#i can't post this on facebook and this is the only other place i can LMAOOOO

[myceliumsage]

i stg that man has some big ass hands.

never was a hands person before now but DAMN.

i'd let him crush my windpipe like it was a disani water bottle i stg.

[siyzuii]

⨳ 　 ʾ apps/sites 4 shifting 　 . 　 ♡

hi! this will be long but i made a list of apps/sites that might be helpful for your shifting journey. reminder that you don't need these to shift but they can be helpful with manifesting, keeping track of stuff, etc.

enjoy! divider cr

NOT SPONSORED BTW LMAO

﹒ 　 ⊹ 　 🝮 　 OO1: NOTION 　 ✩

description:

basically notion is an app for documents and stuff. i have to say this one's relatively known and it's such a huge life saver and i know that probably everyone knows about it already (as they should) but i'm gonna recommend it once again.

useful for:

scripting

dashboards you can add life goals & stuff here you can look up some templates/ideas and see what i mean LOL

cons:

i personally can not think of any major ones because this app is just that good

you do have to make new accounts for the text ai generating feature but i don't know if anyone would use that

additional notes:

i personally love how customizable it is! like you can make each page have a custom icon & header, add widgets, images, and so much more. it is so so so insanely helpful for scripting i'm telling you. or you can just be basic, that works too. there's also a bunch of script templates online including specific ones (like a better cr, fame dr, fantasy dr, fandom-specific drs, bla bla bla) and it's literally the only thing shifttok is good for imo. i'm a big fan of shifterium's templates but there's other people who make them as well and i'm sure you can find some recommendations!

★ 　 ₊ 　 ➲ 　OO2: CANVA

description:

a website + app where you can design stuff from headers down to presentations, posters, covers, etc..

useful for:

album covers for singer/idol drs

book covers for writer drs or something

fake social media posts but there's better apps out there and i'll list them here as well

and much more!

cons:

a lot of things (most of which i think are the good stuff) are paid but you can find similar replicas if you scroll long enough i guess..?? and there's a free trial but i don't know if that helps

additional notes:

definitely my favorite place to go when i need to design something tbh. there's a bunch of templates you can use and the layout is very easy to navigate through! and it's pretty easy to find free alternatives for the paid stuff you do have in there

₍ⁿ⑅..ⁿ₎ 　 ˇ 　 ⩩ 　 OO3: PARROT 　 ❀ 　

description:

parrot is an app where you can record yourself saying literally anything and play it on a continuous loop

useful for:

affirmations (manifesting??)

cons:

i'm pretty sure it's iOS only

additional notes:

personally i haven't used this app (i don't like my voice so i will not be recording myself saying affirmations thank yew) so i can't give it a rating but from the looks of it and based off of recommendations i've seen it's pretty useful. should be a white icon with a pink circle that has a white parrot in it!

≥≤ 　 ﹕ 　 ⤷ 　 OO4: BEHINDTHENAME 　 ◍

description:

a site where you can generate names & even life stories if you choose it (including height, weight, blood type, birthday, nationality and more i think?? at least it gives those for me). you can choose from different cultures and stuff like fantasy & mythology.

useful for:

finding a name & info for your dr self (which is literally you by the way don't forget that!) and potentially other people you'd like to script in

cons:

it really just helps to make a basic profile of a person so the things you can do with it can be a little limited

additional notes:

i prefer using this site for ocs instead but i think it can definitely help with shifting! oddly enough it also shows like a lifespan & cause of death so.. cool i guess!!!!

✦ 　 ﹕ 　 OO5: SOCIAL MAKER/dummy

description:

social maker & social dummy are both apps where you can replicate almost basically anything from the internet from twitter posts to facebook posts, youtube posts, and more!

useful for:

social media stuff especially useful for fame drs, streamer drs, idol/singer drs and so much more

cons:

both apps were deleted so you have to have had installed them before if you want to get them back

social maker is ios only i think?

additional notes:

yeah both apps are deleted but there's alternatives out there like twinote (for twitter) photonote (for instagram) canva (has fake social media templates as i said lol) and others that you can look for (because i personally only use twinote)

⋆ 　 ᶻᶻ 　 　 OO6: HELLOFACE 　 ﹒ 　 ��

description:

basically an app for ai face swapping

useful for:

seeing what your face claim (if you have one) would look like on for example dances, fancams, interviews definitely useful for idol/singer/maybe fame drs

cons:

uses ai (i'm personally not a big fan of ai)

pretty underground so the chances that you might not like it are not low

✭ 　 　 ❒︎ 　 OO7: ROOM PLANNER 　 . 　 ♡

description:

basically what the name says. it's a 3d home designer

useful for:

making your dr room/house

visualizing your dr room/house

cons:

has paid stuff

┊ 　 ‧ 　⬭ 　 OO8: COMBYNE

description:

an app where you can combine items you like from a wide selection of stuff to make outfits!

useful for:

making outfits for your dr

visualizing said outfits

additional notes:

there's other things you can do on the app like challenges where you can compete to make the best outfit i think?? looks pretty fun i might try it HAHAHA

yuh so i got a little lazy here at the end & i know this is prolly not very helpful because most of these apps/sites are pretty well known but maybe just maybe.. i helped someone out...

HAPPY SHIFTING!!!!!

[the-sleepy-archivist]

Blocking Ads on Mobile Devices

Blocking ads on our phones is way harder than it should be so I figured I'd make some recommendations. These are not the only options out there, just the ones that I know and use.

Please note that browser-level and system-level adblocking are complementary; you'll have the best experience if you use both of them together as they each block different things in different places. If you want a basic idea of how effective your combined adblocking setup is, you can visit this website in your mobile browser.

Lastly, there is some additional advice/info under the readmore if you're curious (EDIT: updated June 2024 to add info about sideloading altered versions of social media apps that don't contain ads on Android and iOS).

Android

Browser-Level

uBlock Origin (for Firefox)

System-Level (works in all apps, not just browsers)

AdGuard

Blokada 5 (completely free version) OR Blokada 6 (has some newer features but they require a subscription)

iPhone/iPad

Browser-Level

AdGuard (Safari extension; free for basic browser-level blocking, requires a subscription for custom filters)

System-Level (works in all apps, not just browsers)

AdGuard (requires subscription for system-level blocking)

AdGuard DNS only (this is free and does not require the AdGuard app, BUT I would only recommend it for advanced users, as you can't easily turn it off like you can with the app. Credit to this Reddit thread for the DNS profile)

Some additional info: browser-level blocking is a browser addon or extension, like you might be used to from a desktop computer. This inspects the HTML code returned by websites and searches for patterns that identify the presence of an ad or other annoyance (popup videos, cookie agreements, etc.). System-level blocking is almost always DNS-based. Basically whenever an app asks your phone's OS to make a connection to a website that is known for serving ads, the system-level blocker replies "sorry, I don't know her 🤷‍♂️💅" and the ad doesn't get downloaded. This works in most places, not just a browser, but be warned that it might make your battery drain a little faster depending on the app/setup.

Each of those types of blocking has strengths and weaknesses. System-level DNS blocking blocks ads in all apps, but companies that own advertising networks AND the websites those ads are served on can combine their services into the same domain to render DNS blocking useless; you can’t block ads served by Facebook/Meta domains without also blocking all of Facebook and Instagram as well because they made sure their ads are served from the same domain as all the user posts you actually want to see. Similarly, browser-level blocking can recognize ads by appearance and content, regardless of what domain they’re served from, so it can block them on Instagram and Facebook. However, it needs to be able to inspect the content being loaded in order to look for ads, and there’s no way to do that in non-browser apps. That’s why using both together will get you the best results.

These limitations do mean that you can’t block ads in the Facebook or Instagram apps, unfortunately, only in the website versions of them visited in your browser. It also means ads served by meta’s/facebook’s ad network in other apps can’t be blocked either (unless you're one of the rare beasts who doesn't use facebook or instagram or threads, in which case feel free to blacklist all Meta/FB domains and watch your ads disappear 😍; I'm jealous and in awe of you lol).

One note: some apps may behave unpredictably when they can't download ads. For example, the Tumblr app has big black spaces where the ads are, and sometimes those spaces collapse as you scroll past them and it messes up scrolling for a few seconds (UPDATE: looks like the scrolling issue may have actually been a Tumblr bug that they have now fixed, at least on iOS). Still way less annoying than getting ads for Draco Malfoy seduction roleplay AI chatbots imo though. And honestly *most* apps handle this fairly gracefully, like a mobile game I play just throws error messages like "ad is not ready" and then continues like normal.

One final note: on Android, you may actually be able to find hacked versions of Meta’s apps that have the ad frameworks removed. In some cases they are a little janky (unsurprisingly, apps don’t always take kindly to having some of their innards ripped out by a third-party), and they are often out of date. BUT in return you get an Instagram app with no ads whatsoever, and some of them even add additional features like buttons for saving IG videos and photos to your phone. However, use these apps at your own risk, as there is functionally no way to validate the code that the third-parties have added or removed from the app. Example altered IG app (I have not vetted this altered app, it's just a popular option): link.

It is technically possible to install altered apps on iOS as well, but Apple makes it much, much harder to do (unless you are jailbroken, which is a whole different ballgame). I'm not going to cover sideloading or jailbreaking here because even I as a very techy person eventually grew tired of messing with it or having to pay for it. If you're interested you can read more about the different ways to do sideloading on iOS here.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic

I'm coming to Minneapolis! This Sunday (Oct 15): Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Monday (Oct 16): Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

Enshittification is the process by which a platform lures in and then captures end users (stage one), who serve as bait for business customers, who are also captured (stage two), whereupon the platform rug-pulls both groups and allocates all the value they generate and exchange to itself (stage three):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Enshittification isn't merely a form of rent-seeking – it is a uniquely digital phenomenon, because it relies on the inherent flexibility of digital systems. There are lots of intermediaries that want to extract surpluses from customers and suppliers – everyone from grocers to oil companies – but these can't be reconfigured in an eyeblink the that that purely digital services can.

A sleazy boss can hide their wage-theft with a bunch of confusing deductions to your paycheck. But when your boss is an app, it can engage in algorithmic wage discrimination, where your pay declines minutely every time you accept a job, but if you start to decline jobs, the app can raise the offer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

I call this process "twiddling": tech platforms are equipped with a million knobs on their back-ends, and platform operators can endlessly twiddle those knobs, altering the business logic from moment to moment, turning the system into an endlessly shifting quagmire where neither users nor business customers can ever be sure whether they're getting a fair deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Social media platforms are compulsive twiddlers. They use endless variation to lure in – and then lock in – publishers, with the goal of converting these standalone businesses into commodity suppliers who are dependent on the platform, who can then be charged rent to reach the users who asked to hear from them.

Facebook designed this playbook. First, it lured in end-users by promising them a good deal: "Unlike Myspace, which spies on you from asshole to appetite, Facebook is a privacy-respecting site that will never, ever spy on you. Simply sign up, tell us everyone who matters to you, and we'll populate a feed with everything they post for public consumption":

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876

The users came, and locked themselves in: when people gather in social spaces, they inadvertently take one another hostage. You joined Facebook because you liked the people who were there, then others joined because they liked you. Facebook can now make life worse for all of you without losing your business. You might hate Facebook, but you like each other, and the collective action problem of deciding when and whether to go, and where you should go next, is so difficult to overcome, that you all stay in a place that's getting progressively worse.

Once its users were locked in, Facebook turned to advertisers and said, "Remember when we told these rubes we'd never spy on them? It was a lie. We spy on them with every hour that God sends, and we'll sell you access to that data in the form of dirt-cheap targeted ads."

Then Facebook went to the publishers and said, "Remember when we told these suckers that we'd only show them the things they asked to see? Total lie. Post short excerpts from your content and links back to your websites and we'll nonconsensually cram them into the eyeballs of people who never asked to see them. It's a free, high-value traffic funnel for your own site, bringing monetizable users right to your door."

Now, Facebook had to find a way to lock in those publishers. To do this, it had to twiddle. By tiny increments, Facebook deprioritized publishers' content, forcing them to make their excerpts grew progressively longer. As with gig workers, the digital flexibility of Facebook gave it lots of leeway here. Some publishers sensed the excerpts they were being asked to post were a substitute for visiting their sites – and not an enticement – and drew down their posting to Facebook.

When that happened, Facebook could twiddle in the publisher's favor, giving them broader distribution for shorter excerpts, then, once the publisher returned to the platform, Facebook drew down their traffic unless they started posting longer pieces. Twiddling lets platforms play users and business-customers like a fish on a line, giving them slack when they fight, then reeling them in when they tire.

Once Facebook converted a publisher to a commodity supplier to the platform, it reeled the publishers in. First, it deprioritized publishers' posts when they had links back to the publisher's site (under the pretext of policing "clickbait" and "malicious links"). Then, it stopped showing publishers' content to their own subscribers, extorting them to pay to "boost" their posts in order to reach people who had explicitly asked to hear from them.

For users, this meant that their feeds were increasingly populated with payola-boosted content from advertisers and pay-to-play publishers who paid Facebook's Danegeld to reach them. A user will only spend so much time on Facebook, and every post that Facebook feeds that user from someone they want to hear from is a missed opportunity to show them a post from someone who'll pay to reach them.

Here, too, twiddling lets Facebook fine-tune its approach. If a user starts to wean themself off Facebook, the algorithm (TM) can put more content the user has asked to see in the feed. When the user's participation returns to higher levels, Facebook can draw down the share of desirable content again, replacing it with monetizable content. This is done minutely, behind the scenes, automatically, and quickly. In any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye.

This is the final stage of enshittification: withdrawing surpluses from end-users and business customers, leaving behind the minimum homeopathic quantum of value for each needed to keep them locked to the platform, generating value that can be extracted and diverted to platform shareholders.

But this is a brittle equilibrium to maintain. The difference between "God, I hate this place but I just can't leave it" and "Holy shit, this sucks, I'm outta here" is razor-thin. All it takes is one privacy scandal, one livestreamed mass-shooting, one whistleblower dump, and people bolt for the exits. This kicks off a death-spiral: as users and business customers leave, the platform's shareholders demand that they squeeze the remaining population harder to make up for the loss.

One reason this gambit worked so well is that it was a long con. Platform operators and their investors have been willing to throw away billions convincing end-users and business customers to lock themselves in until it was time for the pig-butchering to begin. They financed expensive forays into additional features and complementary products meant to increase user lock-in, raising the switching costs for users who were tempted to leave.

For example, Facebook's product manager for its "photos" product wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to lay out a strategy of enticing users into uploading valuable family photos to the platform in order to "make switching costs very high for users," who would have to throw away their precious memories as the price for leaving Facebook:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

The platforms' patience paid off. Their slow ratchets operated so subtly that we barely noticed the squeeze, and when we did, they relaxed the pressure until we were lulled back into complacency. Long cons require a lot of prefrontal cortex, the executive function to exercise patience and restraint.

Which brings me to Elon Musk, a man who seems to have been born without a prefrontal cortex, who has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that he lacks any restraint, patience or planning. Elon Musk's prefrontal cortical deficit resulted in his being forced to buy Twitter, and his every action since has betrayed an even graver inability to stop tripping over his own dick.

Where Zuckerberg played enshittification as a long game, Musk is bent on speedrunning it. He doesn't slice his users up with a subtle scalpel, he hacks away at them with a hatchet.

Musk inaugurated his reign by nonconsensually flipping every user to an algorithmic feed which was crammed with ads and posts from "verified" users whose blue ticks verified solely that they had $8 ($11 for iOS users). Where Facebook deployed substantial effort to enticing users who tired of eyeball-cramming feed decay by temporarily improving their feeds, Musk's Twitter actually overrode users' choice to switch back to a chronological feed by repeatedly flipping them back to more monetizable, algorithmic feeds.

Then came the squeeze on publishers. Musk's Twitter rolled out a bewildering array of "verification" ticks, each priced higher than the last, and publishers who refused to pay found their subscribers taken hostage, with Twitter downranking or shadowbanning their content unless they paid.

(Musk also squeezed advertisers, keeping the same high prices but reducing the quality of the offer by killing programs that kept advertisers' content from being published along Holocaust denial and open calls for genocide.)

Today, Musk continues to squeeze advertisers, publishers and users, and his hamfisted enticements to make up for these depredations are spectacularly bad, and even illegal, like offering advertisers a new kind of ad that isn't associated with any Twitter account, can't be blocked, and is not labeled as an ad:

https://www.wired.com/story/xs-sneaky-new-ads-might-be-illegal/

Of course, Musk has a compulsive bullshitter's contempt for the press, so he has far fewer enticements for them to stay. Quite the reverse: first, Musk removed headlines from link previews, rendering posts by publishers that went to their own sites into stock-art enigmas that generated no traffic:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/05/x-twitter-strips-headlines-new-links-why-elon-musk

Then he jumped straight to the end-stage of enshittification by announcing that he would shadowban any newsmedia posts with links to sites other than Twitter, "because there is less time spent if people click away." Publishers were advised to "post content in long form on this platform":

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111183068362793821

Where a canny enshittifier would have gestured at a gaslighting explanation ("we're shadowbanning posts with links because they might be malicious"), Musk busts out the motto of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."

All this has the effect of highlighting just how little residual value there is on the platform for publishers, and tempts them to bolt for the exits. Six months ago, NPR lost all patience with Musk's shenanigans, and quit the service. Half a year later, they've revealed how low the switching cost for a major news outlet that leaves Twitter really are: NPR's traffic, post-Twitter, has declined by less than a single percentage point:

https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/

NPR's Twitter accounts had 8.7 million followers, but even six months ago, Musk's enshittification speedrun had drawn down NPR's ability to reach those users to a negligible level. The 8.7 million number was an illusion, a shell game Musk played on publishers like NPR in a bid to get them to buy a five-figure iridium checkmark or even a six-figure titanium one.

On Twitter, the true number of followers you have is effectively zero – not because Twitter users haven't explicitly instructed the service to show them your posts, but because every post in their feeds that they want to see is a post that no one can be charged to show them.

I've experienced this myself. Three and a half years ago, I left Boing Boing and started pluralistic.net, my cross-platform, open access, surveillance-free, daily newsletter and blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three

Boing Boing had the good fortune to have attracted a sizable audience before the advent of siloed platforms, and a large portion of that audience came to the site directly, rather than following us on social media. I knew that, starting a new platform from scratch, I wouldn't have that luxury. My audience would come from social media, and it would be up to me to convert readers into people who followed me on platforms I controlled – where neither they nor I could be held to ransom.

I embraced a strategy called POSSE: Post Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. With POSSE, the permalink and native habitat for your material is a site you control (in my case, a WordPress blog with all the telemetry, logging and surveillance disabled). Then you repost that content to other platforms – mostly social media – with links back to your own site:

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

There are a lot of automated tools to help you with this, but the platforms have gone to great lengths to break or neuter them. Musk's attack on Twitter's legendarily flexible and powerful API killed every automation tool that might help with this. I was lucky enough to have a reader – Loren Kohnfelder – who coded me some python scripts that automate much of the process, but POSSE remains a very labor-intensive and error-prone methodology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/#hfbd

And of all the feeds I produce – email, RSS, Discourse, Medium, Tumblr, Mastodon – none is as labor-intensive as Twitter's. It is an unforgiving medium to begin with, and Musk's drawdown of engineering support has made it wildly unreliable. Many's the time I've set up 20+ posts in a thread, only to have the browser tab reload itself and wipe out all my work.

But I stuck with Twitter, because I have a half-million followers, and to the extent that I reach them there, I can hope that they will follow the permalinks to Pluralistic proper and switch over to RSS, or email, or a daily visit to the blog.

But with each day, the case for using Twitter grows weaker. I get ten times as many replies and reposts on Mastodon, though my Mastodon follower count is a tenth the size of my (increasingly hypothetical) Twitter audience.

All this raises the question of what can or should be done about Twitter. One possible regulatory response would be to impose an "End-To-End" rule on the service, requiring that Twitter deliver posts from willing senders to willing receivers without interfering in them. End-To-end is the bedrock of the internet (one of its incarnations is Net Neutrality) and it's a proven counterenshittificatory force:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

Despite what you may have heard, "freedom of reach" is freedom of speech: when a platform interposes itself between willing speakers and their willing audiences, it arrogates to itself the power to control what we're allowed to say and who is allowed to hear us:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

We have a wide variety of tools to make a rule like this stick. For one thing, Musk's Twitter has violated innumerable laws and consent decrees in the US, Canada and the EU, which creates a space for regulators to impose "conduct remedies" on the company.

But there's also existing regulatory authorities, like the FTC's Section Five powers, which enable the agency to act against companies that engage in "unfair and deceptive" acts. When Twitter asks you who you want to hear from, then refuses to deliver their posts to you unless they pay a bribe, that's both "unfair and deceptive":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

But that's only a stopgap. The problem with Twitter isn't that this important service is run by the wrong mercurial, mediocre billionaire: it's that hundreds of millions of people are at the mercy of any foolish corporate leader. While there's a short-term case for improving the platforms, our long-term strategy should be evacuating them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

To make that a reality, we could also impose a "Right To Exit" on the platforms. This would be an interoperability rule that would require Twitter to adopt Mastodon's approach to server-hopping: click a link to export the list of everyone who follows you on one server, click another link to upload that file to another server, and all your followers and followees are relocated to your new digs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

A Twitter with the Right To Exit would exert a powerful discipline even on the stunted self-regulatory centers of Elon Musk's brain. If he banned a reporter for publishing truthful coverage that cast him in a bad light, that reporter would have the legal right to move to another platform, and continue to reach the people who follow them on Twitter. Publishers aghast at having the headlines removed from their Twitter posts could go somewhere less slipshod and still reach the people who want to hear from them on Twitter.

And both Right To Exit and End-To-End satisfy the two prime tests for sound internet regulation: first, they are easy to administer. If you want to know whether Musk is permitting harassment on his platform, you have to agree on a definition of harassment, determine whether a given act meets that definition, and then investigate whether Twitter took reasonable steps to prevent it.

By contrast, administering End-To-End merely requires that you post something and see if your followers receive it. Administering Right To Exit is as simple as saying, "OK, Twitter, I know you say you gave Cory his follower and followee file, but he says he never got it. Just send him another copy, and this time, CC the regulator so we can verify that it arrived."

Beyond administration, there's the cost of compliance. Requiring Twitter to police its users' conduct also requires it to hire an army of moderators – something that Elon Musk might be able to afford, but community-supported, small federated servers couldn't. A tech regulation can easily become a barrier to entry, blocking better competitors who might replace the company whose conduct spurred the regulation in the first place.

End-to-End does not present this kind of barrier. The default state for a social media platform is to deliver posts from accounts to their followers. Interfering with End-To-End costs more than delivering the messages users want to have. Likewise, a Right To Exit is a solved problem, built into the open Mastodon protocol, itself built atop the open ActivityPub standard.

It's not just Twitter. Every platform is consuming itself in an orgy of enshittification. This is the Great Enshittening, a moment of universal, end-stage platform decay. As the platforms burn, calls to address the fires grow louder and harder for policymakers to resist. But not all solutions to platform decay are created equal. Some solutions will perversely enshrine the dominance of platforms, help make them both too big to fail and too big to jail.

Musk has flagrantly violated so many rules, laws and consent decrees that he has accidentally turned Twitter into the perfect starting point for a program of platform reform and platform evacuation.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/14/freedom-of-reach/#ex

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: JD Lasica (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_%283018710552%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[listentoace]

This will freak you out

... or at least I hope it does. Yes, I know most of the stuff I post on here is just kinky and horny talk and that's totally fine. By now, thousands of users have found their way to my blog and I'm very grateful for the support. I know I don't share much about myself, but the following will be about a more personal matter. I work in IT, or more specifically, with data. Lots of data. Being into data science, I am hyper-aware of the constant collecting and aggregating of user data. I know it's somewhat common knowledge that you're being tracked, but I want to take this opportunity to point out how bad the situation is and why privacy matters. I'll try to keep it as easy to follow as possible, so please bare with me!

The Trackers

Right now, you're on Tumblr. As you are reading this, your app connects to over a dozen servers that are not from Tumblr itself. They are from companies like Google, Amazon, Yahoo, but also lesser known companies such as Adjust and Moat. Within a single day, the Tumblr App sends about 5.000 tracking requests to the aforementioned and more companies, sharing your personal data. That's once every 15-20 seconds, regardless of whether you have the app opened or not. While I can't say exactly what data is being shared, it is likely that this is personal information that can be utilized to assume your opinions, target ads, or predict future behavior, as these are ways how companies will ultimately make money. Depending on what permissions you have granted the Tumblr app, it might also scan your gallery, your entire file system, access your call history, or your camera and microphone. By granting this permission, you are essentially giving Tumblr the keys to your phone on a complete "just trust me, bro"-basis. To me personally, that sounds scary.

But why do you use Tumblr yourself, then?

Very good and fair question! I actually am conflicted regarding using Tumblr, but I have put several security measures into place to minimize tracking potential as much as possible. While Tumblr can still see when I go online, read all the messages I send to others, know what content I view, like, comment on, and otherwise engage with, that is about it. Tumblr cannot acces my general file system, it cannot remotely access my camera and microphone, and even all the aforementioned trackers are blocked. I'll go more into this later.

"So what, I've got nothing to hide."

It's great that you think that! That's just what the big tech companies want you to believe. But answer me this: have you ever found it uncomfortable when a person next to you was reading all your texts, looking at your gallery, and just generally kept an eye on what you do on your phone at all times? Well, if a single person doing that is bothering you, how much worse must it be to know that several companies with thousands of employees spy on you for a living? Yes, they have seen your nudes, your breakup texts, your hours of Whatsapp calls with your best friend. It's literally a Big Brother Dystopia.

"Why would they be interested in me?"

I bet you have heard about the Cambridge Analytica (CA) scandal from 2018. Just to summarize: a data analytics company CA worked closely together with Facebook to target adds specifically tailored to users to manipulate them into voting for Donald Trump as President. If you are asking how specific this could be, just look at this demonstration by Signal, where their ads are extremely specific to a point where probably only a few thousand if not only hundreds of people would fit the description and just those exact people saw their ad.

"You got this ad because you're a newlywed pilates instructor and you're cartoon crazy. This ad used your location to see you're in La Jolla. You're into parenting blogs and thinking about LGBTQ adoption."

Facebook took it down within hours. But imagine you seeing this ad of a random company knowing this much and lots more about you. Note that Instagram and WhatsApp belong to Facebook/Meta, so even if you're not using Facebook directly, you're still being watched just as closely.

Knowing exactly what you like, dislike, fear, and love, strong emotions can be triggered for political or financial gain. You're into sustainability? Buy this product and we will retrieve one pound of plastic from the ocean! You are conservative and maybe slightly racist? Immigrants are taking over more and more healthcare jobs! You are scared by a possible nuclear war? Vote us for safety and peace!

This is how Cambridge Analytica managed to pull in millions of voters in the US and manipulate the election in a way that Donald Trump wouldn't have won without their manipulation. This is literally a threat to democracy. And as you know, my allegiance is to the Republic, to Democracy!

You might be aware of how right-wing and extremist parties all around the western world use very polarizing and emotional topics in their campaigns and are doing very well on social media. Often much better than more centered, leftist, or conservative parties, who tend to polarize less. This is not a coincidence. Not only is this because of customized, targeted content, but it's also because strong emotions generate more attention

Doom Scrolling & Dopamine

Social Media has had decades to perfect their dopamine lottery. The algorithms know exactly what you are into, no matter how much of a niche it might be. A good, user-oriented algorithm would show you a few posts, the best ones of the day, and then simply say "well, that's been all the good stuff. Wanna see the rest anyways?". But that's not how it works, is it? When opening an app like Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr, etc., you usually immediately land on a recent top-post. This is to give you the instant gratification and that sweet hit of dopamine.

Have you ever noticed how you had to scroll a bit before you got a post again that you really loved? That's by design. The mix of top-posts and mediocre ones is on purpose, to keep you waiting for more. You never know when the next super funny TikTok will come by. All you know is that it might be the next one. In-between top-posts, you're met with mediocre garbage and an add or two and just before it gets too boring, you hit gold again. The constant release of much higher than normal amounts of dopamine make your brain temporarily lose touch with what levels are normal. Why is it that you feel drained and tired after scrolling through social media for a few hours, even though you've done nothing but sitting around? You didn't think hard, you didn't move much, so what is it? It is the dopamine-rollercoaster that is mentally straining you. And there are tens of thousands of highly trained software engineers and corporate executives designing their platforms to keep you scrolling for as long as possible. If that little chiming sound increases your screen time by as little as 2%, it will be added. It is designed to suck your life away, chain your eyeballs to the content they want you to see, just so they can literally sell you to anyone who has the cash. You need that new gadget, visiting this country is an absolute must, this new sports competition is amazing, definitely vote for this cool party. Trust them. They know what you want. You don't know anything about them, but they know everything about you.

"What do I do now?"

Well, it is unlikely that you'll stop using social media at all. I mean, even I am still here. But there are things you can and should do for your mental and financial health, and for your own safety and protection against manipulation. Here is a list of things you should consider

Limiting social media to only a few apps you actually use and are interested in

Spend no more than 2 hours on social media per day

Meet friends irl instead of only texting

Stop sharing personal information. It is not illegal to enter false names, birthdays, etc into random sign-up forms! Protect your children as well!

Use privacy- & user-oriented platforms, such as Signal instead of WhatsApp, or Mastodon instead of Twitter. They finance themselves through volunteers and donations instead of by selling your data and lifetime to any buyer

Use privacy-oriented frontends (the visual interface and application you interact with), such as NewPipe or FreeTube instead of YouTube. You also won't be seeing any ads there

Don't buy anything impulsively. Take a week or two to think about whether you really need and want it.

Check facts, do your own research, use multiple sources, be critical

And in case you're interested in what I use:

I'm have an Android phone running /e/OS and a total of 5 computers/servers which run Linux and a Windows laptop for work. My phone block any trackers, fakes my GPS location (not VPN/IP) to where I am in Barcelona. All devices have a 24/7 encrypted VPN connection. I don't have WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or even a Google account. For personal use I have Signal, Element (Discord alternative), and Proton Mail. That's it. Every website or platform I have an account on has it's own, unique, single-use email, a randomized password and 2FA whenever possible. I use KeePass as my password manager, encrypted with a password, key file, and hardware key. I enter false data into any random form, use hardened Firefox browsers to resist fingerprinting and tracking, and back up all my data at home on a hard drive instead of using a cloud service. (Yes, there is much more)

For my content, I use Tumblr and a semi-active Discord account, Reddit accounts are banned.

For my professional life, I am forced to use Microsoft Teams and Outlook, yet I only use those on my work computer & phone.

Privacy = Freedom

Yes, I know my measures are far beyond average, but I wanted to present an example and hopefully inspire some of you to take back your online freedom and privacy! Because that's what it is! Privacy is Freedom!

I hope this inspired you and please ask any questions in the comments! This truly is a topic that means a lot to me so thank you for reading all the way through it. Please reblog to further share this important topic and encourage others to protect themselves!

- Ace

[cheezbites]

How COD Characters Would Text

✎: I’m such a slow writer/procrastinator so sorry for the slow posts. But I upload lots of skits and I know y’all love those !!😋

♡Summary: Headcanons of how COD characters would text.

Ghost

• He rarely replies to you or sees your messages, as for how you never see him texting you in the first place. (Or even using his phone for that matter). Every once in a blue moon, you would finally see a highlighted double check mark next to your messages.

• Has a black screen set as his profile picture.

• Leaves you on read and you took it personally, but he addresses your texts in real life since he finds the keyboard too confusing, and he doesn't have time to figure it out.

“I saw your text on the... Uh, ‘What App’, the meeting’s going to be at 2:30pm.”

Valeria

• Strictly sends voice notes; she also finds the keyboard too complicated. If she’s in an environment where she can’t send voice messages then she texts you back painstakingly slow, or she doesn’t bother trying.

• She adored calling you to hear your voice and have genuine conversations instead of staring at a screen and repeatedly tapping away. She also loved hearing about your day and what you were up to.

• Texts you at any time but mostly at night.

König

• Would only text you if you texted him; he has his notifications on for vital and crucial things but most importantly when you send him messages. Also a very messy typer, it would be impossible to not find a single typo.

• Has a cute stray cat he saw on a walk as his profile pic.

• König would frequently discover emojis; although you knew them all like the back of your hands you acted oblivious for him.

“���🤪 Did u kno this emoji existed?!”

“miawwww🙀!!! This emoji is very silly, we should use it more often.”

“🙈🙊🙈jajaja ich bin ein schüchterner Affe..”

Price

• Sends you corny facebook memes to start your day. You act as if you hated them and they're obnoxious but deep down you love when he sends them. You know it’s an ‘off day’ for him when you don’t receive one.

• He’s a massive punctuation enthusiast, and he doesn't type slow but not too fast despite his age.

“Good morning, how are you doing today?”

“Please ensure to drink lots of water, it’s going to be very hot later on.”

“Please don’t touch Simon’s sandwich in the fridge. He’s feeling very stubborn today.👍”

• Would make a group chat so the group can bond but half of you guys left over petty arguments and the other half are inactive.

• Him fishing on some boat as his profile picture.

Soap

• Has one of the default options as his profile picture. Or him posing with a rifle.

• Sends you memes you actually laugh at, they’re usually short videos. But then on the other hand, he sends you corny puns that you still find yourself laughing at:

Soap: “Y can’t scientist trust atoms?”

Y/N: “???? why”

Soap: “Cause they make up everything!”

Y/N: “hahahah soo funny dude😐”

And behind the screen you have the biggest shit-eating grin.

• Always double texts you, even if you say you’re busy and can’t take messages. Not even that, he’d triple text you because he can and nothing is stopping him.

• He’s on Do Not Disturb most of the time from all the spam emails he receives, mostly because he carelessly gave out his information to dodgy websites.

Gaz

• Over shares information so casually and then changes the subject, it honestly baffles you at times. To him, there's no such thing as TMI.

“Nearly got run over heading to the shops, but how are you?”

“There was a stabbing at the local chippy shop. What’s for dinner?”

“Just saw a homeless person buy drugs with money someone accidentally dropped. Fun day.”

• Texts you all the time, the moment you send him a message he opens it no matter what time it is or where he’s at.

• Has a selfie as his profile picture.

Alejandro

• Would try-hard being cool so he uses a shit ton of emojis in nearly every text, you can't help but laugh at his failed efforts. And expect lots of typos from him, too.

“Yo😁 any plans todsy🤔🤔??”

“Jow do I turn dowm the brightness.😎☀️”

• He only messages you in the afternoon, in the morning he's too occupied and at night he’s getting that beauty sleep.

• You’re like his tech assistant, always helping him with the simplest of things. This one time, he set his keyboard to another language and was only messaging in Arabic until you could help him set it back to English.

Rudy

• Spams you like it’s super urgent, only to say: “never mind, it’s not important” knowing damn well he had nothing to say in the first place.

“hello?!??!”

“pick up y/n, very important. asap!!!!!”

“are you dead? where are you.”

And once you do get back to him…

“nvm the issue was resolved.”

• Turned off auto capitalisation, but he’s still punctual every now and then. Never sends emojis.

• On that note, whenever you say “ur” he does that know-it-all thing which we all know and hate where he says “You’re*”.

Horangi

• A mix of voice notes and texts, he generally does not text whatsoever even if it’s urgent. If you wanted to reach him you had to do so face-to-face.

• He would leave you on read with no shame and forget what you even sent ten seconds later.

• Is committed to that default image as his profile picture, he knows how to change it but he can't be bothered and he doesn’t even know what to change it to.

Keegan

• When he sends voice notes he acts confused as to why you’d bookmark them. (Fully aware girls simp for his voice - it’s a massive ego boost at times).

• Calls you early in the morning, (really early). As he knows you inevitably snooze your alarm and stay in bed for ‘a few more minutes’ but you stay glued there until the afternoon. It’s a really efficient way of waking you up so you’re not complaining.

Masterlist

[qqueenofhades]

JSYK the OP of the Crab Day post is a self-identified conservative Christian. Can't speak to anything she may have done or said, but I do know that Crab Day wouldn't actually fix Tumblr - the site is running a 30mil *deficit,* which is different from debt. All Crab Day would do would be telling staff that their current policies get users to send them more money, which doesn't actually change anything. Corporations change only when their business strategy is losing the shareholders money.

Gotta be honest, my friend, I'm... not sure what you're trying to do here? Warn me that the original post was made by a Problematic Person (tm) and therefore that must mean it's all wrong, or.... what?

We know that Tumblr badly needs money, because they have told us that and openly admitted that the unpopular new changes were spurred by a need for increasing revenue. I logged on just now on desktop and got a suggestion that I could purchase an ad-free browsing subscription to help support the hellsite (which is the word they used, because they have very much embraced the joke). I have in fact already bought an ad-free subscription, both because I like the product Tumblr provides and want to keep using it in its current form, and because it makes my mobile experience immeasurably nicer. I am well aware that especially in this era of social media sites dropping like flies, the continued existence of a platform that is 30-million-dollars underwater (however you want to split hairs about exactly how) is not a guarantee. And we all complain about Tumblr, but we have all been here a long time (me, uh, over 10 years), we have a solid community, there's no other alternative that's really ever come up or gotten the same kind of uptake, and if it went under, we would be uh, screwed.

Tumblr is kind of a mess, it's the antithesis of every social media site, and it doesn't (for now) have the crap that makes The Artist Formerly Known As Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram so utterly unusable, or if it does, you can (mostly) turn it off. That's why we all like it and why, even if we are resolutely anti-capitalist gremlins who resist being marketed to with every fiber of our being, it doesn't change the fact that servers, staff, and all the rest cost real human-people money which the site, by their own frank admission, is struggling to raise. Even if staff does often make crappy updates, they generally at least TRY to listen to us and include a feature to make it optional or roll it back, unlike certain unnamed idiot billionaires. Their mockery of other social media sites can sometimes be a little much, but for now, Tumblr is pretty much the last place on the internet that does what it does, and I like it that way. If it went under and took my blog of 10+ years and all my friends with it, I would be incredibly sad.

That being the case, and basic financial realities being what they are, encouraging people to toss a few bucks at a TOTALLY OPTIONAL and fun gimmick that increases functionality for a product we like is actually not a bad thing. TumblrMart has crabs, checkmarks, Ea-Nasir merchandise (seriously), ad-free browsing, etc., and if our choice is voluntarily supporting the site through fun (and again, OPTIONAL) purchases versus having us all be involuntarily subject to some horrible data-scraping mechanism or forced off altogether because they couldn't keep the lights on, that is fine with me. Nobody is making anybody do or buy anything. But if you like the product Tumblr provides and want a fun material way to show your appreciation, then I don't think it's some Great Transgression to participate in that.

[strawberrylemongrass]

I'm just thinking about König

I have headcanons about him :3

(look below the cut)

as everyone and their mom knows by now, he has social anxiety. but I feel like he's painfully awkward, too. he starts talking and just doesn't know when to stop, so he rambles and just goes off on tangents and forgets what he was talking about in the first place.

but that's only when he's not actively working. he can be cold and honestly acts a little arrogant when on the clock. doing what he gotta do, getting shit done, taking no crap.

as soon as he's not expected to be serious, he's talking. and he just doesn't stop.

and he's a wolf guy. I don't mean that he calls himself an alpha to put other men down, but he means it in a "I am in charge and I have people that rely on me". he doesn't actually know much about wolves tho.

he has a bunch of those cheesy wolf shirts, you know the ones. where there's a bunch of wolves howling in front of a moon and a galaxy. yeah he loves them. he thinks they're really cool.

if he has social media, he's always posting cringe stuff.

he has these terrible motivational posts, all the pictures he takes are a little blurry or just weird, he sometimes just posts "cool" pictures he found on google or facebook and screen shotted.

when he sleeps, he's silent. absolutely no sound. sometimes it looks like he's dead because he's such a deep sleeper. and he usually hugs things in his sleep, too. a pillow or himself, or whatever poor soul is within arms reach. he hugs and doesn't let go.

I feel like he's fine with most upsetting things, but he can't handle sad dog movies.

wears no-show socks.

that's all I have for now. these are all very much real to me. I love my cringe ass husband! υ´• ﻌ •`υ

[bananasfosterparent]

I definitely think there are more AA enjoyers out there (including some Spawn fans who claim otherwise, remember how many of them were salivating over AA's sex scene in the beginning but now they're all saying they actually hate it because he's dissociating in it) but the thing is AA fans have become the fandom's punching bag which makes it really difficult for a lot of people to publicly come out as liking this route without potentially being called delusional, told that you may end up being abused irl and other crap like this because how can you not see his toxic and abusive behavior. It also doesn't help that even one of the writers who worked on his character claimed that players who chose this route only saw him as a sex object lmao

I know there are spawn fans who like AA because every time I see AA romance scene posts in places like OnlyFangs and the Astarion facebook groups I'm in, I ALWAYS see comments like "I can't ascend him but this is so hot!!" or "thank you for posting this! I'd never do this to pookie, but I have to admit this is got me🥵🥵🥵" or panty dropping gifs and things like that. So they can thirst after AA (but we are the only ones sexualizing him, remember!), yet simultaneously talk about how much they hate that version of him. It really makes no sense. Just enjoy all of Astarion! No guilt, excuses, disclaimers, or abuse required!

It's really unfortunate. I understand why some AA fans keep quiet in the fandom. There are a few people in one of the AA discords I'm in, who are only active in that discord and nowhere else in the fandom because theyre just tired/afraid of the negativity. That's ridiculous to me! The fact that people literally can't even comfortably just exist in the fandom without the fear of being bullied for NOTHING.

I have been told I'm "romanticizing abuse" directly and indirectly more times than I can count and it doesn't get better with frequency. And when you factor in that many AA fans ourselves have had experiences with abuse and trauma, it's just such a poor taste statement that literally has 0 ground. I mean, if any romanticizing of abuse were happening, wouldn't it be Larian doing it anyway? Aren't they the ones allowing the romance to continue after ascension with positive dialog choices, and sharing the AA kisses on Valentine's Day posts? Why not come after them instead of fans? If the relationship between AA and his Consort was "written to be abusive" then shouldn't Larian write that so clearly that literally no one can argue about it and there is no doubt in anyone's mind? So why then, is that not shown in the game? And why come after the people interpreting the story differently instead of the company for not making the story's message so airtight, it can't be argued?

Hint: because it's not written to canonly be an abusive relationship, that wasn't Larian's intention and nor should it be. The intention was to create an evil romance route and that's exactly what it is. Anything outside of that is up to YOU.

I think that's where the superiority complex steps in though. That whole "you AA fans just aren't media literate and clever enough to understand the deep, meta meaning of this cautionary abuse tale!" thing.

It also feels like an underlying misogyny thing too. A majority of Astarion fans in general are women and AFAB people. I see spawn fans always calling us "AA girlies" and I never see the reverse. And when it comes to AA fans, it feels a lot like a "let's save/educate the poor naive girls from themselves and their foolishness." When many AA fans aren't even female and certainly aren't naive or young impressionable people looking to have a real life AA.

As for the Co-Writer Who Will Not Be Named... that whole situation is a perfect example of someone abusing their position/influence. They knew players would take their word as law, without actually thinking about it in the context of it being a rolepaying game. So their opinion and agenda is taken as a canon fact when they only did minimal writing AND they can't speak for anyone else's Tav/Durge but their own.

Saying "When Tav ascends Astarion, it means they only see him as a sexual object." is just like saying "Tav keeps Astarion a spawn because they want control over him." Can you roleplay both of those things? ABSOLUTELY. But for most Spawn fans, I'm sure that is NOT why your Tav did it, especially if they're romancing him.

What Welch said is exactly the same type of statement. Their position and professional contribution to the game holds no water in context of their statement being universally applied to all Tavs and Durges that ascend Astarion. It may be how they see it, it may be the impression they tried to get the dialog to convey, but it's all up to each individual player how it's interpreted.

[batboyblog]

Love for our DC boys and politics with a lens on realistic impact? Yeah I’ll follow that.

well thank you,

as I've said before in real life I'm a pretty serious person, and during 2016, the campaign basically took over my life (working on it) and so I made this Tumblr as a place to put everything not serious in my life, at first my enjoyment of comics, which I've loved since I was a small child, and later branching out into other things as well.

but you know real life, I'm a very political guy and I felt like 2024 was not shaping up the way I would like and weirdly of all the social medias, this is the one I'm the best at? and also lent itself best to long posts with links to back them up? and also its a basically forgotten social media as far as campaigns and politics go? like if you're on twitter or YouTube or Facebook you're getting bombed with ads, and the campaigns have accounts pumping out content. But in an election that could come down to less than 100,000 votes, what about the thousands of people who use Tumblr as their main or even only social? well I figured I may as well try? what the heck, be the change you want to see.

people too often bitch about "why don't Democrats do X!" well, political parties need people to do their messaging, memes, ideas, vibes etc spread people to people and can't be dreamed up in a smoke filled back room and beamed into brains. So This is my little effort at counter programing, and I'm very glad the doom is over and the vibe has shifted, I hope I can keep the vibe going and push people to get involved. For too long people have sat it out, getting involved will make you feel better and you'll get to meet and talk to the people who make choices, tell them what matters to you.

Volunteer

trust me its easy folks, just sign up for a convention watch party, and go hang with likeminded people and listen to the ways we're gonna change America for the better, just do that for me folks, and who knows I might be the guy you're having a beer with.

[abouquetofdaylillies]

i live for ur modern aus i need more pls

Thank you! I'm currently in the process of writing a modern AU, but it's less comedic, and more of a dramatic romance. Jaime is a homicide detective and Brienne is a child welfare agent and she's pulled into the murder investigation of one of client's mothers.

I'm also making plans for a Western Gothic Braime fic, and a Blair Witch (kinda sorta, it'll be a ghost story but it'll take place in the Riverlands or the Whsipers can't decide) Braime fic.

But, for more modern AU headcanons, here you go:

-Jaime never obeys the speed limit, in the city or on the highway, and it stresses Brienne the HELL OUT.

-Tommen is one of those ipad kids who wears those big onesies around the house.

-Myrcella has a coquette/pink aesthetic blog that she keeps secret from the adults because a bunch of the photos are just women in pink thigh high stockings.

-Brienne loves historical romance but keeps it secret, she either reads on her phone or keeps the books hidden under her bed.

-Joffrey only wears stinky Minecraft hoodies and blackmails Myrcella by threatening to tell Cersei about her blog.

-Brienne is a big athleisure girly because she can always find peices that fit her and look good. When she starts openly dating Jaime, Cersei makes a bunch of passive aggressive posts on her Facebook and Twitter about how whorish and sloppy she thinks it is for women to wear leggings as pants.

-Jaime is constantly sending Brienne memes that are months old and she doesn't have the heart to tell him, so she's always like, "That's great sweetie :)"

-Jaime and Cersei were big on terms of endearment when they were dating, and called each other 'babe' alot. They've had several very tense and awkward moments where one of them accidently called the other 'babe' in front of Tywin.

-Jaime is still a big fan of terms of endearment when he starts dating Brienne, but calls her 'my love' instead. Brienne just calls him Jaime.

-Both Jaime and Brienne hate PDA but are very affectionate in private. If Brienne is sleeping on her stomach or back Jaime will lay on top of her like a slug until he feels like he has enough Brienne-time.

-Jaime and Brienne watch Dateline together.

-Tyrion is a huge pothead. He started using to help him with his chronic joint pain and eventually opens a head shop with Tysha, who is a ceramic artist and makes pipes that they sell in their shop. Margarey is a frequent flier in their store.

-Sansa plays tennis even though she likes track better. She thinks tennis skirts are prettier and tennis is a more refined sport.

-Jon has more friends than Robb, and often invites him to parties instead of the other way around. Robb loves parties while Jon hates them.

-Theon is hired as a waiter because he's really hot but quits because he didn't realize how much walking it takes and Ramsay the line cook always silently stares at him when he goes back into the kitchen.

-Sam and Jon become roommates after Sam gets kicked out and they host Smash bros tournaments in their apartment. They're very close friends and often get mistaken for a couple. Robb posts about how much he loves his LGBT family members on his Insta during pride month to try and be supportive and Jon thinks it's for Brynden Tully and likes it.

[choicesficwriterscreations]

January Creator of the Month: Jerzwriter

Each month, CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers or artists, and this month’s creator of the month is CFWC's own @jerzwriter.  The writer is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page.

Quick Links:

Tumblr Blog Complete Masterlist

How do you want to be known on Tumblr? 

Elsa

More below...

1- When did you start playing Choices? What was the first book you played? 

It was sometime in 2017, and the first book I ever played was The Royal Romance, Book 1.

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

I joined a couple Facebook groups in 2019. I just wanted to discuss stories with others who were interested, as no one in my real life reads Choices. I didn't even know I was entering a fandom. lol I started reading fanfic on Tumblr the following year, but I found Tumblr intimidating, so I was mostly a silent reader. I didn’t start writing and contributing until May 2021, mostly because Open Heart was ending and I was in denial. 🙂

3- How did you pick your blog name? 

It’s pretty boring, actually. I’m from NJ, and I write. I wanted it to be JerZwriter, so people would know it is Jer-ZEE-Writer, but that wasn’t doable, so it’s Jerzwriter, and most think it is Jerz-Writer. Oh, well!  

4- Pull up the first and last posts in your archive, and tell us about them!  

My first post was the first chapter of my Ethan x Casey x Tobias love triangle, Delaying the Inevitable (OH).  It was my very first fanfic and I really didn't think I'd write anything beyond that.  I was so green back then, not only to fanfic but to the fandom as well. I’m really glad that I was naive because I don’t think I would have had the courage to post it if I had, but I’m glad that I did. 

My last post was Falling for You, a little drabble I wrote for Tobias x Casey (OH), and it featured a commission by the talented artist @weetlebeetle. It was a light, fun piece that took place early in Tobias and Casey's relationship, and it shows Tobias at his absolute simpiest. Lol 

5- Do you write fanfiction, create fan art, or are you one of those really gifted people who do both? 

Oh, how I wish I could draw, but I can't.  So, I’m strictly a writer. I may try giving drawing a go again, but I don't expect much to come of it. lol

6- How long have you been creating for Choices and for any other fandoms?

Choices was the first fandom I ever wrote for, and I started in May of 2021.  So, just over two and a half years. I have written a little bit for some other fandoms since that time, but I primarily write for Choices.

7- What is your favorite Choices book, and what is your favorite Choices book to create for?

Tough question.  I write for Open Heart, Crimes of Passion, and Wake the Dead, and they are three of my favorite stories. I also loved Desire & Decorum, but I never wrote for it.  Though, I’m planning a re-read, and you never know. 🙂

8- Share your first Choices fanfic or fan art that you posted with us. Do you still like it, or would you change it if you were creating it today?

It was the first chapter of Delaying the Inevitable. I was so green when I started that series that I’m sure there are things I would change, but I’m still very proud of it.  That series will always have a special place in my heart.  I’d like to revisit it one day to “clean it up”, it could use some condensing. But I would never change the storyline.

9- What is your favorite piece of fiction or art that you created? 

This is such an unfair question. lol The Delaying the Inevitable Series definitely comes to mind, but I’m also very proud of my Eli Sipes prequel stories, A Mother’s Journal, Coming Up Blank, and The End of the World. But Tobias and Casey are my favorite pairing, and I simply love the world I created for them. And while my headcanon for them is my favorite, I cannot pick just one fic for them, and I'm not going to! lol But, I've also written a bunch of AUs for them, and Friends* is one of my favorites.

10- Do you have a fic/art that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to do well but found it could use a little more love?

Yes, to both! The fandom is much smaller today, but back when we were more active, I learned you couldn't predict how a fic would be received.  There are too many to name, but I will say whenever my smut does well (and quite a few of them have), I’m always astounded. lol 

11-  If you could write only angst, fluff, or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why? 

This is such a difficult question because I believe the best stories incorporate a little of each, and, as a writer, exploring all three helps spur creativity. Also, my absolute favorite is angst with a happy ending, so there is definitely some fluff in there (and I'm never mad at a little smut being thrown in!) But if I were forced to choose, it would probably be angst.  I think that's where I am strongest, and I just love raw emotion. I think that’s where character development really occurs. I have not written as much angst recently, and I miss it.  Perhaps I need a change in 2024. 

12 - Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

There are definitely parts of me in my MCs and OCs, but I do my best to prevent them from becoming self-inserts.  I'm not as cool as any of them, that's for sure! lol That said, I do find inspiration for my fics in real life, so there is bound to be a little crossover. When using real-life inspiration, I try to change details so that the fiction is not a carbon copy of the real-life event. Normally, by the time I'm done, they're hardly recognizable.

13 - What element of writing/art do you struggle with most? Where do you feel you are strongest?

I struggle most with setting a scene. Dialogue is my strong suit, and that just flows for me. It flows so much that sometimes I forget to describe what's going on around the conversation. I think this is particularly easy to do in fanfiction because so much of the "world" has already been provided for us, so I recognize this more when I'm writing original works.

The other thing I struggle with? Brevity. I know I can go on, and on, and on. lol I've gotten much better at this, but there is still room for improvement.

14 - Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

(Elsa leaves the room, quietly crawls under her desk, and hides…) YES!!! Far, far too many, and no matter how much I share those posts that say, "You don't have to finish! If you're not feeling it, move on!" I don't believe it! lol I really want to make wrapping them up a priority in 2024.  But I also know writing - particularly good writing - cannot be forced.  So, it's a goal, but I'll only do it if I feel it’s right. 

15 - If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to see your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you show them first? 

It would depend on who asked.  I’m not ashamed of writing fanfic at all, but if I believed the person would be judgemental, I wouldn't be willing to share.  A few of my friends have read select pieces of my fanfic, and I’ve always received positive feedback from them. I wouldn’t be opposed to sharing more.  What I'd share would depend greatly on the person asking.

16 - Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing or art? Are there any artists that influence you?

There are many published writers that I admire, but I don’t think they've influenced my writing here. Within the fandom, there are many writers who have inspired me in different ways. There is no way I can ever name them all. But I'd like to give a shout-out to some.

@jamespotterthefirst and @bex-la-get were among the first writers I read when I joined Tumblr. I found their passion for both canon and the worlds they created inspiring, especially as Open Heart was nearing its end and all of us addicts needed our fill. Reading their works helped keep the story alive for me and so many others, and it inspired me to try my hand at it as well. To my shock, they were both so encouraging and supportive of me when I arrived, and I'm forever grateful. Back then, I thought they were rockstars - and they are! But now, they're also friends. I wasn't familiar with @alwaysmychoices from the start, but when I came across their work, I was just blown away.  Weekend with Dr. Ramsey will live rent-free in my head forever, and that headcanon about Charlie calling Ethan the night before she marries someone else. (I faint.) Ohhh, the delicious angst! The way she made me feel what Charlie felt was just mind-boggling, and it encouraged me to really dig into my character's emotions and bring them to life in a more meaningful way.

Early on, I read @utterlyinevitable, and the thing that impressed me the most was how Dom was willing to "write stories that “went "go there.”  They tackled issues that others wouldn't touch.  In their world, everything wasn’t perfect, including the characters themselves. I admired that vision and, frankly, bravery, and it definitely encouraged me to write what I wanted to and not what I felt was expected of me.

More recently, @mydemonsdrivealimo inspired me to explore parts of my MCs that I have not delved into in the past.  In particular, Casey's bisexuality. It can be challenging to represent a bisexual character when they are in a straight-presenting relationship, and you risk alienating readers no matter what you do (looking at all readers here.) So it becomes easier to be lazy and ignore it. But that's a disservice to the character as much as it's a disservice to people living similar situations in real life... like I have many times. Through MJ's writing and our conversations, they've helped me become more aware and do a better job in this regard, and I'm not even sure if they know this - it may totally be news to them lol - but I'm eternally grateful. Now, I feel my girl Casey is free, and OMG, how I love our characters playing together in HC now!

Then there are @lilyoffandoms and @storyofmychoices, who bring joy to all that they touch. Who knew when Lily created a little drabble putting our characters in a new world together, it would end up being one of the brightest fandom spots of 2023? Who knew that so much more would stem from that one work? Seriously, it's been one of the highlights of my fandom experience this year, and it's helped me to find inspiration at times when I felt like it was lost. Thank you both - I am so lucky to have you both here!

There are so many more I could mention, but I'd still forget people and feel horrible, so I want to take the chance to thank every writer in the fandom for sharing their gifts with us. Each of you is an inspiration in your own way; each of you can give someone an idea, and you have no idea where that spark will lead. So, never stop sharing!

17-  Which one of your stories would you most like to see as a movie/series? 

Delaying the Inevitable, Friends*, All in the Past, and the WIP What’s Forever For. I also think some of my Ethan x Tobias works would have made for a good sitcom, and how I wish my Tobias x Casey friendship with Bryce x Jensen would be an epic sitcom. The world needs it! lol   (Jensen belongs to @mydemonsdrivealimo.)

19- Do you write original fiction or create non-fandom art? 

I do. Mostly shorter stories that will never see the light of day, but also some more substantive works... which will also never see the light of day! lol I wrote a novel-length political thriller some time ago. It would need a ton of work to bring it up to 2024, as the political landscape has changed so much. I also have two original WIPs I've been writing. One is an angsty story about a friendship that's loosely based on a childhood friend I lost to cancer a few years ago.  The other is a polyamorous romance about two best friends who fall for the same person. It's really a beautiful, emotional story. If I like the end result, maybe I'll let it see the light of day... maybe. lol

20-  What other hobbies do you have?

I enjoy theater, and I'm lucky enough to live in the best part of the world to partake in that.  I go to a lot of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and local theater productions. I also love going to concerts - they’re like group therapy! Trust me, I got more out of seeing Noah Kahan and Hozier in 2023 than I did from the entirety of sessions with my therapist - and I loved my therapist. lol

Prior to 2020, I did a fair amount of traveling, and I hope to start doing a little more this year.  But I have to admit, since the lockdown, I’ve become more of a homebody, and I like it, so we’ll see how that goes! 

I used to be very involved with activism and advocacy for women’s, lgbtq+, and mental health issues. I still am, but in a different capacity than I was in the past. These issues require people fighting for them, and doing so has always been a huge part of who I am, but it can be draining, and burnout is real. I really reached the end of my rope. So, nowadays, I work as a volunteer for a couple local organizations that really mean a lot to me. I'm not involved in grassroots efforts or taking trips to talk to legislators as often, but I'm helping people on a smaller scale, and that still goes a long, long way.

22: BONUS - tell us anything you’d like (if you want to).

As most of you know, I’m one of the mods here at CFWC, so it was a little weird when my the wheel landed on my name.  But, honestly, it’s happened before, and I've just spun again, even though I am eligible. But this time around, I decided to do it. This fandom really means a lot to me, and I wanted to share a little more about myself and my crazy pixelated people.

I'm truly grateful to everyone in the fandom who does their part to make this a place that many, like me, still see as a place they want to be. We're smaller, it's imperfect, it has plenty of problems, but I am choosing to focus on the good... because there is much more of that than there is bad. So, thank you to each of you... and I hope we all have a wonderful 2024! xo

PS... My header... I know Tobias wasn't technically an LI... which was truly criminal. So, that's what fandom is for, fixing what canon effed up. lol My favorite canon LI is Trystan Thorne (COP). I tried adding their picture to the header alongside Tobias, but it looked terrible, so here I am. :)

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I can't wait to highlight more of you in 2024! :)

[nintendette]

A guide to finding the "Quieter" Pride Events

[US-centric post]

Despite what tumblr would have you believe, there are absolutely Queer Book Clubs, lectures, art events that take place during Pride and all year long!

They won't be on your feed organically until you follow them; they won't pay to send you ads. So you have to be intentional to find out!

I can't make a guide for your individual city. These are leads + starting point. Their instagram will boost other events, there might be a list-serve.

Queer Bookstore - Follow a Queer Owned or Queer Friendly Bookstore on instagram or check their events page. This list has some from 27 states.

A University's: Sexual Health Department, Sexuality Studies/ Queer Studies Department, Queer Resource Center - Many of their lectures/events are open to the public, you don't need to be a student. They want to contribute to the community too.

Sex Shop - Find a local queer friendly sex store. Do not think they only sell things! Mine has a library of sex-ed books and events like self-dense classes, non-monogamy talks, support groups etc.

Queer Library - Likely only in bigger metros, but they host events and lectures.

Pride at Museums - Many museums do unique events/exhibits just for pride.

Pride Organization - Many cities' pride teams need jobs all year round so they do smaller Community and Education events year round. E.G. one is a queer book fair at a lesbian-owned brewery.

Queer friendly [Activity] /Business - For example an Improv club I like does a monthly queer Improv Jam.

Facebook - Queer exchange group, people post things on there or you can ask

I understand you may be from a small town or less progressive city, and these may not be available. I just saw a post with thousands of interactions from someone in Washington DC saying they don't have any 'non party' events, so this is my response.

I think the tumblr myth that there's no queer friendly events for people who don't drink party is way too pervasive. People like you are planning and organizing in your community.

Below the read more are specific examples for Minneapolis/Saint Paul. I'm going to feature some events/orgs to show you what kind of events are out there and to guide for what you can search for in your area.

Bookstore: Moon Palace Books + Black Garnet Books

University: Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health Gender & Sexuality Center for Queer & Trans Life

Sex Shop: Smitten Kitten

Queer Library: QuatreFoil Library functions as an event space as well

Museum Pride at Mia + Mill City Museum

Year round Pride Programming: Gayme Nights, Book Fair, Community Ed

[redfurrycat]

🤠🐂🐓Texan Jake "Hangman" Seresin (Vol. II) Fic Recs🐓🐂🤠

Check the Top Gun Masterlist post for the latest updated version. 💕

Ao3 Authors: Alecjbi, Chase_acow, Dalearden, Dames_for_jamesbarnes, Dandeliondick, Davidbyrne, Earthangel_44, Ginnydear, Haridwar, Heir2slytherin, Kakyoins__wife, KazanskIce, Kiddi, MerielTLA, Nightwrite24, Owls4ever, Popandpizazz, Sceld, Sycamoretree, Thereisnocowboyemoji, Totoroboiii, Vannral, VarjoRuusu, Writerofthelorde.

> Texan Jake "Hangman" Seresin (Vol. I)

Art Bonus - I was cravin' the visual so badly I had to add these delightful pieces of art (don't hesitate to point others my way, I'm SURE I missed some 🤗🥰)

Aran’s Bullriding!Hangster - Aran’s Hat Rule!Hangster - Beezel’s (Smutty) Hat Rule!Hangster - Beezel’s Cowboy!Jake - Gray‘s Barbie Cowboy!Jake - Gray‘s Cowboy!Jake - Gray's Cowboy!Jake & Saloon Owner!Bradley - Indiana's Cowboy Hats' Hangster - Megan’s Cowboy!Jake - Mustasekittens’ Cowboy!Jake - Storm’s Cowboy!Jake  - Storm’s Cowboys!Hangster.

The Exes of Texas Are Upon You by chase_acow {M}

While trying to enjoy their day off, a bet comes back to haunt Hangman forcing Rooster into a tight spot.

cowboy, take me away by ginnydear {T}

jake has a cowboy hat he doesn't just let anyone wear. bradley takes that as a challenge.

Show me the way home, honey! by thereisnocowboyemoji {E}

It’s perched on one of the posts of their poster bed frame and it drives Bradley absolutely crazy.

riding into the sunset with you by alecjbi {E}

While searching through the group's old Facebook posts, Jake finds a photo of Bradley that he can't seem to get over.

Nickelback isn't Romantic, Jake. by dandeliondick {T}

When Jake drinks everyone remembers that he's from Texas and one poorly placed bet from Fanboy leads to everyone in the bar learning Jake is from Texas and well...Bradley is just trying to make it through the night without jumping the ex-asshole.

"I bet on after Texas, it makes him soft." by dandeliondick {T}

The other man raised a brow before reaching up for the bottle Jake pulling it backwards making Jake fall into his chest with a huff. Bradley laughed as Jake honest to God pouted full bottom lip out, “Bradley Bradshaw stop being a dick.” Bradley kept ahold of the beers as he sat down making a dramatic show of getting comfortable before turning his smirk up at Jake, “Well, take a seat and you can have your beer.” He expected Jake to grab his beer and walk off and he nearly jumped when Jake instead swung around and settled onto Bradley’s thighs. Jake leaned back against his chest and laid his head on Bradley’s left shoulder as he snagged his beer from his loose grip.

A Barbecue by Any Other Name by owls4ever {T}

The second time their leaves all line up, Mav's in charge of hosting. Despite himself, Jake's excited when Mav announces he'll throw them a barbecue. What could be better than a day of hanging out with each other and eating good food? Only, turns out Jake and Mav don't expect the same things when it comes to throwing a barbecue.

Pressed Sunflowers by Sceld {T}

His smug expression is the final nail in the coffin for Jake, who is doing a fucking terrible job at hiding his outright shock. “You’re… Good at that,” he says slowly, pretending it’s not doing something for him. or; Jake spends the night at Bradley's place and learns more than he anticipated.

Forever your begonia by MerielTLA {T}

“This is not for me.” Mickey grinned like a fucking maniac as he held out a small envelope for everyone to see, pointing at the signature in it. Jake. The blond felt his world tilt as he frowned at the offending four letters of his name. What. The. Fuck. He pulled the card away from the other´s hand as he looked at the fancy lettering in horrified amazement. “Oh my GOD! Bagman has an admirer?!” Paybay yelled Or Jake Hangman Seresin had never gotten flowers...until he did.

With His Head Held High by dalearden {T}

Jake was born and raised in Texas and he knows a thing or two about guns. When Hard Deck is raided by a band of thugs and all inside taken hostage, Jake gets his hands on a rifle that Penny keeps under the counter and shows them exactly why they shouldn’t mess up with his Team. And Rooster may or may not get hard by seeing how precise Jake’s aim is.

Rack 'Em Up, Big Blonde by Earthangel_44 {E}

Bradley becomes a regular at a Hooters to spend three hours with a blonde server with an unfortunate taste in football teams. Along the way, Bradley might have developed feelings. AKA: Jake is a Hooter's girl and Bradley is his regular.

First Thanksgiving as a couple by Writerofthelorde {G}

Bradley and Jake live together in Bradley's old house, and they're getting everything ready for their family members. They are both nervous. Jake's parents are vastly different from Pete and he is worried they won't get along. Bradley is worried because he had been doing this holiday alone for sixteen years and he's not sure how to act. That and he has some very special papers to give Mav today, and what if he doesn't want to sign them...? The day is a mess, it's loud and hysterical and soft and full of tears.

Rolling Hills and Stormy Skies by VarjoRuusu {E}

(Not Texan!Jake - but this fic fits the vibe! <3)

Everyone thinks Jake Seresin is from Texas. Something he doesn't bother to correct, he just enjoys when his friends try and pin down exactly where his family ranch is, north, south, it's near Dallas, no it's near Austin. He sips his beer and lets them guess until the topic changes. He elbows Rooster in the side when the other man can't stop snickering because only Rooster knows Jake Seresin's ranch is in Montana. -Or, a tale of Bradley and Jake.

bluebonnet boy by dames_for_jamesbarnes {T}

"Let's go see 'em," he says. starts putting his foot on the brake, slows them down to a crawl after checking his rearview. Bradley glances back at him with wide eyes, but Jake just gives him a little smile as they roll to a stop. "C'mon. They won't bite." "But your parents might," he says to Jake, concern creeping into his tone. Jake's fingers tighten a bit on the wheel at the mention of them, even as he puts the truck in park. Bradley always plays at not being nervous, but this is different. This is meeting the folks. "Aren't they expecting us?" It's the sight of the purpley petals once more, the way they seem to shimmer and shine that allows a deep breath. "Yeah, but we're almost home," he tells the other man, reaching over to squeeze his thigh. "And... I think they'll understand." -The bluebonnets make Jake feel more than sentimental, memories of a time when he could just forget. He's glad he gets the chance to do it again with Bradley.

I thought he was older by Popandpizazz {_}

Jake recently moved to California and started dating Bradley Bradshaw and for the first time in months he’s going to see his closest friend

darling, i ain't even worried by heir2slytherin {_}

Jake Seresin did not get jealous. He didn’t have to. He was completely secure in himself, thank you very much. He knew that he was the best there was, in every aspect. He knew that nobody could even compare to him. He knew that no matter how many dates Rooster, no matter how many drinks he accepted at the bar, they were always going to end up together. Of course, he was sure of himself, but the one true thing he knew for absolute damn sure was that he and Rooster were always going to be the ones to walk into the sunset together. He didn’t need to get jealous. That was no point. ... Or, Rooster keeps going out with people who will never be as good as Hangman, and it is most certainly not killing Hangman from the inside.

Wear the Hat, Ride the Cowboy by kakyoins__wife {T}

Jake won't stop wearing obnoxiously big cowboy hats and Bradley decides to steal it.

dirty dance floors and dreams of naughtiness by davidbyrne {E}

Bradley reaches over and grabs Jake’s hat, lifting it off his head. He settles it on his own, winking at Jake as he does so. Jake smirks. “Getting into the country aesthetic?” he teases, spinning them easily. Jake admires the way Bradley follows his guidance naturally. “Nah,” Bradley answers, keeping his eyes trained on Jake. “Just testing out if a rumor I heard is true.” “What rumor?” Jake asks, crooking an eyebrow. “Steal the hat, ride the cowboy.”

If you find yourself thinkin' About that boy from East Texas by Kiddi {M}

“Funnily enough,” he decided to say, hoping he was reading the situation correctly, “this isn't the first sunrise we’ve had, is it?” Jake chuckled softly and made a small noise, “no it is not,” he agreed, “just as pretty though,” “No matter where I go,” he retraced old conversations, “the sunrise always feels like back home.” They settled in comfortable silence for a bit before Jake spoke, “it's been a while since we’ve seen each other,” he said, looking down at the sand, “Spain was it?” he looked over at Rooster, “the last time I saw you?” A little bit of shame and guilt rose in his chest, neither of them kept in touch after Spain but Rooster always felt like it was his fault, “yea, it was,” he nodded, “you haven't changed a bit though, still as annoying as ever,” he laughed, and so did Jake, “but you’re still one hell of a pilot,” Or Bradley and Jake haven't seen each other since running away from their feelings and now they have to realize that they never really went away in the first place

Somebody Sighs Who Is Not In Disguise Anymore by Totoroboiii {E}

Bradley doesn’t connect the dots that maybe Jake was his high school crush

change is alright by haridwar {M}

Jake bet fifty-fifty on whether he was going to enjoy this conversation and stepped up to the passenger side door just as the window rolled down. He was greeted with a warm, smiling, moustachioed face which took him off guard. Though Jake didn’t recognise the driver, something about him verged upon familiar. His smile faltered as his gaze flitted over Jake’s face, eyes tightening in a way Jake didn’t want to overanalyse, but it made him seem no less friendly overall. “Where you headed?” “Closest ranch,” Jake replied, trying to keep his tone neutral as he made the snap decision to not identify himself for reasons he would rather not think about. or... little bit of homecoming, whole lot of drama

show me a slow ride, cowboy by vannral {E}

”Bradley reaches, takes the hat very gently from Jake and places it on his own head. Oh. Jake’s heart is about to burst wide open through the seams.” In which Jake wears a Stetson and Bradley comes down from the perch for once. Or, the obligatory ’steal the hat, ride the cowboy’-fic.

All I want (for Christmas) by KazanskIce {T}

“It’s… almost midnight,” Jake stutters, hoping that his time estimation is right. It’s been a couple of hours since the start of the party and he hasn’t been checking his watch. “What about it?” “You know what they say… about kissing someone at midnight.” Bradley laughs shortly, but it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to be mean. When he stops, his eyes return to Jake. “Yeah, I know. Doesn’t matter, because it’s not New Year’s Eve,” he says. He’s either not getting the point or purposely trying to throw Jake off. 

From the horse's mouth by sycamoretree {M}

Jake hears that there’s trouble with his horse back home. Bradley misunderstands hugely. It has an impact on both of them.

cowboy like me by nightwrite24 {G}

“Why weren’t you in love with me the whole time, asshole?” Bradley feels the doey-eyed look in his eyes melt into downright annoyance. “Well, maybe it took me a fucking minute to figure it out, Jake!” Bradley writes songs for the girls he falls in love with.

[hussyknee]

Posted to Reddit midnight last night at 1am:

3am: Facebook post on local help page.

(amount in LKR. I am very poor and unemployed and live with my mother, who is Satan.)

OIC = Officer In Charge

Bindu = Family doggo. Usually a gentle lad who's all bark, but an entire brigade of strange burly men in gear chasing him (as he felt) all the way to his safe spot was too much.

Passa pattha = backside

Mau didn't come when I fed the kits their breakfast before I crashed, and was still nowhere to be seen when I woke up at 1pm in time for their lunch. Had to hobble around the street calling his name for ten minutes before he came barrelling from god knows where, muddy and filthy. Had to wash and scrub him thoroughly. He's always 80% nerves and hyperactivity, but he's really dialed up today so I ended up getting scratched all over.

I discovered I may have been unfair to him. He's absolutely an overdramatic ninny, but I noticed his nails were quite long. He has six scratch baskets and escapes outside more than the other two but all that's done is give him needle claws apparently. He probably couldn't get as good a purchase on the slippery roof sheets as his brother and sister. My poor baby. They're all completely fine though.

I am not. I feel like my arms and legs are about to fall off. I wish they would. My knees are throbbing like they're arthritic again.

Heading off questions:

Why didn't you call the fire brigade in the first place? Because I've been confined by disability and abused by various people my entire adult life and the only people who have ever helped me with my rescues have been kind strangers. Also the emergency helplines in this country are useless. I once called 119 because I thought I was having a heart attack and was told this was the police line and had to call the ambulance one separately. They then called two hours later asking if I still needed the police. The fire brigade was the most positive interaction I've yet had with a state service, and even they usually only respond to pet rescues when it looks like the animal's life is in danger.

How are you poor when you have a three storey house with a maid and driver? My mother has a three storey house with a maid and driver, on account of having made good money for 45 years. We're poor because she saved none of it for retirement. This is South Asia, middle class poverty is when you don't know if you can pay the electric before it's cut off but still have a maid there's always someone poorer than you who needs to eat. It's all very Little Women. The three storey house is a white elephant financial hole that isn't a South Asian thing but a "my mother is a deranged spendthrift" thing. I live in a gothic novel.

Why don't you keep your cats inside? Because we live in a house that's half verandahs and balconies in the tropics and we can't keep it shut on all sides without killing everyone inside it. And, like I said, nobody will lift a finger to help and trying to make any modifications makes my mother scream like a demon from the depths of Gehenna. Of the four other adults in this house, the only one I could get to help me with Mau was the old driver.

How did you get up to look over the wall before the driver brought the ladder up? I got on a chair and climbed onto a ledge off the side, rising on my tip toes and clinging to the wall for dear life. While trying to wrangle a broom on a line and calling and coaxing. For hours. I have balance issues and can barely change a light bulb without help. Was too exhausted to be scared around hour three.

You're being kind of mean to Mau. You'd be terrified too. Yes, but I am not a cat. A cat being scared of heights feels a bit like letting your species down on an existential level. Also I never so much as wanted to yell at the little fucker, sang him lullabies until the firemen arrived, and spent a total of eight hours on my feet until they got him down. I'm still not mad at any of them even when I rue the day some liar told me cats were easier than dogs.

Anyway, all's well in Mau-land.

For now.

[shiki-aki]

hi! i was wondering if you knew where you can play tnc true blood or just a translation for shiki’s route? i was also wondering where you can read the mangas and if there are other official shiki-aki content other than the main game

Hi!! thanks for the ask

I personally don't know the steps to downloading and playing TNC True Blood, but I'm sure someone in the fandom around here knows how to do that? I believe you're going to need to download an emulator (like PPSSPP) and then download the TNC True Blood iso file off a website. I know a few of my mutuals play the game with a program that allows them to machine translate while they play, but again I don't have firsthand experience so I can't help you there, sorry! :(

There's no translation for Shiki's True Blood route as far as I'm concerned, but I read a vague summary of it and checked his route out myself through Japanese Youtube playthroughs. If you want, I can explain how his route is changed in True Blood/the new endings. Long story short, the latter half of Shiki's route is changed because the original was too NSFW lol. Shiki ends up not kidnapping Akira and holding him in captivity (unless you pick the choice that leads to that bad end).

For the manga, it's a bit of a complicated situation. You have to read on several platforms for the English version because there's no site that has the entire manga compiled in one place. Someone recently uploaded the entirety of the Togainu no Chi manga on the Internet Archive, but it's only in Japanese (and the Internet Archive is currently down). Here's how I would suggest reading the manga if you want the English version:

The manga site below has Vol 1, Vol 2, but it skips Vol 3, which is why you have to read Vol 3 elsewhere. However, the manga site has Vol 4, 5, 6, 7, and part of 8, so I still recommend you read here. The quality of the scans is not the best, but honestly this is the site I use to read the manga because it's the most accessible lol. I'll just bullet point to make things clearer.

https://www.mangago.me/read-manga/togainu_no_chi/

Vol 1 (chapters 1-5)

Vol 2 (chapters 6-9)

Vol 4 (chapters 16-20)

Vol 5 (chapters 21-26)

Vol 6 (chapters 27-31)

Vol 7 (chapters 32-26)

Vol 8 (chapters 37-39) *on the manga site, they don't have chapter 39, so I'll let you know where you can read chapter 39

If you want to read Vol 3 in English (chapters 10-15), you have to go here:

Now for chapter 39 (which is part of Vol 8), you can read it here:

After that, Vol 9 and 10 do have scans but... they're extremely hard to access, and they don't have any English translations as far as I'm concerned; only the Japanese raws. You have to go through hoops in joining a Russian Facebook group to access these scans (which I did because I was desperate to see my beloved Shiki in high quality lol). However, like I said, someone recently uploaded the entirety of the Togainu no Chi manga in Japanese. I would recommend reading Vol 9 and 10 off the Internet Archive, but it's down right now.

There's quite a few official Shikiaki content aside from the main game. Here's a list off the top of my head:

Shiki's Side Story ("Kawaita Mizu")

Shiki's Light Novel Story (based on ED3) but I wouldn't call it canon because it's not written by the same person who wrote TnC

Shiki and Akira's 5th Anniversary Scene

Shiki's drama CDs with Akira (there are a number of them, trust me lol. They're mostly crack though with Shiki and Akira roleplaying in funny scenarios)

Sorry if this answer is getting too long! Let me know if you want links to the Shikiaki content. Some of them require convoluted ways to access, and I don't want to make this post more disorganized than it already is, lol. Sorry! Thanks for the ask; I hope I was able to provide helpful information in some way.