#making myself a tumblr account in 2022 just so i can go on an internet powered nostalgia trip | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

alligatorjesie · 6 months ago

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Hey that's alright you can block me as much as you like but it wont change anything man. You said some shit things so I'm going to say some shit things to you.

You know what that's fine we can just repost that whole comment so people can see what a shitass you are @blessyouhawkeye

Hey real quick you do realize that reylo is just a really vanilla ass enemies-to-lovers ship if you have a problem with it well good luck man this shit is literally everywhere in media.

Almost like it's a popular trope. Have you never watched a rom com? Woof. I got some news for you brosph.

but you know what since we're on the tangent of 'weird people' in fandoms let's talk about that for a moment.

You wanna know what's weird? There's a lot of finnreys in the reblogs acting positively feral about their ship not being canon

(which idk I watched TRoS that was pretty open ended if your still mad about reylo by the end of that movie that shits on you)

and upset they don't have book deals like the reylos but IDK man maybe the reason finnreys ain't got book deals is because they spend all their time online bitching about how their ship got shafted instead of writing that fucking fanfiction.

You know when the reylos got shafted with the shit show that was EP9 instead of spending the next 3 years complaining they just trucked along in their own fucking sandbox completing their own fucking projects for their own fucking friends.

Fuck Disney we'll make our own reylo with blackjack and hookers and sex scenes.

You mean to tell us you've had more problems with reylos who were just excited to see the story concepts they predicted from The Force Awakens coming true in The Last Jedi and making positive content to reflect that joy compared to the actual nazis on YouTube who flood the platforms with 3 hour long hate videos over how Bree Larson is somehow personally responsible for their dicks falling off?

You remember that one time ethan van sciver said he wanted to kill Chinese people? He's a really popular star wars/comic book YouTuber and he's way more problematic than anyone I've ever met in the reylo fandom.

And guess what he also hates reylo what a shock!

You wanna talk about some unhinged weird behavior allow me to direct you at a rabid finnrey who has told me graphically to kill myself at least 5 times now for the sin of enjoying the wrong part of star wars according to them.

That shits fucking unhinged

Here's some of those death threats these are 100% real by the way:

Obviously Death Threat Warning some of these are quite gnarly.

This user still has an active account.

I've reported them several times but I sometimes feel like the only thing that will get you banned on this hellsite is being trans I swear to fucking god.

This user has spent over 7 years shit posting hate directly into the reylo fandom's tag instead of doing literally anything else to make their own fandom more enjoyable for themselves.

That's weird shit.

What has been hellish is being in this fandom for over 9 years and dealing with the amount of uncalled for vitriol at this very fucking plain flavor baby's first enemies-to-lovers ship.

I only started keeping track of the death threats back in September 2022

It's not even been a full 2 years and I'm nearing 1000.

This is the header for my Tumblr. This is a real number by the way I have every death threat I've gotten since starting this documented on my computer.

It's actually 955 because thepettycunt here just sent me a new death threat so now I gotta update the banner.

fun!

One day I'll make a master post.

Today is not that day.

But let's be very honest here the real number of death threats I've personally gotten are well into multiple thousands across multiple platforms over 9 years.

Just for enjoying reylo.

And I'm a furry and have been since the 90s. I'm use to being told to kill myself from strangers on the internet so color me confused when I join this really basic bitch of a fandom ship only to find the hate towards it somehow fucking worse.

That's some fucking weird unhinged shit.

I know you made this shit post just to be a shit poster so don't take this too personally I'm sure at this point you already think I'm unhinged and rightfully so

maybe I am

but after the 100th death threat I just stopped giving a fuck so you'll just have to forgive me but it's real buck ass wild to be called 'weird' when I've never sent death threats to people over fictional ships and none of my reylo friends have done that shit either but I am almost 99% sure if you look though the history of any single person who reblogged this post bitching about reylo you'll find they have a history of doing that shit.

You can pick any one. Odds are they have anti reylo posts going years back and at worst some of them have straight up told people in this fandom to kill themselves.

I can look through YOUR history OP and see You're a huge pile of shit towards reylos!

Go on pick one out at random and have a go. It's a fun horrible way to spend a afternoon.

And before anyone brings it up because people who hate reylo always do;

'what about that one time reylos harassed John Boye-'

a group of women telling John Boyega the things he's saying are sexist towards his female coworker who had already been harassed off social media a few years prior and asking him to do better isn't the harassment you think it is.

You can find that 'reaction' video John made to the reylos on google and watch it yourself. No one is being racist but they are all asking him to stop making sex jokes on his female coworkers behalf and expressing disappointment in him. In fact he even had to reused quite a few of the quotes because I think about halfway through making the video he realized he just didn't have that much material and the things people were saying were pretty fucking mild.

And I'm not sorry. Asking a adult man to hold himself accountable for the shit he says is not on the same level as the far fucking worse shit the over arching star wars fandom has done well before reylo was even a twinkle in anyone's eye

Lastly one more thing and I'm done I swear and I'm going to apologize in advance because I'm gonna sound really spicy and I guess I kinda am but not in a mean way more in a really fucking confused way

but what the fuck do you mean jenny nicholsons reylo videos are unhinged?

They're the fucking same as the rest of her videos.

Is there something less unhinged about a nearly 4 hour long video about a failed fantasy RPG theme park over a 1 hour long video about how star wars episode 9 was absolute dogshit?

Jenny makes cringe videos about cringe shit. That's her brand.

She's voiced her enjoyment of reylo very early on... I think back in The Force Awakens days? So why are you surprised she would talk about the subject at length in detail? She bought a stuffed porg larger than herself and documented collecting it on video for her channel.

Yeah man she probably likes reylo.

Most people who like TLJ do.

What... what the fuck do you mean her reylo videos specific are unhinged?

I'm sorry but if known racist and sexist YouTuber doomcock can spend 6 hours complaining about TLJ because Rey don't make his dick hard like Luke Skywalker does and he's going to make his refusal to reflect on that issue our fucking problem I don't think Jenny is unhinged for complaining about the inarguably bad movie that was the rise of skywalker for less time than the movie's total runtime.

I'm not even mad I'm just really confused by your statement.

#fandom wank #fandom hate #anti talk #reylo fandom #i've seen plenty of blessyouhawkeyes posts floating around #I didn't realize they were such a huge pile of shit #oh well nothing of value was lost #jenny nicholson #I'm still stuck on how they think jennys videos are unhinged what the flying fuckery

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iturastwordblog-youdidntseethis · 29 days ago

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Op ok so my moots and friends outside of tumblr are slowly finding this account and I feel I have to elaborate on the contents of my own blog why I draw/write what I do. This could also go for anyone else who finds this blog out of curiosity.

For starters, this blog is purely safe for work, no kinks no explicit art/subjects, none of that. I don't mind any people of any age interacting with my account as long is it's sfw on MY account as well. I want the safety to go both ways for me and other people. I as well want people to be able to explore their own tickle-related interests as I did on here, and I do so by posting about wholesome, fluffy content that's comforting, which is purely what corresponds with me as a person, leading onto point 2.

Getting personal here, I have absolutely 0 friends outside of my internet life. I stopped making friends around my junior year after too many just stopped or drifted apart from me, and the thought of just losing another person who knows me irl just kind of numbs me. And I've graduated. And the downside of going to a school in a different town is not knowing anyone at the town you live in. So I'm an anti social mess that just spends most of my time at home or at work, or being outside and exploring if it's warm enough.

Having no outside relationships is something I've gotten used to, but on a personal level, I am a sad touch-starved piece of shit who just enjoys the thought of the physical touch love language, (as well as some gift giving, but, like I said, no irl friends to give gifts to.)

Lore time. My curiosity kind of sprouted back in uh... 6th grade I think. Watching yt videos and looking at art on Google in secret and remembering I felt kinda uncomfortable at the kinks?

Eventually I made this blog around 2022.. I think. Was never active, but at the time I was very into the DSMP, loved it, but I am upset I joined that fandom so late. But, out of curiosity, I decided to come here and search "DSMP tickle" and that set everything into motion for me. I saw fanfics, art, headcanons and that was the spark that lit everything to me. I can thank that wonderful side of the DSMP for unleashing myself and allowing me to step out of my comfort zone, making a dsmp-sona (which is now Itura but in my personal fantasy SMP) and molding at her lore.

I loved being apart of the dsml tickle side of it all, making friends and such, but eventually, the members of the dsmp started to get bad reps and I eventually stepped back from the fandom and created and planned out my own fantasy SMP, the WingSMP. I very much want to make it real in the far future, but right now, all I have is two ocs and my boyfriend's Oc. I still need to expose the basic lore.

But at the same time, I continued to make tickle content and still earned followers while doing so. I'm proud of the amount of followers I have now, and I hope that more people would like to make their own WingSMP ocs or become tword art mutuals, just drawing each other's ocs back and forth.

Yeah. I'm touch starved, I wanna be platonically cuddled/held/tickled just so I actually feel physically comforted for the first time since, what, 2nd grade? Mental and emotional comfort is just numb to me at this point. "You're doing a great job!" "I'm proud of you!" "You don't have anything to be sorry for!" Is all just in one ear out the other. I just wanna be tickled from time to time (And mayyybe with some teases >///>) and just given aftercare once it's over. I find that the purest form of comfort in my opinion and I want to experience it. Am I cringe for wanting this? Absolutely. Am I embarrassed to be admitting all of this to anyone who sees this. Without a doubt. But to those who ever come across this, whether it's from tiktok, discord or some other platform, at least knowing this may help better understand one of my more hidden secrets.

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wisecrackingeric-2 · 11 months ago

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Oooooooooo. Oh no. I’m breaking my super mysterious persona to use tumblr as a personal trauma dumping diary aur naur !!!!!!!! Uh vent under cut but I really R E A L L Y Need to reiterate I’m not looking for pity or sympathy at all I just need a place to write all this down!!!!!! If you have advice ofc that’s always welcome but I’m not trying to centre myself at all or make anything about me I just need a space to vent !!!!!

I’m obviously not the first person to say this but I REALLY REALLY HATE the passage of time. I hate that it’s almost the new years and all of my art and posts and other peoples art is gonna be from last year or just have the ‘2023’ label on it. I hate that people are going to move on from my interests and I am TERRIFIED that IIIIIII may also move on. That scares me so unbelievably bad. I hate it so so much I hate that I can’t just pause time or pause my anxiety or autism or ocd to make me stop worrying for two seconds. I hate that so many things are gonna be in the past- like what do you MEAN re4r is gonna be a YEAR OLD in March of next year???????? I cant do that shit man!!!!!!! I can’t see people move on!!!!!!!!!

I HATE being reminded of how fickle everything is so so so SO much. Everytime E V E R Y T I M E something good happens to me, it’s paired with something bad- literally every time without fail. I hate that I can’t enjoy those good things cuz I’m subconsciously constantly waiting for something bad to happen.

For the first time since I came out to my parents in March 2022 I feel like I actually have a future to look forward to. I feel like I actually have things to work towards!!!!!! Projects I can start!!!!!!!! Friends to enjoy them with!!! Things to be EXCITED about!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But then like clockwork I’m brutally reminded of the fact that that could all come crashing down and all of my friends could dissapear off of the face of tumblr forever and it’s all fickle and delicate and why should I enjoy the present if I know bad things are gonna come right after???????????

I hate that this thing that’s brought me comfort and security in my life is so delicate. I could get hate crimed and ran off the internet like what happened on Twitter, my account could get deleted, Etc etc-

And worst of all I could loose my friends in the blink of an eye. They could take a break one day and never return. Something could happen to them and I’d never know. They could leave tumblr forever with no warning and I’d have no way of contacting them whatsoever. It’s happened before to me and it caused me SO much anxiety. I’ve had friends who’ve gone on breaks only to pass away and it leaves me wishing I’d DONE ANYTHING to help them or wishing that I spent more time with them or told them I loved them just a lil mroe

I’ve been so stressed out trying to finish as much stuff as I can before the end of the year cuz of arbitrary rules I’ve set for myself. This is the first time I get to be excited for the future yet I’m constantly knocked down and reminded WHY I SHOULDNT be excited.

Everything’s moving on and everything’s so delicate it could all slip away from me in a the blink of an eye and getting to the end of the year and seeing friends take breaks or say that they may have to leave for whatever reason is only making that anxiety worse.

Not to mention my goddamn parents got a divorce. I havent talked about it hete often cuz I feel like if I did it’d be all I talked about NDNEHENEJWN but it’s taken a MASSIVE toll on me. The fact that they’ll never be the same and I’ll never feel completely secure in life ever again has taken its toll on me.

I hate that there’s no solution to this. ‘Just move on/keep going in spite’ doesn’t work for me. I don’t WANT things to move on I don’t WANT things to change I don’t WANT to loose my friends and the community I’ve worked so hard to build and everything I’ve created again. I don’t wanna move on and it hurts so bad.

I don’t want the new years to roll around.

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erinabear · 1 year ago

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I think

I'm going to get back into blogging. It feels like the right thing to do.

If you had told me when I was 15 that in 15 years I'd be back on tumblr posting about my life at 3 a.m., I'd have called you a fucking liar.

I honestly don't even remember who follows me on here. So, quick life update, I guess?

I now have two cats. I went vegan for four years and now I'm back to an omnivorous diet (Kerrygold Irish butter is the greatest luxury in my life). I've been on strike from my job for over a year now. I dropped out of social work grad school in February and I don't know if I'm going back. I got a part-time job at a bakery in the spring and promptly was fired from that. I have dealt with more emotional chaos in my personal life in the past two years than maybe for all of the rest of my twenties combined.

Now, there are good things. My cats are still the best, I've never liked myself more, I'm a better friend, I have found myself the loveliest little community in my city, I'm out as bisexual and dating women for the first time, I live alone in a huge apartment, I wore a string bikini for the first time this summer, I just bought a ukulele, and I started getting back into learning embroidery. I haven't had a bipolar episode since summer 2022.

All things considered, I kind of constantly feel like I'm on the edge of a breakdown, and I've been self-medicating with weed and alcohol. It feels like it's time for a change and to dig myself out of the mental mess I've gotten myself into.

I'm posting here as accountability, partly, and also because I miss just writing for writing's sake. I'm trying to start small -- moving my mental energy from Instagram (which is so bad for my body dysmorphia, holy shit) to this website and making daily and weekly chore lists to (mostly) follow so I can be a little bit less of a slob in my day to day life.

Maybe I'm projecting because of what I'm doing here, but it feels like social media is kind of collapsing alongside the rest of society, and I have this hope that remnants of the old internet will return -- people splintering off into their own niche interest groups and forming communities that way.

Anyway, all of this is to say: I'm 30 years old and I've completely lost the plot. I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing anymore. I don't think I ever really did. And yes, I'm gonna get all astrological in this space -- it's not lost on me that I'm in the middle of my Saturn return. Transformation, big life changes, sometimes chaos and struggle, becoming who you're meant to be. Things won't be like this forever. I hope.

#personal #saturn return #astrology #bipolar #mental health

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raccooncourt · 1 year ago

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The Magnus Archives is just Gossip Girl but Spooky (A Raccoon Court Case)

I wrote this essay as my argument for my podcast (which you can listen to here!), but I feel like the TMA tumblr community will get a kick out of it. Enjoy!

OPENING ARGUMENT

Hi, my name is Mel, and today I will be defending myself against the claim that “I believe The Magnus Archives is just Gossip Girl but horror.”

Hey Upper East Siders - Today, I would like to open with an honest admittance - I simply do not know what our audience is into. Usually, I just get put on trial for things I enjoy and hope that someone out there can relate. I’m not sure if the trash collectors are fans of both Gossip Girl and The Magnus Archives, but I am and so is Jess, and thats enough for me. If you are familiar with both of these franchises, I imagine that you are yelling into the void right now, screaming and crying and throwing up over how I could make such a controversial yet brave statement. That’s exactly how I felt when my best friend and co-historian of Gay Britain, Jessica Harkness, posited, “isn’t Gossip Girl just the Eye?” over zoom one night in January of 2022. This revelation truly rocked my world, and after further consideration, I have decided to explore all of the ways in which The Magnus Archives is just Spooky Gossip Girl.

In this case, I will identify the similarities between the omnipresent life ruining forces that are Gossip Girl and The Eye, the ways in which money and prestige are powerful enough to destroy anyone’s life, and the impulse of general public to snitch on everyone at all times.

Is London just a spooky version of Manhattan? Are rich white people the root of most evils? Did anyone actually have control over their future or was it all decided for them by forces unknown? These questions and more will all be answered in my analysis so stay tuned.

Defense case-in-chief

Members of the jury, I believe that The Magnus Archives is just Spooky Gossip Girl for a variety of reasons, but before we begin, I will provide a summary of both Gossip Girl and The Magnus Archives in case any members of the jury are unfamiliar.

Running from 2007 to 2012 on the CW, Gossip Girl was a targeted critique and celebration of the exorbitant wealth guarded by the upper east side elite of New York City. In the show, we follow a group of teenagers who go to private school together, some wealthy and some on scholarship, as they navigate the intense pressures of NYC high society. This would be a normal rich teen drama if not for the existence of Gossip Girl, a blog/messaging service that collects and distributes tea about the students. The messages are basically just 2007’s version of getting twitter notifications for a gossip account. Over time, Gossip Girl bullies teens, causes infighting, endorses taking advantage of others, and exposes a number of social and literal crimes. Over the course of 6 seasons, we explore the impact that gossip, money, constant surveillance, and the internet has on the livelihoods of the Upper East Siders, from the snotty teenagers to their prestigious families.

Now, The Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by rusty quill, licensed under a creative commons non-attribution sharealike 4.0 international license, written and performed by Jonathan Sims, and directed by Alexander J Newall. This short form audio drama, produced from 2015 to 2021, follows Jonathan Sims, the newly appointed head archivist of The Magnus Institute in London. Jon’s primary task is to organize and digitize the statements given to the institute with the help of three assistants, most of which which we hear throughout the podcast. While the statements are originally written off as the ramblings of lunatics, it soon becomes clear that the paranormal stories given in the statements hold some truth to them. Eventually, the paranormal aspects of the statements are revealed to be the manifestation of the world’s worst fears. In an unfortunate turn of events, Jon becomes an avatar of The Eye, which is the fear of being watched and surveilled and known, and unwillingly brings about the end of the world. The show focuses mainly on the ways in which we are shaped and guided by our fears as well as the issues of predetermination and fate when it comes to our decisions. While Jon and his coworkers/lover try to save the world, we get to explore guilt, responsibility, and determining the fate of others without their consent.

Both of these shows obviously rely on group efforts to source information and power for the entity that rules (Gossip Girl and the Eye respectively), but neither Gossip Girl nor the Eye actually does the heavy lifting in their operations. Through a variety of tactics, these two entities collect information constantly without doing much work themselves. This is the key to their success as harmful information spreading powers. In this section, I will catalog how these powers surveilled their targets before we dive into how that information was used against others.

Gossip Girl starts out small, with Lonely Boy Dan Humphrey at the helm. In the first season, Dan reports on drama happening at the small private school that the main cast attends. Members of the school are encouraged to report on any suspicious behavior that they see their classmates partaking in. Their reward is not monetary - instead, they ride the high of being credited as an informant in a Gossip Girl post. Teenagers are cruel and short-sited, so it makes sense that they would chase the high of this notoriety without considering the impacts that the drama had on their fellow classmates. This demographic of informants was insatiable - they demanded to know everything that was going on in the lives of their classmates and they were going to help expose them in any way possible. However, while the early Gossip Girl posts merely reported on what students saw other students getting up to, it wasn’t long before Gossip Girl began weaponizing the drama (real or otherwise) to ruin lives. Throughout the show, we watch Dan and Georgina collect any information from the now sycophantic following that Gossip Girl had amassed. This information was not fact checked or considered. Anything went. Something as innocent as spotting Serena Van Der Woodsen outside of an apartment building could be spun to insinuate that she’s back into drugs. Regardless of whether it is true or not, Gossip Girl specialized in character assassination, and even when they didn't have proof, it didn’t matter. The damage done by Gossip Girl in some cases was irreparable - Jenny has to pack her bags and move away to escape constant harassment, Nate nearly goes to jail for drug possession instead of his dad, and Chuck and Blair get in a car accident that causes Blair to lose her baby. Real people were getting hurt, and in the end that was the high that Dan was chasing. He wanted to ruin lives, and his following was willing to help him do so even if it could hurt them just as easily. Dan never needed to rely on hacking security cameras or following people himself - the members of the Upper East Side community and those adjacent to them observed and reported back without any real incentive. It’s fun to speculate about people’s lives, especially when you can distance yourself from the fact that those people are real people, not just social objects for us to gawk over and pick apart. Gossip Girl shows us just how eager even the nice, good people are to publicly scrutinize others without turning that scrutiny on themselves.

Dan finds people to run surveillance for him, but he still partakes in the evil of celebrity shaming. The important part to remember about wielding power gained through surveillance is detaching yourself from those you hold power over, and Dan succeeds at doing so. Gossip Girl becomes a money making venture for Dan, one where he no longer cares about whether his only friends are hurt in the process of his successes. He truly becomes Gossip Girl rather than a real human being. Not only that, but Dan fully commits his life to Gossip Girl’s cause, which is the celebrity gossip economy. While Dan may believe that he is doing something revolutionary by exposing the Upper East Side, he is really just feeding into the mass market we have created for celebrity monitoring and surveilance. It doesn’t matter if it is paparazzi, TMZ, or Gossip Girl, they all serve this bigger purpose. In this way, the show Gossip Girl is identical in framework to The Magnus Archives. In the world of The Magnus Archives, The Eye acts as spooky Gossip Girl, collecting as much information as it can on the fears and secrets of everyone. In The Magnus Archives, one of the 14 majors fears is manifested as The Eye or the fear of being watched and known, the fear of having no secrets. The more information and secrets that The Eye knows, the more fear it sees and the more power it can wield over the general population. It can specialize the way it attacks it's victims the more it knows about them, so the major goal of The Eye is to know as much as possible. Like Gossip Girl, The Eye can’t do this on it’s own, and instead relies on a variety of mechanisms to gain it’s information. Primarily (as far as is discussed in the podcast), The Eye is fed through statements given to The Magnus Institute by people who have been touched by other fears. People who have been haunted by their fears come into the institute, desperate for someone to listen to them, to validate their insane experience, and to make it stop. While the Gossip Girl informants also just wanted to be heard and to be a part of something, those informants weren’t all being tormented by the thing they were reporting back to. The Eye also collects information through the physical eyes of it’s avatars and employees (and maybe any eyes in paintings too?). At the Magnus Institute, once employees are hired to the archive, they are forever tied to The Eye. While all of them work for The Eye, it is the Archivist that becomes the most important worker and acts as the avatar of this fear. Whether knowingly or not, the archival employees purpose in life quickly becomes to collect information and report back. Their service can only be ended through blinding themselves or dying or maybe killing the Archivist, inherently ruining all of their lives in the name of knowledge. The avatars that serve The Eye vary in their willingness to serve. Throughout the series, we see the ways in which Elias Bouchard (DILF)/Jonah Magnus (Not a DILF) have no boundaries when it comes to collecting information for their master. They don’t care if any of their employees die in the greater search for knowledge and actually they will actively put them in harms way if it means getting closer to completing the Watcher’s Crown. That is contrasted by employees like Melanie King, who gouges her eyes out in order to break her terms of service. Here is a key aspect in which TMA ratchets up the horror aspect of the Gossip Girl playbook. While Gossip Girl gains information through willing participants snitching on unwilling participants, The Eye commands unwilling participants to snitch on unwilling participants. The added layer of nonconsensual abuse that The Eye relies on makes it much spookier. Both shows expose our desire to be heard, whether it is airing our worst nightmares or talking about someone you saw cheating on their boyfriend - we need to share these thoughts with others regardless of the impacts, and both Gossip Girl and The Eye relied on this human need to ruin lives.

Now, let’s look at how surveillance and the congregation of information by one all seeing party is used to manipulate others in both of these shows in a way that is vital to the plot and messaging of the show.

I’m not going to belabor the obvious point here - both of these shows are about white men using information to control everyone in their community to everyone’s detriment, and before you say “but mel! Elias Bouchard/Jonah Magnus isn’t ever physically described. How do you know he is a white man?” Guys, he is the literal physical embodiment of capitalism and constrictive, all knowing governments. Of course, he is a white guy. Anyway, this is the basis of these shows, and they would have no story if not for this unifying theme. What ties these two shows is the need to surveil and report back to a greater power, who then uses information to ruin lives and inform fear. Gossip Girl fails to exist without the inclusion of constant surveillance. If we didn’t have the omniscient internet god that was weasel faced Dan Humphreys, Gossip Girl would’ve just been a show about vapid rich kids complaining - I have no interest in that show. Instead, we get to see how people lose their agency and their minds when other people have the ability to scrutinize their actions out of context. Throughout the show, we watch Gossip Girl utilize surveillance to ruin lives - not only the lives of those targeted by the texts and posts, but also the lives of the informants. These young teens (and sometimes adults) became completely obsessed with getting whatever information they could to send to Gossip Girl. They became addicted and were willing to endanger themselves to get the scoop for literally no reward. Even though no one was safe from Gossip Girl’s targeted shots, no one, not even the adults, could resist the rush that came from submitting a tip that Gossip Girl used. In the end, they couldn’t even help themselves by destroying the entity that ran their life. Our addiction to knowing and judging is our downfall, and that’s the message of Gossip Girl. The happy and bizarre endings we see for the main cast in Gossip Girl only occur when Gossip Girl is exposed and shut down. Dan comes clean and gives a pretty shitty apology/explanation for his actions and the group can move one with the master manipulator Gossip Girl finally retired.

The Magnus Archives is also a show that ceases to exist if you remove the powers of surveillance. If The Eye didn’t collect information, it would have no need for the archival staff and we would have literally no show. Easy as that. Instead, we get to delve into humanity’s darkest fears and the ways in which fear motivates us and ruins our lives. The difference between Gossip Girl and The Eye however comes when we discuss the motivations for collecting and using the information. The Eye’s sole purpose is to sow fear and feed off of the destruction of lives. Gossip Girl aims to destroy lives and manipulate/profit off of the Upper East Side, and the fear of being watched is a nice by product.

There is a similarity in message between these two shows that goes beyond just cautionary tales about surveillance. The message may be partially to fear everyone having access to everything about you, and I believe that is a wise moral. However, these shows deal with more than just the fear of being watched - they dive into the ethics of using that information to change the lives of others. Dan originally is trying to gain justice for the unfair ways in which his peers were acting - putting others down, cheating on their partners, and beliving that poor people were useless. However, the power corrupted him, as it usually does, and Dan became obsessed with controlling people through blackmail and their fear of being exposed from his safety in the Brooklyn Poverty Loft (TM Mike’s Mic). Years go by in this dystopian hell where Gossip Girl is in complete control over the lives of the Upper East Side. Now, in the end, Gossip Girl doesn’t win. Dan realizes how fucked up everything he did was (way too late in my opinion, but thats besides the point). In the last episode of Gossip Girl, Dan sacrifices his social life and reputation to start making up for his mistakes. He allows his best friend to break the story that he is Gossip Girl, and he personally apologizes to the main cast, knowing that he likely will be shunned for all the shit he did. This desire to fall on your sword and sacrifice yourself to save others from a future of survielence hell actually is the main message - if you fuck up this bad by abusing the excess of information at your fingertips, you can prevent it from happening in the future, or at least stop the issues you have created yourself. Obviously, Gossip Girl could come back (and she does in the new series of Gossip Girl), but Dan realized that he didn’t need to keep it going. If he quit and exposed himself, at least he could stop the madness for a little while.

Surprisingly, a nearly identical ending occurs in The Magnus Archives. Despite his best efforts, Jon (now the avatar - the Archivist) acts as an unwilling participant in the bringing of the end of the world. Not just a metaphorical end of the world - the literal end of the world. The fears take over the planet and divide it’s inhabitants into those who watch and those who are watched. The latter of the two is doomed to live through their worst nightmares for the rest of eternity. Now, you can make the argument that Dan chose to be shitty while Jon did not - and I agree. If that’s really gonna make or break this argument for you, we can use Jonah Magnus, who did make the choice to bring about the apocalypse. Jon, however, at fault or not, knows that his actions in the past ruined lives and he has a chance to potentially fix it. Over the last season of the podcast, Jon and his boyfriend Martin make their way back to London through the fear domains. Once in London, they realize that Jonah has become The Eye - he is no longer human and is just a fear. The boyfriends are informed that there are a couple of theories as to how they can reverse the end of the world - Jon can kill Jonah and become the eye himself, trying to fix the world from the highest point of power OR they can destroy the eye and banish the fears to another world. There is a ton of super interesting discourse about these options in the last few episodes, but the group agrees to banish the fears.

Jon, the love of my life, then makes a decision for the group. As a believer that it is his mistake that caused the fears and his desire not to doom another world for the sake of his own, Jon decides to become the eye and destroy the entire world - fears and people involved. He is in his Eren Jager in S4 of Attack on Titan era. This decision and commitment to Jon’s selfish line of thinking best lines up to Dan at peak Gossip Girl / Famous Author times when he goes behind the back of his team to chose his plan - becoming the fear and trying to fix it himself. This is a mistake, and in the end, Jon convinces Martin to kill him in order to banish the fears. The team knows that the fears will likely do this to another world, in the same way that someone was likely to pick up the Gossip Girl mantel - BUT they did what they would to stop the immediate suffering. Obviously, this is Spooky Gossip Girl, so Jon and Martin sacrifice themselves literally and not metaphorically like Dan does. However, it reinforces the message that when you have the power to influence and control people, you always have the opportunity to change their lives for the better and fix your mistakes. Just because you have all of the information doesn’t mean that you can’t give it all up to protect others.

These two shows are inherently examinations on agency and our ability to chose what happens to us. In both The Magnus Archives and Gossip Girl, the fate and life plan of the main characters is relatively set in stone and chosen for them from an early age. In many ways, their actions and the hell that they must live through are predetermined by the bigger powers.

In Gossip Girl, as with many shows dealing with rich and powerful families, one of the main non-Gossip Girl caused conflicts revolves around predetermined fate. The rich families set out the life plan of their children from birth - where they will go to school, where they will go to college, what they will study, what families they will marry into. The children are expected to follow this plan and join their parents in upholding the family business and the family legacy. Some of the children chose to follow these plans, like Chuck Bass who follows his father’s footsteps by purchasing and managing high scale hotels (but then does end up murdering his father so ¯\(ツ)/¯ ). Some of the children fail to follow the steps but execute the plan, like Blaire Waldorf who doesn’t get into Yale but does end up running a successful fashion line just like her mom. And then, there are the kids who just don’t follow the plan at all, like Nate Archebald who ends up running a newspaper and puts his dad in jail. This variety in how parents deciding on fate actually plays out is not a new story.

In the show, we also see some levels of fate come into play when we look at Gossip Girl himself. Dan originally uses his power as Gossip Girl to try and hold the elite accountable for their shitty behavior. He tries to break into the upper levels of society, but is told that even if he were to enter the Upper East Side, he would never really be a part of it. This ends up becoming true. As Dan recognizes his ability to manipulate public opinion in his favor, he collects information from the public with the explicit goal of character assassination. He can’t even help himself. He believes that he is in control, when in reality he is a victim to our obsession with celebrity. He becomes well known but he never becomes one of the Upper East Side because he ruined their lives. He isn't in control. In Gossip Girl, Dan acts as the collector and abuser of knowledge, organizing the statements that his followers bring him and weaponizing them, but in the end, his work serves the insane economy of celebrity judgement that ruins lives daily.

Now, in TMA, we deal much more concretely in the ideas of predestination and fate as not expectations that parents and friends put on us but as actual forces in the world. Employees of the archive collect information to serve the Eye. While they believe that they are in control of their lives and their motivations, all along the Eye is compelling them to seek knowledge. Even when anyone in the archive thinks about quitting, they just can’t bring themselves to do it.

Throughout the podcast, we see this predestination of “service to the Eye” observed in a variety of ways. Jon, the Archivist, becomes an avatar of the Eye just as was planned for him (we will discuss this more later). Martin fails to follow the steps but executes the plan nonetheless. Rather than staying as a sole employee of The Eye, he is also working for the Lonely but refuses to help the Lonely hurt the Eye. In the end, he completes his work as an avatar by giving Elias/Jonah valuable information on Peter Lucas and his attempt at completing a Lonely ritual. Then, we have employees that refused their fate, like Tim who dies stopping one of the other fears or Melanie who gouges her eyes out. Even when fate is undeniable, we see it take different forms in two it controls the lives of the characters.

Let’s get back to Jon. Jon, the love of my life, is partially predestined for his future and partially responsible for it. As a kid, Jon was marked by The Web, one of the other 14 fears, when he read the Lietner “A Guest for Mr. Spider” and then watched his bully get pulled into a magical door and is never seen again. Jonah Magnus, when looking for an Archivist to make into an Avatar, knew that they would only be powerful enough to work if they were marked by all of the fears. Now, Jon wasn’t special because he was marked by one fear - plenty of people were marked by a fear. However, the show does bring up the fact that he was picked for this job even when there were other, way more qualified people who applied, like Sasha who also worked at the Institute. This implies that Jon was always going to be picked, none of the other applicants ever had a chance because he was picked despite not having any relevant experience. Throughout the show, the Eye continues to force Jon into being marked by all of the fears so he can complete The Watcher’s Crown.

TMA 160 → https://snarp.github.io/magnus_archives_transcripts/episode/160.html

Once he is the archivist, we see him fight to decipher what is him and what is the eye. We actually see this to a degree with all of the staff, because once they realize who they are working for, they realize that they have no power to leave. While Jon (the Archivist) realizes that The Eye is evil, he cannot bring himself to stop working for it. Jon tells his boss that he never chose to be an avatar, to serve a fear, to which his boss says this -

Whether Jon ever had a chance to leave and to not chose this life, we have no idea. This could just be Elias being a shithead and deflecting. However, we see Jon become unable to leave when he realizes that you can become freed by blinding yourself. Melanie was strong enough to do so, but Jon was not.

And because of this, he inadvertently ended the world. Depending on where you are in the show, you will see very different versions of Jon. Sometimes, he feels no guilt for his actions because he knows they are controlled by the eye. Other times, like when he doomed the world or Tim and Sasha die, he decides to accept those actions as his own even when they were not. It’s a very interesting look into choice and blame that I think both of these shows look into.

Obviously, this example is way too spooky for Gossip Girl, but the sentiment applies all the same. Various times throughout the show, a main character brings up how Gossip Girl is only given power by people giving her material - so, if they stopped giving her material, they could stop her power. However, not one bitch actually stops snitching to Gossip Girl, the detached entity. In ways, both shows follow characters that have issues with taking responsibility with their actions and the ways in which they themselves are ruining lives. Dan essentially says that Gossip Girl would’ve been nothing if people hadn't been obsessed with tea, so its really not his fault that lives were ruined. After all, if people hadn’t done things they were ashamed of, he would’ve had no gossip to spread. Similarly, Jon causes many people incredible pain by reading their minds and mind controlling them and haunting their dreams, writing it off as “feeding the eye.” It doesn’t matter because it wasn’t really his choice. The difference between Dan and Jon in this case is that Jon eventually realizes that it doesn’t matter what is truly his choice - he enjoyed causing fear and knowing these people without their consent and that’s wrong. This discussion of individual fault and responsibility ties nicely into my next point of comparison. In addition, regardless of morality and the desires of the main cast, those with the most money or prestige have the power to determine any aspect of the life of their community. The parents and the rich kids have the most power in Gossip Girl until Dan manages to increase his following and prestige enough that Gossip Girl is in power. In the Magnus Archives, power and prestige are linked in the institute already. The Institute seems to have endless resources and because of that they have endless power. Hiring staff to manipulate and murder is no issue when you have no limits on funds. The police are essentially ignoring all of Elias’s crimes until season 3/4. There was no chance for any opposing forces to silence Gossip Girl or The Eye - they were the ones in ultimate power.

Finally, I would like to touch on a few character comparisons that I feel exemplify how not only the messaging but also the story itself is similar in these two shows.

Let’s start by making a clear distinction between the two people portrayed by Pen Bagley in the series. Originally, we meet “Lonely Boy,” the “poor” kid from Brooklyn going to the private school on a scholarship. He is painted as a total outsider who feels deeply unloved outside of his family. His main goal, whether he admits it or not, is to break into the group of friends that run his school, so he can feel connected and normal. However, Lonely Boy dies as soon as he is accepted into this friend group. In season three, we truly start to meet Dickhead Dan, as I like to refer to him. Rather than the sweet older brother character, Dan becomes selfish, big headed, and self important as soon as he goes to college. For the rest of the show, we watch Dan take out his vendetta against his so-called friends, the only people who really tolerate him in NYC. He weaponizes Gossip Girl to manipulate the lives of his friends until he can finally profit off of it by publishing a tell all novel. Even though Dan had been Gossip Girl the whole time, his intentions originally were just to teach his classmates a lesson on gossip and how harmful it can be. As soon as Dan gained enough social power, he changed his motives and deliberately used surveillance to control every aspect of his friend’s lives before defaming them publicly. Dan sucks. Anyway, I think that this duality can be represented by a few characters in TMA. First off, “Lonely Boy” begins as a guy who has a crush on Serena Van Der Woodsen, a mysterious girl outside of his friend group. Most of Dan’s original motivations are to get Serena to notice him, and eventually, continuous pining worked. I will say that in early seasons of TMA we see this same pattern with Martin and Jon. In the first season, Jon refuses to discuss his personal life or beliefs with his coworkers, remaining a dark academia enigma until a literal worm woman enters their workplace. Martin pines after this man he knows nothing about and stays at his job that sucks in part because this cute mystery boy is there, even when the cure mystery boy accuses him of being a ghost. While I see aspects of Martin in Lonely Boy, mainly the aspect that they are fundamentally lonely despite their best efforts, Dickhead Dan is a total different beast. The secondary, power hungry, selfish version of Dan Humphrey is nearly identical to the character of Jonah Magnus, if Dan could hop between bodies and control people’s minds. I will argue that Dan’s use of information and decision to knowing spread misinformation is a form of manipulation that on the scale of Gossip Girl is a form of brainwashing, so maybe these boys aren't so different after all. Anyway, Jonah Magnus is a servant of The Eye. His whole life’s purpose is to provide the eye with as much information it can about others that it can use to become more powerful. Now, Jonah employs people unknowingly to assist in his work, but he has no care for whether they live or die, much in the same way Dan does. I mean, Dan’s work as Gossip Girl causes his sister to get into drug dealing and exposes how she lost her virginity, which forces her to move to upstate NY just to escape the drama. If you don’t care about what happens to your sister, you probably wouldn’t care if other people were hurt in the same awful ways. In this way, Omnipresent Dan and Jonah are in their basic form the same man. The way that TMA makes it is a little spookier is the fact that Jonah forces people to give him information and the only way to escape is to scoop your own eyes out.

Finally, I want to quickly talk about love interests. Gossip Girl wouldn’t be Gossip Girl if the teens didn’t all have complicated emotional and sexual relationships that breached usual friendship bro code rules. We obviously have pairings that are considered “end game” in Gossip Girl like Chuck and Blair and Dan and Serena. We also have the pairings that overlapped - Jennie and Chuck, Dan and Blair. This intermixing was purely for spectacle in Gossip Girl - most of these pairings were just to shock the audience and keep us interested. In The Magnus Archives, we see this same overlap in relationships and interesting boundaries being broken (i.e. office relationships). Daisy and Basira in my mind are lovers who also happen to be Police Officer partners. It is revealed that in college, Jon and Georgie dated. Later in the seasons, Georgie dates Melanie, who is an employee of Jon’s, and Jon dates Martin. Now, I do not want to make our jury think that I am saying the Jon/Georgie/Melanie/Martin story line is like the Chuck/Blair/Dan/Serena stories except in that there is gay overlap as the seasons go on. How are these honest, beautiful portrayals of different forms of love somehow spookier than the raunchy, debaucherous relationships of Gossip Girl? The relationships of TMA are honest and vulnerable and fragile - and isn’t that the scariest thing a relationship could be?

Closing Argument

Members of the court, today I truly put myself out there by being not only controversial but also brave. I ask that you carefully consider my argument and see that Gossip Girl and The Magnus Archives are basically the same story. The Magnus Archives just adds a little bit of horror through being in London, introducing mind control, and actually manifesting the end of the world. I urge you to see the similarities between Dan and Jonah Magnus, Gossip Girl and the Eye, and the conclusions of both stories. I think it only makes sense that I love both of these pieces of art so much given their near identical structure. Honorable Jury members, do not find me guilty of having a bad opinion today. If you do, I’ll snitch to Gossip Girl AND ask the ceaseless watcher to turn his gaze on you, and that is a threat.

#tma #tma spoilers #tma podcast #jonathan sims #gossip girl #dan humphrey #i would die for martin kartin blackwood #essay #raccoon court #the magnus universe

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hot-take-tournament · 1 year ago

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sorry if my take sounds deeply incomprehensible i just kept going back on submitting it and knew if i didn’t ramble it all out in one take i was gonna chicken out again LMAO

don't worry about it at all!

i think an incoherent infodump every once in a while is good for the soul!

look, if we're being totally candid -

i have pretty severe adhd comorbid with bipolar disorder, which i do my best to mask - yeah yeah, i know you're not supposed to, but i doubt i'll ever truly shake the shame, especially given the things i've done as a result of failing to mask, both online and irl (the latter being much, much worse) - so i've resolved to do it for the rest of my life

i did talk a little bit about what i was like on my main blog here, which you might need for context:

(speaking of which, please don't actually follow or even go to my main blog just because you like this one - i'm 100% fucking serious. i'm a very different person over there to the point of being almost unrecognisable, even to myself - and i guarantee that side of myself wouldn't recognise me either; we're like two parts of a very fucked up whole. so for that reason i want to keep these two blogs separate; like i said, i'm bipolar, so that's where i let the venom out, and when i feel joyful again, i come back here. i'm more active here anyway, to the point where i basically consider this my main blog now - i mean, my bio isn't even up to date over there)

the point is although i plan to mask for the rest of my life, even i'm partial to an unprompted infodump or oversharing session every once in a while

that's the reason i want this blog to be a safe place for people to vent/infodump/just share their wildest takes anonymously, while still having a little fun by making it a tournament - it's partly to atone in a cringe kinda way, but also because this dumbass site has actually been a huge source of support in some of the darker points in my life

it's almost ironic in a weird way - i spent so much time targeting other people for their mental health problems, but when i had some of my own i came crawling back to those same people. maybe karma does exist lol

no, i didn't ever interact with any of them; but just lurking on their blogs and reading their posts helped normalise what i was going through when i felt so alone after receiving my diagnosis; though it was always in the back of my mind that maybe a year earlier i would've seen those same posts and done my level best to make them feel like shit for it just for the sake of a little dopamine hit

i'm a proud airhead, but i'm not naive - i'm not going to lie to you and say that tumblr is a safe space, partly because nowhere on the internet is safe, partly because i've read some of your takes and they terrify me, but mostly because i'm living proof of how awful this site can be

but i do want to at least create one semi-safe place on the internet after ruining so many other people's

jesus i'm fucking crying that's new lol

anyway sorry for taking your incoherent infodump and exchanging it with one of my own, that's probably more info about me than you ever wanted to know

but i hope this provides a little context for why i decided to start this blog

the point i was actually trying to make, because i'm pretty sure i never actually responded to what you were saying - never feel embarassed to submit anything! trust me, i totally get it; but i promise, even when i make jokes about some unhinged takes, it's all light-hearted, and if it ever comes across otherwise, please let me know! <3 <3 <3

i'm gonna take a quick break, i'll catch up with you all again later

#i'm absolutely serious about what i said about my main blog #that's now a tournament rule #although if you stumble across it in the wild - i've had two posts go viral - i guess it's fine #but strictly no jumping from this blog over to there #tournament updates #asks #tournament info #tumblr

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nenekiribookwyrm · 2 years ago

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CWs: mention of death.

March 2023 Update!

The weather continues to get warmer and my scales are thankful for it. I've had a massive case of cabin fever lately and been itching to go out flying in weather that won't freeze me into a dragon popsicle. Here's the update on what's been going on around the castle this past month.

Firstly, I had a death in the family about halfway through the month that knocked me off-balance in terms of getting things done. Add to that finishing up an intensive project at work and it might not be a surprise that I didn't get much done creatively this month. I'm trying to be patient with myself as I move through the grieving process, but being creative is a big part of how I like to spend my free time. So the last half of March has been a blur and I'm hoping that next month I'll be able to pull myself out of the funk and start making things again.

If you didn't see me talk about it last month, I was recently published in Happy Howlidays: A Furry Short Story Anthology which has a bunch of holiday themed stories and features my story "One Last Winter Ride". I'm pretty proud of how this one turned out and hope that you'll check it out! https://thurstonhowlpub.storenvy.com/products/36440494-happy-howlidays-a-furry-flash-fiction-christmas-anthology

I joined a werewolf themed game jam at the beginning of the month and while I haven't worked on my submission as much as I had anticipated at the beginning of the month, I am still excited to submit whatever I have done. I think I'm going to need to pivot my project into something with a lot smaller scope if I want to submit something complete, but I have a few ideas that might work for that. It's just making sure that I make the time to get those ideas written down. If this sounds cool to you, please check out the list of games once everyone has submitted theirs and play them: https://itch.io/jam/werewolf-jam

The current deadline is April 6th, which is the next full moon, so howl with us as we play some fun indie werewolf experiences.

We're in the middle of Furry Awards Season and the window to vote on your favorite furry books and short stories is closing fast! The Ursa Major Awards close at the end of the month, March 31st and the Coyotl Awards close voting on April 15th. Make sure that you vote and make your voice heard:

https://ursamajorawards.org/Voting.htm

https://coyotlawards.com/2022-coyotl-awards-ballot/

Twitter is going through another death gasp, and with the proposed changes being implemented soon I figured it was a good idea to mention I am other places. You can find me at the links over here: https://nenekiribookwyrm.carrd.co/

It feels like Tumblr and Cohost are going to be the places I post a lot of stuff should Twitter fall, so be sure to check those places if you want to keep up with me on social media.

Contact your representatives! If you live in the United States, there are a ton of anti-trans bills that are being pushed through right now and we need to call our senators and house members to let them know that won't fly. There's also the matter of the Tiktok ban bill, also termed the RESTRICT Act, that is much more than a proposed ban on Tiktok. It has a lot of wide reaching applications that could make privacy on the internet much more difficult in the future. I would recommend reading up on the bill and then calling your reps to let them know how you feel. It's a rough time for LGBTQ+ folks, especially trans people, and we gotta stick together through it.

I've been catching up on reading and as such, I'm posting reviews over to my Goodreads account: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/97223644-nenekiri-bookwyrm

Of note this month was Rafts, the debut book from Utunu which I enjoyed quite a lot. A very sweet gay love story that touched me.

That's about everything I have to share for this month. Here's to healing and a better state of mind the next time I speak to y'all.

Curl up with a good book and be kind to yourself

#monthly updates

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autumntouched · 2 years ago

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Since yesterday, after I read your post about interaction/engagement, I‘ve been trying to figure out how to reach out to you… been trying to find the „right“ words, even if I know that that is impossible. I‘ll try anyway…

I completely get how you feel.

I‘ve been very insecure about my own writing since I started posting chapters of 5 years back in september and didn‘t get many interactions. A few likes here and there, some lovely comments (that I cherish very much!) but not more. I started second guessing my skills, started regretting the decision to publish the story in the first place, etc. It basically ended in a downward spiral where I considered taking it down and wished for the ground to swallow me whole because I thought I was so bad that people don‘t even want something to do with me. Sometimes, that wish still sneaks up on me. But then I get the loveliest comment from one of my regular readers and I think: Hey, that person still reads the story, that person still waits for an update, etc. and I get a new spark of motivation that keeps me going. I know it‘s hard and it‘ll keep being a challenge to find joy and motivation in the interactions of the regular readers, but I guess we‘ll just have to learn to do exactly that. Maybe it helps to know that you‘re not alone in facing that challenge. I‘m right at your side🥰.

On the other hand, I understand the POV of the people with social anxiety. I‘m suffering from that too (first and foremost when I‘m face to face with someone) and it‘s awful. Regarding the internet, I started overcoming it by joining the TGM fandom here on Tumblr. Before summer 2022, I would have never dared to comment on a story, let alone reblog it. I thought I‘d be too invasive, I‘d annoy the creator etc. But one day, I decided to shoot blind and wrote a message to @bradshawsbaby . I swear, I‘m not kidding when I say that my heart threatened to beat out of my chest😅. I was so afraid that she would cringe about that message, but boy, was I wrong! She wrote such a cute and sweet reply that almost made me bawl my eyes out��. And from then on, I kind of „realized“ that there are real humans behind all these amazing accounts, yours included, that can feel my love for them and their creations that I try to express in my messages/comments. But it takes a lot of courage and the will to step out of your comfort zone and I get that some people maybe aren‘t ready or just not willing to do that. Of course, that doesn‘t make it easier for creators, but no one can be forced to do something they don’t want to do.

I dare to claim that it‘s safe to say that it‘s a frustrating matter for both sides. The creators who wish for feedback to improve their writing skills to make their readers happy and the readers who feel pressured to do something they‘re not comfortable with. I‘m not sure if we‘ll ever be able to work it out so it works for both sides, but perhaps every side can define their boundaries more clearly so that everyone knows where they stand…

Anyway, I hope this message isn‘t embarassing🫣😬. I just tried to express how I see things regarding this topic, but I‘m just a 19-year-old girl who has no knowledge of anything😅🤷🏻‍♀️. Please, let me know if I embarassed myself with this.

Many hugs and so much love to you💗!

BB 😭❤️ you said this so much better than I could and wow I so appreciate the time and thought you put into this 🥹 thank youuuu

These messages are bringing me so much clarity, and wow like even if I disagree with some things people have shared I still appreciate everyone taking the time to write out such long and detailed responses because it sounds like there are definitely things I could be doing as a writer to make this space more accessible for people in a way that works for everyone, I have a much better understanding of the issue from both sides, and I’m just genuinely grateful this could be a conversation

To your first part, it is so scary as writers to put ourselves out there and whether we want to or not, we can get in our head about things 😭

And in general, I manage my expectations around interactions. I know and respect that everything I write is not going to be for everyone nor is everyone going to want to interact. But I am here to engage and get to know people so quality (in whatever way works) is important to me. And at this point, I really am just here answering Hannix asks 😂 😅

And primarily with writing that responds to asks, I do have anxiety here and I’m not going to minimize that part even while I am learning that it is something I need to work on. I grew up in a home where people were emotionally unpredictable and withheld affection and emotional validation in order to control my behavior. When I am giving someone something that was asked for, that is emotionally vulnerable (writing in general), and it feels like there’s little to no response I go into full blown panic that I’ve done something wrong or made them unhappy with me. I actually seize up because what I learned as a child is that I could be emotionally and physically punished if I don’t recalibrate. I start triple guessing and overanalyzing and that’s not really a place to write from. I could close my asks, say no more Hannix Football Rivalry. But it does *seem* like that makes people happy, that it’s something they love and I love giving people that. But it was taking a toll on me and I wanted to see if there is a solution instead of automatically shutting down

This is not a call for everyone to comment or reblog or dm or trigger their own anxiety to engage. But if someone was not understanding what was happening on my end and is like oh yes, happy to do that so we can all continue to enjoy this universe (or explore other ones!) then that is so so appreciated

Because no, I don’t want to be on here triggering other people’s anxiety 😭 And maybe it’s those people responding because there’s a shared understanding of what that experience is like, how out of control it can get even when you present yourself with logic or try to reason your way out of it

I think while there is frustration, there is also the shared experience of wanting to be recognized for our whole person even when we’re operating as writer and reader and I think Tumblr does give us a chance to recognize ourselves on a deeper level than we may in other interactions. So I do want to take care with that for everyone

No one should be forced to do something they’re uncomfortable with and you are spot on with defining boundaries!! This is not engage or get out or I’ll hold my work hostage. It’s more like, I’m struggling and asking for help if someone can give it because I want to keep giving you something you love and makes you happy. It didn’t seem fair to set boundaries without understanding where everyone is coming from

#talk to me #i love your notes

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diaryofnicaraguan · 2 years ago

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surprise, bitch.

it's been many years since i have been on tumblr. in true spirit of who i am, i cannot remember my old account login. she's a lost cause anyway. but it would've been fun to have gone back on the shit show i thought was cute. i'm glad to be back. blogging was an old passion of mine. when i first joined tumblr i was a junior in high school. (i've had a few accounts). a little over 10 years ago. *shocked* i'm now 30 years old. typing with a broken ring finger on my left hand, on the last day of 2022. to be honest i am not sure why i came back yet or what called me to come back. adele is currently playing in the back as i type away. it's therapy tbh. i wish in some way i could go back in time and hug myself. tell myself to not give up on my love for theatre. my love for music. my love for artistic expression. nowadays i'm swimming in regret and yearning to feel liberated. i've felt stuck. nostalgia is hitting me so hard as i maneuver through tumblr. the internet is not the same as it used to be. my thoughts are all over the place. i guess in order to be able to look back i want to point out some pros and cons of 2022.

let's start with cons: hospitalized and had to get surgery february, got shitty news about my health, my employment has been shit, external people came back into my life just to create more chaos, diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ptsd. my marriage has had more downs than ups. gained too much weight. and i know im not as big as i use to big and im still cute-ish but having proven to myself i can lose weight and gain confidence fucked with me. my sister had a miscarriage that affected my family. my birthday sucked. i was pumped for my 30th birthday, and the whole week of my birthday just didn't feel right. *shrugs* Maybe 31 will be better?

moving on with pros: no lie i have sat here and thought hard. but i found some! even though marriage is rocky, there's been more mutual understanding & better communication. got amazing news about my health. found out i dont need surgery for my fractured finger. i became a certified, licensed technician. passed my exam with decent grades. i let go of friendships that i should never have gone back to. renewed my residency in the united states. now im good until 2032 (if i make it that far). also that shit was expensive. my mom (surprisingly) helped me pay it last time (2012). eventually i want to become a citizen...maybe. unless i go crazy and move to costa rica or puerto rico between now and 2032. the united states of america is anything but united. it's just getting shittier to live here.

overall rating of 2022: 1 out of 10. wouldn't recommend.

im usually not a fan of odd numbers but it seems to follow me. so maybe 2023 will be amazing. i plan on traveling more. chicago is my nearest escape from my hell. i miss being there with my husband. the vibes are always great there. it feels like home there. i have lived in small towns for the majority of my life. after i was accepted to columbia college chicago and shit didn't workout, i gave up that dream and settled for the small city of south bend. i fear i have outgrown my stay here. nothing but bad memories. also no privacy. a lot of people know who i am and who my husband is. im not a social butterfly. i am a couch cocoon.

i just want 2023 to be full of adventures. 2022 came and went and i feel empty. 2021 was such an exciting year. so many chicago trips. like literally at least once a month.

i'm determined to post at least once a day. it would be nice to look back at this on december 31, 2023 and laugh. i highly doubt anyone will read this but if for some odd reason someone does - i hope you all have an amazing 2023. i gotta get ready to go to my husbands bar to ring in the new year.

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hi-my-name-is-cosmopathy · 9 months ago

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I actually remember being in the same situation as you, way before I made my Tumblr account. I often got very upset that my posts didn't get as much popularity as others

I suppose I could give you some pieces of advice (you don't have to follow them):

According to this post, you've been on Tumblr for over a year now and your posts often still get small recognition. Which sucks, because you often put a lot of effort into them. But when you make something sh*try, it gets popular.

In addition, you don't feel very welcomed into different communities because most people don't connect with you on a personal level via birthday celebration posts or replies to vents.

Now, here's the thing: you're only 12 and it's only been a year. You don't have to give up yet.

In truth, the time it takes for someone to get popularity varies, trust me.

In 2020, I was an avid poster in an FB group, and my posts never really got recognition.

Some time later, I got a TikTok account—one of the biggest mistakes of my life and I STILL didn't get recognition.

Some years later I eventually got myself a Twitter account. And I actually began getting some kind of popularity in a community I was in. It was a small one (BBAU community) but I didn't really care. I was recognised by people I knew on the internet before I made my account, content creators whose works I fell in love with.

Of course, posts about original projects of mine or posts regarding different fandoms I was in didn't get the same popularity.

In 2022, I got a Tumblr. Made some TTTE content that didn't get so popular yet.

I slowly started to get recognised by people I liked, I started to have my name mentioned from time to time. Heck, I made a fan design for an AU in the OSC community and it became official!

Que 2024, I currently have 211 followers now-

That's 111 plus of your followers, but even then I could have maybe 500 or 1000, but I don't yet. And that's okay.

It will naturally take a long time for others to rise to popularity, and that's okay. Remember: everyone here at some point started out like you and me.

This one you very much so don't have to follow, but I also changed my motives behind posting and lowered my expectations. Along with that, I also just began appreciating the people who would always be there whenever I posted instead of being sad about the lack of popularity it got.

And hey, if you wanna quit or go on a hiatus, it's okay. It's understandable.

And, I do apologise for probably being that percentage of people who don't reply to your vent or birthday posts (especially in 2023). I am VERY busy AND tired with school, which prevents me from having time to help others. I can't promise that I'll be there from now on, but I can try.

This is a vent/rant post, tbh idk if anyone would care anyways

Sometimes i really just hate putting alot of effort on my drawings, as i feel like they dont get the love that my low effort post do.

Lets use this drawing as an example

This drawing took me 5 hours, how many notes do you think this post will have tho? Probably 30, 50, 40 etc.

8...8 notes. 5 hours, 8 notes..

Now look at this post, probably made 20 minutes and BOOMED 225 NOTES-

You can see the problem, i work so hard on my drawings only to get flopped by the internet. And then i make something shitty only to get viral.

I"ve been on tumblr for over a year now and i havent been growing lately. Its been incredibly tough too upload constantly without being scared of being floped.

And i never feel like im welcomed to any community, as my personal post (like my birthday post and vents) usualy get little reconition. Im still greatfull to my followers and friends i made here and im glad you all are here to comfort me when im at my lowest!! But....at this rate idk if i want to post on tumblr anymore

I get little asked and little followers (and took me a YEAR to get atleast 100 while some might take months) and its not fun for me anymore. And if im being honest, i really dont like ppl who put such low effort only to get hundreds of likes (unless if its memes or shitty post thats funny its fine for me)

Im a 12 year old artist, trying to improve and maybee get more popular. But my motivation for doing art here (and other platforms) is very low and i honestly want to make art JUST for myself and my friends...

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elecman108 · 3 years ago

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It’s nearing the end of 2021, and looking back on it, I... really had a lot of fun despite it all. From 100%’ing Miitopia six months after it came out to falling in love over and over with my D&D characters, it was quite the year to look back on. Starting the year off strong, I drew hardly anything in some months - looking at you, January - and took other months to flex the old creative juices and draw at least once a day - October was too much though - but I had a good time doing it.

I have some personal favourites from each month beyond these 12 I’ve selected, so... Why don’t I just link to the posts they’re in?

And, if you wanna check out last year’s, here it is.

January - A Dragon’s Best Friend / Who’s This New Moron?

February - Gay Panic / The Eight Scariest Idiots / Amnesia’s a Bitch / My Hate For Zoom is Strong / Take Photoshop Away From Me / HuniePop 2; Electric Boogaloo

March - Medicine Can’t Cure This, Buddy / I Still Haven’t Had Strawberry Milk / Miitopia’s Heroes

April - Short-Ass at Six Foot / I Forgot To Post This on Tumblr...

May - Happy Birthday, Demon-Thing! / Axel Do Not Punt The Child / Now He’s Pissed!! / Moo? / Gender Is Optional, Axel, Don’t Roll Your Eyes at Me / Wildshape, Anyone?

June - Uh, I Think My Heart And Wallet Were Stolen / Looking as Single and Dad-like as Ever / Surprisingly Wholesome for Two Thieves / Darker Lord, Your Days are Numbered / Beach Episode!!

July - Unrestrained Summer Fun / Of Puppets And Bosses / God Damn It Taco

August - Summer Squad / Axel and Carrion, Idiots at Large / Jurassic World Energy / Mourning Usually Doesn’t Involve The Dead Calling You a Bitch / Thought You Were Illiterate, But No, Just Stupid / Too Many Pixels, Not Enough Dungeons

September - Is This a JoJo’s Reference? / Why Do The Most Cursed Things Come From Your Mask? / Nice Shirt, Bro / Oh No Not The Casting Couch

October - Ender Don’t Forget Your Catboy On The Way Up / Bowsette? More Like Cursed, Thanks Blaze / Ryma I Will Kill For You If You Ask / I Still Don’t Know If Bonnie’s Blue Or Purple / In Elysium No One Can Hear You Die To Thanatos Again / Put Some Pants On Alpha, For Fuck’s Sake / Veena I Love You So Much / Did I Mention That Resident Evil: Village Released On My Birthday? / Sweetie You Need To Put More Than One Pantleg Into Your Next Costume / Maid With A Gun! / Cloud Strife Final Fantasy 7... Remade / So This Is Where You Go When You Fall Off The Broom On Day 2... / Dorian My Beloved / My Magnum Post For My Magnum Project

November - I Burned Myself Out Last Month, Sorry

December - Merry Christmas, And Here’s To Next Year!

Who knows what next year will bring!! I’m excited, and hopeful for improvements. In both my health and the health of the world at large, things will improve. I know they will. So keep your head up above the water, and fight the current if you must. We’ll all make it to shore if we put out minds to it, and we’ll be able to build a bridge when we get there to make it easier on the next people trying to cross this river.

#the disappointment speaks #drawings by me #OCs #D&D #Drawtober #Year In Review #Art Summary #Did you know if I tag something as 'me' I can block the post from Tumblr iOS?#I may just fuck over iOS users from here on out by tagging my posts specific ways to fuck with apple #actually viewing the word list the name I use for my version of golden freddy is banned so I might just start using 'Goldie' lmao #anyway I hope everyone has a great 2022 and here's to games I'll eventually buy myself like FNAF:SB when I get myself a ps4 at some point!#or whenever I get a job. whichever comes first tbh.#its like 250$ to buy a ps4 used at my local used game store and I genuinely have less than 100$ in my bank account #thanks to covid I also owe some people some money bc of the same thing. money's tight and I'm doing my best #but hey. we're gonna make it out of this eventually. I promise. even if tumblr bans using the word 'submission' as a tag #even though they auto-add it to any suBMITTED POSTS TO A TUMBLR BLOG LIKE WHAT THE FUCK IS- *screams in frustration*#its like youtube vs youtube kids all over again. just make a fucking thing 18+ and keep the kids thing for kids. god.#we're not your parents kids. monitor your own internet safety and go to only trusted websites. stay off tumblr.#thanks for comming to my tag scream see you all next year

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beautifulpersonpeach · 2 years ago

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BPP, I keep going back to 2022 festa and can't believe nobody saw this coming. Did RM really hate the music they were making? Did he hate himself for so long and we never saw it? It breaks my heart to bits to imagine them suffering like this. I find myself hating HYBE more and more for forcing them to remain in the band. Who knows how else the company has been controlling them behind the scenes. I think people who called out HYBE when Dynamite was released were right. BTS need to leave BigHit and show they won't be controlled by anyone. Who do you think was behind BTS' break decision? And if your answer is military enlistment then why didn't they mention it in the festa dinner?

Rewriting this answer three times because Tumblr glitches kept deleting the whole thing…

Hi Anon,

I let your ask sit for some days before answering, because my first instinct was to just link their Festa Dinner and ask you to watch it. But I don't think that would be very helpful. So instead I’ll just share a different perspective of what a healthy working relationship can look like, because that’s essentially the crux of your question.

In K-pop (and the Western music industry), it's normal for idols/artists to be at odds with their company. SM Entertainment for example probably holds the record for the most number of lawsuits idols have filed against an agency, and if we take a look at the proportion of people who are fans of SM groups within the wider k-pop fandom, I'd guess they'd account for almost 50% of the whole space - there's a lot of them. So when k-pop fans default to thinking BTS must be constantly butting heads with their management in a way that's detrimental to the guys, these k-pop fans have seen a lot of examples and have a whole industry's worth of reasons to think so.

The kicker is, for anybody who actually follows BTS and their relationship with Bang PD and HYBE, especially for the last five years, they'd know it's unlikely to see a massive fallout such as the sort seen with EXO, happen with BTS.

[ Consider how when BTS renewed their contract with more than a year to go in 2018, it was highlighted they negotiated their contracts without even having lawyers present, just to express how amicable that process was.

Consider how when JTBC in December 2019 claimed BTS was planning to sue BigHit, it was ARMY out in front asking for receipts while the rest of the industry and other k-pop fans took it as a given. Less than 24 hours later when BTS members, their parents, and BigHit released statement refuting that report and JTBC had to publicly apologize, k-pop fans were confused, and many netizens were surprised that rather than attack BigHit when the news broke, ARMY had gone after JTBC seeking receipts and asking for whatever actual verifiable information the media house had to base their report on. ]

It's possible to read and hear about BTS disagreeing with their company and not think they're about to file a lawsuit. Imagine any other scenario where people would hear, "we were not all in agreement about doing this song [Dynamite] at first", and think that the guys involved were coerced and exploited into the decision. Based on what they all said during the dinner, the boys are very heavily involved in the direction their music takes. Their own opinions on the songs they're making helps determine the output, and naturally by now, they'd be used to navigating their various viewpoints on a song alongside their producers and this is even more so for viewpoints on their career. Wouldn't all this extremely unlikely to happen under tyrannical management? Think about it. This is a perspective I think is obvious, but in some parts of the internet this is a perspective that earns me the label of 'company stan', since it’s hip to be anti-capitalist in the 21st century and it's a fact corporations are evil, employees have no free will, and contracts are soul-bound so people have no room nor ability to maneuver around while in them.

But even then, in business and corporate settings, compromise happens daily and it doesn't mean any of these adult men are being mistreated, coerced, or controlled by a nebulous corporate entity. I don't think you have nearly enough information to determine they need to leave their company.

I've rambled a lot so I'll try to be brief and say the rest of what I think in point form.

"Who do you think was behind BTS' break decision?"

BTS.

- RM. Edited transcript of the Festa Dinner. Translation credit: @/winterlyblooms

And this is before we consider that the boys had planned to take a break before 2020, before Dynamite. Their sentiments in Map of The Soul: 7 were alarming the first time a lot of us in the fandom heard them, because unlike prior years, those sentiments were more explicit and were laid out so clearly.

We know how involved they are in making this music, so then we had to wonder: if they were really tired, if they really feared they could lose direction, if they were really losing their love for this.

BTS had planned to tour every corner of the planet they could get to, "burn like crazy then crash", Jin would go to the military by the end of 2020, and they'd focus on their solo music.

But then the pandemic happened, their tour was first postponed, then cancelled. They had planned to expand their reach worldwide by going on their biggest tour yet, but when COVID made that impossible, they switched strategies and instead decided to target the largest music market in the world: the U.S. Dynamite exploded and the Korean government postponed Jin's expected enlistment date. That year, BTS also became the first k-pop group in history receive a Grammy nomination.

So BTS gave it another whirl on Butter/PTD with RM hoping that in the meantime, maybe he'd be able to figure out a way forward for the group. But he couldn't and it makes sense that he couldn’t. These are adult men, many of whom have become artists in every sense of the word, they have an identity and need an outlet. They each need an opportunity to showcase who they’ve become, and they need to experience the challenge of being on one's own to grow in any real sense. In my humble opinion.

“And if your answer is military enlistment then why didn’t they mention it during the dinner?”

My answer isn’t military enlistment though I think it’s definitely a factor here. BTS were initially due to begin their service by end of 2020, before their government modified that law on their behalf given their accomplishments. It’s entirely reasonable for BTS to not talk about it during the dinner. Aside from the fact that the subject of enlistment is besides the point, mentioning it would only distract from the issues the boys were trying to communicate. I mean, we’ve all seen the fallout in Korea from the Festa Dinner without BTS mentioning the military. All it would’ve done is add fuel to the bonfire of pundits, commentators, and K-pop fans prone to ‘discourse’ picking these boys apart just to spread the exact opposite of what the boys actually mean, for the rest of the population to dissect them further.

"can't believe nobody saw this coming."

I don't think anybody knew they'd talk about it and announce it during the Festa dinner, but practically all of what was discussed during the dinner are issues many ARMYs were well aware of. Just see the first link in my pinned post. So while it's true 'nobody saw this coming' in terms of the specific timing, many in the fandom had been expecting this news for some time. BTS have been talking about their career in terms of 'two chapters' since late 2019 and every Vlive RM has done since December 15, 2019, has touched on the issues discussed during the Festa 2022 Dinner.

"Did RM really hate the music they were making? Did he hate himself for so long and we never saw it?"

These are two very different questions but the short answer to both is no.

All this to say, Anon, you're free to feel however you feel about HYBE. It's a corporation that does as corporations do. The last two years have been really something of an anomaly for BTS. I think everyone can agree on that note, but the reason why the last two years seemed so weird is what BTS explained to ARMY during Festa. If all you got from that was the narrative of Draconian top-down control over BTS to the point they are neglected, abused, and otherwise mistreated, to the point they need to leave the company... that narrative has no basis in reality, certainly not for the last 5 years. And the 2022 Festa Dinner (and everything that’s happened since then) is one of the best examples why.

#bts chapter 2 #bts enlistment #bts #2022 festa #bts fandom

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