiatuses in the past year than I’ve actually been around to write, because of various work, health, and family issues/obligations. I’m on a partial hiatus right now and likely through next week for jury duty, in fact. I never fault anyone for needing to step away. I’ve had people come back after like five years and still want to write and that’s fine. So if you’ve come out of hiatus and I’m “ignoring” you, it might be that I didn’t see your message, that I don’t remember who you were because of a url change or if it’s been many months or years, or that I don’t even know you’re back. Jog my memory as to what we were writing about, some of our plots and things, and I’m sure that I will remember. Unfortunately, my memory is just not great anymore, it’s a reality that I’ve struggled to come to terms with in recent years.

Also, and this is going to sound very rude I know, but it’s again… just my new normal and reality with regard to my memory. I really don’t have the time or focus to keep track of when everyone leaves or comes back from hiatus or for how long. Maybe this is bad rp etiquette on my part, but I don’t frequently read other people’s blogs or even scroll my dash that much anymore. I just don’t have the time. If I think of it for certain people that I haven’t heard from in a while or that I want to check in on, I may pop onto your blog, but most of the time I do tend to miss a lot of everyone’s OOC posts. I come on to write and then I go back to work (my current job is entirely online), or I go about my family obligations (I take care of my grandmother around the clock). Gone are the days when I used to keep in better touch with people or read all their OOC posts. It’s a combination of not having enough free time to do so and that I’ve really gotten crazy with the number of blogs and muses I have, and so I write with a multitude of people that I just can’t all keep track of. This is a problem of mine, I know, and I am in the process of whittling down my schedule and number of muses to help correct it as much as possible. But just because I didn’t know it was your birthday, or I didn’t like your hiatus post, or I didn’t respond to that post you wrote that said you were really sad and needed someone to talk to… doesn’t mean I don’t care. I do care a lot about people. I tend to soak up people’s problems and sadnesses like a sponge, unfortunately. I just don’t have the time to keep up with all the people I write with all the time. If there is something you really want/need me to know, message me. I know I said I often postpone replying for when I feel more up to doing so, but if it’s something very urgent or important, I will respond ASAP.

One last thing I was to address… please don’t let something that is upsetting you fester to the point where you’re seriously hurt by it. I never intentionally mean to hurt anyone. If anything, I am the most nonconfrontational, people-pleasing person you’ll meet. So if it appears that I’ve done or said or not done something that was really rude, or upset you, or that you feel was very wrong of me to do to you, I promise you it was not done with intention to hurt you. Please come talk to me about it. Don’t let it just sit for a long time and make you angry because I’m likely not even aware that you’re upset. I would like the opportunity to look at what happened and to address it, so that you can feel better and I can be made aware of what I did so as to try to avoid doing so in the future. The last thing I ever want to do to someone is make something into a painful thing they’ll carry with them for a long time. Believe me, I’m the kind of person who still remembers things from early childhood that hurt me and have stayed with me forever. Things have happened on this site, some my fault and some not my fault, that have haunted me for years because I end up feeling so terrible about it. I know that’s probably a product of my chronic anxiety, but even so, it doesn’t feel good at all and I would never want to do that to another person. So please bring something to my attention as soon as it happens so that it can be addressed, fixed, or at the very least explained.

Alright, I think that’s everything I wanted to address. I've tried to be as open and honest and I could possibly be. If this post changes your mind about wanting to interact with me, I understand. You all have to do what is best for you. I just wanted to be transparent with people because hurting someone badly really made me realize that this isn’t something that I can just dance over and hope it’ll all be okay. I’m now aware that it’s affecting real things and real people in negative ways, and so I wanted to make everyone aware.

Sorry for all the word vomit, but I thought this was very important to do. Again, if you’ve read to this point, thank you for taking that time to do so. I will continue to try to do as much as I can to conduct myself in a respectful manner with all of you, and I look forward to writing with those who still want to.

#{ out of mutations } ᵒᵒᶜ

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brf-rumortrackinganon · 8 months ago

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I keep getting called a Karen by a few women at my work and I don’t know what to do, as I am a white woman and the women bullying me are in fact black women, and I’ve not done anything other than just started my new job there and all I can think is that they didn’t like me asking questions about what it’s like there etc. and I didn’t say or do anything that can be considered or said to be racist? One of them said as we were finishing that nobody would side with a white woman over them and they’d spread my name online and end me. I’m seriously depressed about this whole situation as my new job was a move and promotion that I wanted for a long time and now with these women targeting me I don’t know what to do. As who will believe me as it doesn’t seem like these sort of women bullying me are ever going to be stopped doing what they’re doing to innocent women like me that have seriously not done anything wrong as even though I’m a left wing progressive woman I don’t feel that non-minorities are listened to by these sort of faux claims of racism, sexism and bullying /abuse etc.

First, if you haven't already, you need to loop your boss and HR in immediately. Right now. If your boss or HR admin is one of these ladies, go above her. Stick just to the facts about what happened when you report what's happening. If you already have reported it, follow up. Say "The issues I reported to you on XX date are still happening and it's still causing (or now causing) X, Y, Z impact to A, B, C deliverables/results, and they are also now making B and C threats of retaliation. What suggestions do you have to address this?"

Second, lock your social media down tight. Restrict your visibility to friends only. Exclude your accounts/profiles from searches.

Third, document. Document, document, document. Every interaction you have with these ladies. Everything you've said, everything they've said, as verbatim as possible as you can remember. Include dates, times, locations, and witnesses/bystanders. If there's any harassment over messages (emails, texts, Slack, etc.) include screenshots in your write-ups. Do it immediately after every interaction you have with each one of them, whether individually or in groups. Also document every discussion you've had with your boss(es) and/or HR about these ladies/these situations too.

After writing it up, immediately email it to yourself - your work email and your personal email. If you have your own printer, print them out too and keep paper files in a locked drawer the ladies don't have access to or at your home.

This documentation is important because it creates a paper trail. If the ladies escalate, you have documentation proving your role (or lack thereof). If the company fails to protect you, you have documentation describing and showing what they didn't do.

I'm just going to be direct here. We live in a time where white people - white women especially - have to be very careful about what we say and do. It doesn't matter what our allyship is or our politics or what we think is right or how much credibility someone does or doesn't have. So when you make these reports, when you do this documentation, leave all of that out of it. Stick only to the facts, which is "I was in Conference Room 1 with Jane, Lisa, Sue, and Joe on Tuesday, April 2, 2024, for a discussion about X that took place between 1:30pm - 2:15pm. {{Discussion summary}} At approximately 2:15pm when the meeting ended, I said A. Lisa said B, then Joe said C. Our interaction ended at approximately 2:20pm when I returned to my office alone." Leave the feelings out, leave the justification out, leave your perspective out, leave your allyship and your politics out. Stick only to the facts.

If I had to guess about what's happening here, it's probably that one of those ladies applied for your job, didn't get the position, and now she's taking it out on you and enlisted her friends to help.

And if you'd like more help, take a look at Ask A Manager. She's an HR manager who has a ton of experience in managing people and the blog is an amazing resource for any/all kinds of career advice. Here are a bunch of here pages about dealing with bullies and toxic colleagues that you might find helpful as well.

#anon advice

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russilton · 5 months ago

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it *was* a little iffy how lewis said he wasn't aware of george's abuse by his fans when spinz was actively being shady. As a fan of both, it bothered me. What do you make of it?

I would chalk that one up to PR talk… cause yeah, it absolutely wasn’t great but also what did you expect him to say? “Yeah I knew about it but-“ was never going to happen, and arguably makes him look worse, or, like he’s being forced into caring about it now by a second party, and that fuels more conspiracies.

I personally really dislike the thing we sometimes see where people are angry about something, the person involved apologises and actually does what we’ve been calling them to do, and then people… pick holes in the apology and try to find ways to still be mad.

It’s like when Merc apologised for their first trophy comment. You can be mad something happened at all, but you can’t expect them to jump in a Time Machine and go back to un do it. Learning and owning up to mistakes is actually what I WANT to see people do. Lewis’ history of doing that is why I like him so much.

This is not a black and white view, I’ve stayed mad more than once- but in this case fans have been mad for years he did nothing, now he’s said sorry I didn’t know, but people shouldn’t do that… and people are just going how dare you not know.

It’s one thing to roll your eyes and move on, but a lot of the time I see people looking for a way to remain on an angry high horse and that shit is exhausting.

As I said yesterday I can’t stand whataboutism, and prior abuse does not give Lewis the right to ignore his fans behaviour, but I really can’t separate this from the fact Lewis has faced far worse abuse, frequently racist, from his teammates fans for decades, and very few people ever stuck up for him. No one made Alonso or Max apologise for their fans racist behaviour, in fact their drivers were allowed to defend them and blame Lewis for inciting it upon himself. I can frankly really see why Lewis genuinely never saw it as something he needed to address, especially since George himself seemed fine.

So for that, I’m glad he has, I’m glad for something when I expected nothing, and I can remain in the world of comfortably reminding people that both George and Lewis frequently defend and stick up for each other beyond the general required capacity as teammates. I care more about how they personally interact with each other than the state of idiot fans online.

As for spinz, I don’t like the guy, I haven’t liked him for a long time, but since the scummy tweet likes he’s also commented on George’s posts, praised him, and photographed him. I trust George to decide how he feels about the guy, and he’s clearly been comfortable with him in person.

If we start measuring up how George’s friends have been shitty about things online, we will be in an endless cycle of terrible. I don’t police my friends likes, if I did far less of them would post about ships I hate. I personally don’t expect Lewis to be keeping up with the posts his friends like even if it is about him.

People can argue it all they want, I really don’t think they’re online much, I have a less travel intensive stressful job with less hours, and I struggle to be online some days. It wouldn’t surprise me if the guys who routinely practice willpower exercises over eating things they enjoy, were able to cut our social media from their diet so to speak

TLDR: didn’t expect it, glad he’s said it, hopefully people will be sensible but they probably won’t, I’m personally content with it.

#asks #anonymous #wank/rants #mark’s driver meta

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grapefruit-personified · 8 months ago

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I know this is an unpopular opinion but I have to be honest I see people already trying to bully korbin online and I have to be honest cyberbullying and our own hateful comments gets us nowhere and it needs to stop. The perk about social media is you can block people or simply not follow them or even filter posts but going out of our way to start being asses is so unnecessary. The girl is 20 we have no idea what all she herself has been through or why she has these views but going on her socials just to to start the bullying is so unnecessary let her teammates and coaches handle it. On top of that if her teammates can keep it professional and she can keep it professional then why do we always have to add to the dumpster fire? Why can’t we just watch the fire burn by itself?

To be clear I knew when she signed to PSG she would be this type of person so I just didn’t follow nor do i comment on her posts or anything of the sort which isn’t hard to do. I don’t even like her her picture and biblical post already were red flags for me i could care less if she likes someone like me or not. Does it suck that she reposts or retweets that stuff? Absolutely but at least she’s showing who she is and not hiding it which I would rather she do than pretend like she’s okay with me. I have known people like her personally and overtime these things handle themselves.

If there is such a problem with her rather than doing cyberbullying and/or spreading more hate on her socials how about we write the coaches and so on. It’s literally the best way to remove her. Most of us will never interact with her in person so what is the point of us becoming hateful and starting up this hate filled speech with someone else that’s hateful does it really get us anywhere? Believe me when I say I didn’t want her at PSG or the USWNT and I want her and her beliefs gone but me being a keyboard warrior with everyone else does nothing but mentally hurt someone else and with everything our generations have been through and interviews I have heard from players I might hate her but I don’t hate her enough to break her and then hear about her kicking the can on the news.

Like i said it’ll probably be an unpopular opinion and I’m sure individuals will say she deserves everything coming her way tenfold but I don’t want to be associated to anything having to do with woso or lgbt if it gets to a point where there’s serious harassment and bullying happening that causes her or some other athletes to break or 🪦.

*** TRIGGER WARNING FOR TALKS OF SELF HARM*****

I agree that bullying her does nothing but stoop to her level. However, using the fact that she is younger as an excuse for her behavior is also something I won't let pass. She has been sharing this stuff up until very recently, she knows what she is sharing, and she knows who she is harming. Being 20 does not excuse bigotry. We don't know the environment she makes within a team and we don't know if her teammates are actually just dandy with playing with her but have to due to this thing called a contact.

You might be ok with her being like this, but many aren't. You mention how you don't want to basically add on to the risk of her hurting herself, but what about the kids and others she is affected by the words she is spewing. At the end of the day she does represent the team many have found safety in and while we all know other players share the same views they have all seemingly been very accepting of queer individuals, having a player so outwardly hostile towards the majority of the fan base is a different level. I don't agree with bullying her to cause her harm but she should face public backlash for shitty opinions.

Mental health is a major issue in athletics, but her opinions that do nothing but harm others and cause others to end their own lives don't get brushed under the rug because people worry she will hurt herself. AGAIN I state forcing someone to stand behind their statements and opinions and forcing someone to see the harm they are doing is not harassment or bullying it is her simply having to live up to the shit she says.

#ask and ye shall be answered #woso #uswnt #ussf #korbin albert

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toki-is-the-king · 1 month ago

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Big LOL

@ the people who won’t stop shitting on me for being a system/people trying to fake claim me because my DID doesn’t look like the person they know or someone they saw in the media, kindly get the fuck off my page.

You don’t know my personal life, the severe amount of fucking trauma I’ve been through, or how fucking hard we have fought to not kill ourselves. This disorder isn’t fun or quirky or cute. Yes I have some alters from fictional media, but that’s a very small fraction of my alters let alone my DID, most of which I don’t post online. Many of my alters don’t post or don’t interact because they are very traumatized. Toki allows us a break from the trauma and is usually very happy and carefree and he loves making friends so that’s why he is allowed to have a social media, but it is monitored by myself and and another alter.

Sorry that a Toki alter formed in my brain after I was abused and sexually assaulted lol guess I should’ve controlled that. Like do you guys realize how lame you sound? I don’t control or decide who forms in my system. when you have DID alters can continue to form throughout your life after traumatic events occur or if the host is too overwhelmed and can’t handle life.

Each alter forms over time and it’s more of a shock to me than any one when someone appears in my system. I didn’t know watching Metalocalypse back in 2019 and finding comfort in it would end up with me developing Toki. But that’s what happens with DID. Your brain is constantly looking for an escape from trauma and dissociation is our escape. We are a diagnosed traumagenic system. I don’t need your approval or to be told you need to be ‘convinced’ of my DID. My therapists and psychiatrists opinion matters way more than some anonymous asshole online.

Last time I’m saying this, no hate will be tolerated on my page. I’m all for having discussions but it is not my job to convince a random stranger online of my disorder. You don’t know me. What you see online is a very small percentage of our life.

#no hate #dissociative system #traumagenic system #rant #I’m over you fuckers #did system #did stuff #complex ptsd #diagnosed did #haters get fucked #traumagenic #dissociative identity disorder #did

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ceilidho · 10 months ago

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Hi, really strange question, so feel free to ignore, but how do you deal with the constant surge of content - art, really. You seem to be a generally more well known/viewed blog, and so I'm sure you've developed quite a community on here, whether it be people you know or interactions with other artists. And I've been following you for quite some time, and I always get excited when I see the "updated now" for your blog. But (here is my actual question), do you ever get overwhelmed knowing that you can't read/see/experience everything? I'm very new to social media, and online spaces in general, and it's generated this fear in me that if I don't keep up with what has been posted by those I follow, I am now suddenly lost. Missing a piece of what should have been catalogued in my mental history. Fanfiction has become such a relief in my life now, and I've gained this new appreciation for human creativity and the beauty of sharing yourself in your art. But I am constantly left wondering that if I miss something, will I also miss an opportunity. I love learning more, and reading, and viewing; appreciating beauty in this lifetime, but I don't know how to combat the overwhelming feeling when I cannot keep up with those who I admire, what's left of me, simply as a viewer?

Oh absolutely!!!! I wrote about this in another post around the traditional publishing industry in general and this overwhelming sense of FOMO that’s super evident in both readers and writers (for readers, that they won’t be part of the current discourse and won’t be part of the reading community, and for writers that they won’t keep up with demand and lose their reader base to other more prolific writers or just to new trends in general because to be honest, the constant microtrends in the book community are hard to keep up with even if you are a relatively fast writer).

I think I’m lucky that for some reason I tend to write very fast - I have a solid backlist of ideas, when I do sit down to write it tends to all come out at once, I (fingers crossed) haven’t dealt with a really bad bout of writers block in awhile - but yeah even I sometimes have moments where I feel guilty that I’m not writing enough. I think it’s super easy to feel like people are simply going to forget about you if you take any time off or if you start a multi chaptered fic and it takes you awhile to finish it.

And I won’t lie, sometimes that pressure isn’t just imagined! Most people that leave comments like “more people!” “Part 2??” “I need more of this!!” are simply expressing their love and I understand that, like I’m not completely insensitive to that (some creators tend to take it very very personally and I understand that too but I think we all have to have a little bit of grace and understanding and give each other the benefit of the doubt), but I will say that I have gotten some seriously rude comments before about taking too long to finish a fic. There is a grain of truth to the fear that some readers will lose their patience with you for simply taking your time to write.

I experience this more as a “creator” rather than a reader (tbh I don’t feel much guilt about not being able to keep up with what my mutuals are posting because I know it’s always there for me when I’m ready) - although actually now that I’m saying this, I take that back. I do sometimes feel very very guilty when I don’t have time to get into a friend’s fic. Oh wow yeah that was a huge lie, I DEFINITELY have felt extremely guilty before about not having enough time to read someone’s fic and feeling like I’m letting them down in some way and not adequately supporting them. Yikes. Goes to show ya.

I am hoping that as more and more people become aware of this that people will start appreciating slowness and ephemerality - taking your time to read or write something, starting incomplete fics just to appreciate them even if they’re short lived or never completed, forgiving yourself for not being able to read everything or write everything right now and realizing that you’ll get to it when you get to it. It’s easier said than done and I do feel guilty sometimes about perpetuating this by being a very fast writer, but yeah! Unfortunately it’s sort of on each of us to do this since the very medium of social media demands instant gratification - tumblr and ao3 (the latter by virtue of being an archive) are perhaps the least egregious of them, but it’s definitely in the nature of social media to induce this kind of behaviour.

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izicodes · 1 year ago

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I want to get into coding but I’m scared about working for a company and talking to people lol and I don’t think I’m creative enough. what do meetings and the job consist of? i have this assumption in the back of my mind like “what more is there to say/do other than code a website?” haha hope this is ok to ask! it’s super vague tbh I can’t find anything that touches base to a specific level enough online.

also, I’m not a math genius… very insecure about that since high/middle school. do I still have a chance? how does math go into coding?

Hiya! 💗

I completely understand how you feel because I felt the exact same thing when I started working at my current workplace.

Working for a company

Many coding jobs do require collaboration and communication with others. However, it's important to remember that not all coding roles involve extensive social interaction. There are positions where you can work independently or have limited interaction with colleagues.

In my case, I work in the office Monday and Friday. Mondays are when everyone in the whole IT Department is in, except those who are off or on holiday etc. This is what I do:

I walk in

sit at my desk near the window

headphones in

code - occasionally turn around and annoy the Lead Web Developer with cries because my code isn't working (he then solves it in 10 seconds...)

At around 2:30pm is an IT meeting in the conference room. What do we discuss?

IT manager discusses any updates as an IT department as a whole. Any concerns about the technology used in the company. Any bootcamps we need to do internally, how was everyone's holidays, a little gossip.

Then everyone takes turns and discuss what they did the past week

That's it.

That's my company but I assume it's something similar for other companies. It's also important to know not everyone in the IT Department are web developers or work on building websites, not even in the sub-department Dev Team. Our Dev team are 6 members and only 2 (me and the Lead Web Developer) are web developers, so work on the company's websites. The other guys are very script-building and database oriented. All I do is code websites.

Maths in coding

Depends on what you're coding. I work with websites, I use Year 11/Grade 10 level of maths - it's not hard. As a reference, I stopped learning maths as a subject at school at a Year 13/12th Grade level and the stuff I'm using is way easier than what I learnt last - stuff my little sister, who's 14, can understand.

I chose web development because of the little maths. Some people have told me "Oh you'll encounter it one day" - I still haven't after 2 years. I use C# and JavaScript at work and still do very little maths. Maybe loops? I know if you're going to study computer science at university you will have to learn a good amount of maths, definitely harder than what I use!

Here is a list of the maths I use daily, that I can think of:

Arithmetic

Algebra

Logic and Boolean Algebra

Basic Algorithms

That's it. Maybe if I learnt the maths need in programming to the max, it might make my life easier when I am working on my personal projects, but my life is already easy with the little maths I know so I'm good for now.

Designing websites is less maths-y and more... designing in my opinion and experience. "I drew out this design for the website... how do I do I code that?" literally me every time I start a project.

Again, other fields in Computer Science would require more maths knowledge so research that field you want o go into and Google/ChatGPT "What maths is needed in [field name]?"

Hope this helps, my advice may not be the best since coming from a web dev point of view but it's still advice! Good luck 😎🙌🏾💗

#my asks #codeblr #coding #programming #progblr #studyblr #studying #comp sci #tech #coding advice #career advice post

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redd956 · 2 years ago

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Writing Characters with Varying Empathy, Sympathy, & Compassion

Prt.1 Empathy

First of all, let’s put down the elephant in the room. Lately online there has been a lot of misinformation over the factors of empathy, sympathy, and compassion. So first we need to define how these things differ from each other, and what exactly they are.

The Difference

There is a big difference between these three, made significant by how groups of people tend to overreact and get these terms mixed up, causing unnecessary drama. So...

Empathy

The ability to feel, share and/or understand someone else’s pain/emotions from their standpoint.

Sympathy

The ability to acknowledge and feel pity for someone else’s pain/emotions.

Compassion

Action in good faith deriving from thoughts and feelings from empathy and/or sympathy, to relieve someone else of a negative emotion/pain.

Examples

Character A is sad, because a family member of theirs passed away

Character B cries seeing Character A cry, thinking of their own family member, and imagining how tough it also must be for Character A. They go through the motions together that night, finding comfort in each other. -Usage of empathy

Character B frowns at the sight of Character A crying, knowing what had happened. They waltz into the room, readying a comforting pat. “I’m so sorry, Character A.”, They whisper, leaning up against them, and clasping their shaking hand. -Usage of sympathy

Character B sits beside Character A, a large bowl of their favorite ice cream in hand. “Hey Character A, I heard what happened and I just couldn’t stop thinking about how bad that must be. I brought you some ice cream, it could help with the sore throat from all this crying.” - Usage of Compassion

The Variation Aspect

It is important to note that having empathy doesn’t inherently make someone a better or good person, same goes to lacking empathy making people villainous. There are natural variations of empathy among people, and these do not dictate whether or not someone is more likely to follow what societal alignment or another.

People with high empathy can still be awful, just as those with low empathy can still be kind souls. Empathy levels are detached from morals and ideologies, which is an important notion to make when creating characters.

Average Empathy

Average empathy is being able to feel and express empathy of course at an average level. They have an easy time sharing their emotions, and feeling when someone is going through a particular emotion. They simply experiencing empathy as expected an as most due, and don’t share the same realities as those with heightened empathy, and lower empathy.

Heightened Empathy

Empaths or those with Hyper Empathy are people who have heightened empathy. Some people can be this way naturally, but more commonly hyper empathy can be a side effect to having mental illness, such as PTSD, BPD, or ADHD.

(BPD and ADHD can also have lack of empathy as a side effect)

Obviously, empaths feel more empathy than the average person, this leads to both pros and cons, one more than the other depending on which angle you look at it. Empaths share others’ emotions at a noticeable intensity compared the average. They can more easily spot emotional differences, unearth other people’s masks, and are sensitive to tiny changes in mood. They take the other person’s pain as their own very seriously, as others

Because of this crowds of people can be incredibly overwhelming. Human interaction is more emotionally draining, and they can get socially burnt out far quicker than the average person. Empaths have a difficult time setting boundaries with others. They are often labeled over emotional, and sensitive. With empathy having such positive connotations, many assume that empaths have it easier and live a whimsical life.

Lower Empathy

Those with empathy lower than the average don’t have it easy either, as just like empaths, it drastically affects life, especially socially. Different neurotypes, those with mental illnesses, head trauma, psychological trauma, and more can lead to lacking empathy in one way or another. More well known those with cluster B disorders infamously get their bad reputation due to low empathy.

Those with lower empathy have a difficult time taking on and sharing other people’s emotions. Because of this they can struggle to understand and relate to other’s experiences. They have harder time coping with emotional situations, and can easily misinterpret the emotions/emotional responses of others. Their emotions themselves can seem callus, and inappropriate to situations.

All of this leads to difficulty in decision making related to others, social struggles, and trouble fitting in with societal standards. Lack of empathy itself can range drastically. For many it makes them more susceptible to negative and potential dangerous behaviors, as well as a lack of healthy self-esteem. This has lead to people with low empathy being vilified, especially in media.

OH YEAH IM A WRITING BLOG-

When writing a character with varying empathy there’s definitely a lot to consider. Especially since their levels of compassion or sympathy can vary themselves, separate from empathy.

You want to avoid

Using empathy related terms incorrectly, but especially disorder/medical terms related to these things incorrectly

Making a character evil solely because their empathy is low

Making a character a pure hero solely because their empathy is high

Things to consider about a character’s empathy

How a character reacts to situations based on a mixture of their empathy, compassion, and sympathy

If you’re character is lacking empathy, how are they handling sympathy

Are their reactions realistic

How a character’s morals and ideals differ from their empathy

Character dynamics formed by a difference or similarity in empathy

Characters in a group reacting differently based on their empathy, sympathy, and compassion

One character displaying empathy more, while another displays sympathy more

How the character feels about their own level of empathy

How their empathy affects them in their worldbuilding

Do proper research if you’ve decided you want a character with a level of empathy

To be continued, Hopefully here -> [ ] [ ]

Maybe, HeavenlySoup this is a sign of me trying to come up with writing refs for heroic and empathetic characters for those with low empathy to understand, maybe you my dear love, are my guinea pig?

#writing empathy #empathy #low empathy #high empathy #empath #lack of empathy #writing #writing mental illness #writing disability #cluster b

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