#also spot the homestuck reference

[toxicaltomb]

wip

this isn’t the animatic btw this is just for me >:3

[sw33t-oubliette]

gonna rewatch natm to distract myself from the horrorterrors im so gonna b normal about this

[moinsbienquekaworu]

Heyyy guess who wrote 744 words of a little witch learning the power of friendship!! Too bad I can't just send that to the teacher. That said it proved I can write 700 words in an hour, so we're good for tomorrow.

[thewertsearch]

Anonymous asked: Well, welcome to what's known as Murderstuck! Enjoy your stay, and complimentary Faygo of 12 delicious flavors can be found in the fridge! Anonymous asked: Welcome to the murderstuck arc! @elkian asked: Allow me to be probably the 300th person to welcome you to Murderstuck lol… it's so interesting seeing your theories, because you get REALLY CLOSE sometimes, it's just that these kids don't do things logically [...] Your prediction for 'blood' re: the Trolls was spot-on. Never seen Murderstuck predicted that early. @sanctferum asked: "What a flash, is all I’ll say. This feels like the beginning of a new chapter, with Aradia revived as one of the most powerful Players, and Vriska choosing to do something she’s probably been contemplating for months." Oh, it's a new chapter alright. A chapter called Horrorstuck (or Murderstuck depending on who you ask). Haaaaaaave fun!! [...] @mimescantscream asked: I'm so giddy for you to enter this section of Homestuck. It is so good. :o] Anonymous asked: welcome to karkat vantas's terrible horrible no good very bad day Anonymous asked: this part of the comic is commonly referred to as murderstuck. what do you think of these developments from a narrative point? they've always kind of felt like a wild swing to me. not per se unexpected, but a bit odd

Time for Homestuck to become a slasher movie!

These murders certainly didn't feel out of left field. The comic has been stretching the tension out for a while now, as the clock runs down on a meteor full of violent, stressed-out aliens. I didn't predict an Eridan double homicide, but I sure expected something to pop off.

Murderstuck also serves an important narrative purpose. The trolls have been directionless for a while now, with only Karkat and Kanaya really committed to helping the kids. Vriska, Terezi and Tavros have at least been doing something, but Equius, Nepeta, Feferi, Eridan, Sollux and Gamzee have barely existed for the entire sub-Act.

Homestuck has a lot of characters, and some were bound to end up on the bench. A crisis like this will get everyone off the bench and back into the fray. This, in turn, makes the Veil more dynamic, and sets the stage for interesting character moments - moments which won't happen if everyone is just napping in their rooms, or whatever the B-team have been doing post-Hivebent. Fuck that - it's time for shit to go down.

[mspaesthetic]

Tidbit: The “Posterization” Effect of Panels Due to the Consequences of GIF Color Quantization (and Increased Contrast (And Also The Tangential Matter of Dithering))

There’s this misconception that the color banding and patterned dithering found in panels is an entirely deliberate, calculated effect Hussie manipulated the image into looking with some specific filter, but this isn’t the case, exactly. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision he took but rather an unavoidable consequence of the medium he partook in: digital art in an age where bandwidth and storage was at a premium.

Not to delve too deeply into the history and technicalities of it, but the long and the short of it is back in the early nineties to late aughts (and even a bit further into the 10s), transferring and storing data over the web was not as fast, plentiful, and affordable as it is now. Filesize was a much more important consideration than the fidelity of an image when displaying it on the web. Especially so when you’re a hobbyist on a budget and paying for your own webhosting, or using a free service with a modest upload limit (even per file!). Besides, what good would it be to post your images online if it takes ages to load them over people's dial-up Internet? Don't even get me STARTED on the meager memory and power the average iGPU had to work with, too.

The original comic strip's resolution was a little more than halved and saved as a GIF rather than a large PNG. That's about an 82.13% reduction in filesize!

So in the early days it was very common for people to take their scans, photographs, and digital drawings and scale them down and publish them as smaller lossily compressed JPEGs or lossless GIFs, the latter of which came at the cost of color range. But it had a wider range of browser support and the feature to be used for animations compared to its successor format, PNG ("PNG's not GIF").

You'd've been hard-pressed to find Hussie use any PNGs himself then. In fact, I think literally the only times he's ever personally employed them and not delegate the artwork to a member of the art team were some of the tiny shrunken down text of a character talking far in the distance and a few select little icons.

PNGs support semi-transparency unlike GIFs, which is why Hussie used them to preserve the anti-aliasing on the text without having to add an opaque background color.

While PNGs can utilize over 16 million colors in a single image, GIFs have a hard limit of 256 colors per frame. For reference, this small image alone has 604 colors:

For those who can't do the math, 256 is a pretty damn small number.

Smaller still were the palettes in a great deal of MSPA's panels early on in its run. Amazingly, a GIF such as this only uses 7 colors (8 if you count the alpha (which it is)).

Not that they were always strictly so low; occasionally some in the later acts of Homestuck had pretty high counts. This panel uses all 256 spots available, in fact.

If he had lowered the number any smaller, the quality would have been god-awful.

To the untrained eye, these bands of color below may seem to be the result of a posterization filter (an effect that reduces smooth areas of color into fewer harsh solid regions), but it's really because the image was exported as a GIF with no dithering applied.

Dithering, to the uninitiated, is how these colors are arranged together to compensate for the paltry palette, producing illusory additional colors. There are three algorithms in Photoshop for this: Diffusion, Pattern, and Noise.

Above is the original image and below is the image reduced to a completely binary 1-bit black and white color palette, to make the effect of each dithering algorithm more obvious.

Diffusion seemingly displaces the pixels around randomly, but it uses error diffusion to calculate what color each pixel should be. In other words, math bullshit. The Floyd-Steinberg algorithm is one such implementation of it, and is usually what this type of error diffusion dithering is called in other software, or some misnomer-ed variation thereof.

The usage of Pattern may hearken back to retro video game graphics for you, as older consoles also suffered from color palette limitations. Sometimes called Ordered dithering because of the orderly patterns it produces. At least, I assumed so. Its etymological roots probably stem from more math bullshit again.

True to its name, Noise is noisy. It’s visually similar to Diffusion dithering, except much more random looking. At least, when binarized like this. Truth be told, I can’t tell the difference between the two at all when using a fuller color table on an image with a lot of detail. It was mainly intended to be used when exporting individual slices of an image that was to be “stitched” back together on a webpage, to mitigate visible seams in the dithering around the edges.

To sate your curiosity, here's how the image looks with no dithering at all:

People easily confuse an undithered gif as being the result of posterization, and you couldn't fault them for thinking so. They look almost entirely the same!

Although I was already aware of this fact when I was much younger, I'm guilty of posterizing myself while editing images back then. Figured I may as well reduce the color count beforehand to help keep the exported GIF looking as intended. I view this as a complete waste of time now, though, and amateurish. Takes away a bit of the authenticity of MSPA art, how the colors and details are so variable between panels. As for WHY they were so variable to begin with, choosing the settings to save the image as requires a judicious examination on a case-by-case basis. In other words, just playing around with the settings until it looks decent.

It's the process of striking a fine balance between an acceptable file size and a "meh, good enough" visual quality that I mentioned earlier. How many colors can you take away until it starts to look shit? Which dithering algorithm helps make it look not as shit while not totally ruining the compression efficacy?

Take, for example, this panel from Problem Sleuth. It has 16 colors, an average amount for the comic, and uses Diffusion dithering. Filesize: 34.5 KB.

Then there's this panel right afterwards. It has 8 colors (again, technically 7 + alpha channel since it's an animated gif), and uses Noise dithering this time. Filesize: 34.0 KB.

The more colors and animation frames there are, and the more complicated dithering there is, the bigger the file size is going to be. Despite the second panel having half the color count of the first, the heavily noisy dithering alone was enough to inflate the file size back up. On top of that, there's extra image information layered in for the animation, leaving only a mere 0.5 kilobyte difference between the two panels.

So why would Hussie pick the algorithm that compresses worse than the other? The answer: diffusion causes the dithering to jitter around between frames of animation. Recall its description from before, how it functions on nerd shit like math calculations. The way it calculates what each pixel's color will be is decided by the pixels' colors surrounding it, to put it simply. Any difference in the placement of pixels will cause these cascading changes in the dithering like the butterfly effect.

Diffusion dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 25.2 KB

This isn't the case with Noise or Pattern dithering, since their algorithms use either a texture or a definite array of numbers (more boring nerd shit).

Noise dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 31.9 KB

Pattern dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 23.1 KB

There's a lot more I'd like to talk about, like the different color reduction algorithms, which dither algorithms generally compress better in what cases, and the upward and downward trends of each one’s use over the course of a comic, but since this isn’t a deep dive on GIF optimization, I might save that for another time. This post is already reaching further past the original scope it was meant to cover, and less than 10 images can be uploaded before hitting the limit, which is NOWHERE near enough for me. I should really reevaluate my definition of the word “tidbit”… Anyway, just know that this post suffers from sample selection bias, so while the panels above came from an early section of Problem Sleuth that generally had static panels with diffusion dithering and animated panels with noise dithering, there certainly were animated panels with diffusion later on despite the dither-jittering.

Alright, time to shotgun through the rest of this post, screw segueing. Increasing the contrast almost entirely with “Use Legacy” enabled spreads the tones of the image out evenly, causing the shadows and highlights to clip into pure black and white. The midtones become purely saturated colors. Using the Levels adjustment filter instead, moving both shadow and highlight input level sliders towards the middle also accomplishes the same thing, because, you know, linear readjustment. I'm really resisting the urge to go off on another tangent about color channels and the RGB additive color model.

Anyway, there aren't any examples in MSPA that are quite this extreme (at least in color, but I'll save that for a later post), but an image sufficiently high in contrast can be mistaken for being posterized at a glance. Hence the Guy Fieri banner. In preparation for this post, I was attempting to make a pixel-perfect recreation of that panel but hit a wall trying to figure out which and how many filters were used and what each one's settings were, so I sought the wisdom of those in the official Photoshop Discord server. The very first suggestion I got was a posterization filter, by someone who was a supposed senior professional and server moderator, no less. Fucking dipshit, there's too much detail preserved for it to be posterization. Dude totally dissed me and my efforts too, so fuck that moron. I spit on his name and curse his children, and his children's children. The philistines I have to put up with...

In the end, the bloody Guy Fieri recreation proved to be too much for me to get right. I got sort of close at times, but no cigar. These were some of the closest I could manage:

You might be left befuddled after all this, struggling to remember what the point of the blogpost even was. I had meant for it to be a clarification of GIFs and an argument against using the posterization filter, thinking it was never used in MSPA, but while gathering reference images, I found a panel from the Felt intermission that actually WAS posterized! So I’ll eat crow on this one... Whatever, it’s literally the ONE TIME ever.

I can tell it's posterization and not gif color quantization because of the pattern dithering and decently preserved details on the bomb and bull penis cane. There would have had to have been no dithering and way fewer colors than the 32, most of which were allotted to the bomb and cane. You can't really selectively choose what gets dithered or more colors like this otherwise.

Thank you for reading if you've gotten this far. That all might have been a lot to take in at once, so if you're still unclear about something, please don't hesitate to leave a question! And as always, here are the PSDs used in this post that are free to peruse.

[voparwave69]

Your name is KAHANET AMNAK. You are the SELF INSERT TROLLSONA made up by the girl who created you to vaguely reflect their PERSONALITY, INTERESTS, EXPERIENCES, and APPEARANCE. You have the same horns as certain CANONICAL CHARACTERS because your creator likes the uniform appearance of the original HOMESTUCK cast's CASTES. But you don't really think about that. Instead, you see that you are a PURPLE BLOODED TROLL who likes to PARTY. You decorated your hive to remind you of GAMES, as you love playing with whoever will tolerate you. You have a soft spot for sugary beverages such as BIG K GRAPE SODA and COTTON CANDY FAYGO, along with FIREWORKS and a particular CARD GAME you discovered recently, where you make decks intended to ENRAGE your FRIENDS. Your PRANKS and desire to DESTROY THINGS are about as beloved as your ANNOYING CARD DECKS. You are very SOCIAL and try to MAKE NEW FRIENDS every day. Your success rate with this is dubious. Your hive is littered with SOPORIFICS that you think make you even better at PARTYING, DANCING and telling JOKES. Your MATESPRIT insists you should take yourself more seriously, but you can't seem to take much of anything seriously, other than HIM and the RELIGION you both ascribe to. Because you don't take yourself seriously, you took your SIGN off your clothes and painted another one of your stupid JOKES onto it instead. Because you take your RELIGION seriously, your skirt is decorated to remind you of the BELOVED CARNIVAL that is CELEBRATED by YOUR KIND in the SWAMPY part of the planet you live in, and especially by you. You cannot wait for the DARK CARNIVAL where you will eternally PRAY and ENTERTAIN the masses. You paint your face to remind you of the masks worn by certain attendants of the GREAT PARTY of the AFTERLIFE and also as an inside reference to your DUAL NATURE, as if anyone will ask. Your LUSUS is abnormally aggressive and so you are THANKFUL he is often gone, but his AGGRESSION threatens to affect your FUN LOVING personality. How boring, you think. You enjoy making MOLDY ART to post online for other trolls to LAUGH at and your hive is a bit infested with BLACK MOLD, but you allow it because the spores affect your think pan in a pleasing way.

> Give the black mold a taste

[mordimor]

Commissions Open!

hey y'all, i'm in a bit of a dire spot financially so i'm opening up some semi-urgent commission slots. two types of of commissions, panel commissions and a few emoji packs, examples below.

please email me first at mordimoss@gmail.com with which type of commission you'd like and all references of your character(s) if you're interested. Comms can also be processed through my Ko-fi, i only take paypal USD at this time, thank you!

Panels are in homestuck panel ratio of 450x650 pixels, base price of $40, every character more than 2 is an additional $10 depending on complexity. but we can discuss things more in depth via email.

emoji packs come in three's for $15, but if you want more, each additional one is $5. i will send them as individual transparent pngs!

[bjeetle814]

@beatcroc

I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE

Maid cafe but all the maids are juggalos

[dashi-inu]

eridan ampora from homestuck 🫧 he was my first favorite and still is from the cast ♡ i know, i know, he is one way in canon, but i wanted to have fun with this sea dweller and make him to my image. like all of my faves *babygirlifies eridan

rewrote the info on eridan's reference sheet under the cut 🌊 this design features nsfw content! 🔞

ERIDAN AMPORA (VIOLET BLOOD, SEAHORSE)

6'9 ft (205.74 cm)

CAPE. Made of silk. Has intricate patterns on the inside. Accompanied by cloak chain.

GLASSES. Matte violet. Near-sighted. With or without glasses he always has excellent aim.

JEWELRY. Wears too many to count. Worn all over his body. Jewelry can change though always wears a necklace with star sign.

ATTIRE. Top is translucent. Some parts are opaque. High-waisted pants with blue, sheeny stripes as pattern. Thigh-high boots!! Will wear footwear with heels even if he's a 6'9 ft goddess- Becomes 7ft in heels.

Overly ornate! Loves being fashionable ♡

---

EARS. Fin-like. Can droop or flare.

NO GRUBSCARS! Sea dwellers are not born from Mothergrub.

BIOLOGY. Violet bloods are seahorse-like trolls. They come in different variations; Stallion, Deviant, and Pearl. Eridan is a pearl variant. Typically pearls belong to the Condesce as they are the only ones that can produce an heir for the Fuchsia caste. Condesce can impregnate them for a litter of violetbloods or one Fuchsia heir.

CORONET, GILLS, WEBBED FINGERS, LUMINESCENT JOINTS

EYES. Big-doe eyes.

BODY. 'Amphora-shaped'. Big bust, slender waist. Refined legs.

POUCH. Very plush tummy. Softest part of the body.

'CLIT' FIN. A little fin that advertises where the oyster is :) Yes, it is also erogenous on its own.

GENDER DIFFERENCES. Violetbloods are male sea dwellers. Their counterpart, Fuchsiabloods, are female. Like real-life seahorses, it's the male sea dwellers that give birth.

---

FIN SPINE. Violet and semi-transparent. Soft and bendable. Divided into three parts; head fin, spine, and dorsal fin. Begins at the crown of the head, and ends at the tailbone. All fins trill when excited or emotional, including gills, ears, and clit fin.

LUMINESCENT BACKSIDE. Glittery spine, back, butt, and back of legs.

BIRTHMARK. Constellation of Aquarius resides on his back.

BLOOD. As Gamzee the potion merchant put it, 'This violet potion is to be imbibed by anyone who wants to exhibit unabated lust for all they encounter.'

Violetbloods have a high libido and are hypersexual as a species.

For this reason, the body of a pearl has features meant to attract a partner or the Condesce to be satiated from this lust. (Big doe eyes, unique body, clit fin, luminescent body parts.)

---

OUTFITS

WITHOUT CAPE ♡ JEWELRY ONLY

Can wear the jewelry in different spots and ways. This is just an example of how much he wears as one of the highest members of the aristocracy.

[davekat-sucks]

you brought up recently that the writers were going for the original feel of homestuck. I'd like to say what I think the feeling for Homestuck actually is. I am going to reference Act 5. 1. Almost every time something horrible happened to a character, they were eventually gifted something positive out of the experience. Example: When Terezi lost her sight, she was able to speak with her mom on prospit. 2. The character's relationships were clear, simple and didn't often change unless some major event happened. Example: During all of Act 5 part 1, Sollux is mad at Aradia and voices his frustration with her even when he apologizes to her, he gets angry with her. 3. The art style remanded relatively consistent. Example: Act 5's visual portrayal of the cast looked the same as the acts that came before. Hero mode had sharp edges and long limbs. Environments had a limited color palate. Talksprites were probably the most abstract art style at that time. 4. The characters main responsibility were tending to tasks involving the game so they always had something to actually do and they belonged in a team. 5. Bit by bit, the story would explore the character's unique powers and we could sometimes see how those powers worked with other's powers or aid. Example: Dave could travel through time, Terezi would tell him what to do. 6. The characters would be responsible for their actions, but because of their age or external forces, the audience could emphasize with them if they choosed to do so. Example: Scratch was manipulating Virska. Virska was also expected to kill for her lusus at a young age to keep her fed. 7. Information was given to the audience quickly. The pacing was extremely fast. Example: Some of the ancestors stories are a handful of sentences. (This has the added bonus of if there is a character in the cast that the reader doesn't like, the character won't be a focus for too long.) 8. We hardly ever saw characters that were not important to the story. The story only visually depicted characters that were actually going to have a role, making the world feel more condensed and smaller. More focused too. 9. The characters understood what was at risk and were at times pessimistic about playing the game. Even so, the cast usually leaned towards optimism. accomplishing their goals or fixing their relationships. The characters actually cared about their lives and what the rest of the cast thought of them. Example: Terezi at one point tells Sollux "1 W1LL H4V3 4 FUCK1NG BL4ST 4ND YOU C4NT STOP M3" in response to Sollux telling her that what they're doing is serious. 10. Chatlogs were as long as they needed to be and the conversations were engaging. Anything I missed?

I think you are pretty spot on with these. That's what the writing is like in the original Homestuck. I don't get that same feeling when reading HS2/Beyond Canon. One could argue that during that time, Andrew Hussie was just doing all this on the fly as it goes on. Perhaps it was that kind of freestyle that he is able to express it naturally in his way. He just writes what he likes without too much input or influence from audiences that read it.

[bogunicorn]

thoughts on what fandoms the da:i characters would be in

I will do this for you but ONLY if I amend it to "fandoms they would be annoying about" because it's funnier and otherwise I'm just assigning them shows they would be into and that's too subjective and less fun

One of them has to be a Homestuck and it's Sera, Sera is the Homestuck. Sera has a Trollsona that she doodles on everything, she would 100% absolutely try to dye herself gray using sharpies and vodka for a cosplay. She references it all the time and is annoying when you don't understand her jokes. She still tries to get people into it, but she considers Andrew Hussy a mortal enemy these days for Reasons.

Solas is a Song of Ice and Fire bitch. Not the show. The books. "But wait, Boggers!" you might say (if you know me well enough to call me "Boggers"), "What about LOTR? Why isn't Solas into LOTR?" And to that I say, he's definitely read it and is a nerd about it, but this is about fandom, and fandom to someone like a Reddit-addicted bitch like Solas is about theory crafting, debates, and politics, and ASoIaF being complex but unfinished really lends itself to the kind of deep internet toxicity that I think Solas would crave. Also he likes wolves.

Cole is a Supernatural Superfan. He has all the cheesy "join the hunt" merch because for a while it was his chief special interest and all he wanted was SPN stuff. He's kind of obsessed with Baby, specifically. His favorite episode was Baby and he has an AO3 account full of fic written from the car's perspective. He didn't cry in the finale until he saw the Impala under the canvas and he's been lowkey upset at Sam for doing that ever since.

Dorian is an old school Baldur's Gate fan. Like, BG1 and 2. He's played other RPGs of that era, those are just his favorites. What makes him an annoying fan is that he thinks complicated = good and looooooves to complain about how "simple" and "boring" current-era RPGs are. If you can't softblock yourself from all progress by making one mistake two hours into your playthrough, it's too easy. He's active in fandom spaces and is largely helpful, like he writes tips and guides and will answer newbie questions, but the price for his help is dealing with him being smug.

Leliana is a FromSoft fangirl and a Soulslike aficionado. Nightingale says git gud. She'll happily team up with you in co-op to get you through stuff if you ask, but she also explains mechanics and such like you should have known them already and thinks you're just not trying hard enough to listen, even though her advice is almost incomprehensible.

Cullen is an MCU fanboy. He fully believes they're the peak of cinema. He compares literally everything to an MCU movie, as he has seen all of them, multiple times, and thinks you're "thinking about it too much" if you criticize them in more than the most banal of ways. Usually it's fine, like, being excited for stuff is fine and enjoying mainstream things are fine, but you can only have so many "Thanos was a great villain" conversations with this dude before you go insane. Despite seeming incapable of critiquing the MCU, his criticisms of the DCEU are spot-on, sharp, and demonstrative of actually very impressive media analysis skills, but also coming from a starting point of "DC Bad, Marvel Good", so it's like, we could've had it aaaaaaaaall.

Cassandra is in the Bridgerton fandom. She read the original books and liked them, so she was one of the first people watching the show. Most of her fandom stuff happens on Facebook with other book fans. Watching the show with her is fun until the exact second she says "well, in the BOOKS" and then rattles off a list of the most inconsequential changes, distracting you from a pivotal moment in the show and forcing you to rewind. She is very pressed about the seasons going out of order from the books.

Varric is a Critical Role evangelist. He was there when it started, he's listened to everything. He's listened to other real play podcasts and shows, but CR is his favorite. That's not annoying in and of itself, what's annoying is that he will not stop trying to get you to watch it. If you even breathe in the direction of a DnD-related topic he tries to give you "advice on where to start" with CR. His friends put up with it because he's their Forever DM and they love him, but he sure does do a lot more obnoxious sound effects now than he used to and they're planning an intervention about it.

Josephine is a Disney Adult. She seems normal and then bam, you get blindsided by something insane, like that she owns every single Disney character Funko Pop, or that she's gone to DisneyWorld for vacation every year for the last decade, or you go over to her house for dinner and find Hidden Mickeys in her bathroom, or she's really intense about pin collecting and limited edition mouse ear headbands. You wonder when she has the time and energy to collect all this. And there's more of it every time you see her. But the thing is that she's pretty quiet about it as long as you don't poke the bear. You know that she's seen every one of the new remakes in theaters, but you don't dare ask her opinion about them. Her favorite princess is Cinderella and she tells you "the original dress was silver" with exactly the same amount of excited did-you-know energy every time.

I hate to break this to you all, but Iron Bull is a Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan fanboy. Yep. Yes he is. His toxic trait is that he shuts his brain off and just enjoys the gritty action sequences. He liked Batman v Superman. He bought the Snyder Cut. He thinks Nolan's Batman is the absolute best that franchise has ever been and ever could be. I'm sorry, it's heartbreaking but it's true. I know, I'm sad, too, we can hold each other.

Vivienne has been in the Anne Rice fandom under the same pseudonym for ever. She was one of the original fans and was much more active in fandom when she was much younger, but she made her fannish activities more and more private as she became more established in her career. You would honestly never know it meeting her IRL; at most, people come over for dinner parties and might notice that she owns every single Anne Rice book, but they're part of her overall book collection and don't really stand out. Secretly, though, she's been keeping up with the Anne Rice fandom under a pseudonym this whole time and goes to the more modern in-person events using her fake name. She might kill you if you ever connected her fandom activities to her real life in any way. She's also just, like, she's really bad at letting people be wrong about these books. Really, really, really bad. There are epic-length threads on old forums that are just her and one other similarly deranged person fighting about obscure Vampire Chronicles lore.

And finally, Blackwall is a Game of Thrones girlie. The show, not the books. He's one of those "I don't like fantasy but I like Game of Thrones" guys, and he thinks GoT is mold-breaking and special and better and grittier and more realistic than other fantasy and that's why he likes it. His most irritating fan trait is that he thought season 8 was good and that the ending was good and he likes to get into heated debates with other fans about it. However, he does not know what Reddit is, he only talks with other GoT-watchers in Facebook, which is why he and Solas haven't had the fight to end all friendships yet. Yet.

BONUS! Krem is into Star Wars and Scout Harding is a die-hard Trekkie, and they go to big cons and cosplay together. They're not annoying at all, I just wanted to mention it because I feel like that's in-character for them.

**also if you like this and think "i'm gonna give this fine person a follow because they're so funny about dragon age", i made a new DA sideblog at @skyholdstarbucks where i'd post anything similar to this in the future

[sodapops0lstice]

how'd u come up with ur username?

Funny story actually. I was previously lesbian-aradia but i wanted to change it up so im not tied to any which character. i ORIGINALLY wanted it to be in classic homestuck gcat my first draft being twotimeTurnover which was a neat little reference to the jack stauber song, apple turnovers (which are 👌👌👌👌) and obviously turntechgodhead. It was my full intention to go with it until i realised "wait i dont even know what two time means i probs should look that up" i then found out it meant someone who was a cheater which made me drop THAT idea immediately. I had to think up of a username on the spot that felt good to say that ALSO played on some of my likes and interests, which finally made me land on sodapopSolstice, lending itself from soda since i collect cans/bottles i like and my interest in stars. Also its just fun to say :P

[tommyssupercoolblog]

Hello, I'm the factive who asked your husband how he was able to find peace in being open as a factive in a relationship with you. His confidence and insight really helped me feel validated and less ashamed of my existence. I also wanted to ask your POV being out as factive? And does it bring you peace and comfort to be where you are with your husband now than before? You don't necessarily have to share everything, only bits you're comfortable to share are ok by me.

I think, after all this, I wanted to be close or connected to other factives wherever I could find one. Just like you and your husband, me and my in-sys husband wishes to be ourselves and gush about each other without feeling too scared to speak our names out loud. If you find this ask relevant, thank you so much for taking your time in answering.

AAAA HELLO!!! OMG I totally forgor about this lol okayokayokay

YES I AM VERY HAPPY AND SECURE AND STUFF I am feeling very pog!!! 👍🏻 I do not have anxiety or anything anymore I am feel peace. And I am SO GLAD we are out? Literally best decision of my life. We r seen and we can be ourselves and it's so much better than hiding FORREAL FORREAL

So about the fear thing, I'm a tommyinnit factive so like.... There was a lot of fear when I first started doing my thing. Because the interactions I'd had with the DSMP community previously were...uh....bad!!!

Very bad!!! Like, doxxing people over shipping c!Tubbo/c!ranboo in a romantic way even though they were literally married bad !!!!!! Suicide baiting and shit bad!!!! And they also seemed to think that things like special interests and introjects were things you can control (even though they aren't) and would harass neurodivergent people who had connections to problematic cc's in that way, so the ableism was also spooky.

So I got it in my head that if I came out, especially as an alter in a relationship with someone else, it would be a BIG problem even if I wasn't vocally pro-rpf and anti-censorship because like. They would see my existence as offensive to source and also as "shipping" and then I would literally be hunted for sport and die. Like that's not an exaggeration that's literally what I thought, I had nightmares about people showing up to our house with guns because they found my Tumblr blog?? Which is.....very overdramatic like that is NAWT going to happen. HELLO???? My Tumblr blog with like 300 followers??? As if someone's going to purchase and learn to use a gun, find our real world address, travel all the way to it, and somehow manage to get to our house with a gun in their hands without being stopped, and then manage to get INTO the house without being stopped or spotted or bitten by the dogs, and then find us, somehow know which one of the people living here is us, and successfully both shoot and kill us??? GIRL NO. GIRL THAT WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

But I was SCARED. So what I did, right, was that when I first made my blog and started posting? I took a page out of poppytwt's book and wrote everything with numbers and symbols and shit, (like this: "T0mm√1nn1+") And I didn't interact with any DSMP posts at all. I would see fanart and fun posts about my source or the characters and I wouldn't like or reblog because I was paranoid that OP would be mad at me, so I would scroll sadly by.

But I was still myself. I was still "Tommy" and I still explained that I was an introject, and in a relationship with Seán. And that was a big step!!! -even if I had to put a space between Tommy and Innit when talking about my source, and also spell it like I was a Homestuck character.

Eventually I dropped the censored letters because it was MAD annoying but I still used spaces liberally, and avoided referring to my source as anything other than "source" unless I like, HAD to. I also didn't make "Innit" jokes about myself, even tho I REALLY wanted to.

Then I started making the Innit jokes too, but only with spaces, and I started timidly reblogging fanart from people who seemed chill- I would read DNIs and intros first, but if I got the vibe they were chill with me, I would reblog. This was a BIG BIG step for me, and I remember at first obsessively checking for DNIs and if someone didn't have one at all, like my blog, I would either scroll through their blog to get a feel for their opinions or I would just leave- because I didn't want to risk interacting with someone who was weird about introjects or RPF or both.

And then people from the fandom...started talking to me. I made friends and acquaintances. And they all told me that basically, as long as I knew who to block, I was fine; and that the fandom overall had MASSIVELY calmed down since 2020 anyway, so the things I was worried about weren't even normal anymore here on Tumblr- only on twitter. And they sort of reassured me.

I stopped feeling the need to put spaces between "Tommy" and "Innit", and started using Tommyinnit casually, both in reference to myself and source. I went back to all our AO3 fanfics, which at the time had no character tags to avoid popping up in DSMP circles, and added the character tags.

Then I started actually making fanart just for source, not septicinnit, and even- gasp- TAGGING IT with tommyinnit. Same with liveblogging and posts about him.

And then I made even MORE friends as people realized my blog like. Existed?

It was a very gradual process for me, and if you need to go slow too, that's okay. But what I've found is that the things I was worried about weren't even really things I had to worry about at all. I didn't get much Anon hate, in fact over the last two years I think I've only gotten it three times.

once from someone who said I was faking DID because I had no friends and was mentally ill and depressed which. Hurt but also was kinda funny because they were being so ableist and mean to me? Girl you clearly don't care about systems.

once from a confused anti-endo who thought WE were endogenic because we have endo friends (and literally all they wrote was "traumas fuck endos suck" with nothing else??? LMAOOO?????? So thankfully that one didn't even hurt my feelings)

And once from a person who spammed a few poorly written asks because I was talking to my friend Kency and someone who didn't like Kency was going through their interactions and anon-hating people. They did have alt accounts that they came back with when I blocked the first ones but they only had like four so after I blocked the anons the fourth time, it stopped.

I was mostly able to laugh it off, and when I was sad, Seán and our friends/family were there to support me.

I ended up on r/system cringe, too, and I had a meltdown about that, but then quickly realized it didn't really matter? Again, no one was coming to my house. None of these people would actually hurt me, especially not when they do this all day and have no special malice for me specifically. If anyone showed up I'd just block them- and even weeks after the post, no one did.

Once someone posted a screenshot of one of our fics to twitter, and then people dogpiled us and we got some hate comments, but all it took was a friend pointing out that ao3 is a pro-rpf and proship/anti-censorship website for op to delete the screenshot, and everyone else stopped after that.

Like, what I've discovered is that as awful as cyberbullying is, it's only as bad as your fear lets it be. If you block them and if you remember to stay calm and that you're not in any physical danger, then it's not a big deal. It only hits hard when you panic, and even then you can find support from the people who love you.

Doxxing is of course another story but it's usually rare and also usually easily solved (delete the information) and also ... doesn't always lead to action. In order to have a hate mob swarm at your house your address can't just be posted, you also have to have a bunch of people decide, independently, to actually get off their ass and show up; and unless you're taylor swift that's probably not going to happen.

I can't keep a cool head under pressure, but Seàn can, and I've found that when we talk things out and work as a team, the threats usually aren't as bad as they look. And again, I've never been doxxed and my harassment has been very minor.

I'd recommend having one or more people in your life who are able to talk things through calmly with you and think clearly when things are a little hectic, to block anyone who bothers you or who looks like they might (because of their DNIs or past activity or whatever), and then to just...take the plunge. Because once you experience being out you're forced to realize that the negatives aren't nearly as harsh as they looked. The water looks colder than it is; you won't truly realize how warm and welcoming it can actually be until you're swimming :) I wouldn't trade this for the world 🌍💓 and that's FACTS, forreal forreal.

[tin-town]

Welcome to Tin Town!

Here's all you need to know about us!

...

Tin Town is an independent multimedia art project created for digital platforms; a thematic collection of art, literature, comics, and music, among other things!

Every addition tells the story of four characters in an industrial yet decaying future, threatened by an imminent catastrophe!

They must embark on a mission to save the world and, most importantly, break free from their old lives in the name of adventure!

What can we say? It's just another story about a group of friends saving the world!

Or is it?

...

Now, let's take a look at our beloved characters! Starting with...

Jen!

Feisty, amiable, and bearer of genuine sincerity. Her bubbly attitude makes her the heart that binds the team together, and her fiery passion makes her someone who always strives for the better! Though it is well said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Ted!

The calm anchor amidst chaos; cordial and serene. His honorable character brings a soothing flow and balance, making him the dependable foundation of the group. Don’t take him for granted, however! He’s not your everyday teddy bear and can really pack a punch!

Ivy!

Decisive and down-to-earth; her low-key nature and spot-on observations make her the master key of the bunch. With an unwavering focus, she keeps her promises to heart and will do anything to see them fully accomplished, although the means taken can be... unconventional.

And... Kev!

A spunky, spirited firecracker that is sure to be your partner-in-crime! Exuding spontaneity everywhere he goes, he's a wildcard among his peers. Even so, he often finds himself stuck in a whirlwind of his own, so he may need a helping hand every now and then.

...

A little more about Tin Town:

Tin Town arises from a deep dissatisfaction with the current state of society and the life-consuming exhaustion that comes with being part of it.

Tin Town is also a wide compound of various references and interests! Art-wise, it takes heavy inspiration from retro-futurism, which helps further enhance the commentary on industrialization.

In the same way, we draw inspiration from surrealism and op-art, as it forces us to find new, unconventional ways to portray our vision.

More contemporary references include internet projects like Homestuck, which also rely on multimedia storytelling.

Most importantly, Tin Town originates from the love that comes with being human, the feeling that there’s more to life than what it seems to offer, and the experience of fighting in the name of life in a world where everything seems to fall apart.

...

So, if you managed to read to this point, we invite you to stick around to see what we've got in store! Tin Town optimally relies on public engagement, and it can only reach its full potential with your help!

These are our socials in which we may upload:

▪︎ @/tin.town on TikTok

▪︎ @/tin-town on Tumblr (You are here!)

▪︎ @/tintownofficial on YouTube

▪︎ @/TinTownOfficial on Twitter

Likes, reblogs, and overall interactions are highly encouraged to help us know that you're interested in our vision!

Thanks for reading, and see you later on!

With love, Tin Town.

🖤

[qprsmackdown]

what submissions have the most convincing propaganda: rather for being silly or being serious

hi anon. mod zazie here. i read through every single one of the submissions to answer this because i am insane. and the results are as follows ^-^

techno & phil fans are INSANE over "for you phil, the world!!" as they should be!! i, too, read bunfloras' phil & techno fics. but even if i didnt already know who emeraldduo was, you all have VERY GOOD propaganda. Immortal lifelong best friends... <3

dsmp fans i love you im holding out my hand to you in a gesture of friendship. hello. both mods are also mcyt fans and dsmp fans. we know abt characters vs ccs. we also despise cc!dream. you are safe here. im sorry that previous polls have traumatized you :((

c!tubbo/c!ranboo fans also fucking turned out you have VERY convincing propaganda

ive never read the locked tomb, know nothing of the characters, but to the submitters who sent in Camilla Hect and Palamedes Sextus youve convinced me. VERY good job. where can i find your media i need to learn more. no like fr

jrwi fans are you okay. good lord /pos. also youll be pleased to know WE HAVE NOT ONE BUT TWO SUBMISSIONS OF THE GREATER MANA POLYCULE

to the etho/skizz fan who submitted an essay. hi. i think youre so right for putting them in a httyd au. very convincing propaganda. also are you okay.

hi silmarillion fans. do you need hot cocoa.

jrwi fans are literally so not normal about their guys. sorry to call you out but oh my god not a single one of you is normal /pos. its great.

not a fnaf fan but "Theyre also both canonically queer, if that helps. That has nothing to do with the lobotomies or the dying and being revived as a soulless walking corpse, though." is the sentence of all time. i hope whoever wrote that is doing well.

good evening to the homestuck fan who wrote jake & dirk propaganda so convincing that for a moment i wanted to go check out their media only to remember its Homestuck and ONLY to the homestuck fan who wrote jake & dirk propaganda so convincing that for a moment i wanted to go check out their media only to remember its Homestuck.

we've been over the jesus christ/mary magdalene submission but did you know apparently there's actual evidence to back it up? lots of it in fact? i did not expect to read that tonight (for future reference slash in case you're curious i am an atheist & cycad is christian)

the little women fan has some SERIOUS propaganda. my respect o7

hello to the autistic sp (south park) fan who wrote a genuine essay on kenny mccormick and eric cartman. wish you well (and like, we got a voltron submission as well. i dont know either of those shows/fandoms at all besides vague knowledge that they're not great but eh we're here to have fun. who cares (this is in response to you mentioning you didnt know if sp was allowed (i dont know actually youd have to ask cycad but im like 95% sure its fine (can you tell i have adhd))))

GIGOLAS FAN SPOTTED. they didnt write a lot of propaganda but HELL YEAH WE GOT SOME LOTR FANS HERE. theyre so qpr to me you dont even KNOW

i didnt even think about link/zelda being a qpr before this but you have convinced me. youre so right. they Are

besties who drink poison together STAY together!!! (merlin and arthur). fuck yeah baby!!! i have never seen merlin bbc

oh moirails are a homestuck thing i saw those in our asks and was unsure what they were

CANON QPR IN FABLE SMP? oh i need to check that out. fable smp fans ik this is a long shot but if anyone wants to give me reccomendations for where to start watching.

hiya qsmp fans. no need to worry you have turned out in both numbers AND propaganda. wowzers.

we have One submission for q!quackbur but now im wondering why no one has submitted c!quackbur. theyre literally homoeretic business rivals whose relationship could be viewed as platonic or romantic. smh

Roman and Youngblood from Roleslaying with Roman have very dedicated fans.

divorce quartet the divorced qp polycule ever but also im very biased. (both scott/cleo and scott/martyn were submitted multiple times)

we have some very fun ocs & real life qp relationships and im so here for it.

oh hey lifesteal smp i know those guys. wow damn theyre kinda fucked up arent they.

POLYARCHIVES SUPREMACY <3 BASEDBASEDBASED

POLYMECHS SUPREMACY ALSO SO BASED

Hi. Person who submitted both jesus/mary magdalene and now hamlet/ophelia. I love you. You are here to cause CHAOS and i for one applaud you for it. Can we kiss /j

[clockworkspider]

I just read this post on 2010s nerd culture and I feel like it's probably referring more to late 2010s as well as a very different side of nerd culture than the one i'm familiar with.

Cause like... to me nerd culture and fandom has always been... not quite the same but very very connected. So to me early 2010 nerdom was singing les mis aloud on the street. It was grey-painted teens spotted in down town. It was hetalia fans just cosplaying at the park. It was recognizing anime fan merch (**FAN** MERCH!) on people's bags and being like "I'VE SEEN THAT! I RECOGNIZE THAT!"

And honestly there was nothing more genuine and sincere than that.

And there's something to be said about the fact that the major defining fandoms of that era were hetalia, homestuck, nightvale, and superwholock. (Marvel and HP were there but they stuck around longer and aren't specifically 2010s.) We all cringe at a lot of these but 3 of those listed started as indie works. And superwholock was NOT A THING marketing wise, fans on tumblr just organically decided to... respond to everything with gifs from 3 unrelated fandoms consecutively. (Contrast this with Barbenheimer, which was also started organically by fans, but the marketing team of Barbie deliberately leaned into it to milk the hype, which incidentally ended up causing controversies in Japan.)

Most of these fandoms were almost entirely fan-driven. Homestuck and Hetalia fandoms had a LOT of fanfics of fanfics. Most Hetalia fans barely even watched or read the source material. (For the better, in this case.) Fans of these fandoms owned more fan-merch than official merch, and were really... fans of fans. Fan works were often based on other fan work. This is a sharp contrast to Star Wars fandom which came both before and after.

This was also when like... anime fandoms got really big but fans were watching fansubs and reading scanlations. So you had all these fandoms that were most definitely considered nerdy and very passionate, but wasn't really making anyone much money. (Besides a few indie creators and big name fans.)

Nerd culture, at that point, despite growing mainstream, was still counter-culture for the very aspect that they weren't market-driven. They were fan-driven.

I feel like it's really when it got closer to 2020 that both fandom and nerd culture became a lot more market-driven. I think we have MCU and Netflix to thank for that. If you look at Barbie, which is a decent movie, the "fandom" was completely propped up by viral marketing before it even came out. You get this with AAA games too, see Cyberpunk.

So like... I'm hesitate to call umm... the majority of 2020s media fandoms nerd "culture" nowadays. And if, by nerd culture, you mean gamers who line up for PS5 and star wars fans with graphic tees, then... idk if that's quite... correct. Once our attention has been SEO-ed there's no real... culture. You know. Like... the "cultural" part of it simply isn't very there if participants=consumers. And that's perfectly fine for people on an individual basis! I don't mean to revoke anyone's nerd cred or shame anyone personally for participating in consumer culture in a consumer society, I'm just being pedantic.

People still nerd about yarn and crafts tho, and DND. I think those areas has never stopped being nerdy.