#Need to see if the archive server has those...

[solradguy]

I don't really have much evidence of the fact that I was at least mildly aware of what Guilty Gear was in 2014 other than that Holy Orders was so bitchin that I pirated downloaded an entire album that's survived the death of 1 external hard drive and about 3 computers since

Guilty Gear sleeper agent

[mcmansionhell]

pre-recession, post-taste

Hello, everyone. I hope this blog can bring some well-needed laughs in really trying times. That's why I've gone back into the archives of that precipitous year 2007, a year where the McMansion was sleepwalking into being a symbol of the financial calamity to follow. We return to the Chicago suburbs once more because they remain the highest concentration of houses in their original conditions. Thanks to our flipping predilection, these houses become rarer and rarer and I have to admit even I have developed a fondness for them as a result.

Our present house is ostensibly "French Provincial" in style, which is McMansion for "Chateaux designed by Carmela Soprano". It boasts 7 bedrooms, 8.5 bathrooms, and comes in at a completely reasonable 15,000 square feet. It can be yours for an equally reasonable $1.5 million.

Every 2007 McMansion needed two things: a plethora of sitting rooms and those dark wood floors. This house actually has around five or six sitting rooms (depending if you count the tiled sunroom) but for brevity's sake, I'll only provide two of them.

With regards to the second sitting room, I'm really not one to talk statuary here because beside me there is a bust of Dante where the sculptor made him look simultaneously sickly and lowkey hot.

Technically, if we are devising a dichotomy between sitting and not sitting (yes, I know about the song), the dining room also counts as a sitting room. The more chairs in your McMansion dining room, the more people allegedly like you enough to travel 2.5 hours in traffic to see you twice a year.

Here's the thing about nostalgia: the world as we knew it then is never coming back. In some ways this is sad (kitchens are entirely white now and marble countertops will look terrible in about 3 years) but in other ways this is very good (guys in manhattan have switched to private equity instead of betting the farm on credit default swaps made from junk mortgages proffered to America's most vulnerable and exploited populations.) Progress!

Okay I really don't understand the 50 bed pillows thing. Every night my parents tossed their gazillion decorative pillows on the floor just to put them back on the bed the next morning. Like, for WHAT? Who was going in there? The Pope?

Here's a fun one for your liminal spaces moodboards. (Speaking for myself.)

Yes, I know about skibidi toilet. And sticking out your gyatt for the rizzler. I wish I didn't. I wish I couldn't read. Literacy is like a mirror in which I only see the aging contours of my face.

When your kids move out every room becomes a guest room.

Anyway, let's see what the rear of this house has to offer.

The migratory birds will not forgive them for their crimes. But also seriously, not even a garden?

Anyway, that does it for this round of McMansion Hell. Happy Halloween!

If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including a discord server, extra posts, and livestreams.

Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar! Student loans just started back up!

[echoekhi]

I’m Declaring War Against “What If” Videos: Project Copy-Knight

What Are “What If” Videos?

These videos follow a common recipe: A narrator, given a fandom (usually anime ones like My Hero Academia and Naruto), explores an alternative timeline where something is different. Maybe the main character has extra powers, maybe a key plot point goes differently. They then go on and make up a whole new story, detailing the conflicts and romance between characters, much like an ordinary fanfic.

Except, they are fanfics. Actual fanfics, pulled off AO3, FFN and Wattpad, given a different title, with random thumbnail and background images added to them, narrated by computer text-to-speech synthesizers.

They are very easy to make: pick a fanfic, copy all the text into a text-to-speech generator, mix the resulting audio file with some generic art from the fandom as the background, give it a snappy title like “What if Deku had the Power of Ten Rings”, photoshop an attention-grabbing thumbnail, dump it onto YouTube and get thousands of views.

In fact, the process is so straightforward and requires so little effort, it’s pretty clear some of these channels have automated pipelines to pump these out en-masse. They don’t bother with asking the fic authors for permission. Sometimes they don’t even bother with putting the fic’s link in the description or crediting the author. These content-farms then monetise these videos, so they get a cut from YouTube’s ads.

In short, an industry has emerged from the systematic copyright theft of fanfiction, for profit.

Project Copy-Knight

Since the adversaries almost certainly have automated systems set up for this, the only realistic countermeasure is with another automated system. Identifying fanfics manually by listening to the videos and searching them up with tags is just too slow and impractical.

And so, I came up with a simple automated pipeline to identify the original authors of “What If” videos.

It would go download these videos, run speech recognition on it, search the text through a database full of AO3 fics, and identify which work it came from. After manual confirmation, the original authors will be notified that their works have been subject to copyright theft, and instructions provided on how to DMCA-strike the channel out of existence.

I built a prototype over the weekend, and it works surprisingly well:

On a randomly-selected YouTube channel (in this case Infinite Paradox Fanfic), the toolchain was able to identify the origin of half of the content. The raw output, after manual verification, turned out to be extremely accurate. The time taken to identify the source of a video was about 5 minutes, most of those were spent running Whisper, and the actual full-text-search query and Levenshtein analysis was less than 5 seconds.

The other videos probably came from fanfiction websites other than AO3, like fanfiction.net or Wattpad. As I do not have access to archives of those websites, I cannot identify the other ones, but they are almost certainly not original.

Armed with this fantastic proof-of-concept, I’m officially declaring war against “What If” videos. The mission statement of Project Copy-Knight will be the elimination of “What If” videos based on the theft of AO3 content on YouTube.

I Need Your Help

I am acutely aware that I cannot accomplish this on my own. There are many moving parts in this system that simply cannot be completely automated – like the selection of YouTube channels to feed into the toolchain, the manual verification step to prevent false-positives being sent to authors, the reaching-out to authors who have comments disabled, etc, etc.

So, if you are interested in helping to defend fanworks, or just want to have a chat or ask about the technical details of the toolchain, please consider joining my Discord server. I could really use your help.

------

See full blog article and acknowledgements here: https://echoekhi.com/2023/11/25/project-copy-knight/

[alpaca-clouds]

Schrödinger's Disability

"Stop using your autism/adhd as an excuse!" I cannot tell you how often I got to hear that. Because here is the thing: Most people do not perceive either of those two diagnosises as "real". Even if they know they are real. Even medical professionals do not quite... understand it. Even those working with neurodivergent people.

Of course, if someone is the kinda autistic person who has also some sort of mental impairment, people perceive it as a disability - but if it does not come along with that kinda stuff, a lot of people treat it, as if we make an active choice to do or not to do something.

I told this story yesterday: When I was a kid, the following thing would always happen. When we would have art class, some of my pencils would drop from the table. Most likely because of dyspraxia. Now, when that happened I was simply not able to stop what I was doing. Because my brain cannot handle "stopping one thing to do another thing even for just a moment" very well. And it could handle it even worse when I was a kid. But also, I do not have object permanence. So, if an object does not exist within my field of vision, I just... forget about it. So, I often would just forget to pick the pencil back up. And teachers would be: "Oh, this boy is too lazy to pick up his own things." Which was not at all what was happening.

Another thing that happened to me too often is a very typical autism thing: Someone tells me something. But they do not tell me this in plain words, but rather imply it. So... I very much just not understood it. So, for example, I got told on a Discord Server by one user: "I have muted this channel." Which I understood as: "They muted this channel (maybe because it is very active)". What they said was, though: "I do not wanna see this channel, stop tagging me in this."

And mind you, this happens at work and university, too. A good example is the good old question of: "When are you done with this?" Which I usually understand as: "When are you done with this?" But what they mean to say is: "Hurry up, I need this now."

Last semester I had this happen at university even. Basically I misunderstood the final assignment, because it was not spelled out. Thankfully the professor was less of an asshole about it, than most people. I explained it to him, he understood, still got a good grade. But that tends to be more the exception than the rule.

As I said, this is a thing that even medical professionals do not really get. Even therapists do again and again fail to just communicate with autistic people clearly. They do not think about us usually being unable to understand implied meanings. We only understand the literal meaning for a lot of stuff.

And again: This is especially harsh with people like me, who superficially seem to function well in society. Heck, I have been told by professionals that I could not have ADHD or autism, because I archived a master's degree at university. Because they cannot comprehend that both ADHD and autism are a spectrum. It is not something you "either have, or have not" but it is a wide spectrum of symptoms that are differently strong in different people.

In Germany this also shows harshly when it comes to disability benefits. Because autism on its own rarely ever qualifies for disability benefits at all. Mental disabilities that might be linked to autism do. But autism on its own? No. Same goes with ADHD. And this... is kinda silly, right? Because we have studies upon studies that people with autism and ADHD often cannot work fulltime - at least not permanently. And we also know that generally neurodivergent people are more likely to be fired for a plenthora of reasons. So, yeah, we should kinda be treated like disabled, right?

And the worst part? In the parts where you get legally discriminated because of disabilities? Yeah, we still get that. We cannot immigrate into all other contries. Like, I cannot immigrate into New Zealand, for example, even though I would like too, because New Zealand discriminates against people with autism when it comes to immigration.

So... yeah. No, this sucks.

Nobody would tell a blind person overlooking a visual sign: "Stop using your blindness as an excuse". But with autistic people? It is the norm.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

JMJ: Frankenstein; or, the Modem Prometheus

Originally this was going to be titled "So Your Favourite Couple is Dead." but that would probably be a better outcome.

Spoilers for The Magnus Protocol episode 1, and all of The Magnus Archives by implication, below the cut.

This is going to be building on a couple of ideas I've seen throw around. Too often to cite any particular source, unfortunately, but I've not seen this conclusion reached and I think it might have more backing to it. Additionally, it's built upon the assumption that because "Chester" and "Norris" share VA's with Jon and Martin that they are Jon and Martin. Which naturally leaves that other J for "Augustus" being Jonah.

A very common thread in the conversations around episode 1's incident reports is that they're foreshadowing the major themes/beats of the show. The second one is obvious enough; don't got to the Magnus Institute. A sentiment we can all get behind. The other, a story of partial reanimation, has been taken to be a warning that the people you love don't always come back the same. I think that's likely the implication but a potential clue hasn't seen any attention AFAIK.

Before we get there though I need to briefly explain the history of JMJ. If you were a part of the ARG you'll know all about Colin's Code Collection. For those who don't know out favourite OIAR code monkey kept a selection of projects on the OIAR servers and through some covert means we gained access to this. Lots of it was normal stuff like Colin thinking he could improve Linux. However there were several encoded strings left by _6A1F7106A_$. These strings contained a few things but of importance for us is a few code blocks encoded in a monoalphabetic substitution cipher where the ciphertext was alchemic symbols. 6A1F7106A itself is an encoded string but unlike the rest of the ARG it was encoded in three layers. 6A is hexadecimal for "J", while 1F710 is Unicode for "🜐", and 🜐 was "M" in the aforementioned alchemic cipher. JMJ.

Now back to that incident. Coming back wrong was the entire premise of why that incident was scary. JMJ have come back too., and as that incident was about partial reanimation everyone ran with that idea mapping onto JMJ. But "Reanimation (Partial)" wasn't the only option for it as it could have bee "Reanimation (Amalgamative)".

This whole time they've been saying JMJ. It's not ever just been J, or M. Even before we knew it was JMJ it was 6A1F7106A. Always one string; like one name. We've been talking about how shunting the Fears through the portal could've mixed them together but they're not the only ones that could've happened to. So what if it's not about JMJ coming back wrong, but coming back pieced together into a new whole?

It's not just the naming either but how they act. An amalgamation of Jon, Martin, and Jonah vying for control. Jonah, again presuming Augustus is Jonah, is the rarest of the three because it's 2-on-1. Jon and Martin can try to suppress him. Additionally, the .jmj error also makes more sense if you treat them as a single entity rather than three entirely separate ones. The trailer initialises them all as separate things but any effects of them we see is a single name and given all the above they don't seem to be able to act independently. The reason the trailer mentions errors and undefined drives for the master–slave drives would then be because there is no singular consciousness in control of the whole. There is a lack of authority, no truly dominant aspect to them, no hierarchy. So they're vying for control and causing those errors. The .jmj error, the encrypted text when plaintext would have been more useful, Fr3-d1 breaking down, the fact they seemingly can only manifest single personalities at once, Jonah's rare appearances. There is an obvious conflict at play here.

The opening to this wasn't a joke either. I was planning on writing about how they're likely dead for real. We've known Elias' VA wasn't coming back for a long long time so if it's Jonah in there it's OG Jonah. OG Jonah who doesn't have a body, which means more than likely whatever has trapped them hasn't stored their bodies. They're in there forever. No getting out. No returning to life at all. Just a cyberspace hell.

But at least they've got some close company.

[spnfanficpond]

Weekly Pond Newsletter

We have been busy little bees this week!

Old Business:

Angel Fish Awards - The post for June went up this past week and you can click here to see a long list of awesome fic recs!

SPN Rewatch: Fanfic Edition - We had another great chat this weekend about 2.15 Tall Tales and 2.16 Roadkill! Click here to access the Archive and see all of the things we discussed from each episode! Also, the theme docs are now up to date and fully cross-referenced. Feel free to add any notes of your own to the episode docs, and if you see any errors like incorrect links, send a message to @mrswhozeewhatsis!

Competitive Writing Sprints - Admin Michelle hosted a two-hour session of writing sprints where 5 participants wrote a total of 7207 words over 4 sprints!! The leader of the pack was @rainythursdaynight with a whopping 2629 words written! Congrats to them and to all those who joined us! Admin MJ will be hosting another session of sprints next weekend on Sunday, so you'll have more chances to compete!

Reader Insert Writing Challenge: Gender Studies - A couple of weeks ago, we announced a new writing challenge, focusing on gender stereotypes. The idea was spawned from teaching ourselves how to write a gender-neutral reader-insert character. In order to be more aware of what gender stereotypes need to be stripped away, we can lean into them by writing the same trope or prompt with both genders. If you're interested in doing this challenge, drop a message to @mrswhozeewhatsis! For more info on this challenge, click here!

Last week's #TweetFicTues prompts -

New Business:

Looking for Manta Rays outside the US - Here at the Pond, we have a lot of ideas for things we'd like to do, but we're short on the manpower to do them. It has also been brought to our attention that because most of us are in the US or Canada, most of our events are not at a great time for our members in the rest of the world. If you have been a member of the Pond for a while and you would like to be in service to your fellow Pondies, then send a message to one of our admins! For more info about this, click here! We can't wait to hear from you!

Manta Rays in the Discord server - Admins Marie and Michelle will both be spending some time hanging out in the Discord server next weekend! Marie will be there Friday evening, 9pm EDT, and Michelle will be there Saturday afternoon, 4pm EDT. These will be informal chats, but if you have a topic you'd like to bring to the table, we'd love to talk with you about it!!

Competitive Writing Sprints - As we said above, Admin MJ will be hosting some writing sprints next weekend on Sunday morning! Come participate, add words to your WIP, and win fabulous prizes!

Fishing For Treasures - Next weekend is FFT weekend here at the Pond, and this month we're celebrating RPF fics!! Submit a link to the blog here, or drop a link in the #fishing-for-treasures channel in the Discord server to get your favorite RPF fics reblogged next weekend! Deadline for submitting those links is Friday at midnight, EDT!

Sun Spin online concert - Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor from Smallville and friend to the #SPNFamily) and Rob Danson are having an online concert next weekend on Stageit.com! Click here for more info and to buy tickets! For more music links from our members, check out #the-music-room channel in our Discord server.

(Divider by @glygriffe!)

That's all for this week! To see all Pond events, and also other SPN-related things like conventions and online concerts, check out our Google calendar! Click here for a static view in Eastern US/Canada time (desktop only, no mobile app access, sadly), and click here to add our calendar to your own Google calendar! We try to keep it as up-to-date as possible. If there's something you want to see on the calendar that's not there (maybe a convention we missed, cast birthdays, or something similar), send us an ASK and let us know!

Hope you have a great week! - From your Admins and Manta Rays, @manawhaat, @mrswhozeewhatsis, @mariekoukie6661, @thoughtslikeaminefield, and @heavenssexiestangel!

[fedoraspooky]

In light of tumblr shooting itself in the foot, I've been thinking about what I should do with my art from now on. Obviously, deleting my old posts off here isn't gonna do shit, it's essentially locking my door after my house got emptied out by burglars. Especially with my old rp account I no longer can log into, they're just gonna steal and sell my old art that I posted there and I can't even flip a questionably-affective toggle about it.

Thing is, I dunno how many people are gonna actually leave. I'm not even sure I will, since I have a lot of friends here... And after so many shitty updates a lot of people are just hanging on out of spite at this point.

That said, I'm considering that for art posts and stuff, maybe I'll post them elsewhere and just link to them here so they're not on tumblr's servers? Idk... Tumblr tends to kill the visibility of links but I'm not really sure what else I can do.

Also, there's the question of where to actually post new stuff. Bluesky seems the most active but I dont know if old posts cut off after a certain amount of posts like twitter does, in which case that would not be a good archive in the long run. xnx

Cohost is functionally pretty close to tumblr, but ngl it seems super isolated on there bc of its commitment to not showing any likes on your posts. I get that its to combat the social media numbers game, but the downside is that it looks like nobody's even seen your work. If people like something of yours there's no way outside of notifs to see it, so scrolling down on your page and seeing only zeros after zeros of comments on stuff (comments are the only visible number), it's easy to feel like you're just posting into a void.

Pillowfort is pretty good, and they just added tag blocking and the ability to queue/schedule posts. Still kinda quiet and invite only, but if you sign up for the invite queue you can get one pretty fast. Also i probaby have a ton of invites sitting around if anyone wants one. I wish it had an app, but mobile web version works well enough I guess, and I'm already used to doing that with sheezy and newgrounds, so I just have those open in mobile tabs together.

Speaking of, Newgrounds has been pretty good, but due to the nature of the portal system and stuff you're more encouraged to post only your better-looking stuff there. You CAN post doodles if you want, but only outside of the portal, which limits their visibility. Kinda like dA's scraps system I guess.

Sheezy looks super promising customization-wise so I'm thinking of posting there more when it opens up to more peeps.

Toyhouse also looks really good for OC and story things too, and also has a good degree of customization.

There's probs options I haven't even thought about, but its good to know there ARE options. I may post in several of those places for now and see how it goes. Test the waters a bit.

If you're thinking of moving your art elsewhere lemme know where, I'm curious to see where people are going :o

Especially you moots, i need to refind my pals in these other places!

[a1sh1teruu]

— STUCK IN SUMMER

— oh, how we love it when the warm sun finally peaks over the clouds, how it warms our skin and has the meadows blooming. how the waters sparkle and shine, the blues, the yellows, all these different colors embracing each other. some of us like a relaxing time in the mountains, getting carried away by the cold, rippling rivers. some of us like it at the coast, near the sea, listening to the waves and the smell of sea salt just wafting through the air. but what happens if those same waves pull us down into a different world, into a more complex world than ours?

welcome to my summer collaboration! now that summer stands on our doorstep, i've decided to host a collaboration to all our fanfiction writers.

what is this collab about?

this collab is all about fantasy and summer! we dive deeper into our fantasies we have in the summertime.

what are the requirements for our writing?

the fic you are writing has to be over one thousand words long and it has to be a fantasy au set in summer.

what fandoms can join?

everyone who writes fanfiction can join!

nsfw or sfw?

as long as you tag everything and put a “read more” divider, than you should be good with darker content too!

the rules:

i do not want to see anything racist, homophobic, islamophobic, xenophobic, ableist, or anything offening towards the people that join! as soon as i see something offending towards someone or a group of people, you will be terminated from this collaboration.

do you have any questions?

for any type of questions, you can dm me! i’ll make a discord server if enough people decide to join, though.

timetable

status : closed

closes : 30.06.2023

deadline : 21.09.2023

application

masterlist

K-POP

— ATEEZ

j.wy — in the heart of the sky by @a1sh1teruu synopsis: the lands of utopia, gifted by the light of mother, were a well balanced realm. undisturbed by the curse of the children of adam and eve. but what happens if the son of adam is born into those precious lands, throwing off the balance mother has created and gifted her children with?

p.sh — utopia by @jaehunnyy synopsis: when the aurora kingdom is in need of help regarding the princess’ fate, all they can do is wait for the chosen one. when seonghwa falls in an abandoned well and wakes up in aurora kingdom, he is intrigued by what he finds out there. can he help the princess, is he the one they were all waiting for, or is it too late for the girl?

c.sn — all's fair in love and war by @justhere4kpop synopsis: your parents left you their beach house when they moved out of the country. you and the neighbor boy always had a strange friendship growing up from the pranks to him standing up for you against beach bullies. it always felt like something was missing while you were away. maybe this is the year for a budding summer romance with the hot neighbor... or maybe this is just a burnt out brain hoping for something more.

k.hj — dreamers by @nebulousbrainsoup synopsis: since infancy, every night has been a gamble for both you and your family. plagued by nightmares that leave you unresponsive for their duration, your only solace is the boy you share them with.

c.sn — precious by @pocketjoong synopsis: as a nature witch, you always wanted your own familiar ever since you were a kid, however, fate seemed to have different plans for you.

c.jh — blue summer by @woosluv synopsis: none yet

k.ys — like a dream by @i-luvsang synopsis: to be whisked away to your estranged grandmother’s house is no where near what you could have hoped for this summer. but you find the countryside beautiful, and the boy in the forest more entrancing than anything at all. instead of the nightmare you expected, you find yourself in a wondrous dream that’s made up of a magical romance, far more literal than you could have ever imagined.

s.mg — cromer by @star1117-archives synopsis: not all imaginary friends let you leave as you grow up. Some refuse to be left in the past, and won’t take being forgotten as lightly as expected.

multi — ocean's envy by @neoteezrenyoung synopsis: after several years, young witch y/n finally goes back to her small coastal town with her license to practice in hand. when she comes back, nothing has changed. except for her two best friends’ attitudes.

— ZEROBASEONE

zhanghao — unbreakable love by @bobariki synopsis: within the parameters of a society where the stars align for only a select few to find their twin flame, your plan for a month-long summer vacation visit to your best friend suddenly veers off course. what unfolds when unmistakable signs hint that you might just be one of the fortunate few?

— TOMMOROW BY TOGETHER

c.bg — the boy behind the blue windows by @impuritywritings synopsis: none yet

h.k — eternal sunshine by @gyumibear synopsis: while on a school trip, the reader accidentally comes across a secret race of merpeople. they want to force her to stay quiet, but one boy helps her get away. he's also her soulmate?

k.th — untitled by @choistick synopsis: none yet

— STRAY KIDS

h.hj — untitled by @svngcore synopsis: none yet

ANIME

— HAIKYU!!

iwaizumi hajime — conjuring romance by @valeriwa synopsis: you were pretty sure the first lesson you learnt in hogwarts was that you couldn't conjure people. so why is it that an incredibly handsome man is standing in front of you when all you wanted was some innocent snow? the sweltering summer heat and feeling like victor frankenstein has got all your plans in a twist.

[mecachrome]

for an incredibly new f1 follower, what would you recommend for getting up to date with teams and racers and performances and history? apart from dts lol

oh that is a good question!!! i don't think i'm even the best person to answer this but honestly i think it all comes naturally if you pick a specific thing/team/person you're interested in and set out to learn more about that topic, because everything is so connected and with time you can fill in those knowledge gaps pretty quickly :') more under the cut:

dts is imo perfectly acceptable for learning names and faces for the first time and basically creating a vague outline of a given subject (i've said it's like using duolingo for learning a new language lol), so if you watch it and are like oh—i'm interested in charles or mercedes or learning more about technical regulations or whatever, then you can just dive deeper into that via wiki / youtube / podcasts + published media + old race archives and build up from there!

otherwise i think the main thing is just to start watching the actual races when the season gets underway, and in order to properly appreciate them then also read up on + watch videos about the technical/strategy side of the sport as well. back in the day i used to really like chain bear and i still always recommend it to anyone who asks! after that i would just seek out like... a community/server/place where other people are discussing news real-time; this could be meeting people on tumblr and twitter, but personally i'm subscribed to r/formula1 because it's the most active composite source of f1 news and Discourse. if you're reddit-averse i also just keep a big list on twitter with a bunch of random data accounts, official driver/team accounts, journalists, etc. that helps me keep up with the season in a tidy fashion—though honestly f1 journalism is so unserious that you don't really need to do that because most journos regurgitate the same three quotes in slightly different formats, so if you want to follow One Guy who won't disseminate bs info i'd recommend chris medland. or just general sport publications like autosport, motosport.com, the athletic if you're already subscribed to it (pretty lacking for f1 though since it's american lol), etc... some sites like the-race are very contentious though so i'd say just tread with caution!!! on the data side i personally enjoy fdatanalysis and f1telemetrydata (i've also used f1-tempo to do my own telemetry analysis but idk if that's useful). but again i'd highly recommend the subreddit since it keeps everything i just mentioned in one place anyway 😭

other media recs:

f1tv, if it's available in your area, has pretty much everything you need to follow f1 in its entirety. i hate to shill for paid media but i genuinely think it's good; you can watch every f1, f2, f3 session real-time, as well as go to the archives and revisit old races for each series from most seasons. it also has technical shows and a whole host of minidocs with bite-sized info that are probably less sensationalized than dts. if you don't have f1tv though then a lot of decent content is cross-posted to the f1 youtube so honestly the official channels are all pretty good for keeping up with the sport.

podcasts: if you're an auditory person then podcasts are a great way to deepdive into f1 history. personally i believe that 80% of men running f1 podcasts should be legally barred from ever having an opinion on motorsport, so i don't listen to that many, but i do enjoy the official f1 podcast beyond the grid (i listen to it on spotify but you can also find full transcripts on the f1 site) since, you know, they get official personnel on and i appreciate the wide range of personalities interviewed—from drivers to tps to various types of engineers. i've also heard good things about shift+f1, the race, and engine braking, but i haven't checked them out so i'd recommend just looking podcasts up yourself and seeing what vibes with you! though some podcasts are just like... I'll eat this because you're interviewing my guy but i would never watch/listen to you otherwise. (cough pit stop...)

books & autobiographies: again if you want to dive more into old f1, then you can always read a book!! i read jenson's autobiography life to the limit earlier and was very endeared, it's a super breezy but charming read ❤️ adrian newey's memoir is also a decent overview of a clearly brilliant and accomplished mind, i enjoyed the technical details and found his early career path especially interesting.

docus, movies, tv: there's also plenty of f1 media outside of f1tv, so you can always check those out; f1 movies aren't necessarily that accurate or frankly good but sometimes it's fun just for the Vibes and the love of the sport. for ex rush (2013) covers james hunt & niki lauda's rivalry, netflix has a schumacher (2021) doc, the brawn gp miniseries ft. jense came out last november, just things like that... some current individual drivers also have their own random miniseries so you can always seek those out, for ex i watched maxv's anatomy of a champion the other day just for the fun of it LOL.

i don't know whether any of this is helpful... but maybe other people can reply with their own recommendations!!!

also if you're interested in f2, f3, etc. then honestly just follow feeder series on whatever platform since they cover everything pretty well; feeder_series on twitter, r/f1feederseries, plus they do interview podcasts on youtube/spotify so i like watching those to keep up with young drivers. you can also watch chasing the dream for succinct f2 narratives; it used to only be on f1tv but it gets uploaded on youtube now so it's fairly accessible. lmk if you have any other questions or something specific you'd like more info about!!!

[sewmice]

Hai as a decently new utapri fan I wanted to ask your opinion on how new fans should get into utapri after finishing the anime. Should they play through the otomes games or maybe try listening to the Masterpiece shows instead?

Welcome to Utapri! I hope you're enjoying the ride so far! And as someone who has been here for 12 years, welcome to Utapri hell, this is your life now! (with love of course)

Since the Masterpiece shows are all alternate universes/acting, it doesn't technically matter? So the real question is, do you like the idol side or the romance side more? Idol side, go for the masterpiece shows. Romance go for the games. And honestly switch around as you please. Just get to SOME game knowledge at some point because that's where you really learn about the boys after all. Personally it's best to know at least a little from everything.

Also the next most important thing will be whether you know Japanese or not. Because currently the anime, movies, and Starish special are the only things available in English. So what you can enjoy is more limited. Shining Live was in English for it's lifespan, and has some archives out there. Live Emotion we can only hope will have an English version but we do not know currently.

Now my answer to assist gets real long so gonna put it under a cut for everyone's sanity.

If you know Japanese, absolutely go enjoy the otome games, all of which have updated ports on the Switch! The release order and thus suggested order would be Repeat, Amazing Aria and Sweet Serenade, Debut, All Star, and finally All Star After Secret. And one day we'll have Dolce Vita.

If you want Quartet Night, while you meet them in Debut, their routes start with All Star. Ringo and Ryuuya have routes in Sweet Serenade and All Star if you're looking for them. Mitsuo in Amazing Aria is well....you'll see.

If you don't know Japanese, I still suggest looking into the games, but your options are more limited. ShiningWonderland has a fantastic crew pushing out translations. They're working on Repeat for Starish and All Star for QN currently. Couple of the routes are finished for at least one ending and others seem to be nearing completion. But I can't speak for that team past that. They are all wonderful people though!

If you don't mind getting a shortened, not amazing experience. There are some old summaries floating around from Breadmasterlee. Those, plus some friends who could understand enough, were how I learned parts of the games back in the day. Not the preferred experience though.

You could also technically struggle your way through with like Google Lens translation? Definitely not recommended though.

As for the masterpiece shows, again if you know Japanese, just enjoy them. If you wanna know what order they released in, the sets were as follows: Masquerade Mirage, Tenka Muteki no Shinobimichi, and Joker Trap Bloody Shadows, Pirates of the Frontier, Every Buddy!, and Polaris Lost Alice, Trios, and The Forest of Lycoris Dreaming of OZ, Never Again Neverland, and Faust Last Cantata

I know that next to last set, the Shining Masterpiece Shows, have translations by Kanasmusings. You can also find translations for some other dramas there, and subtitles for a majority of the stage plays (you will need your own file or DVD/BD).

The most recent Dramatic Masterpiece Shows seem to be works in progress at the moment. I know utapri-translations-uuuu is working on Heavens! And the CDs can be found in my masterlist.

The older ones I don't know off the top of my head if translations exist at all.

There are also Discord servers amongst the community, some public and some private, with resources and amazing people. But I'm not sure on how appropriate it would be to post the public ones. They don't allow piracy so as much as I push buying legally, uh, understandably linking from my blog publicly feels wrong. You can very likely find said discords via the Twitter fandom. Or talk to me in DMs.

This is a lot of info I know. Trying to cover as many bases as I can off the top of my head! Enjoy Utapri!

[doctorbunny]

MILGRAM fans with Twitter Accounts! Your help is needed!

If you (somehow) haven't heard, twitter has become entirely inaccessible to those without accounts.

Embeds no longer work and the login popup is now a redirect to a login page.

Without a twitter account, tweets cannot be seen.

This is an issue as the primary official milgram account (MILGRAM_info) is on twitter

I know strict reading limits have been implemented. But for the sake of sharing information, if you see a post about milgram, whether it be Yamanaka joking that Fuuta can't watch the World Cup, a voice actor talking about their role in a voice drama or the official account announcing line stickers.

Please Please Please. Screenshot and share!

For best results include: a link to the tweet, a full screenshot showing the account, posted date and all text (so not just an auto translated section) and if there is an image attached, fully copy paste the image too.

Be diligent! If we do not start doing this, information will be quickly lost

API no longer works so discord servers are no longer receiving updates for new tweets

I know there are translators on twitter too: if possible talk to them about making a tumblr archive of their work.

In a pinch these translations (Ideally with permission but At Least Credit) also need to be screenshotted and preserved here.

Godspeed everyone.

[fotibrit]

The Wrong hands - rewrite/addition of a scene in IM1

2289 words

“JARVIS, you up?” Tony knows the answer already, but in an effort to encourage the AI to interact as human-like as possible, he has developed a habit of talking to the systems as if they are as unpredictable as people.

The response from the AI is as expected, but Tony���s lips twitch into a small smile as the robot replies, “For you, sir, always”. What reliable friends he has.

“I’d like to open a new project file, indexed as Mark Two”

Jarvis is quick to clarify, possibly sensing the careful manner Tony phrased the request. “Shall I store this on the Stark Industries central database?”

The mechanic stood as he fiddled with the mechanics of the new suit. Jarvis had always been the smarter of them two. Tony had been too focused on the projection in front of him to clarify his line of thinking. Sometimes he forgets that JARVIS can’t read his mind.

“Actually, I don't know who to trust right now.” Tony hopes that explaining the reasoning for his decisions will help keep JARVIS on the same page as him. In some strange way, it also helps him to say it out loud. He doesn't know who to trust right now. There are people he works with, people he lives with, who represent the exact opposite of what he wants the company to be. Those people cannot be allowed to see his latest project. He’s on his own. “Until further notice, why don't you just keep everything in my private server?”

“Working on a secret project, are we, sir?”

JARVIS’s response takes the mechanic a bit by surprise. It may be Tony’s imagination, but the AI sounds almost judgemental, like he disapproves of how Tony is handling the project. Tony is aware that it matters nearly none what the AI thinks of Mark Two, but he still feels a distinct need to explain himself. He feels as if he is fifteen years old again, trying to impress his butler and never quite feeling like he achieves it. Tony takes a few seconds to respond, pushing back the instinct to be defensive. He has nothing to hide from JARVIS. He just needs to explain.

“I don't want this winding up in the wrong hands.” He remembers the wrong hands, the hands that shoved him around the cave and nearly forced Yinsen to swallow hot metal. The wrong hands, the ones that press a button to launch a missile without thinking twice about the repercussions. His hands used to be the wrong hands. Now he has to fight like hell to make sure his are never the wrong hands again.

“Maybe in mine it can actually do some good.”

Tony watches the hologram of his prototype spin for a few seconds before walking back over to his desk and sitting down.

How despicable he must seem to everyone. He looks down at his own hands, the ones that used to design weapons of mass destruction and throw parties when strangers bought them. A merchant of death. He wonders how many innocent people have spent their last seconds staring at a Stark Technologies logo as the weapon attached to the logo worked exactly as he designed. And now, here he is, designing yet another machine with the power to kill.

The difference, he assures himself, is that nobody else will touch this one. This suit will be his and his alone.

“J, go ahead and tint the windows. I don’t want anyone seeing this.”

The windows that open to unrestricted areas darken before JARVIS is able to respond.

“Right away, sir. Shall I restrict which access codes function as well?”

“Yeah, I don’t need anyone coming in. Thanks buddy.”

“Understood. I’ve restricted access codes, and only yours will grant access to this room until further notice.”

Right. Tony has an access code too. Tony glances towards the door, having forgotten briefly that other people existed in his vicinity. When he’s working, he tends to forget that he himself is a person. He thinks of himself as simply a more advanced machine, and being reminded that other people don't view him as the same startles him for a second, until he shakes his head to clear his mind. He needs to focus.

“These plans-” Tony sits back at his desk to admire the holographic design “-cannot leave this room. Nobody out of this room can access them, ‘kay? Not even Obie.”

“Understood, sir. Speaking of Mr. Stane, he has sent a message to confirm that there is a meeting tom-”

“Ignore him. He told me to lie low-” Tony turns away from the holographic machinery and focuses his attention instead on the physical machinery at his workstation “-and lie low I will. Especially tomorrow.”

Tony feels badly about locking his business partner out, but the way Obediah had looked at the miniaturized arc reactor after Tony made his announcement… He seemed almost hungry. Obie would have to be kept at an arm's distance until he proved himself to be on board with the new plan.

Even if the new plan isn't what his father would have liked.

Once Tony had identified the stabilization problem with his boots, his hands worked separate from his mind, twisting bolts and assessing joints. He absentmindedly muttered requests from DUM-E, who handed him wrenches and bolts. Tony’s mind is elsewhere.

The last time he had worked on a secret project, it got someone he cared about killed. The last time he put fire to metal, it had been with someone planning their own death looking over his shoulder.

How many people had died because of Tony’s ideas? Tony only knew one personally, and even that is too much to bear. Yinsen may have been the only person in the world who befriended Tony without expecting anything in return. And Tony killed him.

Yinsen had been right to call him “the man who has everything, and nothing.” Meanwhile, the man who had nothing and everything was murdered at Tony’s hands with the same technology that he's currently working to improve.

As his mind wanders, his breathing becomes more difficult and the machine in his chest suddenly seems much more alien than it had minutes prior. Tony became aware of how it pinched his skin when he inhaled too deeply. His skin feels too tight, his hair sticking to his sweaty forehead itchy, and he has a strange feeling that someone is watching him.

Tony notices, with a twisting sensation in his stomach, that his hands are shaking. He drops the tool that he had been using and stares at his own palm in horror. It’s as if his own body is betraying him to prevent him from making another weapon.

JARVIS’s sudden voice makes Tony jump, and he becomes aware of how abnormally fast his heart is beating. What is wrong? He continues staring at his hand as JARVIS speaks. “Sir, Miss. Potts asked me to remind you that you need to sleep tonight. You have not slept since returning.”

Tony had forgotten that he planned on going to bed at midnight. Clearly, Tony had been more optimistic earlier in the day. Now, with the calm quiet of night upon him, Tony is not eager to abandon his work to be alone with his thoughts in bed. The last time he slept, he half expected never to wake again, to die with a failing magnet strapped to his chest. Now, the comfortable bed feels like the wrong place for his marred and scarred body. He has a strange feeling that something is wrong, that he needs to stay here, and until he can identify the problem that's making his heart race and his hands shake, he will not be moving.

Tony clears his throat before speaking, testing how reliable his voice is. “Changed my mind, J. It's not snooze time yet.”

The mechanic tears his eyes from his hand and presses it to his side, turning his eyes back onto the project in front of him, waiting for something in the wiring to catch his attention. He’s not entirely sure where to go from here, and memories of the humid cave keep coming back to him. The lights seem too bright, giving him a headache. Something feels wrong.

“I need the lights a bit more dim, J. And get the air conditioner running in here, why don't you.”

Tony doesn't hear the reply, too focused on the strange feeling building in the back of his neck. Is someone watching him?

Keeping his head lowered, he flicks his wrist to pull up the security footage of his lab. Nobody is behind him.

He whips around in his chair and sees nothing. An empty room. It still feels like someone is watching him. In the back of his mind, he realizes he might be going crazy.

He turns back to his project and tries to let the mechanics take over his mind. He asks JARVIS to shuffle his work playlist, and tries to make his mind go blank. It takes a few minutes of staring at his project blankly, but soon the familiar schematics overtake the panic in his chest and he goes to work once more.

It takes a few minutes of him working silently for him to figure out what was wrong, and the realization comes when he accepts a wrench handed to him by DUM-E and his throat tightens again.

Tony shoves the table to send himself flying backwards in his rolling chair, putting his hands on his face.

Fuck.

That cave was going to haunt him forever. The humidity in this room, likely manufactured by his imagination, coupled with the feeling of being watched, and the horrifying silence of the room, broken only by metallic clangs and whirring… he feels like he is in the cave again. it takes everything in him to stay grounded.

Before the cave, he hadn't accepted help in his workshop. In the cave, he had to. Now, after months of requesting pieces and help from Yinsen in the cave, the same requests being directed at DUM-E must have sent the ghost of Yinsen into his skin. Even now, he can hear the voice he’s been fighting hard to forget and move past.

“This is a very important week for you!”

Yinsens' words echo in Tony’s mind, and for a moment, visions of the fire and guns and grime overtake him.

“JARVIS, read vitals” Tony keeps his head in his hands, trying to fight off the feeling of rising dread originating from the hard metallic device in his chest.

“BP 140/90, Pulse 112 beats per minute. You seem to be in distress. Shall I send for medical aid?”

“No, no, I'm fine, give me a second.” Tony tries first to get his breathing under control enough to get his heart rate slowed. How had he fallen apart so quickly?

Snippets of his time in the cave come back to him, mismatched and confusing, each scene more repulsive than the last. A camera pointed at his face as his vision fades in and out, fifty guns aiming toward him as he speaks to save Yinsens life, waking up with wires in his chest, watching his friend die for him…

Tony lets his hands drop from his face, keeping his eyes closed, and one hand presses flat against the metallic disc embedded in his chest while the other forms a fist and punches his own leg. The dull pain seems to help ground him to his surroundings, so he repeats the motion, over and over, until he feels secure enough to chance looking up.

Tony opened his eyes and caught a glance of himself in the reflective glass lining his lab. His hair looks wild and untamed, and his shoulders slump in a way which his father would have chastised him for, if his father had been here. Most noticeable are his eyes, prominent because of the deep shadows beneath them. He does not look like himself.

He looks nothing like the man he must pretend to be, if he’s going to pull the company back to the right side of history.

“Hey JARVIS, got anything to make sure I sleep through the night?” Although aimed at the only other being in the room, Tony stared at the gaunt figure reflected back at him as he asked the question.

“I can request five milligrams of Prazosin from the clinic, which can be available in the next ten minutes. Shall I put in the request?”

“Make it ten milligrams, and before you say anything, I don't care about the side effects. Spare me.” Tony watched the man in the reflection speak, still barely able to understand how that wild creature is him.

Maybe he really is going crazy.

“Oh, and wipe all footage and audio of Lab 39 for the time I was in here.” Tony gives a small chuckle, and adds as a sort of afterthought, “I don’t need the board questioning my sanity too.”

Tony finally tears his eyes away from the man in the reflection and puts his hands on his knees to push himself to his feet. With a twinge of satisfaction, he notices that his left knee is sore in the spot his fist had hit repeatedly. He might have a bruise.

Tony claps his hands and surveys the room. “I’ll be back tomorrow, U, don’t worry.” He addresses his hydraulic arm with affection before grabbing his coat on the way out of the lab.

He would certainly be back. He has work to do. But first, hopefully whatever drug the clinic sends up knocks him out enough that he can get a few hours of rest in.

[1016week]

1016 Week 2023!

Hello and happy Monza weekend, fellow Piarlies! ❤️💙 It's with great love and excitement that we're sharing with you the idea behind our next Pierre/Charles event: 1016 Week! We chose Monza to do the grand reveal because we couldn't think of any place that has better Piarles history - and that's what this fanweek is going to be all about. Celebrating Piarles, and all their gorgeous history, and everything that they are. ❤️

You can find all the details and arrangements for the event below the cut! <3

How is this event going to work?

If you've ever participated in a ship week/fanweek before, then this will work exactly the same as that! We've created a list of seven Piarles-themed prompts, one for each day of the event, and the idea is that everyone creates a little something inspired by each prompt to post on its specific day.

1016 Week will run from the 10th to the 16th (🥰) October 2023. Creation time starts as soon as you've got your prompts - which is to say, as soon as you finish reading this post!

We'd like this to be a fun and stress-free challenge for everyone, so we've tried to build in plenty of creation time for you all. Furthermore, we will not be enforcing deadlines very strictly at all - so if you do happen to miss a day or two, absolutely no worries! We will keep reblogging 1016 Week content to this blog right through to the end of the year. 💙

What kinds of content can I create for this event?

Any and all types of creative fanwork - fic, art, gifsets, photo edits, video edits, playlists and more - are welcomed in this fanweek! The only criterion is that its main focus must be the relationship between Pierre Gasly and Charles Leclerc.

Furthermore, there are no content restrictions for this challenge - NSFW, dark, or otherwise uncomfortable topics are accepted. However, we require any such content to be clearly identified in your title/summary/blurb and placed under a read-more cut, so that those who aren’t comfortable with seeing it can avoid it.

Prompts are general, and creators are free to interpret them however you want! As long as it's about Pierre Gasly and Charles Leclerc, and has something of the prompt's general theme in it, anything goes. ❤️

Do I have to complete all 7 days to be allowed to participate?

Not at all! You are free to complete as few or as many of the prompts as you want, and you can submit as many or as few creations per day as the muse inspires. 😁

When you've finished your creation and you're ready to share it with the Pierre/Charles world, @ this blog and use #1016 week 2023 in your first five tags so we can find and reblog your work. Don't forget to add what day of the prompt week your creation is fulfilling!

For our writers and artists who'd like to add your work to AO3: we've created an AO3 Collection where you can post all your creations for this event! You can find it on the Archive as 1016 Week 2023 (1016Week_2023). Be sure to post to Tumblr as well, because we'll be reblogging all 1016week content to this blog too! 💙

Where and how do I sign up?

This is a super low-pressure event, so there's no need to worry about an official sign-up! You can just like or reblog this post (& give this blog a follow!) to show your support <3

It's our honour and pleasure to host this fanweek over at the Calamars Club Discord server. If you're not a part of the server and you'd like to be, just message a mod for the invite link. Your mods for this event are the epic team of @singsweetmelodies, @boxboxbrioche, @welightitup, @duquesademiel, @wolfiemcwolferson and @river-ocean!

@ Pierre/Charles shippers across Tumblr and AO3: we hope that this event will make you smile this September and October <333 We are so excited to share this with you all! ❤️💙

[bagginshieldweek24]

Bagginshield Week is fast approaching!

We’re less than a week away from the beginning of Bagginshield Week 2023, keep reading to find out everything you may need to know and remember!

All kinds of platonic, romantic and sexual relationships between Bilbo Baggins and Thorin Oakenshield are welcomed, included open relationships, so long as they are the focus. Likewise, all canons and headcanons are accepted!

All mediums are allowed, included mixed media, and there is no official minimum that your work must fill! Also, all ratings and warnings and such are accepted, so long as you tag accordingly!

Two prompts are given for each day of the event as well as two alternate prompt lists, and you can use as many of them, combine any of them as you wish, I only ask that you mention which ones you’re using in any specific work. You can also make as many works as you want/can.

You can post in any platform, but as the event mod, I will only be able to work with Tumblr and Archive of Our Own: for Tumblr you can make a post containing your work or a link to it, and you have to tag your posts #thilboweek23 so that I can find them more easily; for AO3, you can find the collection here https://archiveofourown.org/collections/bagginshield_week_23

You can post your works from June 4th to June 12th (the official event dates are June 4th to June 10th, plus two extra days).

The prompts are: Fairytale AU and Domestic for Day 1; Bilbo in Erebor and Piercings & Tattoos for Day 2; Pride & Prejudice AU and Blade/Sword for Day 3; Nautical/Pirate AU and The Moon/The Sun for Day 4; Ghibli AU and Hobbit Culture for Day 5; Erebor Never Fell and Flowers/Flower Language for Day 6; Everybody Live/Nobody Dies and Haunted House/Castle/Palace for Day 7.

The prompts for the Whump Alternate List are: Believed to be Dead; Nightmares/Hallucinations; Silence; Left Behind; Hidden Injury.

The prompts for the Regular Alternate List are: Courtship; Secret Relationship; Thorin is an Errant Smith; Meeting the Family; Enchantments/Spells.

If you need more specific information look here: https://www.tumblr.com/bagginshieldweek23/710619673617629184/bagginshield-week-2023-guideline-dates-prompts?source=share

Now, as for posting in Archive of Our Own, a word or two:

If you already have works ready and want to leave them to cool in drafts, ready to be posted on the day, for the moment, a friendly reminder to reset the date of it once said day comes! Otherwise it will be posted considering the date in which it was uploaded and will appear along with those stories, and might lose momentum, sort of speak. You can readjust the date of publication in the Associations section when you’re uploading/editing your work:

On the other hand, with the rise of AIs and, more importantly, with the “threat”, for lack of a better word, of your work being used by third parties through them, AO3 has given the general advice to private works, that is to make them accessible only to other signed users. If you wish to do so I have no issue, and you can set it up in the Privacy section in the uploading/editing page:

For those posting in other platforms, I can only ask you to tag accordingly, and to either make a promo post on Tumblr, or send me any links you wish to share through asks, and if you don’t use Tumblr but an acquaintance of yours does, they can send it in instead. As you may see if you’ve read the previous event post, I didn’t set up an email address nor a Discord server; I have my reasons for that, but hopefully this should be solve by the next event.

Other than that, I can only say that I cannot wait to see what any of you make, and to wish you best of lucks, Company!

[z00lea]

What are your suggestions on starting commissions? What forms of payment, how you interact with customers yada.

I've been thinking (a dangerous past time) and it's an idea I've been toying with but never knew how to approach...

Tehe :3

Hello!

This might be a little long so I'll add a cut here, everything will be under it ^w^

Before anything else,

Make a TOS

Set prices and what different types of commissions you take

Set approximate turnaround times

Determine an amount of slots you can take per time

You'll want to open slots only when everything is organized, its easier on you and on clients!

I personally take commissions thru Ko-fi, you can link paypal and stripe there, so payments can be made with those (Ko-fi doesn't take any fees from your sales!)

Also on Ko-fi, you can make separate listings for each type of art you offer:

It makes life a lot easier, you can change listings at any time or archive ones you aren't currently offering

While you can make it so each listing has their own slot amount, you can also set an universal amount:

And on Ko-fi still, you can add your TOS directly to all your commission listings so that people will have to accept it before going thru with payment

So you won't have to worry about linking anyone to Carrd and such for them to have those terms available :D

Interacting with customers is very intuitive, people will message you most times asking about availability, present you the general idea and then you can redirect them to payment

If they are commissioning you via Ko-fi, they can attach files and text to their order (so reference sheets, pinboards and anything else you might request of them)

It doesn't have to be long elaborate formal conversations, and usually it isn't (unless there is more to a character or setting that might be necessary to the piece)

I recommend you keep the clients updated as you work on their art, send sketches and such (watermarked) for them to know how things are going and also to make sure you both agree on how it is looking

^ For this reason I also recommend you include on your TOS how many changes are included in the price and in which stage

For the commissions itself this is probably enough to get you started, the most difficult part truly is just advertising

You'll need to be loud about it, make sure to repost/reblog/retweet your commissions with certain frequency so it doesn't go unnoticed and so that new people can see them, remind your followers when you have slots open, post art examples every once in a while with the links to your comms, set a Ko-fi commission banner so that when you link those they'll look appealing.

Some people also advertise on discord servers, I have never had luck there so I have no experience to talk from, most of my commissions come from twitter and FurAffinity.

I THINK THATS IT, good luck and feel free to dm me if you need any help setting it up! :D

[cyle]

Hi Cyle, so Tumblr has something like 600 million blogs in total. I'm wondering whether the costs of hosting so many blogs is an issue & whether it'll systematically delete them like how Flickr was gonna delete a bunch of photos at some point cuz of server costs or something. Because the main reason I use Tumblr is to dig through archives, so that would be a bummer.

I love rediscovering the past here, Tumblr is absolutely teaming with dormant blogs, aesthetics from late 2000s and early 2010s, it's the most wonderful thing to me, rediscovering those ancient posts like I'm wandering through an abandoned library in the middle of a forest. I vaguely remember some talk about a "time machine" feature, so that gives me hope that the dormant blogs are here to stay.

Expanding on the time machine thing, how would that be implemented? Maybe like a date configuration on the dashboard and the ability to see old blogs and posts and hashtags and whatever else as if they were new and active depending on how far back you set your date. Would be great for getting the dormant stuff back into circulation. Maybe if this is well thought through and implemented practically and functionally, Tumblr will become the first platform to not actually be bound by time, by the present moment. So it can exist in any time in history, all the way back till it's inception in 2007. different users interacting in different time periods at the same time.

Maybe that would be confusing but I can sort of see it working, again if it's implemented well. Because there's just so much history on this platform. And it's famous for having old posts circulate now and then with the reblogs.

And another point... It wouldn't be limited to the number of posts today, cuz there would be "new" posts happening in all the other dates too. So there would be way more "new" posts for users to interact with. I think we might need parallel timelines. Or not! Just add more and more new posts to the old time periods when you've set your Tumblr time machine to that date. Ahhh it's a work in progress in my mind but talking about it makes me genuinely excited and hopeful haha.

I'll explain it more comprehensively if it's a point of interest for the team (this is just a 3am brainstorm). Because it could have some genuine benefits in making Tumblr feel more alive and bigger as a platform - like how it used to be. It is very much alive now because it does still have and always has had a great community. but a time machine might blow that up to astronomical proportions. All diff communities from across Tumblr history at the same time. After all "2014 tumblr" is probably the most used phrase that includes Tumblr in it. But Pre 2010 Tumblr was something else altogether.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this and any info u feel like dumping about the whole server cost query for the 600 million-ish blogs and how you manage them. Kind regards ^^

hey, long ask!

we have been experimenting with a new recommendation source of posts we’re calling “evergreen posts” which tries to surface great posts from tumblr’s whole history. you may see some in the For You tab.

having an actual “time machine” to go to specific times at tumblr is kind of already possible as a hack of the max post ID in the dashboard URL if you have “endless scrolling” disabled on web.

we could make that more of an obvious actual feature but i don’t think enough people would want to use it to justify the cost. neat hack day idea tho! someone did make a search time machine once for hack day.