Mental Age Isn't A Thing.

Unfortunately, when a lot of fans dunk on a character for reasons I find silly, especially if they willfully misread the text to do so, the fandom punching bag then becomes my favorite character. I could have liked them a normal amount, but the constant bad takes annoyed me and now I am unstoppable.

Jewish people who type the word “god” as “g-d”: Do you think you can fool the big man upstairs with a technical work around? When he goes through your emails/texts/facebook posts after you die, you don’t think he’s gonna see that dash and think “this sneaky fuck here, enjoy h-ll.”

there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral

“I knew only one other person who was queer, and that person – G-d – was much, much queerer than I was.”

— Joy Ladin, “The Soul of the Stranger: Reading G-d and Torah from a Transgender Perspective”

“What’s so bad about reposting?”

“It’s easy to make gifs, who cares.“ 

 Wrong. 

And here’s why: 

Presumably, you’re reposting because you either: 

a) don’t have access to the video that’s gif’d because you don’t know where it’s from or you don’t know how to download it. Which already proves that making gifs is difficult because of the time spent video hunting and downloading. (You’d be surprised how hard it is to download videos from certain websites.)

b) don’t have access to photoshop, because you’re not sure how to download it, or you do have it but don’t know how to work it. Which again, proves making gifs is difficult because it’s more than just right clicking then saving as (which is what reposting is - so if you catch yourself doing this, stop!) You have to learn how to use photoshop to actually make a gif, and to actually use photoshop you have to know how and where to download it. Some people even pay for it, and it’s extremely unfair to those that do because something they essentially paid for is getting stolen from them.

Gifs are not even just about being able to do the basic load files into stacks or import layers from frames, whichever method of gif making you prefer. Nope. It’s about coloring as well, which makes your gif unique and different from someone else’s. People spend time making their gifs look nice in addition to spending their time looking for the right video and whatnot. 

So have some respect for people that do their best to provide you with pretty gifs on your dashboard to reblog >:( 

(No, it does not count if you repost someone’s gif and “give credit”, especially if the source is “it’s not mine but I found it on Google”. Tumblr made a beautiful function called a REBLOG. Use it. It’s your best friend.) 

Next time you say, “everyone reposts” or “they’re just gifs”, keep in mind making gifs isn’t actually as easy as some people belittle it to be! Try making gifs for yourself and see how hard it is. Really, try. 

(And if you’re thinking, “oh making gifs is so easy! I’ve tried it!” then it literally costs you $0.00 to make your own gifs and gain notes through your own hard work. Seriously. Stop taking credit for someone else’s hard work.)

Stopping reposts can happen if you take a step to stop yourself from reposting and letting others know why it’s bad too. If no one tells you what you’re doing is wrong, how would you know what you’re doing isn’t right? One by one, we can all eventually stop reposting because it’s very disrespectful to artists (yes, gif makers are considered artists too). If you want notes, earn them yourself just like how every original content makers do. And even if you can’t make anything yourself, don’t be mean. Support people’s works. 

(This applies to everyone that makes original content, fan art, fan fiction, graphics, etc. The steps in between to make them are different, but reposts effect all of us the same. Please stop reposting and respect the artists.)

It still frustrates me to this day that there are people on the Internet who will waste their time staring at a screen and laughing with their troll buddies about how “cringey” autistic people are, just for existing and talking about our experiences.

They take one look at autism blogs like mine, and their minds just go “lol autism funny XD lol r slur XD send death threats hahaha funny meme XDDD”. Because they’re ignorant and closed-minded about autism, and refuse to even try to see autism in the way we do.

Instead, they see us living our lives in our own, neurodivergent way, and think “they’re not like my stereotype, so they must be fakers, they think they’re so special and quirky, let’s troll them and send them threats”.

It’s obvious that these people have no personality other than “Internet troll” and “finds fun in harassing disabled people”.

You know who you are.

In the Mishnah, Rabbi Yosi makes the radical statement: “androgynos bria bifnei atzma hu / the androgynos he is a created being of her own.” This Hebrew phrase blends male and female pronouns to poetically express the complexity of the androgynos’ identity. The term bri’a b’ifnei atzmah is a classical Jewish legal term for exceptionality. This term is an acknowledgement that not all of creation can be understood within binary categories. It recognizes the possibility that uniqueness can burst through the walls that demarcate our society. The Hebrew word bria (created being) explicitly refers to divine formation; hence this term also reminds us that all bodies are created in the image of God. People can’t always be easily defined; they can only be seen and respected, and their lives made holy. This Jewish approach allows for genders beyond male and female. It opens up space in society for every body. And it protects those who live in the places in between.

Rabbi Elliot Rose Kukla and Reuben Zellman

Fandom PSAs

Dont’ Like, Don’t Read

or DL; DR

You are responsible for curating your own online experience.

If something upsets you, makes you angry or queasy or triggers you, stop reading/looking at it. Avoid things that might make you feel that way.

Learn to use the Sort and Filter function on AO3, especially the Exclude tools.

On social media, block and mute accounts / tags / words when necessary.

If you hated something, you don’t need to tell that to the creator or start pointing fingers at them publicly.

The Back button is free. Use it.

Addendum:

Yes, for this to work, creators need to tag their works accordingly, so that people know what sort of content they are about to engage with and can nope out if necessary.

I will probably make another PSA about the importance of proper tagging later.

Ship And Let Ship

or SALS

You are allowed to ship whatever you want.

Everyone else is also allowed to ship whatever they want.

You are entitled to dislike or even hate a ship. If you want to do this online, in public, don’t use the ship tags for hate posts.

If you see someone posting about a ship they like and you don’t, there is no need for you to start arguing with them in their replies / comments / QRTs / reblogs. Don’t throw your hate in their face.

Do not harass fan creators or fans for shipping something you disapprove.

All of this also applies to liking / disliking an individual character.

Addendum:

”I agree with this, except when…”

No, then you are NOT agreeing with this.

Let me make this VERY clear. There are NO exceptions. None.

You don’t EVER harass real people over pixels.

If you disagree with this, kindly block and move on.

Your Kink Is Not My Kink

or YKINMK / YKINMKATO

The longer version is ”Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That’s Okay”.

People have different tastes. Not everything is for everybody.

Even if you don’t like a specific kink, other people are still allowed to use it in their creations.

You are entitled to dislike kinky content and think that it’s ”weird”.

Don’t kink shame or judge people based on their kinks.

This goes both ways: your kink is not someone else’s kink, so don’t push it onto those who are not into it.

Be Kind

or Don’t Be An Asshole

Focus on the things you like instead of the things you hate.

Create and unite instead of destroying and dividing.

Don’t harass real people over fictional things.

Stop stirring up petty drama just to get some attention on social media.

Stop trying to ”win”. Fandom is not a competition.

Remember that your own experiences aren’t universally shared. Your perception of things can differ from someone else’s, but that doesn’t mean either of you is necessarily wrong.

APPARENTLY this is something I need to state because it isn’t something people understand. If someone says for _____ to not interact and you fall into that category, don’t interact with them! It IS invading boundaries. It doesn’t matter if you think those boundaries make sense, they’re that person’s boundaries.

i just wanted to clarify some things

artists know the risk they are taking when they post their art online. people are inevitably going to take it apart, color edit it, flip it around or otherwise post it uncredited.

saying that an artist shouldn’t post their work if they don’t want it bastardized is probably the stupidest stance on this subject you could take. if all artists followed this line of reasoning, there would be no art on the internet. 

when an artist posts their work, they are trusting you to enjoy it respectfully. and when you betray that trust either knowingly or unknowingly, it’s like saying the artist’s time, skills and thoughts aren’t worth anything.

you are NOT entitled to an artists work just because they decided to trust you enough to share it with you.

an artist is within their right to feel upset that someone has used their work in a way they never intended it to be used. they are within their right to ask for it to stop and not happen again.

just because it’s “bound to happen” doesn’t mean it’s any less deplorable.