Please write yourselves, fics. @chisie12 - Tumblr Blog

you know how some parents do that toxic thing where they don’t notice or reward kids for improving their behavior, but every screw-up gets remarked upon and used to inflict shame? so you’re stuck in that awful cycle where there are no rewards, only the inevitability of eventual punishment?

and how that makes it extremely hard to judge your own actions or grow into a better person, because there’s no one to confirm that you actually are doing better, and are capable of improving, and are not doomed to forever be a terrible person incapable of growth?

ok so: I don’t know how to explain to you that we’ve built a social media culture that treats people the same way. with the same abusive cycle.

tomboyjessie13

That sounds like cancel culture

I don’t know what to call it anymore. people get heated about terms like “purity” or “cancel” or “call out” culture, or can’t seem to agree on a meaning. I’m not talking about like. no longer supporting rich and powerful celebrities when their abusive actions come to light. I’m not talking about holding people accountable, or warning people about active abusers. but I am seriously concerned about how we treat social media users once they get even a small amount of attention, even in small niche spaces.

I am concerned about this culture of combing through years of people’s social media accounts, looking for “problematic” shit they’ve done. I am concerned with the whole culture of using “call outs” as a tool to harass and ostracize users large and small. I am concerned about the malice we spread behind people’s backs, in screenshots and posts they aren’t able to see. I am concerned with this culture of demanding apologies for things said years ago, things already outgrown and regretted, and of ignoring those apologies even while pilling on more censure. I’m concerned about this whole culture of accusation and misinformation, where the most outrageous claims and holier-than-thou performances are rewarded with notes and views, even as facts are ignored and context removed. I am concerned about the lack of accountability, the way the accused is given no opportunity to defend themselves from the onslaught, the way their responses and explanations go ignored, the way any charge can be made at any time on any evidence, with no ability to appeal or exonerate. I’m concerned about the way this culture targets minority users and turns their own communities against them. I’m concerned about the actually harmful and predatory behavior that is lost in the bog, and how we have lost the ability to distinguish between shades of gray with any level of sanity. And I am concerned by the sheer number of people who fail to realize they are perpetuating bullying and harassment.

I am enormously concerned with the way people who are “called out” are never forgiven, never allowed to make amends, never allowed to grow, how their efforts to learn and do better are ignored even while strangers callously repeat and reblog and retweet the same criticisms ad nauseam.

And I see this everywhere, happening to anyone. And yes, this applies to larger accounts and youtubers and “influencers,” and a bunch of content creators who may or may not be making a decent living off of their work, but who are certainly not “rich and powerful celebrities.” (Because apparently we spend so much time in online microcosms that ya’ll can’t tell the difference???) Christ, my blog isn’t nearly as large as some people seem to think, it’s obscure by most measures, and still I’ve been the target of mass harassment for years. I’ve seen bad and watched others go through worse, seen users with far larger and far smaller followings driven off of this and other platforms—driven off with a violence and bloodthirst that had nothing to do with making a community safer and everything to do with a toxic culture gone wrong. Fucking fix this already.

Abuse is still abuse when it happens online, when done by strangers, when done anonymously, when done en masse. Now do BETTER.

scarlet-rosepetals

This post hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. I read the first paragraphs, about being raised in an environment where you’re punished for every minor transgression and never praised for anything. This is exactly the environment I was raised in, so it got me seeing parallels, and none of them were to social media.

My parallels were to all the jobs I’ve held where if I was perfect my “reward” was not being screamed at. To my peers in school who would bully me for every little “weird” slip up that demonstrated that I’m neurodivergent. To every marginalized person or group I’ve heard disparaged over the smallest thing. And in a moment of unexpected understanding I realized what it is about discussions about “cancel culture” that always felt off to me.

The way we treat each other online is not new. It is not unique. It is not some modern product of the rise of ess-jay-double-you wokescolds. It’s the way we’ve always been taught to treat each other, we do it offline every day. The only reason anyone sees it as unique is that the nature of it being online means that it isn’t as precise in only targeting those who we’re taught to turn a blind eye to.

Fixing this and doing better is systemic, which I guess I should’ve seen coming since most things are systemic. I definitely don’t have an answer to this, but I can see now that no amount of “just not cancelling people” is the answer, because “cancelling” is just a fancy way of dividing twitter fights from all the other ways we’re actively taught to be horrible to each other, and if we’re not pulling this up at the roots we won’t really fix it. I feel like I should end on advice so, burn the capitalists in your heads and radically support each other? That’s probably a good first step.

graylibrary

some of my own observations from starting out online at like 12 in 1997 and watching things develop:

1. all thrown together: people of wildly different backgrounds and knowledge bases are all communicating and very quickly which leads to everyone essentially being embarrassingly ignorant all the time. To alleviate the resultant discomfort we lean into:

2. humans want things to be simple and easy. We want the cliff notes version rather than the nuanced and lengthy explanation and all of the background to understand it, especially if it doesn’t involve us or interest us. “That’s bad, don’t do it. This is good, say this.” Easy to remember, easy to understand, easy to preform for the above mentioned need for a reward in the form of approbation or inclusion. Details and nuance, especially with the vast amount of stuff being discussed isn’t possible, practical, or comfortable all the time.

3. technology out pacing culture: adapting socially to new technology via etiquette and convention can’t keep up with how fast everything is going. How I learned to behave online at 12 has gone out of date several times and I’m only 36, and I don’t mean the things relating to me being a child then and an adult now but that almost none of what I learned as an early teenager even can be applied to tumblr in a practical sense. Everyone keeps having to make this up as they go, and due to point 1, we all have wildly different ideas on how to deal with things and different expectations. And it all changes multiple times in your life, you can feel out of touch and dated at 25. Social norms always have their problems and are always changing, but their lack of cohesiveness and turbo speed changing online has it’s consequences. Volume is also an issue–the sheer number of new things we need communally agreed on rules for is staggering. Similarly:

4. zooooom!: even before the internet and then it’s upgrade to high speed internet the pace of life has been accelerating and this means we expect things to go fast. We’re used to things going fast and even want them to, to some degree. And includes social media feeds and communication. Long posts were more common in 2011 when I joined tumblr and there were not tl;dr summaries. There’s a difference in how I type when I chat now than back in the AIM days–more comments sent before the other person actually finished their point (other people do it to me too). You used to wait more before you replied. Now it’s go go go! That also come connects back to point 2. And in part may come from point 3 especially how we can now use our phones in small moments like waiting in line where we previously could not have been trying to interact with humanity in the same way, things have to fit into those spaces now. The word count limits and easy to understand sound bites fit into smaller spaces.

5. Everything is everywhere. tweets are shared on tumblr and tumblr posts end up on facebook and facebook posts are referenced in youtube videos and so on. Context is easily destroyed or lost even within a platform. There’s so many games of telephone going on and everyone hears things through the grapevine and this is both a natural extension of human gossip and information sharing AND used maliciously and it’s all mixed in. Point 3 and 4 mean Information literacy can’t keep up and the potential stage for point 1 is horribly massive. Also your nudes may end up out there or a video of your horrible murder may get shared with strangers for their entertainment (or so the demand justice….it depends…).

6. grip on reality. while I think we’ve moved mostly away from considering online some kind of opposite of “real life” given that many very real things like shopping and work and school can happen online, now it’s like: you can get a grandma changing outfits in a spiral across your screen from the same app you get make up tutorials from and someone teaching you to change your oil and someone with professional level production lip-syncing a pop song and….what IS real life? Plenty of what is on the internet isn’t real and is meant for entrainment even if it’s not sold to you as such but it’s all mixed in with serious discussions about politics, practical skills, gossip, real news, fake news, airbrushed/photoshopped/facetuned influencers, etc. This started to some degree with TV but has gone so much further with the internet. Do you consciously know the difference between reality and funny videos? Probably! But wait there’s more to this point! At the same time that all this is happening, along with you getting plenty of your marketed entertainment online, there’s all the communication and engagement with other humans that’s happening through a screen. You can insult someone on the otherwise of the planet now in real time or fall in love with them or find real friendships or stalk people or bully them. You can do this to people you’ll never seen and never have to deal with real world consequences for harming them or helping them. This happens often in the same apps where you talk to people you have met and may indeed experience some consequences for your actions good, bad, or complicated. Is online real? It only seems to be part of the time. Do you know, if asked, that I’m a real human with a face and a life and feelings? Probably! But at the same time I’m a voice in a sea of mixed reality and unreality. And it’s not like we haven’t had infestations of bad actors inserting themselves into conversations like this to manipulate us, that’s a thing that happens. So how much personhood does your brain assign me while you scroll by?

Is this the real life or is it just fantasy? Caught in a landslide no escape from reality indeed.

And all of this stuff isn’t necessarily negative! But how it fits together leads to some of the problems mentioned and why they’re so complex and hard to solve.

carlamiaumiau

It feels to me as if many people don’t know where to place other social media users in their mind’s social landscape so they end up simultaneously demanding the accountability of a close friend or family member from them (acting as if every mistake of theirs had hurt them personally) and the public presence curation of a wealthy celebrity (treating their social media feed as a piece of fictional media).

These parasocial relationships make us hold each other to impossible standards. You can’t treat human beings as if they were a TV show just because you experience them as a “stream of content” and you can’t treat strangers as if they were personally close to you just because you have read intimate details that they have shared. It’s fucked up.

homunculus-argument

Hey btw, another worldbuilding thing: You can, and actually should have weird and impractical cultural things. They’re not inherently unrealistic, for as long as you address the realistic consequences as well.

Let’s say you’ve got a city where there’s tame white doves everywhere. They’re not pests, they’re regarded as sacred, holy protectors of the city, and the whole city cares for them and feeds them like they’re pets. They’re so tame because it’s a social taboo to hurt or scare one. Nice pretty doves :)

Then someone points out that even if they’re not seen as pests, doesn’t having a completely unchecked feral pigeon population - that not only isn’t being culled, but actively fed and cared for - mean that there would be bird shit absolutely all over the place?

A part of you wants to say no, because these are your nice, pretty doves. To explain that there’s a reason why they’re not shitting all over the place, maybe they’re super-intelligent and specifically bred and trained to not shit all over the place. The logistics of how, exactly, could anyone breed and train a flock of feral birds go unaddressed.

An even worse solution would be to not have those birds, editing them out of the world. No, they spark joy, you can’t just toss them out!

Now, consider: Yes, yes they would, but the city also has an extensive public sanitation service that’s occupied 90% of the time by cleaning bird shit off of everything. One of the most common last names in the area actually translates to “one who scrapes off dove shit”, and it’s a highly respected occupation. And thanks to the sheer necessity of constantly regularly cleaning everything, the city enjoys a much higher standard of cleanliness, and less public health issues caused by poor public sanitation.

The doves do protect the city. By shitting fucking everywhere.

moonybyte

While I absolutely love your idea, I just want to say that you can easily reduce public bird shitting from Pigeons by offering them comfortable lodgings where they can sleep and feed. Sure, you need to clean THOSE, but the pigeons shit a lot less all over town.

The Augsburg concept has one big pigeon house every 500m in which wild pigeons are fed, protected from weather and have nesting opportunities. Cities doing that have WAY less uncontrolled populations (since they can take out eggs if they feel they need reduce the population), way less shit AND a healthy population since it’s easier for veterinarians to notice and get to sick animals.

So I’d say one can of course still keep your general idea……but there’s also those MASSIVE palace-like pidgeon houses and only the most worthy are allowed to enter and directly interact with the pigeons (feed them, heal them, clean their lodgings). One big entrance for the human servants (priests??) and millions of small holes for the pigeons.

In fact, one could potentially turn your idea around IN THE PIDGEONS FAVOR. So your world is like ours and most major cities have a big feral pigeon population. And most of those cities HATE the pigeons and try to fight them and stuff. And they think that pigeon worshipper town is frigging cuckoo. BUT when comparing, then pigeon worshipper town is ridiculously clean and beautiful. No bird shit everywhere, no ruined house facades and statues from erosion through bird poop. Pigeon haters go “how tf are you so clean, you have birds EVERYWHERE???” and the worshippers shrug and show their little bird temples spread around town that keep their precious birdies AND their town pretty.

plucky-passerine

I think this is a really good example of how research can greatly improve your worldbuilding! You don’t have to be perfectly accurate - it is fantasy after all - but the real world is so much more clever and beautiful than any of us know

curlicuecal

advice that’s stuck with me: you don’t have to work inwards to justify a premise (e.g., ‘how would it ever be plausible to use snakes as currency’) as long as you work outwards in interesting ways from that premise (e.g., ‘how would a society that used snakes as currency look different? what would they use for wallets?’)

kayintruth

Wait, did you choose snakes specifically as a reference to that time when people literally used snakes as currency, or what is a random example?

curlicuecal

Sorry, that time what

teaboot

The number of times I have been delighted by witty banter only to find out later that I was “Flirting” is both unfortunate and disappointing.

teaboot

“haha so what about that guy, huh?”

Me: what about him

“Well you seemed super into him”

Me: what why

“…dude you were flirting all night”

Me:

Me: Whoms't™™

trainerdelaney

I found out several of my female coworkers were planning on trying to get our male coworker to ask me out because “You guys kept flirting” but I was like “We were literally just goofing around. Like we literally just told jokes to each other. Literally just stuff that friends do, the same stuff you and I do.” I was definitely 100% NOT flirting but everyone thought I was

trainerdelaney

“You were laughing at everything TJ did!”

“He paper clipped a banana to the ceiling, Isabelle. That’s fucking bonkers”

eeby-the-mcdeeby

Good time to remind everyone that if you don’t know that you’re “flirting” you’re not flirting. Flirting is an action that has to be done with conscious intent, since the point of it is intent, henceforth you can’t do it without realising.

lexiecon-overlord

It’s the ✨heteronormativity✨

weissguertena

Flirting is an action that has to be done with conscious intent, since the point of it is intent, henceforth you can’t do it without realising.

zetrystan

Technically true.

zetrystan

He got the job.

zetrystan

He takes his job seriously.

*Grabs your other hand* yes

holy shit

Oh sorry my bad

FUCK

k-cakes-baglez-deactivated20240

shower-raccoon

this has legendary post energy radiating off of it

The tumblr massacre circa 2021

batter-sempai

I’m so happy people on Tumblr in 2021 can still make posts with the same energy as Tumblr posts from 2013-2016.

guerrillatech

A new mode of production arises out of the newly networked masses.

praeca

Fanartists:

Thingiverse users:

Royalty free sounds

Flash games

Productivity has always been there

tim-burton-bitch

Because shockingly when people enjoy what they do (you make it enjoyable instead of just hammering on them) people WANT to do things!

rudolphsboyfriend

Fanfiction authors!!

fatefulfaerie

Where is the button to shout this from the rooftop?

anxietyproblem

one-time-i-dreamt

Read more here:

"You are no longer licensed to use the software," Adobe told them.

awsomelink

Friendly reminder that GIMP does pretty much everything Photoshop does, and it’s 100% free. Fuck DRM and the license culture, we have plenty of open source options available to us as a consumer.

socialistexan

Lightworks is a freeware video editor on par with Premiere

Blender is an excellent freeware 3D renderer,possibly better than After Effects

Lightzone to replace Lightroom

Inkscape to replace Illustratr

Audacity to replace Audition (I also received a free version of Pro Tools with my Scarlett Solo audio interface)

If Adobe is going to be greedy shitheads, then fuck ‘em. Don’t use their stuff. Freeware can be just as good, if not better, than Adobe CC.

hopesterling

reblog to save a digital arts major

fallnangelcreations

Reblog to save an artist.

pen-scribbles

oh jEEZ

doomslug

I will keep saying this: GIMP sucks butts.

- Medibang Paint and Fire Alpaca for more cartoon style illustration

- Krita for painting

- Clip Studio Paint (not free, but often on sale and cheap even at full price) is better than PS for art and I’m about to cut adobe entirely. Even does some photo editing.

- Paint Tool SAI (again, not free but cheap) old but good, there’s a ton of hacked copies around too. Not hard to get for free.

- Open Tunez for animation.

strawberryoverlord

Honestly if you’re going to spend money on a drawing program get CSP

Its an amazing program with tons of resources and in built recording for timelapses

Also you can steal photoshop brushes and use them in it

gemennair

“Crowley? Crowley, it’s time to wake up.”

Crowley heard the familiar voice calling him, but didn’t quite want to open his eyes yet. He had the distinct impression that he’d been having a lovely dream, and even now the echo of a nearly forgotten melody played in his head. Soft breeze brushed his cheek, lifting the hair from off his forehead.

“Crowley, you’re safe now. Please, I need to see you open your eyes.”

It was a voice he could never resist, and so he forced his eyes open.

He was greeted with the light of thousands of stars, covering his body, and emitting a warm luminescence that caused the face of the angel bending over him to glow. Crowley was tucked safely into Aziraphale’s arms, the angel’s wings curled around him, those, too, decorated with starlight.

(Link to the fic below)

Keep reading

gemennair

Hello! Reblogging to say that these are all available as prints on my inprnt (Here’s the link!) for those who are interested! ❤

They’re all in a slightly bigger size too as prints. Enjoy! ❤

veeaziel

every day i am percieved™️

There is a reason for this though!

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply.

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” these stories are only “easy” to read in the sense that the effort we put into them is rewarded in a timely manner. which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start rewarding the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. I’m glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you love–the way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail. The fact that you find joy in the process of reading (or listening!) to stories–that is what matters.

raendown

So I just got my ass handed to me by this post, if anyone was wondering.

miyakuli

** Permission to post it was granted by the artist Do not repost/edit the art without permission Please, support the artist on their pages too **

Artist : 安曇磯良

Source

A world where humans have no innate magic but our pets do.

Cat magic is pretty raw and they mainly use it for getting into places they’re not supposed to. They can be trained if you’re patient, and will sometimes do favours for their owners out if the blue, but only if they want to.

Dogs have been bred for specific magic over the centuries and each breed can do certain things. Showing off your magic is an essential part of a dog show.

Horses come in horse, pegasus, and unicorn, each with their own magical talents.

Fuck knows what birds can do, I don’t trust birds.

For an obvious example… dalmatians have been bred for fire magic. A properly trained dalmatian will run into a burning building and all the fires around it will go out. Caution is necessary, of course, because they can also do the opposite. Their favourite toys are often a bit blackened, and puppies must be kept in fireproof surroundings, with extinguishers in easy reach.

The Pekingese’ magic is camouflage - they can change colour to match whatever they touch, whether a blanket, a mossy rock, or even a reflective mirror. This ability originally enabled them to hide in a robe, so their owners could take them into places where dogs were technically not permitted. The classic image of a pekingese is of it sitting outside a building, appearing to be part of the stonework… until it reveals itself to growl at an intruder.