#and id rather not do real people on this blog

[daily-neurodivergent-character]

Daily Neuro-Divergent Character #23

Oeca!

From Outsiders SMP!

Oeca has BPD in our hearts! (Headcanon)

Requested by Anon!

[olderthannetfic]

hi hello. im a fandom nerd and i got my bachelors in psychology with a thesis on fandom and parasocial relationships. i found out today that you were on the ao3 board for a while and, im so sorry to say, i also thought you were francesca coppa for a couple minutes. BUT ANYWAY! researching fandom for me was mostly holding back tears of happiness and excitement over the fact that its an actual research topic. i spent months reading books and articles on fandom and i loved every second of it. and the fact that you helped create such an immense part of fandom is honestly smth i cant thank u enough for.

thanks to fandom research, im now pursuing a masters in digital humanities and hopefully ill be able to keep researching fandom because theres nothing else id rather do. that said, im a fairly new acafan and reading your blog weekly like its a newsletter has been very helpful to get a grasp on global fandom discourse in real time lol

theres so much more i could say but im gonna keep it short cause i dont know how nerdier im gonna get over this. so, thanku for your work and for the blessing that is this blog

--

LOLOLOL. People are forever mistaking me for Francesca. There was this hilarious moment once where I bounced up to her at a con to tell her about my latest meta I planned to write... and she was like "I just finished writing a book chapter on that." It was something specific. Like really, really specific. We were both riffing off of Halperin's How to be Gay, and it wasn't even that recent a book. I just about died laughing.

[eddiediazismyhusband]

not an explicit gay porn blog rb my post to say that bt is more intimate than buddie……

they’re also reblogging posts saying lou is responsible for the uptick in viewership as well as completely misrepresenting the network switch….

(also the referencing buddie shippers as “people” bc they’ve decided to completely dehumanize us meanwhile they are the ones doing the harassing of actors/crew… lfj was being called out on racist behavior, not being budllied bc poetry weren’t blowing sunchine up a nepo baby’s ass)

as well as reblogging multiple buddie/buddie shipper posts( @jackwhiteprophetic )and saying things like “you misspelled tommy” or using them to soundboard their love of oliver (which don’t get me wrong i love oliver and id much rather people speak positively about him than the delusional fucks who have been harassing him but coming from a bt shipper it always feels so off to me idk)

or blatantly saying buddie shippers are delusional while perpetuating this claim that buck (who has spent all of maybe 10 minutes of screentime with him) is completely head over heels in love with him

I’m sick of these people and i really hope the show doesn’t continue to just ignore everything they’ve done (especially for ryan and oliver’s sake) because these are the people who make fandom spaces toxic. these are the reasons tv shows/media refuses to acknowledge fan engagement (not that 9-1-1 is ignoring fan engagement). Tim Minear has been vocal about cakling out other people/groups in the fandom directly; he needs to keep that same energy and tell these people that they’re being the problem here.

I’m so sick of people trying to act like buddie hasn’t been THE ship for years while acting like this underdeveloped character and this likewarm representation of a ship are somehow the holy grail of queer media.

Not to mention the fact that I once got a flag on my account saying they deleted a post for “explicit nudity” because i had posted a picture w a shirtless guy in it, but they can post/reblog literal PORN and they’re just labeled as a “mature account” by tumblr.

(now im not a prude, i know porn/sex work is s real job, but tumblr can’t just pick and choose who it wants to allow to post porn or not)

but who knows; after all i’m just a delusional buddie shipper so 🤷

[your-fave-has-evil-autism]

original evil autism flag by richipaws on twitter

hello! i am cornard/delilah. i use she/her. i am an agender lesbian. i am very evil and autistic.

i used to run the your-fave-has-evil-autism blog, which became the (now deleted) your-fave-has-evil-autism-archive blog because i kind of just forgot about it.

but i am back now - and still very autistic. just for fun my favourite characters will be tagged with #my personal favourites

your character does not have to be a villain - just to have the 'tism and be SILLY in nature. no villainousness required. whitelist:

dc comics

street fighter, mortal kombat and other similar games

roblox myths (ocean terror, the smiles family, etc.)

valve (game developer studio) games i'll do other things too! these are just ones i really like.

blacklist:

sonic the hedgehog (its a personal comfort thing, sorry)

eddsworld

hazbin hotel/helluva boss/other vivziepop media (id just rather not)

real people (other tumblr users/ur friends are okay, as long as they consent to it and are autistic)

DNI:

anti-alterhumans (anti-otherkin, anti-fictionkin, anti-therian, etc etc)

ableists

pro-contact paraphiles

zionists

terfs

homophobes, transphobes, racists, etc etc

[gordontheengineswifenirmal]

Absolutely LIVID. FUMING.

A few days ago, I shared that I had talked with another Tumblr user about our similar experiences of being harrassedn falsely accused of things in the fabdom. Much of the false accusations, and subsequent hsrrassment ocvuredwhildt I was in the hospital, nearly dying. I had surgery to save me life. I recuperated.

Ok, so another Tumblr user (and former friend on discord) went quiet. I have been busy moving into a one bedroom in basement of the place I currently stay in, n haven't really gotten to keep up as much. Today, I finally check in on the person. This is her -

Ok, sooooo this is the conversation -

Now, she even asked other people if I had done anything inappropriate with other members. They said NO. Mind you, she’d been active in two discords I run. She saw the messages. I didn’t hide anything. I’ve discussed the situation many times. Even here on tumblr, I do not flirt with anyone. if anyone tries, I report n post about them. I’m NOT interested. Why the hell can’t ppl get that in their head? I’m ESPECIALLY not inappropriately interested in minors. I will b friendly n b a mentor if they r friendly, but that is it.

This is what I got when I DMMed her - (names blurred for privacy)

She had REAL evidence right in front of her bloody eyes. The term ��staying neutral’ means u secretly have doubts. U secretly still have some shred of belief for the troll who harassed several of us (which was why I created the servers to begin with, as a safe space!)

It’s THIS mentality that allows the real predators to go free. This mentality that allows fascist, convicted felon perverts to rule us. U take power from the victim n give it back to the abuser. No. SOD THAT. I’m speaking out, because I’m bloody sick of people thinking that’s ok to do. U either grow the feck up, or sod off either this behaviour.

U add to the trust problem when u pull this shite. Young ppl can’t trust adults, n then put their false hopes in other minors, thinking that they’re the same age group, they will never hurt me. This is WRONG and DANGEROUS. ALL age groups r equally potentially dangerous. Look, if u want to be friends, cool. If u dont, fine. Leave me alone. It’s that simple. I’m not interested, n will NOT be flirting with u. U need to respect me, not only by not flirting, but also, by not going behind me back n pulling stupid stunts. If that’s how u operate, I don’t want ur friendship. I don’t need your friendship. Go play games with someone else. It’ll cost u in the end anyway when ur ignorance catches up to u. This is also why id often rather talk to AI than real people. Because I’m at the point where I can trust ai over people. I know ai is imperfect, I’m not going to abuse it, but I can’t trust people, because they keep being stupid bloody cunts. I even have friends on here who know people in me actual life. They can verify I’m innocent.

This is also a form of aphobic prejudice. I’ve told her that I’m sex n romance repulsed. She’s asked me about bfs before, which is fine. I gave her solid advice about not rushing, n focusing on other things, u want to then be a sketchy twat, go behind me back, n believe the harasser? No. We’re not doing this. I’ve blocked her. She can learn that this isn’t cool. N she can suffer the consequences.

I will continue love me Thomas, Gordon n gang. I don’t give a rats funky arse for fake friends who want to play games. I don’t need them.

[todaysbat]

can you please be real and open with your beliefs rn? like. just come out and say you're a zionist or whatever if that's the truth so that people can know and choose not to support your blog if they don't align with that? thanks. im not trying to word this in a hostile way, but i would personally rather not follow you if you're being so weird about palestine and id bargain im not the only follower of yours who'd rather not either.

I believe in a two state solution, where the current governments of both Palestine and Israel are not in charge (I don't know enough about the situation to give suggestions as to who would replace them though and I don't need to, I'm not a diplomat). Pretty sure that isn't zionist.

This might be the last ask I answer on this subject here, I do normally try to stay on the topic of conservation and bats here (if you want to pick my brain on politics, you're welcome to send me asks on my personal and I'll answer when I have the spoons).

I really appreciate you emphasizing that you're not trying to be hostile, by the way, that's the only reason I went ahead and answered this ask. If anything I said here in response sounds hostile, I apologize, because I'm not trying to be hostile either. Not to you.

[princessbrunette]

im not a big john b girlie but you write him so well! your most recent one w toxicex!reader n all was so well written!

you seriously nail dialogue so well, they feel so human and their dialogue conveys such nuance and glimpses into their personality and motivations. i'm genuinely such an impressed by writing and incredible skill, you have such a seamless way with words, painting a really charged, and clear image of these characters and scenarios.

p.s some questions if youre willing to answer !

what got you into writing fan fiction?

do you write your own original stories, or are you more happy and comfortable exploring these fictional worlds as is?

would you say writing is an outlet for you, from life, or drama, or work?

when it comes to dialogue, what do you think is more important - what is said or what isn't and

do you have any particular literary inspirations for dialogue (i.e a film with good dialogue like 'before sunrise' or a novel like 'normal people' or something) or are you more thinking of just real, conversations or straight from shows (like outerbanks, and etc) and watching how they talk rather than trying to emulate any other style?

sorry if this sounds like an interview or if this is a bit much or overwhelming. i've been reading your stuff for like a good year now, and i'm just curious!

adore your work, hope all is well sending hugs n love :)) x

this is literally so sweet <3 made me so happy tysm!! of course i’ll answer ur questions ♡

what got you into writing fan fiction?

well tbh i’ve been writing ‘fanfiction’ since before i knew what it was. i’ve mentioned a few times on this blog but i had this little notebook (that i still have!) where i’d write loads of self insert stories when i was roughly 9-10 years old. i would insert myself into my favourite disney shows with the characters i had a crush on etc. it was my favourite thing to do, id bring my notebook with my everywhere and it could keep me entertained for hours! that’s probably where i got my start.

do you write your own original stories, or are you more happy and comfortable exploring these fictional worlds as is?

on tumblr particularly i’m more comfortable adapting universes that already exist because i enjoy the community i can / have built off relating characterisations with other people on the internet. i can have some sort of semblance of whether or not im doing an okay job based on the feedback. however, i grew up writing for a stage / screen too, which i’ve recently gotten back into and i do deeply enjoy creating a universe from scratch.

would you say writing is an outlet for you? from life, drama or work?

not particularly! moments in my real life have absolutely inspired by writing but i’m not sure i use it as an escape. as someone with autism, routine is really important to me. i write as part of my routine mostly every single day whether i post something or not — and if i don’t write i actually feel pretty thrown off. i also write in other forms, for example i love journalling. i think if anything were to be an outlet it would be that.

when it comes to dialogue, what do you think is more important? what is said or what isn’t?

that’s a really interesting question and honestly i’m not sure! i think it varies from fic to fic. i do think what isn’t said can be very powerful, however i believe in order to grasp what is being conveyed without words the reader would really need to understand the character — and to my understanding not every reader does. not only do i know that based off requests i receive occasionally trying to force characters into boxes i personally think they do not belong — but not everyone is here to understand, period. some readers are casual readers, just here to thirst because they saw a couple of edits they liked (which is great, no problem with that!) in which case i like to make my writing accessible to everyone and i try to make their intention as verbatim as possible.

do you have any particular literary inspirations for dialogue (i.e a film with good dialogue like 'before sunrise' or a novel like 'normal people' or something) or are you more thinking of just real, conversations or straight from shows (like outerbanks, and etc) and watching how they talk rather than trying to emulate any other style?

not any that i can remember! i focus more on trying to make my characters seem like they stepped directly off the show even if it’s based in an au. i want readers to be able to hear the intonation in their voice, understand why they’d stutter when they did, see their facial expression as they say it in their head the same way they would if they were watching outerbanks. however, when i read over my drabbles — i often reimagine them as if they were adapted to a film instead. i would give anything to watch all of my drabbles on a private screen, each of them produced in a sofia coppola style of cinema. that would be really fun and girly and aesthetically pleasing i think.

i hope that answered your questions adequately !! 🩷

[neopronouns-in-action]

Dear Doctor Who Fandom:

First, an image to get your attention.

[ID: Multiple colors and font styles of text on a background of stars, reading, "You don't get to say 'Doctor Who says trans rights' if you misgender the Meep! Now that you know how, do better!". "you don't get to say" is in purple curved text, then "'Doctor Who says" is in skinny, all caps blue. "trans rights'" is in yellow, thin cursive. "if you" is in scifi-blocky blue. "misgender" is in spooky, dripping red, and "the Meep" is in a futuristic style in green. "Now that you know how, do better!" is in light grey. End ID.]

If you are talking about the Meep from the TV show, rather than Beep the Meep from the comic(???), the Meep uses nameself pronouns. Aka, the Meep is referred to as the Meep.

The Meep from the show and Beep the Meep from the comic are clearly two different characters, who use different pronouns and have different names.

The Meep does not use he, she, they, or it pronouns. The Meep's pronouns are "the Meep"!

And if you're confused, don't worry! That's what this blog is for!

The Meep uses a form of nameself pronouns with the in front, so that means:

Instead of saying "he", "him", "she", "her", "they", "them", or "it", you say "the Meep".

Instead of saying "his" "her" "hers" "their" "theirs" or "its", you say "the Meep's".

Instead of saying "himself" "herself" "themself" or "itself", you say "by the Meep's self" or "on the Meep's own" or another variation.

Examples for all the pronouns listed above so you see how they each work differently from eachother:

= = =

he/him/his/himself

"He is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as he gets a fence set up around his yard so the puppy can go outside without him having to walk it. His uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting him use, since he lost his. He's going to buy toys and train the puppy himself.”

= = =

she/her/(hers)/herself

"She is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as she gets a fence set up around her yard so the puppy can go outside without her having to walk it. Her uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting her use, since she lost hers. She's going to buy toys and train the puppy herself."

= = =

they/them/their/(theirs)/themself

"They are going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as they get a fence set up around their yard so the puppy can go outside without them having to walk it. Their uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting them use, since they lost theirs. They're going to buy toys and train the puppy themself.”

= = =

it/its/itself

“It is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as it gets a fence set up around its yard so the puppy can go outside without it having to walk it. Its uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting it use, since it lost its. It's going to buy toys and train the puppy itself.”

= = =

Becomes:

The Meep/The Meep's

"The Meep is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as the Meep gets a fence set up around the Meep's yard so the puppy can go outside without the Meep having to walk it. The Meep's uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting the Meep use, since the Meep lost the Meep's. The Meep going to buy toys and train the puppy on the Meep's own." (Or by the Meep's self).

= = =

I really need you all to understand that this formatting of pronouns is not a thing that only exists in the fictional universe that is Doctor Who. There are a lot of neopronoun users that use this exact format, with different nouns in place of "Meep".

This is a real neopronoun format that real people use. Please be respectful and learn how to use them.

Especially when the character explicitly tells you that these are the pronouns the Meep uses.

[tengritexas]

Alright here we go chat

Im playing an interesting game endorsing a candidate on tumblr but Im going to anyways. You can like it not like I dont care its cool.

This blog is aimed to remain apolitical but in the past few months its become increasingly hard to do so. Im now at the point where I must encourage you to vote.

I will be publicly endorsing Donald J Trump. And while Im certain that upsets most of my followers its important to clarify Id rather be your friend and win a heart than win a mind.

I do this for the sake of perserving a good conscious for myself

My reasons for endorsing Donald J Trump are as follows

-The shift of Taxes to Tarrifs:

Under the Trump administration you will not be taxed on tips or for working overtime. Instead that money will come from Tarrifs placed on China which will double as support for american factories and american jobs.

-The chronic health epidemic:

Robert Kennedy (under the trump administration) aims to stop the chronic health epidemic which I think is crucial not only for American youth but also for global health moving forward

-Defunding of CIA operations

Literally just yesterday multiple agencies raided a man over a rabid squirrel in what almost seems like a twisted comedy sketch.

Keep it plainly there are 2 sides of the CIA, one of which does not like you and wants to keep (what I believe) very important spiritual discoveries from the public eye. These discoveries need to become more publicly available

UNDER TRUMP, the CIA lost considerable funding which I believe has led to both assasination attempts. Trump hires private investment firms our of fear that this previously mention sector of the CIA acts autonously and unconstitutionally. This was briefly mentioned in the NASA UAP hearings of 2023

-Media machines/Smoke and Mirrors

I believe the media machine is a marvel of the elite class that currently rules America. I still have not been presented with a case of how Harris will solve the very real and very critical issues (thats not to say they arent there I merely havent seen them) her campaign has been essentially smoke and mirrors. If she wins it appears to me more so a victory for the media machine (which I have a personal vendetta against) than it being because of her capabilites

-Moral conscious and the Eagle Pass Crisis

I am a Tengrist and believe I should not disturb the natural order of things. Harris as the border czar has disturbed the natural order of Texas autonmy. She has done something which seems to me extremely irresponsible. Threatening to shoot Texas rangers and sending in national guard is something I will take serious. Those are my friends, my brothers, the people I see in class and you will not threaten my neighbors.

- The global stage and forever wars

While I think Trump makes overly ambitious claims that "the ukraine war will end in a month" and "israel will stop fighting in a month". I still think this is comperatively more optomistic than his counterpart. I personally do believe Trump having the only administration in which no war started is remarkable. The track record favors Trump here (though I do not believe he will wave a wand and create peace)

- What I do not see on the ballot

I have not seen any suggestions or signs of Trump wanting to take away any rights that the American people already possess. There seems to be this idea that we will move backwards. He supports LGBTQA+ platforms, He supports many diverse universities. Even recieved endorsements from Trans communities. I have seen people argue that your rights are on the ballot, I have not seen this to be true unless you are of the 1% that owns bump stocks (he did want to ban those but its related to guns)

Its your vote, and I suggest you vote your conscious as well. But I hope youll take these points into consideration.

For the sky, for the ground, for the soul.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Linkty Dumpty

I was supposed to be on vacation, and while I didn’t do any blogging for a month, that didn’t mean that I stopped looking at my distraction rectangle and making a list of things I wanted to write about. Consequentially, the link backlog is massive, so it’s time to declare bankruptcy with another linkdump:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

[Image ID: John Holbo’s ‘trolley problem’ art, a repeating pattern of trolleys, tracks, people on tracks, and people standing at track switches]++

Let’s kick things off with a little graphic whimsy. You’ve doubtless seen the endless Trolley Problem memes, working from the same crude line drawings? Well, philosopher John Holbo got tired of that artwork, and he whomped up a fantastic alternative, which you can get as a poster, duvet, sticker, tee, etc:

https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/145078097

The trolley problem has been with us since 1967, but it’s enjoying a renaissance thanks to the insistence of “AI” weirdos that it is very relevant to our AI debate. A few years back, you could impress uninformed people by dropping the Trolley Problem into a discussion:

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/25/mercedes-weird-trolley-problem-announcement-continues-dumb-debate-about-self-driving-cars/

Amazingly, the “AI” debate has only gotten more tedious since the middle of the past decade. But every now and again, someone gets a stochastic parrot to do something genuinely delightful, like the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, who sell chatbots that will pretend to be tantalyzingly confused marks in order to tie up telemarketers and waste their time:

https://jollyrogertelephone.com/

Jolly Roger sells different personas: “Whitebeard” is a confused senior who keeps asking the caller’s name, drops nonsequiturs into the conversation, and can’t remember how many credit-cards he has. “Salty Sally” is a single mom with a houseful of screaming, demanding children who keep distracting her every time the con artist is on the verge of getting her to give up compromising data. “Whiskey Jack” is drunk:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/people-hire-phone-bots-to-torture-telemarketers-2dbb8457

The bots take a couple minutes to get the sense of the conversation going. During that initial lag, they have a bunch of stock responses like “there’s a bee on my arm, but keep going,” or grunts like “huh,” and “uh-huh.” The bots can keep telemarketers and scammers on the line for quite a long time. Scambaiting is an old and honorable vocation, and it’s good that it has received a massive productivity gain from automation. This is the AI Dividend I dream of.

The less-fun AI debate is the one over artists��� rights and tech. I am foresquare for the artists here, but I think that the preferred solutions (like creating a new copyright over the right to train a model with your work) will not lead to the hoped-for outcome. As with other copyright expansions — 40 years’ worth of them now — this right will be immediately transferred to the highly concentrated media sector, who will simply amend their standard, non-negotiable contracting terms to require that “training rights” be irrevocably assigned to them as a condition of working.

The real solution isn’t to treat artists as atomic individuals — LLCs with an MFA — who bargain, business-to-business, with corporations. Rather, the solutions are in collective power, like unions. You’ve probably heard about the SAG-AFTRA actors’ strike, in which creative workers are bargaining as a group to demand fair treatment in an age of generative models. SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher’s speech announcing the strike made me want to stand up and salute:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4SAPOX7R5M

The actors’ strike is historic: it marks the first time actors have struck since 2000, and it’s the first time actors and writers have co-struck since 1960. Of course, writers in the Writers Guild of America (West and East) have been picketing since since April, and one of their best spokespeople has been Adam Conover, a WGA board member who serves on the negotiating committee. Conover is best known for his stellar Adam Ruins Everything comedy-explainer TV show, which pioneered a technique for breaking down complex forms of corporate fuckery and making you laugh while he does it. Small wonder that he’s been so effective at conveying the strike issues while he pickets.

Writing for Jacobin, Alex N Press profiles Conover and interviews him about the strike, under the excellent headline, “Adam Pickets Everything.” Conover is characteristically funny, smart, and incisive — do read:

https://jacobin.com/2023/07/adam-conover-wga-strike

Of course, not everyone in Hollywood is striking. In late June, the DGA accepted a studio deal with an anemic 41% vote turnout:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/26/23773926/dga-amptp-new-deal-strike

They probably shouldn’t have. In this interview with The American Prospect’s Peter Hong, the brilliant documentary director Amy Ziering breaks down how Netflix and the other streamers have rugged documentarians in a classic enshittification ploy that lured in filmmakers, extracted everything they had, and then discarded the husks:

https://prospect.org/culture/2023-06-21-drowned-in-the-stream/

Now, the streaming cartel stands poised to all but kill off documentary filmmaking. Pressured by Wall Street to drive high returns, they’ve become ultraconservative in their editorial decisions, making programs and films that are as similar as possible to existing successes, that are unchallenging, and that are cheap. We’ve gone directly from a golden age of docs to a dark age.

In a time of monopolies, it’s tempting to form countermonopolies to keep them in check. Yesterday, I wrote about why the FTC and Lina Khan were right to try to block the Microsoft/Activision merger, and I heard from a lot of people saying this merger was the only way to check Sony’s reign of terror over video games:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

But replacing one monopolist with another isn’t good for anyone (except the monopolists’ shareholders). If we want audiences and workers — and society — to benefit, we have to de-monopolize the sector. Last month, I published a series with EFF about how we should save the news from Big Tech:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

After that came out, the EU Observer asked me to write up version of it with direct reference to the EU, where there are a lot of (in my opinion, ill-conceived but well-intentioned) efforts to pry Big Tech’s boot off the news media’s face. I’m really happy with how it came out, and the header graphic is awesome:

https://euobserver.com/opinion/157187

De-monopolizing tech has become my life’s work, both because tech is foundational (tech is how we organize to fight over labor, gender and race equality, and climate justice), and because tech has all of these technical aspects, which open up new avenues for shrinking Big Tech, without waiting decades for traditional antitrust breakups to run their course (we need these too, though!).

I’ve written a book laying out a shovel-ready plan to give tech back to its users through interoperability, explaining how to make new regulations (and reform old ones), what they should say, how to enforce them, and how to detect and stop cheating. It’s called “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation” and it’s coming from Verso Books this September:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

[Image ID: The cover of the Verso Books hardcover of ‘The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation]

I just got my first copy in the mail yesterday, and it’s a gorgeous little package. The timing was great, because I spent the whole week in the studio at Skyboat Media recording the audiobook — the first audiobook of mine that I’ve narrated. It was a fantastic experience, and I’ll be launching a Kickstarter to presell the DRM-free audio and ebooks as well as hardcovers, in a couple weeks.

Though I like doing these crowdfunders, I do them because I have to. Amazon’s Audible division, the monopolist that controls >90% of the audiobook market, refuses to carry my work because it is DRM-free. When you buy a DRM-free audiobook, that means that you can play it on anyone’s app, not just Amazon’s. Every audiobook you’ve ever bought from Audible will disappear the moment you decide to break up with Amazon, which means that Amazon can absolutely screw authors and audiobook publishers because they’ve taken our customers hostage.

If you are unwise enough to pursue an MBA, you will learn a term of art for this kind of market structure: it’s a “moat,” that is, an element of the market that makes it hard for new firms to enter the market and compete with you. Warren Buffett pioneered the use of this term, and now it’s all but mandatory for anyone launching a business or new product to explain where their moat will come from.

As Dan Davies writes, these “moats” aren’t really moats in the Buffett sense. With Coke and Disney, he says, a “moat” was “the fact that nobody else could make such a great product that everyone wanted.” In other words, “making a good product,” is a great moat:

https://backofmind.substack.com/p/stuck-in-the-moat

But making a good product is a lot of work and not everyone is capable of it. Instead, “moat” now just means some form of lock in. Davies counsels us to replace “moat” with:

our subscription system and proprietary interface mean that our return on capital is protected by a strong Berlin Wall, preventing our customers from getting out to a freer society and forcing them to consume our inferior products for lack of alternative.

I really like this. It pairs well with my 2020 observation that the fight over whether “IP” is a meaningful term can be settled by recognizing that IP has a precise meaning in business: “Any policy that lets me reach beyond the walls of my firm to control the conduct of my competitors, critics and customers”:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

To see how that works in the real world, check out “The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy,” a magisterial piece of scholarship from Sarah Lamdan, Jason M. Schultz, Michael Weinberg and Claire Woodcock:

https://www.nyuengelberg.org/outputs/the-anti-ownership-ebook-economy/

Something happened when we shifted to digital formats that created a loss of rights for readers. Pulling back the curtain on the evolution of ebooks offers some clarity to how the shift to digital left ownership behind in the analog world.

The research methodology combines both anonymous and named sources in publishing, bookselling and librarianship, as well as expert legal and economic analysis. This is an eminently readable, extremely smart, and really useful contribution to the scholarship on how “IP” (in the modern sense) has transformed books from something you own to something that you can never own.

The truth is, capitalists hate capitalism. Inevitably, the kind of person who presides over a giant corporation and wields power over millions of lives — workers, suppliers and customers — believes themselves to be uniquely and supremely qualified to be a wise dictator. For this kind of person, competition is “wasteful” and distracts them from the important business of making everyone’s life better by handing down unilateral — but wise and clever — edits. Think of Peter Thiel’s maxim, “competition is for losers.”

That’s why giant companies love to merge with each other, and buy out nascent competitors. By rolling up the power to decide how you and I and everyone else live our lives, these executives ensure that they can help us little people live the best lives possible. The traditional role of antitrust enforcement is to prevent this from happening, countering the delusions of would-be life-tenured autocrats of trade with public accountability and enforcement:

https://marker.medium.com/we-should-not-endure-a-king-dfef34628153

Of course, for 40 years, we’ve had neoliberal, Reaganomics-poisoned antitrust, where monopolies are celebrated as “efficient” and their leaders exalted as geniuses whose commercial empires are evidence of merit, not savagery. That era is, thankfully, coming to an end, and not a moment too soon.

Leading the fight is the aforementioned FTC chair Lina Khan, who is taking huge swings at even bigger mergers. But the EU is no slouch in this department: they’re challenging the Adobe/Figma merger, a $20b transaction that is obviously and solely designed to recapture customers who left Adobe because they didn’t want to struggle under its yoke any longer:

https://gizmodo.com/adobe-figma-acquisition-likely-to-face-eu-investigation-1850555562

For autocrats of trade, this is an intolerable act of disloyalty. We owe them our fealty and subservience, because they are self-evidently better at understanding what we need than we could ever be. This unwarranted self-confidence from the ordinary mediocrities who end up running giant tech companies gets them into a whole lot of hot water.

One keen observer of the mind-palaces that tech leaders trap themselves in is Anil Dash, who describes the conspiratorial, far-right turn of the most powerful men (almost all men!) in Silicon Valley in a piece called “‘VC Qanon’ and the radicalization of the tech tycoons”:

https://www.anildash.com/2023/07/07/vc-qanon/

Dash builds on an editorial he published in Feb, “The tech tycoon martyrdom charade,” which explores the sense of victimhood the most powerful, wealthiest people in the Valley project:

https://www.anildash.com/2023/02/27/tycoon-martyrdom-charade/

These dudes are prisoners of their Great Man myth, and leads them badly astray. And while all of us are prone to lapses in judgment and discernment, Dash makes the case that tech leaders are especially prone to it:

Nobody becomes a billionaire by accident. You have to have wanted that level of power, control and wealth more than you wanted anything else in your life. They all sacrifice family, relationships, stability, community, connection, and belonging in service of keeping score on a scale that actually yields no additional real-world benefits on the path from that first $100 million to the tens of billions.

This makes billionaires “a cohort that is, counterintutively, very easily manipulated.” What’s more, they’re all master manipulators, and they all hang out with each other, which means that when a conspiratorial belief takes root in one billionaire’s brain, it spreads to the rest of them like wildfire.

Then, billionaires “push each other further and further into extreme ideas because their entire careers have been predicated on the idea that they’re genius outliers who can see things others can’t, and that their wealth is a reward for that imagined merit.”

They live in privileged bubbles, which insulates them from disconfirming evidence — ironic, given how many of these bros think they are wise senators in the agora.

There are examples of billionaires’ folly all around us today, of course. Take privacy: the idea that we can — we should — we must — spy on everyone, all the time, in every way, to eke out tiny gains in ad performance is objectively batshit. And yet, wealthy people decreed this should be so, and it was, and made them far richer.

Leaked data from Microsoft’s Xandr ad-targeting database reveals how the commercial surveillance delusion led us to a bizarre and terrible place, as reported on by The Markup:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/08/from-heavy-purchasers-of-pregnancy-tests-to-the-depression-prone-we-found-650000-ways-advertisers-label-you

The Markup’s report lets you plumb 650,000 targeting categories, searching by keyword or loading random sets, 20 at a time. Do you want to target gambling addicts, people taking depression meds or Jews? Xandr’s got you covered. What could possibly go wrong?

The Xandr files come from German security researcher Wolfie Christl from Cracked Labs. Christi is a European, and he’s working with the German digital rights group Netzpolitik to get the EU to scrutinize all the ways that Xandr is flouting EU privacy laws.

Billionaires’ big ideas lead us astray in more tangible ways, of course. Writing in The Conversation, John Quiggin asks us to take a hard look at the much ballyhooed (and expensively ballyhooed) “nuclear renaissance”:

https://theconversation.com/dutton-wants-australia-to-join-the-nuclear-renaissance-but-this-dream-has-failed-before-209584

Despite the rhetoric, nukes aren’t cheap, and they aren’t coming back. Georgia’s new nuclear power is behind schedule and over budget, but it’s still better off than South Carolina’s nukes, which were so over budget that they were abandoned in 2017. France’s nuke is a decade behind schedule. Finland’s opened this year — 14 years late. The UK’s Hinkley Point C reactor is massively behind schedule and over budget (and when it’s done, it will be owned by the French government!).

China’s nuclear success story also doesn’t hold up to scrutiny — they’ve brought 50GW of nukes online, sure, but they’re building 95–120GW of solar every year.

Solar is the clear winner here, along with other renewables, which are plummeting in cost (while nukes soar) and are accelerating in deployments (while nukes are plagued with ever-worsening delays).

This is the second nuclear renaissance — the last one, 20 years ago, was a bust, and that was before renewables got cheap, reliable and easy to manufacture and deploy. You’ll hear fairy-tales about how the early 2000s bust was caused by political headwinds, but that’s simply untrue: there were almost no anti-nuke marches then, and governments were scrambling to figure out low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels (this was before the latest round of fossil fuel sabotage).

The current renaissance is also doomed. Yes, new reactors are smaller and safer and won’t have the problems intrinsic to all megaprojects, but designs like VOYGR have virtually no signed deals. Even if they do get built, their capacity will be dwarfed by renewables — a Gen III nuke will generate 710MW of power. Globally, we add that much solar every single day.

And solar power is cheap. Even after US subsidies, a Gen III reactor would charge A$132/MWh — current prices are as low as A$64-$114/MWh.

Nukes are getting a charm offensive because wealthy people are investing in hype as a way of reaping profits — not as a way of generating safe, cheap, reliable energy.

Here in the latest stage of capitalism, value and profit are fully decoupled. Monopolists are shifting more and more value from suppliers and customers to their shareholders every day. And when the customer is the government, the depravity knows no bounds. In Responsible Statecraft, Connor Echols describes how military contractors like Boeing are able to bill the Pentagon $52,000 for a trash can:

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/06/20/the-pentagons-52000-trash-can/

Military Beltway Bandits are nothing new, of course, but they’ve gotten far more virulent since the Obama era, when Obama’s DoD demanded that the primary contractors merge to a bare handful of giant firms, in the name of “efficiency.” As David Dayen writes in his must-read 2020 book Monopolized, this opened the door to a new kind of predator:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

The Obama defense rollups were quickly followed by another wave of rollups, these ones driven by Private Equity firms who cataloged which subcontractors were “sole suppliers” of components used by the big guys. These companies were all acquired by PE funds, who then lowered the price of their products, selling them below cost.

This maximized the use of those parts in weapons and aircraft sold by primary contractors like Boeing, which created a durable, long-lasting demand for fresh parts for DoD maintenance of its materiel. PE-owned suppliers hits Uncle Sucker with multi-thousand-percent markups for these parts, which have now wormed their way into every corner of the US arsenal.

Yes, this is infuriating as hell, but it’s also so grotesquely wrong that it’s impossible to defend, as we see in this hilarious clip of Rep Katie Porter grilling witnesses on US military waste:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJhf6l1nB9A

Porter pulls out the best version yet of her infamous white-board and makes her witnesses play defense ripoff Jepoardy!, providing answers to a series of indefensible practices.

It’s sure nice when our government does something for us, isn’t it? We absolutely can have nice things, and we’re about to get them. The Infrastructure Bill contains $42B in subsidies for fiber rollouts across the country, which will be given to states to spend. Ars Technica’s Jon Brodkin breaks down the state-by-state spending:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/us-allocates-42b-in-broadband-funding-find-out-how-much-your-state-will-get/

Texas will get $3.31B, California will get $1.86B, and 17 other states will get $1B or more. As the White House announcement put it, “High-speed Internet is no longer a luxury.”

To understand how radical this is, you need to know that for decades, the cable and telco sector has grabbed billions in subsidies for rural and underserved communities, and then either stole the money outright, or wasted it building copper networks that run at a fraction of a percent of fiber speeds.

This is how America — the birthplace of the internet — ended up with some of the world’s slowest, most expensive broadband, even after handing out tens of billions of dollars in subsidies. Those subsidies were gobbled up by greedy, awful phone companies — these ones must be spent wisely, on long-lasting, long-overdue fiber infrastructure.

That’s a good note to end on, but I’ve got an even better one: birds in the Netherlands are tearing apart anti-bird strips and using them to build their nests. Wonderful creatures 1, hostile architecture, 0. Nature is healing:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/11/crows-and-magpies-show-their-metal-by-using-anti-bird-spikes-to-build-nests

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/15/in-the-dumps/#what-vacation

Next Tues, Jul 18, I'm hosting the first Clarion Summer Write-In Series, an hour-long, free drop-in group writing and discussion session. It's in support of the Clarion SF/F writing workshop's fundraiser to offer tuition support to students:

https://mailchi.mp/theclarionfoundation/clarion-write-ins

[Image iD: A dump-truck, dumping out a load of gravel. A caricature of Humpty Dumpty clings to its lip, restrained by a group of straining, Lilliputian men.]

[sorrowlikefalling]

introduction post!

. ݁ ⛧ ₊ ⊹ 🦇. ݁ ˖ ♱ . ݁ i never told you what i do for a living . . .

⋆｡‧₊°♱༺𓆩❦︎𓆪༻♱༉‧₊˚. my name is layela! pronounced like layla, the standard!

im 15! (with a late birthday ˆ𐃷ˆ) so dont be weird.

my sexuality is unlabeled, so id rather no one ask about it. ive been unlabeled for about 2 or 3 years!

im bipoc, so if thats any issue, please DNI!

im vegetarian!

i follow back, so im completely fine with mutuals! sorry if i take a while i normally dont notice followers :(

DNI: basic dni criteria, genuine rpf shippers, waycest shippers, etc.

. ݁ ⛧ ₊ ⊹ 🕯. ݁ ˖ ♱ . ݁ likes: fob, mcr, ptv, patd, bmth, swpb, alesana, taking back sunday, sws, underoath, d.r.u.g.s, the used, blink 182, etc., emo/scene subcultures and aesthetics, the punk movement, dead poets society, 500 days of summer, basketball diaries, the notebook, etc!

dislikes: racists, facists, anyone who fits the basic dni criteria, meat/animal products, danger days slander, anyone who genuinely enjoys colleen hoover books, music elitists, people who hate on bmth's progression and say they miss when they were "real metal".

⋆｡‧₊°♱༺𓆩❦︎𓆪༻♱༉‧₊˚. vampires will never hurt you . . .

. ݁ ⛧ ₊ ⊹ 🥀. ݁ ˖ ♱ . ݁ music genres i like: metal, punk, post-hardcore, pop punk, indie rock, blackgaze, melodic death metal, progressive rock, shoegaze, black metal, soft rock, hardcore rock, metalcore, screamo, crunkcore, etc.

my favorite albums: from under the cork tree, wires and the concept of breathing, nightmare anatomy, three cheers for sweet revenge, with ears to see and eyes to hear, fast times at barrington high, dying is your latest fashion, selfish machines, take this to your grave, lies for liars, discovering the waterfront, theyre only chasing safety, flyleaf, white lies, riot!, let it enfold you, reach, the bends, surfer rosa, she hangs brightly, either/or, grace, ask me tomorrow, louder than bombs, were not here to be loved, ours is chrome, mellon collie and the infinite sadness, loveless, despondent transponder, sonic nurse, down colorful hill, never fail to disappoint, damaged, sick 'em, these monsters are teal, give me convenience or give me death, in utero, bleach, etc.

what this blog will contain: jokes about bandom, bandom lore, meme posts, and sometimes serious posts on different things.

⋆｡‧₊°♱༺𓆩❦︎𓆪༻♱༉‧₊˚. my way home is through you . . .

·:*¨༺ ♱✮♱༻¨*:·

[theswiftheartsystem]

(New!) The Swift Heart System Introduction💙

cw: syscourse, and general discourse.

Basic Information:

Collective Name: Refer to us as Swift Heart if not sure!

Collective Pronouns: They/Them, or Ask!

Collective Gender: Pangender, GenderFluid, and genders along that spectrum are all okay with us 👍

We are white, afab and American, keep in mind our perspective is based around our personal experience, and what we have learned about.

Alter Count at the moment: Around 400, but we are aware it’s more, we don’t really care much about alter count all things considered lol.

Host: As of now, none! Even when we have one it isn’t very long!

Origin: Traumagenic

Disorders that we have: DID (what this blog is mainly about), BPD, Autism, C-PTSD, GAD, and possibly OCD (although we would lie to discuss it with a therapist/psychiatrist beforehand for personal comfort!)

Extra: We are Pro-Endo!!!! Although we cannot stop you from interacting if you are anti-endo, We kindly request you please just block us and move on if you have a problem with that.

About Us:

Why are we pro-endo?: When we were first discovering our system we were desperate to be “real enough” and accepted. Although the first system we discussed plurality with was pro-endo, they left the internet shortly after we opened up, and this lead us to being around sysmeds. To prove ourselves we purposely forced ourselves to remember trauma which put us in a worse position mentally. It took a long time, but through working to accept ourselves, we realized how bigoted we were being, which lead us to question a lot of things, such as our beliefs on endogenic plurality. Although we have gone a long way, some of our alters do not agree with us because it got so drilled into our mind that “endogenic systems are somehow just traumagenic and don’t remember” (which is a incredibly misinformed and harmful.)

What do we plan to talk about on this blog?: Really whatever we feel like! We may talk about Syscourse, plural positivity, advice from personal experience, our trauma, special interests and hyperfixations, ect. If we want to talk about it we probably will. (Although we always try to put the proper trigger and content warnings, and if we miss one by accident please tell us so we can add it as soon as possible!)

How to contact us/ask us a question: DMs are normally open unless a situation is happening! Along with that, feel free to use the ask me anything button, comment section on posts, or reblogs!

Mistakes on post: If we make a mistake, please inform us! We are always open to editing post (and do quite a bit), and we aren’t perfect, and especially if we say something bigoted, please correct us we are always open to learning about these topics, and acknowledge that we are privileged in certain ways. We would rather delete a long post we worked hard on if it is harmful then keep it up and go “wellll- it doesn’t affect me personally”

What are we “Pro” on:

We are obviously pro-endo!

We are pro self help. Although we think therapy is beneficial in many ways, not everyone can get a good therapist, wether that’s for financial reasons, none near you, or ableism, racism, sexism, ect in the medical/mental health field. Also it can benefit everyone to learn new coping mechanisms! (Please see a doctor if you are ill! You can only help yourself so much! We do not condone refusing to see doctors when you need to!!!

We are pro self diagnosing! (Just please do proper research before so, and even if it turns out you where wrong, you aren’t faking unless you actively attempt to fake.)

We are pro neopronouns and xenogenders!

People with villainized disabilities and/or mental disorders!

What are we “anti” on:

The trans-Id community. We don’t talk about this on this blog due to a lot of these people in this community being children, although we think what they are doing is dangerous and harmful, We would rather not direct harassment towards children. That being said, please do not harass anyone. (Also wanting to add, we are not anti-BIID, BIID is a completely separate thing.)

Bigotry.

”Narcissistic/Borderline/ect abuse” People with personality disorders can be abusive like anyone else can, but the idea of “[PD] abuse” is just to villainies those with Personality Disorders. This stops making sense when you change the disorder. (Example: “Post-Traumatic abuse” this sounds over the top, but we have legitimately seen someone say this.)

Ending:

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day, and remember you are doing great.

[aromantic-diaries]

Alright J. So we’ve established that your followers are real, which is great. But what about you? Are you real, J? Are you?

Sometimes when I'm not doing anything that requires much of my attention I entertain myself with some really basic and easy philosophy and in one such case I contemplated how much of my personality is genuine and how much of it is a facade. The conclusion I came to was that how you act is a reflection of the people who surround you and what they see of you is what you are in their world.

To you I am J of aromantic-diaries, a faceless thought wearing the mask of a character who is a figment of my own imagination. That is your reality. A lot of the time I'm hidden away from everyone else, not a word to say, no one to see what I do. In those moments I'm almost non-existent to anyone who isn't thinking of me. In their reality I am once again, a thought

And my reality? It's hidden away. Sometimes I let someone get a glimpse into it. I show them a book I'm reading. A song I love. Something I drew. This blog itself is a glimpse into my reality, though rather vague. I show very little to most people. I keep a small space in my own reality just for myself where nobody can see me. Everything in my inner world that I never bring outside is only real to me and doesn't exist to anyone else

Perhaps this is why I have no real name of my own. You know me as J. Others got to know me as the word on my ID, one that my mother picked out for me. Some knew me as David for a short while. Some days I'm Billy. In my head I have no name

Decide for yourself. Is J real?

[ticklishfiend]

um long irl tickle story because i’m tweaking out rn 😀

so i’ve got this friend who is also not Just A Friend and it’s complicated LMFAO anyways, we’ve done kink play stuff before so we know everything each other is into. obviously this means they know i’m real big into tickling fjskjf (which no, is not purely sexual for me lol. neither of us are very sexual people, kink isn’t always abt sex and i think more people in this community need that to register in their brains LOL)

ANYWAYYS so i dont think they know Just how into it i am, like they dont even know abt this blog but im slowly working up the courage to tell them abt it bc i know they wouldnt be weirded out (im just shy LOL). so bc they dont rlly know how big of a thing this is for me, they’ve never Really tickled me before.

now, i’ve tickled them. plenty actually lol. it’s super fun and i love tickling them sosososo much bc they’re reactions are so cute and they’re really good at holding still lol. but anytime they’ve tickled me, it’s mainly just like a poke here or a squeeze there, nothing for real yknow.

which is like. it’s fine. but every time they do it i get skyrocketed into the biggest lee mood for like days on end and usually i get too embarrassed to tell them dhsjndjsg

but the other day i actually decided to tell them how much it affected me. we had both spent the night at a friends house, and at every sleepover when its time for bed, our other friend goes to her room and then its just the two of us alone in the living room. we were high the other night and cuddling, and they kept teasing me by making claw hands and wiggling their fingers at me (i’ve told them before it flusters me So Bad when they do it and now they’re just relentless with it 😭😭), they poked me a few times like usual but also kept quickly skittering their fingers on my foot which they’ve never done before and dhsjjdjdf i was too high i was losing my mind

so that was it, but the next day when i got home i texted them telling them they were so evil for that bc now im feeling crazy. they found that hilarious and teased me abt it for a minute 😭 so i thought that was the end of it bc they rarely tease me too much (im mainly the dom in our relationship so i can understand why lol)

but then. but then.

my friend group went hiking all day today, so when we got back to my friends house we were pretty beat. me and my friend were cuddling on the couch watching tv, but they just kept. poking. me. i felt crazy LMFAO

so ofc bc im me, i was tickling back! i’m more deliberate with my tickles, so i kept squeezing their side and poking places i know they’re ticklish at. they ofc kept making wiggly hands at me, but atp im like so lee and it’s not enough 😭

so. i called them a coward! (teasingly, ofc). i didn’t get specific cause our other friends were right there and id rather they not know abt it LMAO but this main friend knew what i was talking about. they were playing all offended, trying to defend themselves, but they kept not actually tickling me so ofc i kept calling them a coward hehehe

so later tonight once we were at our own houses, we text each other almost immediately. ofc because i was feeling super lee after all that i told them i was (playfully) mad at them for teasing me earlier

they started defending themself again saying they aren’t a coward, so i texted back with “always threatening but never actually does anything about it 🥱 coward behavior to me”

they texted back with “when i come over tmrrw its over. im gonna get you”

😨 WHAAAATRTSJS

AAAAHHHHHH

i was. freaking out LMFAOOO

they kept teasing me back and forth about it and i am STILL losing my mind and that was hours ago 😭😭

we’re hanging out tmrrw night and yall. yall idk if i can HANDLE ITFNFKD we’re spending the night like we always do so once we’re alone and ALSO HIGH AGAIN………bitch i can’t my stomach just turned a flip thinking about it omfg

anyways yeah sorry i know this was long but this little back and forth on “will they ever actually tickle me” has been going on for almost a YEAR now so im justifiably freaking out abt it LMFAOO

i’m also taking my driving test for my license tmrrw before we hang out so let’s hope i don’t start thinking abt tickles and crash the car 👍

[sickknotdoom]

I've seen you pop up in the #sparkletag quite a bit recently, and as both a Patron and as a friend of Kneeby, I think I've had enough of your antics.

It's really depressing to see someone dedicate their entire online presence towards hating someone. It's extremely creepy and weird to obsess over every single thing kit does like this. I urge you to go find a better hobby, and I mean it. This kind of parasocial behavior is toxic and only serves to hurt everyone including yourself. Take a break from this and use that time to reflect on yourself and what you really want. Do you want to dedicate all of your time constantly rambling and raving about everything kit does online? Does that sound like a productive use of your time? I don't think it is.

all my posts boil down to "the pacing and prioritization of this comic could use a lot of improvement + i find it weird that the creator isnt raising awareness to a literal genocide going on rn" and you react by writing an angry essay. your ask seems to boil down to "you cant criticize my favorite comic because it might hurt the creators feelings" so im gonna respond with an angrier essay

there are good things about sparklecare, obviously. i resonate with it in some regards. but that doesnt mean its perfect, as nothing is. i dont even tag my shit under the main sparklecare tags (apart from the stuff about kneeby not raising awareness towards palestine) because i know people like you are gonna get upset if you see a conflicting opinion on your dash. the only tags i tend to use are #sparklecriticism and #sparklecare criticism, none of the main tags. block those tags if you dont wanna deal with me.

my criticism is valid (i think) since yeah. the comics writing has a huge problem when it comes to letting things happen naturally instead of rushing them, which results in kneeby having to explain things on the blog (which 99% of the time you have to scroll deep into since the main blog is constantly reblogging the cometcare one) rather than having the comic clarify it on its own. thats a genuine issue in storytelling so i feel like it should be addressed and worked on.

i have way more of a presence online than this blog, obviously. i just dont want this blog connected to my real identity for a wide variety of reasons (mainly not wanting to be harassed even further than i already am)

if youre a friend of kneeby then i think you should tell kit to actually DO SOMETHING to raise awareness to the genocide going on in palestine and other targets, PUBLICLY. not just an announcement in a private discord, a public statement, or AT LEAST reblog the fanart of uni waving the palestinian flag. all the social commentary ive seen (yes im still taking the social commentary into account since the comic was described as such until my blog popped up) has come across as performative to anyone besides the clowns themselves, id love to see kneeby talk about issues that dont just apply to kit.

i know damn well the sparklecare blog is kits biggest platform, kit should use it to raise awareness, i dont care if the topic makes kit sad, it makes me sad too, but i still retweet as much shit about it as possible whenever it crosses my mind because i actually care about issues that dont involve just me and i actually want to do something to change the world. im a teenager and i do more to raise awareness than a group of adults.

im just a kid with opinions

[goddessxeffect]

hi how are you? so i have been detaching and reminding myself that i am not the ego. feelings or unwanted thoughts would come up and id remember it doesn’t affect me at all bc they aren’t mine. recently, something had happened and i said to myself that this was all just a dream and doesn’t matter but i guess it like sent my ego into panic? idk. i kinda just spiraled and i do know it was the ego that was feeling this but it was like it didn’t want to accept all of this as unreal. all of the egos attachments to people and “memories” and it was sent into shock or something from it suddenly realizing that everything isn’t real. im sorry if this is stupid and doesn’t make sense but whenever i remind myself of who i am, the ego is reminded of that moment and feels hurt because it doesn’t know how to react to everything being just an illusion. i actually have no idea anymore but when this happens should i just dismiss it as not mine. as i read over this, it all sounds silly and i literally understand that all of this is the ego but it still bothers me for no reason and it’s so frustrating

Why do I feel like you see detaching as a practise, a way to become "Self" rather than knowing you are already? Knowing is not a technique, you know Self when you really understand you are not her. Not intellectualizing it and using the mind for realization, the very "thing" you have to let go of. Read (my) posts or scroll through my blog until you understand that you are not her. Genuinely know.

Well, as you concluded yourself, as of right now your "I" is "Vanessa" (or whatever you call your Ego) and not Self, in that case "and i said to myself that this was all just a dream and doesn’t matter but i guess it like sent my ego into panic" you are trying to make yourSelf believe you are not real, no wonder you (Ego) panicked. Let me explain.

You see, your "I" = Self but identified as Ego so "I" = "Vanessa" and since you are not identified as Self you genuinely don't know that Vanessa is not you and you are trying to get to that point trough her (detaching, illusion and so on) but she IS real because you are identified with her. Self or "I am" is the only thing which is never questioned since it is the absolute reality.

Well for Vanessa "it was like it didn’t want to accept all of this as unreal. all of the egos attachments to people and “memories” and it was sent into shock or something from it suddenly realizing that everything isn’t real" everything is real, she is made up of those "things". You are giving her reality by choosing her as your identitiy, it really shouldn't come as a surprise. "It doesn’t know how to react to everything being just an illusion" Yes, let her be. She'll never understand this, stop convincing her and focus on you (I AM/ Self).