#Or Reddit in general let's be honest

[some-pers0n]

Saw people hating on Axolotl on the WoF subreddit and like goddd who cares? Nobody would care about them if Wren hadn't specified that they use they/them pronouns. "Tui is shoving in inclusivity" Tui has been including queer characters in WoF since 2014 with Umber being gay. Tui just likes adding in representation. There's so many queer characters in WoF and it was only a matter of time before she included one with they/them pronouns. I just think it's kinda neat is all. Do I wish Axolotl had more presence in the story? Eh, maybe. For now, I think they're fine as is. Definitely not worth arguing and fighting over

[themyscirah]

Okay so basically the United States MINT of all people is going to be working with DC to make a line of coins! These coins sadly won't be in circulation (the things I would do to live in a world where I could get Batman coins from the supermarket) as they're collectors coins, but will be releasing over the course of the next 3 years, 2025-2027.

Designs haven't been released yet (the same is true for all 2025 designs) but we know there will be 9 coins in total (3 each year) with the first year featuring (of course!!!) Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

Although we know the first three heroes to be featured, the remaining six have yet to be decided, and it turns out the Mint is putting out a survey on their site to gauge which of a group of culturally significant heroes people want to see most! (link to the form is mentioned in the article above)

The considered group includes: Supergirl, the Flash, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Captain Marvel, John Stewart GL, Aquaman, Hawkman, Jamie Reyes BB, Robin (Damian?), Cyborg, and Batgirl, of which 6 will be selected.

As someone who does a bit of coin collecting myself (mainly circulation coins like the quarters sets, but I also have a couple proof and collectors coins) I think this is a really cool and interesting idea that showcases the history of the comics medium and these characters and their influence on American culture. Really excited to wait and see what the designs look like for the coins already announced!

[mariacallous]

Between the Reply Guys playing devil’s advocate and the shitposters spamming disinformation for fun, today’s trolls play in a completely different league from the keyboard warriors of yesteryear. And they don’t just troll randomly for lolz. They latch on to their targets, hoping to get a rise by spreading their brand of hate—whether racist, sexist, homophobic, or all of the above—relentlessly and more organized than ever before.

Fortunately, a new generation of online avengers has emerged to push back this toxic tsunami of trolling, using all the tools at their disposal. WIRED spoke to some of the internet's most famous (and infamous) combatants, from a science communicator taking on anti-vaxxers to a moderator in one of Reddit’s feistiest corners, about how to win a fight online.

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Derek Guy, aka The Menswear Guy, @dieworkwear

Last week, you wrote a long post on X talking about your life as an undocumented immigrant. Vice President JD Vance made a separate post seeming to suggest you should be deported. You followed that up by posting some photos of him and saying, “I think I can outrun you in these clothes.”

To be honest, that was just a throwaway line. I’m not trying to win an online dunk contest with the vice president of the United States. What stands out most to me in that interaction is not who “won” the exchange but the fact that the vice president of the United States is so intensely online, at least compared to VPs of the past.

That, to me, is one of the more interesting shifts in American politics: A large segment of the Republican coalition—including figures like Charlie Kirk and Matt Walsh—is deeply immersed in online spaces. Even the official government accounts for the Department of Homeland Security and White House appear to be managed by people fluent in the language of Twitter.

I can’t imagine any VP in the past, such as Dick Cheney, “clapping back” or posting memes. Being a highly “online” person is a very embarrassing thing and should be relegated to basement losers.

Do you often get trolled?

I’ve gotten some pretty prominent conservative figures who will say, like, “We’re gonna deport you back to Vietnam,” “You’re brown,” “You’re gay,” all the slurs that are wrapped up into that. I don’t know if it happens on every post, but I do get it every single day. In the early 2000s, if I saw that, I would think, oh, that person’s trolling, they don’t genuinely mean they want to deport immigrants. But now, I do think there are some people who genuinely mean that.

So how do you out-troll a troll?

Sometimes I’ll reply or I’ll retweet and make a comment. Recently, someone said, “You’ll always be a slinty-eyed foreigner,” and then I just made a joke. I said, “My naturally squinty eyes are how I see small differences in clothing no one else notices.” But I’m not going to retweet every person who says something to me, because I think that would be tiring for an audience. So most of the time, 99.999999 percent of the time, I just block. I’m really block-happy. It’s polite to the people who follow you, because they don't want to read a bunch of white nationalists, and I don’t want to read a bunch of white nationalists.

Is there a meme that best represents your online persona?

The “I called your tailor” thing was associated with me. I didn’t really mean for that to be a clapback. Someone had posted that they were wearing a bespoke suit. I looked at it, and I was like, I don’t think that's a bespoke suit. So I called the tailor to double-check, and then I replied. A bunch of people retweeted that, and it blew up. But I just considered it fact-checking.

So, are you a troll?

My approach to the internet is shaped by how I grew up: busting balls and cracking jokes with friends, and then also posting informative things.

Samantha Yammine, Science Communicator, @science.sam

Tell us about your trolls in the science world.

Whenever I post about the science of vaccines or any cool space news, there’s an uptick in troll behavior. To be clear, I think some trolling is good or at least neutral, and some is bad—but it’s always about attention.

I don’t consider it trolling when people ask any type of science question they’re genuinely curious about. Even if it’s far-fetched or tied to a conspiracy theory, I want to be having open conversations with people about science, no matter where they’re at. But it becomes troll behavior when someone is purposely engaging to be mean and/or waste my time.

I’ve had people spam my accounts, share my photo with devil horns because I talked about vaccines, threaten me (which goes beyond trolling at that point), try to neg me into debating them about things they are not experts in and that are not at all up for debate.

Any memorable stories?

My favorite was the time a trashy news site called me “Science Scam” instead of Science Sam. [Eds. note: The post has since been removed.] I think they were mad that I cofounded Science Is a Drag (a drag show) and was hired to train public health researchers on how to share essential science during the pandemic. Anyway, now some of my friends call me Science Scam because we found it so hilarious, though a few others have made the connection and tried to use it to be mean, I guess. I can’t say it lands.

I also recently realized there’s this one guy who's been sending me multiple pictures a day on Instagram. I don’t know what the photos are of because they’re hidden unless you click on them. While I am low-key morbidly curious, the fear of existing as a woman on the internet has held me back from ever checking.

How do you out-troll a troll?

I take scientific accuracy and the way science is used to influence human rights very seriously. But what people think about me online, not so much. I don’t think I’d have survived in this industry very long if I did.

What are some of your strategies to deal with Reply Guys?

My philosophy is to always assume people are engaging in good faith. If they double down and get nastier after that, then they either get a clapback or they get restricted, which is a feature on Instagram that means nothing they comment on your page will be public, but they'll have no idea so they’ll just keep talking into the void and waste their own time. It might be a little petty, but if they're trying to waste my time and can potentially harm others by spreading disinformation, I don't feel bad about it.

I also really believe that when people are rude to you, it says more about them than it does you. Sometimes I just reply to troll comments with, “u ok??” because honestly that is what I'm wondering. “Thanks for the engagement, have an amazing day!” is another fave, just to give people a reality check. I totally get and support how some creators have strict blocking criteria, but I very rarely block people, because I am honestly fascinated in how other people's minds work.

Are you a troll?

I view my engagement online as a form of social currency, so I prefer to spend my likes, comments, and shares on content that I actually like and support rather than wasting time boosting engagement for content I disagree with. There are also so many scientists or science-adjacent people who have grown in popularity by being assholes, and I just don’t want to be a part of that elitist culture.

/u/YoungZaphod, Mod of the Subreddit r/UnpopularOpinion

It seems like people who post on r/unpopularopinion are all trolls. How do you moderate that?

The subreddit deals with a decent amount of trolls, but most of them are pretty low-effort. The classics like “I think Hitler was right” and similar xenophobic, racist, or otherwise ridiculous posts generally get picked up by our autofilter, but occasionally more creative ones come through. One of my favorite posts that we left up had something to do with enjoying the feeling of wet socks. Benign posts like that don't bother me, although leaving one up on the front page for a while does generally incur an influx of more in the future.

Do you respond to trolls that try to spam the subreddit?

I’ve generally learned it’s not worth pursuing a response. I receive quite a few messages a day from people who are annoyed their shitposts aren’t being approved. Every troll thinks they’re God’s gift to the internet, when there’s really nothing to distinguish them from the thousands of other trolls out there.

What are some strategies to deal with shitposters online?

As a rule, I ignore them. It’s not worth getting upset about things on a (mostly) anonymous forum. I do enjoy back-and-forth banter a bit in some of the smaller subreddits I frequent though! If I took time out of my day to respond or read every hate message I got I would be a very busy person.

Is there a meme that best represents your online persona?

A quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “I’d far rather be happy than right any day."

Are you a troll or a shitposter?

I don’t necessarily think I’m a troll, although I do enjoy playing devil’s advocate (probably why I started r/unpopularopinion in the first place). Definitely enjoy shitposting, though, as long as it’s not too serious.

Blakely Thornton, Pop Culture Anthropologist, @blakelythornton

How often do you deal with trolls giving hot takes?

I deal with trolls every single day. That is a consequence of being Black and gay on the internet.

Does it take a toll on you? How do you out-troll a troll?

Ninety-five percent of trolls can’t construct a simple sentence, so I usually just point out that they’ve confused “their” with “there” or “they’re.” I don’t respond to everyone, because there’s simply not enough time in the day, and to quote my mother, “racism isn't the shark, it's the water.”

So how do you deal with them?

I find a passionless recitation of the circumstances of their lives, through all publicly available information on the internet tends to end altercations fairly quickly.

Is there a meme that best represents your online persona?

The girl smirking next to a burning building. Or that little dog drinking coffee saying “it’s fine” as everything burns around him. If the two of them had a baby via surrogate it would be me.

Are you a troll?

Only if you're an oligarch, a bigot, or both.

[corseque]

I needed to write a little post about Clair Obscur but I don't want to spoil anyone so I'll do it under a cut (SPOILERS)

if you think about it, these two specific beings are married

cause the first is a portrait of Aline that Renoir painted, and the second is a portrait of Renoir that Aline painted, and both paintings describe their feelings toward and about each other and how they view each other......... they're so romantic I love them so much. I want Sirene to cradle Painted Renoir in her giant hand idk... makes me want to draw fanart

the portrait that Renoir painted of Alene was a beautiful and graceful, artistically talented siren so entrancing and dangerous she can make you go insane just by looking at her too long... he's such a wife guy, so in complicated love with his wife SIGH

I will also never get over Painted Love, the portrait that Clea painted of the two of them together fighting you as a team, I GASPED when I got to the top of the Endless Tower and saw it.

They are IN LOVE. so in love they even share a health bar. They are one, they are in love

Even Clea, who complains about them both, and complains about their failings and is generally a kind of cynical person, still paints them together in this way. Clea truly believes they have this purest love.

they make me so emotional, everything was worth it to see them embracing in love at the end of the game. My loves

omg I just found out the Renoir the painter in real life married a woman named Aline.... they're so real......

HE LOVES HER so muchhhh arghhghghghhg

I would choose any ending that let them hold each other again, I don't care

ETA: I just finally translated the Sirene songs and they are killing me

people on Reddit were describing his portrait of Sirene as a mean or even cruel one but I really don't agree with that. In Renoir's Drafts he talks about how he paints to truly express himself. look at how tender he is about her in the Sirene lyrics, his QUEEN in her dress of love, perfect movement, enchanted by grace of beauty in her joyful world... oh their life must have been SO beautiful and happy before what happened.... and then the music changes and he describes her as chained by grief and deafened by grief... weeping and in pain and unreachable to him, and lashing out dangerously in her grief.... but still "love poem" interspersed even in the boss fight music... MY HEART

idk I know that his view of her is complex and multilayered, but this is just so beautiful to me. I really love Renoir's metaphors in his paintings, they're so perceptive and truly beautiful, but most of all they're honest and truly express his emotions.

I don't know how to hold this much love and devotion with both hands. He loves her SO MUCH. Even her portrait of him is one of a man who devotedly loves her and defends her, even as she's fighting him and she paints him to defeat him, she can't paint him as anything other than her loyal knight and her love.

[decentishoutsidersthoughts]

hey! since you said you liked doing the hc ask, do you have any modern!hcs of the gang?

I love modern AU’s lol, so here are my favorite hcs from that

Ponyboy like constantly has headphones in, it’s a genuine problem. Darry tells him he isn’t allowed to walk outside with them in but lets be honest bro does not listen

The entirety of the story from the book is chronicled on Reddit because Darry made a post asking for advice and had to keep updating it as everything went more to shit

Soda, Two-Bit, and Steve make fake cringe videos and think it’s the funniest thing ever

Dally definitely has multiple burner phones he uses for illegal activities

Soda drinks Monster energy drinks like nobody’s business. Steve once saw him go through five in one day and had to cut him off

This isn’t as much a modern thing as in general, but especially in a modern context Ponyboy is an absolute academic weapon. Like people are FIGHTING over him for group projects

Curly straight up uses Google and chat gpt for all his classes. Bro cheats on everything and it pisses Ponyboy off so much

Soda and Steve are constantly sending each other the most out of pocket Instagram reels. Like Steve will just be going about his day and get smth like ‘I’m glad you didn’t drip down your moms leg, you’re pretty cool’

Soda posts himself crying with Snapchat filters. Ponyboy Caught him doing it once and was like ‘you don’t even deserve comfort’

Ponyboy watches those YouTube video essays to do homework. Soda once caught him watching an 8 hour video on FNAF lore. He doesn’t play FNAF

The gang likes to play horror games and survival games together. I may do a batch of headcannons just about these

Darry is actually pretty well versed in internet trends but pretends not to be because he finds watching the gang try to explain skibidi toilet to him very funny

Soda, Two-Bit, and Steve are constantly screaming ‘GYATT’ at eachother

[dontcryminecraft]

let's see...jaunary wrapped up:

starting either the 10th or 11th, we had about Goddamn Fucking Weeks of Dream v Tommy (let's be honest it was mostly Dream v Tubbo) which consisted of reddit threads, twitter posts, multi-hour streams from multiple parties which were then posted as vods, and two videos- one from tommy on the 12th, and then dream on the 13th. Tommy and Jack have also spoken about it a few times on their podcast, but mostly on their patreon episodes. The final say is generally considered to be the Tubbo & Dream call which was streamed on the 15th.

A short stint of drama happened on the 19th, with a video about stolen redstone builds on the dsmp. It specifically targeted Awesamdude. the video was based on a stream 2 months ago, and at that same time, another creator made a video also about pandora's box. With the video posted on the 19th, both these videos and that stream vod got new attention and sparked a new wave of discourse.

Also bringing back drama from 2 months ago in November, on the 30th or 31st Iskall posted a video titled "I'm Cancelled", which is his take on his exit from Hermitcraft back in November. Stress also exited from Hermitcraft at that time, and posted her support of him on that video, before apparently deleting her channel??? I looked her up and her channel is, like, gone. Not abandoned, not "left youtube"- GONE.

Tommy also posted a 'This is the Internet' video where he jokes about the dream situation, also on the 31st.

LETS RING IN THE NEW YEAR WITH A MINIMUM ESTIMATED TOTAL OF 10 DAYS OF MCYT DRAMA, A WHOLE THIRD OF THE MONTH!!!!!!11!!!!!1

[cy-cyborg]

I'm getting a little tierd of the idea because amputees get more representation in media, it means rep for our disability is better and we "have enough"

People are right, we do have way more rep than really any other disability, im not going to deny that, and ive joked before about how often people write amputees without even realising it. So you would think, by sheer numbers, we should have at least some good representation, but by-and-large that is not the case. Legitimatly, the closest example I can think of to point to of good amputee rep is Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and even that uses multiple tropes I hate (the miracle cure/quest for the miracle cure, the almost perfect prosthetic replacement/forgetting the chatacter is an amputee until it breaks or needs repairs, refusal to call prosthetics, "prosthetics" (automail), the amputee who can't do anything without a prosthetic) and they call Ed a slur for another disability (m*dget) CONSTANTLY. I love fmab deeply, it legitimatly helped me feel seen and represented as a childhood amputee in a way no other show has even come close to, and when it gets it right, it gets it really right, but it's also very far from great and should not be the best example I can think of. Especially nearly 15 years after it released...

A big part of the reason why I don't read many books anymore is because of the sheer amount of books with downright offensively bad amputee rep, some of which were touted as good by people with other disabilities and were recommended to me as good examples. others times, I wasn't even looking for books with amputee/disability rep, it just popped up. It has ruined one of my childhood hobbies for me. Ive tried to get back into reading again as an adult but it hasn't gotten better in that time i was away. I was kicked out of 3 different scifi writing groups on facebook and reddit for asking people to remember "cybernetic enhancement" users are amputees - a real group of people, and maybe debating weather or not we're less human isnt great, and for pointing out seeing those discussions every day was making me feel pretty unwelcome in that space (yes i know, "real" cyberpunk isnt trying to say that, i had to turn notifications off on my post about the topic, it doesnt change the fact that newer creators in the genre dont seem to get that bit, that ive seen cyberpunk writers in these spaces say that debating weather people who loose more parts of their body were less human was, in fact, their intent but they hadnt even considered the fact this made their chatacters amputees, it doesnt change the fact that these tropes, intentionally or not, help make those spaces hostile for disabled fans/creators, especially amputees).

But yeah, I should be thankful I get more rep than other disabilities, no matter the quality, right?

It doesn't just stop at being me being made uncomfortable, though. The sheer, overwhelming amount of amputee chatacters with "perfect prosthetics" has had a noticeable impact on how we are perceived irl. In my lifetime, the general idea people have about multi-limbed amputees in particular has gone from "literally the worst thing that can happen to a person and the worst disability to have" to "is it even a disability? The prosthetic fixes it". These are both wildly untrue and harmful ideas about my disability that were both perpetuated by media, but now that the second one is taking root, it's causing real problems. I have not been shy in talking about how I have to fight to maintain my NDIS funding every time I get something done with my prosthetics, and had to get my prosthetist to sign off, twice, that my fancy prosthetic knee that costs the same as a higher-end new car ($125,000 AUD) is not, in fact a cure and I still need help with other things. It took me nearly 2 years to get a new wheelchair because they didn't understand why I needed it if I had the prosthetics - which to be honest, is not comfortable for me to wear, let alone use all day every day. Guys this isn't just assholes on the street or on twitter saying dumb shit, it's the people in the government body who decide how much funding I get to help with my disability who beleive it. People who have very real control over my life. It's not entirely the media's fault, but when the sheer, overwhelming majority of representation for people like me confirms that belief, it's hard to ignore the possibility that these portrayals are contributing to it, you know?

Which makes it so frustrating when I come on here and see other disability writing advice blogs saying to not write amputees because they have so much representation already. We do, I can acknowledge that, but the vast, vast majority of it is shit, and no one, not even other disabled people, are listening to us about it. And what makes it even worse, is the people they're advising to not writing amputees are the creators who care enough to be doing the research. They're the ones willing to listen, to ask questions. They could be the start of the positive change. But instead they're advised to not even bother with us.

And don't get me wrong, other disabilities ARE under-represented. There are so many disabilities, including some I have myself, that I've never seen represented as anything other than the butt of a joke. There does need to be more reprentation of disabilities other than amputation and limb differences. 100%! but can you please talk about that without saying "amputees have enough"

This isn't even touching on how amputees/people with limb differences who dont/cant use prosthetics, or even folks who use prosthetics sometimes but not others, are almost never represented unless it's for pitty-porn, or how the non-fictional media's (news outlets, etc) portrayal of amputees in particular is used to justify hurting very real, very vunderable people but this rant is long enough and honestly, ive got enough thoughts to make whole other posts on those subjects. That second one in particular deserves its own (more thought-out) spotlight and shouldn't be a footnote in a frustrated rant post lol.

[the-most-humble-blog]

<!-- BEGIN TRANSMISSION // BLACKSITE LITERATURE™ PUBLIC BRIEFING -->

&lt;div style="white-space:pre-wrap"&gt;

&lt;meta audience-profile="general_public"&gt;

&lt;script&gt;

ARCHIVE_TAG="BLACKSITE_SCROLLTRAP_METHOD::GENERAL_ACCESS_PROTOCOL"

EFFECT: creative activation, rhythm cognition, viral structure imprint

TRIGGER_WARNING="reality disruption, emotional recall, artistic confrontation"

&lt;/script&gt;

🧠 BLACKSITE LITERATURE™ — “THEY READ IT, THEN SHARED IT EVERYWHERE”

Let’s be honest. Most people aren’t tired of reading.

They’re tired of *not feeling anything* when they do.

Because we’ve all read a post, a paragraph, even a full book—

and walked away untouched. Unchanged.

Blacksite Literature™ is the opposite.

It’s not writing for applause.

It’s writing that *leaves a mark.*

Writing you don’t just “like”—

you remember it days later,

in the shower,

at 3 a.m.,

in the middle of an argument.

It’s writing that *doesn’t need to go viral*

to become unforgettable.

---

📚 WHAT IS BLACKSITE LITERATURE™?

Blacksite Literature™ is writing engineered to bypass resistance.

It’s literary form meets emotional sabotage.

It’s scrolltrap structure fused with cadence precision.

It’s the kind of writing that makes people pause,

feel things they didn’t expect,

and often—share it without even knowing why.

It reads like poetry.

Hits like a sermon.

Sticks like a song lyric.

It makes people gasp in silence.

Scroll back up.

Bookmark it “for later”

because it hit a nerve

they didn’t want to admit they still had.

---

🕳️ WHAT’S A SCROLLTRAP?

A scrolltrap is a pattern-interrupt.

It’s a visual *and* emotional break

in a landscape designed for speed and skimming.

You’ve seen it without realizing.

A post that didn’t look like the rest.

Had weird spacing.

Sharp phrasing.

You stopped. You read it.

Then you read it again.

Scrolltraps are:

- Built in cadence

- Structured in stanzas

- Designed for screenshot virality

- Written to break autopilot

A good scrolltrap doesn’t *tell* you to feel something.

It presses the part of your psyche

that already does.

---

🛠️ THE FORMULA (CLEAN VERSION)

We won’t give away the psychosexual variants here—

but the clean formula is powerful in its own right.

Here’s a sample contrast:

🧂 Standard writing:

> “Breakups are hard. Sometimes people grow apart.”

🧠 Blacksite cadence:

> “Some people weren’t meant to stay.

> They were meant to trigger the version of you that could.”

---

🧂 Standard:

> “You miss them even though they hurt you.”

🧠 Scrolltrap version:

> “You didn’t miss *them.*

> You missed the version of you

> that believed love couldn’t bruise.”

See the difference?

The structure.

The rhythm.

The emphasis.

This is not random.

This is *designed.*

---

📈 WHY IT PERFORMS EVERYWHERE

It performs across platforms—Tumblr, Reddit, X, Threads, IG, even TikTok voiceovers—

because it transcends formatting.

It’s *human-language.*

It’s story + emotion + structure = involuntary attention.

- On **Tumblr**, it spreads by reblog like an outbreak.

- On **Reddit**, people screenshot and treat it like forbidden gospel.

- On **Instagram**, it gets posted over selfies like emotional armor.

- On **TikTok**, it gets read out loud by crying strangers.

You don’t need ads.

You don’t need a fanbase.

You need resonance.

Scrolltrap cadence achieves that.

---

📎 EXAMPLES FROM GENERAL POSTS

These aren’t “hooks.”

These are viral anchors:

- “The love of your life might not be the one you marry. They might just be the one you had to survive.”

- “We didn’t drift apart. We just stopped pretending we were heading the same direction.”

- “He never lied to you. He just spoke in a tone that made his silence feel holy.”

- “She left you like she was late for something. That was the truth.”

Every line is layered with emotional residue.

Every stanza is a trapdoor.

No fluff. No filler.

Just direct-to-core impact.

---

📜 BLACKSITE WRITING EXERCISE: “CADENCE FIRST, MEANING SECOND”

Here’s the first technique:

Don’t start with an idea.

Start with the *feeling.*

Then build the *cadence*—

**before** you explain it.

Example prompt:

**Emotion: Regret**

Now try writing three lines where regret *echoes* in the silence.

❌ DON’T DO THIS:

> “I regret not telling her I loved her.”

✅ DO THIS:

> “I never said it.

> She never asked.

> We called that peace.”

See the difference?

You don’t need the word “regret.”

You *feel* it anyway.

Now you try.

✍️ **WRITING TASK:**

Choose *one* emotion (e.g., longing, anger, closure, pride).

Write 3 lines in the scrolltrap format.

Each line must function alone.

All 3 must land like a punch.

Bonus constraint:

**Do not name the emotion.**

This is how we train cadence-first writers.

---

🔗 WHERE TO GO NEXT

You don’t need to pay.

You don’t need to prove anything.

But if this felt different—

if your body paused somewhere during this scroll,

if your fingers hovered a second longer over the copy button—

Then you’ve already started the process.

And you know where to go next:

👉 https://linktr.ee/ObeyMyCadence

That’s the archive.

That’s where it gets deeper, darker, sharper.

That’s where Blacksite Literature™ becomes undeniable.

---

🧘‍♂️ MENTAL ARMOR FOR CREATORS

Here’s your shield.

Your creator’s creed.

Your scrolltrap spine when doubt hits:

**“I’m not here to be understood.

I’m here to be *remembered.*”**

Write that on your mirror.

Say it when you post something no one likes—

and *still know it’s the best thing you’ve ever written.*

Say it when they mock your format,

your spacing,

your metaphors,

your silence.

Because you’re not just a writer anymore.

You’re a *voice print.*

A resonance.

An emotional event.

And events don’t ask for permission.

They change the weather and leave.

---

💬 READER REACTIONS (REAL EXAMPLES)

You’ll see things like:

> “This post ruined me. I’m sending it to my ex.”

> “I didn’t expect to cry at 8:45AM in the breakroom.”

> “Whoever wrote this: I hope you sleep well tonight. You earned it.”

> “I bookmarked this. I don't know why. But I keep coming back to it.”

That’s Blacksite Literature™.

That’s scrolltrap psychology.

That’s cadence warfare done clean.

---

🧠 FINAL THOUGHT:

This is not a genre.

This is not a phase.

This is not “cool writing.”

This is **Blacksite Literature™.**

It isn’t meant to be popular.

It’s meant to be **permanent.**

Welcome to the scrolltrap.

&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;!-- END TRANSMISSION [INTRO COMPLETE. ENGAGEMENT IMMINENT.] --&gt;

[gowerhardcastle]

Feedback in Interactive Fiction

Just sitting, writing a game with no feedback can be incredibly difficult and demoralizing; you're just sitting there, accumulating page after page, and it can feel like you're just doing it in this complete vacuum.

And interactive fiction is, I think, *extra hard* to get feedback for--the barrier to entry feels higher. You can't just hand someone your story, and then, even if they play through, they've only seen (if you are branching interestingly) a sliver of the story.

It's hard enough to get someone to read a short story you wrote and give you honest, useful feedback that isn't "oh, yeah, I liked it!" because they are your friend. Getting that for interactive fiction, getting some real conversation is--I don't want to say crazy difficult, because I have seen it--but let's say very, very challenging.

That's the nature of the beast, though.

I mean, I've been immersed in Choice games for a decade now, and when I go to the Choice of Games Reddit and people ask about certain paths through games that I have played multiple times, some of those aren't even familiar to me. I have nothing to say on those threads, because I don't even know that romantic path they're asking about! It's hard to have a conversation about IF, and that's why the Reddit threads are almost all asking for recommendations rather than a discussion of a game--because done well, most players of a game are reading quite distinct games.

This, in addition to the incredible array of truly excellent works-in-progress brewing right now. It's hard to find people who want to get immersed to the level of being able to offer feedback.

And then there is the other problem, which is that it's quite challenging to give feedback: it's a pretty sophisticated skill, and I know this because I teach it (or try to) in my classes. People have a lot of trouble knowing how to move from microlevel feedback (you need an "s" at the end of this word; you spelled that wrong; this character's eyes were blue in this chapter but brown in that chapter) to macrolevel feedback (I didn't think this part was funny; I got confused by the end of Chapter Two; you need more transition into the fight scene).

Microlevel feedback feels safe. Macrolevel feedback is hard and puts yourself out there in a scary way. And you run the risk of the author getting defensive. This is why when you make students read each other's essays they will look at each other and say "It was good, I really liked it!" with no other feedback unless they are taught otherwise.

We're all super busy, and many, many, many people who are best qualified to evaluate interactive fiction are writing interactive fiction themselves. And if they are, their precious time is spoken for!

I feel this as well as I'm working on a really, really long sequel to a really, really long first game in a series, which is itself a takeoff on another pretty long game. It's like...how do I present this to someone for feedback? My solution has been to make this game relatively standalone and understandable as is, but even so, there's a getting-overwhelmed-factor at play.

I've written more about this effect here (for free membership) and how odd it is to be in the middle of a series and try to talk about the middle game, and just some thoughts about series in general.

I have also apparently hit some button or other and initiated a 25% "End of April," membership sale, which, all right, let us celebrate spring together in this fashion. It's not maypoles and cloved fruit, but it'll will do, I suppose.

[atreeinthemoonlight]

I never said Elia cheated. I've never once seen a Rhaelya fan say she did. In fact, it was always Elia's fans who were dying to make her have more impact on the story or sort of revenge or whatever bullshit on Rhaegar.

I said I hope she had something for Arthur so you can focus on your own tragic romance that couldn't be and leave Rhaegar and Lyanna alone.

And it is not good for your health to keep rent-free in your head.

The classic Rhaelya fan routine—'We never said that! We’d never do that!It's always Elia's fans…'

Don’t even try to deny that many Rhaelya fans say this—just check Tumbler,Reddit or Twitter, where you’ll find takes beyond your wildest imagination. Some might even be right up your alley by the way.

You need to wake up—don’t let shipping turn your brain into mistress logic.Always hoping the wife cheats too, just to make your favorite pairing look better.That’s not romance. That’s delusion. You have to understand that speech betrays subconscious thought,these utterances don't emerge from nothingness.Your comments just prove it,what are you exactly saying after all,you said you hoped that would happen. You just found what you claim was a breaking point caused by Elia fans and used it as an excuse to speak out.

The absence of textual evidence for Elia's infidelity doesn't preclude Rhaelya fan's expectations of such scenarios.When someone confronted your secret evil thought directly, you deny it - but that's exactly yours twisted fantasy.

“it was always Elia's fans who were dying to make her have more impact on the story or sort of revenge or whatever bullshit on Rhaegar.”

Yeah,so what?why not?They don't have the right?They shouldn't do that? They shouldn't take revenge on this sweet Summer Hall born prince,or whatever bullshit on him? With that kind of behavior, even a random passerby would spit in disgust—since when do a person need to be an Elia Martell stan to see it happen?If spitting on trash requires being Team Elia, then the Internet is full of secret Dornish loyalists. Are Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark suddenly above criticism? What is this, some new form of servility?It's 2025 now,we won't get our tongue cut or head off for questioning a prince and a highborn lady?

GRRM never wrote any female companions for Lyanna in the books, yet you all freely imagined them, so why did you complain elia's fans dying to make her more impact while you just did the same for Lyanna? How fascinating that you're now dictating what Elia's fans should or shouldn't imagine about her life. By what right do you claim Lyanna alone deserves deeper characterization and backstory development? What makes you qualified to decide this?The brave cool girl deserves layers while the abandoned wife should remain a flat, boring convenient tragedy? Elia just deserves to be their background prop,a mere foil for comparison? Elia fans want her to have narrative agency,and you say they are too 'dying',their voice too loud for you?If you need to silence everyone to romanticize this problematic poison ship, maybe the problem isn't ours. But by all means, lecture others about 'healthy obsessions'.

the she-wolf fan manifesto:

Article 1: All complexity belongs to the winter rose.

Article 2:The Dorish wife should be politically married,but not successfully.Get cheated on,but not vocally.Die conveniently but not too memorably

Article 3: Anyone questioning this is 'dying' or Elia's stan.

Meanwhile, your entire fandom built a religion around two entitled brats who drop a political nuke on Westeros, then you expect generations to politely ignore the fallout and leave them alone? The Dance of Dragons left ruins, but at least it was honest madness. This? They gorged themselves on the suffering of Westeros, repackaging a continent's agony as the tragic backdrop of their great love story,and left the wounds to fester for generations,the realm still hasn’t recovered. You fans never admitted that. Why don't you draw them whispering sweet nothings under the moonlight, with a backdrop of burning villages and orphaned children? Or them cuddling atop the Tower of Joy while Westeros bleeds below?

[eeveecraft]

The Fracturing and Decline of the Tulpamancy Community

Why am I back? Well, I've been thinking about this for a while and a friend of mine just discovered the Tulpamancy stuff. If you're reading this, you know who you are. Still not happy that you found out, but it got me thinking about some stuff I want to write down.

So, some of you may know, #RedditTulpas, the official r/Tulpas Discord server shut down like, a few months ago. The Tulpa.info server got shut down back in 2023, and there's also the debacle that happened with Tulpa Chat several years ago. Basically, all of the largest Tulpamancy Discord servers get shut down for whatever reason once they hit a certain point. The main reason why tends to be drama driving the staff to their wits end, which eventually leads to the server being shut down for the well-being of the staff's mental health.

I mean, I guess there's Tulpa Central with its 1,300+ members, but even though Kopase (eugh) isn't the owner anymore, it's still a server that deliberately excludes other forms of Plurality, and I don't think communities like that should be encouraged to exist. Because let's be honest, that's just thinly-veiled ableism and ignores how Tulpamancy techniques can help disordered systems function better. Oh, that and the fact that other plurals can have tulpas, too.

I also want to bring up how r/Tulpas has drastically declined in quality; we are especially cognizant of it because we moderate that subreddit. There's a lot of low-effort, redundant, and sometimes low-key unhinged posts on the Subreddit, and there is very little actual productive discussion. Most posts there nowadays are just questions, many of which have to be removed because they're already questions that are answered in the FAQ or so basic that they should be asked in the pinned post.

With Reddit specifically, I think a factor in this decline is the direction Reddit has been going with trying to become a publicly traded company, especially with their API changes essentially killing third-party apps. That, and Reddit gleefully giving away all of its user posts to OpenAI with no ability to opt out. We ourselves only check Reddit to moderate the subreddit nowadays because of these changes, and we wouldn't be surprised if others followed suit.

However, this doesn't discredit the general trend we've seen with the larger Tulpamancy communities just declining or outright dying.

The Tulpamancy side of Tumblr has been pretty quiet for several years now with the only major Tulpamancy-specific blog besides ourselves really being Sophie's and maybe Caflec's, and we're hardly active in terms of making posts (we just don't have much to talk about anymore).

There was also the Tulpa.info Mastodon instance, Tulpas.social, but that died pretty damn fast. Plural Café closed invites the moment we tried recommending it to others and has been gradually falling apart, too.

My point is: there's hardly any actual large gatherings of Tulpamancy systems anymore. I remember in one of my Tulpamancy Help videos, I explained how the community became fractured, but I think it's gotten even worse. Like, don't get me wrong, I don't think the community should be a monolith; niches exist for a reason. However, there's something just... disheartening about seeing gatherings of 1,000+ Tulpamancy systems just getting dissolved; thousands of people conversing, exchanging ideas, and helping each other just... separated.

You're probably wondering, "Well, if you're complaining about it, you surely have some kind of solution, right?" Well, not really. it seems to be a cycle tied with the general makeup of the community; enough people in the community just seem to be drawn to petty arguments and drama that takes a toll on the people who manage these communities. So for larger gathering to exist, the people need to be palatable. Otherwise, as new communities form and people flock to them, the same people that caused the downfall of the others before will follow suit. And to be frank, I don't quite have a solution in regards to getting people to stop gravitating towards and starting mentally-taxing drama. That's up for the individuals inside the community to figure out, let alone want to change.

So, what's the conclusion? I guess it's just that I believe the community is heading towards some kind of recession, a dark age of some kind. And that makes me sad to extent because the more Tulpamancy spreads, the more its techniques can be used to help people. There's a reason anthropologists and psychologists are studying Tulpamancy, especially with the interest in its possible therapeutic applications. Despite that, I want to be optimistic and hope that eventually, the community finds its stride again instead of fading into further obscurity.

7-15-2024

[genericpuff]

So Webtoons is getting sued by a bunch of law firms in class action lawsuit. Saw it on reddit. Apparently they lied to shareholders about revenue which is like one of the worst things I could imagine doing to your shareholders. Then their stock dropped again. Wow....wonder how this is gonna effect readers going forward or how they're gonna be more exploitative in the future. Not saying the down of Webtoons has begun but I wonder if it's gonna be the start of it.

Yep, I've been following this since the initial investigations began.

All that said, we likely won't see anything of this for a while, if anything even comes of it. The reality is that Webtoons... really didn't actually lie about being bad at making money. It's literally outlined in their IPO documentation:

So these lawsuits, at least in my opinion (*I AM NOT A LAWYER NOR AM I ANYONE WHO HAS ANY EXPERIENCE PLACING WALL STREET BETS, TAKE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY WITH MOUNTAINS OF SALT) is less about Webtoons 'lying' to shareholders and more so about them kicking the debt down the road which these lawyers want to try and hold them accountable for. It's not uncommon for startups to seek out private and/or public funding to help them stay out of bankruptcy, but such practice is incredibly shitty because if a company was already near the point of bankruptcy to begin with, what exactly is going to change to ensure that they actually make that money back with an additional net gain for those investors?

So in that sense, either something will come of this, or it won't, nothing's really a guarantee as of now. It's just as common for startups seeking public investments to get sued within their first 1-2 years because a company not returning on their initial investments within 3-6 months is a prime cut for lawyers to drool over. Despite their attempts to be honest about their earnings, the vast majority of Wall Street investors are paranoid little fuckers who invest in whatever's new and exciting with the hopes that it'll turn them a profit quickly and without headache. Unfortunately, Webtoons isn't a company that's known for having huge profit margins, which these investors would have realized if they knew anything about this industry or at the very least, bothered to read the fine print that Webtoons was obligated to lay out for them in their documentation. At best the majority of them saw Webtoons' offering that covered buzzwords like "content generation" and "AI" and went "yes please, I love money!" without realizing that webtoons, as a medium, have some of the highest production expenses to lowest-paying demographics out there and therefore companies like Webtoons aren't going to be a short-term gratification. It's more like waiting it out for the "next big thing" that will make that stock valuable again, a massive gamble that isn't guaranteed to payoff. And that's just the game of Wall Street in general.

That said, it's because of how difficult it is to directly monetize digital comics that Webtoons often has to rely on selling merchandise and IP rights in the hopes they'll land a whale - but even their pre-existing whales like Lore Olympus and Let's Play have either nothing to show for themselves, or have left the platform entirely. Of course, they'll vaguely claim that two of Netflix's highest-performing projects came from their platform, but any peek at an aggregated Top 10 list will prove that that is simply not true, and at best, they're referring to True Beauty's live action adaption, which is simply not even close to breaching that list of all-time top-performers (except probably in Korea but this is Goldman Sachs and their American investors they're trying to convince), All of Us are Dead (see above, same situation as True Beauty), and Heartstopper which is... not even an Originals series. Of course, that didn't stop Webtoons and Tapas from boasting about Heartstopper's Netflix adaption and its success on the platform, but literally none of its success is exclusively owed to either of those platforms, Alice Oseman flies solo and if anything, Heartstopper never would have gotten to the point it's at if it were tied down to a Webtoon Originals contract.

So in a sense, until anything comes of these lawsuits, they're more so just lawyers jumping on their own investment opportunity - the opportunity to get settlements from Webtoons for both their clients and themselves by extension. At best what they feasibly have against Webtoons is the company getting way too high on their own supply without anything to feasibly show in terms of profit for their IP's. Considering how many IP's they sold to television and film production studios back in 2019-2022 when they were at their peak over the lockdowns - a peak that is long in the rearview mirror - they are incredibly behind in actually paying off those promises. Even in a recent meeting they held just the other day with Goldman Sachs, they're quoted as saying: "When Rachel Smythe was a graphic designer in New Zealand, 4 or 5 years ago, and she had a story to tell, we enabled her to not just tell it in one part of the world, but globally. She became a NYT Bestselling author, she is rumored to be releasing soon as a major animated release."

When even the company that hosts Lore Olympus as its prize pig can only say that its long-anticipated TV production that both Rachel and Webtoons have been assuring people on repeat that the show is "still happening" and that what they've seen so far "looks amazing" is simply 'rumored to be releasing soon'... I don't even have the words to describe how embarrassing that is for them. Never mind the fact that Lore Olympus has been over for months and both it and its creator, Rachel, have been falling into the pits of irrelevancy. They don't have any other home-runners to bet on, they're just continuing to bank on Rachel as their own example of someone who "got big" even though it was years ago and that fame is now shrinking with the passage of time, you can even see the performance of the series dipping in its own front-end metrics over time. They are trying so hard to convince people that they're worth investing in when the one thing that actually DID have that kind of allure has now come and gone.

Never mind the fact that again, most Wall Street investors probably don't even participate in webtoon culture so the name "Rachel Smythe" isn't some golden ticket to fortune. Lore Olympus might get a bit more of a reaction, but it's going to be a lot more mixed due to how divisive the series became in the end, and general audiences who are new to Webtoons as a public company (and the medium as a whole) are still not so likely to know what the fuck that means or why it's significant. The best time to pull the "we have Rachel Smythe!" card in the public investing pool was, like many other things Webtoons has fallen behind in, years ago. Now it's clear Webtoons thinks that Rachel is their own personal J.K. Rowling, but they forgot the part where Rachel is creating for an incredibly niche and historically unprofitable medium that is nowhere near as big as what Harry Potter was back in its prime, and - personally speaking - that Rowling and Rachel are both, well... terrible at what they do.

Webtoons also has the added burden of not being a startup company. They're not some grassroots Silicon Valley tech startup run by a bunch of friends "with a dream", they're an extension of an industry that thrives overseas but barely has any infrastructure to support it here. They've been bankrolled for years by an overseeing tech company - Naver - but have consistently failed to get out of the red and so of course, now they're turning to public investments to help them out and subsequently, are passing that debt off to the next highest bidder, which is Wall Street. They had nearly a decade to figure their shit out here in the West and while they had their opportunities to thrive, those opportunities have come and gone, a lot of doors have closed and now this all feels like their own attempts to rip those doors back open again.

There is a LOT to insinuate already that Webtoons - a Korean-hosted platform - wasn't ready to enter the Western market and this fumbling of their public stock image is yet another great example of that. Even outside of Webtoons, other Korean-run platforms like Tapas have relied on private investments to keep them afloat (and still do, Tapas is still operating privately) and have routinely struggled to get a real foothold in the greater Western industry despite how much they hyped themselves up as the "next big thing". They're all playing the same game over and over again expecting better scores even though the playing fields are entirely different than what they've come to expect in Korea, where much of the entertainment industry is built around webtoons, much like how our entertainment industry in the West is built around comic giants like Marvel and DC (and even those giants are faltering as we've been seeing over the past several years).

Anyways. I don't know if this lawsuit is gonna go anywhere, there's a lot to the legal process that could lead to a variety of different outcomes, but at the very least, their plummeting stock value and the lawyers circling them from above is yet another notch on their belt of fuck-ups over the past few years. I know it's easy to say this in hindsight and I'm not the kind of guy to say "I told you so", but considering I've been following along with the bullshit of these major platforms for years and knew as soon as Webtoons was rumored to be going forward with an IPO that it would lead to disaster, I'm pretty confident in saying, "No really, I told you so." And I don't entirely blame the investors for that (except for the ones that clearly didn't read the fine print) - I also blame Webtoons for that, because they are a chronically unprofitable company run by a bunch of clowns who manufactured their own demise by getting in WAY over their heads and clearly don't even have a concept of a plan let alone an actionable one.

And that sucks, because the people who stand to get hurt the most are the ones who were made those empty promises years ago, long before the platform entered Wall Street - and that's the creators who were promised that their livelihoods would be secured and their work would be protected.

I will forever bully and make fun of Webtoons for everything they've done in and to this industry. I hope at the very least those investors learned an expensive lesson, and that the damage these lawsuits have already caused to Webtoons' public image - regardless of whether or not these lawsuits win - empowers others who have been screwed over by them to speak up and make their moves. They are not a monolith. They are a brittle business operating from the trunk of a clown car on their way to becoming a penny-stocks sham.

Fuck Webtoons <3

[odium-amare]

50 Shades of Manacled (Honest Review)

Since the rise of fame for this (previously a Dramione fanfiction) body of work, thanks to the fanfare of TikTok and social media, I decided to give this story a shot. Disclaimer: This was my first Dramione story, and I’m not heavily invested in the Harry Potter universe. However, I’m always open to trying new things.

‘Manacled’ was treated like the second coming of Jesus. I could see through reviews, videos, and Reddit that many hearts underwent many powerful, life-altering transformations.

My curiosity was piqued. The fanfic had 77 chapters and a total of 370,515 words. I managed to finish the story. 

Normally, I wouldn’t do an honest critique of fanfiction because, like many, I prefer to treat fanfic as fanfic. Seeing as how the author has endeavored to make a pretty penny out of it and revised the title as ‘Alchemised,’ this work of fiction is now free real estate for me to comb through with my thoughts.

Broken down into 3 parts:

The Good/Okay-ish 

If you’ve read about anything related to this story, then you will know that it contains rape; a lot of rape. Unexpectedly, I had no problems with the non-consensual aspect of this fic (which many people did and I understand.) I have no morality issues with non-consent between two MCs in general in a fictional setting. It’s even a guilty pleasure, and I thought Manacled incorporated this dark concept well into the plot.  On another note, I see people excusing Draco and his actions because he “had no choice” because of so and so.

Firstly, Draco was deliberately portrayed as overpowered - bordering on Gary-Stu levels of abilities. Voldemort, on the other hand, was written as a weakened and dying cripple.

There is always a choice and as another reviewer pointed out, Draco chose to rape. Let’s not skirt around that.

The incorporation of the rape and breeding causes was written out to make the torture porn even torture porn-ier.

The writing knows how to grip your attention and keep you reading. It was entertaining enough, and this was probably why the fic has kept the attention span of a lot of readers.

Narcissa was one of the few characters that was interesting. Her and Lucius’ presence added seasoning to the fic. The idea of her ‘spirit’ inside her portrait looking out for the people she cared about was nice.

Ginny was the best character. She’s flawed (like anyone else) but unlike our titular heroine, Ginny was likable and…owns up to her shit, and doesn’t gaslight those around her. Then she does the single best thing towards the end of Manacled. One of the few parts of the story that didn’t make me want to gouge my eyes out like Astoria did with Hermione. More on Ginny later. 

The Mediocre/Bad

The setup of the bleak and dismal atmosphere was well done - at first. You then realize the bleak and dismal atmosphere is increasingly layered with misery, macabre, grotesque, and affliction every single chapter just for the sake of it. It got heavy-handed and corny fast. Eventually, it came off as if you gave black-eyelinered Bella Swan a Word document and a keyboard to write.

The author loves these words and phrases:

‘Her throat tightened’

‘Thin smile’

‘Smirk,’ ‘Sneer’

‘Bitter smile,’ ‘Bitter’

‘Rage’

Other repetitive words/phrases you’ll have to read at least three times a chapter.

The author also loves to drill down the fact that Hermione is having a panic attack, mental breakdown, or schizophrenic episode at least once a chapter. You will have to read detailed articles about the ins and outs of Hermione crying/wailing/sobbing. Excessive and tedious essays of her every waking thought and activity. It’s rather impressive.  I like to think I’m an empathetic person, but if you end up making me want to get a shovel and bury a character for crying, you’re probably doing something wrong.

The story has three parts. Part 1 which set the present scenery - done alright. But then all that skid down the ski slopes (level difficulty: very steep)  the moment the flashbacks started. The author thought it was a good idea to format the flashbacks as 38 chapters in the middle. There were indeed flashbacks, info dump and even filler. As I expected, there was no way this long-winded fanfic could content itself with only one epilogue; there were three epilogues. 

Why was the fic so egregiously long? Because there’s an avalanche of redundant context, purple prose, and exposition/journalistic essays about Hermione’s panic attacks and tears. The despairing torture porn has all the subtlety of a car crash. The writing was questionable, and this would’ve been bearable…if I didn’t want to slaughter the main characters. So, this takes me to my next part - The Horrendous.

The Horrendous

Hermione is similar to your run-of-the-mill YA heroine. It’s like indulgent, fast food. The heroine was the perfect recipe for self-absorption, martyr complex, a perpetual victim (the war doesn’t excuse this because I’ll get to it,) obtuseness and hypocrisy. In every single other scene, she obstinately refuses to listen to reason. She zigzags between moping, feeling sorry for herself, and doing something stupid because she’s thick in the head. (Exhibit A: Foraging scenes. Exhibit B: Makes 100 ‘lie’ promises to people and throws herself into danger because of reasons.)

The author insists Hermione’s not supposed to be a saint, but she sure goes out of her way to depict Hermione as this Saint Theresa-like character. Otherwise, the cheapened, demonic portrayal of other male and female characters sans Draco wouldn’t have been necessary.  When things don’t go Hermione’s way and predictably, end up disastrous - she falls back into moping and feeling sorry for herself.

She has airs about morality, but then creates bombs that kill hundreds/thousands of people to save her boyfriend - in the name of true love. She has no problems being self-serving when it suits her or killing others for that matter. But of course, she’s against the evil-devil-schevil Voldemort and whatever ‘bad guys’ being evil-devil-schevil cause they’re the antagonists and she’s the Saint Theresa protagonist. It’s cyclical, it’s old and it’s exhausting.

To clarify more about the depiction of the side characters that are not our titular hero & heroine, all of Hermione’s canon friends like Harry, Ron, etc were portrayed as theatrical, out-of-character demons. See, these buffoon caricatures should have listened to poor, pitiful Hermione (because plot) and because of the 8.2 billion people on Earth, Saint Hermione is the only one with common sense.  They hated Jesus because he told them the truth. Sorrows and prayers.

Astoria - your residential, obligatory Regina George - the foil to Saint Jesus Hermione. Naturally, she was written as slipshod, rage bait for the readers to have another female to hate, crow and shrill once her head was sliced off. No, literally. The nature of how her character was written was so cartoonishly absurd, the blonde cheerleader from your early 2000s rom-com was Shakespearean compared to Manacled’s Astoria.

There was an attempt to make the plot complex. That fell short when the deux-ex-machina moments, weird plotholes and explanations made zero sense. I took a look at the author’s blog, and there was a post on how she confirmed Hermione rationalizes everything she does. That makes sense. I can see that the author too, likes to rationalize everything she writes and any critique she receives, so I’m sure all her plotholes made sense inside her head.

As for our edgy, Death Eater boyfriend - He’s a sociopathic murderer. But at least he has that self-awareness. Somewhat. His full-time job is glaring in ‘rage,’ ‘sneering,’ or killing everyone and anyone that’s not Saint Hermione. Sometimes, he’s horny and ‘pushes himself’ into Hermione. His part-time job is ‘looking at Hermione possessively.’ But you know. The girlies eat that up, and obviously, that shit sells.

More on Ginny. What a finale. What an ending for Voldemort and so fitting that it’d be the person you least expect to finish off the major antagonist. By the end of the novel; she is the only sensible and badass character who tries to warn her dumb friend from running off with the wicked, bad boy, but naturally, the dumb friend doesn’t listen. Oh well. 

In conclusion: The main characters were insufferable. And therefore, I didn’t enjoy the story. In the author’s defense, she did mention a few times that the characters’ actions were irredeemable themselves. A happy ending wouldn’t have been realistic. 

With the atrocities both Draco and Hermione committed exactly like the antagonists, they should’ve been killed off as well. 

[kalinara]

So recent posts have got me thinking about the Throuple, and how I personally feel about it. And I'll be honest. I dislike it and I love it.

I dislike it because, ultimately, there really isn't much there. A couple of suggestive panels, a house schematic, one scene of expressed attraction between the guys, one scene that seems really heavily implied that they'd intended to go to bed together (I'll post that later, it's from early X-Force and it's pretty suggestive, IMO), and a few cameos in pride issues.

If Marvel was advertising this relationship, I'd call it queer-baiting at best.

But I always kind of wonder about the background of things. And I tend to assume that the Throuple was never intended to be a thing by the suits and higher ups. I think maybe a few creative types kept slipping things under the radar.

It does mean, unfortunately, that, in terms of actual story or emotional development, it's lacking. I mean, look, biased Scott fan that I am, I would have REALLY liked to see Logan apologize for basically everything AvX onward before those two characters hopped into bed together. I'd like to see Jean get to have opinions about everything that happened while she was gone (many things that she'd now remember from her younger self's point of view), before that happened too. These are characters with a lot of history.

So in terms of execution, the Throuple is a fizzle. (Hell, even the Jean/Logan side barely got off the ground. Some bits where she kept him alive when he was trying to save Xavier through time - which she'd have done even if he were just a friend. And one sex scene in the hot springs. That really feels like a satisfying culmination of decades of yearning. If I were a Jean/Logan fan, honestly, I'd probably feel cheated.)

But you know, I do love it for other reasons. Because however shitty the execution, the IDEA is firmly planted and that idea isn't going away.

All you have to do is go on reddit or tiktok and see anytime one of those toxic masculinity fanboys starts bitching about how Logan is 100% straight "blah blah woke agenda", and you get at least three people jabbing back "yeah, except on the moon".

And that's the genius of it. Because NO one likes those particular fans. And so even people who are utterly indifferent to the idea of the Throuple. Even folks who dislike the execution are very pleased to troll that hypothetical dude at every chance.

Marvel can say what they want. Brevoort (whether he believes it or is just Marvel's spokesperson) can say what he wants. The fact that the annoying fanboys go "I'm so glad he didn't walk back his denial and cater to the wake agenda" are just admitting that there's something TO deny.

I'll be honest, I suspect the issue is Logan's fanbase. It's the largest by far and Marvel doesn't want to alienate the straight men in the crowd. But the thing is, they're aging out. And younger generations of fans are more openly queer than we are, and definitely more than our parents were. This is going to be a non-issue. Especially when the new generations start running the asylum.

It'll take a long time, of course, and there'll be a lot of bullshit before then. But you can't put the genie back in the bottle. The idea is out there. And like Kitty, Rachel, Betsy, Bobby, Mystique and Destiny, Rictor and Shatterstar, EVENTUALLY we'll get to the point where Marvel admits what we all know. (And we knew for a while. The Throuple didn't come out of nowhere.)

Marvel's most famous and popular X-Men character is queer.

More than half of the Original X-Men, that earliest dream that creators never seem to be able to stop revisiting, are queer*.

The flag ship pairing of the X-Men involves a woman and a man who are queer*.

That's pretty awesome.

(*I know technically we're talking about an MMF throuple and it doesn't rule out Jean being straight, but let's be honest here. Jean's got more than enough suggestive interaction with Storm, Emma, Lorna and Wanda to make a strong enough case for bisexuality in her own right.)

[mookymilksims]

🧍🏽‍♀️ Let’s Talk About “Getting Blocked for No Reason”

Every so often, someone will “come forward” about being blocked by me—usually paired with vague claims that I’m mean, dramatic, or don’t let people quietly exist on my Tumblr or Patreon.

So here’s the part they always leave out:

LazyCapricorn started a fight in my server based on the assumption that I was talking about her behind her back in the drama chat. This happened shortly after Gitte was kicked for speaking badly about me across other Sim spaces—after I finally told her to stop nitpicking my work.

Lazy called me a horrible person for blocking Gitte.

Then, in the same breath, she begged me not to block her on Tumblr because she still wanted access to my mods and CC.

After I explained everything and showed receipts of what Gitte had been saying, Lazy privately backtracked on everything she said about me.

Despite all of that, I still gave her a chance to speak her peace—not in general chat where she made a scene—but in a separate court channel where she could have a fair discussion with a jury of server members. She could’ve even had an attorney to help present her side. I told the server they would vote on whether she should stay, and I’d respect the group’s decision.

Why? Because Lazy had called me a horrible person. And if people really believe that, then let’s unpack what it takes to protect a space and make those decisions. Let people see how complex it actually is—and how much I’m willing to let go if someone’s honest and respectful.

But then Lazy backed out of the trial after all that drama she started.

People love to paint me as “block-happy,” but they never include the full context. So let me be crystal clear:

I’ve blocked people for being racist. I’ve blocked people for being queerphobic I’ve blocked people for blackfishing. I’ve blocked people for bullying others, even if they were fine with me personally. I’ve blocked people for lurking. I’ve blocked people for passive aggression, shade, and fake support.

I don’t go around publicizing every block. I don’t owe anyone a public reason.

But I don't appreciate those people acting like I did something to them because they lost access and left out their part of the story..

If someone’s going to speak on being blocked, all I ask is that you tell the full story before I do.

And the next person to speak on being blocked by me be prepared for the reciepts.

You can explain to everyone why you left out some key important details.

4 months ago aurora made a post about me blocking her on tumblr.

What she didn't tell you all was that I privately asked what issues was she having with the ui, considering it was a direct copy of mine.

She didn't respond for several hours despite being online.

Between that incident and the others I mapped out on this post. I blocked Aurora. Then she made the post which told me she saw my message chose to not to respond privately, but responded publicly as if to get ahead of something.

Then lazy comments about how I blocked her for complimenting a dress (left out the server fight she caused and all) and seemingly totes my block as a badge of honor.

1 months after the discord fight. She had been blocked for a month at this point.

Then 4 months after this post, makes a vague reddit post about being blocked by me once again.

This time, she changes the story and claims she got blocked for being a busy mom.

She keeps tabs on my posts, followers, and block list, despite being allegedly blocked.

This is obsessive.

She is engaging with others in subtle smear campaigns against me, because she is blocked.

She surrounds herself with people who openly dislike me and interact with them in a mocking tone against me.

She keeps showing up in comments and reblogs speaking about me.

We are now going on 5 months since the discord incident.

Should I give in? Should I just unblock her and let her download whatever she wants?

Is this the only way she will leave me alone?

Should I accept that if I do unblock her she will still digitally stalk me and talk shit about me any place that will listen?

How many different times have I made it clear I want to be left alone?

See, yall like to talk a lot of shit about me blocking people, but want you don't see is how much I'm stalked. Harassed. Gossiped about. Lied on.

There are a lot of obsessive people in this space.

No normal person would see all of this behavior and not feel creeped out and not block people like this.

[karmaismyfriend]

EXCLUSIVE OPINION: PR 101 — The Absurd Circus of “Team Real,” Fake Pregnancies, Vanishing Cameras, and the Curious Case of Chris Evans’ Fictional Domestic Life

by Someone With a Working Brain

Let’s pull the curtain back on this never-ending sitcom, shall we? Welcome to PR Theatre, where the plotlines are worse than soap operas, geography is just a suggestion, and the only consistent thing is the audacity.

Team Real the self-proclaimed defenders of “truth” have become the internet’s version of unreliable narrators. Every month it’s something new: fake pregnancies, secret weddings, mystery houses, and blurry “sightings” that always seem to occur when security cameras mysteriously malfunction. Move over Spielberg — these folks write better fiction than Hollywood.

🚫 The Pregnancy That Never Was

Let’s start with the uterus obsession. “She’s pregnant,” they cry. “Look at that oversized sweater!” As if women aren’t allowed to wear loose clothing without hosting a fetus. Let’s talk facts:

• No bump. No timeline. No source.

• Yacht girl was vaping, drinking, and partying her way through Lisbon during the supposed conception period.

• Unless she conceived via FaceTime, the math is mathing wrong.

• Also, where’s the baby now? Or is it just another “lost in PR” storyline?

You can’t keep yelling “pregnancy” every six months like it’s a horoscope prediction. Eventually, someone will notice there’s no baby, no bump, and no logic.

🏠 The House That Doesn’t Exist (But Apparently Does?)

Ah yes the Carlisle/Boston mystery mansion. Depending on the mood, the house is in upstate New York, Boston, or a parallel universe. They say she lives with him. But:

• He lives in Massachusetts.

• She lives in Portugal — you know, a whole different continent.

• And every time she does visit the U.S., there’s no real proof. Just grainy “spottings” from a cousin’s friend’s neighbor’s dog groomer.

Also, let’s remember: if your PR couple can’t be seen together without long lenses and dead camera angles, you might want to fire your publicist. Or your fanfiction writers.

👀 “Sightings” With No Photos — in the Age of iPhones?

We live in a world where everyone’s glued to their phones. Blink wrong at a gas station and you’re trending on TikTok. But somehow, every time this “couple” is spotted, there’s no video, no picture, no reliable timestamp.

What we do get:

• Sketchy Reddit posts.

• “I swear it was them” tweets with zero location verification.

• Conflicting details (he was in London, no wait Boston! Actually maybe NYC?).

At this point, Bigfoot has more consistent photographic evidence.

⸻

🚢 The Yacht Girl Who Lives Nowhere Near Him

Let’s be brutally honest. The girl lives in Portugal. She’s more likely to run into Cristiano Ronaldo than Chris Evans.

• She’s constantly seen out partying, doing brand deals, and posing for paps in Lisbon.

• Meanwhile, Chris is off living the New England recluse life, walking Dodger, and doing press tours.

The man was in New York, London, and LA doing press while they claim she was spotted with him “in a Boston parking lot.” Either she teleports or these “witnesses” need a geography lesson.

🎭 How PR Actually Works (Spoiler: It’s This)

PR isn’t about truth. It’s about narrative control.

• Pair a rising name with a household star to generate attention.

• Leak vague “sightings” to fan accounts to stir up the algorithm.

• Discredit fandoms who notice inconsistencies (hi, gaslighting!).

• Recycle the same three talking points — “She grounds him,” “She’s private,” “They’re happy” — like a PR bingo card.

The goal? Maintain illusion. Sell a brand. And if it implodes? Quietly move on to the next.

📢 Final Thought: We’re Not Falling For It

The real fans? They know.

They’ve watched the narrative shift too many times.

They’ve seen how quiet he is, how private he’s always been — and how this entire setup contradicts everything we know about him.

No one’s fooled by silent relationships with inconsistent sightings, failing timelines, and zero chemistry. And if you have to scream “REAL” on a burner account to convince others, maybe — just maybe — it’s not that real after all.

So here’s your PR headline:

“In the world of celebrity illusions, the only thing faker than the relationship is the script they keep reusing.”

Stay smart. Stay skeptical. And above all, don’t fall for the same plot twist twice.