#not trying to get to know me

[laughingcatwrites]

As a reminder that good exists out there, a coworker recently confessed to me that he found out his child is questioning their identity (kid's gender redacted for this post). The kid is keeping it from him, so he can't say anything to them or show that he knows, but he's doing his best to get mentally prepared and educated so that he'll be ready whenever his kid does feel comfortable enough come to him.

For context, this guy is a big, bulky middle aged dude who loves sports and typical outdoor "manly" activities. As his coworker and friend, I know he's a kind and sweet teddy bear of a person, but his kid probably views him as a stern, authoritarian figure, the way most teenagers view their parents. His family lives in a conservative area, so I'm sure between that, their dad's looks and interests, and the fact that their dad is a Figure of Authority, the kid is worried that they won't be accepted.

But you know what? When he found out about his kid, the first thing he did was reach out to his closest queer friend and ask for resources for parents of questioning children. His biggest fears are that his kid will be bullied or discriminated against and won't feel comfortable enough to be themself. His second action was to find himself a mentor in another parent who went the same situation (kid coming out in a conservative town). The other person is preparing him for some of the struggles his kid may face and the fights he may need to take on as a parent to make sure his kid is safe and treated well.

Something I want to emphasize for people focused on language as the primary method of allyship is that when we spoke, he used some outdated terms and thoughts about gender and sexuality. That does not make him bad. These were the terms and thinking used about questioning teenagers when he was growing up and he never needed to learn more current ones. But now that he does have that need, he's throwing himself in head first because that's his kid and he's darn well going to make sure that his kid feels welcomed and has a safe place to be themselves even if they never come out to him.

#I'm so proud and happy for my coworker and I've been trying to figure out how to let him know how amazing I think he is #what gets me the most is that he's keeping this super down low to avoid giving any hints to his kid #he has a lot of queer friends so he already is known as an ally but there's always a chance it will be different if it's family #and he took that chance and crumpled it up into a ball and slam dunked it into the garbage for three points #and decided that even if his kid wants to hide it from him for the rest of his life he will still do what he can to make their life better #pflag #parents doing their best #parenting win #good news #allyship

[inkskinned]

what is with men being mad any time a woman raises her voice where did that even come from. someone posted a video of a small electrical explosion, and the top comment was of course the woman screams. the second comment is women try not to scream challenge, level impossible. i had to go back and watch the video again. there is, somewhat fainty, a little gasp emitted off-camera, more of a yelp than a scream. it is mostly lost in the crack of the explosion. afterwards, you hear her voice, shaken, say, are you okay?

i am helping one of my friends train her voice pitch lower, because she wants to be taken seriously at work. she and i do each other's nails and talk about gender roles; and how - due to our appearance - neither of us have ever been able to be "hysterical" in public. we both appear young and sweet and feminine. she is cisgender, and cannot use her natural voice in her profession because people keep saying she appears to be "vapid". we both try to figure out if our purposeful voice lowering is technically sexist. is it promoting something when you are a victim to it?

a storm almost sends a pole through a car window. in the dashcam, you can hear the woman passenger say her partner's name twice, crying out in alarm. she sounds terrified. in the comments, she is lambasted for her lack of calm. how is that even fucking helping?

in high school, i taught myself to have a lower voice. i had been recorded when i was genuinely (and righteously) upset; and i hated how my voice sounded on the phone speakers when it was played back. i was defending my mom, and my voice cracked with emotion. it meant i was no longer winning the argument: i was just shrieking about it.

girls meet each other after a long summer and let out a little joyful scream. this usually stops around 12-14, because people will not tolerate this display of affection (as it has the effect of being passingly annoying). something about the fact that little girls can't ever even be annoying. we are trained to examine each part of our lives (even joy) for anything that could make us upsetting and disgusting. they act like teenage girls are breaking into houses and shrieking you awake at 3 in the morning. speaking as a public school educator: trust me, it's not that bad, you can just roll your eyes and move on. it does not compare to the ways boys end up being annoying: slurs in graffiti, purposefully mocking your body, following you after you said no. you know, just boy things.

there's another video of a man who is not allowed to yell in the house, so he snaps his fingers when he's excited about soccer. the comments are full of angry men, talking about how their brother is unfairly caged. let him express himself and this is terrible to do to someone. eventually the couple has to address it in a second video: they are married with a newborn baby. he was trying not to wake the infant up. there is no comment on the fact women are not allowed to yell indoors. or the fact that it could have been really alarming or triggering for his wife. sometimes i wonder if straight men even like women, if they even enjoy being in relationships with them.

for the longest time, i hated roller coasters because it always felt inappropriate and uncomfortable for me to scream. one of my friends called me on it, said it was unusual i'm so unwilling. i had to go to my therapist about it. i don't like to scream because i was not raised in a safe situation, and raising my voice would have brought unsafe attention towards me. even when i am supposed to scream, it feels shameful, guilty. i was not treated kindly, so i lack a basic form of self-protection. this is not a natural response. it is not good that in a situation of high adrenaline - i shut up about it.

something very bad is happening, i think. in between all the beauty standards and the stuff i've already discussed - this one feels new and cruel in a way i can't quite express. yes, it's scary and silencing. but there's something about how direct it is - that so many men agree with the sentiment that women should never yell, even in an emergency - it feels different.

is the word shriek gendered automatically? how about shrill or screech? in self defense class, one of the first things they tell you is to yell, as loud and as shrilly as you can. they say it will feel rude. most women will not do this. you need to practice overcoming the social pressure and just scream.

most women do not cry out, even when it's bad. we do not report it. we walk faster. we do not make a scene. what would be the point of doing anything else? no matter what we do, we don't get taken seriously. it is a joke to them. an instagram caption punchline. we have to present ourselves as silent, beautiful, captivating - "valuable."

a woman is outside watching her kids when someone throws a firecracker at them. she screams and runs towards her children. in the comments, grown men flock together in the thousands: god. women are so annoying.

#warm up #writeblr #this one has bothered me for a bit #any time a woman does something even passingly annoying we treat it like a fucking crime #hey man. women are allowed to be annoying. everyone forever is allowed to be passingly annoying #as long as they aren't hurting anyone/thing #like u wanna know something? i find it super annoying that men don't wear seatbelts #why arent there thousands of comments on driving videos thats just like : men try not to die in a car crash challenge #''this briefly annoyed me''. okay??????? AND????????????????? go get ur self a cookie and calm down about it #ur not entitled to control other ppl's experiences and emotions just so u can maintain ur own peace #if being briefly annoyed ruins ur whole day! you! need! therapy!!!! #men try not to become immediately angry about nothing challenge: level impossible #ps author is nonbinary. we didn't even get into the gender presentation thing #the fact men think it's SEXY that my voice is on the lower end....

[egophiliac]

IT WAS ERIC AFTER ALL!!!! I'm so glad we got to meet him (before Vil snaps him away with those Infinity Gauntlets) (can't wait to see what happens when we get the matching Infinity Tiara to go with them, there will be no survivors)

(sorry to be so slow/rough lately, just got a lot of stuff on the ol' brain at the moment! alas, if only I could spend all my time drawing incredibly stupid characters I mean I do but)

#art #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland spoilers #tapis rouge #i know these are not my best but by god i needed to draw ~daddo venue~ #he is a treat! can't wait for him to yell at us for screwing up a shoot or whatever the last-minute disaster will be #i am SO HAPPY it turned out to be about movies after all! ...i mean sort of anyway #i'll take what i can get (and i do enjoy twst trying to be all cute about snow whAHEM i mean beautiful queen) (i see you there twst) #(also to be fair it actually wasn't poisoned in historial-revisionism-twstland so i think we can trust this apple. a+ acting eric) #anyway we are still. very solidly in the 'stand around and talk about the wallpaper for three hours' part of the event. #but HEY we got to meet eric! i was not really expecting it to be him so i am VERY pleased #also god help me i did think the shopping montage as portrayed by a rhythmic where they literally SKIP down the street was hilarious #there's a lot of Choices that were made in this event and that was a good one

[chiricat]

me eat you whole

#makoto yuki #minato arisato #p3 #persona 3 #cat’s art #persona #MAKOTO NUIIIIII GRAAAAHHH #HE HAS A LITTLE SMILE TOO ON THE RELOAD ONE. SO CUTE #hey guys i’m back. i will try getting to those asks now #to the people that ask me how i do clean lineart: i genuinely do not know how. #ive been thinking of how to respond for a long time and i just do not know how to explain it

[astraltrickster]

When you say "even in canon this character is acting OOC" do you mean it as in "this character's canon dropped the ball on internal consistency with them" or do you mean "this character I normally relate to made a decision that I wouldn't have made" or do you mean "this character isn't acting like the fanon we developed by rotating them in our heads for 67295 combined hours away from the source material"?

#fandom #this post brought to you by me getting really mad because canon DID drop the ball on a character's internal consistency #BY trying to make them more like the fanon a subset of fans made by rotating the character in their heads for too long #and i know thats what happened because they keep referencing fandom memes #but thats really hard to talk about because...[gestures vaguely]

[destiny-islanders]

i get it now

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #astarion #destiny doodles #destiny comics #even as an ace person when this happened to me i was like: yeah i get it. #i did try to burn his hand off tho #i'm playing with a full party of friends so i don't feel like i know what's going on most of the time haha #it's fun tho #reading the comments and tags and omg??? astarion is an ace magnet??? #okay i'm in act 2 now and i see a huge reason why. big spoiler tho so not gonna say but. yeah.

[originalartblog]

Apparently much-needed reminder that reposting artists' art (by saving the images or screenshotting them and reuploading them yourself) on other platforms without the artists' expressed permission and without credit is theft and an insult to their passion and craft. You are profiting (in views, in attention, in feedback) from someone else's work and ideas, who do not get that feedback for sharing their creation.

If you are an art reposter, you are a thief and I have no respect for you.

#learn basic internet etiquette i am begging but also holding a knife. yes i'm mad. more about others than myself. #do you know how many artists i have seen leave social media because their art started being reposted all over? #tip: way too fucking many #i've had many people tell me about people reposting my art on tiktok #no one ever asked to repost my art on tiktok. ever. they just save super fried bad crunchy jpegs of my art and repost them #they get 20k likes and don't even bother naming me #also a reason i started signing my name more legibly and why my blog web address is always there but apparently no one can even read that #a few people got an ok for translations on other platforms though #i'm going to be annoying with this post and reblog it a few times to try to catch the people who apparently need to be told #tiny skk adventures #nawy's comics #nawy's doodles #apparently those are reposters' favourites so here look at this

[not-roboto]

The Gang (20 cm x 20 cm, oil on paper) a series of small paintings I made of the backs of the gang.

#PLEASE try to guess what episode each one of these is from #one clue I'll give is that two of them are from the same episode (I think it's pretty obvious witch ones) #and frank's is the most difficult one #i even forgot which episode I took the reference from until I rewatched it and was like OHH THAT'S IT!! #whoever guesses what episode each one of these is from will get to pick a Suuny screencap for me to paint #HAVE FUN #i know i will #iasip art #iasip #iasip fanart #frank reynolds #dee reynolds #dennis reynolds #mac mcdonald #charlie kelly #oil painting #myportfolio

[originalaccountname]

Dazai, in Fifteen, described the act of living as "we breathe, eat, fall in love and die". Through that statement and a few subsequent incidents, like telling Oda planning someone's death was romantic, flirting with nearly every girl he sees, and his fixation with finding someone to commit a lover's suicide with, we can conclude Dazai is a deeply romantic man. Therefore, the REAL tragedy of soukoku as a pairing is that Dazai is a very romantic individual and will not, cannot let those feelings out with Chuuya of all people, due to the mostly antagonistic nature of their relationship. In this essay, I will-

#half-joking #listen i know it'd be cute and we can absolutely create the situation for it to work #but come on that first step is gonna be absolute hell to get past #dazai somehow manages to try something and chuuya starts yelling in both embarassement and ''ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME?'' #solution: make a contest out of it #bsd #skk #soukoku #apparently i talk sometimes

[bixels]

Scary Sunset.

I'm concepting things way outta order in this story, but I'm sure you can piece things together. Context is for a storybeat where, after defeating and capturing Adagio (thus having all three sirens in her possession), Sunset enacts her revenge plot to release the sirens on Canterlot as Thea discovers she's been manipulated. In a confrontation, the two scuffle and fight over the siren orbs while Sunset struggles with her conflicting wants and emotions.

#mlp #sunset shimmer #twilight sparkle #twiset #the orbs are the glass balls sunset carries on her back btw its in her cast line up art #deep down sunset hates thea. she was named “twilight” by celestia. the time of day succeeding sunset. she was always her replacement #but at this point in the story sunset's also fallen for thea. so it's also a conflict of wills in sunset. love or hatred. #hence the “don't make me do this” language. she's rationalizing her hatred and violence as thea forcing her hand and getting in her way #when in reality she doesn't need to do any of this. it's her last stand and outburst to cling to a life of revenge that she's grown too #fond of. because she knows thea has the power to change that and disrupt her identity as a pathetic victim who fell from glory #and that's scary. thea's a very scary thing to sunset because suddenly sunset wants something and to be someone new. #she suddenly wants to change. to be better for someone else. and she never thought or believed that could be an option for her #anyways toxic yuri yayyy #my art #the grand galloping 20s #character design #i hope i got across the pained conflicted emotions in sunset's face tho i belabored over them these past 3 days #i hope a look of anger and dissonance and guilt and “oh god i don't really wanna hurt you please just obey me” while trying to intimidate #is readable. if so it's all in the eyebrows babey

[5ummit]

AO3 Ship Stats: Year In Bad Data

You may have seen this AO3 Year In Review.

It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!

Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.

I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.

Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.

Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:

Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.

The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:

Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?

Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?

Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!

If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.

At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.

The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.

Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).

Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works

Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works

This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.

How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.

With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):

The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.

Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.

To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.

#ao3 #ao3 stats #psa #my words #fandom #I doubt anyone is even going to read this but I needed to get it out of my system and at least try to stop this from spreading #if you know me #you know I get Big Mad about misinformation #don't take anything at face value #do your own research

[raepliica]

tristamp post-S1 mashwood sillies and tri98(?) merylwood :]

#trigun #trigun stampede #tristamp #trigun 1998 #trigun 98 #vash the stampede #nicholas d. wolfwood #meryl stryfe #mashwood #merylwood #stryfewood #the comfort of mashwood spending days together without much happening. just eventless days together #also i know i know meryl and ww barely interact in '98 but #who cares when i can just put two of my fav characters together like playing with dolls #after the fifth moon incident ww trying to leave w/o a word to go look for vash #and meryl having none of his shit bc she already lost sight of one of them so shes not about to lose the other one #*SLAPS VW AND MW* THESE BITCHES CAN STORE SO MUCH UNSPOKEN THINGS #i also just really like ww getting flustered and manhandled by a three-apples-tall woman #merylwood is yuri to me. im not explaining #my art #raepliica_art

[pupcha]

guess who 😈

and I have this art with beta—

I also have a lot of sketches that I hope to finish in the near future (don't pay attention to the fact that there're a lot of Howdy here....)

(hum)beta!Wally (eechy pspsps 🫴)

I don't know what else to show you, so I'll show you (the old ones) art for my mutual :]

Margo for @//thelone-copper ; (I don't know his name 😔🥄🥄🥄) for @//dxkjf

#Hooray I came back again.... two months later.... hm #you know I actually draw very often but most of the sketches seem very stupid to me to put them here— #yes the feeling of shame for my art. AGAIN ((i'm trying to get rid of this feeling)) #ahem. let's change the subject #I hope you're doing well and eating well!! also don’t forget to drink water :] #please I love water so much.... such a refreshing taste smhhh #welcome home #welcome home wally #wally darling #howdy pillar #sketches #art #wally fanart #barnaby b beagle #beta wally

[pcktknife]

" im gonna get better at art I'm gonna improve I'm gonna get better ''

#girl help #the art block is back #its really late to complain abt this now but like i was goin thru it today over this and its killing me !!! #kae.txt #i dont really know how to learn to get better all i know is to keep drawin (not to the point of burnout...well ehhh) #mmm im gonna go to bed and try not to think on it so much 😖 gnite

[verflares]

(pre-calam) filling the compendium :-)

+ closeup and the aftermath

#i am PRAYING that this posts okay and nothing gets squished or looks ugly. but if it is youcant tell me because ill cry #okay. anyways. #zelink #zelda #link #loz #botw #totk #link botw #zelda botw #loz fanart #for some reason trying to format this became a sisyphean ass task so now i just want to post it and go lie down or something #“why use warm colours if theyre on satori mountain” idk.... i liked how they looked :) #ok what else. ummm. so we KNOW zelda filled the compendium like she was running the navy right #its really funny because i dont even think its ever mentioned other than like. maybeeee one throwaway line from purah? #but there was a fandom osmosis moment bcus everyone Knew she'd be on top of it. and its true. she would be. #my art

[monty-glasses-roxy]

HALLOWEEN GAME TIME!!! WE'RE GOING TRICK OR TREATING!!!

ON THE DAY OF HALLOWEEN ask me or anyone else that's reblogged this, "trick or treat" and you shall recieve a random thing in your trick or treater bucket! What thing?

THAT'S UP TO WHO'S BLOG DOOR YOU'RE KNOCKING ON!!

A little doodle of their blorbo? An incorrect quote? A drawing of a little cat? A fun fact about bees? A little drabble (100 words I mean but do as you will) for a random thing? A photo of their pet dog? A headcanon? A fic recommendation? A random meme? An OC? A link to their current favourite song? A nice, virtual slap in the face? A trick? A treat? WHO KNOWS!!! NOT YOU OR ME THAT'S FOR SURE!!! (Just no screamers or shit like that of course lets not forget that lmao)

Why am I saying this now instead of on the day of the game? So anyone else that wants to play has plenty of time to prepare a little handful of things for the trick or treaters!!

Remember, it doesn't have to be anything big!!! You can be the blog that's giving everyone images of rotisserrie chicken you found on google, or you can be the blog that's giving everyone pictures of your cat if you want!! This is a low spoons and low stress game so do whatever you want to do that's easy for you!! Be a mix of everything or just give a 'hi!' it doesn't matter, it's all in good fun!! And we can trick or treat each other too, of course. Not as fun if you can't get any tricks or treats too, right? Anyone can trick or treat and anyone can be trick or treated!

I recommend making/queueing a post on the day so everyone knows you're playing btw (anyone that reblogs this post will get one off me too if they don't say otherwise in tags and if I remember I said this)

FOR TRICK OR TREATERS!!!

All you gotta do is send an ask with 'trick or treat' in it on Halloween! Halloween day!! 31st of October!! Day of spooky!! That's it!! (And if you go on anon no one will know if you come back again but I didn't tell you that lmao) I'll be answering any I get when it's Halloween in my timezone and I'm sure I won't be the only one so if you ask earlier, hang tight! It's probably not Halloween yet or they don't have time just yet cause it's a Tuesday! I believe that's everything so...

Have fun guys!!

#halloween game #yeah I know this is the kind of thing that circles every year btw #but I can't for the life of me remember anyone actually doing it :( #so here's a game!! #I will try my damn best to do it so stay tuned for that!!! #I'll make a little mix of things to share it'll be fun! #plenty of time to build up a little collection of low spoons stuff I think #honestly a great way to get myself back into things probably #we'll see!