3.4.2024
Lyric of the Day: Mother knows best, take it from your mumsy / On your own, you won't survive / Sloppy, underdressed, immature, clumsy / Please, they'll eat you up alive!
...
I finally got my vaccine!! My mom forced me to make the appointment and go in alone, so she 'wouldn't have to watch' or 'deal with the guilt' or whatever bullshit. I didn't even experience any of the regular symptoms after I got it. After I got the shot, I started feeling sick and having a panic attack, but that was an emotional reaction because of my mom's conspiratorial bullshit. Even though I know it's not true, hearing your parent say that you're going to die from poisoning yourself does eventually get to you. (My mom also made sure to make me take up all the paperwork I got related to the vaccine to my room immediately, saying 'she didn't want to see it', which was sort of funny.)
I've gotten more misc packages! I got my Bridget Nendoroid and my Butter the Bat plushie, who's a nonbinary-themed bat!! I set the Nenndoroid up on my desk, which is really going well! I set up Butter next to the Smile For Me calender (from my collector's edition package of the game), on some of my other furniture!
I'm currently waiting on my Miku x Cinnamoroll collab figure, and a cable for me to connect my computer to my printer! (Gonna start printing out fanfic soon and doing bookbinding-esque activities!)
Also - I bought Dramatical Murder for my boyfriend a while ago, as a gift, and began to play it with him on his request, since it's considered a classic in BL media. Certain routes are... gross, so I'm not going to play those. But I did agree to play other routes! Verdant wanted to play Noiz's route, because he essentially said, "He has bunny themeing and also is angsty, so you'll love him." And he was right. I did. I do. Unfortunately, it turns out that if you hand me an autistic-coded bisexual bunnyboy hacker, I WILL get attached, no matter his source. (On the bright side, this has done a hell of a lot in terms of killing the leftover remenants of cringe culture inside my head!)
Alsooo... SIDE ORDER RELEASED!!! Verdant's a lot better at it than I am (I cope by telling myself that it's because he's played roguelikes before), and I struggled way longer at it. I consistently managed to die specifically at the final stage of the final boss. But I have now completed a run with every weapons, except for Eight's! The limit on hacks and chips is kicking my ass... But, I love the game! I love the story, I love the fact that Nintendo of America didn't aggressively censor Marina being sapphic for once, and I LOVE THAT ACHT IS CANONICALLY NON-BINARY!!! I called it from the start, mind, but I didn't think it would actually HAPPEN. (Especially not after that whole mess with Shiver.) Three technically canonically uses they/them, but there is an argument that can be (and often is) made about them being a representation of the player character in the first Splatoon, whose gender you could choose. But there's no ambiguity with Acht!
And speaking of wins for gay people, Monster High is going to be releasing a pride comic collection this year where we finally, finally, FINALLY get to not only see Spelldon, but also we get explicit confirmation that Kieran is queer!!! RAHH!! For those not in the know: Kieran Valentine was originally intended, by his creator, to be a gay man with compulsory heterosexuality. He was supposed to be explicitly gay, but the higher-ups at Monster High told the creator (who, by the way, was the only gay man on the team) that it would be bad representation, because he would be a gay villain. (Average performative ally behavior, to be honest.)
Despite this, Kieran got a really, really, REALLY good entry in his diary that strongly alludes to this intention with his character:
"I now know that what I did - stealing love - was because I thought that's what emotional vampires were supposed to do. But it never felt quite right. I thought if I kept doing it, it would eventually feel right. Then when Draculaura called me - well, Toralei really - I thought that if I could get the heart that got away, it would change me, and everything would be fine. But I was just a real pain in the fang to everyone and made a fool of myself. So I've come to the conclusion being myself has to be easier than not being myself, right? Back then, I hated the thought of who I really was, and that conflict made me become someone who wasn't me. It's time to be true to myself, but it's scary."
It also mentioned him getting the number of a boy named 'Spelldon', but everything was left to subtext. Only the folks in the know would get it. Which pissed me off for multiple reasons. Mainly, of course, the audacity of these cishet higher-ups for telling a gay man that his character that he created based off of his experiences as a gay man was 'too problematic'. But also - Kieran Valentine is a character that is the most Azure-bait that an Azure-bait character can be. Like, are you kidding me? He's an alt, pink, Valentine's day-themed vampire villain with a redemption arc and internalized homophobia. Even Verdant agrees that he is THE most Azurecore character EVER... If he was allowed to explicitly be what he was conceptualized as being!!!
BUT NOW, not only do we actually have an official Spelldon design (as shown on the cover of the pride comic - after waiting years for his design, I am NOT disappointed!), but we're also going to have an explicit romance between him and Kieran!! I'M SO EXCITED!!!! I have such strong fondness and nostalgia for Monster High, and especially Kieran's movie in particular. I've waited literal YEARS for this!! I can hardly wait another minute, much less multiple months!! Aghhh!
(Also, I wonder if they're going to continue to go on the 'internalized homophobia' arc angle for Kieran? Judging by the summary available, he still thinks negatively about the concept of love, so here's hoping. I love it when characters get internalized homophobia-centered arcs. They just like me, for real.) (Also-also, crossing my fingers so hard that Kieran is going to be an absolute bumbling dumbass around Spelldon to try and contrast how he was able to be cool and confident around girls. Some real, "oh, wow, sports," energy. If he doesn't trip over nothing at least once, I will be disappointed.)
Of course, for every gay rights win, there has to be a gay rights loss. This one, unfortunately, happened to hit one of the few corners of the internet I actually give a shit about. I'll write more about that next entry, though, to try and keep this entry positive.
3.4.2024
Lyric of the Day: Girl (girl), you're such a backstabber (stabber) / You're such a backstabber / Oh girl, you're such a shit-talker / And everybody knows it (and everybody knows it)
...
Happy ides of March! Couldn't resist using these lyrics, even if I don't recall if I've used them before, for this (un)holy tumblr holiday. I also thought today would be a fitting for me to talk about... all of that, on tumblr.
If you'll recall, the last time I talked about the current state of tumblr, it was on a hopeful and happy note. Well! Apparently, tumblr staff is allergic to having a good relationship with its userbase! Because, it's time for some of that sweet, sweet TRANSPHOBIAAA!
A popular transfem blogger, @predesterone / @avewy (catchall name is Avery, but the one fronting most of the time is Rita; will be using Avery for clarification) got suspended. She had been asking staff for help with transphobic stalkers and harassers, spreading false information about her being a sex pest, for multiple years, never getting an email back. When she tried to contact staff, they said that she was banned for life. Her blog of 7+ years was nuked, with no communication, reason or recourse. The reason was eventually given: "sexual content". Even though, a month prior, staff told her she did not break that rule on her blog. Avery had not posted any sexual content, but the site DOES have a tendency to mark trans women's SFW selfies as explicit, as they're just seen as "inherently more sexual".
When pressed on why he banned her, when this site is known to have transphobic moderation policies, and to ban transfems wrongly, photomatt (Matt, the owner of tumblr) stated that it was due to threats on his life. The threat in question that he showed as an example had Avery saying, and I quote, "I hope photomatt (Matt, the CEO of tumblr) dies forever a painful death involving a car covered in hammers that explodes more than a few times and hammers go flying everywhere." I cannot stress enough that this is average tumblr humor and was made out of anger, because her repeated contact with staff about the people harassing her kept getting pointedly ignored.
This led, of course, for the tumblr userbase to clown on him en masse, because who in their right mind considers that a legitimate threat on their life? Matt (cisgender white male worth $400,000,000) then threatened to call the FBI on transfem blogger Avery for this. Essentially, his statement boiled down to, "if you want to deserve staff looking into preventing months of harassment, and explain why your accounts were banned, you have to avoid hurting my special boy feelings or we'll call the FBI on you." When Avery (who had, at this point, remade) pointed out that this was not the reason she was banned, she was deleted again.
Matt lied when he said Avery was deleted for harassing him. Avery was falsely flagged for sexual content by her harassers. They found a different reason after the fact. Additionally, Matt degendered Avery as he spoke about her, calling her "they" consistently, even slipping up and calling her "it" once. He claimed he was speaking about the account when he did that, but to refer to her as an account and not a person is arguably worse. He eventually started calling her 'she'... after people started pointing it out en masse. He also casually dropped the fact that he had at least one content moderator on payroll who was accepting bribes to take down blogs on request during this time, as well.
Even if she was banned for harassment, after being banned, Avery immediately got an email back about the harassment and stalking complaints she had been sending to tumblr for 3 months. They banned her twice before looking into this, and their conclusion was that the content "didn't go against tumblr guidelines", and that they wouldn't do a thing.
The really scary stuff was when Matt started interacting with and banning users. He was in the DMs of users talking about the situation, trying to provide "proof" that he wasn't transphobic and Avery was wrong. He was banning transfem bloggers speaking out about the situation within hours of them being posted (when it took multiple months for the situation with Avery's transphobic harassers to be resolved, with the resolution being, "Fuck you, we won't do anything".) He also deleted all reblogs "kung pow penis"ing his posts, and made it so that tumblr automatically censors the associated image before you even hit the post button. He also passively-aggressively threatened to shut tumblr down for being JUST so MEAN to him! ("... this will definitely be on my mind, as well as if we should continue to invest tumblr at all if it's going to harbor such toxicity and harassment.")
I cannot stress that this is a level of man-child behavior that goes toe-to-toe with Elon Musk.
Speaking of man-child behavior related to Elon Musk: Avery posted a selfie of herself on Twitter, with the caption, "too hot for tumblr". Matt, who had apparently followed her from tumblr to Twitter in an attempt to silence her, replied with the names of multiple sideblogs she owned, saying that the infringement on one of them was, quote, "likely". URLs with sexual jokes in them, mind, but Avery clarified that half of those were blank and just funny URLs she had saved. (And I thought she was banned for harassment, not sexual content, Matt?) This is a severe violation of data protection laws.
Tumblr staff, aside from Matt, made a statement which, in legal speak, boiled down to, "We are gambling with our health insurance to tell you that we are sorry our CEO is being a dipshit, we tried to stop him but he overruled us, and no, the rest of us don't actually think the hammer car thing counts as a threat of violence." When a corporation issues a public statement, though, they issue an apology from the highest level. From the CEO or someone speaking on behalf of the corporation, written by their lawyers or PR team. But tumblr posted a statement written by employees, speaking on behalf of themselves. Given that Matt was fighting people on Twitter only a few hours before it was posted, I also can't imagine he was made aware of this post, and that it had to have been Toni (the interim CEO) who gave the thumbs-up.
That statement was... I wouldn't say reassuring. Nice, at least. But Matt is still the CEO. All those transfem bloggers who spoke up are still banned. Everything that was lost that day is still lost, and that means that it can happen again. It was a really, really scary time to be on tumblr. I'd been backing up my blog for a long time, in case tumblr ever went down, but still. I wrongly thought that maybe, after getting sued for wrongful transphobic moderation, they would be more committed to their queer and trans userbase... but apparently not. There's no place where trans people can exist without being demonized, banned, and harassed.
All hope I had for tumblr's future is gone, with that man-child at the forefront. And, even though it's still a lot better than, say, Twitter, I feel significantly less safe there now, too. I don't want tumblr to go down. I have so many memories on tumblr. It's been a part of my life and my routine for over half of my life, and I'm a young adult. But I still feel so angry at Matt, and everyone involved in Avery's harassment, and any staff members who let this go on. I feel so angry at the state of politics right now, for demonizing people like us.
I try so hard to focus my energy on trans joy in these trying times, but sometimes, I just have to be honest with myself and admit that, thanks to the bigots out there, sometimes it just fucking hurts.
