There's a post making the circles about fanfiction that really reaaaaally rubs me the wrong way. It's essentially arguing that fanfiction is a small subculture of the internet and shipping is a small niche subset of that, and it's on you if you walk into fandom spaces and complain about shipping which lol.

Like the first point, sure, but to call shipping a niche in fandom spaces is ridiculous. Gen is the niche in fandom. It is difficult to downright impossible to exist in fandom places without engaging (even unwillingly) with shipping, and it's questionable at best to claim the only reason that people might have problems with this is homophobia.

Like, don't frame this as if it's so easy to engage in fandom and avoid shipping, and then imply there's no reason people would want to engage in fandom besides shipping. Just tell me you don't care about aro people and go.

i made this as a reply to a repost of one of my own posts but i think its important enough to be its own post

If you want to be punk, listen to the music first, its incredibly diverse with diferent sub genres like hardcore, crust, D beat, power violence, street punk, oi, queercore, Anarcho-punk and riot grrrl.

IMPORTANT- listen to local punk bands and support your local scene and community

band recomendations-

-Black flags -Bad brains -Minor threat -Capitalist casualties -Circle jerks -Crass -Dead kennedies - DIscharge - Doom -Dystopia- Electro hippies- GBH - Nausia - No consent -Operation ivy -Subhumans -Zulu

For the dress sense, there are a ton of DIY vidoes on the internet. Don't buy anything expensive like those £200 jackets on the internet, they're a rip off. If you want to make patches, Anarcho-stencilism has a subreddit and deviant art full with stencils and a guide on how to make patches. Thrift stores are where its at for clothes since they're cheep

If you want to be punk, having the ethos is very important too. Anarchist politics(like mutual aid, squating and general anti-state/capitalst action) are very linked to punk as well as anti-fascism.

Don't be afraid of doing things wrong, we're very accepting in the punk community, as long as you don't give in to consumerism, listen to the music and support left wing(actual left wing not like democrats) politics then your likely to get along with almost everyone.

And beware of TikTok, theres alot of flase info on there and people who give bad advice.

Be gay do crime

(Im not an authority on punk, take this all with a pinch of salt. if you disagree with me on anything thats valid, punk has been around for a while now which means its gonna contradict itself sometimes and different people are gonna have different opinions on it since it is a living and evolving subculture)

Fandom 101: The Origin of the Citrus Scale

A guest post by Aeryn Jemariel Knox. (@jemariel)

Ah, the citrus scale. It’s like a cryptid roaming the edges of modern fandom communities. Long-tenured veterans speak of it with affectionate mockery while newcomers google curiously. A relic from a bygone fandom era, the citrus scale saw a brief resurgence in 2018 during the Tumblr porn ban, suggested as a way to avoid the new bot censors trawling for posts with the NSFW tag—though never, I think, in seriousness. 

That may have been jocular and short-lived, but it does point to the reasons why the citrus scale was created in the first place. Certain fandom activities have always had to fly under the radar to one degree or another. Whether you’re trying to evade legal action or simply avoid deletion based on explicit content, a certain level of obfuscation is sometimes worthwhile.

It’s not hard to find the generally agreed-upon definitions of the citrus scale’s levels. According to Fanlore, KnowYourMeme, and others, this is more or less the “official” citrus scale:

Orange: Light stuff, kissing, nothing below the waist or under the clothes. 

Lime: Groping, implied sex without details, fade-to-black, no intercourse or intimate contact.

Lemon: Sex, in full detailed glory. Woo-hoo! Regardless of the actual acts performed, if you can tell who had an orgasm (or, perhaps, had an orgasm denied), how, and where, it’s a lemon.

Grapefruit: We’ll get into this later.

But these tidy categories are clear thanks to the benefit of hindsight. In the Wild West of the early internet, it was not so easy to pin down exactly what you might be getting into based on which term was used.

At its origin, the citrus scale wasn’t a scale at all. It has its roots in hentai (and was always more popular in anime fandoms), stemming from a specific early hentai film by the title of Cream Lemon (1984). Hentai being what it is, this led to certain subculture communities referring to any story with explicit sexual content as a “Lemon.” And for a while, that was the extent of it. Then came fanfiction.net purging explicit content (2002), Livejournal suffering Strikethru (2007), and other events that pushed burgeoning fandom communities out of their growing hubs and back into smaller, isolated communities centered on a single fandom or pairing. In the relatively sparse early ’00’s internet, anybody could spin up an Angelfire website, pass the link around to their friends, and get a reasonable amount of traffic.  Websites devoted to the works of a single author or small group were common.

I mention this to describe the landscape in which fandom lexicons grew and evolved in the early-mid 2000s. Each pocket community had its own rules, lingo, and expectations; venturing outside of your home pocket could lead to some pretty major miscommunications. 

“Lemon” was established early and its definition has hardly shifted. It means that the labeled content (art, fic, mood board, etc.) includes sex. Intercourse, bumping uglies, etc. However, some yaoi fandom niches used it specifically to mean gay sex of the male variety. In some communities, “lime” developed as a corresponding term for feminine gay sex, while other communities brought it up with the usage that eventually “stuck,” “not quite a lemon.” Given that lemon and lime often go hand in hand when discussing actual flavors, the fact that we had some divergent term evolution is not surprising. But coming in from a different pocket of fandom and seeing “lime,” thinking you’ll be reading semi-softcore sexual tension and instead being confronted with graphic sapphic antics? Bit of a shock, I’m sure.

A more dramatic example is the rating level of “Grapefruit,” which occupies two completely different ends of the scale. In some circles, grapefruit was defined as “less intense than lime,” G or PG-rated stories that were more soft or cute than sexy. In other circles, it was used to mean the exact opposite. Kinkier than kink, smuttier than smut, grapefruit art and fic was where you went to have your eyebrows singed off. Some communities were even more specific, using grapefruit for stories featuring non-consensual sex. This was where darkfic lived – in modern day parlance, your “Dead Dove, Do Not Eat” works. To say that this usage difference caused some disagreements would be putting it mildly.

Nobody really worried about orange. Orange just existed, not bothering anybody.

When these terms were coined, the internet was not an assumed aspect of everybody’s daily life the way it is today. There was no Tumblr, no Facebook, no social media to speak of. There were no large repositories of internet lore and knowledge such as Urban Dictionary or KnowYourMeme. It was a playground. And what do you do on a playground? You make friends! The citrus scale, like so many fandom tropes and concepts, was defined by groups of friends that created them ad hoc to meet their own needs at the time. No one could have predicted that it would become so much a fandom history that it’d be enshrined, nor that I would be writing a blog post about it two decades later. From the common source of lemon, people extrapolated what the rest of the scale might look like, and there was no authority to tell them they were wrong. (Except other fans. That hasn’t changed.)

In conclusion, it’s best not to take the citrus scale too seriously. At best, it’s a cheeky way to avoid censors who try to bar a community from engaging with explicit works, but it’s also varied to a fault and open to interpretation. If you and your community have come up with a use for it that suits your needs, then congratulations: you’re part of a fandom tradition stretching back to the roots of the internet. Just don’t try and tell anybody else that they’re wrong. You might start a flame war.

References:

Prokopetz: Orange and Grapefruit

She’s Got Plans: What is the Citrus Scale in Fanfiction?

Unwinnable: Lemon and Lime

Past Fandom 101 Posts:

Everything About A/B/O Dynamics You Wanted to Know (but were Afraid to Ask)

How to Diversify Your To-Be-Read Pile

Recognizing AI Generated Images, Danmei Edition

BLOGGIES 2023 BEST BLOG POST OF THE YEAR

On 31 January 2024, the tabletop-roleplaying-game community voted for the Best Blog Post Of 2023.

Contenders were drawn from the winners of four categories. Links, as well as their very excellent acceptance speeches---more exhortations and manifestos, really!---found here:

Theory

Gameable

Advice

Review

+++

Anyway---you voted. Results were very close; I was constantly worried about a tie. Nevertheless, a winner emerged:

Congratulations are in order, and an acceptance speech follows.

+++

(Like an idiot, I didn't plan for, and therefore didn't have the time to make a bespoke prize for the overall Bloggie winner. So they'll just get a full quadtych of lino prints. Fortunately these don't look too bad together!)

PLATINUM BLOGGIE FOR BEST BLOG POST OF THE YEAR:

🔮Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction🔮 from SachaGoat

Sacha:

As an (award-winning) blogger who only started 6 months ago - I want to use this "acceptance speech" to share the 5 steps that will start your blog: 1. You don't need a cool blog name. screenname(dot)blogspot(dot)com is probably available - you can move it later if you think of a cool name. The trick here is to set it up so your ideas can go live as soon as you're happy (or tired of editing). 2. Post something. Dust off your notebook (or note-taking app) and turn those musings into a structured post with paragraphs and context. Don't have anything ready to go? Take your latest game session and write a play report or spotlight a specific moment. This will take less time than your ttrpg prep. 3. Share it! With your gaming group, ttrpg friends, community discords, xwitter/bluesky, reddit, forums etc. 4. Don't worry about the rest. I don't have a fancy blog template. I've yet to compile a sidebar or blogroll. I don't have a newsletter or patreon. 5. Continue. Your readers will contribute with comments. You will be shared in community newsletters. Peers will write posts inspired by your posts. Your ideas will be used at another gaming table. (And if you're lucky, you can win the next BLOGGIES.) If you've shared your prep with a fellow DM… if you've contributed opinions on a ttrpg discord or forum… if you've read a blog post and have a thought that builds on it… if you have any tabletop advice or ideas … 👏 Start 👏 a 👏 blog This finally brings me to the "thanks". Winning the 2023 BLOGGIES is such a wonderful welcome to this creative niche. Many thanks to the creators who encourage the community to blog (especially around June 2023, I can actually see the thread that motivated me to start). I also want to thank a community whose collective enthusiasm and support nudge me to release the next post. And finally, everyone who voted for my post over the amazing nominations this year - a huge thank you.

+++

On a personal note: I am really thrilled at this final result.

The BLOGGIES can come off as clique-ish. Voting is public, but "public" on the Internet generally means a circle-jerk between subculture friends, a popularity contest.

This thing began as a jokey riff on those best-tweet-of-the-year polls over on Twitter. While Prismatic Wastelands grew it into a celebration of OSR blogging culture, it still has NSR / POSR inclinations---the specific community soil it sprung from.

As host this year I tried to extend the BLOGGIES' reach. Canvassing for nominations outside the OSR space got a couple of indie-RPG designers on the finalists list. Am proud of that; we have much to learn from each other.

I made prizes---hoping that, one day, with enough dangling carrots, these awards will eventually be tasty enough for non-POSR cliques / communities to attempt a takeover? We'll see.

Ultimately: I am glad to water this sapling and watch it grow slowly. Community is made by growing trees, not building greenhouses.

+++

SachaGoat snagging the final win is a vindication.

Sacha's blog is new. We don't share any Discord servers. We've never spoken, hitherto; the first time I messaged him ever was to tell him he'd won the Advice category.

The BLOGGIES fulfils its purpose: to introduce folks to quality blogs; to preach the gospel and importance of blogging. Its shade is spreading.

I'm glad to get to know Sacha and his blog. (Obviously it's been added to my must-read list!) I am honoured to be passing the torch: Sacha has agreed to host BLOGGIES 2024.

Thank you, everybody. Here's to growing trees.

How do you find LGBTQ+ people are viewed in Japan? Is it safe to come out?

i think it’s a bit of a mixed bag

on the one hand, laws and civic setups are still pretty antiquated (gay marriage is only recognized in several cities, still very common for forms to provide man/woman as the only options for gender, etc) on the other hand, even as we move at a snail’s pace, ending discrimination is, in general, a publicly communicated goal for the country, and many big businesses have proactively adopted lgbtq+ friendly policies without waiting for the government (gender inclusive bathrooms and uniforms, access to family benefits for partners regardless of gender, etc).

there is definitely representation of a variety of lgbtq+ people in media both in fiction and also news/variety tv though it can get a bit trope-y at times especially with effeminate stereotypes. still, there is a history of gender swapping / adopted gender presentation in theater (kabuki, takarazuka), and many known famous historical figures having same sex suitors and confidantes, so i think that more than in some countries people are predisposed to the idea of gender as a concept and the existence of gay people who have done important things. its also not incompatible with religions indigenous to japan, so there’s not so much a “you’re going to hell” vibe to the prejudice, its more of a “why do you insist on being different” prejudice if that makes sense. not great but it could be a lot worse.

i was part of a lgbtq+ circle at university and a gay friend of mine told me there’s a phrase that goes something like “it’s okay to be gay as long as you have a wife and kids” so once again just this idea that older generations value maintaining a public face for the sake of the group, whereas gayness is considered a subculture or private part of oneself.

so i think in terms of coming out i think it really depends on your situation, like my understanding (based on the stories of japanese friends i have) is that in general you would closet during your school years to avoid potential bullying for being different (maybe be out to close friends) but it’s much easier to come out in university or to move to a bigger city as a young adult. easier to find your people. but you might be careful when dating and stick to places where you know gay people are. you might closet at your company as well depending on the industry, and it’s a bit of a don’t ask don’t tell vibe socially among strangers, but it’s not necessarily something you’d hide.. if that makes sense. in my case i flag at work and i definitely know lgbtq people because they flag too and i know they know im flagging. but we don’t really talk about it. we just vibe and are extra kind to one another.

in terms of if it’s “safe” i’d say once again it depends but that there’s less (not zero but less) of a physical safety issue than many countries. even so, irl harassment exists and internet harassment is also a thing especially for out public figures. you might hesitate to come out to family or friends just so as not to ‘upset the order of things’ or to chance making people you love uncomfortable. over time your parents might ask why you won’t marry or won’t have kids like so-and-so’s daughter or so-and-so’s son.. these social pressures and tensions, especially in important relationships, can lead to depression and because mental health is also not that progressively talked about here, this is the part that is most dangerous, in my opinion.

just as a footnote this is all my impression of the generation of my age group and the ones above it and i think things are a little more relaxed or open for the next generation. but i think it’ll take one or two more generations to get to the point where it is in the US where everyone’s like, out and proud and colorful at school and work and among strangers. so once again, it’s not great, but i feel like things could be a lot worse.

I have to stop trying so hard to be appealing to people outside of my weird little internet circle. Broader appeal is stupid, be the weird niche internet furry subculture you were mean to be.

If you don't see my whole vibe and go "oh fuck yeah big werewolves, nerd dragons, fat foxes, let's go" then scoot on, I'm not bending over for you.

On the Forgotten Art of Crop Circles

Source; Guardian UK crop circle gallery

Some of my favorite websites in the mid 90s were those of crop circle makers, with photo galleries, reminiscences, how-tos, and even a simple game using aerial photos of fields on which you could design your own.

I've forgotten most of the URLs, but one I do remember was circlemakers.org. Early, hand-coded websites may be a little confusing to navigate; let me drop you here for a little background history.

It's a fun look at a huge subculture — they had cons! — that blossomed in the transitional 90s between pre-internet society and today's. The infant web let them communicate, collaborate, and share their activities. Computers let them plan increasingly complex patterns. Hand-coded websites were a cinch for these geometrically-inclined problem solvers.

Yet the crapass nature of early search engines meant you would only find them through word of mouth or following links from sites you already knew about. Between that and the limited userbase of the pre-commercial web (mostly academics, nerds, and eccentric introverts), they could share their weird hobby right out in public while remaining largely invisible to the wider world. Sound familiar?

@brightlotusmoon your post mentioning "Alien Histories" ignoring the known authorship of Mothman reminded me of crop circles — "Oh, I know who started those; his name was Doug."

(Or was it? This account of a 1991 competition questioned whether Dave & Doug's 1970s crop circles really launched the fad. Other researchers have claimed to have found evidence of circles in older aerial photos or records. But geometric patterns are modern.)

One last item. Here's an account of a circle maker who recently hung up his boards due to very moden concerns. A pity—gorgeous art.

was too lazy to type this out in the tags of prev reblog, but i feel like a lot of this increasing attitude of thinking 30+ year olds are "old" is (in addition to a lot of things) partly due to young people being in less and less intergenerational circles, maybe as part of the increasing culture of individuality over community, and the increasingly insular teen subcultures popping up in social or whatever. what i mean is, you wouldn't think 40 year olds are old and boring if you frequently hang out with your aunts and uncles and listen to them talk about what niche interest they're up to in their free times. you wouldn't think 60 year olds are incapable of having hobbies if you didn't go to courses and events organised within your local community and see them do the same kind stuff as you do with your friends. 30 year olds wouldn't seem old to 15 year olds if they interacted with older fans on the internet in a normal and respectful way to come together and discuss a common interest as part of a connected fanbase.

I’m probably more forgiving than I should be, but I would say most people understand there are perfectly reasonable and compassionate people who have their personal reasons for continuing to enjoy mainstream or other media with massive issues. We all have our own opinions and baggage and that doesn’t make us enemies. But “its just too hard to find indie stuff!” isn’t that. If someone has enough internet access to send a defensive anon ask they can use Google or just ask for recs.

--

It's more than that.

Fandom is a subculture, or a set of subcultures, even with how mainstream fic is now. Supernatural was on for years, so yes, it clearly had a lot of people viewing compared to some novel. However, SPN had garbage viewership compared to lots of hit shows, and most randos at one's job likely did not watch it. It was an inescapable pillar of fandom culture for a while.

Film Bros have such distinct taste someone made that hilarious fanvid to Pretty Fly for a White Guy that used all of those movies they love. Sure, everyone's heard of most of them, but have we seen them?

Film noir nerds have festivals where they go watch increasingly obscure films noir, and there are "classics" all of them have seen that other people haven't.

I know no one who cares about The Secret History... aside from literally every dark academia social media account ever.

Everyone is the protagonist of their own story if they'd just act like it.

People come to my tumblr as a sort of central location, so when I'm melting down about Beyond Evil or even some indie novel, a certain number of people will go consume it too. I'm always picking up tastes from costubers or whatever internet micro-celebrity I like this month.

If you are excited about the stuff you like, other people will consume it so they can talk to you about it. You do not have to passively jump on every bandwagon. Even the supposed normies don't all watch the same shows. (And the idea of normies is a mirage anyway.)

There are whole facebook groups and social circles around indie original m/m novels these days. There are tastemaker super fans who seem to mostly engage in that sphere, and people who hang out in those spaces have all read the big names... big names absolutely nobody outside of the m/m world has heard of.

Go look up the website for GRL, the industry conference, and see how many of the attending authors you've heard of. Probably five of sixty or something unless you follow m/m very closely.

Last time I bothered with After Ellen, they were breathlessly following that Spanish historical soap's f/f subplot. Who else outside of Spain even heard of that show?

I get not wanting to be 100% alone forever, but there is no such thing as universally popular media. We make little pods of taste, some of which amount to full on subcultures.

Those taste groups form when we take a stand for our particular Thing, whatever it is. It requires a tiny bit of proactiveness, but honestly, not that much. People who are already un-normie enough to spend their time on AO3 and Tumblr instead of Instagram or whatever are already making choices about what kinds of tastes to prioritize and what circles to join.

We could make a minimal effort for our favorite types of content and build indie versions into small but viable industries.

Or we could be lazy, spineless cowards.

Here's a bingo card full of great Klaine fics:

Debut: Days by AllyThePotato

Page Turner: Come Alive by delires

Need Tissues: Stick Season by Blurglesmurfklaine

Unusual Occupation: Witch Wanted by RockItMan

Wild Card: Running in Circles, Coming up Tails by izwordsoup

Summer: Swing, Swing by quizasvivamos

Challenge: Ebb and Flow by maanorchidee

Laugh: these inconvenient fireworks by redheadgleek

Trope I don't normally read: Out of Eden (and the whole 'verse) by wowbright

Thanks for your Bingo card! HERE is the collection (125 fics and counting!) and here is the info for the 2023 Klaine Bingo! ~Lynne

1) Days by AllyThePotato

Blaine lives in San Fransisco, Kurt lives in Lima. They've never met in person, but befriend one another and talk over the phone. They make plans to live in NYC together, but will everything go as planned?

2) Come Alive by delires

1960s NYC: Newly-wed junior advertising exec Blaine Anderson finds a missing piece to his puzzle in the back room of a Manhattan bar. Mad Men era AU.

3) Stick Season by @blurglesmurfklaine

After Finn dies, Kurt leaves everything he knows behind without a trace. His hometown, his family, his boyfriend. When his dad has a medical scare, he returns to Lima, one year after breaking Blaine’s heart with no explanation.

4) Witch Wanted by @rockitmans

Blaine is cursed to not touch anyone, Kurt is the grumpy neighborhood witch. They each have something the other other needs (the thing is love)

5) Running in Circles, Coming up Tails by izwordsoup

Kurt and Adam are married with a seven-year-old daughter, Ellie. "Happily married" is another question. Ellie takes piano lessons from none other than Blaine Anderson, who also happens to be a good friend of Kurt's since college. What happens to them when Adam goes to England to star in a West End musical, leaving Kurt and Ellie in New York? What happens when Blaine becomes a more frequently-seen figure in Kurt and Ellie's lives due to Ellie's piano schedule?

6) Swing Swing by quizasvivamos

The Skanks, Kurt and Quinn, are a thing. Blaine, a bit of a bad boy, is dating that goth girl, Tina. The four best friends are fully immersed in the Emo/Scene subculture, the kids everyone at school calls emo or just plain freaks. As close-knit as a friend group can get, the couples share a lot in common: their love of choir and band, tastes in music and art, partying, going to shows and concerts, getting wasted, and—oh, yeah—each other's partners. They swap sometimes. Because it's cool, and it's hot. Besides, it's just for fun. Then, in the summer before their senior year, they take a life-altering road trip to Cleveland for Warped Tour 2005.

7) Ebb & Flow by maanorchidee

Blaine Anderson is yet another anonymous New Yorker who's trying to get a job in the entertainment industry. His days are filled with auditions, bleak subway rides, piano lessons, and complaining about his annoying next-door-neighbour. But Blaine has a secret that he cannot share with his other friends: he dreams of playing competitive Splatoon 2. He already has a hard time justifying this music degree, so he doesn't need to add an interest in eSports to that. That's why the only person who knows about this, is yet another stranger on the internet named Kurt. The two met in an LGBT Splatoon 2 Discord and became fast friends. Little do they know that they also know each other offline.

8) These Inconvenient Fireworks by redheadgleek

After an unexpected Tony award, Kurt Hummel is Broadway's hottest up and coming star, which comes with expectations and some admirers that won't take a hint. When his best friend Elliott Gilbert suggests that they pretend to date to get the leeches to back off, Kurt takes him up on the idea. It's all working out great - until Kurt starts to fall hard for the dark-haired music director of his latest musical.

9) Out of Eden by @wowbright

As a gay Mormon, Kurt Hummel has decided to go the rest of his life without falling in love. But toward the end of his two years as a missionary in Germany, Elder Anderson moves into his apartment—and Kurt's best-laid plans fall apart.

"You have to practice patience when you cruise. You need to be alone for long stretches, often looking for something that isn't always there. It takes time to cultivate the skill. It takes time to learn how to identify the cracks, to see the openings, to recognize the breaks and tears that exist in the ordinary. It's meditative. The driving around in circles, past the same spot. The watching. The waiting. It teaches you how to be still in the moment [...] What is this pursuit all about? What will be revealed at the end? How will the color of things change when one comes out of the journey? It is a moment that captures something unnamable but feels crucial for survival. It's an impulse so strong it boils the blood, alters time and reality and sense. And the only way to get better is by returning to it, doing it over and over, again and again." (Page 11-12)

Just finished reading Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime by Alex Espinoza. Part historical nonfiction and part memoir, Cruising follows Espinoza through his life as a gay Mexican man living in conservative California pre AIDs crisis as he learns the art of cruising, anonymous and casual, often public sex inside the queer community most heavily associated with gay men. Espinoza tells of his experiences cruising, starting at 15 and continuing into the 90's, how it was affected by the queer sexual liberation movement of the 70's, and how the subculture as a whole was almost shattered by the AIDs crisis, leaving only the most vulnerable and desperate behind.

"The queerest space is the void, and AIDs has made us live in that emptiness, that absence, that loss... it is not a queer space any of us would want to inhabit, but many have been forced to make it their own" (Page 117)

Starting with the Greeks and the power dynamics associated with cruising there, all the way to the Molly Houses of the Victorian Era, Espinoza juxtaposes the attitudes towards sexuality in these eras with his own life, coming to a crescendo with the attitudes of Hollywood shifting upon the worsening of the AIDs crisis. Then he moves to the resurgence of cruising with the internet and medication, Grindr and Squirt.com

The final three chapters focus on cruising in a global context, especially the most dangerous of areas, before finishing with a question: what does cruising mean to a modern queer community?

Frank, funny, but often dragging on at points, with a no-nonsense attitude to sex and a casualness with queer fucking not seen often in nonfiction, Cruising is far from perfect, but worth a read.

ill be a cunt about it i hate that 'the internet caused the downfall of subcultures' post and it is weird to see it shared by people who are at least dressing in ways that are like. from a subculture. are you calling yourself a poser here? if your only exposure to subcultures are on the internet then like, sure, everyone only does things for the aesthetic i guess but have you never seen a thirty year old goth on the bus? knocked elbows with soeone in a pit? no dirtbag rock climber living in their van has ever traded you a gram of weed for a jumpstart? I'm not gonna no true scotsman this but the venn diagram of people who engage w the community of a subculture vs people who engage w the aesthetic of a subculture is neither a perfect circle nor two disparate ones and i hope you realise that there will never be an acurate reflection of tactile community spaces on the internet. if you think social reduced everything to aesthetics then get off the internet and live and breathe something that wont show up on a fyp, because i promise its out there

This is the third time I am writing this post because I feel like the idea I'm trying to convey keeps slipping away from me as I keep piling on context, and really, all it is... is just making excuses. I held transmed beliefs and questioned the validity of nonbinary gender identities back on Kiwi Farms. Now, I feel like if circumstances were slightly different, I probably would identify as enby.

Honestly.

The only reason I don't is because my feelings towards being a woman are pretty neutral. All of my problems I had in regards to gender growing up was not so much being a girl, but being constantly told by other girls and older women that I was being a girl wrong. Being a woman is perfectly fine with me; it's the sexism and policing of what is acceptable gender expression I have a problem with.

I don't think I can fully identify as queer, even though most of my friends are and I feel like they get me, so I feel perfectly at home. At the end of the day, I am fine with being a woman, and I am exclusively attracted to men. And I hate to say it, but it's cis men and maybe AMAB enbies who are okay with presenting more masculine. I just really, really like dicks. I don't really like vaginas, even though I imagine most people who would look at me and how I dress myself would assume that I am. And I know this, because I have been called homophobic slurs in public.

Is simply being gender nonconforming enough to be queer? I'm not sure, because I don't know if I'd ever be in a relationship that would be in danger because of legislation being passed. I could, however, see myself getting shit for my gender presentation, because I get people trying to clock me as either a trans man at the start of their transition or genderqueer. I'm in a pretty blue state, in a college town, surrounded by a lot of people younger than me who are overall much more accepting than I had been at their age, though, so realistically, I'm probably not in danger of being targeted for possibly being queer. Would that make me queer adjacent, though? I don't fucking know, but at the same time... I feel at home hanging around a bunch of queer folks. One of my friends joked that I'm straight, but I'm pretty gay about it. There are a lot of times where I will feel like one of the only cishet people in a group. Maybe it's because I've refused to give up the general subculture aesthetic and have been wearing graphic tees, ripped jeans and Chuck Taylors since high school, and I'm not going to stop anytime soon. I still get mistaken for being in my 20's so I am going to ride that shit into the ground, baby.

Things have changed a lot. Culture has changed. The internet has changed. I've changed. Everybody's on the goddamn internet now, including a lot of people who seem utterly clueless about its culture and history. I don't have anybody in my circles of friends that would ever identify as "anti-SJW" anymore. There is no debate in any of the circles I'm in on the validity of trans people at all, or nonbinary people. I look to those who I might have either associated with loosely or engaged with their content, and they just seem like they spiraled into increasing extremism, and for many of them, it doesn't seem like it's just to keep the grift going. They're true believers. And a part of me finds it kind of sad, actually, because they're going to just be miserable fucks for the rest of their lives if they keep their current trajectory. The momentum of the trans rights movement is not going to stop. Normies are getting sick of politicians focusing on transgender people. And within the trans community itself, the infighting has pretty much stopped because of just how tight the screws are being turned as conservatives go all out on the last socially acceptable group they can go against. They're being much more blatant about their bigotry in a way that's so flagrant, it would have been unthinkable ten years ago. We've got bigger problems.

Why am I even writing all of this out? I don't know. It's not like these posts are going to show up on Google when people look me up and see "callout" after my username in the suggestions. But it's important to me to map out these thoughts, I suppose, because actually changing means a lot more than grovelling and saying sorry to be accepted by people who wouldn't be willing to hear me out in the first place. I don't even think I fully regret being on Kiwi Farms; I more regret sticking around as long as I did, and if you've been paying attention to me posting about major life events I've been dealing with recently, you may have noticed I kind of have a problem with sticking around toxic people or places out of some misplaced sense of loyalty.

I guess I'm just stubborn.

TL;DR I feel pretty bad about not believing nonbinary identities weren't valid because I feel like I almost kind of sort of feel that? Also trans rights forever and ever,

The Intriguing Intersection of Grand UFO Conspiracies and Cyberpunk Media

Introduction

As subcultures with countercultural leanings and an insatiable thirst for what lies beyond the known, the grand UFO conspiracy theories and the cyberpunk genre share an intriguing relationship. Both captivate their audiences with tales of hidden agendas, shadowy organizations, and elusive truths. This essay aims to dig deep into the interplay between these two fascinating realms by discussing notable examples across various media forms such as films, television series, books, and anime.

The Allure of Conspiracies and Dystopia

Before diving into specific examples, it's crucial to understand the appeal that draws people towards conspiracy theories and cyberpunk. UFO conspiracy theories paint a picture of a world where clandestine operations are at play, knowledge is withheld, and the public is deceived. Cyberpunk, on the other hand, portrays near-future dystopias with grim landscapes, where technological advancements often come at the expense of human connection and morality. These themes overlap, creating a narrative breeding ground ripe for cross-over stories and theories.

Films that Blur the Lines

"Blade Runner" & Project Blue Book

Although Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" doesn't directly delve into UFOs, it plays on the idea of life beyond Earth with its bioengineered beings, known as Replicants. The film's hidden agendas and secret projects remind us of real-world government initiatives like Project Blue Book, designed to investigate UFO sightings.

"The Matrix" & The Men in Black

"The Matrix" captures the essence of hidden truths and the battle to reveal them, much like the general sentiment in UFO conspiracy circles about 'The Men in Black.' These government agents are rumored to suppress UFO eyewitnesses, an idea that resonates with the Matrix's human-suppressing sentient machines.

TV Shows that Touch the Nerve

"The X-Files"

No discussion of this topic would be complete without mentioning "The X-Files," a show that masterfully combines elements of UFO conspiracy theories and cyberpunk. FBI agents Mulder and Scully navigate a world of deceit, much like a cyberpunk protagonist would, questioning what is real in their quest for the truth about extraterrestrial life.

"Black Mirror" & The Majestic 12

"Black Mirror" delves deep into technology's dark side, but some episodes subtly touch upon themes that UFO enthusiasts would find interesting. The secrecy surrounding advanced technology in the show mirrors the conspiracy theory of the Majestic 12, a rumored secret committee of scientists and military leaders supposedly managing extraterrestrial affairs.

Books and Literature

"Neuromancer" & The Roswell Incident

William Gibson's "Neuromancer" isn't about UFOs, but it was revolutionary in defining the cyberpunk genre. It embodies the cyberpunk ethos of anti-authoritarianism, a sentiment also shared by those who believe that the Roswell Incident was a cover-up.

Anime Crossovers

"Serial Experiments Lain"

This anime explores complex themes of reality, identity, and the internet. While not explicitly related to UFOs, its narrative could easily be interpreted as an allegory for the quest to understand what governments might be hiding about extraterrestrial life.

"Cowboy Bebop"

An iconic example of a cyberpunk-infused world, "Cowboy Bebop" includes an episode titled "Boogie Woogie Feng Shui," which subtly incorporates themes of ancient alien theories, a staple in UFO conspiracy thought.

Conclusion

The overlapping themes of hidden truths, anti-authoritarian tendencies, and unexplained phenomena make the relationship between UFO conspiracy theories and the cyberpunk genre a particularly rich subject matter. Both tap into the human desire to uncover suppressed knowledge and challenge the status quo, whether it's government cover-ups about extraterrestrials or dystopian futures shaped by technology.

And now, don't get us started on how the UFO conspiracy theories have surprising similarities with Faerie myth pre-Roswell. That's a rabbit hole for another time.

- Raz

Witch Hat News #4 - Lessons from the Archives

by Tata Calthrop

This is an archived version of our microfiction newsletter! You can read along on our tumblr, or subscribe here.

Which archive, you may ask? Well, it's quite simple.

Our own one.

Yes, like many twenty-somethings in the creative field now, I was forged in a rather specific fire – the classic Internet pipeline of Neopets, Deviantart, Tumblr, Twitter, usually interspaced at some point with either a gender crisis or a formal diagnosis of mental illness.

You see, for a young nerdy preteen in 2010, you have two sexy choices made available to you, neither of which you will perceive until it's too late. You will choose either the path of solitude (voraciously consuming and creating content in incredible loneliness and feeling like the only person in the world who does so), or the path of the internet, where you will learn at an incredibly young age how to receive and handle a death threat. I was raised on a raw, unfiltered diet of fandom. (Sonic the Hedgehog. The world has not been kind to me.)

The fans and the hermits have a lot to teach each other. In fact, as easy as it is to make fun of – well – most people on the internet, there is something valuable to be learned from every subculture of creativity, including the horny ones. 

So let me make a confession to you: I'm a fanfiction writer. I have a shameful record of 155,821 words, none of which will ever give me a scrap of credibility with anyone, including other fanfiction writers. (Heavy is the head that wears the dunce hat of Adventure/Comedy.) Hell, I've spent over a year picking away at a fancomic project. For zero dollars and no publication accolades, I have written at least five full completed novellas, which will never be published, be recognised, or prove anything except my big, fat crush on the uncle from Encanto.

My god, was it freeing.

The social pressure to monetize your art is insane. I took my first art commission before I even had my first bank account. It was my teenage dream: to be paid is to obtain credibility. The label will hang over your head like an execution hood: PROFESSIONAL. Of course, the loop never really stops; start making money and suddenly your eyes are open to how many opportunities you're missing, and how little you make compared to others, and how wide the chasm is between you and full-time creation. 

(That's not to say the money and recognition aren't nice! That part I do recommend.)

But making fan content, and making friends who also make fan content, and building up a small audience of people who just want to be there for fun is incredibly liberating when you're not used to it. Get a bunch of friends who create together, join a community that makes its own memes and creates a bubble of mutual feedback and appreciation, and you start to realise: this is how they made the old tales, the oral ones before the printing press.

Here's two lessons from the archives.

Love characters. Fall in love with their vulnerable moments, their jokes, their relationship dynamics, the little unseen parts of them that you can never put in a real story because there's simply no point. Linger on the details. Develop a little crush. Project all your issues and obsess over nothing. Love your own characters, and you'll find suddenly that creating art about them changes from a chore to an act of affection. Learn what makes you fall in love with other stories, and look for the same aspects in your own.

Making art to impress a large audience will disappoint you; making art to impress a social circle of about ten interested people is how life is supposed to be lived. The early humans who painted mammoths on cave walls had no audience except themselves.

Here's a quote I like, from Prof. Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts at University of Southern California: "Contemporary Web culture is the traditional folk process working at lightning speed on a global scale. The difference is that our core myths now belong to corporations, rather than the folk.”

Here's another quote I like, from twitter user @FarfinFarfin: "the fastest way to improve your art is to become some sort of pervert, doesn't really matter what kind, whatever you're comfortable with". 

Reviews

The Northern Caves by @nostalgebraist. The Northern Caves is a cosmic horror story about unwary scholars who delved too deep into the ancient texts, except the scholars are a group of hardcore nerds on an early 2000s fan forum for a mediocre fantasy series, and the ancient texts are fan theories about the author's baffling final novel. I know almost nothing about original fiction on Archive of Our Own, but I recognise a wonderfully online scary story when I see one. Psychological, terrifying, and twistedly fascinating reading for anyone who's ever watched an online community implode.

Songs for Girls in Love by @phemiec. PhemieC was one of my favourite musicians as a teenager, and when I got into my first relationship I rushed into the familiar arms of their love songs. They also were making, at the time, Homestuck fansongs. But when I was 15, this music made more of an impact on me than any classic musician ever could. Songs for Girls In Love has a number of fansongs mixed in, largely for things I've never consumed, but you'd never know it from their lyrical subtlety and I'm still a huge fan. 

Digital Land Grab: Media corporations are stealing our cultural heritage. Can we take it back? By Henry Jenkins. Okay, okay, this one's not exactly micro or fiction of any sort. But it is the article that I quoted earlier, and Prof. Jenkins could be described as the grandfather of fanwork studies in academia. A good read about the history and creative validity of fanwork, and the ways in which corporations suppress it. I highly recommend it, even if you know nothing about fanfiction.

Your project here. Do you make art of any kind - visual, written, performed? Are you starting a project or recruiting co-creators? We want to hear from you! Email us at [email protected].

That's it for June. See you next month!

I write a lot to deal with my emotions and to process (right now I am processing a lot of anger, still). I don't share a lot of it, but I did write something to post on fetlife yesterday having to do with my friend, Remy's, death. The circles of people I have over there have no real context or frame of reference for any of it though. Since I'm still vaguely furry-adjacent, I figured maybe people (all like.. five of you) would get more mileage out of it here, so I'm crossposting it.

This is a small tidbit of furry history. Before you fly off the handle and send me anon hate, please take a minute to read all of this through. Plus think about what type of person would absolutely fucking loathe both queer people involved in WWII reenacting, and queer people dressing in uniform to do weird kink shit. (it's supposed to be fascists that idealize the era, they would have an aneurysm, but this is a trick question because apparently everybody loathes it)

Anyway. Pushing the Feldpost Envelope (furries and nazis and death in here.)

"History lesson.

I'm at the third year of my home furcon in 2005, attending opening ceremonies, wearing my officer's cap. All day, I've been nervously eyeing someone also in an officer's cap, albeit a different branch, worried that they're either going to be confrontational, or that they're a bad actor and a bigot. We'd unknowingly run in the same circles for a couple years now, but had yet to cross paths in any significant way until today.

"I like your hat" he smiled and piped up after the ceremonies were over. I, a very anxious sixteen year old girl at the time, had a flood of relief wash over me now that the ice had been broken and he didn't seem like a total asshole (joke's on me, Remy was still an asshole, just usually the good kind). "I like yours too..!" I chimed back. And the rest was history. "Living history", actually.

A couple months prior, Remy had created the Nazi Furs community, which I wound up co-running and co-moderating. The goal was to create a space for people with a genuine interest in history and reenacting (which despite the name wasn't limited to the German side of things) and/or for those who get their rocks off in uniform, a little more tucked away from early 2000s internet shock value, and most importantly protected from actual racists, bigots, and all around pieces of shit (which took a hell of a lot of work). Furries tend to cover the whole gamut of kink, and while Remy and I both leaned further towards the leather subculture, we tried to make space for all of the spectrum as long as it was related to that specific time period in some way.

We were not a popular or well liked group. But we were a necessary group. This is the south, if you weren't a cishet good ol boy, it was frankly just not safe to venture into any reenacting groups around here at the time. So, we made our own space for it, to be gay and weird and ourselves while we ran around in the woods. Even in kink, we tried to push the envelope for what was "acceptable" in the eyes of larger communities and carve out a little trench for ourselves, because often in the most accepting places, people would still take issue (and still do). We did our best to push back against people feeling closeted or ashamed for what they were interested in, kink or not. Don't be a shitty person is all we asked. We were young and we stumbled a lot, but we tried our best.

Ultimately, with the shifting perspectives in the fandom, in kink, and in general with online spaces being cleansed to be more palatable and marketable, we lost the fight. Part of it came from the evolving political environment in the US, it did become impossibly hard to weed out bad actors, and not be seen/assumed as a bad actor yourself. But part of it is from lingering social norms on what is "okay" and "acceptable" (even in alternative subcultures), instead of remembering that some interests can be solely academic and not a reflection of your own personal world views. Bleeding over to kink, it's exactly the same, and some people have forgotten that kink should be weird and ugly and not acceptable, it should challenge your emotions and perspective sometimes. It is the opposite of social norms, it's not meant to be sanitized and diluted down for the masses to consume. It's meant for you, and your self expression, self exploration, and your kameraden who share that with you.

Remy died on January 26th. He was one of my very best friends, and there are not many people left on this planet who know me like he did. I rushed to clean his house of things his mother did not want, or need, to see, because I was the only one left to do so. He is survived by communities that did not want him and refuse to see the work he put in for people to have a place they felt accepted.

I have no place in community anymore. But if anyone reading this feels ostracized for their interests or kinks, I feel the same so deeply inside me that it hurts my soul. You shouldn't have to feel that way. I do not have it in me anymore to try and create a space like Remy and I worked on in the past, but do know that you're not alone. I'll be here. I'm still here somehow."

-----

I would also like to add this summarized post that Remy made to the original group, the last post in the group, in 2017.

"In the wake of recent social unrest, we would like to take a moment to make a statement regarding this community.

Nazi_Furs was created by a bunch of nerds. Yes, you read correctly. A bunch of big old nerdy nerds started nazi_furs to post stories, art, historical articles, images from WWII museums, reenacting and living history events, and sometimes little animated gifs of dancing hitlers that we thought were funny.

Most of our members were card carrying homosexuals. Almost all of our moderators were gay, trans, or some other color of "unacceptable" to ACTUAL NEO-NAZIS.

Many of us have well researched and thought out fursonas that inhabit a world set during WWII era Germany. The setting used in many movies like Bed-knobs and Broomsticks, Indiana Jones, Iron Sky, and Dead Snow lends itself well to fantasy. Setting talking animal people into this backdrop did not seem like such a huge clusterfuck at the time.

Nazis are a cliche', relegated to "the bad guys" in popular culture. The sharp uniforms, advanced military weapons and tactics, crackpot schemes, and paranormal ties are used all the time in modern media. They are a caricature of what they were 70+ years ago, much like ninjas (paid assassins) and pirates (murderers and thieves) are today. Once you have been relegated to a children's Halloween costume you no longer have the influence to command respect or fear.

Let us allow nazis to be just that, a cliche condemned to be the "bumbling bad guys". Let us laugh at them and rob them of any authority they feel they may have. There haven't been any "REAL" nazis since the downfall of the NSDAP in 1945, and any members of that movement would be pushing 90 by now.

The "alt-right" are not nazi_furs. They are hateful individuals putting on costumes pretending to be like people they do not understand who have been dead for years. These people WANT you to associate them with nazis, and calling them that only feeds their egos. Lets try not to do that.

If you take anything away from our group, let it be a reminder of our origins as nerdy nerds pouring over history books, saturating ourselves in history to better understand what happened in the 1930s and 40s. Take a look at our current situation we find ourselves in and ask yourselves if we are all doomed to repeat our past mistakes. Then focus your rage and disapproval in a productive manner. Get out there and vote the real racist out of office. Mobilize in peaceful protest, advocate for the oppressed and downtrodden. Make the world a better place than you found it."

I stepped away from the fandom when my home convention, RCFM, ended after a decade. I had been run into the ground, my wallet taken advantage of entirely too much, and I was burnt out beyond belief. Remy stayed more up to date on fandom things, I know there were issues with other "nazi" groups popping up that were inundated with the alt-right. There was no avoiding getting lumped in with them, so we eventually just enjoyed our interests in silence, away from everyone else.

To be completely honest, the majority of our time was spent in museums and hunting down weirdly specific esoteric research topics, which we'd then attempt to discuss while drunk around a fire (this is the academic way). It wasn't to idolize these people or politics, it was to understand an extremely complicated time period and what was born out of it. There are SO MANY absolutely fascinating aspects to study, not just "woo big scary gun death ubermench". What people saw most though, convention-wise at least, were the room parties where we could let our hair down and be WEIRD. Furcon room parties are fucking weird just as a baseline, throw some uniforms and sadomasochism in, sometimes some LSD, and... I mean yeah. And of course that's all that stuck in anybody's mind. Though, tbh, a lot of the time for the majority of the night, it was just a small circle of friends watching war movies and drinking. We came up with this (not) great idea to take a shot every time there was a depth charge in Das Boot, yeah I can't recommend that lmao.

Even from the reenacting standpoint, Remy was putting together a US medic impression (not even German! *clutches pearls*) over the past few years, because he was an EMT by trade. I've always reenacted a very inept Wehrmacht artillery officer who is a touch cowardly, not great at their job, and is usually relegated to office/paperwork. It's far from the edgy internet shock value people associated us with.

Nowadays I am usually running around in the woods alone, or getting the shit kicked out of me in uniform (consensually). I'm just less visible about it. I wish I didn't have to be. It feels very lonely, extremely so now that I've lost Remy. I think there was a good opportunity somewhere in there to push back against the alt-right by being very VERY gay and trans and queer and weird in uniform, destroy the image they were trying to create for themselves, but the current culture of the internet wouldn't have allowed that. I'm still going to keep doing that, just.. y'know, in my own space, on my own time.

I hope other people are out there being weird too. I'll be weird with you in spirit.