#i get to be a bit unreasonable and mean in my personal blog.

[cloudyweatherahead]

can't believe my nearly two-hour mental health blogging got interrupted by my brother calling me at 2am to ask me if i think he'll miss his late night bus

can't a girl try to achieve inner calm in peace you motherfuckers

[punisheddonjuan]

How I ditched streaming services and learned to love Linux: A step-by-step guide to building your very own personal media streaming server (V2.0: REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION)

This is a revised, corrected and expanded version of my tutorial on setting up a personal media server that previously appeared on my old blog (donjuan-auxenfers). I expect that that post is still making the rounds (hopefully with my addendum on modifying group share permissions in Ubuntu to circumvent 0x8007003B "Unexpected Network Error" messages in Windows when transferring files) but I have no way of checking. Anyway this new revised version of the tutorial corrects one or two small errors I discovered when rereading what I wrote, adds links to all products mentioned and is just more polished generally. I also expanded it a bit, pointing more adventurous users toward programs such as Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr which can be used for automating user requests and media collection.

So then, what is this tutorial? This is a tutorial on how to build and set up your own personal media server using Ubuntu as an operating system and Plex (or Jellyfin) to not only manage your media, but to also stream that media to your devices both at home and abroad anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection. This is a tutorial about how building a personal media server and stuffing it full of films, television shows and music that you acquired through indiscriminate and voracious media piracy legal methods like ripping your own physical media to disk, you’ll be free to completely ditch paid streaming services. No more will you have to pay for Disney+, Netflix, HBOMAX, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Peacock, CBS All Access, Paramount+, Crave or any other streaming service that is not named the Criterion Channel (which is actually good). If you want to watch your favourite films and television shows, you’ll have your own custom service that only features things that you want to see, and where you have control over your own files and how they’re delivered to you. And for music fans out there, both Jellyfin and Plex support music streaming, meaning you can even ditch music streaming services. Goodbye Spotify, Youtube Music, Tidal and Apple Music, welcome back unreasonably large MP3 (or FLAC) collections.

On the hardware front, I’m going to offer a few options catered towards differing budgets and media library sizes. The cost of getting a media server up and running using this guide will cost you anywhere from $450 CDN/$325 USD at the entry level to $1500 CDN/$1100 USD at the high end. My own server was priced closer to the higher figure, with much of that cost being hard drives. If that seems excessive, consider for a moment, maybe you have a roommate, a close friend, or a family member who would be willing to chip in a few bucks towards your little project provided they get a share of the bounty. This is how my server was funded. It might also be worth thinking about cost over time, how much you spend yearly on subscriptions vs. a one time cost of setting up a server. Additionally there's just the joy of being able to scream "fuck you" at all those show cancelling, movie deleting, hedge fund vampire CEOs who run the studios through denying them your money. Drive a stake through David Zaslav's heart.

On the software side I will walk you step-by-step through installing Ubuntu as your server's operating system, configuring your storage as a RAIDz array with ZFS, sharing your zpool to Windows with Samba, running a remote connection between your server and your Windows PC, and then a little about started with Plex/Jellyfin. Every terminal command you will need to input will be provided, and I even share a custom #bash script that will make used vs. available drive space on your server display correctly in Windows.

If you have a different preferred flavour of Linux (Arch, Manjaro, Redhat, Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE, CentOS, Slackware etc. et. al.) and are aching to tell me off for being basic and using Ubuntu, this tutorial is not for you. The sort of person with a preferred Linux distro is the sort of person who can do this sort of thing in their sleep. Also I don't care. This tutorial is intended for the average home computer user. This is also why we’re not using a more exotic home server solution like running everything through Docker Containers and managing it through a dashboard like Homarr or Heimdall. While such solutions are fantastic and can be very easy to maintain once you have it all set up, wrapping your brain around Docker is a whole thing in and of itself. If you do follow this tutorial and had fun putting everything together, then I would encourage you to return in a year’s time, do your research and set up everything with Docker Containers.

Lastly, this is a tutorial aimed at Windows users. Although I was a daily user of OS X for many years (roughly 2008-2023) and I've dabbled quite a bit with various Linux distributions (mostly Ubuntu and Manjaro), my primary OS these days is Windows 11. Many things in this tutorial will still be applicable to Mac users, but others (e.g. setting up shares) you will have to look up for yourself. I doubt it would be difficult to do so.

Nothing in this tutorial will require feats of computing expertise. All you will need is a basic computer literacy (i.e. an understanding of what a filesystem and directory are, and a degree of comfort in the settings menu) and a willingness to learn a thing or two. While this guide may look overwhelming at first glance, it is only because I want to be as thorough as possible. I want you to understand exactly what it is you're doing, I don't want you to just blindly follow steps. If you half-way know what you’re doing, you will be much better prepared if you ever need to troubleshoot.

Honestly, once you have all the hardware ready it shouldn't take more than a weekend to get everything up and running.

(This tutorial is just shy of seven thousand words long so the rest is under the cut.)

Step One: Choosing Your Hardware

Linux is a light weight operating system, depending on the distribution there's close to no bloat. There are recent distributions available at this very moment that will run perfectly fine on a fourteen year old i3 with 4GB of RAM. Moreover, running Plex or Jellyfin isn’t resource intensive in 90% of use cases. All this is to say, we don’t require an expensive or powerful computer. This means that there are several options available: 1) use an old computer you already have sitting around but aren't using 2) buy a used workstation from eBay, or what I believe to be the best option, 3) order an N100 Mini-PC from AliExpress or Amazon.

Note: If you already have an old PC sitting around that you’ve decided to use, fantastic, move on to the next step.

When weighing your options, keep a few things in mind: the number of people you expect to be streaming simultaneously at any one time, the resolution and bitrate of your media library (4k video takes a lot more processing power than 1080p) and most importantly, how many of those clients are going to be transcoding at any one time. Transcoding is what happens when the playback device does not natively support direct playback of the source file. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as the playback device's native resolution being lower than the file's internal resolution, or because the source file was encoded in a video codec unsupported by the playback device.

Ideally we want any transcoding to be performed by hardware. This means we should be looking for a computer with an Intel processor with Quick Sync. Quick Sync is a dedicated core on the CPU die designed specifically for video encoding and decoding. This specialized hardware makes for highly efficient transcoding both in terms of processing overhead and power draw. Without these Quick Sync cores, transcoding must be brute forced through software. This takes up much more of a CPU’s processing power and requires much more energy. But not all Quick Sync cores are created equal and you need to keep this in mind if you've decided either to use an old computer or to shop for a used workstation on eBay

Any Intel processor from second generation Core (Sandy Bridge circa 2011) onwards has Quick Sync cores. It's not until 6th gen (Skylake), however, that the cores support the H.265 HEVC codec. Intel’s 10th gen (Comet Lake) processors introduce support for 10bit HEVC and HDR tone mapping. And the recent 12th gen (Alder Lake) processors brought with them hardware AV1 decoding. As an example, while an 8th gen (Kaby Lake) i5-8500 will be able to hardware transcode a H.265 encoded file, it will fall back to software transcoding if given a 10bit H.265 file. If you’ve decided to use that old PC or to look on eBay for an old Dell Optiplex keep this in mind.

Note 1: The price of old workstations varies wildly and fluctuates frequently. If you get lucky and go shopping shortly after a workplace has liquidated a large number of their workstations you can find deals for as low as $100 on a barebones system, but generally an i5-8500 workstation with 16gb RAM will cost you somewhere in the area of $260 CDN/$200 USD.

Note 2: The AMD equivalent to Quick Sync is called Video Core Next, and while it's fine, it's not as efficient and not as mature a technology. It was only introduced with the first generation Ryzen CPUs and it only got decent with their newest CPUs, we want something cheap.

Alternatively you could forgo having to keep track of what generation of CPU is equipped with Quick Sync cores that feature support for which codecs, and just buy an N100 mini-PC. For around the same price or less of a used workstation you can pick up a Mini-PC with an Intel N100 processor. The N100 is a four-core processor based on the 12th gen Alder Lake architecture and comes equipped with the latest revision of the Quick Sync cores. These little processors offer astounding hardware transcoding capabilities for their size and power draw. Otherwise they perform equivalent to an i5-6500, which isn't a terrible CPU. A friend of mine uses an N100 machine as a dedicated retro emulation gaming system and it does everything up to 6th generation consoles just fine. The N100 is also a remarkably efficient chip, it sips power. In fact, the difference between running one of these and an old workstation could work out to hundreds of dollars a year in energy bills depending on where you live.

You can find these Mini-PCs all over Amazon or for a little cheaper on AliExpress. They range in price from $170 CDN/$125 USD for a no name N100 with 8GB RAM to $280 CDN/$200 USD for a Beelink S12 Pro with 16GB RAM. The brand doesn't really matter, they're all coming from the same three factories in Shenzen, go for whichever one fits your budget or has features you want. 8GB RAM should be enough, Linux is lightweight and Plex only calls for 2GB RAM. 16GB RAM might result in a slightly snappier experience, especially with ZFS. A 256GB SSD is more than enough for what we need as a boot drive, but going for a bigger drive might allow you to get away with things like creating preview thumbnails for Plex, but it’s up to you and your budget.

The Mini-PC I wound up buying was a Firebat AK2 Plus with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. It looks like this:

Note: Be forewarned that if you decide to order a Mini-PC from AliExpress, note the type of power adapter it ships with. The mini-PC I bought came with an EU power adapter and I had to supply my own North American power supply. Thankfully this is a minor issue as a barrel plug 30W/12V/2.5A power adapters are plentiful and can be had for $10.

Step Two: Choosing Your Storage

Storage is the most important part of our build. It is also the most expensive. Thankfully it’s also the most easily upgrade-able down the line.

For people with a smaller media collection (4TB to 8TB), a more limited budget, or who will only ever have two simultaneous streams running, I would say that the most economical course of action would be to buy a USB 3.0 8TB external HDD. Something like this one from Western Digital or this one from Seagate. One of these external drives will cost you in the area of $200 CDN/$140 USD. Down the line you could add a second external drive or replace it with a multi-drive RAIDz set up such as detailed below.

If a single external drive the path for you, move on to step three.

For people with larger media libraries (12TB+), who prefer media in 4k, or care who about data redundancy, the answer is a RAID array featuring multiple HDDs in an enclosure.

Note: If you are using an old PC or used workstatiom as your server and have the room for at least three 3.5" drives, and as many open SATA ports on your mother board you won't need an enclosure, just install the drives into the case. If your old computer is a laptop or doesn’t have room for more internal drives, then I would suggest an enclosure.

The minimum number of drives needed to run a RAIDz array is three, and seeing as RAIDz is what we will be using, you should be looking for an enclosure with three to five bays. I think that four disks makes for a good compromise for a home server. Regardless of whether you go for a three, four, or five bay enclosure, do be aware that in a RAIDz array the space equivalent of one of the drives will be dedicated to parity at a ratio expressed by the equation 1 − 1/n i.e. in a four bay enclosure equipped with four 12TB drives, if we configured our drives in a RAIDz1 array we would be left with a total of 36TB of usable space (48TB raw size). The reason for why we might sacrifice storage space in such a manner will be explained in the next section.

A four bay enclosure will cost somewhere in the area of $200 CDN/$140 USD. You don't need anything fancy, we don't need anything with hardware RAID controls (RAIDz is done entirely in software) or even USB-C. An enclosure with USB 3.0 will perform perfectly fine. Don’t worry too much about USB speed bottlenecks. A mechanical HDD will be limited by the speed of its mechanism long before before it will be limited by the speed of a USB connection. I've seen decent looking enclosures from TerraMaster, Yottamaster, Mediasonic and Sabrent.

When it comes to selecting the drives, as of this writing, the best value (dollar per gigabyte) are those in the range of 12TB to 20TB. I settled on 12TB drives myself. If 12TB to 20TB drives are out of your budget, go with what you can afford, or look into refurbished drives. I'm not sold on the idea of refurbished drives but many people swear by them.

When shopping for harddrives, search for drives designed specifically for NAS use. Drives designed for NAS use typically have better vibration dampening and are designed to be active 24/7. They will also often make use of CMR (conventional magnetic recording) as opposed to SMR (shingled magnetic recording). This nets them a sizable read/write performance bump over typical desktop drives. Seagate Ironwolf and Toshiba NAS are both well regarded brands when it comes to NAS drives. I would avoid Western Digital Red drives at this time. WD Reds were a go to recommendation up until earlier this year when it was revealed that they feature firmware that will throw up false SMART warnings telling you to replace the drive at the three year mark quite often when there is nothing at all wrong with that drive. It will likely even be good for another six, seven, or more years.

Step Three: Installing Linux

For this step you will need a USB thumbdrive of at least 6GB in capacity, an .ISO of Ubuntu, and a way to make that thumbdrive bootable media.

First download a copy of Ubuntu desktop (for best performance we could download the Server release, but for new Linux users I would recommend against the server release. The server release is strictly command line interface only, and having a GUI is very helpful for most people. Not many people are wholly comfortable doing everything through the command line, I'm certainly not one of them, and I grew up with DOS 6.0. 22.04.3 Jammy Jellyfish is the current Long Term Service release, this is the one to get.

Download the .ISO and then download and install balenaEtcher on your Windows PC. BalenaEtcher is an easy to use program for creating bootable media, you simply insert your thumbdrive, select the .ISO you just downloaded, and it will create a bootable installation media for you.

Once you've made a bootable media and you've got your Mini-PC (or you old PC/used workstation) in front of you, hook it directly into your router with an ethernet cable, and then plug in the HDD enclosure, a monitor, a mouse and a keyboard. Now turn that sucker on and hit whatever key gets you into the BIOS (typically ESC, DEL or F2). If you’re using a Mini-PC check to make sure that the P1 and P2 power limits are set correctly, my N100's P1 limit was set at 10W, a full 20W under the chip's power limit. Also make sure that the RAM is running at the advertised speed. My Mini-PC’s RAM was set at 2333Mhz out of the box when it should have been 3200Mhz. Once you’ve done that, key over to the boot order and place the USB drive first in the boot order. Then save the BIOS settings and restart.

After you restart you’ll be greeted by Ubuntu's installation screen. Installing Ubuntu is really straight forward, select the "minimal" installation option, as we won't need anything on this computer except for a browser (Ubuntu comes preinstalled with Firefox) and Plex Media Server/Jellyfin Media Server. Also remember to delete and reformat that Windows partition! We don't need it.

Step Four: Installing ZFS and Setting Up the RAIDz Array

Note: If you opted for just a single external HDD skip this step and move onto setting up a Samba share.

Once Ubuntu is installed it's time to configure our storage by installing ZFS to build our RAIDz array. ZFS is a "next-gen" file system that is both massively flexible and massively complex. It's capable of snapshot backup, self healing error correction, ZFS pools can be configured with drives operating in a supplemental manner alongside the storage vdev (e.g. fast cache, dedicated secondary intent log, hot swap spares etc.). It's also a file system very amenable to fine tuning. Block and sector size are adjustable to use case and you're afforded the option of different methods of inline compression. If you'd like a very detailed overview and explanation of its various features and tips on tuning a ZFS array check out these articles from Ars Technica. For now we're going to ignore all these features and keep it simple, we're going to pull our drives together into a single vdev running in RAIDz which will be the entirety of our zpool, no fancy cache drive or SLOG.

Open up the terminal and type the following commands:

sudo apt update

then

sudo apt install zfsutils-linux

This will install the ZFS utility. Verify that it's installed with the following command:

zfs --version

Now, it's time to check that the HDDs we have in the enclosure are healthy, running, and recognized. We also want to find out their device IDs and take note of them:

sudo fdisk -1

Note: You might be wondering why some of these commands require "sudo" in front of them while others don't. "Sudo" is short for "super user do”. When and where "sudo" is used has to do with the way permissions are set up in Linux. Only the "root" user has the access level to perform certain tasks in Linux. As a matter of security and safety regular user accounts are kept separate from the "root" user. It's not advised (or even possible) to boot into Linux as "root" with most modern distributions. Instead by using "sudo" our regular user account is temporarily given the power to do otherwise forbidden things. Don't worry about it too much at this stage, but if you want to know more check out this introduction.

If everything is working you should get a list of the various drives detected along with their device IDs which will look like this: /dev/sdc. You can also check the device IDs of the drives by opening the disk utility app. Jot these IDs down as we'll need them for our next step, creating our RAIDz array.

RAIDz is similar to RAID-5 in that instead of striping your data over multiple disks, exchanging redundancy for speed and available space (RAID-0), or mirroring your data writing by two copies of every piece (RAID-1), it instead writes parity blocks across the disks in addition to striping, this provides a balance of speed, redundancy and available space. If a single drive fails, the parity blocks on the working drives can be used to reconstruct the entire array as soon as a replacement drive is added.

Additionally, RAIDz improves over some of the common RAID-5 flaws. It's more resilient and capable of self healing, as it is capable of automatically checking for errors against a checksum. It's more forgiving in this way, and it's likely that you'll be able to detect when a drive is dying well before it fails. A RAIDz array can survive the loss of any one drive.

Note: While RAIDz is indeed resilient, if a second drive fails during the rebuild, you're fucked. Always keep backups of things you can't afford to lose. This tutorial, however, is not about proper data safety.

To create the pool, use the following command:

sudo zpool create "zpoolnamehere" raidz "device IDs of drives we're putting in the pool"

For example, let's creatively name our zpool "mypool". This poil will consist of four drives which have the device IDs: sdb, sdc, sdd, and sde. The resulting command will look like this:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde

If as an example you bought five HDDs and decided you wanted more redundancy dedicating two drive to this purpose, we would modify the command to "raidz2" and the command would look something like the following:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf

An array configured like this is known as RAIDz2 and is able to survive two disk failures.

Once the zpool has been created, we can check its status with the command:

zpool status

Or more concisely with:

zpool list

The nice thing about ZFS as a file system is that a pool is ready to go immediately after creation. If we were to set up a traditional RAID-5 array using mbam, we'd have to sit through a potentially hours long process of reformatting and partitioning the drives. Instead we're ready to go right out the gates.

The zpool should be automatically mounted to the filesystem after creation, check on that with the following:

df -hT | grep zfs

Note: If your computer ever loses power suddenly, say in event of a power outage, you may have to re-import your pool. In most cases, ZFS will automatically import and mount your pool, but if it doesn’t and you can't see your array, simply open the terminal and type sudo zpool import -a.

By default a zpool is mounted at /"zpoolname". The pool should be under our ownership but let's make sure with the following command:

sudo chown -R "yourlinuxusername" /"zpoolname"

Note: Changing file and folder ownership with "chown" and file and folder permissions with "chmod" are essential commands for much of the admin work in Linux, but we won't be dealing with them extensively in this guide. If you'd like a deeper tutorial and explanation you can check out these two guides: chown and chmod.

You can access the zpool file system through the GUI by opening the file manager (the Ubuntu default file manager is called Nautilus) and clicking on "Other Locations" on the sidebar, then entering the Ubuntu file system and looking for a folder with your pool's name. Bookmark the folder on the sidebar for easy access.

Your storage pool is now ready to go. Assuming that we already have some files on our Windows PC we want to copy to over, we're going to need to install and configure Samba to make the pool accessible in Windows.

Step Five: Setting Up Samba/Sharing

Samba is what's going to let us share the zpool with Windows and allow us to write to it from our Windows machine. First let's install Samba with the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get install samba

Next create a password for Samba.

sudo smbpswd -a "yourlinuxusername"

It will then prompt you to create a password. Just reuse your Ubuntu user password for simplicity's sake.

Note: if you're using just a single external drive replace the zpool location in the following commands with wherever it is your external drive is mounted, for more information see this guide on mounting an external drive in Ubuntu.

After you've created a password we're going to create a shareable folder in our pool with this command

mkdir /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

Now we're going to open the smb.conf file and make that folder shareable. Enter the following command.

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

This will open the .conf file in nano, the terminal text editor program. Now at the end of smb.conf add the following entry:

["foldername"]

path = /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

available = yes

valid users = "yourlinuxusername"

read only = no

writable = yes

browseable = yes

guest ok = no

Ensure that there are no line breaks between the lines and that there's a space on both sides of the equals sign. Our next step is to allow Samba traffic through the firewall:

sudo ufw allow samba

Finally restart the Samba service:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

At this point we'll be able to access to the pool, browse its contents, and read and write to it from Windows. But there's one more thing left to do, Windows doesn't natively support the ZFS file systems and will read the used/available/total space in the pool incorrectly. Windows will read available space as total drive space, and all used space as null. This leads to Windows only displaying a dwindling amount of "available" space as the drives are filled. We can fix this! Functionally this doesn't actually matter, we can still write and read to and from the disk, it just makes it difficult to tell at a glance the proportion of used/available space, so this is an optional step but one I recommend (this step is also unnecessary if you're just using a single external drive). What we're going to do is write a little shell script in #bash. Open nano with the terminal with the command:

nano

Now insert the following code:

#!/bin/bash CUR_PATH=`pwd` ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT=$(zfs get type $CUR_PATH 2>&1 > /dev/null) > /dev/null if [[ $ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT == *not\ a\ ZFS* ]] then IS_ZFS=false else IS_ZFS=true fi if [[ $IS_ZFS = false ]] then df $CUR_PATH | tail -1 | awk '{print $2" "$4}' else USED=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp used $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null AVAIL=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp available $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null TOTAL=$(($USED+$AVAIL)) > /dev/null echo $TOTAL $AVAIL fi

Save the script as "dfree.sh" to /home/"yourlinuxusername" then change the ownership of the file to make it executable with this command:

sudo chmod 774 dfree.sh

Now open smb.conf with sudo again:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Now add this entry to the top of the configuration file to direct Samba to use the results of our script when Windows asks for a reading on the pool's used/available/total drive space:

[global]

dfree command = home/"yourlinuxusername"/defree.sh

Save the changes to smb.conf and then restart Samba again with the terminal:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

Now there’s one more thing we need to do to fully set up the Samba share, and that’s to modify a hidden group permission. In the terminal window type the following command:

usermod -a -G sambashare “yourlinuxusername”

Then restart samba again:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

If we don’t do this last step, everything will appear to work fine, and you will even be able to see and map the drive from Windows and even begin transferring files, but you'd soon run into a lot of frustration. As every ten minutes or so a file would fail to transfer and you would get a window announcing “0x8007003B Unexpected Network Error”. This window would require your manual input to continue the transfer with the file next in the queue. And at the end it would reattempt to transfer whichever files failed the first time around. 99% of the time they’ll go through that second try, but this is still all a major pain in the ass. Especially if you’ve got a lot of data to transfer or you want to step away from the computer for a while.

It turns out samba can act a little weirdly with the higher read/write speeds of RAIDz arrays and transfers from Windows, and will intermittently crash and restart itself if this group option isn’t changed. Inputting the above command will prevent you from ever seeing that window.

The last thing we're going to do before switching over to our Windows PC is grab the IP address of our Linux machine. Enter the following command:

hostname -I

This will spit out this computer's IP address on the local network (it will look something like 192.168.0.x), write it down. It might be a good idea once you're done here to go into your router settings and reserving that IP for your Linux system in the DHCP settings. Check the manual for your specific model router on how to access its settings, typically it can be accessed by opening a browser and typing http:\\192.168.0.1 in the address bar, but your router may be different.

Okay we’re done with our Linux computer for now. Get on over to your Windows PC, open File Explorer, right click on Network and click "Map network drive". Select Z: as the drive letter (you don't want to map the network drive to a letter you could conceivably be using for other purposes) and enter the IP of your Linux machine and location of the share like so: \\"LINUXCOMPUTERLOCALIPADDRESSGOESHERE"\"zpoolnamegoeshere"\. Windows will then ask you for your username and password, enter the ones you set earlier in Samba and you're good. If you've done everything right it should look something like this:

You can now start moving media over from Windows to the share folder. It's a good idea to have a hard line running to all machines. Moving files over Wi-Fi is going to be tortuously slow, the only thing that’s going to make the transfer time tolerable (hours instead of days) is a solid wired connection between both machines and your router.

Step Six: Setting Up Remote Desktop Access to Your Server

After the server is up and going, you’ll want to be able to access it remotely from Windows. Barring serious maintenance/updates, this is how you'll access it most of the time. On your Linux system open the terminal and enter:

sudo apt install xrdp

Then:

sudo systemctl enable xrdp

Once it's finished installing, open “Settings” on the sidebar and turn off "automatic login" in the User category. Then log out of your account. Attempting to remotely connect to your Linux computer while you’re logged in will result in a black screen!

Now get back on your Windows PC, open search and look for "RDP". A program called "Remote Desktop Connection" should pop up, open this program as an administrator by right-clicking and selecting “run as an administrator”. You’ll be greeted with a window. In the field marked “Computer” type in the IP address of your Linux computer. Press connect and you'll be greeted with a new window and prompt asking for your username and password. Enter your Ubuntu username and password here.

If everything went right, you’ll be logged into your Linux computer. If the performance is sluggish, adjust the display options. Lowering the resolution and colour depth do a lot to make the interface feel snappier.

Remote access is how we're going to be using our Linux system from now, barring edge cases like needing to get into the BIOS or upgrading to a new version of Ubuntu. Everything else from performing maintenance like a monthly zpool scrub (this is important!!!) to checking zpool status and updating software can all be done remotely.

This is how my server lives its life now, happily humming and chirping away on the floor next to the couch in a corner of the living room.

Step Seven: Plex Media Server/Jellyfin

Okay we’ve got all the ground work finished and our server is almost up and running. We’ve got Ubuntu up and running, our storage array is primed, we’ve set up remote connections and sharing, and maybe we’ve moved over some of favourite movies and TV shows.

Now we need to decide on the media server software to use which will stream our media to us and organize our library. For most people I’d recommend Plex. It just works 99% of the time. That said, Jellyfin has a lot to recommend it by too, even if it is rougher around the edges. Some people run both simultaneously, it’s not that big of an extra strain. I do recommend doing a little bit of your own research into the features each platform offers, but as a quick run down, consider some of the following points:

Plex is closed source and is funded through PlexPass purchases while Jellyfin is open source and entirely user driven. This means a number of things: for one, Plex requires you to purchase a “PlexPass” (purchased as a one time lifetime fee $159.99 CDN/$120 USD or paid for on a monthly or yearly subscription basis) in order to access to certain features, like hardware transcoding (and we want hardware transcoding) or automated intro/credits detection and skipping. jellyfish features for free. On the other hand, Plex supports a lot more devices than Jellyfin and updates more frequently. That said Jellyfin's Android/iOS apps are completely free, while the Plex Android/iOS apps must be activated for a one time cost of $6 CDN/$5 USD. But that $6 fee gets you a mobile app that is much more functional and features a unified UI across Android and iOS platforms, the Plex mobile apps are simply a more polished experience. The Jellyfin apps are a bit of a mess and the iOS and Android versions are very different from each other.

Jellyfin’s actual media player itself is more fully featured than Plex's, but on the other hand Jellyfin's UI, library customization and automatic media tagging really pale in comparison to Plex. Streaming your music library is free through both Jellyfin and Plex, but Plex offers the PlexAmp app for dedicated music streaming which boasts a number of fantastic features, unfortunately some of those fantastic features require a PlexPass. If your internet is down, Jellyfin can still do local streaming, while Plex can fail to play files. Jellyfin has a slew of neat niche features like support for Comic Book libraries with the .cbz/.cbt file types, but then Plex offers some free ad-supported TV and films, they even have a free channel that plays nothing but Classic Doctor Who.

Ultimately it's up to you, I settled on Plex because although some features are pay-walled, it just works. It's more reliable and easier to use, and a one-time fee is much easier to swallow than a subscription. I do also need to mention that Jellyfin does take a little extra bit of tinkering to get going in Ubuntu, you’ll have to set up process permissions, so if you're more tolerant to tinkering, Jellyfin might be up your alley and I’ll trust that you can follow their installation and configuration guide. For everyone else, I recommend Plex.

So pick your poison: Plex or Jellyfin.

Note: The easiest way to download and install either of these packages in Ubuntu is through Snap Store.

After you've installed one (or both), opening either app will launch a browser window into the browser version of the app allowing you to set all the options server side.

The process of adding creating media libraries is essentially the same in both Plex and Jellyfin. You create a separate libraries for Television, Movies, and Music and add the folders which contain the respective types of media to their respective libraries. The only difficult or time consuming aspect is ensuring that your files and folders follow the appropriate naming conventions:

Plex naming guide for Movies

Plex naming guide for Television

Jellyfin follows the same naming rules but I find their media scanner to be a lot less accurate and forgiving than Plex. Once you've selected the folders to be scanned the service will scan your files, tagging everything and adding metadata. Although I find do find Plex more accurate, it can still erroneously tag some things and you might have to manually clean up some tags in a large library. (When I initially created my library it tagged the 1963-1989 Doctor Who as some Korean soap opera and I needed to manually select the correct match after which everything was tagged normally.) It can also be a bit testy with anime (especially OVAs) be sure to check TVDB to ensure that you have your files and folders structured and named correctly. If something is not showing up at all, double check the name.

Once that's done, organizing and customizing your library is easy. You can set up collections, grouping items together to fit a theme or collect together all the entries in a franchise. You can make playlists, and add custom artwork to entries. It's fun setting up collections with posters to match, there are even several websites dedicated to help you do this like PosterDB. As an example, below are two collections in my library, one collecting all the entries in a franchise, the other follows a theme.

My Star Trek collection, featuring all eleven television series, and thirteen films.

My Best of the Worst collection, featuring sixty-nine films previously showcased on RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst. They’re all absolutely terrible and I love them.

As for settings, ensure you've got Remote Access going, it should work automatically and be sure to set your upload speed after running a speed test. In the library settings set the database cache to 2000MB to ensure a snappier and more responsive browsing experience, and then check that playback quality is set to original/maximum. If you’re severely bandwidth limited on your upload and have remote users, you might want to limit the remote stream bitrate to something more reasonable, just as a note of comparison Netflix’s 1080p bitrate is approximately 5Mbps, although almost anyone watching through a chromium based browser is streaming at 720p and 3mbps. Other than that you should be good to go. For actually playing your files, there's a Plex app for just about every platform imaginable. I mostly watch television and films on my laptop using the Windows Plex app, but I also use the Android app which can broadcast to the chromecast connected to the TV. Both are fully functional and easy to navigate, and I can also attest to the OS X version being equally functional.

Part Eight: Finding Media

Now, this is not really a piracy tutorial, there are plenty of those out there. But if you’re unaware, BitTorrent is free and pretty easy to use, just pick a client (qBittorrent is the best) and go find some public trackers to peruse. Just know now that all the best trackers are private and invite only, and that they can be exceptionally difficult to get into. I’m already on a few, and even then, some of the best ones are wholly out of my reach.

If you decide to take the left hand path and turn to Usenet you’ll have to pay. First you’ll need to sign up with a provider like Newshosting or EasyNews for access to Usenet itself, and then to actually find anything you’re going to need to sign up with an indexer like NZBGeek or NZBFinder. There are dozens of indexers, and many people cross post between them, but for more obscure media it’s worth checking multiple. You’ll also need a binary downloader like SABnzbd. That caveat aside, Usenet is faster, bigger, older, less traceable than BitTorrent, and altogether slicker. I honestly prefer it, and I'm kicking myself for taking this long to start using it because I was scared off by the price. I’ve found so many things on Usenet that I had sought in vain elsewhere for years, like a 2010 Italian film about a massacre perpetrated by the SS that played the festival circuit but never received a home media release; some absolute hero uploaded a rip of a festival screener DVD to Usenet, that sort of thing. Anyway, figure out the rest of this shit on your own and remember to use protection, get yourself behind a VPN, use a SOCKS5 proxy with your BitTorrent client, etc.

On the legal side of things, if you’re around my age, you (or your family) probably have a big pile of DVDs and Blu-Rays sitting around unwatched and half forgotten. Why not do a bit of amateur media preservation, rip them and upload them to your server for easier access? (Your tools for this are going to be Handbrake to do the ripping and AnyDVD to break any encryption.) I went to the trouble of ripping all my SCTV DVDs (five box sets worth) because none of it is on streaming nor could it be found on any pirate source I tried. I’m glad I did, forty years on it’s still one of the funniest shows to ever be on TV.

Part Nine/Epilogue: Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr

There are a lot of ways to automate your server for better functionality or to add features you and other users might find useful. Sonarr, Radarr, and Lidarr are a part of a suite of “Servarr” services (there’s also Readarr for books and Whisparr for adult content) that allow you to automate the collection of new episodes of TV shows (Sonarr), new movie releases (Radarr) and music releases (Lidarr). They hook in to your BitTorrent client or Usenet binary newsgroup downloader and crawl your preferred Torrent trackers and Usenet indexers, alerting you to new releases and automatically grabbing them. You can also use these services to manually search for new media, and even replace/upgrade your existing media with better quality uploads. They’re really a little tricky to set up on a bare metal Ubuntu install (ideally you should be running them in Docker Containers), and I won’t be providing a step by step on installing and running them, I’m simply making you aware of their existence.

The other bit of kit I want to make you aware of is Overseerr which is a program that scans your Plex media library and will serve recommendations based on what you like. It also allows you and your users to request specific media. It can even be integrated with Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr so that fulfilling those requests is fully automated.

And you're done. It really wasn't all that hard. Enjoy your media. Enjoy the control you have over that media. And be safe in the knowledge that no hedgefund CEO motherfucker who hates the movies but who is somehow in control of a major studio will be able to disappear anything in your library as a tax write-off.

[dazai-anon-archive-taketwo]

Your answer is complete bullshit. What the dazai anon did is nowhere as serious as what you are doing. You want her personal life basically sabotaged, and all she did was send you a couple of cruel messages that made you have a bad day, guess what? That’s everyday for the dazai anon. She’s just fucking tired of the treatment her favorite character faces form this shitty fandom, even his own “stans” join in the hate against him but there seems to be some hypocrisy against chuuya or even the fucking pedophile mori.

All she did was send mean things out of frustration and anger, she deserves to feel that way. I don’t agree with death threats, but nothing about her behavior is “harassment” or “grooming minors” you’re all dumb fucking idiotic children and it shows seeing how you label petty internet fights as “crimes”, at the end of the day, did you lose your degree? did you lose your job? are you in constant fear and suicidal ideations because you’re scared you’re going to jail over THE FICTIONAL CHARACTER CHUUYA NAKAHARA of all things???? No! You are completely fine and living your life with no fears or anxieties as she is. Your blog is also completely useless btw! No one is gonna make a case on this, your parents didn’t which is why they asked u to delete the previous blog. Follow their advice again and leave the Dazai anon the FUCK alone and have the balls to actually face her without holding legal threats over her head. You pieces of shits.

What she does is tell people to kill themselves and say that she hopes they die, that their pets die, that they fail their finals, that their mental health/life gets worse. All over fictional characters, and we are just documenting it. At most she might get a fine, or have her Tumblr/Twitter privileges removed. I'm not sure how that second one would play out but I know people have been banned from sites.

As for the. having a bad day bit. I've mentioned this to her before but I have several disorders that make everyday hard for me too, most notably that I've been either passively or actively suicidal for the last 6 years. How do you think her damn near constant hate and harassment of me and my friends affects my mental state? I say it doesn't get to me because it doesn't incapacitate me and I don't want my friends to worry. The shit builds up. I have blocked her, I have reported her, I have ignored her, I have asked her to leave me alone. None of that has worked.

I understand the frustration she goes through, that's the whole reason I don't interact with the pjo fandom anymore. I was taking everything personally, I couldn't play nice with others and I realized that I was problem so I stopped interacting with it. That is my oldest special interest that has kept me alive multiple times. I do not post about it. Because it is unreasonable for me to ask everyone else in the fandom to only see it my way.

She has become the problem here and needs to deal with that. It is not fair to everyone else here for her to decide that her way is the only right way and everyone who disagrees is against her specifically. She absolutely has every right to feel angry or frustrated but she does not have the right to take that out on everyone else, if she doesn't want to block people and respect people blocking her she needs to leave until she can play nice.

As for the legal action, she can stop harassing people right now and case will likely go nowhere. And I have tried to talk to her about the things she does without "threatening legal action" and she called me a cunt and stupid and jobless and a dickrider and a doormat. She isn't willing to talk things out and treat others with respect, so we have this blog. And we have gotten a few asks regarding legal action, we haven't answered them publicly because Kavya tends to harass anyone mentioned here.

-2

[simlicious]

Personal update!

Hey everyone! I started to write this at 9:40 am, then I got distracted and did not post it right away but I guess activity on tumblr at that time is low anyway.

I am happy to report that I am still going strong with my changed day/night cycle. It's not always easy, I don't get into bed early enough on some days and feel pretty groggy the next. But this is always where I get defeated - I think okay, sleeping in for half an hour won't be a problem... but then I go to bed even later and the cycle goes backwards really quickly. This time I am determined to stay strong even if that means I walk around like a zombie and drink 1.5 liters of black tea on some days to keep me awake 😆

I guess it takes time to adjust the evening routines too. On these "useless" days, I often play Anno 1800 which is engaging and relaxing at the same time. I often quit the game to mod this and that in the game, so my brain is pretty engaged still and this is how I like it most days.

Since new habits need at least 6 weeks to be counted as a new stable habit, I will focus only on my sleep rhythm for the time being and allow myself to take a mental break from other projects to eliminate the inner expectation of working on those when I know it is unreasonable at this time. It also does me good to let go of any pressure to create TS3 content. I know it has been a while but it does nobody any good if I guilt myself because of it. I often get negative feelings around my simblr lately and it sucks, like I am really unsure about the few AI patterns I made and the poll made me really question what I should do since it is pretty divided. I do not know whether those are more random people who answered the poll or people who often engage in my blog anyway. So I don't really know if I should release those patterns at all or if people come and harass me over them if I do. But not releasing them would mean that energy to create them would be truly wasted, I think? If the images exist already, shouldn't they be used to make it count? Because thinking of that makes me uneasy, I put my creative energy into Anno 1800 for the time being which is not emotionally loaded. I am way too disorganized to really do beauty building, and most of the time I am just happy when my population get the goods they want 😆but modding another item that helps with that or editing other people's mods to fit my needs is fun and satisfying. It's a bit like editing tuning mods for Sims 3 (just with some more complicated layers added depending on the mod).

Knowing myself, I will get another pattern idea soon enough though, and sweater season is fast approaching which means I get into the mood of creating more cozy patterns, hopefully! I want to give a shoutout to people who have shown my patterns in screenshots lately. I admit I am not very active on tumblr at the moment and do not see everything I should. Memorable ones were @martassimsbook and @gittessimsadventuresog, but anyone else please feel addressed too! It means a lot to me to see my patterns in use, it makes me feel validated and useful and lifts my spirits. It also helps to dispel some of my negative thoughts (maybe patterns do not go obsolete after all if people are still using them). I'm really happy they are so useful to you! A lot of you probably do not post many gameplay screenshots but use my patterns anyway, I cannot forget about you 💜thanks for all the support!

[balkanradfem]

I was trying to explain to my friend how all music from our country that is made by m*n is sexist, and was deconstructing the lyrics of some beloved, popular songs from the 90s. She told me I was the only person who would ever find fault in those songs, and acted like I was, in fact, a lunatic for dissecting every little thing to find offense in it. So I thought, you know what, I will bring this to my blog. Let the tumblrinas decide if I'm right.

So I will translate for you, some of our very beloved songs, in order to tell you what I think is wrong with them. If you're croatian, this will be funny, and you are allowed to correct my translation. I don't even hate these, they're incredibly catchy, but the lyrics are driving me insane.

Mary and Kate (youtube link) (1st verse) I thought the life was restaurants and dreams Friends, pretty women, for love to guide me And wherever I went, I didn't care I loved, never asked, through the world I drifted (chorus) Mary and Kate Where are they, to come back? My beautiful little Anne Who did you sleep with tonight? (2nd) I talked a lot, drank a lot, and laughed a lot I did this and that, everything, and always what I wanted And while I drifted, a crazy fool Pretty girls were all snatched by effortless cretins (chorus) (3rd) Where was I, what I was doing, who did I love? I was having fun, never lost my head I am still the same, I am the real one Real m*n goes, gives, never gets spoilt.

I no longer understand These young girls I am real for them They are not the real ones. I no longer understand What do they want? If only women were what they once were. (chorus) Mary and Kate Where are they, to come back? My beautiful little Anne Who did you sleep with tonight?

So you all can probably tell why this pisses me off, the chorus itself is giving me rage, but then the last bit just goes into full misogyny rant about women. It is obvious that this is a bullshit sicko man! He fancies himself as a 'vagabond' who just drifts around, drinks and has sex with women, and while he was young, it was working out for him and he could get young women to sleep with him, and then some time later, women obviously caught on onto the fact that he is a worthless drunk who doesn't do anything but party and bed women, incapable of being faithful or useful to anyone, and they've settled for males who, I would hope, are at least having a job and don't cheat or do alcohol all day. So as a response to that, he has to go and say 'wow women today are not real anymore, what do they want?? I am the real male obviously, m*n can never go bad, but all these women, they are unreal for not wanting me,' and then he proceeds to try and guilt trip MULTIPLE WOMEN AT ONCE for being on a location he doesn't know of, asking who they slept with! It's literally none of his business! He's literally not invested in any of these and will not contribute to their life in any manner except to give them a horrible time and to then proceed to look for his next victim, but they're being depicted as wrong and unreasonable. It's very obvious why no woman would look at him!

It makes me even more concerned that by the end of the song, he's no longer saying 'women', he's saying 'girls', indicating that now that he's older, he's interested in younger female demographic, but then also a verse later he had the GALL to call them 'not real women', if they're also not interested in him. In the end he even goes 'if only women were what they once were', by which he probably means, without any rights to reject him, without legal protection, only that way he could get whatever he would want from them.

My friend told me I'm supposed to just 'not listen to the lyrics' but m*n are listening to these lyrics! And agreeing! And if we're also acting uncritically, they're taking it as a sign that we also agree! A m*n wrote these!! It got mega popular!! And the song itself is so damn catchy it's been playing in my head all damn day. Someone needs to say something!!!!

The second one I want to criticize is considered one of the most beautiful, most romantic songs in our language, and I too will sing it sometimes because the imagery gets to me, but once I fully analyzed the lyrics I could see that something unsavory and messed up is going on in here and I am going to talk about it.

Empress (youtube link) (1st verse) Golden threads of the summer dawn came to her castle to wake up my love. Light shall kiss her face, beautiful as in an empress, while I can't kiss her. Golden net of her body has captured my soul only to throw it back into the sea. Every morning, before dawn I come to her castle, white castle of my penance. (chorus) All of my life, all I wanted was her. To find the way to her heart. All of my life, my body is without her Like flowers without water.

These are all of the lyrics, and on the first glance, it sounds beautiful, he's describing her as royalty, and without any derogatory terms as well, which is not common, thus the romantic notion. But. If you paid attention, there are clues that tell us that this woman is not even remotely interested in him, and he's depicting himself as this deeply pained, suffering man, and he's suffering because of her appearance.

He's depicting an image of a woman who is hidden from him, by a castle, and he can't get close to her – this is probably because she is unwilling to face him, or to come close to him, she's behind a wall for a reason. He even implies he's jealous of the light kissing her face, which is in the area of insane obsessed stalker, and when you read further on, he mentions he actually comes to her castle, BEFORE DAWN, which means she probably doesn't know he's doing it, he is in fact, stalking this woman. He describes her castle as a white castle where his punishment happens – he is punished by what? Her existing?

The only description of this woman we get is the perceived beauty of her, there's never any insight in who she is, anything she does or says that would imply interest, but he feels deeply victimized. 'Golden net of her body has captured my sol', he imagines that her appearance was a trap to capture him, by which we can assume the poor woman never even said anything to him, he just saw her and decided that she is responsible for his feeling, because he likes appearance and feels he should have her. And here also we can see that she doesn't want him, because she 'threw his soul back into the sea', meaning she did not show any interest in him. He goes on to cry about how his body is 'like flowers without water', implying he is withering at the foot of her castle, because she is not showing any interest in sleeping with him, oh the horrors.

This is clearly a stalker song! She probably never even spoke to this man and he doesn't seem to know anything about her, he never ever mentions anything except for her beauty, we don't know what this woman is like, or what she wants, this is not a love song! The only agency this woman is showing is that she's staying hidden in her castle PROBABLY FOR A GOOD REASON, and he keeps stalking her and claiming she's causing him pain. I would freaking move castles.

The only saving grace of this song is that I do hope he withers completely without ever getting a glimpse of her, and that she never even finds out, which I feel is the correct way for him to go, without bothering her.

These are not the only songs I find issue with, I am actually continually mad about many other songs but I will leave it at this for now. Thank you for coming to my music corner where we point things out.

[elliespuns]

https://www.tumblr.com/elliespuns/743339485174054912/how-do-you-feel-about-everyone-going-nuts-on-tlou

you summed up my thoughts perfectly! there is a lot of very juvenile virtue signalling going on right now but then again i’ve always found things like ‘black outs’ and ‘strikes’ a little silly and just.. unrealistic honestly. it’s just a way for people to flex ‘i’m better than you because i’m dedicating all my free time to the cause and you’re not’. it reminds me of the very toxic twitter era where this sort of grapple for moral superiority was rampant amongst young people trying to assert that they were in fact good and pure (a LOT of these individuals are 17,18,19 it seems). not everyone wants to be a social media activist and that’s perfectly valid. calling you a zionist on anon is way too far though, at least have the guts to put forth such a serious accusation with your name attached.

I just think that people attacking bloggers for not 'spreading' informations about the conflict are unreasonable and rude. 

Every fandom blogger has their own personal social media where they might be talking about it, which these anon attackers won't ever know, yet they keep harassing. They are basically trying to spread good by being mean to others? How ironic.

I don't feel the need to apologize for not sharing it here. If I feel I want to share something here, I will (as I did a few hours ago). People should realize I am running a fandom blog here. Those who are already following me must already be aware of how things are.

Needless to say, many of us fell in love with the game back in 2013 (part 1) and 2020 (part 2) where there was no conflict and no 'choosing sides'. So now that the creator of the same game shows his true colors, we're supposed to start hating on something we already love and find hard to unlove? A bit harsh, huh? Because unless we go and buy the products from the big corporate companies, we are harming no one. Loving something from afar has never hurt anyone. For Christ's sake, we're loving a game with fictional characters, not the people who have the guns and bombs. The game will always be there; ignoring its existence will do nothing. 

For those who would be wondering (as I understand everyone expects a big fan like me to own things related to TLOU)… yes, I own things. But I bought them a long time ago, when there was NO conflict to get upset about yet. All of these things were bought secondhand on top of everything (well, except for Part 1, which I bought completely new back at the time—again, no conflict back then). So does that mean I should just take all these things and throw them away too? The damage has already been done; someone already bought these things from the corporate companies before selling them to me secondhand. Should I just take all these things, destroy them, and throw them out the window to prove what exactly? That doing so is completely useless too because it helps literally nobody? These things might as well just keep lying on my shelf. I didn't hurt anybody by getting them back in the day.

I am tired of repeating myself over and over. Those who understand this will get me. Those who don't, won't. And that's okay. I won't apologize for talking about Palestine in my personal life and not in the feed of the silly little blog I manage.

[zeddimusprime]

Trans Man Noah Diaz

The first time I saw Rise of the Beasts, I read Noah as a Trans Man, and that headcanon just solidified after my second viewing.

I’ll get the heavy reasons out of the way first, and work down to the most silly ones.

The section that was here before has been removed, because I was overstepping and someone rightly called me out on it. However. I’m not going to lie and pretend I didn’t do what I did. I deleted the comment that called me out because it made me feel bad, I panicked, and deleted it to save my own ego. It was wrong, it was cowardly, it was fucked up, and I shouldn’t have done it.

I truly am sorry, and have spent the last day sitting with myself until I stopped trying to excuse my behavior and just acknowledged what I did. I am not asking for forgiveness, I can only try going forward to be the kind of person deserving of it.

For now, I’m taking a break from this blog, leaving it on a queue, and I won’t be posting here for a while. Even though that isn’t the kind of person I want to be, I need to reckon with the fact that that is the kind of person I am. I’m sorry, once again.

1994 was also the year Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was put into place, which, for those too young to remember, was basically a policy allowing queer and trans people to serve in the military so long as they remained closeted, and prohibited superiors from forcibly outing them. Given that we’re never actually told in the film why Noah was discharged, it’s not unreasonable to think that it may have been because he got found out as trans.

The part that’s particularly personal for me is his relationship with Kris. I’ve also got a little brother that’s quite a bit younger than me, and I acted as an extra parent to him, practically raised him since we were both latchkey kids, and yeah, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’d face the apocalypse head on if it meant keeping him safe. All that to say, it’s comforting to think that Noah’s identity as a man is inseparable from his identity as a Big Brother, the way it is for me.

Most of my other reasons are less serious:

Noah wears a lot of layers and baggy clothes on his upper half, which yes, was part of 90s fashion, but it’s also how I dressed for most of my life, even before I realized I was trans.

Noah is also non-toxically masculine in a way that’s not unheard of but also not as common for men, especially service members, of that time period. Again, there may very well be a cultural component I’m missing here, let me know if there is, but this is just something I related to as a Guy Who Wasn’t Raised As One.

This last one’s kinda silly, but I’m a Car Guy, and one of the most gender euphoria inducing things I can do is work on my car. There’s few things that make me feel like Man quite like sweat on my brow and grease on my hands and a purring engine from a job well done. So for Noah to not only be a tech wiz but specifically a Mechanic? That was the thing that really sold me on this headcanon. (And that’s not even getting into the very fun implications of Noah being the one to repair Mirage, to get to know him so intimately, literally inside and out. Very nice.)

(I also love the idea that rather than being weirded out or taken aback at first like he is in some fics, Noah would be kinda weirdly affirmed to find out that not only does Mirage have some of roughly the same *equipment* while still being treated as and being a Mech, but his setup is the norm for Cybertronians. I can so picture Noah anxiously telling Mirage about his situation when they finally get together only for Mirage to be like “you mean other human mechs don’t have a 🐈??? Like, most humans only have one or the other?????”)

[thevoidscreams]

Pretty words

The other idea I had for @liar-anubiass-blog 's ask in which the reader is a diplomat with the imperium of man.

"I think that went quite well." Sanguinius smiled and reclined into his office chair, relaxing for the first time in days.

"Only because you were there." You laughed softly and joined him at his side, organizing your report of the interactions taken over the last week to peacefully bring this world into compliance.

"Why do you say that? You're a wonderful speaker and negotiator." Sanguinius insisted sincerely.

"They could hardly take their eyes off of you, I don't think they heard a word of what I had to say." You explained, not bitter but something like it. Bit not for the reasons you anticipated. You couldn't care less that the other diplomats didn't look at or hear you. But a gross jealous little pocket in your heart swelled as you thought about how in love a few of them looked. Not just awed but like they were experiencing love for the first time ever.

"Well, all that matters is that the meetings went well." You said precisely and tapped your slate as you put those people out of your mind.

A massive arm pulled you in and Sanguinius lifted you with no effort at all into his lap.

"Something is bothering you, my love."

It was impossible to hide things from him. So you usually didn't try, but it was embarrassing to admit you didn't like other people looking him up and down the way they had been.

"It's silly, and I'd rather not talk about it."

The angel tilted your chin back with one finger, and your eyes met his. You utterly crumbled under his gaze.

"Fine," you sighed as you set down your slate, "I didn't like how a lot of the other delegates were staring at you is all. Their gazes were so hungry, and I didn't like the idea of them wanting you. It made me jealous, which, I know, is a bit unreasonable, given that we're together and it didn't matter, but my feelings were getting the better of me the whole time and I wanted to climb into your lap to make them all stop."

Ypu took a breath, and Sanguinius chuckled. "So it was you as well then?"

You glanced up at him quizzically. "Hm? What do you mean?"

Sanguinius's hold around your waist grew tighter as he held you against his chest.

"I'm talking about that older man. What was his name?"

"Hugo Vantora?" You supplied, there was only really older individual out of all the delegates.

"Yes, him. The way he kept isolating you during breaks and suggesting it would be nice to 'Go find some peace and quiet'." Sanguinius huffed, his feathers abnormally fluffed.

"Yeah and? The guy needed a nap, I just don't know why he didn't take it."

"He was after more than just a nap unless you consider sleeping with another person a nap."

"No... you're not saying what I think you're saying, are you?" You breathed in disbelief.

"I wouldn't lie to you, my dearest. But you were tired yourself. I can see why you didn't immediately pick up on the advance."

You thought on his words for a minute, confused as to why he'd tell you all this. Then it clicked.

"Oh my throne! Sanguinius? Were you jealous of some old guy?" It was hard not to chuckle.

He sighed and nuzzled his perfect face against the top of your head. "Of him? No, but he did take a good bit of your time up, and his ability to openly make suggested of that nature to you was... irksome. And I was," he swallowed his pride to admit it, "jealous that you spent so much time with him."

He leaned down to kiss your cheek and neck. "All I wanted all week was to steal you away where he wouldn't state at you and remind you of how much I love you."

He continued to kiss your neck, and you shivered.

"Well, there's no one to stare at either of us here."

"No, indeed, there's not." He purred.

You both spent the rest of the night reminding the other why neither of you had any reasons to be jealous.

[age-of-moonknight]

Helloo

If im not bothering you too much, may I ask what you know about the cia?

I know it may not be a question related to moon knight, or maybe it could be, but im kinda interested to know the basics at least and you seem to know a lot about it

Btw, i absolutely adore your blog

Hello!!! :D I'm so glad that you enjoy this blog and thanks for stopping by! Although, well,,,,hm,,,maybe it's just my rabid paranoia sinking its claws even deeper into me, but this is one of the more interesting asks I've gotten for this blog, that's for sure. 😅 For perhaps some context, I think anon might be referencing this post I made, gosh, close to two years ago now, where I got....maybe a little too excited talking about the history of the CIA and what Marc's time with The Company could mean for his character hahaha Accordingly, a full rundown on the agency's history, not to mention its many, many facets, is probably a bit outside the purview of this blog, but this is then a good time to state that if anyone ever wants to talk about anything and everything besides Moon Knight, my dms are always open and I'm happy to chat! However,,,I also have an affliction where I am an incorrigible pedant who jumps at the chance to write essays on things that interest me (and intelligence interests me very, very much, unfortunately). As such, while all my instincts are telling me this is absolutely glowing bait on a hook, if anyone wants to read a rambling wall of text about that agency Marc spent some time with, that will be waiting for you under the cut. Again, disclaimer, I'm just some person on the internet and thus can't really be considered a credible source on much of anything (except maybe how many times Moon Knight has teamed up with the Punisher hahaha). All the following info could easily be gathered from OSINT sources (and we're talking, like, Wikipedia, although this gave me the chance to pull out one of my favorite textbooks, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy by Mark Lowenthal (vol. 7). If you're the textbook reading-type and interested in the topic, I'd suggest giving it a shot, particularly chapters 2 and 3 for the CIA and the U.S.' broader intelligence community). I tried to keep this incredibly surface level, as these are all topics that you could write monographs on, so if you want more sources/context, just hit me up! This also got,,,,unreasonably long (I didn't even know tumblr HAD a point where it would stop autosaving, but apparently trying to list all of the CIA's crimes against humanity will get you there), so I ended up having to split this across multiple posts.

Conception I discussed it in my previous post, but I'll give a brief rundown on how the Central Intelligence Agency came to be. So, the United States had intelligence organs pre-World War II, but they would typically only be spun up for however long a conflict lasted and then all of their assets would be reintegrated back into the military, da? But then with the end of WWII ushering in the atomic age and nuclear deterrence pushing out conventional conflict in favor of an espionage-fueled Cold War, the U.S. government deemed it prudent to have a permanent intelligence gathering service. There was just one hiccup, the question of what to do with the U.S.' WWII-era intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Under the leadership of the very descriptively nicknamed Brigadier/Major General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, OSS officers had been running around conducting sabotage and espionage operations throughout Europe and Asia, doing wild things like working with an underground intelligence network of European Catholic priests and coordinating with the 20 July plot/Operation Valkyrie assassination attempt on Hitler. They were the very definition of irregular, British officials accused them of "playing cowboys," and the U.S.' massive post-war military organization was loathe to have to find some way to force OSS officers into the military's necessary uniformity, so in 1947, after a couple years of bureaucratic shuffling, the OSS apparatus got pasted onto this new intelligence agency that was so far,,,rather bookish and the CIA as we know it was born. This divide, between the incredibly Ivy League analysts and the more martial remnants of the OSS that got folded in was a contributor to the two major branches of the CIA (and their infamous intra-agency rivalry), so this perhaps a good segue into the CIA's different internal departments, its "directorates."

There are the two ogs, the Directorate of Operations and the Directorate of Analysis, and then the newer Directorates of Digital Innovation, Support, plus Science & Technology. (Note: this is as the agency stands now; there have been some fluctuations in structure and naming conventions over the years).

The Directorate of Operations (DO) needs little introduction, as it's the legacy of the OSS and what most people think of when they hear the word "espionage," the kind of work one individual once described to me as "fast cars, nice suits, and unlimited spending" (hope he's still out there and doing well). They're your politically deniable boots on the ground collecting HUMINT (human intelligence such as handling contacts and the like) and executing covert actions. It contains the ultimate sharp point of the spear, the Special Activity Center (SAC) with its Political Action Group (PAG), which spreads black propaganda, influences elections, and conducts other psychological operations, and the Covert Action Group (CAG), which draws operators from the military's special forces programs to form their own direct action, counter-intel/counter-terror, unconventional warfare, paramilitary group (they have a very diverse set of martial skills). Naturally, most recipients of the U.S. intelligence community's highest honors, the Intelligence Star and Distinguished Intelligence Cross are from the SAC. Most of the stars on the CIA HQ's Wall of Honor, which memorializes officers who died in service of the CIA, represent SAC officers too, however.

The Directorate of Analysis (DA), in contrast, doesn't get enough love, despite making up nearly half of the CIA for decades. Whereas the DO mainly collects the intelligence through various means, the DA has the people who take the raw intel and try to turn it into something digestible for policy makers (whether that means just translating the intel into basic English or proposing whole, wide-sweeping policy strategies has varied across the agency's history depending on its professionalism and the degree of government oversight at the time). They get so overshadowed despite being a key part of the intelligence cycle, it's almost not funny hahaha (I kid you not, the official CIA website not only has a "kids" section with an online coloring book that depicts the various directorates as heroes, but it even went so far as to depict the DO with a rather dashing hat and cape,,,,while they gave the representation of the DA glasses and a briefcase, I weep hahaha). However, if you've ever heard a stereotype of the CIA actually being made up of a bunch of incredibly Ivy League, smart but cliquey, uncomfortably cold (both in manner and strategy) eggheads, that would be because of the DA. That's a very disparaging stereotype,,,,but it got its start from somewhere. It's still the CIA after all, and there have been times in the institution's history where the only thing to distract the DA from its intra-agency pissing contest with the more domineering DO was to shield the CIA from any sort of external government or other agency encroachment on the CIA's "purview."

Probably the next most established division would be the Directorate of Science & Technology (DST). Whereas the DO is predominantly HUMINT and the DA works closest with policy makers, the DST is the one expanding the CIA's technological capacity to deal with CBRN threats (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear), and collect SIGINT (signals intelligence over radio waves and the like), IMINT (image intelligence as from satellites), and GEOINT (geological intelligence monitoring seismographs to, for example, detect if a nation is doing underground nuclear tests). Intel collection is only as good as the tools used and naturally intelligence agencies all around the world are constantly trying to leapfrog each other in capabilities, circumvention, and denial (preventing adversarial interest's collection efforts, that is).

Similarly, the most recent division is the Directorate of Digital Innovation (DDI), which is similar to the DST, but the DDI is focused almost entirely on cyberwarfare/espionage. They also seem to be doing a lot with OSINT ("open-source" intelligence, AKA any information you can access without a security clearance). OSINT used to be a bit of a joke in the intelligence community ("so, it's just what you read in the paper this morning??? That puts it one step above LAVINT: intelligence collected by overhearing conversations in the lavatory"), but with the explosion of information made available by the modern internet landscape and social media, you can go far with OSINT. (If you too salivate over the potential OSINT, maybe checkout Bellingcat if you haven't already)

Lastly but not least, there's the Directorate of Support, who are all the people who keep The Company running smoothly, managing logistics, comms, security at CIA sites, and overseeing officer training.

So yeah, I've alluded to the DA's and DO's rivalry, so maybe I should talk about inter- and intra-agency competition and the hot water those things have got the CIA in over the years. Maintaining an effective intelligence community is a tricky thing, particularly in a nation trying its best to be democratic and at least nominally respect human rights. You want officers to be able to collect intelligence, but you can't let them have so much free rein they rough up the nation's own citizens with impunity (as that's a bad look and can lead to civilian push back that could not only hurt the regime but handicap intelligence gathering in the future) and you definitely don't want an intelligence agency getting so much power it feels like it can start dictating a nation's policy instead of just advising on it. (Plus, the absolute nightmare scenario of an agency that's gone completely off the rails and no longer bothers much with consulting on politics at all, but just operates completely independently). Thus, to prevent the intelligence community from getting too big for its own good, a little competition, a little checks-and-balances from within the intelligence community can be beneficial. The drive by one intel group to outperform another (and consequently get more recognition/funding/etc.) can lead to a mutual improvement of the products that end up on a policy maker's desk. Having said that, I hope I explained it in such a way where you might see the issue with the CIA being the U.S.' singular, domineering force in the federal intelligence community for decades. The DA and DO had their marked cultural divide, but the CIA had very little competition from other agencies and, for example, had their ultimate weapon: the President's Daily (intel) Brief. The CIA, due to its vast capabilities, for years had the privilege of providing the president with (what the CIA deemed to be) the most important intel topics of the day. Accordingly, particularly during the Cold War before government oversight of the CIA really kicked up, this allowed the CIA to sway the government towards some at best politically questionable and more critically ethically deplorable policy choices.

Yeah, having gotten this far, I don't think I've made it clear that, for as much as I am fascinated by and spent,,,,a lot of resources studying subjects such as intelligence and terrorism, I am fully cognizant and never quite cease to be outraged by the injustice that permeates those fields. The CIA for sure, with its vast resources and the outsized role the United States played in meddling in international affairs during the Cold War and on, is a chief and, now, well-documented offender. I'm sure CIA intelligence collection and guidance has prevented many attacks we'll never know about, but you can't talk about the CIA without discussing the actions that directly resulted in thousands dead. Let's go over some of their greatest hits, shall we? (And that takes me so long I have to put it in a whole other post).

[maibluemen]

ok while i'm working on which meta stuff i want to have on this blog, i do want to make a somewhat? detailed post on some name headcanons i have. so. some countries whose names i either tweak or change from the ones suggested by himaruya (arguably, there are no canon names. alfred is really the only one you could argue for lol)

🇷🇺 - ivan ivanovich morozov

hima doesn't give patronymics to the countries that would use them. ivanovich comes from ivan being very young and asked what his full name is, and the only male name he could think of was his own lol so he just stuck with it. and yes both sisters have teased him for this. morozov is derived from the russian word for "frost," which i find fitting; i wanted to find a non-jewish surname for him because i don't headcanon him as jewish and. of all the non-jewish countries to have a jewish surname.....well. no judgement on people who use braginsky and i doubt himaruya meant any harm or anything but yeah that's why i use a different surname for him lol

🇱🇹 - tolvydas jonas laurinaitis

shoutout to @hinotorihime who i believe was one of the first, if not the first person in the fandom to suggest tolys being a more accurate translation of トーリス (since japanese doesn’t distinguish between R/L sounds like indo-european languages do, and english doesn’t distinguish between I/Y the way lithuanian does, and tolys being an EXCEEDINGLY uncommon name, i don’t think “toris” is an unreasonable translation to have made after the game of language telephone from lithuanian->japanese-> english lol. トーリス would be directly transliterated like “to risu” for those unfamiliar with katakana. it’s worth noting that pixiv translates his character tag as “tolys”). uhh the source he gave me is a website that no longer exists and wasn't archived unfortunately, but "tolvydas" means something like "far seer" and tolys is a shortened form of it jonas is the name he added when he was finally baptized, and it's in reference to john the baptist anyway, here is an old post where she explains some name meanings!

🇪🇪 - eduard tamm

look i know eduard isn't really used in estonia but the guy simply gives off eduard vibes to me, sorry tamm, aside from being the most common surname, means "oak"

🇱🇻 - raivis bērziņš

bērziņš is, again, the most common surname and means "birch"

ed and raivis having the most common surnames in their countries i swear isn't me being lazy, i like the idea of all 3 baltics having tree names (laurinaitis referring to "laurel")

🇵🇱 - feliks mieczysław kazimierz łukasiewicz

who let the poles be catholic so. feliks has only been a name used in poland since around the 1800s? iirc, it was specifically brought over because of a fascination with french names but i might be wrong lol (and ultimately the origins of the name are latin, so variants of it are pretty old anyway). anyway. i've decided that his first name used to be mieczysław and he changed it around the time of the napoleonic wars to feliks, but kept the old name. kazimierz was chosen at his baptism and refers to st casimir, one of the many patron saints of poland (there's literally a wikipedia article dedicated to them all lol)

🐥 - gilbert maria beilschmidt

mary was just a hugely important aspect of gil's history as a knight (and the specific orders he represented also). he hasn't been catholic in centuries but he keeps maria in his legal name because that's his mom, guys

N. 🇮🇹 - felice luca veneziano

veneziano and romano being surnames (meaning "venetian" and "roman" respectively) i decided to just...assign the italy bros their uh. titles? as surnames. apparently siblings having separate surnames isn't unheard of for the nations lol, anyway. i thought it would be more fitting as i also headcanon that there's at least 20 italies (corresponding with each modern-day region though the actual history gets a bit messier, like my tuscany oc is more properly my florence oc.....that's another post, tho) and vene and romano represent. well. veneto (but originally venice) and lazio (but originally the city of rome...though i have yet to decide when he started representing rome because he's not an Ancient....anyway.....) felice being the italian variant of "felix" luca is a baptismal name referring to st luke, who is a patron of (amongst other things) artists

S. 🇮🇹 - lovino francesco romano

heh so lovino is in the category of not really a real name but i like it and have never really felt drawn to another name instead francesco refers to st francis of assisi who is hugely popular. well, in general. and is a patron of italy. i need to workshop some more headcanons about romano and religion because of....reasons lol, but this is definitely a name he took on relatively recently.

[yr-obedt-cicero]

You know, for a community that continually exhorts against glorifying historical figures because it shadows the realism that these were just people and not characters in a fairy tale—we don't really hold these ideals against our peers or ourselves. Idolizing big blogs that seem intimidating because they have more knowledge on a subject than you, or even because they're older, is similarly as false as idolizing historical figures. In fact, it's arguably a bit more flawed because it should be easier to acknowledge that those around you are just the same as you, contrary to the perception of historical figures that have been heroized for centuries. I get it, there is this form of alienation when behind the mask of your internet persona. But the reality is still perceptible that behind every blog is just a person. And even more so, they're not professionals or historians (Some are, but most aren't), they're not Big Important people with authority over you. Most of the time, they're just people sitting in their bedrooms with a laptop or phone. And they suck and make mistakes, just like you and I.

And I'm talking about my own blog too. As much as all the compliments and praise are sweet and good-natured, I realize how much people put me on this pedestal simply because I am knowledgeable about a topic. Anons have even frankly admitted they wished to interact with me but were too shy to, and I don't want to be intimidating, I've feared others before but have realized how ridiculous of a notion that is. I want people to see me as equal to anyone else with a passionate hobby. Because that's all this is. Don't get me wrong, the sweet compliments and gratitude toward my work make my day! But you can do that without thinking unreasonably highly of someone. And I mean this for yourselves as well. You run a blog where you've put your hard work, soul, sweat, and tears into it? Good for you, but that doesn't make you special, of course, you may know a lot but that doesn't mean you're worth or deserving more or less than anyone else.

There is a level of trust one can have with these blogs, I'm not saying the work means absolutely nothing. I know that if a blogger is more knowledgeable on a topic than another, I should probably go to the former for an answer. And that's understandable, but that isn't equated with respect or importance. Another issue with this is that it bars people from being more open-minded, it makes it harder for people to recognize and accept when someone they adulate is wrong. People make errors or can be wrong. And again, most of them aren't experts, so there is still a considerable chance they're going to be wrong. I've been wrong plenty of times, and it makes me feel lousy when I see my old inaccurate posts and many who are easily influenced just willingly take my word. So, another thing, do your own research too. Don't rely solely on someone's word, fact check things! You should do this with the biographies you read, you should do this with the posts you read. By this deification, so many just eat up whatever someone - they perceive as being higher in the respect hierarchy of the fandom - says as fact.

So, look, you can admire people. I'm not saying you can't, hell I admire plenty of blogs. But don't instill this superiority complex in your or their head that this person is holier-than-thou simply because they know more. A majority of these people aren't scholars or professionals. They might be more proficient or knowledgeable in a subject, but none of that is analogous to eminence or respect. Stop with this celeb treatment, you shouldn't adulate the people in front of you just as you shouldn't towards people who died two hundred years ago.

[hyenahunt]

Obbligato: The Punishment of Kaname Tojo - 2

Writer: Akira

Season: Spring, two years ago

Characters: Jun, Kaname

Proofreading: Remi + 310mc (JP) & Skyress (ENG)

Translation: Peace & hyenahunt

Jun: So bring it the fuck on! Don't hold back! No matter what kinda unreasonable suffering you Specials put me through, I won’t feel a thing!

[Read on my blog for the best viewing experience with Oi~ssu ♪]

Location: At the same time, in a classroom for the exclusive use of Special Students within Reimei Academy.

Jun: — GODDAMN!

Kaname: .....

Jun: Hey, HiMERU! What the fuck d'ya think you're doing, you asshole!?

Kaname: I could ask you the same thing, Sazanami!

You're not a Special Student, and yet you've waltzed into our classroom without permission whatsoever, spewing such insults my way!

That’s a curse word, right? Goddamn, I mean.

Jun: You bet it is. Kazehaya-senpai told me that rather than cursing at other people when something bad happens, we oughta curse at God instead.

"That way, no one will get hurt," or so he said.

Kaname: Really now. Whether God exists or not, I don't think he's listening to a word we're saying down here.

So no matter how much you curse at him, he's probably not hurt one bit by it.

It makes sense—You learned a useful word, didn’t you? Of course, a perfect idol like myself would never allow such unpleasant words to pass my lips, though.

Jun: Perfect idol, my ass. The stupid words you spout always straight-up clash with your good looks, huh?

Kaname: I'm merely stating a fact, that's all.

Jun: Oh, riiight. Well, I dunno 'bout perfect, but you're not wrong — you've come to be the top idol at Reimei Academy.

Kaname: I have. Through hard work, of course.

Jun: Hard work? The fuck are you on about, you degenerate copycat, stealing the hard work of someone else — of Kazehaya-senpai!

The hell d'you mean, hard work? Cut the crap, you thieving bastard!

Kaname: It seems you're misunderstanding something... Sazanami, was it?

Pardon me. I'm not an idiot, but I'm bad at remembering things; if it isn't important, then it slips right away.

Jun: Yeah, yeah, that's right... I know you high and mighty Specials can't be assed to remember the names of losers like me, huh?

Forget shitty useless guys like us, right? It's more important to remember the contact info of your business partners or all the shit you study up on in idol history, yeah?

Kaname: That's right. Being an idol requires one to have resourcefulness and knowledge to match, not to mention a tremendous amount of technical skill — I can't neglect a single thing.

The human brain can only hold so much.Therefore, we must be exceptionally discerning in what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget.

Jun: Hah! Exceptionally discerning, he says! Using big words for a dumbass now, are ya!? I know what you're really like — you're just a dumbass tryna maintain your stupid facade!

Kaname: Do stop insulting me in such a loud voice, Sazanami, unless you'd like to be sued.

Jun: Oh, go ahead and try! If I'm pissin' ya off, go ahead and take me out with violence! Everyone around you’ll just take the side of the lil' goody Special Student anyway!

Jun: So bring it the fuck on! Don't hold back! No matter what kinda unreasonable suffering you Specials put me through, I won’t feel a thing!

Kaname: ... Fine, then why don't I give you exactly what you want?

You all, please do remove this idiot from our space. He's unpleasant to look at.

Jun: That's my damn line! Just a little while ago you were on the same level as me, y'know? Just a snivelling lil' crybaby brat!

Kaname: ... Forget about that. No, even if you don't, then I'll simply pretend it never happened in the first place.

I have the power to erase whatever I'd like now, after all.

No matter how much you might talk about those disgraceful days, not a single person will believe a word you say: they'll ignore you at every turn.

You and I are in very different standings, Sazanami.

Kaname: ... You have realized it by now, haven't you?

Reimei Academy is founded on irrationality. No matter how you may push your "righteous ideals" onto others, it's in vain.

While you're here, you're the one in the wrong. It's only by acknowledging it and allowing ourselves to be dyed in the hues of insanity that we can survive even a bit.

Understand that much, won't you?

Even now, I can't help but pity your reluctance to abandon that "individuality" of yours, Sazanami.

[ ☆ ]

✦✦✦✦✦

← prev ✦ all ✦ next →

[postive-rainworld-anarchy-conf]

I came here to defend azriel after a friend told me about this blog of supporters, but like.. after seeing everything here and taking a closer look at the doc fuck There is no grooming in the document, just stray inappropriate messages between two ppl that were clearly familiar with eachother prior to a massive fallout. I'm honestly baffled that I didn't pick up on that. If what happened to azriel counts as grooming, then any conversation that unintentionally sways in an uncomfortable direction is grooming. and that's fucking.. unreasonable. I can't stand behind that.

oh, huh welcome to the club I guess?

but yeah, don't feel bad about being fooled into believing this stuff. like think about and reflect on why you did, but beating yourself up will get you nowhere, and there is already enough suffering in the world.

the most you can really do is well, just do better next time.

personally I'd suggest next time something like this happens, and you feel like you might be getting on a bandwagon, ask yourself these questions.

what actual evidence is there? basically is there anything you can definitely proved actually happened

is this person using intentionally scary language to make me stop thinking? words like "grooming" "zoophile", and "rape" often make people worried that they might've supported someone who's a bad person, and while this might not be a sign that things aren't as they seem, things like using therapy language incorrectly is (though this could also just be someone who doesn't know this kind of stuff, and is trying to express their experience).

why would this person being revealing this. allegations like 'this person groomed me' are very serious. and take a long and arduous time to sort through. so do they want closure, retribution or something else?

how are we getting the information? if you have a good point, the best way to share is is clearly and concisely. so that people know the facts and can decide for themselves. however if you have a point that falls after a bit of scrutiny, it's much better to give it piece by piece, say you'll reveal more later (like for example, saying you're working on a document, that'll show everything, and then not release it for months. even better if you just move on from the situation without releasing it.) but also things like making a big announcement about something and when people ask for proof, sending a video of you quickly scrolling through discord messages is a great way to get people to just not read it or basically just read the highlights. I mean I didn't read it and I think alot of people just assumed it proved something.

now of course this is just some basic suggestions for later allegations that come up, and it's key to remember that just because this one was fake, doesn't mean all of them are. listen to the people who say they are hurt, hear what they have to say.

but don't accept everything they say as gospel. look into it more.

shit like the johnny depp and amber heard situation happens if you just instantly assume someone is lying. (though this was also fueled by sexism) you end up with people getting hurt more than they needed to.

same is true for the opposite.

like before I reached the conclusion that this was a false allegation, I didn't say anything, and instead looked through everything, finding things like pansear's document, and reading through it, and then I drew my own opinion.

hope your having a good day though! I'm glad you can realize that you were wrong, that's alot more than most people can say.

[dearweirdme]

There is a former (I guess?) blog that seems more upset about the recent bangtan bomb than some jkkrs. So they are really committed to saying that JK was annoyed and "dead eyed" at Tae. I think objectivity and even criticism can be healthy for a fandom. But this just seems like a really awkward way to try and justify their own cynicism about TK. Their whole vibe is weird. They say they don't believe but they talk and theorize about TK just as much as a TK blog. Except its under the guise of being some "voice of reason". So they seem to be particularly pissy when something comes along to disprove their whole angle.

Hi anon!

Well I really don't know where they get the 'dead eyed and annoyed' from. that is not my interpretation of that footage at all.

I think it's a good thing when people dare to go against fandom narratives. I mean, there is a lot of nonsense going around, so skepticism, objectivity and criticism are good things. What I have personally found tough at times is when people try to push me into going alog with a certain narrative (like seriously, the shit I got for saying I think the Paris walk was really them was kinda weird). People having different opinions is a good thing, and none of us actually know what the entire truth is. It gets a bit problematic when people start being nasty and degrading to people with different opinions though. Calling onesself a "voice of reason" is a bit... meh to me. Who is to decide what reason is in this case anyway? To some the idea of two persons of the same sex being together is unreasonable for instance.

There have been several narratives going around for quite a while... one of them being the "Jk is dismissive of Tae" one. There's a lot of accounts that really went for that one. To me it looks as though they have at one point decided that that was going to be their angle, and they now just always see Tae and Jk's interactions in that light. Why? No clue. Everyone interprets situations with their own set of experiences in mind. So who knows what that specific account's experience (with fandom, or in private) had been to come with this narrative. I know Taennie hit some people hard, I know the Jk vids hit some hard, we all just try and make sense of things in our own way.

Whatever you think of their relationship though, I absolutely disagree with the "Jk is dismissive of Tae" narrative. The love he has for Tae is absolutely there and I think many take Jk's "holding back" as something he does because he doesn't care for Tae as much, when I think it's more likely he's holding back at times because he cares so much.

[2w1ld3st-2dr3ams]

𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕥𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖 𝕕𝕚𝕤𝕔𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕

!!Old Blog Repost!!

Fandom: Genshin Impact 

Characters: Shikanoin Heizou, Dom!GN!Reader

Cw: Sub!Character, Dom!reader, reader has a cock (real or fake is up to you), masturbation, fingering, breeding, cream pie (kind of not really), anal penetration, brief talks of a first time, soft sex all things considered, the actual sex is kind of short I'm sorry

Post Type: Scenarios (it’s more like a story but scenarios nonetheless)

Word Count: 3.5k

Mumbles: Hoyoverse knew what they were doing with that birthday art, blame them for this fic. TLDR: Heizou gets used like a cumdump and likes it. My demisexual ass showed itself with this one a bit, I am a sucker for the soft feelings of sex even though most of my work is absolutely ruining these characters.

Detective Shikanoin Heizou discovered how much his sexual desires were getting to him

Heavy panting was heard throughout his office, reminiscent of a long day of running around and solving crime. At least, that’s what it would normally mean. Today, however, the panting was a signal of something more primal; a habit that both exited and humiliated the detective.

He couldn’t pinpoint when exactly he had started mixing his private and professional life, taking the pleasure of masturbating in his office from time to time and letting his mind wander when he’s supposed to be on a case. For all of his achievements as a renounced detective, methodology and criminology weren’t things he could fall back on when more personal matters were at hand. He could solve any case like a puzzle, all the puzzle pieces would fall perfectly to his feet as he uncovered the picture the puzzle told. When the puzzle has no pieces however, things start to get complicated.

It didn’t bother Heizou. If he didn’t know how to adapt to each case, he wouldn’t be where he is now. Without a lead to start with and his pride as a detective on the line, Shikanoin Heizou swore to himself he would solve his greatest case yet. 

A few weeks later, he was more exasperated than he had ever been on an actual case. He could uncover murder cases like children’s puzzles, work his way through kidnappings as one would a paper maze, deduce political scandals like a game of charades, yet he couldn’t figure out what the primary cause for his divergent behaviors were. There had to be something that he was missing, but what could have gotten past him? For a moment, he thought up great conspiracies about an undercover enemy trying to distract the Commission. Though unreasonable, for he surely would’ve noticed if anyone in the Commission was acting suspicious, he didn’t discard the option quite yet. Detective work isn’t known for giving the most direct path and anyone with enough courage or stupidity to mess with the detective himself would’ve surely put in more thought.

Theories of similar veins to this one floated around his head for weeks. One afternoon, however, after staring out of the windows of his home out of boredom, he took notice–for the first time–a pair of lovers, quietly giggling at each other as one dragged the other to the door of a motel. Their intentions were clear, the unrestrained excitement in their movements and the look in their eyes told Heizou all he needed to know. He tried to shut them out, to ignore the blatantly sinful noises that would be plaguing his sleep for the night, yet one particular thought stopped him. What would it feel like to spend a night like that with someone, full of lust and passion and maybe even a little risk. 

Even if it was his job to stick his nose in people’s business, he wouldn’t consider it something invasive or malicious; yet he couldn’t deny the strange feeling of guilt that came over him as he felt his pants tightens to an uncomfortable degree. That poor couple was probably not expecting that a detective would be masturbating to an imagined version of their night of passion. 

He was sure he just gambled his spot in Celestia, what with his sinful moans and uncoordinated thrusts to the mental image of a couple having sex; which served as an outlet for his own pent up feelings. After his fantasies became hazier, the feeling of his cum running down his dick interrupting any further semblance of plot, he collapsed on his bed. He entered autopilot then, cleaning himself up while his mind was uncharacteristically blank. When he finally entered post-nut clarity, his analytic mind came back to him at full speed.

Perhaps he had found the culprit to his case now, perhaps it was also time for him to pay you a visit.

Detective Shikanoin Heizou discovers yearning, in more ways than one

A few months had passed since he acknowledged that he might’ve been more pent up than he though. In those months, much had happened that gave him a tougher case to crack. He had no shame in admitting he had experimented with different sexual scenarios before, but if you were to ask him now, the answer might be a little different.

He happened to be passing your house one day, the sudden urge to visit an old friend was overwhelming him. You two had known each other for a while and you even lent a hand on his cases when he requested. Heizou enjoyed the time he spent with you and you did as well, though work had been occupying both of your time lately. His desire to see you was platonic, he tricked himself into thinking. The kisses you two shared between dark alleyways were totally platonic, the “practice” make-out sessions you had every now and then were just what buddies did, the wet dreams that were mutually shared, and of course the fact that he had sucked your dick and you had ate him out were also well in the realm of companionship. You were also quite knowledgeable when it came to sex, so perhaps he could carry a deeper layer of investigation with your company. 

Shuffling his feet towards your door, hunching himself over slightly so his features were hid, he knocked on your door. When a steady round of silence greeted him, the detective berated himself for even considering this route. What would people think of him now; the mighty Tenryou Commision detective halted in his tracks by his own scandalous thoughts. Asking for you to help him figure this out, archons he was basically pleading you to fuck him wasn’t he? What a waste of time, all of it.

Walking away from your door as nonchalantly as he could, he found himself letting his mind shut off like that night, instinct, perhaps, leading him around Inazuma for a while. When his self appointed break came to an end, he found himself face to face with that same motel door. If he tried hard enough, he could materialize the lovers scurrying into the motel once again, slightly intoxicated this time perhaps, but with the same goal in mind. The imagined pair would then hurriedly climb the stairs to their area, giggling at the other for almost falling, before unlocking the door and eagerly entering inside. Heizou had the decency to let the imaginary lovers act out their desires away from prying, yet curious, eyes. All that was left as a sign of their prescience were the made up noises of what they would sound like partaking in such an activity.

His next destination was guided by desire. Letting the now blurred image of the lovers continue their activities in peace, he took the familiar detour to his house. Accompanying him, taking his hand and slightly pulling him forward, was an imagined version of you; eager eyed and lustful, as your other arm pulled him towards your chest and your lips kissed the top of his head. You were tender, felt warm and conveyed sparks of attraction despite being a fragment of a delusional brain. The ghost of your touch traveled down his back before reaching his ass and he swore to the high heavens that he could feel your hands squeeze. 

You almost tripped when you finally got to the abode, pulling Heizou inside with thinly veiled enthusiasm. Fantasy you moved quickly, skipping any make out sessions appropriate for the situation and skipping straight ahead to the sex. Heizou gracefully crashed onto the bed, imaginary hands pulling down his pants and underwear quickly, working in tune with his rushing thoughts. Your figure was over him, teetering on kissing him or admiring him even though you were but a wisp of desire he had conjured up. 

Your touch traveled up his legs before wrapping securely around his dick. Your image began to flicker, the settlement of reality preventing you from continuing to experience with him. It didn’t stop him from moaning your name softly every now and then. His hand, which had previously been yours, mimicked your intentions, pumping his dick at a fast pace. As his moans got louder and your image flickered above him, he came with a desperate cry that sounded foreign in his mouth.

His sense of clarity took a while to come back. In the minutes he had to spare, he looked at the puddle of cum he had made and experimentally took some on his fingers. His perception morphed, his hand and cum being replaced by yours. Everything stilled at this point, with the detective determined to do something as he felt the growing tension of arousal deep in his abdomen again. His hand left his field of view, with it left the image of your hand, and cum covered fingers began circling his hole. His fantasies responded well to that, so the experimentation advanced. Coating your fingers in even more cum, you pushed one into him, making sure to stuff your cum as deep as possible. At the noice you received, you pushed another one in and started slowly thrusting in and out of him.

Anyone outside might’ve mistaken Heizou for a whore, his moans sounding oh so foreign in his mouth but feeling oh so right in the moment. The feeling of cum staining his insides and the idea of getting fingered and spread open made him harder than he had ever been in his life. Your hand shifted slightly, barely grazing a spot deep in him that had him orgasming in seconds. With that, his rational mind returned to him. The detective was left with two crucial pieces of evidence that night, after finishing cleaning himself up.

1) He liked the feeling of being fingered and full of cum and 2) he yearned for your touch on his skin recreating his fantasies.

Detective Shikanoin Heizou discovers your troubles and lends a hand

–A little birdy told me you stopped by my house yesterday, what was that about, detective?

Heizou didn’t expect to hear your voice when he acknowledged the knocks on his office door. You leaned against the doorframe, a curious look in your eyes as you folded your arms over your chest. Informal for a detective office, but he couldn’t judge much. Especially now, when the way you looked at him radiated such warmth and fondness. His shoulders relaxed, a habit of all the people working under the Tenryou Comission, and he allowed himself to chuckle slightly at your remark.

–Just wanted to visit an old friend, Yknow? We haven’t exactly seen each other as frequently as we used to.

Before working as a detective for the commission, Heizou used to hang out with you a lot. You two would explore the high and lows of Inazuma with a practiced sneakiness that you left no trace of your presence. Before the detective fame (or infamy according to some), you two were joined at the hip; a never ending cacophony of laughter that rang through Inazuma in fragments. 

Heizou remembered how you looked at him then, how your eyes were a puzzle he could never solve.  They looked at the world in scorn and resentment, the reason unknown to him, yet looked at him with a tenderness undiscovered by most. Heizou remembered how your hands, which held your weapon in a fierce grip as you sliced through herds of enemies, slid down his body in a way that barely left a mark. Heizou remembered how you always marched ahead, waiting foreign to the unstoppable force of you; until your first night together came. Those eyes, looking at him as the reincarnation of Celestia itself; those hands, afraid to hurt him yet reassuring him that you were there; that unstoppable force, waiting for him in reassuring silence as you had come to a halt for the first time in your life.

You waited for him, as you hovered on top of him naked and vulnerable, and he felt that foreign feeling of being wanted curl up deep in his heart before giving way to something more. He vaguely remembers pulling you down for a kiss before wrapping his legs around your waist. The memory vanished once he remembered his current situation.

You agreed with his remark, you hadn’t seen each other as frequently as you did back then. Luckily for him, you were there to change that. Intrigued, Heizou motioned for you to take a seat as he stacked the pile of documents on his desk. You explained, in your tauntingly vague way, that you had been needing some company lately and finally got around to paying an old friend a visit. So, you had taken the liberty of renting a nice hotel room and asking him out during one of his break days. Heizou was flattered and, after discussing the fine details, bid you a sweet goodbye with a slight blush on his cheeks. 

You were, once away, waiting for him and matching his pace. This time, he’d make you wait a little less.

Detective Shikanoin Heizou discovers fingering and breeding

The day of his break finally came and Heizou could not be more exited. He woke up early that day, making sure he looked his best when he met you. It was the first private hangout he had experienced with you in months and he could feel the familiar tingles of ecstasy travel up his spine. When the sound of your knuckles against the door broke him from his day dream, he hurriedly stashed the few items he was bringing into his pockets before going over his appearance one final time. After making sure not a single piece of hair was out of place, he opened the door so you could guide him to the hotel.

The way you two looked walking down the street reminded him of the lovers he kept going back to the last couple months. Hand in hand, faces painted with delight as one guided the other to a determined location. If he listened closely, he could hear the music entering a subtle crescendo as you pulled him forward to match your pace; the mixture of a soft piano mixed with the wind carried over to his ears as you squeezed his hand just a tad bit tighter. 

The events of the day went by swiftly. Heizou could barely remember the last time he laughed as hard as he did that day. No longer was he the detective of the Tenryou Commission, now he was your friend and trusted companion. You two ended the day just like it had started, mirroring the lovers that never seemed to soften their hold on the detective. Just like them, you two were making your way to the rented room, giggles escaping your lips as your eyes crinkled slightly around the edges.

The shut door gave way to a kiss, and then another, and then another. Heizou was pinned against the door, arms circled around your neck while you two shared an array of kisses. Accidentally stepping a bit too close, you found yourself putting a little too much pressure on Heizou’s crotch, coaxing a whine out of his throat. He bucked his hips to meet your touch, mouth opening as he panted because of the pleasure.

You let him be, going down to his neck in favour of kissing and licking all over it. His moans grew louder and needier, so you pulled him away from the door and onto the awaiting bed. Your new position reminded him of that night, the first night you shared together. You on top of him, waiting for him to feel ready. This time, he didn't keep you waiting long. Quickly pulling you down, he began kissing you feverishly. It wasn't long before you two engaged in a full on make out session.

His hands took the liberty of snaking under your shirt, sliding up and down your chest. You sighed softly into his mouth, aiding him in taking you shirt of before gripping his by the hem. Looking into his eyes, you searched for any signs of uncomfortableness before quickly lifting up his shirt. You gave him a quick peck on the lips before traveling down his face and chest. You nipped softly at some of the exposed skin, your hands traveling down to his ass. You squeezed it a bit, emphasizing your actions with a particularly long lick to his chest.

He pulled away from you, impatience getting to him as he pulled his pants and his underwear down. He redirected your hands to his ass, giving you a pointed look which screamed excitement. You weren't faring much better yourself, only moments away from breaking what little self control you had left. You began circling your finger around his rim, asking him softly if it was okay for you to put it in.

Heizou hadn't thought this things would be happening to him, but the idea that you could fulfill one of his fantasies today aroused him even more. He nodded, moaning in excitement when your finger entered. It felt so different from his fingers, but it felt so good. He moaned louder at the feeling of another finger going in. It stung a little, but you were careful, so tender and loving with him. Stilling your movements, you waited until he was comfortable, which didn't take long. He started grinding his ass down on your fingers, moaning like a depraved whore at the feeling of them reaching that one bundle of nerves he discovered that day.

He was begging you to move them by now, which you did, and it caught him by surprise. You thrusted your fingers into him, making sure to hit his prostate every time. He came quickly after that, moaning in ecstasy as you helped him through his orgasm. Still relying on his hormones, the reached for your pants, pawing at them in an attempt to take them off. You got his message, taking your pants and underwear off.

Time stilled in that moment, reminding him of the countless times he has had this fantasy. You two, together like this, sharing the most intimate parts of yourselves. It made him vulnerable, and he decided he didn't hate it. Looking up at you, with so much love in his eyes, he pulled you down to him. He kissed your lips again, messier and sloppier this time, as his hands guided you to his rim. You were so tantalizingly close to pushing in, the feeling overwhelming him greatly. Perhaps his logical mind had left him for good, for in the next moments he went on to open up more than he was ready to admit.

-I-I've been thinking about you more frequently recently a-and I finally figured out why and I must admit, all I can think about is you marking me as yours once and for all. You promised me all those years back we'd be together forever, so please, won't you allow me to be yours?

Those words pushed you over the edge. Grabbing his hips, you thrusted into him fully. He had to bite his hand to keep from screaming. You let out moans and grunts here and there, focusing solely on the boy under you and how hot he looked moaning out your name. Cries of "y-yes! more~" and "d-don't fucking stop!" filled your ears as your thrusts became sloppier and more desperate. Finally, after Heizou let out a particularly needy string of whines, you came inside of him.

You were surprised to hear the whorish moans that escaped him at the feeling of your cum filling him up. He immediately caged you wit his legs, grinding his ass down on your overstimulated self as he cried and begged for another load. Confused but still undeniably horny, you fucked him senseless again until you both came; you from fucking into him and him from being filled with your cum.

When the third time came around, the pleasure was bordering on painful. Heizou was crying freely, tears pouring from his eyes as he weakly tried to get more stimulation. All that came out of his mouth were please for more of your cum, please to fill him up nice and good, to ruin him for anyone that might come after you. You understood the situation soon enough and, with the deepest thrust your hips could manage, you alerted him that the night was far from over.

-Don't worry, Zou. I'll breed you until the only thing on your mind is the way my cum feels inside of you~

That sentence shaped his pupils into hearts as he all but begged you to do so. The sounds of skin slapping against skin and loud moans and grunts filled the room again, alerts of a long night ahead of both of you.

When you did pull out, tired from filling him up more than 5 times, all Heizou could think about was your wording earlier. Breeding, so that's what it was called.

Maybe the detective would have to conduct an investigation into it in the near future.

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

On the topic of fem fortress, I agree and disagree. For the record I fall under the trans umbrella myself as well and I used the have the same opinion. You are entitled to your opinion of course but calling gender swapped art transphobic is a little too much. My problem with gender swapped art is if they make the female version without wrinkles or without the same body type. If you want to draw the mercs as trans that is totally fine and awesome but again calling people transphobic for drawing vid versions of characters sounds like a little bit of projection no offence. If someone were to draw me as a gender swapped version of me as cis personally I wouldn’t care. And again I’m only talking for me here but calling someone transphobic over something as small as this is taking away from actually transphobia that us real living people have to deal with. I don’t think I’ll change your mind and that’s ok with me. I hope you’ll at least consider this point of view. Love your blog and I hope you have a nice day.

Anon I genuinely do not want to be mean but like. do you know how to read? Nowhere in that post do I say "all genderbent art is transphobic" and I specifically disclaim that I do NOT think that because I KNEW this was the kind of reaction I would get. I can't help but feel like you are either intentionally or unintentionally misrepresenting what I said in order to make my critique sound more outlandish and unreasonable and craaaaaazy and thus easier to disagree with than it is, which is something that Always fucking happens to me whenever I talk about transphobia as a trans person, biphobia as a bi person, racism as a Latino person, etc, someone misrepresenting my argument to make me look like an oversensitive "triggered" idiot for even daring to see bigotry in something "small". I understand that YOU might feel comfortable with people whose genderbent art is like "the thing that makes this character a man is that he was born with a penis and ascribes to all cis standards of 'masculinity' and the thing that makes my new genderbend a woman is that she was born with a vagina and ascribes to all cis standards of 'femininity'" but I don't! I would not want someone to "genderbend" me and make me cis! I do not think it "takes away from 'REAL' transphobia" (whatever that means, transphobia in media and fiction is still transphobia and still affects people in real life) to say that "associating the gender of a character with the 'biological sex' of that character is cissexist" and/or "showing that you have 'genderbent' a 'male' character by making them ascribe more heavily to 'female' beauty standards is not just transphobic but misogynistic" (MASSIVE FUCKING PROBLEM with "fem fortress" designs, since when is Medic tf2 thin and petite or since when does Sniper tf2 wear makeup and a crop top and since when do either of them not have any wrinkles), that's like. completely normal media critique. I know that a lot of my followers enjoy "fem fortress" and I have tried to be as nice as I can about my critiques of SOME VERSIONS of it because of this, but like you need to be able to take critique of things that you enjoy. Nowhere do I say "all genderbend art is transphobic" but it seems like people are rejecting that for "no genderbend art is transphobic" which is just objectively untrue. I enjoy tf2 and I am able to make and take critiques of it, especially things like its portrayal of women characters (or lack thereof), but not everyone can. I would like to be able to talk about misogyny, biphobia, racism, or transphobia within this game and/or its fandom just once without someone inevitably coming to tell me "it's not that bad and you're just overreacting". I guess I'm not saying you have to agree with me but maybe try actually listening to what I say and not knee-jerk react like this bc I lightly criticized something you enjoy (which I have even praised in other posts, wouldn't you know! I think fem fortress is fun!)