#like i’m aware that it’s just online. but you’re still talking to real people and can really like them.

[flashhwing]

I’m here to say that you may absolutely express negativity about veilguard to me as long as it’s not stupid. hate on it for real reasons, of which there are plenty, most of which I’m ignoring because of the hype but would be glad to discuss in a civilized manner. no forced positivity in this zone this is a safe space. unless your criticism is dumb as fuck then I will point and laugh

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Just Friends: How It Began

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

Character: Bucky Barnes

masterlist

Summary: You make a new friend.

It's giving

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging ❤️

There’s more people than you expect. The book club is more of a book crowd. Not exactly what was advertised online. Instead of a circle of only about ten people, there are tables set around the room to seat as man. Each. 

“Find your name tag,” the woman at the table near the entrance explains, “and your table. Everyone has a number.” 

You thank her and find your name tag, sticking it onto your cardigan, right below your collar. You clutch your copy of The Good Earth. It’s well worn. A used copy you found on a thrift shop shelf. You search the room, lost as you take in the other listless faces. 

You check the list of names and find your table number. This isn’t what you were hoping for. You want to make friends. Everyone here is older than you. Noticeably so. And there’s so many. It’s going to be so loud, you won’t be able to focus. You doubt you’ll make any sort of real connection. 

You think of leaving but you’ve come this far. Besides, there’s a spot waiting for you. You find your seat at Table 12 and swing your feet nervously. You tap your fingers on the cover of your book and smile as a pair of white-haired ladies sit down across from you. They don’t acknowledge you as they chatter. You sit back, disappointed. 

Other tables are a little livelier. Several attendees sit at the next table and garble loudly on. It seems like they’re already talking about Pearl S. Buck’s narrative from what you can make out. An older man sits down and you try to think of how to greet him. Oh, no, he seems to know those ladies. All three of them block you out as they ignore your tiny wave. 

“Twelve,” the deep voice gristles over you. The chair next to you scrapes out. An even more worn novel lands on the table next to yours. The man sits. “This everyone?” 

He looks around and you do too. 

“There’s a few more seats,” you say as trace your finger over the spine of the book. You turn to him and pause. He’s familiar. Do you know him? “Um, hi...” You introduce yourself, trying not to cringe.  

He’s younger than the others but still older than you. The silver strands threaded into his dark hair and patched along the edge of his jaw suggest at least a full decade, likely more. You offer your hand stiffly, not sure why you do. You’re not one for shaking hands. He accepts the gesture and your lashes flick in surprise. His fingers are... metal? 

“Bucky Barnes?” You blurt out as he squeezes your hand firmly. 

He drops his chin as if he was hoping to stay covert, “uh, yeah. You beat me to it.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you retract your hand and slap your cheek, “I didn’t mean to. I only... I thought you looked... familiar and then I worried I forgot you from somewhere. But you’re too old to have been in my classes. But I mean... not too old. We had lots of mature students. Mature... just students. Age isn’t... well...” 

He chuckles, “don’t worry about it. More than a century in, I can handle being called old.” 

“I wasn’t-- I didn’t mean... that,” you shake your head. “I’m sorry.” 

“Really, it’s fine. It’s... cute,” he leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. Another duo sits down and make no effort to engage beyond their pairing. He sighs and looks around. “Not very social for a social club.” 

“Mm, no, but maybe once we get started...” you shrug. 

“Maybe,” he sits back and drops his hands onto his lap. “You... don’t have somewhere less... geriatric to be?” 

“Oh, um, well, you know, I have some friends but they only want to go drinking and I get all bubbly in my stummy—stomach, when I drink. So, yeah. I thought maybe I could meet a few tamer friends here.” 

“Huh, well, I assure you, the old ones really aren’t that much different,” he scoffs. “And I get it. Alcohol doesn’t do much for me. Don't like the taste either. It’s all people ever wanna do. Always ‘let’s go for drinks’.” 

You nod. 

“Besides,” he continues, “don’t feel like hanging out with a bunch of dudes who can only talk about fighting the next bad guy. I need a friend who isn’t enhanced or magical.” 

“Right, that sounds...” 

“I know. I'm a grumpy old man complaining about saving the world,” he snorts. “Sorry, I just—I'm like you. Wanna expand outside my circle.” 

“Yeah, makes sense,” you agree. “Looks like you’ve read that a few times.” 

You point to his copy and he peers down. His blue eyes find you again, “first edition. Read it before I shipped off. My sister Rebecca still had it when she passed... she left it behind. It was just sitting in a storage unit.” 

“Oh wow, I... yeah, er--” 

“See, the whole friends thing... tough when there’s only one other guy in the city the same age as you,” he says. 

“It’s nice of her to hold onto it for you,” you finally get your thoughts in line. 

“Yeah, she was nice,” he agrees. “My best friend, but don’t tell Steve I said so.” 

A man sits on your other side and jars you from the plucking of heart strings. He’s balding and thin. “Hi,” you turn to him and give your name, “nice to meet you.” 

He glances at you, “Didn’t know this was open to kids.” 

“Kids?” You echo. You’re well into adulthood. Almost twenty-five. 

“Lay off, she’s being friendly,” Bucky leans over. “It’s a club. We’re supposed to talk about the book.” 

“Yeah, I'm sure she has great insight into the battle between wealth and tradition.” 

Your eyes round. You crane to see around you. You really are the youngest person in the room. You should have known. 

“I’d love to learn,” you say and the man harrumphs. 

Bucky growls, “you sure act like a jackass for putting on airs. She’s being polite.” 

The man sneers, “some idea for a date, boy.” 

“I’m not--” Bucky puts his metal hand on the table, between your books, balling it to a fist as the man gapes. 

“I--” the man begins. 

“Save it,” Bucky says. “Think you may have missed a few themes... you know, about women and oppression.” He drags his hand from the table. “Hey,” he nudges you softly. You almost can’t believe he can be so gentle with the metal limb, “how about we get outta here? They’re showing It Happened One Night just a few blocks down at the old cinema.” 

“Yes! I know. It’s one of my favourites. I was going to go but everyone said it was boring and I didn’t wanna go alone.” You chirp, shying away from your own rambling. 

“Same. So, how about it. Wanna make me look normal?” 

You laugh, “sure. I love popcorn.” 

“Alright, I might save you a few milk duds,” he stands and you do the same. 

You think you’ve made a friend after all. 

[jeremywhitley]

Here we are, six weeks later...

HEY!

So, in case you haven’t heard, our six week run on Love Unlimited following Gwenpool wrapped up today and...

and as much as I did write all of this and it is extremely important to me, I feel I really need to make sure you all know that this didn’t start with me.

To be completely accurate, it started with Chris Hastings and crew for creating such an amazing and nuanced character out of what could have only ever been a high concept and a cover gag. Not that the cover gag wasn’t good, but the statue that is revealed from that piece of marble over the course of The Unbelievable Gwenpool is truly astonishing.

Then, of course, there’s you. An audience of fans with an incredible love and passion for a character who also saw a lot of the quirks and experiences that we as people on the asexual spectrum experience and talked about it online.

Which is where the incredible @alannawrites, my editor, comes in. Alanna had been looking for an opportunity to tell a story about being ace in Marvel comics. We had kind of skimmed around the edges during Unstoppable Wasp, but ultimately being a character who owed so much to a movie franchise, there were a lot of nerves there. Gwen was not only a great opportunity to tell a story of a person hyper aware that they are in a story struggling with the tropes that affect their actual life, it was a chance to bring about this story for a character a lot of the fandom already saw as ace. Obviously, not everybody, but still a lot.

So when editorial game to okay to tell this story, Alanna reached out to me - somebody she’d worked with but also specifically had just had their own little coming out as demisexual a little while back. I was thrilled by the idea and before long we brought on @bailiesartblog and Kelly and had a full creative team of people on the ace spectrum. This is easily the first time that’s ever been a thought.

For me it was important that it not just be a story of coming out, but that it be a Gwenpool story. A story of knowing how stories work, what tropes you can play with, trying to direct the story where you think it should go, and ultimately finding that the story just won’t comply. And for people who have experienced being on the ace spectrum or a lot of other marginalized genders and sexualities - that’s a very familiar problem.

Ultimately, it’s different from a lot of other Gwenpool stories because it’s not the world around her. She has 2-3 real working possibilities for romantic relationships in this story and one that is about to become a fully adult sexual relationship with a woman whom she really loves before it skips the tracks. Ultimately, it’s not a thing from the 616 that’s holding her back, it’s a thing she brought with her from the real world - her sexuality - and no matter how worthy you are, you can’t beat that with a hammer.

There’ll be lots of time to talk about this later, but along with her actually saying the words and waving the flags above, one of the sequences that’s most important to me is the opening sequence of issue 6

This is the problem sometimes with being story tellers. When you think you know the story, realizing you’re not who you thought you are can feel like maybe you’re a villain. Maybe you’re a monster. Maybe you don’t belong here.

Some people on the internet seem to have decided to misinterpret this sequence as us comparing being asexual to being a monster, when very clearly that’s Gwen doing it. I’m just going to assume they’ve never had the experience of struggling to understand themselves and where they fit. Sounds fake, but whatever.

I love this FF story. I love Ben Grimm. I love this cover and that was why I gave my art team the truly unenviable task of recreating it. Like, I don’t know if you’ve been there, but I certainly have and I’d wager that most of us have at some point.

But perhaps the most important image in this scene is the next one:

Julie sees her friend, her girlfriend, the person that she cares about spiraling and literally yoinks her right out of the frame.

And sits her down and talks to her about it. And listens to her about it. And when she starts asking questions that Julie can’t answer, she finds Gwen somebody who can.

And that is an incredible gift to give to someone. And yeah, maybe we should all do that for each other, but man is it hard. Julie for one is in a multi-month relationship with this girl that just told her that not only was she lying about being ready to have sex with her, but that she didn’t actually like kissing her and has been faking enjoying some aspects of their relationship. You wanna think you would still be there for this person, but that’s a lot to handle and it takes a lot to be the person Julie is in this moment. But, personally, I love Julie Power and I think she’s the kinda person to stick with it.

And ultimately I think this scene is so important to me because I hope this book is our opportunity to be Julie Power to somebody reading this story. I hope someone who is going through a hard time or struggling with how to define themselves will find this story and it can be the hands that pull them out of the cover of Fantastic Four 51 when they need it. Maybe that’s a lot to hope for a comic, but it’s really the ambition I think the team went into this comic with. We want to tell a story about an aroace character coming to terms with who they are and learning to accept and be comfortable with it, but ultimately we hope this story gets to someone out there when they need it and makes the difference.

Well, this has gone really long and I’m sure there will be other things I wanna say about it later, but until then take care of yourselves and hopefully you’ll get the chance to be someone’s Julie Power.

P.S. - Julie, you’re amazing and I’m sure we will find a romance for you that works out eventually. Sorry that we’ve collectively now put you through three breakups.

[ur-boyfiend]

hai , here's some chan x reader fluffy domestic stuff, if anyone wants to see a continuation lemme know ^^

you’re lying in bed on your back, eyes closed and earbuds in.  your skills at zoning out are strong, so you’re not very aware of your surroundings. you don’t have any plans for today, but your friends and boyfriend like to stop by unannounced, so you don’t particularly expect to be left alone all day. 

that’s why you’re not that surprised when you feel someone's weight drop on top of you. you pause your music and pull out your earbuds, looking up slightly to see a mop of curly blond hair. laughing quietly, you gently run your fingers through your boyfriend’s hair, and he leans into your touch. 

“what’s goin’ on channie?” he seems more tired than usual, which is saying something. he mumbles something in response, but his face is still buried in your chest so you can’t actually tell what he’s saying. 

“love, i can’t hear you.” 

he lifts his head up to look at you, and his expression almost reminds you of an upset puppy, “people don’t know how to do their jobs. i came in and nobody had finished their part of the project, you could tell they all expected me to finish it for them. so now i’m doing the entire project myself.”

you frown, knowing that being one of the best students in the music department meant people assumed chan would do their work for them if they asked. you’ve given plenty of students deadly side-eye when they tried to bother chan, but most of them just try again when you’re not there. 

“can you tell your professor?” 

chan just shakes his head, “i don’t wanna tell the professor because that’d give them the chance to get their shit together. i’ll just do the project myself and leave their names off of it, their loss.”

you laugh quietly, appreciating the pettiness. you were probably a bad influence, but because of chan’s default sweetheart personality, you were glad he wasn’t letting people take advantage of him anymore. 

“if there’s any way i can help let me know, alright?” 

“you have your own classes to work on, i don’t wanna use up your work time.” 

you shake your head, “the biggest assignment i have right now is my end of semester project for my visual arts class, my team for the year end fashion show is actually ahead of where we need to be since we’re all prone to hyperfocusing on the work.” 

chan grumbled slightly, “imagine having a team that do their work, what a concept.” 

you gently scratch at his scalp, still running your fingers through his hair, “is there anyone else in your class you could team up with? maybe not for this project, but for future ones?” 

chan shrugs, “i try not to interact with people unless they interact with me first, i don’t need to prompt people to bug me.” 

you snort, knowing how he feels. people used to treat you the same way, the difference is you’re just a lot more intimidating than him, and people figured out pretty quickly that you weren’t gonna do their work for them. 

“i think one of my friends was talking about his boyfriend needing a new team for his assignment, i’m pretty sure another one of our friends is in a similar situation… lemme ask real quick.” 

he hums in confirmation and you grab your phone from where it sat abandoned on the low shelf next to your bed, quickly putting in your passcode and opening the ‘dance hoes’ groupchat. you know each other because of how often the performance and fashion departments work together, everyone in the chat had done modeling for you at some point. 

you send a quick text, ‘hey can the catboys get online?’

quickly you get responses from two of the other chat members, both asking what was going on, one much more kindly than the other. you’re pretty sure chan has fallen asleep on you, but you keep playing with his hair as you ask the pair about what they’d mentioned earlier. 

they both give quick confirmation, and you explain your idea. both disappear for a second, before confirming that their boyfriends were down to meet up with everyone. you decide to work out a meeting time later, so you set aside your phone and curl up with chan, tugging a blanket over both of you and closing your eyes, falling asleep in your boyfriend’s arms.

[transmutationisms]

is it unfair for me to hold anger at individuals, or criticize individuals, if covid minimization is not the result of individualized choices but mass messaging and systems at work? im not really sure what to say to leftists who ive spoonfed information who have still decided to “move on” from it, including in their activism. on one hand i understand how they got here, on the other it feels like theyre enacting violence, in the same vein as like misgendering or supporting “blue lives matter” but with the added bonus of them maybe also harming someone directly by refusal to do infection control. i really need to shift my perspective away from a heavily trauma-informed one and start living in the real world where i cant expect anyone to advocate for me, and have to find more systems-based ways to advocate for myself, and releasing some of that anger might need to be a part of moving on from that pov, but a lot of that trauma *is* individualized and resulted from the way people have responded to me, which varies from lukewarm apathy to actively telling me my life isnt worth anything to them. at the same time, it’s impossible for me to feel like i’m not the one in the wrong, when it’s very few people left who care about any of this. sorry for dumping this on *you*, im aware you’re some guy online, but the only ppl i see who still talk about covid are ppl in the same situation as me and are too close to it to assess, or think about it purely on an individual level

i don't think there's anything wrong, bad, or unfair about feeling this type of anger or betrayal. i just also think that this is one of those situations where a (completely understandable) emotional reaction does not form the basis of an effective political platform. both of these things can be true at once; your ethical considerations when navigating interpersonal relationships are not the same as the ethical considerations for someone who wants to style themselves a public health communicator. in an epidemiological sense, a person who reluctantly masks because orgs and public spaces have mask mandates is accomplishing the same thing, materially, as a person who happily masks because they care about their disabled comrades. in that sense there's no need for a public health strategy to focus on 'changing minds' and doing so often just makes people dig in their heels more. but, on a personal level, of course it matters to you whether someone actually cares for you and protects you voluntarily! figuring out how to interact with people in your own life is just not the same as figuring out the most effective mass communication and public policy strategies; what irritates me about many of the twitter-sphere covid communicators is the elision between these two things. having said that, if i can just soapbox for a second:

i try to give these people the benefit of the doubt; i do think many of them mean well and think they are doing what's right. however, the strategy that many of them have coalesced around seems to go something like this: assume that others are not covid-cautious because they are insufficiently frightened; assume this is a failure of individual intelligence-slash-awareness; using the same datasets as the applicable public health agency, interpret all data with any number of assumptions, predictions, and modelling heuristics built in; generate very terrifying infographic, post it, and wring hands when doing so doesn't change anyone's behaviour or state policy.

even in the best of cases i simply think this is ineffective; i would say public attitudes about the seriousness of covid are much more a result of state and public health inaction, ambivalence, and denialism than they are a cause. additionally, interpreting data and making predictions based on them is woolly, and a lack of transparency about their methodology, plus the overconfident desire to present themselves as authorities on the internet, means that this strategy can and does end up producing its own distortions. see, for example, recent 'med twitter' claims that "covid is airborne aids", an attempt to scare people into taking it more seriously that relies on poor and overconfident interpretations of current immunological knowledge; that ends up distorting what we do actually know about covid and the immune system (which is already fucking scary! no lies needed!); and which, as far as i can tell, actually started picking up steam in early 2020 as a right-wing conspiracy theory centred around the claims of dr (not an md) leonard g. horowitz, who argues that covid is a laboratory-engineered virus and uses it in his efforts to sell "resonating silver hydrosol" supplements to you (and your pets!) as "an effective alternative to risky vaccinations and deadly antibiotics".

getting into bed with these people is patently dangerous for obvious reasons. i really do not blame people who are trying to find reliable covid information, and are rightfully wary of state and official sources that have been downplaying this virus for its entire existence, for getting sucked in by twitter doctors when those people are often the only ones who seem to be both posting statistics and taking the virus seriously. however, what i have observed leads me to believe that, firstly, many of these people are motivated by a desire for renown and fame as much as by altruism (welcome to social media). secondly, virtually all of them are fundamentally very liberal in their politics, and this shows in the way they interpret the current state of affairs as a result of individual actions and psychological failures, rather than capitalist policy. this is absurd and leads to absolutely pointless (if not often counterproductive) narrativisation of political action as some kind of magical field where everybody just needs to change their minds and believe in the correct things really hard and then things will change: it's the liberal democratic fantasy that aggregated attitudes create policy out of thin air, no organisation or class analysis or principled communism necessary.

thirdly, a multitude of factors (incl. the paywalling and gatekeeping of knowledge) means that, although state and official interpretations of their datasets are often misleading or outright dishonest because they want to minimise risk, too often the self-styled 'covid communicators' online are not a solution to this and are prone to their own fallacious assumptions, conspiratorial thinking (see again: understanding politics as the product of many individuals believing something really hard, with no analysis of structural factors), poor data analysis, issues with comprehensive data collection in the first place (same as state sources. because they are usually using the same datasets), and a particular rhetorical emphasis on "listening to the science" that often manifests practically as a failure to actually engage with scientific methodology or to questionor improve it where it is lacking, incomplete, or bias-reproducing.

so. these are my issues with the state of covid communication; to me the question of how to navigate interpersonal relationships with people who don't value your life enough to protect it is just very different and the emotional engagement there is also quite different.

[luke-shywalker]

I’ve been having online social anxiety lately. Like you know the kid who stays inside in the teacher’s room at recess and is scared to go out on the playground and watches everyone play from the window but doesn’t want to go make friends because they don’t think they will be liked. That’s how I feel.

And it’s kind of embarrassing because I’m twenty-five and I’m so confident in real life—I answer the phone and introduce myself to strangers and schedule my own dentist appointments and everything. But, no. In a place almost entirely made up of people with social anxiety, the last remaining stronghold of my social anxiety remains. And whenever I come on here I start having these thoughts like omg people don’t like my posts people don’t like my stuff people don’t want to listen to me obsess about this one single character (as if that didn’t describe most people on this website lol) this person must not have liked that thing I said to them everyone would be having just as much fun without me no one would care if I left I should go back home.

And I left Tumblr in 2018ish because I didn’t know how to manage these feelings, and I made it sound kind of virtuous like I was going out into the world to be healthy and live my life and touch grass, but, I don’t think it was really that virtuous at all. I’m sure there were cool people I missed out on meeting and cool art I missed out on seeing and maybe there were people who would have liked to meet me and maybe there were people who would have liked to see my art.

If I left again now, there would be people I would miss. People that I think I am meant to be friends with in this season. So, I don’t think leaving Tumblr again “for my mental health!” is really the solution here.

I need to figure out how to get over this. And it’s also embarrassing because I know just what I would say to a friend having these same feelings. I know how cognitive behavioral therapy works and I know about letting thoughts pass and I know about examining core beliefs and I know about how giving the same thoughts space and letting them influence your decisions over and over reinforces them and all of that. I know you get braver by doing things you’re scared of over and over, which is why I’m no longer afraid of talking to cashiers or talking on the phone or talking to strangers like I was when I was eighteen. I know that your online experience is better when you stop caring about trying to be popular, and focus on having just a few friends and being interested in the stuff they make and sharing the stuff you make with them and being thankful for the people in your sphere even if you don’t have the same follower count as you did a decade ago. I know that it’s okay for your friends to have other friends and it’s okay for friendships to evolve and change over time and it’s okay to develop new interests and explore them even if other people aren’t interested in them. And I know that no matter how many nice things people say to me about my art or who I am as a person or whatever, it’s really up to me to change the way I think about things, and that no one can do that for me.

I know all these things. It’s just…I come on here and instantly rage-quit because I’m like “ugh my post flopped I need to go into exile now” or whatever.

I don’t know if anyone has ever made a New Year’s resolution to spend more time on Tumblr, but…I’m not going to get better with this struggle of mine, unless I keep on practicing interacting with the online world, practicing having conversations with people, practicing being okay with my posts not getting as much attention as they used to or as I would like, practicing not being stressed about what people think about me, and working through my anxieties whenever they come up.

Thank you for still sending me messages/posts/etc. even when I’m not replying. If you have any capacity of relationship with me at all, you are aware that I am Little Miss Get-Back-To-You-In-Two-Months. My parents have straight-up given up on texting me besides around holidays or to plan a visit and my husband texts my own parents more often than I do—not because I have any serious problems in my relationship with my parents—I’m just that bad at replying, that my family knows they’re not getting a response from me unless we’re planning a trip for the holidays or something. And I don’t want to be like this but it’s tied up in this whole digital social anxiety issue and I really, really need to figure it out instead of just being all “lol that’s just me i just suck at replying!! ✌️” about it.

The lonercore anti-social “I hate people” aesthetic of 2011 really vibed with me, but… I really think humans were made to have connections with one another, and that I’m missing out on a core piece of my purpose if I just avoid investing in my relationships with people. Both in-person and online.

Thanks for listening. <3

[fakeshibe]

the internet is so overtly hostile to kids and young people. commercialisation and profit margins killed off the places younger kids were safe and welcome to be in, creeps and those seeking to goad people towards extremism took over those spaces designated for teens.

There is no safe place. Every time i see a 14 year old on twitter, I see them being told to get off the platform. It’s not safe, it’s not for you. And that’s entirely correct, twitter is not a safe place for a 14 year old, but where is? Tumblr? not really. Club penguin? it’s dead. Community forums? not really a thing anymore. Discord? not without that teen being very aware of their safety and how to look after themselves, at which point they may as well have stuck to twitter.

Like it or not, it’s the job of every single one of us to make a space that is safe for teens. Doesn’t mean you have to be kid friendly, just means you need to take reasonable precautions that your not-kid-friendly content stays in your space, that they can’t accidentally come across it. Content warnings, censoring/spoilering posts, possibly avoiding the main tags for a thing if that topic is child friendly and your art is not. stuff like that. Like if young people are likely to search for stuff like lego, maybe don’t put your nsfw bionicle ship art into the general lego tag, stuff like that.

It’s your job to keep an eye out for your fellow humans. If you see a young person they you know displaying signs that they’re possibly being harassed/groomed/generally made uncomfortable/not doing well, make sure they have a safe person to speak to. You don’t have to be that safe person, you just need to make sure there’s someone who can listen to them.

If you see a kid doing something they really shouldn’t be, it’s on you to explain why they shouldn’t be doing that. Don’t berate them, don’t attack them for it. Explain, help them to understand why that’s concerning to you. We all know internet safety classes in schools are pretty rubbish, usually super outdated. I did a child safety course like two years ago that still included tips on building a safe myspace page. School isn’t going to teach kids about the immediate issues on todays internet, it’s on the community around them to guide them and look out for them.

Also playground humour is fine, just be aware when you’re joining in to not take it too far or make it weird. And bear in mind that even just by virtue of being a couple of years older than whatever young person you’re talking to, there’s a power imbalance in that conversation. Don’t encourage playground humour to the point of making it an entirely inappropriate topic. Your the one guiding this conversation, steer it in the right direction.

And if you see someone being weird towards any minor, wether you know them or not, call that shit out. Let it be known that someone is keeping an eye out, let that kid know that they’re welcome and they’re looked out for. Let that creep know that people see them, and people are very, very aware of what they’re doing. Make them feel unwelcome, run them out of your spaces, spread awareness of risky people. Keep your spaces safe.

This is all especially as important as IRL spaces become more hostile to potentially vulnerable young people. Queer teens especially are going to be looking for community and safety online more and more frequently. Make sure that the places they find will be a respite from the real world, not just a different set of threats to navigate.

Make sure young people feel safe on the internet, and make sure that those looking to take advantage of their presence, don’t.

Why am i writing all this? I’ve seen too many posts about people’s experiences as a young person online, and i talked to my brother the other day about him and his friend’s experiences and it’s terrifying that there’s really nowhere for young people to go. Also i’ve realised that i’m not doing enough to be part of the solution. so this is part of that, im gonna be far, far more aware of the issue and doing more to try and help.

[starryjkoo]

some random chronically online fandom and shipping thoughts #1

I just feel like ARMYs who are very obviously Y/N’s have NO reason to be judging shippers. I think it’s funny how some of them are so genuinely defensive and put off by shipping in a way I can tell is personal lol (it’s giving jealousy!). I totally understand people not liking shipping/shippers but I’ll never accept judgement from a Y/N, sorry! If you’re posting about only ONE member in a really thirsty manner after every AYS trailer and then turning around and saying “ugh, jkkrs are so annoying and delusional, jikook are brothers!” I know what you are! 🫵

slurping up all these AYS teasers like a starving animal but I’m starting to feel like they’re showing us too much now 😩 don’t spoil all the cute parts please BH!

only extremely sad and chronically online losers think that mass liking hate tweets actually means anything in the real world. a lot of these people need to get a life and go touch grass because the obsession with jm is truly weird and sad.

not everyone who wants th to appear in AYS is a tkkr, because it’s normal for ARMYs to want to see as many members as possible, but it’s kind of obvious with the ones who bring it up every chance they get lol, or the first thing they look for in a new AYS teaser, or just the specific way they talk about it. and my god are there a lot of tkkr ARMYs

I’m self aware that I’m pretty heavily biased, but there’s nothing worse than the ARMYs who hide under the OT7 visage but are CLEARLY heavily biased themselves. I simply do not like hypocrites, maybe some of them are in denial about it, idk. ofc there’s nothing worse than the ones who cosplay and try to create havoc in ARMY spaces, but that’s an entirely different thing. with that said, i’m convinced that at least 90% of active ARMYs are heavily biased at this point and we’d all be better off if they could simply just admit it.

perhaps this is my own bias so feel free to disagree, but imo ARMYs very clearly have a different sort of energy for jm antis and I think its partially because his hate has been so damn normalized in this fandom after years of tkkrs, but also because clearly a vast majority of the ARMY sh*oter accounts are diet solos and tkkrs and they always put an extra amount of scrutiny on things related to jm. they're also the first to bring shipper/solo drama into ARMY spaces (but only when it impacts their ship/bias) and they’re very clearly obviously lurking in solo/shipper territory to find it the way they do. the silence right now from certain accounts really does speak volumes.

sort of related, but the best way to gain a big following on ARMY twt is to get involved in whatever current drama is going on, for example MHJ drama, boycott drama, general fanwars. ARMYs will flock and mass follow these accounts, and a lot of them are diets who gain a platform and then spread their diet narratives later. one really good example is that elo person if anyone remembers all that, they literally were moots w/ tkk akgaes & calling them bestie but rebranded after they started gaining a mass following for “doxxing” and they started gaining attention because they were “debunking” the OG taennie icloud leaks (lol ofc they were a tkkr doing that). anyways they were awful and did a lot of harm, but they got that platform bc a lot of ARMYs flock to toxic accounts like that, especially when somethings going on, and then they’re impossible to cancel.

last shipping thought but we all know why tkkrs and y/n’s are jealous and weird towards jkk but sometimes its actually the same case for a lot of the other bts shippers, especially jk x hl shippers (like what's w/ all the j*nkookers lol) & yoonm*n. and there’s a lot of ARMYs who fall into this category actually. even if they don’t believe their ship is real, sometimes they still feel a bit passive aggressive/jealous bc they would prefer whatever content was with their bias/self-insert instead. theres so many jkk moments that have been really badly OT7’d, like I’ve never seen anything like the way almost the entire fandom rewrote history to make that jk binging jm content jk binging bts content (its legit wild to me).

and ill never forget during the disney docu when someone pointed out how jk likely knew jms apartment password and it got ratio’d at over 4k by someone saying “he probably knows all his hyungs passwords!” and it wasn’t even funny or clever lmao, it was very much giving

anyways, i believe this is one of the reasons sometimes ARMYs at large are weird towards jkk bc even outside of just tkkrs there are a LOT of HL shippers who take it pretty personally, especially if they’re the sort that projects onto one of the members in their ship. tbh, even if it’s not shipping, it’s a bias line thing where they want to fight over jm/jk being closer to their bias than they are to each other.

its whatever and just a petty complaint lol, i dont care who ppl ship/bias but i do find it annoying sometimes bc there are always ppl constantly downplaying jkks friendship and picking it apart and trying to OT7-ify it more than any other duo. its like ppl are really obsessed & its tiring. just give jkk their flowers sometimes and move on, you know? you definitely do not need to ship them or see them as romantic, but just respect their bond and the things about it that are unique to them, god

alright was just getting this out of my system because I was focused on positive vibes only for MUSE, will be going back to (mostly) positive vibes for AYS!

[biwrites]

Picking A Side (of the Closet Door)

I’m bisexual. (wow…who knew)

Those words have never been spoken by me to most of the people in my life. I am currently in the difficult situation of being half-in half-out of the closet. To trusted friends and coworkers, I am out and proudly identifying as bi. I wear a pride pin at work, I talk openly about my sexuality on my social medias.

On the other hand, to my family, and those who might jeopardize my safety, I’m still in the closet. I’ve gotten very good at swiftly removing my pin one-handed if I see a family member, or someone I just don’t want to know, enter my workplace. I don’t talk about my sexuality on social media accounts tied to my real name or personal life. It was a big step for me when I wrote openly about my experiences as a queer person during my time at college, and terrifying when I got onstage and read some of my pieces. That night, I told my family I didn’t want them to come, that they wouldn’t like the event anyways (they wouldn't have), and that I might not even read. My family had always supported my writing in the past, and encouraged me to take it seriously, even though I wasn’t pursuing it as my main career path. In another life, it would have meant the world to have them there too, like they had been many times before, but that wasn’t the life I was living, so I took the stage alone. 

This tension between the safety of the closet and the freedom of being out has appeared before in my life, but never more sharply than now. I currently cannot safely come out for many reasons, but to remain fully closeted might kill me. The more I peek out of the closet door, the more I am visible…and that’s terrifying. I’m fully aware that I am taking risks, that someday the Good Straight Girl front I’ve worn for the last 22 years will fall, and that I may not be able to choose when it does (though I sorely hope I do). I care deeply about queer activism and community but have often felt like a traitor to the cause. How can I advocate being loud and proud when I am neither of those things myself? How can I access community when I have to watch over my shoulder to be sure nobody’s caught me in a picture at a local queer event? This internal conflict is compounded even more now that I have a partner who is out. For a bit, (even though I absolutely am not) I even felt like a worse partner for it.

So, why am I writing this? 

This Bi Visibility Month, I want to extend a hand to my fellow closeted bi and pansexuals. I want to let you know that you’re not alone, and that you are no less queer for keeping yourself safe. It’s already difficult to feel visible as a bi+ person, and it can be extremely discouraging when you have the extra layer of the closet on top of that. We have made many advancements as a community over the last few decades, and it is incredible that as many people are able to be out and proud in their identities. If you are someone who isn’t ready to come out, isn’t able to come out, or if you’re like me and are only able to be partially out, you are just as important to our community as anyone else. You aren’t betraying anyone, and you aren’t being indecisive. There are many ways to celebrate behind closet doors! We’ve been doing it for centuries, and some beautiful queer culture comes from the small ways we make ourselves visible to those who know. (This is the reason I will always have a soft spot for even our silliest little inside jokes) You can absolutely date from within the closet, and I promise you that you can have happy and fulfilling relationships the same as anyone else! Most importantly, find the people who support you and make you feel welcome, whether online or offline. Take time for yourself, and your mental wellbeing. Being closeted is often deeply painful, and it is important to keep your mental health at the top of your priorities. Cuff your jeans or eat some lemon bars or buy the frog tee shirt or paint your nails pink purple and blue or whatever other silly little things make you feel bi enough…because you are always bi enough.

[dearweirdme]

Hello, I always read your posts and responses. There is something you mentioned that caught my attention. You said that very few people research about queer relationships. I really want to know. I want to learn. I have seen many movies and heard some stories of queer couples. But I would really like it if you could talk about this. It doesn't matter if it's long, I love reading what you write and how you explain it. I hope you can help me, thank you very much for your time.

Hi anon!

Yes! This is so important, and good on you for making an effort to learn 😊.

It’s not even just about queer relationships to be honest, people can be queer while not in a relationship and there’s people who don’t even want to be in a relationship. It’s about understanding what the world’s view on queerness is and how that effects those who are queer themselves. It deals with a lot of angst, sadness, and heartbreaking stories. A lot of straight people don’t go looking for queer content and don’t take the time to learn the way you would like to do now. It doesn’t affect them.. or so they think.

Watching movies is a great place to start, but a lot of movies are still fiction.. or romanticized. I think it is important to hear real stories and actual queer people tell them. A way to do that is to watch queer documentaries. Depending on what country you’re in… you’ll be able to find a lot online (my Netflix has a whole lgbtq+ section for instance). Just watch everything 😂… no but for real, try to watch many different things. All around the world queer experiences will be different. My story for instance will in no way compare to that of a queer person in Afrika. So learn about different societies and the way queer people are experiencing life. Learn about the really dark sides like conversation therapy, self hate, self harm (if you can take it, it’s brutal and can be seriously triggering). But also learn about the good things.. like people accepting themselves and finding happiness eventually.

Another thing I feel is very important and useful, is to follow queer content creators. Since you’re a part of Tkk spaces.. you probably already follow some queer bloggers. But try to widen that to non tkk spaces. There’s many great creators on YouTube, TikTok, and probably other sites I have no clue about. I follow queer couples who try to start a family, queer writers, queer people just living their lives without queerness being the main topic of their account.. etc. Just, try to get as big a spectrum as you can.

More specifically to Tae and Jk. Read stories of formerly closeted artists. A quick google will get you plenty. Also read stories of out queer artists. Read about queer rights in different countries.

I think the most important thing to realize is that queer people are just normal people, but they will have experienced their lives different from straight people. They will have felt unsafe, unaccepted, ashamed, and many other things just for being who they are.. and a lot of them will have felt that from a very young age. It’s not something they will have only felt when dating.. but it’s something they will have felt throughout their lives.. regardless of relationships. It’s the idea of not being normal… and all the harm that they had to endure or were afraid of enduring that formed the way they went through life. And that is something straight people often have problems understanding (not to mention all the actual homophobes that actually make life impossible for queer people even to this day).

There are still countries where being queer will get you the death penalty or imprisonment, there are still countries in which queer people haven’t got equal rights, there are still conversion camps, there are still people losing their jobs because of being queer, there are still people getting harassed because of being queer, there are still people who will make snarky remarks just because I’m wearing a rainbow bracelet. This is important to be aware of, even when you’re straight and it seems like a them-problem.

I’ll leave you with this vid someone recently recommended to me on here (thank you! i’d tag you but I’m not sure if you’d appreciate it..).

[chaifootsteps]

Re: Dave’s tweet about an indie award show.

I think it was well-intentioned but I absolutely agree with his new tweet about it that it should be more of a showcase.

WhTever people were being asshats in the replies can fuck off—but I think there’s a very real problem in indie and it’s kind of simple: indie is too personal right now. And there are layers to that.

All art is personal : indie feels more personal than mainstream because everyone has to market Themselves as an individual and being online means everyone has more direct or personal access to you : if you’re young or inexperienced you’re unlikely to have the professionalism or patience required to carry yourself or your project’s production which can result in a looonnnggg laundry list of potential spin-outs and drama.

You can look at video essays of just about ANY failed product/project/kickstarter and have a glimpse into what happens every time someone steps forward with a dream and no experience or maturity to handle the weight of it.

More experienced or generally mature/professional creators know how to handle their productions and their feelings. Such as Tracy, Goose, and Zeurel.

But there’s a MASSIVE population of too-young and/or too-inexperienced indie creators who are impatient and sensitive (and frankly there’s also people involving themself in the indie scene who aren’t creators, akin to “idea guys” who want to make their own “”studios”” or self-proclaimed “journalists” who want to capitalize on the indie interest via video essays.)

Basically what I’m trying to say is indie as a whole is fine but the current climate of the community is extremely under-developed and inexperienced and is comparable to getting really excited about the concept of surviving in a forest but only running in with a dream and a backpack of basics, without any of the physical or mental preparation or experience with survival skills to actually survive or to even enjoy it.

Anyway this was a long-winded way of saying trying to start indie events like award shows is well-intentioned but I don’t think the indie community is mature enough for that right now.

There’s like this unspoken expectation to support or include any indie production no matter what level they’re at just because they’re indie and if you don’t people take it personal and/or start shit-talking.

But the reality is vetting is still important. There are L O T of amateurs in indie who might mean well that can appear impressive with how high excitement and interest in indie is right now—but they don’t realize (or can’t accept that) they aren’t ready. They wanna make the dream happen NOW.

They aren’t actually seasoned enough to see their idea through, run their production efficiently, or carry themselves maturely.

A showcase is a much better step forward in my opinion. Unofficial awards and “top 5 indie series” type posts from random Twitter accounts trying to establish themselves as an authority/news network/hub for animation that are run by people either too unaware/biased/easily swayed, or far too young, are only creating unnecessary divide and isolated storms of drama.

Especially since people don’t realize most of indie is still isolated in its own bubble. “I can’t believe I got shouted out by this random Twitter with INDIE and NEWS in its name I’m so honored—“ and the post itself has very low engagement or has only been engaged with people already on indie’s side, it’s own bubble. I’m not saying the community can’t celebrate itself, just that it needs to be a little more self-aware and analytical instead of blindly trusting and outpouring their whole soul at every slight expression of interest because there are already small fires and spin-outs occurring that result from that very naivety.

Such as an “online convention” that popped up for indie series to join via a Discord server that turned out to be being run by a literal 17-year-old who then got called out for running it like shit and letting people post/say 18+ stuff despite it being in the rules to not do that.

CartoonBase which occasionally makes unresearched biased or interaction-bait posts about indie productions.

Or a 19-year-old running another indie news type of account that jumped onto the Ang drama without knowing the full story.

Sorry, this got long and rambly and kinda turned into a vent lmao. TL;DR we love indie but a large percentage of indie needs to calm down and slow down.

Nah, these are some very good thoughts. Thank you for this.

[firecrackerhh]

Ah yeah sure, it isn’t Limus being gross and unhinged, it’s the people calling them out? Sure. Suuuuuuuure.

“Viv called us subhumans!” Because you fucking are, I’m sorry the reality of your shitty useless existence is too much for you to bear.

I’m over pretending to be nice to this spoiled brat I don’t care.

You should be thanking Christ Viv doesn’t have the balls to make a tweet saying such and just chooses to like a tweet instead.

“Waaaah I wasn’t doing anything to them I was just infodumping!!!” Bitch stop using the autism card as an excuse to be a fucking obsessive weirdo towards strangers you’re making the rest of us look bad. You weren’t blessed with any degree of self awareness were you?

When someone tells you your behavior is fucking inappropriate, you stop doing the behavior.

Did your parents teach you any manners? Were you raised by fucking wolves? Are you one of those feral children I’ve read about and since you’ve been introduced to technology you decide you’re gonna try playing alpha wolf when in reality any animal with any good instincts would’ve left you in the woods to die?

“I’m sick of your harassment TVC!” Projection. It’s clear to me everyone is sick of YOU, why don’t you stick a fork in a wall socket, I’m sure it would be a life changing experience for you!

Now then, aside Squid’s inability to talk to people like a human being…

Look I think Octavia’s perspective is valid but as a child of divorce I think the people constantly whining about the terminally online weirdos who don’t understand her perspective are fucking projecting their feelings about their own parents divorce and I think y’all need to get over it.

“She deserves better!” She isn’t real you fucking troglodyte. She doesn’t actually deserve anything. Do you mean to say “I deserved better?” I can agree with that at least, if we’re talking about dealing with divorced parents.

Sorry your parents are probably never gonna get together again and you’ll never have the happy childhood you wanted but life is shit until we die and you gotta move the fuck on if you want any chance of happiness in your life.

If anything my life got easier when my parents separated and I didn’t have to hear their shitty fucking arguments. But to be fair, unlike Octavia, my parents didn’t hide shit from me (cus their arguments were very obvious) and honestly at this point I’m more baffled by how they even fell in love to begin with. People change I guess.

They knew each other since teenagerhood and were married for 16 goddamn years until they finally had enough of each other.

I think love and marriage especially is total horseshit, feelings change all the time, like if people want that for themselves that’s great, but I don’t see a point.

“Sickening” bitch you make ME sick. If actors don’t get paid for auditions, I dunno why anyone else would in another field, get the fuck over it.

We all know you don’t actually care.

Also the show making a simple STATEMENT like this isn’t fucking tone deaf just because YOU see Viv’s alleged faults everywhere you go, stop projecting.

“How dare she make this joke??”

These people need to smoke some damn weed and chill out. How the fuck haven’t you high strung bitches gotten a heart attack yet from stress alone?

Wait, Squid’s schizophrenic, bad idea.

Whatever, Squid doesn’t deserve any anyway. They’d still be miserable regardless.

[speaknow-sw]

Emma is another thing, she’s just plain rude to do that. Her little edit when she says Hayden looks at her like idk what was soooo out of place I’m disgusted.💀 | I KNOW this will piss off those on the vendetta against the other one, but I guarantee that dilemma is the one behind everything and I mean E V E R Y T H I N G and not the other girl people have talked about

like think of it, just hear me out please...

dilemma has done the following:

stalking hayden and briar and rachel on numerous occasions (no matter how many people deny this stuff, the proof has been out in the open the entire time)

lying on numerous occasions about a fake connection with hayden

making up fake scenerios of things that didn't happen

bragged about having his number (she never did and neither did anyone else) and faked texts from hayden

makes a parasocial based edit recently about herself and hayden

has always been disturbingly public about her parasocial relationship with hayden

has lied about being a war veteran (she posted it on her story a photo of herself in a uniform costume with the caption of a local pizza place not treating her with respect, last veterans day in the us)

has fought with numerous other fans and many people have reciepts on this so other anons don't come for me because all the evidence is out there already

has actual information on the addresses (even though everything in that category was already known by the fanbase, i've seen at least 10% of other "fans" on tiktok posting videos of the school and both hayden's and rachel's addresses before tiktok took them down - only one video on hayden's address is up still: https://www.tiktok.com/@sasha__darling/video/7153423947063692590 from a realtor doing a walk in tour for buyers)

MORE STUFF THAT WOULD MAKE THIS SUBMISSION TOO LONG

AS FOR THE OTHER GIRL - and no I am not defending anyone and I do not want people to assume I am impersonating anyone, so once more do not come for me...

yes we have disturbing voice messages and "photos", are they vastly unhinged? definitely

has there been anything more of it since then? not that I am aware or have seen.

do they appear to have come from a dm and not a public post on another site or whatever? of course, just look at the videos of the voice notes... I know people are bored and they don't like drama and stuff but people genuinely need to realize that one is simply just saying shit for attention and as far as I've heard, they're not online anymore?? while dilemma is still online and still doing messed up sus shit...

Please leave evie alone and focus more on the one that's actively being a problem - ✨✨✨

okay I didn’t know about certain infos and genuinely wtf. I mean it, like Emma’s the real problem. And I see countless of girls under her posts saying things like « Yes girl, you go get him » or shit like this. She’s like half his age, he’s got a daughter, an ex, a career and you’re here doing shit posting about a poor old man who just wants to please his fans. I know that he wasn’t appreciated back in 2005 and now that the real fans are coming out he wants to suck up this love and please his fans. And you repay his kindness by making edits of you two supposedly falling in love and doxxing his 10yo school address ?

[sesamestreep]

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 4

Write about your MC’s personal style (from this list) ➸ set in the Bakeoff AU, before the events of summer came like cinnamon, so sweet and referencing an event from the first chapter of @firstelevens original fic in the series (sugar pie, honey bunch) and yes, I'm aware this is a huuuuge stretch for this prompt, don't worry about it!

Karen’s just left them to go get another round from the bar when Foggy’s phone starts ringing. On the screen, a photo of Daisy looking comically crestfallen while holding a ruined sufflé pops up and Foggy swipes to accept the call immediately.

“Hey, Daisy, what’s up?” he asks, aiming for casual but…well, Daisy’s roughly his age and avoids talking on the phone as much as anyone of their generation does, if not more. He’s slightly concerned that something must be wrong. Across from him, Matt’s expression turns pinched, probably because he’s thinking the same thing or he can hear the worry in Foggy’s voice.

“Did you watch the episode last night?” Daisy asks, without preamble or greeting. 

“Oh, yeah. I mean, me and Karen did. Matt fell asleep like ten minutes in.”

Daisy scoffs over the line at the same time as Matt says, “I already apologized like five times for that!”

Pulling the phone away from his mouth slightly, Foggy says, “I know you did. And I forgive you. I know how important your beauty sleep is to you.”

Matt rolls his eyes, looking vaguely embarrassed at the same time. Foggy’s not sure if the extended time away during the show has made old things he’d gotten used to before new again or if this really is something new, but Matt’s easier to fluster than he remembered. Foggy could have sworn he made lots of jokes about Matt’s good looks and Matt always just brushed them off. This new shyness about it is surprising.

“Anyway,” Foggy says, turning his attention back to Daisy, “I saw the episode. Why do you ask?”

“Have you been online at all today?”

“You mean, have I been connected to the Internet at all? Yes, of course, Daisy, come on!”

“No, I mean, on social media,” Daisy says, impatiently.

“I don’t really use social media. You know that.”

“I know you have your finsta,” she replies. “I didn’t know if anyone had tagged you in anything there. Or if you have a dummy twitter account to lurk sometimes.”

Foggy laughs. “God, no!”

“Don’t say it like it’s totally ludicrous! People do it!”

“Yeah, but not me,” Foggy says, still laughing. “I’m just a simple country lawyer. What need have I of your twitters and your algorithms?”

He feels like he can hear Daisy roll her eyes on the other end of the call. “You’re such a dork!”

“Sorry. What’s so important that you needed to call me on the phone to ask if I have a secret Twitter account?”

“The Internet is freaking out about you, Foggy Nelson.”

Foggy’s stomach sinks. “It is?” he asks. “What did I do?”

“You looked too damn hot in this week’s episode, apparently.”

“I—what?” Foggy asks, feeling so utterly stupid. None of those words made any sense to him, which is troubling because most of them were pretty simple. “Wait, did I look really sweaty or something?”

“No, dumbass,” Daisy says, “I mean ‘hot’ like ‘god, he’s so hot, I want to have his babies,’ which, by the way, is a real tweet I read about you not fifteen minutes ago.”

“What?!” Foggy basically shouts, which makes Matt lean forward in his seat and give him a questioning look.

“Your humility is really beyond the pale, Franklin. It’s like you don’t know you’re hot!”

“I don’t know that,” he says, still freaking out slightly. “I’ve been called that by three, maybe four people in my whole life before today! It’s not a common occurrence.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Daisy says, because she’s fundamentally loyal and it makes her confused sometimes. 

“Well, if it’s happening a lot, it must be behind my back, then.”

Matt, apparently done with being out of the loop, reaches across the table to poke Foggy’s wrist with his index finger. Foggy replies in turn by patting Matt’s hand with his twice, hoping that conveys that there’s no emergency. 

“Well, it’s happening a lot on Twitter right now,” Daisy replies. “Which, I guess is still behind your back, technically.”

“That’s…great, I guess…”

“I thought you’d be happier,” she says, sounding worried. “You seem upset.”

“It’s just weird to think about,” Foggy says, keeping his tone mild. He’s not mad at Daisy by any stretch, but having people outside of the neighborhood know who he is and have strong opinions about him has proven to be a tougher concept to reckon with than he originally anticipated. “It’s that thing of being perceived in a way that I have no control over.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Daisy replies, thoughtfully. “I just…I thought you should know you’re the Internet’s reigning boyfriend at the moment.”

Foggy laughs, still feeling weird but in a warmer, cozier way than before. “Well, it’s an honor to be somebody’s boyfriend, I suppose.”

Matt’s head perks up at that, like a dog who’s heard a strange noise, and Foggy resists the urge to laugh at him for it. Karen returns with their next round at that precise moment, too, and makes a face at this pronouncement as she slides Foggy’s beer across the table to him. He also sees her look over at Matt, as if he’ll have more answers somehow.

“I’m guessing based on your blasé reaction to this news that I shouldn’t send you a curated collection of mine and Colleen’s favorite tweets about how gorgeous you are?” Daisy asks, innocently.

“For the sake of my mental health, you probably shouldn’t,” Foggy replies, “but honestly, today’s been a weird one and we had a miserable time in court, so it might cheer me up.”

Daisy squeals excitedly, which is not a noise Foggy knew she made before this very moment. She didn’t even make that noise when she won Bake-Off, not that he’s allowed to tell anyone that yet. “That’s what I like to hear,” she exclaims. “Alright, well, get ready for some screenshots. And also sorry in advance for any psychological damage I may cause.”

“Thanks,” Foggy laughs. “Both for the apologies in advance and for making sure I knew about this.”

“What are friends for?” Daisy sighs happily, and then hangs up without a goodbye.

“What’s going on?” Karen asks as she takes a sip from her beer.

“Have you been on Twitter today?” he asks, in response.

“I’m a journalist, Foggy. Unfortunately, most of my life is spent on Twitter.”

“Do you follow any Bake-Off people there?”

“I might follow the official twitter for the show itself, but I’m not sure. Why?”

“Apparently, Twitter is freaking out about me in last night’s episode.”

“Really? What do they have to freak out about?” Matt asks, frowning.

Foggy shrugs. “I don’t know. Just me, I guess? I looked good or something.”

“I told you that you looked good last night,” Karen says, gesturing broadly to convey her annoyance. “You didn’t believe me.”

“You’re one of my best friends, Karen. You have to lie to me about that kind of thing!”

“No, I don’t! And I wasn’t!”

“Well, you’re about to be vindicated,” Foggy says. “Daisy and Colleen are sending me screenshots.”

As if on cue, Foggy’s phone lights up with several messages being sent to his and Colleen and Daisy’s group chat and the notifications don’t slow down at all for another full minute.

“God,” Foggy says, just looking at the new messages pouring in. “She wasn’t kidding.”

“You want to read them,” Karen asks, with a bright, dangerous look in her eye, “or shall I?”

Foggy hands over his phone without a second thought. “Probably better if you do it,” he says, feeling genuine panic and terror at the idea. It’s too late to go back now, though. He’s gotten her hopes up.

“Oh my god,” Karen says, after he’s gotten his phone unlocked for her. She puts her hand to her mouth to disguise her…horror? Amusement? Both? It’s hard to tell.

“What?” Foggy asks, anxiously, and Matt turns over his hand underneath Foggy’s palm so he can give it a quick squeeze, which…that shouldn’t be as soothing as it actually is. It’s, frankly, ridiculous that it helps so much.

“Foggy,” Karen says, excitedly, “you’re a sensation!”

+

guy with no problems • juliachildsplay

um… hello?? Foggy coming into the tent with those little braids??? I’m experiencing symptoms????

the hateful nate • nateorade

I’ve been online too long because the minute I saw Foggy Nelson with his hair in braids, I just shouted OOOHHH GENDER!! at the top of my lungs. my gf and my cat both left the room in protest.

kelly nguyen • gaygrenadine

me normally: it’s so embarrassing when cis dudes get so much credit for the mildest defiance of gender norms… me seeing foggy’s braids in GABO: yasss queen thank you for my rights 🌈🙌 gender is sooo over!!

brynn it to wynn it • flibbertigibbety

I did not actually think Foggy could get hotter to me than when he responded to people ridiculing his French pronunciation by revealing he speaks fluent Punjabi, but I was WRONG!! 

Ezekiel (he/they) • ezeydoesitt

how is anyone getting any baking done right now when foggy is there looking so so good?? couldn’t be me!!!

world’s #1 trilla apologist • eldritchedeelite

lord, I am not one of your strongest soldiers… foggy in that salmon colored t-shirt and those braids… I am WEAK

dinah (derogatory) • surelytemple

my two cents is that Ava deserves star baker this week because she is somehow still baking with foggy nelson’s whole beautiful self directly in her eye line. talk about performing under pressure.

bram (not stoker) • bramblinnmann

I am watching bakeoff with my family right now and it’s getting very difficult to pretend to be straight in front of them when Foggy’s out here looking this hot

your future canceled wife • thecouturevulture

THEM: hey how was bakeoff this week? what did everyone make? was it good? ME: FOGGY NELSON WORE HIS HAIR IN BRAIDS!!! 

citizen paddington  • genderemporia

I literally couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened in this episode of GABO. Foggy appeared onscreen and my brain shut off for the next hour. I came to and I was googling wedding venues, idk man

Kira Iris • villainesque

I don’t condone people getting obsessed with public figures and violating their privacy but if some of yall wanted to be weird and find out if Foggy’s “partner” he references is a business thing or a romantic thing, I would look the other way just this once

Default Username, Esq. • shrimpheavencanwait

thank god foggy nelson isn’t on social media or I would be embarrassing myself I would be in those DMs like cheese filling in a danish I would be bringing shame upon my ancestors for that man I promise you

Helena Bee 🐝♿️ • bananabreadcrumbs

that part of the episode where Colleen walked behind Foggy and pulled one of his braids to say hello and he smiled at her??? It just hurts to see other people live your dreams???

spy x savage x fenty  • coolnormalchill

foggy deserves star baker because he cured my depression and my gender dysphoria in one fell swoop and that’s that on that

Lindy the SEO bitch • easilysearchablebrandname

other bakers: [make the snack] Foggy Nelson: [is the snack]

sayid’s secret account! • sayidsayless

I didn’t hear who won star baker, I didn’t see who got sent home, l learned nothing about sweet dough, I was busy googling foggy nelson Instagram foggy nelson partner foggy nelson star sign 

hb lovecraft • hazelbleu

I've already decided to call out sick from work tomorrow so I can spend the whole day watching the inevitable Foggy fancams that will come from this week’s GABO. It’s my duty as an American.

go gert go • yorkestown

if there’s any uneven bakes this week, we all know it’s because Foggy was simply too hot to handle and it threw off everyone’s baking times

SORRY 4 PARTY BROCKIN’ • attackthebrock

foggy saying that one thing he loves about bakeoff is never having a shortage of people to share his bakes with, because normally it’s just up to his partner to finish them. ME AND WHO TBH????

nora mcclain 👻🥀🖤 • themostest

Foggy explaining the hot cross bun recipe he’s making prompted my (allegedly) straight husband to say, out of nowhere, “I’d let him put a bun in MY oven!” Like, sir??? I’m right here???

stardew valley girl • wooloolemon

it’s crazy how many babies are going to be born nine months from the airing of Great American Bake-Off Season 3 Episode 6

Tolkien Straightguy • helmsdeepthroat

it’s pretty normal for me to end an episode of bake-off hungrier than I was before, but I’ve never finished one this THIRSTY my god

maddie📍grad school hell • doctorwormphd

seeing foggy with those french braids made me crazy y’all!! I almost redownloaded tinder I was so lost in the sauce

blandine montpetit ☮️💟 • peaceandloafs

Ava’s star baker moment was so deserved, I’m just sorry we were all too distracted by Foggy being the cutest human alive to really appreciate it. But not sorry enough that it won’t happen again.

+

“We’ve strayed very far from the light of god, I think,” Foggy says, with his face pressed into the sticky surface of the table, which…yeah, bad idea, but one of many he’s had tonight. Matt pats the back of his neck with a hand that was maybe supposed to be more in the direction of his head and ended up somewhere more weirdly intimate by accident. Foggy lifts his head to put an end to it, not because it didn’t feel nice but precisely because it did and that in turn makes him feel a bunch of messy emotions he doesn’t like. “Karen, what are you doing? Are there more?”

“Yes, but they’re getting a little redundant, honestly,” she says, squinting at his phone’s screen. “Everybody wants you to impregnate them, apparently.”

Matt chokes on air at the same time as Foggy chokes on his beer, so it takes both of them a few seconds to recover and respond. 

“They what?” Matt asks, looking pale.

“The power of a new hairstyle,” Karen says, with a self-satisfied smile, though she directs it at Matt, for some reason. They have a lot more meaningful looks and mysterious half-conversations these days than they used to before Foggy went away to film the show. At least, that’s how it feels to him and if Karen didn’t have a boyfriend that she seemed to love a lot, he’d be worried that she and Matt were going to try dating again, for all it was a disaster the (admittedly brief) first time. Instead, it feels like they developed a shorthand while he was away and, granted he also made a bunch of close friends who he essentially talks to in baking-themed twin speak, it still makes him feel strange. He didn’t think him being away for the time that he was would change so much, but apparently it did. Matt and Karen speak in code now, and the Internet wants to fuck him. Life is strange.

“Do you really talk about me on the show that much?” Matt asks, apropos of nothing, it feels like.

“What? What do you mean?”

“A lot of those tweets referenced you talking about your partner,” Matt replies, looking thoughtful. “That’s me, I assume.”

“Yes, obviously,” Foggy says as his face heats. “Why shouldn’t I talk about you?”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I just didn’t realize it was enough to be noticeable.”

“One thing I’ve learned about the Bake-Off viewers is that they notice everything,” Foggy says. “And I don’t mean to talk about you a lot, but you’re important to me and you’re in most of my stories and…all that…”

Matt seems to be thinking hard about that, while Karen is sitting with her chin resting in the palm of her hand, still scrolling through Foggy’s phone. 

“What are you doing over there, Page?” Foggy asks, in the hopes of distracting everyone from the corny admission he just made that got met with silence. 

“Just sending a few of these to my phone,” she says, with a sheepish look. “I want to show Frank.”

“God, no!” Foggy yelps as he reaches out to snatch his phone back. “I don’t need Frank knowing about these! It’s bad enough Matt had to hear them!”

“Why is it bad for me to know?” Matt asks, startled out of his reverie by the mention of his name.

“Because you think all of this is stupid!”

“All of what? Twitter?”

“No,” Foggy sighs, and then thinks it over. “I mean, I assume you do think Twitter is largely stupid, actually—”

“And you’d be right,” Karen adds.

“What I meant was you think all this stuff about the show is stupid.”

“No, I don’t,” Matt says, frowning. “I mean, I confess I don’t understand half the stuff you say on the show or about it, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s stupid. If anything, it makes me think I’m stupid.”

“Well, you certainly can’t be impressed by everything Karen just read us,” Foggy replies, gesturing with his phone. He’s aware, in the back of his mind, that he’s doing that thing you’re never supposed to do and negotiating against himself, but he can’t really stop it, for some reason. “It makes the fans of the show sound insane!”

“I understood even less of that than I do of the baking terminology, honestly,” Matt admits, “but I think most of those people have the right idea.”

“You mean, hitting on Foggy via Twitter? You think that’s the right move in this situation?” Karen asks, and there’s some kind of play acting going on in her tone, like she’s goading Matt about something that Foggy doesn’t have the context for.

“I’m saying Foggy’s loveable,” Matt replies to her with an unexpected amount of heat. “I don’t know why he acts like he isn’t.”

Foggy blinks at them, feeling like he’s stepped into the middle of an old argument he didn’t know about. “Am I still a part of this conversation, or…?”

Karen’s expression clears first and she turns to Foggy with a reluctantly amused expression, like she doesn’t know what to do with him, he’s so silly. “Of course you are! Matt and I were just agreeing about how great we think you are! That’s all!”

“Yeah, sure,” Foggy replies. It sure as hell didn’t sound like two people agreeing on anything, but he’s willing to let it go. “Well, if I’ve learned anything from this uncomfortable incident, it’s that I should braid my hair more often.”

“And that you look good in that salmon-colored shirt,” Karen adds, helpfully. 

“Which is too bad, because I spilled ink all over it a few weeks ago.”

“Writing with a quill again?” Matt asks, innocently.

“No, I was helping Ruthie,” Foggy says, rolling his eyes when Matt’s smiles stupidly at his own joke. “Her newest hobby is calligraphy.”

“I thought she was into knitting now?” Karen says.

“Old news,” Foggy replies. “I’m just praying her next kick is baking so it can be something I’m even remotely good at.”

“I suppose it’s too much to ask that she gets really interested in reading up on legal precedent, huh?” Matt asks, thoughtfully.

“Yeah, probably,” Foggy laughs. “The point is, my magical salmon shirt that apparently makes me irresistible to random people on the Internet is out of commission.”

“Oh, well,” Karen sighs. “You’ll just have to subsist on the attentions of your local admirers.”

Foggy takes a sip of his beer. “I wasn’t aware I had any of those,” he says.

“Probably a lot more than you think,” she says, and she’s giving Matt another one of those weird looks again. Foggy decides it’s probably safer not to ask, and resolves to change the subject instead.

[rollercoasterwords]

Hi! I found your blog through the female rage substack article that you posted and I’m curious about a couple things (so I hope the tone of this ask will read as genuine/non-confrontational etc).

I really liked the article and the anti-gender essentialist content, so I looked through the others and eventually found your jegulus article (which I read and also liked) but I was sort of surprised to see that you are a part of the hp/marauders fandom. For me personally, everything related to that franchise has just been tainted since the whole jkr terf debacle really took off. I was big on hp when I was younger and wolfstar is a ship/dynamic that I enjoyed back then, so I’d probably like your stuff if I were to read it. But I decided some time ago to give any and all hp content the chop, because to me it didn’t feel right to engage with it anymore. So I was just wondering how you feel in that regard, if you don’t mind sharing. I don’t have anyone in my internet content circle that still actively posts about hp and if irl friends still enjoy it then it’s not something we talk about, so I’d just like to know how you juggle the ‘two sides’ in that sense of your trans-positive/anti-essentialist beliefs and fandom content that’s still so intrinsically connected to jkr and her politics. (Also, sorry if you’ve answered a question like this before. I scrolled through your blog a bit, but if yes then not far enough.)

Anyway, hope you’re well and I’ll probably keep an eye out for any future essays on your substack even if I don’t follow you on here. cheers! (and thanks for the “playing the whore” book rec, I’ll be looking into that. a rec from my end would be paul b. preciado's "can the monster speak". it's the written version of a speech he tried to give at a Freudian psychoanalysis conference about the position trans people occupy in psychoanalysis before being booed off stage. it was short and pretty intriguing, in case you're interested/haven't heard of it yet.)

hi! happy 2 hear u enjoyed the female rage essay--i wasn't expecting it to spread as much as it did + had to turn off reblogs for my own peace of mind 2 keep terfs away from my blog, but it's nice to know there are still people getting something out of it. also appreciate the book rec--that definitely sounds up my alley + i'm excited to check it out!

and i'll do my best to answer your question about hp, but i'm gonna put it under a cut because i know this is a contentious topic + i have a feeling my answer's gonna get long--so if anyone doesn't want 2 read abt my conflicting hp-fandom thoughts, just scroll away please xx

so, quite honestly, i'm in agreement with you that the entire franchise is tainted by jkr. the truth is that it was never really my intention to join the fandom--i read a single fic because it went viral on tiktok, then decided to rewrite the fic from another character's pov just for fun. at that point, i hadn't read any other hp fic and had never been involved in any kind of online fandom space, and although i'd read the hp books + watched the movies growing up i hadn't touched them in years + was so far removed from the franchise that i vaguely remembered hearing jkr had said some terfy stuff, but wasn't aware of the extent to which her politics were like. actively and significantly causing real-life harm.

anyway, i'd done a rewrite for fun of another story i liked and had posted it on ao3, and that had received a handful of people commenting + talking about the story with me as i wrote but had remained pretty self-contained + small. i was expecting the same sort of thing with the hp fic i rewrote, but instead someone posted about it on tiktok and it went viral, and then suddenly there were thousands of people reading every ch update and hundreds of comments. like i said, i had never been involved in an online fandom space before, so i sort of awkwardly stumbled into it and tried to figure out what i was doing as i finished up writing the fic. this was at a point in my life where i'd recently moved to a different country and had to go back in the closet after being publicly out for years, and this online fandom space became my only queer community and a bit of a lifeline in that way. i started making actual friends and talking to people + getting more deeply involved in the community aspect of things.

at the same time, i started actually educating myself on jkr + her politics + her impact, and the more i learned the more uncomfortable i became with being part of anything hp-related. now, i've been writing hp fic for almost two years and 'active' in the fandom for ~one and a half, and despite being grateful for the friends i've made and treasuring the space i've been able to cultivate, i've become increasingly disenchanted with 'the fandom' as a whole and have increasingly found it to be a hostile space, so i've sort of taken a step back from broader engagement and more + more have limited my interaction to just my mutuals here on tumblr. unfortunately, i think many of the 'bad parts' of this fandom are somewhat built-in because of the source material; there are a lot of people who agree with jkr's politics to varying extents and that can make it kind of a miserable place to be sometimes. i know many people insist that hp can be completely removed from jkr, but i don't think that's the case, and i've talked on my blog before about the fact that her politics are built into the very foundations of the text, so i think it's necessary to acknowledge her influence if we want to actually engage with hp at all in a way that isn't just perpetuating her politics.

all that being said, the point i'm at currently is that i'm not really sure that this fandom is a space i want to be a part of forever. again--i understand how it can be lifeline for some people and a queer community they might not have elsewhere, because that's been the case for me. but for me personally, as much as i value my own carved-out space, it doesn't completely outweigh the negatives that i have found myself coming into contact with more and more in this fandom. writing hp fic is also something that i keep strictly separate from 'real life,' contained solely in this online space, because i know that any engagement with hp is a red flag for many, many trans people and i don't want to bring it outside of this space. within this online space, i don't keep it a secret that i write hp fic; it's right at the top of my blog so that anyone who wants to can easily block and unfollow me. i only post my fics on ao3, where they are clearly tagged as harry potter fanfiction, and i only post about hp fic + fandom stuff on this blog, which was specifically created for that purpose. i've requested that people no longer post about my hp fics on platforms like tiktok where the algorithm could send it out onto anyone's fyp, and that request is also in my pinned faq. keeping my hp fic as contained as possible to only people who are already engaging with hp fic is one way that i try to mitigate any harm that might be caused by my fics contributing to hp's ongoing popularity.

the other ways i try to mitigate potential harm are by actively discouraging people from giving any financial support to hp + jkr and by being very vocal about my politics on this page, so that anyone who is following me will be getting pro-trans and anti-gender essentialism politics along with any hp engagement. i also don't engage with hp uncritically; i am specifically critical of the shitty politics in the books both in my posts on this blog and my fics themselves. i don't make it a secret that i think the books are politically rotten all the way down through to the foundations.

none of this is to say that there's, like...a Right Way to engage with this content or a set of rules that, if followed, Absolve All Shittiness. this is just an explanation of the personal evaluations i've had to weigh when it comes to deciding how i'm going to interact with content that is fundamentally opposed to my own politics. and again, i don't blame people who think that any amount of engagement is morally untenable and completely block it out. this is a growing source of cognitive dissonance in my own life, and i'm increasingly considering whether/for how much longer i want to continue to write fic + be involved in hp fandom. but for the time being, i'm still here + still writing fic, and i guess my feeling is that any harm that fic causes is a drop in the bucket, and even if i were to stop writing it wouldn't necessarily have a huge impact either way. i'm just some random guy online like everyone else; even though i talk about politics, that doesn't mean that i'm asking to be held up as some sort of moral standard, nor do i think anyone should be expected to be 100% politically perfect in every action they take--like, for me, writing hp fic kind of falls into the same category as like...eating mcdonalds even though i think factory farming is fucked, or buying + wearing makeup sometimes even though i think the beauty industry is fundamentally corrupt, or paying to see the new guardians of the galaxy movie in theaters even though i think marvel movies are us military propaganda. i don't think "no ethical consumption under capitalism" is an excuse to completely abandon any attempt to mitigate the harm our actions might cause, but it does matter to me the way in which someone is engaging with a fundamentally broken/corrupt piece of media beyond simply whether or not they're engaging at all. at the end of the day, it's up to everyone on their own to evaluate where they draw the line on hp, and i am not looking to make that judgment for anybody else considering that my own thoughts + feeling about it are still changing.

[d3ath-n-d3cay]

Alright children (not necessarily literally but hey),

I’m going to educate you all on English, Fandom History, and Internet Safety. I’ve seen so much discourse over antis and proship over my many years on the internet. From what I’ve seen people become very confused on the meaning of words, people from both side. So I’m here to sell it out plan and simple.

Proship simply means you believe in the concept of letting people ship what they want. It started back when shipping wars were big because fandoms couldn’t always agree on a ship for certain characters. In truth that bit hasn’t changed much. People still can’t agree. The pro in proship simply means for, as in are you for or against something. It is not short for problematic in any way and has nothing to do with dark fiction or problematic ships.

There are many people out there who don’t enjoy dark content, who don’t ship things that are problematic but that don’t feel the need to attack those who do enjoy those things. That alone makes them proship. It means they are following the idea of letting people enjoy what they want without persecution or argument. It is so easy on the internet to block people or content you don’t like. Especially if people use the correct tagging on websites that have such functions. It is important to always curate your internet experience because much like the real world other people are going to cater specifically towards you.

As said above being proship doesn’t mean you like dark / taboo content. However liking such things does inherently make someone proship. Liking these things in fiction and fantasy is not necessarily wrong and it isn’t a crime. However there are definitely some people who have more than a fictional interest who will try to use fiction to fulfill these desires or even hide behind the guise of “oh it’s just fiction”. There are also people who claim to be against such things, who talk about protecting the children online but use this as a way to get close to and groom children. Both sides have predators hiding among them. The thing is you can’t tell who someone is just from posts online. So unless you have definitive proof someone has committed a crime it’s best to just let people be.

Here is where Internet safety comes in and really parents have dropped the ball here. I know as a minor I was often in spaces I shouldn’t have been. I was a teenager and puberty is rough. I will not tell teens “hey avoid all adult content”. It is perfectly normal at that age to have desires and curiosities about sex. However be mindful of adults online. If you don’t know someone irl or can’t verify they are in your age range then it is best to keep conversation to sfw topics or even not engage at all. No adult should ever broach sexual topics with you if they are aware you’re a minor. There are unfortunately predators out there with more access now than before. It is important to know how to keep yourself safe. Avoid certain websites, block tags, and block accounts of people who make you uncomfortable or talk to you in a way that isn’t appropriate. If you’re unsure about if something is inappropriate ask someone you know and trust.

Stay safe and stay happy,

- Shigaraki