#i wanted to post video of this whole interaction but don't have the ability but it's so cute

[cleolinda]

Just for fun, here's five minutes of my very first time playing the Silent Hill 2 remake, having never played a video game before. (My voice only.) I grabbed my phone and turned on Voice Memo because I got stuck in the parking lot and felt like I needed to record struggles this dire for posterity. I recorded this a week ago, so all the issues I mention have since been fixed, including my (in)ability to move forward. (Nobody had explained the importance of the camera in doing anything to me.) If y'all are interested, I can also post a shorter clip of my most recent fight, which shows how far I've come. I have strategies now. I'm such a brave little toaster.

I originally posted this on Patreon with a transcript, so I'll include that below, long as it is. Volume advisory: I do yell a lot.

[Comments directed at James, my player character, are in parentheses.]

Okay. I don't know how much this is actually going to pick up, but I'm just gonna voice record this while I figure out what's going on. This is exactly as bad as I thought it would be. I've had to mute the sound because it's just [laughing] James making weird grunting sounds every 30 seconds—of impatience!—because I can't figure out how to make this man walk. 

And I'm on a laptop [rather than a console]. So we're just living our life here as best as we can. And I even have a touchpad mouse. I have an external mouse coming in tomorrow, maybe. 

Okay, okay, I'm trying to get him to go back into the bathroom because my understanding is that there's a whole bunch of graffiti in there that you would actually— (Why are you not turning left?! Why are you walking BACKWARDS? What are you DOING?) I've already been yelling at him for like two minutes now. (JAAAAMES. What are you DOING?)

Okay, achievement ["No Turning Back Now"]: I tried to leave. Good for me. All right. So— (BUDDY!) What—what's the Sprint command? I don't know, I don't know. Um—Escape. Settings: uh, Controls? No... Controls View? Here we go, here we go. L shift, how would I have known that? Quick Turn... oh, Rowing. I don't need rowing for like another 16 hours, we're fine. Okay, move camera on the touchpad mass—touchpad mOuSe. It's fine. We don't have a problem with that. Combat—I'm gonna have a problem with that, but not yet. Um... there are some mouse commands that I may end up remapping to some letter keys... depending on how the mouse does or doesn't work for me in terms of distance from my hand. We'll—we'll see. I'm used to—I've been using a touchpad mouse for years now, not gaming. It would be very strange to be using an external mouse. So I may just remap some stuff. [I did not. For the combat tutorial, I did use an external mouse.]

Okay, Interact, Extended Movement is “E.” Okay. Space is Zoom, escape: Main Menu, we learned that one REAL GOOD. Um... Map... Flashlight... Okay, we don't—we don't need that right yet. [Sigh.] W-S-D-A! Don't need Row, okay. Sprint. L shift is Sprint. That is what we need. [My obsession with “sprint” is because this man walks as slow as a turtle and “leisurely trot” is the only thing that’s going to get you anywhere.] Okay: Resume. 

Like, the music and sound effects are beautiful, I mean, sure, but right now this is—he's—he's very tired of me dealing with stuff. Come on, (WALK, buddy.) Shift? Can you—how do you SPRIIIIIIIINNNNNT??? 
[Unconvincingly:] All right, no, we're fine. We're fine. We're gonna be fine. So we're walking—oh, we gotta go to the car! Okay! I forgot we even have to do that! We're not getting anywhere without the map!

[Tiny voice:] Really... wanna go back into the bathroom... Maybe we try that when we… are further along... in our ability to move. 

This is a nightmare. I—I didn't think it was actually gonna be this hard for me to learn. I thought it would go a little faster. 

(Come on, buddy, what are you doing? What are you doing? E, can we interact? WHAT are you DOING?!) Oh my God. Okay, what's it—HE’S LOOKING AT IT!! [Which indicates he wants me to do something with it, but “interact” isn’t coming up.] HE’S LOOKING [tiny, despairing voice:] at it. He's looking at it. 

(Babe, what do I have to DO? What do I have to DO?!) 

[Sigh.] Maybe I do need my sister here to... tell me what to do on an extremely basic level. 


It says... does it mean lower shift? What does it mean? [It did mean left shift, like I was pressing, but nobody told me you had to hit “sprint” and “walk” at the same time.] Forward, back, right, left, sprint. Quick Turn... okay, forgot about that. E...? Yeah, and I think by Extended Movement, they mean like a traversal.

Oh... oh, my sweet lord Jesus. I didn't think it was gonna be this hArD!!! It's not hard. It's not hard at all. If you're a normal person, if you're a gamer, this is not hard at all. If you're me and you play Hello Kitty Island Adventure, it's hard. Okay. I am so glad I did not actually just start recording [video] cold. I know y'all would love to watch me just run James into a tree. I know you would love that, but we're not doing that for—half an hour, if I'm lucky. 

Okay, come on, buddy. What are we doing? E!! Oh thank God. Oh, thank God, we've got the map. Okay. Space: Zoom. Back. [Vehement mouse clicking sounds.] Back. Mouse. MOUSE. [Sigh.] I swear to the Lord Jesus Christ, come on—he has very nice nails. [James does. I don't know about Jesus.] He really does. He has very nice hands. I will say when I started the game—remember, this is something I have seen on a very large TV many times. Even I sat back and went, whoa, the graphics are really good. Like on a smaller laptop, even I went, holy shit, that's so good. 

(BUDDY?! GO BACK!! YOU HAVE!! THE MAP!!!)  

OKAY. No, no, this is FINE. This is FIIIIIIIIINE!!  

I'm alone in the house right now. My dog is not here, my dog would be barking his head off, going, what is—

OKAY!! OKAY. [Extremely tiny voice:] That was—that was fine. 

I was hitting the wrong part of the touchpad mouse... because I was thinking of it as an external mouse and I was hitting the top of it… [tiny, exasperated voice:] not the bottom of it… like I normally would. 

NO, IT’S FINE. IT’S FINE, OKAY? I know, he's looking around, he's like looking at his hands and he's like brushing something—he's like, “What are you DOING? What are you DOING?” 

(I'm sorry, that was the car door. I didn't mean to make you bump into that.)

We're doing good. We're doing fine. Come on, yeah, we're gonna walk backwards a little bit. How's the camera? We want it up a little bit, we want it down a little bit? Beautiful reflections, beautiful reflections. I had to work with the resolution because he looked very... WIDE, and boxy, and I had to get it set on my monitor's resolution, which is, I think... oh, I don't even remember what it is. This is a new computer. 

Okay, I'm gonna have to stop now. I can't scream anymore. But good luck to me.

[dingodad]

Ok, so this has driven me crazy for the longest time. What the fuck happened to post retcon Japsersprite? The one we know is from pre retcon, since he was on John’s planet when he brought it into the void. Nothing was ever mentioned to happen to post retcon Jaspers, so where is he. I can’t believe Hussie forgot about him, he didn’t forget about the two Nannasprites. Did post retcon Jaspersprite just not exist? Maybe he died on LOWAS when Typheus blew it up, but there is no mention of that at all. I guess only Jade or the Nanna’s would know then, but nothing is ever said about it. Also is there a way to know if the Arquius that becomes lord English is the pre or post retcon version?

i'm gunna play good cop bad cop here cus there's an answer you don't want to hear and then there's a sort of interesting consolation prize answer at the end.

the answer you don't want to hear: it doesn't matter! :P i don't think this really needs explaining but the whole point of davepeta/jasprose's ultimate self spiels is that tying yourself in knots trying to figure out who's "pre-retcon" and who's "post-retcon" is, as they say, for the birds. john is john is john. hussie didn't "forget" that there are supposed to be two jaspersprites: while a story can occasionally get away with having two Daves or two Roses because Dave and Rose have interesting things to say to themselves, the fact that homestuck has even ONE character called jaspersprite simply strains the reader's ability to give a shit. there is the room nor the need for TWO jaspersprites, of all the damnedest things.

(there can be two nannasprites because two nannasprites are funny - but if there's one thing worse than creating the same CHARACTER twice, it's telling the same JOKE twice.)

the other answer is about sprites in particular. do you know why video game graphics used to be called "sprites"? i only thought to look this up just recently: it's because, like the fairies or spirits of folklore from which they get their name, they float above the background of the game world without interacting with it directly. this should form the basis for our understanding of homestuck's kernelsprite, as well, which borrows both from folklore and from computer programming. they are of course ghosts on a literal level, with spritely undead tails and the ability to pass through walls and physical barriers like they weren't there - but the way they interact with the story itself is similarly ethereal-and-or-ephemeral.

sprites appear at the whim of the heroes to serve a very particular purpose - which, you will notice, is exactly what davepeta says they're doing when they show up in hell - but then the moment that purpose is complete they might as well stop existing. dave- and jadesprite show up inexplicably on the battlefield as the reckoning begins: are they killing themselves now that their purposes are complete? where are all the lususprites, anyway; did they do the same thing? erisolsprite initially seems to indicate that he's going to fuck off and possibly explode like all the other sprites who hate themselves, but then just shows up again 200 pages later later at the convenience of the trickster arc. the same is true of all the sprites presumed-dead following the events of GAME OVER, who show up as-needed in the new timeline to form the next generation of redundant ghost freaks. this is simply how sprites operate. whether they're "alive" or "dead" at any given moment is the wrong way of looking at it - they're ghosts for goodness' sake!!

the fact that the story never tells us what happened to "that other jaspersprite" is supposed to make us think less about it, not more, because knowing where one of them is - the "ultimate" one, in fact - should be enough to put our minds at ease. but it also deliberately leaves the door open for another jaspersprite to show up if the story ever somehow, against all odds, finds a place to squeeze one in. which is again exactly what the plot point is currently doing with sprites like erisol, who for all intents and purposes was dead up until the moment page 666 started

[patron-saints]

the official beginner's guide to olizumi

so! you're a fan of fma or maybe a friend of mine, and you're interested in learning more about the relationship between olivier mira armstrong and izumi curtis! great, you've come to exactly the right place.

if it's been a while since you've seen fma:b, or if you've never seen it and don't mind watching some scenes from the final arc, i recommend getting started with my compilation:

(original video post here)

when i first watched fma:b back in march 2023, i thought i would manage to watch the entire thing without getting obsessed with a wlw ship. i was wrong. the second these two started interacting i immediately became enamored with the trust, respect, and intimacy that they share, and with the way they seemed to find in each other the same steely spirit, grit, and inner sense of self. their ability to communicate their philosophies, despite their differences, and listen to each other with ease and tenderness just. GOT ME. they got me.

get ready for SO MUCH MORE under the cut:

(i was lucky enough to have a chance to draw up a little list of most of my headcanons about them, which can be found here! the most important of which i'd say are that i write them as t4t, and olivier as a stone top!)

if you're convinced of their chemistry just from that, great, my job here is done! but if you don't believe me yet, or you want a little more, it would be my honor to point you in the direction of the first ever fic i wrote for them, "recognition." (tumblr post for chapter 1 here!)

"recognition" can best be described as a 4 chapter old woman yaoi where (almost) nothing happens and two milves fall in love. or if you like, sorry izumi, two very young women navigate the beginnings of a long distance relationship, polyamory, workaholism, and chronic illness. it is sickeningly fluffy, and to date the longest thing i've ever published.

it even comes with an illustration! @wlwsakura did THIS for me:

(original post here) which i will never be over not in one million years!

AND it also comes with a whole entire soundtrack, made by myself and my dearest friend @summerwoodsmoke! kinda a folksy gentle, very sappy vibe. i still listen to it all the time! alex picked some bangers tbh.

for the very first @fma-rareships event, i wrote two little ficlets set in the world of "recognition," which are here and here!

if you're keeping track so far, that's a compilation, a headcanon list, a fic(+ficlets), a commission, and a playlist. but wait, there's more!

so, okay, maybe 23k is too long for you. or maybe fluff isn't your thing. or maybe, somehow, you've made it through all that and you want more. not to worry. i have more.

just this week, i posted "bone deep" (tumblr post here), which is a 5k E rated omegaverse fic that's kind of like recognition on fastforward and if i didn't cut out the sex scenes. and if it was omegaverse. it's the first omega thing i've ever written, but i really wanted a chance to write more in depth about how i see olivier's stone identity, and weirdly this setting gave me the chance to do that!

and now we've covered everything i've made for them...so far. but i want to give a shout out to some others in the rarepairs mines with me, because i'm not the only one who care them!

@machinerismsx's fic "An Open Invitation" is genuinely incredible. it's hilariously funny (there's lines in there i still think about and giggle), and also like. super hot. we didn't know anything about each other's fic projects til after i posted "recognition," but we were stunned to realize we'd written a lot of the exact same plot points, including what i refer to as The Curtis-Armstrong Alliance.

you may have noticed that in my compilation, sig and alex also had like, off the charts chemistry. m and i noticed that too! so in both of our fics, while sig and izumi are still married, they are also each get an armstrong all to themselves, lol.

which brings me to @eggos-esper! my brother-in-arms who is out here as the reigning champ of sigalex! (& you can read the sigalex fic i wrote for him on ao3 here ((or see the tumblr post here!)))

but maybe you're nostalgic for youth. or you like epistolary fics. or maybe you, like me, are deeply obsessed with the miniep "tale of the teacher." if that's you, PLEASE PLEASE check out @baudleaires's fic "Notes from Briggs" it is the cutest thing on planet earth and it had me kicking and squealing the entire time.

maybe you want more art! there's more art!

@iztopher did this one for my birthday and it made me actually scream and then weep:

and @wlwsakura's first piece of them is what made me commission her in the first place:

it's still the photo for one of the groupchats i'm in. it rules.

also, while they're not on tumblr atm, i could not bear to make this list without acknowledging @chillingoose, who is one of my dearest friends and who has come up with some truly stunning things for olizumi as well.

and! and! also @littlebear1537! who loves briggs more than anyone else in the universe!

if i managed to miss anything, my olizumi tag is here! there's not a ton in it at the moment, but there are some jokes, like this one by @heavenlyshadowhunter:

:D

i would LOVE to add more to that tag by any means possible, so if you make anything for olizumi, PLEASE tag me in it! i am also going to work on setting up @olizumi as more of a proper archive too! (edit: i did it! it’s a real blog now!)

thank you so much for reading this incredibly long post, and for giving my girls a chance! <3!

[utilitycaster]

Feel free to ignore if you don't want to talk about it (since I know folks have been super weird to you about gaming), but I'm really curious what build you went for in Disco Elysium, since, at least in my experience, it REALLY colors the information you get about the world (and also how the game flows).

Hey anon! I am happy to talk about it. I'll give you the build and then, honestly, I'm going to give a rundown of The Weirdnesses since talking around them is probably making shit more confusing. I may have even done this before or I may have drafted it and deleted it. I honestly do not recall, and it doesn't hurt to repeat.

I went with thinker, in a move surprising no one who has been subjected to my "never dump intelligence when you can dump wisdom" rants about D&D. I want to know what's going on; this has made progress slow in a few places due to the mediocre physical stats/horrifically bad psyche stats, and also it means my available health and morale are garbage, however, I do not care because I want to know what's going on. It does mean I haven't been able to get through several doors, however.

Anyway re: video games. This isn't unique to them but I think bc I am up to date on Critical Role this just doesn't happen much, but anyway two things are going on.

the overfamiliarity problem. I mean this so seriously: If we have not interacted recently and/or frequently (or uh. at all) saying shit like "I'm so excited for you to be playing this game!" is actually deeply off-putting to me. I am sure it is INTENDED to be friendly, and so I usually quietly delete comments or hide reblogs instead of blocking, but it really is like...this is a normal thing for casual acquaintances to say and it's fucking weird for strangers to say. like the posts if you like them! reblog them! Even "oh it's a fun game, enjoy yourself!" is fine by me. But like, something about "I'm excited for you" or talking about your own experience when I do not fucking know you makes my skin crawl.

Like many people I have a number of hangups about using leisure time for leisure instead of productivity, or even using leisure time for a leisure activity like video games specifically, which are both time consuming and, while very enjoyable and imo rewarding, do not have the same cultural cache as books nor the finished products as crafts, nor the ability to simultaneously clean your kitchen or crochet as podcasts or TV/movies. I've found from some conversations with friends that I have...more than average hangups, and that's a conversation I do genuinely intend to have in like. a therapy setting. and I'll leave it at that. But anyway to that point feeling like I am having demands put on me, even something as vague and well-intentioned as "I'm excited to hear your thoughts!" or "do you think you'll do another run" before I've independently formulated said thoughts/done another run kicks in a whole bunch of contrarian and also "why are you giving me a fucking TASK related to this when I already had to manually override seventeen warning lights to get to the point of doing something purely for fun and for myself" instincts. (This is also a factor in why I'm extremely sensitive to any spoilers; even "oh you'll have fun when you meet Bob" sets my brain into "well now you can't focus on anything until you meet Bob, obviously, all that matters is finding Bob" mode, which may fuck up my experience until I meet Bob. It's not all the time, depending on the nature of the spoiler and the work and my own ability to be like hey. brain. stop. But it is sometimes, and given that there's very valid reasons to avoid spoilers anyway, such as "random stranger on Tumblr usually does not reveal them in a way that feels nearly as rewarding as the work itself" I am spoiler averse.) Really, when it comes to me exploring video games, or life, one must treat me as a shelter cat or a toddler: I gotta do it myself, let me figure it out myself, only stop me if I'm going to like, fall down a flight of stairs or chew on a lamp cord. And honestly? I think this is a good way to treat everyone who is getting into something you like unless they ask you for advice.

ANYWAY mortifying ordeal of being very slightly known/lecture on how to welcome the independent to a fault and perhaps beyond that into your fandoms aside, asking about what I've already done? 100% ok, do not worry about doing this, just make sure from my posts it is indeed a thing I've already done.

[ophernelia]

Hi. Do you have any tips on how to grow your sims platforms? I keep tryig and posting and I hardly get any interactions or followers. Idk what to do. I wish bigger creators would help out smaller ones more by reposting the content so it gets more views. Its so hard starting out

Hey! Yeah, I have a few tips I can share! This is gonna be long so beware!

I keep seeing this sentiment reiterated about larger creators. I get it, but I think everyone's missing one thing in regards to it: you already have access to the same audience they have. Just like you they grew their platform. Maybe it was a stroke of luck from a viral post or something, but they still had to start somewhere. What it takes is getting your content to hit the algorithm. That's all! So even if a larger creator never looks your way, you can still grow and curate an audience without their help. Small accounts are what make up big accounts after all.

You NEED good SEO. I'll talk about TikTok specifically. If you want a boost in visibility then get on Tik Tok. Properly tagging your content is the key to working the algorithm in your favor. I think people believe the more tags the better. No. The more accurately tagged, the better. The hashtags "TS4", "The Sims", and "The Sims 4" are always trending. You should always use those tags. The rest depends on the kind of content you're posting. I'll use my most viral video as an example. My Stormveil Chateau post on Tik Tok got 141.6K views, 22.3K likes. Since it was for a maxis match build I used the following tags: #thesims4 #sims4 #ts4 #simstok #ts4cc #fyp #sim #sims4tok #sims4maxismatch #sims4build #sims4builds #ts4build #ts4gameplay. Most of the tags are related to TS4 and TS4 builds. I wouldn't include anything about CAS, mods, etc. It wouldn't fit the post. Don't flood other tags in hopes of getting more views. It'll just bury your post under a bunch of random content. People have to be able to find your content.

Visually appealing content performs better, period. Y'all give the aesthetic girls hell but they know a thing or two about working the algorithm. I'll give them that! People like things that look nice. Now, that's not to say you need to purge all the color or character from your game. You don't have to follow a certain style trend. Curate your own personal style. Do what you do to the best of your ability. Whatever you post, just make sure it's good quality. Focus on sharpness, clarity, etc. If you wanna curate a particular look then go for it! But most importantly, having clear clean images or videos is the main thing you need. And you don't need a beast of a PC to do it. Sharpen your images and videos before you upload them using Capcut or something. Make sure the lighting is nice. Make sure it's a good resolution for the platform you're posting on. A quick tip: Adding dof to lower quality images makes it look better! See how the left photo looks more clear than the right? A little bit of depth of field helps so the pictures don't fall flat.

Pick a primary social to promote your secondary ones. Usually your primary social may be the one where you have your largest audience. For me, it was Tik Tok. On there I'd promote my Patreon, YouTube, and Tumblr. You just released some cc? Post something about it on Tik Tok, let your audience know they can find it on your Tumblr. Use one to promote the others.

Slow organic growth is STILL growth. Growing your audience is one beast, but maintaining it is a whole other thing. As someone who has gotten shout outs from larger creators, that initial boost ALWAYS dies down. And socials like YouTube will not hesitate to tell you "Hey boo, your shit's failing now. You kinda suck." Been there, felt that. Boosts from other creators and giveaways don't have much longevity. Most times that audience will leave. On occasion you may get a few who stick around, but most won't. That's why it's important to build your audience organically. Yes, it may take longer but they won't just dip out after a few weeks. Things take time to grow. Things take time to curate. Understand you are BUILDING something. It takes time!

And lastly- if you just really want the numbers and it doesn't matter what content you post, then here's what you do: Sell. Still use good SEO, still try to have high quality photos, but give people something to consume. People like to see what they can get. Post some builds, cc, whatever. If you're not a cc creator, then do cc finds, mod reviews, tutorials, build recommendations, lookbooks. People love a good cc haul. They wanna see what they can get. And that's not to say people that make this sort of content don't care about their content. I know they do and it's a lot of work! It still takes time and effort to curate. It's just HOT right now! Especially maxis match content. It ruffles less feathers because a wide array of the Sims community has a vicious vendetta against alpha cc. (Yeah ion know. They will "uncanny valley" and "just play IMVU' you to death. If I say what I think it is.. My people know.) But if you really just want thousands of followers, then there's a way to do it.

With all that said, I know how annoying it is to constantly hear to not focus on numbers but don't. CREATE FOR CREATION'S SAKE. Do it only because you enjoy it. Growth for me has come as a byproduct of me doing whatever the hell I wanted. I make Lykaia because I want to make Lykaia. I love that people love it but it is for me. Not to be an influencer, or to inspire, or to receive praise and accolades. I love everything about the process. Hell, I love the stress that comes with it! I have four scenes to film and I'm still not done editing the ones I have filmed. The episode is supposed to air on MONDAY. I fucking love working down to wire. It's stressful as hell but it feels good! If it's out there, the audience will soon follow. Always. Take your time. Be grateful for where you're at every step of the way. Enjoy the process! And remember that all it takes is one post to take off.

[erstwhilesparrow]

might make a longer post later about more details from the video, but have been thinking especially about how delighted i am at the ways characters are categorizing and drawing lines around things in owen's newest new life ep? careful about the cut; there's spoilers in there.

i think... in other series, or watching videos created by other ccs, if someone monologued at the audience about how they think the mechanics of the world work, i would just take that at face-value and move on? this is a thing people do. minecraft is pretty open-ended -- the things that happen in it and the mechanics players interact with can have many interpretations, and probably the person holding the camera is telling you their interpretation so we have The Intended Way To Understand The Rest Of The Video. or at the very least, those interpretations don't tend to be characterizingly wrong? i'm thinking of pixlriffs in empires season two, who posits a theory in-character about how dreams connect different worlds. i'm thinking about scott literally in his most recent new life video saying to us, "oh, that bolt of lightning must be my light snare, one of my powers." these things tell us more about the world and its mechanics, smoothing over the gap between game and interpretation, than about the people sharing those understandings.

so it's. really really fun to me that owen is playing with that? sparrow newlife is just straight up wrong about a bunch of things, but he also has a really obvious stake in maintaining the distinctions and categorizations he's had in place so far. i'm thinking particularly about how long he goes on insisting that the sculk is good and the warden is bad -- it's something he's been saying some variation on since he first became sculk, and it's also increasingly evident that it's just not true! sure, it's in the warden's mind that he find the otherside and the memories therein, but those flashes of memory are about the sculk spreading. he's been saying himself that the sculk wants to spread! and at the end of the episode, sparrow, despite insisting he's a sculk hybrid, hears scott's heartbeat and literally sniffs him out like a warden. there's not really a perfect separation between sculk and warden even on the level of sparrow's hybrid abilities, but he's so lonely and scared, and he's been so convinced for so long that being a hybrid is the best or only way to be wanted and liked -- he needs the sculk to be benevolent, to have welcomed him into the fold because it wants him just for being him. thinking about his final monologue: he's so deeply hurt that, specifically, the sculk used him! he hasn't been upset about being sculk; he's upset that it didn't ultimately mean anything!

and speaking of self-interested drawing of lines, i'm also delighted that scott in his perspective of this episode's encounter does this thing too? as he runs away from sparrow, he mutters to himself something like, "i don't think [sculk sparrow] is the sparrow i used to know." it's... not completely wild to interpret that as scott telling us the viewers that sculk sparrow is genuinely A Different Entity and that this is something that is now just true about the world, but i like thinking of it as scott, the lightmancer, the character, terrified (that heartbeat sparrow hears is going so fast??) and frantically trying to reconcile the image of sparrow covered in sculk and pulling a knife on him with the pilot he befriended all that time ago. it complicates sparrow in interesting ways! it complicates scott in interesting ways! there's a mismatch, on both sides of this falling out, between who each person thinks the other is, and who that other person actually is, and scott saying this gives us a glimpse of another angle to that mismatch. the sculk is deeply a part of sparrow, yes, and is affecting him, but that well of incredible insecurity in sparrow has been here this whole time. he's always had that tendency to curiosity-cruelty and he's always been holding onto the belief that being a hybrid would make him worth something. this whole encounter is more interesting to me if Yeah, It Is In Fact The Same Guy In There. struggling against something terrible, for sure, but still the same guy! sparrow did that. he burned down those structures. he pointed a crossbow at that villager. he, hurting in a million different ways but still doing it, jumped into scott's head and killed him.

[squirmydonnie]

I'm sad to see tiktok go

I've had the app since I was in 6th grade.

Some of my first breakdowns were on there :(

But I also made friends there, and a learned things. Its been nice in general. There were bad times as well.

But at the same time. I can't say it doesnt feel nice to consider myself an og there.

One creator I'll really miss is, drag0nmistress. Not because shes someone I see everyday, or much anymore.

But she was one of the first to notice me.

She interacted on my posts and tried to help me. She even sent me video to make me feel better. And I just found that.

I'm really happy to have known her for that bit. And that she still remembers me

I hope she sees my message, but if not

I'm still happy to be apart of that app. The whole time its existed you're made to be ashamed of having it.

Then all of a sudden the last 2 years everyone got on it. Including the people who've made fun of me for it

They'll miss the laughs, but I'll miss more.

I'll miss the community. I'll miss what it used to be before. And I'll miss what it's been recently. Because it's not like that was bad either.

The people who stayed the whole time I'll miss too. Even if I didn't know them that well

I don't really want to go to Instagram. And I don't have the app now. I only have tiktok because of my storage.

So I've mostly been contained there.

Which kind of makes it sadder. I've never experienced anything else but tiktok and tumblr.

So while i have an idea of what the other platforms I like. It seems like it sucks.

People on tiktok say so much of it is you having to be performative. And you never have to be that way on tiktok unless you want to.

Eventually you find your people and they find you.

I never would have gotten to hear from trans elders, I never would have gotten to hear from other cultures the way I did. I learned so much.

And that's why its getting banned.

Theres so much free speech. Theres so much it has to go away.

There's so much community and ability to communicate that it has to be stopped.

[and-a-pidgey-in-a-wepear-tree]

good [insert time of day here] i realised i never thought to ask you amid my delight of you being the most interactive follower i have that isnt an irl friend do YOU have ocs or blorbos. i wish to know. for reasons.

OH hello yes thank you for asking!!! I have several OCs but most of the time I simply Do Not Explain on here; I have lots of ideas and doodles but I make it mostly for myself and don't think to share — doesn't mean I don't want to tho! exhibit A: this absolutely massive post I'm about to make lmao. putting it under a read more bc Oh Boy, the floodgates have been opened

most of my OCs are for two different projects I have: The Visitors and my D&D Dark Star Campaign.

The Visitors is just a lil worldbuilding project I've been chewing on for.... oh wow, over a decade at this point??? I love all the OCs I have in there very very much, but they're definitely never intended to go in an actual story, I just enjoy the speculative biology and character / world building process.

Val is one of my oldest OCs, and she's changed SO MUCH over the years! nowadays, she's a sort of insect/dinosaur mashup alien who uses gravity warping magic and a very large axe to hunt demons. a huge issue for magic users of her species is keeping cool, as magic generates heat and can literally cook you from the inside out, so you'll notice the multiple vent-like spiracles across her body for this purpose. she was born blind and so relies heavily on her best friend, Django, to be her eyes and keep her safe. fortunately, Django has Too Many Eyes. he's a dragon genetically engineered by those in Val's species to be the perfect vessel for storing and releasing massive amounts of mirror-based magic. this kind of magic gives him many abilities, including seeing around corners, creating illusions, or multiplying attacks when applied in different ways, and he acts as Val's seeing-eye dragon. in battle, she likes to get up in the action while he holds back and gives her cues on what's happening, only jumping in himself if she's in major trouble. she's very friendly and excitable, and loves to get into the culture of whatever planet they're visiting, while he's more interested in observing and snooping. there's a lot of espionage and hijinks.

these are some of my most recent sketches of them, tho I'm sure the designs will changes in the future. specific colors don't matter at all, it's all about vibes! not pictured in the halfway colored one is Val's big iridescent black cape thing that has a slit down the middle for her rigid tail, nor her weird arms since I wanted to figure out where the torso vents could go.

Duke is another Visitor who visits planets and solves problems, but his path to get there was a whole lot different! I made him up as a coping mechanism when I was 12, and I'm still very fond of him.

he started life as a human video game speedrunner and modder prodigy. in a "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" situation, a devil (very distinct from demons!) struck a deal with him, challenging his gaming abilities with his soul as the stakes. he won despite the devil's cheating, but that's where the resemblance to the song ends. in this world, a devil winning your soul allows them to fuse with you and gain total control over your body, mind, and actions; but if YOU win, the control is reversed! and like any 14 year old who suddenly has the power to rival minor gods and a chaotic creature living in their head.... he goes off the rails for a while. Val and Django eventually find him and help him cope. his powers include electricity, glitching reality, flailing his glaive around, and being a menace to evil overlords.

you can't see it very well in this picture, but his eyes and the segments between his tail glow lime green! I'm not a fan of drawing clothes, but in my head he's relatively fashionable for a teenager and refuses to wear anything other than black. also, he decided to tell me he was trans a couple years ago, thanks for letting me know buddy 😂

my other project does actually get to see the light of day, if very slowly — I'm running a homebrew D&D campaign for my irl friends called the Dark Star Campaign! none of em use tumblr so WHEEEE I get to post all the spoilers I want! there's a kinda staggering amount of lore behind it and a ton of minor OCs, but the two I rotate in my head the most are Anya the Timekeeper and The Master, aka Armageddon.

Anya the Timekeeper is a chronomancy lich from an alternate universe! she used to help Armageddon travel the multiverse and gain power, but she's decided she's tired of being evil, and now hides in a mansion on a tropical island where she breeds dinosaurs for fun. though she's now very determined to help the party, they'll eventually have to kill her past self to prevent a paradox. her familiar is a little archaeopteryx named Trix who steals hats!

(I commissioned this art from @/goodlouse a while ago! highly recommend checking out his blog!!)

Armageddon is the BBEG and he's SO EVIL and SO MUCH FUN. he's an ancient amethyst dragon who, up until a while before the campaign's beginning, was steadily finding alternate universe versions of himself, killing them, and eating their souls to gain Unlimited Power™. unfortunately, his partner in time (hah) Anya told him to fuck off, so the quest for Unlimited Power™ has been kinda slow lately. fortunately, a D&D campaign started, and he cheated his way into existing at the players' table as The Master! my players can ask to talk to him sometimes, and I'll put on a mask of his head I made specifically for this purpose — very useful for not breaking character when the character is supposed to literally be the one sitting at the table talking to the players. I don't try to hide the fact that he's evil and they all know it, the fun is in giving them little hints and tidbits of lore to munch on. right now he's being very docile and helpful but things will get very very interesting eventually as more of his nature and plan is revealed..... =)

I'm still playing around with what he looks like as The Master, but I really like this recent design I did. his eye glows dark and menacing. I haven't found a design for his dragon form I'm really pleased with yet tho :/

okay wow thanks again for the ask, I have many many ideas in my head and it felt pretty nice to get em out!!

[thegreatyin]

~ ✧ ~ COMMISSION INFORMATION ~ ✧ ~

Hello! I’m Yin, he/she/they, and welcome to my part of the hellsite, except with a lot more angels and monsters running amok. I’m primarily a hobbyist artist and writer, though I do aspire to get a proper job in either (or both!) professions someday. I’m a big fan of video games, cartoons, and just generally all that cringe fail nerdy stuff. If you want a more detailed introduction including nitty-gritty boundary information, links to and information about personal projects, and what few other social medias I have, you can find all of that stuff just below the cut. You don't have to read everything, but it's all there if you want to see it.

Also, this blog may-or-may-not convince you to play cult classic niche text-based horror browser game Fallen London. This is your first, last, and only warning... aaaand also beware the massive untagged spoilers for the Heart's Desire storyline from said game, because I can never shut up about my obsession with my made up bat. This spoiler warning applies to literally this entire blog. Viewers beware.

Don't be afraid to tell me if I need to warn (or be reminded to warn) for triggering content, I am always happy to do so!

~ ✧ ~

~ Do not interact: ~

The title of this section is a joke. I don't actually have a DNI. What I will lay down is a before you follow:

• I am not comfortable with sharing my personal information on any public social media! Please respect this. I am comfortable disclosing that I am professionally diagnosed with autism and ADHD, and identify... somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum in both orientation and gender. I'm still trying to figure out where, mind you, but definitely somewhere!!

• I am very violently queer and use the word very liberally as a form of self-identification. If this is a serious, major problem for you, I'd recommend you just block this blog and move on.

• This blog is a SFW space and, while I may reblog or post the occasional dirty or suggestive joke, I tend to avoid any and all truly explicit content. Blogs of any caliber are welcome to interact, just be aware my own space will always remain PG-13 at worst. This rule varies when it comes to artistic nudity- generally I will avoid reblogging it here, but if I ever do so it will be tagged appropriately.

• My official stance on any and all shipping discourse is that I prefer to not get personally engaged and keep my own opinions to myself. While I do have personal takes, viewpoints, and to an extent a clearly-defined side on the whole thing, I am not privy to publicly sharing any of these and will ignore any and all inquiries about the topic. I would greatly prefer to be treated as a neutral or otherwise outside party by both sides of the debate, because I do not wish to get involved in any discourse, and earnestly request that everyone respect that to the best of their ability. I'm just a simple hobbit in my own corner of the internet, and boy am I not willing to carry the ring to Mordor anytime soon.

• I write and draw what I want to write and draw. I am an insufferable multishipper and a majority of my works deal with incredibly heavy and graphic topics. These will always be tagged and properly warned for. I will never drop something violent or gory on anyone's dashboards without the appropriate content warnings and disclaimers. As stated near the top of this post, if I ever forget anything, please feel free to remind me about it!!! Other's comfort will always take priority over my own hubris.

• I greatly enjoy eldritch/biblical angel aesthetics and religious horror themes, and they play a prominent role in a good chunk of my personal works. Similarly; body horror, existential dread, various kinds of abuse, struggles with nihilism, and mental health issues of all kinds are either common or at the very least notably existent in virtually all settings I create. If any of this makes you uncomfortable, I would earnestly recommend blocking most of the tags relating to my work.

• This should go without saying, but this blog is open to all sorts of identities and peoples regardless of origin. Short of literally being a crime, I am happy to let people identify however they wish. If you disagree with this statement, please be aware that I block liberally and I block often.

~ ✧ ~

~ Personal Projects and Settings ~

Acts, Promises, and Faith (commonly abbreviated to "APF"): My main ongoing original fiction project, with a clearly defined cast and setting and (almost!) a clearly defined overarching plot. Set on an artificially magic-infused planet known simply as Mimue, it follows a catgirl shapeshifter as she struggles to deal with love, loss, the baby(?) eldritch spider that crashed through her roof last night, and the most powerful person to ever exist taking a personal interest in her journey to bring that spider home. The main story is not currently published, and will likely not be for years, but I do hope to make it into a webcomic someday. Or a book. Or a game. Or just... something.

Outside of the main protagonist quartet, the setting as a whole has an abundance of side characters (and not so side characters), most of which feature in some shape or form in the official stories I have published on Ao3! These side stories also contain major insights into the lore and overall status of the world at large, and I always have ideas in the back of my mind for how I can make more stuff like this in the future. Just make sure to read the content warnings on all published works, and know that none of those were published in anything close to chronological order 👉😎👉

It is also important to note that you should treat all of those aforementioned stories as you would expanded universe material for an already-existing show or franchise- with the incredibly notable exception of one reoccurring character in particular, a majority of the cast given focus in the Ao3 fics do not star or otherwise provide a major role in the plot as it's written right now. I'm essentially constructing this universe backwards by first introducing everyone to Glup Shitto instead of Luke Skywalker. But that's okay, because now you can have both as your blorbos in the end! Everyone wins!

I am always accepting asks and inquiries about this world, because I love it to death and I love my blorbos to death and Rigel is my favorite character I've ever made ever.

Overall genre: Urban... ish fantasy character drama, leaning slightly towards low fantasy in general. The technology level in most of the world is equivalent to America in the early 60s, and magic originates from an outside force/gift in this setting, but is also pretty much seamlessly integrated into society by the modern day. While the story and themes are closer to darker melodrama than light-hearted action adventure, the world is distinctly not grimdark and the plot is mainly motivated by and through character actions and beliefs throughout the narrative.

Notable Content Warnings: Depression, allusions to suicide, drowning, burning alive, occasional gore, PTSD and C-PTSD, unreality and hallucinations from the prospective of the primary protagonist, body horror

Main Tag: #apf for general content, #apf info for more specific information about the world (these posts are not up-to-date most of the time, upfront worldbuilding questions are always preferred!)

Where to read it?: The APF anthology collection on Ao3 currently contains every published story I've ever written in ideal reading order! You definitely don't have to follow it in the slightest, it's just a suggestion due to how many fics there actually are. This setting also has its very own discord server, but for security reasons if anyone wants to enter it they'll have to DM me personally. Go on, give it a shot, I certainly won't mind!

~ ✧ ~

"Above": A work-in-progress name for a mostly sandbox (no clearly defined plot) setting about various gods, angels, and demons getting up to mischief across time and space. Dramatically darker in setting and tone than APF, and far less grounded to boot.

The world of "Above" is currently split between two eras- the "past" era, where a newly-born Seraph named Reguel tries their best to follow the wishes of their god, and the "present" era, where the King of Demons campaigns to end a millennium of torment from his cruel patron deity. At its core, it's a science fantasy setting that ends up focusing 99% of its attention on the duo of god-created fantasy races and very little on the already scarce sci-fi elements. Outside of lore about the gods and their creations, the rest of the world is merely a backdrop to demon and angel tomfoolery. To this effect, the actual "main cast" features funny jesters, friendly demon kings that use emoticons every five sentences, murderous malewives intensely in love with their giant goth girlfriends, and one (1) very sexy butler. Truly, some treats for everyone to enjoy.

Also, demons in this setting are floating mood ring space cannibals. That's really just something you have to experience for yourself to understand.

While there is an ongoing askblog based on this world, the events of that blog are not strictly canonical and will probably never be declared as such for spoiler-related reasons I cannot get into... but I'm also not saying the blog isn't canon. Just like APF, I'm always happy to receive and answer asks about this setting, so feel free to send any when you feel like it!

Overall Genre: The past era is a fantastical tragedy, while the present era is largely a nobledark adventure story. The world of the past is seen only through the eyes of an unreliable narrator, while the present is told through many different perspectives across many different species and locations.

Notable Content Warnings: Everything in the book. Psychosis, self harm, cannibalism, gore, dissociation, suicidal thoughts, PTSD, C-PTSD, parental abuse, parental neglect, abusive relationships... this is a dead dove setting, through and through, and it does not pull its punches. Particularly in the past era, but the whole world in general is a dove actively dying inside a paper bag.

Main Tag: #above.

Where to read it?: As this is largely a sandbox freeform setting, there's far fewer defined ways to access information about the setting and lore. The most notable proper story is God Have Mercy on Them, God Have Mercy on Me, a work-in-progress epic set in the past era that describes Reguel's early life and the choices that led them to where (and who) they are today. It has an absurdly slow update schedule because I write in my free time and it's insanely long, but many of its twists and turns are truly something else. One day I will finish it, and on that day it will be my magnum fucking opus. Probably. Maybe. Who knows, really.

The other option is @xx-hail2theking-xx, a currently ongoing roleplay blog centered around King Paimak and his merry band of cannibals. Unlike all other blogs I've managed in the past, it has a clearly defined act structure and is planned to end after a certain point, but that point is still far off. You don't necessarily need to read through the entire blog to jump into the plot at this point in time, but it certainly wouldn't hurt!

Also I've worked on it for like a year and made a bunch of art and writing just for it and it's kind of just my homemade self-imposed summer art project now. In a wacky demon sort of way.

~ ✧ ~

The Omniverse: Technically not just my project, but deserves to be included here anyway! This is a set of Undertale Multiverse roleplay blogs I participate in during my off time, although currently they're on indefinite hiatus due to unfortunate life and scheduling reasons.

The simplest way to explain the overarching plot- the very loose, very improv-based plot- of both blogs I run is essentially that there are two concurrent stories running back-to-back. In one, a recovering drug addict struggles with terrifying concepts like "having morals" and "caring about people", while in other the self-proclaimed King of Darkness and Everything Evil has to contest with a madman that wants to wipe out all of reality and build it anew and has already done so once before.

Oh, and the recoverer is the brother of the King's spouse. There's a truckload of complicated roleplay lore associated with each and every character from this setting, and it's almost impossible for me to single-handedly cover it all- especially considering I don't own half of the major cast.

Nothing is currently being done with them right now, but rest assured at any given moment I am rotating Caeru in my mind like a rotisserie chicken.

Overall Genre: Darkly comedic character introspection drama, and grimdark action adventure with a heavy focus on worldbuilding and characters.

Notable Content Warnings: Addiction, drug abuse, excessive violence, PTSD, C-PTSD, self harm, suicidal tendencies and thoughts... okay, maybe this one is kind of a dying dove too.

Main Tag: #rp stuff dwbi for primarily general RP content, while #hag for Hood and Greylu's verse in particular (the King of Darkness' verse)

Where to read it?: @official-saltbag and @darkness-regins respectively, however the quality of my old (and I do mean old) writing found on these blogs is inconsistent and contains many plot points and characterization choices I'm not sure hold up well today. While I hold no lingering resentment or specific apprehension about the blogs in general, I would much rather someone read my current work if they are genuinely interested in my writing style... and also they both completely lack a chrono tag, so good luck properly reading through them without a saintly amount of patience.

~ ✧ ~

Mistakes, Curses, and Mockeries: APF's semi-sequel, but only in the sense that Deltarune is technically a sequel to Undertale. Set in the same world and continuity as APF, but decades into the future- with a completely separate cast and story structure to boot.

One year after the death of his family at the hands of a mysterious robotic "red devil", a young noble named Equuleus comes to the horrifying realization that he's stuck in a year-spanning timeloop. And in every loop, no matter what, widespread disaster and chaos runs rampant by year's end. Potentially at the very same hands that led his family to ruin.

And thus Leus makes a vow; Force a future where everybody lives, or die trying.

...naturally, it turns out "die trying" can be taken very literally in this exact scenario. Things only spiral from there.

Overall Genre: Fantasy mystery adventures, with a touch of character drama and time shenanigans for spice. Steampunk-magitek-medieval-fantasy mixing pot of a setting with the occasional downright cyperpunk jumpscare. Keeps threatening to become a psychological horror and I keep having to bat it with a stick so it chills the heck out already. (It is doing the exact opposite of chilling the heck out.)

Notable Content Warnings: Major character death, dehumanization, dissociation, existential terror about forgetting everything that you are, insufferable nihilists, potentially even more insufferable fatalists, colonialism

Main Tag: #mcm.

Where to read it?: well first you get a shovel and second you start applying it directly to my skull to get the brain out for advanced noclip telepathy strats... is what I'd usually say, but there's actually a singular fic set in this setting now! I know, I'm shocked too.

~ ✧ ~

~ Contact information / socials ~

Tumblr is and will forever be my main social media platform, and I rarely consistently maintain accounts on other sites. You can, however, nonetheless find me below:

• @luminxlumina on Twitter

• @TheGreatYin on Bluesky

• @TheGreatYin on Cohost (Kept on this list for nostalgia. RIP <3)

• @TheGreatWritingYin on Ao3

• @TheGreatYin on Artfight

• @TheGreatFrostingWind on Flight Rising

• @TheGreatYin on Pixel Cat's End

• @Yinsie on Fallen London (Main Account, endgame and working on the Paramount Presence grind. My alt accounts are Caeru, The Blue Lark, and Greylu, in vague order of priority.)

• ...and that's literally just it!

If you successfully scrolled and read to the bottom of this, congratulations! Have a celebratory cookie. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ 🍪

[fluffbeast7]

i found a fake art Channel that's an ARG :) its called ''Snowbird.Rogers''. This post will be about me diving in completely with what i found so far about the channel, if you want to explore it on your own, feel free to skip this!

Im pretty sure this channel is an ARG, the first vid has a weird scene at the end and the second one had all sort of recordings.

The banner has these weird numbers:

2438723490 2947034545 3542524545

and above "snowbrid.rogers" (brid? Not bird like the title?) There's something written in a language i dont understand, but from google translator it means: "what's wrong with zyul?", which I'm assuming is the character or to represent the person posting

i hadn't catched anything wrong with the first video, just at the end that it plays out a video in the dark, i have no idea what it means

in the second video is FILLED with recordings.

''at first, the audio plays of someone trying to call 'Alex', i think it is someone called ''Grim''. They have to record their message (number being 0123456789?)

'' hey alex its Grim, i'm glad to hear that you're back home for the summer. Sorry again that i didn't pick up when you first called, i was- i was busy, but, anyway, uhm, yeah! just glad to hear that you're back, we really need to catch up, its been too long dude. uhm just shoot me a text whenver you're free and, oh, oh- sorry i gotta go again, but, anyway, glad to hear you're back home.''

nothing too weird about the rest of the video then, which comes back with the speedpaint- the channel only has 2 videos, so you'd think that's the end of it? but nope! lets dig in a little bit deeper!

found this at their community tab, but the artwork can also be found at their instagram (which, so far, they only have instagram and youtube.). and loook, A CLUE! we find out that Grim, The one who called Alex, is also an artist and interacts with the person who owns the channel from time to time! and yes, the person who owns the channel is alex, Grim confirms it on their instagram

so.. we know alex has been away, and is coming back from college for summer, (it's mentioned a few times on their instagram)

Don't think i didn't see the link! :D i was just pointing out sum details haha

this is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_vSRk84CWI

and it leads you to this vid!

let's look at the title first, i put it in a morse code translator and it said ''CANARY'', in the video, a bird is singing, and the video does not fail to point that out-

''The canaries are most often associated with happiness, compassion, and the ability to help others through a hard time. They can sometimes come into our lives to remind us of what is important and to keep our optimism in times of sadness.''

I think this video is about Grim and Alex talking to each other, i wrote in what they said but i will put here the most important parts (for me at least)

''you know about the kidnapping that happened a couple years ago in the woods that weren't far away'' (this doesnt have a continuation but its interesting)

-

''you're lucky enough to see me Outdoors, it's taken me so long to get that far, so yeah''

-

''I've told you about how Robin's been acting lately right? she just did a whole jerk about the whole thing I I don't know why and I don't know if it's gotten into her, it, it's just weird I-''

-

''don't sound like her from what you were saying'' ''I know that's why I'm so shocked, it's like I don't know what happened and I am I don't know I'm worried but I don't know at the same time I I just could be''

-

robin is a new character here, but we dont know much abut her.

this is pretty much all i got, Alex posted on the community tab about getting a new social media account but they haven't shared it yet

[lowhowl]

Hey, so I'm kinda starting to put a lot more focus into personal projects (currently writing the script for my next video) and as much as I was hoping to avoid this, I'm going to have to place this blog on hiatus until I start to get muse again, even if 'hiatus' is just tumblrspeak for 'So long, losers.'

I'm not going to definitively say I'm going away, or that I'll come back, but a lot of my inspiration for writing has gone elsewhere and I'd much rather pursue that than risk burning myself out.

I can be reached at my twitter @/WebbedSpiders (slight nsfw warning, account is minors dni) where I'm a lot more candid, mostly tweet at other creators, post my own stuff, and complain; or my Discord, for close mutuals.

also, a bit of an addendum below the cut- it's under a cut specifically bc it waxes negative but I feel like it's important to say because it is cutting into my ability to write here.

fair warning, I'm going to be very blunt and kind of serious with my words here. this also isn't an invitation to discussion, I am plainly stating my thoughts and I will not be swayed.

disclaimer: this is not directed at anyone. please, for the love of the gods, do not take any of this as 'oh did I do something?' you didn't. This is more about how the roleplay community as a whole operates, and no single person can be blamed for any of this.

There's always an air of pressure about Tumblr communities. In the time where I've just been here talking to people, interacting, not really causing problems as far as I know, I've still managed to get softblocked by people just because of association or because I don't mention something at all.

And while it's well within the right of these people to do this- these systems exist so you can curate a safe corner for yourself- it has still created a lot of stress for me and it has lead to me overly moderating and overanalyzing a lot of my own posts, and worrying about what exactly I'd done to push these people away. To be brutally honest, that's not fun and is not conducive to a creative platform. Logging on to realize that threads you were very much looking forward to have effectively been dropped forever is disheartening.

and I think the argument of "well you should think about why you got (soft)blocked" in regards to if I'd done anything wrong is bullshit, because in every case that someone has broken mutuals with me after there's been an amount of IC interaction, there's been no discussion. There's been no clarity. Which means that there's no direct path to improvement or closure unless I go around asking other people why I was blocked, softblocked, whatever, and I'm simply not going to do that because that feels like a breach of privacy. At the very least, it comes off as an indication that the other person simply does not want to interact with you and does not want to even talk to you.

Should note, this doesn't really bother me if it happens with people I haven't really spoken to. This is more of a 'I thought we established we were cool' thing. I know I'm also guilty of this in some cases, but at the same time- I do regret doing it. I hate that it's just accepted as a product of the systems this community has set up, and I feel like everyone- no matter how severe their actions- deserves to at least know what everyone at least thinks or knows they did.

I'm also not stupid, I know that this is just the community that Tumblr has curated over the years and I understand that this is just how it operates, but I'm starting to realize that maybe this space just isn't for me. Creating for myself without the necessity of leaning on others for continuous threads has really broadened my horizons and made me feel like I can do a lot more. I still love Whisper. I still love writing. but if I'm going to continue with this blog down the line when I have muse again, I'm going to be very selective and it's going to be very sparingly. I've found a passion I care about- something that I can actually put all of my creative skills towards that can reach an audience- and I'd much rather focus on that.

If you read all this, thank you, but also. I'm sorry? This probably reads as aggressive and upset- but I've been holding on to a lot of these complaints for upwards of years from how long I've been on this platform, floating between roleplay communities, but I can't hold it in anymore. I hate to say it, but in the time I've spent away from Tumblr, I've just felt better.

[culminada]

I'm asexual! but I barely experience acephobia because my other three alienating traits are like shields that protect me from it 🙃unfortunately I do experience the -phobias people have of the other three things so. yaaay my ability to make friends? not to mention romance? ugh.

first up is that I'm multicultural and belong to a cultural minority. I'm not going to talk about it a whole lot because it's very confusing! Mostly it obstructs my social life from my end, by getting in the way of me feeling like I have anything in common with people - of my culture of origin OR general American culture - so yay.

Second up! The autism! I had to practice for YEARS before I got the hang of interacting with people I didn't know well. And in the meanwhile, no friends for m! Yippee! Stims, special interests (GW2, Trahearne, and fic of the same), executive dysfunction, etc make this Not Any Easier ugh

Dermatillomania, the incessant picking of my own skin! Like I said, red blotchy face isn't very attractive. Sometimes I'll be bleeding and not notice. yaaaaay. not to MENTION. the sheer TIME it takes out of my DAY. how am I supposed to learn the wifely skills of my culture when I?? lose HOURS to dermatillomania and executive dysfunction? (they have a feedback loop on each other.)

So yeah, by the time somebody infiltrates the layers of visual disgust, autistic communication barriers, and cultural differences, they're pretty well screened against something as simple and boring as acephobia. You don't get close to me without being VERY accepting of differences. (or just. yknow. capable of critical thinking and the awareness that people are different lolz.)

(I also tended to be that twelve-year-old who sighed wistfully and said I can't wait to get married, I want to get married ASAP, you know historically people got married at like. 13 right? and so everybody around me was always going OH DEARY YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY WAIT... LIKE SIX MORE YEARS IF NOT LONGER which I'm sure my fellow asexuals would have loved to hear, but my alloromantic brain was Very Unhappy about. it has now been 6+ or more years, for the record,)

anyway that's me. I got tired of repressing my aceposting and autism-posting and so on, bc my other blog is a fandom fic blog. btw go check out @skaald-of-the-hearth-fires that's the fifth, unofficial reason I feel alienated. (actually that falls under the autism heading, nevermind) my culture barely does video games. nobody in regular old boring American culture plays my special interest video game either. I find this quite distressing when people ask what I do and I say oh!! I'm a writer! I write fanfic for Guild Wars 2!! oh you haven't heard of that. ok. I'm so normal about that. so I've written the fic to be quite understandable to non-gamers, fandom-blind readers, and brainrotted fans alike :)

[unpleasant-ghoul]

Oh, hey, look! A post by me that's not about some video game!

I don't normally post shit that's still in progress. But I like the creature and i want to share because I might never finish it (kinda complex for my current skill. Might get too frustrated by the idea/ability difference and drop. happens often)

So, here. Here is it and the whole process of how such things came to be.

This is a pseudocentaur. Those things started for me a long time ago, and it's gonna be a lot to read, so I, ever-merciful, will hide the rest under a spoiler. Here:

So. A few years ago i was reading about Nuckelavee, started sketching, ended up with this:

You can tell from the human-for-scale interacting with it, that even then it had some vague shadow of being more than just a random monster. Not quite a character, but has a potential of getting there. You can also see that that version involved no actual horses, merely a vaguely equine thing that was truly the part of the pseudocentaur. And it was fucking massive.

For a few years it remained forgotten. Then a couple months ago I found it again and decided that I like it! It's neat! But it needs some love and also some actual thought put into it.

And so I started thinking on how's and why's and also on the matter of "does this have to be so big, when my love of things that are fucking ginormous has already led me to an ever-growing number of dragon OC's with absolute MINIMUM height at shoulders being 5. Fucking. Meters?"

So after thinking for some time and drawing for some time I got this page:

(as you can see, size of the creature reduced. Greatly. Also, has actual horse now)

And a much better idea of what the fuck we even have here. And I will share that idea with you whether you want it or not. I'm in a sharing mood. Suffer.

So!

Pseudocentaurs as they are now are parasitic creatures! They infect horses (other animals of similar size can be used, but results vary. Smaller beings can be infected, but don't survive full transformation. It can be used as a way of healing in a pinch, as long as the larva is killed just as the body finished repairing the pre-existing damage before going through the whole "neck splitting open" thing). But they're sapient and generally not evil, so they tend to have standards.

Most, unless there's no choice, prefer dying or even freshly dead hosts, since a dying one gets to continue living, even if it looks gruesome, and a dead one is, well, dead. So nobody's robbed of a whole potential life of Being A Normal Horse. In the case with dead hosts, pseudocentaur takes full control over the body, while with a living host it's usually basically an idealized, fairytale version of riding... Except without ever separating again. I say usually because they're as varied as humans. Some, despite it being frowned upon, take over perfectly healthy animals and essentially pilot them around without any regard for their own wishes.

On the matter of anatomy: the host's original mouth essentially disappears. You can see that: it's just an upper jaw, no tongue, no nothing. The head is not for eating anymore, just breathing (that mass on the horse head's close-up? Extended trachea!) and providing most of the auditory information, as the parasite's hearing is not all that great. And keeping an eye out for danger. Four is better than two! Especially with, again, a living host that can spot things on its own rather than being a fancy horse-shaped periscope.

Now, how does this thing EAT? Not with the parasite's mouth! That one's just for speaking. Not all even choose to have it at all. Instead, there is a circular, fanged, maw at the joint of the host and parasite's bodies. Food (and the body is repurposed for an omnivorous diet during the transformation) has to be shoved in there with the parasite's own hands (or with someone else's. It's not rude to scrape leftovers off your plate and right into your pseudocentaur friend's waiting maw). It's not the most convenient way to eat, but it is how it is. Do it or starve.

Beyond the splitting neck, the loss of jaw, the development of the maw, and the whole "you're an omnivore, Harry" thing, there can sometimes be no changes at all, or there can be some relatively subtle (compared to everything else) stuff: keratinous plating growing on legs, sometimes lengthening of the tail. Might lose some/all fur, might not.

Pseudocentaurs reproduce through two methods: true reproduction, making a whole NEW pseudocentaur is, well. You probably guessed. Two pseuds with living hosts of opposite sexes... Yea. Results in what at first is a normal foal, but bears the pseudocentaur larva in it and transforms after the horse is more or less adult. Those born pseuds are much more in tune with their hosts and, as I've said already, are fully NEW beings. New personality, no experience, they learn as they go. Like children! Except much cuter.

The other, and more common way, is releasing a "fly" made of one's own flesh to seek a new host. The resulting "new" pseudocentaur will have the original's exact personality and same memories up to the point of separation. It can be done voluntarily, or happen on its own if the current body is too damaged. If done voluntarily, the original continues to exist, so it's basically two separate instances of the same dude, just using different hosts and being in different places.

So, there ya have it. Pseudocentaurs. Base inspiration, as mentioned at the start, is the Nuckelavee, additional inspirations for the recent changes were Necromorphs and Illithids.

[here-there-were-dragons]

i'd put money on that they're very specifically targeting tiktok BECAUSE it's massive and generally unpopular with adults, easier to get the legal foot in the door because they won't get much pushback from the public (the parts of it that have legal rights anyway) and i would assume (don't know legalese so don't quote me on this) it's easier to set a precedent that nothing is safe when you start by knocking down the biggest one on the block.

what fucking baffles me is how a vast majority of people i've seen so far are *rabidly in support of* this. do people not understand this is how we get our own chinese walled internet? because this is how we get our own chinese walled internet. and once something like this goes in it can never, ever go back. are people as a whole really so fucking stupid as to permanently sacrifice the greatest and just about only remaining global communication medium humanity has yet invented-the ability to meaningfully communicate with eachother and get news out and in across country lines forever- just to get at the shitty vine ripoff because *checks notes* there's too many skibidi toilet videos or tweens like to post there and we've all collectively decided that minors existing in public is cringe and evil or something? where the fuck else are they supposed to be, the stores that all have no teens policies? the schools where they're not allowed to talk or make eye contact and there's no recess anymore? the sidewalks that are all no loitering zones? the parks that all got paywalled or ripped down by the cops to "discourage gang activity" or whatever? the public spaces that literally don't exist anymore? where i live it's literally functionally illegal to physically exist anywhere other than inside a car, in your house, on the sidewalk so long as you are walking to somewhere (but only as long as you don't look too weird/teenagery/punk/homeless/ect), or in a store but only so long as you don't stay too long and are buying something and also don't look too young, and the anti homeless spikes type shit is so intense here that all of the stores removed all of their *indoor* benches and trashcans (to the point that walmart even got rid of the seats in the shoe aisle for people to sit and try on shoes-you have to sit on the fucking floor now if you want to sit at all) and i'm sure if they could get away with it the restaurants would remove their tables. for entertainment the only things there are left to do are go to walmart or visit any of the several hundred liquor stores. in a huge amount of the us, it's functionally illegal now for kids to even play outside in their own yard, even with direct supervision. that's not even touching how schools are doing everything they can to stop kids from interacting with eachother in any way at all except for bullying.

everybody whines about kids on ipads meanwhile more and more by the day there is literally nothing in the real world left for anyone without money and autonomy to do. if people really want everyone to "go outside more" then rather than sabotaging anything people use to make this state of affairs slightly more bearable they should try making a fucking outside that's actually possible to be in. because that's the real reason nobody goes outside anymore, it's not because of social media addiction or whatever, it's not because kids are stupid spoiled ipad brat babies or whatever recycled boomers vs millenials crap we're apparently spewing uncritically these days, people are spending all their time on tech because there's nowhere outside to go.

i give it maybe 5 years before we start seeing laws making it illegal for minors to play more than 2 hours of video games a week because apparently millenials have retroactively decided boomers were right about everything or some such nonsense. more and more i'm convinced by the day that adults and children are literally separate organisms cause people sure as hell don't seem to actually remember being under a certain age. and once people hit a certain age no matter what their entire mentality seems to just suddenly flip and the worst part is they don't even notice it.

so the house of representatives just passed a bill that will now move to the senate to BAN tik tok completely in the united states and they are expected to argue that “national security risks” outweigh the freedom of speech and first amendment rights. biden has already said that if it gets to him, he will sign it. whether or not you use the app…….this is something to be worried about

[nitrosodiumequilibriumproject]

Passive vs Active themes in games

I'll be honest, I've gotten pretty lazy over the Christmas holiday. I've gotten used to the idea of not being obligated to do anything with myself; especially after completing an hour-long animated video, but that's unrelated. I've already spoken at length about shapes, so I don't feel like I specifically need to make another blog post on it. But, I will blend multiple blog posts into one big wall of text.

As I already know, the three shapes mean various things, in religion, alchemy, science and basic critical understanding. I'm going to take my inspiration from the classical elements, and make the circle water, the square land, and the triangle air. These are three planes of movement that the player must travel through, using the forest creatures to help them. This then ties into the theme of equilibrium, and while not necessarily bad, I've boxed myself in here.

Essentially - and this is a theory I've had for a while, but it's sort of come into its own following the Greek tragedy that was Overdeath's development - game development is split into layers, just like a lasagna. You've got the most basic part of the game, followed by assets, then mechanics, then themes, and more components on top of that. So, in Equilibrium, the primary theme is the squares, circles and triangles, which I'm gonna inevitably be talking a lot about, so I'm gonna abbreviate it to S-C-T. If someone said you had to make a game using S-C-T, and you didn't wanna be creative with it, you could make a basic Geometry Dash-esque game with those shapes. Or, on another level, you could give your character abilities and mechanics tethered to those shapes, and what they mean. Or, more indirectly, you could take what those shapes represent, like I have, and allude to them being in the game. They still are, but it's not like the entire game is ABOUT those shapes. It's a theme. Look at something like Thomas Was Alone, a game I'm constantly told is amazing, but I've never played. Yes, it's about shapes, but that's not really a theme of it. What it's really about is telling a story, and how characters interact within the confines of this geometrical world the game is in. The whole character-switching aspect with each shape having a different property is not a theme, but it's another layer on top of that. Without understanding, on an interactive level, that each of these characters is important and vital to your success, you wouldn't have the same level of connection to the world. This has also been done in Undertale - if you sparing or killing the various monsters in the game didn't change how the story progressed, and how characters treated you, there would be no reason emotionally to spare them. Obviously I'm not creating a multi-faceted narrative masterpiece like those two games, but I'm still making a layered game wherein the themes connect in different ways.

Now, the thing about the concept of Equilibrium; the fact that I've made the entire thing about using woodland creatures to progress, means I have boxed myself in a little. Because this is an active theme in the world; not alluded to or passive like the implementation of S-C-T, everything else I add has to be related to that. That's fine, this is the game I want to make, an Avatar-esque tale about the fusion between man and beast with high fantasy trappings, but it means I can't stray too far outside of that. Levels now need to be about animal-centric progression because, well, that's what it IS. So what I might do is have multiple implementations of the same animal. That was one thing we were told quite a bit in college; game development is about taking a small tool-set and using them in as many creative ways as you can. Like Super Meat Boy using the same saw asset in like thirty different ways, or textures being flipped and re-coloured in Mario. The thing about an active theme is it can be re-utilised in lots of ways while still making an interesting game experience, but if you re-use a passive theme, your world will become very focused, but also very rigid and hard to improve on.

Like, what if every part of the game had to be about S-C-T? Shape runes carved into trees, each enemy and texture representing a fusion or isolation of one of the shapes, yes it sounds cool, but it means EVERYTHING has to be about shapes. I'm trying to think of a good example here of "passive-theme extrapolation", as I have now titled it, and I think the best example I can come up with is an alternate-timeline Quake. Yes, that game has Lovecraftian themes, but if these passive ideas were expanded on, the entire thing would be forced to draw from Lovecraft's work, with no room for uniqueness - it would all be forced to fit the theme instead of being the gothic gore-fest it is today. The active theme in that game is going between the realms to kill horrible monsters, and that's a concept so banal you can build anything onto it.

Man, this was a massive tangent. I should talk about something else. Point is, you can have multiple themes that interweave within each other, without making your entire project about that theme.

[tomyo]

I had a whole breakdown in 2019 when I kept trying to explain to people that social media is a terrible lie and got the response "Yeah, and?". I felt like a lot of people didn't remember anymore that websites used to be about sharing with each other so I went on a whole Twitter rant explaining how solitary these places have become down to their UI design.

The most important things we've lost on websites is curration, remixability and the upstream.

One of the bigger issues with reposters on other sites is they often do it from lack of curation otherwise. That's not to say there wouldn't be any but I have seen plenty of "X Fandom Daily" accounts (mostlh on instagram) reposting (especially art they shouldn't) that do so because there is no way to curate their fandom account otherwise. It's not to say there never wasn't reposters but even back in the day, I'd say that it specifically was more common to see when the content wasn't easily accessible off platform, ie Pixiv fanart or niconico videos that had a language barrier on their native site being reposted in photobuckets or on youtube. Reposters are definitely still going to be an issue due things like financial incentive now introduced in online content but there is definitely still a consumer population that would benefit from more curation features returning to social media sites.

Remixability is the ability to add on or change the contexts of posts. Older people might remember back when YouTube allowed you to reply to videos with your own videos that would be linked in a section of the comments. Sadly something removed due to exploitation, I think there still was more value in it because you could follow a chain of a concept both forwards and backwards in the process. We see this being a wildly successful aspect of TikTok now with the ability to Duet, Stitch, and video comment on the website. I don't think it's much surprise a lot of the most memorable moments from TikTok tend to be things like "It's me or the PS5", "That's enough slices", "Its under the sauce", or say any of the controversy videos like couch guy as the content is specifically created by multiple unconnected parties adding to the creation. A lot of other social media has downplayed interaction on their platforms and we have been worse for it. Rarely is good media made in isolation. As an artist, your work is often improved or changed through the process by communicating with others if not just outright a collaborative project. TikTok thrives because of that community collaboration and remixing of content, it adds complexity to the work in the same way you have to add salt to a cookie recipe to make it taste better. When platforms don't support that they are dulling their content.

And now most importantly, the upstream. I put to the idea that your post is a salmon swimming towards the top of the feed. In a pre algorithm world, your post got one chance to start at the top of the stream before is was pushed down the way. However, every user who saw it had a chance of reblogging it so that it was pushed back up to the top. With the vastness of social media, sometimes it's not just about getting into someone's feed but also getting seen on a feed you're already in. How many things might have you missed just because you didn't scroll down far enough to see it? Reposting by a mutual who maybe had a smaller list of people they follow or who saw it at a time you weren't on would increase the frequency and therefore likelihood you could have seen that post and by extension your mutuals/followers having the same experience by your repost. An last minute addendum to that is the uniqueness of Tumblr's is in blog tagging. It's give us an easy chance to curate a tagged section on our blog for our mutuals/friends/loved ones where we can share things specifically to them or say maybe a follower like the content you post and wants to find more of it on your blog so they can search through your tags to find it. While it's not exclusive to Tumblr, it's one of the few popular places that include it. Especially in the age of the algorithm, the ability to be seen is one of the greatest struggles of creation as you don’t even get a guaranteed chance at the top at post. A lot of site’s just lacking feed control for the user has absolutely harmed user interaction and community. A new user essentially is constantly pressured by social media to become an influencer just to gain a better chance at interacting with others due to the algorithm controlled feed.

This is all to say that this is why people who’ve stayed on here like it and have been extremely opposed to change. Tumblr is not by any means perfect but it still holds true to the social aspect of social media. Every artist I talk to who still posts on tumblr agrees they feel the happiest posting here and I wouldn’t be surprised if that isn’t the same for a lot of other creators or even general users because it’s one of the few places that doesn’t demand you give it the same levels of attention as a job would to have fulfilling experiences on it. Sometimes I post nothing for months and then everything at once and I rest easy knowing I won’t be punished for not consistently pushing out daily content. Right now I have months to years old art regularly being shared thanks to community spaces, fandom blogs, and so forth sharing my work with each other.

Alright, I think I like tumblr now.

A pun post crossed my dash, and I reblogged it with an equally bad pun in return. A couple of my followers find it funny, it's a good day for everyone.

That was on July 7th.

Virality on Reddit was entirely algorithmic. You could garner a couple crossposts, but the success of a post was entirely dependent on whether or not it hit r/all--the main page of Reddit. If your post does that, it's immediately exposed to 10x the number of people and immediately gets upvoted.

On my pun post, I get a couple reblogs. And those reblogs get a couple reblogs--nobody really adds any content to the post, it just gets a couple reblogs here and there.

There's a specific chain of reblogs that I'd like to focus on. The most popular post on this chain has about 25 reblogs on it. Half the posts have three reblogs or fewer. Five posts in this chain have just one reblog total.

But the reblog chain keeps going. And going. It breaches containment many times over. And finally, after a chain THIRTY SIX posts long, at 9:30 AM, July 22nd this morning, it hits a popular account.

99% percent of the people who have seen the post--virtually unchanged from how it left my dash--have seen it because it was curated by 36 different people. That's insane to me.

None of those 36 people know that they're part of this chain. They saw a post, reblogged it, and moved on. If any one of these people had not reblogged, the post would have a fraction of the impact it has.

And yet, after two weeks, the post has effectively hit the main page of tumblr. It was picked up, only because people liked it enough to show it to their followers. There were no algorithms necessary.

You really, truly, cannot get this on any other website.