#bcs there’s so many ppl in need and so many go-fund-mes

[suswous]

If you’re the kind of person to feel guilty about not giving money to go-fund-mes whose authenticity you’re unsure about, I think it’s a good idea to (if you can afford it obviously) give whatever you would give to something like the PCRF, or some other charity you trust to do good for Palestinians.

[sevenines]

i saw this tweet and found it interesting for two reasons. one is that some people base how good cartoon network would be to toh by how it treated su, and despite the fact that su’s treatment by the network was considered poor at the time, now its thought to be exceptionally good in comparison to modern shows.

two is how exactly su got impacted by a limited budget. a common criticism is how characters like connie, peridot, and lapis are left out of missions. but balancing a lot of characters is not only hard but also costly (extra animation, extra voices—it’s been revealed that the show is limited to a set number of characters per episode otherwise they’re over budget). animation mistakes are not uncommon since retakes cost extra. the entire reason the original show got cut short was due to loss of funding!

[pink-spaceturtle5]

In a fucking glorious turn of events, my weed pen is working again

[jentlemahae]

-

[henrysglock]

Hi can you plz help me to understand. My feed is mainly talking about Palestine, showing the atrocities happening, wanting Palestine to be free and I agree the Palestinian civilians should be safe and the bombings and attacks should stop. But I’m failing to see why people aren’t caring about the Israeli civilians as much? They are also being killed, many innocently at a music festival only to never return home again. But it’s like no one cares about them bc they’re they enemy! But they’re not they’re innocent people. Just like the Palestinian people are. And I kinda get the war between both but also what happened was over 70 years ago most of the people living there now weren’t there 70 years ago so why should they still be talked about as though they’re the enemy when living in Israel is all they’ve known? It shouldn’t be just swept under the rug no and I know everyone isn’t just going to stop and make up and hold hands singing songs but It’s 100% the governments problem I just don’t understand why people now are failing to sympathise with the Israeli victims? And why some Jewish people/celebs are being made out to be bad people just bc they speak up on what’s being done to their fellow Jews? Not sure if you’ve seen Brett’s ig but he’s been very vocal and if I’m honest does seem quite extreme but ppl like Noah just seem like he’s upset and worried and doesn’t want harm to come to either side but ofc he’s going to show support to Israel when he’s been there to learn more about his religion? Idk what to believe in terms of news anymore bc some seem very pro-Palestine and others pro-Israel and some switch between both every other day. It’s just all very confusing but it has made me a little sad to see not many people talking about the innocent Israelis who have lost their lives and are still in the middle of all this too… sorry if this is too much I just needed to say it to someone :/

Okay, anon, I think I know where the disconnect lies: scale.

1,400 were killed in the attack on Israel, and that’s a horrible thing. Loss of civilian life is never a good thing.

However. Over 5,000 and counting Palestinians have been killed by the Israelis just since the Hamas attack. That’s not including the 70+ consecutive years of occupation and mistreatment continued mistreatment enacted on them by the Israeli government (It’s not something that “happened 70 years ago”, anon. It has been constant). They have been and are being driven out of their homes; their lives, livelihoods, and land are being stolen out from under them. 70 years’ worth of children have been and are being murdered or left as orphans.

Here are some numbers just since 2000:

And there is no “both sides”, here. There is no “war”, Anon, because Palestine has no army, while Israel is backed by the governments of most western countries, the US army included. They have the backing of the most powerful army in the world…against a people with no army. Palestinians, anon, are defenseless. Israel is bombing their hospitals and schools. It’s an unceasing massacre. Gaza is an open-air prison. The Palestinians cannot escape the violence.

So yes, it’s deeply unfortunate that Israeli civilians were killed, and I sympathize with those who were hurt by that attack, emotionally and/or physically…but they are not victims of genocide, here.

Palestinians are.

That is why we’re more vocal about Palestine, anon. The scales aren’t even close to the same.

This isn’t even going into the fact that Hamas was founded and funded to destabilize Palestine. To quote Avner Cohen, an ex Israeli official: “Hamas, regrettably was Israel’s creation”. Meanwhile, the current PM of Israel, Netanyahu, has said “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering hamas and transferring money to hamas. This is part of our strategy—to isolate Palestinians in gaza from Palestinians in the west bank.”

Israel’s blood is on its own hands.

[needlesandnilbogs]

Known Facts About City Spies Book 6 and Beyond

collated at the Avid Reader bookstore event/signing in Davis, CA, on 6/23/24

On future books:

City Spies book 6 is finished and in the proofreading stage. It will probably be released in February 2025, he's allowed to share the title and cover as of this week.

City Spies 6 is called "London Calling" and the cover (which I briefly saw on his phone screen) is predominantly yellow and green

Robert is the protagonist and the Mother/Clementine/Robert/Annie larger plot will be completely resolved in book 6

There will be at least 8 total city spies books, likely 10

Sherlock society 1 is coming out in September

He's going to be on a two book a year release schedule -- February city spies and September Sherlock society

On research/past books/writing

he writes the first draft then goes to the places to research them

he talks to a lot of experts -- for city spies this includes a bookseller's husband who's ex-cia and planned the mission in forbidden city for him, for Sherlock society he got to go on a Miami marine patrol police boat

the city spies books work best with three cities they go to, boat being hostage in the first paragraph of golden gate is based on kid saying plot took ages to get to Big Thing in book 1 so now every book starts with a big thing happening. The middle city is the city of adventure and city alluded to in the title.

He did not get to physically go to Russia or China or Egypt but he did go to Venice after first draft of mission manhattan, went to every location in the book, then used pictures he took there

Washington he got a friend to show him the abandoned spots very unsafely, including embassy row and the empty Iranian embassy which fascinated him

He walked around Iranian embassy and the United Kingdom and Brazil embassies are actually across from it, the security didn't like him taking those pictures as much but it inspired him

If he could choose one song that best represents mission manhattan/city spies: We are family

when he writes a series he's trying to answer a single question and the books are all different variants on the answer. For city spies it's "what is a family"

he puts his life into the books, especially with a parent being missing and trying to find that connection

Middle grade advice: Write from the pain of when you're thirteen

"As a consumer of art we still believe in magic, but there is no magic […] we're faking the magic, it's just sweat. You forget what they're doing is sweat too."

he and his writing friends all feel like imposters. He talks to ppl who've won newberries and still feel like imposters and then they finally have little clicks that say maybe they can do this, like when his publisher said maybe he didn't need blurbs on his books anymore

Research is for accuracy and he hates being wrong and sometimes he hand waves but it gives him inspiration

real life is better than fiction

On Clementine, Mother, their kids:

book 6 resolves all the issues with clemmie and mother and the kids but not all the series's problems

"In the end as I wrote Clementine I wasn't sure how she was going to end up," he "wrestled writing her every time"

"Clementine is a puzzle" kat says, based on a thing a fan said

Good or bad, accidental or not, Clementine is the most interesting character bc you don't know what side she's on

On public libraries and independent bookstores:

About the nypl: "it's the most fascinating thing to me, this library. It's the Vatican of American books."

There aren't easy answers to the problem of cutting funding for libraries, there's a reason independent bookstores and libraries are valuable and it's bc this type of event matters and they have so many services

"Public libraries are one of the greatest things, as far as altruism, our society has ever created"

When it becomes an issue of books being banned it's not good, it's not okay

These are important issues and it's not simple but access to books written by "not just middle aged white guys like me" is really important

what gets lost is book recs and new authors

"the power we have in the exchange of ideas is valuable"

it's stuff that's been sitting there for a while and failed miserably and then gets popular, libraries and independent bookstores are part of that

TikTok is the single largest driving force in youth literature and it may not exist in a year

On the potential City Spies movie:

MGM studios bought the right to city spies film series before they were bought by Amazon

This happened because there's a Guatemalan woman who's the head of development at mgm, and she has twelve year old twin brothers who are reading city spies, she hears the story and says that sounds like a movie, reads the first page and is hooked, reached out and acquired the rights and then he heard nothing for ages

Amazon bought mgm and he thought it was done but they liked city spies, they hired a producer and then writers strike blocked any development but they now have a writer

He's staying out of the writing process, his background in film is making a lot of connections but also means he knows to stay out of it (though if he's asked he'd be enthusiastic to help)

he gets on set one day and gets two tickets to premiere

Movie in theaters not tv show

doesn't really believe it will happen yet because spy school was gonna be a movie then it wasn't

"I would wait to start worrying about following it till later", he doesn't talk about it really even to friends

MGM made an announcement to variety and so everyone found out

He and his wife hope it will happen (cause it's cutting down time till she can retire), she's his health insurance and it's why it seems a lot of writers end up married to teachers and have insurance through them

tagging @fishyupmywishy also

[saetoru]

I just read your post about Ai and can I just share that I work in archeology and I'm absolutely terrified of the way AI is becoming normalized within research. The University I work for recently granted our department a large budget for this research project, and instead of hiring new people, or taking even taking in undergrad students as assistant researchers, my superiors have been using ChatGPT. It's absolutely insane to me that it is being recommended for us to use it to create surveys and organize our collected data. we are even being told to use it if we're having trouble writing the summary reports that help us continue getting funding.

I use it almost everyday, and it is not 100% accurate. Its actually wrong a lot of the time when you're using it to do more advanced math so it's very worrisome that it's being used for quantitative research. it is so easy for things to be wrong and no one to even notice.

YES ITS SO SCARY !!! im in healthcare management and the company i’m working with is a supplier for hospitals and the way they use chat gpt to compare pricing and break down data and even just write emails for summaries is so scary because the calculations aren’t always correct and they admit that !! and they still use it !! means for breaking down data aren’t always the most effective. and it’s especially scary bc my friend who is a pharm tech has been consistently complaining that more and more drugs have become hard to order in larger quantities and they are having loads of shortages. they’ve had to limit how much they can give at a time significantly in a few pharmacies in my area and it’s like. if you chat gpt things like calculating when it comes to supplying things for the healthcare industry, you heavily risk accidentally miscalculating how you split things up or wtv the case may be and already scarce items will be even more scarce. it’s just a very very nauseating thing to hear — and young ppl especially !! the company i’m working with has also cut back so many interning spots with data analytics bc they rely on ai to do it !! there are so many young individuals that are slowly being robbed of experience they desperately need to build their careers and the economy isn’t exactly helping with the case either, and :,) it’s just. a rly rly big area for concern bc there seems to be no regulation whatsoever and i can’t wrap my head around it.

and besides the professional aspect, there’s also the social aspect you have to consider. ai generated images are becoming more and more accurate and we’re living in a time where we can start to make anyone’s voice and faces be generated to say / look however we want. there are so many dangers to that i don’t even think i need to go into but from every standpoint all ai screams to me is a way to make life more and more miserable instead of efficient :,)

[khamomile-kitty]

i agree that homestuck is full of racist shit, but it that were the “real reason” that “most people” don’t like it then they’d have to show up for the similarly racist Doctor Who, Supernatural, Our Flag Means Death, Stone Butch Blues, Dykes To Watch Out For, Avatar The Last Airbender etc etc need I go on? Like Homestuck is racist & it’s good that some people are acknowledging that but isn’t it kind of worrying that the level of of scrutiny people apply to it is not applied to literally anything else made by cis people.

from my perspective, the racism is a convenient rationale for people who just find the fandom annoying to moralise their distaste of the comic (you must’ve seen the recent bout of anonymous a bunch of trans women got for even mentioning that they were analysing Homestuck’s racism)

like again I totally agree Homestuck is inexcusably racist in places but isn’t it kind of suspect that you don’t see transmascs getting anons about The Romcom About Real Slave Traders Being Gay with the same fervour that trans women gently praising Homestuck get sent atrocious levels of hatemail?

i really think the exceptionalism of “wow, Homestuck is so shockingly racist way more than anything else!!” lets a lot of people ignore just how commonplace racism is in fandom & in the source materials of many of these fandoms; I think diverting literally every conversation about the transphobia Hussie & transfem fans of the comic have faced into “well Homestuck is exceptionally racist, so…” waywardly normalises transmisogyny *AND* racism.

like we don’t need any more people adding to the pile of transmisogynists saying, “wow isn’t it a weird coincidence how transfeminine white people are soo much more racist than other white people? i probably shouldn’t examine where this is coming from and just accept it as true”

Ok so we’re heading into weird territory. Ppl DO criticize those things you mention as being racist?? Like there’s obviously ppl who refuse to engage w that and do stupid fuckin shit like fund a zionist, racist tv show that ENDED w over a thousand dollars, but there’s VERY MUCH ppl who have BEEN pointing these things out as racist.

I really think you are thinking of this the wrong way. This is heading into “It being made by tma ppl means the racism isnt as bad” territory, which I know isn’t what you meant, but the idea that media by cis ppl must be criticized and brought up first in a conversation about bringing up the racism in media made by tma ppl is like. So do you not want us to acknowledge that??

Also. Inexcusably racist in “some places?” Half of the characters are racist stereotypes. The whole thing is racist? And again, you are thinking abt this the wrong way. The reason tme ppl aren’t getting sent egregious hatemail abt shit like OFMD isn’t because of ppl critiquing tma ppl. It’s bc the ppl sending the hate are transmisogynist and racist, and they’re looking for an excuse to be a shithole. The hate isn’t going to stop if we just. Stop critiquing media made by tma ppl when it’s racist? The hate is going to stop when we confront the fucking rampant transmisogyny and racism. Idk if I’m putting that exactly how I want it, I hope you get the idea.

Also, yeah maybe there are ppl who think like that (it wouldn’t surprise me, ppl pretending like their championing a cause when all they rly want to do is make it seem like they’re paying attention while slapping a band-aid over their gaping and unaddressed racism) but acting like that’s all ANYONE who criticizes homestuck is doing is erasing the black and non-black voices who have been saying that for a while now. I agree that I shouldn’t have brought it up in a discussion not currently discussing it, that was a bad mistake. I will not make it again. But acting like discussing the racism in homestuck AT ALL contributes to racism and transmisogyny is?? I don’t get that at all.

Also. ?? I haven’t heard anybody saying that, maybe that’s just me, but if they are, it’s not because they’re genuinely caring abt racism or trans ppl, it’s bc they’re transmisogynist and racist amd refusing to confront it. And acting like that what I was saying when NOWHERE did I even imply it?? Is this the same anon that asked me to take them in good faith?? Bc it sure seems like you’re not even trying to extend that curtesy to me. This ask in particular os a lot more accusatory than the last one, and I don’t really know how to respond to it other than discussing it and hoping you’ll get what I’m trying to say. Are you still wanting to have a conversation with me? Bc if not, that’s fine, but let’s not pretend it is, that’s confusing as hell. It’s kind of hard to have a conversation when one party is determined to take everything you say in bad-faith.

[daaedoodles]

I rly like '24 for the obvious reasons but also cuz it humanized everyone more. Regina's villain origin story was worse imo but when she fell on stage I couldnt help but thinking shes just a GIRL. Shes just a girl who hates her body, ate shit in front of the whole school, basically has her bare ass out and is getting photographed and filmed to be posted online and get HUMILIATED. Idk if this was said in the social media scene of the movie or if i made it up in my head bc im gen z and I know the internet but in my head I was like yeah shes a fucking cunt but she didn't deserve 💀 threats cuz ppl be throwing 💀 threats at ANYTHING 😭😭😭

ME TOO. i watched a review and they said that the only characters that were humanized were the plastics and they were actually so right?? the other teenagers in the school just were like crazy social media assholes and none of them had a redeeming moment so i think i ended up feeling bad for regina and hating them instead like the shit they were saying and doing was vile and she got fucking dragged on social media when, honestly, that wouldn’t happen IRL you’d get cancelled for making fun of someone like that.

EXACTLY. she’s just a girl and honestly regina isn’t even that mean? in 24’ people just seem more like they’re scared of her because she’s hot and has power and followers and influence because of that and COULD potentially destroy you. she’s grumpy with people and she gets rude with gretchen and karen, but we never see her being mean to anyone else? but even still there’s genuine moments like when she’s asking how many calories are in the chobani where she’s picking her nails and you can tell she’s nervous and she actually almost seems kind of nice like that and you can’t help but think how much of the mean girl persona is just regina projecting her insecurities on everyone else. like she rules the school, but how much of that confidence is because she doesn’t ever want to be bullied and ostracized like janis was/she made janis — and then ended up having the same thing happen to her in the most cruel way possible?

the kalteen bars, oh my god. janis doing this was just evil because she would’ve known about regina’s insecurities. doubt regina would ever let anyone else in the school know and then, the cherry on top, janis told the school she did it on PURPOSE to mess with her life and exposed that to everyone

and the fuckign death threats… i was honestly like wtf? like the north shore high student body actually needs to get hit by a bus cause they suck somehow even worse than regina 😭

the fake ass go fund mes and leaving presents at her door but never actually visiting her is so something that would happen irl. i just imagine she’s basically completely alone and keeps hearing from her mom and has seen some of the shit people said on social media when she was recovering from her injuries and that’s why she changes and realizes she needs to be better

[sovonight]

hi sovo ;u; I hope it's okay if I ask you a shop question! So um, I'm lower on money than I've ever been and I'm too burnt out to do commissions for ppl due to personal stuff, but I feel like... if I made one charm or one sticker for a particularly huge fandom/movie that's out right now, and if I put it up as preorder and sold at least 20 keychains then I'd be able to pay my bills this month. but I've never sold physical merch before and I'm a little nervous to try it haha :'D

Would you recommend I try making an Etsy since it seems to have a large enough audience, or do you think I should try making my own website/shop? I'm definitely not ready to consistently sell things as a steady job yet, I thought I'd try literally just one single keychain or one sticker sheet (I already learned how to make those, thankfully) in order to pay my rent this month bc I've only got about a hundred dollars to my name sdflkfssdf;; and if it goes well then maybe I can try it again.

I'm also not quite sure how to price things? if I made a 3.5 inch acrylic charm with the little star shaped keychains like from Vograce, do people normally price those at $15 when they sell them? should I also account for shipping? I've also umm never shipped merch before and I'm so worried about somehow messing it up sldfjsf like I don't know what kind of envelopes I have to get or if I should even use my own address bc I'm so nervous about my personal info being out there, but I don't know if it's worth paying for a PO box if I'm so low on money already. if you have any tips on anything whatsoever, I would appreciate any feedback if you're not busy. But if you don't want to answer please don't worry about it ;u; anyway thank you so much for reading this I really appreciate you! ❤

no prob! here are my thoughts:

pros/cons of etsy:

apparently if you're new to selling on etsy, there's a probationary period where etsy withholds your profits for 3 months. i don't know anything about it personally since it started in 2020, but it seems that funds are only released when your shipped orders are scanned at the post office. i think i also remember hearing about other cases where payments aren't released at all for 3 months--and etsy customer service has a reputation of being difficult to get a hold of if you have a problem as a seller, so if etsy made a mistake with your shop, it may take even more months to resolve. since you have preorders in mind, i would hold off on etsy unless you can pay out of pocket.

etsy can drive traffic towards your listing for you (if you choose the right keywords--it's more difficult to be discovered just randomly if you don't).

they have high fees (for a $15 charm they'd take $1.88 in fees, which is 12.5%).

people may be cautious to buy from a shop that has no reviews yet, but many customers are protected by etsy's purchase protection and can be refunded at no cost to you if their order gets lost in the mail (provided that you ship with a tracking number and meet other criteria).

etsy will strongly recommend that you offer free shipping; ignore them. i don't think i've ever bought fanmerch with free shipping in my life, and their advice isn't geared towards sellers like us.

preorders don't work very well with etsy's system--iirc you're not supposed to do them (even though people still do, of course) but the main reason i remember is that the max processing time etsy lets you set per product (as in, the time between the customer purchasing the listing and you shipping it out) is 6 weeks. that means that the time you allow for customers to place their preorders, the time it takes for you to order and receive the merch, and the time it takes for you to ship out orders, all need to add up a max of 6 weeks, which was personally a difficult timeline for me to meet when making keychains. ofc, it's possible to extend the processing time, but going over the processing time may make it possible for customers to leave reviews/open cases early before you're even ready to ship out their orders, which could affect the reputation of your shop.

pros/cons of not etsy:

if you're not going with etsy, i've heard people recommend bigcartel, since it doesn't require a subscription like shopify or other places do. bigcartel's free plan is limited, but it should work for what you're looking for. another alternative might be ko-fi--i've heard that ko-fi shops aren't ideal for shipping out a large amount of orders, but since you're targeting just 20 i think it should be manageable.

ofc, you'll have to drive all your traffic yourself, so consider if you have enough of a following in your target fandom, or how you should go about getting your post noticed by your target fandom.

unlike etsy, shipping isn't auto-calculated, so i'd probably set a flat rate (in the US i'd expect $5). flat rates might make calculating your taxes just a little bit more complicated; in california at least, you have to pay taxes on the difference between the shipping you charge your customers and the shipping you actually pay to the post office, so iirc you either refund the extra shipping to the customer or hand it all over in taxes.

pricing:

yes, the standard price for ~3" acrylic keychains is $15, though i've also seen people go up to $16 or $17, especially on etsy where the fees are high.

shipping should be a separate cost, either auto-calculated for you (if you're on etsy/shopify) or a flat rate that you set based on shipping rates for your country, so in the end a customer might pay $15 + $5 = $20 in total.

unless most of your prospective customers are international, i'd recommend against shipping internationally to avoid dealing with customs forms, especially since you already have a lot of info to take in.

you can ship everything in a regular bubble mailer, though if you're just shipping stickers not keychains, a flat envelope should work fine. when shipping packages, you'll need to know the weight of each package, but you can just go by an estimate. a 3" acrylic keychain weighs about 1 oz (it weighs less than that, but they don't accept decimals) so i just multiply based on how many keychains are in an order. for usps at least, shipping is the same rate up until 10 oz iirc, so you don't need to weigh it super accurately. you could also always just go into the post office and have them weigh and label everything for you.

po box:

if regular PO box rates in your area are too high, you can also consider using a virtual po box; they go for about $10 per month at their most basic plans. if you're not expecting to get any mail redirected back to you, you should be able to just buy a month's subscription when you're ready to ship things out.

words of caution:

you probably already know this, but large fandoms can often be oversaturated by merch, so just choosing a large fandom might not be enough to guarantee a sale--you might have to stand out by, say, choosing a character who's in demand but doesn't have much fanmerch, having a funny meme concept, or having such a unique/attractive style that people can't help but want your fanmerch in particular. if you haven't already, i'd recommend looking around the market and seeing what's out there and decide why a buyer should choose your merch over anyone else's. though honestly, depending on your fandom, it could also not be this serious and not warrant much research--it all depends!

even if the preorder process works out and you get the funds to place the order, the manufacturer could always mess up on your order, which could lead to delays in your fulfillment and at worst, more expenses if you need to pay to get them remade. if it's easier to get sticker sheets made (like if you make them yourself/locally instead of ordering from overseas) they might be a safer choice of merch to make. ofc, i don't generally see sticker sheets up for preorder so you'd probably have to order them out of pocket and hope they sell, and you'll probably have to sell more of them than you would of keychains to get the same amount of profit. i don't know the whole situation, so i can't say anything definite about the risks/rewards between choosing to sell keychains and choosing to sell stickers.

[genderjester]

Some ppl love to fearmonger that omg universal healthcare will mean u have to wait ages for doctor's appointments and the quality will be shit and u wont be able to choose your healthcare provider which is so funny to me bc like. Why the fuck would that be true.

I live in germany and have the like. State health insurance not the fancy private one. And on friday i called my gp to ask for an appointment and they were able to squeeze me in on the same day bc it was urgent. And even if it hadnt worked out same day they probably wouldve given me an appointment by next week latest. And if they had been fully booked? I couldve called basically every other gp in the area to see if any of them could squeeze me in bc i dont have a network i need to stick to or whatever. The only doctors you need referrals for are the specialists but not even all of them. Many of them u can also just call up and ask. My mom once got a next day appointment at the ophtalmologist bc her symptoms needed to be checked urgently (it turned out to be fine dont worry)

And like some of this is city privilege but it's not like a private healthcare system would solve the lack of health infrastructure in rural communities either like 😭

The only reason some state funded/universal healthcare systems go to shit is bc people in power underfund them to death, not bc it's inherently worse than private. In fact, well maintained and well funded universal healthcare is ideal imo. I really fucking enjoy not having to worry about surprise bills at the doctors office and think that should be the standard around the world.

[vaingloriosa]

as far as i know bryan dmed some underage connor nsfw ccs on tiktok (you probably know the genre) asking them not to post explicit things about connor. not sure what the nature of these messages were but the kids posted publicly in a panic after talking about how they were doing bad things and how sorry they were

rather than address things such as this publicly he is known for dming fans (at least i've seen him do it on a handful of occasions and know ppl he has messaged) to ask them to be quiet about certain things and not engage with certain people in the fandom

so it's basically a power play bc he knows he holds this status with the cult following he has with his fans (many of them underage) and he will use it to his advantage like that to get them to do what he wants

i've actually never seen anyone else be critical of them so it is so relieving to see you and the other anon. i really wonder who this top donor is. they used to have another one, not sure if she is still in the streams since she quit the fandom but she probably donated tens of thousands of dollars to them. she was your typical white karen and had a total meltdown over "losing her power" in the fandom before quitting, but she was very beloved to them and would tell bryan/his mod team abt accounts she didn't like or felt threatened by, someone standing up to her was what caused her meltdown and subsequently quitting. not surprised if she is still donating to them or if history repeats itself and they gained another wealthy worshipper

i would go off anon but i am personally familiar with how these people are behind their wholesome unproblematic facade and worry for my safety, honestly it is so relieving just to talk about this since i have been carrying it for so long 😭 have been seeing them on my feed way too much recently with the baby, the way people go crazy for heterosexuality is insane. i feel so sorry for their child and wish they would just shut up, drop this whole connor thing and move on with their lives. but i guess bc of wealthy white women like the other anon said it must be lucrative. goes to funding their million dollar properties on occupied land i guess!

yeah, he could’ve gone about that situation in a way different matter. I get trying to settle something privately if it was personal but if it was about not posting explicit things of his character, especially from underaged fans (which I agree, they shouldn’t be doing that), he should’ve addressed it publicly and not per person. a whole lot of labor and for what…

oughhh I’ve heard abt that infamous discord and priv chats which is mind boggling bc imagine creating a cult like environment for toxic positivity. a whistleblower told me about how some fans discussed the transphobia and homophobia in their daily lives on the discord and they were told by mods to stop being so “negative” and got threatened with being banned if they ever brought those topics up again. bryan gets his mods or whatever to do his dirty work and boy do they take their role to a whole other level 😭 also i don’t remember who also told me this but when someone on stream tried to correct bryan, he got really defensive and just laughed the person off. really wish i could find the message again bc i know it was something trivial but it was like a genuine criticism. if I find it, ilyk.

also insanity…why give your money to people that absolutely do not need it loll. this is from the same whistleblower and it broke my heart. the way bryan dechart encouraged this behavior is sickening.

awwweee im glad I could be a breathe of fresh air for youuuuu. absolutely vile that the repercussions of speaking out against the decharts could possibly mean a pack of wild dogs being sent to your location. what kind of community is that?! you can unload anytime, amigo, you’re safe here 🫶🏽 I applaud your bravery!! it took a lot of courage to even speak up about these concerns.

influencers who exploit their children are the scum of the earth and I hope these two don’t go down the route of using their own child for content 😐 if there is a baby cam on their stream, we are so cooked as a society I’m not even fucking kidding. every child should be shielded from the millions of eyes of the internet. we don’t need to see that! that’s between you and your partner (if there is one) and this goes for everyone tbh. like please protect your children from prying eyes…

anyways

[siodium]

a while ago i heard that nintendo was gonna discontinue their 2ds/3ds support and eshop service soooo i decided to mod my 3ds!! and i was successful!!! now i have access to the entire library of 3ds games and more if you include nds and other emulator games heheh (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞

and the best part of all......... cUSTOM THEMES!!! ✨

i also took advantage of the acnl save editor and made marshal a resident in my town!!! yESS finally childhood dream fulfilled!!!

honestly i'm just rly glad that my 3ds still works (only the charger ded but i managed to get a third party replacement) bc i haven't touched it in yEARS. it sucks that you can't buy one in the shop anymore. i'm actually tempted to grab another set (the pikachu 2ds tho 👀) from ebay or something before they are completely wiped from the market but eh i'll think about it a little more. i can only hope that my 3ds lives a long life bc there are so many 3ds exclusive games that i wanna play.

recently i had the most random urge to play zero escape: 999 and i found an online emulator for it bUT THE FEELING JUST WASN'T RIGHT.......

and cooking mama games??? sometimes i just wanna go for a nostalgia run but idk how those games will work without a touchscreen and stylus.

since i can now get any digital game i want, i decided to sell off almost my entire physical 3ds and nds game collection to free up storage space and recoup some money to fund other things. of course, i backed up all my save files from my physical cartridges beforehand and made sure they were properly transferred to the games that i'd downloaded digitally. the only games i kept were persona q2 (part of my p5 collection and also the very last 3ds game i got) and lux-pain (kinda rare?? and i like the artbook that came with it).

i did not expect that some of the games would fetch over $100 in the resale market??? wHY?? when modding exists??? physical game collectors are on another level O: anyway i lowballed myself in hopes of quicker deals and i got so many messages within the first hour of listing?? and it somehow became an auction situation with ppl trying to outbid one another lmaoo that was by far the most interesting carousell experience i've ever had.

for those who are interested in modding, pls use the written guide!! sometimes video guides miss out information/steps and screwing up can mean a bricked system. or if you are my irl friend you can just ask me to do it for you ;-)))

btw the game in the third pic is fantasy life!! it's a chill sandbox rpg with very cute graphics. there's an upcoming fantasy life game that was just announced for the switch and i'm hyped!!! but first,, i need to do something about the backlog

[majoringinsarcasm]

I read IG comments again this is a sad ramble don’t read this. Sincerely if you read this and are rude I’m blocking you lol

I think ironically the most frustrating and sad thing about all those “why other countries hate Americans” posts is that

1) It points out very legitimate awful things that current day citizens Cannot Control or Change

2) The sweeping generalizations that, while anyone can have, feel very white American leaning

Don’t be me don’t read Instagram comments but I just read a bunch and so much of it was either your government sucks, which yes it does thanks bestie. Or just education stuff and how we don’t know geography or other cultures or history. Or a very unique “you call yourselves Americans despite other counties being in America you’re so entitled by claiming that title for yourself”

And maybe it’s bc I’m black. Maybe it’s bc my brain doesn’t like rules that I can’t follow the logical road to. But. That’s not our fault.

And what I mean by that is that we only know what we are taught. That’s not a full excuse to NOT CARE about other countries but as children and into adulthood schools only tell us So Much. And if you went to a lower income school you didn’t even learn as much as higher income schools. We’re in school for 12-14 years before age 18 and then it’s either Go To College to get a job or Get a Job right away. And things like learning other languages or culture studies are only useful For A Job if you’re going into that field.

Now. I would’ve loved if my school taught other languages. We had Spanish but it was the “memorize this thing” type and not actually teaching you how the language is formed. And it’s really hard to learn a New Language as an adult. (Which is why the insistence that people speak English when they move or immigrate here is so stupid). BUT I wasn’t. We didn’t have the money for that. And as you can see by current events what history WAS taught is trying to be BANNED as of now.

This sounds so very “be sad for Americans” or US citizens I guess if ppl are gonna be picky about what we were told to call ourselves without any alternative which again We Did Not Choose. But also the US isn’t just white people. And there are many people white included who HATE how things are run. How land is stolen and people silenced and killed. How our money is used without our permission to fund wars and not given to those who need it. Many of us who might be proud of individual roots aren’t proud of the country itself. But uhhhh good luck getting Money to Go anywhere else.

It’s like being tied to a chair with tape over our mouths watching as other counties talk about how we’re terrible and live under a corrupt government and we kill people and we kill ourselves. And thrashing and screaming because WE FUCKING LIVE HERE. THE AWFUL SHIT YOURE COMPLAINING ABOUT IS OUR DAILY LIVES. WE ARE THE ONES LIVING LIKE THIS WE ARE THE ONES WHO ARE TOLD ITS FINE TO KILL PPL AS LONG AS ITS THR RIGHT PEOPLE. AND THOSE WHO SPEAK OUT ARE ARRESTED OR KILLED

A man was killed in broad daylight on camera and when people marched for him and protested against police brutality they were met with More brutality! A woman was killed in her bed. A boy was killed going to work. In front of their kids. While fleeing a crime scene. Indigenous people ARE NOT GONE they are still fighting to keep their children in Native families. Like.

I get it. I fucking get it. I truly do. But YOU are seeing an entire patchwork of people under one umbrella. We are living day to day watching people we love and people we don’t know who deserve to just fucking live be utterly crushed. We are kept ignorant on purpose. The rise of AI makes “a simple google search” an entity new obstacle. We don’t control where our races go. Our public transit is not well funded our schools are not well funded. We don’t. Have. Places to be that aren’t Home or Work anymore.

Again this is not to take away from the Active Genocides going on. Or the way the US Government is complicit in many many crimes against humanity.

I’m just saying that many many of us aren’t running around shirtless praising the place. I don’t want to. Live. Thinking I’ll be stuck under awful leadership until I fucking kill myself man. You’re looking at the shitshow from across an ocean. We live here. I can’t explain the disconnect of seeing actual suppression of the truth and education and how fucked up it is and how helpless it is knowing that firing back isn’t as easy as yall make it sound. Not to say we just sit around and do nothing. But some Europeans talk about resistance and shit and it’s like they Kill Us In Public And Get Away With It Over Here.

Idk man. They’re not wrong about some points but it’s sad LIVING here and knowing information about other places is deliberately not taught or readily available. They called it brainwashing but clearly they don’t think about what that actually entails. Never learning about the color red doesn’t mean blue is the best. You’re just never given a chance to see other colors.

[gardenhotspot]

the workshop was so good 😭

[captain-safetypants]

Not only that, but sometimes there are ways that those who don't qualify for resource assistance can help those who do, that are completely un-intuitive (to me). I have two examples of this from my own experience.

First, when I originally moved to the place where I live now, I looked around for a new primary care physician. I looked up reviews of various doctors on the website for my new health insurance (which was pretty good, bc I was lucky to have a good job with decent benefits.) I found a doctor with kickass reviews who sounded like my kind of ppl and made an appointment at the clinic where she worked. I was new to both the area and the regional specifics of how various medical providers were termed, so I didn't realize until I got there that it was a community health clinic that specialized in outreach to underserved populations (which I don't count as). I was worried when I realized this, that by going there I was taking services from more directly local people who needed them more badly than I did, when I (with my decent insurance) could have gone to many other clinics. When I got in there and explained this to the doctor (who was amazing by the way) she said that if I wanted she could absolutely refer me to someone at a non-community-health clinic, but pointed out that by going there, with my good insurance and being able to pay my copays and stuff, I was bringing income to the clinic and enabling them to serve other people who weren't able to pay for service, especially if I was mostly looking for maintenance checkups and not needing appointments all the time. This made sense to me and I was relieved, and continued to see her occasionally for a couple of years, until I changed jobs and needed a doctor that took a different insurance. But she helped me to sort out my depression and anxiety, and get connected to specialist providers I've continued to see for the next seven years, and I was incredibly grateful for her care and advice.

The other thing that occurs to me is this: my child started public school this year, and brought home an application for free/reduced lunch. We're lucky enough to be able to pay regular price for school lunch (health and safety is a career that can allow you to live comfortably, has good job security, and is in NEED of new blood to replace retiring boomers, so keep that in mind), so I didn't bother to fill it out, because again, I wouldn't want to take services from others who really needed them when I was fortunate enough to not. But someone from the school called me up and asked me to complete it anyway, and explained that JUST FILLING IT OUT, even if you know you don't qualify for services, helps the school obtain funding for services. There's even a little box to check that says "Over income," for people who know they don't qualify and aren't trying to get benefits, because filling out the form at all is what drives the funding amounts. This blew my mind.

I think it's important to remember, as a rule of thumb, if you take advantage of a social service, it actually makes it easier for other people who need that service to access it. Most of the time, when these services get cut, it's because politicians will look at usage and say "see, no one is really using this thing, we can afford to trim the budget for food stamps by at least half". Whereas if you decide to step up and use these programs, even if you feel like you "don't really need it", at bare minimum it's another data point advocates can use to say "hey, look, people are using this thing, this is an important service we are providing, do not cut our funding".