#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.

[unholyverse]

MYSPACE 1.0 THEME REFRESH (originally by conkersradfurday, refreshed by unholyverse)

live previews: 1, 2 / download (pastebin)

hi! i've been using this old theme for years now because other myspace themes don't hit the same, but i've been tweaking a lot of it for personal use. i think it's been long enough since this theme has been abandoned that i can upload something that can handle itself better on modern tumblr.

main features

asks are formatted to look like myspace comments. fun!

four custom links

myspace buttons to follow, message, or block the blog owner

a bunch of info spaces so the world can know what you're about

extra font options

functional search bar (but this is tumblr so...semi functional?)

that web 2.0 ugly goodness

other features + info below the cut

new features

friend space - ever wanna show off your friends? now you can with the friend space to show off your top 8 9 friends on your blog. don't have enough friends? no worries, you can always toggle it off

image space - wanna put a bunch of blinkies somewhere? you'll need to have a bit of html and css knowledge for it, but you can go into the code and add as many images as you'd like. just look for the section and start pasting those images. it's a little tedious but tbh that's just the authentic myspace experience isn't it? but if that's not your thing, you can also toggle it off too.

tweaked/deleted features

had to delete the music player :( sorry but it used flash and i'm not really sure how to make a music player in javascript yet

added username input because it was annoying me that your title could be your name and it didn't make sense in most cases

deleted infinite scroll because the script was super outdated

added the ability to change the "online now!" gif. the original gif will always be in the defaults of the code.

changed the text post header font to verdana because it was impact and you could not fucking read that and it wasn't accurate to a myspace bulletin anyways

deleted the feature that force showed all the pages you made on your blog. so annoying. it will look a little weird if you have asks/submissions deactivated, but i doubt many of you using the theme will have them closed anyways

changed the dead links to redirect to the actual myspace site

extra recommended add-ons

scm music player: a customizable music player with tons of different skins and tons of songs you're able to add

unblue polls by @glenthemes: what it says basically; allows you to customize the colors of tumblr polls on your blog

cursors-4u.com: i love these dinky little cursors they're so fun. great if you really wanna lean into the 2000s aspect of the theme

cursor sparkles: what else is there to say about this they're just fun

notes

i plan on updating the theme semi-regularly if bugs are brought up and stuff (which you can tell me through my inbox)

hopefully i can work on extra tweaks as time goes on (such as figuring out how to add a footer image to videos, toggle tags, etc)

don't repost/claim as your own because it already isn't mine in the first place

like/reblog if you use!

update log

added a tags toggle + tweaked the video post sizes

made the "is in your extended network" status customizable to add different text. feel free to tell the world how many gas station boner pills you took

added an official theme link

[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!

[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.

[nyerus]

Overview of TGCF Versions

Due to recent(ish) events, I thought it would be good to make another post cataloguing all the different "versions" of TGCF, for newcomers and old fans alike! I'll also be going over some FAQs that I've seen or been asked so this post can serve as a decent info thread.

For simplicity's sake, first think of there being two "main" version of TGCF:

The Original -- what all the translations are based on, as well as the manhua and donghua.

The Revised -- what was released in print last year in China (only), and what was recently updated on JJWXC. The audio drama is adapting this

The original webnovel was itself not "censored." By that I mean, it contained everything MXTX originally wrote including kisses, swearing, innuendo, etc. MXTX did self-censor to avoid Real Censorship (hence the lack of NSFW scenes we may have gotten like in her previous novels), but that's a whole different thing. For all intents and purposes, consider the original version and (most of) its translations as being uncensored.

The revised version was first publicly released as a print novel in China. As such, it was actually censored. While "Hualian" is still there, and things are alluded to, it's a lot more vague. Kisses and a lot of other things were cut, including certain dialogue tidbits that perhaps were deemed a bit too obvious. (Plus a lot of Feng Xin and Qi Rong's cursing was removed lmao.)

HOWEVER, shortly after the print release, the audio drama started adapting the uncensored revised version. So we all knew there was an uncensored revised version somewhere in existence. It wasn't until the end of last month that we actually saw it! TGCF was available again on JJWXC after years of being "temporarily locked" to comply with regulations. (Though it was possible it was locked for other reasons. We will never fully know!) Not only was it finally unlocked, but it was actually updated to the uncensored revised version!

F.A.Q.s

1.) Why did MXTX make a revised version anyway? MXTX has mentioned before that she was not entirely satisfied with the original version of TGCF. Because she wrote and released each chapter in a serialized manner, with frequent (possibly daily?) updates, it doesn't surprise me that it didn't turn out exactly how she wanted. Now that she has the opportunity to sit down with it and go over everything on her own time, she's able to get it closer to what she wanted. In short: she's just really passionate about this story!

2.) Is there and English translation, or will there be? What about other languages? Officially, not yet. We don't know if there ever will be, as MXTX would have to re-negotiate the rights with publishers for translations, and at this time, we don't know if that'll happen. Unofficially, there are a few options: a. ClearNoodle has done some fan-translations you should check out here! b. By purchasing the webnovel on JJWXC now, you can MTL (machine translate) the novel. If you've seen screenshots in English floating around that aren't part of the fan-translations above, this is probably the source.

3.) What is JJWXC and how do I use it/purchase TGCF on it? JJWXC is the webnovel publishing site where TGCF was originally released. It hosts a giant array of C-novels, including most other danmei that you may have heard about. SV and MDZS were indeed also on JJWXC, but are currently (still) locked. To purchase TGCF (or any other novel) on JJWXC, cangji.net has an excellent guide and list of other helpful links to get you all set up. Please do check it out! Additionally, buying on JJWXC seems to be the most direct way to support authors. You can also throw bonus tips at them!

4.) How much has really changed in the revised version? A fair bit. Mostly, the changes are to do with plot structure, minor characters, overall flow, and so on. It's still essentially the same story, but in a way that feels fresh. Hualian in particular have exactly the same dynamic as before. MXTX added extra scenes between them, including very sweet and tender domestic stuff haha! There's also a few new lines of spicier dialogue to go along with some of the scenes that already existed in the original.

5.) So what is considered canonical? Both, in a way. MXTX has stated that she's happy if fans can enjoy both at once, and that we're free to pick-and-choose as we wish. Personally, while there are many things I prefer from the original, the revised version is something closer to MXTX's true vision for the novel. So I feel that holds a little bit of weight there, too.

6.) Will the manhua/donghua be adapting any of the newly revised content? So far that seems unlikely. The revised version facelifts a lot from the early parts of the story, which is stuff these adaptations have already covered. It would be hard to change things down the line now. At most they could add some of the extra dialogue or such, but we'll see if that's the case. For now, we simply don't know and shouldn't count on it. If you'd still like an adaptation of the revised, please absolutely check out the audio drama! It's easily become my personal fave adaptation of the story, and is made by a small but very passionate team who are close to MXTX. Thus, it's quite faithful and does the source material such justice! <3

[cleolinda]

The happenings, Tumblr edition

Obviously I am not happy about the prospect of Tumblr going into sunset "guess we'll just let it die" mode (or possibly "Let's sell it to fuck knows who!!"), if that is indeed what is happening. My clinical anxiety needs a lot of things. This is not one of them.

I've been using Tumblr as my primary hangout for pretty much exactly a year now. I am tired of watching platforms enshittify and crumble. Why does this keep happening to us. I am weary.

At the same time, yeah, Twitter is dogshit now, but a year after it got taken over, it is there still. There were some problems on Reddit, but it's thoroughly still there. There was time to figure out some migration for all the good it did.

I worked on essay-type posts and recaps all this year to figure out approximately how many spoons I have and how much I can expect to post a month, before I actually got the Patreon running in October. A solid 1-2 Long Posts a month, it seems like, and maybe more frequently if I do shorter posts. And Tumblr has great opportunities to just keep reblogging and sharing things, sometimes adding comments, so I feel like I'm active even when I'm stuck trying to finish a post of my own.

So now, fuck me, I guess

So I have the Patreon as a way to say, hey, I'm here no matter what else happens, sign up for the ~*free*~ weekend linkspam/check-in, here's what I posted wherever this week, I'll put up some early or extra stuff if you'd like to upgrade to a fancy tier someday. It is truly most important to me for people to just know where I am; you don't have to commit to the $1 or $5 tiers.

But I also want a way to post my writing publicly, so people can, you know, see it. So I'm gonna start mirroring my own longer posts on Dreamwidth, I guess. That's the place I know to go back to.

Hopefully Dreamwidth does not go also down in flames!!!!

I've started archiving some of my work (also from LJ and Twitter) as PDFs in Dropbox. Mostly as a safeguard for myself, but I'll make it a public link on the Patreon.

I would really like to keep up with where people are going, what sites people are going to try to migrate to next, and I'll pass that info on as I get it.

All that said, I think most of us will stay on Tumblr as long as we can, if only for the very unique shoot-the-shit culture it has. Like, people aren't leaving it so much as preparing for the future.

[ms-demeanor]

I appreciate your calm-the-fuck-down post a lot, ngl - from following you, I've seen you have a pretty good handle on understanding what ToS does and doesn't say, and are good at explaining the difference - and I was hoping you could give some insight on whether or not the actually clicking the 'I agree to terms of service' button (note: multi-step process) required to turn off the New! flag makes a difference in the level of data collected - I would expect at the very least it would act as a gateway for whether or not user data is shared with the third party integration, but legalese isn't my field of study.

Agreeing to the ToS to get the little notification thing to turn off would allow tumblr live to share the data that it collects with 3rd party apps and would allow tumblr live to collect location data from your device whether or not you are actively using the app; whether you want to do this is up to you. I do generally recommend having location tracking shut off at a device level, which makes this data collection pretty useless, but I recognize that most people don't have location tracking turned off on their phones.

*HOWEVER*

People are talking about doing this to turn off the New! flag (which IS very annoying) but the most recent post from @changes makes it clear that that is an ongoing bug they are working on; Tumblr has been pretty decent recently about following up on the info they post about on the changes blog and I see no reason to believe that they won't get that bug fixed pretty quickly.

Rather than agree to the ToS I would suggest waiting a few days because I very much doubt that will stick around for long.

And this is not directed at you but I want to use this ask to point to another recent example of tumblr conspiracism: people are seeing the "new" flag as tumblr attempting to force users to agree to the live ToS even as they have offered a longer snooze period and saying that one negates the other - this is being interpreted as malice and a dark pattern and user hostile design.

And I just want to remind people that some time between eight months and a year and a half ago the notifications changed and it was briefly impossible to clear the new flag on the notification button - this is an issue that we've seen tumblr have before with "new" flags after they changed a feature. It's something that people yelled about and sent around guides for blocking the element. It's something that was addressed quickly and was done unintentionally.

I really wish people would stop attributing to malice the bullshit that happens at tumblr that is clearly the result of this website being hilariously broken and held together with hope and chewing gum.

There are ways in which this site is broken that does genuine harm and I'm willing to be cautiously optimistic that the new staff crew is taking steps to fix it (this is about blocked tags; I've been following what various staff members say about this and I have seen small positive steps, staff does seem to be making an effort to unfuck the tags and I can respect that while still being frustrated that it's taking so long). It isn't *good* that the site is held together with chewing gum and hope but it does seem like staff is at least trying to add some popsicle sticks and duct tape to that mix.

The new flag is annoying and I hope they get it fixed quickly and I believe they actually will get it fixed quickly; if you're really bothered by it there's not much harm in accepting the live ToS because the data collected by tumblr live is still pretty minimal compared to most other social media apps, but from a paranoid "fuck all this bullshit" perspective accepting the Live TOS doesn't do much harm at all if you have location data off on your devices (which I think everyone should) and use adblockers (which I think everyone should).

[crypticvirago]

Architect Society thoughts

(This is gonna be a pretty thick info dump so I'll put it below a break so I'm not clogging up anyone's feed).

All this mostly started with my attempt at trying to figure out some odd aspects of how Architects are represented in the game, and it spiraled into me imagining hypotheticals and putting way too much thought into things that don't need it/will probably never be explained.

I know that Architect society is presented as this whole, cohesive unit in the game, but I've always wondered if it's more than that. And while we have no idea how Architect society is divided up, or if it even is, we do know that Al-An is in a position of high importance. He states as much, and considering he was given the very important task of finding a cure for the bacterium outbreak, it's likely he was pretty high up.

Which makes me start thinking about how status is represented in Architect society. If it's something physically represented (like how royalty wears crowns, or military wears uniforms) or if it's something built into the 'code' that uniquely identifies each individual 'component' or Architect in the Network

I think both, and like to imagine they use their horns as symbols of status and add adornments to them - it's almost archaic tradition but since metals like gold, silver and platinum are rare in space because of their density, having more of them symbolized importance and longevity of "usefulness", i.e., how long you've been alive and contributing to the Network

(Idk I just want to see Al-An wearing platinum jewelry with pearls or amber, because cosmically they're far rarer than emeralds or diamonds, reflecting his incredibly important status.)

Which brings me to some things never explained in game. There are statues that get made of Architects you can find in the Koppa mining site, as well as a whole ass garden that gets made as a "place to reflect". Why? What purpose does it serve, unless Architect's value art in some way? I keep thinking about that one Architect that died there. Why did they go there, and choose to die there, if they didn't find comfort in the place?

People, myself included, characterize Architect's as being solely invested in scientific study alone, but they have to value art somehow. Otherwise, why would those statues be made on 4546b? Why would all of those objects, some with purely subjective value, be displayed in the primary containment facility and the quarantine enforcement platform? Maybe not valuing it to the extent of study, but still regarding it as serving some sort of purpose.

And now, what if there's an almost outlier section of society that, rather than studying the sciences, are more interested in studying the humanities? Valuing philosophy, art and even their language, placing it in high regard? What if the number that study those has been dwindling for hundreds of years, largely looked down upon by the majority of Architect society for their study into what might not be considered important to progress? Sort of like nowadays - where people consider getting a degree in the arts secondary to a degree in the sciences. But they value that study regardless, and have their own complex of buildings atop a mountain like we see at the end of the game, in some separate location.

And even further - what if there were even Architects that found themselves discontent with being in the Network and left? Regarded with disappointment and shamed by the society they left behind, deemed crazy and defective, but finding individualism more valuable. Forming a sect somewhere either among the mountains, or below the cloud layer, away from 99% of all other Architects.

What if they alone survived the outbreak? Not deliberately, but just because the infection never had the opportunity to spread to them. They might not even know what happened to the rest, to those that remained in Network. They were told to never come back to the mountain peaks, so they never did. Never cared to. They just know that at one point the progress stopped, and the ships stopped flying overhead.

What if, when Al-An comes home, Architects he once deemed lesser, flawed and defective, are all that's left of the people he loves? Robin not understanding the differences, and is relieved and happy that there are some of his people left. But Al-An's just conflicted because they aren't his people. Not really. It'll leave Al-An with his race still technically alive, but his people are well and truly gone. There's no place for him among them, unless he can accept that sole individualism as his new reality. Having to come to terms with the fact that the society he was searching to restore can never come back to be, but the Architect's are not truly gone.

I'll likely have many more thoughts to add, but I found myself caught up thinking about the evolution of the Architect's as a species - from their birth of sentience to the cybernetically enhanced, interstellar traveling people we know in the game. About the scraped beta dialogue between Robin and Al-An about how they had to work hard to survive the threats of evolutionary and technological advancement, and all that meant for them and their society.

I could probably go on forever about what those evolutionary hurdles must have looked like and the sacrifices needed to be made to continue on, since that's just my cup of overthinking biologist tea. But I think I'll leave it here, for now.

[allyriadayne]

will someone explain to me what the deal is with asoiaf lore? i'll see someone talking about something and it will come from martin responding to a fan letter from the 90s? and this is canon?? like who found and compilates all of the stuff he has said besides released books and interviews i guess. i've never been a fan of a series like this, is this common?

this has me genuinely in tears sorry 😭😭😭

okay serious now. i genuinely don't know if this is normal or expected in fantasy book series, at least i don't think it's that common in modern fantasy where the fashion has gone other ways from the expansive sword & sorcery type from the 20th century. i could not tell you if other fantasy authors are as involved as grrm is because i haven't been involved with any other fandom like this either (maybe lotr fans can say something different), but considering the years between publications (let this one be the last 🤞), the massive fanbase and fame of the source material, i think it's normal that his interviews, comments, and fanmail has been archived in the internet.

strictly speaking, everything outside asoiaf (books 1-5), fire and blood, and the dunk & egg books is not considered canon. BUT if the info comes from people like elio and linda like twoiaf book, or like the calendars, cookbooks, official art etc it's considered semi-canonical, just like anything grrm says /outside/ of the books. famous example, it's like when jk rowling said dumbledore was gay /after/ the books were done. it's semi canonical bc it comes from the author themselves, it doesn't affect the main body of work so it can be taken or discarded.

the thing is, martin has done A LOT of interviews and answered A LOT of fanmail and worked closely in answering doubts from the westeros dot org site for their rpg games set in westeros (girl, the dream) during the more than 30 years since the publication of agot. all this is considered semi canon and this archive is called "so spake martin" (SSM), which i think was started by elio & linda in the 90s and it's still collecting info. if you go to the awoiaf wiki, esp in the main series characters you'll see this citation (from tyrion's page):

most will be things like "martin has said tyrion has similarities to richard iii" (i mean duh) but other will be really neat like saying tyrion has been trained in arms, which while not something new (he does fight more or less ably during the blackwater battle) it's interesting to point out when it's a detail that may be lost in the series. it goes from character trivia to how casterly rock is different from the show. most fans take what he says seriously but i know there are people that only consider what's in the book and that's it, which is fine. in any case, most of these is used to enrich theories or character analysis, it's why you will see trivia from a fanmail from 1996 or whatever. i myself haven't read SSM completely one by one but i do like to peruse the wiki often, even if it's not complete.

i've seen a few blogs on here who also "collect" grrm's words like nobodysuspectsthebutterfly's "so spake martin" tag (mostly analysis but really interesting read if u don't want to go thru the westeros org page) or georgescitadel that has specific info about characters or themes in asoiaf.

[eliotlime]

End of October Update

There's got to be a less clunky way for me to title these things but maybe I'll figure it out after a few posts.

Anyway at the top of the order I want to say that uh... the Abacelsus zine is not happening by halloween unforch.. I just started school part-time and it being part-time is still kicking my ass! So tentative release date will be on 11th November unless something else happens....

On the plus side I'm done with the cover so all that's left is the back page and cramming all 24 pages full of drawings 👍

-> As I've said at the end of my previous post I want to make more blog style posts so here's me trying to do that, more under the cut

🔐Abacelsus Zine

I'm still deciding on whether i want to print it A5 or B5 but I'm leaning towards A5, though for the digital release it doesn't really matter lol

As mentioned, I'm done with the main cover so I just need to fill this entire thing with stuff, I said 24 pages but really the total page count is 30. I'm just not counting the cover and the blurb stuff.

I'm half taking a break with this at the risk of burning myself out and half paralysed with starting it. Plus I've kind of been more into Axl & I-no hilariously but I'll always love A.B.A. I think the lack of any real info really lends her well to interpretation which is always fun.

I've never really been one to engage in fandom so I'm probably going to be doing my own thing. That being said if anyone has any suggestions feel free to drop them in my strawpage or ask box :)

🥤 Strawpage & General Socials

The bugs make my pages so decorative, I gotta draw more bugstyle guys.

Speaking of strawpage, I made one of those! It was really fun, I have a short OC info tab with descriptions of some of my main guys. I'd love for you to check it out.

This kind of acts as my ask box for twitter since there's not one there and apparently it's basically my main social media site these days so I'm just mirroring my experience here over there too.

Hilarious timing considering that it's basically collapsing on itself once again, I'll probably still be on that damn site until it implodes but I also have a Bluesky account for those that care about it.

The sky follower bridge extension is really useful for bulk following people from twitter to bsky

I'd love to post there more but there's not a queue function and that's very important to me as someone who is not American and lazy to remember optimal timings.

Did you see? I also have a new pinned for this blog! Wanted to make a new one for a while now, always thought the old one was so freaking long. All the old info is still on my about and faq page though I don't know who actually looks at those.. a relic from years past..

☹ School

Sigh, like I mentioned earlier I'm doing school again! At my big age, but I'm having fun so far! It's part-time but it's still kicking my fucking ass! It's the main reason why I'm a little disoriented this month honestly.

Do you like it? I spent an entire Sunday making my class miro board look niceys and then proceeded to get nauseous from cybersickness afterwards LOL

I'm doing a UI/UX course and I have to say the funnest part about it is making personas, it's like making OCs. Don't particularly like writing though.. but also that's a lie considering the numerous amount of paragraphs in this blog post alone haha

🎁 Merch

I've also gotten confirmation that I'll be boothing again next year in Febuary! So I gotta start locking into making more stickers and general merch. I say this a lot but I do need to look into opening an online store because I just have tonnes of stickers and stuff lying around waiting till the next time I do a convention which is kind of a shame.

Oh, but I will say that if you are from Singapore and would like anything from my previous convention catalogue feel free to shoot me a DM on instagram and I can mail it to you locally, shipping's $2 SGD.

➰Closing Thoughts

All in all, been kind of busy this month with school and various loose threads from September but overall I think I'm doing better! I've also been cooking lately and truthfully that's my biggest achievement this month haha, been also getting really into canned fish. Yummy!

Oh and a last thing is that I've been itching to animate again so I'll end this post with a WIP of a gif I did last night/morning. I almost always never finish my animations but here's hoping this one actually makes it to the colouring stage haha

No prizes to anyone who can guess who these two because of course.

Thank you for reading! I know I can't expect everything to be done in a single month but I just wish I could do everything without getting tired or cybersick! If you'd like to support me, here's my ko-fi page and my itchi.io & gumroad as well.

If you have any questions or just generally want to talk to me, my DMs and askbox is always open! Any professional enquires can be sent towards my email as well: eliotlime@gmail.com

XOXO, Stay weird!

-Eliot :)

[neechees]

Do you know if there are more places to research the Rossdale powerplant in Edmonton? The city website just says "oh we reburied the remains so it's all good now lmao" which I don't believe. I tried looking at the Papaschase Band website too but their history page didn't get very much into it

Oh ill tell you about it right now in addition to getting you more sources lmfao

According to this, some of the more recent graves that they found at Rossdale plant were reburied in 2016 at the Fort Edmonton Traditional Burial Site. However, i think there was more graves than this, and wouldn't be surprised if there were more under the current plant location even now rather than just around it. According to my Kohkum, there was also more graves around the bridge that sits directly across the plant and leads to the other end of the River Valley.

The whole River Valley area was traditionally Blackfoot land first, but eventually other tribes would come in to trade and host various ceremonies together, particularly near where the river is (which is also where Rossdale plant is), and that's also where a lot of our dead are buried. So for hundreds of years, what is now called "Edmonton" was essentially a Native city & gathering place, and the reason this area was turned INTO a (colonized) city of Edmonton is because the settlers saw that a lot of Natives were here, and they thought it would be convenient to settle the area so they could convert us to Christianity, and/or replace the Indigenous population. This is true for a lot of other cities across Canada, such as Wetaskiwin, Heart Lake (which is where Native couples often got married). Edmonton also has a terrible history of VERY bad racism & segregation, land theft, and displacement.

I mention all this because the trouble is, this place has been occupied by Natives for thousands of years, and so there's graveyards & sacred spaces everywhere, especially near the river valley, and they would have started construction during the time they didn't give a shit if they were disturbing our dead OR living. I could believe they potentially moved the bones and reburied them when they were first building the plant, but I don't know WHERE or when they did it.

The land where Rossdale Plant is located now was traditionally called Pêhonân which means "waiting place" in Cree (this coincidentally is also the name for what is now Fort Carlton, Saskatchewan). All that I've just talked about in this video here under the section "Rossdale Flats" starting at 7:23. Below is an old photo of the Rossdale Flatts where Natives were still camping out

The Cree band Nêhiyawak has a band called "Pehonan" that did the score for the documentary Ôtênaw, and their cover for this album features the memorial statue that's there, but this is from a bottom view with the camera looking up. When upright, the memorial looks like a four poled tipi sitting atop a circle, which I've added as the right photo. I think the plant also thinks this memorial makes up for the colonization and such but obviously, it doesn't.

Now some lovely sources for you:

If you have a vimeo account, there's an oral history documentary called Ôtênaw about the city of Edmonton and the River Valley that iirc also talks about the Rossdale Plant (but again, the surrounding River Valley is also relevant to the plant) that you can watch here. I had the pleasure of meeting the person who narrates the video (Dwayne Donald) & learning from him directly.

Here's a video with a teensy bit of info

Here's a free PDF that talks about Edmonton & Rossdale plant

Here is a paper that talks about the history of the Rossdale Plant as well as mentioning the graveyards during the construction of the plant.

The last paper I linked, in my opinion, still reads from a more settler Canadian point of view and doesn't really take the Indigenous history of Edmonton there seriously, and so I'd say read it critically. One thing is that I find it interesting that in this paper while it does the bare minimum of mentioning its important history with First Nations, later it reverts to saying the area was a "wilderness" & "naturally shaped" & disregards the history once more to justify the construction of the plant (despite archeology in the River Valley finds that FN have been there for 12,000+ years). This paper also includes maps of the history of the plant's construction throughout the years, and includes a blank area that reads "no permanent human settlement, only First Nations camps" meaning, this paper doesn't take Indigenous people living at this site (or potential graveyards near there) as valid enough to call it our land, and once again, justifies the construction of the plant because no White people were there. Perhaps not out of malice, but it still very White centered and ignorant

So while several of these sources do say "we reburied the remains" (which I don't necessarily think they're lying, there were remains that were buried), I also don't think they're completely off the hook because it looks like the plant can barely stand to mention it's still on Native land at the end of the day.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for getting my childhood best friend a new friendship bracelet even though he has a girlfriend?

Basically my mom and her best friend got pregnant within a year of each other. As a result me and Dylan were raised as siblings. Our families are super close, spend holidays together, we've gone on vacations together, and Dylan and I have always called each other brother and sister.

Dylan's been dating Maya for the better part of a year. Maya is nice, but clearly has some feelings on me and Dylan being as close as we are. We've both explicitly stated there have never been romantic or sexual vibes between us, and I have made the hard choice to pull away from Dylan quite a bit to give Maya more room.

(For example I stopped our weekly hang outs, only really hang out with Dylan in a group setting, we don't hang out on FT anymore, ect.)

Maya is generally polite, but there's been tension and a few pointed remarks over the months. I know the girl best friend is pretty much a pariah in boy/girl friendships, so I've tried to just be as unobtrusive and respectful as I can.

Onto the current problem: Dylan and I have always had friendship bracelets and a few matching items. For example we have matching photos and photo frames from the holiday to Greece when we were little, we both have matching hoodies from a concert we went to, and one or two other bits. Its not a lot, but I guess it would all fill a small box if you put it together.

Dylan's friendship bracelet broke last month and couldn't be fixed. He put it away in a keepsake box but was pretty bummed about no longer being able to wear it. It took the whole month of scouring secondhand sites and ebay but last week I actually found one and was able to get it for him as a replacement. I gave it to him when our families met for dinner on Tuesday and he was super happy. He put it on immediately and hasn't taken it off.

We all met as a group to hang out today and Maya seemed a little...Vaguely annoyed toward me? When you can just tell someone's got an issue with you, even if they're not outwardly acting any different.

But she came with me when I went to the bathroom (as girls do) and as we were washing our hands she told me she was really 'surprised' I got Dylan another bracelet. I wasn't really sure if she meant in general or that I was able to find the exact same one, so I asked what she meant and she said she didn't want to be 'that girlfriend' but when the bracelet broke she was internally relieved, because she thinks its kind of inappropriate that we wear matching bracelets and have a 'claim' over each other like that.

She said she's been thinking about the future a lot more recently and she doesn't want anything 'held back' or 'obstructed' by my obsession with Dylan and the 'premade family' we have.

I'll admit I got annoyed by that, and immediately asked if she'd have an issue with me if I was a guy. She said I know that's different, and then one of the other girls from the group came in to look for us because we'd been gone so long and we kind of had to put it on a shelf for the rest of the day.

She text me a bit ago saying 'think about what I said.' Internally, I want to tell her to get a grip on herself, but I also know that I'm the girl best friend, and pretty much anything I do from here on out is critical and could make me the asshole. I also didn't want to hurt her or cause problems for Dylan, I was just trying to replace part of our friendship that's always been there.

AITA for replacing it? I can't exactly stop wearing mine (he'll ask why) or tell him to stop wearing his (again, he'll ask why) but honestly I'm also unsure of what to do now. Maya's the only one who thinks us being best friends is a problem, even our families know we've always had a sibling relationship and not one that might change to romantic.

What are these acronyms?