#technically this does have a discord screenshot so...

[blushroom20]

A handful of Teruteru art has been let out of my likes vault and are scheduled to release throughout today for his birthday!

Don't worry, I still have a lot left in there for future use...

If you're wondering why I just liked a bunch of things instead of reblogging them back when I found them, it's because I wasn't initially sure I wanted to be public on liking Teruteru. Also that would be a ton of Teruteru at once.

I say, as I’m about to post a lot of Teruteru at once.

[infinite-ticking-clock37]

Help why is Silved mpreg a new thing on this app- like what started this help me

OH BOY how the fuck do I explain this shit

Ok so basically back in very early January I decided to draw Silver Spoon.. but pregnant. AS A JOKE-

Then my gf (@humanaltarr) posted the pic, and a few of my moots on Tumblr saw it, and at first I was like "Welp this is the end of my Tumblr career" and I think just a few hours later one of my moots (@spiritmander13) wrote the first Silver Spoon mpreg fic called "Silver Suffers With Morning Sickness" with 6 chapters (technically 7 but the 7th isn't involved with the story)

Then Silver Spoon mpreg became a big joke mostly on the oscc discord I believe (I joined it for a few days but left) and then for a while it was quiet, until I started an ask blog called @askthe-iii-shipchildren, on April 5th, and on April 30th I got an ask by an anonymous person where they wanted Candelabra to put Silver Spoon in a maid dress, and I ended up drawing Silver in a maid dress

Now here's were the second Silver mpreg era began. I made a joke with Candle saying "If Silver stays in that for much longer Candelabra is gonna have a little sibling soon" cuz I thought it would be funny (had no idea what it would cause)

Then @spiritmander13 reblogged it and said something like "CANDLE NO-" and I replied back saying "Silver Spoon mpreg part 2 /j" AS A JOKE. She told me not to start it again, and I said "Aw shucks" but in the tags of that reblog, I said "Time to draw Silver pregnant in a maid dress" and that's where I messed up since Spiritmander said they were intimidated.

Suddenly, I got tagged in a post by Spiritmander, and it seemed to be a screenshot of them saying "Don't tell Infinite, my sins shall stay hidden until it is the right time (I scrolled for like 20 minutes on their blog to find that fucking hell)

Then I got a little spooked cuz yk it's not everyday shit like this happens. I then screenshotted it and went into her inbox with the screenshot and asked "WHAT IS RHIS, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN" and she replied with another screenshot and it said "*Casually steals Tumblr mutuals fankid for the story*" and that's when I knew what was happening.

Soon, Spiritmander posted another Silver Spoon mpreg fic called "Little Moth"

Then it was a little quiet after that, with me making an occasional joke about it, always ending it with Spirit saying "HEY YOU STARTED IT!"

There is also this whole thing with "Bab Incest" Spirit did but I wasn't involved with that

Later in to May, me, @spiritmander13 and @mxmc13 formed the "Silver Spoon simp trio" cause apparently we all saw each other as friends so why not

Then the (sort of) mpreg era 3 started again. I'll put this part simply and say that me and a few other people on osc Tumblr got asks in our inboxes by "Anon~Chan" that were basically like a shitty Wattpad story but with II characters, and I personally got a Silverloon mpreg thing.. so fun..

And the most recent thing that happened. There was a Two x Jax post, and me, Mc, and Spirit were basically joking more about Silver Spoon mpreg in the reblogs, until Spirit came along and said "Silver Spoon simp trio canceled." And me and Mc were absolutely DEVASTATED and then Spirit said that me and Mc had to write Silver Spoon mpreg as well, for me as punishment for drawing it and confusing the original poster, and for Mc.. dunno..

And that's what's currently happening, I am working on my Silver mpreg and so is @mxmc13 ..

And yeah that's the whole story pretty much, this was a VERY long post and probably not even was the asker really wanted but meh

Anyways I imma end this off with saying.. I do not regret first drawing the Silver Spoon mpreg, since this is all genuinely fun and it even got me some friends on this site (Spiritmander and Mxmx and their great) so yeah =]

(also this is NO hate to anyone mentioned in this, and the fics that Spirit wrote are actually really good so I recommend checking them out)

[knightochan-official]

How to Actually Play the New FFXIV Expansion

Hi everyone! It's June 19th, 2024, just over a week from the Early Access period for the newest expansion to the award-winning MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail.

During Endwalker, it was well known you could expect to wait over 8 hours just to log into the game. What isn't well known is why this was: Experienced and clever players have long been using simple scripts to appear "at the keyboard" for all kinds of activities, ranging from housing market wars to launch day. The game is supposed to kick you out for being idle, but thanks to this trick a baby could do, it rarely does for most.

Here's how you can be one of the clever ones actually playing the game. Keep in mind that you will still have to wait out the queue any time servers go down, your power goes out, or you turn your computer off, and for your first time logging in. This will just keep you logged in once you are. You will also need a private computer you can leave on, powered, and connected to the Internet for long periods of time.

Share this far and wide so your friends with limited time can play too!

Disclaimer: I've literally never seen or heard of someone getting banned for using these methods. The client doesn't seem to be capable of recognizing AutoHotkey. However, this is the use of a third-party tool and against the EULA. But so is ACT, and every raider uses that. The chances are slim, and no player will ever be able to detect you for reasons we're about to see, but you can technically get banned for this. Caveat emptor! Don't say ingame or even admit to your Guild or other Community Discord channel that you're doing this.

Tens of thousands of people do this and get away with it. The key is shutting your mouth. OK? OK.

Step 1:

You will need AutoHotKey. This is a commonly used productivity tool that lets you script user inputs from your keyboard. If you're reading this you're some kind of gamer so I'm assuming you can install software. When you're done, you'll get something like this:

Step 2: Let's create a new script. I'll name it XIVJogger. The reason will be obvious when we see what it does. Click New Script, name it whatever you want, put it wherever you want. Navigate to where you saved the empty file. Right click, edit script. Use any text editor you want, I'm going for notepad. We're going to copy and paste this script in, which I've also included as a screenshot in case it vanishes from Pastebin.

Step 3:

Log into the award-winning MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV. Wait in queue. Play to your heart's content. When you're done, don't log out! Go to your inn or private house room where no one else can see you, set default WASD controls, and do this:

Tab back into the game and you should watch your little guy jog around randomly. This will stop the game for kicking you off due to inactivity. When you're done, you can exit or pause the script from the corner of your taskbar:

That's it! Go to your player house or inn room and re-enable the script any time you go AFK.

Note: There are probably more elegant AHK scripts that do a similar thing out there somewhere. I did a baby one that even babies should be able to do, since I don't want to overcomplicate things. If you make improvements, feel free to post them!

[wienersmosh]

done with the smosh membership. :)

i cancelled my membership a couple of weeks ago and here's why.

i was a smosh royalty member. as some of you know it comes with access to the official smosh discord server. i was never very active on it. in the ~5 months that i used it i only checked it a handful of times. i had not even opened the discord app since december 2023.

last month, i decided to open the app. it said that i was not a member of any servers and with the help of a couple of friends who were still members, we figured out that i was banned. (and just today i also found out that i had been banned from the youtube livechat, which i couldn't have known sooner bc i missed the past few livestreams.) one of them reached out to a well-known mod -- a popular smosh fan artist here on tumblr, iykyk -- and asked on my behalf why i was banned. the mod refused to say why, but it didn't matter. it was either i said something inflammatory to someone (doubt it, bc i was barely on it), or because i had been leaking members-only content which, to be fair to them, i have. and i'm 99% sure it was the latter.

now... i don't know for sure who snitched or how they managed to trace it back to my discord profile and youtube account -- but i have a theory. the platform i'm most active on is smosh twitter, where i did occasionally post bts photos, screenshots of bts videos and livestreams, and little clips here and there and included those clips in edits. but even so, i highly doubt it was from my twitter account that they traced back my discord and youtube. i don't have my discord handle anywhere on my twitter and vice versa. any mention or hints of my youtube account have long been buried bc i tweet 50 million times a day.

i'm not saying no one has snitched on me for my twitter account, i'm sure at least a few people have bc my account had 1.3k followers and it was public. what i'm saying is that it couldn't have been my twitter that linked back to my discord and yt. i have a hunch that it's this tumblr post with this ianthony edit of mine, which includes multiple clips of bts videos, that got me into trouble. when i posted it, my tumblr url was different to the one i have now, and my old url was similar to my discord handle and youtube display name, and i'm positive that's how they traced it back to me.

i'm not going to make outright accusations and name them specifically bc i have no concrete proof. but i have a strong hunch that it's a specific smosh fan artist here on tumblr who happens to be a discord mod that did this sleuthing and banned me. and the only thing i have to go off of is that they weirdly have me blocked here on tumblr despite me never interacting with them in any way that could be construed as harassment. all i ever did was dm them and ask if i could see ian's halo fanfics from back in the day. that's it.

and you know what? i can't be too mad about being banned. again, i rarely used discord, so it's not like i lost something that i used regularly, and i did break a rule. it's not like they banned me for no reason. i get it.

but the part that upsets, or i guess, confuses me is that after i had been banned from the discord and the livechat, i was still technically a member. i was still being charged $20 AUD/month and i still had access to all their bts content. banning me from the discord and livechat wouldn't have even stopped me from leaking their content. so it's like... what was the point? it definitely wasn't loss prevention. i can't help but feel that this was more of a social punishment than a legal one. i think if they hit me with a copyright notice i'd be less offended, bc then i'd get the message that this is just business to them and they can't let people steal. but banning someone from the community, so to speak, but not from paying for and accessing your content, seems like such a petty, mean girl, "you can't sit with us" kind of punishment? does this make sense? especially bc it's up to the mods' discretion which people to ban AND not every single person who has leaked content is even being punished.

idk. i know i'm in the wrong in a technical sense, but cracking hard on stupid shit like leaking photos and clips -- not even full videos being uploaded somewhere else -- makes me feel like they're turning fans against each other. those who can pay vs those who can't pay. rule breakers vs snitches. no wonder there aren't a lot of ianthony stans nowadays -- most of the content we want to discuss is behind a paywall now.

i just think there should be a difference between major leaks, like uploading entire videos for everyone to see for free, and fans still being able to make fan content out of bts stuff. bc why is including one-second clips in a 30-second edit enough to get someone banned? no one is watching my edit in lieu of signing up for a membership. it's literally free marketing to entice people to sign up but i guess they don't want that.

so... here i am now. i still love smosh, i still love ian and anthony, but i don't have to further support them as a business anymore beyond just watching their videos. banning me from engaging with the community but not from paying for their content and doing free publicity and marketing for them made it clear to me they did not see a human being behind the fan account. i was just a source of revenue to them.

goodbye, smosh membership. i'm still a fan, but i guess i wasn't that important.

[thefirstknife]

Some important stuff in regards to the harassment of developers came from Bungie today. They won a lawsuit against a guy who repeatedly harassed a community manager and his family (not fully confirmed in the official document, but people are fairly certain this is about A_dmg and his family). This is a twitter thread from the lawyer who went into some details about the situation. The court document is also available to read (featuring some of the horrific harassment tactics that were motivated by racism and also used racism as part of the harassment so be advised if you want to read).

This isn't just a win for the individual community manager and Bungie, but also has potential to set a bigger precedent in the future. It's basically the first time this has been done to this extent and some ruling in this case made it clear that companies can pursue this sort of legal action in the future if their employees are harassed and threatened. This is HUGE because the protection of employees in the gaming industry has been abysmal otherwise. This case will allow for the company to file a lawsuit on behalf of their employees in cases of harassment.

Before I add some of the more heinous stuff about this situation below, I want to say that the majority of reactions to this are positive. People are happy that this happened as it did and a lot of people are excited about potential big influence this will have in the future to combatting harassment of this type in the gaming industry.

Extra details and thoughts below (racism tw):

This started because the community manager highlighted a black content creator, Uhmayyze, who is himself a victim of harassment more often than not (usually of racist nature). He is most often harassed because he is unapologetically positive for which people have continuously sent him awful shit and comments. Because he enjoys the game and isn't jumping on the hate train. Just recently he commended Bungie for a ban wave and had hundreds of people hound him on twitter for his comment, including Gladd who started it by specifically replying to Uhmayyze and putting him on blast (warning for a lot of gross comments, including photoshopped screenshots of fake discord texts to make Uhmayyze look bigoted, nsfw images, r slur, suicide baiting and so on). This is important because the incident of real life harassment was fuelled over a community manager highlighting a content creator that is himself being harassed and despised online for the crime of... being positive. And you know, for being black. This situation isn't an isolated incident. The community, including other content creators, are absolutely horrible towards this one person that they feel, I guess, does not follow the content creator NPC questline of hating Bungie and Destiny.

So of course, at some point, someone from that crowd will feel confident and justified taking things further. How dare Bungie promote this person they hate. How dare they focus on a positive creator. They're clearly biased and don't want to listen to criticism, only to "toxic positivity" streamer. How dare a community manager highlight this creator. It's a personal slight to them, and "proof" that Bungie is bad and evil and "ignoring criticism." There's someone out there (and probably not the only one) that hates this creator and the game so much they were willing to harass and threaten a community manager and his family in real life.

The community manager was first harassed by phone with text messages and voice mails featuring racist bile, including apparently a voice mail telling him to "convince Bungie to create options in its game in which only persons of color would be killed." This is the worst part for me and super concerning in general, as well as showing the dedication of this person to racism, motivated by his hatred of a black creator (which also, by proxy, technically makes the streamer being harassed as well). Absolutely ghoulish behaviour.

This escalated to also harassing the CM's wife and resulted in doxing them; the harasser somehow found their address. Most of the reports on this will say that the asshole "sent them pizza" which doesn't truly capture how horrific the incident was. First, it's a random guy who has your address which is concerning enough given that he harasses you by phone already. Apparently the pizza was made to be "inedible" and the delivery was instructed to bang loudly on the door upon arrival to maximise discomfort. The order was also deliberately made to be paid on delivery to create as much pain for the victims as possible. The harasser also kept track of the delivery and then called the family again when it was done to tell them to "enjoy the pizza." The family immediately contacted Bungie who contacted the police and provided the family with protection. There's no telling how this would've escalated had they not been in the position to call Bungie and had Bungie not reacted to them asking for help. It's absolutely crucial here that Bungie is the type of a company willing to immediately assist in this situation.

Immediately following that, Bungie organised a long and expensive manhunt to identify the harasser and bring them court. That's where most of the expenses went; finding the culprit and protecting the employee and his family. This is the money Bungie earned back by this court decision because they could prove that the expenses were caused by a person harassing and threatening their employee.

This is a big win overall for the whole industry. It's Bungie setting a precedent on how a company should protect its employees. No matter what people think about Bungie or big corporations or whatever, this is how you can use a lot of money and power to make sure that your workers have rights to decency and safety. That's huge for the rights of workers and worker protections. I hope it becomes a standard and that any future harassment is prevented altogether or at least punished accordingly.

Naturally, the commentary on the news from a big part of the community is super positive. Unfortunately, there's also a part of the community that has a lot of really awful shit to say about this. The comments on twitter are littered with people who are using THIS specific moment to yell about Bungie being a greedy corporation, how the money they won should be used to "fix the servers" and "make more pvp maps" or how Bungie will greedily put this money "into Eververse" or "into Marathon." There's comments about how time was uselessly spent protecting an employee who should expect harassment anyway, instead of working on "fixing the game."

This is what I mean when I talk about how impossible it is in the current situation to have a meaningful discussion about any sort of criticism or feedback. There's thousands of comments from people who think that this specific instance shows how Bungie is greedy. This is what I mean when I say that none of these people actually understand what they're talking about. You can't make proper criticism when you can't separate game development with a company's legal effort to stop an escalating harassment campaign of an employee. The majority of gamers are simply not fit to offer any criticism or feedback. The idea that we all have something useful to say and that employees at Bungie are obliged to give us their time of the day is simply incorrect.

I genuinely 100% stand by the claim that the recent barrage of content creators promoting the idea that Bungie is "the greediest company in the world that's scamming players and increasing costs out of greed" as well as the idea that Bungie is "abandoning Destiny for Marathon, isn't working on the game anymore and is deliberately ruining it" is the reason for these comments existing. If a big streamer said that Bungie is getting too much money but also not doing anything "good" with it, then any money that Bungie receives (including compensation for expenses they took to protect an employee from active harm) is a result of greed. The nuance of any situation is lost; when you only learn the mantra of "company has money therefore company bad" you WILL end up causing harm for people and you will most definitely not be an advocate of workers rights. That's where we're at right now.

The dehumanisation of people who work at Bungie (and the harassment itself) is a consequence of this crap and other similar crap that's been thrown into the ether for the past year, disguised as "we're just offering feedback." People heard that Bungie is a "microtransaction hell" and that Bungie is only investing in Eververse and Marathon and they feel like this story reflects that; they feel like an employee being harassed is not deserving of proper condemnation and that this isn't important enough and that Bungie is a greedy corpo anyway so who cares about that. They do not understand how companies work, how games are made, the state of the industry as a whole (or the world as a whole), the treatment of employees or workers' rights, and you cannot meaningfully critique a company's business practices without understanding that. And they don't because they think that legal expenses used to protect victims, finding a culprit and bringing their ass to court is money that is being used for game development and that Bungie receiving this money should result in... new pvp maps or "fixed servers."

And there's even seemingly good commentary where people recognise how this is good, but they initiate the comment with "As much as I hate Bungie and Destiny and I think they're awful and greedy and destroying gaming as a whole..." : that's not the time and place. You don't have to excuse your support of a big win for potential new employee protection policies just because those policies are done by a company. Of course it is. Companies are the only ones capable of pursuing this sort of legal action. It's one good way a big company can put their power and money into a good place to actually help people and bring forth positive change. And like, you don't have to tell us how much you despise Bungie before you're "allowed" to admit that this is good news. Sometimes companies do good stuff. It's literally not that complicated.

I hope that this situation will help other employees demand the same protection, that other companies will follow suit and that this will also make potential other harassers rethink whether or not they will engage in this or similar type of behaviour. In the meantime, know that the community is largely positive about this, but that there are still absolutely detestable human beings who should feel ashamed of their reaction to this. They shouldn't feel welcome here. And there's still people doing this to the devs and I hope Bungie takes their asses to court too.

[violetlypurple]

With the Windows recall shit rolling around, I'm going to be That Girl and put it out there that Linux is, indeed, still a thing, and a thing that has come a long way with regards to user experience and gaming. And a thing that runs 75% of the internet but anyways Saying, "Linux isn't just for nerds and enthusiasts anymore!" wouldn't be an entirely truthful statement, but if all you do is play games, go on socials, and hang in discord... It'll work? I'm speaking to a target audience here, posting from an FFXIV-focused blog, so let me dive into it a little for that target audience, with the assumption that none of you are out there being sweaty over Apex, Overwatch, Fortnite, or whatever zoomers play these days. Basically anything you play through Steam will run flawlessly* on Linux. Valve have baked the Proton compatibility layer into Steam for a while, and since Valve's Steam Deck runs on Linux, they are on point with updates for it. This means that Steam will do the work of making Windows games run on Linux for you without any additional software or tinkering. This includes the Steam version of FFXIV**.

Now, I can't speak to or ensure that reshade or any 3rd party plugin will work. In my case (details below the cut) reshade was more or less intact but all the presets broke so I just kinda said fuck it and removed the remnants. But thats ok, right? You want to try out the 7.0 graphical updates without instagram filters, right? Don't you..?

Mods and other plugins? Don't know, don't care, frankly don't like that they exist outside the narrow window of seeing people's fun screenshots. Sorry not sorry. That said, I have seen some things on the googles.

There are obviously various things that work differently/don't work on Linux like they do on Windows. I can't account for every case, so google is your friend here. The one particularly notable case I ran into was screenshare with Discord being unable to deliver audio, which makes group watching things like netflix a bit of a problem. There are technically workarounds but again, Target Audience.

Sooo... Yeah? If you're mildly tech savvy, go get Ubuntu, install it on a second drive, external drive, or even just try it out from the usb you put the install media on for an hour. If you wanna get spicy with it, do some looking around to see what distribution of Linux might suit you better. Pop_OS is also pretty beginner friendly. Yes, there are some adjustments and some things to learn, but if you have the energy to be mad at what Microsoft is doing, you have the energy to learn a few new things to get away from it. As with anything related to messing with your operating system; back up your important things, just in case!

The Notable Caveats:

*I can't speak to all multiplayer games, since some use anti-cheat or DRM that may not work on Linux. But frankly, a quick google of "will [game] run on Linux" can get you a quick yes or no on if this will be a problem for you. In my case, I mostly care about Helldivers 2 with its nProtect, and it works fine. BG3 has no problems either.

**You might be thinking, "But Basement Witch Noone Knows, I don't use the Steam version of FFXIV!" And yes, that does complicate matters. My brief tutorial is below the cut, should you find yourself committed to this notion, or just have a morbid curiosity.

Ok, so I don't have the Steam version of FFXIV either. There are two ways around this that I am aware of.

The first, which I would not recommend, is to get a 3rd party Linux launcher. If you care about this Windows recall thing, you probably fully understand why I would advise against using a 3rd party app to put your username and password into. If you are willing to do some research into the providers of these tools to determine their trustworthiness, I can't stop you, but I wasn't interested.

The second is Steam! Again! A fun fact about FFXIV is that it runs pretty self-contained in its folder. I have shit internet, so I have been just copying the whole ass SquareEnix folder off my drive and onto other drives to save myself two days of downloading for years now.

If you have Linux installed and familiarize yourself with the Home folder where your usual Documents/Pictures/Videos folders are, I just copy pasted my whole SquareEnix folder in there, to the cries and lamentations of Linux nerds everywhere that would insist I put it somewhere proper. Anyway. Once it's there, all you need to do is add it to Steam. In the Steam Library there is a button to Add a Game in the bottom right corner. When you click that there is an option to Add Non-Steam Game. When you click that, you will get a prompt to locate and select the game. Here you want to hit Browse, navigate to your Home folder, SquareEnix, FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn, boot. in the boot folder you will need to select ffxivboot.exe. Once you have selected it and clocked Open, it will return you to the Add Non-Steam Game list and you should see ffxivboot.exe selected. Hit Add Selected Programs, and that's it! You can now launch your bodged-in copy of FFXIV through steam, and it will apply the necessary Proton layer to make the launcher and the game work as normal. Yay Linux!

i use arch, btw

[ourlittleuluru]

Oh boy... irl kept me busy these past couple of days (both work and new kinda last min art~) >~<;; couldn't post and also just go crazy about ALL the new announcements...

hoooo boy ⚆_⚆ was there so much announcements... discord's basically flooded

Let's just talk about the new features~ Which, as if this game isn't delulu enough, adds even more delulus~

But honestly, I think the new Quality Time feature would be like nice background/white noise for the times I feel like I need something in the background (and I don't want any YT videos, video essays or music. Ngl, I sometimes just open the game and leave Xavier's tender moments on just to get that nice ambience when trying to work in this sweltering... humid af... heat...)

Though I wonder for the Work option... What would Xavier be working on...? Zayne's gonna obviously be doing, well... his work... Rafayel's painting, I think, from one of the other screenshots... Is Xavier just gonna like, idk, read? Can't imagine what he might even be working on 🤣 maybe writing reports

But can I just say this (again) PAPERGAME'S ART TEAM PLEASE TEACH ME YOUR WAYS! I know people are going on about jiggle phyiscs and some... packages. But look here. The technique of the Technical Artist team to make the sweat glistening? And the sweat beads???? Hats off. To make it look like so nice ToT I wanna know how to achieve that look and feel too. How does one do this in Unity??? custom shaders? HDRP magic????

Ahem. anyways... uh... moving on. The new AR photoshoot feature (╹ڡ╹ )

Definitely gonna fuel ALL the delulus. Probably gonna try it only once to see how the changing positions work (and then never use it again, especially if I am gonna put myself in it :v )... I guess the tech for separating the background from main subjects are pretty solid at this day and age. But still, am curious how well it'll work.

Though, if I ever use the photoshoot feature and I have to edit the lighting... welp, there goes hours of my life 😂 gonna be stuck in that mode constantly trying to match the irl lighting and game lighting

Last but not least of the updates is Rafayel! Can I just say the Ultimate animation is just... phenomenal. (Please let Xavier's new myth Ult be just as cool. I mean, I love his current Ults but... would be nice to have a fancier one, ya know?)

Like the whole school of fishies and MC just casually riding on a whale to smite dem enemies 👌

One final thing. Rafayel's outfit. The back, with that spine that goes to his lower legs and ending with these fin looking things. That. That detail is nice. (it does remind me of the word Dolphin tail which leads me to think about Tifa and her dolphin tail hair though. Such brain tangents)

[mcytblr-archive]

Early MCYTblr Interviews: Anonymous

our interviewee is an anonymous member of gay castle, the sleepyheads server, and was involved in the MCYTblr elections. below is a transcript of their account!

Q: You mentioned several things in your initial message to me, so let’s work through them one by one. What was it like to be in the “Gay Castle” server from when it was created?

A: Gay castle was originally made so as to have a place for friends that wasn't the drama-filled space of sleepyheads. It was orchestrated by Conarcoin on tumblr, though technically the server was made by someone else just due to timing and such. Conarcoin is the owner of the server, though. At first you could only join the server via a direct invite from Conarcoin, but since it is no longer just an escape from another server, people now invite their own friends and mutuals as well. Gay castle originally was much smaller and much more mcyt-focused. I don't have a perfect memory of what it was like, but a lot of my time in the server was spent discussing headcanons and aus with other people, or playing minecraft together.

Q: What do you remember from the first MCYTblr election? (And, as a bonus question– do you remember who you voted for?)

A: I wasn't super involved in the first election, but i was there for it. I remember the hype was pretty big- people made animatics and edits and fanart. There was some sort of issue with who won, some sort of drama with how it was decided or how the election discord server was run, but I don't have exact knowledge of what went down. From what I know the people who were most involved started doing a rp based on the elections later, but I was never told much about it.

Q: What was the early life (and later downfall) of the sleepyheads server like? Was it a natural death, or was there some incident or drama that ended it?

A: Okay so sleepyheads was a bit wild. I wasn't there from the beginning, but I was there for at least most of the downfall. It did not die naturally- it does still exist from what I know, but completely remade, so you can't find any old conversation history or anything. It was the first mcytblr discord server I joined. The owner of the server had originally just created it for friends, and when so many people joined it got way out of control. There were issues with people not respecting the blacklist, not respecting pronouns, having nsfw discussions in all-age chats, lots of misogyny to female creators, etc etc. However, it was a big server, and so people didn't really take much notice. One of the things about the server, though, is that a lot of people used it for writing. There were several channels dedicated to individual aus people had made. One day the server owner decided that there were too many au channels, so they deleted all of them. The majority of people had not backed up their writing from the server, which meant a lot of fanwork was lost in one fell swoop. That really angered people and brought up a lot of grievences that people had been letting go, such as a server member getting kicked when people beleived no rules had been broken. Server members decided to create a channel that mods weren't supposed to read so they could discuss how to bring up their grievences and what they wanted changed. While discussion was going on, one person started spamming a general channel with screenshots of all the issues they'd had with people in the server and the server owner, and it took the mod team a while to ban them. People started arguing that there should be a vote for someone to replace the server owner, and there was a lot of fighting. A bunch of people left at that point, and the server kept bleeding members over time. By now it's completely remade and, as far as I know, pretty much dead.

Q: I haven’t asked anyone else about this, and I’m unclear on a lot of the details, so I’ll ask it here– who was ‘fakenoblade’?

A: "Fakenoblade" was a member of sleepyheads and the sleepyheads smp. They had a very good Technoblade impression and made their discord account look exactly like Technoblade's did at the time. They were very popular for acting as Technoblade on the smp and in voice calls. At one point several people took screenshots of one of the calls and posted them to tumblr, joking that Technoblade had actually joined the vc. Much later on, after the Sleepyheads server issues, they made it clear that they didn't go by Fakenoblade anymore, and I beleive they don't use the Fakenoblade discord account or tumblr account anymore, though I could be wrong.

Q: Do you remember any imposter blogs in specific? What do you remember from them? What was the general community response to imposter blogs?

A: The imposter blog that I remember the most was Drinnie, aka iamdreamwastaken, a very popular Dream imposter blog. They played into a lot of current mcytblr jokes, as well as encouraging interactions and fanart. They also created Dreambot, a bot trained off of a dataset of all of Dream's tweets, which would create "original" posts. I mostly remember them because they actually joined the Gay Castle discord server while not giving away who they actually were, and even joined a voice call, though I don't know if they used a good impersonation or a soundboard. They were one of the earliest imposter blogs, which helped with their popularity- people weren't yet used to the blogs, and so were genuinly unsure if any given blog was real or fake. As more blogs were created, and more "creator on tumblr" scares occured, people generally got used to the blogs, and were ambivilant towards them at best, hostile at worst. Drinnie and Zonebur were the two most memorable imposter blogs, mostly because they were early enough that there was still some mystery about them.

Q: What do you remember from the “Penis SMP”? Can you give a short explanation on what it was?

A: Penis SMP was basically just an earlier Goncharov. An outsider of the fandom made a post about how absurd mcyt tags were on tumblr, something along the lines of "this is just like the electric chair scene with penisunavaliable and shittyfartbaby69!!1!" (There's defenitly screenshots of the post still floating around, and it's possible that the og post is actually still up.) A lot of mcyt fans thought this was hilarious, so people pretended like it was real. There was fanfiction, fanart, worldbuilding, etc. More characters were created, with other absurd names like "milfboss", and the fandom grew enough that a group of people decided to make it real, creating a discord server so that they could stream as the characters on Penis Smp, though that project has died out and the server is now deleted. There's still 4 or 5 people posting about Penis Smp, I think, and it even got a Polygon article about it, which was a good enough source that Penis Smp is refrenced on the official Dream SMP Wikipedia page. Even though it's not really around anymore, it was absolutely a big part of mcytblr history- It kind of united a bunch of mcytblr into a collective project, at least temporarily.

[llatimeria]

discord server tips. my main discord server is organized kind of unusually because it's technically designed for oc/art/worldbuilding discussion but i think we accidentally hit on a revolutionary new way of formatting a discord server

firstly, bc it was created out of a union of worldbuilders each with their own roster of distinct worldbuilding projects, we gave each member who wanted one their own server folder, and divided those folders into channels about different worlds and one general chat ostensibly for discussing things that apply to all their worlds.

the unintended effect of this is that we basically gave everyone a House and a Bedroom which we all kind of separately hang out in. we can idly muse about our day-to-day lives without interrupting someone else and it is so nice. I love being able to contextlessly post a screenshot of someone inexplicably obsessed with thea stilton from the geronimo stilton books for children without interrupting someone else infodumping about their current hyperfixation. it's so good.

the other genius thing we accidentally stumbled into was creating a dedicated channel for food discourse. this started because some of us live for needless conflict and others in the server get stressed out by unfounded snobbery, so we made it easy to opt-out of those kinds of conversation while simultaneously making them very easy to start and escalate. similarly, we have a chat dedicated to doing weed because some of us are bothered by drug use, and it basically does the same thing as the food discourse channel except for dumb shit we do when we're high. in the house analogy i guess these would be The Kitchen and The Living Room where we go to piss each other off with our own unique fucked up behaviors that drive our hypothetical roommates insane

[irished-lads]

i know emma is usually the guy to Post About The Fic but also i’m like. equally as insane abt 5r6c as she is so i’m gonna spill something the people might’ve not caught (this was already said in the irish lads discord where we r usually in direct contact! i dont have the link tho if i find it i’ll reblog w a link to the post)

if the audience would like to follow me under the cut,

okokok so like. since the endings technically been written, every little bit of foreshadowing / weird little tidbit / etc etc has always been intentional! everything has a build up and a drop off bc yada yada well rounded story chekovs gun u know the drill, a narrative is naturally composed of little bits and pieces

Well. i wont be the one to tell u the others, especially bc the fic isnt done yet, but i can share One (1) bc its very important to us and, that we know of, not a lot of people caught it from the recent chapter? not saying thats a Bad Thing or anything, but this particular little tidbit has been planned since before chapter 1 was written, so i want to shine some light on the attention it deserves.

That being said! cigarettes were in high demand in the 1800s. usually, everyone smoked bc. yknow. it was the 1800s and no one knew what nicotine did to the system yet, and what would a western au be without at least someone with a carton of them in their pocket?

the two scenes we’ve seen so far where they’ve been the most prominent, firstly, is with dan and spiff in chapter 14,

and the most recent chapter, (at this time, chapter 18), with dan and kevin.

Now you may find yourself asking. “yeah okay van, whats the point here. we all know sharing a cigarette is a little homoerotic and the rituals are intricate, what does this have to do with anything”

dan lights the cigarette for spiff after he asked him to do so, but dan doesn’t take the first drag— spiff does.

kevin gives dan the cigarette first thing, and goes all the way to light it for him.

its about spiff making dan do it for him, and kevin making sure dan doesn’t have to.

to round this all up, here is a screenshot of us talking abt it before the fic was even like. Planned and Fleshed Out. just keep in mind. da little things

[hyperfixation-hideout]

Do you remember sending me an anonymous ask telling me to stop tagging RWDE in my posts because you were upset?

You sent me anonymous asks twice, defending RWDE.

Now tell me...why on earth are you accusing other people of sending anonymous hateful asks to themselves, when you have literally sent anonymous asks to the very people you are accusing?

Do you even hear the cognitive dissonance in this?

Do you want proof of the first time I was impersonated?

I can provide not only a Twitter Link, but a Tumblr post. Where the person who accused me later acknowledged that it was an imposter.

Or you can embrace tunnel vision and think that any time you've sent me or somebody else an anonymous ask, that person was sending them to themselves and it was never you?

If you believe anything about somebody you don't like, then you will fall for everything.

Now my friends and I are working on building up evidence to prove my innocence. that person already accused them of being me.

But then again, you refuse to believe that anyone would defend us. That bias of yours is why you are so deadset on believing the worst of others.

Drop the tunnel vision. Drop the hyperfixation on the bias. And start trying to see if impersonation is possible.

I'm going to try find a way to prove how those discord screenshots were doctored.

uh, no, I do not remember that. If this is Canonseeker talking,

A) everything I said to you was off anon

B) I didn't tell you to stop tagging rwde, I made a generic post saying that posts tagged "anti rwde" still show up in the rwde tag, making it so the tag is flushed with hate, when it was created to avoid hatred and vitriol from people like you who harass anyone with a different opinion, as well as me letting y'all know if you tag with "anti rwde" instead of "antirwde" then rwde folks will see your posts and you may not have wanted that

C) come off anon yourself

D) Uh did you mess up that last sentence? Cause yes, your discord screenshots were absolutely doctored and very obviously fake. Oh, or are you trying to "prove" the post calling you out and debunking your lies was doctored? Cause, no... you're just defaulting to your oldest tactic: when accused, respond with "no, YOU did that to ME" even though that does nothing to counter the proof already exposed about you (you also just did that when going "well someone impersonated ME so you can't accuse me of making fake accounts!")

E) you're the one who targeted me, sending yourself anon hate and tagging me in it with "THESE ARE THE PEOPLE UR DEFENDING??" when I had clearly stated several times that I did not defend hatred or harassment of any kind. You then started tagging anyone who agreed with me in this hate, even after I asked you to stop.

F) what happened to your asks/replies telling me I'm "one of the good ones" who makes "thought out and kind critiques"? What changed besides me calling you out for the harassment and bullying you've engaged in for years?

G) That's not what hyperfixation means. Look it up and learn about ADHD before throwing the term about willy-nilly, please

The only part of this ask I'd potentially be willing to take at face value is the part where you got upset for me claiming you send yourself anon hate. You're right, that's something I don't technically know. (idk why you assumed whatever anons you're referring to are me). But there have been enough instances of you clearly pretending to be someone else, including a time you've ADMITTED to having done so. Regardless, even if you didn't do so, that doesn't undo any of the awful stuff you have verifiably done. Countless people have shown evidence of your lies and hate, and I wanted to believe they were wrong, but that time of hopeful ignorance has passed.

I am an understanding person who gives the benefit of the doubt, as well as second, third, and hundredth chances. I want to see the good in everyone, including you. Time and time again you've shown that if we give an inch, you take a mile, and use our kindness to further harass anyone who dares stray from your own opinions or interpretations. And I don't mean 'harass' as in 'sending a mean anon', I mean repeated hate, slander, and block evading, making fake accounts just to continue trying to make people's lives miserable, etc. I tried to give you a chance and extend that opportunity for you to listen, grow, or change, but you won't admit any wrongdoings, and that's a nonstarter.

[If you're not seeker, I have no idea who you are, and as such do not know where to go from here. Come off anon or message me privately if you're someone else, and I'd be more than willing to have a conversation with you about this.]

PS: Something funny I've laughed about many a time -- even after all that's gone down between us (aka you being hateful and lying about me and me explaining to no avail since you refuse to read), I'm still on your list of positive rwby blogs to follow. Which is extra funny, because you linked that list in your answers to hate anons you tagged me in, going "here are some GOOD rwby blogs to follow" with me on it. As amusing as it's been, I'd like to be removed when you get the chance.

[vergess]

Yeah the thing about 'the rest of these being legitimate gripes' is.... no they aren't.

For example, the phrasing, "tumblr allowed false flags" is a very bold way to reframe what actually hapened. That is, tumblr identified human run harassment campaigns and is currently working to end them.

We’re aware that posts have been marked with a “Mature” community label incorrectly, and the appeals process failed. We’re working to resolve these issues ASAP and ensure it does not happen again. We’re truly sorry about this, it’s not acceptable for us to mess up this process. July 21 2023, Changes

Or did you forget "working to end them" comes after "discovery" for some reason?

The actual quote was to the effect of "human interference has been discovered in our moderation tools and is being addressed." I'll link to the exact quote when I find it again.

But that has been manhandled into "allowing false flags" instead of "actively combatting TERF interference in mod tools."

This post takes "we are fighting this problem" and hears "we are all transphobic freaks."

It's especially funny to see "tgirl" listed as the example tag.

You dipshits may have forgotten, but tgirl is a term originating from sex workers and it refers to those of us who sell ourselves as a trans fetish experience.

Blocking a sex work related tag also being used to harass individuals on their personal selfies is in fact an appropriate approach while addressing an ongoing human interference campaign.

Or, should they just continue to leave a tag that many other websites refer to as a slur, where a bunch of people were being driven to suicide, completely unaddressed so that you can attack them for that instead? Oh, but tumblr should magically know the PORN AND HARASSMENT WORD is actually being reclaimed, and therefore the tag should stay live but MAGICALLY BE CLEANED UP I GUESS, but not by staff, since they're not trustworthy??

Do you want them to keep busting ass working to make this website you can use freely, or not? Which is it?

Or let's talk about tumblr live's "data scraping." The data tumblr live uses is your....... IP address. It has less data than you're fucking alarm clock.

That's the "location data" everyone is pissing themselves over, because they heard "tumblr is selling your location" and went fucking ballistic.

Your IP address, if you don't know, is the thing that connects you to the internet. Unless you use an always on VPN, your IP address is public data that every person on earth can access. You can get someone's IP via their discord, their blog, their anything, because your IP is what attaches you to the rest of the web.

It's "location specific" in the sense that all IP addresses in most countries start with the same 3 numbers.

If this were actually a data hack nightmare why would it be legal in the EU???? Or did we all just forget that international laws exist?

But, you'll note that the link to that one's evidence is broken. Deleted. Poof. I have no idea what that stupid post said, but I know it's a lie because unlike most of these people, I've read the goddamn technical specifications.

"Tumblr made live unsnoozable" is just straight up incorrect. Lies. Tumblr made live snooze for LONGER.

Additionally, we’ve increased the snooze period from 7 to 30 days. Sept 5, Changes.

Or how about "taking away accessibility features." In this case, replacing double tap zooming with pinch zooming on mobile.

In actuality, double tap to zoom and pinch to zoom are mutually exclusive accessibility features. Either you are accessible to people with low finger mobility (double tap) or to people with low muscle stability (pinch).

The "solution" in as much as one exists is to offer both options on a toggle. This is not a realistic expectation in terms of labour, however, for a company of 150 people operating in debt while their own customer base constantly lies about, slanders, harasses and threatens them.

Which brings me to my next point.

PartyJockers Et Al were not banned for """""criticizing staff"""""

They were banned for illegally and falsely reporting a staff member as a child molester. They tried to get a service worker killed for reblogging rated G anime art.

That was the issue.

They didn't like the fandoms a staff member was in, so they tried to kill her. (Oh, sorry, they ~abstracted themselves out of it by merely calling the cops~)

And now, today, people are still passing around these LIES.

Just sit on that. Imagine walking into a fucking restaurant, seeing the waitress has a phone background you don't like, and trying to reporting her to the feds as a child molester with the intent to get her killed.

You know. Violent crimes.

The thing you utter cunts keep saying people SHOULD be banned for?

But that's just the thing, isn't it. No matter what happens, you will find a way to be an indignant piss to service workers.

Or let's take that CEO ad blockers comment. It was made as a joke in part of a long, informal livestream, along with the suggestion to use an ad blockers service.

The JOKE was retracted within an hour, including multiple staff apologies for it being in poor taste. Staff user Zingring, 11 july 2023

Tumblr's dev team then continued their ONGOING efforts to filter unsafe ads, a thing they cannot snap their fingers and fix because ADS ARE SOLD BY THIRD PARTY SERVICES. You have a problem with an ad, report it to the AD AGENCY, tumblr has FUCKALL control of that, you're literally yelling at UNRELATED PEOPLE who are NEVERTHELESS working to solve the problem ANYWAY.

And now.

NOW.

You stupid shitfuck suckass pigstain bastards are harassing ANOTHER SERVICE WORKER TO DEATH but it's okay because, see, you're only trying to get this one to kill themself instead of murder-by-cop.

You disgusting little fuckups.

If you cannot be bothered to learn the basic truth, you can at least stop vomiting such vile lies and be QUIET.

tumblr staff have...

allowed false flags of 100% sfw posts made by transfem users (and blacklisted trans and trans adjacent tags) (edit: '#tgirl' is still blocked as of sept 8th, 2023)

taken away basic accessibility features in an effort to tiktok-ify tumblr

pushed tumblr live, a feature users actively dislike which is mostly unused and overrun by spambots, that also collects all of your data EDIT: staff deleted the blog and post of the user who made the data harvesting expose post (iamdealwithit), as well as rbs. partyjockers and iamdealwithit both had their blogs purged by staff for criticizing them.

allowed ads that can literally kill people via flashing / strobing lights, even if the person had it filtered, despite user complaints, with the ceo even saying people with epilepsy should "just buy ad free" in response to concern over potential death or serious injury from such ads

[NEW!] made tumblr live unsnoozable on mobile, ignoring backlash

[NEW!] a staff member is claiming that people leaving negative feedback is responsible for them being actively suicidal, an attempted guilt trip

STOP GIVING THEM MONEY! stop trying to make crab day or whatever else happen. paying for stuff from the shop is rewarding them for ignoring the userbase continuously and doing things the majority don't want, even if the things they're doing and allowing can cause actual deaths. staff shouldn't be praised and get profit for ignoring their users in exchange for trying to turn tumblr into twitter 2 ft. tiktok. (and now going scorched earth when you criticize them). at this point i don't even care for "staff are people 🥺 be nice" arguments, because even when people are being very polite in feedback, they're perfectly fine ignoring it in exchange for implementing changes nobody wants or asked for (now claiming negative feedback is responsible for them being suicidal), all because new users may like it more (and forget anyone who's used the site for years, apparently).

leave bad reviews. don't buy things from the shop. send feedback, even if they never reply. email them and @ the staff, send asks to the wip blog. don't just blindly buy into "we need to support the site, buy xyz shop product", they don't deserve more money for giving a worse product.

edit: staff have gone scorched earth and removed Every Single RB of the post exposing the data harvesting of live, as well as deleting blogs iamdealwithit and partyjockers for bringing up valid points against staff and their policies (iadwi being the one who made the anti-live post).

[sunriseverse]

For the writers' asks!

8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read? 9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other? 10. How would you describe your writing process?

8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

hmmm.......................i think so? i usually don't read things i wouldn't be willing to write. i would say i read a lot of things i haven't written anything like yet, but that doesn't mean i wouldn't be willing to, just that i'm busy as all hell and have to prioritise, and so only the most interesting-to-me concepts actually get completed and posted.

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

i mean, a drabble is exactly 100 words, but i assume here it means "ficlet". i'm in this sort of weird space of being almost habitually unable to write anything under 3k, often writing 10k-20k fics, but they're almost without exception oneshots. i'm slowly pushing myself outside my zone of comfort with my current multichapter wips, and i have technically written at least one longfic (76k in total), plus a 40k+ novel draft, but i wouldn't say that it comes naturally to me. and i'd say, now, i'm probably a blend between plotter and pantser. in the past i used to just sit down with almost no plan and write, but in the recent years i've found that having at least a one or two word outline (plus copied text/screenshots from discord/dm convos, if relevant) helps a lot now that i tend to write longer works and keeping continuity/tone is very important to me. i do sometimes wish i could consistently write breathtaking longfic with complicated plot, though, but i know that the only way to get to that point is to practice.

10. How would you describe your writing process?

i technically answered this already, but i realised this could be interpreted a number of different ways, so i'll answer it in the vein of "what does your literal writing process look like", which would be, in a word, "chaotic". while, as i mentioned, i do plot things out somewhat, the actual act of writing more or less involves me curled up into an inhuman position on whatever surface i've chosen, staring intently as i type away with no thoughts in my head except the drive to finish the fucking fic. i've likened it to being possessed before, because by the time i'm through with a project, i'm lucky if i remember more than the barebones plot, and i tend to be exhausted. if you can believe it, though, this is a far healthier writing style than what i used to do—at least nowadays if i need to or want to stop, i can.

[falselyprofound]

The Neopets NFT Debacle: A Summary Somehow Not The First Time This Has Happened!

So. Neopets recently announced its latest merchandising venture: Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Without getting into the nitty-gritty technical details, these tokens are a digital collector’s item - a randomly-generated string of letters and numbers (’token’), with a unique picture of a customized Neopet that represents it. Kind of like a digital trading card.

No, you don’t get to choose what species of pet. No, you don’t get to choose what it’s wearing. No, you don’t get the pet on the main website. And no, you don’t even really own the artwork. Just the token.

Given that Neopets has continued to advertise itself as a children’s petsite, players have understandably been confused by the very non-kiddy merch move. And - more importantly - pissed.

It’s been a mess of a month so here’s a (not-so) quick recap of both the details and drama.

September 22nd:

Neopets Metaverse tweets for the first time, announcing that it will be creating a new line of official, Neopets-themed Non-Fungible Tokens.

A member of the Neopets Nation Facebook fan page notes that the twitter account is not being followed by the official Neopets twitter, nor has it received any public endorsement from the company. (x)

A Neopets Nation member sends a direct message to the Neopets twitter account, asking about the partnership. The staff member in charge of social media responds “I believe that is a scam.” (x)

Some hours later, the official Neopets twitter retweets the announcement, clarifying that it is indeed an official partnership. (x)

People are pissed.

September 23rd:

The Neopets team posts the announcement on the site’s New Features page, spreading the news to the playerbase at large. (x)

Users start voicing their concerns on the site’s forums (NeoBoards). Among the complaints are environmental concerns, the lack of site integration, the ugly RNG artwork, and Neopets’s long history of not delivering on merchandise. (Remind me to make a separate post on that last part because it’s a whole thing.)

Neopets responds by reassuring players that the partnership is legitimate and not a scam. ...That’s it. (x)

Fansite JellyNeo echoes the announcement to their homepage, with an added warning; “As a reminder, the last foray into Neopet crypto collectibles ended with the cards being largely worthless and unsellable. (The marketplace to sell/trade the cards was also shut down.)” (x)

The official NeopetsMeta discord server is reportedly a complete mess.

“...ever since this went up all I've seen in NFT spaces is talk of literally buying [Neopets] accounts on the black market to get a 'head start on the competition', so it's good to see that the rules of the website only apply to the long-time users and not the people wanting to pump and dump this community." (comment in ”love the new audience the NFTs are attracting!!”, 24 Sep 2021 - 5:09 am) “I don't know what NFT chats you mean but in the one specifically for Neopets Metaverse people are being overt about their motives.” (herdygerdy, JellyNeo staff, confirming the above)

No sign of any Neopets staff members. (x)

Also, one of the lead admins is called Jizz. Family friendly. (x)

September 24th:

A Neopets user does some digging into the partnership company, taking screenshots and documenting results on a petpage (originally NetDragon69, currently NFTurd. Mirror here). They note the following:

Moonvault, the company behind the NFTs, has existed for roughly a month. It's a shell company with little-to-no information on its homepage. A homepage which is mostly stock assets, anyhow.

Moonvault’s partner companies are both owned by NetDragon (which owns Neopets) and are most likely money laundering schemes.

One of said partner companies will write positive news articles about your company if you pay them. Hmm.

A disgruntled player posts the full names of JumpStart’s upper management to the boards. Players track down their LinkedIn profiles and start sending messages directly to the CEO, en masse. While this is public information and not considered doxxing, it is against site policy. Curiously, the thread remained up for at least twelve hours. Mods asleep, post their boss’s contact details.

Solana, the crypto-company powering the technology used for the NFTs, claims to be better for the environment than other methods of making crypto-merch. Heated arguments over whether or not NFTs can be environmentally friendly ensue. 2am rolls around, and I bail on the conversation after a crypto-bro unironically calls me sheeple.

At least one Neopets user is accused of being JumpStart staff in disguise, as their account is less than a month old and they seem to be the one (1) person on the boards defending the NFTs. This is likely untrue but it was very, very funny to read.

NeopetsMeta retweets an advertisement for, uh... Horny Hedgehogs. It’s nothing particularly graphic but sure, link to cartoon hedgehogs humping each other from your kids site merch page, why dont’cha. (x)

China declares all crypto-currency transactions illegal. Not because of TNT, obviously, but the timing is again very, very funny. This includes NFTs. Given that NetDragon is a Chinese company, this now means they’re also in some legal deep shit. (x)

September 25th:

JellyNeo staff member Herdy recaps and further explains the above happenings on a pet page. He also notes the following:

The artwork being used for the Dimensional Kougra NFT is not the official artwork, but rather an image unique to the Neopets fansite Dress To Impress. When this mistake is pointed out, the promotional artwork that included the Kougra is replaced with a Chocolate Kougra without comment. It’s currently unknown if the stolen asset is still in the system, but it does confirm that NeopetsMeta has no access to the site’s image databases. (x) (mirror) (archive of original page)

JellyNeo publicly criticized NeopetsMeta for tweeting a link to literal horny hedgehogs. Rather than taking the tweet down, NeopetsMeta instead accused JellyNeo of spreading misinformation. ...Even though their original tweet is still up. (x) (mirror)

He also speculates from past NFT endeavors that the starting price for one Neopets NFT is somewhere in the ballpark of $450 USD.

September 26 ~ 28:

No additional statements are made by TNT, and things on the NeoBoards begin to die down in lieu of new things to discuss. Less threads being made, but the ones that remained stayed active.

(Most of the drama around this time targeted a few specific players, particularly one who works in the Crypto industry. While it was certainly a thing to read, I won’t recap it here.)

JellyNeo reports that members of the NeopetsMeta Discord server have been receiving direct messages from bot accounts, attempting to trick new NFT-buyers into scams disguised as freebie giveaways. (x)

...An issue that is somewhat magnified by the fact that the Discord server is doing a recruitment leaderboard-based giveaway around the same time. (Can you say ‘MLM’?) (x)

September 29:

Homophobic language is used in the NeopetsMeta Discord server (specifically the f-slur), and is not filtered out by its moderation bot. When this is brought to the attention of the actual human mod, he chucks a shitfit. It’s three hours before the offending message is deleted. (x) (x) Bonus points: “gay” is automatically filtered out. (x)

Side-tangent: it’s only been nine months since Neopets began allowing users to use terms such as “lesbian” and “transgender” on the site itself (”gay” is allowed by site rules, but still filtered out). Pride-themed merchandise is available in their store year-round. This is who they wanna partner with, huh. (x) (x)

September 30:

Continuing the streak of Discord drama, an admin channel on NeopetsMeta is accidentally made public. “Included in this channel was curated feedback gathered in private by mods from members of the community they valued. [...Regarding] suggestions for the future direction of Neopets Metaverse.”

The list of suggestions includes pushing TNT to release extra pet slots and release new UC (”Unconverted”/extremely rare) pets ahead of schedule, in order to “distract” players. (x) (x)

Entrants to Neopets’s weekly Beauty Contest (art competition) submit anti-NFT protest artwork. The winning entry is deleted from the listings, presumably for being a part of the protest. It is restored after users complain, but the New Features page notably does not list the winners and instead showcases the 2nd place artwork instead. (Quote 2nd place: “I'm really disappointed that they would use my art to censor the real winner. First place won fair and square.”) (x) (x) (x)

October:

The NeopetsMeta Discord moderator responsible for the aforementioned shitfit is kicked, with the staff issuing an apology... and he is replaced with a brand new discord account that definitely isn’t just him on a side account.

Neopets Metaverse releases their roadmap (plan for the future of the project). The roadmap lacks any dates or technical details and can thus be read more as a wishlist than an actual, tangible project.

Tl;dr - their ultimate intention is to fork (duplicate) the main site and make it entirely operate on blockchain items. ...So you’ll have to pay for literally everything. (x) (x)

Neopets Fansites organize a two-day blackout in protest, altering their homepages and encouraging players not to log into the main site. Participating fansites include JellyNeo, Dress To Impress, the Neopian Writer’s Forum, The Daily Neo, Reddit community r/Neopets, Lost And Pound, and more. (x)

Neopets fan artists get more subtle with their protest artwork, and a No-NFT image makes the site’s front page. (x)

@NeopetsMeta on twitter creates and posts a Soyjack meme calling people against the project “Hateooooors”. I took actual psychic damage from typing that. (x)

The tweet is deleted by NeopetsMeta after considerable backlash. The Wayback Machine archive is also deleted, though QRTs responding to the original (14-tweet long) thread remain. (x) (x) (x)

NeopetsMeta issues an official apology for the tweet. (x) The response from the community boils down to “get bent”. (x) (x)

A Reddit user who works in the NFT industry makes a post on r/Neopets explaining that what the team is doing can’t even properly be called a ‘Metaverse’. I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand a word of it, but here’s the link if you’re interested. (x)

The Neopets Team posts an official apology for this ongoing PR disaster to the NeoBoards. They assert that JumpStart does not support the bigoted beliefs held by the Metaverse staff, that JumpStart will start moderating the discord server, and that protest entries will now be permitted in the Beauty Contest. There are no plans to cancel the project. (Also, not really relevant but kinda funny - TNT member Petrichor is shuffled away from working on the site. She was Neopets’ community manager for a grand total of... three weeks. Hoooly shit.) (x)

The Neopets Metaverse discord server is raided (spammed) by protestors. The moderators respond by publicly doxxing one spammer’s instagram account. The ensuing harassment forces the spammer to delete their social media accounts, and two moderators involved in the incident are later booted from the server. (x)

Crypto-merch company Quidd announces it will be releasing its own line of Neopets-themed “digital collectibles”. While not necessarily NFTs, buyers have the option to mint them into Etherium-powered NFTs. (Aka, the crypto-service that’s most garbage for the environment.)

Just to be clear, JumpStart didn’t change companies. They’re now multi-track NFT drifting. ok. (x)

Quidd retracts its announcement of the project from both its social media and discord server within 24 hours: “In the case of the new [Neopets] channel, our partners wanted to put a little more time between another project that they dropped and our project. So, it's a delay, not a cancellation.” We’ll see, Quidd. We’ll see. (x)

Another protest image wins the Beauty Contest. Normally I wouldn’t consider this noteworthy but it is, as the kids say, rather sussy. (x) (x)

November (Pre-Sale):

An official price point for Metaverse NFTs is set - or rather, prices. The more that are sold, the more expensive future ones will become, until eventually they cap out at a whopping 4 SOL (approx $1000 usd). What’s more, the number of NFTs being sold is cut in half in order to promote a fear of missing out. (x)

It’s worth noting that even NFT buyers are unhappy with this plan, as it encourages bots to buy up the cheapest ones and discourages legitimate collectors. (x)(x)

9 hours prior to the NFTs going on sale, scam twitter account @NeopetMeta (singular ‘Neopet’) posts their own version of the site. At the time of writing, the dupe account has reportedly stolen 243 SOL (approx $55066 usd). (x)(x)(x)

Launch goes as expected, by which I mean “bots buy all the cheap stuff and hobbyists decide not to bother”. (x)

Legitimate buyers report being banned from the Discord for asking which account is the real account. (x) The invite link to the Discord channel is removed from the official twitter, possibly due to the scam account swarming them with bots.

November (Post-Sale):

The sale period ends. 42% of the stock is sold (approx. 8,707.5 SOL, or $2.1 million USD). The rest are “burnt” - made permanently unavailable. (x)

Obligatory right-clicking ensues. (x)

Post-sale statistics indicate that 1,000 NFTs were apparently sold before the sale went live - meaning that only 246 could be purchased at the base price by outsiders. (x)

A good number of images were generated incorrectly - fur clips through clothing, Transparent and Eventide pets are completely opaque, Wraith pets are missing their smoke effects, some only have one piece of clothing. Also, there’s only ten species, and 50% of pets have the Sad expression. (x) (x)

Fansite Dress To Impress openly questions how the images were generated and officially revokes any permissions the Metaverse team may have had to use their (pet image-generating) service. (x)

NetDragon issues a press release that goes over the details of the sale, believing it to be a “success” that garnered “strong interest” from the community. (x) (x)

Neopets gets a new marketing employee who is Pro-NFT. She is doxxed by angry players within the week. (x)

...So yeah, that’s where we are in this on-going shitfest. Will add new developments as they come!

[sabertoothwalrus]

i dunno if you consider yourself a “big name artist” or whatever but, i wanted to ask, does it ever get old reading comments about your work? i’ve thought to leave comments on ppl’s work before but then i don’t because i feel like they probably get the same sort of comment from so many other people. would you say it’s worth still commenting on stuff from popular artists?

first of all

HELLO???? “BIG NAME ARTIST”???????? ME???????? EXCUSE???? H U H ?????

second!!! I NEVER get tired of reading comments are you kidding!!!! I obsessively read the tags on my art. My mutuals and I have definitely put a silently agreed effort into leaving comments on each others’ art. The more specific the better. My favorite ones are the ones that either go into detail about what technical aspects they like or what their emotional reaction is to it. When I get a really juicy one I’ll even screenshot it and paste it in my personal discord server.

I will say comments that are a little more generic don’t Stick in my brain as well, but they’re still ALWAYS appreciated. If I go through the tags of my art, generic comments will always make me happier than no comments at all.

[adetheenby]

like a LOT of shit happend with that billionare

-old racist stuff came out

-litterally treating contestants of his gameshow as subhuman, taking away their meds and underwear for some fuckin reason, lots of sexism and physical violence employies turned a blind eye too oh and a lot of people fucking got injured and rushed to the hospital

nurses who worked on it were coming out and speaking of it in an article abt how fuckin badly organized their shit was

-shitty mold lunch

-having his employee book leaked in which he says all his employees should be obsessive to work for him otherwise he wants to rid of them oh and that this is a litteral quote "no does not mean no"

-big shock that in that same company he somehow had a lot of sexual assault shit going on

-litterally put a guy in solitary confinement and coersed him to stay in solitary confinement when he started to suggest he wanted out bc it is litteral torture (he also made this guy run a maraton barefoot on a treadmill & would not turn the lights of for like a week) that whole thing technically is breaking the geniva convention (i know its not wartime and hes just Some Guy so its like legally technically not correct to say that but litterally why would you care about that in all of this)

-Ava tyson friend of his who got popular through his videos came out that she was innapropriate with kids on a discord server when it became a big public thing he promptly fired her and launched a "internal investigation"

-he also is comfirmed to be in that discord server seeing that shit and publicly kept saying he never saw it

and the only thing he made a comment on since shit has been hitting the fan is the moldy lunchable rip off he made.

heres all the links n such under the cut

cant find the videos themselves rn but heres an article bout it

this is bout the "beast games" which is that gameshow

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/style/mrbeast-beast-games-competition-show.html

mold shit is on twitter of rossana pansino i dont use twitter and i refuse to try bc the website has become impossible to use but youll find it with some googling

dont have the link to the employee handbook directly, but this guy fully read it out on youtube

the internal investigation shit is on misterbeast his twitter, once again i litterally cannot use the website and i refuse to make an account

this is the guy he put in solitary confinement speakin bout it

one again ava tyson shit in this guys video bc i will not make a twitter account you can skip through the video and see screenshots

last thing i know is up on his twitter go look for urself im not going on that site.

By the way, here's a quick update on what's been going down on the worst part of the internet this week:

Five days ago, Rosanna Pansino made a video where she opened up a package of Lunchly taken straight off the store shelf (2 months before its expiration date), and found that the cheese was absolutely festering with mould.

Not only is this absolutely disgusting, but, as Pansino points out in her video, they're selling this to kids. The young kids opening up and eating this might not know what mould looks like, and therefore won't recognise this for what it is.

A source associated with MrBeast told Newsweek to "consider the context and the source", essentially accusing Pansino of faking the video. She responded by posting the full unedited video of her opening the box.

And while officially representatives for MrBeast, KSI and Logan Paul declined to comment, two days ago Logan Paul dropped an episode of his podcast guest-starring KSI where they kinda-but-not-really responded to the video/tweets in passing, implying that Pansino was clout-chasing.

But over the past week more people have been posting their own videos of finding mould in Lunchly.