With The Wild Wolves Around You, I’ll Call You

Justice/Ash, 25, England, they/them Panromantic asexual "If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs, "The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies." While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely, He cries to the moon, "If only, if only." Justice

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Chuck Palahniuk, oof

[cornerstorebitch]

no offense but reading is literally the cure to brain rot and there’s no work around to reading books

[fakelawyerbug]

I've seen a bunch of "fandom etiquette" posts on my dash today and I'm going to say something that is maybe going to be unpopular but;

The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.

And I am not going to mince words here:

A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.

That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.

"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.

So much of "fandom etiquette" seems to be about insulating creatives from Feeling Bad and hostility to any kind of negative feedback is a pretty big contributor to why bigotry festers in these spaces.

[iridescentoracle]

#imo the potluck analogy applies- it would be rude to critique someone's icing technique at a potluck bc it wasn't as good as at the bakery #but if they had decorated their cupcakes w hate symbols it wouldn't be rude to tell them that's gross and gtfo #in fact it would be inappropriate to NOT say anything in that situation #or to complain that another guest who did point it out was 'ruining everyone's potluck' #and pointing out racism in fan works is 100% the second thing not the first! (via destructions-daughter)

[swamp-spirit]

There's also a tendency to conflate anyone who critiques general trends with bad faith randos. Like, there is fandom behavior that is 100% racist and should be talked about, but there are also trends of racist/sexist/ableist preferences.

If I say "I am uncomfortable with fandom's tendency to write trans men as feminine and submissive" I do not mean "I think every person who writes feminine submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I don't even mean "any cis-person who writes feminine or submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I mean "I would like writers to seriously think about why this is so common, why they write that, and if it fairly and genuinely engages with what it means to be a trans man, or if they just think it's hot when submissive people have vaginas and didn't want to write omegaverse of m/f".

Similarly, when people say "fandom is systemically less interested in black characters, less willing to give flat black characters rich fanon than flat white characters, and less interested in black characters in ships", the response is not to explain why you, personally, just happen to like popular white guy in that fanon. Your job is to look at yourself and ask if you tend to "just happen to be more interested" in the popular white guy across fandoms, be honest, and start unpacking that. Sometimes it's easier to love the flat character who's already getting 10,000 fics with headcanons and art and meta.

If somebody says "I wish there were more gluten free options at the potluck. I hate always showing up and not finding anything I can eat*", they are not asking you to throw your cake in the trash and weep. They do not want to hear your long speech about how actually this is your grandmother's recipe, and you've tried it with rice flour actually, but it just didn't work. You think about what you can do, and you listen to how they feel.

*The metaphor here not being that you can't read fic that isn't "good rep". The metaphor here is that it can be isolating to be in spaces where nobody is trying to make sure people like you are welcome.

[halalchampagnesocialist]

It’s been almost four fucking years since October 7 happened and yet it’s used by Zionists continually to deflect and deny what Israel is doing in Gaza. We’ve supposedly had a “ceasefire” since October yet Israelis are killing people left and right, people are still living amidst rubble in tents and you’re telling me I’m supposed to care that a bunch of diaspora Jews feel unsafe because of Palestine protests? Please!

[totally-cis-offical]

Wait that explains everything so so much

[rainbow-demoness]

And since we don't face direct punishment for missing positive social cues like we do for negative ones, our coping skills and compensatory hypervigilance don't develop the same way. So we go through a world of never recognising positive signals, sometimes spotting negative signals, and knowing for sure there's more negative signals we're still missing, because those keep blowing up in our face.

Kind of fucked tbh.

[crtscreen]

throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s, our generation was inundated with aave. it eclipsed lolcat as the "funny way to talk." ain't nobody got time fo dat turns into dat boi o shit waddup. this is blatantly not an "aracial" or "gen z" way to talk. it IS black english. not to mention the amount of black reaction images!!

WHY, specifically, is it black peoples' facial expressions that are seen as just so comical or exaggerated? analyze the history of this nation's comedy and tell me why you might be predisposed to thinking of black peoples' faces as just, "more emotive" or exaggeratedly funny than a white or nonblack person's

and throughout those years, 00s-10s, many black bloggers -- victims of the mass staff-led purge (under the cover of them being 'russian' while reichblr still exists) -- they DID tell us it was a problem, DID try to educate people who freak out at the insinuation of 'being racist,' DID argue, DID point out the duplicity and the appropriation and the gross equivalence of african american slang with unintelligence, goofiness, etc. and they were ignored, abused, cancelled, chased off, until being eventually mass deleted by our racist transmisogynistic staff.

we didn't do enough, and the generation after us gen z "kids" didn't stop the trend. using the '-ahh' suffix. rizz. no cap. ate. delulu. it's giving. it's serving. crash out. lock in. aura. tea. main character. bruh. slay. real. keep it 100.

all of the following images are or were popular reaction images! what do they all have in common?

it feels like the effort to categorize slang as AAVE and not 'gen z' or 'gen alpha' slang has really petered out. it feels like we stopped talking about digital blackface in an era where the administration is posting ai-generated videos of black women who speak and act like exaggerated stereotypes and it frustrates me because we all have a responsibility to understand our generation's role in normalizing this type of racist shit for kids today. this needs to be addressed!

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

Black people will never stop talking about this, but when we are on sites such as Tumblr, where so many of the white people feel that not only are they not racist, but that calling their racist behavior racist is emotional warfare on them, they will make sure to keep Black voices as silenced as possible.

Also, a lot of the Black people who got deleted or run off of the site weren't even accused of any type of Russian anything. A lot of them were just run the fuck off by the white Tumblr base on harassment shit.

[max1461]

I stand by my claim that tumblr users are on average more curious and intellectually playful than users on pretty much any other major website. I've thought this a lot with regards to how many of the popular memes on here are history, science, or philosophy themed, in a way that doesn't just strike me as surface level repetition of a factoid (cf. reddit), but actually represents more thoughtful engagement with an idea. Thinking about all the really clever ways that "this is not a place of honor" has been used and reworked, or the Ea-nasir jokes, or even something as simple as those "juice reward" memes. And the boyfriend memes! Those have mass appeal here, and they're all shit like "yeah we shifted your boyfriend down an octave", "yeah we mythologized your boyfriend", "yeah we compressed your boyfriend into a .zip file". You know, like... for all that's been made of the tumblr userbase's susceptibility to convincingly-worded falsehoods, people here really do seem willing to contemplate things a little harder than people on reddit or twitter do. As someone who spends time on a number of different social media sites, the difference is pretty stark.

And I'm just thinking about this in light of the fact that, as soon as polls are introduced, everyone immediately starts using them to do game theory. Like, not even the usual suspects here, just random tumblr users! And I don't think this is because they know game theory and are doing it intentionally, I think it's because a lot of people here just have that sort of playful, tricksterly intellectual impulse. It's wonderful.

[stevishabitat]

Exactly this. Also, some of the wordplay that you find here is so refreshing and fun. Top tier.

And that people are so willing to collaborate, rather the oneupmanship you find elsewhere.

In other platforms, people are somehow out for some kind of win. Here, it's more about enjoying the collaborative process. I love that.

[caringloving-deactivated2025081]

hey u missed ur shift on tumblr.com why aren’t u reblogging

[rabbitkinglune777]

trans women make this place better

[rabbitkinglune777]

not just the website but da world!

[vexwerewolf]

TERFs have no right to speak. Ever. On any topic.

[molabuddy]

really specific trope i like that i feel like can only be explained in a diagram

[rhynee]

this is still one of my favorite explanations for gender

[sedimentfootwrap]

This image manifested so clearly in my mind I had to recreate it

[alexseanchai]

[image 1: a tweet by KatysCartoons, whose profile picture is a stick figure whose head is colored in with the trans pride flag. the tweet reads, "Atoms are binary. They are either intended to be hydrogen or helium. We can't just scrap this worldview just because of a handful of exceptions". embedded in the tweet is a pie chart entitled "Types of atom in the universe": seventy-four percent hydrogen, twenty-five percent helium, and, in tiny font, one percent other.]

[image 2: the periodic table of the elements, except that hydrogen and helium are in their own box labeled "Real elements", and elements 3 (lithium) through 118 (oganesson) are labeled "Mental illness".]

.

incidentally this periodic table must've been drawn in the past nine years, since it doesn't deadname oganesson

[scribeherself]

There is no drug on earth that can replicate the absolute euphoria of hitting a writing flow state at 2:00 AM. You aren’t even typing anymore. You are a vessel. You are a channel for the gods. The characters are speaking directly into your brain and you’re just the stenographer trying to keep up. You feel like you could fight a bear. You feel like you invented the alphabet

[liarsblade]

there's this weird thing people fall into online a lot, where people assume that if the [perceived-to-be-inferior] version of [activity] is discouraged then people will, naturally, do [perceived-to-be-superior] version of [activity] instead. When really it's just as (or more) likely that if [perceived-to-be-inferior] version of [activity] is discouraged people just won't do it at all.

[liarsblade]

audiobook listeners are not necessarily people who would otherwise do a lot of traditional reading if audiobooks did not exist, many are people who simply would experience zero books. Booktok romance readers would not necessarily be reading the classics if booktok did not exist, many of them would simply not read. Fanfiction writers would not necessarily be novelists if fanfic wasn't an option, many would just be people who didn't write. You know?

[cainstellan]

Carrie being skinny in every adaptation is like how Heathcliff is white in most of his. Directors somehow cut out the most important part of their characters, the reason why they have been subjected to such prejudice and why they are the way they are. Why THE BOOKS GO THE WAY THEY DO. Do you think Heathcliff would have been so outcasted and forbidden to be with Catherine if he was white? Do you think Carrie would have been relentlessly bullied and borderline tortured by her peers if she was skinny and pretty?

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

hey, I was just at "things got better" island and everyone there is talking about how excited they are to meet you

[switchblade-dragon]

Hey yeah so this post literally kept me alive for like 6 months. Thank you. And OP is so right. Everyone on this island became my best friends. And guess what? Now they can't wait to meet *you* and they talk about you every single day.

[shinraalpha]

i do think lobbying for data centres over climate goals should be considered a crime against humanity btw