#I'm holding out for a bluesky invite

[filmfreak1994]

I keep saying I might be more active on here now that twitter has imploded itself but I don't know if I have the interest in Tumblr to commit.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I just came fifth place in a raffle of only four people.

I'm in a discord server of artists and their regular customers who are moving from twitter to bluesky. Thing is, bluesky is invite only, and new users only get one invite code per week, so the mods on the server agreed to hold a raffle so the invites would be assigned randomly instead of just to friends. For weeks I've languished while other people were chosen, and today it came down to me and three other people with three available codes.

Guess who drew the short straw.

C'est la vie. Somebody has to be last, so it may as well be me, right? This means I'm the only person who doesn't have a code yet, so the mods tell me that the next one is mine, gauranteed, that settles that! Well, wouldn't you know it, just then a brand new member joined the server, and the mods told me it wouldn't be fair to just give the next code to me, so the raffle is back on between the two of us.

TAKE A WILD GUESS WHO LOST THE COIN TOSS.

This is not random.

This is on purpose.

They're fucking with me.

You know what? Fuck em! If they didn't want me to join their fucking cool kid's club, they shouldn't have invited me onto their discord server in the first place! They shouldn't have bothered with the fucking raffles if this outcome was rigged from the start. What did I ever do to them? I don't even know half these people. I was mutuals with exactly one of them on twitter, I've bought commissions from ten or twelve of them over the years, I tip well, I don't make weird demands or act entitled, I haven't stepped on anyone's toes, I don't derail the server conversations, so why am I being singled out? It feels completely fucking arbitrary.

This isn't fair!

[bks-blogs]

How's it goin', my dedicated pups? Danuki here!

I want to apologize for the sudden absence. Real-life stuff related to mental health slowed me down from work (Due to my pet human's anxiety), and thus I have struggled to regain to my creative footing since then.

If you haven't been following my social accounts recently, I have made announcements early last month about plans regarding future trending parties, and future plans for the 101DS community, and I think it could prove to be beneficial if we work together on pushing 101 Dalmatian Street's relevancy and popularity to a larger audience. In 2024, I'm constructing a foundation for the 101DS community, expanding our efforts on how we support the show. 🐕🐶

Starting off with Announcement 1:

I have opened a 101DS fan-group on DeviantArt that will be part of our fan-campaign "Save 101 Dalmatian Street": Save101DS!

Users there can post announcements and updates like Fan Events, Trending Parties, Art Events, Fan-Content, Fan Projects and so forth. I believe this will be a kickstarter to our efforts to build 101 Dalmatian Street's popularity! You can go ahead and give the website a visit, and if you want to be contributor, an admin, co-founder (As long as you have the experience), our door is always open! We'll send you an invite right away!✉️😊

Announcement 2:

Future 101DS Trending Parties will be handled differently this time around. Starting now, I no longer plan on hosting trending parties exclusively on Twitter. Instead, we'll be holding future trending parties broadly for many social media/art websites. Our goal is to reach out to many users (Whether they heard of 101DS or not) across the internet, and we cannot rely on just Twitter/X alone. I'll be giving more info on how future trending parties will be handled soon in due time, so look forward to that.🚂🏢💻

Announcement 3:

This one is more urgent and has to do with Twitter's current state. After hearing uncertainties about Twitter's future, I must implore you folks of the 101DS community to prepare a smooth migration to safer social websites when the time comes when it seems like Twitter is on its last legs. So, I ask of you 101DS fans to create backup accounts on alternate websites like Threads, Instagram or the Bluesky app (Whichever one you think is best) and ask your followers to do the same. As part of the community, your safety is my top concern, and I know some of you are worried about the state the Twitter. Whether or not you still want to stay on Twitter is up to you, but I'm speaking for all of us when I say, we need to make preparations to make backup social media accounts.✈️🚋💼

Announcement 4:

I have many projects in Danuki's Dalmatian Studio planned and certain creative ideas to share for the 101DS community for 2024, which I believe will help bolster our movement to support. You remember that during our Jan 2nd-3rd 101DS Trending Party, that I made an announcement for a 101DS series project that I plan to create for tumblr featuring the three main characters Dylan, Fergus and Hansel. Meanwhile, I will expand my outreach to the community through more social/art accounts. As such, I will be building 101DS fan-content on my Newgrounds, Threads, Giphy, Tenor, and my Bluesky account so you can stay in touch with my work!🎨🖌️📝

(Check out my alt-tumblr blog 101dsproject2024 for more information about the upcoming tumblr series)

And that's about it for the announcements! I hope you'll take all of these to advice, and I hope you're all looking forward to what spot-tastic surprises I have in store for the 101DS community for this year! And thank you so much for taking part in the Jan 2nd-3rd 101DS Trending Party! It's been fun as always. Until next time, my dedicated pups! Peace!✌️

@atomiccartoons @disneytva @mandareeboo @msitubeatz @adrigummi @alioks-blog @aapaperbag @carlycmarathecat @cadpig101 @doglover502 @egonoidea @fenrisarts @ghostindeedee @higburger @incorrect101dalmatians @jayofthetrees @julie-ghouls @kit-c0re @notsoblackandwhite101 @polarpace @rahitoshi @rainbowchromatic @stoatfloat @straysketches @themilesfox @t00nified @versailercat @xfangheartx @yatesmal91 @brinnyart @samtheangelfox @cachicabra @chelledoggo @dramatic-disraeli @derektahki @aquarellewolf-blog @hyperaura @deadyoung45 @steelsponge @avalanchesparkgrenade @101dalmatianstreet @natedraws @retroartpup @julie-ghouls @mariakarmakova @mnmarsart @ratrrriot @marylikesstuff @marieecarlat @ninjaaa-go @pawreadingpup @sk4w-ro4r @aquarellewolf-blog @mel-toons

[kharmii]

Meta Liberation Army Fandom Drama

There's no safe word in the Kharmii dungeon today, so expect to get it raw and hard with a touch of the 'tism. Someone once told me -might have been @feldkommandant that Asian fans generally keep to themselves because they don't want to deal with Western world fandom drama. I just experienced the worst example of that in action. It's the reason I wrote this post about stuffy old ideologue fangusfungus throwing out a DAMN FUNDIES!!1!1!!! rant.

DISCLAIMER: This is going to be R-18 rated comedy. If anything in this post makes you feel uptight, turn off your device and touch grass.

-So I was a happy lurker watching a bunch of Paranormal Liberation Front fans participate in this Strawpage thing, which appears to be a site where artists crank out quick gift art in the form of loose sketches. It's not something I'd ever participate in because it takes me forever to finish anything. A couple of Asian artists were invited to participate, and they pretty much right away became victims of antishipper ire. They were so rattled that one artist might have set their page to private, and another deleted all their shippy art, even if it was as innocuous as hand-holding.

Side note: This is all speculation btw. I'm an observer trying to make sense of it.

-So Fungs did their rant, and I posted something on their page that they promptly deleted but then reposted as a cap:

0% of antishippers are 'right wing white supremacist Christian fascists' or whatever. I'm not intimidated by those titles because I am an iconoclast who can't be pigeonholed. Right wing people have found me just as offensive.

Also, there are two reasons why it was completely absurd of this person to assume I was to blame.

1.) I'm not a sniveling cowardly rat-faced leftist twat who tittle tattles over petty bs. All those people are supposedly over on Bluesky, LOL!

2.) It would be counterproductive of me to harass Asian artists into going incognito when the whole point of my blog is to obsess over stupid crap and then post related artwork constantly. Right now, I've got the MLA in an iron fist and don't plan on letting go for a very long time.

One of the artists who went private made a 48-page labor of love devoted solely to the underutilized character Trumpet. I'm confused about why antis would target them, but those people are fckn nuts, so who knows?

They were the artist who did this btw, the illustration book about Trumpet AKA 'Cunty Flowergarden'.

The other targeted artist might have offended the crazies doing ReDestro x Shigaraki, which is like a 50/20 ship (my best guess), but it's not as if minors were involved. I'm sad I didn't save more of their work on my computer. All I have is this:

After putting Trumpet through the wringer, I have an idea for a sequel (not really, this is my muse being a smartass). One of the advisors in Skeptic's Carmine Regiment has a brain reprogramming quirk. While they have Trumpet strapped down to a chair with his eyelids taped open, ReDestro tells them, "Make sure he never questions Meta Liberation Army ideology again. Also, make him think we are a couple, and that he blows me under my desk on demand."

Next thing you know, my guy is walking around with a perpetually vacant smile on his face saying stuff in a hypnotic tone like, "Hail ReDestro! Meta Liberation Army until I die!" The above artwork is the new and improved Trumpet.

Anyway, I thought me and Fungs were on the same page. He also did a trans Shig AU. I almost made Shigs trans in Trumpet's Trauma, but that would have crossed a line into being too gross. If I'm going to spend my valuable time writing a 10+K word gooner fic, it can't be too gross. It has to be something I'd want to read if someone else wrote it.

ReD is acting like the proper bootlicker, but he's hard pressed to keep that phony act up. He's sort of wishing he let Shig kill him the day he lost his legs, but he has one of those 'Do It For Him' pictures on his desk with adorable photos of Geten taped to it.

There's also hyper-sexual man-whore Trumpet:

-But then it's like....aaawwwwww......AAAWWWWWWWWW.......

I preferred the fanon head canon where Dabi can't eat because his internal organs are too damaged. -Or maybe that's what is going on here, but poor hapless Dabi keeps trying.

Moving on......back to the drama.

1.) Christofascism isn't a thing in fandom because 100% of antis are emotionally immature minors or twenty-somethings who most certainly will have 'pro Palestine' in their profiles with all their stupid pronouns listed.

2.) Damn right I'm straight! I might be a twisted degenerate perv who writes fan fic of guys getting shellacked by other guys, but that doesn't mean I should be lumped in with the sorts of people who spread Monkeypox in rest stop bathrooms or who walk weirdos in dog masks around on leashes.

Side note: Do Asian women feel the same way? -Like do women into fujoshi culture consider themselves 100% straight but just like to see cartoon boys being cute?

3.) I'm def not a 'terf' because that stands for 'trans excluding radical feminist'. I'm in no way aligned with radical feminism. That 'christofascism' shpeal is bigoted also. It's normal to want to preserve Christian values in countries built on foundations of Christian values. When Muslims go into a country and for real VIOLENTLY force their values on people, nobody is allowed to call them out on it.

4.) This person went private for a few hours because they were supposedly afraid I'd harass them and their friends. That means they must think I'm the kind of psychopath who'd stew on some drama for like a second, then be like, "Oh look, A SHINY!" *runs off* "WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!"

Come to think of it, I head canon ReDestro as being that sort of villain, like if he was pissed at you and didn't break your spine in half in the first five minutes, then he'd get distracted and wander off. He's a busy man, after all.

Anyway, that artist was better years ago when they drew more attractive characters with visually appealing fetishses, but lately they've descended into fat, transgender neckbeard pron. It's like the cartoon version of this:

There's no comparing to the pretty ones because they all look like that. Most look like that...but werewolf bullshit. Fungs was making Trumpet look like that. Let's detrans the Trumpet. Seriously, the guy is a solid mesomorph build who probably stands a hair over six feet tall.

Seriously, if you are going to make a MLA person trans, it would be funnier to do it to this guy:

Imagine our guy...erm 'lady' in a convenience store berating some poor clerk.

ReDestro: It's MA'AM!!! Don't stress Momma out or she might have to pop a bitch's skull like a pimple! *Takes out whole side of wall with 20% stress*

Skeptic would make a good transfemale. My best guess is that he's about 6'11" in canon. I could see him fighting to get ladies room rights. He would have had cameras trained on all the toilets for a while, but after some time, it wouldn't be good enough. He'd have a burning desire to be physically present. All it would take was one bad ruling from an activist judge, and he'd be in there skulking around like an oversized slenderman.

Trumpet zeroes in because he can't help himself. He like, "Suck my dick?" Skeptic refuses because he's a 'translesbian'.

Found this miscellaneous post when I was trolling for content:

I actually did a fan fic where that happened because I live to serve. To be fair though, Trumpet gets his ass beat in canon. You just know it. Look at his arrest photo:

Is that a boot print on his forehead? At least they had the common decency to let him comb his hair before they took the mugshot. You just know this man wasn't involved in any sort of combat during the Gunga Villa Raid. He was probably hiding in a broom closet during the worst of the action. The authorities had to drag him out kicking and screaming.

Let me clue you in on something....they don't have that 'defund the police' crap in Asian countries. People are okay with scumbag criminals getting what's coming to them. The cops who arrested Trumpet were like, "Wait...is that the politician? Are we getting to arrest the politician?" They would all look at one another for a moment, and then someone would say, "What do you think, boys? Does this asshole look like he's 'resisting arrest' to you?"

Trumpet would vehemently wave his hands shaking his head saying, "No! NO! NO I'M NOT! NOOO!!"

Next thing you know, all the cops would pull out their billy clubs and go to town on his ass like they're Endeavor trying to make the baby stick.

[chaotic-hypnotic-erotic]

Mesmero Misunderstood (AO3)

Author rant on.

They're much-maligned, it would seem, at least in my fanfics on AO3, but there is a reason why I put so much love into my version of Mesmero.

A long time ago, I read a book, The Magician by W Somerset Maugham, about a character called Oliver Haddo. I thank Nick Edwards, one of a few friends of mine from college days who's still with us, for getting me a copy of that book.

Haddo was a thinly-veiled parody of Aleister Crowley.

I remember a scene where Haddo wandered into a salon, and basically everybody there - who, just a moment ago, had been trying to outpose one another - started telling him to read the room and yelling at him that he wasn't welcome there.

They ridiculed his ambition to be a magician. They cast aspersions about his drug use, his bisexuality (which was illegal in the UK at the time), and his beliefs (which came from Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism, unheard-of in Western societies at the time).

The author was writing about Haddo, but he was screaming out his vitriol towards Crowley on the page.

Maugham wasn't the only one to take the piss out of Crowley. Aleister was "Mocata" in Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out (don't bother reading it - the racism just stinks), and "Karswell" in M R James' Casting The Runes which got turned into Night Of The Demon, a 1957 British horror film.

Oh, and the great poet W B Yeats commemorated Crowley with a scathing sonnet. Nah, just kidding, he threw Crowley down a set of stairs. How erudite.

That Maugham salon scene stuck in my head, a lot.

Which is where Mesmero came in, as a character.

The first Marvel Rare Pair challenge in 2022 invited me to write about pairings of Marvel characters whom nobody had yet paired before. The creation of my AU version of the X-Men:Evolution character Mesmero seemed the perfect opportunity to explore some truly rare pairings. But what was more, it gave me the opportunity to do something else.

I wanted to explore what it was like to be a mutant, shunned by other mutants.

I wanted to hold up a mirror to the general mutant community: you can't call yourselves the victim of hate if you yourselves hate others.

And inside the frail, diminutive body of this fictional Mesmero, I inserted myself.

The Mesmero you have been reading about in my AO3 stories are all elements of my personality. If Mesmero seems to have a thing for tall blondes, it could well be that that is something in me speaking. I'm apparently 155 cm tall, which makes me shorter than Wolverine - thus Mesmero is exactly the same height as me.

I've received some comments to my AO3 fic about Mesmero, and they have actually been hurtful. And they have come from people who support Loki. As in "God of Mischief" Loki.

This one comment stung so fucking hard.

Hopefully for Mesmero's sake, they stick to their garden and helping the people who go to them asking for help instead of seeking it out and "convincing" others they need their "help" when they haven't.

How "GO HOME TO WHERE YOU FUCKING CAME FROM" is that?

Anyway, I have a multi-part Mesmero story brewing. But you know what, I think I'll stay off AO3 altogether for a while. I don't really care much for comments like that, so I'm tempted to gather all my Mesmero stories and delete them from AO3, put them into a novel, post them to Substack or Bluesky, and stop writing Marvel and MCU stuff. Concentrate on my original characters, my fave settings, and maybe start up a Blogger blog to put them onto, also.

Don't tell my characters to go home. Don't tell them to stay in the garden or else. Don't tell my characters that they take without consent.

Don't project onto Mesmero. You've been hurting me.

[commiemartyrshighschool]

Two things have been on my mind lately.

It is not enough to be right, you also need to be persuasive.

Video essays are significantly more work than written essays.

That comes together, I think, in making video essays a preferred medium for ideas at the moment. They hold your attention and hit you with sound and visuals alongside words that invite concentration but not thought. They're performed in a way that tone of voice, facial expression, and visual display of information are at least as important as the text being delivered.

Being a good video essayist requires not just a way with words, but also editing skills and the ability to not only make a case but be an orator.

A slick, well produced video essay is a lot of work, and if you don't have all the resources necessary yourself to pull it together you need the resources necessary to pull together a team that can do it.

In essence it becomes much harder to "argue back" in a medium where you need to do a lot more than simply write a response.

Now, writing ability varies considerably among people, even before accounting for things like discussions with multilingual dimensions. But almost anybody on Earth who would care to respond to a written essay on the internet has access to a keyboard! Not everybody can become a novelist or essayist for the ages, but even minimal practice and reading can improve anybody's ability.

But video essays have essentially raised the barrier to entry in participating in many conversations. Only a handful are truly consequential, to be sure, but the comment section is almost always going to be relegated to a peanut gallery unless the channel runner takes the time to respond in a video format.

This, I believe, creates a sort of assumed parasociality to watching a video essayist. Because even if the ideas are on your level the presentation is more likely than not, well beyond you.

But a written essay? There might be apparent differences in writing ability, and being persuasive is distinct from being right as well, yet you won't be able to tell if the response was made on a new computer or an old one, who has the bigger stock asset library, the nicer set, the better camera, the quickest cuts. Things that absolutely do matter in a video essay, as does if the watcher finds the essayist attractive, or feel they look trustworthy.

I don't know if there's any way TO actually bring back a public appreciation for essays though. Less than 60 percent of millennials EVER read newspapers, and older generations don't lag far behind on that stat. The internet is ostensibly a great place to discover, read, and share essays but now that video essays can be delivered at watchable speeds even if they're in HD and four hours long they have almost no competitive advantage.

Text oriented platforms do exist, but they're skewed towards the pithy and combative, the hot takes of twitter, bluesky, threads, what have you. I'm not sure that traditional forums, even the few that exist, are free from that either.

I dunno, it's part of why when I published my magazine I really wanted that magazine format, that print-ability. Wish I had the time and energy to get past Issue Zero.

But it seems to me that might be where some of the hope is to be found, collections and curations with accessible submissions.

Anyways, another perk of the written essay is that you don't need to plot the whole thing out. You can just kinda jam and dash off thoughts without an ending sorted.

[blueaizu]

Aizu Updates: Projects for June

It's been a hot minute since the last one of these, so I think it's time for another one. I'm thinking that having this be a bi-weekly thing would be a good schedule. I'll be talking about my time on Bluesky so far, Clip Idol, and some other miscellaneous updates.

These still need a proper name. I'll call them Aizu Updates since I blew my creativity budget on drawings and games. I will be retroactively adding the tag and title to previous posts like this one so they'll be easily accessible.

First I'll talk about my time on the elusive Bluesky. I managed to get on there thanks to someone generously giving me an invite code (NOTE: If it was you and you'd like me to specifically mention your handle, please feel free to reach out and I'll add it in; otherwise I'll keep you anonymous so people won't try hounding on you for invites. By the way: I'll only give invites to people I trust!). Bluesky is similar to Twitter on the surface, but it's actually a decentralized platform with no algorithms, at least not like the ones you may be used to on other platforms. Currently there's a "What's Hot" tab for posts with 12 or more Likes, and there's a Following tab that's always presented in chronological order that covers original posts, reposts (read: retweets), and even replies to other people. At this point in time, hashtags aren't implemented and DMs don't exist. The people there are kind of tight knit so specific communities aren't really a thing just yet, but that could change pretty soon. For now, I'm spending most of my time on the platform trying to get more artwork uploaded since I feel there's a sore lack of it.

A new development is something they're calling "Algos," which are basically a way to add more tabs functioning closer to the algorithms of other platforms. This is part of where Bluesky's decentralization comes in, because (from my understanding) it's a way to change what the platform thinks you're most interested in seeing on the fly without needing to make a fresh account. This is what will separate Bluesky from Twitter and could be a huge development for the future of social media in general. With it, you'll have more control to influence what things the platform assumes you'll want to see instead of just being at the mercy of one algorithm that's rigged by some guy with an offensive musk.

=== With that out of the way, let's talk future projects! ===

The biggest thing I'll be doing in the immediate future is a complete mad dash to finish Clip Idol. I'm supposed to be presenting it again very soon and I need to finish all of the artwork for it so it's in a presentable state. I'd love to make more minigames for Harley to play, but I think the time is coming to put a cap on Clip Idol and get started on something new. It's the only way I'll get better at making games, and I'm sure people will want to play this one! If you haven't seen the previous update I made about Clip Idol, I'll share a link to the latest in-progress video I've uploaded:

=== Vtuber Stuff ===

I've also been hard at work on my Vtuber model, who I decided I'm going to call... Aizu. Yeah, yeah, I know it's not a very vampire-y name, but his design came from ideas based on a lot of self-reflection (but still with a few liberties, I definitely can't pull off wearing a crop top in real life), so it's the same as my current username. Some people have called me a vampire before, so you know what? They're right. I am a vampire!

The model is already fully rigged, but I'm still running tests to make sure his tracking works properly. I'm also still drawing backgrounds, including the main one I'll be using. A goal I have for his streaming background is that, as much as possible, I want it to feel like it's in a real place. Just doing a fancy border won't cut it. Conversely, I'm back and forth on whether I should have him holding a controller and using a drawing tablet, but for my first Live2D model ever I feel it may be a little too ambitious. I'd like to start doing streams as Aizu before the end of the year, and since I'm making the model myself I could always add those bells and whistles in later.

I've talked about Aizu a fair bit and already made him my profile picture, so I'd like to pull back the curtain a little bit to show him in action! This is from a while back so his model is in an earlier state (note the darker wings), but in broad strokes this is how Aizu will be:

And with that, I've got a lot of last minute changes I need to make for my friend's book illustrations before I can continue my own projects, so this is where I'll have to end it for now. Until next time!

[kmackatie]

I'm Katie and this is a personal blog filled with a collection of whatever takes my interest at the time.

Currently, I am deep in Dragon Age hell after playing through all four games since June for the first time, please feel free to talk to me about this at any time without an invitation. I have finished Veilguard and will tag everything with #da: the veilguard.

Aside from this, there will be lots of Baldur's Gate 3 and Critical Role, and for the latter I tag all spoilers for a week after airing as #cr: spoilers.

You can find my writing on tumblr with the tag my writing.

FanFiction

I write when the time allows and you can find all my currently published fics on AO3 here. some highlights: the breath before the phrase The one where they are musicians! 171k words and 20 chapters, this is a Critical Role shadowgast long-fic about finding joy while defying expectations. sleep, with benefits A 2000s romcom filled with pining, tropes, and miscommunication. 62k words and 12 chapters, this is a Critical Role shadowgast fic. hold me here A Dragon Age: Inquisition fic expanding out on some moments between my Inquisitor Kari Lavellan and Cullen. Currently uploading in parts, roughly 40k.

You can find me on pretty much any social media under @kmackatie - if you see the handle, there’s a very good chance it’s me. Please feel free to say hi either here, on Bluesky, Twitter, or reach out for my Discord!