#anyway this is the only part of it that is readable on tumblr

[foone]

Your posts are in an AI model

and then Tumblr decided to sell them to AI models.

Now, don't get me wrong, tumblr selling out the users to AI companies is bad, yes, they shouldn't do that. It sucks.

but don't lets get this confused: your posts were already in there. Tumblr selling them is about tumblr making some money and about the AI models having more exhaustive post collections. It's not about your posts being in an AI model, vs not being in one. That battle has already been lost.

Can you find your post on google? Then it's almost certainly in an AI model already. Think about it: These AI sites showed up before all the sites were making deals to sell their users' content, right? How do you think they built them in the first place?

They scraped the posts. Just like google and bing and such do when they build their search indexes.

It's a fundamental part of how the open web works: you want your posts on tumblr to be visible to users, right? You want them to be readable?* Like, look how much stuff broke when twitter changed their whole read-while-not-logged-in policy, ruining a bunch of thread links/NSFW links. And if it's visible, it's scrapable. That's what the AI models were built on.

I've done website scraping before (not for AI models, of course. I was doing search engines and website archival), this is just how it works. You hire a few relatively smart CS graduates and tell them "build me a scraper that'll give us a bunch of tumblr posts" and they go off for a month or two and come back with a database of a few billion posts, and you stuff that into your AI model. That's how they got all the deviantart and flickr and twitter and pinterest and so on posts. They didn't pay for them: they just took them.

They only ever pay for this shit because either:

they fucked up in such a way that the site might be able to sue them for taking rather than paying

They can buy them cheaper than they can finish taking them. Maybe they'd need to pay the CS grads for an extra month? well, that might be more expensive than just throwing the site a couple hundred thousand bucks.

ANYWAY: my point is, don't treat this "oh no tumblr is selling our posts to AI" like it's a big thing that might happen and it would be bad to happen. Yes, it's bad, tumblr shouldn't do this, this'll let AI models get continual updates of content for far easier than just scraping them would be, tumblr betrayed user trust, and so on...

but realistically, this is not a black and white matter of "if only tumblr didn't do this, then we'd be safe from AI models!"

Nope. We already lost that battle. I'm sorry, and it does suck, but that's just how it is. The avalanche has already started, it's too late for the pebbles to vote. * I'm assuming here that you don't run a private blog that's set to only followers or something. You'd be safer then, of course, but you're not really my target audience for this rant

[thatdeadaquarius]

sagau with the language barrier issue except... the creator is sick and tired of trying to ask for things so they do everything themself.

and it gives their followers mass anxiety bc they can't even ask what you're doing... bc they know they won't understand anything...

SUCH A GENIUS NARVI 10/10 GOOD WORK SORRY IM SUPER LATE BUT THIS IS *chefs kiss*

Like, that's literally how I feel like I first played Genshin LMAO

Also this has a cont. Part 2 at the bottom bc tumblr fucking hates me UPDATE I FIXED IT THANK FUCK

Paimon was like "and then we go to Mondstadt- ! NO, not Wolvendom, to Mondstadt! NOT THE THOUSAND WIND TEMPLE WITH ENEMIES OUT OF UR LEAGUE, ENTER MONDSTADT FOR THE FIRST TIME BEFORE U EXPLORE THE REST OF THE MAP!! >:("

SO MANY IDEAS YET SO LITTLE WRITING SKILL GUYS HELP-

Also warning this is ROUGH in terms of spelling and editing and im so sorry abt that! I have my art show today so you're welcome to come back if you want to see it a little more readable tomorrow lmao

Edit Update 4/6/23:

Revised and fixed all the bad spelling and grammar (hopefully) so make sure to give another read if you havent read the cleaned up version lol

I dont have a beta reader so its just me trying my best ok-

Everything was like kinda chaos tbh at first

WOW- MY FIRST 1,000+ NOTES POST??!?! U GUYS, WHAT ARE R YOU DOIN??!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!! IM GLAD U GUYS ENJOYED IT SM!! Also look out for more encoded stuff in the future since i mentioned wanting to continue stuff like this + ARG stuff :) <3

Edit 9/7/23: 2,000+ NOTES?? THANK YOU???

Like u wake up under the Irminsul, and u think ur hallucinating a goddamn gacha game for like a solid 5 minutes, or ur lucid dreaming, 

but once u actually took what felt like hours to process that u might actually be in fucking Genshin Impact-

Nahida came running from, somewhere?? Its kinda just very floaty dreamy in here so, unclear, she’s beaming with a giddy little smile (💘)

It’s… so much more than what her game model could manage.

I mean, you knew that, of course you did, but- to see the tiny goddess smiling in person, her cute chubby arms waving in the air, her cheeks all plump with baby fat from her excited smile, pretty green eyes that sparkle only in the way excited toddlers do-

It was just…wow. 🥺

You can’t help it, her sheer carefree excitement, exactly like a child but you know that she must be really overwhelmed with joy if shes letting herself act like that so blatantly, you feel ur muscles tug gently into a smile, you try to muffle it but ur happiness leaks out anyway

She's panting as she stumbles on short chubby legs to reach you.

After just staring at you with those big green clover eyes for a few seconds, she physically shakes her head to knock herself out of it,

Nahida places her hand over her heart, and bows elegantly, going back to looking at you with a small but bright smile, her voice is kind of quiet, muffled in a soft way, much like her game depiction,

“Hzozn! R'ev yvvm dzrgrmt gl nvvg blf! R wrwm'g gsrmp blf dlfow wvhxvmw fmgro R dzh zg ovzhg z uvd gslfhzmw bvzih low!” *

…Nahida begins to look a little concerned… her eyes get impossibly bigger.

…Oh no.

♧

Nahida had apparently quickly spread the news that you can’t understand them, but luckily it seems like all the characters still know you!

Alhaitham is pretty much a constant by your side, you knew he was vaguely studying linguistics in the akademiya… but that knowledge still didn’t prepare you to be intensely stared at with his diamond pupils for hours. 💀

Then he’d tap your shoulder or something, and you quickly picked up that he wanted you to just try and say something.

Then he would scribble for hours.

Turns out they can understand you about as much as you understand Teyvat language (s? You can’t even tell if there are multiple languages, that’s how unrecognizable this language is, damn)

The more extroverted or friendly people, like Venti, Yoimiya, Kazuha, Jean, Noelle, Amber, Xingqiu, Hu Tao, Zhongli, Ganyu, Barbara, Beidou, Collei, Ayaka, Gorou, Nilou

At least attempt to talk to you, and try very hard to watch what you gesture with your hands or body language

They're pretty much ready to play charades at all times for you lol

Interestingly enough, they only ever understood you when you typed in the chat (with other ppl)

But even then not immediately, 

Sumeru scholars basically had to make a whole new department (regardless of how much you play with others) to decipher your ancient language (to them) like those old clay tablets with cuneiform we’re still translating?

Like that, your words appear in elemental magic heavy places (so like that abyss lang. It’ll appear on walls or structures, so like Andrius’ stone colosseum? in Wolvendom gained some of your chat replies inscribed and glowing a rainbow of colors on the top edges of the walls)

Much like the abyss language you see throughout genshin, most Teyvat scholars (across nations/internationally) agreed your language is the oldest form of language known!

It’s like modern languages having roots in older ones, like English with Latin, greek, or German roots, or Sanskrit and the Prakrit for Hindi language today

…so of course no one really speaks the root languages anymore, because they’re so old, so those ancestors who spoke those languages would have little to no understanding of their modern counterparts…

◇

Occasionally if you turned your mic on for whatever reason there would be a gentle whisper on the winds in Mondstadt of your voice,

or your laugh in the waves washing ashore in Inazuma and Fontaine,

your startled noises or screams from battling bosses mixed with the landslides in the mountains of Liyue

So they know what you sound like, but that doesn’t mean they understood your language :/

Nahida had been hoping that you’re actual physical form being here would help improve the language barrier

But unfortunately, those things remained the same, but at least you were physically here to talk to now and give more content for the scholars to study rather than them having to make do with your snippets of language from chats

…so needless to say, it took you a long time to realize they viewed you as a god of sorts.

You kind of knew something was up when at least two allogenes were by your sides at all times, or eremites would replace them if they really couldn’t stick around

You figured they knew you weren’t nearly as combatant-ready as they were at all times, hell you obviously didn’t have a vision hanging off you somewhere, and you only really had a knife strapped to a belt, courtesy of the Thirty Corps

You are still kind of convinced that the people of Teyvat, or Sumeru at least, are just pretty polite (and in the allogenes case, very kind or friendly, even people like Alhaitham or Cyno, resting bitch faces they have, seem to soften a little when they’re walking around with you… maybe you’re just imagining it…)

And as much as you would love to wait until they understand you to do something more fun, as you can see the frustration on Tighnari’s face (and his ears try to flatten back hehe) as he looked like he was debating heatedly with some of the Sumeru sages who insist you stay in the city

…so why not go?

It’s not like they’re going to get it anytime soon, and it’s still too frustrating for yourself to charade things or draw things for them because you can’t even hear their guesses 💀

You can totally handle being like the traveler too, 

You still have access to your inventory afterall! Plus, lucky for you, you still find a pass for the Serenitea Pot in your little pocket dimension!

So now you have somewhere to sleep at night, and while most of your stuff went to the traveler’s pack, the things like Primogems

(which.. Okay now you really want primogems bc theyre so pretty and shiny irl)✨️

And other high-level things, or just objects of no use for the traveler (so basically all your hoarded level up stuff and infinite amount of weapons lol) came along with you

So you did have to wander the first week or so around the city and even commission the Adventurer’s Guild to grab you food supplies to cook with

Filling up, along with a few big waterskins, you’re off!

...and everyone collectively has a heart attack!

◇

When you show up in Ghandaraville essentially all “✨️💖☺️✨️” on Tighnari’s doorstep-

He chokes on the tea he’d been sipping on before he opened the door lol

He looks a little frazzled so you try to just gesture with “calm yourself small animal” energy with your hands

“Tivzgvhg Oliw! R'n- R- sld wrw blf-?! Mvevinrmw, xlnv rm, xlnv rm, ivhg! ...R mvvw gl hvmw z nroorlm ovggvih mld gl ylgs gsv vmgriv xrgb lu Hfnvif, gsv Zxgrmt Tizmw Hztv, zmw gsv Nzgiz nlhg orpvob…” he began out looking at you and talking and gesturing to his small dining table (the game sucks, his house looks great and has lots of cool rooms filled with interesting plants… oooo…so pretty...) 

But then he kinda just devolved into rambling, no need to understand, you can read the vibes and just know that's what he's doing lol

Collei eventually ducks in, and she looks a little panicked?

She’s quickly followed by Cyno, pushing past her to call out into the house,

His voice seems hard and stressed, looking at Tighnari, “Grtsmzir, szev blf hvvm gsv Tivzgvhg Oliw zmbdsviv, gsvb dviv hvvm xlnrmt gl Tszmwziezeroov ozhg-” 

Cyno stops and blinks.

Collei’s mouth is slightly dropped open, she also just, blinks.

You blink. 

Tighnari blinks tiredly, he looks like he’d rather be done for the day, you think.

The doctor sighs, and moves his head to nod towards the other dining seats.

◇

Sumeru foods are so much better looking in real life, and they’re so good too, your practically bloated by the end of dinner, 

As a thank you, bc u cant say it obv, you just gesture for Tighnari to stay sitting, and he gives you a raised eyebrow and a suspicious ear twitch

But stays still, and you reach out to finally hit the eight-pointed star hovering over his, and all playable characters chests at all times.

Like you suspected, it brings up a holographic character menu, but rather than his full model, it kind of hovers in front of Tighnari’s face, replacing his old 3D model self with framing the real thing for a portrait just in front of his face

The poor Denro user nearly jumps a foot out of his chair as he looks in shock at your screen, you do the same “chillll boy” gesture with your hands and press his shoulders for a second to remind him to not run off or panic

Cyno and Collei had done the dishes and put up leftovers, and are now standing behind Tighnari, watching with equally wide eyes,

“...Dszg ziv gsvb wlrmt gl blf?

Cyno’s voice is even deeper and quieter than usual, you feel goosebumps run up your spine

“Ziv blf tvggrmt yovhhvw, Nzhgvi Grtsmzir?!” Collei’s sweet voice is also hushed like she’s witnessing something sacred, Tighnari gently shakes his head negatively in response, his shoulders shrugging,

“Nzbyv? R uvvo... z orggov hgilmtvi, zmw nb Erhrlm rh zxgrmt fk zh dvoo…”

Though he’s replying, Tighnari’s eyes haven’t once left your ancient magic? technology device? hovering in front of him,

and as he crosses his arms and squints to try and look closer at everything floating in front of him, you can see the childlike gleam of awe in his green eyes, (so cute) in fact, now that you glance up and look, both Collei and Cyno have the same quietly excited and fascinated sparkle in their eyes too

With a displeased sneer, you chuck his old level one bow into the material grinding spots, hope he wasn’t attached to that…

Oh well, he’ll like the new one better, afterall, with no characters, all your best weapons and artifacts are ready to use!

With a small smile of reassurance, you finally finish gearing Tighnari up, tap a miniature version of that 8-point star in the corner like an “X” button, and it retreats like a classic TV set📺 turning off into his chest, he startles but then carefully stands

You decide to just start making decisions bc its worked out so far ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And grab his hand and haul him out into the forest, Collei letting out a surprised squeak, her and Cyno hurrying after

You reach the nearest clearing, and gesture at Tighnari like a bow and arrow firing, he gets it, and your glad he already trusts you, because he doesn’t take long to summon his bow

He takes aim at a smaller tree about two cars length away

You can feel them all holding their breathe, as Tighnari charges it with Dendro, the arrowhead glowing, (it looks so cool and badass irl god you feel envious even tho ur already here-)

The ranger lets it fly, it streaks neon green, whistling through the air, it hits the tree-

and it fucking explodes.

Vines and leaves and the trees roots all rapidly swell like theyre filled with water, like it literally got hit by a superhero with plant powers, which, not that far off actually.

The green floating Dendro seeds make a ring around the tree its so full of elemental energy-

You give a wild grin, you still got it, hell yeah. >:)

Your grin widens as you look over at Tighnari, Collei, and Cyno

Cyno has a smirk lighting up his face, eyes eager, Collei’s jaw has dropped and she’s just frozen staring as the tree finally settles from the burst of the dendro powered arrow

…Tighnari has lowered his bow, and his mouth is only slightly open, his ears perked straight up into the air, shaking with excitement? Happiness? Interest? You don’t know how peopl-animal-hybrid ears work,

and you STILL cant talk to any of them to ask what they thought, so looks will have to do >:/

Tighnari is the first to move, his head snapping over to look at you, the brightest, kinda feral tbh, smile taking over his face-

“Blf pmld, dv xzm'g fmwvihgzmw blf, zmw blf fh, bvg R xzm'g dzrg gl hvv dszg rm gsv dliow blf'iv tlrmt gl wl mvcg. Blf'iv znzarmt."

… and you just 🙂? Cool!

And give a thumbs up👍LMAO

☆

Bonus:

Alhaitham was literally running around Sumeru City trying to find you when you left, tho you did try and leave a translatable-in-3-to-5-business days-note, he didn’t have time to translate that because you were gone.

Or worse, lost in the city, and he would never forgive himself if he lost you, esp as Acting Grand Sage-

Kaveh got a letter a day and a half later from Tighnari letting them know you were having a sleepover in Ghandarvaville lol

Kaveh also had to hunt down Alhaitham to give him said news, then force his roommate to go sit or lay down for the rest of the day to recover lmao

(Haitham honestly kinda freaked Kaveh out bc he’s never seen him that... desperate, it was like seeing a statue emote lol)

♡

ARE YOU KIDDING WE ALMOST HIT LIMIT AGAIN?!

Bro has anyone else had this problem???

I literally had to switch from PC to mobile and copy and paste it there to get all my shit in and tumblr not throw a hissy fit???!!!

FUCKING TUMBLR- SUCK MY BIG FAT- 👹👹 UGH

ANYWAYYYY SO I FINALLY CAVED 

And started doing ciphers for when you dont get teyvat’s language! I meant to do something fun like this for awhile but I wasn’t sure if that would be kind of annoying, but if you’re interested in learning what they actually say (which the whole point of this is that dw it doesnt rlly matter lol) here’s a hint:

*hint = Atbash

:> good luck!

Wish me luck on my art exhibition today!! Then I’ll be homefreeeee 😭

Safe Travels,

💀♒

♡ the beloveds ♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist

[saffron-words]

Introduction and UtsuKare Translations Master Post

Some of you might recognize me as that Russian translator of Utsukushii Kare books from Wattpad. I decided to revive my tumblr to compile all the links and explanations here for those of you, My Beautiful Man fans, who can't wait for official English releases of the books.

I could never keep a blog, so for now here I'll just tell how it all came about, and you can find links to all my MBM translations at the end (feel free to just skip the wall of text).

So a couple of years ago I finally bowed down and decided to read Utsukushii Kare series in Japanese for language practice, even though I found the summary unappealing and I'm generally suspicious of overhyped media (as far as BL novels go, these books seemed to be The most hyped-up series in Japan). Much to my surprise, I loved it so much it was hard to move on. And while I waited for a chance to buy book 3 and Interlude, I gobbled up everything else related to the series that I could. The manga was only just starting, I didn't like dramaCDs (but I'm in the minority), and the drama somehow revived my love for watching Jdramas, even though I thought that this part of my fandom life has been over for years. When the second season started airing, I made a new friend in the Russian-speaking parts of the Internet who was even more obsessed with MBM than I am, and we fangirled to our hearts' content. At some point I promised her to translate the big sex scene from the end of book 3 as a gift for all the talks. I did, and since back then there was nothing for book 3 in any European language, as far as I know, I decided to post it online and give a link to English-speaking UtsuKare fans too. And since Wattpad doesn't allow copying text, and the browser translator feature from Google Translate was really inadequate, I also put up a link to the translation made with Deepl. As far as machine translators go, it is noticeably more comprehensible, and I didn't have the time (or skills to do the book justice, really) to translate it to English myself. Anyway, after this excerpt I thought I could manage one more important scene from book 3, then one more, and then I finally gave up and started translating it properly from the beginning. I also started correcting mistranslations in Deepl-versions that I kept doing for English readers, so some parts of the book are now much more readable than others. Now the third book is done and I started to work on book 2, Nikurashii Kare. I also translated several stories from Interlude and plan to do at least one more, but that is put on the backburner for now since I want to do as much of the book 2 as I can before book 4 in the main series comes out. Yes, we're getting a new Hira and Kiyoi book! This year too, probably It came out at the end of October 2024 in Japan and, unless something terrible happens IRL, I' plan to 'm thinking of translating it as well.

So here are the links to everything I've translated from My Beautiful Man book series:

Book 3 "Nayamashii Kare" which continues the story past the movie (completed). The text is in Russian, but there are links to decent machine translations to English at the beginning of each part (I've also run through most of them and corrected the mistranslations). Or you can use the in-browser translation feature, but the results would be less readable.

Book 2 "Nikurashii Kare" which was technically turned into season 2 of the drama and the movie, but the script has deviated so much from the book, at times it's like a completely different story (in progress; another 2 updates, and the book will be done). I don't make Deepl translations for this since the official English release finally came out in December.

Stories from other books in the series. The first part is a short scene from Nikurashii Kare, and the rest are stand-alone stories from Interlude. One of them had also been translated to English by Mauli before, but I didn't use her version when working on mine. The rest of the stories have never been translated by anyone else, as far as I know. These, too, have links to Deepl-versions at the beginning.

Disclaimer: my Japanese is not yet really on a level good enough to translate fiction, and there are bound to be mistranslations even if you read the original Russian versions. But I'm cross-checking myself on everything to try and keep those mistakes to minor things. I also know how to translate so I made sure that the text flows well, doesn't feel choppy and retains the same vibe that I get from reading the original.

[antihbki]

Hi. I am here to discuss the tumblr users @/kotocest, known mainly in the radqueer community as Ciel, and his girlfriend @/radikyuu, who is known mainly as Kyuumi or Opphie.

Potentially triggering content ahead. Please read forward with caution.

I met Ciel and Kyuumi in September of 2023. I met Kyuumi first in a syscord/system discord server (which I will not be naming for the safety and privacy of the staff and server members), and was later introduced to Ciel.

From the start, it was obvious things were a little off. Kyuumi would often vent in the previously mentioned server about feeling gross or horrible about doing things or behaving a certain way and included that she doesn't think she could change because "he" wouldn't like her anymore. A little down the line, I found out that "he" was referring to Ciel.

Her vents weren't the only concerning aspect, though. It was clear how unstable she was when Ciel wasn't around or when someone said something about him that ticked him off. Anytime someone pointed out his toxic behavior towards her, Kyuumi would get super upset and would eventually spiral and break down because of it. Ciel would use this to his advantage and claim that she experienced such strong feelings regarding him because she was a "part of him" or because she was a "clone" of him, which would only serve as a way for Ciel to strengthen the leash he already had on Kyuumi. These are still things Kyuumi still seemingly believes, which only leads me to assume that he is still pushing this belief onto her.

There would be numerous occasions of Kyuumi coming to panic to me in DMs about these things, too. One time was especially alarming, and I am only comfortable talking about this because she herself has publicly admitted to this situation taking place. Kyuumi messaged me around 2 in the morning, telling me that she thought she was going to die. Her messages were vague and barely readable, but from what I could understand, she had injured herself in some way and was losing a lot of blood. I told her to call an ambulance, to which she responded that she couldn't. After asking why, I was blocked. After hours of staying awake, waiting for her to tell me that she was okay, I received a message from Ciel at around 10 pm. He informed me that Kyuumi was in the hospital but claimed he didn't know what happened. I asked why she blocked me, but he told me he didn't know. The next day, he admitted to encouraging her to harm herself, saying that he never intended for her to be harmed so bad, but said he didn't know why she said she couldn't call an ambulance.

Fast forward to Kyuumi coming out of the hospital, I approached her about the topic and told her what I knew, and this was when she told me about Ciel threatening her into not calling an ambulance. According to Kyuumi, the two of them were in a vc when he encouraged her to do it. Here is a screenshot of what she said to me.

|| start ||

|| end ||

While I am going to try to be neutral for most of this post, I fully believe that he was trying to kill her. This is not the only time something like this has happened.

As you can see in that last message, Kyuumi had told me before about the fact that she had sent pictures to him. She came to me after she sent them to him and told me about what she did, and said it made her feel disgusting and horrible about her body. When I tried to comfort her, she broke down and told me the things he said about her after he saw the pictures of her. She also told me about some transphobic behavior he was displaying. Here is a screenshot of her explaining that to me.

|| start ||

|| end ||

I point this part out because Kyuumi is a trans girl. She mentions in the screenshot that she asked him to avoid making comments about that specific part of her, and he disrespected that boundary and made those comments anyway. After this, she was left feeling very dysphoric and did not speak to me much.

This part is especially upsetting because Kyuumi was closeted about being a trans woman at the time. She was going by he/him pronouns and was almost exclusively using masculine terms and publicly claimed to be a trans man, but Ciel and I (as well as one other mutual friend) were aware of Kyuumi's identity. Despite Kyuumi trusting Ciel with such an important part of her identity, he went out of his way to upset her and make her uncomfortable.

She forgave him for this situation very quickly, but this behavior from Ciel continued and went unaddressed.

I witnessed Ciel manipulate her on many different occasions, and he was comfortable doing it with me present. Oftentimes, when they would argue, he would briefly mention the argument to their mutual friends, but he would always paint her out to be the one in the wrong. This led to many of our mutual friends hating Kyuumi for a while, and we even had a group chat made for the purpose of discussing what we thought was Kyuumi being an abuser. After a while, and after multiple friends cut Kyuumi off due to her supposed abusive behavior, Ciel confirmed himself on a call with me that he had been portraying her like that with the goal of isolating her. I tried to speak up and tell him how wrong that is, but I was threatened with never hearing from either of them again.

I didn't believe that he would make her stop talking to me, but I didn't take any chances and instead spoke to a friend who went on to confront him. After xe confronted Ciel, xe was blocked by both of them and removed from all of their group chats and servers. As far as I can tell, this is still something he has her do (cutting off people who call him out or who he doesn't like).

Ciel's emotional and physical mistreatment and abuse of Kyuumi is something that I have kept my mouth shut about due to the fear of being cut out of Kyuumi's life, but that ended up happening about a month ago anyways. I no longer have contact with her or Ciel, but given some of the things I have heard about their relationship, this abuse is still going on, and Kyuumi has begun to claim it is consensual.

I am not expecting this to be spread or have much attention paid to it, but I made this because I am tired of being quiet.

Thank you for your time.

[slightly-warmer-hibiscus-tea]

CW: OC talk + Rambling / Blood / Gore / Censored Nudity (character sheet) / Mentions of Drugging

(idk why these warnings are so intense, but I swear it's all just silly OC talk T^T)

I’m kinda sorta working on more (comprehensible) TS OC stuff in between studying right now… I wanna hurry and talk about them but without info dumping (if given the opportunity I will without hesitation 😔…) because in terms of the best stories I have conjured up for OCs in general Naudedel and Noble are surprisingly good and I’m very excited to share how deranged they are together…

Right now it’s just about making Naudy readable and working on extra fun stuff… like monsters!

I’m trying to work out his “monster” form…. The concept is there, but the execution is just not ticking the right boxes for me right now… also, the line art at the end is old and probably will go unused, but thought it was something to add here because like hehe look at my deranged son :)

When it comes to the writing I'm going to split it into two chapters. The first half will be a summary+ of his upbringing, and the second on how he fucked up his arm and why. Just enough info to get a read on what his deal is pretty much. I just need to edit the first chapter and rewrite some parts then it's ready to annoy the world!

I'm trying to think of a good design for his original mother... I'm thinking dark hair and milf (¬‿¬)･ﾟ✧ ... honestly I need to start drawing out the designs for all the other TS OCs I've accumulated over the year (?) here's a fun list-

Hickery (bloodhound OC... dilf oc...I've already been made fun of for his name, but it stuck to me so I'm keeping it!)

Maya (another bloodhound OC)

Cove (Hound's ex-husband)

Cetcher's gf + informant, who still needs a good name...

and that one guy! (doesn't have a name yet... but is important in Hound's part of the story... she bashed some of his guys in the back of head with a hammer... it was a whole thing... Leander got involved... gang war stuff, don't worry about it...)

There are technically more OCs, like that Hightown lady Noble befriended during their first few weeks in town. However, I'm not sure if I'm including her in the final plot meeting. But yeah, anyway I'm rambling so on to Noble news!

For Noble, everything is plotted out in advance surprisingly…character playlist and all... just need to find the words to explain their story other than “parasite with a weird God complex feels guilty” I do have some old memes and art of them though!

Noble curse stuff...

Childhood cult stuff...

Current reality...

Poor person masquerade dress censored for tumblr...

Noble folks!

I actually wrote out a whole little thing for the black dress in a what-if scenario of...

"Oh! ,,,What if there is a masquerade in Hightown and Noble sneaks in to get some information on a certain individual who might know a thing or two about curses, but turns out the whole event if devious and their all eating babies or some fucked up shit,,,, and what if while sneaking around they see Leander and are like 'what's he doing here?' and they lock eyes but he ignores them as he ducks into a closed off area with some important looking people,,, once he comes out he walks past them and they lock eyes again as he leaves,,, Noble chases after him and once they catch up they get to see his cold and detached side right before he hides them from the other guest,,, after they talk for a bit, or more like Leander talking over them and their worries as he slowly wipes their memories while they protest that it's not fair only to wake up the next day back in their room,,, thankfully their curse is good for more then just silly bouts of insanity so they have a hunch on what happened, everyone around them who knew where they went the night before were obviously worried and the general consensus is that they might have been drugged and should go check in with Kuras just in case (wow this is getting long...) but on their way to the clinic they run into Leander and of course discusses their current problem with him ,,, words are exchanged,,, a kabedon may occur,,, as he whispers in their ear,,, all fun till he erases their memories again, or at least tires before receiving a little gift that makes him look at this whole curse thing from a different angle." DEEP BREATH! ...Anyways... yeah.

But it was taking so long to write out that I ended up losing motivation so yeah... like everything else we will pray the motivation comes back so I can finish that... plus who knows, I might make an x reader version of it if I can. (don't hold your breath... I'm extremely slow)

Anyway, I'm gonna to shut up now because I've yapped enough. I'mma make some hibiscus tea (ironic) and head to bed... Night night, if you made it this far, thank you for listening to my craziness <3

[marsbarsfrommars]

alone with you (the only heaven I'll be sent to)

star wars: the high republic | rated t | complete | 2,344 words | avar kriss/elzar mann | fluff, a little hurt/comfort

summary

She nods and simply says the only thing she has to, “I understand.” 

“I knew you would,” he responds with a certainty that makes Avar's heart seize. 

or, in a quiet moment post-chapter 53, avar finds out about elzar almost dying on grizal

read

under the cut or on ao3 for better formatting

notes

first of all, this is dedicated to the person who headcannoned that elzar has burn scars on his hands from crashing his vector on grizal. I've tried, but I can't find their post, so if anyone knows whose post I'm talking about, please comment so I can tag them here.

edit: it's the lovely @ledalausnows and you should definitely check out her posts bc she's super cool!!

also, a huge shout out to the thr fans on tumblr: if it wasn't for you I probably wouldn't have finished this. thank you for all your support and I hope you enjoy this <3

this is the first time in at least six years that I've actually finished one of my wips, so while I'm a little proud of this, the quality might be questionable. my perfectionism made me proof read this so many times I could probably recite it from memory so I hope this is readable and I fixed all major mistakes. anyways, I hope you enjoy this

also, english isn't my first language, so please just ignore any grammar/spelling mistakes

content warning for mentions of scars, injuries, near-death experiences and past major character death. none of this is in any way graphic but I wanted to mention it anyways

The overhead lights in Avar’s quarters are turned down to a dim glow, and it's quiet apart from the gentle hum of the ship's engines. The night cycle must have started a while ago, but neither of them had noticed; both of them were too wrapped up in each other. Now, though, they're resting. Elzar on his back in her bunk, one arm gently wrapped around her with his hand lazily caressing her waist, and Avar on her stomach, half resting on his chest, the fabric of his shirt soft under her wandering hands. 

It's nice like this—peaceful. For a moment, Avar allows herself to forget about their upcoming task, about the possible danger the future holds, and just exist in this moment with Elzar. She feels more at peace than she has in months, possibly years. She slowly runs her hand down Elzar’s arm and intertwines her fingers with his, her thumb softly brushing over the back of his hand. The motion is familiar; they've held hands more times than she can count in those weeks since she escaped the Occlusion Zone, but there's something that makes her pause. It only takes her a moment to realise that tonight is the first time since that fateful night in the garden on Starlight Beacon that they've held hands without the barrier of Elzar’s gloves between them. Elzar wearing gloves is in itself nothing out of the ordinary for a Jedi; most of them routinely wear them as part of their robes, which explains why she hasn't noticed it before. Now that she really thinks about it though, it does strike her as odd that she can't remember seeing him without gloves even once since their reunion. 

She slowly brushes her thumb over the back of Elzar’s hand again. The skin feels rougher in some spots. Avar knows the feeling of scars, enough of them are covering her own body, but she can't recall Elzar ever suffering an injury to his hands that would cause scarring this significant. She raises their intertwined hands to his chest, and sure enough, a thin web of healed fine-line and burn scars covers the back of his hand and wrist. An uneasy feeling settles in her stomach. What happened to Elzar to leave his hands scarred like this, and why wouldn't he tell me? 

Elzar, sensing the subtle change in her demeanour, chooses precisely this moment to open his eyes and look up at her. And for a moment, as silly as it may sound, she feels overwhelmed by the sheer force of her feelings for him. She had missed him for years, and sometimes, even though it's been months since their reunion, she still can't believe she doesn't have to anymore. Avar is certain he already knows what she wants to ask about, but he doesn't say anything, waiting for her to take the first step, so she does. 

“These aren't recent.” It's a remark, not a question. She knows Elzar will tell her everything without her having to ask. There are no secrets between them; nothing is left unspoken. Not anymore. The thought makes a familiar warmth bloom in her chest. 

“No.” Elzar’s voice is soft, reserved for the quiet of quarters and whispered secrets after dark. “I got them on Grizal when my Vector crashed. The healers at the Temple did their best and apparently Bacta also helped a lot, but they couldn't prevent the scars.”

Avar furrows her brow. “I didn't know you were injured on Grizal.” She feels Elzar's body tense ever so slightly underneath her, anyone else wouldn't have noticed, but him and her—and Stellan, of course—have always shared an unusually deep connection, and now they're as attuned to each other as they haven't been in years, perhaps ever. 

“It was at the end of the battle. We thought we were winning, but we didn't know there were Nameless on Grizal. I don't remember this part at all, and most of what came after is pretty blurry in my head, but Stellan later told me that he saw my Vector go straight down. I don't understand why, but I must have passed out when the Nameless appeared. My Vector caught fire when it crashed, and the cockpit bubble shattered. I wasn't wearing gloves that day, that's why the damage to my skin there was so severe. Ty pulled me out, saved my life. I don't remember anything after, but I know Stellan was with me.” 

Avar takes a moment to process all of this. When she finally speaks, her tone isn't accusatory, there may be a tinge of hurt to it though. “Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't Stellan?” she asks. Before Elzar can answer, a terrible thought takes shape in her mind. “It's not that you thought I wouldn't care, is it?” 

No matter what happened, she had never and would never stop caring about Elzar and Stellan. She knows without a doubt that it's the same for them, but she and Elzar hadn't spoken for a year at that point, and her relationship with Stellan had already been strained, so what if they had started to doubt her? Avar lowers her head. She's not sure she can look him in the eyes when he answers, the possibility of what she'll see there—of what he'll see in her—too overwhelming. 

Elzar draws his hand away from her waist to gently cup her face and tilt her head up until her eyes meet his again. His gaze is earnest and there's an urgency in it—he needs her to believe what he says next. She already knows she will before he can utter a single word because she trusts him implicitly, and she knows that trust is mutual. 

“No, I never thought that, I promise.” He pauses for a second and takes a deep breath, “And I know that Stellan didn't either.” 

Avar lets out a shuddering breath and tries to quell her bubbling emotions, which threaten to spill over at his words. Even so, her voice sounds a little shaky when she asks, “Are you sure?” 

Elzar nods sincerely. “I am. Stellan wanted to comm you, but I told him not to. We argued about it, and he relented in the end.” 

The sheer relief she feels at his reassurance is dampened by one burning question, but she doesn't have to ask for him to tell her. 

“I wanted you to know, I really did, but you were halfway across the galaxy fighting the Drengir and I didn't want you to be distracted.” He briefly averts his eyes, as if he's unsure about his next sentence, before he says, “I thought if you found out, you'd want to come see me, but we both know you couldn't have, and I didn't want to make it harder on you.” 

Part of her wants to argue, wants to protest that she would have come if only she had known. But Elzar is right; she couldn't have. Still, she wishes someone had told her. But of course he wouldn't want that, she should have known. Elzar tends to view himself as selfish, but she has always known him to put the wellbeing of others, particularly hers and Stellans, above his own. 

“And later?” she prompts gently. It's certainly not a conversation either of them had expected to have tonight, and she never wants to push him, but they've spent so much time keeping things to themselves in fear of crossing a line that hardly existed in the first place, and what good did it do them? 

“As bizarre as it sounds, almost dying wasn't the worst experience I had that week.” Now it's his voice that sounds shaky. The experience has clearly affected him more than he's currently letting on, understandably so, and Avar sends a burst of warmth through the Force. 

“When I was fully healed, everything was still so chaotic after Valo and Grizal, and there was so much going on that it just didn't seem that important.” Avar hates that he thinks that way but doesn't interrupt him; there will be time for reassurance later. “I got used to the scars fairly quickly, and even though they should be a constant reminder, I hardly think about it now. And I don't wish to. I've made my peace with everything that happened and everything I did then, I truly did, but I still don't like to remember it.” 

Avar understands, of course she does. Enough bad things have happened to her in these last few years that she's made peace with, as is the Jedi way, but still doesn't like to think of. They're the same in that way. She nods and simply says the only thing she has to, “I understand.” 

“I knew you would,” he responds with a certainty that makes Avar's heart seize. 

There's a pause in their conversation then, both of them processing and coming to terms with what was and what hasn't yet been said. Avar is the one to break it when she says, “Please never do that again.” 

Elzar quirks an eyebrow, the tension caused by their conversation slowly melting away. It seems he has decided that the heavy part of their conversation is over, which Avar truly doesn't mind. “Which part? Almost dying or not telling you about it?” 

“Oh, do shut up,” Avar says, but there's no heat to it, just affectionate warmth. 

Elzar laughs softly and pulls her down for a gentle kiss. Far too soon, Avar pulls away again and cups his face with her free hand, her thumb gently stroking his cheek. This time it's her who needs him to believe her next words. Her voice is soft yet insistent when she says, “I care about you, El. I don't want you to get hurt. And if you do, I want to be by your side if it's in any way possible. And even if I can't be, I want to at least know, please.” 

Elzar nods, every trace of playfulness gone from his face and replaced by sincerity. “I know, and I promise you, the next time anything of the sort happens to me, I will tell you.” 

Avar nods as well. “Good.” 

A slow smile spreads across his face at that and the tenderness in his eyes is almost overwhelming. Avar thinks if she had a mirror, she'd surely see it reflected in her own eyes. 

Elzar turns his head and presses a gentle kiss to the inside of her wrist, and she feels the familiar warmth spread in her chest once again, chasing away the last remnants of distress. 

She leans down to press her lips to his once again, their connection in the Force glowing with love and understanding, making her feel almost giddy. 

The kiss turns heated when Avar slides the hand still cupping Elzar’s check back into his hair, her fingers tangling in the soft strands, pressing her lips to his with more urgency. Elzar responds in kind by wrapping his arm around her waist once again and pulling her as close as their current position allows. She feels butterflies in her stomach at that, like when she was seventeen and kissed him for the first time. It amazes her that time and distance haven't dulled the effect he's always had on her in the slightest, but then again, how could they? He's Elzar, after all, her Elzar. 

They don't belong to each other, of course not; there's no possessiveness to their love. But they belong with each other; side by side always. They both know it and the Force rings true with it. 

They break apart, eyes closed and foreheads still pressed together. The kiss has left both of them breathless, as kisses like this often do. Once they've recovered enough to open their eyes and ever so slightly pull away from each other, and Avar really gets to look at him again, she is hit with the realisation of just how beautiful Elzar is like this. She doesn't think there has ever been a moment where she hasn't thought of him as beautiful, but seeing him like this is something else entirely. The dim glow of the overhead lights is reflected in his dark eyes, his hair disheveled from where she ran her hands through it earlier, a soft smile gracing his lips. A sight that's reserved just for her. 

Avar's musings are interrupted when Elzar starts to speak again, his voice still sounding a little breathless. “Avar, I…,” he begins but then trails off, unable to finish his sentence. It doesn't bother Avar. She knows. 

She pulls their still-intertwined hands up to press a gentle kiss to his knuckles, then the back of his hand, then his wrist. She feels his sharp intake of breath more than hears it, and when she meets his eyes, he's gazing at her with a look in his dark eyes Avar can't quite place. Later, she will come to recognise it as pure, unfiltered devotion. 

“Stars, Avar,” he murmurs. 

Elzar seems to know exactly what she's thinking—or maybe he just shares the sentiment—because he kisses her again, his hand slipping under her shirt to gently caress the bare skin of her waist. It's an exquisite kiss, and for the moment Avar allows herself to get lost in it, in this, until the only thoughts in her head are how lovely it is to feel so at peace, and Elzar. Always, always Elzar. 

“What is it?” she asks. For a split-second, she's scared she's overstepped, but Elzar just shakes his head and leans up to brush his lips against hers in a tender kiss that ends far too quickly for her liking. If it were up to her, he'd never stop kissing her, she thinks, only slightly bothered by the fact that she sounds like a character in one of those stereotypical Jedi romance novels Kantam and her used to read to each other for fun in their Padawan days. 

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi anon <333 okay so uhhhh listen when i got this ask which i think was... a month ago? a couple months ago? i did not have a dick & tim reading guide

BUT i read this ask and i thought WOW WHAT A GOOD IDEA, a dick & tim reading guide, i wish i'd had one of those when i started reading!! and also i had a lot of work that i didn't want to do so i needed a project to procrastinate on dsfdsfs

so i have been working on a reading guide spreadsheet and it is ALMOST DONE so i will post it soon-ish. <3 if anyone wants to check out the unfinished version and tell me if it's readable dm me <3

also below i have rambled a lot about the makings of the spreadsheet if you also like spreadsheets a lot

this is only sort of tangentially related to the reading guide but it is the SECRET ORIGIN of the reading guide. i think many comic fans eventually end up with a spreadsheet story because comics are bonkers and difficult to keep track of, so either you sensibly engage with your hobby in a reasonable fashion or you slowly go bonkers yourself and end up with a spreadsheet story. this one is mine.

so a year or two ago, when i got first got deeply deeply obsessed with dick & tim, i was desperate for content and i wasn't able to find much on tumblr

so out of a combination of deep affection for the boys and also an extremely strong desire to procrastinate the things i was supposed to be doing, i went through dc.fandom's list of dick's appearances and of tim's appearances.

and i cross-referenced them all to find the comics they both appeared in, and then i started kinda randomly reading through those comics looking for good art/panels that they both appeared in and taking notes on whether they appeared in the same panel or not:

and then as i became even more obsessive i started adding in a bunch of their solo appearances so i'd know the context of their team-ups, and i started color-coding blue-for-nightwing, red-for-robin, purple-for-both-of-them:

and then i started trying to make lists of Significant Events so that i'd know e.g. when characters died or got married or broke up:

and then i got tired of having to search for dc.fandom pages every time i wanted to check something in a comic, so i started adding links to dc.fandom and to dc universe:

and then i thought, you know, it'd be nice to have comic titles and to know if it's part of an ongoing story:

and sometimes when i was reading, i started taking notes on quotes or whatever was going on:

and that's about when i got this ask, and i thought, you know, i really should make a reading guide.

and i started thinking, okay, is there any way to take my spreadsheet and make it slightly less convoluted and a bit more like a reading guide?

and the answer was, probably not!!! but that did not stop me from trying sdfdsfds

so right now i have a spreadsheet called "Dick & Tim Reading List" and it's got a section that looks like this which has about 200 recommended-read comics:

but ALSO there's a tab that's really really long that has all of dick's solo comics and also all of tim's solo comics (from 1987-2011, not of all time, but still):

and also you can just get a list of all (post-crisis) comics dick&tim have appeared in together:

and also as i was working on this i discovered FILTER VIEWS and simultaneously got curious about all the quotes in grayson 12, which taunted me with the possibility of getting post-crisis continuity back before not giving it to me >:(((((( but anyway they're still good quotes so i made a list of all of them

anyway then i looked at all of that and thought ehhhhh okay but that's very complicated!! maybe i need some shorter reading recommendations. so then i started making a list of those:

basically you should picture the spreadsheet journey like this puppy:

anyway i'm still kinda distracted but i do intend to clean it up a bit more and then post a link, so that will happen soon-ish hopefully <3

[demonofnowhere]

Time’s Time: Time for Thomas (don’t interrupt him) & Time for Stelle (interrupt me ASAP)

* now, i once had a lovely introduction to this post.  i did, honest.  it discussed how twitter has gotten worse and worse, and how if things went well i will do my best to post more thomas stuff here, and even briefly mentioned what this post is actually about. . .

* then firefox crashed. * being new to tumblr, i had not saved a draft of my post.  in fact, i found out you could save drafts mere minutes before firefox crashed.  i thought to myself “wow! what a nifty feature!”, and then proceeded to not save it.  this almost happened twice actually.  i managed to save it the second time thankfully.  i’m still livid though.

* thank you stelle, you are a really useless idiot.

* therefore, we’re not going to have that nice introduction.  the only things you need to know from that post is that you can find me on Twitter (@DemonOfNowhere) for more of my usual infodumping, and that i’ve ditched my usual typing quirks in favour of making this post readable for you all.  let’s get straight to the point instead. * greetings, i’m stelle, demon of nowhere (name change pending?), and it is unfortunately time for thomas.

Doesn’t it feel strange to see me type normally? With dignity? With even the slightest amount of respect for myself? Err, ahem, I mean... Thomas! I love Thomas. I love the ending of “Stepney’s Special” for Thomas.

Thomas tries very hard to maintain a very professional profile on his branch line. It’s likely something he picked up from Gordon, if his attempts to imitate him whilst he was younger are anything to go by (note “Thomas’ Train”). If you get in Thomas’s way, he kicks up such a fuss and holds it against you until either one of your gets a taste of Sudrian karma (”you” being Percy in this situation, usually). This all means that when Thomas is shunted to allow Stepney, a newcomer, fly past him with one measely coach while Thomas, Annie, Clarabel and their passengers crossly wait for him to pass, Thomas gets cross.

Really cross. Super cross. He holds it against Stepney and is still fuming by the time the next morning arrives.

Thomas spoils the effect of it very quickly though. Of course he does, he’s Thomas and he’s stupid. All Stepney had to do was give one compliment and next thing he knew, Thomas was telling him EVERYTHING about his branch like an eight-year-old telling their parent all about their cool new toy they got (don’t let Mattel hear about this). Stepney calls Thomas an expert once, and away Thomas goes, not only to stroke his own ego a little, but also just because he’s too happy to ramble about his prized branch line (which Percy and Toby clearly think is hilarious, based on the illustration...). He’s a bit like me in that sense; we like to ramble about things no one cares about, but we can’t stop ourselves. Please help me.

One of my favourite parts of this exchange is the following line: “Ah well,” said Thomas modestly.

“Modestly” is the funniest words ever used to describe Thomas the Tank Engine. You and I of course both know that, despite his good heart, he is anything but modest.

Now, there’s something else I’d like to talk about here too. If you’ve read my ramblings before, you know that I cannot type for five seconds without bringing up something else that I didn’t mean to bring up but brought up anyway. I’m silly like that.

If Thomas got mad at Stepney for interrupting his branch line’s timetable once...

...How would he feel about having a whole train that has to do everything in its power to NOT interrupt the usual services?

In notes of Ffarquhar’s layout, the land cruise enthusaist train is noted to be scheduled in-between regular services, and mustn’t disrupt traffic. This is implied to be more difficult than it ought to be, partially because rail enthusiasts are rail enthusiasts and getting them back into the coaches is a miserable experience for the station’s secretary, and partially due to shunting arrangements at Ffarquhar that are absolutely mind-boggling (a document I wrote up of Ffarquhar’s timetable, according to the Awdry DVD, can be found here!).

The moment the Bloomer, or whoever the enthusiasts’ engine happens to be, arrives, he has to square his fancy saloon coaches away to make room for Thomas, Annie and Clarabel’s next down service. So, imagine for me, what happens when Bloomer indulges the enthusiasts’ interest in him at the platform for a little too long, only for Thomas with his grumpy little face to huff into the station yard and start angrily shouting at Bloomer to Get Out Of His Way Or Else The Fat Controller Will Find Out And You Will Regret That.

Now, we of course know little of Bloomer, but I’ve always thought of him not quite as an old grandpa, but rather a showman who takes a lot of pride in his theatrics on a railway filled mainly of engines still in regular service. Bloomer doesn’t get to appear publicly very often, but when he does, he’s going to make it worthwhile. He’s going to bask in the spotlight for as long as he can, impressing everyone who is lucky enough to draw eyes on him, and he’s certainly no pushover. If Bloomer wants to spend time talking to the enthusiasts about his past life (though he has to keep SOME secrets, of course. Part of the act, a bit of mystery is always fun), then he’s going to spend as much time as he can doing just that -- which he always does.

This drives Thomas insane. A WHOLE TRAIN THAT COULD THROW ALL OF HIS TIMETABLE, ALL THAT HE’S WORKED FOR, OUT THE WINDOW SO EASILY? WHAT. The poor guy. He and Bloomer would be the ultimate enemies, egomanaics for different reasons that will forever butt heads while the other Ffarquhar engines would wish they’d just shut up for two seconds.

He cheerfully and dutifully shunts Annie and Clarabel along from the carriage shed... then he sees Bloomer’s ugly mug taking up the platform. “YOU,” Thomas hissed, grounding to a halt, “YOU’RE not supposed to be here.” “Ah,” Bloomer smiled sweetly, “Thomas my boy, I most certainly belong here. It’s part of my act for me to be right here, right now. ‘Tis merely part of my script.” “Right now!?” scoffed Thomas, as Annie and Clarabel chattered quietly behind, “Right now, you and your ugly great houses on wheels are meant to be by the cattle dock! Never mind your ‘act’, my Timetable is much more important! You always talk such nonsense.” “And you always talk ever so much, yet say very little,” mused Bloomer, “A script would do you well, improv is clearly not your strong suit, Thomas my darling. For such a famous little engine, you never seem to respect the life of a shining star. What a waste, what a waste. We Enthusiast Engines have far more than timetables to worry about, boy; we have fans to please.” Thomas wanted to retort, but was interrupted by a shrill, long blast of Bloomer’s whistle. “I hope you all enjoyed the first part of the show!” Bloomer called to his passengers, as he began to back away, “We shall return after our intermission, and I have no doubt you shall all be there to witness the Grand Finale of today’s display! Make sure to be there at 6 o’clock sharp. After all, Time’s Time.” Bloomer winked in Thomas’s direction. Thomas’s face was redder than Bloomer’s paint, and he had practically vanished behind a thick cloud of steam. “What a horrid engine!” he grumbled to Annie and Clarabel when he finally made it to the platform, “He thinks the whole railway revolves about him, and expects everyone to work at HIS pace! The shame of it, the shame of it...” Annie and Clarabel really thought it all rather ironic.

This is all made funnier by the fact that once the enthusiasts’ train leaves Ffarquhar for the junction, it crosses Thomas with Annie and Clarabel going up the line at Elsbridge. Thomas has yet another chance to start bickering with Bloomer, especially when the Ffarquhar secretary likely couldn’t get the stragglers into Bloomer’s coaches in time (and Bloomer of course didn’t help her one bit). Their next rowl shall be exciting stuff for all involved -- except Annie and Clarabel, who have tried reasoning with Thomas the whole time, but haven’t quite been able to get through to their stubborn engine.

Now, realistically, I had planned to do a bit more talking rather than writing a whole scene. However, much like Thomas, improv isn’t my strong suit, and I hadn’t at first planned for this to be a Bloomer discussion, and perhaps this has gone on for long enough. Whoops!

What have we learnt today? Well, personally, I’ve learnt that I probably need to get the hang of writing these posts. This probably hasn’t worked out super well. Those of you who are more familar with this site are probably cringing so hard at me right now, and you’re entirely right to do so. For shame, me, for shame...

Usually, I like to round these off with a nice, poetic conclusion about what we’ve discussed today... but really I didn’t know that this post was going in the direction it went into. I mainly wrote this to get my foot in the door and finally post something of substance here. Apparently my second to most popular post here is talking about how fucking funny Terence the Tractor here. Can we change that please? Terence the Tractor is funny but... I can do better than that...

Well, no, no I can’t.

...

You know, I meant to start using my typing quirks again at the end of the post.

But now we’re here, and it doesn’t feel right for me to start using them.

...

I’m doing an awful job at ending this.

...

Maybe Terence the Tractor IS the best I can do.

Hmm.

[colorguardsweetheartblurrsgirl]

Have you guys watched The Art of Murder on Youtube??? You Need to Watch this...

Guys Go to YouTube and Watch "The Art of Murder"

It's so awesome. It's almost at 1m views (at them of writting this 957K six days after being released)

And Honestly I'm surprised no on is talking about this that I can find but I'm so calling it that Giorgio is going to be nominated a Tumblr Sexyman this year.

(I'll add a link later for the YouTube episode)

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Also for those of you wondering where I've been and why I haven't posted about STRY or any other works like UU.

I had alot of work drama going on. I hope this tart on art again soon. Actually it's thanks to work like Mid August I had this amazing idea of a outfit I just had to draw for Lenna. It was going to be a dress she wears when she goes undercover and is given to her by what I'm calling my stories "geeks" the Tech Boi's in other words.

This dress is so cool It's going to have a transformative element to it that if moving pieces of it will change the dress. (I admit I probably was influenced by my fascination since childhood with transformative pieces, reversible stuff, etc. My "Aunt" technically my Cosuin... but I called her Auntie Joanne the one who i mentioned two years ago passed ans showed the blanket was big on making me stuff that were trabsf9rmative like pillows that were jlhuge and turned into blankets (this was back in the 90s early 90s before that kind of thing that I'm aware of was really mainstream) I think she made me also reversible outfits and if you cna tell in that pic I sent the blanket was reversible too. So she may be part of the reason I had such facjnation).

Although, everytime I've sat down to write that scene something. Computer wise or electrical wise has occured so I haven't been able to write. Anyways, Coming up with this dress while driving to work one day however solved the big area of where I knew what I wanted to do with how my main character wiggles her way into this group that will lead her to other people she's looking to get to. I always knew what I wanted to do but just not how she was going to accomplish it. Or rather how too I knew had to change while remaining close to the original plan with many changes the story has gone through. But this dress ides suddenly helped me in so many ways, with giving characters I knew I needed to incorporate more in order to use them as I wished later and such.

Sorry this descriptions getting winded. But Yeah I just had so many good things occur eith the story. I've been working on it. But also work and personal matters delayed me. I won't get into it in this post. But all summer was focused on taking care of someone and later loosing them. And I also don't know how long I have with my good boy too as he's going through stuff... So working on things along with cleaning thus messy messy house that's overwhelming, taking care of my mom who caused accidentally third degree burns to herself and my dad who injured himself months ago and is only now finally seeing a doctor... it's been alot. I've been a bit overwhelmed by it all especially mostly cleaning thsu mess on my own.

If my writing seems better. I finally got a new phone. But haven't transfered everything over to it. (Having issues deleting enough on old phone to transfer stuff). So I only go on tumblr via web on this device. But yeah hopefully my writtings more readable. I haven't found though regardless of generation Samsung Galaxy in general changes my words regardless (my dad and I got the same phone it happens with him too... So I found some of that I used to complain about really as just a "safety feature" as my family calls it as a joke. Just say a built in annoying feature. But it's not as bad as the old phone which was in many ways buggy.)

Sorry this is not planned out. Just figured I'd give a update of some sort.

I do hope to post art soon. Especially planned stuff from last year. I actually brought up The Art of Murder as I might use that opening scene to make an animation animatic with a few of my main characters sometime. I really want to make some animation in general sometime. But I first need to get what they look like out there. So it may be a while.

Well thank you for reading my blabber.

I hope to see everyone again soon.

Have an Amazing day and Upcoming Thanskgiving.

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for trying to beat a video game?

I (13F) and my friend R (13F) were playing a video game with a bunch of our other friends (all around the same age). We were doing REALLY badly because they all kinda suck at the game, or don't care, or are just stupid. Whatever, I'm having fun anyway. R and I are the only ones really trying to win, reading all the lore, grinding out IGC, and leveling up our abilities.

This game is really hard, and really badly designed. It's full of bugs that make key parts of the game impossible. It's also really unpopular because it's so bad, so there's no tutorials on the internet. So R and I have to figure out how to win despite all the issues and a bunch of teammates who are too dumb to contribute anything.

Here's where I might be the asshole:

I figured out a cheat to spawn the end boss and beat the game that way. R thought I wasn't high enough level to beat the boss, and said my cheat would expose him to the rest of the woefully underleveled players, and he'd kill all of us. R killed me and leveraged a glitch to prevent me from respawning, all because she was paranoid my plan wouldn't work!

So Tumblr, did I do anything wrong????????

PS: If you die in the game, you die in real life, if that makes a difference.

PPS: I don't understand how this is readable to you, but mod won't let me type normally.

[crehador]

cr subs shaming: yuzuki-san ep1 pt1

so i'm big mad and here's why

first line: looks good! promising start!

second line: typo + no period already (it's all downhill from here)

usually i don't nitpick stuff like that because it doesn't affect readability, but it's not just once or twice that this happens in this episode. it's half the lines or more. official subs aren't an all-lowercase tumblr shitpost punctuate your work smh

also obviously the bigger issue here is "you" when it should be "you're"

loud incorrect buzzer noise, there are only four brothers, not five as this translation would suggest. "our" should be "we" or even "us" for a more colloquial touch

(edit: actually this would imply more than five brothers because first there's our, at least the speaker and one other person, then four brothers... minimum six brothers according to subs THERE ARE ONLY FOUR)

these two lines come back to back. "although" then immediately afterwards "but"

LOUD incorrect buzzer noise, one has to go (the sentence as a whole is a clunky disaster anyway)

and what do you mean "when" do you want to eat? he is currently eating. "when are you going to finish eating" smh

the lack of contractions is an ongoing issue as well and makes all the subs sound so stilted and inorganic, no one is saying "there is no resurrection" or "you are going to be late" in this context irl

this is the direct response to the previous image, "you won't be late" is clearly meant to be "i won't be late"

does she look like she's in a bad mood? incorrect yet again she's saying "you're in a bad mood"

direct response to line in previous image, bro says 別に and it's just translated as "no" lmao like string the two together and you have

"what's the matter?" "no"

where do i even start with this shit

arrive? wrong

this is probably one of the most infuriating errors to me, minato's main issue in this ep is wanting to do more for the family because he feels all grown up already (he's 12)

his older brother mikoto (13) is less than a year older than him, and they're even both in the same grade at school, but mikoto is taller and already doing more to help out around the house

so several times throughout the ep minato insists (because they're in the same grade) that mikoto isn't his niisan, isn't his older brother specifically

he's not disowning mikoto as his brother, as the subs would imply. to say "he's not my brother" would change the dynamic completely

the older part is damn significant here, especially when the episode ends with a nice moment involving this (which is also butchered in the subs as mikoto saying "i'm still your brother" rather than "i'm still your older brother" which is the whole point afdslksjal)

anyway the above only covers the first five minutes of the episode, and doesn't even include half the lines i have gripes with (i am exercising immense self-restraint here)

it's bad! it's real bad!!

[writerfromtheshore]

An Interesting and different 08

Found this when perusing a reddit forum, and I have been fascinated about the possibilities of it all day. Reposting below for easy readability: 

What if The Toa Nuva and Hagah switched places and we got the Hagah vs Makuta instead? I often think that if they made this switch fit the story, with the Nuva somehow being able to wake up Mata Nui anyways and fulfill their destiny so that we can focus on the Hagah on Karda Nui it would have been a lot more cathartic and somehow benefit the sets' design.

The Hagah were reduced to Rahaga which were established in BIONICLE 3 as a team of flyers (apparently it was later retconned, but let's pretend it wasn't), so it makes more sense that once they're restored to their Toa status they can easily become a fully airborne team.

Also, the Rahaga from 2005 being released as Toa Hagah 3 years later in 2008 is a nice parallel with the Turaga appearing in 2001 and then being reintroduced as Toa in 2004.

Too much metal in the Mistika? Masks that don't look like they belong to the Nuva? No problem. The Hagah have mostly unknown mask shapes (only Iruini and Norik were released in 2005 and Norik's mask was a different shape than his actual Kanohi, so 5 out of 6) and they were an elite Toa team with lots of metallic armor plates to indicate their elite rank, so we can just turn the Phantoka's dark grey parts metallic silver, or even better other metallic recolors such as gold, dark gold, copper, gunmetal grey and whatnot, and it makes sense lore-wise while adding more prestige to the sets. Also, with a few more parts you can solve the problem of some Toa only having a blaster by giving giant spears, which always look cool and don't require necessarily new molds.

Now, I said at the beginning it would have felt a lot more cathartic, but why? Well turns out the Hagah aren't just an elite Toa team but they used to have the roles of bodyguards of the Makuta, with Norik's team being assigned to Teridax himself. So having a formerly disgraced team of elite Toa, each one with far more experience than any previous group of Toa we ever collected since they predate the Metru and might as well have predated the Mangai, being restored to their former glory to have a final battle with the very species they once swore to protect... I dunno but when I think about it, it feels like the Hagahs battling the Makuta would have been a lot more personal. Also, they are the reason why Takanuva exists too since they secured the Avokii or something if I'm not mistaken, so having a titan Takanuva fighting beside them would have been pretty cool too.

Most people, including myself, like the idea of the original Toa team being brought back in 2008 for what was considered the final battle at the time. However, I often think that a different team should have deserved the spotlight. A team that doesn't require much introduction, since we already knew them in 2005, and that feels a lot more skilled and battle-hardened than even the Nuva. What better team to fight a threat such as the Makuta themselves?

The thought of the Toa Hagah being the ones to go to Karda Nui and battle the former ones they were supposed to be bodyguards for... the story potential is fascinating. I think while it may have robbed us from the reveals we got of the Toa Nuva and the closure to their story, which could have still happened in 09 if we stayed another year in the MU, it would have been a great closure to the Brotherhood of Makuta and the Toa Hagah. 

Really interested to hear your thoughts, Tumblr

[standardquip]

4 years of running BentoVid & RICE (an extremely long & meandering retrospective about survey data) This is an entry that's part history about the fanvid server I run that hosts a [now] feedback event [then contest] called RICE, and part data analysis from 4 years of pre-RICE survey data and one post-RICE survey from a particularly "problematic" year of the event. Read the entry as it was intended on dreamwidth by clicking the link above, or expand the cut tag and hope the html I pasted into tumblr displays correctly. [edit: it doesn't, but it's readable if you don't care about line breaks.]

Preface

Or, the time I accidentally influenced an entire industry through a survey question (click to read more) In 2015, I created a website called fursuitreview.com (FSR). Fursuits (one of a kind whole body animal costumes) are expensive and it was hard to keep track of makers that didn't have huge followings. I didn't want to run a review page, but only two existed prior to mine. One had died completely several years before, and the other one updated so infrequently it was almost useless (it, too, eventually died after FSR took off). The other two pages were a victim of putting too much work on themselves. The first had several questions reviewers had to answer and assign points. The moderators would average all the points for each review and give the overall review a score out of ten. This ensured consistency in the scores across all reviews. It was an amazing system but it would simply take too long to do myself (plus I'm terrible at math). Both sites were not actually sites - they were user accounts on furaffinity.net (and sometimes tumblr or livejournal) - which required write-ins to copy a big block of text and hope they got the format right (they rarely did, which meant moderators would have to correct it). FSR started out on furaffinity, but very quickly moved to a wordpress website. I thought very carefully on how I would keep manhours and costs down. I decided to not have any user accounts at all, nor would I bother with a numbered rating system (I instead went with a "positive / neutral / negative" system because that's really what everything boils down to anyway). I devised the least amount of questions I could in order to pry the information I wanted out of fursuit buyers when they wrote in. This resulted in two sections: wear satisfaction, and visual satisfaction. Each section had several sample questions to help guide the writer. "Wear satisfaction" was like, do you like how it fits you? how is the ventilation? how is the vision? Visual satisfaction was questions about looks.

Example screenshot of the FSR "wear Satisfaction" questions from 2020+

When people submitted a review, I would read over them all and make sure everything was copacetic before publishing it. Back then (before 2020), I was a one-man operation so I read literally every single review coming in. I noticed that some writers would mention lining in some of the fursuit parts. Most parts are unlined - it's just faux fur and the backing of that will be up against a wearer's skin. Lining is unnecessary and can ultimately make the costume much hotter - but it does make everything look really nice and marginally more comfortable to wear. After a few of these, I added "Does the item have lining?" to the list of sample questions.

Does the item have lining?

Surely nothing bad could happen from such an innocuous question!! (upside down smiley face goes here)

I must take a break here to mention that I had no experience doing literally anything that FSR required to run. I had bought 3-4 fursuits and thought it would be nice to keep track of my opinions of them. Everything else, from coding a website to writing survey questions, I had taught myself. I had some very very basic wordpress experience from a personal roleplaying character wiki wordpress site for myself, but that was it. FSR was a learn by doing experience. And boy, was it an experience. Writing, reading, reviewing, editing, customer service... FSR had me dealing with it all, and I'm surprised it gained as much traction as it did throughout that process.

So, needless to say, I had no idea what "survey bias" was.

Weeks, possibly months, later, I was browsing twitter keeping up with FSR social stuff, when I came across a tweet from a rather well-known maker (I believe it was either beetlecat or beastcub) asking other fursuit makers why customers were suddenly asking for their fursuits to be lined. I wish I had a link to this tweet, but I no longer have a twitter account. (If you happen to find it, do link it in the comments!) It didn't hit me at first. I watched the thread and the responses roll in. As other makers replied, the sense of dread was very slowly overtaking me. Could FSR really have that much influence? Could just a single little sentence really cause so much strife? Yes, it did, and yes... It did. Once I connected the dots, I edited the sample questions. No longer is it simply "Does the item have lining?" Now it is: "If it is lined, what material was used? Does it absorb sweat appropriately? Does it make cleaning easier?" But I went through a few iterations before I got to that wording. I believe my first edit was something like "(Note: most fursuits aren't lined)", but that didn't properly imply that you shouldn't be asking your maker for lining. After this lining snafu, I had to go through all of my questions and determine what I was accidentally influencing, how that could change what customers ask of their makers, and if I really needed that information in the review to begin with. I also, finally, learned about survey bias, and took some time to read up a little more on how to craft survey questions. And, of course, I had to come to grips with the fact that, yes, FSR was big. And it had influence. My little side project was a staple of the community and people counted on it to make very expensive purchases. Maker reputations and business operations began to live or die by the reviews we pulled in. FSR got to be too big and too much stress for me, so I ended up giving full ownership of the site to someone else in 2022 or 2023 (it was a long transition and I'm not sure when the public announcement was made). However, as of today (31 March 2024), fursuitreview.com is still fundamentally unchanged from how I was running it - including the review form. Nowadays, I have nothing to do with the site. I couldn't deal with the stress and responsibility once it grew to be a community cornerstone. Unfortunately, history may be repeating itself with the project I replaced FSR with...

A brief history of BentoVid (and RICE)

I have been editing anime music videos (AMVs) since 2001. I took a hiatus from the community from 2009ish to 2018. Despite that, I still managed to make at least one video every year. In 2018, I tried to get back into the community and realized it had almost completely changed. Discord was a thing now, and it seemed most of the activity was on there. I joined a few servers, but long story short they all weren't great. In a fit of frustration and annoyance, I did the classic move of going "Screw this, I'll do it myself!"

Bender (from Futurama): Fine! I'll start my own chatroom with blackjack and hookers! I glossed over it, but this is exactly how FursuitReview.com also started.

BentoVid (called AMV Sashimi back then) was created in September 2020. Back then, I did have high hopes. I did "plan" (finger quotes) on becoming a large community, but it was like how anyone plans on winning the lottery, you know? You don't actually expect it to happen. I thought that realistically I'd get maybe 30 members and it'd be just a chill hangout spot. But in 2021, we reached the fabled 100 members. Then 200. We broke 400 this year. And outside the very first year, I didn't actively promote. BentoVid has grown purely from word of mouth since 2021. On the other side of Discord was an annual AMV contest related to a particular anime convention. I first joined it in 2019. It was... okay... But not great. 2020 went even worse. The contest was going through a transition period and had a coordinator that, to put it mildly, was not well-liked. The concept behind the contest (which had been running for several years - I think 2005? Possibly even earlier) was great though. It was a contest focused on peer review. All the editors that submitted to the contest were the judges and voted on the winner. It was a blind contest, so nobody knew who made what, but only people who submitted to the contest could view and vote on the videos. The feedback was cruel. People did not hold back. Still, it was helpful, and I excelled my skills a lot by participating. The contest's discord server, however, went unmoderated and the coordinator made some very bizarre decisions. Another "Screw it, I'll do it myself" event occurred. RICE - Rewards imagined by a community of editors - was born by taking that other contest and implementing all the feedback participants had been complaining about for years. February 2021 was the first RICE. I had never run a contest before. Just like FSR (from the preface story), this was a trial by fire. I made at least one huge mistake every year the contest ran. But ultimately people liked RICE, and word of mouth about it (and the server) grew ever faster because of it. I had taken efforts to specifically NOT advertise RICE outside the BentoVid discord server, but that didn't stop it from growing.

4 years of RICE survey data

Partly due to my inexperience and partly due to my history with FSR, I put out RICE feedback surveys at every opportunity. I am actually not that into data. I don't analyze this stuff and I have no particular interest in collecting data at every turn for random things. I just find feedback surveys somewhat convenient and useful for my purposes. Sorry to people who are into that! XD

Pre-RICE survey data from 2021 - 2024

I have a small survey when people submit videos to RICE. It has (mostly) the same questions every year. Vivafringe helped me go through the data, and here are the results. (links to a google sheet) 2021 - 2023, the optional survey was on the same page as video submission questions. In 2024, I finally realized google form sections existed and I put it on a totally different page. I went from a 100% response rate to 58%. What a huge difference! But still inspiring to see so many people went out of their way to answer regardless. Here's my personal takeaways: US vs Non-US I personally thought there were more international editors participating, but it seems to hover around 20%. Do people keep their videos a secret? It looks like most of the survey respondents actually do attempt to keep their videos secret from everyone. However, almost as many people admit at least one person they know who will also be in RICE knows what their video is. I honestly thought it'd be the other way around, with more people sharing betas before RICE, so this is actually pretty cool to see. Thoughts on blind judging This question was multiple choice with only one answer allowed, so they had to choose which meant most to them. Most people seem to appreciate blind judging, but don't go out of their way to keep themselves blind during the event. (~70% combined) A large minority of people admit that guessing who made what during the event is part of the fun for them. (~25%) One possible answer was that blind judging is never truly blind - interesting to note only one person ever selected this and it was in 2023. Main reason for entering RICE? Another multiple choice answer where they had to select the "main" reason. Most people join RICE because they like the BentoVid community. However, almost as many people join because they like peer review. I'm flattered! lol But, in all seriousness, I really expected those results would be flipped, with peer review outranking BentoVid. Categories A multiple checkbox question for which categories your submitted vid belongs to, according to the editor. I mostly only care about theme, coordinator's choice, and live-action. Theme has submissions starting at 18% in 2021 and gradually going up to 29% in 2024. 2023 is an outlier with 39%. Coordinator's choice is very low. 1 - 3 videos. This is mixed news for me. On one hand, I think it's great people don't feel the need to pander to me (or maybe they don't know how). On the other hand... Please pander to me! XD Live-action is something I would like to see more of... The discord server started out as an AMV server and its audience is still mostly AMV editors. But I really want BentoVid (and RICE, by extension) to be about all fanvids and vidding (Hence the name change from AMV Sashimi to BentoVid). Long story short, live-action vids are obviously a very small minority that get submitted (5 - 9 videos each year), but they fluctuate between years. If you like live-action fanvids and want to join an active discord server... Please join us! lol How did you learn about RICE? This question was a small text field people could write whatever they wanted in. No surprise people learned about it from inside BentoVid. Next highest was word of mouth-related answers like "discord," "another discord server" or "friends". A little interesting was when AWA or POE were specifically mentioned (two popular AMV contests), but this was only twice for each.

Post-RICE survey data

2021 and 2022 had a feedback survey, but it was just one text block that asked for comments. Very few people ever filled this out and it was not very actionable feedback. 2023 was the first post-RICE feedback survey with actual guided questions, and it's because 2023 was... quite the year.

Understatement.

What happened during 2023 RICE?

Remember the contest I mentioned that RICE was based on? While RICE was thriving, that contest was floundering. The other contest, which for the rest of this blog I will call "HOST," happens in September - October, while RICE happens in February - March. 2022 HOST was another transition year for them. The old coordinator ("Elder") took over the contest after so many complaints about the coordinator that succeeded them ("Junior"). As far as I know, everyone was happy with Junior's leaving, but unfortunately it wasn't pretty. We weren't kind to Junior. Bridges were burned. Elder had some great ideas on how to bring HOST back up to its former glory days. But, procrastination got the better of them, so the contest started out very poorly. Then, during the contest, they had an extremely public and embarrassing meltdown. A number of people withdrew from the contest because of it. A totally different person ("Kidd") had to take over mid-event. The discord server went through an emergency restructure so Elder didn't have any special permissions anymore. Kidd was an absolute gem and managed to run the rest of the contest on their own very smoothly (Kidd continued through 2024 and deserves accolades). But the already negative reputation of HOST definitely turned into a dumpster fire after that. It was no surprise that RICE got touted as a good alternative. I was expecting more RICE entries than the previous year but. Boy. I was just not prepared. 2023 RICE saw 56 editors and 76 videos. The prior year was only 32 editors and 45 videos. RICE does not scale well. Moreover, I was experiencing horrible health issues at the time and really should have delayed or cancelled RICE due to them. Consequently, some people did not have a good experience with RICE. I thought the entire year was ruined. I made a pretty involved post-RICE survey due to it. This survey was mostly questions with text boxes where people wrote exactly what they were feeling. This made the answers a lot more personal and detailed. I will not be sharing the raw 2023 survey data. The complaints were about:

Too many videos for too short a time period

Some people were rude in the discord when discussing categories

Some people attacked one of the people giving critique in a voice call

I tried to enforce [very badly worded] content restrictions very late into the submission window. This had editors unnecessarily scrambling to re-edit things and ultimately ended up with multiple versions of videos in the contest [which should not have happened and that is entirely on me]

To me, the responses of the 2023 survey looked pretty dire. I immediately made changes to RICE following them. While RICE had started out as an improved version of HOST, I also had wanted the goal to be rewards for BentoVid server regulars. That's why I really didn't want to advertise it outside the server. I also never pinged \@Everyone or made a special role to get updates about it. The intent was if you were around the server, you'd know it was coming, and that was that. I wanted the good peer review and critique so we could all improve. I also wanted to see amazing videos. But what I DIDN'T want - and was (surprisingly!) NEVER concerned with - was lots of randos who didn't care about BentoVid. I explicitly never posted about RICE on a-m-v.org (despite people asking me to), and I never mentioned RICE outside my own server until after 2022 HOST. And even then it was really only in DM or if someone else had brought it up first. I still try to not advertise RICE, but I'm not as tight-lipped as I used to be. Still, it's primarily in DM. But anyway, I'm rambling now - the point is that RICE grew outside of the BentoVid bubble. People were joining RICE who did not care about BentoVid as a whole and I had to figure out how to handle that. My previous RICE messaging of "feedback event but also contest!" was fine for BentoVid regulars. We mostly knew what we liked and understood eachother because we hung out all the time. But for people new to RICE and/or the server, they had no idea and came in with false expectations. My two main takeaways from the 2023 Post-RICE survey were: 1. Because of my health issues and the mass increase of participants, the Discord server went (essentially) completely unmoderated during RICE. Because RICE (and BentoVid) is usually closely moderated, many conversations/debates went on a lot longer than they should have (because no moderators stepped in), which caused a lot of stress for participants. 2. The messaging of RICE was conflicting and led people to false expectations. People were essentially expecting HOST but "run better." "HOST but run better" is an over-generalization of how RICE works. It's actually quite different from HOST, but without the context of being a BentoVid regular, one wouldn't have that information. The first would be solved simply by me being present. Myself and most my staff could not be present during 2023 (honestly I'm surprised RICE ran as well as it did without us. Speaks a lot to our community!). To deal with the second point, I decided to focus on clearing up and changing RICE's messaging. Clearing the messaging had a few purposes:

More clearly differentiate RICE from HOST

Discourage non-regulars from joining without being super exclusionary about it

Discourage overtly competitive people from joining RICE

Encourage feedback-orientated participants

Focus more on accessibility (as RICE already applied VPR to all entries, it made sense to extend accessibility in other ways)

I took the survey responses very seriously, and as such, rushed to make announcements of what the changes would be. I ended up announcing them the same month RICE ended - March. Proof here (that is a discord link). You can read the initial announcement there in the BentoVid server, but I ended up changing things even more, so here's the summary of what the changes ended up being:

Very strict content restrictions (slightly relaxed later)

Focus on feedback event FIRST (took out all mentions of "contest" and "best" on the website, replacing them with "event" and "most-liked" )

No cash prizes at all (previously it was a $175 pool)

More emphasis on what exactly the server culture is like and what you can expect (basically: RICE is stressful, it's full of server regulars, prepare yourself if you're new)

Permanent categories got permanent names (previously everything was able to be voted on and changed)

All winners only get one award (previously there were multiple designs and names made for each award)

We added CWs as well as VPRs into the RICE expectations

Everything possible was outlined on the website. I literally wrote out the schedule and everything that you could expect to happen, how it all worked, etc.

The fallout from 2023 RICE continued throughout the entire year. It seemed negative feelings regarding it rolled out into other issues BentoVid was having (behind the scenes, especially in the staff channels) and overall I was really not feeling great about RICE. I was seriously considering 2024 RICE being the last one I ever ran.

2023 Post-RICE survey analysis

During 2024 RICE prep (which started in October 2023), I went through the 2023 feedback again. I asked some vague questions to random people about how they felt about 2023 RICE, and their answers (most of which were not negative at all) really had me questioning my perception of the entire thing. I gave the 2023 post-RICE survey data to a friend of mine who used to analyze that kind of thing for a living (Vivafringe). I went through the answers and redacted personal information, summarizing answers if necessary, before giving it to him. As part of the analysis, I asked him a bunch of questions and he looked over all the data to answer those questions. Again, I will not share the actual data here (even anonymized), but I will share the analysis he provided. Full disclosure: Viva did participate in 2023 RICE.

Analysis of Negative Experiences

Did more people have a negative or positive time in 2023?

to answer this I didn't do any fancy analysis. I read the responses and just did a vibe check of "negative" (pretty clearly had a bad time), "neutral" (had some things they didn't like, but gave other positive feedback or just in general didn't seem like they gave a shit one way or the other), "positive" ("vars you're the best" type comments) I think "neutral" people, if you actually asked them, would say they had a positive time, but it's hard to say for sure anyway I rated 7/25 negative, 7/25 neutral, 11/25 positive notably a lot of people didn't respond to this survey and the non respondants were likely positive/neutral. So I don't think you should read those numbers and assume 28% of people had a negative experience the overwhelming complaint from basically everyone was too many videos for the time they had - 5/6 people with "negative" feedback were returnees - 2/6 of the people who wanted "competitive" contest had negative opinions. No real signal there I think

I said the complaints about the VCs were really bad though?

I count 4 people that complained about the vcs my takeaway from reading this is basically: - moderate the vcs from now on, advertise them as critique/nice/whatever (you already are doing this but just saying I agree) - if you get 76 vids again, give more time to watch stuff I don't know how you solve chat getting tense, that was another common complaint

Category drama? Context: some people were very vocal about RICE needing fixed categories like typical AMV contests

I read the category stuff and broadly classified them as wanting "fixed" cats, "unfixed" cats, or "neutral" as you might expect most people didn't give a strong opinion on it, 10/25 were neutral 5 people wanted fixed, 6 people explicitly wanted to keep things as it was now (unfixed) if you read "neutral" as support for the status quo, which I do, I think the way you're doing it is fine. especially because a lot of the fixed cat people (3/6) had negative experiences and won't be here this year

I expected a smaller turnout for 2024 RICE. All I was really hoping for were more editors than in 2022 (which only had 32). Editors in 2023: 56 Editors in 2024: 43 (+3 more if we count DQs) A 17 - 23% loss, depending on how you count this. My thoughts: 1. That's not that bad, to be honest 2. If we treat 2023 as an outlier, 2024 is an acceptable and expected amount of growth from 2022. 3. One of the main complaints in 2023 was that there were too many videos, so 2024 numbers are more desirable in this context.

Other data collected from 2023 RICE

While I was mostly concerned about the negative experiences, I thankfully had the foresight to ask some other questions about RICE that gave us some valuable data.

Kollab vs frame.io = kollab wins by landslide

Direction for rice: contest vs feedback = 15/22 say feedback

Will you make an account on a website to do rice stuff? 12/25 say no

basically everyone answered the "what does rice do differently" question with "the feedback is a lot better". So a way to make rice better is to streamline process for providing feedback.

How long people spend on RICE vids:

10/21 (of the people that responded) started working on their rice vid 1 month or longer in advance

the competitive people ("A contest where the best of the best wins") seem kind of in the middle, time wise. 3/6 spent less than 1 month, 2/6 spent 2 months exactly, 1 didn't respond.

there were 8 newcomers, but basically same conclusion. 4/8 started more than a month in advance. 3/8 took a few weeks

Google docs & PSVs RICE offers a google doc with video information instead of trying to put it all in a filename. We also offered detailed VPRs and CWs, and, in some cases, alternate versions of videos that are more friendly for photosensitive users (called PSVs).

3/25 people said they used the VPRs.

18/25 people used the infosheet

4/25 used the CWs

3/25 used PSVs

What about 2024 Post-RICE survey data?

I collected that. This blog entry is already the size of a novel so I'll put it in another entry, I guess. Stay tuned! (Don't hold your breath though) I will exit this entry with the following results from that survey: If you participated in 2023 RICE, what would you say your overall experience was? 15/18 answered overall positive 2/18 said they did not participate in 2023 1/18 said neutral 0/18 said overall negative If you participated last year (2023), would you say your experience THIS year (2024) was: 9/17 answered overall better than last year 7/17 said about the same as last year 1/17 said did not participate last year 0/17 said overall worse than last year Your overall 2024 RICE experience was: 17/18 answered positive 1/18 said neutral 0/18 said negative 0/18 said boring 2024 RICE had 43 editors and 62 videos.

[giggly-squiggily]

Do you have any advice for someone who wanna start writing but is too scared and don't know where to start

you seem really cool and your writing is truly amazing and I wish you a good day or night!

Hey anon! Firstly- thank you so much for the kind words! I appreciate them immensely, and I wish the same to you :) I'm not the best with advice, but I'll share what I've learned from my time here on Tumblr :3

Under the cut for length :3

Being scared is a completely valid feeling, especially when we're first starting out. Hell- it's still scary some days, and I've been doing this since October 2019 😅

I will say though- that fear gets easier to manage the longer you're doing it. What starts off as anxiety on whether or not people are gonna like your work turns into a feeling of excitement as you get ready to share your creation.

Does it make hitting the post button any easier? Sometimes. Are they're days where I wanna launch myself out a window after I press the post button and run Charlotte from Black Clover style?

You betcha! :D But when you love doing something, and you wanna do it bad enough, it's so worth it :) I think everyone here has felt those nervous jitters to some degree when we first started out in our little community (or whatever community you ultimately find yourself in), so you're never alone, anon :)

All that being said- there's never any pressure or time frame for when you're ready. Hobbies like writing are meant to be fun and relaxing, so if you know you're not ready to make your debut on Tumblr, you don't have to. When you are ready, you'll know- and you'll be able to hit that post button! All and all- I'm rooting for you, anon! I hope when you are ready to start writing here, you'll have only good times and an absolute blast! (And of course- if you ultimately choose to write for yourself alone and not post it- I hope that your writing journey is a fun one full of things you wanna write and see with your favorite characters and settings! :D)

As for where to start- that's ultimately up to you. I can't tell you how to start it, but I can give you some quick tips (And also- if anyone wants to hop into the replies and share their advice, please feel free to do so!)

1.) Formatting is key. It doesn't have to be anything fancy-shmancy; just be sure to space out paragraphs and use proper punctuation so your work is readable. Don't sweat over the occasional typo- I know my work is always littered with them ajejrajer; and if you ever need help with your writing- don't be afraid to reach out and ask :) There are plenty of us here who'll gladly help you out if you need it!

2.) Don't be afraid to interact with people. I've seen a lot of really cool peeps here in the community, and I can say for the most part we're pretty chill klerjkajkrjk I myself am fairly awkward in DMs but I don't bite unless you want me to (Jokes!...Unless 👀 karkekjlarkjlerkj) Okay but really- the best part about being in a community is having people around you who like similar things you do and to share ideas with. It can be a bit intimidating at times (especially if you're like me and have social anxiety plus you've been a fan of a lot of people prior to making a blog) but it's worth it. I'm truly grateful for the people I've met here in this community- both those who I talk to on a daily basis and those who I might only interact with on occasion :) It's a lot less scary once you get to know everyone here jkaekrjajkr :3

3.)The golden rule: Have fun with it. Highlight it, circle it, put Patrick Star in fishnets on it- this is the golden rule!!! Tumblr is a hellsite that can fall off the face of the planet at any given moment, so we might as well make our time here as fun as possible! :D

Going back to the whole writing for you thing- if there's fandoms you love and want to write for, do it! Is it niche? Write it anyway! Has anyone heard of it? Well, now they have, haven't they? Is there literally no demand for this fandom/character/setting? Well- if you want it, then there's your demand. Don't be afraid to change it up and make your blog/writing whatever feels best. Crack fics, serious fics, a combination of everything in between- whatever you feel like making, I say do it! :D As long as your having fun, that's all that matters!

Ultimately- how you go about your writing journey is your call, anon. I don't know if anything I said today helped, but I'm rooting for you and all the things you'll make. If you ever decide to make your writings public here on Tumblr, let me know- I'll gladly check them out! :D Take your time, have fun, curate your experience and kick some butt, friend!

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 8 - Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

So I loved Discworld growing up, just like absolutely everyone else on tumblr. But the last book in the series I’d read was Making Money (vaguely appropriate tbh, since the first book I read in the series was Going Postal, grabbed at random off a library shelf when I was eleven or so). I was always vaguely aware there was more recent stuff I’d never gotten around to reading published before Pratchett passed, but nothing really beyond that.

Anyway cut to me seeing Raising Steam on a display at the library when picking up some holds and figuring hey, why not.

The answer to that being well, I’m sorry it feels mean to say because obviously there were pretty clear and obvious extenuating circumstances here, but it’s just not very good? Now admittedly a big part of that is probably just the inevitability of it failing to live up to my childhood nostalgia, but still. There were fun bits but still – the humour was mostly broad and unpolished, the politics were blunter and less subtle than some electoral manifestos, it was more stuffed full of pacing-killing cameos and fanservice than a later-day MCU flick, and just generally totally devoid of real conflict or drama, or even compellingly scenery-chewing two-dimensional villains to vanquish. It generally just felt like, I don’t know, something in the shape of a Discworld book but without the detail work and polish. Which again, seems very unkind to say, given the circumstances.

Honestly the blatancy and bluntness of the politics was the most striking thing about the whole book, and really cried out as something that would have been smoothed over and nuanced a bit in earlier works. But, well, Discworld’s always had a thick vein of whiggishness running through it, especially the Ankh-Morpok stories. But this one – a reader can only take so many paens to the glorious tolerance of the modern city, where you’re only oppressed on the basis of the class, you know?

The central thematic conflict of the book being ‘Progress, Prosperity and the Railroad, backed by the full weight of capital and high finance, and every crowned head worth mentioning, against a bunch of reactionary religious extremists who everyone hates without a single virtue the author seems to hold in the slightest bit of regard’ is also just fundamentally not very compelling reading, I’m afraid. If the Grags had some, like, saturday-morning-cartoon-villain charisma they might have been more enjoyable, but no such luck.

This might actually be the first story I’ve ever read where the railroad tycoon is a benevolent, good-hearted fellow who really does care about and look after his workers, though. ‘19th century robber baron’ isn’t usually a historical archtype that gets lionized in most fiction.

All that said – honestly, analyzing this as a novel is probably kind of missing the point. The actual plot and story sometimes feel like they’re kind of besides the point, and the real purpose of the book is a love letter and send off to just about every previous Discworld protagonist. There are so, so many cameos and references and call-backs in this book, which I probably would have found rather more charming if I’d read the rest of the series more recently and had everyone being talked about more firmly in my mind. As it was, a lot of them were just kind of annoying cut-away gags.

The book wasn’t, like, the worst thing I ever read or anything. It was always perfectly readable and got a few smiles. But yeah, safe to say it really didn’t work for me.

[4denthusiast]

I get annoyed, like many people, at how long and boring terms and conditions and privacy policies tend to be. I make a point of reading them anyway, as I hate that there's a norm of signing contracts you haven't even read, and though I don't usually understand everything as I'm not a lawyer, it still feels better than nothing. One particularly irritating bit is that despite all this detail, they often don't make clear the information I would actually like to know. I'm sure there are legal reasons for this, but on Tumblr's for example, there's a list of a few actions that are public (liking, replying and reblogging), but it's far from exhaustive. From what I've seen it seems like poll answers and sideblog identities are private, but it's hard to be confident that just because I've never found a list of individual responses to polls I've posted, that information is never shared. Tumblr's UI is too much of a mess for me to confidently make such an inference (and even if other Tumblr users can't see individual poll results, that still doesn't indicate whether it's used by Tumblr & associates for personalized advertising and stuff). For this reason I'm generally hesitant to actually respond to Tumblr polls, which is annoying because they are a fun feature.

There are activities I do that involve websites used by a small number of people for games, mostly reasonably informal but large enough that we do have privacy policies for them. I remember one game in particular was run by someone who happened to be a lawyer, who made a point of writing the privacy policy in a way compliant with all the relevant legislation, and it was way less readable than usual, perhaps more legally compliant but in practice not as fit for purpose. Presumably things would be much worse off if there were no laws on this at all, and I'm far from having enough expertise in the matter to be able to suggest changes to the law that would actually improve things, but it's still frustrating.

Issues with terms & conditions are also a large part of the reason I dislike onlike shopping. Online, each shop gets its own terms you technically have to read. In physical shops, it's just governed by national law, which is not only uniform and therefore less mental strain, but also designed to balance the interests of shop and shopper rather than being whatever the shop feels it can get away with.

Occasionally I'll come across terms and conditions which are pleasantly simple and reasonable in contrast. Netflix is one example of this I remember. It probably didn't make me choose them over their competitors because I didn't read their terms until I'd already chosen, but it does make me feel inclined to like them more.