#like historical pieces are not truly a problem

[nevoadecaipora]

.

[foone]

Look if there's one thing, just one thing, that I wish everyone understood about archiving, it's this:

We can always decide later that we don't need something we archived.

Like, if we archive a website that's full of THE WORST STUFF, like it turns out it's borderline illegal bot-made spam art, we can delete it. Gone.

We can also chose not to curate. You can make a list of the 100 Best Fanfic and just quietly not link to or mention the 20,000 RPFs of bigoted youtubers eating each other. No problem!

We can also make things not publicly available. This happens surprisingly often: like, sometimes there'll be a YouTube channel of alt-right bigotry that gets taken down by YouTube, but someone gives a copy to the internet archive, and they don't make it publicly available. Because it might be useful for researchers, and eventually historians, it's kept. But putting it online for everyone to see? That's just be propaganda for their bigotry. So it's hidden, for now. You can ask to see it, but you need a reason.

And we can say all these things, we can chose to delete it later, we can not curate it, we can hide it from public view... But we only have these options BECAUSE we archived it.

If we didn't archive it, we have no options. It is gone. I'm focusing on the negative here, but think about the positive side:

What if it turns out something we thought was junk turns out to be amazing new art?

What if something we thought of as pointless and not worth curating turns out to be influential?

What if something turns out to be of vital historical importance, the key that is used to solve a great mystery, the Rosetta stone for an era?

All of those things are great... If we archived it when we could.

Because this is an asymmetric problem:

If we archived it and it turns out it's not useful, we can delete.

If we didn't archive it and it turns out it is useful, OOPS!

You can't unlose something that's been lost. It's gone. This is a one way trip, it's already fallen off the cliff. Your only hope is that you're wrong about it being lost, and there is actually still a copy somewhere. If it's truly lost, your only option is to build a time machine.

And this has happened! There are things lost, so many of them that we know of, and many more we don't know of. There are BOOKS OF THE BIBLE referenced in the canon that simply do not exist anymore. Like, Paul says to go read his letter to the Laodiceans, and what did that letter say? We don't know. It's gone.

The most celebrated playwright in the English tradition has plays that are just gone. You want to perform or watch Love's Labours Won? TOO FUCKING BAD.

Want to watch Lon Cheyney's London After Midnight, a mystery-horror silent film from 1927? TOO BAD. The MGM vault burnt down in 1965 and the last known copy went up in smoke.

If something still exists, if it still is kept somewhere, there is always an opportunity to decide if it's worthy of being remembered. It can still be recognized for its merits, for its impact, for its importance, or just what it says about the time and culture and people who made it, and what they believed and thought and did. It can still be a useful part of history, even if we decide it's a horrible thing, a bigoted mess, a terrible piece of art. We have the opportunity to do all that.

If it's lost... We are out of options. All we can do is research it from how it affected other things. There's a lot of great books and plays and films and shows that we only know of because other contemporary sources talked about them so much. We're trying to figure out what it was and what it did, from tracing the shadow it cast on the rest of culture.

This is why archivists get anxious whenever people say "this thing is bad and should not be preserved". Because, yeah, maybe they're right. Maybe we'll look back and decide "yeah, that is worthless and we shouldn't waste the hard drive or warehouse space on it".

But if they're wrong, and we listen to them, and don't archive... We don't get a second chance at this. And archivists have been bitten too many times by talk of "we don't need copies, the original studio has the masters!" (it burnt down), or "this isn't worth preserving, it's just some damn silly fad" (the fad turned out to be the first steps of a cultural revolution), or "this media is degenerate/illegal/immoral" (it turns out those saying that were bigots and history doesn't agree with their assessment).

So we archive what we can. We can always decide later if it doesn't need preserving. And being a responsible archivist often means preserving things but not making them publicly available, or being selective in what you archive (I back up a lot of old computer hard drives. Often they have personal photos and emails and banking information! That doesn't get saved).

But it's not really a good idea to be making quality or moral judgements of what you archive. Because maybe you're right, maybe a decade or two later you'll decide this didn't need to be saved. And you'll have the freedom to make that choice. But if you didn't archive it, and decide a decade later you were wrong... It's just gone now. You failed.

Because at the end of the day I'd rather look at an archive and see it includes 10,000 things I think are worthless trash, than look at an archive of on the "best things" and know that there are some things that simply cannot be included. Maybe they were better, but can't be considered as one of the best... Because they're just gone. No one has read them, no one has been able to read them.

We have a long history of losing things. The least we can do going forward is to try and avoid losing more. And leave it up to history to decide if what we saved was worth it.

My dream is for a future where critics can look at stuff made in the present and go "all of this was shit. Useless, badly made, bigoted, horrible. Don't waste your time on it!"

Because that's infinitely better than the future where all they can do is go "we don't know of this was any good... It was probably important? We just don't know. It's gone. And it's never coming back"

[genderqueerdykes]

Heya I'm a butch intersex transmasc system and I just wanted to thank you so much for this blog and what you do. I had been identifying as a bi trans guy for a while but it just wasn't right. I felt like I was putting on a costume every day. I accepted contradictory labels for others but never myself. So while I still felt connected to womanhood I shoved that piece of me down. I realize now it was also a lot of just internal misogyny. I also felt that I couldn't identify as a lesbian or as sapphic because I don't "look like a lesbian", I'm on T, I'm hairy and big and I've always been intersex. I felt like no lesbian would want me. But reading up on queer and lesbian history and finding your blogs and ones like it made me realize that transmasc dykes have always been here. I accepted that part of myself, and finding the transmasc lesbian community (and just the trans lesbian community in general) has felt like coming home. It's been truly amazing and I do want you to know you had a part in it and I thank you for that.

-many many lesbian thanks,

Your local disabled intersex transmasc dyke

hey you're very welcome, i'm glad i could've helped you!!

cis (femme) lesbians want people to think that lesbians are perisex cis Womyn because they're scared to death of trans, intersex and gender non conforming people. meanwhile, the lesbian community has such a rich history of gender diversity it's not even funny. every gender you can think of has some kind of place in the lesbian community historically. it's such a varied and diverse community. the only ones who are mad about it are radfems

there are sooooo many transmasc and intersex dykes and thats not a problem. never has been and never will be. it's so normal. that's a good thing

[enigma2meagain]

RWBY Relic Pieces in Volume 1, Symbolism of the Pieces, and How It Ties To the Broader Narrative.

Did a quick searchup on the symbolism of chess pieces, and taking what I saw into consideration (note that this is very abridged, and possibly not entirely correct):

CRDL and the Black Bishop

Bishops are representative of religion, as well as spirituality, morality, and wisdom, and a direct reference to Cardin's mythological reference, the Cardinal of Winchester. In regards to the broader narrative that RWBY sets up, he can be considered V1's partial representation of the institution of Huntsmen, more specifically the deeply flawed and darker side standing opposite to the better/neutral aspects of Huntsmen that RWBY/JNPR represent, due to being a racist bully who stands against Grimm, yet also willfully persecutes and harms the people he's supposed to fight for, such as minority groups like Faunus and (given Jaune at this point is basically a civilian in huntsmen's clothing and training wheels) the people depending on the circumstances. Also acts as a form of foreshadowing to the other deeply flawed or outright bad huntsmen we'd come to see later in the series, as well as highlighting the lack of wisdom and morality that can blight the institutions that Huntsmen are supposed to be, represent and protect.

The Black pieces in chess always move second, which highlights how the Huntsmen are a highly reactive organization, and how this severely limits their ability to truly tackle the bigger problems regarding threats like the Grimm, Salem, society's deep internal problems, and in the bigger picture, Ozpin's divine mission.

JNPR and the White Rook

Rooks are representative of the land, being symbolic of the fortress that guards a city or land and its royalty, and how they essentially "guard" the other pieces, as well as representing stability. The majority of JNPR come from civilians compared to the likes of RWBY, with this becoming completely the case after Pyrrha's death and Oscar's inclusion, and they're shown consistently throughout the series as having the strongest connections to civilians on a personal level. They also frequently as the bedrock and stabilizing influence, through Jaune, Nora and Ren's friendships and roles as supporting characters. Being white pieces also highlights how as time goes on, they would develop an increasingly proactive role through the questioning of the narrative told to them by the metaphorical "royals" (in this case, Ozpin's secret circle) and the latter's failure to actually protect them.

This is especially notable in regards to Jaune, Nora, and from a story perspective Ren, given how the former consistently questions Ozpin and his inner circle's shadier actions throughout most of V4 - V8, and Nora and Ren were failed miserably and made orphans due to the lack of huntsmen and the society around them failing to protect them, while putting them into a situation where their only recourse is to become part of the system that failed them.

RWBY and the White Knight

Knight pieces are representative of the medieval military, fitting given the status of Huntsmen, as well as being considered adventurous, valorous, and unpredictable due to their unique fighting style allowing them a level of unpredictability that other pieces don't have, fitting of how RWBY are the main proactive force to pushing Ozpin and the true nature of the secret war against Salem out into uncharted territory, forcing them to actually change and grow.

Knights are also often historically drawn from nobility, much like how every major character in RWBY has some kind of tie to Remnant's most illustrious groups or some kind of major player (Ruby and Yang being part of major Huntsmen lineages, Weiss being a rich heiress to the most powerful corporation in the world, and Blake being effectively the Princess of the Faunus, as well as having ties to the most prominent civil rights activists and movements in all iterations of the White Fang).

Much like JNPR, they are far more proactive compared to the royals they serve, actively pushing the latter outside their comfort zone in a two-pronged attack alongside JNPR, but the series also strives to highlight and deconstruct the messier aspects of their relationship as huntsmen (and thus a form of warrior caste/mercenary, with the following tension in that relationship with the people they are trying to protect) and how the unpredictable nature of their changes results in as much positive and messier forms of change, for better or worse.

This got way longer than I thought it would.

[justjudethoughts]

I think my favorite thing Stroud did is introduce Jessica into the narrative, and it's a bit complex to explain why. So I thought I'd start by sharing an unfinished poem written by myself as a bit of a framing "vibe":

There is a very specific, seldom explored, type of grief that accompanies there being more about the person that you don't remember than what you do. Of course, with Lockwood being 9 when Jess dies, he remembers a lot more about her than about his parents. But he was still pretty small, and the older he gets the less he is going to remember, especially considering that the bulk of his memories with Jess would have been before he even turned 9. In the context of Anthony's life, Jess is a historical figure, not a contemporary. And that is a different type of grief than the grief that comes from losing someone when both parties are significantly older.

The type of grief that Jess causes truly is a "ghostly" form. It's the "haunting the narrative" form. And it's a very real thing. It's the type of grief that comes from having a grandparent you never met, but their picture and stories being everywhere around the house and your heart always being aware that something is missing. It's the grief that comes from a tragic, untimely death that leaves the distinct feeling that the person "should still be here."

Our dining room table seats six people, but there are only five of us, so there is always one empty seat that happens to be the seat next to my older brother's spot. My eldest brother was still born, and growing up, sometimes I would look at the empty chair and mentally dub it "Patrick's" chair, where he was supposed to be.

A friend once told me she didn't like the idea of naming a kid after a deceased relative, because it makes the kid "a walking tombstone." That smacked some string in my heart really hard, because if I am honest, that's what I want to be. I want to be a living memorial of the people who have loved me into existence. I want people to know me, and in turn, know the people who my heart aches for. I'm named after my grandmother, who died in her 40s. She didn't meet any of her grandchildren. I also happen to look extremely similar to her. And it is my greatest honor to be recognized because of that. Because everyone loved her. Everyone has beautiful stories to tell. Her funeral was standing room only. If my name and face can be a reason she isn't forgotten, then make me a walking gravestone. I can think of no higher honor.

And I think, in some way (albeit an unhealthy way at first), this is what Anthony is trying to do. He goes by "Lockwood" so the family name always rings out on the lips of the public. He carries on a similar line of work to his parents, and a line of work that could have saved his sister. He doesn't change a single thing in the house. Despite his refusal to talk about them, he organizes his life in such a way that he is a testament to the fact that they are gone.

And then he reads his parents last lecture. Then he puts the pieces together. And something changes in him.

He no longer lives to be a testament to their absence. He lives to be a testament to the fact that they were here. And that it mattered. That everything they were and did mattered. That his parents were close to solving the Problem, and that he is close to finishing their work. That Jessica's death glow never went away so she could save her baby brother. That no matter how short a person's time on earth is, they leave a mark. His family is his reason to keep going. To show the world, over and over again, that they mattered.

And I love Stroud for that.

[allwaswell16]

All the One Direction fics I read and enjoyed in August 2023. You can listen to my podcast to hear me talk about each of these fics as well as an overview of what was posted on ao3 including the fics on this month’s fic roundup which you can find here! Please let the writers know if you liked the fics by leaving kudos and comments! Happy reading!

Fanfictional Podcast #53 |  ko-fi | fic recs

—Louis/Harry—

🌴 De amore ex tempore by @persephoneflouwers

(M, 101k, historical) the Middle Ages AU where Harry is a philosopher, whose thoughts happen five centuries too soon and Louis is a painter, whose art happens five centuries too late. & Or: the Time Travel AU where alternate versions of themselves live simultaneously in different realities and their paths collide every time, until somehow, they converge into one.

🌴 Gemma's Dad (Could Use A Guy Like Me) by @lululawrence

(NR, 82k, age difference) Louis wasn't planning on getting home and learning that Gemma's dad had gotten the house in the divorce and was dealing with things by focusing on work, the house, and his newly planted garden. It becomes obvious early on that Harry is a bit lost and Gemma is worried about him. To help both of them, Louis is more than happy to help Harry find himself again.

🌴 We Don't Need No Piece of Paper (From the City Clerk) by @2tiedships2

(M, 26k, a/b/o) In a matter of months, he would be bonded to an alpha his dad had chosen for him. Someone that Harry knew nothing about. Not even his name.

🌴 you give me feelings that i adore by @alwaysxlarrie

(T, 7k, a/b/o) 5 times Louis scents Harry's things and the 1 time Harry returns the gesture.

🌴 A Social Construct by YesIsAWorld / @louandhazaf

(E, 7k, established relationship) Five times Harry and Louis try to lose their virginity and one time they finally do. Part 4 of Swallow My Words

🌴 Rode Hard and Put Away Wet by @kingsofeverything

(E, 6k, Texas) Louis heard the same rumours in London, New York, and L.A., and he put them all to rest, but in Texas? Series Part 7 of Tiny Penis Fics

🌴 Trying to Find the Words (To Say For Ages) by @insightfulinsomniac

(E, 6k, uni au) As best friends and roommates, it’s really not a big deal when their on-campus housing provides Harry and Louis with an unusual, intimate bathroom arrangement. 

🌴 Come All Ye by @justanothershadeofblue

(E, 6k, historical) It's the summer of 1971, and Louis just wants to get out of town for a minute or a day. When his buddy Zayn says they should head down south and check out this radical new music festival, Louis is only too happy to agree.

🌴 Every Bit of Mine by skipper / @skipperxao3

(M, 3k, dark) Harry is an enigma. Louis still loves him.

🌴 every night with us (is like a dream) by moon_rose25 / @darkinfinity

(T, 2k, famous/not famous) A look into the life of a professional football player dating a physical therapist.

🌴 Everything Is Batter With You by red_panda28 / @red-pandaaa

(T, 2k, established relationship) Harry comes across a fun baking TikTok and convinces Louis to do it

🌴 No (Birth) Control by @haztobegood

(E, 2k, a/b/o) An unfortunate situation left Harry without contraceptives a day before his heat.

🌴 in my head we can love forever by @beardyboyzx

(E, 1k, girl direction) Harry might be a bit in love with her roommate.

🌴 Nights Like These, We'll Remember by @fallingdefenceless

(T, 1k, meet cute) Louis and Harry meet at a summer music festival and sparks fly.

—Rare Pairs—

🌴 The Light Out In The Madness (Hold Tight) by @lalalaartje

(E, 46k, Niall/Louis) When Louis ends up with Niall as a roommate after a messy break up with Harry, he considers it truly life saving. They become fast friends and while Louis is sceptical about Niall's idea to start fake dating to take revenge on Harry, it can't be that bad, can it?

🌴 Ask Him by LinksLipsSinkShips / @fxckingprincesspark

(T, 2k, Niall/Lewis Capaldi) When Lewis Capaldi gets pressed for information on who he's dating, he admits it... he's been seeing Niall Horan. The only problem? He jokes so much that no one believes him.

[kryptonbabe]

to a degree, if taste in art did not reflect a personality it would render the art meaningless. it's supposed to evoke a feeling. if there is nothing inside you that speaks to the art, it truly is just pure consumption and nothing beyond that.

Here are the posts about this for context. Yeah, of course one's taste in art might reflect aspects of their personality. That being said what we consider a personality is vast and multifaceted, your taste in art can reflect your fears, your desires, your past experiences (positive and negative), your views of the world - these can be intimate, or surface level. However I should say it at once: our actions and how we affect each other in real life are the only mesures by which we should be judged. To ponder over a disturbing theme is not the same as commiting a disturbing act. As Susan Sontag says in Regarding the Pain of Others: “Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.”

Art can speak to facets of our psyches that are surface level, based on a recent experience in school you might look for a book on fishing, you never fished, you don't even intend, but your teacher talked about it in such a vivid way it spoke to you, so you borrowed a book, read it and never thought about it again. What motivated you then? Empathy for the dear teacher, a fleeting desire to experience that, a sudden curiosity?

On the other hand, art can speak deeply to us, as I felt when I first read Light in August by William Faulkner, a book dealing with parental abuse and race prejudice to a mixed race person, who was not a "good" person by the way. Still, my own past, as a mixed race person with some traumatic experiences made me really connect to the character, the book is also beautifully written despite its violence. Books like the Xenogenesis series by Octavia Butler also explore disturbing themes of violence and abuse in a graphic manner, and still, they can speak of a message that does not endorse these subjects. And I am fond of that kind of fiction, they open paths for me to understand my own traumas, intrusive thoughts and other undesirable feelings that have been part of my life for a long time. I developed coping mechanisms that take advantage of the fact that we are imperfect beings and there's acceptance in that. This is my experience however, there are no wrong ways to enjoy or appreciate art, even if those reasons are aspects of yourself that you're not proud of, a bad memory, a bad thought. According to E. H. Gombrich in his book The Story of Art:

“I do not think that there are any wrong reasons for liking a statue or a picture. Someone may like a landscape painting because it reminds him of home, or a portrait because it reminds him of a friend. There is nothing wrong with that. As long as these memories help us to enjoy what we see, we need not worry. It is only when some irrelevant memory makes us prejudiced, when we instinctively turn away from a magnificent picture of an alpine scene because we dislike climbing, that we should search our mind for the reason for the aversion which spoils a pleasure we might otherwise have had. There are wrong reasons for disliking a work of art.” The art objects he's talking about of course are not relevant, the focus is on our approach to a piece of art and how our prejudices can alter our perceptions of a given work.

I have't even touched on the matter of curiosity, the unconscious and the historical context of transgression in art - which is so interesting. We could talk about for instance if the philosophers and writers (Epicurus, Hume, Dostoievsky) who pondered about the problem of evil and wrote about it were all deranged human beings, if the researchers / teachers of literary studies who dedicated their lives to understand works of Marquis de Sade are all perverts. Why were they thinking about these things? Why would they dedicate so much time to make sense of those awful works of art. But then, why shouldn't we think about these things? They might be frightening, painful, uncomfortable aspects of life, but they are not going away any time soon. We do live in a society after all... and in that way we feel like part of its mess. We are not evil by nature like that silly Thomas Hobbes used to think, but we do have the potential for it and we often act on it, why? That is the place of science, philosophy and yes... art to answer. Until we find out, we keep trying.

So yeah, art can and will reflect characteristics of our existence, collectively and individually (as in what we can call personality), on the surface level as momentary interest or deep and emotionally, or yet as curiosity, intellectual concern, it might be instead an unconscious parts of our being (the Jungian shadow-self), who am I to pick and choose what moves others, people I don't even know and never met, towards any given art work? I don't even fully know my own self.

Sorry for the long ass answer, now let me just finish with another Susan Sontag thought, also from her book Regarding the Pain of Others: “Someone who is permanently surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood.”

[justlikeheavenfest]

register now for access to passes, on sale this friday at 11am PT. May awaits with arms outstretched. 🫶 $49.99 down payment plans available. www.justlikeheavenfest.com

[artaphant]

Corsetry design for creating a hoop skirt, best attached with webbing and buckles to avoid cutting into the waist.

Skirts!

Horsehair- sewn into the lower layer to give waves into a gown

HANG AND ALLOW FOR STRETCH ON A CIRCLE SKIRT then resize before designing.

Bodice!

Not always a corset or boned bodice

Boned bodices place boning along the seam lines to keep the fabric smooth and long. Will not change the shape of the bodice like a corset though.

Buy your bodice for the construction, not the style. Most measurements are made for a B cup- you're better off making a higher bust and taking in to fit.

SLASH AND SPREAD- great for adding poofs to sleeves.

References- Cosplay panel. Also the book "The Cosplay book of Ballgowns"

Corsets! W/ Cowbutt Crunchies Cosplay

Expect to have 3+ mockups before the finished product.

Check out the Facebook for Truly Victorian to get community help too.

Mockups should use cheaper fabric, usually muslin so you can draw on it and it won't tear. And add bones to the mockups! Heavy duty zip ties work well.

Middle's issue- the spacing is off in the lacing. The cup should be bigger.

Wrinkles are the best indicator of a problem, when in doubt try ripping a seam for how the fabric moves.

Prewash fabrics!! And follow the grain lines on the fabrics. Mark each piece, stay organized or things will go together upside down and you will cry.

Contille fabric is the standard for corset fabric. Get it all from a coset specialty store, farthingales is Canada based and good for gown supplies too. Some of those places will let you buy boning to length w/ tips and coatings.

Featherlite will not work for anything don't do it.

Bone casing- super helpful in setting in the bones where you need. Twill tape can also work- also good for hoop skirts.

Busk- front hooks to open the corset and will have a bone and seam included.

Corset flossing?

DO NOT MACHINE SEW AFTER THE BONES ARE IN STEEL V STEEL IS NO GOOD.

Magnets and buckles into a corset for armor pieces!!!

Bernadette Banner- historical costumer with scoliosis for good tips.

Foundational sewing books are best starts and "old lady" blogs. THREADS MAGAZINE- get the online archive for resources from 1970's on super helpful.

[astriiformes]

hello!! this is kit. happy birthday!!! you don't have to answer all of these but

🎞️if you could change one scene from any of the movies, which one would you change and how?

⏲️what time period would you want marty to travel to and what would you want him to do? for fun or for something serious?

💫if you have any bttf related wips, here's the oppurtunity to ramble about them! (<-PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLSEPLSPEL)

Thank you!!

🎞️ - If you could change one scene from any of the movies, which one would you change and how?

Oof, just one scene is difficult, because the thing I'd like to change most would be how Jennifer's plot was handled in the second movie, and that requires a bit more overhauling. I think you could still make it better with a little tweaking though -- maybe she doesn't get knocked out and is simply told to stay watch the DeLorean, which still ends up being a problem when she tries to lure someone away from it, or something like that.

I guess that still modifies more like two scenes, but you get the idea! Anything to make her feel like she's got a little more agency. Because I like her a lot and it bothers me that the BttF movies aren't even that terrible at writing women (Lorraine and Clara are both really interesting characters!), but sidelined her anyways.

⏲️- What time period would you want Marty to travel to and what would you want him to do? For fun or for something serious?

Already answered this one but since there are plenty of time periods to choose from I will simply pick another. As someone who studies the history of science, I think that Doc and Marty could get up to some peak shenanigans in Enlightenment-era America (thinking late 18th and early 19th century here) when everyone was obsessed with the phenomena of electricity. I want to unleash Doc Brown on the people that thought lightning rods defied the will of God.

💫- If you have any BttF related WIPs, here's the opportunity to ramble about them!

OH BOY DO I

So, four years ago I started a diptych of stories I am yet to finish but that are some of the fics nearest and dearest to my heart, surrounding the idea of Marty being transgender. (I once called them my love-letter to transmasculinity, which is a little dramatic, but genuinely a bit how I feel about them)

The first is from Doc's perspective, and deals with the fact that, when Marty was first born, the version of him who'd been visited by 17 year-old Marty back in 1955 must've had an absolute heart attack at first. It features a very confused Doc and (eventually) a younger Marty figuring some important things out about himself, and is probably about half-written at uh. Almost 9k words.

The second, companion piece is from Marty's perspective, and set post-trilogy, dealing with him navigating questions of identity as someone who is trans and who now grew up in a different timeline. It follows his relationships with the important people in his life, his dueling existential crises, and the isolating feeling that maybe there's no one who understands you in the entire world -- and the relief that comes from learning that you're wrong.

I've done a truly monster amount of research for these fics--including having a librarian friend help me track down digitized historical documents during lockdown back in 2020--and am contemplating diving into the historical queer archive where I currently work for a second round, though we'll see what I can find. Regardless, I really want to finally finish these stories now that I've circled back around to having a lot of Back to the Future feelings again.

(Also to show the BttF fandom that I'm a much better writer when I'm not churning out only-mildly-edited 1-2k fics every day for a writing challenge, rip, although I'm honored people have been enjoying those ones, too! Just, you know. I can do better.)

[shouldhavestayedawayfromhere]

The Satanic Bible – book review

Sooo I finished reading the Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey this week, finally. I have a couple of thoughts on it, so I thought I'd share them for those who have, and maybe more importantly, for those who haven't read it. (I'm quite opinionated, so if you're a big fan of his work, consider scrolling)

Firstly, my overall opinion on this books is that it gets progressively worse the more you read. It starts out with some interesting philosophical takes – much of which are not LaVey's own, as I learned. The only truly original part of this book is LaVey's system of magic, which calls upon powers that LaVey does not even believe in, and the deeply rooted despise that he has for Christians, the left-hand-path(LHP), and pretty much anyone who practices magic differently than him.

Imo, LaVey is not a philosopher, nor is he a religious leader. He called a new kind of Satanism into life only to abandon it after it started to evolve on its own (like every religion does). His attempts at being progressive failed miserably. He tried hard to be better than Christians by being inclusive and scientific, but that doesn't hide the fact that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

His magical concept is male-centered and heteronormative, some might even say sexist. His understanding of asexuality is extremely limited and in my opinion (as an asexual), quite controversial and insensitive. LaVey's approach to magic is to stress the fact that he doesn't really believe in magic, so his religion will appeal to the modern and progressive masses. He makes his satanism look scientific by claiming Satan does not exist, but still claims to be speaking for him. Also a bold claim to make.

Yet, when the satanic movement was over and people no longer cared about his edgy ideology, LaVey ditched his own religion, said he didn't wanna be associated with it anymore (he's the founder lmao) and called his fellow satanists "weirdos" and "freaks".

In an attempt to be liberating, he pushed yet another dogma onto people, centering his concept of magic almost entirely around sexuality. And the worst thing yet – LaVey was full of hate and faux pity for 'outsiders'. His work pushes a strong we-vs-them agenda. Wether it's satanists versus Christians or RHP vs LHP, it's ridiculous. LaVey actively slanders and makes fun of people who follow the LHP. He could educate on the topic. He could explain how white and black magic don't exist, how everything is balanced, how dark and light coexist in nature and justify his choice of the RHP that way. But instead, he incorporated his despise for white-light religions & practitioners into his satanic rituals. Rituals which leave nearly no room for any kind of spirituality.

LaVey says himself in the satanic Bible in the chapter about devices used in Satanic rituals: "Satanism is a religion of the flesh, rather than of the spirit". And I couldn't have said it better. His religion has nothing to do with growth and spiritual development. It leaves you exactly where you are, but hey, you can use magic to get money, luck or sex! LaVey didn't believe in Satan, nor any other higher being, yet he used them for his greedy desires and fetishes. He focused in on a minor part of what Satanism really is and got stuck there.

LaVey Satanism, as I see it, it a blunt sexualization of the occult and it holds no spiritual value to me. I don't see TSB as a piece of spiritual educational literature. Rather as a historical and cultural classic that may be of use to understand the evolution of modern occultism. But it's nice to be able to say that I've read it.

My words are a bit harsh here and there, so I wanna clarify that I don't have a problem with anyone choosing to practice this religion respectful of others.

[jadespadegames]

My ★★½ review of Napoleon on Letterboxd https://boxd.it/5pDz3x

"YOU THINK YOU ARE SO GREAT BECAUSE YOU HAVE BOATS!!!"

-Napoleon Bonaparte (apparently)

The fundamental problem with this film can be summed up by the ending text which describes how Napoleon fought in 61 battles and lists out the few battles that were seen in the movie. Beside these names are, of all things, the number of casualties of each battle. It then says that in total, 3 million people died in his battles.

I'm not sure why that's the final takeaway Scott wanted us to have about Napoleon. The man was certainly flawed and ended up losing his power, but there is no denying that he was a military genius so charismatic and cunning that he swiftly rose from general to emperor. If you knew nothing about him before watching this movie, you would never know that he won almost 90% of his battles despite being outnumbered in many of them. Instead, we only see about 5 of these battles, 2 of which he loses and the others being strangely insignificant. During the battle of Waterloo, the British commander even points out that Napoleon is sleeping. Is this movie all just one big joke?

We see none of his military prowess or political acumen and instead have to watch him behave like a pathetic, petulant child desperate for power and his wife Josephine. While I believe there could be a good movie centered around Napoleon and Josephine, this was certainly not one. Despite their complicated relationship being the emotional crux of the film, it was absolutely cringeworthy and painful to watch and I was not invested in either of them. Part of that cringe was intentional, but I feel like that only makes it worse. It boggles my mind that Scott thought it was more important to depict Napoleon whining and stomping his feet because his wife wouldn't have sex with him NOW than his true military accomplishments or any of the major reforms he made to France as emperor.

This is an absolute joke of a Napoleon film that is so inaccurate and insulting to its subject that I can't even call it a biopic in good faith. I truly believe it was only made to tear down his image, and while I am all for depicting the flaws of historical figures, this was done insincerely here. Worst of all, it's not even entertaining to watch—the few battles were underwhelming and it felt like the film was mostly just dragging us through scene after scene with little connection in-between. I barely got by with the little knowledge of French history I had, I cannot imagine comprehending this film without any. Things just happen on-screen with little emphasis on their significance. It also does a bad job of depicting the passage of time, and sometimes I only realized years had passed between scenes because of a line or two of dialogue. Perhaps this is because of the hours of content that were cut out for the theatrical release, but the fundamental issues with this film make me believe that the director's cut will not be much better.

Do not watch this if you want a film that actually depicts Napoleon and his life. Watch this if you want to see a film that's "so bad it's funny" though the funny parts are few and the rest is just cringeworthy.

(I also have to point out how lazy and mismatched the soundtrack felt. Twice they used the iconic piano song "Dawn" that was ripped straight from the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film of all things. Having had to watch that movie countless times growing up because my older sister loved it to pieces, I instantly recognized the song and it took me out of the movie each time. That song is far too iconic and inherently linked with P&P and I'm not sure why the composer chose to use such a gentle, romantic tune for scenes with Napoleon and Josephine when their toxic relationship was nothing like Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy's. It just left me feeling like I could be watching a better film that actually makes me feel invested in their central pair.)

[unholyverse]

waterparks // alternative press spring 2023

(full article text under the cut:)

TO THE MOON

With their new album INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, WATERPARKS are diving deeper than ever before. The result is an exorcism of deep trauma and the sweet afterglow of catharsis.

STORY: Alessandro DeCaro • PHOTOS: Jawn Rocha • Styling: Josh Madden

Between international flights, jet lag and no days off in between, it is a miracle that Awsten Knight isn’t face down in a pile of pillows. For the past two weeks, Knight and his band Waterparks have been head down in a run of massive shows throughout the U.K. supporting British rockers You Me At Six as well as a series of intimate appearances at record stores with some of the band’s most die-hard fans. It was a landmark run for a group who have hit the road relentlessly the past year-and-a-half, with sold-out North American and European headlining tours, a top slot at the 2022 Sad Summer Festival and even a “bucket list” opening slot for My Chemical Romance. Their latest milestone? They played to 10,000 people — their largest show in the U.K. region — at London’s historic Alexandra Palace. Exhaustion should be Knight's baseline, but instead, he's as chipper as ever when he hops on Zoom back home in Los Angeles. There's only one problem. The bandleader has been on vocal rest for days leading up to this very interview.

“Dude, my voice feels so shot,” Knight confesses from his living room couch. “We did 12 performances back to back, then combined with really short cut-up sleep on the flight, 1 just feel, ugh.” Sleep deprivation aside, Knight is almost at a loss for words (not from the vocal rest) but because the experimental pop trio he formed 12 years ago have unlocked another level of fandom where new listeners are still flocking by the droves. “It turns out there are a lot of people [in this world].” Knight quips, referring to his newfound fans. But in reality, global domination doesn’t really seem too far off.

Knight barely has time to slow down. The band are set to release their fifth studio album, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (out April 14 via Fueled By Ramen). But the self-professed workaholic has never known any other way. “It's a really hard mentality to shake,” Knight reveals. “When we were a local band, we didn't have any family connections in the music industry, and no one cared, so you had to take on every role. Even though we are not local anymore and get to play arenas with our favorite bands, if I'm not actively doing stuff to push the music, then I don’t know if anyone else will."

In some ways, Knight fears downtime or stillness because that's when he feels like his brain will start to turn on him. He admittedly functions better when he's working on something creative, whether that’s writing a new song or simply designing streetwear for his clothing brand hii-def. “It's not necessarily the most healthy thing in the long run, but people have worse coping mechanisms,” he laughs nervously.

But Waterparks remain his main focus. The trio, which initially formed in 2011, began to truly put the pieces together the following year when Knight enlisted his now-best friends, guitarist Geoff Wigington and drummer Otto Wood, to round out the lineup. “Otto loved classic rock and bands like La Dispute and Touch�� Amoré, whereas Geoff was all about EDM," Knight recalls. “We all had different tastes, but at the core of it, it's guitar and drums.” Their individual musical backgrounds helped craft the genre-less sound they have now cultivated.

"THE BIGGEST REASON I didn’t want that pop-punk label is that I know exactly what we are capable of." - AWSTEN KNIGHT

It wasn't until 2016 when Waterparks finally released their debut album, Double Dare — an intentional choice. “I always felt like if no one was looking at us, why put out a large body of work? I wanted to do cool shit as opposed to oversaturating and waiting until enough people [actually] wanted to hear it.” There is a common adage that you have your entire life to write your first record and six months to write your second, to which Knight agrees, and from there, the band began making records like clockwork.

With those albums came carefully curated eras — a moment in time with a clear aesthetic, theme and overall mission statement. While always writing music from a subversive and experimental perspective, it was when the band released both FANDOM (2019) and Greatest Hits (2021) that they began to stray from the confinement of genre and inaccurate labels. Knight himself spoke out vehemently about being boxed in by the term “pop punk. “I learned [during that time that] you can’t control everybody, and you can only frame the narrative so much,” Knight explains. “Obviously, we grew up loving and still loving blink-182, Green Day, Sum 41 and Good Charlotte, so it’s in our DNA to a degree, but I just don't want that label because it’s so synonymous with the past and what cynical dickheads or mega naysayers say is just for preteens and kids. However, the biggest reason I didn’t want that label is that I know [exactly] what we are capable of and what our output is.”

Take, for example, the breakbeat madness of the FANDOM single “Turbulent” or the distorted experimentation of “Numb” from Greatest Hits. Nothing is off the table for Waterparks. The group join a cohort of other trailblazing acts like Bring Me the Horizon and Paramore, who both successfully pivoted away from the late Warped Tour circuit in favor of mainstream appeal without losing any substance. “There's a song for everybody, and I once tweeted that anyone who doesn't like Waterparks just doesn't like Waterparks yet,” Knight says confidently.

If you have yet to be on board with the band's music, you've at the very least been entertained by — or seen — Knight's fiery social media presence.

It's undeniable that Waterparks’ meteoric rise has stemmed from the bandleader’s unofficial side hustle as a social media celebrity. And at times, his online presence can feel truly monolithic in scale, something Knight has attempted to analyze over the years in many songs, including the aptly titled “You'd Be Paranoid Too (If Everyone Was Out To Get You)" When asked if his status as an extremely online figure has influenced the band’s latest album, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, Knight isn't entirely sure but reveals that he has had to set boundaries nonetheless, as someone who's regularly met with constant praise and vicious internet trolls. “I try not to let it influence things too much [lately], and with therapy, I've learned that you can only control yourself. However, that doesn’t mean I'm not still vulnerable in the music that I write.”

He tackles the subject on INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY with closer "A NIGHT OUT ON EARTH" and parts of the song “RITUAL,” where he recalls when he felt things were “caving in" around him due to the pressures of constant attention. “There are people who listen to Waterparks who aren't on Twitter. and then there are those who view the band in this bubble where it's just them and the people who reply to the tweets,” Knight resigns.

But beyond the topic of social media, Knight gets admittedly “introspective” on the record. When asked to discuss the overall lyrical themes and concepts behind INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, he takes a deep breath and delivers a warning: Things might get a little turbulent.

“There is a love story throughout the record that is expressive to and for other people, but the album itself has to do with overcoming, unlearning and growing past religious guilt,” Knight explains. “It's something that I've struggled with for a long time.” On “FUNERAL GREY," he delivers the punchy line “baptized in my spit,” which is a playful twist on a weighted subject. The theme of religious guilt doesn’t just apply to the overall lyrics of the record but also extends to the album's striking cover art, which at first glance appears to be an image of a blue frog over a red backdrop; in actuality, it possesses a much more poignant meaning.

“Frogs have always been one of my favorite animals,” Knight reflects. “However, when I learned that frogs were seen as dirty and unclean in a biblical context, it was interesting to me that something that I saw as so good, natural and beautiful could also be seen as a bad thing through a biblical lens.” In other words, the concept of shame plagued the charismatic bandleader for as long as he can remember, and INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY was the moment for Knight to finally face his trauma head-on and “come to terms with himself” once and for all. That explains why a majority of the new songs possess “hypersexualized” energy — a conscious rebellion against a conservative past. “Growing up in church, you're taught that everything is so wrong and bad. I always felt like shit, so [this album] is the breakaway from that specifically.”

By overcoming his religious guilt, Knight was able to tap into an evolved sense of self-worth that he’s since applied to his very own love life, which he details on the album's stripped-down ballad “CLOSER.” “My concept of love has changed throughout the years, and that song is about [looking at the past] and realizing that when I was younger, it was maybe more of an obsession. Now I'm taking it apart and learning more about love and the way I present the current version of myself to other people.” Inversely, there is the alt-radio-ready anthem “BRAINWASHED,” where Knight admits that he still wrestles with the idea of true love, constantly making sure that he’s not just wrapped up in the “honeymoon phase.” Knight jokes that this track and “FUCK ABOUT IT” which features a guest vocal spot from blackbear, are “polar opposites,” as the latter couldn't be further from the “hyperfixation” he details in “BRAINWASHED.," once again proving that he feels the most comfortable when inserting juxtaposition wherever he can.

"I've learned that you can ONLY CONTROL YOURSELF. However, that doesn’t mean I'm not still vulnerable in the music that I write." - AWSTEN KNIGHT

Beyond the emotional clarity that Knight gained during the creation of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, it's the album's sonic risks and exploration that he is the most fired up about. Though Knight wanted the band to return to their more guitar-driven and organic roots for certain parts of the LP, much of the record ventures into eclectic territory, with hyperpop, trap, synthwave and even subtle elements of hard rock and nu metal. “RITUAL, ‘A NIGHT OUT ON EARTH, ‘REAL SUPER DARK’ and ‘ST*RFUCKER' are the craziest instrumentals we have done ever,” Knight exclaims. “I love the idea of taking something like a guitar or my voice and making it sound entirely like something else” “A NIGHT OUT ON EARTH,” however, is what Knight describes as “the biggest production flex,” and it most definitely shows. “There's fucking elephant sounds in there and weird Batman villain-sounding horns — it's evil and heavy, and not to mention, the outro is just game over,” he says.

Beyond production, Knight pushes his voice and stretches the idea of what constitutes a strong hook on INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. With “END OF THE WATER (FEEL),” Knight is at his most “bombastic,” in a “cartoon-like” state, weaving falsetto melodies that are meant to shock. “I always make a mental note when I hear a song that makes me go…" He pauses, imitating an explosion. “For me, that's when I hear some high-ass vocals that I'm not expecting.” Even on the first day of demoing “END OF THE WATER (FEEL)” in his home studio, Knight was already so confident in the song that he called longtime producer and collaborator Zakk Cervini and “essentially” forced him to come over to his house right then to help finish it. “I also want the record to show that I had a mustache [during this time], too,” Knight laughs.

With collaboration on the brain, Knight is the first to admit that for many years, he was precious about his art and was hesitant to work with others. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine, Knight changed his mind, which was evident on Waterparks’ previous album, Greatest Hits. This time around, Knight, who's an outspoken fan of the U.K. boy band One Direction, finally got a chance to live out one of his dreams by working with esteemed songwriter Julian Bunetta, who co-wrote beloved One Direction classics like “Olivia,” “Infinity” and “Best Song Ever,” among others. “I flew to [Julian's] place in Nashville, and we ended up making five songs together, two of them being ‘FUNERAL GREY" and ‘BRAINWASHED,” Knight recalls. And while he still plans to keep the majority of his music close to his chest long term, he won't rule anything out. Knight would undoubtedly jump at the chance to work with everyone from Post Malone and Damon Albarn to Donald Glover and Toby Keith.

"I'd rather make the coolest f*cking thing, RATHER THAN HOLD BACK and make something that wasn't that good." -AWSTEN KNIGHT

Now, with the band's new LP incoming, there raises the question: Does Knight feel a sense of relief after both exorcising his deepest traumas and inviting listeners on his journey to self- discovery? "I still feel pressure with it," Knight concedes. “It would be a lot easier if only strangers heard this, but everyone in my whole fucking life is going to hear this album, so that's what makes it strange." But he's never let any awkwardness or controversy hinder the artistic output. "I wasn't not in trouble when I put out a song like [2018's] 'TANTRUM' where I listed a bunch of dudes I wanted to kill, calling out by name," Knight acknowledges. Though his lyrical choices have sometimes resulted in strong reactions, even within his close circle of friends, Knight can't help but accept that he is meant to be unapologetic. "At the end of the day, I'd rather make the coolest fucking thing, rather than hold back and make something that wasn't that good."

Pressures of lyrical vulnerability and transparency aside, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY is Knight's attempt to "normalize” the catharsis he finds within songwriting, which ties into the album title itself. "Intellectual property is the mental space you give to something in your head. The 'property' may be the thing that you are struggling with. By materializing it and giving it its own world, it's actually a great way to express it and then, eventually, expel it,” he explains. "I want this album to go to the fucking moon." ALT

[smoresie]

since everyone's throwing in facts about their buckshot ocs I might as well owo:

quick warning for mentions of self harm, masochism, and addiction

- Shepherd cannot truly die (this was found out after losing the third round)

- Despite his first game being a near win he has lost every game afterwards miserably (he blames this on the dealer's aura affecting him *lie he's a 🚬 *)

- His job is to well, keep the people at the club in order. (haha get it the shepherd herding the flock)

- Shepherd is a vodka person (loathes beer, but for the sake of the game *mainly dealer* he drinks it) (is he addicted to the vices? yes. does he have a problem? no.)

- Sometimes he lures people into playing the game (after leading them up the stairs and into the room, encouraging them, he immediately hides. The dealer knows about this.)

- He is under the Dealer's covenant. He is to follow any orders given to him, remain truthful, and to never leave under any circumstances (in return he faked Shepherd's death and gave him a new identity)

- Dealer was the one to bestow him the title of Shepherd (shame it doesn't fit on his typer, so he just puts his old name down, only dealer gets to call him Lamb)

- Between smoking and drinking he'll always choose to smoke (at least smoking doesn't lower your inhibitions and let it slip how in love with your boss you are I mean what that never happened)

- He's british, more cockney (the dealer likes to tease him about his accent, and it come out even more when he's miffed)

- Former doctor (was forced to resign, sometimes takes the dead bodies back home to study)

- Historical buff (specifically 1800s, you mention something from there he will never shut up)

- Masochist on a whole other level (the dealer knows about it and does indulge him sometimes, grabs the shotgun)

- This has only further after learning about his 'ability' (though he calls it a curse, the dealer thinks the opposite)

- He also doesn't like to talk bout his past much to anyone, let alone the dealer (tho will leave him notes for him to piece together maybe)

- Has multiple sh scars on his body (the usage has slowed since meeting the dealer but he has resorted to biting himself. This too is being worked with.)

- While he knows he's attracted to the dealer, shepherd has come to learn theres more to his feelings (and he hates it)

[talenlee]

The 2025 Pitch

Hi, I’m Talen Lee. It’s 2025. This is my daily blog.

Here’s what to expect here, in the simplest term:

Every Friday, I put up a Game Pile article where I examine a game.

Every Wednesday, I put up a Dev Update article where I talk about what I’ve been doing in game dev that week.

Every Thursday, I put up a Story Pile article where I examine a non-game piece of media.

Wanna know more about what I write? Well, this is a daily blog, in which you can read things I think about the things I do for work and for fun. I’m interested in making games and I want to make sure you can see ways to make games. I want to make thinking about games clear, and I want to make sure academic resources about thinking about games are reasonably available.

Wanna know why you should listen to me? I have a degree in media and communications which I understand is a punchline, which I have used to focus on digital media and playful online creativity. Basically, I try to bring these concepts that are seen as ‘fancy’ to bear on things you’re familiar with and try to get people to take games and play and pop media as seriously as you should any text.

I’m one of those ‘everything is art’ people.

Wanna know more? Well, click the ‘more.’

Monthly Themes

The even numbered months of the year get themes! They are:

February is Smooch Month, where I talk about romantic media. I usually talk about at least one Hallmark branded movie here!

April is Talen Month, where I talk about things that matter to me personally, which often involves a degree of what’s called autoethnography.

June is Pride Month, which is about queer media.

August is Tricks Month, where I talk about magical tricks and illusions, lies and hoaxes, which are a favourite topic and so far, historically, usually features a weirdo who fought Nazis.

October is Dread Month, where I look into horror and darker topics, where I try to confine the grim topics.

December is Decemberween, a celebration of cool things I’ve seen through the year and all the other features of the blog can take a backseat.

Now, there are two secret hidden themes, which is January tends to be ‘everything left over from the previous year’ and November is ‘No Effort November’ where almost all the articles I’ve written throughout the year that didn’t have a home get chucked, meaning that that’s truly the disconnected weird brain worms stuff.

Topics

Anyway, I have a bunch of topics I like to revisit, regularly. Given the right circumstances, it turns out I can sometimes spend four or five days at a time talking about the same thing, and I would rather keep my work varied. It feels like a way to keep engaging in more things and avoids burning out on any topic that frustrates me. Always a new thing.

I have a list of subjects I consider the ‘one a month’ set: That is to say, to keep talking about things in a varied way, I have limited myself to at most one of each topic each month. These topics get about a thousand words at a time, it’s not something airy or empty, and that means I space out research for them, too. Those topics are Transformers, Pokemon, and The Locked Tomb.

I also write about Dungeons & Dragons a lot; I write about 4th edition D&D as the edition I enjoy playing to encourage people to try it, 3rd edition D&D as a historical artifact with problems to show what I’ve learned as a designer through working in such a weird space, and I write an article every month about my own D&D setting, Cobrin’Seil. Then in addition to the article about some specific part of Cobrin’Seil, I also write a Worldbuilding article which is about how to handle developing components in your world, on all levels of culture and interaction, and things you might do a good job of or worse and how to approach them in ways that I think are helpful.

Finally, because 4th edition was criticised for being a system that didn’t give you room to make interesting characters, I have a series called How To Be, which takes a character from a piece of media, and reinterprets them as a 4th edition character, with the intention that the build function easily early on.

Magic: The Gathering

Get a load of this, though, this card game designer, he talks about Magic: The Gathering! Yeah shocked I know. It’s a cool game! I like it! I play it pretty regularly, like, daily, and I can probably always talk to you about it, certainly if you approach me on reddit or kind.social.

I try to limit myself to a maximum of one article about Magic: The Gathering each month. This year with the release schedule we have, that means we’re basically going to have room for maybe four or five articles about specific topics and the rest are going to be – probably – about investigating the new set and seeing what design technology they introduce that I like. 2024 was honestly a wild year for establishing new design tech in Magic: The Gathering cards, and I want to talk about that.

Here’s the other thing I do: Every day, I share a custom Magic card I designed using art from artstation as part of a 365-card set that’s divided up along normal rarity and colour lines. This is a big undertaking, posted every single day, and back last year, my version of it was two posts a month, no matter what, meaning that Magic: The Gathering got something like 35 articles, and you had to be invested in the first 33 for the 34th to mean anything. Now, that article set is winding down, so there’s just a bit of cleanup for that set this year, and then, this year, there’s going to be one blog post about the year’s custom card set.

That set’s called Harrowed Night, the set code is HNT, and you can check it out, in full, in a few days. It’s still going to get a single card a day to reddit and kind.social, like I did last year, but if you want to look at the whole set, on day one, go for it. You can put everything in a meaningful context if you want and see my creator notes and everything.

Just Stuff About Me

There’s also two other features that I write, each month, one of which is a reflection on Christian Fundamentalism – specifically, Christian fundamentalism – and the connected faith of Christianity. These are all informed by my background being raised in a cult and spending a lot of time studying the Bible and coming to understand the problems with non-fundamentalist Christianity. I file this stuff under the heading of ‘fundie stuff.’

The other thing I write about once a month is a treatment of one of my own original characters, not a character from a greater fiction work or something like that, but a fan character or MMORPG character or a D&D character, but writing up and providing a guide to interacting with one of the weird little critters I made up in my head to tell stories about. I think this is cool and fun and it’s a way to talk about not just what characters are like but the kinds of stories you think your characters should be in. I’d love to see it as a normal thing for me to open tumblr and see someone providing a Reader’s Guide to the kind of prototype version of their OCs.

Reflection

Last year I made a dedicated choice to stop thinking of what I do in vague terms. I have grown to hate the way that online creators describe themselves as making ‘stuff’ and doing ‘lots of things’ or, worst of all, content creators. I had a whole reflection on how I hate thinking of my writing as ‘content’ and my videos as ‘content’ and my podcasts as ‘content’ because none of those things are the same kind of thing and they meet different needs and they meet your needs differently.

To that end I avoided referring to work as ‘content’ for a year and I think I’ve become very good at that. One problem I have with describing whether or not I successfully excised that term from my thinking is that obviously, I use the word ‘content’ all the time, such as whenever I talk about media that has something within it that has a potential trigger. That is to say, a lot of posts I make lead with Content Warning.

I hit a target of 1,000 words minimum for every article that wasn’t an audio recording, a sticker, or shirt design last year, including Decemberween articles. You were going to get your ten minutes of time on this blog at least, every day, if I had anything to do with it, and if you didn’t, you could at least look at a picture and know that it was a thing I spent effort making and uploading somewhere.

I also talked more about non-mainstream TTRPGs, with ten of the fifty-two Game Pile slots dedicated to talking about games you can get on itch.io, and taking those games seriously rather than just opting for the lowered bar of ‘well, it’s indie’ mean that the thing didn’t deserve to be considered carefully. I also converted eleven of my older game articles into videos, with some updates and deepening where necessary.

A thing I also tried is putting one of my D&D articles up as a video? I’m liking this and think I might do more of that in the coming year, because I write about D&D a lot and I like doing it.

Alt text was another push for the year! I tried to make sure I used alt text on the images in my blog. Not everything had it – some things were made a year out, after all, and their pictures weren’t made with alt text in mind, and it’s an easy thing to slip the mind. Some things have a lot of alt text (like all the Magic the Gathering cards) and doing 380 cards and adding alt text to all of them was a huge burden I hadn’t considered ahead of time. Hopefully, that’s going to be fixed for this year’s cards, and I’ll be further in the habit of using alt text.

And Also There’s More:

I have a Youtube channel, which updates weekly. Every other week, the current programming is a video of Fox and I playing a game together, where I have the means to talk about games and optimisation and design while we talk about historically interesting games. Then on the other other weeks, I put up a video article, which is either taking one of my other articles from the past into a video form, or, a new video made for the specific format of Youtube.

I have a Patreon. It is my tip jar, a way for you to say ‘I like what you are doing, here, have a dollar.’ But you can give me something there even if you don’t want to give me money, because I use the Patreon as my behind-the-scenes weekly update site. Every week, at the end of the week, I update on what’s happened in the past seven days. If you just follow the Patreon it gives me some numbers on that, but largely, it’s just a way to show more interest in the never-ending word pipe that is hanging around me on the internet. It’s also a venue you can ask me questions and provide comments on the progress of the blog week to week, or answer me if I ask questions like ‘hey, are you all okay with this?’

There. That’s what 2025 offers you. About 365,000 words of thinking about games, fiction, media and your own ability to create. Maybe some free games, we’ll see how it goes.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[decepti-thots]

(I’ll preface by saying: huge JP fan who has no problem with people not liking it)

Anyways I’m actually super curious…

How are most JP fics “boring”? 🤔 I’ve always found their dynamic to be more entertaining than most, given the dichotomy of their characters.

So I’m curious as to how you’ve wound up at “boring” of all the possible reasons to dislike it. 🤣

I'm going to be a bit blunter here than I usually would be on the topic, as I was directly asked. So I'll cut the uh… negativity? I guess? For those who prefer not to see folks talk shit about a ship they like, lol.

First and foremost Jazz/Prowl is basically just… essentially made up and purely based on fanon inventions/additions, and made up fanon stuff is usually not of real interest to me without a very strong hook somewhere in the actual canon material. It is 99% fanon by volume that draws on little to no canon material of any kind but just... years of fanon, reproducing itself and mutating almost like a fanfic game of telephone, all developed in fandom echo chambers. Which renders the characters in the vast majority of fic a) largely unrelated to any canon material I like in a meaningful sense and b) tbqh, the kind of generic stuff found in a lot of typical, large dudeslash fandoms where the characters are… they're Dudeslash Fandom Archetypes with a gloss of paint on top, you know? People come in, look for which character in a fandom fits their favourite m/m trope the most, and then squish the character down to fit into that pre-existing archetype.

And the thing is, J/P has historically made a certain kind of sense for this, because the appeal was basically that… they didn't HAVE that much canon material? In the Marvel G1 comics, they have a little more specific characterisation and canon, but the G1 cartoon is not exactly a character exploration piece ANYWAY, and for Prowl especially he is a blank slate you can functionally project an OC onto. Which like, that's fine! That makes a lot of sense even if it's not what usually draws me into something.

My issue has become that if I read one more G1-fanon-soup fest mistagged "IDW" I'm gonna scream. I like IDW Prowl (and IDW Jazz too!) for the fact that these characters have specific, strongly delineated canon personalities, arcs and dynamics, and both of these characters- Prowl especially, but both of them!- have like. Things about them which are true, and which J/P fic not only tends to ignore but actively treats in a loooot of cases as somehow Inferior To Our Fanon and something to be "fixed" with idk, the power of Extremely Generic Dudeslash Tropes. I've been in many a fandom with Migratory Dudeslash Fandoms writing fic. J/P is extremely rote to me as a result, if nothing else.

It warrants mentioning that J/P fandom is where one does find a lot of examples of just undeniably racist treatment of Jazz in fic, both the truly inexcusable phonetic accent bullshit and also a lot of bad decisions around tropes. I don't think this is a function of the ship, per se, but that its specific persistence in J/P fandom (bc trust me: this has been a point of criticism for A Long Fucking Time) is in part due to it having this long entrenched fanon-to-fanon game of telephone going on? It would be better to talk about the fandom's issues there outside ship talk so I'll leave it at that, but I can't deny it has not… helped my feelings. TBH. And I know that's where a lot of the resentment you will find in the fandom obviously stems from.

IDK. It's just. It's usually fanfic of itself, you know? J/P largely feels to me, in most cases, like fanfic of fanfic of fanfic, and I come to TF fandom for fanfic of a canon. So. Yeah. Not a fan. At all.

[digo3d]

The timeskip in my second finale idea made me think of another good question:

How do you think TC, The Gang, and Dibble might end up around 10 or 20 years after the timeframe of the show?

One of em's gotta be dead lmao /hj

Uhhh in my head they're all in their like mid-to-late 20's in the show (sans Dibble naturally) so they'd be close to 40 or 50...

Hmm i dunno they're not really seniors yet they're just kinda middle-aged at this point, this is a good question

Lemme display my thoughts to you in bullet points because ✨🧚das jus what ah dewwww🧚✨

T.C. did wind up in jail for a few years before the gang managed to scrape together enough money to bail him out. The gang then confessed to him that scamming people was starting to get old and more difficult, especially since they were all getting older now. He eventually folded and agreed with them, especially since Dibble was retiring soon which would make things harder regardless. Perhaps he managed to invest in some really good stocks and that's how he makes a living.

Benny temporarily moved to Bacon Fat Flats to take care of his Ma since she wasn't doing very well and he's a massive mama's boy, naturally. It was especially hard for himself and T.C. and their goodbyes were filled with comically loud crying as Benny got on the train. He'd call T.C. several times a day to tell T.C. what was goin on and just to chat. Eventually Ma got better and Benny was able to move back, of which their meetup was again filled with comedically loud crying.

I like to imagine that Chooch started a family at this point, two little girls maybe (he's such a girldad fr) and a baby mama that is absent in some way (dead divorced or somewhere unknown to Choo) so T.C. and the gang helped him raise them and he loves them more than anything. They're probably in their teens at this point and they still love their dad very much and call the rest of the gang their uncles

Spook became a certified bonafide musician after a song he had made blew tf up. He still lives in the alley to humble himself and so people don't constantly bother him. His song still plays on the radio and his other songs have really hit it big with the beatnik community and he's well-regarded and a bit of a VIP within it. His song actually provided people with a better perspective on the LGBT community and actually helped out the movement a little bit. (because of course he's not straight he literally only talks to ONE woman in the ENTIRE franchise and it's Mrs. Vandergelt with one sentence. Also he's a beatnik and that was one of the points of the beatnik movement)

Fancy stopped gunning after girls after a while and has now taken over his Nonna's restaurant since she had passed. He never married because he realized he was just chasing pleasure instead of love and thought that maybe he'd be at his happiest as a single man carrying on the legacy of the one woman he knows he truly loved; Nonna. Of course he still has his absurd amount of charm and charisma but holds back when he sees a hot piece walk into the restaurant nowadays.

I like to think that Brain ended up saving up enough money to take some self-paced college courses and majored in historical geology and managed to get a degree. Did it take him longer to achieve than other people? Yeah, naturally, but he did it and that's all that matters to him. He was so proud of himself, as was the gang, and people were so impressed it made the news. He still lives in the alley because that's where T.C. and Spook are, so he typically does all his geology shenanigans and articles by mail. Oh and him and Spook are secretly gay married because yes

Dibble has retired (although begrudgingly because both the precinct and the gang were getting concerned about him getting too old for the job and causing health problems) and considered moving down to Florida to enjoy the sun and golf every day, although decided against it because 1. He hates humidity 2. He's lived in New York his whole life that's just who he is now and 3. He would miss the gang way too much but would NEVER admit it.

Of course this is all in my head and based off pretty much nothing but headcanons but it's a silly little thought nonetheless

Also sorry this took me so damn long it was pretty much finals right into hip surgery 😭 your patience is appreciated 🐁