#shut up rie

[caparrucia]

The upsetting thing about the Internet Archive situation is that they decided to bet everything - their credibility, the crucial work of preservation they've done on the net, the accessibility of materials that otherwise be legitimate lost media - on a truly idiotic proposition for the sake of either "changing bad law" or martyring themselves to it.

And now they're getting martyred for it.

And it's their own goddamn fault.

And we're still going to pay for it, as a society, either paying for their dumbfuck legal pirouette, with the loss of all the material that they claimed to be custodians of but instead endangered recklessly, or realistically, both.

It's fucking maddening.

[caparrucia]

And that's what that phrase is meant to represent, yes.

Anger so visceral it does not care for collateral damage. Fuck you, and everything and everyone standing between you and me. Fuck the consequences. Fuck the innocent. Fuck the entire world. My anger against you is far more important than anything else.

I am so angry I am no longer a person, I am a vessel for a rage so all-consuming it will make the world into kindling for the pyre that will devour your bones.

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on” Okay it’s fine to hate me or whatever but you do understand the horse is not a part of this right. Like he’s only here because I got on his back and steered him here. I treat him exceptionally well but if he saw anything slightly strange he would run into the woods and forget about me forever. Take it back.

[caparrucia]

Full offense and pun fully intended, but I genuinely think the very existence of "dead dove, do not eat" was a fucking canary in the mines, and no one really paid attention.

Because the tag itself was created as a response to a fandom-wide tendency to disregard warnings and assume tagging was exaggerated. And then the same fucking idiots reading those tags describing things they found upsetting or disturbing or just not to their taste would STILL click into the stories and give the writer's grief about it.

And as a response writers began using the tag to signal "no, really, I MEAN the tags!"

But like.

If you really think about it, that's a solution to a different problem. The solution to "I know you tagged your story appropriately but I chose to disregard the tags and warnings by reading it anyway, even though I knew it would upset me, so now I'm upset and making it your problem" is frankly a block, a ban and wide-spread blacklisting. But fandom as a whole is fucking awful at handling bad faith, insidious arguments that appeal to community inclusion and weaponize the fact most people participating in fandom want to share the space with others, as opposed to hurting people.

So instead of upfront ridiculing this kind of maladaptive attempt to foster one's own emotional self-regulation onto random strangers on the internet, fandom compromised and came up with a redundant tag in a good faith attempt to address an imaginary nuance.

There is no nuance to this.

A writer's job is to tag their work correctly. It's not to tag it exhaustively. It's not even to tag it extensively. A writer's sole obligation, as far as AO3 and arguably fandom spaces are concerned, is to make damn sure that the tags they put on their story actually match whatever is going on in that story.

That's it.

That's all.

"But what if I don't want to read X?" Well, you don't read fic that's tagged X.

"But what if I read something that wasn't tagged X?" Well, that's very unfortunate for you, but if it is genuinely that upsetting, you have a responsibility to yourself to only browse things explicitly tagged to not include X.

"But that's not a lot of fic!" Hi, you must be new here, yes, welcome to fandom. Most of our spaces are built explicitly as a reaction to There's Not Enough Of The Thing I Want, both in canon and fandom.

"But there are things on the internet that I don't like!" Yeah, and they are also out there, offline. And, here's the thing, things existing even though we personally dislike or even hate or even flat out find offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable existing is the price we pay to secure our right to exist as individuals and creators, regardless of who finds US personally unpleasant, hateful or flat out offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable.

"But what about [illegal thing]?!" So the thing itself is illegal, because the thing itself has been deemed harmful. But your goddamn cop-poisoned authoritarian little heart needs to learn that sometimes things are illegal that aren't harmful, and defaulting to "but illegal!" is a surefire way to end up on the wrong side of the fascism pop quiz. You're not a figure of authority and the more you demand to control and exercise authority by command, rather than leadership, the less impressive you seem. You know how you make actual, genuine change in a community? You center harm and argue in good faith to find accommodations and spread awareness of real, actual problems.

But let's play your game. Let's pretend we're all brainwashed cop-abiding little cogs that do not own a single working brain cell to exercise critical thinking with. 99% of the time, when you cry about any given thing "being illegal!!!" you're correct only so far as the THING itself being illegal. The act or object is illegal. Depiction of it is not. You know why, dipshit? Because if depiction of the thing were illegal, you wouldn't be able to talk about it. You wouldn't be able to educate about it. You wouldn't be able to reexamine and discuss and understand the thing, how and why and where it happens and how to prevent it. And yeah, depiction being legal opens the door for people to make depictions that are in bad taste or probably not appropriate. Sure. But that's the price we pay, creating tools to demystify some of the most horrific things in the world and support the people who've survived them. The net good of those tools existing outweighs the harm of people misusing them.

"You're defending the indefensible!" No, you're clumsily stumbling into a conversation that's been going on for centuries, with your elementary school understanding of morality and your bone-deep police state rot filtering your perception of reality, and insisting you figured it out and everyone else at the table is an idiot for not agreeing with you. Shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and read a goddamn book.

[caparrucia]

You have to make a fucking commitment that extends beyond your narrow, myopic definition of "normal" or you're going to continue to fail the fascism pop quiz, every fucking time.

You need to be willing to defend shit you find personally unsavory/unappealing/unintelligible. You need to be able to defend the weird porn. You need to defend the incomprehensible art. You need to defend the micro-identities that you think sound made up.

What matters is harm. Actual, tangible, documented harm. Not hypothetical. Not theoretical. Actual harm. If it's not harmful, it should be allowed to exist and anyone who tells you it shouldn't, it's trying to radicalize you. Don't fucking let them.

And if it causes actual harm, commit to actual harm reduction. Specific, tangible actions to minimize the specific, tangible harm. Anything else is propaganda.

I'm begging you to rub two brain cells together and stop platforming fascist talking points under the thinnest veneer of respectability. Your definition of normal doesn't apply to anyone else but yourself. If you're queer, if you're disabled, if you're a minority in any axis, stop fucking licking the boot that wants to crush your throat.

They mean you. When they call for the death of freaks and undesirables. When they want to criminalize anything that threatens children's safety. When they insist they only want to target dangerous perverts and malicious criminals.

They mean you.

Stop fucking helping them!

[caparrucia]

The number of people reblogging the IA post with notes to the tune of "oh wait, THAT is why they got sued?" and "Oh, I didn't know that's what they did" is frankly depressing.

To be clear, I'm not shitting on people who didn't know! Not knowing things is not a crime, at all.

But it is depressing how fucking effective the IA's manipulative framing has been and how they've taken control of the narrative, banking on people not actually reading beyond the headlines.

[caparrucia]

Okay but you're at the start of a journey most people would give anything to revisit and they can't.

You're at the precipice of a free fall into awe and discovery. You already have the passion and the unburdened love, and now all that remains is every single time you're gonna fall in love with your subject again. Every encounter that reinforces the fascination. Every single moment you thought you knew it all and suddenly you discover something new.

Self-identified ignorance is only disgusting when it has led you to act poorly. When you have done harm out of ignorance, yeah, the guilt is heavy. But when all that ails you is the realization that there IS a road ahead and people are further ahead than you on it?

You just found confirmation that it IS worth it to throw yourself at your special interest, that there's more to learn, to know, to experience.

Forget about shame and embrace the joy of learning, you deserve to be happy.

when i dont know enough in an area of my special interest

[caparrucia]

I understand the impulse behind loud reminders that your blog does not welcome certain people in light of recent events, but I'm instead sitting here wondering if we're finally going to have a conversation about being actively unwelcoming to bigotry and fascist rhetoric?

Your blog doesn't welcome Those Voters, but are you still unironically reblogging shit about "degenerates" and "porn addicts"?

Your blog is a safe space for the LGBT+ community, but do you consistently tag posts about queer history with "q-slur"?

Your blog decries JKR and her TERF bullshit, but are you still policing trans bodies and trans experiences by mocking people speaking out about their experience as transmen?

Your blog is an anti-racism oasis, but are you still platforming white voices speaking about racism over POC speaking up about their experiences?

Your blog is staunchly pro-Palestine, but do you earnestly believe that sending antisemitic hate to Jews living outside Israel is doing anything to benefit Palestinians?

Like, I want you to internalize this, if nothing else:

It doesn't matter what you say or how loud you say it, okay? What matters is what you do.

And given what your country just did, to itself and the rest of the world, you're damn right people do not give a shit about what you say.

[caparrucia]

Listen to me.

If you learn one thing, learn this: Learn to say "This is not for me" and internalize that it is not a moral judgment or a valid target for contempt. Learn to say "this is Different from what I do" and not make it a fucking rallying war cry. Learn to say "this is New and Unknown" and don't let yourself be swept by hysteric, mindless fear.

This isn't about fiction. This isn't about media. This is about the fact you've been trained by engagement-driven algorithms to react to anything that isn't painstakingly and specifically tailored to you personally as a deadly offense. This is about the fact that it's 2023 and in twenty twenty fucking three, you look at accessibility options, foreign cuisine and anything you can instinctively term "Other" and feel perfectly justified in becoming a fucking contemptible goblin, full of mockery and disdain, because the thought of something not directly benefiting you or made for you personally makes you so fucking angry, you need to immediately destroy it.

Listen to me.

That is poison. That will fucking kill you. It will kill your communities and unravel your relationships and leave you alone and miserable and raging, a prime target for any kind of radicalizing influence that offers to explain why everything is on fire all the time.

The Other is not the enemy.

The Unknown is not a harbinger of destruction.

The Unfamiliar is not here to destroy all you hold dear.

Listen to me.

Find the poison in your soul. Find the impulse to lash out in revulsion and disgust. Find the part of you that wants to annihilate anything that isn't you. Like you.

Kill it instead.

Burn it to ashes and use them to sow a garden in your soul. Tend the fields until Compassion and Curiosity and Humility grow there instead.

Listen to me.

Listen to me.

We've bled and fought and bit and swore, until we evolved the ability to see in others a mirror of ourselves. What you seek to destroy is humanity itself, in others but also in yourself.

[caparrucia]

There's a very Tumblr-specific grift that I find both fascinating and utterly frustrating in how recurrent it is.

Because Tumblr is a casual social media site, this is rarely the site where professionals and organizations host a public presence. Tumblr isn't Twitter. You pick up a username and use it as a pseudonym and all anyone knows about you is what you say about yourself. To connect someone's personal Tumblr with their wallet name is doxxing and evil.

So you end up with people who are passionate and knowledgeable about a vast array of subjects, but there's not really a structure of credibility behind it. Which is really cool and awesome and allows people to express themselves and keep a private space where they can be themselves without much consequence... but it also opens the ground for this particular flavor of griefter: The Enlightened One.

The Enlightened One is just knowledgeable enough about an obscure or complex subject that a simple Wikipedia search will not debunk them, but fundamentally wrong in ways that people actually knowledgeable on the subject froth at the mouth about, because they're not straightforward or easy to debunk. To explain what's wrong with their shit, you'd need to give a full course on your specialty, which requires time and effort most people don't want to spend in their fun, casual space because it amounts essentially to doing work.

And that frothing rage and frustration is very easily mischaracterized as "jealousy" or "hate" and used to uplift The Enlightened One into a pedestal of prosecution.

See, most of the time The Enlightened One is just a clueless dipshit making themselves seem important on the internet, and while they're incredibly frustrating for the people who actually know what they're talking about, they're easy to ignore. But the worst kind, are the kind that are actively spreading misinformation and often starting panic waves, when their niche of interest turns out to be... you know, a bit more sensitive than say period clothing or ancient poetry.

There's nothing wrong with learning from people who are happy to share their knowledge, even in a casual setting like Tumblr. There's also nothing wrong with people asking for compensation when that sharing of knowledge has become a structured, time consuming effort and it's essentially a curated resorce.

But the moment you meet someone who encourages you to run all your decisions by them? Who wants you to treat their inbox like the google search box? Who answers questions without providing any sources, or all their sources link back to their own posts/content? When you meet someone who insists you can stop thinking and let THEM do the thinking for you?

Run The Fuck Away.

[caparrucia]

Enjoying media =/= browsing the corresponding wiki.

I think people have truly lost any ability to be patient with storytelling.

‘I don’t understand this’ They’ll explain it if you wait.

‘I don’t like how this episode left things hanging’ There’s a continuation next week.

‘This character is flat’ Wait for them to be fleshed out.

So many of the complaints I see about shows lately are people being confused by things THAT THE SHOW WANTS YOU TO BE CONFUSED BY THATS THE FUN OF MYSTERY AND FORESHADOWING YOU ABSOLUTE GOBLINS THE MAIN CHARACTER IS ALSO CONFUSED AND THEYRE GONNA DO A BIG REVEAL AND EXPLANATION LATER IF YOU WOULD JUST FUCKING WAIT

[caparrucia]

I'll tell you a secret I learned being on this website for more than a decade.

I mute comments on literally any post I make the moment I get the smallest bit of irritation out of the responses to it. Willfully misunderstood what I said? Muted. Put words in my mouth in order to get to call me slurs? Muted. Made wildly inappropriate assumptions about me based on a single quippy post on tumblr dot com? Muted.

"Why do you post anything at all then?"

Because I stand behind the words I post. I mean them, when I write them. But standing behind the words I post doesn't mean I am immediately available for you gremlin fucks to dehumanize and drag into insipid grade school debates about basic morality.

If I didn't stand behind what I'm saying, I wouldn't say it, but that doesn't mean I'm here to fist fight any and every idiot that swings by with cop-rot in their brain.

My time is valuable, you can't afford it. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to spend a few hours playing my silly gacha phone games.

[caparrucia]

Here's one of those uncomfortable tidbits that no one wants to think about and which people in cozy internet bubbles hate being reminded of:

The way you speak about people you dislike/hate is a red flag to people you do like/love.

The way you express anger and frustration and rage about people who wronged you, even people who wronged you badly, in a wider context, is very often a red flag for others around you. Do you let your anger be a justification to use dehumanizing language? Slurs? Are your personal feelings the measure you use to determine who is allowed personhood and who isn't?

This doesn't mean you're not allowed to be angry. This doesn't mean that you're not allowed to express said anger. It doesn't even mean your anger is not justified.

But if you find yourself sitting alone in your corner of rage, wondering why your personal connections tend to wither and fizz out, it probably is because you're constantly talking about people who make you angry and all the things you'd like to do to them. And like, people who first encounter that, might be sympathetic, might be wary, but the more visceral your anger is, the more readily you express it, the more people start wondering what's the threshold to trigger that behavior. Will you be talking about them in that tone too, if they piss you off? Will they be the subject of one of your tirades, if they make a mistake? Are you going to go on a rampage, calling them slurs, if it turns out they don't agree with you?

Anger is, for better or for worse, the kind of emotion you share with close friends, not with strangers trying to become friends, or new friends who don't know you yet. Anger is the kind of thing a good friend will know how to parse. But if it's a new person and all they know about you is how angry you are about something or someone, they will lack the context to understand that your anger is justified and that it's not the entirety of your personality... because you have made it so that's the only part of your personality they've seen.

Discord culture being what it is, it's fascinating how prevalent "vent" channels are, and how people just go in there and scream their rage in search of sympathy. But it tends to back fire, because to get sympathy from strangers, your venting needs to be edited to sound like you're in the right. Your anger needs to be righteous, to evoke support in those vent spaces. And it becomes a cycle.

Cause the thing is, anger isn't always justified or righteous. Sometimes you're BEC about someone! (Bitch Eating Crackers, a shorthand for "this person annoys me to an irrational amount, anything they do is parsed as a negative", "LOOK AT THE BITCH, EATING CRACKERS" etc.) And that's anger that needs to be expressed and processed! But that's the kind of anger that only close friends can handle. If you put that anger out, performing in the hopes of getting support, you're going to need to either lie egregiously about why you're angry, or you're going to alienate a ton of people because it turns out "is capable of irrational anger about things/people" is a pretty common red flag when that's all you know about someone.

Just.

I keep seeing post after post of people bemoaning being lonely and abandoned and failing to establish long-lasting connections and it's just.

It's the anger. You keep greeting people with anger and anger is a great emotion to fuel a lot of things, like change and protection and closing ranks, but it's kinda shit at building long lasting connections. Try curiosity or good will! It doesn't mean you have to stop being angry, either. If you're angry, you're angry! But when you're trying to build relationships, using anger as an all-purpose tool is like trying to hammer a nail with a saw.

[caparrucia]

There's a certain kind of layered queerphobia to the whole Disney vs Dr. Who kiss situation that's hard to articulate.

Like, the goal of progressiveness is not endless parade of "firsts" devoid of context or meaning, beyond "look, we acknowledged that queer people exist this one time."

The goal is to make it mundane that queer people exist in mainstream media and their stories are mundane and common place and not remarkable for their queerness, as if their inclusion is a privilege because obviously being queer excludes them from being mainstream.

Disney's insistence on making "firsts" is predicated on maintaining that wall, keeping queerness out of sight, baited and implied but easily editable and deniable, because to commit to queerness as mainstream means to alienate markets where queerness is still a crime. To sacrifice profit for speaking truth: that there's nothing outrageous or unusual in queerness, nothing to debate or make concessions for.

That being queer is just a thing people are, just like being left handed or having freckles, and therefore there's nothing inherently special about depicting it in media.

Except there is, of course, because Disney owns a significant chunk of media and they have decided queerness is a matter of political statements and "firsts."

And I'm just... So tired.

[caparrucia]

So that's where the conjugations are in English!

do u ppl say ‘etic’ or ‘eee tee sea’ when u read this?-> etc.

[caparrucia]

Rings my fucking bell, like a perennial fucking plague maiden:

Center harm, not disgust!

When in doubt (and when not in doubt, just swept by problems bigger than you and assured by someone that they know the answer, so don't think right now, just Do!), center harm.

Focus on what specific harm you're reducing with your actions. Make sure it's tangible and concrete. If your actions are minimizing hypothetical harm at the cost of real, tangible harm on others, 9 out 10 times you're on the wrong fucking side, being weaponized by propaganda.

If a conversation revolves around disgust as a driver for action, you're being radicalized. If a call to action depends on your emotional response, you're being manipulated. I'm sorry, this isn't the 90s anymore, social media has eroded the web of respectability of the pre internet society. The primary axis for misinformation to spread in this day and age is emotional response: half the things you believe are true and share as such are not based on fact, expert opinion or personal research. Social media has conditioned us (all of us! You and me and most dangerously of all, the idiots we put in power) that if something feels true, it probably is.

But do you know for sure it is? Do you think it's true because you have first hand experience or actual time spent on reputable sources learning it to be fact? Or just because it aligns with your worldview and it would be nice for you if it were true?

Are you taking action because you're angry and a group of fellow angry folk invited you to join them? Do you have a plan or is this just catharsis? Are you aware of the consequences of your actions or are you drunk on rage and focused only on the immediate future?

Center harm. Center specific actions and their consequences.

Discomfort is not harm. Disgust is not harm. Hypothetical paranoia is not harm.

The reactionary pipeline is real and your self-image as a progressive is not actually enough to save you from falling down the hole. Radicalization is not hinged on politics alone. Saying you're a leftist is worthless if your thought process and actions themselves are indistinguishable from qanon losers. Conspiratorial thought has literally no politics inherently, and your insistence it does is pure lack of critical thought on display.

Center harm, not feelings, not politics, not group think.

Center harm, and remember that individual actions cannot dismantle systemic structures on their own, so anyone who calls for individual action at the cost of community structures is not actually trying to change anything, and instead actively suppressing efforts to make anything better in any way.

[blood-mocha-latte]

the difference between watching mota and watching the other series is now i'm older and everytime i see anyone in mota i'm like that is a CHILD where is his MOTHER this is ridiculous these are BABIES