#also I've been thinking about those mlp posts all day i need to make a post with my thoughts

[charlie-dowds-migraine]

Finished @dughckit's Noel :))

I changed it a bit from the sketch, I hope I did him justice <3

[genericpuff]

lmao so RS just confirmed she STILL does not, in fact, have a buffer.

FAST PASS SPOILERS AHEAD

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To kick this off, let's be real, 2 weeks is NOT enough time to build up a reasonable buffer.

When she took that 2 week break after the wedding episode went up, I knew 1 of 2 things was going to happen:

She was going to piss away the entire break on social media not getting anything done

Even if she DID get anything done and a reasonable buffer of more than 3-5 episodes built up, the episodes likely wouldn't be very high quality as you can't turn out shitloads of decent quality panels like that in just 2 weeks.

I think Rachel really just needs to acknowledge and take ownership of the fact that she is not good at managing herself, her time, or her team. When she started LO in the Originals section, she even admitted to not having a very strong buffer.

Now yes, in her defense, she hadn't fully transitioned to drawing LO full time when she started, but even still, she seems to treat her FastPass episodes as her buffer rather than creating an actual buffer.

A buffer is not "well I still have 3 episodes locked to the general public" or "I have the next couple episodes sketched up".

A proper buffer is "I have the next several episodes finished and exported and ready for their respective release dates." This ensures that they aren't racing to meet deadlines during the release period after pre-production (which is a surefire way to screw yourself over or write yourself into a corner) and that if anything happens in real life that prevents them from working on future episodes, they can still put out new episodes because they have a cushion of episodes still waiting to be released. Webtoons typically recommends its creators have anywhere from 9-15 episodes of buffer ready by the end of the pre-production phase. That usually means 3 free episodes, 3 FastPass episodes, and at minimum, 9 more episodes sitting on the backend, adding up to a minimum of 15 episodes. It sounds like a lot, but when many WT series run for 40+ episodes per season, 15 is a small number. Especially for a comic like LO which had 90 episodes in its S2 run and 116 in its first season. S3 of LO is already 37 episodes in.

She's also basically admitted to just writing as she goes in the past because most people working on their webtoons in productions like these have at least a decent skeleton of a story going on that they don't have to write as they draw. Writer's block doesn't happen in webcomics unless you're writing as you're going, same as how it doesn't typically happen in animated movies because you should already have a basis to work off of before you start the brunt of the visual work that needs a narrative structure to exist.

Now, all that aside, the reason I'm bringing this up again (as I've talked about her buffer range before) is because I've once again been proven that Rachel doesn't have a shred of a real buffer.

And the smoking gun this time was the horse.

This stupid fucking horse.

Now, besides the fact that we're a little sus this is meant to be an in-comic jab at all the criticism of LO pointing out how Persephone always looks like an MLP character-

-but that pony toy drawing didn't make its first appearance in Episode 241, it made its first appearance on Instagram. Not as a preview for episode 241 or as an official LO drawing, in her own words, 'just a pony'.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rachel Smythe (@usedbandaid)

As always, this is still just an estimation based on what goes out in LO and what Rachel posts to her IG/Twitter, but this pretty much tells me her buffer is STILL only 1-2 weeks ahead of time, because that pony drawing time lapse was posted two weeks ago. When we checked the actual timestamp of the post the day the episode it showed up in went up (Episode 241) it was ten days old.

Not to mention, the timestamps on those reddit posts? A month old. Granted, we had been making MLP jokes in the ULO/antiLO community prior to that, but the fact that this "my pretty pony" gimmick came out so soon after someone did literal art of Persephone crossed over with MLP, it really just furthers the suspicion (in addition to shitloads of other instances) that Rachel is snooping in on these crit communities to try and "clap back" at them through her comic. Which is something she'd only be able to do with a limited buffer anyways as it allows her to change things on the fly in response to criticism or whatever hurt her feelings that week.

That said, I won't be certain of this 1-2 week buffer estimation until we see when cowboy hat Hades shows up.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rachel Smythe (@usedbandaid)

I'm calling it now - it will be showing up in this week's episode which goes up April 22nd.

Place your bets, folks.

[weaselbeaselpants]

kind of related but not- I'm genuinely sorry to be posting so much or about Lily Orchard, guys. Prior to Courtney coming on and telling us her story I was mostly just taken aback and angry with Lily as "one of those critic types" in my circle of vision.

It sucks -and yeah I know other critics don't want to hear this+Lily will use this fact as an excuse to discredit ppl's complaints abt her. but I think a lot of us were initially exposed to Lily because they knew of andor were fans of her cartoon criticism content. In my case I knew Lily from her days of Bronydom and have watched her make more and more meanMEAN material even w it's not about internal fandom dramacallouts. Back in those days and up to last year I could say of Lilly the same thing I'd say for a lot of people who annoy me online: I think she's a bully. Which is still bad, it's just not 'criminal', inherent. Comparing her to Rebecca Sugar, Lindsay Ellis, Contrapoints or VivziePop would be stupid as she really doesn't have even half the portfolio or wherewithall as any of those people -or even Zena and Poppy, not that they're angels. Lily was/is annoying because she'd use other people's genuine concerns and talking points. There's a certain takenupbyaltlight-term that I begrudginly would love to use for Lily that REALLY hits the nail on the head with her, be it as a fan, a critic or an activist. But I won't use it. Not because it's untrue, but because it's used by the same people who write her kiwifarm pages and misgender her and clearly couldn't give a crap about her if she didn't make them "lol"

But then, I actually looked at some of Britt's receipts and skimmed bits and pieces of what remains of Stockholm (I think you all already know this but @britts-galaxy-brain the links are missing now). For years, I'd known and listened to others honestly harp on Lily as some kind of counter-initiative for her going after their fav foalcon people. I assumed it was more of the same. It's not. Lily 100% wrote cp and is trying to hide it. No not fiction abt young adults that delves into erotic and sexisms; not stuff with aged-up child characters being big boobied of themselves thru the gaze or r34 artists. She wrote cp.

Essense of Thought's and that one hour long video talking about Stockholm were the first real horrifying revelation. Then I read through Brittney's saved messages from Lily and 'Tara'. Then I saw Patch's video.

THEN, Courtney came out and told everyone on here and her server everything we needed to know. I don't abide by everything Courtney says, especially about her abusers but I mean they're her abusers and please stop asking her to like the children who're valued more than her in the lives of her abusers, or at least maybe vent openly not to Courtney directly about your fear for those kids Cameron has. Yeah, I'm also concerned but idk there's got to be a better way to handle this. Anyway, as previously stated, I believe Courtney, Britt, and Patch. There's no way that those people have faked that stuff. I've heard kind of stretched explanations being true, but there's no way Stockholm was "edited by pedos" like Lily's saying it was I know I'm missing a few folks in there but I believe a lot of people have been genuinely victimized by LO and aren't just acting out of transphobia, bigotry.

Of what I can attest based on what I've seen, I KNOW that Lily Orchard wrote 'fluffy' foalcon and is saying she didn't, and also that the woman hates the word "queer".

Of what has been shown to me, I fully BELIEVE Lily Orchard is an abusive, sockpuppeting predator. Not only that, she's hiding behind other predator's existence to lie to her audience of other abused people to convince both them and herself that she couldn't possibly be a predator.

In 2013, what was 10 years from now, there was a controversy in the MLP fandom where a minor rose a (not undeserved) stink abt the askblog Princess Molestia and how it was making light of r*pe, intentionally or not. To counter this, a bunch of mouthbreathing bronies took it upon themselves to prove they weren't creeps by threatening the underrage sa victim, making r*pe porn of her while other mouthbreathers basically said "yeah put she's [the minor] annoying so it's the same kind of evil we're doing, really". Centrists.

Why this matters to me is (CW. CW. CW) you can find a post from Tara Callie, who was almost certainly one of Lily's alts at the time, admitting she found the r*pe art of Pinkiepony "hot", all the while Lily herself was publicly denouncing Pinkie's treatment by the fandom.

Lily Orchard is an awful human being. She does not have intrusive thoughts or fears of acting on those intrusive thoughts sometimes, like me and other people do. She has sexual and violent urges that she hides enough form the public to not make her followers suspect anything. She's twofaced and takes out her probable self-hate by attacking other predators. She's all deflection and lies. I can not believe a thing that vile woman says. Neither should you.

The biggest means of fighting her I think we all can do of is refusing to use her critical tag w we talk about her. Spam her "own tag". Enough hiding and denying who this terrible bigoted abusive woman really is.

Because really, her thoughts on glubshitto or whoever from Owl House are HARDLY the worst of it. Not even.

[vyl3tpwny]

Hi! I hope this manages to get through, what with many others speaking up on the anniversary of Antonymph. I just want to get this off my chest and personally thank you for making this song and the entire CUTIEMARKS album. It's a tough story and hard to compress into an ask form, but back when the album was fresh I was stuck in a psych ward, after my new (and really good) psychiatrist managed to squeeze out of me just how deep down the downward spiral I was at the time. I had my phone with lots of music for the stay but when I read about your album making circles in unexpected places, I was like, what the hell, why not. And at that time, in that place, it hit me immensely. I was never big on feel-good music, but with that punk vibe and with the lyrics and your awesome voice that both really don't fuck around... it was fresh, it was liberating, invigorating. And Antonymph in particular sent me back a decade so palpably, it helped me realize how much of an asshole I was back then. Seriously, back then I was racist, homophobic, transphobic, the "nice guy" model played to a tee, drunk for days sleeping in random places, etc. Sludgiest among the sludge. It made me realize just how much personal growth I've done in this time and helped me... actually appreciate myself and all the lessons life gave me. After I read your post on the process behind the album, it's like all the pieces fell into place, like why it made such a powerful impression right then and there. Afterwards I got into all of your other work and stuff, and I never really even cared much about MLP (though I think it's super cool it still inspires people to make such good art). Your music helped me get through the hardships of therapy that came after, even when at the end of the day I was screaming into a pillow with tears in my eyes. And to somehow end this lengthy message, I'd also like to say it inspired me to push my own work further, be even bolder with what it says despite being based upon video games. I've actually been slowly piecing together a remix of Syndicate, though I have a history of promising things I never finished so I'm kinda anxious about mentioning it. Anyway, thank you so much for doing what you do and I hope you can keep it coming for as long as you feel it!

it's awesome to read all of this. i think a lot of ppl get stuck in a cycle of "i was shit and i'll always be shit". i think that the ppl who have been assholes in the past rlly need to be the ones to herald the ways in how to not be one. we all know the ins and outs of being a shithead lol. so we also know how wrong it can be to become entrenched in those mindsets. i'm grateful you've been able to find solace in the album in your hardships as much as i have. :3

[margridarnauds]

💚 💙 💣 for the shipping ask - I love drama!

Ship that you secretly like: 💚

For the most part, I'm an open book, I believe that, for the most part, what you see is very much what you get. If someone ever sees me ship something and feels a deep sense of betrayal, frankly, they haven't been paying attention.

...Lugh/Nuada. I ship it as a sugarbaby type situation.

...and Fionn/Gráinne. In a very specific way.

...also can I just say that I saw some Alcina/Heisenberg fanart and even though it is distinctly NOT my thing, I found myself much more warmed to it than I thought it would be? Like, don't get me wrong, they're distinctly MLM/WLW hostility, but...perhaps...like, I can SEE it.

...Orléans/Margrid, the German production. I like to pretend I only started shipping it with the Korean/Japanese/Hungarian production, but no. I've been shipping those bitches since I saw the 2009 Bremen bootleg and saw an older vampire looking dude borderline seducing an ingenue in a brothel and then realized that she managed to get that bitch to stand down.

Ship that you used to have as an OTP: 💙

Funny you should say this because I was just going through my AO3 history (pit of sin that it is) and realized that I really, REALLY shipped Pitch Black/Jack Frost much more than I remembered.

Also, not so much on AO3, but from my FF.net days: Celestia/Discord (MLP), Twilight/Luna (MLP), Hannibal/Clarice (Silence of the Lambs), Misto/Victoria (Cats), Dracula/Anna (Van Helsing), Sansa/Sandor (A Song From Ice and Fire, and I'm going to note, before anyone reads this and decides to start shit, that I was 15 years old at the time -- we can insult my ASOIAF taste in the present, which would be an entirely separate post with multiple caveats attached, BUT at that time, it was very much a 15 year old girl who'd been raised into purity culture trying to come to terms with her own sexuality.)

...it should also be literally no surprise to absolutely anyone that I shipped Demona/Goliath on Gargoyles and that it was one of my first ships. Because YES. Of COURSE. Show gave us a well developed friends to lovers romance and I went straight for the angst bomb.

Ship that pisses you off: 💣

We know that I actively dislike Ethan/Mia, right? Like, actively, actively dislike it these days. I want it on the record. I TRIED. I t r i e d. But.

Now, in this house we stan a girlboss, but I draw the line at not mentioning that she was a bio-terrorist (specifically, in the background files to Village, covering it up) who made a BOW in the form of a little girl make her think that she loved her and she was her mother (do I think that Eveline did NOTHING wrong? No, but like. Mia. Some self-recognition here as far as who CREATED the "little bitch"), even when Ethan BEGGED her to tell him the truth in the boat, keeping Ethan's medical history from him for the sake of not ruining the family, and then getting pissy whenever Ethan wanted to talk through their issues like adults. Like, if she just couldn't say anything because she didn't want to ruin their happy family, as she says in the Beneviento House...maybe their happy family was never that happy. And I absolutely detest that I've seen Mia stans say that, well, of COURSE she couldn't tell Ethan the truth because, after all, Ethan couldn't handle the truth.

Ethan. A 34 year old man. Needs to be kept from the truth about his own body because he's just too stupid, unlike Girlboss Mia. Ethan was good enough to marry, but not to tell the truth to. Like, if she didn't respect him that much, did she ever really love him?

"Mia had trauma--" and Ethan DIDN'T? Did people SEE what Ethan was put through in Dulvey? There was a literal entire game about it.

No. Fuck that. If it seems like I have a hairtrigger temper on this VS Heisenwinters/Wintersberg, then it's because, as someone who's had a lifetime of being abused (by both genders, we're equal opportunity here)...yes. Yes I do genuinely feel like this is more actively reflecting of my trauma than Ethan fucking Dr. Frankenstein -- The Swamp Rat Edition who tried to kill him. Like, 10/10 I'll take a ship that is fucked but very aware of its own issues (for the MOST part, while there's quite a bit of saccharine Wintersberg content, which is a bit like some types of icing where it's good in small doses when I need it but can quickly become overwhelming) I do believe there's a much broader awareness that It Is Quite Fucked Up To Make Frankenstein Robots) as opposed to one where people act like it's fine and okay because "OH LOOK. CUTE BABY." Try and justify it and I'll tear your head off.

People can ship it if they want, God knows that I'm in no place to say anything given some of my ships (including, in a RE context, Maiden/Alcina and Wintersberg itself), but like. I sure as Hell do not like it, I'm never going to include it in a particularly positive way in any fic of mine, and I'm not particularly going to sugarcoat it. Ethan loved Mia, I think she loved him in an odd, unintentionally condescending way, some part of him will always be in love with her especially since they have a kid together, that's it. I've thought long and hard on whether this is internalized misogyny on my part as a noted Heisenwinters shipper or whether this blog says Fuck Mia Rights, I've tried to find SOMETHING to like (besides her love of Rose, which is wonderful that she cares for ONE mutant girl without a paycheck attached) and I ultimately came to the conclusion of Fuck Mia Rights.

[themarvelhorse]

Oh god I didn't expect the question to be turned on me, I've been had!

I don't really consider myself a writer per se since I've never actually finished even a draft of a story but I guess trying counts. Hey I guess that makes me a writer rather than an author.

A) Writing

Okay, so back in the day I would travel an average of 2 hours twice a week every other week. Being a kid with nothing to entertain myself except my imagination during car rides, I would insert OCs into movies, TV shows, or books I enjoyed. Thinking about that stuff kind of got me into thinking about OCs and world-building in general.

In sixth grade, I actually had a project for school that was supposed to be a "book that taught kids about the planets." So being the sci-fi nerd I was I decided to write about an ancient war between two galaxies. I got a lot of praise from my teacher and parents for it. Stuff like that happened a couple of times later actually too, but I never really thought much of it.

B) Ponies So back in the final year of high-school (2011-2012), I come across MLP stuff on YouTube. Like, you know when you go from related video to related video and find yourself in "that weird part of YouTube". I'd heard about them before when a radio show made fun of them. That made me mad, there was nothing wrong with watching cartoons, I thought. And it being directed at young girls never crossed my mind as an issue. So I find the "Rarity Found an Abrams" 30 second animation - easy to watch. Then came the "Best of X Episode" clips in related an recommended videos. First full episode was "It's About Time" and I was hooked.

That was a hard year to be honest, so the show was a nice escape. The community and the sheer amount of creative works in writing, art, and music amazed me and kept me into it all these years later.

C) Writing about ponies

I turned to writing pony stuff here and there when I realized that fanfiction was actually a thing. There hasn’t really been anything I’ve been ready to post anywhere, but to be honest it's just one of those things that gave me that kind of proud joy I've only ever found in cooking - being creative with something when inspiration hits, making it your own, basking in the feeling of a job well done. It was just so satisfying. That and the fact that was one of the cheaper hobbies out there. All you need to work is your imagination and something to write in. Also fairly easy to keep secret when you don’t want people knowing.

MLP in particular is just such a good universe to get creative in. It's so easy to make a new character and find them a place in it, and it's just something us humans are predisposed to doing - coming up with explanations for things and filling in the gaps (Greek myths, Paradise Lost, etc...) and having fun with it all the while. 

The Fallout: Equestria sub-fandom was the same, and it was a neat way to satisfy the more sci-fi elements of creativity I get lost in. I usually alternate between sci-fi and fantasy moods.

I would very much like to make something I feel I can show my family one day, something not MLP-oriented, but in the meantime it’s good practice and it’s where the inspiration lies. 

I might've missed it somewhere else, but I'm curious as to what got you into: A) writing B) ponies and; C) Writing about ponies? Or well, EqG humans in this case

Hey, Marvel! ^^ A) Writing I got into writing when I was around 11 years old. My (at the time) younger brother was 6 years old and wanted to write some little “books” (read: stapled together pieces of paper with doodles for pictures). I was originally just doing it to draw (I was more of an artist growing up), but then I ended up writing an 8 “book” series because I had so much fun! Telling stories just appealed to me. After that I started writing fanfiction (Percy Jackson fanfic at the time), took some writing classes and read some books over the years, and one thing lead to another and I’ve been writing ever since! So I’ve been writing for about 12 years now and don’t ever plan to stop. It’s been my dream to become a published author for a long time now! B) Ponies Ooo, I got into MLP back in high school. I would’ve been 13 or 14 at the time, back in 2011. Like a lot of people, I heard about the Brony thing and didn’t know what to make of it. I honestly thought people were just doing it for the meme. YoutubePoops (edits) were a thing in the 2000s, I kind of figured it was just more of that.  But then I sought out clips out of curiosity and it was Rarity in A Dog and Pony Show and I was surprised to find out it was genuinely funny and charming on its own, without editing.  So, I gave it a shot! I pretty much binged season 1 (I remember working on a freshman year science project as I did), caught off-guard with its charm and genuinely great stories, and then by the time I caught up to where we were in season 2, I was hooked. And there was this explosively creative fan community online with never-ending content! It quickly became my favourite show and stayed that way for the next decade of my life. You can’t beat it for genuinely sweet characters, earnestness, and an all around loving, mythical world just bursting with potential to be explored! And at a time when my social anxiety disorder was developing, it meant a lot to me to be able to escape into a world where friendship was magic. C) Writing about Ponies/EQG

I started writing MLP fanfic in 2013. Not great writing, but I was having fun! I was also pretty slow about it. I tend to write long-form stuff (and some of those big projects never made it to FIMfic because of social anxiety) so I don’t currently have a lot out compared to other writers who’ve been writing for as long as I have. Thankfully, that’s changing. I started writing EQG specifically in 2016/2017 when I really started to fall in love with Sunset as a character, which was when I wrote a story called Losing Sunlight. I needed to see more of her relationship with Princess Celestia.  And I think some people know that The Exes Club was written as a gift to @bevinbrand when we became friends since I knew she loved Timber and Flash as characters so much, and that Empathy for the Devil came as a result of us brainstorming like geeks together! I’ll also say that it’s helped me work through some grief I’ve had since last summer. Fanfic has always been about practicing my writing skills so I can write original books I can maybe publish someday, but it’s also for fun and can even be a meaningful way to express my feelings.  I totally want to know your answers to these questions, too!