Valerok @valerokoni - Tumblr Blog

In over my head...

I’m not really sure what to title this post. So I guess “In over my head” about sums up what this month and the last month has made me feel. Heck most of this year really. I don’t want to bog this post down too much as I’ve written most of what I want to say in stash but the TL;DR version is that Craig and I are struggling financially for a number of reasons. We’ve tried our best to do what we could to keep us above water until we reach some sort of stable ground but it hasn’t worked. As I don’t feel comfortable taking on more commissions on top of the massive load I already have, we’re accepting donations via Ko-fi and a new pp we’ve set up.

Kofi: ko-fi.com/2284Z8LBH708B paypal: [email protected]

For more details you can find that here: https://sta.sh/017fn8ebcqrf

I also have a couple of things I’ve been trying to sell to help with our current situation: Security Camera System by Night Owl Angell Studio BJD Xbox One with no controllers $140 OBO Note: I will be reblogging this at least once a day so if you want to mute the tag Harpy funds I will totally understand. Thank you for any and all reads, good wishes and reblogs ;3; <3

joestrummen

i didnt realise ao3 was started in response to lj deleting account relating to p//edophi|ia and they explicitly support the posting of such works yikes

tomato-greens

it wasn’t, like, ~~~we luv pedophilia, it was way more complicated than that!

although it’s true AO3 does allow all fannish content provided it’s properly warned for, there’s a long history there - of spaces being used by fans until the host decided whatever we were doing was too weird and distasteful and either kicking us off, banning certain content, or changing the nature of the site until it was no longer viable as a host.

you’re referring to the LJ Strikethrough of 2007, which, being an ancient crone, I lived through, and since I was hanging out in the last vestiges of SGA and in bandom, I saw some of the fallout. this was before LJ was sold to the Russians (which is a whole ‘nother story), when it was still owned by Six Apart; in an effort to clean up LJ’s act, Six Apart decided to delete all accounts using tags like underage, incest, rape, etc.

this was supposed to get rid of actual child porn on the site, and I hope it did, but it also targeted fan communities. this was a problem for a couple reasons; for one thing, not every story tagged with these words is in favor of them; for another, these things happen to real people and these personal posts were also potentially in danger of being attacked; for the last one, look, I ain’t into this kind of fic but people write about what people write about, and if it’s fictional and not explicitly banned in the TOS (correct me if I’m wrong; I don’t think written content about this stuff was banned?) then it’s not cool for a content host to just start deleting communities without warning.

but that’s what happened! these deletions were also primarily targeting slash communities, which smacked of some serious homophobia since things were deleted that had nothing to do with any of this kind of content.

eventually someone found out it was this super conservative religious group who’d sent a list of journal names to Six Apart, and who if I remember correctly targeted slash fic on purpose, even after it became clear that the fic was, well, totally fictional. after a while, Six Apart admitted they’d made a mistake and started to reinstate journals, but all of fandom was pretty shaken up.

THEN Boldthrough happened, which was essentially the same debacle several months later, at which point fandom began its long slow migration from LJ to GJ, IJ, and eventually AO3, Twitter, and tumblr.

AO3 was opened in 2008 in response to several incidents, of which Strikethrough was a really intense one. remember, also, that back in 2008 the stigma surrounding fandom was significantly greater and more shameful than it is today, so finding hosts willing to archive fic was difficult unless someone had the dough to pay for server space - often not an option. this was also back when fanfic.net’s HTML restrictions were so great that users couldn’t use any special characters or bold or italicize anything, and it didn’t allow R-rated content, so it was clearly not ideal. in addition, although cease & desist letters were much less common than they were in the early 2000s and before, DMCA takedowns were still a phantom on the horizon.

LONG STORY SHORT, even though pedophilia is reprehensible and I personally cannot stomach fanfic that involves that kind of content, AO3 was founded specially as a safe space for fandom communities that could not find homes elsewhere. it requires warnings precisely for that reason, and if you find a story that is not properly warned, you can alert the admins and get the story labeled appropriately.

IDK, maybe it’s just because I am, again, ancient, but I was in and around fandom before homosexuality was legal in all 50 states. so were most of the people who started AO3. for most of my formative life, being gay was associated with pedophilia, and so was writing about gay characters. just - it’s a lot more complicated than you might expect, and there’s a reason many older fans who have been involved in several generations of fandom were so grateful to have AO3 as an option.

beatrice-otter

I don’t read, for example, Hydra Trash Party fics. They squick me, and I generally feel they are pretty gross. But writing noncon body-horror is not the same as saying “yeah, I totally want to go out and rape and torture people for years while brainwashing them!” or even “yeah, I wouldn’t do it myself, but it would be totally okay if someone did!” Nobody is hurt by it, and nobody is going to be hurt by it. So should I have the right to go, that is gross, you don’t get to write or read that? No.

In the same way, writing about underage teens getting it on–sometimes with each other, sometimes with adults, sometimes consensually, sometimes not–is not the same as child pornography, nor does reading a fic about Hermione and Snape getting it on while she was his student mean someone thinks that would be a good and/or healthy thing in real life.

Fiction affects reality, but fiction is not reality. And writing about something does not mean you want to do it in real life, or believe that anyone should.

Let’s take a closer look at that “Ao3 supports pedophilia!” shall we?

1) The only fics I have ever come across that had actual pedophilia (i.e. someone having sex with a child), it was clearly and explicitly abuse. It was not meant to titillate or arouse. It was meant to horrify. It was seldom explicit.

2) There’s a lot more incest, but it is usually portrayed either as explicitly mutually consensual (i.e. Sam/Dean) or as abusive.

3) I’ve been in fandom for a decade and a half. When people start getting upset at “omg pedophilia, think of the children!” the fics they are usually objecting to aren’t actually pedophilia. Usually, it is teenagers having sex, especially queer sex. And people don’t like that, and use pedophilia as an excuse to shame people for writing/reading sex they don’t like.

Let’s look closer at Strikethrough, shall we? I hope that, if there were any communities of actual pedophiles on LJ, they got taken down, too. But here are some of the communities that got taken down that were not in any way supporting pedophilia and/or rape and/or incest that got taken down:

1) at least one support community for survivors of sexual abuse.

2) a literary book discussion group that was reading Lolita.

3) lots of slash fanfic communities, for things like Draco/Harry fic set in their fourth year (when both boys would have been 15).

Basically, this very conservative “family values” group hated porn, and they hated queer stuff even more, and used “but think of the children, it’s pedophilia!” to pressure LJ to get rid of huge swathes of things they didn’t like. And one time taking down the worst of it wasn’t good enough for them. No, this was step one on a moral crusade. If you acceded to their demands, all that did was whet their appetite, and soon they would be back with a new list of demands. This is why the 2007 strikethrough was not an isolated event, but rather one of a series of events, nor was LJ the only website thus targeted. It starts with anything that can get labelled “pedophilia” or “incest” because that’s low-hanging fruit. But they use that to go after anything relating to queer teen sexuality. Then anything with teen sexuality. Then once the community is already divided and diminished, they go after anything with non-con. Then whatever is next on their list. It doesn’t stop until they’ve won the point and nothing but suitably “family-friendly” fics that match their purity test are allowed.

Which is why AO3 has no morality content in their terms of service. You can’t break copyright beyond fair use (and AO3 has an expansive view of “fair use” and a team of lawyers on call). You can’t use AO3 for commercial advertising. And you can’t post ACTUAL child pornography, i.e. the things that are legally prohibited, i.e. actual photographs or videos of actual children (not teens) in sexually explicit positions–you know, the stuff that actually hurts kids. Other than that? It’s fair game. You can post anything you want, and the archive will not judge. There is no handle for the Moral Majority Family-Friendly Thought Police to latch onto, no cracks they can exploit to divide and conquer.

We’ve been down that road. It doesn’t lead anywhere good.

wrangletangle

Reblogging this for the excellent explanation of what exactly the moral crusaders did last time. They had an explicit agenda of anti-queerness, and they specifically targeted slash and femslash communities in particular, such that many ship communities became (or started as) deliberately members-only. You had to apply, and your personal blog had to look like a real person and a fan. You were vetted, a la 1990s private servers.

During this period, Dreamwidth was also targeted by attacking its payment processor. They had to get a new one. These “Warriors” (literally called themselves that!) were totally on board with destroying fandom as a side effect of destroying the parts of fandom they didn’t like.

If you’re carrying out harassment of people right now because they’re posting works with sexual elements you don’t agree with? (And it’s always sex, never non-sexual violence, how strange….) If you’re doing that, you’re also totally on board with destroying fandom as a side effect of destroying the parts of fandom you don’t like. Because your tactics are fandom-destroying, and so is your agenda.

nwcostumer

reblogging because this is important: strikethru and boldthru and all the various “purges” that fandom went thru about 10 years ago: this had to do with OUTSIDERS deciding that fandom in general and fanfiction in specific were evil and needed to be destroyed; unless we were writing and shipping good vanilla M/F married people. These were outsiders, going after fictional writing about fictional characters.

AO3 and OTW are HUGE, because now we have an organization, with very smart women and a lot of lawyers, that have our back. Fannish history is important, people! It has not always been this way.

This is so, so important: there’s that other post about AO3 and fanfiction floating around, about our history. People decry violent video games but no one is trying to force companies out of business. But people can and do attack fanfiction: an activity primarily written by women for women, about fictional characters. And often about sex. We have to constantly defend ourselves, protect ourselves, support each other against charges like “paeodophilia”.

denaceleste

^^^rebageling again for excellent commentary

araceil

Throwing this in because I was also present: This was during the American Government’s attempts to pass censorship laws on the internet. As MOST of those domains had their serves in America, they were beholden to those censorship laws. A great deal of fanfiction.net was removed because they happened to lose a goddamn courtcase. I’ve been on the site since 2002. They may not have ‘officially’ allowed NC-17 rated content (what it used to be listed as in the filters), it never did a damn thing to remove it. Ever. They had it listed as a rating option during ‘New Story’ uploading after all. It was i nthe search filters. After they lost the courtcase however, they legally had to start doing things about the mature content reports they got. The admins and mods were not actively looking for fic to remove, they were just responding to reports they had already received.

actuallyclintbarton

tl;dr - I know tumblr is all about black and white “you’re either all right or all wrong” thinking, but it’s important to understand what actually happened before going “ew ao3 was made to give pedophiles a safe place to post” because that is 110% not what happened.

shidgephobe

This is why so, so many of the comparatively older fannish folks on tumblr like me are so vehemently against stuff like the anti movement and “all ships are valid UNLESS”. It smacks of censorship and content policing - and we’ve been there. We got our shit deleted and our accounts banned because someone else thought what we were reading or writing or talking about needed to just… not exist. No warning. Literally overnight. We just woke up and stuff was gone.

And yeah, the group was legit called Warriors for Innocence (or maybe of). I knew several people that were members of survivor/support groups that lost their groups - and their main support network - when Strikethrough happened (ten years ago holy shit).

sulphur-crested-cocktease

You antis need to listen when us older fans tell you that the censorship you’re advocating for, when put into practice, is NOT a positive thing; it’s an extremely scary thing!

I can guarantee that you would be very, very upset if another event like LJ Strikethrough were to happen today because *you* are just as vulnerable as the rest of us! If you support the rights of marginalized groups of people, if you’re a slash or fem slash shipper, if you support gender identities that aren’t defined by biological sex, if you care about representation, if you support women, if you have any kind of kink, if you care about fandom in any capacity beyond its eradication, YOU DO NOT ACTUALLY WANT THE SORT OF CENSORSHIP YOU’RE ADVOCATING!!

naamahdarling

People were terrified during Strikethrough. I was there. Communities were being shut down, individual users were being shut down. People were losing access to their own fics, their feedback, their comments – a LOT went on in comments on LJ. Think more coherent reblogs, much more personal, very widespread. Comments were also very important, and in terms of networking/communicating, were absolutely critical.

LJ was, for many people, central.

It was a fundamental part of the infrastructure of fandom at the time.

Having it attacked, having parts of your fandom’s territory just deleted like that, was very very scary. People didn’t know who was next. Every day, the list of stricken journals grew. And not all of them came back, not all of them recovered their content. Some people even voluntarily deleted their content as a form of protest. It was a bad time.

You do not have to interact with fic that grosses you out or makes you uncomfortable. Tagging is a thing. And even outside of tags, you are responsible for curating your own fandom experience. It is not right to expect it to be curated for you. And it is not right to lash out when someone refuses to do so and expects you to walk away from things that do not concern you.

I was gonna say “things that don’t harm anyone” but I realize you can argue that. If you get triggered, that’s upsetting. That could be considered harm. And I have sympathy for that. I do.

I have run across fic that triggered me. I have pretty specific triggers, and people don’t always think to warn for them because they aren’t that big a deal for a lot of people. Or it’s sort of bundled into kink and is presumed, that if you’re okay with certain kinds of kink, you’re okay with this. So I’ve been blindsided by it before. And it sucks for a couple of days while I get over it.

That was not the fault of the authors! You could argue that tagging should have been used, and maybe it should, but ultimately that’s not an ironclad obligation. It’s a tool people provide out of courtesy.

That was not the fault of the site! The site is there to give authors a way to make fiction available, not to judge each work and interrogate its validity and make sure everything is tagged so that nobody has to see anything bad, ever.

That was not even my fault! It was my responsibility to try to curate my experience, and I tried, but it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t deliberately set out to trigger myself.

When I get triggered, unless it is by a deliberate act, it is actually the fault of the people who hurt me in the first place! And I refuse to let them off the hook and blame perfectly innocent people who just wanna write their fanfiction! I may hate that fanfiction, but that is irrelevant to the question of whether or not people should be allowed to post whatever they want.

Also, some people cope by writing about fucked-up shit. My best friend in the whole wide world has shared her fic with me, and HOO BOY it is messed up. She wrote it during a time in her life when she was in and just coming out of a horrifically abusive relationship. I mean, it was exactly the kind of relationship all of us here on Tumblr love to hate. She was married to a shitty, abusive man who preyed on someone younger than he was and used his influence over her to treat her in a way that would be right at home in that Lundy Bancroft book Why Does He Do That? He was a real rapist, a verified grade-A bad fuckin’ guy. (She was lucky to escape. I have immense respect for her.) And she wrote some fucked up fic to deal with it, and she shared it, and people were invested in it. And because this was early 2000′s, she had to host it on a foreign server and cover her tracks, because at that time no-place was safe to post it.

“Yeah, but if she’s writing it for therapy, she doesn’t have to post it where other people might have to see it!” I hear you say.

But like … what the hell??? “Shut up, don’t talk about it, it’s bad to talk about these things, because these things are bad!” is something used against folks with trauma.

“This isn’t good for me, I can’t talk about this, I can’t be your audience for this,” that’s fine, those are boundaries that people with trauma use to defend themselves. You should learn to say those things! It will help you!

But expecting other people to never create and share art about trauma is just so thunderously oppressive I lack the ability to fully articulate it.

And nobody should have to disclose their history of trauma to prove their motives are pure or virtuous enough for their speech to be protected. I’ve only really been able to openly say “I was assaulted, it was traumatic, I am a little fucked up from it” for the past couple of years, tops. I couldn’t talk about it before that. Couldn’t! And it was over 20 years ago!

I also believe, very firmly, that you don’t need a history of abuse to find writing really messed-up shit satisfying, or to find reading it cathartic. I believe 100% in the freedom of creative expression, and the freedom to read whatever fucked up shit you want to read.

All y’all fandom youngsters can spit nails all you want over gross rape fic, incest fic, whatever.

Fine, I don’t like it either!

But that fucked up shit? That fucked up shit helped carve out the spaces we have today. You don’t have to like it, but campaigning to get it deleted, harassing content creators, calling people rapists and pedophiles who have never done and would never ever do such a thing, that is not the way to improve the world, it doesn’t keep actual kids or teens or assault/rape victims safe. It wouldn’t have made me feel safe when I was 16 and did’t want what was going on. It doesn’t make me feel safe now. I can say with the perspective of someone 24 years away from that event, it doesn’t make the world safer for people like I was. It actually makes it worse.

Learn to steer clear of the messed-up stuff you don’t like. It’s a skill, you get better with practice. Have someone else vet stuff for you if you need help doing it now.

Everything that is sketchy and gross is not criminal, and writing about a thing is not morally the same as doing it. Please stop acting like writing about an adult and a teenager having really questionable, gross sex is as bad as the actual registered sex offender they caught hanging around an actual elementary school two neighborhoods over from mine, just trying to talk to the kids. The former is, at most, in poor taste, and potentially triggering to abuse victims. The second makes me want to vomit because even though he was just talking, that guy was gearing up to try something and create another abuse victim. A g a i n.

The first can be avoided because it is imaginary and you, an adult, have power over your back button so that you don’t have to witness harm to imaginary people. The second, those very real kids had to rely on real adults and real law enforcement to keep them safe from very real assault. (It worked! The neighborhood rallied! He was arrested for violating parole!)

Pretty sure Sleazebag McDongface didn’t read some gross NC-17 Draco/Lucius fic before deciding to harm an actual human being. Pretty sure not having read it didn’t keep him from doing it. ‘Cause he fuckin’ did it. And he would have done worse. But actual people stopped him.

I get wanting to protect victims when so many of us are victims ourselves, but man, going after fiction is not the way to do it.

An author is not a perpetrator. Stop trying to make those things synonymous in the minds of other fans, and in the minds of other recovering victims.

bonibaru

I’m a crone who also lived through strikethrough, and all y'all young fans need to read this and understand it if you don’t want history to repeat itself someday.

singingwordwright

Here’s the thing, also: it doesn’t stop with fic about objectionable stuff.

If you have a website with TOS that includes any kind of “objectionable content” rules, there will be parties who will use those rules to try to silence other people whom they want silenced.

Let’s look at the alt-right and MRA movements today, or GamerGate a few years ago. What is one of their primary weapons? They report black or feminist or really any leftist YouTube channels (or Twitter accounts, or whatever) whose message they don’t like and claim those channels are are violating TOS by posting hate speech or incitations to violence or whatever bullshit they can come up with, in an attempt to silence those channels.

When Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequence came under fire for starting a crowdfunding endeavor to fund the production of her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series of videos, male gamers tried to get her KickStarter and various social media accounts shut down by reporting her for for hate speech and promoting terrorism.

Luckily, that became a big enough story that the dudes failed and their efforts backfired. But a lot of times, these tactics work.

How do I know this? Because it happened to me. Not over major shit like the examples above, but over something completely petty.

Back in the mid-to-late 90s, before LiveJournal really became the place for fandom, before FF.net was really a thing, you had to create your own personal website on whatever free webhost you could find (GeoCities was popular, but there were others) if you wanted to host your fic somewhere.

And back then, TV studios and book authors were still sending their lawyers after people who wrote fanfic, issuing cease and desist letters to not only the authors, but also to their webhosts.

At the time, I was writing perfectly het Mulder/Scully fanfic. No rape, no pedophilia, no slash. Maybe a little BDSM. But largely it was unobjectionable.

Then the 8th season of X-Files started, David Duchovny decided he only wanted to be involved part-time, and the show decided to bring in another male character. The fandom lost their shit–as fandoms do–over the idea of “replacing” Mulder blah blah blah.

One of the most popular fanfic mailing lists–one that had previously had no restrictions on what characters or pairings could be posted–decided that if you wrote fanfic involving this character, you were no longer welcome. Well, this was the mailing list with all the readers. Sure, authors could go to other mailing lists, but they wouldn’t have exposure to the sort of readership this other list boasted.

I spoke out, saying that this change was unfair to fic authors and that the moderator of this list was behaving in a pretty vile way. The moderator and her friends took aim at me and began a campaign of harassment, and a few days later, suddenly my website with my XF fanfic was TOSed because someone had reported it. So was the next site I tried to create to host my fic, and the one after that.

Thanks to the way AO3s TOS are constructed, that sort of shit doesn’t happen now. I can speak up if I need to, and while I may receive harassment on my various social media accounts, there’s no chance they can have my fic taken down just because they have an agenda and don’t like me for reasons not relating to my fic.

So yeah, AO3′s rules protect fic a lot of us might find objectionable. But they also protect fic that is in no way objectionable from being targeted by unrelated harassment campaigns. And since any of us could find ourselves in the sights of those sort of campaigns at any time, we need to thank our lucky stars for that.

olderthannetfic

I like this last addition.

When I helped write the ToS for AO3, I wasn’t primarily thinking about strikethrough. I was primarily thinking of FFN, where so many people post things that are technically against the ToS but that the community tolerates. Any time someone gets pissed off, they can go on a grudge-reporting spree and target their enemy’s work. Often, that means guys targeting slash or Twilight fic because it’s “for girls” and thus sucks. Sometimes, it’s one ship vs. another. I was also thinking of Miss Scribe and all of that other Harry Potter fandom drama. (And if you think fans are above destroying an entire archive just to strike at one enemy, think again!)

We can’t force people to like each other. We can’t force people to be nice to each other. But we could take away fandom bullies’ favorite tools.

So we did.

centaurianthropology

Watching young (ostensibly liberal) bloggers and fans take up the deeply conservative rhetoric and moral crusading of the right wing and evangelical groups from the 90s has been both fascinating from an anthropological perspective, and fucking horrifying for someone who lived through this time period and the death of LJ.

naamahdarling

This thread keeps getting better.

It galls me to think that those of us who went through all this shit might have to go through it again because people who were still in primary school at the time don’t see anything wrong with harassing us over

Like, I hate to pull this argument, but we are your fandom elders, we did what we did to preserve fandom for y'all, so y'all would have space to safely explore the sane things we did and still do. And in doing so we rightly realized that if we wanted to protect the comfortable, cuddly parts, we also needed to protect the dark parts.

You can hate non-con fic all you want, and I will always advocate for adequate tagging/warning (especially with franchises that are aimed at younger audiences, e.g. MLP:FIM and SU) so that you don’t have to see it because I sympathize, but I will never support people who want to make sure that it isn’t even there to be seen. I’ve been through that once. It didn’t help anyone. It didn’t fix anything.

Please, learn to curate your own online experience. You are responsible for not clicking, or clicking away. Don’t try to force others to do it for you. That’s not cool. You aren’t protecting children. You are asking fandom to treat everyone like a child. There is a massive difference.

baratheon

Also… maybe parents should do their job in monitoring kids’ content? When my parents found out I was looking at age inappropriate things when I was a minor, like they intervened.

nanshe-of-nina

Strikethrough 07 was such a well-conducted operation that communities dedicated to survivors of sexual abuse and fans of Lolita fashion were suspended, but the journal of the baby rapist, ohbutyouwillpet, stayed up. And it’s still up to this day, though it hasn’t been updated it over a decade as its owner is still in prison.

sassbandit3000

Whooo, I guess it’s my turn to take a shot at this.

I’m a nold. I’m in my 40s. When I came out as queer, in the early 90s, it was in the middle of what were called the “feminist sex wars”. If you want a really good book to read about that period, which has a LOT of resonance with Strikethrought and with the current Tumblr discourse, I cannot recommend this highly enough:

Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights by Nadine Strossen

A preview is available on Google Books, or it should be readily available secondhand, or in academic libraries (though it’s not a very heavy academic read). I recommend Booko for finding cheap secondhand copies. Support independent bookstores!

I haven’t read “Defending Pornography” for a while – I actually last re-read it about a decade ago because of the impact that Warriors for Innocence were having on Dreamwidth’s payment providers at the time, subsequent to Strikethrough itself – but here’s a quick summary, as I remember it.

1. In the late 80s and early 90s there was a vocal group of radical feminists who believed that pornography inherently harms women, not just in its production but also in its consumption (i.e. watching/reading pornography caused people to develop attitudes that were harmful to women). All explicit content was considered to be harmful, from eg. girlie magazines to hardcore XXX videos to a book like “The Joy of Gay Sex”, no matter who made it, its purpose, its intended audience, or its context. (Yup, even m/m content was considered to be degrading to women for reasons that didn’t make a lot of sense tbh.)

2. These anti-pornography feminists teamed up with the religious right and managed to get anti-porn laws passed. In particular, a law was passed in Canada preventing the importation of “obscene” material. Canada, of course, imports a lot of material from the US. Stuff started getting seized at the border.

3. Guess what was seized first? “The Joy of Gay Sex” and the like. Guess what businesses started finding all their shipments seized or delayed – sexually explicit or not – to the point where they were being put out of business? Gay bookstores. Guess what wasn’t seized at all? Mainstream porn made for straight men.

Around this time, Little Sisters bookstore in Vancouver (a gay bookstore) found that huge amounts of merchandise was being seized at the border, regardless of the actual content. They were being discriminatorily targeted on the basis of their sexuality. The queerness of the material they were importing was seen as inherently obscene.

Remember that this is before there was much information available online for LGBTQ+ people, so if you were a young person maybe just coming out and trying to understand things, or wanting to learn about safe sex (and yes it was at the height of the AIDS crisis, too) you’d go to a bookstore like this. Which now had empty shelves. I remember endless fundraising and activism in the LGBTQ+ community to try and keep Little Sisters open. In the end they spent half a million dollars on court cases. Read more about their struggles.

(You know what businesses weren’t impacted and didn’t have to basically ask their friends and community for help to stay open or spend a decade in the courts to defend their right to run their businesses? The powerful companies making porn by and for straight men.)

The book goes into a large number of analogous situations. Time and time again, anti-pornography laws intended to protect women are disproportionately used against women themselves, against LGBTQ+ people, and against basically any marginalised or minority group, rather than against the mainstream male-oriented porn that would seem to be its primary target.

Here’s the key point: Strossen is a legal scholar who’s looked at a lot of attempts at censorship, and you know what she found happened every time? When you try to censor pornography, even in the interests of protecting vulnerable people, that censorship will be applied first, and hardest, against the people who are most vulnerable. They won’t come for actual abusers, they’ll come for the abused, and prevent them from accessing resources, education, talking to each other, creating art to express themselves, or organising against those who are actually causing harm.

Read the book. The stories it tells are from the early 90s but they perfectly mirror what happened a decade ago with Strikethrough and what’s happening now with all this Tumblr discourse.

This is old, old business, we’ve seen it more than once before, and it never goes the way the antis think it will. Censorship is a tool that gives power to abusers and lets them inflict more harm on those who are abused, vulnerable and discriminated against. Don’t fall for it.

whetstonefires

History they should have known: The Comstock laws in New York were this one dude (Comstock) who managed to get a mail regulation re-written to categorize anything related to contraceptives as pornography, which was already illegal to mail.

(Which is one reason for the pornographic playing cards etc, because the 19th century was almost as big on mail-order goods as the 21st, because getting to shops in person was hard for a huge subsection of Americans.)

Comstock built a non-profit with the support of the YMCA and oh shoot, some millionaire whose brand is still going strong, to enforce this law because the postal system didn’t have the personnel. They were granted the right to do so.

He and his posse of honorary mail inspectors with police powers (I kid you not) spent years engaging in endless skullduggery to prosecute people for selling contraceptives by mail. Which was how everyone got them in the 19th century, you couldn’t walk into a shop for a pack of condoms but mail-order packages were nicely anonymous. They dragged Margaret Sanger into court repeatedly. There was a huge cottage industry of contraceptives in NYC at the time, most of the manufacturers being female, Jewish, immigrants, or some combination of the above.

There was one woman whose name escapes me they kept trying to prosecute for selling contraceptive devices and the juries kept nullifying it because the average New Yorker in the 1890s were like ‘yeah no condoms are not a crime,’ but not everybody had her stage presence and resources.

You know who they never even tried to touch? The big rubber companies were were getting into mass production of condoms. Their big funder owned the company that produced Vaseline, and was claiming in ads at the time that it worked as a spermicide.

Only the poor and vulnerable felt the impact of the Honorary Postal Inspectors of righteousness.

moon6shadow-main

It’s been touched on a little before but really it’s hard to explain just how confusing and scary the crackdowns were. I was only a reader on FanFiction when the crackdown came but it felt like I was standing in a coal mine full of canaries. Canaries that were either silent or /screaming/.

Every where you looked, authors where posting warnings about how x stories were getting deleted. All of the warnings feeling rushing, panicked, most of them including notes about how they didn’t know how long they had before their warnings were taken down or they were deleted. It felt a bit like all the stars going out, everything just dying around you. Like a stampede of people had fled from some oncoming unnamed horror leaving silence in their wake. Finding AO3 later on was like finding a safe haven in a world gone mad.

Also FanFiction doesn’t really encourage socialisation aside from authors notes to readers on their chapters or homepage. Meanwhile all the warnings of the crackdown were really rushed and vague. So, as a not very sociable reader, I really didn’t have a clue what was going on at the time of the crack down and the confusion and uncertainty was almost the scariest part of the whole thing. (Not knowing if the authors should come back and if fanfics were gone for good was scarier.) It’s only years later, reading fanfic history posts that I’ve started to piece together what happened.

Also an interesting point was that during the crack down all I ever heard about was /gay/ stories being deleted. Perhaps this was just because I was reading gay stories but I didn’t even realise it was mature stories in general that was supposedly the aim of the crack down until much later.

olderthannetfic

Hot damn, this post just keeps going!

I very much second the rec about the feminist sex wars. Understand those, and you’ll understand why those of us over about 30 are so opposed to tumblr’s purity crusade.

fierceawakening

If you haven’t been TOSsed you really don’t get it, imo.

If you haven’t spent your time wondering if the thing that will get your content deleted is the dark stuff or the nipples, you really don’t get it, imo.

Hell, way way back in the day, I had moderator types private message me going “I really like your writing, but you need to be less obvious about it, or I will have no choice but to tos you.”

prospectkiss

A long reblog, but a worthy read. So much history and experience recounted here. If we don’t remember our past, remember why AO3 and many fandom spaces work the way they do now, we will be condemned to repeat it.

Please do not let us return to the dark ages of fear, censorship, and oppression in fandom.

blaiddaddy

deviantART, Google, etc’s TOS

Everyone is panicking over TOS-es right now as they find a new home as Tumblr gets flushed down the toilet. I don’t like those random TOS breakdowns because the analysis is always wrong.

Anyway this is what people pay me to do and I will now do it for $0 because I’m tired of everyone spreading misinformation. This post is not a substitute for legal advice etc. Reblogs are appreciated because I literally see TOS nonsense on my dash every day.

Any more experienced copyright lawyers please feel free to weigh in - it’s part of my field yes, but my wheelhouse is more film production COT rather than derivative works.

Google Drive (TOS)

Google doesn’t have rights to do whatever they want to files you upload to Google Drive

Their TOSes are annoyingly broad in drafting but essentially boilerplate clauses that they need to host your work, use google translate on it, make it searchable etc. They cannot steal your fanfic. They cannot modify your art and use it for whatever.

Your work MAY be threatened (that is, deleted) thanks to FOSTA/SESTA, which imo is a clown provision signed by a clown that sent safe harbour down the toilet. This and this has more information (I’ve skimmed but not perused both), but the tl;dr is: similar to Tumblr, there was a ham-fisted attempt to protect victims of sex trafficking and all it really did was make cloud based services start deleting user files whether relevant or not.

deviantART (Submission Policy) (TOS)

Uploading work to dA doesn’t give them a license to sell it to Hot Topic. This post is incorrect. Debunked here and corrected by the artist himself here. Your art is safe.

There’s a breakdown of the TOS in there that’s pretty much wrong on most points, if someone wants me to do a not-wrong version, ask. This may help.

All you really need to know is that like Google, I checked it over and nothing in there puts you at risk for dA asserting ownership over your work or selling it - they need those rights for thumbnails, search functions, resizing etc.

Sexually explicit fanart is not allowed, as well as “obscenity”, which is an oddly broad term covering things like “sexually orientated commercial telephone messages”.

I’m not aware of any content purges.

AO3 (TOS)

Yum. I like this one. Easy to read and clearly explained for most people with basic reading comprehension. Section G - What We Do With Content will tell you everything you need to know.

Basically, they have the same clauses about you granting AO3 a license to modify/apart/etc you work, but they take the trouble to explain to you exactly what that means, and how they use it to improve accessibility etc.

No history of content purges as far as I know. Explicit content is allowed with limits eg. no child porn.

Wordpress (TOS)

Same deal - you’re looking for 1. Wordpress - Responsibility of Contributors, with the exact same thing as everybody else. They also do a decent job of explaining what they use the license for (though once again, it’s standard), albeit not as beautifully as AO3.

However, images of sexual acts (including fanart) are against TOS.

I found no history of content purges.

Dreamwidth (TOS)

Same old standard licensing clause, again doesn’t let them steal your stuff.

Incredibly…open content policies…you can basically do whatever you want so long as you don’t break laws or commit fraud it seems? If I’m wrong, feel free to correct.

Hope this helps. Feel free to force me to read and explain any other site TOS documents. Again, more experienced copyright lawyers, feel free to correct me if I clowned up somewhere.

mikkeneko

reblogging as a correction to my last post re DevArt, although since DevArt still doesn’t allow adult art, still not a great alternative to tumblr

rogueoftimeywimeystuff-deactiva

Pillowfort has clarified that art containing pre-pubescent children in sexual situations is not allowed. However teenagers/anyone who could be confused as being Of Age at a glance are treated Of Age for the purpose of art.

They do allow sexual content and are working on moving to a domain that allows more freedom with regards to porn.

weirdmixofweirdness

Article 13 NEEDS TO BE STOPPED!!!

I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE NOT EUROPEAN!!!!

THIS WILL AFFECT THE WAY EVERYONE USES THE INTERNET!

DO YOUR RESEARCH!

CALL/EMAIL YOUR MEPs!

KEEP THIS HORRIBLE LAW FROM GETTING PASSED!!!

succubear

Just fyi this will likely affect non-Europeans as well. It’s easier for a website like YouTube to just restrict ALL copyright instead of just sectioning off what they need to. They’ll probably let bigger YouTubers still operate, but small time content creators will be a thing of the past.

drdrunkpigeon-phd

Net-neutrality flashbacks of not caring

howtodrawyourdragon

https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-stop-the-censorship-machinery-save-the-internet

floralls

florography by ashleywoodsonbailey

theemotionmachine

Virtue requires a delicate balance.

tobi-kelma

This could be a great set of descriptors for tracking social stats in a game.

appel-likes

Woah

shaelit

A good chart for character development, especially when contrasting how they are vs. how they see themselves.

yournewapartment

Adulting 108

At the request of an anon, I have devoted this entire Adulting post to first apartment related things. The anon also asked for advice on renter’s insurance and other insurance, but I’m going to devote a different post to that tomorrow, so look out. I hope you enjoy! This week thanks to @galattici and @cosmicgotham. Please give them lots of love. And don’t forget to check out my other weekly Adulting posts.

1. Craigslist hunting. When using Craigslist to search for available apartments, avoid listings where pictures aren’t shown. It’s not that hard to upload pictures, if there aren’t images there’s probably a reason. Similarly, avoid apartments where rooms and appliances are listed but not shown. Real estate agents and landlords will often leave out or get odd angles of unseemly looking rooms. Use your judgment.

2. Apartment drive by. Another great way to find apartment buildings and complexes is to simply choose the city or town where you want to live, and drive around. We did this with our first apartment, you can literally walk into a rental office in the middle of the day and talk to a property manager.

3. Rental offices. Many rental offices will actually be located in an apartment in their apartment complex. When you walk in and talk to the office manager, ask if this is a model of what the other apartments look like. Ask if there is an apartment available for you to view, there often will be empty ones that the complex is doing maintenance on in the middle of the month. If you can’t see one that day, arrange to come back and view one. Here are some other questions to ask.

4. Rental application. You will need to fill out some sort of rental application when applying for an apartment. You’ll be asked for previous addresses (if you’ve lived in previous apartment complexes landlords will actually call and ask about how good of a tenant you were), if you’ve been convicted of a crime, pay stubs, references and/or credit information. If you don’t have a credit score, some complexes will require you to co-sign the lease with someone who does, like a parent. If a landlord does NOT ask you to fill out any kind of application, I’d advise you to run for the hills and not rent from them.

5. Approval. Apartment complexes will mail you a packet of information after you’ve been approved. This will list your new address, what power company services are available, apartment amenities, school districts, local attractions, as well as your next steps. My current apartment complex also mailed me what Internet providers are available, which was a nice extra bonus.

6. Initial expenses. Your next step will be to put down a “security deposit”. This will either be exactly the same or very close to the amount you pay for rent monthly. This deposit ensures that you don’t destroy the apartment, if you do they won’t refund you. You will also be asked to pay your first month’s rent in advance. Most rental companies will only accept money orders for these initial expenses, you have to go to your bank to get these. They’re essentially checks that take the money out of your account right away.

7. Apartment check. After you’re approved for an apartment, ask to see the actual unit that you’ll be moving into. Make sure that you see said apartment before signing any lease. Notice how loud your neighbors are, how good of a cell signal you have, the condition of the apartment, etc. This is a pretty extensive list.

8. Pre-move in. Make a shopping list of all the non-perishable items you will need before moving in. I’m talking trash cans, first aid kits, toilet paper, laundry detergent, etc. I like to work on this list over the span of several days, and do a large shop before moving in. Your moving day will be stressful enough as it is, don’t add the stress of missing something you need. Here’s a pretty good list.

9. Electric set-up. Use the information packed your landlord sent you to find out who your electricity provider is. Call them, you’ll probably get a pre-recorded message. Choose the option that says something along the lines of “set up electricity”. You will be connected to an actual human being, who will ask you to read your new address. Tell them to turn on power to your apartment a couple days before you move in. They will set up a billing plan with you (ask to be put on a budget, it’ll save you lots of money) and give you your account information.

10. Internet set-up. Setting up your internet is similar to setting up your electric, but a bit more hand’s on. Most cable/internet companies always have some sort of deal going on, a year or two years of discounted service. Be aware of when this discount will end, and contact the company to see if they can offer you a new deal. If Verizon is offered in your area, I strongly advise you to use them for Internet service. i was on a two year plan with them that saved us $40 a month on internet service, and after it ended they put us on a new plan that is now saving us $42 a month. Fuck yeah! Also make sure to set your internet installation date for the day after you move in, so that you’re not stuck sitting in your internet-less apartment, unable to read my blog. Know that most internet companies charge installation and routers fees, and if you complain enough they’ll drop one or both of these. Just be like “I’m a poor college student” or threaten to go to another internet company.

11. Signing the Lease. The last thing you will do before moving into your new apartment is signing a lease. You will be given a copy of the lease to keep, as well as the key to your apartment and/or laundry key. Keep your copy of the lease in a safe place, and make sure to get duplicates of your apartment keys.

12. Moving in. During your first few days moved into you new apartment, look around and make note of anything wrong. Outlets that don’t work, scratches on the wall, peeling paint, etc. Report these ASAP to your landlord to be fixed. This will give you a good idea of how put together their maintenance unit is. Make sure to offer maintenance workers water and be polite to them when they’re fixing anything in your apartment.

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

honestly i have saved a lot of hassle by specifically requesting to be treated by female medical professionals whenever possible

teaboot

my last male doctor told me, within literal minutes of meeting me, that I wasn’t sick actually and all my problems were just in my head and I was making everything up.

The very next female doctor I went to asked me questions about my symptoms, about how long I’d been having issues, and why I was concerned. And then she wrote me a prescription

hereandheaven

One time I was referred to a male infectious disease doctor and he laughed off my symptoms and explained that they were caused by anxiety and lack of sleep. I saw a female PCP a month later and she took a leap and tested me for Lymes. The test came back positive and I was treated before it got bad. I thank her everyday for having the guts to listen to me and take action.

infinitebutthurt

I had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance for severe abdominal pain on my left side. I was fading in and out of consciousness the pain was so bad. Of course the assumption was that my appendix was going to rupture, but when the doctor ruled that out he decided it was simply period cramps and told me to take Tylenol.

As I was stumbling out of the ER the charge nurse stopped me and asked where the fuck I was going. I told her I’d been discharged and she took a look at my charts and deadass rolled her eyes. Called the doctor back in to point out a substantial fluid buildup near my ovaries. He called it a “nonissue” and this brave nurse, bless her heart, argued with him.

As it turns out, I had a massive cyst on my left ovary that had ruptured, hence the pain being on one side. Apparently, it could have killed me. She asked me if this had happened before, which it had. The male doctor then had also told me it was cramps.

I was sent to a specialist, and within two days was diagnosed with severe endometriosis, which put me at a high risk for additional ovarian cysts. Within a month I’d had surgery, it was small and noninvasive, but there was a chance it could genuinely save my life one day.

It took three years of potentially deadly complications that I had NO IDEA were even happening before a nurse that saw me in passing realized what had happened. So yeah, male doctors suck.

artist-ember

male doctors can be assholes to other males too.

when my brother was in middle school he had twisted his knee backwards. when we went to his male doctor, he upright told him to stop being a little bitch. (he was a military doctor and i guess could get away with it?) Anyway, it took 4 years for that doctor to rotate out of that base and the next one that came in was in shock that he hadn’t taken my brother into surgery when he first came in. His ligaments were torn and they had to graft from other muscles to reconstruct his knee to be usable. FOUR YEARS because this asshat didn’t want to do his fucking job and do a few scans to see my brother couldn’t use his leg. for FOUR years. anyway they got him into surgery right away, but there was already a shit ton of damage

another story, different doctor

I get bronchitis nearly every year because apparently you get it once, you’re supper susceptible to get again. anyway i had been coughing for a good 2 months and i went to the male doctor my parents had and told him how long it had been and that it was the same that it was the last two times i had bronchitis. doctor tells me it’s not bronchitis and to wait tow weeks to see if it goes away and send me away. two weeks later, guess what, results are in, it’s bronchitis, he gives me some steroid pills and sends me on the way. not such a bad story right, he just wanted to make sure before giving me something? yeah, except it happened twice after that when i came in for the same exact thing. same song and dance because i don’t know what i’m talking about.

i switch to a female doctor and about a month ago i start getting the start of that cough so i go see her. I tell her how i get it often and i want to catch it before it turns into bronchitis. She sees my history on how i’ve had it 5 times in the past 4 years and IMMEDIATLY she gives me a steroid inhaler, AND a regular inhaler for the next time i start getting a cough despite not actually having major bronchitis symptoms at the time. so not only did she listen to me the first time, but she gave me a preventative. guess what guys … i didn’t get bronchitis this year.

antique-scarecrow

i typically recommend asking for a female doctor regardless of your gender

harpbeats

Selling an Aqua Blue PS Vita

Heya guys I’m potentially looking to sell my Aqua Blue PS Vita to help with bills. It has minor marks and scuffs that you’d expect from an older handheld machine. It works great though and the screen is scratch free the last time I played it. It would come with 5 games and a 32gb card at $160+shipping and handling.

the games are:

World of Final Fantasy Persona 4 Golden Tales of Hearts R Virtues Last Reward Exist-Archive

harpbeats

It looks like we’ll be about 250 short on rent/lights once I get my next check so I’m still trying to sell this ;3;

I’m also considering selling an xbox one without controllers for $140. I’ve barely used it for anything other than rock band and I haven’t played it in over a year.

skelevenn

I’ve been holding on to this for a while. In… September? I was having a Really Bad Time. So I ended up making this comic to sort of… sort through some stuff. It really helped.

I hope maybe it can resonate with other people, too.

Reblogs would be very appreciated, so more people can see it <3

heroes-get-made-deactivated2022

Some ideas for bad things that are white/light:

lightning, very hot fire

snow storms, ice, frost on crops

some types of fungus/mold

corpses, ghosts, bones, a diseased person

clothing, skin tone, hair, etc. of a bad person

fur, teeth, eyes of an attacking animal/monster

bleached out deserts, dead trees, lifeless places

poison

Some ideas for good things that are black/dark:

rich earth/soil

chocolate, truffles, wine, cooked meat

friendly animals/pets/creatures

a character’s favorite vehicle, technology, coat, etc.

a pleasant night

hair, skin tone, clothing, etc. of a good person

undisturbed water of a lake

the case/container of something important

valued wood, furniture, art

velvet

Think to burn, to infect, to bleach vs. to enrich, to protect, to be of substance.

noseforahtwo

*slams reblog like the fist of an angry god*

the politics of light and dark are everywhere in our vocabulary…psa to writers: subvert this, reveal whiteness and lightness as sometimes artificial and violent, and darkness as healing, the unknown as natural

attractthecrows

“The truth finds more comfort in the dark”

jackdaw-kraai

“The light can blind as easily as the dark conceals. The dark can protect as easily as the light guides. Neither are pure good nor evil, pure chaos nor order. The light and dark just are.”

kiraoji

art cheats

hello i am here today to not lose track of the art cheats i have discovered over the years. what i call art cheat is actually a cool filter/coloring style/way to shade/etc. that singlehandedly makes art like 20 times better

80’s anime style

glitch effect

glow effects

adding colors to grayscale paintings

foreshortening ( coil )

foreshortening ( perspective )

clipping group (lines)

clipping group (colors)

dramatic lighting ( GOOD )

shading metal

lighting faces

that is all for today, do stay tuned as i am always hunting for cool shit like this

qbalchemist

Scammer Targeting Tumblr Artists

The title says it all really. So if nothing else, please share and reblog this post to raise awareness for those that might be caught out - both artists and followers. For a TL:DR, please look at the bottom of the post

What is happening?

Right now, there is at least one person actively impersonating multiple artists across tumblr in an effort to scam their followers into paying for fake ‘cheap commissions’. The scammer will clone a tumblr, usually using a slight change to the url/account name to look like the real deal. They will then message people directly through Tumblr with messages along the lines of “Hey, i’m doing cheap commissions right now. DM me to get one”. Naturally, this is ends up just being a way to take their money without giving anything back in return.

Who does this affect?

Everyone. Simple as that. As long as the scammer in question works unopposed, they are free to spread their influence and continue to scam more people. Even if you haven’t been targeted yet, it does not mean you are safe or immune. Several artists have already fallen victim to this scammer, and I encourage any artists that have to reblog this post with the details of their affected account(s) and the ones the scammer has set up.

How can we stop this?

Tumblr, like many other social media platforms, seems to care very little about ‘minor’ occurences like this one, and despite reaching out directly to them over a week ago through multiple avenues of contact - they have refused to comment on the situation, provide a recommended response for users, or take action on behalf of those already affected. Despite this, there are still tools at our disposal that we can use to make this scam more difficult, and to increase its visibility to those within Tumblr staff that are required by policy to take action. Tumblr has the following to say on the topic of impersonation: Confusion or Impersonation. Don’t do things that would cause confusion between you or your blog and a person or company, like registering a deliberately confusing URL. Don’t impersonate anyone. While you’re free to ridicule, parody, or marvel at the alien beauty of Benedict Cumberbatch, you can’t pretend to actually be Benedict Cumberbatch. They then provide a link to this online form that you can fill out if you suspect someone’s identity is being confused. Unfortunately, this can only be filled out if you are the victim of impersonation. In other words, only the artists can fill this out legitimately. So, what about the followers and users of tumblr whom aren’t being impersonated? Our most valuable tool in this online platform is the platform itself. It enables us to spread our word near-virally across all the many sub-communities on Tumblr with remarkable efficiency for a user-driven system. We can take advantage of that effect to increase awareness of the situation. Even if you - the one reading this right now - aren’t an artist or don’t know an artist, the act of reblogging this post or sharing it directly with friends improves it’s ‘ranking’ in popularity increasing its chances to be seen by more people. We don’t need everyone on Tumblr to see the post for it to be effective, just like we don’t need the entirety of the human population of the world to be immune to a disease for that disease to be rendered ineffective or eradicated. If enough people are aware, the likelihood of pulling off a successful scam increases dramatically reducing efficiency to a point that it no longer becomes profitable to continue.

Why should I care?

It disheartens me to say this, but of the many artists I contacted directly over the past week to warn about this issue many of them refused to listen or dodged the responsibility with lines like;

“I’m not being impersonated, so it doesn’t affect me”

“I’m just one person. I can’t make an impact”

“I need to take care of my community. Other people can look after theirs”

This is honestly disappointing that so many artists or art-rebloggers care so little as to intentionally wave the responsibility of keeping their followers and fellow artists safe from this, that they cannot spare 10 seconds of their time to share an informative post. I’m not here to bash artists, but it is time that everyone takes responsibility for their own communities, and of those around them. Artists: You have a responsibility to ensure that your followers and fans aren’t being abused by someone who may impersonate you. If they succeed, your reputation will be damaged, and your followers will resent you. Your followers are also almost guaranteed to be following other artists meaning your efforts can spread beyond your own circle of influence, so don’t be naive when you think you have little effect. Followers: You have just as much responsibility to be aware of those that might try to scam you or your fellow followers. Don’t just sit in silence when you see something wrong: Ignoring the issue only makes it more resilient to our efforts to stop it. You are the vocal majority if you just use your voices to be heard!

TL:DR

A scammer is impersonating artists and scamming money from their followers under the guise of ‘cheap commissions’. If we ignore the issue, it will get worse. Every single person that reads this can afford to spend just 10 seconds to reblog and share this post. Those 10 seconds can save others from being scammed for hundreds of dollars. Reblog & Share

izzym-art

I think my followers already know my commission style, as in how I market them and how I run my business. But just in case:

I NEVER outright DM someone to get a cheap commission from me.

I NEVER discuss the terms and conditions of the commission through DM, just through email. I only discuss drawing progresses through DM. Initial contract for commissions will ALWAYS be done through email.

I ALWAYS post my signature “Saera’s Commission” or “#Saera’s Comms” post on my blog to signify I’m currently taking commissions. NEVER through DMs.

Lastly, please please please be aware of the URLs, check the authenticity of the post and always think logically.

Be safe guys! :)

widdlez

All of the above my friends.

As a note: I’m currently in the middle of con prep and won’t be taking commissions for a while nor will I ever DM you directly. Be wary of “artists” sending messages directly guys and be safe.

om-nom-berries

Reblogging this in case anyone somehow tries to impersonate me (lol): my commissions are currently closed as I work on projects for TCAF and Anime North. I always have my status here on my commissions page: http://om-nom-berries.tumblr.com/commissions

I also will never cold-message people for commissions. I advertise and people message me/email me. That’s how I always have done stuff, because I don’t have time to do it the other way around lol

liberlibelula

Same here, folks. I don’t offer “cheap” commissions, nor do I go around trying to sell them individually. I merely announce them and give a heads up to those who expressed interest in being personally told about the next reopening. Also, my commissions are currently closed.

So if this random assface impersonates me, by any chance, don’t believe them!

artbyvynta-blog

As other artists above have already said;

I’ll NEVER send you DM’s trying to make you buy a cheap commission. I don’t contact people asking them to commission me, I ALWAYS wait for the client to message me first!

jmillerart

Adding to the above, I NEVER have nor NEVER will send an unsolicited DM about “cheap” commissions.

crithaus

I DON’T dm the customer first, I don’t DM to fish for people to get commissions and ever since I remade my commission info, I don’t DM details either, it’s all in the Google form, I also don’t do ‘cheap’ lmao

If “i” DM you, ask for the form first and get my PayPal email from it and IF YOU DON’T ITS NOT ME

If you do somehow and it was not me, I will know and I will send you your $$$ back

bepis-boii

EVERYONE PLEASE LISTEN. DO NOT IGNORE THIS.

Article 13 is going into it’s final stages of voting.

If this gets through, it will allow many, many companies to abuse and misuse this article to take down as many memes, fan works, and even other independent creators on sites like YouTube, Facebook, and other websites INCLUDING Tumblr.

THE FAIR USE LAW AND SAFEHARBOR LAW WILL NO LONGER APPLY IN THE U.S OR IN OTHER COUNTRIES.

IT HAS ALREADY PASSED IN SEVERAL OTHER COUNTRIES.

WE CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO TAKE AWAY WHAT WE BUILT FOR THE INTERNET SO FAR.

So here is what you need to do to drag this article down.

1. Spread the word

I can’t stress this enough. The more attention this gets the more people we can get to take this down.

2. Make your own content

Make your own content on the matter and make sure it is clear to others that Article 13 is bad for every internet user involved.

3. If you live anywhere in Europe, contact your MEPs

Ask them if they approve of the article and why. If they do approve of it, try to convince them in a clear, reasonable, and most sensible way possible that this law is BAD.

The article itself is way to vague about what it’s conveying to its people.

Saying that as long as the use of said internet memes or content is good as long as it’s in “good faith.”

We cannot let some shoddy government tell us what we can and cannot post.

FREE SPEECH IS A HUMAN RIGHT. NOT A PRIVILEGE.

Here’s a video on Article 13 that Film Theory made on the matter. It will explain things better than I can.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GbXHrj8k7dg

kamikazeworld

THE VIDEO LINKED IS FROM YESTERDAY (24/11 2018) THIS IS ALL FRESH PLEASE SPREAD!

lakekraken

To my fellow ‘mericans that don’t understand Article 13 and why it’s important, watch the video. MatPat breaks is down in a very easy way to understand why it’s important and why it will affect all of us. You might think “naw, I’m not in the EU, doesn’t matter to me” (which is a crappy way of looking at it in the first place) but guess what, it will.

Also, I feel like people are pushing the importance of this to memes, but honestly it goes SO well beyond that.

azriouloshi

Ymalik/Ryou again! =u=;;

Blessed be, i love these two!! ;u;

long-ago-1234567890

apparently stan lee finally died of shitty old bitch disease and i better not see anyone acting like he was anything more than a sack of shit who sexually harassed multiple women and injected racism into marvel comics for decades

just cuz he died doesnt make him suddenly deserving of respect

omaaoc

Hey I cant defend the second bit but the bit about sexual harassment were proven false and in fact they were investigated for allegations of elder abuse against stan lee

trackspyro-deactivated20250524

You don’t have to defend the second bit. Stan Lee said he’d be fine if Spider Man was originally Black, Hispanic, Indian, or anything. He just didn’t want an already established character to change their identity. He said if you want a character that’s different, just make a different character, which is exactly what happened.

Tumblr is just being Tumblr again.

tracer-isms

To Paraphrase, Stan Lee DIDN’T harass anyone, and had an understandable reasoning behind his thinking, and it also left room for the Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen storylines, which is awesome