😴

Something so profoundly fucked up between the inverse ratio of shrinking middle class and ever increasing aggression of advertisement

something I find kinda interesting about radfems is that because they believe that womanhood is characterized by universal experiences of trauma and oppression, and because they believe that only they and people who agree with them correctly understand the nature of this oppression, they end up sounding like they believe that the only reason women would like things that they think are bad is if they're somehow being tricked into liking it

does a woman like wearing makeup or revealing clothes? patriarchal brainwashing. a cis woman who identifies as a lesbian dating a trans woman with a penis? she's doing it out of guilt or pity, or she was pressured into it. afab people coming out as non-binary or trans men? that's just internalized misogyny making them want to escape womanhood. hijabi women keeping their heads covered and dressing modestly? obviously they've been pressured into it by their oppressive islamic upbringing. women who are into kink, particularly if they're submissive? abuse victims who don't realize their male partners are taking advantage of them

women aren't allowed to like things under radical feminism. every aspect of a woman's life is either a political statement or a decision made under duress. women have free will and agency unless they disagree with me, in which case they're helpless victims who can't recognize how oppressed they truly are.

don't get me wrong, I think it's worth examining why you enjoy doing the things you're doing. the modern state of corporatized pop-feminism has found a way to frame nearly every act, regardless of how harmful to one's self or others, as feminist, and that's a trap that you certainly don't want to fall into. but the vision of womanhood that radfems paint is so bleak and joyless that it can never adequately act as an answer to that problem

In the graveyard, Book Omens, the oldest piece of media featuring a demon named Crowley, passed a dogend back to TV Omens, the younger and the more accomplished queerbaiter.

“I can see a light,” he said. “Here he comes now, the flash bastard.”

“What’s that he’s drivin’?” said TV Omens.

“It’s 1967 Chevy Impala,” explained Book Omens. “I expect it’s a newer black car than you were expecting.”

“Dunt see why you’d drive a big black car made after the Interwar Period,” said TV Omens.

“They’ve come on a bit since then, I reckon.”

“What’s this Supernatural like?” said TV Omens.

Book Omens spat. “He’s been on television too long,” he said. “Right from the Livejournal days. Gone native, if you ask me. Drives a car he didn’t have to miracle a tape deck into.”

TV Omens pondered this. Like most media containing demons named Crowley, he had a very limited grasp of how normal cars worked, and so he was just about to say something like, I bet it actually needs petrol and he calls it ‘gasoline,’ when the Impala rolled to a halt at the cemetery gate.

“And he wears denim,” sneered Hastur, “even when he dunt need to.” He raised his voice. “Fuck gay rights,” he said.

“Fuck gay rights” TV Omens echoed.

“Hi,” said Supernatural, giving them a little wave. “Sorry I’m late, but you know how it is trying to film during COVID, getting the cast all back to Vancouver and all that, and you can’t imagine the trouble I went to getting Jensen Ackles to make eye contact with other men and then—”

“Now we art all here,” said Book Omens meaningfully, “we must recount the Deeds of the Day.”

“Yeah. Deeds,” said Supernatural, with the slightly guilty look of one who is attending church for the first time in years and has forgotten which bits you stand up for.

Book Omens cleared his throat.

“I have queer coded an angel,” he said. “As he performed magic tricks at a birthday party, children shouted homophobic slurs at him. Then, to contradict this, I placed a line in the narration explicitly stating that as a sexless being he cannot be gay unless he really wants to make the effort, all while refusing to confirm whether he has made that effort. For thirty years both authors have openly expressed discomfort with seeing shipping content, and yet I remain a cult classic among bookish queer people.”

“Nice one,” said Supernatural, helpfully.

“I have created an uncanny valley of queerbait,” said TV Omens. “I had all sorts of dialogue and film language hinting at some sort of ‘love story,’ but the surviving author refuses to confirm what sort of ‘love story’ it is either in canon or via Word of God. Meanwhile, young people desperate for queer representation lavish him with praise for something he never did and the fandom is plagued with discourse.”

They both looked expectantly at Supernatural, who gave them a big smile.

“You’ll like this,” he said.

His smile became even wider and more conspiratorial.

“I let the gay angel tell Dean he loves him and immediately killed him and sent him to Super Hell,” he said.

There was silence, except for the distant swishing of cars.

“Yes?” said Book Omens. “And then what?”

“Look, it wasn’t easy,” said Supernatural.

“That’s all?” said TV Omens.

“Look, people—”

“And exactly what has that done to bait queer people into becoming invested in you?” said Book Omens. “You made half of the ship canonically queer and then buried him! They’ll never watch again!”

Supernatural pulled himself together. What could he tell them? That thousands of Tumblr blogs that hadn’t touched the show since 2013 went absolutely feral? That in the middle of one of the most contentious presidential elections in recent memory, exacerbated by a global pandemic and widespread unrest in the wake of economic collapse, “Destiel” trended on Twitter and dragged “Putin” up with it? It was the most social media engagement he’d gotten in years, and he’d hardly had to make Jensen act.

But you couldn’t tell that to media featuring demons named Crowley like Book Omens and TV Omens. Twentieth-century minds, the both of them. Spending years picking away at a bunch of people who still read, or months tossing out empty statements that look like straight allyship if you squint hard enough. Admittedly it was craftsmanship, but you had to think differently these days. Not big, but wide. With seven billion people in the world you couldn’t pick away at people’s sanity that slowly; you had to be bold. But media containing demons named Crowley like Book Omens and TV Omens wouldn’t understand. They’d never have thought up fridging a lesbian in the same episode as you killed half of the most popular ship, for example. Or canonical nods to Wincest. Or demon deals being sealed with a kiss regardless of gender. He’d been particularly pleased with demon deals being sealed with a kiss regardless of gender.

In French, Vanellope and Tracer are voiced by the same person.

Was watching some clips of Wreck-It Ralph and couldn’t help notice the similarities of Vanellope’s glitching and Tracer’s warping.  So here’s the quickest of sketches.

Heaven-versus-hell type tabletop RPG where the lore is written in such away as to leave the reader almost, but not quite, certain that the author intended to use the word "seraphic" to describe the militarised forces of heaven, and that it's probably just a weirdly reliable autocorrect error that the actual text consistently says "sapphic".

Some misconceptions to clear up:

-Polyamory is not necessarily synonymous with “open relationship”. Poly relationships can be and often are closed relationships, involving only the members already present and not seeking out more people.

-Polyamory is not inherently abusive, disrespectful, cheating etc. People can lead happy, loving, fulfilling lives in poly relationships.

-Polyamorous people are not naturally “less committed” to their partners than monogamous people are. Polyamorous people can be and often are very committed to their partners, just as much as monogamous people are. Having multiple partners does not make a person less committed, the same way that you aren’t “less committed” to your friends for having multiple friends.

-Not all poly relationships are sexually oriented. Plenty of poly relationships do not include sex at all, in fact. That being said, there is nothing wrong with poly relationships that involve or are primarily about sex.

-Polyamorous people may have one-on-one sex with each other. Not everyone participates in all sex all the time.

-Polyamorous people/relationships aren’t inherently more “kinky” than monogamous people or relationships. Poly people can have quite vanilla sex lives. That being said, there’s nothing wrong with poly relationships that do involve kink.

-People in poly relationships may have different relationships to each other. Not everyone in a poly relationship feels the exact same way about everyone else. For example, A, B, and C may all be romantically attracted to each other, but only A and B are sexually attracted to each other, and so C is involved in the relationship in a romantic way but not a sexual one. Or perhaps A is sexually involved with B and C, but B and C are not sexual with each other. Or perhaps B and C are not romantically attracted to each other, either! There are different terms for these different sorts of relationships between members.

-Polyamory is not a solution to cheating, disrespect, abuse, etc. in monogamous relationships. If someone is disrespectful/abusive/a cheater while in a monogamous relationship, they’re still going to be abusive/disrespectful/a cheater in a poly relationship.

-If a monogamous partner tries to make excuses for cheating by saying “it’s polyamorous”, then that person is still a cheater, period. Polyamory is about informed consent for all parties involved, and cheating is not. If someone cheats on you and makes these sorts of excuses, you’re fully within your rights to dump their ass.

-Yes, it is possible to cheat on your partners in a polyamorous relationship, and it’s just as bad as cheating in a monogamous relationship.

-It’s not always easy to transition from a monogamous to a polyamorous relationship, even for people who know it’s exactly what they want. Polyamorous people can sometimes still feel jealous and insecure about their partners finding new people to love.

-Some polyamorous people consider their polyamory to be an important aspect of their identity. They may refer to themselves as polyamorous even when single, and they find themselves unable to be fulfilled in a monogamous relationship. They perceive their polyamory as similar to a sexual or romantic orientation. Other polyamorous people may consider their polyamory to be something that they choose to do, rather than a part of who they are.

-Polyamory is heavily, heavily stigmatized in many parts of the world. Polyamorous people deserve the support of other marginalized communities, such as the LGBTQ+ community, and activists would do well to work towards ending stigma and bigotry towards polyamory, and monogamous normativity.

Poly people, feel free to add on to this

Zel has a bunch of toy mice, and sometimes she naps with them. Happy Pride!

Not people saying “Fandom has always been like this” in that vent post I made. No. It hasn’t always been like this. Fandom has NEVER been like this until recently and if you were in fandom pre-tumblr purge, pre-twitter, pre-netflix boom, pre-tiktok….then you would fucking know it was nothing like this.

We still had the drive to create. We still sold prints and charms and made zines…but it was never like this.

The introduction of streaming, binge shows that drop all at once, tiktok and vine RIP i still love u vine but you were the beginning of a particularly ugly era) creating this bite sized, quick paced ‘content’ era of creation and it bled out into fucking everything else.

Fandoms didn’t die down when the show ended or the season was over. You didn’t mass unfollow artist, writers or moots just because they changed fandoms. There wasn’t this need to please the algorithm in order for your posts to get seen by people and enjoyed.

Fandoms used to last YEARS. Star Trek is literally the oldest running fandom out there and you got people in there that could care less about the new stuff and still have been happily prancing through their fucking fifty year old fandom today. Hell, even SPN after all it’s fuckups and shitshows has a dedicated fanbase STILL creating tons of art and fic.

There is no patience anymore. No calm feeling of taking in fandom and friends at a pace that which doesn’t make you stressed and is still fun.

Do I blame fandom for this? Of course not, but people are complacent with it and start changing their vocab to accommodate and end up making the situation so deep it cant be fixed.

We call Art & Fic Content now, completely stripping the value of what it is to a level of consumerism instead of personal entertainment & community bonding.

A New History of Fandom Purges

On November 24th, 2018, I posted a list of major deletions of sites or of content on sites that stripped fandom of its history. A bunch of pro-shipper blogs had just been deleted, and people were nervous. I suppose I was thinking “All this has happened before…”

On December 3rd, 2018, Tumblr’s Department of Irony announced the NSFW ban. Thanks for providing this salutary lesson to The Youth and a billion reblogs to me, I guess.

Today, we have AO3 for writing. Audio, images, and video are in as much danger as ever, yet fans attack AO3 every donation drive. For those of you who forget our past…

HERE IS WHAT HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US!

1992 - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro forces a zine to be destroyed

1995 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites

1995 - Anne Rice gets IWTV fic deleted everywhere

1997 - Fox and Lucasfilm go after fansites

1998 - AOL goes after X-Files fansites

2000 - Warner Brothers goes after Harry Potter fansites

2000 - Anne Rice anne rices again

2001 - Tripod Massacre

2001 - Anne Rice goes after IWTV fic on FFN

2001 - The Bronze shut down as Buffy changes networks

2002 - FFN bans porn

2002 - FFN bans RPF

2003 - Gryffindor Tower implodes

2004 - FFN bans script format

2005 - FFN bans CYOA, Readerfic, 2nd person, Songfic

2005 - Sheezyart bans adult content; y!gallery founded

2005 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites again

2006 - Sakura Lemon Archive suddenly closes

2007 - Strikethrough, Boldthrough on Livejournal

2007 - Youtube institutes Content ID, deleting many fanvids

2008 - Slash Cotillion closes, taking much historical m/m with it

2009 - GeoCities shuts down, taking old fannish websites

2009 - Greatestjournal shuts down; RPGs deleted

2009 - Marvel gets scans_daily deleted

2009 - imeem, major vidding hub, closes suddenly

2010 - FFN forums purged for inactivity

2010 - DeviantArt purges adult fanfic

2010 - Literate Union goes after Twilight fandom on FFN

2011 - Delicious destroyed by Yahoo’s incompetence

2011 - China arrests women for writing m/m; destroys danmei.org

2012 - major FFN crackdown on porn

2012 - Megaupload deleted for piracy; also destroys vids, podfic

2013 - Max-Dan-Wiz.com purged of fan-generated content

2014 - Quizilla shuts down

2014 - China purges m/m story websites; arrests female authors

2014 - Blip.tv deletes vids

2014 - Viddler deletes vids

2015 - Journalfen’s servers become fully robust, deleting Fandom Wank

2016 - y!Gallery deleted

2016 - Elfwood goes offline

2016 - Audiofic Archive corrupted; major blow to podfic

2017 - Chinese author jailed after being ratted out over fandom drama

2017 - Parents get queer Warrior Cats fic purged from Wattpad

2018 - Tumblr deletes pro-shipper blogs

2018 - Tumblr announces NSFW ban

2018 - Wattpad deletes accounts/fics without warning

2019 - China purges weibo of m/m; more women jailed

This is only a small taste of the many times that:

Fannish moderators got bored, ran out of money, or had a falling out, deleting a site/list/forum along the way.

Sites got bought out and closed for being unprofitable.

Fandom got hit as governments targeted piracy or political dissidents.

Fans grudge reported each other.

Official forums got deleted when the canon finished.

It’s not always malicious. It’s not always about us. But we lose every time.

Some of these purges hit everyone. Many of them hit m/m content specifically or female gaze-y material in general. This is why antis are dead wrong. This is why anti-fujoshi policies end up being anti-m/m policies. This is why we need clear labeling, not content restrictions.

This is why we need AO3.

And it’s why we need a solution for audio, visuals, and video too.