Minty's Reblog Blog

main: MintyMimix

[disease-danger-darkness-silence]

[tronmike82]

I don’t mean to be rude; but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this, does anyone have any examples?

[darkshrimpemotions]

Supernatural

Doctor Who (Steven Moffat specifically)

Sherlock (Steven Moffat specifically)

Actually Steven Moffat is basically just this sentiment given human form.

A version of this happened with The Magicians, tbh. Though instead of expectation: men, reality: women it was expectation: smug nihilists, reality: mentally ill queer folks.

Arguably Game of Thrones.

If we broaden it outside of television…I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I can’t help but think of every band that’s ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.

In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they want–and think they deserve–the time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.

They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they don’t want us. And they don’t really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audience’s demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.

And like any other spoiled brat, they will break their toys before they share them.

[pessimisticfanboi]

It goes all the way to the top for kids shows. Toy sales will crash a show. Makes sense, but if those toys are gendered for boys instead of the female viewers, they won’t usually switch up the marketing and move them to the girl aisle. They cancel the show outright.

Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesn’t perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasn’t a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.

And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didn’t necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.

Young Justice

Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs don’t want largely female audiences

#WhereIsRey (initial)

#WhereIsRey (ongoing)

'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' owes its box-office success to women

The older, male generation of 'Star Wars' fans may be losing interest in the franchise, but female fans are stepping up.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was designed to be the opposite of The Last Jedi

[drunkenhills]

You’re all sitting on the hot take of the decade tbh

[vbartilucci]

And yet when they fond out that boys were watching MLP:FIM in droves, they had NO PROBLEM with it.

[jediorgana-deactivated20260403]

#SONS OF ANARCHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!#LITERALLY SONS OF ANARCHY IS THE BIGGEST EXAMPLE OF THIS LIKE EVER#kurt sutter wrote that show for MEN and ended up with an overwhelmingly female audience#because he’s actually a good writer and knows how to develop characters well and wrote excellent female characters#but once he realized that his audience was almost entirely women he literally took it out on tara and gemma in the show#but like tara specifically#he resented her character for being a huge draw for female viewers so he tore her development to shreds and killed her#in the most brutal gut wrenching way possible#kurt sutter you will pay for your crimes#i actually wrote a manifesto about this on one of my old blogs i should try to find it sldkjsldfjsdljf#long post (via@m-oonknight)

OMG YES. I LOVED Sons of Anarchy, especially the women and then I got to season 6 and it was like - everything was just tossed in the trash? And like, why did Sutter hate that Tara drew tons of attention? That should have been a good thing! He should have been like “Hey folks, this girl’s getting us more viewers, let’s put her in more scenes!” It just doesn’t make sense to me. MEN don’t make sense to me.

[geraltcirilla]

The 100 too. I’ll never forget how Jason Rothenberg would attacked female fans on Twitter and mock them in interviews, and then post links to male fan discussions on Reddit to praise and thank them. In his goodbye letter to the show he SPECIFICALLY thanked Reddit and it was so disgusting.

[annaknitsspock]

Star Trek from TNG on was also a boy’s club, even though the TOS fans were mostly women. Women, in fact, who literally created modern fandom with their zines. But after TNG it was all, “Women don’t understand Star Trek, only smart men hur dur.”

[help-help-i-need-an-adult]

I think it would be harder for us to find examples of when this DIDNT happen than when it did. It happens all the time.

[nova-arcania]

Doesn’t stop it from boggling the mind

(though it could probably start to make some sense if you follow the money past audience bases to maybe a couple of investors or like a rich patron … 🤔)

[ridleymocki]

Stooooop I just wrote a masters thesis on this shit. Media creation and distribution is a means by which dominant power structures consolidate their hegemony. Dominantly situated creators get upset when the audience they attract isn’t the audience they wanted, because they view the whole creation and sharing of the fiction as an exercise to sustain kyriarchal conditions that benefit themselves. When the audience is Other, they see it as a failure of those efforts and lash out.

Simply, they’re trying to assert a particular worldview via fiction, and upon getting confronted with something else, begin foot stamping. It’s not just men wanting male attention and gatekeeping. It’s that the fiction in the first place was an attempt to curate dominance and whoopsie! they miscalculated.

(anyway if anyone wants to read 35k words of philosophy about this, hmu)

[ridleymocki]

Hey folks, for anyone that was interested in the thesis (firstly thank you so much for reaching out I really appreciate the interest) the following is an open access link to download it. Please let me know if it doesn’t work for some reason. Comments are now restricted so can’t put it there, but I hope you see this if you were interested!

I’d also love to hear your thoughts, as I literally wrote it for communities like ours to read, so, thanks.

Fictions are a cornerstone of human cultures: they are created, shared, discussed, modified, and valued. Yet, philosophical accounts which p

[genericpuff]

comicfury continues to reign supreme as the only webcomic platform that understands it's a webcomic platform

[genericpuff]

making an extra post because the tags aren't good enough

here is all the reasons why you should use comicfury (if you aren't already) :

pretty much full control over your custom site design. if you're an HTML/CSS nerd you can go as crazy as you want with it. but for those who aren't so code-savvy, there are also simplified built-in design tools so you can create a unique site for yourself and your work. reject homogeneous minimalism design of bigger platforms, embrace tradition of mid-2000's kitchen sink site design (if that's what you want, that is).

the site demonstrates its own philosophies through its extremely charming vintage 2000's-era site design. it ain't broke so it doesn't need fixing. if it's too 'ugly' for you and wards you off from using the site, then it's succeeding at what it was designed to do.

forums! remember those??? CF sure does!

full view of your comic statistics over the past month, shown as delicious daily line graphs, separated by unique visitors, web page view, and scroll view.

hosting is free. don't want that pesky 'thecomicseries' or 'comicfury' add-on? all you gotta do is purchase your own domain name. contact kyo and they'll take care of the rest.

you can categorize your pages per chapter, making for an easier reading experience

you can include page transcripts for screen-readers as well as mouseover text

you can enable comments per upload and even manage them so that all comments have to be approved by you before they're shared publicly

archive tagging!!! i.e. you can tag uploads with relevant characters / locations / etc. so people can find specific pages easier on your site.

you can run a goddang BLOG on your comic site so that people can read what you've been up to! or don't, it's your choice!

clear filters for NSFW content. the filters do what they must to inform your audience as intended, outside of that, your comic will not be taken down, flagged, or suppressed in search results just because it contains violence or boobies.

they are strictly anti-AI

they do not make licensing deals with third-party companies, so the only 'competition' you have are other indie creators like you, no Marvel or DC nonsense

you're free to embed ads and/or donation buttons on your site and CF will not take off a single cent of it for themselves.

the front page goes to Recently Updated by default, all the other tabs are simply Popular Now and Popular Overall. there's also a Random button if you want to be surprised with something new. while this might seem like a bad thing for people who prefer custom filtering, this unbiased layout prevents the common visibility issues / favoritism / etc. that happen on other platforms.

but if you DO want to find something new that fits your specific tastes? just use their search bar, unlike on Webtoons it actually does what search bars are supposed to do! within the search page you can pick and choose whatever genre tags you want, and you can filter out major NSFW flags you're not comfortable with seeing.

saving the best for last: none of those features outlined above require paying a premium subscription tier. you have access to ALL the same tools and permissions that everyone else does. you have just as much potential to gain an audience there as everyone else and you are all granted the same freedoms.

[cam1lla]

“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.

[moonshinemagpie]

"you are functionally a conservative" is such a good and clarifying insult

Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.

There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.

Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."

Functionally conservative. It's so important to have the language to express that.

[cam1lla]

Thank you for this addition!

[ollieofthebeholder]

I did a report on book banning once.

Actually, I did reports on book banning three separate times with three separate teachers, with three separate sets of parameters so I was able to write about the same topic in different ways, but this is specifically about the report I did in university. The actual specs for the report included that we were supposed to complete some kind of study or poll (this was not a science class). I put the questions out on a couple of forums I belonged to at the time and asked a few IRL friends as well. A lot of the questions were standard for this sort of thing, I think - were you ever assigned to read a banned book, did you ever read banned books on your own, did you read/were you assigned them BECAUSE they were banned or did you find out about them being banned later, what's your opinion on banning books, etc.

But there was one question I asked that ended up reshaping the entire thrust of my presentation: "Are there any books that you think SHOULD be banned, and if so, why?"

Here's the thing. Most of the forums I was posting on were fan spaces for a book series that, at the time, was one of the most banned/challenged books out there. It's a fandom that I have since entirely distanced myself from, that I one hundred percent do not recommend to anyone, that I will actively attempt to dissuade people from reading or talking about, and that I would like to not be popular anymore. I'm sure most of you reading this can guess which one I'm talking about (I won't name it or go into specifics because I don't want to trip any filters unnecessarily). But it was KNOWN that these books were banned in a lot of places. A lot of people wore the "I read banned books" badge with pride. I fully expected that the answer to that question would be a resounding "no" from the forums, and that I'd maybe get a few affirmative answers from one of the other spaces.

I was shocked. Not only did a lot of people come back with either "not exactly but I think we should keep [author] or [book] out of the hands of children" or "yes, [book]/anything by [author] should be banned because XYZPDQ", but not a single person who responded gave me the same answer. The only one I remember - keep in mind it's been almost twenty years - was that one person specifically said The Bone Collector, and for the "why do you think it should be banned" question, they only said, "No. I'm not explaining it. It's too horrible to even think about. Just believe me when I say nobody should ever be allowed to read this book."

I highlighted that last comment in my presentation, along with several other of my "favorite" official reasons for banning books - the Alabama school board that banned The Diary of Anne Frank in 1984 because it was "a real downer", the district that removed A Raisin in the Sun because it was "pornographic", the library that took Charlie and the Chocolate Factory out of circulation because it "might be hurtful to children without parents", and things of that nature - and pointed out that all of these were the same thing. This was somebody saying "I don't like this, therefore nobody should read it, and I shouldn't have to explain why." I also pointed out that if you can't give a good reason, the whole thing falls apart, and then I quoted "Smut" by Tom Lehrer:

All books can be indecent books, Though recent books are bolder, For filth, I'm glad to say, Is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, Everything is lewd. I can tell you things about Peter Pan And the Wizard of Oz - THERE'S a dirty old man...

Go back to that paragraph I mentioned earlier, about those books that I no longer recommend to anyone. Notice how I phrased that. I don't recommend them. I will tell you all the reasons why I don't think you should buy them. I will tell you all the problems with the author, with the franchise, with the writing. I wish they were out of print, I wish they were deeply unpopular, I wish nobody would ever read them again.

But I still won't advocate for banning them.

It's so easy to twist a justification. Look at what I quoted up there! A Raisin in the Sun was banned for being "pornographic". One of the websites I used as a source responded to that accusation with "Did they read the same play I did?" At the time, I thought the comment was funny. Now, twenty years later, I realize: It was a buzzword. It was a convenient label. At the time of the challenge, just saying "it's pornographic" was enough. Obviously you're not some kind of sicko who wants to hear about all the pornographic details, are you? Freak! That's pornography! And they're teaching it in schools! We should get rid of it!

A Raisin in the Sun, for anyone who didn't study it at any point or read it (or watch the movie, which was very good), is a play/movie about a black family in Chicago in the 1960s. The family matriarch has been in domestic service for years, but she's just received a very large insurance payment from her husband's death and is retiring. Wanting to give her family, especially her young grandson, a better life, she goes out and buys a house...in an otherwise exclusively white neighborhood. The head of the homeowner's association (essentially) comes to visit them and offers to pay them a substantial amount of money to not move into the neighborhood, because segregation isn't officially a thing and they can't legally stop them from moving in, but they don't want them there. There's a lot more that goes on in the play, and I highly recommend you go and read it, but the point is that there is nothing sexual or titillating in the entire thing. The closest we get is a scene where the daughter (Beneatha, a college student) is gifted a traditional African dress from her boyfriend, who's Nigerian, and he shows her how to put it on over the clothes she's already wearing, and maybe the scene where the daughter-in-law (Ruth, a laundress) accidentally reveals that, having found out she's pregnant, she's planning to have an abortion rather than bring another child into the world/have another mouth to feed.

It's not pornographic. But someone didn't want it taught in schools, so they called it that to get it banned.

It's so easy to twist labels. If you, a liberal, agree that books with X trait are okay to ban, the people who don't want books to exist will find a way to say they have X trait, and then what are you going to do, admit that you like that sort of thing? Sicko! Freak! Pervert!

You don't have to like the book, or the author, or the topic. But if you're advocating for banning them entirely, you're functionally a conservative.

[blueenergycat]

Luxray Lemmy and the Lightning Storm [Commission]

Strike a pose, direct the lightning! Commission for Lemmy.

Posted using PostyBirb

[torstherapy]

[keepchangingandneverstop]

Day 29 - Psychosomatic Bullshit

[keepchangingandneverstop]

Found the post!

[adriftinhilbertspace]

fun fact: tigers also contract their muscles to make a slow tiger into a fast tiger

[thelawfulchaotic]

Gemini had the fucking GALL to get in my email and summarize a 3-line email, taking up more space than the email did visually.

Hit the “thumbs down.” It’s like, what’s wrong??? Was our summary wrong? Were there offensive words? Thank you for helping us improve our AI tools :)

I selected “other.”

Text box popped up. Please elaborate!

Wrote in “I can fucking read” submit comment

Then had to spend several minutes torching all my settings with a flamethrower. Let me be clear: I’m (a lawyer) notoriously picky with my words FOR GOOD REASON (lawyering) so I overwhelmingly reject Gmail’s “helpful” little assistance. My privacy settings were set to “full paranoia” a little less than a year ago when I saw the writing on the wall and knew public defenders could become a target in the future. Better to lock it all down now.

Gemini had crept in there and turned ALL that shit back on. And showed itself by saying “Jane Doe says she’s so sorry for your loss and offers to reschedule for Thursday at 3” over an email from Jane Doe saying “I’m so sorry for your loss. We could reschedule for Thursday at 3?”

Why would I possibly need this. In what universe would I need this. I have eyes and a brain and a reading speed that twenty years ago was measured at 1500 wpm with full comprehension on dense scientific text. Furthermore! If I read a summary, I’m not reading what they actually wrote. If I’m not reading what they actually wrote, I’m not using my own judgment on the words and phrases that they used.

I literally don’t understand why this is helpful at all. This is just avoidance. Using LLMs to write is specifically Not Writing. Using LLMs to summarize is Not Reading. Using them to make art is Avoiding Making Art. Just READ! Just WRITE! I was not put on this fucking planet to not read and not write and not make art! Avoidance is an anxiety symptom and indulging it gives it more power.

If I had an AI to do my most dreaded task, answer the phone for clients, I wouldn’t use it. Because an AI cannot help them. An AI cannot hear the facts of their case, make appropriate noises, be thoughtful and insightful, and then give them a realistic estimate of what could happen in court. I am unique. I cannot be replaced by machine learning. I have style. I have expertise. I don’t hallucinate unless I’m having a really great Friday night and I’m off the clock.

When I need to outsource tasks from my own brain, I give them to people I know can do them and that I trust to do them right.

Fuck, it just sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?? Goddamn Gemini jumpscare right in my own fucking email

[agent-mcsweetheart]

i saw a post earlier today and now i can’t find it but someone was like the only reason i get through studying is by saying “let’s go steal a grade” where they just imagine they’re doing research for a leverage con and they have to know all the information to pull it off successfully. I’m at my internship rn and i found the original score for the og show and redemption and let me tell you i have never been more productive

[agent-mcsweetheart]

@imaginable-horror you are an inspiration 😌🫡

[onyxbird]

Replace imposter syndrome with the conman method! You're a fraud, and you're such a competent fraud that the mark is never going to realize what hit them until the gloat.

[freak-phone]

I get asked a lot for tips with coloring black people, so i put together a little tutorial! (and bumps my kofi if you found this helpful)

[fuwungi]

I think there’s really a conversation to be had about people harassing others to the point of breaking under the guise of being “morally good” and “protecting others”. I’ve never felt protected or safe seeing people like that. I think “oh, if I step even a little out of line I’m next”.

[fuwungi]

a lot of these same type of people will demand the person they’re harassing to take accountability but I’ve noticed that no one really has any more to say on what they mean by that. Accountability here does not mean accountability. What they want is an exile, or harassment to the point of breaking.

You and a friend have an argument and they decide you’re toxic? You said something problematic when you were 12/13? You like something that makes someone else uncomfortable?

You have to either disappear from the internet forever or kill yourself.

[fuwungi]

I also want to add on and share that this is currently what I’m living through. My stalkers/harassers are making it their goal to ruin my life. I can’t talk about it anywhere but here really (I guess since none of them use tumblr a lot and also knew mine was pretty dead for a while) but they’re inciting harassment mobs, attacking and harming me financially, they outted me as being a trans man after being stealth for nearly 7 years now and where I live is not safe, insanely inflammatory lies about me like I killed my best friend who also struggled with bpd like me- it wasn’t him taking his life because his struggles with it became too much, that I tried to run people over with my car because they tried to “hold me accountable” when I don’t have a license or car, accusing me of extremely damaging things with zero proof outside of “just trust me bro”, calling my apartment complex to kick me out, harassing my friends and anyone even close to me into not supporting me anymore & if they continue they have insane lies about them spread, I’m being harassed daily with my own address and having some of the most vile transphobia and hatred sent to me while sui-baiting me, I could keep going. I’ve been demanded to make a statement several times but they just mass report it and continue harassing me and demand I make a statement again. It feels like there’s no point and I’ll never be free from this. I’ve tried taking my life 3 times, I’m getting help legally but it’s taking way too long. There’s so much people just refuse to understand and they’d much rather have someone to point and laugh at for entertainment rather than getting the bigger picture of the fact that an abuser can come online and lie about their victim so they can never speak out and have harassment mobs to make sure that victim stays silent.

[fuwungi]

I’m being harassed even worse right now because I’m stocking my shop today. I can’t post it anywhere else because the harassment will get worse, but I need to work to live and rent’s coming up while I’m also trying to continue affording legal help as well

Shop

[dietranch]

[fallout-lou-begas]

something that i find interesting about independent animation nowadays is that if you don't have studio/streamer backing, you have to release your work yourself on the internet, but you have to do it for free on the internet because virtually nobody is going to be willing to accept a paywall just for one original show, so what you have to do in order to make any money off of it is make all of your money from merchandising, but then this means that you show must be merchandisable and have very toyetic character designs that translate easily to plushies and whatnot, but then you also need to cater your show to people who are disproportionately inclined to buy merchandise like that in the first place so that your sales can be enough to sustain you, which means that even if you want to communicate complex or difficult ideas in your work, your independent animation project must attract (at least on a first impression) and retain viewers who are both very consumerist and very capable of rabid passion, which unfortunately has a single-circle shaped venn diagram with a lot of the most toxic fandom tendencies known to man, and this explains a lot of things about independent animation and its fandoms nowadays I think

[ndnbutch]

negative self talk IS unproductive and painful for you and often those around you. but like every other post that talks about this is like “yeah it makes you an exhausting and burdensome person to be around and if you don’t stop now everyone in your life will abandon you. Also I personally hate you for it”. and it’s like hey hi hello. basically the theme of all my negative self talk is that I’m an exhausting and burdensome person to be around and that everyone in my life will soon abandon and hate me. so like haha what’re we doing here? are you going to provide any actionable advice for how to get out of this habit, or just tell me that I’m Doing Bad And Wrong And Must Suffer For It?

Anyway. If you struggle with negative self-talk I feel for you. It’s hellish, and it’s not something that can just be bludgeoned out of someone by telling them it sucks. We know! I’m not out of the weeds just yet by a long shot, but here’s some of the stuff that’s been helpful for me:

Fake it til it’s real: cliche, I know! but it really has helped for me, even though it makes me suuuuper uncomfortable at times. but literally tell yourself that you’re super charismatic and sexy and everyone loves you. or whatever version of that feels good for how you’d like to be seen. it’s gonna feel silly and untrue for a really long time, but it helps!

Reframe: I struggled to phrase this one, but what I mean basically is like… taking that notion of “hey negative self-talk sucks for the people around you too” and turning it into “wow, it is kind of mean to my friends to just assume they’re lying when they say they love me. I don’t want to be mean to my friends. I’m going to take the risk of trusting them”. Try not to go too far in the direction of “oh god I’m being mean to my friends” and stay on the path of “I want to and CAN do right by them”

Separate from it: I like to kind of act like my negative self talk is something of a different entity from me. Your mileage may vary on this one. I was a really mean really sad teenage girl once, and for me that kind of feels like the place the negative self talk comes from. So instead of being like “I guess I just hate myself and always will”, I can be like “I have this wounded inner child who is lashing out. I’m going to be gentle with her, but I’m also not going to listen to the things she tells me we are, because she is 16 and hasn’t experienced anything good yet.”

This is far from a comprehensive list but this post is getting long—feel free to add on if you have any tactics that have worked especially well for you!

[tieflingkisser]

[lesbianslimefriend]

here's where to find it on windows 10

[the-tiny-dragons-tea-room]

Ugh, it was in mine. It's off now.

[the-tiny-dragons-tea-room]

IT GETS WORSE

I had to turn this off, but it's something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.

LOBOTOMIZE YOUR MACHINES

[marougus-the-dragon]

AI is a freacking plague, I share this for any windows user.

[maemaybe]

I don't know who my intended audience is here, so whoever needs to hear this, I am begging you to learn to participate in conversations that are about things you aren't interested in.

Part of socializing and having friends is being a good listener even when you don't actually give a shit about the subject.

Your are hurting other people's feelings when you bluntly respond with "Anyway..." and then change the topic.

It can not always be about your preferred topic.

You are being rude. Yes, even if you are neurodivergent. You can be both autistic and rude.

[branchynaps]

Someone left a comment about PMD Cassette Beasts and I genuinely can't stop thinking about it.

Anyway uhh au where the hero is still a human but forgot how to turn back into one?

[branchynaps]

Some pmd crossover drawings! Probably gonna call them team Jump-Start