#chatlog: accountability

[dremiruu]

ok ive seen like five posts here about not finding enough eah chatfics so here we go

eah chatfic masterpost

(these are all the fics i could find on ao3 - if you ever find one thats not on here dm me and ill add it)

• "Grimm is a bitchass motherfucker" by Karmahatesme

• "Be Gay Do Crime" by JooDeeLee

• "Ever After High Text Chain" by YuquisLeftEarlobe

• "These Fairytales are MONSTROUS!" by Emixion | mh/eah crossover

• "Operarion: Apple" by DarlingTheLesbian

• "wonderlanders are absolutely unhinged" by mysolareyesgrowpolarized

• "Kitty Ruins Everything" by DaisyDoo

• "you've reached your destiGAYtion" by curious_chimera (orphan account)

• "It's Not The Chat Fic We Wanted, and We Didn't Need This Shit To Begin With" by Shipping_Sushi

• "HeexTok" by nuclearspiders | mh/eah crossover

• "Monster Ever After" by nuclearspiders | mh/eah crossover

• "gays, homosexuals, gays" by M1NTCHoCoK1tty

• "Chatlog of a Toaster on Fire" by The_Lavender_Creator

• "Ever After Monsters" by urfavtransrat | mh/eah crossover

• "Villainy, in a General Sense" by young_authoress

• "Not really anonymous" by ShyLittle_Frog

• "The 'End the Pining' Project" by MessOfContradictions

• "the words of the prophets are written in gay teenage groupchats" by cherryhibiscus

• "No Hetero" by MangoQueen

• "EVENT PLANNING COMMITTEE" by orphan account

(id tag allthe blogs that asked for this here but i already forgot which ones which so im counting on tags, reblogs, the small size of the fandom and the universe to direct this to them lmao)

heres who i remember has been asking: @smileyfacemojisworld @lionmythflower

[opinated-user]

Wait Lily Orchad is a zoophile (among other awful disgusting things)? I never heard of that. I don’t want to pressure you to explain because it is awful but what is this about?

that comes mostly from the chatlogs between herself and Tara (sockpuppet account of LO) that Brittany shared. on them, "tara" (LO) talks about having sex with animals multiple times. specifically dogs. plus, there's also evidence that LO commissioned Patch to make non con art of Lizzy's character being raped by dogs. the character that Lizzy specifically made to be asexual. plus, there's also archived post of LO fantasizing on her blog about being thrown into a cage full of horny dogs to let them do whatever they want with her. plus, although this is a stretch, she shipped Lilith from TOH with Hooty. Hooty is a demon bird with literally no human features besides being able to speak.

it doesn't appear nearly as frequently as her incest fetishism does, but if you start scrapping the surfice you'll find it. those allegations don't come from nowhere.

[de-fanzine-cpr-pale]

July 9, 2024 UPDATE:

In this newsletter: A. Participants, B. Sign-Up deadline extended, C. submission deadline extended, D. recruitment call to the fandom, E. Discord has been set up, and F. a general mod call.

Info about this zine: TUMBLR and TWITTER

A. We have 71 participants signed-up so far!!!!

That's more than I ever expected would sign-up. Thank you all so much for the support so far, I wouldn't be able to do this without ya'll!

B. I will be extending the sign-up deadline by a week!

Sign-Ups will now close on July 19th!

–SIGN UP HERE–

C. As a result, submissions will be due at the end of September (September 30th, 2024).

D. I am also sending out a recruitment call to those of you in the fandom!

If there are ANY artists or writers you would like to see featured in this zine, please let me know in the replies, reblogs, or this account's DMs. I will see what I can do to ask them to join!

As I don't have an Instagram and don't have mutuals on Twitter, I won't be able to contact those who are exclusively on those sites. If there is any one here you feel should join, please let them know!

Furthermore, if there are any writers on Ao3 or wherever else fanfiction is posted, please let me know as well! I would love to invite writers, but I am not as familiar with them.

I am trying to recruit as many of us as possible, and I would love to have members picked by the community. This also allows the reach to go further! Anyone from Twitter, Instagram, AO3, etc. as well as Tumblr is welcome to join! There's a lot of places I don't go, and I don't want people who would be interested in joining to miss out.

Please do check replies before replying to see if the account you have in mind has already been mentioned.

E. Join the Discord for updates!

As I don't have mods to help me regulate a general chat, no general discussion space will be offered here yet. The Discord will just be for announcements and a quicker way to ask the mod (me) questions. My username on Discord is dr.tycho

F. Mod Call!

Finally if you are interested in helping me mod this zine, please contact me on this account in DMs or on Discord at dr.tycho .

Mod Jobs: In order for the Discord to have a general chatting channel, a mod is needed to help me moderate chatlogs. A mod may also be needed to help me process and organize submissions / keep track of communications.

Mod Rules: Mods must be 18+ (not minors). Must be able to reply to communications within a reasonable amount of time.

Thank you!!!!!

Twitter Version of This Post HERE.

[homestuckreplay]

EOA2 - Statistics!

I’ve run the numbers on Act 2 cause I have a secret and deep love for stats. The data is collected here in the Homestuck GameFAQ and I collect it all myself, so it’s limited by what I can reasonably record.

Act 2 is 67.4% of Homestuck so far by page count. It ran for 511 pages across 125 days (June 9, 2009 to October 11, 2009), 104 of which had an update (83%). This averages 4.1 pages per day (4.9 on update days). September 24, 2009 (Homestuck Day 138) had the most pages in a single day with 15.

This is slightly lower than Act 1’s 4.4 pages per day (5.3 on update days), and still does not beat April 13, 2009’s (Homestuck Day 1) 16 total pages.

377 pages contained narrative text (73.7%) while 134 pages were image or animation only. There were 639 images and animations in total (panels), with 69 pages containing two images (13.5%; nice) and 15 containing three or more (2.9%). Page 510 had the most panels, with 17. Of these 639 panels, 250 were still images (39.2%), 371 were GIFs (58.2% - defined not as filetype, but as a short, simple animated panel), 11 were complex, non-interactive animations (1.7%) and 7 were interactive panels (1.1%).

18 pages contained sound [S] (3.5%), including 31 distinct music tracks worked on by 16 artists, 25 of which were new for act 2. This includes two versions of Showtime by Kevin Regamey & Malcolm Brown and three of Harlequin byMark Hadley.

The distribution of panel types (still image, GIF, animation and interactive) was very similar between Acts 1 and 2, but the amount of new music was significantly higher in Act 2. This was entirely due to Dave’s MIDI samples on p.338, which contained 20 tracks, 19 of which were new.

333 pages contained a command in the title (65.2%). Of these, 120 commands were to John (36.0%), 55 were to Rose (16.5%), 82 were to Dave (24.6%), 64 were to WV (19.2%), and 12 were to miscellaneous characters (3.6%), including the game engine (3), narrator (1), Spades Slick (2), Nannasprite (1), John’s piano (1), John’s fridge (1), John’s bathtub (1), Dad’s safe (1), and Colonel Sassacre (1).

262 commands came from the player (78.7%) and 71 came from WV, with all of WV’s commands directed to John or the narrator except for p.277 (DO THE POTTED VEGETABLE NEXT. IT LOOKS DELICIOUS.), which was directed to Rose. There were 99 additional commands from WV within p.253, directed to a mix of John and the narrator.

I imperfectly track ‘point of view character’ based on who the ‘you’ in narrative text is directed to, or without that, whose experiences we are seeing in the image. If we are seeing something the character wouldn’t be able to see, the point of view is the player’s. Based on these metrics, John is the point of view character for 139 pages (27.2%), Rose for 102 (20.0%), Dave for 122 (23.9%), WV for 104 (20.4%), the player for 42 (8.2%), and a different character for 8 pages (1.6%), including the narrator (4), Spades Slick (3) and Nannasprite (1). Six pages contain multiple POVs, accounting for the small discrepancy in the total number.

Act 1 only contained three command recipients and four point of view characters, while Act 2 contained 13 command recipients and eight point of view characters. By both metrics, John is the main character in both Acts 1 and 2, although Act 2 is really more of an ensemble cast.

There were 39 pesterlogs on 38 pages (7.4% of pages) and 9 spritelogs (1.8% of pages). Combining all chatlogs, John appears in 31 (plus 10 where he’s the recipient but doesn’t answer), Rose in 29 (plus one where she doesn’t answer), Dave in 12, GG in 4, and Nannasprite in 9. The chatlogs vary wildly in length, but average 172.6 words. The longest chatlog is between Rose and GG on p.442, which totals 587 words.

In total, Act 2 contained 14,386 words of narrative text, 2815 words in page titles (commands plus ‘==>’, which counts as one word as it has a distinct meaning), and 8286 words in chatlogs. This includes commands and narrative text within p.253 ([S] YOU THERE. BOY) but does not include other types of words within images, as these are hard to track without extensive time or better computer skills than mine.

This gives Act 2 a total word count of 25,487, or an average of 49.9 words per page – slightly higher than Act 1’s 42.5 average. Page 253 is by far the longest page in Act 2, with 2103 total words including 1579 of narrative text; p.448 is the second longest based on narrative text alone, with 218 words.

In Act 1, the total time elapsed in the narrative was around an hour and a half (0.11% of the real, out of universe time). Act 2 is much harder to estimate, but from earliest to latest point, the elapsed time in the narrative is around 4 billion years (1.17trillion% of the real, out of universe time).

[stillness-in-green]

Project Update/Survey of Interest: The AFO Retcon Essay

Having cleared out the inbox, I thought I'd let everyone know where I am on one of the big projects I've been alluding to for a long while now, the big meta post/essay arguing that the possession plot (and therefore AFO as primary endgame villain) is, in so many words, a big stupid retcon. That essay is - for reasons I'll get into shortly - on the brink of a major change in focus, so I'd also like to gauge how much interest people have in its potential new form. Because it would be another huge one, make no mistake.

(Hit the jump.)

So, I recently started dabbling with a new word processor program and thought I'd try learning the ropes with the retcon essay; I then spent the better part of two weeks combing through chatlogs and my blog archive trying to compile all the evidence I'd want to consider to make that argument. Two nights ago, I looked at the list I had - almost fifty bullet points! - and had the horribly demoralizing realization that...

...You guys, I just don't think I believe it anymore.

Now, that's not to say I've come around on the possession plot, because I definitely haven't! Rather, my trust in Horikoshi as a writer has been so badly eroded by the state of the writing in the endgame that I no longer think even the earlier material is reliable evidence for where the story was going.

To pick the most prominent example, I always regarded AFO telling Best Jeanist at Kamino that his quirk "wouldn't suit Tomura" as one of my strongest pieces of evidence that the possession plot had not been in the cards at that time. After all, who in hell cares what quirks would or would not suit Tomura if AFO's plan, as stated in Chapter 380, was that he would wholly subsume Tomura's will?

Now, however - and Chapter 380 is a big part of this, too! - I look back on that moment and just think, wearily, "Was that ever true, or was Horikoshi just lying to us already, and the only difference between then and now is that back then the lies could hold for hundreds of chapters, whereas now they're revealed within a matter of pages?"

A chat friend letting me vent suggested that perhaps the line was just intended to foreshadow Shigaraki getting All For One (and therefore all the quirks held within it) and Horikoshi just didn't think through all the implications AFO's phrasing had on how that plot was going to go. That may be true, and it's a more generous read than I could muster at the time, but the end result is the same: If I can't trust that the writing was ever an accurate reflection of the characters and their intentions, I can't in good faith construct an argument relying on that writing.

What I think I can do, however, if people are interested, is broaden the overall thrust to something much bigger than just AFO.

I'm currently toying with the idea of a treatise-in-four-parts about the problems in the endgame. Each part would cover one major branch of related issues - they might need to be broken down into sub-parts themselves, if they run long enough! The whole thing would likely be much longer and more involved than my chapter posts; think something more like the PLF mass arrest essay. Following are my current ideas for how those four parts would fall out, as well as some example talking points for each:

Part 1: Shigaraki and the PLF. Would cover Shigaraki as a villain and what he and the forces he'd amassed circa the end of My Villain Academia stood to bring to the endgame, both ideologically and tactically. Would also cover where they actually wound up and some considerations as to why. ��         Example Subpoints: Demanding accountability from Hero Society rather than just focusing blame on singular evils; Shigaraki as representative of all previous Villains; the MLA's shift in portrayal between MVA and the endgame; the ludicrous string of nerfs Toga was subjected to; whether the MLA was only ever intended to be a mass of numbers to whittle down the equally massive numbers of the Heroes or whether they were reduced to that after poor reader reception.

Part 2: All For One's Impact. Would focus on the sharp drop in moral complexity AFO both suffered himself compared to his pre-Tartarus characterization and inflicted on the endgame both himself and with the caliber of minions he brought to the story.           Example Subpoints: AFO's inconsistent characterization; the moral reductiveness of the Demon Lord as endgame Villain; AFO and Yoichi's personal history; Vestige mechanics; the impact of AFO's inconsistency on Ujiko's portrayal; the Sekoto Peak Problem; the characterization and handling of the Tartarus escapees.

Part 3: Team Hero Is The Fucking Worst. Would focus on the multitudinous problems with the presentation and methodologies of the Heroes in the endgame. Might be two parts if it gets long enough that I decide to split it up into, like, one part on the adults/Pro Heroes and one on the kids or something.           Example Subpoints: The story's bad faith attempts to portray agents of government authority as scrappy, determined underdogs; why it's impossible to believe that the current heroic cast will be able to enact a satisfying resolution to all the structural problems the story has raised; That Stupid Fucking Mech Fight; the constant refusal to let consequences stick to the Heroes; the way the story both undercuts and oversells Deku as a protagonist, and the impact that has on the broader narrative; One For All and more Vestige Mechanics; The Problem of Hawks; the hospital riot; the Todoroki family's inaction.

Part 4: Other Issues. A catch-all area for anything else I trip over that doesn't fit in any of the categories above, or problems of a more meta-narrative sort.           Very Preliminary Example Subpoints: The lazy portrayal of civilian characters; meta-narrative examples of the unreliability of BNHA's late-stage writing, from simple errors overlooked in the highly demanding grind of Shonen Jump serialization to the much more damning abuse of the reader's expectations of the comic medium; idk probably lots of other stuff, I Have Many Problems.

That said, I now have to ask, how interested are you all in a project like that? A fair amount of it would be recycled from my chapter posts, but obviously it would cover stuff I never got to in those, and would be able to be written with more hindsight (especially if it's written mostly or entirely after the series ends!), as opposed to the constant problem of reacting to the story week-to-week.

I basically stopped writing the chapter posts for reasons of incessant negativity, and obviously, this would be more of that, but I mind the negativity a lot less when it's A) able to be more comprehensive and focused than meandering and piecemeal and B) in the form of a large project I can work on as I have the energy for it rather than a brand new project every single week. And, as I trust stuff like MVA In Memoriam and On Heteromorphobia make clear, I do like the idea of putting together a good, comprehensive, easy-to-reference tract on all those problems, as opposed to just letting my issues remain scattered across multiple years of chapter thoughts and bnha critical tags!

That said, it's a big project, and I do vent about these issues pretty constantly with chat and irl friends, so if there's not much interest from followers here, I would not find it hard to just let the whole thing go and turn my eyes to less intimidating fare instead.

(Current other projects include the usual roster of BNHA fic, another mid-length meta piece in the mode of the BNHA vs. Helck comparison from a while back, this time on Mamoru Hosoda's Belle, and a horrible temptation to try and write something thoughtful and even-handed about demons in Frieren: Beyond Journey's End to combat the reductive-ass takes on both sides of the argument I've been seeing all over the internet since its anime started. Also, every week I go without seeing a single damn MachtxGluck fanfic on AO3 is a week I get closer to trying to figure out a way into writing it myself.)

Do let me know! Also, feel free to chip in with anything you'd like to see me specifically talk about in an endgame analysis!

[samueldays]

'Effectively, Ukraine has eliminated Russian ground forces'

...claimed an 'Eastern Europe expert' in this thread in March 2022, one month into the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I was reminded of him when looking through some chatlogs today. At the time, I thought he was making absurd predictions, but figured he might try to water them down to claim something like accuracy if Ukraine won in the next month or two, stretching the definitions of words.

Now it's been a year and a half, and I want to revisit Sergej Sumlenny's bluster, not just for him being thoroughly personally wrong, but as a general reminder that anyone can call themselves an expert, and still be completely wrong.

In the first month of the war, this guy was saying shit like:

Russia and its army are about to collapse. RU obviously has no reserves left

Russia has been "about to collapse" every month for the last twenty months, somehow.

According to Ukrainian intelligence (and they get much info from the US I guess) Russia has already used 95% of all its ground forces gathered for the invasion, and it makes almost 100% of Russia's active ground forces. Effectively, Ukraine has eliminated Russian ground forces

If Ukraine would resist several more days, I am sure Russia will face the biggest defeat in its history. Nothing comparable. It will also trigger independency movements in Russia-occupied countries of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Ichkeriya, Sakha, Komi and others

I am not seeing these things that were supposed to happen after "several more days".

When Moscow army will be eliminated (and it nearly is)

I am also sure - very soon we will face a shiny glorious future without the Prison of Nations. Thank to brave Ukrainians.

"very soon" has come and gone, Sergej, why are you still here?

The simple explanation, IMO, is that this guy is a pure propagandist, nothing else.

Perhaps he was never attempting to say anything true at all, he was completely disconnected from the evidence, Ukraine paid him to say pro-Ukraine things so he said the things his paymaster wanted. If Russia had paid him, he would have said the opposite.

But the thing about the Sumlennys of the world is that someone has put quite a lot of money into making them look expert. A Twitter account is free and can be set up in five minutes. A website for the European Resilience Center, maybe fifteen minutes and ten bucks to host. The content over at European Resilience, with regular updates, takes a bit more work. But Sumlenny being interviewed by external sources like France24 is not so easily manufactured.

For more on Ukraine's planned counter-offensive and all of the latest in Russia's brutal year-long invasion, FRANCE 24 is joined by Sergej Sumlenny, Journalist, Political Analyst, and Managing Director of the European Resilience Initiative Center.

Sumlenny got similar treatment in a wide variety of news outlets from ABC to Al Jazeera. Journalism delenda est. Both for Sumlenny personally, and for the many other journalists who interviewed him, respected him, failed to fact-check him, treated him as an expert, and gave him the prestige of an expert. There's two different meanings of "expert":

"expert" as in "has a credential and is used as a source on the subject being discussed"

"expert" as in "consistently produces good results and correct predictions"

and Sumlenny was very much the first sort. Which also has two meanings when I say it: that he was not the second sort, and that people did cite him and invite him and treat his opinion as being worth more than some random Tumblr blog.

(One might like to have a word that only means the second sort of expert. Good luck keeping it!)

The information ecosystem is polluted by Sumlennys. It's easy and common to go "Russian bot", but one should also have a mental space for "Ukranian bot", and then expand that term far enough to include Sumlenny, or have some other term for the less-obviously-bot-like people performing expertise as they spout nonsense. There is no side that is free of lies and nonsense, there is no credential that is clean, there is no institution that is clean. The clown world experts are everywhere. Sumlenny was not acting alone, nor is he unique, Sumlenny merely happened to get my attention, and the "factcheck" system that journalists love to talk about didn't catch him. It's not going to catch slightly more subtle lies. Epistemology is hard.

[sycamorality]

misc broadcast headcanons

broadcasts function like online forums or chatrooms. there are three global lines that any iterator can connect to no matter their location. generally these were set up for theories regarding the great problem, but have since become chatrooms for about any topic. it's common courtesy to have a connection and disconnection message display whenever either action is taken.

there are specific chats that can be connected to for certain topics; history archival, bioengineering, structural issues and repair, art, etc. some lines even share game files or links to broadcasts that were formatted in a way that they'd work like online webgames through some smart engineering! it's common to see connection messages on broadcasts for certain topics, but they aren't necessary if you're just gonna lurk. the webgame broadcasts, also known as 'sitecasts', 'interactable broadcasts' or 'online game forums' depending on who you ask - or 'game forums' for the sake of simplicity, have join messages disabled by default but do display users online, unless a user specifically sets themself not to show as online. users are usually shown with usernames set by the iterators - each username has to be unique, however. it acts like an account. generally, broadcast lines with specific topics are moderated by the iterator that set them up, multiple iterators, or via a voting system that allows iterators to vote on banning or muting [whether permanently or temporarily] another iterator that may be causing issues. the global lines are moderated by a few specific iterators built for communications and moderation, but it is usually common courtesy to moderate your own local group on the global lines and force disconnect them if any issue arises. seniors have a senior signifier next to their name, usually either {S}, {SENIOR}, {LG_I1 LOCAL ADMIN} or {I1 LOCAL ADMIN}. these are optional a can be toggled off by the senior iterators themselves if they wish to not display it. seniors can punish their own juniors, but cannot moderate other local groups.

LG in one of the two latter signifiers stands for Local Group, and the I1 is the sector their local group is located in. usually the signifiers with local group sectors are disabled and never seen due to privacy reasons, but on occasion a senior will have their local group's sector in their signifier, for varying reasons. sectors are an upper case letter and then a number. there are different parts of sectors that are usually split apart like I1nw or I1w for directional locations, or just randomly chosen letters like I1y or I1k.

generally, one's acronym appears in broadcast chatlogs.

[I1_LOCAL] ESoF: so what's for this cycle? FoaI: Lizards, lizards, oh would you look at that, a slugcat, ESoF: give me the damn overseer. FoaI: I don't think I will~ CatM: can we stop arguing?

[GLOBAL_02] CONNECTED USERS - [183] - ACTIVE USERS - [27] FiV: Say, how's that going? FoS: Not all too well, I'd imagine, I haven't heard from him in a while. OttS: A shame, for sure! SE: …Says you. SfaS: We can only hope it isn't another case of rot! FoS: Do you really have to bring that up? ShE: i don't think thats appropriate to bring up after last cycle. SE_2: I think I have to agree with Shared Eyes.

ShE, SE, and SE_2 all share an acronym; they have all chosen to differenciate by either adding a letter in the middle or end, or by adding an underscore and a number. while their names are displayed on the chatline, broadcast logs won't show this when archived, so acronyms are made unique.

[WANDERINGTHERUINS] PUBLIC GROUP - all participants anonymous ToPS: oh! what did you find with your overseers this cycle, Peace? SP: A few old pearls that my overseers scanned for their information. I couldn't get much off them, however. NSA: You could purpose a.. slugcat, was it? To retrieve any pearls your overseers find. SP: i could, i could! good idea. i'll consider.

there are also anonymous broadcats where pseudonyms are mandatory and will show regardless. all participants will be shown as anonymous, but the acronyms of their pseudonyms will be shown in chatlogs.

(small note - all the acronyms here are acronyms of some of my iterator ocs!)

[casual-praxis]

Praxis Yappin' Hours

While I'm procrastinating actually working on the fic for a bit, I figured I might as well shed some light on what the whole modern FS high school AU thing I've mentioned here, here, and here are!

I need to come up with a more accurate name eventually (since only half the AU actually revolves around high school), but it's fitting for the fanfic I'm working on so it'll stick for now.

In regards to the fanfic portion, it's something I started as a practice project for writing dialogue specifically (hence the chatlog format). It kinda got away from me over time, so now it's this whole story about a group of friends who have grown up together, just kinda living life day to day in a low-stakes world, no real worries outside having a good GPA and planning their futures.

The plot is a little abstract on account of being told through various weeks' worth of text messages, but all the Colors have their own goals (some of which overlap) they bring up over the span of their senior year. I wanted to keep the story somewhat realistic (with heavy creative liberties here and there), so there isn't an abundance of drama, though there isn't an absence of it either. Romance is touched on lightly as well.

Red and Green are the most active in their group chat, with Blue chiming in more once he's free, and Vio sometimes going whole days without saying anything. I haven't yet decided if I'll include one-on-one dm's between characters (outside of Zelda and Shadow), but if I can find a way to incorporate them without breaking the flow, expect Red and Blue to dm each other a lot.

I wanted to play around with different texting styles to replicate how people speak slightly differently depending on their upbringing, and also the concept of adopting phrases from people you're close to. I think all of them say some variation of "shut" at least once in the first chapter alone. No idea if the word spread from Green or Blue but it was definitely one of them.

Red types in all lowercase but still uses correct punctuation and grammar (and a lot of emoticons). Green has autocorrect on so that's the only reason he isn't typing in all lowercase and has correct grammar (he also sometimes uses emojis). Blue types in all lowercase, doesn't use grammar or punctuation at all, and shortens most words to abbreviations when possible. Vio is the only one to type with proper spelling, punctuation, grammar, and the patience to put all his thoughts in one message rather than five separate texts.

As for the friend group dynamic itself, I'm working on a relationship chart that will hopefully map that out a bit more clearly. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but along with GreenxZelda, RedxBlue and Vidow are all endgame pairings, so feel free to disengage if those aren't your thing. Romance isn't a strong focus as I mentioned before, though it is still there.

Assuming we do make it beyond the fanfic stage, the AU will continue into everyone's adult lives for a while, albeit in scattered bursts. I'll keep my plans for that a little more under wraps, but it's definitely the part of the AU I think of most.

[mxrp-official-steve]

Your monthly MxRP dev update: Coming Soon(TM) Edition.

You guys hear that? It's a heartbeat.

(Description: An image of the freshly restyled MxRP frontpage, complete with a popup in the middle reading "Signed in successfully")

The issues surrounding the database HAVE BEEN SOLVED circa last week, and Hex has officially gotten the database, including accounts and their associated logs, working on Ruby on Rails. This choice was made because it dramatically speeds up dev- this is the framework CheRPs upcoming Cardinal update uses, allowing Hex to adapt features from there (realtime chatting, accounts with tied chatlogs, notifications, etc) and change them as need be, because it's a framework that they're skilled and familiar with, making any needed retools and reworks easier.

So, what you're probably wondering here is this: "Steve! If this speeds dev up that much, does that mean the Beta is soon???"

To this, I answer: YYYYEEEEAAAAHHHHHHH BABY!! We're currently on track to be Beta-ready sometime this December.

This is an estimate, of course, and the beta could very well be ready before then- if it is, I'll be making a post here, on the Patreon, and on the discord server in short order of each other. Thank you all so much for sticking around through all this development time. It's been arduous. But we're closer than ever!! Keep your eyes peeled, folks. And get ready for MxRP-chan to come out of surgery stronger than ever.

(One more thing before i go btw)

(Description: A video of the MxRP2 beta homescreen slowly changing basic theme colors by clicking on the top-right dropdown box, followed by Hex logging in successfully through the Log In prompt)

[tussive]

I'm just going to go ahead and rate all of the text chat Omegle-like services that I can find.

ChitChat.gg: So far, the best. It still leaves a lot to be desired in the number of people you're connecting to, but I've been seeing it mentioned a lot as one of the main alternatives now and I suspect the userbase will grow at least some. This one has profiles/usernames/avatars/etc, which I don't love but I do understand why they would need to implement that. But one nice thing about this, you have access to your chatlogs from previous chats saved. There's a gender filter option but you have to pay for their premium service which is $4.99 or $8.99. There are some other perks to signing up for it, the ability to send pictures or videos, unlimited chat history and increased interest slots (I don't see the limit on interests listed anywhere and I have quite a few [at least 12?] so it can't be that low. To be honest once this site wins the race and becomes the main text Omegle alternative site, I'd consider paying for the premium just for the unlimited chat history tbh.

Emerald Chat: This is the primary alternative that I'm seeing mentioned. It also has a lot of the same functionality as ChatChat.gg, the infinite timer option for connecting with someone with a shared interest over a stranger, the profile/username/avatar, but while this does maintain a chat history, it doesn't appear you're able to actually read your previous chats. They also have a gender filter option available via a premium service, however theirs is $5.89. It also comes with the ability to send pictures, but not videos and also a mention of "more freedom," whatever that means. Oh yes, they also do have a video chat option as well as a group text chat option, which is interesting. So I mean both ChitChat.gg and Emerald Chat are pretty similar but each have their own thing as well. Aside from the userbase seemingly being bigger on ChitChat.gg (or maybe that's just where the people I share interests are going lol) I don't necessarily think either one of them is better than the alternative. I'd go ChitChat.gg, but that's just my personal preference there.

OPAL: So the previous two aren't amazing in terms of usability, but this one still feels a bit unpolished. Same thing as before, account/username/avatar. Oh, I counted this time (I'm using the same interests on each site as long as I'm able to) and I'm currently using 29 interests, so no limit is obviously preferable but a limit that high isn't bad at all imo for ChitChat.gg. Anyway, back to OPAL. Okay so this one is a bit different. Rather than matching with a stranger, you are given various profiles of people who are I guess also waiting to chat. There are also group chats, which just seem to be based on basic chatroom subjects like Music or Philosophy. I did see someone say while I was checking the site out that it isn't an Omegle ripoff, it's more of a Discord ripoff and I think that's probably more accurate. Or some kind of weird middle ground between the two. There does appear to be a limit on the number of profiles you're able to view for potential convos and I believe it was 15. Once you hit it, you can't go back and see how many it actually showed until the timer runs out. But it's around 15 options. There seem to be an incredible small amount of people on here for what it's worth. Basically everyone I saw in the chats, I saw their profile for the one on one chats.

Phori: So there's not much about this one at all, just that it's in the early stages and you currently can sign up to be part of the early access. There's also this Google Docs you can fill out for some additional stuff, if you just want to sign up for the early access you can just put your email address in on the main site. Here's the Google Docs link though if anyone would like it. It all seems great, they pine for the glory days of Omegle when you were still able to connect to another human person and then just chat with them for a bit. But that's what everyone wants, being able to identify that literally every person who wants a new Omegle wants that isn't a skill. The main website kinda gives off a dating app vibe, like some Tinder shit or something, so that does concern me some also. But I did sign up for the early access and will definitely give this a try when it's available to the public.

OmegleMe!: This one is more like classic Omegle. This seems to be an almost total clone of Omegle, text chat, video chat, shared interests, the design is all the same, it has Omegle in the name lol. It's just trying to be the new Omegle, which is fine. Omegle had problems but there wasn't anything inherently wrong with the core of the site imo. But the issue here is it lists active users and there are only 29 of them at the moment.

Randm.Chat: This one seems nice. It's purely text based, no fucking shitty ass video chatting taking up space. It seems to be well moderated and like it may have a decent sized userbase. It looks like on Google the website was first indexed in October of 2022, so it is probably around like a year old so probably a fair amount more established than a lot of these other options, which are almost entirely all brand new. They also call their site 'Randm Chat' one time and then 'Randm.Chat' another time and that bothers me a great deal lol. It also mentions that the chats are moderated/monitored by staff, which is kind of cool and probably helps keep people from jacking off so much. Oh, one other thing. There's seemingly no place to list interests on this and it seems to imply that it just pairs you with a random stranger and you're left to your own devices. But when you're actually chatting with a stranger, there's a gear icon in the corner and if you click on that the only option it brings up is a text box with the question, "What topics would you like to talk about?" so there does seem to be some shared interest related element at play somewhere, I just can't figure it out right now because I've been chatting with just one person from here this whole time and I don't want to accidentally disconnect while I'm fucking around.

Dismegle: This one feels more committal than the others for some reason. I'm pretty high and don't feel equipped to handle reviewing this one right now. I joined the server and it immediately put me in a chat with just another Discord user. Terrifying! I left immediately. I'll come back around to this but I don't think I like it.

OmegleWeb: This is another Omegle clone, exact same basic features as Omegle and OmegleMe! and this time the active users are at least in the triple digits, 141. So a step in the right direction but still an area that needs work if the site's going to be usable.

Omegleee: Yet another Omegle clone, this one so new it only has interests as a planned feature and there was only 1 active user online lmao. They mention future enhancements that would improve on the original's design such as random group video chat. So at some point this one may stand out but it's simply too new to do so at the moment.

Omeglenow: So this one very much went for the Omegle clone thing, but they did change up the layout a tiny bit. Honestly though it looks worse now lmao. But they do currently have 3282 active users at the moment, which is by far the most of any site that listed it's number of active users.

Ralae: Another straight up clone, but made uglier, this time with an an average active userbase of approximately 150-200ish. So, pretty unremarkable, I'm running out of things to say but these are becoming a lot more of the same thing over and over again than I expected. But we carry on.

Actually I lied. It would appear that I've run out of text options, all of the remaining alternatives I could find were video chat sites. Disgusting. I'm still too afraid of Dismegle to try it also, so I'll update that sometime later but yeah. Long story short, ChitChat.gg is probably the way to go for the time being. Though I have actually been talking to someone on Randm.Chat since I wrote my thoughts on it and that's pretty impressive these days so maybe that one is also worth looking more into.

[bizarrequazar]

GJ and ZZH Updates — June 4-10

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This is part of a weekly series collecting updates from and relating to Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan.

This post is not wholly comprehensive and is intended as an overview, links provided lead to further details. Dates are in accordance with China Standard Time, the organization is chronological. My own biases on some things are reflected here. Anything I include that is not concretely known is indicated as such, and you’re welcome to do your own research and draw your own conclusions as you see fit. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or additions. :)

[Glossary of names and terms] [Masterlist of my posts about the situation with Zhang Zhehan]

06-04 → Nothing of note.

06-05 → Flora made a tweet showing that On Aura Tout Vu, the design company that posted the previous week about making one of the outfits at the Zhang Sanjian concerts (“for the amazing new collaboration ... for Zhang Zhehan”), had posted photos of the same outfit almost a year ago being worn by a showgirl. Their older posts (plural) are still up. In fact, the oldest post they have of the outfit is from March 2020, advertising it as part of their summer collection for that year. The black suit that On Aura Tout Vu also posted about was likewise a re-embellished older piece and the jewelry they’re advertising as “custom-made” for him is also from 2020.

→ 361° posted a video using Gong Jun’s travel photos to tease the video they would post the following day.

06-06 → Gong Jun posted nine scenery photos to Weibo. Caption: “The heart is steady, the results are good, and the seven-coloured clouds* are for everyone, jiayou!” The caption is presumably because it was national exam day. *symbol of good fortune Fan Observation: The post as a whole, especially the photos, are very similar in style to the 不想匿名 account (see the bottom of this post). The previous day, the account had been restricted by Zhihu and required to change its username; the specific reason is not known at the time of this post, but it was noted that another account with “匿名” in its username had the same happen.

→ 361° posted a video celebrating the second anniversary of their endorsement with Gong Jun.  

→ The Instagram posted a video of “Zhang Zhehan” playing guitar.

→ #ZhangSanjian trended on Twitter.

06-07 → #TheRealZhangZhehan trended on Twitter.

→ A post was made by Sina TV announcing the passing of Ma Tao, Word of Honor’s producer, reportedly from liver cancer. A number of other staff who had worked on the show made posts in mourning. 

#Word of Honor producer Ma Tao passed away# and #Word of Honor# got on Weibo’s entertainment hotsearch, Word of Honor and Ma-jie trended on Twitter.

→ The Instagram posted three photos of “Ma Tao” and “Zhang Zhehan” because these people have no fucking souls.  Fan Observations: None of the photos are real, just fyi—obvious signs of photoshopping and “Ma Tao’s” teeth are wrong. Zhang Sanjian’s hair in the photos is the same as in the 2022-05-04 divorce video, so it’s suspected that these were prepared last year but weren’t used for some reason (likely because Ma-jie would have dragged their asses through the mud for trying to use her in their scam.)

→ The Rising with the Wind Weibo account posted a group promotional image featuring Gong Jun.

06-08 → Lexus posted a fake chatlog with Ma Tao in his Instagram story “in mourning” that claimed Zhang Zhehan had stayed with her while registering his case in 2021. Lexus is reportedly in Japan right now if anyone wants to go punch him in the gut.

06-09 → Tiffany & Co. announced a jewelry line using jellyfish imagery and whalers embarrassed themselves trying to claim that one of the most famous luxury brands in the world is trying to appeal to haizhes. The jellyfish brooch at the centre of the line was designed in 1967.

→ 361° posted three photo ads featuring Gong Jun.

→ A private wake was held for Ma Tao’s funeral, attended by Gong Jun. It is rumored that Zhang Zhehan was also in attendance, but this has not been confirmed in any capacity.

→ Zhang Sanjian paraded around the Shanghai airport in black, nominally “on the way to the wake,” because the scam gang have to make every moment about him. Fan Observation: It’s reported that the wake was held in the morning, while this Zhang Sanjian appearance was in the afternoon. The scam gang either didn’t know the time it was to be held at or they were trying to avoid the possibility of running into Gong Jun, who flew back to Haikou via the same airport after the wake.

6-10 Addition 06-14: The Singaporean paper Shin Min Daily News published an “email interview” article about Zhang Zhehan, taking the Zhang Sanjian scam and concerts as legitimate, with the first line of the article saying that Zhang Zhehan visited Yasukuni Shrine. This article was celebrated by whalers, with some blatantly omitting this first line—when confronted about this, they claimed it was no big deal for the very smears at the centre of 813 to be repeated here. The article also went on to say that Zhang Sanjian was “grateful for the opportunity” that his cancellation gave him.

→ Gong Jun posted a promotional video for 361°. (1129 kadian) Caption: “Walk in love, act in life, and protect beauty with green life. Be a green guardian with @ 361 Degrees” The same was also posted by 361° ten minutes later along with the catalogue of their new line.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted a video of behind the scenes footage from his recent endorsement ads. Caption: “Happy weekend! A wave of @ Gong Jun Simon's small daily work, gaining a moment of indulgence in a hurry~” BGM is Babe by Evenings.

→ QuelleVous tweeted a thread about Xiao Chu, Word of Honor’s scriptwriter, explaining that her husband has connections to 6Rooms (a livestreaming platform tied to CAPA) and that she has not had a script project since Word of Honor due to a contract dispute at the company she works for.

→ Fresh posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

Additional Reading:  → N/A

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This post was last edited 2023-06-14.

[titoist]

childhood memories

the librarian reads us a story about how you shouldn't feed a bear because it will come back & expect more food. i find it fairly upsetting. i want to be kind to animals. i feel sort of intensely personally upset with the librarian

i discover cracked.com & open dozens upon dozens of tabs, reading the junk food voraciously. once i see a scary picture on one & have to huddle in the corner of the couch for hours staring at the hallway so i know it's not coming out of the hallway until someone gets home. hours crying

when i'm home alone, i am always so deeply powerfully intensely petrified by the idea of going past my room. there's too many doorways. i'm afraid of mirrors. i'm petrified by the mental image of a ghoulish woman sprinting out of a doorway, towards me, screaming

i go on omegle when i'm about nine & use manycam to show people a picture of a mutilated penis. i'm sorry

i go on omegle when i'm about ten & meet someone who claims to be a girl named jade. to make a long story short, it turns into this weird... knifeplay, rape, forced sex change, roleplay, thing. where if you read the chatlog i am very obviously using the mannerisms & emoticons of a ten year old & "jade" seems unconcerned by this. i saw, said, & did a lot of gross things on the internet but this seems to come back to my memory the most often, like it's emblematic of the rest i save the chatlog. some time later, days? weeks? months? years? i don't know. i walk into the living room & glance at the laptop on the counter connecting it with the kitchen. my father has somehow discovered the chatlog & is reading through it. i don't react or say anything. i don't know how much he reads. he never says or does anything

my father is friends with a happy married couple who live in a big house. one day while visiting them i ask the husband if he wants to see something frickin' messed up!!! he watches me play happy wheels for awhile out of obligation. he just keeps going "… hhhhuh."

in second or third grade, a girl - i don't remember her name, retainers & glasses, blonde - has a crush on me. i never hear this from her personally, but she was bad at concealing her mannerisms. & after awhile, i was openly solicited by the other kids in my grade to help them torture & mock her about it. the way i understand it, she was deserving of ostracization for having a crush on an overweight child, while i had skirted by on account of never being seen as part of the ingroup in the first place. the mocking would have no stakes.

my mother works for a theatre company. this means she has to go up the stairs in that concrete behemoth & beyond the byzantine hallways to practice her roles in productions for hours at a time. she takes me along, & doesn't restrict me to the lobby or supervise me. this means i have the fantastic opportunity to run around various storage room with miscellaneous props, CDs, &, by god, puppets, for hours on end, unrestrained. i spend a lot of time there, alone, & i think it is the contributing factor in me developing a low-intensity interest in puppetry later on in life. once i start talking with one of her colleagues & spend a while parroting nationalist conspiracy theories from my father. my mother comes over eventually & he tells her i'm one of the most articulate & perceptive children he's ever met. it's absurd. i know this is absurd

once, in fifth grade english class, our teacher has us write all sorts of verbs on the whiteboard, trying to guess what a character in a story is about to do. someone intends to write "wrapped," but writes "raped." i watch the teacher notice this & quietly fix it. i saw, i knew

in my bedroom one night i realize a bunch of existential dread stuff for the first time & cry hysterically

early in fifth grade, i miss my bus stop. i tell the driver i missed my stop. an older girl comes up from the back of the bus & starts heavily involving herself in the situation really unnecessarily. then she takes a brief look at me & concludes that i'm autistic. she says her brother is autistic, so she can recognize it. she talks to me like a dumb puppy dog. i get home & tell my mother about this, then go "i'm not autistic!" while going into my room & crying

when i was around seven (?) years old, i went & looked at my birthday on wikipedia. later, i believe my father & i were talking about stuff that had happened on our birthdays in various years, & i clearly remember going up to him & saying, "Gerard died on my birthday" Gerard was a medieval Count of Auvergne who married one of the daughters of Louis the Pious, who was himself son of Charlemagne & Co-Emperor of the HRE. i expected my father to know who i was talking about because at that age i had no grasp of what bodies of knowledge i could expect to be commonplace among people. i figured that maybe everyone knew whatever was on wikipedia, generally.

[opinated-user]

Just because people including Sai were talking about it earlier, I was watching the stream today and saw Nooblord talking in the chat. I'd like to believe this means they aren't a sock account, it's possible Lily just made their pfp for them and kept it in her pictures. We know she smashes her keyboard what are the odds of her typing in chat while also saying different words at the same time. It's elaborate. I say this so people don't make a big leap on shaky evidence, because she has made socks before but Nooblord is not the best example of that.

was that stream with a cam on? if not, then it's possible that LO was typing on her phone while at the same time doing something else for the stream. just saying because, if my memory doesn't fail me (@britts-galaxy-brain confirm if true or not), Tara and LO would also message with her at the same time. either by LO having two computer or a phone i don't know, but i remember somewhere that being part of the chatlogs.

[kausatstolar]

11-20

former | latter

Alright. It's been a very long time since I've done this, largely because life got in my damn way. It's about 18 days until the first anniversary of sovstuck. Isn't that cool? Let's go back to visit our favorite jadeblood. I think I like the panel/text/analysis format, so I'm going to keep up with that.

RETRIS: Investigate poster.

You're not sure if you can consider your JOB a HOBBY, but you entertain the NARRATOR anyway. You are an ACTOR, of the TRADITIONAL LIVE-ACTION BATTLEGROUNDS ROLEPLAY variety. It is a controversial, culturally Carapacian pastime. Lights. Cameras. Action. Bloodshed. Real people died in the making of these productions. Some by your hands.

There's something delightfully unsettling about this. Retris's hand being the only troll hand, grasping the crown. The monsters strewn across the counter. The offhanded comment on the fact he's killed some of these people.. How well acquainted was he, with the hands in the poster. How old is this poster, on that note?

RETRIS: Stare at your hands.

You take a moment to contemplate the amount of times you've washed gore off your carapace. Some were people you've loved. You think it's fine. They'd all agreed in advance that that's how they wanted to go.   You try not to think about it too hard, but it gnaws at you sometimes when the moon is hung high. Some of them were so young. Just like you.

Guh. I really like the composition of this panel. It's so fucking dreadful. He looks so unhappy here. You think it's fine. They agreed in advance. You try not to think about it.

RETRIS: Get immediately distracted by the SHRINE behind you.

Oh fuck yes. Disregard all previous thoughts. It's EVANGELION time. You’ve been a hardcore fan of the series NEON GENESIS EVANGELION since you were a child. It was a formative piece of media to you. It has informed many aspects of your being. You have a particular fixation on the relationship between Evangelion's IKARI SHINJI and NAGISA KAWORU. This is your shrine dedicated to the pairing. KawoShin, it's called in fan spaces. Not that you've ever participated in those. Every Evangelion fan except for you and your BEST FRIEND is annoying. You'd like it if they got blown up with lasers. In fact, you feel quite the same way about-

Nothing better to wipe away the pain of all the people you've lost along the way than blorbos! He's so charming here. His artstyle is really charming. Look at that smiiiile. I'm sure that his love of NGE and KawoShin will not be exceedingly relevant, and has absolutely nothing to do with the way I format these. I feel the urge to blow everybody but you and your bestie up with lazers, though.

It's a sound page...!

Oh?

Fun first sound page! Wonder who's blowing up his DMs?

RETRIS: Investigate desk.

I understand him. That's all I can say here. ...Is that a KawoShin mousepad?

...What a wonderfully drawn hand. What on earth is making him hesitate like this?

Oh. That's all he was doing.

Wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up-

NERV, not KawoShin. Cool. What's all the hurry? Surely nobody's dying? ...Surely.

There we go! Ah, yes, good ol' VRISCORD. Everyone's using this handy little messaging app these days. Probably on account of it coming pre-downloaded on literally fucking everything. Your username on the platform is azimuthAnomaly -- don't tell the internet -- and English m4y not 6e your first l4ngu4ge, 6ut, you 4re trying your 6est. It seems a couple of your FRIENDS have been messaging you while you were out.

Oh. Yeah. I understand. Nice to get a view of who he talks to.

RETRIS: Commit favoritism.

You check on your best friend first, as it should be. She comes before everything else in the world. Including yourself.

[PRIVATE CHATLOG]

Have a strong feeling that "Including yourself." is going to come back and bite everybody. God, he and GG are SO fucking cute together. I love the camraderie they've got here. Ret-HIIssss.... The friendship they have reminds me a little of me and my bestie. Heehee.

[alveolaraspergillosis]

i have a weird amount of regret over deleting old posts and old accounts and old chatlogs, and going over old diary entries to black out old sentences, and running a hard drive reset on my old laptop

[starkeaton]

did you know that if you close DMs with someone on discord, and that person deletes their account, then you lose all the chatlogs with them? you can recover your messages by requesting your data package, but theirs are gone forever.