#i will whinge all i like into this void

[rottingcheng]

not to be a weh weh baby about things but having bpd is crazy in the sense that my feelings are so magnified and intense i actively fear things that can induce strong emotions. i avoid media that isn't mind numbing a lot even though i want to read/watch good stuff bc i get so emotionally invested and if something emotional happens i will feel like my chest was holed out and that's scary.

[tmae3114]

she has been a character for some time now and I still just am incapable of taking the name "Morgan Elsbeth" seriously. why do they keep saying it like it's a scary villain name. Every time they say it, it breaks my immersion. It's the 'Elsbeth' that's getting me, I think. That's such a weirdly specific name to use as a surname. I just can't find it threatening, I know too many Elspeths in real life

[nobdoy]

So I'm on day 9 of covid quarantine, and the pressure to come back to work is real, and honestly I felt so much better yesterday afternoon I told the team that I was just going to take one more day (today) and then be back Thursday. That was yesterday me, and yesterday me was on prescription cough suppressants.

Today me has no more prescription cough suppressants. So I feel awful. I am still coughing to the point of occasionally vomiting. And I am trying to convince myself that I have got to take one more day off or else I'm going to give everybody covid they will eventually die and it will all be my fault. But goddamn, I don't want to write anymore sub plans and I don't want to be sick anymore and I just want to go back to work 😭

[ectologia]

TERNARY

TOMURA SHIGARAKI + FEMALE READER + DABI

WARNING: DUBCON/NONCON, CLIT TORTURE, GENITAL SPANKING, ANAL FINGERING, MALE MASTURBATION, THREESOME, CREAMPIE, HUMILIATION, MOCKING, SLIGHT GORE, MENTION OF TORTURE METHODS, PROFANITY, SLIGHT DABI X SHIGARAKI?

“Come out, come out..” Shigaraki sing-songs, shuffling against the moist gravel. “Where the fu— Dabi!”

“Mm.” Dabi hums, hand lax in his pocket while the other occupies a smouldering cigarette, pinched between his ashen finger-tips.

Shigaraki snarls a groan from the back of his throat. “Stop stroking your dick and come help me, you moron.”

“What’s the fuckin’ point? She’s probably long gone by now.” Dabi shrugs, making no attempt to gather himself. “And does it really matter? It’s just one chick, what’s she gonna d—”

Shigaraki spikes, shoulders prickling as he lurches towards Dabi. “What’s she gonna do?” He scoffs. “Tell those fuckin’ bastardin’ heroes where our base is, that’s fuckin’ what! I’m starting to think I should reconsider putting you second in command if you’re just gon—”

Dabi throws his hands up, feigning an apologetic frown. “Alright, alright! ..Damn.” He brings the smoked pick back down to the seam of his lips, inhaling until a puff of smog rolls out of his nostrils. “I was just kidding, Boss.” He smirks from beneath his clutch of scarred knuckles.

Shigaraki eyeballs Dabi with a flat face. “Dumb-ass.” He swats Dabi on the back of the head, a bit to strongly for his liking once the cigarette previously perched between his fingers is flung onto the sludge-stained pavement.

“Nice one.” Dabi huffs with an audible breath, shuffling through his pockets for another. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt to be a li—”

“Shh. Shut the fuck up.” Shigaraki hisses, pressing his index to the petals of his flaking lips. “I just heard something.”

The two stand, frozen in ear-splitting silence.

Both pairs of eyes meet, knotted and furrowed as Dabi’s arm suddenly darts out, snatching at the blackened void.

“Ah, now would ya’ look at that.”

You yelp once a mangled hand swipes at your neck, clamping down and holding you in place.

“You were right Boss, little shit was hiding here all along.” Dabi snickers, jostling your shaken form like a hunter vaunting it’s kill.

Shigaraki rolls his eyes at his comrades witty intimations, eyeing the tiny thing hanging from his clutches.

He clicks his tongue, re-adjusting Father’s thumb across his cheek-bone. “Sneaky little bitch.”

You’re bound and stiff, eyes wide and jaw locked in your shell-shocked petrification.

“What do you wanna’ do to her first?” Dabi drawls, tilting his chin down to look at you with a wicked grin. “Break her legs? Skin ‘er? Blood-eagle?”

“Hm..” Shigaraki hums, tapping a thumb against his chin. You’re spun once, twice to get all the best angles as they inspect your physique. “I mean.. It’d be a shame to let her go to waste.”

Dabi smirks, darting an intrigued brow upwards. “Oh, yeah?”

Shigaraki’s tongue slips out to wet his parched lips. “Yeah.”

“Mmh.. What a messy pup.”

Dabi coos, tracing the rim of your clit’s hood with his middle-finger. He has your nerves standing to attention every time the abrasive digit dabs against your stiff nub.

“Look how hard that little clitty is.” Shigaraki chuckles, toeing your pussy with the tip of his shoe, nudging Dabi’s marred knuckles in the process. “Could probably jerk it if you wanted to.”

“Yeah?” He tweaks the thin layer of skin surrounding the vulnerable dot, bending your thighs back further in the process. “Wanna’ try?” He swirls his tongue along the crevice of your ear, spitting into it as he croons.

“Please, let me g— Mmph!”

“Ah.” Your pleas are soon cut off by the wrinkled texture of Dabi’s palm. “I don’t wanna’ hear any cryin’ or whinging now, a’ight?”

Shigaraki sneers, squatting down to replace Dabi’s cold, stapled flesh with his own.

He pinches your clit between his crooked fingers, grinding and tweaking the tiny seed, while Dabi bounces you on his knee like a child to soothe your oncoming fit.

“See? this is what happens..” Shigaraki spits with a bitter smile. “This is what happens — when nosy little bitches like you can’t mind their own fuckin’ business.”

He pulls his arm back, tugging your tiny, quivering clit along with him until the stretched skin snaps back into place at the crest of your pudgy pussy.

Your raw cunt earns a sloppy, half-hearted spank from the hard heel of his hand, noticeably avoidant to catch you with his surely destructive finger-tips.

“Hey, woah, woah. Who said you get first dibs?” Dabi splutters, pressing your knees back together almost defensively once he sees the shimmering glare of Shigaraki’s belt buckle.

“I did.” Shigaraki grunts, clumsily rooting around inside the pouch of his stained boxers before pulling out the sluggish length of his pink-tipped cock. He’s flaccid, smooth layers of pale-porcelain skin wrinkled and folded against the chubby softness of his un-cut dick.

“You ain’t even hard yet, you shmuck.” Dabi sniggers, abiding his time by twiddling and flicking at your labia.

“Shut the fuck up. Just gimme’ a sec..”

“No way, I ain’t sittin’ here to watch you rub on your lil’ love-stick.” Dabi peers down at you through his leaden eyelashes. “We wanna’ have some fun, don’t we babe?” He smooshes the pudge of your cheeks, scrunching your lips into a pucker. He snorts, sticking his tongue out to engulf the cavity in a wet-hot kiss. “Mmh..” He swirls the leacherous muscle around and around your teeth, bobbing his head as though he was trying to suck out your soul like a dementor.

“Hey, knock it off. We’re not here to play house.” Shigaraki stutters through his raspy chokes, jabbing at his limply-hanging cock.

Dabi smiles as he retreats, smearing a muggy trail of saliva across your chin all the way to the tippy top of your nose, flicking off at the soft cartilage.

“Was just introducing myself, Boss.”

“You don’t need to introduce yourself.” Shigaraki bites.

“Awh..” Dabi coos. “Big bad villian can’t get his teeny weeny hard?”

He expects Shigaraki to explode into a feral ball of flames at this, only to be met with something much more mellow and.. down-right — timid.

“Do something..”

“What?”

Shigaraki clicks his tongue and huffs. “Do something.. Finger her or some shit..”

“Oh.”

Dabi’s struck dumb, but only for a short moment — before he’s bouncing back to his usual unperturbed and snarky demeanour.

“Well then.. let’s get down to business. What’re we feeling, you little rat? Twat or ass?”

You shiver in Dabi’s lap, the sporadic jolts of your spine spiking every-time the dewy humidity of his breath blows over your nape.

“Only kidding Babe.” Dabi smiles, a wide, wolfish, toothy grin, reaching no further than the dimples of his cheeks, half-lidded eyes set purely on the little patch of flesh below your navel. “I’m choosing.”

“Holy fuck!”

Shigaraki jerks his — now, fully erect cock. Striding up the sweaty length to halt just at the ridge of his pumped mushroom-tip, shiny with a sheen of smeared pre-cum. The tiny slip of pink peeks through his curled hand every time his fist bobs, fapping away at his chubbed up prick while his second set of fingers make themselves useful by rolling and fondling his tightened ball-sack.

“Yeah? You likin’ the show Boss-man?” Dabi’s nose crinkles from the force of his own boyish laughter, tapping your left ass-cheek for the 8th time, just to watch the squishy dough ripple around his stapled wrist.

The scrunched rim of your taught asshole barely has enough room to encompass all three of the fingers Dabi persistently tries to stuff in, shuffling and flexing the digits inside your gummy walls to engage you into a more flexible position.

“Fuck me, look at that butt.” He jerks his elbow forward, impaling you further on top of the jagged bumps of his torn knuckles.

“Ah!” It’s a guttural cry of pain that escapes your hoarse throat, bent at an angle with your stomach pressed across Dabi’s lap, consistently jouncing along his thigh at every attempted means of escape.

“Ooh, yeah.” Dabi croaks through his grit teeth, puffing from the back of his throat once he sees how the smooth curvature of your back arches as he prods at your asshole with a forth digit. “You bouncin’ that ass back for me?”

“Yeah she is, look at her.” Shigaraki can’t help but invite himself into the conversation, leaning back further against the porous red-bricks for support. “Stick her another one Dabi, I wanna’ see blood.”

“Another one? You want another one?”

“No!” You squeal.

“Yeah you do.”

Dabi hooks his left thumb around the puckered hole, stretching you open further to dig a fourth finger into the cramped space.

“Shit, yeah — I like that.” Shigaraki nods in approval as he pumps his massive dick, anchoring from his wrist to his shoulder as he squeezes his plump cock-head.

He thrusts himself off of the wall, waddling over to the scene with his jeans bandaging his thighs together.

“Uh oh.” Dabi mocks, almost giddy once he sees how frantic Shigaraki’s strokes become, huffing with humid cotton-balled clouds of steam.

“Mmh.. want..” He staggers, almost losing his balance before stationing his forearm next to Dabi’s streaked mane of ink. “Pussy.. lemme’ see her twat..”

Instead of directing your stance by your waist, Dabi deems it appropriate to use the hooked fingers clenched inside your back-pussy as a handle, pulling your little ass up into a painful arch by the tiny hole, almost tearing you through the middle on his metallic spikes in the process.

“She’s all yours.” Dabi hollers at his Boss.

“Shut your mouth, stupid cunt.”

A pair of grimy fingers slither down towards your puffed up folds, while a third taps away at your ticklish little clit. He’s no longer aiming the head of his dick at himself, but rather the penny-sized hole left unoccupied below your taint.

His hand drops in favour of clutching your stomach, clawing and grappling with the squidgy meat as he rubs his penis through the slicked up gash.

Dabi’s satisfied with just observing, perching his chin atop your shoulder to visualise how your tiny cunny is gonna take his Boss’s fat, steaming horse-cock.

“Agh! Mmh — Mmh — Shit!”

Or not..

He chooses not to mention the strings of semen shooting against the denim of his jeans, in favour of keeping his head.

Or the same blobs of pearlescent coating dribbling out of your fuckable pussy-hole, left to waste after being soiled by Shigaraki’s acerbic spunk.

Dabi makes no effort to move until he’s sure the low-hanging set of balls swinging against his knee have come to a slow waltz, rocking leisurely beneath Shigaraki’s girth.

“Was that good, you little freak?”

Shigaraki’s unsure if Dabi’s talking to you or him, uncaring enough to ask as he basks in the glowy state of his post-nut glory.

It’s surprising how long it takes for the two men to recognise the faint sniffling smudged into the leather of Dabi’s shoulder, opaque spots of crystalline tears seeping into the veined material.

Dabi juts his bottom lip out, mocking your timid warbling. “Awh, you made her cry Shiggy.”

Shigaraki rolls his eyes, swivelling as he stuffs his cock and balls back into the pocket of his ratty underwear.

“She’ll get over it.”

[rattlingmycage]

Minor negative ranting

I remember when Astarion was more of a jackass, and felt like he was liable to sell us for one(1) corn chip at any given moment. Ngl I miss that dude a lot. The current fanon interpretations of his different endings, diverse as they are, somehow none of them quite land in my ballpark. Not even the "problematic" ones. They aren't edgy in the way I like, like he's either the helpless victim being ravaged or he's almost illogically evil (plot development logic, not moral logic). And that's fine, chase your joy and all that, it just feels like an entirely different character for me. This is a *me* problem.

I've been bummed about it because I was hoping there'd be more works I would enjoy, but since release I've only really seen a fic here or there that I really truly vibed with (or stuff by authors from early access, god bless). Of course I've seen excellently executed ideas and I can appreciate them for that, that isn't the issue, it's just they aren't ideas my stupid arbitrary picky brain goes for to begin with.

I don't know if I'm putting my thoughts into words correctly here. But whinging to the void is kind of cathartic.

[behind-the-veil-of-sanity]

I’ve never kept a diary, but I guess if I had, the entry for today would run something like this… September 5, 2024. It is summer again. Did summer actually ever leave? 21C and not a cloud in sight (teeny fib, the late afternoon turned hazy, but still warm). Shorts and T-shirt. Short socks in sneakers :D No response from real estate agent on web query. Wrote direct email re next possible viewing. Yay, a fast response! Viewing planned for today. In two hours time… find bus route and get there on time. Arrived on time, no agent in sight. Wait. Wait. Ah, eff it, I take a stroll around the property to get my bearings and make use of MY TIME! Apple trees, red and blackcurrant bushes. Nice. Pick up Newtonian apple (allowed!). Take a bite. Soft… pick a few red and blacks (don’t tell!). WHERE IS THE EFFIN AGENT??????? call agent. Auto response: can’t talk right now. What? Text agent: where are you, I’m here!!!! Out of town? Misunderstanding? Oh. Well yeah you didn’t spell that word right did you, but I also did not read that word properly. Next week you say. Okay. Fuck. (sneaks off the property hoping no one saw me). Now what? Stroll down the high street. Check out the local shops and dining places. Quaint, my final verdict of this village. Check bus time table, last bus an hour away. Hungry. Take aim at the local pizza place. 45 minutes later I roll out of the pizza place, one calzone and a beer lining my stomach. Buy orange fizz for desert (why? There wasn’t any coke!). Take last bus back home. Same driver as before. He recognised me… Get off bus, walk for 30 mins to get home, plus stopping off at the local grocery store. Note to self: always bring two bags for groceries. One bag makes life just so much harder. Arrived home. Sweating like a roasting pig. Huffing. Puffing. Watch warns me my pulse is too high for a sedentary position. Fuck #2. Feel stuffed two hours after pizza. Too much mozzarella I reckon. Also, too little tomato sauce. TV time. Watch TV. Time passes. The sun sets. Nice. Takes photo and posts to tumblr. TV. TV. Bang. Darkness. Power gone. Look out the window and realise the whole neighbourhood is dark. Get candles. Light candles. Get phone. Wait for cell service to be restored. Check power company website. Planned work? Power restored in 6 hours! The text to mum contains too many expletives to mention, but how the fuck can EON (electricity company) be allowed to run planned maintenance without telling their customers. Getting annoyed. Write complaint email to EON using even more colourful language. Press send. Feel no remorse. Fuck. (#3) I was supposed to enlist in the next uni course today. Today. The last day. But the power is off… I can access the computer with all the docs. Fuck (#3 still echoing in my head). Get phone out. 30% battery left. Might just work… Log on to Uni. Select course. Enlist. Proceed. Sorry? What? The online system can’t determine how much I’m supposed to pay cuz I’ve moved… BUT I DONT NEED TO PAY TODAY!!!!!! Contact Uni using web form. Write long explanations but try to ignore the frustration from the power fucking company idiot still bouncing in my head. Press send. Get automated reply immediately. Okay, that seemed to have gone to the wrong department. Try again. Contact student support. Sigh. Repeat the same info, adding a few extras and further queries. Press send. Fuck it. Walk to fridge. Open door. Get beer. Drink beer. Sigh. Gawd, I just feel the urge to whinge, into the void where no one can hear me. Huh, I know — Tumblr.

[queenburd]

listen, i AM sorry, ive been trying not to whinge for attention or notes and Ive tried to exist in my own pocket of joy with my own circle for forever

but in my real life Im dealing with a constant ambivalence, a constant lack of care or support from the people whose jobs are to help me. healthcare, lawyers, disability, unemployment. I keep pushing and pushing for support that I am not getting. i keep trying and pushing and nothing's getting better. my depression is wildly out of control despite all my efforts.

and this miserable certainty that Nobody Cares Actually is leaking into my desire to create the things I care about. I feel like I'm sitting and screaming into a room that isnt even empty, it's not a void, it's a room full of people, but nobody is turning their heads, nobody cares. I'm not making things anybody actually has interest in. Nobody wants to see me. Nobody wants me here. I'm wasting my time.

I should be creating for me, I AM creating for me, but I want people to acknowledge I exist. I want to give people something of value. Right now it feels like I don't have any value, like the entire system and world has been repeating "hey nobody actually gives a shit or wants you around. we're not going to help you because we don't want you here."

so then when i create things for something I know other people like but then I just get crickets, I can feel it in my brain. "This thing you care about? nobody wants to hear from you about it. nobody is interested in the things you have to say. you're never going to get any attention for it, because you dont deserve attention. it's just not good."

i KNOW it's insane and it's stupid and I know that it doesn't matter and I know that wanting fucking notes on a piece of art or writing is so STUPID. but i just wish more than a handful of people had interest. and then isnt that an insult to that handful? why cant i be grateful for them?

and I am. I am grateful. and maybe Im not grateful enough. because I still feel like im screaming in a room at the top of my lungs, and who fucking cares? who cares. stop wasting your breath. just stop.

I really thought if i cared about something enough, people would want to hear it and engage with it.

stupid.

[viktors-still-beating-heart]

The ED has not been ED-ing, really. The thoughts are still there, but I have been eating pr "normally". Sometimes overeating, altho not properly bingeing, thank fuck. Probably gained some weight, probably haven't gained a crazy amount. Maybe I have.

I don't rlly give a shit abt anything atm, altho I kinda do give a lot of shits at the same time. Going to try to not gain any more weight, maybe try to lose some, try to take what opportunities I can.

On one hand, life is good rn, day-to-day shit is quite enjoyable-ish. I've made some fucking incredible, lovely friends. Idk how much they care or don't care about me, esp since they're quite new friends, but they're rlly amazing people and talking to them is a lot of fun.

Blegh. Every day, swinging between being happy and semi-fulfilled and excited abt the future, to feeling insubstantial and nothing-y, to wanting to cut everything out of my life and punish myself and rot away.

I'll be fine, I'm always fine, even if I'm not well I'm still always fine in the end. I should be glad for that, at least. Things could be so much fucking worse.

Want everyone who ever knew me to completely forget that I ever existed. Want to be shut in some dank flat in some bloated, uncaring city. Want no one to ever know that I exist. Want to spend the rest of my life in some living purgatory. Do I actually want that tho? No??? Not rlly???

Idfk. Self-pitying nonsense and bullshit, etc. etc.

Got to try and find a way to not let my feelings consume me, while still feeling my feelings fully. Got to try and just improve without kicking myself over every failure, past or present or future. Got to recognise my failures, while not allowing myself to be crushed by them.

Can I talk to people about my issues without sounding like a pathetic, self-centred whinge? Will they even be able to help me, or will I just hear things that I already know? Will my image be ever tainted in their minds? Does that matter? Do they not deserve to know how awful I truly am?

Talking into the void is good lmao, even if anyone sees this and thinks it's stupid as shit, at least you're just a distant, digital stranger. Maybe it's not stupid as shit. Egh. Not my call to make.

Might be more active on here, might not. Doomsaying rn but things are okay, this is the mentally ill den after all, most of the not-bad stuff doesn't belong here. I'm always fine. I hope you'll always be fine too, in the end.

[waterolivecoffiyeh]

Replying to Puppyluver256

Well, I see I finally have your attention. @puppyluver256

You'll have to excuse me if I couldn't reply sooner given the waterfall of word vomit I had to slog through for anything relevant. It was incredibly hard to pinpoint your actual response when you're simultaneously rambling about everything and nothing at all.

Additionally, it's hilarious that you think sprinkling random videos into your reply makes your points more valid. If anything, it just makes you look like you can't formulate a proper rebuttal without turning this into a dumb meme. Way to demonstrate how little you actually care about the topic.

But since you’ve decided to finally acknowledge what I’ve written, I will address everything you wrote, irrelevant as some topics may be and unlike you, I will not be lazy and ”skim through”. If I don’t cover a specific thing, it’s because I’ve either already stated my opinion elsewhere or I didn't care enough to discuss it.

And by the way? Confessing that you just skimmed through my blog shows me you still don’t understand a single word of what I’ve been saying as your response is so tactless, disorganized, and rife with paranoia.

Oh, and if you’re going to be "using my words" actually take time to read what I said vs "what you remember”. In fact, here's a link. Anyone who's reading this post can see exactly what I said. I'd have added a quote to this post but my response to you is already far too long and my old post is possibly even longer.

But I’ve stalled enough. Let’s comb through this mess together, shall we? Do try, and extend the same courtesy I’m giving you by actually reading my reply this time. Perhaps you will learn something.

Firstly, I’m going to get this out of the way since it really stuck in your craw: The misgendering.

1. You have not been going exclusively by they/them pronouns for years. I had been a follower for years prior to my departure and even when I returned when this whole debacle started, you still had she/they listed as your preferred pronouns on your blog and on other socials. You had she/they up for years. It was only within the past two weeks you made the switch (at the time of this post’s original upload). 2. I've paid enough attention to you to know this was a recent change, so if my older posts still say "she" that's because you still had female pronouns displayed on your blog at the time they were originally written. Trying to retroactively accuse me of transphobia is completely disingenuous. 3. Furthermore, if you wanted to be known exclusively by they/them you should have nixed the "she" stuff long ago. Additionally, my recent post doesn't even use "she" so stop trying to rage-bait anyone reading this with the narrative of me being transphobic. I'm LGBT+ too and frankly, I’m disappointed someone who’s in the same community would stoop to such a level.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let's get right to the heart of things: Addressing the holes that make your argument about Israel VS Palestine null and void.

I’m going to straight out call you a liar about you having known about Palestine for 20+ years.

1. If that was truly the case it would infer you knew how sensitive this subject was the entire time and still choose to believe your own interpretations of events instead of the actual facts. 2. You wouldn't have worded your so-called "freeverse" poetry so vaguely at a time when news of the genocide was breaking. Yes, you could have still said you felt helpless, but you chose to spin the current news of Israel vs Palestinian as a consequence of religious dogma, which it is not (more on this point further down). 3. Your “freeverse" poetry is nothing more than a bunch of melancholy platitudes where you lament your ineffectiveness and wail "Oh, woe is me! Won’t someone please comfort poor little me?” Frankly, that's the majority of your posts. They have always been tiny soapboxes for you to stand on to whinge and whine about how a specific situation affects you selfishly, treating your personal discomfort as more important than any actual victims of said situation. 4. This claim you care too much? It's a load of BS. You’re insincere to others and lying to yourself. If you truly did care, you'd take a hot second to actually read my blog. Leaving the poem up is just you not wanting to admit it's tone-deaf and a poorly uneducated take. If you truly learned anything you would have either removed it or added an addendum about why it was harmful, but you don’t want to do either because then it would draw more attention to you and you might actually be held accountable for something for once. 5. All of the posts that I archived coincide with dates of big news coming out of Palestine and they are either passive-aggressive or purposefully vague. I told you before whatever you're complaining about you're not the least bit subtle. If you didn't want people to scrutinize what you wrote, you wouldn't post certain things online and quietly keep your certain thoughts to yourself. 6. Don't use the excuse of "Well it's my blog!" to dodge accountability. When you use social media like a personal journal, everyone can see your opinions and since this is SOCIAL MEDIA, emphasis on the word “social”, anyone can respond. It's like reading your diary out loud to strangers in a crowded room. Everyone can hear you and they may have an opinion about what you wrote and it may not be what you want to hear. People can and will call you out. You are not free from criticism or rebuttal just because it’s a personal opinion. Consequence free speech does not exist. The moment you open your mouth, you are opening yourself up to a response from someone else be it positive, negative, or neutral. Trying to hide behind a shield of “Don’t reply to me! This is my personal space!” makes you appear weak in conviction. 7. Touting your atheism and your “secular humanism” as if makes you intellectually superior or more empathetic is self-aggrandizing and frustrating to watch. Pretending to be more intelligent because you don’t believe in God does not make you better than those who hold faith in their hearts. Playing this role as the untouchable enlightened who has seen the truth unlike the “masses of ignorant sheep” who believe in a higher power is what egotistical jackasses do and it’s a bad look. You’re every bit the Strawman archetype for the “Insufferable Atheist”. You’re almost at parody levels of cliché.

Just look at this paragraph you wrote without a shred of irony:

“I may be an atheist, but more importantly I am a secular humanist, and before knowing the latter term and taking on that label I was still an atheist even at the time, so the religious argument of “god gave them that land, they own that land” would never have worked on me the way it seems to with so many people. And tbh I don’t even know if that’s an argument that the Israeli government themselves put forward (it’s a terrible argument no matter who put it forward), but I do know that Christian fundamentalist extremists say things like that in their push for “god’s people” to return to "their god-ordained homeland” so they (the Christian extremists, I mean, just so we don’t get confused here) can try to usher in the end of the world based on the drug trip of a final volume in their bizarre storybook and no I am not kidding that is literally what they believe.”

Way to give yourself a pat on the back for a way of thinking millions of other people also share. You’re not the only atheist living in the Bible Belt. You’re not that special or unique.

If you were knowledgeable about the conflict in the Middle East you would speak from the socio-political perspective and not reduce this tragedy to a simple religious war (as if those too aren’t also extremely nuanced and complicated). Do you want to know how I know this? You contradict yourself in the very next paragraph:

”You must inform anyone you come across of this travesty. You must not let them look away either. But the suffering will continue regardless. They are all convinced they are in the right, all fighting for the will of a god that they will never confirm to be real, in fact the same god in wildly different interpretations. All the while, the innocents caught in the crossfire will continue to die, glorified in the disgusting “honor” known as martyrdom."

…Do you not see the irony here?

Tell me you didn’t imply this is situation is a religious war right there. Your words alone are tell me you believe it's solely religiously motivated and nothing more.

Let me tell you something. It's not.

The genocide of Palestinians can be rooted in the fact that Israel is basically an illegal colonization and occupation of land. People were forced to leave their homes, losing them in the process and then having Israel settlers move in and take over. Anyone with half a brain and a lick of common sense knows for a fact that Israel is trying to kill off the natives to take this land. Don't you dare blame the Palestinians! Most of us do not blame the Jews or the Muslims for this conflict.

Also? "Crossfire?" Please enlighten me where the crossfire is because most of the time it's Israel causing the destruction and killing. There is no crossfire when the Palestinians are the intended targets. Or are you gonna bring out Hamas as another excuse for calling it a crossfire…if you even know who or what Hamas is.

And the most insulting thing of all is that you sit, comfy and safe thousands of miles away from the horror of this reality, blaming both sides simply because they have faith in the same kind of God. Their religious texts may not be the same as the Christian fundamentalist extremists but they have the same roots. Calling any religious text a “bizarre storybook” is a disgusting insult. For someone who claims to be a “secular humanist” you seem to lack a core component of humanity. Your inference that if only both sides dropped their beliefs and chose logic & reason over faith & God, the blinders would fall off and they would instantly come to their senses, stop fighting, and be at peace.

That is not how real life works.

Religion is not the end all be all seed of all evil that sows discord all over the globe and it’s repulsive you believe it could ever be that simple. Even if EVERYONE in the Middle East adopted your perspective, there would still be pain and suffering. It would still be a genocide in that region. You have a lot of audacity to reduce this down to such a trifling matter, much less say and believe it.

You think you’re the smartest person in the room because you can’t be “fooled” into believing in God? In reality, you’ve shown your ass to the world with how callous and apathetic you are. And I’m not interested in your grandstanding of how decent you are.

And if you want to continue to deny it? Look at your own damn tags:

Side note? You should take the advice listed and grab a snack and a drink because we’ve barely scratched the surface. We’re going to talk about your justifications and excuses for why you can’t handle this news (Spoiler: none of them are valid).

“This is something that is not going to surprise anyone who knows me to hear: I have the emotional constitution of an improperly set flan.”

Tell me something I don’t know. In fact, how about you tell me how you’ve made it to your age without learning how to strike the proper balance between staying informed and not being burnt out from information overload.

You claim you want to hide from “the horrors of the world while online for the sake of your own sanity”. I have some very bad news for you: that environment no longer exists. The internet is no longer a niche little ecosystem that only a few people have access too. Everyone and their mother has a Facebook, a Twitter, an Instagram, etc. and that includes news organizations and major corporations. These days information travels faster. We live in a world where we can get live updates happening in real time which is absolutely paramount when so much news is actually being censored. But I’ll go over that later. I want to focus on this part specifically:

“Every single post about it, tweet about it, insertion into a video I was watching that gave no prior indication it would even remotely talk about it, it kept breaking my heart little by little, especially as I could do nothing to help and the charged language of everything was written to basically shame anyone who didn’t do anything regardless of whether or not they were actually capable of doing so.”

Of course people are talking about this! Its major news that has a global impact on so many things especially your country! We are potentially about to get involved in another so-called “war” that will last 20+ years and cost trillions of dollars! There are people who still don’t know if their loved ones are alive or dead because they’re being held hostage by amoral monsters who will kill them without second thought. Everyone is afraid for the future. Try to step outside yourself for a few seconds and look at the big picture.

No one is asking you to donate everything you own, join all the boycotts, or get involved in every debate and discussion. You always had the ability to choose your level of engagement, even none at all. Yet what you fail to grasp time and time again is that if you want to have an opinion on Palestine, you have to stay informed. You can’t reject information because it upsets you and then turn around and state your opinions on said subject even vaguely. You can’t have it both ways.

And you can tell me till you’re blue in the face your “freeverse” poem and all those other posts were not about Palestine. I do not believe you. You are trying to sneakily weasel your way into the discussion in a way that prevents anyone from replying because the slightest pushback leaves you running scared, blocking to avoid any productive conversation.

Also? I just have to ask: Where are these pictures of dead bodies you’re talking about? I have been plugged into multiple news outlets and even some accounts right at the source and I have not seen even a fraction of this “gruesome injury and death” you speak of. You phrase it as if it’s just a 24/7 parade of gore to mentally scar you. You’re the one in control of what you see. No one is holding your eyes open as you oh so dramatically put it. The onus is on you to enforce your boundaries, which by the way, are for your protection not to correct or change everyone else’s behavior.

Don’t like what someone posts? Unfollow them.

Don’t like when a video starts talking about Israel vs Palestine? Skip ahead or close out.

Don’t want to read posts about it? Keep scrolling part.

Try to actually learn how to properly use the tools you have instead of complaining that total strangers who wouldn’t know you from Adam aren’t catering to your incredibly specific sensibilities. Maybe take a look at your block list and see if some of the things on there are really worth losing sleep over.

As for the rest of section 2?

“All of this on top of my more direct struggles–adjusting to a new house I never wanted to move to in a location I never wanted to even visit again.”

It’s been a year and half since you posted you were moving. You’re telling me you still haven’t adjusted to your new home?

“learning to care for a new dog and never getting enough time to get anything done as a result, constantly getting bitten by said dog”

You are seriously blaming your dog for contributing to your “heartache”? Really? That’s the level we’re at? Frankly? You don’t sound like a responsible pet owner either. You adopted that dog last September and you’re still struggling with training? In my opinion, you could benefit from spending even more time with him. Less opportunities to get mired in the news and decompress mentally.

“the brand new house constantly falling apart either due to shoddy workmanship or because of Dog”

Old houses need a lot more work but in general you need to follow basic upkeep so things continue to run smoothly. And if your dog is destroying things, he’s not getting the proper attention/training.

“never getting enough sleep anymore (admittedly through no one’s fault but my own)”

You are quite literally your own worst enemy.

“pulling my hair out over all this stress and then stressing out over that in a vicious cycle of bald”

If that is the case, you seriously need to seek help to figure out a proper way to manage your stress levels. It should never get this bad. However, everything else before it? The move? The house repairs? The dog? These are just the daily routines of everyday life. If this is the “worst” it gets then you’re already doing better than most. You should feel incredibly blessed you even have a home, a pet, and a living family. The Palestinians don’t even have the remains of their loved ones to properly bury. Try to keep things in perspective. It’ll keep you humble and grounded.

Now, shifting gears to things that are only tangentially related because you're incapable of staying focused on the main topic, your "Fandomazation of Tragedy" section is ridiculously over-bloated with random nonsense totally unrelated to my criticism but I will address it since you felt you had to include it. I’m only doing this because there is one specific paragraph that truly enrages me so I’ll cover that first.

1. I know and have seen people show support for Palestine via edits, gifs, cartoons, or game characters because that was what they felt they could do to show solidarity and support. And if not that, they are boosting other support posts.

You want to claim it's tasteless and wrong for people to make Fakémon for Palestine? I'll tell you what's truly tasteless. This right here:

“I’m sure you can gather what Fakemon is through context, fan-made Pokemon, something I’ve heavily gotten into myself via the Cantessy project and at least three planned future Fakemon projects, and have been following plenty of artists and collaborative creators in the field for years now.”

Using genocide as a springboard to plug your fanfics and art? This is NOT the time nor the place to promote your fan projects! There is ZERO reason this should have been included! How dare you try to siphon attention away from an actual genocide and turn it into an opportunity to get more attention, followers, and feedback. How dare you try to milk this for your gain. And finally, how dare you criticize people using art as a means to express viewpoints or work through the emotions associated because it intrudes on your precious little playground while you try to poach new followers. That's true hypocrisy right there.

2. Cartoons and game characters have been used to make political statements for years (WW2 shorts via Disney and Loony Toons anyone?) This is not a new trend. FREE HONG KONG was just a few years ago after the controversy with Blizzard siding with China. This sort of thing isn't new and it’s not going away.

Side note? I've seen you complain about seeing Palestinian stuff in Splatoon 3 plazas, yet at the very bottom of your response to me is a manta ray character with a watermelon design. You wouldn't be using that to support Palestine if you honestly believed using fandom in political talking points was so "wrong".

And since Pokémon is your favorite fandom judging by your recent fanart series, need I remind you that when PETA tried to take potshots at this franchise for promoting animal abuse, there was a slew of pushback from its fandom in the form of fanart? They openly mocked PETA for trying to push their agenda on a fantasy game and claimed Nintendo and Game Freak supported animal abuse. Does that count as “unsettling” to you because it brings in real-world issues to light-hearted media…or does this one get a pass because it aligns with your personal system of ideals?

3. People do this sort of fanart to come to terms with stressful situations or to show solidarity with others because if there is anything we all have in common it’s the cartoons we watch, the comics we read, and the video games we play. Fandoms cross international borders. Those artists who make pro-Palestine art do so to connect with others to say, “Hey, I see you. You’ve not been forgotten. We’re with you.” And maybe, just maybe, those things can provide a little bit of comfort and support for people trapped in the middle of this nightmare. God knows they deserve a moment of levity and solace.

That being said if that sort of thing really doesn’t gel with you, that’s fine. But you need to understand other people feel differently. Furthermore? There is still plenty of non-politicized fanart out there. Yet you get so worked up when you stumble across anyone who posts pro-Palestine related fanart in your wanderings that you obsess over it and then sulk for hours before going online and crying about how you can’t escape “The Current Bad Thing That’s Been Happening Lately”. It’s absolutely pathetic for someone your age to act this way.

Now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way, let’s get back on track: Your so-called "state of decision paralysis”.

That is a weak excuse for why you haven't do thing one to demonstrate your supposed support despite asserting it multiple times in your response. Saying you don't know what to boost? You don't know what's actual real vs fraudulent?

Well, Mx."I've known about the Palestinian conflict for 20+ years" you'd know if you were actually tuned into the issue, did a tiny bit of research to see which posts were gaining traction, checked their authenticity, or even followed Palestinians online. So yeah, that argument? It doesn’t track. And it’s contradictory too. For someone who claims to have over two decades of knowledge on this subject, you seem to know only two things: Jack and Shit.

1. Saying delving too deep into this subject would shut you down entirely? Apparently not since you had knowledge of this conflict before anyone else? You must be an oracle if you were able to see 20 years into the future! 2. Hesitant to donate because you’re weary of malicious scams? While understandable you can still find established charities like the UNRWA to provide relief or if you truly can’t spare the money, look into the backgrounds of those funds to see where the money is going so you can include links in your bio or boost posts that have them listed. 3. Can’t attend a protest? No one said it was required. I don’t know why you’re letting the charged language of more vocal or active supporters have so much influence over you like this. Can you really not weed out the impassioned from the manipulative? And don’t delude yourself into thinking getting arrested would have any impact on your parents. You’re over 18. You’d be responsible for you.

Oh but wait! The protests you are involved in are coincidental! Well, that balances out!

…I’m being sarcastic by the way if you can’t tell.

Saying you unknowingly have been joining the boycotts cause you avoided Starbucks/Walmart/McDonald's up until recently? That doesn't count if you weren't aware of the movement when it started, so stop trying to score brownie points from your followers.

The simple truth is you didn't want to boost anything because it didn’t fit the aesthetic of your blog so don't come online claiming you can't make a decision. I've said it before and I'll say it again: You only recently reblogged that one post to try and save face. If you truly cared about this situation then your blog would reflect that fact.

And now the last paragraph in section three and the entirety of section four: That I ”misrepresented your posts" and your issues with how people write "censor tags."

If you’re concerned about people misinterpreting your posts, you need to consider reviewing what you wrote before it goes up. With how much you complain over the news, anyone who watches you would assume you were making more digs at Palestine. And when you add that to the passive-aggressive posts you’ve already made, it's not hard to draw certain conclusions.

“I was being vague for the purposes of letting anyone fit in whatever thing they’d find upsetting and needing to filter, and that was deliberately taken as me dismissing a very specific travesty.”

Yeah. No. That does not line up with the timeline of breaking news and when you posted.

“In my case, I often times forget entirely to clear out my filters when I’m in a mindset to not need them anymore.”

Then why are you getting angry at being, in your own words, “tragedy-jump scared” when you’re the one who took the filters off in the first place? Why are you upset other people are still talking about an ongoing situation they want to know about instead of hiding themselves to protect your sensitive soul? And that leads me into the second paragraph…

Your complaint about how people misspell tags to get past the censors.

…I’m going to give you a quick crash course in Internet History because you either don't seem to understand the why: People wouldn't need to change the spelling of those tags if it wasn't being seen as something to already censor. The reason that type of "misspelling" began was because POCs were being censored for talking about their trauma and personal experiences by non-POCs. They became uncomfortable with POCs talking about racism, rape, suicide, gun violence, police brutality, abuse, drugs, alcohol. The POCs used purposeful misspellings so they could stop being harassed by non-POCs for making them uncomfortable or getting their stuff taken down. But before long, this practice migrated outside of Tumblr and has now been adapted by people who did not understand the original origin and it snowballed from there.

People like you always cry about how you hate seeing certain topics brought up but then turn around to complain about misspelled tags and how it trivializes serious subjects. People like you create these conditions and then act clueless about why it so. And why? Because you try to push your boundaries on other people to change their behavior instead of taking yourself out of the environment causing you stress. THAT is what true boundaries are.

However, tag censorship is your own personal pet peeve to deal with and I've wasted too much time on this tangent. It is seriously so hard to stay on message when you go off random topics unconnected to the core issue. Can’t help but feel that’s intentional to obscure things. I guess it works for you though. If you can’t counter an argument, just wear the other person down into giving up. Brevity must not be a word you’re unfamiliar with.

Too bad for you I’m actually willing to pick your response apart sentence by sentence so let’s get to the conclusion which for some reason is the longest section! I’m going to be jumping around a lot. Try to keep up.

1. I said earlier that Palestinian news is being suppressed as hell online here in the West. Getting news straight from the source is very important in situations like this. Suppression of information is detrimental to us as a whole so if people need to circumvent mass media censorship to tell the world what's really going on, so be it. I will stand in support of them. That will always matter more to me than the whims of advertisers or the lobbyists who have these companies in their pockets. Or in this specific case, the emotions of one sad blogger. 2. Just as I have the right to this information, you too have the right to burrow your head in the sand and remain blissfully unaware. You're an adult. You have the power to just close a tab or block anyone you wish. You have a lot of tools to curate your feed but you can’t do that and it’s not because its everywhere you look. It’s because if you truly cut yourself off, you’d have nothing of substance to say…not that you had much substance to begin with. You need a reason to complain. It helps you feel self-important. 3. The fact that a huge portion of your response was tangents about tag censorship, using fandom as a platform for political discussion, and retroactively joining boycotts demonstrates that you can't even give Palestine the attention it deserves, miring the issue with personal anecdotes or mindless prattle.

To put it bluntly, you're not someone who can have a mature conversation with me.

“You carefully made sure there was no way I would find your blog and your targeted harassment under normal circumstances–even with that one instance of you commenting directly on my post that led to me blocking you.”

The reason for this is right there in your very own words. I confronted you outright rather than trying to hide in your DM’s and you instantly block evaded me to avoid any further conversation. I had to resort to these backward measures of archiving because you cut all communication instantly. How can any effective communication be had when the other person chooses to run away rather than address the issue?

“You’d tagged all of your posts with tags you either knew or suspected I would have filtered via vanilla Tumblr so that I could not see it while logged in even if I unblocked you or told Tumblr to show me your blog despite my block, or perhaps you blocked me on that blog and Tumblr finally fixed the issue of blocked users being able to view the blogs of those that blocked them.”

Considering your block/filter list probably goes into the hundreds? I’m not surprised you couldn’t find me initially. And by the way, you’re still not blocked on my blog. You’re welcome to respond at any time. And unlike you, I won’t try to hide.

“Hell, I only found out about this in the first place from a mere google fluke, trying to make sure my own inattentiveness on a completely unrelated issue didn’t lead to someone doing exactly what you’ve done on that issue and just so happening to be on an incognito window while doing so.”

Gotta say that’s a hell of a coincidence. Also gotta say I don’t believe it for one damn second.

As far as I've witnessed, you’re extremely reactionary and simply unable to tolerate it when you get called out so don't try to hold me to a standard you yourself don't follow. I've seen how you interact with people who challenge you or disagree with you, including going out of your way to pester folks in their online space to provoke a reaction before you block evade, and then congratulate yourself as if you outwitted them and laugh "haha another hater”. This has always been about your attitude and your ignorance on subjects you don’t truly understand, putting your personal spin on things because of your own internal biases.

You’ve stated in your response that I’m guilty of harassment and running a smear campaign. I have to ask: What harassment? Pointing out your hypocrisy is not harassment. Informing other people of your true nature is not harassment. I’ve never used slurs or insults based on your identity. I’ve never doxxed you. I’ve never threatened to physically hurt you. Not liking someone is not harassment no matter how much it hurts your feelings.

If this was an actual smear campaign, why is it everything I’ve linked back to your blog still the same as when I first took the screencaps? If you consider sourced words with proper links a "smear campaign" that tells me you’re actually very afraid everything you’ve ever said coming back to bite you in the ass. This isn’t cruelty as you described. It’s pointing out all the holes in your arguments and letting your followers decide if they want to follow someone with such a judgmental view of the world.

“You don’t intend to make the world a better place by doing this, not in the slightest. No, instead you’ve just berated the “snowflake trigglypuff” for trying to keep their “safe space” intact, while painting that sentiment in the language of the social justice warrior you believe yourself to be rather than that of the crazy altright loser I believe (or at least hope) you’d find as repulsive as I do so that no one would clue in that that is in fact what you were doing.”

You really are projecting a lot.

Saying I’m co-opting the language of a social justice warrior? Suggesting I’m alt-right? You’re grasping at straws more than a choking sea turtle.

And calling yourself a “snowflake trigglypuff” even in jest? Who still uses edgy SJW terminology like this anymore? I think this says more about who you are than anything it could about me. I don’t need to reduce myself to dated insults like those. I can come up with far more effective wording to describe how callously ignorant you are.

“Clearly someone who thinks it’s in any way appropriate to tell someone, and I’m quoting mostly from memory as it’s been months, “I’m sure all those dead kids are glad you’re protecting your mental health” has NO sense of shame whatsoever. If I were to stoop to your level, I’d tell you that those same dead kids are probably really proud of you for harassing someone who has, at worst, made some tactless statements out of frustration.”

You are right about one thing, however. Those same “dead kids” don’t care about your mental health or about me calling you out. But this isn’t about those “dead kids”. It's about their families and friends who may still be alive. It’s about the other children who have been lucky enough to not been slaughtered. It’s about people who will suffer generational trauma and PTSD for the rest of their lives. It’s about the same people who may end up dying by their own hands because they can’t live in pain any longer. They’re the ones I’m concerned about.

The dead don’t care. The living do. The opposite of caring is not hatred. It’s indifference. And that’s why I’m speaking out against people like you who take the suffering of others and make it their platform to soliloquy about their first world hardships. So, to borrow a very old Tumblr-ism, I would check your privilege.

“I don’t believe for a second that you actually give two shits about the plight of the Palestinian people beyond some vague sense of "clout.”

Clout? Seriously? If I was interested in immaterial nonsense like that, do you think I’d be posting on Tumblr exclusively where things like “clout” don’t matter to anyone? No. I would be posting this everywhere to reach more people. The reason it’s only on Tumblr is because it’s where you primarily spend your time. It’s the only place you can be reached, where you can’t ignore me.

“I looked at your blog, its layout themed around the symbols of Palestinian liberation, and as far as I can tell it’s all just window dressing.”

And your poetry and posts are just soapboxes for you to puff yourself up or use as “cudgels”, as you say, to pester people into reading stories about your fan-made Pokémon region. Yet you want to accuse me of clout-chasing and using dead kids to bully you? Yeah. Okay. /s

Do you truly believe I’m doing this for attention? For some imaginary internet points to “win”? Win what exactly? What game do you believe we’re playing? There are no winners, only one loser talking out their ass.

Oh and as for this?

“Hell, with the vindictive nature of your blog, you’d think you'd’ve even had posts targeting other peoples who are at best trying to get on with their lives through the 24-hour news cycle of death and destruction or at worst actively supporting the deaths of innocents. (I still wouldn’t encourage such things, but it’d at least make sense given your general vibe).”

There’s nothing vindictive about cataloging these posts and making sure you can’t hide your judgmental nature behind that paper thin veneer of wholesomeness you try to fool people with. The reason I called you out specifically is because you’re a two-faced jackal. That’s the true core of my dislike of you: Presenting an image of niceness while hiding the vileness behind fluffy words and emotionally manipulative language to make people feel sorry for you.

You're not someone to support as an artist. Frankly, you're not a wholesome person either. You're judgmental, emotionally immature, and have a lot of issues, issues you couldn't even pay me to address. I don’t know what you need but it’s something well above my pay grade to diagnose.

And finally we’re going to close this disaster out by talking about your suspicions of my identity. I’m going to summarize because a lot of it is repetitive from earlier points or in the section itself.

You’ve identified me as “H” and for a short while believed I was someone called “A”. You believed that “A” was upset by you and took their frustration out on you, leading you to unfollow “A”. You later realized that wasn’t the case and are now referring to me as “H” (for Harasser). Clever.

I'm not “A” or “H” or any other letter of the alphabet. You’re just upset you don't know how else to address me because I’m smart enough to not leave so much of my personal details online. Whatever happened 4 years ago with whoever? That's not me. Try and not be so quick to assume before you start pointing fingers. You make yourself look paranoid. If you’ve got beef with other people, make sure you're addressing the right person at the least.

I already said multiple times I was a follower of yours and only called you out about the Palestinian stuff because I was appalled that someone I once saw as a good kind person morphed into a self-centered jackass who had no problem using a tragedy as a means to emotionally manipulate people into paying attention to them. If you don't believe me, that's on you. But if anyone uses this genocide as bait for their own little pity party, I'm not afraid to draw attention to it. And since you claimed to have known about the Palestinians for more than 20+ years, I’m holding you even more accountable to get it right and act gracefully.

“Maybe you’ve gone after more than just them, but these are the two I know of for certain. M told me directly, and I saw C’s post about getting an anon “warning” her about someone with an “anti-religion agenda”, and because I’m not a complete moron I could put two and two together because that’s the kind of bullshit religious people spread about atheists all the damn time.”

The only person talking about religion here is you. What I’m doing is pointing out how your animosity towards religion has given you a bias towards the Israel vs Palestine situation because you can’t see past the faith of people in that region. I merely pointed out your concerning behavior to your mutuals because “M” and “C” have the right to know your true character. Friends should not be complicit when one of them is acting poorly.

“Like I’ve said numerous times, I’d take a dozen progressive theists over one asshole atheist.”

Those same progressive theists? They want nothing to do with you. Not even other atheists would want you. You are the asshole atheist in this scenario because you are incapable of thinking critically and simply write off the whole genocide as religious zealots fighting over the Holy Land because God told them to. It always comes back to this. You keep making the genocide about martyrdom so it's easier to maintain your hatred of all things religion. “But you are no hero, nor am I a villain, and I would not be so gauche as to claim the reverse is true either. We’re just a couple of randos on the internet, one who has an unhealthy level of vitriol toward the until-recently clueless other.”

And finally, we come to the point where you try to appeal to my sense of empathy by a generic “we’re all people at the end of the day” sentimentality, going even so far as to say that you’d never claim I was the villain. You’re not going to placate me this way. Stop trying to minimize your actions and act like they are inconsequential. They’re the earmarks of a person with poor morale character. You asked what I hope to gain from doing this?

I want you to drop this façade and either do better or start being honest. You’re full of false sincerity and niceness, pretending to be the bigger person while also muttering your petty disdain for people who don’t think like you, like what you like, or share your exact beliefs. You hide it subtly in the way you write. You think you’re above reproach. You’re the judgmental rotten soul you see in everyone else.

The only reason you'll end up as a "Persona non grata" is because how you present yourself online will eventually catch up with you. At some point, everyone will grow tired of watching you spinning your wheels and gaining no traction anywhere. They will move on to something that's actually worth their time. But until then I will continue to warn others about you and show them your true personality. Take the advice you gave me: Fix yourself and do better or disappear into irrelevance and be forgotten.

PS:

“Whatever your goal was with that, it was your final mistake, because now I know exactly who you are.”

Your threat has no teeth. If you really knew who I was, you’d name me or you'd at least open up a conversation with me. But you won’t. You never will. You’ll continue to cower away while putting on a mask of confidence and arrogance, thinking you outsmarted me until the only one applauding you is yourself.

[pistolslinger]

proditeur:

"i do so appreciate your honesty." it's spoken with the sharp edge of sarcasm; but he means it. he can always tell the difference between genuine interest and brown-nosing flattery, and he'd much rather suffer the former than the latter.

"this?" he wrinkles his nose, staring down at the redacted pieces of information that he personally inked away. but he can see the answers in the void spaces, like a matrix operator watching over bits of scrolling green code. "i did this for your benefit. if you read the complete specifications of this project, it'd take at least... at least..." he ticks off three fingertips against his thumb, muttering inaudibly to himself, "... one hundred and fifty years off your lifespan. by your calculation. you'd drop dead—right here on my table—and then i'd be forced to resurrect you into some sort of jesper-cyborg hybrid.

"actually... let me get you an unredacted copy."

his eyes visibly widen at the potential of cyborg hybridity. aside from the issue of dying and leaving his immortal soul in the hands of a man who — probably, genuinely — has an equation to accurately calculate loss of life through sheer boredom, that doesn't sound all that woeful. "make me, like, nine foot tall," jesper says, with no small amount of interest. "no reason, i just think it'd look wicked,"

and give him an edge in the mansion kitchen, particularly when it came to hiding snacks in the topmost cabinets, out of reach from any shorter-than-six-foot hands.

"thank you," he adds, with a mote of earnest sincerity; as much as he liked to whinge and complain about regulus' lengthy lectures regarding new techology — jesper did like to rifle through the written documents, on the off-chance that something in there might save their lives one day. to cover that embarrassing honesty, he promptly clears his throat. "you have an incredibly somnific voice. also: how soon do i get one of these? are you . . . pre-production, post-production, still trying to convince arthur to bankroll this . . . ? you know, it'd be quicker to just threaten someone into it," obvious ethical muddle aside, of course, "god. the money you could make if you quit the agency and just started building whatever the fuck you wanted."

[steakbones]

im really just waking up and going to bed these days jesus christ

[unnamedelement]

When Reviewer 2 is right in all their feedback except for one thing in particular and that one thing in particular is your major section of the paper so it is going to haunt you for days trying to figure out how you explained it so badly that that’s what they came away with

[mariacallous]

The great affliction of our age makes men believe they have been cancelled by the BBC while they are literally on the BBC

How very interesting to hear John Cleese explain how he’d be immediately cancelled or censored on the BBC, in comments made freely and at considerable length yesterday in the marquee 8.10am interview slot on the BBC’s flagship Radio 4 news programme. Explaining why he was about to become a presenter on GB News, the 82-year-old declared loftily: “The BBC have not come to me and said: ‘Would you like to have some one-hour shows?’ And if they did, I would say: ‘Not on your nelly!’ Because I wouldn’t get five minutes into the first show before I’d been cancelled or censored.” To which the only possible response is, “Morning, Major!”

These days, Cleese claims to “live in hotel rooms” – a bit on-the-nose, but there you go – and evidently boasts a lively range of views. In the strictest interests of accuracy, we should note that he was recently given a whole two series of a sitcom on the BBC, with the last episode of Hold the Sunset broadcast in 2019, a few months before the pandemic hit. Furthermore, it was barely a month ago that Cleese was tweeting: “GB News is sometimes referred to, rather wittily, as ‘KGB News’. To what extent is GB News influenced by Russian interests?” I don’t know – but perhaps it’s a matter that could be explored on his new GB News show. We’re told anything goes.

For now, what seems clear is that Cleese suffers one of the great afflictions of our age, a kind of delusional broadcast disorder that can make the sufferer believe they have been cancelled by the BBC even while they are literally on the BBC. The worst part of it is that we are not allowed to discuss this social sickness because of political correctness. I tried to tell my husband about it at breakfast yesterday – he works at the BBC – but he told me to be quiet so he could listen to John Cleese on the BBC. Like Cleese, I had been silenced.

In any rational world you’d be able to state the obvious reality – the condition is overwhelmingly suffered by men. But you can’t say it! You can’t say it! You can look at Cleese, or Noel Edmonds, or Nigel Farage, or Laurence Fox, but you’re banned from saying what you see. You have to pretend that women are out there every five minutes wanging on about how they’re not allowed to have a primetime show forever, as well as a bus pass or leadership of a political party, and how their only alternative option is presenting hours of gloriously bitter live telly every week on one of our bazillion-pound news-o-tainment channels.

In a sane world, you’d be allowed to say scientific facts, like the fact that 90% of heroically whingeing BBC cancellees are men, 95% of them are acrimoniously divorced, and 110% of them have “divorced energy”. (Obviously, it’s Not All Previously Primetime Men – Mr Blobby has behaved with perfect dignity.) Yet you can’t say it. You’d get cancelled in seconds. In fact, I don’t even know how I’m writing this next sentence.

Pity me. In my incredibly vulnerable position as a newspaper columnist, I have to think about this stuff constantly. Constantly! I once described a soon-to-launch TV news channel as sure to become “unmoored from facts” – and its CEO voided his pram of all toys. He spent rather a lot of time to-ing and fro-ing with the readers’ editor demanding some mean words be changed, before handing Press Gazette a copy of his very grand letter to the Guardian (which was also subsequently published by the Guardian). In it, he explained: “We are absolutely committed to our mission to report news in the most accurate and balanced way we can. It is unfortunate that your article failed to adhere to this basic principle.” The channel in question? Why, it was GB News.

Don’t get me wrong, I was and am still hugely amused by Angelos Frangopoulos, the adorable little Aussie snowflake who wrote that letter. But imagine how I felt last week when I saw his channel had given a guest spot to Naomi Wolf, who hasn’t been playing with a full deck of data points since the 00s. Wolf’s appearance was essentially a very, very long diatribe against the Covid vaccine. Her assertion that “mass murder has taken place” was bolstered by the GB News presenter Mark Steyn explaining that vaccines “cause every conceivable kind of damage”. Other lowlights of Naomi’s appearance, which was allowed to proceed without a single piece of disinformation being questioned? The claim that Covid vaccinations were “bioweapons” that were “sterilising people” and “poisoning breast milk”. Also, “civil society has been wholly co-opted by bad actors trying to destroy British civil society”. Wolf went on – entirely unchallenged – to compare today’s medical establishment to the eugenicists and exterminators of the Third Reich. Steyn just nodded along, repeatedly going “yeah”, presumably in “the most accurate and balanced way” he could. He booked her again the very next night.

Anyway, a fun new stablemate for John Cleese. Cleese famously decided that the Brexit debate saw this country sink “to the lowest intellectual level ever”, so I strongly urge him to push that envelope and book Wolf on his first show. In the meantime, those of us saddened by a former idol’s comic decline should comfort ourselves that some of the best recent comedy has happened on GB News. Last year on the free speech channel, presenter Guto Harri took the knee live on air, got suspended for it, quit and was soon made prime minister Boris Johnson’s comms chief. The whole batshit saga was easily funnier than anything Cleese has done since A Fish Called Wanda (1988), and we must look forward to his promising new show in that spirit.

[bubonickitten]

Rowling is obtuse as fuck. She’s on her nonsense again. She spammed her twitter when she retweeted a hundred supposedly queer people, saying they are transphobic and support her. She lives in an echo chamber. She was whinging about some labour politician saying trans women are women and went full terf baby tantrum. She throws a lot of those. Terf island needs to get it’s shit together

sdfgsfdhdhf what an embarrassment.

Funny thing is, I work at a library and even without getting into her shitty politics (we have to be careful what we talk about at work) people are like "her new kids books aren't.... good????"

Granted I'm extremely out of touch with whatever the fuck she's got going on because I don't have Twitter and everything I hear about her nonsense is through osmosis on Tumblr and I haven't been on Tumblr much, BUT... it seems the only thing she's got going on rn bookwise is the shitty thrillers she writes under her other pen name and a lot of people don't even know that's her lmao.

Like, even Harry Potter, with as much nostalgic clout it's got, is being overshadowed by other, newer, and (this is subjective but) better YA.

HP was important to me growing up but even before JKR started on her TERF crusade, and even if you want to take a very particular stance on death of the author, the text itself has a lot of toxic ideas in it (rampant fat shaming and weird slavery apologism for starters). Rereading HP as I got older (esp as an adult) I picked up on more and more stuff that I didn't when I was younger. And looking at it now, as much as I still harbor some nostalgia for it (in a 'that was a big part of my childhood' kinda way), it doesn't hold a candle to other juvenile and YA fiction, both contemporary and more recent.

If she wants to stay relevant, being a shithead isn't the way to do it. Improving as a writer, both in technical terms and in terms of like... growing as a person -- becoming more aware of the importance of inclusivity and diversity, writing compassionately with a mind to a wider audience, learning from mistakes and educating herself on harmful tropes and working to dismantle things that, while they might be staples for whatever genre she choose to write, are nonetheless harmful -- that would have gone a long way in keeping her relevant as a role model or Popular Children's Author or whatever.

(Not that she was ever a perfect role model. She's always had problems, she's always promoted toxic tropes and ideas, whether knowingly or unknowingly. But she had the potential to be a role model, if only she had listened to her audience when we said, over and over again, "ow, that hurt, and here's why, and here's how to avoid doing it in the future.")

Now she's just some bitter TERF screaming into the void on Twitter, deliberately making life more difficult for trans people in her country and abroad, destroying whatever legacy she might have had if she bothered to learn and grow as a person and an author.

I don't mean to sound flippant. She is, again, doing real harm, particularly in areas where she still has some clout. But she's on the wrong side of history, both in terms of this TERF shit and in terms of the other oppressive nonsense she's doubled down on over the years. If future generations continue the trend of being socially aware, of learning about and interacting with people different from them, of giving a shit about others and appreciating diversity -- and I have high hopes for future generations, after looking at some of the shining examples of Gen Z out there changing the world -- then she won't be remembered kindly.

Whatever moral high ground she thinks she has within her little echo chamber, whatever gratification she gets out of absorbing praise from bigots and allying with terrible politics in the name of tormenting trans people... it won't leave her with a positive legacy overall.

All of this to say: YA as a genre -- and juvenile fiction for that matter -- has changed and is changing. There's a big push for #ownvoices, for diverse authors and characters, for stories that deal with real-life social issues, whether in a real world setting or with an analogous speculative fiction setting. That's not to say there aren't problems with YA lit, or that there aren't shitty stories and shitty authors. But the general trend is moving in favor of giving a voice to marginalized authors and audiences and characters.

I can see it in how collections are being curated and new material is being acquired even in a library system in a rural, skewed-conservative area. I can see it in how younger and newer librarians -- particularly children and teen librarians -- are going out of their way to include a wider variety of voices. I see it in how many parents are increasingly borrowing books for their kids written by diverse authors, introducing their kids to stories and voices that tackle subjects that would otherwise be outside of their kids' experiences. And I see it in how children and teens themselves are choosing material written by and about people who aren't exactly like them.

I see a lot of hope in the direction that juvenile and YA fiction is going, is the point, and I try to remember that whenever increasingly irrelevant contemporary classic authors like JKR are throwing their little tantrums on social media, whining about cancel culture and all that. Libraries aren't censoring them; parents and kids aren't "canceling" them. They're making themselves unappealing and irrelevant.

...that got longer than I intended it to, sorry. It's stuff that's been on my mind for awhile ever since I started spending so much time in libraries, lol.

TL;DR -- JKR can stay mad. If she wants to make a name for herself deliberately alienating and going out of her way to make life difficult for marginalized people, then that's how she's going to be remembered. It doesn't alleviate the suffering she's currently causing, and unfortunately I think she's still turning a decent profit with her crime thrillers (which, from what I understand, have some insidious transphobic tropes, which DOES reach her audience, even if they're unaware of her Twitter TERF antics) and even her new kids books (as much as she's lost respect among newer generations of readers and librarians, she's still a big name).

But she's become a bad joke among most of what was previously a loyal audience of young readers, many of whom have done the learning and growing that she refuses to do. And many of them have since had children, and because the juvenile and YA literary landscape is changing, those children have access to a wider variety of voices and are actively choosing stories that embody exactly the kind of social awareness and inclusivity that JKR and her echo chamber are screaming about. Even kids whose parents are still huge HP fans are less interested in HP than newer popular series (bc as much as kids might share their parents' enthusiasm for an older series, especially when they're young, kids are always gonna find their own thing to obsess over -- and a good parent will hopefully do their best to reciprocate and let their kids introduce them to a new thing!).

So joke's on her. Her popular legacy will begin and end with Harry Potter, and there are plenty of more nuanced and (imo) better stories to eclipse Harry Potter.

[whaleofatjme1920]

Hey, I know we don't know each other on a personal basis. But I absolutely adore you, Elsie. You could never make another headcanon again and I would still check in and remind you to take care of yourself.

You're an incredible person from what I've seen here, and I hope you know your worth.

I can only imagine what it takes to run a blog, the pressure to put out a set of headcanons or scenario you aren't happy with just for the sake of someone else who doesn't even appreciate it that much. The amount of effort you put in for that post to be one of your least popular.

But you are a beautiful star that shines all on its own in my eyes.

Sending all the love in the world, and hoping you can be happy with your blog again soon

- 💜

I find it really rude to leave people hanging, so I’ll be getting to this now. I know you’d tell me to take my time, to feel things out until I feel happy again but I’d rather not leave you on read!! You mean the absolute most to me, and in no shape or form are my feelings of disdain or resentment focused on you, or other people like you here or in my daily life. My anger, feeling under appreciated are feelings that have existed in me for as long as I can remember and unfortunately it’s time for their bimonthly check in but added with the stress of having a blog. You genuinely mean so much to me.

There’s so many things about running a blog for others and it almost feels stupid to complain about it. It’s not my job, I have no monetary tethers to it, but I do have emotional ties. I like writing for other people; if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have this blog to begin with. But I’m so tired of feeling empty, numb and under appreciated for the works that I make. It feels like screaming into a void, or trying to ask the sea to stop crashing waves onto the shore. It’s expected that I provide these things, therefore they deserve no proper accreditation. They are expected. And I know they are but that empty feeling almost gives me no incentive to continue.

It’s not like I want everything to do a 180 or people to tell me how incredible it is 24/7, but it feels so soulless and empty. I know people get anxious to comment, to even interact but for artists and writers, creators in general, that feedback and keep us afloat. It lets us know what to hone in on, what we can cut back on, what makes our audience happiest and what tends to do best data wise. While this ultimately isn’t about numbers to me, there’s something crushing about the works I love most, putting all my time and effort into receiving the smallest amount of interaction just because it wasn’t smut or Creepypasta based.

I hate to say it (because it sounds stupid and whinging and really this whole thing is stupid and whinging), but I hate how my content is just expected. You (and not you specifically) receive something other people would charge for and don’t even pop back in to tell me if it was okay or not. It feels like you’re taking for granted time and energy that’s being given out for free. And let’s get this clear, it’s not money based. Never was, and never will be. I recognize that this is a hobby and absolutely NO ONE owes me ANYTHING.

But after a while of talking to the void, it’s kinda stupid to expect a response back. And it makes me wonder why I’d even want to talk to the void to begin with when I know it doesn’t have a voice to respond.

[early20sfailingplenty]

tw; mentions & discussions of various animals (spiders, cats, dogs) being harmed or killed in hypothetical but also real situations, me being rude to myself in a reflective way.

if you have some kind advice or words, feel free to send them my way. feels like all i've done today is cry; been a rough day.

I sobbed at work today - on the clock and blatantly in front of co-workers - because maintenance asked me to get some ants out of a resident's room and I felt bad for disturbing the ants and several times almost caved and passed the responsibility to my co-worker but pushed myself through it because I was asked to do it and I didn't wanna look silly or disappoint anyone. I cried so hard that I soaked my mask through and had to get a new one immediately after and spent a good five minutes in the bathroom crying as quietly as I could, because right outside were more co-workers in the corridors. No one noticed my upset (just as well, as I said). Later on, I spent twenty minutes kneeling in the middle of a corridor with a plastic cup and a sheet of paper trying to save a spider on the carpet; it's a busy corridor and the thought of it getting hurt or killed when I was right there with the ability to help made me cry. Again. Eventually, my co-worker came looking for me and together we got the spider outside. I dislike spiders, they scare me, but my upset at the danger it was in was stronger and I pushed passed that fear to keep it alive, even if it ended up being only for only five seconds. I still helped it to have more of a life.

I get teary-eyed when I see mentions on YouTube or my dash of sick pets or of pets being harmed somehow, like with strangers leaving poison for stray cats. Or even the mention of a rat trap. I cry at Finding Nemo and very clear animal puppets covered in fake blood in any films. I scour IMBD parental guides, doesthedogdie, wheresthejumpscare and other such sites and if ANY animal gets harmed, I can't and won't watch it. Even if I get a timestamp, jury is out on if I'll actually watch the film. There are entire films I'd love to see but won't watch due to a thirty second clip of an animal being harmed or killed. I cry if I walk in on a 'please help the animal, these are the conditions they're living in' advert with real footage.

The smallest incident will make me cry and I hate it. I've always been like this about animals. My sensitivity is good, yes, especially in a world like this, but it's the slightest thing and I hate that I can't stomach any kind of animal suffering because I always get teased for it, sometimes I get deliberately exposed to it by assholes who think it's funny that I am so easily upset. It's not so much my sensitivity I hate but it's more how others react to me. Which isn't my problem, I know, but I would like to be stronger with this one thing but I'm also not willing to face it head on and do something about it. So I have no right to complain, I suppose. Though, this is less whinging and more... chatting to the void.

It's not like I wanna be stone fucking cold to it, but... less tears would be nice, and less often. It gets irritating having to fight tears almost everywhere I go. Even though most people don't notice me cry because a) I'm a naturally quiet crier and b) the masks we wear at work hide everything below my eyes (KEEP IT THAT WAY PLEASE AND THANK YOU!)

I would like to be a little less me, you know. It's exhausting.