クソメガネ @gravitonrage - Tumblr Blog

lolmonade

Gothic & Lolita Bible Vol. 41

valvala-deactivated20141226

Shout out at the witch outfit being masculine and the wizard one being feminine like for real holla at that

zvaigzdelasas

just add this string to my div whenever you see me, im not paying for that shit

zvaigzdelasas

clout piracy walktrhough

solthrys

2 dice bowl designs

important life update

#help this man is holding me hostage

presidentofthehotgirlclub

🥺

rohie-deactivated20191102

vuhii

meme genre i like: real life images with video game UIs edited over them

nekomato-nekomata-deactivated20

have you got any examples?

vuhii

madfishmonger

I dug through my random images folder to find this.

biggum

adhdalistair

drxgonfvcker-deactivated2019061

grawly

vuhii

holy fuck this has a lot more notes than i remember

biff-donderglutes

Bro why is being perceived such an ordeal

fortooate

#oh I love them

idionymon-deactivated20191001

Abolish all passport and visa systems and replace them with border vibe checks

lesbiskammerat

tomfordvelvetorchid-deactivated

@1dietcokeinacan

Yes, there are lavender-infused wine tastings involved.

Lavender infused wine tastings!!!!

I still to this day wonder if I’m being abusive without realizing it or falling into abusive patterns or w/e & I sure as fuck keep my eyes peeled for warning signs from other people & honestly? it’s exhausting as shit. I'm stressed. I’m stressed!

for a while (even after escaping the clutches of a closed-off fandom “cult”) if I had a disagreement with someone suddenly it was a whole “fuck are they a piece of shit? am I a piece of shit????” & there was never an answer, it just inevitably led to self-torture bc the only intentions I can really examine are my own (& even that is like walking around in the dark with a single firefly as a lantern)

it’s unrealistic to assume the worst every time, and it doesn’t make it easier that abuse is often hard to identify in the first place, which really is how I feel we got in this mess. why wouldn’t you wanna help keep people from getting taken advantage of? I can’t find a line to draw, though. there’s too many variables at play. anything at all becomes a slippery slope towards the extreme examples of abuse we can all recognize without a problem.

I feel like I’m in a constant state of limbo bc I’m resistant to making up my mind about someone’s morality based on paranoia. I’m constantly doubting my own morality, though that’s eased up this year after deciding to ~be kinder to myself~ or whatever. I say it sardonically bc it’s hard to say w a straight face in this particular context, but I got tired of losing my mind over people not meeting me where I was (there’s other perspectives, but like I said I’ve blamed myself enough)

#is there a point to this post? u decide it's not like I have an answer for any of this

freedom-of-fanfic

To be honest, one thing that really bothers me about the discourse is the implication all adults are bad while teenagers are innocent. I'm a teenager, and my adult friends helped me so much and I'm endlessly grateful to them. I had great teen friends as well, but at the same time, the only unhealthy friend I've made was actually also a teen. She was the one who made me feel terrible, the one who manipulated me and sexually harassed me. She wasn't abusive, and we were bad for each other (1/2)

Rather than it being a one-sided thing, but it feels weird to hear the discourse and how all fandom adults are terrible and will manipulate you and hurt you, when the only one who did was a teen friend (and my parents, but they aren’t related to this situation). Of course, some adults are awful, but I strongly dislike this terrible manipulative adult vs innocent blameless teen dichotomy.

mmhm. it’s a Problem. Like, not just a ‘oh this is irritating’ problem or even just a ‘this is a shitty message to spread to young people about what aging means for their fun’ problem (though that’s also pretty awful), but an honest-to-god ‘you’re the ones endangering people’ problem:

First: stop confusing victims of abuse by saying it’s impossible for them to be abused by [disadvantaged group their abuser is a member of].

people with less systemic privilege/social power can still abuse and hurt individuals of more systemic privilege/social power. to wit:

a young person can physically harm, make unwanted sexual advances on, or emotionally manipulate someone older than them

women can sexually assault men and people with vaginas can sexually assault people with penises

a trans person can cyberbully a cis person

nb people can intimidate and harm people on the binary

people can with the same amount of systemic privilege/social power can abuse and hurt each other

a teen can abuse a teen

a trans person can abuse another trans person

people in same-sex relationships can be abused by/abuse their partner

a mentally ill person can abuse another mentally ill person

an abuse victim can themselves be an abuser of others

it is a harmful lie to say that abusers in abusive relationships or toxic people can only be older and/or more privileged than their victim. it makes people doubt their abuse even more when it comes from a quarter they were told was impossible. and as any survivor will tell you: it’s hard enough to identify and deal with abuse even when it follows expected patterns!

of course people with more systemic privilege/social power have a rank privilege that makes it hard to stop them. but predators with less privilege/social power are invisible and their victims aren’t taken seriously as a result.

Second: it sets up minors to end up only interacting with adults who are inappropriate with them because they’re the only adults going to great lengths to overcome being considered ‘bad’ by default.

‘fandom moms’ i’m looking at you. both antis and non-antis. i don’t trust you

adults purposely surrounding themselves with minors/teens always end up with this weird circle of protective minions who will do anything for them

and these adults are pretty consistent about encouraging them

(no matter what the age of the abuser, one of the biggest dangers in fandom spaces is getting sucked into an abuser’s cult of personality and getting trapped in a cycle of adoration of the abuser and self-hate as you do stuff for them that you know is awful but you can’t stop yourself you have to make them happy)

adult abusers who gain the trust of young people can use their influence to convince their victims that adults who disagree with them are dangerous, increasing the isolation of victims from anyone who might call out the abuser on their shit

it all seems so gosh-darn reasonable because it fits what minors already believe.

the adult abuser? they don’t count. they’re a friend! (<–literally how ever abuser ever is enabled by everyone around them)

tl;dr adult = dangerous abuser, minor = innocent victim creates false flags for abuse and shuts down real flags for abuse and it’s actively hurting real people, can we stop

lines-and-edges

I think this is an important post - with the caveat that, like, lots of times people wind up being “the mom friend” for perfectly good and innocent reasons and this is not in itself creepy or bad, and is kind of necessary? Like, lots of folks (younger or otherwise!) need support and encouragement and self-care advice and it’s not a bad thing to feed people or knit for them or whatever.

It’s just when people attach an agenda to it or make it into an egotistical thing/status label that it gets to be a problem.

(I know I’ve seen other conversations about this, to the point that I think many people already assume this piece of context when reading this post, but I feel like it’s worth explicating.)

freedom-of-fanfic

great addition.

There are various kinds of mentor figures in fandom spaces, and telling the difference between those who are truly kind, helpful people and those who are outwardly kind and helpful but perpetuate a toxic or inappropriate environment can be hard from a distance. But there are a couple of signs of toxicity that can be seen before getting so close it’s hard to get away again:

gossip/rumor-spreading with low regard for honest/fact-checking. they’re not necessarily lying, but their version of the truth omits anything that’s unflattering to themselves. if, before getting close, you feel the need to fact-check everything they say/see if there’s another side to the story every time they share something, that’s not a good sign.

quadruple the danger signals if they ‘vent’ to you about people close to them on a regular basis in a way that makes you wonder why they’re even still friends with these people. you can pretty much guarantee that they’re ‘venting’ about you to someone else the same way.

inappropriate interactions with fans/followers.

sexual weirdness: this is harder to define, so I’ll give an example: I observed a selfie exchange between a self-declared ‘fandom mom’ in their early 20′s and a 16 year old fan: the 16yo said they had a huge crush on the fandom mom, who responded that they were flattered and responded with a wink selfie, and it went on like this for 5 or 6 reblogs. there isn’t much wrong with this exchange unto itself, but as a fellow adult I looked at that and thought ‘if this is how they behave in a public space like tumblr, how do they behave around these younger fans in private?’

‘who wants to be my minion?’ ‘that’s right, you’re my army.’ appreciative reblogs of people saying who say they’d defend them to the death, etc. - openly encouraging and inviting people to group identify as their unquestioning followers and treating it as a privilege.

praising people who act as their attack dogs: thanking them for their spirited defense of their goodness, reblogging appreciatively, always ready to be thought of and treated as faultless.

cycles of shame/fear/drama. every few months/every year or so you hear this self-declared fandom leader is in the middle of some huge pile-up of discourse or wank, which always seems to either end in them becoming more popular or their public declaration that they are Leaving the Internet in Shame. if it’s the latter, they always come back, bolstered by the begging of others to know that they’re alive and okay. rinse, wash, repeat.

absent the desire to be a popular voice in a fandom space this can be a sign of mental health issues - and sometimes people who are this kind of drama magnet are acting out of their mental health struggles. They need help, not hate, but there’s no reason to get sucked into their drama cycle if it has the potential to harm you.

I might make this reblog into a separate post later but I hope this helps describe ‘dangerous fandom mom’ warning signs.

belovedsheith

This topic is much more serious than my blog usually gets, but I’ve been thinking about this post and thread all day. I have a fair number of followers who are minors, and I really want you guys especially to be aware of this stuff. Not to scare you, just to give you more tools to protect yourselves. More information is always better. (This thread is good for anyone to read, but what I’m adding is mainly addressed to young people.) As a teenager in fandom, I had adult friends I considered fandom moms. They were kind, supportive, safe people. They validated my feelings, encouraged my interests, and built up my confidence. My parents weren’t very good at those things, so having adults who COULD do it helped me immensely. Without them, I’m sure I’d be a much different person today. Something all those people had in common is that they didn’t loudly advertise themselves to be “fandom moms” or “safe adults.” They didn’t attempt to surround themselves with adoring young fans; they had friends of all ages. They had different boundaries with me than they had with other adults, which is how it should be. Aside from that, they treated me as an equal. My thoughts and experiences and opinions mattered when we talked, and they never once put me down or used me to increase their own social power and self-esteem. If they called me anything, it was “friend,” not “minion.” The vast majority of adults in fandom that I’ve met in the last 15 years have been perfectly decent people. But you have to keep an eye out anyway. Don’t trust someone just because they are older than you, and not even just because they are nice to you. Anyone who is offended that you don’t trust them quickly is NOT safe. Same goes for anyone who does not stick to appropriate boundaries. Take time—a long time—to watch how they act toward you and others. Compare their behavior to this list. It’s a good list. (And I’m not exempting myself. I won’t tell you all the reasons you should trust me, because you shouldn’t, not right off the bat. Hold me to the standards in this list, too.) If anyone ever makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe in ANY way, please don’t ignore that feeling. Talk about it to someone you trust. Get some outside opinions and advice. You don’t have to confront the person who made you feel weird—you can just block them, and report them if you need to. You are nobody’s pawn. You’re a person, and you deserve to be treated like one.

ashasdramadrawer

This is tangential, but somewhat related:

If you get pulled into the fandom orbit of someone who has a cult of personality thing going on? Get away. This includes anyone who decides they know better than you, or treats your opinions as lesser than theirs. Someone starts trying to tell you how to live your life, or gives you constant unsolicited advice, instead of hearing your out to understand you first? Get away. Allowing you to vent is one thing. That’s what friends do. But if that person start strong-arming you, or tries to control you in any way? That’s a bad sign. When anyone tries to create a distance between you and your RL, and make you feel like they are the only people to be relied upon? hoboy. Especially if you have seen them do it to other people. Fostering dependence and making you question your own judgement is always, and will always be, dangerous. If you ask for advice, that’s one thing. Hearing a different perspective is helpful. But when people give advice unasked for, try to change something about you. That’s manipulative. That’s dangerous. That’s an attempt to form dependence that leads to control and grooming.

THAT CAN HAPPEN NO MATTER HOW OLD SOMEONE IS.

freedom-of-fanfic

More great additions. I’m so glad people are adding so much good info and points.

(The flip side of ‘trying to be the only person you rely on’ is ‘trying to make you (feel like) the only person they rely on.’ This can lead to classic ‘I’ll die if you leave me’-type manipulation tactics. It’s just another way of forcing emotional attachment and controlling others.)

#after spending like 4 yrs of my life orbiting someone's ~cult of personality~ I'm like 👀#these days I try not to stress out so much about abuse allegations or whatever but my experiences with Friendship in Fandom have definitely #affected how & when I let people into my life #ref