#mobile blogging still a trial

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google is (still) losing the spam wars to zombie news-brands

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (May 3) in CALGARY, then TOMORROW (May 4) in VANCOUVER, then onto Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Even Google admits – grudgingly – that it is losing the spam wars. The explosive proliferation of botshit has supercharged the sleazy "search engine optimization" business, such that results to common queries are 50% Google ads to spam sites, and 50% links to spam sites that tricked Google into a high rank (without paying for an ad):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

It's nice that Google has finally stopped gaslighting the rest of us with claims that its search was still the same bedrock utility that so many of us relied upon as a key piece of internet infrastructure. This not only feels wildly wrong, it is empirically, provably false:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Not only that, but we know why Google search sucks. Memos released as part of the DOJ's antitrust case against Google reveal that the company deliberately chose to worsen search quality to increase the number of queries you'd have to make (and the number of ads you'd have to see) to find a decent result:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Google's antitrust case turns on the idea that the company bought its way to dominance, spending the some of the billions it extracted from advertisers and publishers to buy the default position on every platform, so that no one ever tried another search engine, which meant that no one would invest in another search engine, either.

Google's tacit defense is that its monopoly billions only incidentally fund these kind of anticompetitive deals. Mostly, Google says, it uses its billions to build the greatest search engine, ad platform, mobile OS, etc that the public could dream of. Only a company as big as Google (says Google) can afford to fund the R&D and security to keep its platform useful for the rest of us.

That's the "monopolistic bargain" – let the monopolist become a dictator, and they will be a benevolent dictator. Shriven of "wasteful competition," the monopolist can split their profits with the public by funding public goods and the public interest.

Google has clearly reneged on that bargain. A company experiencing the dramatic security failures and declining quality should be pouring everything it has to righting the ship. Instead, Google repeatedly blew tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks while doing mass layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Those layoffs have now reached the company's "core" teams, even as its core services continue to decay:

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

(Google's antitrust trial was shrouded in secrecy, thanks to the judge's deference to the company's insistence on confidentiality. The case is moving along though, and warrants your continued attention:)

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-2-trillion-secret-trial-against

Google wormed its way into so many corners of our lives that its enshittification keeps erupting in odd places, like ordering takeout food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Back in February, Housefresh – a rigorous review site for home air purifiers – published a viral, damning account of how Google had allowed itself to be overrun by spammers who purport to provide reviews of air purifiers, but who do little to no testing and often employ AI chatbots to write automated garbage:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

In the months since, Housefresh's Gisele Navarro has continued to fight for the survival of her high-quality air purifier review site, and has received many tips from insiders at the spam-farms and Google, all of which she recounts in a followup essay:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

One of the worst offenders in spam wars is Dotdash Meredith, a content-farm that "publishes" multiple websites that recycle parts of each others' content in order to climb to the top search slots for lucrative product review spots, which can be monetized via affiliate links.

A Dotdash Meredith insider told Navarro that the company uses a tactic called "keyword swarming" to push high-quality independent sites off the top of Google and replace them with its own garbage reviews. When Dotdash Meredith finds an independent site that occupies the top results for a lucrative Google result, they "swarm a smaller site’s foothold on one or two articles by essentially publishing 10 articles [on the topic] and beefing up [Dotdash Meredith sites’] authority."

Dotdash Meredith has keyword swarmed a large number of topics. from air purifiers to slow cookers to posture correctors for back-pain:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/keyword-swarming-dotdash.jpg

The company isn't shy about this. Its own shareholder communications boast about it. What's more, it has competition.

Take Forbes, an actual news-site, which has a whole shadow-empire of web-pages reviewing products for puppies, dogs, kittens and cats, all of which link to high affiliate-fee-generating pet insurance products. These reviews are not good, but they are treasured by Google's algorithm, which views them as a part of Forbes's legitimate news-publishing operation and lets them draft on Forbes's authority.

This side-hustle for Forbes comes at a cost for the rest of us, though. The reviewers who actually put in the hard work to figure out which pet products are worth your money (and which ones are bad, defective or dangerous) are crowded off the front page of Google and eventually disappear, leaving behind nothing but semi-automated SEO garbage from Forbes:

https://twitter.com/ichbinGisele/status/1642481590524583936

There's a name for this: "site reputation abuse." That's when a site perverts its current – or past – practice of publishing high-quality materials to trick Google into giving the site a high ranking. Think of how Deadspin's private equity grifter owners turned it into a site full of casino affiliate spam:

https://www.404media.co/who-owns-deadspin-now-lineup-publishing/

The same thing happened to the venerable Money magazine:

https://moneygroup.pr/

Money is one of the many sites whose air purifier reviews Google gives preference to, despite the fact that they do no testing. According to Google, Money is also a reliable source of information on reprogramming your garage-door opener, buying a paint-sprayer, etc:

https://money.com/best-paint-sprayer/

All of this is made ten million times worse by AI, which can spray out superficially plausible botshit in superhuman quantities, letting spammers produce thousands of variations on their shitty reviews, flooding the zone with bullshit in classic Steve Bannon style:

https://escapecollective.com/commerce-content-is-breaking-product-reviews/

As Gizmodo, Sports Illustrated and USA Today have learned the hard way, AI can't write factual news pieces. But it can pump out bullshit written for the express purpose of drafting on the good work human journalists have done and tricking Google – the search engine 90% of us rely on – into upranking bullshit at the expense of high-quality information.

A variety of AI service bureaux have popped up to provide AI botshit as a service to news brands. While Navarro doesn't say so, I'm willing to bet that for news bosses, outsourcing your botshit scams to a third party is considered an excellent way of avoiding your journalists' wrath. The biggest botshit-as-a-service company is ASR Group (which also uses the alias Advon Commerce).

Advon claims that its botshit is, in fact, written by humans. But Advon's employees' Linkedin profiles tell a different story, boasting of their mastery of AI tools in the industrial-scale production of botshit:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

Now, none of this is particularly sophisticated. It doesn't take much discernment to spot when a site is engaged in "site reputation abuse." Presumably, the 12,000 googlers the company fired last year could have been employed to check the top review keyword results manually every couple of days and permaban any site caught cheating this way.

Instead, Google is has announced a change in policy: starting May 5, the company will downrank any site caught engaged in site reputation abuse. However, the company takes a very narrow view of site reputation abuse, limiting punishments to sites that employ third parties to generate or uprank their botshit. Companies that produce their botshit in-house are seemingly not covered by this policy.

As Navarro writes, some sites – like Forbes – have prepared for May 5 by blocking their botshit sections from Google's crawler. This can't be their permanent strategy, though – either they'll have to kill the section or bring it in-house to comply with Google's rules. Bringing things in house isn't that hard: US News and World Report is advertising for an SEO editor who will publish 70-80 posts per month, doubtless each one a masterpiece of high-quality, carefully researched material of great value to Google's users:

https://twitter.com/dannyashton/status/1777408051357585425

As Navarro points out, Google is palpably reluctant to target the largest, best-funded spammers. Its March 2024 update kicked many garbage AI sites out of the index – but only small bottom-feeders, not large, once-respected publications that have been colonized by private equity spam-farmers.

All of this comes at a price, and it's only incidentally paid by legitimate sites like Housefresh. The real price is borne by all of us, who are funneled by the 90%-market-share search engine into "review" sites that push low quality, high-price products. Housefresh's top budget air purifier costs $79. That's hundreds of dollars cheaper than the "budget" pick at other sites, who largely perform no original research.

Google search has a problem. AI botshit is dominating Google's search results, and it's not just in product reviews. Searches for infrastructure code samples are dominated by botshit code generated by Pulumi AI, whose chatbot hallucinates nonexistence AWS features:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/01/pulumi_ai_pollution_of_search/

This is hugely consequential: when these "hallucinations" slip through into production code, they create huge vulnerabilities for widespread malicious exploitation:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

We've put all our eggs in Google's basket, and Google's dropped the basket – but it doesn't matter because they can spend $20b/year bribing Apple to make sure no one ever tries a rival search engine on Ios or Safari:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-payments-apple-reached-20-220947331.html

Google's response – laying off core developers, outsourcing to low-waged territories with weak labor protections and spending billions on stock buybacks – presents a picture of a company that is too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Google promised us a quid-pro-quo: let them be the single, authoritative portal ("organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful"), and they will earn that spot by being the best search there is:

https://www.ft.com/content/b9eb3180-2a6e-41eb-91fe-2ab5942d4150

But – like the spammers at the top of its search result pages – Google didn't earn its spot at the center of our digital lives.

It cheated.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Image: freezelight (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spam_wall_-_Flickr_-_freezelight.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[zepskies]

hi! so I had a question, how long did it take you to build a following on tumblr? how long have you been writing for spn as a whole (I assume you started with it but I’m not sure I meant when did you start writing on the app mostly) and do you think it usually takes as long as it did for you for other people? (I hope the wuestion made sense)

Hi there, lovely anon!

Oh, these are great questions, and I'm happy to answer. I'm going to be referencing this post, as someone asked me a similar question.

I also talk a lot about my beginning fanfic/coming to Tumblr experience and building a following in this interview I did with the @idlingintheimpalapodcast.

That being said, here's how I got started in SPN fandom and on Tumblr, and 6 Tumblr Tips related to how I've tried to grow my blog:

Learn How Tumblr Functions

Create a Tag List

Posting Schedules, Announcements, and Sneak Previews

People are Visual (Use Images & Design Elements) + shoutouts to blogs I looked to for inspo

Support Your Fellow Writers! Reblog/Comment on What You Read & Enjoy

When I Do Get Engagement, I Reply to Comments and Reblogs

Deeper dive below the cut:

Writing for SPN & Starting on Tumblr

To be honest, I'm a bit late to the party when it comes to Tumblr. I've written for many different fandoms over the 15 years or so I've been writing fanfic, but I've been writing for Supernatural in particular since around 2015. I wrote on platforms like Fanfiction.net, and later I moved over to Ao3.

I dabbled with Tumblr starting in 2021 while I was working on a Billy Butcher x OC story for the Boys (And So It Goes). But after watching the last season of SPN, I got the SPN bug again, so I started dipping back into the fandom.

But I wasn't really that active on Tumblr until January 2023, when I wrote my first soulmate AU series for Dean Winchester, called Never Say Goodbye (Dean x soulmate!Reader).

That started a very fun journey for me in the Tumblr world, engaging with people and making friends here with awesome people! 💕

Now, here are a few tips on what I've learned in building my following. You don't have to do exactly what I did. This is just my advice based on my personal experience here:

Tip #1: Learn How Tumblr Functions

Everything has been a process of trial and error. I have a professional background in content and social media marketing, so that knowledge has helped me a lot with some elements I'll get into later.

But it took me time to learn the Tumblr landscape. I had to figure out:

Why it's important to reblog -- not just your own work in replying to people's comments, but what you read and enjoy. It's what makes Tumblr go 'round.

The different mobile vs. desktop views and functions.

How to format my posts and use hashtags that would best optimize my fics and posts, based on the most followed tags in the fandom I was writing for.

How to create design elements, like banners, dividers, and headers that matched my aesthetic and the fandom.

Make sure my blog is easy to read, visually, and easy to navigate, technically (links to my masterlists, series masterlists, tag list, my fic library side blog, Patreon, etc.).

I'm still adjusting all these things now and then as I figure out new ways to keep readers engaged, and make my blog as easy to navigate as possible.

Tip #2: Create a Tag List

A tag list is a list of blog users that request to be tagged in your upcoming fics. (See this post on tips for formatting tag lists and optimizing hashtags on posts.)

Some authors don't do tag lists anymore because they find it a hassle (and it can be), but even if you're just starting out, advertise your tag list -- I suggest at the end of a fic and in your bio, your masterlist, and/or navigation page. It will get more eyes on your posts, and hopefully more engagement.

I used Google Forms to build up my tag lists because it's easy to use and it creates a Google spreadsheet for you based on the responses you get (an idea I got from another writer who was doing the same thing). You can also create more sheets within the file to organize the responses by character, for example.

On my tag list, I gave readers options to choose which character they wanted to be tagged on based on the fandoms I write for. I also created tag lists for new series to go with the series masterlist. Like I said above, I created spreadsheets for each of these lists within my tag list form master sheet.

Now, you don't have to do it exactly this way. There are many ways to keep track of a tag list.

Some people may think my approach is too much work, but this was very successful for me in building up my tag lists and increasing my following. Staying organized is key! 🤓✌🏽

I have since created a side blog @zepskieswrites for people to follow with notifications on, since my character tag lists are full.

Tip #3: Posting Schedules, Announcements & Sneak Previews

When my blog started to gain traction from my first SPN series, I knew I wanted to post consistently to keep people's interests. For me, this meant once a week (sometimes more if the mood strikes me), to keep that momentum going. YouTube vloggers do the same thing for this reason. They have a set posting schedule and give announcements.

You don't have to post once a week. You don't even have to have a set schedule. That's just what I did last year to increase engagement, but also because I love to write, I was getting inspired, and I made the time for it!

Remember that writing and sharing your work and being a part of the fandom on Tumblr is supposed to be fun! At the same time, what you get out of something depends on how much time you have to put into it.

Basically what I’m saying is, I’ve put a lot of time and energy into my writing and my blog, but only because it’s been very fun to do it! 😉

Now, going back to being consistent. It can help you! When people know they have content waiting for them by a certain timeframe, and they see that you stick to that deadline, they're more likely to tune in and engage with your work.

Of course, real life comes first, always, and things can derail you, but on the whole I make sure that I keep my word when I say I'm going to post something. Tumblr has a scheduling feature that allows you to schedule posts ahead of time, which I use on a daily basis. That can help you as well.

To try and generate buzz around new stories, I give writing updates or announcements, often with sneak previews, and the dates when I plan to drop the upcoming story. When I'm writing a series, on each chapter I give a preview of the next one, so I can try to keep people invested and waiting for the next chapter.

Tip #4: People are Visual (Use Images & Design Elements)

A huge element of successful content and social media is visuals. The first thing people are often drawn to when they look at a web page, an ad, or any kind of digital content is the picture -- and any other visual elements. Then they look at the title/headline, followed by the rest of the story.

This is why I always lead with the title of the story/headline and a GIF or image at the top of the post for a story. Draw readers in with their eyes to the visual, and then the content. I now create my own design elements, including story headers.

When I got started here on Tumblr, I also took a closer look at how other popular blogs I admired were organizing their masterlists, formatting their stories with banners, dividers, tags/warnings, word count, creating tag lists, and more -- both to create their blog aesthetic and to make it easier for readers to enjoy their work on different levels -- the content itself, and the visual elements.

Shoutouts to some of those writers I looked to, who have a lovely blog aesthetic and organization: @luci-in-trenchcoats @deanwinchesterswitch @deanbrainrotwritings @dean-winchester-is-a-warrior

Form and function is a balance, and they should work together. For example, there are some design/post formatting elements that are getting popular now on Tumblr that I personally don't vibe with, because I think it takes away from the reader's experience.

Like making the entire post or story in small case. Readers that have trouble seeing small fonts won't want to read this.

or making everything in the story lower case. this just bothers me for grammatical reasons. guarantee i will be turned off from reading. 😂

Also, most people browse Tumblr on their phone rather than on desktop. (About 62% according to current Semrush statistics.) So certain things that are small in your desktop version will be even smaller on mobile.

If you have a custom blog design, some design elements may not transfer well visually on mobile vs. desktop, and vice versa. So you'll want to check both versions to see how it looks, and possibly make adjustments.

Now, this isn't to say you have to become a graphic designer if that's not your thing. There are plenty of people who share their lovely designs for free, as long as you make sure to credit them if you use one of their banners, dividers, etc. Check out @cafekitsune and @firefly-graphics, for example.

Some of them even take requests. Just make sure to check their bio to see if they state whether they're currently taking requests or not. (This also goes for writers on fic requests.)

Tip #5: Support Your Fellow Writers! Reblog/Comment on What You Read & Enjoy

This is part of the fun when you start truly engaging with the fandoms you love.

Likes are cool. Comments are wonderful. Reblogs with comments are awesome, because not only do they get that engagement/feedback that they can reply to, but the reblog helps your fellow writers get seen. And while they aren't obligated to, they might be more inclined to do the same for you.

You'll also start to develop relationships within your fandom community. This is how I've made many friends and gained new readers on Tumblr -- by reblogging, sharing, commenting on what I liked about the fics I read. 💜

I try my best to support my fellow writers, no matter how new or how popular they are. Just because a writer has a bigger following, doesn't mean they appreciate feedback any less.

Feedback gives us writers energy and fuels us to write more. It can lead to more inspiration, and to continue the series you might be so invested in.

So if I took the time to read something, if I enjoyed it, I'm usually reblogging it and sharing my thoughts, even if it's just a gif or a couple of lines, or a long raving review. 💖

Tip #6: When I Do Get Engagement, I Reply to Comments and Reblogs

Along with supporting my fellow writers, engaging with the lovely people who read my work is just good fun! It's the best part of sharing my work on here and on Ao3. And it lets them know that you value and appreciate them for taking the time to comment and/or comment in a reblog. 💓💓💓

I hope these tips are helpful! Now, to answer your last question...

Do you think it usually takes as long as it did for you

[to build a following] for other people?

Interesting, but the truth is, I'm not sure. My knowledge of content and social media marketing has probably given me a leg up, I think, even though it took me a while to learn the Tumblrscape. I've also been writing fanfic for a long time. Long before I ever heard about Tumblr.

I've spent years studying literature, creative writing, and screenwriting, and putting it into practice. I've spent years writing for other voices besides my own, outside of the fanfic world. Like anyone else, I can only go by what I've learned, my own instincts, my frame of reference, and what I want to write about next.

Like anyone else, I can only hope that what I put out there vibes with people and touches them in some way, enough that they feel comfortable letting me know what they thought about it. 💜

In the meantime, I'll just keep getting inspiration from this guy (and other characters):

[thevirginwitch]

Magic for Witches with Limited Hand Mobility

Joint pain, stiffness, and limited hand mobility can be discouraging for when we want to practice witchcraft. Here are a few ideas on things you can still do even with limited hand mobility!

This post was released for early access over on Patreon! If you enjoy my content and want to show your support for my work, you can subscribe to my Patreon for as little as $2/month! You can sign up for a week-long free trial now and check out all the rewards I offer - including digital freebies, early access to my Tumblr posts, voting power on future blog posts, and access to my digital occult library and my research notes!

Candles

Candle-Carving

Instead of tediously carving thin chime candles (which can be difficult to grasp for those with hand mobility issues), here are some alternate options.

Decorate your candles with permanent markers, acrylic paint, or stickers! Of course, be sure to take necessary precautions to protect yourself against fire hazards when planning on your decor options – for example, make sure acrylic paint is completely dry before deciding to burn your candle, don’t cover 100% of the candle in paint, and be sure to use non-toxic paint. For stickers and other decals, please be sure to use a burn-safe method, such as this! Please do not use regular stickers to decorate any candles you intend to burn, as it is a massive fire hazard. Of course, if you’d like to decorate candles that you do not plan on burning, more options open up for you! Decoupaging candles is a fun, creative way to make candles for your altar, or even to use as room decor. You could also decorate candles as offerings to your deities!

Something that would require a bit more use of your hands would be decorating you candles by painting them with candle wax! All you need is a few paintbrushes, the candle you’ll be decorating, and candles in the colors that you’d like to paint with. This TikTok is a great guide for getting started with wax painting! This option is great because it’s 100% safe to be burned.

Write whatever you want on your candle on a piece of paper, and place your candle on top of the piece of paper. I personally use tea light candles and place the piece of paper inside the metal casing, underneath the tea light candle itself. Again, be sure to take all precautions against fire hazards when burning candles!

Instead of drawing or carving into the candle itself, use a dry-erase marker to draw on your candle holder!

Lighting Candles

Using lighters and matches can be tricky - here are some alternate options for those who are unable to use lighters/matches, and for those who just aren't a fan of/can't utilize fire!

Use LED candles - you can write on them with markers, and they are a safe alternative for those who don't enjoy fire. They're also super portable which is great for travel! You may also use different LED lights - I've personally toyed with the idea of wrapping spell jars/crystals/other items in LED string lights to 'charge' the items.

Electric lighters - these lighters don't require any kind of 'flicking' motions like regular lighters do; plus, they're rechargeable! This electric lighter is the one I use at home, and I absolutely love it!

Keeping a Grimoire

Note taking, research, and keeping an organized grimoire is difficult enough without the troubles of limited hand mobility. Here are a few things to make it a tad easier.

Utilize text-to-speech and screen reader functions. When you find a tidbit of info you want to save (whether it’s from Tumblr, a book, or somewhere else), take an audio recording of the text-to-speech audio (or, read the content out-loud and record yourself) and save it for later! This saves you time and energy with hand-writing or typing notes.

If you don't utilize a digital grimoire already, you absolutely should! There are free and paid programs such as Google Docs, Evernote, Notion, and many others that are designed to be digital notebooks and are perfect for keeping a grimoire. You can attach images, videos, text, audio files, and so much more!

Cartomancy (Tarot & Oracle Cards)

Shuffling cards can be difficult and frustrating. Here are some ideas to avoid shuffling altogether!

Use a tarot app on your phone - I personally love the Labyrinthos app!

If you still prefer to have physical cards, a more crafty idea is to make your own tarot cards - either print them off or make them yourself (you can also use tarot stickers! I personally use these for my tarot journal), about 2-3" in size. (To make cutting the cards easier, you can get a large guillotine-style paper cutter, like this one that I use to cut my zines) Once your cards are ready, throw them in a bowl or in a large jar. To 'shuffle' the cards, mix them up by-hand or shake the jar! When you're ready to conduct a reading, simply pull cards out of the container. (You could do the same thing with your regular-sized cards, although they may get damaged from doing this, so I don’t entirely recommend it)

Spellcrafting

Spelljars

Spelljars are all the rage right now. However, they can be more rage-inducing for those of us who have trouble shoving a bunch of herbs into a tiny-mouthed jar. So, here are some alternate ideas!

Use bigger, wide-mouthed jars - is it a bit chaotic to use an old pasta jar as a spell jar? Yes. Is it just as effective as those tiny, aesthetic spell jars everyone else uses? Also yes. Plus, they're much easier to handle and easier to re-use!

Use alternate containers like ziploc bags, envelopes, or anything else you have in your house! Obviously, use common sense (you wouldn't want to put anything sharp in a ziploc bag, or anything wet in an envelope) - but you can use any old container or bag to carry out spellwork.

You can also throw all your ingredients onto a pretty plate as you craft your spell! Lay it out however you’d like – you could even get creative and make something like a zen garden out of your ingredients. Once you have it completed, you can meditate on the spell for a while, and ditch the ingredients.

Ditch the container altogether – make potions! Throw everything in a big bowl or pot, stir it up, and utilize it however you see fit. You can make potions/perfumes for your deities, elemental potions/perfumes representing the elements for your altar, and so much more. I personally love to look at those “calm-down sensory-friendly glitter bottles” on Pinterest as inspiration when I’m in the mood for crafting potions – bottled potions also make for great props in Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, during Halloween, etc. It can be a  relaxing activity, even if you don’t intend on using it for witchcraft purposes.

Charm bags – charm bags, in my opinion, were the OG spell jar. Throw a bunch of herbs into a mesh or cloth bag and you’re all set! Charm bags are great for sleep/dream magic, bedroom magic, bath magic, and are great options for spellwork on-the-go – just throw a charm bag that corresponds with what you need in your purse/bag/backpack, and you’re good to go!

Digital Spellwork

Tech witchery is my favorite thing to recommend when it comes to those who may be bedridden, dealing with limited mobility, or even those in the broom closet. Here are just a few ideas to carry out spells in the digital realm!

Emoji spells! There are tons of examples available on Tumblr – emoji spells are a great low-effort, time-saving way of conducting spellwork.

Utilize objects in your favorite sandbox video games - Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons are all great platforms to carry out some digital spellwork. @shadow-the-witchblog and @fernthewhimsical both have fantastic ideas on conducting spells in Minecraft, and @stardewspellshed is a blog entirely dedicated to laying out the correspondences and ways to utilize Stardew Valley in your practice. The fun thing about utilizing video games is you can really make it your own!

Create digital collages! Gather up images that remind you of your craft or evoke the outcome of the spell you want to conduct (for example, if you want to create a spell for self love, print out some images of rose quartz, pink/red imagery, confident motivational quotes, etc). Use these collages as your phone/computer background, or print them out and put them up in your room/car/cubicle!

To feel more connected with nature/plants, you may also download plant-care apps or games on your phone! Same goes for pets and familiars – apps are a great way to feel more connected to your practice.

Salves, Tinctures, Oils and More

Making tinctures, salves, oils etc. is a great way to kill two birds with one stone. This lemon & eucalyptus pain-relieving oil is an easy oil to make during flare-ups!

Spell powders and dusts are another great thing you can make with little-to-no-effort. Bree NicGarran (@breelandwalker) has a whole arsenal of spell powders available on her blog, and also in her book, Pestlework: A Book of Magical Powders & Oils. Instead of a mortar and pestle, however, you may opt to use an herb grinder, coffee grinder (just be sure to clean it before/after!), or even a blender with some extra care.

Room sprays are a great way to apply a general “mist” of something to an area. You can mix and match different elements such as moon water, sun water, herbs, crystals, and more to create a spray specific to your needs. Simply throw all the ingredients in a spray bottle and you’re good to go!

Altars, Prayers, Deity Work

Keeping up with deities and altars is taxing even when you’re able-bodied. For someone with limited hand mobility, it can be even more difficult to keep up with. Here are some ideas to aid you with your deity work!

Digital altars are one of my favorite things to utilize. They are easy, convenient, and you don’t have to worry about spending money, making space, or keeping your altar clean when it’s all digital! Pinterest, Discord, Tumblr, and other sites are all great ways of keeping altars. You can use photos, videos, audio, poems… anything you want!

Devotional prayer-writing or writing poetry is another great way to connect with your deities. Instead of hand-writing for your deities, you can opt for typing or voice-recording your devotions! In times of need, you can play your recordings back to yourself.

I feel that it’s worth mentioning that, no matter you energy level or where you’re at on the pain scale, your deities will meet you in the middle. They will be there for you, whether or not you’ve been offering them extravagant meals or can only muster up enough energy to light a candle in their honor. No offering or devotional act is too small, and they will understand that your health and well-being must come first.

Spellbook divider from @firefly-graphics

[werewolfsister]

Blocking PSA & Advice!

Found out something interesting about blocking people on tumblr that I thought was important to know! I just learned this through trial and error. TL;DR people can still access your blog if they've blocked you.

So, normally when you are blocked, the blocker disappears off tumblr as though they never existed like in the picture above.

But if you block someone, and they haven't blocked you-- you can actually still see their blog!

If you go to blog settings (hi everyone I'm on mobile)...

And you scroll down, you'll find your list of people you've blocked. I don't think there's any list you can access that shows who's blocked you.

And as an example below I have a person who I have blocked, who hasn't blocked me (sorry to them!), and I can actually still access their blog.

I think this is weird & important to note because essentially, I can still "spy" on them but they cannot see my blog or interact with me in any way anymore.

So! My personal recommendation is, if you know someone has blocked you then block them back if you're uncomfortable with them further seeing your blog. Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but I'm made pretty uncomfortable by this. If I block someone I think I shouldn't be able to see their blog unless I unblock them.

So there's your PSA! Hope it helps.

[lacefuneral]

hi!!! i love for custom blog theme,, do you have a link to the code or creator 0:?

ya!

so my theme is actually a heavily modified version of redux edit #1 by lopezhummel (current url: holyaura). i always remind users that most tumblr themes are old and that you'll need to replace all instances of "http://" in the code with "https://" so tumblr will save the theme. i had to do it with this one

these are the modifications i made to the theme. i edited this theme over the course of at least a year or so and don't quite recall how i did all of these things. but to the best of my ability:

i moved the "left side img" to the right side of the screen. i also made this element "responsive" so the image will never get cropped when you resize your screen. this was a bitch and a half to figure out and i truthfully do not remember how i did it

i deleted the text in the drop-down navigation so it appears as a little line that is otherwise not noticeable. this type of theme, the "redux edit," used to be very popular because having a drop-down menu let you cram a bunch of links that lead to sub-pages on your blog. i've done away with my sub-pages, but i still like the format of the "redux style" tumblr theme, for its minimal UI and for its customization options.

i separated my mobile description from my web description for formatting reasons. basically, most elements in tumblr themes are connected to specific text fields and toggles. i simply went to the section that was connected to my blog description and deleted it. the web description has to be manually typed inside of the CSS/HTML editor when i want to change it. whereas my mobile description is whatever i type in the "description" box of the normal tumblr theme editors.

i added code someone else made ("NoPo" by drannex42 on GitHub) which allows you to hide posts with certain tags on them. i did this to hide my pinned post, as it looks bad on desktop.

i replaced the tiny pagination arrows at the bottom with images that literally say "next" and "back" because the arrows were far too small/illegible. i know they aren't centered in the container i'm not sure how to fix that lol

i added a cursor

i installed a working music box ("music player #3" by glenthemes), and then added music by uploading MP3 files to discord and then using the links of those files as the audio sources. iirc i also had to make this element responsive and i aligned it so it would sit on the left side of my screen. i made the "album art" for each one the same strawberry pixel art

the moth is just a PNG i added and then moved around so it was behind my sidebar using the options that came pre-packaged with the theme

if you want something like the strawberry shortcake decoration at the top (called "banner" in the theme) your best bet is to google "pixel divider"

theme didn't support favicon so i added that in so i could have a little heart

ALSO:

this theme is. really weird about backgrounds. any background that i have ever set for it, i've had to do weird shit in photoshop. like making the background HUGE, mirroring it, etc. - because it would crop the image weird, or there would be a gap where there was no image. idk man, it's haunted. i'm sure there's a way to fix this but i am NOT tech savvy enough. anyway, patterns are probably your best friend. and if you DO want something that isn't a pattern, it's going to take a lot of trial and error. but i love this theme so i deal with it 😭

the sidebar image and the floating image do not scale. if your image is 1000 pixels, it will display at 1000 pixels. you'll either have to edit the code so that the theme scales the image for you, or resize any images before you add them

my white whale of theme editing (aside from the Weird Background thing) is that i cannot get infinite scrolling to work. i have tried every code out there. all of them break my theme. it makes me sad because like. i have music there for a reason. the idea is that people would listen to it while they scroll. unfortunately, the way it's set up now, the music will stop every time someone clicks "next" or "back" 💀

anyway sorry for rambling but i hope you enjoy the the theme and customizing it in the way that you want to!

[angelshadowsinger]

Hi, Angel!💗 I was wondering if you could please share where you learned how to create your masterlist, and profile layout, and how did you upload your dividers without it looking weird? I’m newish to Tumblr and I’m getting a little frustrated because I’m having trouble figuring it out.💗

hii sweetest! yes, of course I can give you some pointers. first of all, welcome to tumblr authorhood!! may you receive many comments and find infinite motivation~

for me, I suppose I’m “self-taught”? but isn’t everyone on this app? lol. actually, I’ve been sharing fic on tumblr for… idk, 8 years on and off ?? omg that’s wild. but yeah, I’ve definitely learned some stuff along the way., here are my key takeaways:

(general) promote interaction:

there’s a couple things I do to try to improve the number of notes I receive on my posts, but there’s also a few things I try my best to do in order to improve my readers’ experience. first, I use tags on every post I publish. I have a tag for asks, for my fics, for my fic recs, etc. This makes it easier for a potential follower to go through with following you even if they don’t like 100% of your content, bc they can always blacklist the tag and they won’t have to see any of those posts. second, use links so that your readers can easily look through your stuff. a masterlist is KEY here as it’s the gateway for all your fics, but also, general navigation, or even linking your masterlist at the end of your fics can be beneficial too. I find it’s also really important to have links in your bio. this makes it way more approachable for any followers and it’s honestly nice to have for your own purposes as well. the only thing about that is, you have to make the links for your bio on the computer version of tumblr when you’re editing your blog. it cannot be mobile, something about it just won’t work. i can go into further detail on how to get those bio links but tbh i just looked it up on google 5yrs ago and it’s stayed the same since then lol~

theme:

obviously my blog doesnt have a “theme” theme when you visit it on computer, but i mean theme as in, all your navigation/general/fic posts are cohesive and they look like they belong on the same blog. you can achieve this by using the same fonts, text symbols (or emojis…. i guess. personally, side eye…), or dividers.

fonts:

so beyond the 3 fonts tumblr has in its posting formatting, i personally like to use copy paste fonts. they still work with embedding links and stuff as well. i like to use a font generator, where you type in whatever you’d like and it converts it for you. then you can just copy & paste.

text symbols:

these are a good for borders and dividers, or just generally spicing up your bio/navigation. i usually google “text symbols copy paste”, and browse through the results.

dividers:

when you’d like to use a photo divider on your blog, make sure it is a very skinny PNG file. PNG means it has a transparent background, so it will be more cohesive for your readers on regular white posts and also dark mode posts. I actually designed my own PNG divider (Azriel’s siphon of course hehe) on my iPad on ProCreate, but I know there’s a lot of blogs that make them and share them, which you can use so long as you give proper credits. that’s another thing that’s important— always make sure to credit others if you’re using work that isn’t yours!

most importantly, I recommend always TESTING these methods!! make sure to double check that all your links work, that the symbol you choose doesn’t become an emoji when you paste, that the font is all set. there’s a lot of trial and error involved in making your blog just right :) hope this helps & good luck anon!!

[theredmaynefiles]

My Story: A Journey of Loss & Depression

Let me start by saying this isn't a blog about Eddie. I'm not sure why I'm even posting this here, except that for the longest time, I've needed some sort of outlet for some of the things I'm struggling with... and as this is my only blog, I guess this is it. Maybe someone out there will read this & be able to relate. Maybe it will help explain why my blog on Eddie has gone largely silent. Or maybe no one will even notice. Whatever. I need to get this out.

So first of all, hey there, I'm Marci. You know me as an Eddie Redmayne blogger, but I'm also a mom to a son who has ASD & a person who has dealt with what seems - to me, at least - to have been a lot of crap to cope with over the past 8 years. And I've reached a point where coping is more like just existing but more on that in a bit. Maybe.

My dad was always the strongest person I've ever known. He wasn't perfect, but he was one of those dads that could fix anything & always knew the answers to anything you want to know. In October 2013, my dad was diagnosed with cancer - specifically non-Hodgkins lymphoma. My family wasn't new to this particular diagnosis, as my brother, Jeff, was diagnosed with the same cancer in 1999. At this point, Jeff was considered in remission after successfully completing chemo & radiation treatment. So we thought we knew what to expect. Thing is, dad's cancer was in his stomach (my brother's started in his neck) & it was extremely aggressive. I became my father's caregiver. Besides cancer, he was diabetic & dealing with kidney failure. We saw doctors 3-5 times a week for the next year+. My dad went through 3 different types of chemo, including one clinical trial. None of it made any difference, and the cancer continued to spread. In January 2015, he was put on hospice, & in May 2015, my dad died. I wasn't entirely unprepared for this - I mean he was on hospice, & I've worked at a hospital & nursing home, & seen how this sort of things goes many times, but seeing it happen to your own dad - & someone who was so freaking strong - was really rough. It was a horrible experience.

After dad passed, a lot of things changed. Jake & I moved into a house my dad had left us, leaving my mom (with whom I'd always had a very complicated relationship, to say the least) on her own. In late 2016, while watching 'Fantastic Beasts', Jake suddenly exclaimed, "Mom, Newt is autistic like me!" It caught my interest, & my blog was born of it. For the next year & a half or so, it was an amazing creative outlet for me. Eddie is an incredibly talented actor & a truly kind-hearted human being, who actually makes it a point to connect with his fans. I've spoken to him a few times during the fan interviews, & he even wrote me a letter during the pandemic, which was both shocking & awesome. To be honest, though, the best thing about my blog was meeting Charlotte, AKA @bespokeredmayne, who has become one of my dearest friends, & is an amazing person in her own right. (total shout out there!)

My mom didn't cope well with my dad’s passing, & in March 2018, she had a stroke. She died less than a month later. I've already said we had a complicated relationship - without going into that much more, my mom was a narcissist who enjoyed hurting people. My feelings about her are still not great, even after she's been gone for over 5 years. I have a lot of guilt about that, but it is what it is. What I don't understand is why, after she died, my creativity died, too. I couldn't blog anymore. Mind you, at this same time, I was dealing with some health issues - I'd been having mobility issues, which I started seeing a doctor for in early 2018, but mom's sudden passing kind of shunted all of that to the side. Still, I can't even begin to explain the way things changed for me, much less to understand why I was so affected.

The next year was okay, we went to England, which was a lifelong dream, & things seemed like they were mostly going well enough, despite my increasing mobility issues as well as memory issues. While sorting through all our parents' stuff to get their house ready to sell, my brother, Jeff, and I became closer - we'd always been reasonably close, I guess. We got along well as siblings, despite an age gap of just over 10 years (he was older). He'd looked out for me when I was  little & we were friends as adults, which is more than either of us could say about our other sibling, who has been estranged from us both since the 90s. So, yeah... we were pretty close.

So I mentioned about mobility issues, memory issues, etc. I had thought that at least part of this was some kind of ongoing complications from a car wreck I was in back in '95. Turns out, it wasn't - I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 3 years ago. In the time since then, with the pandemic in full swing for much of the time, I became homebound. Besides the MS, I have asthma, & also a vaccine allergy. Between that & the autoimmune disease, I cannot be vaccinated, & I am at high rick for severe covid because of my health. Ironic, no? Add that to my increasing mobility issues & my life became more & more isolated.

The summer of 2021, my brother, in his 50s at the time, was diagnosed with heart failure. The cardiologist he was referred to said this was likely a complication of the chemo he'd had years earlier. In December 2021, just a few days before my birthday, he texted me that he was going to the e/r - this was around 2 in the morning. He texted me one more time after that, & then... nothing. I kept trying to get ahold of him, or the hospital, to find out what was going on, but no one answered until about 4 hours later, when I finally got someone at the e/r. To my absolute shock, she told me my brother was dead. He died less than an hour after his last text to me, of a sudden cardiac arrest. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. To this day, I cannot really cope with it. I don't know why it's hit me so hard - I see people who cope with loss & move on, & I did that with my parents, but this one, I couldn't. It was like it was too much, losing both parents & then my brother. It has destroyed me in some way. I'm not the person I was before. So much loss, & then everything else....

One the day my brother died, I went to the hospital to say goodbye to him. I didn't leave my house again until about 4 weeks ago when our cat needed the emergency vet. For a year & a half, I stayed home. (& I haven’t gone out again since bringing our cat home) I work from home as a data analyst. I pay my bills online, & have my groceries, etc, delivered. The only person I see is Jake. My world is so isolated & so depressing. I'm very limited in what I can physically do & that adds massively to the depression. Plus, & this will probably sound selfish, but it's true nonetheless, ever since my brother died, I've felt this sense of impending doom & hopelessness. Like I'm next & it's only a matter of time. I don't know what to do about any of it. I sit here, in my messy house (I hate mess, but I can't physically do most of the cleaning, & Jake doesn't really do cleaning, despite being a huge help to me in other ways) & I exist. Nothing much changes from one day to the next. I feel not only so depressed, but such a horrible anxiety about my life, & about what will happen to Jake if something happens to me. And yet I feel totally helpless to do anything to change any of it. I just feel so emotionally exhausted all the time, like I can't cope with anything at all.

So, yeah... that's me. If you've made it this far, you're probably either bored to tears or disgusted with my moaning. Still, if you've read this, thanks. If anyone reads it, at least I'm not keeping it all to myself anymore. Maybe offloading all of this here will somehow make it easier for me to cope with it. Either way, it's out!

[spnfanficpond]

Weekly Pond Newsletter

This past week included the famed 21st night of September. Did you dance the night away?

Old Business:

Fic Highlights. This week we had TWO fic highlights for you all to read and enjoy! We do highlights like these as raffle prizes and birthday gifts to thank those who are active in the Pond and spread the love. Fun fact: Though most writers will ask us to highlight an underappreciated fic of their own, you can ask for any fic by any writer to be highlighted! This means that this prize is also open to Turtles and other non-writers. This week, we highlighted A Little Trip: Costco Edition by @mariekoukie6661 and Trials of Agent Winchester (series) by @allys-creative-bubble. Check them out and give our hard-working writers some encouragement!

Fishing for Treasures masterlists. By request, we have cobbled together a masterlist of sorts of the fics we have reblogged for the monthly FFT celebrations. It's not strictly a masterlist, but it should give those looking for something a place to start searching. We've utilized the archive function of Tumblr, which allows us to narrow down a search by month and tag. In the past, we weren't very consistent with our tagging for FFT, but we will be in the future to make this functionality work. We have tried to clean up prior months, but a fic or two may have slipped through the cracks, so we can only promise that the majority of fics reblogged in the past will be there. Click here for more information about FFT and to see these new masterlists!

Angel Fish Awards nomination changes. We announced previously that AFA nominations are now open to everyone, but this week, we also added a new way to submit your nominations! We now have a Google form where you can submit all the information we need. You can still send us an ask or submission through the blog, or send a private message to an admin. This is just a new way to submit, which we hope might be easier for you, too. Click here to see the new Angel Fish Awards FAQ and get the link to submit a nomination!

Last week's #TweetFicTues prompts were:

New Business:

Stageit concerts with Paul Carella later today. Paul Carella is best known by the SPN family for his song, "Chasing Echoes" (aka the Jensen Ackles song). He's recently teamed up with Billy Moran of Louden Swain to make a new band called Tricky MC. They currently have two singles out that you can find wherever you listen to music. Click here for more info about Paul and tickets to today's shows!

Manta Rays in the Discord server. This week, there will be TWO Manta Rays in the discord server! Admin Stacey will be in there on Thursday and Manta Ray Kay will be in there on Friday. To see the Pond calendar for exact times (viewed in the Eastern US/Canada timezone) click here. (Sadly, this link is a Tumblr page, and can not be seen on mobile.) To add the Pond calendar to your own Google calendar (to see events in your own time zone), click here.

Next weekend is #SPNDC! Creation Entertainment's The Road So Far, The Road Ahead tour will be in Washington DC next weekend, and Admin Michelle will be there! This means that the deadline to earn entries for the AFA Raffle will be extended until Wednesday, October 4th. If you will also be in DC next weekend, be sure to say hi to Admin Michelle! (Look for purple hair as she whizzes by on her scooter! lol)

(Divider by @glygriffe!)

That's all for this week! To see all Pond events, and also other SPN-related things like conventions and online concerts, check out our Google calendar! We try to keep it as up to date as possible. If there's something you want to see on the calendar that's not there (maybe a convention we missed, or cast birthdays, or something similar), send us an ASK and let us know!

Hope you have a great week! - From your Admins and Manta Rays, @manawhaat, @mrswhozeewhatsis, @mariekoukie6661, @princessmisery666, @thoughtslikeaminefield, @katbratsupernaturalwhore and @heavenssexiestangel!

[huffwashere]

An UNEMPLOYED Creative Director

Late in 2023 I was laid off from from a start-up and brand that I worked at for 9 years. To be honest, it was a shock. The company had its share of issues, it was young, it was scrappy, it was on a mission to add structure to an industry that historically hadn't had much. However I was not part of a mass layoff experience which made the meeting that was label "department growth," inherently more difficult to not take personally - though I'm reminding myself it "wasn't."

I filled many roles while there, but was the Creative Director officially for 5 years, and unofficially for 7. For the majority of my adult professional career I dedicated my everything to working toward elevating every portion of the brand experience across disciplines leaning on creativity, collaboration and trial and error. We were a start-up that grew into a community leading small business gaining the respect and partnerships of bigger orgs like T-mobile, Cash App, RedBull and google. We took the brand from an idea in a warehouse to a community of 10's of thousands, generating millions in revenue and catching the attention and investment from some A listers in the music industry. Storytelling was my bread and butter crafting cultural and industry relevant campaigns that were so authentic, our audience didn't even flinch at the underlying advertising.

I managed teams of creatives, strategists, marketers, designers and throughout the years some headaches of interns excited to break into the creative world. The shell shock of being laid off has subsided, but how do I showcase all that I have done? The brand is still living and breathing, and it as a whole is my case study. What made me a Good Creative (and marketing) Director is it was never about me. I was (on the surface) very good at removing my ego and making it about the brand. I suck at talking about myself, which made it easy to show, but hard to tell. I'm hoping this informal blog style portfolio will help me showcase the lifestyle brand I build on top of this tech rooted membership program for creatives.

I'm so ready to work for a brand and prove I wasn't just lucky and for a lack of better words show my ex-job I'm the one that got away.

[slothdoctor]

Rules and Muse (for mobile users!)

Hello hello! I am Rain (they/them), 26, have been writing on tumblr for 10 years :D Thank you so much checking out my blog and my silly angel :D *art by me. Side-blog to @luciferain, Lucifer rp blog.

Rules and Muse pages are under read more!

Hello, I’m Rain (NB, 26, they/them). I have been roleplaying on tumblr for the past decade, and had picked up muses from different fandoms before, and newest has been Hazbin Hotel/Hellaverse :D I’m here to write and have fun, and hopefully make friends to write cute stuff/angst/horrors with. So, the rules will be basic:

IC =/= OOC. Belphegor's opinions are not my own. Sometimes evil characters and actions will be portrayed and tagged accordingly, and sometimes I might write some characters as evil when they are more nuanced in canon–it’s all to the have fun. 

I do not condone harassment over someone writing fiction. Real people come first. I will block if it the sensitive subject is too much for me, that’s that.

Don’t reblog threads or headcanons you are not a part of, please. Unless I tag it “ok to reblog”.

Please tag real-life images with nudity, blood, gore and such in general.

Do not force sexual acts on my muse.

To be on the same page with our headcanons / world-building, feel free to plot with me :D Duplicates/self-inserts/OCs etc are all welcome!

That’s it, thank you so much for reading!

MUSE;;

Headcanons and muses mentioned in backstory can be changed to match my rp partner’s headcanons and worldbuilding. This is just the default state we can build up on. —Plus, once canon Bel comes, the blog will most likely go through an overhaul :D

Name: Belphegor

Title: Queen of Sloth, The Deadly Sin of Sloth, Administrator of Sloth Hospitals, Professional Headache for Mammon

Age: Older than Hell.

Gender: None, but likes to present in a very feminine way, and prefers she/her pronouns.

Sexual Orientation: A mess. (Pan, most likely.)

Relationship Status: Has been a hopeless romantic even back in Heaven, never managed to be in a relationship despite her wish.

Height: As tall as the other sins (Lucifer does not count :D)

History: She was once an angel of ethereal beauty and kindness. Spending her time with her herbs and medicine, hoping for the fairytale romance. Always looking for shortcuts, to heal the ones she loved as effortlessly as possible Pink has always been her color, and she dressed up for every occasion. A friendly, joyful presence, she was on good terms with the fellow angels, though she had always been closer with Lucifer’s inner circle.

Crushing on Lucifer, she got closer to his best friend Mammon to get a chance and know about this elusive archangel. When Lucifer abandoned everyone to be with Lilith, she was left behind, spending her time with Mammon, Beelzebub and others.

During the battle following the trial to judge Lucifer and Lilith for giving Eve the apple, she avoided getting involved at first, but seeing her friends bleeding and hurt made her act to support and heal them, causing her to be cast out of Heaven with Lucifer, Mammon and others.

After the fall, with the Root of All Evil’s influence, her transformation was rapid. Once a mostly humanoid angel, now she was a the mother demon of the Sloth Ring, her feathered wings turning draconic, her little horns growing bigger. Her magic shaped the Sloth ring and brought the candleheads, the goat demons native to Sloth.

Her Sloth is not lack of work but lack of care, and she spent the past ten thousand years building her enterprises. Hospital, medicine, drugs. She treats her workers well, but never dictates long or “normal” work hours. Her people are encouraged work as little as possible, and it translates into longer wait times for all procedures other than emergencies.

She is the main provider of all drugs, but her most sought after drugs are sleep pills and “happy” pills, antidepressants. She is still a kind soul deep down, and wants to help others.

Over the years, her best friend had been Mammon, and they both affected each other. She is greedy, wanting to earn as much as possible, while she made Mammon lazier. She knows she owes some of her success to Mammon’s mentorship, and cares about him… But would not act on it.  They usually spend their time together watching shitty reality TV at Belphegor’s home. Since Belphegor does not see the point in anything, she never confronted Mammon on his treatment of Fizzarolli, despite knowing the imp and caring about him almost like a son. Due to how much Greed and Sloth spend time together, and their bickering, there are rumors, and Belphegor jokingly calling Mammon her husband does not help.

She is on good terms with her fellow sins, though Satan would not regard her highly due to her nature as Sloth, and she is angry at Lucifer for not accepting help with his mental health.

She still wishes for her fairytale ending, but thinks it is too late for her. She is not comfortable with her looks, and she would rather drown her sorrows in work. Her full-demonic form hasn’t been unlocked yet, and if she is under huge stress or another strong emotion, her transformation is grotesque and painful, making her go into hiding till it is over.

Hopelessness and sorrow can make her go all monochrome/gray and her candle gets snuffed.

[manonamora-if]

Project Status and Plans

All projects and their relevant links are listed here or here.

2023 Resolutions:

Get things off my desk and shelf it for good.

Avoid starting new ones, or at least starting new WIPs

Continue to do Word Crimes (and maybe Code Crimes)

Under the break:

Project Status and Current To-Do's

Future Projects

/ . /

Project Status and Current To-Do's:

Meeting the Parents

Remaster Completed - Maintenance when needed

Crimson Rose & White Lily

Hiatus - Correct bugs - Redesign the Codexes - Complete Scene 5 (and Scene 2 variations?)

Exquisite Cadaver

Hiatus - Fix UI - QoL update of textbox and translated text - Add missing scenes and Endings - Fix Endless Mode - Look into French localization (unlikely) - Fix the blog

SPS Iron Hammer

Complete Future: remaster with complete story and gameplay

The Thick Table Tavern

Complete - Update Planned - Fix UI (look into mobile scaling) - Fix coding bugs (esp. Arcade Mode) - Re-writes of current text - Add missing storylets - Include recurring characters

The Trials and Tribulations of Edward Harcourt

Work In Progress - dependent on writer - Complete next round of edit and code - Package as a completed product

La Petite Mort

Completed - Update in the Works - Fix UI - Add missing rooms, content and endings - Correct the Inventory Mechanic - Fix display of elements - Translate into English

Goncharov Escapes!

Remaster Completed - Maintenance when needed

P-Rix - Space Trucker

Hiatus - Fix animations (esp text) and autoscrolling - Add the missing content - Look into French localization

DOL-OS

Remaster Completed - Maintenance when needed

The Rye in the Dark City

Hiatus - Fix UI - Double check Act 1 and fix errors - Add Act 2 and 3

The Roads not Taken

Complete - Update Planned - Iron-out the UI + display element - Fix parser gameplay (esp direction) - Add missing element/actions - Look into French localization

Entre-d’œufs coquilles An Eggscellent Preparation

Complete - Update Planned - Fix current bugs and issues (wrong text display and main puzzle) - Retranslate to French - Repackage into one page - Upload to IF Archive + GitHub

The Dinner

Complete - Update Planned - Complete missing courses and Final Beat - Add alternative options + rewind endings - Look into French localization

Templates and Guides

Work In Progress - unlikely to be complete - SugarCube Guide: add missing APIs, commonly used blocks of code, functionality, UI changes, JavaScript code; fix some small errors, add SGDocu theme - Templates: make more for fun; planned: title page. Also add the missing pictures of the templates on itch.

Complete - nothing will change here - Tweego Guide - CScript to SugarCube Guide

Tiny Games

Le Jeu de la Dévotion: fix the typos + English translation

À La Campagne

Collision

Intersigne

Clarence Street, 14

Other To-Do's

Prompts: put them in separate collection

Empty Inbox

Re-design itch pages: consistent style between main games

Re-format Tumblr intro posts: consistent style between posts

Continue to Host Jams

Continue to Play and Review Games

Take care of those damn wrists and hands.

Future Projects

Those projects are TBD in everything. They would probably start then the above To-Do has decreased. The titles are WIP titles. This is not the complete list I have hidden in a drawer or other desk bunnies. They might not be Twine games, or IF games either...

Quest Town

A RPG-style adventure, where you play as a beginner adventurer on the road to greatness and treasure. Along the way, you encounter people needing your help, with promise of rewards in return.

This would include a leveling system, inventory system, combat gameplay, travelling back and forth between location, storylets...

Project Status: Not Started

IFComp/SpringThing 2024-5?

A puzzle-focus escape-room, in hypertext/visually interactive form. Multiple rooms with different puzzle and interconnectedness. Story with mystery.

I technically have a title for it, and the pun is still making me giggle. But keeping this in my sleeve.

Project Status: Mock-up, some puzzles coded.

CRWL Side-quel

A Razac-focused story, either as a prequel, during the event of the games, sequel, or plain alternate universe. Mainly because I've been playing him in a TTRPG session and he's a fun character I want to explore further.

Project Status: Not Started

Sword Vigilante F/F Rivalry

Because there are not enough of those, and I can just go all in with the humour, camp, gushing, innuendos and puns, and of course... betraaaaayyyaals. Think Zorro but with more sword ladies.

Project Status: Not Started

TTTT Sequel - Bron(m?)'s Quest

Essentially a similar gameplay from TTTT but with food instead of drinks. Help Brom(n?) prepare food for the customers.

Project Status: Not Started

[hananoami]

[ Deepspace Trial ] Open Orbit prog notes

An informal post on mobile to record some of my thoughts, events and open orbit progression from today.

Thank goodness for the hunting season event rn bc the double rewards drop for any bounty hunt made farming for crystals a little less miserable for up to 30x pulls. Dedicated a lot of stamina for this, but worth it.

Leveled up quite a few memories in order to progress in open orbit stages; currently working on getting [Your Fragrance] to 80 to help with stage 120B.

Finally cleared stage 110 after being stuck on it for weeks. Had to get [Hearts Within Reach] to lv.80 and swapped out a delta protocore for a Crit Rate one after leveling it up to +9. I finally got one from the core farm, even if the substats weren’t the most ideal. The extra crit rate was more helpful than the dmg to weakened one I was previously using. My play was really sloppy imo, but a clear is a clear. I didn’t expect it to end the way it did. See clear video for more detail.

After the hurdle of stage 110 I was able to keep progressing until my next challenge at 113. This stage required 6-emerald memories to match the protofield stellactrum?* it was a frenzied type battle. I leveled up [Close Feelings] from lv 50 to 60 and [Romantic Afternoon] from lv 60 to 70 to gain more ATK stats and used the Hunters Wand. It was easier to use that to damage the frenzy wanderer, even if I can’t focus target it. I just needed to make sure they were all at least grouped up together when I dropped my aoe.

Stage 117 required 6 violet to match the protofield stellactrum, but i opted to not have a perfect match in favor of using Sea God with my highest leveled Rafayel lunars. This was okay because it was a recharge beacon stage, so I just had to make sure the wanderers didn't get close enough to interrupt me.

Currently stuck on stage 120 with the epic bgm. Team 01 requires 6 emerald memories and team 02 requires 6 violet* memories to match protofield stellactrum. I’ve been using the hunters wand with Xavier, which is still a really close fight. Been progging with phantasma sands gun for Rafayel. I don’t have enough damage with around 2 and a half HP bars left by the time the timer runs out. Will make a more detailed post about this later. Currently working on leveling up memories.

I know there’s a spreadsheet out there that documents all the protofield stellactrum for the Deepspace trials, but I would like to keep one on hand here as well since this is my gaming blog. Will do that with source credit.

A special shout out to P-chan again for having faith and believing in me by saying we’re going all the way from stage 110 to 120 today. Because we did and honestly I wouldn’t have made it this far without their help and support. ♡ and appreciate u always. 🌸

[kirby-the-gorb]

reply roundup!

would you believe I was actually planning to do this the very morning the [licorice gorb] got blazed (obviously it was a better idea to put it off until after it was over)

also someone reblogged it with a screencap where it says "blazed by notpikaman" under my username and tbh I am so glad I'm not the only one burdened by that information XD and thank you to everyone who said "good blaze op" or some variant thereof, a high compliment

anyway welcome all you new followers and also folks who just wanted to reblog the one thing and be on your merry way, I do this occasionally so that I actually get to reply to y'all's tags n such <3 (without making a lot of blog clutter)

we also have a couple new image descriptions! thank you to @cherrycreamsicle for the image description on [suitcase] and @istherewifiinhell for the image description on [kirbear]! both have been added as alt text to the original posts, with credit.

on [the last roundup] @cherrycreamsicle said: Hey no worries! Any accessibility is good accessibility! I'm always happy to help! Hope you and your wife are doing well ^_^

thank you! I felt like it was important to acknowledge that putting it in alt text is not as good for some people as putting it in the body of the post, but it is still definitely better to have. (and thank you! she's doing much better now.)

on [watch] @ceylonsilvergirl said: Do it!! Watch repairs!! Those skills are so niche and needed And especially good for people inclined to pay attention to the details

it just seems really fun! I love little mechanical things and building miniatures and stuff like that so it feels like something I'm capable of! (also I can do it at home for only a couple hours at a time and possibly still make money lol)

on [watch] @macro-microcosm said: i hope you guys make big bucks in a lil watch biz some day

thanks! I'm sure I'd badger my beige-loving partner into letting me make at least one of them my signature kirby-pink lol

on [eggroll] @ceylonsilvergirl said: You felt good enough to go out without mobility aids!! You felt that good! That’s fantastic news! Of course use them when you need them, they’re good! But your body was doing well! That’s whats important

yeah!! it's important to me to emphasize to others that it's not the not using the aids it's the feeling well enough to not need to, cuz it's a mistake that's like. pretty common and even popular. (consider "wow this wheelchair user walked the stage at their graduation and was clearly in pain the whole time" type of stuff. the ubiquity of that type of "inspiration porn" has a huge impact on the disabled community, especially because a significant portion of us are exposed to that first rather than the realities of being disabled.) but feeling well even for one day means my body is still capable of feeling well under the right circumstances, and that matters!

on [kirbear] @hobgirl told a nice story I feel weird about copy/pasting directly but yknow it's there in the tags as long as they choose to leave it up

stuff like that is scary, and the doctors and veteran patients know that! I'm glad you had something comforting with you, and that it was able to lead to even more support than just what it carried by itself.

on [printer] @angst-and-fajitas said: every time I've ever interacted with a printer it has always felt like this and @ceylonsilvergirl said: I have yet to meet a printer that will just friggin’ work

honestly like 90% of the time printers work fine and I don't even think about it, but that last 10% of the time feels like Such A Trial that it really dominates the conversation lol

anonymous asked: Happy kirby day mx gorb :>

thank you! this is what reminded me to actually draw kirby a little cake so it was helpful lol

on [licorice] @ceylonsilvergirl added the [link] for the exact candy I was thinking of

so glad they still exist tbh. don't even remember if I've ever had one I'm just glad they exist!

on [meds] @queenhippolyta said: Do you find that the cromolyn helps you? I started it maybe two months ago but haven’t really noticed a difference yet

it seemed helpful for me when recovering/restabilizing from my covid vaccine, which laid me out for months, but there was a lot of other stuff going on and it was more of a, well, stabilizer than an actual boost. I really don't know if it's doing anything for me now as high vs low compliance really doesn't seem to make a causative difference. (there is a correlation, because on bad days it's harder to get up and take it in the middle of the day, but that's like. definitely not causative.) it might be that different dosing would work better for you, or it might be that it just doesn't really help you! mcas is a tricky beast, as we all know. (I hope you actually find this buried in the roundup >n< )

on [corner] @ceylonsilvergirl said: dang kirbo’s on the ceiling again, grab the broom

this one just made me laugh

on [licorice] @thesleepingnini said: hay wanna draw some silly stuff like this again, baka may sponsor ng ipad diyan

good news, I will continue to draw silly stuff again whether I'm paid or not! additional good news, for those who want more specific silly stuff drawn commissions are open on [kofi] for a few more hours (~6 probably depending how long this post takes me to finish)

@sonisis asked: iEs El Kirbo!

it sure is!

on [licorice] @jenjensd said: It’s a good thing they clarified it’s red liquorice because I legit thought they just gave Kirby a super long tongue for some reason

I wouldn't put it past me tbh (which is why I specified XD )

anonymous asked: Hi your Kirbys are very nice

thank you! I love to draw a Little Guy

on [crowd] @ceylonsilvergirl said: Like when you’re singing to yourself, and then realize people can see you

whoops you've activated one of my fun facts! whenever I am Out And About by myself (which is very very rare these days What With The Illness), I am almost always singing. I am completely comfortable singing at full volume at any time and any place (aside from general noise decorum such as "not in the library" and "not while my wife is sleeping"). so I have not had this specific version of this problem in my lifetime lol

anonymous asked: “Art” that a four year old could do? Don’t quit that day job at target.

look ma, my first anon hate! I'm big time now!

for real though, like, I wanna answer this one kinda seriously even though I'm sure this was just a driveby, because I know it's a common insecurity. why are you upset? if anyone can do it, why shouldn't I? why aren't you?

I make very very very little money from this blog (I even looked up the numbers, in the nearly 5 years I've been doing this I've made a total of ~$1650 to date), but that's because I'm really not putting in effort to make it ~profitable~. my patreon is has no rewards and my commissions are closed (except for literally right now), I only put very rare purposefully designed products on my print-on-demand stores and I haven't made my own stickers to sell in over a year. so if you're mad about people giving me money, don't be. even if you very very conservatively assume only 10 minutes per drawing and also zero other time put into running this blog, that's bare minimum 295 hours I've put into this. in reality it's going to be way way higher than that, but even if you assume I'm only drawing 10 minutes a day for 1771 days and I'm only drawing with no other admin etc, that's only $5.50 an hour, or about $0.93 per drawing.

part of why I don't put in the effort to make it ~profitable~ is because I can't. when my patreon had actual rewards and my commissions were always open and I was still making stickers, that took a ton of energy, and yes it made me a little more money than I'm getting right now, those two years are the period of time the majority of it came from, but it was energy I don't have. I'm disabled, severely chronically ill, and very vocal about it. I don't have a day job to quit because I physically can't do that. but that's also why I can't put in the energy to make this blog a ~business~, and even when I was putting in more energy than I actually had, it was not exactly big returns. I think the biggest most profitable year was like. $800. for the whole year. I made 5 times that doing data entry for a couple hours a week before that company shut down the same year, and the data entry was easier.

so okay, I'm not doing it for the money. (money sure would be nice to have, and I appreciate the patrons who stick around just cuz and the commissions that got picked up this week, but clearly that's not my motivation because there's not much money in running this blog.) then why should I bother?

because making stuff is fun. I get to draw silly little things that make me happy and sometimes other people like them too. that's it. what's the harm in that?

[temsikfates]

Wishlist (mobile)

Dahlia Hawthorne and Evil!Yomiel (The Manipulator)

Man, please, give me this plot. Seriously. I would looove to rp Evil Yomiel interacting with Dahlia! This is one of my dream threads asdlkflk The fact that both Yomiel and Dahlia are vengeful spirits who wants to get revenge on people responsible for their fall is great. Yomiel can easily relate to her and vice-versa. They could start by talking about their vengeful desires so Yomiel can sympathize with her. The main plot idea would be that he would be interested to know about her knowledge in the Kurain Channeling Technique so he can see Sissel (his fiancée again) while Dahlia would definitely want to use him and his powers for her own purposes. I think it would be interesting to work inside this concept, with two vengeful ghosts cooperating with each other for their own selfish reasons. This could lead to an interesting story-like roleplay and I’m honestly not sure where it could lead. They could team up and become crime buddies or they could betray each other in the end, there’s a thousand possibilities and just the thought of it makes me really excited to rp it!  If you run a Dahlia rp account or a Multimuse blog that contains her as a muse, please jump in! My IM is always open for plotting too

Post-game Jowd

I haven’t seen any Jowd blogs around here yet (well, technically, finding active Ghost Trick RP blogs are already rare) but seriously, I would love to interact with a Jowd! It would be a great chance to develop Yomiel as a character. I’d like to explore how both of them deal with their trauma and their developing friendship over the course of the years Yomiel was in prison till the day he was released. It would also be interesting to see a Jowd and FianSissel interaction! 

Lynne and Yomiel (Post-game)

So, I think it would be great for his character development if he interacted with Lynne after Sissel averts his fate. He still feels bad for taking the girl hostage and for trying to ruin her life in the previous timeline when she was actually innocent. She was the first person who showed him sympathy, even after everything he did, she still shed tears for him and forgave him. This only made him feel even more bad for her and for taking her as hostage in his desperation. He even risked his own body to save her from the falling Mino when Sissel and Missile were trying to avert his fate. So it would be interesting to see him interacting with her and seeking her forgiviness in this timeline as well.

Uncle Yomiel 

I know GT rpers around here are very rare, but if there is a Kamila, please I’d love to RP Yomiel being kind of an uncle to her, teaching her about computer stuff and being a complete nerd while also trying very hard to redeem himself to her (she doesn’t know his past deeds but he still remembers it and feels bad about it) and OMG the fluff and the awkwardness as Yomiel tries to be nice uncle to her, I need it. PLEASE.

Ghost Trick/Ace Attorney Crossover

Man, I always dreamed of a GT/AA crossover. Takumi hinted there would be one but… we got Phoenix Wright x Professor Layton instead and I lost my hopes of ever playing a GT/AA crossover so any interactions with AA characters are welcome! I don’t have any particular preference, so if you are a AA muse and you know GT, come by anytime! I’m always open for plotting too! Be it Phoenix defending Yomiel in his trial to something completely different, be my guest!

Yomiel working alongside the police to solve a case involving hackers and national security

One thing I think it would be awesome to RP is Yomiel helping the police in a case involving hackers and national security and stuff like that. I know he would be TERRIFIED at the idea of working for the government again, given how great the last time ended, but since this time it’s the police themselves asking him to work for them, at least there’s no risk for him to get wrongly arrested. Also Yomiel has a dislike for criminal hackers so this could be a motivation for him to “redeem” himself from his past crimes by helping to catch a real criminal and using his programming knowledge for something useful. Bonus if he has to work alongside CABANELA for that

Turnabout Meteorite

A possible idea for a thread that I have since I started playing AA: Phoenix ends up getting Yomiel’s case and defends him in court. 

Yomiel forming a friendship with any AA characters

Yomiel might be a reserved character but I really want him to make some friends. Like, the guy just needs a hug. Seriously. And he needs people to cheer him up and make him forget about the things he went through. I have some ideas for some characters already like Larry, Apollo or Phoenix. It would be fun seeing Yomiel having to deal with their different personalities and ideas and I just want people to bother him, like seriously. Bother Yomiel. He NEEDS it! 

Anything involving Yomiel in a different timeline/universe

Okay, I’m very used to rp him Post-game (his main timeline) but I’m all up for trying different things with him in different timelines. Be with his Manipulator self (I still want to develop him better in this blog) or with his Teenager self (I love this dorky teen) or even in his kid verse! I have lots of ideas and it would be great to change the scenario a little bit. It can also be in some of my AUs for him! I have a Star Wars AU, Western AU, and I can make even more AUs for him if I feel the need to! Just ask me about them, I love the AUs!

Sissel and Alma (and maybe even Emma) 

I’ve always headcannoed that Sissel and Alma would be great friends. That Alma would have been there for Sissel when Yomiel was arrested, helping her through with it. I love the idea of these two women being friends and gossiping about their husbands and being super supportive of each other. Alma and Sissel have been through a lot, let these women be friends and help each other out. 

Sissel being a heroine

Anything where it’s up to Sissel to save Yomiel, let her be an heroine for once instead od the damsel in distress, she needs more action. 

Ghost/Spirit Sissel

I really love the idea of spirit/ghost Sissel trying to help Yomiel. Could be in an AU where she dies near him and gets Temsik powers or is simply a ghost herself without powers, a wandering spirit. Maybe even allying herself with Alma so they can save the people they love.

[smoothgeometry]

FAQ: Who is The Colonel?

If you've been on the main blog page and not just mobile, I'm sure you've seen the banner up top as well as the blog description, which leads to the obvious question:

Who is The Colonel, exactly?

Well, he's the architect, to a great degree, behind the polycule I RP, and the only character that I write that isn't actually my own.

TLDR: I RP as Jade Curtiss from Tales of the Abyss (a once-popular JRPG from the Tales Of series). There's a lot of odd magic things in his setting that ultimately mess with the fabric of reality, so I don't think that it's a stretch to say it's possible for him to be dropoped somewhere on another plane if someone fucks with magic in just the right way.

With that said, his personal plot is deeply involved with his desire to go "back home" and survive in the universe he's landed himself in long enough to do so. He's done a good job of the latter, but so far, nothing he's researched has worked... well, not yet at least.

While Jade does have a playful side, it's usually to keep others at bay. Underneath the facade of social versatility lies a man whose trust is hard-won. Although he has painstakingly learned the value of others inhabiting the world alongside him, that doesn't mean he has to lie to himself about how competent they typically are. He is the sort of person whom many consider to be their friend, but does not consider many others to be his friend in turn.

Thus, the Garden.

As much as he would like to be an isolationist, that's no way to live. it's not conducive to good mental health, and if he grows to be unable to trust his own mind while he's working towards his goals, all would be lost (so far as he's concerned, anyway).

This blog is called "Smooth Geometry" because the members of the polycule jokingly refer to their group as "The Circle", a play on the phrase "circle of friends". But Jade prefers to think of them as either a petri dish (a "successful" experiment of his own design), or a garden.

The fact is that he vetted and put each of them through the ringer to ...mold them, in a sense. To direct their growth.

Jade would rather not make new friends unintentionally, and having this group satisfy his social (or other) needs severely limits the amount of bullshit or unexpected drama he has to handle. My personal headcanon is that he most certainly is a person with anti-social personality disorder; he's made his mistakes regarding socializing in the past, and gotten to the point where he's figured things out. His coping mechanisms are set, and they aren't the most destructive they could be. Having a specific group of people that he's emotionally involved in both reduces the outside drama he has to invest in (becaues he can't completely avoid it, lol), and gives him a controlled environment within which to indulge in his emotions so far as his personal interest.

Jade was able to make friends even in his source canon, after all. He has a clear grasp for interactions with others and what they entail/what others expect. Trial and error pay off, sometimes!

Anyways, he's gone through quite a bit, and suffered quite a bit more once arriving in this universe during The Great Reveal. He's a soldier and a survivor though, and has plenty of tools in his arsenal, and thus was able to build himself into a cushier life than most. Jade has in fact made a comfortable space for himself here, but that doesn't mean he's given up on potentially getting back home.

The Circle, his polycule, is full of people he loves (or would like to grow to love) in one way or another, but his priorities are still set neatly in order. They are quite carefully picked and cultivated flowers, so far as he's concerned, and he's managed to arrange (or is in the process of arranging) his garden into a peaceful place for himself, bloom by bloom. Jade would never argue that he's a good man, ever, but he can be a consistent partner if nothing else; that's better than most others by a wide margin, he thinks. Does he deserve it? Likely not. But he worked/is working hard to get these people and relationships in juuuuust the right places, and he's going to enjoy the convenience of that as he pleases.

[cryoexorcist]

I made very minor changes to my rules and bio pages, but for ease of access and for mobile users, I’ll copy and paste here:

on bio page: 

default verse: v. awakening to a new existence ( ADEPTUS. )

Zhongli gave Chongyun the trials to become adeptus, and Chongyun passed with little difficulty. With their own realm underneath Mt. Aocang, Chongyun can now shift into an arctic fox, and maintain foxlike features in human form. Chongyun keeps said traits hidden beneath seals so people don’t ask questions about how Chongyun was able to become adeptus. It’s easier to hide than answer as to why Rex Lapis is still alive.

on rules page:

Disclaimer: This is a Xiaoyun (Xiao x Chongyun) heavy blog. Either as a ship or as very close friends, I view them as very inseparable with an unshakable bond. There is proof in canon that they are close, I am merely expanding on that relationship.