#i have converted them successfully

[cloudyboudy]

Ik he wants that cookie so effing bad.. HAPPY MCLENNON MONDAY!!!

[kaxtwenty]

SULEMIO

SULEMIO IS REEEEEEEAAAAAALLL

[deus-ex-mona]

anyways! it’s herohei hours~~~~~~

[mizzyislost]

a quick redraw i did of my old art for a friend,,

[ssspringroll]

i DID fix waay'los' dick btw. had to touch up the uv mapping cuz it was distorting body hair weird and while i was in there i had to redo the weights anyway (since they dont export with the mesh, thanks s4s) i also repositioned it slightly so it will work better with animations. it aint perfect but it will get the job done 👍

oh and like weeks ago i made a gradient overlay for it so i can get a little more use out of it cuz it was Just For Waay'los in my mind but now its got rainbow overlays. it could be for anybody. Waay'los' is blue now 👍

[w0nderland]

skdkskkd we’re getting ready to drive somewhere and my sister is wearing a cardigan so she was quietly singing cardigan then my mom comes into the living room and starts singing getaway car???

[rewwwwww]

guys i got "writer"!!

[welcometobrightvale]

listen man if we’re revamping the dropdown menu on the new layout, can the classic games room PLEASE get its own link

[cuephrase]

Most Disliked Robin Results!!

at long last, (some of) the data you've all been waiting for.

for those of you who are new, i put out a questionnaire to gather data in the interest of discovering if my personal hypothesis that knowing someone's #1 Robin tells you nothing really, but knowing their top two, now that gives you insight. i have since closed that questionnaire, and we are in the data crunching stage. in this anon ask, anon was curious which Robin was getting the most dislike votes. i shared the current numbers w/o revealing who was getting which votes, and invited y'all to vote for which Robin you thought was getting the most dislike votes.

these were the results of the prediction poll:

before i share the final results, with 745 responses, a disclaimer:

the data pool is extremely small in the grand scheme of things!! this data cannot be used to make definitive claims about fandom at large. this is simply what we observed from the small group of fans, predominantly from tumblr, who filled out my questionnaire. cool? cool.

for our purposes, a "Stan" is someone who marked X Robin as their #1 fave Robin, and a "Fan" is someone who marked X Robin in their top two. additionally, whenever you see a top two Duo, for example, Dick & Damian, the character mentioned first is that person's #1. so Dick & Damian duos are distinct from Damian & Dick duos!!

for the non-math nerds, the 95% CI*, or 95% Confidence Interval is there to show that if we were to poll a random 745 responders again, from the same communities, we're about 95% sure the true value is somewhere in here range. *this is a bit of a simplification, but uh, i am not a math teacher + google is free. (i thought about finding a snappy youtube vid but as soon as they started talking math i zoned out whoops.)

finally a big, big thank you to @chinajousama and @tevyaa for their data-crunching + formatting!! none of this would have happened nearly as quickly (or successfully) without them!! 🫶

overall dislike

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

the most important takeaway here, imo, is that ~74% do not dislike any Robin. (shoutout to the Jason & Steph Duo who disliked Dick, Tim, and Damian tho, iconic.)

also, it is not at all what tumblr predicted!! tumblr predicted that dick would be least disliked (by virtue of him getting the least votes) and that's...about all that was correct from the prediction poll.

now how does this breakdown depending on Stans/Fans/Duos?

Stans' dislike (Y is responders #1 Robin)

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

"hey!!" you say, "the math is not mathing- if i add up the bottom row i get 774/104%, not 745/100%." correct!! this is because responders were able to dislike more than one Robin.

if we gave the percentages for each row of the very first chart, (the one that lays out how people voted in all the permutations), those percents would add up to 100%. but since we're only breaking it down between the Robins, there's overlap. 14.8% of everyone disliked Tim, that number is true. however, that 14.8% of Tim Dislikers includes people who also disliked other Robins- it's not the percentage of people who exclusively dislike Tim.

tl;dr: it doesn't add up, but the math is right, trust.

"okay, fine, but why don't you have a 95% CI for everyone?" if the sample group was too small to make a prediction (received less than 5 responses), we decided not to give one because there's simply not enough data to give one worth having. tl;dr, if there's a 0.00%* in the 95% CI chart, don't read into those stats too hard!!

Fans' dislike (Y is in responder's top duo)

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

already you can see some differences compared to the Stans' Dislikes- most percentages go up a bit, but a few go down.

now let's see what happens when we look at the breakdown over Duo's Dislike

Duo's dislike

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

note the differences!! for instance, all Jason-first Duos are more likely to dislike Tim than the percentage given for Jason Stans, except for Jason & Tim duos, which duh, but also, Jason & Tim is the second most common Jason-first Duo, making up 25.3% of Jason-first Duos.

also!! Tim fans are the least likely to dislike overall, with 83.2% not disliking any Robin, however, Tim stans, specifically Tim & Dick Duos are the most likely to dislike Damian. (*cough* lingering Red Robin grudge, perhaps? *cough* Tim Stans: i can let a lot of shit go, but that. that i cannot. [i'm a Tim Stan, i'm allowed to tease them, okay?])

another crucial thing to point out here is that the percentages represent how likely Y Duo is to dislike X Robin. this distinction is significant because while it is correct to say that, (based off this data pool), Steph & Damian Duos are the most likely to dislike Tim, it is incorrect to say that most Tim dislikers are Steph & Damian Duos.

"huh??"

something, something squares and rectangles If you grab a random Steph & Damian Duo responder, they are the most likely out of all the Duo responders to dislike Tim. However, if you were to grab a random Tim Disliker responder, the odds of that responder being a Steph & Damian Duo are pretty low.

by number, Dick & Damian Duos make up the biggest portion of Tim Dislikers (26 out of 110 votes). however, they also make up the biggest portion of responders overall with 92 votes, whereas Steph & Damian only got 22.

(side note, if you're like, whoa but Dick & Jason won the tumblr poll- overall, there were more responders that had Dick and Jason in their top 2, however they were split 82/64 and Dick and Damian was split 92/29. those splits are also super interesting to see, bc some are pretty even and others aren't.)

okay, so what's the takeaway here? repeat after me: everybody 👏hates 👏 Tim!! 👏 loud incorrect buzzer yeah, no so the main takeaway here is that so far, it's looking like there is visible variation depending on a Stan/Fan's Duo compared to Stan/Fan opinion. also, that most Robin fans don't dislike a Robin. you can relax, odds are blorbo is not under attack. unless you're a Tim stan. jk jk, i'm sorry, him having 14.8% dislikability is just hysterical to me, like do you see the social distancing, Jason is the second most disliked and Tim has more than double his numbers LMAO.

especially bc that 14.8% is just like, out of all responders, how likely Tim is to be disliked, right, follow me here, hehe. 110 of 223 dislike votes cast were for Tim, right, so of the dislike votes cast there is a ~49.3% chance that a dislike vote is a dislike Tim vote.

but!! if we condense that 223 (dislike votes cast/remember that 1 responder could dislike multiple) to 194 (the actual number of responders who disliked), then it's 110 out of 194, so if a Robin fan dislikes anyone, there is a ~56.7% that they dislike Tim.

try not to laugh at that, i dare you.

now, as a Tim stan, i think this makes sense because out of all the Robins, Tim has the most on panel interaction with every other Robin compared to the others, so like, if any Robin is going to show up and annoy you, odds are it's Timbo. factor in fanfic trends and uh...look, do i love Tim? yes. (i love them all, but that's beside the point.) do i think he's annoying af. also yes. it's part of the appeal, i mean hot people get it, i mean this data is not shocking to me but it is, clearly, deeply amusing. that being said, you might be under attack, because responders were wayyyy more likely to find a Robin Stan annoying than they were to dislike a Robin hehehe. sorry, sorry, i swear i'm not trying to shart shit. i mean, start shit. that was an honest typo but i'm so tired rn and it's funny so i'm leaving it, forgive me. what are your thoughts? any of this surprising to you, or does it track with your predictions? tysm for participating if you responded to the questionnaire!! and if you didn't, no worries, enjoy the Findings. please remember that the goal of this questionnaire/sharing the Findings is not to grade other fans on whether they're "good"/"bad"- discuss to your heart's content but let's try and keep the wank/bad faith takes to a minimum, yeah? thank youuuuu

also enjoy this at a glance graph!! the bars are error bars, they represent that 95% CI :)

anyways!! i just threw a ton of data at you, if there's anything you would like to see me elaborate on/any questions you have, please feel free to send me an ask and we'll do our best to deliver!! there's truly so much to unpack here.

[vinelark]

what r some fics that shaped your psyche? you have so many good recs im currently rereading the to an athlete dying young series

hello! you sent me this ask ages ago and i've been meaning to get to it ever since. (it took me so long to answer that i'm sure you've reread to an athlete dying young by @sonosvegliato many times over by now but hell yeah, what a good one.)

these are a few fics--dc and beyond--that have been in my "in case of emergency" epub folder (aka fics i want to have on hand immediately to reread on bad days, or good days, or even average days) for a few years now. so here is an extremely incomplete list of fics that have shaped my psyche!

for dc specifically--if i tried to list all of them i would just end up repeating my whole fic rec tag, so these are just a few of the ones i read when i was getting into this fandom that stayed with me/made me want to seek out more for these characters:

📸 surveillance series by @smilebackwards

this series located the tim drake center of my brain and lit it up like the vegas strip.

🎒 like a hinge, like a wing by @bonesbuckleup

one of my go-to rereads for pangs; chapter one is a masterclass in tension. also, one of my favorite pre-robin tim pov fics of all time.

💻 nominal by @unpretty

"you don't get it, batman is a comedy" --conversation i've had with multiple people using this fic as my thesis statement.

🌃 the jingle jangle morning by @audreycritter

the moment somebody in my vicinity says "i love dick grayson" i'm on their doorstep with this fic url.

🚉 a meditation on railroading by @eggmacguffin

there's a moment in this fic known among my friends as "baby wipes jason" and it has successfully converted no less than three people to the fandom.

and then for non-dc fic:

🌌 atlas by @megafaunatic (mdzs & tgcf)

did i read this before i had a single clue who the characters were? yes. did i return to it once i did and lose my mind a little? yes. lore etymologyplayground writes that “so so so in love and pining so hard the lines between us are blurring and we haven’t made a move yet but it’s inevitable” flavor with such a deft hand; it is in fact called the lorezone. if any friends-to-lovers pining i write can achieve even 50% of a lorezone i will have done my job.

🪿 If they caught you by @feyburner (tgcf)

i go back to this when i think about setup and payoff, when i think about subtle misdirects, when i think about the monumental task of creating whole compelling new characters in 6k words.

🧪 away childish things by lettered (hp)

one of the best de-aging trope stories i've ever read; i think of this when i want to take a trope to its maximum potential and then go: no wait, there's even more.

(another fav de-aging fic is grow by @cafecliche; shorter plot but no less pangs 🌱)

🏡 in defiance of all geometry by @idiopath-fic-smile (les mis)

a fic that's a perfect reread when i need something cozy and full of character, and a perfect touchstone when i'm pondering something where the world may not hang in the balance but the stakes still matter.

📔 The Absolutely True Story of the Yiling Patriarch: A Manifesto in Many Parts by aubreyli (cql/mdzs)

paragon of metahumor, basically. i think of this when i want to write something that's funny in both text and form.

🍚 and his wanting grows teeth by @yuebings (cql/mdzs)

masterclass in pangy backstory reveal; the way the first scene loops back around to punch you in the gut long after you've forgotten it will forever be seared into my brain.

also, most answers on this list fit the bill!

(apologies again that this answer is so belated; it took me ages to write up partially because i kept stopping to reread these fics every time i tried.)

[bootleg-nessie]

Things that will happen in the future (based on my own experiences with time travel):

***FAQs at the end***

*All of these observations are copied directly from my notes in roughly the order I took them in

*Don’t ask about the interchanging use of past/present/future tense, you know how that stuff is with time travel

Women just started all growing three boobs instead of two. Scientists baffled

Genetically engineered catboys (no literally)

The great pyramid of Giza has been converted into a Bass Pro Shop

The entire state of Rhode Island was bought by some rich tech CEO who promptly dug a 500 foot wide trench around the entire state so that it could in fact be an island. It was soon converted into the world’s largest parking lot

Pollution has gotten so bad that fresh oxygen is now delivered straight to most homes via a subscription service

Basic necessities such as food, water, and housing are now provided for free by the government, but only for the top 1% of wealth holders

Insulin now costs twice as much as rent. “Get fucked,” say pharma companies

92.6% of new electronic appliances now have smartphone integration and require a monthly subscription to use

Most billionaires have real estate on earth’s moon

As an ongoing film experiment, Taika Waititi successfully convinced a Nebraska man that he’s been raptured and is now in heaven. He actually got Truman Show’d and now millions of viewers tune in every week to watch God (played by John DiMaggio) manipulate Robert into confronting his own views, battle cognitive dissonance, and face the realization that he might not have been as good of a person on Earth as he thought he was

Carrots have gone extinct, as have highland cows

Species of extinct animals and plants now are being posthumously renamed after the billionaires and elites most directly responsible for killing then off

Researchers discovered a sentient colony of fungus off the coast of Chile, it prefers to go by Fleebo and appears to have a incredibly complex intelligence far greater than any other observed organic being

Nobody knows where Ireland went. It literally just disappeared off the face of the earth one day and nobody bothered to question it. The story couldn’t compete in the news cycle with the recent news about a company in China that made the first real life pokemon. An entire civilization of people gone and I’m the only one who seems to remember it or even care

Fleebo and its offspring have annexed Madagascar and are threatening any retaliation with nuclear warfare and “making The Last of Us a reality.” Nobody knows if Fleebo actually has the capabilities to do this, but after the Lovecraft incident we’re all TOO goddam scared to fuck around and find out

Large snails have replaced cats and dogs as the most common household pet. Snail culture has largely taken over the world, especially Japan

The president of the United States is now decided with an oiled up twerking competition. Most people were hesitant at first but this has produced vastly more competent leaders so now everyone just kinda goes along with it

With the cost of living crisis only worsening with time, selling tattoo space on your body to advertisers has become common as people struggle to afford rent and pay their bills

North and South Korea have reunited into “Korea 2.0”

Germany has split up into East and West Germany again

Belgium and France have been annexed by West Germany and renamed “Wester Germany” and “Westest Germany” respectively

The entirety of Florida is now underwater. Most of Kansas is too for some reason that scientists refuse to explain because they’ve “sworn an oath to the eldritch gods” and that “much worse things would happen” if they did

The melting ice caps in Antarctica unveiled a lost civilization of intelligent creatures descended from a species of lungfish, predating human civilization by millions of years. They planned on hibernating for another 10-15 million years to observe the course of evolution on Earth and are very very angry at humans for waking them up prematurely and ruining all of that with global warming

The politically correct term for lungfish people is “Dipnoid” but most people refer to them by a variety of slurs, such as “finwalker” and “kelp muncher” (not that they even eat kelp)

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has now increased to nearly half the size of what was formerly known as Canada and has been colonized entirely by pirates (the flag is actually pretty cool). The pirate nation has the 17th largest economy in the world and is projected to surpass the United States in GDP

Africa is about 2% smaller. Nobody knows why. Most people point to Fleebo, who denies having any involvement

All human-Dipnoid interaction was promptly banned by most world governments, except for the GPGPRP (Great Pacific Garbage Patch Republic of Pirates), whom the Dipnoids rely upon extensively for trade

Scientists have used DNA from fossils to recreate other species of humans. We now live alongside them like we did for thousands of years before everyone besides Homo sapiens went extinct. Racism is at an all time high

Class C and above robots are now legally recognized by most progressive countries as people

The United States government has been exposed for secretly funneling billions of dollars into the GPGPRP and using it to fund terrorist operations all over the world.

A new major religion revolving around Dave Grohl has skyrocketed in popularity. Grohilsm is now the world’s largest religion, second only to Fleeboism

Scientists discovered a new continent in the Pacific Ocean, and then promptly lost it again. Most people are convinced this was just an elaborate practical joke, but scientists “swear it definitely happened”

For a brief period of about 30 years, everything in George Orwell’s 1984 happened almost exactly as written in the book. Literally 1984

It was revealed that Jeff Epstein didn’t kill himself. He actually faked his death and spent the next few years in a drug-fueled episode of psychosis making sock puppets in a cave in Italy and then molesting said sock puppets until he died from a sock puppet related illness

Bigfoot was discovered off the coast of Georgia doing cocaine with a congregation of alligators. When questioned, he said he normally lives in Montana and was only there on vacation. He is now a celebrity, and has been featured in a number of tv shows and films, two of which he won an Oscar for. Last I checked, he was a washed up actor living in Hollywood with a reanimated Neanderthal woman

The GPGPRP raided most of England’s museums with the object of “doing exactly what they did for the last few centuries” England was understandably furious, but the rest of the world found it rather amusing

England declared war on the GPGPRP, which it promptly lost after hackers brought down the entire country’s military overnight. Much like in the 21st century, England is the world’s laughing stock

The entirety of Luxembourg relocated itself to the moon

Russia attempted to take over most of Eurasia. In retaliation to the full global effort to stop them, they launched nukes at the world’s 600 most populous cities outside of its current territory. Most of the warheads were stopped in time, but a few major metropolitan areas got hit pretty badly, including Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Chengdu, Mexico City, and Istanbul. Japan was understandably super pissed that Hiroshima and Nagasaki got nuked for a second time

In the wake of the nuclear holocaust, Canada assumed control over what was formerly Russia and assimilated many of its citizens and leaders into its own society and government. Under the new rule of formerly Russian leaders, Canada became a puppet state for the second coming of Russia. It annexed much of the United States, Mongolia, China, and a handful of other countries, becoming “the world’s first megacountry.” Crungolaska now controls a majority of the northern hemisphere

As part of a practical joke by Adam Sandler, Tom Hanks was actually marooned on a desert island like in Castaway. He lasted less than a week before he died. When I left this era of the future, Adam Sandler was serving a lifetime sentence in prison for murder

Fringe groups of crows with above-average intelligence have started popping up around the world. So far they have been observed forming small communities, crafting relatively complex tools, using rudimentary speech, performing rituals, and creating music

Aliens visited earth and had a formal meeting with many of our world leaders, but decided to leave us alone for a few thousand more years because humanity is “not yet mature enough to handle the responsibilities of interstellar travel.” They have incentivized us with a the blueprints for an Alcubierre Drive and a means to produce the exotic matter to fuel it once they deem us as being ready

The original colony of settlers on Mars has declared independence, officially becoming the first country not on Earth

We sent Tom Cruise back to space but this time we just left him there

The tether for the space elevator broke. The town known as Vatorville, famous for being the location of the takeoff point of the elevator shuttle on Earth, was completely decimated as tens of thousands of miles of steel cable came crashing back down. There were no survivors

Most people in first and second world countries have mandatory microchip implants that serve as a personal ID

Last Thursdayism has been largely denounced by quantum physicists. Current theories now revolve around “Next Thursdayism,” the belief that the entire universe was created in the future and that we all exist as a memory in the past

Synthetic organ farms for transplants and research have become a massive industry worth billions of dollars. However, there is still a huge black market for organically grown human organs, as they’re much cheaper to acquire and aren’t taxed at the exorbitant rates that lab-grown organs are

China dug a hole all the way to the center of the Earth. Turns out it’s hollow and there are people living inside. Who knew?

A university reconstructed the entire city of Rome as it was in its early days during the Roman Empire. It’s actually pretty historically accurate, except for the fact that there’s a lot less sex because it’s run by a bunch of sweaty history nerds

After Rome 2 resulted in the creation of a cult revolving around the Roman god of the dead that gained traction as a minor religion, Pluto was officially reinstated as a planet by NASA when cultists picketed their headquarters every day for nearly 3 years straight. “Fine, we’ll give these fucking virgins what they want so they’ll finally shut the hell up,” said NASA’s administrator in chief

In a display of the biotechnical prowess of Disney’s Imagineers, all the animatronics in Disney’s Hall of Presidents were replaced with clones of the originals, which went about exactly as well as you’d expect. After reports of the presidents hurling a series of racial slurs and other obscenities at the first black family to enter surfaced, the project was shut down almost immediately after it had opened. Minority admission to Magic Kingdom plummeted to 2.3% of its numbers from the previous year, making it the second whitest place on earth after a taylor swift concert

Plastic now makes up about 3% of every organism on earth by weight

Public officials are now required by law to take shrooms before running for office

Trees are considered a rare and highly sought after commodity, and are usually only owned by public institutions and the rich (the vast majority of oxygen farms use algae to produce oxygen)

FAQs:

FAQ: What time period(s) did you go to?

A: I have no fucking clue. The world stopped using the Gregorian calendar in 2063 after a gamma ray burst hit the sun. The GRB led to stellar ablation, which changed the length of a year on Earth. The sun would continue to lose mass at an accelerated rate for several more years, with the length of the year changing slightly from year to year. The world adopted a variety of different calendars which kept being updated frequently and were often super confusing and contradictory. I traveled to about a dozen different points in time, which based on my best estimates spanned within a few millennia of the current date.

FAQ: How did you obtain a time machine?

A: I think it was the 17th or 18th of June, 2055? That night, a large sci-fi looking box thingy roughly the size of a VW Bus appeared a few hundred yards away in the open field in front of my house. I tried to take a picture of the box, but for some reason the closer I got, the more the image on my camera started to become fuzzy, and by the time I got close enough to take a decent picture, the camera had stopped working altogether. I pulled open a door to reveal a corpse inside that was charred beyond recognition, who appeared to have suffocated and/or burned to death during a fire that damaged most of the interior. I also noticed a number of strange tumors and growths on the body. I pressed a random button on the remains of what I believed to be a control panel, expecting nothing to happen, but the door closed automatically and I suddenly lost consciousness. When I came to, I exited the box, expecting to still be in the field in front of my house, but instead found myself a ways outside of a small snowy village that based on my best estimates, was somewhere in northern Asia around 2-3 thousand years ago. The villagers started coming after me with spears, so I quickly ran back to the box and pressed another button, hoping it would return me to from whence I came. This time, the people I found (who were thankfully much nicer and spoke a dialect of English that I could mostly understand) told me that it was the year 506 of the PGRB-Δ4 calendar (the calendar that the United Territories was using at the time). I repeated this maybe a dozen more times trying to get home until I landed in 2023, which as far as I could tell, was the closest I had gotten back to my original time so far. It was at this point that I decided to stay and seek medical attention, as I was rather concerned about some nasty new growths on my arms and legs similar to that which I had seen on the corpse.

FAQ: Where is the time machine now?

A: No idea. It disappeared a few days after I landed in 2023. My best guess is that some poor sap found it and ended up sometime else.

(I never ask for likes/reblogs but I literally spent fucking WEEKS on this one so if you liked it pls show me some love <3)

[pyuisi]

headcanon:

roach is a huge one direction fan. he loves how simple the lyrics are and how pure love sounds in their songs.

everyone in tf 141 finds it endearing that whenever they have to go in any vehicle with a radio, roach fights for the shotgun seat to play one of their songs. he mouths out the lyrics and bops his head like he’s in a concert.

before he lost his voice, he’d sing the songs 24/7. that was before he joined 141 though, so no one knew until price found him sitting on the kitchen counter one night at 4 am and singing to “little things” playing on his phone at minimum volume.

roach’s voice was a whisper, which was all he could force out of his throat. price didn’t make a big deal out of it, but roach did and freaked out when price showed up. but price didn’t say anything, just leaned against the counter beside roach and handed him a cup of hot chocolate because price thought roach’s throat would hurt from forcing his voice out like that.

roach told him that night that he almost gave up listening to the band because it reminded him of his lost voice and he didn’t want to panic in front of the team. price just hugged his shoulder and listened with a sad expression while roach sobbed silently against him.

couple days later in another mission, soap beat roach to the shotgun seat and just when roach was about to sulk, soap played “18” and sang obnoxiously on top of his lungs, making up lyrics in parts he didn’t know.

roach had startled into a laugh. soap lit up at that laugh. “this one’s for you, gare,” soap said afterwards. roach blushed so hard after that.

laswell gave him a signed autograph for his birthday. when he signed at her with barely contained tears to ask how she got it, she lied through her teeth that her daughter accidentally got two of them during a fan sign event. she has no daughter and they all know it. roach had no idea how she could’ve found a way to get an autograph in their line of work but he didn’t ask.

gaz asked roach about the band and was successfully converted into a fan. the two of them would take one earbud each and listen to the songs together when off-duty. gaz told roach that his voice sounded nice, when roach dared to whisper-sing one time.

ghost didn’t do anything in particular and tolerated soap’s singing. but he was always staring when roach listened to the music, face uncharacteristically soft. roach would tease him for it.

[i’ve never heard you sing before], roach would sign.

ghost would shake his head. “i’m a really bad singer.”

roach would bother him for a bit before giving up, and settle with just curling over ghost’s shoulder and listen to soap sing while humming along.

after roach died, gaz stopped listening to the songs much like how roach was after losing his voice: the memories were too painful to remember. price would get up randomly at 4 am and play “little things” while drinking hot chocolate and leaning against the counter. he always made two cups. soap stopped suggesting they have karaoke nights, but he’d still listen to the music from time to time, preferring to keep his memory of roach alive. he found himself looping through “something great” and “if i could fly” all too often. ghost would remember that he’d refused to sing for gary and tear himself apart with regret, but even after learning the lyrics to roach’s favourite songs, he couldn’t get his throat to work, even when he was alone.

in an alternate reality (the only one i’ll accept), ghost gives in and sings for roach. hes not a bad singer at all, and because it makes roach happy to sing he does it more and more often. soap is absolutely delighted to have a singing partner and at one point ghost will become comfortable enough that he’ll randomly start shouting lyrics mid-mission into the comms when things are peaceful. ghost and soap play finish the lyrics during the alone mission in mw2, and roach scares the shit out of them when his voice appears out of nowhere and starts whispering along too. when the three of them rendezvous at the church and ghost snatches the car, soap slides into the shotgun seat, fiddles with the radio to get it to play music while they’re being shot at, and him and ghost scream the lyrics to “no control” as ghost drives like a madman. roach almost dies wheezing at the backseat.

price finds the three of them at 4 am one night ballroom dancing to “little things” playing through roach’s phone. they don’t have anything formal, but they’re dressed in their nicest casual clothes (simon in a plain black hoodie, soap in a crumpled up polo shirt, roach in a warm jumper). they’re not singing, but there are plenty of sounds: johnny’s aborted curses when he almost steps on roach’s bare feet, gary’s giggles when simon twirls him in a circle, simon sighing contently into soap’s shoulder.

price looks down at the two cups of hot chocolate he’s holding, frowns, and returns after five minutes with a tray of four cups in total. he makes his presence known and smiles fondly when his three grown special forces children who are among the most dangerous soldiers in the world immediately abandon their activities to grab his hot chocolate and argue over whose mug has more of it.

god, he loves his sons.

[artdotpage]

Problems facing modern artists & creators

I've talked with hundreds of artists and creators about the difficulties they face trying to earn a living from their craft.

This post covers two of the big ones (social media algorithms & bargain basement marketplaces), and what tools are available to grow your business despite these issues.

Social Media Algorithms and Audience Ownership

Social media platforms are a godsend for getting your work in front of potential clients and building a loyal fan base.

However as you will all have experienced, it can take a mastermind to figure out what kind of content the algorithm wants you to post, and if you don't do that you'd be as well throwing your content into the void as even your own followers might not see your post, never mind new viewers.

It also means you don't truly own your audience, if you post something slightly controversial your account could be deleted without warning, or perhaps a billionaire buys the site and everyone flocks to a new platform where you have to start growing your following all over again.

Solution: Build a mailing list

This is perhaps the single best marketing tool available to any business, and is sorely overlooked by artists and creators.

It's cost effective and because you own your mailing list it doesn't matter what's happening on social sites, you can always keep in touch with them.

The tricky part is converting people into mailing list subscribers. However I've seen plenty of creators successfully build one by offering incentives including free digital downloads, early access to content, discounts on your store etc.

Those who sign up to your mailing list would be considered high quality followers, someone who is much more likely to convert to a paid client and buy from you again in the future compared to the average follower on social media.

Tools

https://art.page/

https://substack.com/

https://convertkit.com/

Losing clients to undercutting competitors on the same platform/marketplace

If you run your business on a marketplace or platform, your clients are one click away from finding plenty of other choices who are willing to undercut everyone else to land a sale.

These sites have no incentive to make sure that traffic you drive to your profile actually purchase from you. Whether a sale is made through your listing or another seller, they collect their fee either way.

They also use uniform designs which reduce you to a generic product listing. Whilst this can simplify the customer experience, it means you have no control over the sales funnel and ability to differentiate yourself, making it harder to convert potential clients into paying customers.

Solution: Direct clients to your own site

Use your own personal website to make sales from, there are plenty of options with no monthly charge and lower fees than marketplaces. This lets you make dedicated marketing pages showcasing your best work to make a client excited about doing business with you, instead of just being a generic product listing.

Take advantage of marketplaces purely for their customer base. Don't rely on them as your sole business platform. This way, any fees you pay are worthwhile to generate sales you wouldn't have had otherwise. 

Tools

https://art.page/

https://www.bigcartel.com/

https://squareup.com/

Interested in more?

There's plenty more I have to share on this topic, including:

How to properly use Print on Demand without getting ripped off

Streamline managing your business so you spend more time creating and growing your business.

How to better utilize your brand to connect with clients and increase sales

So let me know if you’re interested and I’ll get writing!

Transparency

I'm building https://art.page to solve these exact issues, with the goal to create the best all in one site builder for artists and creators that makes running your business easy.

[purpledemonlilyposting]

FR though, those movies where a man manages to successfully, “convert,” a lesbian are extremely detrimental, making straight men think that their magic wands have enough power to, “change our minds,” or worse, ask to be our third when we say we already have a girlfriend.

Fuck those movies.

Chasing Amy, Gigli, subplots in various teen movie slop forgotten to time, various episodes of TV shows. It was practically lesbian conversion therapy propaganda throughout the 90s and early 2000s. Straight society assuring itself that lesbians are just lying and stubborn and need to admit we're attracted to men at least sometimes.

Which I also got to hear from people around me. Even up to the 2010s: But what if the right guy came along? What if a man really likes you? How would you live without a man? How do lesbians have sex without dildoes though? You must have slept with men before you became a lesbian right? Are you mad at men?

Society simply refuses to believe there could be any type of woman not accessible to men and that our lives don't revolve around them. Heteronormativity and compulsory heterosexuality are just that ingrained. And some people who purport to be allies or comrades like to pretend our struggle is over while simultaneously disrespecting us.

[anemoiashifts]

manifestation tips.

focusing on desired outcome. ｡𖦹°‧

── .✦ the most important thing that needs to be understood. as long as i know something to be true, then everything else is irrelevant. all of these “tips” (i guess you can call these tips ?) will revolve around that concept.

avoiding mirrors. ｡𖦹°‧

── .✦ this one is specific to manifesting appearance changes. I don’t like to talk about my personal life a lot on here so to preface, i have an eating disorder & have experienced hair loss from malnutrition so ive been losing some hair volume. this has lead me to manifesting healthier, thicker hair.

doing things to keep my hair out of my sight like keeping my hair back or avoiding mirrors & looking at myself in photographs helps “keep me on track” when manifesting so im not pulled back into the 3d.

limit phone usage / television. ｡𖦹°‧

── .✦ you know that audio that goes “remember this isn’t a story, this is our future” & then shows something dystopian ? yeah, that manifesting. granted, it’s fear based but it’s putting that idea in your head.

there are so many things being fed to you through television, social media & marketing that are designed to keep us distracted & insecure.

making my own subliminals. ｡𖦹°‧

── .✦ making my own subliminals has helped me so so much. that way, i have control of what im consuming — like i mentioned above briefly. while affirmations like “i have no ___” & “i don’t ___” can work for some, focusing on the desired outcome helps me the most.

for example: “i have no acne” vs “i have clear skin”. one is focusing on living in your desired outcome, which is where you want to be.

people don’t love it when i say this, but most subliminal on youtube aren’t actual true subliminals. subliminals are audio converted to frequency. most of them are sped up affirmations — which is fine if that’s what works for you. im not denying that they don’t work & you can’t get results from them, but subliminals help me more rather then supraliminals since they aren’t as distracting for me.

monitoring what music i listen to. ｡𖦹°‧

── .✦ this is kinda like the limiting social media usage but lyrics can sometimes clash with what you’re trying to achieve & can influence a poor mindset. music has the ability to effect mood & im not saying you can’t manifest if you’re depressed or u happy but thinking positively is definitely has an influence on you & how your perceive circumstances.

expect the outcome. ｡𖦹°‧

── .✦ i remember seeing a video someone working on a skateboarding trick. to prepare for the outcome of that person successfully preforming their trick, a bottle of champagne was bought ahead of time.

make sure you are able to picture yourself receiving your manifestation. it’s the “pregnancy analogy”. when you’re pregnant, you have to prepare for a baby by purchasing clothes & supplies & thinking up names. be ready to experience it, prepare for it & expect it to happen.

[floweringlamb]

Doctor that administers my T but knows how to break girls like me- whenever he’s with me he tells me all about my female body, no matter how much I insist I’m a boy. Whenever I ask him to up my dose, he orders me to let him see me nude, assuring me that he’d tell everyone that I was trans if I refused. I should’ve just gotten a new doctor, left, done something, but every time I obliged.

He traces along my breasts, telling me how they’re specially designed to produce milk, how when I was impregnated my nipples would go dark to signify the start of production. I tell him that I’d remove them one day, and he shakes his head.

He grabs my hips, pulling me into him, explaining how they are wider than a biological males because they are made to support the weight of a baby. I whimper at the thought of being pregnant, doing the thing that biological males cannot do, revealing to everyone that I was not one.

He presses his lips to mine, caressing my chin, whispering to me about how I have a completely different bone structure from a male like him, and my wide eyes and plump lips were obvious markers of being a female. It was silly of me to think anyone would think I was a boy, everyone already knew I was a fertile female made for cock.

I began to cry as he pulled my legs open, fingers dancing along my folds, him able to tell me the name of each part- instantly able to find my clit and beginning to rub it, making my attempts to push him off begin to fade as my body trembled with pleasure.

He finally pulled out his hardened cock, and gently pressed it into my tight cunt, shushing my pleading as he reminded me of how this is exactly what my body was designed to do. He slowly but rhythmically thrusted, groaning that he was soon going to pump me full of his seed, going to make me finally fulfill my purpose as a female. I sobbed for him to pull out, that if I got pregnant that I would have to go off T, but he just smiled calmly and grabbed into my round hips as he cummed deep inside. I orgasmed and moaned as he did, and he smirked.

He pressed his finger to my hole to keep his cum from leaking out. I looked at him in disbelief, trying to deny what he did. He had probably used some sort of protection right? Maybe my T would protect me?

He knew what I was thinking, and simply says that he will do this every session, until I either admit I’m really a girl or I’m knocked up with his baby. And if I admitted that, he would immediately take me off T and recommend to any other doctors to never let me transition. On the other hand, if I became pregnant for him, he would treat me well and use me as a new study for converting trans boys back into women. I stared in horror, knowing I might not have been impregnated this time, but since I would never admit that I wasn’t a boy he would eventually successfully breed me… and then I would be used as an example of being turned back into a girl…

I convinced myself that both were horrible options, both forced me to detransition. But deep in my mind? I knew what I wanted. So I kept returning. And soon a bump appeared.