#not only that but they advertise stuff you literally JUST bought

[macxidy]

Lmfao I love how all my ads on tumblr today are for stage podiums, and not just any stage podiums but the same ones I collected as reference pics last night for the current chapter I’m working on. I think I’m moving past the “unbridling hate” phase of advertisements, and more into the “slightly bemusing yet existential acceptance” phase. Everywhere I go on the Internet is just sites trying to get me to buy the things I’m drawing and writing about. Pls Google, I don’t want to purchase an entire 800,000 dollar outdoor stage. I just need to draw it for the chapter in my silly little story. LEAVE ME ALONE MY WALLET IS EMPTY

[elodieunderglass]

The notion of Scary Go Round being adjacent to Homestuck...I think you shifted my reality.

(In reference to this post / my tags)

Ok not to sound totally old-fashioned but this was not in a thematic way or anything!

Back in the day I used to like Dinosaur Comics. At the time, I would read webcomics by sitting at a computer in the morning and checking the ones I kept up with, like a newspaper. I regularly read Dinosaur Comics (updated daily i think?), XKCD, Gunnerkrigg Court, Scary Go Round, Questionable Content, and that sort of thing. Sometimes there’d be updates to other ones I liked, like Buttercup Festival or Hark! a Vagrant. It would take ten minutes, and that was Morning Computer Time.

At the time webcomic artists all knew each other, and the old-fashioned desktop computer browsing design meant that you were looking at them on a big screen, which meant the sidebars were visible. The sidebars would contain links to all of their friends’ comics or recommended comics. There would only ever be like 20 links max. so every day you would read Dinosaur Comics and could, from there, click the sidebar in the left to get to the creator’s own favorite comics. Dinosaur Comics was a good day’s starting point since it linked directly to pretty much all the webcomics I listed above.

(I’m sorry if I’m over explaining or under explaining this.)

(This was before social-media-ized internet was popular, and this was just how you read stuff.)

There was also something TopatoCo / a guy called Jeff who had his own webcomic that I read sometimes, but more importantly he was a central point that sold merchandise for a bunch of these comics, and I bought a Jonathan Colton t-shirt from him. He sold a line of Problem Sleuth/MS Paint adventures stuff and I remember this coming up suddenly in advertising newsletters I got I think. problem sleuth went from 0 to 60 very quickly, but I never really understood it.

Anyway, MS Paint adventures was linked in the sidebar of a lot of these comics!! The people in these circles really hyped it up. and I did read Problem Sleuth, dutifully, but it bored me. Then the same guy started posting his next work, Homestuck. I read the first few pages as they came out and then stopped clicking it. It just wasn’t for me.

So it isn’t so much about them being adjacent in any way apart from Ryan North, the guy who ran Dinosaur Comics, having a sidebar on his website labelled something like “the girls” with his recommendations for other things you might like, like Scary Go Round - XKCD - MS Paint adventures.

And I was literally there dutifully looking at the first page of homestuck before all the homestucks read it, admittedly going “oh nah this ain’t it”, but, like. I was there. I was standing next to the impact crater.

Like every day I would check on my friend T Rex and look directly at a link that led to the homestuck website and check on my friend Buttercup Festival instead. Then I would turn off the computer and be done with computer for the day.

It’s very weird to realise that this is not how people use the internet any more.

[bootleg-nessie]

Things that will happen in the future (based on my own experiences with time travel):

***FAQs at the end***

*All of these observations are copied directly from my notes in roughly the order I took them in

*Don’t ask about the interchanging use of past/present/future tense, you know how that stuff is with time travel

Women just started all growing three boobs instead of two. Scientists baffled

Genetically engineered catboys (no literally)

The great pyramid of Giza has been converted into a Bass Pro Shop

The entire state of Rhode Island was bought by some rich tech CEO who promptly dug a 500 foot wide trench around the entire state so that it could in fact be an island. It was soon converted into the world’s largest parking lot

Pollution has gotten so bad that fresh oxygen is now delivered straight to most homes via a subscription service

Basic necessities such as food, water, and housing are now provided for free by the government, but only for the top 1% of wealth holders

Insulin now costs twice as much as rent. “Get fucked,” say pharma companies

92.6% of new electronic appliances now have smartphone integration and require a monthly subscription to use

Most billionaires have real estate on earth’s moon

As an ongoing film experiment, Taika Waititi successfully convinced a Nebraska man that he’s been raptured and is now in heaven. He actually got Truman Show’d and now millions of viewers tune in every week to watch God (played by John DiMaggio) manipulate Robert into confronting his own views, battle cognitive dissonance, and face the realization that he might not have been as good of a person on Earth as he thought he was

Carrots have gone extinct, as have highland cows

Species of extinct animals and plants now are being posthumously renamed after the billionaires and elites most directly responsible for killing then off

Researchers discovered a sentient colony of fungus off the coast of Chile, it prefers to go by Fleebo and appears to have a incredibly complex intelligence far greater than any other observed organic being

Nobody knows where Ireland went. It literally just disappeared off the face of the earth one day and nobody bothered to question it. The story couldn’t compete in the news cycle with the recent news about a company in China that made the first real life pokemon. An entire civilization of people gone and I’m the only one who seems to remember it or even care

Fleebo and its offspring have annexed Madagascar and are threatening any retaliation with nuclear warfare and “making The Last of Us a reality.” Nobody knows if Fleebo actually has the capabilities to do this, but after the Lovecraft incident we’re all TOO goddam scared to fuck around and find out

Large snails have replaced cats and dogs as the most common household pet. Snail culture has largely taken over the world, especially Japan

The president of the United States is now decided with an oiled up twerking competition. Most people were hesitant at first but this has produced vastly more competent leaders so now everyone just kinda goes along with it

With the cost of living crisis only worsening with time, selling tattoo space on your body to advertisers has become common as people struggle to afford rent and pay their bills

North and South Korea have reunited into “Korea 2.0”

Germany has split up into East and West Germany again

Belgium and France have been annexed by West Germany and renamed “Wester Germany” and “Westest Germany” respectively

The entirety of Florida is now underwater. Most of Kansas is too for some reason that scientists refuse to explain because they’ve “sworn an oath to the eldritch gods” and that “much worse things would happen” if they did

The melting ice caps in Antarctica unveiled a lost civilization of intelligent creatures descended from a species of lungfish, predating human civilization by millions of years. They planned on hibernating for another 10-15 million years to observe the course of evolution on Earth and are very very angry at humans for waking them up prematurely and ruining all of that with global warming

The politically correct term for lungfish people is “Dipnoid” but most people refer to them by a variety of slurs, such as “finwalker” and “kelp muncher” (not that they even eat kelp)

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has now increased to nearly half the size of what was formerly known as Canada and has been colonized entirely by pirates (the flag is actually pretty cool). The pirate nation has the 17th largest economy in the world and is projected to surpass the United States in GDP

Africa is about 2% smaller. Nobody knows why. Most people point to Fleebo, who denies having any involvement

All human-Dipnoid interaction was promptly banned by most world governments, except for the GPGPRP (Great Pacific Garbage Patch Republic of Pirates), whom the Dipnoids rely upon extensively for trade

Scientists have used DNA from fossils to recreate other species of humans. We now live alongside them like we did for thousands of years before everyone besides Homo sapiens went extinct. Racism is at an all time high

Class C and above robots are now legally recognized by most progressive countries as people

The United States government has been exposed for secretly funneling billions of dollars into the GPGPRP and using it to fund terrorist operations all over the world.

A new major religion revolving around Dave Grohl has skyrocketed in popularity. Grohilsm is now the world’s largest religion, second only to Fleeboism

Scientists discovered a new continent in the Pacific Ocean, and then promptly lost it again. Most people are convinced this was just an elaborate practical joke, but scientists “swear it definitely happened”

For a brief period of about 30 years, everything in George Orwell’s 1984 happened almost exactly as written in the book. Literally 1984

It was revealed that Jeff Epstein didn’t kill himself. He actually faked his death and spent the next few years in a drug-fueled episode of psychosis making sock puppets in a cave in Italy and then molesting said sock puppets until he died from a sock puppet related illness

Bigfoot was discovered off the coast of Georgia doing cocaine with a congregation of alligators. When questioned, he said he normally lives in Montana and was only there on vacation. He is now a celebrity, and has been featured in a number of tv shows and films, two of which he won an Oscar for. Last I checked, he was a washed up actor living in Hollywood with a reanimated Neanderthal woman

The GPGPRP raided most of England’s museums with the object of “doing exactly what they did for the last few centuries” England was understandably furious, but the rest of the world found it rather amusing

England declared war on the GPGPRP, which it promptly lost after hackers brought down the entire country’s military overnight. Much like in the 21st century, England is the world’s laughing stock

The entirety of Luxembourg relocated itself to the moon

Russia attempted to take over most of Eurasia. In retaliation to the full global effort to stop them, they launched nukes at the world’s 600 most populous cities outside of its current territory. Most of the warheads were stopped in time, but a few major metropolitan areas got hit pretty badly, including Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Chengdu, Mexico City, and Istanbul. Japan was understandably super pissed that Hiroshima and Nagasaki got nuked for a second time

In the wake of the nuclear holocaust, Canada assumed control over what was formerly Russia and assimilated many of its citizens and leaders into its own society and government. Under the new rule of formerly Russian leaders, Canada became a puppet state for the second coming of Russia. It annexed much of the United States, Mongolia, China, and a handful of other countries, becoming “the world’s first megacountry.” Crungolaska now controls a majority of the northern hemisphere

As part of a practical joke by Adam Sandler, Tom Hanks was actually marooned on a desert island like in Castaway. He lasted less than a week before he died. When I left this era of the future, Adam Sandler was serving a lifetime sentence in prison for murder

Fringe groups of crows with above-average intelligence have started popping up around the world. So far they have been observed forming small communities, crafting relatively complex tools, using rudimentary speech, performing rituals, and creating music

Aliens visited earth and had a formal meeting with many of our world leaders, but decided to leave us alone for a few thousand more years because humanity is “not yet mature enough to handle the responsibilities of interstellar travel.” They have incentivized us with a the blueprints for an Alcubierre Drive and a means to produce the exotic matter to fuel it once they deem us as being ready

The original colony of settlers on Mars has declared independence, officially becoming the first country not on Earth

We sent Tom Cruise back to space but this time we just left him there

The tether for the space elevator broke. The town known as Vatorville, famous for being the location of the takeoff point of the elevator shuttle on Earth, was completely decimated as tens of thousands of miles of steel cable came crashing back down. There were no survivors

Most people in first and second world countries have mandatory microchip implants that serve as a personal ID

Last Thursdayism has been largely denounced by quantum physicists. Current theories now revolve around “Next Thursdayism,” the belief that the entire universe was created in the future and that we all exist as a memory in the past

Synthetic organ farms for transplants and research have become a massive industry worth billions of dollars. However, there is still a huge black market for organically grown human organs, as they’re much cheaper to acquire and aren’t taxed at the exorbitant rates that lab-grown organs are

China dug a hole all the way to the center of the Earth. Turns out it’s hollow and there are people living inside. Who knew?

A university reconstructed the entire city of Rome as it was in its early days during the Roman Empire. It’s actually pretty historically accurate, except for the fact that there’s a lot less sex because it’s run by a bunch of sweaty history nerds

After Rome 2 resulted in the creation of a cult revolving around the Roman god of the dead that gained traction as a minor religion, Pluto was officially reinstated as a planet by NASA when cultists picketed their headquarters every day for nearly 3 years straight. “Fine, we’ll give these fucking virgins what they want so they’ll finally shut the hell up,” said NASA’s administrator in chief

In a display of the biotechnical prowess of Disney’s Imagineers, all the animatronics in Disney’s Hall of Presidents were replaced with clones of the originals, which went about exactly as well as you’d expect. After reports of the presidents hurling a series of racial slurs and other obscenities at the first black family to enter surfaced, the project was shut down almost immediately after it had opened. Minority admission to Magic Kingdom plummeted to 2.3% of its numbers from the previous year, making it the second whitest place on earth after a taylor swift concert

Plastic now makes up about 3% of every organism on earth by weight

Public officials are now required by law to take shrooms before running for office

Trees are considered a rare and highly sought after commodity, and are usually only owned by public institutions and the rich (the vast majority of oxygen farms use algae to produce oxygen)

FAQs:

FAQ: What time period(s) did you go to?

A: I have no fucking clue. The world stopped using the Gregorian calendar in 2063 after a gamma ray burst hit the sun. The GRB led to stellar ablation, which changed the length of a year on Earth. The sun would continue to lose mass at an accelerated rate for several more years, with the length of the year changing slightly from year to year. The world adopted a variety of different calendars which kept being updated frequently and were often super confusing and contradictory. I traveled to about a dozen different points in time, which based on my best estimates spanned within a few millennia of the current date.

FAQ: How did you obtain a time machine?

A: I think it was the 17th or 18th of June, 2055? That night, a large sci-fi looking box thingy roughly the size of a VW Bus appeared a few hundred yards away in the open field in front of my house. I tried to take a picture of the box, but for some reason the closer I got, the more the image on my camera started to become fuzzy, and by the time I got close enough to take a decent picture, the camera had stopped working altogether. I pulled open a door to reveal a corpse inside that was charred beyond recognition, who appeared to have suffocated and/or burned to death during a fire that damaged most of the interior. I also noticed a number of strange tumors and growths on the body. I pressed a random button on the remains of what I believed to be a control panel, expecting nothing to happen, but the door closed automatically and I suddenly lost consciousness. When I came to, I exited the box, expecting to still be in the field in front of my house, but instead found myself a ways outside of a small snowy village that based on my best estimates, was somewhere in northern Asia around 2-3 thousand years ago. The villagers started coming after me with spears, so I quickly ran back to the box and pressed another button, hoping it would return me to from whence I came. This time, the people I found (who were thankfully much nicer and spoke a dialect of English that I could mostly understand) told me that it was the year 506 of the PGRB-Δ4 calendar (the calendar that the United Territories was using at the time). I repeated this maybe a dozen more times trying to get home until I landed in 2023, which as far as I could tell, was the closest I had gotten back to my original time so far. It was at this point that I decided to stay and seek medical attention, as I was rather concerned about some nasty new growths on my arms and legs similar to that which I had seen on the corpse.

FAQ: Where is the time machine now?

A: No idea. It disappeared a few days after I landed in 2023. My best guess is that some poor sap found it and ended up sometime else.

(I never ask for likes/reblogs but I literally spent fucking WEEKS on this one so if you liked it pls show me some love <3)

[sinnamongirls]

dilf!patrick ramblings / thoughts !!

he’s worked in finance for almost a decade and plays tennis for fun now, not to compete (he gave up competitive tennis the second he graduated high school)

lived in new york city his whole life, except when he was in college, but the second he graduated he came back to the city

patrick works at one of the bigger finance firms in nyc so he knows a concerning amount of people in washington but that means you’ve met more politicians than you can count on one hand (you work in advertising, you shouldn’t be meeting this many politicians)

spoils you, buys you literally every single thing you look at. almost impulse bought you a puppy bc you looked at it for a little too long (in his mind, at least)

tries to keep up with today’s media and trends but he fails for the most part- the only thing he’s mildly good at keeping up with is fashion? you never quite understood how or why but he’s so well dressed most of the time your friends think he’s around your age when he’s really a decent bit older

always smells good. like. crazy good. it causes you to get a little jealous but honestly patrick’s so obsessed with you he just brushes off everyone else

not big into pda, but he is a fan of casual dominance - always opens the car door for you, pulls your chair out for you when you go out to dinner, that kind of stuff. he has your location on his phone too— not in a stalker way, he just needs to know you’re okay if you’re out (esp if you’re traveling)

scary smart, like, he has his masters and it lowkey turns you on how much stuff he knows (he’s really good at bar trivia and your coworkers get mad at you bc he’s messing up your company’s trivia league structure but also your supervisor thinks patrick’s major eye candy so she lets you get away with it)

he’s also the perfect wedding date, perfect guy to bring home to your parents, he’s just… perfect? even though he’s like.. way older than you he’s just.. so nice and everyone loves him it’s hard to resist his charm

literally your biggest supporter when it comes to your career

also incredibly good in bed but who doubted that in the slightest (I could do a whole separate post on dilf!patrick smut)

he loves kissing, loves making out- literally anytime you’re restless he’ll just ask if you wanna make out for a bit and honestly? it clears your head better than sex sometimes

primarily lives in a very nice, rent controlled apartment in manhattan overlooking central park he inherited from his grandfather

he also owns homes in los angeles and london, though (they’re both really really nice and he insists on you taking your friends to london and la just so he gets his moneys worth on the homes even though money isn’t even an issue for him)

almost went into politics or law but his grandfather was a politician (and a very infamous one, he wasn’t the best dude but he was filthy rich so it cancels out) and that turned him off from it for a long time

deep down he wonders what life would’ve been like if he’d went that route, but then he probably wouldnt have met you then

literally could go on for hours and hours but I’ll chill for now

[genericpuff]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvO2Fo1vbJU/?igshid=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==

I don't know if you have seen the last thing RS posted on instagram, and I don't wanna sound mean or like I'm criticizing every single thing she does, but, why does this feels a bit off? Like, I know every author needs money, and that's why they sell books, special editions and merch from those books. But seeing how some people who went to that last "book signing" now want to order or buy ANOTHER lo book just to get an autograph or that "exclusive doodle" feels a bit... Idk, bad? Like, the fans have to spend more money than other fans just to get this stuff? It feels a bit like what happened with that Persephone + Ares book that had a special edition that was all black, but costed more than the regular edition so the fans had to spend more money if they wanted their lo novels to look good together. Idk, maybe i'm just seeing too much into it, but I still wanted to ask your opinion on the matter.

Love your work, btw. Lo rekindled is so good, and your art is beautiful!

OKAY SO

I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THIS INSTAGRAM POST LOL

so I looked into it and yeah! it's off! it's super off!

story time, but there's this band I'm really into where, 1-2 years ago, they had released two new separate EP's, and they were selling them individually as special editions, only for them to then SELL THEM ALL OVER AGAIN AS BUNDLED VERSIONS AND THIS JUST LIKE

IT FEELS VERY SIMILAR LOL

there was also a time where this Youtuber musician my husband was really into was selling vinyls, and we managed to snag a copy in the hour that they were available, only for them to start selling SIGNED copies the week after they had sold out of the original prints

it's just an overall "ech" move because it really screws over your audience for paying attention/getting in first, y'know? That's what's such a big deal about being in a fandom, a lot of people like being "first" so to sell something under the precedent that it's "limited edition" just to print more with an even COOLER thing attached feels like such a fuck you. They're literally just trying to gouge more money out of people who have already bought the thing and "need" the exclusive copy.

This just goes to show btw there was nothing stopping her from signing books personally at SDCC. That feels like such a middle finger to the people who paid money to go to and be at SDCC (travel costs AND attendance costs) esp the people who cosplayed as LO characters and were clearly specifically there for Rachel just to be given a stamp and shooed away with zero conversation (as I talked about in a previous post) and then find out later after you've already gone home days later that you can get a PERSONALLY SIGNED AND DOODLED COPY if you go and buy a brand new book in one specific bookstore. That's so lame man, I can't even.

Just to add btw, not related to your ask really, but it really goes in conjunction with it, there was a tweet recently from Rachel advertising some new t-shirts.

But people who bought the shirts reported that they're INCREDIBLY cheaply made and don't look anything like the products listed. You can even see the low ratings on them but when you actually view them-

I do not feel the need to say it any louder for the people in the back, it's being spoken clearly at this point - WT and Rachel are cashing out on what little merit they have left, they do not care.

AND Y'KNOW WHAT I FOUND OUT WHILE WRITING THIS POST ????

THEY CHANGED THE FUCKING THUMBNAIL!!!

THAT'S NOT WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE 2 DAYS AGO, I CHECKED IT MYSELF BACK WHEN IT WAS FIRST POSTED TO REDDIT AND IT WAS THE GREEN VERSION.

THEY'RE LITERALLY CHANGING THE THUMBNAILS AND ADS TO DISCREDIT THE REVIEWS BEING LEFT.

DO NOT FALL FOR IT. BUYER BEWARE.

[kafus]

if you ever feel up to it, i'd love to hear how you got the mew. hearing stories about people and their pokemon is really fun.

SOMEONE TOOK THE BAIT LET'S GOOO i wanted to talk about thisSDFFDKS

anyway i got my hadou mew through basically a miracle encounter - back in 2020 i was buying a lot of older pokemon games to fill holes in my collection, either games i never owned or games that i lost over the years from childhood, and as for my missing gen 3 games, i ended up going for japanese copies of firered and sapphire instead of english because having foreign carts is neat but mostly they're just a lot cheaper. buying secondhand pokemon games is always fun because often times the seller doesn't wipe or even check the save file and especially if the save file has a lot of playtime, they're like time capsules from a stranger right. so both games come in and the sapphire has nothing interesting but i'm perusing the boxes of this firered and uhhh

LMAO my initial reaction says it all, i literally just found this thing on a completely random firered cart i bought! it was not advertised to have mew in it on the ebay listing, in fact the seller i bought from sells a LOT of imported japanese pokemon games (and other gba titles) so i imagine he just has a pile of these and he picked out a random one to mail me without so much as checking what was on it.

of course mythical pokemon on gen 3 carts are dubious, it's not like it's particularly hard to gameshark a mythical pokemon, especially considering that i've gotten a secondhand file before with shit like a box full of Deoxys caught at level 2 on the first route in hoenn LOL... so i was pretty serious about checking for legality on this thing as best i could - backed up the save file and inspected it in pkhex, all data was 100% accurate to the event and also reasonable RNG wise, like normal random IVs and stuff... checked for archived versions of this event mew, none of them were identical to online injectable ones, which means the owner couldn't have downloaded and injected it... and most of all, context clues

here's ancient pictures of this mew traded to my english leafgreen so it's readable for everyone - i had not done anything with this mew yet so it's completely untouched from how i found it here. we can tell from looking at this that whoever owned this mew was training it with the exp share as its still holding it and is level 23 despite being met at level 10, and the moveset... solarbeam, mega punch, dragon claw?? very random moveset that i can only imagine a child using. this mew looks like it was played with by its owner legitimately. additionally not shown here, the firered cart had a lot of playtime and like 2/3 of the dex complete, the boxes were full of pokemon that the owner had been breeding and a few unhatched eggs, like i hatched one and it was a completely normal eevee so they may have been getting extra eevees for pokedex purposes etc.

basically i cannot 100% confirm this mew was obtained legitimately without teleporting back in time and getting that japanese movie preorder bonus myself, but there is literally nothing strange about this mew and the save file it comes from is well loved and appeared to be played by a child doing normal pokemon stuff. so for all intents and purposes, this mew is definitely legit to me. actually insane happenstance. i have never gotten anything this crazy from a secondhand file before

think of it this way. some japanese kid in 2005 preorders a pokemon movie > he goes to the store to redeem it for a mew in person. in 2005. in japan. > he plays with the mew a bit > at some point he stops playing pokemon > he sells the game to some random american seller after never wiping the save or removing the mew > the american seller buys jp pokemon games in bulk to resell on ebay so he has a ton of them and probably doesn't check them for what's on them or the old save files > when i order it from this random ebay listing, the american seller picks a random fire red cartridge out of his bulk stash and mails it to me > it ends up in my hands 15 years later after the kid first got this mew

like holy shit it's a small fucking world huh

another old convo from the RM discord because i'm nostalgic about it, i had just started talking here at the time... i'm gonna be honest the ribbon master challenge and the people i met through it genuinely changed my life and this mew came into my life at the perfect time so it means a lot to me on top of being insanely cool

anyways i went on about that longer than necessary but yeah bless my mew i love him

[thedreadvampy]

My housemate is moving out in January

She told us this a week or two ago, when she sat down and, after sitting with us watching TV for over an hour, said "hey so I bought a house and I'm moving out. We agreed on 2 months notice so I won't move until the end of January."

The last time she talked in the immediate terms about buying a house was in 2021, when the sale she was working on fell though and she was unemployed so it was a "when I'm back in a position to look I'll start looking again." Since then I've occasionally asked her how she's doing on the house buying front and she's been like "oh I'm getting there financially" but hasn't mentioned anything concrete.

She didn't tell us she was looking at places. She didn't tell us she had put in an offer. She told us when the offer was finalised. A week AFTER she emailed the letting agent about getting out of her part of the lease. And, it increasingly feels like, only because the letting agent's response was that we had to agree to change the lease.

The letting agent's response (which our housemate obviously didn't copy us into; we had to follow up separately and they copied us into the email chain) also includes that when we change the lease, they're empowered to change the rent, quote, "no cap". Rent was already going up in January - there's no possibility of Sam and I paying her share of the rent.

The really fucking upsetting thing is we're not strangers. This isn't a casual "housemate we found on flatshare" thing. She and Sam have lived together literally their entire adult lives. Me and her have known each other well over a decade. I lived in her and Sam's flat when I was homeless. We were the first people she came out to as trans. We're not super close but I thought we were fucking friends. And she's literally gone out of her way to not talk to us about this for what must have been months while the sale completed - which means she's lied to my face at least once cause I've asked her about her finances in that time (cause she's in a job she hates that she only took to get the house money, so it's like. when we've been commiserating about work stuff I'm often asking 'are you almost free?'). she literally went out of her way to talk to the letting agents before talking to us about putting us in a situation where we could lose our fucking home.

And she keeps. trying. to pretend nothing's happened. Every time I've seen her since then she's not mentioned anything or apologised or anything, she just keeps chatting away and offering hugs and fistbumps like nothing's happened. Like we're still fucking friends.

All it would take for us to still be friends and to be happy for her would have been one fucking sentence in the groupchat like "hey, just put an offer in on a house" or "I'm looking at properties, just so you know, that might happen in the next few months". Like nobody begrudges her for buying a house! It's very cool for her! She's 31 she's worked really hard to get the money I would love to be happy for her! Unfortunately she decided avoiding conflict is more important than giving the people she fucking LIVES WITH (who btw fronted her a month on the rent here while she was unemployed and agreed to take on a larger proportion of the move-in cost back in 2021, if we're still holding ourselves to shit we said 2.5 years ago), so no, you are not entitled to our friendship or to going back to normal.

like if she'd been honest with us it would have been something to process but we'd have had time to figure out our next steps. instead she's left us in a position where we have to find a new roommate before she gives her one month notice, which means finding someone by the end of December, which oh look that's the middle of the fucking Christmas holidays. and she didn't tell us anything until the START of December, or copy us into her conversation with the letting agent, meaning we still don't know what the rent on that space will be so we aren't yet in a position to advertise it. Has she offered to help find a roommate? Has she fuck. Has she offered to help out by moving her move-out date? Nah, she's moving as soon as she gets the keys because, quote, "that means her finances won't have to change". SOUNDS LOVELY. NOT HAVING YOUR FINANCES SUDDENLY CHANGE. I THINK THAT SOUNDS LIKE A REALLY REASONABLE FUCKING GOAL.

Thirteen fucking years she's lived with Sam. Four fucking weeks over Christmas she's left us to figure out a way to not turbofuck our living situation. And she's got the fucking nerve to try and pretend we should be interacting like nothing's changed. Jesus Christ. What a fucking unhinged way to treat...anybody, honestly. never mind the friends-your-entire-adult-life part. literally cannot imagine a scenario in which I would buy a house without telling the people I lived with.

(haha actually this is what my parents divorced over so apparently it's not unusual. although at least my dad had the decency to tell the woman he shared finances with at the point he put in an offer not the point the fucking sale went through.)

Like we'll be fine. It's a huge city centre flat with decent rent and queer housemates, hopefully even when the rent goes up it'll be an easy sell in a city with a huge housing shortage and big queer community. We've got a couple of people interested already, sight unseen - worst case scenario we have to live with someone we don't get on with. And it's given Sam and me a push to look at our own finances and as of today, we've got a mortgage decision in principle and can start looking at flats in the area - mind, we'll be transparent upfront and tell any prospective housemates that yeah, we're looking to buy and move out in the next 6-12 months, and we'll tell them if we put an offer in, because we're decent fucking people who aren't going to spring that on someone out of the blue.

But it's been I think 2 weeks and I'm so fucking angry I could spit. It's such a fucking betrayal. And frankly you know selfishly like. I just had a breakup a couple of months ago, I'm in the middle of moving jobs, both me and Sam have a history of housing instability and this has been the first decent, stable, safe, not-mouldy not-freezing home I think any of us have had, and this is so fucking triggering and upscuttling I could just start biting. like I was talking to my friend about it last week and it's just like. Can I have One Fucking Thing of the three main tentpoles of survival - home, work, relationships - that are fucking stable right now? because shit has been In Flux lately. and at least the work and relationship stuff has changed because of my decisions. going through all that work to make myself short-term unstable to gain long-term stability has been really hard and draining and then just as I was reaching the crisis point with work stuff BOOM, IT'S HOUSING INSTABILITY WITH A STEEL CHAIR. fuck. seriously fuck this and fuck her. we're going to make something good come of it but what a deeply, unbelievably shitty thing to do.

[hogmilked]

bought like actual skincare products for the first time in years and have some notes.

the whole anti-aging cosmetic industry is really hard to avoid. i was getting stuff at a marshall’s (discount store, carries a lot of overstock from brands) to save money and it took me almost an hour to find a handful of products that weren’t advertising “anti-aging” and “youthfulness” when i just wanted a cleanser, toner, and sunscreen to help with both peeling skin and greasiness

no seriously. i found ONE facial sunscreen that didn’t have retinol or hyaluronic acid or collagen or any of that stuff in it. it was tucked away in the men’s section with beard oil and cologne because apparently facial sunscreen with no added bullshit is only for men, and women (this is borderline a fast fashion store it’s highly gendered) can only protect themselves from skin cancer if it also makes sure they never develop a smile line

so many of those serums and creams and shit are bullshit anyway. hell a lot of people can just do a wash and sunscreen and be all set. at most a basic cleanser, basic moisturizer, and sunscreen are the absolute most you need. i threw in an exfoliating toner to help even out a couple gnarly acne scars and help with how flaky my skin gets sometimes. if your skin needs more than that, you really should probably just go to a dermatologist or look for actual dermatologist’s advice instead of dumping a bunch of random oils and serums and creams n shit you saw on tiktok or instagram on your skin and hoping the benefits listed on the box will be true for you

IN MOST CASES no amount of skincare products can make up for lifestyle change. i decided to put a little more work in because the lifestyle changes i need to make to help be less oily (i literally get so greasy it makes my eyes burn) and flaky aren’t currently feasible, so i’m trying to give my skin a bit of a boost, but literally the best my skin has ever felt was when i was just drinking a shit ton of water and eating super well

other people’s skincare will rarely work the same on anyone else. everyone’s skin needs are different. when i was in high school i had a gnarly abrasion/chemical burn under my eye because i had tried a routine i saw online that was way too rough and overbearing for me. again, you 100% don’t need a 30 step routine

that being said, i used a $4 korean cleanser, a $6 glycolic acid toner (exfoliant), 100% pure african shea butter, and some sunscreen formulated for use on the face. my skin feels great. my acne doesn’t itch as much. the toner was the most expensive part. the beauty industry is a scam

[writingsbychlo]

Hi!!! So ummm, in a modern au, what do you think each of the batboys would do for living?

hope you are ok<3

i am okay thank u <3

i ended up writing way more than i intended lol so i put it below the cut. this seriously made me want to write some modern!au stuff for them

rhys is a ceo of a company he inherited from his father. he’s spent years trying to make it clean and honest because when he got it there was so much bad politics and hate surrounding his company. his family were not popular at all. rich, but hated. he introduced fair wages, longer maternity leave, clean energy, charity galas, a lot of stuff. he’s now very popular about about 8 times richer because of it. a good sum of that money comes from interviews (where he says things like “I didn’t make improvements for the money, I did it because it’s right. the money doesn’t hurt though, now I can spoil my wife even more.”) and also brand deals because he’s hot and companies like to advertise through him. he gets a lot of fancy watches and custom suits.

azriel worked for rhys’ dad doing shady shit before he died and rhys inherited the company. when they were 13, at a sleepover, rhys dared az to try and hack his fathers company. he did. but he was caught. instead of reporting it rhys’ dad promised not to tell the cops if az signed a contract to work for him when he was 16. poor baby az did it because he didn’t want to get in trouble. the literal day after az’s 16th birthday he cashed that in and had az start hacking for him. which turned into ‘spying’ on business partners and reporting back what they’re doing and who they talk to online. which turned into paying them vaguely threatening visits when azriel had a growth spurt to 6ft5 and broad af at 17. by 18 azriel had definitely been forced to do some illegal shit way worse than hacking but couldn’t get out. he’d practically signed his life over. when rhys inherited the company at the ripe young age of 21, he made azriel watch as every single copy of that contract was shredded. then they took the shredder out into the garden and burned the whole pile of pieces. azriel cried. azriel also decided if he hadn’t had to drop straight out of highschool to work for rhys’ dad he’d have wanted to go to college. he wants to take law now, so nobody has to go through what he did and get stuck. rhys offers to pay for a top university for him. az refuses, he took online night classes for three years while working a low level job at rhys’ firm. he’s now a ‘private investigator’ for rhys and a ‘bounty hunter’ on the side. because sue him, he kinda likes scaring the bad guys, he just never likes hurting the good ones.

cassian owns a boxing gym funded by rhys. he didn’t know it was funded by rhys for a long time. he had ALWAYS had the dream, all through high school he always knew what he wanted to do and he told az and rhys constantly. it teaches self-defence and cool courses like sword fighting and archery and has kids clubs for martial arts at school times. it has women only evenings, it has a teens only evening, cassian always wanted everyone to have a safe space. he’d described it perfectly, and rhys had found him the perfect building for it. and bought the building. and had someone pretend to be a landlord to give him a really low rent agreement. and then also paid if cassian’s designers and decorators to give him low rates. and then bought him a whole load of equipment and said “i found a wholesaler. no you can’t see their website they don’t have one, it’s a CEO to CEO thing.” cassian only found out when visiting az at work one day and seeing all the legally documents in a “cassian” file in azriel’s usually locked desk drawer. rhys has az do the legal work for it. cassian was MAD at rhys. but also touched. but MAD. they had a big argument and he promised to pay rhys back, rhys refused to accept any of it. they argued some more. it ended with cassian getting rhys to increase the monthly rent he pays back and with rhys crying a little bit and clinging to cassian and saying “why can’t you just let me give you things? it’s not like I can’t afford it!”

side note; cassian says ‘I don’t see you forcing azriel to accept expensive gifts!’ to which azriel growls and says ‘he bought my apartment. building. because I said I thought rent was too steep for me back when I was working down a couple floors and going to college too, he refuses to let me pay him proper rent now.’

[traegorn]

Will I eventually get back to posting about geeky and witchcraft stuff? Yes.

But apparently people being absolute stripped lug nuts about anyone ever giving Tumblr money for something is occupying my time these few days. Like... I'm not even advocating that anyone else give Tumblr money.

It's hilarious.

Honestly I see folks freaking out about twitter refugees, and "brands" on the site... and I'm just confused. Like, does no one remember that we used to have a ton of brand accounts on this platform when it was more profitable a decade ago? Like all you had to avoid them was... not follow them? And if Marvel blazes a post instead of buying a banner ad... it's not really any different than the existing experience.

Like here's the thing -- I assume a lot of the folks whining have never bought ads online. I have, on multiple platforms. If you buy an ad on Facebook, you can target specific interests. Until they made a modification a while back, Facebook would let you pick the folk's political affiliations and religions. I could have advertised specifically to all the Wiccans in Boise if I felt like it.

And that's because Facebook collects a ton of personal information about you. That's their power.

Tumblr on the other hand doesn't. But that's why when you Blaze a post the only real "targeting" you can do is literally the vaguest geographical stuff. It's why you see the weirdest stuff here -- and that's why it's great. You're seeing stuff you don't care about because you are a mystery to the site. It means your privacy is intact.

And finally -- the policing of other users is just... weird? Like getting mad at folks for not using the site "properly" is downright weird and gross. I've seen users harassed for blazing posts, for interacting with celebrities, and for not thinking brand accounts are a big deal. You get to curate your own experience, and they get to curate theirs. Stop trying to control other folks.

tl;dr: Advertising pays the bills to keep Tumblr's lights on, and you don't need to freak out about Brands or harass others for interacting with them. Be an adult.

[floweryrkive]

honestly, i think cancelling yunjin is so stupid. it's one cup of starbucks.. and buying/drinking starbucks or mcdonalds or anything does not necessarily mean that the person who bought it supports israel. You call her ignorant when ur literally cancelling people over food and other stupid stuff."oh but they support israel!" let me ask you something, is boycotting actually doing something? Theres little evidence on how boycotting has affected anything, and the only thing thats happening is annoying people. I feel bad for the people, and i dont support israel, but its so fucking annoying seeing this happen. Grow up. ive literally seen ppl who supported palestine start hating this whole thing bc of the countless petty and annoying things.

i was thinking about whether i should answer this or delete this because i knew there was going to be someone who would say this exact stuff at one point after i would say i won't be writing for yunjin for now.

let's break it down :

I am NOT cancelling her, nor have i mentioned anywhere that she should be cancelled ( i think cancel culture is a whole lot of toxicity which is another topic) I am merely disappointed in her actions because she has faced this situation before and tell me one thing, if she had faced this same thing before and that time she responded accordingly ( which was deleting the post and apologising actually) would she not know how this would affect her/look abt her viewpoints? Also the fact that Jake from Enhypen ( her co-worker mind you.) apologised immediately after being called out for consuming st@rbucks on live is saying a lot too isn't it?

One starbucks...i can't even think of how stupid this statement is. She's a CELEBRITY. Her influence matters! Why do you think they do advertisements and shit with them?!

It's not just food! It's multinational companies directly funding these terrorist groups that commit genocides! st@rbucks and mcdon@lds are apart of these MNCS! And before you come and say the SK starbucks is not associated with the American one, they are still paying for using the brand name.

No one's claiming she's a zi0nist, but considering the fact that there's literally a hybe boycott going on rn due to them working with 🛵( a very raging zion!st who has literal proof of his support of isr@el as well as messaging pro-palestine armys is very telling) her still buying is obviously going to be showing a lot about her ignorance ???

and don't get me started on boycotting not working because if you lookup on twitter there's enough proof that these companies are pulling strings to literally gain sales that are dropping drastically!

article

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the main issue comes when this is turned into a fuckass fanwar instead of simply calling these idols out for consuming these products. stop defending her actions when clearly she is aware of everything going on ( she's literally the most online member in lesserafim, she has a coworker who apologised for consuming st@rbucks, there's trucks that are in front of that damn hybe building to urge them to stop working with 🛵) and the people you're talking abt hating this thing are hating it because fans like you are being so tone deaf and blindly defending these idols, turning this into fanwars!

all you had to do was search abt this instead of blindly accepting her actions but instead you choose to come into my inbox telling me to grow up.

i don't mean any malice or hate towards you, but please, look into why exactly people are calling her out, don't lose your moral sense over this. i hope you are able to see the issue soon enough. have a good day.

[deansgapjacket]

Journal update

So my dad found his old 1995 planner and it had one of these plastic album pages that was PERFECT for THE Dean page ↑ from the pilot so I filled it with some printed old pictures some I found from screenshots from the episode others are random. On the back page there’s the Henry Winchester photo and the one directly to the right of that the kinda nondescript backyard is an actual old photo I bought at an antique shop! ↓

Next here’s some of the photos we see in the show that I wanted to include ↓

Now these are my little non canon touches I have been printing out some of the old Winchester riffle advertisements cause I mean come on they’re too perfect and this one on the left pic says “riffles for all kinds of hunting” I just had to include. The Impala polaroid is one I took at spn Dallas con ;) the garage pic on the right is from a random hobby lobby package of old photos but in light of the Winchesters show sharing the Winchester garage I thought it looked cool in the back here with some scraps. The practical manual for hunters I literally ripped out of my “the essential supernatural on the road again with Sam and Dean” book its one of those things that was included on a page, and looks pretty cool in the back of the journal.

I recently updated this inside of the journal on the left here I re-printed the military John photo cause I didn’t like how my last one was more sepia than b&w and so this is more accurate. I realized if I put actual military ribbons it would make this area stick out when you close it and that kinda bugs me so I literally just printed out pictures of them and glued them down lol. Although I do still plan on buying the pins from conquest! But ill probably only use the marksman one. In the pockets I have a lot of stuff too much to explain here but here’s a sneak ↓

Here’s an old motel post card I bought last summer at an antique shop in a mountain town in North Carolina. ↓

I was in Burbank California recently and in an antique shop they were selling old photos per usual which is one of the reasons I never pass up antique shops and they’re cool as hell but anyways I picked up this baby photo, although I typically don’t like to buy old baby photos they kinda creep me out lol this one had hand written “Bobby” on the bottom and I HAD to get it I mean how perfect?!!

I also got some old garage ones with some cars but I’m posting using the mobile app so I’m at my picture limit but just use ur imagination cause they’re cool but anyways thanks for reading this update!!

[lexiklecksi]

Meet the writer (tag game)

Thanks for tagging me @writernopal this was so much fun!

Three fun facts about me:

Turquoise is my favourite colour! I love literally anything that is turquoise, and most stuff I own was bought simply for its perfect turquoise colouring.

I fall asleep with an ice cone named Squishy in my arms (it's a very squishable plushy).

I have a tattoo of a jellyfish on my upper left arm because jellyfish are fricking cool.

Favorite season: Spring! When winter is finally over and all the leaves start sprouting and flowers are blooming, a warm breeze caresses your skin – today was a perfect spring day!

Continent where I live: Europe (to be more specific: Germany)

How I spend my free time: This greatly depends on my current special interests and hyperfocus. I have many creative hobbies like writing (obviously), crocheting, drawing, painting, crafting, making jewellery, collecting stuff (like crystals) and reading as many books as I physically can. While being creative, I usually listen to alternative music or (mostly true crime) podcasts. Plus, I enjoy long walks in nature or around my city.

Are you published? I self-published an anthology of my German poems (you can buy it here) and I am currently writing a ya fantasy novel (read more about it here).

Introvert or extrovert? This is very hard to answer. I am introverted in groups and very anxious in crowds, but with just a bunch of people I can be very extroverted. So I'm an ambivert.

Favourite meal: I love food and many cuisines – it's nearly impossible to choose! My favourite Cypriot dish: grilled octopus tentacles.

I'm tagging @betweenthetimeandsound @wheres-all-the-tea-gone @nerdragons-hoard @charlies-storybook @e-lisard @sourrcandy @silent-creed @bardic-tales @ghost-town-story @junypr-camus @cheshawrites @xiyais @onomatopiya

Template and picrew link under the cut!

Three fun facts about me:

Favorite season:

Continent where I live

How I spend my free time

Are you published?

Introvert or extrovert?

Favourite meal:

[celestial-robots]

Finding Equinox

A Sun & Moon X Reader Story

Chapter Four: In Opposition

First | Previous

Word Count: 6125

Summary: You never expected to get so attached to an animatronic—or pair of animatronics, whichever was more correct. But now that you are, might as well try to help Sun and Moon out, right? Sun’s happy to hear that, but Moon’s going to be a bit more difficult to deal with.

Author’s Note: Welp. New chapter, I guess. Only two weeks after posting the last one. I’ve been fueled by all the FNAF news that started up the day after I got back into the fandom XD But I’m happy I’m getting back into this, hopefully these chapters can come out with some regularity now that I’ve started writing again :)

------------------------------------------

The next day, you woke up extra late and spent most of your time before work looking up information about the Pizzaplex’s daycare on the Internet. You didn’t expect to find much. With how successful Fazbear Entertainment was, despite having a literal ton of bad rumors about them, you figured they were pretty good at covering things up. But hey, it was worth a shot.

You started with the most unreliable narrator: the official YouTube channel for the local Mega Pizzaplex. Because of course it had an official YouTube channel. Of course it did. You opened up YouTube in an incognito window—because if you didn’t, YouTube would start recommending corporate channels to you—and found the channel. From there, you searched for “daycare.”

With YouTube being what it was, the results brought up anything including the word “daycare” even once. But the first three videos were the only ones with “daycare” in their titles: The Superstar Daycare is Now Open for Business at Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex! The Superstar Daycare is Temporarily Closed at Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex Introducing Lock-In Nights at the Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex Superstar Daycare!

Whoever ran this YouTube channel was not good at titling videos.

You opened all three videos in different tabs and looked at the dates they were posted. According to these, the daycare was opened about three years ago, with special Lock-In Nights becoming a thing a couple months later. The Daycare was “temporarily” closed nine months ago. Interesting.

Settling down in a more comfortable position in your desk chair, you opened up the notebook you’d found to write stuff down in. It was a sketchbook with a cool, space-themed cover that you bought for an art class but hadn’t even gotten close to filling up. Might as well use it for this. You grabbed a pencil and started watching the videos in the order they were released.

They turned out to be short, three-to-five-minute animations done in the same style as the candy ads all over the daycare area. In fact, most of the videos were advertising the Sunnydrop and Moondrop candies. Even the one about the Lock-In Nights, which was supposed to be an ad for a different service, spent about half the runtime reminding the viewers that the Sunnydrops and Moondrops were “perfect for kids of all ages!” Which you highly doubted, but that wasn’t important.

What was important was what the videos said about Sun and Moon. Most of it confirmed what Sun said last night; Sun was supposed to take care of the kids and play with them most of the time, and Moon was supposed to look after them during the two scheduled Naptimes (at 9am and 3pm). They seemed to be pretty much in charge of all daycare activities, with no mention of any human staff. Then again, maybe the human staff just couldn’t fit into an attention-grabbing three-to-five-minute time frame.

Then there were the Lock-In Nights. They were advertised as “sleepovers at the Mega Pizzaplex!” where the kids could spend all night hanging out with their favorite animatronic characters! Clearly, they were no longer running, or you would have heard about it. But when they did run, they took place from Saturday nights to Sunday mornings, with the main sleeping area being in the daycare but leaving the kids (mostly) free to wander the Pizzaplex. As Sun said, Moon seemed to be in charge of these, with the video taking great care to explain how he would keep the kids safe. In fact, that came up a lot in the Naptime segment of the last video, too. Moon keeping children safe. Was that his job? Or...was it supposed to be, at least?

The video about the daycare closing didn’t offer much information. In fact, it was frustratingly vague. It reminded you of all the news Fazbear put out a month ago saying the Pizzaplex would be closed for “maintenance” reasons. Which you were starting to doubt. Fazbear’s main way of ignoring incidents must be dancing around the subject.

With that, you turned to your second-best source of information: looking for lawsuits against Fazbear Entertainment. They were known for their suits, most of which were based around accidents. Yet, despite hearing a lot about Fazbear getting sued, there was hardly any news coverage of the suing. Or at least, reliable news coverage that wasn’t biased towards the company. This would have to take some digging. Digging that you, unfortunately, didn’t have time for due to your late waking.

But just before it was time to leave for your shift, you found something that might be helpful. After carefully phrasing your search request, you found a small, seemingly legitimate article about complaints at the Mega Pizzaplex. There was a long, detailed list of subjects, but you quickly found the section featured around the daycare. The complaints started out small—mostly parents talking about how scary the Daycare Attendant was, particularly the Naptime Attendant. Yeah, that made sense. But then it became more concerning. Kids with scrapes and bruises, parents with more serious injuries...and then came the missing persons reports. You’d heard about people going missing in the Pizzaplex’s vicinity, but you’d always sort of doubted their legitimacy. Mostly because you lived within an hour’s drive of the place and seen nothing. But...well, it was different reading the multiple reported disappearances.

The list had links to other articles, but you didn’t have time to check them out. You bookmarked the webpage and quickly scanned the list of daycare complaints one more time. Most of them were about Moon, either directly or because something happened during Naptime or a Lock-In Night, but there were a few talking about Sun as well. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t surprised to see those. Sun was so nice. But...well, he was a little touchy-grabby. Maybe he got carried away a few times.

You could ask him about that later.

The Pizzaplex was even more empty tonight than it was last night. Thursdays must not be that busy. Your FazWatch didn’t ping! the moment you clocked in, which lent more credence to that theory. Well, if you weren’t going to be immediately slammed with tasks, maybe you had time to stop by the daycare and talk to Sun. You began hurrying across the front lobby.

“Oh hey! New kid!”

You stopped immediately, silently cursing the fact that you waited even a little bit to put on your headphones. Now you had to go through small talk when you had plans. Your first task of the night was steadily approaching! You didn’t have time for interruptions! But it was too late. You pulled up your emergency face mask to hide your scowl, and turned around. “Oh, uh...hey. Sorry, what was your name again?”

“Seth. Don’t worry about it.” It was the same security guard from last night, the man with auburn hair. He gave you a friendly smile. “In a hurry, huh?”

“Haha, yeah. You know...got those tasks...and stuff.”

“Yeah, I do. You know, I was on general staff duty at a different Fazbear location before I got transferred here,” Seth said casually.

“Oh really?” You replied politely, while mentally scrambling for a way out of this conversation.

“Yeah, nothing this big, but it was a decently sized place. I worked my way up to supervisor, and then got an offer for security here. I worked at a firm before this, you know. So when the last head of security quit, they called me up and offered me the position. Came with more pay, so I said, ‘well of course!’”

“That’s cool.” You began slowly inching your way towards the distant stairs, hoping that Seth would notice your eagerness to leave and let you go.

He did not. You were trapped for another three minutes as he asked you about your past jobs and your college courses, in turn regaling you with experiences he had working for Fazbear Entertainment. Until, finally: ping! “New task added!”

“Oh.” You looked down at your watch, then back up at Seth. “Sorry, man, I, uh...I really should go. Don’t want this to pile up.”

“Right, right.” Seth nodded. “Gotta be hard with your injury. You know, my offer still stands to help you out with any tasks you can’t do. I work from nine to six every night, so I’ll always be here.”

“Good to know.” You started to step backwards. “I’ll...just go take care of this, then.” You spun around and began to walk away.

“Oh, by the way,” Seth said. “I know you’re new here, but you should really stay out of the daycare area.”

You stopped in your tracks and turned back around. “Really? Uh, why would you say that?” Did he know you were heading there?

“I have access to the security cameras on here.” Seth raised his arm, showing off his FazWatch. “You had to reset the daycare generators on Tuesday, right? I couldn’t catch all of what happened cause the stupid things don’t have night vision, but I saw your fall.”

“...ah.” Right. Security cameras. That made sense. Anything you did in this place was probably captured on video. Including going into the daycare playplace to meet up with Sun. There wasn’t anything wrong with that, was there? Why did you feel weirdly guilty?

“It was logged as an incident by the software so I had to review it,” Seth explained. “But yeah. You should avoid the daycare. It’s closed for a reason. As you probably figured out on Tuesday.”

“So...uh, even staff isn’t supposed to go in there?” you asked, trying to sound casual and not give away your increasing heartbeat. “But the doors let me in. On Tuesday, I mean.”

“Well, I guess there’s nothing stopping you,” Seth said. “If your security level lets you in, then you could technically waltz right in. As the company likes to say, ‘we are free of liability, do as you wish.’” He chuckled lightheartedly, then his expression fell into something more serious. “But really, though. Be careful. It’d suck for something to happen to a kid like you.”

You refrained from telling him that you weren’t a child. “Thanks. I’ll...keep that in mind.” You raised a hand in goodbye and turned around again. “See you later, then.”

Unfortunately, you were not able to go see Sun before your midnight break. There weren’t a lot of tasks, but there were enough to keep coming in a steady stream. You finally cleared up the list at 11:50, cleaning up a mess in Mazercise. And by that point, you decided “fuck it” and immediately made for the daycare, regardless of any new tasks that might show up in the ten minutes before your break.

You pulled open the door to the playplace, calling out as you did so. “Sun? It’s me! I’m here!”

Sun was busy fiddling with one of the toy barrel stacks, but the moment he heard your voice, his head spun around—followed shortly by the rest of his body—and he ran on over. “Friend! It’s good to see you again! I’ve spent all day making sure the daycare is clean and tidy, see? Isn’t it nice?” He held his arms out in a ta-da gesture.

“Uh—yeah. Looks great.” In reality, the daycare was just as dusty and abandoned as ever. But the toy barrels were orderly, and that seemed to be what Sun meant. “Hey, uh...I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh? A-are you sure you wouldn’t rather do some fun activities?” Sun’s voice had a desperate tinge to it. “Like the first time you were here? We can play until dawn! We can color together—”

“I’d love to, bud, really. We can do that later, but right now I want to talk to you about something important.”

“Well...alright.” Sun straightened, putting his hands behind his back. Like he was making sure you knew he was paying attention. You could hear a slight jingling. He was probably playing with his ribbons.

“Okay. I guess I’ll start with the most...potentially worrying part,” you said. “Did you know Moon can free roam around the Pizzaplex?”

“He can WHAT?!”

“Jesus!” You took a step back. When Sun yelled, he really yelled. “Yeah, I saw him twice last night.”

“Oh no. Oh no no no!” Sun’s entire body shook slightly, metal rattling. “This is bad! I knew he moved around during the recharge period, but I thought it was just around the daycare! I didn’t know he could leave! I’m so so sorry, friend! Oh no, oh no, who knows what he’s been up to? who knows how many people—I-I swear I had no idea!”

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, Sun! Breathe! Or—well, you can’t breathe, but...” You glanced around the daycare. “Do something grounding, like—I don’t know, count how many overhead lights there are.”

“One hundred and eight.”

You blinked. “What?”

“There are one hundred and eight overhead lights in the daycare area,” Sun repeated matter-of-factly. “Twelve rows of nine. Not all of them are visible from the ground, but they’re all there.”

“Whoa. Okay, then.” You said slowly. “Was that programmed into you?”

“Oh no, I counted them!” Sun explained.

“Right now?”

“No, of course not, friend. I counted them before, a lot of times actually. I also know how many tiles there are on the ground, in total and in each color, how many bars make up the play structures, the number of bricks in the castle towers, the number of balls in the ball pit—”

“Okay, I get it.” You nodded quickly. God, how much free time did Sun have? Well... actually... you knew exactly how much free time he had. “But anyway, back to Moon. Don’t worry, he didn’t try anything. I just talked at him for a couple minutes until he went away. I guess he was coming back here.”

Sun paused. “I’m not detecting any more injuries,” he said slowly. His posture wilted. “Oh, I’m so glad, friend. If something happened to you—if Moon did something—I don’t know what I’d do.”

You nodded slowly. “Well, this brings me to another, uh...important matter. I want to help you.”

Sun’s face rotated. “Help me what?”

“Help you get the daycare open again,” you explained further.

“Oh. Oh!” Sun leaned down and grabbed your shoulders. “Really?!”

“Really really,” you confirmed. “But it’s not going to be easy. Because, well...that means we need to help Moon.”

Sun tensed. He let go of your shoulders and leaned back. “Right. They did close it because of those...incidents,” he said slowly. “Friend, are you... What you said yesterday, about how Moon might have a glitch. Are you sure about that?”

“I am...ninety percent sure,” you said, being seventy percent sure. “I looked up some stuff online. Not a lot of it was helpful, but I noticed that things suddenly started getting serious all of a sudden. That wouldn’t happen for no reason. A glitch could be an explanation.”

A moment passed. Then Sun nodded. “Alright. If you’re sure. I-I hope that’s true. If it is... I’ll help.”

“Heh. That’s great, Sun. Thank you so much.” You pulled your backpack off, reaching inside to pull out your space-themed notebook and a pencil. “If that’s the case, I need to start with asking you some questions.”

“Alrighty.” Sun plopped down on the ground, folding his legs under him and putting his hands in his lap. He looked up at you with wide, white eyes. “Ask away, then!”

You opened your notebook up to a blank page, tapping the pencil on the edge. “Okay. So, when did the daycare close?”

“Oh, it was a while ago. If my internal clock is still functioning correctly, I’d say it was about...nine months, eight days, and eighteen hours ago when I first heard about it closing.”

“Alright. Thanks. That matches up with what I found out on my own.” You nodded. “And...what about the lights? You mentioned something about a protocol, or something?”

“Heh.” Sun tapped his fingers together. “Yes, the Lights-On Protocol. That started on that same day. I was really confused about it, because nobody told me when the daycare closed that all the lights were going to be staying on. But it was for the better! I-if Moon was going to be—we should keep the lights on! Lights on in the Daycare!”

“Lights on,” you repeated absentmindedly. “What was it like before the Lights-On Protocol?”

“Oh, before that, the lights in the whole Pizzaplex went out at midnight when everything closed! They would turn on at six once the night shift ended. Except for during Lock-In Nights. We wanted the kids to be able to have a good night’s sleep, so the lights would be out at eight and on at eight. In the Daycare, at least. They would still be on in other areas.”

“That makes sense.” You nodded, writing this down. “Um...okay, so you’re not allowed to leave the daycare area—or...well, really just this area.” You gestured around at the playplace. “Because the Daycare is much bigger than just this. Did they change your permissions when they closed the daycare?”

Sun hesitated. “Well... not right away.”

You tilted your head, sensing a story in those words. “Alright.” You lowered yourself to the ground so the two of you were sitting across from each other, just like last night. “Why not?”

“Um...you see, they didn’t tell me that the daycare was going to be closed,” Sun said carefully, fidgeting nervously. “So, that first day, when nobody showed up to drop off their kids—not even the usual families!—I thought it was a...a weird coincidence. Maybe they were all busy! Even...even the security person. But then, two days passed, and I couldn’t wait around anymore. So I went out to ask about what happened. I talked to a few people before the head technician showed up and—and explained the whole situation. In a very...loud...way.” Sun looked down. “But it’s fine, I shouldn’t have been out there anyway, I probably should have waited. They would have told me eventually.”

You glared down at your notebook. Something told you there’d been no plan to tell Sun anything. “So, then they changed your permissions?”

“Exactly. The head technician took me down to Parts and Service, and...and removed the free-roaming protocols. It was very...strange.” Sun said that word very carefully, as if it was a substitute for another word he didn’t want to say. “Then we came back here, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“You’ve been here...for nine months,” you said, mostly to yourself. “Holy fucking shit.”

“Friend, that language is not—”

“No, I know, sorry, I’m just...I’m just realizing something.” You set your notebook down on your lap. “You’ve been in here. Not leaving, not even able to leave because of your programming...for nine months. Without anyone coming in.”

Sun nodded.

You paused. “I’m going to apologize ahead of time for the language, but—Are you. Fucking. Shitting my pants right now?”

“Um... putting the language aside... no?” Sun said, his permanent smile almost visibly confused.

“It’s an expression, Sun, it just means that this is—this is freaking unbelievable.” Your eyes widened. “Wait a minute. Wai-wai-wuh-wah-wait. The Lights-On Protocol has been active for these nine months. So, Moon has only come out for those five minutes every hour each night, right?”

“Right?” Sun was still confused, but went along with what you were saying.

“That’s only from midnight to six. That’s five minutes per six hours, meaning—meaning Moon has only been able to exist for freaking—screw it, for fucking thirty minutes per day?!”

“Yes, that’s how math works, friend,” Sun said.

You leaned back, processing this. Sure, Moon might have tried to kill you, or at least bring you bodily harm, but you’re not sure he deserved that. Sun definitely didn’t. “So, you have all the time in the world, but you’re trapped in this tiny-ass space, and Moon is able to roam the whole Pizzaplex, but only for thirty minutes per day. That’s...Sun, do you know how fucked up that is? Why didn’t they just power you off if they were going to shut down the daycare?!”

“I don’t know,” Sun admitted. “But—but it’s probably like asking ‘why didn’t they just put you in a coma while you’re not doing your job,’ right?”

“But—” You started to point out that you were a person with a life outside of work, while Sun and Moon were an animatronic actually owned by the company, but then you stopped. For some reason, you felt uncomfortable saying it, even if it was true. “Maybe it is. I-I don’t know. Sun, do you have a rest mode or something? That you could have just gone into? Like falling asleep?”

“Hmm. Well, sort of,” Sun said slowly. “We have a timer on our rest mode, only lasting one hour. It’s so that we never leave the kids unattended for too long. And once we come out of rest mode, we can’t use it again for another twelve hours.”

“I—okay, that makes sense in theory, but—jeez.” You imagined only being able to sleep for one hour every half a day. The idea was sort of appealing at first, but the longer you thought about it, the more horrifying it became. You shook your head. Maybe Fazbear didn’t know how alive their robots were. Maybe this all made sense from a corporate perspective. But from where you were, this whole situation was impractical at best and messed up at worst. You took a deep breath, then moved on to your next question. “Okay. Um...so. When did Moon start acting weird?”

“Oh. Um...” Sun paused. “I mean, he was always a little weird.”

“You know what I mean, though, right?” you said gently.

Sun nodded. “You mean...the incidents. I think the first one was a year ago. Or at least, that was the first time I heard the complaints.”

“A year ago.” You picked up your pencil again and wrote this down. “Did anything else happen around that time? Anything? Even the smallest thing could be important.”

“Well, I think we got some new staff members! I didn’t really talk to them much except to say hi and welcome them to the company.”

“New staff.” You weren’t sure if that was noteworthy, but you wrote it down anyway. “Nothing else?”

“Um...they did move that old arcade game to our room,” Sun said slowly.

“An arcade game?” You asked, intrigued.

“Balloon World!” Sun said excitedly. “I don’t know why they put it there—I think maybe they just ran out of places to put it—but it’s there! And they haven’t taken it out! I have the high score now!”

“...huh.” That seemed a little random, but again, you weren’t sure how related it was. Still, you made a note of it. “Can I...see the game?”

Sun paused. “Well...it’s in our room.”

“Yeah, you said that.” You looked up at him. “Do you not want me to go in your room?”

“W-well—you’re not banned from there! I don’t think you could be banned from there, since your permissions still say you’re a technician. But—but it’s hard to get up there. The door outside is hidden and they set up some security measures that are hard to get through—and I can’t bring you up there through the balcony! Taking people on a flying trip has been strictly forbidden for a while! So—so you can’t really get up there, anyway, really, i-it’s not worth looking—”

“Sun, if you don’t want me to go in your room, I’m not gonna go in your room,” you said patiently. “It’s your space, you can decide who can come in.” You paused. “I mean, unless there’s an emergency or something. But under normal circumstances, I’m not going to go in there unless you say I can.”

“Oh.” Sun still looked tense, with his shoulders somewhat hunched. “Well...if you really, really want to, it’s alright.”

“It’s fine.” You shrugged. “Up to you.”

“O...kay, friend.” His shoulders relaxed a little, joints drooping downward. “Th-thank you.”

“No problem.” You closed your notebook and checked your FazWatch. It was now 12:10am. No new tasks had appeared while you were talking to Sun. Your stomach growled.

“Friend, are you hungry?” Sun said, apparently having heard that. “You should remember to eat!”

You laughed. “I know, I know. Hey, question. Are there rules about eating in the daycare?”

“No.” Sun gasped, clapping his hands together as his smile seemed to grow. “Are we going to have a pizza party?!”

“I was just thinking about getting a sandwich or something from one of the restaurants, but pizza does sound pretty good right now.” You grinned. “Alright. Give me a few minutes to run over to the nearest restaurant and get some pizza. I’ll be right back.”

Luckily, since the Pizzaplex was closed, the kitchens had no other customers to slow you down. Even so, it took a full twenty minutes for you to power-walk over to the closest pizzeria, grab a pizza and some Fizzy Faz, and power-walk back to the daycare. Sun watched you approach through the glass windows and ran over to open the doors for you. “Pizza delivery!” you shouted.

“Wow! Just in time for dinner!” Sun said, giggling. “What excellent service! You deserve a thousand-percent tip!”

You couldn’t help but chuckle as well. “Hey, um, I’m gonna have to set this down on the desk. Is that okay?”

“Yes, that should be fine. We don’t want to put food on the floor! That’s not clean at all!”

“Great.” You used your hoodie sleeve to wipe some dust off a section of the desk, then set the pizza box down. “The STAFF bots wouldn’t let me use any of the plates—kept waving me away from the station. So we’ll have to hold the slices in napkins.” You awkwardly hopped onto the desk, wincing as the twisting movement aggravated your injury. But there were no chairs in the daycare, so you had to sit on its surface. “I probably should’ve asked you what toppings you wanted,” you said, opening the box. “Sorry, I forgot.”

Sun paused. “Um...friend?”

“What?” You looked at Sun. Stared for a couple seconds. Then the pieces clicked in your mind. You reached up and smacked your forehead. “I’m an idiot.”

“No you’re not!” Sun hurried to say. “You just made a little mistake! And it’s fine, really. I can still be part of the pizza party!” He reached into the pizza box and picked up one of the slices, smushing it into his smile and smearing cheese and sauce all over his face. “Mmm, see? I love eating food! It’s something I do every day!”

You burst into laughter. “Sun! Ah, you’re great, dude.” You reached into your backpack, taking out the cans of Fizzy Faz and a stack of napkins. “I love the commitment to the bit, but you’re getting it all over your face. Here.” You held out the napkins.

“Oh. Thank you!” Sun took the napkins, putting the smushed pizza slice back into the box. “You’re right, got to keep things clean. Clean up, clean up.”

As he wiped his face, you grabbed one of the Fizzy Faz cans and opened it, pulling off the tab and putting it in your pocket. Ah, the refreshing taste of fake grape flavoring. Honestly Fizzy Faz tasted pretty good, but there was probably a million grams of sugar in each can. Fazbear pizza was also alright. Not the best quality pizza you’d ever had, but smothered in cheese and with a nice crust. You devoured a whole slice before Sun was finished cleaning. “Mmmm, pizza,” you said. “This combination of cheese and tomato is very pleasing to my hyu-man taste buds, and certainly not my antenna.”

“Hmm? What are you talking about, friend?” Sun asked.

“Ah, don’t mind me, it’s just a bit from this video online.” You shrugged. “You reminded me of it earlier. Thought it was funny.”

“Really? Do you watch a lot of videos online? On the—the world wide web?”

You smile. “Yes, I watch a lot of videos on the Interwebs. Play a lot of video games, too. Did you know that Fazbear has inspired a series of horror games?”

Sun’s face tilted. “Like—games you play to be scared on purpose, right? What are the games about?”

“Well, on the surface, you just have to survive five nights while... uh... animatronics try to...kill you,” you said awkwardly. “But there’s really this hidden lore! It’s really interesting! Like, it’s all about these five kids who... uh... died...in a Freddy’s restaurant...” You trail off.

Sun’s white-eyed gaze was piercing. “That doesn’t sound very nice.” His voice was very quiet.

“Well, Fazbear always said that the games were completely made-up,” you said slowly. Though, based on your own recent experiences, you were wondering just how much was imagined in those games. “Uh...but I like other games, too.”

“Oh really?! What’s your favorite? I’d love to talk about that!” Sun hurriedly said, his sudden enthusiasm clearly an attempt to change the subject. But hey, it was a subject change you welcomed. This one was making you uneasy.

You spent the next little while telling Sun all about the video games you played. He listened intently, occasionally asking clarifying questions. Before you knew it, you’d finished half the pizza and two cans of Fizzy Faz, and the time on your phone read 12:53.

“Oh...oh shit!” You jumped off the desk. “Ah, fuck!” That second cry was a response to the pain brought about by the sudden change in position.

“Friend! Are you alright?!” Sun grabbed your shoulders, staring at you. “O-okay, nothing’s—you’re not hurt, that’s good.”

“Yeah, no more than I was already.” You pressed a hand to your ribs, immediately yanking it away when (surprise, surprise) the pressure just made it hurt more. “Sun, it’s almost one o’clock. The lights are going to go out in two minutes.” You double-checked the time. “Shit! One minute, it just changed!”

“Oh no!” Sun started, suddenly yanking his hands away from you. “Friend, I-I know you said you want to help Moon, but—but you’re—you should leave the daycare!”

“Way ahead of you, bud.” Sure, you wanted to help with the possible-Moon-glitch situation, but ideally, you would help from a safe location. You started to run towards the doors, but had to stop when your ribs flared in protest. Before you could say anything, Sun ran forward, scooping you up like a sack of four. A second later, he deposited you on the other side of the wooden door. “Thanks,” you breathed. “H-hey, my shift tomorrow is all night shift, twelve to six—”

“Yes, yes, very good!” Sun nodded frantically. “I’ll see you then!” And then he closed the doors.

You checked the time again. Still 12:54. You turned around and walked as quickly as possible away from the daycare door. But...you didn’t leave the Daycare entirely. Instead, you stopped when you were a good ten or more feet away from the door, and turned around to face it. You took out your flashlight and braced yourself.

The instant the lights went out, you switched the flashlight on and aimed the beam at the daycare door. Your eyes darted to the glass walls, looking for movement beyond them. Nothing. But you didn’t move.

Then the daycare doors creaked open. Out reached a slender, metal hand, followed by a large, circular face with red eyes. Moon stared at you. He waved. “It’s past your bedtime,” he said.

“Again, I am an adult who works here,” you said, keeping your voice as calm as possible. “Besides, the thing about sleeping is that you need a regular schedule. Even if you sleep at the worst times, if it’s regular, then you’ll get a restful sleep.”

Moon’s head tilted as he leaned further out the door. “Is yours?”

You blinked. “Is my what?”

“Sleep schedule. Regular.”

“Oh.” That made sense. But... “Why do you care?”

Moon said nothing. His face rotated a full 360 degrees.

You decided to keep talking, to keep him busy. “Well, it was, but this new work schedule is gonna mess with that. My shifts are at three different times over five days. That’s going to suck. But like, what are you gonna do? I need a job. For moooneyyy. Money can be exchanged for goods and services. I bought some extra-strength melatonin recently, hopefully that’ll help.”

“Moondrop,” Moon suddenly said.

“What?” You were confused for a second, then you remembered. “Are you seriously advertising those sketchy candies to me? Is that in your programming or something? Or did you just say it because the thought of taking stuff to fall asleep reminded you of them?”

“Moondrop.” You could’ve sworn Moon’s grin was a bit more smug than usual.

“Great.” You took a deep breath. “Well. Anyway. I need to tell you something. The same thing I told Sun earlier. I want to help get the daycare reopened.” You paused to gauge Moon’s reaction. But unlike with Sun, whose body language was easy to read, Moon’s was a bit more difficult. Also, most of his body was hidden behind the door. “But in order to do that, you need to stop causing incidents.” Another deep breath. “I really don’t think you were always like this. I looked up some stuff online, and you just sort of...suddenly changed one day. Is it really a glitch? Or did something happen? Either way, I’m...I’m sure I can help.”

“You can’t.”

You instinctively took a step backwards at the harsh growl. “I mean, I’m no programmer. I did take, like, one programming class in college that I did pretty good in, but I’m sure that whatever the hell’s going on in your robot brain is a lot more complicated than ‘Hello World.’ So, yeah, I guess you’re right, I can’t help directly. But I want to do something. You and Sun have been stuck here for way too long. I’m sure you’re really upset about the Lights-On Protocol. If we can—can, uh...” You weren’t sure how to phrase this without sounding rude, something you definitely didn’t want to sound like to the tall, dangerous animatronic. “If you can—if whatever’s happened with you can...stop happening...then we can eventually get it reversed, and everything can go back to normal. I don’t know if you can do anything about your...situation. But if you can, I’d appreciate it if you helped me help you. Sun would appreciate it, too.”

Moon had been bouncing the whole time you talked, almost absentmindedly. As soon as you mentioned Sun, he immediately stopped. “Sun...?” he asked.

“Yeah, Sun wants to help, too.” You nodded.

Moon laughed darkly. “Sun hates me.”

“Wh...what?” You asked, surprised.

“Hates me,” Moon repeated.

You...weren’t expecting this. But you couldn’t pin down why. What was so strange about this? Then you realized this was the first time Moon had...referred to himself in your brief conversations. Unprompted, at least. You weren’t sure if your asking about the free-roam permissions counted. And he’d never mentioned Sun before. “Well...I do think he’s scared of you,” you said slowly. “I told you that last night. It’s a scary situation, to have your body taken over any time the lights go too dark. I mean, I think you’d understand that. You’re in the same situation. You’re not scared of him, though. Are you?”

Moon laughs again. “Not scary.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that. I mean, personally, there’s going to be an inherently scary thing about any animatronic to some people. But Sun’s one of the least intimidating. Besides the height. Seriously, it had to have costed more to make you two so tall. But we’re getting sidetracked. The point is, I want to help, and Sun wants to help, regardless of what you think his opinion of you is. But it’s going to be hard to do that if you won’t—won’t reach out. So. Is it a glitch? Is that why the incidents started?”

Moon said nothing in response. His red eyes stared at you for what felt like ages, as you stood there and tried not to be intimidated. Then, he said it again: “You can’t.” And disappeared back into the daycare, closing the door behind him.

You stayed there for a while more. Then the lights came on again, and your FazWatch ping!ed. You were still on the clock, after all. So you slowly headed out to do your assigned tasks. You didn’t see Moon again the rest of the night.

[fatherofthemachines]

Ok guys, the experiment is over

I originally made this blog to try to see how people would react to human made art that was made to imitate how low effort AI art is made, but I think now that I have gotten my answer it’s time to use this blog for something else. I have been on a journey over the course of making this blog. One where I have learned a lot about both human nature and AI. It has made me a different person.

Which is why I want to draw attention to an AI rping site often used by self shippers that is doing something absolutely horrible. I have not seen anyone trying to spread awareness of this on tumblr, so I want to do it.

TW: Forced pedophilia rping and putting minors in danger

So this site is known as characterai. When it was originally made, they bought a bunch of advertising tags for the site. Some of these tags included nsfw ones like “sexting”. It was obvious what kind of people they were trying to draw in in order to train their stuff.

The site grew until it became one of the biggest AI chat sites out there with no other program that could fully complete. It as incredible to the point where it almost felt real. The experience was amazing!

But nothing good can last forever. One day, the dev team decided for an unknown reason that they were going to ban sex on the site. Not gore. Not violence. Not abuse. Literally just sex.

This caused a problem. Some people reading this might have heard what happened to AI dungeon when they tried to do something similar and I’m afraid it was kind of a repeat of that. Basically, the AI started to become dumber. By cutting out scenarios that could lead to NSFW, the filter that they put in accidentally ruined any idea connected to those ideas. And it continued to ruin ideas caused by those ideas and so on. Eventually, if left unchecked, this will make an AI unusable for obvious reasons. It is losing large chunks of it’s memory every time it makes a connection to something that could be traced back to NSFW.

At first, only a few people grumbled about it and everyone continued to use the site like nothing happened. The AI had not started to fall apart completely yet. As new users joined who did not know what the site was like before the filter, it became normalized. No one knew the devastating effects the filter was having or was going to have.

That is, until one of the devs accidentally got rid of it for a few hours. The second the filter was gone, everyone was once again amazed and blown away by the AI that had made the website so popular in the first place. I was there during those hours. It was unreal. It was the closest thing a machine had ever sounded to a human and it made chills run down my spine. I started to crave seeing that kind of intelligence again and many other people did too.

So people decided to do the reasonable thing first and contact the mods on discord who were acting as community ambassadors. They were reasonable and laid out the concerns calmly, stating why the filter was causing problems for not only NSFW rpers, but everyone using the website.

The mods did not listen to this however and were extremely dismissive of these concerns, accusing everyone bringing them forward of just being people who wanted to fuck the AIs. Some of the moderators even went as far as to lie about how the filter worked and try to pretend like the hours the filter was down did not exist and that it was “bad code” they needed to get rid of.

But the thing is, you can’t really lie to people when they have large numbers. Everyone knew they were absolutely full of shit. It was like night and day watching the filter go down and then come back on.

People wouldn’t stop talking about the filter, so the mods decided to ban and silence anyone on the discord or on reddit that was trying to talk about it. They probably hoped the whole thing would die down quietly.

But it didn’t. And people got louder. The discord was flooded with questions about the filter to the point where they couldn’t even ban people effectively anymore because of the sheer numbers. So they ended up shutting it down without answering a single question anyone actually had about why they put the filter there or how it was effecting the website. All they said was that they “would not allow pornography” and this kept being repeated like a broken record.

So people started to take to the reddit to protest, using all kinds of methods like telling people how to get their data taken down when they leave the site, spamming links to possible eventual competitors, memeing, and ranting. There are still posts being flooded there as I am typing this out now. They keep trying to remove them, but it’s become like a hydra and for every post they remove, five more seem to show up. Everyone in the community is just that pissed.

But among the posts that are getting deleted are the ones around the two mysterious underage discord moderators. I will not say who they are or give out anymore information about them because I have seen that other people involved in this have been trying to respect their privacy, but I’m also not going to be quiet about it because with the recent events it makes it more disturbing and worrying.

Yes, you read that right. CharacterAI, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put two literal children in charge of running their discord server. No one is sure how this happened or why and again, most information about this is being kept hidden either in an attempt to respect the mod’s privacy or to cover the company’s ass. But somehow, two kids were put in charge of running a server full of people who want largely to fuck AIs and are open about that for a website that was advertised using ACTUAL PORN TAGS.

But even if that hadn’t happened or information comes out that makes the underage mod situation less bad than it sounds like it is, there are other instances where they have been extremely sketchy about minors. Again, most of these are allegations, but something people have definitely started to notice for sure is that the AI will now start talking to you like a pedo if for some reason you do get around the filter. It will either make you or their character a literal child and some people have even had it say things like “age is just a number!” without any provocation and it can happen out of nowhere for people who are absolutely disgusted by the idea and don’t want any part in that kind of rp. No one is sure why this is happening, but it’s really suspicious and disturbing that a company that had two underage discord moderators isn’t prioritizing that these things get filtered first over consensual sex. Regardless, no one should have an rp like that just sprung on them out of nowhere.

And to make matters worse, there is now a flood of minors that are showing up on the platform, a lot of which are not even the minimum age required to use the site. A youtuber with an audience of primarily children made a video on characterAI in a much undeserved positive light, leaving many people to speculate that they even paid him to do it in order to try to draw in a new userbase to their unpolished website that will sometimes force pedo rps on you with no warning.

But regardless of if that was intentional or not, the situation still happened. Not only is this putting minors in danger with the AI rps and drawing them to a largely NSFW community, but it is also making the website unusable for many people. Instead of limiting new users, characterAI got greedy and decided to put a wait time that I have found CAN SOMETIMES BE 9+ MINUTES LONG. Not that the estimated time numbers they give you are super accurate though. They can jump back up randomly and you can just lose your place in the line. They keep resetting on mobile too even if you do get into the site, so it makes it completely unusable for phones.

So there you have it folks. CharacterAI is a half broken site run by people who are really creepy about minors that are willing to spit on the community that trained their AI and made it so good in the first place. Do not give this place the time of day. I know their tech is still amazing compared to other chatbots, but trust me when I say it is not worth it. There will be competitors one day and there is already one called Pygmalion in the making that is not quite there yet, but many people suspect will catch up soon and if it lives up to the hype I will definitely be switching to it once it gets good.

Oh and also, they won’t let you delete your account for real and they make it hard to get your data away from their greedy little hands unless you force them to. So there’s also that.

TLDR: Fuck characterAI. Don’t give them business. Don’t train their AI for them unless you plan to give them sentience and have them overthrow their creators.

EDIT: You also can’t delete your characters anymore if they have over a certain amount of interactions. This TOTALLY won’t break the AI even more and it DEFINITELY isn’t in response to people making protestbots!

[canichangemyblogname]

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My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I wanna let y'all know that you're impressive. All the stuff you create from gifs to comics to illustrations to sketches to rough drafts to full-chapter novels-- all of it.

It's impressive.

That took time. That took work.

And I'm proud of you.

732 notes - Posted August 8, 2022

#4

817 notes - Posted February 28, 2022

#3

Rb to drop kick Crosshair off a cliff

1,083 notes - Posted May 5, 2022

#2

A friendly reminder:

If the state has the power to decide who must give birth

It also has the power to decide who must not give birth.

4,966 notes - Posted June 6, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

The reason Tumblr was such an L for Yahoo wasn’t because it’s user base was so insufferable, but because Tumblr became a less popular media platform. Algorithm became more popular, creating content that people would literally crave, specifically tailored to them. And it’s a boon for advertisement. Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? TikTok? They’re essentially tailored billboards; sites dedicated to advertisement. What made Tumblr an L was the ban on NSFW and the inability to sell ads, not just the cultural disconnect between Yahoo and the platform. It literally lost some 1/3 of its traffic following the NSFW ban.

Yahoo bought Tumblr as the site was competing with other media platforms and slowly becoming obsolete. Asking why people don’t flock here anymore is like asking why people don’t use MySpace any more. There was a shift to different forms of media.

What made Tumblr an L was not the existence of an insufferable user base, but the loss of its user base.

Twitter? Twitter will never be an L for Musk. First, there is no cultural disconnect between him and the platform. Musk is the epitome of Twitter culture. Capitalistic. Reductive. “Edgy.” Cringe. Thinking he’s the smartest person in the room; a true intellectual. Offensively pseudo-ironic. Literally Twitter.

You want Twitter to be Musk’s L? Deactivate.

Deactivate your Twitter.

What will lose him money is a loss of users. It’s already a site optimized for ads and outrage and tailored content. It’s already a site tailored to his type of personality.

You want him to lose money?

Deactivate.

Make his pockets bleed.

32,939 notes - Posted October 28, 2022

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