#edit: the screenshots were weird but i fixed them

[shiki-jin]

YOUR CELESTIAL MAJESTY • SAGAU

(part 0 here)

was listening to TruE on loop while writing the last part of this, it's genuinely such a good song ugwvdya

also can you spot the contradiction ;D it's plot relevant i promise

not proofread, dont bully me ill write a thesis on why youre a meanie

—

you had long deleted genshin, since you had other things to do. you had wanted to go back to the game for a while now, now that you were less busy, but there was just one little problem.

it was now taking up nearly triple the amount of space that it was when you uninstalled it. around 300 whole gigabytes.

jesus christ, what phone can even handle this???

your phone, apparently. because as you opened the game to see if maybe a miracle would happen and that if maybe they would just, like, remove half of the things in the game, it just… kinda loaded?

no installing new files, no checking for anything, no nothing…. just an immediate pan to the gates of celestia.

you decided to check if it was the right genshin since this was just way too weird, but countering your judgement, every link you found led you to the same game, leading you to believe it not to be a bootleg or an illegal version.

guess i’ll trust it then.

you clicked on the gates which opened smoothly, and your screen turned white. then, the symbols of the seven elements appeared in gray.

and then the game just… opened. no loading time, once again. no getting stuck on the geo symbol, nothing. nada. just a smooth entrance into what you had to assume to be teyvat — but your surroundings didn't really support that claim.

the grass was brown and just looked off, the sky was gray. a darker shade than, say, mond’s walls, but it was like one of those game crashes.

well, except you could still move around.

you moved your current character around (the traveller? since when were they the only one in your team?) and decided to open the map after not figuring out where you could possibly be.

hold on, this is springvale? since when?

eveything looked dead, like it had been rotting for a century. you tried to ignore it though, and teleported to the inside of mondstadt. surely this was just some glitch, right? one that would fix itself if you teleported?

maybe the world loaded incorrectly, maybe the fact that nothing took time to load meant that it couldn't load, maybe this or that, maybe…

maybe this really was how the game looked normally. you hadn't done any quests though, so you wondered if it could be restored.

you took a screenshot of the your surroundings — the stone, worn down and dirty. the houses which looked to be in a horrible state, and… the npcs, all sickly and pale, like they were starving.

you went to reddit (yes, reddit), and posted the screenshot, asking if it was normal.

you closed the game and decided to take a nap, too tired to really deal with this shit any further.

while you slumbered, people replied to your post.

╰┈➤ lol me too anon, me too

╰┈➤ isn't the game closed or wtv? how'd you get this wtf

╰┈➤ they're trolling

╰┈➤ o makes sense oops

╰┈➤ So we’re all still mourning huh

╰┈➤ jokes aside that's a super impressive edit ngl

you remained unaware of the truth, but you'd find out soon enough.

actually, you'd find out now, apparently…

what the fuck?? why is my bed so hard now?

you groaned and forced your eyes open, seeing a dark, nearly black sky.

the only light was a single star, lingering right above you.

“since when was i outside...?"

a voice spoke to you, answering your question.

“you always have been, have you not? but would you like to head inside, my lord?”

... huh? i recognize that voice...

—

p.s. place your bets on who it is, i’m thinking of one specific character but if there's a fan fav i'll make it them instead since i haven't written anything beyond this point (⁠・⁠_⁠・⁠;⁠)

p.s.s. don't expect updates to this series too quickly, i wish i could write as quick as i think of ideas but sadly that's not the case orz

[factual-fantasy]

28 asks! Thank you very much!! :}} ✉️

(Referencing this post)

I was thinking that the world of welcome home and the human world both exist, but they aren't connected by a TV show. :0 The puppet world is very real to them and they are real living people. The thing is is that there's no TV show of welcome home, that's just their lives-

Eddie is from our world/the human world. Which is where his hallucinations of having 5 fingers and human skin comes from-

@candyglumboy (Referencing this post)

Midori is my Meowscarada! :0 He's friends with Grim and Sylvester :))

(Referencing this post)

XDD Just a playful NOM

@fawncr33k

Yes yes! I screenshot them :00 I then paste them into FireAlpaca and add the watermark :) 👍👍

@bellanova137 (Referencing this post)

Oh!- In my AU Eddie was one of the most recent neighbors :00 this was his first time at the yearly Christmas party because it was the first one he was around for! <XDD

Thinking he moved in sometime right after Christmas last year. Which gave him and Frank a good year to get to know each other and be on first name basis :0 Which is why Frank doesn't call him Mr. Dear in my comic! :)

(Of course present day is a few years after this comic--)

Oof, yeahhh that was a comic script that I went to edit but accidentally posted- 💀

Thank you for the name suggestions though! I still haven't decided on what it'll be <XDD

XDDDD Hurray!! (Sorry!!--) I hope you enjoy your stay in the fandom! :DD

Also thank you so much!!! :)) I'm so glad you've liked my artwork!! :DDD

It would be watching anyone that repaired it :00

There was actually an idea that back when Barnaby was going to be the second ever neighbor in the neighborhood.. he almost bought home and restored it himself. The reason why he didn't though is because Home was just too small for him. The front door was too short, he'd have to duck though every doorway and the ceilings were too low..

Why would he wanna spend all this time and money on fixing up an old house that's too small.. when he can just spend that money on buying whatever lot he wants and building a house that actually fits him? So that's what he went with..

But if Barnaby had bought home and fixed it up. it's be the same thing as Wally... weird insomnia, anxiety attacks.. feeling like you're being watched while you sleep... etc..

As for their world, I only really had the forest surrounding the neighborhood in mind. Its a HUGE forest that goes on for miles and miles. I haven't decided how far away Julies sisters/brother live but I should really work on them 💀

As for Home, so far Home is the only creature of its kind :0 none of the other houses are alive and it stands as the only strange entity around the neighborhood.

And when it comes to neighborly mysteries and secrets, so far Eddie being human and Julie's secret past is all i got <:///

Oh yeah for sure! My Barnaby is much more mellow than in canon it seems- in my AU he doesn't butt heads with Julie at all! :0 In fact she's a really good friend of his. She has some pretty flat jokes but Barnaby appreciates her attempts and they usually get a genuine laugh out of him XDD

As for Frank, its like a SpongeBob and Squidward situation. They just have different personalities and different senses of humor.. and that's okay! Barnaby likes to crack some stupid jokes to kind'a poke at Frank for the fun of it, but he never goes too far. And the jokes are never personal or insult his interests. They're just really dumb jokes that make Frank roll his eyes XDD

At the end of the day, Barnaby considers Frank to be his friend. And Frank would never admit it, but he sees Barnaby as his friend too :)

I had a very small brain moment and only realized just now that I cut out the askers name by accident 💀 my bad!

Also hey these names aren't too bad! <XDDD Abaolson sounds kind'a cool in my opinion! :00

Oh- well actually I'm only doing Pokémon from the Unova region with a handful of exceptions. So I don't have to worry about Gyarados, Milotic or Onix. At least for now :00 I might make an exception for Gyarados.. so when it comes to long snakey Pokémon I have Serperior and Eelektross to worry about..

As for Ninjask, I imagine I'll do something similar to what I did with Chandelure :00

@glitchhayden418

WHOMPST??

(In response to this post)

AAA YES YES! :DD A "I thought I lost you/I could have lost you" hug!! AAAA I'm so glad that translated well! :))

And actually- I began sketching out the comic 👀👀👀 although I got hung up on the battle scene and need to go back for some resketching 😅

(In response to this post)

Well of course! :D Angst isn't fun if there's no comfort 😌

@littlemisspostit

ESKJFOSIJFIOSJ HYUCKS??? THATS THE BEST THING EVER XDDD

Upon googling him, maybe I could! :0 Maybe he could be a friend of one of the neighbors that lives a few neighborhoods over?

@viennaarttt (The post in question)

Ohhh I see! :0 That was a joke post mostly <XD But if it did happen I can see Barnaby hanging up and calling back to try to wake up Wally 💀

Awwe <:)) This was very sweet, thank you.. I'm getting a lot of comments saying that people liked my old Gravity Falls stuff. Its helping me feel a bit better about all of it <:)

I will probably keep those posts privated for my own comfort,, but now with no worry of people finding my old artwork,, it clears the way for potential NEW Gravity Falls artwork! :0 This time with better written angst <XDDD

@danman22ful

I've watched all of Markpliers videos on it! :D And I gotta say its.. well its something that's for sure! <:D Its refreshing to see a character with both parents living and in a loving relationship ngl- I feel like I never see that nowadays <XD

I searched around for a bit and couldn't find much info on this actually <:0 I saw a Wally with red hair and a blond Frank..? Is this like an opposite personality's AU..?

@famouslysleepy

In my AU Frank and Eddie are just friends :0 mostly because I don't like writing romantic stuff for characters that aren't my own.. plus exploring platonic bonds is much more interesting to me :)

As for Eddie and Home, this comic shows a bit of Eddies problem with it- just like Wally he has the blood chilling feeling of being watched by something..

And even after the party, going near Wally's house makes Eddie feel uncomfortable and anxious.. its just all a matter of feeling you're being watched by something or someone..

XDD If I had a had a nickel for every time someone told me they were shocked to find out I'm in a fandom they love,, I'd be rich!

Also thank you!! :DD I'm glad you liked it! :DDD

aw <XD well this is bitter sweet to read since I've privated most of my Gravity Falls stuff.. but its nice to hear that you enjoyed it all <:) Thank you!

I use FireAlpaca, its in my FAQ in my pinned post! :0

I'm actually hearing bad things about it believe it or not- talks about Ford acting super out of character and what not.. My curiosity is peaked 👀

[mydetheturk]

your requested reminder to post knives going nuclear on zazie when you can :)

ok so im going to be reblogging this to the body horrors week later cause. uh. well. knives. quite literally goes nuclear?

all of these screenshots are from the overhaul project cause i haven't managed to catch the dark horse digital editions on sale yet, though i'll provide the dark horse translations where i can because i have physical copies, and the dark horse translations are imo clearer here.

there are ids in all the alt texts for the photos, it's why this took several days longer than i'd originally planned -finger guns- alt texts might look a little weird in the first set btw - tumblr started eating the photoset and i had to spend an extra half an hour fixing it -finger guns-

the pages are volume 11, pages 90-92, and 114-17, because a lot of the pages in between are leadup pages and also have the zazie control worm. thing.

pages 90-2 are the distant explosion (you can click on the first image and see it in the photo viewer, if for some reason it will not view in dashboard mode. But it does exist!)

(on page 90, dark horse is a lot more specific, with "the northeast sky is glowing" instead of "the whole sky is glowing". the other two boxes with text read "what is--?!" and "oh my..!" respectfully as if they were cut off mid sentence.)

so uh.

knives went uh.

literal "nuclear bomb exploded just above a town"

because he kind of did. Unlike a true nuclear bomb, he did not form a mushroom cloud, but the metaphor is still there. that is a nuclear metaphor

per pages 114-117 (pages are from left to right, read the pages right to left. sorry)

(legato's speech bubbles on page 114 in the dark horse edition read: Survival of the fittest is the law of nature. What is about to happen now is a just a logical extension of that. Be very afraid. You are in his presence. Did you not notice, Leader of the Sand Worms?

It reads very differently, imo, more like Zazie was caught up in their own plots and schemes to realize the control worm didn't work. Legato is also telling Zazie that Zazie should be afraid of Knives. Okay? Not asking if Zazie is afraid. Telling Zazie to be afraid. Like some sort of reverse "Be Not Afraid" from the bible.

Zazie's thought bubbles on page 115 are translated as "the dark hole is swallowing the poison" which reads more like knives made a black hole. given the visuals? that sounds more likely. Black holes, as a real life thing that we know about and have tried to study, are often referred to as swallowing things that pass too close. knives made a mini black hole to eat the poison from the sand worm venom. knives has consumed the dependent plants.)

the fact is, as a metatextual read, plants are nuclear reactors. independent plants are walking nuclear bombs. Nightow did this on purpose. We're meant to read them as something nuclear.

This is, as i was saying to @needle-noggins the other night when i was working on it in an attempt to get more of the alt texts written, a casual display of power. Knives is throwing a hissy fit! Knives is throwing a multi-megaton display of power because Zazie tried to take him over with the control worm. Page 91 had needle-noggins and i speechless because on the low end that tower of debris from the explosion is (if we did the very, very rough math right) THIRTY MILES TALL. Twice as tall as the tallest mountain in the solar system, Olympus Mons! or roughly five and a half times as tall as Mount Everest. On the outside, because we figured its anywhere from 25-30 times taller than the cloud cover, it could be up to thirty seven miles

Over halfway to space on earth.

like.

I know we love the independent plants and all. But Holy Shit. just.

holy shit

[trilobi-te]

Chipspeech Twitter Archive Update

Hi I should have done this months ago.. I do not know when (or if) I am going to finish that website lmao. So I am just going to share my notes from Google Docs. Should be easier to read than the original posts and helpful as a starting point if anyone else decides to make a website :3

The documents are all on commenting mode so feel free to make comments to bookmark things for yourself or write your thoughts or whatever. Under the cut I have put some formatting notes.

It's a folder, each year of Twitter posts is its own document (I tried to compile them into one but it lagged too much). There is also a document with all of the original Tumblr posts (from the accounts I could find, no tags yet but I will go back and get them eventually, also no dates but they're all from 2015), and one with the bios from the official website for ease of access.

The formatting is a little (a lot) weird and there are probably pictures that need resizing/transcription but I figured it's better to give people access now. The text is small (to keep the page count as low as possible) so you will have to zoom in.

It goes by day, organized with a bulleted list. The top level bullets are each character that tweeted that day. The second level bullets are original tweets/retweets by that character. The third+ level bullets are comment threads under that tweet, the organization here is inconsistent but imo still readable (if you think something needs an edit for clarity let me know and I'll fix it).

For each character's section of the list, normal text is that character's tweets/comments. Italicized text is anyone who is not that character. If it is labeled with unitalicized text, it is that character/important account (e.g. the official Chipspeech account), otherwise it is a fan. I also included some labels and/or clarifying comments for Vocaloid producers I like, they're not central to the story though

I got rid of the line breaks within the tweets when copying them down because it was easier to format. Sorry about that. Idk how to fix it other than going through everything again but it doesn't take away from the story so I'm leaving it for now.

If something came from a website other than Twitter, I tried to provide the link (unless its content was deleted). I did my best to transcribe the Clyp posts that were not deleted.

If something is a text-only retweet, it is marked with [retweet]. If it includes an image, it's probably a screenshot of the whole thing. I only included retweets that felt story-relevant (so no miscellaneous cat pictures, Apple-related aesthetic images, etc.), but if people really want it I can go back and add the rest.

Deleted tweets are noted with [deleted tweet], with the characters they came from if applicable. Idk how Twitter works but it the person in the thread is replying to the username of a certain character, I assumed it was that character's tweet that had been deleted. If something says [deleted Dandy thread], assume there is a deleted Dandy tweet in between each of the listed tweets (or another character, but it's usually Dandy). That was meant to be a temporary time-saver and I've gone back and fixed the ones I've found, but there's probably more I accidentally skipped.

Anything not in English is translated in a comment. Except the X-Sampa (I will fix that sometime but there's not much of it). Also it was done with the built-in Google Translate feature so it may be a little incorrect. Unclear pictures and whatnot also have clarifying comments. I can add more clarifying comments (or image IDs) if anyone needs them.

I tried not to include any unattributed fanart but there are some that I forgot to copy the handle for (I am also fixing these when I find them).

As for any future updates to this folder as a whole, I kind of want to go back through each account's liked tweets to see if there's anything funny in there but idk when that will be. That would probably be its own document.

Honestly I should have given everyone access back in June.. oops. If you have any questions you can put them in a comment on this post (or reach out to me another way, idk). As I mentioned before, feel free to use all of this as a starting point if you're making your own website.

I'll pin this post so it's findable in the future. Also sorry for disappearing for several months (it will happen again).

[cidthesquid]

More New Features/Update - Style Savvy : Styling Star #02

[Previous Post]              [First Post]              [Next Post] Aaaand we're back! Last time, All we really got to do was the prologue, restocking and setting up our starting outfit, So let's see what comes next:

So first I ended up using mods to edit my character a bit, Inital Design: | New Design:

The most obvious change is the skin tone, I'm not the biggest fan, of how darker skin tones work in the new art style, I would have preferred something in the middle, Or a slight tweak to the lighting, as the color of both can vary quite a bit in various conditions:

But I still think both look good overall, (emulator could be Affecting) So I haven't decided what I'll stick with long term. (I don't really believe that our avatar's need to look like us IRL, so I encourage everyone to try whatever you want, even other skin tones!) I also adjusted the eyes a bit:

I really like the 'cat eye' design from before, but I did not like that it was 'baked' into the eye shape. This really restricted some designs, and make eyelashes look a little weird imo. The lipstick is new for post 2 as well, and I think it's a nice addition, without being too flashy, but I may change it later. Any ways, even after all these blogs, it's still a little uncomfortable talking about physical appearance, even for my own fictional avatar, So I'll even the design choices at that, let's hop back into the game! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Alright, so another new feature for Styling Star is:

They actually announce when new people show up in town! It's another small change, that really helps add to the feeling of the town growing! If only they made it a little easier to find and talk to people, maybe the social aspect was a little over done in fashion forward, But it's a little weird to have a new entries that shows a bunch of people walkign around, with no option to talk to most of them.

It kinda feels like we've reverted back to the first 3ds game where you only have fixed NPC's in specific locations:

...and they only cycle through a small handful of lines. Maybe this will improve overtime, it's not a huge deal though. I also learned that you can change you can change your phone's wallpaper and background picture, that's pretty fun:

Yup, I'm pretty broke again! Time to go to work! And we just had a customer walk in and ask for a full outfit!

I guess that mean's we're near the end of the tutorial, And the dialogue choices even let us Savvy veterans skip the explanation! Again, they really nailed the prologue in this game! It's really good at giving players freedom in how to approach the start, while still keeping them from getting lost. So now it's time to make our first real outfit of the game:

I think it turned out well given out limitations, but maybe the hat as a bit too much,haha. There's also a neat little option to style from any outfit you've saved in your scrapbook. But for some reason, you can't save the outfit you're currently making So you'll have to design them in your apartment first, then you can suggest your custom design for customers. Any way, they were the only customer today, so on to the next... ----- The new girl from the prior day shows up at our shop:

(I guess they wanted to give us a days advance notice, or it overlapped with an event?) Anyway, she asks for a rock skirt, literarily the one item I did not yet buy in that style! XD So I head to the exhibition hall, buy way more than I need, and head back.

I completely forgot what she was wearing, despite having the other screenshot literary showing on my second monitor. (as I write this while playing) But it all turned out ok, as I picked up a really nice match:

And that was it, she bought the skirt, and left. I was expecting this to be more of an 'event' like explaining, if a customer 'really likes' an item, they can ask for a full outfit, but nope. They did have a cute little epilogue though, after they bought the outfit, her normally Stoic boyfriend complements her look:

A bit of an seemly fluffy ending, but kinda directly tied into a comment I made in my bonus post about not really being comfortable delivering complements, especially in regard to one's appearance, (outfit or otherwise) It may seem like a simple thing for some, and I don't really think it's worth going off-topic enough to explain why it's difficult for me, but it is interesting seeing some version of that shown in-game! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The rest of the day was also mostly filled with people asking for a single item, so a bit on the slow side, So I decided to work on a few pre-made (scrapbook) outfits to offer to customers, It was a little weird having to build them all on my avatar, as the hair and makeup don't really match the styles I was going for:

And once there were no more customers to help, I changed back into my standard outfit and decided to turn in for the night:

This game must have been a huge 180 for people playing right after fashion forward. No real time clock is a nice change, but with the limited customers and lack of npc's to talk to, (so far) it really feels like the days have a fixed end point. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ New Day, and a new brand unlocked!

Also, I think I forgot to mention the 'daily results' screen, I believe it's a replacement for the 'happiness gauge' From trendsetters, but improved to show a numerical rank rather than just resting with no trackable progression. This is the last day we'll cover in this post, it both seems like a good stopping point, (And I'm kinda hungry, and my ADHD's hyperfocus is forcing me to finish this haha)

I guess this game has achievements, that's pretty nice! So, I wake up and see another "new person has arrived in town" notification. So, I leave my apartment ready to run into them at my shop, and on the way, I literally run into them:

(Oh hey, an actual event!) They fell over, so after making sure they were okay, I'm introduced to Rosie and We're given the chance to name the city:

Oh, gees, I was not prepared for this, and I probably can't change it later, ahhh.

Sorry, I panicked, and just typed stuff unto Google Translate until something with a nice sound came out. XD Sorry to anyone who's french, I just think your words sound nice. google says "nouvelle vie" means "New Life", that sound like a reasonable enough city name. Anyways we learn she's from out in the country, and a little lost, She complements our clothes and mentions only ever seeing fashionable people on tv. She also mentions that she's interested in getting some new clothes, so we invite here to visit our Boutique! And now we've opened a few new events, But I've just been informed that I have already used up my 30 photos for this post, so I guess the rest will have to wait till next time! <Next Post> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for reading! I had a lot of fun making this, so I hope you had fun reading it as well.

As always, all comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome! (I'm also looking for feedback on this new style, how's the formatting, too many Gifs?)

You literally can't bother me, (unless you go out of your way to be a jerk), so post whatever you need to say!

[changingplumbob]

hii!! 11-14 for the story questions

Hooray a chance to talk!!! And I actually really wanted to do these 4! Thank you Lori 😁 I'm throwing in a cut just because I write long answers, don't want to be cluttering dashboards.

11) Why have you decided to tell this story? Are there any messages or meanings within it?

It was about 6 months of me playing my rotations before I had the thought to record what was happening in story format. I was actually sticking with households and wanted to be able to look back and see how far they'd come, so I decided to start writing and taking screenshots. I've always liked creative writing throughout my life, but have been reluctant to share it, there's so much talent out there. I enjoyed writing about my sims so wanted to share it, mainly so I could talk to people about my sims because I have such fun playing.

Messages or meanings... I try to write most of my sims as being accepting. There's a lot of hate and bigotry in our world, and I like writing a world where there is minimal prejudice. Samir will never have to face sims distrusting him simply because he is of Arab descent. Devin will never face discrimination in casting simply because she is married to a woman. Joey will never have his job performance questioned simply because he has hearing loss.

I do write a few mean and narrow minded sims but they are few and far between. They are mainly there to add some realism but I want my sims to feel safe being who they are. So messages... judge someone for their character, not something that they have no control over (ethnicity, sexuality, gender, disability).

12) Do you actually play the game or do you just use it as a storytelling medium?

I LOVE playing! I preordered Sims 4! However, patience is not my strong suit. The longest I've played one household lasted from the teens in a household growing to YA and having a baby... I was the master of making a household, playing for a few in game weeks, then getting bored. Rotational play is great for me as it helps me stay invested, plus I love to micro manage.

I do consider that I'm playing my game and just recording what happens for the most part, Reece and Samir are the only ones I think of as me crafting a story. Apart from them I play pretty unplanned.

13) From basic planning to a finished post, how long does that take you?

I like to play, take screenshots, then write for those before returning to the game for another round of playing. Let me check some dates... The next households first part screenshots were taken on Jan 28th and I finished playing the household on Feb 3rd. Looks like I created the word document on Jan 28th and it was last edited on Feb 4th.

So 8 days to play and write the chapter. I'd guess another day to finish queuing the posts (I also do these as I go). But that is probably one of the faster ones. This latest one I've done has taken me over 2 weeks, yes I was away for a portion of that, and I've still not finished the writing. I'm currently unemployed so I have the time to spend on it. When I find a new job I imagine average creation time will double or triple.

Drafts from the past take about 3 minutes as it's just me getting a screenshot of whatever weirdness is happening and putting it in a post. Lookbooks can take several hours to string together, or less than 1 if I'm not providing new outfits. Build or Reno posts take maybe half an hour to put together, providing I took the screenshots I need. This post took me an hour to write because I'm having an IBS flare up and thinking deeply.

14) Do you have any regrets about your story so far? if you could go back in time, how would you fix these?

I am not a big one for regret in real life. I was for a long time but now I try to see the past as "things happened, I did the best I could in the circumstances with my resources and what I knew".

I do somewhat regret putting my earlier writing straight on Twitter with no copy to my hard drive because all that story is essentially lost to the black hole of the internet. BUT that's taught me to keep records of what I'm doing.

Story regrets... nope. I've sat here for 5 minutes and cannot think of one. I do feel sad about making all of Marta's family dead but I don't regret that choice. What I have done with my sims are things that made sense for the characters.

[meikostan]

just solved a mystery that wasn't really mystery and didn't really need solving 👍 anyway i was going insane re:oshi no ko timeline because i forgot how old the twins are and what year this takes place in and needed to put all of my info in one place. in this essay i over-analyze the models of iphone as they differ from each other in the manga vs the anime. warning: very disorganized as i was sourcing all my evidence all this WHILE writing the post.

clickbait tldr: OSHI NO KO ANIME AND MANGA ARE IN SEPARATE TIMELINES⁉️ (NOT A PRANK‼️)

regular tldr: they're like 15/16 and the manga takes place in 2020 (but like including their childhood as well as their teenage years).

edit: the image formatting is broken :( idk how to fix it, sorry. they're still there, they're just huge and not next to each other for some reason

compare and contrast ruby in the manga vs the anime. now i will admit i am not an expert of identifying iphones but in the anime she appears to be holding an iphone 4; we can tell because there's only one camera lens, the power button is on the top, as is the headphone jack. it's also a bit rounded on the edges, which seem to have a little bit more meat on them compared to the manga. speaking of, compare with the manga: here, the phone has 3 camera lenses. the angle prevents us from getting a good view of the top of the phone, but there doesn't seem to be either a headphone jack OR a power button. it's a bit harder for me to tell but i think this is supposed to be an iphone 12 pro max.

compare. left: iphone 4, right: iphone 12 pro max

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL because aqua has an iphone too so of course we're looking at that

left: aqua seems to be using the same iphone 4 that ruby was using previously

right: looks more like an iphone x judging by the camera? compare:

ok so moving on. not from phones in general we'll still be talking about those but we also need to consider some other hints shown by the use of technology here. the anime seems to be pushing harder for us to view vol 1 as being set some time around 2010; if you saw my other post re:my thoughts on episode 1 you'll know that i talked about this already, but i'll restate some stuff here for completion's sake (+ add pictures)

compilation of flip phones being used throughout ai's death montage; while i did find some articles published in 2009 on flip phones dipping in popularity because of smart phones, they were definitely still being commonly used around that time. i know this because i was alive in 2009

also a wii, which was released in late 2006. it would have been incredibly common in many households, especially for non-gamers, which it was marketed towards. obviously a lone wii does not automatically mean oshi no ko vol 1 is set in the early 2010s/late 00's, but this in combination with the older models of phones does seem to point in that direction. also i have no proof of this but i feel like if it was set in modern day (2020s) that wii would be a nintendo switch instead.

bonus kana with an iphone 4 btw

you'll notice that these are all anime screenshots, and this is because pretty much none of this is in the manga. apart from the funeral we don't see any crowd shots, or anything of the public; it's all very focused in on aqua and ruby. what we DO see in terms of technology are ruby's iphone 12 pro max and aqua's iphone x, meaning in the manga either vol 1 takes place around late 2020/early 2021, the cast of oshi no ko is stuck in an eternal present, or this was an art oversight brought upon by early installment weirdness.

also, to cover the use of twitter: twitter was launched in late 2006. the website saw a pretty huge boost in popularity in 2008, and the mobile app launched in 2010. it would be very possible for the twins to go twitter viral and become the oshi no ko version of charlie bit my finger.

OK on to guessing how old they are in the present, which for now only exists in the manga!

DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS POINT IF YOU ARE AN ANIME ONLY AND INTEND TO KEEP IT THAT WAY, OR ARE OTHERWISE NOT CAUGHT UP WITH THE MANGA.

so, we know that ai had the twins when she was 16, and died a week before she turned 20. for simplicity's sake we'll just say she died when she was 20. that means the twins would be about 4 years old at this point.

what we're interested in is figuring out their age at present day. chapter 11 opens up with ruby filling out her idol applications; she list her age as being 14.

however, we know that she's been filling out multiple applications for a good while now, and aqua has continually been sabotaging her. this might not even be an application from present day. speaking of aqua, he mentions right after this panel high school entrance exams:

in japan, students enter high school (upper secondary school) around the time they're 15-16 years old. of course, aqua says they're "coming up", not that they're soon or currently happening. they could be on the lower end of 15 around here, or the higher end of 14.

additionally, in the next chapter, aqua is seen wearing what looks to be a gakuran (basically, middle school boy's uniform; middle school takes place ages 12/13 to 14/15).

from this we can guess that around 10 to 11 years have passed since ai died; they're about 14 to 15 here.

if we pretend that their childhood in the manga also took place in 2010, that means present day oshi no ko takes place around 2020.

mystery solved! but i like digging deeper this is fun. so let's continue.

skipping to the next volume!

lovenow time! here they outright state aqua's grade; high school 1st year, aka 10th grader, aka like 15/16.

can't grab screenshots of where 15 years of lies was established because mangaplus hates me and has locked the relevant chapters behind an app >:(

have to stop it here bc i don't remember as much as i thought i did and i also don't have access to chapters 95 thru 114 (thanks mangaplus👍) so uh yeah thank you for sticking with my rambles. again this was just me logicking through stuff because i forgot how old they are & is for personal reference. next time i do a reread i'll add more ^_^

[arceus01]

Sites I Should Quit: Reddit Edition

Vibes: Overwhelmingly Negative

Reddit never fails to dampen my mental health. It's like every time I go to have a Fun Time scrolling my feed, someone, somewhere, manipulates my algorithm to show me The Shit That Will Make Me Upset (to a greater or lesser degree.)

So, okay, this time wasn't that bad but the truly bad stuff is stuff I will simply never talk about. But this bothers me and I am Allowed to talk about it so I will. Every so often, my misadventures lead me to the... cringe culture parts of the internet. Reddit is rife with this crap. So I ended up on some thread that was, and I say this with confidence, a fake story about a guy with [weird sexual obsession]. He tells his girlfriend, disgust, he tells his co-workers, disgust, he tells his parents, disgust. It reminded me of this (also fake) story that I had a screenshot of saved in the depths of my computer files about a guy who throws an anal vore-themed party. Same vibes. Disgust, taboo [sexual weirdness].

All the comments, save a few, on this story are basically "this guy is mentally ill and he should be forced to go to therapy because [weird sexual obsession] can't be healthy!" And something about tulpas. I do not relate to the story protagonist's exact [sexual weirdness] but I, too, have many [weirdnesses] both sexual and non-sexual. Of course, I do not talk about them. Most people don't. The reactions to the story, fake as it was, were genuine. Disgust, pathologizing, Judgement. The persistent idea that therapy would "fix" the [weirdness].

Because that's what this was really about. It was a reaction of "I do not like this, it makes me feel disgust, therefore it must be [wrong] and A Therapist would Make It Go Away so I will no longer be disturbed by the existence of [sexual weirdnesses]." Only one person mentioned that the only 'mental illness' present was the need to talk about it to unwilling people, and just dumping the whole load out with no easing in whatsoever. Okay. I can see that, at least. Some people are just socially idiotic but again, this story was certainly fake. But there was so little... understanding. Not that I (an idiot) should ever expect understanding or empathy from Internet Users, least of all, Redditors (especially those who go on subreddits dedicated to drama/cringe). But I am continually expecting, shall we say, a voice of reason. A "Guys as long as it's not literally ruining his life, actually dangerous or severely distressing to him who cares? Not every [weirdness] is mental illness."

But no, it's just "he can't tell the difference between fiction and reality!" and "The human brain is unable to tell fictional characters apart from real people". [Citation Needed]. I have to admit I do feel offended by these kinds of posts. I feel singled out, Exposed. Alone. I can't talk about my [weirdnesses]. None of them, ever. I'm simply not Allowed to. I had to make a stupid tumblr blog with no identity and no followers just to begin sharing any of my thoughts outside my system. And even still, I'm nervous writing this, I don't want to post it but I have to externalise my feelings somewhere.

I am, essentially, a fucking freak. I like it. I like it a lot. But the Normies of the world do their damnedest to make [people like me] feel Ashamed And Ill. You are crazy because your [spiritual beliefs]! You are crazy because your [systemhood]! You are crazy because your [paraphilias]! You are crazy because I am disgusted by you! You must change to make me more comfortable! No one talks to me like this thankfully, but it's only because I simply never share these things. I wish I could. In a more Based world people could just be like "My [weirdnesses] sure are [weird] today! Oh you have [weirdnesses]? Tell me more I am interested in the uniqueness of each person's internal subjective experiences!" But we do not live in a Based world we live in a world that's just generally kind of shit.

Internet Users are not making it better either, they are on a crusade to make every abnormal person feel Ashamed And Ill. So many people were saying "Oh I'm not weird after all!" and "Wow I guess I'm actually vanilla..." and it's just. Stop. You are not Better. You are not Uncringe and Based and Cool because [other people] are 'worse' than you. You are actually More Cringe for letting it slip that your sense of self is so fucking Fragile that you Must Compare And Contrast Always. Everything is a competition, but that's a rant for another day. I will admit, however, that I Am Not Immune. I, too, have partaken in Cringing. The difference is that I am doing better to avoid that and to stop doing it because it's bad.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make in all this is that [sexual weirdnesses] (and non sexual [weirdnesses] as well) are treated as a pathology in their own right, as if the mere presence of Sexual Deviance and Unusual Thoughts And Beliefs are a Problem to be Fixed, to be Controlled. I'm extremely tired of it, every time I see it my mental health gets a little worse, and I feel the need to find some kind of Validation that, actually, it's okay to be Who I Actually Am.

[cerberuscaeli]

Amy's lost playlist - EBG edition

ebg entry for @i23kazu 's ebg. Includes a 299 words introduction, 2 gifs, 1 Spotify link to a created playlist + 10 screenshots from specific lyric parts. Found utc.

"So, what is that?" Amir asks, softly nudging your shoulder as you look up from the small device one of the fatui agents had given you. A thank you for saving them from the horrors of Sumeru. The so-called horrors are better known as vines. "From what I understand, I can share things like music with others. It has to be connected to the Akasha and if the device makes a short beeping noise, it should be connected to the Akasha's that also beeped. A signal is all connected. And all I have to do is go to the menu of the playlist. Press 'continue' and music should be playing." You explain to your lover, your fellow forest rancher.

"Do you trust that? We both know how the fatui are." Amir reminded you as you let out a hum. "I don't, and this device has proven us why we should stay wary of them. Here, let me show you what happens when you press 'cancel' because that one causes some weird glitching error and you have to fully restart the entire device." You explained. You weren't the most tech-advanced and didn't really have any instructions but it was easy to learn and navigate through. It worked decently and the errors were easily fixed. "I still don't trust it. I think you should throw it away." Amir sighed, looking at the little device in your hands. "It's giving me the creeps. Besides, I don't like the idea of technology. The real world is out here, what we see, feel, taste and smell. That device is not good for anything. Please, just get rid of it my dear." Amir spoke, pressing a soft kiss on the top of your head. "I will." You assured him as you watched your lover leave.

// 10 songs found // Cancel // Error

Fix // Try Again // 10 songs found // Continue

// 10 songs found // Spotify Playlist found // https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1YgH9ZniQPFgD0PdhEzrbT?si=wdj-8NtqSPChGACHjpxmMw&pi=e-xI-_gyoeSw2K

file:Spotify // Out of Control // file;lyrics1.00.43 //

file:Spotify // Two Birds // file;lyrics2.00.18 //

file:Spotify // Mind is a Prison // file;lyrics3.00.22 //

file:Spotify // Don't Let Me Go // file;lyrics4.00.43 //

file:Spotify // You're Somebody Else // file;lyrics5.00.46 //

file:Spotify // The Water // file;lyrics6.01.22 //

file:Spotify // Shadow of Mine // file;lyrics7.00.27 //

file:Spotify // can you hear me? // file;lyrics8.00.45 //

file:Spotify // In This Shirt // file;lyrics9.03.36 //

file:Spotify // I Hope I'm Not Sick // file;lyrics10.01.38 //

[cornbread-but-minecraft]

Cornbread's Texture Fixer Devlog - Beta 2 - November 26th, 2023

guess i'm doing devlogs now :P. like the in the changelogs, i'm going to be going over things in the order i implemented them, just 'cause it's easier.

today will cover all the changes i made since fixing the verbose button (so the last week basically).

first thing first:

i fixed the 'dark' button's hover texture. for whatever reason, the face of the button is a darker shade of green than its shaded bevel when hovered over. the button's pressed texture doesn't have that issue, so i just replaced the colors.

i noticed the pallet was wrong when i made the first version of Thickly Be-Beveled Buttons, but i didn't do anything about it due to my idea of what the pack should be being different at the time. also, i use another resource pack that replaces this texture, so it is of no relevance to me. this fix will also be coming to TBBB.

looks kinda garish now tbh.

a small fix for an interface most people probably never see. if you're not reading the alt text, you probably can't tell what's different between the two images, but basically, because of the way bedrock edition handles UI textures, the right side of these banners appears slightly stretched. so i've fixed it.

side note: why can you even hover over these? like, it's not just a visual thing, so it's outside the realm of this pack, but just... why????

this is the mob effects screen, cropped to focus on this little problem area (it's always bevels with this game, isn't it). not entirely sure what to do with this screen, given how much it's clearly an artifact of the pocket edition alpha, but i can at least fix its textures.

this is one of the few screens that changes slightly depending on whether left hand mode is enabled or not, but the toggle for it seems to currently be missing, so i can't test the changes i've made there. hopefully it works correctly >w<

(these bevel fixes are coming to all of pocket UI as well btw.)

little behind-the-scenes: i usually write the changelog while making changes, but the posts are written after the fact. it's at this point the changelog lists a bunch of things (mostly close buttons) i actually reverted back to how they are in vanilla, since i decided they actually weren't consistency issues after all.

in previous versions of the pack, i changed the close buttons in container screens to all be part of toolbars, regardless of whether there was a help button to go along with them or not. i'll probably be tweaking this reversion next week, but there is one close button that's i'm changing to not be part of a toolbar even though it usually does have a help button, and it's this one:

you probably never noticed this, because who actually uses the how-to-play screen, but the help button doesn't work here. in fact, there just straight-up isn't even a how-to-play entry for the stonecutter at all! so i just removed the button.

next up, a few teeny-tiny changes that i can't be bothered to get screenshots for:

in previous versions of the pack, everything on the horse screen was in its java edition position, but i decided i didn't like that for the inventory label, so i moved it down a pixel.

chest and large chest screens now look the same as in conglomeration, which is to say, identical to java edition except for the text colors and close button.

simplified the JSON for the layering fixes on the HUD so they (now it) should hopefully be less intrusive and / or buggy.

some technical changes to container scroll panels (recipe book, etc.) that should theoretically make them more accommodating to how other resource packs use the texture.

speaking of the recipe book:

made the search bar shorter by a pixel so the things around it align with the pixel grid better. not shown: this also fixes the issue where the bottom of the recipe book's buttons were cut off by a third of a pixel on this tab.

also, the search bar is the correct length in creative mode now.

this thing is set up weird. also wrong. more noticeable when you hover over it. i fixed it.

i kept the outlines overlapping since that's a thing bedrock does sometimes and i think it's intentional, and i think it might be what the devs were going for here.

the pixel where the bevels meet on tabs is now consistently the correct color, that is to say: the same color as the face of the tab. (this bothered no-one but me probably.)

made this texture use an appropriate level of contrast... for a tab. it's a toolbar, but it uses a tab texture for some reason. the texture was messed up, and i fixed that, but i'm on the fence about whether i should swap out the texture entirely for one that looks more like the regular toolbar.

also the close button is a pixel higher.

....

these last few entries have been kinda boring for people that aren't me, haven't they? well that's about to change with this last one.

everyone, i present to you, probably the biggest thing in gaming:

so you know how, on the world select screen, the close button is part of its own tab / panel thing? and how when you use a controller, the button disappears, but not the tab? well....

i fixed it :3

i would like to note that i didn't just remove the tab, this is a dynamic thing that changes based on input method! it reappears when you use a mouse or touch controls, and the servers tab even changes its set of textures dynamically as well!!

this is unironically the most complicated thing in the pack, but still actually pretty simple?? this game's vanilla system has a lot of really robust architecture that just... isn't used. far more than the game's visual issues would have you believe.

[copperbora]

My Horrible Adventures with Etsy

My journey with my new Etsy shop began after Redbubble changed some policies that at the moment, I can't remember what my fuss even was. In any case, I didn't like Redbubble's changes, and I had been chafing, wanting different things than Redbubble was offering, so I researched other print-on-demand platforms and immediately found Printful, which unlike Redbubble, partners with more conventional shopfront websites like Etsy, Shopify, Bigcartel and WooCommerce.

Why Print-on-Demand?

I'm fucking poor. I full stop cannot afford to order and keep a physical inventory of product so for me print-on-demand is the only answer. I literally cannot even afford my own housing where I live (I have to live with my retired dad,) so physical product inventory is completely out of the question. Currently, I only make $1,200 a month with my day job... if I'm lucky. This is while living in the most expensive place for housing in the entire landmass of North America, the Canadian province of British Columbia. Moving isn't an option as I can't even afford housing where it is cheaper in Canada, plus doing so would remove me from my family which is a no-go socially. I don't have a partner to rely on for social support: I need my family which means that I need to stay put where I am in British Columbia, at least for now.

Where do the Woes Begin?

It started with Etsy repeatedly removing my listings despite all of my art being obviously hand drawn by me (and my being able to prove it with timelapse videos,) and the use of a print-on-demand service falling well within Etsy's rules. Frustrated, I added an infographic advertising the fact that my work is absolutely mine to every single one of my listings. This did nothing. I was still somehow violating Etsy's handmade policy and I couldn't figure out why.

This is their policy, by the way:

"Handmade on Etsy is a spectrum. On one end, we have makers — sellers who are literally making their items with their own hands (or tools). On the other end, we have designers — sellers who design their items but rely entirely on outside assistance or another business to help physically produce them. Many handmade sellers fall in the middle of the spectrum because they are both making and designing their items."

Then I got the email that I took a screenshot of and included here. Unless I fixed the unknown problem, Etsy was going to suspend my account and I wouldn't be able to get it back for at least six months. Frustrated and stressed, I desperately combed over the email and my Etsy seller account, struggling to figure out what I was missing. This can be easier said than done for me because I am dyslexic, so my brain tends to skip over some of the information that I read without me even knowing about it. I also have ADHD, so my ability to focus on non-fiction jargon is even worse than usual.

You would think a creative marketplace company like Etsy would understand that not all people's brain can easily parse written instructions, except there were no real instructions in the email at all. Printful never gave me instructions for this either, which is weird considering that they want you to sell their stuff on platforms like Etsy. There were no notes that I needed to go in manually to do anything. It was only because I had already been fudging around with my listings that I finally noticed that there was a widget called 'Core Details' which needed to be edited.

At long last I had figured out that I needed to physically add a production partner - Etsy has a bulk editing option for this, but since I discovered that that option is extremely glitchy, I had to (in a panic, scared again that my shop would be banned,) edit and check every single listing to make certain that Printful was displayed as my production partner. Fixed at last, I breathed a sign of relief.

Etsy Didn't Tell Me..

...after my credit card was recently stolen that it was debiting the $.20 USD ($.28 CAD) against my future sales so when my aunt kindly bought a blanket off of me I couldn't understand why I wasn't being paid the full amount for the purchase, not even enough money to even cover its production cost. After a lot of stress and emailing I finally discovered that Etsy was charging my future sales instead of my new credit card. I still don't know if I managed to fix this or not, but in any case I took a financial hit on my aunt's sale. Hoping that I wouldn't have any more problems, I turned my mind back to other matters in my life, thinking that I could relax about my shop.

But Then I Got THIS Email!

That's right, Etsy isn't going to give me 100% of my funds after fees for three months (even though my shop has already been open for longer than that.) Since most of the cost of my product listings is my cost, this means I won't even make profit on any of my listings for a quarter of a year. This is absolutely infuriating, especially because I didn't start this shop as a hobby, but because I need money to survive, because I want to be able to support myself financially with my art because conventional day jobs just aren't working for me. I raised the prices on my items but the burn still hurts. A friend mentioned that I could sell on Ko-fi instead which would net me 100% of the funds right away, so that I never go into debt for my sales even temporarily, so I began slowly adding items to my Ko-fi shop where I already had listings for commissions. (This is still a work in progress as I write this.)

Printful's Return Policy Sucks

This one isn't Etsy's fault, but it sure hurts too and Printful never directly explained what their policy was when I was getting into doing this so like a nincompoop I just left the default 30 day Printful return policy on my items. Simply put, because Printful is a print-on-demand company they do not accept returns or refund for buyer's remorse or even for incorrect sizing (no exchanges whatsoever.) Today I learned that an apparel item that I had sold was the wrong size for my customer so I looked up Printful's return policy and learned that Printful is never going to refund me for what I paid for my customer's item

I quickly got rid of the default Printful return policy on my Etsy shop, but now I'm going to be out $60 which I couldn't afford to lose in order to refund my poor customer. Coming from a decade of working in retail I feel bad not being able to accept returns or exchanges now, but I just can't afford to swallow any costs. It's bad enough how long Etsy takes to pay me even just 70% of of my sales; by the time that they do, Printful has already taken the item cost from me.

Apart from Ko-fi, I'm not Entirely Sure What to do Now.

At the moment I plan on leaving my cheaper listings - cotton t-shirts, stickers, toques/beanies and headbands on my Etsy store and treat it as a gateway to my Ko-fi. However, Ko-fi isn't really an option for growing my business because I have never been a successful artist when it comes to offering commissions and the only people who are going to readily find my Ko-fi are my friends and other artists. The problem with us creative people is while we really love supporting each other by buying each other's merch, we're also often kind of financially challenged because a good pecentage of us are neurodivergent (conventional day jobs are hard for us. It's like asking a Windows computer to run a program coded for Apple.)

I need to have my products available to strangers who have never heard of me before, who stumble across my work because they love wolves or other animals. So, I need to research a new commerce platform. Right now I'm muddling over learning more about WooCommerce and Weebly. I like the idea of a platform that posts ads on social media where strangers might encounter them and buy my work but I may need to launch a website which is yet another monthly fee.

I Haven't Earned Anything; I've LOST Money Instead.

Before I removed all the listings from my Etsy shop I had over 200 listings, each of which cost me $.20 USD ($.28 CAD) a pop. Since at least half of those had to be relisted after three months, all those listings really add up. Now, with Etsy refusing to pay me all of my money, plus ads that I paid for, and with the confusion with Printful's ridiculous return policy I think that I'm out at least $200 which I couldn't afford to spend. All of the Youtube videos about commerce platforms preach Etsy as the best site for artists to sell their work on but I almost want to remove my shop entirely.

I read multiple things about Etsy not being great for artists before I went into this venture but truthfully the Youtube videos that I watched which said the opposite really confused me. Despite its ridiculous return policy I still like Printful but until I make a proper amount of money with it I won't be able to offer refunds at all.

Mostly, I feel like a complete idiot because my dyslexia caused me to not immediately notice particular details* and I'm upset that Etsy and Printful weren't more transparent in their communications with me. The production partner issue could have been solved with a simple picture tutorial included in the email, or even just more detailed instructions instead of the ambiguous 'review your listings' that they wrote into it. Further, as many of my friends have mentioned, Etsy's seller fees are just plain high. It's definitely not a good platform for artists at all.

I'm very grateful to all of my friends and fellow artists for trying to warn people, warn me, that Etsy is no good. I'm upset that my glitchy brain required me to learn why Etsy sucks the hard way, by trying. Hopefully someday I can still find a way to support myself with my creativity and stop hurting from my complete lack of financial independance because normal work is too stressful for me (not to mention how it is damaging my drawing hand's wrist to the point that my doctor is talking about carpal tunnel surgery.)

I'm deeply glad that I never got around to printing any business cards for my Etsy shop; it will continue to exist, for now, as a gateway to my Ko-fi shop and hopefully someday other online marketplaces.

___________________________________________

*This isn't the first time that my dyslexia has screwed me over and it unfortunately probably will not be the last. It prevented me from pursuing my childhood dream career of becoming a wildlife biologist by making math an absolute agony of stressful frustration.

[questioningespecialy]

hope someone stabs you on your way home you fucking pedophile

Let's start from the beginning. (do not harass)

edit: Jesus fuck, I've gotta fix these screenshots. For now, they've all got image descriptions and look fine when you click 'em. Done

This is a redacted copy-paste of my reblog at 2:26pm.

This is their response to my reblog, 18 minutes later.

This is their followup response to my reblog 20 minutes later.

A minute later, they (because of course it's them) sent me the Ask.

And finally, this is their follow-followup response 23 minutes later.

...So~ wth?

I think I should, like, say~ something~? Like, appropriate~? And not immature~?

This is gonna be more of a general post to people who think it's okay to tell someone to kill themself (holy hell) and, I guess, keep things from getting misunderstood.

First of all,

it's pretty frickin' irresponsibly childish to tell another person to commit suicide. Like, there's no telling how bad their day was, how much that could ruin their mood (and ability to function), or how close they are to that point. Fuck "jokes". That's childish at best.

But here's the thing,

I assumed a person who'd say something like "hang/kill yourself" is just a (childish-ass) kid who doesn't understand wtf they're saying or the affect it can have. Nevermind consequences. That's benefit of the doubt talking (for the most part), and I could be wrong. But let's assume I'm not. Let's assume this is just a (pre-)teen-ass person tellin' a "funny", though. Why? 'Cuase that's what I do when I see mofos talkin' waifus online. "Must be a kid." 'Cause, let's face it, the alternative's not great. At all. Am I correct in that assumption, though? Like, most of the time? ...possibly 😐

Remember that Reddit post

about how a buncha people who got auto-banned from a sub for participating in a teenage sub turned out to be in their 30's+? o_o And they even provided proof. 😑 Yeah, I'm sure that happens. But just like certain arguments online, I tend to lean towards the "they're 14" assumption. Nothin' against 14 year-olds as a demographic in this regard ('cause i know y'all here). There's just... a mentality and understanding that develops as your brain develops and you find yourself in certain shoes. iow: y'all immature 🤷🏿‍♂️

And that brings me to the other matter:

pedophiles. "Some" of these mofos are 20+ year-olds fantasizin' and lustin' over underaged characters. And that's its own issue that I'm not even tryin'a get into beyond what I already said.

But wait,

why did I censor this rude-ass harasser out in every image? Well, I was curious to get some kinda confirmation on their age (and mentality)... so I kept scrollin'. All I'mma say is 1) they claim to be in their late teens and 2) they clearly aren't doin' well mentally. Like, they ~just might be the kinda person who's too close to that edge to endure online harassment. Ya feel? And I don't need that shit. Fuck y'all. And fuck them especially. Movin' on.

Ah, and I should clarify something.

Whether we like it or not pre-teens are gonna engage sexually with eachother. Hopefully, it's consentual (and enjoyable for all parties involved). Whether or not they're doing it as a byproduct of trauma is honestly between them, their therapist(s), and whoever they're close to. All that is to say that kids, like adults, can be into some wild/weird shit. It's called sexuality. Whether or not they should act on it, especially at that age, is different conversation.

But wait, you still haven't explained yourself.

Well, I feel like I already did as much explainin' as I need to tbh. Just in case y'all didn't catch it, though... my original reblog was directed at underaged people who were into Asuka. fuckin' duh

. . . But why'd you reblog in the first place

considering their addendum? 'Eh, that don't even matter at this point.

[livewiregoth]

This is a little stupid & not relevant(maybe, might count towards laziness) but anyone notice that the toy fair boxes have art errors?

Ignoring how weird the bow placement* is the art on the boxes for the dolls Kiki & Miki have mistakes that could have easily been fixed before putting them on a physical box.

*Ignoring that 2D doll Kiki(I say this since there’s no doll in the box) has wing hair clips while box art Kiki has bows but given what was mentioned about multiple hair clips this can be ignored if she has bow clips.

Sorry for the sloppy example hand to the side, I tried to draw them on my ipad on the screenshot edit screen to explain what I saw.

Kiki’s skirt looks like it supposedly has a pocket(might be off but it’s hard to tell) but the lines are on top of her fingers. Either they were meant to be in the pocket or on top of it while having a hand on her hip. Could also be excused as rings but I don’t think they thought that out nor do any of the dolls have rings on them.

While Kiki’s could be an accident Miki’s is pretty obviously lazy, the outline for what I realize is a kind of layered skirt(one were the top has part of it cut off to show a shorter one below) is not only over the fingers but the wrist too. That one makes less sense & has less of an excuse than the pocket mistake.

Every doll of Kiki & Miki in the toy fair pic have this error on their box art.

Some how whitewashed Kiki’s less detailed boxart skirt doesn’t have the lineart error(along with the boxart having the wings now) possibly thanks to removing whatever lines made me think she had rings or a pocket.

Also now that I think about it I know it was mentioned the details were lazy but man that tie is lazy. Guess they were too lazy to print boxart Kiki’s shirt on this

Shibajuku Girls: The Return?

Soooooooooo I've been debating whether to post about this at all because I doubt anyone will find it very interesting, but doll gossip is thin on the ground these days and I'm not quite ready to go to bed yet, so eff it let's go--

Alright so, those of you who follow these things may remember back during this year's Toy Fair it was announced that for some inexplicable reason the Shibajuku Girls doll line was planning a comeback. For reference: These 13" dolls from the Australian toy company Hunter Products originally turned up on shelves in the US back in the mid-2010's, to a fairly lackluster reception. Between their unusually high price point ($30-$35, a good deal above the average for fashion dolls at the time) and the fact that they are a rather blatant knock-off of Pullips, no one seemed to be that into them. In a way with their hair play gimmick (a lot of charms and hair clips) meant to interest children in Japanese street fashion I suppose one could see them as a precursor of the Decora Girlz, albeit with far lazier and less successful execution. I did end up buying one--Yoko--for the big head collection, and she's...fine, if forgettable. I like having her in the mix for variety, but I could never quite work up the enthusiasm to get another. The demise of ToysRUs around the time of their release probably didn't help matters any, as it was one of the few places that stocked them. These dolls lingered on the shelves of my local Target seemingly forever, before quietly disappearing to absolutely no fanfare.

But to bring it back to Toy Fair 2024--

For reasons that NO ONE I've heard speak on the subject can quite understand, seemingly out of nowhere Hunter Toys showed up at Toy Fair this year with a display of older dolls from the first two waves of Shibajuku, plus a wall of these mock-ups for a projected third series of anime-inspired characters. If you look closely at the 'prototype photos' in the boxes--not actual dolls--they appear to literally just be restyled Pullips. A lot of people (myself included) speculated that they may have put the money into creating a new head sculpt that more closely replicated the doll this line was always made to emulate, and the lack of actual dolls in boxes was a sign that this Shibajuku 2.0 head had yet to go into production in time for the event.

Turns out--no. That's not what they did at all. So--

A few days ago through a series of random browsing encounters I stumbled across listings for two of the five proposed 'Shibajuku Anime' dolls on Walmart's website. They are showing up as out of stock, but if you put them on your wishlist you can add them to your cart from there (though not check out), which is a pretty sure indication that they're expected in stock online and in stores soon.

So...what to say about these. First of all they quite obviously have the same old Shibajuku face. The fashions have considerably less detail than the prototype photos, which in itself I'd be willing to forgive for reasons I'll get to in a minute, but the main thing that overwhelmingly stands out to me here is that Kiki, one of the two characters shown with a darker complexion in the mock-ups, has gone from having tan skin and white hair to pale skin and black hair. Which, yeah no fuck that. No way of knowing if this was the brand's decision or a specific request from Walmart, but whichever way you slice it, it sucks. Lack of diversity was a huge issue with the first iteration of this line, and after the promise of a course correct it looks like we're back to more of the same. I will definitely be bending a critical eye on them to see if the other dark-skinned character, Sakura, receives a similar whitewashing :/

Now, with that rant out of my system, is there anything good to say? Well, the price, for one. These are set to retail for $19.98, which is significantly below what they sold for originally. No doubt the lower quality fashions and lack of accessories have a lot to do with it, but on the whole I'd say it's a plus. Also...as much as as I would have loved to see the ensuing drama if they had had the audacity to churn out a more blatant Pullip clone, for continuity's sake if nothing else I'm glad they stuck with the old face. She's a weird little bird and despite it all she deserves her place in the wider family of Big Head dolls, however derivative that might be (I mean, if anything Pullip needs MORE clones, Blythe has such a start on her in that arena....).

And finally (FINALLY) to wrap things up--will I be buying one? Perhaps surprisingly--yes! I plan to order Akira when she becomes available to ship. I think she's decently cute--you all know my bias for green hair--and I have a purely academic curiosity to compare her to my 'classic' Shibajuku. Plus, despite all my dismissive snark, I would actually like to see this relaunch be successful. I'm always in favor of diversity in the doll market, and this particular type of doll has been sadly under-represented of late. There is plenty room on the shelves for more big head girlies! MGA is daily signing that real estate away at an increasingly rapid pace XD My hope is that they do well enough to warrant the release of the other three dolls from the proposed new line-up, and that maybe--MAYBE--if the Dolly Gods are kind we will see Sakura with her original dark skin tone, as intended.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee ok that's enough sleep-procrastinating for one night, I'm done. If anyone else cares about this at all I'm sincerely curious to hear your thoughts.

[endergnvy]

Edit: please don’t let my experience sway you from downloading the game, I had no intention of that happening while sharing this. Overall I recommend the game if you love a good otome, minus my situation it’s one of the best and only otome games that’s made me cry!

Calling the IkemenVampire community please please read this post I’m begging it feels like I’m going crazy.

Has anyone experienced Leonardo’s and Vincent’s fourth wall break? I googled everything I could about it and I don’t see a single thing posted about it.

Background on me(relevant for Vincent’s part): I’m an editor so I was saving the photos for edits now onto the story.

this is pre Covid so a lot is paraphrased but please hear me out I never got over this + Vincent’s incident scared me away from the game for good.

Leonardo’s:

On my second run through of Leo’s route I was basically skimming through because I wanted the new photos and diamonds/whatever currency they gave and I got to the ballroom chapter and I loved that chapter so I was sorta skipping and skimming when I realized Leo was saying new and weird things

Very paraphrased but basically my dialogue option was “I hope this moment can last forever “ he replies “I hope it doesn’t, because if we relive the same memory over and over again it’ll get stale” sounds pretty basic until the background around his sprite went black. Then like he was directly talking to ME THE PLAYER was implying that I couldn’t keep playing this/the game repeatedly because it has to end sometime like for my own good.

I don’t remember much after that mainly because it was mad late and I was STUNNED speechless.

Vincent’s:

This is the reason I stopped playing this game.

{lil extra bit I remembered;

This was when Vincent’s route was about to come out, I was very excited to play his route I was watching the trailer and looking everywhere to learn more about him and I found something like “equip x characters power(?)” *Im really sad I can’t fully remember this part but it was like a gatcha mini game where you could choose a power that was related to the character

I got Jeans, issacs, and I want to say Vincent’s. I think I equipped Jeans power because I absolutely loved his character design & personality but either way it had something to do with a characters eye? Okay}

-

I played his little sneak peek and it was going GREAT until it cut to the scene where he had something that looked like blood (probably red paint) on his face and he started saying “you’re mine right…?” Like yandere shit

THEN continuing onwards we were in a garden and normal dialogue and his background goes black “you did something wrong, and you’re going to fix it” I wish I screen recorded this shit y’all cause I know mfs aren’t going to believe me “tomorrow you’re going to log back on and re agree to the terms and conditions at 12:00 Japanese time” his background is still black, my game crashes I’m traumatized, I re open the game and it says “come back at 12:00 Japanese time and accept the terms of service” I close the app and delete it.

I don’t think I’ve ever been scared like that in my entire fucking life, I went from playing a sneak peek of a cute vampire boys route to detailed and direct instructions on how to not mess up my second chance. I was genuinely terrified I’m about to piss my self from laughing looking back on it but that scared me away from otome games for 2 years.

The worst part is nobody has said a word about this happening to them, I hope I dreamed this because I actually love IkemenVampire, one of the best otomes out there. Imagine this happening to you when you’re barely 15 at an ungodly hour at night, I know what they’re talking about, I had 2-3 IkemenVampire edits that had the screenshots Vincent was hinting at on my Instagram page. I’m surprised I didn’t piss myself.

Reblogs are appreciated, my hunt is older than the lockdown. Help me find Zen and tell me your stories if this happened to you too.

Thank you for you time.

Edit: again please don’t let my experiences scare you from the game! I’ve ultimately moved on from this experience and just want to know if anyone else experienced something similar.

I’m actually quite impressed with how their coding deals with rule breakers and my respect for the game + game devs went up, give this game a try if you haven’t!!!!.

[nanoa1foryou]

Masterpost of all my very specific Blind Channel screenshots:

Bad Idea 1 Snake Balboa Over My Dead Body We Are No Saints Dark Side Sharks Love Blood Died Enough For You Don’t Fix Me Bad Idea 2

Honestly, these were so much fun to make. It gave such a new appreciation for those music videos. And trust me when I say that some of these were hard to narrow down. (More rambling under the cut.)

When I started making these, it was because of the split second frames I noticed in the first Bad Idea music video. I love gifs on tumblr, but I knew that no gif could really capture just those frames. So I did it myself.

I combed through them all, mostly frame by frame or with excessive pausing. I avoided taking screenshots that were of stock footage (that's why there is so little of Died Enough For you) or not specific to the music video (so no screenshotting just their faces over and over). Some stuff I threw in there for variety. Some stuff I left out because there are fantastic gifs that do it way more justice than a screenshot ever could.

The point was to capture the stuff that you miss on the first and second time watching the video. I wanted to capture the vibe of the video while showing stuff that doesn't get the spotlight on its own in the video.

And honestly, the attention to detail in these videos is crazy. Big props to everyone behind the camera and screens for putting those videos together. The editing is crazy, the camera angles are beautiful and the outcome is stunning. Especially with Vita Pictura. Their work is so beautiful, frame by frame.

Fun facts that I noticed during this little project:

The first Bad Idea video has so many weird edits in there. Like way more than you see. It's so colourful and fun.

You may think that Snake is mostly black and white and you'd be mostly wrong.

Balboa has a lot going on but it looks better when the video is moving. The individual frames are so blurry, but the video is fantastic.

Over My Dead Body has way more filter effects than you notice at first. Also, the camera angles are both stunning and make it look good without having a ridiculous budget for special effects to get the gory details look good. Keeps the focus on the music and idea without turning it all into a horror film.

We Are No Saints has just so much going on. It was the hardest to narrow down just by the variety of effects it had. Like so many different interesting edits. Every frame of that thing was a painting.

Dark side music video was perhaps the prettiest. The edits, the colour palette, the framing. All of it was perfect. I can see why that video went viral and not just the song itself.

Sharks Love Blood has so many fun dark things going on. I just focused on patterns of blood and the way it drips and such. Such a horror video for such a party song.

Died enough for you looks great but having incomplete lyrics cover half the frame makes it hard to screenshot the good parts.

Don't Fix Me has shots from both Bad Idea music videos mixed in there. Occasionally it was individual frames, sometimes full clips. It's just blended so well in there that the only thing you can really pick out are the roses.

The lighting for the second Bad Idea video is so pretty and every shot of it is too. Some shots were used multiple times in it. Definitely worth releasing it though. I can't imagine how much work went into it.

Additionally about our boys:

Niko makes like three facial expressions when he's screaming but so many more when he's just singing or rapping.

Joel looks way more emotional in person than on any video.

The reason why Aleksi cut his hair is so that his face is visible. There are barely any clear shots of his face from any music video.

Joonas moves so much and it's impossible to screenshot it because he is just a blur half the time.

Why are there so few shots of Olli? And when he is on screen he is either out of focus or there for three frames at a time? Give my boy more screen time!

Stop filming Tommi's hands and start filming his face. He has such variety in his expressions.

I hope you have enjoyed all of my screenshots! They've been so much fun to do!

[selfawarejester]

So, someone requested a fic where Blue Team rescues a Child!Reader from a war zone, but unfortunately Tumblr ate the ask. If you’re the one who requested it, please enjoy!

EDIT: found a screenshot! @simp-for-fictional-men-only, hope you like this!

Blue Team x Child!Reader (Halo)

It’s been a long “day”, even by Spartan standards.

Blue Team had been trying to repel Covenant forces on an Outer Colonies planet for over a week… but it hadn’t been enough. Command had called an evacuation, and after destroying a base to help the efforts, Blue Team had been ordered to help with final evacuation calls in the nearest town.

On the Pelican ride to town, there was a brief moment where they thought it was a waste of resources to send Spartans for an evacuation op, especially because the other Spartan teams were still doing the best they could to strike back at the Covenant; not necessarily to stop them anymore, just to hold them back long enough for the civilians to escape and maybe a little revenge. The events of the week, coupled with the guilt of their brothers and sisters still risking their lives, weighed on them heavily.

But at the end of the day, they’re glad they did: they found a group in the Rec center, a dozen people in the boroughs, twenty in an apartment complex — the Marines wouldn’t have been able to lift most of the wreckage that blocked them from escaping.

By the time they’d gotten to the outskirts of town, Blue Team had been left alone to sweep through the dead town. Chief considered just going to meet up with the Marines — surely, they could match the pace of the overloaded Troop Transports — and this area was just dilapidated factories and shady looking establishments that had long since been stampeded.

But a need to fulfil his task to completion stayed his hand… and thank god it did.

At first, it was just soft sniffles that sounded from the inside of the rundown factory. Chief and Kelly, who’d partnered up to search this side of the district, thought it was one of the many Jackals that had been posted in the previous sector wandering, or a Grunt that had been left behind after the Jackals had entertained themselves (in which case, they should probably put the thing out of its misery), so they go inside.

Chief goes first, moving carefully through the debris so as to not dislodge the wreckage, or disturb the corpses of the few soldiers and more civilians. He retrieves their dog tags, securing them in one of the compartments of the MJOLNIR, and Kelly follows, stepping where he does.

Slowly, the sound becomes louder and louder, wheezing and snotty sobbing. Definitely an injured Grunt, he thinks. It’s coming from under a slab of concrete propped up against a wall. Kelly flanks to the right, while Chief goes to the left. He signals that he’ll lift it on the count of three, and grips the edge of the slab. When the slab gets tossed aside, Kelly raises her shotgun, pointing directly at the small figure.

You shriek and bury your head in your knees, pulled up to your chest. You couldn’t believe that after all the gross, awful things you’d had to sit through, holed up in this corner, you were just going to die.

But when nothing happens for a solid five seconds, you chance a peek over your knees and gasp. S-117 and S-087 are emblazoned across the chests of the armored giants… Spartans.

Kelly and Chief exchange confused gazes, having no idea how to deal with children. The last ones they’d had any interaction with was the Castoffs on Netherop, but they were more feral gremlins than they had been children.

(Kelly and Fred still aren’t entirely sure that the whole incident wasn’t a heat-induced hallucination.)

John really doesn’t want to go through another episode like it, but on the other hand, it would be easier if you were pelting rocks at them.

Kelly, being the more personable of the two, kneels to your height (or as close as a Spartan could get) and softly calls. “You don’t have to be scared. We’re here to help.”

You knew that — they were Spartans! The greatest heroes Humanity ever possessed! You were just shocked that you were getting rescued by them.

“Y-you’re Spartans.” You whisper dumbly, but you couldn’t help it! How are you supposed to be cool when you grew up with Master Chief’s action figure on your nightstand. “Like Master Chief.”

You can’t see it, but John can sense Kelly’s smirk as she looks over at him and points. “Well, that’s the man himself.”

* Oh no. By the way your wet, moved eyes stare up at him, it seems you’re a fan.

OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!!! You hope your pterodactyl screeching wasn’t external.

“Whoa.” This couldn’t be real. You’d passed out from exhaustion, and were dreaming all of this. That could be the only possibility!

John knows that this is the part where he says something witty or inspiring… but he really doesn’t know what to say, so he just awkwardly clears his throat. “Are you hurt?”

You shake your head violently, a burning need to not disappoint your childhood hero, and clamber up to your feet… only to wince and lean against the wall, something sticky on your leg.

Now that you’re standing, he can see the dried blood around your ankle. “Hold still!” All the softness is gone from Kelly’s tone as she works on bandaging you up, but you don’t mind, appreciating how careful she’s being.

Co-ordinating with Linda, who informs him that there are patrols scouting the areas — probably only to get any survivors, and not to catch them, but they should still move — and Fred, who tells him that the convoy is flying off-planet via Pelicans in half an hour, John makes some quick calculations.

With the pace you’d set, hobbling alongside Kelly, whimpering every time you put your weight on your left foot, it would take them at least an hour. Too long.

“Whoa…” The sound comes unbidden from Fred when Kelly emerges, with you clutching at her hip, all bloody and dirty. A pang of sympathy strikes as he looks around and realizes all that you must have seen. He was well aware that normal children weren’t nearly as resilient as he and his siblings had been.

“….” He stays silent as you arrive in front of him, staring up at him with slight apprehension, heart racing as he tries to think of something to say — and for some reason, he lands on an awkward, weirdly Southern-sounding. “Hey champ!”

John and Kelly both shoot him weird looks, and he wants to dig a hole and die, when they hear it.

A small giggle falls from your lips, tiny hands covering your mouth as you try not to laugh. Fred sighs in relief, but his anxiety returns when Kelly’s joking voice comes over the comms saying “Well, I guess we know who’s taking care of them.”

Linda drops out of nowhere, and nearly scares you to death as you shriek and bump into John, holding his leg tightly. You don’t really notice how he freezes, confused again.

“…sorry.” She doesn’t sound sorry, you think with a pout and drop from Chief’s leg, careful of your own busted ankle.

“That’s Linda, that’s Fred and I’m Kelly. You can just call him Chief. What’s your name?”

“Y-Y/N.”

“Alright. We won’t be able to make it if you’re walking, so you need to get on one of our backs.” Chief tells you, straight to business. “Which one of us do you feel comfortable with?”

He’s really hoping you pick Kelly or Fred. It wouldn’t exactly be a burden, you’re much tinier than the full grown people he’s had to carry out of a war zone, and you’re handling it much better as well, even though you’re barely ten years old.

“Um…” You look shyly up at Fred. “If you don’t really mind…”

*Aw. That’s… actually kind of sweet. Fred beckons you over, and hoists you up between his shoulders, giving you the rundown on what to do if people start shooting, and to hold on tight when he tells you to.

*You’re much more considerate than the freaked out VIPs he’s had to extract. But he still feels you twitch every time the wind causes something to clatter, so he decides to strike up conversation.

“So how did you wind up there?” It’s not until afterwards that he realizes that, unlike soldiers, civilians aren’t comfortable discussing stuff like that. But you answer that it was your dad’s factory, explaining that it was Bring Your Kid To Work Day.

The Spartans, specifically Kelly, asked you questions about it, having never heard of it themselves. After all, military settings rarely allowed such breaches of protocol.

You only trailed off as you got to the part where he told you to hide, and Fred lets it be.

When you finally get to the convoy, a nurse hurriedly tries to pull you away from the Spartans to help out, apologizing for not doing it sooner when Fred tells her it’s fine and that you can stay. After all, Kelly had fixed you up well, and you seemed terrified at the prospect of being left alone.

All that was left to do was fly up to the ship in outer orbit, with the rest of the survivors. Since there were such few Pelicans, everyone had been crammed into them, military and civilians alike. You’d simply wandered onto the one they’d been on, sandwiched between Chief and Fred.

Chief watches you picking at your shorts, and suddenly remembers the chocolate bar Sgt. Johnson keeps giving him - “you’re not yourself when you’re hungry, Chief” He’d snicker and then leave, Chief just standing there, not understanding the reference - but hey, chocolate was chocolate.

“Here. You did well.” Your eyes go wide, and for a second he thinks you’re going to refuse, but then you snatch it out of his hand and snarf it down. This is how it must feel to watch him eat.

“You’re going to like it up there.” Fred chimes in when your gaze starts getting distant again. “Space is really cool.”

In a twist of fate, you find one of your best friends when you arrive on the ship. Their parents promise to take care of you, and thank the Spartans.

When they start directing the survivors to their quarters, you hug every Spartan, even Linda… or their legs, since you couldn’t reach anything else. (Thankfully, you telegraph it pretty well, so they don’t accidentally smack you or something.)

John just stiffens and then nods, Fred pats you on the head awkwardly and shuffles away (he was very shocked by the affection), Kelly laughs and claps you on the shoulder, and Linda just hums and pets you on the head like a dog, walking away afterwards.

You go on to be a Marine yourself, finding yourself on the Halo campaign, where Chief and Cortana save you once more. You’re surprised he still remembers you.

You leave a bar of the same brand he gave you at his shrine, giving a heartfelt eulogy and catching up momentarily with the other members of Blue Team before you all leave again.

You almost faint when he shows up at Requiem, though. Don’t feel bad, as Lasky fanboys behind Chief for the whole campaign.

Palmer corrals you and Lasky into a break room to make fun of your behavior after it’s all over.