Positivity on a Sideblog with Bonus Unrelated Content

[thecaffeinebookwarrior-deactiva]

Male Protagonists to Avoid in your Writing:  An Illustrated Guide.

1.  The Edward Cullen (i.e. the glorified stalker)

How to spot him:

He’s gorgeous.  Brooding.  Bejeweled with countless sequins.  He stresses over and over again that he and the female protagonist have a “connection,” are “soulmates,” or something else that you’d generally expect to hear from that one creepy kid who used to stare at you in class.  Similarly, in true creep fashion, he uses their supposed connection as an excuse to blatantly stalk her, and is narratively treated as nothing short of a romantic in spite of it because he’s attractive (and sparkly) enough to pull it off.

Examples:      

In the Twilight Saga, Edward is canonically over one hundred years old, making it extra creepy that he’s A) hanging around a high school for no particular reason, and B) dating a seventeen-year-old girl.  He uses derogatory terms about past lovers, attempts suicide when Bella tries to break up with him, and shows up at her home uninvited to watch her sleep.  Moreover, his systematic isolation of Bella from her friends and family is all-too reminiscent of real life abusive dynamics.  

How to avoid him: 

Read up on signs of abuse in a relationship.  This is a good thing to do anyway as a means of self-education, but it’s also important for writers who plan to include romantic subplots.  A good one to start with can be found here, at least in terms of emotional abuse: https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/10/13/21-warning-signs-of-an-emotionally-abusive-relationship/.

Try to avoid a blatant power imbalance.  Edward is stressed to be older, stronger, more experienced, and more intelligent than Bella.  Sometimes power imbalances are unavoidable due to species differences, but this can be countermanded by giving the human love interest qualities that make them valuable in other ways.

Overall, if you’re attempting to portray a healthy relationship, try to base it on an equal exchange of power and mutual respect.

2.  The Christian Grey (i.e. the glorified rapist)

How to spot him:

When I first found out that the 50 Shades of Grey franchise was originally Twilight fanfiction, I initially (incorrectly) presumed it to be a joke.  After I’d come to terms with the fact that it was not, my next thought was that it made perfect sense, because Christian is literally Edward Junior on steroids:  the same abusive brand of stalker who gets off on a blatant power imbalance, with the added unpleasantries of excessive wealth and bad BDSM etiquette.  Oh, yeah.  And he’s a rapist.    

Examples:

Christian disregards Ana’s request for a condom, stating “her body belongs to him,” threatens punishment when she refutes his attempts to discretely grope her in public, and at one point, ignores her safe word.  Throughout the book, Ana is pressured into sex she feels uncomfortable with.    

How to avoid him: 

If you’re going to write about BDSM, actually study BDSM etiquette.

Healthy BDSM relationships are forged on mutual trust and a consensual, mutually beneficial exchange of power.  Even if you are writing about BDSM, if you intend to write about a healthy relationship, be sure to base it off of these values. 

Just because a character is dominant doesn’t mean they need to be emotionally callous;  Christian completely neglects Ana’s emotional needs, such as her aftercare (i.e. the period of tenderness recommended after BDSM sessions to compensate for the emotional and physically taxing task of surrendering one’s power.)

In short, don’t use kink as a means of excusing emotionally unhealthy and abusive dynamics.       

3.  The Ross Geller (i.e. the entitled “nice guy”)

How to spot him:

He thinks his hot female friends (and only the hot ones, mind you) are owed to him because he’s “nice,” romantic, and intelligent.  However, upon closer scrutiny he really isn’t a particularly nice guy (i.e. he bullied his sister Monica and benefits from enjoys her emotionally abusive parents’ favoritism), is self-centered, and consistently places his needs ahead of her own.

Examples:  

The minute Rachel begins to find self-fulfillment in her career, Ross becomes jealous and hounds her at work, accuses her of “not having enough time for (him),” and generally tries to make her feel guilty for being successful and having priorities other than him. 

How to avoid him: 

Again, I cannot stress this enough:  mutual respect.  This is literally the foundation of all successful relationships, fictitious or otherwise.

Have your male characters support their significant other’s decisions and allow them to be happy for their success.  

Your male character’s significant other is allowed to do things that don’t necessarily involve him.  Make sure he understands that.

Intelligence in and of itself does not make a character a better person than his fellows, and intelligence does not have to equate the superiority with which Ross appears to associate himself.   

Just look to the healthier couples Friends churned out in its time:  Monica and Chandler, for example, love and respect one another’s goals, and are no the less interesting and hilarious because of it.  

4.  The Sheldon Cooper (i.e. the annoying autism stereotype)

How to spot him: 

He’s a bloated paragon of autism stereotypes.  He’s got zero regard for the feelings of his friends, considers himself superior to everyone, and is incapable of talking about anything but his own interests.  

Examples:   

“His spot” on the sofa, his need to knock three times before speaking to the person on the other side of the door, etc.  These are stereotypical and inaccurate portrayals of some autistic people’s comfort in routine.   

How to avoid him: 

Research symptoms of Asperger’s in adults (and for god’s sake, stay away from Autism Speaks.)  Similarly, try and learn from actually people with Asperger’s, as anti-autism, “cure”-based sentiment tends to run high in allistic academia.  

Study the mannerisms of famous people who may have been on the spectrum, such as Albert Einstein, Allan Turing, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sherlock Holmes’s inspiration, Joseph Bell.

If you’re not ready to depict an autistic character, I’m going to say wait.  It’s okay to admit to ignorance, and it’s okay to wait to do more research before depicting a certain subgroup.        

Try to avoid inserting autistic symptoms into characters to use as comedic fodder.

Asperger’s coded (and confirmed, by creators and cast) characters like Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Bones) and Spencer Reid (Criminal Minds) have their stereotypical moments, but they’re still successfully presented as lovable, intelligent, and productive characters;  look to them to see better representation of intelligent, autistic characters in mainstream television.  

5.  The John Winchester (i.e. the abusive parent with a redemption arc)

How to spot him:

The John Winchester is a textually abusive or otherwise toxic parent who damages his children’s lives for his own purposes, inflicts emotional or physical harm, and is shown or mentioned to be violent, controlling, and/or neglectful.  However, his redeeming/sympathetic qualities or otherwise heroic actions lead him to be narratively treated as a benevolent character and “good” parent. 

Examples:  

In Supernatural, John leaves his boys for weeks on end in motel rooms, sometimes over important holidays (and keep in mind that this was in the 80s and 90s, when child sexual abuse was at an all-time high.)  He often places his eldest son as the soul caregiver of his other child, despite the fact that he was a child too at the time, and left them both alone with loaded firearms. He also uses unfairly harsh punishments, such as leaving his young son alone at a boy’s home for an entire summer because he stole food for himself and his brother.  His son literally, unironically realized he was being possessed by a demonic entity when it said it was proud of him. 

How to avoid him:    

Educate yourself on the different definitions of abuse (emotional, verbal, physical, etc.) and what qualifies as each.  Psychology Today is a great resource for this (they have some rudimentary definitions here:  https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/child-abuse.)   

Feel free to endow abusive parents with sympathetic qualities (in fact, please do;  100% evil characters tend to be campy, boring, and/or unintentionally hilarious) but be aware that no sympathetic qualities negate or justify child abuse.

Please, for the love of God, don’t use the “he was doing his best” excuse as a resolution.  Many abusive parents legitimately are doing their best, and many abused children are acutely aware of this.  It really doesn’t provide much comfort.

Remember that abused children frequently refuse to turn on their parents, often defending them long into their adulthood.  The child’s forgiveness does not equate the parent’s redemption.  

Similarly, I’d personally recommend staying away from the “I can finally forgive him” trope as well;  it’s done to death, and often frustrating to real-life survivors. 

Before the Meninsits™ come for me about this, I am going to be writing a list of female character archetypes as well, and then make lists of positive attributes to include in male and female characters, respectively, to provide a counterpoint.  I might also make a part two of this post for all the other characters I hate, because I fear it would get too long. 

In the meantime, be sure to follow my blog and stay tuned for future writing advice and observations!

Updating with the link to the female counterpart post, because people keep asking me for it.  Read it here!  

[artisticallyawk]

See I see nothing wrong with writing these characters AS LONG AS YOU DON’T GLORIFY THEM.

Call out the stalkers and the rapists, sure, and don’t let the abusive father off the hook (or let him be forgiven on the Abused’s terms not his own)- I think literature is a great place to show these kinds of people for the nasty people they are and the harm they do, despite their good/‘good’/best intentions. 

I think just saying 'don’t write these characters’ is just as bad as telling people they should be adored honestly, because these sort of people do exist, it’s what makes some of these characters so relatable or ‘desireable’. 

I don’t think every character has to teach people stuff, or be politically correct or even be a ‘good’ person, but you should make it clear where they (and I suppose, you, by extension) put their actions on the good-bad scale. Stop pretending these people don’t exist- hiding the alter is just as bad as worshipping at it.

You can have ‘horrible’ protagonists, just… Don’t suck their dicks while they’re doing it.

anyways yeah thanks for coming to my tedtalk

[thecaffeinebookwarrior-deactiva]

Female Characters to Avoid in your Writing:  An Illustrated Guide.

1.  The Bella Swan (i.e. the blank sheet of paper)

Who she is:

In Twilight, I found Bella to have very few qualities indicative of a strong character.  She’s shown to have very little personality, in the books or onscreen, and is only made “interesting” (a relative term here) via the inclusion of her sparkly, domineering boyfriend.  It feeds into the harmful mentality of adolescent girls that you need a significant other in order to find fulfillment, particularly if he’s significantly older and likes to watch you sleep.

Her one redeeming quality is that Kristen Stewart is hot.

Examples:

Bella is welcomed to school by a friendly, extroverted girl and given a place to sit amongst her and her friends.  Despite this girl’s kindness, Bella shrugs her off as a stereotypical shallow cheerleader, and spends her time staring wistfully at the guy across the cafeteria from them.  Once Edward becomes her official boyfriend, she immediately loses interest in her new friends as her life shifts its orbit to revolve completely around him. 

How to avoid her:

Female characters are allowed to have lives outside of their significant others.  They’re allowed to have friends, quirks, hobbies, and interests.  Give them some. 

The best fictional relationships are based off of characters who compliment each other, not one character who revolves around the other.  Make sure your female character’s life does not centralize around her significant other.

Strong female characters don’t look down on other girls, even if they are outgoing cheerleaders.  Being pasty and introverted doesn’t make you a better person, y’all – if it did, I’d be a decorated hero by now.

Give them aspirations besides getting an obsessive, much-older boyfriend.  In fact, don’t give them an obsessive, much-older boyfriend at all – if you do want them to have a significant other, give them one who cares about their interests and accepts that they have lives and goals outside of them.

2.  The Molly Hooper (i.e. the starry-eyed punching bag)

Who she is:

 Like most things about BBC’s Sherlock, Molly was an amazing concept that went progressively downhill.  I used to love her quiet tenacity and emotional intelligence, and was sure that with her strong basis as a character, she would overcome her infatuation with the titular Sherlock and find self-fulfillment.  Nope!

Examples: 

She remained stubbornly infatuated over the course of five years with an ambiguously gay man who, en large, treated her badly, leading to her public humiliation with zero pertinence to the plot or resolution.  Moreover, her infatuation with Sherlock quickly usurped almost all of her other characteristics, leading her to an increasingly immature characterization that was difficult to relate to.

How to avoid her:

By all means, please write female characters who are quiet, kind, and unassuming (a female character does not, contrary to popular belief, need to be rambunctious, callous, or violent to be “strong”) but remember than none of these traits need to make the character a pushover.  Let them stand their ground.

Similarly, attraction to men (or anyone, for that matter) does not invalidate a female character’s strength.  Just be sure she values herself more than their attention.

As I said earlier, don’t be afraid to make characters who are gentle and soft-spoken, but be wary of making them “childlike,” or giving them an infantile, vapid characterization.

My best advice for writing gentle, soft-spoken, unassuming women would actually to look to male characters in the media fitting this description; since male characters are rarely infantilized as much as women are by popular media, you’ll get a much better idea of what a well-rounded character looks like. 

3.  The Irene Adler (i.e. the defanged badass)  

Who she is: 

Yup.  Another one of the BBC Sherlock women, among whom only Mrs. Hudson seemed to come through with her dignity and characterization intact.  In the books, Irene and Sherlock have absolutely zero romantic connotations, only bonded via Sherlock’s irritation and respect with her substantial intelligence.  In the show, it’s a different story entirely. 

Examples:  

Irene is a badass character who’s turned into a teary-eyed Damsel in Distress via her uncontrollable love for the show’s male lead.  It doesn’t help matters that she’s a self-proclaimed lesbian who falls in love with a man, which, unless you’re a queer woman yourself and writing about a character realizing she’s bi/pansexual, I would recommend against doing under any circumstances.  She ends up being defeated and subsequently rescued by Sherlock – a far cry from her defeat of him in the books. 

How to avoid her:

If you’re writing a badass female character, allow her to actually be badass, and allow her to actually show it throughout your work as opposed to just hearing other characters say it.  

That said, “badass” does not equal emotionally callous.  It doesn’t bother me that Moffat showed Irene having feelings for someone else, what bothers me is how he went about it. 

When writing a character who’s shown to be attracted to more than one gender, just say she’s bisexual.  Pansexual.  Whatever, just don’t call her straight/gay depending on the situation she’s in.  Jesus.

4.  The Becky (i.e. the comedic rapist) 

Who she is: 

Most people who know me can vouch for my love of Supernatural, but it definitely has its problems.  It’s not as diverse as it could be, its treatment of women is subpar, and there are recurring themes of sexual violence – perhaps most frequently, surprisingly enough, against its male leads.  Whether it involves being subjected to non-consensual groping by sultry demons or rape by deception, it’s rarely ever addressed afterwards, often played out as a sexy fantasy, and commonly used for comedic fodder.  Possibly the most quintessential example of this is Becky.

Examples: 

Becky abducts Sam, ties him to the bed, and kisses him against his will.  She then drugs him, albeit with a love potion, and vocally planned to have sex with him under its influence. 

Take a moment to imagine how hellaciously creepy would be if the genders were reversed.

How to avoid her:

Male rape isn’t funny, my dudes.  If your punchline revolves around a man being subjected to sexual violence at the hands of a woman, you need to re-evaluate yourself.

Educate yourself on statistics for male sexual assault:  approximately thirty-eight percent of sexual violence survivors are male, for example, and approximately one in sixteen male college students has reported to have experienced sexual assault. 

Moreover, be aware that forty-six percent of all instances of male rape have a female perpetrator.

Read more here in this amazing article:  http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html

In other words, treat themes of sexual assault against men as seriously as you would treat themes of sexual assault against women.       

5.  The Movie Hermione (i.e. the flawless superhuman) 

Who she is: 

Okay, in and of herself, Movie Hermione is amazing:  she’s beautiful, intelligent, and heroic, as well as possibly the most useful character of the franchise.  She only bothers me in context of the fact that she takes away everything I loved most about Book Hermoine, and everything I loved about Book Ron, too.   

Examples: 

Book Hermione was beautiful, but not conventionally:  she had big, poofy curls, big teeth, and didn’t put a lot of effort into maintaining her appearance.  Movie Hermione looks effortlessly flawless, all the time.  Book Hermione was intelligent, but also loud, abrasive, and unintentionally annoying when talking about her interests.  She was also allowed to have flaws, such as struggling to keep up with academia, and being terrified of failure.  

Movie Hermione also took all of Ron’s redeeming qualities, and everything that made him compliment her as a couple:  his street smarts used to compliment her academic intelligence, for example, staying calm while she panicked in the Philosopher’s Stone when they were being overcome with vines.  He also stood up for her in the books against Snape, as opposed to the jerkish “he’s right, you know.”     

How to avoid her:

Allow your female characters to have flaws, as much so as any well-rounded male character.  Just be sure to counterbalance them with a suitable amount of redeeming qualities.  This will make your female character well-rounded, dynamic, and easy to get invested in.

There’s no reason for your female characters to always look perfect.  Sure, they can be stunningly gorgeous (particularly if their appearance is important to them), but it’s physical imperfections that make characters fun to imagine:  Harry’s scar and wild hair, for example.  Female characters are no different. 

If you’re writing a female character to have an eventual love interest, allow their personalities to compliment one another.  Allow the love interest to have qualities that the female character is lacking, so that they can compliment one another and have better chemistry. 

Basically, write your female characters as people. 

Check out my list of male characters to avoid here:   https://thecaffeinebookwarrior.tumblr.com/post/161184030785/male-protagonists-to-avoid-in-your-writing-an.

[kittycatcosmos]

My gay heart cant be stopped

[gurobug-deactivated20190325]

unstable baby boi

[gurobug-deactivated20190325]

yo i thought Lawrence was fat this whole time, boi slim thicc, skinny legend got me quakin

[thelostmoongazer]

so i figured out this really easy trick a while ago and i needed to share it with yall

im sure this has already been done or figured out before but i haven’t seen a lot of blood tutorials using this technique so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[cgcookieconcept]

Exercise 48 Results: Painting Blood Step by Step 

Artist: Tim Von Rueden (vonn)

Check out the Exercise and Download the Practice Sheet HERE.

You know that saying, “blood is thicker than water“, well that applies to drawing it as well! Read the full explanation and tip guide on how to paint blood for your own works. You can download the pratice sheet .PSD in the link above along with both step by step guides!

[violetosprey]

BTD/TDDUP:  Character Receptiveness to “Initiative”

I’m aware the title is weird and makes no sense.  This post is also probably going to be so wrong XD  It’s more of a guessing game and personal views on this one :P  I thought it might be fun to try to see how close I could get with the creators’ head canons, or fan majority head canons for these characters.

The BTD/TDDUP characters are generally more dominant in nature, and not often looking for any sort of consent (since they are mostly antagonists afterall) when it comes to sexual and/or romantic activity.  What I’m pondering here is how welcoming each character is to an MC who shows initiative for consensual romantic or sexual activities.

Initiative is anything from willingly cuddling, kissing, performing oral sex, or engaging in full blown sex (kinky or non-kinky) with the baddie.  Thinking about when it’s not something that’s directly commanded to be done by the baddie either.

This is kind of hard to guess correctly honestly because of the scenarios the character is in.  Sometimes the MC is only showing initiative when they lose their sanity XD.  And most of the baddies aren’t looking for a fun time had by all…just themselves :P

This is hard to rank too, so I’ll just say the character’s receptiveness is either:

Low, Medium, or High

**Spoilers below**

Keep reading

[kosherrobot]

For only $20 you too can fuck Satan

TAKE A LOOK AT THIS CREAM. TAKE A GOOD LONG LOOK. 

MEMORIZE THE PACKAGING SO YOU MAKE SURE YOU NEVER BUY THIS CREAM FOR YOURSELF OR ANYONE YOU LOVE.

This post is about vaginas. My vagina in particular. I get yeast infections pretty regularly, and until recently I was able to afford to see a doctor who could prescribe me fluconazole.

Fluconazole, a drug also known by the brand name Diflucan, is a small pink pill. You take two pills a few days apart from each other to restore balance and harmony to your bountiful folds. I’ve never ever had a bad side effect from taking this pill.

Cut to November 2016. I’m a recent college grad without reliable health care coverage in the process of finding a job. And I’m dealing with a yeast infection. Before I moved out of state, my previous doctor told me about Miconazole. She said it was as effective as the pill and hallelujah, it’s over the counter! I decided to purchase the cream pictured above. This treatment only lasted 3 days, a convenient time frame for my schedule.

The application process was a little messy, and some of the cream came in contact with my vulva and labia. Within 5 minutes every piece of skin that had come in contact with the cream, excluding my hands, was on fire. I wanted to scream it was so painful. I began frantically searching for what I should do online. 

I found a whole forum of people on drugs.com who had experienced something similar. These comments saved me, and these were just on the first page. There were 33 pages total, the earliest dated July 2009.

I was writhing in pain at 2AM when I found this forum (which I found by searching “my vagina burn itch hurts after miconazole” on Google). As soon as I read these comments I threw the devil cream directly into the trash and jumped in the shower. I didn’t feel any actual relief until I reached in and scraped the cream out of me. I paid $17 plus tax on this bullshit, but I could have just as easily ripped up my money or paid someone to not hurt me. 

The moral of the story is that vaginal health care is is completely fucked up because we don’t have access to an over the counter cure for yeast infections that is safe for our bodies and also YOU SHOULD NEVER BUY THIS CREAM EVER.

Reblog to save a vagina.

[usobukii-deactivated20170126]

Okay so I used to get yeast infections every month after my period ‘cause my pH levels were fucked up or something (idk that’s what my doctor said) and I actually used to take this stuff and it was fine. Then a couple years down the road I had a yeast infection for the first time in ages and I used this again and it burned so bad I had to sit in the bath and like physically dig it out of my vagina

AND THEN I LEARNED THAT IT’S BECAUSE I DIDN’T HAVE A YEAST INFECTION. I had a bacterial infection, which is honestly pretty much identical to a yeast infection depending on the severity. The only difference is that IF YOU HAVE A BACTERIAL INFECTION AND TRY TO USE YEAST INFECTION MEDICATION IT WILL HURT

But it’s not actually the medication’s fault. The medication DOES do what it’s supposed to do, provided you’re actually suffering from a yeast infection. Chances are though that you and every one who commented on this did, in fact, have bacterial infections instead.

FORTUNATELY they also make over the counter tests so you can know if you need to call your doctor or just grab some yeast medicine off the shelf. Next time if you aren’t sure, pee on a stick and save yourself a world of fucking pain

[sushinfood]

AMEN.

[newwavefeminism]

It’s unfortunate that I’m 27 and never knew that last bit of information. The world of vaginal health is so obscure and inaccessible.

[bluegrasskitty]

Reblogging because I too once found out the hard way that I had a bacterial & not yeast infection. 😑

[angrybooklady]

I, too, once set my vagina aflame with miconazole. I didn’t know it was because of a bacterial infection. Reblogging to save a vag.

[reighost]

Reblogging to save a vag.

[poetry-protest-pornography]

It’s almost like the shame and stigma thar surrounds vaginas is a danger to the health and well being of people who have vaginas.

[monasoffspring-deactivated20240]

Damn y'all #saveavag

[constantsolstice]

I was re-watching some old Brandon Rogers vids and i physically could not stop myself from editing this.  I’m not sorry.

[hug-bees]

Had an impromptu chat with @ushi418 about fashion history the other day- thought I’d post it here as a quick ref for people!

[primedspecimen]

@nonsensicaljello this seems like ur jam

[notquiteapolyglot]

To people who use "þ" as an aesthetic "p"

þink again.

[tharook]

getting thorny in the linguistics fandom

[tk-tako]

þorny*

[solarine]

That also goes for using ß as an aesthetic B. 

On my old server, there was a character named ßillyßadass.

This never failed to make me laugh, because that letter is not pronounced like B. It is a sharp S. 

That guy named himself SsillySsadass. 

[liquidstar]

Also to people who you Σ as an aesthetic E

that’s an S too, Σo maybe check next time

[slowspinningredemption]

oh boy

Д as an aesthetic A? Дon’t be a дumbass.

И as an aesthetic N? don’t be sillи.

П as another aesthetic N? stoп it.

У as an aesthetic Y? ty bad.

Ш or Щ as an aesthetic W? nope. it’s “sh” and “shch”!

Я as an aesthetic R? surprise! it’s “ya”.

ah yes, that classic horror film SNYEYAPOVUL DIAYAIES

[greenbriarkitsune]

Language tumblr, teach me more

[gatobob-deactivated20240303]

I just realized Strade is left handed I feel so dumb omfg

IS HE!?!?

-looks at past art-

…Holy shit I guess he is. HOW HAVE I ALWAYS DRAWN HIM WITH STUFF IN HIS LEFT HAND AND NEVER NOTICED!?!??!?

[shilo-morkaisin]

He just wanted to be left-handed, i guess

[drinkyourjuiceshelby]

Depends on who’s asking

[sensei-wrong-deactivated2018121]

[thehmn]

The lindorm is a creature from Nordic folklore, which has the stupidest name possible. Lind means snake and orm means snake, so it’s called snakesnake. Guess what it looks like.

They tended to curl around everything from treasures, towers or towns guarding whatever they considered valuable inside. If they were just a regular monster a knight or heroic man was needed to defeat it.

BUT sometimes it was a prince who had been cursed, and then a young woman willing to marry it was needed. On their wedding night when the lindorm asked her to remove her dress she’d ask it to shed it’s skin, and when the soft new skin was exposed she’d have to give it a good hard whipping, and when it was sobbing on the floor she’d bathe and cuddle it. This would lift the curse from the lindorm and it would turn into a beautiful prince.

So there you have it, a BDSM snakesnake.

[elletromil]

@insanereddragon

[freedom-of-fanfic]

an unfunny joke about antis

the funny thing about bullies - especially self-righteous bullies that travel in packs, such as antis - is that 99.8% of the time they come out on top of any conflict they get into. 

and holy hell, it’s fucking infuriating when it’s not completely exhausting. we all like to see clapback at people who don’t play fair and treat others like shit. when someone is really nasty and abusive - when they’re chronically mean and dangerous and seemingly untouchable - it’s easy to yearn for their comeuppance and want to see them know they’re beat. we want the fear and shame and guilt bullies and abusers spread around revisited on their own head so they understand how awful a person they’ve been.

but realistically: you’ll never see a bully/abuser/anti doubt or question themselves. you’ll never see them backtrack with sincerity. you’ll never successfully shame them out of their behavior or devastate their confidence with your logic and consistency, because successful bullies - by definition - will always be less empathetic, more shameless, and more self-serving than anyone they have the power to abuse.

you will never beat a bully at the shame game. bullies live that game. shaming others is the source of their social power; they know (at least subconsciously) that flinching is game over. when someone points out their behavior is something shameful, they have to excuse or deflect or dismiss it: else, they lose. They deserved it. they hurt me first. who cares what you have to say? 

and if you don’t have the direct authority to punish a bully, why should they care? abusers thrive in this world because they’ve decided the ethics and empathy that guide social rules don’t apply to them. Ethical people have lines they cannot cross without violating their sense of what’s right: abusers trample those lines, doing whatever serves them best, because they’re not obligated to care.

maybe it seems unthinkable they’d get away with it … but in general, our social networks have an inbuilt ‘get out of jail free’ card for abusers. we have to trust others are following the same social rules we are. when we don’t trust that, it’s actually worse. (we get … well, present-day tumblr, probably.) but that very trust makes society blind to behavior that crosses lines - it’s too unthinkable that anyone would do that. innocent until proven guilty. and that doubt protects abusers who are willing to pretend they too are trusting, caring people who follow the rules.

in fact, bullies care more about setting down social rules than anyone because they limit the behavior of everyone other than themselves. Rules set boundaries for ethical people. trust that those rules will be followed blinds people to all but the most blatant rule-breaking behavior. and when bullies lay down the rules, the rules themselves are often designed to encourage and shelter abusers.

I believe this is why the worst abusers so often turn out to be the most vocal activist, the most upright churchgoer, the politician with the anti-abuse platform. Such bullies do, in fact, truly advocate for everyone following the standards of behavior they support … except themselves.* These abusers are free to jump in and out of bounds whenever it suits their needs, making them all but impossible to call out. They harass and threaten and torment their targets, exploiting the victims’ trust and sense of obligation to protect the bully from exposure. but the moment a target retaliates, abusers are the first to call them out for bad behavior, damaging the victim’s reputation and improving their own without compunction, sympathy, or remorse.**

Perhaps the most ironic part is that the higher the standard of behavior the bully advocates for, gatekeeps, and regularly violates, the more powerful and invulnerable they become and the more blatant and open their two-faced behavior can be.  Their hypocrisy is only remarkable to people who know what standards they supposedly uphold and demand of others. To everyone else the standards themselves are absurd. so what if a person falls short sometimes? why do you care? why are you surprised?

This is the social loophole that bullies and abusers in the anti-shipping movement exploit - and there are a lot of abusive anti-shippers. As the self-declared fandom/shipping police, tasking themselves with creating rules of conduct and aiming to enforce them by shaming, guilting, and threatening dissenters, anti culture by nature attracts the best shame game players - bullies and abusers - and draws them into its ranks. 

unhampered by social obligation or a need to play fair, abusers rapidly rise to the top of policing communities like anti-shipping. already governed only by their own convenience, an abuser will never suffer from concerns of going ‘too far’; therefore, the loyalty of an abuser to a cause that gives them licence to abuse will never come into question. their gleeful eagerness to punish, lack of sympathy for their targets, and their willingness to come down hard even on other antis is both admired and feared. everyone wants to be their friend to insure their inevitable slip-ups due to self-conflicting rules are forgiven, unwittingly putting themselves in debt to a person who will never let them forget it.

so who’s left to call a hypocrite out, even when their hypocrisy is open and blatant? at least subconsciously aware that the the only real tethers on behavior in spaces where authority is nonexistent - tumblr, twitter, etc - are empathy and shame, abusers do their level best to evoke those feelings in everyone around them while being completely free of those feelings themselves. they cannot be shamed by anyone; they don’t play fair and they don’t show sympathy if it doesn’t serve their needs.

In short: as long as a bully’s opponent gives even the slightest fuck about playing fair, being kind, and giving the benefit of the doubt, they will never out-bully a bully.

the point of this long-winded post is this: 

if you’re hoping for some creator to smack antis down; if you’re sitting in front of your computer, jaw dropped, as antis flock to the dmcb fandom and set up their absurd rules despite the source material being in conflict with everything antis supposedly stand for; if you see anti-shipper victims sharing how they were driven to suicide attempts and think ‘surely this time antis will be conscience-striken’: the reality is that anti-shippers will never apologize, will never admit to hypocrisy, and will never take ownership of the consequences of their actions. 

bullies always come up smelling like roses because they know social rules are actually nigh-unenforceable. They only apply to the abuser if the abuser chooses to abide by the rules, and why would they limit themselves like that?

and if you don’t like it, there’s nothing you can do about it. 

that’s the joke. (i’m not laughing either.)

*and the louder bullies support the cause of vulnerable people, the more unthinkable it is that they would ever exploit vulnerability themselves. 

**this is a wildly successful technique abusers use for self-protection. it accomplishes many things at once:

it feeds the abuser’s deluded worldview wherein their target is the badguy and the abuser is their hapless victim. (this is how abusers justify abuse most of the time: they have to act outside the rules to protect themselves!)

puts the spotlight on the victim, magnifying their errors and minimizing/erasing the effect of the abuser’s provocation

the victim feels ashamed for their behavior; even if they realize they wer provoked, they are ethically bound to acknowledge what they did was wrong (and the abuser will hold it against them for eternity)

the victim may be successfully gaslighted into doubting that their actions were provoked or warranted

if the victim attempts to act against their abuser’s interest in the future, their credibility is now damaged/doubtful

if the abuser can’t pull off looking squeaky-clean to others, tarnishing their target’s reputation makes outsiders less likely to come to their aid, excusing the abusive dynamic as ‘mutual.’

[andarthas-web]

You can’t out-bully them, but sometimes you CAN wear them down to the point where they flounce out of the discussion, IF you have plenty of chill, time and patience.

Mind, you’re not going to get to change them with that, but it’s helpful in so far as that is showcases the flaws in their arguments and their viewpoint, which makes it easier for others to see them for what they are.

[salient-xanax-blog]

Translations for Strade’s Text in This Is Not Romance

I gathered all of this shit, so here we go. Also, apologies in advance because this is going to be a very long post.

***DISCLAIMER: All of this belongs to @gatobob​ ***

**WARNING: CONTAINS BLOOD, GORE, AND OTHER TRIGGERING THEMES.**

“You should be more careful.”

“Come on, there’s a couple live ones down there.”

“NOW.”

“Ha, I see you back there. Come out and play!”

“N-No! Wait! Don’t-”

“Get over here, pet.”

“Come here.”

“I want to see some girl on girl.” (This possibly refers to Raven?)

“You’re disobeying me?”

“Really?”

“I’m wondering what good you are to me alive, then. I bet I could keep the important parts warm.”

“Hahaha! Run!”

The machines read “Beg” and “Cry.” Nice touch, Gato.

“Wai-”

“Se…lin…”

“You belong to me. FOREVER!”

This page is a bit of a trip, so I’m going to break it up into pieces.

“[EMERGENCY] PERSONAL DATA BACKUP.”

“Place hand. Remove personal lock. > Your body may not be recoverable in emergency situations.”

“Fully armed.”

Also, the very left side of the screen only has the decipherable letters “…narmed.”

“Selin! Selin! Look! It’s Strade~”

I hope this helped anyone that wanted to know what these said and didn’t have access to translate it themselves. Also, for the Strade addicts that need to know every little bit about Strade.

[diabolgod]

What is a 'Goofie'?

WHAT IS A GOOFY? goof·y, or goofies are fools on this hellsite that primarily engage in callout culture, drama mongering, or general whiny bitches that usually play extra tough online. The ages can range from 14 all the way to 30, but usually stay below the age of 25. Goofies are usually antis, or sjws     but at this point the line is so  blurred you might as well lump them together. 

When you encounter a Goofy™ you’ll most likely see them posting about how horrible the rpc is, calling something pedophilia that obviously isn’t, trying to insert themselves into problems that don’t involve them, making callout posts that consist of low res screen caps, recipts that go along the lines of “i don’t have any proof of this but omg take my word”, or reblogging said callout that possesses no real proof and proceed to harass said person called out. They’re the ones saying goofy shit like “@soandso come fight me” online like they’re on youtube.

Goofies are usually bullies, pretending to be “w0ke” by reblogging gofundmes, a few awareness posts, and in the same step tell you to kill yourself for shipping this, writing about this, or having a divergent opinion. You can spot a goofy’s blog if it’s usually them harassing people, reblogging awareness posts, replying once every 6 weeks, if their page is filled with at least 3 selfies, and a callout with the tags saying “YIKES” (variations include: y ikes, yikes…, or even YUKE!) 

Lastly, they believe you’re holding them at gun point to READ your content, your replies, your rules, and look for the content that triggers them. Yes, I said they look for it. A person with decent IQ doesn’t look for things to trigger them, like, say… you can’t stand the site of gore? Yet, you say you’re going to watch all the Chucky movies, and then make a 20 page google doc yelling while saying “I’m so angry / I’m shaking”. 

Many goofies can’t work block buttons, it’s just not real. 

Hope this helps !