#also I came on tumblr to make this post and the very first post on my dash was a lokius post xD
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How fandom culture killed my creativity
hi. I have some thoughts about my time in a huge fandom and how it changed me:
First of all, I would like to say that these are my personal experiences in a large anime fandom. I have made very good friends with whom I am still in contact today - and I was exposed to a kind of brain rot that has changed the way I deal with art forever. However, this does not apply to every fandom/every person.
this - essay? - is way longer than I thought it would be. More under the cut:
In 2020, after a long break, I was able to get excited about One Piece again. Until then, I had always considered art important to me and I had never been able to do it professionally. (maybe someday...!)
The One Piece fandom is huge. There are now over 1000 manga chapters and anime episodes, which is gigantic; and the fandom itself is just as huge: millions of fans love this manga/anime and exchange ideas about it on the internet. I was previously very limited to tumblr, but then I ventured into OPtwt, the One Piece community on Twitter.
There is a lot of fan art, fan fiction and small cliques that like the same character. There is something for everyone. It was great!
I had a hyperfixation phase on OP before, in 2017. Now it came back - so violently that I realized very quickly that I could hardly think of anything else but One Piece.
Hyperfixations involve two major factors: an intense obsession with a character (or theme/media/whatever), which often brings with it a bottomless well of inspiration and motivation for artists – and a strange influence on brain chemistry. Neurodivergent people are prone to difficulties with the release of happiness and rewarding hormones anyway, and even though I am in no way qualified to make grand statements, as a person living with AuDHD, hyperfixations are both a blessing and a curse.
Often, the neurodivergent niches in the fandom communities are very lively. On extremely interactive social media like Twitter, TikTok and Instagram, you are flooded with posts of fan art, discussions and also escalation. It quickly becomes stressful for the brain to keep up with it - especially if you manage to accumulate a large number of followers. (also a blessing and a curse!)
I started posting fanart and OC x canon in 2020. I spent most of the last three years on Twitter and I have to say that it set me back in some ways.
At first, I was slow to get to know people through fanart, but then I got to know people very quickly: fellow artists that I am still good friends with today and, unfortunately, people who have also succumbed to an incredible, destructive brainrot.
I had chosen a character (or rather, my brain did) who plays almost no role in One Piece. All the better, so I pretty much had him to myself and I could do whatever I wanted. The OC x canon community is generally very friendly and respectful, so I found quite a few people who liked what I drew. Cool!
And then it started. With fanart and a small fan club for my OCs, I got more followers and more likes. More retweets and comments, more notifications. The algorithm started to like me and the growth increased steadily. My fandom (OP) account grew, as did my reach.
I checked Twitter more and more. Every free second I took my smartphone in my hand and checked my notifications. I reloaded the page until I had a new notification. I repeated this on Instagram and tumblr. Sometimes I catch myself doing it today, even though I haven't been active in this fandom for over a year!
Likes were good, retweets better. Every notification of an interaction with my art was a push on the feel-good button in my brain. It's very addictive, even if I talked myself out of it at first. The pandemic was at its peak and the internet was the only way to meet friends anyway. All this shit was fast food for my brain.
Then I started drawing fanarts, even though I didn't feel like it. But the likes had to come from somewhere, didn't they? I drew favorites from manga, characters that I didn't even like that much myself. But they were popular, so that promised likes and reach! Every single day, really every day, I drew fanarts. I was disappointed with myself if I didn't.
As of today, my two One Piece art folders have 80GB of data in it! what the fuck!! That's not normal!
I learned a lot during that time and was able to develop my art. I was able to participate in projects, to draw for several zines and also had a lot of fun – but I treated it like a job.
Making fan art your job is very difficult – and has a lot of consequences. If you run a merch shop (as I did for a short time), you always have to follow the hype and draw what's in style. You switch fandoms because the hype has just burned out and the next new thing is already in style. If you're one of the first to offer keychains and stickers - or plushies - you make the big money. That brings profit, but in my opinion you can very quickly step on the wrong foot in this jumping around and slip into burnout.
(Or stagnate to such an extent that you lose all motivation to refine your artistic skills and become better at your craft.)
I see friends of mine, many of them, who are trying to live off of fandom merch. They all have one thing in common: their skills in art have remained absolutely the same over the past few years or have even declined. If you have to churn out a new batch of merchandise every week, you have to cut corners. There is no time for experiments and crazy studies when you can hardly live and have to produce merch/fan art that sells 100% well.
I don't mean to offend anyone - it's just that I've been thinking a lot about my own setbacks as an artist since I've been dealing with them so intimately. And I've definitely made some setbacks!
In 2021-2023, fandom life continued and got worse and worse. Checking my smartphone, drawing something every day to post it - just so that the algorithm doesn't sort me out. Posting daily is the number one rule on all Social Media, unfortunately. But I did it, no matter how burned out I felt.
And then there were the dramas on Twitter: internet puritans, antis and proshippers were screaming at each other and tearing each other to shreds (a trap I almost fell into myself! anti and pro are the biggest bullshit ever and I'm lucky enough to have reached a point where I can say: I don't give a shit lol).
Callout posts, vague tweeting and aggression instead of simply blocking and moving on. Harassment that I myself experienced: I blocked a few people because I found them strange and unpleasant. They posted explicit things that I did not want to see on my timeline. This triggered a wave of harassment that was simply disgusting. These are people who hate their own lives so much that they can't do anything but feel miserable and stalk strangers online.
Admittedly, this made me paranoid: a group of people had chosen me as a target. They passed around screenshots of many of my tweets and made fun of me, copying and stealing my art 1:1. They lied and cheated to make me look like an asshole – and this went on for years. It made me paranoid and was the first step away from fandoms, as it escalated more and more.
So, I was successfully bullied out of the fandom and my hyperfixation was over. It left a terrible void that I am still trying to fill today. Neurodivergence sucks, I'll tell you.
That's when I honestly asked myself for the first time: What the fuck am I doing here? When did I become a content machine for strangers on the internet? Why the hell do I feel so bad when I don't draw for a day? And why do I care what strangers think about me?!
Then I realized that I can't draw anymore.
Without references or the 3D models from Clip Studio Paint, I'm lost. When I try to draw something without any help, I sit in front of an empty canvas. My hands don't do what they're supposed to do and my brain blocks the thought of how drawing even works. My eyes only see the mistakes I make. Everything I draw looks bad to me.
I realized I have a problem.
So I try again and learn it all again from scratch: Anatomy, perspective, color theory, everything. But every time I sit down and try to put something on paper, there's nothing there.
I've been drawing things every day for the last four years. Now my hyperfixation on this character and this manga is over and there's nothing left. I've been burning the candle at both ends and I've broken something in the process.
Art is no longer something I enjoy. I need art to live and breathe, no doubt, but… the barrel now has a bottom again and it's empty to the last drop.
The little motivation I can muster goes into my webcomic, which is my everything. It's just mine, not a fandom. I feel honored that so many people read this comic. At the same time, I'm afraid that it's not enough; in my eyes, my art doesn't look good.
Being surrounded by perfect illustrations on social media all day long distorts one's own perception of art, like the beauty industry that gives you body dysmorphia. On top of that, I haven't had any financial success with my comics in recent years, none at all. The dream of being an independent comic artist has receded so far into the distance that I can no longer see it. Bummer.
The constant stream of content that I gave during my fandom days has set me back incredibly. I can no longer enjoy the process of art, but my brain constantly pushes me to finish it, to have a finished product - because then I can post the drawing and get the virtual handshake that my weird brain likes so much.
Social media detox, of course, is the first thing that comes to mind. It's actually bullshit that we're all so addicted to these apps, but here we are. It's uncomfortable for me to admit, but I have hardly any friends in real life. I'm very introverted and many people find my autism very unpleasant (I can't blame them, I often come across as rude), so I only have 1-2 friends. I would like to have more friends, but maintaining social contact is terribly exhausting. It's hard enough to reply to my mutuals in the DMs (sorryyyyy if I forget sometimes………).
And what if I just take a break for a while and don't draw so much? Recharge my batteries?
Right now I'm taking a 6-week break, partly because my jaw surgery is coming up soon. I'll be sick anyway, so why not put the webcomic on hiatus and take a break for a while?
I don't know if it will work out, but I have a hunch that it won't, because I always have the fast-paced internet in the back of my mind.
How can I be a freelancer if I don't do fanart? How can I make money with it to help my partner, who is currently financing our lives, financially? How can I, as a disabled person, find a job that I can do and at the same time build my career as an artist? As an independent comic artist, I have to do the job of so many people (artist, author, manager, taxes, work organization), how am I supposed to do that?
I have no answers to these questions. Original works don't go nearly as well as fanart! So you have to work ten times as hard and play by the vague rules of the algorithms, which is exhausting enough. Nowadays, you can only be lucky and ride the viral wave if it falls into your lap.
But reflecting on my time in a huge fandom has made me realize that I was going down a very wrong path and am now experiencing the consequences. I'm completely burnt out and no longer know why I'm even making art anymore. I don't know if I want to make art much longer.
(I think shit-life-syndrome plays a big role here, but not exclusively.)
As I said, I don't have any answers - but I would at least like to warn those who are having difficulties with distancing themselves from the internet and are quickly losing themselves in this maelstrom of social media.
I have since deleted Twitter from my smartphone and, fortunately, have hardly ever used TikTok (dodged a bullet there!). I try to get back into traditional art and get away from my computer.
I am all the more grateful to the people, my community, so to speak, who do nonsense with me on tumblr. They read my comics and are extremely nice to me, which I really appreciate. Thank you!
I don't know yet if and how it will continue, but I would like to finish Berserkir in the next few years. I'd love to find a way to finish all the short comics I want to make, even though it's just me and not a whole team. Maybe I'll find a way, maybe I don't.
Anyways, thanks for sticking around!
#long post#really long.#but uh! yeah! this is just my experience with fandoms and social media as an artist. thanks for reading!#writing this made me very sad about what I have lost BUT I am so glad I wrote this. off my chest and so on#+
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Doodle Dump, 1/2024 - 4/2024 (part 1)
So uh...I haven't posted as much on here ever since like, the beginning of this year. Instead, I've been doodling like mad over on the OTAS server and have completely neglected to post any of that over here alsdkjalk. So here's most of the doodles I've done, oldest to newest :> (with wild variations in quality,.,,, a lot's changed in my art skillz in 6 months)
[VERY long post below]
A staring contest, ft. @florisam 's Onyx and @illusidy 's Aerie...queens of the death stare.
Thank @/florisam for this one lol
After a body swap AU where Wis swaps with Qi...Wis has to do manual labor with Qi's wimpy wet noodle caffeine dependent body and Qi's def not taking proper care of Wis's body either... probably doesn't put her hair up if he works with a burner or corrosive chemicals aldkfjl
from a superhero/villain AU, wis is neither hero nor villain...she's the civilian that somehow ends up at the epicenter of every super battle and takes advantage of that by becoming a hero/villain accountant 😂
started drawing some more outfits for Wis, but I never finished them. Will probably get back to these a bit later.
and ofc she's gotta try on Qi's disaster outfit asd;lfkdjlrk
I made Wis a logo! Combined a sprig of wisteria with a pine cone, for her workshop, Fresh Pines. Also made a possible combo logo for her and Qi. Y'know, in case they ever make that multistage rocket + launchpad they've been dreaming about...
Wis would be stoked to get her new stamps :>
Wis as a butler in a maid cafe AU...that I do not have the space or time to fully outline the extent of the chaos within... (inquire in the OTAS server for more info asdlkjlrkadf) Also the first time I drew Wis's clone sisters (which I am aware that I haven't introduced at all on tumblr...I wouldn't blame you if you forgot that Wis is a clone 😂 but SOON I promise)
Ft. @spookemsdukems 's "Builder", it's the mystery gorls! No one really knows where they came from. Well, they know. But they're sure as hell not gonna tell you... (ehhh well wis might tell you about herself if you're friends lol)
asdlfklj based on a quote from an incorrect quotes generator
Initial concepts for one of Wis's clone sisters, the one that ended up in Duvos! Eugh the attempt at a waist up in the bottom right corner still haunts me asdlkfjlkjd Also note that that's not what a real prosthetic AK peg leg would look like, I did these without any real research 💀
Ft. @sunstream7 's Val...no explanation needed i think alsdkfja;sdlkrj
An idea I had about a romance/post-marriage gift that Qi could give you: a necklace with dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin that he managed to synthesize...the neurotransmitters of love <3
Love is the Solution: A special necklace given to you by Qi. The little vial contains a mix of neurotransmitters--the mixture of love. Even though they're trapped inside the vial, when you put it on, you swear you can feel them surging through your nerves all the same. Stamina +15
And I've hit the image limit so this is the end of part 1 a;sldkrjlkjlakfj
#so yeah i haven't been dead asdlkrlakj#i promise i AM still writing tho. just. slooooowly#my time at sandrock#mtas#mtas qi#mtas builder#mtas wisteria#shady learns 2 art#long post
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Ryu Number: Hrothgar
So: Those Anglo-Saxons, hella-time past—
Regarding writing—made some bigguns.
No question some tales've made it down.
Like Beowulf (of unclear source,
Unclear date, written Germanic-style;
Bruiser of translators), which starts with
A Danish king having a real bad time,
Tormented by a monster—word gets spread,
And from the Geats (a northerly-tribe;
Modern-day Sweden), comes this guy
To help out (That'd be Beowulf).
...Okay, I'm going to stop that now. I can't keep that up. Not that I was managing "up" in the first place—the joke just needed some passing structural resemblance to work. Actual enjoyers of Old English poetry don't hurt me please.
The story of Beowulf goes thus: The Danish king Hrothgar builds a banqueting hall, but the constant raucous partying there irritates Grendel (understandable), who is moved to nightly murder (slightly less understandable). News spreads re: the Grendel ish, and Beowulf and his company come down from southern Sweden to help out. There's a fight at the hall, which ends with Grendel down an arm and staggering off to die. This makes Grendel's mother Very Angry (understandable), and she starts killing folks herself; Beowulf then has to set out to kill her, which he does, and when he comes back Hrothgar thanks him, and then Hrothgar tells him to Be A Decent Dude, except with much, much more words.
More stuff happens after that, but that's about the last that Hrothgar shows up, so it's not important to this post.
A CGI film adaptation of Beowulf came out in 2007 which of course took Departures From The Text—but very interesting Departures, as you might expect with them being Departures co-written by tumblr's own™ Neil Gaiman. And more importantly to the dude looking for Ryu Numbers (i.e. me; possibly also you), it had a Terrible Obligatory Video Game Adaptation.
In short, Hrothgar has a Ryu Number of at most 2.
...You'd think between Beowulf and Grendel, the former would be the one assured of an official Minecraft skin first, but apparently not. (Note: Call it arbitrary, but I only count Minecraft DLC if it comes from the Champagne region of France—I mean, if it's released through the official Minecraft creator page. Otherwise, it's just sparkling user-created content.) Anyway, dude's in the Norse Mythology Mash-up.
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The Phantomhive Ring
Nonofficial merchandise, fanmade, custom.
·3D modeled in SolidWorks by @noirserviteur
·3D printed using resin, then cast in sterling silver
·Fitted with blue sapphire (+ diamond chips, soon)
#Kuroshitsuji#Black butler#ciel phantomhive#Our!Ciel#Ring#I would be very remiss not to make a post about this#I did not believe that this would turn out as beautifully as it did#I also did not believe it could be modeled in the first place this well and even if it could be done#That it would not turn out once it came time to be printed and then cast#But I was wrong multiple times#I also hope someone takes a look at the amount of files and can comprehend the amount of time and effort that went into this#When it got here I just stared at it with my mouth open in disbelief for like 2 hours...#edit because tumblr messed up my post#The little diamond chips will see this to completion but I couldn't wait also I don't even think they're super necessary#They're on the way but international shipping is slow as molasses right now#and unpredictable#anyway-#edit 2 added two more pictures so ppl can see the custom knots and adjustment I asked for#💙
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THEY CAN RAISE KEVIN AND SEAN TOGETHER LISTEN-
#loki#loki spoilers#loki series#oasis's marvel chatter#I NEED IT OKAY#lokius#loving living in delusion <3#also I came on tumblr to make this post and the very first post on my dash was a lokius post xD#which is extra strange because I rarely see loki posts on my dash lol#anyway#FREAKING OUT#also listen he looked more distraught at mobius disappearing than anyone else#ALSO#OH MY GOSH#THE HAIR SMOOTHING#BRO HAD TO MAKE SURE HE LOOKED GOOD FOR MOBIUS#LIKE HFUWOANLCK WHAT THE HECK#anyway xD#I love them
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Boy King Seb :D
#thank you to Grace for the idea of making his chivarly collar red bull instead <33333#he was gonna have both collars but then making that one made me suffer so no not today#this was a lot of fun but also made me suffer. but i keep looking at it and being like AAAHHHHH BABY!!! BABY BOY!!!!!!!#can you believe i tried to do this in one night? i cant#i stopped and came back to it and was like 'no way you could do this in one sitting at 1 am'#this is kinda the ascended form of that very first sketch i made for this au! concentrated boy king sebby!!!#i say to myself i need to take a break from drawing complicated things but youll prob see a nando version of this in less than a week ;;;#okay about the drawing(i wrote good tags and then tumblr deleted them so these are a bit inferior AGH):#this is typical pouty seb but is also referenced off a specific pic from AD 2009(beloved)#its very important to me how emotionally open Seb is. im not sure the specific context of this. maybe after a triumph?#but instead of being that typical stoic serious detached kind of ruler; i like him being openly emotional(think AD 2010)#its important as well for his dichotomy with nando and how they choose to portray themselves#seb is very assured in himself and his rule vs. nando who is more insecure and bitter about his#so nando takes strides to portray himself in that more stoic calculating way bcs he feels like it helps him legitimize himself better#whereas seb has absolutely no care for outward public image and shows how he feels and is loved for it(nando hates it but loves it)#not that nando cant be fun and whimsical!! but to me he always seems a bit more mysterious; like i can never tell his true thoughts tbh#anyways i feel like ill finish 10 more drawings before i end up posting the lore pt 2 LMAO#its just a lot harder to organize and layout compared to part 1 which was just an explanation#pt2 would be a mix of more world building/characterization/anecdotes ive talked about with mutuals(LOVE YOU GUYS!!!)#i have a *lot* of ideas (gotta whip out my notes app every once in a while to write down stuff abt it) just hard to put into a coherent pos#sebastian vettel#f1#formula 1#f1 art#formula 1 art#f1 fanart#formula 1 fanart#catie.art.#*ill prob make a process post later if anyone is curious!! its fun to write abt my process and influences and such#boy king au
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there comes a beautiful time in life where i have to ask myselg th question, "did i accidentally project too hard onto the character that i only relate to a little bit and in doing so hugely missed this one entire aspect/interpretation of the characters . am i stupid"
#ARE THEY STUPID!#dr who#this is about ten specifically his relationship w martha lmao#m being so serious i genuinely did not. see the 'ten was on purpose leading martha on to make her think her feelings were requited' angle#until going out into the wild and reading the tumblr posts. like i genuinely did not. at ALLLLLL. its like a brick hitting my head#bc the ENTIRE time s3 ten came off to me as 'doing stuff w no romantic intent behind it but would consistently get misinterpreted as such'#cuz IIIIIIIII have done this. IIIIIIII have run into this problem before. and it sucks so incredibly bad.#i actually do want to think my og interpretation still holds water cuz like. well i could gather all the evidence but#first one that comes 2 mind would be him going 'it's like when you fancy someone + they dont know you exist' to martha. in episode TWELVE#two routes; either ten is needlessly cruel and callous even after a season's worth of building up trust and friendship w her#or he is on super 'i dont think she has feelings for me and this is a very unhappy coincidence of a line' cocaine#Or the 'she fancied me' line in s4 to donna. either he is disregarding all the good and positive impact she did him. or the fact that this#went over his head the whole time made him look back on that time w discomfort <- I DID THIS. I MIGHT HAVE BEEN PROJECTING#THIS ONTO HIM. AM I STUPID.?.?????#you know how mikage rgu can either be read as an incel or a gay man lost so completely in the sauce#ten is like in this same ballpark. i think. of 'emotionally manipulative and disrespects women' or 'aroacespec and missed the cues'#funniest possible options to pick from. ten my brother how did you set yourself up like this#absolutely not denying that he was toxic and unhealthy during s3 in like 500 ways btw. but well. ths is the one concwpt that#flew over my head. so completely. and i can kind of see it now but i also still find it hard to incorporate into my belief system#bc its like. brother I'M aroace and missed the cues too lol#tangential note we can trace many problems down to a writer's room filled w white people not giving#martha's character the respect/agency she deserves for the existing narrative she has. bc they pulled this w mickey too both in series 1+2#if they wanted to portray ten as manipulative then him and martha should've been given more screentime#together where martha (or anyone else) calls him the FUCK out on this. and ten would need to suffer narrative consequences of doing smth#as fucked up as that rather than his happy stable dynamic he has w donna. if they wanted to portray him as oblivious then marthas character#shouldn't have constantly been boiled down to an unrequited crush (particularly her dialogue in the s3 finale - there's a LOT more reasons#why she would choose to leave/why their dynamic was unhealthy besides ten not returning her feelings)#if you read all these tags you may be entitled 2 financial compensation#ten and martha#aspec doc tag
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ok so. kiwami 2. rooftop scene. the ending. it's a bit of a clusterfuck but i wanna talk about one detail, a problem they bring to your attention by Fucking. Talking About Her.
haruka is watching all of this unfold.
[this post is like 4.5k words long + pretty critical + has spoilers for kiwami and kiwami 2, and really minor/vague ones for a couple others. they're not that bad though, trust me (and i added a warning in the one place it is major)]
ALSO CONTENT WARNING i'm gonna talk about kiryu's passive suicidality a good amount in this one, so stay away from this if you think that might affect you negatively/you'd be better off skipping it. i'll also make a tl;dr (which i will highlight in red) at the very end if you really wanna know what my point is that will exclude those elements <3. i am also going to use a lot of choice-based language in regards to kiryu's contemplation of suicide because i think it's the lens through which the games treat the topic, but i personally don't find it a productive or realistic way to look at suicide or suicidal ideation at all. someone dying by suicide absolutely does not mean they don't care about their loved ones enough to fight on or whatever. i love you, and proceed with caution on this one.
(also i'm using the kiwamis as my point of reference because i uh. don't have a ps2? those are the games that i played, and though the differences are likely slight, i wanna be clear about that. also,, ignore the watermark on these screenshots,, i didn't notice them and i'm not retaking them. we're all gonna have to settle for youtube cutscene comps for now xoxo)
first, we have to talk about the ending of the first game.
[note: i am Really Really Confident kiryu has a conversation earlier in the game about his going to jail in nishiki's stead being him running away and choosing not to resist his two options (go to jail or let nishiki go to jail) and define his own path, fighting his way against fate to make it happen. part of why i'm so confident it exists is because it made such an impression on me at the time. it's pretty important to my interpretation of things but i also can't find it for the life of me, so uh. sorry ✌️ i really tried. this post's takes/analysis will be dependent on this scene existing, so keep that in mind. if anyone knows where to find the scene/screenshots of it, lmk and i'll add a follow-up with it]
kiwami stuff
so as she's dying, yumi tells haruka this:
that she may be dying (painfully, and right as she's getting everything she wanted), but she doesn't regret it, because at least she did something rather than running away from it all. that you shouldn't run away, ever.
shortly thereafter, when the police find kiryu and haruka, this exchange happens between him and date. here's the play by play:
date tells kiryu he can get him out of trouble with this, and that if he doesn't, he'll get life in prison; kiryu declines his help:
kiryu is so devastated (understandably) by the back to back losses of the three people closest to him that he resigns himself to life in prison, and the death-in-effect that would be. he would prefer to waste away rather than struggle through a life without them. prison was monotonous and isolating, but coming back after a decade was overwhelming, and coming back to everything being so warped and twisted, and then losing the corrupted scraps he had anyway, well. he wants to go back to sleep. he doesn't want to be in a world where everything's the same except he's on his own. better to return to safety, to die slowly in a hell he knows well than weather a new one where he has control and agency, and thus one where he has the ability to fail and to lose anything at any time. he explains to date that that loss is why he can accept his death:
date shakes him and asks him if there's really nothing left for him, no reason to keep living at all:
then echoes yumi's advice to haruka:
which makes an impression on kiryu:
date gives him a reason to live in the form of haruka, saying she'll be on her own again if he goes to jail. he hijacks kiryu's tragic protector complex to keep him alive, because she needs him, and because she's someone precious to him:
after the dust has cleared,
kiryu and date also have this exchange, where date tells him to stay away from the cops (and presumably arrest and a return to prison, the aforementioned fate akin to death), and kiryu cites haruka as his reason to stay away, one he holds to with no uncertainty (showing again that he's accepted date's logic, that his reason to keep living even when it's incredibly difficult is to care for the more vulnerable haruka). given the weight of the consequences, to me, it feels like date's telling him not to be alone with his thoughts or something. it's almost frightening:
so, what's our takeaway from kiwami?
kiryu lost everything and hit rock bottom, but he chose to fight, and to live life on his own terms, even when it got difficult. that's the narrative life lesson he had to learn to avoid repeating the events of 1995. he made that choice for haruka's sake. it's seen as growth.
and without him, haruka would've just returned to the orphanage (assuming she could make it back to sunflower at all) with no one who knew or understood what she had been through, no one to mourn with her, and no one to give her the attention, care, and protection she needs. kiryu knows what it's like to be an orphan with a limited parental figure who only checks in every so often (kazama, "aunt" yumi), and what someone will do for attention/affection from that person (via both himself and nishiki swearing up, climbing the ranks, etc. arguably haruka coming to kamurocho by herself to find "mizuki" is similar), and what it's like to lose them anyway (again, kazama, yumi). their situations parallel each others' somewhat, and that binds them further. and after losing everyone (which he blames himself for to some extent, as one can probably assume from this and 2, and something key to his arc in later games), he chooses to protect her. and this time, he won't fail. at least partially because failing would hurt him, too. he'd have nothing left again.
okay. now we get to kiwami 2.
if you forgot, the context is basically:
everybody's fighting on the roof of a building which i'm sure will not be a running theme or anything as the series goes on
there's a bomb that's about to go off and they don't know how to/can't defuse it
ryuji shot the twist villain to death, but took fatal hits to do so
sayama's like hey!! let's get out of here!!! and kiryu and ryuji are like nooo we have to settle this oughh it's punchin time and they stick her on an elevator and send her down so she doesn't have to watch
ryuji loses. sayama returns, they have a cute sibling heart to heart, and ryuji dies in her arms. sad
kiryu is in rough shape as well, and there's like 2 minutes left on the bomb's timer
here's the scene itself:
sayama tells kiryu they have to run, and kiryu says he can't. the gist is "let's run!" "you go without me" "i'm not leaving you!" "i'm in no condition to run" "i'll carry you then!!" sayama: *sees how fucked up kiryu is, realizes he's Going To Die Anyway* "ok, then i'm staying with you!" and then further bickering about that, before they give up and make out (as one does i guess)
date (he's here now) yells this at them from a helicopter:
before someone else in the helicopter tells date this:
we get this shot of haruka calling out to kiryu as the helicopter swerves away:
and kiryu and sayama have this exchange about haruka where they say they let her down, but that she'll understand:
then they hug and the bomb ticks to zero right when the credits hit. in post credits it's revealed that the twist villain defused the bomb when they weren't looking, betraying his co-villain for reasons i truthfully do not remember and am unwilling to look up. it's not about that right now.
so, how does this scene interact with the ending of the previous game?
the short answer is "badly <3" but here's the long answer:
it's about choices.
the thing about fiction is that anything you want to have happen, as a writer, can happen. it may not be effective, internally consistent, or logical, but you can write it regardless. audiences suspend their disbelief for the sake of engaging fully with your fiction, but everyone has a threshold past which they will stop being engaged in a story and either become uninvested or annoyed. writers usually have lines they're unwilling to cross as well. but in almost every story, there's at least a couple of places where they stretch reality a little to make the narrative they want happen. this is not a bad thing at all. that's how stories get told.
now, i'm gonna be real with you. i don't care about how feasible plots are like 95% of the time. it's not something i think about much, nor is it something i prioritize. i am a very character-centric media consumer, so if world building and/or plot are a bit stale or contrived, that doesn't really bother me much so long as i'm invested in the characters involved. some people can't stand plot holes or the ways musicals burst into song or whatever, and that's fine for them. but it's not something i tend to find that all that important.
this is all to say that i have a sorta affection for rgg's flavor of bullshit pulling. and it is a powerful flavor, maybe even an acquired taste, but i can and do rock with it so long as it doesn't damage the characters too much. this is why i'm not making a lengthy post howling into the void about joji kazama or the second joon-gi han or how many secret relatives there are. those things are silly and endearing and a clumsy yet heartfelt part of a series i care about very deeply. i'll joke about it, but i don't consider it much of a flaw. it's more like personality. flaws are texture, and they help a piece's identity. point is i am very, very willing and able to suspend my disbelief for these games in exchange for a good time, particularly via good characters.
(if you want another example of where i draw the line from within rgg, the answer's the YAKUZA 4 SPOILERS INCOMING rubber bullets twist, because i think 1) it's actively horrifically stupid (especially retconning a scene we SAW HAPPEN. WE SAW BLOOD ON EACH IMPACT, AND RUBBER BULLETS DON'T OFTEN BREAK SKIN THAT DEEPLY (THEIR DAMAGE IS MORE PERCUSSIVE THAN PENETRATIVE). THESE EVENTS HAPPEN IN THE SAME GAME YOU DON'T HAVE TO RETCON IT JUST REWRITE IT. OR DON'T SHOW THE HIT AT ALL SO THERE'S MORE PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. DON'T DO THIS JUST TO HYPE UP YOUR SHITTY VILLAIN NO ONE CARES ABOUT. and 2) (a bit more importantly) i think it actively removes saejima's primary internal conflict for that game, that being his intense guilt over the 18 murders he thinks he committed, one i was invested and interested in. but this isn't a rubber bullets post.)
characters in this series walk off a lot of life threatening injuries. they survive miraculously, they escape in the nick of time, and they pull through in the end. kiryu still somehow hasn't killed anyone. almost every game in his saga ends with an "is kiryu gonna make it out this time?!?" shortly followed by a "yeah lol. lmao" postcredits reveal. kiryu fucking punches a marble statue into dust in the first game. having a story that asks you to suspend your disbelief so much and so often means that when a decision is made, it's not the writers saying, "well, this would have to happen so we are obligated/forced to write it happening" so much as "we wanted this to happen for some reason(s)," because you already know that they're not guided solely by logic. again, this is true of all writers, it's just amplified in stories like these because they've already given you so many hard mode suspension of disbelief moments (they've broken you in like leather, yeah? or like how obvious internet scams allow for self selection by being so obvious that only the most vulnerable people would fall for them. they curate an audience willing to play along with their bullshit flavor so they can tell a story that's more likely to satisfy that audience. in a good way, in a fun way! mass appeal is overrated). there is not much limit to what this series is willing to try and sell you.
so when ryuji takes lethal damage taking out the big bad, that's a choice. when he doesn't die immediately, that's a choice. when ryuji and kiryu send sayama away in the soon-to-be-forgotten elevator so they can settle this like men or whatever despite the literal actual bomb about to go off, that's a choice. when sayama comes back, that's a choice. when ryuji does die, that's a choice. when kiryu determines that he can't escape in time, that's a choice. when sayama is unwilling to leave him, that's a choice. when she says she'll carry him out and there's an elevator right fucking there and then she's like never mind i guess i won't anymore we're dying together right now kiryu like they're not gonna even try?? wouldn't distancing themselves from the blast give themselves a better shot, something that's super possible given the 2 minutes they have with that elevator??? sayama you met him like a week and a half ago why are you ready to die with him that's not a plot hole i just think that's kinda strange whatever anyway, that's a choice. when kiryu stops arguing with her so they can kiss (next to her brother's corpse), that's a choice. when date shows up, that's a choice. when the helicopter can't save them because the bomb was going to go off too soon, that's a choice. when they put haruka in that helicopter and take her away, let her only impact be reminding kiryu and sayama that they can't help her, that's a choice. when they spend their last moments talking as if they're already dead, then simply waiting, that's a choice.
they're all choices that the writers made for the characters, and we are asked to believe them for the sake of achieving the writers' vision, as with any story. the only problem is that the writers' vision here fucking blows.
i'm not saying it would be realistic for kiryu and sayama (and even ryuji) to make it out alive, but it wouldn't be out of character for the series in the slightest. kiryu is suddenly unable to power through here, and that's a choice. so, what is their vision?
put simply, i think they wanted a romantic last stand for kiryu and sayama, a tragic scene of doomed, devoted lovers. and i think they wanted an edge-of-your-seat fake out death. they wanted spectacle.
here's how some specific choices they made undermine all that shit we talked about earlier from the first game.
once again, kiryu is called by date to live, to pick himself up and keep going, no matter how impossible the odds are. he's even reminded by haruka's presence, his one anchor in keeping himself going. the growth he had in the parallel scene in the previous game is challenged, and he fails.
it's not enough this time. and that's a choice.
it's also one i can't think of a good reason for, and that's the real kicker.
characters can have developmental backslide just like people do, and if they're given good reason for it, it can be just as, if not far more compelling that purely linear growth (i am a chimera ant arc enjoyer, and that's all i'll say. sorry if you haven't seen hunter x hunter. uhh. i am also a zuko avatar enjoyer if that helps). but i can't think of anything that happened in that game that would cause this from a character perspective. if anything, kiryu should be less likely to do this intentionally. he's spent around a year raising haruka, and a year has passed since he lost his loved ones. at the very least, the pain should be more dull, though it is established through an early nightmare sequence that his ass is (justifiably) not over it yet. given that their deaths were the initial motivation for his willingness to rot forever, theoretically, he should be more motivated to stay alive than before now that he's got more investment and stability in his life outside of them, particularly when it comes to haruka, his reason for surviving. and if the ongoing nature of the trauma was the motivator for this, then they should've had it affect him more past that nightmare scene (it really serves more as a recap of the last game than anything else) so it didn't come out of nowhere. so the reminder of the lesson that saved his life and then guided it for at least a year afterwards, one that the whole resolution of the previous game relied on heavily falls flat for... some reason.
i think this is a good time to mention that, generally speaking, you don't write arbitrary choices into characters. sure, people in real life are often sporadic, but when analyzing fictional characters, every choice is filed into a portfolio of characterization that can and should be analyzed. going for pure realism can obfuscate their development, motivations, themes, etc. their choices and reactions may be unorthodox, but they must be internally consistent. this is very related to how i view plot contrivance as well. characters drive the plot, not the other way around. stories are about the ways characters affect their worlds/lives and vice versa, and they're the human face to the themes and ideas the writers are trying to explore and express. maybe my stance on this seems hypocritical. i don't know if it is. but to me, plot issues are usually a matter of engagement and investment, while character issues are a matter of substance.
i hope this doesn't feel patronizing explaining all of this, but i want you guys to know where i'm coming from in my analysis. starting at my base philosophy on writing is the easiest way to do that, i feel. defining the terms of the debate, and all that. anyway
and i mean, look. they survive because "it was defused the whole time we just didn't see it happen", so it's not like narrative tension or realism or whatever was THAT big of a priority overall. if it was gonna be a cop-out anyway, they should'nt have ruined kiryu's development too, yeah?. and sayama fucks off to america after this game anyway, so it's not like the doomed lovers thing had much payoff or meaning after this one (though you could argue that's more an issue with yakuza 3 than yk2, which has some merit to it). which means that they chose to sacrifice kiryu's prior development and internal logic for the sake of cheap tension for their finale that was both kinda illogical in and of itself (the elevator!! the elevator!!!) and a romantic climax that neither required nor really benefitted from this staging. (like. you coulda had them make out and then get saved by date, or kiss on the elevator in a "it's moving, but will we make it in time??" way or whatever. look i'm not saying those are great options either but they're SOMETHING okay. it would remove/reduce the amount of time wasted on characters sitting around with their thumbs up their asses for no reason in this finale).
instead the message of this finale is that, actually, sometimes it is impossible to change your circumstances and fight for your own way out of an awful situation. and what should you do about this unfortunate truth? uh. die! i guess. it's the exact opposite of the encouraging, optimistic message of the last game. zetsubou chou pride my ass.
note: i feel i should mention that when suicidality is brought up within the series (particularly in substories), it is always something someone has to overcome themselves through wanting it badly enough. they simply need the inspiration and the motivation to keep going. it's arguably treated as a moral obligation. frankly, the series is broadly very meritocratic (<- bad) when it comes to this topic (and others, but that's a Whole Other Thing. see akiyama's weird loan shark tests as well). sheer will and resolve is enough to conquer any problem, be it physical or mental/emotional, and it's irresponsible to act/feel otherwise. this is the logic the games operating under, and kiryu is often the mouthpiece for this bootstrap-pulling "tough love" sentiment. so when kiryu "chooses" to die, yet faces no emotional fallout from date, haruka, or anyone else, it feels very out of place. it's not just an odd choice; it's specifically, once again, an odd choice to make in context of the game/series/character it appears in.
kiryu's just like eh, haruka'll watch her only family die right as she gets some sense of tentative stability and lets her guard down after a devastating month the year prior (and a relatively dismal upbringing before that) that we trauma bonded over. sure, she likely came to view me as the one who would stay no matter what, who was too strong to be taken out, who she could always rely on, and so i know that dying would hurt her immensely, but she's smart enough to know it'd happen eventually. her eventual recovery means it's okay for me to do this (somehow, in a way it wasn't in the first game). it's an excuse within the narrative's logic, and one it is uncritical of simply because it's kiryu. he gets a pass.
and i think with the previously mentioned passive suicidality and general series-long mental health issues kiryu displays (i mean. yakuza 5's literally his depression arc), this could be retroactively seen as an interesting choice, like a piece in that particular narrative. i don't even dislike that viewing, especially in terms of fan approach. but (assuming this went down the same in yakuza 2), they likely didn't have that in mind. all they had then was the first game and the movie. and they took the first game's Entire Message and contradicted it for nothing but a scene they wanted to have happen because it'd be suspenseful and/or emotional (without actually doing the work to earn it). and they're not fans trying to analyze his character, they're the ones making choices for him. and they chose to massacre my boy. and if the subject of kiryu's mental health was a priority of theirs, why didn't they explore that? haruka and date's feelings on him not resisting and their words not being enough (whether that blame is justified by the narrative or not (it shouldn't be btw)), the uncomfortable drifting that resigning yourself to death and living afterwards anyway often brings, literally any conversation about it besides the minimal shit we get post credits of date being like "did you know about the bomb not having a fuse?" which like. bad answer either way (which is why they weren't straightforward about it, the cowards). you can't just be like "oh uh. idk he just gave up this time. yeah he was gonna die on purpose for some reason. good thing the bomb was fake lol" and then pack up and go home!! that's stupid!! any merit the idea of kiryu dying by suicide in this scene and in this way could have had from a character-based perspective loses its weight because 1. it didn't happen (for kinda stupid reasons), which makes it fall flat and 2. no one is really affected by the fact that it almost did, including him. they sacrificed his ass and replaced it with nothing, even when there could have been interesting outcomes to it.
so the narrative effectively chose to kill him by making the situation impossible, and this impossibility is ultimately arbitrary, given the series' usual approach to miraculous, illogical escapes. that, or the choice to stay was up to kiryu and sayama, one that 1. doesn't make sense and is actively regressive in context of kiryu's arc in the only other game in the series (as well as his whole saga in retrospect) and 2. one that contradicts how the series sees/treats resignation to death/death by suicide in all other contexts without being addressed, challenged, or condemned in ways it would in all other contexts. because they don't want you to think about it like that. they want you to think he (and the narrative) had no choice, that it made sense to do that. but it didn't. it doesn't.
and look, honestly? if i was bleeding out and had like 2 minutes to live, there's a non zero chance i'd say fuck it and kiss a girl too. i get it. but i am (and this is crucial) not a fucking yakuza character. and i'm certainly not kiryu kazuma.
tl;dr (basically just rephrasing the second to last main paragraph)
there are not sufficient character reasons for kiryu and sayama not trying to escape. additionally, because the narrative regularly facilitates even less likely escapes, it's not so constrained to logic and reality that it couldn't pull this one off. the choice to let their situation be impossible this one time was a cheap and arbitrary way of forcing a scene they thought would be cool and dramatic, and in doing so they chose to cannibalize a key emotional note of the previous finale (namely kiryu's mission to dedicate his life to protecting haruka) for hollow last minute stakes-upping in this one. it is then completely disregarded anyway. god damn.
#got so into this post that i used tumblr on my laptop for the first time to surpass mobile's image limit#i also added transcriptions in the alt text (which i should do more often)#actually thinking about it in the movie kiryu teaches haruka that lesson about stumbling on.. and she's the one to ask to follow him... hm.#just interesting given that the movie came out before 2. i don't think it makes much of a difference to the post it's just neat to me#one of my favorite parts of writing this was skimming through a bunch of yk1/yk2 cutscenes and noticing how often kiryu pats haruka's head#it happens a lot more than i remembered and it's very sweet to me. get bonked little one <3#another good thing was realizing you can edit tags when you're not on mobile.... fucking life changing. i have lost hours to mobile tag#editing and i'm not even kidding about that#speaking of editing this one took like 6 hours.. my brother used “yakuza autism” (verb) for me earlier and it's so true. source: this post#i did have a short break to get food bc i hadn't eaten all day but that's mostly because i woke up at 3pm. anyway#also if you like kiwami 2's ending you're not even remotely alone. i looked at the comment sections of the scene comps and ppl love it#and more power to you!! i like it when people enjoy things. and tbh i DO have feelings that i'm supposed to about that ending#i just also have feelings you're not supposed to. like. anger. i guess.#rgg#ryu ga gotoku#skrunk meta#aww yeah it's a new tag babeyy#yakuza kiwami 2#kiwami 2#yakuza#like a dragon#yk2#kiryu kazuma#sawamura haruka#sayama kaoru#maybe my thoughts'll change after replaying the games...? it's been like a year and a half since i beat yk2 so i am a bit fuzzy on it#yakuza kiwami spoilers#yakuza kiwami 2 spoilers
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okay, so, I've collected a bunch of DP fandom stuff that I remember off the top of my head, specifically in chronological order & colour coded here in this post (fics/comics, tumblr posts, important imo) for no reason other than I saw a post asking for Phandom history & it triggered my biggest, most long-running hyperfixation & now I'm curious if anyone else remembers stuff.
this link is going to be the permanent version I will be updating, but I'm posting what I currently have (gonna go through my old laptop later for more) just to let people know. you can also find the link on my blog, but only on desktop. It isn't colour coded there, sorry.
please share more if you got anything else cuz I'm 100% sure I'm missing a lot of stuff & am too interested now. the biggest reason a lot of stuff isn't here is that I simply can't find it. second biggest reason is i forgor. things not included here aren't "unimportant," this is just the first stuff that comes to mind.
putting it under a cut 'cause it got kinda long
Mars by JadeRabbyt (2005)
Checkmate by pearl84 (2006)
Conversations of a Ghost Gabber by Cordria (2006)
The Foley Maneuver by bluemoonalto (2007)
One Thousand Years by Nylah (2008)
Lab Rat by AnneriaWings (2009)
Lost by Cordria (2010?) [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Phantom of Truth by Haiju (2011)
Ghost Deaths (2012)
Through Coals and Rain by Kakawot (2012)
Shadow of a Doubt by Haiju (2013)
Pink Pants (2013?)
Wes (2014) [original] [1] [2] [3] [4]
this "I'm Inevitable" gif (2014)
Space AU (2014)
Treading Water by The Full Catastrophe (2014)
Danny, you dead IDIOT!! comic (2014)
wash away the darkest days by anthrop (2014)
Reverse Trio (2014)
Inverse Trio (2014-2016) ALT
Halfas are "feral children" (2015)
Burn the Streets, Burn the Cars by anthrop (2015)
It's Not Gay if He's Dead by phantomrose96 (2015)
You Smell Like Death by starfleetrambo (2015)
Ghost Bird AU by @rest-in-peachs (2016?)
Things I Can(not) Do In Amity Park by RedHeadsRock1010 (2016)
KEtTLE by Cordria (2016)
Deeper, Darker by Silvermoonphantom (2016)
Danny Phantom Punches Butch Hartman In The Face by MistressVintage (2017)
Dannypocalypse (2017)
Ghost Train (2017?)
Ghost Physics by jayrockin (2017)
Ghost Infographics (2018)
The Taxonomy of Ghost Cores: An Observational Study (2018) Communicating with Ghosts Professionally: A Study (2018)
Species in Danny Phantom (2018?)
Diddles Piddles by diddly-darn-ghost (2018)
Broken Ectoplasm by ghostanimal (2019)
Ghost of Heroes by Enigmaris & ScarletNightFury (2019-2020)
do not stand at my grave and cry (i am not there, i did not die) by blueh (2020)
Undercover Phantom by artistfingers (2021)
Corruption is a Two Way Street by datawyrms (2021)
Things That Bleed by artistfingers, kkachis, & Perfectly_Inconspicuous (2022)
10,000 works on AO3 (2022)
Ghost Speak:
Danny's handwriting (2015?)
Cordria (2015)
Fiver-Rivers [1] [2] [3] (2019)
Rubber Chicken Sounds (2019)
#Danny Phantom#Phandom History Archive#do you even understand how hard it was to find the original Wes post????????#i spent like 2 hours on that alone#Wes Weston why are you so hard to find#just realizing that a lot of shit happened in 2014#like. 2014/2015 ish#i joined somewhere between 2014 & 2016 so i guess i literally came here right at the peak of phandom activity#the height of tumblr's paranormal activity. you might say#i think i'm just biased though#should i put my own fics on here. Phantom is pretty important to me being my first DP fic#& also the thing that got me back into writing#it's not very good but by god if i dont love it. & anyways i put Bird AU on here lol i think i can put Phantom up at some point. as a treat#also if any links are broken tell me cuz i'm not checking them again. it's 4am#reminder: gotta find those Bird AU fics i read & put em here. there ARE actual Bird AU fics. i know there are. i did not hallucinate that#it just might be the hardest thing on earth to do since that was years ago & i have no idea what they were called#anyway gonna add a fuckton of fics & (hopefully) tumblr posts when i go through my old laptop. i got everything bookmarked on there#like. so many fics. i had them organized too based on what kind of fic it was. but they all have stupid names cuz i was like 15#me: i should do my stencil art today. just to be a bit productive & also maybe make money#my brain: what if you organized Danny Phantom fandom posts into a big archive for people to look at? for free. until 4am.#me: you know what that sounds so much better let's do that
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Song of the Day: March 8
“Cosmo Canyon" by Nobuo Uematsu for Final Fantasy VII
#song of the day#sliiiightly cheating as kaylithographica reminds me we haven't actually heard this in its entirety in the game quite yet#but it's one of the songs I enjoy most and I do love Red and we did make it to Cosmo Canyon today#I've been talking mostly about game progress in my tag babbles these last however many days but I have a sillier project as well#as I watch the game I've been going through my bookmarks and drafts and notes to myself and organizing things#it keeps my hands busy and it is a project I try to undertake every spring-ish so I was about due anyway#and I am very proud of myself because I have taken my 'deal with later' bookmarks from nearly 2000 down to a mere 800#a pittance!#(a lot of them I just shuffled to different better-organized folders but still! all progress is progress)#my tumblr drafts is also well over 1000 but it's also much better organized#once I finish with it I'll dump it all into the queue and probably it'll be hmm.#spitball math says probably 800 into the queue and 200odd to otherwise deal with#that's 80 days of queue at the current pace which also seems roughly correct#the post that came out yesterday that talked about queue lengths was four months after I first saw it but it was otherwise delayed#my queue stopped while I was sick in December and again while I voyaged in January and I think for work a few times before that#so I am in accordance to my own rough yearly rhythms still mostly on top of things!
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how much we bettin that i, with my habit of getting attached to doomed by the narrative charas, will eventually add ( MM-based ) stockman /SILLY but also........half-joking
#WEREWOLF RAMBLES. / OOC.#( as always whenever i make posts contemplating muses: take this w/ a massive grain of salt lol#however i DO have a lot of thoughts abt him; esp AU thoughts. bc that also seems to be what happens when i grow attached to#doomed charas; i start essentially thinking about 'what could have been' bc!!!! theyre always very interesting 2 think about!!#esp for a chara as diverse as stockman who's historically been both 'mad scientist' & 'a wee bit tragic' depending on where u look#(FROM my limited understanding btw; the most of him ive seen outside of MM is 87 & ive only watched a lil of 2003 so far.#im working on it ok /SILLY /lighthearted)#ANYWAY HIIIII IM BACK my first day was a lil hectic & confusing but i came out ok!!#gonna be hanging out around here for the rest of the night now bc i am. So Tired; KJHGKJFG#also tumblr straight up crashing when i tried to post the 1st time. smfh let me SPEAK )
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girl the rice post has reached iceland
#this is so fascinating. yes i am going to go through everything and put it in a google sheet#like a sane person#also it's fun that now is the first time im encounterung icelandic in that post#also. a surprising amount of tumblr users speak hebrew#also also. the conclusion isnt very surprising. i mean i think everyone assumed the root would be the same for places where rice >#< wasn't native. what i hadnt thought of before is that it would have so many names in the places it came from#i.e different names for cooked/uncooked rice etc#and it makes perfect sense! but it's still endlessly interesting and not something i had thought of before#which. my dad had 24 years to tell me cooked and uncooked rice had different names in his dialect. but ig he waited for the tumblr post#and now this started a whole thing. im going to look for projects attempting to preserve jewish-iraqi-arabic#anyway did you enjoy this. whatever this post is? i did#food ment#🤎
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🙇🏻.
#why did I get more embarrassed about being gay and trans in college#this is a vent so like 🧍🏻#I think it’s bc I was outed by my gay friends like. at least once a week. that now people knowing makes me so stressed out it’s unreal#also that I didn’t pass for my first semester that now that I can pass it stresses me to have people know#in hs I was super out. Like I came out on Instagram and my whole friend group was super out and everyone knew#but now people knowing makes me so stressed and like I did something embarrassing#and my college friends say shit all the time about being gay in public and I’m always looking around to make sure no one can hear them bc#the thought of strangers knowing I’m gay legit makes me so fucking upset. why did it just start now#obviously I love being gay and love my gay friends but I feel so weird about it in college Idk why it’s more so now#I had ‘pride’ in hs why am I so ashamed now#I’m trying to be better abt it during pride month but I don’t think I’ll be brave enough to post anything on my main insta#this is all abt like insta and irl all the way obviously I’m very homo on tumblr lmao
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People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.
The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.
But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.
The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.
This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.
Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.
So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-
And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—
And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!
If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.
The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.
It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)
I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.
I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.
The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win
#November 5th#november 5 2020#the fifth of november#just a random ramble#November 5th 2020 is such an important day to me#it really is a holiday#but it does confuse me when I see people analyzing it primarily as a supernatural thing#instead of a ‘hysteria over an election reaches a breaking point when inane zero stakes fandom news comes out and we all latch onto it’thing#but yeah!!#this is my personal essay out of love for the holiday
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S. GOJO ★ DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU'RE IN MY FANTASIES?
Pairing : fem reader / teacher!Gojo
Synopsis : Gojo j*rking off to fantasies of you until eventually the two of you do it together on a phone call.
Warnings/tags : 🔞 smut, solo male m*sturbation, p*rnstar fantasy, d!ck visuals, big d!ck Gojo, risky m*sturbation (office), slight perv behavior, toys, breeding kink, use of sl*t, dirty talk, m*sturbating on phone call, pillow humping, mutual m*sturbation, phone sex
Note : lol this is the post that got accidentally published once. i hate tumblr mobile!! 😿 i still want to edit the original bc it has some juicy stuff. but i put some of it into this 😈
Library | Gojo
The first time he does it, he doesn't actually realize that he's fantasizing about you. You enter his mind randomly one night as he winds down after a long day of teaching. He naturally slides his hands down his pants.
Satoru starts massaging his growing hard-on through the fabric. His big hand wraps around the veiny shaft and he gives it a few squeezes, sighing at the sensation.
Satoru hastily unbuckles his belt and slides it off with a whip-like snap, pale veiny hands rolling it neatly before setting it down on the table besides his bed. Those pale veiny hands quickly push down the hem of his pants and grab the base of his stiff cock.
He starts stroking it slowly up and down, with his eyes closed in relaxation and his other hand snuggled behind his head.
Jerking off leisurely, not rushing at all, just enjoying how it feels to pleasure himself with his own hand.
He pictures you naked. It's just a brief thought. He grumbles at himself and shakes the image out of his mind, as if he was indulging in a taboo act.
You're the teacher he works alongside. Every day you greet him with that sweet smile and kind voice that makes his heart tick. You're so innocent and untainted, he holds back from imagining you lewdly even though he really wants to.
He bites his lip at the thought of you.
Today was hard for him, you know, because your tight uniform seemed... especially tight. He commented on it in the afternoon, of course very subtly;
"Nice tits." he flirted jokingly. But his eyes were glued to your breasts like he'd never seen a pair before.
"Thanks. My uniform shrunk in the wash." you giggled in response.
"Ah, I see." he nodded understandingly, gulping when you bent over to pick something up — even if you tried to keep your skirt down, it still rose up your thighs just enough for him to find out that you wore a G-string.
The image of your body is stuck in his head now, when he's all alone in his king-sized bed.
It makes him cum. And he cums gently, letting out a barely audible grunt of breath while it dribbles out of his cockhole and runs down his shaft.
He swipes some cum off the underside of his cock and sucks it off his finger, tasting himself. Then he falls asleep like a baby, not thinking too deeply on the fact that he came to the thought of you.
****
The next few times get more and more intense.
His cock feels so much better when you're on his mind. Even when he's in a risky setting... like his office.
Though no one would dare to walk into Gojo Satoru's office without permission, there's still the risk that you could just burst into the room — maybe to complain about him slacking off.
He thinks about the risk, and it turns him on more... his cock twitches at the fantasy of you walking in on him stroking his big cock while sat in his office, long legs spread wide and head tilted back in ecstasy.
You'd find out the obvious but dirty fact that even Gojo Satoru needs to let off steam every now and then. He's not just a teacher all the time, he's also a frustratedly horny man.
Satoru squeezes the tip of his cock and clenches his jaw.
The angry veins decorating his shaft are all raised. His cock pulses harder at the thought of you walking through his office doors — he'd love to see your reaction. Would your mouth drop open? You'd find out just how huge his cock is. Would you offer to help? Nah, that only happens in porn, right? He keeps fantasizing about the scenario as if you and him are two pornstars on set.
In this fantasy, you're just sooo shocked and thirsty for Gojo Satoru's big cock, you can't help but ride him in his office even though you risk the whole school hearing the skin slapping and moans.
He pumps his fist up and down his cock faster. You know, originally he intended to nap — he rarely gets any sleep because of much he's needed in the Jujutsu world. But for some reason, after passing you by in the corridors, he got an angry boner that just wouldn't go away.
Working up a sweat under his black uniform, Satoru slumps down in the chair while totally getting lost in his pornstar fantasy of you. He gets too hot so he splits open his jacket and unbuttons his expensive shirt until his abs are exposed. It's funny, he's slowly turning into a performer... and all he's doing is just jerking off alone for himself.
"Fuck." he mutters under his breath.
He orgasms so hard while thinking of you deepthroating him that his toes curl — that never happens. Cum splatters on his abs and he breathes heavily.
You knock on the door and he gets shocked out of his skull.
"Gojo? I have those files you requested." you spoke through the door, "Can I come in?"
"Shit uh, wait! Just give me a second!" he yells, hurryingly cleaning his cum off his abs with a tissue.
He hastily discards the tissue, and buttons up his shirt, leaving a slit of his chest exposed to catch your eye, and calls for you, "Come in."
You swish your hips when you walk in, and it drives him nuts. He acts ordinarily, like he wasn't just getting off to a wild fantasy of you, his co-worker.
"Here they are." you say, and set the files down on his desk.
"Thanks." he stares at you hard.
You'd look so good bent over my desk.
"Gojo?"
"Yup?"
"You look flushed, do you have a fever?" you ask innocently.
He swallows and replies shakily, "Nah, I'm good. I was just... doing push-ups."
"In your... office? Fully clothed?" you eye him out confusedly.
He makes a cute, dumb face and shrugs his shoulders.
****
Satoru's made jerking off part of his nightly routine. It helps him sleep. And he also can't help himself; you're more in his life now than ever, he keeps your company often and his feelings are growing quick.
He's laid in bed.
His lips part erotically and his legs tremble as he furiously jerks off. Suddenly, he shoots forward and groans "Fuck!", cumming hard all over his crotch.
Satoru's cock doesn't want him to sleep tonight. It stands up again a few minutes after he cleans up his cum and rolls onto his side to sleep. He grumbles and tosses around, hoping his boner will go away.
But it doesn't.
So he starts grinding his cock into the bed, whimpering your name into his pillow. Why is he whimpering your name? And why can't he stop himself?
He scrunches up the duvet and humps it, ass muscles tensing with each rough thrust. The friction isn't enough, he starts stroking it with his hand.
But even that isn't satisfying enough.
I need a fleshlight so bad.
He squeezes his cock tight, massages his fat balls, switches hands even, does everything he can. But his cock is needy for more and his orgasm refuses to come along.
Satoru grumbles and stops, glaring up at the ceiling for a good long while before coming up with an idea.
He props a pillow and buries his heavy cock into it. Then he plants two big hands on it, grabbing it as if it's your hips, and thrusts his greedy cock back and forth.
The bed squeaks under the force of the Strongest's hard thrusts. He fucks the pillow and talks dirty to it in his mind, pretending it's you.
"Just let me have your pussy, please."
"You wanna have my babies? Of course you do. Slut."
"That's it, lay there and let me knock you up."
The thought of you squeezing his muscular biceps in your tiny hands is what makes him cum. He groans and clenches his teeth, jawline becoming super defined as he cums into the crinkled up pillow. His gooey cum spills out and stains the fabric.
He gets hit with a wave of post-nut clarity. "What the fuck..." he pushes his hair out of his eyes.
His forehead is sweaty, his chest is heaving, and he feels so guilty for getting off to you again.
****
So Gojo Satoru bought a fleshlight after that frustrating night. He rushed to leave work early, so you caught him.
"Don't be lazy, 'Toru." you frowned, "You're really gonna let me finish this paperwork all by myself?"
The doe eyes you gave him stuck in his mind. All he replied with was a suspicious chuckle and a lame excuse.
"I'm so tired, gimme a break just this once, please?" he pleaded, feeling his blood rush south. You looked especially good.
"Alright, fine then. Get some rest, okay?" you said caringly, letting him off.
He squeezes his cock into the pocket pussy and pumps it up and down quick, relishing in the sound of lube squelching.
The toy is too small for his big cock, but he likes that. It makes him think about how tight you'd be — oh damn it, there he goes again thinking of you when he really shouldn't be.
"I know it's too big, baby, but take it please..." he's dirty talking to you in his mind.
Satoru's got an unsuspecting kinky side to his personality, and it really shows as he fucks his toy. His heavy balls slap against the silicone, causing lube to squirt out.
He momentarily stills inside to suck the sticky cherry lube off his finger, imagining it's your juices. Thinking of how you taste makes his cock twitch, and he starts up with his pounding thrusts again, grunting under his breath and clenching his jaw.
Satoru's got an awful breeding kink. He once told you at a Christmas party that he hoped to start a family one day. Now suddenly as his orgasm works up with each thrust, he thinks back on your response;
"Me too, I'd love to have a big family."
He groans and twists your words in his fantasy; "Cum inside me, Satoru! Gimme your babies!"
"Fuck." he hisses, cumming hard inside the fleshlight.
Once isn't enough, he keeps filling it until he works up a sweat and his cock tires out.
After cleaning his cum out the toy, he washes his face in the bathroom and leans over the sink, shaking his head at himself for thinking of you saying such lewd things.
****
Fact: Satoru sleeps naked.
When passing the mirror in the mornings, he rubs his eyes and takes a moment to check himself out. He flexes his abs, and then a raunchy fantasy brews in his mind;
What if she rode my abs? Could I make her cum like that.
"Oh my god." he mutters out loud, rubbing his face in annoyance at his own horniness.
He slides on his sweatpants without underwear — cock too big, you know, gotta let it breathe without underwear. And he goes to the kitchen to make an super-sweetened coffee.
But his boner is annoying him. It stands up, making a bulging tent out of his sporty sweatpants.
Abandoning his coffee, Satoru gets his fleshlight and tapes it to the kitchen countertop, and squirts lube into it until it oozes out. He likes it sloppy.
Still thinking hard about the fantasy of you riding his abs, he lubes his abs up and caresses them slowly, feeling up and down his chest and tweaking his pink nipples for a bit before paying his cock attention.
"That's it, ride my abs. I know you like them."
He'd love to see you humping on his stomach like it's your pillow. As he slides into the fleshlight and slowly pumps in and out of it, he wonders how you touch yourself. Do you use toys, or your fingers? Do you take your time?
Pressing his two palms flat on the kitchen countertop, Satoru starts fucking the fleshlight harder and harder until the squelching sound is loud enough to reach his ears.
He's starting to think more deeply about you — how soft and warm your cunt must feel. How it would squish under the weight of his heavy cock. He'd definitely slap his cock onto your tummy to show you how much cock you were about to take inside.
Without thinking, he brokenly moans your name as he cums hard.
****
One night, you're on a call with Satoru. He lays back on his bed, long legs stretched out. Even though you're talking business stuff, the sound of your voice gets him hard and he rolls over — soft grunts carry through the phone to you.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing. Moving around. You were saying?"
As you keep talking, Satoru starts subconsciously humping his pillow.
"Ugh, fuck..."
"What was that?"
"Sorry, got a cramp." he lies, sensitive cock twitching against the pillow.
He humps it harder and harder, sometimes slowing or stopping to reply to something you say.
"Are you okay? You sound like you're breathing heavily."
"Yeah, just... working out."
"... what's with you and working out so often? Didn't you work out in your office the other day? Freak." you giggle.
Your giggle makes his dick throb. He smiles guiltily.
"I've just been enjoying myself lately... um, with exercising." he speaks, voice sounding oddly sultry.
He keeps sliding his cock back and forth on the pillow. You return to the previous topic of grading problems, and he listens intently.
"What do you think, Satoru?"
He lets out a squeaky grunt that could easily be excused as one of those noises you make during exercise.
"Couldn't hear you, c-can you repeat that?"
"(blablablagradingsomethingsomething) Satoru." he hears you say his name at the end again and it brings his orgasm closer.
He nearly chokes as he swallows. "Yeahhh that sounds g-good... so good. Ugh, fuck."
"Satoru?"
He cums so hard hearing you call his name. As his cum spurts out, he pretends like nothing's happening and keeps talking to you in a shaky voice. A few seconds pass and he speaks a little more normally.
"Must be some work out routine to make you swear like that." you joke, voice suggesting that you knew exactly what he just did.
"Uh... y-yeah." he acts a fool. His face burns red hot realizing that he just possibly fucked up big time.
"Well, you're probably all sweaty and gross. Why don't you go shower and I'll call you back?" you suggest.
His heart beats hard and he cringes at himself. "Yeah, I think I'll go do that..." he looks down at his cum staining pillow. "... wish you could join me." he mutters under his breath.
"Wow," you giggle. "I didn't think you liked me in that way."
He grins, cheek squishing against his phone screen. "Sorry for being a perv."
"Not at all. I like the attention you give me."
His heart flutters. Well since the mood is set, he thinks, maybe he should prod and see how far he can take this.
"Do you think of me when you're alone in bed?" he asks.
When you hesitate to reply, he gets a little nervous.
"More than I'm willing to admit." you reply.
He smirks. "Oh yeah?" he flusters you with his deepened voice. "What do you fantasize about?"
"Mmm, come find out." you tease.
His boner is sticking up, begging for some relief.
"... I'm hard."
"Yeah, I'm wet."
"Uh... do you mind if I...?"
"Exercise?" you joke.
He giggles guiltily, "Yeah."
"... why don't we do it together?"
He widens his eyes and blanks for a second.
"You wanna touch yourself with me?" he asks in disbelief.
"I am already." you reply.
He chokes up, "Oh."
"So... what exactly were you doing earlier?" you ask suggestively, rubbing yourself through your panties slowly.
Satoru hums, "You wanna know my exercise routine?"
"Haha, yeah..."
"... I was just fucking my pillow. I never usually do that unless I'm really sensitive."
"Oh, so my voice got you sensitive?" you tease.
"Maybe." he replies breathily.
Precum beads out of the tip of his cock, enough to make a squelching sound as he jerks his hand only up and down the first few inches of his cock.
"... are you going fast or slow?" you ask.
"Kinda fast..."
"... okay, then I'll go faster, too."
Satoru listens intently, desperate to hear you moan. When he puts you on speaker, he can hear how wet you are.
"A-are you using a toy?" he asks, hearing some sort of thrusting action through the phone.
"Yeah... I'm trying to hit my G-spot but it's hard. Wish you could come help me." you pout and he can hear that cute pout.
"Shit, I'd love to. H-hold on a minute, will ya sweetheart? I wanna use my toy too. Keep touching yourself, don't stop."
Satoru hears your soft noises as he reaches over into his bed-side table drawer to fish out his toy and lube.
He hastily lubes up the fleshlight and slides into it. "Fuck..."
Biting on the hem of his shirt, Satoru exposes his flexing abs as he fucks his fleshlight loud enough for you to hear. He lazily tugs his shirt off with one hand, never stopping his thrusts.
"Satoru, I'm really close already..."
"I-it's okay. I can cum q-quick if you just say my name."
You can hear him pounding into the toy harder when you start moaning his name. All he needs to tip over is for you to announce your orgasm, and then he lets out a low growl and rolls his eyes back, releasing a hot load of cum.
His balls are squished up against the entrance of the toy as he stuffs every inch inside. And then oops, the poor toy breaks.
"Haha, fuck." you hear him
You ease out of your orgasm state and come back to reality. Oh, did you just have phone sex with Gojo Satoru?
"What happened?" you ask.
"I broke my toy." he replies smugly.
You laugh, "Oh, that's unfortunate." you say, "Well, if you need a new toy come pick me up tomorrow and take me out on a date."
"Wow."
© arminsumi
I do not permit the copying/reposting/translation/plagiarism of my works. Do not steal what I've worked hard to create.
This is fictional work.
#mdni#smut#🔞.smut#gojo smut#gojo satoru smut#gojo x reader smut#gojo satoru x reader#gojo x reader#jjk smut#jujutsu kaisen smut#jjk x reader smut#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jjk x you#gojo#satoru gojo#jujutsu gojo#jjk gojo#gojo satoru#satoru#satoru x reader#satoru smut#satoru x you
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I get variations on this comment on my post about history misinformation all the time: "why does it matter?" Why does it matter that people believe falsehoods about history? Why does it matter if people spread history misinformation? Why does it matter if people on tumblr believe that those bronze dodecahedra were used for knitting, or that Persephone had a daughter named Mespyrian? It's not the kind of misinformation that actually hurts people, like anti-vaxx propaganda or climate change denial. It doesn't hurt anyone to believe something false about the past.
Which, one, thanks for letting me know on my post that you think my job doesn't matter and what I do is pointless, if it doesn't really matter if we know the truth or make up lies about history because lies don't hurt anyone. But two, there are lots of reasons that it matters.
It encourages us to distrust historians when they talk about other aspects of history. You might think it's harmless to believe that Pharaoh Hatshepsut was trans. It's less harmless when you're espousing that the Holocaust wasn't really about Jews because the Nazis "came for trans people first." You might think it's harmless to believe that the French royalty of Versailles pooped and urinated on the floor of the palace all the time, because they were asshole rich people anyway, who cares, we hate the rich here; it's rather less harmless when you decide that the USSR was the communist ideal and Good, Actually, and that reports of its genocidal oppression are actually lies.
It encourages anti-intellectualism in other areas of scholarship. Deciding based on your own gut that the experts don't know what they're talking about and are either too stupid to realize the truth, or maliciously hiding the truth, is how you get to anti-vaxxers and climate change denial. It is also how you come to discount housing-first solutions for homelessness or the idea that long-term sustained weight loss is both biologically unlikely and health-wise unnecessary for the majority of fat people - because they conflict with what you feel should be true. Believing what you want to be true about history, because you want to believe it, and discounting fact-based corrections because you don't want them to be true, can then bleed over into how you approach other sociological and scientific topics.
How we think about history informs how we think about the present. A lot of people want certain things to be true - this famous person from history was gay or trans, this sexist story was actually feminist in its origin - because we want proof that gay people, trans people, and women deserve to be respected, and this gives evidence to prove we once were and deserve to be. But let me tell you a different story: on Thanksgiving of 2016, I was at a family friend's house and listening to their drunk conservative relative rant, and he told me, confidently, that the Roman Empire fell because they instituted universal healthcare, which was proof that Obama was destroying America. Of course that's nonsense. But projecting what we think is true about the world back onto history, and then using that as recursive proof that that is how the world is... is shoddy scholarship, and gets used for topics you don't agree with just as much as the ones you do. We should not be encouraging this, because our politics should be informed by the truth and material reality, not how we wish the past proved us right.
It frequently reinforces "Good vs. Bad" dichotomies that are at best unhelpful and at worst victim-blaming. A very common thread of historical misinformation on tumblr is about the innocence or benevolence of oppressed groups, slandered by oppressors who were far worse. This very frequently has truth to it - but makes the lies hard to separate out. It often simplifies the narrative, and implies that the reason that colonialism and oppression were bad was because the victims were Good and didn't deserve it... not because colonialism and oppression are bad. You see this sometimes with radical feminist mother goddess Neolithic feminist utopia stuff, but you also see it a lot regarding Native American and African history. I have seen people earnestly argue that Aztecs did not practice human sacrifice, that that was a lie made up by the Spanish to slander them. That is not true. Human sacrifice was part of Aztec, Maya, and many Central American war/religious practices. They are significantly more complex than often presented, and came from a captive-based system of warfare that significantly reduced the number of people who got killed in war compared to European styles of war that primarily killed people on the battlefield rather than taking them captive for sacrifice... but the human sacrifice was real and did happen. This can often come off with the implications of a 'noble savage' or an 'innocent victim' that implies that the bad things the Spanish conquistadors did were bad because the victims were innocent or good. This is a very easy trap to fall into; if the victims were good, they didn't deserve it. Right? This logic is dangerous when you are presented with a person or group who did something bad... you're caught in a bind. Did they deserve their injustice or oppression because they did something bad? This kind of logic drives a lot of transphobia, homophobia, racism, and defenses of Kyle Rittenhouse today. The answer to a colonialist logic of "The Aztecs deserved to be conquered because they did human sacrifice and that's bad" is not "The Aztecs didn't do human sacrifice actually, that's just Spanish propaganda" (which is a lie) it should be "We Americans do human sacrifice all the god damn time with our forever wars in the Middle East, we just don't call it that. We use bullets and bombs rather than obsidian knives but we kill way, way more people in the name of our country. What does that make us? Maybe genocide is not okay regardless of if you think the people are weird and scary." It becomes hard to square your ethics of the Innocent Victim and Lying Perpetrator when you see real, complicated, individual-level and group-level interactions, where no group is made up of members who are all completely pure and good, and they don't deserve to be oppressed anyway.
It makes you an unwitting tool of the oppressor. The favorite, favorite allegation transphobes level at trans people, and conservatives at queer people, is that we're lying to push the Gay Agenda. We're liars or deluded fools. If you say something about queer or trans history that's easy to debunk as false, you have permanently hurt your credibility - and the cause of queer history. It makes you easy to write off as a liar or a deluded fool who needs misinformation to make your case. If you say Louisa May Alcott was trans, that's easy to counter with "there is literally no evidence of that, and lots of evidence that she was fine being a woman," and instantly tanks your credibility going forward, so when you then say James Barry was trans and push back against a novel or biopic that treats James Barry as a woman, you get "you don't know what you're talking about, didn't you say Louisa May Alcott was trans too?" TERFs love to call trans people liars - do not hand them ammunition, not even a single bullet. Make sure you can back up what you say with facts and evidence. This is true of homophobes, of racists, of sexists. Be confident of your facts, and have facts to give to the hopeful and questioning learners who you are relating this story to, or the bigots who you are telling off, because misinformation can only hurt you and your cause.
It makes the queer, female, POC, or other marginalized listeners hurt, sad, and betrayed when something they thought was a reflection of their own experiences turns out not to be real. This is a good response to a performance art piece purporting to tell a real story of gay WWI soldiers, until the author revealed it as fiction. Why would you want to set yourself up for disappointment like that? Why would you want to risk inflicting that disappointment and betrayal on anyone else?
It makes it harder to learn the actual truth.
Historical misinformation has consequences, and those consequences are best avoided - by checking your facts, citing your sources, and taking the time and effort to make sure you are actually telling the truth.
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