#this shit should've stayed niche

[striped-shirt-drama-truth]

Hello, this is Alice. Some of you may know me as striped-shirt-dahmer-supremacy. I was here for a short period before my blog was reported and deactivated. As everyone in this little niche community knows, there has been drama between the so-called elites and the rest of the community for the past month. I belonged to the private server of the so-called elites. I am not making this post to add fuel to the fire or instigate more drama. I am simply making this post to come clean and speak my truth.

Yesterday, I left the server and deactivated my discord account after being messaged by a member of the discord because she had come across some information that she perceived as being complicit in "making things worse" with the ensuing drama. I do not handle being confronted in an angry manner well, and did not calmly or rationally reply. If I'm going to be honest, I also do not like the member who confronted me, so the exchanged was already negative right off the bat. Further more, I do not take kindly to her demanding that I respond to her. I actually do have a life outside of this community, so contrary to whatever she may think, I was in the middle of attending to other things that morning and really did not appreciate being demanded that I reply to her.

After thinking it over today, I've realized I regret not reaching out to certain members of this community, because despite everything, I did consider some of these people my friends. However, I left the server and deactivated my account, so I can't. So after mulling things over, I decided to come here and write this post.

Anyways, the truth is this: yes, I was friendly with Kiera aka doin-a-dahmer. I felt her banning was unfair, but I also felt the entire situation was blown entirely out of proportion by both sides. Everyone should've talked the situation over. It didn't mean Kiera had to stay in the discord, but maybe things could've ended on a less sour note. Because I was friendly with Kiera, I did send her screenshots of some of what was said about her. I didn't divulge this to the rest of the discord because I knew everyone would've been angry at me. But I say this to all of you - don't act like you wouldn't have done the same thing for your friend. You know if one of you had been banned, you would've done the exact same damn thing. As much as everyone there loves to claim to not want drama, we all enjoy it. And I can't lie, I enjoyed it too, which is partially why I sent Kiera these messages in the first place and also stuck around the discord. But I'm also not a complete monster like I'm sure everyone feels I am now. I also considered you guys my friends and wanted to stay part of the discord. I felt bad about what I did, and I also felt like the drama was getting out of hand, and I no longer wanted to be a part of it. So I decided to block Kiera and moved on. I hoped the drama would be over, but of course it wasn't. You all know what comes next.

The reality is, no one is innocent in this situation. This could've all died down if the rest of the discord had stopped responding to Kiera and her group and just blocked them and went on their way. It also could've ended if everyone in Kiera's discord had done the same. It really doesn't matter either way, I'm just tired of everyone on either side pretending they are victims. I'm not going to pretend to be a victim either. I enjoyed the drama and added fuel to the fire. I made fun of Kiera and other members of this community because it was fun. I know it makes me seem like a piece of shit, but don't act like the rest of you don't do it and enjoy it, too. Save for a few members who left our discord because they did not like the dram and never actively engaged in this behavior, we ALL kept the drama going because it was fun. It basically became the main topic of our discord, so lets not sit here and pretend we didn't like it. Not even a certain member who loves to sit around with lecturing everyone about how the drama needs to end, pretending she is so above all of it with her sanctimonious, holier than thou attitude, white continuing to fan the flames herself. You know who you are.

To my friends in the discord, I say, from the bottom of my heart, I am genuinely sorry for the hurt I've caused you. I really did care about you and like talking to each and every one of you. I really meant it when I said I considered you my friend. I reacted poorly because I knew there was no way what I did would be forgiven. However, I owe it to all of you to apologize to you. I'm ready to put this chapter of my life behind me and move on, but I wanted to say I'm sorry to each and every one of you. I wish all of you the best and hope you can put this drama behind you, too. I also apologize to Kiera for not sticking up for you. I should've been a mediator on your behalf. Maybe I could've helped so things didn't reach this point. I was an idiot who wanted to be part of a group and didn't want to get banned. Even if I didn't agree with all of your actions, I should've done better by you. For that, I am sorry.

And to the person who DMed me, I won't be naming your name, because I know you would love the attention. You can thank me for making this post and giving you more drama to milk for attention in the discord at least. You're welcome bb! Since you were demanding yesterday to know the truth about what me and Kiera talked about, here you go. The truth is, we began talking because we couldn't stand how you always engage in drama and then when you tire of it, you feel the need to lecture everyone about how it's over and tell everyone else what they should be doing. We couldn't stand your holier than thou attitude. We couldn't stand how it's blatantly obvious that you're a narcissist who dominates the entire chat with your drama and makes every god damn thing about you. Your need for attention and validation was so fucking annoying that it actually brought us together. We also got a good laugh about your atrocious fanfic. It has nothing to do with the fact that we were bothered you "straight washing" Jeff, because personally, I couldn't give a shit. It truly is just one of the worst pieces of writing we've ever had the misfortune of reading! Seriously, you are probably the worst writer I've ever read in my life, and there is a lot of garbage out there. For a story with basically nothing but smut, it's painfully unsexy. The sex scenes are straight out of every shitty misogynistic porno, except they're so completely devoid any anything remotely sexy. And I'm sure you're going to read this and post in the discord about how "funny" it is that you "live rent-free in our minds," but the truth is, it was hard for us not to notice when you never shut the fuck up about yourself. But a narc is gonna narc, I guess.

Anyways, I've said my peace. Thank you all. Goodbye.

[alertarchitect]

Sorry if this meanders a bit, I'm writing this as the thoughts go through my head early in the morning running on maybe 3-4 hours of sleep, tops. I do have something I want to say here, though, so if you want to see my rambling then please continue.

I used to feel terrible about missing out on live events, both in-person and online. Like I can't support a creator whose work I enjoy, especially the less well-known niche creators, as much as I wanted to. But I had a realization last night...

My best friend and I both really enjoy the work of WayneRadioTV and his friends, and last night he did a livestream involving a social game the two of us play - Tower Unite, of you're curious - where viewers could get involved in some capacity. I'm not fully sure, though, because despite the excitement, I had something else going on; an online date with my boyfriend.

See, I got him Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam as a part of his birthday present, both because he was interested in it and because I wanted to go through the games and share with him what is unironically one of my favorite sci-fi franchises out there, despite the reputation it has as a "bro game" with all of the toxic bullshit associated with it thanks to it pioneering online console multiplayer and the, rightfully deserved, reputation that brings with how early-mid 2000s multiplayer lobbies were. It's a way of showing him something that I genuinely adore as one of my more consistent hyperfixations, and sharing with him a part of what has made me, me.

And that's where the realization came in. Yeah, it came about because of me having something else going on, but honestly I don't think I would've had the energy for something as intensive as a high-energy livestream like that without some adverse affects to my mental state last night with everything I currently have going on. So, here's that startlingly simple realization that should've happened far sooner, as it would have helped me immensely in our current capitalist hellscape of subscriptions and content churn and all that other bullshit - you don't have to experience something immediately, or even within a similar time frame as others, to enjoy it just as much. Just because I was too young to ever see some of my favorite bands live at their peak doesn't mean I'm "less of a fan." Just because I'm not binging every show that catches my interest doesn't mean I like them less than someone else.

The time at which you enjoy something, and your method for doing so, does not determine how much you like it.

I think that is honestly an important message we need to spread around now. We have all of these games with FOMO-based systems, their battle passes & shit, all of these movies and shows that get released and stay up for a couple months before getting dropped as a tax write-off (looking at you, Warner Brothers, and how you treated all of those Cartoon Network shows we adored and your fuckery of discarding Wile E. Coyote vs. Acme for tax breaks), all of this relentless content churn. It's the reason we get burnt out so hard on things we used to love - instead of having a world where we pace ourselves, and enjoy things in a way that still lets us enjoy it afterwards, we still have this mindset leftover from the days of only getting maybe one new episode per week of a show, or maybe 2-3 big movies a year, or being fine waiting for sequels to games instead of demanding them to be released immediately - watching things as they were released. Before the explosion of streaming services due to the pandemic, that was more sustainable. You got a bit of new stuff on regular or semi-regular intervals. You had a chance to savor what you saw, to process what happened, and to theorize and work on those theories for fun. Now we get so much, so often, with the expectation of something new every week not being a new episode of a show, but a new series entirely to binge. Things appear, get talked about, and then get discarded more quickly than ever. Hell, the original foundations of this site, the fandoms, don't even last anywhere near as long anymore as the bulk of people find something, engage with it for a short time, and move on. It's to the point where the only fandoms you really get to see stick around like they used to are the ones that already existed - your Trekkies, your Whovians, your LotR nerds, and even the ones that only came about a relatively short time before all of this content churn bullshit, like the Undertale, Homestuck, and Critical Role fandoms. Now the years-long communities like that are relegated to the existing works, the old reliables, and literature fandoms like The Locked Tomb where the very nature of it necessitates longevity thanks to how long it takes to write a novel.

It's relentless. But it doesn't have to be.

We live in a world that prioritizes this content churn, but y'know what? Fuck that. Fuck these big companies that try to sell you a monthly fee for what was once a one-time purchase. Of course, try to still support smaller, indie creators where you can - small-medium size streamers, those YouTubers who make video essays that take so long to release they have to rely on fan contributions in between them to survive due to lack of ad revenue, smaller film productions, etc. - but don't feel the need to do so when you can't afford it, either in terms of how much energy you have (like how I would've been absolutely fucked had I attended that livestream I mentioned at the start of this due to the high-energy nature) or monetarily. Hell, enjoy those big shows and movies too, but what matters most is that you don't - or at least shouldn't - have to enjoy them at breakneck speed.

Pace yourself. Give yourself room to breathe. Take some time to enjoy your content, and to have fun with it, goddammit! There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Hell, if you're someone that derives enjoyment from waiting for all of a show to be out just to binge it, go ahead - but maybe you don't need to binge-watch something new every week. It gets tiring. But at the end of the day, it comes down to this:

Leave time for the discussion. Yes, enjoying the content is fun, but picking something up and then moving on almost as quickly misses the point of why we love these fandoms so much. The content churn gets in the way of us getting to do our thing of talking about our passions, theorizing about them together, infodumping about them to our friends. Give yourself space to talk about it. You don't need to see every livestream from that streamer, you don't need to watch all 10 hours of that new Netflix show in a day and then watch another one the next, you don't have to watch every movie you're interested in like a marathon of back-to-back productions, you don't need to beat every level of that video game in your first sitting. And that's okay.

#ramblings #fandom #content churn #some deep thoughts kinda? #idk i'm dumb #i've just also been kinda introspective lately #about a lot of things #but also very much our relation to the things we create and how some of us are stretching ourselves far too thin #hell I fell prey to it as well #I used to play Destiny 2 every day and tried to attend livestreams of people I liked even when I REALLY didn't have the energy for it #I even kept getting into things within maybe a week or two of getting into something else #and it felt like I never got to let any of it digest y'know? #going from one thing to the next and then the next and the next without getting to enjoy any of it as much as I wanted to #we're not machines and we only have so much time to do what we want #don't spend it not fully enjoying what you love #hell this even applies to trying to enjoy something just because others like it #i spent YEARS forcing myself to play League of Legends #trying to enjoy it #just because the people I knew liked it and played it a lot #and honestly? one of the worst things I ever did for myself #i could have easily enjoyed other things far more. I could've been so much happier #but instead I made myself miserable trying to be someone I'm not #and yeah that's a different matter but it still falls to that same central idea #of valuing your time more so that you can enjoy what you DO like more and helping you not engage with what you don't #because let's be honest if you're making sure to value your time more I feel like that leads to less hatewatching for the average person #and less “I have to watch this just because everyone else likes it” as well #anyway the TL;DR is really just #value your time more by spending more time with what you love and less time with what you don't #instead of falling prey to the content churn and the “need” to engage with everything that comes your way

[d--vine]

Okey doke.

What is this sickness that hangs over me?

THREE OF PENTACLES, REVERSED: the need to develope ones talents before bringing them to the world. I have had a spell of unmotivation lately, and now I realize how greatly I have suffered for it.

what energetic shift do I need to make to leave this state?

THE SUN, THE ZORYA: expansive, life affirming energy, creativity, relationships with children, and yang energy. Yes mom I've been putting out shit vibes, no mom i wont do it again¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I need to be more present in my creative life and explore niche craft. I also turned down a babysitting job I should've taken, shame on me. I've also probably been a crap girlfriend lately, also shame on me. In conclusion, start your own positive vibes, and dont be a little bitch.

what do I need to let go of in order to make this shift?

WISDOM, SARASVATI: the embodiment of wisdom, spiritual interest, and wisdom gracefully attained. I got a really strong vibe from this card, and a message that said "let go of your need to know" because I am a sceptic all the way to my own demise, I think I'm being told to have a little faith. I often have a disdain for the word having lived surrounded by blind faith, maybe that is not the only way to have faith.

TEN OF PENTACLES, REVERSED: discontent at home, seeking change and prosperity but being unsure of how to create it. I am working on getting out of the house I am currently staying in, because it is harsh on my psyche. Also because of my mental state I've had a really hard time finding a job. In order to mend these things I must let go of my groping desperation for them.

what do I need to gain in order to make this shift?

FOUR OF CUPS, REVERSED: acceptance of a situation. Discontent is still present, but it should be viewed as a passing phase. Hold fast, little one, the tide will soon return and the sands you walked before will be long gone. Surprisingly fiery and stubborn for a cancer sun, I refuse to accept anything that dissatisfies me, especially the manner I which I am viewed or treated by others. I need to find a way to balance that out, without becoming a doormat.

IN CONCLUSION, I've been a lazy twit ignoring my gifts, and I need to remember keenly that positivity is created by ME (and you). Scrutinizing every detail of every thing is not the way to be wise, nor the way to distance my spirituality from that of those who are different from me. My home situation is far from ideal, and for now, until I hone in my craft, and find my niche, I need to accept that.

to me, laying cards flat is to lay out a touch of my soul, and let it breathe all by itself, like coming up from unpleasant water for air.

Edit: sorry for the bad quality pics the light in my room does dreadful things to the warm and beautiful tones in this deck😭

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