#like. i was better able to curate a space for myself there than any other app

[cowboyishbabe]

The older i get the less social media is for me ig

[mourningobject]

re: your post saying you have nuanced takes on proshipping; what nuance is there to not wanting csem/abuse/incest/etc written for entertainment and fandom without tact. "dislike both sides of the argument" perhaps it's my black and white autism thinking but genuinely what is there to dislike about not wanting twitter users to romanticize various forms of abuse. i am asking this not as some random hate anon but as someone who is considering whether or not to break mutual; i do not want anyone who can even slightly be okay with abuse for entertainment around me; and therefore am asking clarification.

Putting this under a cut because I don't want a biggie made out of it. TLDR; I dislike pro-shippers as people and think they are disgusting scum, but dislike anti as a label due to the rampant hypocrisy and occasional lack of nuance regarding if and how to portray sensitive content in art, as well as the performative behaviour & the lack of curating of their online spaces.

I've learnt to stop caring so much about what other people do even if the content they create makes me sick to my stomach. I do not agree with creating such content without tact or for the sake of making their dicks hard. But I just won't interact, I'll block. I also don't see how this material can be considered "abuse for entertainment"... unless you're talking about the abuse within the content.

But I understand your concern. You don't want someone perverse to be by your side. To elaborate on what I meant, the problem isn't with the concept of someone simply disliking seeing such things, that's more than fine. I just don't either as a Label, fundamentally.

Antis are more often than not performative and reactionary online (particularly the ones fixated on the subject, or with uncovering others as secretly being evil and such to the point of sending others retrospring asks like "Uuum, why do you follow [so and so]" and not even giving the @ for the person to block them and assuming the worst of them to the point it comes off as fake advocacy on their behalf. Especially when I myself follow artists who create questionable content once in a blue moon, but if it isn't their entire catalogue does that make me evil? These people aren't and will never be my friends. This is something that happened a lot on twitter, especially a few months ago. I understand the fear of being close to someone who's morals don't align with yours, but if you genuinely have concerns you may as well dm them instead of making a spectacle out of it), especially when most of them turn around and indulge in content that borders on the same, or even downright degeneracy on the side, as well as comparing it to genuine real world abuse or feeling it important to mention in cases that are totally unrelated where a person has committed actual crimes which is like, well, both can matter, but is now the time? I'd say it only counts in cases like that of Lily Orchard, where what she portrayed in her works was a reflection of her disgusting self and abuse she'd committed in real life. I don't believe in fiction not affecting reality because that is a redundant way to view art, as well as due to how art can reflect the creator's subconscious views, or normalize things to them, and they'll repeat again and again, "it's just fiction!" as if that makes it any better that they get off on the things they do. But these people will exist no matter what and so will the content they create, so antis should learn to actually curate their online spaces rather than getting into useless discourse, particularly teenagers who won't be able to change the minds of degenerate adults, or make a big deal about it publicly to show how they have the moral high-ground. Not to mention, countless antis I've seen are hypocrites who end up being revealed to believe this doesn't matter at all in the real world, or are friends with people who engage with pro ship content, but will harass others for it...? It's the rampant double standards that I don't like. Plus, a lot of media that antis love has elements that would be considered "pro ship" like nitro chiral games, and targets those audiences specifically, but they are surprised when the people it is made for interact with it. Of course I believe one can engage in media with disgusting things while being critical, though; I am an Ensemble Stars fan. There is shota-bait and incest all over the source material. That doesn't make me inherently sick because I'm not there for that, I understand that.

Also, most antis dislike these concepts being portrayed in media altogether, which is something I disagree with. If handled well these are experiences that deserve to be shared to others. Many victims have internalized so many horrific thoughts that they can't help but handle it imperfectly—that's something they have to deal with in therapy, though, why should I be the one to try to open their eyes as if it won't push them deeper into the hole they're in? You know?

There's also the thin line between "dark content" and "proship material". Who has the right to define this? (Obviously CSEM being inherently immoral is a given). That's all, mostly. There's more I've thought about before but I'm forgetting right now. I think both sides are worthy of critique and simply find most self-identified antis annoying, not nearly in a way that is as egregious as their counterpart, to be fair. I'm too busy simply being a Normal Person who also shakes his head in disdain when I see things like that. Even though I have mental problems regarding this sort of thing. I'm not saying to "not be sensitive", but to "not be stupid".

I think pro-shippers should stay away from antis because they are mostly children and victims themselves at that, and antis should stay away from pro-shippers because they are disgusting adults who will never be saved or changed by their protests.

My questions in this post are rhetorical even though I suppose I'm open to discussion and further elaboration but I think it's more than enough to show where I stand and whether you want to stay as my mutual or not. But that's essentially why I don't self-identify with either. Also, this could have used a dm, but I'm happy to explain my views. I’d at least appreciate an anonymous final verdict, though!

[unpaintedhuffines]

Some Sounds Some Burdens Can Release

Thoughts on cover songs, the loss of meaning, and whether you can lose the point if you never even knew what it was…

While I have played some form of musical instrument for most of my life, I can only very loosely be considered a musician. The most formal training I’ve had was during 5-9th grade when I played trumpet in school band. I’ve played guitar since I was about 10, with a sizable 15-year gap of not playing anything. Like most people that look like me who play guitar, I was largely self-taught: first with Hal Leonard chord books, then guitar tablature that I first sought from guitar magazines that they’d sell at the local Walmart before transitioning to a purely online collection of tabs of dubious quality and accuracy. It was an odd, brackish time - the transition between hard publication and online curation.

I had a couple of opportunities to play with bands. But my innate insecurities and the terminal inertia that beset the self-taught “experts” left me questioning what the point of playing music with no end goal even is. I still have those questions, but I now play with far more frequency than I ever have in my life. I’m even writing some music that mostly lands as naive jams landing somewhere in the pocket of The Replacements and Wilco.

And yet, I still question the point of it all. The only thing I don’t question is how easily and deeply music can make you feel.

My Intentions are Good and Earnest and True

I am someone who was diagnosed as a ASD Level 1 well into adulthood. This diagnosis did not shock me as much as I thought it would. I always had social difficulties. Fitting in was a problem. I was an easy target for ridicule. I was overly sensitive and didn’t know how to relate to my peers. When responsibility wasn’t tied to any sort of task, I had issues with organizational skills and planning. When I did have to be responsible, I relied on my secret ADHD superpowers to help me get stuff done.

Still, the one struggle that I’ve never been able to shake is to be seen/heard/understood. That said, I just mask this shit well.

Naturally, in a need to be better understood, I turned to music - listening, not playing. My parents had a big record collection that mostly stayed with my dad after their divorce. For the first couple of years after the split, I would often be left home alone while my dad worked overnight shifts. As such, I’d hang out with my dog and deep dive into the records. I made mix tapes and mix CDs for friends. Unlike the stereotypical mix makers, I never did so with any romantic undertones. I just wanted to share good music that I felt expressed facets of personality to which I would often align. I most often would make cassettes for people. I’d pull from my CD collection and pepper in selections from the crates and crates of vinyl in my house. Each tape would have 30 minutes a side. Compiling a track list to fit on Side A and Side B with as little dead space at the end became a fun puzzle that would take up an entire evening.

In all that time, I never thought to try to train my ear with my guitar. I never thought of this as a means to improve my own fledgling skill set. I never thought about how this was how musicians who taught themselves got better. Moreover, I never realized that people could find inspiration in a song and cover it in their own way. When I did learn other people’s songs on guitar, I understood that it was helping me to add to my skill set. I never thought of it as a way to use someone else’s songs to take any relationship I had to the sentiments contained therein as a means to express myself.

Cover Me Up, or: I Heard There Was a Secret Chord David Played and It Pleased the Lord

But you don’t really care for music, do ya…

There are great cover songs out there. I think I may prefer Joe Cocker’s “With a Little Help from My Friends” to the original by the Beatles. The best covers songs take the original and change it in a way that uncovers new, possibly even deeper meaning. Compare and contrast “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails and the subsequent cover of the song by Johnny Cash. The original is cold, sterile, bleak. It sounds like someone in a deep depression or lost to dependency. There is an almost adolescent anger to it. Johnny Cash approaches the song as a reticent look back, because there is no point in looking forward. Guitar and piano, plaintive in their interplay and my God, that voice. It is very much sung from the perspective of someone recognizing that their grip on life is loosening. It is a song about mortality. It is a song about the last dying embers before our ashes return to ashes and our dust returns to dust.

This says nothing about the fact that Bob Dylan wrote “All Along the Watchtower” and, upon hearing the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s cover, declared that the song was now Jimi’s. It was no longer his.

Some songs work their way into the zeitgeist that were perhaps too cleverly and subtly written and are thus clumsily interpreted as something that they are not. This is particularly the case with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Cohen had written up to 180 different verses of the song and referred to it as a joyous affirmation of life using religious allusions and references to capture vignettes of emotionality and enthusiasm.

It also was undeniably horny, with the shapes and sentiments of BDSM hiding in the shadows. And yet…

It has been co-opted as an almost funeral dirge. Kate McKinnon, as Hillary Clinton, famously performed it as the SNL opener the Saturday after Trump was elected in 2016. One of Biden’s first official acts as President was to preside over a televised memorial to the Americans lost during the Covid pandemic. “Hallelujah” was the song of choice.

None of these versions had a hint of the irony that Cohen peppered throughout the song, much less horniness.

Sometimes, the songs are so personal to the original writer that even famous people covering them becomes problematic. This is reflected in the recent blow up about Morgan Wallen arranging a version of Jason Isbell’s “Cover Me Up.” Isbell’s song is a love song first and foremost about his (now ex) wife, Amanda Shires. However, the story of the song is Isbell’s detox and recovery from deep substance abuse and alcoholism. When he sings in the chorus “It’s cold in this house and I ain’t going out to chop wood / So cover me up and know you’re enough to use me for good,” he is at his most his most vulnerable, literally having the shakes. The only person he trusts to see him in this state and to see him through this is his wife. There’s nothing inherently sexy about it.

And yet, people like Wallen cover this song as a love song with an almost horny delivery of the chorus. Girl, leave your boots by the bed; hang your dress up to dry. We ain’t leaving this room. To his credit, Isbell doesn’t pass judgement on covers of this incredibly personal-to-him song, saying that he’s grateful for the life it has given his song and that “"It was my real life s*** and now I’m once again reminded that I was not alone in that particular storm."

God, It’s Brutal Out Here

Still, there is an inherent problem with performing a song that is so singularly personal for the composer and their story. It’s especially problematic when such songs are used to woo an audience and perhaps get into someone’s pants. Is there a solution to this? I don’t know. Maybe not.

But maybe we should use the parts of these songs that inspire us, that touch us, that move us to tears (and yes, even horniness) to figure out our own songs to sing. Maybe we do what Elvis Costello suggests when, in defense of Olivia Rodrigo, he said, “It's how rock & roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That's what I did."

I would like to give credit to the songs from which I pilfered lyrics for this post’s title and headings: “Sleep On the Left Side” by Cornershop, “Satan Is My Motor” by Cake, “Cover Me Up” by Jason Isbell, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, and “Brutal” by Olivia Rodrigo. I’m just as guilty as anyone in using covers to attract attention. But maybe in using them as a framework to guide my writing, I’m making a brand new toy. Thanks for reading.

#music #coversongs

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Hi BPP! Just wanted to ask how you’d do things if you were in my position. So my situation is very specific and I really don’t know my place in ARMY spaces. Here’s why:

1. My favorite dynamic among all bangtan pairings is definitely yoonmin. The constant bickering just makes me laugh so much and wish for more. I absolutely love how they just constantly challenge each other.

2. My biases are vmin. I resonate the most with Jimin. His existence makes me cry. I am in love with Tae. Everything about him makes me melt. Jimin is my person; Tae is the love of my life.

3. Lastly, I think jikook are dating…? I don’t actively seek their moments so I’m not really a shipper, I think. If anything, I’d be more of a yoonmin/vmin shipper because it’s their moments I look out for. But jikook is the one pair I keep side-eyeing because their interactions just bring out a lot of question marks in me. They have weeeeird energy, idk it’s hard to explain. How I feel is like how Seokjin reacted when Jimin was explaining the hickey (????) thing.

So to summarize, yoonmin gives me butterflies. vmin gives me a double serotonin boost. jikook makes me release an exasperated but endearing sigh (I say endearing because they’ve still become my top 3, not bcs of their dynamic—too cheesy for me lol—but bcs it seems they make each other the happiest).

Having mentioned all that, I find it really hard to express myself in ARMY member x member spaces (mostly on twitter).

Among yoonmin lovers, there’s a subgroup consisting of toxic taekookers hating on Jimin. Among jikook lovers, there’s a subgroup of toxic jikookers passive-aggressively hating on Tae.

I feel like I’m relatively safer among vminies in terms of interacting with genuine OT7 fans. BUT a chunk of vminies seem to have this annoying superiority complex over other shippers. A lot can’t even fathom shipping vmin romantically. Some of them sound almost homophobic, “u can’t assume they’re gay unless…” and it irks me especially as a queer person.

The thing is I prefer ship-focused spaces because the general non-shipping part of the fandom has the biggest superiority complex against pairing two people together. And they don’t seem to be genuinely open about the idea of the boys actually being queer. And I just don’t like that.

But it’s just so frustrating to not be able to express my love for my favorite duos without having to do it in separate accounts. And I still don’t feel safe even then, because I’m also second-guessing my audience, “u sure u really love jimin?” “u sure u aren’t token-stanning jungkook?” “u sure u aren’t token-shipping vmin?” “u sure u’re okay with them actually being queer?”

Sorry, you don’t really have to answer. Idk where I was going with this. I just like the thought of this reaching someone.

***

Hi Anon,

I've got a few more asks in my inbox like yours, and I recall answering an ask very similar to this almost two years ago - all that to say, I get why you feel your situation might be unique to you and it feels isolating, but ARMY is a huge fandom and I promise you, whatever you're dealing with someone else has gone through before and found their tribe, for better or worse.

There's nothing more to it than curating your space. Someone doesn't think you like Jimin enough despite him being your bias? Unfollow and/or block them. A joker is being obnoxious with their hate boner for Tae? Hasta la vista. And so on. If you don't know these people enough to have a conversation around points of confusion or disagreement, why exactly should you hesitate to prune your online habitat? There's no shortcut to curating your space - you just have to lean into the people whose values align with yours, and cut off the dead weight.

Hopefully that should offer you some comfort.

One more thing I'll tell you now that I told those people then who have asked similar asks before:

If you're the sort of person who is sensitive to how other people think or what they say, being in any big fandom will be a very difficult experience for you. Anyone who is looking for a safe space in fandom is looking in the wrong place. You will always come across weirdos, people who lack basically every literacy skill, conspiracy theorists, and high conflict personalities who think everyone's talking about them or that they're the only people brave enough to obsess over 'taboo' topics. It's enough for you to identify these sorts of people when you come across them, determine for yourself if their values align with yours, if they base their actions in fact and respect for the guys, and act in whatever way that maximizes your peace of mind. It could be a slow process, but with practice you'll get it. Taking frequent breaks and making ARMY friendships offline could help too.

I liked reading your ask because you seem to already have a clear idea of what you like, what you think, and why, but you don't seem like a very assertive person so what I would do might not be practical for you. So I hope all the above are better options for you.

Good luck. 💜

[watchtheblog]

as always, hello to my 9 true real life friends, the 22 of you in close friends, my 40 internet besties, the handful of you i was able to lure over here with a LiNk iN BiO, at least one of the girls who copy and pasted my internet persona for her 200 followers, some other weirdos, biters, and haters (and their partners), my therapist if i ask her to read this to understand me better, and anyone else who is here and can read this!! 

as a preface to a list of extravagant gifts i wish to receive for my birthday (tuesday, 26 september), i am going to tell you a little story. if you don’t care and just want to buy me a gift or just want to use this to curate yours, scroll to the bottom. (if you need inspiration from years past, i’ve been making this list for 10 years.)

without further silliness: it’s been a few years since i’ve expressed my disdain for traditional “fun” but what better time than on the eve of the eve of my birthday to dive back into it.

i define traditional fun as anything social, anything that involves hanging out with multiple friends, or any activity that takes place at a “venue” or anywhere there are dozens to hundreds or more people present doing what one would describe as “having a good time”.

if it’s a: gathering, get together, party, or event, it’s a: no.

i’d rather be run over by a lime scooter than sit at a dinner with more than 3 people i know, and if a new person is involved, “meeting me” better be on their bucket list because the *stranger to acquaintance* pipeline crashed in 2018 when a woman propositioned me in whole foods for a raya “friend pass” (again: she was a stranger), conned me out of my phone number, and then proceeded to send me her uber referral link 15 times until i blocked her.

*i should clarify before i go further that i’m not a hater. i’m so happy that people are enjoying themselves. i think everyone deserves to be happy and to smile and laugh and have such a little blast wherever and whenever they want!!! i just do not want to be near anyone who is doing that. ◡̈ *

PDF (public displays of fun) is anathema to me, and for this reason i don’t like to leave my house on the weekends because that’s when most people are convening, rendezvous-ing, coming together in droves to enjoy themselves in shared public space.

a notable exception to this rule is a restaurant or bar, because there will always be some miserable couple having the worst night of their lives or someone in a corner arguing with someone who is gaslighting them at 2:45am.

like me one time, in my “having no respect for myself” era, when an ex boyfriend swallowed a black label burger and then convinced me *i* was being weird for feeling hurt that he was going to take me home and then go see a midnight movie with his friends… on christmas eve.

v funny behavior.

(it was actually v fine because - surprise surprise - i hate movies, and movie theaters… and in all honesty i hated his ass, too.)

anyway! that’s the kind of stuff i love to see going on in public: messy nonsense, the seeds of trauma sprouting, not unflappable joy!!!!!

when i lived in new york during this time of no self-respect, i often found myself doing things i didn’t want to do. like, going to the club.

THE CLUB is a unique coming together of an inexhaustible list of things i do not like: first and foremost: DJs. secondarily: people i don’t know, big groups of people, being in a confined space, men with weird attitudes, herve leger, anyone wearing a “fashion hat”, music, other miscellaneous loud noises, social nepotism, people being coy about doing cocaine, cocaine, moving my body to a beat, being illuminated by phone light, stickiness, dirty bathrooms, unidentified wetness, and i could go on!!

the only thing i like about the club is screaming in close proximity to someone’s ear (although the fact that it’s done out of necessity takes some joy out of it) and one other thing:

that every single time i ever went to the club, without fail, a man would sidle up to my girlfriend after unsuccessfully trying to hit on me and utter some version of “what is wrong with your friend?” to her.

for my birthday, i’d love to attend an event filled entirely with those men.

it’s tuesday, so if you can’t manage to do that, here are the treasures i’d like:

(disclaimer: all i want for my birthday is for me and everyone i love and support and everyone who loves and supports me to be healthy and happy and rich, and for all of their dreams to come true (and for everyone i don’t like to accidentally commit a misdemeanor that hurts no one but is punishable by jail so they can have some time to think and find God), and for you to donate to the boys and girls club if you have the means. but here are some things i think would be funny or nice or stupid to receive:)

the intangible: to mysteriously but unsuspiciously come into 100 million dollars, that i am always perceived as a genius in the daytime, a beauty at night, and a bop on instagram, that when i get married no more than ten people RSVP, that everyone knows i’m joking about starting a cult but that when i start my cult you will all join, that no one i know ever prepares a picnic for me as a gesture of kindness or romance, that people stop misusing the word gaslighting as it takes away from those of us who are working on perfecting the art, to one day start a tequila company and for that to not be corny, for all my bot followers to gain sentience and break free from their bot farm confines to engage with me, that my mouth never writes a check my ass can’t check, to - at whatever cost - gain possession of the remaining episodes of a&e’s deeply perverse and immediately cancelled “adults adopting adults” and put every person on that show in a subterranean jail for life, to be wealthy enough to donate anonymously, for someone to get real about cancelling daylight savings time, that i remain beloved, hilarious, brilliant, and humble, that i am my best friends’ best friend, and that anyone who dislikes me never finds peace (so far so good!).

the ones you can buy:

i hate to say this but if someone doesn’t come up with $4000 and buy me this max mara coat (xs) i am going to have an asthma attack.

a speaker for my house so i can listen to my cult (meditation) a more reasonable version (black)

also to listen to cult (black) - you can engrave these, what a treat

these sheets (white/white; king)

i know this maybe for a man but this maybe also for a man??? (idk?! do men have money?!?!) this in black ok this is exhausting, i’d like a little card holder for my credit cards and it should cost one million dollars if possible thank you for understanding the parameters!!

a trip here, or here but i don’t travel with people so just for one please!! (i’m retired so i can go anytime!!)

a gift card to my dermatologist even though i don’t think you can buy a gift card from him but feel free to take a look at the services (i do hydrafacials, lasers, peels) and mail me some US currency! or be proactive and try to figure it out!!

this sweatshirt

this lighter i like

this necklace

this rattan tray gallivanting as “calfskin”????? lol this is better :) i do not understand what is going on!!!

i just restocked but i will accept you buying this for yourself as a treat a gift to me bc i love it

i’d like to speak to the medium who has a show on bravo, please. this is him. i do not want to be “read” on the tv show. i do not want tickets to see his live show. i want to speak to a dead person through this man. one on one. (you can come if you organize it.)

a baby phat tracksuit - no link bc they’re relaunching (on my birthday…),  but hopefully there’s a tracksuit on there.

here are some watches i’d like: one another one another one an insane one

a flight on emirates first class literally going anywhere!

this gorgeous vase or this one or this one; also this vase

or this one

this room spray (or it’s candle)

this art or this art or this art (i’m only half kidding)

this art or this art or this art

the cade candle from le labo (it’s not sold online i don’t think bc it’s special, like me!)

some gorgeous cartier stationery (i thought they made stationery… and i’m pretty sure they do but it seems they don’t… lol) this is an alt and so is this and these are cute (so i can write thank you cards for everyone who gets me a gift!!!)

ok thank you!!

[sysmemes]

wait omg so it doesnt have to be a total black out and I do not have to instantly forget stuff . that changes a lot

in the end I dont think its DID specifically but OSDD-1 is very much on the table .

BPD is something I considered but I got myself in a better place emotionally and a lot of the symptoms of BPD are just . not there anymore so yeah (and I do have autism, but schizophrenia is very much not an option)

also yesterday after sending in the ask I also had a very not Average Person Experience that got me considering that I could actually be onto something here . in short i just got mad and stressed and I just started feeling like I was very much physically out of my body (and my head started hurting but idk of that's related or just me) and I ended up being much more . basically mean towards everyone . I managed to reel it in so that I wasnt harassing people that made me upset or taking it out on my friends but I am just not like that . like me I do not do that

weird stuff . and tysm for the reply I forgot to mention !!!!! very helpful

glad I could help!!

I definitely recommend reaching out to a therapist if you are able! I can't recommend the ISSTD therapist directory enough (linked at the bottom of my previous reply). Even if you don't have a CDD, therapists you find through that site are likely better equipped to treat trauma and dissociation than most. If price or location are an issue, I know many offer sliding scales and video appointments!

That sounds like a rough experience, I hope you're doing ok now ❤️❤️

I know you weren't really asking for advice here, but I'd feel Off if I didn't add this stuff:

I didn't say it earlier, but it's good to be pretty cautious about the online system community. Misinformation is everywhere (usually unintentionally), so it's good to read books and studies on CDDs to get a better understanding of how they work. People don’t share a lot of the harder parts of their disorder on social media. Some people might emphasize other parts because it makes for Good Engaging Content (I am not saying these people don’t have a CDD, just that their portrayal of it online, like the portrayal of just about any illness, is curated specifically for social media). Also, the “system content” that gets the most Publicity tends to be what people without CDDs find the most sensational, and what's portrayed in that content might not be something every system experiences (for example, blackout amnesia!).

Another piece of advice I’ve heard pretty frequently boils down to “If you're regularly in these spaces, it can become very easy to pathologize yourself. Taking a week or two away from system spaces and simply letting yourself exist as you are—however that may be—is going to be most beneficial to figuring out how your brain works.” (ty Numb Circularsys for helping me word this!! <33).

All said, I hope you're able to figure this all out and everything!!

[sequencefairy]

4, 19, 23 ?? ☺️

4. Do you have any OCs? Do you have a story for them?

I don't really have any that I have kept around? I make people up to fill in spaces in casts of stories regularly, but I don't have one, singular OC. Hot take, maybe, but spending all your time on One Character is to your detriment, in my opinion. You need to curate versatility as a writer. You need the ability to sketch many different kinds of people for your stories, at any given time, and only spending time filling out the backstory of one or two people does not make you stretch those muscles or grow into someone who writes varied and multi-faceted characters, which can leave your work feeling same-y and like you are only using archetypes to fill in the background.

19. Share a snippet from a wip without giving any context for it.

There is a conversation with Geralt and the child, who is not a child at all but a conduit of something far greater than all of them know. Yennefer can feel the power in her, like the scream of a hurricane rising off the water. The howl of it chills her to the core, even as Cirilla’s green eyes warm from within when she smiles at something Geralt says.

23. Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?

This question is asked in a silly way, but I have a serious answer - either is harder because you need to practice more. I used to find dialogue really difficult to make sound like real people speaking, but I kept practicing and practicing and trying new things and reading fic and books where the dialogue is GREAT and cribbing liberally from those people who have the kind of dialogue I wanted to be able to write and through that, I have taught myself to write better dialogue. Same goes for descriptions - if you have a hard time with them, go read some work by people who do a good job with description and see how they do it and emulate that in your own work until it becomes second-nature.

[izzieislandheart]

I think I reblogged this before, but I'm reblogging again for emphasis on that last bit: YOU DON'T GET TO MAKE OTHERS HOMELESS TO MAKE THE UNIVERSE YOUR SAFE SPACE. Yes, I said it louder for the people in the back. I have an anxiety disorder that doesn't make any of my triggers fun because I see something that sends me into a panic attack, the trigger goes away, I get myself evened out again, and three days later, at 2 AM, I'll fucking REMEMBER it and go into the spiral all over again. THIS FUCKING SUCKS. I get it. I'm in therapy because of it. I was on medication for it until the meds stopped doing anything. I am 110% not going to be the person who's like, "YOU NEED TO STOP INCLUDING PICTURES OF A HAND ON FIRE OR A DESCRIPTION OF A HAND ON FIRE EVER AGAIN," just because I was personally in an accident that resulted in my hand being on fire and me being traumatized by it, to the point I get anxiety tremors just fucking thinking about it to type this sentence. I HAVE TO HEAL. Aside from a raised scar, my physical injury is long since healed. I still have to be able to cook food. I still have to be able to go near campfires or light a candle or put out a candle. It would be rad if I could one day do those things without shaking so badly that I AM going to get burned again just from being too unsteady around flames. MY healing means I have to be able to talk about it, I have to be able to vent, but I also have to be able to SELECTIVELY do it when I want to. I see GIFs of people on fire, even that "funny" one people use for utter disasters, and I scroll unless I feel like I can deal with it at that moment. I generally don't watch horror movies at all anymore, but I intentionally avoid ones like Christine and Firestarter. (For the record: I watched Christine when I was a kid and ended up kind of apathetic about it. The book was better. :p Just not interested in a rewatch because the fire scenes stand out in my memory, I'm guessing for a reason. I also watched Firestarter as a kid, and pretty much the only scene I can remember is where she sets her mom's hand on fire while her mom is washing dishes.) Every person's healing journey is different. If I wanted a life devoid of fire, devoid of seeing fire, devoid of reading descriptions of someone being burned, I could totally curate my life to create that life for myself - but, the key here is that I'd have to CURATE it. I'D have to take responsibility for blocking out all the references, for never using fire sources again, for never going to parties or outings where someone has a campfire, fire ring, or barbecue again. I CANNOT and WILL NOT expect the rest of the world to stop using fire because of my trauma. There has been an ass ton of research poured into what separates humans from other animals. Historically, points like "we have emotions" or "we use tools" have fallen short. The point that struggles to find good, repeated examples in other species is our ability to use our emotions, tools, and critical thinking skills to radically change our environment AND avoid parts of the environment we don't like. A bird can make a nest (change their environment), but they don't have a good way of blocking other animals from raiding the nest; rabbits can make concealed, underground burrows to protect their young, but they don't have a good way of preventing collapse or flooding due to nature. WE can. We're not perfect, but we do it a lot more successfully than any other species when we put our minds to it. However, we did not just demand of the universe, "I want to live in the vacuum of space; accommodate me!" We curated that experience. Curate your world however the hell you need to, but don't expect others to also live your life in your world. You don't know what they're going through and what they need because you are not them. Don't like, don't read. Keep scrolling. It's not about you.

Ok I want to say something controversial

But you are responsible for your own safe spaces. You can block tags, block words, block people.

“But i thought fandom was supposed to be a safe space” —yeah you have to curate it.

Unfortunately one persons’s safe space may be another persons’ trigger. That’s ok. Simply block them, block the tag, block the word etc. They can do the same for you.

Maybe I’m just out of touch, but I’ve been around since the days of “don’t like, don’t read” and that’s a good philosophy. If it squicks you, scroll past. If it causes you anxiety or upset, block! Plenty of people are responsive if you ask them to tag an upsetting trigger. And if they’re dicks about it, block em.

[rozinaaa]

The Urge To Delete Everything

I'm not too sure why this urge came about (I guess it can be viewed as a form of spring cleaning, since it's going to be April in a bit), but I genuinely feel like deleting my entire online presence, since a majority of it stems from a past version of myself that I can no longer relate to, and more importantly, a version of myself that no longer exists, simply because I've moved on.

Perhaps this is a side effect of grief, where I randomly decide to hoover everything up, so that when my time comes (it could be at any time, so it's always good to be on the safe side), I don't have to leave a somewhat embarrassing legacy that will outlive me for at least another 100 years or so, and for that to be the talk of my family for generations to come, especially when there will be relatives that will know that I existed within a certain time, but ones that I'll never meet.

Oh my gosh, that sounded way too deep for my liking, but it's literally just food for thought (I'm convinced I'm already on my way out since it feels like I'm going to get wiped out by a heart attack at some point), but I guess deleting everything relating to a previous version of yourself can also be a sign of growth, as well as the chance to start a new chapter in life.

I think I'm just bored of scrolling through content and seeing the same few topics and opinions get thrown at me, to the point where it gets boring because I've already encountered this information before, so I just want to get out of this loop, as well as making a lot of room in my mind to allow new things to enter, so I guess this is literally having a clear out and decluttering my space.

If it was up to me, I'd have nothing more than a minimal LinkedIn account (but even then, I'd still want to get rid of it), this blog (mainly to see how I've developed over the years), a portfolio site to dish out to potential employers, and my curation site, as well as some custom email addresses that would link to their respective sites.

In an ideal world, all of this would be self hosted and I would use a minimal operating system, but as I've said previously in other posts, that's not really going to happen in a short amount of time, so it's more of a longer term goal for me, if I'm even able to achieve it.

This is probably due to the fact that I've now settled into my job, to the point where it feels suspiciously comfortable and easy for me, where I'm actively looking for a challenge, where I do the work that I do now, but on a slightly larger scale.

Additionally, I need full clarity for everything that I do, so this is when boundaries, routines, and schedules come into play, since it makes my life easier because I'll know what to do and when.

Flexible work is all well and good, but in my case, it feels like my professional and personal lives bleed into one, to the point where I struggle to tell them apart, so I'd personally like to leave my work at work, ideally in a physical place that I'd have to travel to, because otherwise, things will get chaotic.

I know people moan about the traditional 9-5 lifestyle (and I know I've complained about it in the past), but it gives me structure to my day, and I know what to do, provided that there's a consistent amount of work to do, so all I do is just get on with it.

A recent LinkedIn binge (in which I had over 500 connections, most of whom were people that were total strangers, as well as relentlessly commenting on posts under the guise of networking and putting myself out there) taught me that I absolutely definitely don't want to work a social media or digital marketing job at all (this also applies to going freelance again, as well as having a personal brand, which seems like the most self-centred thing that anyone can do to themselves), even though I've got some skills and experience that lie within that area, although I sometimes wish that I had more technical skills, since that would at least lead me to better and more meaningful opportunities that go beyond "Hey look at me! I can make pretty things!" most of the time.

That binge was absolutely exhausting to me, because I'm an introvert through and through (surprise, surprise), so to be honest, there's no point in forcing myself to become an extrovert just to be able to fit in, especially if I don't personally enjoy it, so I'd rather do my own things in my own way without getting overstimulated by the rest of the world, because frankly, it's basically all noise.

Additionally, I think that binge was the turning point for me, as I basically got rid of all the excess baggage (so all of the strangers that I connected with) and kept a small handful of people that I actually know, which is around 70 people, give or take.

That might seem like a pithy little number online (especially where you're expected to know thousands upon thousands of people), but for context, there are about 20-25 people at the company that I work for, and that already seems like a lot to me.

Going futher, I work in a team of 8, which is a small but large enough group of people at the same time.

During my time at university, there were about 60 students in total (across all three variations of the course), and about 10 lecturers, so to me, that feels like a lot.

Hell, even 70 people waiting on the platform to board a train is a massive crowd (moreso when they all get on and scramble to find a seat before being forced to stand up and grab on to the nearest static object), with all of this being something to do with perception.

Having 70 people follow you online seems like nothing, but in real life, that's pretty overwhelming.

I can barely fit 70 people into my room (let alone 5), and having 70 people inside my house will make it full, to the point where everyone else will end up on the driveway, on the patio, or in the garden.

I probably speak to about 20 people on a regular basis, and that's usually more than enough for me, so no wonder why keeping up with at least 500 people (on a single social media platform) is absolutely exhausting, because that's like 8 times the amount of people that I actually know in real life at any one time.

Going back to the original point of just wanting to delete everything, I just want to start over with my online presence, especially now that I'm out in the working world, and that I have to be professional if I want to get anywhere.

Maybe all of this is just a case of turning everything on and off again, where I need to give myself a fairly hard reset, so that I can let go of the things that no longer serve me and make space for new things.

This isn't goodbye, but this is just me growing as a person, and the only way I can do that is if I shed my old self so that I can let a new version come into existence.

[awkwarddystopianwarlord]

My Closet is Full But My Brain Doesn't See That

You know that stereotype of girls being like “I don’t have anything to wear!” whilst their room is drowning in articles of clothing? Even though I’m not always a girl, I’m very much like that. As are my friends. It’s a funny little battle every Friday night where we individually fight with our closets regarding what to wear on our sacred Saturday Gathering Day. 

I have about three small closets worth of clothing. Because of how my apartment is layed out, I have two closets that form a corner and I also have an IKEA four cube by four cube shelf situation. All of that space is occupied by clothing. One closet has all my jackets and coats, the other has all my dresses, flannels, sweaters, and socks. My cubes hold all my shirts, skirts, sweatshirts, shorts, trousers, and cardigans. But come the end of the week, I don’t bloody know what to wear to participate in weekend shenanigans! I own nothing and everything all at once. This is made worse by the fact that I only really have one day to get decked out with clothes, shoes, and makeup so it’s a stressful time. How do I present myself this Saturday? What is worthy of the planned activities? What items of clothing have I neglected of late and what do I repeat more often? I should just keep an extensive inventory, a Dewey Decimal System but for closet items. 

It’s embarrassing to act as though I don’t have anything good or decent or fun to wear when practically all that dwells in my closets are pieces that I enjoy and use. The nerve of me to strut about my room-house muttering how there’s nothing able to become an outfit. Meanwhile I just ordered a few clothes last week and they’re arriving tomorrow. I’ve ordered many a clothes before, because I like them, and now they sit in my closet and I am blind to their existence the moment I try to curate an appearance. 

Wintertime is the best time for me to dress as I please since I can layer and accessorize far more than I can in the warmer months, though it leaves more room for decision making and therefore brain blanking. I try to wear everything I own once before repeating anything. Like parents with multiple children, I’m assuming as I don’t personally have any, I don’t want to neglect any closet dweller. I want to show them all equal love and appreciation and incorporate them into something. That said, not everything is flexible and not everything fits into the current mood of the day I’m dressing for. Some clothes aren’t forgiving in stormy weather, others aren’t forgiving when my uterus is releasing its monthly contents. Some aren’t forgiving of a hearty meal, others aren’t forgiving of much walking, or much sitting. I may have an outfit idea but the morning of can easily snatch those plans away moments after I rise. 

Saying “I don’t have anything to wear” has more than just the literal translation. When we say it, we mean it to say something more like “I don’t have anything to wear because of the weather” or “I don’t have anything to wear because I’m bloated and feel gross and need something that’s easy to take off so I can deal with my menstrual cup with little chance of disaster”. My current dilemma is “I don't have anything to wear that I feel matches the mood of the punk market I’m going to tomorrow”. Granted, that is likely to change once I stare at each closet for several minutes, ponder, stare at everything again, take some items out, try them on, decide against them, mix and match other things with some decided staples, wander around grumbling, ponder again, stare, fold the discarded options, find inspiration, try on the inspiration, fiddle around with other things that work better together, create a look, eat dinner feeling victorious. I simply need to go through the process first. Then, come tomorrow, I will curate a makeup look that will likely not match at all with what I’m wearing and I will be complete.

[infestedguest]

I’m really young compared to everyone else on this post (I’m 20 now), but I started reading fanfiction online at a young enough age that I can’t even remember how I found out about it in the first place. My first ever experiences with political discourse were author’s notes warning about SOPA and PIPA in 2011.

FFN was my go to site as a kid. FFN’s ability to filter content is very limited compared to AO3, and the ability to filter out NSFW content using it is almost nonexistent, since basically all NSFW was skirting around terms of service. But even so, I don’t think I ended up reading any actual smut before I was ready to, (which wasn’t until middle school) because pretty much every author would put a content warning in either the summary of a fic or in an author’s note if it was smut. I pretty much immediately caught onto what a “lemon” was (and holy shit I somehow only just realized calling smut that was a way to avoid ToS), so every time I saw it in a fic’s description, I moved on because I knew I could not handle that kind of content.

I’m not saying I was never exposed to things I shouldn’t have been as a child in online fandom spaces, I was a little girl in the MLP FiM fandom in the early 2010s for chrissakes, or even that I wasn’t unduly exposed to anything on FFN (I read Sweet Apple Massacre on there when I was nine), or that kids that age should be allowed to engage in online fandom spaces completely unsupervised in the way that I was, my point is that I was a third grader (who might I add legitimately fell for the “someone wrote gullible on the ceiling” gag multiple times) with zero context or guidance using a platform with significantly less filtering capability than AO3, and I was still able to not only curate my experience to protect myself (for the most part), but understand that I had to do so.

On AO3 an author can tag a fic with pretty much any warning, and in fact they’re’s an expectation for them to do so. On late ‘00s to early ‘10s, most authors would properly label their lemons, but literally the only other commonly used content warning I can remember was for gay shipping. Everything else was a pretty much a free for all (which, again, is how I ended up reading Sweet Apple Massacre when I was nine).

If you come across actual child exploitation material, tell somebody, and if you accidentally run into a work you didn’t want to see because it was improperly tagged, that’s terrible and it shouldn’t have happened, but otherwise you are responsible for curating your experience and protecting yourself, you are either an adult or almost one and the tools you have for doing so are better than they have ever been.

I’m sorry, but in the immortal words of practically every author on FFN: “Don’t like, don’t read.”

i didnt realise ao3 was started in response to lj deleting account relating to p//edophi|ia and they explicitly support the posting of such works yikes

[educadhd]

My Digital Teaching Philosophy

We live in an era where technology is ubiquitous, often to a fault, and navigating when and how to use the technology that we have as teachers is a difficult task. Fundamentally, I see technology as a tool, and a powerful one at that. Like any tool, it can be used to great benefit in the classroom, but at the same time, it’s important to remember that tools have specific purposes, and it is unhelpful to us and to our students to try and make everything a nail just because we have access to a really cool hammer. 

That being said, my digital teaching philosophy centers around two main principles: literacy and accessibility. To put it simply, any use of technology in the classroom ought to either strengthen students’ literacy or increase the accessibility of a task. If a technology does not do either of these things, its place in the classroom should be reevaluated. 

Literacy

When I discuss literacy here and in other areas of this blog, I’m referring to the concept of literacy as explained by the NCTE, which states that literacy is "a collection of communicative and sociocultural practices shared among communities." (source) Basically, the idea is that being able to read words is only one form of literacy, and it is important for us and our students to develop a network of literacies, including digital literacy, media literacy, and critical literacy in order to be full participants in the global society we live in. In short, for students to be truly literate in this digital age, they need to be able to "consume, curate, and create actively across contexts" and engage critically with the ethical and cultural concerns of these contexts. 

With this in mind, the assignments and tasks we have students engage with in our classrooms ought to be centered around this goal of being literate across contexts. In English and Language Arts education, we have a special responsibility to help students develop literacy because effective communication is the domain of the English subject. Thus, creating classrooms that encourage literacy development is critical for English teachers in secondary education. This can look differently depending on the classroom and teacher, but in my classroom, this means:

Incorporating multimedia artifacts in reading and writing units

Teaching students how to evaluate and select the digital tools and mediums that best fit a given task and/or audience

Encouraging students to branch out and be creative in different modes than they’re used to

Teaching online research skill sets that allow students to find and recognize credible sources

Having real conversations with students about the nature of online spaces and how to protect themselves and others in an increasingly exploitative online environments

Prioritizing relevance and authenticity in medium, topic, and genre in all assignments

Because helping students to develop literacy is at the center of my use of technology in the classroom, whenever I am considering using a new form of software or hardware, I ask myself the following questions regarding its usefulness in helping students develop literacy:

Will learning to use this technology in and of itself set students up for future success?

Does this use of technology authentically simulate how adult professionals use it in normal contexts?

Will this use of technology help students learn to discern truth and error both on and offline?

Does this use of technology help students better understand how people and corporations may try to manipulate and present information to influence them? 

Accessibility

As a disabled person, accessibility is a huge concern for me and thus is very much centered in my teaching philosophies. I see technology as an incredible tool for increasing accessibility in classrooms for neurodivergent or otherwise disabled students. With accessibility concerns at the forefront of technology use, the viability and usefulness of different hardware and software is made much more evident. While many digital literacy theorists emphasize the importance of "transformative" technology use in the classroom, many of these theoretical discussions fail to recognize that disability affects what is and is not transformative for a student. Use of a word processor like Google Docs or Microsoft Word, for example, may seem from an abled perspective to be functionally a mere replacement for traditional pen and paper and not a transformative use of technology, but for a student with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, or even just a language barrier, access to a word processor could mean the difference between being able or unable to complete the task assigned. Because of the way disabilities affect student learning and the simple fact that we have students with known and unknown disabilities in every class period, it is critical to ensure that our use of technology in the classroom is, first and foremost, accessible to every student.

Accessibility requires, by necessity, an individualized approach to education, but this sort of individualization is difficult to achieve when there is only one teacher to, in some cases, 40 students per class period. The way I see it, there are two primary methods by which to resolve this issue. One method is to increase curriculum individualization through a blended learning approach, which has been seen to work well in several cases. However, I personally feel that the drawbacks to this approach outweigh the benefits, so I prefer to use the Universal Design for Learning approach, which focuses on providing students with multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression that they can access and choose according to their needs. In my classroom, this means:

Optimizing student autonomy

Incorporating student interests where possible

Providing mastery-oriented feedback on assignments

Providing students with coping skills and strategies

Offering various ways of customizing how information is displayed

Offering alternatives for visual and auditory information

Using multiple modes of media to illustrate concepts and communicate

Varying methods for student response

Ensuring access to assistive technology and other tools

Helping students to develop strategies to strengthen executive functioning

To ensure that the digital tools in my classroom are accessible for all of my students, whenever I am considering implementing a new hardware or software in my classroom, I consider the following questions to evaluate its accessibility:

If this is an online resource, is it at least WCAG 2.0 Level A compliant?

If this is an ebook or other digital publication, does it have a NIMAS compliant or otherwise accessible source file that can be converted to a specialized format (e.g. Braille, audio, large print, etc.)?

Does this tool fully support screen readers and keyboard access?

Will having this tool available remove barriers for disabled students?

Will having this tool available remove barriers for English language learners? 

Will this tool provide an additional means of engaging with, representing, or responding to lesson content?

How might a student with a disability in sensory processing respond to the use of this tool?

Will this tool increase student autonomy?

This is just one way to go about creating a pedagogical approach that is conscious of digital literacy. What works for me may not work for everyone, and that's okay. What matters most is that we as teachers are committed to giving our students the best education that we can, and this means constantly revising and updating our theory and practice to incorporate the ever-shifting needs of our students.

[fozmeadows]

race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.  

[grapecaseschoices]

Representation in IF (or the lack thereof)

In recent days, the topic of race and ethnicity - as well as treatment of marginalized communities within IFs and their fandoms - has been the premier point of conversation. It has become paramount for people of color, lately, to advocate for themselves in regards to issues of white washing, stereotypes, and white people (...and sadly, other people of color) feeling too comfortable using slurs.

Nothing new there.

As I saw someone recently point out, this is something that crops up every two months. And if you’ve been on tumblr for that length of time, in more than more than one fandom, this is likely something you’ve had to deal with several times within that space of time. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of being a fan of color. (And, often, any type of minority, period.)

We don’t get to escape within the internet into fantasy the same way the “majority” gets to do so. If it isn’t toxic people in the community, it is being disappointed by content creators - either through their comments (or lack thereof) or what they put out in their work.

I can’t speak for every black person or every person of color, however, my fandom experience is one of hyper vigilance. And I’ve noticed that sort of attitude in others.  We have to cut away from certain parts of the fandom. Or cut out work we used to love because of certain outlooks or behaviors.

It is a protective attitude that I’m unapologetic about. By curating my content consumption, it’s pushed me to find, and support, artists that care enough to see people like me as people.  Someone mentioned to me that “as marginalized communities, we have a right to be choosy about our representation in media.” And I agree. We do and we should never, ever feel guilty about it. 

That being said, it can feel kind of alienating.

As I mentioned before, there’s been a continued - one I am glad for - movement in the IF/VN community in calling out bad representation (and treatment of fans).  Fans have pushed for accountability and gotten it. However, I’ve noticed - or at least, I feel - the call for change is sort of limited. There’s a hesitance in our community to ask for that same change of ‘indie’/smaller creators as we do of companies or more established writers. And, honestly, this hesitance has left me with a feeling that the IF/VN community isn’t really one for people of color, particularly black people.

Now, I’m one who tries to give credit where credit is due. The creation of ~interact-if … is probably one of the best things I have ever seen in any community (and I’ve been in fandom/written rpg since HS). I’ve also noticed an increase of writers of color feeling comfortable in writing for their culture or having characters of their culture as well as white creators holding themselves accountable. All of that is what keeps me hopeful about improvement regarding IF works but motivates me to one day do my own. That being said, there is still a lot that needs to be addressed regarding the whiteness of IF work and the depiction of characters of color.

I am going to start off by saying something that may come off as kind of harsh. If you know me, you know what I’m going to say, so you can clock out. If you don’t, take a deep breath, feel frustrated, and then let it go to move on: I don’t think uncomfortability with writing about a marginalized group or unfamiliarity with said group is an excuse. I don’t think “well it’s my work, this is what I know/this is what I want to write” is an excuse. 

IF works in the year 2021 are uncomfortably, awkwardly white (and able-bodied, cis, thin, etc). And I do not think there is ANY excuse, ANY actual reason for it to be that way.

I am sure there are several excuses coming to mind (as I said, I’ve been in RP and fanfic for years, I’ve seen them all—heck, I’ve thought them all. I still do think them at times). However, I’ve always held to the belief that every work that is put out into the universe matters. Everything has an impact.  NO work is too small, nothing is too insignificant. Every art has an effect. And if you’re writing a story, telling a tale, something from your heart to share with others you’re trying to affect your environment in some way, you’re trying to say something.

I feel a lot of us—as I said, I include myself in this too—do not consider what we’re saying to our audience when we create works that are mostly white (or when we can’t have a single character or work with numerous characters that are disabled, fat, mentally ill, trans, I can go on). 

If you’re writing a story, I don’t think you can give yourself any pats on the back for having one or two characters of color. I think we’ve moved beyond that type of ‘diversity by numbers’ … especially when the numbers are often piss poor.  I’m seeing IFs where there are three characters of color to six white ROs. Not only is that ‘ratio’ (for lack of a better word) shitty on it’s own, people don’t consider that the actual dynamic is 1:1:1:6. People of color are not a monolith. I, as a black Haitian-American woman, may have similar experiences as an indigenous woman from Canada and a persian person from Iran …. But we are not the same. Yes, it is great to have a diversity of characters. I’m not saying you shouldn’t include people from different backgrounds in your works.

But please consider why it is never the case that there are two Japanese-Brazilians, three black people from Manchester, and a mixed-race Indigenous/Afro-Latina from Queens, and one white person. It is extremely rare to see multiple of one race or ethnicity in an IF if that race isn’t white.

I feel not only is that problem, I believe it is a conversation that needs to be had. Both as a community and as something writers discuss with themselves, as they review their work. 

And that is the tip of the iceberg. We need to have discussions on the tendency of characters of color to have light colored eyes, or the preference of East Asians (and light skinned ones at that) over any other Asian, or the ambiguously brownness of descriptors. We need to talk about white-washing in face claims that directly oppose established descriptions, or how Artbreeder being bad at black people is NOT an excuse for your black character looking similar to the one in three different other IFs (put the effort in). 

We as a community need to have several discussions or else I feel it will be another five years before we’re dragging our feet toward better representation. And that shouldn’t be the case. At all. 

[septembersghost]

do you feel like your mental health is better when you're not engaging with ************ anymore? I am trying to distance myself on my blog but it's a hard transition for me and you were there a lot longer. I really like seeing others random and interests and things because the love you have for them shows so much ❤ I feel like I need tips to branch out maybe? you don't have to post this you don't feel up to it!

to be honest, my mental health is Extremely Bad due to entirely other factors that have zero to do with that, and maybe ironically are so bad and dire that it's made that feel irrelevant, though (as you probably saw last week oops) i am very sensitive and soft-hearted, so i still get easily hurt by bullying and the fandom situation itself. that said, it is for sure better for me to have space from it these days (even in the awful physical and mental and life issues i currently am enduring, having distance from that is ultimately a positive and i find the more i have, the more objective it makes me and the less i miss it. which feels kind of scarily grown up, tell this to the me of any point before this year and she'd probably think it was upsetting, or a loss. it IS a loss, in a way, but it's also a recovery. separating a bit from things that are damaging us is needed at times). tbh it would be very easy to quit posting it altogether except i do by habit and i have tons of stuff saved, plus trusted mutuals, so i don't have to go looking for it, which means i never have to engage directly anymore or look at tags, and that's for the better.

in regards to changing content, i've been open about the fact that this blog was initially a desperate coping mechanism and a way of dealing with stuff, so the hyperfocus was different, but as time has passed and i've unexpectedly gotten to spend more of it here than i thought i'd have, i've been able to release that and relax a bit and bring more of a kaleidoscope in. it's still not exactly as reflective of me or as curated for a variety of things and more purposefully aesthetically built like my old blog was, but i do feel more at ease and more of a sense of authenticity and comfort with a variety of things i love. thank you for your sweet comment about that too! 💕

the good news is this - your blog is YOURS! you can post whatever you want! whatever makes you happy! so if you need a break from one certain thing or want to start blogging about victorian button collections and cute animal videos, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't! you're not obligated to post anything for an audience (i know that can be hard to remember, my anxiety catches on this all the time, but it's your space! this is our place, we make the rules, as someone once wrote. <333) the friends who care about you and enjoy your presence will stick around, and it's most important that you're looking out for your well-being. it's your garden to tend and your beautiful blossoms to grow.

[silvysartfulness]

I've gotten a whole bunch of new followers since I started making The Untamed content about a year ago, and I think it may be a good time to introduce myself and this blog to the newcomers.

Hi! ♥

I'm glad you find this chaotic mess entertaining enough to want to stick around!

That said, if you don't feel comfortable with who I am and/or what I post, just unfollow at any time, no explanations needed.

I'm Silvy, I'm a Fandom Old, 40+, and have been involved in online fandom since the late 90ies.

I'm neurodivergent, Aspie/ADHD and some spare change. I hyperfocus on things, and love to analyze fictional characters and tropes, especially things to do with the messiness and complexities of human nature and emotion. At the moment, as should be obvious, I live in the The Untamed universe, especially the Yi City corner. (You don't get emotions much messier and more complex than that!)

I have always been fascinated by ”villains” - the people who don't act like others do, who are different, and who hurt people, sometimes without meaning to. (Sometimes very much meaning to.)

I love redemption arcs. I've grown to realize there's a this recent phenomenon happening online where people claim certain fictional characters don't ”deserve” them. I think that's utter bullshit, and an extremely negative and destructive mindset to have. People should always have the chance to change and do better. Everyone makes mistakes. Some worse than others. But while no one ”deserves” forgiveness, unless it's freely given, everyone should have the chance to change, move on and be better.

I have always been fascinated by fiction as a medium to explore the messiness of humanity. Of how people hurt each other and heal each other and grow either way. The mess of who people end up loving, or hating, or - bittersweetly - both at once. In my opinion, that is the very purpose of fiction – the mirror held up to explore our own humanity, without suffering any of the negative consequences of reality. Yes, that includes the really problematic stuff. Yes, all the problematic stuff. Fiction is not reality.

I have 100% understanding for people who don't want to watch or read certain things – don't self-harm by engaging with content and creators that makes you angry and upset! I also have 0% patience with people demanding others conform to their particular standards of purity. It's everyone's responsibility to curate their own online experience. Haters will be blocked.

I'm queer (no, queer is not a slur.) Non-straight, asexual, married to another woman for 6 years now. I'd say a majority of my best friends are trans or otherwise non-cis. If you’re cis and find trans/non-binary/intersex/non-gender conforming etc people strange and frightening, by all means – stick around! I reblog quite a lot of trans-positive content. Maybe it'll offer insights! Any TERF-rhethoric will be blocked and shut down on sight, though. This is a safe space.

I'm Swedish. Socialism works. Just saying. 👍

These are simple facts – if any of the above is a dealbreaker, just click unfollow and everyone will probably be happier in the long run. :)

The less problematic stuff: I'm a professional illustrator, though currently on more or less permanent sick leave. Despite sometimes crippling social anxiety, I also ended up teaching art classes - Life Drawing and Concept Art - at the local university, and was often told I was one of their most popular and well-liked guest teachers. I'm self-taught as a writer, though I am a sponge when it comes to prose and language, so for any skills I have picked up over the years, I can only thank those whose works I have read throughout my life.

I like trying my hand at most creative crafts; painting, woodcarving, glasspainting, pewter pouring, looking to try out resins soon maybe..? I take tons upon tons of pictures. If you know me better, you have probably been exposed to my random ”Look at pretty thing X I saw today!” photo-assault. (It's a love language. ♥)

I used to study archaeology at university for years, before sidling over into a creative career as a museum-illustrator, and then onward to other projects from there. It's amazing what a 100.000+ year view on humanity will do for your sense of perspective! People are people. People have always been people. We are all one people - and diversity in culture, ethnicity and language is one of the most beautiful arts of our human race. Our differences and samenesses always to be equally celebrated. (Now if we could only get better at looking back and learn from previous civilizations' mistakes so we'd stop repeating them...)

I like cats. And betta fish. And purple roses (I used to collect purple rose cultivars, before I got too fatigued to be able to take care of my garden properly. Some still live! Rhapsody In Blue is a trooper, if you want a really hardy purple rose! They can even live in pots, if you don't have a garden.)

(See, I told you I could never resist a chance to share a photo...)

I am very, very forgetful. I got my neurodivergence diagnoses very late in life, and by then my brain was so burned out, it's permanently damaged. Fatigue, memory problems and concentration issues are things I always struggle with. If I ghost you, it's not because I'm upset or dislike you – I either missed your message, or forgot about it, or just didn’t know what to say. I'm sorry. I'm trying my best. ♥

I believe in kindness.

I try to be kind and understanding, and meet others with patience. It's taken me a lifetime fraught with generous amounts of trauma to learn to feel strong, comfortable and mostly at peace with myself, and I have very little interest in conflict or drama.

That's about it, Silvy all summed up.

Wishing all you a happy weekend!