Local Trash Man

I saw someone BBS sections online and it was just the Vanitas sections and it was worse than I thought.

I knew everytime you hurt or kill Unversed, Vanitas feels pain. That I knew and was sad. I knew the novels had more added extra details about that, BUT I DIDN'T EXPECT HIM TO BE SO SAD AND JUST WANTED TO STOP FEELING PAIN

That's why he looked so sad when Ventus defeated him. He only wanted to feel whole again so he wouldn't feel hurt or pain.

He was so miserable. He questioned his existence. He felt pain because he was separated. He hated looking at Ven, but when MX brought him to Eraqus he then started to missed him.

All the pain, sadness, nervous, and basically any emotions would create unversed. And he hated the sight of the Unversed as they also made him feel weak. When he destroyed them and it caused him to feel intense and physical pain. But it also made Vanitas feel slightly better because the Unversed being alive made him miserable. However the pain was so intense and it often made him create more Unversed because of it in an endless cycle.

He hated Ventus cause he got to live happily without feeling anything. He also reminded him of how weak he was because when they were one person he used to be weak and timid, but when separated Ven grew stronger due to Eraqus, Aqua, and Terra's influence. When Vanitas saw his other half, after Sora's heart touched both of theirs, he despised him and wanted to hurt him.

Vanitas actually didn't really want anything to do with MX but only helped him so it makes the pain go away. MX often told him the pain and hurting will make him stronger and to use those feelings. Vanitas only really went with him and wanted to forge the χ-blade and connect so he will stop hurting.

He just wanted to feel better and it's like really sad.

And MX often laughed at his pain or just watched , not doing a single thing.

Also sometimes MX would hurt and fight Vanitas to make him stronger and then disappear. And Vanitas would just be in the keyblade graveyard alone and hurt. Because of how alone he was and how much pain and all the sad feelings he got, he turned cold and a bit twisted. He didn't know nice things for himself, he only saw other people having this and it was never him.

It's just all so sad.

The parts that were just about his creation is just so 😔😔🥹💔

Like he still did all those things but it's understandable where he's coming from now. You feel bad for him now and NOW MORE THAN EVER he should get redeemed.

I already thought he should be redeemed because of how he was in his KH3 battle and he can stay as darkness if he wants but still be friends with them and maybe feel better.

GIVE HIM A HUG PLEASE he deserves it even if he bites

I (20F) am in a moderately large fandom that got popular during the pandemic. Most of the fic for this fandom is gen and platonic pairings, which is a rarity and fantastic. One of the most popular creators in the fandom puts out a ton of gen fics that I really loved. Unfortunately, I learned after that they write fics on a different account, and not just any fics, but inc*st. I'm not talking about found family. These characters are literal brothers in canon. I can't believe anyone would ship them together, much less this person. I unfollowed them and now, whenever I see anyone talking about how much they love this creator, I inform them about the alt account and their ships. Ignorance may be bliss, but I felt awful when I found out and realized I'd been supporting them for so long and I don't want anyone else to feel that way. But someone replied to one of my comments calling me the asshole, telling me I was outing the creator, and to mind my own business. AITA?

You are the asshole. Doxing is Doxing whether you personally feel you are 'saving' people.

The only time Doxing is okay is when REAL LIVING HUMANS not fictional characters are in danger.

How Portland organizers are mass-producing cheap protest shields

Taken from this twitter thread (link is to a mirror on nitter)

Two weeks ago, these shields were getting built by 3 people in a garage. Today, an assembly line of over 25 volunteers (and two dogs 🐶) gathered at Clinton Park in Southeast Portland to help put them together. Using Twitter to coordinate, volunteers gather 3 times a week (location announced the night before) to build these shields. All materials – including duct tape, power tools and pool noodles – are donated (along with everything on this extremely packed snack and supply table).

So how does a protest shield get made? 🤔

Step 1.) Acquire a 55-gallon barrel. (In the beginning, Ghost (@ghostmobpdx) was buying these barrels – which once carried liquids like soy sauce and canola oil – off of Craiglist. Now all of the barrels are donated.)

Step 2.) Remove the barrel lid. Using a circular saw, a volunteer slices the barrel into four sections. You now have five soon-to-be shields! 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡

Step 3.) Using a hand drill, a different volunteer makes 6 holes in the center of the plastic. (Shield building sessions are BYOPT: Bring Your Own Power Tools.🛠️🧰)

These holes will be used to attach bolts, padding and straps so the shield can be carried like this:

(A plan is in the works to upgrade to drilling 8 holes so the shields can have backpack-style straps. This will help protesters avoid dropping their shields when they have to move fast.)

Step 4.) A volunteer adds the aforementioned bolts. 🔩BOLT FACT🔩 Since starting, Viv (@viv______) estimates they’ve used over 1,200 bolts. That’s a lot of bolts. 😮 (Can you spot the faded NLG number on this volunteer’s arm?)

Step 5: Another volunteer adds foam and straps. The straps are made from strips of sturdy ratchet tie material. Foam also gets added over the bolts on the front of the shield to protect people from hard edges.

Step 6: It is ~noodle time.~ A different group of volunteers slices pool noodles lengthwise and fits them along the rough edges of the shield material. This is to protect the protester and anyone they might bump into.

NOODLE FACT: The volunteers who do this part of the process are called the “noodlers.” (!!!) Here is a noodler in action:

Step 7: Another group of volunteers adds a layer of duct tape around the entire shield (except for the foam/strap section). Each shield needs about 2 rolls of duct tape, and Viv estimates they’ve used 400-500 rolls so far.

After volunteers have attached the pool noodles, bolts, foam, straps and duct tape to the plastic barrel material, you arrive at the final step of shield building…

Step 8: Spray paint and stencil the shield. Ghost spray paints the surface of each shield black. From there, individuals can add their own unique designs. One volunteer brought these handmade stencils that included images of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.

As a final touch, this message is spray painted onto the interior of every shield: “THIS SIGN WAS PROVIDED FREE OF CHARGE AND IS NOT INDICATION OF ANY GROUP AFFILIATION” (sometimes accompanied by a protective sigil from local witches or a stencil of Portland’s elk statue).

In total, each shield takes about 3 hours to make and requires passing through multiple groups of volunteers before it’s finished. All materials and time to produce them is donated, and the shields are offered free of charge to BIPOC protesters and $10 for everyone else. Ghost, Viv and the volunteers have made about 250 shields so far, and build between 30 and 55 shields per session.

How does it feel to see the shields in action? Ghost: “My heart is so warmed, just every time. I’m so proud. There was one time – God, it was beautiful -  where a tear gas canister full on exploded off the damn thing and the person is still running away. And the shield was fine.“

I've met the sweetest, prettiest queens who tell me "Well, I'm a transsexual. Sometimes I call myself a transman because both my trans self and my manhood are me."

New friends tell me about the sexcapades their closed polycule gets up to that they just watch because they're a kinky ace.

There's staunch lesbians who helped the love of their life transition as a transmasc, gay men begging to be topped by trans men with the fattest tits.

Older queers don't hesitate to shout "oh, like Prince!" when I tell them I'm androgyne. Vanilla questioning men will text me day after day before shyly confessing I'm their dream guy. Closeted trans women ask to kiss me because I'm their dream girl. Doms and subs who melt when they realize I'm both and neither, and they didn't know somebody like me existed.

There's vanilla lesbians on Grindr and acearos who have shown me love deeper than I thought possible and guydykes kissing girlfags and MtFtMtX elders and throuples that have so much affection that they just collectively parent babygays who got disowned.

Queerness is not the exclusive domain of the thin, the white, and the ablebodied. If you are any of those things and can only picture queer people like you? You need to ask yourself why.

That's why I'm making this addition. It is on me as a white person to make the room for queer BIPOC that is vehemently, violently denied. And I did not make that room in the original post.

Respectfully, I am going to push back on this.

This is by no means a callout. Your heart is in the right place. There are a few ideas being conflated here though. Some of them are precisely why I am asking people to reflect.

Up front, and above everything else: everybody's safety matters. But safety is not comfort, and community requires discomfort.

Somebody of an intersectional identity fearing they're not under an extended umbrella isn't expressing bias. That is a learned response from the trauma of repeated suppression and subjugation. This is what a person without safety is forced to do.

On the other hand, I as a white person need to say this post is about BIPOC because of racist bias. There is no pre-existing implication of racial solidarity. White queers repeatedly hammer that home by only treating ourselves as family. And particularly as queer rights have expanded in the global West? It is increasingly easier to be white first.

And what I have watched as a leader and organizer is how "personal safety" and "safe spaces" are conflated as "comfort for me". It is comfortable to say largely Black and immigrant neighborhoods feel unsafe. It is comfortable to say you got a bad gut feeling from somebody experiencing psychosis. Neither of those things are of real threat to your safety, though. They're just scary and unfamiliar.

These scenarios are extremely dangerous and limiting to people like me, though. An ablebodied stranger feeling "unsafe" because of my health symptoms is a threat to me. They can have me pulled from those very queer spaces, or get me institutionalized... so on and so forth.

And I can't keep myself safe from ableism. That's how other people treat me. To exist, I have to put myself in danger.

I would give the link but you know how Tumblr hates links.

I personally find the pulled quote "I am not entitled to a perpetual state of comfort" to be a) the wisest most comforting shit I've heard all year and b) a maliciously abdicated concept in most young reactionary gays. Also known as tenderqueers, or purity police, or puriteens. So here I go.

JP is an immensely cool guy. We went to college together (generally, not personally). He doesn't play in fandom, or at least doesn't write much about it, so we are now seeing fandom purity culture bleed into "real life" asks and columns and I for one am exhausted. The sheer ignorance of gay history is the bulk of the problem and I don't know how to make younger queers understand that we've always been kinky, we've always been weird and outside and rejected, and while ITS COOL THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE THAT NOW(?), you have ZERO rights to try and cringe-cancel and sanitize a culture of survivors triple your age. Because of les uncomfix, or anything else.

(TW: small fandom-centric story involving trauma dumping re: sexual abuse and incest)

It reminds me of when I received a comment on a chapter of Bandages and Bravado, accusing me of (here we go) promoting/adoring incest for? Midnight making a joke that Aizawa needed a "daddy".

That was it. I also tagged for it. It was a joking sort of tag, because it was ONE SENTENCE, ONE THROW AWAY CONCEPT, like ha ha we are referencing living/classic gay culture in a story about stupid Japanese heroes.

Then.

This person was deeply upset and triggered and trauma dumped, semi-graphically, in the comments on a BDSM-centered fic with nearly exhaustive tags, about how their father sexually abused them and how they have to walk through life knowing that people do this thing that I referenced, and why would I ever do that. This thing that, according to the level of their deep grief, I invented (???) and wrote into a very unrelated story (????) for callous and ignorant laughs.

There is so much wrong with this ahistorical, ignorant, unhealed and reactionary approach to kink and sex and I am still so very sorry that this person stumbled upon that one sentence, or concept, and it was enough to provoke that kind of pain.

I also know that it had little, if nothing, to do with me.

I said (paraphrased), "I am deeply sorry you had to live through that. You should probably not be reading this fic. While it is still your choice, I would not recommend it, because the fact you didn't expect to see basic gay kink content/context in a themed fic overly tagged as such probably means you're not mature enough for the complicated contents to come. It will probably lead to more distress, and I don't want that for you. I will be deleting your comment within 24 hours, due to the fact that others have not consented to your graphic descriptions of your very real abuse. In sharing in public spaces, you may trigger someone else, and I'm certain that was not your intent."

And I did. I was shaken, and sorry, and mad, mostly at the idea that young people (I'm assuming they were young) are irresponsibly barging into pieces of fiction and destroying themselves like this. And, in terms of their comment, possibly harming other people who had come into the space responsibly and weren't at all expecting to encounter an accusatory first hand account of incest and abuse in a story actually WHOLLY unrelated to such things.

I'm just tired, y'all. You are not entitled to perpetual comfort. You are entitled only to maintain your own sense of comfort and your ability to enter and exit spaces that you believe violate your comfort. You cannot do this at the expense of others, and not everything on this green earth is engineered to harm you. Some things simply are.

And if you metaphorically walk up to a rock in the middle of the road and bend over to bash your head into it, not even have the excuse of TRIPPING on it, then you need to take some time with yourself and figure out how to effectively champion your own internet safety. It's your most important responsibility out here, and if you show up with gushing head-wounds more than once, you may not have your own best interests at heart.

Enjoy the good. Block the bad. Curate your feed. BUILD YOUR BUBBLE. MAINTAIN YOUR ARBITRARY CONCEPT OF SAFETY.

people have told me things that made me lie down and cry because either they really happened or someone is so opposed to something i wrote that they made up this nightmare lie just to punish me for it. i carry this stuff in my heart. when i found out content moderators get ptsd i cried too, from horror and from sick relief. you can't hear horror after horror like that without it hurting you. it's a real pain. it counts.

yeah cops don't like it when you oink at them, either. csam is an important term that has a specific legal definition: it is a recording of a real living human child who is being sexually abused or exploited.

a huge amount of furious pushback against the purity police has been by writers, artists, and ABUSE SURVIVORS who are deeply angry that self-righteous little twerps have degraded terms like 'pedophile' into absolute uselessness because they, like the whole rest of the far right neofascists, need a snappy little term that means 'what i don't like shouldn't happen' and gets everyone in earshot to mob the target immediately and without question.