#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]

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[dervampireprince]

ASMR | Ultrakill - Gabriel x Listener - Gabriel Attempts To Comfort You (He's Not Great At It)

[M4A] [Established that you've met before] [Platonic] [You are a husk in limbo] [Pre-events of the main game] [Mentions of lore] [Comfort?] [Gabriel is Gabriel so... not the best at comforting but you are his favourite human (though he'll never tell you that... yet)] [Religious themes]

So um I um... After seeing a lot of cool fanart I finally carved and learnt about Ultrakill and... I sort of have fallen very quickly and very deep and I recorded this 6 hours after watching a lore video on the game and I hope it sounds like Gabriel. And this is an earnest attempt at a comfort audio, I know the fandom loves to meme but I hope I don't get picked on or anything for making this. I just like making comfort audios with characters, and some people do use fandom characters for comfort, yes even an asshole like Gabriel. He may be an asshole... but he's my asshole now. I just worry people will think this audio is a joke since the only Ultrakill character ASMR's I could find were jokey meme ones, but this is an honest real attempt at a Gabriel comfort audio. I just love characters and I love making comfort audios so I hope this isn't laughed at in a mean way. /gen

Anyway yeah this is like what happened with Astarion all over again. (For those who don't know, I discovered Astarion and watched all of his cutscenes and then recorded my first audio as him just a few hours after finding out about him. Sometimes I fall into these guys pretty fast.) And thank you to my Discord members who encouraged this madness.

And to anyone thinking this was an hour late, no it wasn't, daylight savings may have happened in the USA but they don't happen in the UK for another three weeks.

.

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]

[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.

[askagamedev]

Re: evangelist players vs. engaged players vs. those who fall off - does that not ever fall into the problem of trying to appeal to players who have no interest in sticking around and then alienating the evangelist/engaged players who loved the game for what it was? Too often I see studios try to broaden who their games appeal to, or try to capture the people who were never going to stick around in the first place, and utterly sacrifice their actual evangelists/engaged players and are left with no one who is happy with the end result.

I understand studios/the money behind the studios want to make the most possible money but we are now left with a market of video games where too many of them are all aiming to appeal to as many people as possible and thus appeal to no one. We're left with homogenous slop and for what? So many of these drop and flop, and when so many IPs and studios are forced to cater to this, the dedicated playerbase is left unhappy and alienated and they go elsewhere. Then the investors act shocked and scandalized that the studio didn't meet their "target goals" that were set to completely unrealistic standards.

You're conflating several issues.

First - evangelists are not known for good game design sense or business sense. They're known for their deep faith and love for the object of their beliefs, so much so that it drives them to preach. They tend to speculate based on their own feelings and projecting those values onto the player base at large, rather than gathering data and drawing conclusions from that. Trusting their judgement on decisions in fields they are not skilled in based on their feelings rather than collected data is unwise.

Second - all games are sinking ships. The rate at which they sink depends on a few key elements: the marketing spend to attract new and lapsed players, and a steady stream of new content to keep the new, returning, and current players. But every game is sinking because their players grow and change over time. Some finish school and get jobs, some start families, some quit to play other games, some drift apart from their friend groups and stop playing. Every game's days are numbered. This is why publishers keep pushing new ones - they need to stay afloat, and all of their current breadwinners are all sinking at various rates of decay. This means that publishers are always on the lookout for a new big winner to keep things going.

Third - We know that not all games will be successful. This has always been the case. Some of us are old enough to remember the term "shovelware" as a good example of this. The current lifestyle game status quo is a lot more sustainable than the old days, where a bad launch meant immediate layoffs and studio closures were much more commonplace.

The big takeaway here is that big failures are terrible for everybody involved, but a single big success can sustain a company for a long, long time - much longer than in the old days. Small successes don't earn as much or last as long as big ones, which is why publishers are betting big. As Charlie Munger said, "Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome". The current situation incentivizes long-term lifestyle games, which is why we keep building them.

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[teddypoi-qd]

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

[shizucheese]

Shizu's Official Pinned Post Yay!

Updated 10/31/2024: Added YouTube and Bluesky ^_^ Updated 1/29/2025: Kofi memberships and vtuber lore commissions now available!

Hey Everyone! I’m overdue to write a new pinned post for this blog, so here it is! I’ll be editing this as time goes by with new info, so be sure to follow me for update announcements! (As well as to know when I go live on Twitch, post new stories on AO3, and other writing news!)

I’m Shizu, and if we haven’t met before, it’s nice to meet you! I’m a queer romance and fanfiction writer, freelance editor, and Vtuber! If you want to follow me on Bluesky, you can find me here!

If you want to read my fanfiction, I mostly write BG3 fanfiction about my Tav Lysander and Astarion, and post Mag200 Magnus Archives fanfiction. You can find it here! Updates may be a little slow because besides my fanfics I'm also working on an original novel I want to get published, a story for Ko-fi and a story I intend to post on Patreon in the near future, but I can promise updates will come.

If you’re a writer and want to hire me to edit for you, my rates are listed below. Feel free to DM me here on Tumblr if interested, or email me at shizucheesevt@gmail.com! If you would like me to do an editing test ahead of hiring me to edit a full manuscript, I will edit up to 2 pages for free! I am also willing to negotiate a payment plan if you need one! Alternatively, you can commission me for my editing services via my Ko-fi if you would prefer to do it that way!

Proofreading: $10.00/ 1,000 words (or $0.01/ word)

Combing through your work to check and correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Copyediting: $15.00/ 1,000 words (or $0.015/ word)

Combing through your work to check and correct spelling, grammar and punctuation

Ensuring tone is consistent throughout your work

Ensuring that your work complies with the style guide you designate

Fact checking

Developmental/ Content Editing: $20.00/ 1,000 words (or $0.02/ word)

Feedback on narrative structure, characterization and world building

Notes on dialog, voice and tone

Highlighting any plot holes

Creation of a style sheet to ensure the spellings of names and locations in your story are consistent, as well as any other word use that might be unique to your story.

Buy me a Cocoa by supporting me on Ko-fi! Or commission me to edit for you! You can also become a Coffee Biscuit for $3/ month for access to the story I'm writing about my vtuber, Shizune Himebara, and her adventures as the magical girl, The Champion of Hope! First chapter is available for free! If you're a vtuber and you like what you read, you can also commission me to write things related to your vtuber lore! Bio (up to 500 words) - $20

Flash Fiction (up to 1,000 words) - $35

Short Story (up to 5,000 words) - $150

I don’t have a Patreon yet, but do have plans for one once I have enough of a buffer written for the story I intend to post there. Consider this a placeholder for when that happens.

Finally, if you want to tune in and watch me play video games or hang out while I write on stream, be sure to drop by my Twitch streams, where I play mostly Final Fantasy and other RPGs, the occasional visual novel, and if it’s October or if I get bullied enough by my chat, something spooky! I also do a writing stream on Fridays that I call Friday Night Writes where it’s all cozy chill vibes and communal support and productivity!

Streaming Start Times: Sunday: 4:30 Central

Tuesday: 7:30 Central

Wednesday: 7:30 Central

Friday: 8:00 Central

Edit: I'm also on YouTube now!

Finally, be sure to join my discord for streaming and writing news, as well as chill community fun times! (Streaming-related polls I hold here on Tumblr also get held in the Discord, so you can even double dip on voting if you want to!)

[luciidsimmer]

Where I’ve been🤍

Hi, loves. I want to start off by saying I’m so sorry for my long absence and thank you so much to those who have continued to support me while I’ve been gone. All around the same time last year I lost all of my sims cc + save files, was unable to film/stream due to home issues, and was struggling heavily with my mental health. I never intended to leave this community without warning, but the longer I was away the more anxious I was at the thought of returning.

Recently I’ve been doing better personally, saving up for my first ever PC, and even found a copy of my old save files on a hard drive that I thought were all deleted! I’ve been wanting to post content and reform this community for a while, and Im finally ready to do just that.

Here are some content updates as of right now:

Lucid Legacy Challenge-

This lets play will still be on hold for a bit, but not for long! Because I’ve only recently recovered this save file and have a new CC/Mods folder since last playing it, it’s going to take me some time to get everything sorted before filming more episodes. I’ll keep y’all updated on when this series will be returning. I can’t wait to play with Daisy again☺️

Twitch Streams-

Unfortunately I can’t return to streaming immediately, but I absolutely will be reopening Lucid Cafe as soon as possible! I’m in the process of moving apartments and am fortunate enough to have an office I can set up for streaming! I will have to run test streams to see if my current computer can handle streaming, but if it can’t I will have to wait until I get my PC. I have a donations page for this if you’re interested (https://ko-fi.com/lucidsimmer) As always donations are never required for content but always appreciated🤍

Socials-

Since social media gives me anxiety and I don’t want to support certain billionaires, I’ve decided to cut down on the platforms I’ll be using. Going forward I’ll be posting content on YouTube, patreon, tumblr, and eventually twitch. I’ve also been unable to get into my discord account, but I’ll let yall know if I return there as well. My usernames on all platforms is @LuciidSimmer

Current Content-

As of right now I’ll be focusing on making YouTube videos and making CC for patreon. I have a brand new video coming out tomorrow as well as new eye color defaults free on my patreon now! Feel free to let me know if there’s any videos or CC you’d like to see from me! I also plan on doing many giveaways coming up, so stay tuned for that!

I really can’t express how much I’ve missed this game + community over the last year and I can’t wait to reconnect with all of you🤍

[toplesstopics]

New webcomic page! "Female nipples are not penises"

Thanks for hanging out with me during my Joystick livestream while I finished drawing this "day in the life of a top free equality activist" webcomic page!

The VOD will be up for Patreon donors and Promo Squad members by tomorrow, then will go up for free for the public a month from now. But guess what--all you have to do to get free access to all my behind-the-scenes content and early access videos is simply share links to my content on your own social media pages, then post a screenshot of it to our discord server to watch the streams there! More info on how to do that: https://www.toplesstopics.org/promosquad

[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!

[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.

[askagamedev]

This is a hypothetical question, but do you think if there were more consoles on the market instead of the current big 3 we have today, do you think that would be more beneficial to the game industry and market?

I don't think it would be helpful. Game consoles are primarily platforms on which to deliver content to players, alongside PC, mobile, VR, and other various devices. Most of what makes a console compelling is the kind of exclusive games you can play on that console - as long as the technical specs are fairly similar, you can pretty much play the same games on one console as on another, aside from the exclusives.

Adding or fragmenting more exclusive content among more platforms isn't necessarily a good thing. We can take a look at another market where there are multiple competing platforms all trying to deliver content, many of whom have their own set of exclusives. How do you feel about having so many streaming services like Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Netflix, Tubi, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, Starz, and so on? When a new streaming service is announced with exclusive content attached to it, what is your reaction? Personally, I get more than some amount of streaming fatigue. In the case of streaming video, I don't feel like I'm getting a better value overall with more players in the game. They're all essentially fighting over distribution of the same pool of overall content.

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