#one person got downvoted for suggesting that

[normystical]

oh hot takes on unimportant matters that i don't outright disagree with... oh how i love you

[nyxshadowhawk]

A Retrospective on Harry Potter

Why did I like it in the first place? What about it worked? Where do I go from here?

I have decided to give up Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s reputation now stinks to high heaven. At this point, she is quite indefensible. And even if that weren’t the case, she is not someone that I would want to associate with anyway. Meanwhile, the internet has not only turned against her, but against Harry Potter itself. An innocent question on Reddit, about which Hogwarts Houses the ATLA characters would be in, got downvoted to oblivion. Innumerable Tumblr threads insist that fantasy fans should get into literally anything else (suggestions include Discworld, Earthsea, The Wheel of Time, and Percy Jackson). And now that Harry Potter is no longer a sacred cow, there has been a recent slew of video essays that rip it to shreds, attacking it for its poor worldbuilding, unoriginality, and the problematic ideas baked into the original books (like the whole SPEW thing), etc. Those criticisms always existed, but now they’re getting thrown into the limelight.

It pains me to see such an ignoble downfall of Harry Potter’s reputation. If Rowling had just kept her damn mouth shut, Harry Potter would have aged gracefully, becoming a beloved children’s classic. I'd still plan to introduce it to my own kids one day (after Rowling dies and the dust settles). It’s not surprising that not all aspects of it have aged well, since it’s been more than twenty years since its original publishing date, and everything starts to show its age after that long. I acknowledge that most of the criticisms of the series that I’ve seen lately are valid, and I’ve read plenty of better books. And yet, when I return to the books themselves, even with the knowledge of who JKR really is inside my head, I still really enjoy reading them! There’s still a lot about them that I think works!

None of the other things I’ve read have had as collossal of an impact upon my identity, my values, and my own writing as Harry Potter. It’s hard to move on from it, not just because it’s something I enjoy, but because I have to literally extract my identity from it. I don’t know who I’d be without Harry Potter. I don’t know what my work would look like without Harry Potter. I don’t know how to carry it with me as just another piece of media that I like, as opposed to a filter for who I am as a person. So, with all that in mind, I have to ask myself why I liked Harry Potter so much in the first place. If I’m going to move on from it, then I have to be able to define and isolate the things about it that I want to keep with me. Something about it obviously worked, on a massive scale. So what was it?

It’s not the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding is objectively quite terrible, especially in comparison to that of other fantasy writers who knew what they were doing. At best, it’s inconsistent and poorly thought-out, and at worst it’s insensitive or even racist. Is it the characters? The characters are, in my opinion, one of the stronger parts of the story. But I felt very called-out by one of the many online commentators, who said that anyone who identifies with Harry is too cowardly to write self-insert fic. (I do not remember who said it or even which site it was on, but I distinctly remember the phrase, “Reject Harry Potter, embrace Y/N.”) The reason why people get so invested in Harry Potter’s characters is because they’re easy to project upon, and it’s possible that my love of Harry comes more from over a decade’s worth of projection than anything else. The incessant arguments over characters like Snape, Dumbledore, and James Potter ultimately stem from the fact that these characters do not always come across the way Rowling wanted them to. As for the writing itself, it’s decent, but not spectacular. Harry Potter is something of a sandbox world, with less substance than it appears to have and a crapton of missed opportunities, making it ripe for fanfic. For more than ten years, I’ve been doing precisely that — using Harry Potter as a jumping-off point to fill in the gaps and develop my own ideas, some of which became my original projects.

So what does Harry Potter actually have that sets it apart? Why are people so desperate to be part of Harry Potter’s world if the worldbuilding is bad? What, specifically, is so compelling about it? I think that there’s one answer, one thing that is at the center of Potter-mania, and that has been the underlying drive of my love of it for the past decade and a half: the vibe.

Harry Potter’s vibe is immaculate.

You know what I mean, right? It’s not actually a product of any specific trope, but rather a series of aesthetic elements: The wizarding school in a grand castle, with its pointed windows and torches and suits of armor, ghosts and talking portraits and moving staircases, its Great Hall with floating candles and a ceiling that looks like the night sky, its hundreds of magically-concealed secret doorways. Dumbledore’s Office, behind the gryphon statue, with armillary spheres in every single shot. Deliberate archaisms that evoke the Middle Ages without going as far as a Ren Faire: characters wearing heavy robes, writing with quills and ink on parchment instead of paper, drinking from goblets, decorating with tapestries. Owls, cats, toads. Cauldrons simmering in a dungeon laboratory. Shelves piled with dusty tomes, scrolls, glass vials, crystal balls, hourglasses. Magical candy shaped like insects and amphibians. A library with a restricted section. A forbidden forest full of unicorns and werewolves. That is the Vibe.

There are five armillary spheres just in this shot. They are unequivocally the most Wizard of tabletop decor.

There’s more to it than just the aesthetic, though. The vibe is present in something that writers call soft worldbuilding.

There’s a phrase that writers use to describe magic systems, coined by Brandon Sanderson: hard magic and soft magic. Sanderson’s first law of magic is, “An author’s ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” A hard magic system has clearly-defined rules — you know where magic comes from, how it works and under which conditions, how the characters can use it, and what its limitations are. Examples of really good hard magic systems include Avatar: The Last Airbender and Fullmetal Alchemist. If the audience doesn’t understand the conditions under which magic can work, then using magic to get out of any kind of scrape risks feeling like the writer pulled something out of their ass. It begs the question, “Well, if they could do that, then why didn’t they do that before?”

You may come away from that thinking that having clearly-defined rules is always better worldbuilding than not having them, but this isn’t the case. Soft magic isn’t fully explained to the audience, but that doesn’t matter, because it isn’t trying to solve problems — its purpose is to be evocative. Soft magic enhances the atmosphere of a world by creating a sense of wonder. If your everyman protagonist is constantly running into cool magical shit that they don’t understand, then the world feels like it teems with magic, magic that is greater and more powerful than they know, leaving lots of secrets to uncover. Harry Potter, at least in the early books, excels at this. The soft magic in Harry Potter is what got me hooked, and I think it’s what a lot of other people liked about it, too.

The essence of soft magic is best summed up by this scene in the fourth film, in which Harry enters the Weasleys’ tiny tent at the Quidditch World Cup, only to find that it’s much bigger on the inside. His reaction is to smile and say, “I love magic.”

That’s it. That’s the essence of it. You don’t need to know the exact spell that makes the tent bigger on the inside. You don’t need to know how Dumbledore can make the food appear on the table with a flick of a wand, or how he can make a bunch of poofy sleeping bags appear with another flick. You don’t need to know how and why the portraits or wizard cards move. You don’t need to know how wizards can appear and disappear on a whim, or what the Deluminator is, or where the Sword of Gryffindor came from. You don’t need to know how the Room of Requirement works. Knowing these things defeats the purpose. It kills the vibe, that vibe being that there is a large and wondrous magical world around you that will always have more to discover.

One of the best “soft magic” moments in the books comes early in Philosopher’s Stone, when Harry is trying to navigate Hogwarts for the first time:

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk. —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 8

Many of these details don’t come back later in the series, which is a shame, because this one paragraph is super evocative! It establishes Hogwarts as an inherently magical place, in which the very architecture doesn’t conform to normal rules. Hogwarts seems like it would be exciting to explore (assuming you weren’t late for class), and it gets even better when you learn about all the secret rooms and passages. The games capitalized on this by building all the secret rooms behind bookcases, mirrors, illusory walls, etc. into the game world, and rewarding you for finding them. The utter fascination that produces is hard to overstate.

Another one of the most evocative moments in the first book is when Harry sees Diagon Alley for the first time, after passing through the magically sealed brick wall (the mechanics of which, again, are never explained). This is your first proper glimpse at the wizarding world and what it has to offer:

Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, “Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad....” A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever —" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon.... —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5

What works so well here is the magical weirdness of wizardishness juxtaposed against normalcy. Eeylops Owl Emporium is just a pet shop to wizards. A woman makes a very mundane complaint about the price of goods, but the goods happen to be dragon liver. Broomsticks are treated like cars. All of these small moments contribute to the feeling of the wizarding world being alive, inhabited, and also magical. It gets you to ask the question of what your life would be like if you were a wizard. What do wizards wear? What do they eat? What do they haggle over and complain about? What do they do for fun?

In Book 3, Harry enjoys Diagon Alley for a few weeks when he suddenly has free time, and we get to experience the wizarding world in a state of “normalcy,” when he isn’t trying to save the world. He gets free ice creams from Florean Fortescue, gazes longingly at the Firebolt, and engages with delightfully weird people. He’s a wizard, living a (briefly) normal wizard life among other wizards in wizard-land. And that is fun. It’s so fun, that people want that experience for themselves, enough for there to be several theme parks and other immersive experiences dedicated to recreating the world of Harry Potter.

One of the greatest things about Universal was its phenomenal attention to detail. You can hear Moaning Myrtle’s voice in the women’s bathroom, and only the women’s bathroom. The walls of the Three Broomsticks have shadows of a broom sweeping by itself and an owl flying projected against the wall, so convincingly that you’ll do a double take when you see it. Knockturn Alley is down a little secret tunnel off of the main street, and that’s where you have to go to buy Dark Arts-themed stuff. It’s really well done.

Another thing that contributes to the vibe, in my opinion, is that the wizarding world is slightly macabre. They eat candy shaped like frogs, flies, mice, and so forth, and they have gross-tasting jellybeans. In the film’s version of the Diagon Alley sequence above, there’s a random shot of a pet bat available for purchase. In the third film, when Harry is practicing the Patronus Charm with Lupin, the candles are shaped like human spines. In the first book, this is Petunia’s description of Lily’s behavior after she became a witch:

Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school, and came home every holiday with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 4

I remember reading this for the first time, and it just kind of made intuitive sense to me. I suppose it fits into the “eye of newt and toe of frog” association between magical people and gross things, but somehow it works. Unfortunately, this is retconned later with the knowledge that wizards can’t use magic outside school, but before that limitation gets imposed, the idea of Lily amusing herself by turning teacups into rats seems like an inherently witchy thing to do.

That association between magic and the macabre shows up elsewhere, as well. In The Owl House, Luz’s interest in gross things is one of the things that marks her as a “weirdo” in the real world. When she goes to the magical world of the Boiling Isles, weird and gross stuff is absolutely everywhere. That world’s vibe leans more towards the macabre than the whimsical, but it works because you sort of expect the gross stuff to exist alongside the concept of witches, and that they would be an intrinsic part of the world they inhabit. You don’t question it, because it’s part of the vibe.

(The Owl House is one of the few things I’ve encountered that has a similar vibe to Harry Potter, but it’s still not the same vibe. In fact, The Owl House outright mocks the expectation that magical worlds be whimsical, and directly mocks Harry Potter more than once. The overall vibe is much closer to Gravity Falls.)

The Harry Potter films utilize a lot of similar soft worldbuilding with the background details, especially in the early films that were still brightly-colored and whimsical. For example, the scene in Flourish and Blotts in the second film has impossibly-stacked piles of books and old-timey looking signs describing their subjects, which include things like “Celestial Studies” and “Unicorns.” When Harry arrives in the Burrow in the same film, one of the first things he sees is dishes washing themselves and knitting needles working by themselves, taking completely mundane things and instantly establishing them as magical. In that Patronus scene with Harry and Lupin, the spine-candles and a bunch of random orbs (and the obligatory giant armillary sphere) float around in the background. One small detail that I personally appreciate is the designs on the walls above the teacher’s table in the Great Hall, which are from an alchemical manuscript called the Ripley Scroll:

It’s all these little things that add up to produce The Vibe.

Obviously, much of the vibe is expressed very well in John Williams’ score for the first three Harry Potter films. The mystical minor key of the main theme, the tinkly glockenspiel, the strings, the rising and falling notes that mimic the fluttering of an owl, the flight of a broomstick, or the waving of a wand. That initial shot of the castle across the lake as the orchestra swells, as the children arrive at their wizarding school:

If you grew up with Harry Potter, just looking at this image gives you The Vibe. The nostalgia hit is definitely part of it, but The Vibe was already there, back when you were a child and you didn’t have nostalgia yet.

In my opinion, only Williams’ score captures this vibe — the later films, though their scores are very good, do not. But the soundtrack of the first two video games, by Jeremy Soule (the same person who did Skyrim) absolutely nails it. This, right here, is Harry Potter’s vibe, condensed and distilled:

This is why I feel invalidated by the common advice “just read another book.” I have read other books. I’ve read plenty of other books, many of which are wonderfully written and have left an impact on me. But there’s still only one Harry Potter. To date, there’s only other book that has filled me with a similarly intense longing for a fictional place, and that is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. That book deliberately prioritized atmosphere over everything else in the story, and actually lampshades this in-universe. The Night Circus has a plot and it has characters, but it’s not about its plot or characters. It’s about the setting and its atmosphere. It swallows you up and transports you to a fictional place that is so evocative and so magical that you just have to be part of it or you’ll die. And even then, The Night Circus has a different kind of vibe from Harry Potter. In this particular capacity, there’s nothing else like Harry Potter.

The thing is, I don’t think Rowling was being as deliberate as Erin Morgenstern. (In fact, given many of Rowling’s recent statements, I question how many of her creative choices were deliberated at all.) She was throwing random magical stuff into the background without thinking too hard about it, which works when you’re writing a kids’ story, but stops working when you try to age it up. Actually, scratch that — soft worldbuilding is definitely not just for kids! The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system, for crying out loud, and Tolkien is the original archmage of worldbuilding. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that prioritizing atmosphere over meticulousness is bad worldbuilding. That is a valid way to worldbuild! Not everything needs to be clearly explained, not everything needs to make sense. The problem is that Harry Potter doesn’t balance it well. Certain things do have to be explained in order for the magic to play an active role in the story (and the setting of a magic school lends itself to that kind of explanation), but no rules are ever established for the kinds of magic that need rules. When you begin thinking about the rules, you’re no longer just enjoying the magic for what it is. At worst, you begin running up against the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

It wasn’t actually the “aging up” of the story that did it in, per se, but rather, the introduction of realism. The early books were heavily stylized, and the later books were less so. A heavily stylized story can more easily maintain the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. That’s why, for example, you don’t ask why the characters are singing in a musical — you just sort of accept the story’s outlandish internal logic, and the inherent melodrama of it doesn’t take you out of the story. Stylized stories are more concerned with being emotionally consistent over being logically consistent. The later Harry Potter books changed their emotional tone, but without changing the worldbuilding style to compensate.

In addition to the more mature themes and darker tone, Harry Potter introduced more realism as it went, but Rowling did not have the worldbuilding chops to pull this off. There’s the basic magic system stuff: When you begin thinking about it too hard, something like a Time-Turner stops being a fun magical device, and starts threatening to break the entire story. Then there’s the characters: Dumbledore leaving Harry on the Dursleys’ doorstep in the first book is an age-old fairy tale trope that goes unquestioned, but with the introduction of realism in the later books, it suddenly becomes abandonment of a child to an abusive family. The exaggerated stereotypes of characters like the Dursleys become tone-deaf. The fun school rivalry of the House system is suddenly lacking in nuance. And then there’s the shift in tone: The wizarding world that we were introduced to as a marvellous place is revealed to be dystopian. You start thinking about how impractical things like owl messengers are, you start wondering if Slytherin is being unjustly punished, the bad history appears glaringly obvious, the quaint archaisms become dangerously regressive. Oh, and the grand feasts are made through slave labor! The wizarding world suddenly feels small and backward instead of grand and marvellous. J.K. Rowling’s bigotry throws it all into an even harsher light.

This is why I’ve always preferred the early books and films to the later ones. There’s a lot of things I like about the later ones, but they’re not as stylized — they don’t have The Vibe. Thinking about things too hard is just a necessary condition of adulthood, but it’s still possible to tell a dark, mature story that is highly stylized. I really think JKR could have better pulled off that shift if she was a more competent worldbuilder. But it is painfully obvious that she did not think things through, and probably didn’t understand why she had to. In her defense, she did not know that her story would end up being one of the most scrutinized of all time. As it stands, her strength in worldbuilding was in the softer, smaller, deliberately unexplained moments of magic that were there just to provide atmosphere. And there were less and less of those as the books went along.

Pretty much all the Harry Potter-related content released since the last film — including Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, Hogwarts Mystery, Hogwarts Legacy, Magic Awakened, and that short-lived Pokemon Go thing — have been unsuccessful attempts at recreating The Vibe. In fact, the only piece of supplemental Potter content that I think had that Vibe down pat was the original Pottermore, back when it was more of an interactive game. And of course that got axed. That was right around the time things started going downhill.

Some of the art from Pottermore’s original Sorting quiz.

So what now? Well, that’s the question.

I think I can safely say that The Vibe was the reason I liked Harry Potter. It’s the thing I still like the most about it. I’ve spent years chasing it, like an elusive Patronus through a dark wood. If I can capture and distill that Vibe, and use drops of it in my own work, then perhaps I won’t need Harry Potter anymore.

I'm gonna write the story that I wish Harry Potter was, and when I'm a famous author, I won't become a bigot. I'll see you on the other side.

[luvtonique]

Man, Reddit sure is a place.

Now I think Social Media in general is a cancer, like an absolutely worthless piece of the internet and society as a whole that has set us back literally thousands of years in terms of any kind of actual social interaction.

So I'm going in with a bias here.

Mind you I think communication platforms like Discord or phones are fine, it's Social Media I'm talking about. Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, etc.

But I'm actually completely baffled by Reddit.

I don't usually post there, I posted the Bestia mod for Binding of Isaac there, and got a lot of praise, and a lot of hate at the same time.

But earlier today I decided to give some creative criticism of a part of the current Path of Exile league that I noticed tons of players were complaining about. I thought I'd give a bit of constructive criticism on how I, with no game design experience mind you, would have handled the issue.

TLDR: The new mechanic just makes enemies "harder" by padding their stats. Attack speed, health, movement speed, damage, all of those just go up. There you go. Difficulty. My suggestion was to instead give them additional attacks that cast from their location, and gave 9 examples of different types of them, all with their own risk/reward elements involved and even suggestions on how a player would regularly counter those attacks.

As a result of my post, the PoE Subreddit instantly downvoted my post multiple times, currently sitting at a 13% upvote rate with 1000 views, and the comment section is just full of people cussing me out and calling me a dumbass, and even saying such smug shit as "Oh yeah those are great ideas now just go get the incredibly overworked developers to implement your precious idea because it's soooo much better than the ideas of game developers with 10 years of experience working on this game"

And I am fucking floored. Not one, not a single one person had anything constructive to add, any counter points, any form of discussion other than "Fuck off with your ideas."

I am just completely shocked over here, laughing my ass off as more and more these angry manchildren scream and rage in the comments. It's unbelievable.

I know I already have a bias against Social Media in general but this is unfuckingbelievable, this is what Social Media is, it's just a place to cuss strangers out, contribute nothing to a discussion, and act smug.

How the fuck do y'all revolve your lives around this shit?

[luesmainblog]

not the only fandom, anon! this is a big fucking problem in the genshin impact fandom. at the beginning of the game, you get to pick which character to play; Aether, the brother, or Lumine, the sister. it is strongly implied they are twins, specifically, and therefor the same age. also bear in mind, there are maybe 5 characters total who have a proper canonical age in this game, and almost all of them need knowledge outside the game to do the math. for the most part, it is ALL based on the vibe. Lumine and Aether will be collectively referred to as "The Traveler" from here for simplicity sake. as the traveler is your player character, naturally, there are a lot of ship! and due to a few lines scattered throughout the game, there's a difference in opinion on how the traveler should be treated; should we treat them as an Adult because they're over 500 and "seem 20-ish", or should we view them as a Minor because they "seem 16-ish" and there's a running gag about them being underaged for alchohol, specifically?

and something i've noticed is that people are WAY more lax with Aether's age. i routinely see people arguing that it's gross to ship lumine with several of her most popular ships because "the traveler is a minor!!", made even messier by several of these characters having the same difference in reading, and there's a pretty consistant opinion amongst Minor Coded Traveler-truthers that the taller guys are generally off-limits. even the one who's routinely referred to as being very young! you pretty much have to pick one of the "child coded" characters to run into people who view lumine as too old. but Aether is a different story. people ship him all over the place, and amongst the same traveler ships with just a different twin, things are much quieter; you see loads more gushing about how cute or sexy the pairings are, whether it's a tall model or not. for SOME REASON, aether's age isn't considered something worth protecting nearly as much. doesn't seem to matter if the ship is gay or straight, either. what's funny is, you can't even blame it on their personalities being different. they are, but lumine is routinely the more capable and "cool" sibling; aether is the purposely cute one. but it's a petite, pretty, white-skinned blonde girl, so clearly we must treat her as a precious daffodil in need of protection from the horrible, disgusting men/shippers. it extends into the art, too, lumine is often drawn and written as much softer and more generically girly in fanworks, which likely adds to this problem. on a similarly infuriating note, back during the inazume update, we officially got confirmation that the medium girl model CAN be used for an adult woman; there was a crossover with horizon zero dawn, and we got Aloy as a crossover character, and that's the model base she used. and the fandom proceeded to downvote the absolute hell out of this crossover for all sorts of dumb reasons(most of them just upset that the way she was implemented ruined their headcanons about how world travelers worked in this world or "broke the immersion"), and continue to act like the medium girl model automatically suggests they're a minor.

Waddled into fnf discourse (very bad decision)and I don’t know if any other fandom has done this, but I noticed that fandom doesn’t seem to give a damn when the main boy is being shipped with everyone but when it’s the girl (unless it’s with another girl) it’s suddenly cheating or “cucking” if you will. Am I weird for thinking that’s a little misogynist?Its “toxic” and “wouldn’t work in canon” all of a sudden. Why does canon mysteriously matter now? There aren’t even any real toxic ships in that fandom to get mad at and antis still find a way to make everyone miserable.

--

[sameore]

The hostile part of r/HazbinHotel on Reddit?

I don't know your experience with Reddit, but there is something I've genuinely noticed while I was trying to share my transmasc related fanworks (mainly including Alastor, in my case) with Hazbin Hotel's fan community.

And this triggered... my interest, my curiosity? Because there are two specific communities that are dedicated to gather this fanbase:

r/HazbinHotel, and r/HazbinHotelFanart.

(There is another NSFW one, but... welp. The mod team will either delete your work, say it's not "NSFW enough", or just switch your "Male" tag into "Female" tag because they don't know what a trans man actually is... apparently. Even if it was specified on the title: interpret this as you want)

Now the difference? Well. Each time I've posted a trans fanwork, I had two different reactions depending on which community I shared it with.

r/HazbinHotel.

It might not be noticeable here, but as soon as I posted it on this community, I received about 3 downvotes. Yet, it turns out this community won't let the counter go below zero (which explains why it's 0 and not -2). It also goes with the fact, I've left my auto-vote on (when you post something on Reddit, your account will systematically upvote it so you start with 1 point and not "0".)

While the counter will leave it as "0" officially, behind the scenes I noticed my profile karma was dropping. And not just of one point...

Here's what we've got underneath:

(75% were downvotes... except my single auto-vote)

This was an example... but unfortunately, this typically went with other fanworks I've posted in there (not many, as I didn't find this very encouraging in the first place? But that’s the point here: it’s not the first time). People behaved in a quite hostile way.

While I brought up the headcanon of Alastor as a trans man, I received things such as "what the fuck", or "this is the most way-out headcanon I've heard of". This, obviously (and always?) with downvotes. In a rare situation, one or two people defended me... and suggested these people leave the place if they don't like it. Paradoxically, later on for that post back in the days, some people started upvoting my post... to counterbalance the previous downvotes.

r/HazbinHotelFanart.

Well, people seem to be less hostile? And more supportive (see the points). Which might be... err, slightly more encouraging? I don't know.

Thereby, I noticed it was ok to make non-official ships... or to depict a character with a sexual orientation that wasn't confirmed officially. But a character being transgender? You'll have to explain yourself, and have a hard case on your shoulders.

Now, let's remember Reddit is a place in which people tend to upvote/downvote in a quite mechanical way, not just depending on the quality of your post, but mainly on their attitude toward a subject. Many Redditors feel "anonymous", and might use this feeling to belittle your work in any possible way just because they don't like the idea of it.

(The risk when you crosspost something is that it also enables them to directly go to the original post and downvote it as well... which will then affect your overall profile karma. In this case, perhaps I'd expect people from r/HazbinHotel to do the same to the original post from r/HazbinHotelFanArt).

So. obviously, if you depict a trans character, transphobic people will be free to attack you with no difficulty. Guess that's the toxic part of Reddit...

Basically, the problem is that you literally get penalized not because what you shared is morally wrong or is meant to spread hatred (is Alastor being trans wrong?), but because you don't post something according to those people's standards. What you draw is somewhat... unusual?

Here, you get punishment for this. (It's not just about the post that loses karma points, but directly your personal profile).

Finally... the problem is not just about r/HazbinHotel (or this single example), but also about Reddit's whole "justice" system that has flaws per se, and that is mainly based on social desirability.

Your post has to please the largest number of readers, with their expectations (mainstream ideas).

Alastor being transgender? Nah, people don't like this conception of things (which doesn't mean it is any less valid objectively speaking... He remains a character full of mysteries, so why wouldn't it be possible?)

Nonetheless, will it discourage me to depict Alastor as a trans man? Of course not! And there are plenty of other social media to share this on! (But believe me, if only Reddit was the only social media in which I had received remarks... *sigh*)

In the meantime, I'll leave this post some more on Reddit to see what's going to happen... while just hoping I won't keep being downvoted (or even insulted in this case!) #RIPMyKarma

I might update this post if I've got news...

*As a side note:

While in most fan communities there is a "toxic" part...

Of course, as it is important to still recall there are nuances, I'm well aware not everyone in this fan community has this mindset, and that it might not reflect Vivziepop and/or Hazbin Hotel's spirit either.

This is mainly about my personal/global experience and feeling associated with this specific community on Reddit. Perhaps a general tendancy that exists? I don't know... I have never had the possibility to exchange with other artists or mere users who might have gone through something similar. (If you have, well... feel free to share your experience?)

Nevertheless, it's gonna remain an interesting observation.

*EDIT: Another detail I didn't mention when I first published this Tumblr post is that Hazbin Hotel was initially meant for an adult audience. But, in practice... well, a big part of its fanbase might be composed of teenagers. Which might also be one of the potential factors that could explain a part of these reactions...

*Update 1: Turns out there is (once again!) this sort of dynamics in which a few people came in to counterbalance the initial cluster of downvotes on r/HazbinHotel (which confirms the nuance mentioned earlier: not everyone has this mindset). So, now the number of points is finally (timidly) positive, but I have yet to recognize the fact it's a strange way to be welcomed everytime I come up with something trans related. By a bunch of downvotes in the first place...

*Update 1b: To keep on with this nuance, the gasp between r/HazbinHotel and r/HazbinHotelFanart keeps growing though.

The original post on r/HazbinHotelFanart has received way more upvotes since then (over 50).

However. As expected earlier, some people directly reached this one post to downvote it as well. (Obviously I couldn't keep those 100% of upvotes for too long).

*Update 2: Ahh yeah. And the thing with the fact people take it very seriously when you mention this headcanon but the other headcanons are ok. I’m tired of justifying myself though.

But then, these updates were predictable, right?

Sorry if this might sound like a quite long post or something... but I genuinely needed to rant over this. Mentioning a trans(male) headcanon remains, nowadays, still quite taboo... while it's something I've always kept doing because it was important for me. And yet, I feel like I'm being punished for simply wanting to share this with other users and potentially finding people with common interests.

So... that's what it costs to conceive things a bit differently from what we could call a "normative" perspective inside a community?

You get sanctioned for having... different ideas than a majority.

And if you're out of it, you're just... a misfit.

[woonietune]

Hello fandom my old friend

I’m being stalked again. I tend to get stalked. It’s sort of a thing with me. A friend once said I wasn’t like crazycake flypaper--that I was more like a Venus flytrap so stalkers beware. True, I’m not to be messed with. That still doesn’t mean I don’t freak out.

The WBDS fandom was pretty quiet these past six years given the noise of my previous fandoms--in which the highest pitch involved the FBI addressing threats to moi (twice). But (twice) in the WBDS fandom I’ve run across people who’ve made my skin crawl--one loves me too much; the other is a sworn enemy. In the past three months, my Instagram has been hacked three (more?) times, and my humble posts (I have a following of less than a 100 ppl--mostly kdrama fans) keep being reported for inappropriate content and taken down. One post I didn’t question--it had a link in the text to a story which IN TURN had a hidden link in a note to M-rated material. But the other reports were just WHACK, like a photo of a guy licking his sword (ok, Insta, that’s so suggestive... but what if it was a hot girl eating a banana?) The last post taken down was a drawing of mine of a guy on a horse, and the story was innocuous--the fic even had a damn puppy in it, ok? Well, a crazy man committed suicide in it, but THAT WAS ALL A PIECE OF FICTION? WAS THAT INSTA-INAPPROPRIATE? Geez, I reposted it all, and I wished whoever was harassing me a Merry Holidays and gave them some pearls to clutch.

I get uncomfortable the more “known” I get in fandom too. More people love me, more people hate me. Someone on Reddit named my current WIP as one of “the greatest fanfics of all time” in a thread, and I was like, duuuuuude, what are you smoking? I’ve been around a while, and off the top of my head, I can think of a gazillion fics way better than my current UNFINISHED fic. The only one allowed to love me and my work that much is my fandom wife. Oh, she got hit one story hit by the kudos bot (I got one story hit too--this is a crazy bot--it’s not a webcrawler--it’s SENTIENT--it hit a lot of people who posted stories in a small fandom thread on Reddit--it READS Reddit). Since Wifey’s story was hit, she put up a disclaimer saying please ignore those fake 70 kudos (however many--I got about the same number on my GREATEST FIC OF ALL TIME, lol, and I put up a similar I hate you kudos bot note). But weirdly, people have not been leaving kudos OR comments for Wifey since she put up disclaimer... it’s like kudo bot nervousness on the part of readers? What has this bot done to us all? (Wifey did get a hilarious comment from anon calling themselves NOTABOT on another story though who left a heart emoji :D).

I feel on pins and needles right now. 

I want to share stories with people and have people like the stories. I don’t like fandom stalkers, haters, kudos bots, weird persistent downvoters for every comment I make on Reddit, mad love like people saying my fic is one of the greatest of all time loooool, or that one poor woman who still wants to have my babies or something after 4 years (and we weren’t even dating, I swear). I don’t know who keeps harassing me on Insta. Maybe the same person who told me to kill myself for writing rape fic a few months ago--I mean,  why target me? So many other writers out there in way bigger fandoms writing way darker rapefics?

Which one of you two was it? Or is there a third now? A fourth, fifth, sixth Debbie-hater?

Brrrrrrrrr.

My friends say I eat these people and get stronger--they’ve seen it happen. But you know how painful it is to digest hate?

Anyway, Wifey’s story is amazing and getting so little attention. It takes a wonderful (terrible) canon time (when Dong-soo was literally insane for a couple months and unable to speak after being betrayed by Woon) and fills in a lot of plot-holes by having us go into Dong-soo reputed genius mind as he hallucinates Woon. It’s brilliant. It’s here: 

Weakness

Speaking of which, I need a very long nap. And I’m envying my cat’s lickable protein snacks. I may order ice cream. Can people get ice cream delivered? I don’t even like ice cream. Soy cream? Can I get a vegetarian drone from a supermarket to drop me off some soy milk cream sandwiches? And a cabana boy with a drink with an umbrella?

[ladyelainehilfur]

I wrote a post on a different site about HJ's vocals (which are less than stellar when he's singing live) and it got downvoted so badly they deleted it 💀

Fine, I hurt your feelings, BUT AM I WRONG. Quick, someone tell me if it's cap that HJ can't actually sing. I genuinely love that guy and everything he does, but I'm not going to pretend ATEEZ are a perfect group full of all-rounders.

Hongjoong is a rapper, not a singer. He didn't even wanna be an idol until his school principal suggested it. It's okay to acknowledge his singing is a little weak. It's okay to say "Hongjoong isn't a good singer". You're not being maleficent, it's just the truth.

However, I will say I said this to the wrong audience. The comments I got were asking if I was joking, which I wasn't. I was admiring the fact that HJ sings despite it not being his strong suite. I admire anyone who pursues what they like without wondering what people think of them. However, my phrasing in the post was callous, because that's just how I talk. But I meant no ill intent.

But I guess that's a joke for people who worship the ground he walks on. I'm not going to whip out all the evidence that proves I'm not an ATEEZ anti, because I ultimately don't matter.

Seriously though, if you see criticism about your faves, don't take it as a personal attack. People are not one dimensional when they say these things. Hear them out and if you don't like it, leave it. It bears no consequence on you.

I hate this phrase, but kpop isn't that deep. Just chill.

[pancakeke]

one last reddit bitch and I'll stop omg. but the plant misinfo on that site drives me so nuts cause whenever people post non-bug-related plant issues and ask for a diagnosis, 99% of the time the issue is over/under watering or lack of adequate light.

but people will suggest plant multivitamins (not real?), zinc supplements, neem oil, fake antifungals, etc. even though the person's pic shows that the plant is under a $20, 20 watt amazon grow light meanwhile blackout curtains beside it are pulled mostly closed over a window beside it. are we really unable to figure out why OP's plant is so pale??

it make me wonder if people are reluctant to say anything that implies blame or something? like rather than telling people that they're severely over watering their plants, it's less confrontational to tell them to buy a cure-all to solve their problems?

but then again once when someone posted a droopy and dying plant in a huge pot that was visibly soaking wet I told them the pot was too big which allowed the soil to retain water extra long, making overwatering worse. but I got downvoted and someone who said to give it a copper supplement was upvoted.

maybe I'm dumb and the other guy was right. but reddit is the only place i see people talk about "supplements" for plants rather than calling that shit fertilizer like normal people, so I'm suspicious.

i kept reading people on reddit say you can put monstera deliciosa aerial roots in glasses of water until they produce aquatic roots and then lop those off the mother and grow them into new plants. so I looked it up cause it sounded fake and I was right.

where did that idea even come from. you clone those things from nodes, not rhizomes.

[megrimlocke]

How We Are All Going to Die Laughing

The other day, I was looking at a post made by one of my favorite internet comic artists.  The guy used to be something I’d read in the army newspapers, next to the adds for cheap TVs at the post exchange, but these days it’s mostly a facebook feed I occasionally read.  The artist and writer behind “PVT Murphy” (though these days Murphy’s a sergeant, I’m aging after all it seems) was annoyed at Facebook showing him a shopping page offering what amounted to white nationalist (US neonazi, if you prefer) paraphernalia.

Now, I pointed out that this was what the robot had concluded he wanted to see, and honestly none of us should be surprised by this.  Military members lean right, and in the age of Trump this means that radicalization is around every corner- though for the record it always has been.  In some insidious ways with a cancer of racists and bigots among our ranks, sure, I know because being gay I was targeted by a few myself, but also in more subtle ways.

I once watched a man scream at some Iraqis who were emptying a waste bin nearby, screaming that they didn’t get him, because he’d been the target of an IED attack two hours prior.  Those men had no way in hell of having anything to do with it, but the guy that hit us got away free and the trash guys looked like someone he could defiantly vent his feelings of helplessness and victimhood upon in a vain effort to reclaim his power.  I’m not condoning it, I’m just saying that sometimes the path to prejudice isn’t paved with propaganda and privilege.

I have every faith in the artist who draws PVT Murphy himself, but if you attract the attention of a lot of white supremacists, then probably the robot is going to conclude that you might want to look at some of the things that all the people who like your posts are looking at.  Hence the shop page that offered a wall pinup of a templar knight preparing to smite the saracen to defend (white) Christendom with a few crass remarks about Islam written on it.

Now I explained, in truncated terms, how the robot made this call.  The artist wasn’t excited about this explanation, and in fairness no one is excited about the black mirror showing them something ugly, it’s almost like an automated attack.  But the machine was really just trying to be helpful.  It wasn’t programmed to be sensitive to racial issues, and certainly the people who took out the add didn’t take that into their considerations.  It identified a pattern and arranged the delivery of data that conformed with its instructions based upon the data input.

Now, some right wing dude decided to join in this discussion to point out that the robot didn’t know what it was talking about, included the terms “lib” and “snowflake” in his post, and suggested that if the robot had any idea who he was it wouldn’t keep showing him liberal content- after all he always used the laugh react on it.  I pointed out this part as well, but I’d like to go into a deeper analysis for this discourse.

The right, and perhaps a lot of people using the reacts on facebook, has decided that you can use the laugh react to express a dismissive chuckle to the words of others.  I think this has several sweeping, problematic implications.

First, the people using the internet are using it to each other, and are either unaware of the robots they share the internet with or ignorant regarding how they function.  The robots do not interpret Laugh as a dismissive gesture.  The data they gather from this is that you were paying attention to something and decided to put a reaction on it.  The Laugh react is not a downvote on reddit, the robot, innocent little helperbot it was made to be, assumes you are amused by the thing you clicked on, and so endeavors to further tickle your funny bone.  In short, it’s your good-natured wholesome friend who doesn’t understand the difference between you laughing with liberals and laughing at us.  It thinks we’re all friends.

This leads to the second problem.  If you are a conservative and you do not care to be bothered with leftist posts, then using the laugh react doesn’t help you at all.  It further engages you with the content that annoys you.  The stuff that caused you to try and put on your dismissive “ha ha tawdry communist drivel” mid-atlantic aristocrat voice is going to keep appearing.  If you’re the sort given to conspiracy theories (and you are my bro, you still hate Hillary for the pizza thing), you might draw the conclusion that you are being targeted by leftist internet operatives, spamming your feed with leftist propaganda.

The truth is you’re spamming yourself with leftist content because your socially clueless helpful robot pal is gonna go out and find more things for you to laugh at.  You’re not special or important enough for leftist internet operatives to target your facebook feed with propaganda attacks, and you have damned yourself to an experience on facebook in which you are bombarded with annoying or even blood-boiling content.  All of this guidance, by the way, is equally applicable to left leaning users of the laugh react as a dismissive gesture.

What this does is contribute to people’s paranoia.  It makes them believe that an enemy that doesn’t exist is trying to get into their heads.  It fills their electronic lives with incendiary content that makes them angry and it encourages them further to continue to have generally unproductive electric arguments with people that they disagree with, leaving them exhausted by a brain full of cortisol.

Personally, I think the Left’s electric sin is more to do with our frankly superior witticisms (sorry Right, you invented and stuck to Nobama, you’re just not witty) and the craving so many of us seem to have for delivering that sick burn one-liner so cutting and succinct that it stops the conservative dead in his rhetorical tracks seems to consume online political discourse on the left almost as aggressively as call-out culture does when arguing among our own.

In the effort to sell us more things by pandering to our professed passions, the capitalist internet has created an electric rage engine that wraps you into one heated argument after another among people who are not listening to one another and who are learning to disengage from hard discussions.  This last part is so dangerous to our democracy.

To be clear, I’m not lamenting the death of compromise specifically.  There can be no compromise on the income gap, healthcre, free elections, or the rights of people who are darker in skin than I.  But the electric rage engine makes it difficult to even have conversations about these things in the real world, and if you’re not talking to the people you disagree with face to face in the here and now, your chances of finding compromise are precisely zero percent, nevermind actually changing their views.

Have you noticed yourself having conversations with people that could just be copy pasted almost word for word off the tumblr where they “informed” themselves about this topic?  I’ll bet that you have.  Or else, more dangerously, you have begun to avoid having such conversations at all with people.  Have you ever been in a discussion turned friendly debate with your friend and realized after a few moments that the debate isn’t suddenly so friendly?  I’m willing to bet it’s been a while, so much so that you might even be shocked if it happens.

People like to go on about how fraught the holidays can be because of how politically charged family dinners can be, but I can’t remember such an experience within the past ten years.  No throw down arguments, no discussions about the merits of one tax policy or another- we can’t even seem to discuss weighty matters with people who are blood kin anymore unless we already know they agree with our own views- and thanks to the electric rage engine, we can know, in precis, what their views are and what we think about them as a result long before we ever think about what to put in our covered dish.  The opportunity for someone stepping into a landmine social or foreign policy issue at family and social gatherings has been eliminated, and with it the ability of the dinner table to serve as a place for families to reach consensus by resolving their arguments.  We don’t talk politics with people who disagree with us in the real world anymore, we all just avoid it and spit our venom on the internet, achieving nothing but our mounting unhappiness and dislike for one another.

I have a young colleague at work, maybe 25, who demonstrated the ability to just promptly end a discussion last week.  Now it was a nonsense discussion and in fairness the participants had gotten into trolling him for kicks, saying a blue shirt was green on purpose or some other nonsense, I don’t remember the particulars.  But what I do remember vividly was the ease and efficiency with which he was able to simply end the discussion, how disengagement came so very naturally to him.  I despise the phrase “agree to disagree” because it means that the argument hasn’t been resolved, but it is at least a sign that there was actual thought going on between participants.  No such gesture here.  My colleague put down the conversation and simply went back to his work with all the ease with which you might put down your phone when you decided you were done arguing with someone, and the ability to do this in realspace chilled me to the bone.

Moreover, there is a certain epistemological nihilism that has arisen among us, suggesting that no one can truly know anything because the sources of information, with whatever omissions or biases they may possess, are a matter of consumerist choice rather than objective fact.  We can’t agree on what is real anymore because if you dislike someone’s account of events, you can simply get someone else to present a more palatable story and declare the other people liars.

If you don’t like what you read on NBC, you can simply tune to Fox to hear it told in a way that you choose to consume, often playing to your appetite for validation rather than your need for actionable information.  We like feeling right, and the consumerist information economy has identified that as a means to get our attention long enough to upload some ads along with our news video of choice.

If the very identity of a person can be expressed by a computer algorithm and 4 or 5 hundred clicks across news articles, think pieces, and shopping pages, how easy will it be for the people who do understand how the machines work to begin influencing who we are?

In closing, I think every single one of us is developing a progressively more toxic relationship with the internet, particularly when it comes to political discourse, and I think that if we aren’t especially careful our ability to simply shut down and switch off, while healthy on the web, is going to begin invading our lives in the waking world in insidious ways that will hurt our ability to function as a cohesive society. I think that the marketing robots and the very act of making a profile and posting to it things that are important to you are dangerous influences on our sense of identity, and that by wrapping our sense of identity in the ideas and products that we consume in such a contrived, calculated fashion that we are restricting our ability to be flexible in our thinking, making us less able to get along with one another.  

I’ve been on a soft departure from Facebook for a good while now, making it my loose rule to stick to messenger and instagram because I like indulging my vanity but for the most part I want to be interacting with people directly and not selling myself for likes when I use these things.  Real attention from real people  is much much better.  

In 2020, I invite you to join me in kicking facebook or your own social media vice altogether and bringing our political lives and our debates back into the real world so that we can practice and re-acquire the skills of persuasion and discussion; not as a cynic call to begin trying to convert every conservative we can find, but for the sake of a political discourse that serves as less of a battleground with immovable ideological fortresses and more of a crucible in which the useless can be burned away and useful consensus and meaningful, mind changing-discussions can be had once again.  We cannot afford to keep unsubscribing from one another if our democracy is to survive. (<- leftist witticism addiction in demonstration)

[marzgurl]

I had one YouTube comment come in that I was willing to read and respond to. I’m fine sharing it here, along with my response. This was the original comment. “MarzGurl, you really need to stand up for yourself better and make a video and talk about this whole thing. I'm not gonna come out and say it out right, because I'm sure you have certain words banned from comments. When you left Channel Awesome, you had no qualms about making videos on that topic in the past, and you even discussed the situation with JewWario. But now with these current accusations you're floundering around, you have hardly done anything other than tweet day and night about it. If you really believe what you are saying, then prove it. Your primary audience is not Twitter, it's YouTube, and if you are directly involved with this, your audience has a right to know. Have a discussion video on your channel about this movement and don't hold back on it. Don't censor comments, don't hide the like bar, and be open with your full side of the situation. But be truthful with your facts as well, because plenty of people are willing to obviously prove you wrong if they don't. It's simply too coincidental that there are plenty other channels making videos and proving innocence, when there is no one more prominent than you that could make a video in response and prove them right. It doesn't need to be constant back and forthing, you can do just one video to acknowledge your involvement and be done with it. Just stop pretending this isn't going on and that you're not losing subscribers by the minute.“

And the following was my response.

Although this is off-topic for the video, this message was polite enough all things considered, so I will dignify it with a response. (For what it's worth, thank you, Mort, for your two cents.) 

Here's why I don't make a video about it. 

 In general, I am not a drama channel. I had words to say about Channel Awesome because I was directly tied to them for nine years. That was a huge hunk of my adult life. And in regards to JewWario, there was no getting around the fact that my husband and I made a movie dedicated to him, only to turn around four years later and find out he was hurting people. There was no way I could NOT address that. That hurt like a bitch. Here I think I'm friends with a guy, and in the end he lied to me, to his wife, to other people he was cheating with, to all of his friends--hell, his wife didn't even know that Channel Awesome had fired him. I was way too personally involved, and that NEEDED to be addressed, especially because I thought I was proud of our movie we made. Now I hate it. I hate that we put so much time and effort into something, and involved all of these other people who thought THEY were doing the right thing, working on something THEY could be proud of. And in the end, it didn't mean anything. It hurts, man. Hurts like hell. 

I don't tweet day and night about this. This isn't my life. Just because you can read a bunch of tweets really fast doesn't mean that it's all I think about. You just consume a bunch of it and think that's what life is. It's everybody else bringing it to my doorstep night and day, yourself included, that's what the reality is. My channel is not a place where I want Vic to take up residency. All those other channels? They accuse me of standing alongside victims for "clout" or to "give my channel attention" or whatever, never mind the fact that I haven't made any Vic content on my channel. Meanwhile, those other YouTubers are actively making a ton of money on the drama, and making entirely new videos every time I or someone else involved breathes. In personal opinion, that's pretty scummy, and I'm not out here trying to scrape cash from a dumpster fire. These are people's lives, Vic's included. I don't want YouTube attention OR money based on the lives of victims OR Vic. That doesn't seem to stop anybody else from doing it. 

My Twitter audience and my YouTube audience are also very similar in numbers. People come to me on Twitter daily. YouTube is slow for me. And that's what I'm comfortable with. I have a life outside of YouTube, and nothing I do is with any explicit intention of doing it for more views. YOU might spend more time on YouTube. I do not. I could be wrong, but I would expect that you haven't spent much time with me or my content to understand that I have decided the pace in which I interact with each social media platform. Twitter is absolutely where I spend more time and where I talk to and reach more people. And I'm happy that way. 

In the beginning, there were a handful of people trying to have a more rational discussion about this, not a screaming, angry rage-filled discussion. People who stood with victims. And every single one of those videos, even from a girl very calmly and rationally talking from the experience of having studied law, got shouted down in her comments and dislike-bombed. Anyone who has dared say anything in support of victims rather than Vic may as well have not even bothered, because the conspiracy theory channels out there have all radicalized tens of thousands of viewers who are now out there on a rampage and flooding every inch of every social media and jumping down everyone's throat. I can't say that people standing with #KickVic have not done similar things at all, which of course is reprehensible. But to say that it is equal in any way, shape, or form would be SEVERELY misleading. On the daily, I'm getting death threats or people wishing that I WOULD die, and I haven't even made a video. It would be 100x worse if I actually did. 

Mind you, there is absolutely a part of me that would LOVE to talk about this, to pinpoint every step of the last two and a half months of this dumpster fire, and even to address how I have been an asshole in the distant past, too. But everything has shown me that it wouldn't matter at all, and that people wouldn't actually watch. They'd just stick to their biases and comment- and downvote-bomb. 

HOWEVER, one day... MAYBE one day I would consider doing it. But here's what would have to happen. 

This whole thing has to be over. And I mean REALLY over. Like, this whole court stuff that people say is going to happen? It has to actually happen. And it has to go all the way through, and it has to wrap up and end. Or any discussion of it happening has to finally drop. There has to be some indication that we are on the "other side" of this thing, and I don't know what that would be or when that would be. Because to make a video in the middle of it would just make MORE stuff happen that doesn't need to happen. I acknowledge my part in partially igniting a fire. But I'm not out here trying to make a video which amounts to throwing gasoline on that fire. Leave that to the conspiracy theorist channels. They're doing a fine enough job of that all on their own. 

Those 300-some-odd people who unsubscribed? Cool. Let them. Out of 18,000, I'm completely content with that. If that was the ONLY number of people who can't understand that the victims should be at the very least listened to and that the conspiracy theorists are out for clicks and money and don't really care about Vic or the situation at all and just want to stick it to the NPC SJWs or whatever it is they're terrified of, then I'm absolutely fine with where I'm at. All the other tens of thousands of people currently at my doorstep? You weren't watching me in the first place, and you were never going to. You were never going to subscribe to me, and I wasn't out to get your subs. In reality? Little to nothing in my life has changed. I'm gonna just keep going about my normal routine. I'd suggest you and others do the same, but I'm not so naive as to think you'll do me (or yourselves) that courtesy.

Anyway. That's where I'm at on the subject of making a video on the topic. In summary, for the time being, that is a staunch NO, unless there is VERY CLEARLY a light at the end of the tunnel in all of this.

Have a good day.

[fanfictionlive]

Try again. Fail better.

This is sort of a follow up to this post. It's also kind of long, and I'm so sorry if I sound bitter; it's because I am. Kindness is appreciated, as fandom toxicity takes a bigger toll on mental health than one might think, even when you're pushing thirty and married, with a full-time job. I'm also sorry if none of this makes sense. I'm fun, coherent, and a barrel of laughs when I'm not in the throes of social anxiety.

Back in January, Tumblr toxicity was getting to me and I had mentioned that I dipped out of there because my fandom is full of mean, cliquey people who won't admit to it out in the open. Well, I tried to go back (downvote me if you want; I deserve it) to promote my fic.

Clown shoes squeaking, because guess what?

It did not go well.

I got into it with another user who decided they had it out for me, and then their friends started blocking me. I was told that there were quite a few people who "wanted nothing to do with me" because of a misunderstanding that I don't want to get into the weeds of right now. It was made clear I was not welcome in that fandom space anymore.

I'm now basically the Obi-Wan of my fandom (a hermit in exile that everyone says is crazy). But after I left, some other writers started leaving for similar—(cliques, hate anons, gatekeeping)—if not the same reasons that I did. And a couple of very brave souls stepped up and offered the suggestion that writers with a lot of reach support other writers who have just started, or who aren't as popular.

I wasn't there when it all went down, but some very popular writers in the fandom sort of jumped down people's throats, saying they didn't have the time to read and write all the fic they would like, that they weren't going to blindly reblog someone's post just to boost visibility. They insisted it wasn't all about notes and comments. Which is fair, but that's easy to say when you have 3k followers and get 500+ notes with every post. There was a very public dispute that—again—I personally was not there for or involved in, so I can't speak to other people's experiences. But it was all around messy, and the people spearheading the "support new/smaller blogs" are either taking breaks or barely active anymore.

These big blogs will never admit out in the open that they don't approve of/like someone or something. If they do, it gets taken down very quickly. The best you'll get out in the open is a sugary passive-aggressiveness. Kind of like driving in New England rush-hour traffic. It all happens behind your back, which—in a way—is worse, and before you know it, you've been blocked by people you don't even know and have never interacted with before. God forbid you voice an opinion or a concern they don't vibe with, because they and all their friends will draw and quarter you.

I've been told by multiple friends in my fandom that they barely go on Tumblr anymore because of these cliques. I had one person tell me it almost ruined the source material for them, that it felt like high school all over again. One friend told me not to let bullies exile me, but see above paragraph. It was just gonna continue until they misconstrued me into some Creature From the Black Lagoon, and I'd seen enough of that in high school to know that it was time to dip.

My point is that I'm sad it's become like this. And I'm really mad that these are the sorts of people who are dominating my fandom. Writing is what it's always been all about, in my case anyway, and now it's just been ruined. On that platform, anyway

Needless to say, I will not be going back, not with the way the fandom is on Tumblr currently. All this over a pipe cleaner with eyes (IYKYK). I'm so sorry if this makes no sense, and that I am really angry right now. I know that I will grow and learn from this, it's just that—at this very second—it hurts. I'm sure, at the start of his exile, it hurt for Obi-Wan too.

**Edited for clarification**

submitted by /u/skywacca [link] [comments] from FanFiction: Where Magical Ponies battle Imperial Titans https://ift.tt/s4xg9Ce

[mothippie]

Ok so I am more awake and I am insane and need to BARK about how much potential this game had and how it was completely fucked by the staff and how they chose to run it

Keep in mind, I was a player from ~2013 -> ~2020 (on and off towards the end) and I was giving them money almost the entire time (buying apples and such)

Where do I even start...

Let's start with the staff I guess since that was my biggest issue.

There was one question in particular that if you asked, a mod would just either completely stop talking to you or altogether keep ignoring you.

"Can mods see our dms?"

We were kids, we were sharing private stuff on the game since it was a bannable offense to take things off the platform. I remember someone confiding in me about some very personal stuff, and it was fine until I started to wonder if I wasnt the only one able to see it.

But if you ASKED any of the mods if your dms were visible, they would completely ignore you. When I was younger it felt like maybe it was a coincidence but the older myself and other players got, the more clear it became that it was a 90% chance that SOMEONE could see our dms.

It was most likely the best way to catch people breaking the rules in dms. There was a hard stop no nsfw rule (for good reason) but it was known that people took it to dms.

But here was also a 10% chance that they couldnt see the dms and didnt want to disclose it and make players realize they could do whatever they wanted in dms. Either was it was one of the most frustrating things to have to try and figure out because there was simply no straight answers. It made a lot of the players I knew incredibly anxious to say anything at all, even things that wouldn't break the rules, because it felt like there was no privacy at all.

Another thing was the rule that made it to where you were only allowed to speak english in the chat, even if others understood you. If the MODS didnt speak the language, then it was a hard no. I witnessed it a lot with spanish speakers and some russian. On one hand I can understand this, they have to be able to moderate the chat, but it very much felt like there could be another way other than outright alienating people who may not speak English.

Another one was that the mods opinions 100% swayed everyone else, and it was a huge issue in the suggestion forums. I remember suggesting multiple things, some well recieved, some well received UNTIL a mod showed up- then suddenly no one thought it was a good idea.

I was a kid so 100% some of my ideas were just shit but I was not the only one that noticed this switch. The more aware I became when it came to favoritism, the more I started slipping away from the game.

I remember I had suggested a pregnancy terminating Item due to space in dens being a huge issue. If you ran out of space and your wolf gave birth, the puppies would run away or something. I saw a lot of people around me realize they had a chance to breed with a really high rarity male but they would lose the chance because they had also just bred another wolf and they would have no time to chase away the puppies.

I was told that my suggestion was too political.

My suggestion for a fictional puppy pregnancy ender was too political and was in the end the fault of the player for not planning ahead- and it received horrible downvotes only after the mod said that.

I hope it doesnt come off like I mald over this daily, this was a game I loved for 7 years that I am still sad over not playing anymore due to the shitty management.

Another thing, and the last of the big things for me, was how you could only get commissions through game currency and no matter how many people suggested it- the admin herself would tell the players that it just wasnt going to happen.

The reason? They didnt want to "be liable" for scams.

Not only is that not how it worked, but scams were rampant on the games WITH the currency because there was no way to invoice players. I was scammed multiple times, drawing entire full things for people only to be never paid and ghosted as they spoke to people publically. Nothing was ever done when I reported it.

But the people who did pay paid GOOD, and I was not the only person who wanted to be allowed to use PayPal- commissioners ALSO wanted to use paypal.

Now onto the smaller stuff ig? For a game that had a lot of queer people, queer suggestions were just not reciprocated well at all. Take Wolvden for example: you can have same sex couples and all that and it's literally fine.

But suggesting that to the players would get a bunch of "that isnt realistic" "it would break the immersion"

Hate to break it to the pack lovers but alpha, beta, and omega roles arent real either. Let the wolves be gay.

There was a roleplaying section on the site itself outside of dms but barely anyone used it.

There was one place for roleplay that had nothing to do with wolves at all, a fantasy one, and a realistic one if I remember correctly? I may be wrong but I think there was also a section basically for out of character comments but I could definitely be wrong. I DO know however that if you did anything like

Reply reply reply reply

(Here is an out of character example at the bottom of a reply)

You had your ass chewed out. A mod would come in, interrupt the flow of the multiple roleplay happening in one chat, and tell you off for it. It was insane.

So most players moved to dms because then they could ask questions and coordinate with their roleplay partner 10x better.

The final thing I can think of right now is how absolutely shitty the wolf design options got as they ran out of ideas. Base coats that literally worked with little to no markings at all because they were ALREADY completely covered in markings. New base coats were added that basically no one wanted or used because they were so hideous.

And the game art has not been updated for the wolves, and NONE of it matches as it seems it was all done by different artists. I knew almost no one who used the beta female pose because it would make your wolf look like a solid brick. The most popular poses was the alpha male/female, and the beta male. Because they looked the most like wolves and mostly matched.

But all the new clothing items do not match AT ALL.

Anyways that's my rant. I think the game could be been today's wolvden if they just werent so thick skulled and hellbent on remaining in the early 2000's- but hey! Wolvden is so much more fun and so much more welcoming and inclusive and friendly than Wolfplay ever will be lol

Late night posting goes here too

Did anyone else play an online game called Wolfplay

I was ADDICTED to it as a kid, I easily gave them hundreds in the money I managed to earn as a kid. I specifically worked for family to get wolfplay money

[bloody-cute-yandere]

A useless musing

Criticizing Publicly, Complimenting Privately

I decided to start this New Year off by putting myself under Reddit scrutiny; I wanted to know if other people would have any suggestions for physical changes I could make in 2021 to make myself look overall better.  I have plenty of internal resolutions for the year (I am a fan of new years resolutions, it feels like starting off the year with some goals, even if you don’t meet those goals, can help give you momentum to move forward instead of stagnating). So, I put a few pictures of myself at their mercy and asked “what would you rate me, and what would you suggest for me to improve?” I sat back and watched the replies role in.

Its worth noting first off that this particular subreddit is pretty damn respectful. The people that commented by and large gave pretty constructive criticism and some suggestions for improvement. Even so, I did notice a particular trend in the responses I was getting, specifically that all the people that responded in a very complimentary way publicly were downvoted to oblivion quickly. Instead, I had an inbox full of people being very complimentary (and a couple of times kinda fucking creepy, ngl) on one hand, and a post that was getting reply after reply of criticism.

I am not a psychiatrist or have any more than the basic ideas of psychiatry at all tbh, but I would like to take some time to speculate on this phenomenon in this space. Why would a reddit that was made for people to be evaluated on looks be so negative towards people that are being complimentary about a person, to the point where they have to respond privately if they respond at all?

The first thing that comes to mind is that the reddit group as a whole might just downvote comments that aren’t constructive. Even so though, why are the few that were “you are ugly” not downvoted? In that case it could be that people who have offered criticisms may feel as though they’re genuinely trying to help, in which case having people respond publicly with “don’t change a thing you’re great” could make the other commenters respond negatively. It could perhaps make them feel badly about themselves for being critical, in which case they would disagree with the fluffy positive comments and want them hidden. Or, in a more altruistic sense, since they do appear to be genuinely trying to help me, they might want to remove the comments that would not be helpful to me. Another possibility is that the reddit forum I posted in is, while not designed to be hyper-critical like r/roastme, is not really a forum for compliment seekers only; it’s a sort of middle ground. Though even so I would expect that there would be a mixed allowance of criticism and compliments (at the same time the commenters themselves did a solid job of being coplimentary and critical in measures most of the time). I don’t believe that’s all there is to it, though.

One thing that I did notice was that the number of trolls/useless responses was significantly higher on the public post than in my pms. I did get a fair few “you’re absolutely gorgeous” without any sort of suggestions to improve. (I also got a marriage proposal, so that was…. Weird, and was shut down quickly). On the actual post there were only 2 comments that I saw that were outwardly complimentary with nothing else involved. So, it could be that trolls are simply not tolerated in the group.

Another possibility is that the people messaging me privately are trying to get something out of me, though, and are hiding in the shadows of the reddit forum to find people that are insecure to prey on. Perhaps this isn’t worth thinking about too hard.

[icodelabs]

The Reasons Why People Choose to Hire Android Developers

Back again in 2008, if the smartphone marketplace was however in the entire process of using the entire world by storm, search engine behemoth Google, released their incredibly possess working method for cell products. By undertaking this, Google has fundamentally declared war against other cell platforms Primarily in direction of the iOS, Apple's mobile OS. Unlike the iOS's shut architecture, Android is actually a Linux primarily based System meaning it is basically open up supply. The open mother nature from the Android is among its principal attractions for the reason that it provides customers with loads of independence. Android is presently the best mobile functioning technique with regards to marketplace share, boasting about seven hundred,000 activations per day. For sure, the Android platform offers a great business enterprise possibility. Do you have a good concept for an Android application but doesn't have the talents to create a person? Then you ought to consider selecting an Android developer.

With millions of end users across the globe, it will not have a genius to deduce that the Android Current market is a good place for business. So long as you make a useful app and it really works as advertised, people will gladly pay you for it. However, not everyone seems to be effectively-versed On the subject of Android app progress, so many of them opt to look for the providers of the Android developer rather. Establishing an Android application may be very technological, so for Lots of people, Finding out it is solely not a great selection. Why do you have to go through all the trouble if you can simply just employ someone with practical experience to develop the app to suit your needs?

Builders are skilled professionals that have the required capabilities and working experience to create an app for their clientele. And not simply almost any application, but quality ones. As stated just before, if you'd like to be often known as a highly regarded application maker, you need to release quality apps into the market. And the most effective way in your case to accomplish that, is to rent a reliable and reputable Android developer. Excellent is without doubt one of the most important main reasons why you'll want to hire an Android application developer. If you end up picking to disregard high-quality, then be ready to see your application be downvoted by people as it is just not value downloading.

An Android app developer also can share a few of his Suggestions or ideas that may certainly assist in improving upon your application. They've got adequate expertise working with applications, so will not wait to request for their ideas in addition. When you wish to leap into the Android bandwagon, your very best solution is to work with the appropriate Qualified. Until you might be adept with app enhancement, then it can be basically your only option. But don't worry, As long as you will get to hire a fantastic developer, you might have taken your first step into the ideal course.

Hire Android developers,

Android developers company and

Web application development

[searchvoidstar]

Challenges I have faced learning React

 Learning React was a big challenge for me. I started learning React in earnest in 2019. It was a difficult experience overall, but I wanted to go over my learning experience, and maybe find some lessons in the mix. This goes mostly into personal details and doesn’t really get too technical, however, I review the commit logs and try and backtrace my feelings that I remember at the time.

If I were to take away anything from this, it’s probably that pair programming was really useful especially as a remote worker, I had nothing before that except weekly standups where I felt really depressed. Also stay patient, stay thankful, and try to focus while you learn

Introduction to me

I am maybe what you’d call a front-end engineer. I have done web development for about 7 years now. My first job (2013-2016) was an academic staff support programming job. I helped with tasks in a lab with other grad students. This gave me a lot of perspective on weird hacky dinosaur backends like RoR, PHP, Perl CGI, Java servlets, etc all collide on the frontend and it is pretty much insane. I got perspective on dev-ops, full-stack, front-end dev, and data analysis

Early dabbles with React circa 2016

I had a random form I wanted to code and wanted to try using React. I imported React via a CDN  and gave it a shot, and it seemed simple enough, but I kept getting really confused about what the “state” the form was in. I didn’t realize it then, but I was getting very confused by state management concepts that I didn’t know existed. Now I know that I was really missing some intro material, for example CONTROLLED COMPONENTS. Instead, I kept googling weird things like “two way data binding react” and variants of this. I had never used angular but I heard of two way data binding, and I just felt like it was what I needed. I even posted about my frustrations about this on the react subreddit and was downvoted. Felt bad. I was just really confused. I abandoned the project in react and just used our normal jqueryish thing.

New job in 2018,  while taking grad school courses

 In 2018, I was taking some grad school classes working on a CS masters. The algorithms class was hard but mentally stimulating. Most of the other classes did not interest me, and I did not get very involved in the school outside of a couple classes. I get a call for this new job in May 2018, and I am hired on as a remote developer in June 2018. The team understands I’m working while in school. 

I was really happy to be involved. I had worked on the old codebase as an open source contributor. Now, they decide they are going to do “the big rewrite” and are going to use React. We do some work trying to liftover some of the old code into npm modules that can be re-used to start with, and this was a learning experience, I had never published my code as NPM modules. I learned jest testing and stuff as well. My first module was a indexedfasta parser (@gmod/indexedfasta).

Starting in October 2018, my coworker started building the new react app prototype. My coworker keeps asking me “what state management library should we use”. I just had no idea about React still, I had not ever looked into state management, and basically just was like “I dunno!”. I had no way to form an opinion. I was also still taking some classes and remained pretty out of the loop with prototype development. We would have weekly meetings but I just wouldn’t really understand the goings ons. This didn’t feel great

I am floundering...not understanding what’s going on with the rewrite, so I decide to quit grad school to focus on the new project

It’s December 2018, I go home for Christmas and I have an honest talk with my parents and tell them “I don’t get what is happening in the new codebase, I’m honestly unhappy, and it just does all this ‘react’ stuff” but I can’t explain react to them I just say the code is automatically reacting to other things.

So I talk to my parents about how I’m struggling and they say “well if you are unhappy you might have to leave your job” and they are not like, cheering for me to leave but they say that. At this point, it really hit me that I do like this job and I decided to try to focus on work. I decide to quit grad school

I try and make an honest attempt to get involved in the project, start pair programming

On January 10th 2019 I make my first commit to the project by doing some monkey-see monkey-do type coding. I copy a bunch of files and just put them in the right place, tweak some lines, and start to figure out how to make things run. By the end of January 2019 I get my first code change merged.

In February 2019, I start modifying some more things in the codebase, just little one-liner bugfixes, which I like more than the large monkey-see moneky-do file copying and modifying.

In January, I also suggested that we start doing pair-programming sessions. This made a huge difference for me in learning how to code. The pair programming often went way over my head and it felt like my coworkers were giving me like abstract “koans”. Nevertheless, these were extremely helpful for me to help get caught up.

I start to reading “Learning React”

In March 2019, I got the book “Learning React” (O’Reilly2017 https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-react/9781491954614/) for my kindle.  Reading this book was a big help I felt, and provided a needed “brain reset” for me. The book worked well for me, I read it each night on my kindle, and the functional component concepts were super enlightening. To me it was so much better reading a book than say and internet tutorial because I could focus, not have distractions, etc. My eyes would just glaze over every time I clicked on React blog posts and stuff before this.

So anyways, March 2019 goes on, and I’m learning, but our codebase still feels pretty complicated and alien. We use mobx-state-tree and the glue for mobx-state-tree to react e.g. the mobx-react doesn’t really make sense to me. I remember asking my coworkers why my component was not updating and they eventually find out it’s because I keep not using the observe() wrapper around my components.

I start to experiment with Typescript

In April 2019 I start to experiment with typescript and release a typescript version of some data parsing code. I start by explicity specifying a lot of types but I eventually start getting into the zen of “type inference” and I turn off the @typescript-eslint/explicit-function-return-type so I get implied return types.

I start using React hooks

In May 2019 I try out my first React hook, I try a useState instead. It worked well. I couldn’t really figure out why I would use it instead of the mobx state management we used elsewhere, but the example was that it was a click and drag and it made sense to keep that click and drag state local to the component rather than the “app”

I start using react-testing-library

In June 2019, I create “integration test” level tests for our app. I had used react-testing-library for some components before this, but this was using react-testing-library to render the entire “app level” component. I was happy to pioneer this and was happy to try this out instead of doing true browser tests, and I think this has worked out well.

Some caveats: I got very caught up with trying to do canvas tests initially. I really wanted to use jest-mock-canvas but we were using offscreencanvas via a pretty complicated string of things, so I don’t make progress here, and I also got confused about the relationship between node-canvas and jest-mock-canvas (they are basically totally different approaches). Later on, I find using jest-image-snapshot of the canvas contents works nice (ref https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33269093/how-to-add-canvas-support-to-my-tests-in-jest)

Other random note: when building out the integration tests, we got a lot of “act warnings” which were confusing. These were fixed in React 16.9 (released August 2019), but we had to ignore them and they basically just confused me a lot and made it feel like I was battling a very complex system rather than a nice simple one.

Conclusions

Overall, I just wanted to write up my whole experience. It felt really difficult for me to make these changes. I also went through a breakup during this time, had a bad living situation, etc. so things were a struggle. If anyone else has had struggles learning react, tell your story, and let me know. I’d like to also thank everyone who helped me along the way. I feel like a much better coder now, yet, I should always keep growing. The feeling of uncomfortableness could be a growing experience.

[thekpopkave]

I Still Hate to Love You (Chapter 1)

𝕡𝕒𝕚𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕒𝕦𝕤 :: byun baekhyun/ park chanyeol, college au, enemies to lovers au, fluff and angst (possible smut later!) 

𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕕 𝕔𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕥 :: 15.9K 

𝕒𝕦𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕣'𝕤 𝕟𝕠𝕥𝕖 :: hi! admin 🐨 here. this is the first part of our series that’s in progress, and our first time posting. the second chapter of this series will be posted soon, and we hope you’ll enjoy this! we’ve worked hard and hope you’ll give us good feedback :D now onto the story! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Baekhyun had never disliked a person so quickly in his life than when he first met Park Chanyeol. 

To begin with, he was way too tall. What had he been eating? He was like 10 feet tall and he made Baekhyun feel small and insignificant. Worse, he was well aware of how tall he was and the power it gave him. 

“I’m hitting six foot one actually,” he had said, a smirk that Baekhyun hated almost as much as Chanyeol’s tallness appearing.

Oh, that was another thing. Chanyeol liked to smirk way too much. Baekhyun could be objective and admit that Chanyeol was good looking, he had a cute face that would show flashes of being handsome in between his stupid smile and his even more idiotic smirk, but Baekhyun was nothing but an honest person. The smirk irritated him from day one, something about it making Baekhyun grit his teeth and feel like he should leave before he ended up trying to hit Chanyeol and probably break his hand in the process. 

Baekhyun had no problem with confidence, he knew he himself was cute, and he liked seeing other people be confident too, but Chanyeol was where he drew the line. Why else would he wear a leather jacket like that and style his hair with just enough muss to make him look hot? Why else would he look like that when he knew people were checking him out?  He knew what he was doing, Baekhyun wasn’t stupid, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Yet, there was something that always drew them together. Baekhyun wasn’t sure why, but Chanyeol was always there, even when he hated him and his dumbass smirk. Some kind of force always ended up shoving them together, like they were destined. And maybe they were. All Baekhyun knew was that Park Chanyeol was a part of his life now, like it or not. 

``````````````````

Even if it was destiny,  Baekhyun didn't have to suffer silently. 

“I can’t believe this!” He threw his hands in the air as he walked with Jongdae to the mess hall for lunch. “I can’t believe Professor Lim would do this to me,” Jongdae stifled laughter next to him, his eyes sparking with amusement and making Baekhyun more indignant. “I can’t work with him. I can’t! It’s a death sentence. He won’t do any work, and then I’ll have to do the whole thing, and then I’m gonna fight him to the death.” Jongdae laughed aloud as they entered the dining hall, a few people looking over at his loud voice. 

“Baekhyun, surely it’s not that bad.” Baekhyun pouted, standing in line for food and crossing his arms. He felt like a petulant child but he had a right to be upset.

Park Chanyeol was probably the worst person he could have been paired with, he was annoying, he was lazy, and he probably didn’t know anything about what they were doing. Baekhyun had seen him curled up on his desk fast asleep during their film history lessons, and anyone who slept in class got an immediate downvote from him.

Granted, the class was boring as fuck on it’s best days, so he couldn’t really blame anyone for succumbing to sleep during the lectures, but still. Baekhyun wasn’t about to let him off that easy.

“I know you hate this guy’s guts or whatever,” Jongdae passed Baekhyun a tray with a plate. “But maybe you guys can work out whatever animosity you have over this. I’m sure he’s a nice guy deep down.” Baekhyun snorted. 

“Deep, deep down maybe. He's an asshole, I can't imagine he has anything in his brain other than annoying thoughts about how to bother me,” Baekhyun said, scrunching his nose as he picked his entree. Jongdae rolled his eyes. 

“Didn’t you say he just sleeps in Film History? How is that annoying?” Baekhyun pointed the salad tongs at him. 

“Don’t take his side, you traitor. He snores, and sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the lecture and he sits in front of me and he’s too tall for me to see over him.” Jongdae coughed a laugh into his elbow and looked at Baekhyun amusedly. 

“You’re so weird about him. Are you sure you don’t like him?” Baekhyun felt his face flame up.

“What the fuck?” he spluttered, dropping a slice of cucumber on his tray and quickly tossing the serving tongs back. “No I dont fucking like him,” he hissed, feeling enraged at the mere suggestion. Baekhyun wasn’t like the crowd of people that always followed Chanyeol, gaping at his looks and swooning about his motorcycle. He had better things to do, like hate him. “He’s an idiot. I have standards you know,” he said, lifting his nose and moving along the line to pay. Jongdae shrugged. 

“Just saying, all this hate stuff looks like you might have a crush on him. You’re acting like a second grader.” Baekhyun ignored him and paid his food, marching off to their usual table. “Maybe you should give him a chance. Maybe he’s not an asshole after all.” Jongdae shrugged as he sat down and Baekhyun shook his head, unwrapping his silverware. “It’s not like you can do anything about it anyways,” Jongdae said, and Baekhyun sighed. 

“I guess not. But I don’t want to do it.” The whine that slipped into his voice made Jongdae roll his eyes again, and he changed the subject to something about his own classes, and Baekhyun listened while he ate his chicken. 

They chatted for a while, and soon the memory of being paired with the most annoying guy on campus faded into the back of Baekhyun’s mind. 

At least until he showed up.

Baekhyun was sure he had a sixth sense, something that told Chanyeol where he was so he could pester him in any way possible. He saw the tall, gray haired man walking into the dining hall from his seat, and he felt his shoulders tense. 

“Oh god, why me?” he said, slumping down in his seat, hoping Chanyeol would ignore him and go eat. He watched as Chanyeol got in line and got his food, before paying and walking down the aisle of tables. “Don’t look that way!” Baekhyun whispered fiercely at Jongdae when he turned to look at what Baekhyun was staring at.

“What is it?” Chanyeol’s eyes were scanning the crowd, and Baekhyun willed him to just find his friends and go to them. In a strange moment though, Chanyeol’s eyes met his, and the dining hall noise quieted to a buzz, and all Baekhyun could see was Chanyeol with his tray. A part of him (a small, small part) noted how pretty his eyes were, especially framed with his ashy bangs. Then his smirk appeared and Baekhyun yanked his gaze away, feeling his face flush. What was wrong with him?

“Oh,” Jongdae said, as he saw Chanyeol approaching them. “Oops.” 

Chanyeol stood next to their table, his tall self making Baekhyun feel irritated already just by being there.

“Hey.”

 Baekhyun looked up at him, and sure enough, he was smiling at him like a fool. Chanyeol waved at Jongdae who waved back, looking like he was holding back a smile. Traitor. “What do you want?” he snapped, and Chanyeol clasped a hand over his heart and pouted. 

“Is that how you treat your partner?” Baekhyun scowled. 

“When he’s an asshat like you, yes. What do you want?”

“Your number.” Jongdae was watching the whole interaction with a seemingly horrified amusement, and Baekhyun wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Chanyeol was such an idiot. “Before you get excited though, it’s just for school stuff.”

 Chanyeol’s smirk was back with force, and Baekhyun clutched his fork in his hand, reminding himself he couldn’t attack another human, that would go against everything he stood for. 

“Who said I’m not asking for a partner change?” Baekhyun could see the amusement in Chanyeol’s eyes. 

“We both know Professor Lim would never agree to changing partners. Besides, I know you’re a little nerd, and you like getting good grades. So it makes sense that you’d work with me even though you don’t like me for this project.” Chanyeol’s smirk was out again, and Baekhyun glared at him. 

They were like that for a moment, Baekhyun trying to strangle him with his gaze and Chanyeol grinning like a loon. Then Baekhyun’s logical brain intercepted. He really had no choice, Chanyeol was right even though Baekhyun hated to admit it. His grades were too important for him to throw them away even if he didn’t like Chanyeol. 

“I’m not gonna let you slack. Don’t think this is a free ride to a good grade. The moment you don’t do something I'm reporting you,” Baekhyun threatened, pulling his phone out. Chanyeol’s smile widened if possible, and he nodded. 

“Sounds reasonable.” Baekhyun gave him his phone number on a piece of napkin and tossed it onto his tray. 

“Now go away, you’re ruining my appetite.” Chanyeol saluted him and winked at Jongdae, who just waved and began laughing. 

“Oh my god you weren’t lying, you really do hate him.” Baekhyun stabbed his chicken and rolled his eyes. 

“He’s the worst.” Baekhyun watched as Chanyeol practically strutted away like a weird bird, feeling a weird combination of emotions in his chest. 

Jongdae hummed. “He’s cute though,” he said, smiling. Baekhyun tossed a carrot slice at him. 

“Shut up,” he grumbled into his salad, definitely not thinking about the way Chanyeol’s eyes had lit up. 

**************

The rest of Baekhyun’s day went by in relatively normal uneventfulness, and he cherished every moment of it. He was a very organized person, he liked to live comfortably, and he found the most comfort in regularity and order. Even though Jongdae liked to clown him about his four different planners and his insanely neat desk, Baekhyun found peace in knowing how things were and the dependability that organization offered. 

That was probably why love scared him so much.

Baekhyun’s first love was a neighbor he had when he was 13. It was the way he figured out that girls weren’t quite his thing, and also the way he figured out that him liking boys wasn’t other people’s thing either. His parents had been supportive, but his neighbors had decided to move 3 states over to keep him from “infecting” their son. From then on, Baekhyun had approached the subject of love and crushes with a distance that he knew he could control.

He hadn’t ever done anything more than kiss a boy, the fear of the unknown abyss that was physical intimacy made his palms sweat and his skin itch. And while it wasn’t like he didn’t want to do anything more, he just wasn’t sure what to do. Thoughts of the way his neighbor looked at him would always cloud his mind and convince him that he couldn’t risk it. Comfort in regularity. Love was too irregular for him to want anything to do with it. Losing control like he had once to only get rejected again would be far more painful than it had been the first time. 

So, Baekhyun liked his schedule and he liked keeping things the same. Every weekday that he could he went to his favorite coffee shop to unwind and do some homework before going back to his and Jongdae’s place, and that afternoon was no exception. 

“Hi!” Jongin’s bright smile was just as comforting as it was every other day he came in, and Baekhyun found himself smiling back. 

“Hey. How are you?” Jongin shrugged, his smile lopsided. 

“I’m okay. Your usual?” Baekhyun nodded and went to pay at the counter. Jongin was possibly the kindest person Baekhyun had ever met in his life. He always had kind words and encouragement for him, and he laughed at all of Baekhyun’s jokes, which was something few people did. He also made some of the best coffee he had ever tried. It was safe to say Jongin was probably his favorite person ever. 

“I heard you got a new partner for Film History,” Jongin said, his eyes playful and Baekhyun busied himself with finding exact change in his wallet. 

“Yeah, I guess I did.” Jongin took the money he offered and printed his receipt. 

“He’s not that bad if you give him a chance,” he said, his voice gaining a pleading tone. Baekhyun raised his eyebrows. 

“Is everyone suddenly pro-Chanyeol?” Jongin pursed his lips at him. 

“I have to be, I live with him.” Baekhyun sighed and frowned sympathetically, playing it up to see Jongin smile again. 

“I am so sorry that happened to you.” Jongin’s laugh made Baekhyun smile, and he shook his head. “Really, a tragedy.” Jongin gave him his receipt and went to make his coffee. 

“I mean it though Baek, he’s not bad. He’s really sweet and he’s smart, and he likes film. You guys have a lot in common.” Baekhyun ran his finger tip along the edge of the counter and hummed. It seemed to be the general consensus that Chanyeol was God’s gift to mankind, but Baekhyun had seen enough from people like him before. They liked to play games with people, and Baekhyun had been close enough to someone like that for them to scald him with their egotistic manners. 

“I think I know him well enough for now, thanks. Besides, it's just one project, I can deal with it.” Chanyeol had been right to say that Baekhyun liked having good grades. He would probably crawl over broken glass to make sure his grades stayed above a B at all times. Jongdae called him a control freak. Maybe he was. 

“Well, at least be civil with him. He seemed kind of bothered by the way you guys don’t get along.” Jongin’s puppy gaze was out now, and Baekhyun rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah I'm sure having just one person not like him really put his panties in a twist,” Jongin frowned a little as he handed Baekhyun his coffee. 

“He doesn’t like being disliked. But if you were him you wouldn’t either.” The solemnity in Jongin’s gaze and in his words made Baekhyun blink. 

“I’ll be civil,” he promised, before taking a swig of his coffee. “Great as always Nini, thanks.” Jongin beamed at him and Baekhyun had to wonder how such an angel had befriended such a jerk like Chanyeol. Jongin’s words ricocheted in his mind, and he couldn’t help but think about them as he sat to work.

Maybe there was more to Chanyeol than whatever front he put on in public. Baekhyun could relate, he had been through times where he couldn’t bear the thought of being disliked, but he couldn’t imagine caring so much now. He could be civil enough, he thought, as long as Chanyeol didn’t try to pull any funny business. The thought of Chanyeol and funny business made him turn red and he dug into his bag for his computer to work on something. 

He sat in the comfortable space of his usual table, headphones on with some low-fi music playing to help him concentrate for a few hours, until Jongdae texted him and begged for food with a string of emojis that made Baekhyun shake his head and smile fondly. He left the coffee shop after packing his things and stopped by their favorite thai place and got their dinner before finally arriving at their apartment. 

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“Finally!” Jongdae just about fell off their couch with excitement when Baekhyun entered, dropping his book and darting for the food. “I haven’t eaten since lunch!” Baekhyun laughed as Jongdae dug into the food, settling back onto the couch with a pleased hum. As Baekhyun went to the kitchen for a glass of water, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked his messages, where a new message from an unknown number waited for him. 

Yo! It’s Chanyeol ;D

Baekhyun’s first instinct was to delete the message and carry on with his life like he would have at any other point. But he stopped himself with a groan and opened his messaging app. His thumbs hovered over the keyboard for a moment, before he typed a reply out. 

What do you want?

The little bubble with the dots appeared and Baekhyun felt dread lace his stomach. 

Wow. Are you always this rude? 

Baekhyun scoffed and made a face at his phone. 

Only to people who deserve it. 

A part of Baekhyun felt bad for being so short with him, but the logic in his mind told him Chanyeol wouldn’t be losing any sleep over it. 

Are you going to answer my question? 

Baekhyun stood in the kitchen, glass in hand, staring at his phone and waiting for a reply. Jongdae’s voice came from the other room. 

“Hey, do we have any ketchup?” Baekhyun blinked. Suddenly aware that he, Byun Baekhyun, was waiting for a reply from the person he liked least in the world. What was he doing? Chanyeol was probably at a party or something stupid like that, it was no skin off Baekhyun’s back. He put his glass down and looked for ketchup. He finally found it in the back of the refrigerator, hiding behind a jar of something weird he would rather not know about. When he turned, Jongdae was standing right behind him, making him jump about a mile into the air. 

“What the-what are you doing?” Jongdae pouted at him. 

“You took too long,” he said, and Baekhyun squints at him. “Who’s texting you so much?” Baekhyun glanced at his phone which was lighting up. 

“No one,” he said quickly, feeling warm suddenly. Jongdae raised an eyebrow but said nothing as Baekhyun grabbed his phone and put it in his pocket. He edged around Jongdae and escaped to the living room, sitting on the couch and trying not to seem uncomfortable or embarrassed, which he totally was. Thankfully, Jongdae seemed to read the situation and didn’t ask him any questions, and they ate in relative silence, 

Baekhyun itching to both check his phone and also throw it out a window. When they finished and cleaned up, Baekhyun said a quick goodnight before going to his room and shutting the door. He felt like he was betraying someone as he took his phone out and checked it. Chanyeol had sent a few texts, all followed by weird, random emojis. He grimaced as he scrolled through them, wishing he had given him a fake number instead. The last message was one that caught Baekhyun’s eye. 

Library, 4pm, tomorrow?

It was followed by a string of winky faces that both made Baekhyun feel funny inside but also annoyed as hell. He sighed. He might as well get used to it if he was going to be working with Chanyeol, he was going to be insufferable regardless. He shot back a quick response, closing his phone and sitting on the edge of his bed. He sat there a moment, his thoughts drifting to how he had felt while looking at Chanyeol in the dining hall. “Are you sure you don’t like him?” The thought of Jongdae's unbelieving tone made Baekhyun scoff to himself. Of course he didn’t like him. Chanyeol was irritating and abrasive and he was definitely out to get him. 

Even if he was really good looking and had pretty eyes, Baekhyun couldn’t like him. It was the principle of the matter. He flopped back onto his mattress and stared at his ceiling. Maybe Chanyeol would think he liked him if he showed up alone. It would seem a little...date-ish...right? Baekhyun’s thoughts raced as he chewed his lip. If Chanyeol thought Baekhyun liked him, there would be no end to the torture, he would just keep bothering him until Baekhyun died (had anyone ever died of annoyance before? Baekhyun wasn’t sure). He sat up suddenly, ignoring the spinning of his head and launching himself out his door to Jongdae’s room. 

“Hey!” He banged on Jongdae’s door a couple times, still biting his lip and now pacing on the carpet outside of his roommate’s door. The door opened, and Jongdae’s face mask covered visage poked out along with Ariana Grande’s golden vocals. 

“Where’s the fire?” he asked, trying not to move his mouth too much to keep the mask on. 

“You’re free tomorrow right?” 

“Well, I have class at 12 and then I have to meet with someone at 3, but yeah-” Baekhyun slapped the doorway with triumph, making Jongdae flinch. 

“What the fuck is up with you right now? Did you drink something weird?” Jongdae’s judgmental eyes watched as he began to back away. 

“You’re coming with me!” he said, smiling. Jongdae’s voice followed him all the way back to his room. 

“What? Where are you going? Come back here! Where are you taking me-” Baekhyun shut his door behind him and leaned against it, a relieved smile creeping across his face. If Baekhyun had to suffer, it wasn’t going to be alone.

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