#tagged so that folks can block these sorts of posts

[aroworlds]

After six (very slow!) years of writing, Hallo, Aro comprises eighteen short fiction and creative-non-fiction pieces about allosexual aro protagonists--all collected on my website, Patreon or Tumblr.

Stories include:

Unspoken

Leaving

Friendship

Lucky

Attraction

Existence

Neuronormative

Loveless

Monstrous

Pressure, Side One

Pressure, Side Two

Abrasive

Question

Antagonist

Witch

Hunter

Pillar

Tomorrow

Please expect fantasy and fairy tale motifs, trans and multisexual characters, a dash of autism, a great deal of amatonormativity, and a pervasive struggle for recognition by family, society and community.

[mantisgodsdomain]

"oh, yeah," we think, "we could probably cross this over into Li nked Uni verse if we actually draw out the canon for long enough, smacking different versions of the same character into each other is always fun especially when it has the potential for massive cultural differences and shit like running into things where the thing that has been forgotten has significance beyond the things that are remembered. Hey, we should probably check the comic in order to comply with the six-month rule, we don't think we ever finished-"

We return from the reference images. We have remembered why we didn't finish looking into the base comic.

[olderthannetfic]

For AO3 readers, MUTING is the solution to a problem they may not have come across yet.

I just thought of an extremely functional solution for a problem with AI fanfiction that a friend of mine shared her worries about. You see, she was particularly worried that her experience as a browser and reader of fanfiction will start to decline as AI fanfiction starts clogging the Sort By Recent filter on AO3.

Ok, so it didn't occur to me right away, and that is why I think it justifies this long anon post, but I just remembered that AO3 already has a tool to help you weed out low effort sludge that I have successfully used even prior to the increase in AI works. It does require people to be logged in though.

The solution is Muting, which has been around since 2023. I've even used it before for specifically this precise problem. There is a particular rare pair I like, but the primary producer of fics for that pair is one very prolific author whose fics are egregiously low quality. Like, the author even admitted that she frequently just find and replaces the names of the characters when she moves on to a new fandom.

After muting her, it about halved the number of fics in that tag, which was great, because it relieved me of an irritation and also allowed me to find other works. Muting folk who post AI generated works will have the same effect.

Why this will work: The main problem with AI fics is not that they are low quality, after all low quality fics have always existed - it's that they are both low quality and trivial to produce. Therefore, even one person who feels entitled to produce ai fanfiction could easily flood any particular tag with their works. But each time you mute an ai producer for one bad fic, you will end up removing all of their fics from your view, in any of your tags and fandoms. With a little weeding and upkeep, you should be able to browse contentedly as you always have.

Problem: Not all AI fics are tagged as such. How do you tell if a fic is AI?

The hallmark of a fanfiction author who generates stories with AI will be that they are prolific producers of low quality works. Why? because generating stories with ai is easy. It is much easier to generate a bad story with AI than it is to write a bad story without it. Therefore a person who uses AI to generate fics will have a lot of works.

The problem of false positives. What if you mute an author who is just bad right now but could improve?

My friend, if a person is already a prolific author of bad quality fiction, and they haven't gotten better yet, they probably will not improve to your standards ever. So you haven't lost anything by muting them. The goal here isn't to name and blame people who use AI - it's to make your own personal browsing experience better.

The problem of false negatives: What if you read a story and didn't realize it was generated using AI because it was good and you enjoyed it? You read something that you enjoyed on AO3 for free. This is not a problem.

You can find the mute button on AO3 by clicking the authors name. It will be in the same line as subscribe and block.

--

[ms-demeanor]

Not to be rude or derailing your answer to the ask about the scorched earth post, but I do think quite genuinely that the site is becoming more openly hostile to its userbase, or at the very least its disabled userbase. While I’m not a fan of mobbing people’s personal blogs in targeted harassment campaigns, I think some people are also ignoring that staff blatantly said in a recent post that epileptic users would need to pay for ad-free to have their safety assured

I kind of don’t think that’s being ethical or user friendly, to me that sounds like they’re refusing to meet basic accessibility requests and answering with ‘pay us money to be safe’. Strobing and flashing ads aren’t just eyestraining, they can legitimately lead to serious injuries for epileptic folk, and telling people with epilepsy to just pay up or get lost is kinda… I dunno… disgusting?

So it looks like in a livestream (not on a post so far as I've been able to see) either photomatt or zingring made a glib and inappropriate response to an epileptic user asking about flashing ads and suggested that maybe they needed to pay for ad-free.

That's bad, I don't like it, and if it was supposed to be a joke it was a shitty one.

Zingring, tumblr's COO addressed that comment in a post where she said:

Buying ad-free (or gifting ad-free to someone else) is always an option, but that is not the solution (and of course, some folks simply can’t afford it). Sorry that it sounded dismissive in the session! That was not my intent.

I still think that's inappropriate (it's not that ad free isn't *the* solution, ad free shouldn't be *a* solution to accessibility), but it looks like Zingring has addressed this issue multiple times.

She got tagged in this post listing ways that tumblr could improve accessibility for photosensitive users and seems to have pretty consistently followed up; she has explained that there are rules against flashing ads that are sometimes violated by the advertisers and asks people to please report ads that break those rules so those advertisers can be blocked, has noted that there is apparently a "stop all autoplay" option in the works behind the scenes. She does also seem to take it seriously when users reach out with complaints about accessibility issues and seems to be willing to explore options.

Looking through that blog, this does not seem to be a site that is hostile to users with accessibility issues so much as, like everything else that's wrong around here, it is ridiculously understaffed so every project that someone wants to have as a priority is a project that someone else needs put on the backburner.

However, to very gently push back: how much of what you're experiencing as hostility from tumblr is actual hostility and how much of it is seeing posts like this, which suggests that tumblr is removing accessibility features because the lightbox didn't have double-tap-to-zoom on mobile for some users for a short while, claims that the blocking/flagging issue is a false flag against trans women, shared the inaccurate fearmongering post about tumblr live's ToS, and also claimed that tumblr "allowed" flashing ads that violated the in-place rules that tumblr has for advertising?

(this kind of goes with the 'nobody understands the ToS' but also nobody understands ads; tumblr does not have enough staff to look over the ads that go on their site every day, no social media company does, they rely on advertiser agreements as a sort of enhanced honor system and reports from users if the advertisers don't hold up their end of the bargain; the only way around this for any site that uses ads is to not have ads and that post is explicitly saying don't pay for tumblr because they are doing ads wrong - either they have to run ads and some bad ones are going to slip through and users will have to report them or tumblr will have to be 100% paid by the users or tumblr will go away. If you see ads that are unsafe for photosensitive users on *any* website you should report them to the site because the site almost certainly doesn't know that there's an advertiser violating the ad ToS unless someone tells them)

Generally speaking, I am actually *not* seeing worsening accessibility features, I'm seeing improvements compared to where we were five years ago - alt text on images is now built-in and devs are working hard on making tumblr more compatible with screen readers (as noted in the changes blog regularly); tumblr itself started offering different dashboard themes for users after years of complaints about contrast levels and readability; the "tiktok/twitterified" desktop dash view that everyone hates is supposed to be more readable on wider screens.

Compare this post in October of 2022 when Changes celebrated adding animations for posting (and told users those could only be disabled at an OS or browser level) with this post from July 2023 when they rolled back a feature because of an unexpected use case that could cause problems for photosensitive users.

These aren't things that I'd expect to see from a company that didn't care about accessibility, or that was openly hostile to questions around making the site more accessible.

I don't disagree with you that the comment from the stream about buying ad free was inappropriate; it absolutely was and it must have made photosensitive users feel like shit. But in the three months since that comment tumblr has been very responsive about getting flashing ads removed as soon as possible and seems to be working on more permanent fixes. I think this may be an instance of able-bodied people not realizing how shitty and dehumanizing their joke was (and it was) and taking the steps to do better.

If you don't think they're doing better, I probably can't convince you. I certainly don't think that tumblr is perfect about accessibility and I think that users need to continue pushing for improved user control of how the site displays and interacts with various devices. But compared to the kind of responses users complaints got from staff in 2018? I feel like things have improved a lot.

[who-is-page]

Wag Those Tail Feathers: The Wonders of Alterhuman Courtship

Author: Page Type: Essay Words: 1,065 Summary: Page's perspective on alterhuman courtship, as an individual who has been both on the receiving and giving ends of it.

[Part of the Sol System’s Alterhuman Writing Project for 2024. If you don’t want to see these posts, block the tag #inkedclaws]

As a polyamorous alterhuman, I’ve had the wonderful experience of being in relationships with people who have a variety of different courtship instincts— sometimes even all at the same time! Including my own instincts, it’s led up to some interesting realizations about the variety and diversity of expressions of love, and how wonderful it can be to be loved by an alterhuman (and to be an alterhuman in love, too).

My personal experiences, notably, revolve specifically around being nonhuman and this applies to a majority of my partners as well, which influences the flavor of this discussion. It’s been a wonder to be the target of a feathery mating dance, to be wooed with draconic jewelry and treasures, or to have my partner jump out with a meal, as proud as could be at displaying their hunting skills for a mate. It’s not necessarily just a nonhuman thing, either, of course; my orthohuman partner exhibits some similar sort of feelings and actions, too! Something which comes across especially strong in his hunt-and-gather supply-hoarding behavior in video games. But there’s something so especially intimate about having your alterhuman partner court you in a way unique to their species identity. It’s a beyond flattering form of trust, love, and affection.

And as an alterhuman who has targeted my partners, alterhuman and orthohuman alike, with my own affections, it’s also uniquely affirming to have your partners engage with your varieties of courtship for your species. There’s something incredibly special to have them try to learn your rituals and woo you in turn, even if they don’t have the same instincts driving them. It’s love with intention, a conscious effort to learn a language that’s typically foreign to them or which they might otherwise never come across on such a personal level. It may not always be perfectly executed, but the intentions behind them make them perfect regardless.

I’m someone who’s fully public about my alterhumanity. I don’t hide that I’m a dog and (luckily) no one especially seems to care in the day-to-day when I’m meeting up with strangers and acquantinces. But it’s become an important part of my dating life that potential partners need to not only be aware of my alterhumanity and accept it, but they also need to interact with it. You could argue that my spouse set the bar high for any potential future partners with how he took to my canine-ness and plurality like a fish to water, but I’m of the opinion that it’s something that should be the norm, not something so utterly unexpected by many.

Being able to engage in alterhuman courtship with your partner, as serious or as silly as it may fundamentally end up being, shouldn’t be something that you feel is utterly unreachable, that you yearn for but never feel like you’ll be able to reach. Alterhuman courtship is a wonderous experience; something that I think it’s not only important for alterhuman folks to be able to freely do with those they love most, but also to be on the receiving end of, too. It can be easy to default to the status quo in relationships, because of the societal pressure around us. Normativity around romance, sex, and even platonic affections is something that is constantly at play in the backgrounds of our culture and which embeds itself into our conciousnesses in unexpected and often invisible ways; and it’s difficult to dissect these without exposing ourselves to what some might list as “weird” or “unusual” urges and behaviors. But we can’t unpack the shame or embarrassment that might be holding us back from engaging with these urges unless we actually let ourselves acknowledge the collective, confusing feelings abound within them. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to shrug our shoulders and simply say, “I suppose I’ll never find someone who can accept me as my [species] and all that entails,” or to just resign ourselves to having to hide a part of ourselves away forever to maintain relationships.

We should toss these types of negative feelings aside and embrace our alterhuman courtship urges in earnest: that sometimes we’re not fully human, or we’re human a little to the right, and that inevitably makes romance, sex, and platonic interactions a little different for us than it might look for standard folks as displayed on a big screen. It’s not a failure on our part, and it’s not something that needs to be squirreled away due to internalized respectability politics. We can love ourselves and find love in others, for and by being ourselves. We can experience unique forms of love and adore those factors in others. This is, to me, a part of the territory that comes with being alterhuman or knowing alterhumans. It’s a part of what makes life wonderous.

In my partnerships, I love getting to bring my partners gifts. I love to bring them tiny treasures, small things from my system’s hoard, to pebble at them almost like a penguin would (sometimes including a silly little dance, of love!) It goes beyond standard gift-giving in the way that most of the people I’ve met would think of it, where presents that large are often reserved for special occasions like holidays and birthday. But it’s something I do year-round, to show my partners that they’re always on my mind, and that what is mine is their’s, too. I do the same thing with food; while normally incredibly food protective, both due to species identity and past food insecurities, I make the effort to share my favorite foods with my partners for the same fundamental reasons. To share my food, my bed, my life— and to have my partners recognize that as not just general displays of love, but as specifically displays of love intertwined with what I am, is something which displays a deep level of understanding and acceptance for my species. It’s something I’m grateful for beyond words, but it’s also something that I don’t want us as a community to accept as unheard of, or as just a one-off, lucky occurrence. Love like this is achievable and rewarding, both as a recipient of such alterhuman affections and as the giver. And we all deserve to experience it, in whatever form of love that we feel most comfortable with. Don’t tell yourself otherwise; don’t settle for less just because you feel like you have no other choice.

[doberbutts]

I have to ask like. When you harass someone, what is it you're looking to do/accomplish?

Are you just hurting them because you can? That makes you an asshole.

Are you trying to resolve a conflict? If it's making you follow that person around the internet goading them into responding, then *you* are *causing* the conflict at that moment.

Has that person truly hurt you? If there's not authority or staff to report them to (or rules stating that you even *can*) then the best thing for you to do is to block them.

I've been there. Dogblr fucking turned on me over 2 sentences said as a tongue-in-cheek reply to someone in the doberman tags. People who I thought were my friends, people I'd happily interacted with prior, sending me death threats and telling me to kill myself and spreading all sorts of terrible lies and rumors about me for MONTHS. Because, to them, I spoke out of turn. They blatantly admitted to wanting me gone and stated they were happy when they thought they'd chased me off for the week or so that I password protected my blog to make the harassment stop. There were posts by people I'd had extensive conversations with just days prior, stating that they had never actually liked me and were celebrating that I was "gone".

Most of them have not apologized. Most claim that they did nothing wrong, or that I somehow deserved it. I have a few dogblr friends who still reblog from these people even knowing that this happened to me. One of them fucking recently reblogged one of my posts on their newly made blog because I'd long since blocked their other blogs.

Unfortunately sometimes that's how conflicts resolve. Where people are unspeakably cruel to you and nothing ever happens to them. You tell your friends about it and they say "oh yeah I've seen this behavior from them and they suck" and yet don't stop interacting with those people.

I'm not saying it doesn't suck. It does. It hurts.

And I'm sure if any of them were to read this they'd go "lmao it was years ago get over it" as if I'm the one in the wrong for being upset about the betrayal and harassment I received at their hands.

But naming and shaming would accomplish close to nothing. I already know I'm not going to get an apology from these folks and honestly I don't think I'd accept one at this point even if they did (even if they still SHOULD). I *have* had a few apologies trickle in over the years, and have discussed at length why I'm not particularly willing to trust again, and so far that has been accepted. But not from those who were the worst about it, who still to my knowledge act like they're fucking paragons of compassion and empathy.

And certainly continuing to follow them around the internet harassing them into admitting wrong-doing would accomplish pretty much next to nothing.

Sometimes when someone hurts you, the only thing you can do is block their access to you to do it again.

[antimony-medusa]

Is that— bells ringing? Keyboards clacking? The sound of two thousand stressed writers pancing furiously about the floor? Ah yes, Yuletide.

Hello. MCYTblr. I am back again.

You are looking fine today as we move towards the end of the year. Is that a new cologne you're trying? New shirt? New glasses? It's working for you. How have I been? Well.

Well.

*I smack the wall, curtains spring aside, revealing my flip chart presentation that I've had lying in wait*

It is time for me to talk to you about Yuletide again. I was here earlier during tag nominations, but it's sign-up time, and I want to make sure everybody has a change to participate in this if they want to.

What's Yuletide?

Yuletide is an annual mega-exchange for small and rare fandoms. It runs in the close of the year, with a 1000 word minimum for gifts, with gifts revealed anonymously on the 25th of December and de-anoned on the 1st of January. It is easily the biggest exchange in multi-fandom-exchange-world, and last year more than 1,350 people signed up.

Why does everyone sign up?

Well, it's tradition, for one. There are a lot of people that only do Yuletide as their big exchange every year. It's a big holiday spectacle, it's really fun to see it operate and see pinch hits come out and get nabbed in minutes, and people kind of put on their holiday outfits and turn out for it.

For another thing, if you are in a small fandom, it's the one exchange where you can actually have a shot of getting a gift for an obscure manga fandom, or an out-of-print book, or a tv show from the eighties. If your fandom has five people in it, the odds are higher than average that two of them are signing up for this exchange, and hey presto, suddenly you're matchable in your fandom for an obscure podcast.

For another, and this is the biggie, the fact that this is an exchange for small and rare fandoms has led to a certain tradition and vibe for the fandoms that people nominate. People bring their most obscure and fun ideas, going, "hehehehe wouldn't it be fun if someone wrote a story about this", and into the tag set it goes. There is SUCH a spectrum of fandoms in the tag set.

This year there are 4,263 fandoms and 16,735 characters in the tag set. Let me just skim through and look at some of them.

There are commercials, web sketches, art pieces, songs, music videos, board games, podcasts, a dizzying assortment of anthropomorphising different places, items, and ideas, and RPF from a marvelous variety of historical periods (so, y'know, historical fiction if it was published professionally). There are people who nominated tik tok sketches. Twitter threads. A bridge. Book binding techniques. You ever wanted to write a romance between Knitting and Crochet? That's in the tag set, and someone wants to prompt you to do that. Happy Yuletide.

So if you are at all the sort of person who likes a prompt challenge, BOY is this one just a MARVELOUS one. I know I personally am going to be signing up for Humans are Space Orcs (tumblr post) and Fandom Exchanges (Anthropomorphic) amid my more traditional fandoms.

And as for my more traditional fandoms, and the reason why this post has the tags it does (I would get to it eventually)— there is a lot of MCYT in the tag set! I put out a post saying GUYS, the smaller fandoms might apply for this, and BOY did people show up for it. I scanned through it, and the MCYT (and adjacent) that made it in is:

Karmaland SMP

Legacy SMP

Lifesteal SMP

Moonlight SMP

New Life SMP

Outsiders SMP

Rats SMP

SMPEarth

SMPLive

Witchcraft SMP

Pirates SMP

Mianite

Slimecicle Cinematic Universe

SBI Rust

Generation Loss

You could make an entire sign up, 3 minimum requests and 4 minimum requests, and only select MCYT fandoms. The wild thing is that you can only select a max of 10 fandoms to offer, so you actually couldn't offer all of the MCYT. ZombieCleo Witchraft SMP is in. Tommyinnit SMPEarth. Clownpierce Lifesteal. Tubbo SBI Rust. Oli Rats SMP. A wealth of options for the block folks.

So come, join me! What's that? You say this sounds excellent, you're in? You want to know how to sign up? Well this post is already long enough so I'm putting the rest below a cut.

You sign up on the collection here, using fandoms listed in the tagset here. Before you do so though, I'd recommend you check out the blog, especially their "how to sign up" post here, because even if you're used to exchanges, the way Yuletide works is a little bit different. Let me do a quick breakdown here.

Requests

# of Fandoms

You have to select a minimum of 3 fandoms that you are Requesting (a gift that you want made for you), up to a maximum of 6 fandoms. Each fandom has to be unique. For each fandom, you can request between 0 to 4 characters in that fandom, and 0 means "literally you can hit me with anybody", and the up-to-4 characters are the people you definately want to show up in the fic.

AND MATCHING

This is one of the things that Yuletide does differently, because most fandom exchanges do "or" matching, where they match you on either characer A OR character B, (maybe you only offered character B) and you can pick among any of the selected characters on the person's request to write for. Because Yuletide does AND matching, you will only be matched if you offered every single one of the characters the person has selected, and then you get to write for every single one they have listed in their fandom, unless they say differently in their letter. If they requested character A and Character B, you get to deliver a gift that includes them both, according to the rules.

Bu like, in practice, a lot of people are a bit more like "you can pick only one of these guys if you'd like", because that is how everyone is used to things running in most other exchanges, plus people don't want to be too picky, so you can specify in your letter if you definately 100% want characters A, B, and C, or if you're fine with just A, or just A and C, or whatever constellation of characters you're chill with.

This year they have added optional freeform tags you will click on, that will specify either A) use every single one of these guys I selected. B) I have specified in my letter which guys I need for sure and which ones you can swap, C) Dealer's Choice Of Guys Go Crazy.

DNW and Optional Details

Yuletide is an "Optional Details Are Optional" (ODAO) exchange, so technically you could request (or receive) an offer that just has the characters and then you get to go absolutely buckwild for the two month writing period. Most people, however, do not want to do that, so that is where you'll put in Do Not Wants (anything that would ruin the gift for you, from major archive warnings to kinks that you don't vibe with to headcanons you loathe), and some prompts and/or likes for your person to jump off of.

DNWs absolutely must be abided by, and breaking a person's DNW is grounds for getting turfed from the exchange. Following a person's prompts or lists of likes is technically optional, but definately best practice, and y'know, part of the whole spirit of the exchange. Most people are doing their best to adhere to both the DNW and the Optional Details when they do their gift.

You can just format your DNW and Optional Details on the Ao3 signup page (easy, fast), or you can link them offsite in a letter (fancy, you can do formatting, people do them in google docs or dreamwidth pages (the traditional and more accessible option)). There's a tradition of people posting their letter links here, so that people can get an idea for what sort of prompts and signups people are offering, and make sure they're matchable to people with especially fun ideas. Note: you do have to duplicate the data if you're doing a letter, cause if you put your DNW in your letter but NOT in your Ao3, the mods won't enforce it.

And while we're here, that last link is to a community blog that includes a place where you can promo your fandoms to lure people into signing up for your guys, or participate in mini-challenges within yuletide for people who specificially want poly relationships (Three Doves Challenge), or characters of colour (Chromatic Yuletide), or horror/darkfic (Crueltide), or smut (Yuleporn), or art (Wrapping Paper), or even more. There's even a poetry challenge!

Offers

# of Fandoms

You have to sign up with a minimum of 4 fandoms, to a maximum of 10, for fandoms you are Offering (a gift you are willing to make). You must offer at least 2 characters for each fandom, to a maximum of 20— but there's also an "any" tick box if you want to go full "hit me, I like a challenge" and you'll write anything (in the tag set) within a fandom. Each of your fandoms must be unique.

Writing Period:

Signups are open through the 21st, with assignments out by the 23rd, and then you have until the 18th of December to deliver your gift.

Important Notes

You must be 18 or over to participate in Yuletide (because you might be matched with someone who requests smut), and signups close on 9pm UTC on Saturday, 21 October.

There's a known issue where the safari browser isn't letting people sign up properly, (when you get an exchange this big sometimes things break), so they say to either sign up on mobile or use a different browser. So that will be fun for me.

--

And that's it! Yuletide! Just under a week left to sign up, and 351 people have signed up as I write this letter at 1:30am. I just refreshed it and now it's 352. You can sign up on the Ao3 page here!

JOIN ME EXCHANGES SUCH FUN LETS GO.

[jovial-thunder]

Pre-alpha Lancer Tactics changelog

(cross-posting the full gif changelog here because folks seemed to like it last time I did)

We're aiming for getting the first public alpha for backers by the end of this month! Carpenter and I scoped out mechanics that can wait until after the alpha (e.g. grappling, hiding) in favor of tying up the hundred loose threads that are needed for something that approaches a playable game. So this is mostly a big ol changelog of an update from doing that.

But I also gave a talent talk at a local Portland Indie Game Squad event about engine architecture! It'll sound familiar if you've been reading these updates; I laid out the basic idea for this talk almost a year ago, back in the June 2023 update.

We've also signed contracts & had a kickoff meeting with our writers to start on the campaigns. While I've enjoyed like a year of engine-work, it'll be so so nice to start getting to tell stories. Data structures don't mean anything beyond how they affect humans & other life.

New Content

Implemented flying as a status; unit counts as +3 spaces above the current ground level and ignores terrain and elevation extra movement costs. Added hover + takeoff/land animations.

Gave deployables the ability to have 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites; we'll probably use this mostly when the deployable in question is climbable.

Related, I fixed a bug where after terrain destruction, all units recheck the ground height under them so they'll move down if the ground is shot out from under them. When the Jerichos do that, they say "oh heck, the ground is taller! I better move up to stand on it!" — not realizing that the taller ground they're seeing came from themselves.

Fixed by locking some units' rendering to the ground level; this means no stacking climbable things, which is a call I'm comfortable making. We ain't making minecraft here (I whisper to myself, gazing at the bottom of my tea mug). 

Block sizes are currently 1x1x0.5 — half as tall as they are wide. Since that was a size I pulled out of nowhere for convenience, we did some art tests for different block heights and camera angles. TLDR that size works great and we're leaving it.

Added Cone AOE pattern, courtesy of an algorithm NMcCoy sent me that guarantees the correct number of tiles are picked at the correct distance from the origin.

pick your aim angle

for each distance step N of your cone, make a list ("ring") of all the cells at that distance from your origin

sort those cells by angular distance from your aim angle, and include the N closest cells in that ring in the cone's area

Here's a gif they made of it in Bitsy:

Units face where you're planning on moving/targeting them.

Got Walking Armory's Shock option working. Added subtle (too subtle, now that I look at it) electricity effect.

Other things we've added but I don't have gifs for or failed to upload. You'll have to trust me. :)

disengage action

overcharge action

Improved Armament core bonus

basic mine explosion fx

explosion fx on character dying

Increase map elevation cap to 10. It's nice but definitely is risky with increasing the voxel space, gonna have to keep an eye on performance.

Added Structured + Stress event and the associated popups. Also added meltdown status (and hidden countdown), but there's not animation for this yet so your guy just abruptly disappears and leaves huge crater.

UI Improvements

Rearranged the portrait maker. Auto-expand the color picker so you don't have to keep clicking into a submenu.

Added topdown camera mode by pressing R for handling getting mechs out of tight spaces.

The action tooltips have been bothering me for a while; they extend up and cover prime play-area real estate in the center of the screen. So I redesigned them to be shorter and have a max height by putting long descriptions in a scrollable box. This sounds simple, but the redesign, pulling in all the correct data for the tags, and wiring up the tooltips took like seven hours. Game dev is hard, yo.

Put the unit inspect popups in lockable tooltips + added a bunch of tooltips to them.

Implemented the rest of Carpenter's cool hex-y action and end turn readout. I'm a big fan of whenever we can make the game look more like a game and less like a website (though he balances out my impulse for that for the sake of legibility).

Added a JANKY talent/frame picker. I swear we have designs for a better one, but sometimes you gotta just get it working. Also seen briefly here are basic level up/down and HASE buttons.

Other no-picture things:

Negated the map-scaling effect that happens when the window resizes to prevent bad pixel scaling of mechs at different resolutions; making the window bigger now just lets you see more play area instead of making things bigger.

WIP Objectives Bullets panel to give the current sitrep info

Wired up a buncha tooltips throughout the character sheet.

Under the Hood

Serialization: can save/load games! This is the payoff for sticking with that engine architecture I've been going on about. I had to add a serialization function to everything in the center layer which took a while, but it was fairly straightforward work with few curveballs.

Finished replacement of the kit/unit/reinforcement group/sitrep pickers with a new standardized system that can pull from stock data and user-saved data.

Updated to Godot 4.2.2; the game (and editor) has been crashing on exit for a LONG time and for the life of me I couldn't track down why, but this minor update in Godot completely fixed the bug. I still have no idea what was happening, but it's so cool to be working in an engine that's this active bugfixing-wise! 

Other Bugfixes

Pulled straight from the internal changelog, no edits for public parseability:

calculate cover for fliers correctly

no overwatch when outside of vertical threat

fixed skirmisher triggering for each attack in an AOE

fixed jumpjets boost-available detection

fixed mines not triggering when you step right on top of them // at a different elevation but still adjacent

weapon mods not a valid target for destruction

made camera pan less jumpy and adjust to the terrain height

better Buff name/desc localization

Fixed compcon planner letting you both boost and attack with one quick action.

Fix displayed movement points not updating

Prevent wrecks from going prone

fix berserkers not moving if they were exactly one tile away

hex mine uses deployer's save target instead of 0

restrict weapon mod selection if you don't have the SP to pay

fix deployable previews not going away

fix impaired not showing up in the unit inspector (its status code is 0 so there was a check that was like "looks like there's no status here")

fix skirmisher letting you move to a tile that should cost two movement if it's only one space away

fix hit percent calculation

fix rangefinder grid shader corner issues (this was like a full day to rewrite the shader to be better)

Teleporting costs the max(spaces traveled, elevation change) instead of always 1

So um, yeah, that's my talk, any questions? (I had a professor once tell us to never end a talk like this, so now of course it's the phrase that first comes to mind whenever I end a talk)

[your-local-grinning-cat]

The Ultimate Compilation Callout

Hey Guys! AR OOC once again to say I am 100% done.

I'm done with this. I thought it was finally dying down and the drama was finally getting to be over with but then she came back and is now trying to say that we are the ones in the wrong. And she is STILL trying to blame Leona's mod when, as both @/castaway-achlys and I have stated numerous times at this point, they were asleep during the entire event. They did not ask for us to defend them. We were both just tired of hearing our friend be exhausted and stressed out by her.

And the fact that so many people have come out to give their own experiences of her being rude and cruel to them just proves this is not a singular event.

I'm putting all this under a cut because it's gonna get long guys. In fact, I’m probably going to end up needing to create a couple reblog chains to get it all out.

But I'm done playing nice. I have all the receipts. Like I went allllll the way back to when the discord was first created. I caught her in her first lie.

Which, coincidentally, her very first lie in the Discord server happened on the very first day it was formed. What a way to start.

I call her the Malleus mod as an identifier in these screenshots, because unlike her, I am not petty enough to reveal peoples’ personal information on the internet just because I don’t like them.

HOWEVER. I will remind everyone that she is not JUST the owner of the Malleus account. Even if you don’t want to look under the read more because there are a LOT of receipts, know that these are all her known blogs.

I do not condone harassment. Harassment is basically what started all this. Just block and go.

Malleus Draconia @/therealmalleusdraconia

Falena Kingscholar @/the-falena-kingscholar

Aijuka (A Leona gf OC) @/the-one-aijuka

Jack Howl @/frosh-jack-howl

Fellow Honest @/fellow-honest

Meleanor Draconia @/meleanor-draconia

Baul Zigvolt @/baul-zigvolt

Sebek’s Mother @/thethickestone

Marja Felmier @/marja-felmier

And her latest: Eric Venue @/ericvenue

(Bonus non-rp blog @/thetwistedminds)

Before we get too far into it I will say there is a slight color code! But only a tiny one!

Gross light green color - look at that lie! 👀

Gross darker green color - a lie is revealed! 🤭

Orange - note the date/time! 🗓️⏰

Let me show you what I mean in the lie I’ve already mentioned - her very first one. :)

There we have the orange, telling you to note the date. That’s because I was wanting to make sure it was known that the pet posts were made on the same date that the discord was created.

And then we have the gross light green around Malleus mod claiming that this bunny is her bunny and that it was her bunny’s birthday recently.

Now here is the follow up with the gross darker green of a lie revealed. 😌

And there we have it! The color coding system and her very first lie told the very first day the Discord channel was active and easily disproven with an image search.

Now let’s get into the FUN STUFF! /sarc

We’re going to be doing some rehashing here but I’m also going to probably be including some new things so stay with me folks! This’ll be a ride! Buckle up!

So, originally I was thinking I'd start with the current drama. But considering that a lot of that has already been covered and what hasn't been covered needs more context, I'm just going to keep going in chronological order, I guess.

I've been up for over 24 hours compiling receipts, editing them to protect IDs, and then getting them all sorted so let's finally do this so I can pass out!

First up is something that actually has been covered a bit but I'm going to expand on it slightly - her blatant lie to @/elysia-nsimp (I'm not tagging anyone because I'm not forcing anyone to get notifications on this lmao).

Here's what everyone has already seen. But to expand on the event, we didn't call her out on her bad behavior, even though we probably should have as she had just lied straight to another mod's face about her blog ownership. I simply DM'd the mod in question privately to make sure they were okay and then tried to keep the peace in the main chat.

Because, believe it or not with this major callout post, I don't generally like confrontation. But I stepped in there for Elysia and I stepped up during this for Leona's mod.

Now, later that night, she posts this as if nothing had happened and she hadn't just been told that she needed to work on her roleplaying skills:

Uh huh. Sure. That's your last account. Because you have shown so much self-control when it comes to filling character voids within the twst rp community already. I'll be generous and give you a month before you break.

Now these next ones need a tiny bit of background information and a note: the Malleus mod is German and, as far as we know, lives in Germany. These next pictures are little indicators that she has not experienced the United States at all. These indicators may not seem important now, but they will be in just a little time. So keep them in mind for after the pause.

You cannot tell me anyone who has spent any length of time in the United States has not at least heard of Walmart.

Quick pitstop to say wow! You didn't even make it a month! Congratulations!

Also, note the question from the admin and the pretty obvious passive aggressiveness from me. We were sending plenty of hints that they needed to stop - sometimes coming outright and saying it, sometimes simply implying. Either way, we were all ignored.

She says she's not a mind reader. Well, apparently she's just not a reader period.

Now... a bit of an oddball here. And I want to say I do not necessarily think this is a lie. I am including it for a lie that is coming. The one that I included all those America comments for.

I'm sure you will note that I said that I don't "necessarily think" it's a lie - indicating that I do think it could be a possibility. That would be correct.

She has been lying since day one and, after this doozy of a story I'm about to share with you, I honestly don't know what to believe when it comes to her.

So.. to sum this up...

We went from a cringe ask from an OC account that she didn't want to answer -> the asker wasn't supposed to be on tumblr because they were underage (???) and was trying to date her irl and somehow had all of her information (oh but don't worry guys she deleted the ask!) -> he found her social media accounts and sent her NSFW pictures and started spam liking, demanding pictures of her kids, sent pictures of her at-the-time boyfriend, sent pictures of his family and his kids -> so she blocked him on everything and then started spam creating the rp accounts to see if he did it with other people or if it was just her (...mmmhmmm...) but nope he was only interested in Malleus -> she then apparently moved to America for a bit to crash with her boyfriend because this underage person went to Germany to find he.

Oh, by the way, why was this guy obsessed with her? Oh, he was obsessed with German women. He decided that all German women were pretty. And she's German-Russian! And Russians have intense standards for women you know! After this guy found out she was German AND Russian, I mean... it was only a matter of time before he upped his game to try to find her!

Guys, she's not saying she's too beautiful for her own good - the underage stalker speaks for itself!

Now, since this stalker found her through her Malleus account and was obviously very determined, you would think the first course of action would be to, ya know, delete the Malleus blog. Right?

No, no, no! Then she would have to start all over and, of course, if she switched accounts she would be forced to make a post on her current blog saying what her new blog is and he would just find her there. That's why she's trying to make her other accounts more active than her Malleus account (her Malleus account was still, by far, before all this happened, the most popular of all her rp blogs)!

Can I also mention that in that post announcing her pregnancy ON HER MALLEUS ACCOUNT WHERE SHE SUPPOSEDLY HAS A STALKER, she had tagged ALL OF HER BLOGS AT THE TIME?

But yes, Malleus mod. I definitely believe your story. :)

Please. Please tell me you all can understand why I just cannot find it in me to trust a single word coming out of this woman's mouth.

Especially now that during this whole drama, she has been lying through her teeth and trying to pin the entire blame on Leona's mod.

Now this part is nearly over (thank whatever gods anyone believes in) but let's just post the last few of the "before drama happened" pictures, shall we?

...I'm realizing I didn't underline the part where I called her out for having that many blogs in the gross dark green of a lie caught... oops. This is what happens when you have far too little sleep.

But either way, here is another time when she was called out on a lie of hers. And her little comment at the end means she read it and she acknowledged us.

She just didn't care because it didn't suit her.

~~~~~~

ALRIGHT!

THAT'S THE END OF PART ONE!

Yeah. This is going to come out in PARTS. I can't cover it all in one post because there is a picture limit.

So, I'm going to end up making a reblog chain...

Eventually.

Real talk? I need to sleep. Desperately. It's nearly two in the afternoon where I am and I have not slept yet.

Do not underestimate the power of spite and my loyalty to my friends. Both are very strong motivators.

But my body's needs are finally winning.

When I wake up, I'll have the Ultimate Drama Arc to post and expand upon and then the Return of the Drama Arc.

Yay. (said in the most unenthused voice ever lmao)

Anyway. Enjoy all this. I'm gonna go die. /j

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I read your post about not letting kudos and hits upset us. I try to think this way but I'm curious about something else. I've written many fanfics for my fandom and they're all "flop". I don't mind that honestly. But then some writers have written only one fic about the ship I do and and it gets hundreds of kudos. How do some writers achieve that when I'm doing the same and it doesn't get the same response. What else can I do?

I’m afraid I can’t give you a definite answer about what you should do or why this person’s work is more popular, but what I can give you are some advice and, from my experience, some reasons that might explain why other’s works receive more hits and kudos.

start with why other writers’ works are more popular when it’s the same characters, same ship, same fandom. there are various factors at play that might be it;

maybe the person already has large audience base prior to their posting about the fandom you’re in, I know a few authors who already have these sorts of loyal readers that would read any work the authors posted even if they (the readers) were not in that fandom.

maybe someone, anyone, decided share the link to this person’s work on Tumblr or Twitter (X) or any social media platform, and it kind of became viral, thus it drew in lots and lots of readers. it could take just one person, didn’t necessarily have to be the author themself, to share the link among the fandom as a recommendation, or maybe a screenshot of one sentence from the fic that they liked, what happened next is that the replies were filled with people asking for the link.

tags and summary are important factors when people are looking for a fic to read. so maybe this person’s work is tagged with the content people were looking for? maybe their summary grabbed people’s attention or curiosity?

these are just what I can think of over the top of my head.

as for what you can do to gain more readers, I’ve never seen your work so the advice I can give will be a general one; I believe the trick lies in summary, tags as well as the format of one’s work.

when it comes to AO3 (I assume it’s your platform?), tags and summary are the main things people use to determine whether or not they want to click on the fic.

tag your content properly, what characters or pairings it’s about, as well as what the readers will find upon reading your work (you don’t have to spoil it, only the general tags that will give your readers an idea of what they’re in for).

summaries are just as important. there are no “rules” obviously, and I’m not telling you or any writers what to do. though a little advice that I personally take is that you use this little summary section AO3 gives you to do anything to make sure it stands out and that people will see it and want to click on it. that means leave “author’s note” out of the summary section. folks, AO3 summary is the first glimpse into the fic itself that people will see prior to clicking on it, most of the time, people look at the summary to see the author’s writing style and if what’s written, plotwise, grabs their interest. personally, when I see an author use “summary” as a place to write “author’s note”, chances are, I will scroll past that fic as I am interested in what the fic is about, not what the author has to say about their opinion on said fic or their personal life or anything (there’s an author’s note section for that) and if I can’t get a glimpse of what the plot is about or what the author’s writing style is from the summary section, then I won’t click on it, and will look for other fic that can get me interested instead.

moving on to fic format, again, I am not telling anyone what to do here. this is only a suggestion, an advice I’ve learned and want to share: when you write your fic, make sure to use line and paragraph spacing. if your 10k word long fic is one long block of text with no paragraph break, chances are, people will back away from it entirely. also, if it’s two different characters talking with dialogues, don’t put all of their dialogues in one paragraph. for instance, a paragraph for character A’s dialogue, then another separate paragraph for character B’s dialogue and so on.

and I think that’s it for my advice? however, I’ll say this again that the secret to truly enjoying your role as a fanfic writer is that you only focus on yourself. write whatever you want for yourself. it doesn’t matter if this person’s work is more popular, because fanfics and fandoms aren’t a competition. you are your main audience. just have fun creating the stories you want to create for you.

[alterhumanrecords]

Welcome To Alterhuman Records

| Adult | All Pronouns | Multikin | Spotify - Alterhuman Records |

I'm Sauro or Sid, and this blog is a space to share and discuss music with other alterhumans, whether it's created by us, or music that we find relates to our types in some way. These discussions are open to alterhumans of all kinds.

I'm a dragon, harpy, dromaeosaur, reptile and questioning others, find me on my primary kin sideblog @sauropsidsongs

💿 No DNI I block freely, please be respectful of others, this is not a discourse blog.

Above is a link to the official Alterhuman Records Spotify, where I am compiling mass playlists sorted by community, using clade, family, or other general community groupings. Help grow our collection by sharing music that connects to your own alterhuman experiences. Share playlists to connect with others with similar music tastes or suggest additions to our playlists.

Please include song/album name, artist name, playlist name, and language!

Song Example - Running With The Wolves by AURORA in English for the Canine playlist

Album Example - Wild Wet World by Cosmo Sheldrake in English for the Fish playlist.

Currently I only have a handful of playlists, but I'm always looking to add more and community suggestions are appreciated. Suggestions may be opened to community voting so we can choose the best category. Please suggest a few songs along with your playlist suggestion so that new playlists aren’t empty.

🚧UNDER CONSTRUCTION 🚧

- General Tags -

— Bulletin Board - my original posts

— Community Bulletin - community discussion

— Zine Rack - zines and other written word projects by the community

— Posters - visual art by the community

— Music Suggestions - all song, playlist, album, and artist suggestions.

— Sauro Sings Along - songs I have personally added to playlists

— Burned CDs - personal playlists people have shared

— Music Video - what it says on the tin

— Explicit - any music or artists marked E for explicit will be tagged as such.

-- On The Radio (queue) - queue tag

-- Web Graphics - graphics I have saved for this blog

- Record Bins -

-- Bonus Tracks - catch all tag for songs that are not available on spotify, and can not be added the main playlists

— Alterhuman Jams Bin - music that is relatable to alterhuman experiences, but not a specific type

— Alterhuman Musicians Bin - music by the community, not exclusively about being alterhuman.

— Avian Bin -

— Bug Bin -

— Canine Bin -

— Dragon Bin -

— Feline Bin -

— Fish Bin -

— Machine Bin -

— Reptile Bin -

-- Cervid Bin -

- Genres -

— pop -

— rock -

— indie -

— singer songwriter -

— country -

— folk -

-- emo -

-- Queercore -

— punk -

— metal -

-- alternative -

-- industrial -

— electronic -

— vocaloid -

— new wave -

— funk -

— soundtrack -

— novelty -

-- cabaret -

-- jazz -

- Languages -

— English -

— English Subtitles -

— Spanish -

— Japanese -

— French Subtitles -

— Portuguese Subtitles -

-- Welsh -

-- Korean Subtitles -

Unique sign offs for people who want to track their music suggestions

- Frequent Submitters -

— ♟️🎼

-- ★🍷🪶

cassette dividers by strangergraphics-archive

[ingo-ingoing-ingone]

A Personal Post

Hi guys, I'm finally making the post I kept telling myself and my best friends I'd make but wanted to put it off until I felt better. That hasn't happened and with how things are going I thought it was best to just post it now.

So for a while, since probably late 2023, I've felt less like my blog is for me, and more like it's some kind of fandom archive. Which, if you use it this way as-is, great! I'm glad my blog could make you happy like that! But that's not what I set out for it to be.

I'm the sort of neurodivergent person who likes to categorize things, including my interests. All my tumblr blogs are specific to one thing, and this one was no exception.

I began tagging things soon after I made the blog because I saw a lot of people were sad about the twins, and I thought "well since I love both sad and happy stuff, and I'm really good about categorizing things, maybe I can try and help!" And according to many, it did help!

But I think that also gave off the impression that I was making this blog for other folks, and that isn't the case. I'm sorry I never clarified. It's not an archive; I do not reblog shipping posts, posts from people I've blocked, AUs I don't click with, and sometimes just not everything I see.

I've gotten popular in the fandom, and for the most part I do, from the bottom of my heart, enjoy it. I have people who care about my hyperfixation! That's amazing! I have people who love my cosplay and want to meet up with me. I've made so many friends of all shapes and sizes and it's probably the most incredible thing I've ever experienced, truth be told.

But yeah my blog being mine has gotten away from me a bit, I think.

I want to keep tagging my submas tags, that isn't going to change. I will tag triggers when asked, unless it's kind of impossible due to the blog's subject (trains, for instance) or a name or really common word (like the word 'head' or something). Other than that please reach out and I'll do my best to remember. But other tags? Those will be up to me. I don't want to tag when OCs show up. I love OCs and like seeing them, and don't want to have to remember that one person who visits my blog doesn't.

I had anon off for a while because honestly ever since making this blog, there have been anons who really made me unhappy. (Also yes, non-anons but that's been fewer and far between). I've gotten misinformation, accusations, horrible and disgusting explicit asks, and criticisms and complaints, and I'm just... Not here for that. Keep the explicit things and misinfo out of my inbox, I am no arbiter of morality or personal decisions, and I am not here for you to share your negative opinions of submas or the fandom.

Anon is on for people who are too self conscious to chat face to face, for people to send fun headcanon ideas (remember when people did that back in 2022 when this blog started? I miss that, it was sweet and wholesome), to share song recommendations... That kind of stuff. If you have an actual problem, please, PLEASE talk to me off anon, whether that be DMs or a non-anon ask that I can answer privately. Especially if we're friends; please, please just talk to me about stuff. I don't bite! I swear!

But yeah the bottom line is I'm here to participate in fun (and sometimes heartbreaking!) fandom stuff. I'm here for FUN, not as my job. I know that we're all a bunch of neurodivergent folks and sometimes interactions can be a swing and a miss, but please try to be mindful. Please treat me like a person and not just like a museum curator for this blog.

Truth is, I haven't been okay for a while now. It's gotten worse this year for sure, and due to life stuff I cannot see things feeling better for me for some time. I need to go day by day for a lot of things, and I am trying to get better about needing to set boundaries and all that sort of thing. I suffer from intense paranoia too, and having so many eyes on me is genuinely terrifying at times. I'm trying to manage that as best I can, but I do ask that folks be kind.

NO I am not going anywhere, my blog is staying and will continue on as normal, but I really, really needed to get this posted.

Please continue to interact with me and chat and everything like that! But also please remember to treat this space, my blog, as my space. Thanks for reading!

[elainweekofficial]

𐂂 ⋆⁺₊⋆ ✿⋆⁺₊⋆ ᡣ𐭩

E L A I N W E E K

G U I D E L I N E S

While the point of Elain Week is to appreciate her character, the moderator team also acknowledges that certain character aspects can shine more in specific dynamics. Thus, all ships for Elain will be accepted and tagged accordingly. Every interpretation of Elain deserves to be appreciated and shared!

This event is staunchly against hate. We know that Elain’s ship potential is a very controversial subject with a lot of strong feelings involved. We intend to accept and welcome all interpretations of Elain, as appreciation does not look the same for each person. However, we will not accept or repost anti-ship content. Our focus is creativity, exploration, inclusion, and positivity. We feel that avoiding anti-ship content will make the event as inclusive as possible and create a welcoming environment for everyone!

This event will not tolerate rudeness, negativity, inciting ship wars, or baiting in the comments on submissions. Any negative or cruel comments will be removed, and the poster will receive a one-time warning. If the participant submits another post that undermines our guidelines a second time, they will be blocked by the event and thus no longer able to participate. There is love and effort put into the content being submitted, and we ask everyone to remember this before commenting.

To further support human artists and creators, we will not be accepting or reposting submissions utilizing AI. Our team will work hard to spot and disengage with AI, but there is a chance that we may not catch them all—please be sure to reach out to us if you suspect that we have shared content using AI. Submissions can range anywhere from fanarts to mood boards and playlists, but please only submit new Elain Archeron content that was created specifically for the event!

When posting your content on Tumblr, please be sure to use the event tag #elainweek2025 and tag our account @elainweekofficial so that we are able to see your submission and share to our page! If you do not want your submission shared across our social medias, please indicate that either through messages, or on the submission.

For the folks wanting to share their submissions on Instagram, please be sure to use our event tag #elainweek2025 and to tag our account @/elainweek when posting! We are also interested in collaborating with all submissions, so feel free to invite us! If you do not want your submission shared across our social medias, please indicate that either through messages, or on the submission.

For the folks we want to submit any written content, we have an ElainWeek2025 AO3 Collection that you can find (HERE).

Our team will be sure to promptly sort each day’s submissions using both our event tag and a specialized tag per day [#DAYX : PROMPT], sort by content type (i.e., fanart, playlist, etc), and upload a masterlist for each day that we will post the following morning. We will also have a comprehensive masterlist for the entire event at the closing!

If there are any additional questions, comments, or concerns, please be sure to reach out to our team either through the ask box, or through our messages on Instagram! We are eagerly counting down the days until Elain Week 2025 💕

[ace-of-hearts-and-spades]

YOU THERE!!!!!! TUMBLR USER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are YOU tired of how Tumblr treats trans people, particularly transwomen and transfemmes? Are YOU tired of how Tumblr treats people of color, particularly black folks? Are YOU tired of fandom trying to police the madeup bullshit you like to draw, write, or read about? Are YOU tired of all this fucking AI bullshit? Are YOU looking for a new online home to settle in?

Consider Pillowfort.social!

I’m not going to go into the nitty-gritty of how Pillowfort functions, because others have talked about that and explained it much better than I can (I recommend reading @/vergesm’s post here for a more general Pillowfort overview). What I’m going to do is explain what I, personally, get out of Pillowfort and why I enjoy it.

To preface, I’m not being paid to make this post or promote Pillowfort or anything. I wouldn’t think that needs to be said, but people make things up sometimes so idk. I’m writing pro-Pillowfort propaganda because I genuinely like the place and want to see it thrive. If you want to take a look at my own fort and get a feel for the place, you can do so here.

So with that out of the way – let’s talk about it!

Pillowfort is quite a bit like Tumblr, in that it’s a blogging platform, but it’s got a few things that make it better than this hellsite imo. For one thing, you can post NSFW content there. Although I don’t draw much explicit stuff, it’s nice to be able to post art there without worrying I’ll get shadowbanned for a picture that’s just a lil too suggestive. It's nice to know that the option is there. Honestly, it’s freeing not to have to worry about that shit. And it’s also really cool that there’s a built-in system for marking certain posts as NSFW, because as well as being able to mark your own posts as NSFW, you can choose whether you want to see other people's posts marked as NSFW. And for minors, the ability to see NSFW content is automatically turned off. Pillowfort’s got a really good system for both allowing NSFW content and keeping it away from people who don’t want to see it. I really like that flexibility, and how that flexibility isn't detrimental to the users.

And speaking of being able to see or not see certain content, the content filtering is pretty solid. You’re able to block tags and even words in the body of a post, and like I said, you can control whether you want to see posts marked as NSFW. You can even control who sees your own posts! There’s blocking users, of course, but you can limit who sees your own posts even further than that. You can make them visible to anyone, visible only to logged in Pillowfort users, visible only to your followers or mutuals, or hell, even visible to you alone!! It’s cool to have that level of control, and I find it reassuring to know I have those options.

Another big appeal of Pillowfort, for me, is the userbase’s strong “don’t like don’t read” policy. A lot of the people there operate under the mindset of “as long as it’s fictional, whatever dude. I don’t have to like it, but you do you." There are still dipshits, of course, but it’s WAY better than the insane purity culture that’s developed here. I don’t have to worry about some wannabe-conservatives telling me I’m just as bad as Ted Bundy for [checks notes] sexualizing Michael Myers or some shit. Plus, this general userbase mindset is backed up by actual site policy! I’ve heard that Pillowfort is very swift in responding to reports of harassment – whether it’s fandom-based harassment or bigotry. I haven’t had any experience with this personally (and hopefully it’ll stay that way), but I’ve heard good things about it, and it makes me feel more comfortable being there.

Also, did I mention Pillowfort has an explicit anti-AI policy? AI generated images and writing are banned on the website, and staff made this decision once its userbase and community made it clear that they wouldn’t welcome that sort of shit. And GOD, does it make me feel so fucking good as a writer and artist to know that.

And that’s another thing – Pillowfort staff actually fucking listens to its userbase. The website is crowd-funded and relies on subscriptions and monthly donations to keep things running. And because it relies on its community, it relies on keeping the community happy. So complaints, bug reports, suggestions and alterations and things the users would like to see on the site – it’s all taken pretty seriously. And again, it’s just really nice to know that the staff of the place actually give a shit and are looking out for its community rather than trying to suck the dick of the biggest investor.

Really, the only problem I have with Pillowfort is the fact that it’s a bit small. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because the people there are lovely. But since a lot of people aren’t happy with Tumblr, and haven’t been happy with Tumblr for some time, I thought I’d just ask you guys – maybe consider it. Consider making a Pillowfort account. Consider making your own little fort, stringing up some colored lights and cool art and making yourself cozy. Consider offering some money, if you can spare it, because it’s genuinely a really cool place that I want to spend more time in and see prosper.

So far, I’ve had a lovely time there. It’s cozy and friendly and it feels like one of the few places where a queer artist like me is actually welcome. And I think a lot of Tumblr users might really like it too.

I hope to see you there! 💜

[hopelesslyromantic-shark]

⋆ ˚｡⋆𐙚˚ PSA

just realized i can FINALLY use this blog for good lmao!

basically, for those of you who don’t know, the blog is use as my main blog (@hopelesslyromanticshark) has been shadowbanned (to the extent of my knowledge)

i am currently trying to solve the issue by sending multiple emails to tumblr (after waiting a week and then some between each email) in hopes of getting this resolved, but so far i have gotten no response back.

so, basically, i can’t message, i can’t comment, and my posts have been blocked from the tags. BUT i have opened my requests, if anyone is interested! it’s just gonna be a little tricky until things, hopefully, get sorted out!

i just wanted to use this platform to get the message out, to ensure people didn’t think i disappeared or were ignoring them!!

that’s it! thanks folks!

[angels-wantme-dead]

Blog of the Symphony Guild (2.0)

We're collectively known as the Symphony et al. Guild. We're 23 years old and collectively use any (she/he/they, go crazy) pronouns. We identify as a genderfluid lesbian and generally consider ourselves to be queer. We don't care for the specifics and may refer to ourselves as masculine, feminine, both, or neither interchangeably. Our gender is heavily influenced by our plurality.

We are diagnosed with several mental health disabilities, none of which are anybody's concern but mine. We don't do DNIs, they don't work. Take responsibility for your online experience. if you don't like us it's your responsibility to block us. Similarly, if we block you it's most likely nothing personal. We don't like to be annoyed. We're trigger happy with blocking.

We try to sign off on our individually written posts as often as possible, but our communication isn't great yet. We're frequently blurry or crowded in front, so please refer to tags if necessary! Each headmate has their own tag.

We vehemently support good faith labels, which includes non traumagenic systems. Radqueers are not a good faith sort. We are actually traumatized, queer, and mentally ill and we hate you specifically for attempting to normalize abuse. This is not up for debate.

We reject the traumagenic label for ourselves out of spite for gatekeeping. Telling other people what to call themselves, it just isn't very punk rock if you catch my drift. We generally don't respect folks who make hating others their entire personality.

We collectively experience a lot of memory related issues. We consistently lose and forget small details as well as major events. Names, dates, and time are all difficult for us to keep track of collectively. Please be patient with us, this is just as frustrating for us as it is for you.

Emotional regulation is also rather tough for us. If you act rudely, we can't guarantee you won't get the horns for it. Our page, our rules.

We are fictive heavy but bodily white. To avoid discomfort, we've assigned ourselves code names that we use alongside canon names. So if you would rather not use one, you can refer to the other.

We also run @nunyagenic a sideblog dedicated to the archival of plural history or "systory" and @the-systim-cafe our stim blog.

Confused about anything? Feel free to ask us questions or read our FAQ

System members list here

~Sakura and Dei