#online it's because I genuinely do not engage with or see any of that shit very often and irl its because I am. bad at social cues

[lost-in-frog-land]

never am I so aware that I'm succeeding at curating my own fandom experience than when I see a long essay post about how toxic a fandom I'm in is. Like I'll be reading that shit like "huh I didn't know they were doing this. I thought we were just having fun why are people being mean?" never once being aware of any of that shit. come to think of it that pretty much sums up my experiences in most social scenarios. hm.

[technofeudalism]

everything Trump is doing and will do is historically horrific. that said, i'm always taken aback when i see someone post some shit like "we are officially living under fascism now."

the key thing it exposes is that some people were genuinely under the impression the entire time that you can vote fascism away and that we did it in 2020. online liberals get so mad when people share this meme but it actually happened.

we did not "beat" fascism 4 years ago and it just magically came back because we didn't vote it away this time. but i think that is the conclusion some are coming to. even if Trump lost, geopolitics has been forever changed as a result of what he's managed to do in the last decade. you cannot eradicate fascism via electoralism. it is not going to work. fascism has been here. as with so many other things in life, it is a scale, not a binary.

in the slim chance that we get another fair election in 4 years, if Trump actually loses or leaves office, fascism still is not "gone." it is still on the rise. it sounds corny as fuck, but any activist will tell you the fight against fascism is a lifetime fight until it is dead and buried, not one you engage in every four years.

even then, you HAVE to stay vigilant. forever. that is what the "anti-fascist" label in your tumblr bio means. it is not like "Democrat" in the sense that it only determines what ballot you're handed in an election primary. it is not simply a personality trait.

this is what many activists have been trying to explain to so many for so long. but people have refused to hear it because those activists, who came to these conclusions on their own and have been trying to explain these concepts to people for decades, aren't always able to articulate this point without losing their patience and wind up being cast as bitter or condescending. it's been a constant losing battle.

[starryroe]

The amount of times I've been told from a transmasc they try not to engage in a specific kink in online spaces out of fear of getting called out and harassed endlessly genuinely breaks my heart.

The amount of transmascs who like transfems I have talked to who have confided in me that they have actually so many harder kinks than they let on because they don't want to be wrongly accused of being transmisogynistic is staggering.

This is going on my main and idc I'm going to fully say it, the amount of trans guys I, a trans woman with a massive misogyny kink, had to convince that it was okay and allowed for them to reciprocate with enjoyment towards some of my kinks, is insanely high.

And it seems like no one cares. It seems like no one gives a shit when transmascs get harassed for kinks. Like don't get me wrong, many people don't give a shit for trans women that this happens to either. But it seems like people don't even think that it's a possibility that it could happen to other people.

No one should have their kinks examined and pulled apart and outed for the whole world to see. Everyone should be allowed to write whatever kind of smut and porn they want. And yet so many transmascs are scared, are terrified, of doing so.

And here I'll be honest, it hurts a little bit for selfish reasons as well- so many of these people could have been writing beautiful smut that I would have loved for years, but before meeting me they were too scared to even admit things to themselves. It's fucked y'all. Make trans people feel safe in exploring kink. Make any people in general safe.

[kiophen]

genuine question, do you think callout posts are inherently evil? like if someone's doing some weird shit and hiding it i think people would want to be warned about that at least. just try to discourage harassment as much as possible

The existence of a callout posts means that the targeted person will be harassed if enough people see it. There is no amount of "don't harass anyone mentioned in this doc/video" disclaimers that will prevent that. The post is now potentially a permanent record that anyone can cite for years into the future. You are now at the whims of unknown strangers to be banned from communities, kicked out of creative projects, or be blocked by friends, at any time with no warning. I would consider this to be harassment, but to people who don't know about how these things usually go down they would be seen as righteous whistle blowers.

No matter what you actually did, if your awkward interaction with someone was too sexual, or if you stated a shitty opinion about a complex topic, or if you misjudged someone's boundaries, or if you engaged with kink in a way that made someone outside the scene uncomfortable, you are now a predator. I have seen firsthand the game of telephone starting from "this person did/said something sexualized on an online platform where teenagers could have been present," to "acted creepy around teenagers," to "regularly sexually assaulted children," to "pedophile".

Callout posts do not actually stop the person from "doing weird shit". It depends on what you mean by "weird shit", but if you mean "secretly draws/engages with Bad Porn", which is what a lot of callout posts are about, I implore you to recognize that it is truly not your business to know every private action someone takes just because you follow them on social media. This applies to awkward interactions people have in private too. Sometimes it's patterns of abuse, but a lot of the time it's interpersonal drama that is not anyone else's business.

If by "weird shit" you mean that someone has demonstrated ongoing patterns of real emotional/financial/sexual/etc abuse, and it's something that cannot be handled by any other means (either privately or with legal action if relevant), then in those cases a callout post can potentially do more good than harm if it reaches the people that need to know about it.

The level of long-term mental anguish that a target can go through is absolutely no fucking joke. A callout post has the potential to be a gun to someone's head, especially if they're socially/mentally/physically disadvantaged to begin with, which conveniently describes the most likely people to be targeted with high profile callout posts. [This is because: 1.) Our communities are wayy more likely to self-police than the rest of the internet and 2.) there are groups such as kiwifarms that love when a trans girl does something they can suicide bait her with and they also love it when we infight, isolate, and attack each other.]

I don't think callout posts are inherently evil, but they do nothing to make the target not continue their unwanted behavior. The only good function a callout post can serve is to warn potential future victims. If there are no victims, no behavior that will DIRECTLY lead to someone being victimized, no scam being uncovered, no patterns of abuse being shared, then the only victim is the target of the callout post. Everyone else involved is just gawking at gossip and/or contributing to suicidal levels of anxiety to a stranger.

[lycandrophile]

next time someone tries to tell me people don’t demonize and act violently toward trans men and transmascs, i’m just going to make them read this reply i got to a positivity post that was specifically about trans manhood and transmasculinity. this is basically just every negative thing people say no one says about us rolled into one message that’s aimed directly at us.

and as if this isn’t enough on its own, their whole blog is full of this disgusting shit. it seems to be dedicated to it, actually. (fair warning, don’t look at the next two screenshots if you don’t want to see even more genuinely awful transphobia.)

you can say what you want about how they’re probably just a troll or baiting or doing this for attention but the fact remains that, regardless of their true intentions, these are real things that a real person is saying about trans men&mascs, publicly and proudly and to our faces because they want it to do damage.

i’ve dealt with people like this before, on a much closer level. when i was a teenager, i had a grown woman come into my dms just to send me very graphic and detailed instructions on how to kill myself. literally entire paragraphs with all of the steps she wanted me to take. before i blocked her, i told her she was lucky she sent it to me and not someone more vulnerable, because otherwise she might have real blood on her hands. she just sent the whole thing again.

we can argue all day about infantilization versus demonization, erasure versus hypervisibility, what counts as violence, what words we use to talk about our oppression, and so on. but the reality is, whether you believe people want us dead or not, they clearly do, and a lot of them really aren’t making any effort to hide it. at this point, if you can’t see it, it’s because you don’t care about our lives enough to look at the reality that’s right in front of your face.

before you do anything else, block this person. don’t engage with them directly, don’t give them the satisfaction of the attention they might be fishing for, just block them. but don’t forget that they exist either, especially if you’re not a trans man or transmasc yourself. don’t just block them and move on and forget that there are real people out there who will say these things about us, who genuinely enjoy the thought that their actions might have deadly consequences.

because these are the people you empower to come out of hiding and start being blatant about their hatred when you insist that no one wants us dead, when you openly mock us and demonize us and try to cast us out from the community that we were supposed to share. when even our own people decide we’re an acceptable target, these bigots throw a fucking party because you’ve just told them they can get away with murder as long as it’s our blood on their hands. this particular blog was started recently, and i guarantee it’s not a coincidence that they started it in the midst of a rise in online anti-transmasculinity.

it really is telling, how much hate a positivity post has incited. y’all can’t stand when we talk about the bad things that happen to us, but you hate our happiness even more.

[fairuzfan]

i seriously don't even have the words to describe what it's felt like as a native person learning about "holocaust exceptionalism" or whatever for the first time during all of this

the first time i saw a tweet talking about how it wasn't appropriate to compare any other genocide (and specifically this person was talking about the native american genocide(s), along with several others i've seen since & most of the "historians" who go this route, too) to the holocaust because unlike in those cases, where there was a clear logical reason for the wholesale slaughter of millions of people, the holocaust was senseless! it was just killing innocent people for no reason, which is completely different from when they got rid of all those dumb indians standing in the way of Progress & wasting the precious resources the colonizers needed much more... i thought they were just some random dickhead saying intentionally terrible shit online for engagement

but then i just kept seeing people saying similar things, and eventually while reading up on palestinian history, i find out that this has apparently been a zionist (and in many cases non-zionist, which maybe feels even worse) talking point for decades now?

(and increasingly, over the last few weeks, i've seen it shift to this more broad claim that comparing any genocide to any other genocide is harmful, actually... which is such a dumb argument to try to pass off as genuine when, among other things, there's literally an entire field called "genocide studies" that it's honestly almost funny)

i can't think of anything in recent memory that's felt like such a brutal slap in the face as finding out the belief that the systematic murder of my people was a completely logical, understandable course of action--arguably a net positive, even, in the long run--is now and long has been this commonly held. i've felt sick since ever since. how do you say shit like that and not understand that you're implicitly rationalizing and, to some extent, justifying it? how do you not hear yourself?

forgive me, i know it must feel very eye-roll-worthy to have someone come yelling to you right now about how badly their people are treated by zionists, but every time i see someone parroting off an argument along these lines, i swear i can just feel my faith in humanity slip a little more lol

yeah, fuck off with this bullshit for sure

oh don't apologize, i totally understand why you would want to talk about this. thank you for sending this, and I'm so sorry that youre going through this. it really is an inconsiderate talking point at the very least.... i wish the best for you and yours in these times.

[blackfilmmakers]

genuine question, as another black person who cant go out and protest what should i do? im not gonna lie, i listened to some of malcom x's speeches and mlks final speech and broke down. it feels like my family will never be safe here, but as someone whos unemployed and cant even drive (and even if i could drive, i dont have the money to leave) it feels like im doomed. it just feels like the majority of america and even the world assumes that just because the civil rights movement is 'over' racism isnt that bad anymore. someone tried to argue with me that racism isnt that bad in the usa compared to european countries because its 'not as in your face anymore'. what about police brutality? what about right now??? sorry for venting i just. this shit is breaking me man, and i legit dont know what to do

I'm feeling it too, and it pains me to see Black people struggle like this when we just want to be left alone

Here are some things to consider:

1) Your mere existence is a protest of itself. White people legit thought we'd all naturally die out at this point. It sucks that just living as a Black person is considered to be politically divisive; but that's why just being present is itself a protest

2) Not everyone needs to be a foot soldier or protester to join the fight. If there was a war and there was a side that was made up of nothing but fighters, they would lose. You need your scribes, you need your medics, you need your journalists, you need that kid that goes around the neighborhood, and plasters stickers of uplifting slogans

3) Do not feel obligated to engage with racists and bigots. I don't care what any nonblack leftist on here tells you, most of them cant stop using aave w/o having a breakdown. Your saftey comes first. This does not mean to bubble yourself, always stay woke about what goes on around you. But Black people are always expected to be in the front lines always physically fighting. Let others do their part

4) Search for community aid, community gardens, local/rec libraries, etc. Set up Black focused community events. Whether they are physical communities or online communities. Look into Black groups that focus on cooking while on a budget

5) Read various Black literature and essays. You have a physical copy? Try scanning them and having them on file. Spread it before people try erasing all traces of the material

6) Look into information by Black and Indigenous people about their thoughts on walkable cities and gentrification, mainly because these are topics that directly affect you from what I'm reading. But also look for bus/public transit modes of transportation

7) Share mutual aid, and don't be afraid to share your own when you need help.

8) Remember that every month is Black History Month, so we always have the opportunity to share and celebrate Blackness

I can't guarantee these are absolute solutions, but they are a starting point that I hope helps you in the long run ❤️

[separatist-apologist]

I cut your username out of this post because I don't want to unintentionally direct anyone over to you. I do believe you're sorry, and I also believe you didn't intend for any of the things that transpired TO transpire.

I want to answer this, though, because I genuinely believe a LOT of the people who logged out last night to flame the fic are on this website watching, and I want to speak directly to them. I'll never know who they are, and thats unfortunate because to me, it looks like a lot of other people are content to let you be thrown under the bus while taking no accountability for their actions.

I want to share this comment FROM the fic writer who responded to me when I left a comment this morning both condemning the actions of fellow gwynriel/eluciens and encouraging her to continue writing. Look at what she said. She had a mini-breakdown because a small but obnoxiously loud group of people took it upon themselves to not just leave unkind, unnecessary feedback, but to start whole threads about it, take it to other platforms, and otherwise talk shit because a story had *checks notes* conflict.

The fic is tagged: slowburn, eventual romance, AND the elain x azriel relationship. She did her due diligence as far as what she owes people- ya'll don't read tags and engage with the story like it was written specifically FOR you. First of all- it was written for ME. But lets pretend it wasn't, because I think the only reason people are backtracking is because I took offense. You shouldn't do this to ANYONE.

EVER!!!!

And I see a lot of ya'll writing your first fics and your comments are always something to the flavor of "be kind, I'm new/nervous/worried" and then you turn around and do this stuff to other writers like you're OWED your very specific vision of what these characters are, should be, or should act like.

This happens TOO OFTEN in this ship, and frankly, I'm tired of it. You guys will turn on people writing in your own ship if it doesn't adhere to YOUR specific, NARROW vision of "canon" (FANON) and wholesale bully people out, and whats left? A bunch of chronically online assholes whining that no one wants to draw art, write fic, or participate because they're afraid of you. Ya'll act like this is some moral crusade and if you ship the "right" thing, you can't possibly be a bully.

But its just bullying, dressed up as passion for the ship.

This isn't directed at you, OP- I'm talking to the other people who are letting you fall on this sword, who are absolutely watching this, who participated, and will likely to continue acting like this. But they'll be the first to scream and sob when another anonymous blog pops up to talk the same shit, and there will no irony or awareness around any of it. This is the culture some of you have created. Shocking you get it back in ten fold.

[askinkiskarma]

Ok, so I need to get this off my chest because it’s been weighing heavily on my mind. I’ve never properly addressed this because I honestly think it’s not something that deserves the traffic, but my entire feed has been overwhelmed with negativity and it’s genuinely making me want to not be on here anymore.

1. I age up my characters. No, that absolutely does not make me a paedophile. You don’t like it, the door’s right there, the block button’s easily accessible, i tag my fics, you can block tags, there’s so many things you can do.

2. Throwing words with such horrible and serious connotations around as a hyperbole is not quirky and doesn’t make you interesting, it makes you an asshole who diminishes and undermines real world problems to make yourself feel better about literally the most inane of non-problems.

3. If you have time to give a shit about someone you don’t know on the internet who finds joy in some artistic relief, you haVE TOO MUCH TIME!!! I’m curious how many of you actually have any concern or involvement in anything regarding actual paedophilia, that concerns actual kids, actual real life people.

4. If you do indeed believe that someone who ages up a literal fictional tall blue alien is a “paedophile”, you genuinely, genuinely need to go out and touch some grass, BUT what absolutely KILLS me is the absolute unhinged hypocrisy: you want to think you’re better than me, you denounce my work publicly, and then FOLLOW ME and reblog my Jake smut (?!???!?). Like this actually blows my mind. So in your eyes, i am the scum of the earth, i deserve to die and go to jail cause i am “sexualising minors”, but THEN you’re ok with it when you get off to my smut that you do agree with. HOW?! You must be so flexible cause that’s some impressive mental acrobatics. Congrats!!!

5. YOU CANNOT PICK AND CHOOSE WHAT YOU’RE MORALLY SUPERIOR ABOUT!!! Pls get that through your head. If you can forgive “deviant” behaviour when you’re horny and need a Jake fic to get yourself off to, honey baby, you’re just as bad, cause you’re proving you’re willing to bend your morals for your own pleasure and selfish needs. Like PLEASE BE FOR FUCKING REAL!!!

6. This is for my readers and readers of fics in general - if you like what we write, please, please show it. I have seen/talked to several of my mutuals who want to take a step back because of so much negativity that outweighs the support at the moment. If you want to keep being able to enjoy this content, please show your favourite writers some love, especially at this time.

7. And for my mutuals/besties, please, please don’t get discouraged. I know it’s hard, and it sucks, and it’s so disheartening, but i am here to talk and here to stay, and we can get through this together. It would hurt me so badly to see genuinely talented, beautiful, creative, kind people be driven away by some lowlives with nothing better to do than bully people. Stay strong and know I’m always here for you.

This is the first and last time i will be addressing this. I will not be engaging with these people anymore, and i will be using the block button incredibly liberally going forward. Remember you’re responsible for curating your online experience. You don’t like/agree with something, FUCKING BLOCK ME. I BEG YOU.

That’s all. Stay safe and good luck, my loves. I love you. Xoxoxox

[ao3-top-batfam-ships-bracket]

Hi, prev anon venting about the Timkon vs Batjokes poll here: would actually find it very interesting to read some analysis on the rising anti mentality, actually. I've been in fandom for a long time, so I do remember when it wasn't like this, and for a while I was like "it's fine, just block and move on, don't engage, it's fine". But IS it fine?? Fans of more complex and not easily digestible ships... we block and ignore and create our own little niches, but at this point I've seen too many cases of shippers saying they're AFRAID of publically liking something darker just because they might get harassed. This shit is getting genuinely harrowing to real alive people, to the point where some poor fans actually buy the bullshit of "you're a bad person if you like That Bad Ship" as if thought crimes exist and we're in the damn 18th century. It's definitely worth studying this phenomenon in fandom because then maybe we can figure out how to fix this? Fandom is supposed to be fun... Lol, really long way of saying that those texts would be cool to see, thank you guys!

Sure!

Here's a huge library of sources about media literacy, lgbtq+ issues, fandom and fan culture. We definitely recommend checking it out!

Under the cut is the list of articles focused specifically on the phenomenon of antishipping. Please keep in mind that some of these articles are master's theses or doctoral dissertations and that we didn't fully read all of them. This is just a general list of what we've found.

Aburime, S. (2021). The cult structure of the American anti. Transformative Works and Cultures, 36.

Aburime, S. (2022). Hate narratives, conditioned language and networked harassment: A new breed of anti-shipper and anti-fan–antis. Journal of Fandom Studies, 10(2-3), 135-155.

Bradburn, M. (2023). Fans Like Us: Anti-Shipping, Othering, and the Reauthoring of Fandom (Master's thesis, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte).

Drouin, R. A. (2021). 'Fans are Going to See it Any Way They Want': The Rhetorics of the Voltron: Legendary Defender Fandom. Bowling Green State University.

Larsen, V. (2021). It makes me, a minor, uncomfortable. Media and Morality in Anti-Shippers’ Policing of Online Fandom.

Salsabila, J. A., & Sulhin, I. (2024). Social Media And Moral Panic: Examining The Case Of Antis Fandom On Social Media X. Eduvest-Journal of Universal Studies, 4(5), 4138-4150.

Stone, A. A. (2023). The Antagonistic Anatomy of Anti-shippers: A Thematic Analysis. City University of New York John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Urbańczyk, A. (2022). Finding a Dead Dove in the Refrigerator. The Anti-Shippers’ Call for Exclusion of Sensitive Content as a Means of Establishing Position in the Field of Fan Production. Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, 53(3), 404-420.

(Also, adding this screenshot of the table of contents from Larsen's article because it's very funny.)

[damnfandomproblems]

Posting a compilation of responses to Fandom Problem #5234

Anon:

PLEASE watch the Contrapoints video on Twilight. It is by a trans person named Natalie Wynn.

(anon includes a link to a YouTube video titled "Twilight | ContraPoints")

This video has changed the minds of tons of people who initially thought Twilight was "rape and stalking abuse", by explaining the history of where all this panic comes from and why people are drawn to dark fantasies. It changed my mind and I'm hoping it'll change your mind too.

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Anon:

going through every point bc this personally ticked me off for literally no reason but i have nothing better to do. so. sorry if this seems overly pissy /genuine. (also typed this in my notes app so sorry for the lack of italics/caps in place of italitcs) 1. not wanting to see incest/whatever isnt purity culture. blocking tags/accounts that make you uncomfortable is something that is HEAVILY ENCOURAGED. the only people i have ever seen discouraging this are antishippers. what IS purity culture, however, is saying that EVERYONE ELSE should not make something because it makes you personally uncomfortable. as someone who was literally raised within purity culture, that is exactly the kind of shit they say. 2. fiction DOES affect reality! but not in the way you think it does. yes, propaganda works! but that is because it is specifically constructed to convince people of a certain view. representation is important because people who arent cishet white men exist and deserve to see themselves in fiction. but i think the best way i can explain it is this; if you were to watch Hannibal, would you automatically assume that cannibalism is okay? what if you watched a John Wick movie or Deadpool? Is mass murder okay? the answer is obviously an astounding no, because you are able to think about the media you consume. this is expected of any media that isnt literally a show aimed at children. There's at least one media btw. i'm not entirely sure about Hannibal because i've never seen it. 3. that is literally a coping mechanism therapists recommend. those are all UNHEALTHY and SELFDESTRUCTIVE coping mechanisms. you cannot compare the two. 4. if you are getting mad about porn then that is an entirely Puritan viewpoint. 6. "make the story frown upon it." if you cannot gauge for yourself that these things are bad then you should not be engaging with those stories. 7. last point isnt a proship issue, its a jerkwad issue. people who dont tag things are dicks, at least we can agree on that. however if someone doesnt tag something it is on you to block them. YOU need to curate YOUR online experience. (it may also be worth it to KINDLY send an ask about it. its the same as tagging flashing. sometimes people just dont think about it and sometimes people are doing it on purpose to be a douche. you need to block the latter as they are not worth your time or energy.) Last point was something you did not mention so im not including it in the list itself; if you were to ask a proshipper if they supported pedophilic/incestual/abuse relationships irl, they would most likely say no. If they say yes then they are just a pedo/someone who is okay with incest/an abuser. those people are not bad people because of the fiction they consume/create. they are bad people because they want to hurt people and do not see anything wrong with it/are not willing to see why they are in the wrong. apologies for any typos, ive reread through it but i tend to miss things.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Anon:

Op really just compared writing fictional scenarios with fictional dollies, a method of processing trauma that is recommended by psychologists and actually -is- effective at helping people process stuff, to alcoholism, street drugs, and socon which can and do kill people. You ever seen someone withdraw from alcohol abuse? I have. You actually spoken to a psychologist about friends who write things to cope after being raped at a party? I have. Are you still a clueless child? Yes. So take your moral panic and shove it. You're a kid but if you want to get involved in serious adult conversations, you need to be prepared to accept discussing serious, real things. You can't even look at a rapefic without getting triggered (I use this word in the proper sense, not hyperbolic sense) and ascribing blown-out-of-proportion, emotional judgments on people who, if you passed them on the street, wouldn't stand out to you at all. Because these are normal people. This to me is a huge sign you're just not ready for this kind of conversation.

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Anon:

"...really ticks me off how someone can say "It's really fucking gross how you wanna see a minor and an adult make out" and proshippers can be like "UGH PURITY CULTURE" Like, how is not wanting to see pedophilia and incest purity culture. Especially when you're a minor. dumbass I was a minor when I wanted to se OCs modeled after myself hooking up with the hot adult leads from my shows. I wasn't stupid enough to think it was OK to happen in real life but if Dream of the Endless was in an arranged marriage with my OC for reasons I wanted to see it. Like. "Minors" have sex. A lot. And yeah, age gaps can be problematic in real life but on paper? Who cares? It's fake. It's not real. It's a story. Acting like minors are sexless little angels until the day they turn 18 is crazy. Minors want to see boning and they want to see people their own age boning, and sometimes they want to see people their own age boning That Old Man or Milfs or 1000 year old vampires or whatever. Not even gonna bother with the rest. Others can get that.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anon:

Where to even start here? I guess I should start by saying that proshipper doesn't mean what you think that it means OP! It doesn't mean that we support incest or pedophilia, it simply means that we're anti harassment. I don't like incest or pedophilia. It's weird to me, and yet one of the most popular series, Game of Thrones, features both incest and pedophilia. Romanticizing villainy? Can I ask what your definition of romanticizing is? What if the story revolves around the villain? Like Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes? Are stories like that not supposed to exist? What about the anime and manga called Overlord? What About Hannibal Lecter? What about the Joker movie? Do none of these have any value? Do you expect the villain to deadpan into the camera every 10 minutes confessing that he knows his actions are wrong but he's doing it anyways? And if the writers don't make their characters do this, are you going to accuse them of condoning their characters actions? Because I think it would be pretty dumb to make a villain out of character for the sake of, "I know this is wrong, but I'm doing it anyways!" Do you want no villains in stories? Is that what you prefer? For everything to be sunshine and rainbows all of the time? Because that would be really boring. Are there any true heroes without a villain. A bad coping mechanism? Really? So now you're a psychologist who knows everyone on the planet that knows exactly what everyone needs to get better? Coping mechanism looks different from person to person. What is important is that the coping mechanism helps you process your emotions and what happened to you and sometimes it is helpful to write your emotions out in the form of writing and sometimes that can be fanfiction. I am someone who had been diagnosed with trauma and depression and I'm currently doing therapy for this and taking medicine. You know what's helped me all of these years before I started going to therapy on a regular basis? Characters with a lot of baggage like me. They can be hero or villains. I don't care which it is. If they have a tragic back story and I'm all over that. Fiction doesn't effect reality? It can and sometimes does. You're right. But you know who's problem that is? Your parents, the school system, and whoever else never taught you that fiction is fiction. That characters aren't real. If your parents let the TV or Internet babysit you growing up instead of being a parent and teaching you right from wrong, or being able to tell fiction from reality, well then that is the fault of your parents. Do you know who's not at fault? Stranger on the Internet. We're not here to hold your hand, you are not entitled to that. It is up to you to curate your own experience and mind your own business. If you don't like something, blacklist the tag, block the person posting it or log off of that site and find something else to look at. You think you've debunked everything, but really you're just naive and living in a fantasy world. The world is not an idealistic place, nor will it ever be and that is why these stories exists to begin with. Covering up everything that is bad in the world won't ever make it go away and that is reality. Period. Let people cope the way they need to, and unless you have degrees in psychology, you have no right to tell people what they can and cannot enjoy. Again, I myself would never write or read about some of the things that you've posted about OP, but will I continue writing about my trauma? I sure will, because it is something that I am still dealing with many years after it happened and I'm sure others will do the same with the things that they've had experience with, too.

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Anon:

OP, one of your top posts is an AO3 reference and contains a link to an AO3 fic. In case you didn't know, AO3 was directly created to be a host for fanworks that got censored by other sites. Functionally, it is an archive, like a library. And like libraries, it hosts anything that is legal to host under US law. One major driving factor behind AO3's creation was the "Livejournal Strikethrough Boldthrough", an incident where "concerned parties" successfully lobbied to get Livejournal, a site that hosted writing, to remove its "yucky fics". Guess what? Gay fiction got removed in the process because, surprise, certain parties found that yucky too. (I'm talking about conservative groups who are obviously very anti-gay and anti-LGBT.) Here's one post about it: https://pretentioussongtitle.tumblr.com/post/624690560646676480/like-wathever-antis-delete-your-blogs-pls-thx So... You can't say you're okay with calling to censor things, without looking at the full picture and where it ultimately leads. You're asking for a lot of collateral damage. And like someone else said, engaging in discussions about heavy, adult topics with strange adults on the internet (and most of us are adults, OP) is very dangerous. There have been a lot of cases where someone has cried foul about certain kinds of fictional writing, only for an "anti proship" person to walk up to them and groom them, and it worked because the kid was under the pretense that the person was a "safe, good person". Please do not put yourself in danger and get out of the spaces you frequent.

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Anon:

It's interesting you use Lolita as an example of what to do "right" when it comes to depicting things. You believe tons of media must be censored or kept away from the light of day, yet Lolita is an example of what to emulate to prevent that from happening? You would be very shocked to discover Lolita is among, if not the, most notorious piece of fiction for censorship groups to attack. So I really don't know if you fully understand what it is you're arguing for, here. You're just a kid, so I'm assuming you haven't actually read Lolita. That's the first thing. The second thing is, given the fact virtually all people who are invested in censoring and banning media actually hate Lolita, but you seem to have a totally opposite, 180-degree opinion about it, I have to wonder if you've happened to find a lot of random stuff from around the internet, but have yet to actually put it all together and cross-check everything to see if it actually makes sense. There's a lot of stuff in your post that is either plain out wrong, poorly strung together, or contradictory.

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Anon:

I'm going to look real tinfoil-hatty in two seconds, but I swear some of y'all antis in the notes are following tags like "pedophilia" and "incest" and that's the only reason you found this confession. Cause I haven't seen half of you here before. And if so, that's kind of weird. I hope I'm wrong. To be fair there's no way to confirm either way but I just thought it was funny because I can see it happening if not for the antis here, than for others. Gotta get that daily dose of outrage.

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Anon:

""Fiction doesn't affect reality" So why is representation so important? Why has propaganda worked so well?" you're taking this statement too literally. fiction obviously affects reality. if you cry over your favourite character's death, well there ya go. fiction has just changed reality. it made you feel sad things. representation is important because it makes those represented feel acknowleged and because it makes their existence more known to the world. propaganda is designed SPECIFICALLY to heavily affect reality. a doujin artist does not sit down and think "hmm. today i will draw a loli hentai to turn people into paedophiles". ""Well I'm not gonna become a murderer just because I've seen people murder in pieces of media" Name one piece of media where murder was portrayed as unironically, fully okay." as someone not well-versed in shooters, fortnite. murder is encouraged in fortnite. the point of the game is to kill people. i'd also like you to name one piece of media where rape is portrayed as perfectly fine and dandy. ""I'm coping with trauma" Well that's an awful coping mechanism. If you have been traumatized by incest, abuse, or pedophilia, why are you creating/consuming content where those are all romanticized?" because the fact that they're not alone in their suffering is comforting to them? as an abuse victim, i like characters with abusive parents. it gives me a character to sympathise with and characters to absolutely loathe with all my being. now that i think about it, i like that i'm not suffering alone. other people acknowledge the things i, and other victims, have to deal with. there are other reasons, but that's one i thought up ""You're ableist for criticizing our coping mechanism!" ... You know what else is a coping mechanism? Self-harm. Alcoholism. Excessive drug use. Those are frowned upon EVERYWHERE, because they're self-destructive. So why is thinking adults and minors should be cute together (sometimes real life adults and minors, but I'm not gonna get into the whole RPF discourse because RPF is even more fucking disgusting) suddenly okay?" there is a difference between doing things that being actual harm and because the latter is harmless. besides... isn't this circular logic? this argument is based on the conclusion you draw from it. "proshipping as a coping mechanism is bad because proshipping is bad". ""Rule 34 and gross ships is always gonna exist!" In our current world, bigotry is always gonna exist. Doesn't mean we should stop getting mad about it." bigotry excludes a specific group of often-innocent people for no reason. rule 34 is just porn of fictional characters. completely incomparable ""I'm exploring unhealthy relationships in fiction!" Okay then! That's great! Don't romanticize it. Tag it accordingly. Make the story frown upon it. Lolita, the book, frowned upon the pedophilia and thought it was disgusting. Do that." nobody romanticises anything. most loli hentai just... depict a loli having sex. it doesn't depict it as this amazing thing that you should dp. most lolicons that talk nabout wanting to fuck... idk, klee from the funny gacha game don't actually wanna have sex with kids. it's omly romanticised in-universeww, if you will. it doesn't say anything about it being good to do irl. and on nhentai, we use tags. we have a lot of 'em, including the recent 'kodomo doushi'. you jujst have to take a look at the tags section of a doujin and search for any tag you may not want you can also filter them in the search bar. we tag our shit, it's just your fault for being an irresponsible fuck. "But you're not gonna do that, are you." we will. the importance of tagging can NOT be stressed enough anon, i am gonna be blunt here. you are not smart. you did not debunk shit. god will slam the pearly gates of heaven on you for this post

[communist-ojou-sama]

Surely inquiring minds wonder why I am so frequently so hostile toward liberals and especially rationalists when I encounter them online, and you might be surprised to know that it's less emotional than it may seem.

Indeed, it does try my patience to see moronic whites discount the work of the global south revolutionaries and thinkers who have done basically all the hard work making the world a better place in the past century and change, but the sum total of that irritation is not anger but disdain, the disdain necessary to basically say whatever comes to mind to make sure their interactions with me are as hurtful and humiliating as possible.

And you may ask further, okay anomie, whatever you say, but why That though.

Well you see, my maximum conflict, maximum hostility doctrine toward liberal "intellectuals" is borne not of an emotion, but of an heuristic.

That is, when you have a clique of liberals who are exposed to the thought of global south intellectuals and revolutionaries, exposed to the thought of Marxists and communists, and still choose liberalism, that says something very important about their values.

Specifically, it means that for the time being, at core, their allegiance to the imperial core and to its masters is greater than to the oppressed of the world, and certainly to any "leftist" principles they claim to be fond of.

And that is bad, yes, but more than being bad, it is a liability. Liberal pseudo-intellectuals like these are worse than dead weight in any serious left-wing movement, they are a net negative. And what's worse, despite their arrogance and lack of intellectual talent, they sometimes catch the ears of well-meaning communists largely out of being half-decent writers.

Personally, the thought of a liberal pseudo-intellectual being in a serious decisionmaking decision when the shit hits the fan makes my fucking blood run cold. That's what motivates me.

And so, I have elected to do all that I can to make these people the right's problem. I'm already reasonably certain that once a major economic crisis happens in the US most of them will join the ranks of cresting explicit fascism anyway, but just in case any of them might keep cosplaying left and undermining the communist cause, I will engage in every hostility to get them to leave the left, because they aren't needed and indeed we need to have as few of this type as possible

(Incidentally this is why I am civil to those whom I recognize as genuinely talented regardless of their current ideological leaning)

[ramshacklefey]

Maybe it's just an allergic reaction from growing up in a cult, but I cannot help looking at some queers and would-be leftists and seeing the seeds of the exact social framework I grew up in. So, here are some questions to ask yourself about your social circle, online or offline:

Do people around me subscribe to a good-evil dichotomy, and is this dichotomy applied to people? There is no such thing as a "good" or "evil" person. In fact, I encourage everyone to ditch the entire concept of "evil." It's not a useful concept. The kind of thinking that creates good and evil as absolute categories, especially if it is then applied to humans, benefits no one. Learn to accept that morality can be vague in a lot of places, and that a person's actions may be judged right, supererogatory (going beyond moral requirements), less than ideal, wrong, misguided, or morally bankrupt without making any claims about that person's inherent nature.

Do the people around you un-person anyone? This flows out of the previous question, because declaring someone "evil" is usually enough to declare them not a person. And even if you've never consciously put it this way, we all "know" that we don't have the same moral duties to non-persons that we do to persons. There is no action a person can take that removes them from the category of "person." There is no group a person can belong to that removes them from the category of "person." And if the people around you are willing to act as if there were, there is nothing preventing them from doing the same to you.

Do the people around you accept the idea of social contagion? Do they support shunning/exile as punishment? Again, this comes from the idea of evil, but it goes another level down. The claim becomes not just that someone is evil, but that therefore only other evil people would associate with them. This is most apparent during cancel campaigns, when the mob is as happy to turn on the friends, coworkers, and relatives of the target as they are to attack their primary target. But even if someone has genuinely done some fucked up shit, there is nothing they can do that makes them unworthy of friendship. And associating, being friends with, and loving someone who has done wrong in the past doesn't have any moral bearing on you. Communities that act otherwise damage everyone. Fear of being associated with some who has fucked up means that people with maladaptive behavior patterns are cut off from positive relationships with those who could help them. And the threat of ruining lives in this way makes it harder for people to ask for help, whether they are the perpetrator or the victim of bad behavior.

Do the people around you assign moral weight to the media others enjoy? This is a concept straight outta the evangelical handbook. I cannot tell you how many youth group meetings I attended where we talked about the "danger" of Bad Media: it would poison your mind, it would make you drink and smoke, it would make you gay, it would make you have premarital sex. Horror films would make people violent. Angry music would let the devil into your soul. It was all a load of bunk. It remains a load of bunk no matter what it is that you object to, and people who are trying to control what media you have access to are way overstepping their boundaries.

Do the people around you assign moral weight to identity categories? Do they engage in any kind of essentialism? Assigning this sort of weight is just as bad when it's a bunch of leftists saying that All Men Suck as it is when it's a right wing preacher saying that Gays Are Dangerous. Claiming that a person can be more or less virtuous based on their inherent qualities is wrong and dangerous.

Are the people around you as or more worried about appearing virtuous as they are about actually doing the right thing? I was told throughout my childhood to avoid even the appearance of sin. Keeping up a public face of virtuousness and purity was necessary in order to be accepted by the community. This includes things like using the "right" language, enjoying the "right" media, dressing and presenting yourself the "right" way, and many others.

Do the people around you divide the world into categories, defined on a black and white dichotomy of people who are "on your side" and people who are "out to get you"? Yeah, this one is tricky, because if you live under any kind of oppression, there are actually people who want to hurt you and have the structural power to do so. But the vast majority aren't those people. The vast majority of people are just trying to live their own lives, and most are unaware of the problems you're facing. When you're inside a social circle like this, it's easy to get caught up in the mentality that everyone knows what you know, so their actions speak to which "side" they're on. The reality is that most people are indifferent to you, but would object to you being badly treated if they actually understood the situation.

Do the people around you object to nuanced assessments of a situation or morality in general? Is there some kind of "canon" of acceptable beliefs and slogans? Is anything outside of this considered suspect if not outright bad? If your thoughts on mortality and politics can be summed up entirely in tweets and bumper stickers, and people around you get angry at nuance or new ideas, that's a bad sign.

These aren't all of them, and none of these are hard and fast. There are fuzzy edges on all of them. But they are all tactics that enforce social cohesion and Right Behavior at the expense of actual discussion or measured responses to situations. They rely on and grow out of living in a high surveillance culture.

You can push back against them by minding your own business, refusing to engage in surveiling others, and actively opposing judging anyone to be a non-person.

So many of us grew up in and have tried to claw our way out of this kind of social life. Don't just recreate it.

[mayhems-cannon]

update

posting it here instead of bluesky cause i don't know how much people can handle my bullshit act there anymore+idk maybe it might be useful to understand the context of things idfk (tw graphic talks of suicidality, self harm, as well as medication talk (SSRIs, hormonal meds))

recently started going back to school again and i find myself constantly exhausted again, no matter the amount or quality of sleep. i'll wake up, go to school, and have my head hurt so much it'll force me to slep for an hour before exiting like a thief. i don't even want to try drinking coffee or energy drinks or anything anymore, it all knocks me down even more. hell, it feels i can't even eat much either before i start falling asleep again. my sleep schedule is completely fucked because of that, no matter how much i want to wake up and go to school and actually learn what i genuinely care about. my body won't let me, and i don't even want to treat it gently anymore.

i've emailed my obgyn about half the treatment i take, which is given out by her to solve my thyroid issues, and i'll try to get back to her again, but there's something genuinely soul shattering about meds not working on you yet having everyone who says they love you make you take them cause they won't listen to you but only to the doctor. it doesn't matter what i feel until the doctors say it, all that.

i've been considering self harm almost daily at this point, just the whole "going all out, going to town" on it just because everything feels more and more pointless. i want to go to school, i want to go to the museums downtown cause they have stuff i want to study, but my body won't let me. i want to startdrawing and painting outside, in museums, paint and draw the most random things i find cool but my body keeps telling me it's too cold, again and again, never letting me go anywhere when i really want it. what's the point of any meds if i still can't do what i genuçinely want? are those scars not proof enough they aren't working? should i go deeper, do more, so much more of them, or will that be considered too dangerous? (because it is.)

i've been asking myself a lot why should i keep living, a sort of passive suicidality, a weird "i wouldn't be scared if i didn't wake up" evolving slowly into a "maybe i should take all those things i shouldn't and not wake up". i see someone telling me they like what i do, they enjoy my works, they see themselves in them or anything of the sort and i'm like, i'm so glad you do! but i still can't feel any love from anyone, no one online, no one irl, just understanding the logical course of "i know people love me, i know people love my work, i just cannot feel it and might never have have felt it, not even from my parents". it's really ungrateful of me, and it's certainly superficial of me to chase that love through engagement but i don't ven know what to do anymore to dea with it. self harm only works to numb the inside pain enough times before you start worrying about what your mom says. meds barely work anymore and changing them would mean going to school even less.

i try to cope with things, i try to draw gay shit, play games, draw that sreies with Gabriel, but the more time passes the weaker i keep getting, and i can't even explain why, i can't even fight it most of the time, i just keep telling myself "i can't handle it anymore, i can"t handle anything anymore" again and again until i end up actually harming myself and going to bed hoping i'll wake up feeling better.

even creation is an act made in fear, because i fear everyone actually fucking hates what i do, which i am extremely aware is nonsensical with what i stated previously, but i guess psychoses and delusions won't let themselves be defeated by what i had been looking for after years of emotional abuse. it's a constant fear of "everyone will fucking hate everything i do, and especially the creators of whatever i'm making fanworks of. they will fucking despise me and everything i am and ever make of their creation.", it's been here for as long as i can remember and i guess it's here to stay. i'm doing my best to drill beyond it, go past that fear and imagine i'll still be okay no matter what but it's all just undone i two seconds, again and again. of course people fucking hate what i do with John and Mike, and of course no one cares about it, and of course no one cares about anything else i might do, and that's the best ending, somehow.

it's all just serious nonsense, things that just don't go together in any way and might never will because the pieces never fit together to begin with. if anything i hope this is a nice view into what psychosis and delusion apparently look like instead of people calling themselves "delulu" over impulsive thoughts of dyeing their hair blue or something.

apologies for the wall of text and just general miserabilism lately, from here and especially bluesky. i'm trying to see the positives but it's getting really hard to see anything good anymore.

i hope everyone had a nice beginning of the year and will have a nice 2025 going on forward.

i love you.

[bloodpen-to-paper]

PSA regarding cultural exchange and internet culture. Its a rant but its something that needs to be said

I'm already seeing the Qsmp admins calling for understanding and patience with the announcement of the Korean CCs that will be joining, and it frustrates the hell out of me that any of it needs to be said because people on the internet are so poisoned by cancel culture that this opportunity to engage with Korean culture is beginning with stress.

Its an issue that extends far past this server unfortunately, the modern standard for morality on the internet is insanely unrealistic and honestly very anti-human. So many people, most people actually, do problematic things in life and make mistakes, which is completely normal. Its how we are and how we're supposed to be, its how we learn and grow. But having someone get dogpiled/harassed online and potentially even risk losing a career for saying or doing something vaguely problematic that they should be encouraged to learn from is so incredibly harmful and makes the online place more toxic than communal.

There's a legitimate line to draw between something we should encourage someone to reflect upon and a genuinely irredeemable act, and if you can't tell the difference you then shouldn't be speaking about it online. To all the people who dramatize an easily fixable situation, you're part of the problem of people not knowing how the fuck to act when there's miscommunication, differences of opinion or people doing/having done something problematic but not ill-intentioned. Genuinely good people are being either pressured off the online space or terrified to ever make a mistake because people who don't touch enough goddamn grass are so drama-addicted that they make a situation negative when it literally never needed to be. You're toxic and you're making everyone else toxic, the problem is not the person who accidentally said something offensive in ignorance but is willing to learn from that, nor the person who misunderstood a situation and could be convinced to reflect on their actions, the problem is you, adding unnecessary fuel to the fire and blowing shit out of proportion when it could be resolved so much easier. If you're someone who does this, I hate to sound like a boomer but holy shit you should be ashamed of yourself. There's enough bad in the world as is, stop posting and do better.

And here's the funny part, and I don't care how many people this pisses off: current online cancel culture is xenophobic as fuck. People in different cultures have different ways of life, and though that doesn't necessarily excuse some of what goes on in other nations, the current standard for "dealing" with culture clashing takes no account to how someone's culture can make them act differently than you, and they shouldn't be demonized for it even if some of what they do isn't the best. People from multi-ethnic backgrounds, especially children of immigrants, understand that some of our parents say the most cancellable shit imaginable but are still good people at heart. Strangers online wouldn't understand that at all, and their need to complain about everything online with such hostility and lack of nuance would and is doing the exact opposite of what it should be doing; instead of getting people to see different perspectives and learn why their behavior can be harmful to others, thus encouraging them to do better, online witch hunting either drives them away from wanting to interact with anyone, and/or actively pushes them further down problematic avenues where they aren't demonized for harmful behavior.

I am so sick and tired of everything thinking cancel culture is normal, because it is so incredibly not. Its exhausting seeing the same thing play out over and over as someone who's actually interacted with people of different ages, gender and ethnicities, and who knows what these people are like in their hearts, while also knowing the internet would eat them alive without a second thought to who they are or why they act the way they do.

People say and do problematic things, it doesn't mean they're bad people. It means they're human. I encourage everyone to remember that.

[itsclydebitches]

Have you seen the posts going around saying shit like "If a mutual likes Hazbin Hotel I will block them"?? It's genuinely upsetting me tbh, not just the idea that people don't like the show, but that they despise it so much they can't even stand the thought of someone they know liking the show. It reminds me of the Steven Universe hate train only worse. They also say shit like "the show is just someone saying swear words and expecting you to laugh", and if for a second we put aside the fact that that is blatantly not true, what's wrong with that? I'm allowed to like something that's a bit trash, right? I've already seen two different people I follow reblog posts to that effect (and worse, someone saying all a character boils down to is "i love being sexually abused <3" and i don't know how they ever came to that conclusion) and it's driving me mad. And somehow I just know that they don't actually give a shit about any "controversies" surrounding vivziepop, that's just a convenient excuse for most of them. I don't even care if Vivzie is a bad person, that's none of my business. just live and let live, you know?

Sorry for ranting, you're literally the only blog i follow who posts Hazbin fan content

Rant away, friend! Luckily for me I haven't come across any of those posts yet. Plenty of discourse surrounding whether fans are allowed to make romantic and/or sexual content for Alastor, the expected shipping wars, and - as you say - vague references to Vivzie controversies (which I'm too new a fan to even be aware of yet)... but nothing that's a complete rejection of the show itself. That's probably because I've only engaged with blogs posting a lot of Hazbin content though.

I'm a big fan of old school Internet rules which includes an emphasis on cultivating your own online space. You know, the thing tumblr is explicitly designed for. So in theory I applaud anyone blocking users/tags for a show they're not a fan of. Performatively posting about it more as a way to guilt others for liking Hazbin at all... not so much. If you want to block something just block it. If you're mutuals with someone you both presumably like each others' content. Not all of it necessarily, but enough to have followed in the first place, and often being mutuals for long enough leads to friendship because you're both getting interacting with one another a lot. All of which isn't to say that people don't unfollow mutuals, or that you can't drop a mutual because they've started posting something you dislike. Obviously both situations do happen, but it feels like an extreme enough response that these posters probably aren't actually doing this very often. Most people will wait the mutual out until their interest gets hooked on something new, or block the Hazbin tag and keep the friend, or just block without making a big announcement about it. So posts like that feel more like a way to show off how much you dislike the show and guilt others for their enjoyment which yeah, can be upsetting to see. Especially when, as you say, it costs nothing to just let people like things.

Which might sound hypocritical on my part given my RWBY interests, but I think there's a big difference between critically examining a show while supporting others who genuinely love it, and simplistically blasting it. I COMPLETELY get why Hazbin wouldn't be to everyone's tastes and, like with the SU example, anything that gets popular enough is going to develop its haters (especially cartoons trying to tackle non-childish subjects. That's always going to be a fandom landmine). But if you're going to make claims about a show, at least watch it to ensure you can back up your stance? And if your takeaway is still, "This is the worst fucking thing I've ever watched"... cool. Go forth and write about that on your own, personal blog. But no one should be surprised when they're also blocked for bragging about how many Hazbin fans they've blocked.