#I've been thinking about this site for YEARS and there was like. no info on it for the longest time!!

[bye2k]

capri-sun's advergame world, planet juice (2001-2005)

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I think the reader's response to this post is probably going to either be "That's incredibly minor" or "Holy shit YES I'M ALSO PROUD", depending on people's personal experiences with academia, but:

Today I am incredibly proud of one of my students.

In the interests of disguising identities, let's call them Ceri. Ceri is one of my third year undergrads (meaning their final year, for anyone unfamiliar with UK uni systems.) They transferred to us last year, and within two weeks I was giving them the contact info to get to Student Services and get themself screened for ADHD; they have some mental health struggles, but I clocked pretty quickly that they STRUGGLE with procrastination, and punctuality, and attending 9am lectures in particular. Naturally, as is the way of my people, it took them a further four months to remember to go to the screening. Lol. Lmao. Rofl, in fact.

But, they did it eventually! Their screening lit up like a Christmas tree at the ADHD section, and they got a free laptop and optional one week extensions and a study support worker named Claire. This has helped tremendously, and although mental health + until-then-unsupported ADHD meant their academic profile had slid sideways somewhat, with the new tools available and a couple of resits they passed the year and hit this year running.

Until, that is, the last fortnight.

Now, I take them for a Habitat Management module that has two assessments: an academic poster presentation before Christmas, and a site-specific management plan in May. Naturally this means we are at that happy point in the year for the poster presentations. I give out the briefs at the start of the year, so they've had them since October; I've also been periodically checking in with them all for weeks, to make sure they don't have any major burning questions. The poster presentation was to pick a species reintroduction project, pull the habitat feasibility study out of it, and then critique that study; Ceri chose to look at the hen harrier reintroductions proposed for the southern UK. All good.

Which brings us nicely to today! Ceri's presentation is scheduled for 2.30. At 11am-1pm, I am lecturing the first years on Biodiversity, while Ceri is learning about environmental impact assessment with a colleague I shall call Aeron. This means we are separately occupied during those same hours.

Nevertheless, Aeron messages me at about 12.

"I think Ceri needs to see you after your lecture," he writes. "They're panicking, I genuinely think they might cry. I'm worried. Are you free at 1?"

I say I am. At 1, I get lunch and sit in the common area; Ceri comes to see me. To my personal shame, imagine all of the following takes place while I stuff my face with potato.

Now: this part is going to be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has ever tried higher education with ADHD, especially unmedicated. It certainly was for me. All I can say is, I never had the courage to take the step here that Ceri did.

"I have to confess," they said quietly, and Aeron was right, they were fighting back tears. "My mental health has been so, so bad for the last fortnight. I've left it way, way too late. I don't have anything to present."

"Nothing at all?" I asked.

"I've been researching," they said helplessly. "I found loads on the decline of the hen harrier. But it wasn't until last night that I finally found a habitat feasibility study to critique. Generally... I've been burying my head about it, and it just got later and later. I thought I should come in for Aeron's lecture, and I should at least tell you."

This part is a minor thing, right? But honestly, I remember being in the grip of that particular shame spiral. I never did manage to tell my lecturers to their faces. I just avoided. I honestly can't imagine having the courage it took them to come in and tell me this, rather than just staying home and avoiding me.

"I think..." they said hesitantly, "I know I can submit up to a week late, for a capped mark. I think I need to do that, and apply for extenuating circumstances. But then I'll have both Aeron's assignment and yours due at the same time."

Which meant they would crumble under the pressure and likely struggle to pass both; so me, being as noble and heroic as I unarguably am, stopped eating potato and said, "Let's make that plan B."

(It was good potato. I am a hero.)

So, we made plan A: I moved their timeslot to 4.30, giving them three and a half hours. The shining piece of luck in this whole thing was that this was the crunch time assignment - if it had been Aeron's, they'd have had to try and write a 3000 report in that time. But for me, all they had to write was an academic poster, and those things are light on words by design. We found them a Canva template, and then we quickly sketched out a recommended structure based on the brief: if it's habitat feasibility, look at food availability, nesting site availability, and mortality risks in the target release site. Bullet point each. Bullet point how well the study assessed each. Write a quick intro and conclusion. Take notes as you go, and present the poster itself at 4.30.

"You think I should try?" they asked doubtfully, looking like I'd just asked them to go mano-a-mano with a feral badger.

"If you run out of time, so be it," I said. "But your brain is trying to protect you from a non-existent tiger. That's why you've procrastinated - it's been horrible, and you've been shame spiralling, and your brain is trying to shield you from the negative experience; but it's the wrong type of help for this situation! So while you're sitting there working on it, hating life, every time your brain goes 'This is hopeless, I can't do it', you think right back 'Yes I can, it just sucks.' And you carry on. Good?"

"Good," they said. "I'm going to mainline coffee and hole up in the library. Enjoy your potato."

And then, of course, I had to go and watch the other students' presentations, so that was the end of me being any help at all. I spent all afternoon wondering if they were going to manage it, or if I would be getting a message at 4.25 telling me they'd failed, and would have to submit late and hope for an EC.

And Tumblrs

Tumblrs

Let me FUCKING tell you

They turned up at 4.15, fifteen minutes early, wearing a mask of grim, harrowed determination and fuelled by spite and coffee, and they pulled up that poster and started presenting and yes, okay, I'll admit their actual delivery was dramatically unpolished and yes, they forgot to include the taxanomic name for the hen harrier on the poster and yes, fine, I admit that there were more than a few awkward moments where they lost their place in their hastily scribbled notebook but LET ME FUCKING TELL YOU -

They smashed it. It was well-critiqued, it had a map, it had full citations, it had a section on the hen harrier's specific ecology and role in the ecosystem, it had notes on their specific conservation measures. They described case studies they'd read about elsewhere. They answered the questions we threw at them with competence and depth. There was analysis. All that background research they'd done came right to the fore. They were even within the time limit by 15 seconds.

You would never have known they'd produced it in three hours, from a quivering and terrified mess fighting the bodily urge to dehydrate via tear ducts. After they left, the second marker and I looked at each other and went "So that was a 2:1, right?"

I caught up with Aeron downstairs and he was beaming. Apparently Ceri had seen him on their way out, and had gone over to talk to him. Aeron said the difference between the Ceri of this morning and the Ceri of then was like two different people; in four hours, they'd gone from their voice literally breaking as they admitted the problem, ashamed and broken, to being relaxed and happy and smiling.

"I reckon I've passed," they apparently told Aeron, pleased. "Maybe even a 2:2. There's things I wish I'd had the time to do better, but I'll be happy if I passed."

They won't know until late January what they got, because we're not allowed to release marks until 20 term days after hand-in, and the Christmas holidays are about to hit. But I'm really hoping I can be there when they're released.

But mostly, I'm just... insanely proud of them. I cannot tell you how happy I am. And I know, I know, obviously this is not a practice I would want to see them do regularly, or indeed ever again, and it only worked because they were fucking lucky with the assignment format, but like... when life is just punching you in the face, and you hit a breaking point... isn't it nice? That just this once, you pull off a miracle, and it's fixed? The disaster you thought was about to ruin you is gone? To get that relief?

Anyway. Super super proud today.

[all-the-fish]

Oh, you know, just the usual internet browsing experience in the year of 2024

Some links and explanations since I figured it might be useful to some people, and writing down stuff is nice.

First of all, get Firefox. Yes, it has apps for Android/iOS too. It allows more extensions and customization (except the iOS version), it tracks less, the company has a less shitty attitude about things. Currently all the other alternatives are variations of Chromium, which means no matter how degoogled they supposedly are, Google has almost a monopoly on web browsing and that's not great. Basically they can introduce extremely user unfriendly updates and there's nothing forcing them to not do it, and nowhere for people to escape to. Current examples of their suggested updates are disabling/severly limiting adblocks in June 2024, and this great suggestion to force sites to verify "web environment integrity" ("oh you don't run a version of chromium we approve, such as the one that runs working adblocks? no web for you.").

uBlockOrigin - barely needs any explanation but yes, it works. You can whitelist whatever you want to support through displaying ads. You can also easily "adblock" site elements that annoy you. "Please log in" notice that won't go away? Important news tm sidebar that gives you sensory overload? Bye.

Dark Reader - a site you use has no dark mode? Now it has. Fairly customizable, also has some basic options for visually impaired people.

SponsorBlock for YouTube - highlights/skips (you choose) sponsored bits in the videos based on user submissions, and a few other things people often skip ("pls like and subscribe!"). A bit more controversial than normal adblock since the creators get some decent money from this, but also a lot of the big sponsors are kinda scummy and offer inferior product for superior price (or try to sell you a star jpg land ownership in Scotland to become a lord), so hearing an ad for that for the 20th time is kinda annoying. But also some creators make their sponsored segments hilarious.

Privacy Badger (and Ghostery I suppose) - I'm not actually sure how needed these are with uBlock and Firefox set to block any tracking it can, but that's basically what it does. Find someone more educated on this topic than me for more info.

Https Everywhere - I... can't actually find the extension anymore, also Firefox has this as an option in its settings now, so this is probably obsolete, whoops.

Facebook Container - also comes with Firefox by default I think. Keeps FB from snooping around outside of FB. It does that a lot, even if you don't have an account.

WebP / Avif image converter - have you ever saved an image and then discovered you can't view it, because it's WebP/Avif? You can now save it as a jpg.

YouTube Search Fixer - have you noticed that youtube search has been even worse than usual lately, with inserting all those unrelated videos into your search results? This fixes that. Also has an option to force shorts to play in the normal video window.

Consent-O-Matic - automatically rejects cookies/gdpr consent forms. While automated, you might still get a second or two of flashing popups being yeeted.

XKit Rewritten - current most up to date "variation "fork" of XKit I think? Has settings in extension settings instead of an extra tumblr button. As long as you get over the new dash layout current tumblr is kinda fine tbh, so this isn't as important as in the past, but still nice. I mostly use it to hide some visual bloat and mark posts on the dash I've already seen.

YouTube NonStop - do you want to punch youtube every time it pauses a video to check if you're still there? This saves your fists.

uBlacklist - blacklists sites from your search results. Obviously has a lot of different uses, but I use it to hide ai generated stuff from image search results. Here's a site list for that.

Redirect AMP to HTML - redirects links from their amp version to the normal version. Amp link is a version of a site made faster and more accessible for phones by Bing/Google. Good in theory, but lets search engines prefer some pages to others (that don't have an amp version), and afaik takes traffic from the original page too. Here's some more reading about why it's an issue, I don't think I can make a good tl;dr on this.

Also since I used this in the tags, here's some reading about enshittification and why the current mainstream internet/services kinda suck.

[meo-eiru]

Kind of a random question not about art, but about your Japanese.

Are you self-taught or did you take some sort of classes and how much did it take you to get to the lvl you're at?

If you'd be comfortable with sharing some info on that, that'd be great 💗 It's just, I dunno, very impressive to me that you have enough skill to understand media in that language and it's something that'd be very useful to me too, so I'm just gathering information :3 I don't know if that makes sense lol

Oh god you can't imagine for how long I've been meaning to answer this ask, it was constantly floating at the back of my head

I'm self-taught! I didn't take any actual Japanese lessons and have been seriously studying it for around a little over 2 years (started around the end of 2022 I think??)

I had a huge weeb phase back in middle school where I'd watch like 10 episodes of naruto per day which caused me to quickly develop an ear for Japanese and I was able to understand most of the simple sentences I heard.

Around the end of 2022 I decided I wanted to learn how to read it too (mostly so that I can have more access to Japanese yandere content) and used duolingo to quickly memorize hiragana and katakana.

As many of you are probably aware duolingo is NOT good when it comes to learning kanji though, so after experimenting with a few different apps and sites, around the start of 2023 I settled on WaniKani which is an amazing site for kanji and vocabulary learning.

I was having a lot of fun studying Japanese so after a few months I decided to try my chance at that year's JLPT N3 and actually managed to pass it. With that boost I signed up for 2024's N2 and passed it too.

Here are a few apps and youtube channels that personally helped me a lot with studying:

Nihongo no Mori

Japanese with Yuka

[ranchstoryblog]

Fandom Memories: HMFarm

Hmmm. So, nearly a quarter of you whippersnappers wanna hear about the good ol' days, huh? Well, back in the day, you wouldn't just hang out on one or two big websites to try to find people who shared your niche interests among a million random users. Everything had its own dedicated site, with its own special pack of weirdos that you probably wouldn't find anywhere else. Home grown fandom, sprouting from the cement sidewalks of the freshly paved internet like so many weeds with pretty little flowers on top. So, let's take a little stroll down memory lane and visit one of the oldest fan sites with Archive.org's "Wayback Machine."

Ahh, just like I remember it. This here is "Harvest Moon Farm." 'course, we just called it HMFarm, like the URL did. This used to be the place to be. The prime progenitor of all farmin' fansites in the English speaking community. Maybe not the literal first, but up until around 2005, this was where you would go if you wanted to know anythin' about digital farmin'. It truly was a magical place to visit.

This screenshot isn't the oldest design, but it's the one I fondly remember. The majority of my time using the site was during the lead-up to A Wonderful Life, which was probably also when it was the most active as an information source. Seeing the screenshots, checking the forums, speculatin', wonderin', dreamin'... It's a warm feeling. I can't really describe how it felt to look at these shots for the first time. Granted, they were mostly sourced from various places like IGN or Newtechnix, but who wanted to go to THOSE messy sites when all the info I wanted was right here? IGN wasn't telling me how to revive the Vineyard in Harvest Moon 64 while I was waiting for AWL news either.

Our first look at the character we would come to know as Muffy, the sheer novelty of being able to go into the townsfolk's glorious, 3D-rendered rooms, the apparent misidentification of flowering tomatoes... The webmaster, Gamergirl87, would caption each one as well. Some of the captions of those screenshots ended up not being exactly true, but it was the closest thing to on-going coverage we really had. Who else was there to trust?

It's a little off topic, but I think at one point after learning about the GBA connectivity, I must have dreamed about this very gallery and seeing a screenshot of a Gamecube-ized Popuri with the caption that Mineral Town villagers would visit after connecting the GC and GBA together. At least, I'm pretty sure it was a dream. I've met some people who claim they saw the same thing, but none of us have been able to find that screenshot or comment again.

The one that would most catch my attention was the one on the left here. I didn't have a PlayStation 2, so I was coming fresh off of the GameBoy and Nintendo 64 when going into A Wonderful Life. The pond, the mysterious glowing plants, the mood and ambiance of their lighting, the little tree on the door... Naturally, I mirrored it on my first day the remake was available.

It's a real shame that the message boards are poorly preserved, since it doesn't look like there was a news post about the pre-order plush cow. I was hoping to find the name of whoever it was that convinced me to commit my first ever preorder. I still have the receipt, but without the forum post it's really only tangentially related to HM Farm.

'course, just learning about existing games and upcoming games wasn't the only good thing HM Farm was for. As I alluded to, there was a whole community here! While it's a shame that the message boards aren't well preserved by the Wayback Machine, you know what is?

The "ideas" list! This incredible time capsule was one of the first "interactive" parts of the site, starting in the year 2000. It's kind of fun to see how many of these ideas actually happened. Obviously, new characters and personalities were probably expected, but Animal Parade would eventually feature a honeymoon, several games have clothing and other customization, a mall, city, and pig would be added as soon as GBC 3, a goat would be in A Wonderful Life... It's actually amazing how prescient a lot of the suggestions are.

I'd share the whole thing, but the amount of e-mail addresses involved gives me pause. Still, there's a couple I wanna highlight:

Considering how often I still hear about people wanting to marry the moms and people attributing it to just "the fans getting older," it's funny to see Laserion lay out that, no, we've always been like this. Right down to using Manna's unhappy marriage and Lillia's husband never returning as valid reasons they should be available.

Tuan145, on the other hand, I just find extremely amusing because of the specific "2002 Escalade" part. Yes, this is clearly the ideal vehicle for all farmers in the Story of Seasons universe. This is now accepted headcanon. The boat was added in GBC 3 too, so obviously a 2002 Escalade is going to be added any day now.

Another thing that's amazingly well preserved is the site's fan art section. There's a few missing images here and there, but for the most part the entire thing is open to explore. People of basically all ages and skill levels happily submitted their creations, including original characters, digital art, traditional art, crossovers with popular series like Sailor Moon, a liiittle bit of drug use... Y'know, all the kinds of things you'd expect to see in a fan art gallery of the day.

Even better, some of the artists are still doing art today! Looking around, I quickly discovered one of my favorites, Rina Cat, is now on Blue Sky. I made sure to ask for permission to repost their art before including it here. Reaching out to everyone would be a bit much though, so I'll just encourage you to just browse the gallery using the Wayback Machine yourself. There's poetry and fanfics too!

There's a lot more to the site, including useful bits of history like keeping track of release dates for games, pre-release screenshots, and information that was only available on Japanese websites at the time, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Unfortunately, though the site continued to be updated until 2010 and stayed online until 2021, it's no longer available on the regular internet and the URL doesn't seem safe to access anymore. I wanted to include an interview with the former webmaster as well, but all their readily available contact information was tied to the website and I haven't had any luck so far in finding other means of contact. If I have any success, I'll be sure to make a follow-up! If you have any memories of HMFarm, or other fan sites, I'd be happy to hear about it.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for photoshopping porn in this guy's pictures for years?

So, I've hated this guy since high school when he spit on me for being a "freak" after bullying me relentlessly since middle school. I'm not the type for public retaliation so I just kinda let it fester for awhile until I got the idea to make multiple dummy accounts on every social media site I could find him on and started photoshopping hardcore porn onto like every reflective surface in any pic he ever posted.

I've been sending this guy these pictures anonymously for years now, I'm 100% committed to this bit and it thrills me endlessly to read in dms how much this drives him insane especially because he doesn't know who it is even after all these years. Any time he posts a pic within minutes I send him a photoshopped one back from a dummy account then giggle reading his messages about how this makes him miserable, it's honestly the highlight of every day.

Recently though I told an old friend about what I was doing and she said I'm an obsessed psychopath but I personally think since he got to torture me every single day for years then it's only fair I get to do the same. Plus to me it's mostly harmless, and if we're talking about the ways I could potentially get even this is the most banal choice. Still, she told me I'm no better than he was if I keep it up.

I disagree but I'm interested to see what other people think of it

What are these acronyms?

[brooklynisher]

Hey all, you ever hear of Jaunty?

[x]

Do you WANT to learn more about Jaunty?

Well I dug deep, and found some things I never thought I could find. I'm really excited to share what I've found with y'all. This post is sort of a little journey of how I found Jaunty.

There's a few sections to this.

Skip to But where does Jaunty come from? If you just want answers

Is Jaunty even a real character?

Jaunty, from what I originally found, is SUPPOSEDLY a Steam Powered Giraffe character. But where have we seen this character before? Was it the comic? Was it the timeline? Maybe in a song cover? Does the band ever talk about Jaunty?

And to answer all of your questions, no! At least not that I knew of. The only source of Jaunty’s existence is here.

The Steam Powered Giraffe Wiki

So that makes this whole thing pretty complicated right? The wiki has info, and it’s not too inaccurate most of the time, but some of the lesser known/more nuanced information tends to get scuffed.

It really doesn’t help knowing that David has mentioned before that the information on the wiki wasn't that accurate.

What I’m saying is, the only proof we have for the existence of this character is on what might be one of the more unreliable sources of SPG information.

But despite that, this page is special in the fact that SUPPOSEDLY it was uploaded by Steam Powered Giraffe themselves!

[x]

However, there isn’t really much of any information on this user at all. All we know is that they founded this wiki, added a few characters and a bit of information, and then became inactive. Really our biggest reasoning for believing that this was an actual SPG member is the fact that they are the founder and have been around for a very long time.

Okay, suspicions aside, let’s see what I found about this thing.

What the wiki tells us

One, this image was touched by the founder of this wiki twice, it was uploaded in 2011, and in 2014 they protected the page, which means only the administrators can edit the page.

[x]

Both are pretty major years for SPG being the year Upgrade left the band and the year Rabbit transitioned, but there’s not many connections you can make with that.

This user was first active in 2010 and last seen in 2015 [x]

Cool dates to have, but not a lot to work with. It mainly gives us a clear vision of what SPG was looking like at the time of the creation of this page. I can see this thing being used for a special, slightly themed show.

Of course, the information the wiki alone offers is very limited, but we know two things for sure. One, this character is a robot being under the category of robots, and two, these photos were taken by Cineria.

[x]

So, here's the problem, you'd think that by having the name of the photographer, we could get far with that, but unfortunately, it is such a vague name, that there is just no way we could figure out who Cineria actually is. It really doesn't help that they don't seem to be a professional photographer. The only page I could find that connects both the name Cineria and Steam Powered Giraffe is this one.

Useless information

I started searching for stuff by reverse searching it. It wasn't really successful, as I was expecting, but I did find one thing.

A different source.

This source doesn't go anywhere must you know. The ORIGINAL site, florist.buketbunga.com is still up an active serving as an Indonesian site for selling flowers, but this very specific link is broken, and the Wayback Machine doesn't know a thing about it.

The good news is, the link title alone gives us a ton of stuff to work with! Appropriately, the last part of this link translates to "Flower Bouquet Florist Shop Address Nearest 24 Hours Online", which makes sense.

What DOESN'T make sense is everything else coming before it. Specifically the Team Fortress 2 Wiki. This made me believe that someone used these sites to create a scam link, but it's weird because somehow, it's relevant?

Yandex was able to match these images of Jaunty to this site, and what's crazier, Jaunty is in the title of the link! But it's not just Jaunty, it's the Jaunty Explorer.

I did some searching, and discovered that the Jaunty Explorer originates from a TF2 livestream charity event called Tip of the Hats! Donations can earn you medals known as the Jaunty Explorer ($10 Donations), the Jaunty Ranger ($30 Donations), and the Jaunty Mountaineer ($100 Donations). They can come in many different color variations, but here are the main ones.

[x] [x] [x]

There are TWO connections between this and SPG. One, the shared name of Jaunty, and two, hats. Steam Powered Giraffe is pretty big on hats. But, bad news, these are completely unrelated. Main reasoning? The image of Jaunty was posted to the wiki back in 2011, while Tip of the Hats as an event started back in 2013. Can't even take the "SPG was inspired by TF2" route with that.

Okay, but what even IS it?

Now we get into the visual aspect of this!

I tried to see if there was at least any way to identify what this is, but that solely relies on observational skills. There are two images of this thing, but the image with the blue background is much easier to make out.

[x]

There's a lot that's going on with the design of Jaunty. Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough to identify what half of the doodads are. This machine, whether it's an actual machine or just a prop, is definitely a one of a kind as I couldn't find anything like this.

I talked with @boneinator about this, and he was able to read the text: "STAND CLEAR!" on the top of the doors of this machine which lead him to believe that it might be a time machine of sorts.

What we both managed to agree on when it came to the design of this thing however, was that it looks like a cabinet.

Now, like I said, this thing has a one of a kind design, so it's not going to look exactly like one thing or another, but it has similar features to other things such as to this cabinet

[x]

Two longer doors on the upper half, and two smaller doors/drawers on the bottom. Is that actually what it is? I didn't know, but there is a resemblance.

One thing that's REALLY interesting about this machine is the intense amount of steam it lets out.

[x]

So it's definitely a very active machine.

But where does Jaunty come from?

Something I've been wondering is how much of this is actually connected to SPG.

Is it theirs? Is this a part of a bigger thing? Is it just associated with them?

A bigger thing. There is one example of a big SPG show that comes to mind, and it was not just them.

During their 15 Year Anniversary Livestream, the band was asked about their favorite memories. Bunny mentions that one of her favorite memories was at a show called Clockwork Vaudeville. This was one of the band's first time having a massive audience. According to her, this was a time traveling show, and they performed alongside others.

I looked into it and found that the full name of this performance is called Clockwork Vaudeville Circus Cabaret. And there, I found a little advertisement for it as well!

The Kickstarter for this show started in late 2010

I did some more searching and realized there is a bunch of video from this show out there though all these clips are recorded at random intervals. Assuming that the uploader posted these clips close to the date of the actual show, we can see that this show took place in February of 2011!

About one month after this show, this page was added to the wiki.

I checked the clips, and guess what.

[x]

Right there in the corner, there was Jaunty.

But that's not all

Not only have a found a video that contained Jaunty, I found a video that contained Jaunty in action!

[x]

Unbelievably enough, it was a video of the band performing Honeybee alongside a pole dancer. And thanks to the title, we now know that this show took place February 19, 2011

Which all this confirms 100% that Jaunty IS a time machine.

Now with all things considered, Jaunty is not necessarily an "SPG character" as in they didn't create it. It's hard to say if Jaunty is even a character at all at this point! But it does exist in their world and they actively interact with it!

Who cheered? I cracked the code!

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

perhaps a bit of an odd question: so, when I'm scrolling tumblr on mobile, I have a habit of downloading most images i come across, so that I can send them to people who don't use tumblr, especially memes and animal photos. however, i also have severe memory issues, and I may end up forgetting where i got certain images. i know for the photo repository one of the rules is to not repost the photos without any modification- which i might forget, or forget which images on my phone fall under that rule. and while i would guess that that rule doesn't apply to stuff like direct messages or texts, i might forget to tell the person I'm sending it to, who might repost it elsewhere without being aware, or months after downloading i will just forget and use one of the photos in a post I'm making because it felt relevant.

this is something i can pretty easily solve myself by just blocking the photo repository blog, or tags relating to it, but I'd rather not do that because i do really like seeing the photos and all the info and stuff. and i would assume it would be an insane amount of work for you to add something like a watermark to every single photo, so I'm not really sure how to go about this. i like seeing the photos, but i don't want to accidentally break the rules.

You clearly care deeply about doing the "right thing", so, what that tells me is that you're not actually the target audience for that rule. I appreciate all the thought you put into this message. Let's talk about it!

I've been reconsidering if requiring people to get permission for reposting images is the best policy to have and I'd like people to weigh in.

My original reasoning was this: the more I can ensure that reposts are affiliated with credit, the better I can control copyright on the images on the site, and therefore have more ground to challenge any scrapers/fake accounts/AR groups that yoink them for nefarious purposes. The easiest way to do that seemed to be to have people ping and ask, with the expectation of saying yes almost all the time.

But there's a couple problems with that, I think, in practice:

People don't like emailing strangers (I forget this! I have done it for work for so many years it isn't uncomfortable anymore).

This isn't how the internet works. (Tumblr has a specific microculture that encourages crediting creators and not stealing! Once this is shared more widely on other platforms, I don't expect it'll be the same ecosystem).

It actually undermines organic spread of content! (You're less likely to make an excited post about a cool photo if you have to send a maybe-scary email and wait for a response). And I do want there to be lots of eyeballs on the photos.

Realistically, @nexus-nebulae, with the policy right now? If you slipped up and reposted something without thinking, I'd just ask you to add credit to the post so it directs back to the site. The goal of this whole project is community access and engagement - I want to you to enjoy the photos, and send them to your friends! I'm just trying to also protect it from the awful that a lot of the internet has become.

But, I'm also wondering it it makes sense to swap the policy to say that it's fine to re-post images on socials as long as they're appropriately credited and/or linked back to the repository. This isn't the policy yet, but if you're reading this please tell me what you're thinking.

Non-edited image use (like putting them in a scientific paper, using them to build a curriculum unit, or putting them on board game cards - these are just random examples) would still need to be requested; but that's an entirely protective stance and if you ask, my goal is to always say yes.

So OP, please don't worry too much. Enjoy looking at the animals, do your best, and I'll be happy. :)

[ejoym]

Continuing on the last ask about learning to start drawing OCs, do you have any tips on developing styles? I find it really difficult to “let go” of the need for things to be proportional or physically accurate, but I really want to start developing a more cartoon style.

Hi! In reference to this last post. I'm going to site a lot of stuff from a book called Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud. It's a great resource for anyone interested in cartooning, visual art, and comics as a unique storytelling art form.

Cartooning, whether it’s for comics or animation, is a very utilitarian art form. Cartooning skills and an artist's style are often forged in the hellfire of a deadline. For example, what my art style looks like when I've drawn an 80-panel comic in one week looks very different from a single illustration I’ve done in that same time frame.

Cartoonists simplify for the function of needing to draw everything by hand over and over and over again. But we also simplify for the emotional universality of the cartoon image! As stated by McCloud in the following three images.

Technically all 2D art is a form of caricature because we are reducing our 3D reality onto a 2D plane - which inherently abstracts form. Anytime someone sits down to draw (or write), they're engaging with a level of representation within pictorial space.

As an artist, we inevitably work in all modes at some point or another. But I think most artists will show a preference towards different corners of this diagram and that influences their style!

Ask yourself: where would you place the style you're seeking to achieve on this triangle? There's a more detailed version below with many cartoonists and styles for more examples.

I like this diagram especially because it shows the wide variety of cartoonist's styles. That's why this ask has been particularly tricky for me to answer. It's hard to give advice on becoming more cartoony without knowing what that specifically means for you, anon!

That said, I can still give some general good practice tips that hopefully anyone can utilize in their cartooning journey!

Figure drawing. Short poses (1-5 minutes). Figure drawing from life is ideal because life very rarely sits still. If you don't have any figure drawing studios in your area then go to libraries and coffee shops. You can also ask friends or family to sit for you. And finally there are figure drawing resources online that often include timers. Tip: Try drawing only with ink so you can’t erase. You won't have to do this forever but it's a great way to live with the "happy accidents" and then move on to the next drawing!

2. Gesture lines and S-curves. The gesture line captures the initial motion of the pose and will often follow the direction of the spine! S-curves are the alternating "S" shaped curves that represent the distribution of weight across the body. Exaggerating the S-curves is how cartoonists and animators often push the expressive form of the figure. When drawing the figure try to find the gesture line first and then build the weight of the pose on top of that!

3. Give yourself a deadline. Set a timer. Stick to it! Even if all you manage is a quick line gesture. Just move on to the next pose!

Finally, I really recommend reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud! It's a wonderful resource that anyone interested in the visual arts could benefit from reading. I first read it 17 years ago, back in my high school film class.

Phew! That's a long one. Hopefully, there's some useful info in there for you. But do feel free to ask any follow-up questions. And good luck on your cartooning journey! 🖤

(There's also another ask in my inbox about drawing cartoonish expressions. I'm working on a response but it may take a little bit. But don't worry, I'll have a detailed answer to that in the coming weeks!)

[kedreeva]

Any bird artists/graphic designers/photo-editors out there that might be willing to make a logo and/or a merch design for our local small game bird association, after the new year?

Story below the cut if you want more info

I'm currently in the process of taking over my state game bird association's website stuff, to help them recover after incredibly bad leadership did their level best to wreck it entirely. It's a "State" association, in that it's for people in this state but isn't run by the state, it's just like. a few people who like game birds who have made nonprofit (like an actual 501(c)) club for other people that like game birds. There's less than 100 members in it according to the registry I saw, to give you an idea what it's like. I'm dealing with one 70+ year old lady, one Older Mom (who isn't even in the association anymore) that helped transfer stuff out of her name, and one Other Lady (who is apparently the sister of one of the hospital board members, but who lacks her sister's desire to watch the world burn I guess) that I've only had phone conversations with so far. I've so far been able to get their website under control and I'm working on getting their facebook back into their hands (it's still being held hostage by a hostile board member they're trying to get rid of), and to try to help them all limp into being a functional association again, like it was when I first started interacting with it 20 years ago.

That being said, in the transfer of the site, the previous site is 100% lost, including all old graphics. No one still in the association has any of the old graphics saved. That's fine, they were.... terrible. Like, this is an old preview pic of the site banner

Truly terrible. So, not gonna lie, kinda glad it's gone forever.

There is an OLDER banner, from before dickhead mcfuckface took over the association, and it's "better" but it's very clearly got an 80s vibe like you would not believe

But, the old lady that is running the association now asked me about having a header on the front page, so here I am. I told her that there were a TON of talented artists that would be happy to be paid (all of the following would be PAID work, if the association can afford it and if not they will just do without, I was VERY clear about needing to pay artists for work) to design a logo and/or some kind of graphic designer that could help with a little banner for the website. She also asked me about selling t-shirts and hats, since some people at the swaps have asked for them. I told her that a nice looking logo would be a good start for that kind of thing, but that I could ask around and see if anyone wanted to draw a game bird design to sell at their bake sale table or maybe redbubble or something similar so people can just get what they want.

I'm sorry that this is vague, but beyond the logo/site header, I'm not sure exactly what they are going to want, just that they are going to want An Artist Or Three. You'd be dealing with me once I've wrangled them into telling me what they exactly want for anything outside the website.

As for the website, I actually don't mind the basic design of the second banner (the 80's one, a rectangle, circle badge logo in the middle, game animals to either side), and I think it would be good to bring back that general feel, but cleaner and brighter on colors, and different animals. The club does not really deal with deer or raccoons regularly, and pheasants are not the only game birds. I was thinking maybe just doing birds on both sides. Peacocks, pheasant, chicken, turkey, ducks, quail, and dove(s) are the most common at swap meets, so some combo of those would be nice (doesn't need to have all of them), as that's what members will mostly be raising.

If that's something you feel you might be interested in, and can provide your pricing & an example of your style so I can bring it to them and tell them I want them to pay you to give me things for the site and/or association at large.

For the laughs, here is what I "mocked up" for them as an idea

But they also liked the idea of a plain badge logo like this one (because they don't live and breathe peafowl I assume, it's the only explanation)

anyway. if you have the art skills and wanna help a bird nerd group out, please let me know!

[genericpuff]

I've been seeing you say/speculate Rachel Smythe has been cut loose from webtoon, could you elaborate what you mean by that?

It's only a tinfoil hat theory that people should take with MOUNTAINS of salt (seriously, I'm more likely to believe that Rachel really is just done with LO), but there's a general suspicion that LO wasn't meant to end here and that Webtoons decided to cut the cord. I've made a post about it before but some new stuff has surfaced since then.

1.) The announcement the series was ending was made quietly at NYCC and not shared to either Webtoons' socials or Rachel's socials.

The only way fans initially knew about the series ending was through a screencap from the Discord where someone else who had been attending NYCC passed on the info from a Q&A that LO would be entering its final arc.

For a good while the only other way to know the series was ending was through the Discord, a Cosmopolitan article, and my own post.

Though it sounds odd for a series to get cancelled halfway through its third season, it's not uncommon for Webtoons to suddenly axe series while they're on their midseason hiatuses, it's happened before. So there's a general suspicion that Rachel may have found out during NYCC that LO would only be given one more arc.

2.) The actual finale announcement was made in a text post on Instagram that suddenly announced it would be ending on May 11th, despite the fact that there was still lots to wrap up in the story.

What this implies is that Rachel was given one more arc, with no concrete end date... until Webtoons told her to wrap it up in a limited number of episodes, hence why despite us knowing it was in its final arc, the end date still felt too soon. This is also supported by the fact that her initial announcement was vaguely "early/mid 2024" - she couldn't give a more accurate end date because she didn't plan for the actual ending.

3.) Things that Rachel has said implies that she was either hoping for the final arc to go on longer, or that she didn't think LO was going to be ending now.

(that "nothing is set in stone" quote further supports the theory that she may have been hoping to get renewed in spite of the lukewarm ending announcement - that the only reason the announcement was so quiet was because WT hadn't fully committed to it yet and wanted to see how the series would do upon its return; now that they see it falling behind to other series, it might mean WT became more sure in their decision to cut it and gave her an actual deadline to wrap it up by.)

4.) Webtoons has stopped promoting Lore Olympus despite it ending.

Any promotional spots that it has gotten have been stuffed into the dead zone of the banner reels (seriously, anything past the 3rd spot is practically useless because it takes actual committed scrolling to get there vs. the first 1-3 banner spots which can be seen as soon as you open the app/site) and the banner art itself does not in any way advertise the series being in its final arc. These banners also only seem to be appearing for a day at most, compared to the days upwards of weeks they used to get.

Webtoons also hasn't been doing any sort of promoting on their socials for it. Considering The Mafia Nanny has been consistently beating out LO in the top rankings for weeks now, and that LO's rating and view count is still dropping, it appears that Webtoons has finally given up on shoving it down people's throats and put their focus elsewhere.

Again, this is all tinfoil hat speculation, so take it with massive doses of salt. Considering this is Webtoons, I wouldn't be surprised if they finally decided to put LO out of its misery, but this is also Rachel and I wouldn't blame her in the slightest if she finally wanted to be done with it after the past two years of people clowning on it. And I say that knowing I, myself, am a clown LOL

Either way, I feel like either outcome is plausible in its own ways, but whatever is the true reason, it doesn't change the fact that LO is ending and has 3 episodes left to wrap itself up. And whatever comes after will likely involve the launch of Inklore which was estimated for the spring.

[polysucks]

The thing I really don't get about indigenous!Stark haters is - okay, let's agree with them and say it's not canon at all, there is no author intent, there is no textual evidence, yada yada - but why would you actively choose to interpret the characters with a LESS rich narrative? Like, indigenous!Starks makes the characters even deeper and more complex with the way they relate/interact with/exist in the world of Westeros and their dynamics with other kingdoms/houses. And not only that, but it fills in gaps/blanks that make what IS objectively canon and explicitly on the page make more sense and snap all together. It's like having puzzle piece A and puzzle piece C - and indigenous!Starks is puzzle piece B that makes you go 'ahhh, now I see the full picture'. And that feels so GOOD and SATISFYING.

(also that pinned anon that called you the r slur and forgot the INTEGRAL word to make their message make sense is the single funniest piece of anon hate I've seen on this site in YEARS. How do you fuck up that bad lmao)

i missed this ask during sansagate 2025 bc i was dying of a blood infection also thank you i think the hard r typo kill yourself anon is PEAK and I need to figure out how to keep it pinned forever when I redo all my info and pinned posts.

back to my regularly scheduled ndn starks nonsense

yes. I have to hard agree with you. Because it doesn't fuCKING MATTER.

Let's continue to ignore textual and canon context for this exercise, and instead focus purely on the sociological concept that is broader fandom as a whole. I've been genuinely thinking of writing a whole fuckin book (large essay let's be real aint no one publishing my dog diarrhea writing no one cares that much) about how fandom is looked down upon but it's everything we have built our social interactions around as human beings.

We literally live on this planet and experience everything through fiction created by other humans.

Football/gridiron fans? a fuckin fandom. Next time your uncle wears a Packer's shirt tell him how cringe his blorbos are.

Anyway. Where I'm going with this is that I'm old.

I was on tumblr during the beginning, peak, and downfall of Superwholock. I was so deep into the Sherlock fandom that I remember how the entire fandom created a tulpa oc out of thin air and loose ACD descriptions and we just accepted him as canon and casted him as Michael Fassbender. I was there. I was on omegle. I was in the trenches. This video, when it released, personally victimized me. Much like the Lindsay Ellis A/B/O lawsuit video did. but i digress.

So, continuing to ignore textual context:

brown northmen haters, I have a question for you:

Where's your fuckin whimsy?

You're willing to accept the bastardization of Sansa's 3-dimensional, very human, very real, morally grey book depiction via Notorious Woman Haters D&D in the Horrible Year to Be A Woman Doing Anything 2011 HBO adaptation, but not willing to think for a moment that she could possibly be super white passing brown?

Just say you're racist. Just say that. It's allowed. You're fucking stupid, but it's allowed. Just say that. Come off anon and say that :3c

[cherrysightings]

hey internet!! hello inglorious basterds fandom can you hear me is the mic on

So im "new" on Tumblr. New on the sense that I've never really used it; most times I've gotten on here I've just lurked a bit but I never really got used to it. But I'm familiar with Tumblr culture and very much chronically online to the point where I feel constant FOMO from here lol. But what this post is about and for (I think it's my first one?) is to send a smoke signal into the air to any and all Inglorious Basterds fans on here. It's honestly the only site where I've been able to find a "fandom" for the movie which is why I most of the time come here to read y'all's post lol 😭

I LOVE inglorious basterds. I've been hyper-fixated on it for a few months just I've watched it like a year ago? And honestly I just sjdnamdks I'm obsessed 😭 I've read a ton of fics and a ton of posts on here but I'm just DYING to speak to people about it !!! And share headcanons and maybe even write something too, just rave in general about the movie I guess. So this is my S.O.S. call and I guess a shy way of asking to be included in this tags because I might just go insane.

So that's mostly it. I love the movie and have a bunch of crushes on everyone but I'm over my mind for Donny most of all omg it's insane I love him SO much. I'm not that much of the shipping type but I do love me some good fanfiction!

Unrelated: Is this like twitter? Should I make like an info post with some details about me or something of the sort? 😭 Sorry if anything seemed weird English is not my first language lol any other Hispanics in the fandom??

[novelistparty]

so you've probably been warned against clicking strange links and to especially avoid revealing your personal information online, even in "private" accounts. But what about a "cute" spin-the-wheel link above a tumblr poll?? (like the post in the following screenshot)

FYI: getting people to click an external link is a great strategy for gathering more details about a mostly anonymous user in a forum or tumblr or wherever. Here's some reasons why: 1. If you shared a unique link in a restricted forum or channel or community or chatroom or public fandom blog or at the end of a fic on ao3, you can be sure only the people of interest could click on it 2. That URL could lead to fucking anything of their choosing. Do they want to do an intensive browser fingerprint or get a log of IP addresses? Do they want to estimate the hardware specs of everyone's machines? Do they want to try loading other things on the page to test for adblockers or other blacklists? (an additional kind of profiling) 3. People LOVE to give away identifying information for the sake of a poll or cute name generator. Here are some questions I've seen recently and what information it can point to: - First anime? (fuzzy proxy for age and country) - First celebrity crush? (fuzzy proxy for age and country) - First album? (fuzzy proxy for age and country) - First name using first letter of last name, Last name using birthday month (do I need to spell this out? last name and birthday month) - What word do you use for [common item]? (region, language, culture, class) - Getting people to talk about astrology (you've all given away your birth month for free, wtf) Another fun fact about "Spin The Wheel" links: they can generate ad revenue for someone! Fun fact about Quizzes: they can help build deeper advertising profiles for linkbait sites like facebook or buzzfeed or the daily mail or tmz Another fun fact: besides the info the Spin The Wheel or Name Generator pages save direct to the server, the page can encode that information back into where the wheel stops or the name it gives you. That makes it easier to gather information because it's recorded 1st on the server (controlled by person fishing to unmask someone) 2nd back in the post notes or in the discord channel or wherever. And we all know how much people want to gab about the Fun poll or survey or quiz and reveal even more information. Another fun fact about Spin the Wheel or Name Generator or Quiz pages: You might be seeing a list of options nobody else saw that only appear for IP addresses from a certain region! And if you post your result (that would be mostly unique) it's an INSTANT indication that the person from [region] is logged in. (same goes for browser fingerprint - which device a certain person has) I remember a line from an article about digital detectives (I think it was feds tracking dark web stuff), it said they wait for YEARS for someone to post or log in just to confirm a person of interest was in a certain place at a certain time. You and I probably don't remember the information we leaked years and years ago in the notes of a post or on a retweet of some idiot, but any people who might want to figure you out probably have a huge spreadsheet with everything recorded. They can and do analyze and annotate it all, and can start to narrow down where you are, how old you are, your interests, hobbies, class background, devices you use etc. You might be thinking: "but I don't worry about federal agents or intelligence agencies, why do I care?" What if tomorrow your post goes viral, truly globally Viral? You can go from tumblr nobody to target for stalkers and/or hate crimes instantly. An even more serious example from this year: What if you've been advocating for years for people that are now scapegoat of the day for the fascists? What if a federal agent is tasked with creating a list of "those people" for surveillance? The less information you have unintentionally posted about yourself the better. A perhaps more personal and private example: what if you had to get away from a city or country or person or persons or family and didn't want them to follow you? People with a grudge will go to great lengths to get back at someone

[iobartach]

hey-o, lemme do a lil' temperature check here / ramble a bit;

so, cards on table, even though it's been nearly two years, the fandom discourse w/ atsv!migue.l is tough for me.

i know what camps there are, the haters that loathe every fibre of what atsv!migue.l is -- and i completely get why. another then is the... well. you'll know what i mean if you spend literally a minute in the hashtag for him on here, or any other fandom-y site.

and i think for myself, i'm just kinda... in my own camp? yeah, i'm one of the many that first discovered this character through atsv, and whilst i use that version as the basis as for my interpretation (especially in physical appearance and personality), i am preferring now to do my own thing, even with btsv / the 3rd movie on the horizon.

and i guess, by doing so... i hope that's okay / enough for folks? like i hope i'm not inadvertently adding to the hate especially. he's a character that got, what? at a generous guess, 15 mins of screentime, less than the length of a 30 min cartoon / tv episode. and, as was stated by individuals involved in the creation of atsv, he was meant to invoke... certain stereotypes / impressions (i'm phrasing this badly, i know, my apologies).

so for now, i am keeping an open mind on what will be in store for migue.l in btsv, as, especially with other marve.l characters i've portrayed in the past, sequels got released that i absolutely hated. so there is a chance my interpretation will diverge from that, which may not be so bad, given the multiverse nature of my take for this muse, and my own natural reluctance to 'strictly adhere' to every bit of canon info for migue.l such as the reboot continuity's claim that he is/was afraid of spiders

i love what i've done here with migue.l so far, and i'm excited for engaging in more things in the future <3 but as the fandom continues to throw curveballs at me, i'm gonna put this out there and say that if there's anything i'm doing wrong, or could make a better attempt at, feel free to tell me? i'm not afraid of negative feedback, and in fact i learn and appreciate that more than receiving a compliment. this is just sort of the person i am, behind the screen.

so yeah. i've been thinking about this for a bit, and wanted to post this. thank you for reading, and more importantly, for sticking around and embracing my take on this muse <3

[vesna-v-irkutske]

How long have you known about the Academy Maniacs case? I love your account for all the new information I've never seen before. Have you visited Russian sites or anything like that? I think it's hard to investigate things that not everyone already knows, but your content has brought me so many little things I didn't know, and that excites me a lot X)))

If you think I've been studying this case for a few years or something, then no. It's just the power of my ADHD hyperfixation. 🖤

I remember seeing THIS particular image on Pinterest last year, I believe? I saved it to use later as a reaction pic, lol. And I was like, "This is definitely some perpetrator. Not sure if I even wanna know." And then I forgot about it until January of this year, I think. I just started seeing Academy maniacs stuff on Pinterest and then Tumblr. It felt kinda weird... Why are foreigners suddenly so interested in 2 greasy and not conventionally attractive Russians? Initially, I didn't really wanna go into all this, but their dynamic, someone's art and memes were a little bit too good, I guess. Needed to know what's up. 🧐

And yeah, 99% of my sources are Russian sites, 1% is for the Academy maniacs Wiki page on English, lol, I just check it from time to time when I write posts, mostly to see how they translated something (and it kinda SUCKS in some places, LOL (not saying my English is peak, it's not, I don't care that much, I'm just trying to keep things closer to the original)). AND. The Wiki page on English has MUCH more info about Nikita's death. Crazy, right? 😒

Glad to be helpful, btw! This was my goal. So I love seeing comments like this. 🫡🖤