#why am i posting this you may ask. well its either blog or go back to googling cognitive behavioral therapists near me.......

[ecuwe]

found the scent notes for my fav shampoo and it's all my favorite scents 🤯

[aquabuggy]

“Imagination, life is your creation”

Say, what band was it that wrote that song again? Escapes me… Oh well, anyways,

Happy Barbie Movie Release Day!

It’s nice to feel excited about something again.

It’s not every day you see a toy product centered movie gaining this much positive attention, much less one that deals in the existential horror of being alive. Which is, actually, exactly what I expected out of it and am very happy to see.

Barbie’s probably one of if not the most recognizable and successful product Mattel has, and it’s been that way for decades. But why am I talking about that here? This is a things-full-of-liquid-with-heavy-emphasis-on-water-games blog!

Well, you’re not gonna believe it, but Mattel being a toy company that’s been around for this long, has actually dabbled a bit in our territory! And they actually made a good couple of water games themed around a certain blonde blue eyed doll and her best friends!

So! Without further ado, may I present to you……..

Polly Pocket Tiny Games!

What? Was that not where you thought that was going?

Believe it or not, there really aren’t many Barbie water games at all, just cheaply reskinned ring toss games with a Barbie backdrop…which is both baffling and disappointing considering Barbie has had COUNTLESS beach, pool, sea, and just general water themes. Polly Pocket though? Got 6. You may recognize these if you’re a veteran of this blog.

Being one of Mattel’s latest ventures in water games, my sources tell me that these were actually received incredibly poorly, averaging at a 2-3 star rating. While definitely cute and unique, reviews often mention that the games seem to be designed more for aesthetics than actual play, and that it’s very hard to get some of the play pieces to actually move. Not too surprising looking at those cramped tanks. Wasted potential for sure!

Ohhh but I can’t just end the post there can I? That’s such a bummer! Well, what if I told you this wasn’t the first time Mattel tried their hand at making water games? What if I told you that in 1989 Mattel was one of the few big toy companies that actually dared to challenge the reign of Tomy’s Waterfuls during the peak of its popularity? Oh it’s very true, and considering you’ve probably never heard of it, you can safely assume how that endeavor went. But it’s intriguing nonetheless!

Introducing….

[ photo credit- rww121212, lb-squared, whats-in, and gilbe-niema on eBay ]

Trouble Bubbles/Fun Bubbles

Documentation of these online is mostly limited to listings on buy-and-sell sites (As always. I can’t stress how vital these sites are to conserving lost/obscure media.) so there’s not a lot known about these, and not many pictures of them either. What I can gather is that Mattel made at least 6 of these as well, 3 Trouble Bubbles games and 3 Super Trouble Bubbles games. The main difference between the 2 being Super Trouble Bubbles having a small switch that allows you to redirect the jets of water, which is pretty cool and admittedly not something I’ve seen in other water games! Both also have a wind up timer to challenge yourself to complete the game in a short period.

I’ve yet to collect one of these myself, but they look pretty decent in terms of quality and stand out nicely. They never fully took off in terms of popularity but I think they’re pretty cool, especially as a piece of toy history! Not too shabby at all for Waterfuls competition, my hat’s off to them! Not bad Mattel, sad they haven’t recaptured the same inventiveness for their Polly games. But hey, honestly? Nowadays would be a GREAT time to bring back Trouble Bubbles if you ask me. Water games are coming back in style and Waterfuls has been slow in new major products for quite a while. Who knows? It may just be able to snag that crown sometime in the future…

Unlikely.

But hey, anything’s possible in this crazy age!

[miiilowo]

i have been ""poisoned by social media activism"" because im using my platform to boost posts about a literal genocide? come fucking on man. sorry, but i do have the ability to do both watch the news and read articles while also boosting posts for people who spend all their time on tumblr and Dont read the news and may not have the chance to. And like, idk about you but every news channel and article i see is written by zionists and is from the israeli point of view. so i never get to see what is truly happening in gaza, and thats why tumblr and instagram posts are so important. and most posts about palestine are backed up by articles and firsthand evidence, which you'd know if you didnt have so many tags blocked. i mean, i dont spend all of my time on tumblr either. but i post about palestine when i get the chance. this is not something that you can take the stance of "im too busy to post about this" because you post about your favourite medias and random shit all the fucking time. if you have time to post about dean winchester you have time to post about the forced extinction of the people of palestine. you have 10K followers, man. the people of palestine have Asked Us, the people of the world, to share and spread as much as you can. the news does not cover palestine as much as it did anymore, my local radio station went from talking to the situation to completely stopping coverage of it recently. its extremely hard for me to find articles about gaza that arent written from a zionist point of view nowadays. once the media stops covering this genocide, the people of the world are the only hope that gaza has. and this is why i spread posts about gaza, even to my follower base of about 100 people. and you blocking tags because ""you know how to get news about the situation bettwr than the people on tumblr, the illiterate tumblr users who Never check sources and must Never read news articles and their brains are So poisoned by social media activism" as if we arent doing this because the palestinian people have called for our action directly

anon, i appreciate that youre being...slightly. kinder. in this one. i dont disagree with you wholly, but i don't think we're going to see eye to on this, and that's fine. doesnt mean you're a bad person, doesn't mean that i'm one either. you, however, are misunderstanding me, and also repeatedly refusing to acknowledge the fact that i do post about this issue. it may not be the focus of my blog, but i do post about it. i acknowledged in one of my earlier responses that i reblog the ones i see that have sources attached, which you are also conveniently ignoring in this one

i understand that posting about it is important, i do it when i can, but i also dont want to spread misinformation, and i literally do not have the resources to fact check this kinda shit a large portion of the time. My internet connection is so dogshit i can't load a webpage 80% of the time. right now is an exception. i live in an rv with 12 cats and i barely have enough money to get to school and back, let alone pay for high speed internet access, so thats a roadblock. i am not an activist. you are clearly more of an activist than i am, and youre focusing on it more. thats great ! we are not the same person.

spreading reliable information that i can actually trust is important to me, because i care about this issue, more than you likely realize.

i wasnt saying that people on tumblr never factcheck, but i dont have a way to confirm that they did at a cursory glance for half of this shit, and im not going to automatically assume that every single post about palestine was fact checked and refined. i am well aware that palestinian people want people to talk about it on social media. i do post about it. i understand your irritation but the shit youre accusing me of here is being blown out of proportion and i frankly dont want to try and argue with you anymore because i don't think this either of us are going to "win" and its just gonna drain both of us further. i put more effort into reblogging what i determine to be reliable information, you fuck off, stop assuming shit and we both agree to disagree. hows that sound

edit- moved my tags into the main post:

im not gonna pretend im an expert on the issue either. i dont want to reblog something and have it actually be damaging toward palestine because it flies over my head. its very possible that i could fuck up. and id much rather reblog information about whats happening that i KNOW is true, that ive personally looked into, rather than reblog something damaging because i dont fully understand it. i am just a guy. im going to make mistakes. im trying to avoid that. like you said, i have 10k followers.

[mysticvixin]

INTRODUCTION.

Greetings. I'm MysticVixin. I'm an artist striving to create something good in this world. If not just a single smile or laugh. Seeing as the digital realm is getting infested with generative parasites, me along with many artists are becoming digital rufugees. That is to say I'm not intending to downplay real rufugees by any means. Considering I come from a place of privledge.

Though I'm willing to explain my point. As an artist, especially in a modern digital world, I'm more or less required to share my art everywhere. There is a pressure to be consistant and to have it on multiple platforms. This is because both possible employers and clients need to see your work to commission or work with you.

Which is to say that with the introduction of artificially generated 'artworks' as well as artificial intelligence training stealing the hard work of millions of artists worldwide, it would be like working a 9-5 position for possibly decades only for a new boss to be step in, take all of your work from since you were hired, attempt to reconstruct your handwriting, math, notes and everything you learned then getting a promotion.

In time, you will then be let go because.. why pay an employee when you can just have something better do it for free after already taking and learning everything that you can do and faster?

So what exactly are you supposed to do in that situation when all the largely well known offices you could 'work' for either proudly or discreetly claim that their employees' work is nothing more than free labor to steal and utilize for their companies?

Obviously you would feel forced to take down all of your hard work to avoid the problem all together even if it may already be too late and seek new offices that don't think your work is unvaluable. Or if they mention they have third party bosses that would like to take your work give you the option to opt out from interacting with them.

Thus.. this is why I am here now. Trying to find a space I can share my work openly instead of having to either give my work up to artificial intelligence training, heavily alter and hide my work with harsh watermarks, or attempting to datapoison my work in hopes it would taint anyone that attempts to take my hard work and use it.

With that said, Greetings. I'm MysticVixin. I'm an artist striving to create a name for myself with hopes of bringing some good into this world. Even if it's as simple as making someone smile or a laugh. I'm also an aspiring vtuber/pngtuber trying to create a small close-knit community and audience for myself casually in hopes of making new connections and learning new things.

I believe this platform is going to get back on its feet with the rest of the digital rufugees possibly finding their place here. I personally decided this one due to how accessible it is in terms of posts as well as browsing. At least it trys to stop me from doom scrolling. Not only that it's on desktop so I don't have to type endlessly on mobile.... Unless I want to.

It also just has that casual sort of feel to it that makes me feel a bit more motivated to post my work more casually. Without the added pressure that other social platforms seem to envoke in me. Either because it's too big and largely populated or just not nearly as accessible. [I promise I'm not a hipster.. I think.]

Other things that intrigue me is how I could keep all of my different mediums separated in multiple blogs. For example my photography can be in one, poetry/writing in another, and even just a personal blog to just hang out and shitpost as a few examples. Then my favorite aspect that I would love to utilize is the anon or user 'ask me' posts where I can possibly build a story through them or just obvously answer random questions!

But enough about stroking Tumblr's ego, currently I'm working on multiple personal projects such as revamping my personal website, recreating stream assets as well as my vtuber sprites, and even a digital social 'game' where you guys call the shots in establishing a florishing collection of creatures! Though I'm still figuring out some details on that front.

Some of my interests besides the obvious include playing games from my childhood that some have been completely forgotten, swimming at the local aquatic center in the summer, walking and listening to music while I pick up random things I find on said walks, shiny things, thinking about humanity and existence, over-thinking said existence, roleplaying, spacing out while animating things in my head, politics to some degree, and pretending my life has meaning.

I've also been exploring more into spirituality and am drawn towards religions of nature. I'm not exactly certain of which I would more likely identify with though paganism and wiccan seem to stick the most. Since I was young I have always been drawn to the moon and the tide. So my practice is likely water based in some manner. Seeing as it flows through all living things. I even remember having a phase as a teenager and making a sort of altar for aesthetics and even lighting candles but not really understanding how best to proceed. Though I did make one spell that I can still recall.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. I can't wait to share some of these things with you guys and see where this journey may take us. Now if you excuse me, I got a logo to recreate and eggs to find. [Hopefully you can help me hatch them!]

[snowthornes]

Greetings, @greatprotector-if . I saw your tag about writing the mc. Do you remember that random galen.txt file screenshot Someone (alas, 'tis me) sent to your asks? Yes. I have kept its contents locked away for all this time but now it is clamoring to be set free. I cannot keep it at bay any longer.

I was about to send it to your ask box, but then I took a step back and Actually Looked at its length and I was like. Madness. To terrorize anyone's inbox with this would be a most heinous crime.

So, it's a post now!

(Warning!!! Short snippet where you talk to a loser who's utterly in love and is very annoying about it. You may feel the urge to launch them out a window. I would support you <;3)

I am going to babygirl galen so hard actually, themk youf or creating them. I've mostly been lurking around in your blog till recently, but I just want to say that the moment I laid eyes on Galen I have been head over heels besotted with them. Thank you for giving them to us, they are the light of my life, the love of my dreams, I promise I will take care of them I will make them so so happy.

I am keeping an MC who's ready to fall head over heels besotted in love at first sight with Galen. They are raring to go. They are going to be so in love and they are going to be so persistently annoying about it.

"I don't think love at first sight is really a thing," a lovely well meaning individual might say, "Wouldn't that just mean you liked their face?"

(Another MC I keep stuffed in the freezer, voice coming muffledly from its depths: AND WHAT ABOUT IT,)

"No, friend," My MC would say, with a solemnity akin to a war general giving an impassioned speech in the name of their cause before they march off to war, "I mean, yes, Galen is lovely. The prettiest. They have the prettiest golden eyes, like the glimmering gold of sunlight coating tree bark and grass blades in sunset, though they often use them to give me the look—"

They pause in their enthusiastic ramblings to stare at you, eyes bright. Your expression has long collapsed, settling into a flat, dead-eyed stare. Why are you here. Why are you still listening to this. They gesture excitedly at you, triumphant.

"—Yes, like that! And they have the broadest shoulders and the thickest arms and the loveliest eyelashes, and sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to hold them—"

"You know, you're really not helping your case," you interject, your dead-eyed gaze strengthening into indignant accusation. You have to cut this wannabe bard off before he decides to wax poetic about this poor Galen for another three paragraphs.

Gods know that you would launch either them or yourself out a window before they finished.

"It— it's not like I'd do that without their permission," they cough meekly, their eyes wandering away from your accusing gaze. They have the audacity to look shy. "Of course I'd court them first."

"Court," you echo flatly. "Did you really just say court—?"

"Yes!" They draw themselves up, gaining steam once again. Their eyes sparkle with determined fire as they outline their wooing plans to you, the resigned listener. "I'll give them gifts, like cool looking rocks and flowers — nothing too expensive at first, since that would probably make them uncomfortable—"

You squint at them. "... Are you a crow?" they steamroll on, undettered.

"And I'll do some wood carving! Maybe some pocket-sized figurines first — wait, what do you think Galen's favorite animal is? Do they even have one? Ah, what about a chicken? Do you think they'd appreciate a chicken—?

"Not a clue, but you never answered the earlier question," you point out. "Why do you like them so much?"

At this, they pause. "I just..." unlike in their earlier spiels, their voice sounds much softer. Stumbling over their words, as if they were about to voice something extremely precious. "They're... them" they clear their throat, and fiddle with the woven bracelets around their wrist. "Galen. They can be grumpy and intimidating and they're kind and they care and everyone knows that. And I just... I like them a lot. Just because."

"Just because," you repeat.

"Yeah." they seem to struggle with themselves for a moment before they draw themselves up, looking at you with earnest eyes. "I want... I want to make them happy."

— And that was my Galen-mancer MC. It was an ungodly hour in the morning, I was possessed by the Galen Brainrot, and I proceeded to write this abomination, immediately passing out at 5am once I finished it. I woke up groggy and dazed with only one .txt file possessing a damning title as a testament to what I'd done. I'm so sorry 💀

[wolfytae-exe]

Hello cici,

This is the "Ill come again" 🐘 anon

I just wanted to say I love going through your blog(and my other fave blogs) as my morning newspaper hehe.

People keep saying I'm too formal , I don't really know what to say to that I guess I am just like that honestly speaking , I am usually on my own and I don't really have any acquaintances or friends in uni so for me its kind of hard to be casual (especially with past experiences of being casual with others didn't go too well imo).

But coming back to what I was going to say through post , I notice someone asked if Beomgyu has abs or not , I just wanted to talk about that and why having abs in general is pretty dangerous ie; Its not good bad actually It means you just have low fat percentages in your body and the shape of the muscle just shows , having that kind of a body is very dependant on the way a person works on their muscles ie: Constant strain . Having six pack abs may look really good on any person , but they are tedious to manage for eg: You worked really hard on it and if you stopped working on it , it goes away. Abs aren't a mark of masculinity or strength just shows how far you're willing to go for them (especially in pop culture /kpop fanfic spheres tend to ignore that ) . Things like that are also heavily dependant on your ancestry , colonialism and a bunch of other factors. People should watch the show physical 100 , it shows exactly the diff between toned strong people , muscular people with abs and a lot that. It puts into perspective with physical body strength actually is.

By the way Cici this wasn't to you but to that anon who asked the question about abs, it just a obsession topic of mine so I wanted to share a few cents of mine that is all. Please do let me know if I crossed a line with this post.

As always ''I'l come again "

Bye-Bye

i literally love you 🐘anon, never change your formal talk hehe. also the info about the abs like idk what to say to it besides while i was reading it i was smiling cause it’s obviously something you like talking about, i wanna let everyone know they can talk to me about the things they’re interested in ^^ (especially my nd followers)

but back to the fact you gave, i never really thought about it that way, like it’s less fat n more muscle and not considered healthy, then again muscle building isn’t considered healthy either because of the intense strain of the muscle. I also heard of physical 100 and it sounds pretty interesting so i might just watch it hehe thank you 🐘anonie until you come back again🫶🏽

[cyrassol]

man i haven't been on tumblr for so long i forgot how this goes, but uhhh here ig??

18+ only, s'il-vous-plaît

i realise this won't stop any minors who really want to be here, but a) please, b) you'll be blocked if i find out or suspect you're underage, and c) if you really want to see sex-related stuff then you should be learning about safe and consensual sex and, let me tell you, DoL and its fandom ain't the place for it my dude

and with that out of the way

hi! i'm cyra, you may use any pronouns but she/her usually works!

i am in my mid-20's, a funny little tidbit that surprises me everytime i remember

artist, despite what my shitty lighting and shading skills may tell you

sometimes, SOMETIMES, i also write

(psst if you want to see anything in particular relating to those things, feel free to send requests, ask box is open)

i am. terrible. TERRIBLE. at DMs. if you send me a message and i never reply or even read (does tumblr give read receipts?), know that it is not about you personally! i just get crazy anxious about text messages in general, so if you want to talk to me please send an ask or tag me in a post instead :) i understand it isn't the same (which is why i prefer it lmao) but it has a much, MUCH higher chance of being seen and replied to!

gdi i keep editing this post and adding shit to it but! i typically only tag characters and my stuff, but if you want me to start tagging specific topics/triggers then all you gotta do is ask me to and i will :)

welcome to my DoL blog! i can also be found on reddit with the same username as here :)

for the curious, info about my PCs are under the cut!

••••••••••••••••

Arden, my main PC. Genderfluid, but she/her is what she uses the most out of convenience. Official sources of income are her dates with Avery and modelling for Niki, but most nights there's also a shadowed figure breaking into Danube street mansions—oh, you've seen it? No, you haven't—and on Fridays you might see a masked figure go into the brothel for a weekly private show. Love interest is Avery, though both have the mindset that theirs is mostly a transactional relationship. Arden's also down bad for Wren, but for now it seems to be unrequited.

Monroe, my baby secondary PC. Herm/intersex, but although he does occasionally dabble in crossdressing for work, he goes exclusively by he/him and masculine terms. Sex worker, and pretty sought-after, too—Briar would lose quite a lot of money if Monroe stopped showing up one day. Unfortunately, it's come at the cost of his reputation, something he's already being blackmailed for. Love interests are Sydney and Whitney, though both relationships are something Monroe entered into extremely reluctantly given his current circumstances (and also because Whitney is... Whitney).

Adeline, my "forsake civilisation, return to nature" PC lmao. Cis woman with the wolf transformation, which she definitely did not get through the mushroom route. Plantpeople enthusiast, but her true love will always be the wolf pack and its leader. She did get kidnapped by Eden once after she got lost in the woods during a hunt and, while she escaped, sometimes Addie finds herself thinking about the hunter with curiosity—after all, didn't she also fight the Black Wolf at first before knowing better? Maybe the hunter isn't so bad either. Probably the only one of my PCs who'll become a parent.

Vincent, my final PC (for now?). Cis man with a huge everything—huge heart, huge muscles, huge... dick. Gentle giant, it's a wonder he ever escaped Remy's farm—probably an accident tbh, must have fallen into the river or something because this man was as well-behaved as they come. Nowadays his mind is pretty much healed from whatever weird trance he'd been in back then, but despite how happy he is with Alex and the farm, sometimes he remembers his days at Remy's with longing—Vince doesn't let himself wonder if it's the place or its owner that he misses, though.

All my PCs are in their 20's, btw! They also all exist at the same time, maybe one day I'll make a post with all their connections to each other and other NPCs :) It'll be... a mess lmao

[sakumasmut]

this ask will probably very long and pathetic so im sorry ahead of myself </3 YOU DIDNT JUST CHANGE THE POST TEXT TO TALK ABOUT THE GIFT AGAIN,, well obviously i wouldnt say no, and natsume,,, im always open to more natsume content because he is my everything (* >ω<) but you know, as you said in another rb's tags theres seriously so little content of my other favorites that id just feel bad to waste the gift opportunity when i can uhh, magically bring forth more nsfw wataru and leo content because. seriously. theres so little of it!! how!! i went thru their nsfw tags like, these days, and well. ashamed to say the very few there are of wataru, some are from me and even some that contain him and are related to the oddballs are still asks from me!!! no one wants this guy besides me.. ugly sobbing. but also was shocked at how little nsfw content there is of leo? surely hed be more popular so its like.. where is it.. wheres the content!! i did think about you wanting to give me a gift, and i can imagine why youd want to give it (and thinking on par that its not just a late birthday gift </3 but still thanks regardless!!), i was thinking something something with leo and ritsu but.. im not sure what! again if its anything you can just dm me about it or something i suppose </3 or if you do want to keep it as a secret little gift thatd pop up one day i dont mind either! but yeah i realized lately just how sick i am over leo and ritsu. yeah. yyeah. ive been rereading all your content w ritsu and especially the catboy ones.. uwehehe... (´_ゝ`) i kept thinking of scenarios of ritsu inviting leo over in his room with the reader also being there and erm,, wheres mika? i dont know! he can be anywhere he wants to just not here! (i am sorry mika fans. do not make me talk about him or we will reach the forbidden eroguro content. still so sorry for the one anon that didnt know what eroguro is and googled it?? then ended up asking you (ﾟωﾟ) i didnt expect to catastrophically ruin someones life like that... supposedly. my bad) but back to the main thing just uuuuw ive been missing your hcs things that were talking about two characters pursuing the same reader imagine it with leo and ritsu! oh the drama! how jealous filled creatures they both are! incredible! and absolutely phenomenal! but also them both having to share you? think of all the side-eyeing and purposefully paying attention to who you seem to give more attention towards.. they'd be so cute. i have worms in my brain(･ω･｀*). imagine if they were both catboys and so needingly desiring your affection. at once! im going to stop before i explode. i just need them both all over me right now i think. ue. i dont have much to say on behalf of wataru. at this point id just take anything with him because itd be such a rare legendary thing to witness.. ohh the holy grail of ultra rare wataru nsfw (no one wants this clown except me and exactly two other people on your blog) as you said yourself once hed be pretty much open to anything!! the opportunities are endless!! why limit them!! but also ouhhhh i have missed the wataru breeding hcs post.. id almost forgotten hes in puffy bunny even. whenever i think about fucking like rabbits phrase my mind just auto fills it in to nazuna. but ah. applied to wataru. ah. yeah. dont really have anything else to add there but amazing post 10/10 hit me like a rock when i saw it for the first time and may the person who requested that have my forever blessings. i will now sign off before i blow up right in this moment —darlingnon

mmm yeah I suppose you’re right, natsume is quite popular (I even have something for him for next month) but like you said there’s not a lot of writing for wataru or leo, so I’d wanna give you some content for them too! I definitely wouldn’t mind adding ritsu to a leo thing though, more the merrier!

honestly I might just surprise you one day? since I don’t wanna promise a deadline and not make it �� but also very flattering you check my older writing fjehsbdn

[skinnyravs]

Being mis-understood.

Do you ever get the feeling that people just Mis Understand you?

Like, you make a joke and they give you that vibe like: man you are an idiot. Or the times when you say something, and the reaction you get is someone if offended.

Well; I can tel you this happens to me. A lot. Why? I have no clue. I wonder if it has something to do with the different era I grew up in, or just the type of people i used to interact with that are either similar to me or different. But their different still made it easier to mingle.

I know, that I am not the most social person, ever. Like it is a struggle. I am just naturally very shy, very timied and very sometimes I guess you can cal it...off?

I have always seen myself as the silent, observant type that takes it all in and makes up her own mind. Yes sure I may judge but that's because I can only go off what I see. me and talking and being social is not a thing. So its quite a crappy thing that other poeple can do that easily and I'm stuck in the whole eh i dont wanna be social at all. Perhaps this is a bad thing but maybe it isn't.

Not everyone is going to be the social type. Some of us, like me just wanna do stuff and not talk to much and enjoy. Maybe that is why i seem like such a recluse or perhaps come off as being a little arrogant. Trust me, it is not on purpose. I reckon it is simply a personality trait.

Another thing I make very clear ot people is that, I am not going withstand bullshit. From anyone. There was a time, growing up I just ignored shit be it in school and even sometimes work. I would just be like eh whatever. But over the years I could see that a lot of people took advantage of that and I jsut had enough. Eventually, when you work in a medical feidl you come across some ass holes,a nd there are two things happen. - Either stand up for yourself or - let them continue to talk down to you.

Eventually i wasn't having that ad I started to bite back. Sometimes maybe more then I could chew, but I certainly think that was a big thing for me. I didn't want to take a back seat. Sometimes, I think I had always been wanting to just tell people where to go.

My family's history (and it is not a nice one by the way) is what also led me to just be a total bitch sometimes. And if you knew the whole story you might get an idea why sometimes I am.

It is fair to say I am a big believer in standing up and saying what I think. I can be wrong or right it doesn't matter if you are wrong. Sure, the flip side of it, is if you don't like something don't say it. I do also believe that too. But there will be certain situations where; you know what, say it don't hold back. LOL, funny how that is the title of the whole blog as a whole. DON't HOLD BACK. And I mean that.

Just because I ask someone not to do something should not be immediately taken as: Oh she is trying to control me.If I am telling you I do not like what you are doing its because I don't like it and think its inappropriate. How that can be seen as control .makes no sense. There is quite a big difference between: Please don't do this I don't appreciate it. isn't that being polite and not control?

I'm finding this hard to explain; but recent events came up and I have asked for stuff to be stopped. I jsut don't like it and yet it is still being down. For me it is like a total lack of respect for a request. Apparently Im not allowed to do that, because people are saying I'm being rude, controlling and giving htem order. haha...um...what?

If someone came up to me and said: Don't write this and post is. I will ask why amd if they gave me a good reason Id be like: ook i understand your view here but please understand that this needs to be said. And they can either go: oh all right that's ok you explained it that's if ein. Or they could be a total ass hole and say: your an idiot just shut up and move on.

I'm so tired, of everything I say, or do is always being taken the wrong way. Makes me sad that I can never truely be myself anymore and this it just leads to a lot of frustration, anger and disappointment. I, just wanna be able to be myself again. Like I used to be. I lost that along th way because nobody seems to try and understand my point of view anymore. Yet i seem to be the only one trying to work shit out.

It sucks.

[thoughts-and-all-that]

how the fuck do you block someone without blocking someone... someone who makes me deeply DEEPLY uncomfortable either follows my main (i checked after posting this, they do follow my main) or at least checks in on it enough that they liked one of my posts, but the thing is... we are in a very small fandom together, and ive talked to them on discord before, and i am trying so hard to be liked by this fandom despite how much it kinda grates on my nerves, and i really dont want them being like. hey why do you have me blocked. and like. starting drama about it

i guess i doubt theyd start drama but i really dont know them well and i. constantly feel like im walking on egg shells with these people cause theyre the types that are like. more sensitive than me. which sure thats not like inherently bad or negative but it gets. irritating when it feels like i have no idea what i can and cant say that might upset them or get me in trouble. like i cant even joke about cults and cannibalism with these people. like come on, its funny to make these shitty things out to be a joke, it makes it feel like they suck less. i mean, im not making light of them, when it comes to real situations of them im obviously not gonna treat it like a joke, but when it comes to the vague idea of them? yeah its funny. theyre just absurd concepts. i mean, come on man.

like, okay fine, its fine that they dont want to joke about it, but you cant even MENTION that stuff around these people. i mean i guess like. i guess its one of these peoples triggers but. what the hell situation do you find yourself in where cannibalism is brought up and becomes a trigger. like obviously i cant ask them that but like. WHAT. like did your mother eat your brother or some shit like... what the hell situation gives you cannibalism as a trigger. the cult one is fully understandable cause cults are common but you dont hear or see real life cannibalism every day. like does this person just have a horrible backstory or something.

i got very off track. i mean i guess it doesnt matter this is literally just a vent blog

its not like i hate any of these people. i may dislike one or two of them, thats just bound to happen with any group of people, but not hate. but as much as i dont want to say it, theyre not exactly my vibe. i mean... i always stuck out like a sore thumb in this fandom, even back in the day, hell, ESPECIALLY back in the day. i stumbled upon a fandom made by and for homeschooled christian kids and that sure was exactly how it sounds! and i... very much was not that. i was a public school atheist kid and i just simply found the content funny and the characters fascinating. i fell HARD for the characters, they... in more ways than one, lived rent free in my head.

a lot happened, i wanted nothing to do with it after, and then eventually i wanted something to do with it again. but ive been cautious this time. maybe a little too much i dont know. i just cant let it happen again. i know it cant happen again logically, and yet the creeping tendrils it left parasitically suckling on my skin creeps ever upward, threatening my very core.

i swear fandoms have changed drastically since 2016. i dont know what it was. i couldnt tell you if you paid me. they didnt used to be like this, filled with the one thing that makes me question my determination to go on. the one thing i cant even talk to anyone about because it makes me feel like im going to die, and other people treat me like ill die for it.

and its everywhere. its all over and i cant escape it and i try so desperately to.

and you know that its in this fandom. it was the first fandom i saw it in, actually. its the reason i feel this way at all. they haunt me. my every action is tinted with this haunting, it changed me for the worse.

i cant get close to any of them because almost all of them say it. and the ones who dont... definitely arent my vibe. the ones who dont arent even the ones i dislike, surprisingly. i used to hate one of them, hell, i used to hate one of the other people too. but things change. people change.

i guess i cant, since its been 7 years and this shit still haunts me so bad.

the reason that person makes me so uncomfortable is that thing. the one and i think only call i did in that server (i probably did one other) was with them and someone else, because i was like. why not! it was soon after i joined and i wanted to befriend the current era of this fandom. huge mistake. confronted with them doing the one thing that curses me. i left silently because they were all ignoring me anyway. what an experience.

ive had so many feelings since i joined that server, thats for sure. my relationship with this fandom could fill a novel. i hope it never does. it wouldnt get published anyway.

i just love these characters. i used to love one of the other people in the fandom. thats its own story. i cant even keep a conversation with them nowadays. how can i? the thing we had in common is gone. i cant tell them the truth. i REALLY cant tell them the truth. they would hate me. i cant handle them hating me. we arent codependently attached anymore but that doesnt mean i dont still care way too much about them. they were the best relationship i ever had, and we didnt even date.

i dont know what i would do if they hated me.

i just really love these dumbass characters. i dont know what it is. their own creators treated these characters a bit like crap. but these characters are so real to me. but not in THAT way.

and sadly ive tried to stop caring, but it didnt work. i mean... i did also want to reclaim them. that situation doesnt deserve to hold them hostage. i guess i could use to have that mindset about a lot more about that situation, but its not that easy. its really, really not that easy.

and because i care so much about these fucking characters, i care about having a decent relationship with the fandom. theres only so many of us, and none of these people are bad, i just... dont fit in. i never really did. but i try to. i dont think my effort does much.

i worry that they think im too much. i treat darker and mature topics like casual jokes, i dont share so many of the same ideas as everyone else, i make a lot of things about me because i dont know how not to. i try to keep up conversations by relating, but i fear it comes off as me trying to pivot it to be about me.

i think some of the stuff they do is silly, not that id ever stop them

i miss the early days, before the other shoe dropped. when i actually did fit. when it was so easy. when me and my friends filled up discord chats with back-and-forth prompts and ideas and writing... how i always wanted any fandom to be for me. why did it ever have to change. why did they have to tell me the truth. i was only 14.

i actually did almost have it with another fandom, too. that didnt work out as well after a little while. it was nice while it lasted.

i cant do that with these people. i wish i could. i wish i didnt feel like oil trying to mix with water.

so, anyway. cant block this person. wish i could. i wont though.

this is just the surface of all of this, you know. like i said, it could be a whole novel.

i have to live with this.

[rise-my-angel]

I think it is so frustrating and sad you have to not even tag things to avoid getting hate like adding anti tags should be enough but even then I just don’t understand why people are so so so sensitive about opposing opinions. I have a more nuanced opinion of Dany than 99% of Dany fans in that I acknowledge her darkness although I also don’t fully agree with everything you said about her. It’s not worth writing it up bc that’s not the point of this ask (long story short I think she’s inclined to violence at first but we see her being sickened by the memory of it aside from burning MMD which is a special case I could talk at length about, and I am intrigued by that conflict within her character). And I am so wholly unbothered by your interpretation and opinion of the character. I like your content a lot and it’s nice to be able to read opinions that conflict with mine mixed in with things I agree with and I honestly don’t understand why other people don’t feel the same way. Which isn’t judgement. People are allowed to want to see only things they agree with. But it is so foreign to me. We are talking about a book series here.

As an entirely unrelated side question: do you have a post anywhere talking about the reader in your fic or have you left her as more of a blank slate? I’ve never been interested in x reader fic but I love Jon and want to read yours but what I worry about x reader content is that the reader won’t be enough of a blank slate. I am also simply curious about what you have thought up about her whether or not the fic ends up being for me

I'm totally fine with other opinons, but I have had issues before of being harassed over my opinons of Dany before and I would rather not tempt fate because it was pretty brutal last time. I also don't enjoy debate, because I don't use my blog as a platform to entertain that kind of discussion, I like open minded discussion of similar ideas and using different opinons to explain my side. But I do not wish to have a back and forth of totally disagreeing sides, that is not fun to me that gives me anxiety.

I'm fine with people thinking my interpretation of Dany is overly extreme, because I do understand what about her people like and why one may disagree. But debating someone about those issues isn't why I like talking about her. I like exploring a character not defending why I have a stance over and over again. But Dany stans have been unforgiving in the past and I don't want to risk it. And I don't want to platform debates and hostile arguments on this blog.

I made a Sansa post earlier which stemmed from someone whom I follow that made a point I did not agree with, but I did not go directly to them or add to their post. I made my own as to not be negative in a space talking positively about a character or subject. I dont belive in hijacking someones post to argue against what they are saying or going into there inbox to yell at them for it either, I dont think it is a productive way to get your point across. I prefer making my own posts where I can logically display my opinions and why in a well thought out manner, not argue with someone personally.

But Dany stans are not fond of me, and so I sometimes don't tag at all, soley out of anxiey because having a barrage of disagreeing opinions angry in my inbox insulting and demeaning me was what happened last time. So I avoid it to not create a hostile enviroment for my own followers as well.

As for my story, I appreciate you expressing interest but I cannot speak as to the degree of a blank slate reader. I try to not inundate the story with an overly vocal or overly involved reader, I try to blend her into the background of the story without being obtrusive or give her to strong of a vivid personality, but the reader does have a character consistency throughout.

I would suggest reading a little bit of the first chapter, because its pretty indicative of the style in which I portray the reader and make your decision from there. I don't want to mislead you one way or another but the first few scenes should give you a solid idea as to if it is your cup of tea or not.

Either way, thank you for your message I appreciate when someone who thinks differently then I do does not see the value in personally attacking someone for it, and expressing interest in my story, if you read it or not I am flattered either way you are very kind!

[weirdthoughtsandideas]

If DCLA characters had Tumblr part 9 🕺🏼

🎨 biamakesart Follow

Hi!! I made a new comic 💜 Like and reblog

🛼 rollerskatingonthemoon Follow

Haha that happened to me and my friends once 🤣

3 notes

🎤 singing-is-who-i-am Follow

Randomly remember when my dad explained to me that him and his then fiancée were getting married. But he didn’t say that, he started to do this elaborate story about some papa bear that was on his way to meet mama bear at the meadow and saw a flying unicorn or something. That was his ”metaphors” for how they were getting married.

Some extra context to this story: I was 18 when he told me this.

👩🏻‍🦱 dangerously-beautiful-ant Follow

In that case, how did he explain like… how babies are made?

I both want and do not want to know.

🎤 singing-is-who-i-am Follow

”Imagine a pegasus and a unicorn. They love each other very much, and so they run across the rainbow together. Their love causes it to rain ice cream and everyone is so happy! Soon there’s a new pony appearing when the unicorn shoots glitter from its magical horn. All the magical elfs celebrate the arrival of the pony, which of course is purple and sparkles a lot! Now, do you have any questions?”

10 year old me:

🎀 italys-biggest-bow-collector Follow

How did you even go through puberty?!

🎤 singing-is-who-i-am Follow

I’m asking myself this every single day.

30 notes

🌼 punk-not-dead Follow

When someone has hurt you, remember that everyone has the same bodily functions as you do.

What I am saying is that, whenever someone has made you feel awful, just picture them farting. They aren’t so scary anymore now, are they?

🌟 supernova-number-one Follow

I tried this and then I immediately felt bad because I pictured my mom finding out I thought such a ”vulgar” thought about her and shamed me for it

🌼 punk-not-dead Follow

Then picture her burping after shaming you. Who is ashamed now?

🌟 supernova-number-one Follow

Camila have you pictured these things about me?

🌼 punk-not-dead Follow

Yes.

#you’re my childhood rival #I need to picture you doing gross human things so I feel superior

76 notes

🏳️‍🌈 creyendoenmi Follow

I remember when my coach told me I reminded her of a singer she loved as a kid. That singer made her heart beat a lot… and that’s why she wanted me to pursue music because I reminded her of it.

Anyway I am theorizing if she had a crush on that singer and now she wants me to give a new generation of girls crushes with my sweet melodies.

✌🏼 arodarmivida Follow

You're already giving this generation of girls crushes on you <3

💍 queenoftherink Follow

Define ”girls”. In plural. Haven’t seen or heard anyone except for Jim.

7 notes

🍓 chico-fresa Follow

Tumblr is fun. I interact more with people I know irl on here than I do with them irl.

🎸 beanie-guitarist Follow

Yeah, especially some people who you barely interact with irl and thus you don’t know them well enough to know it’s very obviously their Tumblr blog 🤣

🏳️‍🌈 creyendoenmi Follow

He does not even seem to know the tumblr blogs of people he DOES interact with a lot irl. He may just suck at knowing people.

🍓 chico-fresa Follow

I know people!

I wish Gastón was here, he'd defend me.

📸 felicityfornow Follow

@rollertrack

🎥 rollertrack Follow

Oh hi. I’m here. I just don’t post a lot anymore I’m mostly here to send memes to people in DMs.

🍓 chico-fresa Follow

Can you help defend me from these people who tease me

🎥 rollertrack Follow

I always got your back, man 🙌🏼 But tbh it’s kind of funny how you aren’t figuring out who people are 😝 Some of these are so easy, and it’s people who I personally don’t talk to a lot either irl!

🍓 chico-fresa Follow

Come on man… give me some hints

14 notes

🎀 italys-biggest-bow-collector Follow

At the convention now and I found a nice pin that suited me 💜

🎤 singing-is-who-i-am Follow

I love that so much! Wish I could have gone to the convention with you!

🌼 punk-not-dead Follow

Have you found any pin for me?

🎀 italys-biggest-bow-collector Follow

I found three pins, all that I think represent us three specifically. Guess which one is yours

🌟 supernova-number-one Follow

Please tell me you’re not at the starcon…

🎀 italys-biggest-bow-collector Follow

Oh i’m at the starcon! I’m not cosplaying or anything like that, and I’m into more niche things that I wouldn’t find here in the first place… however, I often end up finding something interesting, something I didn’t think I wanted. Like those pins, or sometimes VHS tapes of old stuff that are impossible to find, or are impossible to find with that dub.

Why? Are you there?

🎤 singing-is-who-i-am Follow

She is. She could go without even asking but not me because my dad can’t have control over her, but he refuses to let me do anything…

She’s also in cosplay >:3

🌟 supernova-number-one Follow

I’m not in cosplay!!

🎤 singing-is-who-i-am Follow

She’s in cosplay ;) You’ll know exactly that it’s her when you see her

28 notes

🎸 beanie-guitarist Follow

Hey I found something interesting while at the con!

I have no idea what the actual babygirls are in that competition but I vote for @rollerskatingonthemoon

🛼 rollerskatingonthemoon Follow

In that case I vote for you back! 😜

🎸 beanie-guitarist Follow

Yay may the best babygirl win!! 😍

💍 queenoftherink Follow

Why are you two like this

🎸 beanie-guitarist Follow

ÁMBAR IS A BABYGIRL TOO!!! VOTE FOR HER!!

💍 queenoftherink Follow

See this is why I don’t go to these cons. They make people weird.

🛼 rollerskatingonthemoon Follow

You’re missing out, we’re cosplaying Team Rocket right now and you would have made a perfect Meowth 😹

44 notes

🥸 jeremias-realperson Follow

If my stepdaughter walks out in an astronaut outfit and cat ears, and having a spacy makeup, should I be concerned about that?

Or is it just the latest fashion?

0 notes

💅🏼 ja-jazmin Follow

I have a new video idea 😁 And I wanna ask you guys here before I ask people irl.

For people with uteruses: If you told your parents you were pregnant today, how would they react?

🎤 singing-is-who-i-am Follow

*wrecks the entire house in an angry rampage* ”WHAT?! WHO DID THIS TO YOU?!”

🌟 supernova-number-one Follow

”Oh, who’s the father? Ha! Don’t tell me, it was just some random one, huh?”

Then she’d kind of accept it but make comments about me probably being unfit to raise a child (she tried to murder 3 people so idk if she’s the best example of how to be a good mother anyway)

💍 queenoftherink Follow

”I am going to assume you know what you’re doing, and that this was planned. I can provide you a room if you need to, but you have the responsibility yourself.”

It’s funny that I think that because

I live in a mansion with lots of rooms. I could be pregnant with quadruplets and everyone would have their own room

She doesn’t live here anymore

I guess I am just thinking more how she’d react back when she was the owner of the mansion. Like if she didn’t react like that then she’d maybe be supportive and then when the baby is born she tries to get custody of it or at least force me to live with her so she can be close to the child and influenser it.

But today I guess she’d just be like ”I’m happy” or something. She’s going through therapy. So am I because of the fact that she didn’t until now 😀👍

🌼 punk-not-dead Follow

”Oh that’s great, sweetie. Want a cookie?”

(Then we would not discuss it more)

🛼 rollerskatingonthemoon Follow

I think my parents would be very happy for me, although because of my young age they’d act a bit cautious. But, they’d always be supportive ☺️ If the pregnancy was planned, I think they’d trust me that I’m ready, and if the pregnancy was unplanned, I think they’d support me in whatever choice I make about it.

🏳️‍🌈 creyendoenmi Follow

”Congratulations! Have you planned this for long? Do you know the donor?”

(in my case, I’d have to plan it and use a donor)

📸 felicityfornow Follow

Mom: ”You’re kidding! No!” *hugs me* ”Ok! Have you planned it? When’s the due date? Have you picked out a name? Have you bought everything for the nursery? Are you breastfeeding or bottle feeding? And you know the father is the father? No I’m just asking, sometimes I wonder if your dad is your dad… no, I didn’t cheat on him, but you know… maybe you were switched at birth.”

Dad: ”HI PREGNANT, I’M DAD! Oh, but wait, is it granddad now? No, because it’s YOU who is pregnant and YOU are my daughter, so yes, correct response…”

And bonus: My mom’s wife

”Aww, kisses in the air! Kisses at your belly! Wow! Maybe the child actually is red haired this time, we all thought you would be, but then your dad’s genes got too strong… or I don’t know.”

58 notes

🎸 beanie-guitarist Follow

Last night I dreamt I got triplets, and I made teeny tiny beanies for them.

Anyway anyone wanna make triplets with me? 🥹

🛼 rollerskatingonthemoon Follow

I’m up for adopting triplets and we can raise them together as best friends who are co-parents 😂 Like your cousin and his band

💍 queenoftherink Follow

I’m up for having 3 children with you (although I’d settle with 2 tbh) but not at ONCE

🎸 beanie-guitarist Follow

Ok but… hear me out…

You two, and another person, are surrogates who give birth at the same time and then I’ll take all the babies and dress them up in beanies

💍 queenoftherink Follow

Yeah no, either get me pregnant and expect ONE child per pregnancy, or raise adopted children with Luna as your platonic co-parent

💅🏼 ja-jazmin Follow

Wait, why can’t he get Luna pregnant? 🤔

🛼 rollerskatingonthemoon Follow

I don’t want to

💅🏼 ja-jazmin Follow

But why not? I thought you liked him 😉

💍 queenoftherink Follow

Jazmin, to keep this as simple as possible:

Luna and Simón are best friends and despite trying out some romance in the past, that’s all. They are very close and always will be close, but platonically. That’s why they won’t try for a baby, because they don’t have that relationship. If they raise a child it will be as platonic co-parents. And that child would most likely be adopted.

But me? Well… 😏

… Simón, actually, you wanna try for triplets? I can’t promise anything but come to my room in an hour

🛼 rollerskatingonthemoon Follow

Yay I can be a nanny for the potential triplets then 😁 Or one kid. Or twins.

💍 queenoftherink Follow

And Luna please leave the house for an hour or two

🎸 beanie-guitarist Follow

Glad we solved this 🥳

Actually now I’m just excited if I end up with one kid 🤩

🍓 chico-fresa Follow

Ok guys tmi

💍 queenoftherink Follow

Your existence is tmi

27 notes

🏳️‍🌈 creyendoenmi Follow

I’m sure I can even turn straight girls a little sapphic 😏 /hj

📸 felicityfornow Follow

Hmm, has it ever happened?

🏳️‍🌈 creyendoenmi Follow

Well we can start with you. When you wanted to promote my singing and you just wrote a long poem about how my voice takes you to other worlds…

I was very flattered but also you turned into Sappho’s descendant with your descriptions 🙃

🍓 chico-fresa Follow

Wait a minute…

🏳️‍🌈 creyendoenmi Follow

Wuh-oh

🍓 chico-fresa Follow

Is this Luna’s secret side blog? Why else would Nina write about her singing?

Has Luna been dating Jim all this time?! And she fooled me by saying she ”barely interacted with me” to put me on the wrong path of figuring it out

✌🏼 arodarmivida Follow

HELP no i’m not dating Luna

🏳️‍🌈 creyendoenmi Follow

Matteo is gonna go through every person ever before even considering me

📸 felicityfornow Follow

At this point, I'm wondering if Matteo's gonna find out in the most unexpected and random way.

17 notes

[kellieblog]

6 Easy Crafts You Can Make To Help Your Local Animal Shelter

 They are trying to calm down a situation that could get out of hand by saying, "Don't worry, he's friendly."

People who take their dogs to the local animal shelter often don't know how to control them or have a strong bond with them. Yes, they do care about the dog, but when a dog doesn't pay attention to its owner, it shows that there isn't enough supervision and guidance.

Even worse is when the dog isn't friendly, even if his owner thinks he is. Most of the time, his owner can't hear him roaring because he is too far away. They might not realize that their dog is not friendly because its legs are stiff and its eyes are closed.

You are there, your dog is on a leash, and the other owner is either not there or is far away. Follow these 6 easy crafts you can make to help your local animal shelter. Since this is an on-leash area, you are following the rules. Your thoughts and heart are racing, and adrenaline is flooding your body.

Now, both your safety and that of your dog are in danger. You must either fight or run away. What do you think? Here's what happens most of the time:

• If you want to be polite, you will yell, "Please leash your dog." Your politeness is an attempt to stay calm, but the irresponsible dog owner is often unable or unwilling to control their dog. Asking them nicely may not help, but since you're the bigger person, you should start by killing them with kindness before stepping things up.

• Think of a memorable phrase. Help your local animal shelter with the following, and when someone says, "Don't worry, he's friendly," you can say, "Mine isn't!" It's funny to watch them make mistakes. But once again, they don't know how to put their dog back on a leash, if they even have one. Mama used to say, "You can't fix stupid." And it turns out that you can't fix Stupid's dog.

Dog manners have been set up to keep us and our dogs safe, but it's clear that this person doesn't care about them. No matter how well-intended my blog posts are, I can't fix this. You can't expect them to understand why the behavior is okay, like how it's the same as walking around and sniffing strangers in a mall. They won't get it because they aren't reading this post to help your local animal shelter, but you are, so you will!

You can't fix Stupid or Stupid's dog, because, as I've already said, that wouldn't help your local animal shelter. You can teach your own dog, though. At this point, that's really all you can do. Take control of your feelings, which you can manage. Don't lose your temper and teach your dog!

Do you remember your kindergarten teacher telling you to ignore a child who was bothering you? Do you know anything? It can even be used by dogs! Nothing will get worse if your dog is too busy to pay attention to a wild, off-leash dog.

Soon, the other dog will get tired of being there and leave. When a strange dog comes up to your dog, he won't react if your dog is focused on you and wants the treats he knows you give. Even though that other dog is rude, it doesn't matter because you have a strong relationship with your own dog.

Start helping your local animal shelter in a place where there aren't many other things going on, give your dog treats that are really good, and try to keep your dog's attention. Teach him to look you in the eyes, and give him praise when he does something good. Follow this routine every day.

Take your puppy outside as soon as you can make sure it will look at you. My favorite place to train is at the entrance to a grocery store. There are a lot of people coming and going, and there are also a lot of wonderful smells to distract your dog. If my dog can sit still and pay attention to me in this situation, I'm ready to go hiking.

When I walk my dogs on the trails, I am in charge of them. If we come across a dog that isn't on a leash, I call my dogs' attention and move to the side of the trail.

Some people who volunteer at your local animal shelter will walk by if they see you step off the trail while keeping your dog's attention. I talk to my dog all the time, telling them they are good dogs and giving them treats over time. The important thing is that when I do my job right, my dog rarely even notices another dog, like a vending machine.

Even though you may be mad that Stupid and his dog have chased you down the trail in the past, you should remember that you are partly to blame for this problem.

Yes, helping your local animal shelter is the right thing to do.

It's likely that you and your dog reacted in a way that bothered you or the other dog, or that it made the other dog more excited or aggressive when it was following or attacking you. They started it, so I can hear you. But that's not what's wrong. I'm trying to help you and your dog get out of there without any problems.

If you are in a place where dogs must be on a leash, and an off-leash dog comes up to you, you should call the police. If a dog's bad behavior makes you feel scared, tell the authorities.

Even if the criminal is caught or fined in the end, it is important that everyone knows they are breaking the law and putting everyone's safety at risk. Also, these people make it dangerous for all dog owners to use trails in parks.

The people in charge of the area are responsible for making sure these rules are followed, and if they don't know about a problem, they won't be there. You can still tell the police about Stupid even if you can't change them.

Everyone has a responsibility to keep things safe. People who break the law because they don't know about it or don't care will start to change society. Rude dogs and people who don't know what they're doing will become more common.

Be a good example and follow the rule when you enforce it.

[nony-bear]

Matched (Part I)

This blog and ALL posts are for people 18 + ONLY. 

I do not give permission for my works to be re-uploaded or copied in any way or form including translations. 

 Photo Found Here // Banner Made By Me 

Dividers Found Here & Here

Parings: Alpha Bucky Barnes X Omega Reader 

Warnings: ABO dynamics, slight medical speak, doctors office, blood tests, therapists / therapy mentioned, angst maybe? 

Word Count: 1562

Summary: This is part one of the series Matched. Bucky Barnes always dreamed of settling down with a mate but after decades of trauma leaving him a grumpy old man with a robotic arm he’s convinced no one could love an alpha like him. Begrudgingly he follows his therapist advice and enrolls in the Swan Program a mate matching program offered but the new aged bio-tech company Mate-Tech. 

A/N: I cannot believe I actually am finally doing this. I have had this idea for a series since even before I started writing on Tumblr and it feels so surreal now that I am fully bringing it to life. I’m incredibly nervous about sharing it with everyone because of how close it is to my heart. If I am being honest at the time of posting this I am going through quite the rough patch but I’m hoping finally doing this will help me through. It has already brought me so much joy already and I hope it can bring some of you all a little bit of happiness too. Any likes and reblog or sharing of any kind would be greatly appreciated but as always this blog and all of its content is for people ages 18 and up and never do I ever give permission for my works to be re-uploaded or copied in any way or form including translations. 

Series Masterlist 

Part II 

Bucky stares up at the building in disbelief. Was he really going to do this? Just last week, he thought this was the stupidest idea he had ever heard, committed to rejecting it the second his therapist brought it up.

"James, you want to find a mate, you've said so yourself, what's stopping you?" Dr. Douglas, who Bucky most commonly referred to as Marie, asked as she sat in her usual armchair, glasses sliding down her nose and right hand twirling her pen, no doubt about to write down notes about whatever his answer may be. Bucky didn't mind, though; he liked therapy oddly enough. After a whole life spent unable to talk about his feelings, there was something comforting in a specified time and place each week to do just that.

"I've already answered that question," Bucky grumbled, shoving his hands further down into his pockets.

Marie's lips pursed together, matching Bucky's annoyance. "Well, you must be holding back something because, to my knowledge, you have an excellent solution to all your worries, and yet you haven't taken it."

"Sorry if I'm a little hesitant about some 21st-century AI-technological-mate-matching-bullshit." He responded with a subtle eye roll.

"So you at least read some of the pamphlet I gave you?"

Bucky huffed. "Yeah, I read it."

"So what's the problem? Why are you… hesitant?" Marie asked, adding finger air quotes around Bucky's words.

"Stuff like this didn't exist in my day. There weren't places you could just go and be hooked up to some machines, answer a few questions, and then a compatible mate be hand-selected for you. You had to go out there like a real alpha and find your mate yourself."

"And how is that working out for you, James?" Marie asked skeptically. "You've been in here for months now lamenting over never finding a mate, whether it be due to your past, or your arm, or whatever may have you. You said you don't feel like an Alpha because you don't feel in control…. So take control.

Bucky now repeats those words in his head over and over again. Take control.

He nods to himself and walks into the building with a deep breath.

Inside the door, he is met with a large reception area, white, sterile, medical-looking, and doing absolutely nothing to calm his nerves.

He walks to the large desk in the back center of the room framed by elevators on either side, leading up to what looked like dozens of floors on the outside and two betas working behind it.  

"Um, excuse me?" Bucky asks once he's approached the desk.

"Hi, is there something I can help you with, sir?" The taller of the two betas asks, standing up from her chair at her computer. She's pretty, all soft skin and bedroom eyes, but Bucky doesn't quite notice due to her overbearing scent filling the space between them.

During his time with Hydra, they did everything they could to prohibit him from smelling or being smelled and anything else that left him more than a weapon of flesh for them to use. Now even the tiniest bit of unpleasant notes within someone's scent slaps him in the face at first whiff.  

"Uh yeah, I have a consultation for uh…." Bucky stumbles over his words, half embarrassed to admit what he's here for. "The swan program…."  

The beta smiles almost as if she wants to comment on a man like Bucky seeking out such a service. "Of course, can I have your name please?" Of course, someone like her wouldn't understand. She looks perfect, like one of the women on the pamphlet Marie gave him. Bucky wonders if she would still be so confused if she saw his arm or realized who he was.

After getting checked in, the beta sends Bucky up to the 3rd floor to begin his consultation and officially start his matching journey.

"Okay, Miss Y/L/N, we have all the paperwork you submitted before coming into today, but I just need to double-check some things before we get started, okay?" The technician, Anne, asks you as she rolls her wheeled stool over to her computer.

"Sure, of course." You agree, smiling but also nervously picking at the paper sheet between your body and the muted teal examination chair.  

"Great!" Anne replies before going over our full name, age, date of birth, blood type, allergies, and the rest of your vital information. "Okay, and we have your designation as omega, and your preference for matches as alpha males unless there are stronger results for beta males, is that correct?" You nod, and she continues down the list inwardly, cringing at yourself, feeling quite vulnerable as you're broken down into a bulleted list. "And we have that you are available for the next available program, which is this weekend, is that correct?"

"Yes, this weekend works great." You nod.

"Great, thank you!" Anne says, typing something on her computer before standing up and putting on some examination gloves. "Okay, so now we can get to the more bio-med-tech part of the consultation. And don't worry, I promise to tell you everything I do before I do it, and none of it should hurt, except maybe a pinch when I take your blood."

"Sounds good." You smile, albeit slightly nervous, as she begins walking you through the process of taking your blood.

"So, do you have any questions about the program?" Anne asks, trying to distract you.

You look away from her and the procedure at hand. "A lot, actually. The program is a little secretive. I'm not really sure what to expect." You confess.

Anne chuckles and finishes, placing a bandage on you and turning to her medical equipment on the desk. "That's understandable, but don't worry. Once you get back here on Saturday, your program guides will tell you everything you need to know. The secrecy is only to prevent other companies from copying our program. It's not scary at all."

"Have you been through the program?"

"Not the Swan program exactly, but I was a volunteer in the trial runs. It's where I met my wife." She smiles. "Okay, now I'm just going to place these little pads attached to these wires on your temples and the scent glands on your neck and wrists, okay? Again it shouldn't hurt at all."  

You allow her to place the sticky pieces of plastic onto your skin, calmed by her explanations of each step and openness about the program. "Wow," you smile, "That's wonderful."

"Thank you." She smiles. "Now lie back for me." She guides you to recline in the chair. "Perfect, now you just lay there for the next 15 minutes, and I will be back to unhook you and send you off with all your paperwork."

You lie there looking up at the clouds and scenery painted on the sky, purposefully placed for you to look at during this part of your consultation. You worry about the weekend and all that is to come for you. And after years and years of trying to look for a mate, being largely unsuccessful, and the glimmers of hope turning into hard, bitter memories, you hope this will be it.

At first, the thought of a mate matching program felt ridiculous, perhaps even pathetic, but the more you researched, the more you couldn't deny your interest. With scientific backing and thousands of 5-star reviews late one night, you took the plunge and submitted an application. And now, here you are at your consultation, your last step before entering the official program.

You've completed pages and pages of paperwork outlining your medical history, the details of your personality, and your hopes and dreams of the perfect mate. The consultation you were currently at was to check your vitals to match your profile and collect samples of your scent. Although you didn't know a ton about the actual program, you knew that the company prided itself on its scent technology and data analysis software. Not that you really knew what any of that stuff really meant.  

After Anne comes back in and removes the pads from your skin, making sure to take all the sticky adhesive with them, she gives you all of your paperwork regarding what time to be back here on Saturday, where to go, what to bring, etc. before sending you on your way.

You walk out of the examination room and down the hall of the 3rd floor towards the elevator, pushing the button and waiting for the doors to open.

When they do, you step inside and press the down button. You can't help but to notice the lingering smell of an alpha in the small compartment and blush to yourself, thinking that if half the alpha's in the program smell this amazing, you'll have nothing to worry about.

Bucky, who just exited the elevator moments ago, sits patiently awaiting his turn for his consultation with a technician named Anne.

Are you looking for your true mate?

Consider Mate-Tech's newest mate matching program - The Swan Program!

In just one weekend, find the mate you've been searching for using our most successful techniques and cutting-edge technology.

A one of a kind program open to anyone 18 and older, all designations welcome!

Call XXX-XXX-SWAN or go to matetech.com/swan today for more information.

Mate-Tech: Where bonds begin.

No Pressure tags of some friends who might be interested (If you don’t want to be tagged no worries just let me know!): @dadplease​ // @lavendercitizen​ // @marc-rogers​ // @starksbabie​ // @honeychicana​ // @mianorth​ // @the-soulofdevil​ // @purple-babygirl​ // @sweet-dreams-steve​ // @slutforstevie​ // @stevesbestgirl​ // @donutloverxo​ // @hannahshattuck​ // @selfcarecap​ // @worksby-d​ // @saiyanprincessswanie​ // @tuiccim​

[quicksandblock]

MCYT Demographic Survey Part 2 RESULTS

IT’S TIME!!!

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who participated! 1,654 people total responded to this - about four and a half times as many respondents as the first survey. It’s honestly incredible. I’m so happy the rest of you are as interested as I am in this stuff :D

The increased turnout is also why these results are being posted two days later than I’d intended. I want to give a HUGE thank you to my friend @quincepastey​ and my sibling @orestes-swimming​ for helping me out, and by helping I do mean they did basically all of the technical stuff for me, because my knowledge of spreadsheets was not up to the task. So thank you to Cupid for organizing all the data from questions 3 and 4 into something comprehensible for me, and thank you to Kal for making the charts! They are absolutely the MVPs and everyone reading this should go check them out. Thank you guys so much <3

Reblogs of this post are very appreciated. It would be awesome if the info about the results could reach everyone who submitted a response, so if you reblogged my first post about this survey, please consider reblogging this one as well!

For your convenience, here’s a link to the results of the first survey I did six months ago. Now - on to the results!

Question 1: What is your age range?

Compared to the results of the first survey, we can see that things have changed a bit! Specifically, the fandom has shifted just a little bit older. The solid majority of the fandom is still in the 15-17 year old range, but it’s gone down from almost half to closer to 40%. Almost a third of the fandom are ages 18-20, up from close to a fifth six months ago. 21-25 year olds have increased from about 10% to about 14%. And the youngest segment, 13-14 year olds, have gone from almost 20% of the fandom down to 12% - the sharpest change of all.

Finally, nearest and dearest to my own heart, there are now 26 whole people in the fandom aged 26-30 and 9 people aged 30+. Old Squad is growing, folks. We are... the 2% 😎 Special shoutout to the person who said their 15 year old kid got them into the fandom. I hope you know just how cool you are.

These results are interesting, but it’s also impossible to say how accurate the data is. This survey and the previous one were only posted on my blog, and they only reached a wider audience through the reblogs of my followers. So do these changes reflect actual changes in the demographics of the fandom as a whole, or is it just that my followers (and the people who follow them) have shifted older? To try to avoid this bias in the future, I may reach out to some well-known younger bloggers and ask them to reblog the next survey I do so that I can reach a more even audience.

Question 2: What is your gender?

Apologies for the small text, but there were so many unique write-in answers that I wanted to include them all. You may want to open the image in a separate tab for better quality.

In contrast to the age question, the gender spread of the fandom has remained pretty much the same. About half the fandom is still female, the nonbinary crowd has increased from 20% to 25%, 7% of us are male, almost 7% are genderfluid, and about 5% are agender. Just like last time, most of the write-in responses fell into the vague categories of either genderqueer or questioning.

No surprises on this one! The fandom continues to be overwhelmingly female and queer. Next time I think I’ll include genderqueer and questioning as options to try to catch some of those people into a formal category. All y’all are so valid, especially the person who wrote in their gender as “soup” <3

The results for questions 3 and 4 will be under a cut, because I don’t want to completely destroy people’s dashes.

Before I get into the last two questions, a couple notes. First, I want to explain how I came up with the list of creators, since a lot of people were either excited or disappointed by the fact that a few different people were on there.

On the last survey, this question was a write-in, and I had to transcribe and collate all the answers by hand to come up with the actual number of people who followed each creator. For this survey, I simply took the list that came out of the previous one and pasted it in! I also added a few people who no one wrote in six months ago but who are much more prominent now (Ranboo being the biggest example). So if you were excited to see your favorite small creator listed as an option, they were there because someone wrote them in last time! And if you wrote in your favorite small creator here, they’ll be an option on the next survey. The list is entirely crowdsourced and it will expand with each survey.

That said, the same also applies for more controversial creators. Specifically, I’m talking about CallMeCarson. Several people questioned my decision to keep him on the list - and to be honest, I considered taking him out. But in the end I decided to leave him in as an option for the sake of completeness and consistency with the previous survey. I want to emphasize that this is not me condoning his actions. But for the sake of the data, I felt that it was best to leave him in.

That said, let’s move on to questions 3 and 4!

Question 3: What creator(s) do you primarily follow?

So, it’s harder to compare with the previous survey on this one, and that’s purely because on the previous survey I didn’t have the help I did here. The chart I was able to make for the results back in October was frankly trash. Also, the fact that I split “followed creators” into two questions - primarily and casually followed - definitely throws things off. However, we can still do a certain amount of comparison!

The most obvious change is Ranboo. He straight up was not on the previous survey at all - I think he’d been streaming for less than a month at the time. Now, about 55% of respondents listed him as someone they primarily follow. The Dream SMP itself has also jumped dramatically. Previously, about 5% of people wrote in Dream SMP. That has increased to over half. Quackity has gone from less than 2% to about 30%. Karl has gone from 4% to 30%. Phil has gone from about 8% to a little under 50%. The SBI have jumped from 11% to over 40%.

Techno has gone from about 50% to over 60%. Tommy has gone from 45% to over 55%. Wilbur has jumped from 43% to 55%. Tubbo has remained steady at about 38%.

Dream has apparently dropped some of his following percentage-wise, falling from 50% to about 35%. However, George, Sapnap, and the Dream Team itself have all jumped from 10-12% to almost 30%.

I’m not going to go over the rest of the list, because that would just get way too long. However, I will drop a link to the spreadsheets of data for this survey and the previous one, so anyone who wants to can do some comparison of their own!

Question 4: What creators do you casually follow?

I won’t do as detailed of a comparison on this question, because there’s nothing to compare it to - this question wasn’t on the previous survey. However, it’s interesting to see how many more people follow Fundy, Nihachu, BadBoyHalo, Captain Puffy, Eret, Awesamdude, and Jack Manifold casually rather than as a primary favorite. Out of the top twelve, Karl, Quackity, Phil, and Tubbo are the only ones who don’t have a major discrepancy between the amount of people who follow them casually versus primarily.

I would be curious to hear people’s thoughts on why that’s the case! Personally, I would guess it’s a combination of each of their approaches to lore on the Dream SMP, the frequency and times of day that they stream, and the people they tend to make content with and be associated with by the fandom. I may go into that more later, but this post is already very long, so I’ll hold off for now. Here’s a link to this question’s spreadsheet for anyone who wants to take a closer look!

...And that’s a wrap! Good grief, this got long. Kudos to anyone who actually read the whole thing because I know my attention span would be challenged. I’m already thinking about the next survey - a couple people suggested that I add in questions about orientation and nationality, and while I want to keep the survey pretty tight in its scope, I am considering it. It would be even more data to process but it would be interesting to know!

I would love to hear people’s thoughts on these results! I’m only one person, so I know there’s interesting stuff I must have missed. Please, please feel free to reblog with your thoughts and observations! A lot of work went into this (both from me and from Cupid and Kal! Thank you guys again!), so I’m really hoping to hear what people think about it :D

I plan to reblog this and reply to some of the things people wrote in at the end, so stay tuned for that. And once again: thank you all for your interest in this project of mine <3 See you with another one in six months!

[impostoradult]

Media Market Research (and why its undermining all the things you love)

Trying to understand what is dysfunctional about Hollywood is an epic task, and the answers are like the stars – arguably infinite. Hollywood is dysfunctional for literally more reasons than I could count.

But market research plays a fairly heavy role in its dysfunction (IMO) and the time has finally come for me to add my professional two cents about this issue. (This rant of mine has been building for a while, FYI. Hence why it is so...comprehensive. There is a tl;dr section towards the bottom, if you want the high level summary)

*** For the last 4+ years I’ve worked in the field of market research, almost exclusively with major media makers like Warner Bros., NBCU, AMC/BBCA, Viacom, FOX (before Disney acquired them), A+E, etc. (this past year I quit the job where I was doing this work for a variety of reasons, many of which will become clear as you keep reading, but I am still listed as a consultant on the company website):   https://www.kresnickaresearch.com/who/ (Rachel)

And just for comparison, here is a Halloween selfie I took 4 years ago and posted on my blog, so you can see I am who I say I am. 

I know a fair amount about how market research on major media franchises is conducted and how it influences production, and a lot of these choices can also be at least somewhat tied back to the massive flaws in the market research industry and its impact. *** First, at the highest level, you need to understand market research in general is not well-conducted much of the time. Even the people doing a reasonably good job at it are VERY limited in doing it well because of financial constraints (clients don’t want to spend more than they have to), time constraints (clients want everything done as fast as humanely possible) and just the inherent problems within the industry that are decades old and difficult to fix. For example, all market research ‘screens’ participants to make sure they qualify to participate (whether it is a mass survey, a focus group, a one-on-one interview, etc.). So, we screen people based on demographics like race, gender, age, household income, to get representative samples. But people are also screened based on their consumption habits. You don’t want to bring someone into a focus group about reality TV if they don’t watch reality TV. They aren’t going to have anything useful to say. 

However, a lot of the people who participate in market research have made a ‘side-gig’ out of it and they know how to finesse the process. Basically, they’ve learned how to lie to get into studies that they aren’t a good match for because most market research is paid, and they want the money. So, a lot of TV and film market research is being done on people who don’t actually (or at least don’t regularly) watch those shows or movies or whatever but have learned how to lie well enough in these screening processes to make it through. And because of the aforementioned time and money issue, clients don’t want to spend the time or money to actually find GOOD participants. They just accept that as an inevitable part of the market research process and decide not to let it bother them too much. So, a fair number of the people representing YOU as a media consumer are people who may not be watching Supernatural (for example) at all or who watch a rerun occasionally on TNT but haven’t been watching consistently or with ANY amount of investment whatsoever. You can see why that creates very skewed data. But that’s just the tip of the skewed iceberg. *** Second, media market research is conducted in line with the norms of market research more broadly, and this is a huge problem because media is a very atypical product. How people engage with media is far more complex and in depth than how they engage with a pair of jeans, a car, or a coffee maker. There are only so many things that matter to people when it comes to liking or not liking a coffee maker, for example. Is it easy/intuitive to use? How much space does it take it on my counter? How expensive is it? Does it brew the coffee well? Maybe does it match my décor/kitchen aesthetic? Can I make my preferred brand of coffee in it? The things you as a consumer are going to care about when it comes to a coffee maker are limited, fairly easy to anticipate in advance, and also easy to interpret (usually). How people mentally and emotionally approach MEDIA? Whole other universe of thing. Infinitely more complex. And yet it is studied (more or less) as if it is also a coffee maker. This is one of the many reasons I decided to leave the media market research field despite my desire to have some ability to positively influence the process. As so often seems to be the case, I fought the law and the law won. I could never make the other people I worked with in the industry understand that the questions they were asking were not all that useful a lot of the time and they weren’t getting to the heart of the matter. They were just following industry standards because they didn’t know any better and none of them want to admit they don’t REALLY know what they’re doing. Which leads me to point 3. *** Most of the people doing this research don’t have any expertise in media or storytelling specifically. They are typically trained as social scientists in the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, or math/statistics. And many of them do not have any kind of specialization or education in media/storytelling beyond the English classes they took in high school and the one Media Studies course they took as an elective in college. Most of them have a very unsophisticated understanding of narrative structure, thematics, tropes, subtext, etc. They mainly think in terms of genres at the VERY broadest level. Also, not infrequently, they don’t watch or have much knowledge of the shows they are supposed to be doing research on, beyond what they’ve read on IMDb or Wikipedia or what is generally common knowledge. Unless they by chance happen to watch the shows themselves (which often they don’t) they often know very little about the shows they are crafting these questions about. Again, partly because they think it is like the coffee maker, and you don’t need to understand it in any depth to research it. (I know this must sound insane to you as avid media consumers, but that is the general attitude among those who do market research) There is such a lack of sophistication in how people in the business side of the industry understand media and storytelling. Most of them are either MBAs or social scientists and their training has not prepared them to examine fictional works with the kind of depth that people in the Humanities (who are specifically trained to study texts) have. Somehow, despite the fact that the Humanities is all about understanding texts, that is the one discipline they make almost no use of in the business side of Hollywood. And boy howdy does it show. *** Point 4 – average consumers CANNOT ARTICULATE WHY THEY LIKE THINGS. Particularly media things. I know this sounds condescending, but it is my honest observation. It is unbelievably hard to get people to have enough self-awareness to explain why they actually like things, especially things as mentally and emotionally complex as media. What typically happens when you ask people why they like a TV show or movie, for example? They will tell you what they most NOTICE about the TV show or movie, or what is distinctive to them about it (which may or may not have anything to do with what they actually LIKE about it). They will say things like “I like the genre”, “I think it’s funny”, “The car chases are exciting”, “I want to see the detective solve the puzzle.” Sometimes you can get them to talk about what they find relatable about it, if you push them a little. But often they leave it at either the level of literal identity (young black woman), basic personality traits (she’s a social butterfly and so am I) or situations they’ve personally experienced (I relate to this story of a man losing his father to cancer because I lost a close family member to cancer). But the vast, vast, vast majority of them can’t go to the deeper level of: a) Why X representation of a young black woman feels accurate/authentic/relatable and Y representation doesn’t b) Why it matters to me that X,Y,Z aspects of my personality, identity, experience get reflected in media whereas I don’t really care about seeing A,B,C aspects of my personality, identity, or experience reflected in media c) How and why they are relating to characters when they can’t see the literal connection between their identity/experience and the character’s identity/experience. (For example, many people have argued that women often relate to Dean Winchester because a lot of his struggles and past negative experiences are more stereotypical of women – being forced to raise a younger sibling on behalf of an actual parent, being seen and treated as beautiful/sexually desirable but vacuous/unintelligent, his body being treated as an instrument for a more powerful group to quite literally possess, etc. Part of the reason Supernatural has always been such a mystery/problem for the CW and Warner Bros is they could never crack the code at this level. Never.) Part of the reason they can’t crack these codes is average people CANNOT give you that kind of feedback in a survey or a focus group, or even an in-depth interview (much of the time). They just don’t have the self-awareness or the vocabulary to get it at that level. Let alone asking them to articulate why Game of Thrones is compelling to them in an era where wealth disparity is creating a ruling class that is fundamentally incompetent at maintaining a just/functional society, which is especially concerning at this particular moment, given the existential threat we face due to climate change. And the truth is, that IS part of what people – even average people – are responding to in Game of Thrones. But what they’ll tell you when you do market research on it is: they like the dragons, they like the violence, they relate to Tyrion Lannister being a smart mouth, maybe they’ll say they like the moral ambiguity of many of the conflicts (if they are more sophisticated than average). But the ‘Dean Winchester is heavily female coded despite his veneer of ultra-masculinity’ or the ‘Game of Thrones is a prescient metaphor for the current political dynamics and fissures of modern western society’ is the level you ACTUALLY need to get to. And most market research can’t get you that because the people ASKING the questions don’t know what to ask to get to this level, and most of the respondents couldn’t give you the answers even IF you were asking them the right questions (which usually you are not) And I’m not saying average people are dumb because they can’t do this. But it requires practice, it requires giving the matter a great deal of in-depth thought, and most people just don’t care enough about it to do that while taking a market research survey. (I know this is going to feel counter-intuitive to people on Tumblr. But you have to remember, you are NOT average media consumers. You are highly atypical media consumers who have far more self-awareness and a much more sophisticated engagement with media than the average person watching TV. If you didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be here talking about it in the first place) Point 4.1 – People also lie/misrepresent their own experiences to market researchers because they want to maintain certain self-narratives. You have no idea how many people would get disqualified from our surveys for saying they watched less than 5 hours of TV a week. And sure, that might actually be true for a few of them. But if you watch TV with any regularity at all (which most people in modern America do) you probably watch more than 5 hours a week. The problem is, people think it makes them sound lazy to say they watch 15-20 hours a week, even though that’s about 2-3 hours a day (which actually isn’t THAT high). People lie and misrepresent their behaviors, thoughts and feelings because it can be socially uncomfortable to admit you do what you actually do or feel how you actually feel, even in the context of an anonymous survey, let alone a focus group or a one-on-one interview. People want to make themselves look good to THEMSELVES and to the researchers asking them questions. But that makes the market research data on media (and lots of other things) very questionable. For example, one finding we saw more than once in the surveys I was involved in conducting was people would radically downplay how much the romance elements of a story mattered to them, even large portions of female respondents. When we would ask people in surveys what parts of the story they were most invested in, romances ALWAYS came out among the lowest ranked elements. And yet, any passing familiarity with fandom would tell you that finding is just WRONG. It’s wrong. People are just flat out lying about how much that matters to them because of the negative connotations we have around being invested in romance. And never mind the issue of erotic/sexual content. (I don’t mean sexual identity here, I mean sexy content). The only people who will occasionally cop to wanting the erotic fan service is young men (and even they are hesitant to do so in market research) and women frequently REFUSE to admit that stuff in market research, or they radically downplay how much it matters to them and in what ways. There is still so much stigma towards women expressing sexuality in that way. Not to mention, you have to fight tooth and nail to even include question about erotic/sexual content because oftentimes the clients don’t even want to go there at all, partly because it is awkward for everyone involved to sit around crafting market research questions to interrogate what makes people hot and bothered. That’s socially awkward for the researchers doing the research and the businesspeople who have to sit in rooms and listen to presentations about why more women find Spock sexier than Kirk. (Which was a real thing that happened with the original Star Trek, and the network couldn’t figure out why) Aside from people not have enough deeper level self-awareness to get at what they really like about media content, they also will lie or misrepresent certain things to you because they are trying to maintain certain self-narratives and are socially performing that version of themselves to researchers. *** Point 5 – Qualitative data is way more useful for understanding people’s relationships to media. However, quantitative data is way more valued and relied upon both due to larger market research industry standards and because quantitative data is just seen as harder/more factual than qualitative data. A lot of media market research involves gathering both qualitative and quantitative data and reporting jointly on both. (Sometimes you only do one or the other, depending on your objectives, but doing both is considered ‘standard’ and higher quality). However, quantitative data is heavily prioritized in reporting and when there is a conflict between what they see in qualitative versus quantitative data, the quant data is usually relied upon to be the more accurate of the two. This is understandable to an extent, because quantitative surveys usually involve responses from a couple thousand participants, whereas qualitative data involves typically a few dozen participants at most, depending on whether you did focus groups, individual interviews, or ‘diaries’/ethnography. The larger sample is considered more reliable and more reflective of ‘the audience’ as a whole. However, quantitative surveys usually have the flattest, least nuanced data, and they can only ever reflect what questions and choices people in the survey were given. In something like focus groups or individual interviews or ethnographies, you still structure what you ask people, but they can go “off script.” They can say things you never anticipated (as a researcher) and can explain themselves and their answers with more depth. In a survey, participants can only “say” what they survey lets them say based on the questions and question responses that are pre-baked for them. And as I’ve already explained, a lot of times these quantitative surveys are written by people with no expertise in media, fiction, or textual analysis, and so they often are asking very basic, not very useful questions. In sum, the data that is the most relied upon is the least informative, least nuanced data. It is also the MOST likely to reflect the responses of people who don’t actually qualify for the research but have become good at scamming the system to make extra money. With qualitative research, they are usually a little more careful screening people (poorly qualified participants still make it through, but not as often as with mass surveys, where I suspect a good 35% of participants, at least, probably do not actually qualify for the research and are just working the system). 

Most commonly, when market research gets reported to business decision-makers, it highlights the quantitative data, and uses the qualitative data to simply ‘color in’ the quantitative data. Give it a face, so to speak. Qualitative data is usually supplemental to quant data and used more to make the reports ‘fun’ and ‘warm’ because graphs and charts and stats by themselves are boring to look at in a meeting. (I’m not making this up, I can’t tell you how many times I was told to make adjustments on how things were reported on because they didn’t want to bore people in the meeting). (Sub-point – it is also worth noting that you can’t report on anything that doesn’t fit easily on a power point slide and isn’t easily digestible to any random person who might pick it up and read it. The amount of times I was told to simplify points and dumb things down so it could be made ‘digestible’ for a business audience, I can’t even tell you. It was soul crushing and another reason I stopped doing this job full time. I had to make things VERY dumb for these business audiences, which often meant losing a lot of the point I was actually trying to make) Point 5.1 – Because of the way that representative sampling works, quantitative data can be very misleading, particularly in understanding audience/fandom sentiments about media. As I’m sure most of you know, sampling is typically designed to be representative of the population, broadly speaking. So, unless a media company is specifically out to understand LGBTQ consumers or Hispanic/Latinx consumers, it will typically sample using census data as a template and represent populations that way. Roughly 50/50 male/female. Roughly even numbers in different age brackets, roughly representative samplings of the racial make-up of the country, etc. (FYI, they do often include a non-binary option in the gender category these days, but it usually ends up being like 5 people out of 2000, which is not enough of a sample to get statistical significance for them as a distinct group)   There is a good reason to do this, even when a show or movie has a disproportionately female audience, or young audience. Because they need enough sample in all of the “breaks” (gender, race, age, household income, etc.) to be able to make statistically sound statements about each subgroup. If you only have 35 African American people in your sample of 1000, you can’t make any statistically sound statements about that African American cohort. The sample is just too small. So, they force minimums/quotas in a lot of the samples, to ensure they can make statistically sound statements about all the subgroups they care about. They use ratings data to understand what their audience make up actually is. (Which also has major failings, but I’ll leave that alone for the minute) With market research, they are not usually looking to proportionately represent their audience, or their fandom; they are looking to have data they can break in the ways they want to break it and still have statistically significant subgroups represented. But that means that when you report on the data as a whole sample – which you often do – it can be very skewed towards groups who don’t make up as large a portion of the show’s actual audience, or even if they do, they don’t tend to be the most invested, loyal, active fans. Men get weighted equally to women, even when women make up 65% of the audience, and 80% of the active fandom. Granted, they DO break the data by gender, and race, and age, etc. and if there are major differences in how women versus men respond, or younger people versus older people, they want to know that...sometimes. But here’s where things get complex. So, if you are doing a sample of Supernatural viewers. And you do the standard (US census-based) sampling on a group of 2000 respondents (a pretty normal sample size in market research). ~1000 are going to be female. But with something they call “interlocking quotas” the female sample is going to be representative of the other groupings to a degree. So, the female sample will have roughly equal numbers of all the age brackets (13-17, 18-24, 25-34, etc.). And it will have roughly 10% non-heterosexual respondents, and so on. They do this to ensure that these breaks aren’t too conflated with each other. (For example, if your female sample is mostly younger and your male sample is mostly older, how do you know whether it is the gender or the age that is creating differences in their responses? You don’t. So, you have to make sure that all the individual breaks (gender, race, age) have a good mix of the other breaks within them, so groups aren’t getting conflated) But what that means is, Supernatural, whose core fandom is (at a conservative guess) 65% younger, queer, women, gets represented in a lot of statistical market research sampling as maybe 50-100 people, in a 2000-person survey. 50-100 people can barely move the needle on anything in a 2000-person survey. Furthermore, usually in the analysis of data like this, you don’t go beyond looking at 2 breaks simultaneously. So you may look at young female respondents as a group, or high income male respondents, or older white respondents, but you rarely do more than 2 breaks combined. And the reason for that is, by the time you get down to 3 breaks or more (young, Hispanic, women) you usually don’t have enough sample to make statistically significant claims. (It also just takes longer to do those analyses and as I explained in the beginning, they are always rushing this stuff). To do several breaks at a time you’d have to get MUCH larger samples, and that’s too expensive for them. And again, I want to stress, this type of sampling isn’t intended to sinisterly erase anyone. Kind of the opposite. It is intended to make sure most groups have enough representation in the data that you can make sound claims about them on the subgroup level. The problem is that it can create a very skewed sense of their overall audience sentiment when they take the data at ‘face value’ so to speak, and don’t weight segments based on viewership proportion, or fandom engagement, etc. Point 5.2 – Which leads me to my next point, which is that fandom activity that doesn’t have a dollar amount attached to it doesn’t make you a ‘valuable’ segment in their minds. One of the breaks they ALWAYS ask for in data like this is high income people, and people who spend a lot of MONEY on their media consumption. And they do prioritize those people’s responses and data quite a bit.   And guess what – young women aren’t usually high-income earners, and although some of them are high spenders on media, high spending on media and media related merch skews toward higher income people just because they HAVE more disposable income. Older white men are usually the highest income earners (absolutely no surprise) and they are more likely in a lot of cases to report spending a lot on the media they care about. Having expendable income makes you more important in the eyes of people doing market research than if you’ve spent every day for the last 10 years blogging excessively about Supernatural. They don’t (really) care about how much you care. They care about how much money you can generate for them. And given that young audiences don’t watch TV live anymore, and they give all their (minimal) expendable income to Netflix and Hulu, you with your Supernatural blog and your 101 essays about Destiel is all but meaningless to many of them (from a business standpoint) Now, some of them kind of understand that online fandom matters to the degree that fandom spreads. Fandom creates fandom. But if the fandom you are helping to create is other young, queer women with minimal income who only watch Supernatural via Netflix, well, that’s of very limited value to them as well. I don’t want to suggest they don’t care about you at ALL. Nor do I want to suggest that the “they” we are talking about is even a cohesive “they.” Different people in the industry have different approaches to thinking about fandom, consumer engagement and strategy, market research and how it ought to be understood/used, and so on. They aren’t a monolith. BUT, they are, at the end of the day, a business trying to make money. And they are never going to place the value of your blogging ahead of the concrete income you can generate for them. (Also, highly related to my point about people lying, men are more likely to SAY they have higher incomes than they do, because it’s an ego thing for them. And women are more likely to downplay how much money they spend on ‘frivolous’ things like fandom because of the social judgement involved. Some of the money gender disparity you see in media market research is real, but some of it is being generated by the gender norms people are falsely enacting in market research– men being breadwinners, women wanting to avoid the stereotype of being frivolous with money) *** In sum/tl;dr: Point 1 – Market research in general is not well conducted because of a variety of constraints including time, money, and the historical norms of how the industry operates (e.g., there being a large subsection of almost professionalized respondents who know how to game the system for the financial incentives) Point 2 – Media is a highly atypical kind of product being studied more or less as if it were equivalent to a coffeemaker or a pair of jeans. Point 3 – Most of the people studying media consumption in the market research field have no expertise or background in media, film, narrative, storytelling, etc. They are primarily people who were trained as social scientists and statisticians, and they aren’t well equipped to research media properties and people’s deeper emotional attachment and meaning-making processes related to media properties. Point 4(etc.) – Average consumers typically don’t have enough self-awareness or the vocabulary to explain the deep, underlying reasons they like pieces of media. Furthermore, when participating in market research, people lie and misrepresent their thoughts, behaviors, and emotional responses for a variety of reasons including social awkwardness and preserving certain self-narratives like “I’m above caring about dumb, low-brow things like romance.” Point 5 (etc.) – Quantitative data is treated as way more meaningful, valuable, and ‘accurate’ than qualitative data, and this is a particular problem with media market research because of how varied and complex people’s reactions to media can be. Also, the nature of statistical sampling, and how it is done, can massively misrepresent audience sentiments toward media and fail to apprehend deeper fandom sentiments and dynamics. There is also a strong bias towards the responses of high income/high spending segments, which tend to be older and male and white. Side but important point – Research reports are written to be as entertaining and digestible as possible, which sounds nice in theory, but in practice it often means you lose much of the substance you are trying to communicate for the sake of not boring people or making them feel stupid/out of their depth. (Because god forbid you make some high-level corporate suit feel stupid) *** What can be done about this? Well, the most primary thing I would recommend is for you to participate in market research, particularly if you are American (there’s a lot of American bias in researching these properties, even when they have large international fanbases). However, some international market research is done and I recommend looking into local resources for participation, where ever you are. If you are American, there are now several market research apps you can download to your smart phone and participate in paid market research through (typically paid via PayPal). Things like dscout and Surveys On the Go. And I know there are more. You should also look into becoming panelists for focus groups, particularly if you live near a large metropolitan area (another bias in market research). Just Google it and you should be able to figure it out fairly easily. Again, it is PAID, and your perspective will carry a lot more weight when it is communicated via a focus group or a dscout project, versus when it is shouted on Twitter. However, that’s merely a Band-Aid on the bigger issue, which I consider to be the fact that businesspeople think the Humanities is garbage, even when they make their living off it. There is virtually no respect for the expertise of fictional textual analysis, or how it could help Hollywood make better content. And I don’t know what the fix is for that. I spent 4 years of my life trying to get these people to understand what the Humanities has to offer them, and I got shouted down and dismissed so many times I stopped banging my head against that wall. I gave up. They don’t listen, mostly because conceding to the value of deep-reading textual analysis as a way to make better content would threaten the whole system of how they do business. And I mean that literally. So many people’s jobs, from the market researchers to the corporate strategists to the marketing departments to the writers/creatives to the C-level executives, would have to radically shift both their thinking and their modes of business operation and the inertia of ‘that’s the way it’s always been done’ is JUST SO POWERFUL. I have no earthly idea how to stop that train, let alone shift it to an entirely different track. BTW, if you want the deeper level of analysis of why I can’t stop rewatching Moneyball now that it’s been added to Netflix, the above paragraph should give you a good hint