Spinner of Tales

Another long one, but hopefully it's worth it. 💕

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does this serve any purpose other than to make the publisher feel like they're Doing Something, and to help consumers feel like their purchases are meaningful political engagement?

I’m going to tell you about how a discord banner that was put up for pride month in the Lancer ttrpg official discord was so successful at getting bigots to out themselves, that it’s been the permanent official discord banner for 4 years now.

This is the updated version. It’s animated now.

But pride month 4 or 5 years ago, somebody made the server banner a Goblin mech dabbing in front of a trans flag.

And for your average person who joined the server, they just kinda went, lol cool.

For the trans people who joined the server, it made them feel extra safe.

And for the bigots who joined the server? They’d fucking bitch about it IMMEDIATELY. And promptly get banned.

And that month saw so many bannings of dipshits that they decided to keep that banner, because every single time a bigot joins the server, there is a high chance that they will out themselves IMMEDIATELY and be promptly banned.

While including text like this in a book is different than a community space, the reality is, fascists do not like being embarrassed or confronted about their beliefs; they have fragile egos.

So imagine you are going through the book with a group of friends, and you get to this block about “fascism bad,” and somebody is like, “I don’t know how I feel about this. It seems a bit stupid,” it immediately gets to raise a red flag for everybody that maybe this person isn’t, as cool to have at the table as they thought.

Similarly, you know how many bigots went and burned their beers/hats/shoes because some corporation supported trans people/gay people/Collin Kapernick?

This is performative, yes. But it’s not performative to puff up themselves as heroes. It’s performative, aimed right at the fragile skinned assholes who will boycott Oreos and Budweiser for “supporting the gays.”

It’s one of the FASTEST ways to reduce the number of virulent bigots in a community for ZERO COST.

Like, maybe the experience of the lancer discord is atypical, and fascists are learning to have thicker skins and lie about their beliefs better.

It’s still PROFOUNDLY CHEAP AND EASY to include this blurb.

So, it’s free, zero effort nazi repellent.

Frankly with that in mind, I’d regard anybody who ISNT doing this, as maybe a tiny bit cowardly.

It may be atypical but it's certainly not unique. Another example is the Heraldry discord I'm on, with an icon that is animated to switch its original colours and two other versions, displaying gay pride and transgender pride colours.

Bigots join, bigots mouth off, bigots get banned.

Sometimes we get a different flavour of bigot, ones who tolerate us queers but are racist as hell. They tend to out themselves, too, because it's a heraldry server. That fact alone makes them assume that we're all "European culture is best" and other racist bullshit. They get banned.

And that is TACTICALLY USEFUL.

Because game companies spend so much money moderating chat spaces (both forums and in-game chats) and they lose so much business when dominant third party online spaces associated with their game turn toxic. Hell moderation is the big money sink for social media. Managing that cost is one of the most difficult aspects of the business.

Now imagine telling a game or social media executive that you can eliminate half of their harassment in a single honeypot operation. Imagine telling them that you have a technique which surgically targets a majority of their most toxic members and immediately gets rid of them. Because that's what this is.

You slap up a big pride or power banner and an announcement that this company stands with [insert group here], or stands against fascism, and you take names on everybody who has angry or quibbling shit to say about that. And then you ban them all. And just like that the moderation load you're dealing with gets so much lighter. Keep it up with a similar announcement whenever a topical opportunity presents itself and you clean out any new trash which walks in too.

And it just so happens that the way to do this is to clear out the bigots and make a safe space for oppressed groups.

There are so many of these companies which are worried that by taking a stand like this they will hurt their user base. There are so many forums online with volunteer moderators who reflexively don't want to wait into politics because they think that will increase their workload. Give them good solid practical examples of this reducing their workload instead, and you will get some of them onboard.

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Also prev tags:

A few weeks ago, a small but higher-than-normal number of accounts were mistakenly suspended. The suspensions were quickly reversed, but our response wasn't good enough, and we want to say more.

We're sorry it took us this long to address this. Trust and safety issues are difficult to discuss publicly, and we can’t share details about specific individuals or how our systems work without exposing Tumblr to bad actors. But caution led us to say too little, too late.

We’ve heard from members of the trans community on Tumblr that they were disproportionately impacted, and that deserves a direct response. According to 3rd party researchers, Tumblr’s userbase has the highest proportion of LGBTQIA+ folks on social media, so it makes sense that when something goes wrong, those communities might feel that disproportionate impact.

One thing we want to emphasize is that we do not moderate people's identities. We moderate behavior. We know that identity shows up across a Tumblr profile in many ways, from followed topics to the flags people put in their bios, and more. However, these signals play no role in how our moderation systems make decisions. We monitor those systems for evidence of bias and take corrective action when we find it.

We understand that the communications sent to affected users, and our broader silence to the community, didn't meet the standard people expect from us. That feedback is fair, and we apologize. We've updated the messaging sent to people impacted by these incidents. We are also overhauling our process with a goal of responding to mistaken suspension appeals within 24 hours, and have instituted an ongoing internal review of how suspensions and appeals are handled.

Going forward, we're committed to finding a better balance: being more transparent with our community about issues that matter, even when we can't share everything.

Tumblr belongs to everyone. We take that seriously, and we intend to earn back your trust. We are not afraid to have tough discussions with you or make updates based on your feedback, though on occasion, it might take some time.

To the people whose accounts were affected, and to the members of our trans community who felt targeted: we are truly sorry.

This is a lie. you are lying. You didn't hear from the general trans community, you heard from transfeminine community. The system of moderation is discriminatory towards transfeminine people. This also was not limited to a couple weeks ago, this is happening currently. As of yesterday, April 14, 2026, it has been ongoing.

It will not 'expose Tumblr to bad actors' if you explain your moderation policy, because your moderation is -already- being abused by bad actors. you are implying that your system isn't currently being abused, this is a lie. You imply the trade off of transparency wouldn't be worth the increase in labor. Actually, it would allow us to address it on -our end- and take steps to prevent the harassment that stems from the current abuse.

"According to third party researchers", your moderation policies disproportionately affect the trans and queer community. This is a matter of public record. your claim, that it will seem disproportionate but actually isn't, is unsubstantiated. you are lying.

Source: https://www.nyc.gov/site/cchr/enforcement/2022-settlements.page

(is your Classifier OpenAI? https://www.404media.co/tumblr-and-wordpress-to-sell-users-data-to-train-ai-tools/ not relevant this one its just being petty rn.)

You actually don't "moderate behavior", you respond to reports. You have yet to give any reason to take you at your word on the process itself. Transmisogynistic moderation was lied about for months if not years. Users only got confirmation during Matt's public melt down. You know your *policies* fall short. You've stated as such in 2024, when you wiped your hands of responsibility for a staff member stalking and harassing a user.

Source: https://www.tumblr.com/staff/743224389484625920/a-message-from-a-few-of-the-trans-staff-at-tumblr

If you punished behavior, your CEO would not be allowed to have an account on this website.

But this is to deflect the issue raised, which is that transfeminine people are being disproportionately affected -even compared to other trans people- for "BEHAVIORS" that NON transfeminine people aren't. Identity has little, if nothing, to do about it. The moderation system is sexist. it produces misogynistic outcomes, therefore is misogynist. This Is the exact reason people were angry at PhotoMatt.

From: https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-transphobia-matt-mullenweg

Once again, you are missing the point by conflating transfeminine/trans women/"TMA" people, ("those communities" as you call us) with the broader and less discrete LGBTQIA+ community.

Your Auto flagging system, which has been the source of a significant amount of reports and subsequent bans is not addressed at all. This is a lie by omission.

Address the issues raised and not the ones you can think up a clever thing to apologize for. You make more work for yourself when you obscure the issue. It does not matter if you are doing this intentionally.

And the most erogenous part: "Tumblr belongs to everyone. We take that seriously, and we intend to earn back your trust." -Lie, its belongs to Automattic and the investors of such.

Source: https://www.tumblr.com/policy/en/terms-of-service

"One thing we want to emphasize is that we do not moderate people's identities. We moderate behavior."

I (somewhat) believe that they moderate behaviour. I don't doubt they have a specific reason for banning most users that does in fact go against the TOS*. The problem is that time and time again it has been proven that they only moderate this behaviour when it is trans women who are doing it. They are hiding behind excuses to justify the people they do ban, while completely leaving out that the main issue is that this is who they are targeting for minor rules violations when Nazis, porn bots, racists, transphobes and more all are never so much as flagged.

I've said it before but the problem has nothing to do with who they are banning when entire tags dedicated to actual Nazis are completely unmoderated.

That's the lie at the core of all of this.

Sometimes, in fandom, we just want to write id-tastic fic that rolls around in tropes that might be viewed as problematic. But we don’t want to address the problematic side of things in this particular fanwork; we just want to roll around and wallow.

It is considered courteous to give readers a heads-up via use of AO3 tags. I propose a tag that signals that a given fanwork is for rolling around, not giving a measured evaluation of anything. The MCU has carved out a space for this sort of fic with the “HYDRA Trash Party” tag, for which I commend them. Trash Party is a bit too specific to cover all of the ground I’m thinking of here, though; I propose “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.”

For those of you not familiar with Arrested Development, Michael Bluth finds a paper bag in the freezer labeled “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.” He opens the bag, finds a dead dove, and reacts as follows:

[gif of a white man saying “I don’t know what I expected” in a deadpan manner]

The “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” tag would essentially be a “what it says on the tin” metatag, indicating “you see the tropes and concepts tagged here? they are going to appear in this fic. exactly as said. there will not necessarily be any subversion, authorial commentary condemning problematic aspects, or meditation on potential harm. this fic contains dead dove. if you proceed, you should expect to encounter it.”

Age doesn't always come with wisdom.

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Bowser doesn't bluff.

(if you've never heard of The Newlywed Game it was an old game show that appears to have been designed to make couples fight in the green room after the show. But it is pretty fun to watch, especially for the 70's hair.)

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They get flagged on your blog AND in your queue, and sometimes you can't even tell what the fuck was even in the post so you can give a justification for asking an appeal

And if you aren't scrolling your own blog or queue constantly like a maniac, you won't even know the reblog is flagged cuz they get put in your Review Flagged Posts section of your app and website, somewhere NOBODY even checks, and has no number next to it to tell you how many posts are in there

I got reblogs flagged all the way to 2017 in there, and the only way to know is to SCROLL DOWN

And the cherry on that bullshit Sunday is that some of these reblogs can be flagged without you even being able to appeal them like I have a bunch of them which are simply impossible to appeal, even if yet again the post is completely innocent

At least hit the shiny repost button if you're going to do nothing else. This should not stand.

I don't think that went the way Bowser rehearsed in the mirror this morning.

Dating Bowser must be great, because you can just outsource all your arguing.

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Stand Alone - Chapter one

Part one -> part two

Hello! This was originally started as a redraw of this comic from a few years ago. However, I’m a horrible writer so with the help of @phoenix-inblue we will be continuing and will hopefully be finishing this comic.

beyond part two, all writing credits will go to them! I’m just the artist 👍 Thank you so much though seriously, you’ve been such a wonderful aid to me! I truly appreciate all the advice and help you've given me 🫠❤️