a bunch of minority communities have this attitude that goes, like, "those outsiders don't get you like we do. they hate you. we don't hate you. you're one of us. you're safe here, with us." and every time it triggers a virulent antibody response in me. fuck off!! you don't know me!!! and i sure as shit don't feel safe among you lot!!!! it, like, turns a shared oppression into some cult shit and i hate it for that.

It also moves remarkably quickly from 'yes, all members of ingroup have a natural affinity with one another' to 'that person who disagrees with me isn't *really* a member of the ingroup; don't be like that person'

& of course 'that outsider who tries to warn you about the behavior of the ingroup is really just a person who secretly hates you'.

A lot of fantasy goes with Tolkien explanation of fantasy racism being the result of ancestral grudge.

Then you got Dungeon Meshi which is like:

"Elves and Dwarves hate each other because their respective empires make up 2/3 of the imperial core and are stuck in a cold war as the planet runs out of uncolonized land to grab. Elves are able to live in pastoral paradise because they've horded most of the settings farm-able land and natural capital, displacing and mass murdering any natives in the process. Orcs and goblins are hostile to other races because there the primary targets of an ongoing slavery and genocide campaign. The dividing line between human and inhuman is arbitrarily assigned via a phrenological pseudo-science that quickly falls apart when questioned by anyone who wasn't indoctrinated into it since birth."

matt just fired half the remaining tumblr support staff lmao

from my sources adjacent to tumblr--from which i can spread rumors and insider information freely because i dont give a fuck about ever working in the tech sector--im hearing this round of firings was focused on purging the senior staff, and not just from support but from the entire remaining tumblr workforce. i'm hearing there are about 25 people left.

If this is truly the beginning of the end, it's been an honour 🫡

I know most people don't care about anything unless it has to do with the U.S. but can we please start talking about the Canadian election.

Please don't vote for Poilievre. He's basically the Canadian Trump and plans to put in place laws that harm trans youth, and lots of other shit.

Please vote istg this is the only way anything will get better. Poilievre has been kissing millionaires and billionaires asses. He'll make life even harder, and he loves Trump.

Reblogs are appreciated, especially if you aren't Canadian.

i think if you're writing a world with fantasy species, animal hybrids, sentient robots, etc- its natural to write discrimination into the world. it's almost definitely gonna exist. but you have GOTTA put thought into what discrimination would look like for those groups because i see too many worlds that seem to take the angle of "humans are all racist against non-humans instead of eachother, which happens to use the same imagery as real world racism but applied to a sexy werewolf instead." like come on man. you can do better than that.

*This poll was submitted to us and we simply posted it so people could vote and discuss their opinions on the matter. If you’d like for us to ask the internet a question for you, feel free to drop the poll of your choice in our inbox and we’ll post them anonymously (for more info, please check our pinned post).

Can't believe NaNoWriMo just did this, but literally.

I feel like it's really easy to discuss your fiction work online as like, a replacement for actually working on the fiction. You can post all day about who a character is, and how they might react to stuff. But you have to actually make the character good in the book first.

Listen. I get it. My last novel and a half was written as a serial. I got the benefit of seeing the audience reaction, scene by scene, in real time. Not only is that helpful as an author, it's a great way to hone my craft. But it IS a crutch.

It's part of why I'm forcing my next novel to be a murder mystery, something that I categorically cannot write as a serial. I am forcing myself to actually write the whole damn thing before I show the audience. Unfortunately for ME, I have written maybe my favorite character I have ever created, and I can't fucking talk about her. I can't make posts about how I think she would get really scared after a hit of ditch weed. That hurts me. It's hard.

I ended up not able to contribute to this issue due to family issues, but I'm super proud of everyone who contributed! The PDF version is free & the print version is £6 - there is an option to donate with all proceeds going to trans charities in the US & UK. Go check it out!

The Old Magic persists because nobody remembers how to turn it off.

I really don't understand how "without getting kudos or comments a fanfiction author is going to assume that people who clicked their fic didn't like it" became a controversial take.

I don't know why some people think an author should imagine, or guess that people who click their fic enjoyed it it when nobody is telling them that.

If you're re-reading a fic constantly, or leaving it up in your tab so that it re-loads every day for a hundred days the author is not going to know that unless you tell them. They'd love to hear it. It would make their day.

And if you don't tell them you liked their fic, there's no reason for them to assume you did.

Writers on AO3 when they see the hit counter on their fic go up and get an email that someone left kudos or a comment: Yay! People like my story! This made my day!

Writers on AO3 when they see the hit counter on their fic go up but the number of kudos/bookmarks/subscriptions/comments doesn't change: Oh. People are reading my story, but I guess they didn't like it.

Writers on Tumblr when they see notifications on their story: Yay! People are liking my story! Oh, somebody left a nice comment! Oh, they even reblogged it! That was so sweet of them!

Writers on Tumblr when they see 0 notes on their story: Nobody read it.

Also, just for fun, here are the stats for my fanfic with the most hits:

Almost half of the comments are my replies, so there are actually 27 individual comments. And almost 27,000 hits. So, basically a 1:10,000 ratio.

Do you still think writers are being unreasonable?

While 27 comments may not be much when someone gets them gradually, it's a lot to read through to make sure you're not contributing to unintentional spam.

unintentional spam?? I'm sorry this is just such a foreign idea to me.

I promise you there are vanishingly few authors who would be upset to receive more than one comment saying the same (positive) things!

If I receive multiple emails of comments on something I write, there is an actual zero percent chance of me being upset by it. Literally would make my day, week, month. Love your authors! Comments do not have to be detailed analysis - something as simple as “<3” conveys so much. (In fact, the very first comment I got on AO3 was “<3” and I treasure it.)

Spam your local fic author with comments. You never know what could happen.

They might fall in love with you.

Happened to the Goob author. Happened to me.

I made one of my dearest friends this way. And I bet she'd be completely unsurprised to know I still have her comments saved.

Tell 'em how long it's been, @sparklingganymede.

If you’ve heard authors complain about spam on ao3, they are talking about actual literal spam left by bots, which has become such a problem that ao3 is rate-limiting comments. They are NEVER talking about real comments from real users.

Comments are ALWAYS welcome. As long as you’re not being rude or negative, I promise you the author wants your comment! If they don’t, they can literally turn comments off whenever they want to. The fact that they haven’t means they want your comment, even if it’s exactly the same as the last three they got.

Even just a heart emoji or a “I liked this” will do, I promise!

Tfw when men do that thing where they pretend they have no control over their temper. LOL It’s so funny like am I supposed to pretend that I don’t know you’re completely self-aware and present during this rage performance. Or should I pretend you’re the tortured hero in a movie, possessed by a series of fabricated flashbacks of the war and your father

Someone put in the “Why Does He Do That” quote

Another one:

"Abuse is a problem of values, not of psychology... An abuser tries to keep everybody - his partner, his therapist, his friends and relatives - focused on how he feels, so that they won't focus on how he thinks, perhaps because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his domination."

"These characters are practically married but the network won't let us make them kiss", and its mirror universe counterpart, "these characters are textually fucking but it's otherwise unclear whether they even like each other".

Loving the dichotomy that develops in the notes every time I shitpost about indie tabletop RPGs between folks who think Call of Cthulhu is indie and folks who are hesitant to bring up Thousand Year Old Vampire because they're worried it may be too mainstream.

This is – or should be – the bottom line of any resistance to the ongoing crackdowns on the rights of foreigners in the US, whether they're pro-Palestinian protestors or Venezuelan migrants:

Absolutely everyone has an absolute right to due process.

This is the principle at stake.

Don't be tricked into arguing about whether the accusations against these people are right or wrong: that's a secondary issue, and if you turn this into an argument about innocence versus guilt, you're playing the game Trump wants.

His aim is to turn universal human and civil rights into a privilege for the deserving – and he and his cronies get to arbitrarily decide who counts among the deserving.

And that process starts with tricking you into agreeing that anything other than personhood is a qualifier for the enjoyment of those rights.

If you're not willing to accept a world where ony 'good' people have rights, and where 'bad' people don't deserve protection from oppression and persecution, you have to keep your eye on the ball.

For the last time dude, my leitmotif sounds exactly like it always has. There is no symbolism for creeping corruption in there