#site selling

[8pxl]

PSA: Tumblr/Wordpress is preparing to start selling our user data to Midjourney and OpenAI.

you have to MANUALLY opt out of it as well.

to opt out on desktop, click your blog ➡️ blog settings ➡️ scroll til you see visibility options and it’ll be the last option to toggle.

to opt out on mobile, click your blog ➡️ scroll then click visibility ➡️ toggle opt out option.

if you’ve already opted out of showing up in google searches, it’s preselected for you. if you don’t have the option available, update your app or close your browser/refresh a few times. important to note you also have to opt out for each blog you own separately, so if you’d like to prevent AI scraping your blog i’d really recommend taking the time to opt out. (source)

[hauntedtoybox]

calico cat by babadoll (x)

[qrowscant]

i wanted a machine guts sweater/shirt so here are some color tests

[deep-space-lines]

Full-Size / True Color Version

Sometimes I think about the fact that first living being to orbit the Earth couldn't understand what was happening to her, couldn't understand the history she was making. Laika wasn't a volunteer. The technology to bring her back alive didn't exist. They sent her up anyway. She died, scared and alone, in a malfunctioning spacecraft hastily built to meet a political deadline.

When her heart rate tripled from the stress of acceleration, did she understand the magnitude of what she was experiencing? When she saw the stars outside her little window, did she believe the world had gone dark? In her final hours, did she feel wonder, or just fear?

"The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it. We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog. When you understand that you can’t bring back Laika, that she perishes out there, and that no one can bring her back…that is a very heavy feeling." Oleg G. Gazenko

For me, there's some small consolation, at least, in knowing that although her death was unnecessary and cruel, Laika will never be forgotten. I love you, Laika. May you find peace among the stars.

Prints are available here.

[wanderingcritter]

Theta Delta sticker batch ive been working on! Planning to add more flags and possibly sell them in the future maybe?? Feel free to request flags also! ^^

(Flags listed L to R: blank, transgender, pride, bisexual, pansexual, polyamorous, lesbian, gay, nonbinary, rabies, transspecies, xenogender, abrosexual)

[ranchstoryblog]

Fandom Memories: HMFarm

Hmmm. So, nearly a quarter of you whippersnappers wanna hear about the good ol' days, huh? Well, back in the day, you wouldn't just hang out on one or two big websites to try to find people who shared your niche interests among a million random users. Everything had its own dedicated site, with its own special pack of weirdos that you probably wouldn't find anywhere else. Home grown fandom, sprouting from the cement sidewalks of the freshly paved internet like so many weeds with pretty little flowers on top. So, let's take a little stroll down memory lane and visit one of the oldest fan sites with Archive.org's "Wayback Machine."

Ahh, just like I remember it. This here is "Harvest Moon Farm." 'course, we just called it HMFarm, like the URL did. This used to be the place to be. The prime progenitor of all farmin' fansites in the English speaking community. Maybe not the literal first, but up until around 2005, this was where you would go if you wanted to know anythin' about digital farmin'. It truly was a magical place to visit.

This screenshot isn't the oldest design, but it's the one I fondly remember. The majority of my time using the site was during the lead-up to A Wonderful Life, which was probably also when it was the most active as an information source. Seeing the screenshots, checking the forums, speculatin', wonderin', dreamin'... It's a warm feeling. I can't really describe how it felt to look at these shots for the first time. Granted, they were mostly sourced from various places like IGN or Newtechnix, but who wanted to go to THOSE messy sites when all the info I wanted was right here? IGN wasn't telling me how to revive the Vineyard in Harvest Moon 64 while I was waiting for AWL news either.

Our first look at the character we would come to know as Muffy, the sheer novelty of being able to go into the townsfolk's glorious, 3D-rendered rooms, the apparent misidentification of flowering tomatoes... The webmaster, Gamergirl87, would caption each one as well. Some of the captions of those screenshots ended up not being exactly true, but it was the closest thing to on-going coverage we really had. Who else was there to trust?

It's a little off topic, but I think at one point after learning about the GBA connectivity, I must have dreamed about this very gallery and seeing a screenshot of a Gamecube-ized Popuri with the caption that Mineral Town villagers would visit after connecting the GC and GBA together. At least, I'm pretty sure it was a dream. I've met some people who claim they saw the same thing, but none of us have been able to find that screenshot or comment again.

The one that would most catch my attention was the one on the left here. I didn't have a PlayStation 2, so I was coming fresh off of the GameBoy and Nintendo 64 when going into A Wonderful Life. The pond, the mysterious glowing plants, the mood and ambiance of their lighting, the little tree on the door... Naturally, I mirrored it on my first day the remake was available.

It's a real shame that the message boards are poorly preserved, since it doesn't look like there was a news post about the pre-order plush cow. I was hoping to find the name of whoever it was that convinced me to commit my first ever preorder. I still have the receipt, but without the forum post it's really only tangentially related to HM Farm.

'course, just learning about existing games and upcoming games wasn't the only good thing HM Farm was for. As I alluded to, there was a whole community here! While it's a shame that the message boards aren't well preserved by the Wayback Machine, you know what is?

The "ideas" list! This incredible time capsule was one of the first "interactive" parts of the site, starting in the year 2000. It's kind of fun to see how many of these ideas actually happened. Obviously, new characters and personalities were probably expected, but Animal Parade would eventually feature a honeymoon, several games have clothing and other customization, a mall, city, and pig would be added as soon as GBC 3, a goat would be in A Wonderful Life... It's actually amazing how prescient a lot of the suggestions are.

I'd share the whole thing, but the amount of e-mail addresses involved gives me pause. Still, there's a couple I wanna highlight:

Considering how often I still hear about people wanting to marry the moms and people attributing it to just "the fans getting older," it's funny to see Laserion lay out that, no, we've always been like this. Right down to using Manna's unhappy marriage and Lillia's husband never returning as valid reasons they should be available.

Tuan145, on the other hand, I just find extremely amusing because of the specific "2002 Escalade" part. Yes, this is clearly the ideal vehicle for all farmers in the Story of Seasons universe. This is now accepted headcanon. The boat was added in GBC 3 too, so obviously a 2002 Escalade is going to be added any day now.

Another thing that's amazingly well preserved is the site's fan art section. There's a few missing images here and there, but for the most part the entire thing is open to explore. People of basically all ages and skill levels happily submitted their creations, including original characters, digital art, traditional art, crossovers with popular series like Sailor Moon, a liiittle bit of drug use... Y'know, all the kinds of things you'd expect to see in a fan art gallery of the day.

Even better, some of the artists are still doing art today! Looking around, I quickly discovered one of my favorites, Rina Cat, is now on Blue Sky. I made sure to ask for permission to repost their art before including it here. Reaching out to everyone would be a bit much though, so I'll just encourage you to just browse the gallery using the Wayback Machine yourself. There's poetry and fanfics too!

There's a lot more to the site, including useful bits of history like keeping track of release dates for games, pre-release screenshots, and information that was only available on Japanese websites at the time, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Unfortunately, though the site continued to be updated until 2010 and stayed online until 2021, it's no longer available on the regular internet and the URL doesn't seem safe to access anymore. I wanted to include an interview with the former webmaster as well, but all their readily available contact information was tied to the website and I haven't had any luck so far in finding other means of contact. If I have any success, I'll be sure to make a follow-up! If you have any memories of HMFarm, or other fan sites, I'd be happy to hear about it.

[phytsera]

the infernal engine of karlach cliffgate 🔥🫀⚙️

[luckyclovernb]

Old drawing of Jack! And to the art stealing sites that's using this piece to sell products, fuck you.

[oviraptoridae]

a bumper sticker design to let everyone on the road know you care <3

(if you want one, let me know, i want to get this printed but i need a batch of at least 25!)

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

Our light roast really is that good.

[wombywoo]

someone had suggested I do an art book featuring my ocs, and I've been tempted ever since...🤔 It would be nice to have something *physical* to feature most of my artwork of them, and I could potentially sell a small batch if there's interest...

does anyone have any suggestions for this kinda thing? <3

[scarletroseabdl]

Just the girl that plays with rocks that they warned you about 😈💚

JFF MV Fansly C4S Wishlist All

[deoidesign]

Just some thoughts about recent WEBTOON discourse from an originals creator. I recognize my inherent bias in this situation.

But please recognize that saying "fuck you" to a company means supporting the workers, not making them out to be unfortunate suckers... "would have/could have/should have's" don't get people out of situations.

"I never would have signed with them" is an incredibly tone-deaf thing to say. "this is why you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket" is true, but it doesn't help people who are contractually obligated into exclusivity.

Most of us are making merch, running patreons, trying to get book deals, etc... and most of us aren't able to stop working and still pay our bills. we're trying. we'd all love to, but we can't.

If you really want things to be better, maybe try not putting down the people who are in the bad situation? it ends up feeling like people using our pain and mistreatment as an outlet to advertise themselves...

Our company is getting worse and worse by the year and we're risking a lot to talk about it! Please listen! The only power we have is complaining about things, and it's risky every time!