Category:Essays

Uh oh! Uh oh!! New annoying rant of an essay time!! This one’s been on my mind for a hot moment, but I’ve never really been able to get my thoughts about it together cohesively. But maybe… I’ll try?
As a disclaimer – I do not hate Toyhouse! It’s a wonderful resource and I’ve met so many of my closest friends there. People there are creative and have a passion for art and storytelling. Consider this to potentially be an SOS flare.

I’ve been on Toyhouse for 9 years! That’s almost a whole decade!! And in that time, I’ve seen things come and go, as well as trends and attitudes change. So, with that in mind… I don’t like where things are going! But it’s beyond the obvious lack of moderation issue, and goes deeper into the community and changing of times as a whole.

Toyhouse has one member of staff. A mod, admin, whatever you’ll call it – there’s only one person managing the entire site… and it shows! Unless it’s blatantly inflammatory, the forums and comments are effectively an unrestricted free for all — which, as the userbase has began to grow exponentially, doesn’t bode well. The ‘free for all’ type of atmosphere has led to the development of a uniquely discouraging space that was once full of promise. However, this issue is not exclusive to TH – it just happens to manifest there quite a bit due to lack of moderation.

You cannot write bad things. Sure, murder and death is ok, but you must put a big huge warning saying ‘I DON’T CONDONE THE ACTIONS OF MY CHARACTERS’ on your bio – otherwise you condone it, as would be the obvious conclusion to nobody.
But any other type of ‘dark theme’? Simply portraying is is romanticization. If it makes you uncomfortable, it’s problematic.

This extends beyond themes, too. People will become so hungry for drama and their desire for a sense of justice is too strong, that they aren’t allowed to just ‘dislike’ something for no reason. The thing they dislike NEEDS to be morally reprehensible so they can feel justified.

This attitude is exhausting to see, time and time again – even as a bystander.
Everything has to be in bad faith, and arguments spark as easily as flicking cigarette embers out of the car while driving by a field in drought. Again, this is not exclusive to TH – rather, TH suffers from a symptom of the greater modern internet itself.
Rage and hostility is engagement. Engagement is good. Art and writing is content to be consumed.

It’s awful and I don’t like it, even if it makes me sound like an old hag. I just want to create things and tell the stories and emotions of the people in my head.

Ownership… what about it?

Maybe I’m only just noticing this because I only ‘got into’ adoptable recently, at least in the TH sense. As a teen, I’d buy and sell adopts on pre-AI hellscape dA using points. There were of course popular artists in my sphere, but the focus was almost always on their art instead of adoptables they’d make.

But… it seems different now. Especially in the last year and a half.

In the environment TH has fostered specifically, designs are trading cards. Sure, they may get a one-sentence blurb of story and potentially a name, but more often than not, it’s an endless rat race of foddering someone’s art in order to achieve ownership of a design by someone popular… only to fodder that design for different ‘pop’ designs.
These people’s art is being treated as disposable, made more evident by the rise of ‘dreamie’ lists. People will insist they aren’t shopping lists, but when you link that folder saying ‘any design in here is an auto-accept’…

And god forbid someone actually creates a story with a character design they’ve obtained, instead of dangling them on an ‘entertaining offers’ stick for eternity. If someone has many character designs by ‘pop’ designers and doesn’t show an indication of foddering them off, they’re a whale, a hoarder, and don’t deserve them.

What a mess.

On the reverse side, it’s also getting harder and harder to support smaller adopt makers too, as they begin herd-adopting more restrictive terms of use for their designs. Generally, the worst of these is the ‘don’t delete or hide my designs or else you don’t own it anymore‘, in my eyes.
What are you going to to when TH eventually succumbs to its hubris of exponential growth with no moderation? OCs have existed long before TH, and will exist long after it. To act as though you can simply ‘revoke’ a character that may have heaps of development and love simply because you can’t have your eyes on it at all times… it’s weird.

But what does it matter. They’re just designs to people. Trading cards.

Art is content and must be consumed quickly before moving on to the next new shiny thing, after all.

Haha, oh no. We’re writing essays now! To be honest, I ‘write’ a bunch of essays like this in my head as I’m like, going to sleep or whatever, but barely ever manifest them. But maybe something will have something insightful for someone? Or maybe I’ll just piss people off. One of the two.

This one is particularly a hot-button issue in the Pokemon twitter fanspace I’m (regrettably) in, on that of ‘doubles’. Despite what the horrors of the 2015 kinnie Tumblr trenches would make me think, this time, it refers to someone who selfships/yumes the same character… but the discourse around it is literally exactly the same.

I guess I should start with a disclaimer that I do not consider myself ‘yume’ or a selfshipper, though I associate closely via both friends and because I’m kind of squashed in there. I do OCxCanon entirely from a storybuilding perspective, and while yes, certain romantic setups are unbelievably self indulgent and full of projection on my end, the representatives of ‘me’ are more often than not the canon character.

I feel like anyone who may come across this would already be familiar with what yume/selfshipping is, or at the very least is able to infer what it means from the english world. It’s when you ship yourself with a fictional character! Which is epic and cool and I know it makes a lot of people happy!

The issue arises when people get defensive over others who ship themselves with the same character, called ‘doubles’. And it’s kind of made Twitter (even more) insufferable, and I’m just seeing it from the sidelines because I already had a good chunk of these people muted for being annoying for other reasons.

The whole attitude of ‘doubles’ breeds animosity in the community, end of point. It doesn’t matter how you do about it – the moment you say ‘doubles dni’, you are contributing to the issue!

At the start, when someone simply says ‘doubles dni’ – it seems small. But you’re now laying a trap for everyone who comes across your carrd or whatever; if they happen to share the same fictional love interest, boom! You’ve potentially invalidated them and created an exclusivity.

However, it gets worse when done in groups.

I’ve complained about the clique attitude of the fandom sphere before, about how only people who do this in this manner and make it appealing are given any attention, as is socmed in general. But when you have these huge members of the same clique, and each one has a different yumeship that says ‘no doubles’, and each member of the clique ‘enforces’ that by not giving others any attention… it’s a mess. So no wonder extreme levels of jealousy are coming to points among people who aren’t the ‘popular’ yumeship – when everyone blocks you out in favor of someone else, it stings!
A lot of the worst cases of this are with teens, obviously – because their emotions are going wild, they have less filter… they lash out, and then are promptly chased off the internet by the bigger ship’s followerbase.

Because someone couldn’t share toys that didn’t even belong to them.

I’m not saying harassment is right. It’s awful these things happen, but making a callout post about a jealous 15 year old is almost never the answer. There’s a very cool and handy button that says ‘block’, did you know? And also one that says ‘mute’, which will, shocker, let you not see the tweets upsetting you but also not tell the person you silenced them. It’s almost like instead of parading a ‘doubles dni’ sign and pissing everyone off, these buttons could be used! Shocking!

A lot of these big names are adults. Even if they have their own emotions of jealousy to work out, they should at least have the common sense to know that these characters are not theirs, so people are going to like them too.

There’s also the subject of ‘biggest fans’ and ‘validity’ here, and it’s one I also have gripes of. It’s actually pretty similar to people’s entitlement to character on Toyhouse, in a way? Kind of.

People on Toyhouse complain that ‘Oh you’re not even drawing this character, I’d draw them way more than you!’. But with the fandom take, you take the would out – ‘I’m this character’s biggest fan because I draw them more!’.

Even if you don’t say the quiet part (‘You’re not-‘) out loud, actions have implicated meaning. And again it causes jealousy and hatred within the community. Because like all socmed, it has to be a competition. People aren’t allowed to just have fun.

People also call themselves a character’s ‘biggest fan’ or ‘most valid yume’ over… spending money on them in the gacha game, Pokemon Masters. Which I’ve kind of seen from the sidelines happening with other gacha games, but good god, claiming you love a fictional character the most because you gambled for a model of them that you can just rip and watch dance in MMD for free? I’m not going to get started on that, it reeks of consumerism.

Also goes for people acting like their headcanons are canon / the only ‘correct’ headcanons, getting into fights with others based on slightly different flavors of fanon… the list goes on and on. I can’t wait for Twitter to burn to the ground and for artists to move elsewhere so I can finally stop using it.

I’m a self/shipper yume and I don’t like doubles, what should I do? Am I a bad person?

No. That’s silly. However you need to recognize that by publicly displaying this attitude where anyone can see, you are enabling people to fight with you. Even if you don’t want to be in the ‘community’ – as long as it’s public, unlocked, not limited to followers… people are going to see it!

You can’t leave other people responsible to curate your online experience. If you see someone who makes you uncomfortable, block them (or mute them if you get blocking anxiety or whatever). It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s free! Take your internet experience into your own hands and you’ll have a much better time about it.

Selfshipping, like shipping in general, is supposed to be about having fun and it’s supposed to be something that brings happiness and comfort. But when you give an air of hostility, don’t be surprised that people are going to take that and fight.

Also gacha is bad. If you’re going to spend your money on PNGs or models, please just… commission an artist for a custom or buy an adopt.