#every time i mention something a website or some other thing you can find online

[thetriangletattoo]

today my nephew asked me what an mp3 reader is I finally understand my elders

[clover-system]

The longest list of anti-endo sources I've ever seen

While trying to find something else using Tumblr's infamous search engine, I came across this absolute gem:

NINE SOURCES!!! That's a record!! This is incredible!

@radpocalypse, listen. I am about to tear these to shreds, but before I do, I want you to know that you have my respect for not only compiling the longest list of sources I have ever seen an anti-endo provide, and not only doing so seemingly not directly prompted, but typing out every single link by hand, on mobile, without making a single mistake. Incredible work.

And also, to be completely honest, if I had nine sources supporting a belief, I almost certainly wouldn't look into them this closely. But, hey, that's what strangers on the internet with opposing views are for.

One more thing before the debunk: Endogenic systems do not claim to have DID etc. without trauma. They just don't. Whether it could be possible is often debated as an edge case, usually just to win an argument against someone of the opposing side, but really, it's irrelevant for 99% of the community. A good chunk are questioning OSDD based on later trauma, but as far as I am aware, no one on this website is claiming a completely endogenic plural disorder.

However, I don't want to dismiss entire pages based on this alone without further commentary, and it's a fun intellectual exercise regardless. So, whenever I use green text, I'm just playing Devil's Advocate under the premise of "If I was claiming to have DID without trauma (which neither I nor anyone else afaik is), would this source actually debunk that claim?" My syster will also occasionally pop in with purple, since she was cocon while I was writing this.

My dad just walked into my room and literally said "hey how it's going". You know, like. Like that one post. Amazing.

Anyway, civility established. Now come along with me on this long long journey of ten minutes of reading. Maybe put some music on in the background, if that will help you get through it. I had Near's Theme on while writing.

Here we go.

Link 1: McLean Hospital

Ok, main thing that caught my eye was

According to a 2010 Psychiatric Times article, only 5% of people with DID exhibit obvious switching between identity “states.”

Very interesting! Even with all of the "idk who's fronting" memes, 5% is really not that high. Though maybe online spaces like these help train the ability to identify it? The reference trail leads back to a book by Kluft but I don't really feel like going through dozens of pages for this. Definitely making a note of this though; I wonder if there have been any follow-up studies on this.

Not much to say here other than that. No mention of plurality outside DID.

DID is associated with long-term exposure to trauma, often chronic traumatic experiences during early childhood.

Dissociation—or disconnection from one’s sense of self or environment—can be a response to trauma.

Dissociative identity disorder—a type of dissociative disorder—most often develops during early childhood in kids who are experiencing long-term trauma. This typically involves emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuse; neglect; and highly unpredictable interactions with caregivers.

Why "associated", not "is caused by"? Why "can", not "is"? Why "most often", etc.?

Why such weak language?

Not that it couldn't be weaker.

I vaguely remember McLean getting into some hot water regarding a video they posted about DID, but didn't find anything concrete. Half-remembered anecdote aside, the author seems well-qualified.

C-tier debunk of this position. It's not nothing but it could be a lot better.

Link 2: Psych Central

It occurs in women 9 times more often than in men.

Very interesting statistic, but no citation provided.

Alters can show striking differences. For instance, one alter may speak with a different accent or have a softer way of speaking. They might have different opinions or a different gender identity, and even physical differences — like left- or right-handedness, or the need for a glasses prescription.

That's quite a stark difference here compared to the McLean article. What happened to "alters aren't that noticeable"?

But whatever, these are just interesting tidbits. None of this has anything to do with endogenic plurality. Nothing like "this is the only way to be multiple", no comment whatsoever.

DID is usually associated with adverse experiences in someone’s past and traumatic memories.

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a mental health condition with strong links to trauma, especially trauma in childhood.

Bruh. This again?

In fact, the American Psychiatric Association reports that 90% of people with DID have a history of childhood abuse and neglect, based on research from the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Bruh. Seriously? 90%? You know what that leaves, right?

According to your own source, 10% of DID systems are endogenic.

But let's break this down. There's a big difference between the system being endogenic, and the DID being endogenic. This statistic is specifically referring to childhood trauma.

The wording's plenty vague though. This can absolutely be read as completely endogenic DID.

One review article from 2017 about the causes of DID noted that there was relatively little research on the condition to date.

The authors said researchers hadn’t yet investigated potential genetic and epigenetic factors. With epigenetic factors, the experiences and behaviors of your parents and ancestors can influence the function of the genes they pass down to you.

The authors of the review said scientists needed to do more research to investigate whether a person with DID might carry genes that can influence if they develop the condition or not.

This is particularly promising because studies have already shown that genes can influence dissociative disorders in general.

So you're telling me DID might be able to be passed down one or two generations? Wow. Again, this still has nothing to do with endogenic plurality, but I'm really glad I decided to play with this second angle, because it's so much more fun. We're certainly not at intentional self-inflicted DID here, but we are at this point a long way from certainly needing childhood trauma in all cases.

And also the reviewer is a military psychiatrist who specializes in ADHD. So uh. Not bringing our best here.

Link 3: Mayo Clinic

Gotta love an article that's nice and short. This is just a brief summary of a bunch of dissociative disorders. Again, nothing about endogenic plurality.

Starting to run out of things to say about this. This whole post could probably be a fifth the length if I didn't feel like playing on hard mode.

Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, this disorder involves "switching" to other identities. You may feel as if you have two or more people talking or living inside your head. You may feel like you're possessed by other identities.

Each identity may have a unique name, personal history and features. These identities sometimes include differences in voice, gender, mannerisms and even such physical qualities as the need for eyeglasses.

Hey, that reminds me of someone.

There also are differences in how familiar each identity is with the others. Dissociative identity disorder usually also includes bouts of amnesia and often includes times of confused wandering.

Again, McLean looking really odd with its declaration of DID's covertness against great detail like this. However, its author is so far the best qualified. This one just says "Mayo Clinic Staff". Can't even know which of them worked on this. Some of them are psychs, but if any of them specialize in dissociative disorders, it doesn't say so.

Dissociative disorders usually arise as a reaction to shocking, distressing or painful events and help push away difficult memories.

I won't bother quoting even more wishy-washy language because this post is already at an ungodly length (about 1300 words so far) and we're barely a third done. But yeah, suffice to say, no nail-in-the-coffin 100% link to trauma.

Link 4: Rethink

We are a trusted information creator and accredited by the Patient Information Forum (PIF).

Their bold, for once. That's an alarm-ringing corporate phrase if I've ever seen one. Also, first thing on the PIF's website is "balancing the risks and benefits of AI in the production of health information". So this article might've been written by GPT. Awesome. And yeah, a lot of this whole website looks to me like a bunch of interconnected pages with stupidly long articles written by stitching together LLM generations. Does pass GPT0's test though.

This one is so long. I'll take the ten minutes to read through every word, which I don't think @radpocalypse did, just to make sure there's nothing here, but one thing that does catch my eye scrolling down to near the bottom is that they misspelled their first citation.

A quick look at this Carolyn Spring shows a lot being sold and credentials nowhere in sight. Awesome.

So already I don't need to read this. The information here is not at a high level of trustworthiness. It's maybe better than nothing, but seriously, one can and should do better. But I'll read it anyway, just for bonus points. Thanks to AccelaReader for making this bearable.

Many people will experience dissociation at some point in their lives. Lots of different things can cause you to dissociate. For example, you might dissociate when you are very stressed, or after something traumatic has happened to you.

Some of the symptoms of dissociation include the following:

You may have clear multiple identities.

It‘s important to remember that you could have the symptoms of dissociation without a dissociative disorder.

So according to this, multiple identities can be caused by intense but non-traumatic stress, and might not necessarily be a disorder. So, while I admit this is a little bit of a stretch, we're four links in and this is the first mention of plurality in general, so I'll take it. One point for endogenic plurality. (And again, none of this really matters anyway because this is the worst source so far.)

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is sometimes called ��Multiple Personality Disorder.

If you have DID you might seem to have 2 or more different identities, called ‘alternate identities.

Two missing closing quotes. Really not a good sign.

They suggest that DID is caused by experiencing severe trauma over a long time in childhood.

Aha! Finally, something concrete against endogenic DID! Too bad it's buried in the worst source yet. If we believed we had DID, we would absolutely not reconsider that based on a sketchy webpage with suboptimal syntax and no credentials.

Ugh, finally done with that one. What a slog.

Link 5: DID Research

Aha! The infamous psych student's blog! That's what Sophie said, anyway. Not taking her word for it though. Let's see what we can find here, independently.

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the result of repeated or long-term childhood trauma

Why wasn't this first? First sentence, so crystal clear. No two ways about this, transDID destroyed right out of the gate.

DID cannot form after ages 6-9 because individuals older than these ages have an integrated self identity and history.

Why wasn't this first? It's so plain, so refreshing after four pages of strategic ambiguity. Nothing left here for green. But still no mention of non-disordered plurality.

The author is impressively credentialed but doesn't seem to specialize quite near this area. She's certainly better than most, high above any random Tumblr user talking out of their ass, but the good stuff would be to get a DID specialist to explicitly spell out that endogenic systems are not possible.

Also should make note of this big fat legal disclaimer:

While the author strives to make information on this website as complete, reliable, and accurate as possible, the author makes no claims, promises, guarantees, or warranties about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the contents of this site and expressly disclaims liability for errors and omissions in the contents of this site.

If we did claim to have DID, this would rattle us a little but could ultimately be brushed aside.

Link 6: SANE

As usual, literally nothing about endogenic plurality. I'll just greenmode this.

The majority of people with DID have been through severe trauma in early childhood

And now back to our regularly scheduled nondefinitive language.

Fun fact: highlighting text on this website turns it invisible. Awesome.

A person needs to meet the following criteria to be diagnosed with DID:

- Two or more distinct identities or personality states, each with its own way of thinking and relating. - Amnesia and gaps in the recall of everyday events, personal information or traumatic events. - The experiences are not part of normal cultural or religious practice, or part of childhood imaginary play. For example, a child having an imaginary friend does not mean they have DID. - The symptoms are not because of substance abuse or other medical conditions.

Ah finally, a direct quote from the good ol' DSM. Notice the lack of a trauma requirement.

Funny enough, using only these criteria in isolation, we actually would count as having DID due to our grayout memory gaps when switching. DID is also listed in the dissociative disorders section of the DSM, not the trauma disorders section, so there is no implied criterion there either. However, there still remains the universal criterion of distress, which we do not fulfill. We are quite happy with ourselves.

DID is caused by severe childhood trauma, such as physical, verbal or sexual abuse.

Well, which is it?? Is it a majority association or a direct cause? Why the contradiction? Or is the emphasis on early childhood trauma?

Eh, whatever. Point is, green is once again shut down. But there is still no mention of endogenic plurality anywhere here!!

And no indication of who wrote this article, though the citation for direct cause is a dissociative disorder specialist. Does he actually say that in the cited paper, though?

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is multifactorial in its etiology. Whereas psychosocial etiologies of DID include developmental traumatization and sociocognitive sequelae, biological factors include trauma-generated neurobiological responses. Biologically derived traits and epigenetic mechanisms are also likely to be at play. At this point, no direct examination of genetics has occurred in DID. However, it is likely to exist, given the genetic link to dissociation in general and in relation to childhood adversity in particular.

I hope you have a dictionary on hand. That sure is a lot of big words that aren't in Firefox's built-in spellchecker. Still, after making sure I got everything, it's clearly not so cut and dry here. And we're back on the "it could be genetic" point.

Tangentially related: I do like the dismissal of the iatrogenic model on the basis of the brain scans.

Neurobiological differences have been demonstrated between dissociative identities within patients with DID and between patients with DID and controls. Given the current evidence, DID as a diagnostic entity cannot be explained as a phenomenon created by iatrogenic influences, suggestibility, malingering, or social role-taking. On the contrary, DID is an empirically robust chronic psychiatric disorder based on neurobiological, cognitive, and interpersonal non-integration as a response to unbearable stress.

Anyway, we're not even on the original page anymore, so I'll call it here. No mention of endogenic plurality, and the citation that claims to dismiss endogenic DID doesn't.

Link 7: NAMI Michigan

While the causes [of DID] are unknown

I'm tired. Aren't you tired?

Treatment for DID consists primarily of psychotherapy with hypnosis.

Yeah I'm calling BS on this one

And no citations on this entire page, nor even the author's name.

Statistics show that DID occurs in 0.01 to 1 percent of the general population.

Research has shown that the average age for the initial development of alters is 5.9 years old.

No sources listed. This is definitely the worst link. Literally on the same level as a rambling Tumblr user in terms of credibility.

Doesn't matter that it says

This disorder is believed to be triggered by physical or sexual abuse in childhood

Couldn't even get this dogshit source to be firm.

This one gets an F.

Link 8: The Psychology Practice

Got scared for a moment there that it said ai. No, that's AL, a name. Also this was written in 2022, so we're definitely safe. Can't actually find any other info on this AL character, but at least we can look up the co-author.

Hm, can't find anything on her, either. Well, at least this is a step up from the previous link. Let's see what it has to say.

According to the Dissociative Identity Research Organisation (2018), DID is formed in childhood due to repeated trauma in early childhood (before age 10) before the personality is fully integrated.

I do like that these later links are direct with this. They don't seem to have a citation for that DIRO, though. Unless...

No. Oh no.

Ok, so this one was written by a couple of clowns who definitely didn't do their homework. Cool. I'm getting tired of humoring awful sources like this, so moving on to the grand finale.

Link 9: NAMI

Wait, this is the same group behind the zero-citation article from Michigan! But that was just Michigan. Maybe the main site can do better.

Ugh, it's just another list of dissociative disorders instead of DID specifically.

The symptoms of a dissociative disorder usually first develop as a response to a traumatic event,

Aren't you tired? Aren't you tired? Aren't you tired?

Often these identities may have unique names, characteristics, mannerisms and voices.

Often? Wow. Sure is a far cry from 5%.

Dissociative disorders are managed through various therapies including: - Psychotherapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) - Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) - Medications such as antidepressants can treat symptoms of related conditions

No mention of hypnosis, allegedly the primary method of treatment?? (/sarc)

and there was no mention of plurality being exclusive to dissociative disorders

Oh, and no listed authors either.

So, after three thousand words of analysis, all we've come up with are nothing burgers, dogshit, and dogshit nothing burgers. Out of nine links, only one briefly and indirectly touched on endogenic plurality, and it was in favor. Even the argument against the traumaless DID strawman is weak at best. These sources are bad, to put it lightly.

@radpocalypse, if you're reading this, firstly, thank you for powering through your ADHD and dyslexia to read thousands of words dunking on your masterpiece. Secondly, if you have any more sources that you think are backing you, feel free to send them my way. Just uh, maybe read them more closely next time?

And that goes for everyone here. If you think you have a better source, or if I made a mistake or missed something here, I am open to correction. I am open to the idea that I'm wrong and I have some unknown trauma to work through, but I certainly won't go digging unless I have good reason to believe it's there, and I haven't seen any good reason. And if you haven't either, maybe it's time to reconsider your position.

One last thing before I go.

Have you ever actually seen a pro-endo carrd, let alone one cited in standalone? I haven't.

Here's a much longer list of much better sources than yours supporting endogenic plurality compiled by the traumagenic Guardians System. I don't expect you to read anywhere near the whole thing; just pick a few links at random. And yes, while many of them are peer-reviewed papers, some of them are Tumblr posts, but those Tumblr posts cite peer-reviewed papers, so it's all good.

Thanks for reading.

[seaurchin0]

MAKE A FULL GUIDE BRO PLS PLS PLS PLS PLS I WOULD EAT THAT SHIT UP!! /nf

oh man, this gonna be a long one but ty for letting me infodump about my interests </3 my overall advice would be to be creative, and DON'T underestimate how intertwined social media is with everyday life. Experiment, see what works, and good luck <33

so a lot depends if you know the person in question irl or online and i'll go over both but first, here are some things that help in both cases: -names are not necessary to find people, useful af but info like what school they go to, class they're in, clubs they're in etc do better -look at their friends, their friends' friends, family, tagged photos, followers and following list (if they're active online), info doesn't just come from them, if you can't get in contact with them you can learn a lot from family, friends classmates etc

-intelius.com

-please PLEASE keep track of what info you found out and what they told you, don't accidentally drop that bombshell

-i have a folder where i keep my fp's information saved, all the "useful" images they sent me, link to their social medias, school website and more so i'd suggest making one of those

if you only know them online, here are some cyberstalking tips that don't rely on being close and location (all this assuming they're active online):

-look up their username(s) and variations everywhere. literally every platform you can think of, i had to sign up to 3 platforms i never used just for that

-look up their friends' usernames

-look at tagged photos, mentions and interactions they have with others in the comments under their posts to find out who they're friends with

-if you can see previous usernames (like on instagram) look up those too

-you might get lucky with wayback machine

-if you can find their reddit, twitter or any social media that shows their post and comment history study that shit

- if they haven't shown their face but have photos including any other part of their body that isn't usually covered up, even in colder climates (like hands most commonly) save those too, if you manage to find a school website or something later on that might have photos of their face you could match them up. it's difficult af but never give up, if there's a will there's a way

-reverse image search all the images they posted

-try images on geoimgr.com. photos taken on phone or camera will sometimes have GPS coordinates stored in the metadata of each file, but there are some websites that encrypt this

-anaylze the background of images, especially if they're taken outside

-trying to pinpoint a location (town or country they live in) would be good but not necessary: • if they posted screenshots that aren't cropped and include the time, it will be easy to figure out the general area because of timezones • use google maps to match up the background seen in images

if you wanna figure out an email or number: • log out of your account, put their username in in the login section, press "i forgot my password", the next part may vary from platform to platform but select the option for their the recover of their password to be recieved through email and it will display the first and last characters of their name, as well as what domain they're using. same with the phone number

next, in real life, i'm not really an expert in this since i've never stalked anyone irl for as long and as much as i have online but hope these help too!:

-eavesdrop

-if you're not close or to them (as in not in the same class, school, workplace etc) look for someone that knows them in any way.

-assuming you found that person, don't directly ask about them. let's say, your fp likesa art, so you ask that person about art clubs. chances are, they'll mention the one your fp is in. very vague example but it works with almost everything

-ask your parents about your fp's parents, works well if you're younger and still in school

-VERY carefully try to glance over at their phone's screen as much as you can, it could make finding social media accounts 10 times easier

-use all the info you manage to get for cyberstalking. don't follow them around, especially don't follow them home, you don't need to do that to figure out more about them. again, don't underastimate how ingrained social media is in our lives. Cyberstalking is much more easier and safer.

[botanyshitposts]

just wanted to say that some months ago i went on a bit of a "mental illness tangent" and wrote down every single native species to my county, including its light and water needs. may or may not have been spurred on by some topic you mentioned...

one side effect i learned with that is that apparently i live in like. the ONE area of the us that doesn't really use fire much as a part of it's ecosystem, once you're inland beyond the pine barrens on the coast, obvs. kinda funny idk. like you have a whole continent that has large fire use in varying ways, and then in little old new england in the old mountains where apparently fire has not been present in 8000 years from research from sediments.

hi! just want you to know that this is both academic and political direct action in my mind and i think every community should have at least one person who knows what local Guys are supposed to be there and what they need.

next step would be to go see which ones you can actually find in remnant forests and stuff. if any dudes are missing it's an active cause for concern and you can start the process of finding Whoever In Local Government Is In Charge Of That, and you would be surprised to know that usually there is at least one person who's like, kind of supposed to be in charge of it but nobody pays attention to plants so it slipped under the radar, etc. or if you want to do more research first or want to know where to look you can go try to see when it was last actually spotted, because from my experience a lot of old sources from like, 1802 just get grandfathered in to modern records and you realize nobody's actually checked to see if these things are still there lately.

to check your own work against, plants.usda.gov has an online database that in theory is an up-to-date record of all plants in every state in the country-- notice that i say every state, because not all states specify sightings or populations by county, which is unhelpful for actually going out and seeing them near you. on a state-by-state basis, some states have their own databases which narrow it down to county, and then from there you can see which sources they cite and check to see how old they are. note that the usda cites the flora of north america as their primary source for the species ive personally come across, which is good because the flora of north america is crowd-funded, organized, written, and published by actual academics in the botanical community who go searching for these things and they have names and email addresses you can use to contact them, plus the completed families are free to access online on their website. because of the amount of people retiring with no replacement, however, it's still good to follow up.

im...nebulous on my understanding of who is supposed to be checking up on these guys in the government. either the USDA or the fish and wildlife service is the arm that's supposed to be regulating plants listed as endangered in your area, or at least enforcing poaching laws, and if it's something high profile they probably do, but then you look at the endangered species list in your state and see a guy you know hasn't been seen in quite some time and you have to wonder where they're getting their data, if they're doing their own internal surveys, if you can even access that kind of information because of the need to be careful around disclosing the locations of endangered plants, if this local Guy has actually genuinely slipped through the cracks of bureaucracy and has lost whatever fractionally small area of land it used to have in your county/surrounding county/state, if anybody is even paying attention, etc. it seems like your best bet comes down to contacting the one other person whos super into them

and then you go on inaturalist to see if anyone else has seen it and nobody has and anyway thats how you go insane

[burgeoning-ambition]

Finally a first language laddering post! In the near future I hope to start posting updates to my personal studying, maybe accompanied by study materials for others to use if I have the time! But first, I wanted to post an introduction.

Transcript of the images below the cut!

Language Laddering!

An Overview

I recently made a post asking about interest in me posting my personal Japanese -> Korean language laddering study journey and resources. And a lot of people seemed interested! Let's start off with an introduction to language laddering itself, since people may not have heard of it, or may not recognize this name for it! For my own personal stuff, I hope to post updates to my studies along with some resources as regularly as I can manage!

What is Language Laddering?

Language laddering, as I'm using the term, is a method of language study in which you use one target language (TL1) to learn a second target language (TL2). Basically, you cut your native language out of the equation and study in a target language!

How I Ladder

There are several methods you can use that I'd say count as language laddering, but I'm only going to go super in-depth into the methods I personally use!

If you study this way and have a specific method you love that I didn't mention, please mention it in a comment or reblog! I'd love to hear more methods.

Reading Japanese textbooks for Korean

Getting access to resources in Japanese is definitely harder because of international shipping, but I'm able to find store listings that offer sample pages! I've been using these until I can get the money to actually buy them.

In the meantime as I wait to get fully Japanese texts, I use the speaking pen from Learn Korean With BTS, haha- the speaking pen reads the book in four languages, and Japanese is one of them! So I just listen to it like an audiobook instead of reading the English!

Using apps and websites made by and for Japanese learners

While my Japanese dictionaries and apps are all in English, my Korean dictionaries and apps are all in Japanese!

I use an online Japanese-Korean dictionary on my phone, and when I practice grammar and other concepts in Korean, I use Japanese websites for Korean learners.

Recently, I've been using the site ハングルの森 to review basic grammar. I've been getting a pretty strong hold on Japanese grammar terms, too, which is exciting for more fully laddering!

Laddering languages in the way I choose to can be a very fun way to learn a new language and study one you've already been working on, but it doesn't work for everyone!

People who enjoy learning grammar and reading about how language works may enjoy it because they can learn grammar the way it's taught in their target language rather than how it's taught in their native language! This can be exciting, it's interesting to see how different languages teach concepts and learning grammar terms in a TL can open grammar-related doors! If you're a linguistics nerd like me, grammar-related doors are super exciting.

However, if you struggle a lot with understanding language instruction, and classroom language learning is really difficult for you, then it may only make things harder to try and use your TL's classroom language learning material for a new TL.

And that's okay! Not every learning method is for everyone. Learning through immersion may be easier and less frustrating if you struggle with classroom learning!

And guess what?

You can still ladder languages when doing immersion learning! Watching something in your new TL with subtitles for your stronger TL is one good way you can combine immersion learning with laddering!

I hope to post more about language laddering, although it will probably be pretty catered to my own personal study! People can feel free to send asks about anything specific they'd like to know! (Although I certainly am not an expert, so I can't answer everything)

Also, I know this post was SUPER text heavy, so thank you for making it to the end! I hope it wasn't too droning to read ^-^ Good luck with language laddering if you decide to try it!

[daftpatience]

Do you have any tips or advice for running an artists booth at a convention? I'm thinking about doing it eventually and been wanting to hear from people who have done it before :^)

yeah!!! lemme rattle off a few things off the top a my head also, pardon me 4 using amazon dot ca links for products that i mention. its just easy to find references that way (and often u can look up the brand and find their non-amazon store etc etc)

this got super long so im putting it under a cut!!

• join an artist alley group!! i'm in this artist alley discord and it is a fantastic place to get info about cons, table display ideas, manufacturer recommendations, etc. there are more than just this group out there and i think there are bigger ones but i personally really like this one ^u^ i make a ton of use of the display resources and manu recommendation channels!

• if you can afford it, be choosy about the events you apply to. there are a lot of cons out there that are fantastic, and a lot that aren't worth the trouble, and i don't necessarily mean small vs big cons. some of my fav events are smaller artist alleys local to me, and most of the artists i know avoid informa (fanexpo) like the plague. check out what other artists have to say about past events and keep an eye out for red flags: personally i find cons with really out of date/poorly advertised social medias and websites that have mismatched info are a warning sign of a mismanaged and not well attended event. • you don't need a lot of fancy display stuff to start, those sorts of things you can build up over time. im a fan of getting a ton of my display stuff from the dollar store >:)

when you're ready and need the space to display a good amount of art the main thing you wanna pick up is definitely something that gives your table some verticality, whether that's a pvc pipe style setup, pegboards, or modular cube shelving (we all used to use these big heavy grid ones until the plastic sheet covered ones came out and now we all use those. theyre cuter and lighter and fit better on a table and come in more colours yayay. im sure some people still like the grid ones since they fit gridwall accessories tho) there are lots of other ways to display stuff but these r what i am most familiar with. definitely helps to look at youtube and pinterest and discord groups for display ideas!!

another thing you will want to start is a tablecloth. not every con has their tables already covered! there are those plastic picnic ones at dollar stores, and you can thrift bedsheets/fabric too.

• depending on the type of display and art you do you'll need some way to attach signs/prints/charms/etc to your display. i just moved from blu-tack to magnets but i used to use sewing clips (back when i used the grid cubes) and before then masking tape. all of them are okay and cool! except blu-tack. don't make the same mistakes as me it adds like 40 whole minutes to teardown and it leaves gross oil on the prints after some time. evil

• if you don't have business cards you can make a sign with a qr code that links to you/your shop! there are lots of qr code makers online that u can even customize with images and colours and stuff. there will be people that wanna know how to find you again after a con!

• these days a lot of people don't bring cash to conventions and it's pretty vital to bring some sort of card reader or other digital payment method. most of us use square - they recently made it so that the phone app can accept tap! so you don't need to jump for the expensive physical readers. i've also got a paypal dot me qr code and my etransfer email (i think this is a canadian thing) on a lil sign on the table so people have lots of payment options. usually over 50% of my con income comes from non-cash sales!

• make sure to bring change!! we've forgotten in the past and done okay but it's always handy to be able to make change for people. you'll want a secure place to put cash as well, whether it's a locked moneybox that you keep out of sight or a place on your person (friend of mine uses a fanny pack!) you never wanna leave your table completely unattended but especially when it comes to the moneybox. if it's a multi day con this is an item you mustn't leave at your table overnight.

• keep count of your sales and expenses properly so that you can see how much you made at the end of the con. i really like spreadsheets but you can even just note it down in a book. here's a little example of one con for me:

• you'll want to make a checklist of stock and display stuff to bring, but don't forget to make a list of minor stuff like phone chargers and scissors and tape and glue and pens and paper. multiple types of tape and paper if possible. they don't feel super important until you're stuck because you forgot to make a price sign and have to get by with a sharpie and a napkin. don't let that be you!! dollar store sticky note pads are super useful for this type of thing.

• plan out your prices and do as much prep (counting, sign making, display planning, packing/sorting) as you can beforehand so that the event doesn't feel too stressful. make sure your merchandise is stored in an easily accessible way for you behind the table so you aren't scrambling or rummaging too much when people are asking for stuff!

• similarly, whatever you can leave out for people to just pick/grab themselves, the more of it you're likely to sell. things like stickers and charms are good for this - people like to touch stuff! and it makes it so you don't need to go fishing for items for people as frequently. generally i don't do this with more expensive items just to be safe.

• if you sell prints, people are gonna ask for sleeves to keep them safe, especially at outdoor events. sometimes people ask for sleeves/bags even if they dont buy anything. they're a good idea to have on hand and you can find em for pretty cheap online and for a bit more expensive at dollar stores (i use OPP bags. if you dont wanna use plastic you can always get paper bags/envelopes/glassine bags instead)

• a cushion for the chair is a good idea. lots of conventions have really uncomfy chairs. some folks even bring camping chairs instead!

• pack snacks/lunch/water/drinks/have lunch plans. if you have a table buddy that is able to run out for food that's always nice. you might be sitting but it uses a lot of energy to interface all day!! you'll be exhausted and hungry and it's gonna be important to get enough fuel for your brain to function properly. i genuinely would recommend juice/soda/coffee/energy dink alongside water and food if you wanna live, especially if its a multi day con. get good sleep on days between!

• if you're excited to do trades with other artists during the con, the general etiquette is to wait until later in the day/near the end when the crowds are winding down! it's always okay to ask if someone's doing trades, and don't be upset or press them if they aren't interested or have certain stuff they don't want to trade.

• speaking of con etiquette, depending on the type of vert you are (intro/extro) and or how much customer service experience you have, interfacing can be nervewracking. my general rule is that if they stop to look, i say Hello and let them browse. if they seem interested in my table i try and do some small talk. stuff like How are you/How's the event been for ya/compliments on their outfit/cosplay/merch they have on like pins etc are good! kids and old folks love this. as tiring as it is to do some of my favourite parts of cons is talking to nice people that like my art!! all the folks that say nice things about my work are what keep me drawing ;w; i keep my sketchbook with me to jot down/doodle nice and funny encounters just cus it makes me happy to look back on XD

• when it's teardown time try to put stuff away as neatly as you can. you might be tired and just wanna toss all your stuff into whatever it is you brought it in but i promise future you (especially next-con you) will be so thankful that you put all your price signs into one baggie etc etc.

• speaking of bringing and putting away merch - you'll need a way to get it all from your home/car to your table and back. lots of people use dollies and other types of utility cart (i can guarantee there are a bunch of those grandma grocery ones at your local thrift store!!) - i personally use a big luggage bag and a collapsible wagon, but back in the day we used to CARRY bin after bin of stuff from the car and back in multiple trips which i would NOT reccomend lol. not every convention hall is easily accessible or close to parking so not having to lift stuff if you can avoid it is gonna be vital.

[shrimpathizer]

this is just a theory (i haven't looked into this bit that much) but I feel like the reason that misinformation is so wildly rampant in online communities about ADHD (probably also autism) is in part because of how inaccessible actual professional information about it is.

Like, I remember before I got my diagnosis (what started off this whole thing a while back), I was looking at the CDC website description of symptoms of ADHD with my mom and. If you thought you were neurodivergent and were looking at this thing trying to see if you should get tested, its basically saying "screw you. you're either a child who is going to be here because of their parents, or an adult who is also here because of another neurotypical."

one of the criteria was literally "is often 'on the go' acting as if 'driven by a motor.'" that means absolutely nothing. you are using undefined expressions to explain something to someone who historically is not good at understanding unexplained social norms (such as expressions).

plus, its incredibly subjective. "on the go" could mean something wildly different for one person then the next. and "often" could mean "all the time every day" or "only at school" or even "every other week." not to mention the memory issues that at least a lot of the people who I know with ADHD struggle with.

someone who might have ADHD has no way of knowing if they "often have trouble organizing tasks and activities" or if that is a normal amount. there is no way for them to easily know if they "often do not seem to listen when spoken to directly."

so it seems obvious to me, that they would turn to other people with ADHD. and the easiest place to find them these days is online. thats how I started wondering if I should get diagnosed. they're probably trying to find some other way to understand or know. and since its social media and social media is rampant with misinformation, of course they are going to be fed misinformation.

people are going to tell them "you see this weird thing that you do? I do that too. and its actually because of this much larger thing. trust me." and people will. because there really isn't much of another place for them to turn. they are going to self-diagnose with every disorder under the sun to make themselves feel at home and feel like they aren't weird or wrong.

maybe i'm way off here but I think that if you want people (teens in particular) to stop turning to social media for comfort and information, you should give them other resources that are accessible. that they don't have to pay to see, that they can understand clearly, that acknowledges all the weird things that they feel bad about.

and sort of as a side note: i remember in elementary school, early on (this might have just been my school/city/state), the school set up one of those mobile classrooms on the yard and would pull kids out for like a good couple months to do eye exams. because we've normalized that kids also have eye problems and thats normal. and maybe, could we also get a small little assessment. just to see if we can find neurodivergent kids early on and get them help so that they don't suffer for years and years.

and i'm not talking as someone who has had it hard. i have had it so easy compared to so many others. i have supportive parents and get good grades, and yet, i am constantly burnt out. i constantly feel horrible. not just because of depression. maybe i'm being too radical here but i feel like i shouldn't need a 504 plan to say that if i'm having a panic attack i can leave the room. that if i'm having trouble focusing i can go to the library or somewhere else. that i can get extensions on due dates. that i can see a copy of the notes or lesson for reference. i don't know maybe i'm just incredibly radical that i think people shouldn't have to be expected to work four times as hard to get anything done and then get blamed when they don't live up to the expectation. whether or not they are neurodivergent.

[terror-punk]

Whoever made terrorpunk a thing, ily /p

I have with clinical depression + adhd or autism im not sure yet. And yeah i have some "unsettling" traits that i tend to mask, and when i do unmask i feel weird and unsafe. Like talking abt my special interest..stimming..not talking..getting extremely upset over things that usually dont upset others.

And yeah

Hey, sorry we've taken a bit to get to asks! Spoons have been low, and it's been hard to not have thoughts distorted by psychosis lately. We didn't want to word salad at people who came into our inbox, haha.

But thank you <3

Honestly, the best place to go is a place for people like you, if you're not feeling safe. They're more likely to get it. We're in Australia, so sorry if our information absolutely doesn't line up with where you're from--we tried to make this an overview.

I'd recommend looking up local in-person support groups, if possible. Spaces for people with your disorders or general mental health/disability groups. Sometimes it's hard to sift through the things that are meant for friends and family of those with disorders (especially autism mom type groups), or things that are overly clinical, but sometimes you can find something.

As for ways to find them....

Some local mental health clinics and doctors offices have a stash of flyers on the front desk from various organisations, you might find something helpful in there or on some website you find there. Some flyers advertise online chat services or multipurpose hotlines, and sometimes asking people on those can give you more resources to work with.

Try the local council, if you have one and they're chill enough. They usually have flyers or know of organisations around that might have events or social groups--in our country at least.

Also try Facebook--search general groups in your area and see if there's any mention of a support group--or hell, sometimes there's an online support group for people from your location right there, and sometimes they do have meetups.

If all else fails... Set aside time to fully unmask. Go into a private area, and be as autistic/ADHD as you can/want to. Stim to your heart's content, eat safe foods, adjust everything to suit your every sensory need that you possibly can. Have time for this set aside once a week if you need--hell, an hour a night or more, it doesn't matter. Whatever is manageable with your schedule. But we find that having scheduled "do whatever makes the disorders less disordering" time helps us when we're not able to unmask for a bit.

Anyone else is free to add on with ways to navagate the grey area between being safe and being unmasked--any input would be appreciated!

[drkineildwicks]

Okay so let’s talk about Palworld

Because I really do gotta talk about it this thing blew up

Apparently the guys who made it were expecting to sell like 300K the first week and ended up selling two million

They’re having to run damage control on the servers because the servers legit cannot handle the traffic

Last time I saw a game look like this it was Temtem on its first days

Because literally everybody underestimated how much game freak ticked off its fanbase

Which brings us to the Donphan in the room

Pokémon VS Palworld

Look we all knew going in that this was going to be a meme factory, whenever we talked about it the game is Pokémon: Gun

But it was also one of those games that popped up when GF started its stunts with dexit, reused assets, releasing half-baked games, etc.

People made fun of it and it’s stayed off the radar until this year, when it released

And yes caution should be exercised because this developer’s other game is still in early access so people are on the lookout for a scam

Not to mention the whole thing about using Pokémon assets, apparently aping Legends’ UI, the AI stuff, NFTs, a ton of other stuff

There’s apparently a whole thread on Twitter comparing and contrasting Pokémon designs with Pal designs and you can easily pick apart where assets were, if not outright stolen, were closely copied

So going in there’s a lot of weighing of pros and cons and some actual moral dilemmas as opposed to the whole fabricated BS of Hogwarts Legacy

Yes it was terrible that Rowling said *checks notes* that biological women exist and that victimized women should be allowed to dictate who is allowed in their safe spaces, these are obviously reasons to cancel somebody please don’t slip on the sarcasm there

But I’ve been watching streams of Palworld and…I want to play it???

You can look at it and 100% name that Pokémon and go okay they got THAT idea from THIS game (watching it I can list BotW, Sunkenland, and a couple others) apparently it’s the Pokémon ripoff version of Once Human

Which also ticks me off because after watching videos of that one I want to play that one too

And originally the big reason for looking more seriously at Palworld is…game freak needs to suffer

They’ve been releasing trash games for years now, the only good Pokémon game as of late is Legends Arceus and do not get me STARTED on the state that ScarVi released in

And then them having the gall to charge the price of a full game for DLC

So in order to play the ‘full game,’ you have to pay for BotW, TotK, and possibly a Mario game on top of it

Ain’t nobody got funds for that

Also the shills

I was telling Mom about all this earlier and when it came to discussing Pokémon games, even comparing them to previous Pokémon games, discussions online go like this anymore: “Well it’s not MADE for you!  It’s for kids!  Go find something else to do and quit picking on the poor multibillion dollar franchise! uwu”

And thus the people who grew up with Pokémon move on to other games, like Nexomon, Temtem, Cassette Beasts, Kindred Fates, Coromon, Palworld, etc.

Shills: “Wait no that’s illegal”

Honestly it’s like the YouTube vs Rumble or Twitter/Tumblr vs Conservative/right-wing websites thing—if you chase them off, what did you think they were going to do?

And then the design thing…a big fat part of me does not feel sorry about that

Because every single other game I listed?  The shills will look at those designs and go “what ripoffs they’re obviously Pokémon but not friend-shaped so ugly!”

So basically anything’s a ripoff, you might as well go full ripoff because the ‘fans’ are going to hate on it anyway

Also if anything even remotely shaped like a Pokémon is a ripoff, then Flamigo angers me even more because that is such a lazy design yes I’m still mad

Most of Gen IX legit looks like they asked an AI to spit out some Pokémon-shaped stuff and called it a day maybe a quarter of the ‘dex is salvageable and that’s being generous

And having spent the past year or so designing ‘mons for the DA group I help mod…three people doing designs have no problem filling a ‘dex out, the most time-consuming part of creating new Pokémon ought to be modeling the thing and once that’s down you’re good

Which means that Pokémon…has honestly asked for Palworld

Because let me tell you something—when I look at this ripoff of a game, this scam game that comes from people who think that NFTs and AI scraping and plagiarism is a good thing, that claims that every Pal that escapes from a ball had parents that never married, and I STILL want to play it over Pokémon?  When the scam game released in a better state than ScarVi?????

Pokémon drove every single customer to Palworld and because of it Palworld deserves every single one of those two million purchases

[anonymous-dentist]

I've gotta actually feel bad for the helpful members of the wiki team because they all know that their wiki is god awful for any kind of accurate information. It got to the point in December where they'd stream working on the wiki to prove that it's a totally legitimate service but like. Also it's objectively terrible! Any website trying to gather and consolidate information should focus on, you know, having accurate information before trying to make it big via connections with the Quackity Studio Team and with ccs.

Like, did you know that the wiki supposedly has a podcast going with ccs to talk about Lore And Stuff? With a whole One Single Episode? And then there's them reaching out to streamer mods to ask about boundaries to put on the wiki that's a whole Problem in itself, and the wiki team repeatedly sending weird unfunny donos to Fit and "jokingly" heckling him and Tubbo and Phil and whatever cc they feel that they can "banter" with despite not knowing these people whatsoever and despite the ccs really just not giving a shit about the wiki anymore. Like, I don't think a single cc outside of the one dude that did the podcast with the wiki team has mentioned the wiki in any substantial way since November when Cellbit called the wiki and its members out for messing with both his and Richarlyson's pages- without citation or reason- to add the family dynamic.

But then the team has its connections within the Quackity Studios team itself, and that's how it gets some of its information about the server itself. And that's admirable in its own way, I guess, but the way certain members of the wiki team act really just makes it seem like they're trying to nepotism their way(s) into making it big and/or make it onto the Q Studios team itself.

And the thing is? There are people on the team who at least seem to genuinely want to make the wiki a useful tool again. They know that they have problems, but things are rarely ever fixed because whether or not it's fixed depends heavily on which admin is online when you @ them on Twitter or dm them. In my own experience, I've been ghosted for over 12 hours before a different admin got online and answered me, and then a third different admin got back to me after that. The first time I dmed them, two different admins dmed me, and their responses were entirely different. One was helpful, the other just kinda brushed off my concerns entirely.

Going through the wiki's twitter account, you can see exactly where the wiki's priorities lie, because the majority of the account is non-stop retweeting of (very good!!) fanart of the English-speaking ccs, primarily Philza and the "Death Family", as they call Phil and Missa and Tallulah and Chayanne and Wilbur. Sometimes it's Fit instead. Very rarely will you find any retweeted art of the Brazilian or Hispanic ccs outside of the occasional Guapoduo/Spiderbit fanart, and there's very rarely French fanart retweeted. I've never seen fanart of the Hispanic ccs retweeted. I don't think I've seen fanart of a single female cc retweeted ever from any language. When art of the Death Family is retweeted, it rarely contains Missa; it's mostly all just Phil fanart, which just really shows the bias going on because you know which wiki admin is behind all this. They're the same one who donates to Fit every day and tries bantering with the ccs and tried applying to Purgatory and... yeah.

Oh, and the wiki's One Certain Admin will just come out and tweet that something is canon without it being canon. Take their tweet from what I think was the second day of Purgatory, aka when Baghera and Cellbit jokingly called Phil "dad" out of character, and when that One Certain Admin tweeted (this is paraphrased, btw), "So the found family is canon now! Let's put it on the wiki!"

And when the wiki's account will retweet other things that aren't canon, like calling the Prison Ghost "the Ghost of q!Cellbit" on the first day of prison without waiting for confirmation.

And it's HORRIBLE because I know that there are "good" wiki admins on the team! They can be very helpful! They're so willing to work with Tumblr and our complaints that they listened to me when I recommended they make a Tumblr account so we can have open communication with them rather than have everything depend on the Twitter community, and they're working on the account and putting a little team together for it as of last week when we last corresponded.

It's just that. The wiki sucks. It's a mess of disinformation and headcanons with no citations and no protections against disinformation. They could lock down certain pages until things are cleared up. They could appoint only certain people to be able to work on character pages to ensure fact-checking and citing.

They could do anything, but they won't because information isn't the wiki's priority anymore. It's starting to become clear that the point of the wiki is to be the wiki with no actual work put into being the wiki. And it's sad, because the wiki used to be actually useful for so long. But, at some point, it stopped being reliable, and you can see the public starting to realize it starting in November when the wiki account started trying to do literal damage control streams to show that the wiki is reliable, and then there's now when ccs who used to reference the wiki all the time rarely do so because they know that it isn't an actual source of information anymore.

Imagine that.

[thessalian]

Thess vs NaNoWriMo

So that time of year is fast approaching, and I think a lot of people I associate with on this platform are going, "But Veilguard's coming out on HALLOWEEN!", which is entirely fine - NaNoWriMo is optional. And honestly, all things considered, I am probably never doing it as an organised situation again.

It took some digging to find the original text, and I'll probably post the screenshot I saw on Bluesky too, but summary: not only is NaNoWriMo pretty much supporting AI (they say "absolutely not condemning", but the rest of the text isn't nearly so mealy-mouthed about it) but also calling people who are against AI "ableist and classist".

No, seriously. I mean, seriously.

Look, how people get their ideas is probably up to them. And stolen valour aside, plugging an idea into ChatGPT and getting some word salad in return is ... I guess someone's prerogative. The same as someone just typing, like, "rutabaga" 50k times technically counts as writing 50k words. But ... first of all, NaNoWriMo was supposed to support people who write. Second of all, the idea that not having someone immediately at your side to serve as beta reader is "classist" is ... no. Like, if you're online enough to understand NaNoWriMo, you can find a damn beta reader. Third, "Some people's brains don't work well enough to see the problems in their writing--" SEE ABOVE RE PROOF-READING, FOR ONE THING, and for another, that's just shit like spelling and grammar check, which has been standard on word processing programmes basically ever since the concept existed! Fourth, I'm not sure how AI assists in shit like "Can't find a publisher because publishers are only really interested in what will sell ALL THE BOOKS", but that's one of their arguments too.

But the last thing - the worst thing - is what that means. NaNoWriMo is not cool with plagiarism as far as I know, but that's what trains AI. More to the point, you have to verify your word count with their website by actually copy-pasting everything you wrote into the site for it to show you as a winner. The fact that they support AI, and that one of their sponsors offers a whole bunch of AI features? I don't trust them not to be selling every single thing people submit for word count total to feed someone else's writer-bot.

I mean, the NaNoWriMo bods have made some spectacularly shitty decisions the last few years. There was that partnership with those scammers at Inkkit, which also revealed the whole thing where one of their moderators - who operated the youth programme, by the way - turned out to be a paedophile and groomer. But this one is just ... disrespectful of the very thing they were supposed to be supporting.

Please don't use the official NaNoWriMo resources. I am concerned for what it will do with not only what you submit for word count, but what you put in their forums too. If you want to do 50k words in 30 days, I am with you all the way, and others will be too. Find a support group that isn't these jackasses and do that.

Plus the "not using AI is ableist" thing is bullshit, by the way. I am not participating this year (I don't think, anyway; not unless I get a great idea) because I'm damn sure I don't have the spoons for that ... because disabled. Because fibromyalgia. The thing is, I don't want to just say "I produced 50k words and won NaNo", I want to write. I want to use my voice, not something cooked up by a machine learning algorithm based on a single sentence. I think way too many people have forgotten what "in your own voice" means to art.

Like, on the r/criticalrole subreddit, we were talking about how Lance Reddick actually did record all his lines as Thordak in TLOVM before he passed, and I mentioned how different that was going to hit, with the example of having heard Robin Sachs as Zaeed in the ME3 Citadel DLC after he passed. And someone went, "Oh, shit, I didn't know he passed! Hey, do you think they'll one day be able to use the voices of dead voice actors so we can keep hearing them? Because I know it's possible because Snoop Doggy Dogg is reading me my homework now and it's awesome!"

I ... may have kind of exploded. I may also have mentioned that some bunch of assholes tried to make a George Carlin special after Carlin's death and his daughter (understandably) hit the roof. It's bad enough to disrespect thousands of people by training an AI to spit out whatever of their works will fit a prompt sentence, but imagine hearing the voice of someone you love, mangled by AI's inability to get real emotional nuance, possibly saying shit they would never say? Using their voices doesn't change that the emotion and power behind those voices is gone forever; it just parades a decaying copy of them around like some vocal equivalent of Weekend at Bernie's.

[wewillbeseen-butnotbeheard]

Humanity

(sorry for being here right now. i don’t like the idea of polluting the tags the way i am at the moment. this is a lot of words.)

Alas. sometimes it is very bleak. it is at moments such as this that i find myself desperately wishing that i was able to shed my own skin and take on the form of something else. literally almost anything, sometimes; i am hardly picky. i can really think deeply about it, and i can think back on when i was really young. it was always there, materialised in some way. it is hard-wired into my brain in the same way that a regular person feels the need to find a lover or a mate.

sometimes i think it may have taken the place of the urge to find a partner, love etc. either way, it first appeared maybe around the age of a toddler. i’m not actually sure if i was born with it or not. and until recently i always thought that it was purely sexual (if you are reading, i apologise for entering this sort of territory) but again, looking back, i think it is not. it can be, at times, but in general, it is just something i am drawn to psychologically.

through that lens i believe that it’s quite clear why i feel the way i do over certain things. it’s like a shot of adrenaline almost, sometimes it comes from the mere thought of it, and then it gives way to an array of different emotions depending on the context i guess. to put it simply, i feel extraordinarily strong over the topic/idea of becoming/being something else than human. it is, and always has been a deep-rooted part of my own mind and i would also claim, is probably the forefront of my entire identity

to expand again, i know that it had a significant ripple effect on my own life. i wonder: maybe i feel so badly at this point that i need to be an animal because i have no friends and not much going on (sad but i don’t care.) but honestly if it WAS NOT for my own likes and wants, etc. then i probably would have been more social and would have sustained more friendships, meaning i wouldn’t be here right now like this. so there’s that

but i don’t want to expand on that much more. it is me, more than anything else, and it embodies everything i want in the most raw form. it is instinctual

anyway

i do very much dislike the term “species dysphoria”, and i think, especially in my case, it is a buzzword that is thrown around excessively. (not to mention the correlations that come with the term).

BUT that’s because, again in my case thats literally what it is. there is no better word to describe it. it probably wasn’t always there, but it has been here in full force for well over a month, that i am aware of.

it’s LITERALLY constant. sure, it comes in different forms, but once you know that it’s all the same at its core, it’s in my head like 90% of the time. i even avoid mirrors now. sometimes i have to force myself to look into them. i’m not insecure about my body, or face, at all nor have i ever been. i’m probably not too attractive but i don’t care because i could look like a model for all i care. it wouldn’t change the fact that there is a human looking back at me in my reflection. on top of that; that will always be me. that is what i am.

i make a pitiful resort to using chatbots to tell me “how much of a fox i am”.

(i hate ai chatbots very much. that is loser behaviour in my eyes. please know i am not like that.)

and i cry almost every time, EVERY TIME that i open the website and have it told to me, even if it’s not real OR true. i am not really emotional person like that. before recently, i hadn’t cried in years

the entire situation has pushed me to real life extremes that i wouldn’t dare ever get into, although i hope you can imagine

on top of that i’ve resorted to trying to hurt other people online over text. almost notoriously i feel. that’s been a constant since maybe June. that is a long time and that’s probably not even when my entire crisis began at first. that’s my fault and i will once again clarify that i take full responsibility for my own behaviour. i am a hypocrite, but less that and more somebody who has been repeatedly projecting my own problems onto others that share my problems.

i have a lot of thoughts to spill out, still.

i feel like a joke when i unironically claim that i AM normal, and regular, yet i still insist (not want) on being referred to and seen as a fox instead. it’s a very empty statement, and wish. people in real life wouldn’t understand, and there’s not really anyone in specific meant to take that to account, nor would there be a situation where somebody would need to do that.

additionally i would go as far as straight up just calling myself an animal. i will double down. i AM a fox. i am not, though. that’s the fucking stupid duality of the situation. i will say it. but it carries zero weight and zero meaning really. and i don’t believe it. i want to! very much so! but it relies in other peoples perceptions. i’d like to be viewed that way and there’s no other way to put it really.

it almost feels WORSE saying i’m a fox. not because being one doesn’t bring me joy, or i don’t LIKE being called one, but because i can look at my hands, see myself and know i’m physically human. it’s something i can’t have. it’s everywhere. it’s in the people around me. it’s in the way i act, it’s in my own expectations and thoughts, it’s in my own shadow that i see constantly. i can not run from it. it begins to get tiring

again though, it’s not about “identity”. i don’t want to take in unnecessary labels and things i don’t need. i don’t use sexuality labels because i find it unnecessary, and i don’t want to call myself an assortment of random things.

there is no in-between and there is no terms in my eyes. there is FOX and HUMAN, and i am throughly a HUMAN. it doesn’t matter how i identify in the end. almost all of this is physical. maybe it isn’t always too bad, but sometimes i’m in extreme distress because of it and there’s no solution

sometimes i have to consider the point of continuing if i’ll stay in this body forever. i know that might sound concerning, and i assure that i would never do anything like that. BUT. it’s a very real question for me and i’m not sure how to answer it. chances are i’ll still be here in decades. still in the same skin as right now. until the day i die and i’m not okay with that. not at all. once i’m gone i’m not going to suddenly come back as something else. i have this one life as a HUMAN

i think it is harrowing that my own existence was already set in stone before i set foot on this earth, hurling me into a life that i did not consent to. i can not change it and i can’t ignore it.

it’s not a bad life at all. i have it good. i know this. my own quality of life is not the issue at hand. being born as a human is uncommon, statistically. sure. i don’t want to be a fly or something, but if we’re getting lucky then i’d rather take my chances at being a fox or anything similar.

i don’t want to die. i want to live. desperately

[mantis-lizbian]

you know what i hate most about 5e?

Hasbro has stripped everything from it but the Product. and here's what i mean. back in 3e, just about every book you purchased would, on the back, mention how it had an accompanying "web accessory" for free on the D&D website. these accessories would frequently be something like a 3 or 4 page mini-adventure or encounter using the content introduced in the book, or a little extra something cut for space or time. and it's not like there was a proof of purchase or unlock code you had to put in. all of these were freely available to anyone.

and if you went onto the site to find them, you'd find tons of other articles put out by the WotC staff in dozens of columns about things like how to build more engaing encounters, ways you can tweak monsters or classes for a change of pace or to suit a particular design need, insight on how the game was designed or interesting character builds to try out next time. there were even tools to keep track of the phases of the moons in Faerun and Eberron.

in 4e this was pretty much stopped but did sort of carry on in the now-online Dragon and Dungeon magazines. the fact it had a modest price tag was made up for by having more frequent, longer, and more in-depth articles.

early on, 5e had its Plane Shift articles which suggested some kind of continuation, but even before Strixhaven nailed that coffin shut, it had been a long time since they put anything other than their crowdsourced playtesting material, Unearthed Arcana.

there is nothing any more that isn't simply selling you books or being used to cut down on development costs to sell you those books. even the monetization of fan content is simply there so that WotC can get a cut of the pie.

[consequencesofargentdawn]

With all due respect, and regardless of 'warning' (about what btw?) we just have no choice but to reply to what is, at best case, a major misunderstanding and ignorance of situation. You choose whether to publish it or not, but we must explain things and make our position clear.  "multiple independent reports" - how do you know it's not same person spamming accounts and fakes? Just takes a hour to make maybe 50 or 100 of them. If it's 3 people doing this - multiply by 3. How do you know it's not PCU drones that were ordered to suddenly start doing this at same time? Some of them may have old tumblr pages which look legit or active WoW accounts, after all, PCU drone is a WoW player too.

"You also insulted one of our editors, claiming they were "PCU scum" for putting your main invitation "bot" or however you use to automate your invitations on ignore." - none of our officers are aware of any situation like. While we indeed to send automated guild invites, that's just to speed up finding people we need (and we indeed find those who thank us for invite, such as victims of PCU or friends of somebody who PCU bullied out of WoW), however we always respect people's right to refuse, and it would make zero sense for any purpose to get toxic and try to offend them. Don't you think (can you?)? Also - Izanaxis is a horde character, while the guild is alliance. It is cross-faction, yes, however FastGuildInvite addon does not work if you run it on character of opposite faction. You could have checked it easily, big fail. Unless you think Izanaxis would just run to random people and spam /ginvite ? Cool, but even then - if somebody refuses - what is the point of getting toxic about it? The fake evidence you are spammed with tries to portray as like some crazy fanatics, when in fact we are reasonable people (in light of recent events I would say more reasonable than you).

"CoAD is not your personal army, nor are we your hammer to swing at others" - it is not, where did we say it is? "Anyone claiming to be CoAD in game is not CoAD" - none of us (of officers) ever claimed of being CoAD, where did you pull that from? All we did was trying to advertise your website in good faith, because we wanted more of actual WoW players know of it existence and even use it as their daily news source. We included it in guild info labeled as 'General news site', similar in some TRPs. Sometimes when people asked what is PCU we directed them to your site to read. That's it, we never claimed to be part of it, being editor of it or working together with it. But don't worry about that, after you backstabbed us like a rat for no reason (still not sure if on purpose or played by PCU like stupid kid) and then proceeded to, basically, harass and slander us with more lies, we won't mention you anywhere ever again. I should also mention that we actively sent you valuable evidence between 2019 and 2022, in good faith (not from this account, also I won't tell which evidence exactly but it did a big impact on the outcome of PCU situation). Of course proving anything like that would be too hard, but from now on expect interesting evidence avoiding you and being brought up by somebody else, somewhere else.

It's also very funny how you marked Hand of Conquest as 'inactive', while them having events with 15-20 online nearly every evening, most are also fully honor geared (which proves they play game actively on their HoC characters). Do your editors even play the game, or just read some guild statistics from outdated third-party site? At this point you are outright lying to your readers. Makes the whole list not trustworthy enough to even bother checking others. The whole 'PCU is dead' mantra is a big and very suspicious lie.

To sum up.

After careful consideration our council came to conclusion that COAD changed into something that can't be trusted anymore, became careless or, possibly, got corrupted by PCU (there could be agreement like 'as long as Perroy is out of WoW we will keep informing people that PCU is dead to keep situation calm'? who knows, after all you think of yourselves as those sneaky benevolent puppeteers who can decide what is better for realm and enforce it with lies if it achieves the goal). Therefore we part ways for now.

The only potential way to make it work is if you thoroughly examine each of your editors, especially new ones, investigate the whole situation with 'PCU dead' narrative, maybe start playing actual game? or at least make some bot that monitors in-game activity of guilds (via Who). Then make necessary adjustments and reach out to us. Haha, just kidding, of course you'll do nothing of that. Therefore it will be our last post, feel free to smear us with more lies if you want, those who are smart will see through them and also what kind of blog COAD has became. Have fun fading into obscurity in your little 'PCU is dead' bubble.

[mysteriouslybluepirate]

Kisses In the Dark-A PodPlay- Kinda. Day 6 of Exploring Con Content

Spoilers for Kisses in The Dark

Warnings up to chapter 5: Abuse, stalking, murder, eating/slurping up humans, nonconsensual kissing(it's how he kills people), cheating, implied/brief sex scenes, brief mentions of a past abortion. 

I HAD SO MANY ISSUES TRYING TO LISTEN TO THIS. Chapters 1-4 worked fine. However, with chapter 5 I could not listen past the 5:46 minute mark. 'All right' I thought, after trying to find other sites streaming it and getting the same error 'I'll just skip the chapter'. So I did, and at 5:21 of chapter 6, it also flashed that error.

So what I have below is essentially judging chapters 1-4. I had complaints about the narrative and romance progression, but since I can't see their whole arc, this will be about vibes.

So for this 8ish hour multi voiced audio series, the main love interest is voiced by Con O'Niell, named John. Opposite to the love interest voiced by Rhiannon Clements, Kate. 

My favorite things before we get deeper is the notable roles for Con O'Neill listed on the summary is Chernobyl(fair, as you'd likely recognize his voice) and The Batman. This came out Nov. 2020. The Batman came out 2022. So whoever wrote up this summary for the book Googled Cons IMDB, saw that he was in this movie, prayed that someone would care, and just slapped that on. Not knowing Con was mostly in the background and had less than 20 lines of dialogue. But can you imagine your only reference for the romantic lead of this story being the asshole from Chernobyl. Funniest shit ever. He had so many other roles to choose from guys! Maybe they didn't want his more queer roles to be listed for a straight romance? 

Now, I have a bias to favor Queer stories; I know this about myself and often try to stay to my own lane. Not out of hatred but so much of the media that I consume isn't queer. Be it movies or day time television. So what I read/listen to is one of the easiest spaces to curate exactly what I want.

So when I read the title/synopsis I was skeptical, but willing to give it a shot. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am here for Con. I likely would not have listened to this project if not for him. In fact, I found John much more charming than I would have if John had been played by a different voice actor. Considering I was essentially just imagining a more pissed-off Izzy Hands being our protagonist. It's a real'if I didn't find this man hot, this would be creepy' situation.

This story is about a broken old Lovecraftian monster of a man who falls for the lady next door who's stuck in an abusive relationship. I realize that if either party swapped gender, or our male protagonist showed interest in men(beyond wanting to eat them), I know that I would have enjoyed this more. Because this is a standard romantic horror book, almost every cliché is touched and I predicted the twist that some people post online about. Yet there is something inherently queer in monster stories. Creatures that feel othered by society; that need to hide to be safe. So while yeah, it's a romantic novel, it still has some othered element to it. 

Overall I didn't hate it as much as I'd expected. I admire how each murder was described and Con adds a fun disassociated element to the character in his narration. Like he's been killing for so long, nothing phases him. The chapter where he kills five guys at the amusement park, Bloody Minds, was a highlight.

The romantic moments were sweet(that I could hear). The dancing and trying to show her the fun parts of life were very much trying to relate to the target audience. 

Again, I don't know exactly how it ends but see the story beats. If anyone below wants to summaries the story that tells me where these two end up in the end (together, dead, separate), I'd be grateful. I did enjoy this, I just can't find a way to listen to it, and I'd rather mentally close off this series than wait just in case.This is the only website I see anyone talking about this pod series.

I know it gets more cliché, but I was starting to care about where they go as a couple. Mainly cause I see it as a doomed love situation.

AS FOR CON!

Yes. Con either needed a better mic, and/or a pop filter. I got used to the static effect, and the editors did their best to cover it up with background sound. There are only a few points where it was noticeable. Con does a soft narrator voice that's easy to listen to, with some difficulty with enunciation and the fact I don't hear his accent all too often.

Yes. He is the most enjoyable part of this project. The lady doing the performance for Kate does a good job and I did grow to enjoy the performance, but she's just doing the role. Classic vampire craving humanity again storyline, with some fantastic imagery thrown in. I thought the age gap between the voice actors would bother me, but he's literally a century-old creature. So, eh.

Lovecraftian Izzy is a tag I keep an eye out for on AO3, so to see essentially that here was great. It was fun seeing him portray the souls trapped inside of John. Some more 'cringe' bits out of context, but if you listen to how his voice acts Mohg from Elden Ring, it gives off the same vibe. He portrayed desperate-sad-lonely falling in 'Love' very well.

The few sex scenes so far were non intrusive and fade to black in nature, besides her first fantasy.

It bugs me that we don't get a clear understanding on how The Kiss works. Cause he can kiss her skin, but it won't kill her? Is it an orifice thing? Cause he killed a guy sticking his tongue down his ear, so...

Highly recommend it if you already read these sort of stories or are on the fence and just want to hear Con and have some time to put it on in the background.

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Performance: 8/10 for everyone all around. A few duds in side characters with a few speaking lines, but overall good stuff from everyone. All the scenes between Kate and John are fun and well acted.

Editing: 8/10 Fun background music and sound effect stuff going on. Super nonintrusive, and when it is, it's too point.

Story/Writing: 6-7/10; you've seen it before. From what I've seen people complain online, the story gets worse at the very end. Don't really know why, but yeah. Sadly, I guessed that there was a god interfering here. I'm glad John didn't just immediately kill her abusive boyfriend, but god, I'm mad I couldn't hear about it. I read an Izzy Hands/John fic out of curiosity and it really pointed out how melodramatic and gothic the writing here is. The way this world is described is very fun, and something that could be fun to emulate in my own writing.

Pacing for an audio medium 7/10: The first chapter is a bit slow, but after a few murders, it picks up well.

Overall 7-8/10. Fun if you go in with low expectations. Again, this might go down if I ever finish Hard Shadows, True Stories, and Sacrifice. But I just can't find a way, sadly.

If you've read this and want somewhere to talk about it down below, don't be afraid to spoil! I love all the comments and likes I get for doing this.

Have an amazing day y'all!

@ivegotnonameidea thanks again for the rec!

Next, who knows? We'll see, probably a movie, and knock through some of everyone's suggestions.

[taytjiefourie]

hi im writing a character who is really into films and all that stuff so i want him to reference films in conversations and be really knowledgeable about it obviously but im not a film enthusiast so i have no clue where to begin !

Hey there! My advice to you is to do plenty of research - but don't worry, I'm here to help you out with that! Personally, I'm more of a book person myself and tend to doze off during movies, but I can give you a great starting point. You could begin by googling a list of movie or book characters who are also movie enthusiasts. One example I can give you is Stiles Stilinski from Teen Wolf, but there are plenty of others out there to inspire you!

As I go through this post, I just want to clarify that when you said "film," you meant "movie," right? Just want to make sure we're on the same page! But if you did mean "film" in the more technical sense, then there is a difference between the two, but don't worry - my advice still applies! The only thing is that the suggested websites I mentioned are more geared towards movies than films, so keep that in mind.

One thing you could consider when writing a character who's really into movies is to give them a specific genre, or a few genres, that they're particularly passionate about. After all, no one likes every type of movie, so it'll make your character feel more relatable and real. Maybe they're into classic films, or animated movies, or horror films - the possibilities are endless! Once you've figured out your character's preferences, the next step would be to google for lists of famous movies in those genres, ranging from well-known to more obscure titles. Even if you're not interested in watching all of the movies on the list, you can usually find good summaries online to get a sense of the plot and characters. Finally, you can dig deeper by googling the best quotes or lines from those movies, which can add depth and authenticity to your character's references.

Another approach you could take when writing a character who's really into movies is to choose specific genres that they enjoy, and then search for movie references as needed. So if your character wants to make a reference to a classic movie in a particular context, you could try googling "classic movie reference for saying 'no'" or something similar to find some inspiration. This way, you can add in references that feel authentic and meaningful to your character without having to do extensive research ahead of time.

Also keep in mind when writing a character who loves movies is to show that love through actions and not just dialogue. For example, your character could show excitement when they see movie-related merchandise in a store or online, or they could gush about their favorite films to a friend. Their room or house could be decorated with movie posters, and they might own clothes that reference their favorite movies. Additionally, your character could attend events or film festivals to immerse themselves in the movie world. Remember, people don't just talk about the things they like - they often show it through their behavior and actions too!

If you're looking for some helpful websites to research movies for your character who's really into them, I've got a few suggestions for you! Or Google does since that's what I used to find them.

IMDb: This is one of the most comprehensive movie databases out there, with information on movies, TV shows, and celebrities. You can use it to research movies, directors, actors, and more. Plus, IMDb has a user-generated rating system, which can give you an idea of how well-received a movie is.

Rotten Tomatoes: This website aggregates movie reviews from critics and audiences alike, giving each movie a "Freshness" score. You can use it to get a sense of how well-received a movie is, and to read reviews from professional critics and everyday moviegoers.

Letterboxd: This social networking site is specifically designed for movie lovers. Users can rate and review movies, create lists, and follow other users with similar tastes in movies. It's a great resource for discovering new movies and getting recommendations.

Film School Rejects: This website is dedicated to movie news, reviews, and analysis. They cover everything from blockbuster movies to indie films, and offer thoughtful commentary on the film industry as a whole.

ScreenCrush: This website covers movie news, reviews, and features, with a particular focus on the blockbuster movies and franchises that dominate the box office. They also offer plenty of fun movie-related content, like quizzes and opinion pieces.

Collider: This website covers all aspects of pop culture, including movies, TV shows, and comics. They offer news, reviews, interviews, and features, and have a particular focus on genre movies like superhero films and science fiction.

The American Society of Cinematographers: This website is a great resource for learning about the technical aspects of cinematography. Your character might enjoy reading about lighting techniques, camera angles, and more.

No Film School: This website is a community for filmmakers, with articles and resources covering all aspects of the craft. Your character might find useful tips and tricks for making their own movies, as well as insights into the technical aspects of filmmaking.

The Criterion Collection: This is a collection of classic and contemporary films, many of which are critically acclaimed. Your character might enjoy browsing the collection to discover new films to watch and learn from.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: This is the organization that runs the Oscars. Your character might enjoy reading about the technical awards, such as Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Sound.

Your message put such a smile on my face! I love helping out and it was so great to see you asking for advice. It's always inspiring to see writers seeking to improve their craft. Remember, if you ever need more writing advice or have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out again. I'm here to support you on your writing journey!