#i don't know what to tag these writeups

[keymintt]

i don't think to mention it all that often bc i don't really. make posts just to talk on this blog all that often and also my oc blog is in my pinned post, but if anyone wants more context for my oc stuff i ramble about it over at @ichorblossoms

[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?

[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]

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

--

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.

[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.

[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").))

[busaikuknee]

a quick look back at may 2024

i got started on this early for once. character development, i suppose.

general overview and numbers

i watched 90 matches in may, 65 of which took place this month. this is…a lot more than i expected to, frankly! my sleep schedule has been kind of grim, so i ended up watching more shows live than usual. i might be sleepy, but at least i've been sports entertained.

nothing super notable to report on, though i have been backwatching quite a bit of dragongate this month. dead or alive got me bad. there's something about those cage matches, man.

most appearances throughout the month

hayata's in first place for both "matches that took place this month" and "matches i watched this month," so, fuck, i guess hayata's the Spreadsheet Champ of the Month. i wouldn't have guessed it; i feel like i've barely seen him this may, what with my Bad At Watching Tournaments disease striking halfway through best of the super juniors. i'll...catch up eventually, probably.

mumbling about matches

great sakuya and nagisa nozaki vs miyuki takase and nanashi (noah, april 1st)

starting off with one not from this month! i made a mental note to include it in last month's writeup, but realized that i left it off of the post proper right after i sent it out. unfortunate, but it's my self-indulgent summary post and i can break my "only talk about matches that happened this month" rule whenever i want, so it's making it onto this one.

anyway! short but very fun match. a blend of goofy hijinks and doing-moves wrestling that appealed to me greatly. the normal wrestler-spooky wrestler tag dynamics? the slasher movie sequence? excellent, wonderful, loved it. i've come to really enjoy nagisa nozaki, i should seek out more of her matches when i have the time.

kzy vs jason lee vs hyo vs shun skywalker vs jacky "funky" kamei (dragongate, may 5th)

i can count the number of times i've cried at something fictional on one hand. this isn't a good or bad thing, i just don't think i engage with media in a way that provokes that kind of response.

that being said, this match got me really, really close to crying. the power of love and friendship is real, maybe.

takashi sugiura vs masa kitamiya (noah, may 4th)

i'm reluctant to use this wording as i feel it sets expectations too high, but sugiura and masa had kind of a perfect ten-minute match? solid pacing, did everything it needed to, made both performers look stellar. masa rules and i just want him to have nice things. unfortunately, i also don't want him to experience head trauma, and that was not a wish granted here. my love for the single-trickle-of-blood-running-down-forehead visual is constantly at war with my feelings about shoot headbutts.

shoko nakajima vs miu watanabe (tjpw, may 5th)

i’ve been putting together a playlist of some personal highlights of 2024 wrestling to show some friends, and i am going to shuffle shit around as much as possible to make sure that this gets in there. “technical freak vs person who’s strong enough to just pick them up if they go for a hold” is a combo that always appeals to me, and since nakajima and watanabe are both excellent wrestlers, i was constantly delighted throughout the runtime. good, good stuff. while i might not cry often, i’m very soft-hearted, so the hug at the end made me Feel.

i find that it often takes a couple of matches for me to fully click with a wrestler, and i think this was the match that made me click with shoko nakajima. shokopilled bigkaijumaxxing.

kosei fujita vs el desperado (njpw, may 13th)

imagine a flame text gif reading “FUJITA ROCKS.” now imagine another, slightly different flame text gif reading “DESPERADO ALSO ROCKS BUT I THINK WE ALL KNOW THAT BY NOW.” thank you for your time.

jun akiyama vs atsushi kotoge (noah, may 29th)

my exact spreadsheet notes were "still thinking about this. what a fucking match. why were they in love here."

onward to june! while there isn't a lot that i'm super invested in storyline-wise at the moment (barring minoura and yamato's whole deal), i am looking forward to a couple of the events scheduled for this upcoming month. despe invitacional save me. save me despe invitacional.

if there was something you particularly enjoyed this may, do feel free to share! see you next month!

[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

[mlobsters]

supernatural s1e10 asylum (w. richard hatem)

(this is a rewatch, so spoilers abound)

search up, as my kids would say, what to do when your fixation takes a left turn. spn is definitely still my main thing, but i also just completely lost interest in trying to watch it again. i thought having the project of doing my little writeups for the eps i hadn't done would carry me along, like it did through the episodes/season i struggled with, but alas. not so much

lot of the little xfiles sound effect being used in this teaser bit with the cops searching the building. ps i've learned a lot about the history of abuse against disabled folks including the history of them being placed in institutions like this from imani barbarin (crutches and spice) and current disability advocacy etc; give her a follow.

dude that's a sweet little car, wonder if that's someone on the cast/crew's. in a different life i would have been down to mod my car too (i have a little 2006 black acura rsx that i love dearly)

the coloring and darkness i can't tell if that drip out of the ghostly possessed cop is blood or the black goo lol

such a pretty shot i love it and it's got that @dappermouth gothic americana vibe in spades and i kinda wanna paint it somehow. juxtaposed with the most bland boring font in the title screen lol

DEAN Caleb hasn't heard from him? SAM Nope. And neither has Jefferson or Pastor Jim. What about the journal? Anything leads in there?

thanks for the links to the characters from the transcript, wiki! trying to pay attention to what all the boys know about other hunters etc. also kind of creepy note in the caleb wiki entry: According to Jo's Journal, Jo was forced by her mother to refer to Caleb as "Uncle Caleb."

SAM After all that happened back in Kansas, I mean...he should've been there, Dean. You said so yourself. You tried to call him and...nothing. DEAN I know! (He rummages through his duffel) Where the hell is my cellphone? SAM You know, he could be dead for all we know. DEAN Don't say that! He's not dead! He's – he's... SAM He's what? He's hiding? He's busy?

the sass on the "he's busy?" made me laugh out loud

SAM (snorts) This is a job... Dad wants us to work a job. DEAN Well, maybe we'll meet up with him? Maybe he's there? SAM Maybe he's not? I mean, he could be sending us there, by ourselves, to hunt this thing. DEAN Who cares! If he wants us there, it's good enough for me! SAM This doesn't strike you as weird? The texting? The coordinates? DEAN Sam! Dad's tellin' us to go somewhere, we're goin'.

(little crispy R on weird)

SAM makes a bitchface and sighs.

okay transcriber 😂 dean's so relieved to get some orders

psst dean i think you're supposed to act at least a little mad or somethin after getting thrown around by fake-mad sam

i was trying to find a gif of dean spider monkey'ing over the chainlink fence but instead ended up in the tags of a gifset of that scene with sam shoving dean and apparently some people read this as dean was hurt (emotionally) by sam being too rough with him because he's mad about other stuff? which is 100% not what i got from his reaction. if that's what he was going for, i did not pick it up

DEAN Shoved me kinda hard in there, buddy boy.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i'd expect a "look" to be like, wtf bro? not kind of... dazed and almost smiling

well. i can't find a gif of what i was looking for and i am reminded of why i don't search for spn stuff across the site vs just a blog that i know rb's lots of gifsets. i think that's enough for tonight

i just made the gifs instead 🧍‍♂️🤸‍♂️🧍‍♂️

also realizing why watching these first season episodes is especially exhausting, there's so much backstory and and character establishing going on that i have Thoughts about damned near every scene when they're talking, so it's just a lot of me prattling on and on. it's like a book report for every episode. because if i'm gonna talk about the episode, i'm gonna Talk About the Episode.

DEAN Let me know if you see any dead people, Haley Joel. SAM Dude, enough. DEAN I'm serious. You gotta be careful, all right? Ghosts are attracted to that whole ESP thing you got going on. SAM I told you, it's not ESP! I just have strange vibes sometimes. Weird dreams. DEAN Yeah, whatever. Don't ask, don't tell.

a) you see dead people too, dean b) ->

Pride Program offers personal perspective on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ era

By Stefanie Hauck DLA Land and Maritime Public Affairs

When Jason Guthrie was in the Navy, he thrived for the first time in his life, garnering many accolades, challenging assignments and promotions. But one moment brought his upward trajectory to a screeching halt, resulting in his discharge in 1996 after four years of service. Guthrie, who served during the “don’t ask, don’t tell” era, spoke about his experiences as a gay man trying to find his way in an unaccepting world, during the 2024 Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Pride Month program June 5 at the DLA Land and Maritime Operations Center Auditorium on Defense Supply Center Columbus. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” stipulated that gay service members were not required to disclose their sexual orientation, but could still be dishonorably discharged if they were discovered to be gay.  Thousands of service members – including Guthrie - were drummed out of the service under the law until its repeal in late 2010.

... His early interactions with other closeted gay military members around him, eventually led to his acceptance that he was gay at a time when “don’t ask, don’t tell” was the new law of the land. Guthrie said at the time it all seemed so straight forward. “You don’t ask me, I don’t tell you,” he said about the law. “It seemed to make perfect sense to me but many of my fellow closeted service members did not agree with that compromise. So, we all did the best we could to live our lives and pursue our military careers.” He focused on his work and was determined to be the best sailor that he could be. And by keeping social distractions to a minimum, he thrived in his early Navy career being promoted often and receiving many awards while working in strategy and policy for the chief of Naval Operations at the the Pentagon. ... After a tour in Bahrain, where he worked as an awards writer for the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, he arrived at his last duty station in 1996 at a low point after ending his first serious relationship prior to rotating back to the United States. “I was in the U.S. military and in the closet,” he said, “I knew I would need to transfer again, and he would not be able to join me.” What would be his last assignment was challenging for him in many ways. He had a roommate again after living independently for a while, and the people he worked with resented his rapid rise in rank and his previous ‘cushy’ assignments. “I was in a low mental state and had a hard time connecting with people,” he said.  This is where he said he made the biggest mistake of his military life by inviting someone into his room while his roommate was away at work. He thought it would be OK to do so because his roommate who was a flight mechanic was on a different shift. However, his roommate did show up while he had that individual in his room. “That’s when I heard a sound I’ll never forget. A key entering the door lock,” Guthrie said. His roommate did not say a word, went about his business and left while Guthrie and the individual were hiding under the bed covers. “I went to work the next day thanking God I dodged that bullet,” he said, “But my relief was soon replaced with fear when I was called into the command master chief’s office a few days later.” That conversation revolved around working out the issue with his roommate, but the impasse was so great it was reported to the unit’s legal office, resulting in several rounds of questioning until Guthrie admitted that there was another man in his room and that he was gay.   The next four months were torturous for Guthrie, while he went through the process of getting discharged from the Navy.

i was gonna include some history of DADT but i think this story is more important. the policy only ended in 2011. i know don't ask don't tell was a common punchline for many years, i'm the same age as them, i get it. i also think it's gross. it's that casual homophobia of the time period where people are sort of more openly chill about queer people theoretically, but they're still a joke. and the joke here i guess is sam's psychic stuff is freaking dean out and he doesn't want to hear it? but he's the one that brought it up. whatever, man.

(wikipedia) After the policy was introduced in 1993, the military discharged over 13,000 troops from the military under DADT.[111][231][232] ... In September 2021, on the 10th anniversary of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, President Joe Biden announced that the Veterans Administration would start providing benefits for service members who received other-than-honorable discharges (before DADT was enacted and while it was in effect) because of their sexual orientation.[215]

anyway. sigh.

DEAN Hey Sam, who do you think is the hotter psychic: Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Love Hewitt, or you? SAM pushes DEAN, who laughs.

so we gotta round it out with a little bit of calling sam a girl, of course. people call this flirting, i call it teasing with sort of a rotten core of a joke. i have a tag for it, as i go through the rewatch - the more overt (to me) things about masculinity/gender policing in the show. i think i miss some of that stuff. hey fellas, is it girly to have psychic powers

DEAN Man. Electro-shock. Lobotomies. They did some twisted stuff to these people. Kinda like my man Jack in Cuckoo's Nest. (makes crazy eyes and grins at SAM)

at least his impression bombed :p (my mental check: jack nicholson is the actor, jack nicklaus is the golfer; showing my age, natch)

i don't mean to pick on dean. just unfortunately the writers saddled him with most of the ~problematic~ lines. this is another case where i tend to zoom out and blame the writing and mentally keep it a little separated from the character. which isn't fair but it allows me to continue liking him :p and i'll even give that okay, so he was more homophobic as a character at this age in this time period and he grew past it. which he did, mostly. but then they'll have something like the 8x23 thing and then i squarely blame the writers (and honestly probably jackles too) and keep it separate from dean entirely because it's inconsistent to him at that point and nonsensical.

woof. shut up, bro.

SAM Dean. When are we going to talk about it? DEAN Talk about what? SAM About the fact Dad's not here. DEAN Oh. I see. How ’bout...never. SAM I'm being serious, man. He sent us here... DEAN So am I, Sam. Look, he sent us here, he obviously wants us here. We'll pick up the search later. SAM It doesn't matter what he wants. DEAN See. That attitude? Right there? That is why I always get the extra cookie. SAM Dad could be in trouble, we should be looking for him. We deserve some answers, Dean. I mean, this is our family we're talking about. DEAN I understand that, Sam, but he's given us an order. SAM So what, we gotta always follow Dad's orders? DEAN Of course we do.

i know you'll come around, dean, but let that simmer for a second. that's fucked up.

laughing at the idea that you could get a same day/next day appointment with a psychiatrist even in 2005

not in his usual little sneakers. kinda look like hush puppies or the like. but then his boots were slip ons too, once he moved to those. and jared still wears some of his old spn boots lol, mentioned at a con recently

huh! another actual brand. men's health magazine and that looks like.. damon from tvd? on the cover? oh, funny, it's seann william scott (the only way i dredged that one up after finding a picture was thinking he might have been with kutcher in dude, where's my car? [he was])

our generation (myself included) loves a long sleeve under short sleeve shirt

ELLICOTT You. Now I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you all about the Roosevelt riot, if you tell me something honest about yourself. Like, uh, this brother you're road tripping with. How do you feel about him? DEAN Dude! You were in there forever. What the hell were you talking about?

to be a fly on that wall. that said, i have faith in sam's abilities to bullshit well enough that doctor man buys his story. or maybe he took the opportunity to rant consequence-free, who knows!

hey sammy's got the camcorder out at the hospital, like they used in bloody mary? i thought that was a one and done (they may have used it since and i didn't notice/think about it too)

SAM This place is orbing like crazy.

IT'S ORBIN' TIME! haha also apparently only mentioned in this episode. but it did get a wiki entry because it was in the official website definition thing

KAT And Dean? He's your boss? SAM No.

partners, baby

brooke nevin / sydney sweeney

she reminds me of sydney sweeney a bit. pretty, blonde hair, with big eyes and similarly shaped mouth. apparently brooke nevin was one of the kids in the animorphs tv show? i didn't read those books, they were after my time. i got one or two for my kids but my oldest was very meh so i haven't gotten any others

nicholas d'agosto / tom welling in smallville

and the boy (nicholas d'agosto) who i, for whatever reason, think he looks like smallville version clark kent in this episode (having literally never watched smallville and only seen commercials) was harvey dent in the gotham tv show. which i also didn't watch! i don't watch many things. LOL which i conflated with the show misha was on. gotham... knights? haha. oh, and misha was harvey dent. that's even funnier

KAT My dad took me skeet shooting a couple times.

girl, me too! and my brother worked at the trap and skeet range in high school in az. iirc he was working in the little house that launches the clay targets

DEAN Yeah. They were rioting against Dr. Ellicott. Dr. Feelgood was working on some sort of, like, extreme rage therapy. He thought that if he could get his patients to vent their anger then they would be cured of it. Instead it only made them worse and worse and angrier and angrier. So I'm thinking, what if his spirit is doing the same thing? To the cop? To the kids in the seventies, making them so angry they become homicidal.... Come on, we gotta find his bones and torch ’em.

okay, i had forgotten this was the explanation to why sam says what he says in a minute. 📝

so i guess it was just drippy nose blood from the cop at the start, since it's not possession it's.... whatever brain zappy mind meld the evil doctor ghost man did. gotta have some indicator that sammy's under the influence too

DEAN We gotta burn Ellicott's bones and all this will be over, and you'll be back to normal. SAM I am normal. I'm just telling the truth for the first time. I mean, why are we even here? ’Cause you're following Dad's orders like a good little solider? Because you always do what he says without question? Are you that desperate for his approval? DEAN This isn't you talking, Sam. SAM That's the difference between you and me. I have a mind of my own. I'm not pathetic, like you. DEAN So what are you gonna do, huh? Are you gonna kill me? SAM You know what, I am sick of doing what you tell me to do. We're no closer to finding Dad today than we were six months ago. DEAN Well, then here. Let me make it easier for you. Come on. Take it. Real bullets are gonna work a hell of a lot better than rock salt. Take it!! DEAN You hate me that much? You think you could kill your own brother? Then go ahead. Pull the trigger. Do it! DEAN Man, I'm not going to give you a loaded pistol!

just thinking about how the premise is basically taking existing anger and ramping it up to the nth degree, and what the implications are of that in this. we know sam is independent and doesn't like being told what to do (relatable), and is very frustrated with dean's willingness to follow dad's orders instead of defying them in a more concentrated effort to track him down. playing dad's game of him sending them on hunts through the most ridiculous methods possible. i'd be pretty damned frustrated too. and i also understand, but have a harder time relating to, where dean's coming from. he was raised in a way that he understood from a way too young age that following orders was a matter of life or death, and that he had to keep sam safe, he had the burden and responsibility laid on his little kid shoulders. i can only imagine how hard it would be to break away from that lifetime of conditioning.

so that said, just thinking about how dean would reconcile this. trying to think about it without considering what we know about how dean feels and what he's worried about later, and just what we know at this point. but it's hard to think about it without considering the conversation in 1x16 where he lets his guard down and pretty much begs sam to stay with him and dad instead of going back to school when it's all over. in the pilot, he says he can't do it alone - which sam says yes he can - but dean says he doesn't want to. so we know he missed sam and wants them to be a family and partners. but at this point sam still is scrabbling for normalcy and independence and for this to be a short term situation.

so i guess my question to myself is, do i think this planted more seeds of doubt for dean that sam doesn't care about him the same way dean does. but we've got 1x12 faith coming up soon, which should tell dean something about sam's commitment to him. not enough to soothe his concerns, obviously, and even if sam's ready to trade someone else's life for dean's without a moment of concern, he still doesn't want to stay hunting long term with dean at that point. tough situation. when staying with your person means also having to do this horrible life-risking job with virtually no option for settling down, having a family, stability, safety and comfort.

(at which point i think about how they do eventually get most of that, but then dean dies and sam has to go on without him for so long and i get incredibly sad again. when the happy ending makes you cry every time you think about it for more than 5 seconds... i've gotten a lot out of fixating on this show but occasionally i wish i hadn't)

gives him a pat and apologizes for knocking him out

dean boot update: still not the logger boots

and for inexplicable reasons, evil doctor ghost man turns into a statue and breaks apart on the floor when his bones are burned lol as opposed to the standard ghost burning up sitch

crawled over to take refuge/(literally) protect sam's ass from crumbling ghost statue haha

SAM I'm sorry, man. I said some awful things back there. DEAN You remember all that? SAM Yeah. It's like I couldn't control it. But I didn't mean it, any of it. DEAN You didn't, huh? SAM No, of course not. Do we need to talk about this? DEAN No. I'm not really in the sharing and caring kinda mood. I just wanna get some sleep.

i mean, yes, you need to talk about it. and it kind of breaks my heart. dean is a mess. he only has had two points of stability in life, and sam left for 4 years and then john ghosted him. so he's twisting in the wind, trying to hold on to sam who is looking to leave as soon as possible, and the uncertainty of what's going to happen with john... it's just all so miserable.

so for the second time we get sam on the brink of freaking out over the nonsense of the no contact/cryptic contact from john and then john comes through with something. a message before, a phone call now. iirc jdm too was frustrated over what an ass he was being dodging the kids constantly

Throughout the season, Morgan became frustrated at times due to his character's avoidance of his sons, stating, "It pissed off everybody, it pissed off us as actors, it pissed off the audience watching, because none of us really knew where we were gonna go." However, he reasoned that John's motivation for his actions was due to having knowledge that nobody else had.[25]

you'd think i was getting paid by the letter to write these damned things. good grief.

[puellafuriadarkmagica]

So I talked about this during the end-of-chapter notes this last update, but I'm gonna be rereading PFDM myself pretty soon. I guess it'd be reasonable to figure out a game plan before charging into that.

What'll probably happen is that each chapter will get one post dedicated to it, otherwise trawling through this blog's backlog for whatever reason is going to be a huge headache. If I can get some good momentum going, I'll put a link on the blog's link list itself like I do with the retrospectives. Odds are I'll be tagging these posts #pfdm reread, and the link will let you see them all in chronological order. If it's the future and I've already done this, awesome! Hi! Welcome to the top of the tag!

Now this is not some little HTML septic tank I've haphazardly thrown together in Neocities or some crap - this is Tumblr. If you want to turn my thoughts into a conversation, toss in your own ideas here and there, disagree with me on something and want me to see your point of view or whatever, go ahead. I've got replies turned on, I've got my ask inbox open, I'm all ears. If you've glanced in or, God rest you, used the comment section on the AO3 version of the story, you know I have a tendency to talk incessantly in response to people's off-the-cuff comments.

If you're here from the FanFiction.net version, ignore the above. It's probably nothing to worry about, you'll be fiiiiine.

OTHER THINGS OF NOTE:

This will probably be less in-depth, but cover a lot more ground than the end-of-part writeups (in some parts of which I have deliberately lied to you, dear reader). If I like what I write here a lot more (and am either more honest or come up with more interesting lies) then this might take the place of those. Not sure though.

I'll also be talking about part 3 as I get to it, which doesn't have its own writeup yet, and the book clubs, which I've kind of avoided talking about because Come On What Am I Supposed To Say About Those.

All in all this is just generally going to be the most casually I've talked about PFDM, so maybe, if I'm caught at a particularly lax juncture, I'll show you cut and removed things, which parts of the story I feel pretty weak on, unfinished side stuff I think is cool, bits and pieces of my process... in all this is going to be a real look behind the curtain. If you're following this blog and appreciate the mystique, I'm gonna be putting the body of each reread post under a "read more" button, so just... don't click that.

That should be everything? See you all whenever I start doing this. You know, instead of actually working on the next chapter.

[spaceorphan18]

I was wondering how you felt about the centralization of fandom. I feel like now, I'm so used to hop on AO3 that as soon as I'm looking for something I might not find there, like meta, theories or simply fics for an older (related to AO3) fandom like Glee, I don't have a clue anymore where to look for them. I never used LiveJournal so I don't have the habit of checking it out. FFNET feels obsolete after spending so much time on AO3, and as for Tumblr... the search function is a mess (and I dislike the fact that so many people post fanfics directly in text posts, of course they do what they want but it's frustrating to search for like analysis or simple thoughts and only find docs).

Fanlore is often lacking (although I worked myself on filling some stuff a few times).

I was used to HP being my main fandom: it had its own very charming fan websites with tons of content that often still exist, but are different somehow.

So I guess my question is actually several questions:

- what do you think of fandom being generally more centralized nowadays

- where do you go if you seek stuff like writeups (AO3 allows them but doesn't feature so much of them, but I know the Glee fandom was THRIVING and full of stuff,I guess the waves of mass post deletions are part of the issue)?

- finally, how are you? 🤗 I'm always happy to see your posts on my dash even if my Glee hyperfixation has come and gone

Sorry, it may be a confusing post 😂 Too much stuff going on

Hmm - I guess I wonder what you mean by more centralized? Like that we find everything in one place? Do we find everything in one placed? I guess I'm a little confused (but I often am)

What do you mean by write ups? Do you mean things like meta and analysis? I just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly.

If I'm being honest, my relationship with media has changed and I'm not necessarily seeking out fandoms to engage with. (This is not a denouncement of fandom at all! Just that I'm busier and how I interact with things just is different now) I haven't hyperfixed on anything since Glee - and I'm okay with that.

I don't really know where people can go /now/ to dig into fandoms. I think Discord is one of the places - but you almost have to be engaged already and invited into one. I don't know where people are putting their thoughts and feelings these days.

For me - I listen to a lot of podcasts now (as well as YouTube) where I can hear people's takes on such things, but I can't necessarily engage with it (I mean, I suppose commenting is a thing but it's not my thing) and that seems to fulfill a lot of my desire to hear someone else's thoughts.

And, I mean, I've made a group of good friends on Tumblr that if I want a more personalized discussion on something I'll hit one of them up and spark a convo. (Of course I have people not on the internet with whom I do that, too.)

But I can see where it can be hard for someone who is just starting out on their fandom journey to find a place where they can really dig in with others. Tumblr would be nicer if it was more organized and if tagging did actually work.

And, you know, I kinda treat Tumblr like a journal - and just create my own content. I'm not necessarily writing for all of you, but to sort things out in my own mind. Having people read and enjoy my thoughts is just an added bonus. ;)

I'm not sure if I've answered or addressed all of your thoughts - but hopefully, some of that makes sense?

In the mean time, I am doing well. I'm in a better place personally, which is nice, because then I can get back to all the fun projects I enjoyed before the year of my mental health crisis. Hope you are well yourself! <3

[birbs-in-space]

hey fellow californians, we've our primary elections due in a month's time, and given how important the upcoming presidential election can stand to be for the everyday realities of people globally, it's a good idea to know what your options are and what you can do heading into the voting cycle.

(also if you're against electoralism, please remember that we will be voting for more local positions/that one proposition as well and these things can have a profound impact of peoples' day to day material well-being. it really doesn't take a lot of effort to vote in the grand scheme of things.)

for those interested in voting in the presidential primaries, if you are registered with a party, you will receive a ballot for that party's primary. I believe you can only vote in one party's primary.

if you're registered NPP (no party preference) you will not receive a ballot with presidential candidates, but you can request a ballot for a party with an open primary

these are the parties:

american independent (far right party that many people are mis-registered under) (open)

democratic (open)

green (closed)

libertarian (open)

peace and freedom (closed)

republican (closed)

source

you have until Feb 20 to change what party you're registered with. depending on what county you're in, your ballot might have been sent out if you vote by mail. if you re-register to vote after your ballot has been sent, it should be fairly easy to contact your local registrar of voters to request a different party ballot by phone or email.

you can register to vote here

—

the PFP (peace and freedom party) is a california-only party, but it often works with the PSL (party for socialism and liberation) which is active nationally. in california, there's a significant overlap in membership between the two. the PSL has nominated claudia de la cruz for the PFP california primary. you can learn more about her, her vice president (karina garcia) and their platform on their website here.

(for the record, I'm not a member of the PSL, and as a political anarchist* i don't agree with all of their policies, so this isn't like an official endorsement of everything they believe in. however, the purpose of their campaign is both to run and also to try to raise awareness for and educate people on leftist politics.)

I know less about jasmine sherman, but their website here has a detailed and comprehensive breakdown of a lot of their policies. i'm not the best person to speak on this, but I found their disability policies to be promising, especially since disability advocacy is often left out of presidential electoral discussions, and they have a lot to say on the matter.

(I'm not going to tell you who to vote for or what to do, but I figured I could pass on what's been passed on to me so that you all can make your own decisions, especially since information about this is somewhat sparse in the mainstream. I wouldn't know all this if someone hadn't told it to me directly. remember, this post is specifically about the primary. voting in the November presidential election will be more divisive, but we're not there yet.)

—

finally, I've found the PFP's voter guide to be really helpful, especially when it comes to breaking down information about propositions. you can get a perspective outside of the two included in the official voter guide. you can find it here and a slightly longer writeup on Prop 1 here. voters guide posts are generally collected under this tag.

please do not take this post as a voters guide or an endorsement of anything.

*I don't talk a lot about this specifically online because I don't think it's helpful or productive nor do I think I'm particularly well suited to debate. I usually try to express my politics through my actions where I can, and if I waited for people who I agreed with 100% of the time, then I'd never actually get to help make any sort of meaningful positive change. that comment is supposed to be more of like a disclaimer.

for instance, I'm a prison abolitionist, and neither of the two candidates I mentioned are.

this post is strictly meant to be informative. I'm registered PFP so I'll be voting in that primary. I didn't know before this year how requesting a different ballot even worked and spent a lot of time registered NPP so I wasn't voting in any primaries. before that I was in misinformed american independent limbo. so. knowledge is power

if you somehow made it all the way down here and have specific questions, i guess you can dm me ? idk if I'm the right person to ask but awareness of things is not an inconsiderable amount of the battle. I don't see a lot of DM notifs right away though. also I genuinely don't expect anyone to see this though so if you're reading this and you're like haha this fool thinks people are going to see this. well. no. this post isn't even well formatted and I typed it up on mobile. but it doesn't hurt to cover my ass lmao even if I'm sure it won't leave. like. my blog.

[olderthannetfic]

Escapade Dance Party 2023 Writeup 1/3

Seeing as Escapade Online is coming up this weekend, I suppose I should finally write up some stuff about last in-person con that I never got around to.

I don't usually bother with a full con report, but I do like writing up the dance party. Instead of just playing music, I do a playlist of vids that we project on the wall. It's a small con, somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and thirty, generally, so I don't bother to ask permission. (This is also why we don't broadcast or redistribute the dance party in any way or do one for the online con.)

Escapade is a venerable con. In fact, it's the oldest still-running slash con. Back in the 90s, people would come here to find out what was going on in fandom that year, get pimped into the latest fandoms, find out about new zines. Fandom moves a lot faster now: between when we decide on panels and when the con happens, a whole movie fandom could have risen and fallen. Still, it's as easy as ever to feel out of touch, just for different reasons than in the 90s.

I want people to come away from the dance party feeling like they've heard of some of the Next Hot Things. It's also a great opportunity to cover some of attendees' own fandoms that may not end up in the main vidshow. As a vidder, I despise cons that try to make the main vidshow purely audience-focused and just about whatever ships are big. A con like that sees vidders as providers of entertainment, not fellow fans and attendees. But a con that honors vidders' actual current interests is a con with a vidshow full of weird fandoms of one and glaring gaps in what older fandoms are included. So having another curated show, like this dance party, is a nice way to bridge that gap.

The party is essentially like an enormous mixtape. It's a chance for me to make thematic links between vids and to inflict music I actually want to dance to onto a captive audience. Each discrete vidding community tends to have extremely boring taste in music. Sorry, not sorry. And for dance music, this is even worse. I often can't find what I'm looking for, but I can try.

Every year, I begin by looking at attendees' profiles on the Escapade site, filtering the m/m tag on AO3 for what's been active in the past year, and browsing around until I come up with a list of fandoms of interest. Fandoms that people suggested Escapade panels for also go on the list. These may be the big ones, but there are usually a lot of idiosyncratic options since it's a small con. It doesn't matter if Steve/Bucky is big if nobody at this con is going to care.

I set up my spreadsheet for my epic vid search: This involves not only sheets for my fandom list but vocabulary lists for searching: Слэш, 燃, etc.

After that, I go through the past year of the AO3 'fanvids' tag and maybe the 'amv' one, looking for interesting vids. They need to be at least somewhat danceable and 2-5 minutes without a ton of show audio. That's easier to find on AO3 than Youtube at large, but it still knocks out most vids I open everything, put the playhead to the middle of the vid, and test the sound. If I hear something viable, I go back and watch the vid. But if too many people I know have kudosed, I take it off the list since people have seen it already. For this step, I don't care about fandom, just about the vid being interesting and preferably slashy. (Yes, this is how I fell into Beyond Evil.)

After that, I start looking on Youtube and Bilibili, fandom by fandom, ship by ship. Some fandoms I never do find. They're just too unpopular with vidders. Some I find, but only a ship I have banned. I have a lifetime ban on Klance, for example. Anything too redolent of antis goes on the banned list. Anything with surprise tentacles is a shoo-in.

I also have some other rules for myself that I've developed over the years. I want at least a couple of vids with women, preferably f/f. Escapade is more m/m-focused, but a lot of attendees are queer and/or ship f/f as well. The show must have at least a vid or two that focuses on somebody other than white or East Asian characters. I mostly avoid vidders who are well known to people who attend the US slash/Media Fandom/vidding type cons unless I really cannot fill a particular fandom need elsewhere. I especially try to avoid vids that have already shown at other cons recently, though depending on how they're labeled, I may screw that one up. I've been more and more strict about this over time. I find a lot of vidding communities pretty incestuous, so this is a chance to shake things up.

A big one that surprises some people is that I try to avoid most multifandom vids and many ensemble vids. This one is negotiable depending on the vid, but I find that there's a distasteful pattern where a juggernaut will be deemed worthy of taking up a whole slot for itself with just a focus on the one ship while other things are relegated to an Awesome Ladies compilation. Those vids are fantastic in isolation, but if you play a lot of them together in a vidshow, let alone a vidshow that's a dark, noisy dance party, they all blend together into mush. A great ship vid or single character study, on the other hand, still manages to grab people. If you aren't willing to say "This ship gets the Star Wars/MCU/etc. slot, not that ship", what are you actually saying?

I try to find a fresh choice for any fandom that has been directly requested (so pretty much just Sentinel) and any where I know some attendees are mostly or only in that one fandom (The Professionals).

Of course, I can only play what people have already made, and this is a dance party, so sometimes, there just aren't any choices. I do shoehorn in a couple of not-very danceable vids most years, but they can only go right before or after the intermission or right at the end, so the number has to be limited.

One thing I don't always care about is the strictest standards of "quality" in a snobby vidder sense. Not only do different communities have different standards for what counts, but I'm more interested in novelty or great music. I won't play anything I think is terrible, but I'll take a B+ vid by a rando to an A+ song over an A+ vid that everyone's already seen.

For 2023's con, I decided the party should have a theme of vampires since I had guessed—incorrectly— that the new Interview with the Vampire show would be the latest hot thing everyone was talking about. In retrospect, I should have picked mafia for Kinnporsche and Gonchraov. At least vampires gave me good decorating ideas for cheesy fake candles and black spiderweb-draped tables.

It also sent me looking for goth club music, which I did find to some extent, but between who didn't attend this year and how awesome the cocktail party outside was, we got much less action on the dance floor than usual. (Excuse you! That music is totally danceable! "Drunken tai chi" as we used to say!)

At least my themed cocktail list was a hit. As an annoying cocktail nerd, it infuriates me when people just take a famous drink and slap a fannish name on it, so I insist on making a fannish cocktail list I find respectable.

Playlist in a moment.

[imreallyloveleee]

i watched 4x03 yesterday and while much of it has already fled from my memory, as all episodes of riverdale do, i still have Thoughts:

- you know, rewatching these episodes knowing what goes down in 4x17, you actually do see that there’s some hint of romantic longing between -- lol jk, Betty could not give less of a shit about Archie and his rec center in this episode. when they’re trying to brainstorm moneymaking ideas she’s like “idk cupcakes?” and they never share the screen again.

- moving on: does it feel to anyone else like Bret moves extremely quickly from pretentious but harmless dbag to completely vitriolic asshole in this episode? like in 4x02 he’s just like “hello old sport, come enjoy our keto vegan feast” and in this episode he’s like “FUCK YOU, TRAILER TRASH” without any real explanation for why? unless it’s his reaction to Jughead being dismissive of his story, which...I guess tracks nevermind ignore this entire paragraph

- also Bret’s story: “my mother asks for help with the turkey, and i wonder, vaguely, when she’ll die.” HAHA. when the writers know what they’re doing, they know what they’re doing.

- the treatment of Donna in this episode is interesting, she gives Jughead “advice” about dealing with Bret after he walks in on her making out with Moose, and then when she wins the little story contest the background music has this very sweet, “look at quiet Donna having her Moment” feel to it. I’m truly undecided on whether they had already zeroed in on her as the ultimate villain at this point. you just never know with this dumb show.

- the early scene with Jughead & Betty saying goodbye in his dorm room is just, AHHHHHH, MY HEAAARTTTT. “you and me are in this for the long haul.” brb just gonna go drown in my own tears

- i also completely forgot that this episode ends with the two of them snuggling on the couch, it’s so CUTE my GOD

- Hiram is legitimately kind of scary/threatening in his scene with Veronica, for perhaps the first time ever

- this episode is really a lesson in how Betty Cooper Gets Shit Done. need $250k in fancy eggs? she’s on it. how about an empty bus? done. oh but what about - 4 dozen blank US passports? yeah, she’s got that too.

- that said, her own brother - her FBI agent brother - telling HER to disarm the bomb strapped to Polly may truly be the craziest thing that’s ever happened on this show

- I’ve never seen Chad Michael Murray in anything other than Riverdale, but he is really a delight in this episode. as @earthlaughsinflowersblog says: he knows what show he’s on.

- I know we’re all supposed to be excited for Toni to get more screentime in season 5...and like I’m happy for Vanessa Morgan as an actor if that does turn out to be the case, since she’s probably so fucking bored of this job, but...............you’re never going to convince me Toni is a character I want to see more of, when her reaction to finding her girlfriend sewing up a hole in her dead brother’s corpse is “omg babe WHAT are u doing right now *frowns*”

- I don’t have the energy to talk about @edgarsrocket right now