#also how do you properly format links

[deltamorphose]

chamomile + edelweiss!

this pair is interesting, because the first is hard to answer, but the answer is short, yet the second is easy, but the answer is long.

gifts are tough and annoying but I love giving and receiving them. what I try to give and love getting is something ive offhandedly ranted about wanting. shows attention to what the gift receiver has been saying, except I'm terrible at doing that. besides that, its also tough. I have a bunch of hobbies which have components that can be gifted. but its hard for me to remember gifts that I really liked getting.

the tl;dr of the second one is that its for it to not be my other username

anyways, story/rant time

there was one time where I was going through something a bit rough in terms of my relationship with someone. for some reason, idk what I'd hoped to achieve, I wanted to reset my online identity. and at the time the idea of using "metamorphosis" in my user name came to mind. I think it was something relating to personal change, trying to change my mannerisms with the identity or something. In the end, I never fully went through with it.

At some point, I realised that basically everyone that knew my main username could quickly find my twitter account. Didn't like that. Made a secondary, that was a priv at time of creation. I made the name recognizable, but not find-able, so only people I interacted with on the account would find it. Then I decided to make a tumblr to get off twitter. Didn't want to be recognizable or searchable for it, so I decided to name it something different. This concept of metamorphosis came back, and I wanted to include it. so I brainstormed for a bit, taking a little inspiration from Entomologists by ghost+pals, and settled with sticking "delta" to the beginning because it sounds cool.

to me, this URL means freedom. the ability to experiment and be cringe with less judgment. like putting pan flag centura pfp and putting she/her in bio.

can't think of anything else to add, so rant over

ask source thing:

(I hope I did the link formatting right. Woops)

[thesunpersists]

playlist for chapter 6 of the third thing!

listen on spotify read on ao3

[early-sxnsets]

by fuck i WILL make my own AO3 wrapped this year

[adragonofthings]

Scam blogs (and how to spot them)

Unfortunately, scams do exist on tumblr. That is why it’s key to always try to search around when someone’s sent you a request for mutual aid. Not every account is trying to scam you and for the most part there is legitimate blogs who need your help. Sadly there are also scammers who pretend to be needing mutual aid as well so here is a simple guide to figuring out scams.

How old is the account? The pinned post usually is a good way to tell if the account contacting you is new or old. If you scroll the posts, you should see if they were made around the same time as the account.

How many posts are on the account? Most blogs will have more than just a few posts here and there. After all, a well used blog has thousands of posts for you to look at.

Are there more original posts? Usually someone needing help will have multiple posts of their own instead of a single post that’s pinned. They will also post updates regularly regarding their situation and answer asks clarifying details when necessary.

What does the link on the pinned post say? If it’s a linktree claiming to be a GoFundMe link, that’s something to be suspicious of because it’s likely not. If the link is an actual GoFundMe link that isn’t a linktree link then that usually means the account is legitimate and may have shared posts verifying who they are if you scroll a little.

Is the ask being mass sent to users? While this is done by legitimate accounts too, it’s unfortunately also commonly done by scammers. If you search the ask you got you may find it was sent to multiple accounts across several months and from several different senders with no changes to the overall text itself. Even the formatting errors are not fixed.

Are there any warnings out for the username? Try searching the senders username to see if anyone’s made a post claiming the account is a scam. There should at least be one post about them. If not, it’s likely that they are too new to have been reported yet.

Are you a well known account? How likely is it someone would find you without searching specific tags or posts for users to contact? Think about it. How often does someone send you asks for money that is a relatively new account with only a few reblogs and only one original post? If it’s almost daily, then you should be wary of the asks.

What do you find if you search part of the pinned post in your preferred search engine? If a fundraiser pops up using the same text and doesn’t mention using another mutual aid method, it’s highly likely the blog sending you the ask is impersonating a real person who needs support.

Does the mutual aid post make sense? Some scammers don’t know how medicine works and may list some that don’t work like claimed. They’ll just use whatever sounds ‘right’ without further research. Someone who needs medication will always know what their medicine does they don’t guess because they’ll usually have a doctors paper they go by.

If you have properly recognized a scammer and have fully been able to confirm that their a scammer with enough evidence, please report scam accounts and alert anyone whose shared the scam post.

[sims3alexsa]

Beckford World- Beta

Beckford is a secluded English town situated on a picturesque little island that radiates warmth and cosiness. The central square with its fountain is surrounded by cosy cafes and shops, where locals and tourists alike can enjoy a cup of fragrant tea or coffee from the comfort of the sunny terraces. The old harbour, with its moored boats and quiet streets, invites for leisurely strolls and romantic evenings by the water. The promenade, lined with flowering shrubs and benches, offers beautiful views of the ocean and sunsets, creating an atmosphere of privacy and tranquillity. The majestic cathedral with its tall towers and the cosy old castle become the real gems of Beckford, awe-inspiring not only for their historical significance but also for the atmosphere of warmth that surrounds them. Beckford is the perfect place for those who want to escape from the hustle and bustle and enjoy the simple pleasures of life surrounded by nature and friendly people.

This world-Edit Hylewood by the amazing @nilxis,credit for the terrain and plant placement goes to them.Then the world was redone by one of my favourite creators @Gruesim so the replacement texture roads are to her credit. The world has 27 public lots and 16 residential lots. Stor sets are present in the world! They are included in the download in package format,also in the build there are fixes for these sets.Please read the document inside on how to properly install the Stor fixes in PACKAGE format!!!!

Also in the world there are some mods that you can download from these links: 1.Mod functional printer 2.Tennis court mod 3.Mod purchase from inventory 4.Mod More vending machine fods 5.Mod system of petrol use by cars 6.post mod 7.Shop for clothing display pedestal mod 8.Social clubs mod

9.Private Clinic Psychiatry

10.Get Pumped

11.Yoga mod

12.Spin Class by Twinsimming

Recommendations for optimising the world. I advise and even insist that you use with this world mods Nraas:Master controller,nraas Overwatch,nraas Register,nraas Traffic.(Links to them do not give, I think they have you and so all installed):)Optimise the world with these mods: remove unnecessary transport, generated by the game stray animals, paparazzi and tourists. The world is released in betta version as it was little tested (and I will not have such an opportunity in the near future, so I put it out to you earlier than planned).

Download World

Download (mirror)

Download(mirror 2)

Download CC

(Download mirror сс)

Download (mirror cc 2)

If you have any questions, please write to us and we will solve them together. Gratitude I would like to thank all the wonderful creators I used for this world! Without you I would have nothing and this world would not exist. Thank you so much for your hard work! @Phoebejaysims,@Grandelama,@Martassimsbook,@aelisinsims,@Analogica 40,@Gruesim,@aroundthesims3,@bioniczombie,@Noir and dark sims,@simaddix,@wanberlust-pixel,@zivas-blog,@mequestrianequipment,@syninplays,@olomaya,@omedievalpixel,@kerrigan house designs,@Mspoodle. Sorry who I forgot )

If you want to thank me, buy me a coffee.

[olderthannetfic]

hi, as someone who is tragically gen Z and only ever read AO3, can I ask: what was so great about LiveJournal? Like, I know that there were fics posted there (and I've even read about the "purge", so I get why it isn't used anymore) and that it was sort of a forum-type thing. But what I don't understand, wouldn't Tumblr fill in the latter function? How was that site any different? I see a lot of people reminiscing about it and I'm confused

--

A big factor in LJ's greatness is timing and nostalgia.

It was genuinely great, but it wasn't quite as great as all of the Lo, shall the Golden Age ne'er come again? posts suggest.

LJ arrived at a pivotal time in the development of the internet both in terms of technical stuff and how many people had access. Many fans who are now in their thirties to fifties first discovered fandom through LJ and many were at a time in their lives when they were feeling energetic and up to making lots of new friends—and to figuring out how to make a site work for them.

I got on LJ in 2002 when it required invites. Fandom arrived in droves in 2003, first via coordinated campaigns to get invites to key people and then when LJ opened up free account creation to everyone. Back then, LJ's features sucked. It was impossible to search properly, among other things. At its height (2005-7, let's say), there was a reasonable site search, and fans had developed all sorts of community resources for finding each other.

People often remember this phase but not the early days of suckitude.

This development parallels how Tumblr used to not have that private chat feature and how a lot of fuckyeah[whatever] type tumblrs have helped curate the site and make it much more usable for fans. Fandom draining away from LJ after strikethrough also parallels people draining away from Tumblr after the purge.

There are people who talk about Tumblr the way my cohort talks about LJ...

And to the shock of no one, they are people who came of age on Tumblr, who found fandom via Tumblr, who were on Tumblr during pivotal times in their lives and ones when they had energy to make friends and figure out how a site worked.

Those same Tumblrites are now making all the same geriatric-sounding posts we LJers do about how other sites lack the required features to be good for fandom while missing that 90% of tumblr's "features" at its height (2012-2016, let's say) were actually fan-created and were basically the same as any fandom newsletter or links page or all the versions of this kind of personal curation stretching back to long before the internet existed.

What life phase you hit a site at matters.

--

With all of that said, no, LJ was not a forum. It was a blogging site with threaded comments.

The key point to understand is that conversation was always happening in a specific person's space. Unlike on a true forum, people were in the comments on a particular post in a journal owned by another fan. (On a forum, there's the first post in a thread, but it's still more of a communal space with less of a hierarchy.)

Overall, the LJ format can have a feeling a bit like you're over at someone's house for tea. There's more of a sense of intimacy and also behaving yourself in front of community members.

Tumblr being obscure and impossible to find anything in does give it some of the same vibe relative to Twitter, but it's still part of modern social media that tries to shove every rando into the face of every other rando.

But it wasn't just vibes: LJ also had robust privacy features where you could lock a post to this or that group of friends. You could moderate your comments section properly. Tumblr has far fewer controls to force people to behave or leave on a technical level.

--

The biggest thing many people miss about LJ is the threaded comments. At least by late LJ and on Dreamwidth, you can expand and collapse threads, making it far easier to deal with a massive comments section. But more than that, things are properly threaded with multiple levels of hierarchy that are all easily visible in the same place.

On Tumblr, it used to be extremely difficult to find all of the actual commentary on a post. Nowadays, it's far easier, but you still have to scroll chronologically, and multiple versions of a post with a long chain of commentary may be much more divorced from each other than what would happen in a LJ comments section.

--

But could we use Tumblr pretty much how we used LJ?

We could.

I do.

--

The key things that people tend to miss about LJ, aside from the younger and more excited version of themselves or the friends they've lost since then, are:

Heavily text-based

It may sound odd on the modern internet, but there are a lot of people whose brains don't like or handle an image-heavy site well. They were everywhere in SF book fandom. They were everywhere on the early internet. Today, they're hanging out on Dreamwidth and still going to their SF cons. They're usually not on Tumblr.

You could follow the discussion

Threaded comments help, but a lot of it is about having some place you can check for updates. It wasn't actually that easy to follow big LJ discussions unless you were subscribed to comments and reading along as things were happening instead of coming along after the entire mass of comments had been left.

The tone of the discussion is intellectual and one's enemies are "idiots", not "problematic"

All this requires is a penchant for longwindedness and an itchy blocking finger to remove anyone slinging ad hominems from the comments section.

On tumblr, it's as simple as conversations happening in the replies on a popular account and that person not tolerating suibaiting and threats.

(And make no mistake, a lot of LJ discussion was in the comments on popular accounts, not spread equally between everyone's.)

It does require that multiple people like that tone and want to engage in that way, but lots of people do want to.

--

These days, I interact with tumblr by checking my askbox and reading my activity page. The vast, vast majority of my posts are ones where I'm the OP, so if I block someone, they're booted from the discussion entirely.

For me... yeah, Tumblr functions almost exactly like LJ.

Also like LJ, while I'm hosting the conversation, if you hang around, you'll see the same people again and again in the comments. They may or may not also host that kind of conversation in their space, and there's a larger pool of lurkers who have some notion of which people count as regulars. Other people are watching from the shadows, enjoying or deriding the takes of the usual crowd.

People presumably do like reading my lengthy commentary or they wouldn't be here, but my tumblr wouldn't be popular like this without a healthy pool of other people who chime in regularly. It's not just that there are more people: it's that you see the same people over time. There's a bit more sense of place and community than on some parts of the internet.

--

So, in my opinion, the failure to just recreate LJ fandom on Tumblr was a skill issue.

Threaded comments were great, but LJ culture came from mailing lists, and mailing lists had the same issue as tumblr with the diverging threads.

We solved that back then by clipping out only the parts we wanted to respond to (you'd write "snip" around the quotation to show it was incomplete). We solved the smaller LJ issue by linking to other posts we were referencing and doing discussion link roundups. We solve it on tumblr by, again, linking to what we're talking about and even quoting multiple reblog chains in our own reblog of just one chain.

--

Tumblr's technical features and even general crap-ness aren't really the problem. 90s and early 00s sites regularly went down for periods of time unthinkable today.

The missing piece is people.

When one is in an active fandom with others who curate or with friends who let one know what's up, a site with imperfect features is easy to figure out and retrofit for fandom's needs. When one already feels out of touch and is between fannish passions—or at least fannish passions anyone else cares about—seeing the potential in a new site is hard.

--

Threaded comments are different and better.

LJ's built-in way to see everyone's blog in your own style was better. The automatic timestamps and the ease of seeing a paginated archive of an entire blog was better than tumblr's endless scroll and lack of clear date labeling. But some of that can be fixed with xkit or knowing your way around tumblr well.

A lot of it is nostalgia for the lj era and a refusal to take the time to figure out how to use tumblr in an oldschool internet way.

--

So by all means, people, weigh in about what made LJ great or how the culture felt at the time...

But if I see one more god damn response going "You can't have a conversation on tumblr!" in reply to my tumblr, which contains nothing but conversation, I am coming for you.

[thetoyboxs]

hi! Will you continue the tiny links drawings one day?

(Also. Love the art style BTW)

To properly answer this: I am actually actively drawing them! It's just I took a step back and decided to give them an active story. And I am just very bad at writing an actual story (And doing comics, I really really don't know how to format a comic)

I wish I could post some of these sketches I have of these tiny guys, but they're mostly just a growing doodle page

[howlingmoonrise]

Guide to backing up AO3 fics on the Wayback Machine

okay so on the interest of being able to link back to this instead of having to type it all over again the next time a friend asks:

yes, you CAN back up fic (and other websites in general) to the wayback machine, you don't have to be a specific profession or a member of the internet archive or anything

you can do this without an account, but you have extra options when you're saving a website using an internet archive account (saving ALL outlinks from that page, which is a huge time-saver; saving it to your web archive, which is useful when you want to look up the stuff you saved; etc). making an account is free.

specific things need to be taken into consideration when saving, such as whether a webpage requires login in order to enter. the wayback machine only saves a page exactly as it would show up to you if you were to open it on an anonymous tab right now with no extras installed (logged out, no saved cookies, stuff unclicked, etc) so you need to take this into consideration when saving stuff

why does this matter? because when it comes to ao3 fic, specifically, this poses some issues. at the risk of this post being nearly exclusively lists and bullet-points:

login-locked fics can't be saved to the web archive like this (please download them through ao3 itself if you'd like to save them as they are)

fics rated as explicit, mature, or not rated don't get saved properly if you use the normal fic link. they only get saved as the page where you confirm that you're willing to proceed unless you add this confirmation to the link you're saving (more on this below)

fics with more than one chapter don't get saved properly if you use the normal fic link. i see this happen a LOT with people who think they saved stuff but then only the first chapter was actually backed up. you also need to add a parameter to consider this to the link you're saving (more on this below). no, using the save all outlinks option won't help you here as the links to the next chapters aren't all indexed.

saving outlinks won't work if the fics listed in the page are explicit or multichapter, because you'll run into the same issues as in points 2 and 3. using the "save outlinks" option works when you're dealing with the page for a series where all the works are gen/teen oneshots. maybe twoshots, since ao3 now links to the latest chapter on the chapter count, but i haven't tested this yet.

--

step-by-step guide to how to back up fic and deal with the pesky multichapter/rating issues below the cut:

1. get the fic link

you want the one that is formatted like below, with only the work ID listed in the link

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007075

you can get this straight-up on oneshots, or right-click+"copy link" on the fic name when the fic is listed on an ao3 page (such as in the pages for bookmarks, series, or just in the plain fandom/ship tag). alternatively, if the link you have has anything else on it, such as:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007075/chapters/49717460

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007075/bookmarks?page=7

you can just remove everything after the work ID so that the format is the same as in the first example.

2. edit the link

if the fic is a gen/teen oneshot, you can just leave the link as it is

if the fic is explicit/mature/not rated, add ?view_adult=true to the end of the link

if the fic is a multichapter, add ?view_full_work=true to the end of the link

if the fic is explicit/mature/not rated and a multichapter, add ?view_adult=true&view_full_work=true to the end of the link

you can just use the last one for any fics and it'll work! it's just more difficult to find on the wayback machine if you only have the original link to work with, so i try to keep it to the simplest version possible.

as an example, you'll end up with something like this for the last case:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007075?view_adult=true&view_full_work=true

the edited link you end up with is the one you'll use from now on in this tutorial!

3. check whether the link has already been saved on the web archive (optional)

if the fic was saved, say, yesterday, or the writer has vanished from the interwebz since like 2003, and everything looks to be in order, there's little point in saving it again unless there were major changes since (and PLEASE check if the only save wasn't just an error page instead of the page itself, sometimes this happens and it's heartbreaking when you only notice after the page is gone.)

you can check this by going to the main page of the web archive, entering the link, and then checking on the timeline for how many lines there are in it (if there are no saves at all, they will ask you if you want to save the page). for the fic we're using as an example, someone appears to have saved it in 2021. click on that line, and then on the calendar below (where there'll presumably be either a blue or a green bubble around the date in which someone tried to back it up. other colours are no bueno):

green bubbles/links indicate a redirect. this is not particularly worrying by itself: it happens, for example, when the link is being redirected from the work ID-only format to the ID/chapters/chapter-ID format. but it can also be a redirect to a warning, for example. click on one of those timestamps and check whether the fic shows up as you expect it to. (once you have the page for a snapshot, you can just paste your next links in there to check if they exist instead of doing this all over again.)

for example, in the case of this particular fic, only the third chapter appears to have been saved. weird! you definitely don't want the only back-up of it to be this one, so it's time to move on to the next step.

4. save the fic!!!!

go to the wayback machine save page. paste the link. if you have an account and want to keep the saved website at hand, check the "save in my web archive" option.

whether you want to save error pages (for example, in case ao3 is having server issues, or for archival/historical reasons) or not is up to you, but i prefer to uncheck the box because it's usually more visible if there was an issue. below is the page of a 404 page i tried to save with the box unchecked:

and here is an attempt for another 404 page with the box checked:

the second example saved the error page only, and can mislead you into thinking that the fic was properly archived when it was, in fact, not.

DO NOT CLOSE THE PAGE UNTIL THE ARCHIVING IS DONE OR UNLESS THEY TELL YOU YOU CAN! this latter case usually happens when there's a lot of strain in the archive and the back-ups are happening with some delay, but in general you want to keep the page open so you can see the status of your save.

YES, it's slow as fuck, you're just gonna have to deal with it. i usually have 3-4 pages open when i'm working on saving several fics at a time. be patient. do other stuff meanwhile. i usually do this at the same time i'm updating my bookmarks with the fic title/author/summary/link in case the fic gets deleted and i have no clue which one it was anymore, so i have a pretty steady "copy link->edit link->save fic->update bookmark for that fic->repeat" workflow going on.

5. save the link you used!

bestie. i'm pleading with you. save the fic link somewhere. any! fic link! for that fic! even the original will do! any link that you can reverse-engineer into the one you want! because good fucking luck finding the save you did when you no longer know how to get there, even if you save it on your own web archive (i have a couple thousand websites saved on mine so it's like finding a needle in a haystack).

the web archive does not neatly save the page name so that you can search it easily, so you ABSOLUTELY need the link for the fic or you're likely done for💀

you have a couple options here! place the link in your ao3 bookmark directly, if you have the fic saved on there. if you're the kind of person who bookmarks directly on their browser, go for it, i guess? (but keep a backup of your bookmarks somewhere). create an excel with the fic data in a column or two and their corresponding links on the following one. it's up to you! just save it somewhere.

preferably, save a downloaded copy of the fics you love, too, instead of solely relying on the web archive, but that's a lecture for another day.

6. bonus round: saving series!

also adaptable for saving works by a specific author - the essence of it is that you want every page you'd need to navigate to in order to reach the rest of the works. for an author, this would likely be their main page -> their works page (or their [works in specific fandom] page) -> every page within that -> the works within each page.

this is where the outlinks are your best friend.

get the series link (the format is something like https://archiveofourown.org/series/2930166).

open the save page on the web archive.

if the works are all mature/explicit/not rated and/or contain more than two chapter each, don't bother checking "save outlinks". if the series has a large amount of gen/teen works and they're only oneshots and twoshots, check "save outlinks". you'll save time doing this instead of backing each of them up individually, but please verify that the second chapters of the twoshots have indeed been saved.

save the series page. save also the link to the series page: from this one you can then navigate to the works you save within it.

now individually save each of the works within that series that you want to keep (and that you haven't covered in point 6.3) by using points 1-4 of the larger fic-centric tutorial.

i hope this helps!

[monstrouslyobsessed]

stop censoring your tags!

normally, i don't like to write these kinds of posts, but i kept seeing a certain issue on this site—a very worrying issue, that genuinely upset me to a degree.

if you do any of the followings below

all are edited to protect their privacy and are only meant to be used as examples, so please do not look for those responsible!

please stop. i am begging on my knees for you to stop.

the whole point of using trigger warnings (TWs) is for other people to filter them out from their dashboards. what you're doing is putting more burden on your readers to add unnecessary tags to their filter list. you're also running the risk of triggering your followers and viewers.

even if your hashtags are uncensored, there's always a chance of missing one that was already listed in the introduction—especially with the limit of 25 tags. most filter lists i've tested consider what's already in the post too, even if it's untagged.

plus, any accessibility tool the reader may be using (such as screen reader and translator) may not be able to read the censored tags! considering that the (presumably uncensored) hashtags are at the very end of the post, these tools won't read the said hashtags until that point, making any initial warning moot if they are impossible to read or translate.

please keep your TWs as is, without all the excessive censoring.

tumblr is NOT tiktok or facebook. tumblr does not look for your posts to censor them (unless it's imagery) and/or to ban you off the site. as long as it is properly marked as mature, tumblr literally does not care and even said they are okay with any written post being explicit [link]. i am begging you, for the sake of people here, to properly tag your works PLAINLY.

DO NOT DO THESE: #tr!gg3r w4rn1ng, #c10ud$, #𝔭𝔢𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔭𝔲𝔭𝔭𝔶, etc. for the hashtags at the bottom.

these does NOT work with the filter, regardless of where they are in the post.

DO USE THESE: #trigger warning, #clouds, #pet the puppy, etc. even with #tw (ex. #tw pet the puppy) is fine too!

i included a link below which give a more in-depth explanation about how using #tw (insert trigger) is okay.

once again, while i know that tagging trigger warnings as is may seem like something you could get flagged for, it is not. tumblr's tagging system exists so that people can easily filter out content that they are not comfortable with.

by censoring your tags or content, you are actually making it harder for people to navigate through tumblr, as your censored tags or content do not work with the filter.

i encourage you to please think about how your content and tags may negatively affect others when they are censored.

the only exception i know of that would've impacted the visibility of your post(s) is the use of n'sfw due to the widespread abuses via the pron bots (and we all know how wonderful of a job the tumblrs staffs are doing to combat that issue /s). however, that's often easy enough to bypass via using examples such as, 'not safe for work', 'not sfw', 'n/sfw', etc. i personally recommend you to experiment to see which would work the best for you. generally though, they all should be fine/safe to use and be picked up by the accessibility tools at least decently.

additionally, on a still related note, please be consistent with your colors, sizes, and formats in your writing, especially in your heading area with tags and other important notes. we do have readers with vision and sensory issues who would not appreciate reading contents with too many colors and an excessive amount of bold and italics.

simplicity is best. consistency is excellent.

if it's something like the following,

CAUTION: trigger warnings, pet the puppy, handholding, clouds

that is, in my opinion, fine. personally, i'm okay with one or two bolded TW's to especially emphasize the major warnings, but not all of them. everyone have their preferences; however, again, i must stress the importance of simplicity and consistency for easy and smooth reading, especially for most readers, and it helps with accessibility too.

just please don't do what the first screenshot did (red and green texts). the inconsistency in sizing and coloring, like the aforementioned example, makes it hard to read and harder to enjoy.

lastly, please tag your works properly! a friend of mine was understandably upset when they ran into a content with an untagged trigger. the whole point of tagging is to allow everyone to curate their internet experience. it's considered extremely rude not to tag your works appropriately, especially with major trigger warnings. if it contains non/con, tag it. if it includes in/cest, tag it.

please. be kind to your readers and tag your works properly and clearly.

that is all.

thank you.

other useful links for tags

https://bihelel.tumblr.com/post/627963320709906432/how-to-properly-tag-trigger-warnings the in-depth explanation of tagging system https://trigger-warnings.tumblr.com/tags/ it is not a *complete* list of common TW's, but it's still a good handy guide to have on hand and it's pretty comprehensive.

[ammoknightsofficial]

Translating the Dev's Headcanon Spread for Kyle's Family

Alright, so, I've gotten my hands on the Monster Hunter Stories 2 Art Book! That means it's time to translate This Image, piece by piece! The text on this is quite small, and the halftones can interfere with legibility at times, but I managed, for the most part. I'll be including notes for each section, particularly anything that may seem like an odd or interesting choice, for Maximum Transparency!

Everything's Under the Cut!! Have fun!

母：優しく穏やかな女性 // The Mother of The Family. A Loving, Gentle, and Quiet Woman.

I've chosen to write this in full sentences, rather than the original format, since that feels easier to communicate. You may notice that "Gentle" is both Green and Blue, and that's because 優しく and 穏やかな both communicate a kind of Gentleness, with 優しく being more like "Tender" and 穏やかな being more like "Calm".

カイルがまだ幼い頃に病にかかりこの世を去ってしまう // She Fell Ill when Kyle was Very Young. She never Recovered, and Passed Away when he was still just a Child.

Before I Get Into Translation Notes - I Have Some Thoughts.

I'm going to be fully transparent - this part is one of the main reasons I got the book. I had my suspicions that she was terminally ill and died when he was young, but I didn't want to make any absolute statements until I could properly translate this passage. I had basically no doubts about it, though - this particular scene here is absolutely striking, and communicates what's going on extremely well even if you can't read it. Kyle's too young to understand what's going on. He thinks a flower will make her feel better. Meanwhile, you have the second youngest brother that's just barely old enough to know, and in that horrible point where he understands what's happening, but doesn't know what to do or how to handle it. Then there's the middle child, with enough emotional intelligence to know that comforting the second youngest and not dissuading Kyle's - the youngest of them all - attempts to help is the absolute best course of action here, to keep everyone strong while their mother (tries, and fails to) fight(s) her Terminal Illness. It's really amazing character work, all in one simple image.

This explains a lot about Kyle's actions during the course of the story. It's kind of difficult for a lot of people to understand why he reacts the way he does to his father getting injured, but with the context that he watched his mom die of a Terminal Illness when he was practically just a baby, and was powerless to do anything about it... It really makes sense, doesn't it? On a personal level, I mean. It also puts this post-game line into some new perspective...

"I'm not putting on a brave face" is such particular wording, and such a particular reassurance to give. He's had to before, and the way he's saying this almost implies - to me, at least - that maybe the player character is intended to, perhaps, know about that bit of history. That's all Speculation, though - I just find it an incredibly interesting string of implications.

As for Translation Notes...

The main thing that may seem out of place is the fact that "She never Recovered" is in both Red and Green. That's actually nothing special, it's just the fact that her illness and her death are being linked together in this passage. She died because of her illness - not because she got, I don't know, eaten by a dragon or something later, in some odd unrelated event. She was Terminally Ill, emphasis on Terminal.

カイル家族イメージ　―　作中には出てこない設定イマージです // Headcanons about Kyle's Family - These are Characters + Character-Establishing Headcanons that Do Not Appear in the Story.

Apologies for putting the Document Title all the way down here. I wanted to talk about Kyle's mom first, lol. I've already explained my reasoning for translating イメージ as Headcanon. I don't think anything else is all that noteworthy.

A Chart Depicting the Developers' Ideas for What the (Living Members of the) Family Looks Like. In Birth Order, we have...

長男：真面目・優等生　―　23年

First-Born: Serious + An Honor Student - 23 Y.O.

次男：自信家・明るい　―　21年

Second-Born: Self-Confident + Cheerful - 21 Y.O.

三男：優しい・賢い　―　18年

Third-Born: Kind + Wise - 18 Y.O.

四男：勝気・負けず嫌い　―　16年

Fourth-Born: Determined + Hates Losing - 16 Y.O.

Me, personally, I think the birth order sounds right, but I'm not a huge fan of how young everyone is. The Fourth-Born looks 19-21 to me, the Third-Born looks in their mid-20s, so on and so forth. But that's partially just the fact that I, myself, am currently in my 20s, and generally really prefer writing + drawing adults. Straight up, I clocked Kyle as being at least 18 when I was doing my playthrough of the game, but this image seems to imply he's about 15. Extremely weird thought to me. I will personally continue writing him as an adult, and his siblings as generally way older than the Devs are estimating. That has no bearing on this piece of Dubious-Canon, however, just something I wanted to mention as a bit of an oddity to me.

Also, the second Kanji in the Birth Orders actually specifies that they're all sons (男), but I'm using the Gender Neutral forms of the Birth Order terms just because I find that more comfortable and less clunky, personally. No other reason.

And, no, I don't really know what that bit of handwriting next to the Third-Born's head is. I also currently cannot fully decipher what this passage (originally below the Headcanon Spread) means, though that's likely just a Skill Issue.

If I figure it out, I'll likely Reblog this Post with an Update, but for now, I think I've covered what I can.

Thanks for Reading!! Hopefully you found this interesting, and maybe you found it useful!! The print on this spread was really, really small, and at times quite frustrating to decipher - hell, I just straight up gave up on the above passage - so any comments or compliments in the notes will be appreciated!!

[jiraisupportgroup]

♡ Budget / Expenses Spreadsheet ♡ (Customizable)

Hi guys!!! I've gotten a few asks about budgeting and handling money better — a post on that is in the works now — but I figured I would share the budgeting/expenses Google sheet that I made and have been using for about two years.

This is a link to the spreadsheet & under the "read more" I'll kind of go into detail about what it is, how to use it, and how to customize it to fit your needs.

I like using Google Docs because it's easy to access on both phone and computer so regardless of where you are you can quickly open it up and note down if you spend something or see how much you have left to spend on something. (I'll make a follow-up post at some point going over the process of making a reasonable budget and all that good stuff a little bit later, this post is really just about what the document is and how to use it ^-^)

You need to make your own copy of the spreadsheet so that you can start to edit and use it! When you open up the document click on "File" then select "Make a Copy"

2. Now that you have your own copy let's look at the "Monthly Expenses" part of the document.

This is the main part - your monthly expenses. I have it broken down into different categories so I can see how much money I'm spending on what, and notice if I'm spending too much on something. DO NOT EDIT THE COLOURED BOXES. Those are auto-updating, so you don't want to edit them or they won't auto-update anymore.

The monthly expenses table pulls data from this table down towards the bottom of the spreadsheet. This is where you can note down anything you spend money on. You have a drop-down menu to select what category the purchase falls under, what payment method you used, the total, and any notes about the purchase. The document will automatically add up any values for a category and put the total into the table at the top - that way you don't have to do any math at all its awesome.

CHANGING CATEGORY NAMES (please pay attention to this since if you change category names without following these steps it will not work anymore) You need to change the category name in 3 different places.

1- Change the name on the "Monthy Expenses" table 2- Change the name in the formatting code in the "actual" part of the "monthly expenses table" When you click on the value under the "actual" part of the monthly expenses table you should see something that looks like "=SUMIF(E36:E1002, "Eating Out", G36:G1002)" then just change "Eating Out" to whatever your preferred category name is.

3- Change the name in the drop-down options of the daily purchases part of the document When you click on the dropdown menu, click the edit button. That will open the menu on the right-hand side of the screen, scroll down and change whichever category name you want to edit to the preferred category name.

Make sure that it is spelled the SAME WAY in all 3 of these places or it will not work properly!! I also made a short video showing how I would change the category "nicotine" to "fashion" to show you how it's done:

Once you've done that everything should auto-update properly, and the spending chart will update with the new name as well no need to edit the pie chart at all.

And this pie chart will automatically update to show you a visual of how much money you're spending on what (comparatively).

If you want to change the category names of the payment methods those you can just change in the drop-down edit menu - the names of those do not affect anything so you can change their names, add new ones, delete ones, whatever you want to do and you don't have to worry about anything else getting messed up.

3. The monthly income table is just tracking what your projected income vs. actual income was for the month

again, don't type in the coloured boxes, they will automatically update. I mostly use this as a sort of starting point for planning my budget so that I can sort of see how much money I expect to have for the month so I can plan around that number. This doesn't affect anything else in the document, so if you don't like it you can honestly delete it.

4. Savings and Debts trackers

Again, these aren't tied to anything else in the document so you can delete them if you like. I mostly use these to see whether my savings are going up or down, and keep track of how much money I owe to other people T-T. One note I will make is that the debts tracker does not take interest into account so I honestly just manually update it every month. (It is not a very extensive tracker, and if you need to manage debt there are honestly better ways to do it than this, I just kind of have it in here as a visual for myself).

If you run into any issues or have any trouble formatting / customizing the document feel free to shoot me a DM or an ask and I will help you out!

And again, post about budgeting and fiscal responsibility and all that jazz coming later, but for now try it and see if you like it! See if you can log every purchase you make for a week! That way you'll be able to start seeing what you tend to spend your money on the most, and how much money you spend, and then we can kind of build a budget later on with that in mind ^-^

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗ I hope it's helpful! ˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

[arom-antix]

Hey, just wanted to reach out to say that I found you pointing out and calling this person was really great and you shouldn't have apologized. It was incredibly true what you said, and to be honest it seems out of touch with the reality of a great deal of the japanese fandom, the nuances and their culture. Also, it was as you pointed out, extreme and may I say rude. I want to mention too that the way it was written, as if entitled of the knowledge and the 'explanation' made it all worse in context of the 'fucked up'. The original poster always gets away by using the 'well-written academic'' statement of their 'metas' as an excuse to do or say and make everyone else agree and if not, uses victim narrative and discourses exactly selecting wording for people to agree on it or feel bad.

I don't know if they tagging you in the way they did made you reblog and apologizing/backing up, but no one thought bad about you pointing it out. On the contrary, a lot of people had been bullied and discriminated by this person when they called them out/disagreed going onto lenghts of sending their friends to harass people, and the other persons can't even defend themselves because they are effectively blocked. To quite a few people in the fandom has been done, even accusing them as 'acephobes' (when they're not) or even Nazis by spreading lies. So yeah, I just wanted to say that. I think you were right to call them out publicly.

Thank you very much for this ask. To be completely honest I agree with everything you said here and don't actually feel bad about pointing anything out. I mainly apologised because I didn't want any potentially poor phrasing from my side to cause unnecessary hostility and because I myself have gripes with this person's behaviour but didn't want to cause a scene.

My honest opinion is that they have a serious issue with taking accountability for their own mistakes and highly overestimate their own intellect. If you're reading this, @thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai, sorry if I seem harsh, but it's true. I saw your post lamenting how you're the only academic meta writer / fan in the fandom and I didn't interact then because I honestly do not care enough to start that drama but with the information Blonndiec has just given me, I think it's necessary that someone calls you out.

You're not an academic. You're not beyond the mental capabilities of other fans. You're actually incredibly childish in your metas and analyses and I am not kidding when I say that I was halfheartedly writing essays more academic than every analysis I've seen from you when I was barely a teenager. I don't know how old you are and I frankly don't care. You're not as clever as you think you are.

Also, don't think I didn't notice that you didn't reblog my correction (link here to my correction and here to their "response" for those who didn't see that exchange) of your post so that you could control what your followers saw of the exchange. You're the opposite of an academic. You control information to tailor the narrative, you don't cite your sources properly if at all, you don't format your posts in anything close to how an academic analysis would be, you make unbased claims, you reference posts and canon material without in any way indicating where that information is from, you reference your own (equally unacademic) metas and your conclusions from them without indicating what post it's from or that it's your own theory this new one is based on and instead present it as a common fact, and I could go on and on and on. Your posts are also riddled with logical fallacies and you talk in absolutes and opinions when there's no canon basis to claim such things. I'm sorry, but that's not academic in the slightest.

To be clear, you don't have to be an academic to post on the Internet. You don't have to be anything at all. You could up front be a genuine idiot with no remorse and that's fine. But when you claim to be an academic and also put down the rest of the fandom for not being on your level, you have to be able to back that up. It'd still make you sound like a prick but at least your arrogance would have a basis. It currently does not.

I haven't personally seen the discussions that Blonndiec is referencing and I'm not going to claim anything definitive (because that would be unacademic of me, take notes) but if what they're saying is true and did happen as described, which I have empirical, if anecdotal, evidence to believe could very well be (a friend of mine has personally been blocked by you after they criticised you without actually mentioning your name which I of course can't prove is the reason for the block but the timing is awfully convenient), you should know that you should be ashamed of yourself.

If there's context missing, feel free to enlighten me and call out any incorrect accusations. You have every right to defend yourself. However, I encourage you to cite your sources since you're such an academic. If you don't, then it's just your word against Blonndiec and anyone else who might comment's word and that doesn't prove anything. Don't misunderstand, acephobia and nazi rhetoric should absolutely be called out but only if it's actually happening. False accusations can ruin lives. I hope you know that.

I'm not a fan of calling people out publicly and, again, thank you for this ask, Blonndiec. But considering many of the issues I've personally seen and those I've been informed of by second hand sources were posted publically, I don't really feel bad about calling this out. I could do a full breakdown of just the insulting "academic" comments alone and how there's no academia to be found in said academic metas and, Samurai, if you give me reason to, I will show exactly what I mean point by point (and academically just to give you an example of even low level academia).

If you respond to this, do it in a reblog. That's what a real academic would do. If I'm wrong and you can prove it, you'd have no reason to not show my post in your rebuttal. If I'm right, you'd have every reason to be upfront about your mistakes and how you intend to rectify them. There's nothing wrong with being wrong but there's a lot wrong with refusing to admit to it in a way that lets others peer review you (academic thing, look it up) and come to their own conclusions about the situation. That's what you did when you just @'ed me instead of reblogging my response. A true academic wouldn't hide a peer review. You'd know that if you were one.

I swing in many academic spaces and yet that doesn't make me any kind of expert and I don't claim to be one because I'm not. But since you want to be one so badly, reblog this with a response and show us all how smart you are. I'm dying to know what your academic take on this is.

[saturnianoracle]

How to learn real astrology: what it is and is not

As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.

It is VITAL that if you want to understand astrology properly, you come in with an open mind and forget everything you think you know. Especially, remove yoruself from the belief that astrology is some occultic mystical spiritual practice, and/or that it is solely some psychological tool.

I used to be quite the hater of astrology. None of it 'resonated', and it seemed like wishy washy hippie shit. In lockdown, astrology stuff kept coming onto my feed, and some of it made sense, but most still did not. I then initially wanted to debunk astrology. But when I properly stated looking into it, the deeper I went the more accurate it started to become. Equally, parts still remained highly inaccurate. But this was due to a mismatch of how 'influencers' out there synthesised and understood the traditional foundations of astrology and modern information. Thus, I committed myself to truly understanding astrology, and my life has significantly improved for it and I've only just started.

As an introductory post to what astrology really is, I have formatted it into the following sections: i. the problem with pop culture astrology, ii, the history of astrology, iii. how astrology works, and iv. where meaning in astrology comes from.

The problem with pop culture astrology

This is the type of astrology we see in newspaper horoscopes, online articles, tiktok viral posts, instagram horoscopes, etc.

This is borne out of the allure astrology holds for desperate individuals seeking an easy and quick answer to their life problems, and using it as a form of confirmation bias for hating their ex (for example). But this misuse of astrology will undoubtedly hit for most people, due to the barnum effect, but is ultimately inaccurate and those who think it true have now misleadingly correlated the pop culture reasons for why X happened to what astrology is.

The new moon in your 7th house is not a sign that your crush will leave his partner for you. Being a gemini sun does not mean you are a two faced, loyal-less individual. Having your sun sign the same as their venus sign does not mean you two are compatible. And so on and so forth.

Here are some key things to understand about astrology:

✎ Stop using co-star, and those websites which give you your astrology information like this:

-> This does not tell you anything remotely significant aside from standard archetypal and superifical meanings of having a sun in Sagittarius or whatever (which you might not even 'relate' to, because of a multitude of other factors this does not show). Your chart instead, should, at the very least look like this:

-> Even better, make a chart and add in decans, asteroids, and considers more aspects. Viewing your birth chart like this is essential for gaining a better understanding. Aspects are what brings everything in your chart together to give it more significant and individualised meaning, the houses and the angles are also explicitly identifiable this way. Also, always make sure your chart is in whole sign houses, I will make a post on this later on why, but you will have to go to settings for this as popculture astrology has made placidus the default (as well as other inaccurate takes).

✎ Sun sign is astrology is fake, no matter how much you think it resonates with you it is the wrong footing to base your understanding of astrology off of. Astrology is extremely complex, one thing might resonate for one person and not for another, because of house placements, condition of the planet, aspects to the planet, etc. Consequently, all basic and simplified delineations of a chart are unhelpful and will put you on the wrong footing for future proper readings you might wish to do. This is how astrology can be so inaccurate.

✎ Astrology is not about resonating. Although, this is a part of how we can test astrology, it is linked far too much with resonating with personality. Your birth chart is not a map of who you are specifically, we evolve all the time (as the universe, so the soul), it is a map of your entire life. It is a map of the sky and its energies the minute you were born. Some things you think you do not resonate with is because those energies have not yet played out in your life.

✎ Astrology is not a psychological tool, although it can give us insight into psychology when used and understood properly. Again, it is the blueprint of our life.

✎ Astrology is not spiritual. It is not a belief system, either. Although, one can use astrology to advance their spiritual practices.

✎ Free will exists. I will likely go into this in another post but the energies of our bith chart, solar return chart, profection year, progressed charts, transits etc, are merely indications of how things are likely to unfold. The energies are malleable within their themes' ambit, and it is up to us to decide how we choose to interpret what is/will happen and what to do with that information. A transit might indicate difficulty in a law suit, ok, how can I mitigate that then? What other charts, energies, and transits can I use? If I did not know of this then I would not know how to alter my behaviour to yield a better results, even if it might not mean a completely opposite result.

✎ Your natal chart will not show you everything. There are relocated charts, progressed charts, solar return charts, profection years, etc. All this goes into a holistic assessment. Your natal chart, however, will always remain the anchor of it all.

A brief history

Astrology is not some woo-woo, spiritual, new age, belief system. Astrology's history and use goes back to the Babylonians. It used to be intertwined with astronomy; Galielo and Kepler, for example, were simultaneously astrologers and practised it widely (even as court astrologers). People in positions of power have always consulted astrologers to time events, in the modern era many Royal families, celebrities, and politicans still consult astrologers. Carl Jung, JP Morgan, Nancy Reagan, and Roosevelt are examples of this. Of course, it might be argued that just because famous people have used/use astrology does not give it any more credit to which I say: ok please read my post below pls and ty xo.

Astrology's history has been relatively tumultuous, however. I have condensed this timeline from an article I found below:

- Astrology was a widely accepted practice but, in Europe, after the fall of the Roman empire and much of Europe, it fell into decline along with other disicplines. - The middle ages saw a renaissance of intellectualism with a particular focus on science and thus the astronomy part of it. This was largely due to the Church who viewed astrology as divination and going against free will. - However, in other parts of the world astrology was still a crucial element of daily life, and those in power would use astrologers to time events. - Astrology did re-enter the curriculum, though, in the 14th century, with a focus on being used for medical astrology in part due to the recently available Hippocratic Corpus. These texts were crucial to advancing our understanding of medicine, but Hippocrates emphasised that "a physician without knowledge of astrology has no right to call himself a physician". Astrologer still had a healthy dose of criticism back then, though. - Astrology was a major field of study in universities in Europe, well ingrained in daily life. - It died out in the 17th century, mostly due to the increasing emphasis on science being increasingly and misleadingly viewed as separate from astrology, the church, and astrologers falling into disrepute due to political involvement. - Its resurgence in the 19th century saw an oversimplified, and largely 'spiritualised' version of astrologer. This is because this period also saw an increased interest in the occult and mystic. - Since becoming conflated, astrology has become even further diluted, but this is not to say that every new discovery has been wrong; modern interpretation is crucial to informing the bigger picture of astrology and how we can utilise it. But it is vital to be critical and separate it from pop culture nonsense, aimed at lost and desperate people looking for quick answers and confirmation bias, and have some media literacy.

So, how does astrology work?

: ̗̀➛ Astrology has NOTHING to do with the physical constellations. Astrology is based on the signs on the ecliptic (the path of the sun amongst the constellations, which is the plane of the earth's orbit).

: ̗̀➛ The equator has 15 constellations, and the ecliptic has 13. So why do we have 12 zodiac signs? This is because babylonians divided the ecliptic into 12 equal segments of 30 degrees each thousands of years ago. The ecliptic was divided into SIGNS. 12 constellations were just used to identify where in the sky each sign would be, at the time for ease of astronomical mapping/calculation - it is merely symbolic. This is why Opphiuchus is not the 13th Zodiac SIGN, although it is a constellation (and has always been known).

: ̗̀➛ Another reason why they are not based off the physical constellations is because the actual size of the constellations vary massively in size. Below is a representation of this:

: ̗̀➛ As you can see, Virgo, for instance is huge, and on a literal view overlaps into the next segment because the constellations do not all equally fit a 30 degree division. Yet, we do not give scorpio like 5 days for its season, because the physical constellation does not dictate anything meaningful.

This gives us the tropical zodiac, which is to do with the earth's seasons:

: ̗̀➛ The solstices are therefore reference points for Capricorn and Cancer (tropic of capricorn and tropic of cancer), not the constellations themselves. Accordingly, the spring equinox is marked by Aries (with the sun entering the segment of Aries at 0 degrees until 29), and the autumn equinox by Libra.

: ̗̀➛ The precession of the equinoxes, are therefore irrelevant to astrology (and this is why vedic/sidereal is, in my opinion inaccurate). The slow change of the direction of the earth's axial tilt, over around 26000 years, cause a precession of the equinoxes. This means, the segment of the sky that used to be identified by the Aries constellation from the earth's position at the time, is now looking at Pisces. But as we know, astrology has nothing to do with the physical location of the constellations. Vedic astrologers use sidereal positioning, aka taking into account the precession of the equinoxes, yet they still divide the ecliptic in the same way. This causes problems, leading to many branches in vedic because few agree on where aries actually even starts. But, I will write an extension of this segment in a future post on tropical vs vedic/sidereal astrology.

Where does astrological meaning come from?

As explained above, constellations do not give us meaning, the planets in the signs do (of which the signs' names just derive from where the constellations were at the time, i.e. are merely symbolic).

Astrology operates in a heliocentric context, in that its setting is derived from the solstices (as the sun is what gives us life) and the ecliptic etc, but is geocentric in function in that the meaning comes from how the celestial bodies going through the signs affect us on earth; it is all about OUR relation to the planets, not constellations.

Returning to the quote above (as above so below...), what happens up up there reflects its energies down on us below. For thousands of millenia, astrologers have developed an accurate pattern recognition framework which aligns with the maths and astronomy. This was done using the ephemeris, which tracked the trajectory of celestial bodies against the context of worldly (mundane), or natal events. Eventually, this knowledge could be used for predictions, (to understand transits, or for electional and horary astrology), by utilising the knowledge of how the trajectories of the planets and their interactions with eachother in what sign and house affected what.

Why does it affect us? Well, all the things that happen above us radiate energies. But when I talk about energies, I do not mean it in some spiritual sense, it is quite literal. Everything has frequencies. As mentioned above, astrologers, since the Bablyonian times, have studied these patterns and created an objective framework to align with it. Physical energies or not there is direct causation. The moon for instance, affects the tides on the planet because of its gravitational pull. We are 70% water, there is little reason to deny that the moon cannot affect us either (it does). Perhaps you might understand your broken leg as because of being hit by a car. But astrology can assess the chart of the event, and transits to your own chart to provide further explanation of why you got hit by a car in the first place, and why it caused a broken leg etc. Subsequently, the energies of what happens above relate to the themes found in planets, signs, houses, aspects, asteroids etc - but these energies are not set in stone as explained above.

Ultimately, it is disappointingly small-minded to think that there is nothing 'greater' than the physical reality we tether ourselves to. We are in fact part of something bigger; and again I do not mean this in some culty spiritual hippy sense. It is literally a fact, the world and cosmos at large is so vast, mysterious, and beautiful, how could anyone deny the interconnected web we are all collectively a part of. We might never fully understand the mechanisms of the universe, but what we can do is use the information we do have to make use of it and help inform us on how to live better lives. The fact there is something 'greater' inherent in our lives, connecting everything, which is objectively difficult to truly grasp, is not a reason to reject it. A lot of people who are averse to astrology (which used to be me) are those who pride themselves on rationality and objectivity, yet are restricting themselves to a very particular interpretation of what rationality and objectivity means.

With all this said, I hope it has helped someone understand and appreciate astrology better. There is such a fascinating rich and deep history to it, spanning various cultures and eras, making it difficult to at least not enjoy learning about even if one still chooses to not practise it. I would like to reiterate, however, that to truly embrace astrology and its millenia of knowledge, evidence, and practice behind it, one must divorce its concept from pop culture astrology.

[la-lolita]

Hello, this is Lolita, formerly known as Aphrodites-letters, and (sighs) strawberrymilkmami. It’s been a few years since I left, and I am back to properly speak up for myself about the drama that happened between Cupid (now going by Devosin) and I. I will be referring to Devosin as Cupid, however because that’s the name they used to go by during this drama. In this post, I will take accountability for my actions, however I will also explain some parts of the story that I should’ve exposed a long time ago. 

Why now you may ask? Because I feel so much better now. I have matured and up to this day, what has happened still affects me a lot mentally. People may say this is old, or tell me to move on. You can’t move on when there are people out there still thinking you’re a complete bastard not knowing your true reasonings or thinking you’re just finding excuses— its been years, there’s no point in lying, im not even in the fandom anymore, what do I gain lying? You could say I “deserved” it and that “that’s what I get for being jealous” etc. Yet those are simply accusations and assumptions people made, you can’t take people’s/make assumptions and think it’s the truth.

I have finally developed the courage to speak about this topic again and explain properly my side of the story.

—

Faulty Link

I want to clear up the biggest misunderstanding. I never sent anyone anon hate and I can prove it.

Pinpix has stated that she “can track an anon's identity” by using this link. I found this fact very interesting considering it’s been outdated for years at the time Pinpix did this ‘callout.’ 

Pinpix gave out false information about me, then Cupid reblogged it without checking the sources. Not only Cupid, but many of my former mutuals did so without checking the sources. This link hasn’t been working since 2017, yet they managed to ‘track’ my IP in 2023. Anyone is welcome to check the tracking link themselves to see even more comments proving that it no longer works. 

I’d like to mention Cupid had stated this before. 

I’ve never been in Cupid’s server before. So, I clearly couldn’t have been the one sent the hate. With all these facts coming to light, I’d like this to be a lesson to everyone to not jump on hate trains without checking what the ‘proof’ is.

—

Anon Hate

To everyone affected by the anon hate, I’m really truly sorry you’ve had such rude and demeaning people in your inbox. I believe anon hate is such a low act to do and I understand it affected you immensely. 

However, I want everyone to understand that I have never sent anon hate and will never in the future.  —

Copying

Not only did Pinpix accuse me of sending anon hate, they also made some claims about me copying Cupid (most of the post was them talking about this). I’d like to address these.

I’ve never copied anyone. A lot of what I did was take inspiration from trends at that time. Just because some of my posts came after Cupid doesn’t mean I copied her. I did things that were popular at that time, not things that Cupid did. If Cupid did popular things too, cool! But please don’t come after me for also following trends. Fade outs and social media themes were popular then, and many of former mutuals as well as people from other fandoms had similar themes.

First thing out of the way, Cupids are from Roman mythology and Aphrodite is from Greek mythology, so no I didn’t see Cupid’s url and decided to steal it lol, that is so silly. She and I were friends back then and wanted to match names. I also fail to see how our themes and writing styles are similar. To my knowledge, Cupid went for regal themes, while I stuck to coquette, there was a time where I did more simple clean themes because again- it was trending, especially in blogs from big Fandoms such as Genshin. Just because we both used shades of pink doesn’t mean it was plagiarism. 

I’ve never deleted anything off my page after this incident, so I think you’re misremembering. 

My writing format has changed as a progress of maturing. Personal observations are not proof. Not to mention my writings are still up, so if you had proof that our fics are similar, you could have proved it. You have not. 

This says a lot. 

—

Vent

I will take accountability for my venting. I did vent personal things and I regret that immensely. I’m sorry to anyone affected by them. However, please understand I was going through a difficult situation both online and irl, and as an immature 13 year old kid, I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t have the help I needed, I didn’t know what to do to make myself feel better. Sadly, I chose a path that not only didn’t help me, but also harmed the people around me. I regret it, and if I could I would have taken a few months offline.

None of my vents named or attacked anyone. If you made correlations from my vents to people, that is your assumption. These are all subjective opinions made by you without any proof. 

Some of my posts were indeed targeted towards Cupid, I wasn’t healed from the first drama we had and seeing them interact with my friends hurt me really bad. I just wanted the whole drama out of my life, seeing Cupid on my dashboard didn’t help me forget at all. I had blocked her, however when she interacted with my mutuals, I saw her on my page. However, the majority of my vents were from real life issues.  —

Sign Out

First and foremost, I’m sorry to anyone hurt by actions caused by me. However, the anon hate, the spam into former mutuals’ inboxes, accused plagiarism and this supposed obsession isn’t me. You’ve crafted this whole story based on assumptions and false proof, and I don’t want to take the hate in my inbox anymore. It’s been years and I’m not sure why people are still so obsessed with this situation.

Though this section confuses me, since when you said I did the ‘same thing,’ it implies that Cupid has also neglected to credit the art they used.

I have used art without credits only if I couldn’t find the original source. I found a lot of my inspiration on Pinterest, so when I found the source, I could credit them. However, sometimes I couldn’t find it, and wouldn’t have anything to cite. I now know that I should have looked harder or have used another image for my blog, however I was not as mature then. In my mind, I had looked for the source and couldn't find it. Going forward in any future fandoms I join to make content, I will cite everything I can.

As a final message, don’t harass people online, especially if you don’t do your research on the topic or know the full story of both people. In my case I was anxious. I didn’t know what to do or say, I was panicked and was unable to collect my thoughts and come with a proper response. Now, I hope this was enough to explain my side of the story and clear up some things said about me.

Thank you for listening and have a good day.

[aspd-culture]

Hi! Hope it’s ok to ask this, I’m a person with aspd’s exception they are also my partner whom I love dearly I wanted to know from you all if there’s any advice you all have or anything. They’re genuinely the best person I know and it took a lot of trust to get to where we are now and it was worth every second I care for them a lot and I want to be the best boyfriend I can to them

(Due to the amount of links and to avoid formatting issues, I'm going to keep this post in plain text only. I apologize for the length of it, and the length of all the posts I'll be linking here)

Hi, it's definitely okay to ask and I really appreciate you coming to someone with ASPD because damn the google searches for this suck. I've got a couple posts on this that go into better detail than I could in one post, so I'm gonna put some links in here and if you need any clarification or have any other questions, feel free as always to ask them./gen

Links & more advice below the cut:

Firstly, one of my posts where I've described what an Exception is (always a good idea to know this so that you're aware of what that means from our side):

How to support a pwASPD:

Urges/possible replacement behaviors:

What "Transactional Relationships" Means for pwASPD (useful to understand how to avoid making someone with ASPD feel unsafe around you:

This one is short but it's something I personally wish more Exceptions realized (how high a value it means we put on you). I don't show you this in any way to put pressure on you but instead to help remind you in the moments where it might not feel like the pwASPD in your life cares (because sometimes it just doesn't come across properly) that they very, very much do:

Tips for dealing with ASPD symptoms from the side of the prosocial person:

Things that can cause ASPD Flares:

And that is probably already a novella's worth of information. But some specific advice I don't know if I've gone into before:

Do yourself and the person in question two huge favors in this and learn about flat affect if they experience that & try to learn to be comfortable with it, and get used to checking in with both of your emotions vs making assumptions on them. That goes both ways, because low/no empathy is a big part of most people's ASPD so they will very likely struggle to notice your emotions, and also because pwASPD have an emotional state that is VERY much misread by prosocial empathy. A lot of pwASPD (and no prosocial I've ever met) have this true neutral emotional state that is kind of the default, and I and many other pwASPD have learned the hard way that this true neutral (not content, just not feeling any emotion at all) reads to empathy as livid. Like truly pissed the hell off. This leads to something that can cause extreme friction between a prosocial and someone with ASPD: this persistent "I feel like you're mad at me" or "I can tell something is wrong" when in fact we are not feeling anything at the moment. Ask this enough times in a row though, or try to tell us what we're feeling, and suddenly the majority of us would sure be feeling VERY ticked off. I'm not saying don't ask at all - like I said open communication of emotions is huge between a prosocial and a pwASPD - but if they say they aren't mad but your empathy (if you have typical empathy) is certain they are, believe them at face value. On the low chance they're lying (most of us won't hesitate to tell you that you've ticked us off), it's probably because it is not something they feel able to discuss at the moment, and because most of us have low/no empathy, we don't expect you to guess how we're feeling anyways. If we don't tell you, we usually get that you don't know and won't like pin that on you in the way prosocials might.

Also, obviously pwASPD are not all the same so the biggest thing is to communicate in general. Don't assume everything I've said in these posts are universal because with a personality disorder, the spectrum of symptoms is wide - that's just kind of how it is when you're dealing with a disorder that affects every aspect of someone's life, actions, emotions, and thoughts.

[gebnohe]

The Number One and Only!!

hsr women x idol reader

characters: Acheron, Robin, Serval (separately, not in order)

tags: gn!reader, fluff, idol, idol!reader, established relationship, suggestive for some

a/n: I COMPLETELY FORGOT I HAD A TUMBLR ACCOUNT  LOLLL

so firstly i wanna say i know almost nothing about celebrity culture i dunno how red carpet stuff works or whatever and yeaheayeeayeyayeah 

idk if this has been done already and youll probably see this a lot in my author notes

ive only read maybe a few fics to understand the [acceptable] format and stuff, and theyve only really been hsr fics

i love hsr! wow! 

i did just throw this together when i remembered i had a tumblr so apologies if it isnt up to the best quality im rusty and motivationless

also i like doing these little author stuff for whatever reason idk i find them nice

apologies if i did any mischaracterizing in here i try my best to get characters done right and whatnot

sorry about length differences…! owwwww

PLEASE GIVE ME IDEAS FOR THE NEXT ONE PLEASE 

(and yes, if you recognize the reference in the title, it IS one… heh…) 

you are a king/queen/monarch/ruler/supreme leader/dictator(? 😨 hopefully not) gg!

errr about the robin one my friend did ask that i write an nsfw of it (i did end up doing it) but im not sure if its actually good or not.

idk how/if ill link it

i also just dont really want to be a smut writer, i just wanna write cute warm maybe suggestive but not nsfw stuff… (on the occasion i remember this account)

also are there female firefly fans?? i genuinely have never seen one 

still doing a tiiiny bit of semi colon practice because wife said it was hot when used properly so i am going out of my way to start using them. anything for wife. lesbians unite. sapphics unite ✊. i hope you all find your second scissor.. 

Context: You’re an idol working under an agency! Pretty basic formula. You’re extremely popular, and able to charm anyone with next to no effort. People lay their eyes on you and fall in love almost immediately. Your performances are always beautiful, eye catching, and got every witness addicted from the moment you start to the moment you end. (Also this was written with the intent of you being a different [kind of] idol in each one, but idk feel however you want or something??)

Acheron:

Work today was exhausting… again. You’re going on tour soon, so your managers are stressing out about plans, being hinderances and disturbing your peace. How could an agency be so unprepared? 

It didn’t matter… they paid well at least. But your whole week had been exhausting; your manager was being the pain in the ass they always were, and you were working “overtime” practicing your routine just to make sure you got it down to just how it was intended. 

And when you were finally allowed to go home, you barely made it to the car. Hell, you were having a hard time keeping your eyes open. But somehow, you’d managed to get home.

You fumble with your keys for a few seconds before you finally unlock the door, exhaustedly stepping inside. And there, you’re greeted by your gorgeous girlfriend, Acheron. 

“Ah, you’re home?” She says, immediately noticing your exhaustion as she approaches. 

“Exhausting work.” You groan. “…this week is stressful…”

Acheron walks over to you, providing a kiss on your cheek and taking your hand, leading you to the bedroom to lie down and rest. 

“Mmm…” You murmur, following along as she guides you. “Thank you…”

Instead of lying you down on the bed, she sits on the side of it and gently pulls you onto her lap, making you straddle her.

“How was work?” She asks, eyes shifting to look up at you, hands coming to rest on your thighs, “Wait. You already said.” 

Acheron cuts you off, a small and gentle smile on her lips, her finger on yours after coming up from your thigh. 

“Yeah… but Aeons… it’s been so stressful this week…” You sigh, smiling softly back at her. “My manager is being so anno…” 

You suddenly trail off, Acheron’s hands caressing you from your thighs to your waist and back again. Her lips found your neck and she start gently kissing your skin, occasionally nipping at it. 

“Continue…” She murmurs, breath warm against your neck. 

You shiver while Acheron continues pressing her lips to your neck, “Annoying… and…” 

You try to continue, but the continued affection and kisses on your neck along with the touches make it even harder to focus. Acheron’s hands start to undo your clothes, your skin slowly forgetting the caresses of the fabric and becoming familiar with the caresses of Acheron’s hands. 

“Forget about work…” She whispers, lips moving to your ear and giving a playful and suggestive nip. Your hands struggle to find something to hold onto in order to steady yourself while she moves down to your collarbone, still speaking quietly.

“You can just let me treat you tonight…”

Serval:

Serval clearly had musical talent, which you easily scouted from the moment you saw her when you toured in Belobog. You informed your manager about her, and easy as that. Now she was working with you, helping compose and create new songs for you to perform. You’d noticed more about Serval though, with her musical talent not being the only thing that drew you to her. That vibrant, electric, outgoing, and sociable personality. Even that purple streak of her hair was really cute. And over the time you two worked together, you two grew really close. It evolved from just a work relationship to a friendship, and from a friendship to a relationship. 

But you stop your daydreaming reminiscence when you hear a knock on the studio door, Serval peaking her head into the room. 

“You in here?” She says, looking around the room before her eyes rest in you. “There you are.” 

Serval’s expression softens, taking a step into the room with a coffee in her hand, and the another being held between her arm and chest. 

“You alright there?” You chuckle, standing up and walking over. “Need help?” You ask, watching her awkwardly try to close the door while simultaneously trying to not spill either coffee she was carrying. 

“Ah, thanks, love.” Serval replies gently, exhaling with a bit in relief as you take the coffee she was holding between her arm and chest. 

“You look good today.” She smirks, “I mean, not that it’s anything new but… even better than usual.”

“Really now?” You smirk back, returning the tease, “Though… I’m not sure if you could look any better.” 

“Damn right.” She laughs gently, closing the door behind her, then kisses you.

Serval takes your hand, walking over to the table which was only a few feet away, snd sets her coffee on the table, looking you in the eyes. “So. Do we actually plan on getting work done today? Or are you just gonna let me cling to you for a few more hours?” 

“I’d love that, but we need to actually finish this song.” You chuckle back. “We can do that after or during, but we actually need to work now.” 

Serval wraps her hands around your waist and pulls you towards you, then lovingly kisses you while squeezing your body against hers. “…Fine.” She smirks, amused  that you’re getting a but strict on her. “Let me finish my coffee first. I can’t work in peak shape unless I’m actually awake fully.” 

“…Eh. Fair enough.” You shrug, compromising. She was never a morning person, after all. 

Serval takes another sip from her cup then sets it back down on the table, the arm moving back around you and meeting her other hand around your back. 

“So. You actually got any plans for what we’re gonna work on today? Or are we just going in… raw?” She asks with a raised eyebrow and suggestive tone. 

“Damn it, Serval.” You laugh gently, “Be quiet.” 

Serval smiles warmly back at you, hugging you again then finishing her coffee. “Alright, alright. Fine. Later then.” She boops your nose playfully, then kisses your cheek and steps away from the table. 

Serval randomly pauses and slowly turns to you. “…Have we even started working on the song yet?” 

You stare at her blankly in response for a few seconds. “Uh.” 

Serval bursts out into a gently laughter, her beautiful and cheerful voice filling the room before she slowly manages to compose herself, a grin rapidly growing on your face. “Okay, okay. We should start now.” 

“Wow, great idea.” You say sarcastically with an affectionate eye roll, walking over and taking her hand while shifting into a softer tone. “So where should we start?”

Robin:

You were both heavily involved with the music industry, obviously. Fellow singer, performer, whatever. It didn’t matter, because Robin had fallen in love immediately. She loved the way you moved when you sang, how you held the mic… and her eyes always being glued to your lips as you performed. SHE was your number 1 fan.

But of course, your relationship obviously couldn’t be public. Do you realize how much attention that would attract? Yeah, no. You both were celebrities, but having paparazzi asking Robin if you and her had tongue-kissed yet sounded the farthest bit from pleasant. 

And there you were. You were on that shining stage, singing and performing, looking beautiful as you always did. All of this was only enhanced by the glaring lights, the way the crowd cheering you on from below just made you shine even more. And it even with all of the combine efforts of all those elements, Robin still felt her eyes drawn and glued to your lips. 

She continues watching from backstage while you wrap up your performance, waving to the crowd as the curtains closed while a bead of sweat glides down your face and the spotlights shine down upon your position on stage. 

The curtains fully close and you exhale, gently putting your hand on your chest. “Haah…” You breathe, sweat drops trailing down your face and hitting the floor. You take a moment for yourself so you can catch your breath, then make your way backstage.

While walking, you sigh again, exhausted from the performance you just put on as you feel a gentle tap on your shoulder. You slowly turn around, and Robin suddenly presses her lips against yours, pinning you against the wall, her tongue gently pushing its way into your mouth as her arms move from your shoulders, across your arms and to your hands as she laces your fingers with hers. She moves her arms down to coil them around your waist and squeeze your body closer to hers as she continues kissing you.

Shortly after she pulls away and looks you in the eyes, nearly panting as much as you were with a piercing glitter in her aquamarine-like eyes. 

“Holy- aeons above… you were amazing!” She says excitedly, hugging you tightly. “Xipe I-“ she continues, still squeezing you. (Xipe is the harmony aeon) 

She laughs gently, a lot more excited about your performance than you are, and amused by your lack of words despite only giving you maybe a second to get out a sentence. 

“Robin… my stars…” You laugh back gently, wrapping your arms around her neck as they rest on her shoulders. 

“That was the worst scare I’ve ever gotten…” you tell her, catching your breath. It really wasn’t because of the performance this time, though. 

She hugs you tightly again before speaking. “You’re amazing.” She tells you gently, a playful and approving smile on her face. “Goodness me… I have so much I want to say…” She kisses your cheek then takes your hand, almost dragging you to your changing room as she continues to wear that same playful smile. 

“Robin, calm down.” You chuckle tiredly, walking in the door behind her and exhaustedly sitting down at your makeup stand. 

Robin walks up behind you and wraps her arms around your neck, resting her cheek on the top of your head. You lean back into her touch from the chair, your hands finding their way up to her forearms and resting there. She kisses the top of your head before backing up and swiveling your chair around, then cups your face and plants a kiss on your lips. 

“Don’t worry, I already locked the door.” She assures you, a look of desire in her eyes as she moves down your face, her hands mimicking the action, moving down to your waist and up your shirt. “If you’re still too exhausted, I can do all the work this time…”