#I guess I know the answer and that’s: unsupervised internet access

[boyfriendappreciator]

Nothing frightens me more than ADULT cartoons having fanbases full of children.

[softcitrus2345]

GRRRR. TUMBLR DELETED THE ASK THAT THIS WAS MEANT FOR. >:(

The anon was just asking if I had any early encounters with media that influenced my interest in certain kinks, as well as what my favorite kink trope in general is, and this was my response- Oh boy, there are so many instances but I can only really remember/find a few of 'em- But these were the main ones that stuck with me for years-

I grew up watching MLP. Like, it was my SHOW for years, so it was the main source of media/fandom that I sought out this kind of content in my early days of unsupervised internet access-

I remember watching these scenes and having a neuron activation moment but I didn't know why. Then a few years later I got access to the internet and I'd find myself looking up shit like "fat mlp characters" and even I didn't really understand why either- 💀

I guess I know now XD

There was also this one scene from some Disney thing where Mickey and Minnie were in a sorta Hansel and Gretel situation and got fed a ton of food (I remember being disappointed when they didn't get fat from it for "some reason" XDD)

But there was also this book. From when my age was still in the single digits I feel like had at least a part of the blame for these kinks snowballing into what they are today-

It was called "The Very Greedy Bee"

Basically this one bee drinks so much nectar that it gets really big, eventually SO big that it can't even fly

I remember rereading these pages a lot on my own- ⬇⬇⬇

So ye, this is one of the earliest instances I remember feeling "weird" from a piece of media.

But ALSO-

I VIVIDLY remember this one toy I used to have that I can't remember what it was called FOR THE LIFE OF ME-

It was this big dog-looking thing that was advertised as a fun way for kids to put their things away. You'd put your things away by "feeding" your stuff to it and it would fit a pretty good amount in there

I remember when I would play with it, I would always take all of my stuffed animals and try to stuff as many as I could into its mouth and make it as big and round as I could- I guess this counts as both an introduction to stuffing and soft vore huh-

But yeah, those are all the main things I can remember-

As for your second question, I'd say my favorite trope has got to be stuffing paired with instant weight gain, it's just really fun and I love drawing stuff of that nature

Usually the instant weight gain/extreme stuffing would go hand in hand by using some kind of potion/enhancer kind of thing with it, but ye >;3

I just like when characters get really big really fast from eating a lot- O/////O

Hope this answers your question, anon XP

[suzyandthefox]

❗🚩? For the ask game

@the-fazbearcafe

❗ Discovering Vore:

A little bit of me Lore:

I was always drawn to that type of thing since I was a child, a baby.

Always feeling some sort of attraction (?) to it, a certain biblical story was always my favourite, the scenes in certain cartoons greatly intrigued me, and I was greatly obsessed with the digestive system at 4th grade.

I used to search for whale facts all the time and whale noises, blue whales are still one of my favourite animals.

But finding out about it online was when I first had my unsupervised internet access and I made a deviant art account at 11 years old (Big mistake I know) and I stumbled, somehow, someway, on a piece featuring Hulk (Yes,the Marvel character) after he gobbled up his love interest.

It also somehow lead me to discovering an artist that created Minecraft vore featuring their enderman oc, and they made a mini comic about their pred oc finding a lost child in the cold (never got to see the completion of that comic) , which was basically my first interaction with protective vore.

Then I found someone who did it but with completely original ocs, something led to another, I started to learn the term and actively search for it (And the words stomach, tummy, swallow, etc...) until I found a creator who writes exclusively SFW stories (I didn't even know it could get NSFW, noticed an image or two but didn't bother to look at them)

And they're the only creator I still follow and remember to this day.

When I got on Tumblr I used the same methods and found some good stuff too (most of these creators I can't find anymore)

Anyway, that's my backstory with Vore.

🚩My orientation.

I can answer that in multiple ways, so I will.

Suzy is a prey only character.

When I rp,I like to play both pred and prey, I like the experience.

Me personally? I'm torn between Observer and Switch, I guess I'm both? Yeah I'm both.

If I did make a main sona I probably wouldn't make her participate in that.

[my-never-ending-nightmare]

11/22/2021

“Why are you reading Wikipedia in Walmart?”

By far one of the strangest questions I’ve ever been asked lol. And honestly one that scared the shit out of me, too. Because the person asking it was somebody who I haven’t seen in at least 5 years – and they were standing right behind me. I had no idea they were there at all. Idk if I was super engrossed in what I was reading or if her stealth stats are just maxed out but regardless – it startled me. And to put this in some sort of context that makes more sense: I had been looking through the DVD/Blu-ray bargain bin at Walmart and there was this shitty looking documentary series about the most defining moments of the 21st century (thus far, I guess) and the second episode was supposed to be about 9/11, “the first attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.” Which got me thinking – during WWII didn’t the Germans torpedo American ships in & around the NYC harbor after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? If so, then I guess this DVDs claim was technically correct – but aren’t a countries waters considered part of that country and thus technically an attack there would be an attack on said country itself? It was these questions that led to me pulling out my phone and looking up U-boat operations in the Atlantic and American East Coast from 1939 to 1945 lol.

I’ve always had an incredibly inquisitive and analytical mind, so much so that when I was growing up adults always used to jokingly tell me that I should be a lawyer. But this kind of a mind meant that Wikipedia was a godsend for me. I’m always pulling my phone out randomly throughout the day to look up random information and facts regarding whatever thought or question has popped into my head. Like, Wikipedia is probably the only reason my head is as full of random names, dates, quotes, & facts as it is. My parents have told me before that it used to drive them nuts when I was a kid because I used to constantly ask questions. Especially during car rides. Stuff like why is the sky blue? Or, why don’t dogs live longer? It got so bad that when I was 5 years old they gave me a portable cassette player (this was 1999) so that I would hopefully distract myself by listening to music. I still remember one of those cassettes really well – it was a tape of Alvin & The Chipmunks songs. In fact, I can even specifically remember listening to it while strapped into the booster seat in the back of my parents van when I asked my mom this exact question: why don’t motorcycles have seatbelts? And I can even vaguely remember her trying to tell me that a seatbelt would just do more harm than good in a motorcycle accident.

As I got older the questions became more & more complex. I wanted to know the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How about everything and anything. So when I discovered Google & Wikipedia sometime around 2003 when I first started getting my taste of unsupervised internet access it must have been such a relief to my parents. I still asked my parents random, pretty difficult questions well into my early teens – but my thoughts & questions were becoming darker & darker until one of the last serious questions I ever remember going to them for an answer to was something along the lines of: If God is real then why do so many horrible things happen? If the world is full of this much pain & suffering then how can God be real if he loves us? And if he is real, isn’t it more likely that he doesn’t want us?

As irresponsible as it was of my parents to give a 9 year old unmonitored internet access, at least it saved them from having to answer such unanswerable questions lol.

It really bothered me growing up when teachers always used to talk shit about Wikipedia & disallowed it to be used as a source in any school work. Like, Wikipedia is an incredibly good source of information regarding nearly anything - and practically every sentence in an article has a source for it. I used to always bypass the Wiki ban in high school & college by just finding the source, checking it myself to make sure it actually contains the information Wiki said it does, then I'd just use that source material as my source. It made life so easy lol. I think boomers just had/have a kneejerk reaction to something new that they don't care to try to understand. But, then again, I’m growing increasingly guilty of the same sort of thing the older I get.

Anyway, I guess my point is this: Of all the awkward situations I've been in (and I've been in quite a few) none were as difficult to talk my way out of as having to explain to an old friend what the Kriegsmarine was & why I'm standing in Walmart reading about their operations against the United States of America during World War II lmao

[prayforussinners]

ooc post - PM conversation between @majorem-gloriam and @prayforussinners

prayforussinnershi uh. i'm in gilead and we don't have easily accessible priests here and i was wondering if you could answer a question for me maybe

majorem-gloriam: I can certainly try!

prayforussinners: so suppose that, hypothetically, there was a catholic person in gilead, who didn't get the best possible catechesis, but who knew that surrogacy was wrong, decided that the best way to stop being a handmaid was to get married to a gileadite, so that the government would get what it wanted and she would be able to have children without sinning

prayforussinners: and further suppose that this person then regained internet access and unsupervised library access and did some research and came to the conclusion that said marriage was not actually in fact a valid one

prayforussinners: but she was already stuck having promised to stay with this person until death

prayforussinners: what should this person hypothetically do

majorem-gloriam: does this hypothetical person have children yet?

prayforussinners: not yet, but she's not 100% sure that she isn't currently pregnant, either

majorem-gloriam: can she hypothetically get out of gilead?

prayforussinners: unlikely, hypothetical person has a criminal record and is fertile and doesn't know how to hop borders illegally, or have anywhere to... hypothetically go

majorem-gloriam: if the hypothetical person is near mexico there are people who could help with the border-hopping and places she could go. 

majorem-gloriam: hypothetically.

prayforussinners: hypothetical person is in....... boston

prayforussinners: also the last time she tried to go to mexico the government caught her and made her a handmaid and that is more or less how she hypothetically would have gotten into this hypothetical mess in the first place

majorem-gloriam: oh no. i'm so sorry

majorem-gloriam: hypothetically

majorem-gloriam: is she happy with her husband? is he good to her?

prayforussinners: i just. i don't want to do anything else bad and I don't know how to fix it

prayforussinners: he's... i mean he's ok

prayforussinners: he's not abusive or anything

prayforussinners: she doesn't know him very well and he doesn't know that she's catholic

majorem-gloriam: it sounds like you've been doing your best in a very hard situation

majorem-gloriam: God loves you and He wants you to be safe and happy and He is always watching over you

prayforussinners: thank you

majorem-gloriam: if you got to know your husband and decided that your best option was to stay with him, and could trust him to know you were Catholic, it's possible to have your marriage convalidated

prayforussinners: oh, ok

prayforussinners: maybe that would be ok

majorem-gloriam: the most important thing is to keep yourself and any children you might have safe

majorem-gloriam: if you ever have a chance to get out of gilead safely it would be easy for you to get an annulment

prayforussinners: ok

majorem-gloriam: nothing that's happened to you has been your fault. God loves you and He will help you through this

prayforussinners: i keep wondering if i should leave now before there are any kids so that i'm not stuck making sub-par decisions forever

prayforussinners: and then i think maybe i should just stay here and try to be a good wife but i don't know how to do that knowing that we're not really married

majorem-gloriam: it sounds like that would be good if you could do it

prayforussinners: yeah, maybe

prayforussinners: and then i worry, well, what if I leave and he thinks I was pregnant and he never knows whether he has a child out there somewhere, i don't want to do that to him

majorem-gloriam: if you have to stay there God will find a way to make it bear fruit for you. but if you can get to somewhere you can be safe and Catholic, and someday married in the Church and raise your children Catholic, that would be better for you and for them

majorem-gloriam: you could write to him, once you were somewhere safe, if you wanted

prayforussinners: yeah

prayforussinners: i guess he would probably believe me

prayforussinners: hopefully

prayforussinners: i think i'm legally allowed to walk out but I don't think there's any way to legally leave the country

prayforussinners: and i don't want to go to prison

majorem-gloriam: if you can get to a border state there are people who can help, I could put you in touch with someone. at least on the Mexican border.

majorem-gloriam: I don't know about Cascadia or Canada or Deseret but there might be something

prayforussinners: ok

majorem-gloriam: please let me know if there's anything I can do. besides keeping you in my prayers.

prayforussinners: ok. thank you so much <3

prayforussinners: i'll think about it

prayforussinners: do you think - if i go is it better to just go or to explain things first

prayforussinners: i keep thinking i should explain things or just tell him no and then i always get nervous about it and i never do

prayforussinners: i'm sorry i'm not thinking super clearly anymore

prayforussinners: thanks so much though, this has been really helpful

prayforussinners: i'll pray about it and see what i think i could pull off

majorem-gloriam: of course you're not thinking clearly, you've been through a lot

majorem-gloriam: remember you are precious to God. you have a duty to Him to keep yourself safe.message me any time, please.

prayforussinners: ok <3

prayforussinners: thank you again, father

[freedom-of-fanfic]

you seem to have some level of interest in voltron and the current fandom, while also having a seemingly good understanding of fandom history more broadly, so a question from someone with limited fandom exposure and only from tumblr, where it feels impossible to understand the grand scheme: what is the voltron fandom like, compared to other/past fandoms? are we large? more minor-dominated? is anti culture abnormally prominent? is there more or less meta? any thoughts on where we fit appreciated.

These questions are very interesting to me. Answers are from my personal experience only/reading I’ve done, though, and mostly anecdotal.

disclaimer/caveat that tumblr - web 2.0 in general - really changed how fandom looks in general to a degree that’s hard to explain. It raised its visibility to the rest of the world. it raised fandom’s internal visibility by giving lurkers the ability to run blogs without speaking up (just resharing the works of others) and by eliminating personal control over how far blog content spreads. I think it made fandom bigger than it used to be. and I think it was in just the right time and just the right place to sweep a lot of young people up into fandom just as internet access was becoming faster, more widespread, and more unsupervised/common for even young participants.

is voltron fandom large?

it’s hard to gauge the size of fandoms, particularly when there’s no central community with members to count or some such. It’s certainly active. klance is consistently among the most frequently used ship tags on tumblr and sheith frequently places as well (the two most popular ships in the fandom). In only 18 months, VLD fandom has produced 33,000 fics on AO3 alone - never mind other fanfic sites like wattpad and ff.net. Not counting multi-canon brands (Marvelverse, DCU, etc), VLD places 16th on a list of all fandoms by number of fanworks (on AO3). that’s … way active. ridiculously active.

compared with other fandoms, I’d say that its volume of activity to (likely) number of participants is high. For a cartoon that doesn’t air on network television, it also seems decently large (but this is merely speculation). However, it’s quite dwarfed by the megafandoms generated by live action movies (Star Wars, MCU, etc), which are usually spurred on by constant canon additions like cartoons and comics and books.

but for fun, and in a not remotely scientific way, let’s take a stab at the size of VLD tumblr fandom with some numbers-producing tumblr-based vld fan content.

the vld discourse survey, advertised on tumblr, has almost 1900 responses now. 554 of the responses are from people who count themselves as antis (about 30% of the fandom.) almost exactly double that number (~1100 people) signed the anti-run petition demanding character ages from March 2017, which was also advertised on tumblr.

let’s extrapolate, then, that if antis are representative of the response rate of all of vld tumblr fandom (I would guess pro shippers were less likely to respond, if there was a difference: in my experience antis are eager to get counted and shippers are not), half of the vld tumblr fandom took the discourse survey. that makes ~3,800 people who are actively participating in vld fandom via tumblr. (other active vld fan gathering sites are on 4chan, twitter, amino apps, and discord channels, with overlap between sites.)

is voltron fandom more minor-dominated? 

questions like these always get me wondering so I ran some actual numbers on this:

assuming this survey is accurate to fandom demographics - which it isn’t, because self-selecting surveys never are*, but it may have a rough correspondence - about 42% of the vld fandom is composed of people 17 and younger, whereas about 58% are 18 or older.

about half the fandom - 49.6% - are of an age to potentially be in US high school (14-18 years old), and about 40% of fandom is potentially the ‘normal’ ages for undergrad college (18-22 years old). 25% are of post-grad age or older (22+).

I’d guess this fandom has a high number of young members compared to fandoms for live action movies or comic books. But compared to other cartoons, I would speculate that VLD fandom has a higher percentage of older fans due to the show being a reboot of an older series, designed to appeal to anime fans (skews older than american animation fans), draws on the (LoK)Avatar audience due to being the same studio & part of the same creative team (older teens/young adult audience), and not airing on network television (smaller young audience). 

*if anyone is underrepresented it’s probably older fans, who are more wary of fandom survey results being misused and have less presence on tumblr compared to younger fans.

is anti culture abnormally prominent? 

yes. yes it is.

once again consulting the vld discourse survey (it has a pretty large response pool, okay?), 1 out of 3 vld fans consider themselves anti-shippers. (again: as a self-selecting survey these numbers may not be accurate, and I would guess antis are overrepresented, but still.)

I speculate this is because anti-shipping principles were peculiarly suited to ‘support’ klance and attack competing ship sheith. as 4/5ths of antis say klance is their primary ship, and sheith was the original target of anti-shipping (the rest came afterwards in response to claims of hypocrisy), this seems to be a likely motive for young klance fans who felt uncomfortable with sheith or jealous of perceived sheith support to slip headfirst into anti-shipping as a whole.*

(and vld anti-shipping is made up mostly of the youngest fandom members. the majority of 13-17 year old fandom participants are anti-shippers; the majority of 18+ fandom participants are pro-shipping. 64% of all anti-shippers are 13-17 years old and 32% are college-aged. the average age of neutrals falls between anti- and pro- shippers; pro-shippers are about 40% college-aged, 30% high schoolers, and 30% 23+.)

I also think the prominence of anti-shipping in vld fandom spurred the growth and popularity of anti culture in other young fandoms. it’s now somewhat normal for fandoms to have an anti-fandom ready to fight them from inception.

to be clear: vld fandom didn’t start anti-shipping, just made it more well-known as a phenomenon due to how widespread it is. and anti-shipping - which is mostly American, like English-speaking vld fandom - has its roots in more widespread cultural issues like the authoritarian movement in America/the West, Christian Dominionism, poor education,radical feminist ideology, mra/gg/4chan/alt-right argument techniques, and the extreme partisanship that web 2.0 promotes and exacerbates.

*anti-shippers will say this is reducing the important stuff they protest to a ship war. but no matter what antis believe they stand for now, it’s hard to deny that a lot of pro-klance antis got their start because of liking klance and hating sheith - you know. ship war material! - and looking for a way to justify their feelings. (you’re allowed to hate sheith and like klance without being an anti, by the way.)

does voltron fandom have more or less meta (comparatively)?

vld fandom is surprisingly alive with meta. this fandom loves to take canon apart down to its bones, making theories about future events, ship manifestos, character analyses, and more - and fandom spreads it around, too. meta can get hundreds - thousands - of notes. it’s quite beautiful.

this may be the silver lining of the prominence of anti-shipping. anti-shipping - shame culture, really - makes fandom hesitant to take creative risks because the chance of being harassed and shamed for doing something wrong feels high. people write less fic with risky premises, draw less fanart that isn’t fluff/neutral-toned, etc, because everything you do you also have to defend.

but man, it really makes the meta scene amazing. being forced to constantly prove that xyz has a canon basis, or isn’t problematic, or that a character did or didn’t do something, or explain why you like or don’t like x - or, if you haven’t had to actually argue, having to constantly think about it - has really whetted vld’s fandom’s appetite for meta - dissecting canon to find and share hints of weird story theories or future romantic interaction. 

and because meta directly references the text for its content, I think it’s the most accepted kind of fanwork in vld fandom. after all, you got it from canon. if you’re going to debate on anything, it’s as likely to be the canon itself as the meta.

hope you enjoyed this vld fandom snapshot. :)

[josephborrello]

Magnitude and Direction, Issue #31 | 19 Apr 2019

Notes

Yes, I know the header is another sans serif font, but it's a cool open-source one, as you'll see down in the Software section. --- Also, I've just launched a new portion of this newsletter, which takes ones of the topics covered in the previous day's issue of M&D and expands on it, with a little bit more of my own voice and opinions. Think of it as an Op-Ed column for M&D.  And, of course, another physics pun is involved, this one to reflect that point in time when you're still sitting in bed, grab your phone, open the article, and end up stuck in bed reading it. It's a moment when an object at rest (you) stays at rest... one could call it a Moment of Inertia. (So I did.)

Hardware, Prototyping, and Fabrication

 The sleek, geometric design of this industrial-modern table by Tyler Bell belies the intense craftwork that went into it. I just wish I had that much workshop space...  Is it possible to take out the Internet? (And are you wondering why I put this in the hardware section rather than the software section?)  The next time you think you're experiencing a home invasion, make sure it isn't just your robotic vacuum.  Boston Dynamics' first consumer robot is ready for the Iditarod.  My dad found this one: Etch-a-snap takes pictures and renders the image using a classic Etch-a-Sketch. As you might guess, these aren't 4K images, but they are definitely unique.

Software and Programming

CSSBattle is code golf for CSS code. Change the CSS code to match the design you're given, but try to do it in as few modifications as possible (hence the "golf" part).  Public Sans is "a strong, neutral typeface for interfaces, text, and headings" developed by the United States Web Design System (did you know we had one of those?). It's also this edition's header font.  "[i]f the Web should be 'a per­ma­nen­t, long-lived store of humanity’s in­tel­lec­tu­al her­itage… it needs to be in­dexed, just like a li­brary. Google ap­par­ent­ly doesn’t share that view.'"

Science, Engineering, and Biomedicine

🧠 Anatomists and evolutionary biologists answer the age-old question "what is the least useful body part?" 🥃 According to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, "whiskey" is any spirit that touches wood. As you might expect, this can enable you to get away with quite a bit.  To understand how people will react to driverless cars, those cars have to be, well, driverless. This poses some difficulties, however, since you can't currently let an autonomous vehicle roam around completely unsupervised. A compromise? Have your safety drivers disguise themselves as car seats.  If an organism has chlorophyll, it does photosynthesis, right? Apparently not always... ‍ What's it like spending almost a year in space? Depending on who you ask, apparently, it's either great news or a sobering outcome. But how can that be when the experiment in question was the same? Tomorrow's edition of Moment of Inertia will explore this phenomenon (and maybe also the outcomes of long-term space habitation), and what we can do to address it.

Mapping, History, and Data Science

⚰ I wasn't really sure initially where to put the Google Cemetery, since it's sweeping amalgamation of the tech giant's now-dead hardware and software initiatives. Ultimately, this stuff is a part of Internet history, I suppose, so I decided to split the difference and put it in this section. As a bonus, I challenge to you see how many of these products you'd even heard of before. I had used or heard of somewhere between 20% and 25% (RIP Google Inbox). 🦅🦆 Digitization has had an impact on numerous fields, from manufacturing, to marketing, and even birding - yes bird-watching has its own online, open data set. One of the things you can do with this data set is visualize bird migration patterns as they correspond to regional climates. Seen together, you almost wonder if the birds are responding to the weather, or vice-versa... A description of the data set can be found here.  These breakdowns of how the big tech companies make their money is extremely illuminating with respect to each one's business priorities. One big takeaway: Facebook either needs to do everything in its power to diversify its business model, or they're never actually going to change the way they do anything (despite what Zuck might write in his Op-Eds).

Events and Opportunities

There's only one event that really matters in the coming two weeks...

Sunday-Friday, 4/21-26 The New York Taste of Science Festival is back all next week with boozy lectures, interactive science fairs, and much more at a variety of locations around the city.

Tuesday, 4/23 The 4th Annual GRO Your Career life sciences conference will be at Columbia University (and yes, I am helping organize this event). A wide array of professionals from industries directly and indirectly related to the life sciences will be giving talks and participating in panel discussions, with lots of opportunities for networking.

Wednesday, 4/24 Scientists, artists, and everything in between gather together for the April SciArt Synapse mixer at the Peculier Pub.

Tuesday, 4/30 Derek Brand's next ECHO Bio-entrepreneurship meetup gathers together a cross-section of the NYC biotech community for the first get-together of the spring.

Thursday, 5/2 Falling Walls is a global lightning pitch competition hosted by the German Embassy in celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and featuring enterprising scientists and startups seeking to answer the question of "what will be the next walls to fall"? Their next New York event takes place at NYU's Leslie eLab.

Friday, 5/3 CUNY Startups hosts a bracket-style pitch competition where startups go head-to-head in a series of elimination rounds to see who wins the final prize of free access to CPGO Network, which provides a three-month capital listing on Castle Placement’s website, 100 targeted investors with contact information, and access to CPGO (Castle Placement’s proprietary capital raising app).

Some other upcoming events to keep on your radar...

May 3-5 MIT is holding their 2019 Grand Hack, one of the biggest medical hackathons in the world that has spawned several successful companies over its history. Applications to participate are due by April 17th!

Wednesday, 5/8 The Transit Techies meet up once again at Sidewalk Labs in the Hudson Yards for their eighth event.

Thursday, 5/16 The RobotLab meetup holds their next event at the heart of Silicon Alley with a discussion about the future of human-robot interactions.

Thursday & Friday, 6/20-21 The Biodesign Challenge Summit 2019 on June 20th and 21st at Parsons School of Design and the Museum of Modern Art brings together 36 teams from 9 countries to present their visions for the future of biotechnology. Use code SUMMITVIP115 for a free pass.

Map of the Month

 Follow the growth of NYC's street grid with Here Grows New York City.

Odds & Ends

 More stuff to play with in your browser. This time it's the Chrome Music Lab.