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badscienceman · 1 month ago

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I saw someone ask what "I hope this hurts" means beyond the obvious, and I started to respond only for it to turn into an essay... Because I don't feel like dumping something so long in some unsuspecting person's notifs, I'm just going to post it here instead.

I started writing this after playing the game, but ended up watching a playthrough because I couldn't remember exactly where "I hope this hurts" was repeated. I think I caught the only few times it was mentioned, but I wouldn't be surprised if I missed something, so feel free to correct me on that or anything else I might have gotten wrong.

Spoilers for the full game and CWs for everything you would expect from discussing Mouthwashing apply.

Edited 10/16/2024 for clarity and some minor issues with formatting. I added sections in hopes of making it more readable, as well as a few more screenshots that I hope will support my points better. *Indicates where I made potentially significant additions to my original analysis.

Part One: Jimmy

Jimmy is someone who has a delicate ego. This means that he's very concerned with how he's perceived by those around him. We see this in how he responds to Curly and the news of the company's closure, which he takes it as a personal attack in spite of it very clearly having nothing to do with him on a personal level.

For people like Jimmy, a threat to one's image (whether it's a matter of their perception of themselves or, maybe worse, the perception others have of them) brings intense emotional pain. Even though it's clear that Curly meant no personal offense, and likely saw more good in Jimmy than was actually there, Jimmy sees this as a great threat to his own image, and thus identity.

To be clear, it's not just that Jimmy thinks Curly is looking down on him. It's also that Jimmy needs his role in the company to maintain his image, and he needs to eventually become captain. This is his ultimate goal because the respect and control that someone like Curly has, in Jimmy's mind, is tied to the title he possesses. And Jimmy wants that. He wants respect, he wants to be listened to, he wants power over others. (This is also why Swansea's final speech is so important, in relation to the belief that if one just reaches this next goal, they might feel a little more human, a little more in control, a little more fulfilled, but as Swansea shows us, that's just not the case. And it's true for Jimmy, too. Jimmy isn't magically fulfilled by obtaining the title of captain.)

But in the beginning, Jimmy has yet to realize that just getting the role of captain won't magically make him a man who is respected, or even a man who is truly in control. He sees no opportunities for himself on earth. The only option is to stay in this company and become a little lord of his own ship... and suddenly that's ripped out from under him. He will never reach the goal he's been chasing for all of this time.

Anya telling him about her pregnancy is the final push he needs to go over the edge.

Part Two: Captain

Returning to the initial reveal that the company is shutting down for a second, I think it's important to keep in mind a few things:

1. The importance of the title of captain in Jimmy's mind.

2. How this extends to his perception of Curly, him being the current captain.

3. Jimmy's self-centeredness preventing him from understanding the feelings and perceptions of those around him.

When Curly says what he does, Jimmy immediately jumps to the conclusion that Curly sees himself as above everyone else (and most importantly, as above Jimmy), to the point of considering them "dirt." I don't think Jimmy is just projecting his greatest fear (being seen as lesser) onto Curly. I think he's projecting his own perceptions.

He's placed all of this importance on the title of captain, and thus Curly. The captain is above Jimmy. Jimmy is beneath him, is lesser. And we know how Jimmy treats those he sees as lesser (first Anya, and then the rest of the crew once he's captain, *manipulating Daisuke into putting his life at risk because Daisuke, who is just an intern after all, just isn't important to Jimmy being an example).

I think this is a fair reading because Jimmy does something similar with Swansea when he insists that Swansea is keeping the last cryostasis pod for himself. I understand some might say that this is just Jimmy's attempt to manipulate Daisuke and Jimmy doesn't actually believe it, which is a fair interpretation, but I sincerely think he believes what he's saying in this instance. And I think that because Jimmy sees selfishness as common sense. It's what he would do were he in Swansea's position, and what makes him giving the pod to Curly significant.

Part Three: Anya

So, Jimmy is already hurt and panicking. He sees his chance at power and thus fulfillment slipping away. And then Anya tells him that she's pregnant.

Anya, who he has shown time and time again that he thinks little of.

Anya, who he clearly sees as beneath him.

Any mention of the pregnancy, no matter how gently it was worded, would immediately feel like a threat to him on multiple levels. And not only that, but a threat from someone lesser than him. His image, his status, his control, his power—it's already slipping from his fingertips. *It's happening right then, in that moment. It's not just a potential future where he's held accountable in a real way (maybe if Anya involved authorities, or if Jimmy was legally responsible for supporting a child once they returned to earth). It's happening now, because his image is crumbling.

For this reason, I believe I hope this hurts to be directed at anyone and everyone that he sees as "threatening" him.

Anya and Curly have made him hurt. He wants to make them hurt.

He doesn't care about Daisuke and Swansea. If anything, he's so caught up in himself and this contorted vision of reality, I wouldn't be shocked if he convinced himself in the moment that they, too, were looking down on him for some reason. (See again, "I know what everyone is thinking. The way they look at me." Obviously this is said in the midst of his spiral, after the crash, but I wouldn't doubt the paranoia was there before that moment.)

He wants to make them hurt as they've hurt him. He may also want to make himself hurt in order to vent out his emotional pain. If not, death may simply be the easiest way to escape pain and the threat the future holds in his mind.

*Part Four: Without the Guilt

In addition to all of this, I think crashing the ship (making them hurt) is his vision of what Curly has done or is doing to him. This is how he "leave(s) the dirt behind."

To understand this, I'm going to include the birthday conversation and the conversation between Jimmy and Curly about crashing the ship.

Jimmy: ... So I guess you got what you wanted. Without the guilt. Curly: Jim... If I had known... Jimmy: I can go back to my, how'd you put it? "Struggle of a life?" Jimmy: Anya never got into medical school because she's... well, let's be real. Jimmy: And how many employment years Swansea got left in him? Jimmy: Daisuke will be fine, mommy and daddy have him covered. So there's that at least. Jimmy: But you. Headed for bigger and better, right? Curly: I'm just... I'm just working on my life being a place I don't have to fucking escape! That's what I was trying to tell you, nothing mor- Jimmy: We're the ones you're trying to escape! Leave the dirt behind now that your boots are clean! Curly: That's not what I meant. Jimmy: It is what you meant. Jimmy: You just couldn't frame it to yourself in a way that kept you as the hero. Jimmy: Abandon the crew but remain the model captain.

To me, this is one of the most important and revealing sections of the game. Jimmy is not only projecting onto Curly, he's telling us exactly what he's going to go on to do (or attempt to do) when he becomes captain.

In addition to this, we see his manipulation on full display as he twists Curly's words and won't allow him even a moment to truly speak beyond a few lines he manages to get in between Jimmy's ranting.

That's not to mention we see the beginning of yet another pattern in Jimmy's behavior: getting a person to admit their weakness, then using it against them and/or using it to hurt them (he does this with Daisuke, for example, when he hears Daisuke's fears/desire for approval and proceeds to use it to get Daisuke in the vent). Here, Curly speaks about feeling trapped. Jimmy will soon trap him in a crashed ship just as much as he traps him in his own body, which Jimmy will proceed to drug. But I'll return to that.

Curly: Jim. I can fix this. Jimmy: What do you think will happen when we get back? Hm? Curly: We can figure all of this out. You and me. Take care of it. Kills ninety nine percent. Jimmy: All I ever hear is how great of a leader you are. God, it's so annoying. Jimmy: But, now... What do you think will happen now when we get back? Curly: We'll fix this together. Jimmy: Everything you and I worked for in our lives. Accomplishments, changes. Jimmy: None of it will matter. Curly: You've gotten through difficult situations before. This time won't be any different. Work through it, one day at a time. Jimmy: It's not just me, is it? Jimmy: You were supposed to be the one who had everything under control. You said so yourself. Jimmy: The ship, this crew, everything that happened here... Jimmy: This was your responsibility, Captain. Jimmy: That is what you'll be hearing the rest of your life. Take responsibility. Jimmy: Or this can all be remembered as a tragedy. Jimmy: Despite what must have been the best efforts of its acclaimed captain. Jimmy: The Tulpar crew was never found. Jimmy: No one survived to tell the tale. Take responsibility. Jimmy: You're standing at the top. Jimmy: Feet in cement. Jimmy: I get it now. Right? Curly: ... Curly: ... Right.

This is an important moment, because aside from the scene in which Jimmy is approaching Curly while he's on fire, it's the only other time that I can recall the game separating from their perspectives to allow us to see them both, standing together.

We see a flash of Take care of it. Kills ninety nine percent. Jimmy begins to pull away. Another flash. He continues to draw back. Another. He turns towards the cockpit.

Jimmy sees through Curly. He sees Curly's worst where Curly sees only Jimmy's best, and he's more that willing to use that against Curly.

He sees a man who is not going to do what's hard. He sees a man who is going to try to "fix it" only in the most superficial sense. A man who confuses the appearance of cohesion and peace with the reality of it. Someone who sees the rocking of the boat as a manifestation of taking action against a wrong rather than the wrong itself.

In the end, it seems they're both ruled by appearances. And Jimmy will soon rip appearances in every sense from Curly's fingertips. He will make him hurt. He will get his revenge. He'll turn Curly into the villain, taking away his title, his respect, and his very face.

For daring to look down on him, Jimmy will turn Curly into dust.

But I think these words—I hope it hurts—come back to haunt him.

Part Five: The Eye as a Mirror

Like I said, I went back to try to find each time the phrase is used. There's the beginning, of course, but then there's the pregnancy sequence, for lack of a better name.

When the Polle monstrosity emerges from the giant uterus (?), we see these words:

In this sequence, we see a lot of different images and concepts connected: Anya's pregnancy and thus her sexual assault by Jimmy are tied to Polle and the company. The emergence of the Polle monster from the giant uterus (and the idea of the removal of the pregnancy) is tied to the mouthwash, as it's an act of "cleansing." This is all then tied to the phrase I hope this hurts.

Unless I missed something, these are the only two moments when the phrase is used: When Jimmy crashes the ship, and when he's experiencing this hallucination.

All clean! Really gets rid of that bad taste in your mouth, huh? Through wreckage! Through silence! Wash it away! All day fire fresh!

"Clean" is important immediately. "Leave the dirt behind you now that your boots are clean," Jimmy says. Because in this accusation is Jimmy's actual intentions himself. He wants to rise above others and clean himself from their filth. Now, he wants to clean himself of his sins.

I think "Really gets rid of that bad taste in your mouth" is mocking him. A direct challenge to the thought that he could ever truly be "cleaned," at least in the ways he's so desperately trying to go about it. *Not to mention how this connects to the mouthwash, as it might get that 99%, but there's always going to be 1% left.

"Through wreckage" obviously refers to the wrecking of the ship, but also of their lives. All by Jimmy. Though I wouldn't doubt in his mind it connects to the wreckage of consequences (ie. Anya's pregnancy resulting from Jimmy's actions).

"Through silence" I feel connects back to Jimmy's attempts to keep everything quiet, both literally and figuratively.

"Wash it away" also has a mocking edge, as if stressing the foolishness of Jimmy's attempts to treat these very serious events as if it's all just "dirt" he can wipe off.

Finally, we see "All day fire fresh!" This line stresses the connection to the mouthwash, of course. It also calls to mind the concept of cleansing by fire. Important considering Curly.

And after each, I hope it hurts. Jimmy's statement of pure, childish rage. His desperate desire to make others hurt as he hurts. To lash out, to get revenge. To have control until the very end.

This is also why Polle haunts him. Because he, as a man desperate for control, will always be under the thumb of the company even with that title of captain. That hurts him. And maybe the closest thing to ever recognizing the evil he's done to Anya is envisioning it as similar to the company's control, but even that feels like a mockery because he's so horrifically incapable of seeing her as a human being that she's been reduced to her womb. That's what he's really afraid of, in the end, and the fear feels like something else is in control. It makes the organ feel giant, larger than him, capable of hurting him.

When I was watching the playthrough, I thought that there was going to be four or five "I hope it hurts." I thought it would represent each person Jimmy hurts, or all of them, because he hurts himself too. When the sixth came, I thought so much for that theory. But then, I thought about it and there's the fetus. That makes six.

So, I hope this hurts means "I want to hurt you the way I've been hurt. The way you've hurt me." It's Jimmy saying that if his life has been wrecked, he'll wreck yours. It's Jimmy saying he'll shut you up. It's Jimmy saying he'll burn everything down if it means he can maintain control, or even just the illusion of it.

Part Six: Pain

But I think there's another side to this. Like some of the other lines I said feel are mocking him, I think I hope this hurts turns against Jimmy, especially here. And more than that, pain (and by extension, pain medication) plays a massive role in the game, after all. So I hope this hurts feels as if it haunts every moment where it's involved.

Jimmy says this the first time he gives Curly his pills. Pain is how we know we're still living.

The pills are clearly connected to death from the start. If "pain is how we know we're still living" then pain is connected to life and freedom from it is connected to death. That's saying nothing of Anya's use of the pills to kill herself. I think this connects back to the crash, as well. If life is pain, death is an escape from it.

I think it's also significant that the act of swallowing the pain pills is in and of itself painful.

The pills that are meant to take the pain away become a method of torturing Curly. It's a way to make him hurt, and to exert control over him. Even something that should take away his suffering is just an extension of it.

At one point, Jimmy says "Once these are out, we'll have nothing to keep him quiet." In this sense, the pain pills are meant to suppress, not to heal (Through silence!). They're supposed to shut Curly up and keep him from expressing his anguish in the only way he has left (the noises that disturb Jimmy's sleep).

Others have compared this, or Curly's state, to how Anya has been forced to bottle up her own suffering. Jimmy is keeping them both quiet, or at least attempting to. The ultimate form of keeping them quiet would be to, of course, kill them all.

The pills can also be seen as an attempt to hide or conceal the hurt that has been caused rather than to actually heal. In this way, they're like the mouthwash: something that's not really helping, just covering up an issue (and thus making it worse). And the mouthwash represents Jimmy's attempts to "fix" things. He doesn't actually want to make things right, because that would mean taking accountability. He wants to protect his own ego by "fixing" things in a mimicry of Curly "fixing" things in which he wants to create a sense of "rightness" without actually adressing what (or who) has been wronged. Jimmy can't stand to look at himself, because he would see that he really is constructed of his worst moments, or at least, that's what I suspect he would see.

Conclusion

Considering all of this, I hope this hurts can then become a mantra about living in spite of everything. I hope this hurts means "I hope I'm alive in the end. I hope we're all alive in the end." It could mean "I hope I'm allowed to hurt, because I am hurt, and the harm that's been done to me must be seen rather than suppressed and hidden." It could mean "You can't keep me quiet. You can't ignore or hide what you've done to me."

Maybe most of all, I think it means I hope you reap what you sow. When it's turned back on Jimmy, when it's almost mocking or haunting him, it becomes in part about his emotional weakness. About his inability to look at himself and his reality without experiencing the pain of humiliation. I don't think he ever experiences half of the pain he's inflicted on those around him. Still, he has to deal with the fact that his attempt to hurt others instead of facing himself has caused him more pain rather than taken it away as he'd hoped.

And I think that's why he suddenly decides to make Curly a "hero" instead of a "villain." There's a tipping point where he's pushed into a corner. The pain is too much. He hasn't confronted his own actions in any real way, but he's done enough that he can't stand to save himself anymore. It hurts too badly to live with what he's done. It sends him into another stage of fantasy/delusion. The only thing left to do is what he intended to from the start: kill himself to escape and damn Curly to a slow death. Because to go on living in spite of the pain would be the right thing to do, in a sense. To live in the hell of his own creation. To face what he's done. But instead, he'll entrust those heroics to Curly.

This feels barely coherent in the end, so I might come back in a few days and say wow what the fuck was I talking about? But hopefully there's something here that captures some truth. Again, please feel free to correct me if I'm misremembering anything or if I missed something.

#mouthwashing #spoilers #tw #cw #most of the fucked up mouthwashing shit is mentioned here #idk how ppl are handling tws because are some considered spoilers?#idk

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reasonsforhope · 1 year ago

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Note: Reasons to Be Cheerful has had weirdly huge formatting issues for the past six or so months, so if that version is a mess, this link should work better.

"Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), the Sunshine State’s largest power utility, employs all the people you might expect: electricians, lineworkers, mechanical engineers — and a few you might not. For over 40 years, the company has kept a team of wildlife biologists on staff. Their task? Monitoring the giant carnivorous reptiles that reside in one of the state’s nuclear power plants.

Saving the American Crocodile

What sounds like a low-budget creature feature is actually a wildly successful conservation story. It goes like this: In 1975, the shy and reclusive American crocodile was facing extinction. Over-hunting and habitat decline caused by encroaching development had pushed its numbers to a record low. By 1975, when it was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, there were only 200 to 300 left.

Three years later, in 1978, workers at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant in Homestead, Florida happened upon something that must have made them gasp: a crocodile nest along one of the plant’s 5,900-acre “cooling canals.” Rather than drive the crocs away — perhaps the easiest solution — FPL hired a team of biologists and implemented a Crocodile Management Plan. Its goal was unconventional: provide a suitable habitat for the crocs within the workings of the nuclear power plant, allowing both to coexist.

Over the course of the next 30 years, FPL’s wildlife biologists monitored nests, tagged hatchlings and generally created a hospitable environment for the reptiles. As it turned out, the plant’s cooling canals provided an ideal habitat: drained earth that never floods on which to lay eggs directly adjacent to water. Over the years, more and more crocs made the cooling canals home. By 1985, the nests at Turkey Point were responsible for 10 percent of American crocodile hatchlings in South Florida. In 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service downgraded the American crocodile’s status from endangered to threatened, singling out FPL for its efforts.

The program continues to this day. To date, biologists have tagged some 7,000 babies born at the plant. In 2021, there were a record-setting 565 crocodile hatchlings at the Turkey Point facility.

"Reconciliation Ecology"

Turkey Point’s efforts are an example of what is known in the conservation world as “reconciliation ecology.” Rather than create separate areas where nature or animals can thrive in isolation from humans, reconciliation ecology suggests that we can blend the rich natural world with the world of human activity. Michael Rosenzweig, an emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, was a leading force in establishing this concept. The author of Win-Win Ecology: How the Earth’s Species can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise, Rosenzweig has pointed out that although human encroachment has typically been considered a threat to biodiversity, the notion that the world must be either “holy” or “profane,” ecologically speaking, is simply not true.

“In addition to its primary value as a conservation tool, reconciliation ecology offers a valuable social byproduct,” writes Rosenzweig in his first chapter. “It promises to reduce the endless bickering and legal wrangling that characterize environmental issues today.”

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, May 5, 2022. Article continues below. All headings added by me for added readability.

Dr. Madhusudan Katti, an associate professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University, was inspired by Rosenzweig when he did his postdoc at Arizona State. Katti has now been in the field of reconciliation ecology for two decades and teaches classes on the subject. “To me it’s finding solutions to reconciling human development with biodiversity conservation,” Katti says.

This common ground between development and conservation can be consciously planned, like FPL managing a crocodile habitat at a nuclear power plant or the state-sponsored vertical gardens and commercial farms on high-rise buildings in Singapore. Other examples include the restoration of the coral reef around an undersea restaurant in Eilat, Israel, or recent legislation in New York City requiring patterned glass on high-rise buildings, making windows more visible to migratory birds. Other planned examples of reconciliation ecology can be more individually scaled: a rooftop garden in an urban setting, modifying your garden to earn a “backyard bird habitat” certification from the Audubon Society, or even just mowing your lawn less often...

Reconciliation Ecology: Nature's Already Doing It Without Us

But there are countless examples of “accidental” incidents of reconciliation ecology, as well. One of Katti’s favorites is the kit fox of California’s San Joaquin Valley. “The kit fox was one of the very first species listed on the Endangered Species Act,” Katti says. Its decline was caused by habitat loss through agricultural and industrial development, as well as the extermination of the gray wolf population, which led to an increase in coyotes. So kit foxes adapted and moved to new habitats. One of these was the city of Bakersfield, California.

“Bakersfield, surrounded by oil pumps, would be the last place you’d expect to find an endangered species,” Katti says. But researchers think kit foxes have migrated to Bakersfield because they actually have more protection there from predators like coyotes and bobcats. “The kit foxes have figured out that if they can tolerate the human disturbance and live with people, then they are safer from all these other predators,” he says.

Living in the city has led to some interesting behavioral changes. In the wild, for instance, a female kit fox gives birth to her young and raises them by herself in a den. But in the city, researchers have observed multiple females raising their litters together in the same den. “It’s like a form of cooperative breeding,” Katti says. “That wouldn’t happen in the wild.” ...

The Big Picture: How We Think about Conservation

Reconciliation Ecology isn’t just we humans welcoming animals like crocodiles and foxes into our environments, though. It’s also living with nature in a way that most Western societies haven’t done since the Enlightenment. “In recent years, there’s been a recognition that the ‘fortress conservation’ model — keeping nature separated from humans and not thinking of or valuing human-inhabited landscapes — those ideas are outdated,” says Katti.

In fact, in Katti’s classes on reconciliation ecology, he embraces the notion of reconnecting people with their land if they have been unjustly separated from it. “The term reconciliation also applies to all the colonial legacies where both nature and people have been harmed,” Katti says. “For Indigenous communities, the harm done to ecosystems, it’s happened together. So you can talk about addressing both. That’s where a lot of my thinking is at the moment.”

A hopeful version of this sort of reconciliation is happening in California where colleagues of Katti’s who are tribal members are re-introducing “tribal burns” in some areas. Controlled burns have been a part of many Indigenous cultures for millenia, both as a way to prevent devastating forest fires, but also to encourage the growth of certain plants like hazel that are used for basket-weaving and other crafts.

“The notion that people don’t belong there and ‘let nature take care of itself’ doesn’t really work,” Katti says. “That’s the legacy of Western European Enlightenment thinking — a divide between human and nature. That is a real faulty view of nature. People have been part of the ecosystem forever.”

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, May 5, 2022

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nova-dracomon · 11 months ago

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My Gender is [NOT] Human Zine is Now Accepting Submissions!

Xenogender: A gender that cannot be contained by human understandings of gender; more concerned with crafting other methods of gender categorization and hierarchy such as those relating to animals, plants, or other creatures/things.

This zine will be a collection of artwork, writing and more created by alterhumans and nonhumans to express both their species identity, gender, and how they intersect. While this zine will have an xenogender slant, everyone who has something to share about how their species and gender overlap are encouraged to submit pieces! Similarly, if you are currently questioning, you are still welcome to participate. Anonymous submissions are accepted.

What Can I Submit?

Both fiction and nonfiction pieces are accepted. As long as what you have in mind fits the theme, it’ll probably be a-ok.

Off the top of our head, we’re thinking of:

Essays of your personal experiences

Short stories

Poetry

Advice columns

Artwork

Fictional advertisements

Comics

Mock interviews

This is far from an exhaustive list, we welcome you to think outside the box!

How to Participate

Please email your completed submission to ruffledgryphon(@)gmail(.)com and title the email “My Gender is Not Human Zine Submission.” Also make sure to include the following information in your email:

A name you would like the piece attributed to

Title of your submission

Any content warnings that you feel are necessary for the piece

Any social media handle or personal website you’d like listed in the contributor section

A logo or icon for the contributor section

**If you would like to stay anonymous please let us know

Members of systems are welcome to submit individually or collectively. Please let us know your preference when it comes to attribution.

Once the deadline has passed, the submissions will be crafted together into a single zine and it will be posted on our itch.io as a free PDF.

Submissions are due by May 1, 2024.

Our itch.io: https://ruffledgryphon.itch.io/

Submission Guidelines

Each individual may submit up to 3 works to be featured in My Gender is [NOT] Human. Comics and multi-image works count as one piece. Individuals within a system may each submit up to 3 works. All work must be your own! Anyone caught plagiarizing or submitting AI-generated work will be barred from entering My Gender is [NOT] Human and any future zines from us.

Written submissions should not exceed 30 pages and multi-part art entries should not exceed 10 pages. Please keep in mind the zine’s pages will be 8.5x11 and entries will be scaled accordingly to fit that size. We request all art submissions to be sent in either .jpg or .png file formats.

For stories that use multiple different fonts, we will do our best to preserve the general “feel” of your piece but cannot guarantee we will be able to use the exact fonts or sizes due to restrictions in what fonts we have access to, readability and overarching zine style.

Submissions must fit the thematic criteria of

About the intersection of gender and species identities

If you’re not sure if you count, feel free to reach out to us. However, we will be leaning on the side of “Yes! We’d love to hear from you!”

FAQ

Q: Where will the zine be hosted? What will it cost? A: The zine will be hosted digitally on our itch.io and will be free to download. Our itch.io can be found here: https://ruffledgryphon.itch.io/

Q: Is there a cap on submissions? A: There is none, as long as the file doesn’t start getting too big for our computer we’ll do our best! If there are an unprecedented amount of submissions, we may have to delay the release. In the event that happens, we would communicate that through updates on our tumblr.

Q: Can I update my application after it’s been submitted? A: Yes you may, as long as that is communicated to us before the submission deadline.

Q: Can I rescind my submission? A: Yes you may, as long as that is communicated to us before the submission deadline. This is because once we begin work on the zine, having to remove content mid-way through would throw off the formatting of everything else after. Please take this into account before submitting.

Q: Will this zine allow NSFW entries? A: No, nothing 18+ will be accepted.

Q: What is your timeline for the project? A: Our submission deadline is May 1, 2024. We are then planning to spend the next month compiling all of the entries. Our goal is to have the zine live by June 1, 2024. If something unforeseen happens and we are unable to make that deadline, we will post an update about it on our tumblr.

Q: I have another question! A: Feel free to reach out to us at our email ruffledgryphon(@)gmail(.)com or here on tumblr with any other questions you have about the zine.

#My Gender is Not Human Zine #otherkin #therian #fictionkin #alterhuman #nonhuman #xenogender #nova squawks

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angelofdumpsterfires · 3 months ago

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BILL'S CONTRACT FINE PRINT DECIPHERED

I'm sure someone has beat me to this, but because I decided to decipher/translate all 1000ish words of the fine print on this here totally normal contract (by hand)

Bold code is theraprism substitution cipher, the rest is the author's substitution cipher, i've reformatted the text to be more readable but i've also made a version with the more accurate, original line formatting here

YOU ARE NOW TWENTY ONE GRAMS LIGHTER

THIS CONTRACT IS LEGAL AND BINDING, WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO USE YOUR LIKENESS, FACE, VOICE AND SMALL TOWN PLUCK IN WHATEVER NEFARIOUS MANNER IS DEEMED NECESSARY.

SANS SOUL YOUR SOULMATE WILL NOT RECOGNIZE YOU AND WILL WALK RIGHT PAST YOU ON A COLD AUTUMN DAY, NEVER MAKING EYE CONTACT, NOT EVEN PROCESSING THAT YOU HAVE EYES AT ALL. NO AMOUNT INTERACTION WILL MOVE THEM TO A PLACE WHERE THEY CAN REMEMBER - IN FEELING THE THOUSANDS OF LIFETIMES YOU HAVE ALREADY SPENT TOGETHER, EACH TIME CHOOSING WHATEVER FORM WOULD KEEP YOU CLOSEST LIKE OTTERS HOLDING HANDS IN A TUMULTUOUS RIVER. YOU WERE BIRDS, YOU WERE TREES WITH ROOTS ENTWINED, DRINKING IN THE SUNLIGHT TOGETHER. WHEREVER WE GO NEXT, WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE, I WILL ALWAYS BE RIGHT THERE WITH YOU. -

THATS DONE BUDDY, CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE CHOSEN BILL INSTEAD.

MCDONALDS RESERVES THE RIGHT TO PUT A GIANT YELLOW M ON YOUR TORSO AND FOREHEAD AND SEND YOU WALKING THROUGH A CROWDED TIMES SQUARE WHILE YOU SCREAM “THE FRIES, THE FRIES, THEY DON'T DEGRADE IN NATURE… ITS AN IMMORTAL FOOD… THEY WILL BE IN THE LANDFILLS LONG PAST OUR DEATHS.”

GOOD GOD, THE THINGS S I’VE SEEN, ME. WHO AM I? OH BILL'S PREVIOUS LAWYER, HE PUT MY SOUL INTO A QUILL PEN SO I CAN WRITE HIS LEGAL DOCUMENTS UNTIL THE SUN SNUFFS OUT LIKE A CANDLE IN THIS SICK UNIVERSE. I USED TO BE SO HOT. I WAS SO FINE. NOW I'M FINE PRINT.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, BILL RESERVES THE RIGHT TO PUT YOUR SOUL INTO AN INANIMATE OBJECT, A STRANGE CREATURE, A CONCEPT, A SENTENCE, A TASTEFUL BUT RUSTIC MASON JAR WITH WILDFLOWERS IN IT.

IF AT ANY POINT YOU WISH TO HAVE VISITATION RIGHTS WITH YOUR SOUL YOU WILL BE SWIFTLY DENIED UNLESS YOU HAD A COOL DAY PLANNED FOR THE BOTH OF YOU, THEN BILL MIGHT COME ALONG.

BY SIGNING THIS DOCUMENT YOU FORFEIT ANY RIGHTS TO EATING SOUL FOOD, IT WILL TURN TO ASH IN YOUR MOUTH, A FITTING PUNISHMENT FOR A FOOL WHO SQUANDERED THE ONLY TRUE GIFT LIFE OWES YOU.

BILL RESERVES THE RIGHT TO DRESS YOUR SOUL HOWEVER HE DEEMS NECESSARY, ESPECIALLY IF YOUR SOUL WAS A NERD BEFORE ACQUISITION, SOUL MAKEOVERRR!

YOUR SOUL MAY BECOME FRACTURED AND PLACED INTO DIFFERENT OBJECTS. THIS HAS NO PURPOSE AND WILL NOT RESURRECT YOU WHEN YOU DIE.

SIGNEE HAS FORFEITED ALL RIGHTS OF ANY AFTERLIFE INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO: HEAVEN, HELL, PURGATORY, BIG CORNER, FLOW STATE, THE DREAM HOUSE, THE REINCARNATION PROCESSING CENTER, AXOLOTL'S TANK AND CONSEQUENCES HOLE.

SIGNEE CAN NO LONGER BOARD THE SOUL TRAIN AND IS ADVISED TO DISCARD ALL BELLBOTTOMS.

SIGNEE CAN NO LONGER HAVE A PUPPY AS A BEST FRIEND, THEY CAN SENSE WHAT IS GONE. CATS ARE INDIFFERENT.

SIGNEE MAY EXPERIENCE OCCASIONAL DEMON POSSESSION FROM HORCULUS THE RED, PLABOS THE MERCILESS, MORBUS SON OF MORTEM, PLAGA THE OOZING AND OTHER SUCH COMMON DEMONS ROAMING EARTH SEARCHING FOR WEAKENED/EMPTY VESSELS.

TIPS FOR RIPPING YOUR SOUL OUT: WATCHING YOUTUBE COMMENTARY CHANNELS, ATTENDING AN EXTENDED FAMILY EVENT WITH AN OPEN BAR, USING GENERATIVE AI AND ASSERTING THAT YOU ARE CREATIVE, TURNING A BLIND EYE TO HUMAN SUFFERING, AMASSING MORE WEALTH THAN NEEDED, PURCHASING A BLUE CHECKMARK.

#gravity falls #this is not a website dot com #thisisnotawebsitedotcom #bill cipher #the book of bill #cryptography #i like how it just turns into alex ranting near the end brennan lee mulligan style #also “i was fine. now i'm fine print.” took me out #also 21 grams experiment mentioned??#lmk if theres any mistakes the lines bled together when reading a lot

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goaltenderness · 2 years ago

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hockey rpf recognizable patterns of behavior

this has existed in my drafts/discord messages/meanders of my deranged psyche in one form or another for ages now, but recent discussion #onhere re:bleak boyband bingo encouraged me to clean up the list for human consumption and present it in bingo format, which immediately made it 150 times more user-friendly and thus postable. while obviously visually inspired by bbb, thematically i think it is only adjacent at best because the focus here is fundamentally about relationships, even when it comes to squares like The Weight Of Legacy or Signing With Your Hometown Team (inspired by dylan larkin and john tavares respectively, whose narratives are soooo tied to The Ghost Of Other People it's almost laughable). ideally this board could be incorporated into a larger bbb-style board that would also include broader, less shippy archetypes; but i personally am Not Good at that so what you get today is 81 squares of love&horny.

color-coded version hopefully conveys the fact that while i do believe the 3x3 cards can stand alone, there is a continuity both vertically and horizontally AND diagonally. after all, one of the characteristics of sportsrpf is the fluidity of the dynamics— linemates today, facing off tomorrow, etc.

some of these squares are so very clearly about one specific pairing to me, but depending on your hockeyfandom entry point i think it might vary drastically and i'm very curious about what people's first associations to specific Narratives(tm) are. might reblog later with examples but for now in the name of science i want this to hit the market neutrally and let it percolate

3x3 boards under the cut for easier readability

#how does one even tag this. at least for like archival purposes #hrpf

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iwonderwh0 · 9 months ago

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I don't think androids store memories as videos or that they can even be extracted as ones. Almost, but not exactly.

Firstly, because their memories include other data such as their tactile information, their emotional state, probably 3d markers of their surrounding...a lot of different information. So, their memories are not in a video-format, but some kind of a mix of many things, that may not be as easily separated from each other. I don't think a software necessary to read those types of files are publicly available.

Even if they have some absolute massive storage, filming good-quality videos and storing them is just not an optimal way to use their resources. It's extremely wasteful. I think, instead, their memories consist of snapshots that are taken every once in a while (depending on how much is going on), that consist of compressed version of all their relevant inputs like mentioned above. Like, a snapshot of a LiDAR in a specific moment + heavily compressed photo with additional data about some details that'll later help to upscale it and interpolate from one snapshot into the next one, some audio samples of the voices and transcript of the conversation so that it'd take less storage to save. My main point is, their memories are probably stored in a format that not only doesn't actually contain original video material, but is a product of some extreme compression, and in this case reviewing memories is not like watching HD video footage, but rather an ai restoration of those snapshots. Perhaps it may be eventually converted into some sort of a video readable to human eye, but it would be more of an ai-generated video from specific snapshots with standardised prompts with some parts of the image/audio missing than a perfectly exact video recording.

When Connor extracts video we see that they are a bit glitchy. It may be attributed to some details getting lost during transmission from one android to another, but then we've also got flashbacks with android's own memories, that are just as "glitchy". Which kinda backs up a theory of it being a restoration of some sort of a compressed version rather than original video recording.

Then we've also got that scene where Josh records Markus where it is shown that when he starts to film, his eyes indicate the change that he is not just watching but recording now. Which means that is an option, but not the default. I find it a really nice detail. Like, androids can record videos, but then the people around them can see exactly when they do that, and "be at ease" when they don't. It may be purely a design choice, like that of the loading bar to signalise that something is in progress and not just frozen, or mandatory shutter sound effect on smartphones cameras in Japan.

So, yeah. Androids purpose is to correctly interpret their inputs and store relevant information about it in their long term memory, and not necessarily to record every present moment in a video-archive that will likely never be seen by a human and reviewed as a pure video footage again. If it happened to be needed to be seen — it'll be restored as a "video" file, but this video won't be an actual video recording unless android was specifically set to record mode.

#dbh #detroit become human #dbh headcanons #androids

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a-memory-a-distant-echo · 5 months ago

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it's time for the long-threatened post about how to get subtitles (including translated ones) for videos that don't have subtitles.

in my experience, the methods in this post can probably get you solidly 75% or more of the content of many videos (caveats inside). i've tested this on videos that are originally in chinese, english, french, german, hindi, japanese, korean, spanish, and honestly probably some languages that i'm forgetting. my experience is that it works adequately in all of them. not great, necessarily, but well enough that you can probably follow along.

this is a very long post because this is the overexplaining things website, and because i talk about several different ways to get the captions. this isn't actually difficult, though, or even especially time consuming—the worst of it is pushing a button and ignoring things for a while. actual hands-on work is probably five minutes tops, no matter how long the video is.

i've attempted to format this post understandably, and i hope it's useful to someone.

first up, some disclaimers.

this is just my experience with things, and your experience might be different. the tools used for (and available for) this kind of thing change all the time, and if you're reading this six months after i wrote it, your options might be different. this post is probably still a decent starting place.

background about my biases in this: i work in the creative industries. mostly i'm a fiction editor. i've also been a writer, a technical editor and writer, a transcriptionist, a copyeditor, and something i've seen called a 'translation facilitator' or 'rewrite editor', where something is translated fairly literally (by a person or a machine) and then a native speaker of the target language goes through and rewrites/restructures as needed to make the piece read more naturally in the target language. i've needed to get information out of business meetings that were conducted in a language i didn't speak, and have done a lot of work on things that were written in (or translated into) the writer's second or sixth language, but needed to be presented in natural english.

so to start, most importantly: machine translation is never going to be as good as a translation done by an actual human. human translators can reflect cultural context and nuanced meanings and the artistry of the work in a way that machines will never be able to emulate. that said, if machine translation is your only option, it's better than nothing. i also find it really useful for videos in languages where i have enough knowledge that i'm like, 75% sure that i'm mostly following, and just want something that i can glance at to confirm that.

creating subs like this relies heavily on voice-to-text, which—unfortunately—works a lot better in some situations than it does in others. you'll get the best, cleanest results from videos that have slow, clear speech in a 'neutral' accent, and only one person speaking at a time. (most scripted programs fall into this category, as do many vlogs and single-person interviews.) the results will get worse as voices speed up, overlap more, and vary in volume. that said, i've used this to get captions for cast concerts, reality shows, and variety shows, and the results are imperfect but solidly readable, especially if you have an idea of what's happening in the plot and/or can follow along even a little in the broadcast language.

this also works best when most of the video is in a single language, and you select that language first. the auto detect option sometimes works totally fine, but in my experience there's a nonzero chance that it'll at least occasionally start 'detecting' random other languages in correctly, or someone will say a few words in spanish or whatever, but the automatic detection engine will keep trying to translate from spanish for another three minutes, even tho everything's actually in korean. if there's any way to do so, select the primary language, even if it means that you miss a couple sentences that are in a different language.

two places where these techniques don't work, or don't work without a lot of manual effort on your part: translating words that appear on the screen (introductions, captions, little textual asides, etc), and music. if you're incredibly dedicated, you can do this and add it manually yourself, but honestly, i'm not usually this dedicated. getting captions for the words on the screen will involve either actually editing the video or adding manually translated content to the subs, which is annoying, and lyrics are...complicated. it's possible, and i'm happy to talk about it in another post if anyone is interested, but for the sake of this post, let's call it out of scope, ok? ok. bring up the lyrics on your phone and call it good enough.

places where these techniques are not great: names. it's bad with names. names are going to be mangled. resign yourself to it now. also, in languages that don't have strongly gendered speech, you're going to learn some real fun stuff about the way that the algorithms gender things. (spoiler: not actually fun.) bengali, chinese, and turkish are at least moderately well supported for voice-to-text, but you will get weird pronouns about it.

obligatory caveat about ai and voice-to-text functionality. as far as i'm aware, basically every voice-to-text function is ~ai powered~. i, a person who has spent twenty years working in the creative industries, have a lot of hate for generative ai, and i'm sure that many of you do, too. however, if voice-to-text (or machine translation software) that doesn't rely on it exists anymore, i'm not aware of it.

what we're doing here is the same as what douyin/tiktok/your phone's voice-to-text does, using the same sorts of technology. i mention this because if you look at the tools mentioned in this post, at least some of them will be like 'our great ai stuff lets you transcribe things accurately', and i want you to know why. chat gpt (etc) are basically glorified predictive text, right? so for questions, they're fucking useless, but for things like machine transcription and machine translation, those predictions make it more likely that you get the correct words for things that could have multiple translations, or for words that the software can only partially make out. it's what enables 'he has muscles' vs 'he has mussels', even though muscles and mussels are generally pronounced the same way. i am old enough to have used voice to text back when it was called dictation software, and must grudgingly admit that this is, in fact, much better.

ok! disclaimers over.

let's talk about getting videos

for the most part, this post will assume that you have a video file and nothing else. cobalt.tools is the easiest way i'm aware of to download videos from most sources, though there are other (more robust) options if you're happy to do it from the command line. i assume most people are not, and if you are, you probably don't need this guide anyhow.

i'm going to use 'youtube' as the default 'get a video from' place, but generally speaking, most of this works with basically any source that you can figure out how to download from—your bilibili downloads and torrents and whatever else will work the same way. i'm shorthanding things because this post is already so so long.

if the video you're using has any official (not autogenerated) subtitles that aren't burned in, grab that file, too, regardless of the language. starting from something that a human eye has looked over at some point is always going to give you better results. cobalt.tools doesn't pull subtitles, but plugging the video url into downsub or getsubs and then downloading the srt option is an easy way to get them for most places. (if you use downsub, it'll suggest that you download the full video with subtitles. that's a link to some other software, and i've never used it, so i'm not recommending it one way or the other. the srts are legit, tho.)

the subtitle downloaders also have auto translation options, and they're often (not always) no worse than anything else that we're going to do here—try them and see if they're good enough for your purposes. unfortunately, this only works for things that already have subtitles, which is…not that many things, honestly. so let's move on.

force-translating, lowest stress mode.

this first option is kind of a cheat, but who cares. youtube will auto-caption things in some languages (not you, chinese) assuming that the uploader has enabled it. as ever, the quality is kinda variable, and the likelihood that it's enabled at all seems to vary widely, but if it is, you're in for a much easier time of things, because you turn it on, select whatever language you want it translated to, and youtube…does its best, anyhow.

if you're a weird media hoarder like me and you want to download the autogenerated captions, the best tool that i've found for this is hyprscribr. plug in the video url, select 'download captions via caption grabber', then go to the .srt data tab, copy it out, and paste it into a text file. save this as [name of downloaded video].[language code].srt, and now you have captions! …that you need to translate, which is actually easy. if it's a short video, just grab the text, throw it in google translate (timestamps and all), and then paste the output into a new text file. so if you downloaded cooking.mp4, which is in french, you'll have three files: cooking.mp4, cooking.fr.srt, and cooking.en.srt. this one's done! it's easy! you're free!

but yeah, ok, most stuff isn't quite that easy, and auto-captioning has to be enabled, and it has some very obvious gaps in the langauges it supports. which is sort of weird, because my phone actually has pretty great multilingual support, even for things that youtube does not. which brings us to low-stress force translation option two.

use your phone

this seems a little obvious, but i've surprised several people with this information recently, so just in case. for this option, you don't even need to have downloaded the video—if it's a video you can play on your phone, the phone will almost definitely attempt real-time translation for you. i'm sure iphones have this ability, but i'm an android person, so can only provide directions for that: go into settings and search for (and enable) live translation. the phone will do its best to pick up what's being said and translate it on the fly for you, and if 'what's being said' is a random video on the internet, your phone isn't gonna ask questions. somewhat inexplicably, this works even if the video is muted. i do this a lot at like four a.m. when i'm too lazy to grab earbuds but don't want to wake up my wife.

this is the single least efficient way to force sub/translate things, in my opinion, but it's fast and easy, and really useful for those videos that are like a minute long and probably not that interesting, but like…what if it is, you know? sometimes i'll do this to decide if i'm going to bother more complicated ways of translating things.

similarly—and i feel silly even mentioning this, but that i didn't think of it for an embarrassingly long time—if you're watching something on a device with speakers, you can try just…opening the 'translate' app on your phone. they all accept voice input. like before, it'll translate whatever it picks up.

neither of these methods are especially useful for longer videos, and in my experience, the phone-translation option generally gives the least accurate translation, because in attempting to do things in real time, you lose some of the predicative ability that i was talking about earlier. (filling in the blank for 'he has [muscles/mussels]' is a lot harder if you don't know if the next sentence is about the gym or about dinner.)

one more lazy way

this is more work than the last few options, but often gives better results. with not much effort, you can feed a video playing on your computer directly into google translate. there's a youtube video by yosef k that explains it very quickly and clearly. this will probably give you better translation output than any of the on-the-fly phone things described above, but it won't give you something that you can use as actual subs—it just produces text output that you can read while you watch the video. again, though, really useful for things that you're not totally convinced you care about, or for things where there aren't a lot of visuals, or for stuff where you don't care about keeping your eyes glued to the screen.

but probably you want to watch stuff on the screen at the same time.

let's talk about capcut!

this is probably not a new one for most people, but using it like this is a little weird, so here we go. ahead of time: i'm doing this on an actual computer. i think you probably can do it on your phone, but i have no idea how, and honestly this is already a really long guide so i'm not going to figure it out right now. download capcut and put it on an actual computer. i'm sorry.

anyhow. open up capcut, click new project. import the file that you downloaded, and then drag it down to the editing area. go over to captions, auto captions, and select the spoken language. if you want bilingual captions, pick the language for that, as well, and the captions will be auto-translated into whatever the second language you choose is. (more notes on this later.)

if i remember right, this is the point at which you get told that you can't caption a video that's more than an hour long. however. you have video editing software, and it is open. split the video in two pieces and caption them separately. problem solved.

now the complicated part: saving these subs. (don't panic; it's not actually that complicated.) as everyone is probably aware, exporting captions is a premium feature, and i dunno about the rest of you, but i'm unemployed, so let's assume that's not gonna happen.

the good news is that since you've generated the captions, they're already saved to your computer, they're just kinda secret right now. there are a couple ways to dig them out, but the easiest i'm aware of is the biyaoyun srt generator. you'll have to select the draft file of your project, which is auto-saved once a minute or something. the website tells you where the file is saved by default on your computer. (i realised after writing this entire post that they also have a step-by-step tutorial on how to generate the subtitles, with pictures, so if you're feeling lost, you can check that out here.)

select the project file titled 'draft_content', then click generate. you want the file name to be the same as the video name, and again, i'd suggest srt format, because it seems to be more broadly compatible with media players. click 'save to local' and you now have a subtitle file!

translating your subtitles

you probably still need to translate the subtitles. there are plenty of auto-translation options out there. many of them are fee- or subscription-based, or allow a very limited number of characters, or are like 'we provide amazing free translations' and then in the fine print it says that they provide these translations through the magic of uhhhh google translate. so we're just going to skip to google translate, which has the bonus of being widely available and free.

for shorter video, or one that doesn't have a ton of spoken stuff, you can just copy/paste the contents of the .srt file into the translation software of your choice. the web version of google translate will do 5000 characters in one go, as will systran. that's the most generous allocation that i'm aware of, and will usually get you a couple minutes of video.

the timestamps eat up a ton of characters, though, so for anything longer than a couple minutes, it's easier to upload the whole thing, and google translate is the best for that, because it is, to my knowledge, the only service that allows you to do it. to upload the whole file, you need a .doc or .rtf file.

an .srt file is basically just a text file, so you can just open it in word (or gdocs or whatever), save it as a .doc, and then feed it through google translate. download the output, open it, and save it as an .srt.

you're done! you now have your video and a subtitle file in the language of your choice.

time for vibe, the last option in this post.

vibe is a transcription app (not a sex thing, even tho it sounds like one), and it will also auto-translate the transcribed words to english, if you want.

open vibe and select your file, then select the language. if you want it translated to english, hit advanced and toggle 'translate to english'. click translate and wait a while. after a few minutes (or longer, depending on how long the file is), you'll get the text. the save icon is a folder with a down arrow on it, and i understand why people are moving away from tiny floppy disks, but also: i hate it. anyhow, save the output, and now you have your subs file, which you can translate or edit or whatever, as desired.

vibe and capcom sometimes get very different results. vibe seems to be a little bit better at picking up overlapping speech, or speech when there are other noises happening; capcom seems to be better at getting all the worlds in a sentence. i feel like capcom maybe has a slightly better translation engine, of the two of them, but i usually end up just doing the translation separately. again, it can be worth trying both ways and seeing which gives better results.

special notes about dual/bilingual subs

first: i know that bilingual subs are controversial. if you think they're bad, you don't have to use them! just skip this section.

as with everything else, automatically generating gives mixed results. sometimes the translations are great, and sometimes they're not. i like having dual subs, but for stuff that Matters To Me, for whatever reason, i'll usually generate both just the original and a bilingual version, and then try some other translation methods on the original or parts thereof to see what works best.

not everything displays bilingual subs very well. plex and windows media player both work great, vlc and the default video handler on ubuntu only display whatever the first language is, etc. i'm guessing that if you want dual subbed stuff you already have a system for it.

i'll also point out that if you want dual subs and have gone a route other than capcom, you can create dual subs by pasting the translated version and the untranslated version into a single file. leave the timestamps as they are, delete the line numbers if there are any (sometimes they seem to cause problems when you have dual subs, and i haven't figured out why) and then literally just paste the whole sub file for the first language into a new file. then paste in the whole sub file for the second language. yes, as a single chunk, the whole thing, right under the first language's subs. save the file as [video name].[zh-en].srt (or whatever), and use it like any other sub file.

notes on translation, especially since we're talking about lengthy machine-translations of things.

i default to translation options that allow for translating in large chunks, mostly because i'm lazy. but since an .srt is, again, literally just a text file, they're easy to edit, and if you feel like some of the lines are weird or questionable or whatever, it's easy to change them if you can find a better translation.

so: some fast notes on machine translation options, because i don't know how much time most people spend thinking about this kind of stuff.

one sort of interesting thing to check out is the bing translator. it'll only do 1000 characters at once, but offers the rather interesting option of picking a level of formality. i can't always get it to work, mind, but it's useful especially for times when you're like 'this one line sounds weird'—sometimes the difference between what the translator feels is standard vs formal vs casual english will make a big difference.

very fast illustration of the difference in translations. the random video that i used to make sure i didn't miss any steps explaining things starts with '所以你第二季来'. here's how it got translated:

google: So you come to season 2

google's top alternative: So you come in the second season

bing's standard tone: So here you come for the second season

bing set to casual: So you're coming for the second season, huh?

reverso default guess: So you come in season two

reverso alternate guess: You'll be participating in season two

capcom: So you come in season two

yandex: So you come in the second season

systran: That's why you come in season two

deepl: That's why you're here in season two

vibe: So your second season is here

technically all conveying the same information, but the vibes are very different. sometimes one translator or another will give you a clearly superior translation, so if you feel like the results you're getting are kinda crap, try running a handful of lines through another option and see if it's better.

ok! this was an incredibly long post, and i've almost definitely explained something poorly. again, there are almost certainly better ways to do this, but these ways are free and mostly effective, and they work most of the time, and are better than nothing.

feel free to ask questions and i'll answer as best i can. (the answer to any questions about macs or iphones is 'i'm so sorry, i have no idea tho.' please do not ask those questions.)

#i'm so excited to find out what i totally failed to explain because i'm sure there's something #subtitles #i really do want to reiterate that this is VERY FAR from a perfect system #but it's better than nothing #i assume that we all dream of having at least fluent comprehension of basically every language #but here in the real world...#y'know.#echoes linger

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sourcreammachine · 10 months ago

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a little something fun about the transition from reddit to tumblr

i worldbuild. that’s me hobby. my notes app is all a load of random bullshit. i think of a world idea and then i do notes on it. i think of a fiction idea and i do notes on it. i think of any fun thing and i write nonsense notes on it

on reddit, whenever you shared that shit, it had to be presentable. you needed to be good at worldbuilding AND adept at photoshop. if it looks ugly, gtfo amateur. so i never bothered sharing, i mean, i shared a few things but at my low-medium skill level with graphic design n shit it always took me a lot of effort to do it up, and i never could be bothered to give the amount of effort it took me

so i kept it all to myself and my notes app turned into an unreadable apocrypha that made sense only to me. who gives a shit. nobody’s gonna read it

then spez spezzed everywhere and r/196 became #196. i can share anything i want here! the community is far more personal and personable, and text posts are okay here. it’s not that the bar is lower, but that the bar is more accessible. you don’t need to create a massive .psd every time you want to share some creativity, just share it! and i do, i write stuff for tumbr and put it out there and love doing it, and i’ll fucking do it again

but, my biggest projects, my most proud worlds, were all created when i was closed off, for me only. i’d love to share them to tumbr. but they’re fucking unreadable. even though it’s far more accessible i’d have to edit it into a readable, presentable format and guide people through it better, which it very much was not built to do. it’s like ancient manuscripts. you’d need a rosetta stone. it is not for human consumption. the FSA classes it as toxic waste

so yeah. i have some good shit waiting for you. maybe one day you’ll get to see it when i actually edit it and type it up, but don’t count on anything, because, ykno, severe chronic depressive

#196

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wraithdance · 2 months ago

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thank you for that amazing dating guide.

"A lot of dating coaches are parroting language/behaviors PROFESSIONAL sex workers use for working and that’s dangerous to not understand"

as someone who isn't even aware of what a dating coach is (????) can you share bit more bout this? no need to if you don't want to tho

I had a whole eloquent reply written but tumblr ate half of it smfh. I tried to edit it this down for readability but it's still hella long and doesn't capture the point I wanna make totally.

so if anyone is interested I can write an accompanying paper with my current class thesis to explain further with academic links in MLA format lmao.

(This is based off of cis hetero dating only because it impacts queer dating which is another beast I can't cover rn)

TLDR: sex workers have an understanding of the dangers of using a man as a trick/cash out that lover girls who listen to shera7 without critical analysis do not. That's dangerous because when you're male centered in dating you are a doormat and when using sex work theories as your basis you are prey for a predator (a cis man) who knows the game (patriarchy) better than you do.

you may or may not have noticed a shift in language towards women who are not sexually explorative 'freaks' and the teasing of those who happen to get played by a man.

Tiktok dating coaches have popped up to give heartbroken women hope in a world where they too, can get a man to cash out and live a soft life after dealing with a dusty. in the same vein Trad wife's who make baking and birthing children look fun have also popped up. (As a disclaimer I really don't care what ppl do with their lives I just like to understand the psycho/social aspect of human nature and there's an analysis on both I can't expound on rn because the length of this reply is crazy already)

as someone who very much so believes in sexual agency, taking money from a man if he plans to waste my time and actively dabbles in kink/sex work (Also got groomed on the internet when the whole 'I wanna be a sugar baby' tumblr bullshit happened in early 2013), I have to point out the hypocrisy of the dating coaches/women who hate 'sluts' who use the terminology and ideas of working sluts.

As the economy goes to shit and people lose hope over having property or living the 'american dream', we are going to see a steady rise of both red pill theory and trad wife ideology and its sister 'the man eater heart of gold who is liberated but not TOO liberated and gets flown out to miami'.

This is because people day dream about 'the good days' of the 50s or whatever fucking era in order to come to terms with the fact they can't afford toothpaste. What did the 50's and previous eras have besides dirt cheap housing? Strict gender dynamics that described a woman's 'rightful' place

Male centered people are going to cling to either the virgin madonna or whore frameworks of past to make sure they get a good seat at the table with a man because that's what those under gender socialization are taught to do.

You might argue 'oh how do you know its not what they want!! You're being judgmental!!' and I will say back, I know because if you have no desire to perform a certain metric if there's not a man to acknowledge or praise you then most likely you are doing this for someone else.

The main reason I point this out is that its created a shift that tightens the constraints of misogyny on two fronts for so many women and will continue to only work to demonize sex workers and the 'undesirables.'

I watched women who slut shamed anyone who didn't keep a penny between their knees transform over night to wear fishnets and poster girl dresses while singing megan thee stallion. We can say this was a personal growth period for them but if you asked them what they thought about strippers or even insinuate they looked like they got a trick they'd freak out.

Then on the other hand you get the people who think they know everything about sex work because of the city girls or Shera7, who don't understand those women are speaking directly to the women who de-centered men and don't want love they want monetary security only (which me core <3)

when lover girls start saying sprinkle sprinkle and don't do research or internal work she will fall for the trap of any man who gives her the time of day. a fattened prey to a predator the game was designed for! That is dangerous because that's how people end up in ditches or in abusive cycles. Its what makes sex work an incredibly dangerous job that requires a lot of research and precautions that people don't want to acknowledge out of purity culture/religious persecution. That's why I wrote my dating advice post the way I did to give a reality check as much as I could. You have to know the game!!

So yeah I got tired of typing so hope this makes sense to why I mentioned it in my dating post idk

#asks #smfh I was cooking too #talked about religion playing into sex work #intersectionality and how racism applies to this #but now I'm tired of thinking so bye

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neetily · 4 months ago

Text

↳ EVENT 34. M!Alex DoL (Breeding & Hybrids)

— ✧ warnings: Breeding, Creampie, Hybrids, pregnancy mention, Heats, dubcon, Size Difference, Mating — ✧ word count: 3,959

— ✧ A/N: reposting from my old account since i was asked to! formatting might be off, but it's still readable.

There are certainly times that being a hybrid benefits him. Namely when it comes to his raw strength, and how it ties nicely into his career. Farm work ain't easy, y'know! But for him, and his natural born durability, difficult tasks are a lot easier to complete. It's nice to be not have to worry about the sheer amount of manual labour involved in his line of work, waking up each and every morning with the sure knowledge that whatever the day throws at him, he'll be ready for it. Lifting, weeding, fixing, building— thanks to his bull-like strength, nothing can even hope to stand in his way.

Another benefit is how much he can relate to his livestock. Sure, some may give him funny looks considering that he's a hybrid just like them, why should they bow to his feet? But he makes it abundantly clear that he only intends to care for them, a mutually beneficial understanding shared amongst beasts; not in the least because he can empathise on such an intimate level with them. Able to better help, attend to, and look after his stock as compared to a non hybrid farmer. Really, they should be thankful that it's his feet they must abide by, and not some unknowing, unhelpful human farmer. He understands their struggles like no other, because he experiences them in kind.

There are, of course, cons to the whole ordeal. One of which being his temper, or was it temperament? He never was the brightest, couldn't never get the difference to stick. How it can rise to terrifying heights, surprisingly fast, too. Stubborn as, well... As himself. As a bull can be, huffing and snorting and aiming his horns at anyone, or anything, that steps out of line. Innate intimidation working both for and against him, though he'd rather admit the former. Because a tall, imposing, intimidating presence is good around the farm, especially inside the barns. Tail swishing behind him, nostrils flared knowing that his mere existence is enough to get all the other hybrids back in line in a moments notice.

However, perhaps the greatest con of all, in spite of all the amazing positives, is that: he's just an animal at the end of the day. Just like the stock he cares for daily, a primal beast, a slave to his instinctive chains just as much as the rest of them.

Try to hide it all he wants, it's no use when he has someone as pretty and small as you near him at all hours of the day, helping on the farm as much as your little human hands can offer, leaving him feeling all fuzzy and thankful inside of his chest at the way you wipe the sweat off your brow. A pretty little thing like you is all it takes, really, for the animal within him to buck and gnaw and chew at his willpower until it's all too late. The immediate attraction he felt towards you hidden at the back of his mind resurfacing from a mere glance from you, a connection so strong that he's been unable to look away since your arrival on his farm.

It's that time of year again, isn't it?

He'd tried to keep himself contained. As naturally as possible— ain't got time to head into town for anything like medication or the likes, left to seethe by himself in private, avoiding your usual kind conversation in favour of petting himself into oblivion when he thinks you can't see him, or when you're too busy with one of the many useless tasks he's sent his favourite little farmhand on today. Anything to get you out of sight, though unsurprisingly, never out of mind.

Compared to him, you're tiny. A soft bodied little girl he can't help but to stare at, a yearn so deep in his heart to claim you as his own once and for all— and that's not just his instincts talking, though they certainly aid his drive. Over the course of your time spent on the farm, days and nights spent with him, he's came to appreciate you as a person, too.

One of the good ones, he promises his stock.

And while he can fuck around with his hybrids on any given day—he's done so before, particularly before you entered his life— there's just something about you. An intrinsic understanding that though he could break you in a mere second, still you cling to him for support. Staring up at him with those big puppy eyes he oh so adores; not that he's ever said as much before, often rendering him a blushing mess despite your smaller than his stature, build, and overall presence on the farm.

You're a good worker too, which gets to him. Honest with a strong work ethic, better than some hybrids he's came across. Like you're trying to prove yourself to him or something, which would be cute if that was the case. Y'need not prove yerself at all, sweetheart. He wants to coo softly at you often, fisting his fat cock to completion every night to the thought of his favourite little human between his meaty thighs with the look of adoration on your face. God, how long he's wanted to see you just there, those doe eyes fluttering back up at him, struggling to take his hybrid cock down your throat as— Well. You get the point.

Mans smitten, though the pill is a difficult one to swallow. Him, with a human? Look, he's not got anything against you per se, it's just not something he's ever considered possible in his lifetime. Resolved to picking a cute little hybrid all for himself one day once the farm was settled, and yet here he sits on his porch pining for someone half his size and half his breed. But that's just it, isn't it? The fact that you're so tiny compared to him, so easily picked up and thrown down, unable to escape his too big cock as his heat creeps up on him in the golden hour. It's too enticing, to see you prance around his farm without a single clue of the things you do to him. A curiosity, he lies to himself. Fate, his heart corrects.

"Fuck..." Escapes him, petting at his cock some more as you finish up tending to the plenty plots around the farmhouse, his brows knitting together in concentration, of you walking his way with that big cheesy grin on your face that he silently loves, or his big open palm stroking the outline of his bulge? He's not so sure. All that he knows for sure is that his cheeks feel a little warmer when you're around, that your scent invades his senses the closer you get to him, almost clouding his judgement as you take to sitting beside him, his cock twitching privately in response to the loud sigh you let out upon finally being able to relax.

You're so... God, so fucking annoying. The way you so effortlessly overwhelm his senses, his nose twitching with frustration as he huffs in your intoxicating scent. Can fucking smell your cunt from your side, tip leaking all over his pants with need. It's— sure, he's in heat. Breeding season and all that, not that you're fucking aware given how carelessly you bring up your shirt to reveal your soft tummy to him— oh, just a little bite? Just a small one, just to get a taste? Cleaning up the rest of your sweat that he'd rather lick off for you, exhaling heavily through his nose at the innocent look you wear when regarding him. But it's embarrassing how down bad he is for you, how out of all the perfectly good hybrid options presented to him throughout his life, a weak little thing like you gets to him the most.

"You good, Alex?"

Part of him wants to laugh, barked down at you with utter disrespect for how fucking stupid you're being right now. Dumb little girl, exposing yourself to his bull side so easily, on a silver platter up to his grinding teeth. But he's only half the animal he's acting right now, choosing instead to clear his throat before responding, staring you down with hazy eyes. He doesn't want to frighten you, really.

"Yup." Is all he allows himself to admit, tucking his cock into the waistband of his pants when you take a gander at all of your hard work; impressive, he thinks to himself. You're skilled, and it annoys him for some reason.

"You sure? You don't look too hot..."

The amount of worry in your tone irritates him, worsens his already agitated state as he goes to stand out of your way, intent on taking care of the tight ball of need nestled deep in his tummy until you reach out for him, little hand burning an imprint on his tense arm from the fire coursing through him.

It's craving. Longing to make you his. He's never truly felt so fucking heated before though... Even when fucking his stock when his heat got too strong to bear, he's never felt so vulnerable, and then it clicks in him. He wants you to depend on him too, to look for stability in his arms, to mark every inch of your pretty skin as his so that he never has to worry about another heat again. Unable to ignore the growing creep of want in his chest with every inhale of your scent— the best he's ever smelled, annoying in how sweet and perfectly suited it is to his tastes. He knows what it means, he's been avoiding it for as long as he can. But the way your hand comes up to his forehead, the back of it gently resting against him, as if checking your child's temperature— you just don't know when to quit, do you?

Not that he's any better, immediately sat upon your tugging request, allowing you to touch and poke and prod at his warm cheeks, concern lacing your expression at the way he huffs and puffs before you. Look, see how he's trying to hold on to the last remnants of control he's got, but you just keep pushing. Leaning closer, pouty kissable lips just begging for a tongue shoved between them, his eyes rolling back and shut when you hum in sincere thought for him.

And it's like something snaps in him when he feels your hand on his thigh. Propping yourself up to assumedly get a better look at his flushed complexion, unwinding the tight ball of restraint within him in a mere second as his hands fly out to your waist, easily pulling you onto his lap to show you exactly what's wrong with him. Let you feel the way his big fat cock throbs against your tummy, nails digging in to your hips and arms flexed to keep you pinned in place on his lap.

You've got to know that wrapping your legs around his waist only encourages him, right? Even if you've only done so out of assumed obligation, his clouded mind and rock hard cock take that as an invitation to thrust against you. Just once or twice, the sopping tip of his cock fucked out of his cock in the movement, much to your surprise apparently as a rushed gasp escapes you.

"'M sorry..." He mumbles, though nevertheless pushes your body back, letting you perch precariously at his knees so that he can unzip his pants and free his cock. "Jus'... Um, gotta mate with you."

Not once has he worded it like that, carrying you up to his bedroom without waiting for your answer because of how downright desperate he is to show you how serious his intentions are, undressing you on the way and discarding your clothes recklessly across the old house until he's able to toss you onto his bed.

You unlock something so needlessly primitive within him, the bed dipping under his weight as he removes his top, revealing his tight and toned body for your glassy eyes to gawk at. Fuck, and the sight of you under him like this? How easily and readily he towers over you, safely twice your size as he hovers above, bull tail swinging back and forth in piqued interest at the way you seem to cower under him.

He'd like to look after you properly, wants to treat you the way you deserve, but that'll have to wait. He's unfortunately too fraught with uncontrolled need right now, greedy for his first fuck, to empty his taut balls into your little cunt to make it all creamy for him.

"It's— ah..." Automatically, he starts to jerk at his exposed cock. Letting his precum drip all over your front, a puddle of pre soon forming at your belly button from just how strong his heat is, how strong you've made it, your scent screaming breedable even as he looms over you, leaving him a little dizzy with desire. "It's because you smell so good, I can't— I mean, I tried to hold back but..." but the lust pooling in his tummy is too much to bare, and the way you're looking up at him with such expectation only encourages him to continue, and just seeing you submit so pliantly under him triggers his impulsive behaviours, and—

Mm... There's no use making excuses now. His inhibitions lowering with every passing second that his big cock hovers above you, the wide eyed look you give him back as he slaps his tip against your tummy a little, pressing it right against you, hissing at how good it feels just to even glide his tip against your skin and; "Look," He implores, following your vision down to his heavy cock as he continues to stroke pre out for you. To mark you up with his stink. "Look how big it is. Don't think it's gonna fit all inside..."

And when he looks back up at your pretty face, he's greeted to the sight of your adorable pout. As if you were just as saddened by that fact as he is, nonetheless drawing his hips back to give in to his baser instincts with a final stroke of his cock.

"S'okay. Will stretch my mate out real good, jus' give it time." He promises you, and despite the lewd intentions behind his heat stroke ridden words, he means it. For someone as soft, pliable, easily throwable, and sweet as you, he's willing to wait and train you to take his full size. After all, he's decided that you're his mate now, so you're gonna have to learn eventually. Or rather, nature has willed it so. A scent so alluring, so entrancing? He's but a man, after all. Giving in to his desires as he threatens to shove his cock all the way in at a moments notice.

He'd just rather you wanted too, is all. But it's not that important.

Not like you can escape him anyway, one hand on your hip, the other by your head to keep himself steady. He's much too strong for you, and so much bigger too in every respect. Try to escape his iron grip and he'll easily be able to tug you back down to meet his cock, letting his tip rest against you for just a moment as he steels his nerves.

A shaky sigh later, and his mind is settled. To prove how serious he is, he gives you a concerned look. Pained, almost, from how eager he is to prove himself to you.

"You're gonna be such a good mommy, little mate."

No time to fully recognised your confused expression, already pushing his cock inside of your perfect little mate cunt without warning. Just the tip, really, soaking your insides with his plentiful pre and you're already clawing at him. Nails digging into his tensed up arms, stroking his ego so well, just like how your cunt massages his tip expertly, little cunt sucking him off just the way he likes, like you were fucking made for him, attempting to drag him in further and further despite the way your walls struggle to stretch around his fat girth. Too fucking big for little girls like you, instinctively dipping his head low with a wince when your cunt squeezes him unfairly well. Fucking into you raw feels too fucking good, it's almost embarrassing how much he loves it already. Just the tip, and he's a mess. Panting heavily, periodically squeezing at your side to keep himself focused enough to feel every single clench of your insides.

"Here," He hums, almost begs for you to hear his words in spite of the pheromone haze settling thick in the room. "Hold on t'em. It'll help."

Not only in keeping you grounded enough to feel every agonizing inch of his fat cock splitting you in two, but also more selfishly, he likes it when his horns are grabbed. Feels like you're relying on him a little more, little fists wrapped around his tough horns as he hunches over you like some sort of predator, his body completely encasing your own in the sheer size difference as he humps his tip into you a little too fast for his liking. He doesn't mean it, he doesn't wanna hurt you, it's just that you feel so fucking good, fuck. Like he always knew you would, your hole eagerly doing her best to accept his throbbing cock, the tip finally popping all the way inside with a sickly squelch thanks to his dominating efforts, your cunt soaking his cock with every tiny thrust he offers your small, frail body.

And it's difficult for him to hold back like this, to keep himself in check when you're whining so pretty for him like that. All shy and choked, a mix of pain and pleasure as he takes to rocking your body up and down his cock rather than thrusting inside, the hand on your hip doing all of the work for you as you hide your enjoyment in the sheets below.

He'd love to see you struggle to take his cock, but he understands your reaction. Some hybrids have difficulty, too. The first time can be overwhelming, fucking you selfishly over every throbbing vein of his heavy cock, got him all twitchy and leaking inside of you, doing his best to help ease the glide inside but he only ever truly manages to stuff half of his cock in you before you're tapping out.

"Okay, okay," He grits his teeth at your surrender, allowing you some leeway for managing to even take half of him, a soft cooing tut escaping him at the affection he harbours for you. Pretty little mate, you'll get there eventually. Especially considering it's only the first night of his heat; he'll break you in soon enough. "I'm gonna— Ah, fuck, sorry—"

What he tries to tell you is that he's gonna move, provide you with ample opportunity to fully stop before the point of no return; but his body has other ideas. Pulling his hips back mid speech only to fervently thrust forward again, a brutally unfair pace settled from the get go as his instincts truly take over and he simply cannot fucking help himself from indulging in your meagre, shivering frame. A true treat to a bull like him, pampering himself with heady thrusts and loud grunts, every fast fuck into your over stretched cunt matched with tandem tugs of your pretty body down, made to meet him in the middle, his bed squeaking under the sheer weight of his fucks forwards.

He knows he's made the right choice in mating with you as soon as you start to squirm under him, gasping his name like some sort of mantra for him to drink up, his usual cocky smirk now replaced with an open mouth for him to moan and groan just for you. Drooling precum into you, saliva pooling in his mouth at how tasty your smell has become, how fucking strong it gets now that he's fucking you so full, the knowing that he's only half way inside understandably leaving you a little on edge given how just half his cock is all it takes to have you creaming so well around him. A little ring of it half way up his cock, your relatively tiny hands tugging on his horns as if asking for something else, but you're too stuffed with cock to voice it, aren't you baby?

It's okay, he's a good mate, he can intuit what you want. What you so desperately need, just like him, right? Like a good bitch in heat, you want the same thing he does.

A nice, warm, sticky creampie, huh?

And oh, the way you're sobbing for it so nicely, begging wordlessly with half babbles for more, allowing him to rock your body up and down with every greedy thrust his hips roll into you automatically, driven to impregnate you out of pure need. Like a reflex, or impulse. His tongue pokes at the inside of his cheek as you pull his face closer to your own by way of his horns, his tail flapping behind him in impatience.

Someone as nice and tight as you was made for breeding, right? Little breeding bitch, all for him. Rubbing his nose against your own, taking a greedy inhale of your sickly sweet scent before imprinting his own with opposingly gently nuzzles against your cheek— always mindful of his horns.

"Look at me." He commands, voice rough and throaty from the amount of effort it takes not to just ram his whole fat cock into your perfect little pussy like how he wants to, lifting his head up just a little so that his forehead rests against your own and you can see just how much he wants this. Wants you.

"Want ya t'look at me when I get'cha pregnant."

And to prove his suspicions, it only takes another greedy stoke inside your cunt for your walls to clench down hard around him, mommy body begging for his strong bull seed, yeah? Feel so good cumming around him like that, God, he's not long to follow. Finding it difficult to continue thrusting into your tightly squeezing hole, and yet nevertheless allowing her to milk him as his full, thick seed shoots against your walls. Dumping a fat load right against your cervix, fucking it back into you with relentless thrusts— unintentionally, he just can't stop himself from seeking the too good feeling your cunt swallows his cock with. Thick cream seeping out from around his cock as it gushes out of you, turning your ass and thighs all tacky with his seed when he lowers his body further, keeps you as close to him as possible so that his load is more likely to stick to its intended purpose.

And like that he remains. Heaving against you, he keeps you there for a good minute or so until the wave of pleasure rolls over him and he's offered a miniscule amount of clarity. Enough to view your battered body, how sloppy and messy and stupid you look under him, a silent beg for more on the tip of your tongue as you smile dumbly up at him.

"Already?" He sneers down at you, rubbing his thumb across your cheek with a chaste kiss to the tip of your nose. "Fucked stupid? Oh," His cock twitches inside of you again, warming in your stuffed little hole, keeping his cum plugged inside for your own benefit. Still, he wants.

"We've only just started m'afraid."

#dol smut #degrees of lewdity smut #alex the farmhand #alex the farmhand smut #alex🚜

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capn-twitchery · 9 months ago

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I'm sorry did I see you say you did your masters' thesis on character design? could you tell us more? 👀

YES ABSOLUTELY thank you So much for giving me an excuse to go off about this oh my god--SO!! 👀

my masters was on animation, specifically concept art & pitch bibles for animation (i'm not sure how well known those are but basically it's a document/book you bring into a pitch, contains all the basics of the show!) so it focused around making an animated show concept, a pitch bible & a visual development portfolio (just a fancier way to display more concept art) & the thesis (was supposed to) document the thought process behind making it

it was classed as a science masters, which meant the project had to be based around a hypothesis, so things got Muddled (hypothesis was on the rarity of adult horror in western animation) but the core of it was: i wanted to make a pitch for a fake tv show and write about character design & analyse art styles. so i did! there was stuff on stereotypical design traits & what they imply, environmental storytelling, how to show story through character design, how genres affect art styles & why, stylising animals for animation, sticking to historic research vs visual shorthands/readability, off the top of my head.

i will spare you hours of ramblings BUT i will not spare you the chance to show off some of the stuff i made >:3c the show concept was an 1800s (vaguely) southern gothic horror vibe, i went for anthros bc i had never tried them before and wanted something more challnging than humans. story concept was based around ergotism, mass hysteria, unreality, weird creatures in the fields that may or may not be real, power struggles, etc. etc.

the pitch bible i am still so Unbelievably proud of--i made everything basically from scratch myself, drew so many things i'd never even Attempted before, and although i'd change a few things now (mainly the writing/formatting) i'm still proud of it! i think the visitants pag is the coolest thing i've ever made still >:3c here's a handful of pages, and i'll put a few of the visual development portfolio ones under the cut & the links to the full things if anybody is interested!!

i never did get to finish the visdev portfolio bc of a bunch of health issues + a surgery, which is a shame. i do still really like this project tho and i'm immensely proud of getting the degree even through the Fuckery 😌

i'd love to come back to it someday, there's a lot of things i'd like to change now i'm not under a time limit (better historical reference, for one) but it's the first uni project i've still felt passionate about after submitting it, so thank you for giving me the chance to talk about it :D

if you did wanna see the full pieces, the pitch bible is here and the portfolio is here (albeit unfinished)

#inquiries #abstractkind #thank you 1000x hehehehe i always love talking about this #i know it's unrelated to the blog entirely but it's ok it gets an exception #fredspeaks #sorry this is long i hope it's interesting at least >:3

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finnlongman · 2 months ago

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i hope this doesn't sound patronising if you've already tried that route, but in case you haven't: if this is a text that has been given to you as is and been produced by a general OCR, it might be worth looking into whether ppl have already trained language-specific OCR models for your field of study and using that to transcribe the scanned text again. there's a lot of transcription solutions/software and different fields prefer different ones, and idk the standard for Celtic studies personally, but a site i use often (transkribus) has 2 Irish models whose related projects you might be able to use as a starting point for research at least. best of luck to you either way!

So there are several factors at work with the OCR problems with this text specifically.

The PDF of the text is from Archive. The library copy it was scanned from has various pencil markings and annotations that are interfering with the printed text -- it's not a clean scan. It's also not super high definition, so letters like "h" sometimes get misread as "li", even though they're totally readable to human eyes.

The edition uses frequent italics and brackets to show where abbrevations in the manuscript has been expanded. Individual italicised letters confuse the OCR, as do random square brackets in the middle of words.

It also has a lot of superscript numbers corresponding to manuscirpt variants in the footnotes. Sometimes these are in the middle of a word. This also confuses most OCR systems, even if it can tell that the footnotes are separate from the main text.

The language of the text is late Middle / Early Modern Irish, from two different manuscripts that have their own unique spelling quirks (for example, one of them loves to spell Cú Chulainn's name "Cú Cholain", which is a vibe).

In order to run the text through a more sophisticated OCR system that was equipped to cope with a) annotations, b) weird formatting and punctuation, c) incredibly frequent footnotes (variants), and d) non-standardised spelling (which throws off many language models), I would probably still need to have a reliable, clear, and high-definition scan of the text. Which would require re-digitising it from scratch.

So, the quickest and easiest way to get a version of the text that I personally can use is to sit here and type up 20,000 words into a document. This is 2-4 days' work, depending on how focused I am, and gives me the chance to go through the text in detail and spot things I might miss otherwise, so it's probably a whole lot less effort for more benefit than trying to adapt an entire language model that could read this terrible PDF. Especially as I have no experience of using these programmes so would have a steep learning curve.

Now, somebody absolutely should do that, so we could get proper searchable editions of more things. But honestly, if using transcription tools for medieval/early modern Irish I think there are higher priorities than things already available in printed form, so I doubt it's at the top of anyone's to-do list!

#it's only about 50% the OCR's fault here and it's 50% the PDF just being terrible to start with #which is. a different problem #finn is not doing a phd #answered

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tacticaltaxonomist · 9 months ago

Text

The Commission page is easier to read HERE thanks to additional formatting.

Fanart and all original human/furry/creature characters welcome!

Price: 15-50€ (ca. 16-54$) OR Donate any amount (+1€/$) to a charity supporting Palestine.

Slots: Unlimited (Queue is public HERE)

Queue: 0

Price: 15-50€ (ca. 16-54$) depending on style and complexity (consider 15€ as 1h drawing)

Payment Method: Paypal or Kofi (no accounts needed)

Charity for art!

Donate any amount (+1€/$) to a charity supporting Palestine and get art. - send me a screenshot of your receipt (date, amount, charity) - art complexity depends on amount you donated, but i'll draw you at least something small! List of charities you can donate to: UNRWA https://www.unrwa.org/ Doctors without Borders https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/where-we-work/palestine Defense for Children Palestine https://www.dci-palestine.org/ Palestinian Red Crescent Society https://www.palestinercs.org/en United Palestinian Appeal https://href.li/?https://upaconnect.org/ Heal Palestine https://healpalestine.app.neoncrm.com/ eSims for Gaza https://t.co/VtvHlIRdWs Care for Gaza https://twitter.com/CareForGaza Medical Aid for Palestinians https://www.map.org.uk/ ANERA https://www.anera.org/ Help Gaza Children https://helpgazachildren.notion.site/ Sulala Animal Rescue https://sulalaanimalrescue.com/ Palestinian Youth Movement https://palestinianyouthmovement.com/ BDS Movement https://bdsmovement.net/

Timeframe: 1 week once it's your turn in the queue, first come first serve. Need it by a specific date? Let me know! Specs: Digital art in format of a PNG image, average size is around 1500-3000px square. Need a specific size/ratio/format/dpi? Let me know! TOS: - Art will have a readable signature, but no watermark. - The signature may not be removed. - You may post the art wherever you'd like, with credit to my TH, Tumblr, or KoFi. - I can post the art wherever I like. - Digital art file only. - No refunds, unless I can't deliver. - Limited revisions at my discretion. - Won't draw sexually explicit art. Nudity ok! - May decline drawing gore designs. Inquiries welcome!

Contact: You can alternatively reach me via Email: tacticaltaxonomist at outlook dot com Discord: tactax Tumblr: tacticalTaxonomist / tactax-art Toyhouse: tactax

How to Commission:

1) Contact me by replying here, sending a DM, or via the alternatives in "Contact"

- What character do you want? - What do you want to pay? - What kind of art do you want (see examples below). - Tell me a pose / emotion / outfit / vibe / meme you'd like! - Tell me what coverage you want, like full body / half body / bust / headshot! - If you have no pose/emotion etc. in mind, please tell me about your characters vibes. If you don't give any information regarding pose, vibes, coverage etc when you contact me I will assume 'whatever' is ok, I will not dig for details.

2) Wait for me to confirm that I accept your commission! 3) Make payment. Easiest on Ko-Fi: Below 'Support tactax' enter 12, list your username and/or the characters name in the 'Your Message' box so I can identify you. (Charity option: Donate and send me a screenshot of your receipt, via email or Discord would be easiest. Do not post this publicly. On screenshot I'd like to see: date, amount, charity) 4) Wait your turn in the queue, and for art to be posted!

Pricing

I don't do a strictly-set price range, because different characters and coverage take different amounts of time! Just tell me what you want, and I can tell you if your budget works / I'll do it for less / I'll do it for more / where we can cut corners to make it fit what youre willing to pay :)

Art

This is also easier to view / get full sizes HERE, or right-click and 'open in new tab' to view bigger. And yk, this is my art blog :)

↓Memes (also say a style)

↓Icons/Tokens (also say a style)

↓Style: Doodle (very simplified, soft colors, chibi-ish)

↓Style: Sketch (no color, might have a few grey shades/highlights for distinction)

↓Style: Colored Sketch ( like sketch but with soft colors, slight shading/lighting for depth)

↓Style: Cellshaded Sketch (proper full color, usually a bit cleaner than just sketch / colored sketch, solid colors and cellshading, highlights, gradients, the whole thing)

#commissions open #commission #art for palestine #art for donations

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