Gentle reminder that very little fandom labor is automated, because I think people forget that a lot.

That blog with a tagging system you love? A person curates those tags by hand.

That rec blog with a great organization scheme and pretty graphics? Someone designed and implemented that organization scheme and made those graphics.

That network that posts a cool variety of stuff? People track down all that variety and queue it by hand, and other people made all the individual pieces.

That post with umpteen links to helpful resources, and information about them? Someone gathered those links, researched the sources, wrote up the information about them.

That graphic about fandom statistics? Someone compiled those statistics, analyzed them, organized them, figured out a useful way to convey the information to others, and made the post.

That event that you think looks neat? Someone wrote the rules, created the blogs and Discords, designed the graphics, did their best to promo the event so it'd succeed.

None of this was done automatically. None of it just appears whole out of the internet ether.

I think everyone realizes that fic writing and fanart creation are work, and at least some folks have got it through their heads that gif creation and graphics and moodboards take effort, and meta is usually respected for the effort that goes into it, at least as far as I've seen, but I feel like a lot of people don't really get how much labor goes into curation, too.

If people are creating resources, curating content, organizing the creations of others, gathering information, and doing other fandom activities that aren't necessarily the direct action of creation, they're doing a lot of fandom labor, and it's often largely unrecognized.

Celebrate fan work!

To folks doing this kind of labor: I see you, and I thank you. You are the backbones of our fandoms and I love you.

Hey guys!

I'm still struggling to keep the queue for this blog active, and I've got two other art side blogs that I'm also struggling to keep active - @zhenhunartreblogs and @dmbjartreblogs. Neither fandom produces quite enough artwork to maintain a one-post-a-day rate, and I no longer have time to go hunting through art blogs trying to find old stuff.

With that in mind, I'm going to fold both side blogs into this one.

What that means short term is that I'll just start rebloging Zhenhun/Guardian and DMBJ/Daomu Biji/The Lost Tomb art to this blog instead of those.

Long term, I'll start reblogging the content in each of those side blogs to here, and deleting the posts there, until both are empty, and then I'll delete them. (Combined, they have about 3,000 posts).

Don't worry, I don't possibly have time to inundate this blog with all that content at once, and I'll work first on getting this queue stocked with a variety of fandoms so it doesn't just become suddenly "here are 500 reblogs of Shen Wei and Wu Xie."

Thanks for your patience, everyone!

-unforth

Hey guys, just an FYI that over the weekend tumblr broke tag search (again) so very little is showing up in the tags, when they even load at all. If you made art over the last few days and are wondering why it's gotten less engagement that usual, that's why. And if you made art that you don't see get reblogged to my art accounts I'd appreciate if you DMed it to me (@/unforth).

sorry, but i have to agree with the prev anon who mentioned that tagging art of a character who has prosthetics as body horror is ableist. i already knew about the au from the op and when i saw that tag on your post my feelings were hurt. even though the character lost their limbs in a violent way i don't think that necessitates tagging their body afterwards as body horror when the body horror itself is not being depicted. i really respect what you do to help share fanart but your overly aggressive response to that person feels off the cuff this time. you don't have to publish this btw, you can do whatever you want on your blog as our opinions don't control you et cetera but i wish you'd take a step back and re-examine your initial defensive response and maybe consider changing your mind some day

Prosthetics aren't body horror and aren't why I used the tag. I tagged body horror because Shen Jiu's arms were violently ripped off and that was explicitly mentioned in the text of that post. If someone posted art of someone with prosthetics with a sword through their chest, I'd tag that body horror too, cause I always tag artwork with "weapons actively inserted in someone's body" as body horror, just as I've always tagged "canon Shen Jiu dismemberment" as body horror, in a standard I've used for three years running this blog so that people can avoid content referencing dismemberment, a pretty major trigger.

I can, and do, apologize that my decision hurt feelings.

But I will not remove a tag for body horror from a post that shows a character emaciated from starvation and explicitly says their limbs were torn off. That's. That's body horror.

You want to know what I did that was ableist? I wrote that whole other post, and after I hit "post" I read it again and I'd said something like "when Shen Jiu got his body back but scars show where the damage was..." and I was like wow. Fuck, me. That's some bullshit way to phrase that, losing his limbs doesn't mean he lost his body. So I immediately edited the post. Because ew. I hate that I wrote that, that I thought that, before I checked myself. I can be ableist, as can anyone, and I can admit that I've said and done ableist things, and correct myself when I'm wrong, and I do and will continue to do my best.

But I can't do anything about people interpreting my behavior, actions, and explanations in bad faith. There was body horror in that picture with the depiction of starvation and in the post text where Shen Jiu having his limbs ripped off was mentioned. There's not in this gorgeous art of the same au, and so I didn't use the tag. Nor did I tag this other lovely art of prosthetics on Shen Jiu by a different artist as body horror, because it didn't directly reference the act that led to the loss of limbs. Because, as I said, prosthetics aren't body horror and aren't why I used the tag.

I really can't help what assumptions others make about me, and I especially can't help you persisting in that assumption in the face of my explanation. The moment you and the other anon came at me with "you did this because..." instead of "why did you do this...?" I was put in an impossible situation. I can't dispell your views of me without sounding defensive, even tho you've both ascribed motives/explanations to my behavior that are demonstratively false.

Yeah. Idk really know what else I can say. Alluding to having someone's limbs ripped off is body horror.

Just a note that, now that I know what the drama referred to in the last reblog is:

I never knowingly reblog fandom events that claim to be "general" events (i.e. any bingo, bang, fundraiser, etc.) that claims "all are welcome" and then turns around and says "oh, except you."

If that's a problem for you, this is probably the wrong blog for you anyway, cause like. I write incest. (I don't write rpf, tbh it squicks me, but rpf authors, I support you.)

Hot tip in general? Don't make an event and say "welcome all!" And then be like "oh, except you." That's uh. Yeah, fuck that.

(To be clear: anyone who runs an event is allowed to name restrictions for their own comfort. But then don't advertise the event as open to all! Don't run an event as supposedly "general" Supernatural and then ban the second most popular ship in the fandom!)

Idk it was a pretty morning for water beading on things.

Urgent: Help Us Not Get Screwed

Anyone who follows us has seen us screaming from the hill-tops about our current crowdfunding campaign for Aether Beyond the Binary (17 aetherpunk stories! Outside the gender binary main characters!). We've only got 50 hours left...and we just got screwed.

Our Anthology Kickstarter is being scammed.

About two hours ago, with us still roughly $1,500 from our goal, we got a junk pledge for almost $2,000. This pushed us into being marked as "funded" but there is zero chance it's a real pledge, it's from a shell account marked as being in Turkey. This kind of money doesn't just fall like a miracle into the laps of small business like ours.

The timing on this attack is devastating. The final 48 hours of a campaign are absolutely critical, especially for one as close to meeting our goal as we are. We were very likely to hit our target, but doing so was going to require appeals to y'all that started with "hey, we're so close, please help spread the word." Further, the campaign has hundreds of followers who will get a notification at the 48 hour mark, and many who might have backed to help get us to the finish line will now think "oh, they're there, they don't need me," and not back. Meanwhile, one of two things will happen with the spam pledge: either it will get removed by Kickstarter, which could take hours or a day+, totally nuking us during this crucial window, or it won't get removed until the payment bounces post-campaign, at which point we won't actually have enough money to do fulfillment.

Either way, we are fucked.

Please, please don't let these dipshits ruin the love and passion that 30+ people have poured into this project for over a year.

Our campaign IS NOT FUNDED, and it won't be without help. I'm begging, help spread the word about how we're getting screwed, and help spread the word about Aether Beyond the Binary (visit the link for so much info!) so that we can get enough real pledges to fund this project we've poured our hearts and souls into.

SUPPORT THE QUEER ANTHOLOGY KICKSTARTER FOR AETHER BEYOND THE BINARY (with your pledges or with signal boosts!)

Nothing can possibly go wrong with this plan.

I had an idea for poll! And I have polls now!

Sometimes I think this is the darkest timeline and then I see the New York Times literally sharing Goncharov fanart

(art is credited to Elena Asofsky, no idea what their Tumblr name is, sorry. Article is here.)

...and I realize that the timeline can always get darker. (but it will never be as dark as the end of Goncharov, wtf was up with that?)

My entire dash is people panicking about ao3 and people panicking about Tumblr and its exhausting.

If your dash is like my dash, please allow me to share this moment of calm in the form of my the pretty succulent blooming in my yard.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

It's gonna be okay.

My favorite boops are on posts with old timestamps. Like, I saw a post timestamped 2013. And boops were on. This person has survived 10 years on this website and are still active enough to have turned on boops. You are a seasoned and respected veteran, and you deserve boops.

srsly obsessed with the way mxtx's works all have recurring, overlapping yet distinct motifs about the toxicity of fandom, and yet somehow so many fans are still Like That.

(svsss, obviously, and in more ways than one; mdzs and cancel culture and the way people turn on their faves and believe lies; tgcf and celebrity/fan and more on the court of public opinion...)

This has probably been done but I've been wondering, so - poll time!

I had a day off yesterday.

And I can already practically hear the assumptions that such a statement is prompting the reader to make. Those assumptions are wrong. I don't mean I didn't work. I did, for about 8 hours. That's not at all what I mean.

I mean my wife took the kids out at 9:30, spent the night with her mom, isn't back yet the next morning.

There are things I NEED people on this website to understand about parenting. And I've talked about it before, and I'll talk about it again, because honestly the way that Tumblr as a cohort talks about parents makes me sick. Multiple polls have shown that only about 2% of people on here are parents. We're a huge minority, and we're constantly talked over, ignored, or accused of being bad parents (like, personally, I have had people reply to my comments or come on to my posts and tell me I shouldn't have my kids). In my case, being a parent means I'm almost 41, I'm married to @ramblingandpie, and our children are inching up on being 8 and 6 years old.

My entire day, and therefore my entire life, revolves around them. I'm up most mornings at 5 AM, because that's the earliest they're "allowed" to wake up, and so my brain just defaults to being awake around then - better to wake up before them, at least then I get a few minutes in the morning. Between 5 and 7, I sit with them, do my social media, work on side blogs, study Chinese. Then it's helping them get ready for school, then my wife or I or both get them on the bus, and then I work until the last possible minute, which is either when I need to go pick them up for an after school activity or when I need to go down and meet them off the bus. My afternoons are after school activities, chores such as washing the dishes and cleaning up toys, talking with them, working with them, playing with them. Their bedtime starts at 7:40, and my son gets scared if I leave before he falls asleep so I sit with him until about 8:15. As soon as he's asleep, I go fall on my face, sleep as best I can, then wake up and do it again. Overnight, it's hard to sleep deeply, because about once a week someone will wake up in the middle of the night and need help. That could be as minimal as a hug or as complex as having to completely change the bedding on a bunk bed at 2 AM while also comforting a child who is afraid they'll be in trouble, or afraid they're sick, or afraid of their nightmare, or, or, or. Further, if a child is awake, there is always noise. I usually study Chinese with two or more competing sources of noise. I read the same way. My life is loud, and active, and consists of constant interruptions.

I adore my family, and I love my children, but this is terrible for me.

I do all of this as an neurodivergent introvert. My clinical depression is at least medicated, mostly because post-partum depression after I gave birth the first time nearly drove me to suicidal in under a week (we were expecting this and were prepared, fortunately, getting help was as simple as a phone call). The constant noise and interruptions and forced socialibility are about the worst combination of home-life I could be subjected to. I spend far too many early mornings just breathing deeply and gearing myself up to be subjected to the wall of Loud, Boisterous, Needing-My-Attention that is every minute when anyone else in the house is awake.

So what did my day off look like?

I helped get the kids ready to go and did some morning chores. I'd been up at 4:30 AM so I also had already social media'd and studied. Then, while my wife finished the preparations, I started work, and I worked from about 8 am to about 4 pm, straight. I didn't get hungry so didn't bother stopping for lunch. No one interrupted me, no one asked me to look at anything they'd built, no one broke my concentration, no sounds could be heard except those I'd chosen myself.

I'd been out the day before at a local shopping street and listened closely to the things the kids said they wanted, so at 4 I grabbed a couple orders I needed to ship for work and drove to our local downtown, dropped the orders in a post box, then went back to the shops and did some Christmas shopping in the 45 minutes or so before everything closed. I think I'm basically done with what we'll get them - other bigger things will be left to grand parents - so that's a load off, I literally had a stress dream earlier this week about it being 12/24 and having forgotten to do the shopping and having to go to (oh horrors) the mall on the day before Christmas. (Reminder: I'm a Jewish atheist. It's just virtually impossible not to Holiday in the Culturally Christian Hellscape that is the US. Also, my wife is Christian. So.) Found something cute for my wife, too, even tho I already know the main thing I'm getting her. Then, I realized - one of my favorite restaurants is on that block. So. I went there. I sat by myself at a table, only the indistinct restaurant hubbub around me. I read four or five chapters of my book, and ate a savory crepe, and drank lovely fruit tea, and got a scone to-go that I'll eat for lunch today. It was more than I probably should have spent on myself - about $25, including tip - but fuck it. I only get maybe a handful of days off all year, and I'm allowed to indulge a little.

Then I came home. There were no lights on. There was no noise. I had considered doing some more merch work while watching TV on the actual television (my kids are too young for subtitled shows, so usually if I want to watch My Shows I either have to do it on my computer when they're not around, or put them on and read all the subtitles aloud while trying to keep up and process the actual meaning of what I'm reading). But when I got back, the quiet and dark was so goddamn NICE that instead I curled up on the couch and read more of my book. I did that until bedtime - still about 8:15, because I'm exhausted. Then...I went to bed. And I slept long and deep, knowing that there was no chance I'd be interrupted and woken up, I didn't have to be, even in sleep, alert to every noise and possibility that I'd be needed.

I'm still exhausted and burned out, but even one night to myself felt really, really nice.

Saying "Tumblr does X" as a universal statement is doomed to failure, but generally speaking, the parenting posts I see on Tumblr, the ones with tens or hundreds of thousands of notes, speak what's apparently widely seen as a truism on here: that unless someone wants to spend 24/7 with their kids, to be 100% emotionally available at all times, is always kind and patient and perfect, they are a bad parent, maybe even abusive. I remember when covid started, there were multiple posts actively mocking the "oh god, my kids are now home all the time, how am I supposed to do this?" attitude that a lot of parents posted in despair. WhY dId YoU hAvE kIdS iF yOu DoN't WaNt To SpEnD tImE wItH tHeM?

Look at what my usual day looks like.

Look at what my day off looked like.

Do you really think I don't want to spend time with my kids? Do you really think I don't love my kids?

But I'm not a fucking MACHINE. I'm a PERSON. That's what people on Tumblr seem to forget. PARENTS ARE PEOPLE. The same tumblrinas who post ~uwu be kind to yourself rest if you need to, you should forgive yourself for that mistake you made~ will turn around, with zero sense of irony, and post "you're a bad parent if you ever raise your voice around a child."

Expecting parents to be perfect means expecting parents to be inhuman. It also means that a parent can't be poor (can't spend all your time being the perfect parent if you have to work multiple jobs or weird hours!), can't be introverted (can't be a perfect parent if you're not completely emotional available, god forbid socializing is exhausting for you), can't be on the ADHD or autism spectrum (what do you mean you forgot to get your kid to a doctor's appointment once? what do you mean over-stimulation can make you angry? how dare you get angry at a kid!), can't be depressed (gotta get out of bed every single day, gotta always be upbeat, patient, happy, or else that's Evil), can't be (like my wife) physically disabled (what do you mean your hands hurt too much to hold a child's hand? are you denying them touch?? CRUEL). And when the only answer you can offer to that is, "if you can't be that perfect you shouldn't be a parent," then you're saying people who aren't middle class to wealthy, people who aren't neurotypical, people who aren't physically able, shouldn't have children.

And honestly...what the fuck is your problem?

I'm not perfect. I tell my kids to just leave me alone sometimes. I raise my voice, especially when one of my kids starts punching the other, but also sometimes just cause I'm exhausted and Can't Anymore. I've forgotten an appointment by accident and felt like a total fucking idiot, and I've skipped an after school activity because I just wasn't up for taking them. I've served them more unbalanced, unhealthy meals than I can count. I've made many, many mistakes, but I've also done my best, and I love my kids, and I hope that when they grow up, they'll still love me even as they recognize that I wasn't perfect, just as I've come to accept my own parents' short-comings while still loving them very much. They're people, too, and the older I get, the more I understand where they were coming from.

When I fuck up, I apologize.

When they tell me they're unhappy with something I've done, I apologize, and I try to do better. Sometimes I even succeed.

This shit is hard, yo. And it's getting harder every year.

I'm BEGGING Tumblr: you need to start seeing parents as people. The way y'all talk about parenting on here is toxic, and genuinely harmful, and frankly exhausting. You have no idea what the reality of raising kids is like, and you need to shut the entire fuck up.

I had a day off yesterday.

I might get one more before the end of 2023.

I already can't wait. I am so, so, so tired. sigh

(if you actually read this whole rant and even a single word of it resonated for you, please reblog it. I'm tired of never seeing positive posts about parenting while I see negative ones with a bajillion notes.)

I take 8 points of psychic damage every time Crunchyroll subtitles gege as "Lian."