#and i know the user won't be an automatic no

[spnscripthunt-inactive]

Hello thank you for all the work that you do, I was wondering if you had the script for the season 11 finale Alpha and Omega

Hello and thank you!

Sadly, no, we had a lead on one a year or two ago but it fell through...which is why we're hesitant to announce anything until @mittensmorgul has received the package and we've inspected it.

Everything we have is listed here on the SuperWiki and on the relevant SuperWiki episode pages in the "Transcripts, Scripts, and Sides" section.

[wordstome]

how c.ai works and why it's unethical

Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.

The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.

How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].

I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.

"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."

Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.

(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)

Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:

It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.

C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.

Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.

DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.

(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)

[all-the-fish]

Oh, you know, just the usual internet browsing experience in the year of 2024

Some links and explanations since I figured it might be useful to some people, and writing down stuff is nice.

First of all, get Firefox. Yes, it has apps for Android/iOS too. It allows more extensions and customization (except the iOS version), it tracks less, the company has a less shitty attitude about things. Currently all the other alternatives are variations of Chromium, which means no matter how degoogled they supposedly are, Google has almost a monopoly on web browsing and that's not great. Basically they can introduce extremely user unfriendly updates and there's nothing forcing them to not do it, and nowhere for people to escape to. Current examples of their suggested updates are disabling/severly limiting adblocks in June 2024, and this great suggestion to force sites to verify "web environment integrity" ("oh you don't run a version of chromium we approve, such as the one that runs working adblocks? no web for you.").

uBlockOrigin - barely needs any explanation but yes, it works. You can whitelist whatever you want to support through displaying ads. You can also easily "adblock" site elements that annoy you. "Please log in" notice that won't go away? Important news tm sidebar that gives you sensory overload? Bye.

Dark Reader - a site you use has no dark mode? Now it has. Fairly customizable, also has some basic options for visually impaired people.

SponsorBlock for YouTube - highlights/skips (you choose) sponsored bits in the videos based on user submissions, and a few other things people often skip ("pls like and subscribe!"). A bit more controversial than normal adblock since the creators get some decent money from this, but also a lot of the big sponsors are kinda scummy and offer inferior product for superior price (or try to sell you a star jpg land ownership in Scotland to become a lord), so hearing an ad for that for the 20th time is kinda annoying. But also some creators make their sponsored segments hilarious.

Privacy Badger (and Ghostery I suppose) - I'm not actually sure how needed these are with uBlock and Firefox set to block any tracking it can, but that's basically what it does. Find someone more educated on this topic than me for more info.

Https Everywhere - I... can't actually find the extension anymore, also Firefox has this as an option in its settings now, so this is probably obsolete, whoops.

Facebook Container - also comes with Firefox by default I think. Keeps FB from snooping around outside of FB. It does that a lot, even if you don't have an account.

WebP / Avif image converter - have you ever saved an image and then discovered you can't view it, because it's WebP/Avif? You can now save it as a jpg.

YouTube Search Fixer - have you noticed that youtube search has been even worse than usual lately, with inserting all those unrelated videos into your search results? This fixes that. Also has an option to force shorts to play in the normal video window.

Consent-O-Matic - automatically rejects cookies/gdpr consent forms. While automated, you might still get a second or two of flashing popups being yeeted.

XKit Rewritten - current most up to date "variation "fork" of XKit I think? Has settings in extension settings instead of an extra tumblr button. As long as you get over the new dash layout current tumblr is kinda fine tbh, so this isn't as important as in the past, but still nice. I mostly use it to hide some visual bloat and mark posts on the dash I've already seen.

YouTube NonStop - do you want to punch youtube every time it pauses a video to check if you're still there? This saves your fists.

uBlacklist - blacklists sites from your search results. Obviously has a lot of different uses, but I use it to hide ai generated stuff from image search results. Here's a site list for that.

Redirect AMP to HTML - redirects links from their amp version to the normal version. Amp link is a version of a site made faster and more accessible for phones by Bing/Google. Good in theory, but lets search engines prefer some pages to others (that don't have an amp version), and afaik takes traffic from the original page too. Here's some more reading about why it's an issue, I don't think I can make a good tl;dr on this.

Also since I used this in the tags, here's some reading about enshittification and why the current mainstream internet/services kinda suck.

[cyle]

So what is the threshold in declaring whether this experiment is a mistake or not? Do we need to send feedback in daily? Stop using the site altogether? What will actually be counted vs written off as people not liking change?

when we A/B test something, it means that one group of people has the new thing, and one group of people has the old thing. this youtube video is a very quick way of explaining that process, i suggest watching it first here.

in this case, with the new navigation layout, our hypothesis is that the new layout will be more easily understood by more people, meaning we'll see more engagement with the navigation items themselves. like literally, more clicks to the things we now have labels for, when before they were just an icon. and the fact they're in a place that's become more standard across the internet: a left-aligned sidebar.

ideally, that will lead to better retention of new users, and even an "aha" moment for people who have been on tumblr for a long time but never really looked at those different destinations. i've been on tumblr since 2009 and even i've found myself clicking on the inbox and activity more than ever, with the new change.

for us to see the change as a "mistake", we'd need to see statistical evidence to contradict that hypothesis, which we're already tracking automatically for everyone in the test. we'd also need to get an overwhelming amount of feedback to contradict any positive gains we do see. sending in negative feedback daily won't do that.

so if you want the whole thing to go away: we need to see a negative behavior change in potentially millions of peoples' behavior. that has happened before! we've rolled changes back that caused that negative reaction. that's the whole point of these experiments.

and if you want to send us feedback about how the experience is negatively affecting you: please, please do!!! despite the statistical evidence, we want to know if there are accessibility concerns we missed, usability concerns, design considerations, etc etc, because that's why we're running this as an experiment and not just launching it to everyone. that feedback is really important to us, as long as it's constructive.

[felassan]

John Epler in the BioWare Discord (August 7th, again) -

User: "Since the dialogue wheel is coming back, will our choices set our Rook as diplomatic/humorous/aggressive with varying tone and voice lines similar to Hawke being able to be blue/purple/red?" John: "Not to the same degree - we want to give you the freedom to play your Rook differently depending on who they're talking to (you might be kinder to your companions and brusque with authority figures, for example), but your tone choices will have an impact within a conversation and, sometimes, with specific characters across multiple conversations." --- User: "I have to ask: how muscular can we make the elves?" John: "Reasonably so. You won't be making any massive bodybuilders but like... Timothy Olyphant?" User: "As a follow up what about humans and qunari? Quite muscular a la arnold or big viking type? Or not so much that lvl?" John: "Larger lineages (Qunari, esp) are bigger by default so the upper bounds are going to be bigger, but for modeling and animation we did want to put some limits on it. But your Rook can look pretty reasonably muscled, regardless of lineage choice." --- User: "Are there any time-sensitive quests (in terms of gameplay time, that will fail automatically if not addressed in a timely manner), and if there are please tell me they're at least indicated as such in some way?" John: "There are quests that can go away and technically 'fail' if you don't address them - but, to be VERY clear, this is not an in-game timer, but rather as you progress the game's story forward. That said, we do try to sign post them as much as possible." --- User: "Does Rook ever get the choice to cuss?" John: "Yes. You'll know when you're doing it, and we leave it up to you to make the choice, but sometimes, cursing is exactly what the situation demands."

[character limit text break!]

User: "Does the bioware team read the other channels and if so do they think we're unhinged or endearing?" John: "Little of column A, little of column B. But I mean, I've been online for 27 years, the internet has ruined me as much as anyone." --- User: "all the Rooks we've seen so far are wearing purple, please tell me we dont have to wear purple" John: "Everyone else can wear whatever colour they want but you, specifically, must always wear purple." --- User: "All the games have had unique faction symbols for our protagonist (Warden, Champion of Kirkwall, Inquisition) I assume there will be one for the Veilguard Will the symbol for it get released before the game or is this something that will be revealed in-game/after it’s launched?" John: "Every faction has their own symbol - including the Veilguard themselves! You may have noticed it in some of the art out there." --- John: "As a general comment - one thing I want to be super clear on - even as creative director there are things I can say, and things we're not ready to talk about. I'd rather spend my time answering what I can instead of a dozen 'sorry I can't talk about that yet' - especially since this channel is on slow mode." --- User: "There are blood effects in combat after Rook hits an enemy. And I think a developer shared images of the blood effects on hit after the reveal. Will characters be covered in blood or other environmental effects? Like getting wet from walking in puddles or muddy from running on dirt?" John: "There are environmental effects that persist on characters, depending on the environment you're traversing. They're subtle, but they're there!" --- User: "how many tattoos can we choose from? are there also full bodied ones too?" John: "I don't know the exact number, but there are quite a few. Some are full body as well, though you have control over colours and opacity on a more granular basis."

[character limit text break!]

User: "Of the zones/areas revealed what was the most challenging to design?" John: "Each has its own unique challenges. Arlathan seems simple because - well, it's a forest, right? But what about Arlathan makes it different than places you've been before? How does it fit into the established lore? Minrathous is a different kettle of fish because we've talked about it extensively and in a way that meant it HAD to be grander and more impressive than anything we've built before, which can be a tall order. The team did a fantastic job on all the areas, though." --- User: "which faction has the best fashion, in your opinion?" John: "Crows. Largely because 'black leather and feathers' isn't a look I could pull off in the real world but I am glad my Rook can." --- John: "Alright folks. I've gotta head back to work, but please keep asking questions and I'll answer what I can as soon as I can!"

[source: the official BioWare Discord]

There was also this question and answer:

User: "Can we name our saves like in Origins?" John: "I had to double check because I was about 95% sure on the answer, but also, I've been on this project for its entirety and sometimes I remember features that we had to cut (or never actually built) - yes. You can name your saves to reduce confusion."

but the answer may have now been deleted.

[foone]

Speaking as someone who has written web crawlers for non-evil reasons...

I like how all the platforms (twitter, reddit) are destroying their APIs to kill "bots" but the fun thing about APIs is that only the good guys use them. They're like door locks: they only keep out honest people. Someone wanting to steal your TV will just put a brick through your window.

Similarly, people wanting to flood a platform with spam and pornbots will often just not use the API, because it makes it too easy to track them down. They'll instead write a program that pretends to be a browser, and clicks on links just like a human does.

Fun fact: that's an "API" that exists for every website, and for a long while it was the only API that any sites ever had. So when you're trying to automate using a site (for good or evil), the "api-zero" of just doing web scraping and user-agent-impersonation is always there. That's what the bad guys will use, and that's what the good guys are sometimes forced to use.

Anyway the end result of this sort of API monetization/destruction nonsense is that you're only killing the bots that were written with good intentions. You're killing the haikubots and that "THERE ARE FIVE LIGHTS" twitter bot. you're killing the reddit bots that help moderate submissions by automatically applying flair or timing out replies after too long has passed.

But the bots that are just there to send you crytypocurrentsea scams and entice you in with stolen porn? They don't use the APIs. They won't be affected. They'll keep on working. The people scraping your site for AI research? they won't even register an account, they'll just request the plain HTML contents of your pages.

So once you know that, locking out users from your APIs seems like a real bad idea, doesn't it?

[golden-cherry]

deal - cl16 (3/?)

Pairing: Charles Leclerc x Reader

Series Summary: Your whole life has gone to shit. Your boyfriend broke up with you, you just lost your job and the Monegasque, who suddenly stands in your doorway, claims that it’s his apartment.

Chapter Summary: Charles takes you on an adventure, that you won't forget that easily.

Warnings: angst (talks about Charles dad), comfort, google translated French

Word Count: 3.4k

series masterlist

previous part

A/N: part 3! hope you enjoy it! feedback is appreciated!

Sitting on the passenger side of your own car is strange.

It doesn't feel completely wrong, but still, a queasy feeling spreads through you. Like when you lived with your parents. Whenever someone was visiting, your mom had said, "Just sit anywhere," and of course the guests didn't know that you had an unassigned assigned seat. And when they actually sat down in your seat and you couldn't sit in yours, you had the same feeling as you do now at this moment.

After you dressed for the weather, you grabbed your car keys and your camera. If Charles was actually taking you to the most beautiful viewpoint in the country, then maybe you could snap some pictures for your private Instagram account. Your little private photo album. With no followers, no obligations.

Charles car is at his primary residence, according to his statement. Except for a few cars, the underground garage where your car is parked is empty. Your roommate insisted on driving because, first, you don't know where the trip is going and, second, he doesn't want to tell you where to go. Grumpily, you threw him the key and he caught it with a grin. 

Then Charles made himself comfortable in the driver's seat of your old Renault as if it were his birthright. Right hand on the wheel, left elbow on the door and head propped on his hand, he maneuvers you through the streets of Monaco. Black sunglasses sit on his nose and the radio plays a pop song that somehow gets played every time you get in the car. Charles whistles along with the rhythm.

You turn in his direction. "Are you going to tell me where exactly we're going?"

Instead of answering you, he just shakes his head briefly. He runs a hand through his brown hair once, whistling merrily along. 

You roll your eyes and rub your forehead.

Not only did you just get in the car with a stranger - to be fair, it's your car and Charles isn't a stranger (anymore) - but he actually won't tell you where he's going. "Like I said, we're going to the most beautiful view," is all he replies. 

You've looked it up. According to Google, there are about fifteen lookouts. And each of them is supposed to be the "most beautiful view in Monaco," according to the websites. You looked up the locations on Google Maps, but none of them are in the direction you're heading. Maybe he's trying to kill you after all. 

"I haven't driven a real stick shift car in ages." Charles wraps his big hand around the gearshift knob to shift into the next gear. His bracelets slide from his forearm to his wrist as he does so. Without much jerking and very smoothly, you move forward.

You raise an eyebrow. "So you only drive automatic cars?"

Charles shakes his head. "My personal car - the one that's at my other apartment - is an automatic. The company car I drive is manual." His hand moves from the shift knob back to the steering wheel. His long fingers grip the worn, dark leather. 

"So what do you prefer to drive?"

He shrugs. "I like both."

You purse your lips and look out the window. You drive past small boutiques whose clothes you could never afford, and see cars whose insurance per month is sure to exceed your former annual salary. But this is nothing new to you. This is Monaco, after all. "I've never driven an automatic car before."

Charles glances over at you for a moment. "Really?" You shake your head. "It's kind of like riding a bumper car. Two pedals, gas and brake." He has to grin. "But if you ever drive automatic, please don't crash into other road users."

"Haha."

Charles drives the car out of town. The view out the window changes from old houses, whose architecture enchants you every time, to rocks and trees. By now, a quiet song is playing on the radio, Charles has stopped whistling, and somehow you're enjoying sitting here, next to your roommate, who wants to show you new, exciting things. 

It's been ages since you've been introduced to something completely new. 

The brunette turns off the main road onto a path that you would have missed yourself. It's not paved, which is why the car jolts quite a bit as you drive along. Trees and bushes line the path, and it is so narrow that it would be quite difficult if another car were to come towards you. If you were driving, you would have peed your pants for sure.

But not Charles. He drives as if he were driving this route every day. He knows where there are big rocks that he has to drive around to avoid damaging your car - which wouldn't be so dramatic - and also where he has to countersteer to avoid driving over potholes deeper than the Mariana Trench. 

When he stops after a few minutes, he turns off the car. Then he turns to you and takes off his sunglasses. "I know this place looks pretty shady, and I can understand if you don't trust me. But if you get out of here with me now, I promise you, you won't regret it." He pulls the key out of the ignition. "Unfortunately, we can't get any further here by car. That's why we have to continue on foot for a short while. If you want."

You took a leap of faith when you decided to drive here with him. And he didn't try to kill you last night. That's a big plus. And that's why you hold out your hand to him without giving it much thought. "As long as I can have the key."

A smile spreads across his face as he drops it into your hand. "Let's do it, then."

Charles wasn't lying - it's actually not a long walk. You walk side by side in silence, the key held tightly in your hand. There's not a whole lot of sunlight shining down on you through the trees, and you regret not taking a thicker jacket. You didn't expect it to be so cold in the shade. 

And then you arrive. At the most beautiful view in Monaco. 

You're standing on a small hill that can't be seen from the main road. There is a single tree here, which is why the sun can shine relentlessly on you despite the winter, warming the skin on your face. You take a few steps forward, not realizing that Charles is not following you as you take in the view.

From here, from this beautiful spot, you can actually overlook all of Monaco. The houses, the yachts, the luxury for which this country is famous. But you don't only see the typical postcard Monaco. You also see the green of the forests, small blue bays of the Côte d'Azur, which you have never seen - neither in reality nor on the Internet - and the Mediterranean Sea, which stretches out in front of you and whose sound you can hear despite the distance.

You feel Charles next to you, but can't tear your gaze away from the view. "It's..." You can't think of a suitable word to describe what you're looking at. None of the million words, both in English and the few in French, would do it justice.

"I know." His voice rings softly in your ears. "Shall we sit down?"

You settle down near the tree. The meadow is dry - thank goodness - as you sit down cross-legged, facing each other. For a few minutes, you enjoy the view in silence until Charles interrupts.

"My father showed me this spot when I was little." He plucks a few tufts of grass from the ground. "He liked to come down here when the world down there" - with a nod of his head, he points to beautiful Monaco - "got too stressful for him. Or too noisy. Or just too much." He smiles faintly. "With three young sons who liked to mess with each other, I can't blame him."

You watch as he grinds a few blades of grass between his index finger and thumb until they trickle down in small pieces. "Then he's lucky you're all grown up now."

Charles lips pucker into a thin line and he lets the remaining grass fall to the ground. He folds his hands in his lap and looks toward Monaco. Even though he has his sunglasses on, you can see he closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. "My father died when I was nineteen."

You don't know how to respond. You're glad Charles keeps talking. "Aside from my mother, he was the best and kindest person I know. He saw something good in everyone, even if they didn't deserve it. He..." Charles swallows the lump in his throat. "He always pushed me to be better, but always brought me back down to earth when I took off. He was never disappointed in me, ever."

You have to smile. "Sounds like a wonderful man."

Charles nods. "He was." He looks back down at his hands. "I miss him every day."

It's strange to hear someone talk about their parents like that when your own are the complete opposite. You can't remember your parents ever being proud of you. Their disappointment and criticism were your constant companions, which is why you couldn't wait to finally move out. And you haven't looked back since.

"I like to come here when I'm stuck. When I'm stuck in a situation where I wish I could ask him for advice. Or I'm feeling lonely." A faint smile returned to his face. "I may not get an answer here, but somehow - I don't know - I don't feel quite so alone anymore when I'm here."

You don't know what to say to him. You've known each other for less than twenty-four hours, were at each other's throats yesterday, and yet he's confided something so intangibly private to you, while you've been nothing but skeptical of him. Charles has revealed himself to you, laid bare some of his cards, made himself vulnerable. And he did so without much hesitation.

"You don't have to tell me who called you. Or whatever that person screwed up. But if you need to talk to someone, I'm here for you." He takes the sunglasses off his nose so he can really look at you, and hangs them on the collar of his sweater. The green of the woods behind you is beautiful, but nothing can compete with the green of his eyes. "That's what friends are for, after all."

You have to smile. "Are we?" You point your index finger at the distance between you. "Friends?"

You feel your question is justified. After all, your "friends" dropped you after ... after everything that happened.

Charles shrugs. "If that's what you want. After all, we live together. Of course, I don't want to force you into it, nor could I. You'd sooner smack me with a rolled-up magazine. I just think it's almost impossible for us not to become friends."

He is right. The apartment is not very big and there is no way you could avoid each other. Especially since you don't have any obligations anymore, no job to go to every day. You'll be hanging out at home all the time and you'll definitely spend all your time next to each other, as long as Charles has nothing to do either. 

That you two will become friends is inevitable.

One look at Charles and you'll throw all worries out the window. Charles, who lets you live in his apartment. Charles, who lets you have the bedroom. Charles, who can cook incredibly well. And Charles, who takes you to the most beautiful place, even though it means so much to him. 

He looks at you in surprise as you pull the car key out of your jacket pocket and toss it to him. Surprised, he catches it. "I guess I won't need to lock the bedroom door then, will I?"

Charles grins. "I promise not to kill you while you're sleeping." With his index finger, he makes a cross over where his heart beats in his chest. "I might try it when you're awake, though." He winks at you.

Your grin widens. "Luckily, there are still some magazines lying around at home that I can use to defend myself. Just please don't do it when I'm only wearing a towel. That would be an unfair fight."

Charles laughs. He laughs even though he has just expressed one of his deepest feelings and this place reminds him of someone he loved and lost. Even though he's poured his heart out to you. And yet he's sitting there, cross-legged, in front of you, and he's got his head thrown back and he's laughing so loud you're afraid he can be heard all the way to Monte-Carlo. 

And good heavens - it's the most beautiful sound you've heard in a long time. 

For a moment longer, you enjoy the moment. Despite the call and Charles past, a lightness has spread through you that you haven't felt in ages. The worries have not fallen off your shoulders, but they are no longer so heavy and you would like to thank Charles for that. But as soon as you can open your mouth, he's on his feet in front of you again, looking down at you. 

"I didn't promise you too much, did I?" Confused, you look at him. "I mean, about the view."

You shake your head and stand up as well. Side by side, you gaze down at Monaco. "It's the perfect postcard view."

Charles watches you while you take some photos with your camera. You try to take a good picture from every angle, from every position, and as far as you can tell from the small display, some of the shots don't turn out too badly. When you turn around, Charles is standing right behind you. 

"If you need another model," he puts his hands on his hips, "I'll volunteer."

You laugh. "Absolutely not. Or I'll get a crack in the lens."

He pushes his bottom lip forward and pouts. "Okay, wow. I'm going to take that personally. Then don't." He's about to turn away from you when you manage to grab the sleeve of his sweater. He glances briefly at where your fingers are gripping the fabric, and unsure, you let go. 

"All right. One photo." You raise your camera. Charles tries to get a decent stance, puts his hands in his pockets, then decides against it, crosses his arms in front of his chest, drops them again, runs his hands through his hair. "You'll have to stand in style for me to take a decent picture."

A slight blush creeps onto his cheeks. "What exactly do you want me to do? What would you like?"

You smile at him. "Relax. This isn't a professional shoot, after all." You lower the camera again. "You said you have two brothers. What's the funniest thing you've been through together?"

Charles thinks for a moment and starts to grin. As he tells you about a Christmas when Arthur had been in charge of dessert but unfortunately switched sugar for salt, making the food inedible, you snap a photo of him. His smile is wide, a dimple adorns his cheek, and the wind ruffles his hair. You don't need to snap another. This picture is perfect. 

" ... And then we went to McDonalds in the middle of the night to get ice cream," he finishes his story. He looks up. "Did you take a picture? I didn't even notice!" He stands close to you so he can see the camera's display. His perfume hits your nose. "Oh my God." He takes a step away from you, his grin wide. "I've never looked so good. Can you send this to me?"

The walk to the car takes longer than the walk there, in no small part because you don't really want to leave. You memorize every single step so you can find Monaco's most beautiful view again. 

"Thank you for bringing me here." 

He looks up from his feet and over at you. "I've never brought anyone here before." He smiles gently. "But somehow I felt like you needed this. To be away from it all for once."

"I appreciate that very much. I promise I won't tell anyone about this." You draw a cross with your index finger where your heart beats. Just like he just did. You know how much this place means to him. Never in your life would you bring anyone else here. 

Your car comes into your field of vision. In a moment you would drive back home and everything you successfully repressed until just now would be waiting for you there. But it still can't spoil your mood. Not after the beautiful morning. 

You hear Charles inhale to say something when suddenly his phone rings. Annoyed, he pulls it out of his pocket and looks at the screen before tossing you the car keys. You almost drop them on the floor. "I need to make a quick call." His voice tone is cold, definitely not as warm and mellow as it was just a few minutes ago. "Go ahead and get in the car. I'll be right behind you."

You nod to him and walk the few feet. You catch the beginning of the conversation anyway.

"Nous en avons déjà parlé. Je t'ai dit que je ne rentrerais pas chez moi pour le moment. Non, écoute, je n'ai ni le temps ni les nerfs pour en parler avec toi. Je suis en déplacement en ce moment. Cela ne te concerne pas". coming home – discuss – not your business

You unlock the car and plant yourself in the passenger seat, which, unlike a moment ago, no longer feels too wrong. While you can no longer understand what Charles is saying, judging by his facial expressions and gestures, it's definitely not a pleasant conversation. His face is flushed and he runs his hand through his hair several times before rolling his eyes. 

When his gaze catches yours, you feel caught. As if you're watching him do something private that's none of your business. And for a moment you think that Charles is annoyed, telling you to do something other than watch him. But he just tilts his head and smiles softly before raising a finger in the air with his free hand. His mouth moves and it looks like "One minute" and some French word you can't make out by lip-reading.

You also answer him with a smile and look at the photo on the camera again. It's a little blurry and definitely not your best work, but it was taken from a beautiful moment and is one of your favorite pictures for that alone. 

"Sorry." You barely notice Charles sitting down next to you in the car.

You drop the key into his open hand and look at him with concern. "Are you okay?"

He breathes in and out before putting the key in the ignition and letting the engine rev. He doesn't give you an answer to your question, but starts a new topic. "We're going to see Joris. I'd love to know how he got the idea to rent out the apartment without discussing it first." He doesn't smile, but his voice is no longer so callous. You just nod. 

The situation is tense, and there's nothing you can do to defuse it except sit quietly and let Charles feel his feelings without judging him. You'd like to reach for his hand and squeeze it so he knows he's not alone. But you don't dare. The look on his face when you just touched his sweater-not even Charles per se-and the thought that you might be crossing a line burns into your brain. 

You interlace your fingers in your lap and look out the window.

Of course, you don't notice that Charles' gaze briefly falls on your hands and that he wishes he could take yours in his for a little comfort.

next part

[magicalgirlmindcrank]

Legit not tryna drum up drama but whats your beef with demilypyro? I follow you both but i guees not for long enough to be in the know.

We have beef with Demily like iHop has steak. Yeah it's on the menu, but we're no porterhouse. That said-

She has awful takes about pretty much everything from games to social issues, suffers extreme pick-me-ism, is like two steps away from being an open transmedicalist, and she's just extremely annoying. She seemingly can't go a month without saying some offensive shit about her fellow transwomen or letting her dutch upbringing show. Whenever people bring up that she did or said something shitty she hides behind her autism even when it's not relevant and wouldn't excuse it if it was. Or in case of her saying something racist again, her grandfather being Moroccan or whatever, so she's technically poc so it's automatically fine. Just ignore the fact she's speaking over Black and Latin American people who have actually grown up as such.

On top of it all she often weaponizes her follower base, getting them to attack anyone who is unlucky enough to talk about shitty things she's done somewhere she sees. I won't mention their names, but users have gotten dogpiled and sent death threats cuz of her. She's just immensely toxic and is almost categorically allergic to growing as a person.

None of this is even getting into specific shitty things Demily has done, like making fun of the looks of other transwomen calling them 'it' and such, or her saying passing makes her better at being trans than a transwoman who doesn't pass, or the most recent thing where she puts a transgirl hook up on blast for having ED saying it's gross.

There's funnier trans streamers on this site who don't suck. There's funnier trans vtubers on this site who don't suck.

[blubberquark]

Auto-Generated Junk Web Sites

I don't know if you heard the complaints about Google getting worse since 2018, or about Amazon getting worse. Some people think Google got worse at search. I think Google got worse because the web got worse. Amazon got worse because the supply side on Amazon got worse, but ultimately Amazon is to blame for incentivising the sale of more and cheaper products on its platform.

In any case, if you search something on Google, you get a lot of junk, and if you search for a specific product on Amazon, you get a lot of junk, even though the process that led to the junk is very different.

I don't subscribe to the "Dead Internet Theory", the idea that most online content is social media and that most social media is bots. I think Google search has gotten worse because a lot of content from as recently as 2018 got deleted, and a lot of web 1.0 and the blogosphere got deleted, comment sections got deleted, and content in the style of web 1.0 and the blogosphere is no longer produced. Furthermore, many links are now broken because they don't directly link to web pages, but to social media accounts and tweets that used to aggregate links.

I don't think going back to web 1.0 will help discoverability, and it probably won't be as profitable or even monetiseable to maintain a useful web 1.0 page compared to an entertaining but ephemeral YouTube channel. Going back to Web 1.0 means more long-term after-hours labour of love site maintenance, and less social media posting as a career.

Anyway, Google has gotten noticeably worse since GPT-3 and ChatGPT were made available to the general public, and many people blame content farms with language models and image synthesis for this. I am not sure. If Google had started to show users meaningless AI generated content from large content farms, that means Google has finally lost the SEO war, and Google is worse at AI/language models than fly-by-night operations whose whole business model is skimming clicks off Google.

I just don't think that's true. I think the reality is worse.

Real web sites run by real people are getting overrun by AI-generated junk, and human editors can't stop it. Real people whose job it is to generate content are increasingly turning in AI junk at their jobs.

Furthermore, even people who are setting up a web site for a local business or an online presence for their personal brand/CV are using auto-generated text.

I have seen at least two different TV commercials by web hosting and web design companies that promoted this. Are you starting your own business? Do you run a small business? A business needs a web site. With our AI-powered tools, you don't have to worry about the content of your web site. We generate it for you.

There are companies out there today, selling something that's probably a re-labelled ChatGPT or LLaMA plus Stable Diffusion to somebody who is just setting up a bicycle repair shop. All the pictures and written copy on the web presence for that repair shop will be automatically generated.

We would be living in a much better world if there was a small number of large content farms and bot operators poisoning our search results. Instead, we are living in a world where many real people are individually doing their part.

[canmom]

Hypothetical Decentralised Social Media Protocol Stack

if we were to dream up the Next Social Media from first principles we face three problems. one is scaling hosting, the second is discovery/aggregation, the third is moderation.

hosting

hosting for millions of users is very very expensive. you have to have a network of datacentres around the world and mechanisms to sync the data between them. you probably use something like AWS, and they will charge you an eye-watering amount of money for it. since it's so expensive, there's no way to break even except by either charging users to access your service (which people generally hate to do) or selling ads, the ability to intrude on their attention to the highest bidder (which people also hate, and go out of their way to filter out). unless you have a lot of money to burn, this is a major barrier.

the traditional internet hosts everything on different servers, and you use addresses that point you to that server. the problem with this is that it responds poorly to sudden spikes in attention. if you self-host your blog, you can get DDOSed entirely by accident. you can use a service like cloudflare to protect you but that's $$$. you can host a blog on a service like wordpress, or a static site on a service like Github Pages or Neocities, often for free, but that broadly limits interaction to people leaving comments on your blog and doesn't have the off-the-cuff passing-thought sort of interaction that social media does.

the middle ground is forums, which used to be the primary form of social interaction before social media eclipsed them, typically running on one or a few servers with a database + frontend. these are viable enough, often they can be run with fairly minimal ads or by user subscriptions (the SomethingAwful model), but they can't scale indefinitely, and each one is a separate bubble. mastodon is a semi-return to this model, with the addition of a means to use your account on one bubble to interact with another ('federation').

the issue with everything so far is that it's an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach. you depend on the forum, instance, or service paying its bills to stay up. if it goes down, it's just gone. and database-backend models often interact poorly with the internet archive's scraping, so huge chunks won't be preserved.

scaling hosting could theoretically be solved by a model like torrents or IPFS, in which every user becomes a 'server' for all the posts they download, and you look up files using hashes of the content. if a post gets popular, it also gets better seeded! an issue with that design is archival: there is no guarantee that stuff will stay on the network, so if nobody is downloading a post, it is likely to get flushed out by newer stuff. it's like link rot, but it happens automatically.

IPFS solves this by 'pinning': you order an IPFS node (e.g. your server) not to flush a certain file so it will always be available from at least one source. they've sadly mixed this up in cryptocurrency, with 'pinning services' which will take payment in crypto to pin your data. my distaste for a technology designed around red queen races aside, I don't know how pinning costs compare to regular hosting costs.

theoretically you could build a social network on a backbone of content-based addressing. it would come with some drawbacks (posts would be immutable, unless you use some indirection to a traditional address-based hosting) but i think you could make it work (a mix of location-based addressing for low-bandwidth stuff like text, and content-based addressing for inline media). in fact, IPFS has the ability to mix in a bit of address-based lookup into its content-based approach, used for hosting blogs and the like.

as for videos - well, BitTorrent is great for distributing video files. though I don't know how well that scales to something like Youtube. you'd need a lot of hard drive space to handle the amount of Youtube that people typically watch and continue seeding it.

aggregation/discovery

the next problem is aggregation/discovery. social media sites approach this problem in various ways. early social media sites like LiveJournal had a somewhat newsgroup-like approach, you'd join a 'community' and people would post stuff to that community. this got replaced by the subscription model of sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where every user is simultaneously an author and a curator, and you subscribe to someone to see what posts they want to share.

this in turn got replaced by neural network-driven algorithms which attempt to guess what you'll want to see and show you stuff that's popular with whatever it thinks your demographic is. that's gotta go, or at least not be an intrinsic part of the social network anymore.

it would be easy enough to replicate the 'subscribe to see someone's recommended stuff' model, you just need a protocol for pointing people at stuff. (getting analytics such as like/reblog counts would be more difficult!) it would probably look similar to RSS feeds: you upload a list of suitably formatted data, and programs which speak that protocol can download it.

the problem of discovery - ways to find strangers who are interested in the same stuff you are - is more tricky. if we're trying to design this as a fully decentralised, censorship-resistant network, we face the spam problem. any means you use to broadcast 'hi, i exist and i like to talk about this thing, come interact with me' can be subverted by spammers. either you restrict yourself entirely to spreading across a network of curated recommendations, or you have to have moderation.

moderation

moderation is one of the hardest problems of social networks as they currently exist. it's both a problem of spam (the posts that users want to see getting swamped by porn bots or whatever) and legality (they're obliged to remove child porn, beheading videos and the like). the usual solution is a combination of AI shit - does the robot think this looks like a naked person - and outsourcing it to poorly paid workers in (typically) African countries, whose job is to look at reports of the most traumatic shit humans can come up with all day and confirm whether it's bad or not.

for our purposes, the hypothetical decentralised network is a protocol to help computers find stuff, not a platform. we can't control how people use it, and if we're not hosting any of the bad shit, it's not on us. but spam moderation is a problem any time that people can insert content you did not request into your feed.

possibly this is where you could have something like Mastodon instances, with their own moderation rules, but crucially, which don't host the content they aggregate. so instead of having 'an account on an instance', you have a stable address on the network, and you submit it to various directories so people can find you. by keeping each one limited in scale, it makes moderation more feasible. this is basically Reddit's model: you have topic-based hubs which people can subscribe to, and submit stuff to.

the other moderation issue is that there is no mechanism in this design to protect from mass harassment. if someone put you on the K*w*f*rms List of Degenerate Trannies To Suicidebait, there'd be fuck all you can do except refuse to receive contact from strangers. though... that's kind of already true of the internet as it stands. nobody has solved this problem.

to sum up

primarily static sites 'hosted' partly or fully on IPFS and BitTorrent

a protocol for sharing content you want to promote, similar to RSS, that you can aggregate into a 'feed'

directories you can submit posts to which handle their own moderation

no ads, nobody makes money off this

honestly, the biggest problem with all this is mostly just... getting it going in the first place. because let's be real, who but tech nerds is going to use a system that requires you to understand fuckin IPFS? until it's already up and running, this idea's got about as much hope as getting people to sign each others' GPG keys. it would have to have the sharp edges sanded down, so it's as easy to get on the Hypothetical Decentralised Social Network Protocol Stack as it is to register an account on tumblr.

but running over it like this... I don't think it's actually impossible in principle. a lot of the technical hurdles have already been solved. and that's what I want the Next Place to look like.

[getvalentined]

The Big Patreon Breakdown

Okay, Patreon's Discord Q&A ended on the 16th, and I've been waiting to see if anything else happened—like maybe a a public announcement from Patreon instead of emails sent exclusively to creators and a video hidden on the CEO's personal YT page—but nothing has happened, so I'm gonna do a breakdown of what we're looking at.

This is an EXTREMELY long post. I am not putting it behind a cut. I'm not sorry.

Short attention span version here.

—

I. The iOS processing fees are a smokescreen covering up the actual devastating changes that Patreon is forcing creators into.

The iOS fees are trash, 30 percent is extortion and we all know it—but that's not the biggest issue at hand here. Patreon is using this event as an excuse to change the entire structure of the creator side of their platform, and blaming Apple to avoid getting backlash.

They tripled their platform and processing fees in 2017, passing it on to patrons without notice, and the subsequent hemorrhage of paying users forced them to walk it back. They tried to force everyone onto their rolling billing model in 2021, and the entire community pushed back so hard they were forced again to walk it back.

This time, they're doing both and insisting it's Apple's fault, and everyone is taking that at face value because Apple sucks. And Apple does suck, but Patreon is getting what they've wanted for years by catering to Apple.

Oh, also, they're forcing creators to notify their patrons of the billing model changes (with a suggested template that explicitly refers to it as a decision made by the creator, even though nobody is making any decisions here except Jack Conte) rather than doing it themselves.

II. Patreon is not going to change course for any reason. This is set in stone.

There are multiple proofs for this, including but not limited to:

One-on-one calls between the platform's top earners and the CEO, Jack Conte, wherein the vibe was apparently not "What can we do to support your business in order to retain your place on our platform?" but rather "We know that the only way this works is if we don't do it, but how can we keep you from complaining about it any more than you already have?" One creator explained in granular detail how they run their business through this platform and why changing their billing model would ruin literally everything, and Conte responded with "Is this an essential part of your offering?"

The Patreon Team on Discord has continued to shut down all discussion of alternative options with assertions that Apple won't allow it, even if those alternatives were suggested based on legal precedent set by lawsuits against Apple, and the declaration that they will not be allowing the app to be removed from the App Store no matter what because it's the single most important and integral avenue of creator growth on the platform. (Put a pin in that.)

The platform's top earner is on the pay-per-creation billing model, the one that is going to be hit the hardest; creators on this model stand to lose literally 90 percent of their income overnight. This creator and his team were as blindsided as the rest of us, and they've been offered no assistance except for a complex math equation to try to calculate how much they should be charging people on fixed-price tiers, and no assurance except "the iOS app is the platform's highest source of engagement and is necessary to help you continue to grow."

Pay-upfront (PUF) and pay-per-creation (PPC) billing is going away for new accounts and anyone who doesn't opt out via Patreon's convoluted backend before November 1 of this year, and anyone who doesn't manually switch over to their rolling billing cycle will be automatically pushed into it on November 1, 2025. This means that PUF creators no longer have the promise of a steady paycheck when they need it, early enough in the month to pay rent and bills, while PPC creators are losing their entire business model all at once, which has resulted in a loss of 75 to 90 percent of income for multiple PPC creators who have tried to switch to the rolling billing structure in the past. They are killing these people's livelihoods and they know it, they have seen the data to prove it, but they will not be swayed.

III. Patreon claims the iOS app is the highest source of engagement on the platform at 40 percent—but will not define what "engagement" means, and staff refuse to share detailed analytics or data on the revenue share coming from the app.

Several creators, some with a couple dozen patrons and some with thousands, polled their audience to get a feel for how many of them used the app. Consistently across every creative industry, genre, and form of media, the answer was 2 percent or less. The average across a dozen-plus polls of actual active patrons, numbering into the thousands, is that around 85 percent of patrons access the platform exclusively via the web, whether on desktop or mobile. The majority didn't even know there was an app.

Further, Patreon would not explain what "engagement" means, but did not deny the possibility that dismissing an app notification on your phone counts as an "engagement."

When Patreon was asked for data on how often people pledged to support a creator via the iOS app, the only response was the claim that information is "sensitive to [Patreon's] business" and can't be shared. In a creator-exclusive server. With the people who bring that revenue onto the platform in the first place. And have our own analytics that we can look at individually, which show an average of 0 to 0.5 percent revenue from the iOS app.

IV. Patreon does not have a refund policy in place to work with Apple, and has given no implications of intention to work with Apple to shorten the time it takes for funds from iOS purchases to be paid out to creators, which is currently 75 days.

Yes, you read that correctly: at the moment, it takes 75 days before creators can cash out funds processed via iOS. On top of that, Apple's refund policy is 60 days, and the creator is not involved in the process whatsoever—if a malicious actor pledges to your page, downloads all your work over the course of a month, and then pings Apple for a refund? Apple gets to decide whether or not they get that refund.

Patreon's general refund policy is that it's up to the creator 99.9 percent of the time, with very rare cases of fraud requiring Patreon's intervention. In the case of pledges and Commerce sales via iOS, the creator has no say, and Patreon currently has no policy to protect them. They've stated that they're working on a refund policy that will work with Apple's guidelines to keep everyone happy, but at this point we all know what that means—they're just going to use Apple's refund policy.

They also wouldn't say whether or not creators would be on the hook for Apple's added processing fees, as is usually the case with other big payment processors, but it sounds like we are! So if someone pays $14.50 on the iOS app, the creator gets $10, can't pay it out, and then the malicious actor can call for a refund weeks later and the creator will owe $14.50—in spite of only ever having seen $10 and never being able to pay it out because the 75 hold hadn't passed. Sounds great!

V. Patreon's own graphics meant to explain why this is necessary and how the new fees work are not correct.

I'm gonna let these mostly speak for themselves:

The sale price listed on this graphic is $10, but adding together the three fees listed gives a total of $11.35. This is likely a copying error, as 4.35 is clearly not 30% of 10, but the lack of attention to detail on one of the only two pieces of official material that we have which refer directly to the numbers on which Patreon is signing away our livelihoods is slightly concerning.

This one totals up to 103 percent! (Actually closer to 104, since I rounded Android and Mobile down by about a quarter percent each.) The 40 percent figure on the iOS bar is based on the figure given to us by Patreon staff, and was used to place the markers to denote individual percentages on the other three.

Patreon made these and gave them to us with the assertion that they were proof that the iOS app is indispensable—why should we trust anything they say about numbers if the charts they gave us are literally impossible?

VI. Patreon refuses to offer any promises to 18+ creators that they will not be removed from the app in order to adhere to Apple's content guidelines.

Instead, Patreon staff's response to this request for reassurance is "We have no plans to remove 18+ creators from the Patreon app." You may note that's phrased very specifically, and leaves a hole big enough to drive a freight train full of iPhones straight through. They have no plans to remove 18+ creators from the app. When asked for clarification on this, confirmation that they would not be removing us from the platform if Apple pushed them to do so regardless of whether or not they have plans, this sentiment was simply repeated in more words and with more apologies, along with a reminder that Patreon has had to change their terms for 18+ creators several times already in order to keep up with laws and competition.

VII. All the features Patreon is insisting are integral for creator growth are inaccessible to 18+ creators, and questions about this were either dismissed, redirected, or ignored.

Remember how the iOS app is the single most important and integral avenue for character growth on the platform? Well, 18+ creators are not discoverable on the platform, regardless of the avenue of access. We are not visible on the app unless you have it installed, are logged in, are already following us on the platform, and click an external link to be directed to our pages from somewhere else via a mobile web browser. There is no way to find us on the platform itself.

Other features that staff insist are necessary for growth to which 18+ creators do not have access:

Patreon creator search (on web, Android and iOS apps)

Mass post editing (now called the "Library," which reads as "Something Went Wrong" for me and other 18+ creators who tried to get to it)

On-platform video hosting

Built-in cross-creator recommendations

All on-platform "commerce" features (both digital and physical goods)

The ability to market ourselves by linking to Patreon from our social media and vice-versa (we're basically not allowed to do this or risk being banned)

Yeah, about that first and that last point. We're hidden from searches on the platform, and we can't link to our pages from social media or risk permanent suspension. We cannot grow in this fashion at all, and in fact 18+ creators are getting all the downsides of this switch (except maybe for the app fee, since you can't fucking find us to pledge on the app) with none of the benefits. Nothing they are doing here will help us grow, because they've kneecapped us already. Now they're going after our capacity to obtain a steady paycheck at the beginning of the month, too.

VIII. Patreon's iOS app is currently (as of August 18, 2024) in violation of Apple's guidelines for app ratings; staff did not state any intention to become compliant by raising the app's rating as needed to maintain their 18+ creator community.

The App Store guidelines on creator apps state that they must be rated equal to the highest rated creator content on their platform. In spite of hosting 18+ content, which requires a 17+ rating per Apple, Patreon is rated 12+ in the App Store. Increasing the rating to 17+ would cut out the entire market of wealthy teenagers with iPhones, and since everything else being done here is intended to please Apple, it's unlikely this will be the point that Patreon finally gives an inch for its creators. The exact response from staff on this was "We hear and acknowledge your inputs on the app rating and are exploring our options there." Their "options" on this are to increase the rating, or to remove all 18+ content from the platform. That's it. Those are their options. Why do those need exploring, if they really give a shit about the 18+ community?

I know a lot of people out there are going to say that it would be nice if Patreon would "get rid of the porn," but you need to understand something: 18+ content is not all sexual.

18+ content can and does also include:

Horror (particularly body horror, which is explicitly or implicitly banned on all current adult-specific creator platforms, leaving me nowhere to go when Patreon kicks me)

True crime (murder, violence, theft, etc., is all 18+)

Health (blood/discussion of blood is 18+ regardless of context)

Education (what if you learn about war? that's 18+)

Trauma recovery (the word "r#pe" makes everything around it 18+)

Profanity (ko-fi marks creators 18+ for saying "fuck")

Languages (because you might learn profanity)

Weaponsmithing (because weapons are dangerous)

Leatherworking (because leather can be a fetish)

Shoemaking (feet can also be a fetish)

...even more I'm not bothering to list here.

Implying that they somehow didn't know about this extremely important part of the guidelines—which are being used as an excuse to force the top earner on the platform to ruin his entire business model—is absolute nonsense. Patreon knows about this requirement, they haven't taken any steps to comply based on their current creator population, and I will be shocked if they do. Much easier to just kick us all off, since we can barely use the damn platform as it is.

—

The entire thing makes no sense. Patreon is losing out on so much money by doing this—they're crippling all their highest-earning creators to keep the iOS app running, and it's going to hurt everyone except for Apple. The only reason I can think that they would refuse to budge on this is that there's something else going on behind the scenes between Patreon and Apple. That, or the company is intentionally throwing itself into an extremely drawn out death spiral. But we all know which of those is the more likely scenario here.

[huntinglove]

Undertale Headcanons!!

Shout out to @magical-batt for letting me go wild in our DMs so I could come up with all of these, ily bestie 🫂💙💙💙

Let me start off with my fave, of course!

Napstablook:

• Listens to everything, and I mean everything. Their playlist is incredibly random so they usually skip a bunch of songs until the right one pops up. They usually prefer music with mostly instrumental sections or calming melodies, it helps them feel less tense when they're by themselves

• Maladaptive daydreamer. When they need a break from their thoughts, they put on their headphones, choose a couple songs they like and let their mind go wherever it wants. It usually helps them revisit memories with a different view, as well as think of new music and life scenarios. It does, however, take up most of their days and usually ends up making them isolated from everyone else

• They don't necessarily need anything revolving around physical health, but it makes them feel more alive, so they actively choose to do it. Eating, drinking, sleeping, getting out of the house from time to time, and even allowing themselves to touch things and be touched by other people/monsters, they can feel and experience everything just fine

• Being raised by and around their cousins, they always believe that they're as loud as the other Blooks which, in turn, makes their voice extra quiet whenever they speak. They also space out their words so that they don't speak too fast, to make it easier for others to understand what they say

• Time and time again they try to find an empty spot to relax in, but they either get interrupted or someone's already at their usual spot. They like to stay in places where they can connect with their physical self a bit more, places with a lot of textures or different temperatures, it gets them out of their comfort zone by edging them into reality

• Their UnderNet profile has been flagged as a bot account by the moderators, because they haven't chosen a profile picture, banner or made any posts since their introduction to the site. It causes the application to automatically reject their friend requests towards other users, they are unaware of this and just believe that people are rejecting their requests on purpose

Toriel:

• Can concentrate better while eating snacks! She'd come up with responses to citizens' letters while eating some snails

• Always has some leftover flour on her clothes and fur, some monsters are intimidated by that because they assume it's dust

• Prefers to come up with bedtime stories instead of reading them! That way Chara and Asriel could relate to the characters on a personal level

• Greatly dislikes any type of shoes and socks, due to sensory issues

• Keeps her nails/claws trimmed and rounded so that she won't accidentally hurt anyone

Asgore:

• Has very sensitive horns so he has to wear a small crown, that won't accidentally touch or brush against them

• Pockets are always full of junk. Flower petals, candies (and wrappers), toy rings, bandaids, you name it!

• Needs glasses to read but absolutely refuses to wear them. Usually asks Undyne to help him read citizen letters because of it, she's not very good at it...

• Avoids being in the throne room unless necessary, he feels lonely in there. The echo whenever he hums or talks while in there makes him feel a deep sadness

• Nightmares. So many nightmares. It's what made him learn how to make tea in the first place, to help him out with anxiety and insomnia. He knows what he's done and he's never forgiven himself for it

Asriel:

• Gently headbutts people when he's upset as a way to say "stop that" or "can we go somewhere else" instead of using his words. He got the habit while he was very young and never really grew out of it

• Indecisive to the extreme, he loves a lot of things in a very intense way, it's impossible to make him pick a single one. Favorite color? He'll name as many as he can. Trying to order food? Hops through most of the menu...

• Struggles to grow fur below the neck, so he's always cold. Toriel has knit him many sweaters because of it, but he usually wears whichever ones match with Frisk or Chara

• Prefers to play pretend instead of using toys, he's imaginative and creative and way too scared to break expensive things that were gifted to him

• His ears are his comfort. If he's scared of something, he'll use them to cover his eyes. If he's upset, he'll pet and stroke them to sooth himself. If he's nervous he'll tug on them and have to physically make himself stop before it starts to hurt

Chara:

• Biter. They bite anything, anyone and everything they can, including themselves! They can't grow their nails or cuticles because of it, which makes their fingers be constantly wrapped in bandages. Their toys and pens' only difference to Asriel's are the bite marks and chewed up plastic

• Had a large human family and was pretty much neglected because most of their siblings were young and needed their parents' full attention. Plays a bit rough with Asriel but never actually means to hurt him and feels horrible if it happens

• Insanely curious and adventurous, if it were up to them they'd have check under every rock, over each of the cave's walls and all over the Underground for anything new to see and learn about.

• Picky eater and hypermobile! They had a hard time getting used to monster food and would usually request meals that Toriel hadn't even heard about. Allergic to cinnamon and would end up sneezing for hours because of it. Loves to show Asriel cool tricks by bending their body in ways that most people can't, he'd either find it super cool or super scary

• Was mentally ill at a young age. They were overly suspicious of the Dremurrs for a long time, made up the name Chara when Asriel introduced himself, but got attached to it as they felt more at home within the Underground. They've dealt with depression for as long as they could remember and didn't feel like they deserved their new home

Flowey:

(yes he's Asriel but he wasn't acting like himself)

• Incredibly uncomfortable with his own body and how limited it feels most of the time, still maintaining some of his own characteristics, he's always cold and can't soothe himself with his fluffy ears

• He was potted and brought home by Toriel one time. He was very snappy and ended up hurting Toriel during an argument, he ran away and Toriel hasn't tried to bring him back ever since. He has never forgiven himself for making his mom cry

• Visits Waterfall quite often, specifically because of the echo flowers, in the hopes that one of his previous conversations with Chara or his parents will still be there, somehow. He met Papyrus there and he genuinely saw him as a friend, but his bitterness and guilt drove them apart

• Oscillates between extreme guilt and pure resentment very quickly. It's hard for him to tell where his blame begins and ends, which makes him mad at everyone AND himself a lot of the time. He doesn't need sunlight to feed himself but it's the most isolated part of the Underground, so he always stays at the entrance of the mountain

• He has a hard time entertaining himself or falling asleep, so he usually stalks random monsters to distract himself. He's read through all the journals at the Book Acres, heard every gossip there is and spent hours on end watching the Ice Wolf at Snowdin

Napstabot:

• They didn't really understand the appeal of a body until they actively began craving someone's touch. They were very nervous to ask Alphys and Mettaton for help, out of fear of judgement, but the two were absolutely ecstatic about it

• They made a folder with reference images of what they'd like their robot body to look like and Alphys checked in with them with each design decision until everything was perfect for them, they were very happy about how the final product turned out

• It took them a while to learn how to walk and how to adjust their voice speakers, but but other than that they were incredibly comfortable with their body, even if they were a bit more conscious about being perceived by others because of it

• Mettaton took them shopping for clothes and shoes to match their new style and they found out that they're a huge fan of hoodies and sneakers. If they're feeling fancy they'll wear pants and shirts as well! Jeans are more stylish but they prefer black sweatpants

• Out of all physical experiences they've had, their favorites so far have been: cheek rubs, hair playing, hand holding, kisses and hugging. When they feel too tired to be physical, they'll have their ghost form exit the robotic shell and just relax while it's on charge

Mettaton:

• Having a physical form makes him euphoric in of itself, so he doesn't care about wearing dresses, skirts, or anything that may be considered "feminine" or "girly" by others. He's comfort in his own skin AND he looks good in all the outfits he wears and he absolutely knows it

• Loud and proud about his transition and identity, he wants anyone else in the Underground who may feel the way he felt to know there's hope and time! He gifted one of his fans the dress he wore during a play because he resonated with her but didn't want to tell her she was a trans woman bluntly

• Writes all his own movies and songs but usually has Alphys direct things if other actors are involved, both because he trusts her and because he doesn't want to lose his temper and mess up the MTT brand name. He always includes an inside joke in his movies, for his family and for his friends who are keeping an eye on the screen!

• Loves his EX body the most but usually sticks with box mode when he needs more heavy duty presentations or work, he knows Alphys wouldn't mind (or charge him for) fixing him up, but he doesn't like taking up too much of her time, especially considering that they're quite close and hang out quite a bit as it is

• During the design process for his EX design, him and Alphys binged A LOT of animes and basically scrapped up a bunch of characteristics he liked about multiple of the characters to build him the perfect appearance. He cried for a long time when he first got into his EX body, he finally felt and looked like himself, just like he had always dreamed of

Mad Mew Mew:

• Short temper and extremely protective of her family and friends, but when thanked for looking out for them she'll act pouty and scoff, pretending to not know what they're talking about. She cares, but raging is her main priority

• LOVES everything pink, shiny, frilly and doll-like, it brings her euphoria and comfort. Battling also gives her euphoria, being able to experience touch, hits and even slashes in her own skin reminds her of her physical existence in a fairly positive (and dangerous) light

• Has a bunch of chew necklaces for when she feels pent up but doesn't actually want to fight or hurt anyone, most of them match with her outfits and are super sturdy to the touch! She has also trained herself out of cursing via echolalia, using "mew~" instead!

• Can and will hide weapons within the layers of her skirt, not in a way to be sexual, but as a way to be tactical and to surprise her opponents. She has also stocked up on knives since her encounter with Frisk, just in case

• Loves spending time with her cousins but acts like a tsundere when they're near. They absolutely know it's all an act and enjoy her company regardless of her sassy attitude. She gives hugs strong enough to crack ribs and bend metal, which usually worry Mettaton a bit...

Sans:

• Very in tune with his magical abilities, in and out of combat. He's mastered teleportation and time manipulation, which makes him extremely intimidating to those aware of his capabilities, which is why he's only demonstrated it to Frisk. They may be his friend, but the fact that they're a human will always be his priority

• Him and Papyrus are twins, and Sans is older by just a few minutes. When he feels like making Papyrus slightly grumpy he playfully calls him "little bro" but he'd never do it to actually upset him. He doesn't remember much from before moving into Snowdin, nor does he care to reconnect with his past

• Even though he's not religious, he feels a special and divine connection with dogs, for some reason. He also doesn't mind how fluffy and warm they are, so he always welcomes them to his home and work stations, much to Papyrus' demise

• He has a lot of junk in his room, usually he mixes a bunch of it up for some random inventions, or to make some harmless prank material by himself, since he's not found a lot of stores who still do tabs, knowing his infamous habits of never paying said tabs...

• Magically strong, physically weak. Sans rarely has the energy to take proper care of himself, let alone do chores or keep up with Papyrus' energy. Life in the Underground is comfortable enough for him and he's not desperate for a change in scenery or for a new flame of hope, he's happy to sit back and settle with what he's got

Papyrus:

• Can't sit still for the life of him. He always needs to fidget with something, especially his clothes, he needs to make sure he looks presentable so crinkles and smudges are a no-go! If he's just sitting down, hell usually be tapping his feet or bouncing one of his legs, he doesn't notice himself doing it

• His scarf was originally a cape that he had made for his costume, but he kept on tripping over it and getting it caught on things while trying to set up his puzzles so he decided to just cut out a chunk of it. He uses said chunk as a dish rag now

• He's read every book in Snowdin's library and knows a lot about humans (from a monster's perspective) and he genuinely believes that there are no bad humans, just bad capturers. Also finds humans incredibly cute, like one would a pet

• It's incredibly hard to get him to be genuinely upset, but a nice way to do it would be to hurt Sans. He has no idea about his brother's capabilities so he assumes he's weak and lazy, so depending on what someone did to his brother they'd either get a scolding, or some terrifying attacks that no one knew he could conjure

• He likes to do multiple things at the same time, so he'll usually be working on crosswords, word finders and so on while MTT TV is on. Sometimes the storyline gets interesting enough for him to drop whatever else he's doing and focus on the show instead, he's especially fond of soap operas and quizzes!

Undyne:

• Loves doing tricks with her spears! She can spin them, juggle them and balance them on her tongue! She's gotten hit in the face with them quite a few times, while practicing said tricks, the only monster who knows about it is the dummy in front of her house, but they don't judge her

• Her job essentially forced her to lose her sleep schedule entirely. She always has to be prepared in case the king calls her into duty, especially if it's about the appearance of a human. Because of that she is a very light sleeper and usually wakes up with a nasty temper

• She's always looking for ways to increase her resistance and even tried to train in the Hotlands a couple of times, but she never made it past the bridge until her chase with Frisk. She has gotten herself sick multiple times by training with Papyrus at Snowdin without wearing armor, for resilience's sake

• She's lost her parents to one of the previous humans who came to the Underground, because of that she sees Asgore as a father figure! They've both spent countless nights talking to one another and learning about thselves while on look-out. He trained her into a powerful warrior and loved her into the (fish)woman she is

• She loves anime, especially the ones that have to do with magical girls! She enjoys shonen but doesn't understand why most of it centers around guys and makes girls out to be weak or cowardly, so magical girls have a soft spot in her heart. She knows it would be terribly impractical but she'd really love to have a suit of armor that resembled the ones in Fisher Sun!

Alphys:

• She has lots of comfort foods stocked away at her home and laboratory, all of which are fairly quick easy to make! She can cook full and proper meals, but she doesn't usually have enough time for it because of her job. She misses baking and cooking for herself and potential friends/guests

• She has given up most of her hobbies for her work life and only got into anime after becomg the royal scientist! It's a hobbie that works with her profession and that allows her mind to wander off to better places when she has to deal with questionable procedures...

• She feels awful about the amalgamations, even if the experimentations were consented to. She feels too much guilt to be able to contact their families about what happened, leaving their letters unopened. Sometimes she spends the night at the lab to keep them company, finding herself comfortably tucked into one of the medical beds when she wakes up in the morning

• Her tail is semi-prehensible and she sometimes uses it to stop herself from knocking something over while turning too quickly. The spikes on it can poke out further if she feels threatened or angry. It also expresses her emotions, wagging if she's happy, excited or enamored!!

• Mettaton has given her a few tips on how to gain some confidence and helped her choose outfits and glasses that value her body and face shape properly, it makes her feel pretty but she still struggles with her self esteem and confidence a lot of the time

Muffet:

• A wonderful boss, all of her spiderling employees are very well paid and have many benefits to working under her wing! It also explains why her baked goods are so expensive, considering the amount of workers she's taking care of

• Her pet was a result of one of Alphys' experimentations, it escaped the laboratory when it was still very small and ended up growing exponentially as it was fed and taken care of by Muffet. It's a grumpy creature to anyone who isn't an arachnid, constantly pampered and spoiled rotten by it's owner

• All of her merchandise is home made, which means that some of her first few batches were highly poisonous and dangerous to ingest. It took her a few tries to get the recipes just right, bringing immediate relief and delight to her customers and venomous employees

• She really cares about her appearance and can take hours on end to style her hair and paint her claws, especially considering the extra pairs of arms! She doesn't enjoy lipstick, mainly because it doesn't frame her lips properly, because of her fangs and overbite

• The rest of her family consists of Mafia members, which she's completely clueless about! She genuinely believes that their shops, storages and laundromats are legitimate companies and aspires to make her bakery as profitable as their "establishments"

[matan4il]

To the Nonnie who sent me the four anti-Israel Twitter users with blue checks, with claims to being "journalists" or similar titles... You're very right. I looked into them, and they are Assad apologists. They're literally ignoring the murder of hundreds of thousands of people by Assad's regime, including countless Palestinians who were living in Syria, while supposedly being against genocide and for Palestinians.

I didn't see something about Andrew Tate, but I didn't dig too far back, and I do believe that women who can post the following would side with a man charged with rape and human trafficking:

IDK if they're being quoted here, on Tumblr? If they are, I haven't seen that. At least not since Oct 7.

I guess the bigger issue is that when people on Tumblr see a post meant to trigger righteous rage, they don't check the source. Especially if they think they already know who the side in the wrong is, based on popular Tumblr opinion. So people automatically reblog and help spread these hateful, antisemitic massacre apologists.

Then again, the whole world is reporting Hamas' numbers on how many people have died in Gaza, how many of them were civilians, how many kids... Don't get me wrong, many people died in Gaza, and when Hamas uses civilians as human shields, many of the victims would be civilians indeed, kids included. But:

Hamas is motivated to inflate the number of fatalities

Hamas is motivated to inflate the number of civilians killed

Hamas is motivated to inflate the number of kids killed

And of course Hamas doesn't allow into Gaza any organization that can verify its stated numbers. Hamas has a complete monopoly on access to the areas affected in Gaza, and therefore on the "truth" that you get from there

Hamas has not reported a single terrorists from among the victims, they're all reported together, as if they're all civilians

Over 10% of rockets fired from Gaza at Israel are known to fail, fall inside Gaza and kill Palestinians, but Hamas doesn't report how many of the fatalities were people killed by Palestinian rockets, they're all reported together as if they were all killed by Israel

Terror tunnels built by Hamas have been well documented (there are reportedly over 1,300 such tunnels in Gaza), some sink holes that killed Palestinians are clearly the result of Hamas deliberately building those tunnels under civilian residential areas, but Hamas won't report its culpability for those deaths

There's new footage emerging from Gaza, showing people who tried to evacuate from the north, and who had been slaughtered by Hamas. You can be sure that these fatalities aren't being reported by Hamas either, so the world will be led to believe that these people were killed by Israel, too

(I'm not sharing the footage, because... it's graphic. And just like the Israelis murdered by Hamas deserve their dignity, so do the Palestinians killed by Hamas, but here you can listen to a subtitled conversation, where a Gazan says Hamas is shooting people who are trying to evacuate)

While we're on the subject of Hamas and its lack of reliability, today Hamas used a humanitarian window provided by the IDF to attack. Please remember this when Israelis point out that Hamas has broken every ceasefire ever. Including the one that existed on Oct 6.

If respectable journalists were more vocal about questioning Hamas and the numbers it reports (not to mentions their breakdown), then maybe people online would be a bit more critical, too.

I hope you're taking care of yourself, and you're not drowning in the biased material of these hate driven people! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[kyuushi]

This post is long overdue but I figured better late than never!

There's a way to read Kyuushi in Japanese online and for free legally, something that was previously only possible during limited-time events. You can't immediately gain access to all 323 chapters so don't get too excited but it's still pretty cool. There's a (long) guide on how the site works below the cut!

A few months ago, Akita Shoten, the publisher of Weekly Shonen Champion, the magazine Kyuushi runs in, launched their Champion Cross site. This site allows users to read manga for FREE, legally!

To participate, you can make an account here. You're able to connect a Google or Twitter account, so it's quite easy. If you do use a Google account like I did, the site just asks for a username (it has to be unique, if someone is already using it, you'll have to pick something else) your gender (prefer not to say, male, female, or neither), and year of birth.

Then you just lie about reading the privacy policy by checking the box at the bottom and you're good to go!

If you don't want to connect an existing account, you'll need to supply your email and a password as you normally do when signing up for a new site.

Of course, as with most free things, there is a catch... or kind of several catches 😂 You must collect tickets (すぐ無料チケット) to unlock most chapters.

You get some for signing up, completing "missions," and using your daily free gacha attempt. The gacha can only give you 0, 1, or 2 tickets. If you want to retry the gacha, you can earn another chance by sharing your result to Twitter...

aka you just let it open the new tab but don't actually hit the tweet button lol. Just keep in mind that the second number you get overwrites the first.

You can then head on over to Kyuushi's page (remember to hit the star ⭐ to add it to your favorites!) and pick which chapters you'd like to unlock using your tickets, 1 ticket per chapter. You also unlock the ability to read 1 chapter every 23 hours (the 待つと無料/wait and it's free option). When I made a new account I was immediately able to use this free chapter read!

The first time I used a ticket to unlock ("rent") a chapter, I got a popup asking me to confirm my email address. Not sure if this will happen to everyone or just those who used a Google or Twitter account to sign up.

If this does happen, you'll just get an email with a link to click that verifies your account.

When you use a ticket to rent a chapter, the chapter becomes available to you for 15 days.

However, after reading a chapter with your daily free 待つと無料 option, you have only 3 days to go back and read before it gets locked again. The remaining time is shown to the right in gray. (Please admire Bikimi-chan's beauty in the chapter 317 preview.)

Remember to give the chapters a like!

It's important to note that tickets DO EXPIRE. You can check your ticket information by clicking the number as shown here.

Tickets from different sources have different expiration dates. Daily gacha tickets expire within the day (the expiry date & time is shown in red).

On the other hand, mission tickets last longer.

This section at the top of the page shows you the soonest upcoming expiry date:

At least per my testing, the site does seem to automatically use the tickets that expire earliest!

As of right now, there are 2 chapters that can only be read by using coins, which are a paid currency.

I'm afraid I won't be testing coins out... I've already bought Kyuushi volumes as ebooks, and I'm not a fan of how you seem to have to enter your card information directly into the site. Guess they don't accept PayPal or similar services? I'm not even sure if they'd accept foreign cards. If anyone has tried/tries this out, please let me know!

So basically, you can technically read all but 2 chapters of Kyuushi for free, but it does take time to gather tickets or simply wait to read a chapter per day, and you don't get permanent access to the chapters. It's not the most convenient or reliable resource but it's a legal way to support the series. During this extended hiatus, I think it's important to continue showing that Kyuushi has an active fanbase eager for more vampire fun! 🦇

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the site. I did my best to test out the features and explain how they work but this was a whole lot of information to just dump on people so I'll understand if there's still some confusion. I also could have gotten something wrong so do let me know if you notice any issues.

[runabout-river]

Thoughts on JJK chapter 246 (spoilers)

What an amazing chapter. Even Sukuna was impressed in parts.

Everyone leveled up to some degree, Kusakabe so much that he was able to successfully use Simple Domain against Sukuna's normal Dismantle. He and Higuruma were still injured but only lightly.

We get some explanation on Sukuna's slashes and how they work and how Sukuna's Gojo slicing attack most likely works as well. The good guys are also aware of his fire arrow but they don't know how to prepare for that. That it was mentioned now means that Sukuna will use it in the near future

It was funny how Kusakabe immediately puts his life on the line even though he doesn't want to. It was also funny how Choso got the Ace/Rengoku treatment but he's definitely still fine after that

That Sukuna can move that fast is a problem for everyone involved. It's possible that only Maki can keep up with him when even Yuji failed at it.

Remember my theory on Nanami temporarily getting back to life? Ino did do that in some fashion: he put Nanami's cursed technique into his weapon. It's not said how they did that but my overall point of Ino's seance technique still stands, so I believe that it was Ino's doing. Nanami coming "back" in this way, also makes more sense about the placement of his return in the story, which was a weak point in my original theory.

We get a flashback to the planning stages of the good guys. Higuruma is sure that if his sword kills Sukuna that Megumi will be automatically saved in the process. This is one of the different ways they wanted to save him. Maki's plan most likely involves cutting Sukuna with her soul liberation blade.

Unfortunately for Megumi, he's in a genre of fiction where he won't be saved without working towards that himself as well. If he were to come out now without his own input, the he will either be comatose or crazy/evil

It's also sad to see that Higuruma is absolutely ready to put his life on the line because of his past mistakes. Whatever he's going to go through right now, I hope that Yuji will watch attentively so his own guilt and bad mentality can heal.

What a badass. Not only is Sukuna is extremely impressed by Higuruma but the narrator is too, comparing him to Gojo in his talent, and that with good reason.

Higuruma saw domain amplification for the first time in the last hour. Not only that, but he even did something that not even Sukuna was able to do: using his cursed technique through the DA

Domain Amplification is a Sure-hit Domain that envelopes the user. By pulling the sure-hit effect out of the domain, an empty space is created where any cursed technique gets neutralized. Your opponents and your own.

Sukuna wasn't able to use either Shrine nor the 10 ST while using DA except when they were inside Malevolent Shrine where his CT was already imbued into the barrier.

Higuruma on the other hand, found a way to keep his CT activated while he also has a domain around him that should absorb his technique but doesn't

There could be many different ways on how he does that but most importantly this makes him a close range fighter now because he found a way to utilize his own "infinity"

The downside here is that Sukuna might very well be able to learn how Higuruma is doing that, which would make him an even worse opponent later on.

What's also worth mentioning is that we have another chapter plus another flashback without any traces of Gojo. We still have no proper reactions from the good guys and we still lack a reaction of the world to Gojo's death as well, which should be in contrast to Gojo's birth. Shoko is also missing.

And because my Nanami theory somewhat became true, I'll also remind everyone of my Kashimo will survive and fight with Hakari theory: Kashimo's body had already turned so much into electronic phenomena that he survived the bisecting slash + he uses his one-time transformation to be his old self again. Then he activates his CT immediately to throw himself into the fight against Uraume.

[rokiyuu]

14 Days of MHA - Day 5 (July 27th)

Special Move

Will forever wonder if Class 1-A was aware Midoriya could speak with the vestiges and would do something similar for our quirk analyzer lover, also this is a tribute to some characters moves that I like the most. Enjoy!

Class 1-A is dying to know the One For All user's quirks names, names and appearance of all the vestiges and since Midoriya too nervous to met Eri, the class brainstorms and then make a bet that if they win and manage to impress all the vestiges, Midoriya will sketch them on his notebook along with them and class 1-B for Eri to color it.

Yoichi is really exited, obviously in from the start. The rest don't really have a choice though because the class gets super noisy.

The competition begins. Yoichi is the first to fall after Bakugou's Land Mine Blast, much to En and Kudou's annoyance. Nana, En and Banjo follow suit after witnessing Mina's Acidman: Alma, Sero's Barricade Tape and Uraraka's improved Comet Home Run using all sort of objects created by Yaoyorozu, Kudou was falling since this moment but won't admit it. Shinomori is worried about their identities being exposed, however concedes due to Jirou's Heartbeat Surround: Legato, and recognizing her bravery.

Kudou and Bruce are the toughest, in the end Bruce is won over by Shoji's Octospansion and Tokoyami's Total Release. Kudou is finally convinced after Yaoyorozu creates some Semi-automatic guns with her quirk.

Resulting in Midoriya drawing in his notebook, Class 1-A teasing Bakugou and Kudou's resemblance, Midoriya meeting Eri and all of them playing all sort of aiming games with bumerangs, bows, guns and knives, while ignoring Iida in his complaining of the last two so he ended up explaining Eri that this was just for entertainment and that they were following all the safety protocols.