#like there are so many twitter users speaking from the outside that do not understand just how intense these christians can get | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

five-thousand-loaves-of-bread · 9 months

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my issue with right now AAC advocacy, nonspeaking (autistic) advocacy (from individual advocate, to organization like communication first and assistive ware) (mainly outside tumblr), can all be summarize by their one phrase:

“presume competence.”

“wait, what wrong with that? isn’t it good? don’t they follow that?”

half yes. idea is good, hope everyone follow it, must: all disabled people should be give tool & help to learn, all diagnoses, all amount of struggle.

yes, “even” that person diagnose with severe autism & profound ID, who never speak or look like show sign of understand any language, who scream and make noise and run away all time, who give self & other many injury and broke bone and concussion.

but. me problem not with idea. have problem with, use two big complicate word as basic key important idea for movement: a movement for those who hard speech & communication.

this group, naturally mean have many people (more than “average” amount), who hard communicate, hard communicate big words, hard remember big words, hard understand big words.

“then just change name or explain idea, why say it summarize problem with entire movement?”

on tumblr, AAC user community, semi- & nonverbal/nonspeaking community, see lot people who not just struggle with mouth say word, but also with communicate hard. although less, and most borderline or mild, but do have a few people with ID who talk about ID. people with many layer disability, more affected. in fact, in some corner, we loud & seen here in community.

but. outside tumblr—like twitter, where majority AAC & nonspeaking advocacy get most hear, often influence even new AAC apps and AAC company and non profit and (US) law and (US) government groups. but also different organizations, and real life. so basically, people with bigger real life influence. this opposite.

it many life-long nonspeaking autistics with severe motor apraxia, who brain body disconnect cause mouth not able move make noise in way brain want. often diagnose with severe ID back when not able communicate, but now able full communicate, now realize have high IQ, use long sentence, complicate grammar, big words, who can “write right.” many who not be teach communicate or read, but able learn how read write, by self.

—who not speak because motor struggle, but “mind intact” (their word not mine), no fundamental expressive receptive language understand issue (edit: outsude not mouth speak), no intellectual cognitive issue?

they nonspeaking. they AAC user, or speller. yes, they deserve be in community. must be heard. people must realize this form of nonspeaking possible and many people like this. AAC nonspeaking community without them is still leave out people.

but. right now problem is: both them and allies, treat this form nonspeaking as only way be nonspeaking. all nonspeaking people like this. and what this group want (like be call nonspeaking and nonverbal wrong), need apply to all people who not able speak, because they seen as entirety nonspeaking community.

“all nonspeaking (autistic) people like this”—many times imply by never ever mention other “not speak” experience, but sometime even direct say (paraphrase). where my “not speak” friends who have expressive receptive language issues, who trouble communicate even with AAC, who don’t understand other and self communicate at all, who “mind not intact” (whatever that means), who ID not misdiagnose but is actual severe profound ID, who can’t learn AAC can’t ever functional communicate ever?

what about people who “not speak” not just because “motor but everything else fine,” but “motor AND expressive receptive language AND/OR intellectual”? people who don’t have all your abilities?

we not remembered. we not exist. we not talk about.

and this “ignore,” can be see in all area of their advocacy and movement.

the policing “no severe no functioning labels no levels no nonverbal ever they all bad no excuse”: all my friends who call own self by any of that been direct attack harmed many many times by people who say this, so no, there no “personal identify okay” exception. this silence us. anytime we mention how we dare call self, all what we actual say ignored, actual message ignored, and become argue over terms call us ableist, and lock us out block us crowd attack us harrass us—us with communication issues who words hard first place, and who often have big emotional regulate struggle.

harass us lock us out enough. of course we silent, of course we no longer write in community. of course “community” no have us, no one see us. no one know we exist.

the big words. complicate sentences. complicate ideas. everything confuse. overwhelm even parents without intellectual & communication struggles who want learn to help child. not to mention us, who “not speak” include receptive language issues and intellectual disability.

write enough big words. write enough complicate stuff. write enough confuse hard follow stuff. of course we who can’t understand that get frustrate. and stop read. stop be in community.

have ability write professional enough, write approximate closest to nondisabled people enough. not have ID. all advantages that make people listen you more, take you more seriously. but this advantage, or fact this even is advantage that some not have, they not recognize.

whether mean to or not. became “am nonspeaking and proud, but at least have high IQ mind intact and can write ‘normal,’ so still have worth still deserve listen to because still have those redeeming abilities.” —what about those us who don’t?

“what that do with term ‘presume competence’?”

presume competence key idea, root of movement & advocacy.

presume competence, big words, not everyone who struggle speak can say/speak/write/communicate these two words. not all can remember. not all understand. some, will never ever able communicate or understand these two exact words ever in life, even with best support most help.

key slogan of movement, inaccessible to group of people you claim advocate for. same group people you also ignore pretend not exist erase in your advocacy.

this how deep this exclusion and inaccessibility issue run in nonspeaking advocacy.

down to its roots.

[this about nonspeaking movement (especially outside tumblr) and people who do this exclusion + inaccessibility. this not say term nonspeaking bad or all individual nonspeaking person bad.]

#sorry for long post know it inaccessible but literally do not have ability write short…#long post #nonspeaking #nonverbal #actually autistic #actuallyautistic #loaf screm #discourse

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sonik-kun · 5 months

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I feel a level of accountability needs to be had amongst certain wangxian stans, particularly in regards to how some of them make us JC fans feel and have us reluctant to engage with the mainstream part of the fandom due endless hounding and bullying..

Yes, for Twitter users, this is about that one poll that is going around and the conversations I've seen amongst moots about the poll..

After reading what I've read this week.. I just need to get something off my chest about how icky this fandom is sometimes and how it has us JC fans feeling all the time. So bear with me whilst I rant. It's a lot to unpack, but it has to be said.. So here I go..

So for those who dont know, there's this poll going around on twitter for best DILF/MILF.. Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji both happen to be in that poll.

To both the surprise and excitement of us JC fans, JC is doing well.. However.. So is LWJ.. and so, of course, the possibility of them two coming head to head hangs over us..

And now, in the semi-finals, JC is up against Toji from JJK, LWJ is up against Loid from Spy x Family. It seems LWJ is going to win his.. and JC fans, as a result.. Have felt the need to step away and let Toji take the win.. In fear of backlash and what's to come for our fanbase, if LWJ and JC were to face each other in the finals..

Throughout the entire tournament, we already saw a few nasty remarks from these antis, rearing their ugly heads. So we could only imagine what it would be like should the two be put up against each other.

The fact that we as a fanbase feel the need to let another character win so our favourite doesn't recieve any backlash is both upsetting and really telling of what this fandom has been reduced to.

The fact of the matter is, it shouldn't have to be this way. Us JC fans shouldn't have to be afraid to vote for our favourite character, to see him do well and win and to enter his name or his ships into other tournaments. We should be able to enjoy ourselves and have fun, free of any fandom drama and bullying. The same freedom wangxian fans get to enjoy.

I know it's just a twitter poll, and it doesn't really mean anything, but.. It's just so disheartening seeing your moots feel that way about a character they should be allowed to enjoy.. Honestly, the whole thing has just left a bad taste in my mouth.. I wasn't really a fan of LWJ due to some of his fanbase.. But the nasty attitudes I've seen in this poll, amongst many, have only further solidified that stance..

To the kind and normal wangxian fans out there, I am sorry if you are reading this. I'm not tarring you with this lot. But I hope you all understand that this is the position of most JC fans rn. We do not trust most of you because, unfortunately, the toxic but very vocal minority speaks the loudest.

It really is ruining the whole fandom experience and making MDZS look like a joke and I think that is a conversation that needs to be had.

JC fans aren't the only ones who feel this way. Anyone outside of Wangxian feels very alienated by some of the fans of the main ship.

As a result, a lot of us are afraid to enjoy our characters the same way wangxian fans do.

No Wangxian fan would ever feel afraid to enter their fave into a mainstream poll, and rightfully so. So why should we feel afraid? Why can't we enjoy our characters the same way?

Sorry, this is all mostly me rambling, but.. I just couldn't sit there and not address all the ick.. Especially whilst I was having so much fun, seeing JC doing so well and my moots being so happy as a result..

Note: Just to make it clear, in case I haven't already, I'm not upset with the JC fans who chose to no longer vote for JC towards the end of the tournament. Giving all the bullying and backlash we receive, I can see why you wouldn't want him to win for that reason. A part of me felt the same way, too. I just wish it didn't have to be that way.. It just sucks to see that some people can't behave and let others have their fun :(

#mxtx mdzs #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #the untamed #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #jiang cheng #canon jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #please.. mdzs fandom.. do better

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moeteki · 4 months

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IMPORTANT: Regarding the use of my Nitro+Chiral/BL/BLVN Scans

I know I do not use Tumblr at all in the past year (but plan to be active on here again soon), but I feel as if I need to put this on here as well, given that what I want to say has to do with scans I have uploaded and provided onto here in the past.

If you’re going to reupload any scans of mine I did in the past (and future), I ask for a link back to my postings.

(cont. below)

Reason why I am saying this is that I recently came aware of a Twitter user reuploading some of my old scans without linking back or credit. This user, whom I will not name for privacy for now, has been doing this not only with my works, but my other friends/mutuals within the Nitro+Chiral fandom. It's severely saddening and disappointing, and I'm speaking up not only for myself, but my friends/mutuals as well.

I do not have an issue with sharing my scans; I share them and for the reasons of wanting others to see content that may be hard to get a hold of. What I DO have an issue with is the lack of credit/linking credit. I know what my scans look like; I do them a particular way.

I understand how hard it is for many fans especially (in the N+C fandom outside of Japan) to get hands on items, and I don’t mind the sharing of my scans I created for people to have access, but all I ask at the very LEAST is a link back to my original upload. Just a link. That's all I ask for.

I want to provide content for people who cannot afford/be able to get their hands on it due to items being so old they are out of production. Not crediting me is a major disrespect as I have put a lot of money, time and effort too, into providing scans of content. A lot of my items I have purchased have come from Japan itself, it's an expensive and long time going out in effort to search for a lot of the stuff I have gotten. I've even pulled all-nighters translating content (in the past).

Because of this, I have decided from here on out, when I do upload a scan it will be watermarked in some form. Scans will have watermarks on every single page possibly in multiple areas (mostly hidden), and translations from here on out will have hidden watermarks if they are done solely by me. My translations already come with a credit page, but that doesn't seem to be enough anymore unfortunately.

I was planning on returning part-time to translating and providing scans of content in the next coming months due to time in my personal life finally letting up. What I was not expecting, however, was an individual pretty much reposting my old scans without credit. I hate to do this, but all they had to do was literally just post a link back to my scans.

So the good news, expect this account to become more active in the coming months (hopefully) with new scans and translations and such. Unfortunately though, what will be provided will be watermarked from here on out.

If the individual whom I am referring to happens to see this, since they seem to be pulling content from Tumblr mostly (which is why I am popping on here to say something); please just credit where credit is due. Not just with my stuff, but other's as well. Saying "idk who OP is" is not the right thing to do when you know you are posting content you haven't scanned or taken pictures of yourself. Reverse image search to find the sources.

I hope you understand, and I appreciate you all that have stuck around and continue to. Hope to be active on here again soon to provide content for you all.

Much appreciated, Mellow (Meru)

Reminder that I am far more active on my Twitter.

#mellow speaks #update

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messyhairdiaz · 10 days

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I'm hesitant to ask this question because a lot of people are really weird but you were patient even with the person being really ridiculous and I have been really confused lately.

Why are so many people who were big buddie shippers shifting to be mainly or even only bucktommy now?

I get multishipping, but in the past when people had other ships they liked they didn't shift so drastically. Most people are now changing their users and everything to be bucktommy/tommy and most of the fanfic writers write only bucktommy now.

Is it just because it is new? Or because Buck being bi is such a big thing? I am on the spectrum and don't do change so maybe it's a me thing but it is just surprising and a little confusing why there is so much of a shift. I remember lots of people shipped Buck/Josh and even Buck/Taylor and Buck/Lucy but there wasn't ever so much of a full focus change.

A lot of people also seemed to suddenly start hating on or just not caring about Eddie too which has made me sad, like he only matters in the context of Buddie shipping. That seems to be mostly on Twitter and tiktok though and those groups of fans have always been a little weird.

Anyway this is very long and I understand if you don't want to answer, especially with all the discourse lately.

Hi! Honestly I’m always happy to answer questions like yours where you are genuinely asking a question and not just coming in with accusations and nonsense to start drama

I can really only speak for myself, but I think other people would probably agree with my reasoning, so:

I think a good chunk of it probably is because it’s new, yeah. I love buddie so much and nothing could ever change that, but it is fun to have this new dynamic to work with. For me especially, I’m enjoying writing bucktommy a ton right now, because I haven’t written outside of buddie in, well, years actually because even before I dove in headfirst in 2021 I hadn’t really been writing much of anything. So it’s fun to have new toys to play with.

And honestly, at least as far as my dash and my friends go, I don’t think any of us are only bucktommy shippers now, it’s just getting the major focus right now because it’s new and it’s playing out on our screens. I’m still seeing plenty of new buddie fics, metas, and gifsets coming out amongst the bucktommy

Like, my last fic was bucktommy, and my next one will be too, but I still have lots of buddie fic brewing, and I know I’ll still be coming up with tons of new ideas for them too. But it probably seems like I’ve done a hard shift, because it is only what I’m working on right now. But that’s just temporary, and I’m sure it is with others as well.

As for hating on or not caring about Eddie, that is definitely something I have not seen. I can’t say it isn’t happening, of course, because I only follow around 100 people and rarely venture off my dash, but if you’re seeing it here I would encourage you to curate your dash better, and stay away from twitter and TikTok because those places are cesspools for fandom.

To circle back to why bucktommy is getting this treatment over the other ships you mentioned, again, I can only speak for myself, but it’s because Tommy is such a compelling character. I’m fascinated by the character set up through the begins episodes to now, and I like thinking about him. I’m not saying other characters haven’t been compelling, but they just haven’t grabbed my attention in a way that makes me want to write about them the way he has.

I hope I was able to address all your questions

#asks #anonymous

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formulatrash · 1 year

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While we are loosely on the topic of IndyCar, I've been getting into other racing series and am planning to actively follow some more this year and the culture shock as a fan is real. I can actually ask questions about IndyCar and FE without getting some smart ass "DTS fan" response, coincidentally with them still being unable to answer my question themselves though. Generally people just stay in their lanes and focus on the teams/drivers they support instead of wasting so much time and energy on the teams/drivers they passionately hate. Death threats and harassment aren't normalized. Maybe the haters aren't the only ones who want to see my favs get "demoted" to IndyCar or FE because they're genuinely so much more chill to follow as a fan. With F1, you can do all the blocking and unfollowing not just on Tumblr, but on websites with a lot of grown 50+ year olds and still come across some of the most file shit you've ever encountered. I've met some great friends through F1 and as a STEM student, love the engineering aspect, but the 24/7, 365 fighting and drama amongst fans doesn't make it fun to follow, it gets old and annoying pretty quick.

in all honesty, it's that lack of exposure thing. people are excited to see other people getting into the smaller series we like cus there aren't very many of us, innit. gotta have people to blorbopost with. love to get the moots in on my nonsense.

(this was, in short version, how I ended up writing about Formula E for years)

the sheer scale of F1 fandom has always been one of its issues, like football fandom. there's no sort of curated community areas where everyone's decent to each other cus there's so many people involved. and there's lots of ways in which the media is responsible for that

I'm glad you mentioned the 50+ year olds cus honestly, it's always been this way. and particularly if you're from any of the demographics not assumed to be somehow naturally an authority on F1. I say 'any of the demographics' - you know exactly the one that gets the pass and then the rest of us can waste our lives proving we know anything and drive ourselves insane or just accept you have to love it in spite of it all.

ultimately, it's on F1 to actually call off the dogs in the sense you can absolutely start effective comms campaigns that address harassment and exclusion. you can breed healthy dialogue, you can put a less combative and rage-fuelled version of the sport out there. but what's happening right now is doing numbers for a series that - and remember this was as recently as 2018 - was absolutely on its knees.

shrinking, ageing viewership was impacting sponsorship while costs escalated, manufacturers all threatening to pull out, brands questioning the point of being involved, media coverage that was shrivelling up and dying, no social and digital presence to speak of, very little visibility outside specialist channels.

F1 has, by a combination of luck and a sort of 'try pressing every button at once and see if something works' managed to reverse those fortunes and now the influencers it didn't understand 5 years ago are clamouring to get in the paddock. that's a good thing! F1 desperately needs attention or else, like a Tumblr user, it will literally die because sponsors are only interested in paying for exposure and F1 needs such vast amounts of money.

so: I'd love F1 to have more fans. my friends who've suddenly got into or back into it the last few years rock. but with great capacity for sponsorship deals comes a huge hot mess of governance, calendar bloat and subterranean discourse.

although Extremely Online F1 Fandom is only a small slice of it all, regardless, which I kinda try to remember.

main thing is: enjoy things how you want to! engage with and boost content you like! block everyone annoying, life is too short.

(I genuinely wish more people would just block me when they find me annoying on Twitter or whatever rather than turn it into a strange obsession. think I'm an idiot? cool, block me. massively more peaceful for us all)

#man i really really want [redacted thing i am manifesting so hard about] to happen #so i can like write more about and speaking to this #but anyway #motorsport asks

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this-has-returned · 2 years

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This is a long rant. Strap in.

I'm not sure if this is an experience that other Americans have online, but it's something that I'm noticing more and more as we get deeper into the age of algorithm-based media.

I have spent years learning German for the express purpose of seeking out German media online and being able to understand it with little to no translator assistance. A lot of my favorite bands are from Germany, for example, and I feel really accomplished when I can understand what I'm hearing. It's an absolutely beautiful language and culture. I'm too poor to travel (and my neurodivergence provides other problems with travel as well), but I wanted to at least leverage the Internet's ability to take me around the world's data channels.

I've wanted to do this since childhood. I picked German in particular half on a whim, and half because two relatives on my dad's side sing in German for their church, and so he picked up some of the language from them before I was born.

I was already exposed to Spanish from my classmates (and I was correctly assuming I would take Spanish classes as a school requirement anyway), and was exposed to Japanese from my sister and her best friend (which was a language that seemed incredibly hard). So German, therefore, was the first language that I felt was within my ability to learn, and could be learned for fun (and not strictly for utility).

Neither of my parents are German (those two relatives at the church are apparently French). I have no other apparent connections to the country that would register in any algorithm online. I think this has given me an unexpected obstacle, because all of the algorithms have been like "YOU ARE AN AMERICAN. HERE IS YOUR AMERICAN MEDIA. HERE ARE OTHER AMERICANS TO FOLLOW ONLINE. I SEE YOU HAVE AN INTEREST IN OTHER COUNTRIES; HERE ARE SOME AMERICANS WHO TALK ABOUT THOSE COUNTRIES."

And, like, the fact that so many things are search-based makes it really hard too, because no matter how many search terms I awkwardly type in German, nor how many German content creators I follow, a lot of social media will not recommend me anything from the country; it just redirects to American and UK sources (because it translated my search into English), or to fictional sources made specifically for people learning the language in a classroom setting.

In fact, on Twitter and TikTok especially, I can follow as many German creators as the limited search results will let me see, and then it never shows me any posts from them, nor makes any recommendations based on them. I have to intentionally check on their profiles and scroll through every week or so, because none of it appears on my feed. It's as if these sites think it's fucking insane that I would ever speak another language, or be interested in anything outside of my own country. It's like the algorithms think that following these creators was a mistake I made or something, and best to not take seriously. Honestly, given the stereotypes (and realities) of how little Americans care about the outside world, I guess this shouldn't be a surprise to me.

Tumblr is honestly the first and only website where my attempt to land on the German side of content creation yielded anything at all. This is actually the first website that seems capable of handling users who speak other languages for fun.

Anyone else I know in America who gets content from Mexico, Puerto Rico, or Venezuela (for example) seems to get it because they have family from there, and I think online algorithms seem to keep track of that and cater content accordingly. Additionally, people interested in Japanese media, UK media, or Bollywood seem to get content sources as well. Meanwhile, these same high-end algorithms look at my activity and are like "What's this nerd searching 'Eisbrecher' for?"

The closest I've seen algorithms get is probably the Wehraboo community (oof), but all their stuff just seems to be Americanized hyperfixations on WWII German war technologies and Nazi iconography, which is absolutely nothing like what I'm trying to find (obviously), but there's a surprising number of pipelines leading to there from "casually listens to German music and plays BattleTech games". You can imagine how annoying most search results can be for me, as someone who likes Eisbrecher, Rammstein, Project Pitchfork, and BattleTech. I hope this point in particular highlights the problems I'm having with algorithms and search engines.

I know there's a meme going around about how Tumblr has no algorithm, or that its minimal replication of one is hilariously simple at best, but honestly I appreciate it. Other websites with advanced algorithms keep me locked in this fucking country as much as they possibly can. The fact that I am FINALLY getting recommendations from German Tumblr users after a DECADE of trying to land in German communities on other websites is absolutely wild.

My entire goal has been to utilize what I learned to explore more parts of the Internet and Human Experience (tm), but these algorithms have been keeping me locked here for so long that my skills in speaking, reading, and writing German have gotten rusty from lack of use.

I'm not looking for 2-page stories written in 1980 by teachers for beginners in the classroom. I want memes auf Deutsch, I want rants, I want shitposts (which are hard enough to understand in English, as I'm autistic, so I will probably spend 30 minutes trying to process them in German). I want to see Germany's autistic community talk about their special interests. I want to see the larger neurodivergent community there talk about their experiences, too! I want to see gay fanfic about characters that I wouldn't know from American media, so I would be forced to try and Google what the source material was for 15 minutes to get any context. I fought in the American public school system to keep them from dropping German classes from the curriculum, and was finally able to take it for 2 years, plus another year in a community college before my mental illness made it unsustainable to chase my degree any further. I was hunted down for sport by the Duolingo owl when I took German lessons in the app. I just want to finally feel validated for trying to learn a damn language that I chose for myself lol.

So, hallo LGBTQ+ side of German Tumblr! Happy Pride, and happy Neun Euro Ticket! I need to improve my writing, grammar, and my spelling, but I can at least read you!

Also, do any other Americans struggle with this shit, or has it literally just been me this whole time? Or am I just doing things the hard way, and there was an easier way all along?

#german stuff #bilingual #algorithms #social media #languages #germany #autism #special interests #neun euro ticket

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representation4all · 2 years

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Call 2 Action

It’s no secret that the white man dominates all of the West, if not the world. It’s also no secret that this isn’t anything new-- supremacy of white complexion, religion, and culture has existed in both practise & ideology long before 17th century colonialism. What is new? Technological media. From social media like Instagram and Twitter to cinematic media like the MCU and Elden Ring, humans are constantly expanding in the realm of entertainment. This provides a platform not only to people you never want to see like James Corden, but also people that come from cultures that have been historically swept under the rug, so to speak. So; What do we want?

What do we want?

In a society with so much emphasis on entertainment, seeing oneself on the big screen is an insurmountable feeling. Not only does casual representation feel good, but it also changes the way we see other people around us. Disney-Pixar’s Turning Red gave many non-Chinese viewers a fun, cute, and informational look into the complexities of Chinese culture and the stress of generational trauma in immigrant families. Alice Oseman’s comic-turned-Netflix-original Heartstopper presents gay love in an innocent and pure way, which combats the expectations surrounding MLM (men loving men) relationships of being impure or inherently sexual. What we want is representation. Studies show that representation in popular media changes the perception of not only outsiders or non-minorities, but people who belong to these groups as well. Seeing anyone other than a white man in a position of power inspires young ones and gives them a foundation for their hopes and dreams, and it is the children who are always the most important to the future of a society-- with better, diverse representation (such as GBH’s Molly of Denali), we are directly inspiring a new generation of doctors, teachers, artists, and others that offer fresh perspective and great determination to their field.

How do we get it done?

It’s pretty clear that there aren’t any SONY or Disney big-shots waltzing around Tumblr-dot-com for some good user-based criticism. The only celebrity that we know of who hasn’t been scared away from this hellsite is resident Beloved Neil Gaiman (author of American Gods, Good Omens, Coraline, and many others). However, it’s also clear that these industry titans don’t exactly care about the voices of minorities as they’re too busy exploiting people for profit. So, what can we do about this? There are a myriad of acceptable answers, the first and foremost being: Make the representation you want to see. It’s an oversimplification for sure, but it doesn’t mean that it’s ineffective. Independent, self-published books are a good source of perspective and understanding. So are comics, whether you post them digitally on Tapas or Webtoon, or prefer to keep them on your Tumblr art blog. It’s absolutely not the same thing as representation in media that is consumed in droves and twittered about constantly on social platforms, but that doesn’t mean that people won’t see it. Even if only a single person comes away with a fresh perspective and hope in their heart, it has been a successful endeavour. If you aren’t a creator and can afford to support creators bringing representation into the media, donating financially to independent artists helps to provide the equipment needed in order to create. Patreons, Kickstarters, and Kofi are all great places to start. If, for any reason, you can’t support queer and POC artists financially, there are always alternative ways to show your appreciation. Boosting artists on social media and drawing attention to disparities in media representation help spread reach across larger audiences. Additionally, if there are shows/games/movies that you think do a good job of representing groups of people, Tweeting your appreciation goes a long way. Often, execs look at social media like Twitter to gauge engagement on their show. Shows with low engagement are more likely to be cancelled prematurely.

Steps for actionable change

Change isn’t something that can be secured through logic alone. Sudbrink, author and trainer with over 20 years of experience in management, simplifies change in people to five steps. Translated into applicable terms, these steps are:

Step 1: Awareness Knowing that there is injustice. Step 2: Desire Wanting to fight injustice. Step 3: Knowledge Understanding the injustice; what it is, who or what is causing it, the context behind it, and how to help. Step 4: Action Taking action to fight injustice. Step 5: Perseverance Continuing to fight injustice. Fighting oppression, tyranny, and injustice is much easier said than done. It is not something that can be done alone. Do your part in mending the disparity between cishets in media and queer + BIPOC voices in media in any way you possibly can, even if it’s simply supporting queer and BIPOC projects or spreading awareness. Remember: Awareness is the first step!

#activism #intersectional activism #representation #media/entertainment #social media #capitalism #communism #white supremism #queer #bipoc #call to action #school project #queer voices #bipoc voices #black voices #queer representation #bipoc representation

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silverlineswap · 1 year

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BINANCE & IT’S FUD’S — CZ ADDRESSES IT WITH HIS PERCEPTION

SilverLineSwap-SPARC Bets:

The recent FUD surrounding Binance has been concerning for many consumers.

However, it is important to understand the context behind this FUD and how it does not necessarily reflect negatively on Binance itself.

Here are three reasons why CZ addresses the reasons behind Binance’s recent FUD:

First, CZ has made a point of being transparent about any issues that arise with their platform or services.

In response to the most recent allegations of manipulation within its trading system, he was quick to address these concerns head-on by providing an explanation as well as steps taken towards rectifying any issues that may have arisen from them. This level of transparency shows consumers that their trust in Binance is warranted and appreciated by its leadership team.

Second, CZ understands how vital customer satisfaction is for business success and takes proactive measures when dealing with potential threats like malicious actors or other security risks posed against users’ accounts or funds stored on his exchange platform.

He recently implemented KYC protocols which can help identify suspicious activity more quickly while also protecting user privacy at all times — something few other exchanges offer today! Additionally, he regularly updates customers through social media channels regarding new features/updates so they always know what’s going on at any given time — another great way to keep people informed without having them worry too much about potential risks associated with using his service(s).

Finally, CZ understands how important stability within markets can be for traders who rely heavily upon accurate pricing data in order to make sound investment decisions; therefore, he works hard to ensure there are no irregularities occurring due to factors such as market manipulation.

By doing so, Investors feel more confident investing money into cryptocurrencies knowing they will get fair prices based on reliable information sources provided by him & his team members working tirelessly behind the scenes every day! As a result — We see less volatility when compared against major stock indices over long-term periods which helps both novice & experienced traders alike achieve better returns without worrying too much about sudden price swings caused by external forces outside control!

Overall, it’s clear why CZ takes extra precautions when addressing rumors surrounding binance: because he values customer satisfaction above all else! His dedication to making sure everyone involved gets the best experience possible speaks volumes about what kind of leader/visionary investor should strive to become if looking to succeed in the cryptocurrency space moving forward.

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dilfdoctordoom · 3 years

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On Tom Taylor, the Current Nightwing Run & Ableism

I did mention I was gonna do a post about it, so here we are. There are some things I want to make clear before we begin: the issue exploded on Twitter on the very first day of disabled Pride month; disabled people have been discussing the ableism in Taylor’s Nightwing run since it began; nobody has blamed Taylor for what happened to Barbara in 2011. We are, however, blaming him for the way she is written in his series during 2021.

I am also going to be discussing the ableism in the fandom in this post. The reactions I have seen, from here to Twitter to TikTok, are showing not only a great misunderstanding of the situation, but a purposeful misunderstanding. The very real reasons disabled people are angry right now have been twisted to make us seem ridiculous and overly sensitive and I cannot help but feel that is very intentional.

Another quick addition: disabled people are not a monolith. Barbara Gordon spent over 20 years as a paralyzed wheelchair user. Stating (and I would like to note, never truly showing) that she is a part time cane user now is still erasing her disability. These things are not interchangeable.

So, with that out of the way, let’s begin.

Tom Taylor’s run is ableist. That is a fact of this situation. He made the active choice to include a version of Barbara Gordon that is ableist caricature. Story wise, the role that Barbara plays could have easily been filled by anyone else. There is no real season, within the narrative and outside of it, for Taylor to include this version of Barbara Gordon, who has received a decade of criticism from disabled people. It’s very well known that this iteration is problematic, to put it kindly, and Taylor is aware of that.

He made the active decision to include her, anyway, showing, at the very least, that he is passively, if not actively, ableist. Passive ableism is still ableism and disabled people are allowed to take issue with that.

That alone is reason enough for disabled people to be angry. But that’s not why things exploded on Twitter.

On July 1st, the very first day of disabled pride month, the new design for Barbara was dropped. After months of teasing Barbara’s return to a wheelchair using Oracle (see: Last Days of The DC Universe, Batgirl (2016), etc), they debuted... a new Batgirl costume that the artist has openly said draws inspiration from the Burnside suit.

There’s a lot of issues to unpack here, so let’s start small: the issue with consciously calling back to Burnside. The Burnside era of Batgirl stories was... beyond awful. The villain of the series’ first arc, was an AI based on Barbara’s brain patterns when she was disabled. It was evil because of all the rage and pain Barbara felt. The actual Barbara, on the other hand, was good -- because she was able bodied. Because her PTSD had been tossed aside. It was a horrifically ableist era that drove the idea that Barbara’s life was terrible when she was disabled; that it was some horrible, twisted secret.

Comics have kept that narrative going. Barbara is seen hiding books on chronic pain; she reacts aggressively to the mere idea that she could be in a wheelchair again, acting like it would be weakness. Whereas Barbara had once been Oracle not because of, but in spite of, her disability, who was fantastic representation for the disabled community, she now acts like it is the most shameful thing in her life.

To call back to Burnside is to call back to that ableism and make no critique of it. If anything, it’s to embrace the ideas of that era.

There is also the design itself to consider. Many people have pointed out the inclusion of a back brace, as if that saves it from ableism -- it does not. Any person who has ever worn a back brace can take one look at this design and know that they did not consult a disabled person. Hell, by how impractical that thing is, I doubt they even Googled a picture of a back brace.

It’s a superficial acknowledgement that Barbara is supposed to be disabled. Something that was apparently thrown in to appease the numerous complaints of Barbara being able bodied; something that no one working on it put any effort into.

When it comes to aids, this is not a new thing for Barbara in Infinite Frontier. She’s said to be using a cane occasionally, that we got a better look at in Batman: Urban Legends, and as any cane user can tell you... that is not a cane that could feasibly be used. It’s another pathetic attempt to acknowledge that Barbara is supposed to be disabled, without actually doing anything of importance.

[IMAGE ID: A segmented cane with a tri-pointed handle with a wrist strap. There is a stripe across the sections to connection them, labelled “solar battery charger buttons”. The text reads: “telescoping antenna doubles as cane or weapon if needed”. END ID]

Dropping this design (which we have now established to be problematic) on the very first day of disabled pride month is a sickening move. The very first day, and DC has doubled down on their disability erasure, thrown in superficial things like a back brace to act like it’s fine.

Tom Taylor is definitely involved in this, whether you like it not. No, he is not in anyway responsible for the events of the New 52 and what they did to Barbara Gordon, but that does not absolve him of blame for what is currently being done to her in his run.

When the design dropped, it started trending due to disabled fans reactions. To be clear: we were directly calling out the ableism in this design. This was Tom Taylor’s response:

[IMAGE ID: A tweet from TomTaylorMade that says: “Hey, @Bruna_Redono_F I think our new Batgirl suit is getting some attention.” He then adds a winky face emoji and tags @jesswchen and @drinkpinkkink. Attached are a screenshot showing that Batgirl is trending in the United States and a picture of the design itself. END ID]

This is him, bragging about how the disabled community reacted. Perhaps before this tweet, you could’ve made an argument that he was not ableist, but after he flaunted the fact that disabled people were rightly furious over this, like it was something to be proud of? No. If you are defending him, you are a part of the problem.

Taylor has included ableist writing in his Nightwing run, beyond the inherent ableism that comes with the current iteration of Barbara Gordon (whose inclusion, yet again, is his decision).

[IMAGE ID: A panel from Nightwing #79. Barbara and Dick are standing in his apartment. Barbara is saying: “I have some pretty new technology holding my spine together. I’m happy to do most things -- eat pizza in the park, take down low-level thugs -- but leaping from rooftops seems... unwise.” END ID]

What Barbara says in the panel above has bothered a lot of disabled people. The implication that she couldn’t “eat pizza in the park’ and “take down low-level thugs” without a spinal implant that conveniently erases her disability is... fucked up, to put it mildly. Those are both things that Barbara has done in a wheelchair. The first one is something wheelchair users can do and the implication that it’s not is beyond offensive.

But, let’s leave Barbara behind for a moment. I have previously mentioned that disabled people have been discussing the ableism present in this run long before July -- and that ableism is not only centred on Barbara. Dick is also a player in all this.

Dick Grayson was shot in the head. I don’t believe I need to retread the story, but just in case: Dick was shot in the head by KGBeast, developed amnesia from the event, and went by Ric Grayson for a long enough period in comics. If you have been active within the DC fandom for the past year or so, you know all about this controversial storyline and its fallout.

The Ric Grayson arc concluded itself the issue before Taylor became the writer for the series and ever since his tenure has begun, Taylor has completely ignored the reality of Dick being a disabled man. We understand this is comics, that things do not function the way they do in our world, but still -- it is clear that this gunshot wound to the head has affected Dick massively. We had an entire arc dedicated to how he struggled to find himself in the aftermath.

Taylor is choosing to write Dick as an able-bodied man, despite his canonical injuries and how they would impact his life.

This man is choosing to give empty gestures towards Barbara being a disabled woman (as discussed above, the completely dysfunctional back brace, etc) whilst writing her as able-bodied as possible. He writes both Dick and Barbara as able bodied as humanly possible. That is ableist. He is ableist. This is the same man that said he made a dog disabled ‘in honour of Barbara’. I do not think I need to elaborate on why that is bad.

The least he could’ve done, was get a sensitivity reader. We know that Taylor is not beyond getting people from marginalized communities to consult on his work (see: Suicide Squad), so why, when writing two characters that should be disabled, one that the disabled community have been criticising for a decade, does he not reach out to a single disabled person? A mere Google search could’ve improved the situation massively. In both the new design and the current writing, it is beyond clear that this is not just an able-bodied person writing it -- it’s an ableist person.

He could have listened to the numerous disabled fans that spoke out. Instead, he chose not only to refuse to do that, but to describe justifiable anger as ‘raging’. He treated us like we were crazy for daring to speak out about blatant ableism being parading around of us in our pride month.

Tom Taylor has failed to do the bare minimum and in doing so, he is, at very, very least, guilty of complicity. Again: passive ableism is still ableism.

The argument at hand is not just about Barbara Gordon and the continuing ableism that shines out from her current writing. The argument is about the treatment of disabled characters in his run. It has also become about the way he treats physically disabled people.

We also can’t have this conversation without acknowledging the fandom’s role in it all. I waited a day to write this up, to allow all the reactions to flood in... and I am sickened.

We have everything across the board. Able-bodied people that have actually listened to disabled people, who have supported us (which is deeply appreciated). Able-bodied people who may have had good intentions, but a skewed sense of the situation and perpetuating some of the more insidious lies being spread around (IE. that this is only about the new costume).

There are, obviously, the ableist reactions, though, that we will be discussing here. People deeming the current issues as ‘crazy’, calling disabled people ‘overly sensitive’ and ‘delusional’. Many people have completely glossed over the examples given for why Taylor, specifically, is ableist, and instead have resorted to telling disabled people that we are wrong and should be mad at DC instead.

It’s important to note that Tom Taylor is an adult man. He doesn’t need a fandom to attack disabled people for daring to call him out. He is not the victim in this situation; he has, for quite a few disabled people, been the aggressor.

I have seen claims that Infinite Frontier is a ‘slow burn’, implying that disabled people need to patient... as if we have not waited a decade for less ableist writing. There is a complete refusal from able-bodied fans to actually listen to what disabled people are saying. They would much rather rush to the defence of the (honestly rather mediocre) current Nightwing run.

Disabled fans know that comic book spaces are ableist. We know that both DC and Marvel and many of their writers are ableist. We are still allowed to be pissed as hell about it and acting like the current reaction being had right now is disabled people being ‘overdramatic’ is yet another example of how the able-bodied side of the fandom both refuses to listen to and undermine disabled people when we call out ableism.

We know it when we see it. We always do and we always will and we will always be able to recognize it far faster than an able-bodied person. If this many disabled fans are coming out and talking about an issue, calling it ableism, then it’s time for you shut up and listen.

Stop being a part of the problem and start supporting disabled fans for once.

#barbara gordon #dick grayson #nightwing #batgirl #tom taylor #tw ableism #okay to rb

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arcadialedger · 3 years

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Please note that I am most likely leaving this platform. I am done being abused. But first? We need to have a discussion. A discussion about hate and bullying in fandom.

All online-- I encourage you to read my story below. Reblog and spread awareness. The Dragon Prince fandom especially -- I implore you read my words, every single one of them. The short of it is that I am done.

This all began with losing and being blocked by a friend because I shared something they disagreed with. I don’t care what you feel about my initial reaction to this (which I’ll explain below) -- I’ve apologized for not handling the situation correctly. But I will not be shamed for speaking my mind and standing up for myself.

Because no human being deserves to go through what I have endured since last summer.

Following the “callout” post made about me by one of, if not the largest blogs in this fandom, I received hundreds of threats, harassment messages, and death threats. Messages and posts telling me to kill myself were also prominent, on a multiple times a week basis for awhile.

Messages from people who were well aware I have struggled with being suicidal. Due to one of their favorite Dragon Prince blogs speaking out against me, they thought it was okay to suicide bait me.

And it worked. I already struggle with hating myself, am already insecure, and being flooded with these comments which, while I made mistakes, did nothing to deserve, drove me to try and take my own life after years of progress in my mental health.

Mind you, this is like a 200 follower to 4k follower power dynamic. Which yes, plays a role-- because when you have a large following and influence, you have power. Yet the person behind this had the gall to claim Tumblr clout isn’t real.

People blocking and condemning others instantly at your word? Is power. If people read your words and are influenced, or have their minds changed, or buy or don’t buy something, etc.-- you are an influencer. You have power. And when you’re one of the largest blogs in a fandom, you have a LOT of power.

So take responsibility.

I was hurt because I lost a friend who I had chatted with for months, did a podcast with, and was generally not only one of my favorite blogs but the center of my experience in the Dragon Prince. I may not have been perfect in my words, but when I was asked why I was quiet/ inactive, I explained how I was hurting, anonymously. I was understandably in pain and upset. I had been cut off for just having a different opinion on a matter, for thinking differently. Even though it was within their rights to block and do so, it felt wrong and it weighed on me.

Is that such a crime?

The callout post and previously described abuse followed, lasting for months until later in the year (this began in June, or around then). It also included screenshots of tweets, when this user does not have Tumblr, and they have stated to have screenshots stored up on their computer of my various posts and interactions. This is creepy behavior, and freaked me out. I felt like I was being stalked, “evidence” being filed away for the very purpose of being used against me.

I eventually talked things out with the blog per recommendation of my therapist, and thought all would be fine. For a little while, it was. I largely stayed off of Tumblr to heal. Once in awhile I would have a rough, tearful night because something reminded me of what I lost, but I would make it through. Overall, I was making progress.

Then? My Twitter got hacked by one of the people sending me hate. For what had turned out to be much. And after they tweeted some purposefully incriminating and bigoted things to make me look bad, I came home from a weekend in the mountains to a shitstorm.

Twitter has a love hate relationship for me and I barely opened the app unless actively chatting with a friend. So when I saw 700+ notifications, I was surprised. It had never happened before.

I began to scroll through, and when I saw what had happened, I ran to the bathroom and threw up.

I had lost over half of my followers and a solid 60% of previous Twitter mutuals had blocked me. But worst of all, I had hundreds of hate tweets directed at me replying to the hackers tweets. Messages had been sent in DMs and accounts blocked, followed, and unfollowed as well.

If you have never felt that loss of agency-- that sickening feeling of words you never said next to your profile-- be glad. Because it is traumatic. I value my words. I value what I have to say. And having that taken from me was worse than anything I had been through here on Tumblr, outside of the suicide baiting (the most direct attack to me and my emotions/ insecurities throughout this entire ordeal). Further, this hacker had clearly stalked my tweets based on some of their comments.

Hundreds of tweets bashing me, calling me aphobic slurs (knowing I am asexual mind you, as it was in my bio), making fun of my appearance and targeting all of the insecurities which lead to my first suicide attempt in high school, and taking/ editing images of my face and mocking them. This all culminated in a doxing threat-- a doxing threat which made me feel unsafe on a campus I had already been sexually assaulted on. I was once again, after starting the healing process, thrusted back into the darkest time of my life and spiraled into anxiety and depression. I cried a lot overwhelmed by it all, had difficulty sleeping, and felt sick. I started fall semester and couldn’t concentrate on school. I was a mess.

I had once again been condemned, this time for something I had no part in. I tried to example what happened but nobody listened. I had been hung without trial. People were understandably confused, and my entire reputation on the platform, and my page, became a mess of lies, misunderstandings, and more.

If you don’t know the feeling of already hating yourself and being insecure, and having these beliefs reinforced and spread by hundreds publicly across the internet? Of already feeling lonely and unwanted and having the one space you thought you had taken from you? Consider yourself lucky.

I had a lot of voice actors and creators following me-- accounts I interacted and greatly cherished my mutual with. A handful of them unfollowed, understandably. This online hate mob was sending messages to people demanding they unfollow me, including some of these creators. They had no idea what to make of this mess or what was real and true and just didn’t want to deal with it. Most of the others just stopped interacting with me. @aaronwaltke (tagging so those who don’t follow already click and do so, because he is absolutely fantastic-- he’s a writer for ToA) who had followed me on the platform, graciously wished me peace with the entire situation after I checked to make sure he had not been subjected to messages or hate, either from my hacker or other accounts. His was the greatest compassion I got on Twitter, before I ultimately ended up just having to delete.

I lost podcast deals because of this with Adrian Petriw, Aaron Ehasz, and Justin Richmond. I do not blame them one bit and would have done the same in the confusion not wanting to get dragged into anything.

Only to have one of the friends I lost who helped start this interview these very people on their own podcasts. A slap in the face. A zine I had bought to support them came to my door, with the front page proclaiming to “spread a narrative of love.”

I was never granted that chance. That compassion. I had the vultures sent after me with no mercy. And anyone who has been through online abuse and systemic harassment knows just how much it feels like they’re slowly but surely picking at your flesh ( a metaphor I used in one of my old, since deleted posts discussing the situation, and still find accurate), wearing you down until you have no strength left.

Make no mistake, my story is not a one off situation. Many share the same tale of abuse and being driven off of platforms that once gave them great joy. These attacks are coordinated, systemic, and common hobby for these people-- who largely claim to be loving and accepting of all. They are a cyberbullying phenomenon which has risen with the presence of fandom on the internet. And I want to make clear, with current discussions of “cancel culture”, I mean nothing political in that statement. Some might call my experience cancel culture, but I don’t.

It’s just bullying. It’s just hate. These people get off on ruining people’s lives.

And my life was greatly set back and ruined. I had a stain on my past in fandom I could never be rid of. I had to shut down my podcast, took time off of all social media, and most of what I had built, most of my growth, was taken from me while those who incited and/ or spread hate thrived and continued to grow and find success. That was the greatest sting of all.

I asked the one previous friend who hadn’t blocked me, but had just stopped interacting with me (which I understood and respected, and also greatly respected her perspective, help, and support though this situation in which she largely unfortunately ended up in the middle) for help after explaining everything, and got nothing. They didn’t seem to care, and just blocked me on all platforms. Once in awhile, I would find I was cut off from yet another old friend, or a blog that I had never interacted with before but clicked into, interested. It hurt being cut off, unable to fully interact with the fandom, but I could move on.

That pain would never go away, but I made clear I did not blame them for the actions of those who abused, harassed, and threatened me. I also made it clear they did not owe me anything, including unblocking.

I just wanted to move on peacefully, but those with the power to enable that did not wish to help. I slowly, when I felt ready, began to be more active on Tumblr again, and once again the hate started up.

Sometimes when I was hurting, I expressed my pain and loss to my followers just to reach out, because I was sad. I had no idea how to rebuild from all that had happened. This got me more hate an accusations of emotional manipulation and gaslighting. I had no idea what to do, and got trapped in a cycle of needing to talk about it, and getting hate and backlash, but not knowing where else I could turn.

My doxer came back into my asks, ultimately making me switch schools, and refueled the drama. Speaking up about this got me more backlash-- mostly accounts reblogging (one with tags saying “fuck you”, despite not knowing the full story, and commenting and then blocking me so I could do nothing to respond or get it off of my page. I deleted all posts of the matter, as requested by these people (who validly pointed out they were in the main fandom tags, which I hadn’t thought of and understood), and hoped to move on.

But it hasn’t stopped. I have been beaten down and emotionally bruised for months. I have had my life and safety threatened, my education and by extension life path altered, and lost work (podcast) opportunities due to this-- alongside the irreversible emotional damage from trauma and abuse. My mental health issues and insecurities-- which I have been very open about to destigmatize the subjects and encourage conversation-- were actively targeted to inflict the most pain possible.

And I can’t even talk about it, without enduring more hate and accusations of “playing the victim”.

Death threats, suicide baiting, doxing, months of bullying and harassment to the most vile degree, which a lot of these people don’t know about because they don’t even bother to read my words. Yet I’m playing the victim.

And the accusations of bigotry and being hateful hurt, because it couldn’t be further from what is in my heart. I believing in love and acceptance of all. I don’t know how many are religious here, but I found God after my first suicide attempt and that is what his word has taught me.

I’ve been through too much in life to tolerate this, for lack of a more eloquent term, bullshit. I know what abuse and victim blaming looks like when I see it. And in my 20 years of life, I have gone through too much: constant ridicule and bullying, suicide attempts, sexual assault, major spinal surgery, to just be stomped over and not stand up for my right to basis human decency.

I refuse to put up with this, so unless I get an apology and some semblance of justice for everything I have been through, I am leaving. I will not participate in a space run by hate and toxicity. I will never claim to be perfect, and I have apologized for my mistakes and wrongdoings. Now, hold those who did this accountable. If you’re reading this you know very well who it was, and I am not naming them for those who don’t. Because at the end of the day I still send nothing but love and wish no ill will towards them.

But I’ll be damned if I don’t expect accountability of one of the greatest influencers in the fandom for their complacency in abuse, threats, suicide baiting, and and absolute ruining of my life and online experience. They enabled this and were well aware they had the power to stop it-- to ask their followers to stop-- and did nothing. They didn’t care-- about a human’s life and well being.

@dragonprinceofficial, are you aware that this is what many of the fans of your show, which preaches love and an end to the cycle of vengeance, do to others? That this is happening in your space? If you stand at all by the values you preach, condemn it. @staffTumblr/ @supportTumblr-- shame on you for allowing this abuse to happen and ignoring my reports. Shame on you for permitting these people to operate in your platform and for being okay with hosting hate. People have been driven to suicide on your website-- I am one of the lucky ones.

If you care at all about humanity and stand against this behavior, reblog and spread awareness. Share my story so I may not happen to anyone else. Tag @dragonprinceofficial until they notice and speak out.

This is my story, and so many others. Make sure it doesn’t happen ever again. No human being deserves to be treated how I was. Everyone deserves compassion, decency, and respect. And everyone deserves a place in fandom. Do better. If you want to reach out to me DMs are open, as well as my email, which is attached to my account. Until this change happens and I am given the support/ help needed to safely function on this platform, this blog will not be active outside of that.

Thank you all of the many accounts who have supported me, and I am working on getting back to all who have reached out! Your love means the world. You know who you are, and I don’t want to tag in case people come after you for showing me kindness. I am sorry if this is goodbye, to all that have enjoyed my blog. I enjoyed it for a long time too. I loved sharing my passion for stories, culture, having a space where I could analyze and discuss my favorite things. I loved getting to share what I had to offer with the world, having fun and posting jokes with my unique sense of humor. I loved interacting with intelligent people/ fellow fans and discussing my favorite stories, offering each other new insights and growing together. I loved the many, many kind and wonderful people who reached out to me in a variety of ways and provided support and friendship.

In the end, it just isn’t worth all of this pain and trauma, and I know when to put my foot down. I don’t want pity, I don’t want apologizes, and I’m not a martyr. I just want my story to make a difference-- to spur positive change in fandom culture/ spaces. I will be tagging all fandoms in which I have seen this kind of abuse present as well, to reach as many as possible.

Be safe, and be kind.

- The Arcadia Ledger/ Ryn/ Katie, signing off.

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alignallofthelights · 3 years

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Social Media Trending Analysis: Walker vs. DeanCasWedding

Social Media Metrics for Duke 1x05

Now that it’s the next day after the premiere of Duke, the fifth episode of the first season of Walker, I wanted to share the insights I found. Last night #Walker trended to #3 at United States Twitter Trending Top 30. During the course of the evening the show accumulated an excess of 12.3K, some additional hash-tags that trended during the course of the live tweeting included: #SendLoveToTexas and #Micki.

It’s come to my attention that during the live tweeting a Destiel fan posted some information concerning the social media analysis which directly compared the #DeanCasWedding to #Walker. I will share the tweet for ease of reference.

As you can see there are a number of issues with this data/cross analysis. I’ll begin to go through them point by point and then do a cross comparison of the two campaigns side by side.

First and foremost you will see from the tweet in question that the poster did a 7-Day analysis between #Walker and #DeanCasWedding. This means that during the time #Walker was trending they completed a report that ran from 2/12-2/18. For those who are unaware #DeanCasWedding trended on 2/14, and Walker airs regularly on Thursdays. The past two Thursdays were 2/11 and 2/18. The poster is comparing a 7 Day analysis of a hash-tag to one that surges on Thursday during a live-tweet. The author is comparing apples to oranges.

Secondly, Nielsen and Networks, don’t care about 7 Day reports and trends unless they are news programs or soap operas who have content being shared with public audiences every day or every week. There is no reason for them to monitor chatter in this way. Additionally Nielsen does not care about anything outside of the 7 hour airing window of the show in question. For example if you want your tweets to count towards the network/show and Nielsen’s top tweeted shows and your show of preference airs at 8 PM, only tweets from 5 PM - 12 AM will count towards the shows social media presence. Networks and content providers don’t care about anything outside of those hours. Which again shows how meaningless a 7-Day report is for social media concerning television series, and why I won’t track hash-tags outside of the day/time it trends.

Now that those quick details have been addressed, I’m going to do a side-by-side analysis of the two hash-tags when they trended on the dates in question #DeanCasWedding on 2/14 and #Walker during the live tweet of 2/18. For those who are interested in seeing my original report on the DeanCasWedding trend data it’s here for reference.

#DeanCasWedding

As shared before this is the most important data from the #DeanCasWedding. It trended on Twitter’s United States Trending Top 30 at #4 on 2/14, and generated a collective 46.3K tweets before it stopped trending at around 10-11PM EST. As mentioned before this campaign had a very high retweet threshold 67%, and a very high portion of the contributors had accounts that have been active for less than 1 year (26%), this is a high indication of sock puppet accounts/fake accounts. The average Destiel fan account tweeted 5-8 times on average to make the hash tag trend over the course of the 10-11 hours, with some of the top contributors tweeting an excess of 400 times. All this is provided in the report shared earlier.

What does that mean? I want to zero in on the contributors column and the reach, because this is the heart of it all. Although they had 5.3k people contribute to their campaign the conversation was very insular, that means that the people tweeting likely had the same audience, same followership, and in general the same handles talking back and forth in a very small pool of people trading comments between one another. I will do a comparison to #Walker’s premiere later on because it’s the only other campaign I have record of that had a similar tweet threshold and trended for around the same time (During it’s premiere #Walker and #Jared Padalecki trended for 15 hours, peaked at #4 on Twitter’s Top 30, and generated 59.6K tweets).

The bottom line here is that even though #DeanCasWedding was able to trend the substance is not meaningful due to the factors of reach, retweeting non-original content and sock accounts polluting the tag with what networks really value which is eye-balls reaching the tag and new people either learning or engaging with show/content.

#Walker (1x05, “Duke”)

Looking at the data side by side, you will begin to notice a few differences. Some are intuitive. #DeanCasWedding had more tweets 43.6k to Walker’s Duke 12.3k, and as such they had more tweets and contributors. This makes sense, the hash tag trended longer, and Duke is in episode 5. However look at the reach between each of these campaigns.

Duke’s Walker was able to reach 6.5 Million people, compared to DeanCasWedding’s 3 Million. Again this 12.3K+ tweet hash tag that trended for a handful of hours when the episode aired, was able to out reach a hashtag that trended for 10-11 hours on a Sunday with less competition, and on a day where people have more disposable time. This was also in light of Texas going through a major power outage, and understandable concern in addition to more topics taking light away from Walker (understandably and rightly so I may add).

What this shows is that the individuals who are contributing to the Walker hash tag are diversified, meaning they have different account followings, different accounts who are live tweeting, and that the reach of these individuals is beyond that of Supernatural, and that they are engaging with more people overall. Even though Walker had ~30K less tweets than #DeanCasWedding the economical value of this hash tag is greater because of the reach, and the fact that the contributors are truly diverse from each other (i.e. they are all not retweeting and retargeting towards the same audiences, and double dipping and speaking with the same accounts).

This can be seen in the number of original tweets created during each campaign. Walker’s Duke had 6.2K original tweets for a 12.3K hash tag, while DeanCasWedding had 13.7K original tweets for a 46.3K hash tag.

Here is another interesting factor, the age of the twitter accounts who participated in this hash tag are lower than the DeanCasWedding one, showing the likelihood for less fake accounts. Walker has 18% of these newer accounts, while DeanCasWedding has 26%. Again why does a Destiel have so many users with less than 1 year accounts when the ship has existed for 13 years?

Conclusion

What’s my point with this? Just because something has a high tweet count doesn’t mean it’s actually valuable as a social media campaign. It’s more important to go deeper into the data and understand who is interacting and how they are interacting. The number of tweets is just a small portion of a larger picture.

I’m going to make my last point here because I know the Extreme Destiel fans are children and they will likely only look at the contributors column and boast how they have more people tweet over their campaign (ignoring the fact that it took them weeks for several of the content creators to prepare for the date in question, and that they jumped on the fandom wagon from Samantha and Chad with the Roadhouse AU twitter roleplay), and so I want to dispel the notion here by sharing the Walker Premiere data.

Walker Premiere

As mentioned above the Walker premiere trended for 15 hours on January 21st, peaked at #4 on the Twitter Trending Top 30, and generated 59.6K tweets. As you can see here the total contributors for the premiere far out scale and outweigh any numbers of the Destiel fan made wedding, and ultimately this is the reason why I don’t think any of their smear campaigns, jealousy and angry tweeting matter. The economic value of Walker is more than 7 times greater than the value of Destiel.

When you compare similar scaling trends it’s clear #Walker is way bigger than Destiel is. 9.2K contributors, 5k individuals creating original content during the premiere, a retweet rate of 3-4, and wait for the K.O.

Look at that reach. 102 Million for Walker vs. 3 Million for Destiel. To further add salt to the wound:

Minimal to no bot accounts.

#micdrop

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bring-it-all-down · 3 years

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I am begging people to familiarize themselves with US efforts to overthrow the Cuban government in order to reinstate private corporations.

Prior to the 1959 revolution, American businesses owned the vast majority of the country’s sugar production as well as roughly 70% of the country’s land. This land was organized into a plantation system consisting of latifundia––large privately-owned pieces of land worked by slaves. This ownership was aided by America’s support (and installation) of the brutal dictator, Fulgencio Batista, who received monetary and military support in violently silencing the poor Cubans who opposed his suspension of civil liberties, including the right to strike. During the Cuban revolution, many of these landowners and business owners escaped to America rather than cooperating with the revolution and allowing their property to be nationally controlled. JFK in 1963 admitted that Batista’s regime was the fault of the US.

After the nationalization of Cuba’s industries, like sugar plantations, oil refineries, and banks, the U.S. authorized the CIA to begin attempts to overthrow the government and re-establish American private corporations on the island.

The first such attempt was the Bay of Pigs invasion in April of 1961. The invasion was carried out by a combination of CIA-funded Cuban exiles (named the Democratic Revolutionary Front) and members of the US military. The 1,400 invaders where defeated after only three days, however, after Castro took over leadership of the Cuban troops.

Following this embarrassment, JFK announced a full trade embargo on Cuba, beginning in February 1962. This trade embargo is still in place and has denied Cuba roughly $130 billion over the past 6 decades, according to both Cuban and United Nations estimates.

In November of 1961, the US government created another project to overthrow the Cuban government, titled Operation Mongoose. This project was more secretive and sinister than the Bay of Pigs invasion, involving political, psychological, military, intelligence, and assassination components meant to destabilize the entire Castro regime and bring the island back under American control. This operation distributed anti-Castro propaganda in Cuba, the US, and worldwide; funded militias in Cuba; established guerilla bases throughout the country; carried out attacks on power plants, oil refineries, sugar mills, and other manufacturing sites; and attempted multiple times to assassinate Castro and other Communist Party members (the CIA planned at least 500 assassination attempts against Castro in his lifetime). The Operation was scaled back in late 1962 due to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In conjunction with Operation Mongoose, the US considered implementing Operation Bounty––distributing leaflets around Cuba offering significant monetary rewards for the murder of Castro and a handful of other party members––and Operation Northwoods––committing acts of terrorism against US military and civilians in the US and Cuba and blaming them on Cuba. These projects were both allegedly ultimately rejected.

From 1960 to 1962, the US facilitated Operation Peter Pan, in which Catholic “charities” and the US government sent 14,000 unaccompanied children (mainly of upperclass families) to the US so they wouldn’t be enrolled in the government’s literacy campaign. While many children were eventually reunited with their families, others were placed in foster families as far away as Illinois and New York. They were all made to learn English and speak only in English in the orphanages in which they all lived for at least 6 months. The result was an alienation from their Cuban culture and an indoctrination into US propaganda.

On October 6, 1976, CIA-assisted Cuban exiles planted bombs on Cubana de Aviación Flight 455, departing from Barbados and heading toward Jamaica. The bombs detonated, exploding the plane and killing all 73 passengers, including the entire Cuban Olympic fencing team. Two of the terrorists, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles eventually moved to the US, and Bosch was pardoned by George H.W. Bush in 1990.

In 2010, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) created ZunZuneo, named “Cuban Twitter.” This social media platform, designed to undermine the communist Cuban government, spammed its users with propaganda and collected private data to assist them in fomenting a revolution among Cuban youths.

These are just the very basics of the US’s efforts to overthrow the Castro government and reinstitute Cuba as a resource for American capitalism and imperialism. If you want to talk about whatever protests may or may not be happening in Cuba right now, you cannot do so outside of this context. You cannot talk about the poverty of Cuba without placing the blame on American embargoes.

If you want to discuss America’s understanding of Cuban humanitarian need, you cannot do so without reckoning with America’s use of Guantanamo Bay on the same island which we are supposed to believe they want to liberate.

Just last week, the President submitted a budget to Congress, asking for $20,000,000 to fund support for private businesses in Cuba and $13,000,000 to find Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which transmits American propaganda in Spanish to Cuba. This office was created in the 1980s for the explicit purpose of undermining communism in Cuba.

This is not to say that every single Cuban is happy with the Cuban government at all times, but rather that the US has a vested interest in overthrowing the government and establishing a capitalist, US-friendly one in its place. Any international protest crowd that is full of American flags should be a GIANT tip-off that the CIA/US government might just be involved! Just imagine what the CIA is hiding when all of the information comes from declassified files!!!!!

#Cuba #CIA #America does not remotely care about legitimate humanitarian abuses #It cares about making it seem like communist countries are committing such abuses to give it pretext to meddle and commit acts of terrorism #Anti-capitalism #Anti-imperialism

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mikanyuzu-26 · 3 years

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Is Chapter 139 of Attack on Titan being messed up deliberately?

*Views are my own. I barely post anything on social media but I feel the need to express my thoughts as a long-term AOT fan.

You need to be a genius in getting everything wrong. As a reader who has been following the series for 8 years, the frustration and disappointment the recent chapters brought me are beyond words. The series Attack on Titan has long been known for its well written plotline, with pieces of hints eventually leading to the reveal of mysteries, ranging from the identity of enemies to the origin of titan. Isayama the author is more than capable in building a story, as evidenced by the carefully arranged setups and successful characterization in 130+ chapters. Probably echoed by other readers, the story surprisingly went downhill since Chapter 124 (aka the alliance arc) when pacing becomes slow with no major progress in overall plot. Eren who is the supposedly main protagonist is nowhere to be found in most of the chapters, let alone his inner thought. The conclusion in Chapter 139 is even more confusing, showing clear disconnection with previous chapters and major characters being OOC. There are fans who are kind enough to summarize the inconsistencies.

Chinese netizens’ comment on the story quality

I would interpret the bad writing in Chapter 139 as intentional, with two possible reasons, or both: 1). To betray and hurt the readers as expressed in his interview. He is free! 2). To passively protest against a plot change by his editorial team

“I was a big fan of Game of Thrones, so I can relate to the feelings of those fans who were disappointed with how the series ended. But when I’m drawing, I’m expressing my own feelings, and I think as long as I’m doing that, my fans will be able to accept whatever ending I come up with for them”. The question is – was Isayama hinting at a GOT-like ending that expressed his true feeling? Looking at his response at this point of time, was he foreshadowing a disappointment?

Personally I am a believer of (2) – the plot was hijacked. I see the pacing issue starting from Chapter 124 as Isayama and the editorial team trying to buy time in reconstructing the plot. This is the period when multiple minor subplots (e.g. Connie’s mom, Aruani, conflicts with Yeagerists like Daz, formation of Alliance, Reiner’s mom & Annie’s dad) are introduced and closed off shortly after, while Eren is nowhere to be found.

Also note that Isayama did not even show up in the interview/live stream after the end of the manga in on Apr 10 and Apr 14, 2021. The editor represented him instead. It was also revealed in the most recent live stream that the editorial team had quite a lot of influence over the plot, in which they changed the last few pages of Chapter 139.

As many of you have already raised, early chapters already mentioned the “only way to put a final end to the cycle of revenge” is to do a full rumbling. I believe this is the first draft of the ending of the story as this idea has been expressed more than once directly out of the mouth of Eren.

The other possible change is the way of how Ymir is being freed. In earlier chapter, Eren clearly understands what Ymir has been waiting for 2000 years in Chapter 122, and this is also the reason why Eren is able to start the rumbling in the first place. The possibility of Mikasa freeing Ymir is not being introduced until Chapter 138 (or 139), and certainly comes out of nowhere as the only people outside of path who have seen Ymir are Armin and Ramzi.

How is Chapter 139 being intentionally messed up? The inconsistencies above suggest that at least two plot twists are only being decided at the very late stage of the story. • Eren’s true intention (Eren Requiem vs. full rumbling) and the reasons behind • What Ymir wants

Throughout Chapter 139, there are definitely better choice of words which even average Reddit/Twitter/Tumblr users were able to re-write in the past few days. However Isayama just somehow chose the worst way in presenting the story as if it is a shoutout to readers. The presentation also makes Chapter 139 memorable, though not in a way most have expected.

“Why Mikasa?” “Well…only Ymir knows that one…” When I reread Chapter 139, it seems to me that Isayama is not trying to shy away from admitting the plot change. The disbelief from Armin’s way of saying “Huh? Did you just say Mikasa?” is an analogy to the readers’ reaction due to the lack of interaction between Ymir and Mikasa before the last panel of Chapter 138. Eren is also drawn with a resigned expression. If this is an over interpretation of the frame, Eren’s next response “Well…only Ymir knows that one…” directly points out how the statement lacks a clear and sound reasoning. You can translate it into “Well…only [the company/my editor] knows that one…” or “Nothing I just want to throw this in”. Isayama clearly knows what he is writing and indeed “only Ymir knows that one” becomes a meme.

Also to add that prior to Chapter 139, Ymir has always been a parallel of Historia/Krista, not Mikasa, even as early as Chapter 51, but this plot was just somehow nowhere to be found eventually.

Why Rumbling? The most disastrous consequence of a plot change, from wiping all history and civilization (that has been repeated in his conversation with Historia in Chapter 130 and his internal monologue in Chapter 131) to an Eren Requiem, is that it takes away all the justification and rationale for Eren to eliminate 80% of the population in the first place. Whether or not Eren executes the rumbling and dies willingly, the world will still be in conflict and future generation will remain in the forest. If the plan is to free Ymir, a better way is probably just asking Mikasa to chop his head off. That saves humanity (Ymir likes drama, after all!).

Isayama could have easily used phrases like “I just want to move forward” but he put “I don’t know why, but…I wanted to do that…I had to”. This is also Isayama speaking from the Eren – he does not know why Eren is doing rumbling just to achieve the 80% plan. He just “had to” draw it.

“10 Years, At least!” This is probably the most debatable and dramatic part of the chapter. Eren expresses his love to Mikasa but the scene is presented in a way as if it is a kid throwing a tantrum. In addition to that there is Armin’s comment “Oh ok…I didn’t expect something that pathetic..” as if it is again, the readers’ comment. The scene is portrayed in an unbelievably comedic way, especially when you compare it with Eren’s conversation with Ramzi in Chapter 131, which is supposed to serve the same purpose in showing Eren’s human/soft side. Most importantly, freedom has always been Eren’s core value throughout the series. The outright contradiction this line shows only makes the whole idea of this panel questionable.

Character Regression Needless to say, characters’ behaviours surprisingly regress back to the first arc, wiping out all developments throughout the series. The worst thing is it even kills the hype of re-reading the manga as you know the characters never grow, after all the sufferings and hearts sacrificed. Examples include: • Eren is still a crybaby • Mikasa remains trapped by her relationship with Eren and the scarf • Historia is not living proudly for herself after the Uprising arc • Reiner sniffs Historia’s letter after going through depression and wars (there is even a petition online asking Isayama to change this! You see how problematic this is.) • Jean and the horse joke

Almost everything that could possibly go wrong is wrong in 1 chapter These are written by the man who have been writing good chapters in the past 10 years. Can you believe it is just a lack of sense?

• “Thank you. You became a mass murderer for our sake.” • The “poop” that Armin gives Eren (Isayama likes using meme right? :P) • Eren’s face when he is punched

Is this the High School AU style?

Compared to Chapter 112...You can tell the difference.

The way how the fandom views Chapter 139 is certainly very divided, but even amongst those who like it, most still think “things could have done better” (source: SNK Chapter 139 Poll), showing how awkward the style is compared to previous chapters. The inconsistencies in character portrayal and plot are too hard to ignore. It pains me to see a well-constructed and reputable series, one step away from legend even just with an average ending, closed with a chapter that almost defeats the purpose of the rest. Trust in Isayama – while he can build a legend in 10 years, he can also take it down with 1 chapter.

By the way, Levi is one of the few characters who isn’t ruined. Probably also a conscious choice.

#snk 139 #aot 139 #aot spoilers #aot analysis #attack on titan #isayama #shingeki no kyojin #eren #snk spoilers #hajime isayama #snk analysis

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hypocrisyofandrewdobson · 3 years

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Dobson's Patreon: An Addendum to His Monument of Sins

(The following is a submission from @soyouareandrewdobson, meant to be an addendum to the multi-post submission @ripsinfest made a while back. Ironically, this one also had issues when being submitted, so I’ll be copypasting it here with all the images and links originally intended.)

In 2018, user @ripsinfest wrote a multipart series of posts for THOAD, recounting Dobson’s attempt to establish a patreon in 2015 and how it resulted in failure on a massive scale, to the point that his patreon is arguably “a monument to all his sins”.

Personally I think the post series is extremely well researched, rather “neutral” in terms of tone (letting the posts provided as evidence speak more for themselves than the opinion of the writer) and gives a detailed but quick rundown on what went wrong. Primarily that Dobson overestimated his own “value” as an artist and did NOT attempt to give his few supporters what they wanted through his artwork posted around the time.

I do however want to use the opportunity to also point out at certain obvious things that in my opinion (and likely the opinions of others) added to the failure of the patreon account, that were not accounted for in detail and are primarily related to how the internet perceives popularity and Dobson’s inability to understand, how to “sell” and make himself look good to the public.

To begin with, let’s just point out a certain truth about making money via Patreon: To do so, depends a lot on your popularity as a content creator online. That is simply because the more popular you are, the bigger your fanbase is and as such the more likely a certain percentage of people may be willing to donate money to you and your work in hopes they get something out of it, even if it is just the altruistic feeling of having helped someone they “like”. It doesn’t take a genius to see, how e.g. internet reviewers such as Linkara or moviebob (around 2800 and 4400$ earnings via patreon each month respectively) can make quite some money, while other, more obscure content creator or artists barely make money to go by, earning essentially pocket money at best.

In addition, popularity is fleeting. A few years ago e.g. internet personality Noah Antweiler aka The SpoonyOne managed to earn 5000$ a month via patreon, just shortly after establishing his account. But his lack of content over the years AND his toxic behavior online resulted in a decline of popularity and with it people jumping off his Patreon. As such, Antweiler only earns nowadays around 290$ a month via Patreon and most of that money is likely form people who have forgotten they donate to him in the first place anyway.

And Noah is not the only one who over the course of the last couple of years lost earnings. Brianna Wu makes barely more than he does, despite having once been the “darling” of the internet when the Gamergate controversy was at its peak. Many Bronies who once made more than 2k via video reviews on a show about little horses at the peak of its popularity (2013-15) earn less than 300-800 on average nowadays because interest on the show as well as people talking about it has declined.

Heck, in preparation of writing this piece I found out, that one of the highest grossing patreons nowadays is “The last podcast on the left”, a podcast that earns more than 67k a month by making recordings on obscure and macabre subjects on a regular basis.

So there you have it folks: As the interests of the internet users change, so does the popularity of certain people online and -in case they have a patreon account or similar plattforms- their chances of making money via their content.

Which now brings us back to Dobson, who was not popular at all at that particular time and managed to become even less popular as the months and years passed by.

Sure, Dobson had his fans via deviantart, people knew who he was. But the later was more because of “infamy” than popularity and the number of fans he had accumulated online were representing people interested in him at least since 2005 and did not quite represent his actual present day numbers of supporters at the time.

And mind you, the number of supporters was less than 100k, most of them likely underaged deviantart users. And if my research indicates something, then that most content creators with a halfway decent patreon earning need at least 100k+ followers in total. Because of those fans, only around 1-3% will on average then spend money on you, if you actually create content they enjoy and on a regular basis.

Which brings up the next major problem: Dobson did not create content people enjoyed and that in more than one meaning of the word.

On one hand, as pointed out by ripsinfest, he barely released any content at all over 2015 after a few initial months, despite the fact that he was obviously active online a lot, as shown by his presence on twitter. On the other hand, the few things he did create were not the stuff people wanted.

As an example: If you go to a restaurant and pay for a pizza, you expect the cook to give you a pizza. If however for some reason he just gives you a soda, you get ripped off and never come back. In Dobson’s case, the thing people wanted was not pizza but comic pages. But what he delivered was mostly bland fanart, such as of Disney and Marvel characters crossing over or KorraSami. Sure, a few strips of “So…you are a cartoonist” were still released at the time, but not really many.

To give an overview: Taking the release dates on Dobson’s official SYAC site into account, he released around 16 strips of it between March and August of 2015, the last two being “No Leia” being titled “Zip line”

Afterwards, the next official strip released was “Anything at all” in October of 2016.

Now to be fair, there was at least one more strip at the time Dobson released via patreon, that is also save to see on kiwifarms and other plattforms, which has not been uploaded to his official SYAC page. Likely because he simply forgot about it.

But I think that in itself should tell you something about Dobson’s work ethics when it comes to his webcomics. He promoted his patreon in his own video as a way to ensure he can make comics in a timely fashion again for others to enjoy, but in an environment where certain artists are capable to create multiple strips per week at minimum, Dobson could overall not manage to produce more than 16 over a course of six months, which means an average production of 3 strips per month.

For comparison, Tatsuya Ishida of the infamous sinfest webcomic (a garbage fire of epic proportions from a TERF who I think should be put on a watch list) has produced on average 4 strips per week, including full page Sunday strips, for years and nowadays even releases stuff on a daily basis to pass the covid crisis. So a mad man who wants to see trnas people die, has better work ethics than Dobson.

In other words, people expected Dobson to actually get back into creating comics (with some even expecting a return of Alex ze Pirate), but he got in fact even lazier than before, releasing only SYAC strips and random fanart as a product. Which he then also tried to justify as his choice to make because a) he had mental health issues and b) no one can tell him what to do.

And sure, people do not need to tell you what to do. But when people pay/donate money to you expecting to get a certain product in return, they should get the product. Linkara e.g. by all means doesn’t NEED to review comics to have a fullfilling life, but he got famous for his reviews, people want to see his reviews and they pay him for those reviews. So obviously, he will continue those things.

Then there is also the fact that despite Dobson’s claims how he wants to create comics for everone to enjoy and that he aims to keep his artwork online for free so anyone can view it…(his exact words in his promotional video AND text on his patreon once upon a time)

youtube

…the reality was, that he wanted to use patreon as a paywall. Something I actually kinda pointed out at on my own account (shameless self promotion) once, but want now to elaborate a bit. Basically at the time Dobson opened up his patreon, he also was on the verge of leaving deviantart as a platform people could look at his work behind. Which he eventually did.

Meaning that the only major platforms for people to watch any “new” stuff by him were his patreon or art sites such as the SYAC homepage or andysartwork. Which granted, he did EVENTUALLY put his stuff on.

But unlike other content creators who would put “patreon exclusive” new content up on more public plattforms often within a few days, weeks or a month after making them “patreon only” at first, Dobson waited longer and did barely anything to promote his sites as places to look his stuff up for a public audience. In doing so creating a “bubble” for himself that hurt him more than it helped, as Dobson made himself essentially come off as a snob.

A snob who did not create content for everybody to enjoy, but ONLY for those willing to pay him at least one dollar per month. As evident e.g. by the fact that as time went by, certain content was never released outside of his patreon at all, such as a SYAC strip involving Dobbear screaming at the computer because he saw a piece of art that featured tumblr nose.

Lastly, there is the issue of his patreon perks and stretch goals.

See, his perks were essentially non existent. Aside of the beggars reward of “my eternal thank you if you donate 1 dollar”, two other perks that come to my mind were the following: If you donated up to 5$ at minimum, you got your name thrown into a lottery to potentially win buttons and postcards of his artwork. Unsold cheap merch from years prior he failed to sell at conventions basically. There was just a problem with that thing: That lottery thing, which he also was only going to initiate when he reached a stretch goal of 150 dollar a month? It was illegal!

Patreon itself has in their user agreement a rule that forbids people from offering perks that essentially boil down to “earning” something via gambling, which this lottery by Dobson was.

(THOAD chiming in here to add that, in addition to all this, he fully admitted he would be excluding Patrons that he “knew were clearly trolls” from the lottery. Which made the already illegal lottery also fixed, so...yeah.)

The next thing coming to mind was his “discount” on previous books of his he offered online, if you donated at least 10 bucks per month to him. Or to translate it: You would get a bare minimum discount at pdf files of books such as Alex ze Pirate and Formera (you know, the permanently cancelled Dobson comics) if you paid up 50-75% of their original price on Patreon already. And considering the quality of his early works, he should have given you at least a book per month for free if you dared to donate him that much.

As for the stretch goals… lets go through them, shall we:

100$: A wallpaper per month. Something he did provide with eventually, but barely. And after less than five of those he stopped to make them overall

150$: Monthly Gift basket Lottery, which as I stated, was illegal and almost got him into serious trouble with his account. Also not an initial stretch goal he made up but instead came up with a few months into his accounts existence. Finally it got temporarily replaced by Dobson playing with the idea to use 150$ per month to open up a server and art site where people could upload stuff for free similar to deviantart, but under his administration. Promising a “safe space” for other artists. Which considering Dobson’s ego and inability to accept criticism or delegate responsibilities would have likely ended like this:

175$: Establishing a Minecraft server for him and his fans to play on. Meaning Dobson would have just wasted time he could spend on creating comics to endulge in his Minecraft obsession.

200$: Writing a Skyrim children book. Aside of the legal nightmare that this could have been (I doubt Valve would have been happy of someone else profiting of their property) I have to ask, who was even interested in Skyrim by 2015 anymore? Sure, Skyrim was a popular game and it had its qualities, but it was also a trend that had passed by that time. So in other words, there was not a market to cater towards here.

300$: A strip per week guaranteed.

… are you fucking kidding me? 75$ per strip essentially? Something people expect you to produce anyway if you want to be considered a “prolific” creator worth supporting online? Imagine if certain internet reviewers would do that, telling you that if they do not earn at least a certain amount of money, they will not produce anything, period, or less than usual. And Dobson had already proven that he can release more than just one comic within a few days, if he is motivated by enough spite.

600$: Starting a podcast with his friends to talk about nerd culture. In my opinion could only work under the assumption that people even like the idea of listening to Dobson and his opinions. Which considering how very little people like talking to him sounds doubtful. Also, considering how Dobson tends to be late to the party when it comes to nerd culture, likely tending to be out of date faster than he could upload. Finally... what friends?

700$: Returning the love, as he says it, by donating some of the money patreon users gave him to other content creators. This in my opinion is the most self defeating cause possible. On one hand sure, being generous and all that. But essentially Dobson admits here he would blow the money people give him to support HIS art on others, essentially defeating the purpose of HIS own account. He also does not clarify how much of that money he would donate, meaning there was a high chance that he would spend less than 10% of it on other creators, only creating the illusion of support while putting the actual earnings/donations into his own pocket.

2000$: A massive jump ahead. 2000$ per month would result in him getting better equipment (as in a new computer e.g.) and as such “potentially” make more comics. Mind you, only potentially.

This goal in my opinion is also the most fucked up one. Primarily for the following reasons:

Lets say Dobson would have achieved the goal and actually earned over 2000$ per month for at least a year. His annual earning would have been 24k, minus whatever he had to pay as taxes and payment for using the patreon service. And what would he do with this money? Get himself a better computer and equipment by paying a minor fraction of it once. Then he could use that computer for years to come while still having over 10k in his account, plus his monthly earnings. And he may still just produce 3-4 comics a month of a series that has as much depth to it than Peppa Pig if not less.

Sure, many patreon users have 2k+ as a stretch goal on their accounts to signify that if they could make that much monthly, they could have the necessary financial security to focus their time primarily on their content instead of a regular job. And if the content they create is actually well made, many people would support that or be okay with it.

But 2000 dollars to buy ONE computer and not account for how this money will add up over time? And that in light of such profits people may actually expect you to create more than you barely do already? That is either a case of narcissism, plain stupidity because you can't look further than 5 feet or just shows how Dobson did not understand at all the tool he had at his disposal.

Bottom line: Dobson, like many times before, fucked it up. He overestimated the potential support and resulting profits he could make, he expected that his name alone would be enough to assure gainings instead of creating content to justify support and he was unwilling to really give his supporters anything worthwhile back.

And while I am sure that there were also many other factors guaranteeing his failure, those at least to me, were his "common" mistakes most other people familiar even with the basics of internet popularity would ahve avoided.

#long post #patreon #syac #submission #very long post #andrew dobson #adobsonartworks #tom preston #adobsonart #soyouareandrewdobson #ripsinfest

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beneaththetangles · 4 years

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The World Is Not Enough: Isekai and the Hope for More

When it comes to anime and light novels, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an isekai series or six. Countless stories spanning many genres have used the person-travels-to-another-world premise. To borrow language from the infamous TV Tropes, the isekai concept has been played straight, played with, inverted, subverted, parodied, deconstructed, reconstructed, and more.

People must like isekai stories (I know I do!), otherwise there wouldn’t be approximately 47 million of them, with new ones coming out all the time. Regarding this topic, I recently actually-a-while-ago-but-it-took-me-a-long-time-to-write-this happened to see a post by Twitter user Sashimi Princess Maddie which was retweeted by J-Novel Club:

This post struck a chord with me because I’m fascinated by the connection between fantasy and faith. J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories” is of course required reading on this topic, as is Chapter IV — “The Ethics of Elfland” — in G.K. Chesterton’s book Orthodoxy. They discussed fantasy generally, and logically what is true of all fantasy is also true of the specific subset of fantasy we call isekai. Now, the tweet is obviously partly humorous, so it would be unjust to respond to or critique it as if it were a serious essay. However, I do want to highlight one point of possible disagreement that I believe is relevant to my own thoughts. (I say “possible” because without a full-fledged essay from Maddie, I may be overlooking or misunderstanding points that a more complete argument would resolve.)

Japan is ground zero for isekai. The isekai stories we consume overwhelmingly originate in Japan, and are written by Japanese people for Japanese people. And Japan is a place where Christianity’s influence has been meager, at best, since the Tokugawa period. Meanwhile, the religions with any sizeable footprint in Japan, namely Shinto and Buddhism, don’t contain a concept of heaven comparable to that found in the teachings of, say, Christianity or Islam. Christians make up 1% to 2% of Japan’s population (depending on which estimate you read), which means many Japanese people have probably never even met a Christian! Thus the appeal of isekai in Japan cannot be explained in terms of filling in a gap left behind by the decline of traditional religious hope for heaven.

The OP’s argument would work better if the vast majority of isekai came from, say, western Europe or the United States. Throughout much of the west, Christianity formerly held immense cultural influence. However, Christianity’s influence in these places has declined greatly in the past century or three. If such places produced most isekai stories, we could make a more plausible case that isekai draws upon lingering notions of heavenly reward, relics of a discarded traditional religion whose notions permeated society, in order to fill the hope-deficit created by that religion’s decline.

I believe while Maddie is correct to find conceptual connections between isekai and religion, I just find the specific relationship posited by the OP inadequate, especially with regard to Japanese people. Thus I invite you, dear reader, to consider other Bible teachings that do more to explain the appeal of isekai even in a culture where Christianity (including its notions of heaven) never held much sway. The picture of our world and human nature painted in the Old Testament provides a partial explanation for why we like isekai, an explanation that is not contingent on lingering cultural debris left behind by Christianity.

Let’s look “In the beginning” — yes, the one where “God created the heavens and the earth.” As God completes his creative work in Genesis 1, we read “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” *That* is the world in which God intended us to live. And all this “very good” stuff includes humans, too, who the text says God created in his own image. Alas, we humans ruined things. To put it another way, long ago God and man lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation sin attacked.

Yeah, after God created all this good stuff (including we humans!), Genesis 3 introduces a slew of bad things that weren’t supposed to be part of this world: sin, death, the curse. Of course, God knew this would happen, and already had a plan in place. That plan reached its climax in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, but in some respects it is (at least from our point of view) not yet completed. For now, we still live in a cursed and corrupted post-Genesis 3 world, a place where sin and death run rampant. We ourselves are broken by sin, and we must endure in a world unlike the one God originally created for humans.

The entire Bible is stories of humans sinning, which goes a long way toward showing what mess this world is, but the Bible also contains an entire treatise specifically exploring how awful our post-Genesis 3 world really is. Speaking of our world as “under the sun,” Ecclesiastes incessantly hammers home the “vanity” of this life. “Under the sun” is an unreasonable, unjust, and oppressive place that we can’t understand or fix. “Under the sun” is a place where bad things *will* happen to us no matter how hard we try to avoid them. “Under the sun,” all our labors will accomplish nothing of lasting value. “Under the sun,” we’re all gonna die just like dumb animals, no matter how we lived. And then the cherry on top is that after we die, no one “under the sun” will even remember us, and any stuff we had will be misused by people who don’t deserve to have it.

Our own experiences validate this picture of pointlessness. I had an abusive childhood; I’ve faced a slew of physical and mental health issues; I’m presently almost 35 and I’ve never so much as gone on a date, let alone gotten married or had a family; I’m unemployed and living with my parents because I’m failing so hard at adulting. I’m not hopelessly miserable–God has abundantly blessed me in certain respects–but that doesn’t negate the reality that in some meaningful ways, my life is a big huge disappointment. You, O reader mine, will have different points of sadness and frustration and failure than I do, but I suspect most of us, if we’re honest, would have to concede that our lives are painfully disappointing, or at the very least have not followed the tracks we dreamed they would.

This image of the incomparable Kanami from the isekai series Log Horizon serves no purpose except to break up my wall of text and make me (you?) laugh.

Creation and the Fall provide the starting point for the appeal of isekai. God wanted us to be good and to live in a good world, but thanks to our sin, both we and this world are in far worse shape than he originally intended. Since we weren’t made for a cursed world, it is entirely natural that on some level we long for a place that is somehow more, or better, than the one we inhabit. Likewise, since we weren’t created so sin and death could dominate our lives, it is entirely natural that on some level we long to be somehow more, or better, than who we are. Even if we don’t have a clear idea of what exactly we really want, we still long for a vague something beyond our present existence.

We intuitively sense that something is off about both ourselves and our world, and this leaves us wanting a world and selves that are different from the world and selves we know. In the beginning, we were made for more, and now our existence isn’t quite right. Isekai appeals to this nebulous desire for something better that stems from our latent awareness of the Fall. Isekai stories give more concrete form to the desire to be different than who and what we are, and to live in a reality that isn’t entirely like ours. We may not want to live in the setting of every isekai story, but even grimdark isekai is still isekai, and thus shares the inherent appeal of the idea of other worlds.

Ecclesiastes is again relevant at this point. Perhaps the most hopeful part the book’s message is unstated. As noted above, Ecclesiastes keeps emphasizing how everything “under the sun” is terrible. This raises a question: Is “under the sun” all there is? And here we find the implicit note of hope: the one thing mentioned in Ecclesiastes that isn’t “under the sun” is God. Throughout the Bible, God is consistently depicted as up above. So when Ecclesiastes mentions God, this gloomy book is hinting that there is more to reality than just our world “under the sun.” There might be a chance to escape the utter vanity of this life, if we seek somewhere–and more importantly, Someone–outside and beyond the world we know.

“Now let me be clear,” God is an almighty spirit unbound by the constraints of space and time. Thus, the Bible’s references to God dwelling in the heavens are obviously metaphorical and do not affirm some sort of literal spatial relationship between God and any celestial bodies or astronomical coordinates. That said, the Bible regularly pictures God as being in heaven, and if we follow the logic of that metaphor, then God is not “under the sun.” This is supported by one of the titles repeatedly ascribed to God throughout the scriptures (most often in the Psalms and the book of Daniel): “the Most High.” Again, this superlative is metaphorical, not a literal claim about physical altitude, but to be “the Most High,” God is, in a conceptual sense, above everything else — the sun included.

The core premise of isekai stories is the idea that other worlds exist and that it’s possible to pass between them. Since we already desire something more, better, different than our present existence, isekai has a natural appeal. What distinguishes isekai from other fantasy / sci-fi stories is how directly it addresses this innate post-Fall desire for a different world. Non-isekai stories offer the possibility implicitly, not unlike Ecclesiastes: They ask us to imagine a reality different from our lived experience, but don’t necessarily give any indication that we can do more than imagine. Contrariwise, isekai takes as its explicit premise the idea that a person just like us, from the very world in which you and I live, can somehow go to a different world, and there experience significant personal changes of some kind.

All fantasy / sci-fi stories at least touch on the notion of a world unlike ours. Even if their setting is very much based on our world, by their very nature they include phenomena never seen here. Arthur C. Clarke famously captured the overlap between sorcery and science: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” All fantasy / sci-fi stories occur in a world where mechanical or supernatural forces beyond our experience or comprehension offer new possibilities. Isekai stories not only show us such worlds, they depict these worlds as existing in addition to (rather than instead of) our own, and as being possible for us to visit.

All of this ultimately brings us to the New Testament’s teachings about hope and resurrection and heaven. I think the OP was correct to see a connection between the appeal of isekai and the Christian hope of heaven. But heaven is only the fulfillment of our longing, not the origin of it. The Bible’s depiction of the Fall and its consequences explains better why we would find the idea of heaven, and isekai, appealing in the first place. We wouldn’t need heaven—or isekai—if we were perfectly satisfied with this world. But we aren’t satisfied, and the Bible’s account of the Fall and its effects explains why we find our present state dissatisfying. And so, reading isekai stories is really about hope for something beyond the reality we know. We feel rightly disappointed with our lives and with this world. We desire something else, and isekai supplies our imagination with more concrete ideas about other worlds.

For now, heaven is an incomprehensible wonderfulness. We know almost nothing about heaven, after all. Given how light on specifics the Bible is, even the most devout Christian is still limited to an amorphous notion of hope. But isekai stories are something I can wrap my mind around. The heroism, the adventure, the romance, the supernatural creatures—all of it speaks to my desire to be more, to experience more. The worlds I can imagine through isekai help strengthen my longing for the even better world I can’t yet imagine. Isekai stories help bridge the gap between the unsatisfactory reality I live with and the heavenly realm so glorious that human language can’t describe it. While we can’t really imagine heaven, isekai at least helps us envision something beyond our lives under the sun. Isekai cannot truly satiate our desire our desire to go somewhere different and be something different (that’s what heaven is for), but it does help us explore and understand our sense of longing.

People can enjoy isekai stories regardless of how much they accept or know anything about Christianity, which makes sense if our desire for an existence that is more, better, different than what we know far predates even Christianity. Isekai has not “taken the place of traditional religion as a promise that our suffering will be worthwhile” in a chronological or causal sense (e.g., religion held sway, and it declined, and that decline contributed to the popularity of isekai as a substitute). I believe it is more accurate to see isekai and the Bible’s teaching on heaven as parallel responses to the Fall. We can choose either or both, but they aren’t in competition. Isekai can be an expression of hope and longing both for those who believe in heaven as a religious doctrine, and also for people in places (e.g., Japan) where Christianity’s impact is minimal.

“In the beginning,” God intended for us to be better and to live in a better world, but sin broke the world and broke us, and now we’re all coping with this disappointing life under the sun and desiring something more. Thankfully, God promises that this world and our present condition are not final. He encourages us to hope for a world and a self that is perfect. We don’t know what that will be like, but isekai grants our imaginations a glimpse of possibilities beyond this world. Depending on isekai alone for hope, apart from Jesus, is not unlike eating a ton of junk food before supper and being unable to enjoy the real meal, but isekai can also be an hors d’oeuvre that whets our appetite for the heavenly banquet to come. To me, reading and watching isekai stories is an act of hope, helping me endure this present world by reminding me that I really do have hope of living in another world as a perfected version of myself.

#Anime #Manga #Light Novels #Christianity #Isekai #Religion #Japan #Heaven #Hope #Articles #Author: JeskaiAngel

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