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pinnapop · 28 days

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death of an author, reclamation, and you

"We never are what we intend, or invent 'Cause I make little lies and then I pull them apart Think something dark's living down in my heart And if I wanted to die before I got old I should've started some years ago digging that hole"

Brand New. "At the Bottom." Daisy, 2009.

Brand New was among one of my favorite bands in high school, and I still listen to them today. Their music is important to me and shaped a big part of who I am. Their lyrics about being tortured, burnt-out, and choking on the weight of your own self-perceived flaws are relatable! Their compositions ooze with a level of self-hatred that can only be genuine. It's utterly depressing, and I adore it!

That's not not the full story, though. Jesse Lacey, the vocalist of Brand New, is a sexual predator. This informs everything about how the music of Brand New is. It's self-loathing for a very good reason. I love Brand New. I condemn Jesse Lacey. These two statements coexist. I used to be a part of the /r/brandnew subreddit, and when the allegations against Jesse Lacey came out in 2017, many redditors of that sub were quick to claim "death of the author." After all, the band had broken up immediately after the news broke, and they had also cancelled their tours. Currently, the people using that subreddit mostly talk about buying old BN merchandise and discuss what their favorite concert memories were. Jesse Lacey himself confirmed that the allegations against him were true, so there isn't much debate to be had. The subreddit serves as a monument for fans who still enjoy the music, and as a platform to speak about it with like-minded fans.

In my opinion, claiming "death of an author" is a slippery slope. We can't always claim that Miku is the creator of Minecraft. But often, we see that that is the response people have when a creator is outed to be problematic; "I still like the thing So-and-So made, so I will ignore that the creator exists!" The reason that this worked for Miku Minecraft is because, by the time that Notch was publicly making transphobic comments, he did not own Minecraft anymore. The joke is quite literally that he does not own the thing that people like. He sold it to Microsoft, so he doesn't get royalties from it anymore. You can play Minecraft devoid of supporting its original creator. This joke works so well because it is an actual case of the death of an author! That's great and all for Minecraft, but what about other instances? What happens when we claim "death of the creator" erroneously? And why are we so obsessed with this concept anyway?

So like, back to Brand New... they released their last album, Science Fiction, back in August 2017. The allegations came out later that same year. I own all of Brand New's discography physically, including their last release. I bought most of it off eBay when I was 15. I was not supporting them post-allegations. But that leaves me with a lingering question- what do I do with all these CDs that I still very much enjoy the music of? From how I see it, there are two firm camps on this topic:

Camp 1: You know about Lacey's crimes now and his music cannot be separated from his actions. Solution: Throw your CDs away.

Camp 2: It's something you bought without knowledge of Lacey's crimes, so you should enjoy it anyway. Death of an author! Solution: Continue as usual.

I'm not fond of either of these answers. They come off as too polarized for a situation that is the entire Pantone swatch library of grays. "But, how are there any shades of gray when its clear that Jesse Lacey is in the wrong?" I want to provide some counter questions for you to think about:

What about the other people in the band? You might not be directly supporting the sexual predator anymore, but there are other victims here too- effectively his band mates lost their jobs overnight. (Another example would be LOSTPROPHETS)

Is it feasible to destroy each object you own because it was created under problematic circumstances? When or when isn't this the case? Does it apply to your cup of coffee? Does it apply to the clothes you wear? What about any product with palm oil in it? What about the hardware in your computer? If you look into any company, you're going to find some horrific things you don't like about it. The takeaway here is that it isn't beneficial to treat situations like these as black or white. I don't think that destroying my CDs is going to do anything to take away the abuse that Jesse Lacey caused. Nor do I think ignoring the context of his music will do anyone any favors. The music he made is a product of his crimes. To ignore that fact would be disingenuous to why people enjoy his music and why the music exists in the first place. There's another element here, though. I, and many others, are no longer monetarily supporting Jesse Lacey. You can't even officially support the release of Brand New's music anymore as their record label (Procrastinate! Music Traitors) doesn't even seem to have a functioning website anymore? Regardless, I wouldn't want to support his music in a way that supports him, anyway. Yes, I enjoy the music and the themes of it, but I do not want to be directly supporting abuse that happened BECAUSE he was a vocalist in a band. And I can safely do this with CDs that I bought secondhand, right? This is death of the author. So what's the issue?

I believe there is an issue when people claim “death of the author” far too quickly and scramble to reclaim the media for themselves. It’s an increasingly popular trend these days to pluck characters/concepts from an author deemed to be problematic. "I'll save [Character I like] from this shitty piece of media!", they claim. I don't think people realize how multifaceted in effect that is, though. For instance, if the author is actively making money from their creation, you can't truly "reclaim" a character from them. It's more like you're paying homage to them with fanart.

My best on-going example of this would be Floraverse. There are a multitude of reasons why people do not like the author/s of Floraverse, which I will not go into here. To put it simply, though, since its inception in 2013, many artists and writers involved with Flora either left or were kicked out. These artists either directly contributed to the art and worldbuilding of the webcomic, or were heavily influenced by it. To this day, there are many times someone links me to art on Discord and I’ll say “oh I remember that person, they used to be a Flora fanartist!” and the other person is absolutely floored that that artist was ever linked to Floraverse. Anyway… There have been multiple attempts at people trying to reclaim Floraverse from the author, and this never works out. Like, it really doesn’t work out. Any time that someone tries to reclaim Floraverse characters for themselves whilst condemning the author, that person is dogpiled by the Floraverse community. Which is a weird behavior for a CC BY-SA webcomic, but I digress. Here are some highlights:

In 2019, there was a thread dedicated to Redesigning Floraverse that immediately got taken over by Floraverse itself a month later.

An artist got harassed for multiple years (I think it was 2020-2023) for having an oc based on Beleth, a character in Floraverse.

Just 2 months ago, an artist got harassed for drawing fanart of the characters

Historically, reclaiming Floraverse characters from the author hasn't worked out. And I mean.. why would it? It's an actively running "webcomic" (I'll be charitable) and with an active community that supports the author's current works and views with their wallets. It's one thing to enjoy a piece of media with a problematic author and want to reclaim that media for yourself. It is another for this reclamation to actually be effective. Attempts of "reclaiming" Floraverse get written off as fanworks that the community dislikes. You cannot reclaim Floraverse characters as they do not exist in a vacuum. Listening to secondhand Brand New CDs does work in a vacuum; Jesse Lacey's career is dead in the water. The same cannot be said for reclaiming the art of Glitchedpuppet and co. Floraverse characters and stories are not divorced from the abuses they cause. Characters will be used as strawmen to abuse community members, past or present. Or entire works will be up dedicated to making light of your childhood trauma! These characters were made by an abuser, and will be used to abuse. That is a simple fact about Floraverse. Except... in that statement, I'm not even talking about Glitchedpuppet, the current author of Floraverse. I'm talking about Marlcabinet, the previous author of Floraverse. This statement does however, apply to both of them. Hey, wait a minute, that's weird! I've been talking about "death of the author" for this entire post, and I just said that reclaiming Floraverse characters can't work because the way the characters were used to abuse real people doesn't exist in a vacuum. So like, why does this work within the Floraverse webcomic itself? Marl is the abuser of Glip, but Marl is also the author of the majority of early Floraverse. Isn't the story itself, as it currently stands, an act of reclaiming characters used to abuse community members, minors, and any detractors? Then who is to say that those who contributed to Floraverse and were similarly abused are not also allowed this same privilege? Their real-world suffering is what fuels the comic. When I was 13-16, I adored a Floraverse character named Cayenne. His whole deal was that he was an autistic child slave and was horribly abused by everyone around him. Weird character to connect to, but he’s the character that made me figure out I had autism! I drew a LOT of fanart of this character and I even own a (gifted) life-size plush of him. The authors only ever treated him as a joke and it was a joke even within the Floraverse community that I was the only person who actually liked/cared about him. Sometimes I think about reclaiming him for myself. But I also don’t want to get harassed, and I know I could design much better things, and write better things. Conversely, I also think about how this is the exact character that made me get into contact with Marl when I was 16. It’s a heavy weight to carry knowing that this exact character was the reason I was almost in the clutches of a child predator. Glip personally deferred me to him. Reclaiming Cayenne would hold emotional value for me as a reminder of my triumph over a predator. Would it be wrong for me to reclaim an abused child character from a comic that abused me and many others as children? I've no clue. And I don't think anyone can answer that. I've waffled on it for ~2 years now. Reclaiming Cayenne would give attention to an individual that profits off abusing others, myself included. I'd say that reclaiming Floraverse characters wouldn't be a case of "death of the author", but the original creator of them was a child predator that's no longer on the internet. Floraverse is already practicing death of an author, and it is a shell of its former self. That being said, it is not a story that only has one author. Its other authors are still active, and these authors include every person that it has abused in its wake. After all, it's a comic that relies on you to know about its dramas with and traumas of real people. Tell me: Does a death of the author matter when its being written about you?

#text #brand new #floraverse #death of the author #abuse #grooming

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chaifootsteps · 2 months

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Vaush spoke about how the age of consent should be lower, that owning CP and engaging in beastality should be legal, and this should’ve made people realize what a sick, creepy fucker he was instead of lolicon. Even if he didn’t own any, he blatantly made it obvious that he was attracted to real-life children and animals without an ounce of shame. Besides, not every pedophile and zoophile engages in fictional content anyway, instead choosing real-life stuff.

If Vaush didn’t own lolicon, then many people more than likely would still have continued ignoring his disgusting comments and beliefs, despite proving how much of a danger he is. No one should be advocating for younger consent ages, CP, and zoophilia, and if they are, they’re a dangerous bastard that should be put on a watchlist and the registry.

It shouldn’t have taken Vaush owning the NSFW of fictional little anime girls to make people realize that he was an awful, nasty fucker. His words and actions spoke volumes about him, yet many people refused to listen.

Reminds me of Glip's partner. Advocated for CP -- real stuff, featuring real children -- to be decriminalized and a lot of people still don't see that as the screaming red siren it is.

#Anonymous #floraverse #actual blog post

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bring-out-the-dead · 19 days

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Someone on twitter got called out for making floraverse fanart and her response was to make this nothing ass drawing

It's so "woe is me I'm a victim for being criticized" when all people were doing was pointing out that drawing fanart of someone who is a zoophile/pedophile is not a good idea. (unless there were comments I missed)

It honestly reminds me of when I still had my head up my ass about flora, especially with how she just. Seems to be completely ignorant and unwilling to learn of everything glip has done?

I dunno, it's weird and painful to watch someone make the same mistakes I did and knowing it probably won't end too well for them, either.

#nikonikonek000 #floraverse #glitchedpuppet

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hexcryingwolf · 3 months

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hey. guess what? they could do that. they could just exist. glip is free to just exist. glip is free to live a life in comfort and happiness without strife or conflict. theyre free to work through their trauma and come out healed on the other side. theyre even free to express themself artistically!

they choose not to.

eevee, your spouse runs a community that for years has left a trail of broken people in its wake. theyve made a habit of shielding predators and attacking victims. they inflict new trauma on already damaged people. they do these things then make hit piece artwork they post on their public website and this is how they make their living.

this is what your spouse is CHOOSING to do.

after years and years of callouts, trauma, and pain, when will you stop and realize the constant, common factor, has been your spouse and the company they keep? you both - and your friends - act as if random people crawl out of the woodwork to rip you apart purely for entertainment.

thats not whats happening.

these are people that YOUR SPOUSE has inflicted actual, severe TRAUMA upon. its not just kf bullshit; the people from kf stay in their thread and point and laugh and theyre shitheads but theyre rarely the ones actually interacting with you.

the people who make posts, make vent art, reply to you and challenge your telling of whats happening in the server your spouse moderates

are the people your spouse has hurt, who are sick of pretending that they didnt

theyre sick of seeing the same thing happen OVER and OVER AGAIN.

theyre sick of seeing the pain they endured STILL being inflicted on new victims every. single. day.

did you really think your spouse could just kick the dog forever and never have to worry about it biting back?

their influence is fading. the muzzle that used to keep them safe - their reputation, the scale of their following - has slipped, fallen off entirely.

actions. have. consequences.

your spouse could just exist.

they choose not to.

#floraverse #glitchedpuppet #fox flux

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fox-flux · 11 months

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after many bumps in the road there is at long last a

fox flux DELUXE free demo

which has been described as "longer than i expected" and "how the fuck do i get that heart??" and "am i supposed to be able to do this"

this is my little puzzle-platformer about turning into things and collecting candy. i've been working on it for a long time and it's still not done but i hope you enjoy what there is so far! especially because one day it will be done and it would be cool if you bought it

until then you can get intermittent builds and early screenshots and stuff via patreon. if you're especially daring you can get in my dev discord and see me complain about how pixel rounding breaks pushing things in some cases or whatever! exciting

— eevee (@lexyeevee)

#fox flux #gamedev #indie games #floraverse

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brynalyn · 6 months

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Safety psa warning for Floraverse

Just wanted to put this out there and finally get it off my chest. In 2021 I was doxxed, as well as my family, and at least one other person was doxxed at the time by the same person. and I was also in the floraverse discord servers at this time. The person who doxxed me/my family/others (they did not hide that they had done this) became active in the discord within the same month. I reached out to glip and, although they reached out to the person and confirmed it, they didn’t take any action, and didn’t even bother to tell anyone publicly in the server that they were at risk of also being doxxed on kiwifarms (this person targeted me partially because I was a fan of floraverse and like I said this individual had doxxed another person around the same time as me and potentially more.) after I pushed to get this person kicked out as I ultimately felt extremely unsafe and that they could dox others, Glip told me I was making them uncomfortable by pushing that, and that I was being rude and inconsiderate and even hurtful for suggesting and pushing for it. Then I also got a message from pengo who told me I was basically in the wrong for bringing up this person and their actions, and how inconsiderate it was of me to tell Glip how uncomfortable and unsafe my doxxer being in the servers made me feel, and guilt tripped me about coming forward without making sure Glip was in a good headspace beforehand, even though I had already at that point breached the subject many times in several weeks, and repeatedly got put off as Glip didn’t want to take any actions and got more short with me as I kept trying to have discussion about removing them for my and others safety. This started to shatter my trust in both Glip and pengo, and my doxxer being in the servers led to me having severe mental breakdowns and paranoid spirals as i realized that was not in fact a place I could be safe as no action was taken and I was talked down to for suggesting an action should be taken. I finally left the servers sometime earlier this year, after continually witnessing huge amounts of bullying in the servers throughout my time and terrible treatment of others similar to what I went through.

It was incredibly painful and traumatizing how my genuine concern for my own and others safety was made out to be hurtful and selfish by Glip and pengo. Pengo in particular often was aggressive and accusatory towards me and others, he lectured and belittled people in private and in public while making assumptions about others and justifying his bullying based on his assumptions and projections (this happened to me often and I also witnessed this happen to others repeatedly.) i didn’t feel safe speaking up because dogpiling was common in the spaces, and I had already repeatedly been shut down and guilt tripped for speaking even privately about the person who doxxed me. I didn’t feel comfortable speaking honestly in the server for fear of being punished. I often felt trapped, and had to ‘fawn’ and agree and accept the crappy treatment, and I continued to get more uncomfortable in general until I finally left. I wanted to put my experience out there so that others can potentially be informed that they may not be safe in the server like how I wasn’t and that their valid issues may be twisted and used against them to guilt trip and bully them like mine were.

Tbh I should have left sooner but I had nostalgic attachment to floraverse and I also had friendships with kind people in the servers and it was painful to have growing cognitive dissonance where I had good interactions with friendly people but then get pinged with huge condescending uncalled for lists of all the small ways I had bugged them even if those things were years old, minor interactions that had long been resolved the same day, while also leaving out any mention of my doxxer or considering how that could have been affecting me too, basically doing bad faith reading of others’ characters constantly to justify attacking and berating others for insignificant or bizarre reasons. fear of this happening and of being publicly humiliated over and over became a very huge source of trauma and stress for me and everytime I was torn down it basically enforced the trauma and hurt me more. Overall while I had some good experiences and even friends, I began to become socially fearful, and get anxiety attacks when I got discord pings because of the fear I would get yet another cruel lecture at any time from pengo or that I would bear witness to yet another person getting bullied and dogpiled and I would feel sick to my stomach while others in the server pretended they didn’t see it or joined the bullying. It was extremely horrible for my mental health and I don’t regret leaving as I have healed a lot and had much healthier interactions with others outside of the servers in basically every sense since then. It’s been a healing process as I learn that I shouldn’t have to tread on eggshells constantly to be treated humanely, I shouldn’t get bullied for making simple human mistakes, and im gaining trust in others that they won’t belittle me for my pain and will take me seriously, and learn to trust others in general again after getting that trust smashed by people I once looked up to.

Please be careful about what you say to people in that server and guard yourself if you are in them. and I would caution against trusting the mods because of my own experiences with having my trust repeatedly broken and used.

#floraverse #glitchedpuppet #pengosolvent #I’ve been bottling this up for a while it feels good to get it off my chest #seeing others speak up about their experiences helped so much #btw if it is t clear I am no longer a fan of floraverse or in the servers #I just mainly wanted to talk about my experience and finally put it out there what I’ve gone through and how I feel #this post is not a green light to harass anyone so don’t.#pinkkecleon is the one who doxxed me btw they used to go by the name grimart #grimart #pinkkecleon #this post is a warning for others and a chance for me to be open about what I experienced and witnessed

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chaoticwomanlove · 10 months

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Un día sin una flor es un día perdido♡🌺

#flora #floraverse #flores #flor #naturalism #nature #nature photography #female photographers #paisajes de chile #my photography #chile #photographers on tumblr #my edits #original photography on tumblr #valparaiso #tumblr chilensis #chile tumblr

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vaaters · 4 months

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not to rant on my reblog blog but i have nowhere else to put these feelings

no offence but i feel like it was extremely inappropriate of certain people i considered really good friends to suddenly just tell me i needed to Get Out because they didnt want to "deal with that" (me and jolly knowing each other and later/currently courting) like what?

and then i find out awhile after leaving

apparently people shit talked about me behind my back? like said i was gullible and being abused without even asking me or assessing the situation in a different persons view

like, my guy, you realize you can know someone, who knows someone, that you dont agree with? you know you can be friends with someone who is with someone you dont agree with, right?

right?

guys?

am i crazy?

am i the only one?

what kind of Good Friends suddenly throws you out, like - throws you out. - because of that. after i knew them for what, 7 years? 6 years? i dont know. but that feels extremely inappropriate. you suddenly turn your back on me while pretending to be mildly concerned over me while you also shit talk my name. that kinda really hurts. i dont know. ive been thinking about this a lot.

for a long time.

it feels bad. i trusted you guys! i trusted you guys... you knew me as a child, technically, at 17. i grew up with you basically! i thought you understood me, you know? we did all this stuff,

one of you two even played games with me a lot. and then i find out later your people also disliked me and talked bad about me (because i had autistic habits? why didnt you tell me my behavior of being distracted by a shiny thing was bad for the missions?)

and the other one of you, your nice friend-server. or i considered your server nice. i trusted that server too. i poured my heart and soul out on the server. and i never once mentioned jolly out of respect. and then once you catch wind sometime later, you decide you dont want to deal with that anymore. even though i never did anything wrong. even though i never hurt you, i never crossed you, i never did anything. i thought we were pals.

why would you guys just throw me away like that? what did i ever do to you in a personal way? know someone who you know that you dont like? what kind of crime is that?

i dont think we were good friends after all if you didnt actually care enough about me to say i was being abused and then not check on me or ask me how i was feeling about these things you didnt like.

i dont think we were good friends if you cared more about the feelings of someone you knew that you knew didnt like the person, jolly, that i knew, without talking to me about it past guilt tripping me.

well, except the third person i didnt mention before. opa. wow. that rant he threw into my dms at random after i left flora owel server. that was cringe. the capslock of rage. the stalking-my-twitter-for-years-old-posts and then saying that what happened with my pedophile, predator ex, will happen to me again. thats cool. thats nice of you opa. thanks for that. ill remember that one forever for sure. that wont cause serious traumatic memories to pop back up for me or anything. thanks dude. please dont talk to me again opa.

#floraverse #hi guys how are you #im fine #not a reblog

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stopscammingartists · 8 months

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Who did Glip and Eevee befriend in the art and tech spheres to be so untouchable ??? No doubt those in the industry that protect them sympathize with predators at best

Art spheres no. Glip used to be this way but fell out of grace with the big fluff logs dropped.

Tech and indie game communities however, are still partial to protecting Eevee because she plays up the 'It's all kiwifarms & transphobia' angle really well and wasn't ever actually married to Marl - loosening the impact of the BF logs on her reputation compared to Glip.

I'll use cohost as an example, because it's pretty blatant there.

Just look at the comments on this post on her cohost, and how she talks about her detractors.

....The post she's talking about, by the way, is only about Lain and Big Fluff. The 2 children Marl sexually abused. It's true that both kids posted on kiwifarms, but it's extremely manipulatively dishonest to refer to them both as just KF users.

Cohost btw, seems to be in her pocket. The one time I'm aware that someone called Eevee out on something, they got banned from the platform entirely nearly instantly.

The original comment was on this post of Eevee's. Eevee edited it out, but the same comment was shared on lolcow and had a link in it. Here is the tweet the banned commenter linked to, and relevant screenshots. Guess she didn't want people seeing this. I wonder why?

It was this comment to Eevee that pushed Glip to double down on wishing Jollys suicide attempt was successful, looking at the timing of everything.

Twitter sucks, but if Cohost is willing to look the other way at abhorrent behavior like wishing that someone who attempted suicide twice was successful....so long as the person doing that said abhorrent behavior is Eevee...but quick to drop the hammer on those that lightly point out that said behavior is beyond fucked up - then cohost is rotten at the top and isn't worth using.

#floraverse #glitchedpuppet #forbidden flora #forbiddenflora #fox flux #foxflux #pengosolvent #glip #cohost #her games arent even good #remember when vinny played neon phase for 2 minutes and stopped because the chat spammed 'pedo dev'#and then the person who put the game pack together apologized not for not doing a background check #but for including a boring game #i dont like tumblr but unlike twitter that has a new glitch every day its stable and doesn't have a character limit #and the tumblr admins arent in eevees pocket so I can say things here without concern of being censored #that counts for something I think

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