#and i do understand that i could've allowed more of the niche ones. but there's only so many times

[beefy-babe-showdown]

look i know i said i was only allowing 2 characters per source material but it turns out i was lying to you guys. she-ra, ok k.o.! and arcane will each have 3 entrants in the bracket

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

TW: Stalking, social anxiety, social media pressure.

Seeking advice and suggestions about what to do.

To give some background info, social media wasn't huge while I was in high school. FB was really the only big site people around me used, but I didn't have too many friends during high school and I just wasn't that interested in it. Then, I got IG, which I really enjoyed for about 1 year. But thanks to IG I did run into some stalking situations and had a nervous breakdown, and even though I was an adult by the time I had it, my mom was upset and felt like it was something I did behind her back (she never explicitly said "No social media" but just assumed I'd never get IG because of me never being into it before).

It took me a long time to stop being anxious about social media but fast-forward to this year and now my current friends are using it, so I joined in, but I'm not really using it "with" them even though I've added them, it's not mutual.

When I added one of my friends they told me in advance that she doesn't always see people show up in her feed, which I understand, but I still thought she would've added me back after I told her my username?

I also have some friends who I added a long time ago but who never added me back, maybe because they didn't know me well enough back then, but I see them interacting with everyone else?

And then finally I have a friend who seems kind of similar to me (generally doesn't seem like a huge social media person but still likes some of the cute pictures and memes that end up on there; she's also my closest friend out of my current group). But I remember her getting stuck on the sign-up page (you know, the "Are you a human?" drag and drop tests), got annoyed, and gave up on trying to join since she said it was too hard for her to figure out. So I get where she was coming from but at the same time I felt a little upset because I think having her on there with me could've given me a confidence boost and maybe if our other friends saw me interacting with her, they'd add me back and include me in stuff, too.

I feel like it's kind of a silly thing to even think about. I'm not hugely into social media and at the end of the day I feel like my friends are my friends because we still do other activities together and get along. But I still get a sense of being on the outside looking in when I see them making inside jokes to each other and tagging each other in cute friendship memes and stuff. Plus because of my bad experiences with social media before, it actually did take me a lot of effort to finally pull out myself out of the severe anxiety and trauma I felt towards it and give it another shot.

I don't want to be one of those pushy people who's like "Hey, you need to add me!" especially since I have tried to like... "gently nudge" people into adding me before, and they haven't shown an interest back. I don't want to be "annoying" about it but it does make me feel left out sometimes, and then I blame myself for not knowing how to act on these sites, and what comes off as normal vs. annoying.

Hi anon,

I’m so sorry to hear of your social media experiences, especially in regards to stalking, and I’m so glad you’re safe.

Social media can be such a tricky thing - on multiple levels, and I can definitely relate to needing to learn how to navigate it a bit as an adult (since I come from a similar background in that it wasn’t huge while I was in high school either) - especially when it came to digital boundaries, including but not limited to, deciding who gets access to me, my privacy, and how we define “friendships.”

On one hand, social media allows us to be more connected than ever, with people we very likely might never have met in any other way (international friendships, niche interests, online groups, etc).  On the other hand, many people feel more alone than ever, and I truly believe in some instances it has to do with needing to ask ourselves, and be willing to share, what we want out of social media - and then explore a bit to see who else might share the same goals.

For example: 

How do you define the word friend?  Acquaintance?  Mutual?

Is there a certain amount of interaction you’re looking for?  Weekly?  Monthly?  

Do you have various levels of what you would consider intimate, vs casual?  Say, do you like the idea of sharing your birthday online, and getting multiple messages that day?  Would you prefer a digital card DM’d to you?  

Do you have any special interests, where you could join some online groups?  Sometimes finding that common interest can help get the conversations flowing and get to know people a bit easier as you dive deeper into exploring friendships.

These might seem like simple questions, but depending on someone’s boundaries and privacy they might have very different ideas than you on what they’re comfortable with.  And just like you should have the freedom and space to share what your hopes are as you explore these new relationships, so should they with you - maybe you’ll find overlaps, maybe you’ll realize it’s not the best fit, but that doesn’t mean it’s an automatic red flag, or says anything about you or the other person.

I do hear you on that fear of perception, of wanting to be cautious about how you try to engage, but I feel like you could do everything “right” and still be viewed as “annoying” by someone.  I feel it might be more about how you communicate your wants and needs early on so both parties can feel secure moving forward as they build a foundation of friendship.  And if you have these conversations, and you realize it’s not the relationship for you?  Then worst case scenario, you spare yourselves a bit of a heartache down the line, and make room for people who do share your similar interests.

Regardless of what you learn, and decide for yourself as you explore online friendships more, I hope you cultivate relationships in safe and mutual spaces, that add some joy and laughter to your day.

- Mod Kat

[pb-dot]

Film Friday On A Tuesday: V For Vendetta

I was going to take it slow today considering it's 1: My Birthday and 2: it's one of those "Whether we like it or not today will be historic" days, but then a good friend went and got me started on the 80s Alan Moore Graphic Novel and the 2005 film adaptation. If you're wondering, Getting Me Started isn't too hard if you're at all curious about cinema and adaptation. I'll take nearly any excuse to talk about movies like that, so without further ado, let's get going.

V For Vendetta started its life in Warrior magazine, where the graphic novel explored Britain in the grips of nuclear winter, as well as the rule fascist authoritarian Norsefire party. Into this bleak and stagnant state of commonplace brutality, comes V, a masked insurgent having taken on the persona of Guy Fawkes to stir revolution and blow some shit up. It's a remarkably bleak story, Norsefire and their enablers and cronies are terrible, of course, a collection of perverts, bullies, and weirdos empowered by their absolute authority. V doesn't seem to be much better, both in the "revolution is nasty business"-sense of moral ambiguity, and in the "has a prolonged dialog with a stone statue before blowing up a building oh wow this guy is nuts"-sense of things.

The adaptation goes with changing very little of the broad strokes, but there is a trend in what it changes that I think is interesting to look at. The story is still set in Britain, Norsefire is still in charge, but the disaster that allowed them to grab power is a pandemic this time around. Natalie Portman plays Evie, the story's POV character, notably aged up from the novel's teenager which makes a subplot about V using her as a distraction to get the better of a pedophile clergyman somewhat nonsensical. The adaptation does this a lot, taking the barb off Moore's particular blend of Edge. It's not an uncommon problem in Moore adaptations, as losing sight of the underlying "this shit is fucked up and you should recognize it as such" through-line seems to happen a lot with US filmmakers, and it's probably one of the reason why Moore is famously cantankerous about film adaptations of his works.

The movie version's big claim to fame was chiefly the script written by then-sci-fi darlings the Wachowski sisters. It's not their best work. Part of it is a basic unwillingness to engage with the actual politics at play, for one V isn't an anarchist, which is a big ask for a character whose symbol so closely harkens to the anarchist A. Moore himself have gone on record as to claim that Norsefire aren't even fascists, but more overtuned neocons. Me, I think Moore might have a point, but that his objection is more a question of degree than kind. I do agree that setting the story in Britain while it is so transparently informed by Bush-era American politics is one of those things that a good adaptation probably shouldn't do.

It is a very disarming move in many ways, and it takes much of what could've been bite out of the story. Still, though, the movie needs no help in pulling punches. Fascism isn't an unfortunate glitch in the body politic that exploits the worst sides inherent to humanity in the quest for power, says V For Vendetta (2005) people were just scared and confused and accidentally Did A Fascism, all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing and all of that. Of course, this also means that all it takes to Make It Good Again is one sufficiently skilled individual.

The most galling, yet understandable change in the movie is how much of a superhero V is. Yeah, he's still called a terrorist, but that's only by the Bad Guys. In framing and action choreography, V does fill roughly the same niche as Captain America. Righteous, preternaturally able, feelgood liberal in a way that questions nothing and posits only the Inherent Goodness of Man.

In the graphic novel, V is an enigma, so ambigious in his presence that I had a pet theory that he was no man at all, but rather a woman who, supposedly died in the comic's backstory. In retrospect this was probably not anywhere close to canon, but it was a fun perspective to argue all the same. The movie, on the other hand, seems interested in who V is to the detriment of the actual points he is making. He is, the movie seems to posit, a Righteous Man, and that is important to his work as a revolutionary, to the degree where it turns out the reason he's all fucked up isn't just an emergent property of the cruelty of fascism, but the Smoking Gun that shows that the big scary evil government is indeed illegitimate.

Look, this was the 00s, 9/11 and the rise of the authoritarian neoconservative right that followed in its wake was kind of on everybody's mind. The poorly justified wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did bring the concept of Questioning The Narrative to the forefront. It also gave us 9/11 truthers and the roots of what would grow into Covid Trutherism and whatnot, so while this scepticism was a good tool for the left-leaning, it wasn't entirely without side effects.

I need to get back on track here. One weird thing the movie version of V For Vendetta does is the same thing that a lot of other genre fiction that deals with Prickly Topics is that the fash is so solidly The Other, which runs explicitly counter to Alan Moore's point. Granted, V does point out that The People were responsible for granting Norsefire the power they have, but the movie seems to fail to realize that this is an ongoing process. Sure, not everyone who votes for fascists are dedicated brown shirts or Secret Policemen from the word go, but it does somewhat stretch the credibility that The Public are all cowering in fear of the fash. That's not how it works. Not even when The Fash is an occupying army. There's collaborateurs, lickspittles, sympathizers, and a whole lot of people who Aren't A Fan Of The New Management But... In V For Vendetta (2005) though? Not a soul who isn't the Secret Police or Norsefire Top Brass expresses even an ounce of fashy sentiment, not even in that casual "yer da" way that real people on real earth in 2024 on occasion will do. I think this is another one of those ways fiction writers try to dodge actually engaging with the political concept they employ in their stories. It is less scary to write about fascism if you never ask the audience to empathize with a fascist, or even a "normal person" shaped by living under fascism for that matter.

I feel like I'm just going to town on long outdated political not-satire at this point, so let me get back to the movie for a bit. It's not all bad. Hugo Weaving is an inspired casting choice for V, and while I don't agree on the move to make him more of a character and less of a cipher, the character Weaving does is fun. He is perhaps a bit kookier than I'd go for, but as far as nods to graphic novel V being off his rocker go, I suppose you could do worse. The action's also decent. It's nothing on other action scifi stories I could mention in passing, but it's fun and kinetic, and Weaving's over-erudite vibe does give a fun Combat Professor flare to things.

Also while I'm talking about positives, Evey's "I wish I wasn't afraid all the time" monologue just really hits, and it could be the aforementioned pivotal US election guiding my thoughts, but honestly, it kind of is a Post 9/11 mood isn't it?

As far as inventions of the movie goes, I am also fond of Gordon, one of Evey's colleagues who turn out to harbor quite a collection of secrets and preferences. Gordon feels like the most genuinely human characters in the movie, and while he's mostly around for a bit of an Act 2 Snarl connected to that pedophile priest plot that arguably doesn't make much sense and his involvement in the story ends somewhat farcically, he very much brings the plot alive for his presence. He'd make for a compelling contrast to the casual brutality of the fascism of Norsefire's England, if the movie was a bit better at showing that.

It also leads into Evey's "capture," a point of some real moral ambiguity on V's end that in the novel makes a twisted kind of sense, and is, unquestionably important for the way the plot resolves and the thematic arc of the whole thing. In the movie? It mostly serves to underline the Bush Era parallels as well as introduce a curious collection of plotholes. V also reads as a bit of a sociopath with his "guess I did an oopsie" justification of the whole thing. Still, I suppose you can't not have the Shit Test Enhanced Interrogation sequence if you're adapting this kind of thing.

In the end, the V For Vendetta movie isn't a great adaptation. It makes some very Hollywood Story Structure changes that as far as I'm concerned is a straight downgrade. Still, the movie does have sympathies I can sympathize with, and the effort it puts into reminding people that rule over people requires ongoing consent and that the people can and should remind Those In Charge about that is certainly appreciated. You know, apropos of nothing going on about now.

[blog-by-kij]

I have only basic understanding of what anyone means by ai taking peoples art (something on the ever growing list of things to look into, I mean obviously it’s all trained on real things but I don't have complete understanding), so I can’t comment on that.

But I just checked the ai artwork tag with the intention of unfollowing it because tbh, when I first followed it I though it would be like legitimate things that people wanted to use ai to make and that it would be good to know what’s going on in that sphere and to see what kinds of things people make with ai. Idk maybe I’m following the wrong tags for that, and I’m definitely not a puritan, but like I’m really kinda tired of seeing stupid gratuitous nonsense art of women-type things that are clearly trained on porn or insta baddies.

My issue is not nudity, it’s not nudity in art, its not erotic nudity. It’s not insta baddies either. There’s something here that I can almost pick out, something about how porn and the media in general, especially media intended to be part of selling you something a bit more than just a product (such as lifestyles, experiences, and ideas), that warps peoples perception of reality, and now that is being seen and reflected back directly at us with this specific type of ai art. Because women in porn are real, insta baddies are real, supermodels are real, but basically none of them look like in real life how they do in the final images because of setup, lighting, and a lot of final editing. I swear this was at one point well understood.

I thought that ai is just a tool and what people can make with that tool will be something that is worth paying attention to, even as I try to figure it all out and decide how I feel about it all ethically. I don’t believe that declaring ai art flat out wrong in all circumstances is the correct approach. It doesn’t explain why, or what to do about it; doesn't seem to help me understand; doesn't seem to actually contribute to the discussion. And in general, I agree that human artists will always be here forever, they already have been here forever. I don't believe that ai art will ever be as valued as human made art. But I’d like to see what people want to do with it. It could be fun—if everyone had developed art skills and time was not a factor, what would people make. What would they like to make if they could. Something like a look into peoples mind and all that. Potentially interesting, potentially valuable.

But like, women don’t look like that and they never do. The proportions are wrong, but only slightly, the anatomy is off, but just barely. Nobody’s skin is rubber adjacent, nobody has anime inspired eyes, real breasts simply do not work like that for most women, and none of them have even the slightest hint of the lower belly pooch that most women have; none of them have any visible marks or defects, no body fat—unless that's the kink, in which case, it still isn't quite how it works, and yet no muscle either unless that's the kink, in which case.....and so on and forever that I can just almost see the porn categories that were fed to the ai to create it. I can’t believe that anyone thinks that this is a good use of ai to the point where this is basically all that the tag is comprised of. It makes me sad in a way, because there now exists a tool that essentially allows everyone to create art at some level of proficiency that is much higher than they have, which is maybe what they want but don't have the time or the desire to put in the time to learn those art skills. I believe everyone should make art if they want to, they shouldn't ever let "i'm not good at it" from stopping them, but at the same time I understand that sometimes people don't want to put in the time or effort to learn art skills but they still want to make something casually and a bit higher quality than they can produce. ai served that niche perfectly. It could've been so interesting.

It’s exactly as you said, uncanny valley and idk I just appreciate that I saw this post when I went to go unfollow the tag. Maybe tumblr isn't the place to find the type of usage of ai art that I'm looking for. I get better results from reddit, and instagram, but even there the problem that I have still persists. Also the people on reddit seem weirdly angry about it all, at least last time I looked.

It’s like I’m following a porn bot and it’s annoying because I thought there’d be idk…more variety to ai art because, simply, there's more variety to people and their ideas. But. I guess not?? The ai thirst trap art is horny, i guess, but you look like uncooked dough dipped in lacquer with eyeballs that I can tell are definitely balls underneath and now the uncanny valley is too high that I’m actively revolted and annoyed now. What if you showed emotion at all, anything at all, can you give anything other than a customer service smile?? They're sorta 3D and the huge boobs try so hard, god bless, but for some reason this art still seem so flat and 2D and that annoys me, idk why. Too bad that seems to be what the majority of ai art is, at least on that one tag.

Also you're right, ai art can be good. But it's never spectacular or anything like that. We humans will have discussions till the end of our time about what the greatest piece of art ever made was, or which are the top 100 or more of the most important pieces of art ever made. And we will never reach a consensus on that because we've made a lot of art, and everyone has a different idea of what "the greatest" and "important" means. This is good, imho. What does a great piece of ai art look like? idk if anyone's decided yet but I'll bet it looks like every other piece of ai art, and that's part of the problem with it. What can ai art do that a human hasn't already done? We know it hasn't done those things, because it's trained on things humans made before it existed. So, what can it do then if it can't do anything more than us? Human emotion and experience leads to people understanding their world in unique and different ways, that they sometimes make art of to express. You maybe can ask an ai to create an image of despair, but it can't conceive of that concept in any way that hasn't already been thought of by us. Maybe it can create an image that looks like that, but there's no backstory or understanding behind it and that probably would show in some way.

(Just btw, the solution about this annoying ai art thing is not making the ai create thirst trap images that look more like real women because that won't happen, simply because that isn't what a lot of you are into, just being real here, and also that gets too close to, and inevitably leads to, the very real and very serious issue of deepfake revenge porn, and I'm going to assume that everyone understands why that's wrong. Perhaps a mistake to assume that, but it is a slightly different topic for a different day.)

Perhaps I am stuck in the past of the pre-GPT world, but I think even as AI art grows, real art will still be valued- because of the Uncanny Valley.

Humans evolved to have a fear or dislike of things that are close to humans, but are not QUITE us. Several theories explain why this evolved (including skinwalkers, corpses, and Neanderthals), but the effect is the same.

Humans know what humans look like. AI just predicts what the next pixel should be. It's good... but it's not THAT good.

I doubt AI will be used for more than little indie projects and perhaps RPs, but big studio (and even smaller studio) companies will still have hordes of normal artists doing their thing.

There is also stylization. AI tends to be realistic since it's trained on photos, and it can't make it's own style that much.

Now if your issue is with AI taking your art as training data without your consent, then yeah that's a dick move and should be very illegal.

[kanansdume]

I don't necessarily think it's fanservice. I think these characters were VERY deliberately chosen as vehicles through which to parallel and foil Cassian's story. Saw and Mon Mothma are already connected to him via Rogue One, but also the conflicting point of views, the flaws that Saw and Mon Mothma have are flaws they are mirroring in Cassian to showcase the person he will grow into.

But what makes it work for me is not that it assumes we know them, precisely. It's allowing the likelihood that you know Saw's backstory to be a BONUS. The scene with Luthen and Saw does actually work if you don't really know Saw, or only know him from Rogue One. You know he's a Rebel and that he's ruthless, and you can kind-of go from there without issue.

With Mon Mothma, they tell you she's a senator, they let you know her allegiances and politics still. If you know who she is, then you can read a lot into the foreshadowing in her storyline and learn new things about her family life and how that impacts what she will eventually become, but you CAN actually probably get away with not knowing who she is.

With Yularen, you could honestly just... not even know who he is and it would not make a difference to the plot so far. The important person in his scenes is still Dedra, as it should be. If you DO know who Yularen is, then you can probably pick up on some of the underlying themes of his character and speculate as to what that might mean about Dedra, but the actual plot and narrative work without knowing who he is.

This scene with Luthen and Saw tells us some interesting things about Luthen, and if you DO know who Saw is, you can pick up on some of the really interesting dynamics and ways in which they're USING Saw, but what allows the use of Saw and Mon Mothma and Yularen to work in this for me is actually that they DON'T assume you know them. They don't omit important information that makes the plot and themes work because they're assuming you know a certain piece of lore.

Think about, for example, the way they utilized Cad Bane in Book of Boba Fett. They absolutely just assumed everyone watching knew Cad Bane, and not only that we knew Cad Bane, but that we knew his relationship to Boba Fett that DIDN'T EVEN EXIST because it's technically a deleted arc from The Clone Wars that only exists in interviews or something. So that ENTIRE storyline falls completely flat unless you already have this really niche knowledge of the character and a storyline that didn't even get to air on the show he was in. They didn't build up a backstory for Boba with Cad Bane in prior episodes of the show that would explain this dynamic that could've then paid off with Cad Bane's arrival. They just threw Cad Bane in there more because it was set in a desert planet and he's a space cowboy than because they were really thinking about what cameos and legacy characters might ACTUALLY serve Boba's story best.

Whereas the inclusion of the characters we've gotten so far on Andor are either minor enough that not knowing who they are doesn't matter and they become a fun easter egg (Yularen) or are really really thought through in how and why they are included and are given full characterization so that anyone watching this show who ISN'T as familiar with them still understands the importance of their characters to this particular story and to Cassian (Mon Mothma, Saw Gerrera). And that's part of what makes this scene and the show at large so masterfully written. There's a lot happening underneath that you can pick up on if you want to, but those things are not in any way essential knowledge, so the story isn't about shoehorning in legacy characters as much as it is about utilizing these characters specifically for what they bring to THIS story in a way anyone can understand and enjoy.

Man, that scene between Luthen and Saw was SO INTERESTING.

Because we don't know a lot about Luthen, much like Saw, but we DO know more about Saw, just like Luthen seems to. The audience isn't aligned with one character or the other necessarily, we can go back and forth a little.

Luthen's lack of explained backstory, the fact that he's always putting up some kind of act, some kind of front, means that we as the audience don't really know him either. It's hard to know exactly what he stands for and what his plans are with Cassian. He's not affiliated with Saw, he isn't explicitly affiliated with Bail Organa yet, and he's not affiliated with any of the other known organizations we've been given in mainstream Star Wars before (the Separatist/Republic divide from TCW). All we know is that he SEEMS to be anti-Imperial. But one of the last people we were told was pretty firmly anti-Imperial turned out to just be out for himself.

And on the other hand, we DO know Saw. We know his origins on Onderon and the death of his sister. We know just how long he's been fighting oppression of his people. We know what he does and what he becomes in the future. We know that he's willing to do some pretty heinous things in the name of his cause, but also that he's one of the only people aware that the Death Star is something that needs to be figured out and is trying to track it down to keep it from becoming the problem it has the capacity to become. We know Saw. The good, the sympathetic, and the ugly.

So it's interesting to see this conversation with Luthen, Luthen who says "we need a little extra oppression in order to actually spark a real rebellion," which seems ruthless enough to fall in line with Saw's own tactics, except that Saw's not willing to risk his own people, his own cause, for someone else's mission. He's unwilling to help someone else if there isn't something about it that helps his personal agenda.

And we also see Luthen refuse to pick a side beyond bringing down the Empire, arguing that they can do more together than they can separately, and that their infighting can wait until the Empire's been taken down. Saw's choices to protect his own people for his own agenda go against all of his big talk about how everyone chooses a side but he's the only one really fighting for the galaxy. Saw's more inclined to let petty infighting keep him from helping other people in favor of just trying to do everything himself and assuming he can do it all himself. Which isn't unsympathetic when absolutely no one listens to him later about the Death Star, so in some ways he's not WRONG that if he wants something done he just needs to do it himself.

We don't know who Luthen is really, we don't know why he does what he does and makes the choices we see him make, which makes him inherently untrustworthy but also leaves the option open for him to surprise us with his alliances. We do know who Saw is and why he does what he does, which means even if we don't LIKE him, we can trust that we know what choices he'll make. We can trust that we know where he stands.

Saw stands at the front with his people, he's hiding out in cold caves with his people and making absolutely no bones about who he is and what he believes. He's got nothing to hide from anyone.

Luthen stands behind all of his recruits, letting them do the work while he stays on Coruscant in relative safety drumming up support from senators to fund his efforts and just passing information where it needs to go. He's hiding from everyone.

This scene was incredible because so much went unsaid and lives in just... the audience understanding who Saw is as a character and how that juxtaposes with the relative little of what we known of Luthen.

Which seems like such a wonderful way to use a legacy character, to take the fact that this character has been around for a while and that most audience members will know him and his story, to compare against a character who is completely new and unexplored. That dynamic that the audience has with the characters has been transposed into the dynamic the characters have with EACH OTHER and defines the place they currently hold in the narrative and its themes. It's masterful.

[smartass-hoot]

hi, i'm tan, and while i usually put the tan in stan, i'm currently putting the tan in satan.

normally, i just observe all the shit that goes down in this fandom 'cause i'm honestly here for the memes and the god-tier writing my bro whips out, and i'm not that much of an active participant to interact with "those" posts, but you

darling, you.

you just HAD to attack my bro @delicateikemenmemes , and that too, very, incredibly, personally.

bro already explained the whole friendship thing and i agree with her 'cause, a friendship is still a relationship, and if it's socially acceptable for people to turn down romantic advances, then it should still be okay for them to turn down platonic advances (friendship proposals). i can say more about this, but i won't, 'cause i got other shit to talk about.

you're making it seem as if my bro and her group of friends are forming this tight circle where they don't allow the "unpopular blogs" into. as if my bro only cares about follower count and the attention. as if everything she does is only to gain tract in social media and become popular, and that's why she writes stories, makes all those memes.

you can take that idea and shove it up your cactus butt.

my bro ain't doing this for the spotlight, that just happened by chance. she's just incredibly talented, but more importantly, one of the most dedicated and sincere people i've met. by now, that much should be real fucking obvious, but if it isn't, i'll give you solid reasons as to why what i just said is true: before ikevamp and ikesen, my bro wrote a whopping 200k to 300k word fic for a really small fandom (Run with the Wind). she also wrote yet another massive oneshot for another niche fandom (Tsurune). she makes memes for everything, including funny typos and late night gibberish texts (mind you these memes never see the light of day). she does those because she's passionate about them, not to get notes, kudos, reblogs, followers. don't get me wrong, she appreciates her followers because it means that many people she can share what she's passionate about with. But get this straight: if she only wanted the tract, she could've written for the various massive fandoms she's a part of. but that's not the kind of person she is.

she's kind to a fault, and always gives people a second chance. she always looks for the other perspective, trying to understand where they're coming from. i've seen this happen on multiple occasions, and yes, even regarding this entire situation.

but just because she can draw lines on her comfort, and what is acceptable and what isn't, doesn't make her a jerk. sending someone anon hate ain't cool. stealing work ain't cool. acting out with petty behavior instead of facing the problem head on ain't cool. you don't like confrontation? drop the issue and forget it. move on. a couple of folks posting their crafts on a virtual space ain't gods, and their rejection of your friendship ain't the end of the world. ignore them back, block them, get them out of your life... this literally could have been handled any other way.

but most importantly, don't fucking assume shit about people and attack them. i may not speak to the other two, but my bro does, and i trust her judge of character. and from what i've heard, they're amazing people too.

don't you ever even DARE attack my bro because she's just a humble writer and memer tending to her crafts, and if any of you ever impede on that, i'll be right here to put you back in your place.

peace out.

@delicateikemenmemes @nishtharya @judgemental-seal

Please understand that I am not supporting the messages she sent. I acknowledge that the messages she sent were wrong, so does she. But can you let us rest please. I am not victim blaming. I spent the past week or so worrying about what happened to her, and then this happened and I didn't even know she was the anon.

Y'all immediately knew it was her. Because you know that you purposefully made assumptions.

Part of me feels like you aren't telling the whole story, but from what I understand, you hurt her.

It doesn't justify the messages, especially not to the other blogs that didn't. But please note, that ignoring someone and sending them a message that tells them to stop tagging you and using you for "clout" when she was trying to make friends, is rude. And then acting as though you have no idea why she'd be upset, is also rude.

I don't think that someone being creepily nice, or "obviously" being fake for sending people encouraging messages, gives you the right to assume things about her, and then all but scoff when she deactivates.

And then sit here and act like she's just jealous of your skill and that her actions over the course of an hour or so, somehow crosses a line with you, doesn't excuse the time you spent ignoring her and blocking her for nothing but kindness and them exposing her for no reason and playing the victim when she comes back because she's hurting. She wanted to be your friend.

Y'all mocked her.

I feel awful for all the blogs that received the message, which was copy pasted, and wrong.

And barely more than a couple of sentences doesn't make what you three and @nafeary did completely innocent