I'm trying to prove a point to my brain: Reblog if you think fanfiction does not need sex to be good.

There is a trend I’ve noticed that smut fics tend to be much more popular than anything else and honestly I just want to have something to look at to remind myself and that writing doesn’t have to have sex to be worth putting out into the community.

Getting really sick of all the "There's No Place Like Chrome" ads on youtube. There's Firefox. Firefox saves your passwords. Firefox autofills things if you want. Firefox also does things that Chrome doesn't like allow adblockers, and it does not mine your data and sell your information for advertising purposes. Google is really trying to push people to use Chrome so they can take as much data from users as possible in order to make as much money as possible and it's borderline sinister.

Anyway, download Firefox.

The irony of this is because of the ad blockers on my Firefox, I've never seen any such ad.

Tumblr Top Ships Bracket - Quarterfinals

This poll is a celebration of fandom and fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

INEFFABLE FANDOM, WE ARE LOSING! 🥺

HELP!

bitches just want us all to be perfectly perisex more than anything

newborn babies have their genitals mutilated so they're Normal and intersex teenagers get hrt forced on them whether we like it or not while trans people have to jump through a billion hoops to even have the thought of getting hrt entertained because they would no longer be properly perisex once they begin physically transitioning. what if i killed everyone.

and on top of all the medical abuse we are completely fucking forgotten by EVERY "leftist" and "lgbt activist". we're afterthoughts at best to allllll of you

very inch resting to see everyone reblog the version of this without that last bit....

😳 <- this emoji but without the blush or romantic connotation. im not blushing im staring you directly in your fucking eyes

if you excuse the bad editing it would look like this

can we hit 150k before this piece of shits one year anniversary

u know before yellow emojis took over as automatic, the one we used for this exactly was O_O . which has unfortunately become the shortcut for the stupid blushy one. but we also used to emphasize the emotion by making the mouth bigger, O_________O . there was also o_O , for when you're weirded out, and o_o for small weirds or intrigue. you could use a period instead of an underscore for the mouth, o.o, O.O, which was a little more like shock.

there was also -_- for when you're annoyed. -_-* for pissed. the asterisk is a forehead vein. a very bad day or very bad joke could result in -___________-********** .

anyway that's your history lesson for the day, dont forget your roots.

let us also not forget the meekest of them all: ._.

There's also >_< (annoyed/frustrated) and ~_~ (at a loss for words/overwhelmed but resigned). ^_^ (happy) but ^___^ is impishly pleased with oneself/being a brat and the wider the mouth, the more of a loving pest one is being.

*_* is starry-eyed or dazzled. >_> <_< are sneaky eyes. ×_× are dead/slain eyes. c_c was usually something along the lines of "I am looking Respectfully."

;_; or q_q are crying (which is where the old "qq" for "cry more" comes from). ;o; is wailing while crying, a sort of "nooooooo!" response.

We had a whole range of text emojis, heh.

The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

you're falling in the trap!! it will be read by many people, many times, and it will live on in their memories. and maybe no single other human will match you in time spent dedicated to your story, but as a collective we will outlast you. acts of creation only grow when they are shared

This. Writing is not like dinner. It can be consumed many times

I wish age gap discourse hadn't spiraled the way it has because I want there to be a safe space to say "Men in their 40s who date 25 year olds aren't predators, they're just fucking losers"

... honey you just described a predator LOL

No, I said what I said. But thank you for providing an example of how this topic has become insufferable on the internet.

i am honestly burningly curious about how a 40 year old man who fucks around with college grads is not a predator

"College grad" is not a developmental stage, nor is it what I would describe a 25 year old as. I was 4 years out of college at 25. My mother had two children at 25. You can be a fucking congressman at 25.

There's a difference between a man who is immature and buys into misogynistic views of beauty and aging and one who is a predator. Also, many actual predators? Not losers and able to move through society pretty freely being seen as cool and the ideal, so conflating the two isn't helpful.

This is going to be my final response to any attempt at discourse. You're welcome to continue amongst yourselves.

also sometimes a 40 year old and a 25 year old just weirdly find each and it's a perfectly normal relationship - like all human relationships are complex and situational, it's so rarely an either/or thing let alone just one thing only

if a 40 year old dude only dates 25 year olds, DiCaprio style or something adjacent to it, then yeah he's a loser

if a 40 year old dude meets a 25 year old through social event or friends or whatever and they happen to hit it off and make a go of it, and this isn't some sort of reoccurring pattern for the guy, that's just a relationship with an age difference

being predatory means something specific, and man I agree w/ OP and really wish people just stopped ascribing it to any and all relationship dynamics they personally might not like

predator and groomer - two words that need to go up on the "can't use till you learn their meaning" shelf

Something I find really stressful is this seemingly endless creep of infantilisation and removal of autonomy from young people. Like, not to be all “in my dayyyy” about it, but… at 16, my friends and I were expected to be broadly responsible for our presence in the world. Most of us had jobs, we navigated public transport, looked after younger siblings. We were expected to make informed decisions about our future careers and our sexual partners. We were allowed to leave education and work full time (this was not necessarily good thing - I think increasing the school leaving age to 18 was broadly for the best). Most of us were smoking, or drinking, or both - again, not good things, but just facts - and many of us were sexually active. Many of the AFAB people I knew were on the pill. Legally, we could live independently, or get married with adult consent.

Legally (I live in the UK) we were not minors, although we inhabited an odd legal limbo until we turned 18, and we were certainly not “children”. Intellectually, socially, though, we were considered (young) adults, or at the most “older teenagers.” We were expected to read mostly adult books (rather than middle grade or YA), watch the news/read papers, watch mostly adult television.

And I do think we a bit under-protected, under-supported, and in some cases - neglected and financially exploited - and I’m not necessarily advocating that. But it did make us feel, I think, in charge of our own lives, capable and competent to make decisions.

At 16-17 my parents knew they could leave me alone overnight/for a couple of nights, and I wouldn’t starve or burn the house down. I felt comfortable getting cross country trains on my own, or booking and staying at a hotel (yes, with my boyfriend.)

Then there was this… creeping of sentiments that we were all Too Young to trouble our heads about certain things. A lot of it was good - more stringent licensing laws, raising the school leaving age, raising the minimum smoking age(!) - but some of the broader cultural stuff was… a bit patronising? Eg, the introduction of “New Adult” as a category of books aimed at 18-25 year olds, the way cartoons and books written for the 9-12 age group were being marketed as for the 12-15 age group, referring to late teens as “children,” etc etc.

Then, in 2008, there was the big financial crash and suddenly my generation were (broadly) robbed of all the usual markers of adulthood and success, meaning that we got ‘stuck’ in the lifestyles and modes our late teens/early 20s. And suddenly, all the emphasis shifted from social and legal protections for late teens/ younger adults, to legal restrictions on their freedoms/rights, and strange philosophical protections on the emotional states.

So, OF COURSE a 23 year old can’t buy a beer without carrying an ID card, and a 17 year old can’t have a crush on a 16 year old, but also, because you’re *children* you don’t need to live like adults. So the UK government got to save money by saying “18 isn’t a proper adult,” then “20 isn’t a proper adult,” and “25 isn’t a proper adult” because it meant they could refuse to give single occupancy housing benefit rates to people of those ages (I think they’ve raised it over 30 now.) Or by refusing to clamp down on exploitative temporary/zero hours contracts - because they’re just “temp jobs for young people!”, or by raising the retirement age because “60 is far too young to retire. You’re not a real adult until 35.”

And it means the discursive environment is such that you can claim that a 21 year old trans person is too young to make their own medical decisions, or a 15 year old is too young to consent to the contraceptive pill.

Meanwhile, they are not offering additional *protections* to these newly infantilised adults. 18 year olds are still encouraged to saddle themselves with enormous educational debt, or allowed to have credit cards, or expected to pay rent, or no longer receive child benefits. You still have to *work*. In fact, in the States, they’re looking to removed child employment restrictions - but that’s fine, because 20 year olds are being protected from making their own medical decisions, and adults get to say which books their teen kids are reading in school, and kids aren’t allowed to change their name or what they wear without parental consent.

We can see what these people are doing to the rights of children - so why are we being so complacent in expanding the definition of ‘child’?

Regardless - 25 is VERY CLEARLY an adult. At 25 I was married, had two kids, an overdraft, rent to pay, and experience of living in the world for 6 years. I had more in common with someone of 40 than I did with someone of 15. Hell, at*20* I had more in common with someone of 40 than someone of 15. Any sexual or relationship decisions you make at 25 are your own to make.

Of course there are likely to be power imbalances in a 15 year age gap - which is why most 25 year olds don’t date 40somethings - but not actually necessarily. And yeah, a 40 year old who only dates 20somethings is a skeeze - just like a 30 year old who routinely ingratiates themselves with rich 80 year olds is a skeeze.

But if any young people are reading this (doubt it)… your rights are much, much more important than your protections.

Yes, young people should be protected, but if someone claims they’re protecting you while denying you access to personal autonomy, financial stability, intellectual curiosity, or sexual self-determination because you’re “too young” to need, or understand those things… be very suspicious of their motives.

And if you’re legally an adult, ask yourself why you don’t feel comfortable defining yourself in those terms.

This thread is from 2023, and now with the Cass report we have seen the real, tangible danger that comes from infantilizing adults in their 20s.

You don’t say.

For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better. 

She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.

Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest.  Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear.  I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”

She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there. 

You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.

My favorite response to “that’s not a word” is “then why do you know what it means?”

Every time someone within 30 miles of me says “that’s a made up word” I am uncontrollably compelled to respond “ALL WORDS ARE MADE UP!”

In a college language class I took, we talked about the Jabberwocky poem and the professor had us try to explain every word in it. When we got to ‘outgrabe’ she asked why it was past tense and my response was “Cause the present tense is outgribe”. Her response was “That doesn’t answer the question but that brings up a better one. Why do you know that?”

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that...” in prose writing I immediately think “how?  How does he know it?”  Interrogate your witnesses.  Cross-examine them.  Make them explain their reasoning.  It pays dividends.

All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.

This is your "show not tell" advice explained!

you can think someone's an idiot and not hate them. anyone who doesn't understand this has never had a coworker

Anyone ever put off starting a series or getting into a new craft or activity because you're current stimuli are doing you quite nicely and you KNOW there's heaps of dopamine stored in that new thing so you're saving it for whenever your next major depressive episode hits like a pika hoarding grass for winter or do I just have severe ADHD?

Oh hang on a minute.

That's why so many of us have piles of books on our shelves we haven't read or to-read collections on Ao3. Those are future dopamine stores, for when the current interests start having diminishing returns.

Well fuck I feel way less guilty about keeping all that shit now. Because I *will* get into it at some point. I get into all my art supplies within five years and I get into books within seven. I even get back into stuff I was previously engaged with and fell out with. It's a dopamine store that needed to recharge.

Cool.

I will also now be pleased instead of confused when people tag my fic "to read". It passed the quality threshold to be put in the emergency stores. High praise, that.

Hm. The Secret Social Recognition Euphoria when I realize I have successfully implemented a technique I learned in therapy for dealing with Alexithymia (identifying specific behaviors, identifying what I'm getting out of the behavior to identify the emotion at work, deciding what if anything I want to do about that) without prompting is pretty great. I love when therapy rewards me for using it and my ADHD gremlin gets rewarded for good behavior so I keep doing it. Great design there. Good job, therapists!

This is different than "this is being hoarded because I do not have the energy for New", which is an awful place to be in, but hoarding New Dopamine then will mean you have stores for later when things stabilize a bit and you do have energy for New. It actually takes the New Thing energy threshold down because it's right there, so you can skip the step of "looking for a New thing".

This is more "I could start that right now but tbh I don't really need it" which is a great place and very achievable to get to! Also, I am very pleased with myself for putting in the effort to get here. I am consciously noting that effort does work and pays off for the next time the depression hits. I am both doing better and doing well, and I should be proud of that.