#i put a lot of effort so i was thinking maybe i could maintag this...

[foosybit]

maaaaaybe we don't idolize pedophile relationships. Like, I understand mayoi is a complex character but he's absolutely Witten to be struggling with having attraction towards boys or men who look very young. He's canonly jerked off to aira sleeping, fantasized about Kohaku (who is 15, mayoi is almost 19) in a sexualized outfit, same for Hiiro, and is attracted to Shinobu because he is small and cute. YES, they are the same age but the REASON he likes him is the issue. I also understand he tries to 'control' it and beats himself up over it but it also doesn't change hes pretty actively just letting himself get off to a fantasy of a guy who looks young. Just something to think about. I guess.

hmmm considering the way this is worded, i think ur just here to get your point across to me, not to actually have an open conversation about this. But I'll at least treat it as good-faith and interact anyway.

I think we just fundamentally interpret the doting part of mayoi in a different way.

Now let's get the first thing out of the way… maybe this has shown up in a story i haven't read but… I don't think mayoi jerking off to aira is canon…? maybe you consider it to have been implied in one of mayoi's "im so sorry i totally didn't do anything suspicious last night!!!" lines, but considering mayoi's mental state, i think he's just kinda… prone to blurting out apologies/assurances for things he hasn't done just cuz he thinks everyone hates him or is at least ready to start hating him at the drop of a hat. But this is just a nitpick and whether or not it's true doesn't significantly affect what I'm about to say.

Other than that, I do think it's worth noting that mayoi is still pretty immature at this point, especially when it comes to feelings that occur within interpersonal relationships considering the fact that he's been isolated until main story. I think you can just as easily argue that he's still trying to sort out how to approach his feelings towards others without having it be a pedophile thing. There can be so many reasons for this. like sexual repression making him not know how to express that side of him appropriately, or making him feel the need to be sexual about things when hes not even horny (yes that happens when ur sexually repressed. trust me. im deep in christian circles irl and in deconstruction spaces online. sexual repression and lack of proper sex ed can fuck you up in the most unexpected ways but also doesnt necessarily have to make u a pedophile…). Or being so used to having other people tell you what you should be feeling that you start melding "what i should think if i find someone cute" and "what i actually think when i find someone cute" together, and could mistake cuteness aggression with having a crush and then enter this "i should feel/think xyz" mindset (i literally logically decided who i 'should' have a crush on based on who i respected the most, and then enacted romantic and sexual fantasies about these people who i genuinely wasn't in love with until maybe highschool. shoutout to the compulsory crushes that come with being queer and also just learning about yourself and your emotions in a highly amatonormative world).

What I'm saying through all of this is that mayoi's doting doesn't have to be inherently pedophilic and something that he needs to get rid of entirely. he can continue to be a lover of cute boys and have that at its core not be pedophilic. he can find shinobu attractive and its core reasons don't have to be because he "looks young," it can just be cuz he's cute and mayoi's still sorting out how he deals with his affection for cuteness and is still in the process of divorcing cuteness from youngness in his mind and vocabulary. Again, considering mayoi's implied culty and isolated background, it's not a stretch to think that a lot of his thoughts and feelings have not quite had the chance to mature yet. Especially with something as complicated to detangle as your sexual identity, doubly so if you're queer.

We already know mayoi needs therapy badly, so i don't think the only answer to his strangeness has to be pedophilia that he must overcome. And he also might not have sexual repression be the first thing he tries to address when he currently has literal disabling anxiety and other more pressing issues to address. Part of accepting a complicated character is also accepting them in an imperfect state and not just depriving them of living life and being happy just cuz they have stuff they need to work on. But! You can also decide that the way mayoi acts around younger guys is unforgivable to you personally, and decide that it's too much for you to handle emotionally to hold space for anything that comes close to pedophilia. You might want absolutely nothing to do with anything that resembles pedophilia at all. That's ok too, but will not be the way everyone approaches this side of him. And mayoshino has more going for it apart from just unresolved sexual repression, so i still do think it can stand up past it (more on that after the next paragraph). So, just cuz the writers might be making him an average counterpart to highlight shotabait and might be 'written to be' attracted to young boys doesn't mean we can't bring our own experiences into our interpretations.

Recognizing that writers have their own biases when writing, and recognizing that these characters are partially other people's biased depictions of the real people they perceive in their lives, and then choosing how you interpret a character appropriately is super important to do imo. especially when approaching sort of stereotyped characters in a franchise that'll go out of its way to make queerness as non-canon and only implied as possible in order to reach the largest audience. you've gotta know that 'mentally ill gay pedo' is a bad faith depiction even when it's on a modern-day handsome fictional man like mayoi (always always be wary of how mentally ill people get depicted and the specific traits/flaws they get given. you will often find biases against minorities). humoring bad faith aspects of characters on a surface level can only take you so far before you start saying weird/unempathetic things about minority characters without realizing it, you know? It's always good to take canon with a grain of salt and feel free to divorce them from certain aspects they're written to have, especially from larger franchises that don't have minority rep as their top priority. and you know what, it's also fine to subscribe to a bad-faith interpretation of a character, i do it all the time too cuz sometimes it's cathartic to be annoyed by a character and/or their actions (more on that after the next paragraph).

Another thing that's strange is the implication that the only reason mayoi loves shinobu is because he's small and cute? Or at least is the primary reason for the attraction. Sure that may have been what initially brought him to try and get close to shinobu, but i don't think that's the only factor in why he's still so attached or why i like them together. Shinobu truly cares for and respects him, always assumes the best of him even when mayoi truly thinks he shouldn't, goes out of his way to try and make mayoi feel more included with others, constantly suggesting mayoi for roles, etc. Not to mention that mayoi isn't always just doting the entire time when around shinobu. Yeah he's in a neutral state of doting when around shinobu (not inherently a bad thing), but they chat about the occult stuff mayoi's into, mayoi can vent his frustrations of himself to him and in return mayoi does actively comfort shinobu when he's down too, and mayoi supports shinobu's ideas and still does actively engage in ninja training and helps shinobu master his techniques. To assume that all of this doesn't play a significant role in mayoi's continuous active devotion to shinobu is just a bad-faith reading of mayoi's relationship with shinobu. And maybe you'd consider that assuming this is a significant part of mayoi's attraction is an overly good-faith reading of mayoi and giving one-off lines that go against his general characterization too much credit.

The fun part is that we can both have different readings/interpretations of the same character and one of us doesn't have to be unequivocally wrong. Viewing mayoi as someone who's tryna overcome pedophilia isn't bad if that's the reading you like the most or makes the most sense to you or helps you process your life better or whatever the reason may be, just respect the fact assumptions were made to get to that point, and other people will fill in the blanks in different ways.

[mariaiscrafting]

i saw you talk about “blocking etiquette” in one of your posts and i was wondering if you could briefly explain that? my blog is a baby (i joined in march) so i really don’t know any of the unspoken social rules haha. i feel i should know this before i say anything ever thats dream critical lmao

also saw you have a ton of asks so feel free to answer or not there’s no obligation ! take care of urself it seems like a lot to handle rn

I'd like to preface this by disclaiming that I've been on Tumblr since 2014, so I think I have a good sense of blocking etiquette as it's evolved with Tumblr culture, but I might still be presumptuous/wrong about some things.

Anyways. So, on Tumblr, there's generally always been a "block first, ask questions later" mentality. No matter the fandom, people kinda just unfollow or block people at will because Tumblr's algorithm is so shit at recommending things for people that unfollowing/blocking are really the primary ways to tailor what you don't want to see. So, if you frequent a search term/tag search, like "dream smp," you'd likely block someone who posts things frequently to that tag, but whose content you dislike. Blocking is, obviously, still used as a means to stop interacting with just plain assholes, as it is on every social media site. But more times than not, Tumblr users block blogs for neutral reasons related to how they want to tailor their social media experience, rather than a personal vendetta against someone.

Frankly, from my perspective, this was the main use of block lists back in the day. They weren't so much ways to truly hate on anyone's blog since anyone deemed a true asshole would likely spur a reporting campaign against them, rather than an addition to a blocklist. No, Tumblr blocklists were almost always so people who frequented certain tags simply... didn't have to put up with some people. If there was a wave of problematic shippers inundating a fandom/character tag, of TERFs inundating trans/feminism tags, or something similar, they would likely be put on a blocklist simply because Tumblr users wanted a comprehensive list of people they might come across, but didn't want to have to see posts from. Along a similar vein, a lot of mcytblr blogs advocate simply blocking people who post imagines in the main mcyt/dream smp tags, rather than harrassing each and every one of them into fixing their tag habits. Like, they're just annoying, really, and this social media site is so big that just blocking the ones who frequent the tag is so much easier than anything else.

One notable difference about Tumblr blocking as compared to Twitter blocking is the malintent behind Twitter blocking. Twitter fandom subtwts will advocate for blocking someone particularly if they're being cancelled/a Twitter user simply dislikes them enough. In addition, I've seen more than one Twitter user unironically say that they block people who unfollow them, as if following/unfollowing them were a personal affront, and blocking people were some component of this social game that reeks of cliqueness and high school levels of maturity.

That isn't to say that Tumblr blocking etiquette doesn't have pitfalls, because it has many. The main one I've noticed is that, especially in smaller fandom spaces, someone who's considered problematic might be enmassed blocked by lots of users in that fandom, and effectively be shut out of that fandom. If they're put onto a blocklist, a problematic post is circulated enough, or they're blocked by enough "big blogs" in the fandom, these users can be kept from reblogging, liking, or sending asks to a large part of the fandom they participate in. Vague posting doesn't really get you anywhere on Tumblr because of how insular each blog is, as opposed to Twitter, where screenshotting someone's profile who's blocked you and/or complaining very obviously about someone blocking you without naming them is commonplace and can be easily spread throughout a subtwt. This means Tumblr blogs who were mass blocked end up reaching much less members of their fandom, cannot really stand up for themselves in the face of mass blocking unless they're infamous enough for people to recognize their name, or participate in the discourse that promoted their blocking in the first place. While I haven't really experienced this, all of this is taken from what I've observed mutuals and recognizable blogs going through over the years.

Another note is that this website is kinda fucked, coding-wise. We all know this. This means that there are a million holes in the blocking system that make it even more annoying to navigate when people have blocked you, and that ends up getting more people blocked than maybe should be.

First of all, those imagine blogs aren't just posting in the main tags for shits and giggles, or to be cumbersome and clutter the main tags. They're doing it because Tumblr is dying, and even in a fandom as big as mcytblr, it's almost impossible to boost/promote your original content. The Tumblr algorithm sucks at spreading awareness about popular posts, more and more Twitter refugees means less and less people who fucking reblog > liking posts, and basically the only way posts can blow up anymore is by being found through a tag that is trending or frequently browsed through the "most recent" setting. This includes dream smp and many smp character names, so obviously imagine blogs are going to take advantage of this and maintag. It's the reason mcytblr constantly tags "m*necraft" despite being told off, time and time again, for doing so by mineblr. And it's the reason I've likely been blocked by many people- because I had to make the decision between spreading awareness of a post that took a lot of effort and that I thought was important enough to main tag despite being critical/negative, or keeping mcytblr happy by not cluttering their bias's tag with a crit post. Sure, some of mcytblr likely blocked me because they thought I was annoying/disagree with me, and that's fine. But I'm sure many blocked me for the same reason I block imagine blogs and mineblr blocks dream smp stans- because they wanted to peruse their fave's tags, and they simply blocked a random blog that posted something they didn't like, without really thinking much of it.

Second of all, side blogs kinda fuck up how blocking works. It's annoying as hell to see a post you really like in the main tag/search, only to find that the person blocked you upon trying to reblog. Because of sideblogs, people will oftentimes block a sideblog because it's that user's fandom blog, without blocking their main, so the user is left kinda seeing their stuff time and time again, without being able to interact with it.

Speaking of how fucky the code is because of the blogging system, reblogs make it even worse. Most social media sites simply make it so a blocked user cannot see another user's profile, posts and all. But Tumblr not only allows this, it kinda fucks up the search function by sometimes allowing people you've blocked/who've blocked you to show up in main tag searches, it didn't take into account the fact that you can still see an OP's post when someone else reblogs it, and Tumblr didn't think to just fucking fix all these holes and just wholly omit someone's posts if they've blocked you, or you've blocked them. So, despite blocking people, you can still be logged in and see all their shit, and they can see yours. It's kind of annoying as fuck.