This is my blog. I don't know what to name it... I like fandoms and tumblr and stuff*. I'm teaching myself Gimp with some weird results.
Pronouns: She/her
The image in my sidebar is by: http://imgraysea.tumblr.com/
*stuff includes Doctor Who, Moffat Hate, Vlogbrothers, Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Teen Wolf, Supernatural, superwholockthecomic, Avengers, Tumblr-like craziness.
My love of audio posts has earned its own blog...
-Kirsten :D
In the heart of the fairy mound, there were two identical
cradles, each with an identical infant inside.
“One of these babies is the one you bore,” said a fairy.
“The other is the changeling we left. You may leave our hall with whichever
child you claim as your own. Choose wisely.”
“But they are both
my children,” the human mother protested indignantly.
The fairies whispered amongst themselves in surprise and
confusion. At last, one asked, “How do you mean?”
“I came to get back the child you stole from me, the one who
is mine by blood. I never agreed to give my adopted child back to you.”
Perhaps her words touched the fairies’ hearts; or perhaps
her stubbornness impressed them; or perhaps they simply found the argument
amusing, novel enough to merit a reward.
She left the fairy mound, an infant in each arm, and brought
them home.
I don’t know why, but I think about this all the time.
I wanted to touch base with you about an interesting thing I've noticed now that I am the victim of a viral dogpiling harassment thread going on on twitter - at this point I've had about 100 different antis message me directly telling me I have to block them for them since I am a horrible person. They won't block someone they supposedly hate themselves and expect that person to be the one to take care of their wellbeing by following their demands. It's the height of entitlement.
First of all: wow, I’m so sorry!? That’s incredibly fucked up. Hang in there, anon. If there’s anything that would help you out don’t hesitate to mention.
Second: im so fascinated!? By this choice…??? Entitled is right.
I’d be curious to know: are they telling you to block them based on your relative ages? Or are all of the antis attacking you with this demand 21 and younger? Because I can see that fitting a certain ‘adults (that is: anyone older than me) have to look out for my safety even if they’ve never met me’ attitude that I find lines up with the increase in ‘trust authorities to protect you’ culture shift that followed 9/11 in the US.
Either way: isn’t it interesting how antis are insisting you are dangerous to them, and yet trusting you to block them instead of try to harm them if they put themselves in contact with you?
It’s almost like they know you’re not actually dangerous to them and this is all performative outrage and playing at activism.
Wild.
[image ID: anonymous says:
I’m the DMMD thread person who said the very controversial statement that kids shouldn’t be playing DMMD since it’s meant for adults. That really rustled their jimmies. I’ve honestly not looked at their profiles, just reported the really offensive ones and muted the others. But everyone demands I block them, and from friends who been curious, apparently there is an anti culture precedent of refusing to block people they consider bad because they think that means they lose.
End ID] (emphasis mine)
Blocking people who ship things they hate means they lose?
Well that’s the most 4chan thing I’ve ever heard.
I’ve said before that I think anti-shipper circles have learned their argument style by watching people from the alt-right argue on YouTube comments and twitter chains, b/c their ‘argument’ method is an extremely effective trolling and harassment style. This seems to reinforce it.
Bless you for your maturity in dealing with them.
The reason why this precedent exists is because internet bullies need a way to declare victory when people ignore them. Here is the thing: Bullies need a rise out of their target in order to get their satisfaction from bullying, proof that they have hurt their target. If the immediate response to a bully is block and ignore then the bully has usually put effort into their bullying and gotten nothing out of it - objectively, at best, they can hope that they hurt their target, but they will never get the actual satisfaction of knowing they did.
So they have redefined blocking people is a sign of deficiency - cowardice, moral inferiority, and most importantly trying to equate it to admitting defeat. This way they can still get their violence thrill when someone ignores them. They know they won, they know they hurt their target, because they have defined blocking to be irrefutable proof of such.
But it only works if they believe it. They have to convince themselves, not their target. Which is why people go in other’s inbox and demand that they be blocked. They have built up their world view so that they are unable to block or it is actively admitting that they are cowards, morally deficient, and are and always were wrong.
And, unfortunately, because anti culture is based on bullying and abuse they have managed to convinced a lot of younger people that this is the case, so now lots of people are unable to block people because it makes them feel that they are cowards and morally deficient.
This is yet another way in which anti culture actively harms minors. It has rendered many minors incapable of using the tools that allow them to protect themselves in online spaces.
This is an incredible analysis! Thank you.
Unfortunately it is not just analysis. I know a girl who is being stalked and harassed by a man on social media but she refuses to block him because “blocking is cowardly”.
I figured out all this by talking to her, trying to address her concerns about blocking people, and trying to convince her it is ok to block this guy. This has been going on for 4 months and still she refuses because people have drilled it into her head so much that blocking people makes her a bad person. I finally got her to turn off anon asks though, so progress is being made.
I’m really glad you went to that effort. You’re a good friend. Unfortunately, I know it’s not just theory to think over … it’s seriously screwing up a lot of lives. That’s why I think it’s so important to understand the mindsets of the people doing it, so you can see it in yourself and others before you hurt yourself or anyone else, and before you get tangled up with people who are spouting that rhetoric before you meet them.
Also: thinking back to when I was younger, blocking was considered the ‘cowardly’ thing to do even before antis were shitting things up in a particular way. On LJ, on FB, on MySpace … only assholes blocked people, at least in the geeky spaces I hung out in. Which makes me think that maybe the Geek Social Fallacies also play a part in this? ‘If you exclude people you’re a dick.’ ‘You’re a coward who won’t confront people. You just avoid them.’ Which of course, feeds into an environment where even people who don’t buy into anti-shipper rhetoric are set up to be afraid of blocking people, lest they be seen as the ‘real’ problem for failing to negotiate a ceasefire and excluding other nerds from their nerd experience.
It’s all just conveniently feeding into a space where abusers have full time access to victims and denying that access makes the victim equally abusive. :( I hate it.
I hope your friend ends up okay.
Blocking is not cowardly. Blocking is taking control of your time and attention, and refusing to give energy to the people who want you to waste it on them.
If you are entertained by antis, you are under no obligation to block them - if they don’t want to read your words, they can block you. If someone is bothering you, feel free to block them - your time and attention are limited; don’t waste them on people who only detract from the enjoyment you get out of life.
(Originally posted this as a reply, but I’m copying it into a reblog for safekeeping and expanding on it slightly.)
This is making me wonder if we need to revive another Old Internet term: signal-to-noise ratio. Blocking mindless hate and copypasta’d harassment is usually less about threat than about nuisance. Removing useless, irrelevant, foul-smelling garbage from your local slice of internet so you can spend your finite time and attention on the stuff you’re actually there for. This was less true on platforms like LJ that made it easier to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio. But on Tumblr and Twitter, with high posting volume, feeds clogged with reblogs/retweets, sitewide tags instead of moderated communities as the only common spaces, and extremely limited filtering capabilities, blocking becomes a vital tool for junk control. In some ways it’s a replacement for basic mod functions like “clean up the mess if a troll starts shouting insults, baiting participants into flamewars, or otherwise interrupting useful conversations to draw dongs all over everything.” Or spam/off-topic control–my blocklist is mostly bots and blogs that post stuff I’m not interested in to a tag I’m browsing.
Related: I suspect the motivation for content-less harassment comments like “tl;dr”/“bad post op”/etc isn’t just signaling allegiance or demoralizing the OP, it’s also shitting up the signal-to-noise ratio of the post notes and inviting your followers to join in. It’s why long substantive posts are more likely to get the Tumblr-hate equivalent of a dong scrawled in sharpie–the *existence* of signal in the “enemy” camp is what’s being targeted, and trolls don’t fight signal with counter-signal. They fight it with noise.
Noise attacks are some real shit right now, too. Information bombardment is one of the cornerstones of information distortion (which was literally how 4chan and Russia drop-kicked Trump into office.)
Of course 4channers would say that blocking is cowardly - they depend on the unchecked ability to generate noise.
I encourage blocking those who maliciously generate noise.
people keep adding more excellent points.
be wary of groups that respond to signals with noise. it often means that the basis of their worldview or ideology lacks substance and their only recourse is to drown out the truth with incessant screaming.
(it’s another form of anti-intellectualism, IMHO.)
Please note “noise” take many forms in this instance. Something I’ve also seen in fandoms is “positivity campaigns” to celebrate people, that conveniently only celebrate the “in-group” and by coincidence don’t celebrate anyone in the counterpart “out group”.
So now if you try to speak up against this exclusionary behavior or block out this positivity campaign, you’re the asshole.
*finishes a movie* *rubs my little gay hands together* well…better head on over to ao3 and see what they’ve got
I like that queer fanfic culture has looked at media and said “you spent millions of dollars on putting together some good AU ideas…. I’ll see what i can do with it.”
in grade 12 we were reading romeo and juliet and we were at the romantic-ass balcony scene and this hot girl in the class volunteered to read juliet’s parts and i put up my hand to volunteer for another part and the teacher goes ‘oh do you want to be the nurse, amanda?’ and i was like ‘no i wanna be romeo’ and the hot girl swiveled around in her seat to give me a Look™
she and i later ended up making out at a bunch of parties in university lmfao
in retrospect this moment was absolutely pivotal to my butch awakening but it was also just a lesbian power move
Lately I’ve been doing this thing where when men give me shit at my job, I choose to instead speak to their wives/girlfriends/female counterpart. I had a dude today try to yell at me and I ignored him and instead spoke in a very level voice to his wife instead. He literally stomped his feet like a fucking toddler and said “stop ignoring me! I’m talking!” And his wife said “George, please use a quieter voice. You’re embarrassing me.”
instead of bugle mcu peter parker sells his pictures to/works for buzzfeed. all his articles about spiderman are titled like ‘Insanely Cool And Relevant Spider-Man Helps Out At Local Soup Kitchen’ and ‘Awesomely Powerful And Suave Vigilante Spider-Man Just Stopped A Crime Ring From Stealing All Of Tony Stark’s Shit’ and ‘Beloved Sweetheart And Icon Spider-Man Saved An Old Lady So She Bought Him A Churro (Pics Will Make Your Heart MELT!!) and ‘Photographic Proof That Spider-Man Is A Thousand Times Cooler Than The Queens Police Department’, stuff along those lines. He also makes Which Avenger Are You quizzes, and one time he was mad at Tony so he made a poll asking if Spider-Man or Iron Man were cooler, but he rigged it so no matter what the actual voting outcome it would always say 0% voted for Iron Man.
‘Opinion: The Green Goblin Is A Loser And Spider-Man Could Easily End Him If He Wasn’t Such A Respectable And Peaceful Dude’
‘PROOF That Tony Stark Thinks Spider-Man Is The Greatest!!’ and it’s just a bunch of pictures that Peter completely staged and Tony clearly didn’t realize there was a camera on him. He’s smiling at the kid all proudly or whatever and Spider-Man is just fucking thumbs-uping into the camera lol
‘Devastatingly Smart And Funny Spider-Man Gets The Hulk To Calm Down With Only A Few Great Jokes!’
‘Um, Spider-Man Just Totally Saved The Entire City From A Genetically Modified Super Villain, And We’re Living For It.’
‘Okay- We Really Need To Start Appreciating Doctor Strange’ the picture featured in the article is Spider-Man trying to get Strange to fist bump and Strange looking annoyed
pictures of Spider-Man hanging around parades and protests and riots trying to make sure no one gets hurt
‘INCREDIBLE Spider-Man Webbed Up Falcon And The Winter Soldier Like It Was Nothing!’
‘Spider-Man Just Called Doc Ock A Little Bitch In The Middle Of A Fight, And It Was Iconic’
‘Friend To All! Spider-Man Saves An Adorable Cat From A Burning Building!’
‘Everyone’s Favorite Web-Slinger Just Gave A Lost Little Girl The COOLEST Ride Home!’
I can’t stop thinking about this lmao someone help me
The articles pick up some steam and start getting popular and he worries that people will suspect he’s Spider-Man because of how many pictures he gets and all the stuff he writes about himself
Instead, people start suspecting he’s got the worlds biggest crush on Spider-Man
Superhero Conspiracy Bloggers™ who also totally believe Peter has a crush on Spider-Man get wind that Peter is Tony’s intern.
Tony thinks this is a hilarious turn of events, and as revenge for the ‘No One Likes Iron Man’ poll, he tweets out that he’s been trying to set up Peter and Spidey for months now, but “they’re both so shy!”
The internet goes wild.
Michelle, completely aware of Peter’s identity, publishes her own article entitled: ’Spider-Man: PLEASE DATE MY BEST FRIEND’. It trends for three days and Ned has a copy of it printed out and framed.
Harry Osborn, completely unaware of the comedy in this situation, gets drunk and posts a whole angry rant on his snapchat about how Peter can do ‘SO much better’ than the vigilante wall crawler
I feel like Tony’s ego is the most legendary cryptid in the MCU
Because I heard reports of it for years. The images of it are usually blurred and easily dismissed as something else to anyone with a pair of eyes and it has yet to actually be proven to factually exist.
I think a lot of people believe Tony is arrogant because of his flippant attitude and tongue-in-cheek blustering, but many of his actions (which speak louder than words) demonstrate a remarkable lack of ego.
Makes Pepper Potts CEO of Stark Industries [he trusts her more than himself to run his company]
“Dead for almost 20 years, and still taking me to school.” [could take credit for the New Element, but emphasizes he ‘re’discovered it]
Lays on the wire in The Avengers to save New York City when redirecting the nuclear bomb into the wormhole [after Steve said Tony isn’t the kind of man to do that]
“I…I’m just a man in a can.” [said while vulnerable]
“Actually, he’s the boss. [points to Steve]
I just pay for everything and design everything, make everyone look cooler.”
“Like the old man said. Together.”
“Ultron. My fault.” [takes sole accountability for the Sokovia disaster, even though Bruce also helped]
The entirety of Civil War in general. Tony believes that the Avengers should have oversight. Handing authority of the Avengers to a Council is not the action of an egoist who thinks he’s always right (!!!) He’s basically admitting they can, and have, made mistakes and need to be put in check.
Asks Peter for a plan on how to rescue Strange in infinity War – and that’s the plan they use.
Goes with Quill’s plan on Titan in Infinity War, even though he didn’t seem to have a high opinion of the guardians.
Tries to stop Strange from handing over the Time Stone in Infinity War, even though that’s what spared his life.
I mean, time and time again, Tony tries to be a team player, listens to others, and exhibits self-deprecating behavior. When he was dying in Iron Man 2, he went on a destructive binge to force everyone who loved him away so they wouldn’t care when he was gone. I mean… !??!?!? Like, ego? Where!?
Iron Man is more than a suit of armor. It’s a metaphor for who Tony Stark is as a person: cold and hard on the outside, but warm and soft on the inside. He uses his arrogance as a shield to protect himself–to deceive people into thinking he’s not as vulnerable as he really is.
It reminds me of this quote:
“The difference between ‘Iron Man’ and some other movies is that there’s no spider bite; there’s no magic bullet where a hero is born. We had to build him. We wanted people to remember that there’s a person inside that suit, and it will hurt if he falls.”
It boggles me when that’s lost on some. Like, yeah, Tony’s a messy character, and he’s certainly a hard pill to swallow because he can be downright acrimonious, but he feels so deeply. He’s easily wounded. He’s one of the most emotionally-driven superheroes. That’s why everything he’s done has taken such a toll on him. It’s why he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s why he has anxiety attacks.He wants so badly to do good and save the people he loves – even at the cost of his own sanity and comfort. Every time he fails, it destroys more and more of what little self-worth he has.
Anonymous
