#when you get dogpiled it's easy to feel like an entire fandom hates you

[cushfuddled]

YOOOOOO dude I used to follow you on DeviantArt years ago!!! I bailed when stuff started going to shit so I’m super glad to have found you again! Man, Twin Shadows is still in the top 5 of my favorite comics literally ever, including non-fanfiction. I still think about the way you depicted fire in it - so so so so cool. Even now, having not looked at it in years, I can vividly picture the movement of it and all the emotion it held. Can’t wait to catch up on your newer stuff too!

WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT I'M

FJADKLFJDSKAJFKDLAS?!?!

DUDE YOU'RE GONNA MAKE ME CRY WHAT AJFKDSLAJFDSA THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH!!!

[biennatodd]

I’m sorry that you’re getting dogpiled, especially when your original post was so good. It totally doesn’t deserve it. I’ve been where you are and it is NOT easy and it doesn’t feel good but I’m glad you’re not willing to doubt yourself and that you have the strength to call these people out.

I think it’s easy to say yeah just block and move on, but this is a harassment campaign and it needs to be recognized. These people don’t deserve to just say whatever the hell they feel like until they’ve shamed and entire part of the community into not interacting with 0 consequence. That’s bullshit.

People who use the “canon” Jiang Cheng tag can legit be so hateful not just toward the character but also toward the people who’s interpretation they dislike. They morph everything into a moral issue, project shortcomings of the character (often exaggerated beyond what’s actually in the text) onto REAL PEOPLE and make all sorts of assumptions, usually ignoring fact to do so.

And it’s so telling that the fandom at large is more than willing to tolerate this behavior, and gets mad at the victims of harassment for speaking out instead of the people starting shit in the first place because we’re “Annoying!” and at least things were peaceful before you all started standing up for yourselves! What a load of bullshit.

Fuck that behavior for real. Everyone do better.

Fuck it. Since I'm being spat on and tarnished by jc antis I'm unashamedly doing call out posts as they have harassed me on all my posts and got their little friends to gang up on me. Starting with this "lovely" person

Calling me an abuse apologist just because I said that madame yu had tough love methods..... I was in no way excusing her abuse towards wwx with that FYI. Wwx wasnt even mentioned in the og post.... Never once denied she was abusive in the post either (in fact i ackowledged her abuse numerous times in the post and how her children act around her. But apparently you willfully missed that part). I said she had tough love methods towards her children. NOT WWX. Wwx was not her child or have you forgotten that? She has a tough love attitude in the sense that she toughens up her kids, expects no nonsense, wants them to strive to do better, get on with it, stiff upper lip attitude etc. This does not mean it's a good parenting tactic.

---

Using tough love to describe her parenting technique isn't a compliment. Apparently some of you don't know what it means because tough love, whilst there is love and good intentions behind the actions, it can also have unintended bad consequences on your children and is not a form of love you should expose your child to if you want them to become normal, emotionally stable people.

---

It can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms and suppressing emotions amongst other things I won't go into. I was in no way complimenting her. It was a critique. That should have been obvious. But in your words, ig some of you don't have reading comprehension.

---

To accuse me of something so extreme as excusing abuse over a FICTIONAL CHARACTER and trying to get all your friends to agree and jump on my posts because I never explicitly made the above points obvious is what a bully would do. You know nothing about me and decided to make such allegations over a single post. I will not stand for this bullying.

---

YOU should be ashamed of your behavior. I've seen your other posts and how you talk about and to REAL PEOPLE.

---

You acting all morally superior whilst attacking me and many others like this makes you an abusive person FYI. And I won't sit there and take it from you or your friends.

---

Moving on to specimen number two

This person has been spamming my notifications jumping on EVERY post, being disrespectful and pretty much accusing me, an ace person, for being ignorant about MY OWN IDENTITY and using ace stereotypes just because I surmised that jc could be ace due to his lack of interest in romance.

---

Echoing the words used by another user in the thread, but denying that such ace persons exist is acephobic in itself. I'm an ace person who isnt interested in relationships outside anything that is close, platonic but meaningful. Many others in the jc fandom say the same thing which is why they see themselves in him. A large portion of the jc fandom are actually ace in fact and we love to see him used in ace rep posts. We're already made to feel like freaks, so to have that thrown in my face is very hurtful. Above all twisting my words and making out I said every ace person hates romance is very disingenuous. I NEVER once said that in the post. I wont have my character attacked and lied about like that.

---

Also, once again TWISTING my words, implying I was pissed off about the incel claims when it was so obvious that I was merely asking out of curiosity where these claims come from?? Because it was never implied in the canon text. There was no anger or malice behind my questions. It was all open discussion. I can see now that this was mental gymnastics at play here to justify your hcs that you know are not canon and use it as an excuse to attack my posts with your friends, all because you were proven wrong. You lashed out on what was an otherwise polite discussion. That behavior is all entirely on you.

---

Ive only ever been respectful in my posts and they were never done to provoke arguments or hate on others opinions. So to wake up and be accused of all sorts over a fictional character is very hurtful and just shows how terribly low your side of the fandom has to stoop just to prove a point and hate on jc.

---

Im not tolerating it and these blatant LIES any longer. I hope other jc antis read these posts and see how nasty you all are. And if anyone thinks this sort of treatment is okay, then you need to look inwardly and step away from the computer. I'm done here.

[fanexus-dot-net]

FAQ

What is the purpose of Fanexus?

Fanexus was originally conceived as a way to make it easier to organize fandom content. The founders are fans who have followed fandom activity as it has migrated across many different social media platforms, and found that none of them quite suited their needs. After spending years thinking about how each of these platforms could be altered to better support fandom activity, we eventually realized that we’d amassed the money, skills and connections to make a platform ourselves.  

Fanexus is also open to use by original creators; original works are where fandom begins, after all. Enthusiasts of non-media fandoms, such as people who are passionate about interests as broad as cooking, crafting, interior decorating, brewing, extreme sports, rock collecting, history, model-building, archaeology, philosophy, etc, are also all welcome to use Fanexus as a place to post about and discuss their interests and ideas. Fanexus can be used for any type of interest so long as it doesn’t violate our rules regarding legality, harassment and hate speech.

While we originally wanted to create Fanexus as a means to better organize our content, as we’ve watched toxicity in fandom grow to increasingly alarming levels in the last few years, we’ve decided that making Fanexus a space that actively opposes this toxicity is a goal of equal importance to us. We want Fanexus to be a place where people can explore weird, complex and dark things in art and fiction without being accused of endorsing those things, and can have nuanced discussions and debates without things immediately devolving into insults and dogpiling.  

You can read more about the philosophy driving Fanexus here.

Why an integrated wiki?

We would like to go over some of the issues we’ve faced as fans that inspired the inclusion of the wiki:

There are a lot of fandoms that have very complex fanon worldbuilding/terminology/characterisations/etc, and this can be very confusing for a new fan. The way we have the wiki set up means that users will be able to go straight from a post that mentions those concepts to the wiki page for those concepts (we’ll elaborate on how this works in a later post dedicated to this feature), instead of having to search through other parts of the internet for an up-to-date fanon wiki for this fandom. We feel like people will be more likely to keep these wiki pages updated than they would if it were an external wiki, because once they have accounts on Fanexus, it will be very easy to quickly go and update a wiki page on the site, rather than going and creating a new account for a separate wiki.

In a similar vein, fandoms can produce very interesting AUs that many different fans contribute to. We’ve had the experience of coming across a piece of artwork or fiction based on one of these AUs and wanting to know more, but then finding it very difficult to track down information that explains what the AU is about, and people’s various different takes on it. We thought that by providing a wiki feature, people could create pages for each of these AUs and then update them as they develop. The AU itself may not be complex enough to justify the creation of an entire wiki for it, but having a page or two dedicated to it could certainly be helpful. The same logic applies to things such as OCs.  

People develop their own personal headcanons which can be very complex, and it can be tiresome to have to explain them over and over. So if users can create wiki pages for each of their headcanons (or AUs, OCs, etc) and link them whenever they’re necessary to understand the context of say, a fic they wrote or a piece of art they made, it could save them a lot of bother. Personal wiki pages won’t be available on launch, but we’re endeavouring to add them as soon as we can.

Can you tell us more about your other features?

Details of the features we’ve announced so far can be found here. 

We intend to add new features to Fanexus to improve our users’ experiences for as long as we have the funding to do so. We endeavour to add features that are highly demanded by our userbase, so long as the features in question are within our legal and technical capabilities to implement, and align with the philosophy of Fanexus.

How is this being funded? Will it be free to use?

Right now the beta is being paid for by the founders. Once the beta is online and in use, we plan to have a Kickstarter to fund the development of additional features we couldn’t afford to include in the beta. Fanexus will be freemium, which means it will be free to use, with premium features such as added customisation, that will be used for the ongoing funding of the site.  

Will there be a mobile app?

Currently we have a responsive web app, but a mobile app is one of the first things we intend to develop should we get the required funding via the Kickstarter. 

What kind of customisation options will Fanexus have?

In the long term, we hope to introduce in-depth customisation options to Fanexus, some of which will be premium options. We will take feedback from our userbase to decide what customisation features we will prioritise implementing first.

Are all ships welcome on Fanexus?

Yes. We understand that the reasons someone may enjoy a ship can be very complex, unexpected and/or personal, and have nothing to do with a belief that the ship is healthy or a desirable relationship to have in reality. So long as a person understands the separation between fiction and reality, and knows what a healthy real life relationship is like, we maintain that they should be able to ship what they like. We just ask that they tag their content for people who wish to avoid it. This extends to the shipping of real life people, with the provision that if Fanexus gets a direct request from any of these real people asking to have shipping content of them removed, we will remove content containing them specifically, out of courtesy.

Is NSFW content allowed on Fanexus?

Fanexus welcomes NSFW content, simply requiring that it be tagged with an adult content warning so that it is hidden from underage users.

Our servers are currently hosted in Denmark, so content posted on Fanexus must abide by Danish law. 

Further details of what sort of content is and isn’t permitted on Fanexus will be outlined in our TOS, which will be shared prior to launch.

How old do you have to be to use Fanexus?

Fanexus will be 13+, with adults-only spaces. On sign up, users will be asked if they are over 18, and anyone who indicates that they are a minor will be required to enter their DOB. Posts and blogs that are marked as Adults Only will then be hidden from minor users until they turn 18. Minors found to be lying about their age to interact with adult content will be banned. We looked into ways we could have people prove their age on sign up, but we couldn’t find any practical, reliable method. People were uncomfortable with providing personal information, and given that many adults don’t have credit cards, while many minors borrow their guardians’ credit cards, having people make a credit card deposit to prove their age wasn’t a viable solution.

Will Fanexus be doing anything to protect minors?

We believe that the best form of protection against online dangers is education, and so we’re in the process of compiling educational resources to be made available on the site so that people are aware of what sort of red flags to look out for when it comes to a variety of online threats. We also want to provide information about the separation between fiction and reality, so that minors (or anybody impressionable) won’t misunderstand or be manipulated with fiction into thinking that unhealthy behaviors and attitudes presented in dark/complicated/self-indulgent fiction and art are acceptable in reality.

We currently have the following ideas for distributing this information:

We’ll have a staff blog that provides site updates, and also periodically posts articles containing this information.

We’ll keep a compilation of this information available on a page on the site, which will be easily accessible via the navigation bar.

Eventually we want to introduce a feature where if a user searches for particular keywords, a banner appears above the search results, linking to helpful/education information relevant to the keywords. The banner will be able to be hid so it doesn’t show up again in subsequent searches.

We will of course also have a mod team watching out for any reports of suspect behaviour that may be endangering minors (or any of our users), who will take action to neutralise these threats. Another feature we are planning to develop to help our mods protect minors is a keyword detector for comments and DMs. This will scan the comments and DMs of minor users for any keywords that suggest they may be being targeted, and send a warning to our mods to check up on them. 

What is your affiliation with the Prostasia Foundation?

The Prostasia Foundation is a child protection organization that adopts an evidence-based approach to child sexual abuse prevention, that respects human rights and is sex-positive. Being evidence-based means that their positions are based on scientific research. Fanexus reached out to Prostasia because we agree with these tenets, and wanted to find ways to create a safe space that doesn’t resort to censorship. Prostasia proved to be extremely helpful in this respect, offering us information on legality, the impact fiction actually has on reality, and effective methods to protect minors, all based on research. They have also offered to help us develop our keyword detector feature.

Prostasia has an Advisory Council made of voluntary, unpaid experts from relevant fields. These advisory members do not carry any vote or authority on deciding Prostasia policy, and the views that they express on social media or elsewhere are not necessarily representative of the views of the Prostasia Foundation. Fanexus’s point of contact with Prostasia has been with the Foundation’s Executive Director, and we have no affiliation with the members of their Advisory Council.  

Similarly, Fanexus has no vote or authority in deciding Prostasia policy, nor do we sign off on anything they publish, unless it directly references us. The reverse is also true, while Prostasia provides us with advice, they don’t sign off on all the decisions or statements made by Fanexus.

Are you trying to replace Archive of Our Own?

No. We love Archive of Our Own and we have tremendous respect for the Organisation for Transformative Works, but we can’t affiliate with them due to the rules that govern not-for-profit organisations. You will definitely be able to host fanfiction and original fiction on Fanexus, but we’re currently more focused on covering the areas that Archive of Our Own doesn’t already have great features for, such as providing a space where people can host art, have discussions, role play, and document information about their headcanons, worldbuilding, original characters, etc.

Will Fanexus be open to all or invite-only?

We want Fanexus to be open to all eventually, but we also anticipate that the sort of people who promote and thrive on fandom’s toxicity will sign-up with the express purpose of breaking the rules we put in place to protect people from them. To avoid that happening en masse on launch, Fanexus will initially be invite-only. Once we have an established community of fans who can report trolls and other troublemakers, we will open Fanexus up.

In order to get an invite to Fanexus, you will need to apply via this form. If you are accepted, you will be emailed an invite (please check your junk mail) to our  Forum and Discord. Users of the Forum and Discord will be given priority invites to the site.

When’s the release?

As of the 29th of August, most of our initial features are finished, and are in the process of being bug-tested. We plan to start allowing users of our Forum/Discord on the site within the next month. Fanexus will open up to the public after the Forum/Discord users have thoroughly tested the capabilities of the site, and we’ve implemented any further features required to cover weaknesses they’ve found.

Are there other places I can follow Fanexus news?

We share updates on the following accounts:

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[lastsonlost]

After the first episode of "The Mandalorian," the Disney Plus series in the Star Wars universe that became the top streaming hit of 2019, aired on the platform, some Twitter users expressed frustration at how few women spoke, and how few female characters there were in general.

Some of those who tweeted, including well-known feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, were met with dogpiling and waves of harassment across social media platforms. 

The harassment largely stemmed from anti-feminist Star Wars fan accounts who rounded up and highlighted tweets under the pretense that those complaining were "outraged" social justice warriors trying to tear down a successful Star Wars franchise.

The harassment is just the latest instance of feminist fandom voices being shut down online.

Anita Sarkeesian is no stranger to online harassment,

YEA SHES VERY GOOD AT MAKING THEM.

 being one of the central figures in Gamergate, the online harassment campaign that resulted in her receiving numerous death and rape threats, along with bomb and shooting threats at her events. But even she was surprised at the amount of vitriol her tweet about "The Mandalorian" received.

After watching the first episode of the Star Wars series for Disney Plus, Sarkeesian tweeted asking if she was just tired, or if there wasn't "a single female speaking character in the first episode."

She was exhausted, Sarkeesian told Insider — missing the one scene where a woman spoke and making a typo in her tweet. In the replies, Sarkeesian corrected herself. Then she went to bed. In the morning, the tweet had more than 3,000 replies. It currently has close to 7,000.

"Maybe you should switch to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills... I'm sure you'll find much to relate to there...." one top reply read.

"No wonder you're so tired. They say you should stretch before making such reaches, especially at your age," said another, with more than 1,400 likes of its own.

It's an example of dogpiling, a type of online harassment where, on Twitter, someone's replies outnumber likes and retweets, and are mostly filled with repetitive, hurtful comments.

"It's ironic. Women, especially feminists, get accused of being emotional and angry and all of these things when all we said was 'Hey, I noticed this thing. And it's kind of a problem, and I think it's really bad for our society,'" Sarkeesian told Insider. "If they didn't reply to it, my tweet would have just been gone. They made it a much bigger deal."

Sarkeesian is the most prominent figure facing dogpiling and harassment in response to her criticism of the series, but she's not the only one.

People with and without large Twitter followings, some who are verified and many who are not, have found themselves overwhelmed with anti-feminist replies and messages across platforms after tweeting about how few women are in "The Mandalorian."

Specifically, in the first episode, there's one female character wearing a mask who speaks, and two female characters total, along with a few women spotted as extras in the background of shots. More female characters are expected to play larger roles in future episodes.

"Even if you want to give the show the benefit of the doubt and say there's some big, wild justification that's going to come around in episode 7, it feels wrong that the vast majority of this world is populated by men or male-identified characters," Sarkeesian said.

Star Wars fans have a history of harassing women online when faced with criticism

Online harassment in the Star Wars fandom, particularly of women, is nothing new. Actresses like Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran of the latest Disney-owned Star Wars trilogy have recently talked about the negative aspects of the Star Wars community.

Ridley, who stars in the newest Star Wars trilogy as Rey, "cut off" her Facebook and Instagram accounts "like a Skywalker limb" due to harassment, and Tran faced racist and misogynistic harassment after appearing as the first woman of color in a leading role in the Star Wars franchise.

"It wasn't their words, it's that I started to believe them," Tran wrote for The New York Times after deleting her Instagram posts in 2018. "Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories."

In the case of "The Mandalorian," almost anyone who tweets about the show from a feminist perspective is at risk of being targeted, because Star Wars fan accounts are rounding up tweets that criticize things like the amount of time it took for a woman to speak in the first episode.

One account rounded up 33 of these tweets with the caption "SJW's are outraged over the 'lack of female characters' in the first 2 episodes of The Mandalorian. A show with 3 female characters. Feminists only care about counting the number of minutes women are on screen in Star Wars."

Insider spoke with two people whose tweets were featured in the round-up, who said their tweets were mischaracterized, inspiring a wave of online hate.

Both of the people who spoke with Insider said they liked "The Mandalorian" and will continue watching it, but wanted to point out that it could be better in terms of female representation.

One woman who spoke to Insider anonymously, because she is trying to distance her name from the situation, says the harassment began several days after she posted her initial tweet about a lack of women in the first episode.

After receiving anti-feminist replies on Twitter, she also started getting harassed across platforms, in part because other anti-feminist Star Wars accounts picked up screenshots of her tweet after it was first included in the round-up and distributed to an even wider audience, including on Instagram.

One person even left a violent message for her in the email submission form on her professional website. It reads "People like you don't deserve a f---ing opinion, but at least I'm glad you can voice it. Doesn't prevent me from calling you f---ing r-----ed for spouting your misandry. HOW DOES IT F---ING FEEL C---? I hope you expire and never have children."

"I had to put everything on private, for my own mental health," she told Insider. "I just had to shut down my profile. I will never, ever, ever tweet about Star Wars again. And I love baby Yoda so much. But I can't. They won. Life's too short for me to fight this fight."

Even after setting her accounts to private, she was inundated by hundreds of follow requests on Twitter, along with DMs sent to her private Instagram.

Those who tweeted about female representation in 'The Mandalorian' stand by their words, despite the harassment

The person who tweeted the round-up of critics didn't want to share any identifying information with Insider, but did stand behind the tweet, and said they didn't participate in or encourage harassment, but the reach of the account became clear once Insider asked for comment in the replies. Within a few hours, a video had been uploaded about this article (which had not been written yet) to YouTube from a channel with more than 130,000 subscribers.

The video in question has been viewed more than 33,000 times and highlights the mentality in at least one corner of the Star Wars fandom that is male-dominated and is aggressive toward diverse media representation.

"What SJWs do is as soon as this kind of thing happens, they identify [the Twitter account that posted the round-up] as hostile to their narrative [...] I would call them left-wing garbage," the voiceover of YouTuber ComicArtistPro Secrets says in the video. "They are going to come in and write an article smearing [the Twitter account], 'Don't you dare shine a light on these cockroaches in such an effective way ever again,'" The YouTuber mocked, referring to the feminist critics as the "cockroaches" in the situation.

"This is a strategy that these sorts of anti-progressive, very regressive cyber mobs have used for years," Sarkeesian said. "They try to use social justice language against us when we try to bring these issues up but it's so transparent and so obvious what they're trying to do, by undermining our point. It's very bad faith."

Writer and programmer David Ely, a male who's tweet was included in the roundup, told Insider that his replies were pretty tame in comparison to Sarkeesian and the other woman Insider spoke to, although he did receive one unspecified death threat from an account that he blocked.

"Part of the response seems to come from a belief that Star Wars needn't be political. That it be pure entertainment," Ely told Insider. "Star Wars is a made-up universe. If gender inequality exists there, it's either on purpose, or because the creator's biases meant they didn't notice it. Either way, that's political."

Sarkeesian also stood by her original point that "The Mandalorian" should have more female characters, and said a lot of the negative response was because there's so much pushback from people who have historically been over-represented on the screen, and are hostile to the changing expectations for diverse characters that represent the diverse Star Wars fanbase.

"We are so accustomed to male-dominated narratives that it's easy to not even notice glaring omissions," she said. "Unlike if the entire cast had been women, I suspect everyone would have immediately noticed that regardless of what one's opinion would be on that casting choice."

MAYBE ITS NOT FOR YOU ANITA....

[toonstarterz]

BECAUSE I’M NOT POPULAR, I’LL READ WATAMOTE: CHAPTER #166

Baseball season is in the air! Thankfully, you don’t need to be a fan of the sport to like this chapter. So long as you enjoy the stupid antics of a bunch of socially awkward teenage girls, there’ll be plenty of fun to be had. And of course, it wouldn’t be Watamote if they didn’t include a bunch of expertly intricated plot threads and natural character development as well. With all of Nico Tanigawa’s passions coming together once again, I can say that this chapter is definitely in top form.

So without further ado, let’s play ball!

Chapter 166: Because I’m Not Popular, I’ll Go Cheer

Tomoko getting flabbergasted just by Katou existing never gets old.

You know, I always had the impression that Tomoko wording things in the most perverted way was just a gut reaction due to her mind being perpetually in the gutter. But now, I feel like her answer here is just too on the nose to be anything but deliberate. IdiotPerv!Tomoko is hilarious, but TrollPerv!Tomoko is too powerful. 

Consequently, Tomoko can’t say shit without it biting her in the ass.

Okada with the save. Sure, she probably didn’t want to look like a slacker from Katou either, but still. If Katou’s the mom friend, then Pineapple-chan’s the exasperated, but supportive onee-san friend.

I just realized that this is a standard routine with these two: Yuri will say something tactless and Mako will call her name out in admonishment. If this has been going on since they first met, then Mako has boundless patience and/or is the absolute best friend that no person should ever take for granted. Not that 

Yuri does...mostly.

Y'all can tell that baseball fan Ikko had a blast drawing the backgrounds in this chapter.

Speaking of which, I’m 212% certain that Komiyama’s role in this chapter is to be the mouthpiece for Nico Tanigawa’s baseball fanatism. Given that it’s technically in-character (for who is basically their self-insert), and baseball chapters can only feasibly happen every hundred chapters or so, I’m fine with the mangakas taking these little indulgences.

Hey, let the girl live a little! Komi’s gotta cram ten chapters worth of dialogue she won’t get into one.

Pardon me, Tomoko, but you seem to have left your self-awareness by the entrance to the stadium.

Naturally, Tomoko hates that Komiyama isn’t making a fool of herself in front of her mom-crush. It’s easy to forget that so long as you don’t set off her berserk buttons, Komiyama is actually quite...normal. Like, being amicable with others and casually humble-bragging is her default state. 

Nico Tanigawa’s artistic habit of putting nicknames under faces always amuses me.

There’s being upset, and then there’s being petty. We all know that Tomoko is aware that Itou is in the band, and any other day, she wouldn’t hold that against the girl. But because she’s salty over Komiyama acting cool, her sensibilities revert back to Year-1 Tomoko logic. 

Now, if I were a more crass person, I could make the assumption that the majority of those underclassmen were a combination of girls admiring Fuuka’s “cool beauty” status and boys wanting to check out an attractive senior girl in a cheerleading outfit, discrepancies notwithstanding. 

But I won’t.  

Oh yeah, Miho. Based on the above cheers, she seems like your average popular girl, but if you recall, she got a kick out of Katou’s “offers” to Tomoko. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a bit of a mean streak in her.

Btw...armpits? Okay, then...

You’d think that by now, Tomoko would learn some subtlety before pulling shit like this.     

Normally, I’d call Tomoko out for shenanigans since I thought she was mostly over the whole “slut-shaming” thing. But given how she wasn’t thinking this when the girls in her class wore cheerleading outfits during last year’s sports festival (that we know of), I can only assume that this is more of Tomoko’s jealousy due to Fuuka’s friendship with Katou.

Either that, or Tomoko just doesn’t want to admit she finds her hot.

I think we’re all in agreement that Ucchi’s gonna lose massive points for this.

On the other hand, the image of Emoji Girl screaming about Tomoko’s crimes through a megaphone is peak absurdity, and I’ve been laughing my ass off for twelve minutes. 

In all seriousness, I’m kind of glad that Tomoko is finally getting her way overdue karma for all her skirt-peeping. Sure, it’s all been played for comedy, but that doesn’t change the fact that its sexual harassment, or the fact that she’s more than likely gotten away with it for being female.

It’s all fun and games until your stalker calls you out on it.

LIES.

You know...maybe it is Tomoko’s fetish. She’s done it so frequently, and it’s always been portrayed as just another one of Tomoko’s “quirks”. But given the context of all those occurrences, having a skirt-peeping fetish actually sounds very plausible. Thank you, Yuri, for that insight. 

Looking at Katou’s expression, it might be her fetish, too...

Seeing Tomoko get more and more mortified as everyone keeps dogpiling on her shame makes for quite the cathartic reading. 

Add on to the fact that Komiyama, the biggest perv of all, is the most dignified at this moment just makes this whole chapter an absolute treat.

Considering that Tomoko basically just got outed as a pervert in the middle of a crowd of spectators, she’s taking this quite well. First-year Tomoko could’ve had a legit panic attack if that had happened, but now, she actually has enough nerve to retaliate. Sure, Tomoko had some decent ammo with the Tanabata wish, so she likely had more guts than she would’ve been, but it’s still impressive nonetheless.

Sasaki Fuuka–putting a new spin on the term “victim-blaming”. 

Komiyama can be the reasonable one while Tomoko is the crazy pervert, or Tomoko can be the reasonable one while Komiyama is the crazy pervert.

But the universe just can’t have both be reasonable or perverted at the same time. 

As someone who knows jacksh*t about sports, I have to admit that this is an interesting fun fact if it can be applied to the popularity of real-life sports teams and cheer squads.

I could totally see this becoming a meme in the Watamote fandom. Anyone?

These moments of zero dialogue, sometimes a whole page’s worth, excel at immersing the reader into the story. Suddenly, you’re not just reading about characters in a story. You’re now experiencing first hand what’s like to be at a baseball game, with a few familiar faces from the band and cheer teams making it feel a lot more lively. 

If it weren’t for all the wonderful peeps on Reddit, I never would’ve caught that this is the same baseball manager we’re seen periodically since the beginning of the series. You know, the one Tomoko did that fake dub for?

Perhaps I’ll call her...Beta!Nemo. 

A PSA to all you non-sports fans: You can now pretend to be interested in your favorite high-school teams just by tuning into your local service provider.

Go, Harajuku Makuhari!

You know, I think I mentioned before that I wasn’t sure what Komiyama’s career prospects were.

Now I’ve got a clue.

Yo, I could feel that pain from my screen.

For a second, I thought this was Reina, given we can’t see her eyes and that she’s manspreading (sounds like something she would do). But then I pictured her actually signing up for cheerleading and...yeah, no. 

Not to sound all pretentious if you already know, but cheerleading really is one of the most difficult, dangerous, and underappreciated sports there is. In addition to all the physical risks, you have to maintain an endlessly cheery disposition, even when it’s hard. That’s why I call it the “customer service job” of the sports industry.

The go-to method to keep your in-story sports team at peak realism: 

Unwavering mediocrity. 

As opposed to them hurrying up and win? Quite the pessimist you are, Tomoko...

not.

As startling as it is to hear these words come out of Tomoko’s mouth, it’s not entirely unfounded. For all her negative worldviews, crude behavior, and general apathy, the one thing that has always been constant about Tomoko is that she knows things can be better and she wants things to be better. She never got the chance to really strive for it back then when she had nothing to latch onto. But now that she’s got friends, Tomoko realizes that she can feasibly make some of those ideals a reality.  

Their unbridled admiration is sweeter than diabetes.

Insert long-winded discussion of a related social phenomenon that probably exists, but the author is too lazy to research here. 

She...didn’t deny it. 

Character development...I guess?

I was wondering where Tomoko would draw the line on her slut-shaming towards Fuuka. Granted, it’s probably easier to feel empathy when you can see that shit happening from other people rather than yourself. 

But seriously, Katou? Pimping out your friend? You terrify me more and more with each passing chapter. 

See what I’ve been getting at? Tomoko knows that realistically speaking, her summer is probably not going to be anything extraordinary. Inconveniences will occur, moments of boredom will arise, and missed opportunities will transpire. But as I’ve reiterated time and again, even those “plain” experiences can become delightful memories when shared with those you care about.

That’s going to be a crucial feeling from this point on, it looks like. ‘Cause based on Yuri’s expression, she may have the most difficulty resonating with that kind of emotion. Let's see just how Yuri handles an expanding social circle–Tomoko included–that’s a little more bright-eyed than she is. 

We’re in the seventh inning stretch of Tomoko’s third year, and time will only tell if it ends in a victory.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I've been sitting on a fic for more than a month, not sure if I should publish it or not because it contains some very dark topics. Obviously I won't put it on tumblr (people here are the worst), but I'm reticent to even put it on ao3. As the climate is right now, I don't even feel like sharing my fluffiest pieces is worth it. It is really killing my motivation to write at all. Like why bother? So, do you have any advice or encouragement you could offer?

I hate that this feeling is so understandable.

I don’t know that I can offer any worthwhile. It’s easy to say ‘fuck the haters’ but it’s hard when antis are so vicious and unforgiving.  But here’s what I can offer you:

If antis are killing your motivation to write and share ... either don’t write, or write and don’t share it. if it hurts and you’re scared and stressed and don’t feel like sharing, you don’t have to. If writing/sharing your work is something you can abandon without pain, abandon it. You owe nobody anything. Don’t pressure yourself to be strong. Do what makes you happy.

(and honestly, you might find deciding your’e going to stop writing and taking a break refreshes you entirely. for best effects, I’d recommend blocking all discourse from your dash and only consuming creative content from others. maybe read some books. seriously step away from the exhausting topic of Wokeness and maybe the motivation will come back.)

but if writing & sharing is something you can’t stop doing: if it would be worse to stop than to continue - it’s time to find a way of writing/sharing that will allow you to cut out the part that’s killing your motivation (from your ask, I’m guessing the potential backlash) and keep the fun part.

First things first: I would to create an entirely separate AO3 account (if you can) with an unrelated pseudonym and post the dark content under it.  I recommend this because that way the work can’t be easily traced back to your other social media accounts, and if it ends up attracting a bunch of backlash it will leave you out of it. This is how I started handling my dark content a couple of years back and it’s worked out pretty well.

You can also mitigate the backlash a little by making it harder for antis to dogpile you:

Use the ‘choose not to warn’ tag and then frontload the first chapter with all of the warnings so that antis can’t find it to pick on by just looking for the big trigger tags.

dont’ allow anon comments.

lock the fic to AO3 members. this will prevent randos from being able to look at your fic without an AO3 account.

moderate the comments. if antis dogpile you but their comments don’t appear and you never react, they’ll get bored quickly. antis are in it for the reaction.

alternatively, moderate the comments and have somebody else check them. they can delete the nasty ones and give the rest to you to enjoy.

And there’s hope you’ll never even be bothered: there’s some evidence that antis usually only go after fics from authors that they know are involved in the discourse (if they can’t dispute your points they will attack your fiction).

Alternatively, antis are more likely to go after people that are gaining popularity at a rapid pace or whose works they have liked in the past: if those people are creating content antis don’t like and refuse to stop, they attack and shame the creator as punishment. (If you’re not going to create the fiction they want, then you shouldn’t create fiction at all.)

Lastly: if you’re writing fic with dark content, I want you to know that there are lots of people who need and appreciate that. people who need that kind of material. people who dont’ need it, but have an increasingly difficult time finding it. People are scared to comment or react sometimes, but there are people who appreciate you. and they’ll find you, even if it’s under a new pseud. 

fandom isn’t nearly as fun as it used to be. It’s cliche to say ‘write for yourself’, but like ... if you’re not getting personal enjoyment out of writing anymore because of antis, that’s totally okay. and maybe you’ll find that taking a break and just consuming (and avoiding discourse) will refresh you nicely and you can come back and have fun again.

but if you want to stick it out, I’ve got your back, anon. feel free to poke me any time. (and if you dont’ want to stick it out, I’ve still got your back. antis don’t know it, but fandom is for whatever enjoyment you can get out of it.

Best of luck to you!

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