#i don't know what to tag these writeups

[alfheimr]

My Favorite Cheap Art Trick: Gradient Maps and Blending Modes

i get questions on occasion regarding my coloring process, so i thought i would do a bit of a write up on my "secret technique." i don't think it really is that much of a secret, but i hope it can be helpful to someone. to that end:

this is one of my favorite tags ive ever gotten on my art. i think of it often. the pieces in question are all monochrome - sort of.

the left version is the final version, the right version is technically the original. in the final version, to me, the blues are pretty stark, while the greens and magentas are less so. there is some color theory thing going on here that i dont have a good cerebral understanding of and i wont pretend otherwise. i think i watched a youtube video on it once but it went in one ear and out the other. i just pick whatever colors look nicest based on whatever vibe im going for.

this one is more subtle, i think. can you tell the difference? there's nothing wrong with 100% greyscale art, but i like the depth that adding just a hint of color can bring.

i'll note that the examples i'll be using in this post all began as purely greyscale, but this is a process i use for just about every piece of art i make, including the full color ones. i'll use the recent mithrun art i made to demonstrate. additionally, i use clip studio paint, but the general concept should be transferable to other art programs.

for fun let's just start with Making The Picture. i've been thinking of making this writeup for a while and had it in mind while drawing this piece. beyond that, i didn't really have much of a plan for this outside of "mithrun looks down and hair goes woosh." i also really like all of the vertical lines in the canary uniform so i wanted to include those too but like. gone a little hog wild. that is the extent of my "concept." i do not remember why i had the thought of integrating a shattered mirror type of theme. i think i wanted to distract a bit from the awkward pose and cover it up some LOL but anyway. this lack of planning or thought will come into play later.

note 1: the textured marker brush i specifically use is the "bordered light marker" from daub. it is one of my favorite brushes in the history of forever and the daub mega brush pack is one of the best purchases ive ever made. highly recommend!!!

note 2: "what do you mean by exclusion and difference?" they are layer blending modes and not important to the overall lesson of this post but for transparency i wanted to say how i got these "effects." anyway!

with the background figured out, this is the point at which i generally merge all of my layers, duplicate said merged layer, and Then i begin experimenting with gradient maps. what are gradient maps?

the basic gist is that gradient maps replace the colors of an image based on their value.

so, with this particular gradient map, black will be replaced with that orangey red tone, white will be replaced with the seafoamy green tone, etc. this particular gradient map i'm using as an example is very bright and saturated, but the colors can be literally anything.

these two sets are the ones i use most. they can be downloaded for free here and here if you have csp. there are many gradient map sets out there. and you can make your own!

you can apply a gradient map directly onto a specific layer in csp by going to edit>tonal correction>gradient map. to apply one indirectly, you can use a correction layer through layer>new correction layer>gradient map. honestly, correction layers are probably the better way to go, because you can adjust your gradient map whenever you want after creating the layer, whereas if you directly apply a gradient map to a layer thats like. it. it's done. if you want to make changes to the applied gradient map, you have to undo it and then reapply it. i don't use correction layers because i am old and stuck in my ways, but it's good to know what your options are.

this is what a correction layer looks like. it sits on top and applies the gradient map to the layers underneath it, so you can also change the layers beneath however and whenever you want. you can adjust the gradient map by double clicking the layer. there are also correction layers for tone curves, brightness/contrast, etc. many such useful things in this program.

let's see how mithrun looks when we apply that first gradient map we looked at.

gadzooks. apologies for eyestrain. we have turned mithrun into a neon hellscape, which might work for some pieces, but not this one. we can fix that by changing the layer blending mode, aka this laundry list of words:

some of them are self explanatory, like darken and lighten, while some of them i genuinely don't understand how they are meant to work and couldn't explain them to you, even if i do use them. i'm sure someone out there has written out an explanation for each and every one of them, but i've learned primarily by clicking on them to see what they do.

for the topic of this post, the blending mode of interest is soft light. so let's take hotline miamithrun and change the layer blending mode to soft light.

here it is at 100% opacity. this is the point at which i'd like to explain why i like using textured brushes so much - it makes it very easy to get subtle color variation when i use this Secret Technique. look at the striation in the upper right background! so tasty. however, to me, these colors are still a bit "much." so let's lower the opacity.

i think thats a lot nicer to look at, personally, but i dont really like these colors together. how about we try some other ones?

i like both of these a lot more. the palettes give the piece different vibes, at which point i have to ask myself: What Are The Vibes, Actually? well, to be honest i didn't really have a great answer because again, i didn't plan this out very much at all. however. i knew in my heart that there was too much color contrast going on and it was detracting from the two other contrasts in here: the light and dark values and the sharp and soft shapes. i wanted mithrun's head to be the main focal point. for a different illustration, colors like this might work great, but this is not that hypothetical illustration, so let's bring the opacity down again.

yippee!! that's getting closer to what my heart wants. for fun, let's see what this looks like if we change the blending mode to color.

i do like how these look but in the end they do not align with my heart. oh well. fun to experiment with though! good to keep in mind for a different piece, maybe! i often change blending modes just to see what happens, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. i very much cannot stress enough that much of my artistic process is clicking buttons i only sort of understand. for fun.

i ended up choosing the gradient map on the right because i liked that it was close to the actual canary uniform colors (sorta). it's at an even lower opacity though because there was Still too much color for my dear heart.

the actual process for this looks like me setting my merged layer to soft light at around 20% opacity and then clicking every single gradient map in my collection and seeing which one Works. sometimes i will do this multiple times and have multiple soft light and/or color layers combined.

typically at this point i merge everything again and do minor contrast adjustments using tone curves, which is another tool i find very fun to play around with. then for this piece in particular i did some finishing touches and decided that the white border was distracting so i cropped it. and then it's done!!! yay!!!!!

this process is a very simple and "fast" way to add more depth and visual interest to a piece without being overbearing. well, it's fast if you aren't indecisive like me, or if you are better at planning.

let's do another comparison. personally i feel that the hint of color on the left version makes mithrun look just a bit more unwell (this is a positive thing) and it makes the contrast on his arm a lot more pleasing to look at. someone who understands color theory better than i do might have more to say on the specifics, but that's honestly all i got.

just dont look at my layers too hard. ok?

[dorkshadows]

The Writeup

Thanks for the interest! As promised, I've come out of retirement for one (1) day to do this writeup about the intense things going on in the Nezha 2 fandom.

Once more, this is NOT about the people who happened to watch the movie, the people who are just interested in box office stats, the people who really enjoyed the movie, or the people who just really admire Nezha. This will be about the fandom fandom, the truly invested, the elaborate fanons behind certain ships that will make you go "wait what?", the rabid Ao Guang discourse that will also make you go "wait what?," the brainrot (affectionate) in its purest unfiltered form. This is a post about brainrot for those also suffering from brainrot.

This is a collection of patterns mainly from lofter, but also from douyin, weibo, bilibili, and xhs (I'm grouping everyone together because most artists/authors repost to multiple sites or have their content shared on multiple sites, so everyone ends up looking at the same things if they follow the relevant tags on each site). I didn't filter out or blacklist a single tag. I stared directly into the sun to collect this information!

Disclaimer: I genuinely have no idea how to warn for some of the things mentioned here, so just a blanket note of caution- if you click "read more," you are prepared to read about anything and everything. If you are OK with all this, then- let's go! 命由我不由天!

The movie has been out in China in for roughly 3 weeks. In those 3 weeks, all of this has happened in the deepest layers of fandom.

General patterns:

I can't speak for other site stats, but at least on Lofter, Nezha/Ao Bing as a ship is #1 and #2 trending (as Oubing and Bingzha respectively) out of all fandoms and topics on Lofter. But curiously, Ao Guang (#8 trending) and Shen Gongbao (#9 trending) are more popular as individual characters than Nezha and Ao Bing. The latter is noteworthy because Shen Gong Gong's tag was pretty barren circa 2019.

Some Oubing fans have decided that they don't have enough oubing content so they've started shipping Oubing.... from the 1979 movie. This is also in the top 10 trending. Their inspiration comes from this advert.

Ao Guang vocally disapproves of his son dating Nezha, but he can't do anything about it. The real victim here!

Any pairing you can think of exists. Any pairing.

Character/Reader fics exist for everyone in the main cast except Wuliang Shenweng and Taiyi Zhenren

There's a vibrant self-shipping community again for everyone except Wuliang and Taiyi

Lots of M-preg

CEO Ao Guang is common in modern AUs

Nezha is usually in his powered up form in Oubing/Bingzha content, but in his gremlin form in content focused on anyone else

Lots of "The characters themselves react to watching the movie!" type of stories

Shiji Niang Niang has been shipped with both Taiyi Zhenren and Shen Gongbao. The latter has spawned a meme. There's a comic I won't repost because I don't know who the original artist is, but it's very powerful. It goes like this:

SGB: "Prejudice is like a mountain in people's hearts-" SNN: "So I exist in everyone's hearts? That's beautiful <3"

"Lady Yin LIVES!" AUs aplenty

Wuliang's nickname is "Evil Peach"

Lots and lots and Lots of Shen Gongbao whump

Ao Guang has been separately interpreted as a daddy dom, a malewife, an old guy TM, a himbo, and a baby girl AND as all of those things all at once

Ao Run and Ao Bing are the only dragons considered to be smart

Shen Gongbao tends to have very low self-worth. This comes from a 2019 Jiaozi interview where he directly says our leopard lacks confidence

Any AU you can think of: modern AUs, mafia AUs, republican era AUs, actor AUs, musician AUs, wuxia AUs, this one AU where the Ao family are American senators for no reason, omegaverse, and so on

Lots of Journey to the West (a lot of Black Myth specific ones especially) and FSYY crossovers

There's a meme about the real Lu Tong using his antlers to attack people in their dreams if they dare make sexual content of him because someone who made "bottom" Lu Tong content claimed they were attacked by him in a dream. Others took this to mean that he only attacks if you make him a bottom. People who interpret him as a "top" claim that they won the lottery and their lives are going great.

Ao Guang and Shen Gongbao are usually on a first name basis. Ao Guang calls Shen Gonbao 公豹兄 (Gongbao Xiong, "Brother Gongbao") and Shen Gongbao calls him "Ao Guang" directly. This is sort-of canon because this is how they address each other in 敖丙传 "The Tale of Ao Bing/Aobing Zhuan". for those who ship it, their ship name is 龙王豹 (longwangbao/ dragon king leopard) *Keep Aobing Zhuan in mind. This will be important towards the wildest part of this writeup.

Now for the elaborate fanon lore behind two specific ships that seemingly came out of nowhere. Everyone knows about oubing, but what about the other popular ships out there? They're absolutely wild, but- HEAR THEM OUT.

DiLong:

This one has its origins from the first movie. 地笼 AKA "Prison Cage/Emperor Dragon." It's a ship based on Tiandi (Emperor of Heaven) x Ao Guang. The Di in "emperor" is pronounced the same as ground "di," which is also the first character that makes up the word "prison." And "long" (dragon) is pronounced the same way as cage (also "long"), hence the ship name.

Some time after Ne Zha (2019) came out, someone pulled out one of Ao Guang's lines and ran with it. It's a quote where he essentially says that even though the dragon clan was loyal to heaven and its emperor, the heavens betrayed and imprisoned them in the sea anyway. This section of fans took this to mean that Tiandi charmed Ao Guang on false pretenses, took advantage of Ao Guang's love for him, and then left him to rot in the eastern sea... after impregnating him with 1-3 kids. And this changed Ao Guang from an innocent beauty into a resentful dragon desperate for vengeance.

Things of note about dilong:

Tiandi 天帝 is NOT the Jade Emperor (Yu Di). Their mythos overlap, but the Emperor of Heaven is considered the supreme ruler of Everything in the universe while the Jade Emperor rules over the three realms. So Tiandi ranks higher than the Jade Emperor. (But he's also a more obscure figure in popular worship if we get technical)

At the time, Ao Guang didn't actually have a name in 2019 canon. So the fans referred to him as 敖广 (that's what the eastern dragon king has always been called, but Nezha 2 reimagines him with a different name that's pronounced similarly: 敖光).

Tiandi's given name, or rather, the name that the fans gave him, is Hao Tian 昊天, which is the actual name of one of the mythological Tiandi's many variations

Tiandi does not appear in either Nezha movie. His entire character (appearance, personality, etc.) is purely built on headcanons. He is usually written as a playboy, a heartless manipulative bastard, a deadbeat dad, an ungrateful power greedy monster, and so on. But he is always written and drawn as #Hot.

Ao Guang gave birth to Ao Bing in the Dilong universe.

As you can tell, this is a very angsty ship that usually ends in anger and suffering, but there are plenty of fix-its and happy ending versions out there too, mostly about Tiandi feeling bad for being such a shitty bastard in the past and trying to win Ao Guang back

Regardless of how you feel about Dilong after reading all this, if you are in any way fond of Ao Guang's design in Nezha 2, you owe your life and soul to Dilong shippers because Jiaozi's original idea for Ao Guang was making him a bearded geezer. The Nezha team saw how popular the humansona for Ao Guang was (from dilong fanart) and they incorporated it into canon.

#Dilong had a resurgence in popularity thanks to Nezha 2 (it's the no.6 trending topic on weibo as of right now). But you'll notice that pre-2025 Dilong may feel ooc now because Ao Guang is, for lack of better word, interpreted more as a softspoken twink than the beautiful himbo he is now.

*Keep Dilong in mind as well. It is the source of much insanity below.

LuBao:

Next, in a similar vein to Dilong, another wild ship has risen over the horizon! In terms of quantity, dilong is more popular, but in terms of engagement, this is doing bigger numbers nowadays. I'm talking likes in the ten-thousands range. That ship is.... Lu Tong x Shen Gongbao. AKA 鹿豹 (LuBao, DeerLeopard)

You might be thinking "HUH!? Why!?" My answer for you is that it's all Taiyi's fault. Both inside and outside the movies, Taiyi consistently screws Shen Gongbao over. Life imitates art! This section is a little longer than the dilong section because there is a Lot going on here. I'll admit that one of the most profoundly beautiful and well-written stories I have ever read is a lubao fic on lofter, I understand now

Just as the fans did for dilong once upon a time, this section of fans pulled a blink-and-you-miss-it quote from Nezha 2, where Taiyi tells Nezha that the previous captain of the demon hunting team was Shen Gongbao (after they meet the current captain, Lu Tong).

From there, the lore just got deeper. When Lu Tong greets Taiyi, he calls him 师伯 (Shi Bo, senior martial uncle). But you only call a male relative 伯 in Chinese when that person is your father's older brother. Wuliang is Taiyi's elder (martial) brother (Shi Xiong, as I'm sure you all know), so Lu Tong's address is incorrect. Taiyi knows this as well, so he corrects Lu Tong and says "It should be 师叔" (Shi Shu, younger martial uncle) EDIT: Taiyi doesn't directly say "It shout be shishu" to Lu Tong (that was an incorrect memory on my part). More accurately, Taiyi refers to himself as "Shi Shu" when talking to Lu Tong. Lu Tong continues calling him Shi Bo anyway. And more tellingly, Lu Tong doesn't refer to Taiyi as Shi Bo when Wuliang is around; he exclusively does it when Wuliang isn't there. The fans took it to mean one of two things:

Lu Tong did it on purpose because he only acknowledges one (1) person as his Shi Shu and that's Shen Gongbao

Lu Tong is officially Wuliang's disciple, but he believes himself to truly be Shen Gongbao's disciple and since Taiyi is Shen Gongbao's elder martial brother, he'll call him Shi Bo

Then it got even more elaborate. The fans surmised that since the celestials are so condescending towards demons, Lu Tong and He Tong were ostracized and bullied when they first arrived at Yuxu Gong. And the only person who was nicer to them/protected them/stuck up for them was Shen Gongbao since they're the only demons there. This is why you'll sometimes see fanart of the three of them together in the "Yuxu Gong days."

When Shen Gongbao immediately realized Shen Xiaobao's wound came from Lu Tong's arrow, the fans decided this meant that he was familiar enough with Lu Tong to know his fighting style. When paired with the above headcanon, this directly turns into "Shen Gongbao himself taught Lu Tong archery."

Whenever Ao Bing possessed Nezha, fans noticed that there was always a closeup of Lu Tong's reaction. They decided this meant that Lu Tong recognized Ao Bing through recognizing his fighting style, taught to him by Shen Gongbao.

The fans also think Lu Tong did not have to go off that hard on Shen Xiaobao and Shen Zhengdao. There's following your boss's orders and there's following those orders in the most hyperviolent over the top way possible. Their conclusion is that Lu Tong knew that was Shen Gongbao's family and did it on purpose. Because when Shen Gongbao left Yuxu Gong without telling him, Lu Tong took that personally. And when he took Ao Bing on as a disciple, Lu Tong took that more Personally. So Lu Tong has decided to do his best to kill everyone Shen Gongbao ever cared about until he has nobody left but Lu Tong. Audiences complained that Lu Tong lacked a personality in the movie- the fandom has assigned him a personality and that personality is "sadistic freak obsessed with his Shi Shu."

Things of note about LuBao:

dilong was requited at some point in time, but lubao is an aggressively one-sided ship where Shen Gongbao only requits 1% of the time either because it's a complete AU, none of the movie's events happened, or he has amnesia (inflicted on him by Lu Tong)

A common trope revolves around Lu Tong hoping and hoping for Shen Gongbao to take him on as a disciple, which never happens, planting the first seeds of disappointment and HATE

Lu Tong really fucking hates Ao Bing, whom he considers to be the antagonist of his life because Ao Bing STOLE all of Shen Gongbao's love that rightfully should have been Lu Tong's. He also really hates Ao Guang too, again for stealing HIS shishu. actually, he hates Taiyi sometimes too. He hates anyone Shen Gongbao ever talked to.

He Tong is the only person who knows Lu Tong is this way.

Sometimes Lu Tong meets Shen Gongbao as a primitive deer, a fully adult celestial-in-training, or a literal "deer boy." During his time as captain, Shen Gongbao usually takes Lu Tong under his wing at some point and/or is the person who spares Lu Tong from being slaughtered by the rest of the team or convinces the others not to kill him. OR, even wilder, Shen Gongbao interacts with Lu Tong for 5 minutes 200 years ago and that's enough to cause Lu Tong to go on this spiral. Whichever the case, Lu Tong imprints on Shen Gongbao.

90% of LuBao content includes Lu Tong taking his revenge on Shen Gongbao after Wuliang imprisons him. This includes all manner of graphic torture.

Lu Tong wants Shen Gongbao to hate him because he believes Shen Gongbao left him in the past due to indifference towards him. "Hate lasts longer than love."

Shen Gongbao: *exists* Lu Tong: I'll kill your family. I'll kill your disciple. I'll kill your disciple's father and your disciple's best friend. And Taiyi Zhenren too. I'll kill everyone who ever interacted with you. Then I'll break you and break you some more until you're nothing but bones and dust. I hate that you made me love you and that you left me. What do the dragons have that I lack? Are my antlers lesser than their horns? We both have blood on our hands and yet you think yourself nobler than I. You are inherently kinder than me and I hate that the most about you. My dearest revenge is dragging you down to my level, to make you hate me as much as I hate you. If I can't have your love, I will have your hate and your pain and your tears- Ao Bing & Ao Guang: 有病!??????? WTF.

恨明月高悬独不照我 is a phrase now permanently associated with this ship. It translates to "I hate that the moon in the sky shines for all but me." Lu Tong hates that shishu shares affection with everyone except him.

This is such a prevalent characterization of Lu Tong at this point that "obsessed with Shen Gongbao" is now his defining trait even in content where neither he or Shen Gongbao are main characters

If its an Ao Guang/Shen Gongbao fic, Lu Tong sometimes shows up as SGB's abusive ex, abusive stalker, or a guy that Ao Guang finds extremely creepy and annoying

If you're still here, this next and final section puts everything else to shame!

The Ao Guang Discourse

There is a lot of drama surrounding Ao Guang now, not because of anything he did as a character, but because of who's he's shipped with. But there's actually only one side of the fandom instigating all the arguments.

Now, remember Aobing Zhuan? That's a spinoff comic focused on Aobing's childhood that came out circa 2021(?). It goes into depth about his early days with Shen Gongbao, his brothers, and even his mother, 应龙, Yinglong. (Yinglong is a real mythological creature, a powerful dragon with a place in old mythos and folklore as well, but that's not entirely relevant here lol). Yinglong is older than Ao Guang, is beautiful, strong, etc. She dies in the spinoff.

A significant number of fangirls latched onto Ao Guang (as presented in Aobing Zhuan), and projected onto Yinglong, the mother of his children. After Nezha 2 released, Ao Guang understandably gained even more fangirls. Most of them became GuangYing shippers.

Now, it's a golden rule in CN fandoms to tag your content so others can avoid. GuangYing shippers do not care about this. They go onto any and all m/m content with Ao Guang to insult the authors and argue that their disgusting ways are disrespectful to canon, disrespectful to Ao Guang, and disrespectful to women everywhere. It doesn't matter that Yinglong is not in the movies and also dead--Ao Guang is not allowed to move on from her ever, and also he is STRAIGHT. Is there not enough gay content out there?? Why can't the heterosexuals have this one man to themselves?? The injustice!

Edit to add: m/f is also unsafe from the wrath of guangyin shippers. They also attack Ao Guang self-shippers for daring to be sluts coming in between him and his true love, Yinglong.

They especially hate dilong and have been harassing all dilong content for the past month. Dilong is their main target, but it's not their only target- you can also find them under Ao Guang/Shen Gongbao content claiming that "they're just besties" and "Ao Guang just sees Shen Gongbao as a pet" asdfasdf

Dilong shippers retort by saying all Guangying shippers do is attack and harass others instead of making their own content, which is why their content is so lacking and pitful. They also called into question the canonicity of Aobing Zhuan. Jiaozi supervised it, but he's not the actual author. They started bashing Aobing Zhuan as focusing too little on Aobing, making Aobing look bad to make his brothers look good, accusing the author of being a Xiao Zhan stan in the wake of the ao3 ban, creating events that directly contradicted with canon, crediting things that Ao Guang or Shen Gongbao did for Aobing as things that Yinglong did, the official Nezha team is embarrassed of the direction Aobing Zhuan went in and doesn't acknowledge it anymore, Yinglong is the author's self insert, etc. And back and forth-

And then, 匪我思存 (Fei Wo Si Cun), acclaimed web novelist, author of multiple novels, including 东宫 (Goodbye My Princess 2019) and 9 more that were turned into TV shows.... published a Dilong fanfic on main (weibo). It referred to Ao Guang as 敖广 and involved M-preg, of him giving birth to Ao Bing, who is also Tiandi's child here. Yinglong and Tiandi's wife are both in the story too- they are a lesbian couple who double as beards for their husbands.

The Ao Guang fangirls, I mean, Guangying shippers LOST IT. They came at Fei Wo Si Cun with full throttle rage. Countless socmed posts about what a horrible disgusting disgraceful thing this author did! How dare she use her wide platform to do this instead of putting it somewhere where nobody can see!? Some have even accused this one fic of destroying Nezha 2's image on the global stage. This one story about this one ship has DESTROYED the reputation of ALL OF CHINA. This is TREASON. Now when normies see Ao Guang and Ao Bing, all they will think about is M-preg.

Not only that, Fei Wo Si Cun had the audacity to do something as misogynistic as turning Yinglong into a lesbian beard! It is a SIN to break up a "canon" pairing and a sin to change the character's sexualities into anything except heterosexuality!

Correction: the lesbian couple part is hearsay and probably came from FWSC saying (that in her fic’s setting) Yinglong and Tiandi’s wife married their husbands because they can’t be with the people they love for “reasons”

The Yinglong crowd is still going at it as I write this. FWSC has not deleted or apologized for this fic. China's reputation has, last I checked, not been DESTROYED by this one story about an animated dragon man from a kid's movie, and dilong shippers are still suffering.

And that's a wrap for now. I may or may not update this if something even wilder happens. I want to say no, this is the end of the ride, but we are only 1 month in. There's plenty of time for more to crop up!

UPDATE: This post is already out of date LMAO! For those interested in updates on everything mentioned above, here's the follow-up: Writeup Part 2.

BONUS UPDATE: Part 3

[lemotmo]

Oh this interesting

Q. Do you have any idea why Deadline would have deleted only that line but not address the removal in any way?

A. I have a ton of asks about the Deadline writeup so I am going to answer as much as I can here to hopefully cover as many of the asks as I can. For context, and much to the disappointment of a certain group of people, Deadline is not equal to TVGuide, TVLine or Entertainment Weekly. They don't write opinion pieces. They don't have writers on staff who are assigned to watch a show and cover that show. That's not what they do. They are basically the AP News of Entertainment news, if that makes sense. They don't have a particular slant or side they gear their coverage towards. In other words they don't have Buddies or other fandom people on staff. Sorry to the 'mob' (for what it's worth though less than 200 people is not a mob) who wrote angry, threatening emails demanding its correction. Not a soul at Deadline read a single word of those emails, just like no one at ABC is reading those emails, but I digress. They report entertainment news. That's it. Trade news that is relevant information.

Also for what it's worth the information they were given would not have come from the show or even Tim, it would have come directly from an approved media release directly from ABC. The media relations department would have sent them a release directly and the release would contain the information they were okay with being reported regarding the show's renewal. Most of the time those memos would say something along the lines of 'approved for immediate release' meaning the journalist was free to write about everything the release covered. Occasionally those same releases will have a second section that will say something along the lines of 'hold for release until (fill in the blank date)'. That indicates the information in that section of the memo is not approved for release at that time but needs to be held for a write-up planned for a later date. So in this case either the memo ABC sent Deadline was missing the 'hold for release' direction, or the journalist missed the request (which is not likely because this is Deadline and that's not something they're likely to overlook). Or quite simply the article dropped sooner than it was supposed to. We will most likely never know which of these is the real reason, I'm personally leaning towards the article dropped earlier than it was supposed to, but it doesn't really matter. The other question I'm getting a lot is why the line would have been removed without Deadline or the journalist adding a 'correction' or 'this article has been amended to correct an error'. Deadline is not going to do that if what they wrote was factually correct but released earlier than it was supposed to be. Releasing the information earlier than it was supposed to be is not the same thing as calling the information incorrect or misleading. The journalist is not required to say he misspoke if he didn't actually misspeak. There is no factual error within the article. The information was just released earlier than ABC wanted. That's why there's no note or correction amendment to the article. It's that simple. No conspiracy theories. No caving to lunatics. ABC just wasn't ready for that particular angle to be confirmed yet. Hope that helps!

Thank you Nonny!

Just leaving this here, because I have gotten a lot of asks about this. Thank you for clearing this up Ali.

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[cleolinda]

Weekend links, April 21, 2025

My posts

Ian's fifth Silent Hill 2 stream is up, and the next is April 30; I'm working on my own recap of the same area; OBS still hates me. "Have you tried—" Yes. I have. WE JUST LIVE LIKE THIS NOW. Hopefully people will enjoy a writeup that's necessarily a bit more fleshed out, if the tribulations will ever allow me to finish it. 

Reblogs of interest

Well, I woke up to the news that Pope Francis had died.

PSA: The US FDA doesn't have enough staff for all the food testing that should be done. Here's a list of foods at high risk for contamination.

Always reblog Calming Cat.

A real rabbit in a Peter Rabbit jacket was the best thing I saw last week.

Re: 4chan: I kind of understand this post and I kind of don't, and I'm okay with the kind-of knowing that I have.

One of my favorite Galadriel illustrations: The Swan-ship of Lórien by Maura Boldi

Also this week: one of my favorite Anke Eissmann illustrations of Eowyn (all the others are also Anke Eissmann)

Does what it says on the tin: Pedro Friedeberg's Silla de cien manos (Chair of 100 hands)

Simkaye: Y2K Limewire Hampster nostalgia.

l0stvegas: Please click each image containing an adult deer

smellyvampirez: "Cats...?"

I own two of James R. Eads' card decks, so I'm very interested in this game.

A deep dive into hippie fashion

Tangara, "the music player you wish you had in the early 2000s"

I can't get out of the house much. Please go use my share of libraries.

I can promise you that using "—" or "--" OR both mixed interchangeably is nothing but a tell of which device I was using to draft a post at the time, get your gen AI aspersions out of here.

The shame reflex: "It is defeatable. Go for the throat."

Video

The best Coca-Cola Bear ever

"This is what upstairs neighbors have"

I'm getting, like. Max Max by way of Robert Palmer vibes here, not sure how else to explain it

This isn't the first time I've reblogged Domino Cat, and it's probably not the last

Smack barm pey wet

The sacred texts

I can attest that "I also choose this dead guy's wife" is a sacred text on Reddit, but also, this adds some wholesome context.

"i mean they did also kill jesus. that was a pretty significant thing that happened. like i understand where you’re coming from here but they very much did kill jesus."

"This is such a classic trainwreck post that has the vibes of a 2014 screenshot posted to Pinterest and then the last addition is just last Tuesday I can’t even"

Personal tag of the week

Shaped (not to be confused with #the body is round). 

[kiophen]

Re: tags on that ask about callout posts (not the same anon), can I ask about the 4lung situation? I haven't looked into what happened too deeply but from what I have seen nothing is super well documented or explained

If its too much and you don't feel like getting into it don't worry about it, feel free to disregard. I'm mostly just curious since I've heard things and it was mentioned

I was prompted to do my own digging into the whole situation surrounding her a few years ago. She was excluded from an online music event due to someone bringing up concerns with the organizers privately. I found that basically every public accusation about her is not true, and/or redacted by the accusers. The only true accusations are the ones that really don't matter; she retweeted porn on main and was a babyfur. These things were used to bludgeon her with pedo accusations and back up all the fake shit thrown on top to make it more convincing.

"Did you know she attempted to KIDNAP a KID?? Oh, the kid said it wasn't a kidnapping and the accuser said they jumped to conclusions and apologized? Well did you know she TWEETED a SLUR? Oh that was actually photoshopped by kiwifarmers? Well did you know she SEXUALLY HARASSED a MINOR? Oh, that was actually her shitty ex-gf trying to make her look bad in retaliation to a bad breakup? Well did you know x and y and z misinterpreted or fabricated things? Well at least you can agree that being a BABYFUR is something worth ritualistically harassing a trans woman, over right?"

One reason why stuff isn't well documented is because the main person who was pushing the accusations so hard ended up apologizing and retracting and deleting a lot of posts (and also I think they're suspended, which deletes all their tweets, and most of this shit happened in twitter threads). They did get bullied into removing their apology too.

Another reason is that a lot of the situation was people seeing the original callout posts years ago, internalizing the message "This Person Bad Pedo Bad Bad Person Bad" from it, and then later being like "Ummmmm isn't that person a pedophile? Yikes?" to their friend who brought her up who then says "Oh My Fuck I am Sorry I Did not Know that!" and then it just gets spread around like that through uncurious people who don't care enough to check

I have my own collection of archived tweets from when I was trying to find the root of these claims and might make a full writeup about the situation someday, but also I have complicated feelings about whether I would be just be immortalizing this shitty behavior, if it would just lead to more people trying to harm her, or if anyone would even learn anything from it. Also I don't want the person who started the accusations to get dragged back into this since I can tell they were being manipulated and gaslit as fuck by other bullies into making this such a big part of their life for so long.

Specifically about the kidnapping thing: After one of her shows, she and a friend drove a teenager to an Arbys to get picked up by their parent as a nice gesture due to some trouble the teen was having. The situation was catastrophized by either this teen or the accuser into a "kidnapping" (there is conflicting information, they both blame each other) and then the accuser tweeted it out. The teen has since said they didn't really think they were being kidnapped, and the accuser said the kidnapping aspect was made up.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/766905425760337920/olderthannetfic-i-used-the-data-people-gave-me

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3025453.3025720

if you (or any of this blog's followers who likes statistics) have the time to go into detail, how can i find and/or make charts similar to those? i'm curious to see more recent numbers for the stats in the research but i don't know how to search for them. looking up terms like 'ao3 statistics' only brings up results for personal works like hits, views, and kudos.

--

*dying*

Anon... my charts are just numbers I grabbed by hand from AO3.

Cecelia Aragon runs a data science lab at a university where they downloaded all of FFN and then wrote programs to try to assign metadata and crunch numbers.

--

The first step to any stats project is to figure out what question you're asking and what kind of data would actually answer it.

Then you look at your target site (or whatever) and see where that data might be stored or how it could be determined in a relatively objective way. This requires a lot of understanding of the site in question.

For example, I wanted shipping stats for Wattpad. It doesn't offer AO3-style tags for that, so I needed to randomly sample, then hand-classify. Destination Toast ran an analysis like that and outsourced the classification to others with the instruction to mark something as "gen" if it was too hard to tell if there was a ship. Knowing what Wattpad is like—very, very het and very, very incoherent—I thought this was a poor choice. When I did my analysis, I erred on the side of assuming something was het rather than gen. I think that makes my numbers more accurate, but more is not entirely. Since I did my hand-classification myself, it will be more consistent... but also potentially more inaccurate in some particular direction. Outsourcing reduces the chance of one person's takes biasing the whole dataset but introduces other potential problems.

Being aware of these drawbacks in various methods of looking at data is important. You can't really fix them, but you can at least note them in your writeup.

For example, looking at AO3 as AO3 is relatively easy, but using AO3 to generalize about fanfic is a terrible idea. Many fandom stats people don't realize this or don't realize why this is so.

--

Which stats are you after in particular? Shipping? Join dates? Kudos ratios?

[shra-vasti]

Who are your big 3 enhablr writers? And do you have fic recommendations? Also I love your writing

Hello anonie♥️ thank you so much for enjoying my writing, I hope I'll hear more from you🤭

Hmm so, instead of stating my big three (because there aren't any big 3 for me, I love so many writers in here, it's hard to choose just 3) I'll just name a few who's writeups inspired me enough to get out of my writer's block and finally start writing. (This isn't a ranking but a short appreciation post maybe?)

@enhaflixer - her marriage law series has my heart, I love Harry Potter and I love Enhypen, and the concept was very new for me, and also her other works? spectacular! I can't really pinpoint but after reading her works I felt like I needed to write something too😌

@mssishipi - okay, I got to know about her with Taste of Indulgence. What's better than a boyfriend? Two boyfriend!! But then I read her other works and I was so mesmerized, I need to learn how to plot things from her😭 her characters always leave a lasting impression in my heart, and I thrive to get that good🙂‍↕️

@nephynes - nene, she's the loml, I've been following her since she started writing again, and oh god? Tension Theory had me on chokehold, she writes things so raw, and so phenomenal! Then secondhand heaven did it for me, after reading two of her works and learning that she just got out of her own writer's block, I opened my notepad and started writing Be There for You, I'm not even kidding.

Also now for my fic recommendation, ever since I started writing, it has been very hard to find time to read! So aside from reading my mutual's works, I couldn't find time to search for any newer pics from other amazing writers😭😭

I've read many amazing fics in the past, and they deserve the interactions they've gotten over it, and even more. But I'll list a very few of the fics which I thinks WAY WAY WAYY more love than they already have! Also if the links don't work out, lmk or else you can always check their accounts which I tagged🙏

1. @enjakey - her whole masterlist is swoon worthy! But I'll list two of my favorite ones which I have already read (I want to devour the rest of her masterlist too but I just need time).

ECHOES WHERE YOU STOOD, LHS

THE CERTAIN ROMANCE OF WINGS AND WAR, SJY

2. @mrsjjongstby - oh she's underrated😭 I love how she always deliveres unique concept. I would suggest to raid her whole masterlist tbh. I'm linking her work which deserves more attention.

OVERRULED, PJS

3. @shy9-29 - I don't think we've interacted much, but I loved her works, so if you haven't, pls show some love to her works🥺

DO YOU EVER SHUT UP? + Part 2, SJY

There are many more writers who deserves a shout out but I can't think of many, I'm sorry😭

[antimony-medusa]

Why do MultiFandom Exchanges Run on Don't Like: Don't Read?

I was writing that writeup about the amperslash exchange last night, and I realized that some people don't know this. So. Say you are running a multifandom exchange. You got a big amount of people sign up for it, there's like 84 people signed up, and they all nominated 3 fandoms, and there's a bunch of overlap, but you are stil looking at like 120 different fandoms. You have a big mod team, for an exchange that isn't Yuletide, cause there's two of you running this exchange. Do you think that you are intimately familiar with all of those fandoms?

I have been around the internet for a long time, and I know a lot of fandoms by sight, but let me tell you, I could not tell you on-sight which of the Mass Effect relationships are canonically (or even fanonically) considered to be toxic/abusive/problematic. If you are running a multifandom exchange, there is simply no viable way to know the network of these relationships in canon, much less once you consider in fandon stuff like "these people are commonly headcanoned as siblings".

So like, say you wanted to say "no abusive relationships?" or "no incest?" I've seen exchanges try to run with that rule. You are immediately vulnerable to people coming in and saying "oh these people are canonically related" when what happened is a queercoded relationship got translated as "cousins" in the english dub. Or they mean "he's like a brother to me" that gets used as family headcanon fodder. Or a relationship where people were enemies to lovers is presented as "abusive" because of their past. And then suddenly you, the mod team of two people, is poring over localization notes and clips and fanon essays instead of doing the hundred other things that an exchange needs. Even in MCYTblr, I am aware of a lot of lore, and I keep being surprised by things like people saying "oh empires and hermit false are canonically sisters", and I watched the empires crossover. It is simply not viable to keep up with which relationships might be toxic/problematic in every relationship in every fandom on the internet. AND you're faced with things like "well this apepars to be canonically okay, but fanon would say otherwise, so if we let it through, people are still gonna be mad/hurt because the fanon is so pervasive, but if we turn it down, people are gonna be mad because canonically it's fine, so—"

It's a moderating nightmare. So the only viable way forward is to say "we will let literally anything into the exchange, be warned that there might be stuff you find objectionable in the tag set, by participating you agree that even if you disagree you're not gonna harass anyone for it" and we go. But you do want to make sure that nobody has to write a relationship they have a problem with, right? Well, that's why the "you only have to write what you offered" rule. The way the matching works is you only match to what you offered, so if there are five ships you don't agree with and two you do in the tag set, you just offer your two, and then you'll be matched on the two.

You offer what you're comfortable with, and then the algorithm does its work, and then even if you match to someone who requested something you go "oh boy" to, everyone agrees to ignore everything they didn't match to, so you just put a sticky note over that part of the screen, and continue with the one relationship you do agree with that person on.

But how do you make sure that the person who thinks that this popular relationship is abusive (they hate it and wants them to break up) and the person who thinks this relationship is actually fine and hcs it as fluffy, and the person thinks it's bad but wants to watch them destroy each other hand in unloveable hand, all get what they want? There are 84 people in your exchange, it absolutely does not work to match fluff writers to fluff writers by hand.

That's when DNWs and defaults happen. Your DNW is everything you don't want to see, so the person who wants fluff can write down "I do not want toxic dynamics" and the person who wants them to break up can DNW "happy endings", and everyone will get a gift that matches their specifications. And defaults— that's for if you match on a relationship you like, but it turns out the person you requested only wanted canon-typical homophobia and unhappy endings, and you want fluff, so you can say "actually I can't write this", you send it back to the mods, they post it as a pitch hit, and it gets picked up by someone who can look at the whole request, go "yeah I can rock with some canon-typical homophobia and unhappy endings" and opt in specifically to the request.

The whole system is set up to try and balance "everything is welcome, we are not passing judgement on your fandom" (the dl:dr attitude about what's allowed in) and "you only have to opt in to anything, nobody gets forced to write something they don't like/agree with" (you only match on what you offered and requested, you can default if someone asks something you don't like). That's the exchange space standard.

And THAT is why matching in a big exchange is always an adventure, and that's why the entire exchange space has agreed, to make this whole thing we're doing together to work, to just go "that's not for me, but you do you" and just move on when they see something they don't personally vibe with.

[the-priestess-of-dawn]

Hello! I was wondering if you've ever posted about the Robin Hel resplendents? I couldn't find it and I'm curious about your take. I love your analyses.

Hmm... I definitely HAVE, because I have interpretations lol, but mmmm my tags are so inconsistent asdfghjkl so sorry to everyone who's ever tried to find anything on my blog (not to mention, tbh, I'm not sure I didn't exclusively post about this on Twitter...). So... let's just do a full writeup right now, shall we?

Basically, uh... Hel M!Robin is "covert Grima" but Hel F!Robin is just wearing edgy clothes.

So the thing is, M!Robin got his resplendent pretty early on, back in 2020. Now, I'm not going to break into a full analysis here because it's a tangential point, but I would argue that FEH's treatment of Robin/Grima/Robin-as-Grima has actually changed over time, with them shifting from "this is literally just Robin gone wrong" to a more... (I can't pretend to be unbiased about this; you KNOW how I feel about Grima = Robin)... genericized "evil entity snatched the body" take (which I can't help but feel is a result of the developers no longer having Awakening fans on staff. I mean look at Rearmed Grima's Forging Bonds. They just straight up forgot that it's a plot-important detail that Lucina doesn't know Robin is Grima. Or look at the Forging Bonds for either of the Brave Robins. The entire premise is flawed because Chrom only takes the title of Exalt postgame, meaning that for Robin to be advisor to the EXALT they must have already defeated Grima and regardless of ending they should NOT be worried about being taken over by Grima.) Anyway, I digress, but the point is that back in 2020 they were still hitting hard on Grima being a Fallen Robin. We hadn't gotten Halloween F!Grima yet and frankly I'm not sure anyone thought that a fallen alt could get alts or resplendents of their own, so... I sort of suspect that's why they wanted to bring in elements of Grima to Hel Robin.

And here's what's really interesting... Hel Robin is the ONLY Hel Resplendent that is implied to ACTUALLY be dead. It's... subtle. "These are the raiments of Hel, the realm of the dead. Don't read too much into that." is... a little bit suspiciously specific in its denial, isn't it? Like, saying NOT to read too much into it is basically an invitation to start scrutinizing it asdfghjkl. And then you have "I may look a little scary, but I'm still the same Robin underneath. Have no fear." And just WHY do you feel the need to assure us of this, Robin? Nobody thinks the Resplendent alts are changing personalities...

But maybe it's because, idk, his eyes get a little redder in his special art?

Again, it's SUBTLE. And if you only look at the special art, you could easily say it's just brown. But, then... why make this change berween normal attack and special? Robin has certainly been portrayed with inconsistent eye colors before, but not in the SAME alt.

And then let's actually look at his special activation lines...

UM... What's that one in the middle there??? "Accept your fate!" ???

Does that not cinch the deal? Do we not know enough about Robin to be able to conclude definitively WHICH Robin would say THAT (and which Robin would reject that kind of thinking outright)?

(I think "Death can be a mercy!" is also very consistent with Grima's worldview and their belief in their power of destruction as "the one true equalizer")

And if all of that wasn't enough, there's also his page on the FEH Pass website, which includes a short introduction written in-character by Sharena. M!Robin's says

Robin's wearing attire from Hel, the realm of the dead! Ohhh, I hope he's OK... Even if he's not feeling like his normal self, this new outfit keeps the black-and-purple theme from his classic look and adds some spooky flair with new patterns and a stylishly frayed hem!

So yeah, Sharena is worried about him and thinks he isn't feeling like his "normal self." Again, M!Robin is the ONLY Hel Resplendent who has any indication of a personality change coming with the clothes. Resplendent F!Robin, despite sharing the outfit's design, doesn't share ANY of the "covert Grima" features. Not the lines, not Sharena's concern, and absolutely not the changing eye color. Honestly, it was a little disappointing to me, because the little details with m!Robin are just so brainrot-worthy, but idk, F!Robin got the better glowup art-wise (seriously, her Respledent is some of my favorite Robin art out there) and when you think about it, it IS extremely funny to imagine the two of them interacting while M!Robin has to keep pretending he's not the one who went back in time and got his ass kicked.

Because I mean... that's sort of the obvious inference, isn't it? That he's Original Timeline Robin who became the fell dragon, followed Lucina back in time, and was killed by Good Timeline Robin. Lol I really wish more fanfic authors would take this alt and run with it, because is that concept not just totally ripe with potential?

Anyway, thank you for coming my TED Talk today. I will tag it as Grima Studies this time and add it to my masterpost for any of you who might like to one day find it again asdfghjkl.

[couldtheycatchkira]

speaking of your summaries, something im super super curious abt is what guides you when you dont know a character for all that really good flavor text. mainly solely the tags? some extra research? asking friends who you know know the art? bc a lot of them are really really awesome

((There's a little looking through the tags, but it's mostly the extra research. For William of Baskerville, for example, I decided to look through a summary of the novel since I don't have a television. Sometimes all you need is a vague idea of what's going on and a few well-placed references to random details or various quotes. This is mostly because when the blog was just starting, tags were actually pretty rare, so I had to actually do work to justify the conclusion and formulate an entire plotline as to how they did it. Now I just just go "Spinda didn't solve the murder but I caught one and now we're friends :)" and show some viewer mail. Anyways nowadays results where nobody talks is very rare, but now I get people who have entire pamphlets, which, honestly? I prefer. (The Ultraman writeup wasn't much of anything but it really was just me going "Spacium Beam").))

[yurisorcerer]

If anime were appraised solely on their last episodes, Metallic Rouge would be pretty decent, but they aren't, so it isn't.

I'm not going to recap all the various little revelations and plot twists here because honestly who could possibly care? The gist is that the events of the preceding twelve episodes don't truly matter because everything was really just building up to this, a showdown between Rouge and her father figure Dr. Jung, a character who is barely in the show before this point (even in his hooded guise as The Puppetmaster), and who feels ancilliary to much of what the series was trying to do before now.

The actual events of this episode feel very random and I'd almost say fanficky? In isolation it's not a terrible finale but finales of course do not occur in isolation, when taken against the backdrop of everything Metallic Rouge could've been, and indeed *actively tried to be.* The Neans' plight doesn't matter because the entire thing was orchestrated by Doc Jung, which he demonstrates in a long monologue that comes off as trying way, way, wayyyy too hard to make this boring cutout of a Super Intelligent Chessmaster type character seem interesting. If the show had just focused on this from the start instead of interpolating like four unrelated plots along the way, it might've worked a lot better, but it's inherently hard to know.

It would certainly feel less distasteful. I cannot get over the fact that this series treated "serious examination of discrimination and a moral question over the ethics of armed struggle," regardless of its (deeply shitty and unbelievably milquetoast) conclusions, as just another hat it could put on and take off at will. None of it ends up mattering! At the last minute Rouge just decides to free the Neans, because *now* she thinks it's the right thing to do. If we were going to build Rouge up as some kind of liberator and savior it would've had to start many episodes ago, and despite occasional toothless gestures in that direction it, really didn't. I hope fellow tumblr user @naomiortman doesn't mind me digging up the comments they left in the tags of their reblog of my last writeup on this show, because honestly, they're completely correct and get to the heart of the problem of why *this specifically* was a pose that the show should never have attempted to strike if it wasn't going to commit.

The whole thing is just very offputting!

And as for everything *else* the show tries to do, the genre-hopping was occasionally fun when it remembered to not be stupid about it, but that was really only a handful of episodes in hindsight and if someone doesn't feel that that's enough to make up for the show's *many* writing mistakes, I find it very hard to disagree with them.

And then there's the last couple minutes of this episode which....reveal at the end that Clown Robot Girl was secretly a Usurper all along and installed a virus turning all Neans into murderbots, which just completely threatens to saw the legs off what happened mere seconds before, and then it turns out to completely not matter because Gene installed an antivirus beforehand because he knew this would happen somehow? (Gene is a nothing of a character and is another reason this show's writing sucks eggs.) And thus Neans have freedom now, because of a completely unforeshadowed, last-minute minor plot twist that occurred offscreen.

This show is hilarious, and deeply unserious. My friend Sredni (@ihfsttinuf) also pointed out that apparently a bunch of this a wholesale bite of the end of RahXephon? I haven't seen that show so I can't comment, but like, lol. (EDIT: That's apparently by the same guy, by the way! So if anything it's self-plagiarism.)

Just so this entire post doesn't come off like an angry rant, there are a few things that work. Mainly the buildup of real, mutual trust between Rouge and Naomi. (Or maybe I just want it to work because otherwise this show truly does have nothing going for it on the writing side.) At the very least, it's delightfully gay, I like the visual of the two of them together inside Rouge's mindspace. Although even this comes with an icky side effect in that Naomi is now like, functionally dead as her own physical person. IDK man, any time I try to give this show credit for something I find another way in which it could have so easily done better.

Hey, at least they brought the dedicated combat theme back, that's good. And Cyan is right, Rouge's new form does look really cool. (Why did they feel the need to kill Cyan, by the way? You can't both have a shitty central narrative AND kill all your best characters.)

I don't want to come off as though I just completely hate the thing top to bottom. It was entertaining on a week to week basis, but in trying to do so many different things it just kind of does nothing, and I find it really frustrating for that reason. The visual aspect of the show remains compelling (I love the Gladiator designs, seriously), but I could never in good conscience recommend this to someone even if I don't "regret watching it" per se.

What a mess! Glad it's over.

[dbphantom]

Was pretty proud of this writeup about the (current) world of Veneer from the OC subreddit so I'm putting it here so it's in my Veneer tags

I write it to criticize the fantasy of a post-apocalyptic world where everything is steeped in violence and depravity and no one ever tries to help others or rebuild because "you can't trust other people". Isolation 100... Your post-apocalyptic world is built on fear and domination, mine is built on hope and trust. We are two sides of the same coin, but I'm making this story land on my side because I need to believe in other people more often lol

It's the far future, past 2 civilization-leveling apocalypses caused by over-consumption. The current civilization is so different from the first round of humanity that Era 1 humanity is basically the ancient aliens trope (think For/erun/ners from Ha/lo or the Eri/dians from bor/derlan/ds or the Ancients from S/targa/te (who, in retrospect, I think the E/ridi/ans were inspired by due to the whole escaping to an upper dimension thing, but I digress, do not let me go on this rant right now)) because nobody can read the writing they left behind or understand their technology or how it was powered.

Presently, the oceans have disappeared and the ozone layer has been destroyed. A large chunk of humanity from the last civilization lives in bubble cities (built by Crestfall Corp) scattered across the continents, but the ones who can't afford it take shelter from the sun on the Abyssal Plains, protected by the lower cloud cover. The Abyssal Plains are what's left after the ocean vanished, but it comes back when the moon is full, so everything down there either floats or is waterproof or lives in an airtrap (place where the water can't flood in because of the way it is structured or due to air pressure) ((there used to be a trading town named Airtrap, but now it is just called Haven because, as it turns out, most people are not keen on entering a dark cave with the word 'trap' plastered above the mouth, no matter the context))

Travelers across the plains sometimes come across massive, ancient structures housing drains, which is where the Hunger reaches up from the Underground. That is where the oceans drain to when it isn't a full moon. I don't have any more information about the Underground because nobody has ever come back from it.

The drains powered on 'recently' (current age) due a meteor striking the moon. The shards from the collision rained down and powered ancient technology that had been sitting dormant for ages. This is why the oceans have (mostly) disappeared. No one really knows why they return when the full moon rises...

The Hunger is a mysterious force that mutates wildlife across the Abyssal Plains, so there are groups of monster hunters who have banded together to form guilds and offer their services to the communities that have popped up. One notable up-and-coming group is Restoration, a guild of postal workers who deliver the mail and take on contracts to hunt monsters in exchange for food or work on their train. Notably, they have a no-kill policy. Their leader, H. Belinda, is an ex-Crestfall agent who ran from the company after she graduated and is now wanted. Before she started her life at CF, she worked with her dad selling stuff she scavenged from the Pacific junkyard to traders, like most of the people who grew up there.

The Abyssal Plains are also pockmarked with old battlefields and graveyards from spats between long dead corporations. If you're brave, you can scavenge some decent loot from them, but the war has been over for a long time. Regardless, Crestfall continues to strengthen their militia. After all, they've got to protect their investments people from the scary monsters that may hunt them in the night...

Sunlight City is where the story starts, a residential bubble city with a nature preserve and a focus on manufacturing. The actual city is more on the east side of the bubble and the suburbs sprawl out from there before farms take over. There's the nature preserve and Realta lake on the far west, which is where the CF headquarters for Sunlight City is. There are other bubble cities, like the one that is a giant amusement park and another that is solely a college campus, where the residents are trained for certain leadership positions in Crestfall Corp, but Sunlight City is my favorite :)

Travel between bubble cities is mostly done by CF pilots because air travel is fast and convenient, but you *can* travel across the continents in whatever will protect you from the deadly laser that is the sun. There are motorcycle gangs that hang out up there, but they look more like astronauts than bikers. They also tend not to go very far in as the continents are mostly a wasteland due to the sun, like the surface of the moon. Wonder what they're doing up there, though...

Fortunately, K. Bradach and C. Oroitz recently submitted their final requirement for graduation, which will change the way people travel between bubble cities!

Unfortunately, it seems to have awakened something that has lain dormant for a while...

Aesthetically, imagine scavenged solarpunk/lunarpunk meets ipod futurism and diselpunk. Then add a splash of steampunk from Julian's magic and you've got a stew going. Also the mushrooms. Can't forget the mushrooms. And the bones (they go hand-in-hand). Also the trains because I like trains :)

[strangepersonthefirst]

Theory on the nature of True Names

Ok, so I'd like to preface this by saying that I do have more info than just mine. A lot of it IS because I'm a nosy little fucker with a whole library full of ways to get my hands on one and the knowledge I have no intent to ever use a truename nefariously. Ok. Let's start.

At the basic level of understanding, a true name is "your" name with extra spice. That's easy. At a few more layers down, We find "True names are the name of your *soul* and that gets into fascinating territory already. How do souls name themselves? What defines a soul name? Semi-Theoretical, and the theory part here. Ok, so what if True Names were the basis of titles (skipping out on title theory, but in short if the universe thinks the universe can acknowledge and sometimes it does.), as in a preliminary identifier so the universe as a function (before you begin to think or self-differentiate) the universe separates your soul from any other set of soul-like atoms. we KNOW the universe pushes for souls because souls are gloriously efficient, and the universe strives for efficiency in all it does. If something is to change something else, souls do a good job, with less build costs. But, of course, I don't think the universe is like a scatterbrained ADHD person, even if I decide to ascribe the universe's thoughts more intent than a sky-spanning set of interlocked gears. So it's not just identifier tags. But of course, just because the universe doesn't, doesn't mean your soul won't. The soul has a whole fuckton of passive functions, I've noticed. It literally is your energetic heart parallel, generates your aura, digests energy, perpetuates an existence more effectively than just a mind or body, allows for useful conversion of energy.. The list is massive. But the soul is only so aware of itself- Even if you were perfectly in-tune, you could argue you're more mind than soul in a process sense (even though I believe personally that the means of consciousness themselves are a big soup you can't draw lines through.) So how does the soul recognize itself to find issues and try to self-regulate? It gives itself a set of identifiers. Now, during my study of true names, I've found a grand majority of them are more.. descriptive of processes that the soul is already doing? "Ever-Reflective Shard of Light" , "Doorway from heat to freedom", "Swaying of wind", these are rough translations, but a lot of them tend to refer to traits the soul accomplishes. Shard of light (now dead), for example, Literally chose the brightest aspects of an energetic situation and always pushed those back out. Literally reflecting the "light" of the area outwards. It's MY theory that a soul is actually naming itself so that it has a very, very rudimentary corrective manual. If all else fails, the soul understands that you are supposed to be like your truename. It can get confused on what that means (even language of pure intent has nuance, after all,) but it will always drift back towards that core line. This of course also explains why knowing someone's truename is so fucked. Not only is it a taglock, you have their blueprint. I don't even wanna entertain the ideas behind that one.

Below this remore is just a taglist of people I think would have fun reading this writeup, theory over

@keepers-archive @somnicity @burninghorizon @omkara-observer

[lemotmo]

Being familiar with Tim's work, this actually makes sense 😂

Q. Why would ABC care if the article acted like a Buddie spoiler though? They've been Buddie maxing since they acquired the show.

A. I don't think it was the Buddie spoiler that was the problem. It essentially was a massive Eddie spoiler. As far as the audience is concerned, at this time anyway, we only know Buck is into men. We have no canon answer regarding Eddie. Confirming Buddie is a will they/won't they spoils the Eddie outcome. ABC won't want to do that. They will want to let the episodes tell that story. The more I think on it, the article was probably always supposed to come out this week. What I think happened that actually threw off the writeup is that the episode that ended up being 8x13 wasn't originally supposed to be 8x13. I think the schedule is off by a couple of episodes. We already know that the first half of the season did not go according to schedule because first Tim extended the season premiere arc from 2 episodes to 3 episodes and then he extended the Brad nonsense. So we lost bits of storyline we otherwise would have had by now if Tim hadn't made those two decisions. The Eddie/Christopher stuff was probably supposed to have more focus in the first half of the season, and it would have made way more sense to have Eddie move at the end of the mid season finale, which was probably the original plan. ABC cutting everything a week earlier than the show expected didn't help either. But because Tim did what Tim does, and got distracted by side quests, it got pushed to the back half of the season. That explains why they had to work the Buddie parts into episodes 9 and 10, where they didn't really belong, but had to be added anyway because they have to hit certain story beats by the end of the season. I also think that's why the Eddie/Christopher reunion happened very quickly once Eddie arrived in Texas. They have to move the story progression along to be where they need to be by the end of the season. They have to be where they can use the off season to promote the Buck and Eddie relationship going into season 9, there's no way that's not the plan given what we've already seen. So yeah I don't think the Buddie part is what they were trying to keep quiet. I just think if they had been able to stick to the original episode schedule the audience would have had the Eddie answer by the end of episode 13. So the article ended up coming out earlier than the necessary Eddie information made its way to the audience. Does this make sense at all, anon? Lol.

Thank you Nonny! This is a very helpful post.

For anyone who had questions about the Deadline article: this one is for you. 🤗

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[cleolinda]

Weekend links, April 13, 2025

This week has been a hundred years long. Apparently I posted the fourth Silent Hill 2 commentary only 5 days ago, and I am already—well, rewind. The fourth video and its recaps are up, plus an extra video and a sidebar post. It's our first foray into the Otherworld and it ends with me managing to get past Pyramid Head (one does not "defeat" Pyramid Head) in two tries. Also, a beautifully staged scene with Angela, kingfisher mythology, and moth math. 

Unfortunately: OBS has decided to hate me personally and it currently records my gameplay like we're in an earthquake—not the cinematics, mind you! The cinematics look fine!—and I don't know why and I don't know how to make it stop. I have a list of potential fixes I am basically at the end of, and I will now be looking into Free Easy Recording Software That Isn't OBS in hopes of moving on with my life. As such, I don't think there's any way I can get my own commentary recorded in time to stay in step with Ian's stream this week, so I'm just gonna do a writeup of a recording that only exists in my own head. I've wanted SO BAD to get to this part of the game (please refer to picture here), I have a lot to say about it, and I do have screenshots. I'm just gonna TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENS, I GUESS.  

ANYWAY HERE'S SOME LINKSPAM

Reblogs of interest

Tumblr may or may not go down for real this time:

"If Tumblr dies, where will you go?"

How to download a backup of your Tumblr

"dreamwidth makes me feel like a baby. did you guys use to blog like this" I'm still there, Gandalf. (I need to resume crossposting there, though.)

"Tumblr yes a place for investors money put money in Tumblr can trust Tumblr user for giveing good legiticmatecy."

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To all who celebrate:

Happy Leland Melvin Day!

Happy National Unicorn Day!

Happy [Next] Bandcamp Friday is on May 2nd, 2025, on which the money you spend goes 100% to the artist.

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No, for real, "Madison" as a girl's name basically does come from the movie Splash.

"there aren’t enough posts going around about the swedish cryptid known as the skvader which is a rabbit with pheasant wings and also a very good boy."

On believing (or not) in fairies, duendes, trolls, and ghosts

An unexpected amount of Gritty this week

"No copypasta has ever ruined my life as comprehensively as Hell Fuck Castle."

Pretty sure I've reblogged this before, and I'll probably reblog it again: "One thing most people don’t realize about Gazebos is how bloodthirsty they used to be until the 1930s or so."

"As a scribe I see fit to write down all my troubles"

"Introducing Margie! A cat-goose dragon based on this little fella from this medieval manuscript"

"May I gift you: pineapple dragon?"

For all the Animorphs fans

Stories of seeing Muppets as people

"the lichen knowledge iceberg i have constructed on request"

Wait... people don't have "an intact chronological memory of life prior to age 12"?

David Lynch sure had one.

"i like to call this fate Death 2. Death 2 is the scariest thing that can happen to a person."

"poob is gonna call you. now poob is just gonna call you."

This week, it was fuckenwimdy.

Two posts that start off deep and sad and end up deep and wholesome. 

Video

Babysitting but literal (it's cats, they'll be fine)

Irish Tesco worker nails church acoustics in work stairwell

“Binary Sunset” from Star Wars, also in a stairwell

"Truly, the world is a better place for having skilled people who are willing to use their skills in the pursuit of incredible silliness."

The sacred texts

I deem this post about celebrities getting all their clothes tailored to be a Sacred Text because it has stuck with me for a very long time.

An old favorite: a compilation of "[band] sounds like [hilarity]" posts.

"Roses are red, April is grey. But in a few weeks, it's gonna be..." 

Personal tag of the week

Videos my dog did not like, a tag I've never used before but two nickels, etc. 

[olderthannetfic]

sorry what is the ayn rand in harry potter thing? isn't she that libertarian? there was harry potter fanfic promoting that? what on earth was the context lmao (not doubting you i'm just shocked)

i didn't know that there was a trend of HP snape-is-harry's-dad fics but i definitely read one of those when i was starting to get into reading fic lol. it was. incredibly bad. but also has a special place in my heart, as it was what brought me from Wattpad to AO3 (half of it was reuploaded to wattpad but not the other half so i was forced to switch)

also somehow i've never come across a forced-marriage-HP fic but maybe that's also because i generally don't read those so if i see that in the tags i click off

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I made a separate post about Pawn to Queen. I can't find any writeups that really go into the Rand thing, but I remember people talking about it.