#I refuse to blaze posts but I really really want a lot of people to answer this because I am so very curious

[flawseer]

Mail Call #3

Answering comments from @void-the-bear @railway-lands @keabirb @ilikebookssomuch @chezgorman @cartoons-everywhere @dragonra305

Please don't hurt me. I have glasses.

Thank you, to all of you. It makes me genuinely happy to know that I'm able to put something into this world that other people can enjoy. I think this is a great setting that is fun to add to.

Doing a Wings of Fire-themed run of this Smaugust challenge has been very interesting and it's good that the result appears to be well-received. It's not always been easy, I'm actually getting quite exhausted having to post content on a strict schedule like this. But it is worth doing if it makes people happy.

Relating to my comment on this post. I probably will do it eventually, along with some other ideas I had that didn't fit in. But it won't happen while Smaugust is still going, as I am already skirting the limits of what I am physically capable of right now.

Ahh... hm... This is the question that has toppled mountains and started wars. You're going to get hit squads sent after me.

Well, there is the big one, of course. Qibli/Winter. They have such wonderful chemistry whenever they are in a scene together (with one pretty upsetting exception). And Qibli is always teasing him about being his destiny and the two of them getting married, so I think there is some attraction there.

Then uh... I used to feel completely ambivalent about this one, but Starflight/Fatespeaker has really grown on me over time. There's a lot of interesting potential there that doesn't really make it into the story. I need to make a long-winded post about Fatespeaker one day.

Blaze/Glacier is another one that could be cute. I think putting a repressed Icewing together with a highly eccentric and rambunctious Sandwing is going to be a winning combination most of the time. Or well, I guess I should say "could have been cute", since Glacier had to die for the plot, in a very wretched and infuriating way too.

There are a couple more that I think have their moments or could be interesting in one way or another. Some of them even contradicting or overlapping each other. Listing all of them would probably be a bit excessive.

Oh yeah, and I think Sunny is ace.

Ah, a question that'll make me put someone else's favorite character at the bottom of a preference list... After the shipping question I'm starting to fear for my life now.

Let me preface this by clarifying that I generally like all of the DoD. There are some characters in this setting that I loathe and wish they would exit the story, and the arc 1 protagonists are nowhere near that. So being ranked low here translates to me saying "Yeah, they're okay, room for improvement", not "wow, they're the WORST!"

Okay whatever, let's get down to it.

#1 - Sunny

That one's easy, I mean, just look at the pinned post on this blog.

Sunny is so wonderful and charming and perfect in every conceivable way, she is one of my six all-time favorite characters. She is the flower that blooms in the bitter desert. A lot of people may perceive her as this demure and innocent character who is always happy and friendly, and oblivious to the suffering around her. Nah, Sunny knows exactly what is going on. She is keenly aware of all the bloodshed, suffering, and toxicity that unfolds in the world around her. When she remains optimistic and forgiving in the face of darkness, that is not her being meek or passive, it's her steadfastly refusing to let that darkness into herself. She is actively embodying the change she wants to see in the world, even when it hurts her or gets her taken advantage of, because that is what she believes in and the future she will create.

That's pretty inspiring. I wish I had that kind of inner strength.

Also, she is not weak. While she's not a powerhouse scrapper like Tsunami or an invincible stack of bricks like Clay, Sunny strikes quickly and without hesitation when her friends are in danger, and can be deviously clever. This is often overlooked, but she is--to my knowledge--the only character to land an attack on Morrowseer that comes close to actually hurting him.

Well... you got me rambling about Sunny. Let's go through the others more briskly.

#2 - Starflight

I like Starflight a lot. Unfortunately the story really doesn't. He is like, the unluckiest character by far. I don't know what he did to deserve the never-ending cavalcade of misfortune that gets shoveled in his direction throughout all three arcs. Like, it never ends. A couple of friends and I came together and we jokingly called our group the "Starflight Protection Foundation", because someone needs to stage an intervention. Like, wrap him in a cozy sweater and buy him hot chocolate or something. Heaven help this poor man.

He's another one of my favorites.

#3 - Glory

Glory is really cool; I vibe with the "unchosen hero spurned by destiny" theme. She goes through her life and is constantly told "No, you don't have a special destiny. You're the fifth wheel. You are worthless and unimportant". Though she struggles with the constant abuse and devaluation, she eventually finds a way to turn it into strength and declare that the only value that matters is the one she gives to herself.

I really wish the story had NOT made her turn out to be a secret princess. "I was born without destiny, so I'm making my own" is a so much more satisfying character trajectory than "Oh, don't worry. You were born special after all, you just didn't know about it".

So yeah, I kind of tend to put that "secret princess" plot twist on the shelf when I think about Glory, and prefer to think that she managed to sway Grandeur with her skill and determination, rather than a random blood link.

#4 - Clay

Clay is very lovable. He is like the emotional bedrock of the group and acts as a stabilizing force that pairs well with all of the other arc 1 protagonists. He pretty much resolves all of his baggage in the first book and becomes content and steady. That is very good for him, but unfortunately this also kind of turns him into just some dude for the following four books.

Which is fine, it is good for the other characters to have someone behind them who loves them and helps them up when they stumble. It just makes it difficult for Clay to shine on his own.

#5 - Tsunami

Okay, so, Tsunami. I actually like her a lot in arc 1. She's bringing an interesting kind of energy to the group that is like, half-supportive and half-detrimental. Very chaotic. She also has to contend with some heavy stuff; everything to do with her father and the complications in her family life. It's very interesting. Lots of places to go with that.

Arc 2 Tsunami though, really grinds my gears. She regresses into this kind of juvenile, immature personality that is just pointlessly abrasive and confrontational. She acts really condescendingly towards Peril-- despite the latter having saved Clay's life AND it being really important to Clay that her staying at JMA works out well. Her borderline sabotaging this effort by making Peril feel unwelcome seems very dismissive towards Clay's feelings. It also doesn't help that she is the most outspoken about her loathing of Nightwing mindreading and prophecies, which drives Moonwatcher further into her emotional shell and makes things more complicated.

Okay, I have to reiterate: I don't dislike Tsunami. I just think her character arc is incomplete. It feels like she is stuck in arrested development while at JMA. She's mostly running around yelling at people, when she really should be thinking about what to do about Queen Coral, and how to get custody of her siblings. Her sister Anemone is carrying emotional scars from how the Queen has kept her leashed like a dog for her entire life, a process that is now happening to Auklet, even to this day. And then there's the 30 something children who have never known parental love for a day in their life and their mother can't remember the names of.

Someone's gotta step in and save these kids. Or like, at least start vaguely thinking about it.

Turtle???

Hmm....

...

Moose!

[copperbadge]

Have we found a tumblr replacement yet? Apparently the latest “live” shenanigans were the thing that it took to break me. I’m not trying to stir shit, I’m just mostly here for you and a couple other blogs, so I’m going wherever you go.

I wish, but unfortunately not so far. I mean, I've talked a little about how I'd like to find one but there aren't really any viable ones right now, and there may not be a fandom mass-migration for years still. I'm more likely to follow the crowd than blaze a trail in this case, so it may be some time. For now my only real tactic is to simply not engage with staff or support at Tumblr in any way, and accept the changes as gradual steps towards the site's demise with as much serenity as I can muster.

I've already accidentally opened Tumblr Live twice while trying to navigate the app, which I'm sure is intentional, given I've now suddenly opened Tumblr Live twice since its inception instead of Zero. Relatedly, I would love to see them redirect that passion into making the "Mute Notifications" button actually work, but mine is not to reason why.

Anyway. There are options available, like obviously there are other social media platforms, but none have quite the combination of "easy to use" and "has a lot of people on it" and "Offers the same functionality" (photo and video hosting, an app, etc) even with an "ease of use" and "functionality" that are as crap as Tumblr's.

For example, Dreamwidth is great, but it's a Livejournal code fork so it's a very different format from Tumblr, more labor-intensive to make and share posts (no reblog function, image embedding can get a bit complicated, etc). CoHost is new and very promising but a bit of a ghost town right now -- I'm there and I've had a bunch of people find me there but still exponentially less than are on Tumblr. Pillowfort I still need to re-investigate; I'm there as well but it's been a while since I looked in, and I was struggling with the functionality previously. I had a look at Mastodon, but as positive as decentralized servers could be for the future of social media, I actively dislike the idea, and it also seems difficult to set up and complex to maintain. Discord is....there, and a lot of fandom stuff has shifted there, but its structure is very different and it's also decentralized, and also I hate it passionately and refuse to use it, so that's a no-go for me, though I suspect it's where fandom might end up.

If you're struggling with accessing tumblr directly, you might consider feeding the blogs you follow to an RSS reader -- I know people who do that and find it pretty functional, because then if they want to comment they can just pop open the specific post and deal with it directly. I don't know how much you know about RSS and I don't have the energy to fully explain it right now, but NetVibes is a pretty decent free RSS reader and it's what I use for certain blogs outside of Tumblr.

In any case, if I do find a place, or if I see the migration beginning, I'll sound the alarm :) In the meantime I'm still reading through my tumblr, stashing away posts to save off when I leave, even if that'll be a while.

[akiyamastar]

Hi guys, I am back on the Chiaki tag. Yes, I'm analyzing him again and sort of picking up on a point I mentioned in my last post.

I think there's an interesting divide in how Chiaki acts in front of the other Yumenosaki graduates versus the rest of Ryuseitai (yes, even Kanata). He has this serious, no-nonsense personality that he tends to conceal in front of Ryuseitai, because he needs to act like "Ryusei Red," but this other side leaks out more in front of the other graduates. You can see this clearly in stories where he isn't interacting with his unit.

Chiaki's more complex than people make him out to be, especially if they don't know a lot about Ryuseitai and think he's some dense hero. In reality, he's an extremely perceptive person. This is a given, considering one of the main roles that he imposes upon himself is to read the emotions of the people he cares about, so even if he comes across as brash and pushy, there's this indirect sense of "I need to look over them and make sure they're all okay." His pushy, energetic personality disguises how he discreetly tries to read into situations with startling accuracy, defending the people he loves most.

In fact, he was so perceptive that he refused to let anything bad happen to Ryuseitai anymore after the events of Comet Show, thwarting Gatekeeper's move to try to alarm Madara of the false information that Kanata had been enshrined as a god again during Submarine.

Moreover, I'm of the opinion that Chiaki knew that he didn't do the best thing by reclaiming the leader role, but at the same time, the reason why he did so makes more sense in the context of the situation; he is trying to make Ryuseitai last at all costs, and he won't let the corruption of the idol industry take them down. While Chiaki does have a problem with taking things on his own, something that gets on Tetora's nerves and leads to that growing tension depicted in the prologue of the Universe story when he punches him, Chiaki's intentions were very much calculated. Chiaki is constantly reading the situation and emotions of the people around him to make the next optimal move that can help others.

While in front of Ryuseitai, he feels the need to be this "beacon of light," as symbolic as the blazing red sun that is the essence of his role as Ryusei Red, this facade is something that he is only keeping up because it's his "idealization" of himself. It is what he had originally wanted to become in Meteor Impact, and now that he finally has the power to become a hero in others' eyes, Chiaki partakes in this "fake it until you make it" act where he acts like a competent hero in front of the rest of Ryuseitai. It is to the point that his unitmates may admire him, but don't see his true self, marked with hidden insecurities of never being the main character of his own story. It is something that I really wish was explored more when Chiaki mentioned to Tetora how he wasn't that cool senior he tried to make himself seem to be. (Tetora and Chiaki's dynamic is so important to me if you haven't noticed by now.)

Essentially, Chiaki's personality is outwardly boisterous and passionate, channeling out his love for heroes and tokusatsu, but inwardly, he is extremely critical of how he enjoys such things. He also may seem like an unrealistic fool who views everything through the lens of tokusatsu, but he's also too realistic for his own good. He just thinks he'll seem like "no fun" if he shows that in front of Ryuseitai, but he does show his seriousness more around the other graduates.

I think an optimal example of Chiaki's more serious side was displayed in Shu's gacha event story centered on the graduates (Astraea's Atelier), specifically with how Leo and Chiaki interacted there.

Leo is generally a very playful and often unpredictable person, and you might initially think that this would go hand-in-hand with Chiaki's energetic personality. This isn't entirely a false assumption; in Red Hot Island (the water park gacha story) the two of them got along like two peas in a pod with their enthusiasm for the trip. (Their dynamic also goes so hard, btw.)

Nonetheless, there is a key difference between the two that shows a lot about Chiaki's character: while Leo tends to cope with problems by becoming increasingly more unpredictable and erratic in his personality, or isolating himself when he can no longer do so, Chiaki tends to shrink back and start showing cracks of his serious self when encountered with something grave, putting a halt to the energetic act rather than dialing it up.

This is why Chiaki is more likely to become suddenly realistic and even slightly irritable if people aren't taking things seriously when it matters most, which you can see when Chiaki sometimes shows a bit of annoyance for Leo's antics when they go too far in Astraea's Atelier, since he thinks that Leo isn't taking the situation of a stranger invading Shu's place in France seriously enough. Which is something I kind of love considering I wish we saw that side of him more.

Here are some examples of their interactions by the way (all translated by @/nia_narqissa on Twitter):

I recommend reading the story in all honesty since in general it reflects the graduates' friendships and how they interact with each other (and it's really funny).

I find it really interesting that Chiaki actually does seem almost hostile to Leo at some points in the story, something that might seem strange at first, but makes a lot of sense if you consider the fact that this aspect of his personality has always been a part of him; you could even conclude that it's very likely that he just swallows emotions like anger, but feels them just as much as anyone would.

In the end, however, the two do understand each other and I'm honestly really glad that they're interacting more in recent gacha stories.

I do hope to see more !! stories like this one where we see more of Chiaki's serious side since I think it's really interesting, and maybe even more on showing himself more to the rest of Ryuseitai because he is just human in the end. I think those are all my daily Chiaki thoughts for today. (I am very normal.)

[psychspark]

It's just so indulgent now? 👀

okay okay okay okay so. I have a character that I'm currently doing a run of bg3 as, her name is Ashtyn. She's romancing Lae'zel. It's going great. She's an ancient historical figure in my personal dnd setting and her backstory quick style is that she was the first aasimar and Tiamat is SORT OF her mother and she introduced dragons to the material plane. her backstory is modified to fit better into bg3 but she's still like. Tiamat's daughter, basically, which to ME makes for some really juicy like. there's SPICE in certain interactions. Technically she is responsible for Wyll 1. losing an eye 2. being a warlock. Mizora shows up and is like 'hey girl hey'. Qudenos sees her in act one and is like "kin? you're kin?" Ashtyn's deal is that she just recently refused to be Tiamat's chosen anymore so it's a lot of her looking at the other companions like '?????? STOP PUTTING SO MUCH STOCK IN THE GODS THEY SUCK'. She's very awkward and cagey and lowkey evil and. I've been thinking about posting little vignettes about her and talking myself out of it because what if people think it's cringe

Anyway below the cut is an excerpt from that doc:

“Karlach. Keep an eye on him, would you? Oh – and Wyll? Don’t forget. Our pact still stands. And you,” Mizora turns to Ashtyn, eyes blazing curiously. “Your mother dearest asked me to pass on a message-” Mizora is cut off by the blood hunter’s wild lunge at her – she disappears in a puff of smoke and reappears a few feet away – Ashtyn didn’t even graze her. “Tut tut, I’d ask where you get that temper but I know already. Anyway, she wanted you to know she can help you with the tadpole if you would only ask.” Ashtyn’s chest heaves from the force of her breathing, smoke billowing uncontrolled from her nostrils. Seconds ago all eyes had been on Wyll but now she is the focus of the campsite. It takes her a second to realise that it’s not because of the smoke, but because of her wings. Her wings must have appeared when she lunged. Any sort of elemental disaster could erupt if she opens her mouth now, so Ashtyn keeps her lips sealed together and gives Mizora the most hateful look she can muster. Mizora laughs, and Ashtyn burns. “Oh pup, you’ve found the most exciting company. Ta-ta!” The devil vanishes. Wyll roars in despair, Karlach clearly yearns to hold him, and the rest stare at Ashtyn in varying states of awe and fear. Gale has already figured it out. “By the gods, you- your mother is-” “Do not speak her name.” Ashtyn snarls, lightning crackling past her lips as she does. She can’t control her body – her wings are still out. She’s been told her eyes are a wonder when she’s like this – flashing blue-green-white-red-black in an endless, random cycle. The fires of Avernus are reflected in them too, she knows. In the corner of her eye she sees Karlach looking at her – really looking, and sees fear and hate and betrayal there. Wyll, too, looks at her like she’s a monster. And Shadowheart. And Gale. All of them know what she is now. Not Lae’zel, though. Her eyes shine with unhidden respect. Perhaps that’s the worst of all – Ashtyn knows well the deal her mother made with Lae’zel’s people and Lae’zel’s own aspirations as well. Ashtyn wants her darling’s strong arms around her, whispering away Tiamat’s influence and threading a new purpose into her heart. Too overwhelmed to contemplate a sensible thing to say, Ashtyn spreads her wings and rockets into the sky, unable to endure the scrutiny she’s suddenly being held under.

[rosetheocto]

hi!!! i wanted to ask about your thoughts on what should be changed in eeveelution squad!! ive been thinking about it a lot recently and ive seen you on the tag from time to time and i wanted to know more about what you think!!

OOOOOO there’s a lot of things actually!! This is kinda long and all over the place tho so uhh have fun with that!! :0

if you want me to elaborate more on certain things or have a point make more sense just send another ask my way lol

No CC. sorry to whoever made her but she SUCKS and I don’t like her. Her backstory makes no sense even in an AU and she’s just. very overpowered lol (also her and Gai have no chemistry)

speaking of ships with no chemistry: Lazuli/Speed/Silvia. theyre all so toxic to each other and Speed has shown clear disinterest in them both for nearly the whole comic. They only got together in the end cuz The Fans Wanted It, completely ignoring stuff like Lazuli/Silvia kissing Speed during a PTSD flashback without his consent. I can go on and on about how much the romance in this comic is bad but I’ll be here all day lmao. I may make a rant about them all in another post in the future

TLDR for that being: most speed ships suck (I see him as aro tbh, Stella was an exception), Black and Pearl also suck but not as much, I’m glad Crystal didn’t get with Trace

Leaf needs more personality, tbh all the girls do. Like seriously name one female character that doesn’t have any major ties to a guy. like even Sunshine has a love interest in Axel and they’re 3/4 years old

I wish the berserker lore made sense. ik EV made it overly complex to Spite The Haters or whatever but I just don’t really get it half the time. in terms of unique stuff ES has like those and the Coastal Eevees or the timeline resets it could’ve been handled a LOT better and made more sense

(and I know the Journals have more info but I’ll get to those in a sec)

Shade just sucks as a villain and you can tell he was rushed to give the finale a proper final battle (Special 12B wasn’t meant to be the finale originally if you didn’t know that)

(If I were to make a final villain to ES it would’ve been Alan but that’s just me lol)

there’s way too many characters and most people can’t even tell the slight differences in appearance as well as I can. like there were people mistaking Blaze (Pearl’s mom, Flareon with the hair swirly thing) and Mollie (Triplets mom, Flareon with a leg missing) as the same person for a while and that isn’t really good for design and story stuff. and like there’s so many characters that show up once and never again until you find out that They Actually Had A Bunch Of Story Relevancy You Didn’t Know Until Just Now! (Shade)

and looking at the drafts for the After Story it doesn’t really answer any questions and just made things more confusing?? and there’s also stuff that I just. refuse to accept as canon. Speed would NOT abandon his daughter for years just cuz “he wants to explore again” yeah he may not be the best father figure in the world but CMON :((

AND SPEAKING OF THAT: there’s way too much Journal only content, which is fine if the average reader knew about all those journals. The stuff from those should’ve really been incorporated into the story sooner, cuz most stuff that’s been established in journals for years only got to shine in the comic at the very end

Those are all the major things I can think of really! If you read this far, then thanks!! I have a lot of thoughts on this comic lol

[carmenthabaddie]

I am putting me first and others last. And lots of sleepless nights me working on me and blood , sweat and tears. I refuse to be in same spot next year. Finally having success and spiritual abilities help me so much.

I recently few months ago learned about law of assumption and always knew about witchcraft and African traditional religions since teen years. Wish in 20s new about all 3. But at 31 least I know now and can tell other black women. The black church is keeping blacks behind and take advantage of black women. But each to they own.

I really want to document my glow up level up and show us we can overcome anything or anyone. I’m gone cross post on social media and research on be better content creator who has success and followers and real encouragement. It takes baby steps especially since I’m on budget. But I’m abundant and money grows on trees. And my sp David loaded with money and Virgo and I’m a libra. We both love money and luxury and helping blacks. Beyoncé said best revenge is your paper and she is Virgo too.

I am gone start spending less. But do cluster lashes, basic pedicure, face wax and acrylic nails. My budget can only afford that currently. I got hella wigs hold me off and clothes and makeup. So will be more strict saving money and plan meals I spend lot money groceries shopping 😫😫😫😫 Help. I’m shopping addict. Lol But I can overcome anything especially with my future baby daddy on my side. ❣️

I’m doing good with house chores and less time off social media.

I want to be a singer so 2024 more singing along on Spotify and YouTube Music lyrics. Eventually learn lyrics and do songcovers.

2024 I’m executing my plan. And small progress is still progress. But be accountable of my habits. Especially bad habits.

My law of assumption coach is amazing and helped me a lot. And affordable and trans. My therapist is nice.

My family still dysfunctional but I stay myself and say shit to piss them off. Kill them with kindness. They fake that’s why I’m be blessed and not them. Most them need therapy but it’s taboo in our community sadly and I want to change that.

Does paying for blaze help reach people? I really want a successful blog on here. I think I typed this post clear.

What’s good hashtags to reach more black women? I want to work with black women.

My goal for this blog is least one blog post a day.

Was this post interesting to read? I really like to have success somewhere on social media.

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 26: Hero and villain glued/chained/otherwise stuck together and begrudgingly cooperate to gain their autonomy (part 2)

Looks like you guys get a second post from me today, because I was reminded that I had missed a fairly infamous story back when I looked at the "hero and villain trapped together" episode. I hardly need an invitiation to bitch some more about Ken Penders, so let's take a look at the final main story arc from the Knuckles the Echidna comics before they were cancelled, King of the Hill.

I'm not quite sure what this cover's supposed to be saying. "No guns allowed"? Why didn't they just do what E.T. did and give Hunter a walkie talkie instead? :P

This story featured Knuckles having to deal with two new antagonists who wanted to tear him a new one: a human (or Overlander, if you prefer) hunter named... err, Hunter, and a purple gorilla... or monkey... named Monk.

I will now pause for a moment so you can all get your laughter out of your systems.

I know, I know. But let's not forget (as was pointed in an Off Panel strip I sadly have not been able to find) that the Sonic the Hedgehog series is full of silly names. The speedy hedgehog is named Sonic, the two-tailed fox is named Tails, the spiky-fisted echidna is named Knuckles, the pyrokinetic cat is named Blaze, and so on. But don't worry, Mr. Penders will give us plenty of other material to shake our heads at in this story.

The story kicked off when Monk, Knuckles' childhood bully, returned to the Floating Island looking to pick a fight with him. And considering why he'd been missing from the island for years, it's hard not to blame him for being pissed. Look, don't get me wrong - bullies are a massive problem and often ruin people's lives. I was bullied when I was younger, and it can do terrible things to your self esteem. But check out this flashback of how Knuckles' father and grandfathers decided to deal with Monk back when he was bullying preteen Knuckles.

Jesus Christ, Ken! This is how you portray your so-called heroes?! Knuckles' father and other ancestors, the ones who supposedly knew best and had all the answers?! Monk looks like he was still a teenager at the time, and for the crimes of (refers to notes) stealing Knuckles' yo-yo, bear-hugging him, and tossing him out of a tree, the cabal of mysterious grandpas just sentenced him to death?! I just... they go from hiding in the shadows and leaving Knuckles completely alone to... this? One of the memes most associated with Locke is how he microwaved his baby because he had a bad dream, but I feel this decision is just as worthy of mockery. Robotnik invades the island multiple times and tries to steal the Chaos Emerald? Meh, it'll be fine, Locke clearly doesn't need to do anything about it. But a teenage gorilla steals his kid's yo-yo? That is apparently worthy of an execution party! As Bart Simpson would say, "No offense, Locke, but your half-assed under-parenting was a lot more fun than your half-assed over-parenting."

Anyway...

Before the fight between Knuckles and Monk could be resolved, our other new antagonist showed up. Easily knocking out Monk, Hunter invited Knuckles to join him and his new captive aboard his ship, where Knuckles found out just how passionate of a hunter he really was.

Man, I can't believe Sonic the Hedgehog got his head cut off by this lunatic. :(

It turned out Hunter was looking for a challenge, and decided he wanted to hunt both Knuckles and Monk for sport. Knuckles initially refused to cooperate, but reluctantly agreed after Hunter threatened to shoot a photo of his girlfriend, Julie-Su.

Monk and Knuckles were ordered to wear special collars and to run for their lives, but quickly found out that the collars would shock them if they got too far from each other.

Knuckles led Monk into the hidden sewers of Hydro City, hoping to shake their hunter, but he managed to track them down via their footprints. They managed to hide overhead in the pipes and tried to lay a trap, but when Knuckles lost his footing and slipped it set off their collars. Monk didn't handle that very well.

Alas, poor Monk, we hardly knew him. No seriously, we really didn't. Anyway, Knuckles got so angry that his chaos powers went off and...

Is that supposed to be blood coming out of Hunter's hands? I guess they couldn't show red blood in an all-ages comic book, maybe? That's the only way I can make sense of that panel.

Anyway, Knuckles and Locke stripped Hunter down to his underpants - for some reason - and locked him up in an underwater bubble.

Actually, Knuckles raises a good question. How does he eat in there? ...or go to the toilet? ...oh god. I really hope my second question wasn't the answer to my first question.

This storyline gets a lot of criticism, and rightfully so. The story itself isn't really engaging to me, and back when I read it for the first time all I wanted to know was why I should give a damn about this stupid purple gorilla who used to beat up Knuckles when he was a little kid. And of course, there's the lack of unoriginality from this whole story. Aside from the characters' dumb names there's also an undeniable similarity between this Hunter and a certain other well-known Hunter, from the Spider-Man franchise...

...as well as this story likely being inspired by the novel "The Most Dangerous Game." Oh, and there's this panel from part two of the story which James Bond fans may recognise from The Man with the Golden Gun:

Weird, but at least it's not as cringey as that time he traced Anthony Mackie's face for his Lara-Su Chronicles project. But anyway, this was the last story Ken Penders got to tell in the Knuckles comics before they were cancelled. It didn't really seem to throw him off though, he just ended continuing telling them as the backup stories in the main Sonic book instead. Sigh.

I'd like to finish up tonight on a positive note though, so here's a shoutout to the person who reminded me that I'd missed this story, the superstar that is Aleah Baker! A former contributor to the ArchieSonic series, Aleah wrote for, coloured, and designed characters for numerous issues before the series' cancellation, with her most well-known work probably being the fan-favourite Spark of Life arc that she wrote for Sonic Universe #71 - 74.

More recently she coloured Jon Grey's alternate cover for IDW Sonic issue #50, and the two of them made it look gorgeous!

Aleah is an awesome individual, and it is nothing short of an honour to know she's been reading my rants. :)

All right, that's it from me for tonight. As I said in my post from earlier today, next time I'll be looking at times in ArchieSonic when the hero was kidnapped and it was the sidekick's time to shine. See you then!

[alligatorjesie]

Hey @watchingtheearthrise

What’s this tag look like to you?

This stupid prick really had the audacity to basically say this:

And still thinks I’m in the wrong because I refuse to back down when I impolitely tell Anti assfucks to get the fuck out of the tags They Posted In.

Now I know you’re going to try and clamber up that high horse and tell me ’Just block the anti tag and move on’ but it’s going to be pleasing to watch it buck you the fuck off when you learn I’ve had this discussion before and I’ll have it once more:

I don’t want to block antis. I want to tell every single one of them to get a fucking hobby and to fuck off and out of the tags they’re harassing people in.

I enjoy doing this.

Reaming Anti assholes is as much a cherished hobby as any other that I put my entire horse sized cock into. Just as much as dick as I put into art, plants, carving, sewing, braiding, or your father.

Also this part is making me rollin' man:

First off like I give a single fuck about your baby fweewings regarding DNIs.

Take your own fucking advice and don't interact with shit you hate.

Second and most fucking importantly;

What a ignorant fucking child you must be to not understand that when you block someone any comments you make on their posts removes themselves.

I don’t have to do jack fucking shit.

I don’t remove comments, just like I don’t block people because I'm not a fucking pussy Anti who can dish it out but not fucking take it.

I fucking despise the-pretty-corpse as a person since they're a anti-reylo finnrey who likes to send death threats to reylos, but I will give them the credit where credit is due because they at least take the fucking punches.

I love to fight and argue.

Why the fuck would I remove a comment? I am blazed out of my fucking mind right now but even still I know how basic coding works on this hellsite well enough to understand when you block someone any comments you make on their posts removes themselves and you the blockee become unable to comment further and since you blocked me The Fucking Instant you clicked on the post it removed itself.

You removed your own comment the moment you blocked me @watchingtheearthrise.

Go on now kiddo. Unblock me, comment, then block me again and see for yourself.

So not only are you an anti, but you're also a fucking moron.

I mean what's the difference anyways?

Anyhoo, I feel like I bitch a lot in these tags and I thought I'd give something to the poor reylos who have to read my bullshit on occasion.

Here ya go enjoy some of my dumb reylo artwork.

It might be a repost. I don't fuckin' remember I'm high. Love you guys. Keep up the great work.

[ladycharles]

I love your music! I'm glad you blazed some of your posts because I may not have discovered you otherwise. It's interesting because I wasn't sure I'd like it at first as my musical preferences lie closer to the realm of metal, posthardcore and pop punk, but I adore all the synths in your music, the visuals in your music videos, and the cleverness in your lyrics. Actually, some of it reminds me of Gerard Way's solo album Hesitant Alien and I think that's why I enjoy your music so much.

An element of your art (which your music videos absolutely are) especially resonates with me as I am also nonbinary and it's very validating and comforting to see someone else being their authentic self and to be reminded that there's really no rulebook to gender-nonconformity. Thank you for sharing your music and I wish you the best as your journey of being an artist progresses!

Thank you so much! 💖💖💖 It is so true, a lot of people want to put us in boxes but if you follow your own path it is so much more rewarding.

I used to go to punk shows a lot in Toronto (RIP Soybomb) so while I am not super knowledgeable on the genres you mentioned they hold a place in my heart for sure - it's cool that you connect with my music because I feel like there's a lot of secret influence from post hardcore, pop punk, etc. Those shows had a big effect on me and some of the bands I listened to around then (Infernal Arms, Fucked Up, Horse the Band, Billy Talent, Refused) definitely influenced me in big ways!

Also serendipitous that I saw that Gerard Way album the other day while looking for album cover inspo and saved it because I thought it looked cool but haven't listened yet. I will have to do so!

If you have any metal recommendations btw I am all ears, I really barely know the genre.

All the best and hope you'll stick around for the new album! 💖

[bee-dazzle]

I think this clarification is really important. We are at a point where users have been really poorly treated by many sites and so I think it is understandable that a lot of us are very wary of change, especially in this direction. We are here because we like it here.

After using tumblr more regularly I have all but ceased using Facebook for anything but checking if somebody is hosting an event. I've moved entirely to here and to Discord otherwise. Because other platforms are hostile and barren and have nothing I actually want in then, just nasty skinner box doom scrolling mechanics. This one feels full of real people. I want that.

I have never paid a cent to Facebook and refuse to click their ads for a number of reasons, whereas here I have PVP bought dashboard creatures and checkmarks, and blazed posts specifically to annoy my friends, or to show as many people as possible a picture of my pets snoozing.

We get it, the infrastructure to run a website takes money. More users leads to more load leads to more expensive infrastructure leads to a more urgent need to monetize. That can be very hard when you have eroded your value proposition in the name of bringing in more users. Please. Focus on us.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[the-firebird69]

Our waiting for the video to pull up on Trump trying again to get immunity where it does not apply we thought

He mentioned that he is guilty of several crimes and he admitted them on TV you said that he committed fraud already and everybody decided to put some put them on some sort of trial.

-he's standing there but seems like forever because the computer is sitting there trying to load and they're messing around a simple process so I posted in a separate Tumblr cuz he's got the computer up what the supreme Court decided

-it's a lot of decisions being made about what to do with you guys here within a qualified to make the decisions or not they're doing it because you are a stinkers and losers and mean and you're just idiots going around in circles not accomplishing anything except for ruining what they've done for years and that is coming up and that topic quite a while they're going to ask you because of it I'm pretty hard it's happening today and I went through a bunch of you not that many and started evictions they're going to begin a new pretty soon and large numbers of them in Charlotte county in Florida all over the world really and we're going to begin doing it too reducing teams out to arrest you when you start breaking the law

Thor Freya

The more like a pouring into the tunnels they've eaten up about 5% of their population remaining they'll probably go for another 5% tonight. There's a whole number of things that they're doing wrong one of them is they're not tracking the robots and they put them all over the place and it makes it easier for people to grab them those different parties are grabbing them and they do take the hardware and software out and Trump hits the silicon about a year after they already made them. He's a massive bum and a loser.

-we do have more to say the sun is just pleased with the treatment and wants you people to shut up and get often and you refuse and you're driving around saying all those dumb crap you said stupid crap about his idea it was your idea you're saying you're the inventors and our son said so let it roll tell people that and you have to tell me I guess and got into a lot of fights and big fights too and people are coming down on them telling them just to shut up and he doesn't say anything all the time and here you are screaming it and started a big fight and yes bja and Jenna are going to step down before the elections well no they're playing on sticking it out and they found Trump snickering and toadling and laughing and he says no you know and it changes things in a sense is no that's not how it works but so you said laughing and said okay how does it work cuz you trying to take my apartment key and everybody's trying to kill you and they are killing your people until they can get to you and got hit because he turned around and started blabbing other people picked up on it and started hitting him he's going to be a wreck and he's going into a couple movies and people are going to beat him up and bring him down what are the movies is going to be Mick ultra and that's after I am the cheese and before Superman and Doomsday and Batman and it is going to be a hell of a fight they're going to kill each other and Trump is going to get decimated and he will be attacked by Brad for what seems like a month of solid attacks and finally Trump kills Brad and his client gets Trump killed and in Tunis and it's over all sorts of dumb things but there's a lot going on there's a stuff called fire and there's several warnings today about the woods out there being dry and a part of it caught fire and they're putting it out and it's happening intermittently all over the place if you figure it out it's only a quarter of the place but it's going to be a blaze tonight I'm planning on sending 20 more now there's only 100 households and actually we said 110 but he's right we said it was 100 but it's not. And they're going to go out there and we think that people get hurt it's not a real smart thing to do but that's what they're doing. And the other side are getting as many people together by this next morning they will be weaker than kittens we're looking forward to that but the max are going to strike tonight and they're going to hit the morlock because they're going down into the tunnels and they're going to trace it down and hit where they're coming from and they're going to hit a lot of them it's going on tonight. You're going on he's more like going north with a huge Force and it will be there momentarily it is gigantic it's too big they're going to get their asses handed to them and they'll be up there in a couple hours everything is going to start in a couple hours and we're going to hear from them screaming and yelling and their AI boy and we can care less if they keep saying this stupid and they're hilarious looking people by the way they look like really dumb and so dumb that you really want to stop them from being near you and Dave was trying to do that he didn't look so smart either but he was squished it down and he was diminutive for his size our son is a child and he looks a little bit odd too but not that odd he says that you should have him drive your car because it affects and really John remillard will go after this like a shark after a seal our son is really only about 5 years old and that's his head and his brain and his body is about a 3 year olds and he's like that guy the mask to you guys when you're actually mature and he's not very bright but our son is a lot smarter than you are it's just as smart as Mac and Mac is always surprised but really he's an underage driver. They also say he has a disease and not supposed to drive around no that doesn't matter... Tell me to see what happens there

-my son and daughter actually says he thinks it was her and it was and she came and mentioned that some guys using a money order and then he can combine a reference number and the money order number and we'll try and place the cash that they use and force them here that's what it all means and some people sent thousands of dollars. It's not a grant or a will and you can make a will that's what the living will is you're alive and you're saying that this person can have this truck if he starts a pool company and tries to do it for a month at least. John son says that's a great idea and he's going to make pools that are like beaches at the house and you wait into it and you can have a little wave thing and title pools and is going to take Trump and give him a consultant job in the company name will be Beach bum so people might try that but there's some big wigs doing it and they have a lot of their troops doing it and it's all kind of on the same line there's maybe 20 major groups. . Two of them are foreigners and they're going to try and get it going for real.

We had trillions and trillions today way too many to mention they're doing it and they say it's cold from their end and they're trying to get stuff together to become powerful

This function is causing people to get into the game and we needed it very badly and it's forcing us to sign on is a giant movement

Couple more things

-I don't appreciate you dragging me around and our son and a cheapskates still going to drag you around and take all your money one effect is most of the people that use the checks they're trying to trace us down and they are getting very messed up they're not going to make it... We found one group but sent out the same code 27 times from 27 different locations all them within three states there's a big group a couple hundred million letters all the more money orders sent to our son so they're saying Jim Morrison you want to go there area and close people off so they're going to try and get Jim Morrison there and take it for a ride for everything is worth and it's not Justin he's not doing it either a lot of people are saying wow and it is that way that's incredible stuff

We're going ahead with what we're doing now and we are getting stuff together and we're moving out but there's a huge amount of stuff happening these people are nuts they're going around doing dangerous things and we don't want them near our son they're idiots they get killed once or twice a day each it's over they're r forces are going up and are diminishing very fast more and later

Thor Freya

The panel idea has taken four companies are trying to make them for specific cars mostly Mercedes BMW Audi cars with bigger motors and some of the American cars mostly Camaro Corvette charger Challenger there's only a couple sedans the Kia sedan the big one that our son had but the high performance version and you know there aren't many more that they want to do it too and our son said the high performance speed shops could try and order the panels for supercars no it's for the hypercars and super cars to make them more impregnable and even different rating for a fly car with some different panels so there would be a couple levels and they're going to try and look into it but we have four people doing it for a regular cars there are several people who are looking at their trucks and wondering if they could do it and our son says the truck with a high performance package of an increase in horsepower and talk to and some torque and it's true and could pull the weight and it's actually probably a wiser thing in SUV a large one is better than a small one but so many people have the small ones that have actual power it's about the explorer sized. The reasoning is that you can carry stuff and it won't get destroyed or destroy you and is more chance of it surviving cuz they do in case it so they figured out something it's pretty Sharp and they are going to town on it and it says don't forget to make an enclosure for the gas tank and they laughed and said that's a good idea that you can provide answer your shielding for your motor and such it's simple stuff on the inside of your grill and put a louver that's out of steel or even out of the metal and they agree so they're going to go ahead and try and make these packages and they're getting excited because they do understand what he's saying you're going to be making these and you're going to make it so many they also need vehicles with right now their vehicles are getting destroyed and our son and daughter say that we build those and we're interested in that and they want to talk to us because we can build them fast and we pretty much have to no they're building them as fast as they can and it's just not fast enough and we need that kind of thing for a little bit of heat and the max we're doing that to us our entire life and I'm going to put it forward is it been a very valuable talk and we hope to do more later and yeah he's itchy again

Thor Freya

Olympus

Wow you mean I can walk up and buy a truck from you and our friend says you have to use a little more caution than that that we're going to talk about it with certain people and we are going to sit down and discuss it and she probably have a show car show equipment show you can have a smaller one so it's not ridiculous and he says a big one isn't bad it's true too the question is where and Max is laughing that's a good question and our son says Florida and it's a joke but it's not big probably in California and it's a good idea and to have a car show because our cars have the metal on them and most of them have a rating of eight or nine already and their standard cars and you're going to go around armor in your cars for no reason except you can armor them more with titanium panels or titanium alloy I'll give you about a 12 or 15 so they're thinking about it now

Thor Freya

Olympus

[mrsmarymorstan]

Co @shayberri789 #ill report them as i see them bc i do not think flooding staff is a good idea #theres very few of them on the team and millions of users ads and issues they deal with daily #i worry that flooding staff will achieve the opposite of what you rly want op #they'll certainly be aware but itll just take them even longer to sort through #idk #but i will keep an eye out

Okay, so I can't exactly speak for OP here but I feel like it needs pointing out that A LOT OF US in this community are really sick and fucking tired of the weekly PSAs we have to give out for these god damn fucking adverts. It's not just the occasional one. It's not just Blaze Posts. It's the banners that we can't ignore! It's the fact that not even disabling autoplay stops them! It's the fact that people are being PHYSICALLY HARMED from using this website and despite the NUMEROUS TIMES we have made people and staff aware of this problem NOTHING has changed!

And it's not like if the "flooding" works it'll be a Mishapocalypse type scenario. There'll probably be only the same 6 people giving a shit as always. We fucking KNOW the majority of this website don't give a flying FUCK about Photosensitive people because otherwise it would be actually SAFE to go into the "Epilepsy" tag and not have it be filled with strobes.

We'd be able to say "Into the Spider-verse's use of strobes lighting effects presented an ableist narrative" and not be accused of being racist or over the top or just not plane UNDERSTANDING that some things just aren't MEANT for us!!!!

If you look at OP's blog, this arose because Tumblr stole their money when they refused to Blaze their previous post pointing out double standards in media. So I don't blame them for wanting to cause a bit of fuss and make things DIFFICULT for Staff.

This isn't about wanting one or two adds taken down, it's about never having to deal with them in the first place and the whole POINT of a direct action protest is to MAKE THINGS INCONVINIENT!!!!

So yeah. No. I think OP has the right idea.

I'm tired of being polite. I just wanna go Ape Shit.

TL;DR : Please report any adverts or blaze posts you see that contain flashing images to tumblr.com/support 

After my blaze post about disability access in media was rejected due to reasons ungiven, I got in contact with Tumblr and pointed out their irony in rejecting my post but continuing to promote adverts that contain dangerous levels of flashing imagery, high contrast colours, and glitch effects. 

They told me to screenshot/screen record any of these adverts I saw and report them to tumblr.com/support along with the approximate date and time and the website they redirect to. 

Of course, for Photosensitive people who have been forced to witness these adverts, this sort of thing is nearly impossible. How can you have the wherewithal to report an advert whilst suffering from a seizure or migraine? 

This is where Allies come in! Please can you collect any and all adverts you see that contain flashing lights at a rate of 3 Flashes Per Second or higher/Glitch Effects/High Contrast Colours? Then, on 26th March (Epilepsy Awareness Day) I suggest that we all send these adverts in on mass! It’ll help to get our point across that this is a REGULAR OCCURRENCE that affects an entire community of people, and hopefully we’ll be able to enact some actual change to make this website more accessible for disabled people! 

If you are seeing this after 26th March, or worry you’ll not remember to do so by then, fear not! You can send the posts to Tumblr Support year round! It’s just useful to have a date to organise these things around for maximum impact.

Keep reading

[anonym-potato]

The Entire Main Cast of Stranger Things are Autistic have some headcanons - Part 2!

Sequel to this post.

Erica:

• Blunt as hell about everything at all times and will not apologize for it.

• Hates it when things touch her face. Specifically her face, she couldn’t tell you why.

• Learned to read way before every other kid in her grade and holds it over their heads.

• She didn’t actually mind crawling through the vents because of their size, just how dusty they were. She likes small spaces, they’re good for hiding in, but dust is the devil.

• Shares her brother’s distaste for strong smells. Unlike him, she just out and out told Steve his cologne was gross (he did stop wearing it, but Lucas was still grumpy with her)

• Refuses to believe something is ‘different’ about her because that makes her like her brother, who’s a huge nerd. And she’s totally not a nerd. Totally.

• Overalls…comfy. Good pressure stim.

Steve:

• The only one of these folks who actually has a diagnosis (and that wasn’t a sure thing, it was the 80s), so everyone always asks him about the ‘right’ terms for things, but he doesn’t care.

• Mimicmimicmimic, it makes peopling easier. He honestly didn’t realize he was being an asshole until Jonathan beat the shit out of him, and then he felt like garbage for a while.

• The hair routine is the Same Every Day which is Good. It makes it easier to have that sorted out every morning.

• Has the uncanny ability to turn literally anything into an impromptu stim toy. Gloves? Textbooks? His mom’s nice vase? In Steve’s hands, they can be stimmy. He even only chipped the vase instead of shattering the whole thing.

• The Scoops Ahoy uniform is made of the most itchiest fabric to exits GET IT OFF ME-

• Makes popcat noises all the time when he’s thinking.

• He’s used to acting like he doesn’t need help or support, because his parents expected this to be something he could ‘get over’, so he has a bad habit of saying he’s fine even when he’s really really Not.

Nancy:

• High compassion, low empathy. It can make social situations difficult even though she has a decent grasp of subtext and sarcasm by now - are you being stanfoffish because you’re tired? Angry? Upset? Please tell me so I can respond appropriately.

• The steryotypical ‘gifted’ neurodivergent kid who blazed through everything in elementary school and had to learn how to study several years later than everyone else.

• Sun Too Bright. Must Wear Sunglasses At All Times.

• She’s the first person in the group (after Joyce) to advocate for saying something if you need help. They all have to fight monsters and graduate school together, this extra mutual weirdness is nothing. Steve nobody minds if you need to go lay down because you have no people charge left you big doofus.

• On that note, she Steve and Jonathan have been competing to find The Comfiest Jacket Possibly for years now. She found the current top contender and is very proud of it.

• Has used the same kids shampoo that smells like strawberries since she was five and hasn’t changed it since because it’s part of the routine.

• Hyperfocushyperfocushyperfocus. She doesn’t know how to stop doing the thing when she feels like she has to do the thing.

Jonathan:

• Is always wearing jackets because everything ever makes his skin mad and it Sucks.

• Eye contact is the worst thing in the world and making it is impossible sometimes. He just looks at people’s chins and hopes they don’t notice.

• Was less willing to compromise himself to appease Lonnie and got a lot of shit for it, but never said anything because he didn’t want to ‘bother’ Will and Joyce. He’s very used to bottling all the Gross Feelings up until he can’t hold them in anymore and it is unsurprisingly bad for his mental health.

• Music is so sounds you guys, it’s the best to rock to, you’re not moving Dustin are you okay?

• Special Interest in photography, in case it wasn’t obvious. He and Will have spent many an afternoon infodumping back and forth.

• Leg bounce. Always with the leg bounce. He’s a fan of thumper, okay?

• There is a Routine, you stick to the Routine, it is important, wait what do you mean the plan has changed NANCY WHAT-

Robin:

• Really struggled with verbal language as a kid, sometimes talking just Doesn’t Happen, she learned ASL but didn’t know anyone else who knows it for a while. She’s now teaching it to most of the others.

• She tells Steve about it after they get the job at the video store, and she expected him to be cool about it but he was all ‘Oh yeah me too!’ And it was the best feeling.

• She also found the Scoops Ahoy uniform unbearable itchy and she and Steve had a post-Fourth of July bonfire in which they burned them.

• Cracks her joints all the time because the popping sound is Nice.

• Special Interest in linguistics, she likes to joke that language is her best friend and worst enemy.

• Super sensitive to patterns, she can figure out people’s schedules with freakishly little information. It’s kinda scary.

• The social battery has very limited capacity. If you attempt to speak to her after work, you are lucky if you get a response that isn’t just her middle finger.

The adults will get their own post.

Update: it’s here!

[lestwritewhilewaitingforajobcall]

The Odd Rumble of Thunder - Thor x Reader

(A/N)

Hey guys! I wanted to personally thank you all for the kind comments and messages, they really inspire me to continue writing more and the support truly means a lot! Also, I just found out how to access post replies, I apologize I haven’t gotten to reading them since my first story, I’m still trying to figure out the gist of things here on Tumblr! Anyways, recently I’d only been posting more on Poseidon, so here’s a special one for our Norse god of thunder (aka the god I simp for the most). This idea came to me while out on a camping trip, I hope you guys enjoy it! Feedback would really be welcomed and appreciated!

This is for entertainment only. Record of Ragnarok belongs to Shinya Umemura, Takumi Fukui and Ajichika. I also do not own you, the reader.

The Odd Rumble of Thunder

Thor x Reader

Even before the news spread like wildfire, Thor had become under the tyranny of a good habit to bringing his wife with him wherever he may go. It stood to reason that he would never be so careless to invite you over to danger, hence why, at a god’s ephemeral notice, he had stopped seeking direction for his combative side, but when, at last, he had to venture, he made much quicker work of it than when he would have otherwise.

Inarguably, if you’d wanted to lay down and rest instead, it was a surety you’d receive your meals in bed, unbothered. But for Thor there was no guarantee he’d ever have to worry about you, so the whole of Asgard knew by now he’d drop whatever he was doing to accompany you, uncaring about diplomacy in the first place.

Not that Odin nor Loki minded either; especially since the Allfather knew more about the concerns of a father expecting their first child. Moreover, Loki enjoyed shapeshifting into his cousin during days he was absent. It was much more fun to cause mischief legally, as he would say.

Today, Thor stood by his wife who sat comfortably in her rocking chair on the porch, allowing a full view of the hills that sloped gently down to the grand gardens. You were seven months along, approaching the eight month, the swell of your stomach now far more prominent.

At the very moment you had begun to show, you had a companion of whom would almost never leave your side, your husband’s absence in the kingdom gradually becoming more frequent, more lengthened, till at last his presence among his people became an exception. Despite your constant reassurances that you would be fine, Thor insisted on staying, casually sweeping aside your thoughts regarding his habitual sense of duty.

“I would only be gone for nine months to tend to my wife and child, they should fare well on their own lest they are more incompetent than I would’ve thought.” Thor had told you once before, and you’d decided not to question him further on that. You understood your husband’s concerns, to be truthful, you had a few of your own as well, so having Thor assist you alleviated some of the stress and worry concerning your child’s safety.

Especially now that you were nearing your due date. For instance, you were having the toughest time moving, suffering primarily from the weight in your belly and pains in your back and legs that made walking and even standing difficult. What made the physical strain worse too was your child’s eagerness to know you and Thor both, unable to stay long in one position, much like their father’s enthusiasm for battle.

“How are you feeling?” Thor’s question rested upon a rather precise calculation of the last time he had asked the same only a short moment before. It was quite visible in his actions that he did not want to cause any negative feelings if he could help it, though desiring you to avoid stress as much as possible.

You smiled. “Come close. You’ve been standing there for ages just ogling at me.” You opened your arms out wide. “Are you not tired?”

Truth be told, despite Thor’s constant need to remain close to his wife, he felt a real, undeniable fear of touching you, specifically, your abdomen. He closed the distance between until he was right in front of you, staring down at you with hard eyes. Longing leaped like a flame reaching out in his celestial yellow orbs.

“Love, I am always grateful for your concern for me. And I am feeling much better just knowing you’re beside me.” You raised yourself up, pushing against the chair to try to stand. Thor rushed forward, held you then put his hands under your arms to lift you up. Your child was growing fast. “But how about you? How are you feeling?”

You inched closer, your fingers playing with the locks of his hair that you could reach. “Aside from the stress of waiting, I’ve noticed that you have something else weighing on your mind.

“Tell me, what is it?”

At the sight of you through his warworn eyes, his mind was filled with bliss. For that loving glance of yours, he felt a divine presence and holy atmosphere that seemed to pervade everything around you. Having an inkling of what you were hinting at though, he broke your gaze, in an attempt to avert the guilt you conferred on him.

“Please. We’re in this together, I would want nothing more than to help you back as much as you’ve helped me.” Thor felt you shift in his arms, get more comfortable. He felt the bulk of your child across his legs, the weight no doubt pulling you down. Seeing you in pain like that, was sad and unbearable, and the gnawing feeling grew stronger. And since he knew you were always so full of strength and determination, always unrelenting in your attempts to make him feel better, he began,

“I am afraid.” Red eyebrows drew together.

“Afraid of what?”

“That I might accidentally hurt you and our child,” Thor took a deep breath in then let it out in a sigh while taking a step back. “I do not want that to happen, even if I want to be at your side at all times. And this frustrates me to no end.”

Thor did himself a favor by giving attention to anything other than his wife, refusing to be a witness on the sadness and any he may have caused. Dealing with his own disappointment was nothing new, but he had trouble dealing with the fact that he was the cause of yourpain. He wished he could take his troubles which escaped, hanging in the air, and all the bad feelings on himself and let things continue as they were, but he knew it didn’t work that way. You needed to know that he only wanted you and your child safe and protected, even from himself.

He could not understand how the cosmos could play such a cruel joke on the both of you: you, bore so much pain because of one of the greatest affairs of life, and him, the strongest deity in the Pantheon, was powerless against the natural laws of existence.

Strong shoulders slumped, head bowing as stray strands of red hair fell over Thor’s brow. Not again. He did not wish to be reminded of the cautious sympathy his father and cousin had approached him with. His stomach lurched whenever the subject of your frailty came up. Dread and a terrifying fear overwhelmed his soul for the first time, the thought of losing you−

“Hey,” Your voice which lingered on the gentle breeze brushed against Thor’s face, pulling him out of his stupor. He refocused, turning his gaze onto your sweet face.

How were you able to hold yourself up well despite your obvious pain and suffering? Did you not bear the same nervousness as he did? The answer was obvious, practically screaming in Thor’s ears but became deaf following his guilt and clouded instincts. For a long time since you’d first told him about the news, he bore these worries in silence; but when at length he’d been perplexed by your introspection−or seeming lack of it. Why, in fact, did you concern yourself with him at all? Compared to you, there was hardly any threat to his own life posed. Why had you always done more to make him feel better when you were the one who needed it most?

Cutting through the haze he found himself in was the shape of you, or maybe your hair billowing in the wind, a wisp of it across your face, and then suddenly the feel of your skin, the sense of your head on his chest. Even if it were fleeting, that alone brought him the possibilities of comfort that he’d so needed. Oh, how he missed this; you cupped his big callously marble hands around yours, caressing them so tenderly, as if he were fragile and might break, so short it could never be pulled back.

As he relished the warmth of the blaze you gave him for the winter of unease, he’d realized much sooner that the coldness that inched its icy fingers up his spine still threatened to battle your kind words, you, his very own wife, and he detested himself for being unsure whether or not it was of his own doing; was he pushing you away when you’d only wanted to offer your help?

Thor’s immediate impulse was to pull back from you, abruptly halted by your fingers which slipped between his now splayed hand. You wrinkled your nose in a delightfully unguarded manner that caused his breath to hitch in his throat.

“Do you remember the first time we said our vows?” If only you knew the way Thor perceived you: in his eyes, your radiant smile reflected the morning sunlight of Valhalla, for a split second picturing the moment you’d walked down the aisle, that headpiece on your head instantiating the paradox of mystery that once lifted revealed your beautiful face, marking it the best day of his long life. Something warm bloomed in his chest once again and spread its heat out through every vein in his body. He remembered the smooth feel of the veil against his cheek after sealing your promise with a kiss, his lips parting with a breathless sigh.

“Your hands caressed my fit of nerves with light, tender touches and then inspired me with hard, passionate embraces,” With effortless ease, you lifted your intertwined hands to your mouth and kissed his knuckle. Thor watched with great admiration your every move, the desire to distance himself was now but an afterthought. Nothing would ever separate him from you when all you’d ever done was pull him closer than ever.

Then, you sought out his hand, kissing his palm as he stroked your face. You clung onto his arms, gripped at his chest as if you were searching for warmth, as if you needed his touch, and much like him, couldn’t bear to be even an inch away. His mind was still slowing its racing to let him mutter something in response, so he allowed himself to be entranced by how smooth and sure of yourself you were, with nothing to mar the calm serenity of your features. Your smile seemed to be a natural adornment, the utter gentleness in your eyes, reminded him of every morning when he woke up, he would see you by his side, as well as your sleeping snoring face. Right at that moment, the silly scream finally made it to the deaf god’s ears:

He was your haven,

The place you called home and went to find peace.

As Thor immersed himself in your smell, your sparkling eyes, he felt the excruciating cold all melt away in your warmth. No more seeds of doubt with which to sow and seek his destiny. Slowly, he began to see his surroundings from a keener point of view, realizing, then appraising them: from the passing wind your hair messed which he pushed aside, tucking it behind your ear, to how his sash seemed to fit him better indeed, rather than cling onto his skin even tighter as brutally as it had done before. He noticed the minute changes since he’d last taken a good look at you months ago: a little flusher on your skin, lines around the eyes a little deeper, a little increase in body temperature.

He pulled you closer, his actions not arising from calculation instead led by instinct. You let him take more of your weight, your belly pressed against his stomach as you sighed, his fingers working wonders on massaging the muscles that had been much abused in carrying the baby’s weight. A sudden wrenching through his sash struck Thor’s heart and had him holding his breath.

The baby had moved, and he’d felt it.

Bending down, he buried his nose in your hair, closing his eyes as he drank in your scent. Your arms wrapped around his back as he connected in this loving embrace, feeling his heart beat in rhythm with your own.

“Our child would no doubt love to be enveloped in their father’s safe arms,” With a light, gentle touch, your fingers ran through Thor’s hair, making him shiver with delight.

On that day, only the beautiful gardens of Asgard became privy to nothing more than a moment in which husband and wife reached for the same comfort and their concerns met. These gardens were simultaneously the very same place where Thor had first avoided the problems that plagued his mind, but also became exactly the same place where he’d find solace in the arms of his lovely wife.

Resting his hand on where his child was, he recognized that familiar feeling turning up, but upon realizing the bittersweet irony of and within these gardens, the revelation came to him: happiness could also come from the very object of fear.

And as you had an unmovable trust in him, there was an unspoken mutual understanding that he too, should put his trust in you.

[shadow-academic]

Sorting Star Trek: The Next Generation: Part 1

I first discovered the Sorting Hat Chats through @wisteria-lodge’s excellent posts about Elim Garak and Julian Bashir, and they’ve also done a good writeup of The Original Series’s Power Trio (and Scotty), but I haven’t seen anyone do The Next Generation yet, so here I am! I intend to Sort the whole TNG cast, but that’s a lot for one post, so I’m going to split it into multiple parts. 

A more detailed break-down of the system I’m using is right here, but the basics are these:

PRIMARY (ie MOTIVE)

BADGER ~ Loyal to the group.

SNAKE ~ Loyal to yourself and your Important People.

LION ~ Subconscious Idealist. Ideals are linked to feelings and instincts.

BIRD ~ Conscious Idealist. Ideals are linked to built systems and external facts.

SECONDARY (ie METHOD)

BADGER ~ Connect with the group. Make allies, work steadily and well. Be whatever the situation calls for. If you find a locked door, knock.

SNAKE ~ Connect with the environment. Notice things. Tell people what they want to hear. If you find a locked door, get in through the window.

BIRD ~ Collect skills, knowledge, personas, useful friends. If you find a locked door, track down the key or try to pick the lock.

LION ~ Be honest, be direct, speak your truth. Either the obstacle is going down or you are. If you find a locked door, kick it in. 

Worf, Son of Mogh

Worf is perhaps the most straightforward character in the whole show. A Klingon orphan raised on Earth (in Minsk. Minsk.) by adoptive human parents, Worf held onto his Klingon heritage by adopting a Klingon code of honor. Even when he meets other Klingons, almost none of whom take that code quite so seriously, Worf holds himself rigidly to his system, checking every choice he makes to make sure it is honorable. It’s honestly the clearest Bird primary I’ve ever seen.

Worf’s secondary is also very clear. When faced with any problem, his first instinct is to charge in, phasers blazing, mek’leth at the ready. He is unflinchingly honest in all things. He’s got one of the loudest Lion secondaries in the whole franchise.

Lieutenant Commander Data

Bird primaries have a constructed system that they check their decisions against to determine whether something is right or wrong, whether it is constructed by them or something given to them wholesale, and I think Data’s ethical subroutines definitely count as a system that was given to him wholesale. But the ethical subroutines aren’t the whole of Data’s Bird primary. Data is constantly questioning the world around him, trying to understand what humanity is and what it means to be human. He is constantly gathering data (pun not intended) and evolving his system to account for it.

Speaking of gathering data, Data also has a Bird secondary. His knowledge is vast, and on the rare occasions that he lacks an appropriate toolset for a situation, his android brain can learn one very quickly. In short, Data is the Double Bird Spock can only dream of being.

Dr. Katherine Pulaski

Dr. Pulaski doesn’t get nearly as much screentime as her crewmates, only lasting for one season, but I honestly really like her character. She was very obviously conceived as “female Dr. McCoy”: an older down-home Southern doctor who wears her emotions on her sleeve and is brutally honest. But does she house-match him? Well...yeah! Like McCoy, she will go out of her way to help people because they’re people. The best example of this comes in her one and only focus episode, “Unnatural Selection”. (I’m still salty about the fact that not only is Pulaski in only one season, but it’s also the shortest season due to a writer’s strike.) Captain Picard believes the risk of contagion to his crew is too great to help the crew of Darwin Station, but Pulaski refuses to abandon them, because those are people down there. So she ends up beaming one of the patients into a shuttle where the only people aboard are her and Data (because he’s immune to disease) and even though she gets infected and has to be rescued by Chief O’Brien doing some transporter technobabble, she does solve the medical mystery of the day and saves whomever she can.

Speaking of Pulaski and Data, let’s address the elephant in the room. The thing that Katherine Pulaski is most infamous for is her being an enormous dick to Data in her earliest episodes. That’s very much a Badger primary falling into the trap of dehumanization, just like McCoy with Spock, but the big difference in the dynamic is that Data is not Spock. Spock can answer McCoy’s snark with snark and it’s incredibly entertaining to watch, but Data is far too innocent and earnest for that, and it just comes across as Pulaski being mean. But what all those Pulaski-haters pointedly ignore is that Pulaski goes through some really serious character development over her limited screen time. When she gets to know Data, she stops dehumanizing him, and indeed becomes one of his biggest advocates. In the episode “Pen Pals”, when Data has the personal issue of the day, it is Pulaski who argues most fervently in favor of helping him, because Data is their crewmate, he is their friend, he is a person. Pulaski even comes to believe in Data’s personhood in ways that Data himself tends to dehumanize himself. When Data explains how he cannot feel emotions, Pulaski’s like “Really? Because your reaction back there seemed pretty emotional.” Pulaski continues challenging Data throughout her screentime, but she goes from being dismissive of him to asking Data to challenge his limits in ways he hadn’t even considered.

As to Pulaski’s secondary, she has the same uncompromising Lion that McCoy had. She is going to charge in and make sure people get the medical attention they need, and nothing, neither Captain Picard nor getting infected with a fatal illness herself, is going to stop her. (Yes, I’m bringing up “Unnatural Selection” again. It’s just the best Pulaski episode.) At the beginning of “Unnatural Selection”, Counselor Troi even straight-up calls her out as being almost too dedicated to her work as a doctor.

Dr. Beverly Crusher

Speaking of doctors, let’s move on to the Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise for the rest of the show. Beverly Crusher is also a Badger primary. Her priority is her patients, and her patients are anyone who is hurt. She doesn’t care about the context; she sees someone hurt, so she charges in to heal them. (That’s her Lion secondary, too.) She’s very straightforward: charge in and heal people, no matter the consequences, which can honestly cause problems, because on multiple occasions, she ends up doing something like violating the Prime Directive, which Picard then has to call her out on.

Crusher: “I couldn’t just leave them there!” Picard: “Why not?”

The fact that this exact quote is an exchange they’ve had multiple times is, I feel, very telling for both of them. Picard knows that the rules exist for a reason, but Beverly’s not gonna let a little thing like rules get in the way of helping people.

Beverly’s also doing a spot of modeling; she’s got a Badger secondary model that comes in the fact that she kind of holds the role of “everybody’s mom.” Beverly is a caring, nurturing, maternal figure not just to Wesley but to the rest of the crew as well. But it is a model; when the chips are down, Beverly’s first move is to Charge.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Captain Picard is a phenomenally eloquent man. He’s downright famous for his speeches about how humanity can be better than anyone gives them credit for, about standing firm to ideals in the face of adversity, about never hesitating to do the right thing. This shows that he’s put a lot of thought into his own moral system; I don’t think a Felt primary would feel comfortable putting so much thought into examining their morals just to articulate them better. Picard sees value in the systems of Starfleet and the ideals of what Starfleet is supposed to stand for, and his Bird primary has incorporated them into his own personal system of what is right and wrong.

Like Kirk, and indeed like all Captains, Picard has a solid Lion secondary model; a natural necessity of the job is the skill to make snap decisions and judgment calls in the moment, and he’s quite good at them. But he only uses that model when it’s absolutely necessary. Picard’s preferred method of problem-solving is to trust in his crew. When faced with a problem, Picard will call a meeting of the senior staff and possibly the odd relevant specialist like O’Brien, and ask for their input on the issue at hand. What we’re seeing there is a Badger secondary leaning on the strengths of his community.

I’ve every intention of doing the rest of the crew at a later date, but this post is already very long, and I want to do more research (read: watch more Star Trek) before I tackle the rest of them. So, to sum up:

Worf: Bird/Lion Data: Double Bird Dr. Pulaski: Badger/Lion Dr. Crusher: Badger/Lion (Badger secondary model) Picard: Bird/Badger (Lion secondary model)