#Just like when they found out about my Discord account some years ago

[skurtberry-shortcake]

The worst part about having online friends is that if someday they just stop responding, you'd never know what happened to them

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for writing a story? ✨ (emoji so I can find this easily)

So around a year and a half ago, as part of a drama exam me and a group of four others had to devise a piece to act out for the exam.

Me and two others who were the actors (the other two did the set and music) ended up really liking the story and characters we were creating for the project and all wanted to expand on the story we'd created for the exam.

The three of us me (currently 16 NB) and the other two who I'll call Alex (currently 17 M) and Rowan (currently 16 NB) made a discord server for the three of us to talk about the characters we'd made together and share ideas for how we'd develop them if we turned the performance we were writing into a story/book series.

This was a lot of fun and at first I really enjoyed discussing ideas about the characters we'd created but after a while I started to find myself disliking some of the others' ideas more and more and wanting to write the series on my own.

I never acted on that though because the three of us were all passionate about our ideas and the characters so the idea of writing my own version felt wrong when the others wanted to write the story too as a group.

Now since then, Rowan has stopped talking to both me and Alex. I haven't heard from Rowan since May and honestly I don't really want to hear from them again because since we stopped talking I realized our friendship really wasn't very healthy for either of us. During this time they deleted discord but their account was still in the server.

Alex had disappeared offline since January but recently returned five months ago. We caught up and at first we talked about our ideas, the characters and how we wanted to turn it into a book series again, during this we kicked Rowan's account from the discord because neither of us spoke with them anymore. After a while we stopped talking much about the characters and our ideas and just started talking about random things. But last week Alex left the discord unannounced and I haven't heard from him at all since.

Now, I know Alex might return sometime like he left and returned before and I know this is pretty soon but while he's gone and since I'm no longer in contact with Rowan, I've found myself wanting to try writing the story myself with complete freedom to write the story I want to write and not have to use the others' ideas that I don't like.

It wouldn't feel so wrong anymore since they're not still there discussing their ideas or talking about how we should all write it together as a group but I do feel a little unsure if this would be an assholeish thing to do. I mean, I'd be writing about the characters we all created together, using the base story idea we all created for the project and I don't know if Alex will return or not yet.

So, would I be the asshole if I wrote the story by myself?

Additional info.

Idk if any of this is relevant but it might help with the judgement/I feel like people would ask for info about this stuff if I didn't add it.

The ideas I disliked were mainly to do with the development of a certain character, a ship that really would not make any sense and Alex wanting to add in a talking magical dinosaur to the plot of what was meant to be a story set in the modern day real world.

We never actually tried to write the story as a group before, we just talked about it.

None of us see each other IRL anymore.

I have got ADHD and autism.

There wouldn't be anything nsfw in the story.

None of the characters were based on any of us.

There are a lot of reasons why mine and Rowan's friendship wasn't healthy for either of us but to give a few reasons we didn't really care about each other's interests (like fandoms), would consistently cancel on hangouts with each other or would get into arguments over stupid stuff and not talk for weeks only to go back to being clingy with each other when we started talking again. Looking back, it was definitely an unhealthy friendship for both of us.

What are these acronyms?

[twilight-princess240]

I'm probably going to regret posting this and might delete it at some point, who knows, but I want to get this off my chest. I'll probably regret doing this on a public post on Tumblr later.

Is it weird to miss someone who you've only talked to briefly on here who deactivated their account for a reason or another, and since you don't know if there's any other social media out there they have along with the fact that you still didn't talk to them much, you'll probably never encounter them again?

Because that happened to me. I found an account by chance while perusing Tumblr, and I was interested in what posts were on there despite them being 18+ and NSFW. I honestly liked the content when looking through it and I even sent a message through the ask function admitting as such despite being unusually shy for some reason, maybe because at the time I didn't post anything (until my rant about my girl Alyssa Targaryen not too long ago) and I usually prefer to keep to myself.

I admittedly wasn't sure what the response would be and suddenly I felt like the biggest shrinking violet on the planet at the time. It was probably because it was the first time I had ever sent an ask on anyone's account, not to mention this was probably the first guy I reached out to on my own initiative outside of those I was already comfortable around on Discord. I was so nervous and to a certain extent, scared, because even though I was 22 at the time I never knew I could be so shy. I must have been pretty red in the face from my shyness too.

But he reached out to me about my ask through Tumblr's messages function, and he was honestly really kind. In the first message he sent to me, he thanked me for the kindness in my ask, and I was so surprised that he directly reached out to me that not only did my shyness kick in full force, I admittedly didn't respond to it for a month. When I finally responded, he understood I was shy for reasons I couldn't explain at the time, and surprisingly, despite my shyness still lingering, I felt comfortable around him. He assured me that he didn't feel uncomfortable about the fact that I liked a lot of his posts, which I was feeling really conscious about and had admitted to him. I felt like I could come out of my shell at least a bit, open up a little, at least to the point where I was willing to keep talking to him if we could. There were times where there were bumps in the road, where I wasn't sure if we had gotten off on the wrong foot or something or I was wondering if I was annoying or a load because of a tendency to just run my mouth at times, but overall I honestly enjoyed talking to him and his company even if it was solely through Tumblr's messages function.

However, it wasn't for long. We only talked for a few months, and even then, it was really brief and spread out partially due to different time zones. He was dealing with a lot of hate from anons who knew they could get away with it because they could hide behind screens. It was one of the key reasons if not the key reason why he eventually deactivated his blog, last year actually, and probably hasn't returned. Our final exchange, in October last year, was me wishing him luck since he was deleting his blog and possibly not returning, and he thanked me and wished me the best as well. And we both moved on with our lives.

But here's why I think I'm weird when concerning this topic and for even writing all this. It's because somehow, I miss him and feel a wish to reconnect with him and talk with him again. Aside from us talking very sparsely, I'm not sure if we even really knew each other after our message exchanging. As a result of all that, I feel like I shouldn't miss him. Yet I do, and I feel a strange desire to reconnect with him and talk with him again. I try to quash those feelings because not only will it probably never happen, to an extent I feel like it doesn't feel right to miss him and want to reconnect with him after only exchanging messages with him briefly and it being almost a year since he left.

Oh boy, this was practically an essay. While I do feel a bit better about getting this off my chest, I'm probably going to be cringing at myself for this and considering when to delete it as well. It scares me a bit, the fact that even though I didn't mention the person's name at all, someone might still figure out who I'm talking about and somehow get it to him. Well, it's still up in the air as to whether this is going to be deleted or not, but it all depends on how much I regret posting this and how mortified and conscious I feel at least a bit later over even writing this to begin with.

[marsontherocks]

141 and Friends online Headcanons

Ghost has a secret account to monitor what everyone is doing. No one knows he even has any social media accounts until one day at breakfast he tells Soap to stop posting thirst traps on Instagram

Soap instead posts more thirst traps

Soap and Gaz bully each other online

Gaz has #CancelSoap in all of his bios

Alejandro has jumped on the #CancelSoap train

Gaz ends all his emails with "Please hesitate to reach out❤"

Price hates it

Laswell says she hates it but she loves it

Soap will click on any link he is sent

It's a huge issue

He has had to take Internet Safety classes too many times

Ghost will scold people for coming into his office unannounced because he's "incredibly busy"

He's playing Solitaire

Price forwards chain emails

Ghost makes chain emails and sends them to Price

König hates sending emails

Sometimes Rudy will post pictures of himself

A guy commented a heart emoji and immediately received a death threat from Alejandro

Valeria likes to slander Alejandro online

Alejandro once commented on one of the posts "The divorce was 7 years ago, move on"

Gaz sends Ghost a lot of memes because he thinks it annoys him

It doesn't, if anything Ghost appreciates it

Soap once took Rudy's phone and changed his insta bio to say "@/RudyLover's Discord Kitten"

Rudy didn't notice for a whole year

König likes watching those food cooking channels

Alex convinced Farah to get a TikTok

He regrets it because now Farah will ignore him to watch videos of cats

Gaz started a Price fan account

Soap and Farah are also apart of the account

It got weirdly popular but then someone reported it to Price and they had to take it down

Price was honestly flattered

Graves likes to watch watch repair videos

Graves has seen that one Pedro Pascal edit

Its his lock screen now

Gaz once sent Alejandro a very weird meme that was ment for Soap:

Alejandro is a little concerned about what those two talk about

Soap texts Ghost in weird fonts

Every new message is a new font

Ghost doesn't know how he hasn't ran out of fonts

Price watches fail complimations

Laswell and Price's conversations look like this:

Laswell: Lunch?

Price: Ok

Price: Lunch?

Laswell: K

Laswell: Seen news?

Price: No

They have never sent a text longer than 3 words

Soap also posts videos of him blowing things up

He has several account violations for saying shit like "BOMBS ARE AWESOME"

Ghost and Farah will video call just to watch Cat videos together, the call is always incredibly silent. Soap witnessed one. He didn't even know Ghost was on the phone till Farah sneezed.

Laswell never makes an account with her real name

Prices username is always JPrice and then some random numbers

Ghost doesn't ever want his account to be found by the others so he makes his username BestestHelloKittyLover420

Soap's username is BombLoverSoap

Gaz is BestKyleEverSixty9

Rudy's is AleLover, hes matching with Alejandro

Alex is FarahNumber1Fan

Farah is AlexNumber2Fan because AlexNumber1Fan was taken

Valeria is MamiESN

Graves is GravesNotFilled, hes aware of the double meaning here

König has a default username

Horangi makes matching profile pictures for him and König

Horangi's username is a keyboard smash

Roach posts pictures of bugs he finds in base and when he's deployed in another country

His username is RealRoachBlazeIt

BTW, if you want more of a certain headcanon, let me know, cuz I LOVE talking while at work lol. My inbox is open always👍

Masterlist

[weaponizedhorse]

Very curious to see that write-up, having only seen illuminautii's own video on the matter from her perspective

Dude I completely forgot to reply to Nunya about this also so thank you so so much for sending this ask!

@beardedmrbean

And oh shit if all you saw was iiluminaughtiis video I am here to inform you that basically everything she said was a lie. Strap in it's gonna get CRAZY

basically iilluminaughtii brought this entire situation on herself by trying to "call out" legal eagles editors on Twitter for "stealing/ copying" her style? And the style was a highlight effect? And a ripped paper effect? Which legal eagle has been using for like literal years. Like this is literally the examples she gave on Twitter

And Illuminaughtii legit just flew too close to the sun cause a TON of crazy shit has come out about her since she made that tweet

But it turns out Illuminati used to be in a group channel called sad milk with a bunch of other YouTubers One of them was the click and one of them was wonderstruck TV and after all this shit went down with the group channel she paid people to dig through The Clicks old videos from 10 to 14 years ago where he was saying no no words because he was 17 and learning English (he's swedish) she posted in this discord about the click saying retarded 10 years ago and when someone said "it was 10 years ago irrelevant" she went on to say how "disgusted" she was with this person for "excusing" 10 fucking year old videos?? Blair said "that word was never okay to use and was never in my vocabulary" good for you?? And apparently Blair says retard/ed in private anyway

Then she made an alt Twitter and alt Reddit account and on the Reddit account she made up conspiracy theories about why sad milk broke up then replied with her iiluminaughtii reddit account debunking her own post?? and then on Twitter she tweeted to the click, to anybody he's coworkers, with like that he shares a podcast with anyone, who is even been on the podcast anyone who has any sort of affiliation with Click saying "oh do you know your friend said the n word Did you know your friend sent the f slur etc" And I mean it was non-stop the click said in his video that he remembers this account and thought it was some random troll but it was Blair the whole time.

Illuminati deleted the doobie Smurfs Reddit account after this was found out but the Twitter is still up so you can actually go through the doobie shmirtz Twitter and see all the unhinged fucking shit she did.

In her video about Click she said that he basically allowed a pedo to stay in his discord for months knowingly. And it turns out as soon as this guy said he was a pedo the mods kick him out while Click was asleep cause time zones. Illuminaughtii in discord messages said she was proud of Click for how he handled the situation

That's not even counting what she did to wonderstruck TV The worst of which is in her quote unquote response video about everything that happened on Twitter she put out his would-be suicide note. For what fucking reason I have no idea and then she revealed that she called the cops on him even though he said he had already calmed down and talked to his therapist? It's it's fucking insane

I very much encourage watching clicks video

[sylpheedz]

In Memory of Jeysen Perez Lyons (1996-2022) & Akira Toriyama (1955-2024)

    This is actually quite late, but I'd like to take a minute to pour one out for a very good friend of mine who took his own life two years ago now, and a man who's creativity touched countless young lives all over the world.

Eulogy below, puttin' it under a Read More. Warning, it does talk about s**c*de and if you're not going to be okay after reading about it, probably don't read it then.

I'd like to start with Toriyama-sensei (right). 

    Akira Toriyama captured hearts of millions every with stories of friendship, growth, and gloriously, ridiculously intense anime action since 1984. He was the man behind art of the Dragon Quest games, and most notably, Goku, the character that would inspire countless to always surpass their limits and giving their very best...or something like that. 

    I'll admit, I was never really a DBZ fan myself. Never did get with the hype. I'd catch it a few times on old Toonami, but it just never really captured my attention the way it did for so many others. Never even really made the discrepancy that it was anime, it was just another cartoon to me as a kid. 

    But the funny thing is, you don't even really have to be a DBZ fan to still be affected by it. While I never really watched the show itself, I was exposed to it by the animations by fans it inspired, specifically Super Mario Bros. Z, a fanfiction sprite animation series by one Alvin Earthworm where Sonic and Shadow team up with the Mario Bros. to fight Mecha Sonic for the chaos emeralds and prevent him from destroying any more worlds. There was that and Nazo Unleashed, which was a flash animation that used frames of the show for its fight scenes, which was the rawest shit ever to me as an adolescent. These animationss' fight scenes, which were very heavily inspired by Dragon Ball Z, are what inspired me to practice my art and work my way up towards animating.

    So while there may have been a few middle men involved, but even my creative mind's been influenced by Toriyama. And for what it's worth? I'm thankful for the madness he's given me. All the AMVs and fight scenes I concoct in my head while either laying in bed unable to sleep or taking a shower. Who knows. Maybe I actually will watch the show just for some ideas on animation techniques.

    While I may not have personally been as enamored with DBZ as everyone else, I knew someone very closely who was an absolute madlad for it.

    His name was Jeysen Lyons (middle), and he's probably one of the best friends I've ever had in my entire life. Hell, maybe even the best. I met Jeysen back in my very first year of middle school, along with Masatoshi and Chris, my first real friends after having spent my elementary days ostracized among the other kids to the point of suicidal thoughts. 

    He was a really funny kid, dirty jokes galore and could quote entire YouTube Poop videos from memory (and we had some much raunchier shit back then lmao, it really was a different time from today). It was always more fun when Jeysen was around.

    After graduating middle school, I found it harder to keep in touch. I'd always get so engrossed with my own life that I could never really keep up with old friends like I'd want to. Never was good at keeping up. But there were still some summers where we could get together at his mom's apartment for his birthday, July 10. Eventually, his mom found work in another state, and they had to move to Mississippi. After that, I hadn't heard from him for a while. I don't remember how, but at some point I managed to get ahold of Jeysen's Steam account and could talk to him from there, and we friended each other on Discord. It was always so much chatting with him online, though sometimes he would some concerning memes, which wouldn't be surprising considering he lurked 4chan.

    On that note, it seemed like he absorbed the sentiments regarding us queers as probably a lot of 'channers would normally have, ranging from "don't be publicly visible" to "just need to be shot". Once my egg cracked, it became one of those things that were more...complicated. And thanks to that, I wasn't sure how to tell him about...well, me.

    I wasn't sure how he'd react. Would he accept me while thinking me stranger tan he thought? Would he have still considered me a friend but disrespected my identity openly? Would he have completely and totally hated me, moving forward? I wanted to tell him, but I always got too nervous whenever I tried, so we'd just end up chatting, which was always still fun, but I so badly wanted to break the ice with him at some point.

    Other than that, we'd even talk about each other's personal projects, like my Revolutionary Vanguard Minerva, and his Perfect Universe, which is about a high school boy that gets caught in an alien war of good and evil and attains god-like power in the midst of it, and has to try to keep it from driving him mad. I always thought it was an interesting premise. I wish I asked him more questions about it.

    At some point two years ago, Jeysen contacted me sounding...exasperated. Panicked. I told him that whatever was happening, he could talk to me, and that I'd be there for him whenever he'd need me. But after I said that, he just said he'd be fine, and then left.

    Fast-forward to days later, in the middle of calling my representatives about another horrendous internet bill that came back, I tried talking to Jeysen again, as I was a bit worried. I got a response, asking me if I was "M". I asked them to clarify, and they asked if I was [deadname]. I said yeah.

And they told me they were his mom, and that Jeysen had died.

    I thought it was a really strange prank at first. I even got angry, told them to knock it the fuck off. But then I looked up his name, and sure enough, there he was, in an obituary.

I couldn't believe it. Jeysen really did do it. I lost my best friend. 

I lost my brother.

    From what his mom said, he was frantic about something involving "docksing". I'm thinking she meant doxxing. It sounded like at some point Jeysen caught the attention of somebody who knew how to get people's info, and that sent him into a panic attack while they were already trying to transfer him to different medication for bipolarism. 

    His demons got the best of him in a moment of emotional instability, and he was finally pushed too far, and now he's gone.

    It...still doesn't feel real. It still feels like I could just reach out to him, right now, on this chat client like usual and start talking to him again. Maybe it'll never feel "real" to me. But it is. My boy is gone.

    His mom assured me it's not my fault, and I know it isn't. But I keep replaying scenarios in my head, where maybe if I'd just...been the one to approach more, maybe he wouldn't have done it. If I'd taken more time to ask him about his day, ask him about Perfect Universe, to watch DBZ or other anime with him...

    If I'd just gone out of my way to spend more time with him... Maybe I could've made him stay. Maybe I could've saved him. Maybe, maybe... I could go over all the "maybes" in the world, but it wouldn't change the reality that he is not here anymore. Not a day has gone by where I haven't thought of him at least once.

    And this is actually why Toriyama's death hit me harder than other deaths. I actually started crying when I found out. It felt like I was losing a part of my bro, in a way. Which is probably silly, that's a whole-ass other person, another individual. It's not like DBZ is going to stop being a thing because he died. I have no doubt is probably as immortalized in Japanese and probably even worldwide culture as Astro Boy. Actually, more than Astro Boy. Atom's admittedly a little more niche...

    But the worst part? I never got to tell him. I never gave him the chance to reject me, but I also never gave him the chance to accept me either. Now I'll never know. I'll never know whether our friendship was flimsy and fleeting or made of iron. I'd like to hope it was, personally, but... 

    Either way, I'll always miss him. Life's much duller without my brother with me. I have so much that I want to talk to him about. So many new ideas, so many new things I wanna do with my life, now that I'm finally going through my transition journey. But I guess that'll all have to wait till I'm up there with him.

He'd better be up there. 😠

Lemme tell ya, folks. 

If I go up there and find out the Big Boss in the sky put him in the incinerator for "being a quitter" when he was already in inconceivable pain that caused him to take his own life? 

He is catching these fucking hands of mine. I don't care if I'm gonna lose, it's on sight for doing mah boi like that. 👿🔪

I will dive down to hell and fucking claw my brother out of the lake of fire myself if I have to.

But in all seriousness, if I could go back in time, even if it meant I had to start my life completely over, I wouldn't even blink if it meant I could see my brother again. I can only hope he's in a better place right now.

...Or ol' man God and I are gonna have to have some words. 😡

[awesomesauce2929]

Choose violence ask:

what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

worst discord server and why

what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

worst part of fanon

ooooh 🌶️ spice level is high, let's go. warning that there will be vent-like explanation here, this is going to be raw

what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person? Personally I use block button freely when I see accounts with bad vibes, bad behaviour, especially they are insulting someone with nasty swears and those who put others under the bus for drama. But there was a guy who attacked a ship for a sake of promoting his own art which he reposted (the art was made 2 years ago), after finding out his other horrible antics and allegations and how he throws others under the bus like it is his breakfast, I blocked him, he was really annoying.

worst discord server and why? well. here we go. basically I was friends with one of the admin, had a good time in the server for 1 year and half, after sharing my vent on my personal twitter, they scolding me, dropped me from the proofreader of their fan translation project because I said I couldn't do Chapter 3 at the time. They didn't even communicate that, in fact they got someone to be proofreader without telling me. They justify it by saying my mental health was bad and gaslight and isolating me further until I could not take it anymore, I lashed out. I apologise but the server was so tense that I got paranoid, anxious and got trust issues. I became inactive in that server on 1st January. I tried to reconcile and explain myself to the admin about my actions and I was sorry I was, but they send a crazy google document to me being passive aggressive and absolutely rude, with no respect or regard to my feelings whatsoever after I got over the shock and took some time to realise it wasn't worth explaining myself. the end. But this year I found two amazing servers that helped me to get better mental wise and I'm much happier in 2024 than 2023.

what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them? emmmm, I don't think that kind of thing happened to me so far because I don't hate character, I am mostly indifferent to some of them, I just see the fans playing up the antics as they are an active force compare to the character which is a passive tool to be used. But I will say that the opposite does happen to me, my interest in characters, especially interacting with others civilly or positively or both, grew well and I love creating headcanons about them or even fics hehe.

worst part of fanon the debate of the who is the most powerful saint, especially the gold saint is overdone. Camus being an abusive parent and most people ran with it, I don't personally like that headcanon because that is used to overhating the aquarius. and I think that is it really.

[javis-burner-phone]

Thank you for your post about the current situation in the fandom. It really hit home. I know your post was about writers in the fandom but I was able to take a lot from it.

I am not a writer, I came to this part of tumblr about a year ago to enjoy Pedro fanfic, other brilliant content and hopefully make some connections within the fandom.

I never expected it to be so hard and so disheartening (I’ve been part of fandoms before and thought I knew how it worked… I was wrong!). Maybe it’s just me but as a non content creator I have found it hard to find my place here.

I make it a point to reblog the amazing writing that I read so that other people can enjoy it too and as a way to say thank you to the writers who give us these stories for free. I add comments too when a story has made a big impact on me. I send in asks and requests but most get ignored, which is fine, I can see how things can get lost if someone has had a lot of responses or even if that particular writer just doesn’t like the sound of what I’ve sent. I have pushed myself way out of my comfort zone and gone into people’s DMs and discord to start conversations but no one seems all that interested. I’ll never be the loudest in the room and it can be hard to make yourself heard over all the more confident, outspoken people. But I can understand that not even a shared interest will mean you automatically get on with someone and i don’t want people to have conversations with me out of some kind of obligation.

However, after a while you can’t help but take it personally and feel quite despondent. I have been very close to deleting my account altogether and then I came across your post and your take on it all and I am so glad that i did. The part you wrote about the filtered content list was something I didn’t know about but now I do I can try it! It might not change anything but it’s worth a try. Just because I haven’t found my people yet doesnt mean that I won’t! And let’s face it, all I want to do is chat and get silly and excited about Pedro and his amazing work!

I do seem to have gone on quite a bit here when all I really wanted to do was say thank you for your post and to fly the flag for other non creators who might be feeling as lonely here as me - sorry for the long message and thank you for taking the time to read it.

Hey, thanks for sharing your experience. My post focused on fic writers, but you're 100% right. You don't have to be a writer to feel isolated here.

It makes sense to feel negative about how hard it is to connect here. I've also considered leaving a few times, but I kept trying and I'm glad I did. It requires a lot of effort, but we CAN make strong connections here.

I'm glad the post gave you hope. ❤️

[jazzpostsrandomthings]

My introduction to FFXIV

Hey, after posting the thing about the stress test server a few weeks ago, I got an idea to try and go down the memory lane, trying to recall everything that had happened during the time I've spent playing Final Fantasy XIV. I hope that someone would find my story and experiences interesting. After all, I found out that I enjoyed seeing other people's reactions to the game itself as well.

But in order to tell my story, I have to start somewhere. And I can't find a better way to do so than to tell you how I learnt of the game in the first place.

Not sure when exactly did it start, but I remember my friend mentioning that he was playing FFXIV during Summer this year, I think. I wasn't too interested, after all I had prior experience with MMORPGs like Aion, Tera, Black Desert, ArchAge and even that Digimon Masters Online or whatever was it called, and I didn't go further than level 30 in any of them (which meant I was playing for less than a month or a month and a half at max for Aion (the 2010 version prior to becoming the cash shop simulator with no story) and Digimon Masters). Why was I trying so many MMOs out in the first place? Well, my mom is actually into MMOs herself so I was visiting the titles she was playing as well (minus Digimon Masters) to help her and just find a title I would like, but it never clicked so I thought that maybe I wasn't into online gaming in the first place.

So when I heard that my friend was playing an MMORPG that was also a part of a franchise I didn't know much about, I kinda wanted to join... but I hesitated, knowing that it would probably end the same way as it did for five other titles I've listed above.

Fast-forward to the beginning of September 2023, September 2nd to be presice, when I saw some hentai-loving douche from a Russian Megaman Discord server saying how much the old gaming and MMOs sucked in comparison to perverted gachas he was playing with and how the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV was actually trash. Needless to say, the guy was banned for posting hentai there. But either way, what he said about FFXIV was actually a good advertisement for the game so I remembered what my friend was saying and decided to reach out to him, saying I am willing to give it a shot. I did mention that I might not stay for too long here due to my track record with MMORPGs, but he said it was fine and that I can leave if it doesn't light up the spark in me in a month. He then made a group DM with a friend of his who actually was a person I saw on a different server a few years ago so that was neat.

I made a SquareEnix account that same evening, downloaded the game and then logged into the Free Trial for the first time, getting hit with this game's version of Prelude (even though I wasn't a fan or FF series, I knew the tune) and feeling a sense of tranquility, staying on the screen for a few minutes and continuing to listen to it while fiddling with settings.

I watched the opening cinematic (it was great but I was wondering if the game even had Japanese voice acting because I like playing games and hearing their original language, be it English, Japanese or something else, just a personal preference) and got to the character creator. I was looking at the races, finding a liking to exactly the three of them -- cat-eared people with furry tails known as Miqo'te, tall and slender horned people named Au Ra and short child-like folk with long ears by the name of Lalafell.

Also I was struggling a lot with trying to read most of the race's names at first. It took me at least a few weeks to memorize them even.

At first, I wanted to make Axl as a cat boy here, thinking that I probably won't stick for long anyway (and I did make him in the game later, I still have his preset saved), but I decided to actually choose the race none of my friends picked up (one was a Miqo'te, other was an Au Ra), so I went for a lalafell and made my boy Pi from ROCKMAN ZERO - Chapter: AXL here to the best of my ability. One of the two friends was certainly really happy I chose a potato according to her messages when I had announced it :D

After getting freaked out by the game asking what my deity was (picked Oschon because Pi has a thing for exploring and learning new stuff about the world), I decided to pick the Healer class, before getting told not to do that because it would make early combat really annoying, and then my friend told me I can go for Arcanist since it would become a Healer class at level 30. Needless to say, I went for the book, then chose the Atomos server because my friends were there (ping wasn't bad here at all, even though everything tends to freeze rarely due to my internet provider screwing me over) and thus had set my eyes towards the seaside jewel of Eorzea -- Limsa Lominsa...

I didn't know there was a different opening for each of the city-states at that time so I had some flashbacks to ArchAge when my character, Pi Peataan (I REALLY didn't think much while giving the character a name), but then we had actually arrived to the city and... I realized I underestimated my PC with the potato graphics settings I had supposedly set for it. Those bushes took me out of it for a moment.

So, I arrived to Limsa, fixed the graphics, met Baderon Tenfingers (still giggling at that name), took notes that pirate speak is indeed quite hard for me to read quickly, then went to the main plaza with giant aetherite where I was met by my friends, the self-proclaimed 'emo catboy' Miqo'te Summoner/Scholar and an immensely tall black-scaled Auri Dark Knight. They greeted me, which made me feel all shy because before that I've only seen these people as 2D avatars and text messages, and now they could ran around me and kinda interact with me... ahem. One of them added me to the friends list (other couldn't, he was still in Free Trial), and then went their own ways while I had one hour left before the bed to explore the city.

I didn't know yet that you don't need to do yellow quests so i just picked up all the quests that were available in Limsa before proceeding with the main quest. I was getting lost in this giant city A LOT, which was the result of me having what I call "topographical cretinism", but I was... enjoying it. I ended the day without setting a foot outside the starting area, but I was looking forward towards tomorrow to explore some more, drifting to sleep while the main menu theme kept ringing in my head, accompanying me into my dreams...

Hope you enjoyed this entry. I will try to continue this series. I had a lot of fun remembering the details of the first day of FFXIV for me and what was I feeling during it all. Playing through it again with my friends that cannot play FFXIV or don't want to sink so much time into an MMO, and looking through the backlog of messages and screenshots in Discord I left while going through all of that certainly helped to assemble these memories back in a proper order.

Next Entry >>

[bittertomato]

A lil late but happy new year!

Characters under the cut, plus some fun facts

Tomato's faves for each month of 2023

January: Diana Cavendish (Little With Academia)

February: Diana Cavendish (Little Witch Academia)

March: True Rider — Hippolyta (Fate/Strange Fake)

April: Psyche Callista (Your Throne)

May: Misaka Mikoto (A Certain Scientific Railgun)

June: Misaka Mikoto (A Certain Scientific Railgun)

July: Morgan (Fate/Grand Order)

August: Morgan (Fate/Grand Order)

September: Morgan (Fate/Grand Order)

October: Morgan (Fate/Grand Order)

November: Morgan (Fate/Grand Order)

December: Morgan (Fate/Grand Order)

Brainrot of the Year 2023: Morgan (Fate/Grand Order)

Hall of Fame (aka brainrots of years past)

2023: Morgan (Fate/Grand Order)

2022: Tsuruhime Yachiyo (Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight: ReLive)

2021: Tsuruhime Yachiyo and Yumeoji Shiori (Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight: ReLive)

2020: Yumeoji Shiori (Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight: ReLive)

2019: Tendou Maya (Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight: ReLive)

2017 & 2018: Diana Cavendish (Little Witch Academia)

2016: Carmilla Karnstein (Carmilla the Webseries), Elsa (Frozen), Tohsaka Rin (Fate/stay night), and Misaka Mikoto (A Certain Scientific Railgun)

2015: Carmilla Karnstein + Laura Hollis aka Hollstein (Carmilla the Webseries) aka my gay awakening

2014: Elsa (Frozen)

2012 & 2013: Higurashi Kagome (Inuyasha), Kuchiki Rukia (Bleach), Mouri Ran (Detective Conan), and Chiba Mamoru (Sailor Moon)

2011: Chiba Mamoru (Sailor Moon)

2009 & 2010: Kuchiki Rukia (Bleach)

Pre-2009: Who knows? My memory sure doesn't!

And I promised fun facts, so...

The early days...

The reason I can date my first fave to Rukia in 2009 is because that was when I made a Fanfiction.net account and posted my first fanfic. Don't read it I was young and foolish.

Bleach, Inuyasha, and Sailor Moon were my first animes. The first two I definitely watched on Adult Swim back when I still watched cable.

I used to be pretty skilled at self defense and even have a first degree black belt. One of the reasons why Ran from Detective Conan really left an impression on me.

There's a few unnamed faves that I also had from more obscure anime that were from so long ago that I can't pinpoint the exact years. A special shoutout to Asuka from Ask Dr. Rin! This show is in no way affiliated with Tohsaka Rin lol.

And yes, I do have male faves besides Mamoru! I love Hak and his constipated repressed feelings for Yona (Akatsuki no Yona) and my in-game name in FGO is inspired by Kurogane (Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles). And for whatever reason, Fred is my favorite from Scooby Doo.

Honestly, I have to give Elsa some credit. I think she started the trend of my faves being "blonde/light haired "regal" rich/well off BAMF ladies who seem cold and distant on the surface but are actually dorks over-burdened and forced to grow up too fast, with a dash (or a ton) of family angst dumped on them." I mean, do you see any of my past faves being blonde? xD

The college days...

I was in denial about being queer and swore I was straight until I somehow found Carmilla the Webseries (I don't even know how) during the summer of 2015 and had a multi-step process of acceptance that went something like "Oh the actress for Laura Hollis is hot. Oh the actress for Carmilla is cute, pretty, and a huge dork. Oh everyone is pretty attractive. Wait mostly just the girls. Wait is that why I don't give a shit about men?"

Little Witch Academia is not only the first series where I published fanfic on AO3, but it's also the series that got me to write AND finish longer stories. So congrats, Diana! I really wanted to angst you :D It's also the fandom where I found my closer Discord friends. Love y'all, mwah.

I think Revue Starlight might be the series that squeezed the most faves out of me. It holds a special place in my heart for numerous reasons, but the main one might be the collab fic I worked on with Quill, who is now my partner 😊So thanks, ReLive even if your gacha game is somehow even worse than FGO.

That said, the series I seem to always go back to seem to be the To aru and Fate franchises. Maybe it's because they're still ongoing.

Those two are also the reason I started messaging Quill back in the day, so they hold an extra special place in my heart. Even with all their flaws.

And then Lostbelt 6 hit FGO and blew everything out of the water. I rave about Morgan a lot but that chapter of the game truly had a stellar cast. Nasu wanted us to remember that he can cook lol.

Where is my Lostbelt 6 anime, Aniplex?

[coockie8]

Wait what? Girl what happened? Do you mind talking about it? We could go to dms if you'd like cause I've never seen Anything on that

It's pretty public, like at least two posts about it will come up if you search my username (unless you already have these people blocked, or vice versa), so we don't have to go to DMs, but this will be long, so I'm gonna put it under a Keep Reading.

About 3-4 years ago on the original variation of my Dark Ace ask blog @red-eyed-raven, a user whose username I can't remember (who will from here on out be referred to as A), and won't share anyway because despite what they did, I don't think they deserve to be harassed, started interacting with Dark Ace, and chatting with me a bit.

We moved over to discord to engage a bit of a more personal relationship (a decision I will rapidly come to regret), they realised that I was coockie8, and briefly gushed about how they'd been a fan of my art for a while. I joined their discord server, I had a (deeply uncomfortable due to my anxiety) voice call with them, and I'd even given them the (real life) name I'd been going by at the time.

On the ask blog, there was also another user (who we'll refer to as B) I'd been kinda low key roleplaying with (who I also moved over to discord with at a point), and the roleplay did get sorta spicy in spots (by "spicy" I mean Dark Ace suggested showering with this person's character at one point). Now, I will admit B had "high school student" written in their bio, but as someone who was in high school until their literal 20's, that didn't actually give me any indication of their age. Given the usually spicy content on the blog, I figured they were 18+. I am fully willing to admit I made a mistake here; I should not have made assumptions.

Anyway, at some point I noticed that I'd been removed from the discord, and when I asked A, who was the server owner, about it, I was told they didn't approve of the dark content I was writing with a friend who was running a Lightning Strike blog at the time, and they'd rather I not be in the server, and I took that in stride, blocked A so they wouldn't be forced to interact with me in any way, and moved on. Prior to this, the Lightning Strike blog in question had received a nasty anon accusing them of romanticizing abuse because of the "stockholm-ish" nature of the way we were portraying Dark Ace and Lightning Strike's relationship.

After a few days of Dark Ace not getting interactions from A, someone asked if something had happened, and I explained A wasn't comfortable with the kind of dark topics I cover (understandable), and that, in retrospect, they might have even been who'd sent that nasty anon to my friend.

This was the catalyst. A wasn't blocked from @red-eyed-raven, so they saw the ask andhad a full blown meltdown over me just suggesting that they might have sent that anon hate.

It was at this point A started hunting me down on other accounts, taking screenshots of any art they found objectionable (including a picture I'd drawn at 14 of Aerrow getting raped by Mr. Moss) and poured all of it into a callout post accusing me of being a pedophile and a groomer, and called me a "backstabber" for hiding this from them (if you've been following me for any amount of time, you know I don't hide this). They posted (poorly censored) art they fully considered to be "child porn" Gods I hate that term publicly for all of their followers to see. But I was, somehow, the only one committing a crime in their mind. I don't know.

I don't need to explain where the "pedophile" part comes from; these people believe a cartoon character assigned the narrative trait of a number below 18 is the exact same thing as a real, living, breathing 14-year-old. As a CSA survivor, this grinds my gears for obvious reasons.

The "groomer" part was over the barely spicy RP with B, as well as the fact I'd admitted to them that the police had seen my "objectionable art" in the past and did nothing (this part is crucial, at least to me, 'cause there's at least 1 user who's been trying to claim I've been convicted. I have not. I have no record. They're lying.), because drawings are not the same thing as hurting a real person, and there's literally nothing wrong with creating dark and taboo art. The act of stating this objective fact (that art is not real life) is, apparently, "grooming", I guess.

A couple more "callout" posts were made, rife with all the same misinformation, and I left the fandom for a year. Upon tentatively returning about a year later, I immediately got attacked by these people, and promptly shut down for a while until I'd established myself in the proship community, and didn't feel so isolated anymore. This is when I fully returned, and it's taken at least 2 years for me to stop drowning in anxiety every time I hyperfixate on this show.

So yeah, that's the gist. I know it's long, sorry.

[zeldakat]

totk theory?:

(with other timeline stuff mixed in, for flavor)

everyone prepare your tits i went on a whole ramble in two diff discord servers and i need to share my thoughts

[VAGUE TOTK SPOILERS AHEAD]

SO. This all was started by me watching a theory video. In it someone said something about TotK being a closed loop (in reference to the time travel)—which I didn't agree with.

My reasoning, copied straight from my original ramble (with edits for grammar to make it easier to read):

The glyphs were supposedly made by ancient ppl after watching the dragons tears. But, they only appeared after Zelda time traveled

And, iirc, before the sword is sent back the light dragon is there. BUT she doesnt have the glowy light trails on her head yet.

Then I realized all that kinda falls apart bc tanondorf recognizes Zelda prior to her time traveling. BUT I can fix this.

Tangent time. I know this sounds really off-topic but I promise it eventually loops back to the original topic.

So, earlier today I was playing Hyrule Warriors (Definitive Edition) with my sibling, and we were talking about Ravio's weapons being called "rental hammers" and how it would be funny if, afterwards when he went back to his own time, he put those hammers up for rent for stupid amounts of money because, quote, "they have blood from the enemies from the era of the fallen hero in their grains" because he couldn't get it out when he cleaned them and decided, fuck it. I can make bank from this. THAT turned into a conversation about Hyrule Warriors' non canon status, and I said something along the lines of, "if Hyrule Warriors was canon it could solve the timeline convergence problem."

My reasoning for that:

It literally has all three timelines. its the whole fucking plot

^ though they dont stay together, it easily explains references in BotW. and the rock salt thing*

(*The "rock salt thing" is the fact that BotW's item description for rock salt references Wind Waker and basically says salt deposits like this exist bc of the Great Sea, despite this Hyrule. not being underwater. which raises some questions!)

And speaking of the rock salt thing–

I also posed the idea that, if you still dont want to consider HW canon for fun, you could just explain it by the Passage of Time. And just time in general.

THIS theory's explanation:

After Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass (both the same Link) is Spirit Tracks. Spirit Tracks takes place 100 years after WW and PH, and both of those games are like. pretty important to it

Spirit Tracks does not take place in the ocean. (For the most part at least. I don't know much about spirit tracks.) Instead, it's in "New Hyrule", which was founded by the previous hero and Tetra.

^ Basically they found a big ass fucking island (aka. a continent) and were like Yeah this looks like a good place to reinstate the monarchy.

So, even though Hyrule gets flooded in the adult timeline, we still end up with a Hyrule on land in that same timeline.

Slight topic change. BotW (and by extension TotK) is at the end of the timeline. At least 10,100* years after whichever game was most recent, and then some more to account for the first appearance of the Calamity. (Now. I personally am a fan of the theory that the events of 10k years ago actually took place before Skyward Sword (and these events are the Imprisoning War talked about in that game) but for the purposes of this theory we're ignoring that possibility.) (*More on this later.)

That's a lotta fuckin time. A lot can change in that amount of time.

Who's to say all three timelines didn't eventually end up in the same place? Kinda like the evening out of chaos states or whatever, I dunno I'm not a physicist.

And then. this is the part that circles back ok. Hylia, who is the Goddess of Time, just smushed them all back together into one because fuck it man, they're close enough.

I explained this by saying basically, that-

"Time doesnt work like that" as an argument for anything Zelda related is nullified by the simple fact that Hylia is the Goddess of Time and Nayru has significant power over time as well, and since they're both deities they can do whatever the hell they want with it. If Zelda, who is only channeling the powers of the Goddess Hylia via her blood, which—I don't know how goddess-turned-mortal blood works but this is probably a reasonable assumption—is diluted over tens of thousands of years, can go back 10k years, easy peasy lemon squeezy, then Hylia her-fucking-self can do as she pleases.

So the end conclusion to this one is that time can in fact work like that if an ultra powerful goddess of time wants it to.

And thus we circle back. (omg just like time travel,)

Now. All of this is to explain this idea: TotK is a closed loop, but only kind of. "What the hell do you mean by this, Cat," you might be asking. Well. It's simple.

Zelda's presence (in the past) and effects (on the future of that past) are guaranteed; her actions are not.

And what do I mean by that?

I mean that Zelda is guaranteed to time travel, and she is guaranteed to lead to the sealing of Ganondorf via Rauru's hand. This is to ensure the survival of Hyrule as it is in order for this Zelda to get to the point of this time travel in the first place—likely influenced by Hylia or other goddess to be this way so things stay stable. If this Ganondorf were to succeed, then. well. Hyrule would be screwed, because he"s kinda fucking overpowered with the secret stone.

(Now is "later".) (By the way—I don't know the full lore of TotK, but I'm pretty sure this all has to happen before the first Calamity. I would assume that the Calamity only existed as it did because this Ganondorf was under the castle; that's why the Calamity comes from/starts at the castle every time. so. Zelda actually would've gone back a good bit more than 10k years. Cool!)

Now. Whatever Zelda does to make that happen and whatever she does after doesn’t super affect the survival and state of Hyrule, for whatever reason. So, those actions are not guaranteed. Hence the whole dragon and Master Sword thing—the first set of bullet points in this post.

Oh yeah, and the light dragon also doesn't exist until Zelda time travels. That, or she's up above the clouds with all the sky islands, (which is probably the case, given the carvings behind the rocks in the intro section,) but I like the idea that, while that explanation is true for her, to everyone else she just appeared in the sky—similarly to how the glyphs have history but weren't present or documented till the Upheaval.

So, yeah. TotK is a sort of closed loop and that big sentence up there is what I mean by that. I bow dramatically, the crowd goes wild, etc etc.

[bigfrozenfan-fanfics]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When I think back to the beginnings of my novel, which was initially just a little ficlet about four years ago, around Anna's birthday, I realise that it was all born out of the single idea that for some reason Elsa no longer had any magical powers. It's also a fact that I was terrified of writing it at the time, so I asked on Tumblr who of the experienced writers there wanted to take my idea and write a multi-chapter fanfic. But no one was willing to do it and so I had to make the decision to try it myself - without any experience for a project of this size. At the time, I didn't even realise how big it would be!

To cut a long story short, I am glad that I dared to take this step!

But it was a long road - with many setbacks at the beginning. First i had to learn how to write and motivate myself repeatedly. There were so many days when I was just a finger's breadth away from simply giving up. If it wasn't for some fans and writers who encouraged me, gave me lots of tips and convinced me that my expectations for reactions from the Frozen fandom were a bit too high. Fortunately, I had also found a first beta reader from these ranks who helped me with the production of the first two chapters.

Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to thank @fericita-s and @the-spaztic-fantastic once again. Also a big thank you to @the-sky-is-awake for the encouraging words during my very first attempt to write a fanfic (which I did not finish after the release of Frozen II, by the way).

Also, at that time, an anonymous reader who — to this day — doesn't have a Tumblr account, wanted to help me and who later turned out to be my most loyal fan and beta reader and became a real long-time friend. Our chats and planning — first on Twitter, later on Discord — are so extensive that it would fill more than an entire book. But we also talked about many private things. By the way, the idea of including music in my chapters came solely from him. The music later helped me a lot with my writing and thinking and it was not uncommon for me to have tears in my eyes when reading the finished chapters.

Thank you, HeinrichVSA, for the many years we worked together, for your friendship and, above all, for always believing in me. Until today! You've always cheered me up in bad times and motivated me to keep going and never give up. Thank you also for your advice on historical matters and for contributing some scenes in some chapters yourself and for creating the OC character Oswald Monrad and his daughter Stella for me. THANK YOU for everything!

Without the motivation provided by the comments from my loyal readers, I would probably have given up long ago, but the consistently positive feedback from them — even I always asked for criticism at the end of each chapter — has really given me immense pleasure and encouragement. With your comments, you all confirmed time and again that I must have done something "right" with 'The Broken Bridge'.

So many thanks to: @true--north @dronning-formynder05 @annaofthenorthernlights @karma26 (up to the beginning of part four, where the adult content began). You have made my many days sweeter and thank you for staying loyal to me all these years. The novel would not have been possible without you! Outside Tumblr I have to thank especially to lolita @_lola_lola on Twitter aka X, chainzsw on Discord (alias Winterdust--76 on Tumblr) and Kongelig_Historian on reddit. Many thanks also to HARU @xlayers for the commissioned wonderful fanart to many of my chapters.

Thanks also to all the Disney book and comic authors who have been a source of many of my ideas and have enriched the story. Especially when it comes to certain characters, such as Thord from "Lur Thief" by Georgia Ball, who unfortunately never received any recognition from Disney for her extraordinary comic book story, nor permission to write a planned sequel. Unfortunately! In my novel, I have tried to do my best to realise this and give Thord a well-deserved comeback as a villain.

But none of this would have been possible without the magic of the Frozen films, and all Frozen fans and fanfic writers would agree with me. We all love this magical world and would love to live in it. But at least in our stories we can bring this dreamland to life.

Let's all hope that the two planned Frozen sequels open up as big a world and as many new possibilities for new stories as the first two films did.

[aceparagoned]

This is not going to be my usual post since some things have been brought to my attention that I wish to address publicly as opposed to continuing to deal with this situation privately like I have been.

I'll put this under a read more because this can get rather lengthy.

Two years ago, I was made aware that there was a callout blog (of which I can privately hand out the URL if you're truly curious since they have decided to doxx me by including my full legal name in said callout as well as misgender and deadname me left and right throughout it) about me authored by two people from a former friend group I had been a part of since I was in high school. At this time, it had been only a couple of months since I voluntarily left the group after offering that I would (even though the head mod of the group said that I was to talk to their co-mod to "figure out just what to do with me.") Looking back on it now, I fully acknowledge that I was in the wrong and that I wish I had never harmed those by my thoughtless actions, especially by being a forgetful idiot.

Throughout the callout, however, you'll see that they chose to include things from when I was nothing more than a cringy, know-it-all preteen to try to make a pattern of me being an awful person throughout my whole life. However, it's also stuff that I've long since apologized over to those who I had hurt and have tried to work on myself and my actions. I was also rightfully called out by those on anonymous communities on Dreamwidth such as wankgate, acj, and even on LiveJournal as well, all of which has helped me learn how to be a better person so that I may not repeat those same mistakes. I even commented as such in this thread.

For the more serious things that they included in the callout, such as the false rapist accusation I made against someone, I fully acknowledge that I had fucked up pretty badly during then by getting way too into things and not taking a moment to step back and think for a moment. To this day, I am still regretful of what I did and frankly wish I had never done that in the first place. Another serious topic the callout authors included was that I plagiarized someone's character in the past, of which I've long since retired the character and have not written them since then.

During the entire time that I've been writing this post, I've been actively trying to log in to my old Dropbox account where I know I have logs of where I've since apologized for my actions (the false rapist accusation as well as the individual listed on my archived LiveJournal post), but thankfully, I do have the private plurk I made six years ago apologizing for the plagiarism as evidence for this. If I manage to get back into my Dropbox account, I'll update this post with further evidence of my apologies.

You may also see in the reblogs of my callout two people that say they have further evidence on me. These two individuals are my ex and a former friend of mine. What they may not want to say is that my ex was caught cheating on me back while we were still together and the only way I found out was through an old group text message on my old phone where everyone I was friends with at the time thought to keep it a secret from me. My ex had even said that she "planned on telling me at some point" and since then, I had the constant reminder of her cheating on me in the form of her husband joining our voice calls on Discord and the like for almost two years. I decided that enough was enough and cut all ties with her because I couldn't keep pretending that things were fine between us when they weren't. Not only that, but in the PS4 chat that I had wanted to stay private between us, she had her friend join in and listen to our conversation. And this friend of hers said that, in a poor "'attempt'" to comfort me, that "I'd find someone whose demons will tangle with mine." I've since ceased all contact with them and haven't even played anything on my PS4 in years since I got my PC.

UPDATE: While I have not been successful in logging into my Dropbox account, I did come across this thread on my old Dreamwidth account with the person I had falsely accused. I'm still in the process of trying to get back into my Dropbox, though, so stay tuned for that.

Another allegation that the callout authors accused me of was being racist when referring to the color of my grandfather's skin. I stated it was olive since our family immigrated from Italy sometime in the 1800s, and it's not just him that has it. It's also my two uncles, his brothers, who have the same skin tone that he does as well as my aunt, my mom's sister. Now, lemme make something clear -- I simply don't have a single racist bone in my body. My mom taught in Buffalo, NY, where there were more African American children than any other ethnicity during her time as a teacher. She took me to conferences with the local NAACP chapter as well as on a trip to learn more about black history. This was all done as in my early childhood, too, which is something I'm deeply appreciative of her doing.

Another topic that was included was my treatment of my mother. This is something that I have also acknowledged that I was in the wrong for and it's something that we both have been actively working on with not just each other, but also medication on both of our parts. Both my mom and myself, especially when I was growing up, weren't the best when it came to maintaining a house and I do acknowledge that I should have helped her around the house more than I did as a kid, especially when she was a single mom working sometimes well into the night just to support the both of us. The both of us have depression, which contributed to us having a hoarded house that caused the both of us stress with not just one another, but also with our family. However, we've made great strides in our relationship to where I can confidently say that things are much better between us and have been able to maintain a clean house for years.

What I don't think was included in the callout is how I've been going to therapy and getting myself on some much needed medication. Back in August 2014, I scheduled a first time appointment with a doctor to get myself back on track because I knew that I sorely needed help for my depression before it got too severe to deal with. A good number of antidepressants were tried with some providing better results whereas others didn't work as well. I got myself into regularly scheduled therapy as well as seeing a psychiatrist up until I moved in June 2018, then continued my therapy and medication arrangement in Florida with thanks to my step-grandma and aunt for helping me find a place to go to for both therapy and psychiatry.

I'd like to think that I've since made great strides as far as my behavior and conduct are concerned, but as always, I know there's room for improvement, so I never say that I'm perfect or anything. I also know that since the callout went up, there have been other instances where I've made mistakes as well, however I am actively doing my best to learn from what I've done and continue on my path of being a better person overall. I will make mistakes, but I am always open to criticism so that I may continue to improve upon myself.

Thank you very much for reading this post.

[sagemoor]

#occultea response

This is super long, I apologise! I've decided to use this platform to talk about this, even though I haven't really used it in 6 years, because I feel like tumblr is the first place I was introduced to witchcraft social media on. And also, my only other media besides discord is personal and not witchcraft-related. Introduction I'm Tea, and I am a green and folk witch who has lived in and practiced the folk magic of America, Scotland, and Ireland. I have been practicing witchcraft for about 10 years (I am 25, despite what my bio says). I also am a moderator of a large online witchcraft discord, and that is what most of my answers here will be based on. I will also include here that I am a PhD candidate in plant sciences, close to finishing - I think this is relevant because a lot of my expertise and access to research (even like, JSTOR articles on witchcraft) is enabled and encouraged by my entrenchment in academia.

Topic 1 I share my practice online for community. I thankfully now live in a place where the in-person witchcraft community is pretty great, but I lived in small cities and areas where most witchcraft discussions centered around Wicca (which I have never been interested in as a path for myself). I started sharing here first on an account that was accidentally deleted in 2017 but I moved to discord a couple of years ago and really found (and then started another) community there. I have never wanted to teach but rather just wanted a serious space where I could discuss what books I was reading mainly. I think community is great at introducing me/you to new things and furthering my/your craft, and that is what I hope to accomplish by sharing my own craft. I think social media has impacted the community in a lot of ways, both good and bad. I honestly think it depends on the space in which the community operates - I will not pretend the discord I mod is perfect, but I also think a lot of other witchcraft discords I have been in can run a little rampant in misinformation found on witchtok, tumblr, etc.. I'm sure we have some too, because it's super hard to weed out when crafts are so personal. I think one of the biggest things is the spread of misinformation seems to have exploded with the explosion of short form content. There is just no nuance in any short form content, witchcraft or no. And with UPG this gets even more complicated. The only way I find I am able to combat misinformation anywhere is to not accept anything I see as fact, until I have either tried it for myself, or if it is verifiable from other sources (which a lot of my practice is - if I find folklore repeated in many books which are well sourced, I take that as good info). But I definitely struggle with knowing when someone is speaking in UPG terms or in folkloric terms especially when it comes to deities. For content creators, I do really think it is important to distinguish what is UPG and what may not be.

I also think there is an issue with people exaggerating experiences that they've had to get views / attention / whatever, and that can lead a lot of people who are beginning and can't recognize exaggerations feeling inadequate. I think with experience people begin to realise that certain claims are ridiculous, and it no longer bothers them (it no longer bothers me), but that can be a hard lesson learned. Social media allows people to compare themselves to others and can lead to overconsumption, which I won't say a ton about because I feel like this is covered a lot. I think witchcraft requires a degree of skepticism, and it may take a while for newer witches (and even some who have been practicing a while) to develop the skills needed in sorting out good information from bad information. But! There are also a lot of communities which dispel misinformation, exaggerated claims, and the like. Thankfully, I feel like these communities which are 'serious' witchcraft communities are starting to be a little more well-regarded than the areas which aren't as discerning. With discussions like these, and big creators talking about it, I think more and more awareness will spread and will prevent people from taking advantage.

And social media introduces a lot more people to the space, to know that it's even a thing that they may be able to approach. I found witchcraft here, when someone posted an aesthetic graphic of the Green Witch by Murphy-Hiscock that made it's way onto my feed. I read it, and resonated with what I read. My craft has developed since then, and I may have found witchcraft some other way eventually, but there really is this amazing reach that has helped so many people find what path was for them. I think defining witch vs new ager vs pagan is a whole other issue (one for another time) but honestly, how am I affected by you calling yourself a witch if you don't fit into my definition? I'm not. I think that will be another challenge for the community in the coming years - accepting that your definitions and practice do not rule other people's. But I digress.

In terms of consumption of media replacing practice, I definitely think it can. It's not something I personally struggle with, as I cast spells when I need to and don't consume a huge amount of witchcraft content outside of discord, but I definitely did when I was younger and living with parents who weren't witches. I mean, we have the term 'armchair witchcraft' for a reason - it definitely exists. I said earlier I had been practicing for about ten years, and when I typed it I knew I would address here that I have been practicing seriously for about six or seven. Moving into my own space allowed me to start practicing the way I wanted to. I still consume a lot of content in the way of books, but as time has passed my reading preferences are less spellbooks and more historical accounts.

Topic 2 I am not an influencer but what I share on discord is minimal (I don't share spirit workings besides showing herbs, deity workings, and many of my spells) but it is authentic. I don't really have the resources to post anything that isn't authentic if I am including a picture. I am more liable to post recipes with plant correspondences connected, or a list of folklore associated with a particular plant I am working on. If I do share a picture, I may include a list of spell components, but I never share what I did with them if that makes sense (like only sharing the ingredients of a recipe but not cooking instructions). Everything else feels too private to me.

I'm only affected by censorship by having things of certain topics like domination magic, blood magic, etc., behind an 18+ wall on the server. This is done because adults who are posting that info don't want to be sharing it with minors, which is the correct take! People will find things online anyway, but that doesn't mean it has to be through us.

I've definitely seen grifters in the community. Mainly here or spamming DMs on discord or instagram. I don't think this is a spicy take, but anyone trying to sell you something that isn't tangible (like selling a spirit) seems too risky to me, and not to mention unethical. If you get something direct in response, like a tarot reading, fine. But I personally wouldn't risk sending someone money to do a spell for me (again, unless it's tangible like a witch ladder or a knot magic hat or an oil or something). I think we talk about scammers so much in the community now though, that it's not something I really need to discuss because everyone knows about it.

I discussed misinfo in the topic above, and the only way I can think of to combat it is to talk about how it is rampant, and tell people to double and triple check their sources. Educating yourself isn't easy. Watching a tiktok or even a youtube video is not going to give you all the information. People will have to get comfortable doing research and then actually doing the witchcraft themselves 🤷🏼‍♀️. Also like I said, clearly stating UPG is important.

This has been said on every one of the videos discussing this I've watched: definitely having a large following automatically makes people think you're an expert. I've noticed this even on my relatively-small discord: being a mod in a position of power makes people believe you are all knowing. We try to staff based on activity and level-headedness and chemistry, so a lot of our staff are beginners. The rest of us who aren't beginners make it very clear what we're experts in and what we're not. Again, I think this goes back to doing my/your own research rather than maybe expecting to be spoonfed information.

Topic 3 I can get inspiration from content creators or other discord members, definitely. But I tend to take that and do my research and figure out how to do it in a way that works for me. I don't really get FOMO, but I feel like that is a product of knowing myself and knowing my craft and having lived in it for a while.

Rather than feeling FOMO, I feel like oftentimes I can feel quite burnt out. It's not a product of comparing myself to others necessarily, but especially with the moderating of the server. I don't know how content creators do it. I am a firm believer in going through seasons in your craft, and I think that can be so hard to do when you operate in a space where a lot of your community (or your job) revolves around one thing.

I don't know what my craft would look like without social media, to be honest.

Topic 4 I definitely think online communities are as valid as in-person communities. I am extremely grateful for the friends I have made on discord and online - they have pushed me and my craft to grow in a way it never would've without them by asking questions, recommending books, and sharing their own ideas.

I personally haven't been affected by people capitalising off of witchcraft, nor do I know anyone who has been. I definitely think some things should be paywalled so creators can get their due, but also almost all of the information you want to find you can find for free. It's whether you want to hunt to find that information, and whether you trust the sources that information may come from. I think the only way to ensure a course/etc is valid is to have info on who's running it. Who is teaching? What are they teaching? how long have they been practicing what they're teaching? Do they have a good bibliography / resource list for further reading? What are their accreditations? These are all questions we need to ask before we purchase something like that. Conclusions I feel like communities are always going to have issues, bad eggs, tension, all of that. There's no way to prevent it. I think the witchcraft community needs more honesty (not rudeness - honesty) about what they're doing and why, and I think it's important for people to know why they do things in their practice and why they work (the example I always use is, why do we stir tea clockwise to 'bring an intention'? It's an adaptation of movement in a circle thrice from British Traditional Witchcraft, but a lot of tiktoks don't share this when talking about the method). This will help prevent misinformation from spreading and can give context to posts. I also think people need to understand that some people's crafts will look strange to you. You may not call what they do witchcraft, but they do, and like I mentioned before, we all need to just accept that that's the way it is. This will be easier when people stop inflating their experiences (if they ever do), but for right now I think making your own experiences known to whatever extent you want is important. Even I can step up and say I did not have a deity choose me from birth, nor have my deities or spirits ever acted in a romantic, sexual, parental, or even best friend-type of way toward me. My relationships with my spirits has always been friendly and professional, but if they were not working with me, they would find another witch. I am not the Chosen One. Other people may have had these experiences, but that's not my experience, and that doesn't make me less of a witch.

Having this conversation about social media and its impact on the community is important, and I think just having this conversation by itself will make a big change.

Thank you for listening to my thoughts, especially if you made it this far. I'm not on tumblr much nowadays, but maybe I'll return to it someday.

Tea xx

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

hello there shiro! i apologize if this is an odd question but how do you find friends in the dinluke fandom? i have been around for a while now (since the first season to be exact) but i noticed that unless you are not part of a friend group it's hard to find people to talk to or to hang out with. i have a lot of dinluke ideas to talk about but it gets really lonely sometimes. how do you navigate your way in the fandom?

Hello there! No need to apologize! So let me tell you how I ended up knowing the people I do - while browsing the AO3 in the weeks after the high of the Season 2 finale, I saw a fic that was more a massive list of prompts from a Discord community. It had an invite link and so I decided to join. From there, I found people I got along with and we stuck together while also finding new spaces and servers after the first dinluke server imploded. Sometimes, you just have to be brave and message an account that posts about dinluke regularly. I will admit, it was easier for me to find friends and dinluke spaces because I posted fic and art (and opinions on occasion) so prolifically which put me on a lot of people's radars.

But I have to say, it has gotten a LOT harder to find fandom communities and friends since the journaling fandom spaces fell off years ago. Tumblr and Twitter are pretty chaotic and disorganized, and they lack a directory that can point you to various community spaces. The only reason why I've been able to join fandom servers on Discord is because I either found a public invite link or had a friend/acquaintance invite me in, and I've never figured out how one can search Discord for servers. If you've never felt comfortable reaching out to strangers in hopes that their interests jive with yours, it can be incredibly hard to find that lifeline to a place where you can hang with like-minded fans.

I do miss the days of kink memes where you can post anonymously or as your account while engaging with prompts and fills and other posters, and i miss the days of being members of multiple journal communities that cater as generally or specifically to your needs as you like. I miss how much easier it was to find the fandom spaces that catered to your interests. Those sure were the days.

Your ask did inspire me to check if the "dinluke" handle had been claimed by anyone over at Dreamwidth. Anyway, there is now a dinluke community on DWJ. It is currently under construction so membership is moderated and I doubt anything will truly come of it, but it's nice to dream that it could act as a backup space when other spaces become inaccessible or incompatible.

I hope this answers some or all of your questions, Anon. My ask is always open for anything dinluke :)