#and i mentioned it to my friend in our server which has a bot that randomly generates memes based on your convos

[daylighted]

i seriously did not want to do this but if i'm gonna be talked abt behind the scenes, and if ppl i follow are going to start turning on me because of one actual psychopath that has not left me alone for 3 weeks, i'm gonna say my piece because it is not fair to know that i am being painted in a bad light, when i have been a victim, and my friends have been dragged into this because every time, it is made public.

all of this has happened in a span of twenty one days. here's my proof.

this is a server that one of my close friends and most adored people (who, again, like anyone else mentioned in this, should not have been dragged into this fucking tirade) created for spn fans on discord to cultivate a fun little community and to make friends. she acquired the link, i don't know who invited her or if somehow she just found the link if it was posted and joined herself, but she showed up.

four days into her being there, i tell the server, i'm making a mr. & mrs. smith inspired jackles bot. i'd more say 3, because i posted it at midnight that day. eleven hours later, she says 'i wanna make a mr. & mrs. smith dean bot.' so my whole idea. and i am not a confrontational person by nature, so i was trying to lightly discourage without straight up saying no, because i did not know this girl. it'd been a little over 3 days.

i have the person i was replying to blurred because i'm actually sick of people getting dragged into this that did not have any reason to be put in between her shit with me, whatever the hell that may be.

here is me lightly trying to deny it but not outright saying no, and maybe that's on me, but who in their right mind sees someone else's idea and eleven hours later just blatantly copies it?

and she did copy it. word for word. this is my intro message on the left, and this is hers on the right. it's literally word for word, practically, with the lines lining up and everything.

so i'm angry. i don't care abt follower account but now i'm going to look like the thief because at this point, i'm not anywhere near big. like 300 followers. which again, don't care about, but sometime between the span of this above and what's coming, she'd been posting abt a milestone very close to 1k. that is a clear difference, and an abuse of the writing channel, that is supposed to have been a safe place for us to share our ideas.

i don't say anything about this, though. my breaking point is when she discovers my bonnie & clyde au and says she wants to make a bot based on it. which maybe i would have said yes to someone else, but she'd stolen my idea already before, word for word, and i wasn't in the mood. so i politely told her no, and that i was planning on making bots out of all of my aus. and she goes something like, "oh, that's fine, i just really liked the idea is all." i have deleted our dms on discord because i didn't want her reaching out to me again, which does come up!

anyways, i think it's cool. i'm thinking she's not going to take anything else, because i denied her one thing, so maybe this was just a one-off.

she posts this into the writing server, like she's showing off that she made the bot anyways / had made it already in the short span of time it took me to reply to her, and was trying to get hype for it??? or something?? or rub it in my face that she made it anyways? i don't know her motives. for anything that happens in this.

not to mention, she made a mr. & mrs. smith dean pt two in this time, for some reason. again, not her idea.

but going back to the above screenshot, that's her chatting with bonnie & clyde!dean. please look here at a screenshot of my fic, literally making it clear that whatever the intro she used for this, it was identical, because the interaction here is identical to my writing.

the day before this, december 1st, she was also asking me to tell her abt the au, but i'm not going to downright say that it was to stake out stuff to steal, but looking back, it seems like it.

so by this point, i'm angry! really angry! because every idea i mention in that chat, gets stolen by her. so i make this post. kind of infamous when it comes to future things.

immediately, she knows it's about her, because she's messaging me everywhere. i. do. not. engage. behind the scenes, i'm talking to people in the server abt it, because i literally am being stolen from and expected to take it! so she gets kicked.

this causes her to message me even more. this causes her to make an entire post ( now deleted by ppl in the server's request, because we thought once 'resolved', it would be resolved ) tagging every single person in the server. not just me, not just the people who came forward or the server's owner, but everyone who has no idea what's going on. trying to pitch her case.

her case being, by the way, that the reason she copied me was because of photographic memory. i feel like i have a screenshot of this but can't find it, and also don't want to keep using all my limited picture spaces. but if i find it and you want to see it, i will show it.

she gets let back into the server on a warning. it's like a 3 strike system, i imagine, which this is where things get psychotic! like genuinely!

the very day that i tell her no to the bonnie & clyde thing, i get this in my inbox.

on god, never before have i been told this ever. and i'm supposed to believe that it's not a coincidence, when the only person i've 'wronged' on tumblr so far is her, and just for calling her out on her shit? i've literally been on tumblr for maybe 2 months maximum at this point. like i only know a handful of people, and most are in this server.

so i move on. whatever. one of my friends from the server makes a post ( that i rb-ed, but i'm not gonna link it because again, i'm keeping them out of this if i can, but it's also on my page still ) in my defense, because genuinely, it is not that fucking serious to tell a fanfic writer to kill themselves.

after she posts it, she gets an anon telling her to track them. and then one telling her to kill herself. again, i'm not posting who's doing this, but she responded to it, and it's on her account if you need to see more proof.

so you might be thinking, how do you know this is her? it's a lot of circumstantial evidence and gut feelings. and yes, i did doubt it at the time that maybe it wasn't, and i was just paranoid, but literally sometime last week, she not only:

messaged me 4 times privately on discord to reply to a question i already answered (being like do you think i'm a bad person? or something like that. but i answered it! and she added something on the end that i didn't see because i was busy and in a different timezone.)

tagged me twice in the server to try and get my attention for this question.

private messaged me here on tumblr.

sent an ask, which i do still have & a screenshot in case it gets deleted btw, about it.

MADE. A THROWAWAY ACCOUNT. BAITING ME INTO REPLYING TO IT. it was a comment abt a fic, so i said thank you, and within 3 fucking minutes max, she sent me ANOTHER message on discord saying "please stop ignoring me." THE ACCOUNT NOW, IS GONE. SO THAT'S HOW I KNOW IT'S HER. you will see later, too, that this is fitting for her character.

i know that screenshot is not much to go off of, but that account did not follow me, did not even like or interact with that fic. i remember taking that screenshot because i was like, there's no way this is her, like actually no way, because the first message to get me to say anything was just like a compliment. and the moment i replied, she messages me, and after i message back, i get the above response. i hope this makes sense.

this is her strike 2, by the way, because i was getting harassed and i wasn't going to sit there and be like yeah this is fine that this is happening to me. i am six hours, maybe more, behind her timewise. as you can see in the screenshot, it was 1:27 am for me.

so all of this happens, and she's getting increasingly more passive aggressive. she keeps bringing up CONSTANTLY that none of us interact with her things anymore, which is crazy to me, because she hardly interacted with ours but expected things back for her. not to mention, of course i wasn't going to interact with someone the same after that someone stole my shit.

all of this leads to december 17th, which yes, was yesterday. which i'm assuming is her big crashout because it's the only reason i can think of anything else that it could be??? but me and a lot of the other server members get anons like this. which is why, like i said earlier, i am convinced the kys is her. this one is the one i received.

and these are a couple that my friends did.

none of us reply, and she's spamming in the chat asking if we got anything, and we all deny it, because we know it's her. like, who else comes into other people's asks to talk shit on someone else? it makes no sense. especially people that the anon wouldn't have known? that she was friends with? i wasn't even in her little intro tagged post, like a lot of the server was before now, so it's literally a dead giveaway that this is her.

when she gets to me, though, after being told i think twice that no, none of us received anything, tumblr must have eaten it, her message changes. and she's like "i just got a second ask telling me that you definitely got one." and when i asked to see the screenshot of the ask that name drops me, she says she deleted it. like how convenient, right?

so this is where things get absolutely mental. more so than they are.

the dani era. shortlived but absolutely insane. suddenly she's leaving her account, as you probably saw from one of her posts that's now deleted, but i might have a screenshot.

you can't really see it but she changed her server name to dani too, and you might have seen her account before literally this afternoon, was daniisms. so again, she is kicked, because suddenly handing off your account to a stranger is weird and violates the rules. i am not in charge of the kicking, by the way, if for some reason you think i am. i literally am just a person in the server who for some reason was targetted? idk.

i don't want to air out her shit but this is the reasoning she provided for why she was quitting and 'dani' was taking over. sorry it's so small i was on my laptop n so it's just. like that.

in a later message, she brings up how specifically she is depressed... because of lack of engagement from us. literally. and i get that that's upsetting, but she just handed over her whole account allegedly? because of it? that's insane to me.

so after she's kicked, she starts messaging some of us on discord, i got an ask.

this, also, is still in my drafts, because i was going to privately be like arty this is actually clinical please seek help, but it wouldn't let me post it privately so i didn't! because i never wanted! any of this! public! from the very beginning!

also you can see there, the username change. so a lot of us block her. i didn't because i wanted to see if being kicked and no longer apart of the server would make her give it up, which yeah, i should have, but i give a lot of benefit of the doubt if you can't tell, when all it does is bite me in the ass.

because a lot of people got blocked, she made an account called bella-oftheball, and only followed two people from the server, commented on one of my random fics, and on the account right now, her only like is another person from the server's. not to mention, the header on the account is literally exactly her edit style. again. blocked.

so this morning. all of us are getting messages from arty again, suddenly back on her account, and claiming that all of this is a hacker. that she hasn't even been here for weeks. so this is the first time she's seeing any of this allegedly and she's confused, doesn't understand why she's gone from the server, her discord account's deleted...

still here in my friends list. lol. and she's in my asks, as you can see where i answer it. so you can see her exact defense and then her in the comments.

now i just want you to tell me why a hacker would:

post all of her drafts

target a spn tumblr writing acct??? like?

and none of her sideblogs ?

make up ANOTHER persona aka the friend named dani.

go through the effort of liking some of our things when she did, and interacting with all of us in the server???

because hackers usually idk. delete the entire accounts. or post awful things on someone else's accts. they wouldn't just run it like their own ??????

so yeah. she's back on tumblr btw, as artyandink, as arty. i'm posting this because her intro message has changed to no longer have any of the server ( not me, never me, and i wonder why! ) but people that i know she's telling all of this too and painting not only me as a bad guy, but also my friends who literally only are involved because they were defending me. dragged into this shit for daring to believe me.

i am making this both in my defense and as a warning. please be careful around this person! she switches identities on a dime to fit her narrative, will harass you if you don't answer fast enough, will harass you if you say anything she doesn't like, and will literally torment your entire friend group if she deems fit, as a form of sick pleasure or something. again, i don't know her motive, just that i've been going through this behind the scenes for 3 fucking weeks, all for it to lead up to this, and to have me being pinned by her to people that do not know a thing about this because it was NEVER MEANT. TO BE PUBLIC. OR THIS INSANE.

<3 please stay safe ily guys.

[stevensaus]

Beeper -- A Universal Chat App, Built On Matrix, That Is Darn Good.

I am very much enjoying my experience using Beeper, a Matrix-based chat application to tie all your chats together. Particularly the way that they have managed to actually bridge iMessage so that I can respond to it natively from my Android or Linux machine. Beeper is a universal chat app. It's a single app to chat with friends on 15 different chat networks. We've added chat superpowers that make it the best chat app on earth. -- Beeper It does exactly what it says it's going to do on the tin -- allows me to have a unified app to message across most major chat applications. The setup is pretty user-friendly, though I will mention that it will load all your past messages from some services (Facebook Messenger in particular) on initial setup, so just be ready for that. It's a one-time inconvenience, and I think the opposite behavior -- not pulling in old messages -- would be an even bigger problem. If you'd like to give Beeper a spin, I have a referral link right here (it's good for five invites a day): https://refer.beeper.com/iX38q6 At present, there's really only two concerns that most folks might have. The service is free which, let's face it, cannot continue forever. However, the quality of the service and the responsiveness of the team is such that I would be perfectly happy paying a subscription for the service. On their jobs page it says "We charge our users a $10/monthly paid subscription service. Our pricing model allows Beeper to deliver a great product and service, while eliminating any need to profit by monetizing user data." I think that when they switch to that model, the service is actually worth it. Secondly, it is piping all of your communications through a central point. While 2FA must be enabled for all bridges that support it (including iMessage) and as much encryption is employed as possible, there is a possibility of a man-in-the-middle attack or snooping where the bridges interface between services. For the vast majority of my messaging, this is not a problem; YMMV. You can, if you like, self-host your own Matrix server and connect to rooms, host bots, and the like from there as well. Beeper open-sourced all of their bridges, so if you'd like to set it all up on your own, you can definitely give it a go yourself. But the improvements Beeper has made to the experience are rather nice. Files upload and show up properly on the far end of the bridge, not as links to the homeserver. Suddenly I am able to get decent-resolution videos from my Apple-brainwashed (er... using) friends and significant others ... on my phone and on my desktop and show up as "blue bubbles" for those who care about that sort of thing. The UI of both their desktop and Android client are slightly different from stock Element (an interface for "regular" Matrix), but in ways that I think are going to make it more appealing to "regular" users. And perhaps most importantly, I do not have to handle all the fiddly bits myself. Their team has been rolling out updates on a regular basis with new features and making the whole experience smoother. If you'd like to give Beeper a spin, I have a referral link right here: https://refer.beeper.com/iX38q6 . The code is good for five invites each day. A few technical notes for those of you who may be edge cases like me. For those of you using bauh to manage your AppImages, beeper's built-in updater breaks the symlink. (Their tech support says this isn't a problem if you use AppImageLauncher, and I agree, having switched to that solution for other reasons.) If you'd like to stick with bauh's management of AppImages, I wrote a quick little bash script that simply checks the symlink and recreates it if a new AppImage is found where bauh installs them; it's at https://gist.github.com/uriel1998/da34848e2cbd3d3d1169d9a2a77d4127 For those of you who are intrigued by that iMessage option but are not Apple users, you will find out something pretty quickly: Native iMessage support also means HEIC formatted images. To enable support for this format in Xviewer, Eye of Gnome, GPicView, PCMan File Manager, Nemo, and a bunch more, sudo apt install heif-gdk-pixbuf will enable support (for those on Debian or Debian-derived systems like Ubuntu and MXLinux). If you're determined to view HEIC images in something like feh (which I do), you can use something like this script: https://gist.github.com/uriel1998/402bebb02d071039032d77f286b2c40d. It uses both heif-convert and gifview to handle the formats that feh doesn't natively. For converting HEIC images to something else, I use this script: https://gist.github.com/uriel1998/71a94220feb2b9f159ff4126839163c0 which uses both heif-convert and imagemagick to quickly convert images. The usage is pretty simple: convert_images filename output_format , such as convert_images MyPicture.heif jpg or convert_images input_format output_format , such as convert_images heif jpg Read the full article

[the-masked-society]

I wasn't present on that talk and I don't know if that even gotta involve me, but I'm gonna translate what Digi's saying into typing since she's currently on time-out from taking main front to let her social battery recharge 👍 I'm gonna drop my two dimes in when needed

And lemme preface that by saying I'm not a social protector or a meditator so I'm probably gonna spew some incorrect stuff- but it's just me and her here rn and I only take care of food and body affirmations on the daily occurrence so I also might word myself a bit "oddly", not to mention my type of self expression is a bit eccentric too, though I did try to be a bit more serious for that

First lemme acknowledge that last part- totally reasonable and respected, and I don't think she asked that in a "tell me that right now" sort of vibe but more on a "in a future instance if we really do become closer friends" situation, cause we had some friends we met on tumblr through the years (as much as my own memory go back at least), and some didn't have or knew what Discord even was. Some of those friendships ended eventually for a variety of reasons, but many did include that because we don't use tumblr all too often (aside of Digi who has 0 social awareness and shares every little thing. I swear she's giving E. even more gray hairs than his adopted kiddo does 😒), and cause it's a bit hard to maintain year-long friendships in a site where it's mostly dependent on reblogs (which clog our blog and make it hard for new or returning fronters to try reading back to see what the body been up to lately). We usually either move to DMs to make it simpler, or we move to a different site or app to keep talking without clogging our blogs- which is typically Tiktok Dms, WhatsApp (only one friend got that far with our trust so that's kinda rare), Discord, and up to July last year- sites like Quotev until it became meh and removed private messages.

We personally like Discord because it has not only a DMS function, but it has access to servers and bots like Pluralkit which can really help sometimes, especially with explaining plural things to friends we don't trust with our simply plural yet (not that they'd see any of the dangerous or serious alters from the get-go anyway, everything's crazy locked up).

Regardless I think she meant it as a future drawer question, not smth actively for now (I'm going based on the fact she's just nodding along to what I'm saying so far)

For us it's rare we have the motivation to actually work on the simply plural, which is why it's typically Digi attempting to get to front whoever's profile she works on at the moment to get them to fill it in or give her the needed information (which- after some reading back, I noticed Digi already mentioned- so we will have smth to work with when we start therapy and not waste time). Sometimes people like me who front a couple times a week already fill in theirs since we already have a set template to follow, and sometimes we let Sierra do it, since it's his job to have whatever info we have in physical forms for therapy, which is usually notes or simply plural. He have access to information about alters for that so he can fill in more than Digi does. (he uses mirror pronouns btw 👍)

I noticed that for us there's no such thing as "welcoming to acknowledge that we are sourced from Characters". Because we have many fragments (some been here for literal years- me included, I been here since I think 2018 and only adopted an identity and became a fully fledged alter at 2022 when we interacted with my source) and a high count overall, we tend to think the alter is a brainmade (unless it's extremely obvious they're an Introject) unless there's pseudo memories or "source trauma" that prove us wrong, then it's typically trying to match them with their source to figure out what piece of media is that based on their memory or recognition of media characters. That can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a full month (which happened twice with Introjects of songs, which personally is the hardest to match since the lyrics rarely include active character names that make it easy to figure out).

We enforce at least mild source separation over here, because we personally had very bad experiences with alters thinking they are still in their source and cause of it they can do things that in there will go without saying and here almost killed us.

We have some alters who are fully source separated, me included (I don't consider myself a fictive anymore, but I do have memories from there, some traumatic and some not, I just tell myself they didn't really happen- I just consider myself a fully source separated introject cause I don't like how 'Brainmade' sounds, all alters are technically Brainmade- which is why we use 'Sourceless' instead). but we do tend to still let alters keep in touch with their sources for closure if they want to. Me personally I don't, cause most of my negative memories outweighs the positive ones and I'd rather put that place behind me if i can.

Due to our childhood and I guess the nature of how we grew up to perceive the world, we have maybe 2 alters overall who aren't aware of any trauma at all- though it doesn't immediately make everyone else trauma holders. It just make it so almost any Introject have some form of source trauma along with their pleasant memories at some point or another, which is frustrating I'll tell you that TvT, especially when symptoms or phobias are overlapping and then you get a front room filled with aquaphobic people to varying degrees right when we need to take a bath or do dishes. (God bless Aźure and Olivia- they're godsend for their respective areas)

So we don't really have experience with alters denying they are Introjects- if they deny their source trauma we just advise them to full separation from it (after intensive therapy with our internal therapist god bless your patience Clower, maybe one day we'll have actual therapy to keep us afloat instead of you so you can focus on your child/dir). So I guess the more Systems you meet the more diversity you learn about 👍

Morally grey protectors tend to say and do that, probably because kids are more innocent and vulnerable than adults (maybe or probably him having memory of some bad adult, I don't know and I ain't planning to overstep by asking). Could be proven by the fact he cares for a kid who so far I got the vibe is very nicely taken care of, so he does enjoy kids' company.

We met two on tumblr so far aside of yourself and one of ours (the other is technically a fragment who might've fused?? I don't know I never talked with that group aside of one of them who's my friend), and about 2 others on Discord, one of which we had to cut off due to their host being very toxic

I hope Four gets better than, if he needs any validation or comfort or any questions he can't figure out the answer to about- feel free to DM us here on tumblr 'bout that (since it's too private for normal posts and Discord is a no for now, which I personally agree with, we have too many people added on Disocrd we can't keep up with it sometimes 😅), I could connect ya to Jasper since they have the exact same experience since they split a bit over a year ago and they grew immensely and can provide some advice or perspective or emotional support if that's what Four needs at the moment. Just do tell it's about that if ya end up do cause we have the memory of a snail and will probably forget about it as soon as I publish that reblog. But on the side I can say I'm glad it seems they take it well 👍

Russ and Haze sound so cool, we used to have someone who went by Russell though I doubt anyone else remembers him, he's been gone for years.

As for interests, you might've noticed from Introductions that were made in our blog already and you might've not, but for us almost every alter have their own special interest. I mean sure there's common ones many like that we kind of treat as our collective interests like Psychology or Literature or creative writing, but many have their own. Like Jay liking fashion and debates a lot to a point it's a special interest, or mine for example being the kitchen and culinary changes through the years. There's some common ones many share like animals, I heard Tim from the Bat group likes birds which is smth many others like too, and we have a couple who have an innate interest in poetry.

But I guess you can say that clincal psychology and psychiatry, music, fantasy, and classic literature to its various forms are our special interests. I do know the psychology one came from Digi and the history came from E.

Oh and Roleplay! Digi got a lot of us into Roleplaying in fandom spaces

We also tend to mitchmatch roles however they fit to our system, and then clarify if prompted, so I guess I'll quickly explain what that mean for us. For us Subsystems mean the exact same as what you mean, and we have three of those. There's Geno's which I'm almost 90% sure fused back into her already and should probably ask a scout to check, there's Tim's from one of his sources, and there's Jasper's (who nope, is in fact one of 3 subgroups, not out of 2/dir) with the other Four fragment, who again, might also fuse back into them in the future and therefore might not count as a Subsystem anymore.

Technically Jasper does still count as a Subsystem regardless of Four because of the colors, but they did separate from being the alter who is the "one split into four", which is why Four split in the first place, to being that placeholder. So Jasper is a bit of a complicated situation, at least until we figure out if Four settle into his position or end up fusing back.

- Spots {He/Him}

Then there's the Sidesystems, which I saw is similar to a term you used, the "layers". We typically see the system as one big cake with different layers to it, each layers different from one another. The deeper you dig and try to discover, the more darker layers you find.

Another analogies we use to describe our system functions include the multiverse and the water bowl analogies. I'll only explain those two as they are fairly simple to understand and this reblog is long enough as it is.

The multiverse is pretty straightforward- like in media people like to pretend all forms of media are connected, and you can reach them with portals or the likes (the main form of transportation in our system's innerworlds). This analogy also explain- similarly to the cake analogy, how each Sidesystem or Subsystem tend to have their own innerworld who are all Intertwined in some way (subsystems rarely do)

The water bowl analogy is pretty simple. There's a wooden bowl filled with water (or soup). Inside the bowl there are different colored and sized beads, and a single potato in the middle of the bowl, with threads that connect each bead to the potato. The potato is the front room, and each Sidesystem is a bead. The bowl, per obvious, is the system overall or the body, whichever you prefer to see. Each bead is different, some are bigger than others (amount of alters in said group), some are closer to the potato (placed closer to front room and therefore may have members from said group front more frequently), and some are at the edges of the bowl (alters from said group are less likely to front). Some beads are positioned closer to other beads and therefore meet the other beads more often (knowledge and friendship or even romantic relationship between alters from different sub-groups), while some beads are completely isolated at he edge of the bowl and doesn't know or doesn't want to know about the rest of the bowl and the other beads (alters who does not care about the rest of the overall system or want to meet them, or doesn't care about the life of the body). Some beads may also be repressed by the "bouncy balls" (the "higher-ups", our nickname for Gatekeepers whose knowledge and influence isn't limited only to the Sidesystem they're a part of, or Persecutors/Protectors who deem knowing those groups at the time isn't good for us) or pushed deep under the water by them (knowledge of them is repressed or erased).

The "under-the-water" part also is viable to describe Dormant alters, although it isn't accurate for us as we have smth else that work with Dormanch rather than them being repressed or pushed "into the Subconscious part of our mind"

But all the beads are connected to the potato and have chance to move there, and all the beads are eventually part of the same bowl.

We call those Sidesystems, since they aren't part of what we call "the main group" which is essentially a small group of maybe 30 or 40, which can change on a weekly basis, which is the group closest to the potato aka the front room. From those we have many, and we didn't finish listing even half of them, but so far we did in our SP there's 13 or 14 of them (some of them have a number of members as little as two, others have a number that reach into the twenties or the thirties.

Typically every group of Introjects from the same source tend to be in a sidesystem of their own (unless they join the main system group), and therefore their innerworld tends to mimic or resemble their source according to how they remember it. Due to this as you can imagine, Spots used to be part of a separate Sidesystem, but eventually as he both fully separated from his source, and as he became more vital for day-to-day, he therefore transferred to the main group along with someone else from his old group whose name is Scarra, who I doubt is really capable of talking online due to his role and its effectiveness, but for short he is highly involved in our sleep (as we struggle with chronic insomnia among other stuff that makes sleep a very difficult task).

- Unknown Fronter {They/Them}

(Apologies for taking long to reply, we had things to take care of and spots ended up leaving front halfway through, not to mention a minor what we like to call "error screen hour". I could explain that if you'd like)

Being in a system with LU Chain fictives with a shared Spotify account between all of you is funny coz you'll have a toss up whether you're listening to Legend's progressive metal, Hyrule' folk music, Shadow's classic Midwestern 2010s emo classics, or fuckin Time's white girl music.

Like yes king, Arianna Grande on the way to make sure animals haven't died!!! Slay!!!!!!

[cack1e]

its so funny to me how your friends can get fucked up and evil impressions of a character from you that dont represent the character at all. like maybe ikkan squid squad will forever be mpreg splatoon to my friend and that red-headed quagmire genshin character? he will always be a car to me

[writerscornercafe]

A Follow Up Discussion

Good morning everyone! We had a few questions regarding the channels and their purposes after our announcement so we thought we would clarify some more and pin this comment. 

 #general-chat is for anything and everything your heart desires. This could be one direction and writing related but it doesn’t have to be. Keep in mind that if you are going to talk about something that could be deemed a sensitive topic use the spoiler action or start the conversation in the #sensitive-topic channel

Example: Talking about a fic you read that has abuse in it, use spoiler action. Talking about gun laws would be a topic for the #sensitive-topic channel

If you are planning on writing soon (this could mean Louis Tomlinson soon or actually soon) you can use the #general-chat or #real-time-writing.

Let’s say you are going to write five hours from now, feel free to give a heads up in the #general-chat. If you give a time, it should activate the friend time bot and people can see what time that would mean for them.

If you are writing in one minute or even five minutes, feel free to give a heads up in the #real-time-writing channel.

Censoring/Using the spoiler action: Sometimes we will use the spoiler action to block out an entire conversation. I know for me personally sometimes I do this as a way to let the person know I’m about to say something they don’t like so beware (I’m looking at myself when I’m about to tell Beca my opinion on food or a Marvel movie lol) But that isn’t helpful, is it? I would like us to try and be more cautious of how we are using the spoiler action and try to avoid using it as a way to block out an entire conversation. If you share a snippet and there are mentions that could be triggering before you share it please state: Mentions of ____ and include the triggering content. Think of what you would tag on ao3 or Tumblr and use discretion. This is also a helpful article that talks about triggers and a common list that you can reference if you are unsure. 

Thanks to Laur for the suggestion to organize our categories, Beca has done so! On the left, you will see Information, Writing & Such and Fandom & Random. Hopefully, the more organized categories can give you an idea of where to host your conversation. If you are unsure, ask!!! You can ask publicly or privately. 

Let’s talk threads! Discord allows two types of threads: public and private. 

Public threads are a great resource to use if a group of people are chatting in #real-time-writing as we are trying to limit the amount of side conversations happening in that channel. As these are public, remember to use the spoiler action when discussing sensitive topics. 

Due to the level our server is at, we are not able to use Private Threads. (To boost the level of the server, we must pay as it’s a Nitro feature, which is also paid. Beca boosted the channel once, but if she wants to boost it again to go to level 2, she has to pay again because it’s a paid feature in Nitro). Private threads could be used when discussing spoilers for a fic you are working on or spoilers for a tv show a few people are watching at once. We encourage you to reach out to people via DMs!

An example of creating a group DM: a few of us play Animal Crossing and since I knew that could clog the #general-chat and we can’t use private threads, I created a group chat to discuss all things Animal Crossing. (And a reminder, to create this private group chat, you have to add the person as a friend.) If you want to send the same message to different people at the same time it’s also impossible. You need to add the users as friends. (It’s a discord feature so there isn’t much we can help with it.)

Onto DMs, they are a great way to check in with each other about literally anything! Helping beta, asking how their fic is coming along, or being their accountability partner. You could also move the conversation to Tumblr, seeing as how we all have our URLs easily accessible if you don’t want to DM someone on discord. Private messaging isn’t necessary, it’s just an option.

It has also been brought to our attention that there have been a few conversations and comments that have made some people uncomfortable. We once spoke briefly about it in #general-chat in the hopes that people would read it and keep that in mind, but we feel an official statement is best. Beca and I let a few things slip through the cracks which is not okay and we apologize for not doing something about it the moment it happened. Going forward we are going to try to keep a more watchful eye on conversations happening on most of the channels- I say most because I cannot look at my policeman channel due to my own issues. That being said, if you see something, say something. Especially seeing as how there are time zone differences and we can’t catch things happening when we are sleeping. The best part of having Beca is that we are a team and we can discuss together who takes care of what issue that way we are both taking care of ourselves and all of you. We are asking for your help in keeping this safe because there is a chance we will miss something. If you don’t say anything we can’t help you or do anything to keep the server a safe space for everyone- which is one of our goals.

We love getting to know each other and talking about other music or movies or more personal matters like our health or tattoos. Discussions about those things are okay and encouraged. Discussions about the boys’ music and what concerts people get to attend is okay. Talking about their upcoming projects is okay.

What we will not be allowing anymore is discussions about Harry or Louis’ public relationships- really any of the boys but seeing as how Harry and Louis’ public relationships are more prominent that is what is talked about most. This topic is off-limits on all of the channels. Any type of misogyny, violence or more “heated” comments will result in a warning via DMs. If you proceed to make comments that go against this rule or our previous rules, you will be banned.

Please, keep in mind that we are not trying to prevent you from having conversations. It’s, in fact, the opposite. We are just trying to keep things organized so everyone can engage in conversations without feeling lost or uncomfortable.

As an aside, Beca and I are not fluent in discord and all that it entails- hence the hiccups. We are new to owning a server which is why we value your input and patience as we navigate this. We have been planning to do an audit for months and have been keeping track of things to discuss. This is something we’ll be doing periodically and we will always keep you updated, that is why it’s also very important you give us your opinions, suggestions, complaints or anything you feel it’s worth sharing. You guys are awesome and no one is in trouble! Thank you so much for everything so far!

[sebdoesthings]

Works in Progress (June 2022)

Unsurprisingly, I still have a metric ton of WIPs. Maybe even more than in my last update, which was in April.

After checking, the number is actually the same, if you disregard One-Man-Force, which is currently in beta reading as it's being posted. The Switchcraft fic I mentioned last time is drafted and waiting for me to be interested enough to edit it, and the three Witcher fics are still approximately the same without much progress.

I have, however, started yet another fic since then. About a week ago, I was on discord with two of my writer friends, and we came up with this idea to have monthly title prompts. On our server, we have a bot that can be made to give title ideas, and each month now, we generate ten, pick two, and assign one of those two to each of our friends depending on which idea we'd like to see them turn into a story. This way, each of us has two titles to pick from at the beginning of the month, and based on what ideas are sparked by the one we choose, we write a story.

We've set a minimum word count of 500 words, but with my trusty too-much-gene, my story has already reached over 2500 words. So far I've written the very end and the very beginning of the fic, and now I'm going to have to fill it in. I've got a pretty good idea of events, so it's mostly a question of actually sitting down to write it. I'm quite excited about this fic (it's Witcher, that's all I'll say for now), and I'm hoping to finish the first draft in time for July's Camp NaNoWriMo.

For Camp NaNo I think I'll work on that one Geralt/Roche fic I have been wanting to continue for the past few months but have always let shorter ideas take precedent over. Along with that, because I need multiple projects if I'm going to be writing every day, I'll work on next month's title challenge. I think most of those monthly things are going to be original stories with a few fics strewn in between if the shoe fits, but regardless of that I'll post them on my Ao3. Maybe I'll just have one continuous fic where each chapter is a story, just so they won't clog my feed.

Lots to think about and write, but I'm excited.

[qonqr]

I’m Still Here

Many of you may have been asking yourself where did Silver go? Is anyone still working on QONQR?  I admit I’ve been very quiet the past year and from the outside, it looks like not much is going on.

 Before I give my QONQR update I want to share a major accomplishment for me. I’m a little less of a hoarder than I was a month ago. As the 11th year anniversary approached, I decided I had too much old QONQR merchandise I needed to get in the hands of my players. However, I hate shipping. I should be the spokesperson for one of those shipping providers that make shipping easy because I hate doing it so much. Many of you know that the player Rayndel has an Etsy store where she sells QONQR merchandise with my permission. I sent her a 65lb (30kg) box of QONQR stuff. Coffee cups, T-shirts, dog tags and stickers. She is liquidating all of it for me. You can find it all right here.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DragonHoardCrafts?section_id=19648949

 2020 and 2021 have been challenging for most people, and I’m no exception.  Both our kids are off to college. We are getting older and so are our extended families. Medical issues become more frequent for us and them. The stress of the pandemic doesn’t help. There are days when I can sit at my computer all day, and never write a line of code. Things are hard, they impact our ability to work as hard as we once did.

 A little over two weeks ago, QONQR hit its 11th birthday. The milestone passed quietly. I always spend time reflecting on how QONQR has changed my life and the stories you’ve shared about how it has changed yours. We’ve built something great together. Together we keep it going.

 Despite outward appearances. Things are happening at QONQR. I am working, albeit at an admittedly slow pace. I’ve let go of the stress of pushing QONQR as fast as I can, and instead I’m working on QONQR at a pace that is comfortable. It is important to me and my family that I end my day without being drained of all my energy by the awful decisions and quality that Apple and Google hand me every day.

 The next release of QONQR will include the following features. Many of these are mostly done, so I’m happy to share them, with the caveat that I have no idea when these will actually hit the store. Tons of testing is still needed.

 New Sync Lock Rules

 Sync lock will now last much longer, perhaps a week or even a month before it automatically expires. Along with that Sync Lock Protection will also last longer. The more times you gain sync lock protection, the longer it will last. We want to protect legitimate family members from daily locks, but also want to avoid situations where multi-scoper can get infrequent help to unlock an army of devices and accounts. In addition to longer locks, Sync lock may also hurt resource collection with your bases depending on how play testing goes.

 As with everything pertaining to multi-scoping, it is a blurry line between stopping those who play unfair, and those that are punished for inviting family and friends to play.

 Notifications

I have wanted push notifications for most of the past 10 years. In fact, we were very close to having them implemented about 5-7 years ago, but Google changed their push notification system. We used a unified messaging system created by Microsoft to push to both Google and Apple simultaneously. There were incompatibilities between the new and the old Google system for a long time. We gave up on trying to finish that implementation back then, waiting for Google and Microsoft to get their stuff fixed, and it was years before it became a priority again.

 I spent most of the past 3-4 months working on notification. This area is quite possibly one of the worst technical implementations I’ve had to work with in all my time working in software. For example, if you kill an iPhone application, you also remove the ability to get push notifications until the next time you start the app. It appears to be almost random when Android will decide to beep your phone when receiving a notification, and when it will be silently added to the notification center. For both Apple and Google, the documentation is frustratingly inaccurate or out of date. There are multiple different ways a notification can be processed depending on whether the application was terminated by the user, suspended by the operating system, in the background or in the foreground. Was the notification scheduled locally or sent from a remote server?  Honestly, as a developer, it would be difficult to purposely design a worse system.

 The good news is that I believe I have it working as good as it can possibly work. In the next release you will be able to enable or disable notifications as a whole, or selectively choose which notification you want to receive. Notifications will include: Atlantis, New Wire messages, Mentions in Chat and Forums, Bots and Bases Full.

 A Major Overhaul to the Scope

The changes to Sync Lock mandated that overheat have additional logic to control bots and energy regeneration. More significantly, if we want to have a notification that your scope is full, so I needed to know exactly when the scope would be full.  Currently your regeneration rate is based on the number of launches in the past hour. Launching a few seconds before or after an old launch rolls off that 1 hour mark can mess up the prediction of when you will be full again. To make that prediction accurately, without checking every minute to see, “Are my bots full now”, we changed the formula for when bots will be full, and scheduled a notification based on that time.

 The new regeneration is very similar to the old, but we predict you may get 1 or 2 more launches per hour. I’m hedging the formula towards more not fewer launches to make sure this is seen as a positive change.

 As long as we are messing with the scope, let’s talk about the Bot Regen Accelerator.  Hard core players have pointed out that players who launch on a timer, always hitting the “optimal” launch interval, don’t gain any advantage when purchasing this $0.99 upgrade. In the new release this upgrade will reduce your overheat level by 1 level and you will never be in maximum overheat due to deploying bots. The impact of the upgrade will be noticeable by everyone with this change. The name of this upgrade will probably change to “Scope Coolant” or “Heat Diffuser”. Send me your name ideas.

  Subscriptions, Ads and Elite Players

This is a change that probably won’t be in the next release, but it is something I’m thinking about before the end of the year. Apple has had a bug in their subscription logic for years. If you purchase a subscription on an iPhone, then get a new iPhone, you need to cancel the subscription in the App Store, then renew from your new phone. Apple keeps charging you, but the new device can’t see the subscription, so QONQR doesn’t know you are a subscriber. Why wouldn’t Apple fix this? Well Apple only takes half the percentage of a subscription after the first year. By making you start a new subscription, they can double their cut of the money you pay QONQR for the subscription. Another problem with subscriptions is that they result in many support requests because they honestly aren’t 100% reliable in either Apple or Google’s implementation.

 Many people know that earlier in the year, Apple introduced a change to advertising that blocks tracking. This is great in theory, and I get it as a consumer that I don’t like to be tracked, but this tracker blocking also blocks my ability to make any revenue on advertising. Why would I continue to give away free advertising?

 Elite players are those that have spent over $100 in QONQR over the life of their gaming experience. Over the years the benefits of being “Elite” have dwindled. Features have changed, and incentives have ended. I’d like to invest more time and energy to build features for players that continue to support QONQR but I think it makes more sense to lower the bar and make the benefits for “active” spenders.

 With these three things in mind, there is a chance that QONQR will move to a monthly “pass” option rather than a subscription. There seems to be a trend with games, where players buy a monthly pass that offers benefits, rather than using subscriptions. Subscriptions are buggy and in the case of Apple, a shady business practice.

 The same benefits available to subscribers would remain under the “pass”, but you would have to explicitly purchase the pass each month.  Secondary missions may move to the “pass” model with non-pass players getting only a handful of secondary missions per month. Ads would be completely removed from the app in this scenario since they no longer generate much revenue.

  What’s in the Plans for 2022?

 If you have read my blog over the years, you know that Apple and Google make it harder and harder to stop cheating (primarily multi-scoping).  It is being reported that Windows 11 will have the ability to run Android apps. I don’t know yet how that will impact QONQR, but I’m guessing it won’t be good. At best it will have no impact because I’ll be able to stop QONQR from running on Windows, at worst it could be a nightmare.

 March 2022 will mark the 10 year anniversary QONQR hit the Apple App Store. I can say with a high level of confidence that QONQR is now the longest running location-based, multi-platform, mobile game.

 Personally, I think 2022 needs to be a transformational year for QONQR. I’m not sure we can survive if the game doesn’t change. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have never cared about supporting mobile developers. Outrageous fees and abusive rules (recently acknowledged by the US Congress) have been part of the ecosystem from the start. There are dozens of apps that you can download from the official Google Play store that make it a simple tap to attempt to hack and manipulate an Android app, so players can do something the developer is attempting to prohibit. Once again Microsoft broke the tools I use to help secure the app from hackers, causing weeks of work to find a solution that would maintain the same level of security.  Apple and Google both purposely hide information from developers that would help them ensure real people are using their apps instead of bots. They do this under the façade of privacy, but ignore simple solutions that could maintain privacy, while helping developers ensure the integrity of how their apps are used.

 I’ve said for years, the only way to stop hackers and cheaters in QONQR is to make it irrelevant. That requires a major shift in gameplay. Together, you the players and me the developer, we need to decide if we want QONQR to have such a major shift. I don’t know what that shift would look like, but 2022 might be the year we figure it out.

 2020 was a year of making sure QONQR can survive. Through tons of work that year, massive software rewrites and updates, I was able to cut the cost of hosting QONQR. Today the cost of hosting QONQR all year, matches what we spent in three months during 2019. So far 2021 has been a year of slow work toward significant improvements to the game, but without major strategic impact to your daily playing. I’ve taken my time to avoid burn out. I’m enjoying the pace of my current work week. It has been good for my family and me.

 I’m not sure what 2022 will look like for QONQR yet, but I’m excited to try something new. Maybe we’ll break things, maybe we will create something ten times better than what we have had for the last decade. Time will tell. We’ll figure it out together.

 Thanks for keeping the lights on.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[terrascookiejar-archive]

Terra has a Chat with a REAL Moderator this Time

In lieu of my original post that gained a lot of traction, and me talking about being “contacted” by someone claiming to be a mod.

An ACTUAL mod from the Official Cookie Run discord managed to contact me and  set the record straight on a few things, as well as discuss a few things regarding what happened. So it seems that this whole situation has indeed caught the attention of the mods of the Cookie Run Official Discord, and even MicMac himself. So what’s been done?

I do wanna talk about it in greater detail, so I’m gonna put everything in a cut, starting now. If you want the TL;DR version, skip to the second picture of Chestnut with Walnut at the end.

First things First, the person who I talked on the moderation team was someone by the name of Zayder, who contacted me on anon with their details. Using some help from friends We were able to background check and confirm, yes this person is actually legit. So I was reassured I wasn’t walking into some kind of trap.

(The photo given to me to prove authenticity by a friend. I blurred out their Discord number myself just for the courtesy of privacy)

What’s Being Done to Protect Artists on the Discord, Moving Forward?

I think this is the big question on everyone’s mind since I made my original post and all eyes are on the moderators and MicMac to make the change.

There seems to be a genuine admittance to the fact that the previous way fanart was moderated was ineffective and caused issues such as the theft and reposting to happen. 

So they’ve gone ahead and added stricter measures to prevent this from happening again. Including preventing new members from posting until they get the “Cookie” role, a cooldown on the channel to allow for easier moderation and viewing of said artwork, and heavier infractions laid down for art theft. 

I mentioned that the cooldown also allows for time for people to appreciate genuine artwork posted. So considering the magnitude of its members I’d say that’s a great first step in moving forward towards protecting community fanartists. I got confirmation from members in my own discord that the cooldown IS indeed already enacted and even increased from 10 to 30 minutes, so I have reassurance that what’s being told to me is true. 

They DO have a report system on their bot, but it seems most people prefer just messaging mods so that system in itself is rather flawed, but only so much you can do there. 

(^ This one’s my own artwork, btw!! ^) Zayder also asked me for my own feedback on what could be done to help protect artists, since I am an artist myself. It seems most of the moderation team are not artists and this probably lent itself to making moderation there so weak. 

In summary my main suggestions that were noticed were being mindful of traced art, and a dedicated section or post explaining art theft and how it harms artists and the importance of crediting artists. As not everyone understands how it hurts us, some people genuinely are uninformed. Which Zayder stated he would forward to Mic Mac. (Not sure how I feel about my own suggestions going directly to MicMac himself, but you know!!)

Fawn’s Situation happened so Long Ago that most of it is Lost (or worst case scenario, was deleted by a member of the moderation team) 

While the general consensus now is indeed “Yes, Fawn created Nutmeg Cookie,” there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of evidence towards who the perpetrator was (We had their username, hazbinalastor666, but not their ID and they’ve since changed it to cover their tracks) and the moderators involved with Fawn’s “Ban” to be found on the Official Cookie Run Discord. At least not anymore.

Zayder has confirmed that Fawn “left” the server in December of 2019, which lines up with Fawn’s own statements on the situation. However Zayder stated that whoever kicked her didn’t actually put her on the banlist. So either they kicked her manually, or they used the bot and then used it to erase all evidence of it and pretend nothing happened (which he certainly HOPES is not the case, and I do as well). It did not help that Trial Mods were not a thing yet by this time (They were not introduced until February of 2020), according to what Zayder told me. So things on that Discord were essentially pretty gun-ho. It’s not as simple as looking up a term and going to “Oldest” to track down stuff from the time.  Plus a good chunk of it seemed to have happened through DMs so... Good Luck getting that evidence.

Zayder informed me that Fawn is welcome to come back at any time. Though speaking with her she’s chosen not to, and considering her situation I don’t think anyone can blame her. I would like to believe that the version of the Discord that Fawn had to go through is not the same as the one we have now but something like isn’t essentially going to wash away what happened.

As for evidence that Fawn created Nutmeg first? Yes I do have it. The original incident,  hazbinalastor666 claimed that they created Nutmeg in November of 2019, However there’s evidence in our own discord showing Fawn creating Nutmeg as early as September of 2019.

As well as the day Fawn came forward on our discord about the situation after keeping quiet out of fear of backlash, ignited by seeing the thief get a commission of Nutmeg. However, I don’t plan to post that publicly unless I have Fawn’s okay. 

Yes. The First “Mod” That tried to Contact Me was Pretty Undeniably Someone Posing as a Mod From the Official Discord

“I'm also really curious on what you found false on what the "moderator" said to you. Nobody on the mod team ever told us they were gonna contact you, so I wouldnt know who that is.”

So that was my first sign that clearly the original person who contacted me at least wasn’t doing so without the consensus of the other mods, and neither did they consult the mods afterwards... So very, very likely they were a fake from the start. Some of the things that were off that I told to Zayder, and that we found through conversation were as follows:

The first person contacted me on a throwaway and refused to disclose who they were. Zayder gave me the ID of his personal discord and we could verify who they were easily.

The first person blew off my own suggestions for helping improve the fanart channels with statements like “We’re already cracking down on it.” Zayder asked me for my own suggestions as an artist without even being asked.

The first person kept trying to get me to get Fawn to use a VPN in order to get back into the Official Cookie Run Discord. Despite being told repeatedly that’s not how a VPN works. That’s just fucking weird. 

The first person couldn’t track anything down regarding Fawn’s situation years ago, Zayder was at least able to actually pinpoint the date in which Fawn was kicked, and rather quickly too I might add.

Zayder had pretty proficient knowledge on the bot the Discord uses for moderation and how it works. Which he explained to me a few times. The first person said to me at one point, and I quote, “For all I know the bot gives messages when infractions are laid.”

So seeing how talking with a real Moderator like Zayder was, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that someone was trying to dupe me here for some reason. Was it revenge? Did they want some sort of blackmail? Did they want me to proverbially “back off?” And if they ARE a mod why wouldn’t they give the info and such that I gave them to the other mods? Who knows. 

TL;DR:

Long Story short, it does appear as if the Moderation Team and Mic Mac have heard the artists of the fandom and are going to be working hard to lay down stricture rules regarding posting and doing their best to make sure credit goes where credit is due.

Fawn’s incident happened so long ago there’s not much evidence to be found on the Official discord, but we DO have proof that Nutmeg Cookie belongs to UpsetFawn!

The First Person who claimed to be a Mod was a fake and talking with Zayder proved it.

Overall, my talk with Zayder was very pleasant and enlightening and I believe Zayder would say about the same! I never meant to cause such an uproar, but I’d like to think things will change for the better now that we’ve all spoken up on behalf of our fellow artist. 

What we need to do now is watch how the Cookie Run Official Discord moves forward and if they’ll stick to their word towards protecting fandom content creators from theft and uncredited reposts. Though after my talk I’m certainly optimistic they will.

Always have your back for your fellow fandom artist, TerraTerraCotta

[daylighted]

I’m sorry to be that person but i simply can’t understand what happened with artyandink, i love their posts and bots and i would just like to understand better what happened since the posts and everything weren’t really clear for me 😭

so basically the very short & sweet ( update after finishing writing it: it was not short or sweet ) answer is that she word for word copied one of my writings, alongside many of my other ideas ( at the very least mentioning wanting to do them at the same time as me so she could put hers up first and get validation for an idea that wasn't hers, i imagine, but that's speculation ) and then when i stopped letting it happen and called her out on it, she blamed it on photographical memory of all things, but at least stopped, so i thought it was done.

phase two is when she started being incredibly rude and passive aggressive to me or anyone that would listen about how we didn't interact with her stuff anymore, and how it wasn't fair. which is honestly incredibly rich, isn't it? because she rarely interacted with our things, or gave them the recognition that she wanted in return. but really, it wasn't about fairness and doesn't matter if things are interacted with equally or whatever, she was just mad nobody was hyped for her things anymore because the only things we saw from her, weren't her own ideas.

in between this phase & phase three is when she starts genuinely harassing me personally. messages on discord privately, tagging me in a public server if i don't respond in time ( we have a six hour time difference! when it's morning for her, it's the dead of night for me! ), private messaging me on tumblr, sending asks on tumblr. literally all in the same 30 minute span max. always asking things along the lines of if i think she's a bad person, or guilting me personally, about never interacting with her things.

this is not like an excuse or whatever, but at the time, i was hardly posting on tumblr / less than i am now, because everything i wrote got taken, so i lessened it a lot. i was only ever on tumblr to post my things when i did, and that was it! very rare! so interacting with her things was hardly ever on my mind!

phase three. personally feels like a crashout to me because it's actually insane. the same day that she again messages me, this time asking if i got an anon abt her, which alone is crazy that even happened because who talks shit about someone, to someone else? that they might not even know follows? i tell her no, because it obviously feels shady as fuck. and so she starts being really weird. things like, well i got this ask in the screenshot i'm sending you, and a second saying you definitely got one, but i don't have the screenshot of the second, because i deleted it, but not the first. shady, right? anyways. same day as all of this, she gets on the server like, hey guys, i'm gonna let my friend take over my entire tumblr & discord, her name is dani. hope this is okay! and not even two seconds later, she was suddenly 'dani.' please keep track that this is her second persona. so obviously, she gets kicked because it's weird as fuck, it was honestly just something you had to be there for to see how weird it was, i guess? she changes her tumblr user to daniisms, starts messaging all of us ( in the server, i have not clarified! ) privately and stuff, saying that well, arty was just depressed, that's why she gave away the entirety of her accounts. like any of that makes sense to do.

phase four is actually the most diabolical one because she gets blocked! by all of us! because again, it is weird as fuck. this is when she private messages people again but now her excuse is, oh, NONE of this was me, i've been gone for a month, this was a hacker. so hackers steal supernatural writers tumblrs and their discords, somehow, which mind you, how would anyone even know her discord user? it's nowhere on her account from the last i saw, and so genuinely, how would a hacker know this information to hack her there? so hackers make up an imaginary friend to blame their issues on, and when it fails, that's when they leave your account to you? and also you just so happen to conveniently come back right when the hacker is gone?

the text messages she used in her 'evidence' were faked. you can recreate them exactly in iphonefaketextmessage, something that every writer i've talked to knows, because we've used it at one point for our own writing. suddenly, now that 'she's' back on her own account, she's continuing fics that her hacker made.

she's clearly convinced herself that i'm an enemy and that i'm stupid all at once, because even to this day she is bringing up my name to people that she wants to befriend now that people aren't interested in being friends with someone so conniving and honestly? psychotic at this rate. she apologizes in my messages for everything, still not taking any accountability, and then to everyone else & where she can be perceived, she's trying to discredit whatever i say while trying to paint herself as a savior for "shutting down anyone that says a thing bad about dahlia."

even in her defenses against herself, she literally cannot stop herself from trying to take away from what SHE put me through.

i hope this is further clarification. a lot of the evidence of things i say in here is in my first post, and there's also more i didn't talk about. this was supposed to be short & sweet but it is an incredibly complicated manner, and i just want to be done with it, but she won't stop bringing me up.

and i hate that i have to say this at all, but i really, truly hope this isn't you, arty. seriously. the consequences of our actions are tough, but that's why they're consequences. if you see this, and i know somehow you will, even though i keep you blocked and don't talk about you except for the one post i made and one reblog i did yesterday when you again had my name in your mouth, please leave me alone.

[pretty-rad-arson-dad]

Hey guys so, about the whole situation that had happened with me being fasley accused of being a pedo, I said I'd make a post telling our side of the story (cause this involves so much more than me and them) and involves about 10 other people.

Also, ahead of time, sorry if this is messy, I just really don't know how to make these kinds of posts to clear things up? Explaining things like this is not something I'm good at. I was also going to post this sooner, but stuff in my persona life happened, and I've also received threats from this person's friends if I tried to come forward with my side of the story (or more like made anymore posts about it, as there's already a whole call-out post about them on Instagram, which I'll be showing later). After some debate, I actually realized it would probably be best if I actually did, just to get a warning out, even though I know there's a chance this won't be recieved well cause this is fucking Tumblr... And again, I'm just trying to tell our side of the story and warn others so the same doesn't happen to them. Also because I do believe this guy might have a Tumblr account and might try to seek out more people to abuse. I sure as hell know one of his friends who helped stalk us have a Tumblr though.

So, the person making the accusations was someone who joined my discord server, and at the time of joining, he was saying that he was of age. Several members on the server can vouch for me when I say this. Of course, in regards to him telling us he was of age, this is apparently something he failed to mention when he decided to make that callout conveniently enough. I'm still unsure of what his actual age is, wether he actually lied to us about being an adult when he joined the server or if he was lying when he claimed to be a minor in his callout. 

Anyways, sometime after he joined the server, he started to become a problem. Me, being an idiot and feeling bad for him, allowed his behavior to slide, though I didn't know the full extent of what he was doing til a bit later.

He would constantly talk about how he was being abused and we'd try and help him with advice, which he never really listened to, and if anyone on the server mentioned that they had done something fun or had a great time doing something that day, he'd go off and make us feel guilty for having fun, cause his at home life was shit and apparently if he wasn't happy, we couldn't be either. He actually tried to pull some shit while I was celebrating my birthday with my family. This kinda becomes a bit important later? Or at least the day becomes important later.

He's also known as kind of a pathological liar on the server, claiming that they one of the official FNAF artists (one who doesn't exist, btw), and start rumors about YouTubers and other people we liked, and whenever I'd ask for proof, they'd get all defensive. This itself isn't a big deal, except he also has the tendancy to start rumors that people are pedos if he gets into a heated argument with said person. It's actually happened when one of my friends said he didn't feel comfortable with people shipping things between adults and children. This caused a giant argument to erupt and I had to temporarily boot said friend from the server. At this time, my accuser then decided to make accusations that the friend of mine was a pedo because he... Didn't like people shipping adults and children.... Of course, we told him to cut the bullshit and stop causing rumors.

Now, keep in mind, they got upset over someone being grossed out by shipping adults and children.

This becomes a bit important later.

We ended up having a few other problems with them as time went on, them critizing other members AUs (well, more along the lines of bullying them for their AUs and projects), more guilt tripping and at one point, even bragging about pushing someone to suicide (at least that's what 2 of the other server members are telling me, I can't confirm this, as it seems it happened during a period I had no internet, and there's a good chance they might have deleted it, but do feel free to take this with a grain of salt). 

Eventually, he actually ended up leaving the server for good because of Tupperbot. Adding the stupid bot was the second best decision I've ever made in regards to him, honesty.

However, for a lot of us, the main tipping point was the roleplays and private DMs.

He loved to roleplay some pretty fucked up shit with a lot of people on the server. We've actually had one member as young as 11 come forward and say he had tried to do shit with them too. Keep in mind, he told us he was an adult when he joined. He would love to roleplay all sorts of weird, incestous and pedophilic shit with us, and would force it on us out of the fucking blue. Another thing worth mentioning, me and a few others are victims of childhood sexual abuse and rape. He CONSTANTLY put this shit in most of the roleplays he did with no regard to how triggering it was for some of us. We never even got a warning or an ask if it was okay to have something like that put in a roleplay. Some members spoke to him about their discomfort involving the shit he was putting in the roleplays, but it was disregarded and he'd continue to do it. Some of us were even so scared to say anything about it, as we were afraid he'd lash out at us and threaten us, so we just put up with it. 

Aside from the roleplays were the really weird direct messages he'd sometimes send. There were times someone would be venting (this would happen in the server as well) and he'd respond with that they had no reason to be upset and that he's been through much worse. There would also be times when someone would be feeling depressed, and he'd make these private little group chats to try and "intervene" by inviting a few of us in there with the said person. This would be fine on its own, but he always made it a point to invite one person that we've REPEATEDLY had to tell him not to invite. I'll call this person Wah, cause I don't want to cause them any more stress by exposing their account name. Wah was someone we've told him not to invite because she was, at the time, experiencing a lot of suicidal idealations and we were worried putting her in a situation like this where one of her friends was feeling like killing themselves and her having to help to talk them down would be the sort of thing to set her off into hurting herself. We obviously didn't want that, so we made it a rule not to ever get Wah involved. Accuser knew this and went and always invited Wah anyways. And would shrug it off whenever we'd go off and remind him of Wah's own mental health issues. There has also been at least one instance with them and another user, who was feeling suicidal. They mentioned they had been wanting to kill themselves and accuser went off about how if they killed themself, accuser would kill themself too. This obviously scared the shit out of this person and made them feel more awful.

And there of course, is the shit they did to me. They'd sometimes randomly flip out on me in my DMs out of literally fucking no where, and purposely trigger my PTSD.

There's more, but I can't remember all of it because just so much went on.

Anyways, sometime after they left the server, people began coming forward with their experiences with accuser, telling all that he'd been doing in DMs, and mentioning his prior behavior on the server. We started venting about the way he had been treating us in the vents chat because well, we figured if we couldn't try to talk to him about his behavior, at least we could vent amongst ourselves. Apparently he had actually made a few friends on the server and they let him know we were talking about him.

Fast forward to my birthday celebration and I'm getting DMs from him. They start our fine enough but eventually he suggests we start a thing where we mention one positive thing that's happened to us each day. Cool, a fine idea on it's own, but as I've mentioned above, he's had the tendancy to make us feel like shit for having anything cool and fun in our lives, so of course me, and a few other people who apparently had received the same message, were hesitant.

I left him on read to think about it and also because, again, I was celebrating my birthday and I was about to blow out the candles on my cake and open gifts.

I don't remember all of what went down, and I don't seem to have access to the Instagram DMs anymore since I have him blocked on there too, but eventually, I received a message of him flipping out because he knew about our vents. I believe I might have ended up calling him out and telling him exactly why we were doing it, but I can't remember. This happened back in May so the memory is a bit fuzzy and I don't have the DMs anymore.

All I know is that most of the members of the server decided to cut him off.

After that, he tried to tell Wah I wasn't who I seemed to be and attempted to ruin our friendship, made several accounts to stalk the Instagram accounts of serveral other of the server members and I, and then we ended up having to kick a few of their friends from the server cause they were starting to cause trouble.

Then there was silence for a bit.

And then there was the incident. They had gotten a (at the time former) friend of ours involved by lying and manipulating them into believing I was doing all sorts of nasty shit. The friend, who I'm going to call Pasta, ended up bringing that stuff over to Tumblr, unaware that they had been lied to. I'm not sure if it was Pasta who reached out to us, or if it was one of us who reached out to Pasta, but we ended up telling them what was going on, and somehow, accuser found out, and accused them of being a traitor and freaked out on them. They admitted that accuser was responsible and we ended up making up.

I've also since then had some of accusers former friends come to me and tell me about the call-out, further confirming that it was them who started all this as a way to try and get back at me.

And, since of course some obligatory proof is required, I shall provide these call-out posts with some screenshots. And you can even see in the comments we're far from the only ones who have dealt with them.

These aren't the only things from them, obviously, but considering the fact that we've all now got them blocked and some of us have even deleted the DMs (because tbh, most of us thought that cutting them off would be the last of it), this is what we currently have.

Anyways, thanks for reading this long ass mess. Hope y'all stay safe.

[tickle-her-senseless]

Important

Hey all. Just wanted to respond to questions from members of a couple of Discord servers run by the same person following a chaotic couple of days. I’m putting all the info and screenshots (minus names, pics and locations) here, so I can just direct people to this post if they have questions.

I had been intending to just head back here to Tumblr and let the situation lie, but unfortunately the reason given by the automated bot for my ban mentioned “crossing consent multiple times”. Today, friends have been sending me worried questions relating to this, so I’m concerned that the server owner may have made a similar claim in public. Now I pretty much have to say something as that’s such a serious thing to say about someone, particularly on any kind of kink scene.

The mention of consent actually relates to the server owner. Near the beginning of the lockdown, she and I were speaking a lot, she began to tease me in DMs, I responded with a piece of writing dedicated to her, we exchanged pictures - and eventually confessed a mutual attraction. We made plans for the end of lockdown, she talked about driving through Europe and showing me her favourite places. Although her English is perfect, I began learning her language through an app as I wanted to make the effort (Brits are renowned for being lazy with languages), and kept it up every day for months, amusing her with my clumsy pronunciation on calls. Sometimes she would send me explicit comments/thoughts, although I was always nervous to initiate that kind of thing.

One day she sent a message saying that she was still coming to terms with the end of her last relationship and would need to take things more slowly, as she was finding romantic sentiments (as opposed to kinky ones) hard to deal with. Naturally I replied “Of course, in that case I’ll wait for you to initiate that stuff once you’re ready”. At some point afterwards, she sent me a message out of the blue saying “I want cuddles ❤️” and I thought “oh, this is a level she’s OK with” and responded. I think it was the following day when I tried to pick up where we’d left off (without going any further, just cuddling in bed type stuff). She reciprocated and we continued. I also (in an attempt to consider her feelings) asked her if the idea of me posting an old session video on my blog for an American friend would upset her at all. Intending to reassure her about my intentions, I mentioned ”...not wanting to tickle anyone except you and saying no to all of the other UK people on the servers who are asking about post-lockdown sessions”. I also said “I do feel a commitment to you”, which (with hindsight) was probably a foolish or misleading word to use in a purely ler/lee sense.

A week later she sent a message I didn’t immediately understand along the lines of “I thought you were going to let me initiate romantic stuff, you don’t seem to have understood me at all”. I wasn’t sure what she was referring to - the recent story I’d written for her? Use of the word “commitment”? Something else? I tried to talk with her on the phone as some wires had clearly become crossed via text, but she refused for five weeks (citing not being in the right headspace), before finally calling when I sent a message explaining that anxiously waiting to mend the friendship in lockdown by myself for over a month was having a terrible effect on me mentally, and I was going to have to “throw in the towel”, wishing her luck and every happiness.

During our phone call, she claimed that the main issue had been the fluffy cuddle messages which she took to be a serious and repeated boundary/consent violation (citing her wish to avoid romantic talk). This was the last thing I expected and really shocked me. Of course I apologised frantically, repeatedly and profusely. I also said I hoped she could see how I’d made the mistake innocently and honestly when:

- she initiated it the first time, so I assumed it was something she was happy to talk about.

- when I picked up where we left off, she didn’t say “Actually, d’you mind if we don’t today?” and continued the cuddle talk instead.

She said that because she initiated it one day didn’t mean that she wanted to continue the day after - fair enough. The difficult thing to accept was the idea that she felt so violated by the attempt to carry on the next day that she found herself frozen to the point of not being able to say “actually I’m not in the mood just now” and carried on with it, and that I was at fault regardless. She even used the word “harassing” to describe it, which I found very harsh considering my inability to read minds over hundreds of miles. Especially when I couldn’t see or hear her to pick up on body language, tone of voice etc to guess that she was saying one thing but feeling a different way. She said, word for word, “It’s like when someone’s choking you and you can’t speak, you’re literally choking me!” As someone who, as a teenager, was once choked on the ground by my own father until I blacked out and lost bladder control, I did see that as a stretch at best, but chose not to challenge it as she was upset.

I also suggested that, looking back, we probably should’ve clarified exactly what was meant by “romantic stuff” when we almost certainly had different takes on it eg. I’ve cuddled after every 1:1 session I’ve ever had, even platonic ones, purely from the angle of aftercare and a sense of having shared an experience. I was told that despite our different ages and experiences of romantic love, there was only one objectively correct definition of “romantic” - hers.

We went around in circles for over four hours - I apologised over and over while explaining how I got the wrong idea and asking her to understand and forgive, while she tearfully called me a gaslighter, a consent violator, an excuse-maker, a harasser ... eventually I collapsed into tears myself (I’m ashamed to admit), totally worn down, and she softened a bit. She finally said she didn’t believe I’d done anything intentionally, and she still wanted to spend time together in the real world. We made up, spoke warmly as friends for an hour, and I left the call exhausted but relieved. After a few days’ reflection, though, I decided against ever travelling to meet her for real, as the experience had shaken me considerably - and I figured it’d be risky to meet someone in real life when I didn’t trust her completely not to accuse me over either nothing or an innocent misunderstanding. I was still wondering how to explain this to her when things got wild on the server.

A few days ago, a Tumblr user with a stated age of 18 contacted me to say nice things about my blog, which (I hope this doesn’t sound conceited) isn’t out of the ordinary. When she told me she was English and totally new to the scene, I suggested the Discord server as a place where she might make some friends (given the large UK membership) and sent her an invite link. The rest is set out in the mega screenshot saga below, which begins in the staff chat. I’m “SwiftX”, my real name is in teal, the server owner is in blue and her friend and co-moderator is in purple. All other names and locations are in black:

Before sending the last message, I actually typed out five different versions of a counter-argument before eventually deciding to step back. Being totally dismissed and lectured by two people about British labour laws and pub ID measures by two non-Brits nearly a decade my junior was irritating, yes, but the baseless suggestion that maybe I’d done something in private with the new member and was somehow “arguing against” ensuring she wasn’t a child because of that horrified me. As if I’d allow a child access to explicit content to cover my own discomfort - and anyway, I’d done no more than exchange greetings with the girl and point her towards the server, where she was actually verified and granted access to all channels by the guy in purple, not me! After a couple of hours’ contemplation, I politely asked to be removed from the moderator staff, but a disdainful response to my request prompted me to explain it, and why I was upset. Not all of what I said was necessary to say, but all of it was true:

She immediately muted me for 48 hours - “staff disrespect and degrading comments”. Not a problem, I had work to be getting on with. Late that evening, however, her friend arrived in my DMs:

Him: ...it’s creepy that a 32 year old man is potentially teasing a minor

Me: Well I can prove I haven’t teased her, her profile says she’s 18, and the person who exposed her to explicit content was you when you verified her - despite admitting to having had doubts about her age.

Him: ...I’ll drop that subject

Moderator of the year, ladies and gentlemen 🙄 Anyhoo, later that day I received a ban notification from both servers run by this owner, citing “crossing consent multiple times, guilting and being degrading along with causing several conflicts”. I was surprised to feel a flood of relief, but the consent mention really disturbed and worried me, as I’d been under the impression that the server owner had fully accepted that the earlier stuff had been an innocent misunderstanding. Later that day, good friends of mine began sending me worried DMs questioning my record and asking if I’d been inappropriate with a bunch of people, so I’m concerned that the staff may have said something that (deliberately or not) has encouraged speculation. This post is intended to be a landing page to which I can direct anyone concerned about my character so that they they can form their own opinions.

When my follower count began to take off, I became determined to avoid any kind of rift with another prominent member of the community. It’s so frustrating to watch an already niche subculture splinter into factions over needless disputes. This is why I’ve kept names etc. out of this post. If anyone suspects they might know who the server owner is, or actually knows who she is because they’re here from Discord, I would implore them not to out or target her in any way. There are two reasons:

- I don’t want to start a flaming war, I’m desperate to move on and begin improving my mental health after an awful couple of months ... I just need to protect my reputation first.

- I don’t actually think she wanted drama ... I think her genuine perception is that I’ve said something horrible to her. That’s more upsetting than the idea of her trying to smear me, to be honest. I suspect she feels like crap too, and I don’t want to add to her mental load. I honestly hope she’s OK.

Hopefully this will reassure my friends and anyone else questioning my character because of whatever’s been said in that server. I’d also hope that my history of positive interaction here, including being on great terms with everyone I’ve ever had a session with, supports what I’m saying further. It’s a shame this had to happen, but I’m trying to think positively about what lies ahead and trust in my real friends. I’d also like to thank the other members of the server staff who’ve privately sent me messages of support and sympathy having already seen the entire exchange.

[citrineghost]

A Letter to WordPress

Dear WordPress,

Tumblr has been around for a good while now and many of us have been here since the beginning (or close to it). It’s become something of a comfort and a home base for many. You can understand then why it’s so terrifying and tension-setting when a new owner comes around.

This website has been through a lot of changes, very few of them good in recent years. I want to open up a dialogue from the user base about our feelings and desires surrounding this site, because to so many of us, not only its design and function, but its success and future are a big deal.

Obviously not all of the things I list below will be universal opinions, but I’ll try to outline some of the things I’ve seen the majority of users want. I’ll also throw in some things that are more personal, because I can’t claim to know everything the rest of the users want, but I can tell you where I see obvious problems.

First and foremost, here’s an obvious one. You can’t really go anywhere on Tumblr without knowing: we want the bots and the nazis gone. We need some kind of captcha system for every time someone wants to include a hyperlink in a post or response. Until the staff count gets higher, I would honestly suggest closing down the report system for everything but bots, nazis, and death threats/suicide bait.

Make NSFW content welcome again. Outside of porn bots, the pervasiveness of NSFW content is slim to none. As long as minors and those with ‘NSFW’ blacklisted aren’t seeing the NSFW content, there’s nothing wrong with it being here. A large number of the people posting NSFW content on here are artists who use this content to make a living on commissions. The ban has done nothing but make valuable members of the Tumblr community leave and take their art elsewhere. The focus should be cracking down on anyone who isn’t properly tagging NSFW content with ‘NSFW’. If the focus is put on that, the problem with NSFW content will be null.

Please keep Tumblr unintegrated with other social media. Most users will agree, the anonymity is such a huge part of what draws us to Tumblr. Other people only know what we tell them and it’s very appealing for our real life accounts (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) to be completely separate. When users want to share links to other accounts, they can do so easily with links on their blogs.

Replace ads with either, better, more sensible ads or members content. A large part of the ads on Tumblr make absolutely zero sense just by looking at them. Not to mention, they’re all completely unfit for the user base. I’ve seen weight-loss ads (harmful to the many people on the site recovering from eating disorders) and ads for products most people wouldn’t need or want until their forties. Most of the user base is 13-35, if I had to guess. I can tell you right now, you would make more money and the user base would be much happier if ads were removed in favor of members content. Adding a paid membership that allows users to gain access to new features (rather than restricting what’s already here) would be a huge boost in morale and company income. Use that income to improve the site. Don’t get comfortable making more than the bare minimum in profit until the website is functioning reasonably well. Hint: it’s not right now.

Keep the base functions of Tumblr. Don’t try and get radical, hoping big changes will excite the community. They won’t. We’re creatures of habit and we just want memes, fandom, and relatable nonsense. Keep reblogging, replies, customizable blogs, tags, and likes functionally the same.

Be receptive to bug reports and post change logs so that the community knows that they’re being addressed and fixed.

These are the obvious pleas of the community. Please keep in mind that the heart of Tumblr is in its users and if you ostracize us, there will be nothing left. We love this website and we want to see it thrive as much as anyone. We just don’t want to sacrifice the spirit of the community in the process.

Read more under the cut if you want to see some more of my own personal suggestions. I’d love for other users to sound off in the replies with whether they agree with any of the pleas or suggestions and also give their own!

Okay, so, here are some personal opinions that are by no means the voice of the community. I think they’re pretty sensible, but what do I know?

Change back the color. I hate this saturated navy color and I’m pretty sure a lot of others do too. I’m part of the disabled community and I know and have seen people saying that these extremely contrasted colors that were added are making their Tumblr experience worse. It gives people headaches due to light sensitivity and, frankly, it’s ugly. If you’d like to cater to those who are visually impaired/colorblind, that’s fantastic! Do so with an account setting that turns on higher contrast mode or adds patterns to things to make them distinguishable.

Add an option to blog suggestions and posts that have shown up on your dash from followed tags that says “Stop Suggesting This.” I’ve been suggested a number of blogs that I’m not interested in following. I don’t want to block the user, but I do want some different suggestions and for those blogs to stop showing up in suggestions. I’m also tired of seeing the same post twenty times from a tag I follow. There is currently an option that says “This particular posts sucks.” While I think that was a great attempt at catering to the community, I don’t want to use it because my intuition says that there’s a negative connotation. Does me saying the post sucks make it show up less for other people? Does it lose popularity? I can’t tell. The only thing I know is that I don’t want to say that a good post sucks just to make it quit showing up on my dash.

Implement some of the features that XKit uses. I would bet at least a quarter, if not more, of Tumblr users use XKit to make using Tumblr less painful. That shouldn’t be the case. Tumblr should have these functionality options available in dashboard settings.

A very hot take here that many might disagree with: Make notes viewable more like mobile has them. As it is, it’s hard to tell which ones I’ve seen on desktop. It can be tricky on mobile too, honestly, but it’s easier than on desktop. I would also heavily suggest making the unseen notifications darker so that they stand out and making a button to indicate that you’ve seen them.

Keep the dash, messages, notes, and profile as separate processes similar to how mobile has it. The trek all the way down the damn dashboard is a long one. I want to be able to see notes and messages in full size without losing my dash progress. When I switch back I want to be right where I was. I understand if this one isn’t possible or practical. It was just something I like about mobile over desktop but I’m aware that they’re two different beasts with different capabilities.

As far as the aforementioned members features, I do have some ideas, but I can’t guarantee they’re the best the user base has to offer. I’m sure others could think of better. Anyway, some things I’ve thought of are groups/clubs, digital currency, and separate dashboards. So, as it stands, You can have multiple blogs on one account. People can follow them separately. That’s fantastic. What would also be nice though, is being allowed to make separate dashboards. This would probably take up another chunk of server space, so I understand if it isn’t feasible right now, but I would jot it down. The ability to separate shitposts, aesthetic imagery, fandom content, and NSFW would be amazing. If you follow a huge number of blogs, like me, you could even make a friends dash so that you don’t miss your friends’ posts. It would just be a matter of allowing people to add and name their new dashboards. Then, when they go to follow people, it prompts them to choose what dash their content goes to. You could even simplify it by making the follow button default to the main dash, but adding a little dropdown arrow beside it. You could then choose which dash to add them to from a list. Below are some bad paint-drawn concept drawings.

Anyway, I hope this has all been helpful in some way. I’m fairly certain that WordPress will never actually read this, but it was cathartic to write and I hope it will be cathartic for someone else to read.

Sincerely, birb-ghost

[ask-the-party-god]

Ask The Party God - Timeline

the pre-terezi-gang timeline post is here

height references over here

hi, im jade! everyones favorite party goddess and trans doggy girl~ but you already know that! if youre reading this, it means youre interested in learning more about my reality, because paradox space is fucking weird like that and you cant really be sure all the time

as far as im aware, everything up to the point where we beat the game happened without deviations from the alpha timeline? so this is what rose has talked about as a ‘terminal timeline’, or ‘post-canon’, or whatever the hell that is supposed to mean

we got to earth-c, and i settled in the troll kingdom because trolls are cool, dave and karkat were in the neighborhood, and the caverns are close by so i can visit rose and kanaya speedily as well! i still do have my old tower out on an island, with my workshop and garden, but i almost never sleep in it, too far away and isolated from everyone...

then one day i found this old active server in the furthest ring keeping tumblr active and i thought, hey, why not have some fun? ;D

as for the others...

my darling sis june egbert! she lives in the consort kingdom, but has been thinking about relocating elsewhere lately! she went through a rough patch right after the game, unsure of what to do and full of all sorts of doubts and questions, but shes doing a lot better nowadays! specially now that terezi is back, shes been a lot more peppy and hanging around with the lalondes particularly!

rose rose rose rose~ happily married to her wife kanaya, duh, but that doesnt make her any less of a flirty cutie! a while back she got really sick for a bit, and weve been keeping an eye on her just in case it happened again, but its been all good ever since! she helps kanaya at the caverns a bunch, which makes her schedule busy busy... and you didnt hear this from me, buuuut words out on the street that she and kanaya may be warming to the idea of having a kid! <3 well see how that goes!

one cool dude~ daves a little bit of a shut-in honestly! and honestly i dont blame him? he must be tired after all the timeline and time travel shenanigans, so he spends a good chunk of his time hanging out in his and karkats house! hes kind of awkward about opening up with feelings and stuff, and ive been trying to nudge him to be more open for a while! but with all the craziness thats been going down lately, and more people coming and going and getting together, hes starting to consider things he hadnt before~ hopefully, some specific someones? ;)

janey! my uh... ecto-mom, technically, although we see each other more like cousins than anything else! she still owns crockercorp, but ever since jasprose has been around, she has been spending a lot more time at home and just hanging out with her friends, which really, sounds a lot healthier than the big business thing she had going on a while back! she enjoys teaching me baking stuff, but doesnt have much patience for my decorating skills ;p

grandpa! and grandson technically, hehe, jakes kind of a weird case, hes a mixture of a shut-in, a celebrity and an adventurer! he can spend up to weeks at a time without leaving his manor, but then hell have full weeks of interviews and hiking, and thats not to say anything of when he and dirk put out another episode or two of their dumb comedy talkshow... hes often busy with stuff, but hes still a good pal and can clear his schedule in seconds if we need him for something!

one sweet nb dude! rox really is... something else, really! fun to tag along at a party, fun to chill at home playing games, fun to talk about more serious stuff and open up with him, he really is just solid as they come! hes been hanging out a lot more with june since she got out of her depressive slump, but sometimes i wonder if junebug finds weird to get flirty with roxy, considering im pretty sure we made out in front of her at some point or two... hehehe

dirk! if daves a bit of a shut-in, hes a shut-in times two, which is weird because youd think someone stuck in post-apocalyptic earth for so long would want to hang out more? not to say he DOESNT, though! hes around jake often enough, and keeps close to jane, roxy and dave specially! we dont see each other too often, but we HAVE been messing around with robots and planning out to upgrade our respective self-bots for funsies!

aradia! we only met briefly in dreams for the longest time, but i knew already that she was a riot! she came with terezis group after she finally found vriska, and seems pretty happy just... kind of... being around and watching shenanigans ensue! i actually dont know where she lives, but she drops by occasionally, because im apparently pretty ‘fun’... cant say i disagree ;)

sollux is blind, and not dead, and WILL kick you in the shins if you keep prying about how exactly he ended up like that, which is fair enough! he spends a good chunk of his time with aradia, and im not sure if theyre dating or not...? but hes been around the other trolls a bunch! specially kanaya, apparently theyre good friends that go way back! i guess they both DO style their hair similarly, with the side spike thingies...

the other half of the dave-kat duo! swooooon~ really though, i cant remember the last time i said “dave” or “karkat” without talking about the other shortly after... buuut theyre just roomies, and hell get awkward and grumpy if you even so slightly IMPLY otherwise, despite the fact everyone knows they fall asleep leaning against each other during friday movie night! roooolling my eyes~ with the rest of the living trolls having arrived, hes been a lot more willing to go outside, which im glad for! its healthy to get some fresh air from time to time, and specially hang out with friends!

oh-la-la, miss maryam-lalonde herself! kanayas the matriarch of the caverns, and quite the busy gal, having taken it upon herself to supervise her entire species reproduction and well-being... in my opinion, she needs a good vacation from time to time, and to be less of a workaholic! >:o ive been helping her occasionally in the caverns, and as of late weve begun trying to mess around with ectobiology for some troll-human crossing experiments with... not good results so far... but hey, rome wasnt built in a day!

terezis back, yes! after spending YEARS out there looking for vriska, she managed to find her and come back, the madwoman! personally im not sure why anyone would go to such lengths for... her... but also, its not my bond, not my place to speak, she obviously really loves her a bunch! with vriska no longer lost in the middle of the furthest ring, shes started to catch up with everything going on with earth-c, and i think shes really going to like being around! specially with how much june and the rest have missed her ;)

troublemaker extraordinaire herself! shes... well, shes vriska, im pretty sure she stole that eyepatch from sollux? so you just know she up to no good already >:/ speaking of her eyepatch, im not sure WHY shes wearing it? whatever kinda wound she got, she doesnt like mentioning it, despite bragging about defeating english at every chance she gets! terezi says they found her popping in and out of consciousness in the furthest ring with some messy wounds, and that shed probably been hovering out there after the fight for years... doesnt seem to have humbled her in the slightest <.<

callieeeee! theyre super sweet and wonderful but also really shy and awkward! they live with roxy but manage to outdo dirk in terms of shut-in-ness... they also totally like roxy but is unsure about approaching those feelings considering the whole species thing and whatever, ive been trying to get them to open up for a while now! weve written fanfic together and drawn grids, so i can definitely tell theres some attraction there, even if theyre afraid of acting upon it just yet <3

jaspie is roses bane, and the one cat that made me get used to their smell enough that i dont bark at them instantly anymore! im pretty sure she crashes at janes often, and is just as outgoing and flirty as i am around earth-c parties and bars, which is saying something honestly! i wont let her dethrone me as the party god, though >:)

and finally davepeta! theyre staying with june for the time being until they can get settled around and see what they want to do here! theyve also dropped by dave and karkats a bunch, which i most certainly dont mind! i definitely appreciate some help in bringing a romantic vibe into those twos lives~ ;o

and thats about it! theres also the nannasprites and tavrosprite and arquius, but they pop by so sporadically and rarely that i dont know what theyre doing a majority of the time... we lost track of gamzee after the session so hopefully hes totally gone, and we havent heard any message from caliborn in years... and with the furthest ring broken and the black hole sealed, leaving a weird white empty space right in the middle of reality, im not sure what our chances of bringing back the other trolls are :( but still, we keep living on happily over here and having our fun slice of life ending together!

id say after everything weve gone through, we deserve a big break, dont we? hehehe <3

also, particularly important events that happen and are recorded in this blog will be tagged as timeline shenanigans!

[purplesurveys]

749

Have you ever had FOMO (fear of missing out)? Sure, I’ll get it quite often cause there’s always so much going on. If so, what's caused it? The last time I got FOMO it was when Blanch and Andrew made plans to have a drink Friday evening a few months ago, but they invited me by the time I was already home for at least a couple of hours. Fortunately for me the hangout never pushed through that day haha. Are you happy with your social life? I’m a lot happier with it given how dismal it used to be. I’ve since reconnected with some high school friends like Ciamae and my relationships with my orgmate friends are stronger than ever. If not, what would you have to do to change that? Have you ever hosted a party? If so, what kind of party was it? No. I don’t want to bear that responsibility lol I feel like I’d be awful at planning it and that I’d turn out to be a lousy host. I’d rather go to someone else’s party.

What's the best thing you can cook yourself? Meh, don’t remind me of my nonexistent cooking skills. Are there a lot of graffiti around your neighbourhood? No. It’s a gated subdivision, so not only is that not allowed, but the people living here probably aren’t into graffiti either. They’ll be pretty common once exiting the main gate of the village, though. What kind of a phone do you have? iPhone 8. What kinds of stuff do you have on your keychain? I only have the keys to my car and front door. I used to have a rainbow Mickey Mouse that Gabie got for me as well as a UP keychain thingy, but both of them fell off at some point so I stopped including non-key things on my keychain because I was really sad about losing those trinkets. Have you ever made something with your own hands that you're proud of? Yeah. I forgot which province that was in – I think it was Vigan? – but they had a pottery factory that we visited and I was able to make my own small vase. I wasn’t able to take it home because they said firing it would take a couple of days, so I only have a photo of my work as a souvenir. If so, what is it? ^ I’m pretty sure I already posted a photo of that vase on one of my surveys; I just don’t know if this is also the exact survey I answered before lol. What is your favourite Jack Lemmon film? I haven’t watched any of his work. I’ve always wanted to see The Apartment though. What is your favourite David Hyde Pierce film? Unfamiliar name so I had to look him up...andddd after Google I’ve learned I haven’t watched any of his work. A bit of an impressive portfolio though. Have you ever made your own soda? (Soda Stream doesn't count!) No. Do you have a hobby that forces you out of the house? If so, what is it? I don’t feel forced out of the house by it lol but I do love going to museums and trying out new restaurants and what food they have to offer. It’s not as demanding as having Pokemon Go as a hobby as I like doing either on my own time. Have you ever been part of a theater group? No. If so, did you get any lead roles or mostly supporting roles? Which IM app do you use the most? Messenger. For a brief period during the quarantine my friends and I gave Telegram a shot since they also have games in there, but that only lasted like two weeks since the game bots were too wonky. What's the most ecological thing you do? I think it would be segregating my trash. I’ve forgotten most of the things my old school taught me but that’ll forever stay etched in my head, and I’m really grateful that my university also has separate trash bins to allow me to continue the practice, because so many other public areas don’t. My former music teacher, Ms. Ettie, also taught us to ‘save the polar bears.’ It’s essentially lessening your paper consumption by always folding your notebook leaves in half, but she’s always used ‘saving the polar bears’ with us both as an easy way for us to remember, and because it’s a cute way to put it. What's your favourite board game? Why do you like it best? I don’t really like playing lots of board games and I don’t get to encounter them much either. I always end up having a hard time following any of them – especially the new ones that seem to have much more rules :/ – and board games are too expensive these days anyway. Besides English, what other languages can you speak? Filipino. Besides English, what other languages can you read? Filipino. I’ve also been learning Spanish on Duolingo, but I’m still very rusty and despite being familiar with many words and phrases it’s still hard for me to read complete sentences altogether. Do you think you could make it as a chef? No, the kitchen and I have never been friends. This has baffled me for a long time because both sides of my family are known for their cooking, and my own dad is a chef. I dunno what happened to me or my siblings or cousins lol. What's your favourite kind of tea? Unhealthy, sweet, artificial/powdered iced tea. I also like the tea they give out at fancy hotels that are hot, thick, and almost taste like nothing since they make me feel fancy hahaha but I don’t get to have them a lot, so. How do you like your tea? ^ Just the first one I mentioned. I’m not much of a tea girl so the powdered iced teas are already enough for me. What thing/person/happening has made you the happiest you've been? There’s been many things that have made me extremely happy but I suppose I haven’t been as happy as the time I passed my dream school and the time I asked Gab out again and she said yes. Girls, do you ever just say "Fuck it!" and go without a bra? Yes. It’s hardly noticeable whether I’m wearing a bra or not because my chest is really tiny, and in fact it looks even more unnatural when I wear a bra because all of them are just too big for me, even the ones with the smallest cup sizes. Because of that I can alllllllways get away without wearing a bra in school and no one would bat an eye. What's the most freeing thing you've ever done? So far it’s been driving out of town by myself. Have you ever had a restaurant dish that was made with bugs? Unfortunately no. They had bug dishes in Vigan but the menu said their availability would depend on if they’re in season, and unfortunately we were there at a time when they had no bug dishes and I had to settle with the next most exotic thing they had, frog legs. The next place I wanna get to try bugs in is definitely Thailand. If not, would you even want to try one? Yup, I just said I do. Do you think today's kids are really impatient? In the same way that adults are. A lot of kids are exposed to the internet now, so I suppose they’re influenced to be impatient a lot quicker what with the possibility of their videos buffering, websites loading slowly, and other factors like those. But then again I don’t know if I’m making sense; I haven’t had to handle and observe a young kid in years. Have you ever tasted birch sap? Nope.

How about the young buds/shoots of spruce trees? I haven’t. Which edible flowers have you tasted? I don’t think I’ve tried any of them? And answering no to the last three questions has made me realize how inexperienced of a foodie I still am haha. What has been your worst restaurant experience? I can think of three but there were always external reasons as to why they were bad. 

Mad Mark’s was really bad and we had to follow-up so many times for each of our meals AND our check, but I’m not as resentful towards them since one of the seemingly only two servers present was pregnant. 

Barcino’s service was also quite awful and we waited an hour for our food, but we forgave them since it was Valentine’s and the place was ridiculously busy. 

Probably the worst experience comes from a family dinner at Shakey’s, but only because it was my parents’ fault. I had no problem at all with the service but I think my mom and dad just decided to be extraordinarily snippy that evening and criticize every single thing our server – and eventually, the manager – did. It was really embarrassing and I remember spontaneously crying out of frustration at their childish behavior lol. We ended up walking out with my mom sneering “your service sucks” to the manager and me giving him an apologetic look. It was so brutally embarrassing, eugh.

What's the most immature, adolescent thing that still makes you laugh? Probably Pewdiepie jokes. Have you ever had a life threatening condition? If so, what was it? Nope. Do you ever compare your life to somebody else's? If so, why? Eh, it’s something we can’t help but do sometimes. What is a food item or a dish you absolutely cannot stand? Fruitcake or food for the gods. Have you ever had a custom print done on a shirt? If so, what was it? Not me personally, but I’ve ordered t-shirts with custom prints back in high school for our events. What does your favourite mug look like? I really only have one mug and I’ve described it so many times on here, so I just looked for it on Google this time and this is what it looks like. The design turns blue when the beverage inside is hot, and it gradually fades back to black as it cools down.

Do you ever copy surveys to Facebook Notes and share your answers? Mmm nope. I’ve only taken surveys and posted them on my Tumblr. What's the best thing about today? I found out Keeping Up with the Kardashians is coming to Netflix by June and I CANNOOOOOOOT be any more excited for it haha. Do you ever read other people's survey answers? Yes, always. Everyone I follow on here writes very well and it’s always interesting to read their answers :) Do you like daytime or night time better? Why? Nighttime. I don’t really like the sun and I’ve found the nightlife more suitable to my personality, interests, vibe, etc. What's your highest level of education so far? I’m taking up an undergraduate degree but I’m supposed to be graduating this year. The schedule is still wonky due to coronavirus, but I have hope in graduating. I still 130% don’t know if I will be taking up law but I’ve had family and friends lightly nagging me to try taking law school entrance exams in 2021. If you could have any job in the whole world, which would you like? A travel blogger/vlogger. Describe your ordinary day. Back when life was still...normal, I’d drive 1-1.5 hours before my first class so I can beat the traffic, but usually I’d still end up in bad traffic because that’s Metro Manila for you. What I would do on my free time depends; if my schedule was freer I’d go to Skywalk to hang with friends, but sometimes I’ll have errands to run like printing something at the internet cafe. I have nearly-daily meetings in the afternoon so I’ll have to go to those too; and then 1-2 times a week I’ll drive to Ortigas so I can see my girlfriend. It was a very hectic schedule and I miss it a lot. Would you ever have a UV tattoo? A what now? What is the brand and colour name of your favourite lipstick? I don’t have one. What do you like on your tortilla? Just whatever goes on a fajita. I don’t really have tortillas much. How about inside your pita bread? ^ All the same, just whatever goes in a shawarma as it’s one of my favorite food. What do you like in your burger? I answered this in a previous survey but I wouldn’t hesitate to order a burger if a menu says it has caramelized onions, brioche buns, and some kind of secret special sauce because that always makes me curious haha. I’ll sometimes go for bacon, jalapeño, or eggs too, but not always. How about on your pizza? I only ever order quattro formaggi; I never have the heart to order anything else as it’s my favorite variety of pizza heh. Would you ever take part in a games club? Probs not as it’s not really my hobby. If so, what would be your ideal club? I dunno, this question is quite vague haha. I suppose if there’s an club or org that bands together people who love history, debates about it, or likes watching documentaries on different history topics, I’d jump on it. Would you be able to give a speech on your favourite subject right now? Sure. We used to have several impromptu speech exercises in my public speaking class and no matter how much I dreaded each of them I always did quite well, so I got convinced that I must have some sort of talent or skill in it that I never got to discover until I had that class. Do you work better alone or in a group? Depends on what needs to be done. If there’s a video that needs to be done or a poster that has to be made, I’d be much more comfortable if I was in a group cause then someone else could take over those tasks.

Are you more comfortable as a leader or a follower? It also depends. If I like the topic or task we’re given, I have no problem leading the group. Which one of your friends have you known the longest? For how long? Angela, 15 years. What is your favourite song right now at this very moment? It’s a local song called Sino by Unique Salonga. It’s not a recent song anymore, but I came across a fan video of Unique performing it in a gig and just fell in love with it all over again.

[gogoigo]

Last few years, go players all over the world have observed a great change. A new era has come – an era of artificial intelligence (AI). It has had a great impact on the way people play and study go.

Software tools such as Leela Zero in combination with its user interface (e.g., Lizzie) provide a great opportunity for learning. The biggest problem is that for running such software you need powerful hardware.

About a year ago I was at the European Go Congress 2019 (Brussels, Belgium), and didn’t have my laptop with me. At the same time, I felt like I’d like to review my games with AI. Then I remembered that Benjamin Teuber 6d from Germany had introduced his new project AI Sensei to me. The idea is simple: you upload your game record to the website, the AI analyses it, and then you can see the report with all of your mistakes and how you had to play instead. Leela Zero (and KataGo) are running at the remote server, which means you don’t need powerful hardware: you only need to see the report. I tried to use it on my mobile phone and was surprised by how comfortable and useful it was.

Let me share with you an interview with Benjamin Teuber 6d (Germany), the founder of the AI Sensei project.

Q: Please explain briefly what AI Sensei is?

A: AI Sensei is an automated game review service, i.e. you upload your games to the website and it shows you all the mistakes and what you could have done differently. KataGo is being used per default, we also support Leela Zero. AI Sensei has a free version that is very useful already, as well as paid subscriptions for higher quality and deeper AI variations.

Q: How did you come up with an idea of starting such a project?

A: The first time I lost to my computer – it was against Leela (not Leela Zero yet) – I immediately thought that this might be useful for game reviews. So my friend Erik and I coded a quick prototype that analysed games. It was interesting, but back then it misread a lot of situations, so we didn’t continue this project. About a year later, Leela Zero reached pro level, so we tried again and were much more satisfied with the results. So we turned it into a full website that we first opened to the public at the European Go Congress 2018. Shortly after, I decided to quit my freelance job in Germany in order to focus more on this project.

Q: How many users do you have at the moment? Are they mostly Europeans, or is the project popular worldwide already?

A: Over 3,000 people registered an AI Sensei account so far. The number of regular and paying users is lower, of course, but from the feedback we have got, people seem to like it and think it helps them to improve. The number of subscribers is increasing steadily and if we can keep it growing, it’s enough to be a sustainable business. Most people are from Europe and the United States, but we have users from all over the world. We are also planning to start a Japanese version soon.

Q: Did AI Sensei help improve your own Go?

A: I certainly think so. I didn’t invest a lot of time into studying Go for the last few years, but I did use AI Sensei to briefly analyse every single tournament game I played, focusing on my biggest mistakes. Last year, I managed to become German champion for the first time ever!

Q: How does AI Sensei compare to similar tools?

A: Our main emphasis is about reviewing your games efficiently, even if you don’t have a lot of time. Our user interface makes it easy to identify the biggest mistakes and learn from them. In contrast to e.g. Lizzie, we currently don’t offer a ‘live mode’ to interact with the AI. I would argue that while a live mode might help in some situations, it also brings the danger of getting lost in variation after variation without really understanding the gist of a game. So, at least for myself, less might be more in this case. But we might still add this feature later if our users want that. Other differences are good mobile support, so that you can review your games even when you’re at a tournament, as well as being able to send reviews to your opponents or teachers.

Q: What features are you planning for the future?

A: We recently added a quiz mode, where the mistakes from your game get turned into Go problems to solve. It’s already fun to use, but we have a lot of ideas to improve it, like building your personal mistake database to repeatedly practice with. The goal should be to never make the same mistake again. Other ideas are playing against bots, the live mode mentioned above, as well as social features, where you can write comments and discuss reviews with other users.

We try to let our users guide our decisions on what to build next.

Report by Artem

[tarotfurbyandchill]

Worried about losing contact with the furby community and your friends due to Tumblr’s decision to start deleting blogs? Please read on.

Hello all. As some of you know, I am one of the admins of the furby server Oddbodies and Kind Souls, a Discord dedicated to the appreciation of furbies and furby customizations, particularly oddbodies. Recently, many of our server members and friends have had their accounts deleted erroneously by Tumblr under their new bot.

Now, as you probably know, the furby fandom has a very strong stance against ped*philia, something that many people in our community have taken upon themselves to talk about in length. How is this relevant to what I said before? Because we suspect that Tumblr is deleting blogs that so much as mention the word “ped*philia” (which is why I’m starring the word, in case it helps my blog stay, y’know, alive). This has the potential to wipe out MASSIVE amounts of the community in one fell swoop. And we’re already small enough.

 If you’re afraid of losing touch with the community? If you’re afraid of losing friends you know only through the Tumblr furby community? If you’re, bottom line, afraid? Please,  PLEASE join Oddbodies and Kind Souls’ emergency invitation wave (which I will probably be deleted for posting because apparently, we don’t do external links anymore). We are opening the server as a refuge to furby and robot enthusiasts to make a sanctuary in as these uncertain times come upon us. During less stressful times, Oddbodies and Kind Souls has games, more themed chats than you can shake a stick at, and a genuinely kind community that’s willing to help you with almost anything at any time. Come join to reunite with friends, make new ones, and hopefully ride out this terrible wave of decision making Tumblr has inflicted upon us.

 The furby community is a family. And we’re not going to let Tumblr’s poor management take that from us.

 I’ll see you there.