#so i go to wayback machine to see if they happened to have it before

[just-spacetrash]

😦

[ngage2003]

Hey so, a lot of folks in the Marble Hornets fandom are varying shades of new to it, and so didn't experience it coming out unfortunately, but apparently there used to be a marblehornets website that has been down since 2016, and I actually didn't know about it but my friend (@straycalamities) did and found it on the Wayback Machine.

I bring this up because while the images on the website are mostly broken now, it actually holds some really fascinating information on the characters that I have never seen talked about, like some of their majors in college!!

I am going to post snippets (as screenshots would get fucked up on mobile) and talk about them a little, but check it out here if you're curious.

Starting from the top and most passionate, we have Alex Kralie's description.

Director / Writer / Editor / Actor Alex Kralie, born April 4th 1986, has been into making films since his early childhood, when he would make short sketch comedy videos starring himself and his cousins with his parents camcorder. He would then show them at “premieres” to his friends and family. That love has since remained with Alex, where he has been involved in many different capacities in various filmmaking communities. He is a double major in both filmmaking and photography, with a minor in theatre. He originally wrote Marble Hornets during high school and has continuously tweaked and polished it throughout his time at the university. He’s very excited to finally see it all happening after years of work!

Likes: Film, Directing, Art, my dog rocky.  Dislikes: Fakery, creative bankruptcy, passionless people, 9 to 5 jobs, unambitiousness, bad movies and film.

Wow, ain't that a breath of fresh air? A BIRTH YEAR! In a slenderverse series! In a youtube horror series, honestly! You never see it.

Alex's description is by far the longest and most passionate, a fact which kind of kills me knowing what he becomes. Working on a project he started in highschool, if there is anything Alex is, I suppose it is dedicated, all devoted to idea he gets in his head which he just can't seem to shake, huh?

Finally though we have a major for our tragedian! Two majors! And a minor! Sorry but I am genuinely so enthused about this. This paragraph really knocks home what I have always said about how Alex thinks, with his confidence and slight pretentious nature with a genuine passion and undertone of insecurity—and through the lens of him talking about himself! Wow.

But moving on to the lead, Brian Thomas!

Actor Brian has been attending the university for three years, and is hoping to graduate after his next couple of semesters with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in video production. He originally met Alex in Dr. Warren’s cinematography class where they collaborated on quite a few projects together. He’s very happy to be making his acting debut in Marble Hornets!

Depending on who you think wrote these, this description could be really funny. BUT WOW A CANONIZED WAY THESE CHARACTERS MET. I feel like I have won the lottery. Anyone else?

That is a really fascinating combination of major and minor too, [WHICH WE NOW HAVE FOR HIM, WOAH,] it really makes you wonder what Brian is doing though, and where his direction in life is, if he even knows. Its such a short and sweet and direct description, it is equal parts charming while hiding something under its surface you can't quite place and might even slip from your attention, which feels very emblematic of this character.

I'll leave you to read Sarah Reid and Tim Wright's bios on your own, but I want to point out that at the bottom of the page, there are two people who don't have them.

Both Seth Wilson and Jay Merrick are marked with a "coming soon" notice, with Seth listed as Camera/Co-Editor and Jay listened as... nothing. He is just slapped on there because. Why?

Probably because Alex wanted him there because he is his friend, but it is interesting to point out. Jay as I said before is a passive (though not meek) character, especially at the start of the series, and this just reminds me of that. He is here, but quiet and observing, not helping really as he trails after Alex because he is his friend, because they have a connection, because Alex can't imagine not having him here.

Food for thought :-)

[allykatsart]

Hiiii. I really love ur tagteam art and all the wiki and archives. Is there any lore or stories you feel like sharing that you haven't yet drawn?

Oh TONS!

But my arm/hand hurts if I draw too much in one sitting & I have IRL stuff to do ._.'

I know I'ma forget tho, so I hope you don't mind, but I'm making this into a list of things to draw in the future! In no particular order:

Bots/scams being bugs/spiders and Tumblr having a LOT of them in their apartment.

Tumblr sharing Goncharov with AO3 & annoying Twitter with it

(Inspired by a convo with @sadbrainsoup ) Tumblr seeing AO3 with the Archive Group and getting insecure about it.

AO3 trying to comfort Tumblr about the above

Webtoon x Wattpad being an arranged marriage (they're owned by the same company)

AO3 reaching the max amount of bookmarks

Dead sites and what happens to them (& how they interact with Internet Archive)

How The Archive Group ask for donations

Tumblr in different outfits/Themes

AO3 asks about Tumblr x 4Chan

Tumblr visits 4Chan in the hospital

Wayback machine turns Tumblr into 2014 Tumblr

Twitter & Tumblr argue over the Sexyman Tournament (more)

Twitter dates(?) a ghost(?)

Dashcon 2

Twitter is not okay

YouTube stealing Tumblr posts for YTshorts

Tumblr helping new users figure out the website/Helping Reddit move in next door

AO3 & Fanfiction having a rivalry in the past

Characters to be introduced:

Reddit

4Chan

Youtube

Vine

Technically any website is up for me to design a character after XD these are ones that I don't have plans to draw, but I might anyways

Artfight

Pinterest (since everyone is asking about them)

boredbutton

CoolMathGames

Instagram

Deviantart

Furaffinity

Steam

Unvale

I might not draw all of these? I'm mostly brainstorming. As I've seen before, I'm trying to use these websites' histories as the 'cannon' between the websites. I'm making myths about the internet so that the history is remembered!

If anyone remembers some shit I wasn't aware of, or feels my interpretation of a website is wrong, go ahead, tweak mine or make your own if you'd like!

[notadapertiones]

(Alt Text: Tragibox Lore Resource Masterpost. Archives, official links, fan docs, etc...)

Guess who accidentally deleted it when they were going to edit something... yeah.

LAST UPDATED; 30/03/25

Thought this would be treasured by others as much as it is by me. Wherever my hyperfixation takes me to learn is for me to share!!!

If you have any additions, feel free to send them to me so I can add them! Also don't doubt about telling me if any of the links happen to be broken or if anything is incorrectly linked!

⚠️ Some things to keep in mind:

Tragibox Lore is currently being rewritten by the new owner of the project, Ruby Waters. Some things might get changed!

Breakthrough bonuses are fanmade.

Ruby has kindly asked to not ship characters within Tragibox, this includes Neester x Lilac. Screenshots of this boundary can be found on the Lore Archive Masterdoc linked below. DaveMack is excepted from this since it's a canon ship! Canon ships are allowed.

Official Orin Ayo Lore Doc (Wayback Machine Link): Might be a bit laggy on phone. Try not to touch the text too much because it sends you to refresh the page (HAPPENED MANY TIMES...). There's a missing picture of Acheture Blunt's appearance before death but I managed to dig around a little and find it! It's currently on the lore archive below.

Tragibox Lore Archive Masterdoc: A document by me. Archives the official lore doc, in-game profiles (in progress), discord lore questions answered and some other things. My directory basically!!! Don't request editing access. Note: When opening in a mobile browser, check "desktop size/browser view" to be able to see the images better, otherwise they will look blurry.

Official Tragibox Discord Server: Activity varies a lot but very fun! There is interesting lore material around and you can ask lore questions. Might serve to track the progress of the project in the future! Also good to interact with other Tragibox fans. Special shout-out to whoever sent me the invite link through strawpage when I asked for it, you're a real one sob sob...

Tragibox Archive by Smugg/Pk Freeze: HTML version of Tragibox games saved plus a bit of lore information screenshoted~

Orin Ayo Wiki: Take some of the things here as a grain of salt, information tends to be changed by users and is usually not backed by sources. Lore related note; don't take the info in character profiles in Orin Ayo as the 100% truth, as most of that information can be manipulated by cultists~

Extra to Orin Ayo Wiki: Paige's Wiki Page

Breakthrough Wiki: Same thing as the Orin Ayo Wiki. This time, character info can be trusted a little more, most of it is written directly by Sol but there are some cases of unknown characters or Dave writting them (Dave's logs have his signature)

Using this little space to add that I'm currently working on a document analysing some elements on Tragibox from a more scientific point of view~ For now it is just a very rough WIP bit will be added to this list once it is done.

[aquamarine-oceanfront]

Summary of events related to Murder Drones' apparent debut on Prime Video (and a possible merch drop?)

Not the prettiest title, but there's been a lot of odd goings-on in the past few weeks, and I felt like compiling what exactly has been happening in a single post for ease of reference. I'm not 100% sure all of it is connected (or even indicates any future events, necessarily), but I'll make sure to indicate that when I get to it.

If you're short on time, here's my hypothesis: Murder Drones will debut on Amazon Prime Video on May 16th (this upcoming Friday at the time of writing). Coinciding with this, Glitch will announce new merchandise (including a Solver Uzi plushie).

Below is my evidence & thought process, arranged chronologically:

April 25: @foggy_dragon on Twitter posts the following:

Judging from this reply, this doesn't appear to be an existing trailer - it's one that the general public hasn't seen before.

April 26: Around the time of LVL UP EXPO, Amanda Hufford (voice of Ragatha in The Amazing Digital Circus) posts two pictures of various Glitch staff members and voice actors together. Both were taken in or outside of a Hot Topic - the first is what I'm focusing on.

Look in the background (to the left of Michael Kovach, wearing N's hat) and you'll find something unusual:

What appears to be a Solver Uzi plushie! There haven't been any official ones before, so this caught a lot of fans' eyes pretty quickly.

April 28: Twitter user @Endoropolis makes the following claim:

The accompanying photos and video show the store featuring two copies of a Glitch poster on either side of the entrance, which are indeed visible in Amanda's earlier photograph.

April 30: According to this Reddit post, @primevideoit on Instagram (the official Italian account for Amazon's streaming service) uploads an image outlining new additions to the platform in the month of May. One of them quickly garners attention:

For what it's worth, I have seen at least one other screenshot of this post without the red scribbles, lending credit to its legitimacy:

(Unfortunately, I don't have the source for this iteration.)

According to the same Redditor cited before, the account deletes the post within a few hours. (There are no archives of it, unfortunately, so I cannot personally verify these claims.)

May 1: @primevideotr, the platform's official Turkish Instagram account, posts their own set of images promoting their forthcoming offerings that month - once again including Murder Drones and claiming it'll come out on the 16th. (This time I did see it myself - here's a Wayback Machine archive of the below image.)

(As an aside, a lot of people took note of the "S1" appended to the title. I don't think this by itself indicates plans for a second season - it seems like that's just how these accounts refer to every TV show. I'm less certain about the "original series" branding, but I'd assume that refers to it simply not being on any other paid streaming service.)

May 2: The Italian Prime Video Instagram account reposts their May schedule, now bereft of Murder Drones. Fans flock to the comment section in response.

~May 6: The Turkish Prime Video Instagram post is edited to remove the image with Murder Drones. (Compare this archive from the day before with this one from the 6th. While you can't see the rest of the images, take note of the way the number of dots indicating how many images are in the post decreases by one between them.)

~May 8: Kevin Lerdwichagul, CEO and co-founder of Glitch Productions, posts the following image as an Instagram story:

Many take notice of the timing (after all these apparent leaks) and wonder if Luke's Murder Drones hoodie is indicative of anything. (The counter-argument I saw: maybe he just likes wearing it?)

May 12th: Glitch's official Twitter account posts an N-related meme:

Nothing very out of the ordinary in of itself, but - again - the timing gets people wondering.

May 13th: The same account retweets two different pieces of Murder Drones fanart:

This, I'd say, is rather out of the ordinary at this point - the account's been largely focused on The Gaslight District for the past month, a natural byproduct of that show's pilot finally premiering. Similarly, the account's profile picture reverted back to normal (after spending quite some time as a Gaslight District-themed variant).

So that's where we're at now. I can't imagine the announcement would take much longer, since the Prime premiere date is fast approaching - we'll see for sure soon enough.

[coraniaid]

It isn't true at all that Buffy was originally planned to run for only five seasons. It isn't true that the writers wrote The Gift expecting it or wanting it to be the last episode. It isn't true that the show was cancelled and then surprisingly rescued at the last minute. I'm sorry. but it just isn't. It doesn't become true just because so many of you keep saying it. It's never been true and there's never been good reason to think it was true.

Don't forget that this didn't happen that long ago. It's not lost knowledge we can only speculate about. The historical record is easily accessible, either directly or via the Wayback Machine. The negotiations Fox had with WB and UPN about Buffy's future were very much the subject of public discussion and speculation while the fifth season was airing. WB wanted to extend the show for another season, but Fox knew UPN would pay them much more than they were currently getting. WB wouldn't meet Fox's demands -- they were prepared to pay more than they had been paying, but not so much more -- so they opted not to renew (not to cancel) the show beyond the fifth season. Within a week or two of this being announced -- and well before The Gift ever made it to air -- the show had been picked up by UPN, as Fox knew would happen when they first demanded more money from WB. And UPN did in fact pay them about double what WB had been paying per episode for Season 5.

Joss Whedon wrote The Gift and was heavily involved in these negotiations. He was one of the loudest voices agitating for a move. He didn't think The Gift was going to be the last episode. He didn't plan it to be. I know somebody on the internet once told you differently, but they were either lying or repeating second-hand stories they'd never bothered to check.

I have checked them, and so can you. It's not hard to do so. I've posted some of the relevant links before, or you can go and find them for yourself. And if you do check, you'll see that the popular version of events is a myth. A fabrication. It's not true. And if you repeat it, knowing that it's not or not bothering to research, then you're a liar.

[vikenticomeshome]

More "Smile for Me" Plushies from ToyLandByOrlova

Remember this guy? Fashionable Habit from LimboLane's game "Smile for Me"? I got him from a plush-maker out of Ukraine called ToyLandByOrlova.

So, that shop had a few other plushies based on the same game. Not sure if they will still have them when you're reading this. I decided to pick my favorites, buy a few, and talk about them.

And then I just bought them all, because, why not?

So, let's talk about Dr. Habit again. He's dressed up in his work clothes now.

Look at that face, wouldn't you trust that face?

Oh no, you forgot to brush you teeth! You know what happens now!

Yeah, he has multiple layers of clothing, similar to Fashionable Habit. You can see his belly, arms, and legs, if you push the clothes up. Scandalous!

Let's put him aside for a moment and take a look at Nat Vancey. Her hair, eyes, and outfit are all very reminiscent of the character.

I'll admit, when I first saw this one, I was very confused about her chipmunk cheeks. Seriously, what is she storing in them? Is this canon?

I thought maybe it was an interpretation of this sprite where her mouth is branching off her face.

And then, I saw this one.

Okay, so ToyLandByOrlova portrayed her just how LimboLane made her. That's fair.

So, let's talk about local string-bean Mirphy Fotoparat. She's' very tall and leggy.

I haven't gone through Wayback Machine archives, but I suspect that Muirphy was one of the earlier productions from ToyLandByOrlova. Her face seems a bit off. When I originally saw it, I thought that it was done with those ink pens that can write on felt. However, the lines have actually been sewn onto her, which is good. Her mouth-piece does jut out of her face, which is a little awkward. However, you can tell who she is.

Her clothes are also sewn in a way that prevents them from being shifted around, unlike Habit.

And she's got a plushie camera. What sort of photos has she been taking?

Oh.

Anyway, let's talk about Parsley Botch.

So, Parsley gets the saaaaaaame..

So, Shadow Habit is very similar to Fashionable Habit, but he's been done in all black, and he has that smile. He does still have a very scandalous belly. Although, he doesn't have a shirt under his coat this time. I guess it would have been pointless to another layer of black material

Okay, I think I made him happy now. We can talk about Parsley Botch for real. I gotta say, I never really saw this guy as having a massive cushiony chest before.

Like, his whole thing is that he is super hungry, and he works so hard that he forgets to eat. But then, I took another look. I took into account that just because his sprite is flat, that doesn't mean he is.

And, the more I look at it...

His cup size makes sense. I'm sure Martin appreciates them during cuddle sessions.

I love the little detail of the scratch(?) or nasolabial fold (?) on his face.

And here he is from the back.

And now, he's going to sue me for showing you his belly.

I'm so glad that I bought them all.

[weaselbeaselpants]

So, ya'll want my gut feeling about BlackGryph0n explained?

Okay.

Back in the 2014-2015 days, I followed some antiSJW brony folks and these three artists made satirical blogs abt the adult CMC mocking tumblr culture and fandom. Not a big fan of those same artists now, but the one who owned the Applebloom blog made a parody comic of that time Gabriel posted pics of dripping syrup and tying up Michelle Creber (who was still a minor at the time), by having Gabe's griffonsona do that to Applebloom while a disapproving Apple family look on. The comic ended with the other Apple's sending Gabe's oc to be eaten by Queen Chrysalis. The comic then linked to and showed the screengrabs of Gabe and Michelle Creber's real life posts that inspired it. It then had a poem parody that went like: "sing a song of sixpence but surely they deny, one big black gryphon backed into a pie, deported by the apple fam for hitting on a tween, wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the queen?"

If ANY of this comic still exists it would be under a wayback machine of "ask apl-pleb-loom" or something like that. The mod of that blog posted besides "Fury Belle" (radfeminist SJW Sweetie Belle) and Ass Brutalewd (Stootalo but a horndog college girl).

I don't so much care for the artist and distanced myself from them and the antisjw types. I don't support or like them but THAT was how I first learned and saw what Black Gryph0n was doing. Back in the mid 2010s. I didn't learn after the fact, I was aware of the accusations for a lone time. When the Hazbin Hotel pilot came out, I didn't know how to feel when I learned who Alastor's va was. To be clear, I don't think anyone at Spindlehorse knew of that situation since most people didn't and knew Gabe more from his old Brony days. I'm not blaming Spindehorse, especially since they recast Gabe anyway. Again, while I never cared for the person I originally heard that info from-

the image of 17-y-old something Michelle with duct tape on her mouth, posted to an audience of impressionable children and fellow gooning bronies, with Gabe smiling, proudly, like it was nothing has ALWAYS stuck with me. I haven't excessively combed through the all the documents and evidence to see if someone else has found that image, but to me, that was enough to swear off Black Gryph0n and his work. I KNOW that that happened. I KNOW that that incident occurred and Gabe did that.

Having found out years later that he married Claire IS uncomfortable. Marrying someone for the adult they are now as an adult even if you did know them briefly as a minor is one thing; I think even the healthiest relationship that's questionable. I'm not convinced, considering the rumors going around and that someone was bold enough to make an entire parody comic about it, that NOTHING inappropriate happened when Claire and Michelle were teenagers. At the very least, what Gabriel posted and thought was 'cute' back then with both girls was beyond inappropriate.

Like MandoPony (remember him?) it was a betrayal within Bronydom that hit hard. There was no shortage of creepy bronies and assholes in the fandom, like our dearest Lily Orchard and ToonKritic, but BlackGryph0n was 'horse famous' and seen as mostly child-friendly. He was trusted enough to hang out with the teenager members of the actual show.

I will not hear that BlackGryph0n isn't a creep and didn't in some way take advantage of anyone. "Grooming"/"not Grooming" who cares about the specifics: he was an adult and should have known better than to ever post something like that.

I don't know the extent of EVERYTHING ILoveKimPossibleALot did/said of Saberspark in relation to any of this. Knowing KP, I can def believe she did a bad job at a call out. That's KP. Barring the video she did explaining why she left Lorch, she's really not good at handling drama. I don't feel inclined to hear her take away on Gabe, Saber, Sai or anyone.

If you support Gabriel Brown and insist on stanning Saberspark because he supports Gabriel Brown, please kindly unfollow me.

If you unironically think "YES Gabe/Saber got metooed' NOW I CAN HATE THEM!" is any kind of sane reaction, ALSO please kindly unfollow me.

[mercurialharpy]

Disappointment even when you don't meet your shitty heroes, but they still haunt you.

Step into my own personal wayback machine for a moment. It was Fall of 1992, I was rooming with five young women I barely knew in a college dorm suite, at a college I'd transferred to the year before. I remember looking at an end table and on it, was a comic book. I'd never been into comics personally. Like most folks at the time I'd imagine, I (incorrectly) assumed that comics were for kids, and strictly for superheroes.

I was about to learn how wrong I was. This happened to be an issue of The Sandman, and was borrowed by one of my roommates from her boyfriend. He happened to be there when I was thumbing through it. I don't remember exactly what we said; all I recall was he disappeared, and re-appeared a half an hour later with Preludes and Nocturnes, a collection of The Sandman issues 1-8. I was hooked. Completely and absolutely. From that moment forward, I was a Neil Gaiman fan, and although I wasn't a hardcore consumer of every piece he's done, I would stan him and defend him and his work to anyone who would listen. My roommate and her (now) husband, who remained friends with me for decades after college, have had more than one book signed for me from the man himself.

Following the end of the original Sandman series, the novel American Gods became my second favorite. When, in the late 2010s and early 2020s, I learned my two favorite works were finally in production for television, I was beside myself with joy. Vindication. At least for me, being a fan of Gaiman was like being in a club no one else wanted to be in but you.

In following the threads of the main plot of the series, Morpheus himself was an outcast because of the trauma he suffered at the hands of vile people. In turn, he was not a particularly nice guy. I absolutely got the message that you could be a literal god, and be broken at the same time. This, paired with learning about Greek Mythology while in school, gave me a deep and satisfying understanding of the material that persisted for years. Almost a decade before The Sopranos or Breaking Bad lit a fire under the antihero archetype, Gaiman had it on lock with his work. The best foreshadowing is when you don't see it coming at all, I suppose. I will always be a fan of the work. But I'm not in the club anymore. Even now, I'm gazing at a bound version of the entire Sandman series on the shelf, and I've given serious consideration to tossing it out with the trash bin entirely. In all honesty, I had a sinking feeling when I watched the premier of American Gods on Starz (a now defunct network). It was at once a very good show, and a very flawed adaptation of the novel. In one of the promo pieces for the show, I remember reading that Gaiman was immediately at odds with Producer Bryan Fuller, and the differences ultimately caused Fuller to leave the project while taking some of the A list actors with him. All I could think was "uh-oh. This isn't going to make it to the end." And boy was I right. But not exactly for the reasons I thought.

So now we know. All of the articles I could find discussing the allegations against Gaiman and his current wife are behind paywalls, so I'm not going to link them here. I would recommend heading to Reddit for the ugly details. Both the decades-old assault allegations, and Gaiman's jaw-dropping responses, have left me questioning what exactly I should do with a piece of foundational literature that as a writer, I depended on as one of my touch stones. Another creator on Tumblr (of course I can't find the blog NOW when I need it) mentioned that supporting the remaining seasons of The Sandman TV series and Good Omens is probably a good thing despite a moral imperative to stop supporting the author; it helps maintain an ecosystem of actors and TV/film production that has suffered terribly in the wake of the Covid Pandemic and the recent writer's strike. But that doesn't solve my internal struggle. In discussing the situation with my partner, he quipped "Well, why would he stop being an asshole, if he was consistently rewarded for it? Networks were tripping over themselves to offer this guy deals. Someone had to know what was really going on, and chose to ignore it." Oof. Late-stage capitalism strikes again. While researching this post, I came across a quote from actor Norm MacDonald, from his memoir "Based On A True Story:" “It's true what they say. Never meet your heroes. It turns out they're all a bunch of fucking assholes. They're probably the reason you turned into such a fucking asshole - because they were your heroes and you spent all your time trying to be like them.”

Yup. Accurate. A good Wiccan friend, who has since passed into the Summerlands, told me during a particularly ugly divorce "Harpy, remember the opposite of love is indifference, not hate. " This quote is often attributed to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. The source notwithstanding, this quote never sat right with me. In America, we are now contending with an almost terminal lack of empathy, as the authoritarian shit-show circus revs its engine. We are, again, a place where the cruelty is the point, and it appears co-conspirators are literally lining up to inflict as much damage as possible on weaker individuals without agency. I care. I'll never stop caring. This is my fatal flaw, my hubris. My middle-finger to the gods that be, telling me not to care, and look the other way. I will not obey in advance. And I will not pretend that something I loved dearly wasn’t created and elevated via the suffering of other women, directly or indirectly. In short, I refuse to be haunted by an author I once had boundless respect for. As a Norse Pagan, I don't pray to the gods for forgiveness per se. We (or as least I, in my practice) make offerings, and ask for help in just being a better person; take responsibility for missteps and hurtful things, as we know not even the Gods are immune from consequences.

I see none of this kind of contrition coming from Gaiman. I see a lot of narcissistic self-soothing and justification that just, well...turns my stomach. Musician Tori Amos's response to the allegations alone made me sob. I know well, having been the victim of narcissistic bullshit in the past. This avoidance may be a strategy for side-stepping potential legal exposure. Or, it could be that he's just an actual predatory asshole. For now, the book stays on the shelf. But I won't be touching it, or looking at it for a while. The ghosts will just have to chill for a minute, and be content with indifference for now.

[quordleona03]

My OTW interview

Back in 2023, I was asked if I'd like to be interviewed by the Organisation for Transformative Works. I said yes, sent in my answers, and only just wondered - 2024 was a rather busy year - if they ever used it. They did, and here it is:

How did you first find out about fandom and fanworks?

In the old Science-Fiction Bookshop in Edinburgh, a couple of years after the end of the 4th season of Blake’s 7 was first broadcast, I found a book called Blake’s 7 The Programme Guide. In the back of the book were the names and addresses of groups of B7 fans, and I found you could write to them and join. I got stamps and postal orders, sent typed letters – and got fannish newsletters back.

Somewhere in this, I found out about fanfic. I had no idea. The first B7 story I wrote, prior to this, was in the form of an episode – because I had no idea that you could do anything else for a TV series but write episode scripts, nor that there was anyone else out there who wanted to.

What made you decide to reach out to Open Doors about archiving Iolanthe’s works on AO3?

I was friends with Susan when we were all on LiveJournal. I was watching M*A*S*H reruns and had joined MASH100 on LJ and written drabbles. I met Susan – who was Scarlatti on LJ and Iolanthe on her lovely personal site, A Priest in Korea. Susan’s stories inspired me to start writing what became For Ever, which was the original nucleus of Sins and Virtues.

Susan died in June 2006, while Such As We was still in first draft – I sent her sections as I was going along because she had cancer. Other things happened, and I’d stopped writing M*A*S*H fanfic in about 2011. Then about ten years later, I started thinking about M*A*S*H again, and Hawkeye/Mulcahy, and Susan’s stories. I found her old site on the Wayback Machine, re-read her stories, and thought of the story idea that has become All We Know. I also thought, “I could get these stories on to AO3 and everyone could read them: I bet they have a process for that.”

And I did, and they do, and – A Priest in Korea moved to AO3.

What was it like working with Open Doors?

Once we had made contact, it was very easy! Julie, an Open Doors volunteer, was my Virgil, and sent me clear emails with easy-to-follow steps. I understood what to do and why to do it that way. The first step in the process could have been the hardest – I had to get consent to transfer the archive to Julie from someone related to Susan – but fortunately, I was still in contact with Doug, Susan’s partner, and he was pleased to know that her stories were to be archived.

Was there anything about the import process that surprised you?

Not really. Oh, I suppose finding out that “Tag Wrangler” is an actual job. At some point I sent the tags Susan had used to Open Doors, and Julie explained there would now be a pause of a few weeks to let the tag wranglers do their work to ensure that the tags I was to use when I posted the stories were in the right AO3 form.

And then I got an Excel form which outlined exactly how to post the stories. I could never have used AO3 before in my life, and it would have been clear how to post Iolanthe’s stories in her memorial account. But, step by step, everything about the Open Doors process seemed so obvious, and quite unsurprising, even if I hadn’t thought of it before.

How did you hear about the OTW and what do you see its role as?

I heard about OTW because other fans were talking about it on LiveJournal in late 2007. I’d left LiveJournal for other reasons in June 2006, so I was not involved in those discussions – but I was aware they were happening. I now see the role of OTW to, specifically, protect the existence of AO3 as a host site for fanworks of all sorts and to, generally, protect the right of fans to create transformative works based on all sorts of media.

What fandom things have inspired you the most?

Stories. I love reading fanfic, and I love writing fanfic. Writing is my passion.

Also: that fandom exists. That we have made fandom – and everything in it – out of love and words. This entire eccentric diverse muddled dramatic multilevelled Escher-staired magical structure, half castle, half space station, half Faraway Tree, half fae and half heaven and half hell: we made it. Fandom exists because we want it to, because of what we love, because of how we love, because of words.

[soft-sunbird]

I am back!

Where have I been?

Well, it's my birthday! So I'm feeling more capable than usual. So I'm here to tell you that the reason I've been away is because I've been working hard to archive and automate the collection of data on Gazavetters campaigns. (No, I'm not working in an official capacity with them. I just appreciate their work immensely.)

The excellent @gazavetters have just hit 350 individually vetted and verified campaigns. That's a lot! In fact it's this many: XXXXX XXXXX XXX0X XXXXX XXXXX - 25 XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX 00XXX - 50 X0XXX XXXXX XXXX0 XXXXX X0XXX - 75 XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX - 100

XXXXX XXXXX 0XXXX XXXX0 XXXXX - 125 XXX0X 00XXX XXXXX X0X0X XXXXX - 150 XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX - 175 0XXXX XXXXX XXXXX XX0XX XXXXX - 200

XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XX0XX - 225 XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX - 250 XXX0X XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX - 275 XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX - 300

XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXX0X - 325 XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXX0 XXXXX - 350 X (351)

I've bolded and linked to campaigns that either have less than 5 donations, or collected less than 50 of their currency. (16 of them)

I've replaced campaigns that have closed with zeroes. (5% of them)

Every single campaign except for two I couldn't catch in time (#47 and #142) has been archived in the Wayback Machine, or archive.is where that wasn't possible.

More details under the cut

I could not have done without the help of my incredible boyfriend, who basically put this tool together for me - here's how long it takes to scan 10 campaigns:

All that data goes into here, Supabase:

Which I can then import directly into a spreadsheet for analysis:

Which is how I created the post "50 campaigns less than 4% funded", etc.

I wanted this to be flexible enough to handle any masterlist of campaign links, not just Gazavetters. Other amazing efforts include el-shab-hussein and nabulsi's spreadsheet, Operation Olive Branch, Bees and Watermelons, the Butterfly Effect project, the Strawberry Seed collective, and definitely more that I don't have in my bookmarks folder. You could absolutely swap out all the names and links for any of theirs and the scraper would do most of the rest.

Kids in Gaza don't have a lot to be happy about. Fortunately, my other talent and hobby is locating and acquiring media. I've managed to obtain a rip of the entire children's section of an Arabic audiobook platform, a decent amount of Iftah Ya Simsim (Sesame Street), and an animated educational series about Muslim scholars and their contributions to science and philosophy. I'm working with a mate to get these as small and accessible as possible, before I share them privately. I've got... oh, about 475GB worth of material so far? Let's see how these projects go, as well as my own fundraisers (Shaima Fatima Aya Asmaa) plus the other 17 I'm advocating for (see my pinned post for details), and we'll see what happens. Peace. Bee out.

[someoneintheshadow456]

I said before, now that Cait Corrain’s true self has come out, I can finally elaborate on what happened with her. To put a long story short, I was one of her very first victims - long before she became an original fiction author and back when she was known as Enterprisingly on AO3 - the author of Play to Win.

I know that #reviewbombgate was back in December, but at the time, I did not know about it because I’m not involved in BookTok. However, I WAS involved with the Reylo fandom, albeit indirectly.

The final chapters of Play to Win went on a tangent that seemed bizarre to me at the time. In fact, it seemed so strange that I brushed it off almost completely. It was only when I found Play to Win’s Wayback Machine page after recalling memories of the Reylo fandom last year when I read the chapter properly (instead of skipping ahead to get to the Reylo scenes). And a proper reading made me realize what was so unnerving about it:

Anyone who has engaged with my blog (especially from 2015-2019, when I used to post a lot more content about my personal life) can see the strangely... specific way this character was described. In order to go into this level of depth, one has to have been following me intently and keeping tabs of all the personal things I posted.

And then, she goes from eerily specific descriptions, to straight up maliciously lying about me:

Keep in mind, this screed takes up an ENTIRE chapter in itself. Said character, Ejya Fjord, is a background NPC who is mentioned a total of 121 times in a 161,000 word story. In fact, her name is mentioned so little that you could be forgiven for not remembering her at all:

You'd think, if someone would do something like this, I had to have done something terrible to her, or even just gave her a negative review. But I never did.

As you can see here, I have only engaged positively with her. Since Play to Win was also taken down and you can’t see old comments on Wayback Machine. Unfortunately after this, I can only give my word without receipts.

Play to Win was published first in 2018. I reviewed her story in March of 2018, possibly even earlier. In my review, I praised the writing, worldbuilding, and dialogues, but gave a small constructive criticism in that the politics could be better integrated into the story without feeling disjointed.

In the very early chapters, Ejya was clearly intended to be 100% Swedish - as one can tell from the name. However, at some point in the later half of the story, she retroactively became mixed race and a rival for Ben's affections, while Ben seems to be having none of it. It's clear these choices were made to portray me as some kind of horny fangirl for Kylo Ren who will stomp on other girls for his sake:

When I read the last chapter first, I was horrified. But now I'm just... bemused that someone would ever see me as some kind of calculating vixen who dresses like a Euphoria high school student and only likes masculine hobbies to pick up dudes. When in reality it took me until 2020 to be able to type the word "sex" without having heart attack and have never so much as posted a selfie on here.

It's also funny that Ejya is petite and flat chested while my actual body type is the exact opposite... which she would know since she stalked my blog so thoroughly. Almost as though she's implying something about her own insecurities...

Initially, I was under the impression that Corrain targeted me because of my association with @ainomica - due to her ruffling the Reylo fandom’s feathers (and ending up on Corrain’s hit list) over her opinions on John Boyega. However, that controversy happened in 2020. When Corrain wrote this libel about me, @ainomica wasn’t even on her radar, not to mention it was a year before we had ever even met. This libel was done to target me, and me exclusively.

In essence - Corrain weaved libel about me into her story because my existence pissed her off. We know now that Corrain had a penchant for targeting sapphic authors and WOC almost exclusively. So it's safe to say she was just being a typical white saviour liberal who shows what she actually thinks of minorities when they don't toe the line.

While this does make her less unhinged in my eyes than using me to target someone else, it still means that Corrain was, and always has been capable of aggression towards anyone she’s remotely offended by. Especially if said person happens to be a minority of some kind.

[consanguinitatum]

DT talk throwback: my interview w/David Blair, director of Takin' Over The Asylum

Over half a decade ago now I was a writer for David Tennant News/DT Forum, one of the bigger unofficial fan sites of DT's at the time (now sadly defunct). During my time there, I got the chance in Jan 2016 to interview David Blair - most notably the director of Takin' Over The Asylum, though he worked with DT in three other shows - about those projects, and what he remembered about David. I didn't want this interview to sink into the depths of the Wayback Machine and I thought y'all might enjoy reading it, so here is that interview in its entirety:

David Blair, Director / Front Cover of BBC DVD for Takin' Over The Asylum (UK)

Hello Mr. Blair! From 1992-1996 you worked with David Tennant on four separate television shows:  Strathblair in 1992, The Brown Man in 1993, Takin' Over The Asylum in 1994 and A Mug's Game in 1996.   Were you at all involved in the casting process for Strathblair, the first project you worked with David on... If so what did you see in the young actor that won him the role?  And how did that translate into choosing him as Campbell Bain?

I was a Producer at the BBC before I started directing. David was a student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama in Glasgow. He asked if he could meet me just to talk through procedure for TV, interviews, etc., as the college appeared more interested in theatre than camera. Indeed, frowned on the latter! He’d be about 18 then. I certainly knew from the outset that he ‘had something,’ and I gave him a few minor opportunities as soon as I embarked on my directing career. To be clear, I only work with actors I want and believe in – still do. Some might say my own career has been stifled by this obduracy but I don’t care. My need of working with great actors is paramount and David’s a shining example of what makes it all worthwhile. I commissioned Takin’ Over The Asylum for the BBC and worked closely with the writer throughout the creative process. I knew as soon as I read the screenplay, David was going to be perfect for Campbell. But I’m not a fascist about this kind of decision-making, so I mentioned to the writer and Casting Director I had a boy ‘in mind’ for the role. I didn’t oversell; I knew he would make it work for himself. There may have been some minor scepticism at first, but when he did his audition, he blew them away.

David's audition tape for Takin' Over The Asylum

Many of David's fans have seen Takin' Over The Asylum and are well-versed with it. Can you talk more about Strathblair, The Brown Man and A Mug's Game, and David's roles in each?  Little is known about the roles he played in those productions. Can you give us any insight into the stories behind all three of the projects themselves, and what was it about David in those years that made you want to cast him in all of them?

In truth, Strathblair and The Brown Man were merely cogs in my directing wheel. They weren’t aesthetically of great merit but gave me a few credits to kick-start my career. What I needed was a ‘signature piece’ and that came along with Takin’ Over The Asylum. In many ways, I regard that as the start of my directing career. In those days, without a high-profile production on your CV, you would more than likely be destined for a treadmill of soaps and ‘continuing drama’. Before Asylum I was picking up scraps; after it, I was being asked what I wanted to do. Thus A Mug’s Game became my second collaboration with Donna Franceschild, who’d written Asylum. Ken Stott, Katy Murphy and others from Asylum were already on board - and really? We just wanted David to ‘be in it’. It wasn’t a huge role but he kindly agreed to come in and do it for us. Played a music student (at the Scottish Academy, as it happens), as I recall but, again, hugely professional and accomplished. In one scene, he had to throw up over the railway tracks at Partick train station in Glasgow.... ah, an enduring memory.....

Did David do anything on set of any of the productions he worked on with you that totally took you by surprise or that was unexpected?  What did he do?

I think in those days, more than anything, it was important to keep in mind just how young he was. This boy of 21, was commanding the space, displaying an extraordinary ability to create laughter and tears; sometimes both at the same time! He had natural charm and wit and that, combined with this wonderfully spontaneous joie de vivre, made him a joy to be around both on the set and off.

What do you feel David's most unique/valuable attributes as an actor are?  What do you think separates him from his peers as he has matured into the career he has today?

When I look at him now I still largely see the same lad I met all those years ago. Still bursting with enthusiasm and an absolute desire to come out on top – which he’s done consistently. He’s retained his appetite, clearly, and devoured a huge range of roles – never seeking a ‘comfort zone’ in the process. It’s also struck me that he’s never attempted to be somebody he’s not and that truth, integrity, diligence – some might say, ‘Scottishness’ (!) – defines the man we see today.

David has said he considers Takin' Over The Asylum a career-defining project for him. What is your reaction so many years down the line to that comment?

I’ve always been rather humbled by David’s regard for myself and Takin’ Over The Asylum. I genuinely never felt I did anything out of the ordinary. I picked the best man for the job which, God knows, he underlined in spades once he played the role. He gave me as much as I gave him. Of course, there are occasions in my own career where I look back at defining moments and say “if it hadn’t been for so-and-so”.... but, I guess, the reason why we can reflect in that way, is because we didn’t let anybody down. David didn’t – and I hope I didn’t.   Looking back at Takin' Over The Asylum all these years later, do you feel it still holds up as well as it did?  In retrospect do you feel it helped shed as much needed light on the mental health industry as you'd hoped?

Funnily enough, somebody called me the other day to say he’d sat down and watched all six episodes and couldn’t believe how well it’s stood the test of time. I think I agree. I suppose because it’s a subject matter nobody would touch with a bargepole these days – that’s keeps it fresh somehow. All the scripts were vetted by the Association For Mental Health before we signed off on them. The writer had had mental health issues and wanted it to be authentic and in no way derisory. In fact, I remember many of the extras I cast all had had mental issues – one in particular having been institutionalised for 37 years!

I'd like to explore your decision to cast institutionalized patients as extras in Takin' Over The Asylum in a bit more detail. Was this related to filming the series at Gartloch Hospital, and if not, how was the idea first presented and eventually implemented?  Was this something you and Donna discussed as part of your intention to make the show as sensitive to the subject matter and as authentic as you could?  And did you run into any problems with compensating the extras, or any other issues relating to their Sectioned status?

It was simply an idea I had not just to add authenticity, but to have these guys make a worthwhile contribution to the film – and also make them feel good about it, if you like. I wanted to dispel the notion that all mentally ill people were screaming banshees – the story alludes to this anyway – by whose definition are we mad? I also thought it would help the non-mad actors (if there is such a thing!!!) to be surrounded by the ‘real’ rather than the ‘made up’ and thereby enrich their own performances.

Speaking of Gartloch Hospital, how did you choose that particular hospital for the filming location?

Gartloch was one of several mental hospitals around Glasgow being run down at the time, as part of the government’s controversial ‘care in the community’ programme. In other words, ‘we don’t want to pay to look after them any more, so you do it’. Of all the ones I looked at, Gartloch – not least with its huge tower – seemed to provide the best ambience; most suitable for the story and visually rewarding also.

Exploratory views of the interior and exterior of (now abandoned) Gartloch Hospital

As you mentioned, you do certainly seem to gravitate towards actors and writers that inspire you. Years ago you spotted a certain something in David -- so if given an opportunity, would you be willing to work with David again and if you could choose your own ideal role for him, what would that role entail?

Nothing would give me more pleasure than finding a project that both David and I could work on. David, creatively, is a bit of chameleon, so I don’t think there’s an ‘ideal role’ for him as such. A brilliant piece of writing and a character that takes him a place he hasn’t been before would be the simple remit.

Over the years many fans of Takin' Over The Asylum have expressed their desire to know what happened to Campbell and Eddie after we left them. If you were to continue their story, where do you think Campbell and Eddie would be today?

My hunch is that Campbell would have gone on to be a success in the music industry and Eddie would have tumbled into an even darker place, fueled by alcohol and self-doubt. I’ve often imagined Campbell inadvertently bumping into Eddie while he was sleeping in a cardboard box and Campbell doing for Eddie what Eddie had done for Nana in the very first episode.

Lore is - from Donna amongst others -- that you asked her to take a minor character from a play she'd written and make a drama around him. Of course that character is Ready Eddie McKenna. Could you tell us what the name of that play was?  And what was there about Eddie in the framework of that play that made you see him as the kind of character that could carry an entire series - and that Donna was the woman to write it?

With regard to the question below, it’s strange how little fateful moments define what we are and what we do. In my early days as a Producer, I commissioned Donna to write one of four monologues I was overseeing – I didn’t direct it, as it happens, but it was a sterling piece performed by Katy Murphy. The BBC – not myself – then commissioned Donna to adapt a stage play she’d written called And The Cow Jumped Over The Moon to fit a play strand we were doing at the time.

On the day of the studio, the Producer overseeing the project, was taken ill and they asked me to fill in for her ‘in the gallery’. (This was an old TV play where you worked in a rehearsal room for, say, three weeks then shot the whole thing – multi-camera – in a matter of days). Of course, as a result, I became familiar with the material and was indeed taken by this minor character – Eddie – who was a hospital radio DJ. After that, I asked Donna if she felt there might be mileage in creating a serial based around this character. I’d love to go into great and meaningful depth about why I thought that but, in truth, it was just a hunch – although it was one relative to how Donna was writing at that time; I believed she could deliver something unique with wide appeal. She hadn’t done any original TV work at that time (apart from the monologue) and had worries.

It took her some time to finally come up with a first draft – the breakthrough, she told me, came when she switched from just a hospital to a mental hospital. After that, we worked the episodes one at a time getting precisely where we wanted to be on one, before moving on to the next. Not an option that’s often available these days. During this process both Donna and I were supported hugely by the then Head of The Department, Bill Bryden. And that support manifested most clearly in simply leaving us to our own devices. No script executives, story editors or any other distractions. The work we ended up with had the footprint of nobody but ourselves.

And that's that! I hope you all enjoyed this unique insight into Takin' Over The Asylum and DT's work with David Blair.

[lightofraye]

An Open Letter

Hello Danneel,

I suppose it had to happen, right? A “letter” to you. After all, I’ve written two to your husband. I had been pondering this for some time. I imagine your “stans” believe that I dislike you because you’re in a position that I wish to be in—the woman married to Jensen Ackles.

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

See… when my life became chaotic and I lost track of a number of my favorite celebrities’ work and career, I became unaware that Jensen moved onto different shows, eventually settling in Supernatural for fifteen years.

By the time my life arranged itself in a way that I could begin to track down information—some easy to find, some next to impossible—I learned of the tail end of Supernatural. However, my provider was being ornery and refused to carry CW. So I just let it go.

My family, my life, was my primary focus for a time. Then I found a good internet provider, dropped my satellite provider, and began adding streamers. That’s when I came across The Boys. Then Big Sky. Then Supernatural on Netflix.

I became a new-old fan. I remembered Jensen on Days of Our Lives, after all. I remembered talking about him with one of my best friends. I remember talking about his unusual name—Jensen. And I remember talking about his acting.

Then I saw you. Longtime married, three kids. All the news articles kept raving about how great you two were. I saw the older videos of you two together, that livestream with Misha in the Impala….

I felt the sting, just a bit, of what I assumed was jealousy. I sighed, set it aside. I would follow Jensen’s work, I told myself. Jared’s too. Others that I admired. Just added to the list.

Something kept bothering me. I kept going back to it. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the problem. Mere jealousy couldn’t be it. I’ve had that sting before, grew past it. (Henry Cavill, anyone?) So why couldn’t I get past this?

It was pure happenstance, me coming to Tumblr. I was feeling very dissatisfied with Facebook, didn’t like Twitter. Reddit was not my thing. There were other, smaller, options, but damn if I didn’t keep coming back to Tumblr, largely because of the hilarious memes I’d see snipped and shared.

Why not? I told myself.

Let’s see how it goes. Signed up, picked a few areas of interest and I was off.

Boy, was I off.

Discovering the subsections of the fandom left me reeling. Destiel? Where the hell did they come up with that? Wincest? Yikes. And then—

Tinhat?!

COCKLES?!

Needless to say, it was… phew. I found a few I liked and focused on them. Then someone mentioned YOU. I rolled my eyes; you hadn’t been active in acting other than a few teeny-tiny but parts. What could they possibly say about YOU?

Then I read the post. And another. And another. I would spent a good few weeks carefully devouring everything I read. There’s so much, I may never cover it all. But I saw enough.

I would fact-check as best I could. Some were completely lost. The Wayback Machine could only do so much. Not everyone saved the sources. 

But I saw enough.

Then I sat back and it CLICKED. It wasn’t jealousy that waved hello to me. It was the personality traits, the behavior, the way you spoke to him, that all matched what I knew and learned in my several decades of life.

You are insecure.

You lack confidence.

You lack any outside interests.

You are unsupportive.

You care for nothing and no one outside of money. Oh, you have your children—you just don’t care about them. You have your husband—all you see are dollar signs.

There is no love. There is nothing genuinely GOOD in how you view Jensen. You don’t want him home; you push him out. All you want is the constant stream of income.

I see what you’ve done. All the acting in the world wouldn’t change the rest—you’ve an empty heart, a black soul.

Let him go, Danneel.

That’s my best advice to you. Let him go. Get some therapy and grow as a person.

Maybe then you could actually like the person you see the mirror.

In discordant tunes, Raye

[genericpuff]

Remembering My Roots - Rest in Peace, RateMyDrawings

I've talked about my old art before on here, but never really fully in-depth about the site that hosted it. I was reminded of it today while going through my FB memories and felt like I should actually write a true eulogy towards what once was.

Once upon a time, before LORE | REKINDLED, before Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH], before I had even started drawing webcomics, I entered the world of digital art through one website - not DeviantArt, not Pixiv, but a little site called RateMyDrawings. Back in the day, it was one of the most popular browser-supported art tools, offering multiple different art tools that were, at the time, revolutionary. A flash drawing tool which could replay the progress of your drawing (but the tradeoff was that you had a limited amount of 'ink' aka recording data), a Java-supported tool that was essentially Photoshop Lite (but didn't come with the recording), and later, a more refined tool supported by HTML5 (?) that offered more 3D-like brush tools. There was also DrawChat, a live drawing flash tool where you could draw with others and chat.

And on that site, I created my first works of digital art. No drawing tablet, just a mouse and a loooot of patience. They'd host contests every now and then to win budget Wacom tablets. Sometimes I'd enter, I'd never win. I did eventually get my first drawing tablet, but by then, I'd moved on from RMD onto actual software such as GIMP and Photoshop Elements.

That site is gone now, one of the first art site deaths I'd ever experience in my teen years. I was around 12-13 when I started using this site and I adored it. When people talk about missing the 'tight-knit communities' of old, I don't think of DA, I think of RMD, my first home. Unfortunately, the site couldn't survive in the 'modern' era of the Internet, overshadowed by more advanced tools and art-sharing sites like Deviantart, Facebook, and Instagram.

But I did manage to backup some of my old art pieces before the site finally became completely shuttered in the early 2020's. For a while the site was awake but lacked any content or features, with a message from the site's creator Mick that it might come back, it might not.

It didn't. The old ratemydrawings.com URL now redirects to the inactive FB page. Any attempt to bypass that kill screen like before leads to an Error 404.

But while the site was in its comatose state - before it was shuttered permanently - I was able to access my old profile and extract some of my art pieces of old. I posted them to my FB about 3 years ago, and today they showed up in my memories.

I share a lot of art pieces from creators like Rachel Smythe in an attempt to preserve media. But I also need to remember to preserve my own. So here are a handful of the 100+ pieces I drew on RMD. Enjoy ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

Don't be confused by the '1987' part of the username, I picked that number because I was a huge Zelda weeb and 1987 was the year the first Zelda game was made. Whoof.

What's ironic is I actually didn't have the Featured Artist award last time I was actively on the site, so it clearly happened while I was inactive in its final days. The one award I wanted the most and I wasn't there to witness getting it. RIP.

Unfortunately that's all I really have in the way of high-resolution drawings as I wasn't able to preserve much else (though if I find anything more I'll definitely add it to this post!) That said, I was able to nab some screenshots of my homepage via the Wayback Machine where you can see more of the pieces I did back then:

There are so many dorky ass drawings here, some from Time Gate (because it's that freaking old!!!), some are screenshot recreations from anime that I enjoyed (a very common trend on RMD), some are collaborations. There was a point where I learned how to color with the mouse by using low opacity colors and layering them one at a time. Really upped my game there LMAO That Ocarina of Time Link drawing was the first one I ever did that made it to the front page of RMD and y'all, I was so proud, the site back then I think had 50k users total which is nothing compared to the Internet today, but achieving that was one of the greatest things ever LOL The Skyward Sword drawing that followed was one that really felt like a milestone in terms of my art evolution, I felt like I was finally creating something good. I believe I did that Skyward Sword drawing off another DA piece at the time, it was really common to do redraw challenges on RMD what with the technical limitations of the site - I suppose redrawing stuff I liked back then should have been foreshadowing LMAO

That feeling wouldn't last forever ofc once the art high wore off, but even to this day I look back on the pieces from that era fondly. It's where the mysteries of digital art finally started to 'click' in my brain, and I had still barely gotten started.

I also have a few drawings preserved that were done after I got my first drawing tablet, and you can really tell with the improvement of the lineart LOL That said, I think I was around 18-19 when I did these:

Now, one thing that I really enjoyed doing on RMD were collabs - specifically, trading collabs where users would exchange drawing files through the RMD PM system with one another to do steps of a drawing together. Often times I took the role of coloring other people's lineart pieces, which is probably where I started to really learn digital art coloring and come into my own with it.

A collab with user "lime":

Collab with user "Mikai":

A collab with user "Overik", which I specifically remember struggling with because, at the time, my computer monitor's screen was messed up resulting in the entire thing basically being a fluorescent pink:

A collab with "Mist04" that I don't remember doing lmao:

Collab with "Adzumi" (?). I'm fairly certain that's who it was, I definitely remember the process of painting this one, I had loads of fun with it:

Collab with user "ForgottenArtist", IIRC this one was more of a coloring page where they gave out the file freely for others to color, so this was my version. The forums on RMD were great for that sort of thing, people would literally just upload their drawing files for people to have fun with:

So I guess I drew this next little thing in 2021 when the site was still 'live' but not functional, I completely forgot I did this though LMAO Basically the main URL took you to that kill page I showed above, but if you knew any of the extension slugs, you could bypass that kill page and get into the rest of the site, which I was able to by using my username URL. So I got into the Java drawing tool and made this little thing in the hopes I could upload it. Of course, it didn't work, but hey, it was worth getting a screenshot, I suppose:

It's equal parts nostalgic and bittersweet to go through these drawings. Life back then feels so far away and yet I still remember it so vividly, the hours I'd spend drawing on the family PC, feeling more at home with the friends I made online than the ones I had in real life, listening to music that I still listen to to this day. It's far away now, but it still lives through me, in the work I do today. Even someone like me can go from being a complete noob drawing with a mouse to a professional making their living stabbing ink into other people while still drawing the same stories they drew as a child.

There is one piece I had to dig up outside of FB memories, fortunately it wasn't hard to find because I knew I had shared it ages ago on my FB so the search bar saved my skin. My very first digital art piece, of Sheena Fujibayashi from Tales of Symphonia, one of my favorite games of all time.

My very first digital art drawing:

Recreated in 2019:

Past me went through a lot, and they'd be doomed to go through even more still (they hadn't hit the plague yet). And yet they're going to survive, they're gonna keep getting better and better with each passing year. Thanks past me - you've done a lot of dumb shit in your life, but sticking with your craft wasn't one of them. Thank you for walking - through all the good and the bad that you've had to weather through - so that I could run for us both.

[emo-metalhead-punki]

Rant About SolarDiscomfort

⚠ TW // Gr00ming ⚠

(idk I do wanna draw this so yea....this isn't a gift)

So SolarDiscomfort or Brooke which is her real name

She is a deviantart artist that I meet in 2018 when I was 13 yrs old (I was okay, kinda, mental health issues)

So I remember Brooke followed me and requested me to draw her OC and so I did, and she thanked me so yea

Then I followed her back, her art is...alright ig lol, but I think is cool but need some progress, and we send each other gift and all that, so it's before all the gr00m3R thing happened, so let's talk about that if I can remember

So on somewhere on 2020, Brooke has proposed her best friend named Kate who is 17 at the time, they been best friends for 4 years but later becomes a couple which I was "nice, congratulations you two" but it's not...so, I use the wayback machine and I do remember reading this but I didn't understand

Ngl this give me a huge "WFT" moment like, what kind of state that you live in and how this is okay?... And get this, she doesn't support mapp even tho she DATED A 17 YEAR OLD WHILE BEEN A 20 YEAR OLD LIKE YOU CAN'T DO THAT BITCH

And then one year later, they fuxking broke up which is a good thing and I remember Brooke telling me to stop supporting Kate cuz she's.... too be honest, idk

All I remember that Kate is a tracer cuz she use a base without giving the artist credit but then her mutual tell her and then there the credit and more drama of Brooke did

Like, she would rant that one artist named serpy and I try to understand what's going on after reading the posts of Brooke but I feel like Brooke is taking her anger out on serpy, but I did stay away from the drama cuz is was too much and she keeps typing "crazy laughs" like...uhm...okay then...no one cares what you did man....I do really remember the drama but her account is deactivated....like every Deviantart artist do....

But if you know her, here a drawing of it, in case you recognized the art style

The left one is Brooke and the left one is kate

And I do wanna talk about Kate, like she may be kinda of annoying (cuz she kept requesting me a lot like everyday ) but all in seriously, I do remember her dating that one Mexican dude named Max (not his real name lol but I'm gonna called him)

That I don't trust like I hate him, I don't trust him and I seeing his irl photo of him and I still don't trust him...and I do remember seeing the message from him like I got highly uncomfortable by him

(I'm a Mexican, if someone didn't know lol)

Oh btw he also made NSFW as well, while being a minor ofc, classic teenagers in 2017 are started drawing NSFW cuz that's fine...right?...

Nope...it's not...you gotta wait dude...

But I did check his bio for his age but he didn't put his age...but then I saw a post of it, it turns out his 18 (on 2020) so I assume that he was 15 or 16 while Kate was like either 12 or 13 (i can't do math right, if I'm wrong then yea...) but I do believe that Kate was also groomed by him and till this day, she didnt talk about this like she was like too busy being happy instead of talking about this like why, how you deal such a traumatic thing and then later forget it, i mean, good for her but I will like be traumatized for life and not feeling happy

But for Brooke, yea...so if she like made an account on Tumblr and then see saw this post I be like...yea man...you got exposed as a P3d0 and a groomer man like...you should have say any of these things and your so toxic to serpy that she didn't do anything to you

So your career is over lol but I'm glad you didn't groomed me and talk shit about me cuz I didn't even like you like your so toxic towards any artist like why man...you didn't do anything to you like "oh she suck ass" and "she ugly asf" and "she's dumb as hell*

I mean...I dont like serpy ship cuz it's a zoophilia ship like...she basically ship Anne from frozen with mr. Peabody (the dog) from I forgot the name like it's highly uncomfortable to look and which I should have say no to her when she requested me that shit...so yea...she still ship it till this day...and her ships are mostly crossover so...yea...(That one shipper that ships spinel with a fucking car from cars movie)

So yea...Brooke...if you reading this...

Keep your nasty behavior to yourself instead of spreading it like a disease, I use to think your cool but now, your just a toxic woman, a p3do and a groomer

Peeps, watch out for SolarDiscomfort in case she made a Tumblr account