#originally this was intended for cc creators who wanted some ideas

[erebiatyndarus]

Santa Monica Apartments | 2/?

I did not originally intended to make this lot available for download, but seeing how much love just a couple of screenshots got...

❗️❗️❗️ IMPORTATNT ❗️❗️❗️ this lot is DROWNING in custom content (if any CC is missing please let me know)

❗️❗️❗️ KNOWN ISSUES ❗️❗️❗️ the chair by the fallout desk in one of the apartments on the second floor don't slide in, your sim won't be able to use the computer. i left it for aesthetic reasons but i recommend changing it

DOWNLOAD SEE MORE SCREENSHOTS

> size: 40x30 > there are 4 apartment - 1 very basic looking and 3 fully furnished (like I said - never intended to make this downloadable, I decorated these flats for my sims, you can change them or leave them the way they are) > lot is set as "residental", you gotta change it to apartment lot yourself with a cheat: changeLotZoning apartmentbase (if you want) just some ideas: there's a lot of rabbit-hole space, you can make apartments bigger / you could open a business on the lot and utilize the pawn shop space on the ground level / the driveway can be placed in the place of basketball court

big thanks to all CC creators who's creations were used, you guys are amazing! have a lovely time playing 🖤🩸🧛

[katsurinssims]

Katsu's alternative Afterglow Palette

as I mentioned in my last post, I made a lil alternative hair colour palette. Before I got into Afterglow, I really wanted to try out @0201-sims VK actions, as I love the idea of a visual kei inspired hair colour pallete. But I got into afterglow, so forgot about it for a while! Then when I was ill and making a bunch of sims and downloading a bunch of CC recently, I thought that I wished I had a secondary family of naturals to chose from, as when I was using Pooklet's colours I used 2, one being what my DRs were in, and the other being just another option. So I tried out the VK actions, but wasn't 100% happy with how some of them looked on Afterglow textures. Afterglow has a subtle, silky shine (which is what converted me, aha) that can easily become flat looking with certain colour actions applied- so I trialed some other colours I like and this is what I came up with!

The colours and why I chose them:

It's a mix of Cassis' VK actions and @digisims2 Ephemera Inspired Color actions. Cassis' Aliene is a much cooler (as in cooler tone) and slightly more unnatural, alternative looking black than Poppet's, which fits well with the Vkei theme. I knew I wanted cooler, but the green undertones are really striking! Basier is used as the red rather than the brown, its the main one I wanted as it reminded me of when I was a teenager and took a picture of Hizaki to the hairdresser as a reference photo. I suppose you could call it a strawberry-esque colour, its very fun. For blond and brown I picked out a couple of Digi's Ephemera colours that were dissimilar from the colours already included in afterglow naturals, and Digi's always been an inspiration for me in my CC making journey, as well as Ephemera, so it seemed only fitting. The main idea I wanted to get accross with the main 4 colours is hair that has clearly been dyed, but in natural types of colours, maybe for alternative types of sims, aha. For the grey I knew I wanted something richer and warmer, so went with @blackswan-sims Pipe Bomb x Finade mix, which I have had saved by for a while because it intrigued me so much! Finally I'm adding just one unnatural because I missed having a bright pink option, and this was the hardest to pick out. I went through a lot of options before landing on ol' reliable @pooklet, in Pentolite. It's warm but not too red, and doesn't blast out all the subtle detail. So yea, the main purpose of this alternative selection is to suit my game with a lot of late 90s FRUiTS and other Japanese street style inspired fashion ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა

That may be too much information/explaination on my choices there, I'm mainly just excited to show you all these colours!

As much as I just picked these out because I liked and wanted to use them, anyone else is welcome to try this alt palette; but I don't expect others to like or use them, or for them to be a norm amongst afterglow creators. Besides these being maybe a bit of an odd choice- having one family of naturals makes CC creation easier, cuts down on the size of your downloads folder, and keeps your bodyshop neat! Nothing wrong with that, I'm just someone who's a lil over the top with these types of things I suppose, aha.

If you do want to use them, I'm uploading them as a set of actions for PS:

Download my Afterglow Alternative Palette actions

I didn't alter the original creators actions at all, just bundled them together- which means they may not work on all versions of Photoshop. I've included individual swatches in the file with the creators names so they can be found easily!

Intended to be run over Afterglow but would work on any volatile base. Check @the-afterglow-archive for more Afterglow ₊˚⊹♡

I'll be posting anything I make with these colours to this tag!

[kayas-kosmos]

Ko-Fi Challenge - 2024, the Year of Solarpunk!

[This post is intended for the Ko-Fi January 2024 challenge. However, I receive an error message every time I try to post this blog on Ko-Fi so I am uploading it here instead. I therefore don't know if I will quality for the challenge since I cannot get my posts to work, but it's worth a shot].

Hello everyone, I hope you are all having a great start to the year!

I have decided to dip my toes into the Ko-Fi January challenge and let everyone know about my plans for this year. Really, I only have one plan – Do something small every day to make the world a better place. But I plan to go about doing this in a big way.

The last several years have been extremely troubling with a lot of catastrophic Global crises happening on a daily basis. It's all around us and it feels inescapable. People are tired of the constant flood of bad news, they're tired of doomscrolling and they're tired of the deluge of films that portray some different flavour of the apocalypse. Even us artists can't escape into our art for comfort anymore because of the constant spectre of AI technology threatening to make our work obsolete. The future looks very grim and a lot of people are not looking forward to the year ahead.

That's where "Solarpunk" comes in.

Solarpunk offers an alternative to all of the doom and gloom and presents the idea of a bright future in the face of cataclysm. It is a movement both political and artistic designed to reignite our souls and excite imaginations with ideas rooted in science and observation of the world around us. Even if it is utopian, it's a utopia grounded in what is realistically achievable and the current tools we have at our disposal to succeed.

Here is a short video that gives a great summary of what Solarpunk is all about.

Now you know what Solarpunk is, here is where my art comes into all of this and what I am planning for the year ahead.

Flowerpunk.

The first and most important project I want to launch this year is Flowerpunk.

Flowerpunk is my webcomic that I have been developing since 2020. Taking place in a universe where magic has been reduced to nothing more than a commodity, the magic itself is starting to decay, causing the soul of the world itself to become sick. It is up to a group of punks and outcasts to take back the magic and heal the world of this rot.

For those who haven't seen it yet, I put up a trailer for the webcomic on Webtoon, Tapas and GlobalComix. Please check it out!

These first 9 chapters follow two main characters, Kimi and Ludwig. Kimi is a gentle soul who has a thing for pastel colours and Ludwig is a rebel with a burning spirit and big hopes.

They both have a pretty terrible taste in music as well!

A lot of work has already gone into this project. I have most of the world-building done, there's a whole myriad of magical creatures featuring in this universe and the first part of chapter 1 is only 11 panels away from completion.

Furthermore, Flowerpunk is an IP under a CC BY-NC licence, meaning that you can legally use my characters and creature designs for anything that is not monetised provided that credit is given.

"This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. Credit must be given to the creator. Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted."

To give some examples of what you can do:

~ Make derivative versions of my work (writing, art, AUs, etc...).

~ Make OCs from my species, or use them for your own stories removed from the original universe as long as the work remains non-commercial.

~ Use my creatures or character likeness for RP characters or in DnD/tabletop campaigns.

~ Using my work for any educational purposes (such as copying a drawing for an art study).

I want this project not just to tell a story of radical hope, but to also encourage the creativity of others and their own storytelling projects based in this universe.

But that's not all! Once Flowerpunk launches, this will lead me onto the next part of my plan which is...

Merch.

I would love to launch some new merch to help support Flowerpunk's development, including stickers, pins and most importantly, motivational posters. This image below is the kind of thing I am aiming for:

These posters will also be used on social media to help inspire people to take action and fight for a better world. And speaking of social media...

Social Media, TikTok and Twitch.

I plan to start Twitch streaming my process later in the year and I may even consider inviting guests to do chats and interviews with. This is inspired by the time I appeared on a LumiRue Twitch stream back in March of 2022 and the extremely productive conversation we had about art and activism. I also have shorter videos planned for my TikTok discussing a variety of topics, including Solarpunk (obviously), my webcomic universe, autism and disability and much more!

Recently, I created a Solarpunk feed for Bluesky and I plan to continue contributing more positive news and ideas to this feed. The feed consists of art, videos, book recommendation, games, real-world projects (such as re-wilding projects) and much, much more! The feed has seen a great success so far and I want to continue using it to spread positivity. I may even start inviting people to add their own contributions to the feed!

In Conclusion.

Despite the challenges we face this year, I feel like it's going to be a good one moving forward. There is a lot to look forward to and a lot of cool stuff on the way!

Also, I wanted to take a moment to thank all of the people who have supported me here on Ko-Fi over the years, it really means a lot to me and has helped so much. Even small donations make a huge difference, especially in times like these when things have become so precarious for artists.

Hope you're all excited!

[es-sims]

Sims 2 CC Reach-Out

So my kittens are starting to become a little more independent and that leaves me with a little bit more time for other interests. But having been away from CC content in a while, I got a lot of ideas/things I want to learn about CC making and it's kind of overwhelming trying to focus them. So I need some help picking something to focus on first.

My focus for defaults will still be historical/medieval/fantasy. The reason I even started this default project was to make it easier for players/myself to start a medieval game, especially with a Maxis neighborhood which would normally require a lot of work to get set-up. Not to mention that it reduces how much scrolling is required for the Build/Buy catalogue.

I will still work on other things, but I have so many ideas rattling in my head that it is difficult to pace myself with the short time I have while the kittens snooze. The descriptions of the choices are below the poll, please check them out if you want to see what I mean by these categories.

Thank you again for the help, along with another big thank you to all the Sims 2 creators who have been inspiring to learn and try new things with CC creation.

______________________________

Build Mode Defaults: These will be focused on texture-defaults of floors, walls, and doors. I have done some CC experimenting with roof defaults but they are low-priority compared to the massive catalogue of wallpapers/carpets.

Buy Mode Defaults: While I still intend on defaulting as much Buy mode as I can, I also have plans to learn to do mesh replacements for the objects that are too modern to pass for anything else. These mesh replacements will try to be as close to the original as possible while keeping it historical/fantasy related.

CAS Defaults: This will have a bulk of clothing defaults, but will include hair defaults and conversions to other ages/genders. This will also include refreshments of old CC; creating add-ons for defaults that have uneven replacements for teens/adults and package-cleanup for file size reduction.

Standalone Buy/CAS CC: This category is for both modern/medieval stuff that are not related to DRs. These will include conversions of outfits to make them separated, hair recolors, and modern/medieval retextures of Maxis and CC items. This will also include new buy objects, several of which have been sitting in my Blender docs for months.

Other/Misc: This is for stuff that doesn't really fit the other categories and is more experimental. Things in this category are small projects that I have started but have hit a major impasse due to lack of knowledge on the subject or lack of motivation. This includes: finding ways of incorporating the Colors/Music Trait project into historical/fantasy gameplay, default-replacing the static images in memories, new traits, and randomized textures for suitable defaults/accessories/possibly food. If this category is selected, please note it will be much slower but I will provide more screenshots of WIPs as I work on these.

[frobinfandays]

What is a Creative Common lisence?

Hello everyone! I want to thank the three people who submitted themes to use in #FRobinMonth24

Even if it's only three answers I am so thankful! That really helps a lot because it means I have to pull up way fewer idea.

That being said I asked for inspirational fotos and one answered, that they don't understand creative common licensing.

Which is fine! It is not easy to understand.

So, I decided to write a little text about copyright and license and the usage of certain things online.

Please be aware that I am no lawyer and that copyright might be different from country to country. I also don't guarantee that everything I wrote here is 100% correct!!

More under the read more (sorry to mobile users).

What is copyright?

As Wikipedia puts it:

A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives the creator of an original work, or another owner of the right, the exclusive, legally secured right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.

A copyright is an intellectual property. This paragraph I copied from Wikipedia is the intellectual property of the wikipedia editor who wrote it. They have the copyright to it. But the "Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0;" (CC BY-SA 4.0).

And we'll get into what that means later. (Also I quote it and linked back to the source)

So, Copyright... Oda created One Piece and gave Shūeisha the "copyright" to print it in the Shonen Jump Magazine, basically giving them the right to copy it.

And legally created merch of One Piece is licensed. And the manufacturers bought that license.

Which is why fan-zines that are sold for profit are in a very, very, very grey zone. I don't think ayone within that community is actually allowed to sell those or the merch. Even the charity zines are in a grey area but not as much as the for profit ones. In some countries selling fanart (even commissions) is illegal. The only reason that the big names don't go after those zines is because they are aware that it's good publicity and the "profit" is too small. Also they often don't know about it. Still, be aware of the risks!

On a much lower scale, if you go to any Stock website, you can buy licenses for most of the photos to use. This is mostly used in professional context because you can't just go online, search for a picture, take it and use it in an billion dollar ad campaign or something else. If the creator finds that and gets angry, it can get very expensive.

Or that is the theory, otherwise there wouldn't be so many illegal copies of all kinds of websites like Shein. (Which is the other side of the coin)

And while these rich companies should actually buy the right to use designs, pictures, and other intellectual property, there are a lot of poor artists and they also need pictures and inspiration.

So, what is Creative Commons (CC)?

Creative Commons is the nonprofit behind the open licenses and other legal tools that allow creators to share their work.

Creative Commons is a way for artists to share their work but to add limitations too with a simple code.

The text I had in the form for the submission to the FRobin month was the following.

Please feel free to submit/link a picture prompt (a photo you have taken yourself or which has the correct common license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/). (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-SA)

Of course a picture of yours that you submit, you allow to be used in a creative way in a fanwork or to be an inspiration for fellow artists.

I also want to encourage people to use the picture prompts within the artwork too. For example in a manipulation, animation, collage.

In theory to do that legally I asked for your own pictures or links to pictures that are shared with the creative common licenses of BY, BY-SA, BY-NC or BY-NC-SA.

There is a total of six common licenses but those four are important for this very case. Why?

CC BY This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. CC BY includes the following elements: BY: credit must be given to the creator.

-> With other words the medium (song, picture, video, etc...) can be used in any imaginable way. You are even allowed to sell or earn money with what you created, as long as the original creator is credited.

CC BY-SA This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. CC BY-SA includes the following elements: BY: credit must be given to the creator. SA: Adaptations must be shared under the same terms.

-> The medium (song, picture, video, etc...) can be used in any imaginable way. You are even allowed to sell what you created, as long as the original creator is credited.

PLUS the thing you created is also allowed to be used in the same way, so someone else can use it in any imaginable way, is allowed to sell it as long as they credit you.

CC BY-NC This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC includes the following elements: BY: credit must be given to the creator. NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.

-> The medium (song, picture, video, etc...) can be used in any imaginable way, as long as the original creator is credited.

BUT you are not allowed to sell it or earn money with it!

CC BY-NC-SA This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. CC BY-NC-SA includes the following elements: BY: credit must be given to the creator. NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted. SA: Adaptations must be shared under the same terms.

-> The medium (song, picture, video, etc...) can be used in any imaginable way, as long as the original creator is credited. You are not allowed to sell it or earn money with it.

PLUS the thing you created is also allowed to be used in the same way, so someone else can use it in any imaginable way, as long as you are credited. But it can be used to be sold it or earned money with.

---

There are two more licenses that don't allow the change of the medium, which is why I decided to not include them.

Now, looking back the Wiki-quote and actually all of Wikipeida is shared with the CC BY-SA license. You are allowed to quote from Wikipedia in any paper you want as long as people are allowed to quote within the same license. With other words if you are now having a discussion about

Now, since this is a fandom blog, I want to take a short look at fanart and fanfiction.

Legality of fanworks

Fanart and fanfiction is most of the time running within the legality of "Fair use" (again Wikipedia) and likewise laws within each country. (So again, check within your own countries texts within the copyright laws.)

Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing as a defense to copyright infringement claims certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement.

I can't find right now the exact quote but the overall understand is that as long as you don't sell your fanworks, based on copyrighted works you can always claim fair use if someone tries to sue you.

Which is why Ao3 has it in their TOS that you are not allowed to post advertisement. (Explaination) You are not allowed to link to your Ko-Fi or ask for commissions or donations.

Because then you might not be able to claim fair use and Ao3 as the hosting website can't either.

And again this goes back to the fan-zines, fanarts and also fanfictions that might be sold for profit.

To read more on the topic, Wikipedia's, Legal issues with fan fiction sure is a source but so is fanlore's, Fandom and Profit.

Sorry for the long text. I hope you have a good day!

(x)

[foamimi]

Heyo!! To any CC artists, creators, or whomever is in search of  some inspiration, may I suggest checking out...

♥ ♥♥ the old Club Penguin wigs archive! ♥ ♥ ♥

there’s a ton available to look at throughout the website. this is just a small fraction of what’s there regardless of the fact that some are duplicates (mainly just recolors of one another). the majority come with additional pics, too.

I realize it’s Club Penguin of all places, but hey who knows, they may help spark some creativity in one form or another!

idk if this kind of thing meets the requirements by any means, so feel free to ignore if not ;; just thought I’d tag on the off chance it did @maxismatchccworld​

direct links for the ones previewed under the cut

Row 1.)

The Dark

The Electric

The Curly Lochs

Row 2.)

The Rows

Unnamed Pink and Black Wig

The Masquerade

Row 3.)

The Wave Washed

Blue Sweat Band

The Striking

Row 4.)

The Chief

The Willow Wisp

The Cinder

Row 5.)

The Flow

The Aquamarine

The Strawberry Braid

Row 6.)

The Secured

The Enchantment

The Stomping

Row 7.)

The Too Cool

The Chic

The Summer Jam

Row 8.)

The Rocker-chic

The Styled Messy

The Right On

Row 9.)

The Blue Ombre

The Replay

The All Star

Row 10.)

The Firey Flare

The Short & Sweet

The Glamorous

[kumaradosha]

I’m seeing a whole lot of bad takes and ignorance of past/present content and lack of critical thinking or ability to understand character motives regarding this most recent Dream SMP lore. So please, allow me to lay down some facts, some sense, and also some speculation of my own. This’ll be really rambly, because I’m tired, and I want to say a lot. Rewatching ALL the streaming perspectives now, my thoughts start here:

Considering Sam doesn’t want to enter the cell to dirty his hands himself, he clearly has some aversion or moral qualms about torturing prisoners, but Quackity has convinced him to go along with it. Quackity spends a lot of time before he goes into the cell repeatedly making sure Sam won’t have a change of heart and intervene, which indicates Sam probably has some misgivings. Quackity feels he has to remind Sam that this is for the greater good and to stand back and let him do his thing and that this will probably be the last time. These are all reassurances and instructions that would not be necessary if Sam were known to be totally cool with it all already.

Sam believes the stringent measures Dream put in place for the prison are just desserts for him to suffer, but Techno doesn’t deserve the same cruelty, because Techno didn’t enact those rules. And that’s why Techno gets baked potatoes from Sam, and Dream doesn’t. Sam clearly believes this harsh treatment is justified, because Dream was going to do it to someone else. He thinks he’s being just. Of course, allowing the torture, though not his idea and not really comfortable to him, was still crossing a line, considering physical torture was not something Dream did to his victims (and besides, there’s the argument that not everything a criminal has done is morally correct to be done to the prisoner regardless). That, he was convinced, was for the greater good, to get the revive book. Quackity manipulated him; he thinks he’s doing what’s best, but no, of course that doesn’t make him right or his hands clean.

Sam wanted the dog dead because it’s a security risk, especially with Quackity entering the cell with two other people. He killed it later for the exact same reason. Y’all act like nobody else has ever killed an animal in Minecraft RP; get it together. Is Sapnap also evil? Tommy? He killed his own cat. Random animals are not treated with the gravity you guys are giving them; it makes no sense to call out this one time.

When Techno raised the point that he would be fine if Quackity killed him, because Dream could just bring him back, Dream countered with his warning that Techno doesn’t want to experience death, judging by how messed up it made Tommy. What motive would he have to argue that, aside from actually caring about Techno’s well-being? If Dream was only thinking of himself, he would benefit from Techno being willing to die and be brought back to life by him, giving him an easy reason not to give the resurrection knowledge to Quackity. I honestly can’t think of a reason he would argue other than the fact that he doesn’t want Techno to die even temporarily or experience death--that he cares. Interesting...

Dream hiding in the escape tunnel to make it look like he disappeared too was 5,000 IQ, but he didn’t do it just to be silly or smart. Quackity literally threatened to kill Dream when he came back. Dream HAD to pretend to disappear, because he was legitimately in fear for his life. You saw how terrified he was when Sam found him, how he just immediately begged him not to tell Quackity. He was afraid Quackity would come back and kill him before Techno managed to come back and break him out. He believed that would be his fate and had to make a last ditch attempt to avoid that outcome.

Phil confirmed on stream that the blueprints Techno was led to via coordinates are for the prison. Not Tubbo’s missing nuke, like I’ve seen speculated.

“Steve is your polar bear” was written on stream during the “Prison Podcast” Technoblade lore. This is not a mystery. Dream said he wrote it down when Techno started talking about Steve rescuing them.

If Sam doesn’t approve of Quackity killing Dream, why doesn’t he just tell Quackity Dream is still in the prison but not allow Quackity in anymore? Quackity needs Sam to lead him inside, to let him in. Since when did he have any power against Sam to force him to let him in? I don’t understand why Sam has to keep it a secret just to keep Dream alive. Just don’t let Quackity into the prison anymore. Clearly it was a bad idea, since all these security risks happened while Quackity was getting a free pass to not follow the rules of the prison.

Dream casually walking in the way of Sam’s pickaxe to disrupt his swing once Sam almost had the bell broken gets me every time.

The rapport between c!Dream and c!Sam in prison fascinates me. Clearly Dream is much bolder with Sam than Quackity and still seems to trust his sense of duty to a degree. Sam is also more malleable, convinceable, his fatal flaw being actually listening and talking to Dream, even after it clearly messes with him psychologically. He let Quackity manipulate him, too, and he compromises too much. That might seem weird to say, considering the harsh conditions he has Dream in, but. He does give in to a few things.

I’m wondering if Dream wanted to go to the courtyard hoping it was less secure and easier for Techno to break him out of.

Sam has no reason to lie and gaslight about Dream being the one to suggest raw potatoes and sealing up the courtyard. That’s not in his character to do. So clearly Dream suggested these things. In fact, we have proof. Search for the clip of Dream revealing a teaser for future lore, with him telling Sam the hole in the courtyard ceiling for the light is a security flaw. He straight up says that. Update yourselves. Furthermore, are the recordings we have of Dream suggesting nicer features for the prison even lore? Are they in-character, or was it cc!Dream and Sam making plans? I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t remember/am not sure. In any case, clearly the plans changed at some point, and they were Dream’s idea.

Dream said he didn’t realize how bad it was until after he experienced it. This could very well be a lie. However, it could also be a wake-up call. We just don’t know. Dream clearly possesses low empathy, and every person at some point doesn’t fully realize how poorly another being can feel in a bad situation. Sometimes it actually does take experiencing it yourself to realize how it feels. People can do cruel things to others before the empathy fully clicks. It is possible that Dream really does only now understand how harsh his plans were. Unfortunately, it’s just as likely he doesn’t care and is pretending to, because he has a history of acting, lying, and manipulating. We just do not know, and I think that’s part of the fun, the speculation. Note that none of this is excusing what he’s done; that bores me. I just like understanding characters and their psychology and motives.

Sam is ASKING if Dream had this prison built for Tommy. He is suspicious that that is the case. Dream did not TELL him this, because OBVIOUSLY Sam would have absolutely nothing to do with building a prison he knew Dream meant for Tommy. So no, Sam thought it was for something else. And guess what? It was. Back during the disc war finale stream, Dream told Tommy and Tubbo that the prison was originally intended for someone else (maybe multiple people, the number was not specified), but that he changed his mind and would now put Tommy in it (ha ha punny). Tubbo asked who it was originally intended for, and Dream wouldn’t tell him, preferred to keep it a mystery. Dream had zero reason to say this if it weren’t true. In fact, it would have been more impactful to pretend (or admit) he intended it for Tommy all along. Think of the horror, or even the betrayal finding out Sam, his friend, helped make it. So yes, there is every indication that it is the truth--Dream meant the prison for someone else at first.

And Dream didn’t argue with Sam’s accusations, because why WOULD he? If he didn’t tell Tubbo who it was for, he wouldn’t tell Sam now. Plus, he wouldn’t want to argue with Sam, make him more heated and less sympathetic, and risk him deciding to tell Quackity Dream was there after all. Dream has no reason to speak up. Let Sam think what he wants. Dream’s silence does not mean confirmation. This is not a new thing with him. He keeps things mysterious, and there is a lot about his planning and mindset he does not disclose.

Now, whether Dream made the prison harsher before or after he decided he wanted Tommy in it is up for speculation. We don’t know that timeline.

Anyway, Sam’s speech about Dream getting what he deserves is really delicious. All these people out here mocking Dream fans for Dream still being in prison (like Techno’s not imminently coming to break him out, hello?) and being told off by Sam, yet plenty of us are enjoying it, too, like?? Bruh, what kind of Mary-Sue-touting asshole likes characters who are flawless who never go through strife? Can’t be me. I love watching my favs through triumph AND despair, so this is all just a win for me, thanks.

It is possible to sympathize with a bastard who is highly flawed and wrong AND to understand his motivations without justifying his actions AND to realize he deserves punishment (though to what degree I don’t care to argue). All the black and white morality and taking one extreme stance of “this character is perfect!” OR “this character is wholly evil and only ever does things to be sadistic!” and polarizing the community is cringe, yo. You need to calm down. Enjoy the ride or like...get off?

Anyway, Dream is my favorite, Techno is my second favorite, I adore Sam, I really enjoy Quackity, and the SMP wouldn’t be the same without Tommy. So much love for all of this creative work and its creators. I’m having a blast.

[myheartsims]

Check In Tag ✔️

I was tagged by @berryconfetti for this, thanks for the tag!

Why did you choose your url?

I've been using variations of MyHeart(Blank) since I was 12 and made my YouTube account so when I wanted to make a Sims blog I just took that thought process and ran with it.

Any side blogs? If you have them name them and why you have them.

@myheartsstories - intended for me to post stories on, but it ended up being more 'Kim plays a challenge, takes screenshots and posts them over there' while MyHeartSims became more my cc finds blog

@myheartshistory - one I haven't posted on in a bit, but it was me making a story out of the History Challenge with Berry Sims

@berrygameplay - I'm one of the members of said blog

How long have you been on tumblr?

Uuuuh good question, I have no idea. I was on tumblr before I joined with a simblr blog but I didn't really keep track. I know I was still in high school when I joined though so probably about 10 years ago? And then I joined Simblr about a year, year and a half ago.

Do you have a queue tag?

On this blog I rarely queue and on MyHeartsStories and MyHeartsHistory everything is queued so no queue tag around

Why did you start your blog in the first place?

I started getting more and more involved in the Sims community and it felt weird doing that when I was fandom posting on my old account (I don't even use that account anymore) so I created a new blog just for Sims

Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

It's my Simself with the colors behind it that I've used in my Tumblr theme

Why did you choose your header?

I choose this banner because it's the first build I ever felt proud of. It's a recreation of the castle/lake in Princess and the Swan Lake (the animated movie) with Odette and Prince Derek in the front. I absolutely loved recreating it and I think it fits me too, as I love fairy tales haha. I also didn't want the same banner as I used on my other side blog (MyHeartsHistory doesn't even have a banner)

What’s your post with the most notes?

I think it's the post for when I fixed either the Luumia default skin or the Waterlillies default skin when those broke (before the creators fixed them themselves, which happened several months later I believe), but part of those notes were already on the post as I reblogged the original posts... (Funnily enough people still download my fixes when the original creators have also posted fixes at this point). For an original post, I'm not sure, probably my Swan Lake Castle build download.

How many mutuals do you have?

I don't really know quite frankly. I know of a few, as they're people I'd consider friends from discord, but that's probably not all of them

How many followers do you have?

Ehh not that many and I don't really mind either. I think it's nearing 200 followers? But there may be some bots in there as well. I try to delete those when I notice them but I don't really pay attention. I'm not super active on here anyway and mostly use it to reblog cc I want to find back later

How many people do you follow?

Just over 200, mostly Sims blogs that post cc and people's who's stories I like!

Have you ever made a shitpost?

I don't even know what qualifies as a shitpost haha

How often do you use tumblr each day?

I check pretty regulary each day, as long as I'm home. Barely use the app so I do have to be on my laptop to check

Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

I don't think I've had a fight on here before?

How do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this’ posts?

I thankfully, somehow, don't see too many of those, and I don't think I've really ever reblogged any of them. I just ignore them

Do you like tag games?

Depends on the specific tag game. I rarely get tagged in them anyway haha

Do you like ask games?

I like getting asks with questions so I sometimes reblog them and I do try to send people asks when I see they've reblogged it, but I rarely actually then get asks so

Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

What counts as Tumblr famous? I don't really know haha

Do you have a crush on a mutual?

Nope

Tagging @nynsimmer, @simhurricane, @sweetlysimss and @frolickinggnomes, but y'all should only do this if you actually want to do it!

[beacon-lamp]

Thoughts on dreams response?

so i read the 19 page paper and then watched dream’s response video.  don’t really know what the discourse surrounding his response is bc ✨i don’t care enough to go purposefully looking for it ✨

my overall thoughts on the Entire Situation under the cut because i talk A Lot:

first and foremost, the math in the paper is Incredibly Thorough.  dream gave the Abridged Version in his video bc i doubt most people read the entire thing.  but if you read the paper, you’ll see the author point out what calculations the mods did wrong and, more importantly, why they were wrong and how they fixed it.  you’ll also notice that they mentioned several times that the results the author calculated did match some of that of the mods’ calculations.  we love reproducibility.

questioning the credibility of the author is a waste of time and energy.  they’re Anonymous for a reason.  imagine getting a fucking doctorate in statistics (an additional 4-8 years of study after college in the US) and your biggest paycheck of the year comes from some dude in florida who plays minecraft for a living.  jokes aside, you can argue in circles about “oh dream bribed the expert” but the intentions of the author and purpose of the paper are clearly stated in the first couple pages.  before all the math stuff.  people were so quick to believe the stuff in the paper the volunteer mods put out.  why not believe the expert too?

there is a greater lesson here to be learned about bias.  both for and against dream.  it was Incredibly Concerning to see So Many People immediately jump to “dream cheated 100%” or “dream would never cheat he’s the best” before understanding all of the facts.  i’ll admit, even i fell into this trap before i took a step back from the situation to look at the big picture.  we all have biases, many of which we aren’t even aware of.  but it’s always important to recognize those biases and account for them as much as possible before drawing conclusions, especially those that have real world implications.  it’s also important to listen to Experts and those who Know More Than You.  sometimes you just have to shut up and listen.  you’re not going to know everything and that is Fine as long as you are open to Learning from those with credibility and knowledge.  you’re going to make mistakes and have opinions you’ll later look back on and *cringe* and all of that is fine because we are all Growing and Learning. 

aight let’s talk about the mods.  i’ve already like vented in the tags of a post from like 2 week ago and my point still stands.  statistics is Very Difficult to Do and unfortunately is an Incredibly Powerful Tool.  there is No Right Way to do stats.  the data is unbiased but the analysis and interpretation of that data can be.  once again, that’s why it’s important to account for your biases.  the mods tried.  i’ll give them credit, i really do believe they Tried.  but unfortunately trying sometimes just isn’t Good Enough.  statistics can be weaponized to push forward an agenda, whether or not the author intended it.  i know that this is “just minecraft” and it only affects “one person” but inaccurate publications or misrepresentations of data have Real Life Consequences.  one Disproven and publicly denounced paper had people Believing that vaccines cause autism, contributing to the antivax movement that is Once Again having an impact during coronatime.  the point is, the mods should’ve consulted a professional.  someone with credentials about their math.  there is no doubt in my mind that they knew the fallout that was to come.  the drama this would stir up.  there was Obvious, Documented bias against dream from the beginning.  i’m sure there were people who wanted to take him down at least a peg or two.  but once again, that’s no excuse to publish this without consulting a Credible Expert.  i’m going in circles now you get the point, academic integrity is Very Important.  also News Outlets have reported on this, overall shedding a pretty negative light on the minecraft speedrunning community as a whole, which also harms the mods too in my opinion.

finally, let’s talk about dream.  if you don’t like him, that’s fine.  it’s Okay to Not Like Someone.  to Stop Watching their content.  to Stop Supporting Them.  dream responded incredibly immaturely to this entire situation, as we have seen him do Multiple Times before.  personally, i don’t believe the excuse “i acted without thinking and i’m sorry” cuts it anymore, given his 14M subscriber count and 1M+ twitter followers.  he is a grown adult and should learn to conduct himself better publicly.  i have friends his age and this behavior in a professional setting, which for him twitter is because social media/ content creator is quite literally his job, would be Completely Unacceptable.  it’s perfectly valid to be angry and yell about it to his friends, hell i’d be Furious.  but he should know better than to tweet impulsively.  feel free to draw your own conclusions on him as a CC and public figure.  please do.  i know “cancel culture” has deviated from it’s Original Meaning (much like the term “stan” has too) but hold content creators accountable for their actions.  do not blindly defend him.  at the same time, acknowledge that he is a young adult who is still growing and learning.  these two ideas can and should coexist.  however, ***do not accept apologies that are not yours to accept***.  shut up and listen to others who know more than you about a particular thing.  think for yourselves.  draw your own conclusions but always be willing to Grow if/when you Learn New Information.

the world is Complicated.  i’m sorry.  i wish it were easier too.

in conclusion, i can’t believe *this* is the first time i’ve used statistics knowledge outside of an academic setting and in the Real World.  2020 is fucking wack.  if you’ve made it this far, thank you for coming to my incoherent ted talk.  no one is going to read this whole thing and i’ve accepted that.

[rolorules]

Last time I watched Code Geass was more than a year and a half ago so correct me if I'm wrong but to me Rolo and Lelouch in Last Moratorium sounded if not natural, at least credible, given the nature of the episode which is intended to give us a rare fragment of a regular student life, we can't possibly expect the both of them to act the way they are shown to act in the anime episodes 24/7, can we? And if this happens right after Milly's graduation my guess is that by that time Rolo and Lelouch are in much better terms: Lelouch coming to the realisation that Rolo, an orphan and trained assassin since childhood, an outcast we may call him unless under disguise, is the victim of the same darwinist society aimed to crush the weaker ones such as Nunnally; while Rolo on the other hand finally starts to see himself as a proper person with intentions, desires and emotional needs to fulfill and instinctively starts finding his place among his peers. Lelouch's hatred for Rolo can only be explained by how much he loved Shirley; I refuse to believe that a brilliant and clever person (and a SECRET SWEETHEART) such as Lelouch never felt a bit of sympathy for Rolo while also ruthlessly using him for HIS own purposes. I also believe that Rolo only killed Shirley when he realised the part she could play in ruining his plans by helping Lelouch reuniting with Nunnally (the real menace), in that instant he acted the way he's always had and killed her on the spot but had she said she only wanted to help Lelouch to fight the Britannian empire for a better world he probably would have spared her, if Lelouch didn't push her away or somehow made it clear to Rolo that she was really important to him, we could've avoided this. And that's the whole point because as far as character development is concerned it's so important that we get to see Rolo act on his desire to be Lelouch's little brother. That's it pretty much, he just needed some more time to learn how relationships work actually Shirley and Nunnally are the sweet caring supportive figures he needs to have by his side it's so tragic how well everything could've worked out so easily :/// I also love the fact that Lelouch thinks people need a place to go back to, it encapsulates his vision and it further reinforces my abovementioned conviction where he recognises the damaged child in Rolo who needs a home but never had one (not to return to but to grow in). And finally, to me it's pretty obvious that the home Lelouch refers to is Nunnally and Suzaku but I can only say intuitively because it's been so long since I last watched Code Geass but I'm quite sure of it? Maybe he was being dismissive due to CC's flirty tone? Idk but I agree with everything else you said and this is definitively canon and it makes me think of an alternative epilogue by the original creators which sadly remained a draft I guess, I vaguely remember to have read it somewhere, I can't tell, but Lelouch is dead and CC is able to revisit his dream idk and she sees him greeting Suzaku, Kallen, then Gino, Anya and Rivalz, Nunnally and Rolo, Milly and finally Shirley (kinda rude that CC is not included). It ends with CC saying "so that's what you dreamed of Lelouch" or something along those lines I don't remember at all I just want my three little meow meows (Suzaku, Lelouch and Rolo) to have their Ouran high school host club life it's what they deserve!! Thank you so much for sharing it I've felt something for the first time in months and I think I'm gonna rewatch the show life is beautiful take care xx

First of all, thank you for your comment; it is very touching, and I hope it is fine with you that I answer it publicly. The power that well-written characters in interesting stories have is astounding, and the joy they bring to our often mundane lives is something we can only be grateful for.

Regarding your explanation of their behaviour, I very much agree. I only think a bit less highly of Lelouch and his capacity for compassion as you do. He has probably not forgiven Rolo for taking Nunnaly's place, but has at least grown accustomed to his presence. He once told Rolo to be less formal when talking to him, and this is exactly what Rolo is doing here. In fact, they (inter)act very much like brothers in this picture drama, with Rolo taking little jabs at Lelouch and Lelouch seeing right through him. Maybe still a bit too good to be true, but very heart-warming.

And, yes, you are right, Suzaku and Nunnally have always been Lelouch's 'home', but I think we have reason to believe that at least the events of Turn 19 (whose anniversary is tomorrow) made Lelouch realise that Rolo had become his 'home' ,too.

And finally: an Ouran Highschool Host Club Life for the boys? Sounds like a great idea for fanfiction or fanart. I shall have to consider this a little bit further...

Once again, thank you so much, take care and don't be a stranger!

[transcendentcacophony]

Thinking about Posts and Tumblr

So I responded to an earlier post from @kalesims in the comments. I probably should have reblogged it so I didn't have to break up my response which may have made it less than useful (and potentially read to mean the opposite of what I meant), but I also wanted to move a bit beyond the initial prompt with this longer one. I have not posted much Sims stuff in awhile. Part of this is because school and work demands are eating so much of my time right now1, part of this that ongoing pursuit of perfection we all seem to have to some extent on social media, and part of it is because I may have dumped my entire CC folder into my game without sorting it properly and now it runs like rubbish and I have to fix it. Regardless, I'm going to focus on issue #2 the ongoing pursuit of perfection, because I think this is the most relevant bit and the one I've been thinking a lot about lately. Tumblr is a social media platform. (This bit is a little academic, sorry.) I think we all know that, but do we ever really think about what that means? It's ultimately a company that provides a public-facing platform with the explicit intent of marketing ourselves to each other. More likes and followers for you=more ads and money for Tumblr, but they have to incentivize that for any of us to care. How do they do that? Make it a popularity contest. How often do you look at your likes or followers count? What emotional response do you have when they're low? How many creators incentivize new followers or more likes by releasing content to correlate with milestones in those areas? This is all part of feeding that beast2. It also draws on something referred to academically as the "hedonic treadmill," which is basically the keeping up with the Joneses mentality where we constantly compare our success to our peers and find ourselves wanting, even if we aren't. This is going somewhere, I promise.

When I first started Tumblr, I had one blog: transcendentcacophony. I started it explicitly to follow sims blogs I liked and keep track of the cc I downloaded or things that caught my attention, and my initial posts all reflected that. After I was on for a while, I realized most blogs compartmentalized to a certain degree: you have a blog for gameplay, a blog for cc finds, a blog for interest x, etc., so, not being particularly versed in these things, I thought "This is how you tumble!" and immediately set about creating sideblogs like transcendentcacophonyinspire, transcendentcacophonys3cc, or transcendentcacophonystudyblr. I went through my entire archive, moved everything over to its new home, and deleted the original posts and reblogs from this page. Does that mean I think having all the sideblogs is wrong? Nope. The organization of having sideblogs is sometimes helpful, but they they make me feel kind of fractured on some level. None of these provide an image of a whole person, just brief glimpses of an aspect. Sometimes I regret having split the off, other times I find it more convenient. Mileage may vary, but the obvious winner for the sideblog model is arguably Tumblr. None of my blogs have many followers, but there isn't as much overlap in audience as you might think and if they were all still one blog, I doubt there'd be as many as there are.

This raises the question of who you intend your blog to be for. Is it for Tumblr, so they can keep making that sweet sweet ad revenue? Is it for the online audience? Or is it for you? Who do you see as your primary audience? The structure of social media clearly wants us to say everyone else. "You're here for the likes! The followers! The popularity!" Other companies lean in to this as well. How many followers do you have to have to qualify as an EA Game Changer?

I would argue that it's this pressure to have all likes, followers, etc., that prohibit us from posting what we really want to post. Are you posting the things that actually make you happy? Or are you posting the things that you think an audience wants to see?

Learning anything takes a lot of practice. How many times did you fall off before you learned to ride a bike? How many broken and malformed pots do you make before you get a perfect one? We learn by doing. Waiting for that perfect screenshot or getting reshade just right or having the perfect city in CAW keeps us from posting our broken pots. Maybe we need to post more broken pots.

If something makes us happy, does it need to be perfect, or do we love it anyway? "This is my first pot! It sucks, but I made it! Finishing it alone is an accomplishment! It's mine and I'm learning and I want to show that process so we can all get better together!" Shouldn't our screenshots or gameplay or worldbuilding be the same?

I am building a world in CAW. I've been doing it for quite awhile, and I have an entire folder full of broken pots as a result, but I learned something every time I broke one. When I read CAW forums, I learn more from the ones where things don't work than from ones where they do. I post some of my broken pots, and simmers like @nilxis or @murfeelee are so supportive and helpful and give me tips on how to better and fix issues I'm having. I value that part of this community. I don't learn to do better by not showing off my broken pots.

I know some of my interests are pretty niche. I'm building an alien scifi world, I have conversion projects from games that support that but probably won't be useful to mainstream simmers. I made a series of alien moons in conjunction with simblu, who is now deactivated. These are arguably not things that will get a lot of likes, reblogs, or followers, but they are things that make me happy. Kurt Vonnegut once said when he wrote books, he always wrote with only 2 people in mind: himself and his sister. His goal was that at the very least he would like what he wrote, and a few of the books were written with her in mind, and if anyone else liked it, it was just gravy. I can’t say I’m a fan of the man’s writing, but I kind of like the idea of this mentality.

To that end, I think I'm going to change up how I use this blog moving forward, with the express goal of posting more often and with more emphasis on things that make me happy or show off more of my broken pots. Maybe it will cost me followers, maybe it won't, but it will help me carve this little niche out of the internet that is mine, that makes me happy, and that seeks to support the simmers and other community members3 that have been so supportive of me in the past. If just one or two people get something from it, or are entertained, isn’t that still just as valid?

I don't mean to imply in any way that posting what makes you happy can't make you popular, or gain likes and followers. It's very much possible. Vonnegut wrote his books for himself and he published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works, complete with film adaptations of several, literary prizes, etc. You can be successful doing what you love.

But I don't know that I need to be successful at it. I want to be happy doing it first, and anything outside of that is gravy. I'm going to post more broken pots and worry less about perfection or "doing it right." I'm going to fall off the bike and get back up and keep going. And maybe, by falling and failing, I'll get better or at least good enough or comfortable enough I'm not worried so much about that quest for perfection that is currently prohibiting me from trying.

Anyways, @kalesims, I don't know if that answers the original question you had. But I'd love to see what you post, be it gameplay, screenshots, cc, etc., really whatever floats your boat, moving forward. And, if you're willing, I'd love to learn by doing together. Let's go break some pots.

1 Whoever decided the best way to avoid outbreaks on campus was to just cancel all breaks and holidays over the last year clearly doesn't understand college students (who very much are still having parties and making up their own breaks) or that the reason we have those breaks is for mental health. Fall break was specifically added to reduce suicide rates among graduate students. And admin wonders why everyone hates them... 2 There's a researcher who looks at social media as a neoliberal marketplace that forces us to monetize ourselves without necessarily allowing us to realize that's what we're doing. She's got a book coming out about it next month if anyone is interested: Pain Generation: Social Media, Feminist Activism, and the Neoliberal Self(ie)

3I have in no way forgotten you, @piyotan, and you are definitely part of my online community, this was just targeted largely at simming.

[lesbiancarat]

Book anon here to say today is a happy day because it is dk and vernon day ^0^ the fact they share bdays makes my heart so big like djakdnaks that's the best thing really! (I say this as I don't like celebrating my own birthday lol but that shiz makes me soft) like how can it not get better than sharing a birthday with your fellow bandmate who is also your buddy :'))

Back on topic, I am happy that in the fandoms I'm in, update blogs or accounts are well loved so no drama there but I agree on cc peeps, my gosh the decline of them is obvious for the past 2 years =/ I remember 2018 the carat fandom here was HUGE with creators and lots of notes but now...its hard to see more than 200 for some and while numbers don't matter because you should ALWAYS be doing this for fun, its so shocking to see the interaction go so low and its more likes. I do have a theory as to why this is the case and it might be due to nowadays, people on Tumblr find reblogging alot to be "too much" akaspamming. I would know because some told me I do this and I'm like ??? I am simply reblogging content I like and if it means hitting the rbelog limit so be it djajdjw. Legit idk why its seen as bad nowadays when everyone used to reblog alot and no one complained so maybe this could be why? Again a theory but it would make sense and its a shame if this is the case :c I admit I like stuff because I sometimes do reblog it for a color theme but mostly I hit the reblog limit so I want to reblog it later xD

But let's not get into people that take others work as their own -.- now I get giving credit for say icons (I do this for icons and headers I use because its the least I can do. I would link it but idk how to do it on Tumblr lol) but taking someone's say gif and just posting it on twitter to share is like ??? You do know there is a share button that SHARES THE ORIGINAL LINK BACK RIGHT? Smh i can't with people. That's why I try to make sure for icons at least I know its not a repost and try to stay away from pintrest as best as I can (also svt on pintrest? Are they making moodboards or smth? I leave Tumblr for a bit and this is what I come back to lol)

Oof I wrote too much again sjamdna I'm living up to my emoji huh? XD but yes my tooth is better! It hurt again last night but today we are good!

I'm late answering this but yeah the fact that dk and vernon share a Birthday is super sweet! it's fun that they get to do their birthday live together as well ^^

but yeah i joined carat tumblr around late 2017/early 2018 (i made this side blog during oh my era but I'd been reblogging svt stuff on main before then) and I'm p sure most if not all the cc's i originally followed are inactive now :( obviously like you said content creators should make content for fun and bc they want to and not for the notes, but it's understandably disheartening when less people are interacting with it and even the people who do still see your content are (at least seemingly) less enthusiastic about it (ie liking but not reblogging it, less ppl writing things in the tags or replies, etc.)

but that's so wild to me? I've never heard anyone say someone is reblogging too many things like... how do you expect to see posts if people don't reblog stuff?? id welcome that extra content on my dash dhfjfh. i guess you can go in specific tags but like. idk reblogging is the main function of tumblr i don't know why there are people sort of against it/not as willing to use it (i mean... i suspect at least one factor is other social media platforms relying more on algorithms and likes to show people new content and ppl are just more used to that maybe?)

i feel like to some extent people feel entitled to have every or any gif or fanart or fan content on their platform of choice, but like if an artist posts something on tumblr but not on twt or instagram it doesn't HAVE to be on twt or insta. people can make a tumblr (or whatever platform) account if that's the only place a creator is active and they really want to see their content. and if people want to share something cool to another platform it is not hard to just post a link to the original post and tell people to check it out. like i do that every once in a while if there's a translation that doesn't allow reposts, but i still want ppl to know that trans exists if they wouldn't normally. and yeah!! you're gonna get less engagement that way!! but that's when you need to question whether your intention is really to share something cool w people who wouldn't normally see it or if you just want clout from this cool thing for yourself

and obviously not everyone who reposts things wo credit or permission has such innocent intentions as "i want to share this cool thing" but i think in a lot of cases it is something similar to that where ppl see something and they want to use it or share it for whatever reason and they just forget that it's something an actual person took the time to create and chose to share it. fan creations, unless otherwise specified, are not like memes in that they're intended to be shared and edited and copied to hell and back

but yeah pinterest is the worst in terms of reposts. like very little if any of the content on there (at least that's fandom related) is original content. the vast majority is reposts from other platforms without credit. a few weeks ago i saw someone on twt post like an old SVT photo or something and someone asked where it was from and they were like 'idk i saw it on pinterest' and when i tell u my blood boiled dhfkfj like!! ok!! so you're reposting a repost and u have no idea what the original source is... great

but yeah i have no idea what SVT is gonna do with pinterest... guessing it's just gonna be pledis posting official/behind photos that they also post on twt anyway. it really looks like it's something bh made them create given other bhl artists also have pinterests they're all following each other. also pledis didn't even officially announce the new account opening anywhere as far as I've seen so like. i think they really don't care dhfkfj

i really don't know what bh thinks they're gonna gain though like. ik there are active fandom pinterest users but i think most of them also have other social media like twt or insta. like they're not cracking open a huge new market, and LITERALLY NO ONE expects any musician or celeb to have an official Pinterest so. it's just so unnecessary dhfkgj

I'm glad your tooth is feeling better!!!

[fanfictionlive]

Delivered a full package

Okay, this is not to brag because, in the end, I still think I've done more than I should've done, and a few of it was unnecessary. Even though I was obsessed with finishing it, I'm thrilled with the results.

After more than two years, my long fix-it fic, 380K+ words of fantasy/adventure/romance with OCxCC has been finished. In a fandom that rarely people cared about worldbuilding and OCs, starting such fic was rough, let alone finishing it. Flamers, trolls, and people with "true" understanding of canon and purist (This bunch, I really don't understand. What are you even doing in fanfiction? This is literally torture for you) that tried to force their opinions as 'facts' in a fanfiction(!) gave me more motivation. The more I saw "You can't" the more I moved forward. Comments were minimal to okay at best so I had to be... persistent. So, what I did?

Researched a lot and worldbuilt to the maximum. On myths, cultures, different source materials that were in Japanese, and connected a lot of dots the creators left behind that even. I treat writing fic as an academic paper. I usually look in areas that I can contribute more that hadn't done before. Even In the end, 70% didn't care much but I was satisfied nonetheless.

Spent a lot of time on the OC creating, to make him feel like one of the legitimate character in canon and not an SI. I think I succeeded and pro,ple liked him a lot. To the extent, that I saw my fic was recommended in the game's Steam review section in Spanish. They liked the interactions between him and the CC to the extent that they called it "Husband Simulator". Didn't expect it to be recommended like that, but I took it. My beta helped me a lot in maintaining his authenticness as I wanted to cross some red lines in making an OC (He was one of the main characters, he is powerful, but in his own special way and the spotlight was on him most of the time).

Then a year passed and I thought, well, I really wanted people that were looking for such fics can find it faster, and I need the motivation to move forward (At this stage, I wanted to drop it) So, I made a twitter account for this and a Tumblr. In addition to that, I decided to draw my OC along CC. Nobody was going to offer me fan arts and I have some skills, so I talked with one of my colleagues and she decided to help. I think I made 18 different fan artes (OCxCC, OC headshots, full bodies, and some romantic poses in between) to promote it. I also made Deviantart and pixiv account too. I went far and made several book covers for it as well.

My fic's rating is T+ (Young Adults) and someone offered me to write smut for it. Then I thought, why not doing it myself? The result was a separate story that included fade-to-black scenes of the original fic.

In the end, I managed to tell a fresh story with twists, angst, romance, and epic battles. OCxCC, must for those who liked to read them, and a number of artworks so people could relate better with the characters. Even smut chapter for those who wanted to look more into their love adventures and see beyond words that I couldn't say in the main fic. After two years, I finally managed to break through and deliver what I intended. Made a lot of friends along the way who shared my ideas. Interestingly, I got a lot of female readers too which really liked my OC. I always thought F/F and slashes were their way, but you learn new things each day.

The burden has lifted, finally. I'm free. To those who followed my story to the end, I'm grateful and thank you.

submitted by /u/Cipher_DEMON_LORD [link] [comments] from FanFiction: Where Magical Ponies battle Imperial Titans https://ift.tt/3g9cG3F

[courtneyrobinson97]

IXD301

Where does content come from?

This week was all about where content comes from and also who owns that content. We looked at sources of content, for example:

Client Supplied

Self Generated

User Generated Content

APIs

Etc.

We also identified different sources of imagery, etc., for example Illustration, Icons, Photography… from places like:

Illustration

iStockPhoto

Shutterstock

Getty

Copyright

What is copyright?

Copyright (or author’s right) is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture, and films, to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.

Copyright touches our lives on a daily basis. Whether you read a book, watch a film, transfer music, or take a photo, copyright issues are ever-present.

Copyright law aims to balance the interests of those who create content, with the public interest in having the widest possible access to that content. WIPO administers several international treaties in the area of copyright and related rights.

There are two types of rights under copyright:

economic rights, which allow the rights owner to derive financial reward from the use of their works by others; and

moral rights, which protect the non-economic interests of the author.

Most copyright laws state that the rights owner has the economic right to authorise or prevent certain uses in relation to a work or, in some cases, to receive remuneration for the use of their work (such as through collective management). The economic rights owner of a work can prohibit or authorise:

its reproduction in various forms, such as printed publication or sound recording;

its public performance, such as in a play or musical work;

its recording, for example, in the form of compact discs or DVDs;

its broadcasting, by radio, cable or satellite;

its translation into other languages; and

its adaptation, such as a novel into a film screenplay.

Examples of widely recognised moral rights include the right to claim authorship of a work and the right to oppose changes to a work that could harm the creator's reputation.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organisation devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organisation has released several copyright-licenses, known as Creative Commons licenses, free of charge to the public. 

These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy-to-understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. 

Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright but are based upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, which are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management, with a "some rights reserved" management employing standardised licenses for re-use cases where no commercial compensation is sought by the copyright owner. The result is an agile, low-overhead and low-cost copyright-management regime, benefiting both copyright owners and licensees.

Portfolio Website Content - So Far...

<!-- HOME SECTION -->

<h1>HOME PAGE</h1>

<div>

<img src="images/background.png" alt="Me" /> 

<h1>HEY, I'M COURTNEY.</h1>

<p><i>METAL GIRL WITH TATTOOS.</i></p> <p><i>ANIMAL & COFFEE ENTHUSIAST.</i></p> <p><i>UI DESIGNER & FRONT-END DEVELOPER.</i></p>

<button>VIEW MORE ABOUT ME</button>

</div>

<!-- END OF HOME SECTION -->

<!-- START OF PORTFOLIO SECTION -->

<h1>PORTFOLIO PAGE</h1> <div>

  <div> <img src="images/dogapp.png" alt="Who's That Good Boy?" />

<h2>WHO'S THAT GOOD BOY?</h2> <h3><i>SKILL : APP DESIGN / PROTOTYPING</i></h3>

<p>The educational app for all ages, encouraging users to travel and discover the many varieties of doggos we have in this beautiful world even right on our own doorstep.</p>

<p>Who’s That Good Boy? allows users to have a fun, interactive experience as well as sharing the experience with family or friends.</p>

</div>

<div> <img src="images/mybranding.png" alt="Self Branding" />

<h2>SELF BRANDING</h2> <h3><i>SKILL : CORPORATE IDENTITY - BRANDING</i></h3>

<p>My brand vision is to create unique and exciting solutions within the design industry which adhere and relate to my selected style and approach to design.</p>

<p>In this section you will see my start to finish process of making my Monogram, Wordmark and Visual Marque.</p>

</div>

<div>

<img src="images/infographic.png" alt="Dementia in the UK" />

<h2>DEMENTIA IN THE UK</h2> <h3><i>SKILL : DATA VISUALISATION - INFOGRAPHIC</i></h3>

<p>During my first year of university, my Nannie suffered from and passed due to the affects of Dementia.</p>

<p>I decided to base my infographic on the topic of Dementia in the UK as it's a disease that, unless witnessed first hand, not everyone understands the full extent and issues it raises.</p>

<p>I wanted to make something that would provide people with the relevant information in an interesting but informative way.</p>

</div> </div> <!-- END OF PORTFOLIO SECTION -->

<!-- ABOUT SECTION -->

<h1>ABOUT PAGE</h1>

  <div>

<div> <h3>Hey, I'm Courtney.</h3>

<p>I’m a young, enthusiastic UI designer based in Belfast currently seeking placement opportunities for 2020-2021.</p>

</div>

<div> <p>I'm currently a second year student at Ulster University, Belfast, studying a Bachelors in Interaction Design.</p>

<p>My key areas of interest include:</p>

<ul> <li>Front-End Development</li> <li>Branding</li> <li>UI Design</li> <li>App Design</li> <li>Data Visualisation</li> <li>Illustration</li> </ul>

</div> <div>

<p>Before coming to Ulster University, I achieved a Level 5 HND in Graphic Design at Belfast Metropolitan College. It was here that I discovered my passion for digital design whilst building and designing projects for set briefs.</p>

</div> </div> <!-- END OF ABOUT SECTION -->

<!--CASE STUDY SECTION -->

<h1>CASE STUDY PAGE</h1>

<div> <img src="images/appheader.png" alt="Who's That Good Boy'" />

<h2>The Challenge</h2>

<p>Create an illustrative travel app considering elements such as mobile design principles, colour and thumb.</p>

<h2>The Process</h2>

<img src="images/travelapp-mindmap.png" alt="Mind-map" />

<p>For this project, I began by exploring the potential answers to the problem given by drawing a mind-map of ideas after hearing the topic “Travel”. From this, I was able to branch the ideas out further to see which ideas held the most potential in regards to fulfilling the set brief of creating an app using illustration but also considering the potential needs of the intended users.</p>

<p>After discussing my list of ideas in class, my next stage was to begin market research. I had to gain a sound knowledge and understanding of all the elements that need to be considered when building and designing an app before I could begin developing my own concept. Looking at how existing apps use illustration in regards to travel as well as their navigation layout approach, icon sets and branding were all helpful as it made me consider what was needed for my own app in order for it to be successful.</p>

<img src="images/masterapprentice.png" alt="Master Apprentice" />

<p>As I’d never created an icon set before, I used the design technique of master apprenticing to recreate a set of travel icons so that I would have a better approach to designing using just simple shapes. I enjoyed completing this exercise and it encouraged me to research the history of icons to see how they have varied in design approach from the 1900’s to present day.</p>

<img src="images/travelapp-mindmap2.png" alt="Mind-Map" />

<p>Now that I had a better knowledge on what needed to be included in an app, I then went back to my initial mind-map of ideas. From this I decided to create a dog themed app as I felt it held strong visual stimulation for creating illustrations. My inspiration behind the functioning of the app stemmed from looking at Pokemon Go. I wanted to design an app that encourages the user to travel in real life to collect as many dog breeds as they could, gaining a stamp for each breed as a reward.</p>

<p>The idea for the app is that the user would photograph a dog they find whilst out exploring, the app would then transform the dog into an illustrative id card which would then be stored. Each dog discovered gains the user more ranking and also unlocks mini challenges like a treasure hunt as they have to answer questions and follow clues to end up at a final destination.</p>

<img src="images/travelapp-wireframes.png" alt="Wireframes" />

<p>Turning to my sketchbook was the next stage of my process so that I could start developing visuals for my app design. I created many rough sketches in regards to icons, illustrations and wireframes so that I could move on to digitising the app using Sketch to develop them into clean, finished design elements which would piece together to finalise the overall app design.</p>

<img src="images/presentation.png" alt="App Presentation" />

<p>I produced a high-level mock-up of my app to present in front of my classmates in order to receive constructive feedback that would then help guide me to a finalised app design. Once I made the recommended changes to my designs, I created a functioning prototype using InVision to best show how my app design answers the problem set in the original brief.</p>

<h2>Some Obstacles</h2>

<p>The main challenge I encountered was when I was digitising the dog illustrations as at this point I had limited experiences using Sketch for these purposes. The illustrations therefore took quite a bit of time to create however I feel that this experience helped strengthen my skill set in regards to using this software.</p>

<h2>My Reflection</h2>

<p>Throughout the process of this project, I feel like I was able to strengthen my existing skill set for developing and designing concepts from start to finish, however, I also got to experiment and learn some new techniques I hadn't tried out before such as prototyping and considering the rule of thumb.</p>

<p>To read further notes and my reflections on this brief, click the link below to my Tumblr page!</p>

<button>VISIT MY TUMBLR</button>

</div> <!-- END OF CASE STUDY SECTION -->

<!-- CONTACT SECTION -->

<h1>CONTACT PAGE</h1>

<img src="images/background.png" alt="Me" />

<div> <h1>Let's Chat!</h1>

<p>Check out the ‘Hire Me’ page for my CV or fire me an email using the link provided below whether it be for job opportunities, an invite to groups/events or perhaps even for a killer collaboration project.</p>

<p>I’m currently seeking placement opportunities for 2020-2021.</p>

<button>GET IN TOUCH</button>

</div> <!-- END OF CONTACT SECTION -->

<!-- HIRE PAGE SECTION -->

<h1>HIRE PAGE</h1>

<div> <img class="center" src="images/visual1.png" alt="Visual Marque" />

<h1>Courtney Robinson</h1> <h2>UI DESIGNER & FRONT-END DEVELOPER</h2>

</div> <div>

<h3>Design Experience</h3> <h4>Content Marketing Manager</h4> <h5>Robinson Financial Services</h5> <h5><i>Oct 19 to Present (Part Time)</i></h5>

<p>Roles & responsibilities:</p>

<ul> <li>To expand the company’s digital footprint and brand awareness</li> <li>To take full responsibility of the companies digital marketing strategies including use of social media, email campaigns, blogs, SEO (to name a few) to increase digital lead generation</li> <li>To provide administrative support to the Company Director</li> <li>To perform other incidental and related duties as required and assigned</li> <li>Responding promptly to customer enquiries in person or via telephone & email</li> <li>Working to tight deadlines</li> </ul>

<h4>Freelance Designer</h4> <h5>Courtney Robinson Designs</h5> <h5><i>June 17 to Present (Part Time)</i></h5>

<p>Roles & responsibilities:</p>

<ul> <li>Responding promptly to customer enquiries in person or via telephone & email</li> <li>Create visuals based on customer requests (print or digital)</li> <li>Strong use of Adobe Creative Suite and Sketch Software</li> <li>Daily reports on the status of pending work</li> <li>Good general IT skills</li> <li>An ability to communicate design ideas clearly</li> <li>Working to tight deadlines</li> </ul>

</div> <div>

<h3>Education</h3>

<h4>Interaction Design (BDes)</h4>      

                                                                <p>Ulster University, Belfast</p>

<p>Sep 18 - May 22</p> <p>Result: Pending</p>

<h4>Graphic Design (QCF)</h4>

<p>(EDEXCEL BTEC Level 5 HND Diploma)</p> <p>Belfast Metropolitan College, Belfast</p> <p>Sep 15 - May 17</p> <p>Result: Pass</p>

<h4>OCN NI Level 2 Award in Social Media (QCF)</h4>

<p>Belfast Metropolitan College, Belfast</p> <p>Sep 15 - May 17</p> <p>Result: Achieved</p>

</div>

<div> <h3>Design Skills</h3>

<ul> <li>Sketch</li> <li>Adobe Creative Suite</li> <li>HTML/CSS</li> <li>InVision</li> <li>Branding</li> <li>Digital Marketing</li> <li>Web & App Design</li> <li>Data Visualisation</li> </ul>

</div>

<div> <button>DOWNLOAD PDF</button> </div> <!-- END OF HIRE PAGE SECTION -->

Sources:

https://www.wipo.int/copyright/en/

https://creativecommons.org/

[so-shiny-so-chrome]

Witness: Jaetion

Creator name (AO3): Jaetion

Creator name (Tumblr): Jaesauce

Link to creator works: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaetion/works

Creator name (other platform- please specify): Pillowfort: Jaetrix

Q: Why the Mad Max Fandom?

A: MMFR movie was incredible! It hit all of my sweet spots.  And the fandom is great: really supportive people, creative fanworks, and great discussions. I've been playing around with fandoms online for a long time and I've met some awesome people, but the MMFR fandom is just chocked full of interesting fans and ideas (like this spotlight!). 

Q: What do you think are some defining aspects of your work? Do you have a style? Recurrent themes?

A: Oof, I'm not sure. I think my style is a lot of conversation, and very little and very poorly written action? As far as themes go, I love referencing music. Music is important to me, so it usually influences my writing. I identify as a feminist and try to put progressive messages into my stuff. I try to write women who form relationships, live their lives, and drive the plot without having to play second banana to men. On a similar, I like writing/reading sex scenes that are fun and funny for the people involved - enthusiastic yes from both/all parties. (Unless I'm filling a fic request that specifies something else, of course.)

Q: Which of your works was the most fun to create? The most difficult? Which is your most popular? Most successful? Your favourite overall?

A: “Take the A Train" was fun because I love writing about NYC. But the stories in "Citadel City Serenade" have definitely been the most rewarding. I really like trying to fit plots and characters together, and it feels awesome when things snap into place. "Six-String Soldier" is my most popular fic, probably because I started writing it right around the release of the movie and it's shippy. Overall... hm, I think my favorite MMFR thing I've written might be "Metal Bars." I think I did a pretty decent mix of kid naivety and shitty oppression. 

Q: How do you like your wasteland? Gritty? Hopeful? Campy? Soft? Why?

A: Hopeful, but realistic, I think. With everything that's going on in politics, both in America and internationally, and the unbearably awful reports on climate change, I need to cling to some remnants of hope or else I'll just lie on the floor and never get up. I love solarpunk! Reclaiming/recreating the world is what interests me.

Q: Walk us through your creative process from idea to finished product. What's your prefered environment for creating? How do you get through rough patches?

A: I write drafts, either as notes on paper or outlines in Google docs. I have a bunch of notebooks full of fragments. I do a lot of editing - I have a hard time articulating things, so it takes a number of attempts until I get it right (or at least close to right). When I get stuck, I read fic. There are so many talented authors who've produced so many amazing stories that it's pretty easy to find something inspiring.

Q: What (if any) music do you listen to for help getting those creative juices flowing?

A: Folk music! I have a couple of playlists on Spotify specifically for writing Mad Max fic.

Q: What is your biggest challenge as a creator?

A: Writing! Specifically writing something good! I'm not sure if this counts as a challenge, but I also struggle with self doubt; posting something that gets no attention really sucks and it's hard not to take poor reviews/no reviews as a personal affront.

Q: How have you grown as a creator through your participation in the Mad Max Fandom? How has your work changed? Have you learned anything about yourself?

A: I've never attempted to write something as long as "Six-String Soldier," or the whole series of "Citadel City Serenade," really. Trying to manage a couple of different timelines at once with different POVs has been complicated and fun. Because of this fandom, I've also been writing more articles for the Fanlore wiki and tracking down references/resources for preservation. I'm an archivist and being able to use some of my professional skills in fandom and even develop them has been sort of neat.

Q: Which character do you relate to the most, and how does that affect your approach to that character? Is someone else your favourite to portray? How has your understanding of these characters grown through portraying them?

A: I probably relate most to Max: tired, wants to be alone, many grunts. But I prefer to write the Wives. They're so fascinating, each in their own way. I love how distinct they are and yet how well they work as a team. The first few times I saw the movie, I focused on Furiosa as the feminist hero that we all needed, but the more I watched and the more I read, the more I realized just how courageous, intelligent, and yes, feminist the Wives are. Victory doesn't require fighting and heroes don't need to be killers. The Wives achieve so much over the span of the story without physically fighting.

Q: How do you translate various elements from the film, such as the theme of the importance of bodily autonomy and critiques of an oppressive ruling class, into a modern setting?

A: This is an amazing question, thank you for asking! MMFR portrays a reality that is uncannily close to our own - In fact, it might as well be a peek into our future. In my mind, there's not even much of a need to translate those elements/themes because oh god we're dealing with them right now. What I was trying to translate with "Citadel City Serenade" is the victory of the characters over those adversities. In MMFR, the characters participate in violent, bloody battle; in CCS, they start social movements. Which is something we can do in the real world! Marches, protests, grassroots activism in general are tools we can use - Music, art, hell even gardening can be parts of a revolution.

Q: Do you ever self-insert, even accidentally?

A: Nope! I'm far too pathetic to survive in the wasteland. Hopefully I'll just die in the initial blast.

Q: Do you have any favourite relationships to portray? What interests you about them?

A: Yes! I'm a shipper at heart, so I am all about the couples. My two favorites are Capable/Nux and Toast/Slit. I love having the women be the ones leading the relationships - not only setting the boundaries but also expanding the War Boys world into completely new territory. I'm also totally into male characters who are sexually inexperienced. Alpha male dudes are meh in my opinion - Give me someone sweet and enthusiastic, someone whose love is based on respect, someone whose enthusiastic about learning. I think Nux is firmly in the category of awesome boyfriend, and I like trying to figure out how to lead Slit in that direction. There's also the idea of redemption in their relationships that I find fascinating.

Q: How does your work for the fandom change how you look at the source material?

A: Hm, I think that I definitely view the film through a feminist gaze. It's entirely possible that MMFR is just an action film but that's not my take on it!

Q: Do you prefer to create in one defined chronology or do your works stand alone? 

A: Why or why not?Bit of both! I just want to read, read, read - As long as the fics are well written, it doesn't matter to me if the settings are consistent. As far as my own writing goes, I get so many ideas for fics that it's not really possible to have them all exist in a single chronology.

Q: To break or not to break canon? Why?

A: The great thing about fanfiction is that it's transformative. To me, canon is the foundation, but you can build whatever you want on it. Hopefully I keep the characters close to their canon portrayals, but other than that, I like to mix things up. Also, a modern AU setting just fits so damn well in the Mad Max world. I think also that canon itself can be flexible. Death of the author and all that. Once media is out in the world, it'll be interpreted by the audience - and sometimes those interpretations are vastly different from one another. 

Q: Share some headcanons.

A: I don't really have any! Since most of my stuff is AU, the headcanons are limited to those settings.

Q If you work with OCs walk us through your process for creating them. Who are some of your favourites?

A: I have a smatterings of OCs who populate the world as background characters: Vuvalini, milking mothers, and War Boys. I played a MMFR tabletop RPG a couple of years ago, and my character from that and an NPC she saved both ended up in 6-String. That particular War Boy (Stacks) now has a couple of fans and so I've been giving him more screentime, as it were. He's sort of interesting as a foil to Nux and Slit: those two have girlfriends to learn from, but Stacks is on his own as he tries to escape from the WB life.

Q: If you create original works, how do those compare to your fan works?

A: I do! I participate in NaNo every year. I think my fanfiction is better than my original stuff since I write, since the fanfic is intended to be shared and thus I have to write decently enough to get readers. However my stuff tends to be in the speculative fiction genre, so that's something my fanfic and original fic share.

Q: What are some works by other creators inside and outside of the fandom that have influenced your work?

A: There are so many! In Mad Max, @supergirrll, @redcandle17, pbp (@primarybufferpanel),  @bonehandledknife, Tyellas (@thebyrchentwigges), and hell all of the Boltcutters are all really important; the early writers of Nux/Capable fics also really influenced and inspired my love of the characters and the ships. Spicyshimmy, an author in the Dragon Age fandom, has also been one of my favorite authors for years, and I return to her stuff regularly to see how awesome writing can be. 

Q: What advice can you give someone who is struggling to make their own works more interesting, compelling, cohesive, etc.? 

A: I struggle with this myself, so I don't think I really have an answer unfortunately other than read everything you can get your hands on, write everything you can think of. I write basically what I want to read; if I can make the reader!me happy, then at least I've satisfied one person. However, what I consider interesting, compelling, etc, isn't always what other people want. Maybe my advice is to try not to take it personally when your hard work isn't rewarded. Which again, I'm not always able to do. 

Q: Have you visited or do you plan to visit Australia, Wasteland Weekend, or other Mad Max place?

A: Yes, Wasteland Weekend! It was a lot of fun and I'm hoping to go again. Being able to immerse myself in the world was a great experience - A totally new way for me to engage with fandom.

Q: Tell us about a current WIP or planned project.

A: Still chugging along with "Citadel City Serenade!" The two main stories in that series are going to intersect in a meaningful way soon. In fact, they're going to crash. Looking forward to getting that out there (and getting it done!).

Thank you @jaesauce

[furbyq]

oh my god it’s a bad idea someone has probably already done before with terrible results. but that’s my sim secret, i’m always terrible, so here we go.

when i posted that thing the other day, or last week or whenever, this is the post i wanted to make. i had written most of it and saved it in my drafts, but i thought maybe it wasn’t a good idea. thinking about it today, i’ve realized i don’t really care. i may still delete this post or hide it later, so get your looks in now.

there’s basically 4 hate secret archetypes:

you’re shit

your cc is shit

your sims are shit

and my favorite,

you did this thing unrelated to sims, don’t do that, it’s shit

some people who receive these secrets don’t deserve them. i can’t say whether or not i did, since i am biased, as i am me. but there are a lot of people i’ve seen get picked at who really don’t deserve it and cannot take that kind of rejection from the community. everyone who has ever gotten a hate secret that they felt was unfounded needs to remember: you don’t just have to take shit your entire life from people who treat you like trash. you can also rare back like a horse and hoof them in the face.

so what i’m going to do in this post is go back through all the secrets i have saved that were directed towards me and critique them on how founded they were. and perhaps how nice they looked. 

at the same time, i’m going to tell you exactly what i felt about them when i first saw them and exactly what i feel now. and i may not be very nice. in fact, after having written the rest of this post, i wasn’t nice at all.

chances are, the people who made the secrets did the right thing and stopped following me or looking at my blog a long time ago. and that’s a very healthy thing to do, i’m proud of them. however, possibly, the people who submitted these secrets might be people i know and have talked to, or still talk to. the problem with simsecret is, you never fucking know. maybe i submitted one of these and don’t remember. that’s right, i was me all along.

now, first of all, i must commend this person on making an aesthetically pleasing secret. i mean, the part that they added actually matches my old blog theme a little bit. however, i have to dock points for lack of consistency in that second pooklet. i’m not going to give grammar too terribly hard of a time, because i’m not going to complain about people who may not be native english speakers. i have no way of knowing. but consistency? you get an 8/10.

let me explain you a thing. when a lot of people start posting in any community, it’s easy to be nervous about people critiquing your personal choices. for me, this was a big stumbling block. i emulated pooklet and azaya because their games looked good. they were two people in this community that fanned the flames of my love for ts2 into a fire that will burn for centuries.

this was also when pooklet had just released their lovely templates, which i still use, and they are likely to be the only templates i use until the day that i make my own. milkshape consistency is important to me and diverse facial features are important to me (keep in mind, this was before custom sliders). i would like to think that i evolved as someone who can make sims that look distinctly like my own, despite being based on someone else's templates, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

nothing is ever going to please everybody. i could release a lovingly crafted piece of cc every day for the rest of my life and someone would complain about me clogging up their dash instead of unfollowing me. but to someone who is new in the community, criticism like this is much more harsh than you may intend it to be and may have an amplified effect. derivation is common in the start of new hobbies, even you probably derived at some point.

the second secret that was specifically aimed towards me is so low effort, i would give it a 3/10. or a 6 out of 9, you somehow fucked it from both ends by making this shit off-center.

first, if you have a similar opinion, you may need to learn the fact that i may prefer to view different things with my eyeballs than you do. since i only have my eyeballs, and not yours, i tend to pick colors i like.

you may think to yourself, “well, why did you make that top area of shirt a different color to the bottom area of shirt??”, and i will tell you, they are not both shirt. the top part is a jacket overlay or some shit. it was a different color on yuxi’s original as well. as for the color choice, i just liked them. especially the middle one, which i tested colors on for half an hour because i knew i wanted to keep that minty jacket and i had already used too much purple.

what does using colorblind as an insult accomplish in this context? you are criticizing something that, if i actually had it, would be a type of disability i could not help. say it’s shit, and say it’s shit to my face so that i know not to share these things with you.

at least use better colors. my colors are notoriously eye-searing but that red is about to give me a goddamn aneurysm. 6/10.

i don’t know how to break it to the original maker of this secret, but much like the tooth fairy does not exist, perfect humans also do not exist. why are you holding me to a higher standard than other people and then discarding me the moment i do something you personally do not like? you liked me. i fucked up. you liked me less than if someone you disliked did the same fucking thing?

in 2015, adfuck was a shitshow, but it is nowhere near the shitshow it is now. i also always provided a secondary link without adfly. i did that shit where i made it smaller for a couple of posts. i did the scum thing. i thought it would be lucrative and help my situation a tiny bit. a dollar earned from adfuck was a dollar i did not have before, and if you’re dying from starvation a dollar will save your life.

the subtext is, if you were afraid of viruses, you should have used the non adfuck link every time. if you were like me, and you had downloaded a thousand things from behind mandatory adfucks with your block disabled before the skipper (the adfly skipper, not like, a sea captain or anything) and hadn’t had a problem, you could very easily toss 1/1000 of a cent to a creator whose work you liked.

my stance on adfucks have changed drastically since 2015. i would never do it again because of its more clear association with viruses and the fact that i do not enjoy knowing that i could’ve made other people’s lives immensely shittier by being complicit in fucking up their computer. but i did do it, and no amount of apologizing is going to change that.

for future record, if you ever find one of my old, reblogged furbyq-sims posts, never click the shortened link. use the non adfuck one. i would have to push link shorteners every single nanosecond of my entire life for it to ever pay anything of substance, and i refuse to promote shorteners anymore. i will never cash it out, so clicking the links is a waste of time. since i deleted furbyq-sims, i cannot edit the links out. do not click them. 

do note that during my run with adfuck, i received 579 total clicks that registered as ‘valid’ or what-the-fuck-ever. those clicks amounted to $1.53 USD. when people use adfucks, be aware that they are doing so to make, probably at most like $5 USD a month if they get thousands of non-blocked clicks. it is the definition of pointless. the danger element is enough to put most people off, the shitty pay should take the rest of them, and yet.

“hey, stop spamming” “hey, to resolve this, spam more” what do you fucking want from me?

again i’m pretty sure this person is not a native speaker, so i’m not going to poke at the grammar more than to mention that contradiction. you got your point across very well. remember to add a white outline to your text next time. 7/10.

let me tell you, desperation will make you do things that may not make sense to anyone else at the time.

think about this: my mom has serious lymph node deficiency that contributes to her getting pneumonia frequently. she’s on an oxygen concentrator at this time. now, oxygen concentrators are the thing that you get when a person needs nearly full-time oxygen. you don’t get a million tanks, you just get a single concentrator, which requires continuous electricity to work. ring ring it’s the electric company, your power is getting turned off tomorrow. you call hospice, hospice is like “well we can get a notice to them in like, two days” so you panic. you scramble for what you believe at that moment is the most important thing, regardless of whether or not you are right.

people who are in need will generally get help to some extent on the internet if they are brave enough to ask. but when it is a dire thing, you will reblog the post as many times as it takes to soothe your profound panic. every time you reblog, maybe one more person will see it. maybe that person will reblog, someone will see that and send $5 your way to help. you have got to keep things like this moving, if you do not ask you will not receive anything and dead posts are as good as not asking.

i don’t mean to sound overly terse, but i do sound that way for a reason, because some things are worth being terse over. and i hope, i hope to whatever deity may actually exist, that you never have to be in that position, where you know exactly why i did what i did. because it means you’re living in hell and it is no place to be.

i know this is an undertale reference of some kind. i don’t understand it, i haven’t played the game. if you’re going to say something mean to someone, maybe you should use your own words instead of formatting cryptic bullshit that includes the word 'garbage’. 3/10.

if you’re going to insult someone, be specific. because when you insult someone, you wield a sword. when i get stabbed, i want it to be a killing blow to my heart and not some lukewarm stabbing about in my midsection. fucking kill me or leave me alone. those are the options, pick one.

people in the sims community make custom content. and some of it is great, and some of it is shitty. and sometimes, both of those things can come from the same person, because everybody in the entire world has off days. i’m not going to say my shit is great, but i have made things i am proud of. proud that i took the time to make something and it paid off, and i realized a creation that would not exist without my existence and efforts. 

other times, my stuff has been shitty. you are not obligated to download what you don’t like, and i’m sorry that me taking up 500 megabytes of the entire internet to host my shit on impacted your life so much back in 2016 or whenever the fuck.

after some angry secrets, it’s good to end on this one. it makes me laugh every time i see it. 9/10.

i’m going to address three points in this picture, but i’m not and have never been mad at this one. whoever made this secret, inbox me. you’re my favorite motherfucker.

when i made the phantom rage skin i had a picture of a man who had very speckled vitiligo saved as inspiration. i lost that picture when i cleared out old files, but this model, genesis castillo, is very similar to the vitiligo pattern that man had. there are a hundred winnie harlow skins. there were none like this where the vitiligo was not evened out with makeup. i then paired tones 1 and 10 and 2 and 8 for contrast, but the 1 and 10 one looks much odder in the low opacity parts, like camouflage, someone said once.

as someone who has a skin condition, i know how emotionally traumatic they are when they change your appearance drastically. i cannot empathize with any traumas of vitiligo that are directly tied to people of color being affected by it because i am not a person of color. 

if i offended anyone who has vitiligo, i am genuinely sorry. my intention was not to make a ‘costume’, it was to make a virtual representation of a type of human being that actually exists. i hope that learning from this experience and using that knowledge to the best of my ability in the future is enough to undo even an iota of damage that was done.

point two, what is wrong with the middle sim? what is wrong with the middle sim? what is wrong with them? they have a mole? they’re wearing two head accessories? what is wrong with them???

point three, the bebebrillit hairline conversions weren’t terrible. fitting shit to the different hairline shape is difficult, so it can lead to some weird edges. at the time i took the previews for the hairlines, i didn’t have a ton of hairs in my folder. i just started doing nouk hairs. i needed to take a picture of the high fashion ponytail, so i killed two birds with one stone. this is not a combo that i played with, thinking they fit together like jigsaw pieces. it was a preview and it even showed that the hairlines did not work with every hair.

also,

there was a mythical 8th secret (yes, there were actually fucking 8 of them, i’ve averaged 2 hate secrets a year which i consider a life achievement). it was a picture of my first ts4 skinblend with the word “hideous” or “this is hideous” or some shit on it. it had the word hideous in it. that secret was deleted before i could save it, but i still remember it. and i can’t even be mad, i mean, they’re right. 10/10. best secret. it wasn’t a secret at all.

i actually can’t remember why it turned out so shiny, i think it’s because there were like no skins close to what i wanted and i tried handpainting before i knew how to.

in conclusion, please, in the future... stay salty, stay mean, continue hiding behind anonymity, but either grow a sense of humor or commit to what you’re doing instead of hurling balls of infernal bitching gently at my face.