#anyway. something something Tumblr's aging user base

[rahleeyah]

Rotel, vodka sauce, couscous, mushroom tomato pasta sauce, ice cream, canned chilies, frozen peppers, paper towels, tampons (9 items): $60 at Publix

Grapefruit 12 pack bubbly water, blackberry 12 pack bubbly water, frozen green beans, bag of russet potatoes, fresh brussel sprouts, bag of 3 fresh bell peppers, 3 count bag of romaine hearts, 2 packs of taco seasoning, large chocolate pretzel bar, bag of shredded Mexican cheese, 2 pounds fresh chicken tenders, large fresh pork tenderloin, 1 pound frozen ground beef, pouch of 90 second brown rice, bag of cabbage and carrots, one pound kielbasa, box of penne, canned tomatoes (19 items): $61 at Aldi

This blows my mind, every week. If y'all have an Aldi near you GO

[hopecomesbacktolife]

dailyquests

fully read and ensure you fully comprehended your coworker’s email before replying

[kerubimcrepin]

Live-read: The Wheel of Destiny #8, Kerubim.

You can find this article on the Dofus MMO's site, by simply googling it.

A bit of context: this is an article, from the series called "Wheel of Destiny," which focuses on small character studies of various ecaflip characters from the World of Twelve. I won't be doing all of them, just the ones that interest me.

It is my decision to start with this in particular, because of the relatively small size of the article, to test out this... reading liveblogs thing. I hope it goes well, and isn't too boring.

I hate Eca so much it's unreal, just so you know.

To make it more obvious which parts are me, and which parts are the article, while you're skimming the post, I turned on my computer's night mode for making screenshots.

...My sincerest apologies to tumblr's dark mode users, though. I'm sure this is a nightmare for you.

And this is what I was talking about in the previous posts, where I said that, canonically, Kerubim's friendship with Bashi started before the Quest of Two Mornings in Episode 3, Strich Hunt.

Very sad to disappoint, but there does not actually seem to be a Croc Ness monster in the Dofus MMO.

Yet another confirmation of the temple being situated in Amakna. (Besides my own geographical estimations while watching the show, and it literally being there in the Dofus MMO.)

It's a long ass way between the temple, and the swamp, but it is realistically doable for two kids, especially if they have a carriage. (Which Kerubim, being the guy responsible for feeding Ecaflip, does have access too.)

"Five-Cat Monte" is a reference to "Three-Card Monte" which is a real thing.

Glad to know Bashi is also very normal and sane as a kid. Also, very glad that older kids, who give lessons, react to things like this by essentially going "Sure, go die I guess."

God, they are so fucking stupid. Anyway, they are talking about some real landmarks here, all of which are also around Amakna, and seem to be pretty accurate to the in-game geography.

...It feels nice to be right.

...I suppose that, despite its faults, the orphan temple actually gives a shit about its disciples not dying. Color me surprised? Eh, I'm mostly joking. It would be very weird if they didn't.

I will spoil things ahead for you: Ecaflip used magic to make Kerubim look like Atcham.

Bashi's reaction to Atcham being "AAAAH NOT THAT FUCKING CREEPY KID AGAIN 😨". The way he pretty much says, "a ghost?? NO. SOMETHING SCARIER. YOUR WEIRD FUCKING BROTHER."

It all implies., So much. It implies so much. I'm still not over it.

Pictured: my vision of how Bashi reacted to Atcham, when Kerubim (against his will, unwillingly, and deeply embarrassed) was forced to introduce them to one another.

I like to think that before they began to hate one another, Kerubim's relationship with Atcham was similar to what he had with Patafiks. Except instead of copying him, Atcham would, idk. Threaten to kill himself if he got any friend other than him? Threaten to kill his friends?

Something insane and jealousy-based like that.

I may be that guy who's very critical of Kerubim, and constantly going "Atcham's sad implied backstory this, Atcham's sad implied backstory that," but you don't get reactions like that by simply being extremely bullied.

You get reactions like that by being That Heavily Bullied Kid With 20 Mental Illnesses Who Attacks People With Sharp Objects.

Pictured: my rough theory of whatever the fuck happened between Kerubim and Atcham in the orphanage.

It is a funny image... that quickly wraps around back to being sad, once you think about little orphan Atcham, who people fucking hate for being a bingus, who has nobody except for his equally-orphaned brother (who doesn't look weird, can actually make friends, and leave him alone, if he wants to. Which he does.) and how at such a young age he got desperate enough to resort to what seems to be violence to protect himself.

Which got him absolutely no help. And also made people look down on him even further.

I think the funniest part of it all is that Atcham as an adult has:

1. The knowledge that hating Kerubim is literally not productive and a weird fucking coping mechanism.

Yet he keeps doing that.

2. A sort of moral compass that's all about protecting and respecting those in the same shit situation as him. (Even if they insult him. He hates that, but he's mature enough to uh.... just shave people against their will about it.)

While Kerubim is like. Still struggling with even saying that he doesn't even hate his brother. Somehow, he's the more emotionally constipated one.

So normal of them.

Anyway,

I think here we can see a bit of the internal growth Kerubim has had, from the time when he was a child, to adulthood.

Joris cannot picture Kerubim being ashamed, or disgusted, by Atcham, despite this article showing him doing exactly that.

It is the reason why I think one of the factors that contributed to Kerubim adopting, and keeping, Joris, was his guilt over whatever Atcham went through, despite how much he likes to say that he doesn't like Atcham.

Joris is different from other kids: small, weird, probably bald. And in any other situation, it's likely he'd develop a complex about it, except his dialogue in the movie specifically implies that Kerubim has put in conscious parenting effort into preventing exactly that.

While it's obvious that Kerubim loves Joris, there are many flaws in his parenting. So him putting a petabyte worth of effort and research into one single aspect of it is... very telling.

Now for a bit of a reach/headcanon: Who's to say that the reason Joris doesn't have many friends, is not Kerubim trying to isolate him from any potential source of shame or trauma? This part, as I've said, is purely speculation/headcanon — but it is an interesting thought.

And Atcham, who was there, and experienced shit like this from Kerubim, is still swayed by Joris's words.

What I think happened between them is that Kerubim, who yearns for societal approval, is afraid of being like Atcham, who is often ostracized and disliked by people for his looks. Besides this, I think Atcham, who was Going Through Horrors, was clingy.

For these reasons, he pushed Atcham away, and it is this betrayal, coupled with Kerubim's advantages in the form of not looking weird and being Ecaflip's favorite, that made Atcham fucking detest him.

What it all means is that Joris isn't necessarily wrong: Kerubim wouldn't hurt Atcham (at least, not unless it's self defense), and what he did was just... trying to save his own skin as kid.

Which isn't exactly malicious.

And I guess Atcham agrees with Joris on Kerubim's incapability of doing harm to him on purpose. Otherwise, he would never be convinced to change his mind.

There is probably a reason for why Kerubim would rather live in a forest, than go back to the temple looking like Atcham. And as I've said, I don't think it's a happy one.

Now think about Atcham doing this his whole life and get sad. Like I just did.

I think that, of all the things, it's most disgusting that whatever happened to Kerubim and Atcham was happening under the watch of Ecaflip, and perhaps even because of him.

I wouldn't put it past him to orchestrate their hatred for each other for fun. Or because he wanted Kerubim all alone, to himself.

I also find it interesting, the way Ecaflip says "once more" here. Implies that it used to be a normal thing for him. I suppose my guesses of Kerubim being disliked by other kids due to Atcham may have some merit.

And god, it makes me so, so sad.

He cares enough to intervene when Kerubim is about to die, which goes against his own rules, but not when it's about his kids' life being fucking awful.

...Maybe Oropo was right.

Do we know if Ecaflip's emotions are even genuine? He is the narrator of this story, after all, and he could be lying. He puts Kerubim in danger many times. Many. Just for fun and his own amusement.

I will take Ecaflip's narration as a straight-forward one, — that he really is feeling these things, but it still reads as manipulation, even if he is doing it for "Kerubim's sake". He's not a good father and never will be one, and these are very cruel lessons.

I will be real, their relationship disgusts me to my heart <3 Amen.

And now we know why Kerubim is... like that. And why his parenting is so overbearingly sweet, controlling, and obsessed with making sure Joris knows he adores him and adores him back.

Perhaps, despite everything, Atcham was the luckier one for not having Ecaflip's "love" the way Kerubim did, but honestly, I feel both of them had it equally shitty.

A true "would you rather sit on an anthill or sit on a cactus" choice.

[autisticrosewilson]

I read your wilson headcanons and I would like to hear more if you don't mind. Or anything about Tanya and the rest of deathstroke Inc. (That's what theyre called aren't they?)

I haven't a clue but boy oh boy do I want to talk about them. Uh go in with caution, there's discussion of experimentation and eating disorders and childhood homelessness in Tara and Poppy's parts. I know you specifically asked for Tanya but I talked the most about Tara because I realized I haven't really made a post yet about my version of her story, and I figured now would be a good time to get into that.

Be warned I haven't read Tanya's Titans era yet so these are pretty solely based on her time with Defiance.

She definitely went to a private school, and it's not an experience she would wish on her worst enemy. Had really long braids as a kid but too many people pulled on them so she decided on the iconic pom poms.

I don't remember if her dad was ever mentioned so she primarily grew up in a single parent household, which didn't really bother her as a kid but she did have to be more responsible at a young age.

She just seems like a volleyball girly to me, I don't know. Probably did a lot of sports and had a million clubs. Never took a class that wasn't AP. My girl was a PRODIGY.

Band kid 💔💔💔 (yes she went to band camp, no she doesn't want to talk about it. Clarinet player.)

Begged her mom to let her come to the lab, she always knew she wanted to follow in her mom's footsteps.

Going from having a sous chef to living with Slade "joined the military at sixteen so he can only make MREs" was not a change she appreciated.

I feel like she was scouted for modeling as a teen and she thought about it but ultimately decided that she wanted to be known for her brain and not her face so she turned it down. She still brags about it though.

She forced Slade to take etiquette classes so he'd stop eating like a barbarian and embarrassing her in front of her coworkers. He already knew most of it but he pretends to be clueless so she'll keep going with him. This is like peak bonding to him

Poppy they could never make me forget about you<33 literally my daughter if anyone cares.

Everyday the fact that she didn't get a last name makes me froth at the mouth, I have to do everything myself around here. I've decided it's Hayes, but she doesn't really use it so it doesn't really matter.

Firstly there is something so real to me about trans fem Poppy (She/They) and I just need everyone to stick with me.

So I don't think Poppy is her original name anyway, I think she came up with Poprocket first and then spawned Poppy from there. I don't think she remembers anything about her time before the Dark Side Club, and I don't think she wants to. I think she checked, y'know just to see if there was a police report or missing posters. Nothing. So I don't think she ever went out of her way to find her previous family.

Banned from multiple public places for dying her hair in their bathrooms and staining their sinks pink.

She is a biter she will bite you it doesn't even matter if she likes you or what the situation is if you get close enough to her teeth she will fucking bite. Tara has many imprints of her teeth and is immune to them at this point.

She's definitely a little chubby and a little short for her age, I think her time on the streets + in the Dark Side Club made her malnourished and she kind of hoards food/over eats to make up for it

She was the kid in the galaxy print leggings that hissed at you in the hallways I fear, drew the Dan & Phil cat whiskers on her face everyday. Original Tumblr user, mostly reblogs cat videos. Warrior Cats kid, used to roleplay her catsona with her friends on the playground

Had to be physically removed from the room when they started dissecting frogs in bio, Slade had to pick her up because she was crying so much and they couldn't get her to stop, he ended up taking her for ice cream

Tanya and Poppy for all they're polar opposites get along pretty well. I think Tanya gets really protective of her, definitely the one Slade has to answer to before he does anything with Poppy or Tara

Tanya is the one who teaches Poppy to do makeup and they have little spa days

Poppy keeps bringing stray cats home and Slade keeps trying to say no but Tanya doesn't see an issue so she buys all the stuff for them herself

Tanya tells her gross stories about shit she saw when she was interning at a hospital while Poppy's eating to make her gag

Poppy constantly steals Tanya's clothes and it always leads to a fight first thing in the morning when Poppy tries to wear Tanya's crop tops or god forbid her Christian Dior perfume to school

They're like the sisters ever and no one even cares, DC let me in the writers room

Tara my love, they didn't do you ANY justice. The SA storyline just... wasn't done well, or handled with any respect, and it kind took away all the interest I had in Slade because the most interesting part of his character is his family and their dynamics but I couldn't focus on that when he was being weird about underage girls so it really just kind of threw me off, so I guess my prognosis is that it just,,,,didn't happen in my version of events.

Like there was a weirdly codependent father-daughter bond where he projected onto her, because she was looking for a family and he was coping with Rose blaming him for Lili's death, but there was nothing sexual or romantic because that's fucking weird and I don't want to write about it

I'm including some of her New 52 origin but I'm changing it a little, so instead of growing up with Beast Boy (he keeps his original origin) her story coincides with Poppy's since The Ravagers are so similar to the Dark Side Club anyway.

Tara is raised in the castle as a maid like her mother, Nadia, but when her powers show up she's exiled by queen Illiona who sends her and her mother away to a cabin in the middle of the snow laden woods, far away from anyone else. Well, anyone except for Dr. Helga Jace, a woman claiming to be a doctor for meta humans with a grudge against the king. In the end she convinced Nadia that Tara's best bet was being fostered by a family in the U.S. to which the woman agreed. What they didn't know was that Tara's "foster" family were agents of the Dark Side Club.

I always imagined Tara with a Russian accent for reasons I can't explain, but I was vindicated by Markovia being a part of the Soviet Union

She used to have brown hair down to her hips but the scientists cut it short, and when she escaped she bleached it to hide better.

She hates doctors because they remind her too much of the experiments, so Slade only lets her get checks ups by Dr. Villain, who is only allowed to do house calls

Jokes about her and Rose being twinsies because they're both bastard kids

Her and Brion used to be close as friends and he even sent her letters once in a while when she was exiled, I like to think he's still looking for her but she doesn't trust he wouldn't tell her location if she sought him out

They grew up close, like their mothers before them, and I imagine that Brion learned combat as part of his lessons and Tara would always beg him to teach her. The one time he actually did she was such a natural at sword fighting he joked she'd make a better knight than a maid

Crazy good at strategy games, for all she's never been interested in academia I think she's crazy smart and a thorough planner. Maybe a little bit of a control freak. It's something her, Slade, and Rose all bond over

Her superhero name being Terra and her civilian last name being Markov is soooo stupid, I can buy that she as a homeless 15 year old came up with it but I refuse to believe that Slade let her out into the real world with that. Her civilian name is Terra Hayes and her alias is Bishop (chess connotation = Defiance uniform + the bird has similar colors to her independent costume)

She knew very little English before Slade, luckily she came to him after he had some practice teaching English (Rose also didn't speak much English at first)

She got very good at cooking, cleaning, sewing, gardening, and the like young so she was always relatively independent to begin with but a lot of those old hobbies remind her of her mom now, who she doesn't know the status of

She and Poppy survived together on the streets, Poppy was 11 or 12 to her 14 or 15 so she took the big sister role pretty seriously

Slade found them together and Tara initially attacked him but he managed to talk her down after getting his ass kicked

They both have food issues, understandably, but where Poppy tends to over eat to the point of getting sick Tara will stop eating for days if she feels like food is running low so that Poppy can eat more

Probably one of the most financially responsible of Slades kids, arguably too cautious about money at first. There's a difference between knowing her mentor is rich and processing it, and she's not entirely sure what to do with big displays of wealth. She worked in the castle, she was a servant no matter how well taken care of, she's not meant for the princess treatment.

She does like going with Tanya to her work parties and high society events though, she learned a lot about social etiquette and politics as part of her curriculum and she's very charismatic when she has the chance to be

Put this girl in a theater class!!! She loves undercover missions, especially ones where she's undercover as like a waiter or a chef or something, she's thriving. Sometimes she gets so caught up in the job that she forgets about the actual Job™️ though.

Her and Joey put on wigs and coordinated outfits,take their fake IDs to fancy restaurants and pretend to be a proposing couple to get free food. They don't even need to they just think it's funny.

Sunny is an enigma, I almost hesitated to include her just because we know so little but Slade does explicitly say she's family and I like that she bullies him so I decided to.

Once again no last name, and it's debatable if Sunny is even her actual first name. I think she tells everyone she meets something different so no one knows if she's lying or not. The only person who knows her actual first name is Slade, but he doesn't use it because she doesn't.

She low-key gives estranged mob daughter to me, really funny if she has a whole family that she just doesn't talk to. Probably ran away to be a mercenary after one too many attempts to marry her off.

I'm not saying she intentionally copied Laura Croft but I am saying that she spent an inordinate amount of time playing Tomb Raider as a kid

Can and will whoop ANYBODY'S ass in Just Dance, her and Joey aren't allowed to team up

Very competitive about family game nights, she has resorted to physical violence multiple times

She has a lot of tattoos but only ones that can be easily covered, claims it's just so she's harder to identify but I feel like she grew up in a strict household and she's got lingering paranoia about self expression

Acts really unbothered all the time but she has never once won the idgaf war

She's about college age but I don't think she actually goes, never all that interested in school but she's definitely been to some college parties. She tried to bring home a frat boy once and the whole family collectively bullied him so bad he ghosted her and none of them ever let her live it down

Steals Slades leather jackets and he complains about it but he's started specifically picking out ones she'd like and modifying them all with extra padding and armor that he wouldn't really need just so she'll be safer when she wears them

Sunny's not invited to Tanya's work parties anymore because she shows up high, eats all the food, and then complains halfway through about being tired till someone takes her home early

Caught Poppy doing her eyeliner with a fine liner sharpie and dragged her to the nearest store to get her actual makeup

The fights her and Tanya have over clothes are the worst because they're similar sizes. Sunny wore one of Tanya's EXPENSIVE dresses to a college party and it's a good thing the dress was dark because there are definitely blood stains. Tanya accidentally shrunk Sunny's favorite pair of jeans in the dryer and let's just say one of Tanya's pom poms was a little sparser than the other.

Poppy made glitter bombs to use in the field but one time it missed and hit Sunny on her motorcycle to this day Sunny is still finding it in her armor and sometimes her tires leave faint glitter tracks

One year for Halloween they tried to do matching Charlie's Angles costumes but it was so unrecognizable without the three of them together and they all had different things they were going to (Sunny had a costume party, Tanya was handing out candy, Poppy was going tricker treating) that no one knew who they were supposed to be

Poppy, Tanya, Sunny, Tara, and Rose all have girls nights which can range from your average sleepover to them terrorizing the town, either way Slade always has to clean up the mess

Thanks for the ask and sorry it took forever! This kind of got buried under a bunch of other notifications lmao

[kynmoonlight]

Bard's Broken Heart

I present: 1 motif of what I’m calling “Bard’s Broken Heart Lace”

OK, not quite, but still a cool design. Inspired by this post from Tumblr user @loki-is-my-kink-awakening https://www.tumblr.com/loki-is-my-kink-awakening/723753602720661504/oh-my-gods-are-these-the-hearts-hidden-on?source=share Who noticed that the trim on Jaskier’s shirt in Season 3 Netflix Witcher is little hearts! And a reply (sorry OP, I can’t find it now) noted that they’re very symbolically, hearts that are divided!

So anyway, I got crafting-obsessed and had to try to figure out how it was made and attempt to recreate it.

Which lead to research on historical lace-making and needlework.

[Disclaimers: this is all my best guesses as an amateur crafter, not a historical expert. I know my stitching is uneven, especially the pin-picots, which I just learned last week]

by the way, crafters or fic writers looking for historical fibercraft reference, check out Project Gutenberg’s (free!) The Encyclopedia of Needlework by Thérèse de Dillmont https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/20776/pg20776-images.html SO much fascinating stuff!

First, based on the clearest photos I can find (ie not very) I’m guessing the actual trim was machine-made, because a) the stitching is really even and smooth and tiny, b) handmade lace would be extremely expensive, and c) TV/Movie costuming needs multiples of every garment, especially for something like a delicate chemise Jaskier wears running all around the continent for a whole season. 

My first guess and attempt was crochet, which wasn’t it, then thought it might be tatting or bobbin lace, which also weren’t right once I looked up images. 

I finally settled on whitework cut-work embroidery with some needle lace techniques for the edging. Which I think gave me a kind of close facsimile. This one is about 1-½ x the size of what he wears (because that’s the limit of my aging hand steadiness, crafting magnifiers, and the materials I had.)

This one motif took me probably two hours, including many screwups and tangles. Not including drafting, blocking and snapshots. With the right materials and one done for practice (as it was only my second project in whitework and first try at needle lace!) one heart would take around an hour. For someone whose lifelong job, all day every day, was embroidering lace trim, they’d probably manage a meter/yard or two of the actual size trim, which I’m guessing is how much is on that shirt.

So in-universe, this still wouldn’t be a cheap piece of clothing, with at least a full day of skilled craftswomen wages for just the lace, plus finely woven, printed fabric that (I think, historically, that would have been block printed by hand), and additional seamster time to make it up. Modern-day equivalent would probably be easily USD $1000 if not 2x that. Our boy is making good money as a now-famous bard! (I suppose in a universe with magic, it could have been magiked, or magically duplicated after an expert created a template, but I suspect that would cost as much as handcrafting anyhow)

If I get bored and the crafting bug hits me again, I might try to make a whole edging this, maybe on a handkerchief. 

Now, what do I do with one lace heart? I settled on starching it and attaching a safety pin back, so I guess if I ever go to a convention I can wear it as a pin so fellow Witchercrafters and Jaskier fans know how much of a nerd I really am.

I could write up direx with step by step pictures if anyone else really wants to try it.

[sunflowercider]

Back at it again thinking about those magic identifying necklaces that never get used. Also I finally decide what the Frontera symbol is lol

(aka tumblr user sunflowercider be like "is anyone else gonna do anything with that lore?" and not wait for an answer)

Why are identifying necklaces a thing?

Okay, like I've conjectured before, the identifying necklaces probably come from the palace, similar to how a normal card ID is issued now. Though in Lorasia, it's only for nobility, which honestly makes sense. Lorasia is a feudal monarchy still, so nobles have some significant power; having a way to identify a true noble both helps a noble prove their legitimacy to those who speak to them, as well as prevent bad actors from pretending to be someone with that kind of power.

The palace probably issues the necklaces for the above reasons, but additionally as a sort of census of the nobles. Unlike modern representative governments, nobility is based on birth (or occasionally you can be granted it, like Lord Nort), and so thats a lot of people running around with power. Nobles are in charge of the lands given to them and are taxed (aka they definitely have someone keeping an eye on them), so that's less to track, but what about their numerous kids? How does the palace guarantee that some rando saying theyre related to Lord So-and-So is real? ID necklaces!

Who gets them, and when?

Sorry, gonna be briefly grim here - I don't think a born-noble gets one immediately upon birth partly bc duh its a baby but uh. Mostly because babies surviving in olden times was harder (._. ;) Sorry, sorry, that makes me sad. But probably the moment a noble announces to the palace that they have a child, the palace will whip up a new necklace. The child doesnt have to wear it obviously, but remember, its like an ID, so it needs to be something the noble child (or the family) has in possession.

The necklace has a little hologram of the person's face too, so potentially there's a small faction of palace magicians who go to visit the new child to use their magic to essentially take the kids "picture" lol. (I cant imagine the palace would make a family with a newborn travel to the palace just for a necklace. Gotta make it convenient for people or else they might not do it!) Lorasia has magic tho, so I imagine "picture" retakes are not needed - the magic image reflects the owner as they age!

If someone wasn't born into nobility, the moment they are either awarded it or marry into it, the palace issues a necklace for them. It might even be a little more ceremonial, since both of those ways would already have even a small ceremony anyways.

Okay, but what do they look like?

The only description we have is that it's a necklace "engraved with a symbol of the [noble house]". Wow. Let your imagination run wild.

My guess is that these mf necklaces are expensive to make, so they're not made too over the top, but I mean. They are for nobles, so theyre probably still made of gold or silver as a base. The description also just says "engraved", but symbols of nobility often have color that's important too, so there's probably some pigment involved on the pendant part. (The fancier nobles probably wanted jewels instead of pigment but good lord that'd be expensive and difficult). The shape of the pendant part probably depends on your house crest, but the size would probably not be very large, for convenience. Probably around an inch (3 cm) in diameter? Legible but small.

Any random cultural notes?

You bet!!

There's no way altering your necklace is legal without consent, so I imagine the nobles who find the necklaces boring to look at will dress them up. Add some ribbons, tie on pretty charms or gems, weave them onto fancy hats - who knows! I bet there's plenty of trends that come and go over the years for those who care about it.

Losing your necklace is a grave error, but more terribly, if any other nobles find out, you will be considered a huge idiot for quite a long time. The parties with nobles will suck.

If you have twins, they will get different colored metal bases. The magic activation will only work for the correct person either way, but imagine having to scan your ID every time you and your twin need to remember which is theirs. Twins will often join in the decoration trends anyways to be safe.

While frowned upon by the palace, intense young lovers will exchange necklaces to prove their commitment. (Exchanging their family's crests, an item meant to be worn close to your heart, an important item that needs careful cherishing, oh my!) More commonly, people will just exchange or purchase decorations for their lover, if they do anything at all.

Common folk sometimes whisper that they're chains for the nobles, but in kinder terms, theyre pretty happy they can ask for a necklace for proof of trust if they feel someone's trying to trick them. It's written in bold letters in the palace law books that a commoner has the right to ask for proof of nobility, and if a noble rebukes, they will get in serious trouble. Like, potentially stripped of your title kind of trouble. And anyone who is caught pretending to be a noble? Oh dear.

Okay, most important question - what the hell is the Frontera's symbol?

IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED

After chewing on it for a while, I think it's a white shield, with the two (blue) rivers converging on it at an angle, and bluebells sprouting from them.

White for a peaceful land, the dual rivers that bend around the barony/county and blue meaning loyalty, with the main symbol being bluebells meaning humility, gratitude, and love. (Also im amused at the association with fairies stealing people to another world if you pick one hahaha)

[ohnoitstbskyen]

So I'm thinking about doing Business

I'm going to experimentally pay for Tumblr's "Blaze" on one of my posts to see what the effect is, if any. I don't plan to use it often, but if I'm using this site as part of my silly little content creator job, maybe it makes sense to advertise some things?

I don't even know what it would make sense to use that feature on, either... posts with my official video releases? Stuff like that article I wrote about the experience of going viral? ... posts about my merch store? (oh god I don't want to advertise the merch store, I haven't added anything to it in ages).

Anyway, if you see one of my posts with a "promoted" tag on it, that's why. Just figuring out if that's something that should be part of my job on here. There are some extended personal reflections on using Tumblr for My Job™ below the cut.

On the other hand, Twitter was never that much of a Business Platform for me, either. That site and app is insanely bad at driving traffic anywhere else, which is part of why its ad revenue was so low depite the huge user base. Getting people to click away from Twitter to anywhere else is like pulling teeth, even for people with million dollar marketing budgets, and so I just... kinda never tried, really. Partly because it never seemed worth the work, partly because it was my personal Twitter before it accidentally became my Business Twitter.

Tumblr in that regard is different though. Four years ago, someone posted an outtake from a shitpost video I did laughing myself half to death over an article about how millennials are killing mayonnaise. That outtake went some degree viral on Tumblr, and that virality did prompt a lot of people to go find the full video on YouTube, making it briefly the most successful video on my whole channel.

So I dunno. Maybe it makes sense to use Tumblr for Business™ in that way. Not that I think I can manufacture a viral hit, of course, but maybe paying to have my work shown to more people on here could be worth it? I guess I'll find out once that Blaze goes through the moderation.

It sorta ties in with a broader pre-post-Twitter reflection I've been having about how I use social media, though.

I don't want to be my job

My personal twitter became my business twitter entirely by accident, and while it was fun at first to have thousands of followers on my personal shitposting, it wasn't fun at all in the long run. At a certain point, usually somewhere past the 10k follower boundary (or if you had the misfortune of having a pre-Elon checkmark), people stop treating you like a person or a fellow poster, and start treating you like a brand, a celebrity (however minor), like a Public Figure. And on the one hand that's good, kinda, because if you have a larger platform, you do deserve more scrutiny. On the other hand, it means you can't be a person on your own social media.

Dark humor, in-jokes, dumb shitposts with friends, dunking on some random hot take, all of that starts to come with the danger that some stranger, who is determined to misunderstand what you post in the absolute worst possible faith, will see it and start yelling about it.

And if, as a person who has a bigger platform, you yell back at them, or dunk on their bullshit... yeah, there's a real risk that you're the one being the bigger asshole, actually. When you have a big Twitter audience, you have some responsibilty for what happens to the things you put in front of that audience. And if you have fans, they might want to defend you, and if you have a lot of fans, some percentage of them aren't going to know how to act or where the line is, and go way the fuck too far.

It's the reality of having a public profile. People will come at you in absolutely wild ways, accusing you of saying absolutely insane things that they have derived from truly deranged (often willful) misinterpretations, and you can't respond to that like a person responds, or you run the risk of being the one who does more harm.

And so you can't be a person on your social media anymore. You now have to be a Public Figure, and if you don't figure that out you're gonna get in trouble. I should have made a private friends-only account on Twitter far, far earlier than I did, I should have made an official brand account far, far earlier than I did. But the only way to know that is in hindsight.

... which leads me back to Tumblr. I've been thinking about Doing Business™ on Tumblr - Blazing my posts, doing SEO, promoting my brand and all that other shit that technically comes with the job I ostensibly have.

I fled back here when I saw Twitter start to torch itself, because I need to post somewhere, but do I need to post for myself, as a person?

Or do I need to post because I am TBSkyen the YouTuber and posting is part of my job, my brand and my online personality which I crafted as a layer of separation between myself and the audience but which has at this point become so entangled with my real self that I don't know the boundaries between them anymore?

Am I going to look back on this and realize, as I did on Twitter, that I should have made a private, friends-only Tumblr account right from the start, and not mixed the personal with the professional and with Posting? I have around 2000 followers right now and this is still fun and casual, but what happens if I manage to luck myself into a real following again? When am I going to dunk on something I think is dumb and cause the person who posted it to receive actionable threats because someone who likes my videos doesn't know how the fuck to act?

Anyway, this is the kind of shit that gets powerblasted through my brain when I pay $10 to make some more people see one of my posts on a website - how's your morning going?

[roundearthsociety]

This is going to be a tad personal but how do you manage to be trans and catholic? Some of the biggest anti trans voices like Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles and Desantis base their views off that religion. Many trans people on here, Reddit and IRL have nothing but disdain for Catholicism because of the Vatican’s statements and how they’ve been treated. Likewise, a lot of Catholics I’ve seen on tumblr, Reddit and various forums view it as a sin, mental illness or pedophilia and oppose affirming care as well as IVF.

I’m an American exvangelical, who does have some conservative Catholic family members, and I’m trying to broaden my perspective a bit rather than writing Catholicism off as an irredeemable, hateful colonizer ideology and viewing paganism and Reform Judaism as the only valid religions like most Tumblr users do. How do you put up with it when many refuse to affirm it, including the pope who’s still very conservative? I’m not asking to attack your beliefs but are simply curious whether there’s more nuance than people will claim.

This is something that's a bit hard to answer, as someone who's not that good a theologian nor that good at theory. Plus, I'm not side A, so I wouldn't be all that good at discussing Catholicism While Queer with you I suspect. Anyway I will be assuming you, the reader, have got some level of legitimate Christian faith. Because otherwise I'm not sure how to like. Give you that.

So let me preface all of this by recommending you look into queer Catholic organizations such as New Ways Ministry, or especially DignityUSA which I've heard good things about. There are also some Tumblr bloggers on the more affirming side of things, most of them aren't really doing all that much advocacy work either but you might find it interesting to scroll through, idk, and-her-saints or shoutsofmybones's blogs for example, and take a look.

Also: you don't have to give up on Christianity entirely if you can't / would rather not be Catholic! Even if the specific ritual and community aspect is especially important to you, the Episcopal Church is probably decently well implanted where you live and is worth looking into, especially since it doesn't have the embedded political elements that the US Catholic Church tends to have.

As for my own personal answer below - please don't bother to get mad at me for this, it's like 4AM and I'm not too interested in writing a thesis here.

Gender-wise it's honestly pretty straightforward. I know I function better being generally recognized as another sex than I was assigned at birth, with characteristics to match; everything else in terms of gender roles names etc is really just getting a lil silly with it ngl. This is neither especially uncommon nor especially new, and the generally recognized way to deal with this has long been to just let people do their thing. While there are issues with the way that's being done (hey! you should freeze your gametes if that's available to you! don't count on never wanting kids, especially if you're a teenager! trust me on this one.), a lot of the modern discourse around it boils down to "this is disgusting to me so it must be morally wrong". And like, I'm a biologist, I can't really find it in myself to be grossed out by this stuff anymore.

Anyway the Church is far from a monolith. Even at the institutional level there's plenty of tolerance; my home diocese is based in a large and ancient Mediterranean city so God knows it's had ages to get used to the weird shit, not counting the handful of trad strongholds. My understanding of the situation in the US is that it's Kind Of Really Not That though, so I'd strongly recommend heavily looking into your local Catholic diocese and parishes before making any moves, because Catholic faith and practice are a very community-bound thing and it's not really something you can do at a distance. Thankfully though, once you start avoiding the political activists trying to use faith as a means to an end (as is the case for most of the people you cite in your ask), you'll find that it's relatively more chill than you'd think. Let me elaborate.

My own case is complicated enough that I can't reasonably apply any of the details to this, but ultimately what's important to note here is that Christianity is functionally about how everyone is flawed, and everyone fucks up, and sure you'll be forgiven but you've got to own up to it first. The members of the Church, even the Pope, even (most of) the Saints in their earthly lives, are no exception. They can be misguided, fearful, or just plain hateful; in such circumstances, it's on them to do better, not on you to adapt to their flaws, and they know this if they're honest to themselves. This, in turn, must apply just as much to you and me; as a Christian, you (generic) have everything you need to do better, and to know anything that prevents you from loving other people is probably not the way to go.

But anyway yeah. I'm trans and Catholic because both of those are just kinda who I am, and I don't intend to stop being either because I'm not interested in replacing myself with the cop in my head. So the Church can have fun with that.

[randomscpventblog]

what of those who use rewrites and get harassed for it by... *those* kind of bright fans, like the type of "fan" that send threats, make nazi jokes, and so on, etc. like dont we also get some voice in venting? if i may share my vent:

i don't care if people wanna use bright, that's their choice good for them, but at most i want people to understand /why/ some people might be moving to a rewrite or a different character within the scp universe instead. and same thing goes for rewrite crowd to understand the same. its a spectrum, two extreme ends with a lot of grey in between it. bullying, sending threats, etc whatever from all sides isn't going to help anything.

i personally moved to rewrite because it just felt the best thing to do morally. i like to follow morals, and the moral said to rewrite something new. am i going to bully people and go "delete bright boo!!" no. i could never.

things i do agree: for the character to be deleted, or at least archived the same way the original 166 file was archived on the wiki with a big ass disclaimer, and keep the tales provided by they were written by other uses and not adminbright (example, keeping Major Tom but deleting Code Brown)

things i dont agree: bullying people who chose to either use bright or use a rewrite. agree to disagree.

Everyone can vent if they’d like and your welcome to vent here if you’d like but please just keep in mind that this is primarily meant to be a safe space for Bright users as well as being a place for my thoughts meaning I won’t exactly be impartial or neutral. I however do not condone any harassment and agree that everyone should be able to do whatever they’d like without fear of harassment.

Also I feel like the reason Bright fans vent more here on Tumblr is because rewrites are much more prevalent here and they also get much more support whereas Bright users are simply not allowed to speak in a lot of spaces. Of course this doesn’t justify any harassment but it may explain why some Bright fans go so far plus there’s simply way more rewrite users then Bright users here on Tumblr especially in the Western side of the fandom so that of course means there’s a larger percentage of them who’ve received harassment compared to the few Bright users.

Also also I’m not a big fan of the morality argument, I just feel like basing your interests off of what others tell you is ok to like/support can get depressing pretty quickly. Obviously you shouldn’t financially support bad companies/people but I feel like just straight up not being allowed to simply enjoy something or talk about it is going too far especially when it comes to something as harmless as a character. Of course the choice is yours however I’d just advise you to only follow your own idea of what’s morally correct and not let others bully you into doing what they think is right.

As for character Bright I believe he belongs to everyone but his original author so I agree that AdminBrights works should be removed off the wiki or if possible do something similar to Ao3’s orphaned accounts/anonymous accounts that way even if removal can’t be achieved then at least it’ll limit AdminBrights reach with new users. Everyone else’s works with Bright on the wiki should stay of course as they’ve done nothing wrong.

Anyways this’ll be the third or fourth time I’ve said this but do not send rewrite creators any hate or harassment I expect everyone here to act like adults regardless of age. If I find out anyone of my followers has been responsible for such asks/messages then me and my friends will put you on blast for all of Tumblr to see, this is not funny and your making the rest of us look immature.

[modestbirdwizard]

De-Program The Algorithm: RSS is good and you should be using it.

Escape the algorithm, tune your feed and save the world; or, even though it's old and ugly, RSS can make your life better.

We live in a time of algorythmic feeds that distort our perceptions of events, time, and the people that we care about. Non-stop, hardwired access by large corporations into the pleasure centers of our brains have disrupted human congnition to the point where many wonder how we ever found content we liked without having it served up by angelic machines that live in the cloud, accessing us via the little magic boxes that live in our pockets.

There IS a way out of it, though, and it comes from before Web 1.0. It is called RSS, or Real Simple Syndication.

A more thorough explanation under the jump!

In the even older times, Syndication was a word used by old media to describe an article or show that they'd gotten from somewhere else, and were presenting as content to their own viewers. Star Trek, Garfield, and millions of other comics, stories, TV shows found success not in their initial markets, but in the long running and carefully tuned presentation of existing backlogs to interested audiences.

While syndication was previously a method of showing old content to new audiences, RSS is primarily a method of displaying new content in a feed to an audience of one, or a few. You can set your RSS up to have as much or as little content as you wish, mindlessly scraping vast quantities of podcasts and articles, or as a carefully pruned garden, where each entry lives or dies by the pleasure it brings you.

You can even put porn on it. And webcomics.

Youtube is compatible, which means you could bypass any artificial limiting our curation of your subscription tab with it. Tumblr blogs can be RSS feeds as well, as well as most wordpress sites. RSS is usually a defacto afterthought in this day and age, but sites like twitter don't work natively (Thanks Elon).

Really, the biggest killer for me is that I can create not just a video subscription feed that actually shows all of my subscriptions, I can even create several feeds of content based on genre or subject. No longer will my miniature painting videos be swept away in a tide of tech reviews or drama alerts!

There are self hosted options if you have a server or an unemployed raspberry pi, but for the general user, I highly recommend browser plugins like Feedbro, or apps like Feedly. Many of them have paid features now, but don't be fooled. There is always a free way to get your feed set up, and Feedbro works on mobile anyway. Sadly, this isn't something that firefox can sync, but at least you can export your desktop feed and import it on mobile.

[ririchanva]

First~ **hugs** I miss you Riri!!

// Wah! *hugs back* Kit-kaaaat~! I mishu toooooo xD Ahahahaha while you didn't really place any request, I thought maybe an Izuku one-shot might be a good way to start things :3 Anyways, here's one just for you (based on our past roleplays~)

Summary: As Usadori, Izuku Midoriya has seen many time-lines in order to figure out how to stop the supposed future that Shinso had come from. As he was looking into the many burrows in the warren, he spotted one where he...had a different family?

Contains: Spoilers from the Quirk and Miracles main story, but not necessarily canon to it. Time Shenanigans. Based on a Tumblr RP. Slight angst and fluff. Deku having the Bunny Miraculous. OCs that belong to @moonxsuncelestials

Word count: 1,221

Quickly.

I must find solutions.

Various ways to prevent the horrid future.

Those were in the mind of one Izuku Midoriya, holder of One-For-All and the student of All Might.

Although...that was not quite right.

While it was true he was the 9th wielder of a mysterious power accumulating past heroes that also were users of OFA, he was currently a different type of hero.

Training under Master Fu, Izuku was given a magical device called a Miraculous. An object that a frantic Hitoshi Shinso was reluctant to give him, but did not have any other options. Then again, Izuku understood why the brainwashing quirk user was hesitant. Izuku was a wild card of a tactician.

And so, under the hero name of Usadori, the green haired male was sitting in what seems to be a vast space that held portals of different timelines and sifting through all of them. Many that had a Chat Blanc flooding the world as he sat alone. Or many that had either himself or Kacchan turning evil...

As he was waving a hand one by one through these portals, he stopped at one that made him falter.

He saw himself but older...and he wasn't alone.

In fact, Usadori watched as he saw his young adult civilian self was walking inside what seemed to be a traditional looking home, almost resembling the Todoroki residence but much nicer...more warm and welcoming than what house his dear friend Shoto grew up in.

"Tou-san! Kaa-san! Jade! I'm home!" The other him on the other side of the portal called, looking around as he was taking off his shoes.

This confused Usadori for a moment because one, he knew his father was overseas for work...well, the bastard never returned home since his announcement of being quirkless at the age of four. The second thing was, who was Jade?

The rabbit user's question was soon answered in a form of a little boy running towards Izuku with a smile.

"Izuku-nii!" The little boy chirped as he soon was wrapping his tiny arms around Izuku's legs, giggling softly as blue eyes looked up at him happily, "You're home!"

"Yeah...I'm home, Jade. Aaaaand I come bearing gifts~" Izuku bent down and brought the little boy in his arms and chuckled, tapping the kid's nose before he looked around, "Where's our parents?"

“IZUKU XIAO LONG MIDORIYA GONG!”

Usadori jumped at the sound of a voice and blinked when his other self was paling for a moment, the little boy then having a cheeky smile on his face, almost as if saying 'ooh! you're in trouble now!'

Stomping into the foyer entrance where the two boys were at, came a tall figure with cerulean blue hair that is tied into a ponytail and deep, cat-like red eyes. And he looked miffed. While gliding wisp-like behind the man is another tall male that had a glowing enthral look to him, that matched for his sapphire blue hair and violet eyes. Usadori would think, 'They are a beautiful pair.'

A smile was on the angelic looking male that showed that he was also sort of upset about something, but holding it back as the first man marched over to Izuku, who placed the little boy down.

"...Tou-san, whatever I did, it is all Bael-san's fault--"

"Don't you be giving me lies, boy. We raised you better than that." The first male snorted as he folded his arms, showing the muscles he had, his aura reminding Usadori of Eraserhead for a moment, "You know you worried your Mother and I?"

Usadori frowned, looking at the portal further to where Inko Midoriya was, but there was no sign of her. This made the rabbit user close his eyes for a moment, thinking, 'Ah...perhaps this is a world where Inko was not his mother? And these two were his parents?'

That...is quite the world.

Usadori kept watching as he watched himself stuttering and waving his hands around with excuse after excuse, until the second male decided to move forward, giving a soft smile before saying with a strong voice.

"We are not angry--"

"Speak for yourself, Beloved--"

"Sai Gong, you better not be interrupting me right now..."

"...Sorry, Lapis, my love."

Lapis narrowed his eyes, making the other man raise his hands up in surrender as he smiled towards Izuku once more.

"While your father and I are worried from you once again running off with your friends in dangerous situations, I understand why you do it. Despite being involved with the family affairs, Izuku, I wish you would at least tell us before you up and vanish like that. It almost gave me a heart attack when your Uncle Yun had to call me that you almost got hurt during a mission?"

"I know, a-and I'm sorry Kaa-san. Really, I thought I'd be back before Jade's bedtime..." Izuku breathed out, but not before he felt arms around him and blinked as he then looked up to Lapis.

"We know you are growing into a strong warrior, Izuku, my darling. But you have to remember that you have a family that loves and worries about you now. What would Inko-san think, bless her soul, if she hears you are dragging yourself injured with broken bones?" Lapis then looked over at his husband and raised a brow, "Darling, get over here and hug your eldest!"

Sai Gong was quick too wrap his strong arms around both Izuku and Lapis, his anger gone as he then chuckled, "Your mother's right, Izuku. Next time leave a damn note or something before you go off like Toshinori, ya hear me? Or you're grounded."

"Tou-san, I'm twenty one, I'm no longer that high school boy you took under yours and Kaa-san's wings."

"You're still our boy, and that still makes you little in our eyes," Lapis teased, as he then picked up Jade and let the little one join in what seems like a family hug.

Usadori watched with a soft and somewhat envious look as he watched Sai Gong take Jade and walk away along with Izuku following him while talking a mile a minute about something that happened that day. They look like a proper family... Usadori would think bitterly, but then remembered that he still had his mom. So it seems this world's Inko Midoriya had passed on, at least according to Lapis' words.

Speaking of the man, Usadori had a strange feeling that Lapis could feel him because he stayed behind and looked over to where Usadori was, as if he could see him.

"...I know you're there and I know you aren't a threat...but whoever you are, I hope that you can find what you are looking for..."

Usadori almost opened his mouth to reply to Lapis but then shook his head. There...there was no way that Lapis could actually know that he was watching, right?

...Right.

Usadori was about to swipe the portal away to go and observe the next time-line, but almost froze when the voice spoke again.

"You have people that love you, Izuku. Whether it is your time or mine, let it be known that you are not alone..."

And with that, Usadori quickly made the portal disappear, the words still fresh in his mind and heart.

[maiverie]

HI DO U HAVE ANY TIPS ON STARTING A TUMBLR BLOG? like how you format your links and everything i'm new and want to start a blog but don't know how 😭😭

hi anon!!! omg sure yes I dooo!!! when I started I didn't have anyone to help me so it was literally such a shitshow lmfao so I HOPE THIS HELPS!!

— (long post below)

disclaimer: this is all based on my experience and im sure there are other users with better tips than me so DONT TAKE MY WORD FOR GOSPEL BAHAHA

(also I'm going to assume you reached out to me because you want to start a kpop writing blog and not smth else, so all these tips are obv specific to writing blogs. I also don't know how experienced u are w Tumblr so I might say some obvious things,, sorry if you already know most of these things!!)

anyway tumblr is actually really intuitive and after about two days I honestly think you'll get it (probably even within a day tbh). here are some quick steps I feel like make sense in my mind:

find a url (if you're starting a kpop writing blog,, most people seem to include the name/a reference to their bias but in my case i kinda just went w my name and played around w it until I liked it 😭 you can also search for "url ideas" in tumblr if you're having trouble!!) keep in mind you can literally change it at any point in time so don't worry about choosing the -perfect- one

set up your blog! most of the time, people have a navigation post (the pinned post where everything is linked so readers can navigate ur blog easily), a masterlist (a post that shows everything you've ever written), a wip list (a post that lists all your works in progress, so fics you're currently writing and want to publish in the near future). additionally, people have a post about themselves (like an about me section with blog rules and stuff. this is my old old one). personally, i have a carrd right now (this is mine here) and you'll find other users have one or the other!

set up your navigation post: hyperlink honestly everyone's different (btw don't worry about taking these tips too seriously bc honestly u should do whatever you want on your blog — it's yours after all!!) but I think most people include their name, pronouns, age (sometimes), timezone (sometimes) and hyperlinks to their masterlist + wip list.

how to hyperlink im sure you've done it before for school, but it's really easy! here's a demonstration — this link will send you to my navi, and this link will send you to one of my fics! to do it, you just need to copy the link of whatever post you're trying to hyperlink (three dots in the top right of the post -> "copy link"), typesomething, double click onto the word you're trying to link it to, tap the 🔗 button, and copy the link into that! (in this example, it'd look like this: something.)

how to make ur navi neat/pretty personally, I used to just search for moodboards (on tumblr) and pick 3 photos that I really liked (obviously give credit to whoever made the moodboard!). what I have now is just something that I designed but you can have one or the other, it doesn't really matter! other tips I think I'd suggest is to keep it as simple as possible; you can embellish it later but make sure it's easy to read and people can see all the links! I really like searching for "symbols" on Tumblr, and then there are cute lil symbols u can add to your post :) or just use emojis! or dashes! this might be a little ahead, but I have a tutorial on gradient text if you really care, but maybe focus on the base first :D just as an example, my moot @.hazyyu has a really pretty navi!

apply the same principles to your masterlist + wip list + about me just search for symbols, add whatever images you think look pretty, search for "line breaks" on Tumblr and there are pictures of links you can use to divide stuff up! making a carrd is easy but time-consuming (just search on YouTube "carrd tutorial")

there are other caveats to a writing blog, but those were just the basics! here are some other things I thought I could mention:

a permanent taglist is a list of people you tag every single time you publish a story/update it (for the purpose of them being notified every time you post) — sometimes people will ask u to "add me to your permanent taglist!" which just means tag them every time you post a story. personally, I have a google form for anyone that wants to be on the permanent taglist, but I didn't do that initially — I used to just wait until people sent in an ask asking to be on it and then I'd have a separate post with everyone who did. for example, this was my old one! doesn't matter whichever approach you do ^^

people also organise their blog via the hashtags I do this too! it's so much easier that way :)) for example, every time I get an ask, I tag it with "#ask" (umm a lot of people are much more creative w their tags but personally icb lmaoo — here's an example of my friend who used a different tag and it's really pretty!). if you want help with organising your blog w tags, here's an explanation I wrote a while back!

if you want help promoting your work, you should consider joining a few networks! these are basically big big blogs that reblog all your work so more people can see ur stuff ^^ here are some of the ones I'm a part of: kflixnet, enhanet, k-labels!

you'll meet other users along the way and call them your moots; most of the time this just means you interact w them a lot via asks/dms. personally I'm not really active and I kinda find it hard to keep track of a lot of moots so I stick to myself and interact w anyone that comes my way!! but bae u can do whatever u want!! go find blogs of people that seem rlly cool and send an ask and just see where it goes; just don't badger people, be nice and I think you'll pick up on sm things naturally!!!

ur blog is gna look great!!! let me know when you finish setting it up!!! I hope this helps 😋💖

[artnool]

Oh, Tumblr.

I'm back. Again. AGAIN. I don't think anyone would be left shocked from the revelation that that I too, was one of them Tumblr kiddies. (neurodivergent queer kids with niche hyperfixations used to flock this site like moths to an open flame and boy did i have a lot of hyperfixations lmao) I'm back. Again. AGAIN. I don't think anyone would be left shocked from the revelation that that I too, was one of them Tumblr kiddies. (neurodivergent queer kids with niche hyperfixations used to flock to this site like moths to an open flame and boy did I have a lot of hyperfixations lmao) So greetings, old friend. It's me. Well, this feels less like meeting an old friend after a long time and more like being DMed by one of your old classmates from elementary school asking you if you were an open-minded individual looking for networking opportunities. (It's awkward and you don't really want to be having this conversation right now, but you kinda just have to go through it.) But here we are. Back to where I started. I'm scrolling through my old blogs and my dashboard and I still see lots of mecha and anime stuff here. This is where I used to do my fandom stuff. You know, fanart, fanfic, headcanons, and disproportionately heated arguments about the varying interpretations of a character from a cartoon made for children. Fun stuff. Eventually, when everyone moved, I also moved to different places too. Twitter mostly. Since then, my Tumblr just sat there, collecting dust and wondering why. "What happens to a Tumblr blog when it is left alone? It becomes worn and aged, and its paint peels and its foundations begin to sink. What does it think of? What does it dream? How does it regard those creatures who built it? Who brought it into existence only to abandon it when its usefulness no longer satisfies them."

I still have those old blogs, btw. Rule of the land was that you make one for each of the separate things you enjoy like you were an Ancient Greek god and the blogs were your different epithets ala Aphrodite Pandemos/Urania or something like that.

(Names blocked out both to protect my privacy and to spare everyone else the agony of my past cringe) But the ability to make multiple blogs and handle them from the same account actually lends itself to the process of compartmentalization. This sets it apart from other microblogging platforms. It's actually much easier to do this here than on Tumblr, Bluesky, etc. You're also given much more tools to spice up your posts here. YOU ACTUALLY HAVE FREEDOM TO FORMAT YOUR POSTS HOWEVER YOU LIKE

Probably won't come back here though. Place kinda died ever since they tried to block nsfw stuff in 2018 and basically killed all of the good will they've built with their user base. Also, I have a sizeable following on other websites anyway and it's difficult managing multiple sites so I'm sticking to those. It was fun seeing some people I used to follow still posting though.

So yeah, if anyone asks me "Hey, are you familiar with Tumblr?"

[skele-girl999]

I was just writing a ROTTMNT fanfic based around Future!Rise Mikey and I went off on a tangent immediately explaining how I think Mystics, Magic and Ninpo work. Thing is, it doesn't work with the scene at all, and I can't think of any planned scene I could appropriately put it in. At least not one within the near future.

My solution? Copy paste the whole thing onto Tumblr and see what other people think of it, while I keep a copy stashed away for future reference. You never know, I may get a cool idea to add on from someone else.

Head Cannon/Lore Drop below:

"Mystics, magic and Ninpo were all different, despite how similar they may look from an outside perspective. They had different activation requirements, different tools, and they also just felt different to use. But they also behaved very differently as well.

You could do just about anything with magic, your only limitations were the strength of your conduit and how much power you could extract from the world around you. Though it did require some skill and practice to use, and was in fact the most difficult to learn. Mikey couldn’t do magic, as its complexity made it a bit of a dying artform.

The people of Witch Town were the only ones who had any mastery of magic, and they were among the first to be taken out during the Krang invasion's first attack after they got the Technodrome.

Mystics are a little easier, if more directionless and physically taxing, not to mention limited. They depended deeply on someone’s personal energy reserves, and it was influenced by your emotions. Someone with low or no mystic energy would not be able to use mystics, since they would have no power to give. And for the people who do have power, they would be restricted by only a few abilities based on their personality and nothing else.

Draxum described Michelangelo as a warm, lighthearted person with a vast imagination, who could quickly turn dangerous and highly destructive when provoked or desperate. This is why he could use fire, gravity manipulation, and make solid light projections, but couldn't create ice, or control plants, or some other ability like that.

It helped that he had such a large well of energy to draw from. The largest amount of mystic energy Draxum had ever seen in a single person, in fact.

Ninpo, unlike the other two, was a lot less understood. It was one of those abilities that only a select few could have gained and only unlocked under very specific circumstances, like Chi, dreamwalking, prophecy, or true enlightenment.

But, after having their own Ninpo studied and the few remaining records of the power examined, Donnie and Draxum managed to pull together a working theory on it.

Basically, Ninpo is the ability to use one’s deep emotional connections, specifically family, to harness major facets of their personality and project them into some kind of power. The take of this give tended to vary, most likely based on the strength of the user and the aforementioned family bonds, but it seemed to be focused on the body.

It messed with cellular growth, the consumption of vitamins and minerals, and the production of hormones. All of this often led to an increased ageing and health problems. Though Draxum and Donnie were hesitant to solidly confirm any specific symptoms, considering the apocalypse was a breeding ground for premature ageing due to stress and health problems caused by horrible living conditions anyway.

Ninpo also seemed to be hereditary, which was something that they couldn't really figure out an answer for with their circumstances. Not only did they have a limited sample size, but all of them being from the same family meant no diversity, and them being mutants also messed with the research.

The two scientists of the family were very bitter about this, but did still try to work with what they had."

And that's about it! Now go, my fellow turtle fans, give me your opinions and theories. I wish to see how I could improve what I've written (and maybe rant about the fic this was written for).

[kirbys-pop-culture-junk]

Japanese copy of Danganronpa for the PSP that I bought on the SomethingAwful forums back in like 2013 or so.

I feel like a lot of people my age went through a 4chan phase of their life as almost a rite of passage where they spent at the least a little bit of time on the site, especially in the late 2000s/early 2010s era. As someone who has always been a bit of an old soul, for some reason for me I had a SomethingAwful phase.

I had always been a fan of the weird stuff on the site, especially Photoshop Phriday, the kinds of stuff that a 13/14 year old in 2003/04 probably should not have been looking at. But the forums themselves were always paywalled and something that I never really had much of an interest in going to anyway. All of my forums were retro video game and wrestling message boards and I didn’t feel the need to branch out that badly. It wasn’t until I got a bit older and hit that specific weirdo cynic phase of my life when I was like 18 when boards like SomethingAwful appealed to me.

I became a longtime lurker of the place, including a fan of Retsupurae, the YouTube SA-based series that is now a relic of early YouTube history, before finally purchasing an account, as well as Archives access (for an extra fee you were able to access the entire forum archive, which for a person like me who loves history it meant I could access stuff like posts that got weirdos like TotalBiscuit banned on the site) and started to post, mostly in the Let’s Play, Games, and Food boards. I’m sure you’ve heard about the drama associated with SA and I can safely tell you that yes, even the board that just talked about food and cooking had drama with members and it was honestly always absurdly hilarious. As an internet-lonely early 20s doofus, it was a place to make friends. The last community I was involved with (Detective Conan) had things end on extremely sour notes with some friends while other friends kinda just drifted away, which meant that a lot of the time that I spent online, I was extremely lonely. Using SomethingAwful around the same time that I started heavily using Tumblr meant that I got to see both sides of the infamous Danganronpa Let’s Play Paywall situation. I’m not gonna lie, all the posts getting upset that Lowtax would put the LP Paywall back up whenever a new chapter of the Let’s Play for the game came out used to crack me up, as did seeing all the ways people would circumvent it by even posting god damned screenshots of posts in the thread. I was even there for when slowbeef infamously banned someone for using the phrase “intriguingly moe” to describe a character and let’s be real here, slowbeef was completely in the right.

Being like 23 and having what I thought was disposable income, as a gag I figured I’d buy a copy of the game from the SA Mart from a fellow goon for like $15. It was the only time I ever used the SA Mart to buy anything. I didn’t even have a way to play it, I just thought it was a funny gag as someone who liked the series and characters while also seeing the fandom in the early days of Tumblr Fandoms being a thing go bananas for everything possible about it. I hung out on SA until about early 2015, when a lot of us realized that after having corners of the site that were a dedicated safe haven for people like us, it was getting overtaken by garbage again, so most all of us abandoned ship for the hangout future of Twitch streams, Skype group chats, and of course, Twitter.

When Lowtax committed suicide a few years back, there were a lot of people making self-reflective posts about their own lives on SomethingAwful, and I completely understood why, and even had my own little taken aback moment over being reminded of that period of me life. Lowtax was a genuinely reprehensible human being and even when I was an active user of SA a lot of the forum regulars were well past tired of him and his antics. But people used the site and turned it into something that I don’t think Lowtax had ever wanted it to be. For a large chunk of people now-a-days Online, especially leftist/progressives in their late 20s to mid-to-late 30s, that was where a lot of friends were made. I made some of my longest lasting internet friends on that site, including people that I talk to to this day. I learned *a lot* from the people I met on there, including people who helped me gain new perspectives on things in life. Before becoming a SA Goon, back when I was a lonely post-college dropout living in an entirely new town away from home and away from all my friends I grew up with, I was almost a reclusive outcast, a college liberal dirtbag leftist who watched Bill Maher. People on SA that I met got me to knock all that obnoxious shit off and I don’t even think they realized it.

Even though SomethingAwful was only a footnote of a few years or so of my life, it was definitely one of the biggest moments of my internet life, and maybe one of the times where I went through the most changes as a human being. As a website, it was an awful, awful place full of stupidity (never forget the guy who peed “LET’S PLAY” into the snow) but I can’t ignore the fact that I also made some friends with some very cool people who helped mold me into the person that I am today. And as a shoutout to those people, much love to FutureFriend, TheJayofSpade, DeviousVacuum (you’ll always be DVac to me), Danzel Glovington (maybe the first friend I made on SA. Haven’t spoken to you in years but hope all is well), DazzlynReed (an absolute sweetheart), Metroixer, FreezingInferno, Captain_Duck (one of the first people to give me a chance by having me guest on streams), Color Printer, and ChorpSaway.

Also a funny thing about SomethingAwful is how many new people I meet that as it turns out were on the site at the same time as me despite our paths never crossing. One of my best friends and someone very important to me now is something who was hilariously on the cusp of interacting with me on SA for years and years due to the both of us sharing a lot of the same friends, before we finally began talking barely a few years ago. I constantly kick myself over how I could’ve known her even almost a decade ago and it just never happened!!

This was a lot more than I had anticipated writing and I don’t think I properly conveyed all my thoughts about this period of my life the way I wanted to but I think you will at the least get the gist of it.

[blueaizu]

Aizu Updates: Uploading Older Art, Other Social Media Activities

Lately I've been busy doing book illustrations for a friend and I've reached a point where they have to be done now now now, so I haven't had much time set aside for making new stuff. I've got a few older drawings in my backlog, though, so to help my page feel more complete I'll be uploading some of those in the meantime. They may not completely reflect how I draw now, but rest assured they all still fit the criteria for being something I still like enough to share!

That was the actually important thing, so I'll put the rest of this post after a cut. It's basically just rambling about observations of social media I made.

So in the interest of covering more bases when I become a vtuber, I've been looking into some more alternatives for Twitter. Don't get me wrong, Tumblr's been great and I'm happy to keep using it! But while Tumblr's suited for more in depth blog posts, there's a succinct immediacy to the more rapid fire nature of the Twit. As a regular person I don't actually miss using it (I mean seriously Twitter's a goddamned cesspool); but I recognize its power in sharing quick updates with a large body of users that are scrolling through content like a naughty child unravelling a roll of toilet paper.

The platform that seems the most promising is called Bluesky, which is currently invite only because it's still in beta. It was founded in part by Jack Dorsey, the previous CEO of Twitter, so Bluesky's striking resemblance to Twitter is no coincidence. Supposedly it will allow communities to run from their own servers, but it can also carry over your account information seamlessly between them. People used to say the blockchain could have good uses when NFTs were still going around, and at the time I didn't believe them, but now I think I'm starting to see what they meant (but I still hate NFTs).

The limited supply of invites driving up demand on top of the Muskman seemingly doing everything in his power to sabotage his own platform is giving Bluesky quite a bit of hype, so I think it might actually have a chance to flourish. It will for sure start off basically being Twitter 2.0, but its more open nature supporting outside servers run by smaller communities instead of one big monolith can let it grow into its own thing. But who knows when Bluesky will open its doors to the public? Even if I do get in right now, you (yes, you, the person reading this) likely wouldn't have access.

Another alternative that's available right now and very similar to what I described is Mastodon. While I could see its potential as a platform, it's difficult to use and the audience just doesn't seem fully there. A number of people fled there from Twitter, but they didn't stick around because it's actually nothing like Twitter. They still had a net gain of new users, but I have my doubts about sticking with it. Still, I wouldn't write it off just yet since Mastodon does power Pawoo, which is a Japanese-run community that's associated with Pixiv and is quite lively in its own right. This is the true power of a platform with an open source network of community-run servers.

Anyway what was the point I was trying to make with this again?

uh

I hope these developments mean we're on the cusp of a new age of social media where we have the power to run our own communities and not be at the mercy of one big corporation? Yeah, something like that.

Also being a vtuber is cool.

Actually, you know what? Speaking of vtubers, you deserve a little reward for making it this far. You didn't have to do that, but you did! Don't tell anyone, but...

SURPRISE PEEK AT MY VTUBER!!