#i went through like 5 iterations

[mugwot]

them! again! more!

[arvoze]

[insertcoolnameherethanks]

Noncomprhensive list of the WORST gifts I have gotten:

Wall art: while a thing i enjoyed, I was with the person when they bought it and it had hung on their wall for a year, they gave it to me because they were moving and no longer wanted it and pretended it was new. Terrible gift because they pretended. Also because they gave thoughtful or handmade stuff for everyone else while I got something they were going to throw away

A movie I liked: the catch is I already owned the movie...and the person who gave it to me watched the movie for the first time at my place and watched me open the packaging...

Funko Pop i already owned and had displayed that had been commented on (I can give a lil grace cause maybe they thought I owned a different one of the same character)

A bar of soap that was a gag gift that said grammar police on it

A thing from a Fandom I was not in: the person said "if you don't like it, I'll take it and keep it". Person was in this Fandom.

[clamorybus]

i used to be so into yugi-oh as a kid, i miss it

[spicymancer]

What was the process like for designing the ActiRangers, their civilian and suited forms? Their suits look so cool, it’s definitely clear you have a lot of familiarity with the genre while also having great ideas on how to innovate and add your own unique elements! Did they go through lots of conceptual iterations, or did they come pretty naturally? Any particular teams that inspired you, like SPD or RPM with their numbered members?

So the Actirangers started out as characters designed for a private little Tokusatsu OC jam I did with some friends! The design I submitted was Pink, (hence why she's kinda the main character of the story)

(Real name and certain background elements redacted for spoiler reasons)

So Pink's suit was the first one designed, hence how she's kinda the most basic of the Rangers. I had just got done watching Birdie Wing and Love After World Domination and thought it would be kinda fun for a golf themed sentai hero.

She was originally going to be ActiRanger 5 before I thought of the "Four/Fore" golf pun.

The rest of the team was then designed from there with each of their sports in mind and some general vibes.

I don't think they went through all that much iteration, though I will say since I tend to draw them in Black and White I sometimes mix up which parts of their suits are their color and which parts are black.

I wanted to give them each some kind of Power Weapon so I stuck to stick sports and also Table Tennis. (I am still weirdly fond of the old Penny Arcade Paint the Line comics)

As far as Power Ranger teams that inspired them, Mighty Morphin' is obviously the biggest inspo. (The Dan Mora run on the Go Go Power Rangers comics is awesome.) Time Force, S.P.D. and RPM were all on my mind as well.

For the Gambit Gang I was struggling to come up with a fun villain theme and eventually figureod out that the enemy to the "Sports" team had to be the "Chess Club". (Insert joke about polycules and board games)

Gray in particular was conceived at this point when I and wanted an Evil Ranger on their side. Chess Knights having a vague horse theme, he obviously had to be Polo! His design draws pretty heavily from Mystic Force's Koragg which is still IMO one of the sickest designs Sentai has ever cooked.

Wow that got a little more long winded than I inteded but I hope y'all enjoyed this little peek behind the curtain of the ActiRanger's development!

Thank you all for enjoying my silly OC comics and doodles!

[redslug]

Helping Neuroslug help me

Admittedly it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out and start using inpainting, but now that I've had a taste of it my head is spinning with possibilities. And so I'm making this post to show the process and maybe encourage more artists to try their hand at generating stuff. It really can can be an amazing teammate when you know how to apply it. For those who didn't see my first post on this, I've trained an AI on my artworks, because base Stable Diffusion doesn't understand what anthropomorphic insects are. That out of the way, here we go:

I noticed that a primarily character focused LoRA often botches backgrounds (probably because few images of the dataset have them) so I went with generating a background separately and roughly blocking out a character over it in Procreate. Since it was a first experiment I got really generous with proper shading and even textures. Unsurprisingly, SD did it's job quite well without much struggle.

Basically masked out separate parts such as fluff, skirt, watering can, etc. and changed the prompt to focus on that specific object to add detail. There were some bloopers too. She's projecting her inner spider.

Of course it ate the hands. Not inpainting those, it's the one thing I'll render correctly faster than the AI does. Some manual touchups to finish it off and voila:

The detail that would have taken me hours is done in 10-20 minutes of iterating through various generations. And nothing significant got lost in translation from the block out, much recommend. But that was easy mode, my rough sketch could be passed off as finished on one of my lazier days, not hard to complete something like that. Lets' try rough rough.

I got way fewer chuckles out of this than I expected, it took only 4-5 iterations for the bot to offer me something close to the sketch.

>:C It ate the belly. I demand the belly back. Scribble it in...

Much better. Can do that with any bit actually, very nice for iterating a character design.

Opal eyes maybe?

Lol

Okay, no, it's kind of unsettling. Back to red ones. Now, let's give her thigh highs because why not?

It should be fancier. Give me a lace trim.

Now we're talking. Since we've started playing dress-up anyway, why not try a dress too. Please don't render my scribble like a trash bag. I know you want to.

Phew

I crave more details.

Cute. Perhaps I'll clean it up later. ... .. . SHRIMP DRESS

[just-ornstein]

WHAT THE FUCK IS THE BEAKER CASTLE EVEN - A SimPE Deep Dive

Alright, so after stumbling upon some of the Beta pics on the Russian TheSims.cc site and this analysis post about the Beaker mansion, I became deeply curious if some of this would be reflected in the lot relationships. After all, some characters like Viola, Kelly, on top of several others could be found when digging through the raw and somewhat encrypted code of lots.

By now it's pretty clear that the Beaker home once belonged to this dude and his army of girlfriends (definitely check out the post I mentioned earlier). On top of that Loki (and possibly Circe) seems to have gone through at least two iterations before eventually settling on their final forms.

And on top of that whenever you scan the mansion in a completely new game, you will find fingerprints of primarily deceased Sims everywhere!

Now to get to the Sim relationships on the lot...

712 freaking Sim Relationships, all of which are unknown. Some of which still have stats set such as married, friends, relationship scores, etc. I tried comparing this to other lots in their neighborhood and NONE even come close. Both Olive and the Smiths have around 400. The other lots have below. And the only lots that are even a tad higher in this number are the Capps and the Summerdreams which makes sense when you realise that hood went through at least one other iteration before turning into Veronaville.

Now I wondered if the encrypted code (despite being very hard to read due to being partially encrypted) had any old Sim remnants left in there. And yep, several even. Many of which even have information such as their gender, hair, clothes and age in there. So lemme go over some of them:

1. First one, a guy who's name is partially encrypted so it will never fully be visible. It's not Johnny cause Johnny also has his character file on this lot.

A male teen with brown hair who used to wear the "tmbodyhoodedsweatshirtboardshorts" + the "tmhairhatcap" hairstyle.

2. Second is another teen, this time by the name of Zeeshan. He had black hair, the bucket hat hairstyle and wore the hooded sweatshirt, except with pants this time around (and grey apparently?).

3. The third was an adult male Sim by the name of Kenneth with black hair. Based on his info he was likely meant to be a Gardener Sim.

4. The fourth was one named Kana... Possibly a longer name cause once again the code becomes a bit shambled here. She too was meant to be a Gardener as seen by her outfit and hair data. Her hair would have been brown.

5. Elle, another female Gardener Sim, this one having red hair.

6. Vasyl, an adult male Sim who wore the busdriver outfit. Sadly his hair data seems to be blocked behind the code. For funsies I like to give the name to Bald Beta Loki, since he gives off that vibe. BUT, I think this was an NPC busdriver due to the outfit.

7. Joanne, an adult female Sim with an unknown hair colour in corn rows style and the classy afbodyjacketturtlesweaterdressboots. Sadly her ID is hidden behind the encrypted code, so it's hard to fully make out.

All of these Sims appear to be NPC/Townie Sims. None of them match ANYONE in the Beta pictures. And the current Townies/NPCs seem to have replaced them. Interestingly enough, those that were NPCs are still NPCs and those that were Townies are still Townies. Making me wonder if this is a thing that translates to other Sim IDs too. That Sims that were Townies in earlier iterations are still Townies in their new form. Same for NPCs and yep, Playables. This is merely an assumption I'm making on what I'm finding here, but if anyone can help research this further, that would be greatly appreciated, especially as this could mean the Viola ID may not belong to Viola Monty.

Viola is an odd case cause no outfit, hair or other data can be found in the lot file and she's only ever mentioned once in the context of lines filled with "sleep in pyjamas". But for now I cannot say anything with certainty unless more remnants of these old Sims could be found somewhere. OR, if these files could be read in its entirety which is quite difficult.

It's very hard to get a Sim ID attached to a lot (believe me I tried) and often times seems to rather happen accidentally than intentionally. Moving a Sim out or having a Sim die usually removes the data they once held to that lot. Good example is Loki in my current Strangetown who lived on this lot all of his life and when he died he had no remnants left on this lot.

REGARDLESS! The Beaker lot is ancient and seems to have been ground for a ton of testing, Sims and many more things. No wonder the Beakers got this home with its incredibly shady history. Half of the beta town was partying here!

[purpurussy]

what is all of this like for post-hiatus phannies?

I've been trying to figure out how to phrase this for a minute. The most obvious comparison would be that it's like starting a TV show 10 seasons in, but that doesn't come remotely close to the amount of required reading necessary to understand even 5% of the references. This has not been a problem for me, as I love nothing more than a good all-consuming hyperfixation rabbit hole, but something I'm realizing is that you really just had to be there to fully Understand.

I got into d&p properly in December of 2023, when gamingmas appealed to my emotionally curious nature and then gave me some kind of irreversible brain damage which I'm still trying to process. Since then I've been consuming their back catalogue as though it's laced with cocaine, and obsessively lurking on phannie tumblr until I finally made this blog a few weeks ago.

-

I actually watched Dan's videos for a little while back in roughly 2013/2014, but something about his content back then just wasn't working for me like it does now (I have such a clear memory of watching Reasons Why Dan’s A Fail and thinking "aw man why does this cute little twink hate himself so much 😔" and then going back to watching Jenna Marbles lmao. Funnily enough it did make me change my negative self-talk a little bit). I was very much a brief casual viewer who went off them pretty much after watching a few videos, and after that I was sort of vaguely aware of them as the cultural icons of the 2010s that they were, but I wasn't keeping up with them at all. 

I don't even remember BIG coming out, which is insane because I've always been extremely chronically online and it definitely broke containment as a cultural moment (although I think I was trying to minimize my social media use at that point in my life, so maybe that's why it went over my head). I feel like I must have heard something about it at the time, though, because I knew they were gay when I started watching them last year. What's really strange is that a lot of this stuff is kinda timeless to me. I don't remember it happening 5, 10 or 15 years ago - I just witnessed it very recently. For a lot of you guys, BIG happened 5 years ago, but I just watched it for the first time a few months ago. At the same time, in my mind they've just always been gay, since I wasn't in the trenches of the unhinged online culture surrounding them in the early/mid 2010s. It's so confusing to balance my weird temporal perception of these events with the impressions that I get from you guys. Oftentimes I have to judge roughly when something would have happened based on their appearances - it's not actually a *memory* for me, like it is for you. I absolutely love the dynamic and branding they have now, and the deep dives into their past are more of a curious exploration of how they got here, rather than actually nostalgic (or, I suppose, mildly traumatic) for me. It’s still very interesting and compelling to me, but because I love the current iteration of Dan and Phil, not because I’m emotionally invested in who they used to be. 

Sometimes I’ll be aware that an event happened, but I won’t realize how monumental it was until I see people talking about it (I hate to say it but I genuinely don't fully understand why the BONCAs thing was so earth-shattering, but like I said, I've always lived in a post-BIG universe, and I think you just had to be there). There are also plenty of references to stuff that's just been lost to time, which I have to piece together with context clues, as well as the more unhinged demonic stuff that I just don't have any interest in exploring whatsoever (I think I might have watched the v-day video if I'd been there when it leaked and I was a stupid teenager, but at this point, I don't even feel any kind of morbid curiosity for it. I just feel really bad for them that it got leaked. Plus, unfortunately, I think I've learned all I need to know about it through internet osmosis here). I feel like a lot of these events have a real emotional meaning for you guys, when to me, they're just interesting/funny/insane anecdotes which give some context to everything. Some of the shit that you guys lived through back then is absolutely wild, and I love and appreciate all of you for meticulously archiving and documenting everything and for being so willing to answer the same questions over and over again! Otherwise I feel like I wouldn't be able to really be part of this community, and posting my silly little memes on this blog is so fucking fun. So thank you all for that.

It seems like this is one of the most ride-or-die fanbases I've ever seen. The fact that they could invent the concept of YouTubers doing world tours, successfully execute that multiple times, branch out into several other ventures, come out as gay not fully knowing how that would affect their careers, disappear for several years and then come back knowing that there would be a solid audience waiting for them even after their virality had died down, drop merch every 3 seconds - I don't know who else can really get away with that, for almost 15 years, in the extremely "live fast die young" culture of internet fame. And I think it's in no small part because you all have chronic "unconditionally supporting dan and phil" disease. (While we’re on the topic, I feel very lucky to have missed the hiatus era. There's kind of a compression in the timeline for me between the gaming channel going dark and Dan starting his WAD tour, where it's like that time just doesn't exist in the Dan and Phil cinematic universe for me. It took me a while to realize how insane it must have been when they came back in full force, I can't even imagine how that must have felt.)

Of course, there's a caveat in that I'm saying this only really knowing about the tip of the demon iceberg. I’m aware of people engaging in behaviours such as doxxing them, outing them and stalking their families, which is horrifying in and of itself, but I don’t know how long it went on for or how many people were involved. I think people are generally pretty well-behaved at this point, and most of the drama seems to be between different schools of thought within the fanbase itself. I assume a big part of the reason for that is people's varying degrees of involvement in (and remaining notion of guilt for) the boundary-crossing behaviour from the old days. Living with the spectre of this insanity is kind of strange - it makes me feel nervous sometimes that I’m gonna accidentally say something that hits a nerve, or cross a line I didn’t know existed, because there’s all this history that I don’t fully understand, beyond just the normal unwritten rules for interacting with fan spaces online. 

-

The topic that got me writing this in the first place was the orange heart incident, and everyone’s subsequent meltdown. For me, the excitement in them soft/hard/semi launching is more about me just getting excited about any open, proud expression of queer joy - it heals something inside me every time I hear a man referring to his husband or a woman referring to her wife (excuse the gendered terms, ykwim. gay shit). It's just that sentiment, combined with the fact that I'm parasocially invested in them: I'd love to see that energy from my fave little guys who live inside my computer. I am basically rooting for them to become more comfortable with just talking about gay stuff more openly and candidly, and I guess that would require a bit of a hard launch, although I can understand that they don't want to potentially open the door to excessive questioning regarding their relationship. I feel like it ✨hits different✨ for people who watched them for years before they came out. Like, you guys are rooting for people who you watched in real time struggling with their identities and internalized homophobia for years and years, while to me, they’re just some guys who I’m a fan of. Sometimes I get caught up in the emotional frenzy of their hard-launch breadcrumbs even though I don’t feel quite as insane about it as you guys (I said in some tags a few days ago that it’s like the base instinct to turn around and start running if you see a crowd of people running towards you and screaming in terror, even if you have no idea what’s going on). Anyway, I would love to see them being more gooey with each other, and I am gobbling up the breadcrumbs they're feeding us atm, because I love seeing gay people expressing gay love with no shame 🧡 

I think my perception of them as a couple, or of their sexualities independently, is just kind of an extension of everything Dan said in BIG. I really have no doubt that they're a couple, and I don't feel any kind of weird Catholic guilt in saying that, since I neither witnessed nor participated in the insanity back then. I interpreted (I'm paraphrasing) "obviously we were more than friends, but it was more than just romantic, we're like, actual soulmates" followed by "as for the situation now? we're private people and we'd like to keep that part of our lives private" as him essentially saying that obviously they're a couple, but that their relationship is not part of the Dan And Phil™ Brand. The brand is 2 guys who have great chemistry doing comedy together (5 feet apart even though clearly they are gay and in love). And I think that's a completely healthy decision to make, even irrespective of their history. I think a hard launch would be subtle, and it wouldn’t realistically change the nature of their content that much. 

With that being said, to me, it seems slightly wild for people to adamantly insist they're not a couple, or that it’s “invasive” to assume that they are one (not that that really applies to anyone here, but elsewhere on the internet). If they were a straight man and a straight woman, and there wasn't a huge chunk of people on the internet struggling with this oddly conditioned aversion to seeing them as a couple, then nobody on earth would be insisting that it's weird to assume they're together. Dan confirmed that they became romantically involved around the time they met, and building a forever home with your ex is crazy, that's all there is to it.

-

This is kind of a messy stream of thoughts (it ended up sort of becoming 2 essays for the price of 1) and I don't really know where I was going with it. In conclusion I think that day 1 phannies are braver than any US marine and you have all suffered more than Jesus on the cross, and I'm extremely thankful that I get to reap the rewards of your labour now without having lived through the dark ages myself. I also think some of you are holding onto a bit of unnecessary guilt for dumb shit you said on the internet when you were a kid. And Dan and Phil are gay and I love them and I reeeeaaaallllyyy want them to do a podcast so bad because this is all conjecture and I would parasocially love to hear their actual thoughts on it

[taylor-titmouse]

Lucky Little Lunatics, R/L Monroe @petitemortality's latest erotica release, is out! Another one for the sapphics, particularly the monsterfucker sapphics. If you're into Chimera Falin, or any sort of TF, you'll be into this one! You can check out a three page sample and a full list of its contents over on the shop page.

but this is the post where i talk about the process of designing the cover. i had a lot of fun with this one (i mean, i ALWAYS do, but this one had the most ideas generated)

so let's talk about THUMBNAILS!

like i said: there were a lot! these were the notes i was given:

"moon imagery important

monster girl is a chimera incorporating wolf / stag / owl parts, big monster jaws and sharp teeth are important but otherwise the actual form she takes is open to exploration. she is Large, regardless

it's not an outright vore book but there's definitely a fairy tale style threat of gobble you up

I can give you direction on the three witches she's hunting if you want or need it, but as usual I'm not expecting anything super figurative so it's probably not That important"

so my big takeaways are: moon, obviously. A Monster, fairy tale vibe, and the three witches. already we're cooking with iconography, and the style so far with the covers has been largely silhouette. so obviously we have to do something with a big prominent moon, and obviously the title is going to go there. like that's a no brainer. if you need to have a big prominent circle, you put the title there.

i presented the first six to lee and he liked 2, 5, and 6 the most. we moved forward with 6 because the others were ultimately a little Too storybook, and it is after all a book about turning into a monster and chasing down some women you've been hanging out with, for the purpose of fucking them. taking his feedback about making the monster less specified and more oppressive, we ended up with the 8th thumbnail, which ended up being the final!

and then we went through some color variations. i work pretty much Exclusively with gradient maps these days, which make it really easy to iterate on a palette with very little additional work. lee chose the bottom left, so that's what i moved forward with!

FONTS

we tend to go through a lot when picking these. my first pass was based on the fantasy fairy tale vibe i was still operating under, which we ultimately dismissed. lee wanted something Like the first, simple, font, so i tried a bit more. the crit there was that they ended up looking too much like a bestseller, when what we wanted was something a little less top shelf and more pulpy. we ended up using the top right option, which coincidentally is the font i use for the cover of You're A Mage on Monsterfuck Mountain. apparently that font is just for monsterfuckers

and that's more or less it! there wasn't a whole lot of process between thumbnails and thumbs, just plan and execution. i think my favorite part of the cover is the little witches holding hands and running away. they charm me.

anyway you should go read the book! it's very good. it has big monster tongue stuff AND tail stuff. truly a monsterfucker's paradise

get a copy today!

[dodgebolts]

the moment that absolutely no one has been waiting for... here are the results of the dtblr survey that went out last week! Thank you to the 650 people who responded, easily eclipsing the 598 responses that were submitted in September :]

Open the read more to see the results!

Starting out, we have a newcomer to our top 8, welcome Awesamdude, who stole a spot from Quackity (20.7% -> 3.1%). Since the last survey, more people say they main all 3 Dream Team members and less people are maining their friends, most of them slipping under 10% of respondents saying they mained them save for the lovely Foolish Gamers.

Next, there was an increase in people who came for and still are here for the Dream Team—with a decrease in the proportion of respondents for nearly every other category. Dream team forever!

While most people (85%) have been around before 2022, we have a greater proportion of newer people around now! In the last survey, that number was even greater at 93%. So don't feel bad for being new, it's actually way more likely than you think, and a very warm welcome to the 5% of people who joined after the face reveal/meetup <3

Next is a question that I think is really interesting: has watching the Dream team influenced how people play Minecraft? More people now don't play as much, which tracks considering that they play Minecraft a lot less than they used to.

Now for a rather sore subject for a lot of people, since there's been quite a shift in who plays in MCC since the last time. In the last poll, 60.8% of people said they watched Dream. Now, those viewers have dispersed across creators or just stopped watching altogether, with both George and Sapnap gaining 10% from their numbers in the fall. However, 25% of people said that they don't watch anymore, a huge jump from the 4.5% in the fall. RIP MCC Dream, you're missed severely by the community <3

Next up, Trust Issues has managed to nearly catch up to some of Dream's released music, gaining 8 percentage points from the last survey. Dream if you're out there your fans want it really badly. Release it just for us?

Since the fall, we've seen the official end of the DSMP, so this is more of a legacy question, which is reflected pretty well in the statistics shifting towards people who either don't watch or are very casual about it, our lorehead population shrinking by 4 percentage points from the first survey.

These statistics haven't moved too much since the first one, the trends going pretty much as predicted with following decreasing from main -> alt -> priv (with the exception of Dream whose alt is often confused for his main) and with George and Sapnap having fewer people following them than Dream.

The statistics shift from this question is really interesting, especially given all the shit that's gone down on Twitter since the first survey. The percentage of dtblr who joined the fandom on there increased 7.7%, a gain that knocked down nearly every other platform's percentages. AO3 also makes its debut in the top 6, tying with Reddit exactly.

Much like the twitter following question, these statistics didn't shift too much, with the YouTube algorithm and word of mouth from other people/creators doing most of the heavy lifting of marketing for the Dream Team. Shoutout to the people who found out through either Heat Waves or MrBeast, you guys are on like 2 ends of a horrific spectrum y'all are strong as hell LOL

Now for some shared fandom trauma, these results also didn't change too much from the first survey. However, for this iteration I added Supernatural, as I probably should've done the first time considering this IS the SPN website after all. I managed to grab a few more people than last time out of the 'none of the above' category with its inclusion, so hi all my former and current SPN bloggers o/ <- has never seen the show before

A vast majority of us have watched gaming content in some form before, and fewer people this time have never watched gaming content before. From those who specified which games they'd watched, the titles ranged far and wide, so it's really cool to see all of us under the dtblr umbrella :)

Once again, this question showcases how lurkers truly carry the community on their backs—there's a small decrease in lurkers from last time and an increase in blogging answers, so it seems like some of our lurkers started posting which is awesome :D

Over half of us don't really watch any other MC servers, but there's still a ton of people who like watching them! From the last time I ran the survey, most of the servers—save for Empires and Karmaland—now have fewer dtblr watchers. The QSMP makes a strong debut on the board though, eclipsing half of the other options.

This was a really interesting question, though it seems like the vast majority of people either continued posting on the same blog or took a break and just jumped back into the fray! Also a late welcome to the ~15% of people who either weren't here or started posting after <3

The answers to this question showed some of the most interesting shifts from last fall's data. Fewer people seem to be listening regularly, and the proportion of people who responded no is nearly doubled from the fall's 21%.

These data points were also really interesting to see shift from the fall! Of note, fewer people like and tolerate Jackbox, and more people seem to have warmed up to FPS games—Fortnite, CS:GO, and Valorant all have fewer people in the "don't like & won't watch" category. Still, Valorant is easily the most hated game of the 6 while Geoguessr is still almost universally loved/tolerated.

As expected in the shipping category, DNF dominates any other ships, with Karlnap easily taking the second place. The proportion of Toosh enjoyers has doubled since the fall, up from 14.7%, while the number of non-shippers has halved. Additionally, the proportion of Karlnapity enjoyers has plummeted from 25.4% to less than 10%. Otherwise, most ships have stayed within 3-4 percentage points of their fall numbers!

Once again, Dream seems to have forced the hands of nearly half of us, turning non-RPF shippers into the RPF fandom we are today. Interestingly, the number of "yes" respondents has nearly doubled from the fall, while fewer people responded that they still don't ship RPF. As would make Dream happy probably, the pie chart is colored blue and green.

Now onto some of the demographic questions, we've continued to be very heavily biased towards North America and Europe, with nearly 85% of us coming from those two continents. Compared to the fall, we've gotten proportionally more South American and Oceanian rep. Hey to the Asians/Australians who are probably going to see this when it's first posted! o/

Once again, the majority of us seem to be around the same age as our streamers, with 80% of us falling between the ages of 18 and 30. Don't fret, though! From the fall, the proportion of respondents in both the <18 and >30 age brackets have increased. All in all, nothing too surprising.

The pride parade is still running from last fall, with approximately the same percentage of people identifying as LGBTQIA+ or unsure. Just in time for pride month in a day or so!

I'm not sure if I was just miscounting but I could not for the life of me get all of these little squares into a proper rectangle, so just bear with my weird organization here. Regardless, the majority of us rep the blue and green as our favorite colors, with multiple people specifying the hex code of George's minecraft shirt or a classic teal.

It's been about a month since this has been out, and we still unfortunately haven't gotten It Takes Two back. We're still in the phase 42% of people believe that we're going to stay in for a while, getting bounced back and forth between Dream and George hoping that they can get the other wrangled for it. #I_BELIEVE!

This was kind of a cruel question for most of us, but to the 11 people who answered that have met any of them, know that you're in a very select group of users. I'm jealous!

Now to answer the age-old question of the dtblr 1%, it constitutes those of you with around or over 5,000 followers, while a majority of people have less than 50 followers or just no blog at all. As with most other follower polls I've seen floating around, the responses were heavier towards the bottom, but as is the common advice/adage, follower count means very little here—just start chatting and posting!

For the final question, I thought it'd be interesting to see what dtblr's academic interests are, and also to reaffirm or break my belief that George is like a flame to the moths of CS/Engineering-focused people, which was at least initially supported by the data from the fall. We've got people from all across the diversity of academic fields, with the most people indicating that they're interested in the arts and humanities.

As for my hypothesis: among non-George mains, the proportion of CS/Engineering people is about 5.5%, whereas 18.3% of George mains indicated that they're interested in CS/Engineering. In fact, I took a closer look at all the people who noted their interest in CS/Engineering, and nearly 70% of them said that they mained George. Like I said, moths to a flame. or something. I'm right there with y'all 🫡

That's all! Thanks so much to everyone for responding and waiting for me to get through all of this data, it's always a big task but I love seeing the results. Until next time!

[i-only-ever-asked-questions]

Good Omens Through the Decades

UPDATED!

This is a timeline of all the events that have happened related to Good Omens, from its inception to its publication to its future plans; editions, adaptations, failed adaptations and the like.

I originally wanted to have this post ready for the anniversary in May, that didn't work, it just kept getting larger. Then I wanted to do it for the anniversary of Season 2 in July, that didn't work either, for the same reason. So I am just going to post it now, a random date and hope for the best LOL. And guess what? After a fun and fruitful chat with another fan who prefers to remain anonymous, I added a couple of events a few trivia here and there (thank you!). So, a little bit of warning: it is loooong, lots of things have happened in 34 years. At the beginning I was going to put all the references at the end of the post, but they are a lot, so I put them in a document instead.

*Yes, of course I am aware of the allegations. But this is about the history and the world of Good Omens which is so much bigger than one person, even if that person started the whole thing. It is ours now. It is Terry's and Rob's. It is David and Michael's, Douglas McKinnon's, David Arnold's and the rest of the cast and crew. It is Colleen Doran's, Dirk Maggs's, Terry Gilliam's, Vicki Larnach, Jim Hare and Jay James Moody's. It is Stephen Brigg's and Martin Jarvis's. And so many other people who have brought or will bring its many iterations to life. It is the fans'.

1985-1990 - The Book

1985, Jan - Terry and Neil met for the first time when Neil interviewed Terry for Space Voyager magazine after "The Colour of Magic" was published [1,2] *For years they both wholeheartedly believed it had been at a Chinese Restaurant during February. Some time after Terry passed away Neil found his diary for 1985 where the entry said it had been in January at an Italian Restaurant [3]

1987, summer - Neil wrote the first 5000 words of a story and sent it to a few friends, including Terry; "An exchange in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, combined with a late night viewing of The Omen and a love of Richmal Compton’s immortal Just William stories, had put a story into my head, about a demonic baby-swap that goes wrong, in which the Antichrist grows up to be a nice kid, with a dog and a gang" [1,4]

1987, Oct - Sandman began and William the Antichrist went into the back back back burner [1]

1988, spring? summer? - Terry called Neil and offered to either buy the idea or write it together; "About a year later I took it out of the drawer and did see what happened next, even if I couldn’t see how it all ended yet" [5]

1988, summer - They wrote it together (do you really need a reference? 😉)

1988-1989 - First draft took about nine weeks. After Richmal Compton's estate did not reply to the request of using William Brown and his world, William became Adam, Pepper and War became female and the book got a new title (Good Omens by Neil) and subtitle (The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry). The second draft took about four months. There were still about five more months of polishing and editing and auctioning and more editing [4,6] *Good Omens was the first Terry book that ever went to auction. It ended up going for £150,000 [7]

1989, Halloween - During the World Fantasy Convention in Seattle, Terry and Neil started plotting what could become the sequel to Good Omens and called it "668 The Neighbor of the Beast" [6,8] *The real-life experience of trying to piece together the plot of a soft porn movie using little free increments from hotels' pay-per-view over time probably made it into the sequel around here [7]

1990, May 10. Book published in the UK - Hardback published in the UK by Victor Gollancz (with whom Terry had already been working) to be followed by paperback by Corgi on May 23, 1991 [8,9] *After the first UK edition was published (Gollancz), several changes were made to the text to make it easier on US readers and to polish it a bit. The new text was used by both the US publishers (Workman) and the UK publishers of the paperback (Corgi). Gollancz was unaware of this alternate text until about 2009. They started using the Workman/Corgi text starting with their next edition in 2014 [9]

1990, Sep. Book published in the US - Hardback published in the US by Workman to be followed by paperback by Berkley on March 1992 [9,10] *UK editions list Terry's name first and US editions list Neil's name first. This was done because Terry was more known in the UK and Neil was more known in the US [7]

1991-2004 - The Movies

1991, Feb - Hollywood Studio Sovereign Pictures hired Terry and Neil to write an adaptation of the book for a movie. The studio had some specific requirements such as Crowley owning a night club, Aziraphale working as a curator for the British Museum, Tadfield with an abandoned pier and a miniature town in it and Satan. They ended up rejecting the script anyway [11] *It was at this point that Terry suggested Buddy Holly's "Every Day" as the theme for Good Omens. In this script some of the angels used for the series got started like Gabriel and Sandalphon and a big sequence had them use their haloes like frisbees inside the British Museum [11,12,13]

1992, Jan. Movie Script - Terry declined to write a second script, but Neil stayed and wrote one. In October the company got taken over and all dreams of a movie died [11,14] *In this script Crowley tries to run away to Alpha Centauri

2001-2002. Terry Gilliam Movie deal - Since about 1999, when he obtained the rights, and throughout the 00's Terry Gilliam tried hard to make a movie. The closest he came to it was in 2001-2002 when he got as far as casting the parts (Johnny Depp as Crowley, Robin Williams as Aziraphale, Mme. Tracey and Hastur, and Kirsten Dunst). But he couldn't get a US studio to invest the last $15M and the movie project collapsed [13,15,16] *Terry had received, back in 1989, a copy of the book asking for a blurb. The letter got lost and he thought the book had been sent as a pitch for a movie [16,17]

2004, Jun 20th - Hill House Publishers created the "Neil Gaiman's Preferred Edition Series" with limited editions of American Gods, Anansi Boys and Neverwhere. As a bonus for the subcribers, Hill House printed the 1992 movie script under the name "A Screenplay." Only 500 numbered and 52 lettered copies were ever made [11,18]

2005-2010 - The Sequel (and the Audiobooks)

2005, Jun - Terry and Neil met at the Audie Awards in New York and plotted a little more of the sequel. This was when the South Downs bit was thought up [19,20]

2005, Dec. Crowley and Aziraphale's New Year's resolutions - The list of resolutions came out sometime between Christmas and New Year's at Harper Collins' website [7] *The well-known idea of Crowley gluing coins to the sidewalk is not in the book at all, it came from this list

2006, Feb 28. New edition - The book was reissued in the US as a hardcover in two different versions. The text is the same but one version has a white cover with Crowley and Neil's name listed first, and a second version has a black cover with Aziraphale and Terry's name listed first [7,21] *This time the explanation for the authors' name order was to make sure the book could be found both under "G" and also under "P"

2006, Jul. Briggs Audiobook - ISIS released in the UK an unabridged audiobook read by Stephen Briggs in CD, MP3CD and cassette (it won the 2008 Audiobook Download of the Year by audible.co.uk) [22,23]

2009, Nov 10. Jarvis Audiobook - HarperAudio released in the US an unabridged audiobook read by Martin Jarvis in CD [24] *Martin Jarvis is the same narrator who recorded the Just William audiobooks, a nice Easter egg related to the origins of the book

2010, Sep 23 - Terry and Neil had dinner at a sushi restaurant in Cardiff and decided that the book should be adapted as a TV series and not a movie anymore (as per Terry Gilliam's advice). And if it goes well, the rest of the story, the unwritten sequel, should be adapted too [8,13,15] *It was around here that the idea of the sushi restaurant cameo with both of them being patrons started

2011-2013 - The Stage (and a failed TV series)

2011, Feb. Terry Jones TV series - Terry and Neil agreed to a deal to adapt the book into a four-part TV series made by Terry Jones and Gavin Scott. At the end they didn't quite like the script though [13,25,26]

2012, Jun - Amy Hoff's The Cult Classic Theatre was granted permission to adapt the book to a stage play [27] *One of the conditions was that no footage would be taken/made available and the script would not be shared/sold

2012, Aug- Narrativia was established as the production company that would handle all of Terry's work adaptations. The production of the TV series and of The Watch were then transferred from Prime Focus [28,29] *Narrativia was first revealed at "The Watch Team Interview" panel during the Discworld 2012 convention on Aug, 26th [28]

2013, Mar. Stage Play - Amy Hoff's play was presented on March 20-23 and 27-30 at the Cottiers Theatre in Glasgow [30]

2013, Apr - BBC drama producer Heather Larmour pitched a radio drama adaptation to the BBC [31]

2013, sometime. The Musical - Vicki Larnarch and Jim Hare, "two hippies from Sydney", had met with Terry and Rob about six months prior. Terry's interest had gotten piqued when they showed him The Chattering Order Nuns song and he asked them to come back with a showstopper and a few more songs. They came back with "All Living Things" and they got the green light to go forward with the adaptation [32]

2013, Dec 11 - In a meeting at The Groucho Club, Terry and Neil enter into talks with the BBC to adapt GO to TV [33]

2014-2015 - The Radio Drama

2014, summer - Dirk Maggs adapted the book into a Radio Drama and gave Terry and Neil a cameo as police officers pursuing Crowley [31,34] *In July, Neil advised Dirk to get Terry's recording asap, before he couldn't do it anymore. They did it in the summer and that day ended up being the last day Neil and Terry saw each other [35]. The rest of the recording happened during autumn [13]

2014, Aug - Terry asked Neil to make the TV adaptation of Good Omens, "I know, Neil, that you are very, very busy, but no one else could ever do it with the passion that we share for the old girl. I wish I could be more involved, and I will help in any way I can" [12] Neil, of course, said yes

2014, Dec. BBC Radio 4 Dramatisation - The six episodes aired between December 22nd and December 27th, 2014 on BBC Radio 4 [36]

2015, Jan 15 - Random House UK released the BBC Radio 4 Dramatisation in CD [37]

2015-2019 - The TV series (and some luxury limited editions)

2015, Mar 12 - Terry passed away 😢

2015, Mar 25 - Terry's funeral. As soon as Neil got back home, he started writing the script for the TV series [12] *Sometimes signed copies of the third draft of the pilot (dated 25 July 2015) appear in eBay

2015 - Jay James-Moody joined the team to produce the musical [32]

2016, Aug 1 - First read-through of the series script [38] *The scripts were finalized right before SDCC 2016 which was held July 21st-24th [39]. Both Maggie Service and Tim Downie were present in this read-through [40]

2017, Sep 18 - 2018, Mar 10. Season 1 shooting - Season 1 started shooting at St. James' park (with the 11 years ago scene) and ended in Cape Town, South Africa [13,41,42] *The read-through before shooting occurred on Sept 13, 2017 [43]

2017, Nov 13 - Full development reading of the musical at the York Theatre in Chippendale, Sydney, Australia [32,44]

2019, Feb 8 - The social media campaign to promote Season 1 started with a tour of the Chattering Order of St. Beryl, an acapella choir that traveled to different cities for events and TV shows [45,46]

2019, Apr 25. The Chattering Order of St. Beryl's video - The video "That Brand New Baby Smell" was released in YouTube [47]

2019, May 3 and 4 - Workshop production of the musical at IPAC in Wollongong, Australia. About ten days before the series premiere Vicki, Jim and Jay showed Neil and Rob a recording of this show [32,44,48] *Although a full recording of the workshop exists, they are not allowed to share it until it is finished

2019, May 21. Companion Book - A companion book to the TV series with interviews and behind the scenes photographs written by Matt Whyman was published by William Morrow [49]

2019, May 21. The Script Book - Headline Publishing Group released a script book in both hardback and paperback (The US edition by William Morrow followed on Jun 11th). All editions of the script book include an "Other Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" deleted scene. An exclusive edition for Waterstones included an additional deleted scene (Aziraphale in the 1800). A hardback edition limited to 1000 copies with white cover included four different deleted scenes (thugs visiting the bookshop, Leonardo DaVinci, the televangelist and Crowley clothes shopping) and a series of sketches made on set by Lorna May Wadsworth. On Jan 15th of 2020, a paperback edition with the white cover was released; it contained all five deleted scenes from the other editions and a sixth one (Aziraphale trying to sell a book); this edition does not include the sketches however. [9,50] *The script book was created so the production could pay for the death of Agnes Nutter, a scene (and a character) originally written by Terry which was too expensive to film [3]

2019, May 23. The Illustrated Edition - The Pratchett Estate and Neil agreed on a revised definitive text. It was published in five versions collectively called the Definitive Edition. Two versions were published by Gollancz which they called the Illustrated Edition; a standard hardback with black cover and a limited edition in a slipcase with white cover signed by Paul Kidby, the illustrator [51,52]

2019, May 30. "Unholy Night" - The Chattering Order of St. Beryl's released their album "Unholy Night" on Amazon Music and other digital platforms [53]

2019, May 31. TV Series - Season 1 premiered in Prime Video 😊

2019, May 31. Soundtrack - Silva Screen Records released the soundtrack in CD, vinyl and mp3/wav download [54]

2019, Jul. The Definitive Edition - The other three versions of the revised text were published by Dunmanifestin, the company established by the Pratchett Estate to handle Terry's intellectual property. All editions were limited: The Occult Edition (July 1st) with only 1655 copies in a black clamshell box, the Ineffable Edition (July 4th) with 666 copies in a deluxe box including ephemera, and the Celestial Edition, made to order with only 24 copies [52,55]

2019, Aug 2. The BBC Radio Drama Collectors Edition - A vinyl box set by Demon Records included four LPs printed in black and white in illustrated wallets, commentaries by Neil and Dirk and a set of tarot cards. An Amazon exclusive limited edition of 500 sets also included a print signed by Neil [56]

2019, Aug - Neil pitched Season 2 to Amazon [57]

2019, Oct 28. Blu-ray and DVD - Amazon released the series in DVD, Blu-ray and steelbook limited edition Blu-ray (PAL) for the UK. The US version (NSTC) followed on November 5th in both DVD and Blu-ray, there was no steelbook edition for the US market [58]

2019, Dec - John Finnemore joined as co-writer of Season 2 [57] *In this meeting, John stated that he needed to know the ending before he could write so Neil came up with the ending of Season 2 in about 5 minutes right there and then

2020-2025 - TV Series Season 2, a new Audiobook and some other adjacent projects

2020, May 1st. Lockdown Video - A short video about a phonecall between Crowley and Aziraphale was created by Narrativia and The Blank Corporation for the 30th anniversary of the book. It was released in the the official YouTube account of the Terry Pratchett Estate (@terrypratchett6025) [59]

2020, summer - Neil started writing the script for Season 2 beginning with the opening scene for episode 1 [57] *The last scene written was Gabriel organizing the books by first letter of first line. It was planned as the last scene for Episode 2 but at the end got moved to another place [60]

2020, Sep 16 - Season 2 was officially greenlit (along with Anansi Boys) [61]

2021, Mar 26 - The Hillywood Show announced the Good Omens parody project [62]

2021, Jun 29 - Amazon announced Season 2 in a press release [63]

2021, Oct 18 - 2022, Mar 1. Season 2 shooting - Season 2 started shooting in the Bathgate studio. Some scenes were shot on location in different parts of Edinburgh and other areas [64,65] *The read-through happened over October 14th and 15th, three episodes per day [66], David had to attend via zoom since he was still in isolation from Georgia's covid [67]. On the other hand, Michel McKean (Shadwell in Season 1) was present for that zoom read-through but had to be drop out also for covid reasons [68]. Peter Davison (David's-father-in law) was asked to play Job's part after shooting had started (possibly replacing Michael McKean?) and Ty Tennant (David's son) was cast too after shooting had started but through audition [69]. Maggie Service was in the very first shot of the season and also in the last day, first one in last one out as she said [70]

2021, Nov 2. Full Cast Audiobook - HarperAudio released in the US a full cast audiobook with Michael Sheen as Aziraphale and David Tennant as Crowley. The audiobook was later released in the UK on January 14th, 2022 [71,72] *The original cover for the audiobook was designed by Henry Sene Yee; a lavender background with drawings of Crowley and Aziraphale facing away from each other. After Season 2 was released, the cover changed to one of the promotional posters [73]

2023, Mar 15. Good Omens HQ - The Terry Pratchett Estate and Neil Gaiman created Good Omens Headquarters. The headquarters launched official accounts in several social media platforms and a website that keeps track of collector's items as they are being revealed [74]

2023, May 10. Good Omens Parody - The Hillywood Show's parody premiered in their YouTube channel (thehillywoodshow) [75] *Amazon Video partnered with Hillywood to announce the premiere date for Season 2 within their parody video. Neil, Maggie Service and Daniel Mays appeared as guests

2023, Jul 28. TV Series Season 2 - Season 2 premiered in Prime Video 😊 *As part of the promo campaign two days before the premiere, Amazon screened the first two episodes in cinemas in several cities free for Amazon Prime members

2023-2024 - The Graphic Novel

2023, Aug 1. Graphic Novel - The Kickstarter campaign to fund the graphic novel adaptation with Colleen Doran as illustrator launched [76] *At its closure, 36,867 backers had pledged £2,419,973 (notice it is pounds, not dollars)

2023, Aug 25. Season 2 Soundtrack - Silva Screen Records released the soundtrack for season 2 in CD, vinyl and mp3/wav download [54]

2023, Dec 14 - Season 3 was officially greenlit [77]

2024, Apr 18 - The Graphic Novel Pledgemanager site launches for people who missed the Kickstarter campaign or to add extras to an already existing pledge [78]

2024, Jul 13 - Vicki Larnach, Jim Hare and Jay James Moody appeared as virtual guests at Nullus Anxietas 9, the Australian Discworld Convention 2024 held in Adelaide, to talk about recent push for the musical [79]

2025 - The Future

2025, January - Season 3 is scheduled to begin filming [80]

2025, Spring - Graphic novel is scheduled to be released [76] *The original release date was in July of 2024, however in April of 2024 it was announced that it would need to be pushed to the Spring of 2025 (Update #20)

There should be a special mention of a fan created musical parody for YouTube that was in development in Russia by 62Media. This was completely fan made and not connected to the Pratchett Estate, Neil, the BBC or Amazon (which is why it is not in the list). Unfortunately it had to shut down due to COVID [81]

Fun fact: During the tour to promote the book, back in 1989-1990 the song "Shoehorn With Teeth" by They Might Be Giants became the unofficial anthem of the tour since that is what they always ended up singing when things went too crazy [82]

[laurentidal]

Ice Core Report ❄️ August 2024

Decided to do a little editorial check in at the end of each month. Most of you probably don't know that, while Lauren is my real first name, that my blog is actually named for a massive ice sheet that once lay over the place where I live (the Laurentide Ice Sheet). Thus, this is a report from my ice core.

#1 Story: Suggestion Box

This one was a huge surprise for me. It took off immediately, and I had not seen that coming. I'd had this image saved in my "had potential" folder for probably three weeks before I decided on how to tell the story. It went through an iteration where this was an ice skating rink, then it was a sandwich shop. I think one draft had a "five dollar footlong" joke in it. But ultimately I liked "arcade" the best.

#2 Story: Enjoy Your Stay

This was based on fun joking conversation I had with @hypno-potion and as the scaffolding we were joking about kept getting more elaborate I was like "No there is definitely something here." I'm glad you all agreed.

#3 Story: Kitty Pet Saga

I saw this picture and immediately knew what the story was going to be. Sometimes I see an image and think "There's something here if I look hard enough" and sometimes I see an image and a fully formed idea just jumps right out of it.

#4 Story: Oh My

This is a story I actually wrote quite some time ago for an old defunct website that never really got any foot traffic. I'm glad I brought it over, because it's one of my personal favorites. The only fauxcest story in the top five this month. That's one of those kinks I think I'm just going to have to accept that you guys aren't as into as I am (and I have the data to validate that claim).

#5 Story: Daughters and Suns

The only true repost from my old blog and the only part of a series in the top five this month. This series is my favorite thing I'm writing right now (though this entry isn't my favorite in the series). There's a lot more coming so I hope you're enjoying as much as I am.

Sunda Systems

We're half way through Season 1 of my Sunda Systems investigative mind control conspiracy story. Our investigator has made several contacts and visited the campus first-hand. She also might be starting to feel some effects from her various encounters, and her keen eye for detail is missing a few clues that are staring her right in the face. But I'm sure the date she's got lined up will give her some much needed relaxation.

Please please please share this story and feel free to get interactive with it! I've put some real effort into it and I've never written such a slow burn before. I'm enjoying the ride, and I've got some GOOD (I think) twists and turns coming. I think this format could be fun to play around with as an audience. Post your theories! I love seeing that folks are engaging with more than just the like button.

Update of Magics & Mesmerism

Some of you are aware that I'm working on an erotic mind control TTRPG called Magics & Mesmerism. I'm still plugging away. As we speak, I'm writing skills for the Innovator character class. As a treat, I'd like to share with you an except from the page on Hypnotic Foci:

General Thoughts

Every story in the top five this month is a FEMALE SUB story. Noted. I tend to favor that in my writing, too, which is interesting because I think Female Over Male stories are hotter, probably because of the subversion of expectations. I'm a slut for subversion of expectations.

I think that's everything. Love you all and I'm very excited for you to see what's coming in September. One of my favorites that I wrote comes out tomorrow, and on the 13th you'll be introduced to your first Force of Nature.

Till then, keep reading, keep messaging, keep asking, and if you're feeling generous, keep donating.

[teethstitch]

Since you are into TMNT I am curious what’s your opinion on each of the turtles in general since you seem to be into all iterations of them /gen question

ooh fascinating question. unsure if you mean each individual turtle from each gen or just each gen itself but i'll go into both!

so i actually have a tmnt powerpoint i'm working on right now, so i'll lift some stuff but obviously i won't lift it all, ill go in franchise order. shows and comics in order (show specific comics will go in the show sections) and then movies. spoilers for pretty much every single thing i talk about. if you haven't finished a specific iteration just skip the paragraph about it

Mirage

I havent read too much of mirage, though i'm sure its good i find it a bit visually noisy and actually struggle to read it- my vision is fine as far as i know and i don't usually have trouble with other black and white comics but man mirage is hard to read, whenever eastman would draw for idw annuals or issues i'd have a hard time getting through them because even though the style is cool i just can't see anything, so yeah, that for the time being kind of sums up my thoughts on mirage, i think the shredder worm shark is funny as hell though. i suppose the only thing of note i have an opinion on is the april race debate - wherein by one of them she was thought of as white and the other thought of her as non-white (i can't remember which ethnicity), so based on that i've seen people say that means she's white or the other ethnicity but since they're co authors i've just gone with the idea that mirage april is biracial. that's about the only mirage thing i can actually give my two cents on, moving on!

1987

I really like 1987, i haven't watched it all but trust me i'm slogging through it o7. i adore the animation mistakes, the way they give one turtle another turtles lines, and i think the characterisation is pretty solid. sometimes the show can feel tedious to watch personally, which is why i love saturday morning adventures, it's a much more concise, thought out version of the show itself and is a beautiful love letter to the show (they also finally sent usagi home :'D). obviously it went on for way longer than it realistically needed to, a majority of episodes basically mean nothing unless they introduce new characters, its the one piece of the franchise, lots of filler, i still think it's great though. i also love shredders revenge, it was the first tmnt game i've played since joining the fandom and similar to SMA it is a genuinely beautiful love letter to the community and franchise, i'm an avid cross stitcher as well so pixel games make me happy because i can stitch straight from the game sprites, which i've been doing :3. I love how the turtles are characterised, Cam clarke is iconic and i love shredder and krangs dynamic, irma has become the love of my life and much to my dismay i love the neutrinos which sucks because they're only present elsewhere in idw, i'm doubtful but begging Tottmnt to bring them back.

2003

2003 is by far my favourite of the shows, i actually enjoyed fast forward unlike much of the tmnt fandom, i thought it was fun, though sterling was meh to me, i just didn't like him - even though i liked fast forward i can personally admit the show dealt with similar issues to 1987 of just. extending itself. when they were able to focus on plots and do arc episodes was great, but the seasons could have definitely been cut down sometimes because the formula of an episode was beholden to ads, which meant every 5 minutes someone had to say something shocking or nearly die only for it to be dissuaded or continued after the ad break, watching it digitally now with no ad breaks was kind of funny though because i would be up late sometimes and delirious and the 03 singers yelling 'teenage mutant ninja turtles' at me while mikey or other did a cool move entertained me much more than it should have. I really love that the opening scene is recreation of the first scene in the mirage comics, even if i have trouble reading it i think thats cool and fun, i love all the turtles voices and characterisation, i never have any complaints about voice in any iteration but especially not here, they all feel perfect. the fandom is a big part of the joy of 03 for me, but i do still love watching my favourite episodes back from time to time, and like any good 03 fan i can scream about good genes and same as it never was like a banshee, though i do also have a lot of thoughts on other arcs dw. usually i find it easier to pick a favourite turtle iteration to iteration but man is it hard here, they all have their moments, i think the humour and the darkness are played really well (cough except for when leo got stabbed in the shoulder and i had no idea where he got stabbed until he got a scar next episode because there was no blood). I was drawn into the fandom by rise and it will always hold a special place in my heart but 2003 is far and away my favourite iteration. forever sad about the dreamwave comics being cut short and no one picking them up. we deserve more official 03 comics.

IDW

I'm also still reading idw - don't kill me its long and also theres just a lot of turtles stuff to get through, okay? I really have enjoyed it thus far, i jumped for joy when the neutrinos were revealed, i hated chet with a passion and they somehow wormed me back in with the fugitoid reveal, i will say similar to watching 03 digitally and just getting hit with the before ad and after ads cutaways back to back, there's a bit of an annoyance in trying to find and read everything in exact order, because missing a micro/macro or short side story like the secret history of the foot can kind of screw you over, so when someone says they're reading idw its not actually the 150 issues, its well over 200, though i haven't counted specifically. if you read the powerpoint pictures you'll see the artist death match, basically i was just going to pit them against each other by choosing the best design of reoccurring characters and the artist would get the point, there are some great artist who had a hand in this series, i can't deny all of them are talented, but man some of them are just not for me, getting through an arc with a style i don't like is a breath of fresh air, right now my main example of a style i like is Mateus Santolouco - not all the character designs are my favourite but the secret history of the foot clan was gorgeous, especially karai, she's always been one of my favourite characters. i enjoy idw, i think the worst thing i can say about it really is sometimes theres styles i don't like and akin to other comic series it can be stupidly difficult to figure out the exact reading order when you're not there from the beginning.

2012

possibly controversial (definitely, i'm lying to myself), 2012 is probably my least favourite of the franchises shows (no, its not below next mutation, just talking animated main shows). just to explain myself, I do LIKE the show, but of the shows i find its the least in line with my humour, the gross out humour is a little more uncomfortable for me given the 3d style, i can't deny the story is probably the most well done of any of the shows thus far, i do enjoy the story and i think even non relevant episodes to the main storyline do a good job of serving some kind of purpose to character development or giving the viewer a look into the world, it is by no means a bad show, i would never say it is, i do like it, but for myself personally i struggle to sit down and rewatch because of some of the things i pointed out and some other things like the way apritello is written, leorai (shudders), idk why but 2012 splinter just annoys me, i will say the turtles and april are really enjoyable characters, i find most of the characters (karai, casey, some of the minor villains even) pretty engaging, everyone feels really fleshed out and similar to 03 the voice acting is on point, though this iteration isn't my favourite in terms of rewatchability, i audibly cheered when i realised shelldon was greg cipes, when he said booyakasha i was on the floor weeping. 2012 is a show that i would watch on occassion when it was on, its the one i technically grew up with, though i wasn't really into tmnt as a kid, but greg cipes was pretty much my childhood as a big teen titans kid, as well as mae whitman, i was a big tinkerbell kid, so those 2 are a huge highlight of the show for me. my feelings on 2012 are pretty confusing, but i still do like the show, its just if anyone (like you) asked, i would have to say its technically my least favourite, but again, by no means means that its bad, because it isn't, it's just not really as for me as the other shows. the '12 comics i enjoy, i haven't read too many but the batman crossover was sick as hell, style wise the 2012 comics are solid, while i don't think 2012 looks bad as a 3d show i would personally be more drawn to it if it was 2d like the comics, i just prefer 2d.

Rise (2018)

As previously mentioned, like many others rise was my formal introduction as a teen/now adult into the tmnt fandom, for a while it kind of stood out as my favourite before 03 topped it, but still i love it with all my heart and i rewatch episodes frequently. i think the voice casting was on point, i had recently finished ducktales so ben schwartz and josh brener were welcome surprises, kat graham was in perth for a con recently and i was so sad she wasn't scheduled for the melbourne run of that con and was heavily tempted to go just to see her, rise april is definitely my favourite of all aprils, while i think its a fun dynamic when April is an adult and sort of an aunt figure to the turtles, rise april really killed the older sister thing, every episode she's in is a treat, omar miller and brandon smith (am i meant to put middle/second names i have no idea) were stunning choices for raph and mikey, rise raph is so brotherly and silly, he just brings so much heart to raph, Mikey is so much fun in rise, i can get caught up in inflection and the way a line is said and there's a lot of variety with Mikey's lines, its funny and i couldn't ask for better delivery, i think they're all good at it but brandon knocks it out of the park with mikey. So, partially the blame goes to 03 but rise was also what got me into usagi yojimbo, it's kinda funny how the only show without a canon usagi is the one that kinda goes the hardest in adding him into stuff. the format of the show not getting to focus a lot on plot and mostly just being one off episodes obviously isn't ideal, but for what story we got i really enjoyed, i also just liked the one off segments, the majority of them i really liked and found funny, for me this is probably the show that makes me laugh the most out of any of them - while i tend to participate nowadays more with the 03 section of the fandom, i still love rise to my core and still interact with it here and there.

Ronin

As i said before, theres a lot of tmnt to go through, but uh. everyone talks about the last ronin, so i detoured my regular watching and reading to dive into it. I liked it, there are things i would love answers to but i might just need to reread to know because middle of reading my cat threw up and i had to pause to clean it up, so yeah- there are things i'm worried to have possibly misunderstood, like the dissolution of their treaty of sorts, misremembering or misunderstood that part of the story is a possibility but if its not that i'm still desperate to know who actually betrayed who first, what actually did the turtles/foot truce in? i haven't gone into re-evolution or lost years yet, i've been meaning to but occasionally i'll get a new shiny hyperfixation and when i return to turtles i tend to dive right into the shows or long running comics first compared to stuff like ronin. i am very excited for the game and the film, little nervous at the idea the film will be live action but i'm mostly just going to wait and see, no sense hating it before i even know what it looks like.

Mutant mayhem/tales/2023

i know i said movies last but its kind of different since the movie was before the show- so deal with it ig. mutant mayhem is a great movie, emotional, funny, i really like it, and the style translates beautifully into 2d animation for the show, i don't have much to say on the movie itself, i really liked it, i watched it with my mum who really liked it and she can be pretty hot and cold when it comes to movies. Tales is a fun show, i similarly don't have too much to say, i struggle to rewatch things i've watched semi recently because i get burnt out on it quicker, but i'm super excited to watch this iteration continue, i'll miss rise like hell but i think tales shows great promise and i'm looking forward to more of it!

Bayverse

if you're wondering why i skipped the 2007 movie its because i haven't watched it, semi similar to mirage the style is a lot, but not similar in the way that i can actually tell whats going on in 07, i just. don't like the style. bayverse is pretty controversial but i like it enough, i don't really rewatch it because the 3d models freak me out, but i love the fanart people make, i do think the character designs themselves are very good, peoples fanart definitely helps you look at them more clearly as well. I still don't visually get leo's bone necklace placemat thing. splinter in the first movie is too furless and he needs to be shot. the movies themselves i don't find too special but i don't dislike them, i remember watching the second movie because some cousins and i went out with our nan and my younger cousin wanted to watch it so we did. i had very little turtle exposure as a child but out of the shadows was part of it.

Original trilogy

I quite like the original trilogy, it's very campy but i think its a fun watch, similar to mutant mayhem i watched these with my mum, we really only watch the movies together and we had a good time, we both struggle to really take them seriously. we had to pause the first movie for a WHILE to laugh at the bathtub scene, i still laugh about it frequently and remind her of it just as often, 'i'm coming....... tO A DECISION' also was funny, the third movie is there also.

Batman vs tmnt

Holy crossover, batman. i really like this movie, as a tmnt fan and a batman enjoyer this movie is just so good, many have said it before and i will continue to say it. the movie is so full of easter eggs, i'm still trying to figure out if that portrait in the turtle van is of mikey or jennika - everyone is characterised so well, the dynamics between the batfam and the turtles is done amazingly, alfred and mikey as a duo is delightful and as always the voice acting is so good, i would sell my soul to hear kyle mooney and baron vaughn as mikey and donnie again. eric bauza is always fun to see given his history with tmnt, so seeing him actually be a turtle for once was great, i really enjoyed his performance as leo, i still can't believe darren criss is raph. i'm a gleek and a huge starkid fan and i can't hear it but i know its true. its fucking insane. the movies story and pacing is just really good, and is one of the few animated tmnt iterations to actually let people get hurt, have visible injuries and get fully murdered on screen, when i saw that foot ninja DIE die i was fucking pumped, a lot of the other video iterations lack actual tension because yeah shredder wants to murder a guy but this is family programming, so he wont and can't. but you watch people die and suddenly that hologram the foot tried to kill doesn't just feel like a 1987 thing where the one time the villains are able to do real damage its a decoy, it feels like a truly necessary precaution, had batman not done that, someone would have died, no doubt. i've spent an extended period of time analysing the easter eggs in this movie, especially when it comes to the turtle van itself, i LOVE the van design, the fact its an old rv, the call back to 87, the spare tire being an anti-foot symbol, the grafitti saying 'Foot Stinks', the April calendar with a picture of a turtle on it, its all a genuine treat. I love this movie, i think it's the best tmnt film ever, i love rise's film but to me nothing holds a candle to this. rarely do i only ever have one criticism for a movie but the only issue i have with the movie is the fact they clearly imply mr freeze DIED and that mutated batman killed him but they NEVER TOUCH ON IT AGAIN. i need directors commentary, i need a script, i need SOMETHING to tell me what happened. anyways. the fighting is so much fun, i love it, it's delightful to watch a tmnt fight and to be fully dialed in because it feels like a real fight, 03 had some pretty good fight scenes but in essence they were very cartoony in the way they won a lot of the time, i just think the batman vs fights are golden, especially the penguin fight, but again, all of them are really good.

so yeah. i have a lot of tmnt opinions, there's more i could say about each iteration individually, especially the shows, but i'll leave it with a list of my favourite characters and their iterations.

IDW Karai, 2012 and 2003 karai, they mean the world to me, i'm a big karai fan and i think they're great. of course the neutrinos, as little as they appear they mean the world to me. 2003 casey is definitely my favourite casey, second is probably idw casey. Batman Donnie is so much fun, his lack of social awareness is really played up but it feels natural and very donnie and i love the think he does where he moves his head like he's going to hide it in his shell but doesn't so he's just poking out. Rise april has my entire heart, she's the best and i'd die for her. 03 and 24/MM Leo, they're both great. really the entire rise cast has my heart. also the 03 cast but special shout out to 03 splinter he's just very sweet. i have to stop now because i could yell about even more characters forever, so last one i would say Alopex, i think she's a great addition to the franchise and i hope more people adapt her.

in case you weren't wondering because i'll tell you anyways, i do have oc's, i just don't really draw that much or particularly well so i don't post about them, i do write about them but i don't publish it bc i don't think anyone would care much, i don't really dip into oc fic either so.

so yeah. general thoughts on most of the franchise! if you want me to expand on any of the thoughts i shared here i'd be happy to but for now my fingers ache from typing so bye :3

[nikethestatue]

I think that the great disconnect between some of the characters, the readers' perceptions of them and the reaction to them, stems from the fact that most readers, unless they are the OGs, read at least 2-4 books back to back.

Maybe you started reading once ACOMAF was done and there were only 2 books in the series. Or maybe you joined after ACOFAS and before ACOSF. Maybe you began last year, or even this year. I'd say a good chunk of the fandom read all 5 books in one sitting.

And then...everyone started talking about 'well, he/she is out of character!' 'Azriel is an incel who is gross and entitled' 'Rhys is a misogynist pig' 'Cassian is a misogynist pig' and on and on.

But the interesting thing is that what most people don't realize is that SJM isn't writing the same characters that she did in 2015. She went through an evolution as a writer, as did her characters. What many readers perceived as ''OOC' is really the evolution of the character in SJM's mind. When you start off with a character that was written a certain way in 2016 and then you move through various iterations of said character up until 2024, that's almost 10 years. That's 10 years of where Azriel was first introduced and when we saw him last in HOFAS. And that's a long time. So the question is --what IS in character? 2015 Azriel? or 2024 Azriel? or 2021 Azriel?

In reality, they are ALL Azriel. And what so many consider to be the 'incel/entitled' Azriel, is...also Azriel. And if you didn't like Azriel in his POV or in HOFAS, I would say, brace yourself, because that's the Azriel that SJM is moving towards. Snappy, sarcastic, argumentative, and consumed by Elain--that's the Azriel we'll be getting.

Rhys--kind of the same thing. the Rhys of ACOMAF is gone. And Elain--Elain won't just fall in line and run to Lucien. The Elain that we saw in ACOSF, that's the iteration of Elain that SJM is working with. Snappy, willing to stand up to others, someone without regard for Lucien and his feelings. Eluciens might not want to hear this, but this Elain has been developing since ACOFAS.

I feel like the progression of all these characters is pretty clear and comparing them to what we got in 2015-16, or even worse, to TOG, won't serve random ships. You got to get onboard with what these characters are now, and not what they were a decade ago.

[trippinsorrows]

Hey Ari! That last chapter of LTYE has me curious if you ever considered giving Solana a 'normal' childhood or background story? It's just all so sad, and I wonder how different her life could have been if she wasn't born to such a evil man.

hi!

this is an interesting question.

warning: long ass post literally no one asked for, but i don't know how to stfu clearly.

i actually went through a couple of different scenarios and even plots for this story. i knew i wanted to tackle abuse, sexual trauma, and/or mental health, so most touched on some aspect of one or more. a couple that, obviously, didn't make the 'cut', so to speak, are as follows:

solana being a nurse who is secretly in a relationship and married to roman, but they live separately and only those closest to him even know he's with her/married for safety reasons. her relationship to and with him eventually gets 'exposed' i.e. is exposed by someone and she's attacked by his enemies and miscarries as a result (she hadn't had a chance to tell him about the pregnancy). thus a lot of the story would focus on their healing from that.

roman meets solana who works as a waitress at a restaurant and is almost instantly intrigued by her because she randomly comes up to him and serves him pie because he looks like he's having a 'bad day.' (she's more bubbly and not as nervous in this iteration) he's not used to this kind of friendly behavior. his intrigue results in him randomly coming to see her and a relationship/connection forming. there were two options here where she has a baby from an abusive ex she escaped where roman would develop a bond with her and the child or where xavier (i know) is still her dad and arranges a marriage between her and someone who is an equal pos which roman is not here for obviously. some other things lol

there was also a similar one to the above where solana was forced into an arranged marriage with seth's psycho (no offense seth girlies) ass, they have a baby together, but he's abusive. he's deep in the hole in the bloodline and one night roman and the gang break into his house, demanding to be repaid. well, obviously, his gambling ass ain't got it, so roman, unaware of just how bad shit is or that seth really don't gaf about her and the baby, takes solana and the baby as 'collateral' that seth can 'get back' when roman gets his money. welp, feelings grow and obviously roman is like 'i'm never sending you back there' and yeah.

and one of the last was solana taking care of her two younger sisters, the youngest being a half sister. still piece of shit xavier as the father who was abusive and had the mom killed (a secret as well) and solana stays around because one sister is only like 15, and the other is lik 5. she refuses to leave her sisters, and xavier won't let solana take them. well, xavier stays true to his piece of shit nature and plans to sell off the 15 y/o with some illegal arranged marriage and enter the human trafficking world which terrifies solana, so she risks her life and approaches roman to ask him for help and/or a loan smuggling her sisters out of the country and into mexico to escape their dad. she'll then return and work for him, indebting herself to the bloodline. roman is like fuck that and just moves solana and her sisters into his house until she can figure out a better plan or whatever. and obviously, feelingssssss.

so.....yeah. 😩 my creative process is....a lot when it comes to story creation, clearly 😭😭😭😭

[sevenrs]

slugcats based on how well i think their immune systems function

1. spearmaster

how is it not sick from all that animal blood its drinking? hyper immune system. suns also seems like the kind of iterator to do that. really thought about everything (until they didn't. looking at you lack of mark)

2. gourmand

highly social-- large colony, likely exposed to a number of diseases and went through all the sickness as a pup. country slug, varied diet, no allergies. a very healthy individual

3. artificer

again it's all of the blood. and the body heat generated from exploding. except it's also probably under a lot of stress (self-made) and that hinders immune function (and everything else but this isn't about that)

4. rivulet

gives off the vibes as a more stress free slugcat. which means the immune system isn't dampened (stress supresses the immune system because body resources are allocated away from it and to the brain, heart, legs, etc.)

5. survivor

i imagine survivor to be a better representation of what most slugcats living in a colony and unaffected by iterators are like. so middle of the pack kind of fella. good homeostasis (im so prpud of you)

6. monk

survivor but physically worse off (im sorry monk but. your lungs. your throwing strength)

7. saint

playing saint makes me feel always stressed so i think it is always stressed and like. cycles and stuff that thing is three billion years old and honest to god has stopped making new t cells