#and i just ignore 99% of it nowadays

[pipedreamprayer]

When it comes to fandom and any use of fictional characters (so OCs as well) I think that EVERYTHING becomes a sort of power fantasy because we have power over anything and everything BECAUSE ITS FICTIONAL

Those examples are all essentially a hope someone could have for the real world translated to the imaginary world we're collectively using like a sandpit as a 'power fantasy' instead of just a 'fantasy', because it feels empowering to get invested in a start where that fantasy or hope or dream can be made reality for the characters that we have complete power over. Some people see bad people in the real world and want to see them punished, or made to be better people, while others daydream about being more 'bad' and owning it. And the problematic love interest opinions so easily come from personal experience with having/being that person in the past, or knowing someone who went through a relationship like that, or even seeing fictional depictions of this issue while having strong feelings about romantic attachments and getting upset that there's no easy solution in real life. But at least in our minds and these little (usually online) communities we've made for sharing those thoughts, there's the power to fix those difficulties.

And yeah I'm certain that people forgetting that others have different preferences and things that they find empowering to see even within a fictional context is responsible for MOST conflict within fandom! There's this really weird attitude that if your opinion isn't true 100% of the time in 100% of cases then it's entirely invalid so people will argue themselves sick that what boils down to their personal preference is actually a moral dilemma with this answer as the one and only right answer.

I think it’s really important to talk about how different people have different power fantasies.

For example:

For some people, the idea of someone redeeming a villain is a power fantasy.

For other people, the idea of a villain being defeated is a power fantasy.

And for other people, the idea of a character owning their villainy is a power fantasy.

I would argue a lot of fandom conflicts re: villains come from people being unable to see that their fantasies, which put them in control of a narrative (and all three of these are designed to give the author or reader control of the narrative in different ways) are someone else’s horror stories.

[sege-h]

hey sorry to bother, i might be getting the wrong blog but i think u shared a post about how ppl need to stop online persecution/callouts/etc based on vague callouts and the like? i might be crazy ignore this ask if so, i just want to read it again to feel sane twitter folks are back on their BS and im losing it

I think this is the post?

But also anon get off twitter I cannot stress how good for your happiness getting off twitter is. And if you mean the Twitter People (tm) that moved on here, just block them. We need to get back to blocking people that bother us, be it for serious or petty reasons, it's so freeing

[baskeigh-ball]

Ignoring the fact that ibis had the ai paint feature a couple years before this whole ai fiasco, after seeing your post, I decided to try it out to see if it really held up. I already knew what you said made no sense, as even stuff like ai painting requires heavy human input that isn't just someone typing a prompt in a thing and looking through thousands of images and somehow still calling it 'art'. Really, it's just some weird advanced bucket.

The ibis ai paint... really sucks. I'm pretty sure it hasn't even been touched since it was added. No matter what I did, I got random colours and whatever colours I had put there looked like it were from a filter, not to mention how my lineart bled everywhere like it was blurred out.

Ibis isn't problematic for adding that feature as not only was it added ages ago, but it was also just a gimmick only added because a few more popular paid programs added them, like Clip Studio Paint. I highly doubt even the company took it seriously considering how poorly built it is. This is actually the one time I'm glad some feature in an app sucks so much.

Another reason why ibis isn't problematic by the mere feature alone is that, when you look at the artists making content during the time of that update, it was received with humour. It was something fun to try, but ultimately dismissed for actual artwork, as nobody would use it to fully paint their works. Nowadays we see something slapped with the words 'ai' and think that it's instantly bad due to the latest issues with it and big corperations/ certain production companies but it isn't. It's just a lot of people abusing what was previously some fun gimmick, which it can still be, and for certain apps, still is. Nobody throws pitchforks at character ai, after all.

You can tell just by the size of this that I'm procrastinating on something. Ima go and let this rot away in your askbox now lol

You really thought this would fade away in my ask box, mwahahaha /j

I wanna start off by saying thank you for holding me accountable, I will admit that I got buzzworded pretty hard in this situation lmao

This information came as a surprise to me-- I was seeing posts pop up within the past week complaining about the ai feature on ibis, so I assumed it was recent. As it turns out, after reading your ask, I discovered that I got a few wires crossed! Because yes, the auto paint feature I referred to in my post has been around for years now, and was never taken seriously anyways

So that was my bad (and yea ur right it's completely unusable, lmao)

But as it turns out, the feature that people have been complaining about DID come out recently. It was called the AI Example feature, I think the idea was that you make a simple drawing and the AI adds 99% of the detail and color, which I've seen a bunch of other programs do.

...and then it was immediately removed due to some pretty major backlash, which, duh

^ This is the only evidence I can find of the 11.2.0 update that included the AI feature on the actual site; their update history stops at 11.1.0. But there's also the news page about the removal of the update, so it's not like they're trying to pretend it never happened.

So tl;dr, I jumped on the hate train a little too quickly and never did enough research to figure out what the actual update was, and that it's been removed by now anyway (which I couldn't have known until today, ofc, but i did kinda post that thing about ibis today so it's still a pretty major oopsie)

I think I can say with confidence now that I agree, ibis paint isn't problematic to use-- they made a mistake with this update, but they actually listened to their users and removed it LITERALLY the next day. So, thanks for letting me know! I'll also edit my last post to prevent any misinformation, just in case people make the same mistake I did :]

[hamliet]

am I the only one who thinks death as a redemption distasteful?

I mean, no, you’re definitely not the only one!

Honestly, the trope is oversaturated now. Everyone and their mother wants to have Darth Vader while ignoring the specific context that made Vader’s redemptive sacrifice work. I wrote about when redemptive death works in the linked meta above.

See, I tend to think the problem isn’t the trope itself, but instead treating the trope as an easy way out, or as a moral necessity when really it should serve the character, the plot, and the themes. The genre also matters. But... yeah, how it's used in 99% of stories nowadays is lame and distasteful. It's giving up, not pushing through. It's bad witing.

Like, writing a story where someone fucks up in every aspect, where they are evil, but in the end have one lone thing they love and sacrifice everything for that love—that’s beautiful. And I don’t think it’s a miserable ending either; bittersweet, but it’s hopeful. It talks about the humanity in each of us that can’t be snuffed out no matter how we try. 

I dunno, man, I have loved ones who are so beyond messed up. I want to believe there is hope for them even if it’s an eleventh hour “wait, I love this one person.” Will that redeem them to the world? No. But is it enough to comfort their loved ones? Maybe. It’s not an easy answer. That’s why redemption via death can work masterfully in a story. It can give life and hope. But it’s so often misused that I also get why people hate this trope now and kinda hate it myself lol.

In stories, actions have consequences. They’re symbols, and so are the characters. If you skirt consequences for a character that’s how you get Marty Stus and such. If death is an established reality in your world, then it’s logical some characters may die. Death is a fair consequence, but consequence does NOT mean punishment. It just means that if something happens in a story there should be a reason it happens, not just “for the sads” or “because they were bad and I want to punish readers who see themselves in them.” If a character has done certain things, and the rules of the world make it clear death is likely, that’s not inherently bad writing. 

But for a lot of the oversaturation of "redemptive death," it’s, frankly, cheap. Because it’s not used as a genuine way to end a characters arc with thematic weight or to honor them. It’s done to give the audience a “there there, we made you care so we won’t kill them off as a baddie but we don’t want to take responsibility for making a complex character and actually use them to add meaning to our story.” And that’s been most of the redemptive deaths post Vader, let’s be real. 

But on the other hand, death is a reality people have been grappling with in stories since the beginning of time. I���m serious; the oldest stories in the world are about humans trying to understand how to live in the face of death.  But death is the only thing that humans are all equal in. The only thing. I wrote about that here.

So when you have people who refuse to acknowledge death at all, and act like killing a character including in redemptive death is a moral statement that they deserved to die when it really isn’t—it’s just a different side of the same coin as the cheap “death redemption” people. Both view it as a moral thing or as an easy way of wrapping up their writing instead of letting it fester so that audiences can continue to think on it, to ponder it, to wonder what if.

Not all stories are designed to preach or teach morality, and even fewer good stories are designed to do that. (Which is not the same thing as saying good stories are inherently amoral, either.)

If a character redeems themselves via a sacrifice that costs their life, then their sacrifice needs to matter. It needs to be dealt with, to bring life or criticism, rather than being an easy hand wave away so that the story can just continue like it didn’t matter. I

Redemptive death itself is not the problem. The problem is bad writing of characters and themes and plots that leads to an oversaturation of a trope in a pale attempt to imitate a good story rather than actually write one.

[aseikh]

I've been debating on if I wanted to say something about this or not, but I realized that, in the end, nothing is going to change unless someone says something. And if y'all have an issue with what I'm going to say, I will be open to talking about this--with the understanding that its a good-faith discussion.

Either way.

People active in this fandom nowadays are so ready to call others out for anything from using AI to posting a picture they found on Pinterest. And I'm not saying that this stuff is okay, but I really think people need to reconsider putting others on blast for something as minor as one or two social missteps. Calling someone out shouldn't be used in situations like these, because all it's doing is publicly shaming them. Calling someone out (or shaming them via anon messages) is incredibly hostile and in the end just encourages people to stop interacting with the community entirely. I'm not even the target of these messages, but y'all are making me feel like I'm being watched what I say and do, else I'll be the one to get anon messages about me next. 99% of the time, calling out should be used when other (more private) messages have been ignored or the situation simply isn't safe.

Calling people out and shaming them for doing something they might not understand the nuance of is making this fandom an unwelcome space. Other creators have left the fandom and consciously decided not to come back because of behavior similar to this or being taken for granted. I've decided to stop writing simply because of the way people have treated my work in the past. Going to an anon blog and shaming someone, or making a post not naming names but being really obvious about who you are talking about, rather than actually talking about it, is making RA a hostile community.

In the end, if you have an issue with someone, or feel like there's some social cue that they missed, just message them. Publicly shaming them and starting arguments is not going to solve anything, but rather chase people away.

And for what it's worth, this is not the same for if someone is being openly, violently bigoted. Call someone in, privately, for missteps or genuine misunderstandings. Call someone the fuck out if they're being a violent bigot or if they're ignoring other calling in messages.

[naamah-beherit]

On fanzines and the mess their current state is

Or: musings from a writer's biased perspective.

This post has been a long time coming, but always something else caught my attention and months passed as such. Finally, the time has come.

There was a zine wank recently. The mods proved to be quite ignorant how art works, kicked the artist, the artist went public with receipts, the mods insisted it wasn't like that, and the whole affair kept derailing with possibly another explanation for the kicking until at last the mods cancelled the zine. And it's just the latest wank of many. A zine here took money and never delivered the product, another zine there has a mod who hasn't read the book but only heard about it from their friends who, coincidentally, are the other mods. And so on, and so forth. Everywhere you look, there's a fanzine. Multiple fanzines in fact, sometimes at the same time. Which is understandable, given how old a concept of a zine is and how solid their foundations in fandoms.

Or, well, technically, because when I think about the zines of today, I can't help but realise they're gradually losing the connection to their roots.

(yes, this might be another post of the "old person yells at clouds" type. I'm fully aware of that)

I won't summarise a history of zines, because that's not the point here and also Fanlore has done a much better job in this article. It does serve as a good starting point, though, if you've never ventured past "zines are a thing that exist". The most important thing to keep in mind is: the zines used to be about much more than just art. And here lies some of my beef with them.

Nowadays, most if not all zines are art books. Worse than that: art books that refuse to acknowledge the fact, own it, and market themselves accordingly. I actually own an art book that was announced and sold as such (Ages of Arda Anthology), which to this day in all my fandoms¹ remains the only publication of that kind. And if the zines of today would have acknowledged their main focus is mostly if not only art, I wouldn't be writing this.

Alas, here we are. I participated in four zines. Additionally, I was one of the editors in one of those. It was the first English Hualian zine, actually, back in 2019 - unless another one somehow slipped my mind, but I don't think so. My 2019 was bad, but TGCF is the only thing I remember well from that time. I've also been traditionally published (three times so far), which is also relevant to the rant. I admit I don't remember how many check-ins we had for that one zine I was in the staff of. We had a word/size limit for the entries. As fas as I recall, that was the entry criteria. I might be missing details, though; I was hella depressed at the time. Like I said, bad year, few memories and 99% of them is TGCF.

But anyway, the other three zines I wrote for. I applied, was accepted, went through the process, saw it to the end. You know, the "usual" zine process. The one I've got Opinions™ about.

Let's start with submissions. x samples of works of y quality. Okay, sure, we all think without stopping to realise it's a tad weird to submit a selected portfolio of works for a hobby event as if it were a job application. It gets weirder the longer you think about it, because, as I once wrote, fandom is for fun. It's a hobby. Maybe I'm old and jaded, or an idealist, or an old jaded idealist, but I believe everyone has a place in something as deeply tied to the fandom as a fanzine.

Then comes what I've got a personal vendetta against: check-ins and deadlines. Sure, I know people create projects with specific time frames in mind, but dear gods, again, it's not a job. Nothing bad will happen if dates shift around a bit when there's no money involved. Maybe it's just me being bitter about putting fun, fannish activity into strict professional frames. again, I'm old and jaded. And dear gods, check-ins. Here's when my trad pub history comes into play, because in neither case I had to let the editorial staff know I was actually working. True, it might be a case for a story that isn't done yet, doubly so if there's a deadline looming over both an author and their editor, but when you submit something finished and aren't asked to revise&resubmit, you go over the editorial input, make the changes (or not if you're feeling brave, lol), send it back, go over the proof copy, submit possible adjustments, and that's it. Or at least that's how it worked for me for two magazines and a short story anthology.

What does it matter if someone writes a story the day before the zine submissions are due? If it works for them, then it shouldn't be an issue. Again, it might be just me, but standardising and project-managising a hobby activity doesn't really sit well with me. From my very biased perspective, I don't see fun in chasing deadlines and writing on the clock, but that's just me.

Zine being a project rather than fun activity also ties to it becoming a product. That means a zine has to sell to at least cover the production cost, and with the quality the organisers and the audience expect, the labour cost is basically non-existent. That at least remained from a fun hobby activity - people working for free, lol. It also enables situations when the same few highly popular artists partake in most or all zines in a fandom (often upon invitations, whose very existence makes my blood boil), leading to a reality where zines become an endless cycle of repetition. And don't even get me started on invitations that add to the marketing strategy of selling the zines. "Here are our wonderful, carefully selected artists, and here's everyone else". That's how I see it. Where has "we're all fans of the same thing" gone? Where's "share our mutual love for the same thing"? Instead, we get invited people and those who have to submit a CV-like application for a senior position.

You ruined a perfectly good fan activity, is what you did. Look at it, it's got capitalism.

And last but not least, art books that refuse to acknowledge what they are and the subsequent treatment of writers.

The longer I look at zines, the lower the artists:writers ratio is becoming. Sure, people like to look at art, because it's quite often easier and always quicker than reading. Sure, ain't nobody got time for reading these days. BUT. The growing disparity between respect and reception of works of artists vs writers is, well, growing, and by not giving writers an equal treatment and exposure in something as important to fandoms as fanzines doesn't help to improve the situation. Again, my opinion, but when seeing zine promos that have got approximately 20-30+ artists and 5-10 writers at most is not cool. This is why I say most of the zines these days are art books that refuse the name. And there's nothing wrong with that name, or with including only artists in something that's only about visual art. But when it's mixed for art and writing, then the least zine organisers could do is make the numbers equal. Again, we're all fans of the same thing, and no fan activity is better than the other when its outlet is meant to be varied. Also, where are cosplayers? Where are meta writers? Both of those have got a place in a fanzine as well and should be given a treatment equal to other expression of fannish love.

Am I trying to turn back a river with a stick? Probably. But I'm fed up with zines that fail because someone embezzles funds, zines that prioritise the same group of people over and over again over a more diverse crowd, or claim they're welcoming to all forms of expressions but obviously prefer to include only fanart. I'm fed up with manufacturing zine after zine after zine just because they sell. I'm fed up with fandom becoming more and more of a structured professional endeavour instead of a hobby. I'm fed up with audience that constantly demands a faster and faster stream of, well, content. Neither of those is what fandom and fanzines should be like.

.

PS. not proofread. Sorry, I'm too dead to do that, so mistakes may get fixed within the next few days, 'cause they sure as hell are many.

__

¹ - I don't know anything about other fandoms, though. Like I said: it's all opinions from a very personal angle.

[xaviaaaaaaaaa]

What's your highest score (and preferred version) of Tetris? And if you have one, your best time (and difficulty) of Minesweeper

Mild Tetris infodumping time!! :D

TL;DR: I prefer TETR.IO, where my sprint PB is 25.612 (811th global as of writing), Blitz PB is ~435K (not top 1K also just a lot of SDPC looping). I also do not have any best times in minesweeper (yet :3)

ngl i'm realizing most of what I put here is unrelated to the ask but uh um uh

The vast majority of the time, I am playing either on Jstris or TETR.IO. Both of which aren't technically "Tetris" and are unofficial browser-based clients.

Within both of these I normally only play sprint / 40 Lines (very self-explanatory, clear 40 lines as fast as possible). Most of the time I'll just constantly play sprint without really thinking about it while I listen to a YouTube video or go through an album or smth. Unfortunately tetrio doesn't keep track of my total completed sprints but jstris does, and the number has climbed to be just a little high (3,148 as of right now). There are also other modes but they range from slightly to vastly less popular and I've played 40L by far the most sooooooo-

My PB is 25.465 seconds which is very good according to this graph :3

(Jayson is my other name ignore that part)

Also also also fun story my PBs in 3 of the 4 sprint categories on jstris I got within a few hours (I got a 100L pb on that day but improved it later 😔)

Also this is even more unrelated but I feel like mentioning; tetrio and jstris play largely similarly but with minor differences to DAS and finesse but I've had someone try to die on the hill that tetrio finesse is better which is rather silly of them in my imo

uh um there is Blitz mode on tetrio which i don't play often cause it requires too much mental attention and also a lil bit of luck and also also lots of SDPC DPC looping which is really cool and satisfying but also ngl kinda lame but

(replayed at 2x speed cause 2 minutes is a long time)

Occasionally, I play the default mode on Tetris.com. This is an offical client and generally far more popular. Unfortunately I don't have my high scores saved cause i just switched to a new PC build but my best is around ~700K. I pulled it up while writing since it's been a while and did pretty decent but I really struggle with instadrop gravity

Also worth noting is Tetris 99 since it's what got me into tetis in the first place. I have ~700 hours according to my Switch profile and played around 3,000 games (mostly in 2020). Not really much of highscore to point at with this one except one time I won 10 games in a row which is neat.

(I couldn't find the screencap from the 10 games in a row bit but I did find this which is way funnier)

nowadays I absolutely can not be bothered to play this game cause I've gotten to a point where it is boring and slow and uninteresting and if i want to play a long stressful multiplayer tetis i will go to Tetra-League instead.

I played a bit of PPT and PPT2 but never really got into it, I think my highest rating was around 11 or 12K on PPT.

also I've recently tried playing the mobile app and it is awful and frustrating and terrible and bad and lags a whole lot. my highscore there is like 1.3 million which would've put me far and away in first place in my city, but for some reason it decided that I lived in New Jersey that day so instead I was like 30th.

I got into NEStris at one point and I'm pretty sure my best was a little over 300k but i never put that much practice into it.

most of this was entirely unrelated to the ask but I really felt like ranting :3

[itsclydebitches]

I'm ngl I feel kinda afraid to mention any positive aspects abt the show bc it feels abit nowadays like you just, can't enjoy it anymore. Like no matter what RWBY does you won't be happy and any positive aspects mentioned you'd find a way to turn into something bad or Not Good Enough and idk I love most of your essays but that kinda throws me off. I just wish you were able to watch it a bit less... Against It. Hating it is fine, I hate it, it's a horribly written horribly paced mess with awful characters, awful humour and the worst voice acting in the industry, but I can unapologetically appreciate when a good scene happens and it feels like you can't, or at least can't without adding 50 asterisks and conditionals and ways it could be better. IDK it makes me a bit sad sometimes, since you dedicate so much time to this.

I feel you, anon, though we've known this was coming for years. Unlike a collection of short stories or other, separated media, the longer RWBY makes mistakes the more future content is going to suffer. Four years past where I personally think the show started having serious issues, yeah, there's more to criticize than praise (imo, obviously) and I'm not inclined to pretend otherwise. You say yourself, "I hate it, it's a horribly written, horribly paced mess with awful characters, awful humor, and the worst voice acting in the industry" so honestly I'm a little confused as to where you think these good scenes are that I'm missing. If the plot, tone, characters, humor, and acting all suck, what are we left with? And if you "hate" the show, why would you expect others to find more to praise?

Personally, I feel like I do appreciate the good scenes when we see them, but yeah, they're going to come with those 50 asterisks because, as said, everything is interconnected. If the show does a good job depicting Ruby's grief over Penny, I'm still going to question why we didn't get that when she first died. If the show nails an awesome "I'm still just small" line from Little, that unfortunately makes all the terrible humor surrounding it that much more apparent. My recaps strive to unpack all the aspects that I see, which means that after years of missteps the good stuff is coming with a huge load of baggage. For me, it would be a serious misrepresentation of the text to go, "Wow, Weiss hitting herself in the head with a rock sure was funny! Good on RWBY for writing such a comedic scene" and just ignore the context of that interrupting Ruby's grief because I don't want my recaps to be too mean. These recaps aren't going to RT. They're not written with the intention coaxing a writer towards improvement without breaking their spirit. There's absolutely no reason why I should pull punches - say less than everything I'm thinking - especially in a fandom that already works so hard to paint RWBY as better than I personally think it is.

I'm not going to insult you by assuming your intentions, but frankly I really dislike this whole 'It's so sad you can't enjoy the show anymore, you've dedicated so much to this, what's the point if you're not praising it?' perspective. I've heard it a lot over the years and 99% of the time it's sanctimonious nonsense. Again, I'm not accusing you of that, anon, just acknowledging that a lot of people have tried to "help" me over the years not because they care, but because they don't want anyone criticizing RWBY and have realized that outright attacks haven't worked. But the reality is that you don't know me, or what I get out of RWBY, or what's an enjoyable way for me to spend my time. It's totally fine - and understandable - if you're upset that my recaps have grown more and more critical over the years, but the answer to that discomfort is to stop reading them. There's no constructive criticism to offer here, just an implied request for me to lie and say that I think the show is better written than it actually is... which isn't going to happen. You shouldn't be "afraid" to mention a positive take - the fandom is 99% positive takes - and if you don't like the idea of sending in an ask and me potentially disagreeing, there are thousands of other RWBY content creators who will give you an enthusiastic response. Yeah, it sucks that you can't read recaps overflowing with praise and it sucks that I can't write them, but that's due to RWBY making those major mistakes and allowing them to snowball for half a decade. As said, you claim to "hate" the show and provided a long list of its broad and far-reaching problems, anon. You should thus understand that the problem here is in RWBY being really badly written, not me acknowledging that it's really badly written.

[ace-girlboy]

I was watching a video about adult’s reflecting back on high school and how they always tend to tell young people “these are the best years of your life!” which is ridiculous. So I thought I’d share a comment I left under that video that I’ll put under the cut-

“We all know that (many) adults tend to view their teenage years with rose tinted glasses. They don’t really remember the negatives as much as the positives- and part of this is definitely influenced by media and how it portrays high school. I think a lot more adults would have a more realistic view of their high school years of movies didn’t constantly make high school seem like some sort of paradise or something idk. Like if youth wasn’t some sort of fantasy time period in media then more people would for sure recognize that no, sometimes it sucked.

However I think they are also influenced a lot by how their high school years were as a teen, not realizing that lots of things have changed since then. The independent mobility afforded to the teens of the past just doesn’t really exist for us now. (I’m [age]) On most days I literally only go to school or my house. 99% of my life is spent in either of those locations, I barely go anywhere else. I can’t just “walk to my friends houses” because they live far away and we can’t just meet up somewhere cuz there’s nowhere to go. Academic pressures have definitely risen, and (while I can’t vet this for sure) I bet the academic standards of the teenagers of the past were lighter than nowadays. Many high schoolers nowadays go into college already having college credit from APs and B’s are no longer a “good” grade to get, but a mediocre one. C used to be a pass and now C is basically an F in all ways except you *technically* pass. There’s an incredible amount of pressure to succeed and not all of it is unjustified. A lot of people need scholarships to get into college, because if you want a well-paying job you basically need to go to college which is fucking expensive. Between all of this and extracurriculars people do, we just don’t have the time or resources to hang out. 

Also, mental illness among teenagers has risen a lot. And yeah, you could blame it on ThE pHoNes if you wanted, and social media definitely has a role to play it that. But it’s ignoring many other factors like increasing isolation (see above points about independent mobility and places to go), the fact that we are very invested in “adult” problems like politics or climate change, and the fact that many teenagers nowadays have realized they are queer and suddenly have to deal with an influx of hate from their peers but mainly adults. We are more stressed out than ever and it’s because the adults around us are failing us and we are about to go out into the world on our own as it is literally DYING. 

Of course we can’t be having “the best years of our lives” when we are constantly isolated, given no agency over even our own APPEARANCE sometimes, pressured to preform well at school, and have to watch powerlessly as the adults in charge of our countries actively make things worse for the sake of profits. We worry about adult problems because the adults around us are not taking care of the society we are going to inherit!!! We have real concerns and adults always told us to change the world but when we try, no one listens. So no these are not the best years of our lives. They fucking suck.”

I did edit out my age and I probably got some stuff wrong here. I mean I’m still a dumb teenager who probably has shit takes about stuff. I guess I’m just angry that we have to care about adult problems because the adults (in power) around us can’t be responsible enough to take care of our world and our societies and our future. We have to inherit a dying planet and societies that are increasingly more unequal because some old white dude likes green paper. Like isn’t that fucked up? That we have to do that? That we have to worry about adult things because they won’t? That’s fucked up right?

[venting-town]

The thing about having BPD and schizoid at the same time is that they sometimes cancel each other out

When I was young ( before age 11-12 which is where I’m pretty sure I started developing schizoid ), I constantly had to make sure that people that I loved still cared about me

Even when I’d “ act out “ ( trauma responses ), I’d still want them to love me

I’d go between loving them deeply and then hating them deeply the second they did something that would hurt me ( or even if I just perceived them trying to hurt me )

I’d sometimes manipulate them/test their love for me to made sure they ACTUALLY cared about me

Eventually, around 11-12, I started not caring as much. Mind you, I DID of course still struggle with abandonment and betrayal and trust and etc, all the things people with bpd struggle with, but I’d force myself to try and “ get over it “ by using very self-destructive means

And it hurt. Trying to fight against something so ingrained into you ( fear of rejection/abandonment/betrayal/etc ), wanting those people who should’ve ALWAYS loved you and cared about you and protected you ( mine didn’t ), and then try to turn around and force yourself not to care about them. Force yourself to just ignore them, to give up on trying to get them to care about you or love you or understand you, even though you yearned for those things so deeply/badly for 10 years of your whole life.

It was unbearable. And yet, I continued. Because that’s what I needed to do to protect myself/survive, because nobody else was there for me

And I’m glad I hurt my family sometimes. And that’s okay. I’m glad I hurt God/Satan/demons/angels/reincarnations/spirits/souls/etc too sometimes.

Fuck the okay and not okay and justice and vengeance. I’m glad I hurt them ( not always but sometimes )

Sure. You could just assert that bpd and schizoid are two contradictory disorders so you can’t possibly have them, but you’d be wrong.

And I know I’m not the only one who has two seemingly impossible disorders to have at the same time.

Just because things are contradictory doesn’t mean that they can’t work together/you can’t have both. That’s not how things work. That’s not how the world/the universe/etc works

Of course it might sometimes not work like that. Other times it may work that way. Other times it’s both and other times it’s neither, etc etc

BUT, for the “ your supposed schizoid is actually just your autism “ thing, as I stated, before the age of 11/12 I DID want/need/yearned to be loved and cared about.

Yes, I LOVED having alone time ( because I was so frequently molested by others and also forced to be around people all the time ), but I still wanted to be around people I loved. I was also INCREDIBLY socially awkward ( and that’s not just due to my autism, it’s due to constantly having to shift between identities to match what others wanted or I’d get punished. I couldn’t even mingle with kids my own age because I was so used to having to “ be an adult “ due to grooming/enmeshment/parentification/etc ).

And yet, I still wanted to have friends and wanted people to love me

As I get past 11/12, I started caring less and less about others “ love “, and started getting really pissed off when they’d occasionally try to show me love. I secluded myself more often and didn’t want to be around people I loved.

Mind you, I still ( at the same time ) would fear abandonment/rejection/etc, but it became more easier to ignore the more I forced myself not to care

Of course, it’s not just about not forcing myself to care. It was a mix of “ I need to make myself stop wanting love do I won’t get hurt “ and “ I literally cannot keep forcing myself to love others because it requires so much sacrifice/energy that I don’t have “

Nowadays ( and for the past few years ) I honestly can’t say that I care for my family. I’m not saying that I don’t care at all, I’m just indifferent 99% of the time, and that’s okay

I mean, yes, I DO feel love towards them sometimes, but if you gave me choices between staying secluded from my family the rest of my life vs only occasionally going to visit my family, I’d choose the first option with ( almost ) 0 qualms

[hero-israel]

In light of the mass arrests on the Temple Mount I have seen a couple news articles that imply or occasionally outright say that these crackdowns are an example of Jewish Islamophobia or a Jewish hostility to Islam. Similarly, I’ve seen the anti-proselytizing law that was shelved portrayed as Jewish hostility to Christianity. Now, Lehava types seem to have a genuine hatred for Muslims and Christians (and undoubtedly their political allies being in the government will strengthen this segment of the population), but people seem to want to make a nationalist conflict into a religious one, even if they have to willfully ignore Judaism’s ambivalence towards other religions. We just don’t care one way or another about other people’s religion, unless they’re appropriating our stuff or trying to restrict our religion!

Now, said ambivalence can lead to severe neglect by the Israeli state (and if there’s a religious conflict between Jews and non-Jews in Israeli society 99 times out of 100 the Israeli govt will side with the Jews, which ain’t great if you’re a religious non-Jewish Israeli), and Israel cracking down on mosques and churches and imams and priests as organizing sites and inciters of Palestinian nationalist violence can seem like a distinction without a difference to the Palestinians it effects, but I feel it really necessary to call out this argument, as it leads to antisemitism and the idea that Judaism is an evil religion really quick, not to mention encouraging anti-Jewish elements of Islam and Christianity amongst Muslim and Christian groups with sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

I don't really think the anti-Jewish elements of those religions need any encouraging, they've kind of made up their minds. But I get the point you are making.

Al-Aqsa is a trap, it happens every year. Israeli cops either barge in and make sure no one hurls bricks and fireworks downhill at the Jewish holy site (the one that is beneath the Muslim holy site out of purely coincidental and meaningless reasons ofc), or they stand back and let the bricks and fireworks hurl until there's an even bigger conflict that they have to go in and stop. 20 years ago, Palestinian gunmen barricaded themselves inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, thank goodness things haven't expanded into a repeat of that too.

And as I append on like three-quarters of my posts nowadays, all of this is worse with Ben-Gvir running the cops.

[snake-berry]

request info!

fanart requests are currently open :)

ok so my pinned post used to be my old request info, so im just re-doing it bc the old one is sort of out of date. soooo just ignore this if you are not interested <3

i take fanart requests for asoiaf and harry potter, tho i am more involved in the asoiaf stuff nowadays.

i draw both individual characters/groups and ships!

i do not accept all requests just because i have to be at least moderately interested in a suggestion to draw it. however i just dont reply to requests im not going to be doing, like im not going to put you on blast publicly lmao.

please ONLY send requests in my ask box! i do not take requests that are sent to my chat, ive had some unsettling requests sent privately in my chat before and so i prefer to only be contacted thru my ask box since it is a more open forum. you can use my chat if you want to just talk or whatever, thats fine id love to get to know ppl on here better, but i will not consider a request that isnt sent in my ask box. (asking for clarification for my request boundaries in chat is completely okay, just send the final request to my ask box!)

no i will NOT draw your oc... if it is a asoiaf/hp oc and you have a visual reference for them ig i would consider it, but im not going to draw someone's non-fandom related original character, esp not as a free request.

i do not take commissions, my art is fairly rudimentary so i feel like id be scamming yall lmao. so dont worry abt that, just send a request!

if i dont respond after you send a request once, its possible i missed it and you should feel free to send it again. however if i ignore it twice, your piece is either taking a while to complete or i chose not to do it based on personal preferences. so do not send the same request more than twice please!

i take requests from anons, thats perfectly fine!

if you have a suggestion for my asoiaf portrait series, please send one! or two! or three! i will always take requests for that series, and never reject them like 99% of the time.

i have other media i enjoy outside of asoiaf/hp, and would be happy to do fanart for some of those fandoms too, so you can look at my blog for the list of media im interested in or send me a chat if there is a fandom you want me to draw for! i will probably not draw for anything i am not familiar with, though.

i do have an ao3 (alrighty_aph and pseud snake_berry) but i am not currently taking fic requests. if there is something you really want me to write, you can send me a chat about it, but its much less likely that ill accept your fic request as opposed to a fanart request as i am currently knees-deep in my f&b longfic!

light nsfw requests are okay, but i will not draw anything too explicit.

you can be as specific or nonspecific as you want in a request tbh, either is fun for me in its own way!

ok sorry for the length but i just wanted to be thorough bc ive had bad experiences with requests in the past! (not anyone ive actually drawn for, just people i ignored bc they sent something i straight up prefaced i wouldnt do and then proceeded to harass me in my chat). but thats all so go ahead and shoot me a request if you have one! :)

[budpuppy]

ok ignore this if u don’t want to answer but i saw a post about how u r vegan and i’ve been considering going vegan for a long time because i do feel really passionately about animal welfare… however my main issue is i don’t really know how to be vegan in an enviournment where i’m getting food from other people… like i don’t really want to announce that i’m trying to go vegan because i’m very sensitive to judgement from others but i don’t know how to properly refuse food or substitute food because i’m never able to find a good enough excuse? i don’t know i figured it would be worth a shot to ask because chances are you’ve run into a similar issue in your journey lol!

i'm very comfortable saying i'm vegan, so it's not somethin i've had to tiptoe around, but i understand ur reluctance! like 99% of the time, when i'm offered food and i say "thank u, but i'm vegan," it becomes a whole conversation. ppl saying "oh i could never do that" or asking what i eat, wondering why i'm vegan, sometimes ppl feel challenged by it, like offended ig ? like i've gotten "ok, just don't shove it down my throat" and that's not only incredibly rude, but tone deaf when we're talking about the rights of animals to be free of exploitation, something which is very important to me...and the animals obvi

anyway, i'd recommend... simply not telling them !! you don't have to disclose anything to anyone. maybe you're allergic or something. you can also start changing your own dietary habits/personal grocery list, but still accepting what is given to you. at least until you settle in to the lifestyle and feel comfortable talking about it.

i went vegan cold turkey but, as important as veganism is, i understand it can still be hard to get there. take whatever steps you need, and know that it will get easier, until it's just... normal. i mean it's so easy nowadays, there's soooo many vegan options, it rules. good luck !!

[ashlynniis-bracketeers]

Alrighty, have a remade Pinned Post

Decided to go ahead and remake my old pinned post. This should have all the info about me you need lmao. Will probably have some copy-pasted info, this is mostly for formatting, adding extra information, and the like. Also should be easier for me to edit.

I don't use "Carrd" or whatever you people are calling it nowadays. I grew up in the era of “don’t give out personal information dear god wtf are you doing”, so this is basically going to be the only info you’ll know about me, most likely for a long time. You are not obliged to give out your legal information (age, living location, etc.) to self-entitled randos on the internet. The internet honestly shouldn't know anything about you lmao.

Also no real specific DNI, if somebody doesn't like my content then there's no need to bitch at me, and if I block somebody, this is my space first and foremost for me to curate. My blog, my choice as to what I reblog. Closest thing is that I don't trust people who make aggressive dumbass discourse/stupid in-fighting discourse 99% of their identity lmao, people like that could be actually learning about nuances and doing actual activism instead... And I'm going to leave that at that.

Seriously, stop in-fighting, you're just making it easier for jackasses to legislate you out of existence because you're divide-and-conquering/eating yourselves instead of having proper solidarity and respect for people's personal choices/experiences/variance/identity. It's getting extremely annoying. I guarantee that 99% of people outside of the community/microcommunities don't even know about all of these arbitrary distinctions/arguments, let alone care. You're just cannibalizing yourselves while alienating potential allies/potential members of your community. This world isn't black-and-white, stop stressing yourself into grey hairs before the age of 16, what the fuck.

Shipping/fanfiction discourse is stupid. Don't come to me about shipping/fanfiction discourse. None of the terms used in the "greater" discourse mean anything, they're vague, ephemeral, and easy to rewrite. Both "sides" are ridiculous and filled with jackasses and fools, both have serious problems with using abuse survivors as "gotchas" against the other, being racist, queerphobic, xenophobic, and literally every other prejudice under the sky, and not having any discipline, tact, or the ability to mind their own damn business. Both sides need to learn some self-awareness, proper tagging (especially if being posted in a public forum), proper blacklisting, and that 90% of the shit they're fighting about doesn't matter in non-fanfic media spaces. I don't consider myself to be on either "side" because my experience with people who get so wrapped up in it has been overwhelmingly negative and with people on both sides accusing me of being on their opposite side. There's a lot more nuance here. Some people just read things in bad faith, whether it be through ignorance, being deliberately malicious, or the story just being really badly written. It's ridiculous.

If you have no unique icon+description+content when following me, I'm probably going to report you as a bot. I know about this place's bot problem (and the forms the bots can take) and don't really like taking chances on that.

I also do not share donation posts. Those are not my wheelhouse and I can never tell if it's a scam or not.

Other than that, if I think you're annoying and/or the like, I block. I've been getting more liberal with my blocking lately.

Name: [REDACTED]. I am not giving out real names, what the fuck? Just call me Brackets, though I still respond to Ashlynnii and sometimes to Frost/Ashes (i.e. my Steam username).

Just try to figure out my pronouns lmao. I don't really give any fucks, this is the internet and again, nobody is entitled to that information. I'm honestly fine with anything that isn't neos/xenos.

Also, Asexual (I think... I've don't really recall ever having sexual attraction to anyone, real-or-fake) and [still-figuring-it-out]romantic. 👍‍

I’m all over the damn place with my fandoms, honestly. That’s for you to figure out. I also feel gender envy for unhinged middle-aged/old men lmao.

I draw and write, though I only post my writings on DeviantArt due to their… strange content. Art tag(s) here are “Brackets Draws” and “Brackets's Art”. For original text posts I use "Brackets Talks", for posting original video game-related stuff that isn't art I use "Brackets Games", if I make a poll I use "Brackets Polls", and if I add something to a post in a reblog (and not just ramble in the tags) I use "Brackets Adds". If I tag something “lmao” it means I’m filing it under “funny”.

...Politics has been heating up more and more lately, so if you don't want to see when I reblog stuff like that, then watch out for the "politics" and "discourse" tags.

Misc. interests include memes, being a furry (just have a fursona, not really a fursuit-er or the like. Fursona’s name is Brackets.) and Transformation content. No, not bloody Transformers, Transformation! They’re different! That’s what my “strange content” that I write about on DA is about, and I also make memes of it on Reddit/YouTube. It’s commonly just called “TF”. If you look in my TF folder on DA… be warned! Weird shit! I post it to Reddit (on a specific subreddit), but I don’t post it on Tumblr! I've seen enough people brigading against TF content exclusively on this site way too much for me to risk drawing in those asses. If you post weirdo horny comments on them you're getting cursed out lmao.

Now to list off other places you can find my content:

DeviantArt - Newgrounds - Reddit - Youtube - Art Fight - Toyhou.se - Neocities (Still huge WIP)

[raidark]

just thinking about the fact japanese Digimon fandom fucking hates Appmon for some reason, to the point that its biggest fandom is apparently in the west (which already says a lot)

like i mean technically i can understand because the japanese fandom is so biased on their nostalgia that for example, one of the biggest reasons the franchise still exists is because Adventure still gives a lot of money (whenever things are bad they just need to make another movie or anime series with the original Adventure cast and that's all)

that feeling applies to many other things and so a project like Appmon made them feel threatened, fearing their beloved franchise was going to end apparently (even if Appmon in all cases seemed like only a temporary instance. The anime is like 99% of the brand).

So nowadays Appmon is in limbo, with some sources like the Digimon Museum acknowledging its existence...

...and other media fully ignoring it

it makes me so sad

[southernmermaidsgrotto]

Hello, I need some help and I think you might have some answers? I went to the river early yesterday and found a bunch of things that the water washed up like jewelry, little statues of elephants and buddha, a statue of a God(?) that says Chango Machu, religious memorabilia and a little red satchet. I got so excited that I picked them all up, thinking this was completely random luck that I found cool stuff. I looked inside the satchet when I got home and there are things that I’m 99% sure are from a spell someone casted- a chocolate heart, coin with the serenity prayer, little clock, tiny metal horse shoe, animal fur etc. I didn’t think twice and threw them out. I’m now realizing I might have done something really bad. Did I mess with this person’s ritual? Am I cursed? I’m completely lost on what to do.

To add on the the previous ask, I still have some of the statues and jewelry. Also, please pardon my ignorance, I searched “Bruja” on tumblr because a lot of the items are clearly from someone of latin heritage and you’re the first blog that showed up. I apologize in advance for anything I said that might offensive.

"I got so excited that I picked them all up, thinking this was completely random luck that I found cool stuff"

Well you should know better than that. In absolutely no situation is it correct to just pick up whatever things you find laying on the streets unless it seems to be something someone clearly lost and you intend to give it back. But if it's a bunch of spiritual looking stuff? DON'T TOUCH IT. Specially if you find it in your front yard/porch or the entrance to your house or job, or any other place you commonly go to. Specially not in a graveyard either. I'm worried that nowadays people don't often get proper spiritual education as the first thing you get told by anyone ever is NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO PUT IT THERE OR WHY. It's as simple as don't get candy from strangers in the streets istg

I have an "am i cursed" post coming up but it's long and I thought I'd put here the main points in the meanwhile.

Unless you were the specific target of that working or there was a clause added to it so that if anybody interferes with it, they'd face consequences, you should be fine... but,

if the working involves calling on, or requesting the aid of, certain patron saints, spirits, entities, gods, etc. like the Orishas, for example, you're risking disrespecting that spirit orisha and thus facing repercussions due to that offense.

What should you do then? get rid of it. PUT. IT. BACK. right where you found it. Cleanse yourself (do a good, deep, powerful bath, just in case) and cleanse your home (if you think something could've followed you in...) then DIVINE. If you trust your own divination abilities, do that, but I recommend:

Consult with a priest of the faith involved to know what the next steps should be. Could be a santería priest, a babalawo, whomever respectable authority of that specific faith (in this case, a faith where changó/shangó is present, thus, orisha faiths) you have access to. Santería, Lukumi, Ifá, Isese, etc. African Traditional and Diaspora Religions. Request a consultation with a Priest or Priestess regarding your spiritual health and ask about this specific situation, they would be able to tell you very specific answers and protocols regarding your current situation and how to move forwards, and how to avoid getting in trouble again in the future.

And please for the love of everything holy, just don't pick up, don't even touch, anything that looks like a spiritual working ever, unless you're an experienced practitioner (or know and trust one) who knows how to deal with the possible consequences.

Hope that helps!