"You don't look like the type"

Really? This girl?

You're telling me THIS girl doesn't look like the raging lesbian she is?

I think what she means isn't "you don't look like you're into girls, but I've heard that you are" but rather "you look like a loser nerd with no game, but based on the conversations I've had with you, I have to assume that you already have at least two girlfriends you have wild gay sex with all the time and you're looking to expand your polycule because even that's not enough for you."

Which, yeah, she does look like a loser nerd with no game! And really is much more of one than Natsumi's own raging lesbian imagination would have it.

Tumblr "feminists": yuri is for men

Twitter dudebro weebs: yuri is for men

Yuri authors: Don't forget to block the annoying heteros (Iori Miyazawa) don't use my characters in your gross homophobic memes (Nio Nakatani) I'm making this manga free because I am a lesbian and I want to spread awareness and someday be able to get married to another woman in my home country (Alt Hanakage)

Now that I'm home from work I actually want to go into a bit more detail!

Iori Miyazawa (Otherside Picnic) - had a rather long rant in an interview about readers who are locked into "heterocentric values" and don't accept that lesbians actually exist, he suggested blocking them when you encounter them on social media.

Nio Nakatani (Bloom Into You) - Sayaka's homophobic senpai was a meme for a while with Japanese edgelords who used her as a sort of Homophobic Hero, so she lambasted them on twitter

Alt Hanakage (Senpai no Kouhai) - is an out lesbian who has talked about how her personal experiences inform her work. She made a short manga called "Ring On My Finger" about her frustration at being unable to marry another woman and made it available for free because she wants more people to understand her frustration.

And while I'm here I also want to shout out this butch x butch yuri anthology, which was spearheaded by yuri artist Natsuo Mutsumi (self-described nonbinary lesbian) and features work by many other LGBTQ mangaka including Alt Hanakage (mentioned above) and trans artist Nekobungi Sumire (who has a tumblr!! @ nekobungi )

apparently computers do dream of electric sheep

I’m glad that my hard drive dying got 79k funnyman points

Masks 🎭

Round 1 - Side B

firestar art by @kudos-si-do

Propaganda below ⬇️

You know what? Sure. Why not. For months I've been bitching about people attaching a post of mine WHICH I HATE to polls but I mean whatever if we're making it about catholicism or whatever the hell, and two characters I've never heard of before, then yeah. Sure. Go nuts.

I'm voting for the cat btw

Hello.

A lot of people have mentioned that the events around azarias' whistleblowing, including her suspension and the OTW's retaliation, are hard to understand.

I have created a carrd as an explainer.

It is still somewhat verbose, but hopefully much clearer.

So afaict all the information in this page is correct, and it's absolutely good to make it widely known. But unless I missed it, this page is missing the absolutely vital fact that this is not an isolated incident or specifically an issue with the current Board, but one of many broader examples going back over a decade including multiple Boards. And the simple demand to just get everyone involved to resign seems like a poor solution.

Simply getting the current Board to resign will fix nothing. Getting the members of Legal to resign might fix some serious issues, because afaict it's mostly been the same people the whole time and the fact they're so welded on is definitely part of what makes the AO3 so toxic. But if those individuals are replaced with similar people and the system that allowed/encouraged them (and others in parts of the OTW that aren't Legal) to stay in place for so long unquestioned isn't fixed, something like this will happen again. Other appalling things are likely happening in other parts of the org and just haven't come to light.

Because this is not a problem with a few bad apples, this is a broad systemic problem, and it can only be fixed by fixing the system. I have known multiple good people who joined the AO3 as volunteers, were horrified, and went on to join the Board intending to fix things, and the system chewed them up and spat them out again. This isn't even the first time there's been a large fandom-wide campaign to replace the Board due to alarming mismanangement- and the last one (in 2015) succeeded, and even got some specific policy issues fixed. Yet here we are.

I don't know exactly what needs to be done to fix this. I do know that resignations without deep policy change will not be enough. We can't just assume that whoever comes next will make things better. I've seen people who are more knowledgeable than me make sensible sounding suggestions about how things can be improved, I'm not sure how this could best be organised into simple demands, but I think it can be done.

Chestnut_pod's post seems like a good place to start, both the post itself and the comments. And synonymous's summary of the long history of issues at the OTW is probably useful context for anyone who hasn't been aware of all this before now.

The thing is, Azarias’s testimony and the corroborating commentary around it illustrates how the Legal team (which has been around longer with fewer changes than the Board) has consistently blocked systemic change that other volunteers have tried to implement. While everyone currently in Legal resigning or being removed will not fix the problem on its own, it really does seem like the obvious first step.

If you are following any discussions about the OTW, from End OTW Racism to the AI discussions to random other shit, I would strongly strongly recommend you read this comment and replies from an ex-PAC volunteer who was the AO3 Abuse Team's go-to volunteer for handling CSEM (real actual CSEM, suspected CSEM, or CSEM distribution attempts; not Wincest extreme underage) and who was "fired" from the organization by a legal team that appears to be running roughshod over other stakeholders in the org and contributing to a broadly abusive and horrendous environment for volunteers. You can use Dreamwidth search, if you have an account, to find terms like "PAC nonny" and see earlier comments as well.

I am a long-time OTW skeptic and I find this information to be horrifying in the most serious possible way; this kind of mismanagement and abuse will have long-term impacts on volunteers, and is indicative of carelessness and incompetency that IMO is likely to threaten the long-term viability of the org. In addition, it is breathtakingly cruel behavior.

The OTW failing to act on escalating CSEM harassment, failing to provide volunteers with appropriate support after being exposed to CSEM, failing to safeguard Policy & Abuse via appropriate processes and technical support, and failing to behave ethically and fairly with regards to dismissing a volunteer their board members disliked, are all completely unacceptable. It's genuinely horrifying stuff and the OTW should address it.

Saw a couple reblogs with confusion about full context so here are a few more links. For context, "PAC" = "Policy & Abuse", the people who handle enforcing AO3's TOS and dealing with reported content.

So, a volunteer who was the "go-to CSEM person" (something no one should ever become and which an organization should prevent you from becoming) was being increasingly traumatized while volunteering. She wanted to take reasonable steps to address moderation issues within AO3, like removing unsourced gifs of bodies that look like childrens' from underage fic and fic that included characters enthusiastically adovcating for pedophilia. She was unable to take action against such content because OTW legal's position was that "maximum inclusiveness of content" includes gifs of genitals that might belong to children. In addition to being poorly treated and traumatized, she was isolated after escalating mass CSEM attacks because members of the Board didn't like her and were looking for reasons to get rid of her. And, finally, she was reinstated with a lie and expected to go back to being the "go-to CSEM person".

This is a top-down failure of basic ethics and care that flies in the face of established best practice for dealing with the traumatizing impacts of Abuse/Trust & Safety work. Additionally, it is flat-out cruel bullying. And the same people who did this remain ensconced in the OTW.

And Legal has now allegedly retaliated against the volunteer who’s speaking out by doubling down on the baseless accusations, in a “subtle” way that skirts the edges of slander but is still very clearly meant to imply that said volunteer may have been the culprit behind the CSEM spam. Discussion here, along with a call to all volunteers to quit now because this is not a remotely safe working environment for anyone.

not proshipper not anti but a secret third thing (person who has a career in the media and, through covering legislative politics, has watched "associating with problematic fiction or entertainment is an indicator of moral degeneracy" rapidly become a mainstream GOP position that they are encoding in legislation to target the queer community under the guise of protecting children, thus coming to the conclusion that positioning the "can people enjoy things that would be immoral IRL in their fiction" debate as a proship v anti fandom debate is akin to pretending that "should we have the death penalty" is a discussion that only matters in Death Note discourse — the extent and manner to which fiction affects reality is an issue that is immediately relevant to today's US politics, and to summarize my opinions on the matter in fandom terms would be to diminish the ways this debate is affecting america Right The Fuck Now. and i have stopped taking "this person is bad for shipping the wrong anime thing and being horny about it" in any sort of good faith ever since I saw it literally used as part of a GOP smear campaign against a transgender state legislator in an attempt to defend the right from backlash after they used their supermajority in the Montana house to prevent her from speaking on the floor. Anyway I think everyone on this site, especially Americans, could benefit from ceasing to think in proship v anti vocabulary and instead developing coherent political positions on the nature of fiction that do not directly align with current fascist political tactics)

This is the main reason I refuse to self-identify as "proship" despite definitely holding views that antis would consider proship: shipping is the least of the freedoms of expression at stake here, so buying into the anti narrative that shipping is in itself a political issue is at best a tactical blunder.

hey guys, i solved it! optimistic fiction and pessimistic fiction have the same moral value! we’ve done it! we’re free

like, ok

i’ll just pass this on to kurt vonnegut and fuckin…elie wiesel shall i

lmao YES like…whether you’re fourteen and creating characters who explode the preps with their brains or you’re an adult writing existentialist french novels…there are SO many reasons to engage with those ideas and emotions that aren’t “i am a rampaging asshole who hates hope” the way apparently some people assume??

like, it’s even reductive of who is experiencing the (fictional) cruelty. “dreaming of the battlefield” in dark fiction is just as likely (or more likely??) to mean “processing feelings of despair by imagining MYSELF as a cursed foot solider in an unending war” as it is “processing feelings of helplessness by imagining myself as powerful and unaffected by emotion”

or like. “hey guys, i actually WAS a cursed foot soldier in an unending war and it sucked shit.” if those guys are pessimists, fine, they earned it

"Even naive, edgelord pessimism is often an attempt to process intense emotions that are outsized to the current situation. Some teens idealize the battlefield because then they'd understand why they wanted to die."

This is such a good observation that resonates with me a lot, and something I have rarely seen talked about. The thing is, when mainstream culture acknowledges the impact of trauma, it's almost always acute trauma, most often in the context of Men Who Have Seen War. I'm not saying that acute trauma is generally well represented or understood, but I am saying that representation, understanding, and simple visibility for the chronic trauma that comes of growing up abused, neglected, and/or marginalized is even worse. Of course this leads to some people idealizing the battlefield as something that would give them the "right" to be as fucked up as they already are.

The Conversation about mental health posts goes in waves - from "it's ok to just do nothing for a while" and "self care is lying in bed with a cup of tea" to a hard backlash against that ("those posts were so damaging to me") and posts like "acually self care is cleaning your apartment," and there's lots of reasons for that --

i don't have a good conclusion here - just "nothing in excess," I suppose.

enough people have tagged this negatively about people who felt like they were hurt by the relaxation-positive posts ("well maybe they shouldn't take mental health advice from tumblr!!") that i guess i have to clarify:

it is entirely possible that those posts did harm them, and blaming people affected by a mental illness that harms your ability to know what's best for you for taking a post that says "it's always ok to to rest" to mean "it's always ok to rest" is a real dick move.

yeah, you shouldn't take mental health advice from the internet. it's rough, though, because for people in the US professional help can be hard to access, and the internet seems like the best avenue. but the logical (and compassionate) conclusion there isn't to blame the people who take advice that turns out to be bad for them. if anything, you should blame people who write about a subject that is incredibly varied in a way that seems universal. yes, people who write these posts usually are sincere! but being well-meaning doesn't mean they're harmless.

thanks, though, i guess i have a conclusion now: if we're going to give advice, we should probably do it in the first person. "when i feel overwhelmed, i find a small task i can do and do it." "sometimes it really helps me to take a walk even when i don't want to." not as snappy, i guess, but emotions and feelings are messy, so of course there's no neat solution.

I go for the "this has helped me" approach myself (or "this helps some people" etc) but social media being what it is, 'clickbaity' simplistic intense statements like "THIS WILL HELP YOU, YES YOU" usually get more engagement. And maybe they do a better job for the people they do help because they're so strongly worded, though idk if it would be worth the downsides.

I tried adding a side note about the way this conversation also often erases the experiences of people who have mental AND physical health problems but I couldn't get it to come out right. Still. We exist! And people forget that!

I really wish they had officially translated 共犯者 (kyouhansha) as "partner in crime" instead of "accomplice" because partner in crime sounds sooo much sexier and gayer

Just swap the words out in your head and then tell me I'm right:

Sorry, but I STRONGLY disagree with this. There are multiple reasons I prefer 'accomplices' vs 'partners in crime', the first being that 'accomplice' is just snappier/catchier than 'partner in crime'. "How so?" you might be wondering "Aren't they the same amount of syllables?" And while that is true, partner in crime is three words, so there's a beat of silence between each word, making it effectively 6 syllables vs 4 in accomplice.

Another is 'partner in crime' feels a bit more clinical to me. Like it feels like a literal definition of their relationship up to that point, while 'accomplice' has more room for innuendo. And some may counter with "But isn't 'partners in crime' innuendo in english for 'friends'?" 1. That's another mark against 'partners in crime' since it has platonic connotations, ruining the gay feel 2.Is it reallly? The definition for partners in crime is 'two or more people working together to commit crime' while the definition for the 'innuendo' version is 'two or more people working together to do something other than crime' or 'people who hang out'. The only difference is what act they are doing together. If they did crime, then it would just be literal. And Sorawo and Toriko ARE commiting crimes. Mostly just the owning of unlicensed firearms, but crime is being commited, which ruins the innuendo potential for 'partner in crime'. Accomplice, on the other hand, has a vaguer definition: One associated with another, especially in wrongdoing. Associated? How so? Is it just business? Are they friends? Are they...more? It has the same veneer as 'roommates' in that one vine(?).

And to top it off, we wouldn't have gotten this scene, or it wouldn't have landed as well, if we had 'partners in crime' instead of 'accomplices.

Side note: I fucking love this scene. It's so amazing. Sorawo taking the seemingly innocuous word accomplice and using it to hide her feelings for Toriko from herself while leaving them on full display for the audience is so good. I love this mentally ill lesbian.

In this scene, Sorawo coins Akari as a victim to differentiate her from Sorawo and Toriko's relationship as accomplices. And it's a natural fit. An accomplice helps a fellow accomplice commit the crime, while the victim has the crime happen to them or is affected by the crime negatively. There's a barrier between accomplice and victim that can't be easily crossed. Now, can you use victim here if Sorawo used 'partners in crime' instead of 'accomplice'? While you could, I think it wouldn't quite fit. Going back to my previous points, 'partners in crime' is a bit wordy. Victim isn't. There's a disconnect there that makes it feel awkward to put the two side-by-side. You'd have to add a modifier to victim to make it match, since 'partners in crime' is a word being modified. It'd have to be something like partners in crime vs unassuming victim to make the contrast feel right.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the matter. I can somewhat Other the appeal of 'partners in crime', but as someone who started Otherside Picnic with the manga, read the novels, then watched the anime, which was the only version to use 'partners in crime', I have some strong feelings on the matter.

Accomplices is better for memes also:

@owlsinlargehats, not really the point here, but how are you pronouncing "accomplice" that it's four syllables? Or do you just mean the plural "accomplices"?

It's also worth noting here that Japanese interviews with Miyazawa often really stress the criminality aspect of Sorawo and Toriko's relationship ("lovers can break up, but accomplices can never escape from their crimes"). Western readers (even outside the US) tend not to see unlicensed firearm possession as an especially serious crime, but in Japan it is; they'd be assumed prima facie to be terrorists or hardened gangsters if the police ever saw them. They'd be likelier than not to do multiple years in prison. So the fact that "partners in crime" is in more common metaphorical use militates against it as well in my opinion, since the intent is that Sorawo and Toriko be read as very literally committing violent felonies together almost every time they spend time with each other. "Partners in crime" does sound sexier and gayer, but sounding sexy and gay just isn't the thematic purpose of what the characters are saying in Japanese.

That it's actually better not to use the phrase more commonly used as a (potentially sexy) metaphor because not being a metaphor is part of the point is a really good observation, to which I would add that it's also better because not being commonly used is also part of the point. Sorawo really, really wants to see her relationship with Toriko as something utterly unique that the two of them can define for themselves. She's skittish about more commonly used labels and seems to find them restricting or diminishing.

lesbians will be like “i know a place” and then take you to peep the horror

Hey Fire Emblem: Three Houses Fandom,

So one (1) of your lords was gonna make it into my bracket, but since I kept the submission window pretty short, I thought I'd run a poll to let you all decide who gets the spot. That said:

mwah mwah mwah!

All the Eda kisses give me so much life ;;W;;

The owl house finale but its an epic movie poster! 🔥 I still can’t believe it’s over… what a ride ah?? <3

Prints stickers and more available here in my shop!!

(find the s1-s2 posters on my instagram!)

the raeda wedding

Raeda Marriage