#im tired of seeing people policing content creators... just fuck off

[literaphobe]

another reason to limit the amount of white people associated w amigops/otv and friends is the stuff that’s come out about ash recently :/ like yeah people can learn and grow etc but if you’re still dropping slurs in your late 20s and casually racist even tho so many of your cc friends are poc... girl

ok im about to GO OFF im fucking pissed about little miss cigarette tray,,,, ok i’ve gotten a ???? vibe about her before a :/ vibe n it’s all the way back in rust group forming when i thought she was being a lil manipulative. n the shit she did caused so much annoying shit that literally could’ve been avoided

okay so rae corpse ash n sykkuno bump into toast n jack’s group, right? and they were all like we should all be together in one big group!!!! but then they were like wait what’s the group limit what if we don’t have enough space,,, and then they start experimenting n adding each other i guess? n it turned out they had space for everyone but one person (iirc?????) and ash suddenly was like oh it’s okay i’ll leave!!!! u can all be grouped together i don’t need to be in the group!!! n other stuff that was like v self destructive sounding n like oh no it’s ok no one wants me here anyway etc and syk was like ???? because literally no one had any plans to leave ANYONE out they were literally just trying to figure things out n suggesting ideas and she was over there tryna be the self sacrificial hero i guess?????

and then. people in chat got really mad and toxic hating on rae and sykkuno in their chats yelling about how ash was being forcefully left out or whatever which wasn’t the case at all n wouldn’t have been if she didn’t give that impression??? and then RAE thought that ash was GENUINELY getting excluded which made her ACTUALLY mad at her friends?????? who did nothing wrong???????? and then like weeks later when they talked about this ash was like “oh actually i was super upset about getting left out :/ but it’s all good now!!!” like GOD. NO ONE WAS TRYING TO LEAVE YOU OUT. U LITERALLY IMMEDIATELY STARTED ACTING LIKE SOME SELFLESS VICTIM N REMOVED URSELF WHEN NO ONE TOLD YOU TO LEAVE?? anyway at the time i gave her the benefit of doubt that she wasn’t doing it on purpose since i thought she was ‘nice’ but u know what? it’s a fucking ugly look that a white woman got a bunch of streamers of color hate for “bullying” her and “excluding” her when she was literally the one who chose to walk away n act selfless WHEN NO ONE ASKED HER TO DO THAT

anyway now that i’ve got that off my chest let’s talk about her racist ass comments in her community discord. she essentially made a bunch of anti-asian remarks, specifically many anti-chinese ones (1. i had Chinese food earlier maybe that’s why I feel sick lol 2. making fun of Chinese people for supposedly eating bats 3. calling corona the bat soup virus 4. continuing to be grossed out by what Chinese/Asian people supposedly eat and being all ‘oh maybe i’m just weird w food tho :/‘ n letting people get away w responding to her saying ‘Asians eat a lot of weird stuff no no u r fine!!’ + ‘Chinese people n their food bruh’ which. just. i am very disgusted 5. ‘guys my cup was made in China am I corona infected’ + some other stuff i’m too tired to recap here look at this twitter link)

she also talked about how the BLM protests were.... stupid..... and called people idiots for protesting......... said there was ‘a right and wrong way to protest and this is wrong’ and ‘it’s not like we just can’t have police officers’ ,,,,,, so yeah. and she also said the r word and she called someone the f slur on stream once and uh..... yeah she sucks!

honestly the shit cherry on top of this shit sundae is that she literally profits off asian aesthetics w her anime bitch ass v tuber thing n other stuff on her stream n her twitter handle is literally SUGOI_ASH??? also like otv n friends is a mostly Asian friend group who propelled her lily white ass to success???? she mooched off the success of streamers of color only to say racist ass shit like this???

anyway. she “apologized” by saying “I GUESS i’m sorry for being ignorant n I’m sorry IF YOU WERE OFFENDED. ANYWAY–“ and moved the fuck on and like just. fuck off w that shit. it pains me that she managed to get a larger following from all this in the few months she’s hung out w otv n friends and sydney a black bi streamer literally has less followers on twitch? like what the fuck is up with that make it make sense??? anyway i hope everyone unfollows ash tray n follows Sydeon on twitch instead :-)

also idk how many people in otv + friends know about this. i highly doubt there will be a dramatic kick out of ash from their friend group if it becomes a thing they all know about. i think ever since they kicked out f*dmyster they’re a little traumatized about having to publicly remove anyone from their circle in general? because many other streamers n content creators will jump on it and comment on it very heavily and make them all very vulnerable n i def don’t want that or expect that either. i hope they play w ash less from now on tho? some people commented that in the corpse lobby yesterday it seemed like people weren’t interacting w ash as much? idk if that’s really the case but i will respect whatever they choose to do if they even know what happened,, i guess if i see her show up in future lobbies i’ll just like ignore her lol

[yhs-grian-rights]

Sorry to bother you, but what the hell happened with Sam? I knew he's a fuckin douche but what the hell happened here?

Well I've had alot of people ask what the hell went down, so I guess I'll answer it here!

A 'callout' post was posted on twitter, where they talked about all the weird content that is present in yhs,TS and KoV. The post itself I believe claims that it's not trying to cancel Sam the content creator, but meant to spread awareness, and dare they ask, have content warnings for their videos? Preposterous.

Anyway, it got people talking, good, people were getting educated and properly warned about the content. But that also gained the attention of Sam. One would usually apologize or clarify, or simply brush it off, but that would be too easy lol. I mean, holy shit Sam, dude if you're reading, you could have easily said 'oh that was 5 years ago, and I'm not like that anymore' and boom, it would have been done, I mean there was proof but still, most would have agreed. People can change. It's normal. I myself probably wouldn't have agreed with being called out if it was something that was done years ago, I think it's a shitty thing to do. But, instead of that, he DEFENDED himself, even said "I will continue making the same jokes where I see fit" WHICH IS??? HUH. He basically dug his own grave when he said that, where do you possibly see fit to make rape and suicide jokes???? In a Minecraft roleplay?? The fuck?

Anyway, I am not active on Twitter so I didn't see it all go down apart from screenshots and links. So I'll skip directly to the part that had to force me to get involved in this shit show.

Out of nowhere, Sam and Baylee (his sister) joined the server. The kinnie server (wheeze). And emediatelly a "discussion" as they called it, happened. It was 2 am so I was asleep at the time, but my friend rightfully handled the situation to have a proper discussion. You can see the highlights of it in Mika's post about it, where she simply asked that a content warning would be appropriate, seeing as kids watch his videos (which he denied, which is stupid cuz do you think 18 year olds were the target audience of yhs when it came out??? You don't have control over who watches your videos, but it's Minecraft roleplay, what do you expect lmao) the mod ended up kicking them out (we have bragging rights now for kicking Sam from our server lol).

But, the thing that strikes me odd is the fact that he looked through our chat. Looked through conversations of 14-17 year olds. He's almost 30. Yeah that sounds about right. He was trying to dig dirt on us. Found a "kill me" comment, and thought that yes, we too are as bad as him, because simply saying kill me is equivalent to showing a hanged block man on a video to millions of kids. Nice! Guess we're all cancelled!

Im sure some friends of Sam linger in the server. I've heard he's trying to doxx Mika, a minor, for documenting a conversation that was public in the server. Which is also incriminating.

No one is asking for him to be a saint, or even agree on what should and shouldn't be joked about. Humor is subjective after all, if he really wants, he can keep making those shitty jokes, it would be cool if he didn't! Yet again, young people watch those videos and it's kinda fucked up. But I won't be policing what you can and can't do, I don't have a life but come on I got better things to do lol. The thing everyone is asking for, is proper content warning, literally just add warnings in the description or title. You might find the jokes funny but you can't deny it's a sensitive issue. He warns people for swearing but not for dark humor? It's a bit silly.

Anyway yeah that's some of main stuff that's been going on. Were tired.

[splendidlyimperfect]

Sting’s entire life changed when he was eleven years old and his best friend Rogue told a secret that he’d promised to keep. Taken away from the father who abused him and the best friend who’d tried to save him, Sting tried to start a new life with his uncle. But the trauma wasn’t easy to escape, and eventually Sting turned to drinking to forget the things that hurt.

Now he’s an adult, and he hasn’t been sober in years. But when drinking nearly kills him and a near-stranger saves his life, Sting has a chance to turn his life around, and maybe become the man that Rogue deserves to love.

Chapter Summary: Things get worse, and Sting tries to find ways to cope with his anger.

Chapters (9/?): 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Rogue Cheney/Sting Eucliffe, Natsu Dragneel/Gray Fullbuster, Natsu Dragneel & Sting Eucliffe, Sting Eucliffe & Weisslogia Characters: Sting Eucliffe, Natsu Dragneel, Rogue Cheney, Gray Fullbuster, Weisslogia (Fairy Tail) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Past Child Abuse, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Trans Character, Trans Sting, Friendship, Childhood Friends, Sting-focused story, Sting is a disaster, Natsu’s a great friend, Rogue tries to do what’s right, Tumblr: FTLGBTales Series: Part 2 of i’m still standing

**TW for underage drinking and sexually suggestive content with teens

-----

im·​paired | \ im-ˈperd adjective : being in an imperfect or weakened state or condition

.

vii

spring age thirteen

.

After that, the nightmares start.

Sting wakes up crying in the middle of the night with blood under his fingernails from scratching at his arms. He can’t remember what the dream was about, but afterward, he can’t fall back asleep. His stomach hurts, and there’s a part of him that wants to wake up Uncle Wes and ask for a hug. But then he hears his dad’s voice, so he hides in the closet instead.

Grow up

Stop crying

Don’t be such a baby

Sting squeezes his eyes shut and covers his ears, shaking his head and pressing himself as far back in the corner as he can. “Stop it,” he whispers. Everything is blurry and his head hurts, and all he can think about is shouting and broken glass.

The next day at school he can’t eat, and halfway through third period he gets a headache so bad that he has to run to the washroom and throw up. He manages through the rest of the day, and when he gets home, Uncle Wes tries to ask what’s wrong.

Sting ignore the question and hides in his bedroom, refusing supper and eventually falling asleep in his clothes. He wakes up in the middle of the night, crying and sweating and eventually throwing up again.

“You don’t look good,” Uncle Wes says the next morning when Sting drags himself downstairs for breakfast. “Do you want to stay home from school today?”

Sting can’t even look at him. Even when the police had showed up with Sting in tow at four in the morning, Uncle Wes hadn’t been mad. He hadn’t yelled at Sting for using his phone, or stealing money for the bus, or sneaking away to see his dad. Instead he’d thanked the officer, then pulled Sting into a hug and told him it was going to be okay.

Sting shakes his head, pushing away the cereal Uncle Wes made for him and leaving the house without a word.

It’s not going to be okay. 

Continue reading on AO3

~

Things get worse.

The nightmares don’t stop. Sting’s stomach hurts every day, and food becomes a fight. He can’t pay attention in school, and nothing sticks because he’s never really there. When he starts failing tests, Uncle Wes tries to step in. He meets with Sting and his teachers and it’s just like when Sting had come out and they’d all talked about pronouns and bathrooms like he wasn’t even there. This time, the teachers look at him with pity instead of curiosity, and eventually Sting shoves his chair over and storms out of the room.

He doesn’t go back to school.

Uncle Wes gets him into this online program for ‘alternative learning,’ which Sting knows is a fancy way for saying ‘kids that are fucked up.’ At first, he tries because Uncle Wes is so good to him, and Sting doesn’t want to make him upset. But eventually, it’s too much. He can’t focus on anything, and he doesn’t want to.

Sting knows Uncle Wes is disappointed, but he never shouts, and sometimes Sting wishes he would. Nothing makes Uncle Wes mad, so Sting gets angry instead. He yells and slams doors and tears his notebooks to pieces, but it doesn’t help.

Sting never feels better, and he starts to think he never will.

~

The first time Sting gets drunk, he’s sixteen.

He’s sitting on the street in an unfamiliar town, staring up at the streetlights and trying not to cry. It’s been hours since he ran away from the guy he’d hitchhiked here with – hours since the words you owe me for the ride were accompanied by a hand around his wrist and a sharp stab of panic. Sting had never run so fast in his life, and now he’s desperately, terrifyingly lost.

Uncle Wes has probably realized he’s gone by now, but it’s the fourth time Sting’s taken off in the past two years, so he probably hasn’t even bothered to call the police this time. Part of Sting wants him to, wants to be found. The other part knows that he’s not worth saving.

You’re never gonna be anything.

Sting shudders. Fuck you, dad, he thinks, wrapping his arms around his knees and pulling them close to his chest. It’s November and he’s freezing – he’s wearing two sweaters but the chill on the cement is soaking through his jeans and he can barely feel his fingers.

“If you stay there, you’re gonna get picked up.”

Sting looks up to see a guy a few years older than him leaning against the bus stop down the street. He’s got hard, dark eyes, and Sting thinks he should probably run away, but he’s just so fucking tired.

“Fuck off,” he growls, trying to sound tough. He’s sure he just sounds pathetic.

The guy shrugs, tipping his head toward the end of the street. “Cops tend to come by here. It’s too close to the fancy neighborhoods.” He shoves his hands into his pockets and takes a step toward Sting. “You’re not from around here.”

Sting doesn’t answer. He pulls his knees closer to him, digging his fingers into his palm to keep himself from trembling. Last time he ran, it had been July, and he’d been able to sleep in the park for a couple nights. This time it’s freezing, and he has nowhere to go.

The sharp blip of a siren makes Sting jump. Fuck. If he gets picked up again, he’ll just end up being Uncle Wes’ problem again, and that’s the last thing he needs. Red-and-blue lights reflect off the wall further down the street, and Sting hears a door slam as an officer gets out of the car.

“You need a place to crash,” the guy says, and it’s more of a statement than a question. He reaches out a hand and Sting shies away from it.

“Why the fuck do you care?” Sting asks.

“I was there,” the guy says, shrugging. “We’ve all got sob stories. Look, it’s not the fuckin’ Hilton, but it’s warm and sometimes people have shit to eat. You look hungry.” Sting stares at the outstretched fingers, then slowly reaches out and takes them. “I’m Ryan,” the guy says once Sting is standing.

“Sting.”

“Interesting name.”

Sting doesn’t say anything, but when Ryan starts walking down the street, Sting grabs his backpack from the ground and follows him. It’s starting to snow, heavy flakes drifting through the dirty light of the streetlamps, and Sting shoves his hands deep into his pockets, shivering.

“Where you from?” Ryan asks as they walk.

“Not here,” Sting replies.

Ryan looks at him sideways, eyes searching Sting’s face before he says, “how old are you?”

“What difference does it make?” Sting snaps, staring down at the sidewalk. He’s tempted to just tell this guy to fuck off, to try and find a quiet corner to sleep in until he can figure out what to do, but Ryan doesn’t pry, so Sting keeps following him.

~

Ryan’s place turns out to be a shitty apartment in a building with a busted door and a broken elevator. Everything smells like cigarette smoke and the wallpaper is peeling, and when Ryan kicks the door to his apartment open, a cloud of smoke wafts out around him.

“C’mon,” Ryan says, grabbing Sting’s arm and guiding him inside. Sting immediately tries to pull away, but Ryan’s grip is tight, and he doesn’t even seem to notice Sting’s panic.

“Ryaannn!” Some guy from the living room calls out and holds up a bottle of beer from his spot on the couch. “Who’s the new kid?”

“Sting,” Ryan says, nudging Sting forward through the kitchen. “Grab him a beer, yeah?”

The next few minutes are a blur of unfamiliar people and names Sting won’t remember, and a low, thrumming panic in the back of his mind that whispers, get out, get out, you aren’t safe. When someone eventually pushes a beer into his hand, he stares at the bottle for a long time. All he can think about is his dad, sitting in the recliner in the living room, downing drink after drink until he passed out and it was finally safe for Sting to leave his room.

I’m not like him, Sting thinks, swallowing back tears. But then he remembers last night, when he’d been so angry that he’d thrown his plate on the floor and shouted at Uncle Wes across the broken pieces. The whole time, Uncle Wes had been calm and patient, and it had stoked the aching, terrified fury that was always boiling in Sting’s chest.

I’m just like him, Sting thinks, and takes a drink.

~

It doesn’t take long for Sting to start feeling it.

At first, it’s like bubbles. Sting’s cheeks flush and his fingers tingle, and the hurt that he’s been carrying around for so long starts to fade into a sort of numb haze. Then Ryan gives him a couple shots of something that tastes horrible, and then a cup of something pink, and after a while, Sting feels like he’s floating. Every time he blinks it’s like falling asleep – soft and hazy and a little bit unreal.

Sting’s not sure what time it is, but it doesn’t seem to matter. People come and go, laughing and drinking and making out with each other on the couches or against the walls. Every time Sting closes his eyes and opens them again, it’s like a shifting dream where everything’s out of sync and nobody is real.

“You okay?” A soft voice drags Sting out of his haze and he looks up. A girl that he doesn’t recognize stares down at him, and he realizes that his head is in her lap and she’s running her fingers through his hair.  

“Yeah,” he mumbles, running his hand over the fabric of the couch. The sensation is wildly unfamiliar, sparks prickling on his fingertips as he explores a ragged cigarette burn on the cushion. Every time the girl touches his face, it’s electric, and he stares at her. “Your eyes are green,” he says, reaching up and running his fingers across her cheek.

“You’re wasted,” the girl giggles. “Why’re you here? You’re too pretty for this place.”

Sting stares at her for a minute, then shakes his head. His hands are tingling now, and he can’t feel anything except a deep sense of relief. The room around him is warped and fading, and he wonders why he’s never done this before.

“How’re you feeling?”

Sting looks up at someone vaguely familiar – Ryan, he’s pretty sure – whose face is swimming in front of the blurry living room lights. It’s like a halo around him, making him bright and warm and something Sting wants to touch.

He does, reaching out and running his fingers over Ryan’s jeans. The fabric is textured under Sting’s fingertips – it’s like he can feel every fiber of the denim against his skin.

“You’re wasted,” Ryan laughs, pulling the girl up and taking her place on the couch next to Sting. A tiny flash of panic runs through Sting when Ryan touches his hair, but the feeling starts to fade when Ryan’s fingers start combing through it. “Feels good, hey?”

Sting hums. He’s so tired, suddenly – keeping his eyes open feels next to impossible. Maybe if he sleeps like this, he won’t have nightmares.

“Y’know what else feels good?” Ryan asks, his voice dropping as he keeps playing with Sting’s hair. His other hand slides up over Sting’s stomach and starts to move in gentle circles there. Sting tenses.  

“I don’t—”

“It’s okay,” Ryan says, sliding his hand a little lower until his fingers are brushing Sting’s belt. A jolt of panic makes its way through the haze in Sting’s mind and he pushes Ryan’s hand away clumsily.

“No,” he mumbles, forcing himself to sit up. As soon as he’s vertical, everything starts to spin, and he groans, putting his head in his hands.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Ryan says gently, putting his hand between Sting’s shoulder blades. “This your first time?”

Sting’s not sure if Ryan’s talking about drinking, or whatever he was planning on doing with his hands and Sting’s belt, but either way the answer is ‘yes.’ “I should…” Sting frowns, looking around the room for his backpack. Everything blurs together into a mess of light and color, and he sighs, leaning back against the couch.

“I told you that you could crash here,” Ryan says. His thigh is touching Sting’s, but his hands aren’t, so Sting lets it slide. “’s my fault you’re wasted.”

Sting wants to argue, but he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. “’kay,” he says quietly, leaning back until he’s lying on the couch again and staring at the water stains on the ceiling. He shouldn’t be here. His phone is in his back pocket, and Sting knows that if he called, Uncle Wes would come get him.

Ryan squeezes Sting’s knee and stands up, giving Sting an unreadable look and then heading away into the kitchen. The sounds of the party around him fade away, and Sting’s hand drifts down to his phone.

But then he thinks about the broken glass and the awful words he’d shouted, and he shakes his head, curling up so he’s facing the back of the couch and letting himself slip back into a numb haze.

Sting can survive on his own, and Uncle Wes is better off without him.

[tedfashionski]

Finking, Finking.

Hi, welcome to my ted talk. (That is the only time I will ever make that joke. This is Fashionski Finks. Expect radically low standards of self-involved rantiness with zero research or accountability from here on out). For a while there I seriously thought that the covid-19 quarantine was going to result in people being increasingly placid and accepting of creeping extensions of the police state. But here I am, getting depressed again, not about the protests, which I love, but more about my relationship to in-group pressure dynamics. One of the problems with being a relentless contrarian is the discomfort of my impulse to rebel against groups even when they’re championing the right thing. I have to find my own way to fight against the system as an outsider. No gods, no masters, no fucking peer pressure.  I’ll never be happy joining a chorus line. I don’t sign fucking petitions (they’re just lists for the NSA). I do donate, but like fuck will I do it performatively. I can’t go to protests cus I get panic attacky in crowds. I empathise pretty strongly with outsiders of all stripes but believe ridiculously excessively in the public good of criticism, and have a nostalgic love of trolling (I like to think I’m gentle with it though). Bring back the troll! We need that fucker, he’s a sign of a healthy internet. I’m writing this blog thing as an extension of my need to vent my extreme negativity. TBH I never expected to get any followers with ted twitter and the bizarre welcomingness of the hf twitter community totally wrongfooted me. I’m not nice. Ted isn’t meant to likable. He’s my dark side. I was meant to be using this alt as a way to terrorise the nice nice (secretly cruel) fashion people. I’m gunna try and up that aspect more. Just bear in mind, my complaints are largely about the system, but if I see you perpetuating fashion’s entrenched anti-intellectualism or its insidery bullshit, I’ll come for you with a little meta-bomb with your name on it. Maintaining my misanthropic tone does take work tho, like, deep down in some twisted part of my psyche, I guess I do actually want to be liked. It’s fucked up.

I suppose it’s only fair to explain this Ted fursona. Like, new concept, who dis? Why all the furry porn? …..because I just think it’s hilarious. Every time I think about the furries I cackle (not at them, mind). I just love the mad corruption of pure Disney aesthetics into hardcore pornography. That’s anti-authoritarian as fuck. I love the sincerity of their culture. The way the crazy fetish aspect means they’ll never be fully blandified by mainstream acceptance. The way it’s so cringe but so delightful. And more seriously, I’m interested in how a culture of mostly gay male nerds developed to the point where they’ll invest 10k in custom fursuits and support eachother’s independent businesses in ways that the fashion community completely fails to do. The fashion world sucks. There’s so many correlations there that I want to investigate: the newness (furries date from around the 70s, fashion culture in its self-aware state dates from the late 19th C – both very young fields); the centralisation/decentralisation; the hierarchy (furries can be pretty catty, I have discovered in my research, and we all know what fashion people are like); the adoption of new identities; the cis-boy gayness aspect (I’m increasingly tired of the extreme nasty hierarchy of certain CSM queens. It’s all very UGH. Just, fuck those particular bitches.) There’s more to the furry love, but I’ll explore it in future posts.

More importantly, why Ted fucking Kaczynski? I’m not like, actually a terrorist. (….yet. tehehe. NO, seriously I like non-maiming violence. Fuck yeah to property damage. Fuck yeah to disabling the system in extreme way. But no to wooden IEDs. Think of my shitty jokes that fail to land as my hand-crafted bombs). I think I like the shitness of Ted. He was just an epic fail of a terrorist. I’m a little white girl living in London. I’m not actually a primitivist, as much as I crave a hut in the woods. I did go to an elite school though. I had some really shitty experiences in the fashion industry in my early 20s, and I watch my friends who are relatively successful in that system and I get so angry on their behalf at their poor treatment. They think I’m too angry. Fuck that. They should be more angry, and the fact that they can’t be angry at their extreme precarity and the fact they’re still insecure and terrified of being ejected by the system after all their investment and skills they’ve built up is BULLSHIT. I’ll be double angry for them, I’m not invested in that system. I don’t need it to pay my rent. I’m free, motherfuckers, and I’m coming for the abusers and exploiters. If you’re a complacent industry figure not fighting hard from within, uggghhhhh fuck you. Yes, YOU. Soooo, I relate pretty hard to the MK ultra stuff. (go look him up, he was basically tortured and experimented upon by the elite). But there’s a pretty big chasm between my views and his, and I’ll try to be clear about the extent of my interest in his extreme beliefs. I haven’t even finished reading the manifesto. Basically, I watched that shitty show on Netflix with sam worthington around the same time I watched Joker (that movie fucked me up) and thought it’d be a good outlet to larp online as a terrorist. There’s the angry white alt-right school shooter aspect, which I’m still figuring out, cus I’m non-binary and I was raised by nutso trumpy right-wingers, who I barely speak to anymore, and I struggle to get along with people generally. There’s sad, self-pitying rage here. I empathise with the angry white dudes too much. I feel guilty about it. That’s good ground for artmaking (yes, shamefully, this…is…art. Sorry). I modelled this fursona a little after my brother, who I spent years living with and arguing with and trying to lift out of his scary racist youtube rabbit holes. This is actually quite an emotional thing for me, cus I did the ‘talk to your fascist family’ thing. And I completely failed. I realised his right-winginess wasn’t lessening, I wasn’t gaining ground, and in fact my excessive empathy and desire to reach out to the relative most similar to me in character meant his extremism was rubbing off on me. Making me more resentful and depressed. Feeling powerless. I was being too kind-hearted and forgiving of his masculine impotence. So I’m exploring some personal shit here. But Ted is also a cute lil fuzzball teddy bear. He means well, but me being super autistic and faily at social skills means he’s kind of a dick, cus I am. I’m going to try and further develop this character, this POV, and this post is the only time I’ll explain the divide between him and his creator (moi). The ‘I’ on the twitter and here is Ted Fashionski, I need that space between me and him. Masks give us this freedom to be more ourselves. Internet culture has lost a lot of its wild brutal anonymity in the last decade or so, now everyone’s afraid of making mistakes. How the hell do you grow if you’re not allowed to fuck up? This is a vital outlet. He’s become an important part of my life and I have to say, I love being Ted Fashionski. He’s like Paddington Bear who just escaped form Guantanamo or something.

I get pretty fatigued as a matter of course. I’m a long-term depressive since childhood. I have a difficult time keeping my hard-on for living. I don’t get suicidal really but I do struggle with extreme fatigue. I sleep a lot. I often fall into spirals of self-hate. And as someone who utterly believes in revolutionary leftist politics, I beat myself up about not doing enough. I’m so middle class and english and white. I was raised in such a chauvinistic and complacent culture; I don’t even know where to start. I’m wading my way through post-colonial literature and beating myself up for finding it boring and uncomfortable. It’s hard to force yourself to acknowledge your culture is The Bad Guys. It’s easier to fall into fanstasies of supremacy and butthurt misunderstoodness. And it’s not like my depressive brain needs any encouragement to hate me. My trajectory is ever leftwards, but I remember the righteous fury of being right-wing. I get it, that was me. We need more paths back from fascism, more comprehension of why people are that kind of shitty. I talk less, and less well, the more depressed I am. If I’m talking, it means im feeling a lot better. Just, fyi.

Give me a minute to be critical here. With the George Floyd protests, a lot of the cool guys on fashion twitter has gone blazingly hardcore on the political side. But there’s this troubling rhetoric about ‘no return to normal content’ or ‘this isn’t the time for fashion’. Like fuck it isn’t. This is a key problem with fashion culture right here, we have this received perception of fashion as empty escapism. Escapism matters in fashion, yes. But seriously, talking about the surfaces of things does not equal not caring about deeper meaning. What the fuck. Clothes are a connective tissue, a membrane between us. They’re emotional and powerful. We can talk about things that matter THROUGH clothes. I speak fashion, pretty fucking well. Most people who work at fashion magazines are morons with no understanding or respect for their subject. They’re incapable of doing it justice, and that’s deliberate. On this tumblr you’ll see rants and reviews of fashion and other artforms, always interpreting through a fashion lens. cus it matters, cus it’s a vital part of the culture, cus just because something has a glittery, seductive surface doesn’t mean it doesn’t communicate or contain depth. There’s no going back to ‘normal fashion content’, yes. Normal fashion content is a fucking psyop to divert legitimate interest in aesthetics amongst largely non-academic dyslexic visual types away from careful thought/feeling and towards empty consumerist commericiality. The traditional fashion media wants you to express yourself and your interest in the zeitgeist through buying more shit. Another fashion world is possible. Let’s destroy the old and build a new one, one where surface and spirit are connected and true and fashion can’t be abused in service of evil industrial monopolists.

/end rant. TLDR: angry fictional teddy bear with tin-foil hat and an eco-anarchist fetish says no to stupid fashion and yes to the renewal of conceptual fashion. Also, Fuck White People.