#publishing twitter discourse

[sasaranurude]

Making a censored version of nu:c for download in the regular app stores is an understandable decision from a business standpoint--its success has been enormous even having to sideload it so they'll probably make tons of money with this. It's an observable trend that app store users spend more money on microtransactions.

So I'm not sure why people think that the release of nu:c bliss is some kind of attack on children. Even people who enjoy nu:c seem to be on this trend. The game is rated 17+ on both google play and the app store? 17 is a perfectly normal age to be engaging with censored sexual content in fiction... Have you guys even looked at the kind of M rated BL the average north american teenager can buy in a bookstore? Like, at my local shops--both national chain and larger independent--I can go to the manga section and buy any number of SuBLime or TokyoPop-published titles that have explicit sex on the page. Just in the writing of this post I went and grabbed three different explicit BL series off my shelf that I'd bought in person from book shops. The TokyoPop ones do say "18+" on them but the SuBLime titles only ever say "mature". They weren't even plastic wrapped the way hentai usually is, although I guess the dicks are lightsabered out so the publishers thought it unnecessary. If you're this mad that teenagers are going to be seeing explicit BL then I'm sorry but you have bigger fish to fry than a single censored mobile game release

Although I guess the more common argument I've seen is that this game release is somehow "inviting minors into adult spaces." What? Huh? Do you expect the game publisher to be moderating the fandom's spaces? Fan spaces are YOUR SPACES. If you don't want teenagers there, then don't let teenagers in. Also... It's not like you need to present ID to download the existing uncensored game. Does nobody remember when the nu:c official discord server first went live and it was absolutely ridden with teenagers who weren't even bothering to lie about their ages? Minors have already been trying to get into adult spaces, even nu:c ones. The nu:c bliss release has literally no impact on this. You just still have to do the same thing you always had to do: loudly state that adult spaces are 18+ and block any known teens on sight. You should be doing this in adult spaces for any fandom, regardless of source material. If you're expecting that the game publisher is going to try to moderate your internet experience for you then idk what to even tell you

#suchobabbles #i dont normally discourse on this blog but this one has deen annoying me #eta: i guess the fan spaces thing makes sense if your concept of fan spaces is just like #'everyone on the entirety of twitter who posts about a thing' #but uh. you probly shouldnt be expecting a game publisher to consider who posts on twitter about a thing either. #and also if it annoys you that much then you should find better fan spaces to hang out in lol

[your-local-ruebit-hole-detective]

I had the weirdest dream last night btw

#It was actually about the animatic #rue rants #So I dreamt that there was an animation error #And THAT somehow became a giant discourse #Like the type that’s only had by entitled twitter users #About whether it was okay to publish art with mistakes #because the viewer might not like it #it was so fucking stupid #Also somehow no one had any issue with the animatic itself?? #Which was weird given it’s about rape?

[hydrachea]

It's very funny and pretentious how many posts I'm seeing about the horrible, discourse stirring twitter users coming back to tumblr, oh how peaceful things were before this catastrophe, as if I don't see rampant threats of violence in several ship tags on the regular

#yall are clowns #don't pretend like tumblr is any better ESPECIALLY in terms of discourse #the amount of 'shippers dni or *threats of bodily harm*' i see on this website doesn't faze me anymore but it's very much rampant #not to mention the anon hate my mutuals get for the content they publish #how pretentious can you get we never had 'vibes' to protect we're filled to the brim with horrible people just like twitter is #the only thing we have that's better is that tumblr isn't designed to FUEL their discourse #but let me tell you that hasn't stopped anyone has it #get off your high horses welcome the twitter refugees that are sane #and stop pretending we don't have the exact same brand of insane terminally online fucks they do all over this website

[luobingmeis]

lrb i think something very. interesting. that has cropped up from the push for “good pure moral media” is that it has simultaneously brought the “push for representation” movement—something that is good and should be promoted bc all different types of people should be represented in media, not just the white/cis/het/able-bodied—to this idea that media should at all times be Representative. like maybe it’s just a slight difference but i think a lot abt that post that occasionally goes around that’s like “if ur writing just to check of a series of boxes in representation, ur gonna end up with very flat characters.” like, yes, A Lot of the conversation abt representation also began with a lot of media falling into the trope that the only Black/queer/disabled character was also the villain, which then in turn causes negative associations while also feeding into stereotypes one way or another, so i won’t discredit that. but Now it’s like. how much media upholds itself on “finally being pure representation.” finally showing “good people.” like yes at all times u should be cognizant of Who ur representing and in What way (who is the villain, who is the antagonist, who is being upheld as the good heroic one, etc), but sometimes it just feels like. “everyone in this media has to be good and pure to prove it’s not like degenerative ~other~ media” (op’s note: heavy sarcasm there) or it feels like “if we don’t represent everyone here in a way that is relatable to every viewer and if they are not all good and pure then we will be torn apart.” which then feeds into the concept of “relatability” which, again, i feel like used to be about how like. you can relate to a character even if they are not like you (which tbh i believe that you shouldn’t have to relate to a character at all to enjoy and understand a story but i digress bc the main point and this one are not mutually exclusive), and now has become a bit. hm. like things are upheld as universally relatable Because of how good and pure it is? and that it Should be relatable and if it isn’t that’s Your problem.” or the even more fun “why are you consuming this media if you don’t relate to it/the characters aren’t like you” because apparently fiction is made solely so you can relate to it and not because it’s art that can be, yes, related to, but also appreciated and understood without needing to point at it and be like “that guy is like me.”

which is all to say i think more people need to read more books where the characters you love do stuff that makes you say “hey that’s fucked up.” and then you realize you still love the character and it does not change your Real Person Morals because you have come to the realization that the books you are reading as an adult are meant to entertain and are not the same as the books you read when you were five years old (you know, the ones that were meant to teach you that lying is bad and hitting people is wrong).

which is all to say (part two) that we should also not go completely opposite end of the spectrum bc that is how we cycle back to “””coincidentally””” making the only minority character the villain and perpetuating stereotypes left and right. so maybe there’s a nice middle ground.

#anyways i think ************ is fun and cute but the way the fans are showing their whole entire ass on twitter #upholding it as the epitome of good pure representation while also being very racist abt it #has really got me thinking #and also my more hot take i have begun to hate the push for needing to relate to characters #*hot take in a sarcastic/joking way. if i could edit tags on mobile i would take that out bc it feels dismissive of the prev point #and i am someone who has /related/ to characters #and still do!! #but sometimes it feels like. #there is this idea that if u cannot relate and project #and treat a professionally published character as just a mold for u to shape and take away from canon #and essentially make into an oc #then there’s something wrong with the media #also furthermore the discussion that crops up abt ‘reading abt people u dont relate to’ is so strange #bc there was such a push to publish all different kinds of stories #(rightfully so) #but now sometimes u see discourse and it’s like #people very much view consuming media as just a way to see urself /and only that and nothing else/ #and thus if u consume something that doesn’t represent who u are- u must have bad intentions #(which isn’t to say that relating or wanting to see urself is inherently bad #absolutely not! #but it’s like. art in general needs to be made and treated as /more/ #bc if it just works to represent and nothing else #we will just keep having these moral panics and less and less nuance)

[wickedhawtwexler]

it just blows my mind that there are people out there who want to write & publish novels when they never read novels. each writing medium is sooo specific. i'm trying to write a short story (having not read a short story in a long time) and i am struggling!!!!

#like i'm doing this for fun (a casual competition on a writing discord) so it's fine if it's bad. i'm just trying something new #but i would never like. consider publishing this. making people pay money for it. lmaooo #that whole ''professional writers don't have to read'' twitter discourse STILL haunts me #m.txt

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Terrible Visions

A scrambled timeline is a timeline that has proceeded much like ours, except that some particular facet has been mixed up all over the place. For example, in the scrambled timeline we will consider today, our world's fictional stories have been told by different people, and in different ways.

Bryan Lee O'Malley, in this alternate timeline, is best known as the cartoonist responsible for Homestuck, a popular comic series about a group of children who become embroiled in a cosmic-scale video game known as Sburb. Although Homestuck is probably most often associated with the cult classic Edgar Wright-directed film adaptation released in 2016, the comics themselves are highly-regarded, and the film brought a new audience to them. Netflix has commissioned an animated continuation, The Homestuck Epilogues, which is due to be released soon.

Andrew Hussie, on the other hand, is a figure you're likelier to know if you're overly online. His "MS Paint Adventures" series - most notably including Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, which is kind of like Homestuck but weirder and hornier - have firmly remained a fixture of obsessive Twitter fandom culture. It doesn't help that the best-known iteration, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, is infamous for stretching thousands of pages of meandering digressions out of a simple and focused narrative starting point. Scott Pilgrim fans have developed something of a toxic reputation, which is not entirely deserved - although of course Knives discourse is interminable, and back in the fandom's heyday there were reportedly incidents of fans assaulting each other "for being evil exes".

Scott Pilgrim fandom was very big back in the day, though, and consequently it was a nexus for other creative figures who would go on to surpass Hussie. Perhaps foremost among these is indie developer Toby Fox. He was literally living in Hussie's basement when he produced ROSEQUARTZ, a universally-beloved retro Goonies-like RPG about a human hybrid boy born to a race of gem-based aliens. He's now developing an episodic spiritual successor, RAZORQUEST, with more overtly dark themes. It revolves around an inheritance dispute among a demon-summoning family.

Other foundational figures in this timeline's internet culture include Alison Bechdel, who helped get the webcomic scene started. Although she's now more seriously acclaimed for her personal memoirs, her gaming webcomic Press Start To Dyke, which premiered in 1998, was once everywhere. It had a broad appeal, and at its height, it was common to see even straight guys sharing pages from it. Time has not been especially kind to it, though, and at this point its main legacy is test.png, a meme spawned by one of the comic's most ill-advised pages.

Then there's John C. McCrae, more often known by his pseudonym Wildbow. A prolific and reclusive author of doorstopping "web serials" - long-form fiction published online - McCrae's best-known serial is still his first, Wind, a noir superhero story set in an alternate history where capes are mostly just a subculture of unpowered vigilantes. Wind landed in a culture already rife with comic book deconstructions, like Alan Moore's 2002 graphic novel Worm Turns, but it nonetheless managed to stand out from the pack with its extensive cast of characters and its themes of coordination problems and the end of the world. Later McCrae web serials include Part (the first "Otherverse" serial; an urban fantasy story about a couple who die in a car accident and find that they have become ghosts), Tear (a "biopunk" story set in a collapsing underwater city), Warn (the controversial Wind sequel), and Play (the second "Otherverse" serial, set in a small Indiana town that helps hide a psychic girl from the CIA).

Last and perhaps least, we should discuss J. K. Rowling. Far and away the most famous of any of these authors, Rowling's name is inseparable from the YA series that she debuted with, the Luz Noceda books, which remain her one successful work. Although it was heavily derivative of older fantasy novels - like Jill Murphy's Academy For Little Witches, or Philip Pullman's Methods Of Rationality trilogy - Luz Noceda was still a monumental and unprecedented success in the publishing industry, and the film adaptations were consistent blockbusters. The final book, Luz Noceda and the Watcher of Rain, contained some allusions to a romantic relationship between Luz and her recently-redeemed associate Amity. Rowling confirmed that this was her intent in subsequent interviews and indicated that she had fought her publishers for it; the film would then go on to escalate matters slightly further.

There have been many lengthy and heated online arguments as to whether the references in the book itself constitute text or mere subtext. Whatever your stance on this discourse, a new complication has been introduced recently: although she has put out no official statement on the matter as of yet, it has become quite apparent from Rowling's shrinking network of contacts and her conspicuous silences that she is certainly TERF-sympathetic, and likely an outright TERF herself. For many, this is leading to a critical reevaluation of the social values inherent in the Luz Noceda series; others, to say the least, are holding off on that kind of reappraisal.

Anyway, Scott Pilgrim just beat Luz Noceda in a Twitter poll for Most Gay Media, and people are piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissed

#the scrambled timeline

[belle-keys]

My 2024 bookish predictions:

The Dragon Renaissance - With more Fourth Wing sequels in the works and season 2 of HOTD coming out in the summer, I think there's a good chance dragons and dragon-shifters could become the next big thing. Maybe they'll replace the fae as the "big" fictional creature?

The Percy Jackson Renaissance - It will be in full swing, accompanied by a noticeable Greek Mythology Renaissance among locals on Twitter whose knowledge of Greek Mythology is limited to... Percy Jackson. The Hunger Games renaissance will see its last days in January/February or so.

(Poorly written) military fantasy will become popular. Again, I think this will be an unwanted side effect of Fourth Wing's popularity. But I think the Gaza Genocide and institutions endorsing Zionism will play into this as well. I thinks we're about to see a lot of military propaganda in the book world and military-themed books trending.

Dark academia will enter into the beginning stages of its flop era. I say this as someone whose blog is largely dedicated to dark academia, but with Kuang not publishing anything in 2024, with Olivie Blake's Atlas trilogy coming to an end, and ST Gibson's An Education In Malice being... not that good, I can see people moving away from dark academia by the end of the year.

Colleen Hoover will release something. I don't particularly care for this, but I can easily see it happening. She didn't release anything this year so it makes sense she may have a 2024 release (and maybe one designed to improve her reputation).

The ACOTAR series adaptation will get chopped (officially, that is).

People will become less open about enjoying smut and dark romance with all the Twitter radfem discourse and backlash against poor quality romance ruling publishing. There will also be more "discreet" book covers. There will be a lot of anti-erotica discourse.

The Nobel Prize winner will be a POC.

Rivals-to-Lovers will replace Enemies-to-Lovers as the top trope. Less hate and more competition. More academic rivals, magic rivals, popularity rivals, etc. I can see people vibing with this in 2024 instead of the "I hate you but I wanna make out with you" vibes of full-on Enemies-to-Lovers.

JK Rowling will accidentally get herself arrested and/or indicted and she'll be all White Woman about it.

George RR Martin will announce that he "intends" to publish The Winds of Winter before the end of 2025.

A former Disney/Nickelodeon/child star/boyband member will write a memoir describing their trauma and they'll thank Jeannette McCurdy for giving them the courage to do it. The revelations will be insane and unprecedented.

#books #book blog #book community #book commentary #bookish #booktok #anti booktok #acotar #anti fourth wing #anti jkr #books and literature #rivals to lovers #enemies to lovers #dragons #pjo #dark academia #military fantasy #anti colleen hoover #book opinions #book criticism #2024 predictions

[cvspians]

I don’t try to get into discourses on here because it’s done enough on twitter and this is my space to publish my fics and ideas but let’s get one thing straight.

Rhaenyra did NOT try to “usurp” Baela and Rhaena of Driftmark through Luke like some people love to claim on here.

There is nothing to “usurp” when the twins weren’t even the heirs to Driftmark anyways.

Corlys, THE LORD OF THE TIDES, named Luke his HEIR. Not to mention, Lucerys and his brothers carry the last name Velaryon and are Laenor — who is the first son — sons so by default, it’s Lucerys birthright to inherit Driftmark as it is Jace’s birthright to inherit the Iron Throne after Rhaenyra.

Corlys himself even tells Luke during the Driftmark episode that it’s his “birthright” to be the Lord of the Tides.

The twins carry the last name Targaryen because of Daemon and were born to parents who were second-born so as much as it sucks, they weren’t gonna inherit anything anyways unless Daemon had some secret estate to his name or the Velaryon boys perished alongside Corlys (even then you would have Vaemond trying to take over the main branch under the claim of being the second son).

Rhaena was going to be the Lady of Driftmark through her marriage to Luke and Baela was going to be the future Queen after marrying Jace, so at the end of the day, the girls future were set.

SO NO, Rhaenyra did not “usurp” anyone. Corlys is a grown ass man who makes his own decisions and it has nothing to do with Rhaenyra. He had every chance to name his granddaughters heirs but didn’t.

“But they were bastards” yeah well y’all can foam at the mouth all you want calling them that but it still won’t change the fact that both Laenor and Corlys claimed them as their own.

At the end of the day, the only person who was usurped and had her birthright stolen was RHAENYRA, the woman who WAS named heir to the Iron Throne by Viserys, the KING.

#house of the dragon #rhaenyra targaryen #corlys velaryon #i’m so sick of the lies #please read the book or watch the show with your eyes open #driftmark #lucerys velaryon #rhaena targaryen #baela targaryen #jacaerys velaryon

[olderthannetfic]

I definitely think there are people who use those "diverse reading challenges" to show off, but I also think you can have a truly genuine desire to diversify your reading habits, and challenges can be a good way to incentive yourself to do that and keep track of it. And I'm not sure there's a go-to standard for who is "tryhard" beyond if they act cringey and show-offy about it on social media. I was going to say something like "do they genuinely seem like they're trying to branch out, or just reading the same things as they usually do but with a black lead" - but honestly, I want the people who are "just reading YA" or "just reading romance" or whatever to read more diversely, too. Like for romance readers specifically: Read more romance with COC or written by POC, read more M/M and/or F/F if you primarily read het, read more stuff written by people from outside of North America and Western Europe, etc. And if you primarily read serious "classic" literature, try reading one from Africa beyond the lit-class staples like Things Fall Apart rather than another white British author, just to give an example. I think everyone should do more of that. I think those can all come from a genuine desire to try new things, not just show off to your followers about how open-minded you are.

Actually, I think the big way to tell if someone's being "tryhard" is, yes, their reaction on social media, but particularly how they talk about the book when they're done. The one big Tell I see on Goodreads about people who want to be seen as "reading diversely" but don't really appreciate diversity is when they read a book about, say, Muslim characters and then leave a 2-star reviewing whining that they didn't like that the book expected them to know 101-level things about Islam like what Ramadan or the hajj is. (Or alternately, are mad that it DID explain that stuff "too much," oblivious to the fact that in Christian-majority cultures, that's a publisher expectation that you do that with any other religion, because of ignorant readers who will whine if you don't spend a paragraph teaching them what Ramadan is because apparently these supposed "diverse readers" can't be assed to learn literally anything about the best-known Muslim holiday.) I saw someone complain on Tumblr about Goodreads reviewers getting mad at all the "Jewish stuff they were expected to know" to read Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, and this person was like "I'm a goy and I understood all of it because it's stuff you would know just from having seen Fiddler on the Roof. If all the Judaism you need to know for a book is stuff that you can get from watching Fiddler on the Roof, then maybe the issue is not the book, it's you for not having such basic information about a major world religion and then reading a book about it."

Or as another example, when people complain about how the particular set of lingo this person who is oppressed in a way you are not used to describe their oppression is not the exact thing that Twitter discourse has told you is "correct" to use or that it is offensive. When they get mad that a book where a black person is talking about their life experience with police brutality has "too many descriptions of violence" and "I'm rating this lower because it might be triggering." (In general, when people seem to conflate "this triggered me" with the kind of "productive discomfort" that relatively privileged people NEED to confront in fiction about marginalizations they don't experience in order to grow as humans. But also it's just like... there are some topics where it would be doing readers a disservice not to describe them graphically. Not everything can be communicated in a way that would earn a G rating on AO3. That might mean the book is inaccessible to you, but that's on you to deal with, not on the author to censor themselves.) Or when they, as in the American Fiction example, expect it to fit some stereotypical ideas of "authenticity" and are mad that this POC or LGBTQ+ or disabled person's lives are more like their own rather than feeling like a museum exhibit about an exotic Other culture.

To me, "tryhard" is when you don't actually value diversity FOR diversity. If you're going to read diverse media, you can't get mad when it actually is diverse. If you want to read about stuff about/from other cultures and identities, then a) you need to be okay with being challenged, b) you need to not expect the author to hold your privileged hand all the time. You can look up unfamiliar words like "hajj" or "Purim." It's 2024. You have a tiny computer in your hand that is several times more powerful than the big computers that put astronauts on the moon. You can use it to go to Wikipedia when you see a word you don't understand, it's not that hard! Expecting authors from other cultures and identities to patiently explain every aspect of that to you like an elementary school teacher is the ultimate sign of entitlement and privilege, especially if you're reading, say, a book by a Congolese author about the Congo, not one that they wrote specifically for Western audiences!

When people make a big show of reading "diversely" but then seem to be upset that those books are actually, you know, DIVERSE, that's a big flashing sign that it's performative tryhard nonsense to me.

--

It's pretty sad when we'll go google some xianxia thing to watch The Untamed, but we can't manage to look at a ten thousand times more commonplace wikipedia article on a major world religion.

[mecachrome]

for an incredibly new f1 follower, what would you recommend for getting up to date with teams and racers and performances and history? apart from dts lol

oh that is a good question!!! i don't think i'm even the best person to answer this but honestly i think it all comes naturally if you pick a specific thing/team/person you're interested in and set out to learn more about that topic, because everything is so connected and with time you can fill in those knowledge gaps pretty quickly :') more under the cut:

dts is imo perfectly acceptable for learning names and faces for the first time and basically creating a vague outline of a given subject (i've said it's like using duolingo for learning a new language lol), so if you watch it and are like oh—i'm interested in charles or mercedes or learning more about technical regulations or whatever, then you can just dive deeper into that via wiki / youtube / podcasts + published media + old race archives and build up from there!

otherwise i think the main thing is just to start watching the actual races when the season gets underway, and in order to properly appreciate them then also read up on + watch videos about the technical/strategy side of the sport as well. back in the day i used to really like chain bear and i still always recommend it to anyone who asks! after that i would just seek out like... a community/server/place where other people are discussing news real-time; this could be meeting people on tumblr and twitter, but personally i'm subscribed to r/formula1 because it's the most active composite source of f1 news and Discourse. if you're reddit-averse i also just keep a big list on twitter with a bunch of random data accounts, official driver/team accounts, journalists, etc. that helps me keep up with the season in a tidy fashion—though honestly f1 journalism is so unserious that you don't really need to do that because most journos regurgitate the same three quotes in slightly different formats, so if you want to follow One Guy who won't disseminate bs info i'd recommend chris medland. or just general sport publications like autosport, motosport.com, the athletic if you're already subscribed to it (pretty lacking for f1 though since it's american lol), etc... some sites like the-race are very contentious though so i'd say just tread with caution!!! on the data side i personally enjoy fdatanalysis and f1telemetrydata (i've also used f1-tempo to do my own telemetry analysis but idk if that's useful). but again i'd highly recommend the subreddit since it keeps everything i just mentioned in one place anyway 😭

other media recs:

f1tv, if it's available in your area, has pretty much everything you need to follow f1 in its entirety. i hate to shill for paid media but i genuinely think it's good; you can watch every f1, f2, f3 session real-time, as well as go to the archives and revisit old races for each series from most seasons. it also has technical shows and a whole host of minidocs with bite-sized info that are probably less sensationalized than dts. if you don't have f1tv though then a lot of decent content is cross-posted to the f1 youtube so honestly the official channels are all pretty good for keeping up with the sport.

podcasts: if you're an auditory person then podcasts are a great way to deepdive into f1 history. personally i believe that 80% of men running f1 podcasts should be legally barred from ever having an opinion on motorsport, so i don't listen to that many, but i do enjoy the official f1 podcast beyond the grid (i listen to it on spotify but you can also find full transcripts on the f1 site) since, you know, they get official personnel on and i appreciate the wide range of personalities interviewed—from drivers to tps to various types of engineers. i've also heard good things about shift+f1, the race, and engine braking, but i haven't checked them out so i'd recommend just looking podcasts up yourself and seeing what vibes with you! though some podcasts are just like... I'll eat this because you're interviewing my guy but i would never watch/listen to you otherwise. (cough pit stop...)

books & autobiographies: again if you want to dive more into old f1, then you can always read a book!! i read jenson's autobiography life to the limit earlier and was very endeared, it's a super breezy but charming read ❤️ adrian newey's memoir is also a decent overview of a clearly brilliant and accomplished mind, i enjoyed the technical details and found his early career path especially interesting.

docus, movies, tv: there's also plenty of f1 media outside of f1tv, so you can always check those out; f1 movies aren't necessarily that accurate or frankly good but sometimes it's fun just for the Vibes and the love of the sport. for ex rush (2013) covers james hunt & niki lauda's rivalry, netflix has a schumacher (2021) doc, the brawn gp miniseries ft. jense came out last november, just things like that... some current individual drivers also have their own random miniseries so you can always seek those out, for ex i watched maxv's anatomy of a champion the other day just for the fun of it LOL.

i don't know whether any of this is helpful... but maybe other people can reply with their own recommendations!!!

also if you're interested in f2, f3, etc. then honestly just follow feeder series on whatever platform since they cover everything pretty well; feeder_series on twitter, r/f1feederseries, plus they do interview podcasts on youtube/spotify so i like watching those to keep up with young drivers. you can also watch chasing the dream for succinct f2 narratives; it used to only be on f1tv but it gets uploaded on youtube now so it's fairly accessible. lmk if you have any other questions or something specific you'd like more info about!!!

#ask

[watchfuldeer]

the nicholas braun stuff happened to coincide with a very difficult week in court that i’m not at liberty to discuss the specifics of publicly. needless to say, i currently have no patience for gossip, hearsay and rumour being presented as fact.

year-old comments from the subreddit for the gossip account/company/one woman and her inbox that is deuxmoi, that regularly insists verifiably false things are true (and indeed single-handedly created nick’s online reputation as ‘NYC’s boyfriend’ to 2 million followers) do not constitute credible sources. overstating the harmful content of what is clearly being presented (second hand accounts of consensual sex between adults being labelled sexual assault, for instance) is irresponsible and juvenile. the article that has been published does not feature a single first hand account, and seems to be functioning as something of a honeytrap for people who hooked up with nick, rather than a safe space for anyone. the author posted it to her twitter with an accompanying tweet suggesting that the article contains ‘many and serious underage rape allegations’, which it simply doesn’t. it’s sensationalist clickbait that completely undermines the credibility of the poster of the original tiktok, which has been deleted, and has little to no journalistic value. it is extremely weak, sub-tabloid levels of conjecture. no mainstream media outlet would publish this.

this isn’t to say i believe nick doesn’t have the capacity to do misogynistic, immature, deeply unpleasant things. i’ve always thought that the new york post article from october 2021 would be a great hit piece if the worm turned, and inevitably it has become one, because having alleged one night stands with the women who go to your lame af bar every weekend just for the opportunity of sleeping with you is extremely stupid behaviour and always has been. his M.O seems to be the cavalier attitude to women of a single straight guy in his 30s, compounded by being an ex-disney kid with apparently poor social boundaries, who treats his bar like an extension of a hookup app, and is probably constantly surrounded by awful mates doing the same. i see it every day in my generational cohort. it sucks.

i apologise if this upsets people. things might come to light that change my mind! i’m very open to that possibility. he may well be at the finding out stage of having fucked around. i simply don’t think much of the discourse this week has substance beyond the tiktok, and that’s actually truly unfortunate. if you publicly accuse an individual of a crime, you had better be fucking sure they did it. if you kick off a campaign to get potential victims of abuse, rape or assault to come forward, you don’t give equal credence to completely unverified, anonymous hearsay as you do first-hand accounts. be serious.

#nicholas braun

[vague-humanoid]

If you have spent any amount of time on social media following the Israeli attack on Gaza, you are sure to have come across Visegrád 24 and its ultra-viral content. The Polish news aggregator is perhaps an unlikely candidate to become a key player in the information war. But in just a few short weeks, it has gained hundreds of thousands of followers across its platforms, especially Twitter/ and TikTok (currently at 843,000 and 183,000 followers, respectively).

A study published by the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, titled “The New Elites of X,” identified Visegrád 24 as the most influential account engaged in Israel/Palestine discourse. One measure of its reach is that, in the first three days following Hamas’ surprise attack, the six traditional media outlets with the most followers on Twitter/X (CNN Breaking News, CNN, the New York Times, BBC Breaking News, BBC World News and Reuters) who collectively have nearly 300 million followers, received 112 million views on Israel/Palestine related content. Visegrád 24, by comparison, received 370 million views over the same period. Since then, its influence has only grown.

Its massive reach has led many to equate it with reliability, and the account is regularly cited in establishment media such as Newsweek or Fox News. But this is far from the case. Indeed, its accounts appear to exist to lionize Israel and its supporters, demonize Palestine and its supporters, fearmonger about refugees, and promote ultra-conservative politics in general.

[houseofmarcella]

Obligatory Philip/History Essay for my friends (pt1)

Recently I have been seeing various memes and art pieces (that are all lovely and beautiful) and some weird twitter discourse about Philip, the show's lore, real-life historical tragedies, and a complete misinterpretation of 17th-century christianty. I was hoping to clarify some things and put out some of my pet theories.

Obligatory: I am but a humble fan and history enthusiast, and this is all written in good fun and with the understanding that any children's cartoon depicting historical figures (even fictional ones) is not always going to portray things accurately to the finest details. To begin,

THEY'RE DUTCH (ethnically?)

'Witte' is a Dutch surname meaning white or blond. Combining it into Wittebane gives us 'the white bane', and the rather obvious allusion to the European colonization (and Christianization) of the Americas. Contrary to the common belief that the continent was only colonized by the Spanish/French/English, the Dutch were the first Europeans in the area. I have always had the pet theory that the brothers were Dutch orphans who were forced to join an English settlement.

The whole "tryed to fit in with the town by becoming witchhunters" thing could easily be interpreted as them doing their best to acclimate to their new town.

I really like how this could parallel Luz and Camilla too. Caleb 'taking care of Philip by pushing witchhunting as a way to protect him from townsfolk with hawkeyes for anything weird/of the devil. This can also feed into the 'betrayal' aspect of their relationship, where Philip feels that Caleb left him, but Caleb was older and just trying to keep them safe. (Flapjack choosing Hunter when he expresses the desire to "choose his own future" in HP feels... relevant)

Earlier in the fandom, it was a general impression that the brothers were the town founders, and not just some orphan kids from an ethnicity the townsfolk didn't like. I wonder if this was a change from the shortening of s3, but the nature of the statue seems to imply they were literate and probably did something important enough to be remembered besides disappearing mysteriously into the night.

Timeline for quick reference

1613 somehow, the Wittebanes arrive in Gravesfield, a town that should not yet exist (from TtT).

1614 Adriaen Block (dutch) sails up the Connecticut River and opens the door for the Dutch West India Company to trade for furs with local Mohegan and Pequot tribes. THIS IS THE FIRST EUROPEAN SURVEY IN THE AREA, let alone a settlement!

1634 Wethersfield, the first English/Puritan town in Connecticut, is founded, this is the town that has a historic district called 'Old Wethersfield' and was the location of the conneticut witch trials (sound familiar?).

1636-37 The Pequot War

1647-70 The Connecticut Witch Trials Occur

1664 The English take over New Amsterdam and rename it New York

Wethersfield... Gravesfield...

The town Wiki page cites Wethersfield as Dana Terrace's hometown, and though her official birth location is actually a town nearby, the parallels here are so overt I will simply summarise.

Wethersfield has a historic district called "Old Wethersfield" and just LOOK AT THIS CEMETARY! A few of the town's founders were pretty damn important to the Pequot War as well.

Most importantly, Wethersfield was the site of most of the major executions in the Connecticut Witch Trials.

The Witch 'Hunter' General & Hopkins

Matthew Hopkins (obv. the inspiration for Jacob Hopkins in show) was an English (this is in England btw) puritan who hunted women and poor people on a religious zealot murder spree from 1644-1647. He killed at least over 100 people and could arguably be held as the person who started this frenzy.

He published The Discovery of Witches and called himself the "Witch-Finder General". The change from finder to hunter in the show is probably just for clarity, but the reference is there.

Pt2, with a discussion about puritanism/calvinism, how Belos probs used his view of catholicism to build the government and religion of the modern BI, and how the grimwalkers relate to the Calvinist idea of predestination and salvation... will come soon.

Thank you @ter-claw-thorne, @theawkwardarchaeologist, @triple--a--threat--a--threat, and @died-of-ligma, for dealing with my rambling.

I apologize if there are any spelling errors in this essay, it's 2 am and I had a real history essay due two hours ago.

#toh #the owl house #philip wittebane #caleb wittebane #toh hunter #history #original post

[thebibliosphere]

I don't want to stir up discourse/harassment again, but I'm very curious, what was the Lucia Franko situation?

I'm going to put this under a cut because she's notoriously litigious and scans the net for people talking about her.

It is well known that she wrote a romance series romanticizing an affair between a 16-year-old gymnast and her 30+ coach.

It caused a bit of a shit storm on Twitter when Romancelandia as a community became more aware of it. I was in a group discussion on Twitter where people were saying she needed to not file it under romance or young adult romance (which she had done, presumably because YA romance is a HUGE earner) because it didn't belong in either genre. There was also some talk about whether or not she was in breach of Amazon TOS.

I posted maybe one thing in that whole convo, agreeing that she needed to move her stuff into dark romance and out of a genre frequented by minors because while fandom is a free for all, professional publishing has standards and restrictions we all need to abide by.

To this day, I do not know if it was her or her fans acting on their own, but they must have looked at that group, decided I was the smallest fish there based on my Twitter following, and decided to try and dive bomb my reviews and attack my social media, primarily my Facebook which is where certain types of romance authors reign supreme and you can pretty much ruin someone's career if you're able to destroy their FB standing.

Unfortunately for them, I am not a Facebook romance writer. I am a Tumblr romance writer, so it was not unlike bringing a knife to a nuclear orbital strike. They got blown clean out of the water, and it caused quite a few people to go, "who the fuck was that?!" while I slithered back beneath the surface like some feral Tumblr leviathan.

At this time, LF was also actively threatening to sue Scarlet Parish over factually documenting where she was in breach of Amazon's TOS. She was sending her legal papers and threatening her livelihood. She has since repeated this pattern when people point out facts that she used to brag about as selling points but now considers slander.

In the end, she brought so much attention to the whole thing herself that it resulted in the books being reported to Amazon, who did find them to be in breach of their TOS and removed them

LF has since aged up her character to the legal age of consent and republished them on Amazon, which is fine; she's no longer in breach of TOS. But what isn't fine is that she continues to threaten legal action against anyone who points out that her original character was underage and she was in the wrong genre listings and still puts herself in the YA categories a lot of the time when her content is supposedly exclusively for adults.

Anyway, apparently, me pointing this out when asked about her is the same as being pro-censorship 🤡

#personal #long post #harassment

[champagnepodiums]

Some Early(ish) Thoughts on the whole Alex Palou Contract Situation™️

I am dumping the thoughts that have been percolating in my head all weekend about the situation here, hopefully it’ll all make sense but cohesiveness is not generally my strong suit but these are the things that have stuck out most to me so far about the whole situation:

The Inciting Incident: I think it’s REALLY interesting that an internal e-mail from Zak Brown somehow just magically managed to make its way to Jenna Fryer who ofc did her due diligence and wrote about it. The telling? thing to me though was that Nathan Brown from IndyStar was very quickly (like I think it was within an hour or two) able to confirm the story. On a Friday evening 🙃. Like it doesn’t seem like a far stretch to assume that McLaren wanted to establish this story to reflect favorably for them.

The Concept of Loyalty in Motorsports: This whole situation has sparked lots of discourse and it is interesting (and frustrating) that people on Twitter at least, already seem to be siding with McLaren and slamming Alex Palou for not being loyal but really — why should he? He is the hottest prospect in motorsports right now and if McLaren has failed to provide things they have allegedly promised (F1 opportunities and a comparable IndyCar program), why does Alex owe them his loyalty? (I am talking specifically about loyalty here). If teams can break contracts, why can’t drivers?

The babygirlification of Alex Palou and why I admire him through this: okay like it is very humorous that the smiliest driver on the grid is the one causing trouble but people are acting like just because he’s outwardly smiley, there’s no way that he can actually be apart of this and make no mistake, both can exist at once. I think all racing drivers at the top level have to be a certain degree of ruthless and I think Alex Palou is just willing to bet on himself and ruffle feathers in the process to get the best deal for himself. I personally think that it’s admirable, I mean, he is the one strapping himself into a deathmobile so like why should he be stuck with Zak Brown’s promises that I don’t think he really had much intention on completely following through with (see Pato’s F1 deal lmao)

Chip Ganassi Issued the Statement Against McLaren because He Saw An Opportunity to Be Petty and He Couldn’t Resist: The Race published an article that basically was like “Is it fair to McLaren that Chip Ganassi called them out but didn’t call Alex Palou out because this is his fault” and that’s stupid for so many reasons. Like did Chip really have to make a statement? Probably not. But was he going to pass up an opportunity to say some mean shit about his nemesis? No lol. But also it makes absolutely no sense for CGR to slam Alex Palou, especially if all of this means that he will stay?

We Actually Don’t Know What is Going On: There was a lot of speculation and opinions from everybody over the weekend about the situation (most of which I cover above) and I think something we should keep it mind is that all we know at this moment is Zak Brown’s version of events (the ex-management company too but uh, I don’t trust anything they say so). There is still so much that we don’t know so while speculation is fine, I think completely writing off Alex Palou should be avoided — it’s honestly probably what Zak Brown wants everybody to do.

I think that sums up what I’ve had rattling around in my brain. I’m up for discussing this whole situation so feel free to send your thoughts my way 🫶🫶🫶

#indycar #alex palou #shout out to the discord for talking through it with me

[xenosagaepisodeone]

It's kind of funny that that post came across my dash because a week or so ago on Twitter there was a huge discourse about the ethics of reposting manga panels that came as a result of the mangaka behind sasaki to miyano making this

nothing about the image itself is too surprising. Japanese companies are generally stricter about copyright than the US, and because of how anime/manga is more readily available for consumption than overseas, the etiquette as to how to engage with them are a bit different as well. what was frustrating was that the conversation surrounding it was framed as a matter of respecting the creator's wishes, instead of acknowledging the larger framework that informs boilerplate requests like this.

It also reminds me of that one time I followed the artist behind Wolf Guy (the 70s manga not the 2000s one) and he qrt'd a tweet I made containing some scanalated panels with "it's so nostalgic to see this again. it's been so long since wolf guy was published ^o^"