#i'm deleting them but i wanted to save the screenshots somehow because these are so funny lmaooooo

[aintashes]

do you ever decide to clear out your drafts of old stuff because you're trying to be more organized and come across posts from literally years ago you didn't even know were in there because i—

[bunbeeplays]

The Lemon Legacy: Generation 1, Chapter 85 - The Bach Bash Part 1

It's time for Ophelia and Xander's joint bachelor/ette party! The Watcher was too excited to get started to take establishing screenshots of The Lemon Drop, but Xander closed early for the night so they'd have the perfect party spot!

Marcie: Penny? What are you doing in this save?

Penny: …I live here?

Marcie: And where's Kyle?

Penny: I don't know what the hell a "Kyle" is but my wife Miko is like 10 feet away if this is some weird flirting tactic.

Marcie: Oh, no, sorry. You just look a lot like my best friend Penny Pizzazz. And you're also apparently named Penny Pizzazz.

Penny: Understandable mistake. Pizzazz is a pretty common name. Your friend sounds pretty, though.

Summer's always danced to the beat of her own drum!

And she took her heels off so she could dance easier. I definitely didn't delete the CC shoes I put on her and then forget to give her new ones. I'm killing it over here, gang.

Xander tries to tap the keg he hauled in, but the tap ends up flying off.

Drew: You're a bartender, dude! How do you not know how to tap a keg?

Xander: I'm used to mixing and pouring, not tapping! And Ophelia and I pre-gamed a little so maybe I'm already kind of buzzed.

Keg successfully tapped!

Xander: All right, who wants to do a keg stand with the future Mr. Lemon?

Ophelia doesn't hear this declaration because she's too busy demanding to dance battle Joaquin. He's certainly down for it!

Xander somehow convinces Drew to help him with a keg stand, even though they insist they're not strong enough to hold him up that long.

Xander: I trust you!

Drew: I don't think this is a trust issue but whatever, man.

Well, that's about how I imagined it going.

Damn, even the bartender came over to laugh at him. Tough crowd.

From the other side of the room, Marcie and Ophelia are still able to witness that fail.

Ophelia: OMW, what a dork.

Marcie: You must feel like the luckiest girl in the world to be marrying that specimen.

Marcie: What do we owe Hilary and Greta for watching the kids?

Ophelia: Nothing. Jace was so excited to have some boys his age to play with, and Greta's probably having fun with the girls. Just don't be too mad if Violet comes home with black coffin-shaped nails.

Marcie: Deal.

Marcie: So the big day's tomorrow. You nervous?

Ophelia: Yes and no, I guess? I feel all fluttery about it but I'm just excited to get married.

Marcie: Understandable! I felt the same way, but it was a perfect day. Your day will be too, I know it.

Marcie: The kids had so much fun with you guys. Violet kept talking about playing in the splash pad with "O'fia".

Ophelia: She's precious, they all are. The girls especially were giving me baby fever.

Marcie: Just as I planned.

Ophelia: What?

Marcie: Nothing.

Marcie: Do you really think you want kids soon?

Ophelia: I don't know, I think so? I know Xander wants kids and so do I, but he's got the bar, I've got the band. How would we make it work?

Marcie: You find a way. It wasn't always easy for me and Joaquin, but it's been worth it.

Speaking of Joaquin, Xander's going for round two with his new fellow goofball bestie!

Travis: Come on, dude, are you trying to get killed before your wedding?

You're just jealous The Watcher made you and Becca get married off-screen, Travis!

What's that quote about doing the same thing and expecting different results? Xander should probably look it up when he's not so juiced.

Ophelia: Can't wait to tell my future kids about this night, they'll be so proud of their daddy.

Joaquin: BWAHAHA you should have seen your face, man!

As Joaquin doubles over laughing, Xander hobbles back onto his feet.

Xander: I should have given your kids ice cream before sending them back to you.

Joaquin: Those kids are chaotic no matter how much sugar you feed them!

Ophelia: I'm gonna make sure he's okay. And get myself another drink.

Marcie: Be sure you're drinking plenty of water!

Ophelia: Water? I hardly know her!

Ophelia laughs at her dumb joke, then also laughs as she fake applauds Xander.

Ophelia: That was quite the show! Mwah!

After another drink, Ophelia gets back on the dance floor to show off her moves, only to smack herself in the face in the process.

Ophelia: OWWWW

Drew: Party foul!

Ophelia: As my fake dad, aren't you supposed to support me?

Drew: Not when you're doing rookie shit, kiddo.

[ltleflrt]

Helllo 🙂

Alright so the whole ao3 tos violation drama is ongoing on twitter and since your name is somehow what these people are using to legitimise their arguments, I’ll super appreciate it if you could clear up a couple of things for me.

Do you also believe the person they’re calling out is behind this? There doesn’t seem to be much proof about it except for the “everyone knows” and the google doc and some unknown insider. I’ll basically take your word as proof because I trust you.

And second, were any of your fics ever in trouble with ao3 because of this thing? It’s very hard for me to accept ao3 deletes fics because someone in the comments mentions getting a physical copy. The whole spin these people have put on this is just *shakes hands*

Thank you and I’m sorry the trolls try to stop you from making physical copies of your work. Their “well someone’s making profit” sucks!!!

I'm going to preface this with a reminder that I'm not active on Twitter, so I do not know everything that's going on there.

Do I believe the person they're calling out is behind it? Well, I believe she started it. Or at the very least was extremely vocal about her opposition to printed fics in a forum where she whipped up people who respect her opinion into having the same opinions.

I don't have proof. It has been several years since I was targeted, and I did not save receipts. I'm bad enough about doing that with things I buy in the store, so I certainly don't keep track of shit like that for fandom drama. Everyone who attacked me was on anon, and at the time I was naive enough to think it was okay to share my links publicly, so I have no idea who decided to impersonate CW/WB and report me for copyright. (I seriously doubt it was actually someone at CW/WB doing the reporting.) Someone came to me privately at the time and explained that she saw the drama go down in this person's FB group and showed me some screenshots. Here's the first anon message I got about it, and as you can see that was 5 years ago. If you check the comments you can see that someone mentions thinking they knew who it was.

I have also seen a recent screenshot where someone posted pictures of printed fics that they purchased on FB, and she responded negatively to it and said that she didn't think that the author getting zero profit was good enough since Lulu makes a profit. That's basically the same thing she and her groupies were talking about 5 years ago when they were bitching about me, so the tune has not changed in all this time. And during the conversation that followed they were patting themselves on the back for just printing their favorite fics on their home printers instead. That's what set me off on this rant. That screenshot was shared in a private discord server, and I don't intend to make it public. There are people in that FB group who don't share that person's views, and they'd like to remain anonymous.

So back to the original question. Do I think she's behind it? Yes. I've seen her name on things. And I've also seen how she has a little group of super-fans who take her opinions to heart without actually thinking about it very hard.

After the anons jumped all over me several years ago and reported my Lulu account, I just created a new account and moved on with my life after that, and am more careful about letting people buy prints than I was in the beginning. (I also stopped doing free giveaway drawings, because I didn't want to risk an unknown hater getting a free copy. Fuck them.) I didn't call anyone out, and just kept things to myself. However, when another author friend of mine had a similar experience a few years later, we compared notes and found that it was the same person whipping up outrage. My friend happens to be active in the FB group, where I am not, so she sees more of the drama there. Based on the fact that she told me the name, and I was like "oooh that person", I'm inclined to believe my friend about what she witnessed.

Any time I see another author deciding to make their prints available, I make sure to warn them about keeping their info secure, and that's the extent to which I generally get involved. Unless someone asks me about it privately, then I'll name names.

On to your second question. I have not been reported for anything on AO3 (yet, *crosses fingers*, cuz the trolls try really really really hard to punish those they disagree with). I don't think I've mentioned my printed fics in any comments. I had it in my profile for a while, with all in caps ZERO PROFIT to cover my bases, but eventually took it out to be better safe than sorry.

I'm speculating, but I suspect the AO3 reporting might have gained traction because one author got sick of having their Lulu account get stealth reported (because the trolls will pretend to be your friend and will pay actual dollars to access the links in order to report them), so they made their own website. They order the books in bulk, and then take orders through their direct website. Due to this, it's nearly impossible for them to avoid some kind of profit, due to being unable to accurately determine how much everything is going to cost to the penny, so they round up a little to make sure everything is covered. It's possible (again, SPECULATION), AO3 went ah that's the Forbidden Profit, and slammed the ban-hammer down.

Another author eventually rewrote one of their fics as an original and is selling it. I don't know if their AO3 got reported too, but that might be a potential connection to profit as well. I do know that when I first started getting angry anons 5 years ago, a few of them didn't like the idea of filing off the serial numbers of an AU and selling it as original fiction either. So it wouldn't surprise me if the Reporting Trolls still conflate Fic For Profit and Fic Rewritten As Original For Profit and went on an AO3 reporting spree for that author too, even though the situation is slightly different.

I don't work for AO3, I don't know what they're specifically looking for. But I do believe they'll delete a fic if they find something against their TOS. But I also think they're not going through it with a fine tooth comb until Reporting Trolls do it for them and find the teensiest scraps of evidence to supply them.

My take on all of that is that I hate everyone who disagrees with zero-profit fic prints, and I hope they all develop a nasty, incurable toe fungus. And until I see that one person who I believe is the ringleader of the anti campaign go "y'know what I changed my mind, here's my fic printed on Lulu too!" I'm going to think she's sus based on the screenshots I've seen and the conversations I've had with people in her FB group.

Also, why do you need proof? What's your stake in all of this? Are you planning on printing your fics and want to avoid drama? If yes, just keep it off FB. If no, then why does it matter? Continue reading that person's fic if you enjoy it, and ignore the drama. Don't report your fellow fans for zero-profit fic prints.

Anyway, I hope this answers your questions. Feel free to come off anon and message me privately about it, and I'll be a little less vague. I still don't have any proof if you want it, but I'm happy to talk about it with people.

Edit: the "you" in the proof paragraph isn't necessarily You, Nonny. I'm sorry, my brain got pissy at hypothetical requests for proof and I got carried away lol...

[sevenaldzdramashit]

I usually don't want to say much about the shit, I'm too busy with researching how to free myself from life(and with disgusting attention seeking 😁😆) BTW you can send me money to make me die faster: (link) joke

Yes the situation with the community sucks, nothing will change so I gave up on "communicating".

"Why drama if we all can forgive each other and be friends?"(sounds very sweet but) "I hate your partner I want them to die. Do you want to be my friend? No? Why?"

It's awesome you managed to actually keep it cozy(that's the whole point of a gaming community, I know) - however in order to do it you ignored belittled and humiliated a few people(would be nice to admit it and not forget about it) but since you consider us terrorists it apparently was a "saving the community from abusers" operation, so good job. We don't have any power which is very convenient for you. "We" are basically 2,5 people VS the entire community full of cool veterans streamers other sacred cows and everyone is friends, so it's obvious why we don't matter and why new people would rather join you than some weird negative outcasts who only "spread dramas".

I'm super done with it but staying quiet makes me feel like you're getting away with whatever you've done. There's basically no point anyway but i think I'll post whenever i feel like it, i don't have anything useful though so recommend to look at what @atalantavanessalmao posts(screenshots).

Initially I planned to just leave you alone and do my own thing too, i mean streaming, but everything somehow is affected by this situation especially if i streamed TGC games; Journey isn't a real option because every time i streamed it it was considered a "political gesture" 😁. Yes i also just want to have fun sometimes just like you all and there's nothing weird about it, it's only weird to ignore important shit in order to have fun.

Anyway I deleted my Twitch account(s) to "burn the bridges", I used to be like "feel free to message me let's discuss!!" but now it's "okay no one needs that, I'm also done don't sneakily look at me and especially don't pretend to be a nice stranger on my streams" 😁 I think at this point no one is obsessed with me though, which is amazing and means no one will ever try to find my new account. Joke i don't have a new account, or any, my pink sparkly dreams about streaming are ruined 🤣🫥 If I had a future I would still stream "Art" though, i think...

Okay I'll stop for now see you later (i hope no)

Have a nice day everyone and don't worry we the journey terrorists are already suffering enough so apparently even life is on your side in this shit conflict 😆😁😲

[rosepetalsthings]

Regarding the Dtblr, Let👏🏾Your👏🏾Voice👏🏾Be👏🏾Heard👏🏾 Rant if you gotta, your followers gotchu

My followers trying to encourage me to be mean on main 😂

This is gonna get long and very stream of thought so gonna add a read more for once. This is a rant so it's mostly just gonna be my annoyance at everything. And the meanest I'm likely to get on this blog.

Look... I really really dislike how some of the old blogs left, and how they are perpetuating a lot of misinformation, and frankly a misinterpretation of what has actually happened. I can get leaving, but stop acting as if anything has been fucking confirmed as real. Or that her word is more reliable than dreams when both of them have, frankly, fuck all to show us.

The most she has is that Dream and her have communicated before. And the way people talk about it makes it sound as if dream went out of his way to go find her and message her. When literally every Instagram dm is dry as fuck and NEVER initiated by him.

Then if we go with snapchats are real, what do we have? Only a few saved convos, no context behind any of them, and messages that could be interpreted a whole number of ways depending on what the context we're missing is. And you cannot tell me that if you were introduced to the messages by themselves with no context, you would even slightly jump to sexting or grooming. Hell, she had to show a seperate screenshot of one of the compliments, which might I remind everyone we were just criticising the validity of taking a picture of a screenshot with your phone.

What does it take for some people to fucking think for a second about what is being presented to us??? Instead of flying right off the handle and immediately condemning everyone that doesn't come to the same worse case conclusion as you???? "Oh we left so everyone else must have too or there too busy defending dream" like fuck off. There's more nuance to what's happening then you care to admit or look into because you don't want to confront the idea of dream in your head, good or bad, with the real life human being.

And THEN you get the fuckers who outright believe just anything they hear because why not. "Oh but he confirmed the flirty messages!" Actually that was one of the things he said an outright statement on! And it was that he didn't!!

Or the person who somehow added an extra person to the mix, and then just fully believed without any critical thought that Amanda was telling the truth about dream deleting evidence and that's why she cant show us the proof she definitely has :( or definitely doesn't because she went between having hard evidence and nothing at all so fucking quickly. (At the same time can people stop acting as if everything she says clears dreams name???? Like as much as she isn't doing herself any favours there's nothing here that definitely proves she's lying, just that what she's presenting us deserves scrutiny)

Or fucking everything to do with the techno mermorial.

there are people so fucking convinced that they've pretty much stated that it doesn't actually matter how it shakes down legally, cause clearly he can just hire better lawyers then her and buy her to be quiet :( completely misrepresenting what's actually happening and how a court case (or settlement, which also is not this big evil thing. Most things don't reach a court). Like don't be so fucking close minded that you'll shut out anything presented to you because he has more money so clearly he's just bought everyone off

And then when confronted with the fact that they overeactted and behaved horribly they say "well I'm not defending a potential abuser and clearly my thing isn't as bad as that but I'm sorry I guess :/ "

Or the talk on "iT's NoT tHe AgE gAp It'S tHe PoWeR iMbAlAnCe" like okay then hope you were real fucking critical of purpled dating a fan then. Or is not actually about the power imbalance? Because power imbalances is not a fan and a cc talking??? Like if it's the potential age gap then just say it!!!!! Stop just saying power imbalance as if it's at all at play here from what we've been shown.

And like half of them won't even look into it more. That this is the reality they've settled with because it's easier to deal with posting breakup lyrics, and posts about how you can't trust men then to confront the fact that this isnt a black and white issue and at this point there is no hard line in the sand everyone must follow or else theyre a horrible person.

it is fine if you leave, it is fine if you think that messaging fans at all is bad (although maybe examine why you think that about this but for nothing else), or if you think that talking on snapchat is bad (which I really disagree with, but youre allowed your opinions), but don't act as if any more than that has been confirmed, or saying if you don't leave or if you remain neutral than you're clearly a bad person. Fuck off

[missmentelle]

How do I know if I'm being gaslit? What does that mean?

If you are experiencing “gaslighting”, it means that someone is intentionally trying to make you feel like you are irrational and insane. They will try to convince you that you can’t trust your own judgement, even about things that you experienced firsthand. The internet tends to use the term ‘gaslighting’ to describe any kind of lying or arguing, but it’s a lot more complicated than that - when you are being gaslit, it means someone is going out of their way to make you feel like you’re the crazy one who causes all the conflict in the relationship when in reality, it’s the other way around. A person who lies about liking your new haircut or starts an argument with you about whose turn it is to do the dishes is probably not gaslighting you - gaslighting is intentional, repeated, and specifically aimed at undermining your sanity and emotional stability. It is a pattern of abuse, and by definition, it can be very difficult to recognize and escape from. 

Examples of gaslighting include things like:

Insisting that things did not happen the way you remember them, even if you have proof. Maybe you and the abuser had an argument over WhatsApp yesterday, and they called you a slur. You definitely remember that this happened, because it was devastating for you, and you took screenshots in case they deleted the message. But when you confront the other person about what they said, they flat-out deny that it ever happened - in fact, they have no idea where this is coming from, and they feel insulted that you would accuse them of such a horrible thing. They didn’t do that. They’ve never done that. In fact, there was no argument. You made the whole thing up in your head. It doesn’t matter that you have screenshots - they don’t want to see them, because they know that you are totally misunderstanding what’s in them, just like you always do. When you’re being gaslit, the gaslighter doesn’t care about reality. They will flat-out deny what happened and create a new version of events that puts them in a better light, and they’ll insist that you are the one with the faulty memory for not remembering it that way. Even with evidence right in front of their faces, they’ll stick to their guns and say that you are completely inventing things. 

Constantly insisting that you overreact and blow things out of proportion. Maybe you saw a notification on your partner’s phone the other day, and you realize that they’ve been texting other people on a dating app. You are obviously very upset about the situation, and you aren’t sure if you even want to stay in the relationship. But instead of apologizing, your partner begins to get angry with you for how upset you are - they insist that you are blowing this completely out of proportion, that you’re being a huge drama queen, that you’re being manipulative and attention-seeking, and that it’s completely insane for you to be upset. Any time you are upset with the other person for genuinely hurting or harming you in some way, they flip everything around - all of a sudden, the conversation becomes focused on how unstable and dramatic you are, and the abuser’s wrongdoing is totally forgotten. The abuser paints a consistent picture of you as someone who freaks out over absolutely nothing and completely overreacts. 

Playing up your existing mental illness or insisting that you are mentally ill. Your abuser sees signs of mental illness in everything you do. If you have a history of mental illness, they’ll insist that it’s coming back - if you don’t have a history of mental illness, they’ll invent a new mental illness for you out of whole cloth. Did you get upset because your partner screamed at you? That’s not normal, you’re having huge mood swings and you’re definitely bipolar. Did you stick up for yourself when your partner was trying to control you? That’s definitely not normal, you’re acting just like this person they knew who had severe BPD. Whenever you are upset about the way you’re being treated or just refusing to be controlled, your abuser will play the mental illness card - suddenly, they are the hard-worn, loving caretaker and you are the very sick person who refuses to let them help you. Sometimes, when you are getting especially angry about your partner’s mistreatment, they may flip a switch and go from yelling at you to acting like your caretaker in an instant - they’ll start pleading with you to get help, offering to drive you to the hospital, and begging you to understand that you aren’t well and that they’re just so worried about you. The point, of course, is to completely undermine you as a person; they want you to believe that you are seriously mentally ill and incapable of understanding what’s real and what isn’t. 

Positioning themselves as the innocent “victim” in the relationship, even when they are the one mistreating you. To an outside observer, you are the one constantly being terrorized by someone who criticizes and controls you. But your gaslighter doesn’t want you to see it that way - according to them, they are the innocent victim who has to tiptoe around your constant unpredictable mood swings. They’ll claim that they try so hard to help you and avoid setting you off, but you’re just so unreasonable - they may even claim that you are the one abusing them. Any time you fight back, stand up for yourself or have a negative reaction to their abuse, they will find a way to frame things so that your response is the real issue, and not the abuse that provoked it. If they pinned you against a wall and you pushed them off you to get away, they will flip the narrative on you - they’ll swear up and down that they were just gently trying to keep you from hurting yourself when you violently attacked them. Somehow, every confrontation you have about your partner’s bad behaviour turns into you apologizing and feeling bad, even when you went into the conversation being pretty sure that you did nothing wrong. 

Intentionally turning friends and loved ones against you. A gaslighter will sometimes try to recruit your friends and family to “their” side, turning them against you. They will tell your loved ones all about your supposed mood swings, “mental health issues” and how difficult you are being, in an effort to win sympathy and destroy your credibility. The idea is that when you turn to your friends to say “my partner freaked out on me over something small last night”, they’ll respond with “mmmm, your partner already told us this story and they gave a very different version of what happened. It sounds like you’re leaving a lot out to make yourself sound better. Your partner says you’ve been acting weird lately, what’s going on with you?” It’s much easier to warp someone’s perception of reality if you can convince their friends and family to reinforce the fake reality that you’ve created. 

Dramatically misrepresenting your motives. A gaslighter will find ways to “prove” that you’re the kind of person they say you are, regardless of what you do. Even if you do something nice for them, they can find ways to twist things to suit their narrative. Did you buy them an expensive birthday present because you care about them? You’re clearly being manipulative and trying to bribe them somehow. Did you clean the whole house for them because you wanted them to be able to enjoy coming home to a clean living space? Nonsense, this was clearly you being passive-aggressive and trying to shame them for not being as clean as you. Your actions end up not mattering - no matter how hard you to try to prove that you aren’t the difficult, terrible person that your gaslighter says you are, they will always find ways to misrepresent your motives and lie about your intentions so they can turn your innocent behaviour into whatever they want it to be. 

Being gaslighted is an immensely stressful experience - it’s designed to make you feel crazy, and if you’re subjected to it for a long time, that’s exactly what will happen. It’s unbelievably stressful to be in a position where you feel like you cannot trust your own mind or make rational decisions. And when that stress inevitably starts to affect your mental health, that becomes further evidence that your abuser is correct and that you’re the crazy one. It can be extraordinarily difficult for a victim of long-term gaslighting to escape from their situation, because they genuinely start to believe that they are the problem in the relationship and that they’re lucky anyone will put up with them. 

If you suspect you are being gaslit, there are some things you can do to recognize the issue and break free from it:

Keep meticulous records. Write down the details of conversations and arguments as soon as they happen. Record fights with the audio recorder on your phone. Take and save screenshots of important conversations. Save voicemails. Keep a diary with dates and times of events. Nobody has perfect recall, but if your partner’s version of events consistently doesn’t match your hard evidence in a major way, that’s a pretty good sign that they are twisting the truth to suit their needs.

Talk to a neutral third party. Talk to someone outside the relationship that your partner doesn’t have access to - this could be a friend, a coworker, a neighbour, anyone that you feel you can trust. Turn to an internet group or forum if you have to. Show them the evidence you’ve collected or talk to them about what’s happening, and get a neutral perspective. People who have not been exposed to your gaslighter’s charms will be able to tell you pretty quickly that your situation is not normal. 

Think about your past relationships. Have any of your past relationships followed the same patterns as your current one? Has anyone in your past made similar complaints about you? If your last relationship didn’t have these kinds of issues, there’s a good chance that the new person in your life is the problem - not you.

Trust your gut. If you get the sense that something isn’t quite right, don’t ignore those feelings. Remember, you don’t actually have to be certain that you’re being gaslighted to justify leaving the relationship - if your relationship frequently causes you stress and anxiety or makes you feel like you can’t be yourself, something is seriously wrong and it may be time to go.

It’s also a good idea to talk to a mental health professional or a domestic abuse expert if you suspect you are being gaslighted - they are experts at helping your recognize it and come up with strategies to have healthier relationships in the future.

Hope this answers your question!

MM

[i-need-air]

King & Queen. – Bakugou Katsuki x F!Reader.

Summary: Fluff, Baku being extra while confessing, social media shenanigans.

Word count: 1784.

It's 4 AM, I'm a mess but I needed to get this off my chest. I'm testing the waters with my writings, it's been forever since I wrote anything and I wanted to throw myself a little bit into the fandom I've been obsessed with for the past months. I do hope you enjoy it. ♥

Bakugou Katsuki took pride in having such a large following online. Ever since the first year UA Sports Festival, both his Twitter and Instagram accounts got thousands and thousands of followers, mostly crushing over him and others just hating on him, and in both ways he loved the attention.

The Aesthetics™ he had were always on point and his Twitter was just filled with one sentence tweets, re-tweets of famous heroes, a somewhat dry, dark and/or sarcastic meme from time to time, only and only if it fit (again) his aesthetics. Sometimes he'd engage with the Bakusquad, specially Kaminari and Mina, both very active users, and [Y/N], answering to her tweets with a one word roast and little more.

After the second year UA Sports Festival though? His social media reached the 100k mark, skyrocketing into a small celebrity as he won the first place for two years in a row. But what made him reach such a large number was the way he won. Their battle for the first place was insane, such a difference compared to what he had to deal with Todoroki in the past. [Y/N] put an amazing fight, there's no doubt to that, but the woman overused her quirk and he knew her weakness, mostly since he sometimes (rarely, almost never, pft) observed her train with Icy-Hot or Deku. It was a spectacle to watch and it has even been televised for a whole week afterwards, critics applauding how promising UA's students were. And that's how it all started.

The shipping.

Images and even fucking edited music videos of their fight were everywhere. It was so obvious both of them enjoyed the fight, the little grins they shared as they attacked each other, the small comments both threw and the camera and mics everywhere picked, the look Bakugou Katsuki gave [Y/N] when she kicked his ass. Such an adoration, followed by his insane grin, ready for a challenge. The look [Y/N] gave him, as he took the first place medal with pride from Endeavor, thriving at the applauses from the public. Stars were put to shame compared to the sparks in her eyes. Oh, and the moment their orbs made contact exactly after that? The chemistry.

Bakuy/n was one of their names online, apart from variations of their hero names mixed together. The fandom was slowly picking up a name, mostly going with the first mentioned. And Katsuki? He was fucking aware of everything. Her social media was on radio silence, but this event made him think. Actually think, not half-ass an idea and just throw himself head on into it. And the conversation he overheard was just making him plot now.

Mina and [Y/N] were actually discussing this exact topic. The pink girl was thriving for it. Her Twitter account was now filled with subliminal messages about love and it made her poor friend anxious. Basically because this issue hasn't been addressed at all with Bakugou and she planned to keep it that way. Yet Mina, sweet, adorable, loving Mina was just pressing on it really badly, but thankfully she never did when both sides of Bakuy/n were in the same room/conversation.

"Isn't it like so romantic?" Mina's eyes shined, hands clapped, her gaze looking somewhere in the distance, daydreaming.

"No, it's not, it's weird..." her [h/c] haired friend answered, falling more into the couch of their living quarters, trying to hide from the world.

"It would be if it wasn't obvious you pin for each other!"

"Oh, god, please stop saying that."

"You're not denying it though!"

"MINA!"

Laughter coming from the pinkette filled the room as the blond man decided not to interrupt and leave, small grin on his face as [Y/N]'s groans just told him what he needed to hear. She definitely did not deny the attraction and whatever chemistry they had.

Which leads to the current situation.

The girl was sitting in the cafeteria, waiting for Ochaco and Mina to come around, phone in hand as she scrolled mindlessly through Twitter, watching as her most recent tweet, the first one in ages, was getting attention. She giggled at Denki's stupidity, as he just posted a selfie of himself drenched in Diet Coke clearly in the UA bathrooms. Checking his replies she saw the boy she's been [kinda, lowkey, just a lil bit] trying to avoid for the past days.

[@BakugouKatsuki:]

"Dumbass."

[@MissPinky:]

"So THAT'S WHY U NEEDED MINTS!?!!!!!?? 🤣

She giggled again, entertained by her friends when her interactions just exploded. App actually crashed as she blinked while munching on some french fries dumbly.

As she tried to open her app again, both her friends landed by the table, joking about Kaminari and his never ending stupidity. Notifications popped again and again, legit confusing the girl to no end, making her ignore her two friends as they asked her what was going on, mainly because of her expression.

"The hell...?" she muttered, throwing the phone down while Twitter took its sweet, sweet time to load and open and just as she opened her mouth to answer Mina, she made eye contact with some very intense red eyes.

Clasping her mouth shut and ignoring Ochaco as she took [Y/N]'s phone to see what's going on, the girl could only focus on Bakugou, sitting a few tables away, facing her direction. She almost shivered in place under the intensity he was giving away, although his position was laid back, phone in one hand, chin in the other. And, again, gaze on her. He barely even blinked, his neutral expression giving nothing away and she knew she was blushing. Why was she a blushing mess under his gaze? Well, answer was obvious for everyone, even the whole internet now, but oh, she wished Bakugou Katsuki wasn't that sharp. Who are we kidding though?

Ochaco started to shake her out of her daze, interrupting the intense eye contact battle as she shoved her phone in her face.

"Oh. My. God." She muttered, stuttering her following words "Please, look at this, I can't believe it... Mina, check Twitter."

"If Kaminari threw Diet Coke and Mints in one of the bathroom toilets to 'experiment', I'm done with him." Mina responded but froze in place, just as [Y/N] looked away from the explosive boy. "Wait... WAIT!" her eyes almost popped out of her skull. "WHAAAAAAA–?!"

On the screen of her phone was the profile of the guy she's been crushing for... A year now? The guy that at first ignored her, then screamed at her, then beat her ass in training, then got his ass beaten by her, that scoffed at her shitty jokes, that actually chuckled at her shitty jokes, that studied with her, that smiled at her... The guy that complimented her when her quick improved. The guy that took her opinion seriously even when acting like he didn't care. The guy that stole her heart when he showed little glimpses of his complex persona only to her. The guy that fucking retweeted:

[@onlybakuy/nhere:]

"King & Queen."

And a picture attached, them shaking hands after their battle, ready to go get prepared for the podium. Bloodied, sweaty, yet both smiling at each other.

"I can't believe this–[Y/N]–" The brunette started rambling and fangirling besides her, but... With a careful glance, she peeked under her eyelashes to look at the boy again, her heart almost stopping when noticing he was still observing, small grin on his face hidden behind his hand, perfectly angled for her to see. "There's another one!"

Everything started to make sense, as she quickly checked her notifications to see the Internet™ just going crazy over that retweet. People started mass-following her, fans and stans just living for it, tagging her username with a screenshot of the retweet and now it hyped up again with... pictures of his profile? Did he change his description? He... changed his description. While there was absolutely nothing in there, now there was one single word. King.

Her eyebrows just rose so high her forehead hurt, the 3 braincells that were still somehow functioning were catching up to what the hell was going on and now she was positive, 100%, without a doubt that she was blushing like a mad-woman, a smile forming on her lips as she hit the retweet button on the same tweet he did and instantly opening her profile to edit.

Both her friends were freaking out by her side, accusing her of being way too calm in this situation, to explain but [Y/N] knew she couldn't utter any word, or even look up at them or at him. If she did, she'd break the spell, the moment, and as she deleted her description and only wrote a single word in her profile, her smile only widened. Hearing Mina screech after seeing her retweet, the girl giggled like an idiot.

Bakugou Katsuki was loud, brash, maybe a little bit emotionally constipated, rough around the edges, incredibly smart, observing, caring, awful with words but straight to the point with actions. And he was, without a doubt, fucking extra when doing things.

As she pressed the button Save on her profile, she caught him looking at his phone, being patted on the back by Kirishima, that somehow appeared in the frame yet was so distant in her field of vision as only he mattered at the moment. Waiting his reaction patiently and waiting for the internet to start freaking out again, her chest was hurting from the drumming of her heart. Hell, she knew she looked like a disaster with a flushed face, phone gripped so hard in her hand that it could break, a group of girls forming around her, noisy yet so distant. The world going in slow motion, seeing his crimson eyes widen for a fraction of a second, hiding more of his face in the palm of his hand as he still tried to look so casual, Kirishima's "Yeaaaaaaaah!" filled her ears as he tapped his finger on the screen, destination already clear. And when he saw what he needed...

He got up, leaving his tray of food behind, shit-eating grin basically parting the sea of people forming around them both as he marched towards where she was seated, and for the third time they made eye contact. His cheeks flushed, such a boyish expression coveting his normally angry features, mischievous and happy, relieved, just... Perfect.

Everything went in slow motion for her, his march, decisive and bold, as he always was, took to an end as he got to her, just giving her a hand and a raised brow, inviting her to leave with him anywhere but there.

And she took it without hesitation.

[well-shit-im-a-morosexual-now]

Hey, it's me again! The Anon that constantly comes back because I'm too lazy to play the new lessons myself.

Anyway, Lesson 30-something, what happened in it? I've just seen screenshots and most of them are Solomon blushing (which, well, can't really say I'm complaining).

Hope you answer, and I'll probably ask you about the lessons after this.

-Anon that's still somehow stuck on Lesson 31. Seriously, I should really start playing the game again soon.

I'm screaming I literally wrote this whole thing and it got deleted because tumblr refused to send it and just banished the reply into the void i want to fight someone. I'm so sorry I'm gonna bang my head against something now.

It's okay if you ask cause I need someone to rant to after lessons!

So two days before the ritual to break the pacts. Solomon is researching how to use the night dagger.

Lucifer & Satan are arguing on the staircase (cause 50% of all important conversations happen on staircases - and I mean this sincerely). Lucifer promised mammon he'd come play cards with him and Satan doesn't want him to go cause he thinks it'll be a scam (he's worried about his dad big brother❤). MC asks Satan if he's worried about Lucifer and that makes his affection go up. He asks MC to promise him to go with Lucifer and keep an eye on him. He ruffles MC's hair and gives them the same we'll still be friends talk that the others do

They go to play cards and place bets, if Mammon wins he gets Lucifer's credit card for a day and if Lucifer wins he gets mc alone for a day. You can choose whether you want mc to either play along or cheer for Lucifer. (And look my MC's performing Olympic grade gymnastics to avoid Lucifer's advances & this lesson has a lot of options to romance Lucifer that I didn't pick so...)

Lucifer gets distracted by Mammon's car before they start playing.

WE GET THE BACKSTORY ABOUT THE CAR!!!!!! AND LOOK IT'S BEING THERE FOR SO LONG WITHOUT BEING ACKNOWLEDGED THAT I WAS ALMOST CERTAIN IVE BEEN HALLUCINATING IT. the backstory was actually really cute.

Mammon really really wanted this limited edition car (it had a rare colour) so he worked his ass off and earned money to buy it (I think it's mentioned that this is the first thing he bought from his own money). But by the time he'd earned enough it had been sold out. As far as Mammon knows Lucifer spoke to the dealer and was able to find one last car (can you do that? Can you just ask them to look in the back and they'll just pop out with a car they accidentally overlooked?). BUT Lucifer recalls that he actually spoke to diavolo and called in a special favour to get the car for mammon. Lucifer tells mammon he was impressed by him and I no longer possess a physical form I'm now a bowl of goop with thumbs to type

Lucifer wins (duh) and mammon asks to speak to mc alone. He tells them that even if their pact is severed he'll always be their first man. MC says 'I won't forget.' Mammon does that stuttery thing and says something like 'don't forget.' He hugs them tight. I added a screenshot of this (& other important moments) to my first answer but I don't wanna risk it cause if I lose this again I will realistically commit homicide. But anyway this line killed me 'suddenly I feel like the invisible bond between us is even stronger than it was before'. If I wasn't a puddle before I would be now

The next day mc & Lucifer meet up to go out, Asmo and mammon complain, I'm a total dick so I don't let MC hold Lucifer's hand and it makes him sad (I cry). They meet Solomon at the gate and he says he needs to talk with MC but can wait till after. He suggests going to the carnival (from the beginning of the season) cause it's the last day at the devildom and Simeon was planning on taking Luke but had to bail to go to the celestial realm. (Also the devildom is only one city/district right? I always saw it as the capital of The Devildom as a whole)

Lucifer laments not being able to remeber their first time at the carnival, mc gets to reassure him that it's okay. They get popcorn and go on the ferris wheel.

He asks them what they spoke about last time on the ferris wheel. The answers are 'Lucifer' or 'diavolo' . if you choose diavolo he throws shade at past Lucifer for being an idiot and talking about another man when with MC (*SNORT*) .

LUCIFER CONFESSES!!!? HE SAYS "MC I LOVE YOU"?!? HE'S THE FIRST BROTHER TO DIRECTLY CONFESS AND HAVE MC DIRECTLY CONFESS BACK.HE BASICALLY SAYS 'ANYWAY PAST LUCIFER WAS A FUCKING IDIOT BUT I LOVE YOU'. my mc goes 'lol as a friend'

Yes yes ik mammon technically confessed first and did so twice (thrice?) but neither were direct. The first was him agreeing with mc about them being in love in front of someone else and the second was under the influence of the truth bracelet. Asmo confessed too but in a 'never thought I'd find someone I love more than me. That's wild' way.

After mc shoots him down he goes 'that sucks guess I'll have to try harder to make you fall for me'

@like-nxrthernstxrs if you say you love him back, you get to kiss and mammon who followed you sees and goes quiet which yeah no, no thanks

I didn't unlock the locked lessons but screenshots show that all the brothers follow them I think (imagine the nightmare of dating one of them for real tho? Like you, me and your friend Steve except Steve is your 6 brothers who want to sleep with me)

The most notable exchange during them is when Levi asks whether Lucifer seems happier without his memories (he actually is more carefree) but mammon says he wouldn't be happier because he loves all his little brothers and he wouldn't be happy if he couldnt remember them. Levi tells mammon it's gross whenever he starts acting like an actual older brother (so we've seen mammon step up to the role of a older brother every once in a while - specially when Lucifer isnt able to - and he's actually really good at it? And that's just💞💞)

When they go home, solomon's in MC's room. He goes 'so do you want the good news or bad news first? Actually they're both bad news and you're fucked lol'

The dagger is so old that it doesn't have enough power to break the bonds and even when charged with Solomon's power it isn't enough.

The only way to restore the power is to use it to stab a powerful demon in the chest and have it absorb the demon's power.

Then he gives mc the dagger and is like 'anyway go stab Lucifer in the chest or we're all gonna die'

MC's like 'what the fuck'

Solomon goes 'lol just kidding i wouldn't ask you to do that'

Solomon tells them that he spent his whole life protecting humanity and that he is willing to do anything to save it. He tells them that choosing between all of the three realms and one demon should be easy. But he can't because he knows that'll make MC sad and he doesn't want to hurt them (honestly some of the dialogue from Solomon, Simeon and even diavolo makes me wonder if they'll ever become LIs down the road)

Lucifer has been eavesdropping the whole time (obviously) and kicks Solomon out.

Mc tells time not to worry and that they'll figure something else out. He tells them that he cares about his brothers and them (he puts a bit of emphasis on MC) and that he wants them to stab him. MC keeps on protesting. He grabs their hand and makes them point the dagger to his chest. You get a choice. You can either stab Lucifer, MC or command him to 'stay'. If you choose to command him, he freezes for a sec and then tells MC they are too distraught to be able to put any actual power behind the command. He moves their hand to stab himself. The screen goes white. If you decide to stab MC he screams their name. The screen goes white

A '???' voice tells them to stop and that it's not needed. Simeon (the only person with even a single braincell in this entire game) stops their hand and tells them they've been brave. He slips an old ring on to their finger. The screen goes white.

The screen's still white but now it's white in a way that makes it look like it's sunlight blinding the screen.

Another '???' voice apologises to MC for not being able to meet them before. It asks mc why they refused to stab Lucifer. They can say it's because they love him, because they didn't want anyone to get hurt or because they wanted to find another way. And look even if you aren't romancing Lucifer you have to admit at this point of the game MC does love him and all his brothers as well.If you pick the first option the voice says that it's a good thing and that they should cherish that love and let it grow. If you choose the second it tells them they are kind. The voice then tells them that after seeing how much the brothers adore them it expected them to be wicked and that it's happy they aren't. It tells them that they don't have to worry and that the ring of light will keep their powers in check and that they should go back because the others are worried. MC wakes up to Lucifer calling their name.

I'm 90% certain the voice in Michael, 10% of me is terrified it'll turn out to be God. And look I'm not religious, I don't really believe in anything and either way I was raised in a Buddhist household so God has never been anything I believed in BUT God talking to me through an otome game is definitely not something I need rn or ever really

Mc, Solomon, Simeon and Luke are by the lake at the palace. Solomon says he can finally relate to Mammon cause Lucifer had punished him. Simeon reveals that Lucifer had punished diavolo as well and would be coming after the rest of them that kept this whole thing secret from him (And this kills me! This man loves his family so much he was not only willing to go against God and his army when his family was in danger but he was also willing to lash out at DIAVOLO who he has so much respect & loyalty towards when he accidentally put Lucifer's family in danger!??? Anyway any chance I had of solidifying into a physical state has been completely swept away)

It's revealed that Simeon may or may not have stolen the ring from Michael who still loves Lucifer and keeps a shrine to Lucifer all of Lucifer's things from the celestial realm with him. And honestly I want whatever superpower Lucifer has that allows him to act like a dick with major issues but still makes ppl just absolutely love him. (I absolutely adore how easily om! throws around the word 'love' or actions of love. And I don't mean regarding MC. I mean between the brothers, undateables, Luke and side characters. Like at this point there's no doubt that despite all their differences everyone loves each other.)

Simeon (or Luke) note that now with the ring MC is as powerful a sorcerer as Solomon and may someday surpass him. Solomon is asked of he's jealous and he says he's not and he's glad to finally have someone like him.

Solomon pulls MC aside and asks them for a favour. They can either ask what it is or say 'anything for you'. If you choose the second option he blushes. He tells them he has spent his whole life looking out for humanity (thousands of years) and that he would like to work side by side with them to protect the humans. In his own words they'd be 'partners'. You can either agree or tell him it sounds like a pain in the ass. If you agree he says that a part of him knew they'd agree. (I can't remember if this is said outloud or implied but I'm assuming this means Solomon will teach them to use actual magic thus making 3 out of 4 of my main game MCs magical apprentices. Nice.)

*Solomon refers to himself as 'the witty sorcerer' confirming that all their aliases in the cards have actual canon meaning...so Mammon's 'fallen warrior' and 'punishment party' is basically just confirming he was probably the only one classed as a fighter from all his brothers back in the celestial realm and that he's a masochist right? That's what that means?*

Barbatos arrives to welcome them and ask them to follow him.

The lesson ends.

The pre stabbing scene with Solomon and mc doesn't really follow the exact dialogue of the first scene in S2 and the backgrounds don't match either (the human world vs MC's bedroom). Now this could mean the devs fucked up or it could mean there's more BS waiting to be stirred up. Personally I believe it's the first one BUT with how determined the devs seem with turning all of Lucifer's hair white i wouldn't be surprised if it was the second either

Hope that helps 31!❤ sorry it took some time I had to take constant breaks to scream cause the app sucks :)))

[alahmnat]

WWDC 2022

General thoughts

To a large degree, this year was definitely more of an "evolutionary, not revolutionary" event. Lots of great polish put on stuff that was introduced last year, and some really great enhancements to the iPad in particular as a platform unto itself, but nothing that quite felt fundamentally groundbreaking.

Craig Federighi's schtick as Apple's "goofy uncle" somehow keeps working, and I think it's solely thanks to his decade-long commitment to the bit that started with his Hair Force One Game Center nickname. It also somehow still amuses me that the "crack marketing team goes on months-long drug-fueled bender to name the next macOS update" gag continues to make its way into the presentation every year.

The video also gave me the distinct and particularly unsubtle impression that Apple really wants people to get back into its giant donut office.

Anyway, deeper thoughts under the fold.

iOS/iPadOS

It's really starting to feel like these platforms are reaching a greater stage of maturity. There wasn't anything this year that was particularly groundbreaking or revolutionary for the iPhone, but there were a ton of places where things have been refined or fleshed out much more completely.

Lock Screen

The Lock Screen enhancements are honestly fantastic. Being able to set separate screens for different focuses is something I've honestly wanted to do since iOS 15 launched, because it seemed like such an obvious concept. Congratulations to all you weirdos who can now keep your anime tiddy wallpapers safely hidden while you're at the office!

In all seriousness, though, multiple typefaces, the foreground subject stand-out, photo shuffle, widgets, and bespoke Apple-designed lock screens + wallpapers are all super swish. Further minimizing the importance of notifications and giving you space to reclaim the wallpaper you put so much thought and time into choosing is also really nice, and I may just be saying that as someone who gets annoyed any time I see notifications piled all over Zami's sweet face.

Focus

The other Focus enhancements are also all extremely welcome. Giving 3rd party apps more control over how they interface with focuses is great, and hopefully this makes it easier to set up quiet hours from work in not just Mail, but Outlook and other apps as well. I do kind of wish you could set defaults for what things are allowed to do when you're not in a particular Focus, which can then be overridden. That way I could, say, have Outlook only provide notifications while I'm at work, without having to figure out how to silence them the rest of the week.

iCloud Shared Photo Library

This is a really neat idea that I can definitely see using for road trips and family visits where Oscy and I both turn into something of a shutterbug. I'm curious how well the "everyone has identical permissions" idea will fly out in the open, though. Do contributors/participants get to save local copies of the photos to their own library, or are they locked in the cloud? Given the focus that Apple put on abusive relationships later in the keynote, I can honestly see opportunities for abuse in either direction. If you can't keep local copies of things, how much easier will it be to gaslight someone about past events? On the other hand, if you can keep local copies, how do you maintain control over things you've added that you no longer want someone else to have access to (like intimate pictures; I know you just shouldn't do that, but we have to build for the users we have, not the perfect users that security professionals invent).

I'm assuming that if you remove it that you posted, it gets deleted from everyone else's device, but not yours. If you didn't post it, or otherwise retain a copy of your own (by, say, screenshotting it), it's gone as soon as anyone (original owner or not) removes it from the shared library. Guess we'll find out.

Privacy and Account Management

Apple really did two things with this release centered around account control: Safety Check and enhanced Parental Controls. Safety Check is a 100% slam-dunk no notes great addition to the platform. Even for people who aren't in abusive relationships, it's great to have a central place to manage and revoke access to your information from both people and applications. Having a one-button action for immediately and comprehensively cutting someone out of your account will undoubtedly be a godsend to anyone struggling to get out of such a situation.

Parental Controls are something I'm increasingly of two minds about. On the one hand, the internet is a legitimately dangerous place if you don't know what to look out for, and most kids just don't. Plus, it is a good idea to be able to institute some degree of impulse control on kids so they don't get lost in the magic rectangle all day, while still letting them have access to it for the important things they're carrying it for (though there's certainly also a degree of "how young is too young for someone to have their own mobile computing device?", whether it's a phone or a tablet; could this smartphone have been an email a RAZR?).

On the other hand, it's also extremely easy for parental controls to become another tool in the arsenal of an abusive or controlling parent. For queer kids in particular, it can be dangerous to give unsupportive or outright abusive parents such granular dominion over their child's own personal life, which is increasingly tied to the magic rectangle. Overall I think Apple does a good job of staying out of this end of the pool. However, given the propensity of both governments and private companies to treat queerness itself as an "adult" topic, I still get squeamish about the ability to "limit adult websites" as a general concept. Especially since Apple is prudish at the best of times.

All of that having been said, the additions to iOS and iPadOS 16 are centered around ease of use, and the things they streamline are good things to have streamlined, like letting you use a single slider to set the age-appropriateness of the various media and store libraries based on your kid's age, with the option to adjust each one manually as well. Also, putting the approval process for requests that come in over Messages in Messages is sort of a no-brainer that I was surprised wasn't already the way it worked.

Looking at the full features list post-keynote, app-specific clipboard access permission is one of those things you wouldn't have thought needed to be a problem in need of addressing, but here we are I guess *sigh*. I do like that the Hidden and Recently Deleted folders in your photo library are now authentication-locked by default, though. That's a nice privacy win.

On the security side of the privacy fence, Apple making it easier to roll out security fixes without having to do a while point release of the OS is also a great win.

Rapid-fire takes

The Shared with You API is cool, but I so rarely use the feature right now because it doesn't integrate with Telegram or Discord, where 99% of the stuff shared with me lives. I wonder if that's something this will enable, on top of letting apps feature content shared via Apple's own channels.

The collaboration API is also cool, but it also seems to rely on everyone being all-in on the Apple ecosystem at home and/or at work, so I don't know how much use it'll actually get outside of Apple Park.

Mail also seems to finally be getting a catch-up release, with attachment reminders, better search, queued send, snooze, etc. I like that they've added a follow-up reminder, for those of us who have the problem of things ceasing to exist the moment we stop thinking about them for 2 seconds.

The Passkeys spec is fascinating to me. I honestly hope it works, but I can also see it being something that could make distributed account access info for teams (like the stuff one would put in a shared 1Password vault) more complicated.

Messages (specifically, iMessage) is getting a lot of catch-up features to match competitors like WeChat, WhatsApp, and Telegram. I don't really use Messages because most of the people I know don't have an iPhone, but I'm glad those who do can now edit their messages after the inevitable embarrassing autocorrect mishap.

I still can't make an arctic fox Memoji. When are you gonna start taking the furry market seriously, Apple?!

Freeform looks neat, but again I'm not sure how widely used it'll end up being.

Being able to make Quick Notes on iOS is nice.

Copying text out of a video frame is incredible.

Templates for Reminders is a really cool idea. Being able to build a standard "packing list" checklist you can just create a new copy of is really handy.

Multi-stop routing is a welcome addition. Hopefully it supports adding a stop mid-route, so I can search for a gas station nearby without losing where I'm currently driving to.

Apple just casually throwing out a "we're coming for you, PayPal Credit" in the middle of an otherwise dull segment on Wallet updates is kind of hilarious. No fees or interest is a genuinely amazing set of conditions (of course because you're not borrowing money, you're just spreading your own out across 6 weeks, which is itself an exercise in encouraging more responsible spending).

Weather on iPad! Weather on iPad! Weather on iPad! Weather on iPad! Weather on iPad! Weather on

macOS (and iPadOS as a desktop)

On top of all of the features iPadOS is getting that it shares with iOS, it's also picking up its fair share of features that are shared with the Mac. It's clear that Apple is trying to grow the iPad and foster it as a more fully-featured car to the Mac's truck niche; you're still going to need a Mac to do a lot of higher-end stuff, like complex video editing, audio mixing, game development, or full-on application programming. But people who drive cars could also use more than the bare minimum. And so, the iPad seems to be growing up into "the desktop for the rest of us", so to speak.

Stage Manager

This is the big one, which was shown off first on the Mac, where it seemed... interesting, if a little out of place. Seeing it pop up on the iPad made immediate sense, though. On the iPad, this is a powerful alternative for app spaces, which can be clumsy to navigate by touch, or require a keyboard with buttons I don't have on mine. Being able to swap quickly and easily between small collections of windows is something I've needed fairly regularly, and while app spaces work, they're not really great for the task. There's still too much hidden information about where I'll be swapping when I swipe back, or how things will be laid out when I double-click the Home button (because I have a 4th-gen mini). Depending on how reliably I swipe between spaces at any given time without fumbling, I could have to swipe many more times to get back to something just 2 spaces away, because the OS will "helpfully" re-buffer the original space as the "next" space to swipe left into if I take too long to get off of the intervening space.

By contrast, Stage Manager would give me access to 5 sets of windows (1 active and 4 inactive), which is arguably more than most people will need at any given time. To use my most recent use case as an example, I was bouncing between two Safari windows, Shortcuts, Logger, and Creative Book Builder to copy a bunch of chapters of a fic into an eBook I could read without having to deal with the website's tiny, tiny font size. (I was using Shortcuts to transform the BBCode markup of the story's raw text into Markdown, which I then copied to the clipboard for pasting into Creative Book Builder, but thanks to a bug in Shortcuts in iOS 15, the clipboard was never populating so I had to log the contents of the clipboard to Logger, where I could copy it and then paste into CBB. And the second Safari window was for looking up other stuff that I needed as I was building the parsing shortcut.)

As it was, I had Logger in a slide-over panel, so in practice I was really only bouncing between two screens for the most part, but it was still an awkward experience given how frequently I had to do it (once per chapter, and it's a long fic). Being able to bounce between those screens with a single tap would have been so much nicer. Out of all the features they talked about for the iPad this coming year, this is probably the one I'm most excited about.

So why is this also on the Mac, when macOS already has plenty of windowing controls like Mission Control and Spaces?

I think it's there as a clever stepping stone for people coming from the iPad. Once folks are familiar with Stage Manager on the iPad for their multitasking needs, they'll be able to transfer that skill set to the Mac, making it easier to get onboard. Later they can graduate to Mission Control or Spaces or some combination of the three (Stage Manager integrates with Spaces, and Mission Control isn't going anywhere), but out of the box I think it's there to give people a broader, shallower ramp to transfer from the iPad to the Mac.

I can see it having its uses for people who have already been on the Mac forever, too. For those who are more mouse-oriented, or those who can't keep a large mental model of "off-camera" screens in their heads, it's a nicer way to switch between discrete collections of windows while maintaining context. I can even see using it for, say, game dev, where I could have Unity in one stage, Visual Studio in another, Substance Designer in a third, and Pixelmator in a fourth, with the ability to switch between them quickly and smoothly.

Continuity Camera

This is just neat. It's kind of hilarious that they're rolling this out after essentially building an iPhone into the Studio Display as a webcam earlier this year, but whatever. More people having better webcams is a plus.

The Desk View mode is a really clever way to take advantage of the wide-angle lens on the iPhone to do something unique. I can already see it being really useful for Twitch streamers who focus on arts and crafts (paging Tinker Tailor Solder Fry, or Cameron's Warhammer painting streams). The fact that it supports dual-streaming of your face and your desk simultaneously is especially cool.

Dictation & Accessibility

Apple's really leaning into voice and image processing this year, with huge upgrades to dictation, Live Text basically everywhere in the system, and live auto-captioning galore. This could easily have gone in any of the sections, but I'll throw it here to help out the anemic-looking Mac section ;).

Dictation gaining support for automatic punctuation is honestly huge. No more having to say "period" at the end of a sentence. Nice for messaging, but this also seems like an absolute must-have for drafting longer blocks of text without having to mode-switch between speaking and micro-managing Siri every few words.

Other Stuff and Rapid-fire Takes

Quick Look in Spotlight, I never thought I'd see the day. Bless.

I'm definitely looking forward to the up-tick in copyrighted image misuse in Keynote slides following the addition of image results from the web into Spotlight.

Not sure how I feel about the iOS-ification of System Preferences Settings

Apple is Sherlocking the ambient noise app ecosystem.

This is specifically a call-out for the copy on their features page: props to Apple for including "care provider" as well as "friend" in the list of people you can benefit from cooperating with by using 2 controllers for a single input.

Home continues to mostly be a thing for people who aren't me, for 2 reasons: 1) I am that meme about developers not trusting the toaster with an electrical connection, and 2) even if I weren't, I live in an apartment so my options for "smart" things are, essentially, LED lights and maybe a needless security camera that's likely to get stolen. And I've already got all the voice-activated lights I need. That said, props to Apple for putting their HomeKit platform out there as a new standard, since god knows nobody else in the industry is gonna make anyone making these things care about security.

Duplicate detection in Photos is great for folks who haven't bought Gemini.

GOD BLESS AMERICA, they're updating the Photos picker for the first time since, like, 2008. The current one is just so terrible.

Nobody wants background video playing in the Apple TV+ tab, Apple. Nobody. Literally zero people.

Safari

I'm breaking this out into its own section because Safari is like a mini-platform that lives inside of the rest of Apple's ecosystem. After last year's... contentious release process, this year's Safari updates are almost banal. That said, there's some good stuff in there, especially in what they didn't cover in the keynote.

Tab Groups are continuing to mature. While I know a lot of people poo-pooed them last year, even as a power user, I've found them extremely helpful in keeping concerns separated in ways that "just use another window" fails to accomplish, especially when I'm not on my Mac. Seeing that Tab Groups are getting per-group start screens is nice, but the real action is in the per-group pinned tabs, which is something I've desperately wanted since I started using the new Safari last year.

Integrating Tab Groups into the collaboration API is also really cool, though I suspect it won't get a whole lot of use in the real world given Safari's ongoing abysmal market share rankings on non-mobile devices. I'm curious whether they're persistent, or if they only last while a collaboration session is active. I like the idea of turning the whole browser into a sort of meta-Google-Doc, while still keeping access to your own tabs outside the scope of what people can see (and judge you for).

I really do hope they've done something about tab retention stability, though. More than once lately, my iPhone has just forgotten that it had tabs open that were outside of a tab group, and my Mac has also done it once recently. Fortunately, I was able to mitigate the loss on the Mac by pulling up the tabs on another device before iCloud Sync caught on that they were gone. I wasn't as fortunate about the ones on my phone, though. I've since taken to just putting my "general" tab set in a group named after the device itself, since tab groups seem to be more stable than the "not in a group" group.

It also may be an artifact of the number of tabs I have open in various groups at any given time, but my iPhone has consistently been having a problem where I tap a link, it loads the page, and then immediately loads the previous page, and wipes out the tab's entire back history in the process. It does it when I just hit "Back" sometimes too, in which case it'll reload the page I was backing out of and nuke the tab's history so I can't get back to where I was trying to go anymore. My Mac has recently started having this problem very intermittently too, and I'm starting to get both worried and annoyed by it.

Rapid-fire Takes

Praise the lord for website and extension settings sync.

I'll be curious to see what new standards for the web and browser extensions the Webkit team has compiled for this year.

Nice to see Apple continuing to push password requirement transparency, whether through their own input attribute proposal or just doing it the hard way and making a big list.

Web Push Notifications, for when you really just never want to be left alone again in your entire life. Yay. (Honestly, I get the utility, but the practical use cases are far, far narrower than proponents think. Just give me an RSS reader, I don't need to get pinged every time TechCrunch posts a new article.)

Hardware

I don't really have much to say about the new M2 chips beyond "holy shit", so I'll probably leave things there for the chipsets. Absolutely absurd performance boosts over a chipset that was already an absurd performance boost over the i7 and i9.

The new Air looks great, with the return of MagSafe (seriously, why would you ever walk away from the one thing that makes your power cords so great?) and the ability to get back to The Thinness without sacrificing performance. The MBP is finally™ back in a good place, so I'm perfectly fine with letting the Air return to its roots as a minimally-connected ultra-lightweight portable with enormous battery life. I do wish that they'd lean into the color spectrum they assembled for the iMac, but also these are probably still targeted at the business market (at least internally), so we get the boring colors instead. At least there's more than 2 this time. (I am going to grumble at Apple for the somewhat misleading unqualified "Air starts at $999" line when that's for last year's model.)

The 13" MacBook Pro is a weird little gremlin of a machine, though. After the removal of the Touch Bar from the bigger MacBook Pros last year, I figured the one on the 13" had a stay of execution because it was already in the pipeline before they decided to make "full-height function row" a selling point. (Honestly I'm glad there wasn't a live crowd last year so I wouldn't have to listen to the condescending whooping that would have inevitably followed that line from the stage.)

But now it's a year later. Apple's sticking a new M2 in the thing. And it still. has. a Touch Bar. They even make a point of pitching it on the website!

Apple, you're giving me incredibly mixed signals here. Please, I beg of you, if you're going to kill the Touch Bar just do it and be done with it. This will-they-won't-they thing is gonna kill me instead. At this point in time, just from a financial standpoint, I'm probably committed to waiting for the 16" M2 MBP to come out next year before getting a new laptop (assuming I don't opt for a Studio instead), but I'm not sure I'd want to get an M1 now anyway if there's the possibility they'll bring it back as an option next year in the bigger ones. If they go 2 years without it on the 16", it's not a fluke and it's definitely dead, but the fact that it's still there on the 13" model gives me a weird amount of hope.

[chimericchaos]

Hey yo peeps so something kinda... fun happened today and I(we, idk) thought we should share it

Here's where I would put a warning if I knew what warning to put, but I don't know what this qualifies as or if it even needs a warning so I'm just gonna put one anyway

Warning: ..... idk something about headmates I guess

Ok so today we were scrolling past screenshots from last year because of course we save all our screenshots eternally and yes they do take ALL the space and today I was tired of that so we decided to go through them and delete the ones that were not essential to life

So we saw this one picture of Aang from Avatar The Last Airbender, and guess what? The Brain Did The Thing. The same feeling as with the last new addition to the system (Akechi), there suddenly was this feeling of like a hyperfixation but also desperation(??) I guess. Like you try to scroll past it but you just instantly come back to it and for that moment all of existance is just about this one thing. Idk I still don't think I'm explaining this properly but whatever

Basically my brain lost its shit over a picture of Aang and, um, now I hear his voice in my head

Anyway yea so as we were discussing what the hell is going on, this little scene LITERALLY HAPPENED ALMOST WORD FOR WORD:

(line break thing indicating image because asdfasdfasdf)

(end of image)

So yea that happened, Hveðrungr had a hell of a laugh when it did, and gHost was in a state of dispear. Happy times.

Long story short, and about 2 hours later, we've gotten gHost to calm down by explaining Aang DOES have a reason to be here

The last week or so, the front has consisted almost entirely of Vi, Kazuko and Anger; with intermitted breaks here and there with Intellect and Ella making sure everything doesn't go to shit

That basically means the word "relax" was not in my vocabulary this past week, neither were "rest", "vacation", "careful" or "slow the fuck down". As you can imagine, I didn't feel like coming to work this morning

So again I don't know how to explain it, but I guess????? the brain decided????? we needed a break??? and someone to show us how????

Idk but so far the three main words we've heard from Aang are: Balance, Moderation and Temperance. Whatever that last word means. So I guess that's gonna be his role here??

Another thing gHost was hell bent on was (for some reason??? in hindsight how tf would this work?? like idek what he was thinking???) "tell me something only Aang would know" and somehow the response was "Katara likes turtle-ducks" and we were like "turtle-ducks? What the hell's a turtle-duck??" So we looked it up and OH MY GOSH THEY ARE THE CUTEST THINGS YOU'VE EVER SEEN WHAT IN THE NINE REALMS HOW DO WE NOT REMEMBER THEM

So it's clear why Katara would like them, or why anyone would like them for that matter

So yea in the time between then and now, we've gotten Aang's purpose, his image (complete with headphones and TIMBERLANDS OF ALL THINGS), his colour slot, age (non-defined, but defined in that it's non-defined), some cool memories/feelings of mountain tops, a very complicated feeling about Katara, and the urge to fly but that's not happening any time soon so whatever

Also HE KEEPS TELLING US TO STOP SWEARING SO MUCH I CAN SWEAR IF I WANT TO SHUT UP (jk he's fine with occasional swearing but don't just throw them in a sentance, that's wasteful)

[teamsharoncarter-archive]

Hey dude, I'm sorry if my tag give you negative impressions and it triggers problems god knows you don't want to experience. It would be hard to accept different opinions on tumblr because we're communicating in a third medium, misunderstandings are bound to happen. If people in the fandom are actually making your life hell and actually personally attack you, I'm offering ears to your story. I know how shitty people can give anxiety and maybe sharing it can ease your burden. That if you want to

I have calmed down now (who knew chores could clear your mind right?). Also, I want this ask and answer to be public so people know what happened and don’t send either of us hate or whatever. (That’s happened before so it’s for mine and your protection). But if you feel uncomfortable with that, I will gladly delete this post and send it via submission.

Hey I want to say thank you, for apologizing. I would also like to apologize. I was already in a beginnings of a manic episode that I felt in me, and when that volcano just erupted, I “spewed the lava” onto you and you didn’t deserve that so I’m sorry about that. I’m trying to do better with it. And I probably should have been more clear, I will work on that too.

Yeah the five years of being on here were hell. (In fact I have a post labeled “Five Fucking Years [link]” that is the summary of the hell - but no where near explains exactly what I’ve had to deal with.) My blog archive on this one only shows 3 years, but I had two different blogs—and a failed remake for this blog—until I remade into “teamsharoncarter” (tsc is like, my tenth url on this blog omg).

I kinda ranted about the Five Hell Years of Fandom below, it’s kinda long, so it’s under a read more.

So my Fandom Life started way back in 2012 on fanfictiondotnet, and 2013 on tumblr.

First thing negative I ever had happen to me, is that a person reported and had my fanfic deleted because I “falsely advertised on the fanfic summary” as stated on the last review before my fanfic was just Gone. FFN didn’t even warn me or back it up at all. And because people badgered me for an update because I wasn’t Spitting Out A New Chapter Every Hour, the demands made a deadline for something that wasn’t supposed to have a deadline made me worry that people would hate me if I didn’t Immediately Post Now, so I posted One Paragraph chapters that were rushed and gross, because I thought they just wanted quantity, not quality. So then I started getting Hate Reviews because it was rushed and not “proper length for a chapter.” (Thank God for James Patterson for his One Page Chapters that taught me, who cares if it’s one page? You wrote down what you wanted in the story without somehow jamming it into another chapter.)

Imaginary deadline made me anxious like a school deadline, which made me feel bad for not posting anything for months which lead to more anxiety which lead to feeling like crap everyday for not posting which eventually lead to spiraling depression.

So I left fanfictiondotnet behind me. And did a dumbass decision to join tumblr. I’ve seen other authors on FFN talk about visiting their blogs and chat with them and stuff, so I thought it would be a fun place to hang with fellow fans.

I was right for a little bit.

Then I reblogged a post that upset one of my few followers. Next thing I knew, I was getting sent messages about how I’m a menace to society for liking this one couple or something (like if I remember correctly, it was a think it was thalico - about 7 months before Nico was confirmed gay). And so because I said “fuck off” because like, 13 years old, why do you wanna worry about that stuff when all you want is fun right? So whenever I got a message from them, I’d delete it. I’d block them over and over again, because either they were using friend’s accounts or a different computer, I’ll never know. After they were Proven Right that their headcanon was canon, they were like “see! i told you!” as if it was okay for them to constantly harass me because their headcanon that a character was gay was confirmed.

What made me finally leave that blog was that I kinda got into a fight, like we did, but they twisted the words I was trying to say, which I got irrationally angry at, and they vagued me, and also not so vagued me, (which is why I don’t take kindly to that anymore) to their followers, which lead to hundreds of anons in my inbox about how I should die and should kill myself. I tried to tell the person, but they had me blocked after they vagued me, and so I had my friend tell them, but all they got was a laugh in the face about how I was childish for trying to stop what I deserved.

So I deleted that blog, remade another one, where I would just reblog, not comment, not have ask open, not post personal opinions, nothing. Just a simple reblog blog. That didn’t work either because I started to feel lonely, and the only follower I had was my sister.

So I tried FFN again, new account, new fanfic ideas, new ships, new identity, and put a link to my blog on my bio and decided to open up my ask for any convos my readers wanted for the fanfic—specifically things like theories for the next chapter. I even made sure to have three chapters ready, so I would post one chapter per week, which gave me time to write the next one, to give a nice flow. Which was a big mistake. I started to get the same “UPDATE!” messages, so I would post the next chapter anyway because I have a compulsion to please people, which restarted the spiraling because I no longer had the cushion to have more time to write. I though the update demands would shut up if I gave them three in the same day. But then, I also got hate reviews for my fanfics in my ask. About how everyone was Out Of Character or Not Together With Their OTP. And so I deleted the accounts and just started over again.

With this blog.

I started not talking to anyone but the few friends I made on my previous blog. I reblogged a lot of gen stuff, then as a month went by with nothing, no sign of hate, I decided to reblog shippy stuff, I changed my icon to my OTP.

Which upset practically everyone.

I was sent not only that I should die or kill myself, but death threats and rape threats and just weird ass shit. I get sent messages that my otp/fave character was abusive (steve/tony, fave character is tony) and that I was an abuse apologist and that I should be filled with concrete to they could “smash me into a million piece or sculp me into a human being with more decency”. So since then I just would, block anyone who I saw was even a little negative toward the things I loved, because I thought, if I put up the barricade now, they can’t get me later. But then I started showing love to other ships and characters and it would just start all over again. And then people I already had blocked would somehow find my posts, screenshot them, post it making fun of it without removing my url, then send hoards of people after me. And when asked to stop, they laughed at me more.

I changed my url, and saved the old url with a redirect to a “not found” page so they thing I deleted and I was save for awhile.

I posted a picture of me as sharon for halloween - I didn’t have a white catsuit, but I did have a vest like Sharon did in CW so I wore that (2 people recognized who I was trying to be) - and then I got this ask: “You are ugly. So is Sharon. [link]” and yeah my answer was basically “wow anon lol pathetic hate”, it still got to me?

I don’t know what has made me stick it out with this one for so long. Maybe because I have a lot of followers now, maybe because of the friends I made, maybe it’s my “fuck this fuck you i’m staying” spite. I don’t know. I just know that I’m tired.

I’m tired of defending myself and the fiction characters I love. I’m tired of constantly being told by my own invasive thoughts and by real people, that my life doesn’t equal that of a fiction characters. That fiction characters are somehow worth more than me, a living breathing human.