#might delete later if I start getting dogpiled

[woodsfae]

What I've Learned By Being A Really Unusual Bra Size: An Essay

You are almost certainly wearing the wrong size bra. If your breasts aren't very large or heavy and your bras don't cause you any discomfort, this may never matter to you. However, the fact remains that you are probably wearing the wrong sized bra.

The band-plus-four-inches is incorrect, if you were fit that way. It is a persistent myth. Victoria's Secret is notorious for fitting people into whatever bras they have in stock, not what actually fits. And those of us with parents who cause us harm, that's an issue of misinformation as well (my mother put me in 36D bras because that's what she wore at the time. Victoria's Secret insisted I was a 32DDD).

By the time I was 18, I had permanent nerve damage in my shoulders, however, I discovered A Bra That Fits which leads me to my next point.

A Bra That Fits is a great starting place, but they're only mostly correct. I owe a lot to ABTF: without them, I might not have ever realized that I'm actually a 28J-K. Yeah, you read that right. 28J-K. Being in correctly sized bras has saved me a lot of pain, even if it's way worse for my wallet. Specialty-size bras are horrifically expensive, but the pain relief is worth it. But here's my part where I risk pissing off the Bravangelists.

Being in the right-sized bra might not fix ALL your pain. I have permanent nerve damage from a decade of wearing the wrong size. According to my doctor, my plastic surgeon for my upcoming reduction, and my physical therapist, that even aside from my nerve damage, my breasts are so much too big for my frame that my muscles literally cannot tolerate how unbalanced I am. I change bras 2-3 times a day to shift the weight around and I am always in pain. Always. I have never not been in pain since at least 2009.

Believe it or not, I've had Bravangelists fucking rip me for saying that bras can't fix all my pain. Sometimes they just can't. They can help - they have helped me so much - but if your issues are severe enough, if you have nerve damage or are severely unbalanced, a better bra won't fix it. Each of my breasts is the size of my entire head. I have two whole my-own-head-sized lumps yanking me down and straining my trunk-support muscles at all times.

If this is you too, I see you. I understand. It sucks. I always recommend that big breasted people check out the ABTF calculator (just google a bra that fits to find it) but if you get yourself into the right size and your pain doesn't go away, that doesn't mean you haven't tried hard enough or haven't paid enough money to try every bra variant that exists. Sometimes your tits are just too goddamn big.

Sometimes it's exhausting seeing my fellow chronic pain havers/spoonies get yelled at for saying the right sized bra doesn't necessarily fix everything.

[thisgoldendream]

This will be a difficult post. I never was a “big” blog by any means, and following my hiatus for nearly two years, the number of people who will see this is limited. My blog was highly niche after all. I also never wanted pity or to stir the pot. And I’ve always been scared of what kind of attention it’d draw.

But I feel this might be… necessary catharsis. There was a main reason, and some others I decided to do this.  I need to say why.

Apologies in advance for incoherence, and just how stupid it sounds... I do not profess myself a writer nor the best with words. It will be rambling. But I’ll try to explain the best I can because I finally need to.

I’ve had drafts about a particular vile situation sitting by that I hesitated to say anything on, since I’ve found keeping silent and pretending everything is okay and remaining unperturbed is what is typically the best course of action when dealing with trolls. And I’d rather settle things privately. Which I tried. Several times to no avail. But … silence only benefits abusers.

The primary reason is a situation that has been, mindbogglingly, having gone on for six years. All identifying information will be redacted. Many of the blogs do not exist anymore. I’ve also archived quite a bit so if this individual does cause me more strife, I will no longer have any mercy.

Many years ago there was an acquaintance—all they deserve to be called--I encountered on this site who’d message me. They’d be active on tumblr all day, and get a lot of anons flooding the dash, and once I saw them getting harassed by one and defended them. Thing is, after that I started to receive such messages from a mysterious anon and they’d complain about getting them on discord -right after- I’d get the message so it was obvious they were the perpetrator. Easy solution was to block the anon. (Those messages...somehow led to some other individual dogpiling me, but I’ll focus on the primary can of worms). Their dms were… odd and sent a lot of unsolicited fics and bragging about real life milestones that they’d end up contradicting months later. I and others who were exposed to it chalked it up to them being harmless and maybe lonely. Some of it was a bit amusing.

Eventually their many lies and penchant for drama led them to be banned from a discord and I blocked them on this site. One would hope most people take a hint at that and leave well enough alone and move on.

Not this person. Despite seemingly moving onto other things, they… keep coming back. With sock puppet after sock puppet after sock puppet.

In 2018 I noticed a blog re-blogging one of my gifs with a name that sounded vaguely familiar; it was one of this person’s many, many RP blogs. A musical-focused one. This was after I had translated Toma’s route in Library Cross and they were doing their typical talk to themselves on anon thing—having apparently watched my translation they acted like they played it, and apparently didn’t get the actual gist of what happened in the route or what the game was even like, which frustrated me. I messaged them correcting them and asked them to stop and they deleted the post and left a guilt trip message about “going through a hard time,” a pattern they always continue with when caught. To illicit pity and make the victim feel bad for them.

But what really sickened me was an “OC” of theirs I saw, using the same name I go by—Erika--that looked horrifically just like the picture I once foolishly posted in a discord they had been in, and well. It made me sick. I don’t know what to call it except pseudo skin walking and obscenely creepy.

Needless to say it greatly demotivated me from posting translations, scans, and other such things I really enjoyed sharing.

Now I confided in only two people who knew full extent of what this person’s about. But this was beyond that. I blocked just about any adjacent account of theirs I could find – discovering just how many sock puppets and fake identities they had – their disturbing preoccupation with pregnancy often a tell and hoped that’d be the end of it after privately calling them out.

For my own peace of mind I started using analytics on my blog to try to identify when this particular person and this person alone might show up; observe a pattern. I once again naively thought they’d get the hint and that all the blocks would work. In time, I pretty much narrowed down who they were. And they weren’t from the country they say they’re from, surprise to no one.

A good opportunity came about in 2020 when I was encouraged to join an otome translation group … something I’d thought about but was too timid to do, and just worried because of the previous treatment and attitudes towards characters I like on here; the more “problematic” ones lol. The rules were to work on the project you were once a week and I could be involved with Otome and enjoy playing Amnesia World alongside while translating lines. It was a win-win in a way, even if I wasn’t active on my blog.

In 2021 I saw suspicious IPs once again on my blog… and lo and behold saw some blank blog follow me which I sadly grew dubious of because of that person’s endless sock puppets. I snapped and messaged them to leave me alone once again and they denied it and once again said “they were going through a hard time,” and rambled about how they were “healing,” and said they wouldn’t bother me again.

Natural a lying liar lies, and they came back in the summer as the analytics warned me. I set my blog to login only and hid it from search engines and blocked any blank blogs that tried to follow.

I rarely logged back in on tumblr until fall of 2022, and I saw much to my happiness … some people still were liking some of my old stuff so I thought of keeping it around as a warehouse of sorts or if I ever felt like posting again.

But in early February… the same documented IPs from 2021 were on my page. Again. I blocked a blank blog, set it to private, and the next day a new one followed me again. With a similar title to my own this time? Yeah, I’ve had enough.

I’m not this person’s only victim. They infect and repeatedly act like this in just about every fandom they’ve moved onto. But I only feel comfortable telling my story.

I wised up and have kept many, many receipts and archives beyond what I have here. You’ve hurt a lot of people. And to that individual, now that I have nothing to lose and you can’t steal my content any more. If you do interact with this, you will be revealing yourself--because I will dump all I have. I was kind enough to not post identifying info but I will not be any longer. None of this is tagged with anything identifying or relevant to fandoms, either. So if you interact or come back, I will no longer have lenience...you deserve none.

My final say on this is, since it’s obvious there’s mental illness involved, I feel it’s imperative I state that I have much empathy for people struggling with mental illness. I have my own turbulent struggles with anxiety and depression. It isn’t fun. There are probably very few who DON’T struggle.

However, I draw the line malignant people who use it as a shield to excuse their harmful actions, then try to manipulate their victims.

In the sincerest way possible, go outside and get actual help.

I’ve gone to therapy to try to overcome my struggles and social anxiety. The most powerful thing I was told that my past of bullying haunted me like a shadow and to go forth with my head held high and be myself. But this affair...sadly taught me some people are out to get you.

Also... to anyone who read this, this is very, very abnormal behavior and not likely to happen to you.

Typing all this, trying to explain it...hurt my brain. I can’t even make sense of it.

---

Beyond… freeing myself from the aforementioned situation, there were other reasons I just don’t feel like continuing anymore.

Fall of 2020 and into 2021 was an incredibly hard time personally for me. I went through three really difficult losses. I haven’t really felt like the same person since. Despite therapy and grief groups...it really doesn’t feel like something you can talk about. Because from my experience, confiding in people about the trauma... reminded them of their own personal struggles. It’s been a very lonely road.

And fandom now… I just feel I don’t belong in it. At least, in the west… since I was young I always found solace in my nerdy hobbies and chiefly viewed it as entertainment. Not something to strive for in reality. When I was a kid, “don’t do what you see on TV” was common sense. “Videogames make people violent” was baseless fear-mongering. Articles in gaming magazines about Christians decrying Pokémon as satanic and churches in the south destroying merch. Ridiculous. But it seems now—especially born from this site, it seems we’ve come full circle. “If you like villains you support it IRL,” this sort of sentiment seems so widespread… and the same meme and meme format posted over, and over again, recycled and reused, from fandom to fandom, same premise. And the energy people put onto things they dislike versus what they actually love is something I’ll never understand.

This platform is very good for hosting all forms of media, much better than twitter for longhand writers and translations. But ...I despise it, how its staff ignores countless abuse reports, lets malefactors do whatever they want, and get away with it. Twitter has its own massive host of problems, but at least the phone number authentication and account lockouts slow it some.

In the past, I loved fandom for transformative works. People creating beautiful arts, writings, and ideas.  The more ideas and diverse, the better. Not the same opinion ...or headcanon spread as fact to the point it’s accepted as canon, over and over again. And when people are afraid to create things for fear of being harassed or having something other than the “popular” fandom opinion, it becomes a stagnant echo chamber.

And although I found translating for the otome group was nice…I noticed from the spreadsheet I was the only one signing in and working on it for over a year when I was on the project. And once the related project ended up being canceled due to localization, I asked what about the one I was working on… and received no reply. From anyone. I gave it two weeks. Nothing. Being ignored like that… stung. I never felt like I was terribly welcome and that confirmed it.

I’m tired. I’ll probably always enjoy otome, but I think from now on… I’ll do it quietly and on my own. Without judgment for liking the “wrong” fictional pixel men. Because that’s what it is. I just find it so...trite. I’m tired of being walked all over, I’m tired of being afraid what to say, and I know every time an empty blog followed being yet another one of that person’s alts was no way to go. That’s on me. I feel guilty for any innocents I blocked in the process suspecting it was that person... but it messed me up.

If there wasn’t a space for what I liked, I wanted to carve out one—but I don’t have that energy anymore. Provide something for other fans if they liked it. share what I love and have fun. Have some camaraderie…I truly enjoyed that. And especially to those I could call friends sand ramble with in dms without fear, gush about, really you’re the MVPS. It was a lot of fun. I will cherish it… but I could not continue. And I never wanted to burden anyone. Because none of this makes any sense to me. Sorry…

I’ve always wanted to lift others up and encourage others. Even if someone likes a character I don’t, or pairing if they’re nice—there must be something to it I can’t see, whatever floats their boat. These things...really shouldn't be a big deal. Let people enjoy what they enjoy. And others who give someone grief for it… and haunt tags, or belittle you for your hobbies aren’t worth your time. It reeks of insecurity. After all, nobody on tumblr dot com or twitter are an “educator” or superior for having an opinion on videogames. And numbers don’t matter; sure the validation can provide a buzz, but at the end of the day, it’s social media. ...What you enjoy that does.

So to end on a positive note… because I don’t want my optimism to die completely.

Find whatever you like and people who like the same thing, and make them your people. May your creativity flow ever freely. Nothing is more powerful than your own interpretation of the canon, than your own experience with it.

To roughly quote one of my favorite games of all times, “as long as you’re not doing anything wrong and nobody is getting hurt, you should just live proudly in the open.”

Edit: The only reason I’m leaving this and my one past blog title up as placeholders is because honestly. Since tumblr does nothing to limit someone from creating endless blogs and dodging blocks/reports/bans, I wouldn’t have put it past them to well, try to get the blog names. This person since then has tried to add me on Discord twice (which I didn’t... give out) in the previous year a month apart. I just want to move on.

[lilquill]

Are you doing okay what with all the VV stuff that happened? It seemed like you and Mina were close

Hey hey, thanks for the worries anon! Mina of mvcreates/Violet Vineyard and I were properly talking as friends for only a few months quite a long time ago. Emotionally I’m completely fine, but I do have stuff to say and I do want to help document things if any of it is useful in any way. A lot of it will be dry because it’s just documenting, but some of it will be “juicier” I guess, and I’d like to corroborate some of the things my friends are saying. I’ll put this under the cut for people who don’t want to scroll through all this and/or have no idea what I’m talking about and want to keep it that way!

You guys can check @nuwuhorizons‘s blog to see what exactly is going on and I believe they’re also reblogging some things others who were members are saying. The case of people dogpiling a 19-year-old trans person and making fun of their name is on the blog (post here, wayback machined here).

I can corroborate a bunch of what @rrrawrf-writes (post here, wayback machined here) and @gingerly-writing (post here, wayback machined here) have said. I backread through the interaction that Ginger talks about in her post (of course not the DMs, but the interaction itself).

I know some people may be confused about why Ginger only has that one screenshot of what she said and may not see that as full evidence, but Violet Vineyard had a super strict “don’t screenshot and post anything” with lots of scary looking legal stuff attached to it policy and, well, Ginger can’t be sharing stuff without anyone’s permission if it’s just the message she herself sent, but they’d have grounds to take god knows what action with what backing against her if she posted something else. But, well, for what it’s worth, as someone who read through that conversation a little after it happened, it was certainly a case of dogpiling and left a bad taste in my mouth, and it strikes me as really odd that the mods would try to shut someone down like that.

I haven’t really been doing stuff in writeblr lately as you can probably tell from my blog, but yeah, Mina herself and a lot of people in that particular friend group of hers, as Lisa mentions, have just disappeared off Tumblr. I can also attest to the dogpiling tendencies and this Mina Is Always Right tendency, and the fervor with which people would defend her.

I was honestly never close enough to Mina to be in that friend group. She and I were only really talking to each other for a few months over a year ago. I don’t think I was “writeblr-y” enough to fit in with them. I was also not super active in that server. I didn’t post much about my wips because I in general don’t think I really post a lot about them. Therefore I didn’t get like, massive benefits off of the whole “network” thing, but  I’d reblog some stuff when I saw it. I was probably most known for posting pictures of my plants, lol. And I would occasionally hop in to talk briefly about kpop with like, one person? (They went by Kay and their url was like, lvcrezia? lvcrezias? Something like that.) In fact, probably the last thing I ever said in that server was a super quick conversation about Red Velvet’s “Monster” music video around the time it dropped.

In fact, for the sake of being super transparent/establishing credibility, and for documenting purposes, I’ll list all the non-plant-pictures and non-kpop conversations I can remember actually participating in. Some of these will lead off into bigger topics, and I’ll specify those. But first, a word.

TO ANY OF THE FORMER MODS WHO MIGHT COME AFTER ME FOR SAYING THINGS ABOUT THE SERVER, SINCE THIS HAS APPARENTLY HAPPENED TO OTHERS: The server is deleted, and so is the text of the whole “contract” (yes, really) that people had to agree to in order to join VV. I remember that the agreement made sure we didn’t post screenshots publicly, but other than that I genuinely do not remember the text and I have no way of referencing it to keep in line with it since the server is deleted. I do not remember if documenting things like this is against anything I have agreed to, I have no record of the agreement, and I have not been notified of any place to access a record of the agreement before the server was deleted. If my post is some sort of violation, you cannot hold me accountable for rules that I am unable to follow, and I would greatly appreciate not being targeted with empty threats shrouded in scary legal language. If you have any point of contention with what I have said, feel free to take it up either publicly or privately. Please do @ me if it’s specific to me; I’m not really the vagueposting kind. If any of you want me to delete this post, you will need to provide actual proof of the agreement that I made by joining Violet Vineyard, and you will also need to prove that the rules were not edited after I agreed to them. If any of them were follow-up rules not from the beginning of the server, it’s possible that I did not see them and therefore you need to provide proof that I agreed to those, too. In addition, since image editing is what set off this avalanche in the first place hence we’re all aware that there’s software that allows us to edit images and pass them off as an original thing, you’ll need to provide proof that any screenshots/images are undoctored. Furthermore, since the rules have been deleted with the server, as the method I used to agree to follow them, you must prove that my agreement is still valid, since it seems to me it’s been nullified since it’s, well, gone either through deletion or kicking me out alongside everyone else. Tl;dr you don’t scare me lol.

Anyways, back to a list of the non-kpop, non-plant-pics, non-my-wips-promo conversations I can actually remember:

On January 5, 2020, the server had a conversation about Roshani Chokshi’s book The Gilded Wolves. I can give the date because during/in the aftermath of the conversation, which I talked about the book in, Mina DMed me quickly. (This was also the last time Mina ever directly contacted me.) I’ll talk about this later.

In February 2020 I believe I quickly mentioned getting concert tickets.

Either early this year or late last year I think I posted some stuff about landscape photography, with some photos of the beach.

I believe I posted a couple fashion pics at some point?

Back in May 2019 I got some kinda weird asks about Violet Vineyard and I think people were talking about that, and I assume I participated since I was the one who received the asks. At that time VV was like a super new server and didn’t really have much as far as the issues we’ve been talking about go, so I defended it. (I’ll be talking about this later.)

Probably in June/July 2019 people in the server had a discussion about Black Muslim characters and representation, initiated by me for one of my WIPs.

I think we talked about South Asian sweets at some point???

I believe in April/May 2019, there was some stuff in that server reagarding “drama” with Castor who at that time went by the url pilipalea that I honestly don’t remember much of. Castor was never in VV, but I believe they were in a server with Mina at some other point. There was something about grammar and proofreading?? (I’ll be referencing this soon as well.)

I helped someone with their computer science homework at some point.

I asked for r&b music recs at some point either late 2019 or earlier 2020.

I’ve also talked about ethnic clothes I think.

We’ve talked about Hindu nationalism and how awful it is.

I think we’ve talked about tone policing and how woc are often portrayed as “aggressive.”

We’ve talked about health/fitness and exercise.

I recommended Jade City and some other books I’m a fan of in there.

Probably talked about Bollywood movies at some point.

The fact that I can remember probably most of my conversations that lasted more than like, one message in there is, I think, a pretty good testament to a) me having at least a kind of decent memory and b) I wasn’t participating in the server so regularly that the conversations kind of blend together. I know this is all kind of long and dry for anyone who’s here for drama purposes lol, but I did want to establish that I’ve been in that server for quite a while and that I wasn’t monitoring it heavily; in fact, I had it muted very soon after joining it.

I wasn’t super close to anyone that I’d met through VV. People who are friends that I still regularly contact who were in VV with me, I had met through other servers and other interactions on Tumblr. I’ll disclose right now that I have been longtime friends with Ginger, Lisa, and Eff (@time-to-write-and-suffer), who have all come out against VV, and that we are in our own servers with people from writeblr. Ginger and Lisa were both in VV, Eff has never been.

Okay, back to maybe “juicier” stuff.

Mina had always positioned herself almost as this “tumblr mom” type. She’d reference her age a lot, which would contrast a lot with how a significant portion of the members were much younger and, I think, set up the dynamic of people looking up a lot to her and always coming to her defense. After all, we’re talking a bunch of passionate kids who’d found a writeblr network. And the server definitely seemed “legit���; I myself was pretty impressed with just how tightly organized everything was, and like I mentioned, there was fancy legal language to ~protect their rights~ and whatnot. Mina herself seemed so accomplished with so many talents: she’d post her writing and artwork, I believe she’d made a couple pieces of music, she’d work out and keep in shape, she had a seemingly wonderful loving relationship with her husband, she was active in research fields professionally and as an outbreak responder, and she, of course, had a significant online presence as a “big writeblr.” I remember when she’d started blowing up, so soon after her blog had been created, because of her prolific content and friendly persona. People, especially younger ones who had no other writeblr support group, looked up to her and trusted her. And the nature of the server was to shower everyone in praise, so Mina found herself on the receiving end of quite a bit of it. Mina would also actively boost and review other writers’ content, genuinely engaging with it and providing feedback, support, and valuable resources.

Mina also had a tight-knit group of adult friends. Some of them I believe carried over from pre-VV times (incuding CJ of typewriter-jade if I’m remembering correctly, who made fun of the trans person’s name in the reblog chain in the link to nuwuhorizons’s blog), while some were made afterwards. They would act super friendly and familiar with each other, which I think contributed to a lot of people falling into this little “friendship” super fast. They were also authority figures and role models, and tended to agree with each other, so everyone just went along with that.

These factors, I think, heavily influenced the dogpiling tendencies. People were eager to defend their community, where they’d found so much love and support for their work. Minors would go along with adults in conversations. When someone said something, others would enthusiastically support them. And people were just so into each other that I really couldn’t keep up, which is probably why I didn’t participate too much. People became just super fast friends and the server was so large and so seemingly “professional” and structured in how it was made. I think people just kind of assumed everyone in there was great and their friend who could be trusted deeply, when in reality that’s just impossible if there are like, 100+ members. Meaning if something minorly negative happened (like on that literal eleven-year-old’s blog), everyone would come in to say something to demonstrate their emphatic loyalty, even when it became excessive for something as small as an ask game done wrong.

This happened with the Gilded Wolves discussion as well. Someone stepped in to say that the way Gilded Wolves coded its antagonists as this shady secret society of people was antisemitic, and everyone joined in to rip the book apart without having even read it. I joined in the conversation to state that I didn’t see it that way, since that shady antagonist group was very much coded as white Christians (their names are all French Christian names) and were colonizers (meaning making them this shadowy group of powerful and evil people was accurate) and one of the protagonists, who is Jewish, is opposing them and antisemitism is portrayed as horrible, and that the book had had (if I’m remembering correctly) Jewish sensitivity readers and multiple Jewish book reviewers really enjoyed and recommended it. Then Mina stepped in to say that multiple Jewish journals she followed rated the book highly and recommended it meaning the accusation of antisemitism clashed heavily with what a lot of other people thought, and that since me and the other person who was saying the book was antisemitic were the only ones who had read it or were familiar with it in any capacity, it wasn’t fair for everyone to be judging it like that. It was like she’d flipped a switch: people were suddenly much more “reasonable” and “fair” and willing to give the book a chance, just because she’d stepped in. (As a quick note, I don’t remember exactly whether Mina stepped in first or if I stated my opinion first. I also want to mention that Mina DMed me to state that the person who accused the book of antisemitism had expressed some Zionist sentiments in the past and to say that maybe their take on the book could have come from Islamophobia with them maybe assuming obviously ethnic name of the author was a Muslim name. The Zioinist stuff is something I can’t actually speak on since again, I have no access to the server anymore and I don’t remember that person’s url. This was the last time Mina DMed me or I her.)

I wrote all that out because I think it illustrates a few things. Firstly, a good example of the tendencies of people going with the flow of things even when it led to dogpiling/drastic conclusions. When I say they were really trashing that book, I mean it! Secondly, it demonstrates the willingness of everyone to go along with what Mina said. Third, it shows that Mina was capable of stepping in to prevent dogpiling (and, seemingly, she would, at least if her beliefs aligned with the opposite of whatever incited the dogpiling) and that people would listen to her and actually change their minds. 

Whether or not Mina supported something was pretty important. Of course, it was her server, so she was definitely allowed to run it how she saw fit, but she would very swiftly pass judgement on things and everyone would just comply. One time, I think there were more than one different threads of conversation happening in the general channel of the server. Jess suggested making a second general channel to allow for other conversations, as is common in a lot of servers, including ones I’m in and moderate/own/have some power in. I don’t remember if I supported that suggestion or if I only backread that conversation, but I know at least one other person agreed. Mina said that as an older person (she’d very frequently bring up her age) she thought people could just wait for their turn in a conversation and didn’t even consider trying it out. Other mods, I believe, backed her up and said no to the second general conversation channel. I remember being a little confused as to why nobody even considered trying a member’s suggestion to make the server more easy to participate it and help provide additional structure/support how big it was, and why it was shut down because people could just wait for their turn, when clearly the general channel was getting overloaded before our eyes. But Mina didn’t see the need, so therefore nobody else wanted to do anything about it, and nobody ever mentioned it again, I think. I know this is a super minor instance lol, but I do think it illustrates something about the behavior in the server and how it was run. It’s not like other channels weren’t added based on need; one was created for the 2018 elections, one was created for talking about race in June during the height of BLM protests having news coverage, I’m pretty sure one was created for talking about the coronavirus. So, the mods were watching conversations and responding as they saw fit, they just wouldn’t field this request, for some reason. Obviously conversations getting muddled in a general channel isn’t as significant as major political events, antiblack racism, or a pandemic, but these channels were made to improve the server experience and likely to prevent these topics from completely overloading other channels, so, well.

Okay, the Castor/pilipalea stuff and dogpiling. I’ll say this stuff now because Castor has opened up about it (here [wayback machined] and here [archived in a google doc]), so I see that as permission for others to comment on it. If I’m remembering correctly and looking back at the right things, there was something about Mina giving advice on a grammatical error to one of her mutuals, or something asking if her mutuals wanted grammatical advice? Castor vagueblogged, presumably about that, and talked about classism in expecting good grammar from people, which is a valid issue, but seemed misapplied to this instance of someone consenting to receive advice on grammar/syntax/mechanics, if that’s what the vagueblogging was about. I reached out to Mina to let her know that I thought someone was vagueblogging about her, and she told me about past conflicts with Castor. I also reached out to Castor over DMs to ask what the vagueblogging was about, because you genuinely never know; classist prescriptivism is harmful and bad, and so many people on Tumblr are in so many different circles that similar topics may come up coincidentally. Castor wasn’t clear with me either about what the post was targeting and skirted around naming names.  

At this point, looking back, it still seems to be that it was about Mina, especially considering that Castor had previous history with her and others in her circle. Mina was irritated by the vagueblogging (who likes being vagueblogged about?) and also informed me, all the way back in April 2019, about this past server drama that Castor mentioned. It seems to me that it stemmed from a misunderstanding: Mina and I believe other mods noticed another person using Castor’s PSDs without credit. Mina checked with Castor about whether people should be crediting them for PSDs and Castor said that, yes, they wanted credit; you can see this interaction in the screenshot Castor linked on their post. 

This is where the accounts of what happened diverge: Mina expressed to me that she and the other mods weren’t very harsh since they’d seen that Castor’s friend had credited Castor in the past, so they just wanted to remind Castor’s friend to give credit, without knowing that Castor’s friend had permission to use the PSDs without crediting. I was told that Mina and the team of mods were professional in their handling of this; Castor has stated in their post that the group was extremely harsh. Since I don’t have any screenshots or exact records of what they said before I was in contact with Mina, I can’t comment, so I’ll withhold judgement on that. According to Mina, she and the other mods had not been very vocal about this crediting/PSD stuff, and very few people knew about it, so it did seem like Castor had attacked Mina out of nowhere.

What I can say is that the VV members were certainly quick to respond to the grammar vagueblog, and that if I’m remembering correctly, readily jumped to Mina’s defense. I distinctly remember that one VV member specifically asked whether it was about Mina in a reblog. This happened pretty early on in VV’s existence and I believe was the first major “drama” that VV got embroiled in. Looking back, I do think it was fair to be critical of Castor’s post. But this was also the first look at the tendencies people had of getting embroiled in the fervor of any perceived slight against a member (in particular Mina).

I noticed this again when I received anons that were sort of bitter about VV’s existence in May 2019, way before VV had gained the reputation that it has now. People were very quick to respond with hostility and slightly amplify the anger expressed by other members, and little by little things got really out of hand. I can totally understand being upset and irritated, since the asks were kind of unwarranted and the sender did apologize if I remember correctly. But there was a huge outpouring of vicious language from a lot of the members, and this was, I think, the first instance of proper dogpiling in VV, especially since it was an easy antagonist; the sender was out of line, and they were totally anonymous.

These were the only two instances of going to bat for VV that I ever participated in. For the other things, I either only backread or missed them completely. While they don’t really paint VV in a super bad light, not like the dogpiling of an eleven-year-old that Jess mentions in her post, it did give me a pretty good idea of how VV handled controversies.

I’ve mentioned some of my theories of why this dogpiling/toxicity happened. I’d also like to add that Mina would often send concise, decisively-worded statements about things. I think this may have come across as final-word judgments to a lot of people, so they would take that as the last say on a certain matter and escalate in severity of their response from there. And like, you should trust your friends and take what they say in good faith. But you still need to be thinking critically and considering your response, especially when you haven’t known someone for very long. And this, I think, was a big source of toxicity in the server. There were just so many people responding to the same issues and aligning their beliefs, and they’d build off each other and create an environment where these kinds of responses were okay. Plus, VV was always portrayed as a tight-knit family when not everyone knew each other and not everyone was active (as is totally normal for a massive server), so this also contributed to people wanting to defend each other all the time. And I don’t think the mod team did an adequate job of shutting it down, despite the veneer of a structured, sort of more “professional” space.

Okay, now onto the art stuff.

Disclaimer, I don’t draw digital or physical art. I was always aware that Mina was certainly at least using references for her work. In some cases I could even pinpoint which pictures were used, like one where the faceclaim was Ranveer Singh. I also received fanart of one of my characters that, of course, looked very similar to the faceclaim. It certainly was clear some tracing had happened in that picture because of the level of detail in the chikankari embroidery, but like…..it’s free fanart, chikankari isn’t copyrighted, and that embroidery is super difficult to draw anyways. What I was not aware of was Mina apparently tracing images and using them to advertise for commissions, which is something I do not condone. I also know my photography and photo editing tools, so I was aware that there was some filtering/editing going on. I’m not sure if Mina traced and didn’t disclose it for commissioned art.

Okay, now the server shutting down stuff!

I was completely unaware of the dogpiling/transphobia stuff happening in the server because I had it on mute. I only found out about all this two days ago. I received the message where everyone was @’ed about VV’s “migration” off Tumblr and that the server would be shut down. I can confirm that the concern was about mirror sites and that the server did discuss these mirror sites as a big intellectual property issue. I didn’t know people wanted the server shutting down to be kept so secret, and I honestly cannot think of a reason why; I feel like if those mirror site concerns were serious, people would be trying to spread the word on writeblr? So I think that people are right to be a little suspicious of the exact reason for the server’s closing.

I think I should mention also that people were pretty much always friendly with me on VV. I met a bunch of cool people, and Mina was always kind and supportive with me. @radley-writes has echoed similar sentiments here (wayback machined here) and here (wayback machined here) while being critical of the environment in VV.

I know this post is like, wildly long and probably quite dry and rambly at points, but I hope it does provide some specific examples to back up some of the criticisms of VV and document it a bit better.

Thank you for reading! I’ll make sure to edit this to add stuff if I remember things/see the need.

I also want to state that my post is more a critique of the environment than anything. I’m not trying to attack anyone at all, I’m just giving an account of stuff that has happened, my level of involvement, and my own thoughts on all this.

I also want to say that I am completely open to hearing what any of you have to say. Feel free to critique/discuss anything I’ve said in this post with me. If you want to vent about your experiences in/with Violet Vineyard, my inbox and DMs are totally open. If you want to keep things confidential, I won’t break your trust or reveal your identity (unless you start idk, spouting racist stuff at me or something). If you want to anonymously tell people about an experience, feel free to shoot me an anon.

I hope you’re all having a wonderful day! I’m sending you lots of love. Take care! <3

[gonebyionnalee]

this is a big longass (i’m talking more than 2000 words) serious post so sorry mobile users and content warning for child sexual abuse etc

okay so for context i don’t know how many people were active in the same communities as me 3? 4/5? years ago on here but long story short there was a trans woman called whitney (mentioning she’s trans because it becomes relevant later since i want to talk about why the trans community at large is terrible with this kind of subject) who was well known and popular, to cut to the point she turned out to be a pedophile who groomed multiple underaged people (mostly women and trans men) like between 13 - 15 as a grownass adult and sexually harassed a few other people of various (including legal) ages. also had rape allegations attached to her name which obviously you can’t quantify with facebook chat screenshots but you know not going to suddenly get flakey about rape charges against somebody who is quite literally grooming children

her url was purplefridge and the medium for getting her expunged from the community was callout posts because let’s be real if you have concrete evidence that somebody has attempted to groom/molest you and they’re active on tumblr, you’re going to post about it on tumblr. i’ve had to do that, multiple people have had to do that on here, in a self governing online community that is largely how things are going to happen. if people want to see the posts just go into tagged/purplefridge but also somebody for whatever reason posted a dick in that tag years ago so um you know. look out for that

and in moments after that largely she joked about it and tried to cover her ass by telling people (notably people i’m friends with) that it wasn’t that bad but after the like 4th or 5th post she hightailed it, deleted her blog and sent multiple people (talking in the 10′s and 20′s here) the same copypaste cookie cutter apology and in the years after that she managed to continue life as normal on twitter, still active in the soundcloud/furry/trans communities as if nothing had happened and cultivating social clout like a normal human with the @ polistae

i’d wanted to tell people in the past (2ish years ago) that she was that person, and just because somebody seemingly isn’t doing that now, doesn’t mean they aren’t a rapist and child abuser. the event is a large black mark on my brain and despite never having been in direct contact with her (mutual friends is how we knew each other and while i was underaged at the time she didn’t groom me), the feeling of having to cut people out of your life because, for whatever reason, they decided to remain friends with somebody who is quite literally once again a rapist and child abuser because “i have hope she’ll change” or “she told me it wasn’t that bad” or “i want to keep an eye on her” is quite literally vomit enduing. whenever i tried tweeting about it i felt like my head was going to explode (i did tell her to kill herself in traffic at one point though which was gratifying). like when people know incredibly personal things about you and your history with child sexual violence and rape during your teenage years, yeah, that hurts lol

and for whatever reason the topic of her existing and being a piece of shit came up semi recently (this week), a friend of mine linked to the posts on here for context and we had a back and forth in the replies (as she did with other people who were there and had to deal with it) and it gets a few notes from people who are disgusted (you know like any human with basic morals would be) then flash forward a few days later some hack furry soundcloud musician who makes DJ paypal ripoffs is screenshotting our tweets and encouraging people to dogpile us because we’re ~problematic~ or whatever (for context i did make a joke about soundcloud trannies but literally if you’re focusing your energy on a trans woman saying a word that she’s allowed to use and unbothered by the literal rapist you are clearly, utterly, brain dead) and then gets in my mentions and starts accusing me of a multitude of different things as to why i’m talking about something i happened to see somebody else talking about it like i suddenly made the decision to bring up something from four years ago for fun like. literally not expunging the energy with a limit of 280 characters or less having to coddle a grown adult man who needs to be told that “rape and child abuse is bad and not something that stops being abhorrent after 4 years”

and while not directly interacting with me, i had to see tweets from various people calling it “bringing up past drama” and the whole deluge into people changing and it being outright lies etc

and it’s just

like i really can’t fucking stand how idiotic some people are about this subject which i guess is why i’m writing the nihon shoki of child sex abusers here. like people calling things like this purely because it happened through tumblr as a medium “callout culture” like no fucking shit they made a giant post about it, it’s the fastest way to get somebody out of a community with hard evidence. 13 - 15 year olds coming forward about being literally groomed by a pedophile is in no way comparable to people making posts about people doing things they personally find objectionable. like, literally if somebody is a rapist and child sex abuser to boot, why would it stop being a relevant fact about them after 4 years? why shouldn’t it be public knowledge be it tumblr post or not? i don’t see you calling for the abolition of sex offenders registers so why are you harassing people for bringing up the fact that somebody just migrated communities and tried to obscure the fact she is, again, quite literally a rapist and a pedophile

and like i mentioned before in the first paragraph that’s about 3 miles away now, there’s a specific problem with this in LGBT online communities (not gonna talk about furries because let’s be real as a community they’re responsible for god not talking to us anymore) specifically transgender. like i see so much of this stuff from trans women specifically defending other trans women because they believe they’re infallible except only when confronted by other trans women. like i remember a while ago i think it was aquila talking about sexual harassment from a trans woman and some bitch tried to accuse her of “contributing to the stereotype that trans women are sex abusers perpetrated by cis people” like ????

it’s impossible to have a serious discussion about sex abuse and assault in the trans community because, at large, the community has a problem with sanctimonious white women who’re only friends with other sanctimonious white women (i’m mentioning race despite being white myself because i mean it like a lot of them are racist even if they don’t know it and talk too much about things they shouldn’t but do anyway because they think being trans puts them at the very bottom of some kind of hypothetical social ladder). like somebody comes forward with a story about sexual harassment from a specific person who happens to be trans and you get a bunch of Those People talking about them perpetuating stereotypes despite this being a literal event that happened to them

same with the whitney thing like we (small friend group of mine) were talking about it in our group chat and then some trans woman who was apart of it just up and leaves and today, we see he having a laugh and a jape with her like she didn’t find out hours before that the person she’s friends with is a rapist.

firsthand i’ve seen a lot of things from trans women who think that they’re untouchable because they have the label of “trans woman” and fall back on that as a get out of jail free card like they can’t be racist or classist or even themselves be criticised for sexual misconduct

and the sexual misconduct thing is literally perpetuated like a normal thing like all of those posts that get circulated around about how all trans women flirt with each other and share nudes like, no, if i don’t know you and you try to talk to me like that you’re a creep and need to fuck off. like a lot of my friends who’re trans women have experiences with people they don’t know trying to share nudes or outright start aggressively flirting

like i’m aware this is kind of all over the place towards the end and it might be hard to understand if you’re not apart of the trans community or you’re trans and haven’t experiences this yourself firsthand or been told by others about similar things but, really as a community we have a problem with allowing people who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about lead discussions about identity politics and also thinking that people who’re sexual harasses ranging from “just doesn’t know what appropriateness is” to “preys on minors” to “literal rapist” walk free and interact with people like a normal human because of weird belies that only other trans women are allowed to confront other trans women about things they do (and also as much as i hate to say it some people like the people on mine and my friends cases the other day, just don’t care and consider anybody bringing stuff up from the past or because it happened on tumblr drama-whores or whatever)

like another example is during the whole dog mom escapade (yes the woman who wanted to fuck dogs and her girlfriend who dated somebody in the past who fucked a dog, and regularly interacted with her gf’s blog about wanting to fuck dogs) i had people try to accuse me of using her trans status to get people to (heh) dogpile on her and somebody go on a “you shouldn’t bring this stuff up to a crowd of largely cis people because people have a habit of persecuting minorities moreso than people with privilege and people might mock her for being trans!” rant at me to which i just responded with “i don’t care”. like she wants to fuck dogs nobody cares if she has a dick or not they just want her away from them because she wants to fuck dogs. this isn’t complex.

like, again as a community, we really need to do better. and outside of that back to the original epoch of this longass post, what the fuck is wrong with people (both cis and trans) who’re willing to excuse literal rape and child sexual abuse because it happened a while ago or because they have some perverse sense of loyalty to an online friend

and again sorry to kind of just. write a herculean passage of text and i know the stuff about the trans community failing in regards to that in mine and others experiences maybe might be hard to follow if you aren’t aware of what i’m talking about (maybe? we’ll see) but yeah i’ve had this on my mind for a while. having to see people excuse that kind of shit and outright try to start drama with you and others is, obviously, very strenuous

idk i feel being gay/trans exposes you to a lot of angels but also a lot of terrible people, online communities that’re self governed can go to shit incredibly fast if somebody with enough social notoriety is crafty enough (case in point monetizeyourcat) and enough people are willing to take their side for whatever obtuse reasons 

also i checked there’s literally around 2000 words here so again thank you if you read the whole thing and i’m sorry for the really fucking grim subject matter that seems to crop up a fucking lot in online communities, but again, lot of thoughts, this is a way to expunge them from my head so i can go play dangan ronpa without having a literal dark cloud over me. blessed thursdays everyone <3