I really like fictional couples that actually enjoy spending time with each other. It seems like such a simple, mundane thing. But, often, I see fictional couples who are completely enamored and dramatic and willing to die for each other, which isfine.But like… do they enjoy hanging out? Do they have private jokes and would they be friends even if they weren’t in love? It feels like such a basic thing, but it’s something that I actually don’t see that often. And it feels so refreshing and honest compared to these over-dramatic romeo and juliet-esque romances. Just two people who become good friends and becausethey enjoy each other’s presence so much it grows into a strong attraction. It feels more real and tangible than two attractive people meeting and “falling in love at first sight” - like, of course, you fell in love at first sight! You’re both supermodels! Sorry, can’t relate.
weird anti ideology finally leaking out into the mainstream
I’m so exhausted by all of this.
I think we’re seeing the consequences of surveillance, honestly. Like they’re policing themselves this heavily because they’ve never had privacy before, not from their parents, not from their peers, not from advertisers, not online, nothing. And with all that constant and conflicting criticism, there are no consistent rules for when they’re going to be attacked so they’re responding by making elaborate, false rule-sets as a coping strategy. LIke “maybe, if I act this way, I’ll finally be safe” but it doesn’t work so they get more desperate.
Add on all the school shootings in the US, inaction on climate change, and a pandemic that was allowed to rip through schools unchecked, kids and young adults have a deep sense that their lives are disposable. And they’re right! Our society is systematically hostile and abusive to children in so many ways! However, the only child abuse society gets riled up about is pedophilia. Adults act like pedophilia is the only kind of child abuse that counts as abuse.
And that’s why I think we are seeing kids stretching the meaning of pedophilia. They are looking for language that encompasses all of the kinds of abuse that they’re experiencing. All of the emotional abuse of children is normalized, quite a bit of physical abuse is normalized, and the lack of privacy, agency, and bodily autonomy is all socially enforced. The truth is that all of these other forms of abuse can and do lead to sexual abuse, too. These kids are on to something, but it’s getting deflected and warped by the fact that they still live in the dangerous environments they’ve been abused in. I think more specific language will be empowering here and will also bridge the gap between the current generation of young people and other anti-violence movements.
So if you are a child or young adult who resonates with any of the above, I want you to know that as a child abuse survivor, I believe you when you say that you’ve been abused. I think the anxiety about fandom websites and queer people and kink is misplaced because strangers don’t usually have the structural power and access to you to hurt you but I know that there are people in you life who dohave that power and I’m worried about you. I think ao3/queer/kink are just the issues that you feel safest speaking up about. I see you speaking up and I think there’s more going on.
So what I can do for you, as a random stranger on the internet, is give you some resources and language so you can start to articulate your experiences and find solidarity with others.
Here’s a copy of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. The US has refused to sign this but it’s still a good idea of what the rest of the world believes you deserve and what we know will help you thrive.
Here’s a copy of the power and control wheel for child abuse. Power and control wheels are commonly used in many forms of victim advocacy to help map abuse. To be clear, we count these things as abuse because we know from research that they are traumatic. Many laws have not been updated to include all these forms, so you’ll notice that many of the things on this wheel are completely legal even though we know they are harmful.
Additionally, I’m including a zine I found on peer support for suicide ideation. I know that growing up, my friends and I were always told to tell a trusted adult but we didn’t have one and ended up trying to help each other through some really awful shit. This is a guide written by someone with a similar experience and it details ways to informally support someone who is feeling suicidal.
the normalization of being able to take photos of random people without their consent and just post it online without care for their feelings or privacy being violated for who knows to see makes me literally murderous
Being in fandom becomes far less stressful when you realise fandom wank is dumb. Who cares if user bozo-the-fool thinks Zardox the Bloodthirsty was right and multiversal genocide is a good thing actually. First, there are more urgent problems in the world right now than Zardox the Bloodthristy, and two, there is a block button you can use for free.
people on this website be like “it’s actually school’s fault that i don’t know how to read because i wanted to write my essay on the divergent trilogy and that BITCH mrs. clarkson made us study 1984 instead. anyway here’s a 10 tweet thread of easily disproven misinformation about a 3 year old news story and btw, who is toni morrison?”
i KNOW most of y’all are lying about being in the gifted program as children because none of you could pass the basic reading comprehension assessment they give third graders today
this post is mean and I never read divergent or whatever the fuck but 1984 sucks and is rape apologism so if somebody wanted to write about divergent or whatever good for them
this reply is like literally exactly what op is talking about lol. like firstly ops point isn’t “1984 is good”, ops point is that analysing complex stories teaches you how to form opinions and think for yourself. and like secondly in 1984 you’re supposed to think damn it’s fucked up that he’s thinking that way about her, i wonder if this ties in with the central theme of “a society like this will fuck you in the head”? (this is the thinking for yourself part). like do you think orwell just put that in for fun? do you think that just because winston is the protagonist you’re supposed to agree with everything he does?
You know I feel like this post just gave me an epiphany for what is wrong with how Tumblr Fandom/Internet Fandom responds to media-or not *wrong* but makes it very hard to respond to anything but a morally correct, and heroic protagonist.
When an English teacher, or reader, taught or picked up 1984, it wasn’t with the intention they were going to love the protagonist. They picked it up with the intention of reading a whole story and trying to grasp the theme or catharsis from the story. If the protagonist was a *shitty* person it played into the the themes or the story, because it wasn’t about morally judging the book or *liking* or feeling attachment to the protagonist. Sometimes and often times, books were just about gaining another perspective.
No one read Lolita expecting to endear, or like, or be inspired by Humbert. You are supposed to be upset by his behavior, you don’t read Lolita with the intention of being inspired. You read it to learn more about what the fuck is going on inside someone’s head when they behave like that. How children get sucked into abusive situations. Or read “The Great Gatsby” not because they want to fall in love with Gatsby or Nick, but to better understand and analyze the experience of the 1920s or destitution of the American Dream.
A lot of internet and fandom culture has changed that though. When we say something like “I love the Great Gatsby” it comes with the idea or association that means you must *love* or relate to one of the characters. And maybe you do, but the first assumption is not longer about the quality of the work or themes, or cathartic impact-it’s about character admiration. And with that character admiration, in tumblr stan culture, or kin culture, or exalting characters with fanart/romance/so on you don’t just ‘admire’ or find that character ‘compelling’ it now translates to ‘you LOVE that character’ or you ‘DIRECTLY relate to that character.’
You can’t say “I love how Humbert is written, it’s so fascinating and dark”, without it directly translating you somehow relate to a child abuser or condone his actions. Taking in media has become an act of worship and connection. We no longer watch meant to just see the story as a whole, we watch expecting to connect to a character and if we offer them our “worship” as it’s become, as opposed to just attention or interest study as it traditionally was, it means we are condoning the character or saying we directly empathize with all their actions.
I think that’s why there is often now so much fuss over *toxic* characters or not. Or whether that classical novel is showing good or bad things anymore. We’re treating the characters as people we should love or want to draw or write about. Sometimes a story is just about getting the the theme or catharsis or learning another perspective. We don’t NEED to like the character. Or we don’t HAVE to like a character to be impressed by how they’re written or intrigued by their behavior.
I think if internet culture could learn to view stories as small insights into other lives or single takes of one perspective instead of purposeful moral inspirations we’d be a lot less worried about how toxic or not toxic they are.
Seriously!
And this is where “unhealthy relationships” in fiction come in too. Well-written, complex stories of bad relationships aren’t supposed to be good and healthy examples. If it’s held up that way (Twilight), then the issue is the writing and the writer. Unhealthy relationships in, say, Anna Karenina are obviously unhealthy but they are, to misquote James Joyce “portals to discovery.” You can know that a fictional relationships is seriously bad and still find it interesting. Psychology! Complexity!
Also I want to add that some characters (Humbert Humbert is a good one) are written so that if and when you find yourself sympathizing or saying “Yeah, I know that feeling” you’re supposed to stop and consider that. Not in terms of “I am a sick individual and deserve to die.” but more like “is it possible to have compassion for terrible people?” and “what is it in our culture or my upbringing that makes me think like I do?”
I’ve heard way too many people say “I will never read Lolita because of what it encourages” and I just…you’re missing the point? Completely? Like, you’re so missing the point that it’s almost meta? You’re not supposed to like Humbert??? You’re supposed to either be like “wow, gross, dude” or “oh fuck, wait, why do I have even 1 thing in common with this guy?” Nabokov is not going to be straightforward with you!
It’s like the jokes about being mad at your teacher for asking why the sky is blue in a certain book. Maybe there really is a reason. Did you think of that? For a bunch of people who’ll write thesis-length defenses of your favorite ships and trace down one instance in one minute of one episode of the 15 season show to prove that you’re right, it concerns me that you’re not as willing to look at a lot of other things with any depth. To say nothing of multi-chapter fanfic.
If you surround yourself with only good and pure and wholesome media approved by the purity-culture police, then you just don’t get to do a lot of introspection and I think that’s kind of a shame. I feel like it really limits your view of the world.
I dunno. There’s a weird kind of anti-intellectualism disguised as protection and good intent sometimes. Or it feels like the kind of prudishness that labels some books “dirty” and the people who read them equally disgusting, but just relies on social ostracism to enforce the labels. You know, “Think of the children!!”
Anyway, I’m going to go read some dirty, dirty literature now. Like 1984.
The reason why children and teenagers should be exposed to somber, disturbing works of literature, like 1984, Lolita, Maus, Gulag Archipelago and a host of others is precisely 1) so that they are aware that there are disturbing, harmful and downright evil things, people and phenomena out there, always have been and always will be, and 2) so that they can study them second-hand, with the help of an adult perspective of a teacher/editor, and 3) arrive at their own conclusions and coping mechanisms. Because closing your eyes and ears does not make you immune, quite the contrary - it only makes them more vulnerable and fragile.
If you go on the internet and google how to dry out a drenched book, you’ll find a forum where someone else asked the same question and was told to go fuck themselves and just google it.
If you go on the internet and confidently announce that the best way to dry out a drenched book is to dip it in alcohol and light it on fire, and nobody else has ever figured out a better way to dry out a book without damaging it. Argue about it with absolute confidence for long enough, and somebody willwrite you out a peer-reviewed 30 page tutorial with an essay section with 15 cited sources that offers you threedifferent, separate, far superior methods on how to dry out a drenched book.
While the human desire to help one-another may wane or falter, you can always count on the righteous anger of someone witnessing a stranger being Wrong On The Internet.
I think growing up on a steady diet of fanfiction made me hate traditional book genres. Like, I don’t care what the overall “theme” is. Gimme the tags. Is there character death? Sibling rivalry? Snarky best friend? That’ll do way more to get me into a book than slotting it into one of a dozen strictly defined boxes that tells me almost nothing.
Last time I was in a bookstore I was rifling through the paperbacks going “where the hell is the Content rating? is this ‘mature’ or are we in for actual funtimes here? And where are the Content Warnings? whatcha got here book? You gonna get weird on me?” So really, Ao3 has me spoiled.
This gave me a brilliant idea for book displays at the library. #angst #enemies to lovers #plot twist
You are a good librarian!
I only have flat shelves to work with but…. I did it.
ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL. YOU ARE A GOD AMONGST MORTALS.
I found a book in the library with content tags and suddenly I realised what I’d been missing all this time.
Is there a blog for that? Like a blog where people recommend books and like give them their tags? Because I feel like that would be AMAZING
Tempted to start doing this whenever I read/reread something.
Reblogging this version for awesome librarians!
Neat idea.
That should be a wiki so people can contribute. I would!
Oh that’s a fantastic idea! Accessible to everyone both to contribute and to search and compare to the selection at any library or bookstore.
And then libraries etc. could contribute and participate by posting the website on their door or something similar.
What do you think Tumblr?
I would so love a way to quickly find a book that pushes all my right buttons, but also has tags for anything that I might have an issue with (like killing an animal in a horror; seriously that’s cheap)
Does the dog die, crossed with a wiki, crossed with good reads. Anyone know if there is something like that already?
If you can get the ball rolling I’d be happy to contribute what I know and do what I can to boost it on social media.
*bounces up and down with armfuls of sparkly multicolored string* put me in, coach
OP here! If you lot wanna do this, I’m down to create some graphics for promotional purposes and the like! That’s about all I’ve got time for, but I’d be happy to do it. Just let me know!
LETS DO THIS
DISCORD SERVER IS LIVE. It is still very basic, but it is up. I started on this accidentally about five minutes ago, so gimmie a bit to get things settled.
If you are interested in contributing to the creation of a website for tagging books, please join this server!!!
You went to school one morning and find out you, and your friend, just became magical girls. Problem is, you don’t want to waste your life solving problems. Write about your experience as a team of magical girl super villains.
The problem is I’m not a girl
And I am not a serial killer, until proven otherwise of course, yet I write about them
From someone who’s survived MySpace, livejournal, deviantart, and fanfiction.nets’ content purges and bad policy updates, here’s some advice on how to get through tumblr’s recent bullshit:
- don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.
- archive everything on your blog you want to keep
- tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.
- tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.
- go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.
- support places like ao3. This is exactly why ao3 asks for donations a few times a year. They are a 100% anti-purging, judgement free, ad free non profit run by an elected board and protected by lawyers. Places like ao3 literally save fandom so please continue to support them and other similar archives. This is exactly why ao3 is so important.
I’m convinced if ppl on this site knew how crappy gifs look before you color them properly, they would appreciate editors more
for context reasons, this is how a gif I used in a recent gifset looks like without any adjustments/coloring whatsoever:
and here it is afterwards:
I truly don’t think people realize how dingy and dark most movies and tv shows actually are so they can’t appreciate the work and skill it takes to make gifs look the way your brain “remembers” it looking.
Another before and after example:
This gif needed 6 different adjustment layers, not including the sharpening process, which is its own separate challenge. The blue window was also changed to green to keep the palette more consistent and to reduce the range of colors needed, because a wider range of colors generally results in worse gif quality since gifs only support a max of 256 (compared to the millions your monitor can display).
yeah…
I have such appreciation of all the gif makers here! They put their time and energy into make these gifs for us to share.
Anonymous asked: Wait, I signed up for a trans kid when I decided to become pregnant? Are you joking or are you really that crazy?
Hey there,
I’m not joking at all and I don’t really see how this would be a laughing matter to you.
Yes, you signed up for a trans kid. And while we are at it, you also signed up for a disabled kid. Autistic kid. Gay kid. A kid who doesn’’t look like you. A deaf kid. A kid who will have interests that don’t match up with yours at all. You signed up for a shy kid and a loud kid and a kid who wets the bed and a sick kid.
That’s the beauty, the miracle of parenthood, don’t you agree? You decide to care for a little person you don’t even know yet. You decide to open your heart and home to them, you promise to nurture and love and protect a tiny human being. How can you promise that, if not unconditionally?
You can’t pick and choose your kid. Maybe even more importantly, they can’t choose you. They depend on you to keep that promise - and not only if they live up to whatever expectations you had.
