Avatar

Only A Dream Away…

@arwenkenobi48

🔞Minors DNI🔞
Ezra/Arwen/Feral. He/him, 22, INFJ, Cancer.
Trans male, demisexual, panromantic. Completely obsessed with villains, monsters and other unconventional things. I have way too many OCs, F/Os and original creative projects.
Credit to ArtersTrashBin for designing my avatar!

Blog Owner Profile

Hello everyone! The name’s Ezra (aka Arwen). Welcome to my strange little corner of the internet, where I post whatever comes to mind, usually ideas for original creative projects and whichever fictional characters I happen to be most obsessed with.

General Info

I’m a 22 year old transgender man (currently pre-transition, but presenting as male and using male pronouns). I’m also demisexual and panromantic, meaning that I’m attracted to all genders, but need a bit of time to get to know someone first. I’m half Indian, specifically from the Kashmir region, but was born and raised (and currently living) in the UK. My personality type is INFJ, my star sign is Cancer and according to the Chinese zodiac, my spirit animal is a dragon, which explains my lifelong affinity for them.

My interests are mythology/folklore, fantasy, sci-fi and horror media, cinema, creative writing, animation, classic literature, history, heavy metal, zoology, art and fandoms. There’s nothing I enjoy more than creating original characters inspired by myths and legends from around the world, watching an obscure cult classic movie or gushing about fictional villains.

I am a survivor of complex PTSD, which I am receiving medical and psychiatric support for. I’m also neurodivergent (dyspraxia specifically) so if things seem a little disorganised here that’s probably why. I tend to be rather shy at first, but come out of my shell around those I trust.

I recently got a degree in film and screenwriting and am constantly brainstorming new ideas for film and tv scripts. I’m also a part time artist, both digital and traditional, using my iPad, sketchbook and a single stick of charcoal to make something intriguing.

Fandoms

I’m into multiple fandoms, including but not limited to:

  • Star Wars
  • The Lord of the Rings
  • Faust
  • Cuphead
  • The Dark Crystal
  • All Tomorrows
  • Crash Bandicoot (the most recent one)

Basically, as long as something is fantasy, sci-fi or even horror themed and has unforgettable villains, I will be obsessed with it. I have quite a few OTPs as well. ObiMaul (Obi-Wan Kenobi/Maul), Angbang (Sauron/Melkor) and Faustopheles (Faust/Mephistopheles).

Fictional Others

I have a number of F/Os (fictional others) who I like to think of as a hypothetical family/brotherhood. Writing about them as if we’re all living together in a gothic castle is incredibly therapeutic.

A complete list of them and their different roles is as follows:

  • Amsel Bloodmoon (From my original gothic novel project Blood Moon Sky). He’s gay, he’s a goth, a dhampir (half vampire half human) and I consider him to be my beloved boyfriend. We’ve been together since late October last year and deeply in love.
  • Sauron (From the Lord of the Rings). I am so utterly smitten with this beautiful man, he’s basically like my celebrity crush in a weird way. Even though he’s a bit puzzled by it, he certainly enjoys the positive attention.
  • Feral Opress (From Star Wars: The Clone Wars). I am obsessed with this adorable little Zabrak. Heck, he’s actually the character that kickstarted my “career” on tumblr in the first place! He’s my sweet baby boy and I love showering him with affection.
  • Mephistopheles (From Faust and other pieces of folklore). My artistic muse and a character who I almost consider to be a mentor. This charming demon is also the focal character of most of my original intellectual properties, which I have tied together into a mythos/multiverse that I call The MephistoVerse.
  • The Devil (From Cuphead). He’s basically like one of those cats that demand affection 24/7 and of course he always gets it because he’s so adorably pompous and floofy.
  • Ratbag the Coward (From Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle Earth: Shadow of War). He’s a sweet dork of an orc who’s like a brother to me. Constantly coming up with harebrained schemes and being the closest thing to a troublemaker the household has.
  • Dr Hans Friedrich (From an obscure YouTube channel called Rocky ASMR). An evil scientist who lives in the basement and totally isn’t planning to make zombies for world domination. Underneath his eccentric demeanour, however, Friedrich really just wants to be loved.
  • Koroviev (From my absolute favourite novel, The Master And Margarita). A trickster demon who’s always cracking jokes and joining in on Ratbag’s pranks. He always knows how to make us all laugh.
  • Gabriel Belmont (From Castlevania: Lords of Shadow). Despite being a rather moody vampire, he’s still part of the brotherhood and partakes in our various adventures. He needs a hug (and frequently gets them from me).
  • Ulysses the Dragon (From various projects within the MephistoVerse). The very first OC I ever created, 14 years ago, Ulysses is a green dragon who’s as loyal as a dog and as smart as a corvid. He’s pretty much been a lifelong companion and I love him to bits.
  • Dr Neo Periwinkle Cortex (From Crash Bandicoot). As if one evil scientist wasn’t enough, Cortex is the most recent F/O of mine. He is simply adorable and the rest of us can’t stop fawning over him. Although I dread to think what he and Friedrich are conspiring about.

Writing Projects

I am the creator/owner of the following intellectual properties:

  • The DragonSoul Trilogy. Although purely existing in script form, these are intended to be a trilogy of 2-D animated dark fantasy films focusing on the rivalry between Mephistopheles and Stardust, a dragon/human fair folk who owes the demon his soul.
  • Pandæmonium. A sitcom focusing on Satan and his fellow demons becoming social media influencers, with disastrous consequences. A combination of satire and slapstick. Very loosely based on Paradise Lost.
  • The Book of Buyan. A graphic novel about two intrepid sorcerers going on a quest to find the soul of a powerful necromancer.
  • The Varkaus Mythos. A nine-volume series of fantasy novels set almost entirely in the fictional realm of Varkaus. Ancient prophecies, barbarian orcs riding armoured griffins and interdimensional portals await.
  • Blood Moon Sky. Gothic novel divided into four parts, exploring some original vampire lore and the backstory of the ancient Bloodmoon lineage, a prophecy surrounding the seventh son of a seventh son, a romance between a dhampir and a human and a mysterious tragedy that has broken the vampires apart.
  • The Secret Life of Cuthbert Wetherby. A surreal animated short film about the Victorian folkloric figure Spring-Heeled Jack and his double life as the upstanding gentleman Cuthbert Wetherby and the infamous Terror of London.
  • Little Sunshine & Friends. A four-episode miniseries spin-off of DragonSoul, featuring Mephistopheles and his henchdemons getting up to all kinds of crazy antics.
  • Mythology All-Stars. An anthology series with each episode devoted to a different set of myths and legends from around the world and original stories featuring beloved characters such as Anansi, Sun-Wukong, Beowulf and some more obscure ones like Suur Töll and Arawn.
  • I, Darkswan. An experimental short horror film containing allegorical depictions of humanity, good and evil, life and death and a seriously unreliable narrator.

With the exception of Blood Moon Sky, these projects are all connected and are part of The MephistoVerse, with Mephistopheles of course playing a crucial role in the plots, or at least encountering the protagonists in some way or another. I, Darkswan is a bit of an outlier, as it is a story written by one of the characters within the MephistoVerse so there’s almost a kind of Inception thing going on.

Please bear it in mind that the vast majority of these projects currently only exist in the pre-production/planning stage. Feel free to ask me about them but if you’re going to create any content based on them, please tag and/or credit me.

Miscellaneous

My top 10 favourite films (in no particular order) are:

  • The Dark Crystal
  • The Princess Bride
  • Tetsuo: The Iron Man
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
  • The Wind In The Willows (Cosgrove Hall)
  • The Lord of the Rings trilogy
  • The Thief and The Cobbler
  • Beowulf
  • The Producers
  • Faust (F.W. Murnau)
  • Honourable mention goes to Monty Python and the Holy Grail

My favourite places in the UK are Glastonbury, Sheffield, Glasgow, Buxton and the Natural History Museum in London. My favourite food is a döner kebab. I might be slightly addicted to bubblegum soda. My favourite bands/musical artists are Nightwish, Starset, Rammstein, From Ashes To New, Written By Wolves, The Veer Union and Enya. 

My favourite visual artists are Jacek Yerka, Zdzisław Beksiński, Vladimir Kush, Rob Gonsalves and Louis Wain. Other people who serve as sources of inspiration include Guillermo Del Toro, Vincent Price, Ralph Bakshi, William Blake and Shakespeare.

I have an odd relationship with spirituality and religion, but I consider myself a Muslim. I also study the principles of Taoism and find them incredibly beneficial. In general I just love to learn about, well, everything.

My askbox is always open! 💖

*whispers discreetly* by the way, I do frequently write explicit content here. Thou hath been warned. Minors, Begone.

swordmlm

reblog if you:

  • ARE GAY
  • ARE POWERFUL
  • LOVE YOUR PARTNER
  • SUPPORT OUR TRANS BROTHERS AND SISTERS AND OUR AMAZING NONBINARY SIBLINGS

no one will ever know which one

URGENT: 🚨🚨EARN IT ACT IS BACK IN THE SENATE 🚨🚨 TUMBLR’S NSFW BAN HITTING THE ENTIRE INTERNET THIS SUMMER 2023

April 28, 2023

I’m so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this

What is the EARN IT Act?

This is the third time the Senate has been trying to force this through, and I talked about it last year. It is a bill that claims "protects children and victims against CSAM" by creating an unelected and politically appointed national commission of law enforcement specialists to dictate "best practices" that websites all across the nation will be forced to follow. (Keep in mind, most websites in the world are created in the US, so this has global ramifications). These "best practices" would include killing encryption so that any law enforcement can scan and see every single message, dm, photo, cloud storage, data, and any website you have every so much as glanced at. Contrary to popular belief, no they actually can't already do that. These "best practices" also create new laws for "removing CSAM" online, leading to mass censorship of non-CSAM content like what happened to tumblr. Keep in mind that groups like NCOSE, an anti-LGBT hate group, will be allowed on this commission. If websites don't follow these best practices, they lose their Section 230 protections, leading to mass censorship either way.

Section 230 is foundational to modern online communications. It's the entire reason social media exists. It grants legal protection to users and websites, and says that websites aren't responsible for what users upload online unless it's criminal. Without Section 230, websites are at the mercy of whatever bullshit regulatory laws any and every US state passes. Imagine if Texas and Florida were allowed to say what you can and can't publish and access online. That is what will happen if EARN IT passes. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of Section 230 because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)

This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” and LGBT online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal’s EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230. If this bill passes, we’re going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms. This will include anything related to LGBT content, including SFW fanfiction, for example. Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok, Tumblr, all of them will be completely gutted of anything related to LGBT content, abortion healthcare, resources for victims of any type of abuse, etc. It is a right-wing fascists wet dream, which is why NCOSE is behind this bill and why another name for this bill is named in reference to NCOSE.

NCOSE used to be named Morality in Media, and has rebranded into an "anti-trafficking" organization. They are a hate group that has made millions off of being "against trafficking" while helping almost no victims and pushing for homophobic laws globally. They have successfully pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. That's how SESTA passed. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.

The EARN IT Act will lead to mass online censorship and surveillance. Platforms will be forced to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, aything related to abortion, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSAM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.

EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please. The same way that right-wing groups have successfully banned books about race and LGBT, are banning trans people from existing, all under the guise of protecting children from "grooming and exploitation", is how they will successfully censor the internet.

As long as state legislatures can tie in "fighting CSAM" to their bullshit laws, they can use EARN IT to censor and surveill whatever they want.

This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.

This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.

Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of “protecting kids” to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids. Blumental doesn't care about protecting anyone, and only wants his name in headlines.

It will make CSAM much much worse.

One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works – without fear of liability for any “failure.” Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.

(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on “obscenity” as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)

The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill? EARN IT is actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.

I don’t know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the “make child pornography worse” bill, but here we are.

HOW TO FIGHT BACK

EARN IT Act was introduced just two weeks ago and is already being fast-tracked. It will be marked up the week of May 1st and head to the Senate floor immediately after. If there is no loud and consistent opposition, it will be law by JUNE! Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. There are already 20 co-sponsors, a fifth of the entire Senate. This is an uphill battle and it is very much all hands on deck.

  1. CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES.

This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.

(202) 224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline. Here is a call script if you don't know what to say. Call them every day. Even on the weekends, leaving voicemails are fine.

2. Sign these petitions!

3. SPREAD THE WORD ONLINE

If you have any social media, spread this online. One of the best ways we fought back against this last year was MASSIVE spread online. Tiktok, reddit, twitter, discord, whatever means you have at least mention it. We could see most social media die out by this fall if we don't fight back.

Here is a linktree with more information on this bill including a masterpost of articles, the links to petitions, and the call script.

DISCORD LINK IF YOU WANT TO HELP FIGHT IT

TLDR: The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship of any and all adult & lgbt content across the entire internet, open the floodgates to mass surveillance the likes which we haven’t seen before, lead to much more CSEM being distributed online, and destroy encryption. Call 202-224-3121 to connect to your house and senate representative and tell them to VOTE NO on this bill that does not protect anyone and harms everyone.

Unironically, vegans need to be advocating for more and better sheep, llama, and alpaca farms. Wool is one of the best fabrics we have in terms of versatility, longevity and most importantly, insulation. Even wet, it retains 80% of it’s insulation potential.

AND IT DOESN’T SHED MICROPLASTICS

Like, there’s literally nothing you can do to a sheep that’s as morally reprehensible as dumping plastic down the gullet of literally every other living thing. You wanna talk about animal welfare? Talk about reducing the amount of microplastics produced by rayon, polyester, and spandex.

You are brave as FUCK for saying this, and it’s 100% true.

Wool farming, if done with an eye on animal welfare*, does absolutely nothing to harm a sheep or alpaca. It’s no different than a haircut. And just like a haircut, it’ll grow right back. If your argument is that sheep may be cut in this process—very occasionally a sheep may be nicked. To be clear, I say NICKED, not cut. Think about shaving your legs or face and hitting a bump, and ow, you bleed a couple drops. That is what may, rarely, happen. But RARELY, because farmers are going to take damn good care of the animals who keep them in funds. Should it happen, it’s as much an accident as you finding that bump while shaving.

Likewise y’all should be promoting ethical beekeeping and honey farming. Bees are unique among livestock in that if they don’t like their keeper, if they think the hive is shitty, they can, and will, just…leave. You can’t put a collar or ear tag on a bee. Bee populations are declining and they’re incredibly important in our biodiversity (as pollinators, yes, but also in other ways). And bees do, indeed, make too much honey for themselves. That’s why they swarm. A nest gets too full of comb, or they outgrow it, and they just dip. Swarming is dangerous because it leaves the bees vulnerable—the queen is mostly unprotected, they have only as much food as they could carry with them so if it’s late in the season they’re dead meat, humans spot swarms and freak out and send exterminators because they don’t realize swarms aren’t dangerous as long as you’re calm….it is, BY FAR, better to have bees in a hive that never overfills, where they can be checked for parasites and diseases that would destroy the colony or even an entire apiary and can receive honey substitute rather than starving to death if winter should be particularly harsh or long, and where an excess of their natural product and instincts can be siphoned off for the benefit of humans with no detriment to the bees.

Honey is less harmful to us and to the planet we live on than agave syrup, stevia, or cane sugar. It does not rely on any kind of slave labor (again: if the bees weren’t happy, they’d leave). It does not upset entire economies. And by its nature there are more independent keepers than there are giant conglomerates, which is better all the way around! (Although the conglomerates are trying to change that, so like. Support your local beekeepers.) Plus, old no-longer-needed honeycomb is made of beeswax, which can be used in all manner of things in lieu of more harmful chemicals like phthalates. There is no downside here!

“Never do anything involving an animal ever” should not be the goal. That completely ignores that we are animals that grew up in a complete ecosystem. “Do the least amount of harm and be good stewards, because this planet doesn’t belong to only us” should be the goal.

Wool and honey. We can argue another time about eggs. For right now let’s agree that sheep, goats, alpacas, and bees make far more of these products than they will ever need, that in some cases an excess can even be detrimental to them, and that it is a GOOD THING to find a way to live in balance rather than poisoning our world with “vegan leather.”

*to wit: animals should have plenty of space, shelter, food, and clean water. I love meat and I fucking hate factory farming.

Self-Ship Ask Game ~ Aesthetic Themed

🌍Adventurecore🌎 ~ If you could take your F/O anywhere in real life, where would you take them?

🛍️Barbiecore🛍️ ~ Show us your favorite outfit that your F/O has worn!

🖕Bastardcore🖕 ~ Are there any “flaws” of your F/O that you find endearing?

🌳Cabincore🌳 ~ You and your F/O are enjoying a weekend in nature. How do you spend it?

📖Dazecore📖 ~ What would you say is your F/O’s biggest passion (outside of you, of course 🥰)?

😱Expressionism😱 ~ Describe to us exactly how your F/O makes you feel! Or, for a twist, describe how you make your F/O feel! Or do both!

🖤Femme Fatale🖤 ~ What, in your opinion, is your F/O’s greatest achievement?

🔍Film Noir🔍 ~ Are there any questions about your F/O that you’d like to see their source answer?

🪨Groundcore🪨 ~ What would your F/O do if you became a worm?

📝Hipness Purgatory📝 ~ If your F/O drew you, how would it turn out?

💾Internet Academia💾 ~ How did you discover your F/O or their source?

🚎Joyride🚎 ~ How would a road trip with your F/O, friends/associates, and you go?

🪁Kidcore🪁 ~ Tell us about the earliest memory you can remember with your F/O!

🎧Lo-Fi🎧 ~ Let’s say your F/O is up late working on something. How do you support them, or how do you get them to go to bed?

🎮Nintencore🎮 ~ Create a Pokémon team for your F/O!

🐕Petcore🐕 ~ What animal reminds you of your F/O?

🍷Red Academia🍷 ~ What’s your favorite fun-fact about your F/O?

💤Sleepycore💤 ~ What is it like going to bed with your F/O? How do they sleep?

Scared and stressed over the thought of nsfw content being completely banned from the internet

Someone please tell me that’s not going to happen

Avatar

idk who needs to hear this rn but suffering is not noble. take the tylenol

One time when I was younger I was refusing to take headache medicine and my mom said “the person who invented that medicine is probably so sad you won’t let them help you” and now every time I find myself denying medicine I just imagine the saddest scientist making those big wet eyes like “why won’t you let me help” and whoop then I take the medicine

scientist when you don't take the medicine they developed to help your pain

As long as you are taking a SAFE dose of it, then it's *good* for you. Pain is bad for the body. The inflammation from prolonged pain can worsen chronic issues and make it harder to heal.

Ibuprofen is best for pain that has inflammation, while acetaminophen doesn't help with inflammation but is more broadly effective on other types of pain. As long as you are taking the recommended dose, you can even take them TOGETHER, since they have different mechanisms of action.

You do need to be aware of how much and how often you are taking any pain medication. Overdoses can be very painful (even lethal.) And if you are in chronic pain often enough that you need more than the safe dose, then you need to look into other medications to manage that pain.

(Also, if you are specifically taking Acetaminophen/Tylenol for your go-to pain management, getting some NAC and taking that with it reduces the risk of overdose AND may strengthen the effect.)

One other thing: NSAIDS (ibuprofen, aspirin, and naproxen being the three big ones) can cause digestive issues with chronic use, including stomach ulcers. That doesn't mean "don't take them," it means "if you're at the point where you're on them all the time, every day, constantly, you should talk to a doctor about either reducing that risk or switching to another medication that doesn't have those side effects."

Avatar

Additional notes for pain meds: if you have pre-existing conditions like auto-immune diseases that are inflammatory, digestive based illnesses causing pain (crohn's/colitis/related), and other chronic illnesses PLEASE ask a doctor or fellow community members what medications actually work and what might make your illness worse!

I have autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in my digestive organs and learned from a specialist that taking NSAID's actually makes it much worse, and can increase the already damaging effects of my disease. Many people unfortunately don't know this and cause worse damage taking the wrong medication.

unfortunately, also in my experience, most emergency doctors jump to using NSAID's for pain unless you explicitly tell them you can't have them because they're not familiar with inflammatory/digestive illnesses and their reactions to them.

make sure you research what's safe for your condition, because a lot of times doctors need to be told explicitly by you or a specialist if you have intolerances to specific pain meds. Obviously not everyone can afford a specialist, which is why communities of people with similar illnesses are very helpful; they've saved me many times!

Reblogging to add that NSAIDS can do way more harm than good if you’ve got a blood disorder like haemophilia. Always talk to your doctor about safe alternatives!

As of May 15th, image sharing platform Imgur will be purging its site of all not-safe-for-work and anonymously posted content. As part of the site’s new terms of service agreement, Imgur’s definition of “not safe for work” is concerningly broad: it will be removing not only every upload deemed to be pornography or sexually explicit content, but all depictions of nudity (no matter how artistic or educational they are in nature) as well.
Imgur was created in 2009, and has remained one of the most popular image hosting sites on the internet for decades. Its 300 million active users access content on the platform over 60 billion times per month. Compared to other image hosting sites of the early 2000s, such as Photobucket, Imgur has a reputation for being a place to host niche, originally created works, including memes, personal artwork, image macros, fan art, and yes, highly specific porn and fetish content that caters to small yet passionate communities.
Until 2016, the only way to share images on Reddit was by passing them through Imgur first. If you didn’t already have an Imgur account when you were making a Reddit post, you mostly likely uploaded it without bothering to create one, so your image files were posted anonymously. But Imgur is now mass-deleting all images that can’t be linked to an existing account. This means that the vast majority of image posts on Reddit that predate 2016 will be completely broken after Imgur’s new terms of service are adopted. That’s not just posts with pornography or nude photographs that are getting removed, which would be a sizeable data loss itself, but nearly eleven years worth of digital history.
The impact this mass deletion will have can’t be overstated. Reddit has been a crucial hub of information sharing, social networking, and documentation for approaching twenty years now. Over 1.6 billion individual people have made their mark on the site in one way or another — sharing their home renovation projects, posting tattered photographs of long-dead relatives and asking for assistance in getting them restored, pooling together genealogical records, showing off their latest power-washing job, demonstrating how to construct leather harnessesexchanging theories about their continuity of their favorite German science fiction epics, and far more.
Many of these in-depth Reddit posts are absolutely reliant upon images. And every single one of them that came before 2016 can potentially be ruined following the Imgur purge. Even many posts that were made after 2016 will be destroyed as well, because many Reddit users who upload images to Imgur never create official accounts.
Whenever sexual content is driven from social media, there is little in the way of public mourning. If anything, there is a tepid acknowledgement of the harm that will befall sex workers, alongside outright celebration that at last these sites will be scrubbed of the most unseemly and dangerous sides of human nature, and at last rendered “safe.” But condemning future generations of queer and kinky people to ignorance and loneliness is not saving them. And exposing someone to sexual content too early in life is not the only form of sexual harm. Denying a person a chance at self-recognition can be equally traumatic, and violent.
Those of us who do decry the sanitization and Disney-Worldification of the internet are frequently likened to predators who wish to expose our bodies and proclivities to children. Our mere existence as adult sexual beings with adult bodies is deemed a threat. Paradoxically, we are also mocked for taking the removal of erotic art so seriously. Porn is somehow viewed in our culture as both frivolously pointless, and profoundly terrifying.
But in reality, sex is not dangerous. And sex is not frivolous. It’s a rapturous, inevitable, and an essential force in human life. Sex isn’t for everyone, but it is one of the most precious ways to experience inhabiting a body, and refusing to acknowledge the existence of sex makes it impossible to fully appreciate human history, identity, or any form of art.
Sex’s removal from public discourse and digital record keeping is a hateful, genocidal destruction of one of the most precious aspects of the human experience. We are right to mourn for it. And we are right to fear what comes next, after our bodies are rendered unviewable and our dreams unspeakable.

the first time i posted this essay link, tumblr removed it for being sexual content jesus fucking christ. read the piece, please. our ability to communicate and find one another online is rapidly eroding and this is no light matter