#among other things...but i digress

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price - Service De Luxe (1938)

Baron of Arizona

The Long Night (1948)

Various Vincent Price kissing stills

[kit-screams-into-the-future]

re: the last post i reblogged bc i am realizing just how much i yapped in the tags and i do not wish to subject the wider tumblr public to that rant LMAO

[marybeatriceofmodena]

lol more vague assumptions about Nosferatu being about the """"patriarchy"""" when thomas is also a victim xox just say you're uncomfortable that your uwu dark romance movie is actually about CSA but from a rylo i wouldn't expect anything else

You know the funny thing is that I haven't posted about Reylo in ages, mostly because I moved on (the fact people are still pressed about the most vanilla villain/heroine ship out there, in 2025, is hilarious to me, because 10 years later even the most dedicated Twilight hater had moved on) but guess my Scandal of Christendom reputation precedes me lmao

But like, newsflash babe, the patriarchy can also make victims of men too, hope that helps!

While I'm at it, why don't you do something useful? Have some links

[sendmyresignation]

I didn't finish Girls to the Front partly bc I got distracted but partly bc I heard a few other people saying it felt biased or lacking a further critical analysis, I'm curious it it references any of the women who were involved in DC hardcore or hardcore in general, re the books assertion that hardcore is overly technical and masculine point thay you alluded to in your tags. I know that it was still a very male dominated scene but the continued way that some people act like the women who were there didn't matter or aren't worth discussing has always irked me, and I'm curious if you had thoughts

sorry, i just got the time to answer this! i wanted to be able to give some quotes so it didn't look like i was pulling anything out of my ass. but yeah, so while the book does occasionally mention women in hardcore, Marcus has this rhetorical strategy where she brings them up, but not without first diminishing their existences and then dismissing their contributions.

There's reasons for this, I think, actually. One is that she really wants to sell this idea that punk was more influenced by women in the 70s and then, suddenly hardcore happened and the "macho-ism" of hardcore meant that the 80s lacked the previous generations female presence: "its penchant for louder-faster-harder performances and frenetic slam dancing were catnip for boys anxious to blow off adolescent steam... [the mosh pits] drove most girls to the sidelines". This is true... but only to a certain extent and is also a generalization, the other thing is I think she just reallllly wants to make riot grrls this supreme influence on women in the 90s, like there were sooo few women in DC (not out front, not as personalities, as she quotes from Jen Smith). But, by writing off the entirety of the 80s, she loops hardcore and posthardcore together?? like rev summer bands were explicitly challenging the violence and the "hard" rhetoric with vulnerability- spiritually v connected to riot grrl. and, ofc, rev summer was conceptualized by amy pickering! like she is directly responsible for not just the term but is herself the catalyst (Marcus says: "The scene's previous golden age... was what Fire Party's Amy Pickering had then dubbed Revolution Summer" which I feel removes a lot of her involvement, esp when Marcus criticized the fact Fire Party rehearsed religiously for months before performing live, therefore they weren't a part of the summer itself and also stood in contrast to the Olympia-riot grrl values of anyone-can-play diy). She also, in an attempt to re-enforce this riot grrl linage into The Canon excludes women in DC who weren't direct inspirations on riot grrl (so for example, Chalk Circle is mentioned a hell of a lot in these histories bc she was a mentor for Olympia grrls after moving to Cali, wrote a precursor zine that a lot of riot grrls read, and was in a band with Kathleen Hanna, Holly Rollers always gets mentioned bc of Juliana Luecking, etc) but Pickering and others gets left out bc she's an imperfect role model (wanted her band to be seen outside the paragram of gender, she worked at Dischord, booked shows, was friends with most of the hardcore scene). Unsurprisingly, then, Marcus v. conveniently leaves out the black women in DC; Pickering's band included drummer Nicky Thomas (who is literally never named in the book, only Pickering is mentioned when talking about Fire Party which i find particularly egregious) and their first show was dedicated to Toni Young of Red-C and Dove who were legit hardcore bands.

She also is weirdly inconsistent about the contributions of female instrumentalists (that idea of personalities...); again, the members of Fire Party outside their vocalist are never mentioned, Unwound is briefly offhandedly namedropped but Sarah Lund's name never appears, Christina Billotte is mentioned and quoted when she's involved in riot grrl (Autoclave-era; later she would grow distant from the DC meetings) but is only passingly mentioned when Slant 6 is formed and none of her bandmates are named, Maria Jones is name dropped as a significant presence in DC because of the Holly Rollers connection but none of the other bands she was in are shared, including the all-girl, all openly queer Broken Siren, I could go on and on and on. Unless you were a frontwoman or directly involved in riot grrl, you were not relevant enough for Marcus to care about, which I find frustrating. who gives a fuck about female vocalists when the "technical" nature of guitar or drums makes them much more gender-locked positions in rock music? again, there's also a divergence about proficiency, as if attempting to perform complex, serious music was like.... giving into the masculine musical culture? which i find incredibly essentialist and insulting to women invested in their craft. Ultimately I find Marcus incapable of adequately accounting for the variety of women and their reasoning for being in a band during this period and it does a disservice to the history to simply pretend any woman not Doing It Correctly is worth forgetting or dismissing. so, hopefully that answers your question lmao. id still recommend girls to the front, if just because it presents riot grrl pretty unedited and the timeline is super helpful when dealing with a very fragmented small subculture and seeing that it gets preserved. but MAN did a lot of the analysis get on my nerves lmao

[system-of-a-feather]

pst

btw

if anyone doubts that our oldest sister is shitty

she works for

Amazon

and not as a poor unfortunate person who got a starting job that makes it so they can barely meet their needs

she chose it as a preferred selection

*shivers*

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Which era of Archie Sonic did you enjoy more? Pre reboot or post reboot?

Hmmm that's a good question. Idk I think I liked some of the writing post reboot better and I did like the new characters. I also personally think the removal of the love triangles specifically made the comic so much more enjoyable for me and opened up for better characterization for Sally. However, reading post sgw I did miss some of the old charcters (rip all those claimed penders ocs) and their now unresolved storylines, was sad at the loss of certain character struggles (like Rotor who was struggling between his health and wanting to be in the field again), and I missed how pre sgw had just some of the most insane or out of the blue plot developments/world building choices.

In terms of enjoyment, though, I'd have to say post reboot for the following reasons:

1. I enjoyed pre reboot for what it was more often than not, but I had my most fun during Flynn era. I liked how the Penders era moved things to being more serious, but I often felt like he had good and interesting concepts/ideas without the writing to back it up. Meanwhile, while Flynn wasn't perfect either, I felt like he was able to make a lot of those established relationships more believable to me, and while he also made some batshit plot choices he had more of the writing skills to back it up. This is all to say that aside from some stuff at the very beginning of pre reboot, it was a long while before I was able to really enjoy what I was reading instead of just taking things I liked where I could. Post reboot was a lotta Flynn, so despite the loss of characters and plotlines I enjoyed greatly, I at least felt like I could enjoy everything post reboot.

2. It didn't have all of those Sonic based love triangles. I know I know I'm a multishipper I ship Sonic with a lot of people but by god. I just could not take the Sonic/Sally drama anymore. Bunnie/Antoine was fine. Flynn actually made me believe in Julie-Su and Knuckles as decent partners. But by that point (and this is coming from someone who loved Sonic/Sally before reading the comic) everything going on re-Sonic and Sally's romance prospects with the opposite gender and each other was like beating a dead horse. And for Sally specifically, she had been recharacterized so so so many times pre-reboot just for the sake of drama that she often...didn't feel like her own character. So post reboot with the love triangles and the romance with Sonic removed I felt like we could really see who she was as a character and a clear vision of her ambitions/cares. I could feel like who she *is* wouldn't be changed on a whim for the purpose of plot.

3. As they say, people get better with practice. And while I thought some of his pre-reboot stuff was interesting, I felt like by post reboot era, Flynn had grown better at depicting the nuance of living under the eggman empire.

ㅤ

So yeah I guess I'd say, gun to my head? Post reboot. But it's really more complicated than that. I did enjoy both a lot, and especially in the last like 80 issues pre reboot. Pre reboot was wild an interesting in a way that I enjoyed with characters and storylines I loved, but it wasn't always written amazingly and contained much too many ongoing love triangles and mehhh canon relationships to me. Post reboot gave certain characters more time to shine as characters, reverted the pre reboot growth of other characters, delivered some of its nuanced situations better, and was largely written nicely, but you could often feel that the post reboot team was now restricted in a much different way than they were pre reboot (like, pre reboot's struggle was keeping up with existing storylines and relationships and keeping things true to what they have been, but post reboot's struggle feels more like it may have had some of Sega's restrictions we see nowadays).

In the end, though, I miss characters and storylines from both pre and post reboot after the cancelation.

[gu6chan]

DISCORD'S GETTING BANNED IN RUSSIA???? On one hand W discord sucks ass and this will definitely be a hit to it as a platform but on the other hand ALL MY RUSSIAN BUDDIES...... if they take twitter next the drakengard fanbase is done for methinks 😔

[saints-who-never-existed]

I've been chewing on this wonderful post for days now. It's taken me that long to figure out what I want to say about it and what I want to say actually concerns Crozier more than Fitzjames.

To be more specific, it's that final line concerning the two of them - "Fitzjames is not truly loved by the people he surrounds himself with in the same way Crozier is." - that's been rattling around in my head most of all. And I think it's been rattling around so consistently because I don't know that I believe it to be true.

I think Crozier shares many of the same flaws that Fitzjames has - that misplaced trust, that naivety, that misjudgement of character. And I don't believe, in the end, that he's truly loved by the people he surrounds himself with all that much more than Fitzjames is.

Now, that's not to say that Crozier is not loved and trusted by those around him... Blanky loves and trusts Crozier to the ends of the earth. Jopson is so devoted to him that'll he'll drag himself through agonies and hells both real and imagined just to get near to him. And Crozier has the love and staunch loyalty of good boys like Hartnell too.

But at a base functional level, the love that Crozier gets is no better than that which Fitzjames does, even if that love is truer and more plentiful, generally speaking.

It's still fleeting and it still doesn't make a difference in the end.

Crozier's abandonment to his fate is still proposed and discussed just like it was for Fitzjames but whereas in Fitzjames' case the idea is quashed immediately, in Crozier's it's actually followed through on.

Little protests in Crozier's favour, of course, but I think it's very telling, very damning even, that he speaks practically rather than personally as he does so. He mentions Crozier's leadership, his knowledge of the land and the Netsilik tongue but says nothing of the man's character.

Even staunchly loyal Little doesn't want to save Crozier because he truly loves him. He wants to save Crozier because he needs him and that's not the same thing at all.

In my opinion Dundy’s entire role in the narrative is to draw attention to Fitzjames being a poor judge of character, or rather, valuing and prioritizing a kind of relationship that would serve him in the Civilized World that falls apart as the men start to shed their ties to England to focus on survival. It’s interesting to me that historically Fitzjames handpicked the Erebus lieutenants— it seems a smart move for a voyage to a dangerous remote location to surround yourself with people you like and trust, so you’d expect that the people Fitzjames picked would remain loyal to him until the end. But that isn’t what happens. If you accept that Dundy was leading Little in the conversation where he first proposes leaving the sick behind (and Little does look at Dundy several times as though they’ve previously discussed this) Dundy was willing to leave Fitzjames behind to die when he was sick. Kinda cold given the length of their knowing each other and Fitzjames’ campaigning to get him his position. But it makes sense that a relationship built on mutual self-interest would crumble under the weight of individual survival needs.

I also keep thinking about Fitzjames suggesting Des Voeux as somebody they can trust during “Terror Camp Clear”. Des Voeux??? Really??? But he’s another one of the ones Fitzjames handpicked. There’s a naiveté to it, the assumption that the mutual self interest, this “I got you a job so now you’re loyal to me”, is the same as legitimate trust or friendship. It’s Fitzjames’ first “more than god loves them” at Franklin all over again, his misplaced belief that what will get them through this is the same thing that got them into this, the hierarchy and political connections between people. In the end, for all that he’s charming and politically successful, Fitzjames is not truly loved by the people he surrounds himself with in the same way Crozier is.

[tbhimnoteasyonmyself]

Akk's flirting is bad but MY GODDDD is it accurate!!

[ladybonheur]

A professor tells me to call them by their first name: That's it. I've peaked. I'm gonna get a good grade at academic interpersonal relations. Which is both possible to achieve and normal to want.

[bnny]

my mother is an interesting creature. when distance separates us, she's funny, charming, and cool, even. i become somewhat blind to her abusive streak. sometimes i need to remind myself of the things she's said to me and the ways she's treated me. distance has treated my memory of her with kindness...

[jinjeriffic]

DPxDC and OOC

I've had a couple of posts cross my dash recently where people lament that a lot of the dpxdc fandom writes characters very OOC and how we're proliferating these characterizations among each other. I figured I'd add my own two cents.

I think the fundamental discrepancy comes from trying to reconcile two canons with vastly different tones.

Danny Phantom is a comedy superhero show operating on cartoon logic. Why do ghost experts Jack and Maddie never realize their own kid is a ghost? Why is the status quo restored at the end of every episode? Why does Danny shoot an ectoblast out of his butt that one time? Because it's funny. It's cartoony action fun where the plot is resolved in 22 minutes, there's never any lasting consequences and it's aimed at kids.

DC meanwhile wants to be taken Seriously. Heroes get beaten within an inch of their life, traumatized, killed and even the good guys do messed up things (often to each other). Yes there's action and puns, but also horrific violence, actions have consequences and it's (mostly) aimed at adults. When a main character dies the comics show their family and friends mourning and things are very dramatic. Even though at this point we, the audience can pretty much expect every death to be undone within 2-5 years of publishing, but I digress.

So how do we, the fanfic/fanart creators reconcile these differences when we make our crossovers? We either make DP more serious and somber, or we make DC more comedic.

Suddenly we have a DP verse where the Fentons' bumbling obliviousness is elevated to serious neglect or outright abuse. The GiW are no longer a minor annoyance, they are a serious threat with genocidal plans and a desire to vivisect the protagonist. When actions have consequences, we imagine Danny as dealing with serious PTSD from having to be a solo superhero and witnessing his family's death that one time (and maybe also getting vivisected). Danny is not just a teen superhero, he's now the Ghost King with serious responsibility on his shoulders.

On the flipside, if we make DC more comedic we tend to exaggerate character traits for comedic effect, focus more on the interpersonal dynamics (especially the Batfam) and have the characters act more casual and silly. Suddenly the Batfam goes from a group of seriously messed up individuals who have trouble communicating with each other and fight all the time to Batdad "Kids if you don't stop killing criminals you won't get dessert ffs" Bruce. Violence is played for laughs instead of taken seriously. Yeah they fight, but they still Love Each Other.

And THIS IS PERFECTLY FINE. It's transformative work! And trying to reconcile these disparate fandoms is hard! Fandom is a labor of love. We do it for free. We do it for our own entertainment. And no one is forcing you to read fics you don't like. DLDR and all that.

[punctuation-completionist]

since today is punctuation day, i figured i'd talk with you about my favorite punctuation that is sadly not in unicode

(my apologies if these crop weird)

these six marks were invented by french writer hervé bazin in his essay plumons l'oiseau (or 'let's pluck the bird')

while the essay also had aim to switch the french language to a more phonetic writing system, it also gave us six new punctuation marks!

from left to right and top to bottom these are, the acclamation point, the authority mark, the conviction point, the doubt point, the irony mark, and the love point. so let's go over what these all were supposed to convey! (or at least what i expect they were supposed to)

the acclamation point was meant for praise, goodwill, and enthusiasm (ie "Well done [acclamation point]")

the authority mark was meant to be used in situations where the exclamation was serious and involved a degree of command or urgency (ie "Get in my office right now [authority mark]") i think this— along with the love point and irony mark— shows how a lot of these punctuation marks were a bit like early examples of tone tags, i'll get into it more later

the certitude point was used to show sureness in a fact. (ie "It's absolutely positively true [certitude point]") i think this might be the most useless of the bunch but whatever. i digress.

the doubt point is kind of the opposite of the certitude point, used when you aren't sure of something (ie "It should be done tomorrow [doubt point]") also it should be noted that the example used above is not the only way you'll see the doubt point, some also have it looking like this

the idea of irony marks has been widely suggested, for example the poet/art critic/song writer (i think, this guy's only wiki page is in french and i am guessing a bit on the word 'chansonnier') alcanter de brahm suggested an irony mark that resembled a backwards question mark (not to be confused with the percontation point which indicated a rhetorical question) and belgian inventor (among other things) marcellin jobard suggested a point that looked like an upwards arrow (this △ on top of this |, i can't paste it)

^ de brahm's mark

all that to say, bazin's mark was based off of the greek letter psi (Ψ) which some of you may recognize if you are familiar with the greek language or comics that shall not be named. it's used in situations of irony (ie saying "Wow, that sure was brilliant [irony mark]" if someone did something stupid)

and our last point is the love point, known for being so adorable, and indicating love or affection after a sentence (ie "Thanks a lot bud [love point]")

now we can obviously see that some of these are very similar to tone tags! the love point could be like a /pos, the irony mark is kinda like a /sarc, the authority mark could be like a /srs . i just thought it was interesting i guess. i don't have a point (heh) here exactly except that i guess people might actually need these punctuation marks ? so unicode? give me the love point or give me death

anyways so that's some fun niche history for y'all! hope you enjoyed

[timesorceror]

So I started this rec list sometime in mid to late 2024 after listening to @thisweekinfandomhistory's episode on the Crack Van, where one of the hosts commented (and I'm most definitely probably paraphrasing here) about how rec lists are something of a lost art.

This, combined with my burning desire to write a primer on Dreamling (in the hopes it could perhaps one day get covered on the pod) was what pushed me to start going through my 30-something pages of bookmarks (of which those occupy slightly more than a third of my total pages of bookmarks) and start categorizing them in preparation for this list.

Sorry about all the parentheses; I've very likely got some rather loud undiagnosed ADHD and cannot for the life of me keep my brain from interjecting with every single bit of information, relevant or otherwise. But, I digress.

There are ten posts included in this monster of a fic rec masterpost, and they are divided between Oneshots, Multi-Chaptered Fics, and Series. The reason for the divide is simple: Tumblr only allows 100 inline links per post, as I also learned from listening to the lovely ladies of the This Week in Fandom History Podcast.

The rec list posts are below the cut, along with a link to my masterpost Google Doc, an explanation as to the method behind my madness, among other things.

Oneshots - Part One Contains: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crossover

Oneshots - Part Two Contains: Fluff / Happy Ending, Fishbowl Rescue, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, New Inn Is A Temple

Oneshots - Part Three (NSFW) Contains: Accidental Vouyerism, Age Difference, BDSM, College / University AU, Centaur AU, Dragon AU, Dream Sex, Fantasy AU, First Time / First Kiss / Getting Together / Friends to Lovers, Fluff / Smut

Oneshots - Part Four (NSFW) Contains: Fishbowl Rescue, Hurt/Comfort, Medieval AU, MPreg / Breeding Kink, Nursing Kink, Omegaverse, Oviposition, Pacific Rim AU, Period Sex, Retired Dream of the Endless, Selkie AU, Sex Pollen, Shapeshifting, Star Wars AU, Stuck in An Airport AU, Soulmates / Soul Bond, Temporary Amnesia, Tentacle Sex, Touch-Starved Dream of the Endless, Venom AU, Werewolf AU

Oneshots - Part Five Contains: Soulmate AU (No Smut), Touch-Starved Dream of the Endless

Multi-Chapter - Part One Contains: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Crossover, Fishbowl Rescue, Fluff, Friends / Enemies to Lovers, Getting Together

Multi-Chapter - Part Two (NSFW) Contains: Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Swap, Canon Divergence AU, College / University / Academia AU, Creatures & Monsters AU, Dragons AU, Dream Sex, Established Relationship, Fairy Tale AU, Fantasy AU, Fishbowl Rescue / Hob Gadling Saves Dream of the Endless, Friends to Lovers, Fuck Or Die, Getting Together, Historical AU, Hob Gadling is Hope of the Endless, Hob Gadling Owns the New Inn

Multi-Chapter - Part Three (NSFW) Contains: Hurt/Comfort, Medieval AU, Modern Setting / Human AU, Monsterfucking, Omegaverse, Past Relationship(s), Period Sex, Retired Dream of the Endless, Roommates, Sex Pollen, Soulmates AU, Temporary Amnesia, The New Inn is a Temple, Touch-Starved Dream of the Endless, Vampire AU, Victorian AU, Werewolf AU

Series - Part One (A–L) Features series written by: acadethicc | AceDragonType | Aetheltrythh | Anonymous | apocryphal | Ardin | Aria_Lerendeair | aWordyBody | Bacota | BeatnikFreak | behold_me (feat. The_KickIt_Domain) | BuckytheDucky | chaosheadspace | charinabook | CourfeyracFredMariusCratchit | cuubism | dancinbutterfly (feat. Moorishflower) | Darci | Delta_Pavonis | Dira Sudis (dsudis) | everythingisconnected | foxish_nonsense | frihetkanske | GalaxyDreamStories | hardly_an_escape | honeyteacakes | IcePhoenix96 | im_not_corrupted | Ismene_Jane | issylra | Konstadt | LeotheLionathefootofOrion

Series - Part Two (L–Z) Features series written by: Lightning_glass42 | LikeMmmCookies | lithenemesis | LLflorence dreamling (LLflorence) | Maelstrom22 | MDJensen | Mondaysundayssadurdays | monobuu | MonstrousRegiment | MoonlightMav | Moorishflower | Mywayornorway | NyriaMizell | often_adamanta | Purplesauris | Sam_Salami | SerenAur | starsniper | softestpunk | Stormysaslytherin | slythernim | Sylcian_SPH_Legacy | tharkuun | The_Shy_One | TheFanficMustFlow | Thesuspiciousflyingjellyfish | ThirtySixSaveFiles | Thranduilland | TimelessRiver | tinglingsensation | Torte | ObsessiveAgony | viiidispade | winterbucky (WinterLadyy) | Whoareyou0000 | zoomacroom

There will likely not be any more posts added to this, given the nature of how Tumblr posts work, but as I am still in the middle of my second run-though of the Dreamling ship tag's entire body of completed works, I will continue to update this Google Doc as I go (and whenever I comb through my Marked for Later tab and go through fics that are still there as well) that you may view at your leisure.

Note: this Google Doc is my personal fic rec list, and is not the be-all, end-all of Dreamling fics, despite how expansive it is. If there is a fic I have not added, it's very likely I did not read it because of a tag I'm not into (like Hurt No Comfort), or I read it and didn't bookmark it because I felt like I wasn't going to read it more than once. Or any other number of reasons, such as incomplete fics, which I rarely read these days unless it's a tag that I absolutely go feral for.

So don't DM me asking to add specific fics, please. Thanks. :)

I would like to explain that the Google Doc uses the tab function to separate the Oneshots, Multi-Chaptered Fics, and Series, and within each tab, they are further divided using the outline function.

The way I chose to organize the Oneshots and Multi-Chaptered fics was to start by thinking of this rec list as sort of like a menu at a restaurant by picking a main tag that I feel is the focus of the fic, and then further organize them by a sub-catagory tag (for example, I have Moorishflower's fic, Radio Silence, under the broad umbrella of 'Alternate Universe Oneshots' which is further organized under the sub-catagory, 'Post-Apocalyse AU'). Mostly I tried to follow this method by selecting two tags from the tag list of the fic, however not all fics I wanted to include HAD enough tags to use, or they had a bunch of hyper-specific, talk-commentary tags that I felt were not very compatible with the system I had worked out. So there are a few fics that I had to categorize or sub-catagorize simply based on vibes.

Hopefully, that explanation was sufficient, and I know that – given the current state of the fandom in regards to NG – some of these fics may one day become orphaned or be taken down. Unfortunately there is little I can do about that other than to encourage you to download any of the fics you enjoy so that you may continue to enjoy them if they disappear.

The purpose of this undertaking was more to challenge myself (and my patience) to see if I still had what it took to make a proper rec list and also to truly get a sense of Dreamling's major themes, tropes, and common tags so that I could list them out in the primer I still want to write for TWIFH.

That's... pretty much why this exists, though along the way, I was moved to finish this project for the sake of creating a snapshot of this particular ship's fandom at this particular moment in time. Whether or not it lasts remains to be seen, but I'm glad to have done it, and I hope that any fandom historians, as well as current and future fans of Dreamling appreciate my efforts.

I would also like to give a special shout-out to the @mr-sadman Discord, which also has a fic library of at least some of the listed fics for the occasions when AO3 goes down for whatever reason, as a good chunk of Dreamling authors and artists tend to congregate there and are all a bunch of lovely and wonderfully derranged people who have supported me in this endeavor.

So please, enjoy. Go forth and read fic.

All my love, TimeSorceror

[askablindperson]

In what way does alt text serve as an accessibility tool for blind people? Do you use text to speech? I'm having trouble imagining that. I suppose I'm in general not understanding how a blind person might use Tumblr, but I'm particularly interested in the function of alt text.

In short, yes. We use text to speech (among other access technology like braille displays) very frequently to navigate online spaces. Text to speech software specifically designed for blind people are called screen readers, and when use on computers, they enable us to navigate the entire interface using the keyboard instead of the mouse And hear everything on screen, as long as those things are accessible. The same applies for touchscreens on smart phones and tablets, just instead of using keyboard commands, it alters the way touch affect the screen so we hear what we touch before anything actually gets activated. That part is hard to explain via text, but you should be able to find many videos online of blind people demonstrating how they use their phones.

As you may be able to guess, images are not exactly going to be accessible for text to speech software. Blindness screen readers are getting better and better at incorporating OCR (optical character recognition) software to help pick up text in images, and rudimentary AI driven Image descriptions, but they are still nowhere near enough for us to get an accurate understanding of what is in an image the majority of the time without a human made description.

Now I’m not exactly a programmer so the terminology I use might get kind of wonky here, but when you use the alt text feature, the text you write as an image description effectively gets sort of embedded onto the image itself. That way, when a screen reader lands on that image, Instead of having to employ artificial intelligences to make mediocre guesses, it will read out exactly the text you wrote in the alt text section.

Not only that, but the majority of blind people are not completely blind, and usually still have at least some amount of residual vision. So there are many blind people who may not have access to a screen reader, but who may struggle to visually interpret what is in an image without being able to click the alt text button and read a description. Plus, it benefits folks with visual processing disorders as well, where their visual acuity might be fine, but their brain’s ability to interpret what they are seeing is not. Being able to click the alt text icon in the corner of an image and read a text description Can help that person better interpret what they are seeing in the image, too.

Granted, in most cases, typing out an image description in the body of the post instead of in the alt text section often works just as well, so that is also an option. But there are many other posts in my image descriptions tag that go over the pros and cons of that, so I won’t digress into it here.

Utilizing alt text or any kind of image description on all of your social media posts that contain images is single-handedly one of the simplest and most effective things you can do to directly help blind people, even if you don’t know any blind people, and even if you think no blind people would be following you. There are more of us than you might think, and we have just as many varied interests and hobbies and beliefs as everyone else, so where there are people, there will also be blind people. We don’t only hang out in spaces to talk exclusively about blindness, we also hang out in fashion Facebook groups and tech subreddits and political Twitter hashtags and gaming related discord servers and on and on and on. Even if you don’t think a blind person would follow you, You can’t know that for sure, and adding image descriptions is one of the most effective ways to accommodate us even if you don’t know we’re there.

I hope this helps give you a clearer understanding of just how important alt text and image descriptions as a whole are for blind accessibility, and how we make use of those tools when they are available.

[abyssalpriest]

@tenebrisdivina hope you dont mind me replying in a reblog!

Absolutely! This is largely my issue I definitely feel you on this. I much rather look at them as an alien race if even only alien by planar terms, because the religious connotations are... Well, my work is channelling spirits, walking other planes, etc, to me theres no inherent faith let alone religion involved in them, they're just "people from a different place". It's got nothing to do with belief and all to do with just other races existing in their own spaces

I definitely find it like... exactly what you said in that second part where I use the term to communicate with humans, specifically those interested in and amiable towards these energies, but at some point I'm like. ugh. Im not here to serve humans. Im here to be in-between, I'm here to be both completely human and completely myself, and it just doesn't fit into my work to be only a human looking at these foreign people as opposed to one of those people looking at themselves AND human looking at those people and humans. IE I personally want to find a term and understanding that is fair to these people, and also communicable with humans. It's just not... Serving me or them to pretend that I only understand them/us under the biased label of "demon" that, like a highly pigmented coloured lens, allows us to see and address them yes, but doesn't allow an accurate viewing of all of what they are

If we only ever call them demons and work with them like that, there's always going to be an expectation of God being involved and/or antagonism and/or aggressiveness/vindictiveness and/or animal nature and/or all the other things I mentioned the term being tied to in the first post, which skews spirit work. I know someone who is this race who is extremely high energy, brilliant shining light, kind and gentle and fun, and not antagonistic especially to God at all and its like. this term is uh becoming outdated! I'll put it that way lmfaO

Exactly though it's... It does a job but poorly - not poorly if you want to work with "demons", but it just doesn't cover working with "the race that chiefly gets called demons". This is why I spoke to Lev about having a word in a language that exists among spirits for "eldritch" energy, which. he made me make my own based on impulses, but "demon", like "eldritch", is just becoming too narrow IMO for people who work with these people. The more info we have around about them and the more people we have working with them, the less the (albeit broad) set of stereotypes that come with that word just are not doing it for me. Limiting is absolutely the word to describe it

Honestly, I really dont want to be in any sort of spotlight, I dont want to be a leader, so I dont mean this in that way, but I do have to say I hope if I show more of this religious workings Ive got w Lev IRT working with all his energies - including those that get relegated to "the demon Leviathan" name and energy - I hope it helps people who are struggling to find ways to express their communication and just general workings with and opinions of these beings that doesn't have to be smushed into "demon"? Like. Demon as a term is so based in a struggle to find anyone else like us working with things like what we work with, maybe the more people see that these energies and beings DONT have to be labelled demon, the less that term will be the necessary singular label...

Honestly at a bit of a crossroads IRT what Im doing with Lev, because like. I think what I needed from my urge to revisit my "demonkin" days and identity - god just got back from the Astral talking to Hermes about shit and I look around in my body and its just. all rain outside. it feels like everything including the air itself is drenched lmfao god ok

Credit where it's due - my twinflame @rikagora has really helped me on the digestion of impulses leading me this direction to figure out what I feel about the label "demon", we discussed it a while back but

ANYWAY. i think what I needed was to reconcile the apparently disjointed "I dont relate to anyone anymore like i did when I was open about my Soul Race" and "I just dont want to go back to saying im 'demonkin' because (many reasons but at the forefront was Cringe bc it was my teenage years)" into... "Man there really isnt any options for connecting with Lev and his people in their deeper and darker aspects other than having to do it through the lens of 'demon', which in itself I dont personally agree with as a term"

Like. I'll put it this way, I want to keep exploring and working with those energies but I am tired of christianity always having to be in the background whether its catholic aesthetics or rejection of God for Satan - or its just plain using the word demon. Demon isnt ONLY used by christians I get that, but the idea of using a word for his race that is anything other than a neutrality just isn't for me* - a neutrality as in I want a term that doesnt always have anything to do with god, rebellion, teaching/knowledge, "falling", or the race that i primarily refer to when I say "angel", or even hell or hierarchies or war or antagonism or anything like. I want to work with him in ways that dont have this expectation on him, because even when we say we're divorcing the word demon from christianity, in using the word we are still conjuring a stereotype of them.

The biblical and christian and even demon idea of a demon is... Not one race, its an identity, its a political label, in terms of spirit racism its a racist label lmfao and im not saying people cant reclaim it, Im not saying people arent allowed to use it, i AM saying though that.... Look. Me and Lev (depending on what side of him you get) both enjoy the roleplay aspect of "oh yes I'm a corrupting demon im so scary and dark and haunting" but beyond roleplaying with humans, theres just so little ways of getting in contact w the energy that the label "demon" tends to be attached to

Like I would argue when Lev comes to me as Poseidon he's closer to that than when he's Shiva, Poseidon energy is the deep dark sea and the roughness of it and the stern father and the Ruler and whatnot, it grows close to encompassing black of "Emperor Leviathan" but like. This is what I missed about demonolatry: the mask-off, encompassing and swallowing teacher, the black energies, the bottom of the ocean, the darkness not painted in the light of social rules, the tendency towards elevation and respect of the animal nature, the antagonising of light-and-purity-is-the-only-good mindsets, etc... Insert other personal things from my own "demonkin" memories....

I'm tired, to summarise, of thinking I have to go to demonolatry to get what I want because "demon" isn't a neutral term for a singular race, its an identity label used (rightly or wrongly) by many different people of many different races who agree and vibe and therefore identify with the concept of demonhood; in my opinion in a couple centuries we COULD get the word to a point where it has nothing to do with christianity and its working and on-paper definitions synchronise as simply "spirits of the race of the slowest moving plane" with nothing added about anything religious, but like... right now....

Again. I dont care if others use it. I just have needed to acknowledge that "demon" for me is a really.... For me and my relationship with Lev it's roleplay. We both have an instinct to spook people who are too uptight about shit and get in our face about it, and living this life mostly in a Catholic country and growing up in a catholic school has left a huge impact, I have always felt like Im an antagonistic force by sheer existence to the foundations of catholicism, but honestly... im really neutral towards it nowadays. Now that its not pushed on to me I dont need to push back

Ive sort of been at this point for a while now because... Like how when I came up against the rebirth (more so afterbirth) of the "demonkin" label I knew I had to just jump in to my expectations and familiar places for it to then take me where it needs to go, I need to jump into this new fast-approaching gateway of... I really, really enjoyed the idea of demonolatry religions. I dont know how I feel now, but thats a part of stepping into the gate

As some of you may know, I started making my own religion for personal use with Lev. Its heavily based around the things that I'd been trying to cram and squish into the label "demonic" for years, except now it doesnt have that label. Its raw, its gorey, its animalistic, but refined in the black and adorned in ritual clothing and acts and solemn words decorated with grandeur. Its what I need. I know this much, but I stumble here because I know this is just the start of the gateway.... I thought I had several more paragraphs to go in this text because i FELT them but no, here's where I stop

I guess then I leave it at yeah, I dont like the term demon honestly, I use it for a reason but the reason doesnt fit my work. Trying to fit Lev into it beyond him dancing around in it as a barely-realistic mask to send out certain energies... Just. not feasible, nor is it something I want to do because beyond the fact that he obviously has complex feelings towards it (in positive and self-identifying ways in this case) because its such a loaded term for someone like him. He likes loaded terms, he identifies with antagonistic demiurge-esque ideas of relationships between God/Brahman and him, but like. I just.

Im trying to find, dig up, wear, coax out an energy. People slap the label "demon" (or "eldritch" as a variation, they're similar though distinct) on that energy, im tired of using terms based in/related to christians saying These People Are Evil and uhhh Lovecraft existing