a beewitching sideblog x

sideblog of beewitched

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

they killed him for this

[soundoftheirwings]

Gotta tell you guys something wild in the Chinese fan sphere

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

And that is how this charity received over 1 million in donations in three days lol. Oh btw the “freedom of expression” side won by a landslide (960k to 40k)

[thisishowyoumakemovies]

I kinda wish all fandom beef could be handled this way. Instead of internet harassment, what if we see who can donate to charity the hardest? Put your money where your mouth is.

[northstareclipse]

A lot of people who are formally educated in left/progressive spaces talk a big game about material conditions and then act personally disgusted by the people most visibly shaped by them. They love “the working class” as an abstraction, then get weird when an actual person has gig work, bodily limits, consumer hobbies, inconsistent capacity, complicated politics, and a nervous system that does not necessarily want to attend the reading group potluck every week.

[isuggestlandback]

You know how right wing media runs off of BIG SCARY EMOTIONS instead of fact?

Left wingers do this too. Except instead of "THEY'RE EATING THE CATS AND DOGS" it looks like:

"No one else will ever accept you."

"You're too oppressed to be understood by anyone but us."

or

"Anyone outside our group is dangerous."

Check in with yourself about how online communities make you feel.

Do they make you feel hopeful, or hopeless? Connected, or isolated? Accepted, or tolerated?

Do they encourage you to think for yourself, and use critical thought? Or do they ask you to accept without thinking and toe the line? Is there open communication, or are differing opinions bullied into silence?

Beware of anyone who tries to isolate you.

Beware of anyone who tells you no one else will ever love you like they will, that no one else will ever accept you.

Beware of anyone that tells you life is nothing but pain, or that there is no hope.

Hopeless, lonely people are easily controlled.

I know things are scary right now. I'm scared too.

Look out for people who WANT you scared.

Try to find spaces that make you feel like change is possible. Look for people who make you feel empowered to do something!

Look for the helpers.

[ihazyourkitty]

"Beware of anyone who tries to isolate you. Beware of anyone who tells you no one else will ever love you like they will, that no one else will ever accept you." "Hopeless, lonely people are easily controlled."

^THIS!!!!

There are many valid reasons to be angry, or scared right now. But don't give up on hope, and don't let anyone isolate you.

Keep healthy boundaries. Find communities that aren't just in a constant state of doom. Find communities who also help and support one another, and who act in ways to help facilitate meaningful change in the world. And for the love of all that is good, please stay away from people who would weaponize your trauma/pain in order to control you whilst otherizing someone else!

[northstareclipse]

I understand why optimization culture has boomed so hard in the past several years.

Something big happened that most of us could do very little about. The world became openly unstable in ways people could no longer politely ignore. Institutions failed. Safety nets frayed. The future got harder to imagine. So a lot of people started reaching for control wherever they could find it: morning routines, dopamine detoxes, habit stacks, sleep scores, screen-time limits, supplement protocols, productivity systems, “nervous system regulation,” whatever the app-store priesthood was selling that week.

I get it. I really do.

But I’m going to pull a phrase people love to use when they want to sound emotionally mature: trauma explains behavior; it does not excuse it.

Because at some point, “I am trying to regain a sense of agency in a chaotic world” turned into “everyone who doesn’t live like me is undisciplined, addicted, immature, morally weak, spiritually degraded, or secretly begging to be rescued from themselves.”

And that’s where I get off the ride.

I’m not saying optimization is bad for everyone. Some people genuinely benefit from tweaking parts of their lives. Some people like routines. Some people feel better with stricter sleep schedules or less social media or more deliberate habits. Great. Wonderful. I’m sincerely glad when people find something that makes their life easier.

The problem is the culture around it.

The culture is ableist because it treats “functioning” as a moral achievement and assumes everyone has the same body, brain, energy, pain level, sensory needs, executive function, and recovery capacity.

It is classist because so much of it quietly depends on flexible schedules, disposable income, safe housing, nutritious food access, leisure time, privacy, and the ability to refuse exploitative work conditions without immediately risking survival.

And it is Puritanical because underneath all the soft wellness language is the same old suspicion of pleasure: too much comfort will rot you, too much rest will weaken you, too much fun will corrupt you, too much convenience will make you less human. You are always supposed to be renouncing something. You are always supposed to be proving that you can suffer correctly.

That’s the part that bothers me.

Not “I tried changing this habit and it helped me.”

Not “I personally feel better when I do less of that.”

But the constant creep from personal preference into moral hierarchy. The assumption that a “better” life is always a more controlled life. The belief that every impulse must be interrogated, every pleasure audited, every habit optimized, every moment made legible to some invisible performance review.

And honestly, I think a lot of people would rather accuse everyone else of being addicted, lazy, dysregulated, or broken than admit how scared they are of being alive in a world where control is often partial, fragile, and unevenly distributed.

By all means, arrange your life in ways that help you. But the second your coping mechanism turns into a cudgel against people with different needs, different limits, different joys, different bodies, different schedules, different resources, or different definitions of a life worth living, it stops being self-improvement and starts being social pressure.

[creekfiend]

I understand that there is discussion of masking by autistic people that is much more honest and in-depth, but so much of the stuff I see sort of leans on the assumption that masking is something one chooses to do in order to appear "normal"

In reality, I think the behavior pattern that we name as "masking" is the natural behavioral and psychological result of being consistently punished for attempting to acknowledge your own reality during formative developmental periods. And I'm not sure that "masking" is a clarifying word to use for this

[digitalkiddo]

If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.

[luna-azzurra]

Things to consider when Writing about Heists!!

⊹ What are they actually stealing and WHY. money is boring unless there's a specific reason they need that exact amount. magical artifact? information? person? the declaration of independence? make it interesting and personal

⊹ Who planned this thing. because the planner is usually not the leader and that creates tension. is the plan genius or are they just winging it and pretending they know what they're doing

⊹ What's everyone's role. you need: the mastermind, the muscle, the hacker/magic user, the conman, the thief, the driver/getaway person, the inside person, the wildcard who's chaos incarnate. everyone has a job and also a reason they can't just be replaced

⊹ How did this crew even form. old friends? recruited specifically for this job? forced together by circumstances? some of them hate each other but need each other's skills?

⊹ What's the target. museum? casino? palace? dragon's hoard? corporation? secure facility that's supposed to be impossible to break into (it's not but it's close)

⊹ What's the security like. guards, cameras, magic wards, traps, locks that require specific keys, biometrics, creatures guarding it, all of the above. make it seem genuinely difficult

⊹ What's the timeline. do they have weeks to prepare or is this a "we have 48 hours" situation. rushed heists are messier and more fun

⊹ What's everyone's motivation. money obviously but also: revenge, saving someone, clearing their name, thrill seeking, blackmail, ideological reasons, debt. mixed motivations create the best conflict

⊹ Is there a traitor. there's usually a traitor. or at least someone with a secret agenda that contradicts the group's goals. trust issues everywhere

⊹ What's the escape plan. because getting in is only half of it. how do they get out without getting caught or killed. what if the escape plan fails (it will)

⊹ What can go wrong. everything. something WILL go wrong. alarm gets tripped early, guard that wasn't supposed to be there, someone gets injured, the thing they're stealing isn't where it should be, betrayal. plan B time

⊹ What are the consequences if they fail. prison? death? worse? are there people threatening their families? debts they can't pay? this raises the stakes

⊹ How much prep/planning do you show. the planning montage is iconic but don't make it boring. show the research, the practice runs, the moments they realize how screwed they might be

⊹ Is this crew's first job together or have they done this before. experienced crews have history and inside jokes and old grudges. new crews don't trust each other yet

⊹ What's the moral line. are they robin hood types stealing from the evil rich? morally gray criminals? fully selfish? do they have rules about collateral damage?

⊹ How do they split the take. equally? based on contribution? does the mastermind get more? is someone getting shortchanged? money ruins friendships

[luna-azzurra]

Writing is lonely in a specific way that is hard to explain to people who don't do it. not lonely like isolated. lonely like you are trying to build a bridge to another human consciousness using only words on a page and you will never actually know if you got there.

You send the thing out and maybe someone reads it and something moves in them and they have no way to tell you exactly what moved or why and you have no way to know if it was the thing you meant or something else entirely.

You're working in permanent uncertainty about whether any of it lands. and you keep going anyway. you have to develop this strange faith in the act itself, in the value of the attempt separate from the outcome, because if you need confirmation every time you sit down you will never sit down.

Most of the writing happens in a silence that never fully gets broken. you learn to be okay in that silence or you don't last.

[sentientsky]

characters going “we were lovers once”: eh, it’s okay i guess. it’s nice enough

characters going “we were friends once”: absolutely devastating. one hit knockout i’m gone

[zoppzoop]

getting violently ill btw

[sushi-yaps]

coming out of reading a fic like I'm coming up for air. the water running down my skin, the light too bright, every breath a gasp, all my muscles weary from holding me upright.

i walk in a daze to work, to gym, to dinner.

i can't wait until i can submerge myself again

[r3member-me-n0t]

You were born with blonde hair.

You hate it.

It looks terrible on you and you've always thought that. When you were really young, you thought that's just what everyone thought about their hair colour. When you were a teenager, people chalked it up to hormones and wanting to be unique and follow the trends of dying your hair. It wasn't.

You've seen people with brown hair. It looks so good. You start imagining yourself with beautiful brunette hair. What if you could be that? And then you hear someone talk about you, call you 'that blonde over there' or someone telling you, 'your blonde hair looks so good!' and you're reminded all over again.

Your parents talk about something. Something you've never heard of before. "All those young kids, dying hair everywhere," they say. You ask them what it means. "Oh, that's when someone with one hair colour thinks they're better off with another hair colour." Your heart lights up. There's more people like you. You're not insane. And then- "Fucking insane. They just want to feel special. All this ridiculousness over trends." It hits you in the heart. You say nothing, just mumble an 'okay' and turn your attention back to your food.

That night, you're scrolling on your phone, and one video pops out. It's talking about dyed hair. You see people not just with natural-coloured dyed hair, but blues and greens and so many other colours. It looks beautiful. You remember your blonde hair. Could it finally be brown? These people are like you. They might be able to help.

You do research. You reach out to people online. And finally, you have your hands on a box dye from a store. it's not the highest quality, but you have it. At midnight the next weekend, you do it. You dye it brown. It's messy and tricky, but your heart is swelling with joy the entire time.

You expect people at school to be happy. Your hair is beautiful. You're beautiful. You finally feel comfort in your hair, confident in the way you look. Instead, you get side-eyes. People whisper and glare. One of your friends pulls you aside. "What happened to your hair?" You tell her you dyed it. Asks her if it looks nice. She grimaces. "Yeah... it looks fine.... but your blonde hair was your natural hair colour and it looked fine as well." You tell her the truth. How you've always hated it on you. Found brown to be so, so much prettier. Looked so much more amazing on you, and felt it too. "Yeah... but blonde is still your natural hair colour, right? No amount of dye is going to change that." Your confidence starts to sink. Will everyone think this?

Turns out, they will. You hear people still refer to you as "that blonde there". New people express confusion. "But her hair's brown? It's very clearly brown." "Well, yeah, but she dyed it. Her natural hair colour is blonde." "Oh... okay."

Your parents don't like it. "Your blonde hair was so beautiful," your mother sobs through her tears. "Why did you have to ruin it? My beautiful blonde child is gone! Gone forever! Why did you do it?" And you tell her that her child is not gone, her child is right here, just with different hair. She doesn't listen to a single word. Your father is mad. He yells at you to get out of his house, that you're a fucking disgrace, that you're mentally ill and brainwashed by trends and so many other hurtful things. You can only leave.

You try to go to another friend's place. She answers the door with a scowl. "Why are you here?" she seethes. She's angry. Why? You tell her about your situation. "Serves you right," she spits. "You're incredibly offensive to everyone with blonde hair." You ask her why, puzzled. "You clearly hate blonde hair. Why else would you dye it? Do you find blonde people disgusting?" No, no, that's not it. Blonde people are fine, you try saying. It just didn't suit me. I wish it did, but it didn't, so I changed it. "Stop twisting everything," she says. "I don't want to see your face." The door closes and you're left there on the steps.

You don't know what else to do. Were you truly lying? No, blonde hair has never suited you. Brown looks better. Brown makes you feel secure. You feel it's what makes you feel like yourself. But why can no one grasp that?

You search up more on your phone, and you find a community for similar people. People thrown out, disowned, abused for dying their hair or expressing wants to. When you get there, you find that they accept you with the warmest smiles and the coziest hugs. You find people that bleached their brown hair to blonde and dyed their blonde hair to brown, just like you, and they look so amazing. You find people with all sorts of coloured hair too, red, blue, yellow, purple, multicoloured and hair that gets redyed differently depending on the day. They all have similar stories. You've finally found a place you belong.

Outside, people are still outraged. They scream at the community that they're brainwashing their kids, that they're grooming every kid to dye their hair until there's no natural hair kids left. You don't feel hurt anymore. You know now they make no sense. They push out their own children, and this is the result. They don't want people with dyed hair banding up together.

Brown hair has always suited you. You're rather tired of people trying to pretend it doesn't.

This is not about dyed hair.

[named-after-a-planet]

I LOVE THIS POST

[mikeandwillsweddingofficiant]

^^^^^^^^

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[ruinedchildhood]

[rabbitheatedgrrrl]

Not wanting to have sex is NOT a problem. It doesn’t matter if you are asexual or allo, there is nothing wrong with not wanting sex. It’s just an activity. That’d be like saying that if you don’t like soccer, you need to go to soccer therapy to figure out why you dislike it and figure out how to like it because it’s for your own good. See how ridiculous that sounds? IT IS OK TO NOT WANT TO HAVE SEX AND IT IS NOT SOMETHING THAT NEEDS TO BE FIXED!!!!!!

[sushi-yaps]

The thing about work is you have 3 options

1. work soul sucking job. make basically no money. still expected to either be on call, do overtime, go above and beyond despite making pennies on the dollar.

2. work soul sucking "career". make ok money, but never feel truly secure. you may have the skills your employer needs now but just remember layoff season is always around the corner if you don't meet your performance metrics.

3. work nonprofit. make basically no money. (also the nonprofit is constantly at risk of shuttering due to lack of funding).

And that's pmuch it. (short of joining a monastery or being born rich).

all options suck in different ways, and also we are taught to disparage people who are in one of the other 2 groups so that we fight against each other instead of fighting a flawed system where the deck is stacked against us.

[sushi-yaps]

In an AI meeting and the Red and Blue comments are sending me. (The guy made a pet in Codex named Rio).