#[ please consider following! <5 ]

[milkweedman]

finished my hat finally and its super warm and comfy and i keep putting it on and then feeling the strong urge to knit more warm items. and then i take the hat off and can be normal. and then i look at the hat. and im like oh its such a warm and comfy hat though why would i not wear it ? so i put it back on and then the urge returns.

may have knit a cursed hat, basically ?

[pass3ra]

cressida's storyline was genuinely shameful tbhhh it's like they started rewriting it in the first half of the season then completely forgot about the changes they'd made to make it fit the book plot and it just ends up making everyone else look bad😐 every character in the second half got a "penelope did nothing wrong" lobotomy so we ended up with eloise completely ignoring cressida being sold off to an horrible man (when she made every effort to support her in the first half of the season) and for some reason resenting her for pretending to be lady whistledown? Then they somehow frame her ignoring colin's offensively bad pleas as it being her turning away from redemption when all she's trying to do is escape being trapped in the country with her likely abusive aunt... and it ends with her meeting her horrible fate and it still being framed as tragic only to immediately juxtapose it with the bridgerton family winning the idgaf war while gleefully seeing off francesca and her future dead husband. The bridgertons were the villains of the season frfr

[miqojak]

.

[m1d-45]

hello, I'm sorry I haven't been sending as much asks. I too feel like I fried my brain a little on sunday and if I don't have like new things to comment/write ask about then I don't rlly ask?

idk I want to bring new things into the table so if I don't have any I tend to stay quiet.

midas my love/p your most recent post? chefs kiss. I'm in love by how well you portray each character, especially wanderer since he's one of my favs (lvl 90 and widthsith r5/hes my baby)(xiao and kazuha too, anemo men my beloved)

I'm interested in this Diluc fic you have upcoming, I might wait a bit when it's published until I feel like I can handle the angst. my school has been kicking my ass

teddy darling/p I would love cheesecake, I haven't rlly tried it before but I'm sure yours will be great. also how do you not get scared by analog horror I'm in shock, I have to agree that what midas wrote on alternate! Xiao and zhongli made my palms sweaty and heart race, you both truly have a way with words

I am going to continue studying for precalc rn, but I have some ideas for little writings/art that I might send in later. I'm considering making a blog but idk if I'm comfortable with it.

- 🍄 (why does this feel like I'm in another land sending a letter to my spouses, I hope you have a great day teddy and midas)

[gazing wistfully out the window] when will mushroom return from the war…

off the bat don’t feel obligated to send asks, we’re just guys being pals and it’s ok if you’re silent for a while

second thank you, from one wanderer enjoyer to another (mines at 80/80 bc i need anemo rocks :( ) i’m glad you found his voicelines enjoyable. he speaks very particularly so i was worried i’d get it wrong-

(can’t believe i forgot but anemo men my beloved as well, i’ve been meaning to do lines for xiao)

good luck with your precal, i’ve never done it but shit looks hard. hope you make it out alive /hj

[wizardsoup]

matched

Eid Mubarak!

Have you found any resources I shared on this blog useful or insightful? Then consider donating to any one of these donation drives below (or all four)!

HelpGazaChildren

Hussam's GFM

Eman's GFM

Sudan Soup Kitchen Appeal

Reblog and share even outside of tumblr, please!

[turtletoria]

It has been a year of genocide, and the aggression from the IOF does not seem to be slowing down. Getting these campaigns to their goals is even more pressing as the weather gets colder. Please consider donating to any Gazan family's fundraiser today, and on every day until their fundraising goals have been met and these families have reached safety.

🌟 Raffle will end at the end of December 16, and I will randomly select and contact winners via email on December 17!

‼️ Only donations made after October 5 will be counted! Also please keep in mind currency conversion - only equivalences of $5 USD OR MORE will be counted for entries!

Please donate and share if you can!!!

List of raffle-eligible, verified funds below the cut:

(as of 10/05/2024)

[The red font indicates funds that have not reached 50% of their goal yet and urgently needs help in getting traction]

Alaa's (@alaakh998) family (€17,729 raised of €100,000 (temporary goal of €20,146)):

Ameera's family ($8,200 raised of $40,000):

Ahmed's (@eileen-88) family (€63,617 raised of €75,000):

Rawan's family ($140 raised of $20,000):

Rawan and Yemna Abudaya's family (kr165,143 SEK raised of kr319,315):

Aya's family (kr41,215 NOK raised of kr500,000):

Walid's family (€1,510 raised of €20,000):

[justabunchofdragons]

note 1: i was going to put an option for no weapon, instead wielding magic but i feel like that option would be too appetising and i do want weapon stats!!!

note 2: i KNOW maces & morningstars are not the same (same with spear & javelin) but there's so many weapons and they are similar enough ok !!!

note 3: tell me what you would name your weapon >:0

EDIT HI FOLKS who reblogged or voted in this this silly post i made in 3 minutes! over 30k votes (!!) means that if just over a tenth of people who voted donated $5 to this (vetted, donation protected) fundraiser, maryam and her family would meet their goal TODAY. i've been following this one through operation olive branch for months, and donations have stagnated. please consider giving what you have.

[dilfosaur]

well i haven't spilled my guts on tumblr since i was in college but it's the platform that's felt The Most Mine thru the years, so

let's talk!

i've had a huge chip on my shoulder that i wanted off before the year ends. very bad professional experience to follow

so firstly to get ahead of the speculating, i'm not naming names or anything. some of you will puzzle out who i'm talking about, but please don't bother anyone especially not on my behalf. i've worked hard to distance myself from them the past few months. shit happens, especially when you're a dumb bitch (that's me!)

but also this person was someone i considered a close friend and it makes me uneasy to possibly direct backlash at them. "then why post about it" bc i did intermittent work for them for over a year. this is just about that. so hear me out

basically it started off fine. i initially did some commission work for good pay, then was invited to become more involved with their team. unfortunately as i became more involved with their operation it became more disorganized over time. projects started then forgotten, constantly shifting schedules, lapsing communication between roles, confusing financials, and often inconsistent if not late payments. during mid 2023 i was doing colorist work, sometimes on a one day turnaround (all while also preparing drawfee's summer merch launch). the payroll wasn't set up correctly so i wasn't paid for that work for over a year (more on that later), tho to be fair that was largely my own fault at first as i just didnt realize the payments didn't go thru lol

i always consider myself decently capable of separating friendship and coworker-ship; i run a company with 4 wonderful friends, going strong for almost 5 years. that didn't really work out in this case. by early this year our friendship was on the rocks; work issues fed into personal issues and vice versa. so as the rest of this shit plays out, we had just had our first "big fight" which i felt very bad about and added to all the upcoming tension

a huge point of friction was the fact that i really wanted to work with them to make a music video for one of their songs. i've always wanted a chance to make a music video, was confident in a concept i came up with, and even did some concept art for the idea. everyone insisted they loved the concept and that we should do it, but we kept pushing it back for various reasons. it ended up becoming a huge sticking point for my frustrations, which i tried to express productively. TLDR, we eventually got around to discussing it seriously around april.

i planned to ask for $4000 with negotiable add-on for the whole project, which was my Friend Discount price. i was offered a contract for $1000 flat rate, as they insisted that was the only budget they had for it.

don't ask me why i signed it lol. i didn't even counter offer

there was some girlmath to it: i wanted an extra 1k for a student scholarship i provide every spring and well, there it was. but if i had to guess, i saw it as something i just couldn't back down from any more. i caused these folks- my friends- a lot of problems bc i dug my heels in so deep to chase this project, so fuck it we ball

i had about 4 months to solo a 3 minute music video. they wanted it done in august so they could release it before summer ended, bc "it was a summer song". to be fair i was asked if i needed them to pay for anything extra like assistants (which i would have to find and manage) but i was so immediately overwhelmed that i didn't wanna slow down to wait on that process lol. there was very minimal communication other than brief progress check-ins every few weeks. i did everything for that project myself: the original concept, character designs, storyboards, layouts, backgrounds. i even did the editing/compositing for the final cut of the MV. the only favor i did myself was limiting the amount of it that was actually animated to simple loops and motions. hardly my best work but it was work still done

i did it all in between my full time job. i ended up having to take nearly a month away from most of my drawfee duties (with the support of the others) to make the august deadline. i only ever asked for a 3 day extension (notice given about a week in advance, around the same time i was given the final song file lol). i finished the music video at 6am on the final deadline and recorded drawfee the next day on 2 hours of sleep

but it was done, coolies. the team was very happy with the final product. honestly, without getting into it, those were a very emotionally taxing 4 months. on the professional side, i regretted agreeing to the project and especially for the dogshit rate they offered. i felt like a hypocrite- as someone who always wanted to advocate for younger artists demanding their worth in a world that's getting increasingly hostile toward creatives, i failed myself

so when i met with the manager to discuss the release plan, i told them to do whatever worked best for them as i only had one request: i wanted my credit removed from the project

tbh... like... lmao this dramatic bitch right!! but really, i decided that bad practices only breed worse business. friends or not, it was unprofessional of me to accept such a low paying job so i just didn't want my name used in association. everything felt so muddled to me and i was just really tired at this point

the manager was very understanding and then offered that i could be paid more. they said that their team "was surprised" i accepted their low rate and they would be happy to up the amount. this confused me as the initial budget seemed pretty set and at no point between april and august was i offered a better rate. i knew these guys weren't made of money. so, i declined. i didn't want to put anyone out of their means over work that was already done and agreed upon. but more importantly, i was over the whole thing and didn't want to prolong the project with a contract renegotiation. i just insisted my name be removed

they decided to use a pseudonym (which i was fine with) so they could create a story about a character who made the MV (this sounds really convoluted but i don't know how better to put it without getting specific, sorry). that way if people asked about the credit, they could speak comfortably about it without signaling that something went wrong behind the scenes. ok, kind of a silly narrative imo but whatevs. and maybe this is where i finally went truly wrong but. yolo i guess

i gave the name "D. Smithee", D as in dilfosaur and Smithee as in Alan Smithee. look it up for fun film trivia ig! was it passive aggressive of me to reference that in this context? yeah, honestly. but i thought it was kinda funny and really not that deep. if it was a problem, i have other real, non-cheeky pseudonyms i regularly use. the manager accepted it and all i had to do was wait for them to post the video and i could leave the whole experience behind me

a week later i received a message from the manager that my pseudonym had been denied by the rest of the team bc one of them got the reference. fair enough lol. however, they decided that rather than ask for a different name, the were going to make one up for me that they liked and would "fit the [story]", without asking me

and that! is when i finally snapped!

i was so tired of giving them concessions at this point and having a credit made up for me without any input from me felt genuinely violating and unethical. i started to Panic bc of how stressed i was, and asked for my overdue payments (aka the $500 still owed on the MV, and the colorist rate from a year prior that was never paid even tho i reported it in january) to be scheduled ASAP as i was leaving the work discord immediately

i finally told them off for exploiting me throughout the months while i kept trying to just be nice and finish my contact cleanly. in return i was told that it was unfair to say that as i agreed to everything- i accepted their cheap rate and denied further payment so that was all settled, and it was ok to change my credit without my consent bc i "said they could do whatever with the release". i called bullshit, ended the convo as kindly as i could, and cried lol. they agreed to ditch the pseudonym and just give no credit. that night was the last i heard from anyone on that team

and the real kicker?

august came and went. then september, october... and they never released the music video

and i don't know why, because i was never contacted about it. i've been removed from the picture entirely i guess. 4 months and boatloads of stress. just. up in smoke. i don't know what i expected honestly

it's hard to not take everything that happened personally and as done in bad faith. i really do, honestly. i've had plenty of shitty deals in my almost 10 year art career, but it hits different from people you saw as friends. but to the point of "why not keep it private", i have never felt so disrespected as a professional as i did this past year. i can toy with money and credits and other formalities all i want, but my work- my ideas, my labor, my effort- is still so important to me. i felt like the biggest idiot for doing so much work, pouring so much of myself into a piece for someone's use, for what has amounted to nothing

but more importantly i hated myself for undervaluing my work, even if initially i thought this person was a trusted friend. money is not really an issue for me- drawfee is my main job and i am fine and comfortable. it's so important to pay artists appropriately but i often undersell my own work bc i value the collaboration and passion between creatives more than the reward. i think a lot of artists tend to feel the same, and it often makes us easy to take advantage of. it's so difficult to find the balance between passion and making a fair living, and i think there's some shame within ourselves when artists choose to prioritize that passion

i wanted to finally get all this off my chest bc i was ashamed of every choice i made. things like this happen all the time i'm sure and hiding these mistakes only make it easier for it to happen to other people

tldr always value your work and protect your passion from people who just see it as a product. and don't give cheeky pseudonyms i guess lol

(and again pls don't bother anyone involved about this. a lot of chaos has left my life as i moved past all this, and this is me closing a door without opening new ones hopefully lol)

this shit was truly

so ass.

but i'm moving past it now

but on a nicer note. outside of all of this nonsense, i made lots of good memories this year. i'm truly so grateful to the many wonderful people in my life who keep me going even when i fuck up big time!

and thank you to all of you strangers who, despite everything, give me the time of day. especially if you read this whole thing. you're a real one :')

happy new year!

[supportgaza]

From Gaza to Ireland: Out of the Fire of War to the Fire of Soul-Crushing Survival Guilt and Fear for my Family

Note: My main account (@mahmoudkhalafff) was unfortunately terminated by Tumblr for no reason. This is my back up account. Please continue to boost my campaign. We are too close!

At times of peace, having to be away from your family for months and years is a high price you pay for obtaining an academic degree or securing a better job. Imagine while you are away, they were trapped in a besieged strip of land and thousands of missiles rained down on that besieged area of 360 km² around the clock for almost 11 months. That would crush every cell of your mind and drive you crazy, wouldn't it?!

Imagine suddenly getting addicted to watching the news and the gory videos and pictures all the freaking time. You follow relevant social media pages that only show images, videos, and stories of entire families that were wiped out in an instant in an airstrike and deemed as collateral insignificant damage. While plunging deeper and deeper into an unprecedented state of acute depression, I wondered: how come all my suffering from displacement, fear, and hunger in Gaza for 5 months during the war before being evacuated to Ireland is nothing but a drop compared to my ocean of suffering now?

The constant thinking of my family in Gaza during the genocide and all the potential scenarios is consuming my sanity and mental health at a time in my life and a place where I am required to be 199% focused and productive. To give you a glimpse of my horrible psychological suffering these days: I fear going to sleep because I know horrible horrible nightmares are waiting for me on the other side. Some have to do with the horrors of wars I witnessed in Gaza myself and others relate to the horrible potential scenarios I keep thinking about.

Seeing the images and pictures of Gaza makes you think a thousand earthquakes hit every neighborhood of the Gaza Strip! Nothing and no one has been spared. The horrific war has turned the place into a hell on earth, unfortunately. How can young people have any hope for a better future seeing the mass destruction and the relentless Israeli efforts to stifle Gaza and squeeze hope out of its people as a form of collective punishment. How monstrous and heartless!!!

Amid all this chaos and madness, my number one priority and focus is evacuating my family to Egypt as a first step and hopefully reuniting with them in Ireland at a later stage.

Please do consider helping me save my family by donating, reblogging, and sharing.

Note: Vetted by:

1. @el-shab-hussein and @nabulsi # 151 on the spreadsheet of Vetted Gaza Fundraisers List]

2. @riding-with-the-wild-hunt Here .

Tagging for reach <3

@riding-with-the-wild-hunt @ibtisams @vakarians-babe @90-ghost @sayruq @fairuzfan @sar-soor @fallahifag

@el-shab-hussein @taamarrud @humanvoicebox

@plomegranate @queerstudiesnatural @commissions4aid-international @nabulsi @stil-lindigo @soon-palestine @communistchilchuck @palestinegenocide @northgazaupdates2 @northgazaupdates @ghost-and-a-half @kyra45-helping-others @kyra45 @commissions4aid-international @feluka @appsa

[incognitopolls]

More Palestinians who have reached out for aid. If you have anything you can spare, even $5, please consider clicking one of these donation links and giving what you can.

Donate to @hadeelmekki

Donate to @samerpal

Donate to @atalah-mohammed

Donate to @stupendouswolfearthquake

Donate to @mohammedaldeeb

Donate to @amlanqar

Donate to @bshaeromars-blog

Donate to @hmzamahamed3

Donate to @alhabil

Donate to @nohaibrahim-2024

Donate to @mahmoudkhalafff

Donate to @nedataya

Donate to @abedalazeiz

Donate to @abdelmutei

Donate to @amira-world

Donate to @eyadeyadsblog

These campaigns are all vetted by @/90-ghost, @/el-shab-hussein, and/or @/nabulsi.

These are just a few of many, many Palestinians who use Tumblr to reach out for any possible help they can get to raise the money needed for their families to evacuate, buy food, get medical help or supplies, find shelter, and all other basic human needs that they cannot access without outside help. Please take a few minutes to read some of these families' stories. Many of them have children, and many have urgent medical needs. All have already experienced horrific injury, illness, and loss, whether to themselves or to a family member, a neighbor, a friend.

It costs $5,000 USD for an adult to evacuate to Egypt, and $2,500 for a child. If everyone who follows this blog was able to give $5, we could evacuate 31 adults, or 62 children. I know not everyone has money they can spare. But if you are someone who does, please click on one of the links above and help save someone's life.

[thursdaynights]

This is good!!!!

This is what I needed!!!!

My first camping trip alone, even if it’s just for a night. I’m out here with Dracula in one ear, nighttime noises in the other, while sifting through the books I brought to be ready to Info dump on a hike tomorrow.

[echoekhi]

I’m Declaring War Against “What If” Videos: Project Copy-Knight

What Are “What If” Videos?

These videos follow a common recipe: A narrator, given a fandom (usually anime ones like My Hero Academia and Naruto), explores an alternative timeline where something is different. Maybe the main character has extra powers, maybe a key plot point goes differently. They then go on and make up a whole new story, detailing the conflicts and romance between characters, much like an ordinary fanfic.

Except, they are fanfics. Actual fanfics, pulled off AO3, FFN and Wattpad, given a different title, with random thumbnail and background images added to them, narrated by computer text-to-speech synthesizers.

They are very easy to make: pick a fanfic, copy all the text into a text-to-speech generator, mix the resulting audio file with some generic art from the fandom as the background, give it a snappy title like “What if Deku had the Power of Ten Rings”, photoshop an attention-grabbing thumbnail, dump it onto YouTube and get thousands of views.

In fact, the process is so straightforward and requires so little effort, it’s pretty clear some of these channels have automated pipelines to pump these out en-masse. They don’t bother with asking the fic authors for permission. Sometimes they don’t even bother with putting the fic’s link in the description or crediting the author. These content-farms then monetise these videos, so they get a cut from YouTube’s ads.

In short, an industry has emerged from the systematic copyright theft of fanfiction, for profit.

Project Copy-Knight

Since the adversaries almost certainly have automated systems set up for this, the only realistic countermeasure is with another automated system. Identifying fanfics manually by listening to the videos and searching them up with tags is just too slow and impractical.

And so, I came up with a simple automated pipeline to identify the original authors of “What If” videos.

It would go download these videos, run speech recognition on it, search the text through a database full of AO3 fics, and identify which work it came from. After manual confirmation, the original authors will be notified that their works have been subject to copyright theft, and instructions provided on how to DMCA-strike the channel out of existence.

I built a prototype over the weekend, and it works surprisingly well:

On a randomly-selected YouTube channel (in this case Infinite Paradox Fanfic), the toolchain was able to identify the origin of half of the content. The raw output, after manual verification, turned out to be extremely accurate. The time taken to identify the source of a video was about 5 minutes, most of those were spent running Whisper, and the actual full-text-search query and Levenshtein analysis was less than 5 seconds.

The other videos probably came from fanfiction websites other than AO3, like fanfiction.net or Wattpad. As I do not have access to archives of those websites, I cannot identify the other ones, but they are almost certainly not original.

Armed with this fantastic proof-of-concept, I’m officially declaring war against “What If” videos. The mission statement of Project Copy-Knight will be the elimination of “What If” videos based on the theft of AO3 content on YouTube.

I Need Your Help

I am acutely aware that I cannot accomplish this on my own. There are many moving parts in this system that simply cannot be completely automated – like the selection of YouTube channels to feed into the toolchain, the manual verification step to prevent false-positives being sent to authors, the reaching-out to authors who have comments disabled, etc, etc.

So, if you are interested in helping to defend fanworks, or just want to have a chat or ask about the technical details of the toolchain, please consider joining my Discord server. I could really use your help.

------

See full blog article and acknowledgements here: https://echoekhi.com/2023/11/25/project-copy-knight/

[imjustheretotrytohelp]

Do not let this campaign stagnate!

I am very worried for Abdallah (@abwoood)'s campaign and the lack of donations he receives. This is his only source of income yet he hasn't received a single donation in 5 DAYS.

He really can't be left in this situation. His tent literally fell on top of his and and his family(s head while they were sleeping, their possessions completely soaked. He also got hurt while helping his diabetic mother and he can't walk properly now.

Speaking of his mother, she has diabetes and high blood pressure. Abdallah had to take care of her because she got a chest infection. The lack of medecine could be fatal for her, and only donations could help her get access to it.

Please, consider helping him take care of his parent and of himself. Follow him, share his posts and his fundraisers and donate! If possible please adopt his campaign, other than donation it is the best way you could help him right now.

ALSO CHECK CONVERSION RATES

The campaign is in AUD which means :

$5 USD = $7,44 AUD

$10 USD = around $15 AUD

$15 USD = $22,32 AUD

donate here!!

vetted by association (@/nesmamomen 's uncle, who was herself vetted by @/el-shab-hussein)

[rongzhi]

Visiting a coffee shop in Yiwu, Zhejiang

English added by me :)

Palestinian Fundraisers #6

#1, #2, #3, #4, #5

Hello everyone! While we're here, please check out the following fundraisers! I am willing to translate videos upon proof of donation as well :)

These are the campaigns of a few people who have reached out to me recently!

Please consider donating if you have the means!

Amounts raised current as of November 3, 2024

@freepaleatine95 || https://gofund.me/19e0f69f  44,175 / 50k USD

@familgazaamal1 || https://gofund.me/0f8138fb 6,645 / 30k USD

@ghazialamoudi || https://gofund.me/8a2c70d7 1,969 / 10k  EUR

@ameertaims || https://gofund.me/69f392e2 33,671 / 200k SEK

@karamrafeek || https://gofund.me/a9d0f2d7 2,279 / 7 GBP

@mahmodsy1 || https://gofund.me/463cbf01 8,143 / 25k USD

@nourbader2017 || https://gofund.me/44bd0219 4,110 / 25k USD

@helpmohammed2024 || https://gofund.me/db1b926b 4,305 / 50k USD

@ahmed-fathi-gaza || https://gofund.me/728d2627 21,036 / 80k EUR

@aya2mohammed || https://gofund.me/0dc7f391 37,185 / 50k EUR

[professorcalculusstanaccount]

The penultimate part of my story, The House of Glass. Tintin's investigation hits a wall. Follows directly from this!

If you're enjoying this comic, please consider donating to Eyad, he is a father of four trying to evacuate his family from the Gaza strip. His wife Amal, and their kids, Sami (11), Mohammad (9), Sarah (7) and Saad (5) are currently in a displacement school in the Zaytoun area. Eyad has been separated from his family, and is currently living in a tent in the Dier al-Balah area.

His blog is @abosamisblog

[turtletoria]

Ameera and her family need your support in surviving the ongoing genocide in Gaza!! She URGENTLY needs help in affording essential items as winter approaches and North Gaza continues to be bombarded and starved by the IOF.

🍉 She has currently raised $7,830 out of her $40,000 goal, with the last donation being from a week ago! Please consider donating here today, even $5 can give hope!

🌟 Verified through Pali Pals (@/pali.pals on IG) and the Butterfly Effect Project (line 751)!

🕊 Show your support to Ameera by following her on her socials, @/skaikameera on IG and @/ameerarsk on TikTok!

🇵🇸