#its like. having online friends is wonderful

[gyuswhore]

happy new year everyone! 🤍🎉

I've been tagged endlessly in so many Tumblr wrapped posts and I appreciate you guys thinking of me as being part of your year!! i unfortunately cannot bring myself to count my fics and stats for the year so I won't be participating formally but I still wanted to make an end of year post!

2024 was a lot of everything, I wouldn't categorise it as good or bad but it was definitely a year of new beginnings! I learned a lot, from my community on Tumblr and from my actual life which I'm so immensely grateful for.

There's a lot that's going to be happening in the first quarter of 2025 on this blog and I'm sure everyone is going to have fun being involved!! I do have a couple announcements to make but those will come a little later.

my goals for 2025:

grow @camandemstudios. so much effort went into its creation and running this year and I hope we can expand as much as possible!!

work on my writing, learn from the authors I admire and write more of what I want to write!

work on my art! I definitely want to open an online shop and it's been on my list for YEARS,,,2025 is gonna be the year guys I promise. but before that I need to actually make more pieces!!

read more!!!!! I bought a kindle recently and I hope it'll push me to restart my reading phase, and I really want to start reading fics on here a lot more too!

stay kind, stay positive, and keep this blog as somewhere everyone can lodge themselves!!

I cannot possibly tag all of the people that made my year but I promise, if we interacted in any capacity, you've become someone I cherish. This isn't an exaggeration, I really do appreciate every single like, reblog and reply, every message in my inbox and my dms, to every other writer that I've spoken to this year, you guys are champs!!

To @highvern, my heart and soul; to @the-boy-meets-evil, my ride or die; to @toruro, my first real friend on here and someone who I think has become a friend for life; to @wqnwoos a newer blossom that makes me wonder why we haven't been friends for longer, and someone I hope to grow closer to; to @amourcheol another new one but someone who's so incredibly easy to talk to and I hope to become closer to in the coming year; to @etherealyoungk, for being the kindest sweetest most pure soul; to @miniseokminnies @ugh-yoongi @bitchlessdino @haologram @multi-kpop-fanfics @seungkw1 @tomodachiii @fairyhaos @fxstpace @wongyuseokie and just the entire cam & em studios server, thank you for being my friends no matter how often or sparingly we talk, I appreciate you and I really hope we can all get a little closer in the new year!!! 🤍

[stiffyck]

Still occasionally think about that one online friend who just. Disappeared one day.

I hope wherever they are they're okay....

[plant-ago]

An Open Letter to Dan and Phil

Dear beloved nerds,

This was originally going to be an (even longer) actual letter that I was going to give to you at the tour, but my nonprofit-employed ass can’t afford a meet and greet, so we’re doing this instead. I promise it’s not just trauma dumping— mostly, it’s about saying thank you and trying to cultivate some hope for all of us.

I’ve been a big fan since around 2014, when I was a mentally ill neurotic deeply repressed loner egg (average phannie, let's be honest). Now I’m a whole adult who got therapy and HRT and has joined the legions of transmascs with the Dan Howell haircut! What a legacy.

I’m making jokes because the thing I actually want to talk about, and the reason I decided to make this an open letter, is kind of serious. But in light of the election, I feel like I need to share this, both with you and with all the other queers in this little corner of the internet.

Here’s the gist: I’m a paralegal at a non-profit organization that works to help queer migrants get asylum. Mostly what I do is sit them down in our nasty sterile office and try to be kind, and help them get through telling me all the most terrible things that have happened to them, and then turn around and pare it all down into legalese that is digestible to the government to make the case they should get asylum.

It’s a horrible job, really, and one that shouldn’t have to exist. Some parts are plainly wonderful, like meeting so many queer people from all walks of life. But it’s also heartrending and difficult, and burnout is always looming. My horrible banal work is often literally a matter of life and death for the client, and I’m fighting a broken system for a chance at giving them the happiness and safety is owed to them by international law and, really, by any decent human standard, should never have been in question.

The thing is—and this is reason to hope—queer people really do exist everywhere, no matter how much repression and violence we face. In a tiny village in Colombia, there's a kid who’s all spit and vinegar, dresses like a boy and plays football and fights anyone who says that they can’t, who grows up wiry and gets black eyes because men still can’t handle getting their asses handed to them on the soccer field by a dyke. This client texts me at my work number sometimes to ask if I’ve eaten that day, because they wanted to check in on me. He asked me to call him by a boy’s name, recently. I don’t know that he’s told anyone else. I open every message I send him with "Hola, James."

Then there’s the sweet, babyfaced college freshman who got death threats when he was outed to his classmates back home, and whose parents kicked him out when he refused to marry a girl to protect the family's reputation, leaving him alone in a foreign country. He was couch surfing and just trying not to miss class so he could keep his student status and he was so conscientious I wanted to cry— he’s eighteen, guys. Eighteen. I’ll get him his papers or so help me fucking God I will kill for him. You know? You know. After that meeting I had to sit at my desk with my notebook and fill an entire blank page with the phrase “he’s just a kid,” over and over again, until I felt like I could breathe.

On a Friday morning recently I get up and open my laptop to interpret on a call with a soft-spoken older trans woman who's sat in the bleak phone room of the ICE detention facility because her immigration judge didn’t believe that she was really transgender. “An odor of mendacity pervades everything the respondent says,” the judge wrote in her ruling, where she determined the client wasn't "credible." To this day I’m still floored that she straight up ripped off Tennessee Williams—new frontiers in bigotry, truly. She didn’t even cite. In our meeting now, the client quietly tells us how hard it was when she came out but how happy she was the first time she wore makeup, and she'd rather stay in detention here for indeterminate years as proceedings spiral on than go back to Guatemala, where they'll kill her—boys, if I ever get within spitting distance of this fuckass judge, it is on SIGHT. Absolutely fucking ON SIGHT. For legal purposes, that was a JOKE.

So I finish the call and get up to get a snack. It’s only ten am but feel tired already because I’m angry, which is not unusual but also not something I want to hold onto, because it doesn't help anything. So I make some toast and look at my phone— two texts, which I ignore, a spam email, and, wouldn't you know it, a YouTube notification from Dan and Phil games! Jarring! That’s just sort of how life is though, isn’t it? Deathly serious and lighthearted in the same breath.

But regardless, seeing the notification makes me feel warm, so I have my toast and watch a little video of you two playing Roblox or dress up or whatever it is you do on that channel these days. I have a good giggle and I finish my toast and go back to my desk. It’s a crucial part of my diet really— the giggles, not the toast. I’m not angry anymore. I’ll be angry again, but for now my cortisol levels are manageable and I can put my head back into emails or whatever the fuck. Do you ever think about how plants make food for free out of sunlight but we sit around writing emails all day? And that’s if we’re lucky. Capitalism is hell.

Anyway, there is a point I am trying to make, and it’s not really about the banal horrors of neoliberal nation-state or capitalism or even homophobia. It’s to say thank you for coming back to make silly videos together, because I love them, and you never fail to make me happy. And yeah, maybe something about the story of that scared eighteen-year-old kid at the front of my mind makes it particularly sweet to watch you two goofing off and being openly queer. It reminds me why I’m doing what I’m doing, and it gives me the strength to send another fucking email because sometimes doing “important work that I value and believe in deeply” means having to send another fucking email. And sometimes I’ll rewatch your older videos, and then come back to the more recent ones, and my heart bruises, because you remind me what I’m fighting for and why. It’s nothing grandiose, it’s just— for queer people to get to have the ability to grow into themselves and be outrageous and silly and make mistakes and to love and be loved for who they are. To have the safety and support and security that no one should ever go without. That’s all.

So I am being dead serious when I say thank you for making top-tier light entertainment, and for coming back to a job that wasn’t always kind to you, and that it does actually matter. All this talk about terrible influences and legacies has made me think that sometimes you doubt whether you do good in the world, so let me be clear: you really, really do. I kind of get the sense that in order to accept sincerity Dan needs to be beat over the head with it, so if that’s the case, consider yourself coerced, you dickhead. You matter to me, and especially in times like these, I think I speak for all of us when I say that the joy you share is a precious and treasured gift. So please accept my gratitude in return.

All my love,

Jules

(I removed or changed all identifying information in this letter to protect privacy, but the stories are real).

[weirdmageddon]

It's not totally clear here why Dave's dream self appears to be already awake while his real self is also awake. I think we must infer that his dream self is in some sort of "waking trance" where he's technically awake but too preoccupied by certain things to be considered fully awake.

thinking about jade being lonely as hell on her island and going to sleep waking up on prospit and seeing john (not knowing his name yet) asleep plagued with the creepy dersite doll dreams with the scary teeth and just aughhhh

and she’d like overhear the white queen talk about the dark kingdom derse and the prince(sse)s of the moon that are there and trying to attract as little attention as possible jade would fly out there through the medium because shes so lonely. and she’d go to the purple moons’ towers. she’d find a girl is sound asleep in her purple robes and bed. but the other kid on the moon she finds is awake! except… not really. more like in a trance state. awake but not conscious. but she likes to hear whatever garbled stuff this triangle-speced boy has to say

the trip is long but jade visits this boy a few times since he’s the only non-asleep person like her she can interact with face to face. he usually seems lost in his own world, usually listening to music or talking to himself about stuff that doesnt make much sense. when she’s deprived of sapient affection she’ll touch him in small gestures like holding his hand while he listens to his music and he’ll squeeze back instinctually, and it helps her experience a microdose of the human connection. maybe he doesnt get much in the way of sapient affection either. when she hears The Horrors of the furthest ring another dream headset pops into existence for her to listen along with him and they listen to whatever music hes making. who is he

[feliville]

I need to get the courage to just talk about my oc story thingy here sometime, even if only like 2 people read it, like, it's ok I just want it to be written down here in some capacity.

I wanna post stuff I'm thinking about adding 2 the comic and see if anyone has any opinions or whatever, but I need to give context first I Assume. I don't KNOW ‼️

[camvrin]

spit balling 🤓

self depreciation aside I'm AWARE that I'm one of the most generous and caring people you could come across if you're not a terrible person

and I will try and be there for you even if I don't like you

so sending me death threats over something that isn't even true when I literally looked out for you is a crazy thing to do 😭

[kbitty]

webfishing is THE multiplayer game to me. like this game encapsulates the entirety of what hanging out with friends online should feel like. i have never experienced a game like this before.

this game feels like a cozy hug. like a pocket of space in the digital world where i can truly just hang with my friends. i can log on to my computer after a long day, get silly in this little forest with my friends as our goofy avatars, and unwind. i can sit and fish with my friends as i do my homework or draw my silly pictures. i feel at home.

[uitzinnigmp3]

.

[emotargaryen]

sometimes i like to go on the blog of someone who's getting clowned on for leaving a stupid comment on a post and it always giving this vibe

[catsrightnow]

I am happy because everyone loves me ^.^

[emypony]

.

[claitea]

finished mario wonder it was SOOOOO good i love it to PIECES

[staronet]

I think my job is destroying my mental health.

[sunlessys]

basically our ideal goal with this blog would be to form a small community with people, systems or not, who can chat w us about stuff and like. reblog and send each other ask games. that’s the biggest thing we’ve been missing about the old days of tumblr and the one thing we as a system think we’re lacking. we want a community online that really engages with itself 🥺

[robotpussy]

speaking of soft blocking idk i dont think its worth it like if u hate me so much just block me

[elytrafemme]

friendship is cool bc you get to have these funny little guys who make you happy and become a better person or whatever and laugh a lot. but then there’s the horrors (trying to see and message them frequently enough when you know you can’t possibly juggle all of them all at once and never knowing the best answer)