#but the vast amount of reblogs... i genuinely don't think are from their followers. i think it's virtue signalling to be frank

[starlit-mansion]

the main reasons i dislike and almost never reblog posts screaming at artists to draw fat characters is 1) i really don't think it does any work to fix the problem to call people cowards, it just gives you a brief high of saying something mildly justified but cruel to a general group of people on the internet and 2) while i'm not saying i catalogue each reblog that's just screaming at artists and meticulously compare the art that the person who reblogged it puts love on in their personal blogging, i do notice when people talk the talk but never walk the walk, and i don't much care for that. it's always a little harder but more rewarding to put a little bit of love on a single piece of art with the things you claim to want artists to work on that you had to dig and curate for than to slam reblog on a pithy mean statement that isn't showing you any images that offend your subconscious bias towards thinner bodies

[lakesbian]

wrt what you said about worm opinions not being a fight; sometimes it reads like you and bloggers you're talking to have different aims in the fandom. people aren't always interested in being corrected (and feel extra defensive when it's in a reblog by someone with a large following like you have) and posts made about someone else without directly referring to them can occasionally come across as passive aggressive in a small fandom. directly stating if and when you don't want people to feel bad or offering to leave the topic be can help mitigate that if it comes up. you should blog how you want but it seems worthwhile to point out in case you find it helpful. you post a lot about reddit so if you were part of that big migration i wanted to note it since it can be easily confusing. feel free to disregard this if it's too much meddling

okay this is a lot of sentences about something that Isn't worm analysis so i'll be nice to everyone scrolling and put it under a cut

HASFDAKSFDSLS i don't post a lot about reddit no. i post a lot about alec, the only times i mention r/parahumans are when i'm 1. making everyone who doesnt have the stomach for one million posts about e88 in a row look at the rare good art that got posted there or 2. showing everyone a funny post title. i also feel like you might be misremembering that a Big reddit migration ever happened because while i havent been here long enough to remember everything i feel like the environment would b a lot more insufferable if it had? anyway

re "posts made about someone else without directly referring to them can occasionally come across as passive aggressive in a small fandom" - posts i make inspired by disagreeing w/ someones opinion with a direct tag to the person i saw have that opinion could be taken as aggressive/uncomfortable, because people leaving a random comment of a pretty generic opinion somewhere do not generally want to be dragged onto a stage for an impromptu debate! it's far more reasonable to just post my thoughts on a paraphrased version of the generic opinion without specifically shouting out whoever i most recently saw it from. (if i wanted to address precise phrasing or details of a point vs just bouncing off it, that's when i directly respond to the original text.) given that you also literally just said "people aren't always interested in being corrected (and feel extra defensive when it's in a reblog by someone with a large following like you have)," i feel like you should be able to understand this pov--it's extremely contradictory to imply that i often shouldn't directly correct people, but also that i should always explicitly shout out the person responsible for an opinion i disagree with

as for "people aren't always interested in being corrected (and feel extra defensive when it's in a reblog by someone with a large following like you have)," i have a couple notes:

i've been told i have a large following a few times but tbh i still genuinely do not see it--it was really only some of my first wormposts that got a notable amount of notes, at this point i feel like i've lost enough followers from having largely very specific posts (alec <3) & from being opinionated about hot-button topics that i do not think i count as a Large Blog. per se. i'd actually posit that No blog on wormblr is large enough to invoke the risks of disagreeing w someone publicly as a large blogger (i.e. unintentionally siccing harassment on someone), but maybe there's something i'm missing there

literally all of the people i've publicly corrected about amy were well-known fandom mainstays at the least and considered actively foundational (especially on the much much larger reddits and discords) at most, while also being extremely well-known on tumblr. i frankly find it hard to imagine any of them feeling threatened by the wormblr alec guy disagreeing with them when their opinions on her are those that have been shared by vast portions of the fandom for far longer than i've been in it. in fact, i would guess that any defensiveness there is actually far more liable to be a result of being extremely unused to having viewpoints they see as ubiquitous challenged

in both of the most recent cases that i'm sure inspired this ask, the people i was reblogging from made maintagged posts directly quoting things i've said without explicitly stating they were from me (<- "this can occasionally come across as passive aggressive in a small fandom") to express their disagreement w/ those opinions--if they didn't want me to try offering corrections, and fairly politely phrased ones at that, they could've just not made a post starting a dialogue about the topics, yeah?

[underestimated-heroine]

I blocked a radfem who followed me (their username was literally like 'radicalfeminist' with numbers after it or something) and they then messaged me from a sideblog about how I "prove I don't actually care about 'trans ideology' because if I did I would allow radfems to follow me so they might be convinced." They also said something like "what else could I expect from someone who threatens to kill themselves if they're called 'he/him'" which was genuinely just funny. Because that...just never happened? I don't share details about my gender & sexuality on here & very likely never will, but that's whatever. my personal life aside, it just is a fake story which never happened. Not that it would be an indictment on me if I had.

Funnily enough, ever since I made this shaggy meme pic my pfp as "underestimated-heroine" a lot more transphobes have assumed I'm trans and attempted to disrespect pronouns I've never shared. To me, this phenomenon showcases the idiocy of the "radical feminist" mindset in a small yet entertaining and poignant way. They see "heroine" next to a famous meme which happens to have facial hair (on a site where often anonymous users literally gender themselves however the fuck they want moment-to-moment in an act of genuinely inspiring collective rebellion). And without any further investigation, their Weird Sad Koolaid-poisoned neurons begin wailing about how Heroine Shaggy oppresses them on the basis of (presumably) being born with a cartoon cylinder instead of a cartoon hole, but I digress.

When people unfollow me, I generally don't take it personally unless I can pinpoint something I've reblogged or said to inspire people to unfollow me. In which case, I accept that we've reached an impasse and take my own direction, or reflect on my own actions and try to do better. Not so, for those who are pitter-pattering their stupid little fucking feet around on the surface of fascist rhetoric quicksand.

I'm starting to get what those people I always thought were annoying mean when they say they feel bad for hateful people, because I can't fathom the amount of work it will take to unlearn the entitlement necessary to believe someone choosing not to engage with you online is an act of oppression. When I find out that one of the many bigots on this site blocked me, I'm sad to discover they're a bigot, but ultimately glad there's no chance we'll interact anymore. Even if they're not a bigot and it's for no seemingly discernable reason in regards to ideology/politics, I respect when someone else blocks or unfollows me because they are not obligated to engage with me or my energy. I am not owed anything by them. Maybe they just don't want any more followers, maybe they don't like one of my interests. It doesn't matter because ultimately, that's their choice. They don't even owe me an explanation. Why would they? We are strangers online.

Not so, in the minds of bigots. No. Unless they are being targeted from every direction, they're not being seen. If someone born with features that differ from theirs can relate to their struggle, they whine and scream about how their identity is being appropriated because they don't think their identity as the member of an oppressed group affords them the right to demand justice and equality; they think it affords them the right to demand reign.

Anyways, don't learn this lesson the hard way like i've had to: don't interact with bigots. you cannot pry the fingers of the willfully blind from their eyes. Report hate speech and block them. Block their side accounts, too. You can only rarely thrash people who derive the vast majority of their dopamine supplies from feeling like the specialest, uniquest little victims in any way that matters. Instead, we win when we turn our backs. Generally speaking, we can only starve them out. In a way, that's good news for us: our best option is to keep our eyes on the light and forget them.

(And beware overindulging in paranoid interpretation lest you help push vulnerable people towards these hateful ideologies.)

The self-centeredness of people who have handed their braincells over to hateful ideology boggles the mind.