#because the internet is WEIRD GUYS

[bookwormbynight]

Having a following on the internet is probably one of the strangest things - if not the strangest thing - I've ever had to adjust to. My Tumblr account was a blank slate that hadn't followed a single person or liked a single post until July of this year. I posted bad fanfiction that got fifty views and five kudos since I was twelve that nobody noticed or cared when I orphaned or deleted. I was a fly on the wall for the vast majority of my life.

I wouldn't say I'm famous now, but I'm aware I have eyes on me. I have 70 followers, I get regular feedback on thoughts I used to text to my four irl friends who would have rolled their eyes and moved on, I get people asking my opinion on things or using my platform to share theirs because that's a legitimate avenue now, I get dms I'd never gotten before in my life, people asking me for things, I have people scrutinizing my actions and my moral character (I, a stranger on the internet), I have people recognizing my old comments from years ago and getting excited now, and I have people telling me that I caused in them the exact reactions I used to have that made me want to do this in the first place.

This isn't a complaint or a brag or a "I'm leaving" post, to be clear. I just think it's nuts. Do you guys have any idea how much this experienced has changed me, the habits I have, the way I view myself? This is my hobby.

My ego has swollen and my anxiety has heightened and I have to teach myself how to be a person in an entirely new plane of existence, and god, that is weird.

And I'm sure many of you can relate to that! I'm not special! Pretty much all of the people I regularly interact with also post content, oftentimes getting reactions far larger than mine, and it's almost like friends but also not because I don't know you and you don't know me and if I fuck up you don't know if that's a part of who I am or a mistake I made, because I haven't done, maybe can't do, anything to give you a foundation of trust in the public square. We're a community of strangers on display for everyone to see.

Is this something possible to explain to someone who has never experienced it? Would I have understood before I knew? It doesn't matter. I would have done it anyway.

Tumblr life aside, I started writing because I wanted to be able to replicate the emotions that stories gave me. When I became obsessed, or cried, or jumped up and down, or threw my phone at the wall all because of something that does not actually exist - isn't that just incredible? Those memories of mine? Those feelings? Imagine being able to pass it on, to give that gift to someone else, I've done that.

Twelve year old me would have died if she saw where she would be in six years.

Thank you so much, sincerely, to everyone who's let me know they enjoyed one of my fics. Go write your own, write another one. Give me those feelings, accomplish that. And I'm sending love.

[contagious-watermelon]

Why do I keep seeing transmascs and trans men insisting or implying that all trans men are "female socialized," or "understand the female experience," or "navigated the world as a woman." Because yeah, sure, that can be true for some people. especially if you weren't gnc at all as a kid and didn't crack your egg until well into adulthood, it makes sense.

But they don't stop at saying they had that experience. It always comes with an addendum that trans men, as a group, all can relate to this experience. I don't know about the entirety of my demographic, but I never got even a little bit of what some of them talk about. I didn't even believe that women were scared of going out at night until I kept consistently seeing them say it, online or wherever, for years. I never realized catcalling was a thing until I saw some women complaining about it on reddit.

But they posit it as some sort of, you're safer than cis men, right? You know what it's like? Which, on top of being patently, demonstrably false in the case of myself and many other trans men, holds some unpleasant and often outright hostile implications about trans women. And they always deny it, but if you can't even conceptualize someone like me who grew up gnc, and never got the bulk (or any?) of whatever we consider to be 'female socialization,' what does that say about what you think trans girls went through, growing up? I don't want to speak for them, as I've never experienced that firsthand, but I can guarantee that (if you're even a little bit obviously trans) people don't treat you like a cis kid of the opposite gender. By and large, they don't get treated like cis boys.

It just makes me mad that we're taking this inaccurate framework that (ever so conveniently) puts trans people into the box of our assumed birth gender, and trying to fancy it up and use it with a faux-progressive veneer; never mind the way that transphobes use it to bar trans women from being athletes, or using the bathroom, or having access to any gendered resources they need. It would be bad enough to try and dust it off and use it even if it were largely accurate, due to the aforementioned connections to outright transphobia, but it literally is patently false. Not in all cases, obviously, but why are we trying to revamp this untrue, inaccurate generalization and pretend that we can make it 'trans-inclusive?'

[xoxo-ren-xoxo]

'omg mumbo is kinda buff and athletic in real life?? but he's such a nerd!' i hate to say it but this is just a description of every professional cinematographer ever

[cent-scratchnsniff]

Please don't hurt yourself

[trainwreckgenerator]

hey do you guys remember razias shadow? cause i just did

[iscariotapologist]

today the little old church ladies told me i looked "studious" and that "you're wearing brown like st francis" and thought i was 20 years old. flattering since during the sermon i was observing the amount of grey hair i have now

[wis-art]

Women, so pretty, so shaped, i am so lesbian,,,

[satosktty]

satoru would be a physics major ( by choice even as a nepo baby ) that's talented in fashion and art studies because everything exists in a context—when sukuna ( a current fashion major ) meets satoru he's taken a back on how satoru seems to come up with ideas far better more beautiful than most of his classmates and himself could ever come up with, things that are on the level of the greats he likes.

but as he sticks around satoru he realizes that satoru's idea are so authentic because he doesn't think about fashion being about fashion. satoru takes fashion and the arts as things that always connect to life and because satoru has lived his life sneaking away from his family to enjoy things, he goes to places that are grimey with the worst people imaginable and come out with an even greater insight on life and persepctive. therefore, he can understand art better than someone in art college that is simply copying basquiat.

for example in black swan; nina couldn't play the roll of the black swan even though she had been obsessed with ballerina for years because the story isn't about ballet. it's about romance, and Nina's never experienced that.

satoru remains completely unaware of his gift and just sends sukuna more and more of the designs he came up with.

tldr: autistic manic pixie outdoes fashion major future boyfriend

[dallasdrevis]

genuinely shocked on how this fandom is this god damn small and yet we still have pointless drama I stumble on once in a blue moon.

[pastafossa]

Me, to friend: don't you hate it when you have those days where your heart is just mad and it beats REALLY hard at random moments, even when you're just sitting there, like not FAST but really hard and it is VERY UNCOMFORTABLE for no reason? Friend: you know that's not normal right??? Me: you mean that doesn't happen to you? Friend: NO, IT DOES NOT. Me: ...please hold. *five minutes later* Me: so I talked to my mother and this might in fact be a highly hereditary genetic issue that both her and my grandma and my great grandma all had, who knew??? Anyway I need to see a doctor and I might need heart medication. Friend: YA THINK?

[reueslee]

I think the deeper I get into the academic side of history the more difficult it becomes for me to return to online spaces for it. I get whiplash every goddamn time.

[secondbestafterthatmeteorstrike]

Santa outfit went down a treat

[comvi]

gurh. i dont think ill ever truly get over how nice everyone here is. im so used to people ignoring the things i enjoy and not wanting to hear me speak at all but everyone ive ever talked to here has always been so friendly. im really happy

[lorephobic]

it sucks how much queer sex/expression in art gets sensationalized by the general public to the point of making the actors themselves uncomfortable when all they did was portray queerness, like as a queer person observing it happen in real time it always feels so othering when people can't just be normal about it

oh my god yeah. i’ve been thinking about it all day and obviously it's all speculation as to whether or not that's the reason barry's kind of distancing himself from saltburn, but the way people have been acting about jacob and barry after this movie is fucking crazy.

it's so annoying that straight characters get to just be characters who live and die inside of the story that they were created for. but for some reason, portraying a queer character is regarded as a sort of admission of the actor.

i think you're so right in talking about the sensationalism of queerness and i think it largely comes from the belief that queerness is something to be hidden and unveiled when the time is right. which means that any peak into a person's relationship with queer identity (in this case, barry playing a queer man and then extending this act to the pr surrounding the movie) opens them up to a line of questioning that they very well might not want to talk about. it's none of our business whether or not they're dating, and frankly it's delusional to assume that they MUST have a something romantic or sexual going on just because of the way their characters acted in saltburn.

the inability to draw lines between what's real and fiction and the pushing assumption that queerness is owed to us by people who play queer characters is so concerning. actors act. it is their job. not allowing them work-life separation is immature at best and harmful when taken to this extreme.

[phaedo]

you know what i just realized like it is kind of fucked up that when we learned that the tardis would be wheelchair-accessible this season most people assumed that meant a disabled companion. like it's a logical assumption to make but isn't it wild that the normal state of affairs is for the set to be completely inaccessible. isn't it wild that the show up to this point has created a norm of not only few disabled characters but also a tardis space that literally bars many disabled actors from the show to the point where an accessible space was an obvious sign that there would be disabled characters. huh!

[endlessfuckup]

saw your post about no longer wanting to be a phan blog and i just wanted to say i get you especially the reaction to this tour has been very uncomfortable and i could never figure out exactly why it felt... overbearing ig??? but it has been building and the tour leak and announcement just seemed to put a spotlight on people seem to have learned nothing from the previous years and seem to think that now that they're back it's okay to push their boundaries because they're engaging with us again. and tbh i appreciate you for helping put into words the discomfort ive been feeling and it sucks that it turned out like this that the enjoyment of the thing gets harder because of others

I was so so hoping it wouldn't get like this again

The first 5-6 months of the gaming channel being back were mostly wonderful

Everyone was behaving and respectfully enjoying dnp being back as a duo

I've seen/felt it building up over the past few months but I kept ignoring it because I figured it was just newer phans who didn't know about any of "the lore"

But every time I'd check their page out it would almost always be someone in their mid-late 20s who has been around for 10+ years

I was dumbfounded

I genuinely cannot believe people still treat Dan and Phil like tv characters who exist purely for entertaining the masses

Its really sad