#I’m aware I’m complaining about this on a social media platform

[morganbritton132]

I think a lot about how I was nineties kid so I grew up with technology and I’m so sick of it. I’m sick of social media. I’m sick of tvs that look like computers and that everything breaks after a couple years. I’m sick of subscriptions and AI, and how all social media now is bots and people cannibalizing other people’s creativity. I’m sick of people trying to sell things to me every fifteen minutes in a YouTube video.

I’m tired.

[shayshaybiscuit25]

It’s late, no grammar check. lol yes, I’m about to vent. Stay with me. This is mainly to the problematic individuals in this fandom and I’m sure they’ll reveal themselves by responding….because well they simply can’t help themselves. Hit dogs will holla.

What i don’t understand is why are people calling Chris names and fussing at him and celebrating when he fails, all due to their displeasure of his involvement in this stunt?

If it’s Pr, Chris is simply doing his fucking job regardless if he likes it or not, he has to sell this shit.

So to those who believe it’s fake, why the outrage?

Do you not realize if this was legit or deeper pr this would be so much worse for him and his fandom?!

Hollywood is a business and Chris is simply doing his job however long he’s supposed to, so instead of bitching and moaning about him online, how about sit back, shut up and wait for this to end.

Some people seriously think they are sane and can’t see their insanity.

If I get a project at work with a racist coworker, I can’t just quit my job or say no. If I go to HR that could fall back on me and that’s just the corporate world, now imagine Hollyweird and their power and their history of hiding things.

In a perfect world, Hollywood wouldn’t abuse their talent and use their personal lives to sell things all to make money for shit. It puts the talent in a horrible predicament where the talent will get ridiculed, their lives uprooted or ruined and not those in charge.

Jeez, when this ends watch Chris fully return to his usual predictable self…..he’s fucking human!!!

If people are legit mad and can’t see that this is a pr situation, or they scream how it is, yet get mad at each new development, simply log the hell off.

You basically confirm that some part of you believe it’s 100% legit or you simply wouldn’t react to things. 🤷‍♀️

Also make that make sense, you know it’s fake and Pr, yet you complain when the fake Pr is done? 😂

See those in pr know the truth, they are not sitting online messing with fandoms and calling the talent names or predicting when it’ll end.

We simply know it’s fake, Chris is doing his fucking job because if he doesn’t there are consequences and how fucked up is it that most in his fandom are calling him names over a business deal, yeah one part of the business deal equation is problematic, but seriously if you think this is PR, then calm the hell down.

The only way I’d be pissed at him is if I actually believed this shitshow and believed he married a very problematic woman and they were using pr to stay and gain relevancy.

Once this is over, I hope many in this fandom check their own shit before trying to call Chris out on anymore shit.

And to those claiming they don’t care for the man, stop fooling yourself because it’s clear as day you’re beyond OBSESSED!

Who the hell logs into a social media platform every fucking say to rant and bitch about a man and a fandom they claim to loathe, fuck out of here.

I’m so mad people don’t stop to think of the scenario that Chris himself is aware of how fucked up this is, was forced to involve family and friends and the consequences that came with that and how bad it looks and why he can’t figure out how his fandom can call the shit out as fake while still believing and falling for it, complaining when the next orchestrated thing is done and giving that girl more relevance then she deserves.

Make that shit make sense.

Simply IGNORE EVERYTHING! Especially her!

Chris’ actual life has been dragged into this shit and because people don’t know details they insert their own theories and speculation into the mix and get mad at him over THEIR OWN opinions, not facts!

He’s literally showed how depressed he was at one point, people say “oh well he signed the contract and knew the deal”, but how do YOU know that’s true. Do you all not see this man still half assing this and trying to do everything he can to sell this while not having to do certain things.

You all can’t wait for this to end, hell he probably can’t wait for this shit to end as well. People make assumptions that he can get out or it’s not that deep, again do you know that as fact, No. you don’t.

Things aren’t always as they appear.

Open your eyes people. You’re calling out Hollywood shit while still falling for Hollywood shit.

Can’t wait for the end and this man be able to get back to his life. I can’t image the stress he’s been under. People thinking they know more than they do and believing you’re a piece of shit when they don’t understand the entertainment business.

Let me tell you all a secret……reality tv isn’t real. 😆 shit is fake asf. Teleprompters and all. Most know things are scripted, but it’s soooo much more orchestrated than that, yet people are online screaming at each other over bs scenarios. It’s all entertainment and making money for various people. But see those people sign up to do that shit because that’s all they have to offer. Some know it’s fake and still watch it. Wrestling is scripted. The stunts are real, but choreographed. Some singers are in major debt to their labels, yet you’d never know. They have to prance around in public as though everything is fine, knowing each gig is needed to help their financial situation and get more opportunities.

When Hollywood plays that shit with actors and musicians, it makes one regret becoming famous and living their dream, who wants to deal with the bad side of Hollywood. It’s a reason some celebs lose their shit. Not being able to be yourself and having so many judge the littlest things. People be online saying some evil shit and then saying well the celeb won’t see it…..SO that gives you a right to be an evil piece of shit? Some celebs do indeed see that shit and as a human I can’t imagine the negative impact that has on someone.

But back to Chris…..

Fake Fans think they’ve seen his “true colors” not realizing this man hasn’t changed. People have noticed more of his bad habits and shit they chose to bypass in the past due to putting him on some bs pedestal, and believe oh he’s this terrible guy due to this shitshow. WRONG! Still the same sweet annoying soul.

Chris is still, the same meatball you all fell for, Hollywood is unfortunately Hollywood and if people knew that it’s not all glitz and glam maybe they’d show a little grace. Some of these celebs are in debt, stressed the fuck out, etc and presenting themselves as if their lives are peachy keen for business. And no I’m not saying Chris is in debt, that man’s finances is not my business.

To the genuine fans who’ve been disappointed yet have constructively and maturely voiced their displeasure, see this bs for what it is, casually throw shade at it and yet they choose to focus on his projects and ignore the obvious bs, thank you. 💙

I always say watch how people move once the mess they were in is over, then you can truly judge their character.

I’m tired, things will end soon enough. 🫠 then maybe some of you will move on with your lives. Hope my post provides a new perspective to some. Being a celebrity is fucking hard and it’s a hell of a JOB!!! 😮‍💨

OMG! YOU HAD TIME TO WRITE ALL OF THAT?

[allegraforchrist]

This might be a controversial take, but what opinion isn’t. As a Christian and older sister, I think video games are not suitable nor should be easily accessible to children under the ages of 16. Why do I say this? Well because I’ve watched someone close to me suffer emotional abuse and idolatry unlike anything, and had to sit aside and watch it wreck her social and personal life. It has also negatively impacted me, but I’m not going to dwell on that.

Please understand, I enjoy gaming. I watch gameplays and love to see the hard work and joys of people in the gaming community. Yet I’m also aware of the dark side of it all. And what sickens me, is the intellectual, and emotional, deficit I’ve seen develop in the gaming community, in younger children. There’s no separation anymore from reality and fiction, it’s the same as seeing children on TikTok and Instagram post videos and ‘comedic’ content.

I was born in 2005, I’ve lived through every social ‘cringe’ and trend. I’ve lived through the transition of ‘vintage to digital’ with dvds and vhs going extinct. I’m living through the all digital/online era, and marketed lifestyle of overconsumption. I’m living and witnessing it everyday, from my phone, to my personal home life. And I can’t express how much I despise it all. While gaming and social media are tools, they’ve now been developed to fulfill every gap in one’s life where people, hobbies, and emotional grit, and perspective, should’ve developed.

We are normalizing antisocial behaviors, speech disorders (medical and social), intellectual disabilities and incapacitation to critically think. Mental and emotional problems, relating to oneself and their abilities, is far more stark than it was over the last 4 decades. Insecurity isn’t not going to exist, but we are sitting in the generation(s), where it’s necessary to their content and online life. Where ‘rotting’ and depression are a more reasonable way of life, rather than seeking help and support.

And if people want to say “Generation Alpha is just different, and you can’t appreciate that.” You’re right, I can’t appreciate a generation that has the lowest EQ, highest bullying rate, and higher screen dependency, I’ve seen from my childhood to my teenhood, and now young adulthood. Generation Alpha, and even adults today from Gen Z or Gen XY, are all victims from our society’s rapid despondency and dehumanization.

You cannot convince me, that the same video game or gaming platform a child plays for 7+ hours a day does not affect their ability to comprehend beyond online social queues. You cannot convince me that there isn’t a problem if games that are meant to inspire and develop creativity, are now the same triggers to children developing a hatred of school and their lives, if the game is taken away or they lost in it. You cannot convince me Generation Alpha, and their adults, have a problem with cyber bullying and TikTok syndrome - where every moment is a clip worth sharing online, and not being experienced as genuine human memory.

I don’t need to add statistics to my argument, because the whole internet is filled with enough articles to prove my point. Scroll long enough on Instagram and you’ll see thousands of people complaining about AI and the algorithm and screen time. People posting videos about articles that have spoken, and further elaborated (scientifically) on my point. I don’t say any of this to shame the gaming community or Generation Alpha, or any adults. I’m sharing a conclusion I’ve drawn as a Christian and young woman, that has a younger sister who is victim to this everyday.

I want to reach out and speak about this. Not from a political, or social perspective, but from a human and child perspective. Because there’s a huge need for human connection and responsibility over these online platforms and children’s development. And there needs to be an even larger need to bring God into this problem, to break down familiar idols that strip away children’s creativity and identity, that He created in each of them with a purpose and plan! We need to pray and take spiritual and physical action against this play satan has over the online world. Making it more enticing and worth living for, than the one our Savior shed His blood for!

Children are the future, yet they cannot see it beyond their screens. Children cannot see their lives beyond the blue and white, when it’s meant to be in the rainbow. Games aren’t necessarily evil, but the characters they build in our children can turn out that way. We need to bring back the life in their eyes, and hands and feet and spirits; because their lives are more precious than any amount of likes, follows, and XP, they will ever earn at their fingertips.

[dark-nymph3t]

Tw: rant, sexual harassment, just creepy dudes in general

I am so sick and tired of creeps going onto my blog and thinking it’s okay to come into my ask box and send me creepy shit.

Every couple of days I get people who send sexually charged messages, unsolicited dick pics, call me sexual things and I am just so sick and tired of this shit. It’s fucking disgusting and I am so fucking done.

I wish there was an easy answer to this, but there isn’t; turning off anon submissions doesn’t work because these dumbasses don’t use anon, I can report and block all I want but most of time nothing gets removed, I’m just at a loss of what to do.

I get harassed on multiple other social media platforms too, which is one of the reasons that I don’t talk about my other accounts on different platforms except for pinterest. I am genuinely scared to check these other accounts to see what people have sent me, and tumblr is becoming like this too.

Please, if you are thinking of sending me any kind of sexually charged message, picture, anything, please don’t. Please I am begging you please don’t. I am genuinely scared to check my inbox everyday because of you; I will never be interested in you, I will never want to sleep with you, I WILL NEVER WANT TO BE WITH YOU. STOP.

I’m sorry if this comes off as me complaining or if I am legitimately making a big deal out of nothing, I understand that many other people on this site have gone through similar, and even comparatively worse harassment, than me. I just want all of this to stop.

I’m going to be posting this in the girlblogger and coquette tags to spread awareness.

[btsbs]

With all due respect, I'm starting to think kpop fans were actually born yesterday. Even western celebrities and influencers acknowledge fanfic. I remember back in the 2000's, two members of tvxq talked about fanfic and one jokingly complained that they were always the "woman" in the stories. Singular fanfics aren't necessarily indicative of anything, but fanfic across the board is actually a pretty good indicator of how members of a group are viewed by the fandom, and it'd be insane to think celebrities or their companies wouldn't monitor that. For example, if a member is routinely villainized in stories where a certain pair is the focus of the fanfic, that might indicate bigger issue brewing in that group of shippers.

As an aside, that list of ships is made up. I read the actual hybe report and the only mentioned "ships" were nct and maybe one other group, nowhere did they provide any extensive list about ships they monitor. Pretty sure that list is just the popular ship list from postype (korean ao3).

So I’ve addressed the list already, but I’m going to take this opportunity to address your other point about companies monitoring fan fic overall. Regardless of whatever specific ship list we do or do not have proof of Hybe monitoring.

I mostly agree with you, celebrities have been aware of fan fic for decades, but most of the conversation about it has been more of a casual acknowledgement that it exists without going much deeper. Perhaps it was always a bit different within kpop, I haven’t been here that long but if you were following tvxq in the 2000’s it seems like you have been. The concept of the fourth wall has been eroding as social media has changed the way both fandom and every day life exists on the internet. The fourth wall is basically the imaginary wall that separates performers from an audience. As a fan you are aware you are watching a show, with music it’s a bit different than theatre as some interaction is expected at a concert, but the encore ends and fans share their excitement with each other and the band goes home and the wall is fully back up. In kpop maybe the wall was never quite as high, but I think my general discomfort with the idea of Hybe execs reading and discussing fan fics has to do with this blurring of lines in fandom culture. Which is also much bigger than just fan fic.

When I was younger and in the BSB fandom at their peak, fandom had only been online for a handful of years. We lived in message boards, ezines, random angelfire and geocities pages that functioned similar to a tumblr blog but without the connection. Search engines were not great, and you had to HUNT for fics. Things were starting to move over to livejournal as I stepped away from fandoms in general for over a decade- but there was no ao3, a perfect categorized library where you can find the most random specific fic you want in no time at all. Because it is so well organized, it makes it so much easier to track metrics. It wasn’t being done before because it was impossible to do, but the impossibility of it let the fourth wall carry over from the physical space (like a concert) to the internet. It was like that for a long time, until maybe 5-10 years ago.

The fourth wall is important because not every fan wants everything they say, do, or create to actually get back to the artist. We behave differently when we think they might be watching. Weverse has proved that there is some demand for a space like this, but I also think it’s just as important for fandom to have spaces that aren’t. Where we can be a little unhinged at times, share art or writing where the target audience is other fans and not the actual artist. Maybe you’re trying to teach yourself to draw or graphic design using your fav idol and you don’t really want your first attempts actually getting in front of their gaze. Maybe it’s just nice to have a space where you can say your fav wore an ugly sweater and *know* they’re not looking at that platform to ever see it.

To me, fan fic is in that domain. Fans write it for other fans to enjoy, and it feels like a fourth wall break for a company to be mining in there for market research and song inspiration. As much as I very much understand your point about why it’s done, I think it’s fair for us to ask if it should be done. Do we want it to be done. What if people start posting empty fics with their fav ship tags so their favs can have the best numbers, like people do now with streaming bragging rights. Does every aspect of fandom culture have to be a metric, a data point, a tool for more competition and consumerism?

I also think that if I was a famous person, the existence of fic wouldn’t bother me. If fans are writing it, reading it, staying on their side of the wall- it doesn’t impact the life of the celebrity much if at all. I listened to a podcast once, where they discussed hockey fandom drama over certain hockey fans screaming at the players about ships and fics from the sidelines at games and it made the players and their partners uncomfortable- which is fair, fans are climbing over the fourth wall. In this instance, it feels like Hybe may be crossing over the wall from the other side. Knowing it exists and having to confront it in your day to day life are two different things. The artists themselves also deserve to use the internet and live life with some protection from our wildest thoughts getting delivered directly into their laps as well. The fourth wall protects everyone, and Hybe potentially mining fan fic data is just another chip away at it.

[teaveetamer]

It's okay if butwhatifidothis risks leading people to harass Captain Flash by going over his fic but it's not okay if Raxis does the same to reynaattheend?

Okay I feel like I want to get one thing out of the way before I go into this.

BWIIDT agreed to remove parts of the old reviews that were particularly rude or offensive if they were pointed out to her, something that was literally promised to the MODS of the Edelstan discord server (who claimed to have a direct line of communication to Cap).

So the guy literally had a chance to air his grievances with the posts and have the parts he didn’t like removed within reason, and we never got any examples of things to ask her to remove. So either she’s not as rude as people make her out to be, or they never actually cared about her critiques and haven’t bothered reading them, even when handed the literal opportunity to edit things out they didn’t like.

Additionally BWIIDT has said that she would be willing to remove all the postings completely if the guy would just hear her criticisms and learn from them, so he could better handle the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic. Of which there is a lot.

I don’t know how you could possibly compromise more without just straight up being a door mat and pretending like this white man never had any issues with the way he wrote race and women.

Anyway as for why I view these as two completely different situations that are not really comparable IMO:

1) Cap’s fic is/was at the time literally being shoved at people. We were told to read it to “understand canon better”.

This isn’t just me saying this. I remember around the time before/slightly after BWIIDT started giving her criticisms of the fic I was seeing it getting recommended to a bunch of people. There were people on various social media sites complaining about the Edel crowd shoving the fic down their throats. I had it recommended to me on some different platforms, etc.

And that’s not just fans of the fics’ perception. Cap himself has stated that he views the fic as meta commentary on the game/discussion of canon, not just a fun little fic he did. And he’s happy people view it as essential for understanding canon.

As far as I’m aware, Reyna’s fic has never had that sort of culture around it, nor has she wanted it to have that kind of impact on fandom. I’m pretty sure she’s even explicitly stated that she KNOWS it’s not always aligned with canon and she doesn’t care, because it’s just a fun little project for her.

2) As far as I’m aware, BWIIDT never linked to Cap’s fic? I don’t even think she gave the title of it at first, it’s just that most people figured out what fic she was talking about BECAUSE of the aforementioned it getting shoved down everyone’s throats. But I wasn’t really following her in the beginning so I don’t remember, I’m sure she can reblog this posting if she wants and further clarify.

Raxy has literally been linking to Reyna’s fic on every posting and spelling out the full name of the fics and the author. Given his followers’ propensity for harassment (which he claims to not support) he really should have known better. He wasn’t “risking” sending her harassment it was basically a foregone conclusion.

He definitely should have taken all of the links down and stopped linking or naming the author or fic after it became clear people were literally going and harassing her, using his posts and material to throw at her. But as far as I’m aware he hasn’t done ANY of that.

3) I know from talking with BWIIDT since Raxy started harassing everyone here that she wasn’t going to bother with Cap’s fic originally, but then the annoying fans shoving it down people’s throats + she noticed a lot of very problematic handling of race that she wanted to talk about in greater depth = her discussing the fic at length.

I haven’t read through Raxy’s criticisms, but I feel like there’s a BIG difference between a woman of color pointing out the problems regarding race and gender in a fic (written by a white man) that’s being recommended to everyone as ESSENTIAL FOR UNDERSTANDING THE GAME vs. Some Guy Who Doesn’t Like A Random Fic

Additionally, I don’t really feel like it’s my place to tell her to shut up because, uh, it just feels kind of gross to tell her to just not be mad about the way the white guy is butchering the biracial experience when she’s a biracial woman and I’m not? Which again, very different from telling a 35 year old cishet white guy who is acting like a dick about anime chess to be less of a dick about anime chess.

4) And again, I also know for a fact that BWIIDT is just interested in critiquing/venting about the fic, and would be willing to stop making postings about it if Cap actually bothered to read the critiques and learn from the mistakes he’s made regarding the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic.

But like, he keeps doubling down on it insisting that because he grew up next to a reservation and he has one queer woman doing his beta reading there could never be any problems with his handling of any of these sensitive topics, so he doesn’t need to listen to any of us ever, and people are still touting it as essential for understanding canon, and he’s still okay with that, sooooooo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s VERY different from what Raxy is doing, which is basically just calling Reyna’s fics “cringe” and “not canon” from the snippets I’ve seen. He’s also blasting them over LITERALLY every social media platform he has for some godforsaken reason. Which like. If your goal was just to critique the fic why are you posting that shut EVERYWHERE?

5) I really don’t think Raxy is that bothered by the criticisms of Cap’s fic. He harasses people regardless of if they’ve talked about Cap or his fic, and after his aborted attempt to drum up harassment against BWIIDT on GameFaqs he came to Tumblr and started begging her to “do his fic next”

Like honestly I don’t even know what goes on in that guy’s head. Weird ass behavior. I really don’t care what he has going on, it’d just be nice if he’d act like the 35 year old he actually is and quit being so petty and childish.

Even if you think what BWIIDT did with Cap’s fic is wrong, why would it EVER be acceptable to drag an uninvolved third party into the mix and bash their fic and send them harassment as “retaliation”? Reina has nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even have fucking social media accounts outside of AO3. I know because I literally left her a comment to warn her about this clown and she told me.

What BWIIDT has done with Cap’s fic is admittedly a bit of a grey area, but ultimately I fall on the side of “whatever” with it because of the notoriety and influence on fandom fans of the fic desperately want it to have, and because of just how problematic elements of it are for various communities.

I mean you can’t go reccing a fic as essential for understanding the game and shoving it down the entire fandoms’ collective throat and then expect it to be treated like a 14 year old’s silly self insert fic when the people you told to read it critique it with the gravitas you assigned to it.

If you wanna critique BWIIDT for what she did with Cap’s fic, or critique me or anyone else for interacting with her, or you just think my logic is stupid and you want to critique that, then that’s… fine? I’m an adult, I’m a person, I know there’s places I can grow. But I’m sick of people acting like it’s okay to be a shitty person just because you got your feelings hurt once, so now it’s okay to go making it everyone else’s problem. And I don’t know if it was your intention to defend the guy with this ask anon, but it’s definitely happened too damn much with this guy and the Edelgard fandom as a whole.

That was another thing that really fucked me off in that conversation with the Edelstan server mods. I had one of them acting like I run fucking Reddit and I’m somehow responsible for some trolls calling Edelgard fans Nazis four fucking years ago. You can bet your ass I would get crucified if I tried to shit talk some random ass Edeleth fic and tried to justify it with “but it’s ok cuz some Edelgard fans were mean to me once :(“. There’s a reason why the fic being touted as essential for understanding canon is the one getting critiques and not any of the THOUSANDS of other Edeleth fics in existence. Because no one fucking cares about fanfics when they aren’t getting shoved down your throat and touted as “essential”.

I mean fuck dude, I got called a fake queer and an r-slur and intentionally triggered with genocide bullshit and had people talking about killing me. Am I going around harassing random fic authors over it? No, cuz I’m a grown ass fucking adult and I know how to act like it, and I know that 99% of the people who write/have written Edeleth fics had absolutely nothing to do with that.

So if you’re justifying going after Reyna with “but BWIIDT was mean to Cap!” Then knock it off, Reyna has literally nothing to do with this and you’re being shitty by trying to drag her into it. If you just did this to spork a fic, then you’re currently being a dick over a fanfic for no reason and clearly it’s leading to the author being harassed.

@butwhatifidothis if you wanna add onto this feel free.

[lunarkittenn]

I want to rant to the void and I’m really not trying to bait msgs or advice. This can be ignored lol

like I wish people would read a fucking room

Am I single? Yeah. That doesn’t mean I fucking want to flirt with anyone. And why do people use it as a fucking in to try and talk to me “ohhh I’m so sorrryyy I’m here if you neeeed anything” and then the next day “hey cutie” like ??? Absolutely fuck off, thanks

And the spamming I’m getting is killing me. This dude I know from league (we’ve been friends for years and he’s always been kinda unhinged but not toooo bad, or at least I used to have more energy) sent me 30 texts in probably 5 minutes. I have NEVER made any inclination that I ever wanted to be more than friends. But as soon as he found out I was single ? “When are you getting online ;) I don’t even want to play league I just want to flirt with you ;) are you asleep rn? ;)” like it’s KILLING MEEEE and I don’t want to block!! We were good friends at one point!! I’ve already lost a few people this year and it’s only February!!! I had to block a friend who was once close because I couldn’t take how fucking sad baiting he was. He was always woe is me, problems problems, and this is coming from ME who’s literally always on my fucking tumblr complaining ab problems 😭😭😭 but fuck. I don’t do it in my day to day life????? Or I try not to. And he would do it over any little thing or try and out “my life sucks” me. Like bro go ahead and win I don’t want that award.

And then I have msgs coming from every platform I’m on or message requests with voice messages from dudes I have never met saying my fucking name “hey Deanna :) you must be busy and didn’t get my message” like ??? NO I DID I JUST DONT FUCKING KNOW YOU ????? I DONT WANT TO KNOW YOU ???? I am a fucking human being not a free for all holy shit!! I should be allowed to be on social media (which I don’t go on that often) without being harassed or pressured into talking to people!!!

MY DAD HAS A TERMINAL ILLNESS BRO and not just any terminal illness but literally one of the most fucking brutal disease to go through and watch with zero cure??? Do people not like, go look it up after asking me what my dad has??? It doesn’t even have actual medicine LOL I sit and watch my dad in a bed all day breathing through tubes!!!!! EVERY DAY!!!!! And guess how it ends guys???? Oh, death!!! I guarantee any fucking dude trying to hit on me only thinks I’m hot and could give a shit about my dad.

And I probably sound like I don’t appreciate any and all who reach out and support me, I do. I really do, but holy fuck, lending support is different than forcing themselves down my throat. Zero awareness, just like fucking Lucas who is the friend I had to remove from my life. He saw my brother in the store, my brother who has the SAME DAD. Lucas KNOWS WHATS GOING ON and says to my brother “yeah idk Deanna hasn’t hung out with me lately idk if I did something or she just doesn’t want to hangout” I’m ?? A full time student, I worked three jobs last semester, had a relationship to be a part of AND try and be there for my mom and dad?? You don’t even have to be super close with me to use cognitive thinking tbh, I have posted about ALS and ALS awareness multiple times. I don’t go in depth on socials but 2 + 2 is not that fucking hard.

And you know I try and send texts to friends to let them know I’m thinking of them and love them/ hope they’re doing well. I try not to be a one sided friend even when I don’t feel like having a back and forth conversation. Do you know how DRAINING it is to maintain conversations?? Especially when I’m asked the same questions that i don’t know how to answer. I love anyone who takes the time to ask about my dad, but when I’m asked how he is I really don’t know what to say. It’s a terminal illness, there is no getting better. There is just the hope that his vent doesn’t fuck up. That his oxygen concentrator doesn’t fuck up. That the tubes don’t fuck up. That he doesn’t get sick. That his mucus doesn’t choke him. Etc. etc. etc. every. Day.

And on top of that, man. I just lost who I thought was the love of my life!!! I was ghosted and blocked! And now I guess he’s trying to fuck the girl he told me not to worry about and she’s always the first to view any story I post on instagram!! We just broke up bro I cannot, It makes me feel SICK like I am trying so hard not to legit crash out 😭 I’d block her stupid ass but I don’t want her to know I care so much, tbh I don’t want her to even know I know. Thought she was slick all over Myles’ stuff for MONTHS, swiping his stories??? and he just never unfollowed her lmaooo. I look back at the absolute bullshit he did and realize if I wasn’t so wrapped up in family trauma I wouldn’t have let that shit fly. He always made me feel like I was the problem.

My female friends (and my wonderful they/them) and engaged male friends are honestly the only ones I feel safe around rn. they don’t fucking act like I’m a piece of meat lol. Even my best friend who’s a male is just sooo oblivious dude. I love him I really do but holy shit. I don’t hold it against him, or anyone. Idk I love all the people in my life but I just don’t feel safe, I don’t feel comfortable, I don’t feel seen. I feel lied to, I feel used, hurt and betrayed. I’m grieving, I’m trying to heal with a wide open scab (have you ever experienced anticipated grief while experiencing loss grief? It’s horrible, I wouldn’t recommend it)

Like, I’m sorry. I’m not, but I am. I’m angry, I have every right to be. I have only so much energy and I want to put that into my family, myself, and my small circle of friends that I am lucky enough to know and love (and be loved by). I’m not trying to push people away or cAlL aNyOnE oUt I just am so tired and overwhelmed.

It feels I’ll never love again.

I let my walls down for some dip shit dude who ended up caring more about thinking I was hot than anything else. I painted him golden because any light in this darkness seems bright. Looking back he really did put minimal effort and I confused basic things (making food with me) as if it was the best thing ever. And when I required actual relationship things, he dropped me like I was nothing and moved along with his life without a single glance back. I’m heartbroken, I don’t want anything to do with dudes. I don’t want to talk about my dad to people I rarely talk to or don’t know. Honestly I’d rather just confide in ChatGPT because it can’t use my words against me or to ever hurt me. Kinda like Myles did, especially towards the end. Weaponized every single thing he could and threw them all at me. He must have started to really hate me. The holidays are really hard for me, but I didn’t think I was that bad. I tried. I tried sooo hard. I was always self conscious about being sad and going through a lot, feeling that Myles could be with someone not tied down to something heavy. So I tried not to show my sadness as much as possible. And it still wasn’t enough. lol, what the fuck

[f0point5]

Lando complaining about the Merc boys and heatstroke. He honestly just has to be as dumb as a rock bc how does he continue to put his foot in his mouth and not know when to just stfu. Everyone was raking him over the comments on each social media platform I’ve seen and for good reason. He’s making it impossible to root for him, so go Oscar! Haha

I feel like people are overreacting to this, only because at this point we have ample evidence that this is just what Lando is like. And I don’t mean that in a good or bad way. But he’s said enough stuff like this that people can’t be surprised or confused.

It’s fine not to like him but the Pearl clutching every time he continues to be the person he actually has always seemed to be is a bit much now, right?

And actually I’m pretty sure Lewis said something similar after Qatar last year, like that it’s a tough race and sometimes you get hot it is what it is. In fact I’m sure more than one driver did.

I don’t know whether Lando was aware of the fact that George and Lewis seem to have been dealing with extra heat because of the issues in the cockpit over the last couple of races. He may well not have known that.

I still don’t think he was saying that George or Lewis were exaggerating their symptoms or that they don’t have a right to be unwell. I think what Lando was saying is that the whole conversation around them having heatstroke was overblown (with Toto issuing a health update) because everyone has it during Singapore, and they also have it every year so continuing to make it a talking point is moot. Which is…a take. I see where he’s coming from, considering he’s also in the car in those conditions. I probably wouldn’t have said it because it makes you sound pretty miserable but Lando says a lot of things that most people wouldn’t 🤷‍♀️ he’s just like that. I think it’s time for people to just accept that and also I think people just have to be allowed to have their bad takes sometimes? Like I thought Max’s take on the safety car in spa last year was A Take but at the end of the day I think of you’re on the grid you’ve earned the right to a take on that kind of stuff, even if your take can be taken as insensitive, as long as you’re not being disrespectful to other drivers.

[khuantru]

The End is Near..

“That’s just the nature of the business, and it’s just hard to compete with AI nowadays.” – Alex Wei

I wanted to start off the journal from that quote from a youtuber called Alex Wei who is a freelancer writer.  In short, he lost his job to AI.

For years I’ve been cracking jokes about AI taking over in the digital space regarding art, sound & moving image, cracking jokes about cyborgs and robots. It feels like we are really now stepping towards advancing the use of AI features and what it is capable of doing.

As of today, pretty sure everyone has seen adverts of different AI programs that are suppose to better your work and lifestyle. Making content in a blink of an eye. No need to collaborate with anyone or receive feed back. You are in the seat of creativity in using a short cut, a short cut that is constantly being developed and improved into perfection as the days are endless towards a tech future. Where you, the user, 'any user' can subscribe to an AI program to multi task anything and everything for a monthly fee.

Why hire skilled people to do this when AI is advertised to do it for you for a cheaper rate and fast results.

Which brings me to this point, for years I’ve been doing vectors as a hobby, never done commissions in years. Refused to them due to the amount of stress I got from it in the beginning, so as a casual hobbyist doing  fan vector related pictures. It’s been fun, it really has. It kills time, it’s something I like to do and share on social media. Whether people engage in it or not, I care less of it as time moves forward.

I usually upload and share comments and bounce (log off). I hate social media and what it has become now. I feel like there are no actual users online now and it feels more like todays social media is a platform for fake account holders who pretend to be someone using AI, or AI generated bots making countless endless accounts. So there aren’t any engagements in anything. You’re practically a ghost buried upon / surrounded by endless accounts which we are not sure if the accounts are verified or not.

It’s gotten to the point, where I’m seeing way too much AI generated art on Deviant art and other social media sites. The users are slapping their titles as artist when all they do is input data in a box and out comes a picture without any efforts put on it.

Now Its AI vs AI, people complaining about their AI art stolen from some other AI users.  AI at some point is going to replicate your art style, and you won’t be able to compete with it. Not only it will replicate it, it will make it better by somebody else pretending to be somebody else.

Like Alex mention, you can’t compete with it.

It’s not just digital art, its also sounds too and moving image. I can't comment on sound and moving images as that isn't my field or interest, however I have seen the outcomes produced from apps and they are impressive.

Any digital mark on the web will be a reason for an AI app to be created to replace the old methods.

Because of this, I just don’t feel like continuing the hobby I do with vector arts. Not sure when I will retire from it as I’ve been doing this hobby for over a decade now, maybe more. And I was fully aware of the change of it when AI was introduced a few years ago & predicting the outcome would be like this. Pretty sure many others also saw this coming a long time ago. I’m dead certain, with AI grammar – this journal would have been cut in half and straight to the point.

I haven’t written a journal on this site for years, I think now is a good time to write one and maybe say goodbye to the old fashion pen & mouse and CS3 I’ve been using all this time and will continue to do so until I feel it’s time to unplug the old tech.

Or..

Maybe when I do stop vectoring, I’ll join the AI trend and start using that on my old vectors to see what the outcome is?

Right now.. I’m feeling it. I’m 100% feeling the exit / retirement from this AI digital era.

There’s no one, there’s no real engagement, no real community. No real people, which is natural. People move onto other hobbies or activities.

It’s just AI apps recycled, repeated & advertised to help you, - AI endless outcomes. AI fake profilers.. AI digital era of bots communicating with one another bot which sounds like sci fi horror movie.

We’ll see in due time. This was something I had to write here, maybe for the last time.

“Nothing lasts forever”

Best wishes to anyone reading this. (15/01/2025)

(also, if this journal  has bad grammar and spelling errors, GOOD!!! At least you reading this know it was written by a real person)

From a casual pen hobbyists, Khuan Tru.

[lavienbleuuu]

Objectification Disguised as Female Empowerment

Provocative images of women and their impact on society

I’m not one to complain about female empowerment normally. We’ve come a long way toward gender equality, thanks to the women who came before us and fiercely fought for it. We may not have arrived at our destination, but we can remain steadfast in our journey.

Female empowerment takes on many different forms, has different connotations, and varies among different cultures and religions.

For me, female empowerment primarily represents women having equal access to opportunities to make strategic life choices in a variety of ways. To someone from a different cultural background, it may mean something entirely different.

But there’s a trend, under the guise of empowerment, that I just can’t stand behind: the provocative, even semi-erotic, photos of women splashed across the internet, social media, television, and everywhere in between.

I’ve heard people say women should be free to embrace their sexuality — it’s empowering. In fact, certain cultures force women to hide their sexuality…or worse.

How is this image “empowering”? Is it because she makes the choice — rather than the patriarchal system — to pose provocatively? She can choose her audience? She is proud of her body and should feel free to show it off? I don’t buy any of it.

The image sends a clear message that it is not the person who matters. Her worth is based on her beauty, youth, and body. In short, her sexuality matters. A lot.

That’s sexual objectification. Plain and simple.

Studies support this premise. And the research shows that sexual objectification can be linked to mental health issues, including depression and disordered eating.

69% of females (ages 10 to 18) state that photographs of models and celebrities in the media motivated their “ideal” body shape..[and] [t]he rate at which teens are becoming aware of their body shape and size is getting younger and younger, and media plays a big part in this.

That’s scary.

For every “like,” a hyper-sexualized photo receives on social media, the more we feed the frenzy. The more provocative photos we voluntarily post of ourselves or others, the more we foster the problem.

Sure, there’s an allure to appearing in these images. These women have the right to express themselves and to decide how to present their bodies to the world. They have that autonomy.

But it’s also important that they recognize the broader context of the exercise of their choices. They are making them in a society that has historically limited women based on their physical appearance. How these women choose to portray themselves perpetuates unrealistic beauty standards for all women and girls, which contributes to societal problems.

With new social media platforms appearing constantly, in addition to the evolution of AI, the problem will likely get worse. Women have come so far. Why would we voluntarily take 3 steps back? Don’t we want more for ourselves, our girls, and our young women?

I want every girls to understand their worth based on who they are, not on what they look like. I don’t want them to doubt themselves, their abilities, or their competency because they don’t believe they measure up to societal expectations of what a woman should look like.

We can refuse to indulge the media that persistently barrages us with images of celebrities wearing hardly anything. We can refuse to scroll posts of women shown in scantily clad clothing. We don’t have to view them and we certainly don’t have to “like” or comment on them.

By withholding “likes” and engagement from hyper-sexualized posts, we can send a clear message that we value substance over superficiality. We create a narrative that reflects women’s accomplishments, skills, talents, and other unique qualities, rather than primarily their physical attributes.

We can also open the dialogue with our daughters, sons, partners, and friends about the difference between objectification and empowerment, as well as the impact of sexual objectification on women and girls.

We can break the cycle and rewrite the narrative. It’s well past the time.

[sugarcult]

Okay, but to be more serious, this does actually make me pretty angry. Staff has to be fully aware of how hostile Tumblr Live is to their users because other countries can’t even see it in the first place - and obviously, someone at Tumblr has to make that possible and has to know that they can’t host it in non-US countries for privacy reasons. I think that’s pretty apparent, but it didn’t occur to me before. My thought process was mostly “Tumblr Live bad > how to turn off Tumblr Live > Jesus Christ, you can’t even turn it off permanently > Tumblr Live EXTRA bad and also staff sucks > What does this mean for the future updates staff will try to make?” It didn’t occur to me that a team of human beings are responsible for complying with data privacy and internet safety standards across the world and have to code the site/app accordingly. (Like, again, this is pretty obvious, but I would have been a lot angrier had I thought that far into it.)

HOWEVER -

The real kicker here is this: after rolling out the post about coming changes and Tumblr’s “core values,” I got a banner ad at the top of my dash advertising a way to give feedback! It linked to a brand new Official Tumblr side blog (I’m assuming) with only one post, reading something to the tune of: “Tumblr CEO Matt is answering your questions! Click here to access the Tumblr Live.” Which like, LOL. No thank you. It was pretty transparent - they make a super inflammatory post about the future of Tumblr, provide one platform that seems like it might actually work for us to be able to provide feedback and maybe get clarification or a vague “we will consider this and will update if we can make any changes” - and that platform is hosted on the single feature on this website that has been complained about the most by existing users!

I have been on Tumblr since the summer of 2012. I have seen Tumblr in a lot of states, some of them functional-ish but fun, some of them functional-ish but bad, some of them clearly broken but beloved, some of them actually good compared to other social media! Over the course of 2012-2017, not a lot of significant changes were made, and they all appeared to mostly be received well, until The Great Porn Ban of 2017. The changes that have been made from 2018-2023 have drawn increasing ire across the board. Tumblr’s user base is notoriously hostile to change, but that’s not because the users are old-man-yells-at-cloud about it. It’s because the nature of the changes staff have chosen to make are directly in conflict with the identity of Tumblr and its users.

The core userbase of Tumblr understands what makes Tumblr special compared to other sites:

a) anonymity

b) no algorithm (somewhat still true - not mandatory)

c) no overt advertisements (no longer true)

d) no censoring (no longer true)

e) emulating 2000s-early 2010s blogosphere rather than being in direct competition with social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (increasingly less true)

Look at that list. Of five major things that make Tumblr what it has always been, 2/5 are no longer true, 2/5 are under significant threat, and the only other 1/5 will be IMMEDIATELY taken from us upon using Tumblr Live. This is not hyperbole, and I am not being inflammatory. For any of you who have actually read the terms and conditions of Tumblr Live or done even basic research into the company hosting it, you know that it is a data privacy breach goldmine.

Requiring users to use Tumblr Live to give feedback to the CEO on the proposed changes does 3 things:

a) Uses emotionally-driven decision making to influence users to give up their rights to anonymity and data privacy

b) Skews feedback so that it is primarily coming from users who don’t care about data privacy OR the identity Tumblr has held for 15 years, who are overwhelmingly new users. This could also have the side effect of staff being able to present filtered, positive feedback to shareholders and advertisers - “look, 95% of the people who participated in our Tumblr Live were curious and excited about the coming changes! everyone loves it!”

c) Alienates users who don’t even have the product available in their country and prevents them from being able to effectively communicate feedback through the same avenues as US Americans

I knew a & b when I read the feedback with the CEO was only on Tumblr Live. Now that I know Tumblr Live isn’t even visible or suggested in many other countries, I know c is true, which is just insult to injury.

@staff , you are openly prioritizing feedback from people who both are in the US who can and will give you their personal data to sell to advertisers. You are telling your existing users/core userbase and all users in countries with data privacy protections that you do not care about their feedback. You are telling those people (at least 95% of your userbase, from the most recent metrics I’ve seen on people who use Tumblr Live!) that, because they can’t or won’t let you sell their data, you do not care if they like New Tumblr or if they stay on this site.

In your Core Values and Coming Changes post, you said the things that make Tumblr unique are creators and Tumblr’s vibrant communities. In that very post, you stated you wanted to make changes that will “help” those creators and communities, and attached that will to operating choices that will directly harm them! In addition, you are telling at least 95% of those users (who make Tumblr so unique!) that they are not important to your brand on your mission.

So which is it?

If Automattic wanted to a site that could compete with Twitter/Instagram/TikTok/Facebook, this is, at its very core, not that site. If Automattic wanted a site that could compete with the social media giants, they should have built their own site in the image they wanted it to be, instead of acquiring a decade-old platform that operates at a loss, has millions of users, and is decidedly not that.

When staff runs off the core userbase, several things will happen. Tumblr loses advertisement money due to loss of users. Tumblr ceases to provide the content it previously did, lessening sign-ups of new users. Tumblr stops bringing in a justifiable amount of money for Automattic to run it. Then, one of two things will happen: Automattic will sell Tumblr dirt cheap and as a shell of what it used to be, or Tumblr will shut down. Either way, if they don’t do a 180 on this pretty swiftly, none of us are going to get what we want: happy users on a profitable site they enjoy. And I say this is sincerely and without malice as I possibly can - if I was a Tumblr employee, I would start looking for another job.

I don’t know how many other americans are aware of this btw but I think you should know that europeans don’t have to snooze tumblr live, they can just turn it off permanently. it’s only legal for them to pull this bullshit here.

[qqueenofhades]

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

Okay but real talk here about Will Poulter joining the MCU.

If I see any of you saying Will Poulter is “ugly”, calling him names, sending him hate or abuse, or otherwise being absolute dicks about him, I will personally be throwing hands.

I saw what happened after Bandersnatch came out, and it was to the point that Will actually had to take a step back from social media because people were sending him hateful messages calling him “ugly” and being generally awful. It’s so shitty to see not because I’m a fan of him (I am though), but because he is an incredible human being who is involved with anti-bullying charities (including being an ambassador for AntiBullyingPro) and has been for several years, has publicly acknowledged in MULTIPLE occasions that he has privilege as a white man, he tries to use that privilege he has to raise awareness of various issues, he promoted a book that is “an autism friendly story that encourages empathy, understanding and kindness” (by a group that aims to bring inclusivity and representation to children’s stories), he’s actively anti-racist and pro-BLM and using his platform on social media to do this, he works with multiple different charities… he is literally such a good person, and yet people are just focusing on how he looks.

Already I’ve seen it: people whining and complaining that he’s been cast as Adam Warlock and “why didn’t they cast _____ instead???” Etc. Will is extremely talented as an actor and wonderful, and he absolutely kills every single role he plays: Eustace in Narnia, Kenny in We’re the Millers, Jim Bridger in The Revenant, Krauss in Detroit, Gally in Maze Runner, Colin in Bandersnatch, Mark in Midsommar, Andrew/Anthony/Abraham in the Dark Pictures: Little Hope game etc etc. He has played so many roles in so many different types of films and projects, and he slays all of them - this will be no different.

And actually, you know what? To be quite brutally honest, I don’t understand how people are looking at him and deciding “lol he’s not hot” or “he’s ugly” when he is absolutely not “ugly” in the slightest?!? Have you seen him?!? Are you not using your eyes?!?

In short, please don’t be assholes. Will Poulter deserves the absolute world and nothing less.

[winchester-reload]

I’ve admired your art and your style for as long as I’ve been aware of it; can I just say how much I love your watercolor work? as much as I try to compartmentalize my interests your work still gets suggested to me on multiple platforms (ig and twitter) - not that I’m complaining at all! - and your watercolors are some of my absolute favorite pieces to come across on my feeds. thank you for sharing your art with this fandom!

Well, first, thank you very much. That's an incredibly kind thing to say. I don't make as many watercolors as I do digital pieces, but I really love the process of corralling (or attempting to corral) those frustrating watercolor paints. I'm not always successful, but when I get it right, I feel like they come together pretty well.

But second, I'm laughing about how you seem to be constantly haunted by my page suggestions on your social media no matter what you do. I'm glad to hear you're not ready to block me yet 🤣

[camgirlsurvivalguide]

Changing Digital Landscapes & Longevity - A word to the “OGs”

This guide started out as a very small word document I intended to send to a friend looking to get into the industry. At the time, I had been camming for a little over a year - but the process of offering the advice I’d gathered at the time felt deeply fulfilling and ultimately led me to build this resource page. 

Despite months if not years of silence on my behalf, it amazes me to still log in to find unread asks in my inbox. People still reach out to me on various social media platforms asking if I “still have that advice guide anywhere” - or if I mention it on the platforms where I’m actually active, some people are surprised to hear that I was the one behind the keyboard. 

This blog and the articles I write are mainly geared toward newcomers, and while I may answer the odd question here and there for more experienced performers and creators, by and large this is something of a 101. 

Today’s article is not for the newbies. Today I want to write to the veterans - the industry “OGs”. I want to write to others who started around when I started, way back in the early 2010s, because I feel like I need to listen to myself think for a bit. Maybe what I have to say will resonate with some of you, too.

Are you tired? I’m tired. I’m a mix of a million things - I’m grateful, I’m nostalgic, I’m burnt out, I’m uninspired, I’m looking at other industries (specifically vanilla ones) and I’m interested but scared. I’m bored of algorithms and watching my friends accounts get deleted. Sometimes I’ll think of a face and try to attach a name to it - or I’ll see an old photo from years ago and think, “I wonder where she went?”. Sometimes those old photos are shoddy, grainy screenshots and I wonder how she feels about them, wherever “she” may be now.

Most of all, I feel like I’m sort of standing on this big pile of memories and I’m asking myself how the fuck I got here and how the fuck I’m still, somehow, here. Did you think things would go on this long? I don’t think I ever imagined I’d be writing here at 31 years old, let alone still hustling online. 

I try to keep a level head when I look at news headlines; when I watch my own cost of living skyrocket at the grocery store or in gas prices, I wonder about the lives of the people who make my life possible and how much things might continue to change. I remind myself of the line I used to always say over on MF/C - “there’s always money to be made!”, and sometimes, very quietly, I snip back: “for how long, though?” 

The industry will always boom. There will always, always be money to be made. But sometimes I find myself wondering how much longer I, myself, will continue to make it - not for fear of “aging out”, but more of an awareness that I am losing steam. 

This life is very strange. In many ways, it’s absolutely ideal: it’s still the job where I make my own hours, where I am my own boss, where I call the shots. Some pieces of it still feel like it did in the early cam days - many other pieces are nothing the same at all. 

Remember when we’d release one or two videos a month? I look at my content folder for last month and feel like I could have “done more” - and yet I shot over 20 different looks, all with corresponding videos. Remember when girls would “go for rank” and then take time off? I mean Jesus, that was a whiiiile ago now - I guess the top 20 solidified pretty tightly around 2015 or whatever - but at least that felt like it at least alluded to sustainability. 

I catch myself wanting to say, “I’m not complaining” - like if I have anything to say along the lines of being tired or wondering what the fuck I’m going to do next somehow makes me a bad person, or an ungrateful person, or something along those lines. It feels bad for business, too, which is an almost scarier thought. 

A non-industry friend of mine and I spoke last weekend about work and I mentioned I was having a tough time “feeling inspired”, and she said,

“You’ve been working the same job for almost a decade. Most people switch jobs every five or six years.”

In many ways the “job” has changed, especially after having moved from exclusively live streaming to primarily content creation - but fundamentally, it is the same. We reinvent ourselves and look through new perspectives to keep ourselves going, and the things we like about this line of work are likely still alive and well - but maybe it’s not a surprise to feel the way I’m feeling. Maybe I’m not alone, either. 

Does anyone else feel like whatever the next step is, it has to be “big” somehow? Like if I were to do something else - something non-industry - it would have to either make me the same amount of money or be something so passion driven and different and interesting and “wow, she did THAT” kind of a thing ... almost in an attempt to make it feel “worth it” to have my attention taken elsewhere. I daydream about buying some farm out in the middle of nowhere a lot lately. I follow along on Twitter with one of the OGs who has literally done just that. I wonder how many of us also want to go where it’s quiet and slow. 

Anyway, more than anything I want to just say that it’s fucking insanity that putting out new content practically daily and fighting tooth and nail against algorithms that fucking hate us has become some sort of normal, acceptable thing. Are you tired? I’m fucking tired, man. I’m grateful and I’m kind of in awe of everything that’s happened over the last near-decade, and I’m in awe of those of us who have seen things rise and fall and rise and start to fall again, and somehow have still stuck around. 

What a strange little life we’ve made. I hope all of you are well - and if you’re not really sure how to answer the “how are you doing” question, just know we’re in the same boat. 

[castiel-left-his-mark-on-me]

Hi, Ary, very inactive ex-mutual(i think???) here. Good to see you thriving! ♥ It's been a while since I've dipped my head into cockles stuff. Could I perchance maybe ask uuuuum tf is going on??? lol I see Mish apparently confirmed he used to stay over at Jensen's in Van, and heard newbs were apparently freaking out about it and getting a bit messy, which I get that, business as usual. But I'm also seeing shit about spin-offs? And Jared getting in a twitter fight with Jensen, causing/resulting in stans to going feral and sending hate?? I know you're not as big a fan of Jar, but that's part of why I figured I'd ask you, you usually have a really level head about this kinda stuff. If you don't wanna answer publically, or at all, that's totally chill!

Hey, Rhi! We're still mutuals! Of course we're still mutuals! When I saw the notification of your ask, I was like "Hey! I haven't seen you in a while!" and my husband was like "???" and I said "Tumblr" and he said "Oh."

It was a wild time haha.

In any case, welcome back to the dumpster fire! We are obviously still a mess. So to catch you up, I guess I will start by summarizing both before and after the finale (not sure where you left off so this might be redundant for you) ... basically, it became obvious as the end of the show neared that Jensen was not on board with the plan for the finale; although Jared never stopped singing its praises.

We got confirmation of this during a zoom interview where Jensen said that he actually went into the writers room as well as called Kripke to basically voice how he didn't agree with the direction the final season was going, but he was shot down on all fronts. In another interview, he was asked "What would you tell your younger self going into this career?" And Jensen responded with: "I would tell myself to just keep your head down and do the work" meaning, "Don't try to change things because you can't." I also think that this whole situation is what he wrote "Let Me Be" about for his first Radio Company album, but that is just my own speculation. All of his reluctance, even though he always followed it up with "But I eventually saw the value in the script" or "I came around in the end" (which never sounded sincere, and I don't think he was really trying to sound sincere) made us all very nervous about what was to come for 15x20; and of course, when the last two episodes aired, we saw just how badly they fucked it up.

After the awful finale, the entire fandom became aware of the CW's heavy handed role in the thing, basically squeezing all the life out of SPN to shape it into a ramp from which Walker could launch itself. They not only erased all the love and joy and representation that Cas's love confession gave us, they also tore apart the things that made sense about the bond between Sam and Dean, making it really just about Sam-- and therefore Jared, which of course, Jared seemed to be fine with ... even though no one else was. Misha barely said anything during the finale, and a few of the other actors talked about the show ending in various posts, but Jared tweeted up a storm ... and Jensen? Jensen just sat in sexy-silent resentment of the whole thing. He didn't tweet, he didn't post, he didn't say a word once he no longer had to, and I think that's because he was already going full-steam-ahead on his plans for redemption.

Which brings us to Chaos Machine-- Jensen and Danneel's new production company that is being run by a queer creative director and has a mantra of inclusivity and representation woven throughout it's fabric; and apparently, the first story that Jensen wanted to tell through this new platform is the origin story of Sam and Dean's parents; so last week (?) he announced the upcoming production of "The Winchesters" -- the untold love story of John and Mary. Obviously, John is not the most likable character from the show, so the idea was met with a lot of resentment when it was first announced, but Jensen has gone on to say that he is excited to take on the task of telling the "true" story behind these characters-- the one that makes sense with the pre-established canon and doesn't reject it. So, given that, the idea is being mulled over with a bit more optimism from the fandom.

Who isn't being optimistic though?

Jared Padalecki.

When Jensen made this announcement on Twitter, many of his friends and coworkers congratulated him, but not Jared. Jared responded with a passive aggressive: "I'm happy for you, man, but I wish I didn't hear about it through Twitter." This of course, sent all the die-hard Jared fans into a tizzy and they immediately began asking him if he was serious (hoping it was just a joke-- we all hoped it was because there would be fallout no matter what one's opinion on Jared is). Instead of leaving it there though or just deleting that tweet, Jared went on to tweet some more, saying that he was being serious that he didn't know about the plans for the prequel, and that he was "gutted" that Sam apparenlty wouldn't be included (mind you, this a prequel to SPN... meaning BEFORE Sam and Dean were even born, so how could Sam be included? But Dean is apparently narrating this story so maybe Jared thought Sam should be helping to narrate it? I don't know). But Jared being Jared couldn't just leave that there, he then went on to tweet at Robbie Thompson who was announced as a writer for "The Winchesters" so then Jared went off on him too, calling him "Brutus" and a "coward" acting like Robbie betrayed him (speculation is-- Robbie refused to write for Walker, so Jared is pissed that he essentially chose Jensen over him). He did fairly quickly, remove that tweet attacking Robbie, but of course the damage was done at that point. And it truly only took his first tweet calling out Jensen for some people to be like "Jared-- that sucks if you didn't know but why are you saying any of this publicly?"

As you might know, Jared has had issues in the past with posting hurtful things on social media, and has even used it as a tool for attack before-- calling out customer service agents and public workers that he felt have wronged him, which is bad enough ... but for him to then do the same thing to his best friend of well over a decade? Many people who had once liked him or at least gave him the benefit of the doubt (I used to ...) stopped after this latest twitter tantrum.

However, some people have suspected for some time that J2 had a falling out either shortly before the finale or just after. Their public/social media interactions have seemed awkward, stilted or even non-existent in moments that they normally wouldn't be. In the past year, when Walker premiered, Jensen didn't say much about his friend's new venture other than a "Congrats. buddy" here and there. Later, we learned that Jensen refused to work on the show ... Jared said he make him do it, drag Jensen to the set "kicking and screaming" which made many fans quirk up an eyebrow because, why would Jensen put up a fight unless the two weren't as close as they used to be? And then Jensen moved his family to Colorado (either permanently or for an extended period at least) which is notable considering how he moved to Texas seemingly to be closer to Jared, even buying a house that was near his. All this was just speculation though; but it wasn't until Jared's tweet complaining about not knowing about the prequel that the theories behind them falling out, became less theory and more fact.

The day after his twitter tantrum, Jared tweeted again-- not retracting his statements or apologizing, but instead saying that he and Jensen "talked" and were "all good". Jensen then tweeted too, parroting this statement to some degree, which only made the whole thing even more sour in the mouths of the fans. The fact that Jared didn't apologize for his outburst and throwing his friend under the bus, and also the fact that Jensen-- Mr. Sexy Silence, Mr. Never Tweets, Mr. Tech-Ignorant-and-Proud, actually had to POST SOMETHING saying that he and Jared made up, it just screamed OPTICS. It was obviously the work of agents and PR firms and lots of people going "Look, if you two keep beefing, that will mean the death of both of your projects. Even more people will stop watching Walker, and this SPN prequel will never get picked up due to the scandal." So, the two "made nice" publicly to quell the chaos, but in my opinion, it's all too little too late. Jared started a storm that he can't contain now with a little tweet, and it seems like he knows that too because before he talked about him and Jensen making up, he asked that people "not send threats". He could have just as easily said that he shouldn't have made this a public issue and that he's sorry, but instead, he continued to play the victim and stoke the flames by alerting us all to the damage he's done.

Now, like I said before-- I used to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't think he's an awful human or that he deserves to be attacked or anything, but he is an adult man with very poor judgment and an obvious selfish-streak a mile wide. He should know better, and he should have more respect for his so-called "friends" and "brothers" than to make them targets to public ridicule. I have a hard time believing that Jensen still sees Jared the way he used to, and I wouldn't blame him a bit for wanting to pull away-- especially when he's moving on to so many new and exciting things. Jared certainly deserves happiness just as much as anyone else, but he went on twitter and basically asked for a scandal, and he got one.

The question is now-- was there a motive behind it? Was just looking for a reason to bring his and Jensen's falling out to light-- while making himself looking like the victim in the process? Or did he genuinely not know about the prequel and just decided to go about "not knowing" in the most toxic and hurtful way he could manage?

In any case, that is the drama ... that is the J2 insanity in a rather lengthy nutshell ... that is the tea ... and I hope it all makes sense.

But the good news out of all of this is, Cockles is thriving-- they are happy and in love and Jensen calls Misha "Babe" and Misha misses waking up to see Jensen in the morning, and they are just as cute and wonderful as can be.

So, I will end that there. I am so glad to see you back, and I hope I answered all your questions in a way that made sense ... I tried anyway!

💖💖💖