#tumblr is a site that is interacted with in a very normal way

[eikae]

holy shit here it is! the stupid picture I reuploaded 12 years ago bc I thought it was funny and deleted because it got sooo popular and I didn't want people to think that I:

1. intentionally was trying to co-opt someone else's content

2. was only pretending to like The Matrix once "they" found out I hadn't seen it (a real fear I had that could have been at least mitigated by watching it but I didn't do that and it would have seemed disingenuous to me either way)

3. couldn't spell "believe"

[mesetacadre]

you mentioned discussing student unionism with a comrade a while back, any thoughts on that that you’d be willing to share on tumblr

—a student who is very depressed about the current state of student organizing

I think this is pretty obvious but on this site it always feels necessary to say explicitly: All my knowledge, experience and opinion are almost exclusively regarding the student movement in Spain. The student movements across the imperial core are somewhat similar, and the dynamics as far as I've seen and heard are essentially also similar to those in the imperial periphery, except it's modified by a general bigger will to actually be combative and a more conflictive social climate. For example, last academic year we had a Chilean at our uni and it wasn't too dissimilar to what he knew in Chile, with the considerations I said earlier. But still, specifities between countries are many, even between different universities in the same country or region, since they tend to have a certain culture, and aspects like the way a campus is designed have more influence than most people think.

The first problem or obstacle I identify with student unionism is the lack or seriousness. Actual student unions, unions in the sense of the word, are few and far between. What's far more common is to have leftist horizontalist etc types of orgs acting as a poor proxy or the exact same types of orgs as the previous ones but while calling themselves a "union". In my opinion the main thing these orgs lack is placing the worker's movement at the center of their activity. Students are workers as well, and worker and student issues are very often more connected than those solipsistic orgs like to pretend. Universities and lower education have lots of workers in their respective environments, often also unionized, and if a student union can find common ground with these workers, their demands can go so much further. Of course, that comes with a drawback, that these are all worker aristocratic unions and consequently also tend heavily towards minimizing combativity and place too much faith in institutional bureaucracy.

The second big obstacle is external to the unions themselves, which is that legally and socially they don't have anywhere near the same respect and rights as the regular worker unions. In terms of legality, student unions in universities often have to be registered as a normal student association, such as a tabletop games club. And most people don't really register that difference which does (or is supposed to) exist. I've had to explain the concept of a student union to people much more often than the concept of a worker union.

The student movement as a whole has a lot of particularities that are as interesting to discuss as they are annoying to deal with, and those of course interact a lot with student unionism. For example, the widespread tendency towards localisms and horizontalisms means that, because most students don't generally look out that much outside their faculty, university or high school, unionization is either very hard to achieve or materializes in more of a loose assembly of students from different places unable to coordinate anything. Being in an actual student union with a proper structure really does make you realize how baffling and inefficient it is to have these localisms and individualism. It's a trade-off between how much you want to do as you please and achieve actual results, a trade-off that most people don't even recognize as real. This time the 17th anti-hierarchichal horizontalist and anti-patriarchal assembly will really save us

[kynimdraws]

INFO POST

Name: Kylee (they/them). 30+

A totally normal Korean American mostly known for my drawings, specifically my Pokemon nuzlocke comics. But I will talk about other things on occasion because I do have periods of being fixated on certain topics. I also am a doctor!

Interests: Pokemon, League of Legends (everything except the game lmao), Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, Animal Crossing, Mother series, Korean history/culture, character design

General FYIs: 

General inquiries/commission work/etc should be sent thru kynimdraws [at] gmail [dot] com! Tumblr messaging/asks/etc is not 100% reliable

I will not follow NSFW accounts but I am fine talking/interacting with them. There may be suggestive shitposting but I like keeping my content on the SFW side

I am VERY picky about who I follow/interact with online. Fandom content in particular is a minefield for me aka I have many things I dislike and don’t want to see, even if it might be a popular thing in media that I otherwise enjoy. Therefore, I will unfollow/block/mute liberally. There are times I accidentally block a blog bc I mistake them for bots. So if you got hit with that, just send me an ask or email me

I am very open about what I like and dislike, and none of those things are a direct attack on your sensibilities. I have never gone out of my way to directly send hate or whatever have you if I end up seeing shit I don’t like. My complaints in my little online space ain't a personal attack on you.

My ask/submission box/DMs  are open for criticisms if you have any issues you want to resolve in private. No one is perfect and I may have done ignorant shit that needs to be pointed out. I have deleted or edited posts in the past if people tell me what I did wrong. PS I get that some of my stuff may upset you, but try to act civil when pointing shit out please.

I try to tag all my things whenever I can. Again, send me a message if anything bothers you. I am all for good debate but if you send me excessive hate or threats bc I have different opinions about matters that are trivial, I will block/delete them.

If you wish to use any of my hcs, please credit me. And if you are comfortable with it, send me the works so I can check them out! Or @ me if that is easier.

---

FIRE EMBLEM FYI: Specifically for 3Houses/3Hopes because I need a separate one for this franchise specificially given how many crazy things I got due to being involved in this fanbase via my fanworks:

DO NOT try to convince me to like or tolerate Byleth/student ships, ESPECIALLY the ones with the lords (aka CIaude, Dimitri, EdeIgard). I already summarized why I don’t like FE3H Byleth ships with student chars here. While the spinoff game FEW3H has now removed that teacher/student problematic situation, the fandom keeps putting the FE3H elements into the FEW3H fanworks (i.e. remembering Byleth from “another life” trope)...so no thanks!! DO NOT SHOW ME IT!!!

As for the Byleth ships with faculty members, my response is here so don’t try to bait me about that topic either thanks.

I do not care whom you ingame S-support. 3Houses limits the dating-sim part of the game to that character, so I cannot care less about how you play the game. The main issue I have is when people treat Byleth the “character” as a legit ship material when I personally think they are a cool character ruined by fans who are too obsessed with badly executed self insert otome tropes bc they self-project super hard onto them. Just to be clear, any FE3H or FEW3H OC/Canon >>>>>>Byleth ships personally. Even Byleth-sonas that remove the teacher/student aspects are better than canon FE3H!Byleth

Please don't drag FE VA statements as some sort of “gotcha” on my opinions like this post here. IDC what other people prefer with ship shit, that’s their problem and not mine. I am not gonna bother them about it. So don’t bother ME about it.

---

Links to check out:

Myths of Unova + Episode Grey (Pkmn White/White2 Comic)

Tales of Sinnoh (Pkmn Diamond Comic)

Art Site (Portfolio)

Twitter 

Instagram 

[eleventeenthealbum]

seejanerot -> eleventeenthealbum

Tumblr got my ass for "harassment" (screen capped someone being racist). I'm Jewish. Eleventeen is an album by Daisy Chainsaw. I like it.

Nerd blog is @halfjewharlequinn

Anthro Blog is @religiousfurryism

I have a SECRET nsft blog that can be requested by mutuals.

Please don't try to sell me things in DMs, I cannot afford any unnecessary payments, I can only spread your work/donation posts.

READ THIS 👇

MAPS and "pro-para" types unwelcome. Incest lovers owe survivors everything they have. Fiction cannot cause abuse, but it can facilitate, normalize, romanticize, and eroticize it.

It happened to me. Please dni if you post sa based kinks I am very hyper vigilant and paranoid.

♥️ABOUT AND DNI BELOW♥️

DNI Radqueers/Terfs/swerfs/zionists we will not like each other. die.

"Purity culture" is very real and it's not the critique or discussion of sex or kink or fandom. It's the concept that the amount sex you have or who you do/don't have it with has an inherent implication on your personhood.

I'm a big big hater. I hate people who pay social media sites and I hate AO3. AO3 censored a mod for being Pro-palestine. They are simply pro Israel and pro CSEM, period.

Weebs are on thin ice.

I like bad horror stories, FMV, Furryism, Animal Crossing, comedy, comics (mostly transformers and DC but I also love vintage comics, Love and Rockets, things by Lynda Barry, and Archie Comics), and Twin Peaks. Formerly ran the blog @Jewishharleyquinn before they got me.

I'm interested in court cases and nature + natural history

I want to be a fairy. I want to be a mermaid. I want to be very small.

You can ask me to tag things🩷 I use (trigger) cw except for "flashing"

Tw: csa + grooming

You might see me speak a lot on abuse fetishism online + in fandom. I was groomed online by a woman through toxic fandom, "loli" and other CSEM anime/manga, and a very twisted version of feminism and sex positivity.

It went on from ages 13-17, meeting online when I was just 12. She involved me and her foster sister. I have had a few other sexually traumatic experiences (some happening in early childhood that she connected with me on), but that was by far the longest and most twisted.

I started talking about this more when I realized others had been hurt in very similar ways.

I'm a grooming, incestous abuse, and sa survivor, these things also upset me greatly. If I interact first I apologize, please just block me. I say this because of my own negative reactions.

[howlsofbloodhounds]

Why do you like Killer?

Well first off my fixation on the guy started because i got curious about his story while watching Gacha React videos and kept coming across conflicting accounts. And then I realized, wow no one really knows anything but this silly guy.

So I did my own research. And I realized, wow. He is severely misunderstood. This poor man has been through hell and is struggling with himself, lost in his disorientation, losing his grasp on his reality and himself due to outside factors. And the way he has responded and reacted to his trauma is not pretty or even easy to understand.

He hates what he’s become so much, and it isn’t pretty what he’s been made into against his will—yet he struggles to tell if it was truly against his will or not. He’s so lost he struggles to even realize that he was manipulated and coerced, unable to differentiate between memory and reality anymore.

And yet he also refuses to admit that he was ever any type of victim—instead reclaiming control by leaning into the identity he has formed, finding security with the belief that this is something he chose rather than something that was done to him.

His emotional states (or capacity for emotion), mindset, personality, belief system—those things change in response to his circumstances and the world around him, reflected in his soul’s Stages. Parts of him are still stuck in the past, while he’s trying to outrun it.

And he struggles to integrate it all into a sense of a coherent self—which only gets worse when others are wanting things from him, too, and won’t take no for an answer. He’s always wanting someone to help him make sense of things, to ‘save’ him, and yet he doesn’t trust anyone and doesn’t trust himself even more.

And killer doesn’t even see ‘no’ as a valid answer either. Learned helplessness in Stage 1, believing choice is a privilege constantly out of reach in Stage 2. Maybe not even having a concept of choice or free will in Stage 4.

I would say more but tbh I think this post (and its later additions) said so much that I agree with already. I like that Killer is not in any sense of the word, a “perfect” victim. He has normalized a lot of what was done to him and tends to normalize it when done to others, as well. He tends to externalize his trauma quite a lot.

Other than that, by sharing everything I could find on his canon in various sites and apps like Tumblr or TikTok, I met and interacted with a lotta cool people. Made some pretty cool friends.

Even met my late girlfriend through Killer, who related quite a lot to Killer’s circumstances and felt seen by someone being able to see him the way she did—and she gave me the best months of my life.

Killer is very dear to me not only for the rep of how trauma can completely destroy or change a person not always for the best, the age old question of ‘can even the worst person change for the better?’, but also cuz of the people I met through him.

[wifegideonnav]

I'm new to Tumblr. How do Tumblr users usually engage with each other?

well first of all welcome haha. the main ways to engage with people are:

liking and reblogging. platforms like instagram and tiktok run on likes and an algorithm, but on tumblr, people almost exclusively use their dashboard and turn off suggested content, so they’re only seeing what people actually reblog onto their dash. that’s why people on this site are so adamant about reblogs, because likes basically do nothing. i saw someone say once that anything you would like on a different social media, you should reblog on here, and i totally agree. and don’t worry about how old a post is, or about reblogging something you’ve previously reblogged. there are posts from 2014 that i regularly see on my dash a decade later, so literally don’t feel awkward, it’s 100% normal to engage with old posts.

tags. there are three main ways tags are used: labeling original content so people find it in searches, internal organization systems when reblogging or posting (for instance, many people have a tag for their original posts, and will tag reblogs by fandom or character or whatever - important note that reblogs do not show up in search results), and to make sotto voce comments on a post. it’s normal for people to make jokes, add their own commentary, ramble about something semi relevant, or say something to op in the tags on posts they reblog.

reblog additions. every time you reblog, you have the chance to add something to the post, which unlike tags will be retained when someone reblogs from you. a good rule of thumb is to comment instead of tagging when it’s something you actually want other people to engage with, as opposed to tags where you’re just kind of expressing yourself lol. don’t be surprised however if you see people’s tags getting screenshotted and added to a reblog. if this happens because the screenshotter likes what the tag writer said, it’s jokingly referred to as “passing peer review.” (and of course people screenshot tags to criticize or mock them as well.) essentially, tags are like being at a big group dinner and saying something to the person next to you as an aside, and then sometimes that person goes “hey everyone listen to this”

post comments. there’s also an option on every post (unless op has turned it off) for people to comment on the post itself, not on a specific reblog. mostly this is useful for talking to people on personal posts or posts with reblogs turned off. on a bigger post, just reblog it and put your thoughts in an addition or tag.

asks. seems like you figured this one out! lmao. asks are used for a wide variety of things, but essentially it can either be a prompt for someone to make a post or a way of having an interaction/conversation with someone without dming them.

dms. these work like dms everywhere else, except the functionality is limited and it kinda sucks.

games. there are also many varieties of games that people play with each other, ranging from ask games (things like “rec me some music” or a post with prompts and people send you some from that list), tag games (typically there are questions you answer then you tag other people to fill them out for themselves) handwriting tags, follow chains, giveaways, name/url playlists, and more. with the addition of polls, brackets have gotten popular too (eg the tumblr sexyman bracket). there also used to be a lot of in-character ask blogs, where a user would set up a blog and roleplay as a specific character that people could send questions to (there still are some but way fewer and way less popular than there used to be)

to be honest i feel like i have to put “discourse” and “drama” on this list too. people on this site loveeee having the most insane arguments of all time and then everyone else memes the hell out of it. google “sonic for real justice” for an example lmao. (of course there’s also very unfunny political and fandom discourse that goes on as well. i would advise you to avoid discourse blogs as a general rule regardless of whether you agree with their position or not)

tagging people. you can also @ people in posts you think they’d like or if you feel like they have relevant input. typically this is something you would do either to people you’ve spoken to before, or a big blog with an established persona and rapport with their followers (eg if you follow a blog about snakes and you see a random post with snake info that seems wrong but you’re not sure, so you tag them to ask for their expertise).

and this isn’t a specific “mode” of communication but it’s also a thing to “interpret” (for lack of a better word) other people’s posts. for instance, people drawing a photo from the original post (i cant find it but there was a post going around recently where op posted an aesthetic photo of an egg cooking and then several people painted it), or people trying/recreating something a post was about (example). it was also a thing for a minute there where people would rewrite funny exchanges as shakespearean dialogue

those are all the ways i can think of, although im sure i’ve missed some (if other people think of any pls add on!). good luck, and i hope you’re able to meet some cool people!

[saltminerising]

Can't even speak to people coming from neopets, but a lot of people who joined with me during one of the sign up windows way back, were coming in a mass Exodus from Gaia because it had been going downhill for a long time. Or from RP Tumblr. The thing about Gaia is, multi accounts is not only the norm, but expected. Especially in rp circles! Need an NPC? Brb, lemme make another account for them to post with. Need to make a vent post but don't want to have it associated with your main? Hammer out a quick throwaway account. Want to use another character in the same/a different RP? Make an account for them. The same is absolutely true for Tumblr where you could have a thousand accounts/pages for interacting with specific content be it a character or a vibe (how many of you have a side blog that is either your main or your fr?)

I've never played a game that didn't allow multiple accounts, much less one that was so strict on the policy. That part of the TOS should be in bright 2 foot red letters at the very top of the TOS because it's not/wasnt normal for a pet/game site to have, well, any rules about multi accounting, much less such cut and dry ones where you'll get banned 10 years after the fact if you oopsied once and had a second account for even one day before realizing. I don't know how it is now, but when I signed up the rule about multiple accounts was waaayy buried deep in the TOS after all the standard behavior rules that most people gloss over because they're all the same across the Internet: "don't be a dick, here are the things we specifically find to be dick behavior, it's pretty much the same here as everywhere else butalsodon'tmakeasecondaccount" I had to hunt for that shit on purpose, scan the whole of the TOS to find it the first time they started mass banning people. It was not easy to find! Especially for a bunch of kids.

And tbh, it would be one thing to ban funneling, via any accounts wether they were multis or otherwise. Because funneling has always been a dick move. But to be as strict as they are over a rule that, at least back then, is so hard to find is genuine insanity and it doesn't surprise me at all that the main admins are/were cops/friends with cops where the rule of the world is "Everyone is evil except us. We are the only ones who are good and it's us against them."

For the record, I'm not arguing that multi accounting should be allowed, I understand why they're doing it even if I don't agree with it. I'm just saying how strict they are is crazy, especially when it comes to mistakes someone might have made as a literal child and punishing them for it as an adult.

❄️

[p5x-theories]

Heya it's been a while, now if you're wondering why I haven't been interacting with this blog for quite a while, I'm actually half-retired on Tumblr (it was to do with some drama regarding AI bros & entitled people in tandem > >) so unfortunately I don't bother with properly using this site as much nowadays, so sorry for the bad news :'< I do however wish to share these for this little community to mess around with for fun; fanon/headcanon designs for Polter & Enco's outfits based on the theories shared on this blog (pardon the subpar art of mine) :')

So firstly here's my interpretation of Polter, since the most popular idea of her rebellious spirit is that of a witch, that I obviously went with. But to try and give it some spice, I gave it a subtle secondary raggedy doll theme to play on the idea of a "possessed doll" given what her Codename might be short for. Now the choice of colour for her gloves comes from the species of flower known as Lamprocapnos or "bleeding heart flower". The reason I went with this is not only to be a nod to the already existing heart motif going on for her civilian self, but also on this idea that her element being Curse (to fit with the witch/occult thing) with the flower itself being toxic. As for the choice of weapons, this was rather tricky to decide as I wanted something that still fits the witch theme and after discussions with a friend, I finally settled on a tome for a "melee" & a wand for "ranged" How it works is on DnD logic. For the tome she reads a Cantrip where she can cast a spectral fist at enemies without depletion, While for the wand she fires arcane bolts with the "ammo" itself being of spell memory.

And next up is my interpretation of Enco, based on the one theory that was suggested here of his rebellious spirit being a knight errand, now his was obviously a lot more harder to do knowing armor can be a pain to draw heh. I also took some consideration in how to design something of striking a balance between not making him too overly armored & giving him a unique feature to this knightly theme, and eventually I settled on giving it a striking surcoat as focus. (which yes, the back is deliberately longer than the front.) For the choice of colours for both his gloves and the overall outfit that too was difficult, as I am on the belief of his element being Force as to echo that one theory of the story members representing the 7 normal magic types of SMT (fire, ice, lightning, wind, dark & support/life), as I couldn't quite see another story teammate of the assumed 7 members being green as well (as technically Wind takes the spot). So after further consideration I ended up with the colours list in the pic, with Celeste Polvere being a shade of sky blue in the similar vein of Morgana's sky blue eyes. As for his weapons here, I wanted something unique for his melee weapon that fits with the chivalry theme which I eventually settled on a weaponized flag standard, as I felt it'll compliment the whole "victory" angle I wanted to go for his attire. While for the ranged weapon here, since nobody in the main story group uses a rifle yet I felt he'll be the most fitting to use one himself, with the types he's using here are Bullpup firing Personal Defense Weapons. As I felt it oddly fit with the armoured look of it all. So anyway, that's my reasoning for these fan interpretations of their Thief outfit s, if I'm close to my money then hey that it'll be a fun coincidence! If not then consider these instead a time capsule of a very wild guess of what these two would have looked like in my head. ;v;

Ooo, these are super fun designs, thank you so much for sending them in!! Especially if you went out of your way to log onto Tumblr again so you could send them here.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

What if Bella ran a very successful yet niche meta account on tumblr with hot takes about various forms of popular media called, TheCarnivorousBellaMeta?

Well.

This wouldn't happen.

The Caveat

First, Bella's canonically bad with computers. This isn't her fault, it's 2005 and personal computers for normal people is only just starting to be a thing. She notes having an ancient computer at Charlie's house that she has little idea how to use and prefers not to use. Otherwise, Bella prefers to read books in her free time as well as get chores like cooking and laundry out of the way.

This is not a girl who's running a blog (especially not tumblr as either tumblr doesn't exist yet or else is in its infancy in this time period, if anything she'd be on LiveJournal).

But let's say Bella is an avid blogger with a LiveJournal account.

What's she posting?

I'm sorry, anon, but her blog is not TheCarnivorousBellaMeta.

I imagine Bella's blog is tasteful quotes from Jane Austen's works, tasteful quotes from people who make her feel intellectual, reblogs of famous paintings she doesn't recognize, and maybe, maybe, dissertations on why Loki is a poor blorbo who never did a wrong thing in his life. (It's the wrong era, but I suspect Bella would be profoundly into Reylo, Loki's Resistance, and maaaaaaybeeee Johnlock).

Point being, her takes would be well worded, but given they're what a thousand other people are staying on the site and prompted by nothing she's probably not that popular.

I imagine there's also a few posts of "today I made enchiladas. They were delicious" as she feels the need to fill her tumblr.

Bella's hot takes are people's normal takes and I would expect her blog to reflect as much.

Alright, We'll Pretend

Let's pretend that Bella's the same person except for some weird reason she's running a blog that feels like it's being run by an alien (because to Bella it is).

The beginning of Twilight is essentially unaltered as we're assuming Bella is still Bella, she just runs a blog (not sure what her hot takes are, exactly, but we'll not go into that). She goes to Biology, Edward acts weird, Edward leaves, Edward comes back and acts weird, she nearly gets hit by a van, Edward acts weird.

The difference is in the part where Edward has decided he must know everything about her. Given that he's watching her unbeknownst to her, he sees Bella on her ancient computer updating her tumblr blog "TheCarnivorousBellaMeta" with such things as whether or not Itachi really does love his brother or not or whether Snape is Good or Bad (TM).

Edward is fascinated, as he is with all aspects of Bella, and methodically goes through not only every post she's ever written but every public interaction she's had with other anonymous internet denziens.

From this, he's able to more easily narrow in on Bella's likes, dislikes, how she views the world, and how she might view him.

Edward, who is trying to ignore Bella in public, gets a terrible, tempting, awful idea. He makes up an online persona: AlbrechtWithTheWilis (this is an obscure reference to the ballet Giselle, the tragic storyline being one he associates with Bella as, though she doesn't know it, she's being tempted to join the realm of the dead) and starts interacting by giving a very in depth comment making it clear he's read many of Bella's posts and deeply considered them.

Bella's surprised and deeply flattered. While she's a popular niche blog, she doesn't get these kinds of comments often and er she has a lot of posts on a lot of things. Only a lunatic would read through all of them. Bella responds that she's deeply flattered and moves on.

Edward doesn't get the kind of interaction he was looking for as Bella doesn't reach back out to him and instead answers questions like "What if Itachi was a walrus? Would he murder his entire family then?" (The answer, by the way, is yes).

Edward ends up having to ask questions himself, carefully prepared questions based on what he's seen that Bella will both enjoy and will provoke deep thoughts about herself and the world.

To his mounting anger and frustration, he waits weeks, and instead sees five iterations of "What if Itachi had pink hair?", "What if Itachi was actually in love with his brother for real though?", "What if Sasuke was secretly Itachi?", "What if Naruto was a hallucination of Sasuke's?" answered and none of his very insightful questions.

(This is in part because they're too insightful, they require a lot of thought whereas the others do not, because Bella's never heard of the source material Edward's mentioning or else has no hot takes, and because Edward is following his question with five paragraphs of what he thinks and how what he thinks is absolutely the right answer. Clearly expecting hot take Bella to agree with him.

Bella does not.

So, she doesn't answer and feels increasingly weird about this Albrecht guy. Seems kind of like a smug elitist, clearly trying to impress her, doesn't he?)

As it is, he's prompted to read through Naruto to see what the possible draw is, and he can't figure it out as it's weird foreign cartoons to him. Bella doesn't even have Naruto on her shelf! He searches but all he can find are classics, typically English, like Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Dickens.

There is, in fact, no mangas or animes on her shelf despite Bella referencing these materials near constantly.

She clearly knows it intimately, per her blog, but where is the source material she's even drawing from?

Worse, in real life, she gives no indication she has this blog. At first, he thought of this positively. Bella has a +1000 following on her blog but has not allowed it to get to her head or affect her daily life, except it makes him feel like all his efforts to get to know her don't even matter.

Edward starts giving her a shake down in real life, dropping little hints that he knows about her online persona. Bella tries to brush these aside as AH HA HA HA HA, I'M NOT A TOTAL NERD WITH HOT TAKES ON THINGS. "Naruto? What's that?" She gets increasingly disturbed that Edward is... trying to publicly humiliate her? Despite Edward being super hot and mysterious, Bella finds herself less and less interested in him.

You all know how this eventually goes: Bella gets eaten by Edward.

[strawbbfluff]

Hi. I don’t know what to title this. But I think I kind of just wanted to make a post to warn??? Inform??? People, especially minors, about what this community and lowkey just individuals in general can be like and about how it’s affected me.

For those of you who are newer or just didn’t know, I made my blog and “officially” joined this community when I had turned 17. I had a previous background of being on kik where I had met people similar to me and just made me feel better about the way I was. Do I think 17 is too young to be on this site? Absolutely not. Do I think that there are certain precautions people, especially minors, should take? Absolutely I do.

I had left kik because it was becoming very draining for me. Those of you who have ever had kik and interacted with knismos probably know what I mean. I absolutely wasn’t practicing the safe behavior that I should have been, and I let myself be taken advantage of time and time again at the mere ages of 15-16. I knew better. But manipulation and abuse are things young people are especially susceptible to, especially a kid who wasn’t really receiving a healthy amount of attention at home.

So then I turned 17 and moved to tumblr. I just liked it. I made my cute little blog and was eager to make better friends who would treat me with dignity and respect. This was when tumblr group chats were still a thing, and so I joined a pretty popular tickling group chat. At the time all ages were allowed. And I was happy for a while, I made friends and became especially good friends with the owner of the group chat. At the time, he was 20.

I became infatuated with him. It wasn’t healthy by any means, and it was gross. However, I don’t believe that it was my fault anymore. He was absolutely flirting with me, rationing his attention in a way that left me desperately craving more, even sending me gifts from time to time. I told him everything, he knew everything that made me tick and how to draw me in slowly but surely.

Here’s the thing. He had a girlfriend. I did not know this. I knew he had been flirting with another girl, sure, but he was so off and on with her that I really didn’t know what to believe. And so he starts getting more public in his flirtations with me; reblogging my posts, tagging me in gifs, mentioning me in various posts. His girlfriend or her friends must have found out somehow, because on my 18th birthday I’m getting flamed through asks and getting sent death threats on how I’m disgusting and I’m a home-wrecker and that I should really just go. How confusing do you think that is for a young girl?

I confronted him about it. I was sick of putting up with and cleaning up after his messes. He tells me he’s sorry, that I don’t deserve it, that he’s going to fix it and that I didn’t do anything wrong. I know I didn’t. He’s been in the wrong all along. He preyed on me.

I was coerced into sending him photos. Videos. I was molded into this mess that couldn’t function normally without his approval. I was disgusted by myself and I didn’t know how to make things better. Eventually I cut him out of my life.

I think it’s important to add to this that I have never known a love that wasn’t abusive. I’m not saying this to make it better because it doesn’t. But I know how many young girls out there who are in the exact same situation I was. Please, please protect yourself. The idea of an older person making you feel good about yourself might seem appealing but I’m begging you. Don’t give into that. You will find other outlets that are healthy and right. You don’t have to fall into that cycle of abuse. And just know if you have/are going through that, it is not your fault. People that age know better. It doesn’t matter what excuse they give.

It’s worth saying that I’ve been through a couple more abusive relationships/friendships after that. This one person I was friends with, around two years ago, happened to be my age and I was eager to be ready to engage in friendships again. He ended up being the most emotionally abusive person I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. You get love bombed the first few months and then it gets turned into an endless cycle of torment.

My body wasn’t enough for him. He wanted more than my presence as a friend and so I had to change for him. Of course he would never outright say it, but being gently pressured over and over again to eat more, gain more weight, be less excited when I’m talking about things, only be happy when he’s the one giving me attention and following his rules. It was hell and I don’t know why I put up with it for so long.

I eventually cut him off too. I was an adult at this point and so was he but really abuse can happen at any age. I was definitely more susceptible to it considering how I was treated when I was 17, a child, but my point remains the same. I can’t tell you what to do. But all I ask is that you take the precautions to preserve your youth. Don’t make “friends” with adults in a community like this. Don’t let your life force get drained away by people who want to morph you into something you’re not. Be. Careful.

This was mostly just me having a therapeutic moment, but if you read this far, I hope it can help you in some way, too. And if you can relate to anything I said, I’m sorry. You deserve better than what you got and I only wish the best in the future for you. I love you. There are people out there who will treat you in a healthy way and there is so much more to life than the internet.

I guess it’s also reasonable for me to give props to people who have really changed my life for the better and that I’m super grateful for.

@still-not-rly-sure I love you and you’re a great friend, even if I suck at checking tumblr dms

@b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b I miss you and I’ve been a shitty friend recently when it comes to discord messages but you’re my first friend and I’ll always be grateful for you

And a suuuuper big thank you to my literal bestest friend right now @siastema-switch 🩷🩷 I love you so so much and I can’t even think of the words right now to describe how thankful I am for your friendship, your care, and your love. I’m very very excited to see you soon sweet girl

[wuxian-vs-wangji]

What is the dumbest Purity Police thing you've ever seen on tumblr, Ancient One?

I currently follow 36 blogs, the vast majority of those are old mutuals (6+ years) or faceless fan blogs I don't interact with, but happily reblog from. That's the highest my follow list has been my entire time on this site. I get content from tags more than people I follow.

It's incredibly rare that I follow a blog. I'm very very specific, and me not following a blog is in no way a slight or a judgement against them, I am incredibly picky.

But as anyone who was on tumblr 10+ years ago can attest, "Follow Back" was a rabid practice and you'd get shit hurled at you for not doing it. You were expected to follow back every single blog that followed you. I used to get so many messages "reminding" me they'd followed me and I had to follow back. I never did.

One blog I was mutuals with, and had been around a year, was one of the rabid follow-back believers. At one point she mentioned she was following like 1,800 blogs, which frankly was pretty normal to hear from my mutuals.

She went off one day about how adult content should be banned because SHE shouldn't have to see it on her dash, and it was unreasonable and unfair to expect HER to go out of HER way to block tags (or unfollow blogs that posted untagged). It was an infringement on HER rights as a Tumblr user to have to click a few buttons to block a tag or unfollow a blog and break her precious, perfect follow back streak. Instead, she should be allowed to dictate the content of every single one of those 1,800 blogs and only let them post what she liked.

Tumblr didn't recommend posts back then, you had to go into tags to see new content. She was pitching a fit about curating her own online experience.

In the same 2 paragraph outburst she also demanded books put warnings on them if there is any sexual content at all because she said it was no different from sexual assault for her to sit down with a book and be exposed to such content. She deserved to be slapped for that line above all else.

She was a member of the fandom around the books about fancy elves (fae) fucking.

I blocked her immediately, and massively increased the sexual content on my blogs.

And from pure spite, my sex positivity blog (RIP) and NSFN (Not Safe For November) was born. I also started writing spicier and spicier fanfiction, and became known as the Smut Queen of that fandom.

[ropebuny]

Thank god for ur recent asks cuz i felt like i was going insane with how terrible sooooooo many bdsm posts were on this site. Mood-killing cringe and pedophilia everywhere, cishets just can not post responsibly istg.

I genuinely feel like I’m going insane on here too. cause like there are pedos EVERYWHERE and they leave their likes and following lists open so you can see everything like I’m so confused it’s like they’re parading it ????? and I get weird freaks following me all the time and I think it might be because I post about ageplay and fauxcest and then it feels like I’m part of the problem :( like I just wanna explore my kink with other normal adults but it’s like half of the people into ageplay are just pedos

and the cringe comment is soooo real cause whenever I open tumblr I see people reblogging some cringy daddy dom post in red text and it getting thousands of notes. like huh….. why are those posts getting so much interaction and how do people genuinely find them hot ??? and aren’t like ew

and regarding the cishet thing, definitely lots of gross straight men on here 🤢 but I’ve unfortunately also seen lots of fellow people from the lgbt community be weird and gross and be exposed as pedos :( it’s like you just can’t escape it AT ALL

I remember when I was a kid and I found out about pedophiles and I was fully convinced there were only like. 3 pedophiles on planet earth or something. cause there’s no way there’s more than that right ???? like imagine being attracted to kids as an adult like no way there’s that many people who are weird like tjat. and I was fully convinced they were all behind bars too because I was so faithful in the good of humanity. turns out I was really naive and dumb and turns out there’s so many fucking pedophiles on every corner it’s actually insane

every day that I spend on tumblr is another day that I want to delete my account because all I keep finding is pedos and abusers and creeps on here and it’s like. what’s rhe fucking point of being on here if it just infuriates me

and whenever I make a post calling out a pedo it usually gets like no notes which is very disappointing and makes it that much harder to warn others regarding bad people on here and it’s just. so disappointing all around like everything

[hollow-dweller]

Talk Shop Tuesday: as someone who is involved in a lot of fandoms (and has seen a lot of horrors), has there been a significant shift in how fandom is today compared to the “good old days” as much as people say?

there are. SO MANY.

to start and to be entirely clear, there is no good old days of fandom. there are things i miss about fandom tendencies of the past, which i'll get into, but as many many many marginalized fans have and will continue to say, Ye Ol' Fandom was as much if not more of a cesspit of racism, misogyny, and queerphobia as it is today. because fandom platforms were more diversified, they were also more gatekept--and i mean actually gatekept, not just "people are mean about this thing i like" gatekept. to an extent this was necessary--fandom itself was much more culturally stigmatized, and existed largely in a legal gray area, so fandom spaces needed to be semi-closed communities for their own protection. however, if you were a fan who tried to bring up systemic fannish issues--such as racism--you could and would be kicked out of whatever fannish space you were in, and there would very rarely be other places to turn.

also as a caveat: this is not anywhere CLOSE to a comprehensive view of the changes in fandom nor the myriad factors that contribute to those changes. fandom is a cultural ecosystem existing within a broader cultural ecosystem, and the ways those things interact with and inform one another are literally innumerable. anyone who claims they know the One Thing That Ruined Fandom is oversimplifying the issue. anyone claiming they know the Twenty Things That Ruined Fandom is oversimplifying the issue. fandom is a living system, and living systems exist in a constant state of change.

but broadly speaking, i think there are two major changes that have informed The State of Fandom.

Consolidation of Fandom Platforms

as mentioned, fandom used to exist as a variety of closed or semi-closed forum spaces, blogs, archives, and other websites, each dedicated to its own fandom or, more often, subsets of a particular fandom. authors/artists had their own sites, particular ships had their own sites, fic had its own sites, art had its own sites, discussion/meta had its own sites, and any or all of these could be hosted in any combination across any number of websites depending on the fandom. some of this was the result of the structure of the early internet, and some of it was, as mentioned above, a function of necessity.

as the internet evolved and fandom platforms became consolidated, this necessarily changed fandom norms and behaviours. the way we write fic is different because of the advent and dominance of ao3, the way we construct meta is different because of the nature of sites like reddit and tumblr, the way we build community is different because of sites like discord, etc. notably, most of the changes we've seen are not created by social media or mass fandom platforms, but rather enhanced by them. ship wank, whether masquerading as legitimate analysis or not, has always been a cornerstone of fandom--it like all things is simply much more accessible to people now than it used to be. the subdivision of fandoms into different subgroups, even within a ship or media, has also always been a thing--people form friend groups with like-minded people and that's normal, actually. the types of conversations and conflicts fandom has have not changed that much--just the places and manner in which we engage with them.

modern fandom platforms are both more accessible and more comprehensive than they ever have been--so fans can more easily than ever be exposed to different corners or subsets of fandom. but also. fans can more easily than ever be exposed to different corners or subsets of fandom.

The Scarcity of Long Running Media and the Dissolution of the Monoculture

the type of media that fandom now orients itself around has changed drastically as a result of changes in the broader media landscape, and this also changes fandom norms and behaviour. it is increasingly more rare for a fandom to develop over the course of years, because long-running serialized (or even episodic) narratives are becoming less common. tv shows especially are released with vanishingly short promotion cycles, and with less and less certainty of continuation. creators have to therefore hedge their bets--the binge model means there is no room to pivot mid-season if things aren't working out, and the lack of certainty around renewal means that seasons have to be relatively close-ended in order to try to deliver a satisfying experience. similar trends affect book publishing--we are seeing fewer and fewer multi-part series being released, and fewer books dominating cultural discussion in the way blockbuster series of the past have.

thinking of cornerstone megafandoms of the past (and present), we tended to see a couple essential elements that contributed to both fandom engagement and sustained fandom activity: they were released over a longer period of time, and they took up a larger portion of the dominant cultural landscape. the Harry Potter books were released over a period of ten years and were, of course, a huge cultural moment. Twilight was released over a shorter period of time, but was similarly a cornerstone of the monoculture, enhanced by the immediate and almost-eclipsing (heh) release of its movie counterparts. The X-Files was released over the course of, again, a decade, and they will be releasing new Star Treks until the mountains crumble into the sea and the stars turn to dust. these fandoms all have greater and lesser degrees of longevity and output, but they and fandoms like them all had the benefit of time and cultural dominance in order to enable the development of the fandom.

this is not universal (nothing i'm saying is universal), but fandoms nowadays tend to be a lot shorter-lived and migratory simply because they have less material to work with and less time in which to work with it. Voltron, as one example, was a megafandom that developed rapidly and burned out quickly, and while it had a decent amount of material, its eight seasons were released over the course of two and a half years. fannish momentum can only be sustained on so much material for a certain period of time, and fannish investment is necessarily going to be curtailed if fans live in uncertainty about the continuation of their favourite media.

this also is reflected in the type of fanworks that we see proliferating. while AUs were not absent from Ye Old Fandom, i do think they were a lot less common/prominent. the longer release cycles and difference in structure between releases (open-ended finales as motivation to hook viewers into the next installment that they knew/were pretty certain was going to happen vs close-ended finales that hedge bets if a series is cancelled) led to a lot more speculative fanworks set within the canon, imagining what was going to happen next. a famous example is of course the HP fandom's Three Year Summer--the period of three years between the release of the fourth and fifth Harry Potter books that was intensely productive for that fandom. fanworks in that period were famously long and plotty canon divergence/canon speculation works branching from the return of Voldemort in book four, and that tendency towards long and plotty canon-based or canon-adjacent fanworks persists within the HP fandom to this day.

fandoms nowadays do tend more towards works that are stripped from their canon contexts (the infamous coffee shop au, media fusion aus, modern setting aus, no powers aus), and while these works did exist in Ye Old Fandom, they were both more rare and their reach was more limited.

Some Kind of Conclusion Because This Is An Essay Now I Guess

to present a synthesis scenario: a particular trope is generated and popularized by one fandom. due to its presence on consolidated platform sites, it becomes ubiquitous within that fandom, spawning further derivatives, copycats, reimaginings, and variations. as people migrate from fandom to fandom, both as a result of the media landscape itself and the ease of doing so on social media/multi-fandom sites, the trope or AU spreads to other fandoms, and is again further transformed by those fandoms. this continues ad infinitum.

this pattern is not limited to tropes in fanworks--it is applicable to every element of fandom, from discourse to meta to creative works to behavioural norms. the state of modern fandom is interconnected to the platforms on which fandom is hosted and the media on which it is based. no longer is the one common unifying element of fandom the source media--the unifying element is fandom itself. this is why we see, for example, people stating they get involved in fandoms for media they have no experience with--they do not know the source text, but they know fandom.

i could literally go on and on--i didn't even touch on things like the destruction of the fandom fourth wall, or the relationship to the practice of filing off the serial numbers, or the existence of BNFs (actual BNFs not people like you seek who just Have Friends and Make Things), or the connection to nostalgia, or the relationship to commentary and analysis-based fandom outlets such as rewatch podcasts, or-

there are literally so many elements here. i could talk about this forever. i probably will be talking about this forever. please god someone let me out of here HELP-

[kevin-day-is-bi]

i feel like i wanna remind ya that like, there are people (me) who enjoy the Bruce&Dick as father&son because it's not wholesome and can be rather fucked up, esp in fics that really focus on their interactions

idk like, i dont have a ship in particular in batfam, but it feels like you keep getting deeper into the "any interp other than sexual is stupid" and :< it's fun to explore the fucked up non-sexual things...

I'm guessing this is largely about my tags on this post.

A couple things right away.

1. I'm in fandom to ship. I have been in DC for the sole purpose of consuming and creating ship content for almost 8 years at this point. When I first watched Young Justice at 12, I had ships fully formed by episode 7. I watched episode 1 and started shipping Dick and Wally. I think they have an interesting friendship, but I personally have no interest in exploring their relationship platonically. While I understand that 2017 isn't super long ago compared to the entire history of Batman, please do not explain shipping within the DC fandom to me. I have been doing it a very long time.

2. that doesn't mean I in any way look down on or think that people who enjoy consuming media in another way (platonic or familial etc) are not consuming it "correctly"

3. I had several unpleasant experiences, both personally irl and in fandom spaces, with people who were anti-shipping (I'm not saying you are) which led to me being overly cautious in fandom, so for a while I didn't reblog anything ship related. I rebbloged non-ship content and just didn't tag it how I wanted to. I have finally got over that and have joined spaces where I feel more confident and welcomed.

4. Without going into too much detail, I live a pretty fucked up life. I have a lot of complicated emotions around sex and sexuality in relationships and I use fandom to explore that. I have been in platonic sexual relationships, romantic asexual relationships, situationships, unhealthy crushes, QPRs, and a lot of other situations that I also explore in fandom. I am aware of the fact that I have asked for life advice on this blog and in DMs before and clearly have the fact that I'm 19 listed in my blog description, but I have lived a lot of life and am pretty mature about fandom. I've been reading Bat smut since before I got my first boyfriend, and my life has very much shaped how I view media.

5. Finally, I am aware that there has been an uptick in blood and gore (and other more physical) kink things recently. That would be because those are genuine kinks that I have that there has been an increase in for me recently. I have those because I am disabled and my relationship with being disabled has led to me sexualizing certain aspects of it. I'm not going to tag for this or other things (NSFW, shipping, etc). I understand that some people want or need that level of control. I am not the person to follow in that case I use Tumblr's fast reblog feature liberally. I am on this site to distract myself from the fact that I am in pain 24/7 and my life is a mess. I do tag content I create and have always done so.

normally I wouldn't respond to this level, but this is gonna replace my current pinned post for a while. lemme again just say:

this is a non-issue. I don't care what anyone does or does not ship. I don't care what people think about what I do or do not ship. we are talking on a site where we don't know anyone's real name about things we want fake people to do that a bunch of people in a board room created. I am on here so I don't think about how I have been displaced because I almost died in a hurricane for the second time in 6 years. who I ship is such a low priority to me that it is functionally non-existent right now.

if any of my followers don't like what I am reblogging, unfollow! I won't be heartbroken! I'm not going to stop talking about ships that I have on my blog. and if your automatic go-to feeling when you see someone being positive about a ship you don't have is to think they are anti-not shipping that thing, do some internal examination as to why. because it's not true, and I never ever said it was.

feel free to dm me to talk about this more! but you are wrong, and I'm not going to change how I act on here.

[prime89]

PSA: Etiquette and NSFW

This is a post about general interactions in DM's and followers. Common sense is just to be polite, but your milage may vary about what you consider ok and what is not. This post will mostly be about my own opinions for those who DM me, like, follow, or want to interact with me. This may get a little long winded, but the TL;DR is that as long as you aren't LGBTQ+ phobic, racist, or rude, we should get along fine. Don't be an asshole.

So you are a new blog, or have been on Tumblr for a while. You come across my page, you like it, and decide to follow it. Cool. The Tumblr app states that you should be +18 to be on the site, but my page is pretty PG-13 anyways, just in case. I get the notification, and I am going to want to know who is following me. This leads me back to your page. I will scroll down it, and if I like what I see, then I will follow back. And now we are mutuals. This may result in a varying amount of likes/reblogs from me. I don't tend to schedule or stagger, so you may get a lot if I deep dive your page. If this is a problem, just let me know. My page tends to be kinda random, but it is LGBTQ+ friendly and open to generally everyone. I tend to only go out of my way to block and report bots. I identify any page that follows me, but has no posts, likes, or reblogs as a bot, so if you are new, please post something so that I know that you are a person.

Since I am open to most people, this includes NSFW pages as well, but I might interact a bit differently. You get the same general vetting, but I am likely not going to reblog.... at least on this page. I have a sideblog devoted to NSFW. If you know, you know. Even then, since I don't want it getting nuked, the content I reblog will be rather tame, even though I may "like" quite a bit of the spicier content. It sucks, but I won't reblog nude genitals, real or imaginary even on that page. Trust me, I miss the days of "Go nuts, show nuts" too.

Now here is the crux if you've had the patience to read this far. You decide that rather than passively lurking and occasionally reblogging, you want to talk to me. Not sure why, but that's your right. If you are an NSFW page or want to have that kind of discussion, please start off normal and polite. And whatever you do, NEVER start with "Hello slave". This will make me ignore you completely. Why? 1.) Rude. You don't know me like that. 2.) I am Black. I have no positive connotations with the idea of slavery. Even knowing that it has no inherent racial theme behind it, it sits badly with me and it ain't my kink. BDSM stuff is cool, but I am not your property. If you are a SW who is reaching out, get that money, but unfortunately I can't help you. I don't have the cash to indulge in it, but I completely respect the hustle. Hell, I have very particular feelings about how it should be treated, but if you ask me about it, you would end up with a manifesto. I just don't want to waste your time. Other than that, I am not really looking for direct sex, but if you want to just talk about kinks, fantasies, or just chat, I am open to that. Just start off nicely, and let it come naturally. I am honestly curious about a lot of perspectives, including kinks and fetishes, so as long as they aren't... violent, harmful, or downright unsanitary, I am open to learn about or discuss it.

That said, I hope to get along with everyone. Be kind, and lets get along.

[mcytblr-archive]

Early MCYTblr Interviews: warpedfungusonastick

today's interviewee is warpedfungusonastick, who's been in MCYTblr since the summer of 2020 and is a member of dreamlying! below is a transcript of their account of early MCYTblr.

Digging back into what I have of my online history, I started the tumblr blog warpedfungusonastick in late July 2020. Beforehand I had a very small <20 follower dttwt account and saw that the Tumblr community was more my vibe. I was 18 when I got into being a dteam ~fan and my personal views on fandom and stan culture and parasocial relationships were, while still evolving, kind of against a lot of the culture that was growing up around especially the twitter fan community.

(This being said, this was the depths of COVID lockdown and I rarely left my house because I was a senior in high school in the U.S. and living with someone who absolutely could not get sick. So I was terminally online and can definitely say in retrospect deeply invested in the fan culture and even the creators/their online personas while being semi-ironically self aware of this relationship.)

I first saw a dteam video in later 2019. Funny enough (and not funny at all, because I think about these Patterns quite a lot), I had then just left the Cryaotic fandom. If you don't know, he was an old friend of pewdiepie who split with him around the time of or before the multiple pewdiepie scandals and pewdiepie whistling off several alt-right dog whistles and that whole thing. But back to the point, like a month after i became a regular Cryaotic Twitch viewer, a long expose came out about him being abusive to his ex-girlfriend and a groomer of underaged fans. Cryaotic was a faceless streamer whose iconography was this little blob thing and I will not abandon the theory that the origins of Dreamwastaken fanart are the direct successor to humanized fanart of this Cryaotic persona.

Through the whole Cryaotic thing I first found out about kiwifarms/lolcow. What stuck to me, beyond the abhorrent stuff said on those sites, was that they had a pretty clear system of archiving things using sites such as archive.is and were completely unafraid to post "doxxed" materials anonymously.

Commentary on DL interviews: - I fully second what georgesoot said about "No it's not odd, I at least partially strove for infamy. Any attention gratifies the ego after all, not just positive attention. Then there was the absurdity of it all". I tried to be a lot less controversial than some other DL members, but I did run with them and did say some things that weren't within the typical conventions of more mainstream and popular blogs of the time. It was a dopamine hit for people to interact with my blog--like any social media--but I/we did it in a kind of absurdist way at a point with the things we said and the ways we kind of transgressed whatever the normal way of being a fan blog was. - Re: Wormweeb--I was also kind of mentally ill and depressed and really only interacted with both friends online (even if they were friends from school). And as a result I took it all a bit more seriously than it was at the time. This is is less related but I used to get these--visceral? reactions to when Drama would happen because I was personally invested more so because I didn't want my online friend group who (although seen as a united front on the outside sometimes, I think) each had our Faves in the mcyt space and had had petty infighting over the morals of that (both seriously and unseriously, but everything starts to bleed, in my opinion).

More about my previous exposure to Minecraft fandom: I used to follow mianite back in the day and watched a lot of captiansparklez & aureylian. Since I joined the dteam fandom before any blog presence I was there for their very first streams (which got like…5k views 10k?) and the birth of the dsmp as essentially a server for friends (which led to minor discourse later when the line between roleplay and people on a MC server blurred.)

So my points of reference for these types of fandoms were a fandom that was very much for younger children (Mianite) and therefore the creators were treated with more distance and the recently up-in-flames Cryaotic fandom.

Back to doxxing/archiving/odd relation between: I used to joke about the tension between the right to privacy and to be forgotten on the internet and the right for nosy teenagers with too much time on their hands (and literally obsession brainworms) to dig up your past. Two things I think that were interesting about the most (in my opinion) morally dubious element of mcytblr and most people formed their negative opinions of critblr on was the having/knowing "forbidden" information. Most of this we were either told by randos or knew through other people online. A lot of it also ended up on Dream's kiwifarms, but that was a bit of a two-way street.

And the second part of this whole thing is the way that this information would come up among The Discourse. Because knowing some of the things we/I knew, you could call out creator's lies/misrepresentations of their histories/online pasts in ways that people who didn't know couldn't. Which was kind of where some of the in-jokes came from. I also took the habit of archiving things (old accounts, posts, whatever) to archive.is and such at the time because I fell on the 'I don't want this digital history to be erased if only for my own sanity.'

I think this has been rehashed before, but at every corner, the mcyt/dteam fandom was a fandom like any other, complicated by the fact that it was a real person fandom. And especially on tumblr where the Culture was a little different because no creators (few creators) were on Tumblr, people kind of just said and did whatever. I struggle to think of any of this as important in the grand scheme of anything, but there was a massive outpour of content because of the sheer size of the fandom across all platforms. There was 24/7 content, big fomo, and so I think blogs acted like pundits--like a forum on the newist in DSMP or Love or Host or MCC or whatever. My memory of that time has atrophied a lot but I think that DL and co. cropped up as the pundit subclass (however some of us had actual talent like wormweeb and made fanworks) and the fandom overall was sustained by a sprawling form of Conversation on the Latest Content.

Q: right-- and while other blogs caught people up on streams, dream lying was more interested in meta on the creators themselves?

I think that was a part of it. We were all united in this semi-ironic cynicism about fandom culture as a whole while being fans ourselves, and we socially shared this Vision of a number of variably worded critiques about - stan culture - cancel culture - the dangers/pitfalls/intricacies of these.

I think a lot of it was just shits and giggles, but at least I at one point had this idea that I was a tiny little measured response to the excess of fandom culture. I looked down on uncritical fandom and thought that especially because some of these creators cultivated deeply parasocial relationships with their young fans (I was not much older, but all 18 year olds are Like That) it was some sort of imperative to talk about that at least a little bit.

As I read through my old posts--these was a lot of self important a lot of rambling a lot of nonsense. And I don't really think that these fandom culture can be changed by one little microblogger with a couple hundred followers, but I stand by a lot of my initial criticisms of the ecosystem as a whole and mainly the creators themselves and their (heh) lying, their harm, their overall misconduct and above all the systems that created and enable their whacky ass bullshit to this day. .

But the doubled edged sword of (I return to the forbidden info thruline) I never really shared info that was private because I wanted to be somewhat ethical, so it always felt a bit like we/I was going crazy with things I knew to be true but obviously wouldn't share because that's nor super moral.

Another note about The Rumors and DreamLying--in my memory we kind of thought were Something. And I guess we've been nudged along in that perception but I think the most vocal and controversial of us just said wild shit that stuck in people's brains and for the longest time I didn't associate myself with dream lying at all on Warpedfungus because I wanted to be Somewhat Normal, if measuredly critical and just…vibing. But I think at circles back to a lot of this being wank amongst a handful of terminally online people who at the time didn't get out enough and, like, fixated on this Thing because it was community (or a facsimile of) and at the end of the way we're all just archives or archived pages or gone forever.

(Which reminds me that for the longest time I had you and Roxytonic blocked because I thought archiving was corny but I now think it's kind of cool. It's a nostalgia trip, if anything else. I'm now in another fandom that would've really benefited from some hardcore archiving because so much of the old internet (and fan spaces amongst them--ie ff.net, livejournal, even more underground spaces) are completely lost to the sands of time and the deletion of those hosting sites, etc)

Q: i am very interested in your thoughts on, as you mentioned before in reference to cryaotic, the way that creators cultivate and manipulate fanbases, and the effects you think it had on how the mcytblr fandom

Dream, along with "learning/studying the algorithm" and getting insanely lucky, did many specific things to cultivate a fandom of immensely parasocial fans. And regardless of my cynical vision of what his motives were, his actions of wanting to be seen as a 'friend', sharing many personal details, being accessible to fans, DMing young stan accounts, following fan accounts, OKaying a lot of fanworks about him/his personal and the whole…gaybaiting (you know what i"m referring to) thing had the result of a very large very dedicated fanbase.

As far as cryaotic, it's my theory that dream knew the effect on having a very…intimate…relationship with his conventionally not ugly young white man friend, and used that. And as far as the other element that I associate between dteam/cryaotic--these were men who had very boring lives and probably saw themselves as undesirable to women Until they had this massive following and this kind of situation happens time and time again where people get Influence that didn't used to have and do messed up things with it. And I don't know what's to be done, but it's quite bad and completely goes against the "wholesome" image they try to cultivate. If not some of the stuff being actually crimes.

I think the common perception is sometimes that these cases are "bad apples" when there are so many bad apples And not even in the man aint shit way, but unlike more conventional routes to Fame, mcyts have no oversight unless they join and esports org and still then…the org may just side iwth them if it's worth it. And that's not to say that this stuff doesn't happen with conventional celebrity and even on college campuses and in everyday life and whatnot but I think people in such a public eye should be held to standards of conduct that may prevent some of this.