thal @thalestral@mastodon.social

Welcome friends! For those who don't know me, my name is thal and I'm a freelance writer, journalist and comics academic.

My work is mainly in the mainstream media (SciFiNow magazine, Guardian etc) but I am currently out of work due to mental health issues.

Currently I am mostly on twitter (& now here!) talking comics, gender and generally being anti-terf, anti-nazi ✌️

I'm also non-binary, and my pronouns are they/them.

You can buy me a coffee here if ya like!

http://ko-fi.com/thalestral

@thalestral witches.town closes end of April 👌

So apparently one of the so progressive instances on mastodon that I was advised to join (I didn't) is shutting down after the admin went on a transphobic rant against non-binary folk 😑

If you're on witches.town I advise moving ASAP.

Today was a day in which lack of trigger warnings made twitter impossible to use. Why would anyone RT images of sexual assault ffs

Extremely not happy that twitter lacks the CW feature mastodon has.

Everyone else? Block abusers. Block people who waste your time. Don't answer anybody that YOU DON'T WANT TO.

And uh, move to mastodon 🐘💨

This is the shit that puts women and non-binary folks off of engaging with geek culture in any way.

Why would someone subjected to the abuse I linked above, even dream of going to a comic con?

This behaviour hurts everyone in comics. Movies don't care, they've got their money. Comics though? Comics should absolutely care.

Men. When you see this stuff, report it and verbalise that it's Not Okay. The people doing this think they're the majority. Educate them 👌

But I'm not gonna talk about them. They're nobodies.

Fact is, comics has got more pleasant - on the surface. The gaming community didn't fare so well, and subsequently the "geek" parts of the film community have turned into a vile cesspit of utter shitgibbons.

I saw a fellow journalist this week have to delete a tweet asking if any women liked Batman v Superman because of the abuse just asking that question resulted in.

And twitter, ofc, does nothing. I report a lot. The action rate is ~2%.

Within the comics industry, the more obvious abuse towards critics from fans, fellow critics and creators has died down. Yes even when taking Nick Spencer and Dan Slott into account.

Today I would not get a high profile artist throwing a misogynist slur at me. Or a high profile artist threatening to punch me (hat tip to Mark Waid for keeping that threat alive to a male critic this year though!).

Comics as a whole has got smarter. Which is one of the reasons that gang of eejits has arisen.

It's one of the reasons I moved to working in print. Just before my current breakdown I was thinking of going back to some online stuff as now a lot of sites don't have comments. Which is GREAT.

So I probably will do some online writing when I come back. But I will never ever engage with people I don't know about it.

A presence on twitter is kinda mandatory for a writer. But people see "journalist" and think somehow my tweets are the same as paid articles 🤔🤔 NOPE.

To be clear - this abuse doesn't bother me. At all. And to be clear - that's extremely fucked up.

Y'see, when I began writing about comics online I'm 2011/12 this was my daily intake of abuse and harassment. In fact, this is pretty light compared to what I got then.

And it was awful. It contributed to one of my smaller breakdowns. Not least because comic pros and critics often joined in.

This was 3-5 years ago. And that was common.

Hmm, can I link to a tweet from here? Let's find out!

Top tweet contains trigger warnings for rest of thread. But this is basically a snapshot of some of the abuse in my mentions in the last 24 hours.

What for? Well I tweeted photos of an Amazon battle outfit from Wonder Woman and Justice League side by side.

That's... literally it. And this is why I have one piece of twitter advice:

NOBODY IS OWED A RESPONSE

https://mobile.twitter.com/thalestral/status/930552511542505476

My "too depressed to game" games.

Homescapes is weirdly soothing. The character in it is the butler in Gardenscapes - where you inherited a mansion and a butler and spend all your time gardening. It's kinda like if Batman had decided just to get really into landscaping and he and Alfred spent all day playing puzzles.

Then that character returns home in Homescapes, to his parents mansion. Because ofc.

Rest are decent time sinks too! (Futurama still buggy af).

Privacy settings of a toot:

Public - posts to all timelines

Unlisted - not on federated or local timeline, but visible on profile and to followers

Private - only visible to followers (ie friend locked)

Direct - only visible to users mentioned in the toot (ie a DM)

🐘💨

I was planning on doing a live tweet of Batman v Superman at some point as I've not seen it, but DC movie fans are rabid shitgibbons 😌

My twitter time today and yesterday has been 90% blocking men who a) don't understand sexism and b) think I remotely care about their opinions.

As well as those filling my mentions with threats of violence and death (not at me but ugh).

"Let's play a game to help some of the newcomers make connections: name 5-7 things that interest you but aren't in your profile as tags so they are searchable. Then boost this post or repeat its instructions so others know to do the same."

#comics
#pugs
#gender
#enbies
#mentalhealth
#gaming (#ps4)
#feminism

🤔

J threw out Nev's cardboard box (pictured) and now I need to order something that comes in a big enough box to replace it 😂

Look, if your name here is different from twitter and you don't have your former handle in your bio... WHO ARE YOU

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Toot!

Still amused.