#i think it was mostly people on twitter saying that

[nathaniacolver]

i feel like tumblr NEEDS to know about Dr. Ally Louks, and the term "Olfactory Ethics"

(long post incoming)

storytime/timeline:

on november 27, 2024, an excited English Literature PhD recipient posted a picture of herself with her thesis, titled:

"Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose"

as you can see (on the bottom row, above), the tweet has been viewed over 119 MILLION times, and has received over 250k likes. unfortunately, within days (most of the replies dating december 1st), she had garnered what seems like every possible insecure man with a twitter account to post their vitriol and rage concerning the fact that a woman is clearly more well-researched than them. regardless, she tanked it ALL with kindness and with a smile:

AND I MEAN VITRIOL (queen of making boundaries clear):

(inserting reading break for the timeline's space's sake):

here's her abstract:

and in case the abstract wasn't clear, she has since (date: december 16th) taken the time to re-summarize her thesis for the layman (yes that is a link! click it! 3min read!)

she has repeatedly shown just the perfect amount of kindness and understanding for those who are simply Not Comprehending (mostly december 1st):

(the chatGPT hate in the next one is my favorite:)

has upheld an incredibly high moral standard of how she interacts with the situation (december 2nd):

ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS: regardless of this crap, she made it clear that as a professor, her FIRST priority at the end of the semester would be taking care of them (december 3rd)

(CAN SHE GET MORE BASEDDDDDDDDDD)

she stays both 1) educating the masses, and 2) engaging with pop culture as much as a normal person would (december 9th-17th):

she also supports a free palestine (WHO IS SURPRISED. NOT ME.) ((december 15th))

here's the BEST FREAKING THING ABOUT THIS. since this all has happened, RANDOM TWITTER USERS, UNKNOWINGLY, have REPEATEDLY proven her thesis to be true,

again,

and again,

AND AGAIN.

EVEN CARDI B DO YOU HEAR MEEEEEEEE

COMBATING MISOGYNOIR WITH HER OWN BARE HANDSSSSS

oh she knows she's mother

here's some more she never saw/commented on (INCLUDING SOME FROM TODAY. IT IS STILL GOING ON. EVERY SINGLE DAY LIKE CLOCKWORK SOMEONE POSTS SOMETHING THAT PROVES HER POINTS ABOUT OLFACTORY ETHICS):

THE WICKED MOVIE REFERENCE HELLO

apparently, OTHER academics are mad at her for being so famous and influential, but she stays unbothered (december 16th, and TODAY, december 19th):

and she's partially getting her post-doc on how people's sense of smell has been altered (december 1st):

and the best part is!

all of these screenshots i've collected are only a SAMPLE, illustrating dr. louks' indomitably kind and ethical character.

anyway. i want ALL of y'all to start saying, out loud, "olfactory ethics", or even better, "dr. louks was RIGHT" (something something women's names are erased something) every time you see something that plays into her thesis. never let her influence die. THINK THROUGH what you're REALLY saying when you comment on the smell of something, or how your perception has been shaped by society. USE THIS PHOTO IF YOU HAVE TO:

follow her on twitter (@DrAllyLouks) or bluesky (idk her handle, if someone tells me i'll edit it in)

AND SAY HER NAME!! DR. ALLY LOUKS

[ranticore]

thinking about characters fursonas is always more fun to me than directly anthro-ifying them because it's not just a question of "what animal would they be" since before you can even ask that you have to figure out how they would pick a fursona, and i almost feel like that says more about a character than what animal they choose.

like. would they want an animal that represents their ideal self? something that represents how they see themself to be currently? and how well does that perception match up with these actual reality? or would they pick based on something less complicated like "favorite animal"/"movie character they liked”.

all that leadup to ask, how do you think your mvf guys would pick their fursonas?

💯💯💯 literally it's one of the most fun characterisation exercises you can do, it tells you SO much about them, how they view themselves, what they want others to think of them and so on. all that good stuff. and then you get to delve into furry subcultures, influential artists etc

so on to the actual fursoneys themselves

Jean-Baptiste - aforementioned hummingbird with a suit from idk clockworkcreature or something. the subculture/art style is realistic but very humanised, basically a bird head on a feathery human body, no wing-hands, with a Georgian style of dress (potentially with steampunk elements) and named after a famous scientist from the period. He would not be an artist, but he would be one of those ppl who's a bigtime engineer making huge money who invests heavily in commissions of art (usually traditional media like oils, colouring pencil, etc) and writing about this character, who is a kind of inventor/old-timey scientist with a highly detailed backstory and canon setting. He chose the hummingbird because it's beautiful, precise, and tenacious, and also just because he likes the 'rare fursona species' aura. He has VERY strong negative view on poodling (when someone wears a partial fursuit with their skin showing) and has been posting to the same old rp forum for the past 20 years. Rude and bitchy but one of those guys who always pays well and tips for commissions because money is no object. an important part of the economy

Bowman - exactly the opposite to everything above. His fursona is a retriever-ish dog called Dog or Mutt or something with a single-colour palette and the art style is new school big toothy grin etc. fursona exclusively wears board shorts. He draws at a beginner level and he's obviously having a blast with it. The muscles are very detailed (so's the bulge) & the art is clearly bara influenced, especially around the eyes. He wouldn't have any interest in suiting i don't think but you will find him at the furry rave in a neoprene harness. He wouldn't have much money to commission with and his twitter feed would be mostly reposts of other people's art (without permission)

Islin - ok you know that one genre of art style used exclusively by dragon furries where it's got realistic scale textures, backgrounds, and the ref sheets are usually incredibly detailed and the dragons in their anthro forms are always absurdly ripped. He can draw this, i know it in my heart. The design is pretty generic western dragon, all things considered, I don't think he has the imagination for more (sorry). Character's name is something appropriately fantasy-ish like Xyrgoryx. He could definitely take commissions as a side hustle but as a perfectionist and professional worrier it would overwhelm him easily. You would probably not find him at a convention at all, I'd say such spaces do not appeal to him. He's been on Furcadia tho.

Félix - generic twinky fox in a thin-lines washboard abs disney-inspired art style with an absurdly deep backstory which we never get to see because the character is only ever drawn being railed. He can draw but more importantly he knows how to take the commissioner's money and run, delete his account, and remake under a different username. Was able to afford a fullsuit from Made Fur You and that alone gave him enough clout to continually avoid allegations of past misbehaviour. Every so often someone goes "hey isn't that a known scammer" when they see him at a con but it never sticks. Later he would get cancelled immediately for saying he "didn't care about" right-wing furries as long as their art was cute.

Senca - Almost certainly a feline-based original species or hybrid. The art style is very goldenwolf with spiritual/neopagan influences, mostly traditional media and ACEOs in oil pastel so it's got a kind of smudgy look. Her character has the same name as her and she considers it a 'truesona' of sorts. She's an established artist and well-respected but struggles to keep up with what Tha Youth are doing and her personal website has looked the same since the year 2006. She has a realistic partial suit but doesn't wear it much anymore, preferring to vend at the dealer's den instead. She always knows way too much gossip about any given person you could point out to her but she insists she isn't involved in what she'll delicately & vaguely refer to as 'drama'.

Léa - she was attracted by the promise of easy entry into a supportive and friendly readymade community and bought an expensive Closed Species design to be her fursona. She tried to participate in events but instead got sucked into a cesspit of petty warfare between her CS community and a very similar CS with design elements that may have been inspired by hers (after all, 'dog with kinda long pointy ears and a big fluffy tail' is VERY copyrightable). She goes along with it, afraid of losing her space in the panopticon discord community by voicing a dissenting opinion and it'll eat her up from the inside. until one day she wakes up and realises she paid €400 to gossip and participate in a group that bans you from adding horns to your fursona's head (a legendary trait restricted to the CS owner and their favourite sycophants) whose main form of bonding ritual seems to be reposting their enemies' art to mock it and colour-pick to prove the palettes were copied. She explains all this to Bowman in one big tearful rant on their first offline date at Eurofurence and he helps her get away from that community.

Helena - that was her copyrighted closed species. and she IS litigious about it.

Erica - it's a pine marten in a modern sketchy "just got an ipad and procreate" style, really cute, fun design, good coordinating outfit, honestly ticks all the boxes but then 5 days after he posts that awesome themed ref sheet he's got a brand NEW fursona and this time it's a cute lil jackdaw, again lovely design all around looks great but wait no in 5 days time it's a roe deer, no wait it's an otter, it's a gecko, it's a

Pascal - a sick as hell cartoony golden eagle with an electric guitar and sunglasses and you can imagine it airbrushed onto the side of a campervan because that's where it lives. he's strictly offline, doesn't know what a furry is, never been on twitter, but he is 100% certain in his heart that this bird is a true representation of himself

[bataddictedloony]

it’s also giving klance circa 2018, people were so desperate for klance to be canon they were legit stalking people on the show. Jayvik shippers aren’t there yet but i’m a tumblr oldie and… i’m Seeing Signs, is what I’m saying.

Mostly, Linke just seems like a guy desperately defending his own writing choices (which he has a right to do, giving people are forgetting their manners as soon as they’re on social media and HE CANNOT CHANGE NOW BTW - on top of it being really lame if they made jayvik canon post-canon, like a certain terf twitter witch). The only real argument I can give against him is if he wanted to write ace rep, they didn’t succeed. Unfortunately, ace rep can’t be ambiguous in writing. Not yet, we’re not there yet. That shit needs to be identified out loud in the show. But I don’t really think that was his angle from the beginning. Dude just wanted to write love that’s not romantic and not familial, but still so strong and intense that it put everything in danger and saved everyone. That’s a Good Thing. If only to remind people that friendships are relationships you need to take seriously and need to stop underestimating, both in fandom spaces and real life. The closest thing in media that I can think coming close to doing smthn similar is Hiccup and Toothless, or Pacific Rim.

I think people are just upset their ship refuses to be canon. The arguments people have are really childish, the incessant need for everything to be romantic and canon is unbelievably childish. It’s homophobic? Bruh, you just watched a show where lesbians ate each other out, on a massively popular animated series. That’s revolutionary. That’s literally never been done before. An animated series where being queer isn’t necessary for the story, and yet it’s fucking everywhere, no way to deny it, and you’re pissed cus Your ship is only ambiguously canon, and the writers want to keep being vague about it? Grow the fuck up, eat the food you were given and sit down so you can inevitably get upset at the next show that tries to do something different and interesting, instead of pandering to an audience that has not an ounce of respect for audiovisual media and their artists. It’s absolutely disgusting.

Okay, so apparently the reason people think one of the showrunners is homophobic is that stuff I just shared about Viktor being Ace and him and Jayce being written as loving each other platonically.

Apparently they think that's only to shut up shippers; because it's impossible that a character was intentionally written as Ace and not communicated well enough, and also people can't love someone unless it's romantic

I'm not the only one who finds a tad uncomfortable that claiming a character is ace and a relationship is meant to be platonic not romantic is seen as homophobia? Right

In a show with other canonical queer characters

[pyrotechnicdarts]

thinking about that time when some critrole fans were insisting you cant like essek because hes literally committed war crimes >:( and people had to be like no he hasnt because 1. he lives in a fantasy world where the geneva conventions do not exist and 2. babe he is simply not real

[shopwitchvamp]

An interesting observation I need to report to you all from when I was out touching grass last month (hiking/camping): People in the real world seem to consistently react to me saying that tumblr is my primary social media by going "Isn't that a dating app????"

[markscherz]

a person who named a genus, on tumblr

Actually, three genera, but Anilany and Nanohyla are not as catchy as Mini. A full list of the taxa I have described is available on my website. :)

[hypermascbishounen]

Ironically I think a lot of the things that drew in my friends were what warned me initially I was in for a bad time, lol. To other people, Warren Ellis was 'the guy who whose scripts were iron man 1 and 2!' and to me he's 'the guy that injected war on terror Islamophobia into those old plots, and whose scripts where chosen to bookend an adaptation of Atlus Shrugged funded by the usa military'. Trevor's redesign to me, immediately smacked of trying to grizzle up a male character to be an acceptable antihero to the homophobes we all saw melting down on twitter about his appearance in Dead By Daylight(and Deats all but confirmed that).

But I still went in trying to give it a chance. I hated it, but honestly the first season is bad mostly in a boring way. I can see less critical people being able to enjoy it. I like my own share of trashy stuff! I didn't *really* hate NFCV until seeing what happened with Hector, and I never even played Circle of Darkness. I'm glad more people can recognize that they deserve better than nfcv, bc I do feel like a major factor in its bad writing is a sort of insular back-slapping club for hacks that's been enabled for way too long. I don't blame any of my friends for not having my exhausting hypervigilant brainworms about media, and just wanting something to get stoned to on a weekend, lol. I just will throw down if anyone tries to say it's peak fiction or doesn't mishandle the plots that it does, or thinks it's better written than the games just bc there's more words, because that's all just blatantly not true.

dude i was rewatching the netflix show to prepare for nocturne (i’m super late i know) and it’s insane to me how childish and poorly written it is. like, it was literally embarassing to watch it on the tv in the same room as somebody else because of all the “swearing is funny” humor and the excessive amounts of “well, that happened!” jokes. like damn i understand why this show got hated on so much… anyway uhh yeah i’m sending this to ur inbox bc i saw one of ur posts on my feed and i was like “this guy gets it”

Haha, I watched the four seasons with one of my big brothers! (Well, I watched the first two seasons alone, but rewatched them with him at some point after s3 came out) You can imagine my embarrassment at... Certain scenes... At the end of a.... Certain season.... 🙃

Honestly the swearing and the awkward jokes are the least of the problems this show has lol (even if it can be annoying and straight up bullshit when Alucard and Sypha swear and blame Trevor's influence on that. No, they were rude cunts before Trevor.) But I'm glad my humble opinions aligned with yours! ❤️

[creativity-deficient]

Why are people always so shocked when South Park handles a topic well?? I’ll see so many articles that are like “wow even SOUTH PARK is calling you guys out” tf you mean? They’ve BEEN doing this??

[petrichormore]

one of the only times I’ll reference twitter but spiderbit shippers on twt need to hop the fuck off spiderhalo rn. know your history. respect your elders.

[jakeperalta]

kind of crazy how the person who owns and controls one of the most used websites in the world, which is often seen as a current events/news platform, can be so close with a presidential candidate that he's part of his family photo and it's all just like.. allowed and normal

[calamitydaze]

tbh “people hear about legitimate dream fuckups and it colors their worldview to exaggerate and misconstrue harm in everything he does” is just the opposite side of the coin to “fans hear about dream being legitimately fucked over and treated badly and it raises their defenses to react to every perceived slight like a personal betrayal” literally nobody is capable of being normal about that man

[tinystepsforward]

algerian trans women arent able to compete in women sports at all, but yeah its makes no sense to call khelif tme. youre so fucking smart.

(this is a response to this post) i see you don't believe that i'm quoting one of the trans women in my life about that, which is your prerogative. it's also your right to miss my point entirely both about the ways this alienates intersex people and about the rigidity of a binary that comes down to the same shrinking circles terfs draw when they try to quantify what a woman is (speak up for women, the most organised nz group, have now submitted on the human rights act suggesting that all babies be karyotyped at birth and the results be public, bc they can't establish any other definition they agree on. absolutely fucking nobody, not even their christian or conspiracist allies, agrees with them on this one.)

but you don't have to take my word for it! when i was at that consultation with the nz law commission, i was in a room with many other intersex and trans people, including trans athletes and trans women like lexie matheson who consult on trans inclusion in sports at a high national level. i don't think there's a single person in that room who did not name what was happening to khelif as we spoke as transmisogyny, who did not speak of her as part of a group with whom we all shared something.

at the end of the day, prison abolition informs all of my politics. i believe that we must look clearly and carefully at harm and distinguish it from discomfort or disagreement, and identify its structural sources and true perpetrators. i believe that to build a better future we must be capable of imagining one. i believe that we can build a world where suffering is not the metric by which we determine value or punishment or righteousness. i believe that we can build a world where we centre and uplift those who are most hurt, in every arena — black and brown trans women, here; in some of my other work, it's incarcerated intellectually disabled people, or asian migrant sex workers affected by section 19, the list goes on — without then pitting them against other people who share some of the same story and will benefit from the same deconstruction of the systems that hold them down. i believe we can build a world in which asab doesn't affect so much of your life by beginning that work now.

there's a politics of scarcity — you have it better than me, so we have nothing in common. i saw it all the time in brothels, the idea that the new girl is taking money out of your kids' mouths. the viciousness with which people who are struggling are so ready to abandon solidarity. is it so hard to demand better for everyone? to think less about the ways we're alone and more about the ways we're together?

maybe it is. i know that well enough as a prison abolitionist. people get scared. they swing at shadows, they swing at anyone who seems to be suffering less, they — we, i should say, i am certainly not immune — get blindingly jealous of people who seem to have it easier. that's grief! that's grief for the easier life that we deserve. and we get to mourn, and take that time to feel it, and then we can choose if we want to keep working hand in hand with each other toward a world where that grief is dwarfed by the promise of the future.

[delightful-69]

.

[comradecowplant]

I made a bluesky out of curiosity, and omg it's all libs, insipid facebook-quality comments, and content mill joke reposters. I've seen 12 different people post that maddening, media-illiterate "Vault Boy kicking capitalism's butt" poster so my "thing" rn is explaining why it's stupid. it's a terrible waste of time and yet i am compelled to persist.......

[tamaharu]

ill be so real seeing slurs get thrown around more and more online is getting pretty fucking weird

[jerksbitch]

twitter has poisoned this fandom i fear ... we used to be a community..