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flakytartart · 2 years ago

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Box split FAQ (Who, What, When, Where, Why + How)

Who are you?

Hi! I'm Flaky, a hobby artist that likes to buy merch of my favorite characters (mostly from Danganronpa and Persona 4/5). Nice to meet you if we haven't already interacted! :J

What's this post about?

There's a new piece of Danganronpa merchandise available for pre-order on AmiAmi - Key of Love keychains!

You can buy a single keychain at random for 1,210 JPY or the complete set of 16 for 19,360 JPY. Buying an entire set gives you 1 random photo card as a bonus.

I preordered 3 full sets (THH, SDR2, and V3) to collect my favorite characters and will be left with 39 extra characters. Because of that, I put together a box split/sales post in the hopes of getting rid of the extra!

I'm charging $8 USD for each keychain + shipping ($6) and taking payments via PayPal and Venmo. Photo cards will also be available for reservation (keep reading for more info).

When...

...do the keychains come out?

Preorders are expected to release/ship out sometime in February 2024. I'll start sorting/packing when they get to me.

...do we have to pay for our claims?

As soon as possible please! After you send in your claim, I will calculate and send your total along with my Paypal link/Venmo username via DM.

Where will you ship to?

I'm located in the US so I'll only be selling/shipping domestically. :0 I don't know how much shipping to other countries would cost and it makes me a bit nervous to deal with that so I'd rather not attempt anything. I'm sorry.

Why are you doing this? (And why should I trust you?)

I think it's a pretty good deal for everyone! You get the exact keychain you want for a decent price, you help me (not really) break even, and I don't have to own 48 keychains. Hunting for merch can be difficult/pricey, plus I've always wanted to organize a box split. I'm pretty much selling these at a loss but I think it's worth it even if just one person gets what they want! If these don't sell here or on Mercari I'm most likely gonna pass them out for free at our local anime convention next year.

As for trusting me - I understand if you don't or are nervous. I really am just some dude on the internet. All I can say is that I have good standing as a seller on eBay and Mercari, am very serious about handling other peoples money, and that your information (emails, names, address, regular things I'd need in order to send stuff to you) is 100% safe with me. :] 👍

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Okay so you've made it this far -

How does this work?

Well! This is my first time doing this so the main post is mostly based off of how shsl-box-split runs their splits (+ throw a bit of Harpys_ on IG in there too). They're both incredibly wonderful and friendly so I highly suggest checking them out!

I am one person doing this alone so please be patient with me during this process. Basically, it'll go something like this:

Decide on what keychain(s) you want + what photo cards you'd like to try for.

Send me an ask containing which characters you want (I will not post your message, it's just to help me see who claimed what first!) as well as your preferred payment method (Paypal or Venmo). Claims are first come, first served.

I'll DM you to confirm your claims, total, and send either a link to my Paypal or my Venmo username. Please do not claim keychains if you cannot immediately pay for them.

After payment is received, I will update the split post with your username and log down relevant information into a separate spreadsheet. At this time you are free to send me your shipping address (recommended) or wait to send it at a later time.

We time travel wait for the February 2024 release date!

Shortly after the keychains get to me in February, I will begin sorting and packing. Before sending anything out, I will message you one last time to confirm that your claims and address are correct (or ask for your address if you haven't already sent it).

I send off your package using USPS! It arrives at your mailbox! Boom, transaction complete! :D

About photo cards...

Each set comes with one random photo card. Every character will have 3 slots and you are allowed to reserve one photo card for every keychain purchased. Reserving a photo card does not guarantee that you will receive one. Some examples: You buy one 1 keychain and reserve a Hajime photo card - if any of the sets come with Hajime, he's yours! You're the last (third) person to reserve Hajime's photo card. You will only get him if - by some miracle - all three bonus cards are revealed to be Hajime. You claim Hajime, but the photo cards are of Makoto, Kaede, and Shuichi. You will not receive a photo card with your order. Your best bet is to reserve characters that don't already have reservations or to reserve different characters (if purchasing multiple keychains). I don't think there'll be duplicates, but for the sake of covering all bases, 15 slots are available for reserving photo cards.

This split will be open until the sets arrive at my door. If you need to pull out of the split, please, do not contact/start a dispute with Paypal or Venmo. Let me know what's up and I will send back your money. No shame, no judgement.

If for whatever reason my preorder is cancelled, something comes in damaged, etc. I will send out an explanation message + offer refunds to those affected. I do not give out refunds if your package has already been shipped.

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And that's...pretty much it! Thank you for reading this incredibly long post lol. If you have any questions please let me know! :J If you're interested in joining the split, feel free to see what's available here.

#box split #group order #danganronpa #dr1 #sdr2 #ndrv3 #drv3

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marzgurl · 2 years ago

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All right, cool, let's give some backstory here.

Anybody following me likely already knows what the last four-plus years have been like for me. In January 2019, there'd already been a big discussion amongst people within the anime and anime convention community about actually talking about the people in our community that we quietly already knew were dangerous but haven't done anything serious about them to protect each other. The first of those people discussed was a guy who went by the username of Hazukari who was known to sexually prey on people in the convention circuit. This story isn't really about him, but it's important to understand that that's where the community was at when everything blew up.

The next thing that sort of unintentionally blew up was a much bigger conversation about an extremely popular voice actor, Vic Mignogna. It had already been well known for 15 years through whisper networks that he wasn't to be trusted with his female fans, both adult and underage. Stories were everywhere, even here on Tumblr. It wasn't hard to find people telling stories about their encounters with him across even some of the oldest of social media. Forums and blogs, everywhere. I understand that people really thought, "Oh, it's all just talk," but unless you were there from about the year 2005 on up, you really don't know just how pervasive the knowledge was. I myself had watched behavior from him out of him in 2007 that made me believe it. It was weird to know a guy would hold church service panels on Sundays at anime conventions, but then I would watch him get handsy with a young woman and take her back to his hotel room. It might not have been illegal, but it set off alarm bells in my head.

Now, I wasn't the person who started off the firestorm. Another person entirely who went under the Twitter handle of "hanleia" (and who no longer uses that handle) had made a tweet asking when we were finally gonna hold Vic accountable for his behavior. And although she didn't really intend it, her tweet absolutely blew up. Thousands of likes and retweets. And along with it came hundreds of stories from individuals telling their personal experiences. I took screenshots of well over 100 different people at that time telling their stories of how he was weird or a creep or made them uncomfortable, or in some cases some people talked about their experiences being volunteer convention staff members who had been treated like shit by him. And at the time, that's all it was. It was kinda a repeat of stories, some old some new, that I'd been hearing for 15 years. Where I came in was well after the firehose had already been opened all the way up, and suggested a hashtag to just keep track of all the stories, which I'd called #KickVic. That's all it was intended to do, and it came much later after the whole movement had already kicked off. Unfortunately, as time would go on, it wouldn't matter that I didn't actually accuse him of doing anything to me, or that I wasn't the person who started the movement. Culture war assholes (and seemingly Vic himself) would decide I was the face of the entire movement based solely on the hashtag alone.

As the movement went on, it got WAY worse than I think any of us really knew it was. Like, we knew he was kinda a handsy asshole, but not to what extent. Suddenly, a bunch of members of the industry--voice actors and sound engineers--were liking people's tweets, and even telling their own stories. They were telling their own stories about how he had been handsy with them and pressuring them for sex. As you can imagine, assholes would ask why they waited so long to speak up. But I guess you can't imagine how difficult it is to speak up against another powerful dude in your industry that everybody likes unless it happens to you. But if multiple people in the industry were now saying it was true, that's when I knew for certain this shit was real, and it could possibly be way worse than anyone really knew. If these were just the people willing to speak up, how many more were out there that have never said anything at all, too scared to tell?

By February Vic had lost his working contracts with anime dubbing studios and was quickly being dropped by reputable anime conventions. He was starting to bleed money. Which is probably why he was motivated to, rather than seeking the help and reformation he initially promised he would seek, instead then began suing people for talking about the things he did. Among those he sued were Funimation (the company that ended their contract with him and then tweeted about it), Jamie Marchi and Monica Rial (who were two voice actors who claimed to have had uncomfortable interactions with him), and Monica's fiancé Ron Toye (who had also spoken up in Monica's defense).

2019 was a pretty big shit show, and the legal stuff was a huge mess. It would be difficult to cover the whole thing competently without a whole documentary on how stupid it was. The shortest version I can tell you is that alt-right reactionary YouTuber pieces of shit decided Vic needed a GoFundMe to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars so that he could sue the very women he assaulted for defamation. And his legal team was awful from the beginning. His lawyer, Ty Beard, didn't even practice defamation law. He was an estate lawyer. It'd be like calling AT&T Internet tech support to fix the motherboard in your computer that you physically broke in half. What I'm saying is, you're calling up somebody who's only BARELY tangentially related to the job you need done, and there's no way they have the ability to actually help you.

And basically by the end of the year, that's exactly how that all went down. Even if he'd ever had any hope of winning that lawsuit, there was absolutely no saving him with the disastrous legal team he had on his side. Just an absolute moron running his case for him, fumbling the entire thing. It didn't help that the lawsuit ended up spitting out way more information about Vic's behavior than we ever would have known had he not sued. Now, thanks to that, we know he was hiring prostitutes behind his fiancée's back, having relationships with multiple people on his Star Trek Continues fan film, tried to have sex with twin women at the same time, learned that his reputation was so bad that Funimation had to install locks inside the building to prevent actors from interacting with staff that were colloquially called "Vic Locks"--I mean, the list of fucked up shit we learned went on and on and on. It would have been infinitely better for this man had he not sued, but then I guess we wouldn't have ever known how truly bad everything really was.

If I try to tell every single little step of this story from 2019 on, we're gonna be here forever, so we need to speedrun the next, like, three years here. But believe me when I say, if you were ever either a victim of Vic's or an ally of his victims, you knew no peace. The constant harassment day in and day out was insane. It was to levels you wouldn't believe. I definitely wasn't the only person who got it, but just to give you my own experiences, some examples of things that happened were: I was doxxed, my extended family was doxxed, I was harassed across all social media, sent death threats, my family and my pets were threatened with death, when my cat died I was mercilessly mocked for that painful loss, my marriage certificate was posted online, people (unsuccessfully) tried to mail things to my house and send pizzas, my E-mail was hacked, and it just goes on and on and on. It was especially bad throughout that first year. And although as time goes on there have been lulls in those waves of harassment, they never totally go away. At some point, someone will always decide to make some alt account or make some new YouTube video that will whip up the hate all over again. It comes in waves, but never totally goes away.

But you came here to read about a possible murder plot. So, okay, here we go.

It's 2023.

Vic still goes to some shady conventions from time to time. He hosts livestreams on Twitch every Wednesday. He whips his followers up into a frenzy all the time, even when nobody's talking about him. But then he hides behind the idea of, "Oh, I didn't TELL anybody to hurt ANYONE." Some real stochastic terrorism kinda shit. We can all tell he's very okay with the idea that his detractors get harmed, so long as he stands back far away enough to be able to say he didn't have anything to do with it.

It's April 2023. Out of seemingly thin air, a person I do not know in any capacity or have ever even heard of starts picking fights with me. She goes by the name Farah Fatherless (a porn name--she does amateur porn and has an OnlyFans, etc.). I already have her blocked. I have a lot of people blocked--over 2 million people, in fact. But she's tagged me, super pissed that I have her blocked. Initially, I don't even see it, for that reason. But somebody else replied to her asking, "Why would she block you? You're so cool!" And THAT person, I did not have blocked, so I ended up seeing the conversation. This happens a lot, so I quote-tweeted Farah and ask something to the effect of, "Why do people who don't even like me or even want to talk to me want to have access to me in the first place?" I've done that a few times before. Under most circumstances, it just becomes a big joke we all laugh off. BUT NOT THIS TIME I GUESS.

After this, Farah is on a war path. It had genuinely been four years since I had seen anybody be so unceasingly abusive and aggressive. She attacked anybody and everybody trying to get her to calm down. She just started making shit up, doxxing friends, and she would go on and on for days at a time, even when nobody was talking to her. Eventually she got herself a week-long Twitter ban after using some slurs. So we thought that was the end of it for a while.

NOPE. While she couldn't attack me on Twitter, she made up a Change.org petition with the slogan of "#kickmarsgurl" (she couldn't even spell my username correctly). Kick me from what, I'm not really sure. But it was full of all kinds of wholly untrue things, like claiming I'd been physically removed from anime conventions before (I haven't) or that I had been calling anime conventions to get actors removed from their events (I haven't, and you CAN'T call anime conventions, because anime conventions don't have phone numbers). And you could just tell it was her because it was written incredibly poorly. Just awful spelling and awful grammar, which we've learned happens because she uses talk-to-text to write almost everything she writes on the Internet. Thankfully, we figured out this incredibly stupid ruse very quickly, so that flopped. She was back on Twitter for a while doing a really bad job claiming it wasn't her. Then she got another week-long Twitter ban. So we thought, okay, surely THAT'S over. NOPE. Next thing that came up was a fake news article! It was written supposedly by "CNN-Anime" (a division of CNN that absolutely does not exist), and not only that, but it was published on Medium.com--a blogging web site that literally anybody can write on for any reason. The article suggested I was at some party (I don't tend to go to parties) and that I had been drinking (I don't tend to drink) and that a young boy was there (I don't tend to hang out with children) and that I had been inappropriate with that child. Despite how plainly and obviously fake it was based solely on the fact that it was published by "CNN-Anime"--a division that does not exist--and published on a blog web site that isn't even CNN, it was still being spread around by utter morons that absolutely wished it WAS true. But even all the lawyers I've come to know over the last four years said, "Wow, it's clear these guys never learned what real defamation is, because here they are doing real defamation and meeting actual malice right now." Farah came back to Twitter again. Denied the article was her. Eventually got herself yet another week-long Twitter ban. At this point, we knew this couldn't be the end of the onslaught.

YEP. The next thing I knew, I was starting to receive an onslaught of bot followers, first on Instagram, then on Twitter. Just an absolute barrage of bot accounts following me, maybe two every minute, until before I knew it I'd received something like 12,000 new followers on Instagram. These were followers I didn't want. And it made me mad because I knew the only way to combat this was to take my account private to stop them from being able to follow. I've never had a reason to keep my accounts private before. I've prided myself in staying public and not being beaten back at any point during the onslaught of harassment. But this finally made me go private while I slowly and painfully removed 12,000 bot followers on Instagram. And it wasn't long before whoever was doing this (let's be real, it was Farah) had moved on to sending those follower bots to my Twitter account, too.

In the middle of being followed by bots, probably intended to either shut me up or make my account dirty enough to be reported for bot activity, I am contacted by a stranger--somebody I've never talked to before. They tell me that they actually have more information about Farah that they only just realized they were aware of. They forward me something like 48 screenshots of Farah's Discord server, where she and multiple other people talk about cosplay and meet-ups and who knows what else. In these screenshots from December 2022, Farah is in her Discord describing how she JUST BROKE UP WITH VIC MIGNOGNA.

WELL.

It's weird, it's gross, and they had been dating for about 7 months by that point after meeting at a convention that was local to her. She had lots of screenshots of texts between herself and Vic, proving they were in fact an item. And she found out that Vic had "gone back" to his ex-girlfriend. See, but she doesn't know all the information I already was aware of, that Vic had been dating another person semi-publicly since at least late-2021, and as far as I had been aware, they'd never broken up in the first place. So this other person wasn't an "ex". They were there the whole time, and Vic was cheating on both of them.

SO! Now I had new information. Farah was doing this, FOR SOME REASON, in Vic's honor. Why, I couldn't be sure. Was she trying to get him back? Was she already back with him and just trying to help him now? Hard to say yet.

But I knew that, if somebody was out here trying to attack my Twitter account and get it potentially removed so that I no longer had my voice, then I needed to at least get this information out before my account disappeared. So I spent one evening with my Twitter account protected, removed a bunch of bot followers, then came back out and posted a thread about everything I had learned, up to and including information on the OTHER girlfriend that I knew was still in his life.

And, boy, both Farah and the other girlfriend were having a TIME. After a day of it being public information, Farah started publicly posting on Instagram again, seemingly that this had just been a whirlwind situation, that she and Vic had gotten back together not long after that Discord conversation, that they were together all the way up until this point (May 2023), that she realized now that she'd been lied to and manipulated. Though she still didn't seem to understand that the other woman was not an "ex", and was still mad at her for existing. The other woman meanwhile (Haileigh) was posting on Twitter that none of this was true and that Farah was just crazy and that she was mad at Vic for being somewhat untruthful but that didn't matter because she was going to stay in Vic's life no matter what. Okay, you do you. I can't make you leave, and really, that wasn't the point. The point was just to get Farah to fuckin' stop attacking me for nearly a month straight. But eventually, Haileigh nuked her Twitter account. Bummer.

There were still several days where Farah publicly flip-flopped about how she was feeling. One minute she would be pissed at Vic for doing this to her. The next she would be pissed at me for revealing any of this information at all, threatening to sue me. And finally after several days, she nuked all of her presence off of the Internet entirely. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, all of it, just gone. Is it possible this was all over? NOPE!!!

I tell this part now only because Farah has basically said this publicly herself, but at the time she wanted it kept just between us. But basically, a few days after she deleted her internet presence, she started sending me E-mails. This was the start of the most unbelievable 180 I've ever seen in my life, and was one I was very hesitant about, but have slowly been warming up to over time. Long story short, she realized Vic really was just as manipulative as he seemed, was a huge liar, and that there were even worse things that she thought I should know about. But she was hesitant to tell me more until she felt like she could trust me. And if I had to be honest, I wasn't yet sure I could trust that she wasn't just gonna report our communications right back to Vic, either. So we came to a truce, and I would just sort of play things by ear. I promised I wouldn't take screenshots of our E-mails or post about them online.

The E-mails I got back after that were pretty concerning. Everything she had been doing for the past month, attacking me on Twitter and writing fake articles and even buying bots, she'd been doing them for Vic. Not only that, but Vic was aware she'd been doing it and was very grateful for it. He didn't expressly tell her to do it, but she was doing it because she genuinely believed I specifically was hurting him and she wanted to do something to help the person she loved. And for that, Vic was very happy. They had talked about this over a dinner date before she got started doing it. Apparently their conversation was something like him saying, "Thank you for doing that. You don't know to what extents I've considered going to make this all stop." Her response was something like, "Like what? Have you considered having her killed?" And apparently his response was, "I have considered it, yes."

So, this apparently was not the only time this topic of conversation came up. After I had leaked the screenshots from Farah's server, Vic apparently pressured her to try and sue me herself. Not only that, but he started putting pressure on moving forward with putting on SOME kind of physical harm towards me. He started asking Farah whether or not she was aware if I was attending Anime Expo this year. She told him that she believed I was. (Spoiler alert: initially, no, I wasn't, because I wasn't even going to be in California that week, as I literally was already a guest at Delta H Con in Houston, Texas that exact same weekend.) Regardless, Vic started asking if she knew what hotel I was going to be staying at for Anime Expo. She told him she didn't know, and she couldn't just go around calling hotels to find out. But she did promise him that if she saw me there, she could at the very least follow me to my car and take a photo of my license plate for him to use later. Obviously, none of this ended up happening, especially because she realized he was using her goodwill and love towards him to get her to do things that nobody should ever do for anybody else.

Now, there are A LOT OF DECISIONS HERE that she was making that, even if it was for somebody I loved, I would have never offered to do. But if she was actually genuinely seriously regretful about how things went down, and she was realizing that the actual bad guy in this situation was Vic, then I was willing to hear her out and give her a chance. The last thing I E-mailed her was asking her whether she had any text proof of any of these conversations happening. More than a week passed. I heard nothing back.

It is now late June, 2023. For some reason, Vic is suddenly on his weekly Wednesday Twitch livestream. And guess what? He's talking about Farah! Well... sort of. Nobody has been talking about this man's weird relationships publicly for a while, so it was not yet clear to my why it was that he was talking about this. But it basically boiled down to, "Don't bother the people in my life. Don't bother Farah! She's been a good friend." And my first thought is, "Friend? That's what you wanna call her, after we have proof that you were more? Friend?"

And that did it! That SET. FARAH. OFF. Apparently, she had asked him to go on his livestream and clear everything up about their relationship. And all he could muster was calling her a "friend", so that he could still sneakily keep multiple relationships going at the same time.

Farah suddenly reactivates all her accounts! Twitter! Instagram! TikTok! Everything is back, and she's LIVID! She promises she's gonna tell the world everything she knows about him and drop a bunch of receipts!

And lo and behold, she actually does it! Screenshots of texts! Recordings of phone conversations! She makes huge public apologies! She apologizes to me! To Jamie! To Monica! To anybody she picked fights with!

And then she drops what she was telling me in her E-mails. She tells EVERYBODY that, yes, Vic had had conversations with her about having me killed. Well, holy shit! From this much alone, I'm told that if we used just her testimony, I could probably have enough to have a restraining order created.

But the question is, does more proof of all of this exist?

So, well, here's the unfortunate thing. In all of Farah's initial hurt and pain, she deleted large chunks of her conversations with Vic, never wanting to see them or interact with him ever again. However, it seems that she did have some clarity of thought afterward, realizing that, YES, apparently they did talk about some of this "murder plot" via text. But that chat log is deleted now. But she's hoping AT&T has record of these texts. Farah has contacted AT&T. She's physically gone into their stores, asking for that backlog. Apparently, AT&T won't hand it over without legal intervention. So! Now she's talking to lawyers, trying to get the phone records subpoenaed. She has made it more than abundantly clear to me (at least, this is how she is making it sound) that she is willing to put herself in harm's way (legally speaking) to prove that, yes, she and Vic discussed physically harming someone over text messages.

For right now, this is all we know. We're waiting to see if she can successfully get her own damn text messages subpoenaed from AT&T. It can be hard to want to put a little trust or faith in someone who tried so hard to hurt you for a month straight, but the amount of receipts that she has already shown publicly so far has been proof enough that there is at least some reason to believe she means well. Also, when she WAS lying about things while trying to attack me, she was VERY bad at it. You sometimes have to read between the lines when she talks about things. Because I often believe she's telling me the truth as of late, but sometimes her version of the "truth" is just what Vic was telling her, so it might not always be true, but she definitely BELIEVES it's true.

I'm sure this is a story that is going to continue to develop. But for anybody who was curious, this is what it's been like for me.

tl;dr: A 60-year-old man who got kicked out of the American anime voice acting industry hates me so much that he VERY LIKELY had multiple conversations with a woman he was romantically stringing along about developing plans to have me murdered. Cool!

I would say that most people will never be able to say they may or may not have been the intended target of a murder plot by a former anime voice actor, and I hope I at least live long enough to write an autobiography about how stupid the entire thing is.

#anime #vic mignogna #cw #tw #assault #death threats

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letteredlettered · 3 years ago

Note

I've debated sending this for some time, and I will leave it up to you as to whether you want to share it or not.

I still remember the first time we ever met. You may not and that is totally cool. It was at a small convention in Seattle about 8 years ago, there was a dance/ball on that Saturday.

Now i had been totally engrossed in the reading of "The Way Down, which remains one of, if not my favourite stories of yours, but I digress. There was this sort of shuffle of a activity, and I went to investigate to see what was happening. It was you. You had arrived and your were being introduced to a lot of people. Somehow, not sure if I was introduced, or if you asked.

Now here's the part I will always remember. You turned, and looked at me, really looked and smiled. and said, "oh hi!" like you knew who I was. You recognized me!

What you don't know was I had been to other conventions been introduced to other "well known writers" and honestly others not so well known. Prior to this evening, the usual response was to look at me like, "who the hell are you" to nod and then turn away and start engaging with others. Now, i realise and understand that my name is not one easily known or recognized, And that is okay.

But you did. You did not turn away, or ignore me, or give that look. Yu did not do any of that. Now, if you were in that stage of current social panic that we can quite frequently find ourselves in, and have no memory of me or that evening. This is more than fine. All i know is you made me feel seen and known. and that i will never forget. so thank you so much for that.

Of course I remember. I shouldn't say "of course," because I actually have a terrible memory, even for things I care about. But I definitely remember meeting you.

You were the only person who was friendly to me at that convention.

I don't mean that other people were cruel or unkind, but I had wanted to come specifically so I could talk to people about H/D. I didn't have any H/D friends at the time (besides the folks that I later brought to the con, but I will say they were not terribly into H/D at the time--it was jad and another friend who was mostly a lurker), and I really wanted to make some. I have a lot of social anxiety, but I am actually extremely good at hiding it. People are usually shocked when I tell them how hard social things are for me. I was very ready to make friends, and . . . I definitely didn't.

It's funny the way you remember this, because I remember it very differently. I truly think this must be longer ago than 8 years; considering the job I had at that time and the fic I had written, I'm pretty sure this was 2011 or 2012, but as I said, my memory is terrible, so maybe you're right. But I feel pretty sure!

I remember arriving, people being friendly and eager to meet, asking my username. I remember telling them and them doing exactly what you say: the blankness, the "oh, huh, I don't know that name," then turning away to talk to someone else. I was sad about this. I thought that maybe someone would have read my fic, and that could be a little ice-breaker, and I wouldn't have to work so hard to get to know them because they would want to know me. After the first few times this happened, I was embarrassed that I ever thought anyone would recognize my user name, and I felt very arrogant, and felt that of course people wouldn't recognize my name, and of course I should work hard to make friends, just as everyone has to.

And I did work at it! My job at the time was not only talking to strangers, it was literally teaching other people how to engage with strangers--and not to sell stuff, but to get them interested and curious about the world around them. I worked at a science museum! I was good at listening and asking questions. But I literally got the feeling that no one wanted to talk to someone they did not know, which was crazy to me. It was a con!

Anyway, what I remember was that everyone kind of drifted away, but later, you came up and seemed to be there for the reason that I was--to meet people who liked HP slash and wanted to talk about it. I remember you asked who I was, and I told you, and you knew who I was. Let me tell you, by that point, I was convinced that I was a complete asshole for thinking that my fics were somehow popular enough to have been read by anyone at this convention, and I felt a great deal of gratitude and relief that you seemed to care about my fics, and that you wanted to talk in the first place. And I recognized your name as someone I had seen about on LJ, and I was really glad for a familiar face, as it were.

Now I do have a confession that I have had you friended on tumblr for a while, I think; I feel like as soon as I saw the username (which I don't always do right when someone friends me; I can't always pay attention to my email so miss a lot of things) I friended you back because of this little interaction . . . but this whole time, I have always been afraid I remembered your name wrong, and that you were someone else! And on the last ask you just left a bit earlier, I was thinking about sucking it up and asking if you were the same person, just to clear up this little confusion of mine just in case!

I really regret that I didn't clear it up before, and that I didn't reach out to you after the con to thank you for talking to me, and that I didn't make more of an effort. I don't know how to say this without sounding kind of bratty or maybe ungrateful, but I really, really struggled to make friends in this fandom for years and years. I actually think that con is when I pretty much stopped trying. I had a bad time, and while that was no one's fault, I couldn't help but feel like it had to do with the idea that people only want to talk to people they know, or only want to talk to people whose fic is famous.

I say that this may sound ungrateful or bratty because now, I think it's pretty safe to say my fic is somewhat known, and meanwhile, I have stopped trying to make the effort to get to know people. It's hard to do, and I am a tired person, and while most of my lifelong friends were made through fandom, there are so many people I can keep up with. But I'm grateful you were at that con, and I'm grateful I met you, and thank you for this ask.

If you are ever in Seattle again, I would love to have a coffee.

#fandom

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rollercoasterwords · 2 years ago

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hey, i am absolutely obsessed with your dorlene fanfic (the hand that feeds) it is so so good, so I was wondering if you could put it on goodreads so I can add it to my reading challenge (every book (and fanfic) counts!) if that’s possible ❤️‍🩹

hi!! tysm i'm so glad u liked the fic 💕 and i do very much appreciate u coming to me and asking whether u can post it on goodreads, bc my answer is -- please don't lol. i understand that u want to count it towards ur reading goal + i know this is coming from a place of u appreciating the fic, but even tho it's long my fanfiction is not a book, and i really don't want it to be treated like one. many people are respectful + kind on goodreads, but there are also many people who take posting fics on there as license to treat them exactly as they would books by rating + reviewing them publicly.

but my fanfiction didn't have an editor. it didn't have people looking over it + helping me with it; if it was a book it would be a first draft. it's also not intended for like....a broad goodreads audience. it's posted with tags on ao3 specifically so that the people who find it are people who are filtering + seeking out stories like mine, if that makes sense. i don't want random people to come across it and treat it the same way they'd treat a book, because it is a separate form of literature with its own conventions + expectations. but because not everyone who uses goodreads understands that, i've seen some pretty nasty stuff about my own + my friends' writing from people posting fics on there, all of which could have been avoided if those people just kept their negative reviews private.

if you really want to add the word count to your reading goal, one option is to add a book of the same length + maybe just leave a little note for yourself that says like "thtf" or something so that you know what it is. or if you want to make a new "book," then i'd ask that you just put something like "fic" or a broad term, or just like....nondescript letters, something where you'll know what it is but you're not actually putting the title of my fic + my username out there for anyone on goodreads to find + treat like a book, y'know? or u could also make a private spreadsheet to keep track of the fics u read, instead of using goodreads to track them. at the end of the day, what matters is that you'll know you've met your reading goal, right?

anyway - thank u 4 the love + thank u for asking me instead of just posting the fic on goodreads without permission! i appreciate it 💞

#ask #thtf

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ask-whitepearl-and-steven · 5 years ago

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How do you feel about askers’ way of asking questions? There are the ones who are super polite like in the previous ask or the ones who flat out just DHSIDJ BUT WHY??? Is there one you prefer? Is there a specific way you like to receive asks, but you’ll just respond to them no matter what? Please, I need answers

It... depends...?

Depends on my mood, on the subject of the ask, on whether or not I know the person/recognize their icon.

On one hand, I want to believe that everyone is just trying their best. I know no one is sending me rude messages on purpose, and communication mishaps happen.

But on the other hand - if you are sending me a message on anon, or if I don’t know you personally (we haven’t talked much) - yes, I would prefer it if people were at least a little polite?

Because consider this - I have thousands of followers. I don’t know their icons/usernames by heart. I recognize a few, but most are just a sea of passersby faces on the street where I peddle my wares. And if you’re on the street, minding your business, trying to sell some comics quietly and a random person breaks off from the crowd and goes up to you, gets in your face and yells

well

You may just feel a little uncomfortable?

I personally know I do. I try to assume the best, but I don’t always have the patience to do anything except ignore this to save myself time. Answering it would invite similar inanity into my inbox and flood out the more useful messages. If I don’t know the person well, this isn’t friendly joking - it’s just annoying.

I get messages almost every day - sometimes it’s only a few, but often, there are at least 30 in my inbox every time I open it. Especially after a recently posted comic, sometimes there can be 80+ questions I need to look through. I can’t feasibly reply to all of them, so I have to scroll and see if

A) There’s anything I can use for the AU comic (those get saved for later)

B) There’s anything I can answer within 10 seconds (these are short, simple enough questions that do not require a paragraph to explain)

C) There’s anything people are having trouble understanding en masse that I might have messed up/missed and needs to be addressed so everyone can calm down

But the majority of the asks are not these asks.

You want to see what the majority of my asks are like?

Nonsensical questions that are trying to get a reaction out of me.

Questions which make it clear the reader has not yet read the FAQ/the whole comic/has not really read very carefully.

People trying to strong-arm the story in a direction of their own, or trying to break down the 4th wall to give Steven All The Answers...

These are just a FEW examples.

Some messages are just really sweet notes from people who tell me they like the comic - I try to save them for later to reply privately, if I can, or I save them to read over and over again to cheer myself up. :)

Some are random chainmail asks or various attempts to get my attention - ‘pass this hug on to the next 10 people’ etc - I appreciate them, but I never react or do anything because it’s just not realistic for me to do that sort of work. I have other things I want to be focusing on.

I want to be polite and patient and answer everyone, but I hope you guys can understand that I just... can’t be. I’m only one person. I don’t have a PR team behind me because I’m not a public figure. I’m just one comic author, and I don’t want to build up some sort of ‘influencer’ status. I just want to draw.

And I know this might be difficult to hear but - I’m not your friend. I’m not your hero. I’m not even someone you should be looking up to. If my work inspires you, I’m thrilled to hear that! We can be peers! I can give you advice if you need it (provided you’re not expecting a 10 chapter How To book on your desk in the morning) and I can answer questions if you’re confused.

All I ask is that you take a few seconds to THINK about what you typed before you hit that button.

Before sending the ask, ask yourself:

1) Is it written politely? (Or are you talking to me the way a rich middle aged woman talks to someone in customer service?)

2) Did you already try to find the answer to your question by searching the blog and reading the FAQ?

3) Would you run up to a random artist at a convention and say this to their face?

If all of these can be answered with ‘YES’ After that, send the message. I guarantee you will exponentially increase your chance of your ask being answered if you follow these steps. :)

#chekhov answers #Anonymous

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threeleggedart · 3 years ago

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from discord: 2, 3, 9, 19, 22

2. Is it easier to draw someone facing left or right (or forward even)

depends on if the characters asymmetrical but generally dont have problems with either + i flip my canvas to check for inconsistencies. forward is weird because depending on character design its either super easy or a nightmare (ie any characters who were never meant to be viewed facing forward)

(next one was a text doozy so making this a read more!)

3. What ideas come from when you were little

this ones gonna be weird bc i dont think i can be sure on a lot of these lmao

bio/zoology + monster stuff definitely came from childhood interest, i likea tha critters :) i wanna say my interest in bots/mechs + funky inanimate object stuff too? i did play metal slug a lot as a kid and a bunch of childhood favs were mechanical characters. also ive found fanart of putt putt, captain underpants villains, and the brave little toaster in my childhood journals lmao

oc -wise, selena herself (and vicks) also are funny in their own ways. i can say for sure they were always distinct ocs in my mind but i never actually Materialized them till very very recently. selena was based on a childhood pokemon trainer oc (but noot entirely self insert? its hard to describe) and vicks is kind of. a catharsis character for me. i have been thinking about making an entirely split oc from vicks recently bc the character i view in scenarios i want to visualize has been vicks, but i dont really wanna anymore bc she deserves to be her own deal now

...i also would argue probably the reason why mws huge cast + me just being able to. establish how they interact with each other so quickly also came from childhood ocs i never put down on paper or knew how to articulate as characters. its something im very weird about bc i straight up had a "cast" of fundamental ocs (proto-selena was one of them actually) from childhood to high school that were so personal to me i never wrote or visualized any of them bc Crinj they were just for lil ol me lmao. they liked to hang out with each other :)

finding connections between my fixation on my current characters and stuff i thought about as a kid is a thing i think about a normal amount teehee

9. What are your file name conventions

stupid and goofy but still understandable to infer what it is for personal stuff, labeled straight for work stuff. "sketchbook" files have scratchpad in the name, pieces that include characters that arent my own usually include the persons username, and annual based stuff have the year

i like to be sillay but also i am a freak about keeping my files organized lmao

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.)

sid industrial machinery is really fun for me, buildings tend to be too basic and geometric for me to enjoy drawing... i wanna do more extremely stylized furniture and prop stuff (i really like those drawings that are character inventory layouts), i actually do wanna make fake object assets for my settings eventually bc i love that kind of stuff. bottles and containers are aesthetically pleasing but havent figured out rendering the sweet spot ive seen other drawings hit, at least for me

environments are something i wanna do bc those pics of super expansive landscapes with either huge structures or so open you can see the horizon stretch for miles are really cool, but still in the general learning process so itll be a while before i can even try reaching for that effect

22. What physical exercises do you do before drawing, if any

i sometimes do a little wrist wriggle or crack it a bit, or ill wring my arm/shoulder, but unless my arms got a weird feeling i dont really do too much...

i squeeze both my biceps with my hands too sometime bc thats actually where i normally experience soreness from drawing

#discord #ask

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twoidiotwriters1 · 4 years ago

Text

Iron 3 (Peter Parker x F!Oc)

Words: 1,756

Masterlist

Chapter 2 / Chapter 4

Tony Stark's trip to showcase the new Jericho missile is a success with the military, but when soldiers take him back, they’re intercepted and the billionaire is kidnapped.

Both Lily and Pepper find out by watching television. The call from Colonel James Rhodes confirms their fears. Although the information isn’t much, the important thing is that they’re doing everything to find him.

Pepper Potts concentrates on everything she has to do for the company without her boss. Working for Tony for so many years has formed a special connection, even if it is not the conventional one. Sometimes thoughts of possible horrible scenarios come to her mind, but she pushes them away.

Something she can be thankful for is the company of little Lily, who also can't help but worry about the man. He may not have been kind, but no one deserves to be tortured.

The tension remains for three long months, the wait for news from Tony along with the paternity results in the envelope which has not been opened. Nobody knows what to do in a situation like this.

Rhodes keeps searching for his best friend with the help of the army. Pepper and Happy take care of the little girl. The relationship between Tony and Lily's small circle has been strengthened in all this time, even Rhodey receives some calls from her asking if he’s okay and if he has found Tony. Regardless of the test results, they would protect Lily.

At the end of the three months, the new news give everyone a great respite. Tony Stark is alive and returns home.

Although Lily wants to meet Tony along with Pepper and Happy, they won't let her. Surely there would be a lot of reporters and they’d ask a lot of questions if they see the girl.

For those cases, Pepper had already arranged a babysitter. A difficult task, but she managed to find a twenty year old girl, she has no idea who the girl is, nor who hired her. The contact was a Stark Industries worker. With that problem solved, they both wait in Pepper's apartment.

Jessica the babysitter isn't so bad, Lily thinks. The only bad thing is that she spends a lot of time on her phone.

Lily searches all the channels for any news about Tony and finds one where they’re broadcasting a press conference with him eating a hamburger.

"That man must be crazy," Jessica says from the couch.

"Why?"

“He just said that he will no longer make weapons. His company produces the most. He’ll run out of money,” She explains.

Lily frowns.

Why would Tony stop producing what makes so much money?

***

"Did you think I wasn't going to find out about the girl, Tony?"

“Obie…”

Obadiah Stane raises his hand to interrupt him.

"It hurts me that you don't trust me.”

Tony sighs.

"I didn't have much time to explain everything to you and after my obligatory vacation, I couldn't do it.”

"Is she yours or not?"

“I don't know, I haven't seen the results. But, I don't think you called me for this,” Tony tries to deflect that topic as soon as possible. He can't handle this now.

They walk through Stark Industries until they reach the room where the Arc Reactor is. They argue about the actions of the company and how it affects Tony's decision. He tries to show Stane another form of energy, but in the end he fails to do much.

Happy waits for him in the limousine to take him back to the house. Tony gets in the car.

"Sir, Lily asked me to give you this," says Happy, handing him a folded paper. "She's already at your house," He informs and starts the car.

Tony unfolds the paper, finding a drawing made with colored crayons. A big house, the sea behind and three people standing in front. The names Happy, Rhodey, and Pepper are written under each person in crooked letters. The man can't help but smile, but what he’s really surprised about is seeing the fourth person in the air with outstretched arms. It's him with a big smile and the words 'I'm alive' next to him. He doesn’t know whether to feel fear at those words or simply laugh at the idea.

The truth is that during his experience in Afghanistan, he did think about her. How his life would be if the test was positive. If he’d manage to get out of that situation and return to have a family. Images from his childhood, everything he lived with his parents came to his mind.

Howard Stark was not the best father in the world. Tony doesn't remember loving or encouraging words from him, no matter how hard he tries. He discussed this with his assistant and his friend Yinsen, who was very helpful in giving real advice, but even so, he still doesn't believe that he’s capable of raising a girl. He doesn't have a clue how to do it.

“Sir," Happy interrupts his thoughts. “We’re home.”

***

"You're good?”

“Yes."

"You don't look good.”

"Well, I am," Tony answers, arranging some things in his workshop.

"Did you like my drawing?"

"It could be better.”

Lily frowns. It’s not the answer she expected. Maybe that means he wants more drawings, to see how much I can improve, she thinks.

“Okay.”

Tony takes off his shirt and leans back on a table. He connects several cables to his body. Lily looks at him curiously and notices the circle in the center of his chest.

"What is that?”

"You wouldn’t understand.”

"Doesn't it hurt?"

“No."

"How does it work?"

“You wouldn’t understand-"

“Try me,” She cuts him off. She’s sick of that answer. Tony sighs.

"This little wheel of light,” He touches it. “It's what keeps me alive, it works so that the shrapnel doesn’t reach my heart.”

"What is shrapnel?"

"Fragments of a missile that tried to kill me.”

She nods.

"And what are you going to do now?"

“Update it. Jarvis, call Miss Potts.”

"Can I ask another question?"

"You already did.”

"I'll ask another question," She informs. Tony brings his lips together to avoid a smile.

“Okay."

“Your dad was also an inventor. Did he answer all your questions?"

Tony frowns. He could never ask so many questions to his father. Howard kept him as far away as possible, but he had other teachers or he did research himself.

Pepper's arrival interrupts them. Her steps are nervous, she thought that finally her boss would want to know the result of the paternity test, but seeing that he needs her for something else, she leaves the envelope on a table.

The man explains what she has to do to replace the reactor in his heart with a better one. Lily looks amused as Pepper panics and Tony tries to relax her, but it only upsets her further.

"It's like the game ‘operating'."

"What is that?" asks Pepper scared.

"I know what it is, can I try it?"

"No!" The two adults answer. She makes a face.

When the machines sound faster on alert, Lily freaks out and looks around for something she can help out with, but she doesn't know what all of Tony's toys work for. But Pepper manages to solve it in time and everything ends.

“You're better?" She asks approaching again.

“Yes, Kid. Back off,” He answers, pulling her away a bit.

Pepper wipes her hands. Tony explains what she has to do with the old reactor, she nods, but after she clears her throat.

"We have a pending issue,” Tony turns to see them. Pepper points to the girl.

“Right," He sighs. "Just tell me if she's mine or not.”

"Don't you want to see the papers?"

Tony sits on a bench and looks at Lily.

“No."

Pepper opens the envelope carefully. Reads every detail and sighs in relief. She smiles and looks up at her boss.

“Lily's your daughter, sir.”

Tony doesn't take his eyes off the girl.

“Fine."

Pepper notices the tension between them.

"Just fine?"

"Yes, that's it,” Now he stares at the redhead. "Thank you, Miss Potts.”

The redhead nods unsure and leaves the workshop.

Tony makes a face and returns to the girl.

"You got scared?" He raises an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“What did you think?"

"I don't want to lose my dad so soon,” She cocks her head. "I just found him.”

"I should take you to an orphanage.”

“You'll do it?"

“You’d be better with someone else.”

"But I don't want to be an orphan.”

“Nobody wants to be. I am.”

"Is that why you're always sad?"

He opens his mouth thinking of an attack, but he decides to avoid it.

“This is a bad idea. Being my daughter, I don't recommend it.”

“Well, not that I have a choice. My mom is no longer at home and…” She sighs. "I don't think she wants me back.”

Tony puts his hands to his face and groans.

“Fine," He gets up and looks around. "I have other things to do. Pepper will handle the paperwork."

“Can I help?"

Tony walks to a desk and touches the surface. Holograms of plans and folders are projected in front of him. Lily approaches the desk, Tony looks at her from the corner of his eye, maybe he can admit that it is nice to have someone who’s easily impressed.

He and Jarvis talk about a secret project, outside of any Stark Industries business.

"I don't want this to fall into the wrong hands.”

"What about mine?" Lily asks. She raises both hands showing him her palms.

He sighs.

“They're still wrong, but,” He cocks his head. “I guess you're a Stark now. That's enough,” He crouches down to her level. "You can’t tell anyone about this.”

"Not even Happy?"

“I'll take care of Pepper, Happy and Rhodes. This shouldn't get out of here unless I say so. Okay?" He offers his hand.

“Deal," They shake hands. “Can I help?"

"Only if you follow my rules.”

"Which are?"

“Don't get in the way. Do exactly what I tell you and don't ask so many questions.”

She frowns at the last rule.

"I can't help it, how can I help you if I don't know what to do?"

He rolls his eyes.

"Fine, we’ll have a limit of questions.”

“Fine," She answers in a deep voice, imitating his. She smiles looking at him, but she stops when he doesn't.

"This will be more complicated than I thought.”

Taglist

If your username is crossed out it’s because Tumblr didn’t let me tag you, sorry. If you want to be removed from the taglist, you can tell us, we also make mistakes, lol

@stardusthigh @sarcasticallywitty15 @silenthappyplace @yourbonesareinmybody @aylauwuuniverse @tyb1 @skittles-skittles @hufflepuffzutara @poetryislife0715

#Iron #Peter Parker #Peter Parker x Oc #Peter Parker x reader #Avengers #Avengers fanfic #Marvel fanfic #Tony Stark #Iron Man #Pepper Potts #Iron Man 1 #James Rhodes #Spider man

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sigmaleph · 4 years ago

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wait, how does "pretending not to understand the NFT you bought" benefit either "people buying NFTs for status" or "people trying to resell NFTs"? i would imagine pretending to be a fool on twitter lowers your status, and i would imagine that making NFT owners look like idiots would (slightly, in aggregate) lower the potential resale value of NFTs? i agree that most of these NFT threads are fake, but i think its more likely to be people who hate NFTs pretending to be NFT owners.

you seem to be under the impression i'm claiming this as some sort of machiavellian strategic move? it's not. it's people trolling on the internet for fun. i don't know why this is fun for them but empirically lots of people go on the internet and pretend to believe things they don't and thinks it's funny when you believe them.

it doesn't need to advance any long-term goal.

agree that most of these NFT threads are fake, but i think its more likely to be people who hate NFTs pretending to be NFT owners.

every time i looked up a username they were a completely unironic NFT type who like goes to NFT conventions and shit. if they're faking it it's really deep cover

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lildoodlecat · 4 years ago

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For the personal asks: 11, 22, 33 and 44? (are those numbers coincidental or not, the world will never know >:) )

(All these doubles.. so scary :0)

I love your username btw like hard same lol

11. Last time you cried?

God this is gonna sound pathetic sjxk but I was at a board game convention and this fuckin,, 13 y/o boy was being very mean and kinda yelling at me bc I didn't understand the game we were playing and kept being slow and making mistakes. (He didn't let me learn the game first so man,wonder why I didn't know wtf was going on)

I promptly fucked off after that bc he was a dick but I did cry a lil after I got away from him bc I was not abt to cry in front of that tiny asshole

22. Nicknames people call you?

Jay is a nickname from an old username actually! Uhh besides that ig my sister (lovingly) calls me a gremlin sometimes dkfksl

33. Best day of your life?

Y'know, I genuinely don't know how to answer this question. A few years ago I would've said like "the day I got to see jacksepticeye on tour" but now that's not really it??

Oh!! Idk if it's the best bc thinking in absolutes hurts my brain but a really damn good day would be one of the ones when I went to visit my friend Pika! He's a cool dude n it was really neat to see him in person esp since we live on opposite sides of the country

44. Selfie?

Oof maybe I should've specified no selfies but. Hmm

How's this for a selfie

I'm technically in the picture ;D

#jay talks back #ask game

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drundertalescum · 5 years ago

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I feel like this must be something you've heard before but. Whenever I see your username, even though I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be Doctor Undertale I just read it as is, as drunder, and it always kinda makes me chuckle which is nice. Anyway hope you're having a fantastic day

I like Drunder!

I’ve had people asking me what Drundertale is and I still don’t know. TECHNICALLY its supposed to be D.R. Undertale Scum* but at this point its just whatever people want it to be. I didn’t really understand tumblr naming conventions when I made the account!

*(D.R. is a nickname of mine, and Scum because I thought it was synonymous with “trash” but with a personal twist because scum is a term in werewolf/mafia/town of salem which I like to play. I have since realized with the help of many unpublished anons that this was a bad move.)

As for my day, I’ve had an ear and sinus infection for almost a month now so I’m a bit of a ball of misery, but this ask helped to cheer me up :D I hope you’re having a good one, anon!

#Anonymous

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miloscat · 4 years ago

Text

[Review] Conker: Live & Reloaded (XB)

Let’s see just how well this misguided remake/expansion holds up. This will be a long one!

Conker’s Bad Fur Day is my favourite N64 game. It’s cinematic and ambitious, technically impressive, has scads of gameplay variety with fun settings and setpieces, and when I first played it I was just the right age for the humour to land very well for me. A scant four years later Rare remade it for the Xbox after their acquisition by Microsoft, replacing the original multiplayer modes with a new online mode that would be the focus of the project, with classes and objectives and such.

First, an assessment of the single-player campaign. On a revisit I can see the common criticisms hold some water: the 3D platformer gameplay is a bit shaky at times, certain gameplay segments are just plain wonky and unfair, and some of the humour doesn’t hold up. It’s got all the best poorly-aged jokes: reference humour, gross-out/shock humour, and poking fun at conventions of the now dormant 3D collectathon platformer genre. I also am more sensitive these days to things like the sexual assault and homophobia undertones to the cogs, or Conker doing awful things for lols. Having said that, there’s plenty that I still find amusing, and outside of a few aggravatingly difficult sequences (surf punks, the mansion key hunt, the submarine attack, the beach escape) I do still appreciate the range of things you do in the game.

As for the remake, I’m not sure it can be called an improvement by any metric. Sure, there’s some minor additions. There’s a new surgeon Tediz miniboss, the new haunted baby doll enemy, and the opening to Spooky has been given a Gothic village retheme along with an added—though unremarked on—costume for Conker during this chapter based on the Hugh Jackman Van Helsing flop. Other changes are if anything detrimental. The electrocution and Berri’s shooting cutscenes have been extended, thus undermining the joke/emotional impact. The original game used the trope of censoring certain swear words to makes lines more funny; the remake adds more censorship for some reason, in one case (the Rock Solid bouncer scene) ruining the joke, and Chucky Poo’s Lament is just worse with fart noises covering the cursing.

The most egregious change, and one lampshaded in the tutorial, is the replacement of the frying pan (an instant and satisfying interaction) with a baseball bat which must be equipped, changing the control and camera to the behind-the-back combat style, and then swung with timed inputs to defeat the many added armoured goblings and dolls carelessly dumped all throughout the game world. This flat out makes the game less fun to play through.

On top of this, all the music has been rerecorded (with apologies to Robin Beanland, I didn’t really notice apart from instances where it had to be changed, such as in Franky’s boss fight where the intensely frenetic banjo lead was drastically reduced as a concession to the requirement to actually play it in real life), and the graphics totally redone. Bad Fur Day made excellent use of textures, but with detail cranked up, the sixth generation muddiness, and a frankly overdone fur effect, something is lost. I’m not a fan of the character redesigns either; sure Birdy has a new hat, but I didn’t particularly want to see Conker’s hands, and the Tediz are no longer sinister stuffed bears but weird biological monster bears with uniforms. On top of all this you notice regular dropped details; a swapped texture makes for nonsensical dialogue in the Batula cutscene, and characters have lost some emotive animations. Plus, the new translucent scrolling speech bubbles are undeniably worse.

I could mention the understandable loading screens (at least they’re quick), the mistimed lip sync (possibly exacerbated by my tech setup), or the removal of cheats (not a big deal), but enough remake bashing. To be fair, the swimming controls have been improved and the air meter mercifully extended, making Bats Tower more palatable. And some sequences have been shortened to—I suppose—lessen gameplay tedium (although removing the electric eel entirely is an odd choice). But let’s cover the multiplayer. Losing the varied modes from the original is a heavy blow, as I remember many a fun evening spent in Beach, War, or Raptor, along with the cutscenes setting up each mode.

The new headline feature of this release is the Live mode. The new Xbox Live service allowing online multiplayer was integrated, although it’s all gone now. Chasing the hot trends of the time, it’s a set of class-based team missions, with the Squirrel High Command vs. the Tediz in a variety of scenarios, mostly boiling down to progressing through capture points or capture the flag. Each class is quite specialised and I’m not sure how balanced it is, plus there’s proto-achievements and unlocks behind substantial milestones none of which I got close to reaching (I don’t think I could get most of them anyway, not being “Live”).

The maps are structured around a “Chapter X” campaign in which the Tediz and the weasel antagonist from BFD Ze Professor (here given a new and highly offensive double-barrelled slur name) are initially fighting the SHC in the Second World War-inspired past of the Old War, before using a time machine, opening up a sci-fi theme for the Future War. These are mainly just aesthetic changes, but it’s a fun idea and lets them explore Seavor’s beloved wartime theming a bit more while also bringing in plenty of references to Star Wars, Alien, Dune, and Halo; mostly visual.

Unfortunately the plot is a bit incoherent, rushed through narration (unusually provided by professional American voice actor Fred Tatasciore rather than a Rare staffer doing a raspy or regional voice like the rest of the game) over admittedly nice-looking cutscenes. They also muddle the timeline significantly, seemingly ignoring the BFD events... and then the Tediz’ ultimate goal is to revive the hibernating Panther King, when the purpose of their creation was to usurp him in the first place! It expands on the Conker universe but in a way that makes the world feel smaller and more confusing. It’s weird, and also Conker doesn’t appear at all.

On top of this, I found the multiplayer experience itself frustrating. To unlock the full Chapter X, you need to play the first three maps on easy, then you can go through the whole six. But I couldn’t pass the first one on normal difficulty! The “Dumbots” seemed to have so much health and impeccable aim, while the action was so chaotic, obscured by intrusive UI, floating usernames, and smoke and other effects with loads of characters milling around, not to mention the confusing map layouts, the friendly fire, the instant respawns, and the spawncamping. Luckily I could play the maps themselves in solo mode with cutscenes and adjustable AI and options.

I found some classes much more satisfying than others. I tried to like the Long Ranger and the slow Demolisher, but found it difficult to be accurate. The awkward range of the Thermophile and the Sky Jockey’s rarely effective vehicles made them uncommon choices. I had most success with the simple Grunt, or the melee-range Sneeker (the SHC variant of which is sadly the sole playable female in the whole thing). You can pick up upgrade tokens during gameplay to expand the toolset of each class, which range from necessary to situational. But ultimately it’s a crapshoot, as I rarely felt that my intentions led to clear results.

Live & Reloaded is such a mess. The Reloaded BFD is full of odd decisions and baffling drawbacks, while the Live portion feels undercooked. I’d have preferred a greater focus on either one; a remake is unnecessary, especially only four years on, but a new single-player adventure would have been ace. And a multiplayer mode in this universe with its own story mode could be cool if it was better balanced and had more to it than just eight maps. As a source of some slight scrapings of new Conker content I appreciated it to some extent, but I can’t help being let down. I guess it’s true what they say... the grass is always greener. And you don’t really know what it is you have, until it’s gone... gone. Gone.

Yes, that ending is still genuinely emotionally affecting.

#review #conker #conker live and reloaded #Rare Ltd #xbox

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kitkatwinchester · 5 years ago

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On September 13th, 2005, a new show made its debut on the WB. It was about two brothers whose lives were flipped upside down the day their mother was murdered by a demon. It had a small budget, a small cast, and a small crew, but the people involved were dedicated. They wanted to do everything they could to make sure the story of Sam and Dean Winchester was told. They wanted to show us the true power of family in the darkest of times. Little did any of them know just how much of a legacy they would create, and just how much of a family their following would come to be.

I was four years old when Supernatural first came on the air. I had no concept of any show beyond Blue’s Clues, Lazy Town, and the Disney Channel. I was a smart kid, but a kid nonetheless, and Supernatural just wasn’t something I was ready for. As I grew up, Supernatural achieved milestone after milestone. It made it through the channel change to the CW. It survived a writer’s strike in its third season. And in April of 2010, it hit its 100th episode milestone. As it neared the end of its fifth season, Eric Kripke’s original storyline had been told, and it seemed as if the show would end, then and there. But it didn’t. Instead, it continued beyond its originally scheduled timeline, taking on a new showrunner in its sixth season and continuing for years after. And in 2011, in the middle of said sixth season, it finally made its way onto my radar.

Tenzin Tsekye and I have been best friends for fourteen years, so we’ve spent a lot of time together. We’ve had hundreds of sleepovers, shared a million memories, and watched thousands of shows and movies together. So when, at one of our many sleepovers, she suggested that we watch an episode of something called “Supernatural”, I trusted her. She knows what I watch, she knows how I am. I was bound to like it. Except there was one problem. She insisted on watching this one episode that she really liked (Family Remains) that was smack dab in the middle of season four, and I was not having it. I told her that we had to start from the beginning. I didn’t know anything about this show, so how could I possibly watch an episode in the middle of its fourth season? It wouldn’t make any sense to me. She kept assuring me that it didn’t have anything to do with the main plot (a concept I now know as “Monster of the Week”), and that I would love it. But I wasn’t convinced, and I was persistent. I told her that if we weren’t going to start from the beginning, I wouldn’t watch it at all.

We argued about it for at least an hour, and finally, I backed down. I said that we could watch the season four episode only if we went back and watched the first episode afterwards. She agreed. After we watched Family Remains, she stuck to our agreement and we watched the pilot. And then we watched the second episode. And the third. And the fourth. And my entire life was changed forever.

It still baffles me to this day how close I came to never starting Supernatural to begin with. I thank Tenzin all the time for being so stubborn on that night. Who knows what my life would be like today if she hadn’t been? Looking back, it’s hard for me to picture a time before I started watching Supernatural--so much so that pinpointing when, exactly, it became the obsession that it is today is near impossible. But what follows is a rough timeline of events based on the major things I do remember.

Tenzin and I never wound up watching the rest of the show together. Instead, I brought the show up to my dad. It took a while, since we were both pretty busy, but by the next year, Supernatural had become our new thing. I was a busy middle schooler, so it was often hard to fit in watching more than one episode on the days we spent together, which meant it was slow-going for a while, but we did our best. Luckily, the fact that we weren’t binging it all at once meant that we were able to avoid a lot of the cliffhangers, (which, looking back at it now, makes me feel very lucky), and it gradually became my favorite show of all time. By the time Season 9 was on the air, in 2014, we had caught up on all eight seasons on Netflix, and I was hooked and ready for more.

We didn’t have cable, so instead, we watched every episode a few days after they aired once they came on Hulu (I didn’t learn about cwtv.com until much later), and it was at this point that I really started to dive into the fandom. Now that I was caught up, I was able to look up fandom content as I pleased without worrying about spoilers. I guess you could say this is when the obsession truly kicked in.

As I came up on my teen years, Supernatural became my life. I started requesting even more Supernatural merchandise as birthday gifts, Christmas presents, and everything in between, and I would wear the gifts I got anywhere I could. Within a few months, I discovered the world of fan fiction, and within a year, I grew confident and excited enough to start writing my own. I started watching video compilations not just of the show, but of the cast--behind the scenes videos, bloopers, convention videos, and so much more. I joined Facebook groups about the show and finally started interacting with other fans, making all kinds of friendships along the way.

On top of that, as the tenth season came to a close with no signs of the show stopping, my mom finally caved in to my babbling and excitement and started watching the show with me. We started back at the Pilot (which, for me, was probably about my fifth re-watch at that point), and we made it all the way to about mid-season five just as the eleventh season was getting ready to air.

And then a truly amazing thing happened.

For my 16th birthday, that same amazing mother bought me tickets to the Supernatural Convention in Chicago.

To put it lightly, I was excited. Very excited.

On the weekend of September 9th, 2016, just a week before my birthday, I got to meet the Supernatural cast for the first time. And that convention experience was one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

When we were on our way to the convention, I was really just excited that I’d finally get to meet these celebrities--these HOT celebrities--that I’d seen on the big screen for the last few years. At this point, they were basically idols to me, and even having the chance to see them in person was the best thing I could’ve asked for. But when I got to that convention, I was hit with something even better than I could’ve hoped for.

I say all the time that the SPN Family is a different fandom than any other. There’s a special feeling throughout our fandom that, as someone who is in multiple fandoms, I have not been able to feel anywhere else. When I try to explain that to people, nobody gets it. Even my mom, when I first started talking about it, kind of shrugged it off like it was nothing. But when we got to that convention, she felt it too. The air is different. The second you walk into a room of fellow Supernatural fans, you feel comfortable. You feel welcome.

That first convention, my mom didn’t really come with me to the panels. She took some photo ops with me, but being as far behind as she was, she didn’t want to spoil things for herself too much, so I spent the majority of the convention by myself, at a mere fifteen years old. But I never felt scared or alone or apprehensive. I made friends immediately. The people I was sitting next to, the people I stood in line with, basically anyone I came in contact with struck up a conversation with me, and it would end with Facebook usernames, Twitter handles, or even phone numbers being exchanged to contact each other in the future. It was insane. I’d never been in an environment like that before, and I loved it. And the openness didn’t stop there.

When it came time to meet the actual members of the Supernatural cast, they were just as kind and wonderful to talk to. At every panel, the guests were so eager to interact with fans, and many of them even stepped off the stage to come say hi to fans who were in line to ask them questions. Even the three main stars, Jensen, Jared, and Misha--who had to stay on the stage for security reasons--did everything they could to bond with fans and make them smile or laugh, and it was beautiful. And that transcended beyond the panels.

That Sunday, my mom and I had a photo op with Jensen and Jared, and let me tell you, I was crazy nervous. I mean, these were huge celebrities and people that I really looked up to, and I was about to get a photo with them. Plus, Jensen was my very first celebrity crush and all-time favorite actor at the time (he still is, to be honest). The whole thing was crazy nerve-wracking.

After standing in line for a bit, it was finally our turn, and as my mom and I stepped up, and I turned to Jensen to tell him what we wanted for the photo, I completely froze up. My brain told me to say: “We want to do a squishy hug photo.” But what came out instead was something more along the lines of “hug please photo hug?” To say the least, I was blushing with embarrassment for several hours afterwards. But despite my nerves and fangirling, Jensen just smiled at me, and he gave me a little chuckle, and said: “sure thing, sweetheart”, which, of course, made me fall apart even more. Nonetheless, the photo happened, and at the end of it all, Jensen gave me one more reassuring little rub on the back, plus a second hug and a last smile before we headed off and away from the duo.

It took me hours to process the whole thing, but at the end of it all, I was so happy and relieved.

Jensen could’ve been cold. He could’ve given me a weird look for freaking out so much. He could’ve even just done the picture and gotten it over with. But he didn’t. He went the extra mile to make sure I knew that my nerves were okay, and they were understandable, but that he wasn’t judging, and he was okay with it. And that really says something.

After that, I went to a convention every year (excluding this year, for obvious reasons). I’ve been to four conventions in all, and every single year, the experience has only gotten better, because I’ve gotten more confident and comfortable around the actors--all because of that special energy.

In 2017, I was picked to sing karaoke with several of the actors from the show...on stage...in front of a huge crowd of Supernatural fans. For those of you who know me pretty well, you know that I have terrible stage fright when it comes to singing in front of people. I get super nervous, and the nerves just get higher with bigger crowds. But that night, to my surprise, I was great. Not only did I sing the classic “Wanted Dead or Alive” in front of hundreds of people, but I got to sing and dance with some of my favorite actors--and I was confident about it. When I was on that stage, dancing with the actors and singing with the fandom, I felt good.

It wasn’t until long after I was done that it hit me what had just happened, and I couldn’t believe it. All of my years of performing in theater productions and talent shows, and I had never been as confident as I had been on that karaoke night. I still have the video on my phone, and I smile at it in disbelief every time I watch it.

My confidence only grew from there. In 2018, I decided to submit to the convention’s fandom music video contest. I spent many hours and many days putting together an edit for Team Free Will 2.0. I was super particular about the timing--beats had to hit scene changes exactly right, lyrics had to line up with the scenes being shown, and I really wanted to tell a good story. When I finally finished the edit, I showed it to my dad--who’s been doing films his entire life--to get his opinion, and he was super impressed. Even though he had stopped watching the show around Season 11 (luckily, my mom was caught up at this point, so she and I were able to watch it together), he really loved what I had done with the edit. (He actually wound up loving it so much that he asked me to edit several projects for him later, including a music video, film production, and theater trailer, opening a door for me in life--one I never would’ve found without Supernatural.)

I submitted it to the Denver convention, and months later, when I was finally able to attend said convention in August of 2018, I was nervous, but excited. As my convention experience went on, I kind of forgot that I had submitted an edit, instead enjoying my time with my new Supernatural friends, the actors, and, now that she was caught up, my mom. But on the third day, they announced the winner, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t hear what name they said, but we all kind of assumed that it hadn’t been me, which was a little disappointing, but I didn’t let it get me down. But then, while I was talking to my friend, I heard the tell-tale notes of the opening of “This is Me”--the song I had used for the edit--and my head whipped to the screen faster than it ever has for anything. Sure enough, in the #1 spot, was my music video edit.

Needless to say, I kind of lost my mind. I ran up to the front to claim my certificate--including the gift certificate for $100 of Supernatural merchandise--and couldn’t stop jumping up and down. And my friends that I’d made at the convention that year were jumping right along with me. It was a beautiful moment.

By the time the 2019 Chicago convention rolled around, I had grown really comfortable with the whole cast, crew, and fandom, and 2019 was one of my best experiences yet. I submitted another video edit and got second place. I sang the Ghostbusters theme (Hillywood style, of course) with a friend at karaoke night. I even managed to ask every actor a question at their panels without stuttering, even bantering back and forth with a few of them. At autograph tables, I managed to have full-fledged conversations with some of the actors, and at my photo op with Jensen and Jared, I actually told both of them exactly what we wanted to do for the picture without stuttering over my words.

In any other fandom, I don’t think I would’ve been able to do that. But the actors and the fans make that entire convention so comfortable and easy to get through, no matter how nervous you are, and that’s one of the many things I love about this show.

Sadly, though, there was also something else that happened in 2019.

On March 22nd, 2019, Jensen, Jared, and Misha made the announcement that all Supernatural fans were hoping would never come. On Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and everything in between, Jensen Ackles said the words we’d all been fearing: “Though we’re very very excited about moving into our fifteenth season, it will be our last.”

I was in Europe when I found out--Barcelona, to be specific--and to say that the news put a damper on my vacation would be an understatement. I was in tears, and I know many of my fellow Supernatural fans were too. This show had always struggled with ratings, but it had always pushed through, hitting milestone after milestone. So when the news finally came that it would be coming to a close, after a whopping 327 episodes, it shocked us all.

But even knowing it was ending, the cast, crew, and entire fandom were quick to note that it would never be far away. While the Winchester brothers would take their final ride in (what was supposed to be) May of 2020, it didn’t mean that the fandom would die. While news spread from actors to fans to, frankly, the entire world, we all rallied together, knowing that, as Jensen put it so well, “the show might end, but what it has built, this will never end”.

So we prepared for the end. I did my ten day countdown leading up to the premiere, and as the cast counted down each of their lasts on social media, we counted down each of our lasts watching the show.

And then 2020 happened, and everything changed. COVID-19 shut everything down, including production on Supernatural, and with only two episodes left for the cast to film (plus four that still needed post-production), it looked like Supernatural wasn’t gonna be able to end after all. They aired the completed first thirteen episodes of the season, and then it went on hiatus. I think, at the time, a lot of us were worried. What if something happened? What if they weren’t able to finish? What if, after fifteen years, the show had to be cancelled because of a pandemic?

But Supernatural’s never given up, and the pandemic was no exception. For the cast and crew, this was just another obstacle in the long line of obstacles that Supernatural has made it through over the years. And in August of 2020, Jared and Jensen went back to set--along with several other actors--and finished the Winchesters’ long legacy. And on October 8th, 2020, Season 15.5 began airing on the CW, and our long goodbye to a show we’ve all loved for years started all over again.

And now here we are.

I’m sure you’re asking me why all of this matters. I just gave you a complete rundown of the Supernatural timeline from the day I started it, and I haven’t even gotten to the point. So, here’s my point.

This is what my life has been for the last nine years. I was eleven years old when I finally discovered Supernatural, and now I’m twenty, and my life has changed so much.

Supernatural has taught me things that no other elements of my life possibly could. It’s brought out parts of my personality that I never would’ve discovered otherwise.

Supernatural has made me who I am today.

Supernatural has gotten me more involved on social media, even going so far as to create my own content to share.

Supernatural has influenced other things I watch. Now, I try to find shows, movies, and even books that have some of the same themes as this show because I love them so much.

Supernatural got me connected with GISH, which helped me feel more comfortable going out of my comfort zone and being a little (okay, a lot) weird.

Supernatural made me proud to be a fangirl, giving me the chance to express my interests publicly and feel free from judgement.

Supernatural gave me some amazing new friendships, and strengthened the relationships I already had with friends and family.

Supernatural brought out my creative side. From fan fiction writing, to photo collages, to video editing, this show has given me more ways to express myself than I ever could’ve hoped, and it’s opened so many doors for me in the process.

Supernatural has taught me so many lessons and mantras that I will cherish and keep with me forever. Between never giving up, spreading love and kindness, knowing that family always has your back, and not being afraid to be who you are, the show and its cast have given me confidence and strength that I will never forget.

For those of you out there who still think that Supernatural is “just a show”, this is what I present. When I first started Supernatural, I thought the same thing. But over the years, it has become so much more to me than that, and I know that the entire fandom agrees.

With Supernatural ending, a small piece of everyone in the fandom is ending with it, but deep down, we all know that this show will always be with us, and the legacy it’s leaving behind is something that will never be forgotten.

Supernatural has been through a lot, just like it’s two main characters; but, like Sam and Dean, it has never given up, and it has saved so many people’s lives in the process.

I feel so honored to have been even a small part of such an incredible journey.

Thank you, Supernatural.

Thank you, Supernatural cast and crew.

Thank you for making your fifteen years in this world matter.

Thank you for teaching all of us what it means to be human.

Thank you for showing us that we can continue to fight for ourselves and others no matter what the world throws at us.

Thank you for making every single one of us feel special and worth something.

You have changed my life, and the lives of so many others, more than you can possibly imagine by teaching us all that we truly can “carry on”.

On September 13th, 2005, an era began.

On November 19th, 2020, that era will end.

But its legacy will last forever.

“No doubt, endings are hard. But then again, nothing ever really ends, does it?”

#Supernatural #SPN #SPN Season 15 #the end

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