#even with ''copying'' other social media sites literally no one does it like this

[sharkneto]

oof yeah this update is Not Good. i miss seeing all y'all faces

[erraticprocrastinator]

Maybe I’m imagining it, but am I the only one who’s noticed a significant shift in fandom culture very recently?

This is coming from someone who’s “grown up” with modern fandom culture, and I’m not even talking about the differences between now and six years ago, when I first started participating in fandom spaces. I mean recently as in the past few months, maybe the last year? Again, maybe this is just in my head, but, I swear, I feel like I’ve been seeing a bigger and bigger division between creators (fan artists, fic writers etc) and audiences (readers etc) across multiple fandoms and in general fan spaces, too.

In particular, it feels like reader entitlement when it comes to fanfics is becoming much more prevalent than I’m used to seeing. I’ve been coming across so many posts, across multiple platforms, trying to justify re-uploading others’ work, coming after authors who orphan or (god forbid) delete their fics, complaining about unfinished WIPs, and so many other things that honestly give me the ick. I know that, as an author myself, I’m biased towards these kinds of posts, but I really do feel like there’s been a shift from fans who really are just genuinely invested in this content to a way more hostile attitude. I’m used to seeing people who are upset about a favourite fic being removed, or disappointed about an abandoned WIP, but I’ve just never noticed so many people outright vilifying authors for it, or promoting things like using the Wayback Machine to copy and repost deleted content (something I have now seen people suggesting to each other on multiple occasions). It’s starting to put me off from actively participating in fandom at all, which I really don’t want to happen.

Even setting that particular issue aside, I’ve also noticed a huge uptake in people shaming both authors/artists and readers for the kind of content they produce and consume. I genuinely don’t think I can scroll through any of my social media feeds without finding at least one post complaining about a certain ship, or the way Author X portrays Character Y, or the existence of Dead Dove, or literally any other tag or trope that’s ever existed on AO3 or any other major site. I’m not talking about people asking others about their preferences, or people who say something just isn’t their cup of tea. I’m talking about posts, dozens of dozens of posts, made with the sole purpose of saying “eww, why does XYZ thing even exist, I mean who could ever read/write this, you’re disgusting if you do”, completely unsolicited, about every possible content you can imagine. I’m genuinely asking, whatever happened to “don’t like, don’t read” and “you’re allowed to click away”? Again, I’ve only ever known relatively recent fandom culture, but I always thought that “you do you” was the generally accepted attitude? I was actually anxious about posting my most recent fic because of this, and I’m honestly still a little afraid that I’m going to get a comment tearing apart my characterisation or end up as the subject of some unhinged Reddit thread — and what I write is pretty tame, compared to the darker works out there.

Have fandom spaces always been like this and I’m somehow only realising now, or has anyone else noticed these things, too? Is there some piece of the puzzle that I’m missing? I’d particularly love it if other fic writers could weigh in, because I’m really curious to see if it’s just me who’s seeing things this way.

[boreal-sea]

What is the Purpose of Mastodon?

I'd say there are 4 main purposes of mastodon (and the rest of the fediverse).

The first purpose is the same purpose as tumblr or twitter etc. It's social media. It's meant for people to find other people, connect with them, and post and share content that matches their interests.

To decentralize social media. This is the big pull of mastodon that makes it very different from twitter, facebook and tumblr. It's also the feature that is most confusing to understand. I'll explain it more below. It also leads into #3 and #4.

To be a place where you can be in control of the rules. Don't want Nazis? You can ban them, or join a server that has strong rules against them.

To get away from commercialized forms of social media so you aren't constantly bombarded by ads, and your data isn't being fed to advertisers, and so you know the platform you are on won't cave to advertisers and do things like ban porn.

1: Social media

This is the easiest to understand: it's social media, we all know what that is. If people think the fediverse is only about #1, they go "ok but the internet is full of places to meet people, I don't need another website to do that on". And they'd be right! But it's the other three purposes that make the fediverse unique.

2: Decentralization

In my opinion this is the key to the fediverse. And it seems really complicated and too difficult to understand but it's really not.

Imagine you could download tumblr's code, then upload it to your own website, and run your own copy of tumblr. As a bonus, you could still follow anyone over on the main tumblr website and they could follow you. It would be exactly like using Main Tumblr; the experience would be seamless.

But there would be advantages too. Like if Main Tumblr decided to cave to advertisers and ban porn, for example. YOU wouldn't have to stop posting porn, because you're not on Main Tumblr, you're using your copy of Tumblr on your site, and your rules say porn is A-OK. So you could keep posting all the porn you wanted, and anyone who followed you could see it, and no one could stop you (as long as you're following the laws of the country your server is set in obviously).

And what if Main Tumblr decided to shut down? Not a problem for you - you're not using their site, so all your data is safe! If Discord goes down, every single Discord server also dies with it.

Twitter is dying; every single Twitter community and everyone's followings they've built are all dying with it because there's only one Twitter. A lot of artists and other people who depend on Twitter due to the followings and the communities/brands they've built on there are literally losing their livelihoods because Twitter is dying, and there's only one Twitter.

But if they'd been on a mastodon server that was dying, they could just move to a different server and all of their followers go with them - they wouldn't lose their audience and they wouldn't have to rebuilt it. Or, even better, they could just host their own server for their own brand and never have to worry about it going down on them, ever.

Now yes, hosting a website does cost money. And if you don't have money, that's ok! There are a bunch of servers out there already that are running and funded and accept users for free, and most of them have a set rule that if, for some reason, they have to close the server, you will get a 3 month warning to pick somewhere else to go.

All you have to do is read their rules and see if it's a community you jive with. Then after you join, you can follow anyone anywhere. It's that open, and that easy.

3 Rules and moderation

Another huge advantage of the fediverse is that every server can have its own rules, just like Discord servers can have their own rules. Many servers have extremely strict rules against nazis, racism, homophobia, spam, etc.

And the best part is, these server admins can actually enforce these rules because most of the servers are small. This means there's not that many people to deal with and moderation is actually a feasible task.

4 Commercialization

You might have heard "on facebook, you are the product" and it's true. Your data (and your identity) is the product being sold to the advertisers on those platforms. With no ads, there's no one trying to buy your data. The server your are on is the product, one you can choose to donate to if you wish.

[plague-of-insomnia]

Yeah that rubbed so wrong. Most people who really use tumblr a lot do not use it like people use IG or twitter. @staff really need to stop comparing tumblr to social media like those.

And the whole “good and varied” thing is laughable. You’re talking about the site that’s like 90% ND, where many of us come to intentionally see the same scene made into gif sets over and over by 20 diff people bc we love that scene and everyone has their own unique perspective.

I love seeing the same meme made into 20 diff fandom versions, or even redone by diff artists within the same fandom.

I love when I see a fave mutual reblogging one of those “give your mutual a plushie to help them through the day” kind of posts 20 times for diff people.

And tumblr gives you tools to “minimize” (literally) anything annoying, for the most part. Other SM does not.

Like Reddit? I am constantly getting notifications for boards I’ve never ever gone to and have zero interest of ever going to and I cannot stop that. That makes me want to use Reddit LESS.

Tumblr has survived bc it’s OUR dumpster fire unlike anything else out there. Why would you want to make it into the schlocko version of Twitter or FB or IG?

People who like those sides aren’t gonna want another bad copy, and the ones here are here because we Do not like those other sites.

I get wanting to be profitable, but changing fundamentally tumblr is not the way to do it.

i hate the “on average a user only sees 25 posts per session so they have to be good and varied” bullshit on that staff post. if i open tumblr and the 25 posts i see are nothing but a single mutual mass reblogging their favourite thing that i couldn’t care less about. well. that’s what i enjoy

[hiddenwashington]

as the height of summer begins to peak, the citizens of washington find themselves having more free time, moments to just relax and have fun. teenagers lounge by the pool and complain that there’s no beach nearby, or wander around the mall for hours on end. kids are running around the playgrounds, and even the older citizens of dc are finding time to do what they love and make some memories. with everything in the city being so unpredictable, it’s best to live while you can and enjoy the time you’ve got.

we are already a little into it, but happy summer everyone! i’m sure there are quite a few of you looking for a distraction from the heat, so we’re here to provide a nice and fun task to sit down and do, hopefully somewhere cool! we’re keeping with the format of some tasks in the past, but with a brand new focus. for this task we’re here to find out about your character’s social media and hobbies! 

- as usual there will two aspects to this task, a written part as well as a graphic! we would love to see you implement some parts of both, but of course please feel free to put your focus where the muse is. if that means putting more time into one aspect over the other that’s completely fine, just as long as we see a little bit of both in the post!

- for the visual aspect we would love to see some sort of graphic showcasing your muse’s presence on social media. what that means is entirely up to you! there are a tone of templates out there with a variety of different social media or phone based graphics to showcase. if you need some ideas you could definitely start by checking out these: x, x, x, x, x but don’t hesitate to come to us if you need more help! your muse isn’t really a social media type? that’s totally okay! we’re including day to day hobbies in this task as well, so if a moodboard giving an idea of how they spend their day makes more sense you’re more than welcome to take it in that direction.

- for the written aspect we’ve come up with a list of questions to answer however you best see fit that can be found below. copying and pasting the list directly to answer is absolutely acceptable, or if using them as a guideline for a paragraph fits you better go for it! whatever gives us more information about your character is encouraged! again, if there’s anything you have any concerns about don’t hesitate to reach out to us!

does your muse use any social media? what sites do they use? how much of an online presence do they have?

what kind of accounts does your muse follow online? and what do they post on their own accounts?

is your muse comfortable with a phone or computer? do they use them often? how literate are they with technology?

what kind of profile picture(s) does your muse use on various apps? how often do they change their profile pic/icon?

are they someone who takes a ton of photos when they’re with friends or family? do they end up in a lot of photos?

if given the opportunity, would your muse prefer to make money through an online channel rather than a traditional job?

do they have any hobbies that take up a lot of their time? what are they? are there any special interests your muse has that they like to share with people? are there any that they keep secret?

your muse has a whole day to themselves but not enough time to plan a trip or event. what do they do for that free day?

does your muse listen to anything in particular in their private time? if so, are they more of a music person or a podcast person? what genres do they prefer?

would your muse prefer to go out to spend time with loved ones, or would they rather stay in?

does your muse use any dating apps, or do they prefer to meet people the old fashioned way? if they absolutely had to write a tinder bio what would it say?

as always tasks are encouraged but not mandatory and there is no time limit on when you must complete them by. you are welcome to do the task on whichever muses you want but just keep in mind tasks will count as character activity, since we want to make sure everyone who wants to participate in the task feels like they have the time to. if there’s anything you have a question about or need any help with just shoot the main a message!

finally please make sure to tag your posts with hwtask11 so that everyone can see the great posts you make! please give this a like when you have read it all!! ♥

[scripttorture]

One of the central characters in a fantasy story I'm writing has torture as part of her backstory. She was captured by an evil race, and one individual in particular put her through a "training" regime designed to turn her into a useful/trustworthy slave. Specifically the goals of the training were:

- destroy her sense of self / agency

- overwrite her ingrained response of healing herself when injured (she has magical healing powers)

- an affectionate or worshipful disposition towards her captors

- immediate obedience to any command

I feel like both physical and psychological torture / mental conditioning are probably appropriate, though I'm leaning away from including sexual abuse. I honestly don't know much about torture at all and the only things that come to mind as producing a result similar to what I'm looking for are the Game of Thrones torture sequence and the use of obdience collars in the Codex Alera book series. The latter is very interesting to me because it is a magical device that inflicts pain in reaction to disobedience but also inflicts pleasure to reward obedience.

I guess I'm just wondering if you have any advice for what kinds of methods would be good to include in a process designed to produce obedience, rather than torture for its own sake or to extract information, as well as if there are any common pitfalls I should try to avoid in writing about such a thing.

The training itself won't be in the book, but I need to be familiar with it for backstory purposes because later in the story this character encounters her torturer again, and is subjected to some further abuse before she finally overcomes her fear and kills him.

Alright well I’m going to be straight up with you: the scenario you’ve presented is a very common torture apologist trope. It’s incredibly unrealistic. And it’s unrealistic in ways that support torture by claiming it can be ‘useful’.

 Which probably means that you’re new to the blog and haven’t heard me give this talk before. That’s OK, we all learn sometime and it’s not my intention to shame you for the fact you’re not as obsessed with this stuff as I am or couldn’t afford to shell out for the books.

 Torture does not produce obedience. The best evidence we have right now suggests it encourages active resistance.

 If you got a lot of your inspiration from Game of Thrones then frankly I’m not surprised you came up with apologia. The torture in that series is incredibly badly handled. And a big part of the point of running this blog is that most people are getting their information on torture from shows like that. Which happens because the research is inaccessible and hasn’t been popularised the way fictional tropes (sometimes fictional tropes literally started by torturers) have been popularised.

 The important thing is what you choose to do now.

 I’m going to break down the problems here and make some suggestions for what you could do instead.

 Firstly: there is no torture or abuse that will guarantee obedience. Pain does not make people meek or compliant or willing to follow commands.

 Torture survivors are not broken.

 They are not ‘controlled’ by their torturers and the suggestion that they are is used in the real world to bar real survivors from treatment. It is also used to bar them from entering safe countries and to argue that they shouldn’t be allowed visas or passports.

 The best statistics we have for any sort of compliance under torture come from analysis of historical French data where torture was used to try and force confessions (something we know torture can sometimes do).

 The ‘success’ rate averaged at 10%. Under torture 90% of people will not comply long enough to sign their name.

 Secondly: torture does not and can not ‘make’ a victim feel ‘worshipful’ towards their torturer. The suggestion is kind of like asking if someone can tap dance immediately after removing the bones from their legs.

 Torturers have no control over a victim’s emotions. They have no control over their symptoms. They have no control over their beliefs.

 And there is no such thing as a torture that can change someone’s mind in a way torturers can control.

 Once again, this fictional trope is used by politicians and the media to justify marginalising real torture survivors.

 I have read hundreds, possibly thousands, of accounts from torture survivors. I’ve read historic and modern accounts. I’ve read accounts from all sort of people from all over the globe. I have never seen a survivor say anything positive about their torturers. I have never seen anything close to toleration.

 A lot of survivors are blisteringly angry at their torturers. A lot of them feel overwhelming levels of spite and some report literally putting themselves at risk of death in order to spite their torturers. And yes, a lot of them are afraid too. None of these emotions are mutually exclusive.

 Affection is impossible. We are not wired that way.

 Thirdly: I understand that ‘evil races’ are a long standing fantasy trope but it would be remiss of me if I didn’t mention the racism inherent in that idea. That some people are ‘born bad’.

 I’d strongly suggest you look up the Black, Indian and First Nations people that I know are on this site critiquing these kinds of fantasy tropes. Because they will be able to explain it better then I can.

 Fourthly: the term ‘psychological torture’ is a pretty common dog whistle for torture apologia.

 Most of the time tortures that people dub ‘psychological’ are things with real, physical effects that lead to lasting injury and death. They just don’t tend to leave obvious external scars. I use Rejali’s term ‘clean torture’ for these techniques. Researchers distinguish them from scarring tortures because they are harder to detect and prove in court.

 The majority of survivors today will have experienced clean torture. They will have no obvious physical scars. But they will still be disabled. They’re ‘just’ less likely to see any form of justice for it.

 Fifthly: torture is a terrible training method because it decreases a person’s ability to learn.

 Torture causes memory problems. It also often causes lasting physical injuries that make performing basic tasks more difficult. And it causes a lot of serious psychological problems which make performing basic tasks more difficult.

 A trained person who was never tortured will always out perform someone whose training involved torture.

 I probably sound quite angry here.

 I write fantasy and I also write about torture a lot. But I can’t imagine that it’s just flavour for a fantasy world or some artefact of the past. Torture is a real, present threat in the country that I grew up in. If I was to return now I could, literally, be tortured and executed.

 If you want to include torture in your world, in your story then you are committing to telling someone else’s story. You are representing an incredibly marginalised group of people and you are presenting that representation to a third group, one that has never had contact with real torture survivors.

 Are you comfortable with the idea of telling your peers that survivors are still controlled by ‘the enemy’? That they’re passive? That they don’t have the capacity to make their own decisions?

 Are you comfortable knowing that the popularity of this message keeps millions of genocide survivors in refugee camps, blocked from citizenship, aid and safety?

 I understand feeling attached to a story and a character. And I understand that this information is hard to find. Hell I’m probably going to end up with the only English copy of one of the pivotal textbooks because I’m shelling out to get it translated.

 You say you want to write a torture survivor. With respect I don’t think you know what a torture survivor looks like.

 I think the most helpful, and kindest, thing I can do here is describe what torture does to people. Because I can’t tell you whether that’s something you want to write. I could try and rebuild this scenario for you (and if you decide you’re interested in that after reading all of this and all the links then I suggest looking through the blog tags for ICURE, torture as training, Black Widow and Overwatch.) But I think you need to decide whether you actually want to write a torture survivor first.

 Here’s a post on the most common torture apologia tropes.

 Here’s the post on the types of memory problems torture commonly causes. I strongly recommend picking at least one.

 Remember that this would never go away. Improvement and recovery in torture survivors means learning to live with symptoms. The symptoms themselves are permanent.

 It’s a hundred different alarms set up on their phone to try and make up for the forgetfulness that makes them miss appointments. It’s the little bottle of perfume in their pocket to bring themselves back to reality when they get intrusive memories at work.

 Here’s a post on the other common symptoms.

 You want something in the range of 3-5 of those, though more are likely if your character is held for years. Each of them should be severe. Every single symptom should have a large, negative, impact on the character’s daily life.

 Do you know anyone with chronic pain? It warps their world. Work can become impossible. Basic household tasks like getting dressed, cooking, cleaning the dishes are done through gritted teeth or not at all. Hobbies and ‘fun’ activities dwindle as they struggle to find a way to do them that doesn’t hurt. Interaction with other people, even loved ones, can easily become barbed.

 Because the pain makes everything more difficult. It means everything takes more energy, more effort. Which means that things fall by the wayside, whether that’s by a pile of mouldering dishes in the sink or snapping at a child. It means tears and the social judgement that follows them. It means the world narrowing as it gets harder to go out.

 Do you see what I mean? Every part of life.

 That’s an example for one symptom. You need to work out at least four. Then figure out how they interact. Then figure out what the character can do to make her life better.

 With chronic pain that can mean painkillers but it’s always more then that. It’s re-learning how to do things; how to put on trousers without aggravating the bad knee, how to sew with one hand. It means learning to cut down on what they do and it means learning a new sort of flexibility; accepting that there are days when the pain is too much.

 It can mean having the same conversation about disability over and over again. With family, with friends, with colleagues. ‘I can’t do that.’ ‘I can do that sometimes but not always.’ ‘That will hurt me.’ ‘I can’t use that chair.’ ‘I can’t get my arms that high above my shoulders.’ ‘I need help with this.’

 And that sometimes means learning a kind of patience that is really barely held back rage. Or perhaps I’m projecting a little with this last one.

 If you’ve never met a torture survivor, if you’ve never looked at a survivor’s work, then all this is difficult. You’re trying to imagine something from first principals with nothing to fall back on.

 So let’s bring some survivors into the discussion here. Some reality.

 Who’s listened to Fela? How about Bobi Wine?

 Fela Kuti was the father of modern Afro beats music. He was tortured multiple times and during one attack, which destroyed his home, his mother was murdered by the military. When he got out of jail Fela marched her funeral procession past the biggest barracks in Nigeria’s biggest city. He wrote two songs about this attack and he doubled down on his opposition to the military government.

 Fela’s music started causing riots.

 You can read what I have to say about him here. You can listen to his music on youtube.

 Here’s an interview with Bobi Wine, which was conducted shortly after he was tortured in Uganda. He talked about how he was determined to go back and continue fighting. Which he did. He even ran against the president.

 I’ve also got a short piece on Searle who was a cartoonist captured by the Japanese during World War 2. His drawings of what happened in To the Kwai and Back are worth seeing. Especially if you want to write atrocities on this scale. They will show you the scale and how to focus on the small, human elements despite that overwhelming scale.

 Alleg’s The Question is pretty much a must, it’s one of the most thorough accounts from the Franco-Algerian war.

 Monroe’s A Darkling Plain is also a must, it’s a series of interviews with survivors of various different conflicts and atrocities. Some are torture survivors. Some are not. It is essential reading because it shows the variety in survivors as well as giving a sense of their lives beyond the symptoms.

 Finally Amnesty International has literally hundreds of interviews and studies available for free online.

 The most important decision for any story with regards to torture is whether it should be there at all.

 So much of this topic is intimidating and so much of it is difficult to write. Not just in the ‘oh this is horribly effecting’ sense but in the ‘I have twelve things to juggle in this simple scene’ sense.

 Ask yourself what torture adds to this character and this story. What does this backstory actually give this character?

 Because if the point is to have her vulnerable and then ultimately triumphing violently over her attackers I don’t think you want a torture scenario. You could get the same thing from a bad guy trying to drug her and having the kidnapping fail when she fights him off, clumsy but effective nonetheless.

 And she could still come out of something like that traumatised.

 Right now I really don’t see this adding anything but torture apologia to your story.

 Handling torture well in a story means accepting that it can’t be the same story without it. It means watching the characters and narrative warp under the weight of it. It means lasting effects, for all the characters and for the world itself.

 I believe you are capable of writing that if you want to, pet. But this ain’t it.

Edit: I’m having trouble seeing the beginning of the answer here. Can anyone let me know if there are formatting issues again please? The first word in the htmal is ‘Alright’ but what I’m seeing on tumblr starts 8 paragraphs in.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[goldheartedsky]

I told myself I wasn’t going to make a post like this—that I wasn’t going to stoop to the level of making call-out posts—but I really can’t stay silent after what has happened in the last day or so.

The TOG fandom has a serious issue with excusing antisemitism and allowing people who have painfully hurt marginalized groups to continue to ignore, dismiss, and refuse to acknowledge their limits of intersectionality in regards to social justice. I have seen it myself, been on the receiving end of it, and have talked to other Jews in this fandom about what’s been going on and it needs to start being addressed.

Now, I’m not going to name names or tag people (mainly because I have been blocked by almost all of them for this very issue) but if you message me I will gladly tell you the users involved in this. Also, if you have doubts of any of this’s validity and would like screenshots, feel free to reach out to me here or via Discord and I will share them.

A lot of this started when a member of the All&More server had brought up the scientific and medical “discoveries” during the torture and medical experimentation that took place during the Third Reich and how a lot of the origin of it isn’t taught. LR made a comment saying that “we are three-dimensional creatures who are stuck moving forward in time and can’t go back” and added that not using the research won’t make past horrors not happen. When the original user added that there has been a movement in medicine for removing Nazi scientists names off discoveries and that progress was slow moving, she deflected the conversation onto herself, saying “Not using research won’t make my family not harmed by the Japanese” and then immediately pivoted into admitting that, from what she understood, there weren’t any particularly valid scientific discoveries made by them. She then said, in regards to said Nazi atrocities, “Take it, learn about it, put it in context, and then own it and transform it.”

A Jewish member of A&M voiced their discomfort about possibly taking medicine that was a direct result of the murder of their grandparents and other relatives, to which LR said, “Still stuck in the 3rd dimension, still moving forward in time.” I brought up the fact that medicine was built on antisemitism and racism and that starting over would be better than a lot of the procedures we have now. There is a longstanding issue in medicine of disregarding black pain and so much of what we have now is created by eugenicists—including Nazi scientists. There is still a lot of Jewish trauma due to medical experimentation and that is oftentimes dismissed.

LR then made a flippant comment about “Does this count as Godwin’s Law?”—which is about how all internet discussions lead to someone being compared to Nazis/Hitler. When called out on the inappropriateness of the comment, she did not respond and was backed up by one of the mods of the server. There was no apology made nor an acknowledgment about the casual antisemitism of the comments she made and the dismissal of Jewish trauma/pain.

Now, fast forward a couple months when I was contacted by a third party who had not been in the server at the time but had joined and heard about what LR had said there. H said they were friends with LR and had concerns about antisemitism and would like my perspective. I explained what had happened and offered screenshots if they would like them, which they did. They thanked me and apologized that it got to a point that I felt unsafe in the server and had to leave, which I appreciated.

A couple weeks later they reached out to me again and offered to broker a conversation between LR and myself because the situation wasn’t sitting well with them. I was skeptical (because I had been blocked at that point) and didn’t have a lot of hope that this conversation would actually take place but I felt a responsibility to try and be the bigger person and deal with what had been said head on, so I agreed to sit down and have a discussion with her as long as there was a third party in the chat as well—given our history.

After a couple weeks of back and forth with H and hearing that LR had said that she would “think about it”, she finally agreed. I was asked for a time and date and I gave my availability and was told she would be asked for the same. A couple days later, I was suddenly told LR would only be comfortable with this conversation if H acted as a “literal go-between” with us copy-pasting our responses in their DMs so we can “sit with the message and everyone can get to them when they can” rather than it being a session with an actual back and forth and was asked if I was okay with that. I honestly said no, because this was supposed to be a situation where she and I sat down and discussed what she said in the server, not a back and forth message relay where the conversation got dragged out for days or weeks or however long it was going to take. I said if she was serious about meeting me halfway on this, she needed to be able to sit down and actually talk.

H copy-pasted my response to LR and came back that she had backed out of the conversation, which part of me had expected from the beginning—even though all I wanted from this sit down was for her to understand how hurtful the antisemitic comments were and an apology.

These comments that were made in the server are not a secret. It’s pretty well known what was said and again, these were all on record, not privately made in some DM. She has still not owned up to the comments she said, nor has she ever apologized for them. She has ignored message after message about them and blocked more people than I can count. Many of the people defending her when the discourse begins have also been messaged about the comments she’s said and also either block people or ignore the messages completely and refuse to acknowledge them.

Now, this being said, in the most recent conversation about fandom racism, someone brought up the post that was made reducing users on ao3 to faceless, nameless numbers without saying who they were, what they had done, and how they were specifically contributing to the problem of racism in this fandom. They made the comparison of other situations like HR looking at pay stats to see how to fire and included “Nazis, capitalists, and colonizers.”

This is not an invalid argument. There have been other Jews in the fandom who specifically voiced feeling uncomfortable for the exact same reason. However, another person, LT, decided to specifically make a post calling the OP out and drag them for having the audacity to liken it to the Shoah (which, mind you, this person is not Jewish nor did they decide to capitalize Shoah or the Holocaust as they should have). She received a reply saying, “you’re offended by antisemitism? Here’s LR’s (someone LT has agreed with multiple times over racism in fandom) track record of antisemitic comments” which outlined everything I delved into previously.

LT said that they were “unaware of this incident until a couple days ago” but agreed that it was an upsetting display of casual dismissal of Jewish pain and hoped that LR had apologized. She was then called out for being aware of it and still continuing to reblog LR’s posts even after knowing about the comments and was linked to my post clarifying that LR had not apologized and refused a discussion about it, to which LT said that she had gotten “quite a different version outlined in the post linked and corroborated by a third party” and “felt uncomfortable” making a value judgement, insinuating that I was not being truthful about my side of the story.

I messaged LT off-anon and said that I was not lying nor over-exaggerating about what had happened in the server or about the following discussion about trying to broker a conversation with LR, and was immediately blocked by her. I am also not the only Jew who has sent her messages about this topic, only to have their messages ignored.

Now, am I surprised that I was immediately blocked after voicing my issues with what LT had said in that post? No.

She has a history of making antisemitic comments, most of which happened during the brunt of the Israel/Palestine discussion happening, which included statements such as “You cannot be considered indigenous if you hold a position of power”, that, despite having been displaced for 2,000 years, the Jewish diaspora was “integrated” into their respective communities (a wholly untrue statement), as well as linked to and promoted a website with extremely antisemitic articles including one about “Spartan Jews” and how Israeli Jews are violent to “send messages to their deprived self-esteem” that they won’t be victims again. Half of the comments on the site’s front page included such hits as “Death to all Jews” and “Wow, I had no idea this was happening—I guess it is true that Jews control the world and the mass media.” This website was repeated in multiple posts as “unbiased” and “a good resource” for other people to truly know what was going on.

Jewish dissent on the content of some posts and that website went unacknowledged and dismissed.

Being that LT is a relatively big user in the TOG fandom, her posts got circulated frequently. Seeing things like that touted as unbiased was extremely triggering for me and multiple Jews in this fandom that I’ve spoken to.

Now, the reason I made this post in particular was because I have seen a lot of echoing of the sentiment: “no matter how much you disagree with their sentiment, aligning yourself with racists is...well aligning yourself with racists.”

This statement NEEDS to become intersectional. If we are criticizing the work of people because of who they hold company with, why does that end at racism? If we are going to have a discussion about racism in this fandom, why are we letting it come from people who have openly said antisemitic things, people who have stood by them and supported them in silence, and people who have silenced Jewish voices speaking up about this issue.

These are not separate issues. This is a really good post regarding the white washing of Jews in social justice discussion and it comes full circle into the medical experimentation discussion. Jews were not seen as white during the Holocaust. The Nazis were trying to cleanse the Aryan race because they did not view Jews as white. They experimented on them because they did not view them as white and, thus, disposable.

Every Jewish diasporic community is still vulnerable. Even though the US has half the world’s Jews, over 50% of the religiously based hate crimes are consistently anti-Jewish even though Jews make up 2% of the population. Chinese Jews are still holding their holiday celebrations in secret due to government crackdowns. The attempted genocide of Beta Israel was less than 50 years ago. Across the Middle East and North Africa, Jewish communities are barely hanging on after centuries of attempted destruction. These are not just Jewish issues but racial issues as well because when people make the sweeping generalization of “Jew” and they only mean white-passing Ashkenazi Jews, it erases so much of our community.

I absolutely agree that this fandom needs to have a discussion about race and portrayal in fic and what we can do better moving forward—and I want to see that done—but we also need to acknowledge what so many people starting this discussion have said and the marginalized groups they have hurt along the way. I see these posts come across my dashboard and know exactly who they're coming from and what they think of people like me. If we are going to say, “No matter how much you disagree with their sentiment, aligning yourself with racists is aligning yourself with racists,” then we NEED to be saying, “If you are aligning yourself with antisemites, you’re aligning yourself with antisemites.”

We all need to move forward. But that means moving forward together. Jews included.

[for-a-longlongtime]

@joelscruff I really agree with you - however, I do feel like making a side note (or let’s say weighing in with my two cents, if you don’t mind) because while I’m not really active in other fandoms, it goes beyond the judgement in PP fandom.

I’m obviously NOT excusing it - it’s actually completely unacceptable how fic writers have been treated, but I think it may be useful to be aware/unpack why and how these things are happening — also because I really want to emphasize to everybody who gets hate that IT IS NOT PERSONAL. Yes, the attacks are definitely personal, but please do not let them get to you because this isn’t about you personally as a writer failing or coming up short or whatever.

as OP said, listing warnings is a courtesy- it’s a heads up about things that may require a warning. But tagging your fic doesn’t mean ‘list every action that happens in here’. And if you’re a reader and read something you don’t like, either in the warnings or in the actual text? Just close the page. Block the author, if you feel like you want to do that. But don’t go off on them.

Lack of (new) media literacy:

This is such a big thing. I don’t want to go all in-depth and nerd out, although I’d definitely encourage folks to read up a little on what it is because it’s interesting. But basically it can be summed up by “critically assessing information” that a lot of people never learned/were able to master, and that definitely also applies to young people who are considered to be ‘digital natives’ because they grew up with all the online access etc. But it’s not about technical skills; it’s about social skills and cultural competence, and so many people lack that. You see this around here manifested as people reacting in such fucked up ways re: fanfic, but other variations of that lack of media literacy is for example how people fall for conspiracy theories - or are not being able to believe/accept science.

I’m an older millennial, and while I don’t want to claim that we necessarily were taught media literacy as we came of age and got online as teenagers in say the 90s/early 2000s, I think I can generalize a little by saying that we have always been very much aware of different forms of media (and storytelling) and often the creators behind it. As a matter of fact, ‘modern fanfiction’ was started by Gen X and it didn’t even happen online: it basically happened with Star Trek in the sixties and seventies, as fans wrote fic and made zines (magazines) by hand and through copying pages literally with xerox machines. Compare that to teens in this day and age — for a lot of them everything is kind of presented as ‘content’.

Puritanism, ‘culture wars’ and FOSTA-SESTA

I’m really gonna try to keep this short because oh my god, there’s so much to say about all of this. Let me refer to this Vox article (disclaimer: I don’t necessarily agree with all of it, but it does a pretty good job of addressing a lot of things):

The lack of (proper) sex ed and the insistence on preaching abstinence in schools has to do with so many things. Similarly, online activism (or ‘performative activism’) has given a major vocabulary to folks which makes them ‘call things out’ but then misses the boat because they’re not fully able to fully contextualize it.

FOSTA-SESTA is NOT a child protection act — it has everything to do with criminalizing sex work, and it’s one of the really bad things done by the Tr*mp administration. It has made things like ‘moral panic’ and anti-sex attitudes so much worse, including ‘sex negative feminists’ (which isn’t the same as anti-porn feminists, btw). But it has really impacted the way that public discourse takes place regarding a lot of subjects that have to do with sex. You know how so many states have started blocking sites like Pornhub etc? A lot of that goes all the way back to things like FOSTA-SESTA. And a lot of that seems to be bleeding into fandom discourses as well.

Anyway. This became longer than intended, and maybe it’s all a little too much (it certainly isn’t as graceful or complete as it could be, but I don’t wanna lecture anyway). Just really felt like adding this as a foot note to your truly excellent post @joelscruff.

It really pains me to see how writers are being treated, how many folks have been leaving, and I’m not gonna be as naïeve as to believe that I’m gonna convince anyone to not send shit to people. I just hope that maybe it’ll help people understand a little more about what’s behind a lot of that shit - not to be more understanding of it, but hopefully to make it a little easier to disregard those messages.

To every PP writer and reader out there: I love you, and let’s please just not fuckin forget that we’re here to have fun and write horny shit and happily share it with each other. If something isn’t your thing, or if you dislike a certain kink or trope; just skip it, be it as a reader or a writer. Different strokes for different folks. But let’s not be assholes about it.

hey just fyi write whatever the fuck you want because people will always have an issue regardless of whether you did every single thing possible that you thought was right and correct. no matter what, there will ALWAYS be someone who thinks you're doing something wrong and it's fucking exhausting. just write what you want and how you want and only warn for what you think you should warn for i'm so serious. it's gotten to a point now where you can list every single possible warning ever and someone will still get mad at you. it's actually insufferable to be in this fandom sometimes. who would've thought the pedro pascal fandom would be the most morally righteous & judgmental fandom to ever exist.

[captaincoffeegirl515]

What the hell was that last act???

So first of all I want to say that I did enjoy most of the movie. It was okay. The sex scenes didn’t do anything for me though since I’m just not interested in sex at all. But while I more-or-less liked the movie, I felt that the big plot twists in the last act and the ending were badly done because… how the fuck did ANY of them manage to get away with ANY OF THAT??? Like from a legal standpoint it’s just ???

This got so much longer than I anticipated, so the rest is under the read more. And yes, there are so many spoilers. So if you haven't seen The Voyeurs yet and don't want spoilers, please avoid this.

Seb and Julia literally confess to selling their old apartment in order to spy on the people who live there and use them for their art show. Like, yes, they put that clause in the Terms of Agreement for the apartment (which literally no one ever reads) but there is still the matter of Informed Consent. Informed Consent is usually in the form of a contract Pippa and Thomas both need to read and sign, or via verbal questions and answers which is filmed so Seb and Julia would have physical proof of an agreement. This is basically telling them what footage was taken, how it will be used, and if Seb and Julia have permission to share the footage publicly. In Thomas’ case, since he’s dead, his next-of-kin will be asked. Only then are Seb and Julia legally allowed to publicly share and showcase the Pippa and Thomas’ pictures. And Seb is a professional photographer! He should know that!

Have you ever seen prank shows? Like even the ones on YouTube. Have you noticed at the end of some videos, there would be a part where the filmers would approach the person who was pranked and ask if they could use their footage in the video. That’s Informed Consent. They need to ask permission to use a person’s footage in a video or if they need to blur out the person’s face for privacy. Seb and Julia even showed a picture of a dead man for chrissakes! Remember the outcry when that YouTuber posted a video of a suicide victim in Japan???

The Japanese interviewer was right to disapprove of their methods because even though there was a clause in the Terms of Agreement, the prank (because isn’t that what that whole show they did was?) or experiment still resulted with someone killing themself (yes I know it was murder, but the world doesn't know it). They can possibly still be held liable for causing Thomas to kill himself the same way a prankster can be held liable if their victim dies from a prank because of this thing in Law called the Eggshell Rule or Eggshell Plaintiff.

What this means is that a defendant is liable for any injuries caused by the defendant’s actions, regardless of how unforeseeable or uncommon the plaintiff’s reactions to the defendant’s actions are. So for example, there is a scary prank where the prankster jumps out of the bushes and terrifies people. One of them turns out to have a heart condition, suffers a heart attack, and dies. Regardless of the victim’s frailty, the prankster can be held liable for exacerbating the condition and causing the victim’s death. Likewise in the movie, they can say that Seb and Julia, by orchestrating the whole thing and making Thomas see his girlfriend cheating on him, could have caused him to become broken-hearted and kill himself. Therefore, Seb and Julia can be liable for Thomas’ death.

And then here’s the kicker! The famous photographer and his wife, a famous model, both suddenly end up blind AFTER their big art show where they displayed Pippa’s scandal. And not by accident. No. This was obviously surgically done. And NOBODY suspected foul play?? Nobody thought about revenge?? Nobody thought it strange how their blindness was clearly done with a surgical/medical precision nor suspected the couple’s subject, Pippa, who they thoroughly humiliated, who also worked as an optometrist technician at a lab that has the machines that could cause that kind of blindness??? And they're both still alive! They can easily tell the police who did it!

It should have been way too easy for the police to know that it was foul play. Blood tests can tell that Seb and Julia had been drugged. How they were blinded can be traced to the optometry lab. Pippa would be the easiest main suspect due to her connection to them with revenge as the main motivation after they humiliated her in that art show.

And yes, I agree that what Seb and Julia did was wrong. They used Pippa and Thomas, and then murdered Thomas so they can have some juicy story to tell!

Even so, what happened to Ethical Codes in the medical field? What happened to the Hippocratic Oath? Non-maleficience rule? “Do No Harm”? Pippa should have been slammed with, idk, medical malpractice or something, after using her knowledge of the LASIK machine and using it to permanently blind people (which is an actual fear real people have about LASIK surgery), have her license revoked, be fired from her job, and possibly serve jail time. Why is she walking free all willy-nilly and still being allowed to continue stalking Seb and Julia?

I’ll admit though that maybe I’m being more harsh towards Pippa because I myself used to be a Board Certified medical professional (my license expired last year because I hadn't been working in that field for a while) and because of that, her actions angered and horrified me more.

Normally, we as an audience are made to root for the main character or hero, but I found it difficult to do so because Pippa herself is a terrible person. She's a pervert and a creep. She was obsessed with the lives of other people, stalked them, and even went as far as committing crimes in order to fuel her obsession - trespassing, breaking and entering, destruction of private property.

And my goodness this actually makes me think of a few Ben Hardy stans who are like this. Well, idk if going to Ben's school so that she can get a copy of a school film he was in can be considered a crime, but it's still fucking creepy.

Pippa’s got that Savior Complex where she tries to rescue this poor neglected wife from her horrible cheating husband (the same one she herself wants to fuck because she’s obsessed with him). And then when it all goes south, she immediately turns around and blames THOMAS of all people because “he started it”. Like, so what if he did?? He still had enough maturity to realize when they were taking it too far, and decided to stop with the stalking. He told her to stop multiple times but she was too blinded by her obsession and lust for a man that she doesn’t even know.

AND THEN!! She stalked a grieving husband (I know we know that was a lie but Pippa didn't know that) and proceeded to cheat on her boyfriend with said grieving husband. And frankly, I don’t understand why she’s so vengeful about Thomas’ death considering how easily she forgot him so that she could cheat on him. Like. Who knows, maybe he still would’ve killed himself regardless of the poisoned drink because the last thing he saw was his girlfriend cheating on him with the man she’d been obsessed with for the past idk how long. Even in the scene after Thomas died, there was a momentary grief where Pippa was all “it’s my fault Thomas died” but it was all too brief and immediately after she went back to obsessing and asking about Seb. And they want me to believe that she’d want to avenge Thomas’ death? No. I think she blinded Seb and Julia because she was angry at being called out for her obsession. For being told that she was wrong to go that far. It wasn’t about her “love” for Thomas. It was about how humiliated she was about being wrong.

Can you believe that Pippa gave this whole speech with the fable about being content with what you have and not to try to be greedy by wanting more and then she just immediately DOES THE OPPOSITE OF THE MORAL by cheating on her boyfriend because she wanted more aka Seb???

The more that I think about it, I feel like the true villain of the movie is Pippa herself. Her obsession with Seb is what started the whole thing. If she had been able to keep a healthy distance, none of that would’ve happened to begin with. There would be no fights over how far things were going. Seb would have no scandal to tell. She worsened Thomas’ insecurities of not being enough for her, making him go to great lengths just to try to please her. Poor Thomas. He truly deserved better.

Pippa also has awful friends. Instead of stamping down the creepy behavior, they’re giving tips on how to listen in on other people’s private conversations! And then later try to excuse her cheating on Thomas. And then help with her obsession AGAIN.

Acting-wise, I felt that Natasha, Ben, and Justice were incredible and I loved them. I love how conflicted Ben played Seb and how you can see it in his eyes. My favorite scene was the one where Seb and Julia had that confrontation over the wine where Seb asks if she ever felt guilty and Julia just stares right back and stares him down. Natasha was brilliant as Julie pretending to be all friendly and vulnerable with Pippa. Justice was very emotional and I love the scenes where he was horrified at how far Pippa was taking everything. For me, Sydney was the weakest one at acting. While there were some okay parts, her face can be really stiff at some points, like during the sex scenes.

Overall, I thought the movie to be quite thought-provoking especially in this day and age where people can find the most intimate details of another person’s life so easily, be that through Carrd, Instagram stories, Facebook feeds, and other social media sites. It makes you think about parasocial relationships, how people can be so obsessed about people that they’ve never even met, and how that obsession can easily grow into something dangerous that can ruin lives. Good movie, terrible last act. Too much sex for my taste, but then it wouldn’t be called an erotic movie.

Outside of the movie, I really love the chemistry between the four of them. I love watching their interviews and seeing how they interact with each other.

Last but not the least, I know this may be random but my brain likes to zoom in on the weirdest things. How on earth did Pippa manage to get Seb on top of that operating table?? No offense but Pippa is fucking tiny. Seb’s like twice her size and mostly muscle AND unconscious. Like ??? Sorry but that threw me off so much it’s ridiculous.

[monkberries]

So here goes: Personally I find Paul to be hot with a beard. But it annoys me because there’s always some Paul stan who’s like “he was super depressed during that time you know” anytime someone says how hot he looks with a beard. Like first of all, I don’t think we should go around diagnosing people and assuming how he felt 24/7 just based on a couple of quotes when we don’t know him, and second of all I was just saying he looks good. Also idk why Paul stans want to pretend like Paul is STILL a victim when he’s definitely not. He’s a super successful billionaire musician. He’s fine.

I'm going to assume all four of these were from the same anon; I received another along these same lines that seems to be from someone else:

OKAY. There's a lot here.

As I've said before, I think the concept you are both talking about - that Paul is the favourite, that people will attack you if you criticize him, that people are vilifying John more now - is true, but is also a matter of perspective. I think sometimes we perceive the whole fandom as just the people we're surrounded by; that can be true in smaller fandoms, like for obscure shows or whatever, but for the Beatles, the fandom is so much bigger and more spread out across generations, social media platforms, and works of literature than almost any other fandom. There are literally thousands upon thousands of books either about or tangentially about the Beatles; there are pockets on every platform from tumblr to twitter to podcasts to instagram to facebook etc., and it branches off even more niche within those to like, facebook groups specifically for podcasts about the Beatles, or discord servers, or livejournal threads, or music forums, or fics on ao3. There are fansites with thoughtful speculative articles like heydullblog and blogs specifically reviewing Beatle books like beatlebioreview and sites cataloging every bit of minutiae like the Beatles Bible, all with their own flavor of comment sections. And not only that, the Beatles fandom spans generations and cultures in a way that almost nothing else ever has or ever will.

And this is not even going into the shifting narratives that have been in play over the years surrounding Paul specifically, and the huge, huge difference between the perceptions of him by the authors and the Counterculture People, the perceptions of him by regular ass Wings fans who have only idly flipped through Rolling Stone while waiting in line at the local bodega, and the perceptions of him by everyone in between, who may or may not have been unconsciously influenced by the wider narratives about him.

All that is to make the case that the fandom that you are experiencing on tumblr/twitter is an extremely small fraction of The Fandom at large. For every Paul stan on twitter that yells at people for not believing that Paul literally invented music, there is a John stan in a facebook group going on about John's supposedly tireless peace efforts. For every nuanced, well sourced post on amoralto's blog, there is someone in the Beatles Bible comment section saying that John and Paul hated each other. For every fan who's read the major Beatles bios with a critical eye towards bias, there are plenty more fans who just absorbed them as straight fact. This is not to say that your experiences are not real or valid! They absolutely are! What I am saying is that there are infinite permutations of infinite Beatles fandoms out there, and the people you see who insist that Paul is still treated worse than John, I would imagine, are occupying various permutations of the fandom where that is more true, alongside the one they share with you. It's not for me to say whether the Paul or John people have the upper hand on the whole - truly, I don't think anyone has enough perspective on the whole fandom to make any judgment on that, no matter what general Grand Pronouncements anyone may make about The Fandom.

As I've said before, any overly defensive "stan" behavior, whether it's for John or Paul or George or anyone, is exhausting to me, so I definitely understand where you're coming from re: him being supposedly underrated. He is literally one of the most successful musicians of all time; as of the beginning of this year, he is worth 1.2 billion dollars; and, thanks to his own efforts and the efforts of quite a few fans and writers out there over the decades, he now enjoys an incredibly positive "granddude" reputation. There are ways in which it can be exasperating to read yet another indignant refutation of music reviews for RAM that came out fifty years ago, when his last three albums have hit the top 3 in the charts in both the US and the UK and have gotten great reviews. I have seen people wonder, honestly wonder, how much more money Paul could have made, how much more respected he could have been, if the rock press had been inclined to give RAM good reviews. When I see that, it does start to feel like fans of Paul, at least the defensive ones in the fandom permutations I occupy, are arguing with the author photo of Philip Norman in the book jacket for Shout!. It's not that I think those arguments and discussions are not worth having; I do think they're worth having because I believe that the only way we can continue to grow is if we grapple with the mistakes made in the past. But there is a strange kind of disconnect that happens when you read about someone indignantly defending Wild Life as though the members of Wings are currently, actively having eggs and rotten fruit thrown at them, and then you remember that Paul is currently, and has been for many years now, one of the richest men in the entire world.

As for the misogyny thing, I'll copy and paste a quote from Erin Weber which may explain a little better than I can:

"Where it starts entering into serious discussion for me is when you have professional grown men (Schaffner would be the most glaring example of this, but not the only one) repeatedly using the term “pretty” or “pretty-faced” to refer to another grown man. (Norman does the same). Schaffner doesn’t only do that once or twice, he uses one of those exact words at least fifteen times in his references to McCartney. “Pretty-boy” is also a term that at least one journalist has used to describe Paul, and that’s not a stealth insult: that’s an overt one. (My husband, who hates the Yankees, routinely used the term “pretty-boy” to insult Alex Rodriguez. And it wasn’t meant as a compliment).

My reaction to this is based both on studies that I’m aware of (I’d have to hunt them up, but I’ve seen them referenced before) which argue that the use of feminized language can be a method of stealth insult/diminishment when used by men to describe other men, and my own personal experience. It is difficult to see a situation where a grown man using the term “pretty” or any variation of the word “pretty” to describe another grown man means it as a compliment. Even if its purely meant as a descriptive term, it is a descriptive term that is weighted with significant meaning and is feminizing. And given the rock press’s obsession with masculinity and its insistence, as noted in other studies, of using masculine terms to portray a song as good and feminizing terms to describe them as weak or inferior, I don’t think its a coincidence that a rock press that knew well the power of masculine and feminine language commonly used feminized language, particularly in the 1970s and 80s, to describe McCartney."

I personally see this more as pseudo-homophobic than pseudo-misogynistic (like, when I see a man called "pretty" by another man in an insulting way, I immediately think "oh, that author wanted to say a gay slur but he's too Professional"), but the two things can get muddled together, I suppose.

Anyway, actionable items:

Diversify Your Fan Experience. More perspectives can really help gain a fuller understanding of not just the fandom but the Beatles themselves. Don't be afraid to be wrong, and don't be afraid to be right; always be open to learning new things and hearing new insights.

If All Else Fails, Block 'Em.

[gamebunny-advance]

Hm...

Thinking about that time someone literally copied one of gijinka designs for social clout, then just flat out denied it when I called them out.

At the time, I had buckled under the belief that “I’m probably being paranoid. There’s so few notes on this thing, and it’s so old, there’s probably no way they would have seen it.” and I had deleted the call-out. 

Honestly, I still get really aggravated when I feel like someone is “stealing” from me (and it happens a little more than you’d probably think), but I just don’t feel justified in calling anyone out because it’s mostly with fanart, and neither of us are profiting from it, so neither of us have anything to lose or gain from it except a bigger number next to a little heart icon.

I guess what upsets me about it is them getting recognition for something that isn’t theirs. I put in the work to make the thing, but they get to knock it off and get even more recognition from it? That’s just unfair. But in a way, all fanart is like that, right? It just seems more okay to do it when it’s a character from a company or something, because they’re not really being *hurt* by fanworks but hurts when fanartists copy other fanartists because we occupy the same space and thus are in competition with each other.

Tangent aside, my feelings basically boil down to: “Am I really gonna start drama with someone for saying they stole the design of a character neither of us own”? At the time, I’d decided, “no,” so I just kinda let it go. There really wasn’t anything for either of us to lose or gain by pushing it further.

But I recently saw them getting called out for other shit, so I got reminded of that incident.

I 99% believe that they stole the design from me, but because they made their design more “woke” and maybe because I didn’t watermark my original one, that somehow made it “okay” for them to do.

I don’t really wanna start shit now because it’s been over 2 years since it happened, but I would just feel a little better if the “proof” was out there. I’m not gonna repost their art here, but if you go to my main blog, @gamebunny-color-sp​ and search “kirby character design”, I’m sure you’ll find what I’m talking about if you’re really that invested in this tale of mine.

That said, I am going to talk about the differences between the two like you’ve seen theirs already.

Now, I’ll concede that puffy sleeves/shorts is a kind of obvious thing to do for a Kirby gijinka. He’s a round ball made of smaller balls, and those very easily translate into “puffy” features. And big ol’rubber boots is another easy way to translate his feet. I’m not gonna be mad at every Kirby gijinka that has puffy sleeves and boots.

But why the cape? No Kirby forms really wear a cape unless you wanna count Meta Knight, but he wears his very differently. My reasoning was that, besides the hat, I wanted him to have something that would show his copy ability. It’s actually a carry-over from an even earlier version of the design I’d made where I actually played with that idea.

But you know, a cape still isn’t an *uncommon* design choice. It’s basically a staple of the hero archetype, so whatever. A cape doesn’t necessarily mean that they got the idea from me.

But what gets me, is the yellow stripe motif. I don’t think there’s *ANYWHERE* that Kirby is associated with yellow stripes, or stripes at all for that matter, and yet (un)coincidentally, both of our designs have them.

When I first started making gijinkas, I really just did whatever I wanted without too much concern for if it actually fit (arguably, I still do that *cough*bigtittyrob*cough*). You can see that in this old timeline I had made, chronicling my iterations of this design.

Why was my first thought to give him blue accents? Who knows. But it’s also where the yellow stripe on his cape started and had carried over to each new design, just because I liked it and thought that it still went with the yellow star motif that I’d added. So for me, it was just an evolution of my bad design choices getting better.

But, if you didn’t already start with the stripe motif, why would your Kirby have stripes at all? And it’s not like stripes are uncommon. I realize that. But there’s just no logical progression to it unless you just happen to think in the same stupid ways that I do/did. If you wanted to accent the cape, wouldn’t you just add it like a border, like I did with my first 2 designs? Or add more star motifs to it? Why the stripes? And why add 2 except to make it seem more different than mine? There’s other little things, but I think my point is clear: there were just too many “coincidences” for this to not have been a case of plagiarism.

Like I mentioned earlier, I’m coming out with all this because the person in question got called out on a pretty vicious forum site, so they’re probably dealing with a lot right now. They’ve basically deleted/private all of their social media accounts, so whatever ‘clout’ they’ve gained from my design, and possibly others’, just up and disappeared, but I don’t feel any catharsis in that because that really has nothing to do with what happened to me. And you know, the person who did it is younger than me (I’m 23), and this happened literal years ago. They probably just didn’t know any better at the time and were still in the mindset of “stealing is fine if I add positive representation” like a lot of kids still have these days.

I don’t really wish ill will on anyone that does me wrong. I just want things to be set right, but given how long it’s been since the incident, I’m probably never gonna hear, “Yes, I stole your design. I’m sorry.” from them. My catharsis is in now standing my ground and saying, “Yes, my design was stolen, this is why I think so, and even if I’m the only one who cares, at least it’s out there.”

I gave in back then because I didn’t have much confidence in myself. I thought I was wrong because I know I can get over-emotional and that I was too small to be seen by anyone and thus couldn’t be stolen from. But I feel like I know my worth a little more now, and I’m not going to let this happen again if I see it. At the very least I’ll blog about it vaguely like I’ve done today to let off steam.

[suzena]

I should probably give my two cents on this since this is my field and all that.

Listen, first off, I get that everyone is concerned about their fic being stolen since it's a subject so close to their heart, but that is not what is happening here.

What I need you to understand is that no one went to AO3 to specifically steal your fanfic. What happened here is that people wanted to train some text generating model (in this case, GPT-3) on text data and they took some books (about 62 billion words of them) and discovered that, damn, that's not enough. (Yeah, I know, models these days eat billions for breakfast.)

Then they glanced to the side and saw the internet just kinda... sitting there. So hey, why not just take a large chunk of that to train on? In this way they collected 500 billion words (that's including that book data).

(Do note that the internet data is given less weight than the "official" book data, meaning it's less important to the calculation that generates the output.)

But now the issue is that the internet didn't just spawn into existence, other people put that data on there. And some part of that data will indeed be fandom content. So when you give the model a prompt like "omegaverse", this will highly correlate with fandom circles (since, let's be honest, no one else is talking about omegaverse) and generate something that looks suspiciously like fanfic.

Does that mean AO3 data is used for training? Maybe. Probably? It's a large place for fandom these days. But also social media, forums, other fanfiction sites or literally any other fandom space that can be accessed freely will be included.

Now, where it gets finicky is that the model is not copying your fic. That would be clear copyright infringement. There are a few points that make this case a little less clear.

It's not copying your data, but instead using your data to finetune some numbers and parameters of the model.

It's not personal data of you AKA data about you.

A lot of law around technology talks about "upholding public interest" AKA a less biased, more inclusive system that can use more diverse data is judged to be more important than your want to not have your data used, especially in these cases of training AI.

So, there is a limited amount of rights that you have in this case, but the influence of your data specifically in the final product is also minimal. (Which is unfortunately also why writing "Muskrat sucks" fic won't work, even if you write 100k of it, it's nothing compared to that 500 billion and will ultimately not make a difference.)

If you're worried that you're about to be outdone by a computer, don't fret, I'm proud to announce that while these models look really impressive within their limited playground, they have absolutely no clue what they're doing. Or at least, they have no memory of what they're doing, causing stories written by them to be coherent in short paragraphs, but absolute nonsense in the context of a longer text. (Which is also why selling AI generated stories won't lift off for a while. My only hope is that we have true transparency about what is AI generated when we do get to the point of AI being able to write stories.)

Finally, AO3 has an excellent team of people who I'm sure will do their utmost to do as much as they can, so if nothing else, have faith in them.

I love it when anons/guests find my works and kudo/leave reviews, but given the new revelation that Elon Musk is using bots to mine AO3 fanfiction for a writing AI without writer's permission, my works are now archive-locked and only available for people with an AO3 account.

[rwhague]

What is Self-Publishing??

Do you want to become a published author? Do you have a manuscript on your desk just begging to be sent in to a publishing house? In this post—part one of a three part series describing the different routes to publishing, we are going to talk about Self-Publishing. What it is—what it’s NOT—and what it costs.

First off, let’s start with what self-publishing is not. Self-publishing is not something you do when you can’t find anyone to traditionally publish your story. If you are having problems finding someone to publish your story, first consider why this is? Is you story ready to be published? Does it need further editing? Input from other authors? Because the self-publishing market it tough—perhaps even tougher than the traditional publishing route. Every falls on the self-publishing author and their often small pockets. Marketing, cover design, copy edits—so if your product is not ready to be published or could see some more revisions, don’t try to rush the process. Take the time to really sit and look at your Manuscript to make sure it is all that it could be.

So if self-publishing is not really a second alternative to traditional publishing, then why do people do it? Easy answer: Money. With traditional publishing, an author will see most of the revenue of their sales going to other places. Often traditional publishers will not even look at a manuscript unless it is submitted by a literary agent. A literary agent works on commission—usually around 15% of the author’s product goes to them. Then there is the publishing house’s cut. Since the publisher is paying the overhead fee of actually publishing the book, the bigger houses often take upwards of 90% of the total book sales. Now this might not be true for all publishing houses—some indie publishing houses have higher percentages going to the author, but often the do not have advances paid to the author upon signing—so basically no money upfront but the potential for money later. I’ll talk more about traditional publisher in a later post, so if you like this blog, be sure to follow me. Also be sure to like and comment about more content you’d like to see.  

So if a self-publishing author is able to take home almost 100% of their sales after publication, why doesn’t everyone go this route? Once again, the answer is money. All of those costs mentioned before that the traditional publishing house was paying for—well that now falls onto the author. So that’s things like cover design, editing, formatting, distribution, marketing—all of those things cost money and now it’s the author footing the entire bill.

So how much does it actually cost to self-publish a book? Unfortunately like most things in life, that depends. Does the author hire a publicity company to promote the book? Do they hire the best illustrator in the business to create the cover for their novel? How long is this stinking book? The more pages, the more it’s going to cost to print the book. Really, a person could pay as little or as much as they wanted on self-publishing a novel. In the end, however, the book may or may not sell.

There are so many options to go with in self-publishing—so many things to spend that hard earned cash on, but what are the most important things to actually fork over the cash on?

First off: Cover. Every heard the phrase: Never judge a book by it’s cover? Well, in the real world, that is the FIRST thing every reader does. If you can’t get your reader to pick up that first copy, then it doesn’t matter how fantastic the inside is. So don’t skimp on that cover. That being said—don’t always go for the most expensive either. Even if you get a world-renowned cover artist, that generally won’t matter to your readers unless they’re looking at the acknowledgement pages of all their favorite books. Instead, go for good quality rather than high price tags.

Another thing you don’t need to skimp on is the editing fees. The last thing you want your readers to find is a typo on the first page! Some reader will literally chuck the book across the room. There is nothing more unprofessional than this. And don’t think this is something you can do yourself. There would be nothing worse than to spend hours formatting your book so the pages line up perfectly on Microsoft Word to then find them helter-skelter in the margins of your book. You’re an author—a creator of worlds and lives. Let someone who’s a professional in margins handle the other part.

So those are the two major things to spend your money on when self-publishing. I hope this has helped—wait, what? What about advertising you say?

While it is true you can spend money on advertisements, I would not recommend putting all of your money in this. Think about how you view ads. Do you scroll past them or hit skip? If you have that intriguing copy, that’s great, but most of the best marketing tactics can be completed for free. And that’s through social media. Having a pinterest, a Twitter, a blog, these are things you can do for free. Now one marketing thing you can do—and I hope that you will do this—is get an actual website and a newsletter up. Keep in mind that any website or blog on another site like Tumblr or Reddit is not yours. It is owned by another company and you can be dumped at any time. So it’s important to have your own website and newsletter to keep in touch with your fans.

Next week, I’m going to be posting an article about Traditional Publishing then a subsequent post about Vanity Publishing—both of which are routes that I have personal experience in.

[badfauxmance]

Follow Up on an Earlier Ask

Anon 1:  I hope your team sees that this is following their "professional", which she and her team are concerned about, but when people openly call racist on "professional" platforms, and she is associated with him, that is not a good thing. // His team saw it and it's not doing anything. He was canceled and his team saw and did nothing, cb continued as if nothing happened and taking advantage of the situation and him being dragged out being called a decaoologist; now the same thing he being dragged in the comments and being called a racist and his team see this and does nothing and cb again taking advantage to get fame. He is getting recognition now for the wonder series and he is being news for the tommy and pamb series. One time, racism and the appropriation of cb will end up falling in the mainstream media, and this will be worse than the little camcelamento on twitter and it will not end well.

That’s not entirely true. His team’s response seem to be that they make sure none of the mainstream American/English language entertainment sites talked about him dating Alejandra. There was a brief mention on Entertainment Tonight and Extra TV in the US when the Ibiza yacht pictures came out. Those two shows are two of the bigger entertainment news shows on US TV. After that the only English language media that talk about them are Just Jared and Daily Mail, which are more or less paid articles that have a limited audience. We realized that not long after the Twitter cancelling started happening, all English language mentions are limited to these smaller niche sites.

I think Team Sebastian’s response is to promote the relationship per the contract, but limit it so that it doesn’t do long term damage to Sebastian’s reputation. This is their loophole of getting some attention for Alejandra as they’re supposed to, but most importantly protect Sebastian’s reputation. Just because his fandom doesn’t approve of this situation doesn’t mean the rest of the public gives a damn about it. There are literally people who are only now just realizing he was even “dating” her precisely because his team realized from the Twitter cancelling that if word spread he’s “dating” this problematic nobody from Spain, his career will crash and burn. CAA is probably too desperate and kind of greedy for money to have Sebastian end the contract early.

Anon 2:  I hope your team sees that this is following their "professional", which she and her team are concerned about, but when people openly call racist on "professional" platforms, and she is associated with him, that is not a good thing. // His personal team for CAA doesn't seem to care about him like his team at CAA; the more he signed up for it. Cb is taking advantage of all this because the only thing that interests her is fame, because she is hungry for fame. Cb is vile, rascal, rascal, petty, ignoble, narcissistic and tantrum who thinks that money buys had less dignity and characterizes two things that she doesn't have. I hope that it reaches the big media and that karma does its part.

She’s getting some attention, but her dreams of making a splash in the US is an utter failure. Aside from the fact she’s got a history of racist behavior, there’s literally nothing about her that’s interesting. Her acting is negligible and no one outside of Spain or Italy has seen any of the stuff she’s acted in. Even her social media content isn’t particularly interesting. She’s more or less a carbon copy of every other influencer, which makes her extremely boring and unoriginal. She tries to demonstrate she has a personality of some kind, but all we see is she’s a world traveling party girl who has uninspired taste in food. Goodness knows I’d be bored to death if I had to go eat with her. I’m not exactly a Michelin star chef, but I could come up with better cooking than what this girl apparently does. It’s like she’s trying to be a Spanish Chrissy Teigen or something, but utterly failing at it. It’s hard to take her seriously. At all.

[mel-street]

hi guys!  happy new year and here’s hoping that 2021 is a better year for all of us. during quarantine i did what a lot of you guys did and turned to social media sites and fanfiction. (the amount of fanfiction i’ve read this year is INSANE and we’re not going to talk about it)

my usually nerdy self immersed myself into fandoms and along the way i met some of the most important people in my life now. these people have taken me in, broken me (im dramatic kay deal with it), and been there to huggle me when i cried over random shit. so this is for you guys. these are for all the internet weirdos that my teachers and parents warned me about, but that i ended up being closer to than some of my irl friends. these are for the people who have influenced me and shaped me into the weird fangirl stabby bad boi simp that i am starting into 2021 (im aware that this entire thing makes no sense but just pretend that it does)

@ohh-deary-me RAVEN (ok that was weird to call you, but im not going to name reveal you for a third time so yee)  aksdjflkdsjfd i love you way to much. we first met on a pintrest group chat for some project thingy on wattpad and ended up fighting over tom holland which says something about both of us. you’re so incredibly amazing and im so proud of us for how much we’ve grown and you’re amazing, and a literal copy of me which is scary, but you’re so amazing and beautiful and i love you so fucking much and i’ll never leave you <3

@wildfleur-dreams DOT! you’re my huggable smol bean sister whom i love with all my heart and one day i will meet you and i will hug you and pat you on your smol head even though we’re pretty much the same height oop-. you’ve been there for me ever since i told you to read my my shitty grishaverse fanfiction and commented on it. and i love you so so so much *huggles* <33

@asterani sdfjasf raffe. you’re literally the sweetest human bean in the world. i love talking to you about random shit and thirsting over disney characters. asdkfjsd you’re so amazing and i hope you know that *Huggles* also hehe im glad you like the mandalorian. we need to fangirl together sometime. i love youu.

@doublerainbowsss NOMI!! my bts obsessed older sister by like 6 days. you’re so incredibly talented and funny and amazing and sometimes im immensely concerned for your mental health but that’s only because i love you lmao :) thank you for always being there for me and thank you for making my little sister into a bts stan *serene smile* im not mad about that at all- ily hon

@brekkerstan *waves* hiiii. i love how we bonded over some completely random grishaverse post and then ended up writing some completely crack headcannons. you’re so sweet and im so glad that you messaged me a few months ago. thank you for always being there for me and always fangirling about six of crows with me (except there’s like a huge time difference between us and you’re always messaging me at like 2 in the morning and you need to SLEEP) <33

@sincerely-milli MILLI BBY. i knew you for a while on wattpad, but it wasn’t until we both got tumblrs and both got way to obsessed with vlv that we became close. you're the most amazing beautiful talented human to ever exist and i love freaking out about mechfall with you. ily <3

@nostalgiconism IKKKA. i’ve known you for a while on wp, but i just wanted to tell you that im so grateful for you. you were one of the first people i ever followed and one of my first online friends and you’re literally so sweet and idk what i’d do without you. ily

@illavarasi KIRI!! ok imma be honest i was completely intimidated by you when i first met you, but now i know you as an amazing chaotic bean/clown/hooman and i love you for that. thanks for always being there and always making me laugh. ily

@lochscinders hey cece. im sorry you had to put up with my dramatic ass for so long. thanks for ruining every single disney movie for me in one night while we both wheezed hysterically. that was possibly the most iconic and scarring moments of 2020. thanks for putting up with me thirsting over stabby bad bois and my endless spamming of anakin gifs. love ya <3

@mintyvolt ok this is the most talented human in the world. like seriously volt i don’t understand how you manage to juggle school and other stuff while writing and posting incredible vlv chapters every week. because of you i’ve cried over a certain golden boi’s death, shipped my murder beans to an uncomfortable extent and fallen in love with a murder. (i swear im still writing that melfall fanfic i just happened to forget about it) thanks for being so amazing and creating vlv. you’re going to be famous one day and then i’ll be able to brag that i knew you then. ily

@rosy-drxxmer KIRI. im so glad you’re reading soc lmao. i’ve known you for a while, but thank you for always being there for me and continuously spamming me with six of crows memes and edits. i love freaking out and fangirling over kanej and the grishaverse here’s to another year of fangirling. ily kay? you’re amazing and beautiful and talented and deserve the world.

@sitaarein hi isha yeah idk which blog you use anymore but imma just tag this one. you were friends with some of my closest friends a while ago and then you left wp for a while and i didn’t know what happened to you. we all moved to tumblr and i found you and im so happy we started talking. you’re so amazingly talented and have somehow managed to teach me how to use photopea (which btw is pronounced photo-pe-a) so thanks for that. keep being amazing <3

and lastly @YOU if you’re reading this

thank you to all my followers who followed me for some random fandom and then had to put up with me spamming you with something completely different from what you followed me for. i really appreciate all of you *hugs* i hope your 2021 is amazing.

aksjfksd i l love all of you guys so much. HAPPY NEW YEAR I HOPE YOU HAVE A GOOD YEAR (or at least a year better than this one)

[boreal-sea]

What do you mean by "rate limited"? As far as I'm aware, no mastodon server prevents you from posting many posts in a row.

Mastodon is definitely not "just twitter but better built". I'd say there are 4 main purposes of mastodon (and the rest of the fediverse).

The first purpose is the same purpose as tumblr or twitter etc. It's social media. It's meant for people to find other people, connect with them, and post and share content that matches their interests.

To decentralize social media. This is the big pull of mastodon that makes it very different from twitter, facebook and tumblr. It's also the feature that is most confusing to understand. I'll explain it more below. It also leads into #3 and #4.

To be a place where you can be in control of the rules. Don't want Nazis? You can ban them, or join a server that has strong rules against them.

To get away from commercialized forms of social media so you aren't constantly bombarded by ads, and your data isn't being fed to advertisers, and so you know the platform you are on won't cave to advertisers and do things like ban porn.

#1: Social media

This is the easiest to understand: it's social media, we all know what that is. If people think the fediverse is only about #1, they go "ok but the internet is full of places to meet people, I don't need another website to do that on". And they'd be right! But it's the other three purposes that make the fediverse unique.

#2: Decentralization

In my opinion this is the key to the fediverse. And it seems really complicated and too difficult to understand but it's really not.

Imagine you could download tumblr's code, then upload it to your own website, and run your own copy of tumblr. As a bonus, you could still follow anyone over on the main tumblr website and they could follow you. It would be exactly like using Main Tumblr; the experience would be seamless.

But there would be advantages too. Like if Main Tumblr decided to cave to advertisers and ban porn, for example. YOU wouldn't have to stop posting porn, because you're not on Main Tumblr, you're using your copy of Tumblr on your site, and your rules say porn is A-OK. So you could keep posting all the porn you wanted, and anyone who followed you could see it, and no one could stop you (as long as you're following the laws of the country your server is set in obviously).

And what if Main Tumblr decided to shut down? Not a problem for you - you're not using their site, so all your data is safe! If Discord goes down, every single Discord server also dies with it.

Twitter is dying; every single Twitter community and everyone's followings they've built are all dying with it because there's only one Twitter. A lot of artists and other people who depend on Twitter due to the followings and the communities/brands they've built on there are literally losing their livelihoods because Twitter is dying, and there's only one Twitter.

But if they'd been on a mastodon server that was dying, they could just move to a different server and all of their followers go with them - they wouldn't lose their audience and they wouldn't have to rebuilt it. Or, even better, they could just host their own server for their own brand and never have to worry about it going down on them, ever.

Now yes, hosting a website does cost money. And if you don't have money, that's ok! There are a bunch of servers out there already that are running and funded and accept users for free, and most of them have a set rule that if, for some reason, they have to close the server, you will get a 3 month warning to pick somewhere else to go.

All you have to do is read their rules and see if it's a community you jive with. Then after you join, you can follow anyone anywhere. It's that open, and that easy.

#3 Rules and moderation

Another huge advantage of the fediverse is that every server can have its own rules, just like Discord servers can have their own rules. Many servers have extremely strict rules against nazis, racism, homophobia, spam, etc.

And the best part is, these server admins can actually enforce these rules because most of the servers are small. This means there's not that many people to deal with and moderation is actually a feasible task.

#4 Commercialization

You might have heard "on facebook, you are the product" and it's true. Your data (and your identity) is the product being sold to the advertisers on those platforms. With no ads, there's no one trying to buy your data. The server your are on is the product, one you can choose to donate to if you wish.