#i'm sorry i needed to put it somewhere

[orsanedraws]

i will not give in to the urge to write an oc x character fic that's in my head... i will not...

[taffywabbit]

"why not just make your own website?"

with the announcement of cohost's death and amidst all the other tumultuous shit currently going on with social media as a concept (i am AMAZED twitter has survived this long given the circumstances), one suggestion that i've been hearing a lot is "we should just go back to the good old days of personal websites. let's all just make neocities pages!!"

(this is gonna be a long one sorry)

and like. idk! it's certainly something i've considered, i think it would be a fun thing to have, but it also feels like the equivalent of "capitalism sucks so let's all just run off into the woods and live in a cabin outside of society" to me. like it would be nice, it would be fun, but it doesn't ultimately solve the actual problems that are present with the modern internet, it just evades them. more importantly in my case and many others, it does not really help people who rely on the modern internet and the connections they're able to make there for their income. sure i can make a website and host my art and blog posts there, but who's going to see it? i can't build a consistent audience and make a living off of random passersby who peek at my website once, say "huh, neat!" and MAYBE add it to an RSS feed or whatever if they really like it. there's minimal potential for meeting and impressing new people outside my existing circles if i don't ALSO still have some manner of social media platform to promote the website on.

a lot of the "solutions" i see people proposing for the slow, painful decline of social media as a user experience keep coming back to old-fashioned, more isolated/insular systems. we miss forums, we miss personal webpages, we miss newsletters, etc etc. but like... those things were ideal in the "old web" because the old web was more about sharing hobbies and interests with whoever happened to pass by and check them out, and even just USING the internet was a niche hobby in and of itself for a lot of people. if you wanna be kinda cynical about it (and not unjustifiably so), web 2.0 is much more blatantly business-oriented, and its algorithms and carefully crafted UX's are primarily meant to funnel you towards viewing ads and spending money on products. looking at it that way, it sure does suck and Everything Was Better Before! but the modern web is ALSO more powerful than anything before it for just like. connecting people. spreading information and news. showing your art/music/writing/thoughts/etc to strangers who never knew you existed an hour ago. putting the tools to reach out to someone and tell them you think they're cool right there on the same website where their art is hosted, just a comment or a message away.

if you're able to avoid patterns of engagement-bait and obsessing over follower counts as a measure of self-worth (a big "if", i realize, but i view it like installing an adblocker - it's just kind of a basic prerequisite for modern internet safety and survival), a lot of these systems can genuinely be really positive and life-changing in ways that were simply not possible 20 years ago! almost all of my current closest friends are people I met through sharing our art on platforms like Twitter who were complete strangers at the time. all of the art clients that regularly pay my bills and support my work came from places like that too! the "social" part of "social media" is really what makes it ultimately worth keeping around in any form, and makes the pursuit of a Good social media platform still valuable.

there's a lot to love about the old web - its aesthetics, simplicity and freedom for personal expression - but every time someone says "just delete your socials and make a personal website" i am forced to confront the fact that i could never do what i currently do or be the person i am on the old web. if i was stuck hanging out in my own little space and only ever interacting with people who openly and loudly share my interests, i couldn't support myself with art full-time, i probably would never have met the kind and quiet strangers who are now my best friends and have made me who i am, and i'd just generally get a lot less insight into the vast range of experiences and perspectives that exist outside of my own. my life would be on a fundamentally different trajectory in countless ways without the advent of web 2.0.

and that's not to say "well twitter and facebook and tumblr all suck but you kinda still have to hand it to them" cuz you don't, obviously. they're corporations, and their job is to take the personalities and thoughts and art of the people who use their products and try to scrunch it all into something uninform and marketable that generates profit and pleases their shareholders. but like, you CAN still make a good thing out of them! these websites are tools just as much as geocities or myspace or IRC used to be. and the one thing these newer tools are pretty much all REALLY good at is discoverability. if you're just a hobbyist at the things you wanna share on the internet, then you likely don't have a lot of use for those tools, and perhaps you WOULD genuinely be happier just keeping a personal blog site or hanging out in private groupchats or sticking to specialized federated Mastodon instances or whatever. it just isn't feasible for me, and there are a LOT of people in my same situation. my entire industry of online freelance artists barely existed 20 years ago, and the web culture of that era is largely incompatible with my continued survival in the mid-2020s. i would LOVE to run off and live in the woods in concept, but all my survival skills are adapted for city living and i would just eat the wrong berry and die out there. i want- i NEED people to try and improve the spaces we're in, and support better forms of social media (like what cohost was trying and largely succeeding to do!) instead of just complaining that it all sucks, everything was better when we were kids, and digging ourselves little holes to hide in. much like all the other problems and frustrations and systemic issues of the world we live in, the modern web isn't going to go away if you just ignore it, so we may as well try to make it better for everyone.

anyways tl;dr i probably WILL make a neocities at some point. it could be fun, even if it doesn't help my career stability or whatever. but i do also need ALL THE SOCIAL PLATFORMS I USE FOR MY JOB TO STOP EXPLODING PRETTY PLEASE, and failing that, some actual half-decent alternatives that aren't going to fizzle out in a month would also be great thanks ✌

[kelzen]

[seance]

TAKE A SWIM IN THE DIRTY WATER, DARLING, CHILD, TRUE LOVE OF MINE

[langernameohnebedeutung]

I'm beginning to realise that a major reason why I woke up in the middle of August and was like "I REALLY DESPERATELY URGENTLY FINALLY NEED TO DRIVE AROUND ICELAND FOR TWO WEEKS ON MY OWN" (apart from, you know, seeing Iceland) is that this will be the first time since Ireland that I will completely on my own schedule and on my own and off to clock and not available and it's really interesting that the people in my life who are the most like 'why would you want to go to Iceland on your own, there's nothing there, that sounds boring, it's empty and cold' are the ones I most need a break from. It's you, the stressor is you.

[cas-theghostking]

Hi, sorry if this seems like a bizarre request, but I feel it would suit him. Zane seems like he'd be a dancer, and I'd like to see your design of him dancing (it can be as uncomplicated or as complex as you please)! And if you'd like, you could include another Ninja (or as many as you'd like)! It's all up to you; I would like to see him as a dancer! :D

So this ask was from two years ago and I completely forgot it existed but I absolutely loved this idea so here's zane and pixal doing the lindy hop!

[crownedwille]

.

[minnaci]

sorry i know i am not a hellaverse blog but i just watched full moon and i felt so strongly about it that i got out of bed, opened my laptop, and logged into the tumblr website for the first time in months because i knew i would want a full keyboard for this.

disclaimers: i enjoy the show and especially this episode! i like all of the characters, including stolas. what i say is colored by my own experiences and perspectives (ie, i am biased and this is my opinion)

tldr; i find it hard to like stolas in full moon. i also find it hard to empathize with stolas, if i'm being honest, and especially when it comes to his relationship with blitz. warning for full moon spoilers and discussions of racism-adjacent classism.

within the hellaverse exists clear social and economic stratification between "royalty" and "imps", with stolas being the former and blitz being the latter. much like in real life, these social identities inform everything about these characters and the way they interact with the world and each other.

stolas, to put it bluntly, is rich, and blitz is not. stolas lives in a lavish palace with imps as servants. he is not shown to interact with other imps outside of this master-servant relationship. hell, even when they were children, blitz was quite literally purchased for stolas. blitz's first impression of stolas was being sold to him, while stolas was none the wiser.

this is not necessarily stolas's fault. he was sheltered as a child, and even as he grew into an adult, he remained sheltered, seemingly ignorant to the very real class divide between him and his newest paramour. from the very beginning of their reunion, blitz uses his body to provide a service to stolas in exchange for his livelihood, and stolas accepts it because that's the way stolas is used to interacting with imps. stolas continues to "hire" blitz, both as a bodyguard and as a sex worker, and while he understands that this relationship is transactional, he doesn't really see anything wrong with it until the shitshow at ozzie's.

there is no awareness of how uncomfortable this might be for blitz. there is no empathy for how blitz might react. stolas treats blitz as an object, a plaything, a living, breathing sex toy (at one point, stolas calls blitz his "impish plaything". can it get any more clear?). as long as stolas owns the grimoire, and blitz needs the grimoire to survive, stolas can leverage that for whatever he wants from blitz. it's coerced consent. it's been coerced consent from the beginning. there is no acknowledgement that stolas holds the only key to blitz's livelihood. not until ozzie's.

only after blitz says, to stolas's face, that their relationship is completely transactional, does stolas finally begin to scratch the surface of how large their difference in perspective is. where stolas has been playing at a fantasy of being in love, blitzo has been doing what he needs to do to survive. to keep his family afloat.

and full moon. god, full moon. one commenter on youtube described it as an "ambush", and i am inclined to agree.

blitz was prepared to do what he's had to do. sex for survival. he bought out nearly the entire lust district for it, because even then he could sense that something had changed, and that he'd need to really impress stolas for things to continue as they were-- for blitz to be abel to continue to make ends meet. what blitz had no way of knowing, though, was that stolas was re-writing the rules of the metaphorical game they were playing. sure, stolas gives blitz the asmodean crystal, thereby "freeing" blitz from stolas's service, but in the same breath, stolas lays down a new set of expectations. stolas is no longer willing to accept sex as a service. stolas now wants love.

it would be a lot for anyone to take in. imagine you enter your boss's office for your performance review. you think this boss is hot. you maybe have a big crush on this boss. but they tell you that you're being fired, effective today. but they're giving you a foot in the door at a different company because they care about you. also by the way they fell in love with you, which is why they fired you. honestly? i'd probably react pretty poorly to that.

and for blitz, who has gone his whole life being told, implicitly and explicitly, that he is unworthy of love and care, both as a product of his personal experiences and as a product of his socioeconomic class, that's a whole fuckton of shit to take in. it feels almost logical for blitz to treat it like a joke or some sort of performance, because what other explanation is there? stolas is royalty. and blitz... blitz is just blitz. blitz, whose parents cared more about fizzarolli than him. blitz, whose father sold him to some rich asshole. blitz, who, in his perspective, knows better than anyone else that his greatest assets are what he can provide for other people: sex, assassinations, and more sex. blitz, who, in his mind, has ruined every relationship he's ever touched, from his parents, to his friendship with fizzarolli, to his fathering of loona, to his disastrous fling with verosika.

blitz, who was given all of thirty seconds to process that stolas really does "care for him deeply" before stolas dismissed him and shoved blitz out of his life for good because blitz didn't respond (read: perform) to his satisfaction.

i am not saying that blitz is perfect or blameless, because hell knows he's not. he took advantage of stolas's naivete in a plethora of ways. he's a literal murderer. he does treat the people around him poorly. he has hurt stolas, and fizzarolli, and moxxie and millie and even loona. blitz is brash, rude, and emotionally stunted. but much of this can be at least in part attributed to his childhood and the scarcity mindset with which he was raised. when every interaction you have is transactional, even the ones you have with your parents, it takes a lot longer than the 30 seconds that stolas allowed blitz to process that someone genuinely cares about you in a way that is not contingent on you doing things for them or otherwise being useful to them.

all that to say, i feel for stolas, but feel for blitz more. i think this episode did a really great job of like... really digging into the crux of the problem in the stolitz relationship, which is their fundamentally different perspectives and life experiences, even if the finer points about class and socioeconomic status weren't explicitly discussed.

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

annoyed

[dbphantom]

i keep seeing your username and thinking j followed you for danny phantom rather than mermaid stuff 😆

i am so sorry, you probably did XD

[manasurge]

1/3 of the way done of this last page, then I can finally post it all o|-<

[lizardthelizard]

listen. LISTEN. I knoooowwwwwwwww that August has never been important enough for canon to ever bother expanding upon issues like this. I know, but...

In the pilot, we KNOW that Emma is lonely. We know this because she’s sat in her apartment, alone, celebrating her birthday by herself. It’s well established that Emma had no one she considered her family and has had extreme trouble connecting with people over the years (Neal, Lily and Ingrid as fleeting exceptions).

But August? Canon gives us NOTHING. We know almost NOTHING about his past in the Land Without Magic. We’re given the name of one (1) character (Isra) that he has a connection with (someone who is clearly not THAT important to him, as she’s never mentioned again ever) and that’s IT.

Emma stays in Storybrooke to begin with because of Henry, yes. But it’s not a particularly tough decision for her because, well...she has nothing to go back to anyway. And I can’t help but wonder how true that was for August as well? Like....??? did he bother to contact ANYONE when he thought he was dying???

August is a genuinely intelligent and charismatic character (albeit, a little obnoxious). I have no doubt that he has made friends + friendly acquaintances over the years. But close friends? People he can open up to about his past with and who won’t think he’s losing his mind? HIGHLY doubtful.

I know that the show didn’t really explore their friendship very much or expand on it in any meaningful way, but Emma and August’s relationship is sooooooooooo *chef’s kiss* to me. Yeah, they have genuine chemistry and a fun dynamic, yeah the ‘I can always tell when someone is lying to me’ character interacting with a character that is literally Pinocchio is funny af and surprisingly poetic. But also!!! These are two lonely, emotionally closed off characters that were essentially orphaned by their parents for 28 years that have both had shitty childhoods and have connected so genuinely with one another and I don’t know where I was even going with this but I love both of them so much and they both deserve this friendship and WHY WASN’T AUGUST AT EMMA’S WEDDING I’M STILL MAD ABOUT THIS OKAY

[frengerino]

trying to be really normal about finally getting diagnosed with hip impingement/arthritis yesterday. yeah it could be worse, at least this surgery can be done arthroscopically etc... but like dude....... i'm in 9/10 pain* and i'm going to have to take months off my job because i won't be able to fucking walk after surgery..... meanwhile i literally LIVE to run. unfortunately at some point in the past 5 years i accidentally became a distance runner and not running is making me want to DIE. i wish i was being dramatic but i'm not. and i can't even pour my energy into other things because the pain makes me unable to string two thoughts together. how is this fair

*reserving 10/10 for childbirth, which i shan't ever experience but i respect those who do for really committing to the bit

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

..

[salamie-baby]

I lived past the age i thought i would die at, and I got to see the northern lights. The world is beautiful and I am a living organism that is a part of the collective body that is the Earth and She houses our consciousnesses and gives us water to hospitate our creation and food to nourish our existence and ground to return to when we have spent our time and I was born and I am living and one day I will die. I ate food today. I drank water today. I moved and I spoke and I thought and I felt. One day I will be We and We will be Her and She will shape the energy that is in my corpse into a new cell for the body and everything has always been whole and complete. My pain will be carried in me for eternity, because eternity is all and all I percieve is eternity. I have so much pain in my little heart that I thought I would die from it and yet I continue to live. The northern lights danced across the sky and over my head tonight, and I saw a flower blooming green and pink.

[elliesbelle]

lol