#but considering the average ages of people on this site and the average ages that people begin to date

[kennythetrampvamp]

Reblog for bigger sample size maybe? I really wanna know!

Watching tv, u grow up feeling like everybody starts dating in highschool at the latest and that that's what's supposed to happen, but it's really so different for everyone. I now know plenty of people in their 20s who have never dated anyone.

(Tbh I don't hang out with many people older than me so I haven't heard much from those demographics yet (I'm 22))

Also please tell me about your first date and/or first partner! If u want to :)

[burr-ell]

Sometimes Things That Shake Up the Status Quo are Worse

I keep seeing people insisting that Exandria "can't return to the status quo, which was bad", but rarely do they say anything in support of that argument beyond "the Primes pick and choose favorites!". And while I'm not confident the show itself won't try to make that claim, the reality is that it just isn't borne out mechanically or narratively. Laying aside that non-Divine Soul sorcerers exist (like, and I'm just spitballing here, Aberrant Mind Ruidusborn), the gods work primarily through the on-the-ground efforts of clerics and paladins—people who have actively and consistently put in the work to devote themselves to the divine. This is a setting where resurrection magic, which relies on divine power, has been intentionally made more difficult than it is in DnD rules-as-written. Even clerics only get access to Divine Intervention at level 10 (when they've already spent a long time devoting themselves to their deity) and up until level 20 the chances of it actually working are vanishingly small—and level 20 clerics are both hard to come by and ultimately still limited.

In the rare event that the Prime Deities choose to bless someone who isn't a cleric or paladin, it's someone who has a good reason to have gotten their attention. Vax offered his life during a divine ritual in the burial site of the Raven Queen's most devoted champion and then actively committed himself to her cause. Yasha was an aasimar being mind-controlled by a devil who wound up at a divine altar and chose to worship Kord after he freed her. Orym is the devoted widower of someone who is in Melora's realm and was present at a ritual in a temple associated with Melora, and one of his companions prayed at a shrine to Melora on his behalf. Vex was directly in front of Pelor, had taken a leadership position in one of his sacred cities, and had received a vision from him directly—and even then, she had to earn it. Scanlan also had to earn the right to Ioun's favor and complete a trial, and had previously shown qualities and values that she believed were fitting of her champion. Fjord was a companion of a devoted cleric of Melora who had sought her help in keeping Uk'otoa sealed and made requests of her on Fjord's behalf, and Fjord also chose to meditate and then became a paladin devoted to her.

And in Exandria, if you don't want to follow a god, you don't have to. Percy, Keyleth, Grog, Beau, Veth, Caleb, Essek, most of Bell's Hells, the average commoner in the various cities the parties have traveled to—whether they outright dislike the gods as a whole or just don't have an interest either way, they're all capable of thriving with or without them, and indeed their problems are almost entirely caused by mortals. It's especially egregious when you consider that cities like Avalir were around during the Age of Arcanum, when the Prime Deities physically walked Exandria, and people like Laerryn, Patia, Zerxus, and Lacrytia Hollow—openly disdainful of the gods or even trying to create feats of magic to get on their level—were continuing business as usual. The previous god of death not only willingly abdicated in favor of a mortal during this time, but outright helped her do the job!

The Prime Deities can't win. If they didn't give anyone any power at all, they'd be viewed as selfish. If they'd stayed on Exandria after the Calamity, they'd be foolish and reckless. They're simply not capable of intervening and helping everyone, so they're labeled capricious. If they leave Exandria, they're abandoning not only their refuge and home, but also the people who need and rely on them. You can argue that "no one should have that much power" all you want, but I think it's exceptionally silly to take an argument meant to criticize the wealthy and powerful of our world (whose only unique quality is ultimately that they got lucky) and apply it to fictional deities (beings who are powerful by their very nature) who, while flawed, also think they're too powerful. They tried to protect Exandria from themselves and the Betrayers while still using their power to do right by the people there, and for the most part it was working just fine.

The "status quo" from before all this was and still is the best compromise available. No one has managed to sell a better one that doesn't amount to "cater to my blorbos and my self-indulgent idea of revolutionary politics, which may or may not also ultimately circle back to my blorbos". I think that's pretty telling.

[dia-souls]

===Yui Komori as an Idol Reverse Harem Headcanons===

Yui is known for her cuteness, she is really famous because of her aegyo as she doesn't look cringe while doing it.

Yui is one of the youngest idol in entertainment industry. She was 14 when she became a trainee and debuted at the age of 17.

Yui has a very shrill and gentle voice. Her vocals are good. She can hit high notes. She can also sing live.

Her dance is average. She is very good at doing gentle and elegant dances rather than fast and hip hop.

Yui has really soft and feminine beauty. Her visuals are compare to angel or doll because of her blonde hair, white skin and big eyes.

She doesn't dye her hair frequently but if she does, it's usually light colours like white, pink or highlights.

Her popularity shooted because of her performances in which she is dressed in a beautiful pink dress that matches her eyes and with a small crown adorning her hair. That performance caused her to get viral as people started comparing her to doll and her cute voice also caught attention of many people.

She has more fanboys (55%) than fangirls (45%).

Idol Yui works under Sakamaki cooperation whose head is Shu.

She has two manager Reiji and Ruki. Yui sometimes cries as both of them are strict and sometimes hard on her.

Ruki is incharge of taking care of her diet and her schedules. He is incharge of taking care of Yui and he makes sure she stays healthy and keeps her on ideal weight.

Reiji is incharge of handling her social sites and is responsible for tours recquirement, Yui's passwords etc are under Reiji. Reiji is usually the one who is keeping her socials update like posting picture, stories, captions, tik tok, etc.

There is unspoken rivalry between them, as they both compete on who is more responsible and who can handle all these things alone. They both secretly like Yui and are aware that opposite party also likes her.

Idol Yui is really famous among male idols and as well as other fans. Some male idols confessed that Yui is their ideal type.

Yui is also known for her kindness. As she always treats her fans kindly even rude and toxic ones whom disrespect her. She smiles at them gently instead of getting angry.

She through out her career never showed anger, she is also known for her calm nature.

She is considered to be wife-material that's why she is famous among Japanese men.

Yuma is Yui's personal body guard. Yums was given to Yui by commapany( by Shu) , her boss actually to make sure she stays safe and her sasaeng don't bother her or hurt her.

Azusa is Yui's hairstylist and makeup artist whom secretly is Yui's biggest stanner. He did this job just because he could be closer to his favourite idol.

He fells in love with her again and again as she always treats him kindly and doesn't judge his slow way of speaking.

Azusa always blushes whenever he sees her getting dress for her performances.

Azusa as yui stanner has his own accounts online where he defend Yui from haters and fights with them he always wins as he knows Yui's secrets and all stuffs. He is famous because of his defending way and was called Yui's no. 1 fanboy by online community no one saw his face neither he will reveal.

He protects Yui from shadows.

Kou is Yui's choreographer whom uses this opportunity to touch her in the name of making her learn faster and better.

Yuma once confronted him and was ready to beat the hell out of him when he noticed his way of touching her then he scolded by Ruki saying that he is only teaching her and nothing else.

Yuma still punched him but that didn't stop Kou. He sometimes manapulate Yui into going out with him.

Shu watches this all from his office through cctv camera and threatened Kou to kick him out if he tried anything funny on Yui again. He makes sure that all male staff stays in line.

Shu also changed the male staff to female staff most of the female staff work around Yui. He makes sure of it only 4-5 males are around Yui but they don't stay around her too much.

Yui is surrounded by female staff so that Shu could be at ease knowing she won't be harrased but he literally rubbed his temples when he found out that a staff girl confessed her love to Yui. She was kicked out.

Yuma was the one who told such things to Shu as Yuma knows he has power over to control them Yuma observes all of the staff the moment he finds them creepy or weird he immediately informs Shu so he could take action.

The staff is kicked out if he/she had ill intention towards Yui. In this way Yuma and Shu protect her.

Shu once installed a camera in Yui's changing room to peep at her only to be caught by Ruki whom than throwed it in dustbin while crushing it.

Reiji and Ruki never found out that Shu was the one behind this vulgar incident.

Yuma upon hearing this, his protectiveness and possessiveness towards Yui shooted up.

Yui is also shipped with Yuma, Reiji and Ruki. Because her moments with them always gets viral.

One time one fanboy made Yui uncomfortable and Yuma immediately rescues her by twisting his arms and he recieved positive comments from fans.

Ruki sometimes covers Yui with his jacket and Reiji sometimes glares at them whenever they make her feel bad or uncomfy.

Yui cracking jokes with them these moments makes fans ship them romantically.

Yuma and Yui were also caught up in the dating scandal. Just to have Shu immediately releasing a statement denying them without Yuma and Yui's approval or consent.

He afterwards made sure that this is actually not true and it was not true in reality.

Yui is also shipped with male idols. Her most famous ship is with kino. (in meantime, I will explain the reason👀)

Yui also works as a MC her male partner is Carla whom grabs every chance to get shipped with her.

Carlayui is second famous ship after Kinoyui between idols.

Yui is also shipped with Shin because of their interactions in variety shows where they both were paired up in games .

Tsukinamis are also idols but under different agency they aren't in same agency as Yui.

They once collabed with Yui which results in countless edits of them being shipped.

Tsukinamis compared to Yui are more famous and their popularity served as a clout for Yui to gain fans.

Subaru is Yui's biggest simp. He is Yui's rich fanboy. He has all of Yui's merches and photocards. His room is filled with Yui's pictures whom he took personally.

Subaru also stalks Yui while wearing black jacket or hood over black pants he always wears caps with his white hair poking through them he also wears black mask.

Subaru was called out once on this because on his Instagram people noticed that his pictures are in the same place as Yui and with exact same pose.

Reiji sued him immediately upon noticing but Subaru being rich easily got out off this and continued.

Subaru also applied for body guard position only to be rejected as he couldn't beat Yuma's strength and physic.

He also goes in same gym as Yuma and tries to get Yui's info from him only to get rejected.

The triplets are her fans who go to every one of her concerts and have not lost any of her concerts. Laito had even made her sign a marriage contract. Yui signed it thinking it was funny.

He later gushed about it to Ayato and Kanato whom then do same as him making Yui sign it and claims her as their wife on twitter and Facebook.

Ruki and Reiji later sue them as Yui then started recieving hate behind that hate train was Subaru whom made a big issue of such small thing by different accounts as a result Yui started bawling on her next live and he felt hella bad.

Shu than announced hiatus for Yui, which broke the triplets and Subaru.

Tsukinamis later defending her on their live saying idol life is hard and she is young which in return made Yui hated more by Tsukinamis fangirls.

Reiji and Ruki rubbed their temples when they saw hate comments by jealous fangirls of Tsukinamis.

Triplets and Subaru started hashtags of #saveyuifromtsukinami #saveyui #boycotttsukinami #saveyuifromphedophiles #tsukinamisstayawayfromyui

Shu then started protecting Yui by going to Tsukinamis agency and making her go to hiatus again and increasing security as people started hated on her he also sued alot of jealous fangirls and releasing statements on taking strict action on their cyber bullying.

Plot twist: It turns later out that Yui is now dating idol Kino who is in same agency as Tsukinami. She hid it from everyone as she isn't allowed to according to contact of her agency, Shu immediately threatens her.

Subaru fainted on spot when he saw Yui and Kino sharing kisses and hugs while stalking her

Triplets being heartbroken and started hashtags (they have a big fan following) #breakupyui #yuidontneedkino #freeyui #freeyuifromtsukinamiandkino #boycottkino.

Yui then under pressure of her two managers breaks up but Kino still has feelings the sad edits of them are made to this day.

Tsukinamis Jaws drop on knowing the truth that the snake is in the same den as them.

Shin during variety shows purposely push Kino or go hard on him while smirking and making him lose games as revenge.

Yui is Carla's MC partner so he try his best to console her and his edits are increasing with Yui.

Shin tries to make sure Kino stay away from Yui by getting in between or blocking their eye contact.

Laito also write dirty fics about Yui on wattpad and tumblr with himself as self insert they are hella dirty and has huge fan following shipping the OC laito with Yui but Subaru came across it and made an issue about it again by sending hate comments and promoting it to be cancelled on his social pages, Ruki upon reading fics sued Laito (lol).

Yui was sexualized once for wearing maid and neko outfit which attracted alot of male fans.

Azusa decided to make sure she gets mostly covered outfits like her dresses are usually long dress and skirt that reaches her kness she is boycotted to wear tight and short shots.

[artbyblastweave]

An aesthetic decision I really like about the Mad Max setting- focusing on Fury Road in particular here- is that the timeline and the setting deliberately defy coherence. Countless elements of our world have carried over- the guns, the vehicles, the musical instruments, the religious concepts, and nominally some of the actual people- but the world is geographically impossible, you don't see much contemporary architecture even in a ruined state, and there's no version of the timeline where this can be the same Max Rockatansky as the original films. But it is. The incongruities are deliberate. The setting is mythic, these are campfire tales told about Max, the King Arthur or the Omnipresent Jack figure of the new age. The world that was is swallowed in myth, the world that exists is borrowing some of the old world toys, and being up-front and bombastic with signifiers of the mythic and abstracted nature of the setting absolves you of the need to make the worldbuilding make sense- or rather, to make it make sense in the way you'd have to take a stab at if you had a year-by-year internal worldbuilding timeline of How Everything Went Down.

Fallout 1 is not exactly like this. It can't be, because you could kill a man with an overhead swing of the setting bible. But it's tapping into a similar impulse. People in the first game are using old world tech, but they don't really live in the old world; they live in settlements using materials scavenged from the old world, or in old world towns that were unimportant enough back then that their current identity totally overwrites whatever came before. They don't live in LA: They live in the Boneyard, which gives you a pretty good idea of how much of what we think of as "LA" would be recognizable as such if we were exploring the space in first-person perspective. When you encounter an area that has a direct, well-documented, and unambiguous connection to the old world, it's a Big Deal, and they're hard places to get to- places that the average person living their life in the wastes would die trying to access. Of particular note in this dynamic is The Brotherhood of Steel- for all their technical understanding of the knowledge they hoard, they've clearly seems to have undergone a few rounds of Canticle-style cultural telephone, mutating from Recognizably The American Military into a knightly order. Fallout 2 does this to a lesser extent- it has more settlements directly named after their pre-war counterparts- but it's also a game about a society that's starting to pull back together and form into something resembling the old world, for better or for worse. And it reproduces the trend of stuff with a direct, legible connection to the old world being inscrutable and dangerous to outsiders- specifically with the reveal that the Enclave consider themselves to be the direct continuation of the pre-war government, that they've just kept electing presidents out on that stupid little oil rig. I haven't really made up my mind on whether the timeframes of the games- 84 years followed by 164 years- actually work for the vibe they're going for, in particular it doesn't work with Arroyo- but on the whole, the vibe coheres.

You get into the 3d games, and it becomes much harder to continue to pull this off. One major tool that Fallouts 1 and 2 used to maintain that sense of abstraction was the overland travel map; you were visiting island of society in a vast sea of Nothing. You had encounter cells that consisted of burnt-out, looted shells of cities, maybe good for a camp site but not as anything else. Another important tool towards this end was the isometric camera angle. In a topdown worldspace you can scrub out a lot of environmental details that would be immediately recognizable to the player as artifacts of our present society if you were exploring the space in 1st person. The examine button can feed you vague, uncertain descriptions that convey enough detail to make the item recognizable while also conveying that there's been a level of information decay. Once you move into a 3d worldspace you lose both of these elements- the worldspace is what it is, I can walk across it in eleven minutes stripping it for loot as I go. I can read every sign on every still-standing building, and I've got eyeballs on every old-world bit-and-bobble with a handy interface description of what I'm looking at. And you hit random encounters in the 3d games at basically the same rate, in real-world time, that you did in the isometrics- but the isometrics could successfully abstract it out to represent that you were hitting something noteworthy every couple of weeks, while in the 3d games it's kinda inescapable that you keep getting jumped every single day walking back and forth up the same stretch of road. Not only is it recognizable, it's cramped.

I think that Fallout 3, to its credit, did a decent job of navigating this and trying to maintain the islands-in-a-sea-of-nothing vibe from the isometrics- most of the settlements are built slapdash in places that were obviously never intended for long-term human habitation (bomb craters, overpasses, suburbs), the landmark-heavy city proper is textually a difficult-to-navigate deathtrap, and the poison-sky green filter, memeworthy as it is, does help shore up the impression that you're inviting death by trying to move through the space. Fallout: New Vegas I think addresses this by going in the total opposite direction; It's set in an area of the country where the infrastructure was abnormally well preserved, and the pre-war culture was revived artificially, and from a thematic standpoint it's really interested in digging into the implications of those two things. The fact that the lonely-empty-decontextualized-void aesthetic isn't long for this world dovetails well with the cowboy themes. They have a fair number of future-imperfect context-collapse gags but they don't overdo it by any stretch of the imagination.

Fallout 4, from many directions, is sort of catching the worst of the heat here. The world is recognizable, aggressively so. In fairly-authentically recreating the suburban sprawl of the Northeast, Bethesda simply surrounded the inhabitants of the commonwealth with too much Boston for a sense of true distance from our world to be possible. Everyone still has the accents. They still know the names of all the old neighborhoods. They're still doing the "Park your car" bit. It's still Boston. And it's a busy Boston, too- you can't throw a rock without hitting a farming settlement that's doing well enough to attract tribute-seeking bandits. It's densely packed with points of interest, and those points of interest are packed to the brim with salvageable materials that, going off of the new crafting system, should be in enormous demand to the people who've been living in this area for 210 years. The game doesn't really advance a satisfying explanation, even an aesthetic explanation like fallout 3's poison sky, for why everything around you hasn't been stripped clean before you even came off the ice, why all these environmental storytelling tableaus are just waiting for you to find. It doesn't spend nearly enough time hammering out what the 200-year chronology of the most-livable area seen in a Fallout game looks like- Why don't you see something comparable to the NCR emerging? Something something CPG massacre (which is mentioned twice in the whole game, AFAICT.) And what's being lost here, right, is the ability to use the sands of time to smooth over rough spots in the worldbuilding, in the chronology. You can't hide behind the idea that the world you're experiencing is mythologized. It's presented as real, and it doesn't make much sense if it's real!

And to top it off- Fallout 4 probably has the highest density of characters who were actually there, by some means or another. The Vault Tec rep, Daisy, The Triggermen, Nick Valentine, Eddie Winter, the vault 118 inhabitants, Arlen Glass, Oswald, Kent Connolly, The whole of Cabot House, Captain Zao, The kid in the goddamn fridge and his goddamn parents, and uh. The big one. You. You, the player. Which is such a goddamn splinter under my skin, from a storytelling perspective. You were present in the before-times- but only nominally, only to the exact degree necessary to establish that that was the case. The ugly shit is alluded to, but not incorporated into the character's day-to-day in a way that's obvious to the player, you're there for like six minutes and it's pretty nifty if you overlook that bit at the end where everyone got nuked. Your ability to talk about the world before is always vague, vacuous, superficial. The dirty laundry you dig up on terminals around Boston never seems to meaningfully impact your character's worldview, their impressions of the then and the now. All of which combine to make this the simultaneously the most specific but also the most frustratingly vague game in the series. At its best, Fallout's love of juxtaposing the then and the now would make it a great setting for the Rip Van Winkle routine. But it requires a strong, strong understanding of what the world was like before and after, a willingness to use the protagonist to constantly grind the jagged edges of those things against each other, a protagonist with a better-defined outlook than Bethesda's open-ended-past approach allowed for- and it has to be in service of a greater point. And for Fallout 4 to do anything with any of that, the game would have to be about something instead of being something for you to do. Maddening. Maddening.

[anjanahalo]

Wayne Vs Fenton 3

start of the madness

pls note I'm putting these numbers in as "what I have written." They're not gonna necessarily be in order. I hope to make a full fic to put on AO3. In the interim, here's stuff I wrote in general as it strikes me in the moment. This bit is from Tim's perspective after Damian and Danny Are Friends become a known quantity in the Wayne household. ~*~

Damian making friends didn’t make sense. Everyone else felt complacent in simply accepting it. Tim wasn’t. Considering his upbringing, autonomous socializing wasn’t part of Damian’s personality. Nor was how calm and patient the former assassin child became with all of his siblings, Tim included. Damian himself insisted he and this “Danny” were friends. Hell, Damian even called the kid by a nickname. Not his last name, not “Daniel.” His actual, preferred nickname. Tim was suspicious and instantly began investigating. Daniel “Danny” Fenton, age 15, moved to Gotham two months ago from Amity Park, Illinois with his godfather and temporary guardian, Vlad Masters, former mayor of Amity Park, head of Vladco Industries, and heir to Wisconsin’s Self Proclaimed Dairy King’s fortune. Child of Jack and Madeline Fenton, doctors of something called ectobiology, former college classmates of Vlad Masters, and founders of FentonWorks, a cottage research facility that developed antighost (Ghosts? Really?) weaponry and equipment. Brother of Jasmine Fenton, currently a student of Yale in their psychology undergraduate program, and already a shoe-in for the Dean’s list. Honestly, of all the people related to him, Danny ended up being the least interesting. Middling grades that dropped in high school along with attendance. That was probably what led to his coming to Gotham. A set of brilliant - if evidentially weird - parents and a rich and involved godfather doing what they could to help their faltering son to succeed by sending him to one of the top schools on the east coast. There was evidence that Amity Park itself had some apparently minor meta vigilante protecting it, but searches for “Phantom” turned up nothing in the Justice League’s database, suggesting whomever this was might be an actual ghost like Deadman and, thus, restricted to access by those with JLD clearance. Tim put aside that issue for later. He could just ask B for privileges later. Besides, the only information he found on this vigilante was on a few amateur fansites and local papers. No major news sites or government listings. It couldn’t be anything major. His focus remained on Daniel Fenton. Except, even when looking into the kid’s socials, there wasn’t anything interesting. He had a couple friends back in Amity, the most interesting of the two was Samantha Mason of the Mason family, though Tim already knew of her from various socialite dinners she looked ready to burn to the ground, pink and lacey dress or not. Her social media was full of activism, conservation movements, and calls for both veganism and something called ultra recycle vegetarianism. Tucker came from an average family of upper middle class parents, nothing odd there, though his social media showed his love of technology and ancient Egypt. Nothing strange there. Danny’s social media, besides his friends, included links to Nasa, occasional rambles about high school life, and, for some reason, a dog photoshopped to look green. From the replies of his few followers, it was an inside joke since they all cooed over the dog and didn’t comment on the green. Again, nothing strange. Even the one time he managed to hack into Damian’s phone to see his messages yielded nothing. He and Danny would meet for what Danny called “playdates.” For some reason, Damian played along with a name Tim knew he’d scoff as childish and beneath him. Even that would be innocuous. One or the other would suggest meeting at various parks, arcades, even the observatory, negotiating dates and times, and that was it.

Danny was a normal kid. Damian was a born and bred assassin. Why in the actual fuck were these two friends? Nothing made sense. Everyone else was happy to ignore it because of the peace the irrationality before them instilled. Tim wouldn’t become complacent. Whatever Danny was hiding, he’d find it.

[basiltonbutliketheherb]

hello and welcome to my chappell roan ted talk

these days, more than ever, i am feeling incredibly disheartened by the treatment of female artists and the deep societal misogyny that it signifies. there is such a vast expanse between this and the typical experience of a male artists, that they have come to occupy an entirely different space in the cultural zeitgeist. male artists are often considered evergreen. allowed to make mistakes, to be rude, to release below average material and be given endless chances, to age, and to have problematic pasts and relationships. (yes, i am generalizing, of course male artists experience mistreatment as well, but generally to a lesser, and less permanent degree. we are talking about women today.)

the experience of a female artist is that of being constantly balanced on a knife’s edge. they are idolized, deified and built up to insanely lofty heights, then one (real or perceived) wrong move and they are viciously turned upon. they are built up almost solely so that they can be delicious to destroy.

we’ve seen this over and over in the past with people like taylor swift, demi lovato, britney spears, katy perry, kristen stewart, miley cyrus, ariana grande etc. (blake lively is a current example.) once they reach a level of overexposure and mass appeal, the vultures begin circling. one bad song, or thoughtless remark, or bad breakup, and they are public enemy #1. even when they do something truly problematic they are not allowed to learn and grow from it as men are. their purpose in society is immediately shifted from entertainment at their charm and success to entertainment at their suffering and demise.

this phenomenon used to be mainly sourced at the hands of media figures. journalists, talk show hosts, gossip sites, magazines. this highly visible upper echelon held all the cards and could sway the public in any direction they pleased in a pre internet monoculture, but now, with the rise of social media, billions of normal people have this power while being safely guarded behind a screen, or even wholly anonymous.

the recent years (and impact of younger generations growing up chronically online) have led to a sort of moral grandstanding, virtue signalling, victorianesque societal revolution. in this space there is no room for error. everything female artists do is taken out of context, twisted, and shamed. they are fully dehumanized and treated like a product belonging to the masses. a subject of discourse more than a person. they are expected to be perfect in every aspect, off the bat, with no room to make mistakes or learn. they need to be knowledgeable in every subject and never ever offend anyone, or do anything to bring anyone, anywhere, anything less than pure satisfaction.

there is no right move a female artist can make. if they take chances to further their career they are calculated, selfish, greedy, competitive. if they are content with the level of success they are at they are lazy, mid, a flop. if they are comfortable with their appearance and body size and aging, they are mediocre, not meant to be famous, a bad influence. but if they alter their appearance in any way they are fake, self obsessed, arrogant, and a bad influence. if they appear perfect, well spoken, kind, and generous then they are liars, manipulators, schemers. but if they appear blunt and not perfectly media trained then they are not cut out for fame, ungrateful, annoying, and spoiled.

( i am aware that i sound like the barbie movie monologue, but that doesn’t change the reality.)

the thing is, there have always been haters, trolls, liars who wanted to instigate the downfall of female celebrities. who couldn’t bear their success and admiration, and just wanted to burn it all to the ground. but today, in this social media generation, the call is often coming from inside the house. so often the ones to turn on famous women and treat them inhumanly, are their own supposed fans. people who are so obsessed with this perfect image that they project onto their fave. who feel so deeply entitled to their time, attention, and recognition that they feel personally slightly and attacked when things don’t go the exact way they want.

let’s take for example, the cancelling of taylor swift’s vienna tour dates.

these shows were cancelled by the venue management, due to a planned terrorist attack that was intended to kill 10s of thousands to 100s of thousands of people. due to the delicacy and danger of this whole situation, taylor swift decided to not mention the incident until after she had finished her european dates and was safely back in the US, as to not further endanger herself, her crew, and her fans.

this caused an unbelievable outrage. people who were both personally affected by the cancellations and those who weren’t, came for her throat. they were furious at her for not talking about it. for not coddling them and telling them how deeply sorry she was. for not grovelling at their feet and self flagellating to make it up to them. once she was back in the states she did in fact release a statement telling everyone how devastated she was over the whole experience and explaining how she felt it was important to stay silent until the right moment to speak on it.

now you’d think this would be enough to assuage the angry mob, but no. they doubled down and declared that it was too little too late, not enough remorse, and that they deserved even more of her attention and repentance. the whole behavior reeked of a desire to chain her to a post and throw bricks until she promises to do better next time and to give everyone their own personal concert and cradle them in her loving motherly arms, to make amends.

and these are supposed to be her FANS. people who were willing to spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars just to be in the same room as her. just to breathe her air.

now, taylor swift ultimately will be fine (i am talking career wise), she is one of the richest female celebrities in the world. no one can even come close to matching her music sales, fan base, legacy, and broken records. she can lose 10%, 20% of her fan base and still be on top of the world.

but now let’s look at chappell roan.

in the past 6 months or so chappell has rocketed to fame. as someone who has been a fan for ages, this explosion of recognition and admiration was both outstanding to witness, and deeply dread inducing. especially knowing that chappell stands out as a loudly queer artist, who is unique and deeply talented, who is open about her struggle with bipolar disorder and depression, and has no desire to whittle herself down for public consumption. all of this, while incredible and refreshing, was a clear warning sign for what was to come, given the history of female artist reception, even for those who check every box of being publically consumable.

in the past couple weeks there has been a massive wave of both “fans” and those who didn’t even know chappell previously, turning against her for sport. chappell roan released a statement after having nonconsensual interactions with crazed fans, having her family members stalked and doxxed, being yelled at and harassed on the street, and having her personal history, relationships, and childhood mined for exploitative content.

now this behavior may sound familiar. just the typical feral stan behavior that celebs often experience.

but one key factor here is that chappell is brand new to this level of exposure. her fame exploded before her income could from this success, far too suddenly to have taylor swift level security measures set in place around herself and the ones she loves. too sudden for anyone to adapt to their experience of existing in public, online, and even private spaces being permanently altered. she woke up to an entirely new world and had little time to figure out how to move within it without further damaging her own mental health and safety, and likely few people around her who had experienced even close to this caliber of success and could guide her through it. all with no major record label crafting her image or providing pr.

so, the statement. chappell has recently gone on social media and set boundaries for herself. for how she chooses to move within this new world. she has explained the way this rise to fame has impacted her mental health and filled her life with fear and anxiety. she has made her position clear that she is an artist professionally, but a human being when she’s off the clock. her career is just that, a job. an amazing job, yes, but she is still an autonomous person who is allowed to clock out. who is allowed to turn off the character that she puts on for performances, and be left alone when she is not at work.

this includes, (considered most egregious) fans not touching her without permission, coming up to her in public and asking for pictures or autographs, or shouting her legal name at her on the street and taking pictures of her. as well as not harassing the people in her life or sharing her personal information online.

now while these things all sound reasonable, and something any one of us regular folk would expect in our daily lives, this boundary setting is nearly unprecedented for female artists. anyone who has tried has been deemed a cultural blight.

celebrity worship and stan behaviour has lead to an extremely parasocial society.

fans feel it is their god given right to own every aspect of a celebrity. they “deserve” to know every detail of their relationships, their thoughts on politics and events, their secrets and shames and preferences and loves and traumas. they are “entitled” to their time, attention, and endless gratitude, no matter what they are going through or willing to offer up. female celebrities are solely there for the consumption of the general public, they are to be picked apart and chewed up strip by strip. fans “deserve” to touch them, take pictures of them, yell at them, just for a moment of recognition, validation of their obsession, a glimpse of heaven at the alter of their deity. this is just the way it is, has always been, and will always be.

but chappell roan has said NO. no, this is not the way it has to be. just because something has been tolerated in the past, doesn’t mean it’s not wrong. doesn’t mean the future generations need to abide by the tradition of stalking, harassing, and devouring. doesn’t mean that it should be the norm to accept the potential of home invasions, hacking, and assassination attempts.

this simple act of boundary setting has caused an absolute outrage. media publications, other artists, “fans”, haters, and causal media consumers have come with pitchforks and torches to burn her at the stake. they say she is entitled and ungrateful, despite her explaining how deeply grateful she is to all those who support her and also support her privacy. they say she is a nobody and hasn’t earned the right to set boundaries. that society needs to swish her like wine in their mouths and spit her out once they’ve tasted enough, before she’s allowed to say anything other than “thank you thank you i love you i am not worthy”. they say she is not cut out for fame, because this is what fame is and has to be for all female celebrities. they do not get to have autonomy or choice. how absurd that they’d even try, how selfish and greedy and self important to think they deserve it??

of course true fans are going to rock with her no matter what, but chappell is brand new to most. to outsiders she is a face that appeared one day already cemented in a superstar position, and was suddenly unavoidable, confusing, and suspicious. the court of public opinion and the power of negative discourse have a weight to them which can easily overshadow the newfound success of a niche, less easily marketable celebrity like chappell, who has only just gotten her foot in the door.

in the midst of this discourse something else has occurred to deepen the gash of public animosity. chappell roan was given the career and life changing opportunity to perform at the VMAs for millions of people. an opportunity to grow her critical notoriety and fan base, as well as bring queer representation to the live screen, that would be a massive career misstep to pass up on. in accepting this opportunity, chappell was forced to cancel a couple shows that had been planned for a while. she tried to make the situation work for everyone, but ultimately was unable to. she expressed her regret and apologies and assured everyone that she would be rescheduling those shows when she had the chance.

as we have seen with the taylor swift vienna situation, this was NOT going to go down well.

“fans” came after her with a vengeance. they called her selfish, greedy, fake, and wicked for choosing her career growth over their personal experiences. said she was an ungrateful hypocrite for asking the world for space and then choosing the option to be unhumble and promote herself to the masses. the tickets were refunded, but people had CHOSEN to book hotels and fly out to see her in concert and thus blamed her for their financial burden. just as taylor swift “fans” did with the vienna tour dates.

as if chappell roan should be obligated to recoup them for the financial choices they made, and give them the experience they wanted right the fuck now, with the right level of humility, or else be deserving of punishment.

it is understandable for fans to be disappointed that they didn’t receive the experience they hoped for. that the situation was so sticky and immediate that they didn’t have time to cancel plans and grieve the loss. i know when i waited two hours after the opener at sabrina carpenter’s tour last year, just to find out she wasn’t able to perform due to bomb threats, i was heartbroken and angry at the world. i was frustrated with how the situation was handled by management, but i was not angry AT sabrina. i didn’t evicerate her online and demand that she FIX my heartbreak at once. i sat with my feelings and knew that there would be other opportunities, and that

sometimes life isn’t gratifying, no matter how fucking unfair it feels.

it is becoming more and more rare for any degree of understanding and grace to be given to female artists. every success i witness for the artists i appreciate (like this year for sabrina and chappell) fills me with a deep foreboding dread. because they are considered disposable and easily replaceable in this instant gratification, tiktok algorithm generation. everything has to be right now, done perfectly, and hold up to high moral inspection or else they are slotted for obscurity or public crucifixtion.

meanwhile, every aspect of these situations is deemed frivolous by society. they say if you don’t like it, get out and go work at dairy queen, there’s a line waiting behind you who are willing to appease us more. they say that having income from success immediately delegitimizes any social commentary or personal issues. because celebrities are not human beings. they are religious figures. they are both royalty and court jesters. they are toys to be played with ad nauseam, and then discarded.

but why?

why does it have to be this way? why does wanting to share your art with the world mean giving up your safety, privacy, and peace? why is it okay for male celebs to be grumpy and brash and never interact with fans, but it is a cardinal sin for female celebs to do the same or to transparently ask for it? and why is any of this important to you and i, who are barely scraping by and unlikely to ever be famous? why does it matter when these women generally still have some semblance of their careers leftover even after mass disdain?

because all of this is indicative of a greater issue that pervades every aspect of society. it is simply that with famous people we can see it on a macro scale.

all women and femme presenting people are held to the same standard as female celebrities, but on a less publicly visible level. in our careers, our relationships, our expressions of joy, our community and bonds with other women, and our own calcified internal misogyny.

we are here for consumption, we are here for the pleasure and entertainment of others. how dare we ask for more? how dare we know our power and set boundaries for ourselves? how dare we think we deserve a seat at the table, even as we age and grow and expand beyond the bounds of charming ingénue? how dare we collaborate instead of seeing each other as competitors and threats to our own power and beauty and ability to be loved?

how fucking DARE we ever get the idea that we are worth more than our youth and beauty and service to others?

i don’t know how we, as a whole, address any of this when the matter at hand is so deeply pervasive and engrained in the foundation of society. but i, for one, will start by looking at my own role in the treatment of female artists.

i will take the time to ask myself why even the existence of certain figures sparks a feeling of rage within me, and why i feel such a deep desire to know every detail, action, and thought of the artists i appreciate. why i feel joy and satisfaction when female artists i dislike are taken down, or “beat” by someone i prefer. why i let drama that has nothing to do with me alter my perception of art created by people i do not know personally. why my black and white thinking and sense of justice only applies to those who don’t resonate with me on an artistic or personal level.

i will work on finding grace and understanding for those who are trying to grow beyond their mistakes and be better people, the way that i am trying to everyday. those who exist both in the public sphere and in my daily life.

because it’s never too late to rip out the teeth of the bear trap we were born in.

long story short: chappell roan did nothing wrong. but if she ever truly does, all you can do is ask for accountability, then take a breath, get the fuck over it, and see the bigger picture for once

thank you for coming to my ted talk

[adastra-sf]

The Maoi of Rapa Nui

Moai chieftain statues are the famous massive megaliths of Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island) in eastern Polynesia, carved about 1250-1650 CE by the original Polynesian colonizers of the island.

Many know them as "Easter Island heads," a misconception from having seen photos of statues in the volcano Rano Raraku partitially covered with soil. They all have full bodies with over-large heads - a 3:5 ratio between head and trunk, a sculptural trait consistent with the Polynesian belief in the sanctity of the chiefly head.

The island holds nearly 1000 statues, each weighing as much as 90 tons and standing up to 10 meters tall, though they average around half that. One unfinished sculpture would have stood 21 meters (69 feet!) tall and weighed 180 tons. More statues are still being discovered.

Almost all (95%) of the moais were carved from the volcano's stone tuff - compressed volcanic ash that's relatively easy to carve using only stone tools (toki).

Probably the biggest mystery is how tribes using Stone-Age tech could succeed in transporting 50-ton moai statues across kilometers of hilly terrain. Because the island was largely treeless by the time Europeans first arrived (by which time local culture and history had largely collapsed), the movement of the statues was a mystery for a long time.

Some transportation theories are more accepted than others:

The earliest accounts say a king named Tuu Ku Ihu moved them with the help of the god Makemake, while later stories tell of a woman who lived alone on the mountain ordering them about at her will. 

The longest-held European hypothesis was that the moai statues were dragged from the volcano to their destinations along log rollers, which also explained how the island became deforested. Pollen analysis has established that the island was almost totally forested until 1200 CE, and tree pollen disappears from the record by 1650.

However, Iceland demonstrates how simply using wood for construction and fire can quickly deforest an island.

According to oral tradition, the moai statues walked to their destination. A literal interpretation is that the statues were rocked from side to side while pulling them forward to "walk" them to their final sites, as demonstrated in this recent experiment. This theory holds the most scholarly support today.

A not-uncommon but highly unlikely (and, y'know, disrespectful) claim is that aliens placed the moai statues for the locals. Occam's razor suggests this probably isn't the answer. But everyone loves aliens. The debate continues.

The ancient period ended when the Rapa Nui people were devastated by Peruvian slave-raiding expeditions that reached the island in 1862. Within a year, the individuals who remained on the island were sick, injured, and lacking leadership. Survivors of the slave raids had to deal with Christian missionaries. By the time Europeans arrived in 1722, the island's population was estimated at less than 3,000. Foreign diseases and emigration to other islands such as Tahiti further depleted the population, reducing it to a low of 111 native inhabitants in 1877.

Chile annexed the island in 1888, but it wasn't until 1966 that the Rapa Nui were granted Chilean citizenship. The 2017 census registered 7750 people on the island, of whom 3512 (45%) consider themselves Rapa Nui.

The original inhabitants live on among their famous megaliths.

[polling-sonic-fans]

Tumblr Biases

Recieved yet another note on a poll expressing concern that it would be a biased result because the population of tumblr does not reflect all Sonic fans. This is true for all of this blogs polls - they can only, and only aim to, capture data on the Tumblr Sonic community.

A few expected biases that come to mind immediately, that you shouls be aware of interpretting the data from these polls (and many others on this website:

Tumblr seems to have above average incidence of neurodiversity when comparing large polls to global data (See Table 2). This is expected to affect polls regarding narrative readings, specifically in interpretting neurodiversity in characters, and interfan relations/ fandom culture.

Tumblr is known to overrepresent non-hetero sexualities (regrettably, citing buzzfeed here); this might suggest that polls will skew towards reading characters as LGBT, and a preference for same-sex pairings over more typically 'straight' user bases.

Tumblr has a higher proportion of women/ female identifying people, as well as a large non-binary and trans population. Considering that in 2015 Yougov found that more women than men listed Sonic as their favourite video game, (although we cannot extend this data too far - it is out of date, British, and a very specific wording), it could be said that this doesn't impact our polls as much as gaming communities with more men in them, however we should be aware that tumblr has a distinctly smaller community of cisgendered men.

Tumblr is perceived to lean left, although this is a difficult metric to quantify as 'left' is so broad. Still, we should expect polls relating to politics, ethics, and activism can be expected to be affected by this.

70% of tumblr users are Gen Z and Millenials. This should not be a major issue, as it is expected that the majority of Sonic fans will be under the age of 50 at present, but will impact the life stages we expect most users to have hit.

There will be more ways in which the data gained in these polls is biased by hosting on Tumblr. Blogrunner does not have ambitions to host polls on any other site, as this is where it is active. However please consider these and other biases if you intend to use any data gathered here for your own purposes, as well as the following caveats:

The reblogging nature of this site means that polls with small sample size cannot be considered reliable: one large blog might be able to share a poll and encourage their followers to vote in kind with them. I recommend that until polls start reaching 500 votes minimum, they cannot be considered fair representatives of the tumblr Sonic community, and as always the more votes the more reliable.

I am asking polls in English: these questions can only be considered to be reflective of the english speaking population of tumblr.

Polls on tumblr do not allow for changing vote - if wording is complex, votes are more likely to be inaccurate.

Polls regarding characters will include that characters tag, and therefore recieve more traffic from fans of the character who frequent that tag, than those who dislike the character, who may even have it blocked. Same for ships and games people may either follow or block.

That's all that's coming to mind right now. This post will be pinned as a disclaimer, please always do your own research and think critically about the ways in which netnography and survey are limited data points. Thanks.

[unnervinglyferal]

My new obsession right now is Columbo

My mom finds this very odd

I don’t understand why

I have a curio cabinet with dead things in it but she’s weirded out by my current obsession with a 70’s tv show

Although is it really a 70’s show when the first pilot episode was aired in 1968 and the last episode was aired in 2003?

That spans from the late sixties all the way to the early two thousands

If you want to include the first time the character of Columbo was seen that was the early sixties but I don’t really count that one because it was for a completely different show and he was played by a completely different actor and now Columbo is just very intwined with Peter Falk

Anyways Mom finds my obsession super weird

I can’t tell if it’s because the show was started before she was born or because both my parents have said that it was the type of show kids only watched if their grandparents were watching it

I mean like last month we had a conversation about making me a decomposition box for road kill but she’s weirded out by the 70’s show obsession

I literally walked into a water filled ditch to grab a frog today, I had to hose off the bottom of my pants after that

But somehow the fact that I know how many years it was until people knew if Columbo had a glass eye like Falk did is odd

(25, and yes the character does have a glass eye like Falk did)

This is the lady who admitted to spending hours try to figure out what type of wetland the Frog Pond is

Oh also I realized I have a screen recorder on my computer so I don’t have to fuss around on like fifty different sites trying to find good quality video files of the episodes and then fuss around for like thirty minutes trying to find good subtitles online

I can just record them from my screen

tbh weirdness is relative. There's people who would think that keeping chickens and grabbing random snakes recreationally is weird, but if something's normal in your region, it is. Nobody in my girlfriend's family considers it odd or unusual that she had a baby at 16 (despite of the average age to do that around here being almost twice that), the part they consider weird is that I'm still in the picture and actually changing diapers.

There's no such thing as normal, so don't worry about that. Also I've never seen a single episode of Columbo and have only learned about it through people making "I've been watching Columbo for some reason" posts a lot online. Which on its own is fascinating.

[filthforfriends]

Pre-San Remo interview so wild that I have to routinely hunt whatever version YouTube hasn't removed for copy right infringement to convince myself if actually happened.

Here are the highlights paraphrased:

Do you sleep with a different person every day? D: No. Every week? D: No. Man, women, or both? D: Women.

Have you ever been in a relationship with a much younger woman? D: No, "much younger than me" is what? Kindergarten?

Have you ever been in a relationship with a much older girl? D: Yes. From 18 to 34...is 16 years (of age difference).

Have you ever experienced or been subjected to sexual harassment in a musical environment? V: Hmm, no.

Have you ever been aware of sexual blackmail in your environment? V: Of people close to me that I know directly, no.

If it happened, what would you do? V: I'd try to comfort the person that had suffered harassment and I'd try to encourage them to report the facts and to talk about it.

Do people catcall you? V: Yes. Does it bother you? V: Yes, it's annoying. Can it be considered on par with harassment? V: Yes. Obviously, its psychological and verbal harassment, not physical. However, that does not make it any less serious.

Have you ever told off a persistent fan? D: Not because of his persistence...Once, when we were playing there weren't barriers. Victoria bent over and a guy had the friendly idea of touching her butt.

What did you do? D: I told him a few things. Not good things.

Who spends more on porn? T: We don't need those sites. D: Ethan! V: Ethan! E: I don't know why I feel like the others said my name. Am I wrong? Anyways, it's not me.

And are you in favor of legalizing prostitution? All: Yes.

Do you have a girlfriend in common? D: Not that I know of. T: Absolutely not. E: God, what a weird question.

And a boyfriend? D: Neither. T: No.

Have you ever thought about the fact that sooner or later you could disband? T: There is so much chemistry that no. E: No, never wanted to think about it.

Have you ever thought of leaving the band to become a soloist? D: Absolutely not.

Is being in the shadow the fate of musicians who are not frontmen? E: No. T: No. I'm also a guitarist so I don't have this problem.

Aren't you envious of John Lennon and Paul McCartney? T: Absolutely not. E: No, it's just self-destructive.

Have you ever taken psychedelic drugs or sedatives? All: No.

Pro legalization of soft drugs? All: Yes.

Voluntary euthanasia? All: Yes.

Who smokes more weed? T: I don't know. D: Me. V: Damiano E: Damiano.

How many cigarettes do you smoke per day? D: 5-10.

Cialis or Viagra? D: None. Misfire (premature ejaculation), it happens to everyone. What do you do when it happens to you? D: Wait a quarter of an hour.

How many hours do you spend making love? D: It depends on the week. And masturbating? D: Not many (times).

Are you in a relationship? D: I won't tell you that. Then tell us if you cohabitate. D: I live alone.

To win your affection, how much does it count (on a scale) from 1-10? Buy you dinner? V: Zero. Have a six pack? V: Zero. Have intelligence? V: Seven. Have a nice ass? V: Seven. Have a beautiful smile? V: Eight.

Have you ever had mutual attraction with a celebrity? V: Yes.

Do you receive interest even from women? V: Yes. Have you ever had a fling with a girl? V: Yes. How did it go? V: Good!

Do you get advances even from boys? D: It's happened.

Does it bother you if people think you're gay? D: Absolutely not.

Who hooks up the most? T: Depends on the moment. E: None. V: Ethan. D: Ethan.

Do you sleep together? V: All four, it's too much. D: Two by Two. T: It's happened. E: Me and Thomas sleep together when we have to split the group in two parts.

Do you support yourself by music or do you still get pocket money? D: I've able to support myself through music.

Has your family ever struggled to make ends meet? D: No, we are an average family.

Have you ever got a panic attack before a concert? E: No. T: Never. D: Not before a concert. V: Yes, it was awful. I tried to calm down and the guys helped me distract myself.

Have you ever been to a psychologist? T: No. E: No. V: Yes. D: Yes. How long? D: I'm still In therapy.

The most short tempered? D: Me. V: Me. E: Damiano. T: Sometimes me.

The most vain? E: Victoria at the beginning (of the band). T: All four. V: Damiano. D: I think myself.

And now do you always wear a mask? V: Yes, of course.

Will you vaccinate? All: Yes.

Source: X X X

[ellsellmesoull]

Helloo,!! Please help me! I am conducting a survey so if you know a child aged 3-5 please consider answering some of my questions, especially cus the deadline is tommorow! T~T

-sincerely someone who does not understand how children work.

Alright storytime- I am a college student and I was invited to an innovation program for students to publish their ideas and receive help from the government.

I am hoping to work on game design so I want to create a product that involves games. And a criteria to the programm is it must solve problems faced by ordinary people.

So my idea is to make a game that children aged 3-5 yrs could play and learn helpful things.

Problem is that we have a submission deadline of tommorow cus our college decided to join super late.

Id like to do my best and submit my idea but I need a way to know the problems faced by kids these aged. Cus we also have to submit a survey we did.

1. How is it to raise them? Do they behave? Do they understand what's being communicated to them?

2. How do they play? What games interest them?

3. How messy are they? What kind of things do they make the most mess of? Do they tidy up?

4. Would you prefer if the kids cleaned up their mess?

5. How do you discipline them? Are they scared of something? What do you give as a treat?

6. What gets their attention? What looses their attention?

7. What price range do you look for on average when looking for furniture for the child?

Thank you if you answer, and if there is anything you do not want to answer or anything you do not know, it is alright. Thank you,

I dont have many followers especially on other sites and I cant really physically move to conduct survey especially in this short amount of time due to physical and environmental reasons that's why im resorting to this.

But I would really appreciate it if you could answer , or even reblog this so more could see it.

[paradise-in-k4]

The Gap in the Evening, Entry 2: “Alarm the Aya”

With our thoughts aligned, we started making our way to the Human Village from the junction before getting jumped by what looked like a flying girl with a camera. It was exceptionally difficult to keep track of her movements since she was moving at mach speeds, something that could only be achieved with jet aircraft. At the same time, she could’ve easily been able to achieve warp speeds and we would still not be able to tell the difference. That’s just how fast she was. She could keep up with the JSDF’s latest fighter jets if she wanted to, which says a lot about how researchers are slowly breaking down barriers between fantasy and reality before reclassifying last millennium’s fantasies as our reality or simply fiction. It wasn’t until she stopped to review the photos she snapped of us that we could get a grasp on who she was… mostly because she introduced herself as Aya Shameimaru the tengu, and then started to press us for an interview like any other pushy journalist trying to comprehend the ongoings of our modern world. She asked me what we were doing as we walked to the Human Village, under the assumption that we had recently arrived in Gensokyo and somehow ended up in Youkai Mountain’s foothills. We didn’t really say much about our investigations, but she somehow eventually figured us out as she walked us to a vacant building in the village where we could stay overnight.

It was there when she promised us that she wouldn’t do anything rash with the information that she’d gather from the impromptu meeting. So we told her everything we knew about what we now considered the Parallel Satellite Incident… until she said that she’d publish it in her public newspaper. At that point, Maribel did the only thing she could do and kept quiet, much to Aya’s surprise. Seems like she’d try every trick in the book to get the rest of the story out of us, but she didn’t want her real name to be associated with this article. None of us had any room to settle this matter financially, and we surely didn’t want to draw more attention to ourselves than we already did as impromptu investigators from another universe. But after a long night of negotiating and a bit of light banter coupled with a promise to meet again at a local lamprey vendor, we did the only thing we could think of to find a middle-ground between our proposals, and asked her to keep this issue as low-profile as possible if she were to publish our findings.

She agreed to the terms with the condition of limiting the amount of newspapers containing this interview with us to her boss, a couple shrine maidens, four wise people that Marisa had called the Sages (of whom we had assumed were authority figures), and a few other people who Aya said had resolved similar incidents in the past. Chuckling about how she had this scoop and someone else named Hatate (probably a rival coworker) didn’t, we shook hands and went on with our interview. It wouldn’t be long until we would emerge onto the radars of many notable people that lived here. Was this a kind of fame we sought out? Perhaps as much as the fame sought out by scientists and detectives unknown when they find a major breakthrough in a case that they’ve been unable to fully understand for years. Perhaps then, we could begin establishing a sort of long-term forward office where we can conduct our research on the Parallel Satellite and other notable sites with the help of the local public without any further delay…

-Renko Usami

——————————

Muse Notes: Aya Shameimaru

Title: Traditional Reporter of Fantasy

Universe of Origin: L1

Size (headcanon): Average, 5’7”

Species: Youkai, Crow Tengu

Pronouns: She/Her

Age: 1,000+, exact age unknown

Personality: Aya is good-willed and often gets along with humans and other youkai, especially when they subscribe to her newspaper, although she has a disinterest in the rigid tengu hierarchy. At times she can become overly opportunistic to get big scoops for her newspaper to make herself known as a reputable news source that reports the truth, even if the words are sometimes twisted to lie through omission (or just outright lie), slander/whistleblow others, publish opinionated/sensationalist articles, or fulfill another of her motives. However, her interests also lie with the wellbeing/protection of the Human Village as part of her role as a tengu, as they are sometimes seen as mountain-dwelling protectors of humans. To this end she fulfills this role by cooperating with others to resolve incidents, and sometimes publishing somewhat-altered news to keep the Human Village from descending into mass panic during crises and incidents.

Occupation: Owner and Writer of the Bunbunmaru Newspaper

Home Region: Youkai Mountain

Abilities: Capable of manipulating wind

Wind: Aya’s innate/inherent ability as a tengu. Both with and without her fan, she can create, control, and disperse high-pressure winds at will. She could even create tornadoes if she wanted to, although that is more of a last resort deal for her. Many consider this power to be among some of the strongest abilities in Gensokyo, although Aya prefers to prevent fights if/when possible. She almost never uses this power to purely show off, much like other tengu.

Speed: Tengu as a species are really just that fast, left unmatched by many humans and youkai alike. Aya alone declares her claim to being “the fastest” in Gensokyo, even being capable of out-speeding a speedy vampire like Remilia Scarlet according to Marisa.

Skills: Aya is a skilled photographer, interviewer, and writer, all necessary skills to facilitate a one-tengu newspaper that could be considered a prominent source of information. At the same time, she is proficient in combat with nothing more than her fan as both a melee weapon and a means to use her wind ability. Just like almost all tengu, Aya’s drinking tolerance can rival that of most oni.

Possessions:

Hauchiwa fan (hand fan made of bird feathers that can generate wind)

White blouse

Black short skirt

Red token (hat that doubles as a divination cup)

Tengu geta (clogs or other footwear with one extra-long tooth on the bottom)

Camera (tengu-grade camera that can take pictures and sometimes erase bullets)

Bunkachou (tengu notebook used by Aya to record information)

Orange reporter’s armband that reads “Shuzaichuu” (“collecting material/the scoop”)

Muse-Specific Headcanons:

She likes to say “Ayayayayayayaya” in many situations as both a catchphrase and a reaction to others

Aya has a number of youkai crows under her supervision, but not a whole lot. Probably about 4 to 6 at most on a normal day, but that doesn’t equal a hard limit she can call upon in certain circumstances (see Crow Sign “Daymare in the Dark Night”)

Aya can fly on her own just fine, but she can also fly by using her crow’s wings that she can summon at will or conceal from sight

The newspapers she sells are typically free, although super-limited editions go for about a hundred yen or more each depending on the contents

Futsubasa no Rei helped Aya get the Bunbunmaru Newspaper off the ground before she departed elsewhere

Blog-Specific Lore Notes:

Previously unaware of the Parallel Satellite Incident, she planned to publish this incident alert in her newspaper after being informed of it by Renko and Maribel. After their vehement refusal to disclose further details after realizing that she would publish it, she made a compromise to instead print a special limited edition that she would only send to a dozen or so “important” people of Gensokyo. Among them included the Tenma, the sages, the two shrine maidens, the usual incident resolvers, and prominent residents of the Human Village

She has attended the 2nd Multiverse Fighting Tournament as a journalist alongside Alice to gather information for a special edition of her newspaper

Aya has joined in the investigation of the West Mountain

Aya is aware that an alternate Marisa has come to her Gensokyo following Rei’s initial investigation of the West Mountain

Aya was the one to spot and report on another Marisa attacking the Scarlet Devil Mansion, easily making a headline for it

Spell Cards:

*Intended purely for close combat

**Can be used for close combat, but also meant for longer range danmaku duels

Wind Sign “Wind God’s Fan”

Gust “Wind God Girl”

Crossroad Sign “Crossroads of Heaven”

Crossroads Sign “Saruta Cross”

Wind God “Wind God’s Leaf-Veiling”

Wind God “Tengu’s Fall Wind”

Wind God “Storm Day”

“Illusionary Dominance” (“Taking Fantasy by Storm”)**

“Peerless Wind God”

Blockade Sign “Mountain God’s Procession”

Blockade Sign “Advent of the Divine Grandson”

Blockade Sign “Terukuni Shining Through Heaven and Earth”

Whirl Sign “Autumn Leaf Fan’s Wind”*

Tornado “Guidepost for the Advent of the Divine Grandson”*

Headwind “Route Forbidden to Man”*

Thrust Sign “Tengu’s Macroburst”*

Wind Sign “Opening Wind of the Tengu Realm”*

Demon Beast “Sickle Weasel Veiling”*

Squall “Sarutahiko’s Guidance”*

Whirl Sign “Fluttering Fey Fan”*

Whirlwind “Torii Whorl-Wind”*

Wind Sign “Tengu Newspaper Deadline Day”*

Crow Sign “Daymare in the Dark Night”*

Reporting “Aya Shameimaru’s Coercive Reporting”

Telescoping “Candid Shot”

Snapshot “Fast Shot”

“Crow’s Darkness” (Spell Card Bomb shared with Reimu in Subterranean Animism)

Last Words and Impossible Spell Cards:

Photography “Quick-Shooting Tengu Scoop” (Impossible Spell Card)

“Instant Shot Journalist” (Impossible Spell Card)

Wind Sign “Tengu Rainstorm Gust”

Shutter Chance Izuna Drop (Last Word from Lost Word)

Giant Shellfish of Azaka (Last Word from Lost Word, A9 Aya)

[silveredfeathers]

((It's the age poll.))

Oh, no. It's the one from a while back. I am never letting you live it down, old man.

You mean the one with a rather small sample size compared to the number of users on the site?

That's only 88 people out of... Roughly 135 million people who use rotumblr. There is no way this poll could be accurate. Hence why I was only looking at the fact there where older users on the site rather than the overall results of the poll. Also, how could it reach more people if only 14 users reblogged it?

Also, I would like to point out that thinking 35 is old is rather ridiculous considering the average person lives up to around 73-79 years old. I'm not even halve way through my life if we are to assume I'll die at 73.

So no, I'm not old, and I'm also not going to trust the results of a highly inaccurate poll that only got to so many people just because someone wants to say I'm an old man.

[antylope]

How I became a top 0.1%, made money from it and then started hating it

Hi everyone, this will be a story about how transforming your hobby into a "dream job" does not turn out so good in reality. About 3 years ago, I got insanely good at an infamous game - League of Legends. I managed to earn a living from it but I eventually quit.

Before I start, I just want to state that this is NOT some form of bragging that I managed to do what many teenagers consider their dream. The truth to the story is there were many disadvantages that noone really hears about.

I got introduced to this game at the age of about 10 or 11 by my older brother. It looked fun to me, even though I was horrendous at it. I played it on and off since the age of 11 to the age of 15, not thinking much about it and often taking months, or even years off, when I got bored of it. Totally understandable, normal stuff.

I was 16 when COVID hit. I was stuck in my house, not having to go physically to school, with lots of time on my hands, so I thought to myself I'd give this game one more chance. I still was awful at it, but slowly I became a bit better. I started really liking it. I started thinking what I did wrong in the games I've played, what can I improve, what are my weaknesses. I started looking at guides on the internet, I watched countless hours of coaches talking how to play better. After a few months I hit Diamond (for those who do not know anything about this game - it is about top 5-10% of playerbase).

I knew I still had much room for improvement so I kept going. The better I got at the game the more drawn I was to it. Eventually, it became something I would consider my passion. It was not mindless playing to kill the time, I did EVERYTHING I could to be better at this game. I did not play when I was tired, I made sure to get quality sleep to perform better. I avoided foods that made my brainfog worse. I recorded all of my matches I have had played and reviewed them every day for one hour before going to sleep. I even set my alarm clock and woke up at 6 am, 2 full hours to play a few matches before having to listen to online classes.

I had one thing in mind - to become the best. I was very ambitious, I lived for this game and I LOVED IT. Eventually, at the age of 17 achieved Master rank, which was top 1-0.5%. This still was not enough to make money from it, so I kept going. I knew I could achieve more. I was very emotional about every match I played, I knew I had to put 100% of my effort to perform as best as I could.

Getting to the plot, at the point of my 18th birthday I became so good I was in the top 2000 players in the whole Europe. Out of millions of people who play it everyday, I was one of the best. I was so proud of myself. This was the point in which I thought to myself, "I am ready to make a carrier out of it".

To explain how you can earn money from this game, there are 3 options: 1) Become a professional player, play for a team and conquer the world 2) Be a coach and sell your services to help other people get better 3) Boosting, which in simple terms can be explained by: logging onto someone's account (or playing with them) and winning a lot of games to boost their rank and get paid for it.

I chose the third option, since it paid the most for an average person who tried to earn money from playing this game. I applied to many sites which offered such services, not as a customer but as an "employee". After a few weeks I finally got in. The procedure was complicated and it was insanely difficult to get in, but somehow I have made it.

At first, I loved it. Playing my favourite game and get paid for it? That's amazing! I broke the code to becoming rich! 3 months have passed and this is when the realisation started to hit me. This "job" (if I can even call it such) had many downsides, which were obviousely not talked about. I will try to name as many as I can:

1) You most often had to """work""" (play) a minimum of 12 hours a day to earn any significant money - being on the top of the game and keeping focus and energy throughout all this time is IMMENSELY difficult. Near impossible I'd argue. 2) You often had to wait hours to be able to start playing, because there simple were no customers that wanted the service. 3) The sites that offered such service took a minimum of 40% cut from the work you did, meaning if you'd earn 100€, you would have to give 40€ to the site. 4) Some customers were awful people - they paid as little as it was possible, while simultaneously demanding the highest quality and the quickest service to be provided. Many of them also had weird specific requirements, such as playing only during certain hours, playing certain role, champions, configuration, etc, which was extremely annyoing since you couldn't just do your "job", but instead you'd have to deal with their oddities. 5) You have to play even if you don't want to. You don't like certain changes in the game on the newest update? That's a shame, you still have to perform at your best. You wanted to take a break? Nope, you are obligated to finish your order. There was no such thing as weekend. You wanted to go on holidays? One month of not being active and you'd get kicked from the site. 6) The competition was cutthroat. New orders from customers were picked up by boosters (people doing the "job") in a matter of SECONDS, making you sit in front of the screen sitting there with impatience. 7) Absolutely no time for any other hobbies, cooking healthy, nutritious meals or even school. I would do the bare minimum to pass all the exams just to have more time to grind this game.

As you can see, there was a lot that could, and went wrong with playing this game as a source of income. But most of the time I just clenched my teeth and pushed through it. If you dealth with all of the unconformities your income was pretty nice. In my opinion you could easily make a living out of it, especially in my country. The salary was paid in Euro, which is much more valuable than our local currency, and 500€ of income a month would be enough to keep you going without a real job. Add to that the fact that I lived with my parents, went to school, so this money was amazing for me, especially when I did my "dream job".

This allowed me to live like a king compared to my peers this age. Can you even imagine, still being in highschool and making as much money as an adult with a real job, while you're just sitting in front of a computer and play games? This was something which many of my friends were jealous of, hah, even my parents were. My dad was very supportive of it and my mother said it is "unfair for me to earn as much as she does when she is more than 20 years older than me and she works a REAL JOB". Noone knew the reality, the dark side of it, how it drained you from all of your energy. It was extremely stressful, it drained you emotionally aswell, which caused me to perform worse each month.

Deep down inside of me I knew I needed a break, but I always said to myself: "Come on, THIS is what you wanted all your life! You are playing games for a living! Stop being an entitled, ungrateful kid and appreciate where you got in life!".

Slowly, I started despising this game. I hated every bit of it, I hated the changes, I hated the stress, I hated how much time I have to put in, I hated the customers, my "coworkers", I hated the whole atmosphere. I wanted to escape from it. I wanted to break away from the chains that I have put myself in. This was also about the time where I started to change my life for the better. I lost a bit of weight, I took mental health seriousely. I started going for walks. You have no idea how amazing they felt - I just felt at peace. I felt like I could take a deep breath and finally take some rest.

This made me understand one thing - I don't like this game and it is restraining me from becoming a better person, from improving my life. All of the people who play it are losers like I was, they hate their pathetic lifes and they live without any real social connections. This realisation helped me decide to cut this game out of my life once for good.

When I uninstalled this game, I felt a void in my heart. Previousely, it was all my life. I was what I was thinking about while waking up, when going to sleep, while in school, while on the toilet. I LIVED FOR IT. I just did not know what to do with myself. All of a sudden I had so much free time on my hands. You can compare it to an animal which spent all its' life in a cage. Then people decided to release it to the wild. The animal just sits there, stares at the trees, not knowing he is finally free. It's because he never experienced other life than the one it had in the cage. I felt very similar to this animal. On one hand, I finally did not have to stress. On the other hand, all that I worked for? Destroyed. My passion? Gone.

Right now, about 2 years later, I still am confused what to exactly do with my life. This might sound depressing, but I have no reason to get out of my bed. I have nothing I can put my best efforts in. I don't know what path to choose. I am wasting countless hours doing things which I don't care about, like scrolling social media. Even though I know I made the right choice, my life got better in almost every aspect, I still am lost. My life now is constantly seeking such another thing which will make me trully live again.

The conclusion of this story is that the world on other side of the bridge might look completely different that you'd imagined. You might reconsider seriousely if you really want to transform your hobby into your work, since this is when you start to most often hate it. That is why I also believe your job should not be something you love. It will suck the life out of you.

Thank you for taking your time to read it. As always, if you have any questions, if you want me to explain anything, or even if you want to throw a hate comment out there, go for it. I will be more than happy to read it and respond to you.

[dilatorywriting]

Hi hi, first let me just say that I love your works.(Especially Monster Mayhem. ReaperRookmakesmyheartgobrrr) I have been reading your work on A03 and was even happier when I found you on Tumblr.

So I guess this isn't a traditional "Ask" but, im trying to start a fanfic blog here on Tumblr. I'm mainly writing twst content. Do you have any tips on how one should start posting their work on Tumblr? I haven't posted any works since I have no followings. If you don't have a precise answer to this, thats fine. But any tip of advice is very much appreciated.

Hmmm... I am also fairly new to the Tumblr sphere side of writing all things considered (just started really posting in earnest on here back in December? Very late November maybe?), so I'm still definitely a bit lost sometimes! But I can give my top tips! Or at least things that I notice tend to help!

Formatting is super helpful! If you keep things neat and concise people really seem to appreciate it! Using the cut-off/little squiggle on the side to split your posts under a 'read more' is also generally appreciated. I tend to like the format of 'Pairing, Word Count, Summary, Banner, Cut Off' because that's what I was used to on AO3, and also the things I most care about when I'm looking for stuff to read. I do like the banners on Tumblr--which is definitely different from AO3--from like a very superficial perspective, in that a lot of times if I didn't know who a character was 100% yet, I could look at the picture and go 'oh wow yeah that one's definitely my type' and would read it anyways lol

Tagging is a nightmare, but get the big ones! If I'm posting something for Malleus, I make sure to include both Malleus/Reader and Malleus/Yuu for example, just in case people go looking for one but not the other. For your own ease of access, pick a tag that's specific for different things! Like all my writing is tagged, very creatively, 'My Writing.' This just makes it so if I lose a post in the ether, or my taglist crashes, it's very easy to find everything again

Short form does better on Tumblr. It's the way of the world. Long stories tend to get less traction on average--both in terms of literal length and also like multi-chapter splits. Which is terrible for someone like me who likes to ramble on for ages but I digress. I actually started a Tumblr with the intention of teaching myself how to write shorter prompts. Write more often and less intensively sort of thing and look how well that went lololololl *sobs* I'm right back where I started But yeah don't be discouraged if your long, hard won, chapter is getting less notes than someone's two-line remake of a Brooklyn 99 quote. It's just the way it is. Tumblr is social media, AO3 is a library. They're just very different that way.

Hope any of that can help at all! I'm still so lost on how this Hell site functions too lol

Best of luck! :D

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Hello, Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️ here. I have to say, I was really surprised with the response to my last post – thank you for all the responses! And thank you for the questions as well. As I’ve always said, I really appreciate the questions. I hope you will find the answers adequate, too.

Q: “I thought the social credit system was mostly about crime and financial metrics? why would the government care about what’s going on in the bjd hobby?”

A: R-vv has it right! The Government doesn’t really care about BJDs. It cares about people’s aggregate behaviour, both online and in person. However, since you need your real information (name/age/address/etc.) in order to apply for an online account (of any kind), it’s easy to link the two. After that, anything you post online can be linked to you, there is no anonymity. The government, therefore, tracks online activity like the pulse of the nation. One’s online behaviour can lead to significant real-life consequences. For a more exaggerated example, you may remember how the popular fanfiction repository, Archive of Our Own, was completely shut out of China several years back. Most folks chalk it up to China activating its infamous Great Firewall and start clamouring about free speech and all, but the reality is nothing of the sorts. The reason why AO3 was shut out of China was due to rabid fan behaviour leading to large luxury brands dropping their Chinese spokesperson and losing a large amount of money (for more information, here: https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005262/fan-fiction-site-blocked-in-china-after-celebs-stans-complain ). The reason why the government is interested in anything in specific is because of their social implication and financial impact. Simply put, China is a place that cannot stand social dissidence. It doesn’t matter why there was dissidence, dissidence simply cannot be tolerated.

Q: If that’s how their credit system works and it effects them that much and they hate recasts then why don’t they all just bully Luo into a lower social credit rating and stop his business from operating?

A: Well, you see… there’s a simple answer to this question that, and when broken down to its basic elements, can be rather silly. Without an interaction, you cannot contribute to someone’s social credit score – it can be something physical like an altercation, something systematic like the hiring or firing of a person, or it can be financial like a purchase. Since the Chinese doll circle detest Luo, they refuse to have anything to do with anything related to him. If there’s no interaction, there’s no way to contribute to the downfall of his social credit system. Besides, online bullying (like the AO3 example above) actually lowers the scores of all people who were involved, including the complaining stans (they are “rabble rousers” and a “mob”). It’s a lose-lose situation if anyone even attempts it in the first place.

Q: Social credit applies when you want to get a loan? / I know in US your personal finances and credit is separate from your company if you own an LLC. There must be some loophole he is using if it’s not affecting him.

A: Interestingly, Luo would have a pretty good social credit score – it has something to do with the marking scheme being based on what is “socially productive” for China. It’s only got tangential ties to morals. Luo’s factory has an annuals sales volume of $2.5 to 5 million USD, according to his own company profile (https://chinabjd.en.alibaba.com/company_profile.html ). This is on the background of a region where the yearly average income is $50,147RMB ($7035USD) per year (http://tjj.jiangxi.gov.cn/art/2022/6/2/art_38582_3982696.html ). He is considered one of the largest factories in the region, supporting not just the families of his workers but also both upstream and downstream manufacturers. Even if he needs a loan, it’d be more than easy to get one (Chinese people do not like leverage much when doing business, it’s considered highly risky behaviour – over-leveraging caused the housing market to crash in 2022.) One of the Tieba members from a previous link (this one: http://c.tieba.baidu.com/p/7792470874?pn=1 ) where a commentator mentioned that Luo’s factory is considered a “protected” business by the local government. Normal companies simply cannot compete.

Note 1: Online selling platforms such as Taobao and Xianyu are touted as being safer due to their customer service and protection policies. Therefore most doll owners strongly urge other (usually new) users to use a platform instead of sending money through transfer services such as Weixin or Zuan-zuan (think of them as F&F Paypal and Venmo). On these platforms, every transaction leaves a record. And if you have been blocked by another user, or you have a history of returns, complaints or bad ratings, these records will directly impact your social credit score. The system is set up for you to follow it and be voluntarily tracked because following the rules is considered “safer”.

Note 2: Just like what I said in the last post (https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/707455091551109120/hello-oldie-chinese-diaspora-anon-here-where ), the Chinese boomers don’t share the same moral values as their children do (or their children’s children). The boomers in the government are more interested in keeping the nation docile and productive (read: keep earning foreign currency) than worrying about copyright. It’s a process that’s still happening today: https://lisamerriam.com/kfcs-success-in-china-breeds-imitators/ There has been changes to copyright law and better enforcement, but this should not be taken as a change of heart. There’s nothing like Chinese pragmatism – these changes are made to ensure that it can still attract outside investors without them running away in fear of imitators and other malicious competitors.

~Anonymous