#the streams and videos AND the Patreon and discord content

[rawritsamehh]

I really wish dnp fans would respect pj as a creator and not just as “friend of dnp”

[eloise-t-g]

i think for me, the watcher situation comes down to this:

it's absolutely respectable that the watcher team wants to grow and produce better quality content. it's respectable that they don't want to stagnate and end up pushing the same content out over and over again. that's not satisfying for them creatively, i get that.

however, if higher quality, more heavily produced content is not what your fans are asking for, then you can't ask them to fund it.

this all-or-nothing method they've gone for is frankly bizarre. it feels like they leap-frogged all other alternatives to improving their finances and ended up here, alienating and frustrating the majority of their fanbase (the fanbase they thanked for getting them to where they are).

i think this could have gone a lot better if they:

Hadn't hyped up this video for a week.

Hadn't announced the worth it successor just beforehand.

Hadn't put out a wishy-washy, "boo hoo we're so sad about this", over-produced video.

Hadn't made it $6/month (more in a lot of countries given exchange rates).

Had considered that this means fans in specific countries literally cannot pay for the subscription due to geo/region-locking.

my ideas for improving their funds, aka things they could have tried before blowing their brand up: create their own website with two options - a free version with ads and a paid version without ads, OR make better use of their patreon/make their website extra content, not all their content, for example:

Put the ghost file debriefs on there.

Put shows like survival mode on there (or even shift that show from pre-recorded video to live-stream - live stream access to patrons and VOD access to everyone, maybe).

Put episode commentaries there.

Do reaction videos to their old buzzfeed content, talk about memories and BTS, and put that there.

Put one/two episodes of each show, per season on there (and ONLY there).

Put the episodes up there a few days early.

Make specific, website only content (that's not your main and most popular series aka ghost files and puppet history).

Record the live, in-person shows and put those VODs up there.

EDIT (thought of something else lmao): put extended or even uncut versions of ghost files on there. Paranormal Detour on Detune's twitch channel has shown that people will willingly sit through 6+ hours of a ghost investigation.

EDIT: idk, do livestreams once a week where you watch scary movies with fans on discord or twitch.

(side note: the fact that they're not taking down their patreon and instead shifting all of their podcast content on there, something the patreons who have been loyally giving them money for years didn't ask for, is ridiculous and greedy. add to this the fact that they don't even get a free sub to the new website, instead get 40% off - a measly 10% more than anyone else who subs before the official launch).

the thing for me is that they're claiming they want to make "television" and "television-grade content". that's completely fine. what's not completely fine is acting like your four episodes a month is equal to netflix's entire catalogue.

this really felt like it should have been something they told us they were progressing towards, not something they revealed to be on the imminent horizon. idk, it just feels out of nowhere. no, they don't owe us all of the info about their company. but something had to be better than this.

final thought - it's okay and valid to be upset at the team for this. for a lot of people, it's a complete betrayal (especially the comment that $6 a month is something "anyone and everyone can afford", i mean yikes). i do think some people's anger got the best of them, and some of the comments i've seen across youtube, twitter, and tumblr are plain bullying, racism, and harassment. until we have the whole story, we can't decide that one founder (aka steven in a lot of people's minds) is solely responsible. i know a lot of these awful things are only coming from a small minority of the fandom, but they still get seen.

at the end of the day, all three of them got up in front of a camera and made this video, together. that can only lead us to the conclusion that they made this decision together. acting like these men in their 30s couldn't stand up against it if they truly wanted to, is so strange and parasocial lmao.

tl;dr there were much better ways of going about this announcement, if it even needed to be made at all. however, that doesn't excuse the hateful shit being spewed at the team. for now, all we know is the three founders decided they were done with youtube, and done with their loyal youtube audience.

(i have so many more thoughts on this but i need to stop lmao. however i do wonder how different things could have been if 1. they had hired someone with actual business experience as their CEO from the jump, and 2. this video was more of a "hey we're broke! this is a last-ditch effort to save our company!". guess those questions will remain ... well ... you know ...).

[lakemojave]

Hey fellas,

I'm known on the internet as Lake "Sebastian" Mojave, and I've been doing game criticism for two years, writing for three years, and streaming for four. I'm focused on genres from a variety of eras, but mostly neo-westerns, horror, indie games and story RPGS. I like cowboys, vampires, and basically every kind of movie ever. I have a twitch channel, and I'm writing a book series!

Twitch: I stream here every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 6pm Pacific time.

Discord: Join for stream announcements, content updates, and a whole lotta silliness.

Youtube: Subscribe for my video essay series on games and game history, called The Complete History. Subscribe here for twitch VODs.

TikTok: I post stream clips here.

Land of Falling Sun: My WIP novel, a dark fantasy western set in a reimagined liminal wild west space.

Patreon: If you wanna support me on the side I post other ramblings here sometimes.

Ansem: The Seeker of Darkness

See y'all around!

[thelilypit]

Lily Orchard doesn't understand File Explorer

(or she does, but she's hoping that you don't)

Content warning for discussions of abuse and incest. Also, this post is long as balls.

Okay, I wasn't going to make a post about this. I agree with Crim right now: there's no point interacting with Lily or her posts. She's shown herself to be completely full of garbage, and isn't convincing anyone outside of her inner circle with her recent posts.

Still, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding as to why her recent explanations don't hold up to scrutiny, so I'm making this post to help people understand exactly why her evidence is bunk. If you're reading this, please don't bother Lily about it further. At this point, any further antagonism towards Lily only serves to convince her remaining fanbase that she's a helpless victim, and not the dangerous manipulator she truly is. With that out of the way, here's the sitch:

BACKGROUND: On September 5th, 2024, Lily Orchard briefly showed the contents of her Downloads folder during an editing stream. Keen observers noted a handful of peculiar filenames, including a .rar file with the exact name of a RWBY incest-themed fancomic, and a .zip folder with the name "aslutphone-0.22-pc.zip", which corresponds to a mobile phone-themed visual novel that is also incest-themed.

The presence of fantasy adult material on Lily's computer is in of itself no concern - private kinks are private kinks, after all. However, some commentators noted similarities between the scenarios highlighted in "A Slut Phone" and statements made by Courtney Peet, Lily's sister, in regards to alleged abuse she experienced as a child at the hands of Lily.

Almost immediately, anonymous asks were sent to Lily Orchard querying her about the contents of her folder. Rather than provide a relevant answer, she pretended those asks were related to a different game:

It's reasonable to say that Lily didn't have an explanation handy at the time, at least, not one that would fit with her current public image. Still, the anon asks were piling up behind the scenes, and people on Lily's patreon discord were beginning to ask questions as well. On September 8th, three days after the initial discovery, Lily posted her explanation for one of the two files highlighted:

According to Lily, "Sisters - Ruby&Yang.rar" is a full archive of the RWBY series, and she intended to mention Ruby and Yang in her "Sibling relationships" video, back in June. The fact that it shared its filename uniquely with an incest porn comic was totally a coincidence, and anyone who accused her of owning said porn comic was just a pervert themselves.

(what Lily, who frequently complains about disk space issues, was still doing with an alleged rip of RWBY that she had no intention of watching, I have no idea. But I digress) And finally on September 12th, after a week of anticipation, Lily had finally come up with her explanation for "A Slut Phone":

It was all a trick to make her critics look stupid! She had downloaded a different game for an upcoming video, and had renamed the filename to, in her words, the "worst possible game I could find", just to catch out the trolls!

This is, to put it mildly, a little difficult to believe. Still, it's the explanation Lily provided, and the following day Lily provided evidence that proves the contents of that folder pertains to sexadvicesuccubus.exe, and that said contents had not been recently edited:

This is where some of Lily's critics start to falter, accusing Lily of fabricating the contents of the above folder or changing around the other files. Personally, I'm willing to accept that the folder displayed *does in fact* contain the game data for "Sex Advice Succubus." However, there's still some glaring issues. For one, Lily is showing us a Windows File Folder here (with compressed data inside)

Meanwhile, the file spotted on September 5th was a .zip

Another (minor) issue is that the filename for "A Slut Phone" looks different on its itch.io download page, compared to the name of the actual file (as demonstrated above). If Lily had simply copied the filename based on the itch.io page, her "decoy" folder would have been named differently As for the issues with the file's modification date... more on that after the break. And now, a brief intermission. The Lily Pit presents:

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH YOUR WEIRD PORN GAMES GETTING SPOTTED IN YOUR DOWNLOADS FOLDER

So, you're a reasonably successful youtube creator and occasional streamer, and one day someone spots a suspiciously named .zip file in your cluttered downloads folder:

Worry not! Just follow these simple steps to exonerate yourself of any signs of pervertedness!

First, you're going to download a scapegoat game - don't worry about this game's raunchy title, it's far more tame than whatever wild stuff you're surely into:

Now, go to your computer's date and time settings, and set it back far enough to avoid culpability:

(In this case, we've adjusted it to the exact time of the original .zip's modification, but if nobody saw that part then you don't even have to worry!) While your PC's time is adjusted, extract the contents of the new game's .zip, and compress it while you're there:

Rename the folder to match the filename of the .zip, and there you go!

And if you're thinking "That's an awful lot of effort to go to to hide the fact that you've got weird porn on your computer",

You would be absolutely right.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Lily Crit

... Shoot, where was I? Oh yeah, falsifying the "date modified" part of a file or folder is trivial. The evidence Lily provided proves nothing, and arguably, it makes her look even more suspicious than she was before.

Still, I do have to acknowledge that there is no definitive proof of those files' contents being what we suspected. Lily's explanations, however outlandish they are, could well be the honest truth...

... but let's be real, they're not.

Stop lying, Lily.

[teddyqd]

TMP/Magnus Kickstarter Update

Hi all! We just got a huuuuge Kickstarter update, and I thought I'd share the TL;DR that we (the mods of Statement Remains) put together to give people a hand navigating it!

TMP News - The digital premiere will be available on October 22nd for backers at the Archival Assistant level and above, and for Knight & Noble Patreons. - It will include a preview of The Magnus Protocol pilot episode and some exclusive bonus content. - The audio of the preview episode, without the extra content, will be released to KS backers at the Researchers level and above on 31st October.

- There will be a post-premiere livestream on Twitch with cast and crew, sometime after the 31st

- All the pre-launch previews will be exclusive to backers and patrons, but the official debut (in January 2024) will have new content not seen in the previews (including the full orchestral debut)

- The double length pilot episode releases Jan 2024, with a weekly release schedule following (and a 2 week break every 10 episodes)

- They are currently finalising script drafts for season 1, writing for seasons 2 and 3, doing primary recordings for episodes, and editing the Pilot episode

Casting Announcements - Meet Alice Dyer, played by Seer Pink (they/them). You may know Seer from streaming/tiktok -- this is their RQ debut! - Meet Samama Kahlid, played by Shahan Hamza (he/him). Shahan has previously played Siva in Trice Forgotten!

Other Castings - Anusia Battersby (she/her) as Gwendolyn Bouchard - Lowri Ann Davies (she/her) as Celia Ripley - Ryan Hopevere-Anderson (he/him) as Colin Becher - Kazeem Tosin Amore (he/him) as Teddy Vaughn - Sarah Lambie (she/her) as Lena Kelley - Ellie Dickens (she/her) as Lady Mowbray - Tim Fearon (he/him) as [ERROR] - Alexander J Newall (he/him) as [ERROR] - Jonathan Sims (he/him) as [ERROR]

There are "multiple returning friends and enemies from The Magnus Archives", but revealing them now would be a spoiler!

Making-Of Documentary - The documentary is well underway! - It will feature candids from meetings, interviews, and video diaries from Jonny and Alex! - The full version will air after the series is concluded, but a teaser segment will be released alongside the premiere!

ARG Updates - Official start date: **15 September**

- Far larger scale than the mini-ARG, featuring both digital and in-person elements - Will feature lots of worldbuilding and exclusive story that will provide an even deeper insight into the world of TMP

- Bookmark https://themagnusprotocolarg.com! This will be the main ARG hub! - Questions about the ARG can go to arg@rustyquill.com. They will not provide hints/help solve the puzzles.

- Important note from the ARG site: Participants of this ARG must be over 18 for legal reasons.

Mic Updates - The Podcast Pro mics are nearly ready to start shipping. They are finalising packaging and etching the finished microphones!

---

And a quick note from me on behalf of the SR server! We're currently looking for mods to bolster our team, so that we can feasibly host the ARG solving efforts! If you're interested, you can join the Discord here: https://discord.gg/h6bkdqc5yd

[drdemonprince]

This is prompted by your most recent substack about fame, because my point is extremely tangential, I'm putting it here.

It's interesting to have seen the internet go through many stages. From the newsgroups/BBS era, to internet forums, to blogs, to social media, and how the respective environments shaped things.

In the early days, it's very much a group thing, some people became Big Name posters, pseudonymous, but still a group thing. The blog era was more personal, but still something made by someone who's just a person, even if not literally pseudonymous. Also, still text based, a lot of it even often. Social media changed that, with it's focus on follower counts on one hand and to snippets of text (twitter) or images (insta), and even though it's social media-ness is debatable, video (insta, youtube). The semi-anonymous nature however, was completely lost by now.

The doing it because you enjoyed it, or whatever, also recedes into the background because this is where monetization really takes off. The deleterious effects of the interaction between monetization and follower counts (notability) need no introduction, but painting with broad strokes, make something appeal as broad as possible deepens the flattening effect a medium like video already has, the visual aspects often being more important than the messages. It also has a much higher barrier to entry. Spinning up your own blog is cheap, text takes only a tiny amount data. Video is not. It's expensive to make (especially if you want slick videos), expensive to serve, so it's predisposed to big, single platforms that can leverage economies of scale.

The natural result is that you have a few people with big audiences, instead of many people with small audiences. If audiences is even the right word for that. If I'm talking about say, some TV show on my blog, and someone responds, it's a fairly equal conversation. More between peers, of sorts, just two people talking about something they share. As opposed to a Youtuber who makes a video about it with 100,000s of viewers. Because there are so many fewer voices, you lose the breadth of conversation too, narrowing to a small range of popular topics, and the distinction between You, and You as Your Brand gets eroded.

It's kinda notable in the autism sphere. Blogs where people talk about their experiences, how they dealt or didn't deal with things, have fallen off. Twitter came and went, and now there's Youtube and insta, where everything gets simplified down to a few slides or a 10 minute video about only the most basic aspects. Which is just... sad. I wouldn't have known that autistic burnout is a Thing many people struggle with if not for a blog post a friend came across and shared one day.

There was a comment from someone, a while ago, about how they used to have ASMR videos on, until they were able to get out into nature, and their desire for those videos completely disappeared. We're all very deprived. Of social contact, foremost. The pandemic poured gasoline on an already smoldering fire I feel. Latching onto someone 'famous' in a surrogate of social contact & context, like that person with their ASMR videos, feels like an understandable (though not good) outcome of that, which brings with it very regrettable excesses.

I think this is all pretty much a correct analysis, thank you! Though I would qualify that we have shifted away from the period of the Youtube mega content creator a social media ecosystem of intimate-seeming connections with smaller influencers, these days. Think of your Twitch streamers with a dedicated base of like 50-200 viewers per stream (and a Discord and a Patreon that supports them), the fitness Instagrams that sell meal plans online, the tarot witches and activist influencers offering one on one sessions, etc. Those communities can be more niche, but they still offer the illusion of a connection -- and if anything, that illusion is more strong because the creator is a "micro" famous person, and can take time to interact closely with fans here and there. We might already be heading out of that period of social media, though, especially with the disintegration of Twitter and the slow death of Meta's apps, too. I don't know what comes next but I hope we are due for a reappraisal of all of this, and the norms surrounding it.

[simonjadis]

Jesus christ. I'm scared to ask but... what the hell happened with The Watcher fandom?

I don't even go here, but here's my understanding

Several years ago, Shane and Ryan left Buzzfeed to launch their own company, teaming up with Steven Lim. Watcher has grown, producing multiple shows. Initially, people were supporting them on Patreon (for discord + early access) and YouTube. both of these are increasingly notorious platforms that take cuts from profits. YouTube payouts are massive if you're just 1-2 people getting a million views per video and a new successful video every week. but it doesn't cover a growing company's needs

To be blunt, for Watcher to continue as a company, they need cut out "middleman" services that both regulate their content and take a cut of their earnings. That means moving off of YouTube and it means changing the Patreon to just be for the podcast.

So, on Friday (April 19) Watcher announced that they're launching their own streaming model. Everything that they'd already shared would remain on YouTube, but future content was coming out on their own service for a $5.99 sub. Which in turn would be lower than or about the same as anyone subscribing on Patreon, and would also be without the horror of YouTube ads

(Again, I don't go here, but I will not watch advertisements voluntarily, least of all on yewchube. I have ublock origin/firefox and when it comes to streaming, I have the ad-free subscription or I don't watch it at all)

To be clear, they made this announcement well in advance of launching, and were making sure that international viewers would still be able to view (something that some major corporate streamers have not done). They also emphasized that they're unbothered by profile sharing, so that $5.99 per month could come down to $2 per month for three friends, or just (as I often do) one person buying it and sharing the login with friends.

Also you can gift subs. All of this is unfortunately moot, and it seems that many of the people reacting to the announcement did not learn or care about any of this.

The reaction to this news was, to be blunt, unhinged. Obviously, it's normal for some people who cannot afford $5.99 per month to feel disappointed. And any change can be unnerving for a fandom. But the vitriol (some of it, like the person who accused them of "ruining Taylor Swift's day," was admittedly very funny) was pretty vicious.

I think that a lot of it was disinformation based (unclear on where the idea that they were removing old content from YouTube originated, as it certainly was not from their announcement video) and a lot of it was (predominantly younger) viewers looking for social media clout by coming out with the coveted "worst new take" to impress their friends.

And so, SO much of it was racism. For some reason, a lot of people have invented a narrative where Shane is being held hostage by the other two co-owners, and desperately wants to release content for free to the detriment of his company, but Ryan and Steven have somehow conspired to make their company profitable so that they can continue to (evilly) pay their employees.

From what I can tell (again, I don't even go here), the bulk of the backlash ended up targeting Steven. People in the fandom are already weird about him and have an ugly tendency to invent mean things about him (a couple of years ago, some of these same ill-behaved "fans" decided that he was homophobic, not because of anything that he did or said).

So this was an excuse for these vicious little beasts to let loose. They were leaving abhorrent comments on his loved ones' Instagram photos -- some from months ago.

On the less overtly racist front, backlash included people saying that they just want Shane and Ryan sitting in a room talking about stuff. It is unusual for creatives to not care about the quality of what they make; of course Shane and Ryan and Steven care about production quality, about being able to film ghost-hunting and other shows. They're not 23-year-olds scraping by, they're artists and storytellers and they are also employers.

I don't know these men and I don't generally feel sorry for men, as a rule, but it must have been pretty devastating to find out how many of their most vocal "fans" seem to despise them, feel entitled to their art for free, and will rage against them like this.

Which leads to Monday's grim announcement, which as I understand it was that they're going to put new Watcher content up on YouTube with a delay. I'm not saying that it's a bad policy; I'm saying that it means that they remain tethered to YouTube for what content they can include, and it's showing these rancid trolls that their cruelty works.

I'm not going to say that this is "letting the terrorists win" because I'm not trying to victim-blame Watcher here. But I worry about what these rotten little beasts will do now that they've felt the rush of victory.

I cannot emphasize enough that I do not even go here. plenty of people very much go here and have written at greater length and in greater detail than i have. I'm just horrified. I don't even go here

[askagamedev]

recently a Ubisoft exec apparently said that customers would have to get used to not owning their games for streaming and game services like game pass to really take off. What’s your take on that? Are we really headed to a place where none of us own our games anymore and we just rent them? If we buy games digitally do we actually own them? Can the rights to those games be taken away even after we paid for them?

As with most things, it's good to take the time to understand the nuance of what was said. The Ubisoft person doing the speaking was Philippe Tremblay and he is Director of Subscriptions at Ubisoft. In [the article], he was specifically talking about the mental shift that needs to happen in order for a subscription business model in games to really take hold, because game subscription services are really still in their early stages. Realistically speaking, subscriptions have one of two possible futures - an eventual plateau where subscriptions reach sustainability and equilibrium or an eventual crash because they couldn't.

Look at digital music streaming services like Spotify. They have largely reached their plateau as a massive chunk of the music market. There are still people who buy physical albums, but they are in the minority. The majority of music consumers tend to listen to their music via streaming services and have gotten used to not owning their music. This is one possible future for video games.

Let's contrast this with the current state of movie and tv streaming services. There's a huge number of streaming customers, but there are still strong physical media sales because the streaming services can't necessarily keep the shows and films the people want due to licensing issues. When this kind of volatility in the availability of the product is commonplace, it upsets the user base and puts them off of staying as subscribers. This is another possible future for video games.

As for buying games digitally and "owning" them... well, not really? Like... we've known for ages that end of service for live games is the end of the road, barring player-run grey shards and the like. There are many MMOG, MOBA, looter shooter, mobile, etc. games that have been shut down permanently. Some kinds of games are inherently ownable and some are not.

As player, it is largely up to us to decide what kind of games we want to support. Playing with a regular group of friends in a live service game is a huge amount of fun but absolutely not conducive to owning the game. Playing a single-player game by myself at my leisure is much more conducive to ownership, but I lose out on content updates and the camaraderie of playing with friends. It is my belief that we should all support the things we value. There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

So... Where You Going?

For those not in the know, tumblr's doing its swan song and is going down to a skeleton crew for running the site. The site won't be gone immediately, but given how things run on tumblr now (will sometimes be totally unusable, I've had my blog automatically killed for nonsense reasons, held together with duct tape and glue) I'm going to treat this as if it could go down tomorrow or else that it will probably collapse by Christmas.

I'll probably be here until it's no longer usable but I'm not going to hold my breath that that's going to be any significant amount of time.

So, there comes the question of where I am going to go.

@therealvinelle and I have been discussing that and what we're likely to do is pivot what would be text meta into @rankheresy content. Things that would have been long text answers to questions will become episodes (note this is what the episodes essentially are already). We're also looking into doing Q&A style streams/videos where we'd answer questions from the audience to get to what would have been the short/more ridiculous 'what if' kind of things we usually do.

Of course, if people want us to run certain episodes/do certain content, we're open to suggestions and feedback.

As for Ao3, I'm not going anywhere on there, because if I could have shaken the fanfiction habit, I would have years ago. I'm in this for life, baby.

Neither of us have any plans to move all the blog content somewhere else in part because a) nobody seems to know where they want to land yet b) all the existing options are collapsing or else are terrible and I hate them. As much as this place is a hellsite, there's nothing quite like it. This could change but, for now, them's the breaks.

Also, since I've now published things, I can't disappear from online entirely.

So, here's the places you can find me.

Me, Myself, and I

The_Carnivorous_Muffin on Ao3

Amazon Author Page

If you're interested at all in my venturing into original things/what's been going in there, follow the Amazon author page as that will for sure alert you when new things come out, I'll make announcements other places (e.g. discord) but of course that depends on other places existing which who even knows at this point.

Rank Heresy (@rankheresy i.e. me and @therealvinelle meta stuff)

Rank Heresy Spotify

Rank Heresy Podcastaddict

Rank Heresy Apple Podcasts

Rank Heresy Amazon Music

Rank Heresy Player FM

Rank Heresy Google Podcasts

Rank Heresy Patreon

Rank Heresy Kofi

Rank Heresy Discord

Rank Heresy discord will probably become the best place to catch me or @therealvinelle as well as catch any announcements we make. In #announcements we drop anything we update (either the podcast or fics) and #notice-me-senpai channel can be used when you really want to get our attention/have us answer a question (we do lurk there but as of right now it's not a super active server).

Podfic (me and @therealvinelle podfic stuff)

Podfics on Spotify

Podfics on Amazon Music

Podfics on Podcastaddict

Podfics on PlayerFM

Podfics are what it says on the tin, it's me and @therealvinelle podficcing only our own material (which so far is just partway through For The Love of a Woman)

It's been a wild time, friends, hope to see you all in the future.

[cjkie22]

A non-exhaustive list of why you should listen to hit dirtbag boyband Bears in Trees:

their music is really amazing. you'll love it.

especially if your Spotify wrapped was on the pov: indie side of things

and even if it wasn't.

songs for every emotion

absolutely beautiful lyrics

sometimes these lyrics make sense. sometimes they don't. that's part of the fun.

songs about platonic love !!!!!

songs for the queers! the aros! the aces! the enbies! the trans community!

my dad likes them. doesn't sound like a lot, but it's an achievement.

(more underneath the break)

iain (bass/vox/lyrics) has "ginger" tattooed on the back of their head. if that isn't iconic I don't know what is.

on the note of iain, they were the first person i was aware of that used they as a pronoun, and that changed my life

they have a discord server! it's a really lovely community. i am not biased in the slightest. (discord.gg/sandbox) (https://discord.com/invite/thesandbox) (i will personally send you an invite i don't actually know what the link is)

they should DEFINITELY be on the heartstopper soundtrack

if I'm remembering correctly in the tiktok where they said they should be on the heartstopper soundtrack, they also said 3 out of 4 of them were in some way queer. seems like a good thing to me.

they opened for you me at six earlier this year. it was my first time seeing them live. and WOW.

I met some of my best friends through this band. I'm not joking; big shout out to the mojo dojo castle house, I'll never forget that weekend.

they're hilarious on the internet

you might cry at several of their songs for a million different reasons

BearBerry records

they have a tumblr blog @/bearsintreesofficial (iirc). I'm not gonna tag them but

BiT gigs are a safe space. I may have almost fainted at my last one (new cross inn, August 2023) but I've never met so many kind strangers and genuinely lovely people

merch is super comfy and really cute.

it gives stardew valley and animal crossing (trust me I'm right)

after the new cross gig (sweatiest gig in the world), despite surely being exhausted, callum (uke/keys/vox) took my bereal and i got my mini lesbian flag signed by them all

I turned out not to be a lesbian, which possibly makes it funnier, but the flag is stuck on my wall still

cryptids would LOVE their band

dash.

there's also a community minecraft server for discord members

BiT postcards !!!!

gosh and the bit stickers

they covered stick season on an Instagram live

they also do the funniest twitch streams

iain and the mountain

the raccoon email address

george (drums/production) is elite. the drum fills in doing this again? iconic. also has a specific really cool shirt I want to steal

wedding. dress. tiktok.

callum doesn't wear shoes on stage. apparently this was common knowledge but it sure surprised me at new cross.

the austrian soft drinks advert

iain make up looks

callum plays the flute. I want to say classically trained flautist but i may be wrong.

none of them have EVER bribed any members of law enforcement

their songs are very tattooable

talking of tattoos, nick (lyrics/guitar/saw him play the uke on stage once) has L + R tattooed on his forearms (iirc). absolute genius and I am stealing it when I get more of my patchwork sleeve done

iain releases solo music to under the name pet yeti. it's ethereal. callum also plays flute on one of them.

trumpet joe

the four of them never look like they are dressed for the same event

someone once edited the bears in trees wiki page to say that Ryan Ross was in their band

silly geese

that time we got singing? poetry? performance art? of THAT harry potter fanfiction

according to tiktok, iain and nick once had to sneak into their own show because they were underage

nurby

I have a video in the depths of my camera roll of them covering Mama by My Chemical Romance on a twitch stream

sonick

all of them give me gender envy at different times

their newest single (bart's bike) features banjo

patreon content

yelling it gets better with a room full of people was a healing experience.

tilly

modern baseball and fall out boy adjacent in my brain

if you like bears in trees you're automatically hot and really cool

they did a song with noahfinnce and its really super good

callum also featured on a myriad song which is also really super good

bit songs feel like coming home. they feel like hot chocolate and a blanket on a cold night. they feel like a warm hug. they feel like surviving and falling in love with life again and overcoming the worst things. they feel like victory, because you didn't think you'd make it to adulthood. but I'm 20 now. and I'm still here. I've almost graduated uni. and that's what bears in trees feels like.

all of their songs!!!! amazing!!!!

please feel free to add to this list. I'm taking suggestions.

[dervampireprince]

ASMR | Elisabeth das Musical - Der Tod x Listener SFW Death Becomes Entranced And Seduces A Lonely Prince

[M4M/GF4M] [Prince! Listener] [Seduction] [Manipulation] [Kissing - no character death, lore here is Death's kisses can kill if it's 'your time' but if it's not they don't but they're still cold and cause temporary frostbite-like symptoms] [TW implies the listener is depressed and has been experiencing suicidal ideation, Death at points advises the listener to kiss him which would kill them, please skip this audio if you think these issues could affect or trigger you and if you are affected by these issues please seek help and contact hotlines in your country. This audio is fictional, Death's attempts to be a voice of suicidal ideation should not be taken seriously nor applied to real life.] 

I've been wanting to make this audio for so long. While I've left it ambiguous enough to be enjoyed as an original audio, this character is actually from my favourite musical 'Elisabeth das Musical'. It's a German-language dark queer historical romance where Death (Der Tod) is drawn to those who think about him, in particular it follows the life of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, and her son Rudolf. The musical does deal with serious mental health topics and some historical events from that time including the rise of fascism so please know that going in, but if you think you can handle such topics then I couldn't recommend the musical enough. 

The original 1992 Vienna production is on Youtube with English subtitles, that is my favourite production and means a lot to me as Uwe Kroger as Death is just... perfection to me, very much gender envy and has been a big influence on me and helped me with accepting myself and my gender expression, and his characterisation of Death as this genderfluid, pansexual otherworldly being is just beautiful. And if you enjoy then I'd also recommend the 2005 Vienna production which is also on Youtube with English subtitles mostly for the few extra added song and Serkan Kaya's performance as Lucheni.

For those of you in my Patreon Discord server, I streamed this musical last Sunday in there for you guys and it finally felt like the perfect time to bring this audio to life. And if Kronprinz is still around, I know you were requesting a Der Tod audio for a long time and I hope you're happy with this one. The listener in this audio series takes the place of Rudolf, but you don't need to know anything about the musical to understand these audios. I chose to present them more like my original royalty series audios as Elisabeth das Musical is not very well known outside of mainland Europe and Japan, so I hoped by framing it this way with a photograph of myself cosplaying Death from a couple years ago would entice more people who aren't familiar with the musical. 

I love this musical so much, European musicals in general are my biggest interest and if you go searching for them it wont be long until you find my sfw account @emptymasks posting too much about them. If you're interested in learning more I have some masterlists and info posts pinned on my emptymasks Tumblr, but also as part of my subathon rewards I am doing a stream on my Twitch explaining about infodumping about European musicals and I've been working on some video essays for years that I hope to get finished this year that will be up on my emptymasks Youtube channel. I also run @europeanmusicals . If any mutuals or followers from my main or side blogs finds this... well hello there, I find myself nervous to drop this in the euro musical tags, as if people are going to find this format of fanwork weird but well... I had fun, I hope you guys are nice about this (nice doesn't mean you have to like it, but please don't be mean about it if you just don't enjoy asmr or audio content).

Something something if I had a nickel for every time Prince voiced a personification of Death from different fandoms I'd have three nickels.

.

Old public spicy audios on sound gasm (link in pinned post). 2 Exclusive spicy audios on Patreon every month. I also stream on Twitch every week @ dervampireprince . [minors + ageless blogs dni. this blog is for 18+ only.] [do not repost/reupload/edit any of my content]

[t4t4t]

What can we do against monsters?

This has been something that I have been thinking deeply about for a few days now, and it's been a few days not because the news broke, but because I was one of the first people to see it.

And that's because Aaron Bushnell had watched my content, my friends and comrades' content, and supported us. I saw the video of him calmly, bravely, stepping into a storm of flames that would ultimately kill him to bring attention to others on the other side of the ocean who were dying in similar and worse ways, on the very day that he did it. On the Twitch channel he streamed it on. Another member of my community had brought the account to my attention, and I recognised the name, and a corresponding youtube channel.

To be frank, my first thoughts were "why? you could have done anything but this! why?" I'm sure many of us can relate to this.

But recently it has hit me.

A person, who by all accounts of what information I can find online, was a closeted trans person (he used he/she pronouns in other discords I shared with her, and overwhelmingly went by the name of "Lilly" on her youtube and twitch and discord accounts) who was in the US Air Force, an organisation that has indeed in the past simply disappeared individuals who express any sentiments that their operations are unjust or evil, who knew in fact that one day soon, she may be sent to murder innocent Gazans in one of the most despicable genocides in recent history. 

Perhaps she had already been forced to participate in it. From what we know, she didn't appear to have been directly involved in the genocide. 

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/what-aaron-bushnell-did-in-the-military

But she ultimately felt complicit in a way that demanded action.

So what were Aaron/Lilly's options? Sedition? Traitorism? Perhaps it simply wasn't in her nature to want anyone to die. Perhaps she had already been forced to kill people indirectly and didn't want anyone else to, no matter how complicit they were in the murder of the colonised Palestinians. These are unknowns. But what we do know is that she completed one of the most radical and extreme acts of protest possible. She joins a long list of self-immolated martyrs of many struggles.

And to be clear here, I do not use the word martyr here flippantly. The countless Yemeni and Palestinian voices who have called her that, and awarded her many other honourable accolades including being publicly honoured in Sana'a, Yemen, yesterday (February 27th, 2024), confirm that this is how colonised and oppresssed people view her as part of their struggle.

https://x.com/intifada/status/1762670714060968139?s=20

https://x.com/Aldanmarki/status/1762043564870045992?s=20

https://x.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1762225663673561346?s=20

https://x.com/karaokecomputer/status/1762232705717322180?s=20

https://x.com/BIG__Brother7/status/1762090633873752093?s=20

Not just Palestinians, but globally, multiple anti-imperialist nations' representatives have expresssed a deep love and respect for her actions.

https://x.com/upholdreality/status/1762275594622943430?s=20

https://x.com/magne_toes/status/1762219467507945956?s=20

https://x.com/evoespueblo/status/1762588988445962341?s=20

It is only really white western imperialists who do not understand the act of self-immolation as an act of protest. From the endlessly proselytising zionist fascists who are celebrating another dead supporter of Palestine, to the moronic liberal desperation we've seen focusing on individualist and poorly understood anti-abolitionist mental health based criticisms: they simply do not understand what this means. What it represents. 

I would encourage people to read the information available about Thich Quang Duc, the Vietnamese buddhist monk who famously self-immolated in protest of the colonising of his homeland in 1963. It sent shockwaves around the world, just as Aaron/Lilly's death has and will continue to do. 

Thich Quang Duc's heart refused to burn to ashes even on a second cremation attempt of his remains, and is now displayed as a holy relic in Vietnam. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c

I wonder if Aaron/Lilly's heart would be given the same attention by her funeral organisers. I believe her heart, and the heart of everyone who engaged in such an act in the past for righteous causes are simply indestructible. Wherever it is, may it bless all those who come near and remind them of what she died for. These people were too kind and sweet for this world and the permanence of their remains is an testament to that.

Aaron/Lilly's friends have all commented on how sweet and kind and caring she was, and how  dedicated she was to the cause of liberation and anti-colonialism worldwide. There is nothing bad that can be said about her, even in the long aftermath of her death. She was simply human, in a world that is deeply, deeply inhuman.

She was up against monsters. Monsters that cannot be slain by ordinary means. Monsters that are many headed, can regenerate, and duplicate. Powerful demons that control our world and wreak havoc and pain and suffering wherever they choose to plunder, as greed is at their heart.

She acted in a way that she felt was the only way that she could. Her hand was inarguably forced, to do the one desperate thing she could to draw attention to what is happening.

May her spirit soar in the halls of our ancestors and rest easy knowing that we are all completely in awe of her bravery, dedication and solidarity.

I want to make some things clear at the end of this post however.

I have stated this on my twitter, and on my stream, but it bears repeating here. While I think this needed to be addressed in an appropriate way, and I stand by everything I have said above, I do not want anyone else to do this. I do not believe this is something that we have to do in order to make change happen.

I have always said that the need for non-violent building of power takes precedent over every single action that is done or proposed here in the imperial core. The fact of reality is that capitalism and imperialism are failing. It will soon come to a head where these violent machines will fail to work, or simply be abandoned by those who operate them. It is at that point that we absolutely necessarily must have a support network of power that means we can survive outside of that system and create a new world of fairness where everyone has what they need to survive and no one suffers harm and discrimination. I stand firm in my position that we can build this world together.

I want this world desperately. I want a world where people like Aaron/Lilly do not feel so desperate to do something so valiant and self-destructive because they have no other option.

So my final word on this matter is this.

We must continue to fight for this world and build it in her memory and honour. Not only is it what she would have wanted, it is what she died for. 

Mourn the dead. And fight like hell for the living.

[belladovah]

2024 Simming Goals

I didn't do very well on my Simming Goals last year but with a new PC and an empty game folder, I have a newfound sense of motivation and well...not much choice!

Make a Website to share my mods & creations, tutorials, mod lists, gameplay guides/rules, etc.

Make a Sims 2 CC Finds Tumblr Blog where I can reblog CC I come across. I will most likely unfollow some CC creators on this blog and follow them on the CC Finds blog instead so I can more easily find new mods specifically in my main feed. My content which is mostly mods will continue to be shared here.

Re-do my Sims 2 Downloads folder completely following my own advice.

Grow my YouTube Channel: Aiming to upload a minimum of 1 video per month. I plan to focus more on mod tutorials and showcases as this is where I am most knowledgeable and passionate. I need to decide what I want to do in terms of gameplay because I am currently unsure, I would very much like to at least finish Season 1 of Opening Valley, then maybe switch to streaming for Let's Plays or even not do them at all.

Create and Release more Sims 2 Mods: I will likely create several new mods during my journey of rebuilding my downloads folder, and I will also revise a bunch of mods I made but never shared and share them!

Improve my Patreon and give people more potential reasons to want to support me financially

Talk in my Discord much more, hopefully at least once a day

Reduce the number of accounts I follow on Twitter/X and start using it more again

Share more little 'nuggets of knowledge' and tips and tricks in the form of blog posts and potentially YouTube Shorts

Start playing a new Sims 2 neighborhood, maybe Pleasantview

Bonus: Learn to make 4t2 Object and/or Clothing Conversions.

[women-of-malevolent]

META - What "canon" is in Malevolent, for the purposes of this blog

TL;DR:

In order of most 'I accept this as meaningful to the story of Malevolent' to most 'do not bring me this crap'

Canon:

The podcast itself

The official podcast transcripts from the website (I edit out the emotion tags because I often find them redundant or disagree with their assessment /no offense; I super appreciate transcriptionist work! Thank you so much for providing the accessibility resource to fans who need and want it /genuine <3 )

I guess I'll hear you out if you think it's really important:

Call of Cthulhu lore

Original Lovecraft lore

Supplemental Q&A's on main podcast feed

Supplemental Q&A's on other social media

Just don't:

Patreon-locked content

Pay-locked content

Invictus stream / Patreon chats / Discord / speculation about author/writing choices

Malevolent is a weird story. I've seen it marketing itself as an ARG, or an alternate reality game. From Wikipedia -

"An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions. The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real time and evolves according to players' responses. It is shaped by characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by an AI as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and collaborate as a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally utilize multimedia, such as telephones and mail, but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium."

So, what are the multiple media that make up Malevolent?

First of all, I want to explain for anyone who might not know all these details: Malevolent is a weekly podcast. Every week, ~15-20 minutes of story is delivered as a Chapter to the Malevolent Patreon Patrons. Each week, those Patrons vote on one big choice that the characters will make in the following week's episode. These Patrons are called The Voices. Every 4 weeks, those 4 story Chapters are collected into one episode called a Part and shared with the public. The Patreon also shares exclusive author interviews, commentary, silly songs/other miscellaneous bonus content, plus access to the Malevolent Patreon Discord channel, in which the author and his wife are moderators and off-and-on participants in fan discussions about the show (including commentary about character backstories, motivations, what ships are/are not canon, etc). Higher-paying tiers get access to more channels.

Most of Malevolent's listeners have access to the Parts as hour-long episodes, plus whatever supplemental material is shared on the podcast feed. A small contingent of highly financially supportive fans have access to everything.

With that legwork out of the way...

Below is a list what I understand to be all the possible layers of "canon" in Malevolent, followed by an explanation of how deeply this blog will consider it as a source. This list is in order from most canon (1) to least/not at all canon (9). More sources are added as they come up.

These numbers also (probably, maybe) roughly align with listener drop-off rates. Imagine funnel-like drop-offs in number of people who care enough to engage this ancillary of material. Also keep in mind the listeners who are tuning in for the first time, 20 years from now. How much will they get from this source?

The podcast itself - this will be the blog's prime canon source. This is the primary story source from which the vast, vast majority of all readers and listeners - now and decades in the future - have access to.

The podcast transcripts - this is its own category because the transcripts often editorialize (not a bad thing - just necessary product of translating one art medium into another). I've come away from episodes with a strong impression of one line delivery (ex: delighted), then find that in the transcript, it's described totally different (ex: disgusted). I will use the transcripts as my primary source for this blog. I usually delete the tone indicators. I also add MR. to Mr. Scratch's dialogue tags after he asks Arthur to call him that.

Call of Cthulu roleplay game - I'm not familiar with this and I don't think most listeners of the show will be, either. The relevance of this source will be considered on a touch-and-go basis.

H.P. Lovecraft extended universe - I have not read much Lovecraft and I don't want to start. The relevance of this source will be considered on a touch-and-go basis.

Supplemental interviews, episode commentary, Q&As available on main podcast feed - The author very regularly provides thoughts on the story and writing of Malevolent. I will consider this source as little as possible. If you have some information from here you think is important for me to hear, I will consider it; but please understand that 1) the VAST majority of listeners will not hear this, even if it's not cost-gated; and 2) not everyone who hears it believes/respects authorial self-reporting. No offense but no way

Twitter/X, Reddit, YouTube, or other social media commentary - similar to 5, with less weight because even fewer listeners will ever find this or seek it out. Also, social media is highly susceptible to internet decay.

Invictus CoC games - not considered. I might look into these later (WAY less thoroughly than the main WoM blog), but also I might not. These are Call of Cthulu games that were DM-ed by the author of Malevolent. There are some overlapping characters like Anna Stanczyk and Frank Uphill. Even if you're into these pls you have to admit that most of the Malevolent listening audience will not watch them.

Supplemental, Patreon-exclusive content - NO. If it can't be accessed without paying or signing up for a website, naw.

Semi-private discussions from heavily gated discord groups - NO. Let's not

Speculation about the author - NO. This includes speculation on whether or not ____ is intentional, or why writing choices were/weren't made.

[twigsandhearts]

TWIGS AND HEARTS PATREON RELAUNCH

WE HAVE BOTH PAID AND UNPAID MONTHLY CONTENT TO ENJOY!!

TIERS SUMMARISED: FREE: MONTHLY NEWSLETTER UPDATES $2: EARLY RELEASE FOR OFFICIAL EPISODES THE OFFICIAL SCRIPTS AS SEEN BY OUR VAs $3: All of the above + Access to the Patreon section of our discord credited / shoutouts in episodes $6: All of the above + The old version of TaH scripts Blooper reels Bonus series: The Soteria Project $8: All of the above + All music tracks and anecdotes about how they came to be Themed live streams Interactive updates Bonus content such as speed paint videos

ALL MONEY GOES TOWARDS FUNDING SEASON 2! Newsletter comes out 1st of each month & other content comes out 2nd of each month.

[PATREON LINK]

[nyarlathotep-the-dark-pharaoh]

do you have any advice for amall youtubers looking to grow their audience? you're awesome btw

There are a number of things that you can do to ensure healthy growth of your audience: Post on other socials! Especially make sure to take your clips and post them on short-form video platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. These platforms get an incredible amount of traffic and this is where you can sell yourself. People become familiar with you while scrolling and when they do decide to consume long form content like live streams, you'll be a friendly face that sticks out.

Deceive, deceive, deceive. Don't let your new viewers know that they are part of an audience. Tell them it's something else, just a YouTube channel, or a casual live stream. Make it feel like a safe space, someplace people can come to really be themselves and just hang out. Once they've spent enough time, start establishing that your audience is in fact, the only place they can really be themselves. It should feel urgent to them that they get involved with your community, join the discord so they can finally talk to someone who gets it. Now, reach out to them. You, their streamer, their god, approach them in DMs. Make sure to be humble, they're already a worshipper and it will only make them trust you more. Start offering special perks, powers, rewards, secret knowledge. Let them in the "in-group." This is much easier if you're a god or monster but you'd be surprised how many mortals have got away with this over the years. If you do have access to magic, then you should appoint your most trusted followers as your warlock mods, who will grant boons to the devoted. You're a very busy creator after all! If you don't have any special powers and are having trouble deceiving your followers, you can join me on Patreon where I give out lessons in dark magics and warlockery (starts at 10$/month.)

Make sure to place your audience in an appropriate spot for the amount of sunlight they need. My audience is hungry for sun so I keep it on my windowsill but many audiences prefer partial shade. Don't forget to repot your audience every couple of years. Don't make the mistake of cutting them when they Bloom! It takes a lot of energy to Bloom and contrary to popular myth, it doesn't kill the mouths. You probably shouldn't need to feed them, they can generally handle themselves, but if you notice that growth is slowing down (and its not because of a Bloom) you might want to provide some extra food, though not too much. Remember, they're carnivorous.