#curate your online space

[kishiar-la-orr]

personally speaking, there are 3 parts of kishiar la orr's character that makes me find him really fascinating.

first is how he is technically a troupe but a subversion of a troupe at the same time? male leads in romances, whether its het romance or a BL romance, are usually like. cold northern duke who is super strong, super smart and opens up to the main character very slowly because of the main character's kindness, blunt and at times rude. instead, we have kishiar — who is also a northern duke and super strong and super smart, but i'd argue between kishiar and yuder, the one who made the first move to further advance their connection is kishiar? as in, he extends his thoughts and feelings genuinely, expresses wanting to be close to yuder, which are all an olive branch yuder can accept, a sign of trust and (to a degree) vulnerability and real intent to form a connection.

yes, part of him plays into the common male lead troupes, but other parts of him honestly reads more like a female lead? he's the one more emotionally in touch, he's the socially savvy one, he's sunny and smiley. which is just fun, in my opinion, when compared to other BLs i've personally found over the years.

the second thing is my unending fascination with kishiar's complicated tango with mortality. being sickly from childhood, there must've been a sense of impending doom — especially when it's practically public secret among nobles that imperial family members usually die young because of vessel issues. kishiar was on super fast track to the same recorded fates those other people had. but then, in the prev. game, he survived! became healthy! only to not long after take two steps backwards as his health arguably got worse. sometimes i think being killed by yudrein in the 1st tl could be considered a mercy to 1st tl kishiar.

and in the 2nd tl, he went from sick to healthy — and that is it. i think with the blooming romance with yuder, it emphasizes the core characteristic of kishiar that is: he does everything for the people he loves, their future and happiness whether it's with or without him in the picture. ideally, of course it's with him. and in the 2nd tl, he's finally granted this. you can really tell when you see the prev. game flashbacks and go back to the present timeline that kishiar is just much more alive and not just in the physical sense — there is a drive and a sense of liveliness that wasn't there in all of their past life sections, in my opinion.

i just really get fascinated with character struggles with mortality, man. i think kishiar especially has a lot to offer in this department, there are so many things from canon that you can deconstruct or things not yet answered that you can headcanon — everything to play around and explore further about his character and its deep ties to death. even down to the way that he talks, to me, is due to his isolation because of the very vessel bursting issue that also foresaw his impending doom. like, he talks like a person who's alone a lot while growing up? the eloquence and all. it is so fun. naturally, this also includes his expertise with emotional processing and expression — i also think this can also be tied down to his intricate dance with mortality.

finally, the last layer is that kishiar, by all accounts, should be a gary stu — a male version of a mary sue character — and should maybe be boring to read about. he can do practically everything from magic, swordsmanship and aura, divine power to awakener ability. he is sociable and politically wise, able to play the 5D chess of nobles and high society and extract information from enemies and allies alike easily with his multi-layered words. he is smart, he is emotionally intelligent, he has a lot of strong allies, he is kind. but... he isn't boring to read about? not at all. his struggles may have passed, but they are struggles anyway. they contribute to the way i perceive him as a character and only cause me to be even more fascinated by him. and this very 'perfection' kuyu sets him up with — especially the being super strong and able to wield all the powers in their world like a goddamn avatar — is set up to be a major flaw: the very reason his vessel couldn't hold it for the majority of his life and in the 1st tl. everything just colors a very interesting picture of a character that i ended up beyond obsessed with.

[pinkyjulien]

x

[hydrahound87]

Why are people surprised when they see "weird" or "cringy" things in fandom (including nsfw now.. apparently)

There's a cow farm, you're gonna find cows outside!

[lemotmo]

Their downward spiral has been fun 😊. But everything she said is fact.

Q. Your boy wonder blocked those of us who don't love his boy wonder. Class act you got there.

Q. We get it Oliver we say Tommy you say block. Still want us to pretend he's not a brat?

Q. I asked your leader about his onscreen boyfriend and he blocked me. Actually he told me I was getting blocked and then he blocked me. Very mature of him.

Q. What kind of petulant child actually takes the time to go through a comment section of 900 plus comments like that photo had and manually deletes certain comments and then blocks the person who sent the comment? And you want us to respect him????

Q. He's so pathetic 🙃. How are you not mortified by how embarrassing his behavior has been? Nevermind you are you will just pretend you're not.

Q. Oliver is basically giving his fandom the middle finger and yet he has the nerve to get butt hurt because we all like Lou more. What an immature brat.

A. So this is a very small sample of the asks I have received since Oliver went on his blocking spree. I wanted to include a sample because every single person who has sent me a complaint that he blocked you has intentionally not disclosed the question or comment you left that got you blocked. The only thing that's clear is they all involved Tommy in some way. And based on your pattern it's not hard to imagine that most of those comments probably included insults of some kind directed at anybody not Tommy/Lou. Oliver is not a brat. Oliver is tired. They are all tired. The sad thing is if you all had allowed the story to just unfold and taken it for what it was, Oliver would have been very kind to you. Because he's an absolute teddy bear of a man. He never gave you all false hope. He's been the one you should have been paying attention too because he has the one who's been honest with you. He never would have shipped it but he would have been respectful of you shipping it. And when Tommy's part was complete, that character, and you, probably would have even received a thank you post of some kind from Oliver because he loves Buck, and he would have been grateful for the role Tommy played in getting Buck ready for his next chapter. That's the kind of person Oliver is. The Oliver you all are seeing now you brought on yourselves. He is a petty king and once you push him over the line it's over. You all have made it your mission to make him, and his friends miserable because they refuse to encourage your delusion. You deserve being blocked by him and I hope he continues to do it. There's no need for him to subject himself to your abuse. He doesn't have to allow Tommy content if he doesn't want it there.

The real reason you all are so upset today is that you're rapidly running out of delusions to cling too. They have systematically eliminated or debunked every one of your talking points, and that's what actually angers you. Examples:

'OMG Oliver and Lou are total besties look how much they love being together' = Oliver completely ignores anything and everything Tommy/Lou related. Doesn't like any Tommy content, doesn't follow Lou on any social media. Zero BTS interactions. Publicly admits to blocking people who demand he fawn over it.

'Oliver and Ryan clearly hate one another and only tolerate each other because Buddie fans are insane' = Oliver and Ryan take, share, and post amazing b&w photos of one another. Loads of BTS content of the joking around and having a good time together on set. Follow each other on social media. Openly discuss and like Buddie content. Admit to reading Buddie fanfics and watching fan edits. Hang out at each other's houses and play around with Instagram filters.

'Lou's going to be bumped up to main: = release cast lost proving that didn't happen and he didn't even appear on the call sheet

' Buddie will never happen because Ryan said he won't play queer/gay' = Ryan does several interviews openly discussing the Buddie possiblity. Refers to Eddie as queer coded, starts using only gender neutral pronouns. Films a BTS video implying he hooked up with Peter Krause.

'Tim sent us a DM telling us spoilers' = Tim gives an interview flat out dismissing this.

This is the reality and it's making your delusions increasingly difficult to sell. Your own people are starting to wake up and as a result you turned your venom on your own people. And what's insane is if you had just been basic level decent you would have found plenty of fandom people who would have let you fan girl over Tommy. We have all been there. We have all fallen for a minor side character the show was never going to care about. I promise you people would have been kind to you about it. But you followed the lead of a crazy person and believed being horrible and nasty to people would get you what you wanted. You're in the position you are because of yourselves. No one else is responsible or to blame. And that's why no one feels sorry for you. Everyone is exhausted and that clearly includes the cast as well. What they're doing is hilarious and deserved.

Thank you Nonny! I do appreciate you dropping this in my inbox.

All right, Oliver is obviously as fed up with all this craziness as we are. I say 'good for him' that he is actively curating his online spaces. He is just doing what all of us do on social media: blocking the people we don't want to deal with, deleting the comments that contain topics of things we don't want to see, deleting comments with hatred in them, deleting comments where anons are shitting on our friends...

As for the rest of this excellent reply?

IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[goldkirk]

hey this isn’t aimed at anyone in particular but I’m saying it for the record here: if I tell you no, please stop messaging me about fundraisers and mutual aid.

I get enough messages that it’s impossible for me to keep up without devoting at least half an hour each day, when I’m not even on tumblr that long most days. Me having a boundary about this isn’t a moral failing, it’s a lifeboat for me on my own blog.

In my personal life I’m already advocating and donating literally as much as I can spare. This is not me not caring, it’s just me not willing to interact with that on the one place I go online to not interact with irl news and world events for the most part.

I cannot be upset all the time. I cannot be upset everywhere. I cannot use all my emotional and mental energy fielding my own upset from ongoing events. My options are to hold boundaries about this or stop coming online at all.

I’m all for sharing information and signal boosting to reasonable extents, but the scale of it this year is so large and so enduring that it is literally not possible to for me to participate on every account I have. I’ve previously shared links to Gaza eSIM donations and a major hub of verified Go Fund Mes here and elsewhere online. We, the online humans, know how to look those things up ourselves by now. There are many, many people choosing to do advocacy work, and right now, I can’t be one of them.

If you’re extremely upset when I tell you I can’t share/donate right now about a Gaza family or personal fundraiser you ask me to share here, just unfollow and block me. That’s what those buttons are for. Protect your own emotions and energy and get me off your feed instead of staying upset and continuing to engage with online people or content that upsets you.

Please don’t send repeated angry messages based on manufactured purity politics and moral outrage into my messages and inbox when I exercise the right to run my own blog.

[miimeeks]

it feels like most of the time antis don't actually realise why something is considered bad (irl) aside from just a vague moral idea that some things are simply bad.

which is why they also dont realise when something is fictional the reasons why its considered wrong irl are irrelevant or just not present.

many things are considered wrong in reality since it causes harm to real people (in the most simple terms) but in fiction no one is actually getting hurt, the only thing thats wrong is the vague "taboo" of it. which ends up being the appeal to people !!

[artemisdesari-blog]

When ao3 was created in 2008 I was already in my 20s. I'd already lost stories to purges on livejournal and FFN. But I had been exploring fandom spaces on the Internet for around ten years at that point. And I found all the adult spaces that I wasn't supposed to be, the ones that were locked down with basic date of birth verification questions which were very easy to get around. And everyone I was at school with did it. We all went into spaces online designed for people who were over 18 when we were too young for them. We saw and read a lot of things we were too young to see, but that was not the fault of the people who posted the things we were reading, or pictures we were viewing (and the pictures took a long time to load). That was our fault for going into those clearly marked places at all. I remember being 14 and certain NSFW Simpsons drawings had been printed out and passed around because of the shock factor. I remember being 13 at a sleepover and a friend brought one of her brother's very explicit videos with her for us all to watch because she thought it would be funny. We didn't and the screams of disgust summoned the parents of the girl we were staying with. But in all of this it was not the adults who inflicted this stuff on us. In fact when they discovered it the adults were the ones who put a stop to it (and in the process exposed a few things that were going on with the friend who brought the video to show a group of 13 year olds). We were not being invited into these adult spaces by adults. We were invading them as teens because we thought the restrictions were stupid, because we thought we were mature enough to go into them.

In my case, and those of my friends, our parents stepped in, the school stepped in, and we all found it a lot harder to access explicit material even though there wasn't as much available in the way of parental controls in the early days. We were watched, browser histories were checked. As the parent of a child who is just starting to enter that phase of their life it is my responsibility to set parental controls on their devices. It is down to me to make sure that they do not wander into adult spaces online and see things they shouldn't see. And if I miss something, it is my job as a parent to make sure that they feel safe enough to come to me and talk about it and how to avoid it until they're ready for it. It is not the responsibility of the person who drew or wrote whatever upset them, in the same way it is not the responsibility of film/TV studios to do anything more than write their scripts, shoot their media and get it rated before releasing it. If you wouldn't give your kid unfettered access to movies rated for well over their age, why are you giving them unfettered access to the Internet? The responsibility for sensible, appropriate, media consumption is not on the creators, it is on the parents and on the individual accessing it. If the creator has tagged it 'mature', 'explicit', 'minors DNI' or whatever, they know it will probably be ignored. But they did their part. It is not their fault if they're ignored.

So instead of clutching pearls and screeching 'think of the children', parents go out and do your damn job as a parent. As for the teens; if a place is marked not for you and you go there anyway, don't go blaming the creators if you see something that upsets you. It's like seeing a sign that says 'if you touch this button it will burn you' then complaining about being burned because you touched the button. You got what you were given. And in today's culture of tagging pretty much everything, that's a lot easier to do than it was when I was a tween and teen.

[kaoharu]

yumetwt is so stupids ♡ sorry

[shirogane-oushirou]

need to learn github so i can suggest a "block user on all sideblogs" feature (edit: for xkit. just to clarify, bc i'm well aware t.umblr only implements features nobody wants or needs <3). when someone goes mask-off on here and i need to block a lot of people at once, having to copy-paste usernames across all of them is so. bad.

[rethcore]

Just for the record, every time you like one of my palia tag rants it only encourages me to make more palia tag rants.

And also I appreciate you and feel seen asdfa thank you ;u;

[crowshoots]

i really wish people nowadays knew how to use the block button & the blacklist feature instead of starting an entire smear campaign

[lillotte17]

..

[chipped-chimera]

What I love about Tumblr is being able to curate your online experience.

What I DON'T love about being online in general (as this is not exclusive to Tumblr) is the presumption that as long as anyone has even a mildly popular account/platform is that they have to know and be on the ball making statements about every current issue under the fucking sun or they're somehow the devil.

Yes this is about Palestine. Look I am on the side of Palestine here but sometimes you just wanna go to your little space on the internet to catch a fucking break, not have people blasting an air horn in your ears every minute because you're not constantly talking about 'current issue'. And I shouldn't have to lead with 'I support Palestine' to say that without fear of getting fucking blasted.

If you're any kind of person who thinks it's okay to call for, encourage or participate in bullying people online for curating their own spaces, claiming they're being 'silent' on an issue just because they haven't said anything specific about it - fuck you, you're an asshole. Get off my blog.

It's people like you who are driving compassion fatigue. You're literally making things worse. You actually want to do something constructive? Get the hell off the internet, stop harassing people and actively DO something constructive. If you cannot do that due to personal restrictions, find another way to do something constructive online that ISN'T harassing people. Because harassing people doesn't do SHIT.

[malleleothreesome]

YOUR MALLEUS POST IS JUST!!!!! AGDKFFLSVFL!!!! WHO KNOWS HOW MANY TIMES I RE-READ THAT THING BUT IT WAS WORTH THE WAIT!!!! 😫😭👌🖤💚

I'm so late to this but thank you so much Knight!! 🖤💚🖤💚 I'm so happy you enjoyed Blindfolded Malleus... I was so excited for you to read it, and I'm very happy it lived up to the hype and anticipation!!! Truly, I am so honored and grateful that you would re-read something so long 🥹 it amazes me how supportive you are!! I hope I can continue to write things that you enjoy! One day in the [regretfully] far future I swear to you that I will put out an Idia fic just for you hehehe. I'm so overwhelmed by the amount of things I am excited to write, but I guess that is a wonderful problem to have! I only wish I had more time in the day to write, but alas, such is life. Why the fUCk am I writing so formal right now daiohssadoi;hdSAO not me saying BUT ALAS. SUCH IS LIFE????? It is so.

I'm actually taking a TWELVE DAY vacation from work starting on the 22nd so I might actually do a little request event where people can send me like kink prompts or something. I think that'll be fun!

Okay and FINE I'll do some fluff prompts too for the fluff people but please don't judge my fluff too harshly, I'm still learning!!! For some reason smut just comes naturally dhaDSAHIDDASijdsan I'll start gathering some prompts and we will do a little ask game or something.

📣 By the way FELLOW HONEST THIGH RIDING ANON if you SEE this first of all, ONCE AGAIN: I wish to express my undying devotion to you and your exceptional thought process. I am positively frothing at the mouth over your request and I am PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE I am finally making good progress and it WILL be out soon. We WILL make him cum in his pants. We WILL make him cry, whimper, and moan.

[leoideflowers]

not to judge their choices but how did leona and idia end up opening a flower shop? it doesn't strike me as the first career they would pick considering their personality and their interests so im curious

// No worries, that's a perfectly fair question. Quite frankly, there isn't a particular thought-out answer besides just Leona wanting a way to convince Idia to stay with him. I made this AU simple because I thought it was kinda funny, given that yes, they would not own a flower shop and if they did they would be terrible at it. However, in the AU, they're both sorta stuck at point in life where they have no particular direction to go in, so they simply stick together.

[artemisdesari-blog]

You know what I miss? I miss "don't like, don't read" being the primary accepted attitude to fanfic spaces. I miss a time when people had to actively look for the things they did and did not want to see instead of an algorithm shoving echo chambers of like minded folks at us until that's all that we can see and hear. I miss the times when people looked at their internet space and curated it into what they wanted it to be rather than being told by the machine what it should be.

I miss people understanding that while fiction may reflect our reality, it only affects our reality if we allow it to. I read my first sex scene in a book when I was 13 (my mum read the first third, got bored and let me read it, the sex popped up about two thirds in), I had already encountered themes of SA in mainstream media before that, not to mention torture and murder just being an obliquely referenced thing in even kids programs at the time. I routinely read books which featured war and carnage, child endangerment and even heavily implied child assault/abuse, relationships with massive age gaps, abusive relationships, implied incest (by the time I was 10 everyone in my year group at school knew the story of Oedipus, and anyone who went through the Greek and Roman mythology stage got an eyeful of all of it, frankly), and relationships where the power imbalances were huge. Fanfic authors may explore the darkest sides of human nature, but mainstream media has been doing that for FAR longer than we have. If anything, in exploring it fanfic authors have also called it out far more than mainstream media does (looking at you, romcoms)

I miss people understanding that you cannot hurt a work of fiction: the characters aren't real people. Some of my earliest exposure to fanfic was in the early days of FFN, and then scouring the internet for fic which had not made it onto that central hosting site. Those were the wild west days, the days when people treated fanfic like published books and gave you a summary and not a lot else. At the risk of sounding like an eighty year old lady: you youngins today have no idea how good you have it. The tagging systems on AO3 (in particular) make it difficult to run into things you would prefer not to read about unless the writer has opted not to tag. Sometimes that's a simple oversight, sometimes it isn't, but most will tag for the most common triggers if they feature. And, quite honestly, if they don't you can ask them to tag it, but the back button also exists and should be used.

I miss people understanding that inter-generational friendships are actually pretty common and normal. I started work at 16, I made friends in my work place who were anything from 5 to 40 years older than me. I had my work mum, who watched my back when the early morning customers got a bit too flirty with my 16 year old self, my manager who was 12 years older than me but who gave me advice about boys my age and who could talk Star Trek and all other sci-fi with me for hours and who told the idiot who was 7 years older than me who asked me out to back off when I said no. They taught me a lot about life and navigating the world as an adult that I didn't learn from my parents or teachers or peers. They taught me about communicating with people older than me, and strangely about talking to people younger than me too.

I miss people understanding that the bad guys aren't fascinating because I agree with them. The bad guys are fascinating because they are the bad guy. What is their motivation? Do they even have motivation or are they just like that? There is a reason the bad guys get the juiciest lines. Would I want to encounter Darth Vader, or Hannibal Lecter, or any other popular evil character in a dark alley? Hell no. I wouldn't even want to bump into them in the middle of a busy street on a sunny day, but they are fascinating to read about and watch. They are fascinating to write. That doesn't mean I agree with any of the things their characters do, and I might only be playing with them, but someone else thought them up and imagined all of the awful stuff that they could do first. Why do fanfic writers get absolutely crucified for playing with them, when the creators are left in peace?

Look at it this way: I read IT when I was 14, I did not immediately go out and recreate a few of the more controversial scenes in that one. I read multiple books about 16, 17, 18 year old girls getting into relationships with men old enough to be their fathers, I didn't go out and start looking for a man that old to date. I don't murder and SA and pillage my way through the world no matter how many times it's come up in books and films and tv series. Reading about it doesn't mean I don't understand how terrible it is, but as I said at the start: reality is reflected in our media. How many films have been made about war? How many TV shows that deal with all manner of crimes? How many books that have characters which were abused as children? Or deal with incest?

So, if you really object to all the stuff you see in fanfic, how about you go out there and try to make things better for actual REAL victims, instead of attacking people who are simply writing about an imaginary figure? Especially when some of those people are the victims you claim to be trying to protect. Evil people have always existed, they exist now, they existed 100 years ago, they existed 1000 years ago. They certainly didn't need the internet to inspire them then, and they don't need it now either.