#posts that are for a very niche subset of people (me)

[dreamyzworldlove]

jason grace 🤝 eddie kaspbrak

being impaled in the chest

[episims]

A Peek to My SFS Stats

I know some creators prefer not seeing their download numbers and that's fair! This kind of stuff can easily cause pressure and/or feelings of underachievement.

For me though, it's just statistics. And since it's pretty precisely 5 years from when I first uploaded anything to SFS, I've gathered some data to play with.

So, this very self-indulgent post is solely about my SFS stats. Just because I'm a total nerd I find it interesting, and I like being open about things. It's long and blabbery so the rest is safely under the cut.

For the background: I tend to create whatever I need for my own game. I share my weird stuff because I feel like it's a trade for everything I download from others.

Probably due to the lack of any consistency or branding at all, my CC has a wide range in download numbers. I have some popular pieces, sure, but also some niche mods like no snow accumulation that has only interested 126 persons in nearly two years.

Even though saying "only 126" is an illusion created by the internet. Imagine if those 126 individuals would come to you in person. That's more people than I've probably even had a real talk with during the last year!

The raw data of my SFS main folder is (calculated with a sheets program): it has 227 files and the average download count for each file is 1557, but 74% of the files have been downloaded fewer times than the average.

So even though my CC isn't usually downloaded that much, I've shared a handful of things that have been downloaded so much more than everything else that they pull the average up.

What are those things? Time is an important factor here, as most CC tends to gather downloads over time (not a single post from 2023 on this list).

1) Subtle wrinkles (January 2022)

17313 downloads (674 hearts; ~3,9% of all downloaders) Post notes: 1112

That's several thousand more than the second most downloaded thing I have, and it's such a random thing.

I'm sure most people have downloaded them to get those 4t2(ish) forehead wrinkles. I have no other explanation as the rest of them are hand-drawn by a person who can't draw. Also the preview is frankly hideous, I used about one minute to take it... safe to say I didn't expect this post to gather any attention at all.

2) Cellphone default (January 2021)

13547 downloads (565 hearts; ~4,2% of all downloaders) Post notes: 1133

Noteworthy that it's been updated a couple of times which pushes people to redownload.

This was a quick passion project, since at that time I couldn't find a cellphone default I was completely happy with. If it hadn't been a quickie, I would've used more time to find a good base mesh oof. Many thanks to @pforestsims for later improving it.

3) Tombstone defaults (December 2019)

12477 downloads (582 hearts; ~4,7% of all downloaders) Post notes: 1064

I was so proud of these when I made them. Those were my first mesh defaults ever! Today, I'm proud of my past self for doing them. That's crazy many meshes and subsets to handle for a total noob.

I couldn't do anything with BHAVs back then, so those defaults would've never ever happened without @midgethetree. She endured a lot, working with a noob who went through several meltdowns because of subset issues that didn't make any sense.

4) Baby personality mod (February 2020)

9724 downloads (489 hearts; ~5% of all downloaders) Post notes: 1193

The first mod on the list! Absolutely essential one for myself and apparently for some others too.

Also the actual first mod of my own ever. I can't really recommend starting with something this complicated, I had zero ability to perceive the scope of the mod when I asked if @midgethetree was willing to help me through it. She deserves all the praise for doing it, I've realized later that I couldn't ever teach anyone the way she taught me. So, if you read this: thank you, Midge.

5) Rabbit pen default (August 2022)

9628 downloads (442 hearts; ~4,6% of all downloaders) Post notes: 1305

This was completely @deedee-sims' idea and project! I just hopped in (hah) to help. I'm only hosting it for practicality, as the BHAVs most often need updating, and those are by me.

6) Turn On/Off replacements (July 2021)

8644 downloads (388 hearts; ~4,5% of all downloaders) Post notes: 1470

This post has more notes than any other post of mine, yet it's not even nearly the most downloaded thing I've done. The two don't always go hand in hand.

I've also shared an updated version of these lately in a new post. It's unlikely they'll get the same amount of attention, which on paper doesn't make much sense since it's practically the same thing but done better. But I'm sure everyone knows that the hype and the quality don't always match.

7) Pixelry’s KKB fridge recolors (February 2022)

8147 downloads (329 hearts; ~4% of all downloaders) Post notes: 662

This is such an oddity on this list since it's the only recolor set and the post has fewer notes than the other ones, too. People just (secretly) really like cute fridges, apparently.

8) Crib teeth anim fix (August 2022)

6157 downloads (431 hearts; ~7% of all downloaders) Post notes: 1408

This list is already long enough, but I wanted to show how fast the number starts dropping at this point.

This got posted a day before the bunnies, and I find it funny to think that for about 3000 people it's more pressing to have bunnies in their game than fixing their toddlers dropping teeth while crying lol.

No point in continuing the list forever, but among my most note-gaining Tumblr posts are also:

Puppy/kitten want replacements (October 2022, 1114 notes, 3849 downloads)

Improved biotech station (July 2022, 1110 notes, 3893 downloads)

Camera overhaul mod (January 2024, 1059 notes, 1752 downloads)

Newspaper default (March 2022, 970 notes, 5052 downloads)

While I don't have a real conclusion to offer, it's clear that notes don't always get realized to downloads, and likewise many people download without interacting with posts.

One more thing I'd like to point out is that the percentage of people who hit that SFS heart button seems pretty constant. I feel like it shows that some people just have that habit and some don't, and it's not likely directly related to how much they like the thing.

The amount of SFS hearts that crib teeth anim fix has gotten doesn't follow this pattern lol. It's really not common to see the percentage change even that much.

[eri-pl]

A dictionary

I have a very… I think it's called "idiosyncratic" way of speaking. I use phrases that have meaning for me, but sometimes not for anyone else. So I decided to post a discionary of the most common ones (instead of IDK to stop using them).

Idiot, Idiot#1 — Melkor, later known as Morgoth, Dark Enemy etc etc. My problematic (oh, how so!) fave. I would never vote for him but I would definitely cry about him. I use both names, depending on which timeframe I'm talking about, also I use the Ao3 | spelling.

Idiot#2, Idiot Junior, or just Junior — Sauron. Also known as Mairon, but this feels like a more niche name. Not much of a fave, but also I would cry etc. Sometimes I use his other names too, based on context.

Fefe — Feanor, also know as Curufinwë Feanáro Finwion (did I put the ' right?). I don't remember who invented this name.

Lulu — Lúthien Tinuvíel (did I do the 's right???). This term thanks to @edennill

Birb — often, depending on the context, Manwë, the Elder King or Eonwë, his herald.

Tolkien would chase you (me) with an axe for this — the "this" in question is either deeply non-canon (or even subversive. Like: contains jazz.) or deals with Christianity more explicitely than Tolkien preferred it in the Legendarium. Or both. (Maybe allegory counts as axe-chaseable too :D)

[character] goes brrrr — the character in question dies in the way of Men and passes beyond the circles of Eä, but said shorter and in a less poetic way. Also, often some implication of "and other characters are confused/shocked by it". Like: Dior goes brr and Celegorm goes "???".

the Witch-King treatment — explicitely sending a character to Hell, (like the Witch-King in one fic*). Definitely falls under "chased with an axe by Tolkien" category, but is a small subset of it. (Yes, I don't mean characters in void/outer space/angband/dreamscape, I mean we are going explicitely theological about it.) (FYI Tolkien was very unwilling to answer any questions of this type, and people did ask, iirc about Gollum.)

Like, idk, kinda — words that had been popular when I was young, so I use them as part of informal English XD The purpose is a) to convey lack of certainity or precision, b) to make the sentence rhythm more entertaining.

Jirt, Professor, Sir — various ways I adress Tolkien, usually when ranting at him. (Jirt is a name he invented himself or maybe his friends, ansyway it was a thing).

My guy (or "my gal", but for reasons that will become obvious, that one would be very rare) — the way I adress a character when I am really angry and/or worried at them. Generally when they do something problematic.

[capitalization in the tags] — usually fictional characters don't get capitalized, unless autocorrect does it or I copy someone's tags or some other reason. That's it. Also, Tolkien gets not-capitalized when I copy tags or click at the popular tags…. sorry, Professor.

#random — things less relevant to silm, or low-effort posts, generally the purpose of this tag is that someone may want to filter it out. I probably shouch change it to something less generic.

[some really weird word that doesn't make sense in the context] — I was very likely writing this on my phone and it autocorrected me, and I did not notice.

*This is not meant as critique of the fic, it just gave me a way to express it in a way I like. This is not a fic rec/ fic hate post.

[libertineangel]

I've talked about this general thing before but really that "christ you people can't do anything" Twitter screenshot I've often seen added to posts a very clear signifier of a truly horrible attitude toward mental illness and neurodivergence on this site

Like sure there's a subset of people who hold up a list of diagnoses like a shield whenever they're criticised for anything, but an awful lot of people seem to use that as an excuse to take any earnest discussion of someone's struggles in bad faith and dismiss genuine difficulties to the point where much of their rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of my conservative grandparents

It seems to me especially prevalent with autism, like so many people call this "the autism website" or whatever but it's very clear that their concept of autism is "really likes cartoons" or "writes long posts about niche topics" or "can reliably identify very specific cars in pictures" - when confronted with autism manifesting as severely limited social capability the reaction is always "just go outside and talk to people and learn social skills", if a person can't tolerate a wide variety of foods it's "you have to eat these things, grow up", I could go on but I'm sure you get the picture, the moment anyone describes autistic traits that aren't fun internet-palatable quirks the reaction is as ableist as you're ever likely to hear.

This is clearly atrocious behaviour in itself but importantly it also shows just how callous and self-centred this approach is, because surely just a modicum of thought spent on imagining a life like that would make clear that nobody would fucking choose these traits, that whatever mild annoyance you might feel for some bizarre reason at hearing about it is nothing compared to the difficulty of actually living like that. Nobody wants to spend their life unable to form or maintain social connection because of their inability to navigate basic conversation, nobody wants to only eat the same limited rotation of foods every damn day because few other affordable things are palatable, yet instead of recognising that this must be a deeply unhappy way to live and having any sympathy so many people here would rather react with scorn and derision, often justifying it by hiding behind the fact that they're autistic too and they manage so clearly it's possible and those worse off just haven't really tried, as if every autistic person has the same experiences and they specifically are the metric by which everyone should be measured.

[utilitycaster]

idk if you saw but someone started a dropout confessions blog which, as those blogs are wont to do, became an instant magnet for not just dumb takes but also the simmering vitriol that d20 fans like to pretend isn't there and now that the discord is read only, THAT has become my next prediction for what's going to create the next boiling point

I did see. The thing that prompted that last ask was me reblogging a post from that blog (that was weirdly cross-posted into the CR tag but it was a valid point, so I reblogged it anyway).

For what it's worth, I am not a fan per se of confession/anonymous gripe blogs because I think people should stop being cowards and start healthily expressing dislike of things, especially in actual play which due to the very personal nature of TTRPG improv and the fact that even as it's gotten much more popular, it's still relatively niche compared to scripted TV and its stars more accessible, has always from its very inception had a parasociality problem (across shows/fandoms too) and therefore a toxic positivity to simmering vitriol pipeline. However, I also get not wanting to draw that ire, and while I think finding likeminded friends and going off in the group chat is your best bet rather than sending in anonymous confessions, that also has a barrier to entry.

I will say though: I've seen a lot of D20 is going to hit a boiling point statements (this is a very good thread that has some of them) and I think the server shutting down helped because here's the thing: the sense I've had with the D20 fandom is that the Disney Adult cohort (as they're called in the Twitter thread I linked) has always been, again, small but extremely and disproportionately loud. I think maybe that crew will have a meltdown, but it will be rather like the past CR fandom meltdowns that gave the Critical Role fandom a similar reputation: a small subset that cannot handle stories that challenge their pre-existing beliefs or go against their personal headcanons, not any sort of massive fandom breakdown. Honestly it's sort of happened, several times already; I think the problem is that CR doesn't like...have that same sort of across the board visibility of fans as the zine folks have, and is a longer-running fandom that never had the same "unproblematic" reputation D20 had, so people keep acting like D20's fandom doesn't follow a huge number of the same patterns. Like I think it will be fine.

[ask-gd-ad-honorem]

Introduction post

Hello all, I have decided to make a Tumblr account for you to interact with me. I found myself quite dull and lifeless living on my own with little access to the outside world, so to remedy this I have created this account.

Personal Information:

My name is Ad Honorem. If you are not at present aware of this fact, I speak in very formal and occasionally antiquated vernacular. Some have indeed said my speech is turgid, likening it to the disquisition of 2 philosophy majors. Infrequently, people have remarked that I speak goofy ahh words.

I am an adult, of uncertain sexuality. I am bilingual (English and Italian) and currently live in Seville, Spain.

Interests:

History (especially Ancient Rome)

Literature and Poetry (Edogawa Ranpo and Tolstoy immediately come to mind, however I am also fond of Italo Calvino)

Sculpting (I rarely make sculptures from inexpensive materials. I have some in my house, should you have the misfortune of arriving upon it)

OOC BELOW:

this is an ask blog / rp blog made by @traaro for this niche subset of the geometry dash community. i will update as necessary.

[shinji-hibiki]

Gimme your top 5 genres (however niche u want) you like to listen to!!

oh my god Awesome question. generally im a big enjoyer of rock and metal but ill get into some of the more specific genres i like!! (not really in any order)

Shoegaze/Blackgaze/Dreampop

This one is a little broad because there are so many genres and artists that overlap and I get a bit confused at how people categorize music. However. Fuzzy guitars incomprehensible vocals... the distortion...the Reverb...god

I got into this genre at the beginning of the pandemic and it completely bore itself into me. I could gush about how it makes me feel forever but this subset of music was just made for me. Here's some of my favourite fuzzy tunes for u...

Progressive Metal

Ohhh yeah. having a true Music Liker moment but i love it when songs are 11 minutes long and have like 3 separate breakdowns.

You got your Tool. you got Dream Theater. Caligula's Horse. My mom even recently got me into Sleep Token (lol) Hell, dir en grey has some prog metal under their belt dude it Rules

If you want to have a Really transcendent progressive metal experience lay down before u sleep and listen to This Shit:

Darkwave/Gothic Rock

Covers classic staples in the gothic scenes like Type O Negative, Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie, The Cure, Bauhaus, etc.. and newer contemporaries of overlapping genres like Drab Majesty, Cold Cave, Linea Aspera, Rendez Vous!!

listen 2 some truly sexy darkwave stuff i dare you. its so good. both of these examples are really gay especially workout

Indie/Contemporary Folk

During and after the pandemic, my musical sensibilities shifted considerably based on my relationship with my immediate surroundings. Long story short, now that I didn't have to go to fucking Public School, it was a lot easier to realize that I lived in a beautiful town that I could explore and connect to all on my own.

This was the kind of music that I listened to while drinking tea on the porch with my cat, biking to the shore, walking into the woods, thinking about the boy i still liked. those days kind of served to clue me in that i was a real person with a real life to live i guess lol

Post-Punk (The Weird Kind)

I'm not very good with music labels so I really didn't know what Post-Punk entailed for a while. But looking into it, I realized it's a really broad label covering a lot of shit that I really like.

Post-punk mostly encompasses some of the experimental artsy type nerd music I like!! Devo! Talking Heads! Squid! Viagra Boys! Technically it also encompasses the gothic rock stuff above too but. Oh well. Hey you should listen to squid listen to them do it

if u listen to any of the above i will love you forever. i am holding your hand and leading you. do not be scared

@good-wine-and-cheese thank u so much 4 prompting this and now im curious!!! whatre YOUR top 5 genres..

[joannerowling]

(regarding the Hilton article that you were sent by that anon)

Hilton’s "criticism" is so frustrating because my favorite thing about the Strike novels is that the crimes the team are investigating are not treated as crazy one-offs, but as single *instances* of more frequent problems, and so of course on the way to uncovering one truth, they uncover several. Similarly, the act of investigating those single instances will bring up similar circumstances from characters’ pasts, because again, they are not entirely infrequent occurrences.

But what also shocks me is that this particular criticism ("How dare the world not be split into good decent people and The Criminal!") is the perfect opposite of the criticism everyone loves to return to with Harry Potter ("How dare she write a book where there are Good Guys and Bad Guys"). Of course, actually reading HP will show that the books aren’t so clear cut, but they are still children’s books which tackle good vs evil.

So which one is it? Does Rowling write books with painfully black-and-white views of the world, or does she need to be reminded that only one person can be evil at a time, and the morally perfect heroes must defeat him before someone else can take the reigns? Do we want more variation and imperfection and bad-people-on-both-sides or less?

Well there are two things you have to consider in order to answer your question.

Number one, most if not all criticism thrown at JK Rowling since 2020 has to be read as bad faith because, 9 times out of 10, it's motivated by ideology rather than an actual desire to engage intellectually with the text. It doesn't matter if the criticism makes sense or constitutes rigourous analysis, what matters is how much criticism gets thrown out there. If there are enough articles titled "10 Reasons Why Harry Potter Is Actually Terrible For Children", most people won't read the articles, but they will eventually get a sense that Harry Potter MUST be wrong for children to generate so much controversy. The goal is to discredit JKR's opinions by any mean necessary. That's why Pink News's strategy in June 2020 (following Jo publishing her essay on self-identification) was to publish multiple "articles" a day attacking her and her positions.

Number two: i've read a lot of bad faith "criticism" of JKR and HP over the years (long before 2020). This thing you're talking about - accusing her of promoting black and white morality in HP - is mostly no longer "fashionable" discourse. At its height, it was only ever promoted by, ahem, let's call them "passionate" fans of Slytherin. Context: the marketing strategy of Harry Potter (especially post-release) heavily relies on encouraging fans to pick one of the four houses and identify with it. The problem with that marketing strategy is, to sumrise, no Slytherin is supposed to be a good guy in HP (because the way the "recruits" are picked is based on a racist/classist premise), and there is no real redemption arc for any of the Slytherins kids we see in the books, so some fans eventually started to resent that and became mad at JKR for not just… redeeming Draco and making him Harry's best friend or or whatever. Honestly the psychology behind this particular outrage and why so many people rallied behind it against Rowling ever since the 2000s is fascinating and could easily make for an entire post on its own. But, not the point of this reply!

In short: it was always a very niche criticism from a very petty and nerdy side of the fandom. And nowadays, that specific subset has by and large decided that engaging AT ALL with Harry Potter would make them a Bad Person™. So they no longer protest that specific, perceived issue, because that would mean admitting they care about HP in the first place. They have moved towards basically saying that JKR's morals IN GENERAL are wrong, so if you read her books (which you shouldn't!!) every good guy should be seen as bad (or badly written) and vice versa. This is the reasoning behind people calling for an entire "rewriting" of the books by anyone else, preferably multiple people, or aggressively pursuing the building of a "counter" HP universe, via fanfiction.

Which, again, is really interesting to me from a psychological perspective! This need not to simply erase, but rewrite JKR's work in the "correct" way. The only reason one would feel the need to do that if if they perceived the original work to have so much resonance, so much power, that it can't just be left to be forgotten, because it will NOT fade on its own. Instead you have to rewrite it to confuse future readers, to "drown" the original work essentially under a pile of bullshit. It is not a goal one would ever pursue so relentlessly if they perceived the writing to be bad – wrong, maybe, but not bad. On the contrary it's probably the highest compliment to Jo's writing skills that people feel so threatened by her and the longetivity of her work.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 14/04/2024

Thwâmpröck Desert

Season 8 No Album Release (Read More) Thwomp Desert (OST Version) - Mario Kart Wii

Ripped by Madinstance

So you know how yesterday's post was about a ripper with a very clearly defined niche of work, with Jamangar and Locked In The Underground? And earlier in the week I was covering the sheer prowess of ripper Madinstance, the raw power he exudes with I will Never be a Redneck? And just a few more days before that, where I talked about how much Mario Kart Wii's music means to me with Sweatpants Select? Well amidst my lineup of possible future posts, I slowly realized how perfectly Thwâmpröck Desert fit all three categories - a great way to end the week, and another Season 8 rip to boot.

Madinstance is an exceptionally skilled ripper, that much I hope I've made clear over my past posts on him. But with a few exceptions from time to time aside, he's also a ripper with a rather particular focus - a lot of his greatest rips, such as Every Mob Wants to Rule My World, Fell From a High Place (Reprise) and M​-​O​-​O​-​G City, are all focused on paying respects to Minecraft and its legendary original composer C418, wheras recently Initial Deluxe (I've Just Raced on this Course Before) appears to reveal a newfound love for the Mario Kart series. You may think at first thumbnail glance that Thwâmpröck Desert is an extension of that, a rip of a Mario Kart game, but there's one more field of his expertise that I'm yet to cover on here. C418 is beloved by many, yes, but within those privy to video game music history, particularly in the chiptune community, few composers are as revered and celebrated as the Follin brothers, Tim Follin and Geoff Follin.

To VGM aficionados, they need no introduction - but then, its those same aficionados who would know such things as that Robocop on Game Boy of all games has amazing music, as I discussed in Viva La Robocop. Most others, those who are primarily video game fans, will simply choose their favorite composer based on their own favorite games. That's completely valid too, of course, many long-running franchises like Kingdom Hearts, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dark Souls and so forth have key people composing for them that are incredibly distinct, to where you KNOW what a Kingdom Hearts game will sound like, what a Dark Souls game will sound like, and so on. Yet what makes the Follin brothers so fascinating in contrast, is that their soundtracks were attached to all kinds of games from all sorts of places: Ecco the Dolphin on Dreamcast, Silver Surfer on NES, Pictionary on NES, Plok! on Super Nintendo - practically the entire spectrum of games of the 80s and 90s, from shovelware to all-time classics, the Follins contributed to. Yet to them, the individual game quality hardly mattered! Be it Pictionary or Plok, Tim and Geoff Follin composed every soundtrack like it was their life's greatest achievement, creating full-on chiptune prog-rock in games that had NO business going that hard (I know that's a bit of an overdone and reductive turn of phrase, but really - PICTIONARY???) The brothers knew how to make any platform they were working on positively sing, and their obscure weirdo games have become titans amidst VGM enthusiasts as a result. An underdiscussed side of video game history, still cherished by a specific subset of nerds yet today.

Which, then, brings us back to Thwâmpröck Desert - an arrangement of one of Tim Follin's most insane pieces, the title screen music for NES game Solstice. It deserves a listen all of its own - the way it fakes you out with the most barebones little ditty of all time before switching into a rock masterpiece is an absolute work of art, and the piece just keeps growing from there, at once impossibly layered yet incredibly cohesive. Madinstance LOVES ripping the Follins' work, he's made a name for himself in part for ripping the SNES game Plok! in particular during Season 6 and Season 7, yet even still I was unsure how well Thwâmpröck Desert could really work. Its not a rip of a Follin composed game like the aforementioned Plok! rips - its arranging this impossibly dense piece of music into a song that already sounds like the violin version of pure, yet elegant, panic. Yet I suppose that also makes it the perfect fit for the Solstice title theme's sheer density - and when actually listening to Thwâmpröck Desert, its hard to imagine that Thwomp Desert ever sounded any different.

It's just - GAAHH!!! Its fucking mind-boggling how good it sounds, how this odd song I'd barely thought about from Mario Kart Wii wound up being the perfect template to arrange Follin's music into. The melody's string instruments are perfect for the Solstice title theme's pure distilled chaos whilst still capturing that sense of elegance and flow, and the most quirky instruments still present in Thwomp Desert add a delightful texture to the arrangement. I have to pause it every 10 or so seconds I listen to just process all that I've heard - the percussion, lead, backing, the progression of the song, its all handled absolutely masterfully, I cannot BELIEVE this was just dropped on us on a normal tuesday! I will Never be a Redneck was at least a season premiere!!

Whew...well, alright, I hope you get the picture - The Follin brothers' music fucking rocks, and I am SO glad that a ripper as amazing as Madinstance has taken it upon himself to pay regular tribute to their work. Games like Mario Kart Wii are leagues more mainstream than the games that the Follins typically worked on, and the idea of SiIvaGunner getting less VGM-savvy viewers to find out about these legendary composers - it just makes me really happy! Madinstance's rips are bangers to be sure, but much like Beautiful! ~ Curveball of Sean Kingston, like Beyond the Floating Isles, like Gate Happy: they're bangers that can also open up a whole new world of musical interests to viewers like you and I. And isn't that just the coolest way for SiIvaGunner's art of subversion to live on in?

(oh, also, its called Thwâmpröck Desert because the Solstice NES game takes place in "Kâstleröck" and I just found that very funny)

[canichangemyblogname]

I am answering here because I wouldn't want to make that post any longer for no reason. I appreciate your apology and I accept your olive branch. I am sorry if I upset you, it was never my intention. I always want to support LGBT+ and if I do something homophobic I am always open to critisism. I had to clarify, because as you said we don't know each other and writen words can very easily be misinterpreted.

I am not upset, and I am sorry about the misunderstanding. I appreciate your willingness to communicate and your continued insistence on being kind.

I’ve become unfortunately wary about the 9-1-1 fandom from some popular but not so kind takes going around on here, and so my gut reaction was to assume you support a very niche subset of the fandom. It’s good to remind myself that some people are just here to enjoy the characters and the show, like me, and that the people who have made a big stink of Buck’s coming out are a very small portion of the fandom.

I want to clarify that I do not think you were or are homophobic because you enjoy shipping. I don’t think that’s ever an argument I could or would make. Don’t stress yourself. I hope you have fun with it!

[queerfables]

It's really funny to me how I still have absolutely no sense of which of my posts will resonate with people. I talk a lot of nonsense here that goes completely unnoticed (just as the god of shitposts intended). And then sometimes I write a silly off the cuff posts to amuse only myself it gets thousands of notes. And every time I'm like "oh. uh. hi there."

I never really know how to talk about this, to be honest. It feels like a faux pas to acknowledge the attention but I'm also sincerely touched that people are interested in what I have to say. The last time I got anywhere close to this kind of exposure I was in a very niche subset of a very large fandom and after a couple years of being pretty active I had about the same number of followers as I've gained in the months since Good Omens came out. It's weird!

Anyway if you wanna be friends but don't know how, please feel free to drop me a message or add commentary to any of my posts, I love chatting with people.

[gaysheep]

re:lrb

content warnings are a good thing but i feel a certain culture surrounding them has arisen that denies to distinguish between content and execution

the idea behind them is "tell someone ahead of time if a piece of art deals with a sensitive subject so they can be informed about watching it." some people wring hands about it but i think this is basic etiquette? the average person would warn a friend who recently had a parent die if a movie they're going to see deals heavily with the topic. "hits too close to home" is a phrase for a reason.

i think the issues here are:

the gradual shift from "i personally cannot consume this because it contains something that upsets me" to "no one should consume this/it shouldn't have been made because it contains something bad," how the subject was handled notwithstanding

increasing number of people flat out refusing to engage with anything that makes them uncomfortable whatsoever

most people have a certain subset of hard nos: "if a movie has this in it, i'm not watching it." what will come to mind for most people reading this post is probably ptsd triggers, but this is actually super broad. splatterhouse films are understood to be a niche subgenre of horror; there are plenty of people who can watch a scary movie but can't stomach graphic gore. american audiences very notoriously don't like when children die in movies but might make an exception if it's tasteful and thematically relevant.

i appreciate content warnings because being given advanced notice that there's an onscreen sexual assault in something keeps it from shocking me. it removes the element of anticipatory dread at the start of a scene where i'm not sure if it's going to be sexual assault. the warning itself allowed me to make an informed decision in watching it.

i can't watch, read, listen to, or play just about anything that contains cannibalism not just because it's upsetting but because it's an ocd trigger. no matter how brief or not-graphic it is, i can't control the way i'll latch onto and obsess over any detail given to the point where i physically become nauseous.

there are going to be "hard no" situations like that and that's fine, and you should be able to make an informed decision about whether you can handle something right now, but i think we should be more open-minded about the fact that art is a vehicle for critique and the presence of "sensitive content" on its own is neutral

[arodabi]

Whats an aromantic flag and why you should include it in your pride posts

disclaimer: i know theres fighting every year about who should and shouldn’t be included in pride posts, this isn’t to argue with people who just hate aspec ppl, this is an informational post. don’t send me bullshit about it

Why should you include aro flags?

many people believe that aromanticism is covered under the asexual flag, so if they include that they’re including aros, however that’s not the case. aro and ace people share the aspec community, but one identity does not fall under the other. It’s less like using the trans flag as an umbrella for all trans and nonbinary people even if there’s a separate nonbinary flag, and more like using the transmasc pride flag to represent all transmascs and transfems. Aros are just not covered under the ace flag because both groups are separate identities. people can be aro and ace but not all aros are ace.

aro is also an incredibly important identity for a lot of people, something we take a lot of pride in. we get relegated to “minor or add on identity” all the time because people keep thinking of us as the -romantic version of asexual. we have multiple terms, multiple flags, and a huge array of different aro experiences, we are not a subset of asexuality and many of us wish for that to be more respected.

last on the reasons of why you should include aros in pride posts is that we have no larger umbrella flag, unless we’re counting the rainbow flag. the aro flag is the umbrella flag for arospec identities. if you don’t include it then we aren’t being included. and this isn’t me telling you you have to include an aro option for everything you make (tho that would be nice) ppl have the right to choose what flags they want to include. but theres been many times when i see people add  flags representing all parts of the community except aro, and then add on smaller more niche flags. i don’t want this to come across as another post like “how dare you include X flag but not Y flag!!!” because i think everyone should have the joy of representation, i just think many people don’t realize they’re even leaving aros out. either through lack of awareness or lack of knowledge on what the aro flag actually is, and that’s what i wanna help with this post.

What even is the aro flag?

Let’s start with what it’s not:

[ID: a flag with four horizontal stripes. from the top down they are green, yellow, orange and black. End ID]

This was the first proposed aro flag. We do not use it anymore for a couple reasons, the main one is that it resembled another countries flag too closely and was getting confused. I’d think this one would have died out by now but i literally just saw a post include it today.

[ID: A flag with five horizontal stripes. from top to bottom the colors are dark green, light green, yellow, grey, and black. End ID]

This was the second popular aro flag. It is very close to the main aro flag now except the middle stripe is yellow. That stripe was changed due to causing some people sensory problems. This one is sometimes still accidentally used, probably because it looks very close to the main flag, but it’s not the main aro flag either.

[ID: A flag with five horizontal stripes. from top to bottom the colors are black, grey, white, light green, and dark green. End ID]

I’ve actually seen this flag used a lot by people not very knowledgeable about aros. This is a flipped version of the aro flag. I also for the life of me can’t find an example of this but i’ve seen more than once a version that is flipped and removes a stripe of green so it looks like a recolored ace flag. These are pretty common, enough for me to have seen multiple people selling merch with this incorrect flag. I think it comes from people thinking the aro flag is the same as the ace one which does start with black at the top and has only four stripes.

[ID: A flag with seven horizontal stripes. from top to bottom the colors are black, grey, white, green, white, grey, and black. End ID]

Yeah, this is the agender flag, not the aro flag. I see these get mixed up all the time. It’s not hard so see why with similar colors and a white grey black gradient, but as someone who is agender and aro, it kinda gets on my nerves when people mix these up. Also no this is not the same color palette as the aro flag. I’ve seen people make designs labeled as agender/aromantic that just use the agender color palette. The aro flag has two greens and they’re both different than the agender green.

[ID: Two flags next to each other. The first one has five horizontal stripes. from top to bottom the colors are orange, light orange, white, light blue, dark blue. The second flag has eight horizontal stripes. from top to bottom the colors are dark green, light green, white, grey, black, grey, white, and purple. End ID]

These are two common aroace flag designs. These flags are used by a lot of people and you might see them included in pride posts. These are good flags, however, they should not be used to represent all aros. Including an aroace flag does not mean you’re including all aros and all aces, it means you’re including just aroaces. There’s plenty of aros who aren’t ace and aces who aren’t aro. It’d be like putting a gay trans flag in a post and saying its there to represent all gay and all trans people, when the flag is usually used to represent only people who are both gay and trans. Again, these flags are not bad, and them being included in pride posts is good actually, but they should not be used to represent all aro and all ace people.

Now let’s go over what actually is the aro flag:

[ID: A flag with five horizontal stripes. From top to bottom the colors are dark green, light green, white, grey, and black. End ID]

This is the main aro flag. It’s the one most widely used and recognized. The color meanings are dark green and light green representing the spectrum of aro identities, white meaning friendship, and grey and black representing the spectrum of sexual identities in the aro community.

But wait there’s more!

The aro identity is a spectrum, meaning theres more identities under aromantic, and they have their own flags too. If you really wanna go wild and include some other aro flags heres some more. (this is not a full list of all arospec identities, just some i see around the most. feel free to look into more arospec identities and flags! also all of these definitions are coming from me and my personal knowledge of aro identities, i do not identify as any of these though, only as aromantic, so if i give the wrong definition please tell me so i can fix it!)

[ID: A flag with five horizontal stripes. From top to bottom the colors are dark green, light green, white, yellow, and dark yellow. End ID]

This is the alloaro flag. Alloaros are aros who aren’t ace. They deserve more support and attention because they’re really amazing members of the aro community.

[ID: A flag with five horizontal stripes. From top to bottom the colors are dark green, grey, white, grey, and dark green. End ID]

This is the greyromantic flag. Greyromantic means someone who feels romantic attraction rarely. The term greyromantic is also sometimes used to mean aro identities that still feel some form of romantic attraction.

[ID: A flag with four horizontal stripes. From top to bottom the colors are black, green, aqua, and grey. End ID]

the quoiromantic or WTFromantic flag. It means someone who can’t or doesn’t want to tell the difference between platonic and romantic attraction basically. It’s got a special place in my heart bc i used to id as quoi.

[ID: A flag with five horizontal stripes. From top to bottom the colors are red orange, orange, yellow, white, and black. End ID]

This is the Lithromantic flag. Lithromantic means someone who feels romantic attraction but doesn’t want it reciprocated, or may no longer feel romantic attraction when it is reciprocated.

[ID: A flag with a black, sideways triangle on the left side pointing right and three horizontal stripes. The first stripe from the top is a thick white stripe, the next stripe is thin and dark green, and the bottom stripe is thick and grey. End ID]

The demiromantic flag. Someone who is demiro doesn’t feel romantic attraction until they have formed a deep emotional connection with someone.

And there’s many more arospec identities!

I hope i’ve helped to clear up some misconceptions about aros and our flags! We’re not under the ace umbrella, we’re our own community. We all have different experiences, different relationships to our identity, and I hope to see more people represent aros this year!

Have a happy pride month!

[frostyreturns]

Super Fucked Up

This post is about the depopulation agenda, genocide, hypnosis, satanism and porn (no pornographic images though) so if that’s not for you stop here.

I worked with this gay dude I used to talk conspiracies with a lot, and at first it was just in the context of him liking them the same way people like a bigfoot documentary he didn’t actually believe any of what I was saying...but has been starting to come around lately and the video this post is based on is partially why. He’s chill in that I can tell him I think the rise in gay/trans stuff is a depopulation conspiracy and he wont freak out and get upset. He never agreed but he told me about there being gay porn centered around hypnosis and encouraging people to turn gay or trans by using video hypnosis, and he recently told me there is a kink subset to it that surrounds “extinction.” Asked him if he could send me any screenshots without sex or nudity so I could make a post about it. Below is what I was sent and was told there was a lot more and a lot worse but it all had mostly gay sex in the background. The main idea seems to be not just encouraging men to be gay or trans so that humanity goes extinct...and turning that into a sexual fetish...but also in encouraging the genocide of white people by encouraging white women to exclusively breed with black men. Men (specifically low value men) are encouraged to become women to attract men so that those men waste their time and their reproductive energy on them instead of on real women and getting them pregnant and propagating the species. And it tells these men who can’t get laid that the key is to become women instead, that women don’t value them and will never have sex with them...but men will if they ‘become women.’ It encourages general homosexuality for the same reason. The key factor is that it’s not just about a trans fetish, it’s not just about a gay fetish or a race fetish but it’s all three combining to fetishize or at least try to make people fetishize the concept of their own eradication. There’s nothing overtly graphic or pornographic in the images but they are still disturbing.

These are some of the other phrases from the video I don’t have images for, keep in mind these phrases are using subliminal and hypnosis techniques like flashing lights and images and use porn as a delivery system. The idea is that the ideas are subconsciously implanted because you’re not fully aware of seeing or hearing them in order to reject them with your conscious thinking mind.  

“You have a biological imperative to be bred into extinction”

“compromise everything”

“This is your heritage” (alongside images of black men with white women)

“Damn your lineage”

“your sisters are doing it, join in you failed as a man”

“submission makes you easy to control”

“It’s natures course, enjoy it, play your role”

“Your ancestors are watching, make them proud”

“breeding status revoked” (images of white people)

There’s also a bunch of just graphic gay porn terms I’m not going to repeat.

He also says there are a lot of weird symbols he doesn’t understand but some of them look occult, I didn’t see these and don’t know for sure because he said he couldn’t get any images without gay porn in them but if someone who doesn’t believe in satanic conspiracies thinks they look satanic I believe him. Especially since one of the images he did send me was the eye of providence. One of the symbols he did recognize was of a seahorse...I’m guessing that has something to do with weird gender shit since I think male seahorses get pregnant or at least thats what I’ve been told... that could be bullshit.

Now to be fair I don’t know how many people are actually consuming content like this. I expect it has to be a very small niche and for all I know gay and trans people in general are not into this. For all I know this was uploaded and everyone hated it...however the fact that it exists as a genre of porn at all is concerning. For all we know also it was not ulpoaded even by someone who was gay or trans but simply someone who is using that for their agenda. It communicates that there is some kind of concerted effort to use duplicitous and non consensual means to alter peoples sexualities online as part of a satanic agenda to depopulate the world. This is the sort of thing I knew was going on to a certain degree but to see it presented in this way so overtly and unapologetically is still shocking. I asked him where he found the video because this seems like dark web shit but it’s not. He says it’s not even from a gay porn site but it is from the gay section of a normal porn site. If this is the kind of porn some peopel are watching...who’s to say it’s not directly responsible for their gender and sexuality confusion. This is the kind of thing people like me have been called crazy for even suggesting exists but it’s just there for anyone with an internet connection to stumble on. I would even bet these kinds of videos are aggressively served to people who google decides would be vulnerable to it.

Now some will argue stuff like this does not work, that this sort of hypnosis is ineffective, that’s an argument I’ve always heard but don’t really trust that that is true. However there is the argument that hypnosis only works if you want it to and you can’t alter someone sexuality in this way. I think that’s bullshit but it’s certain to be a counter argument. The point however is not whether it’s effective or not, even assuming it is not..this is still a huge problem. The point is that it was attempted, the point is that it’s being disseminated online in the attempt to push this agenda. The point is there are people who are searching for and attempting ways to alter peoples minds and sexualities for the purpose of causing extinction and genocide. Who knows what other attempts they are making, what they are putting in your food, in your water. Who is making and releasing content like this and are they involved in anything else the public consumes.

Now I want to have like 15 kids out of spite.

[blueskittlesart]

Hi

I'm a little bit new here when it comes to Tumblr(i follow you on Instagram), I love your art and your analysis

You just seem so swag

But also I was wondering, any tips to getting your account/art out there? I know there is no algorithm so what is there to do

ok so. the way i got a decent following on here is that back in like 2018 i was very active in a sort of niche community (she-ra fandom) from the ABSOLUTE BEGINNING OF THAT FANDOM, by which i mean i was there making fanart when we had a grand total of 3 images to go off of. I made a lot of mutuals in the early days of that fandom that would spread my art very quickly after i posted it. I was also in an even smaller subset of that fandom because a lot of my art was for a less popular noncanon ship, which i think contributed to me gaining followers bc not a lot of other people were making that content in the first place. as the fandom grew, I gained A LOT of followers really quickly when certain pieces gained traction. i actually still get notes on some old she-ra art! when the show ended most fans moved on to other things, but a lot of my old she-ra followers stayed and followed me from interest to interest and continued to spread my work. which is basically to say i got really lucky LMAO. but my advice is try to get mutuals/make friends who are into the same stuff that you are!! because tumblr doesnt have an algorithm you're totally relying on other users to spread your content around. Find some people who like your content and are willing to spread it, and engage with them! other than that, just. post often and do not shut up about the things you like. like when i got super into ace attorney and didnt shut up about it for like 6 months my posts wouldn't get much traction at first bc. none of my followers liked ace attorney LMAO. but eventually other aa fans found me thru the ace attorney tags and i started getting more notes again! if you put your posts in the tags and keep posting people who like that content will eventually come to you, it just might take a little while so try not to get too discouraged

[olderthannetfic]

You mentioned in a post that you wished the publishing industry would adopt BL terminology for the sake of all queer lit--would you be able to expand on that? You've got me really curious about what you mean! I read plenty of BL manga but know very little about genre fiction/publishing/lit in general. (Although your posts make me want to see all of what's going on in the trashy m/m romance Kindle unlimited scene...)

--

Basically, there exists a market niche that is m/m by and for women. It's not exclusively by and for women: there are always plenty of nonbinary AFABs and some trans men in these spaces. There are some other people, including a few cis gay men. According to Viz, their BL titles actually do a lot better with US men than they expected. (I know nothing about how they got their figures and what sorts of men they include.)

Exactly what the m/m element means to people is going to vary. Maybe it's just "ooh, hot". Maybe it's an expression of one's own queerness since the women in these spaces are often queer. Regardless, if it is representation, it's more akin to drag than to memoir.

Now, there are two sets of jackasses who need to be told "no" and one set of perfectly nice people who are being harmed by the conflation of all things m/m:

First, there are the antis crying about appropriation and sexualization who've never read a single gay lit book and who are completely clueless that the niches they like would not exist without female authors. Positioning BL type m/m as "gay" gives the illusion that these morons have a point.

Then, there is the sexist douchebag subset of cis gay men whining because a man cried and was sensitive to his love interest's feelings in some book. How dare?! These chucklefucks are all over the place in Amazon reviews. The words "real men" feature prominently. You can especially find them in the reviews of anything that is cis gay dude genre fiction, praising it for not being like the dread Chick Writers. These clowns make the mistake of thinking that anything that appears to have m/m in it must be aimed at them and only them. Any woman who dares to write is intruding on their space. In reality, of course, m/m romance trash in English comes out of slash fandom. The dudes leaving reviews like this did not build either thing and are themselves the interlopers.

(And yes, I absolutely mean cis gay men here, not cis mlm or whatever. These guys come from a very biphobic culture, which can be another way they don't vibe with the liminal and mutable identities of BL.)

And then there are the nice people whose work is suffering for the lack of clear labeling. These are the dude authors trying to put out selfpub memoir or gay lit about what it means to grow up as a gay man in some place and time. Romance may certainly appear in their works, but the marketing niche they're trying to join is more of a Gay Literature one. They are claiming to speak for gay men and about what gay identity means in a way BL generally does not. Unfortunately, I've seen more than one dude like this on Goodreads going "For the love of god, stop labeling my stuff 'm/m romance' because then I get disappointed readers and bad reviews!"

The distinction is that they're not trying to gatekeep "m/m romance" or tell women what to write. They just want their audience to find them and to not be drowned out by the more numerous BL-ish content.

Frankly, it's like the problem of conflating all the "queer" content: we all know there's often a lot more m/m than f/f and way more of both than trans or ace narratives. If you're a fan of the less numerous thing, whatever that is in a given situation, it sucks to have to scroll through eight billion pages of results or search through a whole bookstore section to find the stuff that is for you.

BL is a marketing category. It's not exactly a genre, but with its category come certain trends and expectations. BL varies a lot, but the commonality is that since it's presumed to be by and for women, it tends to resemble other For Ladies media. You see this in fic too. Off in non-AO3 parts of the internet, you can find fic that strongly resembles thrillers cis dudes stereotypically like. In slash fandom, you tend to get the sense that the writers have consumed a lot of traditionally woman-targeted stuff.

So you'll find cis guys who like romance novels and romcoms and Buffy better than the usual cis dude media. They may gravitate to writing and consuming so-called "m/m romance". In Japan, the same manga artists will often produce for both BL and gay publications, and that goes for both AMAB and AFAB artists.

Neither the audiences nor the authors are completely distinct and separate groups. Nobody should be policing that.

But it can be helpful if we have some kind of labeling that essentially says "Tastes like slash fandom" vs. "Tastes like cis gay dude culture" or however many more categories we need to describe the content.

We also want to be able to label "Serious lit about what my identity means" (where we probably do care what the author's real identity is even if we aren't gatekeeping douchecanoes) vs. "Dumb genre fiction where character type X gets to be the heroes that is making no claims to authenticity".

I like "BL" in that it includes the idea of "for women" fairly overtly, which reflects both the history and the present reality of these niches. But I also like it in that what it literally means, "boys love", is a content descriptor and not a gatekeepy "women only".

This is also a pet peeve because the English ebook novel industry seems to be calling itself "m/m romance", which people constantly mistake for a generic content description for all things containing m/m rather than a specific piece of industry jargon. Not to mention, "m/m romance" is a terrible marketing term for the stuff that tends towards more adventure plot with romance b-plot instead of just romance novel format.

I also don't like how isolated different potential pro creators and potential paying audiences are. The BL-buyers should be aware there's this whole field of content they could be consuming. The people reading m/m romance on KU are sometimes pretty familiar with fanfic, but they could definitely be made more aware of the wealth of media coming out of Asia or indie stuff in other mediums that is also catering to people like them.

I think it would be to everyone's advantage to have better ways of talking about what's out there and what kind of vibe it was going for.