Wavelength

I think the reason I'm so hostile against authors who make "dark re-imaginings" of fairytales is because I sincerely love dark fairytales. I'm not even talking about the notorious grimness of historical fairytales and folklore. I mean the entire concept of dark fairytales. Modern ones included, original fantasy and fairytale fiction that doesn't rely on "re-telling" included.

I don't think I'll ever re-open the asks here. I thought about it and it's just not worth it.

The last straw for me was towards the end of the page's run. I ended up spreading some very malicious misinformation about notwhorosethinks. He contacted me, cleared it up, and showed the receipts. I deleted all the posts about him. I take responsibility for it, I was negligent in moderating the ask box.

I also had a talk with magebunkshelf after people were using this page to vaguepost about drama between Gatorboys fandom members, further escalating their feud. I let it slip through the cracks. Mage was very understanding and reasonable with me, even though I was in the wrong and I was nervous as hell because that was my one of my only times speaking directly with a VA one-on-one. I deleted all of those drama confessions, but I still feel guilty, because I let people who were enacting harassment have an unaccountable shield of anonymity when the purpose of this page was to protect people from harassment.

The goal of this blog was to provide a space to have critical opinions of audios, the same way people can give critique of any other form of media, without fear of backlash. Audio RP is a very tight-knit community, and some people are very protective of their favorite audios and are quick to organize harassment and exile other members of the fandom over perfectly valid opinions.

The things I let slip through were only a fraction of the bad posts. You didn't see the asks that I didn't post, but they were bad.

There were absolutely malicious, hateful, highly personal rants about VAs getting sent to me that had nothing to do with their audios. There was doxxing info in my ask box that I frankly wish I never even saw. I was getting confessions where people gleefully wished that a certain VA they disliked would SA someone or groom a minor so that there would be a reason to cancel them. Some people even wanted to egg the community into "placing bets" on VAs doing unforgivable shit and listing out which VAs they hoped would do something problematic or illegal. There were asks making completely baseless and speculative claims about VAs, trying to psychoanalyze them and their sexualities in frankly creepy ways. There were post directly calling for the "removal" of certain fandom members by name. I went and warned those people that people were trying to use my anon asks to target them for harassment and abuse, but they just kept coming.

On top of all that, people were harassing me. If they took issue with the opinions in an anonymous ask, a lot of them would turn their aggression towards me and send anon hate and harassment. People would get mad and accuse me of censoring them when the queue was overflowing and their asks took too long to post. People would send me anon hate for even letting this blog exist in the first place.

It was absolutely draining. I wanted to give people a place to express their opinions without censorship, but I also had to draw a line somewhere and moderate the asks. Drawing the line between a controversial opinion and straight up harassment was exhausting, especially as more and more people intentionally blurred the line. Knowing what personal information about VAs was publicly known and what was doxxing info became a nightmare to keep track of. Checking to see if claims were legitimate or complete misinformation became impossible. The inbox got bigger and bigger with more asks to moderate, and I let more bad posts onto the que.

At it's height this blog only had around 330 followers. There's just no way that such a small group of people should produce so much conflict and wear me out so hard.

So yeah. I'd say I'm done. I take responsibility for the times I spread misinformation and enabled harassment by shielding bad fandom members from accountability. I think the right move is to just shut this thing down for good. I still love audios and the Tumblr audio RP community. There's so much amazing fanart and fics and comradery here. But please, let this be a lesson. Let people have opinions and disagreements without resorting to organized harassment. It really shouldn't be that hard.

There's another blog called Positive ASMR Roleplay Confessions. It seems like a much nicer place. I don't run it and I had nothing to do with its creation, but I wanted to give them a shoutout.

Thanks to the people who made this blog fun in the early days before it went downhill. Thank you to the people who understood the purpose of this blog and used it responsibly. Thank you to Priest from the RA confession blog for giving me a shout-out early on when I had very few followers. Thank you to the VAs who create all of these amazing stories, despite all the bullshit you go through. You guys were stars.

I believe saku is talented enough to do better. Great storytelling challenges tropes it doesn’t recycle them. If he truly values his audience, he’ll reflect on this critique and grow. If not, well that’s its own answer.

Don't say he should introduce evil male characters. He already has. You mention the cheating ex-girlfriend in the Gang Lord's Son series, but that's a minor off-screen antagonist. Did we forget Jame's betrayal in Elias' series? That was a way bigger deal. What about the people who tried bombing him? Hello? That and the morally grey/bad characters he himself has played. The evil male Zealots that got killed in his M4M Incubus series?

To cite an example, do you remember when there was a huge surge of people faking dissociative identity disorder? Most of the people doing that were either adults or adolescents at a stage in their life when they're trying to shed the hallmarks of childhood. They made fools of themselves, sure. But despite the social risks it still somehow feels more safe and socially acceptable to lie about having a rare and poorly understood mental disorder than to simply tell people that you want to talk about your original characters. It's almost like people feel that there's more shame in admitting that they are imaginative and want to play with their imaginary characters, than there is in lying about a psychiatric condition. As though having OCs and daydreams is more stigmatized than dishonesty and destructive misinformation about mental conditions.

And that's just the Tumblr-ish variety. I have seen so many grown men completely go out on LARPing as "modern vikings", doing anything and everything but admit that they're LARPing. People might make fun of you for saying you're a modern-day viking, but playing as your make-believe warrior character and playing dress up as a middle-aged man is treated a hundred times worse. So they'll endure the mockery, because they're convinced that the alternative is so bad that they'd prefer to pretend their make believe play is anything but what it actually is.

I'll sometimes see people launder their own imaginations, sometimes claiming that a scenario they imagined came to them in a dream. Why? Because it feels safter to share a story involuntarily placed into your mind than it is to admit that you just wanted to share your daydream with someone.

I think we need to make people feel safe playing with make-believe characters. It's healthy, it's normal, and god knows there's already enough stigma out there doing everything it can to crush the imagination out of people. People shield themselves from that stigma with dishonesty and even self-imposed delusion, and I'm tired of it. Be free. Tell stories, play games. Even people in ancient times LARPed and told stories and played as characters, and they aren't so different from us. I don't know when or why we started gatekeeping imagination as being limited to either child's play or a vocation for a small number of professional creatives, but it doesn't have to be that way.

To avoid more punishment, the child sits still and is quiet. But they have to actively remind themself constantly to sit still and be quiet.

The teacher sees the child sitting still and being quiet. The teacher treats this as the baseline.

Since the child is putting a lot of effort into sitting still and being quiet, doing so distracts from paying attention to what the teacher is teaching. The child then is punished for not paying attention.

listen. 67 is not 69. it's not 420, or 21, or 42.

it's E.

you remember this shit?

I listen to everything. Just not rap though. Racism? No it has nothing to do with racism. I don't like Eminem either so that can't be it. No I won't listen to your recommendations. No I won't try to listen to an underground rapper. Who is Kendrick? What's a Chance? Denzel Curry? Isn't that the name of an NBA player? I did like Same Love by Macklemore though! Remember that song? It's the only good rap song. I'm definitely not racist, guys.

What world are we living in that a kid is afraid to draw a character from a show he likes by the age of ten? On pen and paper no less? Kids in the 2020s have fully accepted the panopticon before they even hit puberty. It's insane. When I was ten I didn't even know what a copyright lawsuit was because I had no fucking reason to.

What world are we living in that a kid is afraid to draw a character from a show he likes by the age of ten? On pen and paper no less? Kids in the 2020s have fully accepted the panopticon before they even hit puberty. It's insane. When I was ten I didn't even know what a copyright lawsuit was because I had no fucking reason to.

Being a roleplay asmr enjoyer is so, like, not embarrassing, but if someone brings it up in conversation, you just have to sit there and shut up because WHATEVER they’re about to say isn’t gonna.. be very opened minded.

And it sucks because ITS GOOD. Not only for comfort, but it’s entertaining. Like cmon, there’s Redacted, theres Escaped Audios, there’s Yuurivoice, there’s Desmond asmr, Obsidian Lantern, ScytheAudio, Mage Bunkshelf, Reverie Audios, Castleaudios (Claire mommy), and so, SO many more great creators who practically make shows and the whole entire genre of content is dumbed down to “cringy boyfriend/girlfriend asmr/goon asmr”