#tumblr is the last place on the internet where i feel comfortable

[physalian]

In Defense of Fanfiction (Or the perfect starting point for your original novel)

Fanfic gets a bad rap pretty much everywhere except Tumblr. It’s misunderstood and misrepresented by its average works, seen as juvenile and cringey, or a banal point of contention between a famous person or piece of media and its fans.

Outside of fanfic that writes about real people, especially smut fics of real people, I support the art wholeheartedly. Fictional characters are one thing, but personally, caricaturing a celebrity’s life for public consumption and writing or drawing them in compromising content without their consent is a little weird. You do you. Don’t like, don’t read, as they say.

Fanfic is the perfect starting point for a few reasons:

It places you in a creative box and forces you to work within those constraints

It does all the worldbuilding and character concepts for you

It lets you write way outside your comfort zone

When published and receiving feedback, it boosts your self-confidence

It's incredibly flexible

It’s practice. All practice is good practice

—

Behold your creative box

When I was little I had no idea the majority of fanfic was shipping fics. I always pictured and looked for canon-divergent alternate universes. Like, what if X happened in this episode instead of Y? What if this character never died?

Fanfic demands you work within someone else’s canon, whether it’s an OC in the canonical world, or the canonical characters in an AU. These are like little bowling bumpers saving you from the gutter, but also keeping you on a straight-ish path toward the pins.

The indecisiveness of too many choices can be too intimidating when you’re first starting out. You want to be a writer but you have no idea where to begin, what genre to pick, what characters you want to chronicle, what themes you want to explore.

Even if it sits on your computer never to see the light of day, you still got those creative juices flowing.

Pre-packaged worldbuilding

Sometimes all we want is to get to the good stuff. Maybe I want to write a story about elemental magicians but Last Airbender already exists and I just want to play in a pre-existing sandbox. So I write some OCs into that world and have a free-for-all.

I don’t have to come up with my own lore, world history, magic system rules and mechanics, politics, geography—any of it. I get to just focus on the characters.

Even if you’re writing an AU, like say a coffee shop AU, you don’t have to think about brand new characters, you can just think “What would M do?” and go from there. The trade-off is your readers will expect canonical characters to behave in-character, but I think it’s worth it.

Stretch beyond your comfort zone!

Do you hate writing action scenes? Go practice with a shonen anime fic. Need work on dialogue? Write some high-fantasy fic, or a courtroom drama. Practice a fistfight by watching fistfights and writing what you see, and do it over and over again until what you read makes you feel like you're watching what’s on screen.

But beyond that—practice genres that you aren’t super familiar with. If you’re new to fantasy, write fantasy fic. Or a mystery novel/show, thriller, comedy, satire, adventure, what have you. The nature of fanfic still gives you those “guardrails” and you can get some brutally honest feedback on how you’re doing.

And, of course, the realm of M-rated romance and smut fics. I haven’t because I think I would die of embarrassment if I tried and I never intend to include sex scenes in my works anyway, but if you do want to, use the internet as your test audience. Post it on a throwaway account if you’re nervous.

Build that self-confidence!

The fandoms I used to write for are super dead, so it’s insane how I still get email notifications that so-and-so liked my fic to this day. Comments are as elusive as ever, but random strangers on the internet telling me they liked my work is a magical reassurance that my writing isn’t actually awful.

Random strangers on the internet are, as we all know, beholden to no moral obligation to be kind to your little avatar face, or be kind to be polite. So a rando taking the time to like my work or even leave a positive comment can feel more honest than one of my friends telling me what they think I want to hear.

I tend to avoid the more present aspects of fandom like online communities, forums, social media, what have you, so I get a delayed and diluted aspect of any given fandom through completed works. Which means, in general, I get to avoid the worst and most toxic aspects of fandom and get to sift through positive feedback and critique.

Even if your fanfic isn’t written with stellar prose, it’s fanfic. We don’t expect Pulitzer-prize winning content. And if your work isn’t up to snuff, people are more likely to just ignore it than put you on blast (at least in my experience, I never got a bad comment or a “flame” in the old FFN days).

Fanfic doesn’t care about the rules of published literature

On the one hand, try not to practice bad habits, but with this point I mean that your layout, punctuation, formatting, paragraph styles, chapter length–all of it is beholden to no rules. I get as annoyed as the next reader with giant blocks of paragraphs, or the double-spacing between pages of single-sentence paragraphs, but if the story’s good enough I might ignore it.

There’s more than just straight narrative fics, though. People write “chat” fics, or long streams of text and group chat conversations. The scene breaks can come super rapidly–I’ve seen fics with a single sentence in between line breaks to show the passage of time. And without the polish of a traditionally published novel, I’ve never seen a purer distillation of author voice in any medium more than fanfic.

All practice is good practice

Even if it’s crack fiction, or a one-off one-shot, or something meant to be lighthearted and straightforward and free from complex worldbuilding and intricate plots. It really helps break writer’s block when you can shift gears and headspaces entirely and you can get relatively instant feedback to keep you motivated.

Beyond that, the “guardrails” help you stay consistent as far as character growth and personality if you struggle with designing rich characters.

The most recent fanfic I wrote was just a couple years ago, for a dead fandom I didn’t think would get any traffic whatsoever. It wasn’t my original works, but the feedback on that fic gave me the kick in the butt I needed to get back into writing more seriously.

—

In short, I support fanfic. I may not be proud of my earliest fics' prose now, but I am proud that they walked so I can now run.

#writing advice #writing resources #writing tips #writing tools #writing a book #writing #writeblr #fanfic #fanfiction #archive of our own #ao3 #ffn

[emporium]

Tumblr Frog Earrings

Edit: They brightened up a bit in the sun. What do you think about this color now? Charlotte was so excited she went into full production mode. Last night the fantastic Charlotte from The Goode Karma Co came to me with an idea for these earrings. She sent me the idea at 9pm and by 1am she already had the prototypes made. I think they look so cool and we were thinking of selling them as a set of four that you can mix and match. Is this something you'd like to see in the shop? There are well-founded concerns about companies taking advantage of Pride month to make money and I wasn't going to launch anything this month due to those concerns but I had an idea that I hope would belay those fears. Tumblr will donate 100% of the profits from these to the Trevor Project. I'll provide complete transparency with screenshots and such on how many we sells and the donations we make. Users have also expressed concerns that I'm a character created by a corporation or that I'm a master manipulator who is just trying to get a sale. I'd love for people to know that I'm just a regular person who is being himself on the only site he feels comfortable doing so. Since talk is cheap in addition to the donation tumblr will be making, I'm pledging to match every donation the company makes. By that I mean me, Nick (last name omitted, don't want to get swatted :) ), will take my own money and match any donations that Tumblr makes. I bet you're skeptical, people lie all the time on the internet. You're right to be skeptical but I'm serious and to prove it I made an advance donation of $500 (which was matched by Jimmy Choo, lululemon, and NASCAR as part of a Pride month promotion) as a down payment on my matching pledge (proof below with what I hope is enough personal information redacted).

I want to make sure people know that tumblr is a safe place. It’s a place where you can go to be yourself, share your passions and take a breather from life. I support people being themselves, in whatever form that takes. You do you and let everyone else worry about themselves.

I’m an old straight white male. I have no idea of the struggles many of you go through, I won’t pretend I do. I may not know the right things to say or do but I do know that I support you, all of you unconditionally. I want you to educate me, I want you to rely on me, I want you to help me get rid of anyone who is making others here feel unsafe, unwanted or just simple bad about themselves. My asks are open (even anon), as well as my DMs.

[yuyuconfessions]

"I've noticed that younger fans seem to have trouble connecting the dots that a lot of adults on this website were kids younger or close to the age of Yusuke when this series was originally airing back in the 90s in Japan and the 2000s in the west.

Although these fictional characters' stories ended for them at 18 it doesn't mean that Yusuke and the gang stop being important, interesting, or compelling to us. It also doesn't mean that we have to stop loving these fictional characters and their stories after we turn 19.

If you as a minor 14-17 or someone aged 18 - 25 thay feels comfortable shipping these characters, viewing art of them, and reading fic about them ESPECIALLY NSFW art/fic; but your skin crawls that people older than you are creating that content, then you need to sit down with yourself and ask yourself if fandoms that are literally older than your existence are places that you are ready to be socializing in.

Fandoms that are older than your existence will have fans that are MUCH older than you and they are making content and having interactive conversations.

Yu Yu Hakusho is not an Adult Only fandom but it is a fandom that is Mostly Adults.

I fell in love with this show when I was a pre teen. I'm in my mid 30s. The show's target audience is teenagers. But here is the thing: it's target audience was teenagers back in the 90s and 2000s and that's still most of its audience today because Togashi told a fun and resonant story that tends to stick with its audience.

If you can't handle shipping content or adult conversations (conversations about mature topics and themes not necessarily 18+/NSFW but these are definitely present also) about Yu Yu Hakusho then you should try to avoid adult spaces when searching for discussion or content and stick to spaces specifically for minors.

A space specifically for minors would have a ban against all 18+/NSFW content that is strictly enforced. It would not have an 18+/NSFW section at all.

Tumblr and most of the discord servers for YYH that I've seen are adult spaces. Because there is an expectation that while minors are allowed on the websites they must be over a certain age with parental permission because adult conversations happen here where minors could see them.

All of this to say: Unplug from the adult spaces if you feel uncomfortable with adult themes and content or 18+/NSFW content.

Talk to friends irl about Yu Yu Hakusho or find a minor focused space online to talk about it. Come back to the adult spaces in a few years.

This applies to the 18 - 25 crowd also. If you can't handle seeing someone ship these characters or if someone ships them in a way that you don't agree with and it's so upsetting to you that it's causing you a great deal of anger or distress then you need to consider if you really want to be in the Greater Online Yu Yu Hakusho Fandom at this particular point in your life. Or if maybe you want to filter tags on tumblr and drop sites that you can't filter to make your fandom experience more smooth.

If Yu Yu Hakusho has lasted 30 years then it'll last another 3 or 5 years while you get adjusted and engage with Yu Yu Hakusho in minor focused or safely filtered fandom spaces. Trust me. Yu Yu Hakusho will be somewhere on the greater internet when you're older and you've gotten better at self regulating your intake of content online and your response to seeing content online that you don't like.

Yusuke, Kazuma, Kurama, Hiei, Keiko, Botan, Shizuru, Yukina, Genkai and the rest will be here when you get back. That's the great thing about resonant media. It sticks around because people connect to it.

You can love them as long as you want to. They'll always be there. They're not going anywhere."

This mod would just like to add

No one shipping Yusuke x Keiko is sexualizing or exploiting minors; yes, even if the person shipping is 35 years old. These are cartoons, fictional, 2d drawings. If you want to play cute with "but they're 14!" No. Yusuke was created in 1992. He is 31.

If any of the above makes you, a minor, uncomfortable, then get out of adult spaces. Back in myyy day (que groans), any show I liked and looked at online had adult content, like Inuyasha or Naruto, even Teen Titans. I'd be 12 and see suddenly complete porn of Raven, and as a teen, I'd just exit out of it. Now, kids see things online, things they shouldn't see because the internet is NOT safe for kids without parental oversight, and their response is to... yell at the people making the content... for other adults.

If you wouldn't walk into Spencers and yell at the employees there for the vibrators, don't yell at adults drawing porn of Yukina and Hiei fucking. Exit out, or ask your mommy and daddy to put restrictions on what sites you can access. The internet is NOT your babysitter.

#yyh #yu yu hakusho #幽遊白書

[be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie]

I don’t know why I’m here but you gotta know about it. TW mentions of child abuse

There is an actual dead dove poster in the Spider tags now 💀 posting creepy shit and doing it openly on a platform with a shit ton of minors. I saw only one before filtering the tag out but it was a Spider x Quaritch post where they discussed how people "sleep on their dynamic" and "imagine the Stockholm syndrome"

I sent them an ask and said that they should perhaps keep that to themselves or at least out of the general tags bc surprise surprise! Users don’t want relive their past trauma while scrolling through fucking tumblr and hey legit laughed and mocked me in their response. The worst part is it’s an actual 33 year old and despite the fact that they’re apparently ace I just can’t understand what fucked up morbid curiosity can drive a person to become, and I quote, a “dead dove connoisseur” and enjoy reading about sexual child abuse? Make it make sense.

It’s not even a preference thing. It’s basic human decency. What part of “don’t post about how you love fictional child abuse when there are kids looking through the tags and some people can get triggered by it” is so hard to understand? Anyway, this is just a heads up that you might see their post one day, so now you know.

Don't be shy anon drop the @.

You are absolutely right, a preference for writing about child abuse/incest is super not okay, and it's always in young fandoms and around characters like Quaritch. Despite there being whatever proper tags people think are there, I really don't think that content needs to exist. People STILL don't know what they are getting into. Case in point: I know we all stalk the Avatar a03 and we all unfortunately saw the newest gross Quaritch/Spider fic posted. Well, I clicked on that shit, because my dumb ass thought maybe it would be comfort focused enough we could skip around that bc Quaritch was already dead in the fic. When I tell you I have been so uncomfy for the last twelve hours, I cannot scrub that shit from my brain. I wish it had never been written! I wish I was dead! There are very few things that can still make me feel genuinely bad on the internet, and that managed it. I feel icky.

Anyways this just became about me resenting my decisions, I will definitely be reporting anything I see like that and I hope my followers do the same. Thank you for warning us. Tumblr is not always the safest place for minors, but hopefully we can make sure this community is.

#that was actually my first ever click on a dead dove do not eat i'm pretty sure #never again! #there were literally all the red flags in the universe and i still thought maybe it wouldn't be that bad i don't even know #ughghhg #i was like it CANT be that bad people can't ACTUALLY read this it has to be like about recovering from this kind of thing #nah #listen its dead dove do not eat for a reason i'm just stupid and didn't believe people were that awful i guess #miles quaritch #miles spider socorro #spider socorro #avatar #avatar the way of water #james cameron avatar #melissa's asks #melissa on avatar (cameron)

[rhoorl]

Just a sappy year-end post you can continue scrolling lol…

I’ve written and rewritten this so many times over the past week. The words were failing me on how to sum up this year, so instead here’s a long-winded stream of consciousness:

There are so many things that now have a new meaning for me thanks to the last nine months.

Sequins. Donuts. Ties. Mirrors. Belt buckles. Snakes. Holsters. Back Alleys. Bakeries. Pickles. Landscaping. Gray sweatpants. Honestly, the list goes on.

At the start of 2023, I was soooo excited to watch The Last of Us. I was a fan of Pedro and Mr. Rhoorl was a huge fan of the game so it was like a win-win and something for us to watch together. Little did I know how much that show and Pedro’s subsequent SNL appearance would change the rest of my year.

I still laugh when I think about how long I spent lurking on the Pedro subreddit before I said anything. But little by little, my upvotes turned into me leaving comments and those comments led to me finding some pretty awesome people. Especially those who encouraged me when I threw out a random comment about how I was thinking of writing a fic of my own after consuming so many stories and feeling inspired (I read my first fanfic in March of this year!). 

I remember going to the movies one day in the summer. I arrived early (taking solace in having some peace and quiet) and as I sat waiting for the trailers to start, I typed up the skeleton of the Working Title plot on my phone. Fast forward to impulsively creating a Tumblr account and feeling like the eldest millennial ever hoping I wouldn’t get laughed out of the room as I tried navigating this site and interacting with people and their posts.

Then a few weeks later, I was reading one of my favorite series (The Layover) and got this idea about an AU where the Triple Frontier boys start a landscaping business. I was so scared to message Megan about it, hoping she wouldn’t think I was completely nuts (well, maybe she does). I’m so happy I took that deep breath and hit send on that message. It was an uncharacteristic move for me, normally I’d just think ha that’s a funny idea and keep it to myself. But so much of the summer was pushing myself out of my comfort zone so I thought, why not?

Speaking of taking a deep breath and hitting send…who knew that the idea of hosting an online watch party would bring so many amazing people into my life? It all feels like a fever dream sometimes with how it all came together and I’m not sure how everything fell into place but grateful doesn’t even begin to express how it makes me feel. 

I’ll spare you the story since this is getting long, but this year had many highs and many lows. And what really helped me a lot during these lows was a lot of you reading this. Thank you for the encouragement, the laughs, and the shoulders to cry on during those low days, along with the silly graphics and gifs that made me smile (or gave me thots). I’m a pretty reserved and closed-off person away from here, but this year I decided to get out of my comfort zone a bit and just … try.

I know I'll probably never meet Pedro (except in my dreams), but damn if I did ever meet him I would love to say thank you. Thank you for putting so much heart and soul into your performances. Thank you for inspiring creativity in me that I didn't think was there anymore and for inspiring others to bear their souls out onto the internet by way of amazing, heartfelt, and thot-tastic stories. Thank you for giving me a reason to meet people from literally all over the world. This place feels like a playground sometimes with friendships striking up in the simplest ways, like “Hey you like Pedro/this character/this very specific photoshoot/this gif? Cool, me too let’s be friends.” I am so thankful to have made some true connections and friends here that I otherwise would not have met. 

(And finally, because I'm me, I’d thank Pedro for being so broad and having amazing hair…ok I wouldn’t actually say that because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to form a sentence but dammit I would be thinking it that’s for sure!)

So to sum up, this year has been one of growth, of taking deep breaths, of silencing the little voice in my head, and hitting send, or post, or reblog. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s magic. 

If you made it this far, thank you. I’ve gone through a few tissues writing this so I’m going to wrap things up. I don’t really have a profound way to end this rambling other than to say I’m here if you ever want to pop by and say hello or yell about the latest Pedro photo. I know there’s a lot of discourse on here from time to time about various pockets/groups but I feel pretty lucky to have landed in a corner of this site that is supportive and full of love. There’s plenty of room around the table for us all and I wholeheartedly believe in community over competition. I can’t wait to see what 2024 brings.

xoxo  Jess

P.S. At what point do we test the Emergency Alert System ahead of Gladiator 2? I’m going to need a wellness check.

Pedro tax for your troubles:

#tw: long post #tw: personal #year in review

[swearyshera]

So we are at the end of the road on something that has always been about the journey, not the destination.  I’ve taken my time to gather some thoughts.  This blog has meant a lot to many people, not the least of which is me.  I’ve had a hard time these last few years – I think it’s been hard times for everyone, in one way or another.  Personally, I seem to remember discovering this blog not too long before I had a breakdown and handled it very poorly, making bad decisions that cost me a lot of friends, or at least people whom I thought were my friends up until a breaking point.  (Your blog was unrelated to this).  When I came out of hospitalization I had a few things to rely upon – a video therapy group was one, certain family members and, well, as silly as it sounds, hitting up tumblr for my daily dose of Sweary She-Ra to make me laugh. And then in mid-January, 2023, one of the people who was closest to me in my entire life died suddenly of technically unknown cause but considering his health issues, probably a heart-issue. It was sudden and devastating.  We shared She-Ra and the Princesses of Power together because he was kind of curious about it and I was a nostalgia-fan of the ‘80s series.  We both became massive fans of Entrapta.  In fact, my nephew / best friend got me into the fandom in the first place because he had a silly idea for a fanfic about Entrapta wrecking havoc in the Fright Zone just post first-season and had little confidence in his fanfic writing, but decided to pass along said idea to me, an inveterate fic-writer for many fandoms.  I was put through the wringer this year – it’s the first time I’ve been in partial charge of a memorial service.  I am feeling better now than I did at the beginning of this year because I’ve found the strength to keep doing things that he and I liked to do together and time helps.  And again, in all of this, I had a silly little comic where a sparkly purple princess calls people “twattingler,” others make liberal use of the word that originally meant Fornication Under Consent of the King, one character swears all the time but apologizes for it, one character is contractually obligated to use Ned Flanders style cursing and there’s a fourth wall breaker and an incompetent boss with indecipherable accent and Marxist unicorns and all the rest.  No matter what was happening with my emotions I could just… take a little break and look at the funny fancomic.  Sweary She-Ra for me has been like a warm mug of tea on a cold day or a bowl of baked macaroni and cheese with a butter-cracker crust made out of the old 1960-70 something Betty Crocker cookbook.  It’s been Internet comfort food that has been sorely needed at times.  So thank you.  I just want to thank you for this funny little fan project.  I don’t think you have any idea how much it has meant to your audience.  @freedfromthegalactichivemind

And I don't know if the audience has any idea how much it has meant to me!

When I started this, things were pretty shit, weren't they? Here in the UK we'd just come out of the second Covid Lockdown, with the third expected to happen imminently; the weather was miserable, we'd barely seen our friends in months, the world in general just sucked. And I'd love to say that I felt a calling to break through that with some humour, but no... it was nothing like that. This is what happened...

And so it all went from there.

I almost just went for random scenes as I thought of them, rather than starting from the beginning. But I thought "Eh, fuck it, let's see how far I get", and the rest is history.

Even as the storylines got more complex (bear in mind, I started purely with the intention to do the original script with a few swear words peppered in), I always wanted to keep things upbeat. The painful moments are those 'this is the good stuff, hurt me more' moments rather than actually horrifying things - I know there's been a couple of exceptions, but in general it's held true.

But I've always been driven by one thing - the world isn't very funny right now; it's stressful, sometimes downright terrifying. And if I can alleviate that for ten, twenty seconds per day and make that tiny bit of difference to someone, then I consider that a job done. I'm not out here claiming to have the cure for depression, or some kind of plan to save the world, but I (hopefully) can make a few people smile in the midst of all the shit that's happening, even if it's just for a moment.

So much has changed in the last three years, but this blog has been such a central part of my world, it'll be weird when it's over (maybe that's why I don't want to stop there!). But if this coming Friday really is the last chapter in this part of my life, I'll still be happy that it happened. And if you've ever smiled or laughed at the blog, I'm happy that happened as well.

#sweary she-ra origin story

[jimahalangel]

Gelatin Skeleton

Summary:

Apparently the multiverse doesn't need your permission to Isekai you. It doesn't even have to give you the courtesy of letting you know it happened.

…

Undertale is gone, like it never existed.

…

You would know—you've looked.

…

"Wait- so you're telling me the void ate my universe? I'm living the weirdest 'I survived' book?!! Introducing to scholastic book fairs everywhere: 'I survived the destruction of the universe when the void decided to get all schlorpy schlorpy!?'"

…

"I am unfortunately fully aware of what information your universe had in the way of… fanfiction about my friends and family-"

...

Notes:

Formatting is better on AO3 (italicized font and such)

Update schedule: AO3 will get new chapters earlier (probably about a day) than Tumblr. (Aiming for once a week, on Thursdays or Fridays - not set in stone)

Link to read on AO3:

Chapter 1: Wikipedia, my beloved.

(read chapter 2 here)

Going to sleep in one universe and waking up in another sounds like the kind of thing people would write about in various types of fiction. Because it is . It's such a prevalent trope that it has its own genre: Isekai .

As defined by Wikipedia, "Isekai, ( Japanese: 異世界, transl. "different world" or "otherworld") is a genre of speculative fiction—both portal fantasy and science fiction are included. It includes novels, light novels, films, manga, anime and video games that revolve around a displaced person or people who are transported to and have to survive in another world, such as a fantasy world, virtual world, or parallel universe. Isekai is one of the most popular genres of anime, and Isekai stories share many common tropes…"

You'd think someone would notice being Isekai-d; that you might feel different upon waking up in a world where things are changed in new and mysterious ways—perhaps feel empowered? Surely when one is suddenly transported into another reality, they might remember the day it happened?

Apparently the multiverse doesn't need your permission to Isekai you. It doesn't even have to give you the courtesy of letting you know it happened.

Or, well, you think this is another universe, at least? Because an entire chunk of internet-culture/pop-culture was missing when you went to Google it yesterday.

Is missing.

Still.

Undertale is gone, like it never existed. You would know—you've looked.

It's not like years' worth of memes and fanfiction and fanart pertaining to a game that changed the entire gaming industry could just up and disappear out of nowhere, could it?! But you can't find any sign of it anywhere online or offline—and you definitely had physical evidence.

You'd stayed up all night last night searching for a single trace of the game and fandom you'd spent years of your life looking toward for comfort and entertainment. You’d looked everywhere.

But it's gone.

All of it.

Everything.

It's impossible.

There has to be an explanation.

Which brings you to your current Isekai theory: Maybe it's not gone— you are. You might be somewhere new where it never existed in the first place.

Either that or your brain is really majorly messed up and created an alarmingly huge chunk of false memories.

.... Actually… How long has Undertale been missing for you?

Has this happened before and you just can't remember it?

You check your search history. Nothing about Undertale before yesterday. Which is definitely strange because you'd been on AO3 looking through Undertale tags two weeks ago. And there's no need to delete your search history when you live alone. Your most recent search history from right before your rabbit hole yesterday is still the same Wikipedia article you remember reading.

Strange.

So Undertale being wiped from the face of the Earth must've happened sometime in the past two weeks.

You check the Google search trends for the words, 'Undertale' and 'Meglovania,' among several other words and phrases more unique to the game and fandom than 'Sans,' and 'Papyrus.' You want to get to the bottom of this, but you're pretty sure those character names won't get you any closer to an answer with how common they are to describe non-Undertale related things.

It's somehow not a surprise to you when search trends show that exactly zero people are looking for the answers you are.

Okay, so that kicks the possibility of finding anyone else who remembers Undertale.

You check search trends for 'alternate reality,' 'alternate universe,' and 'alternate dimension,' and you also open up a separate tab to the Wikipedia article for 'Isekai.'

It seems like there's definitely a good amount of search queries related to each term, but upon further inspection, they're mostly about isekai anime and tv shows like Dr Who.

Not really all that helpful, but maybe when you're not dealing with the real-world issues of dimensional travel you can take a break and watch the ones that seem interesting.

You bookmark a few articles that seem to be about actual science and not sci-fi media, but besides scientific papers and articles misquoting those same scientific papers, you've hit a dead end. You turn your attention towards finding discussion posts or forums on the topic —Maybe something on Reddit?

…..

Okay, nope.

You're not going to have much luck bringing in other people to help you with this unless you're looking to end up institutionalized. Not that there's any shame in that, but you don't think it'd help you much in this particular situation.

Man, you are really hoping for your Isekai theory to ring true. Otherwise, you're SOL with no way of finding out what's going on here. You feel like that guy who had to rewrite all the Beatles songs from memory in that one movie. What was it called? Yesterday?

Not that you think you could reproduce any of the content you remember about Undertale.

No, you definitely couldn't, especially not the game itself. You aren't a one-man game dev team, and the idea of trying to profit off someone else's ideas like that makes you feel slimy. Even if you're in an alternate dimension or if your brain actually came up with everything and created false memories, you couldn't bring yourself to claim what you feel is someone else's intellectual property. You'll just have to quietly remember on your own and create fan-content privately from now on. That thought makes you feel kind of alone…

You push that down and bottle it up for future you to deal with. Right now you need to determine how and why this happened through some gentle research. No need to end up on any government watchlists.

#I wrote this for me but you can read it too #no beta we disappear like W.D. Gaster #skeleton harem I guess #I sent you to another universe where I'll be isolating youand making you think you're clinically insane #so you can have a bunch of skeleton boyfriends. as a treat #Gaster is kind of everybody's dad here ig #absent father? more like a-void-ant father lol #jk thoughbecause Gaster is actually great in this :) #mahalangel og #undertale #sans undertale #papyrus undertale #undertale fanfiction #sans x reader #reader insert #gelatin skeleton #gelatin skeletons in the fridge

[librarycards]

what sorts of things do you think can help people deal with their mental illness besides therapy/meds? i’m not saying i disagree with anti-psychiatry, and i have had bad experiences with psychiatrists/therapists for multiple reasons, but what kinds of things actually help? i’m on wait lists for free therapy and multiple of them have long way lists and hotlines don’t help me, i feel at a loss. and i kind of feel like being being this mentally ill would be a burden upon any friend/partner i could potentially have. i honestly don’t know what to do bc i haven’t improved in years

first, a clarification: i'm not anti-med, i am only anti-forced treatment. i think you'll find many, though not all, anti-psych (and adjacent) ppl with this view, which is often shoehorned in with broad anti-med shit both because of the dubious history of some antipsych figures and because of strawmanning by pro psych forces. but i digress.

there is no simple solution for crisis/ongoing suffering, especially because the actual biggest help to all of us would be the abolition of white supremacy / ableism / carceral neoliberal capitalism / settler colonialism / cisheteropatriarchy. absent this, we're left trying to fill in the gaps, collectively, as best we can, while always acknowledging that we are putting interpersonal band-aids on systemic harms.

with all that being said, i think the best place to start would be to take stock of what and who you have as resources: are there any friends you feel comfortable sitting beside or watching a movie with, even if you don't feel ready or comfortable sharing "deeper" stuff with them? do you have internet people, or a place where you can shout into the void (like tumblr)? is there a public space you can go to, like a park, where you can at least get out of the house for a little while and be alone among others?

i personally take medication, though i'm tapering one of the last ones i'm on, and chose to discontinue the myriad pills i was prescribed as an involuntary psych inpatient. this isn't because meds are inherently evil, but only because i didn't like who i was when i was on them, nor could i tolerate the conditions under which they were forced on me. absent these meds, i have found other ways to move through my own brainstuff: occasionally weed (e.g. right now), more often forcing myself to sit next to other people who i know will make sure i don't do anything shitty to myself (even if we're not in active conversation). i have a bunch of youtube videos, books, audiobooks, podcasts, etc. on deck.

i have throughout the last few years cultivated an online and in-person community in which i'm not "burdening" / "dumping" my shit onto one or even a couple individuals all the time. you're right that the full extent of what we experience is definitely too much for one other interlocutor to take - we're designed to live in community, not in isolated couples. it's also true that, while occasionally and contingently helpful, a professional counselor or therapist can be inaccessible, abusive/violent, etc. etc.

while you're waiting to experiment with the free therapy you mentioned, it might be a good idea to reach out to people you do trust to have a frank, meta-conversation about your respective relational needs. this can feel weird at first, but i autistically love it, and it's also common in a lot of kink/bdsm communities (of which there's plenty of ND overlap haha). rules can be freeing. you don't have to worry about violating unspoken boundaries when you've spoken them, and established nonjudgemental ways of enforcing them and holding each other accountable when you haven't. in the past, i've established these both verbally and in google docs, etc. i've also established it - and found it especially helpful - in situations where myself and the other person(s) experience different axes of privilege and marginalization. but regardless, it's a great way of self-designing the boundaries that in many cases we expect therapy to do for us - except, without the carceral impulse endemic to the psych practice.

i also think it's okay to acknowledge that you might be a burden sometimes, and that the people who love you will carry you. they know you'll do the same for them. part of being in relation to others is sometimes receiving more than we give - it's part of being alive, being vulnerable. let yourself be cared for, let yourself be heavy. think about how good it feels to fall into bed at the end of the day. rest is the first step to feeling a little better.

#this is just a start and non comprehensive #but if i interpreted your q correctly you're looking for a psyc critical approach to mental wellbeing with materially actionable steps #and the possibility to help in the absence of formal supports #ask #anonymous #world healing #antipsychiatry

[elliespuns]

Little TMI here but honestly I don’t have a label on myself because it STRESSED ME OUT!!! Of course no hate to people who do label themselves I totally support but one thing about me, if I love you I will NOT care what genital you have. We are not totally sure what Dina could actually be but one thing for sure is she’s my baby & I will defend her at all times. The last of us is known for its LGBTQ+ representation as well with beautiful story & visuals, all the characters are my babies but it makes me uncomfortable if when the whole sexuality of the character is confirmed people deny it. Like look I don’t particularly mind if a man likes Ellie or the way a woman likes Abby as long as they are NOT denying their sexuality. Could Abby secretly like girls? Maybe but completely denying that fact that she could absolutely not like men gets on my nerves. Ellie though that’s a different situation it’s quite clear she likes girls & when men say they can change her or sexualize her as a kid it makes me so uncomfortable. As much as I love the last of us fandom there is rude & ignorant people in here & it ruins the wholesome & comforting feeling.

ANYWAY EVERY TLOU CHARACTER IS MY BABY & I WILL DEFEND THEM FOR LIFE, except for David ew…

True. That's why I was trying to say that people shouldn't really dwell on whether to call Dina bisexual or lesbian because there was never a scene where she would tell us how she felt about her sexuality in the first place.

She might as well be pansexual or demisexual, for all we know. So if people are here to pick on straws, or in my case, calling me out on calling Dina a lesbian in one of my posts (I dared to call her and Ellie 'weird ass lesbians' because it was fitting for the situation and it was actually just my humor talking), they should also realize that calling her bisexual might be as 'disrespectful' as calling her lesbian since none of us know how she feels about her sexuality anyway.

I had a few people 'lecturing' me about Dina not being a lesbian but BISEXUAL after I shared the post (I swear, do people even know me and my sense of humor, dammit?). Calling me out on it as if I didn't know she has a damn baby with a guy. Like, thank you for telling me! I've been new to this fandom, and I had no freaking clue when literally one of the storyline's plot twists was that Dina's pregnant. *sigh*

I think people get touchy too easily today. And not even just about themselves, but about fictional characters too. I mean, yeah, I love my babies too, but I've never heard Dina speak up about her sexuality. So unless we know what she labels herself with, I don't really think that people calling her lesbian with a grain of salt is disrespectful. 

What do we know, hm? Maybe she was sick of guys and completely switched? Maybe Ellie's mesmerizing eyes and her magical pussy made her go full-on lesbian. 

I hope I don't need to specify that I am joking (again). But hey, the point still stands. Calling her bisexual or lecturing people online that her actual sexuality is bisexual is also just based on assumptions.

I am open-minded about Dina's sexuality since we don't know how she would label herself. So I did really mean no harm by saying she and Ellie were 'being weird ass lesbians'—I mean, this is the internet and Tumblr. Not everything is meant to be taken so seriously.

#the last of us #tlou #dina nolastname #dina tlou #ellie williams #ellie tlou #ellie x dina #dinellie #tlou game #the last of us game #elliespuns answers

[multiplicity-positivity]

kind of asking for advice, how do we explain to those we're friends with that we are plural? and where can we be.. ourselves?

Hello. We have a post that we will link which covers many aspects of coming out as a system to loved ones. It goes over more details than I could write here comfortably, so I’ll just link it.

As far as where you can (safely and happily) be yourselves, we don’t have an answer when it comes to physical, real-life locations. It is an unfortunate fact that plurality is not commonly understood or accepted in today’s society. We ourselves are only out to a small number of people in our lives, and have faced some severe repercussions for coming out to people we thought we could trust, who ended up not being accepting of us at all.

However, in today’s internet age, it is quite possible to find spaces to explore your identities, express yourselves, and unashamedly be yourselves online. There is a bustling, thriving community of systems here on Tumblr - you can find them through the hashtags the community tends to use. Here are a few of them:

#sysblr, #plurality, #pluralgang, #actually plural, #system things, #multiplicity, #actually multiple

This just scratches the surface. You can search through the hashtags for specific origins and types of plural experiences to find even more systems sharing their experiences and carving out a space for themselves here on Tumblr.

We’ll also gladly recommend the subreddit r/plural, if you are a Redditor or would like to become one. That subreddit is a space for systems of all sorts, and we’ve found it to be a diverse and welcoming space.

Many systems also congregate in Discord servers created and managed by fellow systems. We don’t have any specific servers we can recommend at this time, but if anyone who sees this is a part of a plural Discord server and would like to share that info, that would be most welcome.

When searching for spaces online, we would not recommend sites like Astraea’s Web, Kinhost, or Power to the Plurals/The Plural Association. The last of which is the only one with some sort of social component, but we do feel it’s worth mentioning if you’re going to be seeking out plural community online. We have gone into more detail about these sites and our issues with them in the post below.

We do hope this post can work as a jumping off point to help you find more places online where you can safely and comfortably express yourselves as plural. Followers, you are welcomed and encouraged to add on to this post if you know of any more places where systems can exist and express themselves online.

#coming out plural #plural community #system community #system spaces #plural spaces

[pffbts]

a goodbye letter.

hello everyone, it's been a long time, isn't it?

i haven't written anything in months and tbh even if i wanted to further give life to all my wips, i wish i had even a drop of motivation and energy to do so. some of you might have as well forgotten about my little blog, which had its own humble beginnings. and tbh i don't mind at all. it's been, i don't know almost 5+ years that i've had this blog. i started it out during the last two years of my high school, when i was struggling very much to cope with all the pressure and anxiety. this little corner of the internet became my comfort space. i could pour my heart out into snippets of letters and the love that i received from all of you who were there from the beginning only fueled my passion to write more and of course, helped me immensely in escaping the cruelty of my reality.

since then, i have graduated school. my reality is still harsh but i'm surviving. i have also graduated from my college with two degrees that i was doing simultaneously. currently, i'm preparing to sit down for my master's 1st-year exam coming months and job surfing at the same time. tbh i wish i had enough energy and positivity to motivate myself to pen down something. but it seems like we have to finally pull the curtains down on this blog.

yes, there is a lot of stuff that's still pending to be completed as you will know if you care to check my masterlist. but i'm not going to give you any false hope by saying that someday i will magically come back and finish and place them all in front of you. it would be too selfish of me to keep you on your toes like that.

i know i've let down a lot of you. many have told me me how much, especially my letters have helped you guys during hard times. even though i know i shouldn't even bother to think like this considering i know none of you in-person. still, it's the crippling humanity in me. honestly, i feel sad for myself. my life took so many things away from me. even the capacity to keep this comfort space alive for myself. some of you have left a long time ago. probably life has happened to you all too. i have also met some of you during the latter part of my journey here and i'm very glad that you all loved my work even with all my incompetency in keeping up with the schedules. you guys were too kind to me.

this actually came too suddenly - this realization that something needs to end. i don't think there will come any other time in the future when i'll read fanfics or write them myself. but it's a bit too much to delete the whole blog considering the reblogs will still exist in the tumblr algorithm. therefore, the letters will still be up along with the fics.

although i don't think i will stop writing. i have my substack where i will experiment with my creative writing but that's just my way of growing up as a writer. these days i'm too busy both in my head and physically, i wish i can overcome becoming a moss. my produce is sparse but my want is bigger than that. although for fanfics, there's no want anymore. i've had my fill and i'm sad to say, this is where we part.

pffbts is thus archived. all my posts will remain. if you send in any mundane sweet ask, i will answer them as soon as possible. kindly please don't send in any requests for fics (i've had to delete a couple of them from my ask box and it felt terrible.) i'm not completely going away. as a person, i will stay. it's just the fanfic writing part of me that will take a permanent leave. i'm almost 24 and it's been almost 10 years that i've started out in creating fanfics. i think it's enough, nah? plus writing this post for you all has strangely made me feel calm, as a certain baggage has been let down from my shoulders.

thank you to you all from the past & the present. i hope you all stay well and healthy. it has been truly a good time to have you all with me.

-K.

#a:pffbts #personal

[kissatoru]

for the FINAL time: indicate your AGE on your blog PLEASE

i know i’ve said this so many times that it feels obnoxious at this point, and trust me, i’m as tired of saying it as (those of) you (who this doesn’t apply to) are of hearing it, but i need to reiterate it one last time. honestly, this is more of a rant than anything, but these thoughts have been on my mind for a while and i’ll just be glad to get them out. maybe this is making a big deal out of something quite small, but it wouldn’t have to be if people would actually listen/care.

i want to start off by saying if you’re someone who doesn’t have an age or an indicator of it on your blog, and the title of this post annoys you, you can go ahead and unfollow me right now.

or don’t, because i’m going to block you sooner or later anyway. which i realise sounds harsh, but apparently being polite about it isn’t getting me, or any of the other 18+ only blogs on here who are constantly repeating themselves, anywhere so i don’t care about being polite anymore.

the cheap price of literally nothing but having some numbers in your bio is still too high for some of you to ‘pay’ to read mine and others’ work. like we’re writing stuff you can read for FREE and all that us nsfw writers ask is that you have an age on your blog — yet some people still refuse to do that much. it’s not only disappointing, but also straight up disrespectful. there’s blogs who’ve been following me for WEEKS who still don’t have an age indicator, despite me posting about it regularly and despite it being clearly stated on my pinned post.

believe it or not, i don’t want to block you. some of you are always in my notifications, interacting with my posts, and especially when you reblog mine/my moots’ works, i recognise you, and seeing you makes me really happy! but when i check your blog and see that you don’t have an age on it, that’s telling me you’re seeing my reminders but you just don’t fucking care.

it’s all well and good interacting with me and my posts, but if you can’t even respect the simplest of boundaries, i don’t care whether you’re actually a minor or not. you are obviously too lazy or don’t care about me as an actual person as much as you care about the content you get to see on your timeline.

maybe you have your reasons, like maybe:

you’re not comfortable sharing your specific age. that’s totally fine! you can tell me in my dms if you’d like to. if not, anything from the year (e.g. 02’ liner) or the decade (e.g. 90s baby) you were born to an appropriate age range (e.g. 19-23) etc. will suffice. if you’re unwilling to do at least that, then i’m sorry but my blog is not for you.

you’re new to tumblr and don’t know where, or how to set up your blog. in that case, you google it. yahoo it. bing it. i don’t care. use the internet you clearly have access to and find out. there’s plenty of tutorials, you just have to look for them. or ask a friend or a mutual. you can dm me your age just so i’m aware until you figure it out.

you don’t have time. in that case, i don’t fucking believe you lol. if you have the time to read a whole fic, you have the time to punch in a two digit number into someplace on your blog — or to find out how, and then do so.

some of you don’t have an excuse though. some of you will list literally everything about yourself but your age on your blog?? you clearly know how to use tumblr, you clearly know where to put info about yourself, you clearly have time so... maybe you clearly just do not care enough to do the bare minimum of reading my byf or my pinned post.

also, it genuinely does not matter, nor do i care, where you actually put your age. whether it’s in your bio, your title or a pinned post, as long as it’s there, in some place i can access, it doesn’t matter.

i think i’ve talked about everything i wanted to, so to end this post on a more positive note, i want to thank the people who actually listen. i, nor anyone else, should be having to thank people for doing the bare minimum, but, at least in my experience, when you’re having to block 9 out of 10 blogs that follow you on a regular basis, you can get pretty used to the constant disappointment, and seeing that 1 blog who actually has an age on their blog can be pretty relieving lol so thank you<3

#( ★ ) psa.

[copperbadge]

Hey Sam, hope the week has been treating you well. You're one of the more internet savvy folks I know, and you also have the useful ability to code-switch between different generations. I have a meditation class comprised of 50% "with-it" boomers and 50% gen X and Z folks. I'd like to create a blog where we can hang out in between our weekly classes and stay connected. It has to be something I can make invitation only, and I'm not familiar with FaceTwitterTok. I'd love to get everyone on tumblr but that might be a step too far - some of the folks need to be reminded when to "reply all" on an email. I was considering Discord, but that may have too many options. Do you have any recommendations for a good blogging platform to check out? (RIP LiveJournal...)

Thanks and have a good one!

I hope it's ok I made this public in case readers also have ideas!

It's helpful that I also hate basically every platform out there because it means I will evaluate which one I hate least for your purposes. I will say that for Boomers and GenX, Facebook is probably what most of them will be most comfortable with, awful as it is to say, and also gives you a strong control over who joins the group and who can see what. For those not familiar, however, there's a lot to learn and none of it intuitive.

If you think LJ had a great set of tools for what you wanted, I do STRONGLY recommend Dreamwidth.org, which is an LJ code-fork that has had a ton of dev put into it. It has a pretty simple interface, offers a nice free option, and allows people without a Dreamwidth to comment (though there's a slightly convoluted technique to commenting with other social, anon commenting is also allowed). I think it's a good option for what you're looking for, as long as you do a brief tutorial with your class.

TikTok and Insta are pretty terrible for actually holding a conversation; TikTok's character limits are very, very short and Insta I find quite buggy, it often crashes while I'm trying to use it. Twitter doesn't allow you to say much at once and has some really weird shit going on with replies IMO. Tumblr, honestly, is not great for forming communities.

I hate Discord but it is a series of closed communities with strong moderation tools. Again, highly non-intuitive, but might be a strong bet. Related to Discord and possibly superior for your purposes is Slack -- it's a free site like Discord and offers much the same in terms of text chat, but with about a quarter of the bells and whistles, which means also a quarter of the places for people to get lost in. I do like Slack, I used it at my last job and I still have a Slack that I use to hang out in with friends from that job.

Readers, feel free to chime in but remember to comment or reblog, as I don't repost asks sent in response to other asks!

#tech #social media

[daisynik7]

WIFEY! i woke up rolling off my bed and landed on a back scratcher that was on my floor and now there’s a dent in my knee LMAO. your wife is not only a sleepy, silly girlie, she’s also a clumsy girlie. i’ve also been incessantly crying over your messages it’s fine 🥲

but i’m sorry to hear about that, i’m glad to hear it was almost and not did get into a car accident, even then i don’t know if you suffered from whiplash or anything but as long as you're safe and unharmed, i’m happy. i do feel bad for the person who randomly broke down, especially on the freeway, hope they’re ok too :( 

i have family that lived in the midwest and can attest to how brutal the cold and snow is, and yes driving must’ve been an absolute nightmare! another reminder to my snookums to stay warm on all fronts bundled up, and eat warm foods (soup!!!!!!) 🥰

AND THANK YOU for hosting the swap and for your recs! given your impeccable tastes i know i will enjoy them thoroughly, and i can’t get over how well-detailed your descriptions of each and why you love them, i’m excited to read them! 

i have to say one thing i’ve always loved about your fic reblogs is your in-depth analysis i.e. the screenshots and highlights of particular excerpts that stood out to you and loved, there’s truly no one like you 🥹 and for you to that to something i wrote??? I’M HONOURED, AND I’M SOFT NOBODY TOUCH ME I’M A SOBBING MESS wait no please hug me 😭 i am absolutely in love with your love and care for others, and that has shown in your feedback to others and your check-ins, thank you for your sweet words and support <3

as i’m typing this i just got your message, (don’t feel pressured to respond to this!) do as you please, i’m honoured, thank you for the follow!!! <3 and once again thank you for your sweet words on How It’ll Be, i’m shrieking!

 i hope the rest of your week is productive and your weekend is well spent and restful! i’m so proud of you!!!! in the meantime, i’m sending you all my love, all my kisses, all my hugs, and cuddles 🤍🤍🤍

also, my internet is being a little silly billy so i don't know if this message was sent the first time, i'm hoping not 🫠

lastly, i’d like to inform you that you have permanent residence in a very special place in my heart where I have you safely tucked in and you are not allowed to leave (there are snacks, i promise) 🫢 in all seriousness, hope you’ve had a wonderful day and night and i love you endlessly my darling wife, treat yourself kindly, always! 🥰

my sleepy, silly, clumsy, beautiful wifey! I'm sorry your rolled off your bed, but I'm assuming it's because you had such a pleasant dream, so I hope it was at least worth it. and if not, I'm kissing the little dent on your knee to heal it if it isn't fully healed already!

I'm totally safe from the near accident, it sounds more dramatic than I'm making it sound and the person who stopped seemed to be fine physically. hoping they were able to move to safer location and get their car fixed because it didn't seem like anything was wrong (which is good).

thank you for participating in the fic swap! I still have yet to read the rest of the fics you recommended, been a busy and distracted girl this week, but they are still on my radar and I'm very excited!

I try to leave more in-depth comments whenever I can just because I feel like I can better express myself doing that instead of spamming the tags LOL. I got inspired by another mutual I have on here who does it often, so I can't take credit for it! I just want to show how much I appreciate the writers on here because I feel like we (as a Tumblr community) don't do that enough!

I never want to leave this safe space I have in your heart! 🥹 I am the most cozy and comfortable there and I'm not leaving for anything (so you better get used to me lol). I love you so so dearly my snookums, always thinking of you even when I'm away! I hope you had a relaxing and/or productive weekend and that these last few weeks of 2023 go by smoothly. love you so much thea ♥️

#my lovely thea #lovely moots #wifey's love letters

[commaclear]

Hi comma

I'm not a minor, but I know there's a lot of minors in tntblr and I've been on the internet long enough to realize way farther down the line that I've been in very unsafe online environments before.

I guess I'm saying this because of the new information that came out about that cc called kwite. I just keep on thinking about how uncomfortable it sometimes makes me to be in the fandom of such a homoerotic ship and know so many fans are probably only 15 years old. It seems to be really safe so far despite that, and the soap opera you have going on in your inbox is hilarious, but I guess I'm just worried that this could change.

I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if you delete this ask, it's pretty uncalled for. I'm sorry. But I guess I'm sending this ask because I'm still a bit younger than you, and wanted to know if you had advice for staying safe in online communities.

Only if you're okay with answering, of course. I really hope this wasn't too upsetting to read. I love your work, and I really hope you get that surgery you've been waiting on soon. Get well <3

I really do worry abt younger ppl in this fandom bc the internet safety things that were common when I was fifteen are becoming less and less common, so I would actually love to list a few

Do not share personal info, especially in your bio or pinned post and especially if it could be used to track you down irl (e.g. which city you live in, where you go to school, pictures of a local library/coffee shop/restaurant, your birthday, pictures of your face)

Tumblr is different from places like Facebook or Instagram because you are under no obligation to tell anyone your real name or show anyone your real face, you can and should embrace internet anonymity here because it's one of the last major websites where you can do so

Just saying you are a minor is enough (and you don't even have to do that, no one is entitled to know how old you are), you don't have to go out and tell everyone exactly how old you are because that opens the door for weirdos

You will know if something makes you uncomfortable, trust yourself and listen to that instinct. Even if you can't explain why a certain person/fic/art made you feel uncomfortable, listen to that feeling. Trust your gut feelings because they will figure out something is bad long before you figure out if goes against your boundaries in some way. Children are taught to ignore gut feelings like that, "Oh, it's not a big deal, go give your creepy uncle a hug or you're gonna hurt his feelings". But especially on the internet, where you can end up in dangerous or traumatizing territory without even realizing it until it's too late, you need to listen to your first instinct.

Just to harp on the above point a bit, if talking to someone makes you feel anxious, if you ever have to hype yourself up before you go to message a certain friend because sometimes the things they say make you feel weird, if talking to someone ever makes you feel weird about yourself or second guess things, if they ever ask you to do something you're not comfortable with (even if it's not at all sexual!! If you're talking to a mutual, and you mention you broke your foot and they ask to see the cast, if that makes you uncomfortable this still applies) If any of that happens, take a step back. Distance yourself from the person who made you uncomfortable for about a week and reassess how you feel. If there have been other times they've made you feel weird or uncomfortable, block them. It is totally okay and even expected to block people on Tumblr for literally any reason. It is always better safe than sorry. If this is the first time they've made you feel weird, explain the situation to them and establish a boundary. If they break that boundary, then it's blocking time. It might seem harsh, but to cultivate a safe online experience, you have to have safe people around you, and safe people respect boundaries 100% of the time.

tl;dr don't share unnecessary personal information with strangers on the internet, and if anyone makes you uncomfortable for any reason, do not hesitate to block them. You don't owe anyone anything.

And as tntblr's appa, I've gotta put this out there. If you feel unsafe in our online space or you're not sure what to do about something making you uncomfortable, then my dms are an open, judgement-free zone. I will do my best to help you out, and at the very least, I'm a pretty good listener. Sometimes all you need is a sanity sounding board.

#anons my beloved #appa comma

[jurinova]

Hi! I wanted to get in contact with you for a couple reasons. You can feel free to answer this publicly or privately, whichever you're comfortable with, and your welcome to DM me if you need to have me clarify or explain more about the situation.

1, sorry for the spam, and 2, I'm really glad I have finally found your blog, Because I've been looking for a minute now. For starters thank you for unaware and subtle influence to my art style and my own outfit designs, I've really become super into outfit design wayyyy more than I was years ago when I first saw your outfit meme, and better at it two and secondly, one of your outfits was the first set of clothes i ever drew when I was redesigning my first OC from being a fandom and animal character to being more stand alone and human, years ago, and that means personally a lot to me, especially since I'm hoping to make something like a webcomic or animation outta my own characters and story eventually.

Although, to be fully honest and transparent, the reason it took so long to find your blog is because I didn't find your meme through Tumblr, I found it on Google images on Pinterest and lost the image and etc when I moved phones (where I do my art on), and full transparency, I do suffer from some mental health issues and one of those unfortunately means I have a really bad memory, and admittedly, I must of at some point just forgot that I had drawn the outfit from your meme originally and have continued using it? Im actually embarrassed to admit that and I feel awful about using your design for so long before I actually remembered that it wasn't mine or just something I saw someone wear once irl or etc, and I wanted to let you know that now that I am fully 110% aware now, and are older/wiser enough to know better than to use even others outfit designs like it's no big deal and that I wanna do what I can to fix things?

I'm planning on redesigning my main OC, who rn you can see clearly in the outfit on my icon/blog to have a different default outfit, and trying to go back to everything that has the old outfit and give proper credit, but I wanted to ask if there was anything else I can do or etc to help mend myself forgetting the outfit wasn't mine and using it so long without permission/credit. Because as someone who ended up making my own outfit memes, and has had designs and art basically stolen or having others take credit for, I feel awful that I somehow got myself to this point where I was absent mindedly using your design this whole time. Your art and designs are really fantastic and I don't wanna contribute to you not getting that attention/credit as I have been doing, and I feel bad I even forgot that kinda thing in the first place. I'm just glad I woke up and realized that I had basically gaslit myself into forgetting it was your design/one from a meme and not mine, because the last thing I'd want is to continue being a design thief now that I'm aware, and I'm glad at least I caught it before I started making my own comic or etc and had continued doing it.

TL;DR I've been accidentally using one of your outfits designs as a default on a main character of mine for a few years now, unaware I was even doing it because of certain memory issues I have, and now that I am fully aware, I want to deeply apologize and try to fix things and tell you that I plan to stop and change their default attire completely and go back and credit you wherever I can wherever I have used it, and ask if there is anything more I could do to fix this mess I've made?

Hi! First of all: Absolutely no need to apologize for spamming me with likes! That was great, and really made me smile. Thank you for that!

Secondly, thank you for having the courage to message me about a matter like this. Of course, I feel sad to know that my outfits memes are floating in Pinterest and who knows where but that is something many artists these days have to face. The internet culture currently is about sharing and many people don't stop to think about the consequences, and that sharing images might cause problems for artists. Without sources people can't find the right artist or they may not know that the content was not for taking. Obviously I don't want people to intentionally take my designs or art, but I am aware that it can happen completely unintentionally: which I'm sure was the case with you.

So, please don't feel bad about the situation anymore! We all make mistakes, that's just life. The fact that you're choosing not to use the outfit in the future is enough for me. It actually feels great to be an inspiration and to know that my outfits are well liked, so if I can offer any further advice it's this: go forth and design more cool outfits! Be inspired by others but always create something that is yours. When you look at the old outfit on your character, think about what was it that made it seem so perfect for that character. Then take those parts and transform it into something new, something better, something more you. That's really the cool thing about designing, you really get to express yourself and your characters through outfits. It's why I love doing it so much.

I wish you all the best and good luck with your webcomic project! ✨

#asks #askstrangeweird #long post