#this is coming from my link click hyperfixated self please

[kuratchas]

hot take but the yingdu villains being all hot mysterious men scares me

[unculturedswine69]

Introduction! (2024)☆

Its about time to re introduce myself, since i made my first introduction post in 2021,ive been editing it as ive been going along but honestly i would just feel better making a new one now!

First of all, if you want links to accounts on other websites,or you wanted more info on commissions, OR you just wanna see a full list of my interests...Click on my carrd link! (bottom of the post)

Intro starts NOW!☆

AGE: 19 (8th may)

NAME: Ali, Paris, Sheetz, honestly you can just call me whatever! But Ali is preferred these days :)

PRONOUNS: He/Him + They/them, you can use either of those but currently i prefer He/him!

LIKES: Anime,Manga,Games,Art,Cosplay,Otome games, Etc. to list some things im currently into right now ~ Gintama, The muppets, Jerma985, 18trip, A3! ,Fullmetal alchemist: Brotherhood and Digimon adventure! i rotate my interests around alot, please check out my carrd to see more :)

DISLIKES AND DNI: Proshippers, Racists, Homophobes, anyone like that! i understand you probably wont listen to me anyways but i still want nothing to do with people like that ^^

EXTRA INFORMATION ☆

This is my main blog! ill mostly be spamming random fandom related things, sometimes i might reblog a post that might be a bit nsfw somehow (nothing explicit, just dirty jokes and the like) but i advise minors to be wary!!! i also just want to say that i dont want to be close with minors, we can chat occasionally but i dont think its appropriate to do anything more than that! ^^ and also remember that regardless of your age you should be polite and responsible on the internet! (said by the stupidest person on here (me))

im a digital artist who mainly focuses on my OCs while sometimes drawing Fanart, i also open up Commissions every once in a while,id like to do this as an actual job sometime in the future instead of just doing it for fun!

i love to discuss art with others and i also love to hear feedback and and talk about stuff like that in general, art is basically my only hobby so i have alot to talk about ^^ feel free to chat with me about it! i also dont discriminate against beginners or anyone who does art differently from me, so dont be afraid to show off your own art :) everyone is welcome here!

Im neurodivergent, Im diagnosed with Autism! which might not be important to some but for me i have a really hard time talking with others and expressing myself properly so id prefer if people knew that i had difficulty with things first,as to not have any misunderstandings ^^ i hyperfixate on things alot too, and i tend to project all these things onto characters i like.

i have mental health issues, this can mean that sometimes i dont come online for months or it can also mean i will fixate on spamming ,so my activity on this site is a little weird.please dont take me ghosting you personally!! i try to respond to everyone, im just going through some stuff <3

relating to my art and interests: im a oc x canon artist too, i make lots of ocs for my oshis and also self inserts, im OK with doubles (the same goes for Kins too!)

OH ALSO. im super bad at spelling and grammar and all that . sorry if it gives you a hard time when your reading through my stuff </333333

tldr: im just a silly guy on the internet, feel free to come chat with me! i love making friends!!!

My art account is @sheetzking its a little empty right now, but ill be uploading alot soon~☆

Thank you for reading my new intro!

[gab-has-adhd]

"I have issues but you're just as bad." 🃏📍

Gab / Lubel / Illumi

28

🇨🇵

🏳️‍🌈(pan-greysexual/demiromantic)

🏳️‍⚧️(agender - masc expression)

Mentally ill and neurodivergent (ADHD, BPD, possibly PTSD, anxiety disorder)

Anarchist

Taken

Current hyperfixation: Hunter x Hunter

Art blog: @lubelzoldyck-artworks

Please be 18+ to follow either of my blogs (frequent suggestive and gore posts)

If you see an opinion you don't like on my blog, please just block me and move on. Don't try to engage discourse with me. I don't like discourse. I am bad a rethoric and it really is just mentally stressful for me. I'm not here to discuss.

I'm an anti, but if you are one and believe death threats / d0xxing / suicide baits towards pr0ships are okay, just fuck off.

Other fandoms I might share stuff of: Homestuck, Saint Seiya, Good Omens, Versailles, Mozart l'Opéra Rock, les Misérables, Undertale, Deltarune, OFF, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Team Fortress 2, Yu-Gi-Oh, Full Metal Alchemist, Houseki no Kuni, Saltburn, etc...

Find my DNI, kin list and socials here:

I'LL COPY MY DNI HERE IN CASE SOME PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO CLICK ON MY CARRD OR CAN'T FOR ANY REASON. DO NOT INTERACT (that means reblogging, yes, even a post I am not the OP of, I check every blog in my notifs) IF YOU ARE:

LGBT-phobic

A truscum / transmed

A TERF / SWERF

A matfem

Far right, alt-right

An aroace exclusionist

A radqueer or supporter

Contradicting orientations / identities

An endogenic system

Believing otherkin / fictionkin / kinning in general can be compared to LGBT orientations / identities

Mad Pride / anti-psychiatry

A pr0sh1pper or supporter

Or if you believe fiction can 100% never ever influence reality

An anti who believes harrassing / death threats / suicide baits / d0xxing is a good and efficient way to "get rid" of pr0sh1p

A drawn CP (l0li / sh0ta / cub / babyfur) supporter / enjoyer / artist

Racist, sexist, xenophobic, antisemite, fascist, white supremacist, etc...

Defending cops

"Doesn't see colors"

Supporting Israël

Anti-kink at Pride

A hisogon, illukillu, zoldyckcest, stridercest or other p3do / incest shipper (even if it stays SFW)

Defending Andrew Hussie

A problematic paraphile (p3do, z0o, n3cro, etc...)

DD/LG, CGL, ABDL

NFT / crypto

Against AI art

Supporting JKR

Actively in the Harry Potter fandom

TCOAL fan

Hetalia fan (yes I know I used to be one but. Really I don't wanna have anything to do with that anime ever again. Thank you)

I pretty much am obsessed with Illumi and Hisoka. Sometimes I will make memes about them or just post rambles about them. I have a "few" headcanons about them, which I talk about on this post 🌸

Frequent personal tags I use:

#gab talks / gabs stuff (when I post stuff)

#gabs face / #my face / #selfie (when I post selfies)

#gab memes (when I shitpost)

#gab replies (when I reply asks)

#gab makes polls

#posts i interacted with

#posts i talked on through tags

#polls (for the polls that aren't mine)

#my beautiful silly girlfriend <3 (when I reblog gfs posts or tag her on one)

#my art (when I reblog my art)

#self-reblog (when I reblog something I already posted or something from my art blog)

#stuff I want / #need

Other frequent tags:

#fav

#forever in my heart (the old fav tag)

#meowing cats

#kitten

#accurate visual representation of adhd

My art blog: @lubelzoldyck-artworks (⚠️ frequent gore / suggestive artworks)

My girlfriend's blog: @sparkling-ladysapphire 💕

My friends: @opossumprince @mey51 @cat-mutual @yamithemoonwitch @forbiddenseason @oloreandil 🌸

PLEASE GIVE MY SNEASLER BERRIES ON POKEFARM ❤️

[homeofjonicles]

The Jonicles - Entry 16 (strip drawn by Alex Hirsch)

Note: This is the sixteenth entry of The Jonicles, hence why the date does not match when this is being posted. This was written back in June of this year before I started this blog, and there will be errors or developments in how this series was being written. Please enjoy (or don't enjoy) the sixteenth entry of The Jonicles!

It is currently the 30th of June, 2022 at 6:59 am. I'm on holidays, which means I have had much more time to indulge in my Garfield hyperfixation now that school is out of the way (for now). And I didn't realise I forgot to write an entry for five whole days... It is also day #43 of my Jon Arbuckle hyperfixation. I'm losing it.

When most people think of Garfield, they usually think of the currently ongoing strip that's been in syndication since the late 70s. The once charming, funny strip that has since seemed to have lost a lot of what made it charming and funny to a lot of people and is now mundane and inoffensive. Some may think of the cartoons that aired during their childhood, like Garfield And Friends, Garfield In The Rough, Here Comes Garfield, the holiday specials and the oh-so cursed 3D cartoon, The Garfield Show. Some may think of the terrifying and awful movies they made, like the live action ones and probably the strangest piece of Garftoon history, Garfield Gets Real. Seriously, what was up with that movie?? Bonita's sythe shaped head still gives me nightmares to this day....

But not many people think of the name 'KaBOOM!', which is a comic publishing company that is an imprint of BOOM! Studios. They publish comics ranging from Peanuts, Regular Show, Adventure Time, and of course, comics about our loveable fat cat and his equally loveable dorky owner and pet dog sidekick, Garfield, Jon, Odie and their many msiadventures. Not Lyman though.

I have heard almost no one talk about this, and the only reason I discovered it was when I was snooping around on Tumblr looking for my daily dose of Jonstanence. I came across a blog called garfieldfashion through clicking the link of an image of Jon looking grumpy while holding two jugs of fresh lemonade on a beach that I had never seen before. And from there, I found a goldmine of posts featuring my favourite dorky cartoonist in many different artstyles, obviously taken not from the regular Garfield strip, but instead from something else, and I thought it looked veeeery familiar to me.

I scrolled down, marvelling at the art style of the cropped panels, thinking it had been the work of a very passionate and dedicated fan of the Garfield series, an unofficial fan work that was posted online for all to enjoy. However, as I scrolled, I came across an image that stopped me in my tracks. An image I had definitely seen before. It was Jon, and he was sitting relaxed in a chair at his cartooning desk, and he was wearing a yellow sweater with a blue jacket and appeared to be talking about his loveable self. "Why, that's the Jon fancomic I saw on a fan casting website that one time!" I thought, looking both shocked and excited that I came across that oh-so enjoyable image of Jon once again, something that was drawn so masterfully and something that clearly had so much effort and care put into it. It was pleasant. But as I remembered the struggle of trying to find more pages of that comic and coming up with nothing, I knew I had to know more.

This blog clearly knew their sources. There were multiple cropped pictures taken from what appeared to be the same comic, and curiosity struck me. Where was that Jon comic from? I had only seen the one page out of context, which is the image I put with this entry. Where was the rest of the comic and where could I read it? And most importantly, who made it?

That was when I noticed the text underneath the images, and I realised that was the name of the comic they were taken from. But some of them simply said "Garfield #37" and I knew that probably wasn't going to get me anywhere, so I scrolled up towards the images that had an actual name attached, which was "Garfield: TV Or Not TV?" and I looked it up, and lo and behold...

... It was an actual published comic! Like, it had a proper publisher and everything! And it was on sale, too! Like, a proper A4 paperback comic book, not syndicated as a strip or anything. It had more than three to seven panels that actually took up every centimetre of the page! There was no daily limit to how much could be told, it was a continuous effort of actual storytelling! As I scowered Google Images and gazed upon the many vibrant, gentle colours that seeped into every love-poured page, I could feel something, somrthing that in real life I only truly felt with like two people I had ever met... I was in love.... Platonically. With this comic.

Eventually I found a website that hosts these comics for free, and I delved into these mysterious and amazing panels, filled with colour and life and originality. And I was hooked. My first priority was finding where that Jon Arbuckle panel was from, and I read on the little caption underneath that Tumblr post that it was issue #16. Sone spoilers ahead!

It starts off with a story about a girl who is trying to sell lemonade, and after giving Garfield and Odie a free cup, she vents to Jon that she can't seem to get any money because of a man named Lyle, who's a competitor in lemonade selling. shenanigans ensue with a delivery race and a swapping of lemonades, but that's not the main point of talking about this issue. What I'm really interested in is the Jon panels and what they are.

It's a funny little story where Jon is a self-aware character who is also being drawn by himself, talking about how he is being drawn along with the whole comic while also drawing himself! Confusing I know, but it quickly becomes a lot of hilarity once Jon starts getting phone calls from all these women who make up a Jon Arbuckle fan club which fun fact, I am in fact a part of! And the only gay man there... Jokes aside, Garfield comes in and starts providing snarky commentary as Jon quite literally illustrates how Garfield is an obidient cat who has normal eating habits, how Liz is super overdramatic and hopelessly in love with Jon and is uncharacteristically over-doubting her ability to be with him, and then she gets hit on by another guy and Jon literally becomes a superhero and saves the day... yeah, it's pretty self-aggrandising! I think the only accurate thing there is Jon looking a little more handsome in his portrayal, but that's probably just me being biased... So Garfield goes over to Jon's cartooning desk and starts drawing how he thinks the comic actually goes, and ends up doing almost the exact same thing Jon was. Having (who i think is) Vito delivering a shitton of pizza and lasagna to him, talking about how Odie promised to never lick or slobber on him again, and of course, having Arlene be the damsel in distress. All the while, Jon's there outside the panels all like "Wait what's Garfield doing at my desk..? Hang on this isn't right... You know what, fuck it, I'm gonna go make dinner."

It's funny, it's charming, it's everything Garfield used to be and ten times more, and not to discredit Jim Davis or anything, but I think I actually like these comics way more than the actual strip. Of course, you couldn't fit an arc like that into three panels alone, but the comedy really hits so much more than it usually would. And not to mention the fantastic art! It's so expressive and bright and colourful, and they do this really cool thing where some comics have a different artist draw it, and it's so cool to see all these talented people draw an actual published Garfield comic in their own unique way. And the writing really feels like it was pulled right out of Garfield And Friends. Not too crazy, but not too mundane or slice-of-life-y. And many of them have little callbacks to episodes and arcs of Garfield And Friends. There's this cute little comic where Nermal actually gets mailed to Abu Dahbi and it turns out there's a bunch of kittens there, and Nermal isn't the cutest out of all of them. He wins a cutest kitten competition after failing previously, and he won because he was covered in mud, and got enough money to get sent back home. Him and this other cat who got him into the competition walk to the airport, and it turns Nermal caused a whole "fashion" craze with kittens covering themselves in mud because it's the cutest thing to do. And it's drawn in such a lovely art style, it's adorable and pleasing to the eyes. It feels so soft and comforting like a children's book.

So yeah. The KaBOOM! Garfield comics are awesome, they really feel like a "by fans, for fans" type of thing. The only gripe I have with it is that Jim Davis is always credited on the cover, and maybe I'm taking this the wrong way, but he actually didn't draw any or most of these. A lot of them were actually drawn by Andy Hirsch and David DeGrand. And they weren't written by Jim either, but instead Mark Evanier and Scott Nickel. And boy, did they do a fantastic job on these. It really does feel a lot like an episode out of Garfield And Friends, it's amazing and I'd recommemd it to any Garfield fan who wants fresh, new and funny comics to read.

That's all really. As usual, I would like to welcome Jon once again into my chaotic brain and my heart with the added knowledge and love for these comics that I had literally no idea even existed until now. Have a good read, Jon. Love you man :)

Last edited at 9:02 am

I really do love these comics a lot. They're so full of soul and personality, the art styles are lovely, it really does remind me a lot of Garfield And Friends. Not much else to say here, other than these are awesome and Jon is adorable. Also garfieldfashion rocks, give 'em a follow!!

Also, I would post a link to the site I found the comic hosted on, but the thing is, I don't know if the comic is legally hosted on there and I don't want anyone to get in trouble, so just to be safe, I won't link it.

Cheers,

Your Local Jonnoisseur

Posted on the 23rd of July, 2022 at 10:00 am.

[jcmorrigan]

i crave..more blakeworther hcs..anything...please

So this isn’t really headcanons in the proper sense, but it kinda comes with some. I’m gonna do something a little different, because every time I get a hyperfixation, I end up assigning songs to it based on what I happen to listen to and connect to it, so here is going to be the songs I associate with Blakeworther (or with Albert and the other two come by association because him big favorite). And hopefully this will be some fun because a lot of these, you can’t actually see a direct connection - this was just my brain Doing Things and coming up with scenarios (also, some of the songs are steamier than others; proceed with caution)

Drunk - The Living Tombstone: I swear all three of them are heavy drinkers. It’s pretty much said that Vincent is an alcoholic and this is a Problem. They are all three in that boat. All three of them. Honestly, they all probably need serious help, but two of them are suffering from extreme trauma and the third represses his feelings to unhealthy levels, so they’re not likely to admit it soon.

United - Amberian Dawn: Okay, so you remember when in one of my past headcanon dumps, I put down “If they ever did drag lip-sync; don’t ask why I have this one?”. The shortest possible version of this is that when I get new lovelies who lean villainous, I like to imagine them putting on musical numbers, esp. to whatever song I’m listening to at the time. And this song was in my car one night when I just needed to imagine these three rocking out, so I’m like “And because AD is female-led, they’ve gotta be in drag, whether syncing or singing.” (The longer version of this story involves...go click the “What is the WHAM ARMY?” link on my main page. Yeah. I want them in on it. And karaoke AND drag are two core tenets of the WHAM ARMY.) Anyway, the mental image wrote its freaking self when I sat down to this. Albert in the pink ruffles, dancing like it’s his last chance to, taking Capri’s melody and eating up the limelight as multicolored strobes pulse around him. Victor and Vincent are doing the backup. Victor is really hamming it up while Vincent looks like he wants to die. Vincent eventually gets worn down and you have all three of them leaping dramatically about to this synth-metal song. And ever since then I can’t disassociate this song from them even though it has very little to do with them (other than that it’s about people who need each other to do their best).

Shoot Him Down! - Alice Francis: Unfortunately, I was STILL on the drag/karaoke kick when I went to listen to this one, and oh my goodness, just as a performance art piece, Albert would be like “I want to sing the murder song” and Victor would go “Cool, I love electroswing/jazz” and Vincent’s just “Are we doing this again? Was once not enough?” and it’s the same setup. Albert as lead hogging the spotlight and the other two are backup singers.

I’m Gonna Win - Rob Cantor: This is another case of the song showing up at the right time. I was thinking about Blakeworther while listening to this and it clicked. But it really kinda has that badass energy that they all three need. I can see Vincent singing this the DAY he got back from the near-death experience and started plotting his revenge, and the other two are like “HELL YEAH” and adopt this as their anthem. Their battle theme maybe.

Mamma Mia - HUGEL: Saw one of THOSE animation memes. Kruecent. This one if you must know. It encapsulates their dynamic PERFECTLY. And then you know what? There’s a Blakeworth one too. And it amuses me to all hell that anyone who’s ever animated VTSOM to this song is like “Vincent is that tired male vocalist” and we all agree his type is WHOEVER WOULD BE THE LEAD VOCALIST. This is Vincent’s hell and he loves it but good luck getting him to admit that. Anyway this was the first fandom I even saw THOSE memes for and I don’t even wanna look at others because this is already perfect

Mr. Sandman, Man Me a Sand - Okay I know it’s a shitpost of a parody but. It’s a combo of talking about a dream entity and riffing a CreepyPasta. And it’s off the shits. Is this Victor and Vincent singing about Albert, or is this Albert singing about the other two and having no idea how increasingly weird he’s getting? (As in...like...he legitimately forgot the words to Mr. Sandman and is just improvising.) It’s Albert-adjacent and I won’t hear arguing on this.

There will probably be more because I do the song thing with EVERY hyperfixation character/ship but for now I think that’s it

[creativitycache]

ngl asking for people who self-identify as "antis" is already biasing your results because the term originated from fans being defensive over getting called out (eg the types who sincerely think fandom culture is ""puritan""). fair number of people started to use the term ironically and it might be evening out but overall the post calling for responses on the survey still comes off as something written in bad faith?

I wrote a rather long and involved response and then tumblr ate it. Goshdarn.

Fair warning, this is a hyperfixation and I’m coming off of a migraine so this may not be very cogent. Please read this in the over excited tones of someone infodumping about emulsifiers, with no animosity intended.

So, tl;dr and with a lot fewer links, I’m incredibly interested by your perspective that “anti” originated as a derogatory term.

As far as I am aware, the etymological history of the word “anti” being used pejoratively is coming from some very new debates.

I’m also noting that you had no feedback regarding the content of the questions themselves, which I would be interested in hearing as I am genuinely coming from a place without censure.

The term “anti” actually is a self-descriptor that arose in the Livejournal days, where you’d tag something as “Anti ___” for other like minded people to find. (For example, my cursory google search pulled up 10 Anti Amy Lee communities on LJ).

I’m a self-confessed old. I was back in fandom before Livejournal, aaaall the way back in the Angelfire days. Webrings children! We had webrings! And guest books for you to sign!

I’m going to take a swing for the fences here Anon, so if I’m wrong please let me know, but I’m going to guess you became active as a fan in the past 5-8 years based of your use of the term puritan.

There’s actually a HUGELY new debate in fandom spaces! Previously, it was assumed that:

a) All fandom spaces are created and used by adults only.

b) If you were seeing something, it’s because you dug for it.

These assumptions were predicated upon what spaces fandoms grew in. First you had Star Trek TOS fandom, which grew in 1970s housewives kitchens. They were all friends irl, and everyone was an adult, and you actively had to reach out to other adults to talk about things. (By the way- a woman lost custody of her children in the divorce when her ex husband brought up to the judge she kept a Kirk/Spock zine under her bed. The judge ruled this as obvious signs of moral deficiency. That was in the 80s! Everyone is still alive and the parents are younger than my coworkers!)

Time: 1967-1980s. Is Anti a term? No. Who is the term used by? N/A Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

Then, when the internet came about, it was almost exclusively used by adults until The Eternal September. 1993 was the year that changed the internet for good, but even years after that the internet was a majority adult space. Most kids and teens didn’t have unlimited access if their parents even had a home computer in the 90s.

This is the rise of Angelfire, which were fansites all connected to each other in “rings”. You had to hunt for content. If you found something you didn’t like, well, you clicked out and went on with your day because you’d never see it again unless you really dug. This was truly the wild west, tagging did not exist and you could go from fluff to vore in the blink of an eye with nothing warning you before hand. All fannish spaces were marked “here be dragons” and attempts were made to at least adopt the “R/NC-17″ ratings on works to some limited success, depending on webmaster.

Time: 1990-1999. Is Anti a term? No. Who is the term used by? N/A Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

In 1999 LiveJournal arose like a leviathan, and here is where the term Anti emerges as a self descriptor. Larger communities began to form, and with them, divisions. Now, you could reach so many fans you could reach a critical mass of them for enough of them to dislike a ship. The phrase “Anti” became a self-used tag, as people tagged their works, communities, and blogs with “anti” (NB: this is at far, far smaller rates than today). Anti was first and foremost a tagging tool used and created by the people who were vehemently against something.

You could find content more easily than in the past, but you still had to put some serious elbow grease into it.

In 2007, Livejournal bans users for art "depicting minors in explicit sexual situations”. The Livejournal community explodes in anger- towards Livejournal staff. The account holders/fans view this as corporate puritanical meddling. The outrage continues as it is revealed these bans were part of a pre-sale operation to SUP Services. SUP Services, upon taking over Livejournal in 2008, proceeds to filter the topics “bisexuality, depression, faeries, girls, boys, and fanfiction”.

The Great LiveJournal Migration begins, as fans leave the site in droves.

Time: 1999-2009. Is Anti a term? Yes. Who is the term used by? People self describing, seeking to create communities based off a dislike of something. Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

Where do fans go? Well, in the last decade, they migrated to Tumblr and Twitter (sorry Pillowfort- you gave it a good try!)

What’s different about all of these sites? Individuals are able to create and access content streams. These are hugely impactful in how communities are formed! Because now:

a) finding content is easier

b) finding content you dislike by accident is easier

c) content you dislike requires active curation to avoid

d) truly anonymous outreach is possible and easy (for example, you anon! Isn’t it much easier to go on anon to bring up awkward or sensitive topics? I’m happy you did by the way, and that’s why I keep my anons open. It’s an important contextual tool in the online communications world!)

Now the term Anti gets sprightly. Previously, if you didn’t like content, there was nothing you could really do about it. For example, I, at the tender age of way-too-young, opened up a page of my favorite Star Trek Deep Space 9 fansite and pixel by pixel with all the loading speed of a stoned turtle a very anatomically incorrect orgy appeared.

I backed out.

1. Who could I contact? There was no “message me here” button, no way to summon any mods on Angelfire sites.

2. If I did manage to find a contact button, I would have had to admit I went onto a site that wasn’t designed to keep me safe. I knew this was a site for adults, I knew there wasn’t a way to stop it from showing something. There was no such thing as tags. I knew all of this before going in. So the assumption was, it was on me for looking. (Some may have argued it was on my parents for not supervising me- all I can say is thank GOD no one else was in the living room and my mom was around the corner in the kitchen.)

But now? On Tumblr? On Twitter? In a decade in which tagging is so easy and ubiquitous it’s expected?

Now people who describe themselves as antis start to have actual tools and social conventions to utilize.

Which leads to immediate backlash! Content creators are confused and upset- fandom spaces have been the wild west for decades, and there’s still no sherriff in town. So the immediate go-to argument is that these people who are messaging them are “puritans”.

And that’s actually an interesting argument! A huge factor in shaping the internet’s social mores in the latest decades is cleanliness for stockbrokers. Websites can become toxic to investors and to sales if they contain sexual content. Over time, corporations perfected a mechanism for ���cleaning” a site for sale.

Please note there is no personal opinion or judgement in this next list, it is simply a description of corporate strategies you can read during the minute meetings of shareholders for Tumblr, Twitter, Paypal, Venmo, Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo Answers, and Livejournal.

1. Remove sex workers. Ban any sex work of any kind, deplatform, keep any money you may have been holding.

2. Remove pedophilia. This is where the jump begins between content depicting real people vs content depicting fictional characters begins.

3. Remove all sexual image content, including artwork of fictional characters.

4. Remove all sexual content, including written works. If needed, loop back to step 2 as a justification, and claim you do not have the moderators to prevent written works depicting children.

I would like to reiterate these are actual gameplans, so much so that they’ve made their way into business textbooks. (Or at least they did for my Modern Marketing & App Design classes back in the early 2010s. Venmo, of course, wasn’t mentioned, but I did read the shareholder’s speeches when they banned sex workers from the platform so I added them in the list above because it seems they’re following the same pattern.)

So you have two groups who are actively seeking to remove NSFW content from the site.

A) Corporate shareholders

B) People are upset they’re seeing NSFW content they didn’t seek out and squicks them

Now, why does this matter for the debates using the term “puritan” as an insult? 

Because the reasons corporate shareholders hate NSFW material is founded in American puritanism. It’s a really interesting conflation of private sector values! And if Wall Street were in another cultural context, it would be a completely different discussion which I find fascinating!

But here’s the rub- that second group? They're not doing this for money. If there are any puritanical drives, it’s personal, not a widespread cohesive ideology driving them. HOWEVER! The section of that group that spent the early 2010s on tumblr did pick up some of the same rhetoric as puritanical talking points (which is an entirely separate discussion involving radfems, 4chan raids, fourth wave feminism, and a huge very nuanced set of influences I would love to talk about at a later time!)

These are largely fans who have “grown up” in the modern sites- no matter how old they actually are, their fandom habits and expectations have been shaped by the algorithms of these modern sites.

Now HERE‘s the fascinating bit that’s new to me! This is the interpretation of the data I’m getting, and so I’m out on a limb but I think this is a valid premise!

The major conflict in fandom at this time is a struggle over personal space online.

Content creators are getting messages telling them to stop, degrading them, following them from platform to platform.

They say “Hey! What gives- we were here first. The cardinal rule of fandom is don’t like, don’t read. Fandom space has always been understood to be adult- it’s been this way for decades! To find our content, you had to come to us! This is our space! This is my space, this is my blog! If you don’t like it, you’re not obligated to look!”

Meanwhile, at the exact same time, antis are saying “Hey! What gives- this content is appearing on my screen! That’s my space!  I didn’t agree to this, I don’t like this! I want it to be as far away from me as possible! I will actively drive it away.”

This is a major cultural shift! This is a huge change and a huge source of friction! And I directly credit it to the concept of “content stream” and algorithms driving similar-content to users despite them not wanting it!

Curating your online space used to be much simpler, because there wasn’t much of it! Now with millions of users spread out over a wide age range, all feeding in to the same 4-5 websites, we are seeing people be cramped in a technically limitless space!

Now people feel that they have to go on the offense to defend themselves against content they don’t like, which is predicated upon not only the algorithms of modern websites but ALSO talking points fed from the top down of what is and what is not acceptable on various platforms.

Time: 2010-2020. Is Anti a term? Yes. Who is the term used by? People self describing,and people using it to describe others. Is fandom space considered Puritanical? Depends!

So I, a fandom ancient, a creaky thing of old HTML codes and broken tags, am watching this transformation and am wildly curious for data.

Also...I uh....I can’t believe this is the short version. My ADHD is how you say “buckwild” tonight.

Anyways...um...if anyone has read to the bottom, give me data?

[ineffablefool]

I got an ask which I have decided to respond to anonymoosely, because I can.

I just read your post about Fat Aziraphale and how it made you feel better - I'm trying to use Aziraphale to convince my wife (also fat) that really, she's wonderfully friend- and wife-shaped and people find her pleasant to look at.

Oof.  This kind of situation is such a hard one to be in, for all parties concerned, because we’re all stewing in nigh-constant fatphobic garbage, and almost no fat person, no matter how good their self-esteem, can ignore that garbage 100% of the time.  So the person feels bad because they don’t look the way someone else decided they should look, and the people who care about them feel bad because, well, they care.  Just yuck all around.

I have Thoughts on this, and I figured I’d put ‘em on the blog.  They are not specific to asker, especially since asker didn’t ask for advice.  Asker can totally ignore me if they like, that’s fine.  But now the Thoughts will Live on the Blog.  Oh -- and I use “fat” as a neutral descriptor throughout all this.  Not “plus-sized” or “larger” or the o word which I hate with the blue-hot screaming fire of an oxyacetylene torch of rage.  Fat.  Simple term to contrast with thin in the same way tall contrasts with short.  I like simple.

(this gets exceptionally long without being the least bit organized)

Disclaimer, I am not an expert in anything except being me.  But that means I’m an expert in being a fat human, and one who ID’d as female for over 30 years and still gets read as female 99.44% of the time (women get hit harder with this crap), and one who has done a lot of thinking about this whole mess.  So maybe that will be useful to someone.

And I don’t know if this is ever a “convince” sort of thing.  I think it’s more a “come to realize, slowly, over time, with a lot of work and hopefully support”.  (Asks aren’t the best place to craft the very finest of language, so I know there’s a lot of wiggle room in the meaning of “convince” in the ask that spurred this post, but again, I’m taking this more general.  )  It’s very hard to show a fat person your inner understanding of them as a whole and wonderful and important human being. This is because we get so many little reinforcements, day in and day out, that being fat is inherently bad, and that we are inherently bad if we are fat.  It creates a narrative which hits us from almost every conceivable angle, and it can feel very, very convincing.  (Read this 2010 post by Ragen Chastain if you want to be sad.  I’m not saying her results are typical, because her work involves dealing with fatphobia, but I am saying that if any of us sat down to do this math, we are not likely to be happy about whatever result we do get.)

So it’s a bunch of little things needed to turn things around, and it’s over a period of potentially years, and it’s the fat person in question having both the willingness and the energy to put in a bunch of boring yucky work.

Positive representation is a huge part of it, though.  It builds a new narrative.  It gives examples of fat people accomplishing things, creating things, living and having fun and just actually being people.  Of fat people being loveable, and loved, although that’s not the most important part.  I focus on it in the Good Omens hyperfixation part of my life, because my hyperfixation is completely around a romantic Aziraphale/Crowley relationship, but being a valid romantic partner is not nearly as important as all that other stuff (hi my aro and ace people you are not forgotten).  And I’ve seen a bunch of posts by people talking about how Sheen’s Aziraphale, and the fandom response to the character, have helped with their own self-esteem -- because it’s the new narrative.  It’s not “this character is (barely, if you squint, but we’ll let it ride for a sec) fat, and therefore bad or the butt of a joke or less than the thinner characters”.  It’s “this character is fat and important and loved”.  Type of love is up for all of us to decide per Mr. Gaiman, but you don’t get to argue the love.  Aziraphale’s appearance has nothing to do with his value as a human-like entity.  He’s literally tied with Crowley for most important character, given that the show has been reframed from the book to both begin and end with our ineffable duo (plus the emphasis given by the Hard Times cold open).

Sharing that new narrative with the important fat person in one’s life can be one very small part of helping them unlearn the old narrative.  If it helps, I kinda not-officially-but-it-works-out-that-way curate fatter-versions-of-Aziraphale artwork in my fat positivity tag, along with all the other fat-positive stuff that runs through my blog.  (I don’t think there’s any fics in that tag besides mine, just commentary, but I can’t remember right now.)

Over on my other Tumblr account, I follow a bunch of fat-positive blogs, although I haven’t refreshed the list in a while (I just... don’t need it as much as I used to, which is fascinating, now that I think about it), and some of them have gone dormant.  But I can recommend, in no particular order, fuckyeahfatpositive, ok2befat, and fatqueerlove (assuming the person IDs as/is comfortable with the label “queer”) for the more affirmation side of things (though there’s some activism mixed in); and bigfatscience, the-exercist, and fatphobiabusters for the more activism side of things (debunking bad science and fatphobic myths; speaking out against fatphobia in medicine, legislation, reporting, and wherever else it shoves its ugly head out from its troll-cave). The Fat Nutritionist hasn’t updated in a year, but she still has lots of good stuff up. thisisthinprivilege is... hard to read, sometimes, and I think it’s better for after you’re energized and angry about the garbage you’ve been taught.

(If anyone gets through this ridiculously long post and knows of other good resources for that last paragraph, by the way, I’d love to hear about ‘em.)

But it takes the fat person actually seeking out the new narrative, and shoving fat-positive content and mindsets into their eyeballs and brainpan, for there to be a real change, I think.  And that’s the boring yucky work part.  A lot of people find that they can’t really pull their thoughts out of the old track and into the new one without getting some help from a therapist -- and therapists are great and there’s nothing wrong with going to therapy, I see a therapist every two weeks myself -- but therapy takes time and money and energy and a therapist you can actually work with.  Not everyone has all four of those things.

It’s also important to not draw any lines when trying to communicate to one’s important fat person that they are, in fact, important and worth whatever kind of love it is that one has for them.  No “you’re not actually that fat” (how will they feel if they gain more weight later?).  No “at least you’re healthy” (how will they feel if they become unhealthy?).  No “but you carry it well” or other variations on “at least you’re not one of the ugly ones” (how will they feel if their appearance changes later?).

If there’s a line, then your important fat person always has to be careful not to cross it.  Don’t imply to them that there is actually an appearance-related condition to your love for them, and they just luckily haven’t failed you yet.  If there actually is such a condition, maybe sit down and have a few deep thoughts with yourself.

Plus, speaking personally, I am “that fat”, and I’m not 100% healthy, and I carry it weird and am really-weird looking.  And I don’t appreciate being thrown under the bus so someone can tell someone else “at least you’re not one of those, you know, the fat people who aren’t valid and important human beings”.  So nobody ever do that.  Please.

Final words to my unhealthy, or really really fat, or weird-shaped or just plain ugly-by-current-common-standards fat people out there -- i got u fam.  You’re all valuable and important and I love you.  And you’re all doing, or going to do, amazing things, because doing amazing things has precisely jack to do with the amount or positioning of fat upon your very important and inherently worthy human self.

That’s all!  If you made it this far, then you get this link to a photo of a cute bearded dragon in a hat, if you’d like to click it.  I follow william-snekspeare on my other account and have commissioned him for artwork twice now and he is an absolute dear.

And I hope asker’s wife has a good body image day tomorrow.