#it's some sociological shit don't mind me

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

anyone else obsessed with the recurring theme in TTPD about how in each instance with the three notable muses referenced, they each made a show in their own way of stepping up to Be Someone for her, only to completely cut and run (whether physically or emotionally or both).

The first love who laid on the charm offensive, "I'm not an organ donor but I'd give you my heart if you needed it," sweeping her up in this great big first serious adult love, inspiring all of the dreams that go with it, making her feel like This Is It and the actions undertaken as a result. But then bailing at the first sign of inconvenience, leaving her distrusting of her own feelings and instincts.

The longtime partner with whom she built a foundation against all odds, the one with whom (or perhaps rather for whom) she meticulously placed those stars on the ceiling. The one who at one point painted dreamscapes on the wall and sparked her darkest nights, the one who chose her mess and said there was nothing that could stop them, the one she believed in so completely she crafted a whole life around, but then accused her of abandoning the ship when he had long since metaphorically and physically left the house on the Heath.

And then of course the final boss level, the infatuation from hell who saw all this and said "I can be the one that none of the others were" and insinuated himself into her life and her consciousness until it felt real, only to vanish after the ploy did its damage.

(Of course, it's all contrasted by a fourth party with whom the trust and dreams come freely and solidly.)

It's just a fascinating study in how patterns keep repeating themselves, not only in a person's choice of partners but in people's behaviours in general. And how so much of the album is not just about specific situations but also globally about the pitfalls of relationships and dynamics and how we choose to believe. TTPD album that you are.

[olderthannetfic]

So, you mentioned low standards of research in podcasts. I don't listen to podcasts or watch a lot of videos about fandom analysis, but I have seen error corrections happening in the wild for what I have listened to, so I can only imagine how annoying it is when you know your shit.

Do you have any resources that come to mind as things everyone who likes fandom should be comfortable with, or specific essays on uniquely important fandoms (such as Sherlock Holmes or Star Trek) that everyone should read? Obviously the OTW resources are up there; what else?

Aside from resources, do you think there are any skills that are especially vital for getting to the bottom of fandom trends? Interview skills are probably pretty high up there.

Any pitfalls you see a lot of young fans falling into?

(I do a lot of fandom history research. It is the thing that gives me joy in fandom; other people like shipping or AUs, I like my little mini-anthropology sandbox and watching how ideas spread. I'm not necessarily good at it, but it's fun!)

--

Well... it's the usual things.

For example, a lot of fans claim to love fandom stats, but the ones that get passed around come from like three people. The people doing those stats, including me, don't usually have a statistics background, which doesn't automatically make them bad, but it really seems like people are just trusting anything with a pie chart.

We've recently seen people discover that those year-end AO3 ship stats have a seriously weird methodology. They don't show the thing their fans are actually trying to find out. People were pissed. But most of the time, they don't even bother asking what the methodology is or trying to do anything themselves.

There's far too much sitting back and waiting for some BNF to spoon feed one publicly-available information.

--

The big failings aren't usually the math itself but, of course, not knowing what question to ask, so it pertains to history research, not just stats.

You'll see a lot of stuff on shipping that looks at AO3 because AO3 shipping numbers are easy to pull... But AO3 shipping numbers don't just happen to be easy to pull: that is both an effect and a cause that is directly related to AO3's content. Someone interested in meta shouldn't be asking "What do AO3's numbers show?" as their first question. They should be asking "Why is this metadata available or not available and what does that mean on a sociological level?"

--

Thing two is the eternal I Have Apparently Never Heard of Anime problem. A fuckton of people theorizing about fandom trends seem to know fucking nothing about whole massive sectors of fandom or treat them as afterthoughts. This is okay if you're writing a history of Media Fandom. It is criminally stupid if you're trying to talk about what makes a piece of media have fic when another doesn't, what kinds of websites make fandoms take off, etc. Those kinds of broad questions need a broad understanding of what's out there.

It's not anime-specific, and I'm not asking for a high degree of knowledge.

I have routinely had people tell me that best friend ships and mystery/crime as a genre aren't popular, and that's why AO3 has this or that pattern... Meanwhile, buddy cops are the bedrock of oldschool slash fandom and make up basically all of the longest-running Western m/m fandoms that aren't Star Trek. CSI slop tends to have legions of future canon het shippers, and they make plenty of fanworks. It's just that some of this is more visible on FFN or older places, not AO3.

I'm always seeing things like someone speculating about how this and that anime fandom thing or bit of mid-00s FFN community drama led to this other thing on AO3, not realizing that AO3 came out of LJ Western fandom slash culture. To them, FFN is so central that it must be the main reference point, not the bajillion and one archives AO3 founders ran or Usenet or mailing lists or LJ.

I once saw someone asking on twitter about where a prominent Ranma fic might have been posted in the mid-90s. People claiming "My professor is an authority!" came out of the woodwork in droves to blither about K/S zines and then LJ. Not only was this entirely wrong, but the right answer was blindingly obvious if you knew enough to interpret the google results. I can only assume that the person tweeting had never heard of Usenet and didn't recognize the acronym for the big anime fanfic group that literally everything like this was first posted to.

I'm talking people insisting that fandom only goes for white characters when it's very obvious that fandom goes for majority leads who are not othered. All the bawwing in the world about "People assume anime characters are white" won't get rid of The Untamed or Kpop thirsters or whatever.

I'm talking sweeping pronouncements about gender and fanfic writers where the person hasn't even heard of FIMFiction or SpaceBattles or Dark Lord Potter cheesefests.

I've been in fandom for a long time, but I wasn't in all these parts, and I wasn't around for 80s zines. You don't need deep knowledge until you pick a research topic. But it's shocking how little shallow, broad knowledge a lot of people have when they're writing their Theory Of All Of Fandom History.

--

People are stupid as shit about survivorship bias, and fandom history is no exception. They're also dumb in the opposite direction, assuming that the thing they like now has always existed in this exact form.

For example, someone got mad at Fanlore for supposedly not documenting the history of f/f zines. Others have searched and searched for the zines of their old show they got into last year and are bewildered to not find any. The reality is that Fanlore editors are attempting to document every Media Fandom zine and have combed through old adzines looking for any mention of anything. Because of the methods of distribution—because it was expensive—small fandoms often had no zines at all.

Femslash fandom doesn't seem to have gotten enough critical mass to do much until Xena. The internet has really democratized things, but even the early internet was still somewhat in that old mindset where only certain popular things have a fandom. I think Yuletide itself, which started in 2003, really helped spread the idea of rare-but-existing fandoms being a thing. FFN and perhaps some other multifandom archives like Media Miner played a huge role.

Nowadays, we think of fic as just how you respond to media, any media, even if there are only two fics for that one car commercial, but that isn't how people saw things in every era—or at least it's not how fandom infrastructure worked. A lot of the time, the big hosting spots were single-fandom archives, often with restrictive content rules. Finding somewhere to post a m/m/f OT3 fic used to be hard. Never mind early zines when photocopiers didn't even exist yet and you had to sell out your print run of 500 to make a go of it.

All good research starts with a lot of preliminary investigation to figure out what you're even trying to look for.

Actually bothering to look for fans talking about their own history or casually chatting with your interview subjects before the formal interview will put a person miles ahead of many of the cringeworthy fandom ~papers~ I've seen.

The biggest mistake people make is going "Okay, these numbers aren't perfect, but some numbers are better than no numbers".

Bullshit.

As soon as there's a pie chart of the false numbers, everyone's brain turns off and they never look at the chart subtitle, never mind the research notes.

Bad numbers are often worse than no numbers.

Look at the logic behind the methodology first. Look at the social context. Basic understanding of human nature and familiarizing oneself with the shape and hangout locations of a community will get you most of the way there before you sit down for a specific interview or try to collect any specific numbers.

--

None of this is a fandom thing. Research is research. It's just that most people think "research" means watching a tiktok that the algorithm likes and were never taught how to evaluate a source for reliability.

Evaluating sources is a skill. I had explicit lessons on it in school. Lots of people don't, and that sucks.

Honestly, watching the more thoughtful debunking content on non-fandom topics, like Miniminuteman's stuff on pseudo-archaeology or Dan Olson's... everything, is a good window into critical thinking, and that's most of what's missing from bad fandom history.

--

But more than any of that, more is more. Not the crap stats, but the narrower, more personal accounts, the interviews. The more fans who investigate their little corner that isn't the same old AO3 site-wide "Why is there so much m/m?" ship stats or the same canned "Everything comes from K/S" history, the better.

What I object to is not amateur efforts but efforts that pull from the same small pool of data or that just reblog a tiny handful of supposed authorities.

--

If people are going to read just one thing... hmm... go try to look up a history of rec.arts.anime.creative, not because I think it's the most important fandom history out there but because it's at the nexus of things a lot of current fandom history work miss.

[max1461]

I'm contemplating the tradwife shit again, I'm coining the term "bioconservative turn" for the present cultural moment (evidently the term bioconservatism is already in use for something else... perhaps "biotraditionalist turn" will do instead?). The tradwife shit, the raw diet caveman testosterone shit, the wombyn born wombyn shit, all of it. It's characterized by a couple of things I think:

An ever-present awareness (or pseudo-awareness) of biology, an interest in biological specifics such as testosterone levels, and an appeal to "biological essence" or "biological purpose" as a source of authority.

A conservative, although not necessarily politically right-wing, outlook: "modernity is essentially flawed and we need to return to our roots in order to reconnect with what really matters".

A particular focus on health as an ideal; per the above a sense that modernity is above all else unhealthy.

A conceptual shift away from the mind and towards the body as the most central part of the human being, commensurately a great political concern with the nature of bodies, and an attribution of society's faults to the wrong-treatment or wrong-usage of bodies.

A generally somewhat quietistic bent, although by no means apolitical. A focus on individual right behavior. Perhaps contrary to expectations, not necessarily characterized by eugenicism to any great extent.

Obviously these different components will be expressed to different degrees in different cases, but I think this circumscribes it pretty well.

I think this emerging perspective has a couple of distinct influences that are being syncretized to varying degrees. There is a genealogy through the natalist Christian right, "go forth and multiply" and its associated ideas. There is a genealogy through wellness culture, health food, and fitness; "organic" and "all natural" as central ideals. And there is a genealogy through environmentalist thinking, especially in its less specific and more wholistic incarnations. All of these threads seem to me to be independently popular in the current moment, and so the appeal of a syncretic combination of them is not hard to see.

Please note that I am not here to argue some stupid shit, or to do base guilt-by-association of this or that ideology. I don't like this biotraditionalist turn very much, but the reasons I don't like it are thoughtful instead of vapid. I would be interested, though, to hear others' opinions on this trend, if they think it's a real thing and what they have observed about it, because I've been contemplating it a lot lately. At least, I'd like to hear from people with novel sociological observations or commentary to provide, rather than boring polemics. I'm at my wit's end with boring polemics.

[hooked-on-elvis]

This is a different question. WHICH ELVIS SONG YOU LAST CRAVED TO LISTEN TO? (AND WHY?)

I'll take the risk in sounding too silly now but, you know, I mainly enjoy the King's music on shuffle mode because any of them are damn awesome, however sometimes I miss a certain song. (we all have our favorites). This question is a way for me to share my feelings over one of his songs I love dearly, but also because I'm curious about the Elvis songs that are as deep in your hearts and minds as this one is in mine. I'll ramble a lot about why this song is special to me, and I don't even know if you're interested in this kind of content or not, but I invite you to do the same. Let's get things to the next level, let our passion show. No just dropping the song this time, uh uh. Let's get contemplative in our appreciation for Elvis' music. That's what I'm proposing. I hope some of your feel his music the same way I do. You'll see how passionate and overexcited I get in a minute. LOL.

This is Elvis around the time this song was recorded.

November 28, 1976. Elvis performed at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, California, at 8.30 pm. He wore the 1974 Arabian suit with the V-Neck suit belt.

So, it's past 00:00 a.m. around here now. Suddenly, out of the blue, I just missed listening to "It's Easy For You" from the "Moody Blue" album (1977). The runtime of this song is 3:27 - and this post is about what a good song can do to a human's brain in just a few minutes.

This song has so many layers! I appreciate songs with real content, you know? Those are my favorites, songs that tell a story. This is one of them.

Controversial feelings rush in because it causes me to think about the perspectives of the each individuals involved in the matter the lyrics brought up: a broken family, a disillusioned man, a temptress woman who came, rocked this poor family's world - intentionally or not - and now has left and it's being called on it. "It's Easy For You" is definitely a philosophical song to me - sociologically rich, really.

I feel kinda avenged for the guy's family, like… if I were the ex-wife I would laugh that his sorry ass and at the same time would resent him even worse, like "Look what you did to our children and for what?"…On the other hand, I understand the man for breaking his marriage. It surely wasn't an easy decision to make. I try to wear his shoes. Would it be better if he ignored having feelings for other woman and stayed in his loveless marriage for the children's sake? We always take our life's experiences to try to comprehend things, right? Well, I remember a family I knew when I was a teen. Somehow gossip spread that the husband and the wife were no longer seeing eye to eye, if you know what I mean. They kept married just not to traumatize their children, at least that's what I heard. I remember being around 12 years old and thinking this is was the saddest thing I had ever heard happening to people. So, this Elvis song gets me back to that and questions come into my mind... questions on life and love. Would it be better if the husband just cheated on his wife just to keep his family together, to save his children of trauma so early in life? His misery would be worth it? He chose to be selfish, but really... was he all that wrong? I don't have an answer for this. I feel this guy is a good guy who was really in the middle of crossroads and chose to follow his heart. I feel terrible for him because he sure feels like shit. He's desperate. You see he's calling on this new woman he abandoned his family for, probably in hope she would take him back and not make him feel like he's a real shitty person for hurting his children because he chose to try to find happiness in love again. At the same time I imagine the reason why his new love left him after a while - the reasons can be many. Does he have any right to call on her for not wanting to be with him anymore? Just because he was in love with her doesn't mean he was a good partner... she chose to leave him for a reason, just like he did when he chose to leave his marriage for her. How does this woman felt after being called on her decision to leave him? He's blaming her for his misery there! It's real heavy, and I think it's unfair too. Also, I imagine how was this guy's relationship with his children was affected. Do they resent him for leaving their home? How those poor kids lives are gonna be, 'cause this kind of trauma leaved deep marks behind, wounds that may never heal - and this parent is conscious about this. He sure is, and that's why he's so desperate. So many broken hearts... ugh! There's a very sad ballad performed by Tammy Wynett called "I Don't Wanna Play House" ... it's about the woman left behind and how sad she is at seeing how the divorce affected the way her child perceives love. The mother watches her little girl playing with the neighbor's kid, as they usually do, but this day the little girl's mother sees a commotion there and decides to find out what's going on, so she listens to her daughter's explanation for refusing playing house with this other little kid... her words were: "I don't wanna play house, it makes my mommy cry... 'cause when she played house, my daddy said 'good-bye'." The first time I listened to that song I cried like a baby, really cried. Anyhow, "It's Easy For You" by Elvis gains a new depth to me when I put those two songs together. I can feel why he's so frustrated, it's much more than just being sad over a break up. It's a more intense kind of love disappointment, really a grown up thing.

All of those emotions are the reason why this is one of my favorite Elvis song. Here in Brazil we have this huge actress named Fernanda Montenegro (you must have heard about her a little while ago because her daughter, also a huge actress here, was nominated to the Oscar 2025 - Fernanda Torres with the 'I'm Still Here' film). So, Fernanda Montenegro once said "Art exists to bring us comfort" and this quote is deep inside my heart. That Elvis song, 'It's Easy For You", is one of those songs supposed to make people feel hugged, and I love how Elvis can translate all the depth in the words of this song with his unique interpretation. The last chorus is where things get really intense for me - and it's the reason why I fell in love with this tune in the first place... the words are strong, but the way they are put out is where the real treasure lies. I'm gonna use colors to represent the way I feel listening to Elvis.

"I had a wife and I had children... I threw them all away. And now you tell me, you dare to tell me, I should go back to them. What do you think - what on earth do you think I should say?"

See? The tones escalate... from sorrow to warning to anger. It's amazing to hear this. I wonder if he intentionally thought about putting those feelings there or if he was just thinking about how the words sounded, you know what I mean? Anyway, Elvis... you've done it, man. And your musicians... GOD! Everybody did such a great job with this song! I feel like crying for things I never experienced. This is art. I guess after all of this I have to say this is a underappreciated Elvis song - but not if it's on me. I'll always have it in a special place.

"It's Easy For You" — Lyrics: Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice. Recorded October 29, 1976 at Elvis' home Graceland, Memphis. Musicians: Guitar: James Burton, John Wilkinson, Chip Young, Charlie Hodge. Bass: Jerry Scheff. Drums: Ronnie Tutt. Piano: Tony Brown. Electric Piano: David Briggs. Vocals: Kathy Westmoreland, Myrna Smith, Sherrill Nielsen, J.D. Sumner & The Stamps. OVERDUBS - Steel Guitar: Weldon Myrick. Percussion: Randy Cullers. Moog Synthesizer: Shane Keister. Additional overdubs were done by the members of Elvis' live band in January 1977 at Creative Workshop in Nashville.

[rapha-reads]

IWTV rewatch

(now that I've read the books and know the entire canon, let's see how it changes things or don't)

Season 1 episode 1 [In Throes of Increasing Wonder...] - part 1/2

- oh man, Daniel looks so old and tired and resigned at the very beginning. Comparing him with the Danny boy of season 2 who's so fired up and sassy... He's an adrenaline junkie.

- [Daniel] "I told my editor I was meeting with the most dangerous man in the world. Gave him two choices: Bezos. Putin." - moment of silence for 2022. It was shit but we didn't realise that it could get even worse.

- [Louis] "You've grown old, Daniel" - oi, manners, Louis! Where are your manners.

- [Louis] "I wasn't sure you'd remember me" - funny. Because none of you remembers shit actually. Memory as the core theme of the whole ride. Memory and subjective narrative. From the very first line.

- Oh maaaaaan, Armand lurking in the background from the very first scene. Armand babe, I've grown to be fond of your psychopathic tendencies, but this is seriously creepy, dude.

Also. Also. The way he's keeping such a tight leash on Louis. The surveillance. The eyes recording.

- [Daniel] "'That's the sun out there. Where's your coffin?' [Louis] 'You're standing in it'" - first of all, departure from canon lore, the sun doesn't make vampires slip into the death sleep automatically. They can resist it no matter their age. Secondly, morbid, Louis dear. Very morbid.

- Oooh, Armand letting the sun come in and staying sitting right next to the beam. Taking roleplay to the extreme. And Louis showing off his self-destructive tendencies. Amazing how we're having all the elements (most of the elements) already.

- [Louis] "Truth and reconciliation" - 123 dead, 84 injuries, a whole city levelled up. Nobody's ready. Let's get into it.

- Oooh, Armand coming into play. "No third party" - why, afraid you'll slip even easier? And then full on roleplay, Louis giving orders, and the blast of patronising aimed at "the boy". Brilliant writing. So very subtle when you don't know where to look, so in your face and crucial when you're in the know. Delightful.

- Interview date: June 14th 2022. Start of Louis' story: 1910, fall. Canon change. De Pointe du Lac's lineage: Creole. Canon change. Although I feel like the collapsing of timeline takes away some of the weight of the unholy family's life (not even 40 years versus 70 years in the books), I greatly like the change of personal history. So much richer.

- Can we take a moment to appreciate, nay, worship, Jacob Anderson's vocal skills? The change from his unaccented Dubai English to the Creole New Orleans English drawling... I am in absolute awe.

- [Louis] "Go on home, else I bleed you like a cochon, bruv"

Oh hello Lestat. Welcome to the narrative.

Paul needs to retreat to some monastery. 'Get thee to a nunnery'.

- [Priest] "I haven't seen you in confession in a while, Louis" and then that little scoff - oh, hello there, religious trauma. How much are you going to poison the narrative? Entirely? Well, carry on then.

- [Louis] "My business and my raised religion were at odds, and the, uh... ha, latencies within me, well, I beat those back with a lie I told myself about myself - that I was a red-blooded son of the South, seeking ass before absolution." - first of all, the fuck does that mean, Lou. Secondly, can someone get him to therapy.

- Delightful social commentary on segregated Southern states at the beginning of the 20th century, but I'm being told in my earpiece that a certain blond demigod (or monster, depending on the perspective) is about to make his entrance, so let's drop the sociology for now.

- [Lestat] "Seul l'impossible peut faire l'impossible" (only the impossible can do the impossible) - okay Lestat, ominous and nonsensical, lovin' it. A+ for the French accent, Sam, by the way.

- Never mind, Lestat's continuing the social commentary for me, thanks boo. "I mean that as a compliment, a man of your race to have privileges here". Ouch. Great first introduction there.

- [Lestat] "You're the man who made me buy a townhouse in the Quarter" - wooow there, wow! Slow your rolls, Ariel, you haven't even met the guy properly! Maybe take him on a date before making commitments like that?

- [Louis] "I know sometimes, men of my race, we all look alike to you people, but I ain't been selling you no townhouse" - *wheeze* yeah that's my boy.

- [Lestat] "I disembarked for the music, but then, there was the food" - yeah, I think they're called people?

- [Louis] "I wanted to take the end of my cane and slit his throat with it." - CAN I GET A WARNING before y'all gonna foreshadow like that?? Damn. Can't escape fate, or something like that, I guess.

- Hello and welcome to 'oh no I am more turned on than I have ever been in my whole life' : [Louis] "I couldn't move. My body was seized with weakness. His gaze tied a string around my lungs, and I found myself immobilized." Or maybe it's survival instinct telling homeboy "danger! Dangeeeeeer!".

- Lestat playing Mind games on Louis while he can still.

- Excuse me, the exchange between Lestat, Miss Lily and Louis is fucking hilarious, I'm wheezing: [Lestat] "Only it turns out the saint is not a city but a handsome man with a most agreeable disposition." - agreeable what, the only phrases y'all have been exchanging are a commentary on racism, and then you went on to start fucking with his mind. Lestat, stop being impulsive or draw 25. [Miss Lily] "You're his destiny, Louis." - you know, talk about destiny outloud too often, the universe hears and plays a trick.

- [Louis] "Emasculation and admiration in equal measure. I wanted to murder the man, and I wanted to be the man." - and you wanted the man. Don't forget the third part of the rhyme.

- Lestat already using the Fire Gift. Canon change. Well, in book canon he's still under 30 human age when he meets Louis and Fire Gift only develops later in vampiric age. But here he's already a bit more than a century old. Logical change.

- [Lestat] "We both wanted the last bouquet of lillies" - *wheeze* You fucker.

- That poker scene is another social commentary with thinly veiled - or like actually not even that veiled - racism. Oh, and Lestat's here to continue the criticism. And play mind games. Though, hey, freezing time. Another vampiric power that usually appears late. Absolutely adore that Louis just rolls with the fuckery and switches his cards. 'Dude's stopping time in front of me and talking in my head? Whatever, cards await nothing'. Love a guy who's decided that everything goes and he ain't gonna press too much for the answers. Now if only he'd press a little bit more, but hey, no story if he does.

- [Louis] "Let the tale seduce you. Just as I was seduced." - you know what, as someone who just read 12 or 13 books in the span of three weeks because they couldn't stop, I'm right here with Louis. Let yourself be hypnotised. You'll lose sleep and attention span and the ability to care about anything else but these whiny blood suckers, but hey, totally worth it. If you survive till the end.

- [Louis] "Money would arrive, wired from France" - another departure from book canon, where Lestat lives off of Louis. Then again, book!Lestat is barely 30, mustn't have had time to set his network of attorneys, while show!Lestat already has a century of existence. Which brings me to a point that I haven't raised before, but what was Lestat doing between leaving Paris at the time of the Révolution (if memory serves) and arriving in New Orleans in 1910? Having tea with Marius? Sleeping beneath the sand? That's a full ass century Rolin Jones and Cie have to explain, here.

- Louis' conversation with his sister. [Louis] "'He ain't white, he French' [Grace] 'Oh, that a different kind of white? French white?'" - listen sis, as a half white French half brown Moroccan, yeah, trust me, white French's pernicious. [Louis] "Paul crawled into my bed last night" - who wanna bet Paul's talking to our book canon friends the spirits? And these ain't good spirits either. Ah, but Louis loves his family. Ready for the grief? No? Me either.

- [Lestat] "My mother, she gave me every advantage in life" - Gabriiiiiiellllllle. Cannot wait to see her in s3.

- Someone needs to shut Paul up. "the birds asked me to ask you" - okay Paul. Sure.

Wait, "Monsieur Freniere", ain't that the other plantation guy Louis wants to protect and becomes obsessed with his sister, Babette? Or am I already mixing up my canon.

- Oh hello, Lestat's backstory in the monastery, plus Sam Reid showing off for the first time his acting. Or should I say, his possession. An award for Sam. All the awards for Sam.

- [Louis] "Don't everybody need to know what I do" - preach, bro.

- [Louis] "Nothing but broken souls around me, and the ones that ain't broken, greedy" - ah, then, which one are you, Louis chéri ? Broken ? Greedy? Both? Only one for the moment, both as the years go on? And Lestat? Greedy, yes? But isn't he also so deeply broken?

- [Lestat] "The Earth's a Savage Garden" - begging Rolin Jones to give us Lestat soliloquising about the Savage Garden please and thank you.

- [Lestat] "'Shall we have a nightcap?' [Louis] 'Probably had enough for the night.'" - and yet you're helplessly following him, drawn in like a magnet, like an impossible to resist planetary orbit. Also look at that little gay panic. Awards for Jacob please.

- Ah, the gift. That's how Lestat will ensnare you. Gifts and gifts and precious things and then a child. Run, Louis, run.

- Oh, Nicki mention! [Lestat] "a boy of infinite beauty and sensitivity" - yeah he kinda was insane too, but that's your point of view I guess.

- [Lestat] "What kind of a man wastes this beautiful waist with words?" - first of all, damn, nice alliteration here. Secondly, a gay man, Les, you know that, we know that, Lily knows that.

- The erotic tension of this scene is off the charts, blimey. And Louis keeps repressing. He's about to blow off. In every meaning of the term. Yep, there it is. Excuse me while I go look. Respectfully. Also. Hands. They have something for each other's hands. And the first bite. And levitating. And that's just episode 1 and we're only halfway through episode 1. Nobody does it like this show, I swear.

part 2 | episode 2 | episode 3 | episode 4 | episode 5 | episode 6 | episode 7

Season 2 rewatch (coming soon)

[do-you-ship-it-polls]

I am the first anon who posted about misandry. Thank you for your answer, I understand better why you posted this banner.

I just want to make a distinction between what I'd call feminist misandry and TERF misandry.

My friends are the farthest you can imagine from TERF (a lot of them are even trans). They are misandric because a lot have suffered from cis-men. For them, misandry is a protective instinct: if you meet a group of cis-men, be careful.

They hate cis-men as an oppressive group. They don't take a essentialistic view of masculinity, but a sociological one. Men are a group of power, that can abuse it, and they will protect each other. And of course, they don't include trans women in it. (A lot of the feel waaaaay safer with trans women than cis men).

That has nothing to do with TERFs, who use misandry to say "trans women are oppressors" or "trans women are essentially men"

Anyway, I understand the desire to piss off terfs and radfems. But I'd be sad if the word "misandry" was appropriated by them.

Sorry to bring that discourse, and thank you for the clarification!

genuinely don't understand why people are so deadset on identifying themselves as bigots who think 50% of humanity is out to get them. like, being against the patriarchy means you're a feminist or anti-sexist or ideally just a normal person but idk how many people agree. irrational hatred of men is not the same as wanting to knock the patriarchy down, all it does is just: be irrational hatred against men. when there's discussions like this, it also verges on "trans men aren't real men" territory because for some people, they are the exception. until they go on T and dress in a masculine way, then they're too cis man-like to participate in queer spaces (dunno how common it is, but it does happen!)

english isn't my first language, nor have I grown up in an american culture, so I wonder if it's my use of the word misandry that sets people off? like, is that a loaded word? because the definition of misandry is simply "hatred against men". it doesn't mean you feel uncomfortable with men or are scared of them, it means you hate men. I never thought that I would get so much shit for saying that it's weird to have such a deep, blind hatred for half of humanity. I don't think the word can be appropriated my radfems/terfs because there's nothing to be taken out of context, it means the same thing for anyone who uses the word.

why not just call yourself a feminist, an anti-sexist person, an anti-patriarchy person, etc etc. why do you label yourself as a person who hates all men for being born men and no matter what they do, they can never become a good person because they were born as men? I'm genuinely so baffled. not that anyone is planning on changing their mind about this, atleast not me.

thanks to the comments and asks that confirm to me that I'm not crazy for thinking this lol. also, I'm just some guy behind the screen. you can unfollow, block me, ask me to remove your submissions from the queue, whatever.

Just a fun side note, you know who started this discourse in the first place? All of this about transandrophobia and misandry?

little chihiro over on my queer blog... (I really liked the headcanon so if the person who submitted them sees this, i'm not saying it's your fault at all) just funny that it's this little cute character.

I should probably stop answering asks about his now.

[abattre]

Naruro is a Japaneese manga right, so it only makes sense for us to take the Japaneese culture into consideration when watching the show. I don't know how to explain this but all I can find are americans using only their own culture for describtions. For example Sasuke being called emo and edgy, that's not even a thing in Japan, how is Sasuke nicknamed that when Kishimoto himself probably has no idea what that even means. (He's traumatized, not trying to act diffrent)

Another example are Sakura, Temari, Ino, who are seen as some sort of girlbosses and queens who would never take any shit from any man when in reality they're doing all the cooking and the cleaning in their houses, just like the traditional japaneese woman in real life. (I've read the Shikamaru novel and bro's never in the kitchen, it's always Temari. And I know Sasuke is usually absent but when he comes back it's always Sakura who's making dinner)

There's also Hinata who's considered the best girl in the series, the wife material, the keeper, the woman of every dudebro's dreams, while Sakura is seen as the toxic crush who rejects the poor, sweet, good guy and chooses the hot 'badboy' over him. (I'm not her fan but I swear I've seen some people hating on her only for not loving Naruto back. Maybe she reminds those insecure men about the rejections they got from their real life girls?)

And don't even get me started on Sasuke getting called abusive and misogynistic for defending his life when ninja women attack...

I'm just saying, lots of fans project their own lives and beliefs onto the show and it often dosen't make any sense

(I hope you understood my broken english, I tried so hard, it's my third language so it's not easy for me, I also hope you don't mind the spelling mistakes but feel free to correct them for me if you find any)

oh that's really interesting! i'm not well versed enough in japanese sociology to corroborate on the subculture aspect there, but i agree that the western fandom's interpretation of sasuke is heavily weighed down by the stigma of being put in the emo trope box. i think the emo thing has become so kitsch now that it's kind of just an easy out for the fandom to avoid engaging with the moral aspect of sasuke's story. like.. they want a light-hearted excuse to justify characterising sasuke's reactions as superficially as possible so it fits their narrative of him being just a straight villain in shippuden

as far as kishimoto's motivations go, i think the intentions there were just a bit lost in translation then? also the fact that we don't get the whole context for why sasuke behaves the way he does until the end of the original series run is probably what ingrained the idea most people have that sasuke was just standoffish because he was arrogant and nothing else... i guess a lot of fans have a hard time overcoming that initial impression. even after we find out about the massacre & itachi most of the fandom is like.... utterly incapable of forgiving that he had priorities outside of his friends and konoha because they can't get past the notion of thinking he's just power-hungry for the sake of it. they're fundamentally uninterested in engaging with the nuance of sasuke's situation because they didn't find sasuke likeable enough to show some grace for his circumstances and trauma by the time we get that information. which crazy but ok... skill issue i think

as for the girls.... kishimoto cannot write them as has been said by everyone for forever.... but yeah. the way he tried to paint over his misogynistic writing with the girl-boss feminism thing is a really weird counter-balance that doesn't work for me. i think sakura is probably the best example of that... she has a Big kinda aggressive personality that gets cut-up with kishimoto pacifying her in both the story and her behaviour but he's tropifying her so hard on both ends they never meet in the middle in a way that makes sense. so it comes off as a really disjointed characterisation on the whole with her motivations & actions being kinda flip-floppy one way or the other depending on whatever situation she's in. the housewife thing was probably just kishimoto not knowing how to end their stories in keeping to the girl-boss side of things he halfway set up, so he threw them all into the same fold of what he thinks is the ideal Happy Life conclusion all girls must have in his head. which is just getting married and being a traditional japanese housewife because of course it is

funnily enough, i think the sakura hate on that end also just goes back to people resenting sasuke for his role in the story. they exalt hinata for always being loyal to naruto and never being interested in anyone else... but sakura is Evil because she never fell in love with him and couldn't get over sasuke so she must be irredeemable and the Worst Ever. the self-inset bias etc etc. it is most definitely a projection issue lmao. it's been like 20 years and they still can't get over it so i'm not really holding out hope for an overhaul on sasuke's mass mischaracterisation. rip </3

[bdbdbdbdmn]

i once saw a post that went something like "if you're trans, you have to be an expert on biology, sociology, history, etc..." and i wish i still had it because it really pops up in my head all the time. i didn't understand shit before i understood transness. it helped me understand evolution and human biology. i understand what's happening in the world around me now. i understand why and how feminism is provably correct, why and how everything non-bigoted really is right. it's given me so many tools i can use to better understand the inner machinations of someone's mind (like as opposed to Patrick's on SpongeBob, which are an enigma) aka practicing the skill sometimes called logic and/or empathy. i understand words better, they use the shit out of syllables which i love and makes spelling make So much more sense. i wish a trans person taught me spelling and reading and English and everything instead of yelling at me and the class cis people who didn't care about or really understand the stuff they were teaching (how could they with the way it's set up though...). and hold on. i think "grammar nazi" is actually foreshadowing about this and it really makes sense with the general past of nazis and fascist. what better way to get the public to self-censor and not be able to come up with new ideas than to get everyone to think that the way they speak is set in stone, engraved by the government and corporations and their media? like yeah trust the experts that the earth is round and vaccines are good, but don't let some dipshit "erm actually" you out of being queer. keep talking about it. make 420 flags and words and terms and labels a day forever and never die for as long as possible please. keep the memes and comics and stories and such coming.

posts that most people won't understand even though it'd be really easy if they actually truly listened to trans people for even less than a week collection. i have been for a decade, i will demolish you with walls of texts until you give up. it's all i do on this account.

[psychozenni]

Intro post cuz l've been on this site for years without posting and most definitely need one :V

Val/Vince/Vic | Trans masc Genderqueer & Achillean

l use any pronouns, but preferably he/they/vamp in a more platonic way !!

Audhd + BPD and prolly some other shit that I refuse to look into D:

Main interests/Hyperfixations include: Creepypasta, The Eltingville Club, Sally Face, Criminal Minds, and Sonic

Special Interests: Social Justice, Sociology, Psychology, Criminology, and Patterns

I am a yumeshipper !! My main men are Ticci Toby, Jerry Stokes, Steve Harrington and Sebastian (sdv) !!

I only have a ship name for Toby (Bloodhound) and Jerry (DiceDresser) tho :C

I LOVE LOVE LOVEEEEE ANIME !! FMA, TDLOSK, Blue Exorcist, Black Butler, Dandadan, JJK, MHA, Fairytail, and too many more to count =~=

Also I draw sometimes, but it's usually only traditional, and I LOVE writing :D I have so many fics just rotting in my notes app so if anyone ever wants me to write smth | will :3

Music wise I kinda listen to anything, but my main artists/bands rn are: Mitski (saw her live 1/27/24), Chase Atlantic, Bloodhound Gang, WayV and Stray Kids (whenever l'm using my cd player)

I stan a LOT of groups, but my main ones include:

Stray Kids, PHarmony (saw em live 5/17/24), Nmixx, Ateez, TxT, Girls Generation, CLC, Cherry Bullet (rip) and like a bajillion more...

Gonna put some of my oc/persona art for The Eltingville Club here, my art style ain't really good but I also don't care so !!

Anyways, intro done erm I love my brothers Zion, Aya, and Will and I love my friends Momo, Ife, Star, Jasmine, Ash, Jace, Ica, Robyn, and Aksel :3 (half of em don't even know I have this acc el em ay oh)

[thelongestway]

The "oops, all brennans" trend continues (honestly, the dice have spoken again, and so far ALL the new crew members have been brennan)! Ship, what is it with you attracting that specific crowd? This is likely the subject of either sociology papers or multiple in-jokes (probably both!)

Also I keep going back and forth on my preferred ship name italics convention. Sentient ships are the worst! /joking

Chapter 8: Contacts

Dandelion wasn't kidding when she said one crew wouldn't be enough. The first thing the Trellians did after sending infobursts back and forth with their main fleet was request a lot of really invasive shit, the worst of which was lists of human and construct contacts ART and I had. And for ART, specifically, those who knew what it really was. (We had a long argument about that constituting a huge security risk. In the end, they went with only the number of people and type of relationship on ART's list as the really necessary data, with additional information from me provided on request.)

(So long as they could convince me they actually needed the information.)

Iceblink swore when she read the info, and said the limited number of contacts constituted cruelty to any sapient intelligence.

Brisote, Dandelion's navigator, scoffed and said, "That's rich coming from you, Ice, we barely see you outside of a terminal these days."

"It's the option that matters," she shot back, wincing. "It's not like my team and I are doing all that work to keep our systems running and you don't even know it's us!"

"There's not a lot of choice here," Seth said to her.

"I get it!" Iceblink interjected. "Seriously, Antarctica is not the answer and all that, so I get it! But it makes our job a whole lot harder!"

"I concur. Perihelion in its normal operating mode has neither choice of privacy nor choice of contact. This is not optimal," Joscelyn added.

Kes role was mostly to handle the crew's psychological state, including Dandelion's. For some reason, Joscelyn was really happy to hear I had been talking to Bharadwaj already, and insisted that ART would eventually need someone like that of its own. ART told kem that was not an optimal use of its crew's time. Joscelyn said in that same voice Bharadwaj occasionally used in our conversations, "If you would like to talk about that, I think a private conversation would work best."

ART said, "Get a feed link, then we'll talk." (It had figured out very quickly that was the one line most Trellians wouldn't cross and used it at every possible opportunity.)

Joscelyn sighed and looked at Iceblink. She grinned and waved her feed glasses at kem.

ART said to me, They're serious about this.

It is best practice for dealing with organic-style thinking, Dandelion said. There are no roll-backs, so one must invest in maintenance to a far greater degree than you are probably used to.

Why don't your crew have feed links, anyway? I asked. It would make it a lot easier to work together. Just look at Iris. Or even at any of the regular Preservation humans.

Security precaution. A ship should not be able to overwhelm its crew. Also, full-cycle connectivity is terrible for the human brain.

I see you have not examined my medical databases yet, ART said. That is an outdated idea.

I have. And judging by the state of most of your humans, you have abandoned it wrongly.

I wasn't going to listen to that discussion again, so I disconnected. But Dandelion pinged me almost immediately.

SecUnit. Stay.

Query?

The more you are in contact with Perihelion, the better, so long as it is not detrimental to yourself. This will be a long process.

Listening to you idiots argue about who takes better care of humans fucking counts as detrimental.

Fair, she chuckled. But in all seriousness, Joscelyn is right. If it's full uplinks to construct minds that really do the trick, then we are far too few to provide enough stimulation as it is. You don't have to stay in that specific channel, but remain in-feed if you can.

Instead of answering, I just showed her the architecture of the shared workspaces ART and I usually had set up. Most of them were just regular processes that we thought the other might have some useful input on, but one of them usually had some kind of show running. Right now it was the latest episode of Cold Sleep Explorers (ART had promised Iris it wouldn't interfere with her game, so we continued watching ahead).

Ah. Far ahead of me, I see. Good, Dandelion said.

And then the show caught her attention. A lot more of her attention that it should have.

This was never a good sign.

Query?

It's nothing, Dandelion said, withdrawing. She sounded amused, but I didn't ask her about it. Iris and I still had that game to play, and I didn't want to get spoiled.

---

A couple days later, Dandelion suddenly tapped my feed. (Well, a couple nights later. Most of the humans, both hers and ours, were taking their rest periods. ART wasn't, of course, but one thing Dandelion had gotten out of it was to designate people she could come to for questions if she needed an external opinion on it, and made it promise not to hack into those conversations unless it was completely necessary).

(Even Dandelion didn't think she could tell ART not to ever hack a conversation it could actually hack.)

When I let her in, she peered at me for 2,3 seconds before actually stating her query.

This is going to be invasive, she finally said. But I need your memories of how you met Perihelion, and how it changed over the time you knew each other. Since you were the catalyst for its transformation, I'd like as much detail as you can provide.

I'd been expecting a question of that kind ever since talking to Joscelyn, so I had a data pack ready for her. She gave me an appreciative ping, then went through it without disconnecting. Oh yeah, she was having emotions about this. And not just the "what a wonderful relationship you two are having" kind that a lot of our humans did for some reason.

When she finished, she didn't even pretend to run diagnostics. Instead, she just hung out in the feed together with me, thinking. I didn't push her, and this went on for a good ten minutes before she finally said, I will need to ask you for a favor, SecUnit. I'd like you to temper me when it comes to Perihelion.

Query?

She paused again, looking like when she had been processing what to tell Ratthi and Mrinal about the Friend. Which gave my risk assessment a spike, but smaller than it should have been. (About 0,5 percent. That thing really needed recalibrating.)

I admit I hadn't been in agreement with most of my crew, who decided to treat Perihelion as identical to another node ship approximately as soon as they met it. What we've seen since then has convinced me. The problem is that it has convinced most of me, but not all of me. And this means I am not going to be fair to it when we begin training it. So I would like you to participate in the process and stop me if I am out of line.

Yeah, right again. I did not like what I was hearing.

How exactly am I supposed to stop you? The two of you have a lot more processing power than I ever did. You'd just be able to swat me aside like a fly if you wanted.

You will tell me to stop and I will stop. And the reason I will not swat you, as you say, is the same reason that I have not swatted my captain when ke said 'this is a node ship and its crew' even as I thought very differently. The node ships always come second to their humans, and I have had a lot of practice in disagreeing with mine and following their orders anyway. She sighed, giving a mental glance towards ART, who knew we were talking, but wasn't listening in. For now. Which is something I think Perihelion sorely needs to learn, for exactly the same reasons, but this is not my decision to make, nor my problem to have. Apologies. Will you do what I asked of you?

You haven't really defined what you want from me. I don't know what you mean by 'out of line' here.

The best plan we have for now is to train Perihelion's processors like we would train a human brain. That will mean exposing it to as broad a range of experiences as we can, occasionally pushing its boundaries. And I predict I will not be kind about that. Perihelion reminds me far too much of the last full AI I've had the misfortune of knowing and, to an extent, of one of its captains. This is not a good combination to start with, and we also don't have the luxury of bringing in another node ship to be its teacher. Our ship psychologists believe the few months it will take for one to get here could be critical. So I want you to look out for when I start pushing it not for the sake of Perihelion itself, but because I am seeing a ghost, and tell me.

That made a weird kind of sense. I sent her an affirmative ping, and she returned a grateful one. But before she disconnected, I still had one question.

If you had full AI before, why did your humans seem to think it was impossible when they met ART?

Because we only had two, who were not nearly as sophisticated as yours. One succumbed to the Breakoff virus, and the other overtook colonists' brains for extra processing power when they were connected to it in chronostasis. We haven't tried building them since.

Well, fuck.

And Iceblink said we were living in horror media.

Dandelion chuckled. There are many different horror media to live through, aren't there?

[cleoselene]

and like for the record despite always getting stupid questions I don't mind stupid questions if they're in good faith

on tumblr dot com they are almost always in very bad faith

but like when i was teaching and students were genuinely trying to learn i got lots of questions people would consider stupid and it was okay because they were not being smartasses, they just didn't know, and not knowing is okay, being willfully bad-faith ignorant is not

I taught at a working class public school and I taught at an elite private university. Sure, the elite private students were much better writers, asked more nuanced questions, but so many times they also said STUPID shit that was in VERY bad faith. I had a student in a Poverty in the United States class I was TAing confidently tell me that pandhandlers make an average of $800,000/year.

I was so fucking gobsmacked by her assertion that she saw this on the news, because it was literally the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard anyone say with absolute confidence, and also really shocking to hear in a Sociology of Poverty in the United States class

So I pulled up Google on the overhead projector to see the source of this young woman's assertion, because she had dug in her heels. The source, it turns out, was Fox News' John Stossel, who did some braindead "experiment" pretending to be homeless and some really ridiculous math to calculate that if he did that forty hours a week five days a week he's make $800k "doing nothing." And I had to give the class the lecture ONCE AGAIN the same thing I was constantly scrawling in caps lock red pen on their papers: FOX NEWS IS NOT AN ACADEMIC SOURCE AND THE RESEARCH THEY DO IS NOT ACADEMIC AND IT IS NOT SOMETHING TO BE TAKEN AS FACT. I had another student in this class complain that her family's housekeeper had "lived in this country for 30 years and never bothered to learn English" and her comment was fucking STUPID. I asked her how long she'd lived in Miami. She said all her life. I said, "you've lived in a bilingual city all your life and never learned Spanish?" in the same judgmental tone she used abotu her HOUSEKEEPER. Like trying to teach sociology to people who make bad faith arguments was absolute hell. I was always seething with resentment.

Teaching at my undergrad school was an entirely different experience. A lot of them truly struggled with things like, basic sentence structure. The actual course material was secondary to me needing to help them with the fundamentals of learning how to write on a basic level and on an argumentative academic level, and the material sometimes had to take a back seat to things far more remedial, but all of THOSE students who asked questions people may think are stupid were not assaulting me with stupidity. Just a lack of education and privilege. They were earnest in wanting to know the answers, they didn't assume they knew the answer ahead of time which the elite private school students did.

so there's stupid and there's stupid, ain't there? one is bad and the other is human and okay.

[taexual]

Dude where do I even start :ccc

This chapter, I really couldn't wait to have some free time and read it peacefully (peacefully meaning, squealing and losing my shit at every paragraph)

I loved the plotting ok, the attention to details, the way they all worry about each other and just fight against this urge to bury Sid alive, so inspiring and wholesome :D

Also, something I've absolutely always loved about your writing is this continuous narration of the characters thoughs, interactions and quirks, like it may be the simplest of things for other people (like writers in general and stuff) but for me these moments -of Luna finally exchanging a gossipy stare with Maggie, or Jungkook feeling devastated when Oc took her hand away, and then making sure that it wouldn't happen again-, they just add so much endearment, personality, depth to the story. Idk, it feels like every comma you write has a purpose, and will eventually add up to some beautiful metaphors, and revelations.

What does it feel like to be such a talented writer??

Now, regarding the lovey dovey stuff... What the actual fuck are you trying to do to me? I swear I cannot look more deranged giggling at my phone every 32 seconds jfc, have some compassion.

Like jk demanding that kiss in the park? Had me doing flips

The “I never knew how to love you quietly."

AND OC RECITING HIS ENTIRE SPEECH??!? ‘We have Sociology together, I saw you sleeping in class, very cute by the way, the professor does not know how to shut up, have you seen that new Studio Ghibli film, I recently watched their classic with some friends, My Neighbour Jungkook, I’m Totoro by the way, I thought maybe—wait—no—’”

“Not one period, nothing,” you continued, a melancholic haze in your eyes. “Just commas and an endless stream of thought. You could have asked me to bury a body, I would have said yes.”

STFU I ALMOST CRIED, THOSE ARE MY BABIESS

The rain listened. It had become a fundamental part of your present and a prophet of your future: the two of you were going to spend the rest of your lives listening to the rain and falling in love.

This destroyed me actually, get me someone to listen to the rain and fall in love with, rn please and thank u

Also watch me try and write 'transfixing. Beguiling. Effulgent. Pulchritudinous' next time I'm falling asleep to test my writing abilities fr, just you wait

He was almost ready to call Rated Riot’s next song “Smile Lines” and just sigh dreamily into the microphone for five minutes while Yoongi played gentle piano chords in the background.

As if their entire discography wasn't like this already, at least in my mind it is. But yeah, I can totally see him doing something like that next time oc does anything remotely endearing (breathing basically)

Ugh idk what to say, you have me screaming and crying for this couple, these characters and their story all the time, and I love you for it. There are also things I forgot to mention because my phone refuses to actually save things in the Clipboard, but overall this made my week, as your updates always do (and that paired with Ateez's performance in Coachella in a couple of minutes?? Yeah life feels worth living again 🤭🤭)

Thank you sm for this, take care of yourself pleaseee, ill be waiting for the next one cccc:

oh how i wish i could thank you eloquently, instead of going sskdhfksh at every word of your message 😭 i must stress that the fact that you noticed (!) these little moments between characters and you've enjoyed (!!!) them is the absolute highest reward i could get 🙏🏻 it's so easy to skim, you know?

babe making you giggle is my main purpose in life at this point, i don't know what to tell you. and you'RE SO RIGHT OMG he's so whipped for her, their next album is just going to be jungkook morphing from this 🥰 into just this ❤️ (like me for you rn, fr)

i also hope you have more peace and quiet to do the things you enjoy in your life!! i love you!!! 🥺🤍🤍🤍🤍 bless ateez btw

[jluver]

hello !! i’m dalla, but you can call me d.

i am a 19 yo girl from brazil with a lot of passions and too many thoughts in her head.

i love talking to people but rarely start any conversation due to my lack of social skills, but i think i’m getting better at it now though. feel free to shoot me a text or something if you feel like it, i would love to talk to you 💕

talking about love, some other things i’m really into are: reading. music. watching documentaries. terror/horror movies. winter. psychology, philosophy & sociology. animals and my dog!

my favorite artists are: taylor swift. seventeen. le sserafim. tomorrow by together. enhypen. itzy. stayc.

my boundaries 📢❕

please do not trauma dump me!! i know sometimes life can get really hard and i’m really sorry if you feel like you don’t have anyone to talk to, but trauma dump a stranger on the internet is not the way to solve your problems.

if you are under 18 years old do not interact with any of my nsfw content, or else you will be blocked and reported.

do not come at me unprompted to talk about some industry/fandom drama. i don’t really engage in this kinda of stuff and it makes me feel bad.

⌕ ݁˖ ᎒ DO NOT FOLLOW: if you are xenophobic, lgbtq+phobic, racist, etc. younger than 16. doesn't respect peoples prounouns or identities. takes everything way too serious. hates on people and don't see celebrities/idols as normal human beings. pro ana/mia blogs.

⌕ ݁˖ ᎒ BEFORE YOU FOLLOW: if you are a minor please block the tags # ̥*ೃ♡𓏲 dalla recs: nsfw and #˖ ࣪ ˒ ‎♡⃕ dalla writes: ns/fw for obvious reasons. this is a secondary blog, my main blog is @urh2ogf — likes, follows and other interactions all come from there.

rules & guidelines 📢❕

i do not take specific requests, such as “can you write me something with person a doing something”. but i am always open for suggestions and thoughts.

even though i do not recommend following me, i do not mind minors interacting with my sfw content. but, again, if i see any minors interacting with any of my nsfw content i will block and report you. there are no excuses for this type of behavior.

who i (currently) write for

1. seventeen

2. stray kids

3. tomorrow x together (txt)

4. enhypen

5. ateez

*i do plan on writing for girl groups in the future.

**i also plan on writing for more groups in general.

who i do not write for

in regards to nsfw content, i obviously do not and will never write about any minors. due to personal preferences i also do not write smut about anyone younger than 20.

i also do not have any interest in writing smut to anyone born after 2005 (in other words, people younger than me), even after they become 20. this is just a personal preference of mine.

in regards to sfw content, i’m open to write for anyone, as long as they are 18 or older (again, it’s just a personal preference).

i do not write about (nsfw)

inc*st. step-cest. r@pe. cnc. mafia / mafia related stuff. anything that makes the idols seem abusive and controlling (yandere, stalking, punishments, etc). idol x idol. member x member. male / amab readers. anything involving p*ss or sc*t. age play / age regression. ddlg. weird shit in general.

[andromedasummer]

okay completely gross about the idf soldiers thing, but that professor who stood with students protesting sounds awesome. i agree it often is the lecturers that make the subject tho, i think that's partly why i'm so reluctant to change what i'm doing (started with anthropology and history, now it's anthro and sociology), i really enjoy the lecturers i've had from the anthro and history departments so far. the sociology lecturer i've had...i could really live without lmao. but apparently he's not teaching the required paper anymore from next year, so who knows maybe i could actually pass it this time. how is welly to live in in general atm tho? i think that's another reason why in recent years i never took that leap, cause it's kinda just...falling apart. at least that's what my family that lives there tells me. shit public transport that barely shows up these days, things closing left and right, pipes bursting at every other corner. i do love welly tho, i've been going down there ever since i was a kid and have always wanted to spend some time living there. i'll just have to get used to the hills and wind lol

I love Wellington, Ive lived here sibce 2012, but shit is falling apart. The pipes keep bursting and the news doesnt even cover half of it. Two went out the front of our house, raised the ground from the impact and were hemorrhaging water out onto the road. It took 7 months for them to fix it. Same with most other burst pipes around the city, unless theyre super disruptive like the fucking river we had a month back on one of our main streets. Cost of living is abysmal here and rent is $400-600 a week. The mass job cuts have left the city dead and people aren't spending on lunch because the price of everythibg is himing up, which is causing a fuckton of shops to close. Mind you not all of them are because of this, despite what they say. Bourdeux was known for being exorbitant in their prices for mediocre bread and bad treatment of staff so they cant bitch and moan about cycleways all ghey want but thats not it. Same with the ttprg cafe stuck in front of the public library (which has been shut since 2018 for construction and earthquake strengthening). They say theyre failing because the road is shut, but every person I know in the community says to avoid the place because the owner looks down girls shirts and is a creep. Sucks because a lot of the other employees are lovely.

It's just not affordable right now. I would be on the street if my parents werent wonderful and helping me out, because my sickness would've made it impossible to work and pay for a place to stay here. Student housing is less rough, but still bad because youre overpaying for bad accomodations. I know my friend moved here to study from Otago said the only thing she misses is the housing/rent prices down there.

Thats not mentioning the council, who are useless. Media loves to pin the blame on Tory Whanau, and she absolutely has her issues, but she has inherited a lot of inaction from prior mayors, and of her two biggest detractors, one said homeless people should pay rent to love in cars because shes a fucking ghoul and the other, while very nice, wants local govt to run like a business. And I'm sorry, Ray, but being a nice neighbour and saying hi when I walk my dog doesn't cut it when you don't have any climate change policy in mind.

[firelord-frowny]

purely out of curiosity, i started looking up how much it typically costs to go on those ~african safari~ trips where you stay at some sort of lodge in he Serengeti or wherever and uhhh what the FUCK lmfao that shit can cost like twenty thousand dollars PER PERSON??????

i mean i guess it kinda sorta makes sense, given that the sort of person who even has enough money to do that in the first place i also the sort of person who would strongly prefer not to be without the higher-tech comforts of the ~developed~ world, which means these lodges and whatnot are probably having to bring in resources from hella thousands of miles away on a regular basis, which is probably mega expensive,

but still!

obligatory disclaimer that my knowledge about shit like The Economy and Sociology isn't nuanced enough to die on the cross of any opinion i have about any of it, but it kills meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee that there is SO MUCH REVENUE generated in that part of the world while the actual people who live there die of malaria and have to pull parasitic worms out of their flesh with toothpicks*. 🙃

Also????

some of the websites for the companies that provide these kinds of services boast about how they can take you to ~where the REAL people are~ and immerse you in ~the culture~ and blah blah and like

something about that seems so off to me! like the native people in those regions are supposed to be part of the safari or something???

do the ~real people~ even like it when tourists come to See Them?? i mean i'm sure they probably benefit in some financial way, like idk maybe they sell stuff to tourists, but if that element was a non-issue, how would they feel about it???

like, i feel like i would hate it! like omfg go AWAYYYYY i'm just trying to carry home my well water and you wanna just LOOK at me??? mind your business! or maybe YOU should carry my bucket! make yourself useful! don't just stand there and smile like a dumbass! you westerners sicken me!

[berrylover0571]

No but can we fucking talk about how this culture of paranoia about fetishes contributes to even more sleazy Behavior than if we talked frankly and honestly about them? Because like yeah I get it, there's a lot of weird fetishes. Humans like weird shit, one of my favorite types of burgers are definitely not burgers and are in fact steamed meat with mustard and onion and there's a guaranteed number of people who probably hate the texture taste and sound of it, and yet I eat that shit religiously because I'm from a very specific and narrow part of the Midwest that has them. It's just an acquired taste.

Weird fetishes and just fetishes in general are the acquired tastes of sexual expression. Bullying somebody for liking a fetish is not cool unless they are being super weird and obnoxious about it, and even then they're probably being super weird and obnoxious about it because they don't have any other outlet.

When people talk more frankly and honestly about sexuality and fetishes and sexual expression, without the fear of stigma or the fear that what they like is weird or bad, things don't get as shady and do in fact get better. I say this with authority because I fucking have put in the work to actually get people comfortable to talk about sexual expressions like that, it's something I'm not only fascinated by, I am deeply enraged by the deficiency sociology, my field of study, has one regards to studying it. I believe we have such an archaic understanding of sexuality and sexual expression simply because we only Court the idea of procreation, and we look at fetishes and sexual expression as anomalous as opposed to a given. Everyone has fetishes. Every single person. Everyone has a thing they're looking for, something they like doing, something that makes them feel pleasure or joy. Sexual expression is play and stimulation, it is the human mind being creative with the most intimate of our emotions and we like pretending like it's the most important thing on the planet, probably because of some stupid fuck a thousand years ago, and we really shouldn't because let's be frank here, the worst thing about fetishes is that somebody gets aroused, and the sleazy behavior that comes as a byproduct of them has nothing really to do with the fetishes. It actually probably has more to do, more substantially to do, with the countless ways in which we shame people and obligate them to be incredibly cagey and weird about it.

If you want people to stop being weird with fetishes, to be more open with themselves than others, and more expressive and fun ways, don't be a dick head when you learn about a weird fetish. Everyone has a weird thing. Every single person. Be it a fetish, a food preference, or some unusual outfit pairing, there's no fucking end to what the human capacity for weirdness is. Weirdness is after all our base fucking characteristic. It is in our weirdness and our uniqueness that we find collaborative strength. Please for the love of God and all that is Holy stop shaming people for shitty fetishes, and if anyone gives me shit for being a fetish blog saying this, you're proving my point exactly. There's more pressing matters and bullshit then whether or not somebody gets turned on by balloons, clowns, vore, or furry porn. There's weirder shit, swallow that bitter pill, and move the fuck on.

Ohhhhh my god u found out somebody has a physically impossible fetish? should we tell everyone? Should we write a callout post?should we invite sigmund freud