Being loveless is so frustrating sometimes, not in the "oH eVeRyOnE eLsE sEeMs So HaPpY, i WaNt ThAt" way, I don't give a fuck, leave me out of it please and thank you. No, the issue is I see so many posts that go "EVERYONE wants love" "EVERYONE needs love" "you deserve love!" etc etc that immediately make me extremely uncomfortable, but I'm not allowed to say anything, because if I mention loveless people on those posts its considered an attack on the happiness they're celebrating, and should I even bother? Its not about me, that's kind of the point, the only way I'm involved in those posts is the "everyone" lines, and clearly loveless people aren't included in "everyone". Do we matter enough to those people for them to change the way they speak in those posts? To be considered before lumping the whole world together like that?

I've never consented to being involved in the concept of love, I don't want to be dragged into it, those posts straight up feel like a violation of boundaries, and is there even anything I can do about that? Its not like anyone else cares, and if I want to be in mentally healthy spaces I can't just block every person who posts those things, because they're considered positive and good things, the only spaces that wouldn't talk like that would be loveless spaces (a huge minority on the internet, nonexistent irl) and unhealthy spaces where ALL positivity is locked out. I'm already in the former, and I LEFT the latter years ago because it was bad for my mental health, I'm not going back there

Just got a jumpscare from seeing an Emmie post on my dash lololol. I think it was from her larrie days but like. When i joined this fandom she was at voldemort levels of being hated-- a pariah!! So many posts would indirect her with asterisks only that i had to ask multiple times who tf people were talking about!

And now? She's not even a whisper on the wind!! What newbie would know or care who this person is?? It appears she hasn't even made a post since 2020!

So this is to say that i love this weird fucking fandom that has stayed alive and changed and remained the same in all sorts of funny ways. And I'm glad that we're past the "so-and-so reblogged e****, so they might as well unlarrie already, what a fake" era

wolfstar tumblr has started again to claim that we shouldn’t describe sirius as short and feminine because it’s “heteronormative”, that we shouldn’t describe remus as tall and masculine because it’s, you know, un-canon (a terf’s?). it feels like terfs are coming to the fandom and we are going back to the time back then when popular writers who turned out terfs were dominating the fandom. seems the fandom is adopting the old terfs’ claims again and even shamelessly applauding it. how are you bearing these days, laura. as for me as a trans person who hates jkr and her holy “canon”, it’s horrible. feel like everything the few good people (such as you) in the fandom had tried was vain. sorry for disturbing you.

well it's been about three or so months since i last made a post about this stuff so sounds about right that more terfy posts are coming out all surrounding height discourse. it's a cycle in the r/s fandom and im afraid these terfs and transphobes aren't coming to the fandom they've all probably been here a while because this fandom is rife with them due to the source material and general politics of the people that write the fic (liberals who are so totally for gender neutral bathrooms but transwomen make them obviously uncomfortable irl)

i've already talked a bit about how harmful and also dumb this line of thinking is re: short and fem s so i'll link this post on gender essentialism i made but i'll say again it's just so tedious how it's often the same people who don't seem to inspect where their assumptions are coming from. people stick terfs dni in their bio and perhaps disagree with the openly transphobic lawmakers but that doesn't mean their biases against trans people don't exist. transphobia is far more insidious than that!

like people seem to go: short s -> s is "whiny" and "annoying" -> he's feminine (whether he actually is or not) -> thus he's being written like he's a girl and that's bad because that's heteronormative

the media heuristic that exists that "whiny" and "weaker" men (ie. complaining, relying on their boyfriend/partner for things, idk being the fucking little spoon) are women-coded does not mean you shouldn't make any character whiny or annoying or whatever because then you are essentially making them a woman and that's Bad -- the response is to unpack the very idea that there are certain traits connected to men and women and when applied to people of the opposite or other genders somehow still has a connection to an innate gender of 'man' or 'woman'.

also, s characterisation is varied but not as prolifically dramatic and bad as people seem to say. they're latching on to the 'feminine short s characterisation' where he acts dramatic as if i have not ready many a fic where he is tall and stereotypical masculine with similar personality traits. however, these traits are viewed differently when packaged differently. the difference is s wearing a skirt or being perceived as feminine in a way that they do not view as aligned with their perception of how gender should operate.

whether intentionally transphobic or not, the shorthand people use in these discussion always ties in with this belief that there are innate gendered characterisitics that if acted out in certain relationships makes them heteronormative. i am afraid that's not how queer relationships work! they are still gay even if one of them is short and the other tall and one is fem and the other masc like? you can dislike certain relationship dynamics but that doesn't make them inherently problematic or homophobic or anything. i avoid plenty of r/s fic because it's not how i personally view them. i don't try and morally justify my dislike because i don't like how they wrote r i just click out. as for saying one thing is canon and another is not like idgaf whatever!! most of canon is quite horrible and problematic and of course we are all engaging with it to some degree but to use it to argue something as meaningless as height should be adhered to. well i'm scrolling away frankly.

idk people are always telling on themselves in these discussions and you can pretty much always track one degree of separation between them and a pretty outward terf. i block and unfollow a lot of people but at the end of the day i engage with far less content than i used to because it sucks seeing so much transphobic and often anti-queer discussion. it's exhausting and it's why so many trans people especially transfem people leave this fandom. people can slap anti-jkr in their bio as much as they want, a terf is still a fucking terf.

i jsut unfollowed 70+ people that is over a third of blogs i was following in the first place o(-(

MY BEAUTIFUL MUTUALS I AM SO SO SORRY..................... you will live forever in my heart i simply was Not Strong Enough i finally gave in i finally curated the dash

I keep on trying to make this post and keep on erasing it but I think I need to take a break from Tumblr.

you know ... i've made a fool of myself on the internet quite a few times in my life. i've said some pretty bizarre things, some of which went way beyond simple "brain farts" and in fact may have been signs of serious mental issues.

to name some examples of shit my brain has done:

experienced something akin to age regression complete with temporarily lacking knowledge and skills i normally possess. sometimes the missing knowledge was replaced with alternate "facts" that were straight-up wrong, yet for the duration of this state (usually just one day), i was convinced i was making sense.

badly misinterpreted someone's words because they tripped a trauma trigger and i was only self-aware enough to recognise that my emotions were disproportionate, but not that my judgement was impaired.

leaps in logic and outlandish claims that seemed reasonable to me at the time, but a week or a month later, i began to feel like i must have been on the verge of psychosis to come up with such nonsense. (does anyone remember "people in the past didn't experience sexual attraction the way we do because they wore different clothes"?????)

and that's in addition to regular brain fog, sleep deprivation logic, taking things too literally because i'm autistic, or simply ... being wrong. for normal reasons.

but every time there is an "abnormal" reason, i find myself hoping that anyone who witnessed it understands i wasn't just being stupid. because even in this day and age, too many people still look down on stupidity as if it were a choice. for a while it got a little better on the internet, at least in my circles, but then we experienced a great renaissance of "focusing on language distracts from the real issues" logic and suddenly no one cared anymore. even though it was never about the exact language used, but about the underlying devaluation of people with low IQs and anyone else perceived as stupid.

so i catch myself thinking, "it wasn't stupidity. i was triggered. i hope they understand that and don't unfollow me for being stupid." but that's shitty of me, too, isn't it? i am not better than people with intellectual disabilities or brain damage because my "stupidity" is more transient. it's not an expression of my personal opinion though, it's an expression of what i fear other people may think. and i will never be able to shake that fear as long as people keep complaining about stupidity like it's a moral failing.

there is immense privilege in my ability to look back on these episodes and recognise them as temporary. is someone who would look down on people who are permanently like that really my friend, though?

if you can't handle me at my "making no fucking sense", you don't deserve me at my "flash of brilliance during hyperfocus" tbh.

sometimes it's wild watching 2 people you used to know from within the same group of online friends get radicalized in 2 wildly different directions

Kinda aggravating seeing so many posts like "yeah fuck AI art" but then when the ai art is funny enough to people it's all over my dash

In the mood to unfollow some unnecessarily negative mutuals

Heads up if ive unfollowed you on main its nothing personal. Ive just been realizing tumblr is.. Still detrimental to my compulsions and brainweird and i need a shorter dash.

The thing is like.. I want to have a funy blog where i talk to my friends and reblog stuff and say whatever i feel like but. I dont want to read a dashboard. Which is kind of impossible to do 2/3s of those if i dont have one. Predicament.

starting to understand that whole "erase entire online presence and restart from new" thing everyone's 833n on a8out for forever

.

ok now im just angry that i have 700 followers

It's me. I'm the cis, heterosexual, aromantic man. I will never marry, I will never be married, I will grow into middle age and elder age and I will die unmarried. I will be forced to support a household of myself on only my wages alone for the rest of my life. I will be asked about women and marriage and children by my family for the rest of my life (or men, the progressive ones might say). I may not ever come out to them. I feel like I burned my coming out on something stupid. I don't want to explain it. I don't want to run them through the definitions and intricacies. I don't want the acceptance without understanding, placating me with ceased questions and poor explanations to other, drunk adults.

I like my hair to be long, I spent a year with it dyed a golden blonde with dark roots because I like the trashy party girl aesthetic. I want to dye it again with pink tips. I like painting my nails, black and blue are my favorite colors. I like wearing chokers. I also like wearing baggy jeans and ratty hoodies. I like having stubble. I like having chest hair. I like having a square jaw and broad shoulders. I wish I had a flatter stomach and a thinner profile frame. I don't know what this makes me, perhaps this is something no more GNC than Machine Gun Kelly. I think about this a lot, how queer my appearance truly is. I should think about it less. I have thought long and hard about if I could be trans or if I could be non-binary or if I could be genderqueer and the conclusion I ultimately came to is that I most enjoy being a man open to whatever self-expression I want.

I don't date, but I've thought about it. I would like to meet people, and I would like to have sex with them. But I don't want to hurt them. I fear if I explain what I am beforehand it'll scare them away. I fear if I explain after they'll feel manipulated or abused. I don't know how many people in the dating scene want what I want. I fear my own lack of experience will make me a bad lay, an embarrassing story to tell to confidants in hindsight. I fear my own virginity, a boundary to those I wish to be like. All of these fears are baseless, as I've not been able to even begin a single relationship in my life. Despite this I still heavily identify with terms like "slut" and "manwhore" and "thot" because my interests lay so deeply within casual sex, sex without great intimacy or emotion. This may be some form of stolen valor. I hope the true sluts are not too mad at me.

I made this blog several years ago because a mutual of mine reblogged memes making fun of aro and ace people, making fun of the concept of aphobia, and in addition well known aphobes. I didn't feel comfortable talking about aro stuff on my main blog, for as little as I talk about it. Living through the ace discourse of the 2016 era has largely caused me to cringe in embarrassment any time I am forced to discuss my orientation with people who aren't aro or ace themselves. I no longer follow this person. I unfollowed many people I was mutuals with from that time, most of them because they posted too often about how much they hated men and I didn't want to see that, some because our interests simply drifted too far apart, only one for explicit aphobia reasons. (Also one because they became a "both sides are bad, any vote is wasted" libertarian, but that's unrelated.)

I guess at this point I don't care deeply about what strangers on the internet think of me. If a trusted friend told me that they don't think I'm truly queer that may hurt. But I am going to continue to use the word for myself. I take up no resources. I go to events that are open to me. If an event was not open to me, I think I'd not want to go anyways. I am not a hypothetical, I am not a strawman, I am a person with lived experiences both within and exterior to the queer community. If you hate me, I will permit you to continue to do so. But ultimately, I am who I am, I cannot change these facts, and I would not choose to do so even if I could.

no you know what I'm going to scream about the stuff I talked about in the tags of this post publicly

I'm tired of the well-meaning "don't feel bad if your work only gets 20 notes your genius is what counts and do it for you!" bullshit. I've had a good handful of friends who have straight up DEACTIVATED in recent months because their work was not getting reblogged AT ALL. No, it wasn't from lack of not being well-liked, no it wasn't from lack of trying to make sure it was getting out there to the people they knew would engage with it. It was because no matter how much they were praised privately for their work, when push came to shove, absolutely NOBODY reblogged it and gave it the audience that it was due, and I'm tired of people shoving the "unsung genius" narrative as an excuse for it. Nothing excuses that. And the boop event really proved that.

because I know given the opportunity, indiscriminately pressing a button (sometimes 10 thousand times, as I did) is not beyond this website's capability. y'all loved doing that. and look at what it wrought. nothing but love and affection and happiness. just from a couple of quick clicks of a little paw button. sure. nobody knew who you booped but the other person (which is how likes used to work on this website, btw). there was an element of anonymity to it. but that is kind of the core of this website that no other social media platform still has: the ability to be anonymous. and hyper-curating a blog on here like you might on twitter or instagram to project an image is simply not viable. and hey. you wanna know a secret: literally nobody cares what you post or whether it goes with the "theme" of your blog or not. yeah. I know. CRAZY concept in this day and age. but literally. I myself have reblogged things that have had nothing to do with whatever I am currently fixated by and you know what happened to my follower count? not a damn thing. in fact, I actively try to reblog things specifically BECAUSE it's my friends who made them (even though I'm not always good at KEEPING UP WITH HOW MUCH THEY POST @prismatica-the-strange will NEVER GO UNRECOGNIZED by me).

And you know what fucking sucks? I have to deal with this too. surprise right? you ever wonder why I reblog fics or art I post like 20 times the day that I post them? do you ever wonder why I ask about tag lists and beg for asks all the time? IT'S BECAUSE EVEN I GET LIKE. 5 LIKES ON THE THINGS I POST. AND THE REST OF THE REBLOGS ARE MINE SO I CAN MAKE SURE THAT PEOPLE WHO WANT TO SEE WHAT I MAKE GET TO SEE IT. and I say that knowing that I'm certainly not an unpopular blog, or an unpopular writer. I know that people love the stories that I create. Hell, half of the people that I've talked to about lady terror have told me that they consider her to be canon (AND EVEN SOME!! THOUGHT SHE WAS!!! WITHOUT EVEN HAVING WATCHED THE SHOW! WHICH IS STILL SO SO WILD TO ME!!!) But especially in the last 4 years (which really dates this phenomenon), my posts, no matter how well received they've been amongst people I've talked to about them directly, I still go into the notes and at least half (often more than half) are MY reblogs to make sure people saw what I posted. and it happens every single time, and I can't tell you how much it crushes me considering that it used to be that I would be able to post it only once, and people would reblog it sometimes even HUNDREDS of times.

It's not about popularity. it never has been. it's not about anxiety. or shifting website cultures. even if you lurk, the simple fact is, that if you want people to keep making what you love. you have to reblog. your theme won't suffer because you reblogged a fanfiction that you really admire. your posting won't be ruined because you reblogged some fanart from someone in a different fandom. really. I promise. and if people do unfollow you for that? who needs em. followers come and go but you should NEVER have to cater to them. on this website it has ALWAYS been the other way around. lean into it. make it yours. put stuff you ACTUALLY WANT to be seen and that you love and appreciate on your blog. no matter how old it is, how new it is, no matter how niche or off-theme it is.

so please. if you really want to show your appreciation for someone's work? you reblog. it's really as easy as that. check the tags. add some when you reblog if you like. but please for the love of god reblog. it's as easy as booping and even more rewarding for the people who you reblog from. if you want to let someone know that their work is genius and appreciate it? show it. reblog. then DM them if you're too nervous to say what you want to say but not in a public forum. but for christ's sake. REBLOG.

Do you have any advice/suggestions/requests for non-black members of fandom as far as how to respond to racism in fandom spaces? Obviously we shouldn't be speaking over black voices, but it doesn't seem fair for black members of fandom to have to do all the work of making a fandom space safe and welcoming for themselves.

You are correct! Tbh, these are tips for being a good ally in general:

Amplify Black Voices!

Odds are, whatever manifesto you have in your mind about the injustice of antiblackness in your fandom, a Black fan has already said it multiple times. While I appreciate the sentiment, I must admit I'm salty when I see that people are more supportive of (usually white) voices that discuss my lived experience, over my own voice and my lived experience. What does that really solve? You need to be following Black fans too, that way you're actually in the know when these things are happening.

Don't be a Bystander!

If I'm getting jumped and you (who had the power to help) show up afterwards to say "I really empathized with your pain", I'm not going to think "wow they cared, I'm so grateful". I'm going to think "WOW they really let me get my ass beat!" Same idea with this. That's honestly the most painful part for me; it's not the lone racist themselves, but the hordes of people who back them up, and the rest (some of whom you may even consider a friend) who might disagree but say absolutely nothing.

When you see that a Black peer is being railroaded and you KNOW it's wrong, step tf up! Be willing to say "you're out of pocket for behaving this way, and I will not be supporting you now that I know you're a racist". I will never know you're an ally if you're only an ally in your head! It's the thought that counts, but the action that delivers!!

It's going to be uncomfortable! Stand on it!

If you share that you're against antiblackness in fandom spaces, but next you're reblogging whitewashed art, or an artist known for whitewashed/racist pieces, or still following someone who's made covert/overt antiblack statements, etc. just bc you "enjoy their stuff"... You're not being an ally. Be willing to hold those creators accountable, and when they disappoint you, unfollow them. Be willing to tell your friends, "hey, that person did/said this thing that was anti-black and were unapologetic about it". And if your friends don't care? Now you know who's around you. I'm not saying it's easy, but... Do you stand on business, or would you rather allow racism so that you can stay comfortable? Because your Black peers have to live under this discomfort you're only momentarily experiencing. It's far harder for me to approach these people and hold them accountable. And if I see that you're still kicking it with known antiblack racists... I'm probably not going to assume highly of you, either.

Educate yourself on what these aggressions look like!

You might not know what to look for, and if you don't, you're gonna miss a lot. What is actually antiblackness will often be posited as "drama" or "fandom wank". Or, if they're really trying to sound progressive, it'll reveal itself as dogwhistles in other important topics like queer representation or misogyny (e.g. how white women often claim misogyny when confronted with their racism, or TERFs). That's how it gets swept under the rug. Learn to recognize microaggressions, learn to recognize the signs. It requires work! Listen to and believe your Black peers when they explain what they saw! Bc trust, once you see it... You'll realize there's a lot of it lmao. And that's what many fans are afraid of confronting.

That's what I have for now, if anyone else has anything to offer. 👍🏾 Thanks for asking!