#the weirdest post I've ever made I think

[tiredchaoss]

ine if we could have infinite options?? Do you love the colors of the sky but it's just a poll. You know I probably should ahve been able to tell how many options there r from all the polls I've seen but nope couldn't remember at all.

[mercysimming]

my red flag is that i'm considering giving caleb and jacklyn a makeover again

[planetpiastri]

pairing: lando norris x fem!australian!reader [no faceclaim] summary: honestly, you kind of expected this part-time gig to just be four days of pure chaos that gave you an excuse to see an f1 race up close. then some guy in the fanzone complimented your shoes, and the rest is history. notes: requested by anon!! this has been sitting in my drafts for aaaaages, sorry love <3 y'all are so brave for putting up with me while i try and remember how tf to write these uhhh yeah this one took a turn hope u like it anyway LMFAO

liked by oscarpiastri, ynusername, and 13,024 others

ausgp Arriving in style! The lads looked great at the Melbourne Walk today 🤩🤩

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username1 lewis and zhou are absolutely slaying!! and oscar is also there

ynusername oscar i love you but you gotta step up your game mate, i wanna wear your merch so bad but it is UGLY!!

landonorris excuse me ausgp i think my fit was deserving of recognition in this post :(

ausgp Can't compete with the hometown hero 🤷‍♂️ landonorris but daniel isn't in this either ? oscarpiastri You're funny.

landonorris

liked by mclaren, ausgp, and 811,364 others

landonorris he shoots, he scores! thanks for such a warm welcome melbourne :)

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oscarpiastri You and I have different definitions of scoring I think

landonorris ever heard of playing the long game? oscarpiastri Nurse he's out again

username2 where's the worker with the shoes i think they're indirecting her

username3 GET THIS MAN THE SHOE LADY'S DIGITS

maxfewtrell Now that's just uncalled for

ausgp Love to see the spirit 😉

username4 aww lando always looks so happy in melbourne, he loves it here :'))

ynusername oh wtf

liked by ausgp, yourfriend, and others

ynusername busy busy busy day, absolutely buggered, but very excited for tomorrow 😁 (also peep The Shoes on the last slide)

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yourfriend i mean... he's right, they are sick shoes

ynusername you're just saying that cos you made me buy them yourfriend well yes!

username5 omg are u the girl who was working the fanzone today??

ynusername i was one of them!

username6 ok if this is the shoe lady i don't blame lando for staring she's so pretty omg

yourfriend "the shoe lady" ynusername i've been titled?????

ynusername

liked by yourfriend, landonorris, and others

ynusername weirdest work day ever (included today's shoes bc apparently it's a thing now)

view all 112 comments

yourfriend that wrap was good as hell tho

ynusername deffo the most exciting part of lunch

username7 wait who is this girl and why does lando follow her?

username8 go to lovestruckln on twitter, she has a whole thread about it!

landonorris ...weird in a good way, right?

username9 your lack of rizz is astounding lando username10 bro STAND UP ynusername weird in an interesting way landonorris i'll take that

landonorris

liked by ynusername, ausgp, and 1,011,023 others

landonorris melb, you have my ❤️

view all 8,327 comments

username11 SHOE GIRLLLLLL

username12 i hope they never hard launch and he just keeps posting pics of cool sneakers

georgerussell63 You're welcome

charles_leclerc You did it, you crazy son of a bitch ausgp Where's our credit?? georgerussell63 You put the pieces in play, I moved them into checkmate ynusername you threw a shoe at me. calm down. ausgp He what???

username13 bro's collecting aussies like infinity stones

danielricciardo ?? oscarpiastri No ynusername :// landonorris 😁😁

ynusername you're cool ig 🙄

landonorris your swag style and utter disdain for me has captured my heart ynusername oh my god stop i'm blushing

tagging: @thearchieves @sheridamn @nikfigueiredo @charlig123456789 @ilove-tswizzle @aandreea2005 @sideboobrry @vellicora @eire-the-egg @marymustdie @cocote1410 @taygrls @koalapastries @vroomvroommuppett @nichmeddar @d3kstar @333kiki @ririyulife @resident-swiftie @zimm04 @jupiter-je-taime @ever_bizzare @clemswrld @hollieeelol @leireggsworld @ironmaiden1313 @lunar-racing @lightninginab0ttle @maddie-naps @bwddermilch @pnkwhskyprncss @landossainz @chaotic_version

request: hiya! i love how funny your smau’s are and i’m begging for an aussie!reader x Lando one. maybe she works for the AusGP and they met in Melbourne? idk -anon

[pruneunfair]

Ranking all the OI and manhwa I've read part 2: the moderate.

The decent stories. Just a little better than average

The tyrants only perfumer

My favorite fast food webcomic to this very day. It's characters are tolerable and there's just something some satisfying looking at the perfume bottles, the little bottles remind me of those DIY kits they'd sell at target. That being said it's still a fast food manhwa, the characters are flat, the plot goes too quick and the villains are easily defeated so as much as I enjoy it when I just want to read something quick and light, it's not a good option for something more serious.

The empress wants to avoid the Emperor.

This was actually one of my very first manhwas I've ever read. I thought it was one of the greatest stories ever told when I was still in my revenge phase and it's definitely not terrible when I reread but it's not the greatest piece of literature either. Still for a basic revenge story at least Louise actually gets away her fuckass husband.

Tears of a withered flower

I like it, just not as much as everyone else likes it. I've already made a few posts on it and my current opinions still stay the same but besides all the self insert this and the predictable that the dialog definitely improves from cartoony to poetic. I'm just hoping the rampant misogyny problem in TOAWF is only a fandom problem and not something the author is planning on incorporating into every other woman that isn't Hae Soo

I will divorce the female leads brother

Okay I won't lie this one is kinda funny given how it calls out the absurdity of protagonist centered morality in a better way. Ethel as a protagonist is okay as protagonists go and while the villains are played off as stupid thats because the story actually plays into how idiotic they are instead of claiming they are the smartest around when they aren't, specifically the brothers and father. Also the Og fl of this one has by far the ugliest designs I've ever seen. It's the kind of design where you can tell the artist did not like her at all and gave her the Miku special with those unflattering color combos. I think the weirdest part is the implied incestuous feelings the family has for Reina but once again, it's meant to be seen as vile so it gets a little pass.

Into the light once again

The pain I went through when I realized the 14 year old Aisha was being paired up with guys way to old her with this one because it was so good before it just ruined what could've been 😔. Outside of the obvious I adore both Aisha and Marianne as polar opposites and characters that aren't immediately nice or honesty to Aisha aren't put to death, for the most part at least, they are allowed to grow as better people and get character development. The magic system is pretty easy to remember though I think Aisha can sometimes get too deep in her "super powerful nice girl" archetype but it's not to the point of being awful.

The empresses lipstick

more of a comedy than a traditional rofan but it works, it's one of the first I've seen to get the rococo style a little bit better than others. (It's still not the greatest accuracy but since it's meant to be silly it has more leeway) however it sadly is brought down by the fact that Jane is heavily implied to be on the younger side when her mom bugs her about school and implies that she'll be going INTO high-school implying she's 15-16 based on Korean school systems and she's already being paired up to marry male leads older than her.. damn you age gap trope and damn you 18th century for reminding me of gross yet true history. If it weren't for the fact that I can't remember anything about the ML's age this would be lower.

The villainess turns the hourglass.

What I think of when someone asks me to think of the OG era for manhwa. The concept of the hourglass is easy to follow and it actually comes with a drawback so Aria can't be too overpowered, the bright colors make it all pop and having an actual villain for the FL in a villainess story ties it all in, people can complain about how awful she is but villainess is literally in the title so..you get what you bargained for. There are still cons though about it I don't care for, first of all I wish Mielle could be an actual threat so there would be a fun ongoing mental battle between two evil women, Isis and Mielle could've been smarter as a duo, Asher could've had a little more personality and the twist that Aria was actually of noble descent all along really killed the charm of her being a commoner who could prove she was just as smart as the aristocracy.

Perks of being the villainess

Deborah's already climbing up the ranks of one of the prettiest FL in my opinion because that shade of purple is DIVINE! The plots rather basic as most villainess manhwa tend to go. Deborah is hated by everyone except instead of a backstory claiming she's misunderstood, the og Deborah was actually an asshole to everyone she met except for Pilav so it gave her an actual obstacle. I do think some of them went too fast but I'm just glad we actually got to see the effort being done at all. I'll admit this was better then I thought so it moved up on my tier list. My only complaints are that the chapters can sometimes drag on and on to the point of being bottle episodes.

I shall master this family

I would like this so much more but it drags on so much! Florentia was nice at first but as the chapters went on and on I was less impressed and just thinking "yeah this is just getting boring" with how many times you know she's gonna best her opponents, don't hate her but shes becoming a little too meh right now. That said I like reading it, definitely suffering from a overpowered MC that could use some work but when it comes to politics it's so much more interesting if you can get past that one major issue.

Pretty good: almost better then average but I either haven't read all of it to place it higher or if there's just better

I will become the villains poison taster

I love my underrated girlie's ✊️ the plot is certainly unique, Giselle has the strange of ability of being not only immune to poison but the poison also tastes like fruity snacks/drinks. It deserves a little more traction then what it gets, the ML Reniel actually has emotions instead of stoicism plus actual critical thinking skills because the FL acts nothing like the OG villainess and Giselle, despite how it may seem, isn't the born sexy yesterday trope, she's just allowed to be a sweet heart while still being a person. It's not much but it's still pretty good.

Serena

Fashion and character designs are absolute peak but plot comes before art. At first I was pretty harsh on Serena but when I actually read more of it to form a more concrete opinion I realized it's not the worst and actually got a little entertaining. As a FL Serena isn't bad, I like that she comes across as a nepo baby who needs to work hard to uphold her predecessors legacy so we have flaws to work with here and at the very least the story seems to be kinda self aware that Serena isn't a terrific person. It's also a drama not a romance so while I don't like either Eiser or Frederick as love interests at least Serena can say the romance isn't supposed to be the center of the plot.

Your throne

After so many people telling me how good it was I finally caved in and began reading last week but I already got spoiled so I know most of what happens. Obviously I like the fact that Medea and Psyche actually team up instead of hating eachother and even though it's through spoilers Psyche is my favorite. It's so dang long though it's probably gonna be a while before I make any your throne related posts. Only cons is it can sometimes get too boring to follow.

Seducing the villains father

Proof you can make a stereotypical rofan and it can still work. Yerenica is the perfect balance of girl failure and likeability where her flaws are very common for most people and yes while she is kinda dumb she's not so dumb it makes me wanna slam my head against the wall. Erudian is pretty good as ML's are concerned, just a tad basic and the villain Soleia isn't dumbed down either. Love the second half of the story which gives a little more focus on Yenis family instead of just her love life and while it does get cringe inducing and the plot tracks off from time to time, I still like it.

The crownless queen

The FL is a recently retired history expert who transmigrated in her daughters inaccurate novel and because of those inaccuracies, there are new problems to face while Delia has to survive in a world where Barons and Dukes are switched and she has to climb to social latter. There's little things that really prove how much thought was put into it (such as Delia not knowing the exact date in time shes set in since she's in a different world)

Beware of the villainess.

A little similar to your throne but it keeps my attention longer then the former. Once again women working together instead of being forced into enemies! Really like that! The Yuri baiting though? Boo 👎, don't tease the audience like that (especially considering the og fl is literally called Yuri) can be over the top but I think that's what makes it stand out, it means to be funny and in your face with Melissa's antics but the best character by far is Yona, home girl just wants that check and I can understand that feeling.

Another typical fantasy romance

I gotta stop procrastinating and finish this one!! 😭 first off, Pellus is my 2nd favorite ML with his design being my number 1 favorite in terms of character design. For once we have an actual cold duke who accurately looks intimidating instead of basic BTS member. Best part though: it is one of the greenest of green flag relationships to the point where Lithera and Pellus are worthy candidates to face off Pereshati and Therdeo in terms of who's the best manhwa couple. Actual communication instead of miscommunication that goes on for chapters, relationship actually has steady progression that's just in the middle of how they get to together and Lithera is a great FL. Then I found a bunch of other manhwa and forgot about this one until it came up in my head while I made my first tier list. It'll probably go up once I complete the story.

This one took longer then I expected but part 2 is finally out and now I have to start rereading for part 3.

[gudvina]

one of the many annoying things about sotr is the shipping police. i swear i never saw the fandom being so bitchy about two ships that are not canon. yes people ship haymitch with maysilee and effie, what's your problem? why do you care so much you have to insert yourself in those fandom spaces and then complain because people are calling you out on it? shipping based on headcanons it's something that have always existed, we did not invent it. but alas! ha*dove shippers feel so superior they think they have the right to tell everyone else h**dove is canon haymitch loved l*nore d*ve all of this life blah blah blah and i'm here trying not to tell them that a ship being canon does not make it good. especially h*ydove because that's not what i'd call a good romance lmaoo

I've just made a post about this, so your ask comes right in time, but this is the weirdest fandom space I've ever witnessed.

Hayffie shippers continuously seem to claim that while they have shipped hayffie for 10 years they believe Lenore Dove is the absolute love of his life, which I can understand a few people coming to that conclusion, but truly I've not seen anyone (apart from a very few people) say they are indifferent to Haydove or even deny that they are this great romance. I don't understand why Hayffie shippers (and thus the Hayffie tag) need to have this strong Lenore Dove presence or even Haydove presence in their blogs, so much that Haydoves (let's remember, the same people who have been fandom policing since sotr came out) feel comfortable going to Hayffie shippers' inboxes to ask about Haydove. Like in what world.

Imagine having a canon ship and worrying SOOOO much about ships that are not canon and that people have fun shipping. I hate ship wars, these problems are easily avoidable if we stayed out of each others' tags, but this behaviour is so fucking weird and it's getting tiring.

Hayffie week is coming in a few days. Let us enjoy that, at the very least.

[twopoppies]

Hello there!!!!

So yeah, I got blocked by Louis on Twitter too. I’ve never posted anything about the kid cause honestly, I couldn’t care less, but after one of his Twitter rants, I suddenly found myself blocked. It happened the same night he replied to that “chicken parmesan” tweet, just to give you a context. I didn’t reply to any of his tweets about Larry or the kid, and I never posted anything disrespectful. But my profile picture was one of those old “fetus Larry” photos, which is obviously why I got blocked.

While talking to other people, I found out loads of fans got blocked that night too. And not just people who had said something about Larry or Freddie, but also those who just had icons of him and Harry, or even just Harry. I think he expected people to kick off and make a big deal about being blocked, but that didn’t really happen. The weirdest part? He didn’t even block the person he replied to, just a bunch of random people instead.

Honestly, that whole thing made me take a step back from him as an artist. I can’t lie, it hurt. It just feels so immature and unfair to treat fans like that, especially the ones who have always supported you and made it possible for you to do what you do. What annoys me even more is that most of the “Solo Louis” fans, no matter how nasty they are, never seem to face this kind of treatment.

WTF? That's the most childish thing I've ever heard. I was so pissed at him after the Chicken parm thing. I'm sure he would have blocked me if I was on Twitter. I really don't get this at all. Ironically, years ago, I remember him blocking people who said shit about Harry. But he was also in his early twenties then. This is a 33-year-old man we're talking about. I truly don't get what he's trying to do.

[steddieunderdogfics]

This week’s writer spotlight feature is:  @toedenandbackagain! ToEdenandBackAgain has 7 fics posted to AO3 in the Stranger Things fandom and all of them are in the Steddie tag!

Our anonymous nominator recommends the following works by @toedenandbackagain:

hold me now, i need relief

hot (sticky, sweet)

sweet to taste (saccharine)

A Sign of The Morning

seasons change (so do we)

"Her fanfics are what got me into Steddie and Stranger Things and for that I am eternally grateful for that. (Also thank you again for reposting your fanfics back on AO3!!!)" -- anonymous

Below the cut, @toedenandbackagain answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

The urge to write Steddie really took me by surprise if I’m honest. I watched the first half of Season 4 (the superior half, imho), and something about Eddie’s character made me feel like he had way more to offer than what he was being given in canon. So when he and Steve started making eyes at one another, I was immediately on board.

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

I love reading enemies to lovers, or enemies to friends to lovers. I love a slow burn like nothing else, the slower the better. I think there's so much opportunity in building a relationship within a fic, especially one that was originally not friendly.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

I love writing “long term pining” type fics. Especially of the “they're both in love with one another and neither realize it” variety. There's so much to explore in that sort of story and I love making the characters suffer just a little.

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

This question keeps me up at night because I love so many aspects of so many Steddie stories, which is such a cop out of an answer, I know 😂 I think that a Steddie story that has forever stuck with me was “Looks Like You're Hungry, Looks Like You're Drowning” by Capriciously_Terminal. Something about it just lingers, it was beautifully written. “Are You Flagging?” By soidade (my beloved) is also a forever favourite, it was the fic I was obsessively reading in my car before work. And during work. And at home.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

I would love to explore time loops in a fic but I am just so overwhelmed with how to start. It was originally The Lathe by palm violet that sparked that urge and  I've never been able to shake it.

What is your writing process like?

I keep a log of every fic idea I ever come up with, even if it is just a handful of sentences or a quick snippet. Specific pairing ideas get grouped together, but as I'm writing I will usually come back to my Google doc of doom and scroll through to see if anything jumps out at me that could work with what I'm currently writing. I try to start with at least a rough structure of events before going in with the details, and I like to know vaguely how I intend for something to end before I even start writing. From there, I just go. I find writing in chronological order very difficult, so I like to write big scenes first, and fill in the gaps. I also love useless tidbits, little character quirks that go nowhere and mean nothing in the grand scheme of things but round out who I'm writing about and what their bigger picture story is outside of the story I'm telling.

Do you have any writing quirks?

I love to write on my phone. I know it isn’t for everyone, but I find some of my best writing work gets done when I’m hunched over my phone in the weirdest spots. Entire chapters of A Sign of the Morning were written in various office waiting rooms, on public transit, or from my work lunchroom.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

I want to say posting when I’ve finished, but considering I wrote A Sign of the Morning in 12 days, and updated every day the exact moment I finished the chapter (no beta, no proofread, please forgive any and all absolutely horrific mistakes of that fic, they haunt me), I know that’s not the truth. I love sharing my stories, and I am always wanting to immediately put it out there for people. Posting when finished is, however, one of my goals as a writer. I would like to give readers a much more consistent upload schedule from me, and I’d love the comfort of knowing everything was finished.

Which fic are you most proud of?

This is another one of these questions that had me stumped for a long time. Part of me wants to say A Sign of the Morning, because it is, to date, my longest completed fic, as well as the fic that has gotten the most attention in my entire fanfiction writing history. But it has a lot of flaws. A lot. But at the same time, it meant so much to me that any other answer feels wrong.

How did you get the idea for A Sign of the Morning?

I loved the idea that Steve and Eddie had to have crossed paths before at some point, and I had always loved Steve’s growth as a character in the series but I felt like it was missing something. Some of the first few scenes that I imagined were the swing set scene, and the final fight Steve has with his parents. I enjoy stories that have character growth amid romance, and I wanted asotm to have that. From there, it really took on its own life. But from the moment I first had the idea, I wanted the story to have a specific feeling, which eventually led to how I chose the name. I wanted this fic to feel like the moment you have after the worst night of your life, the night you didn't know if you would make it out the other side. And then on the horizon, you can see the sun coming up, and you realize that you've made it. Steve's journey with his sexuality, his friendship, his relationships- familial, platonic, and romantic, and his growth into adulthood amidst a whole ton of supernatural trauma was what I wanted to write about- with Steddie to weave it together.

When writing A Sign of the Morning, what was something you didn’t expect?

The response for this fic is nothing I've ever experienced in around 15 years of writing. I've never had that sort of attention on my work, and I'm so grateful for every person who left a comment, a kudos, or a kind message at my Tumblr. I was also shocked how much of it just … happened. I had a few key plot points when I started writing, but some chapters and storylines (the party at the Byers-Hopper house, El’s “tattoos”, the fight between Jason and Steve) just fit and almost wrote themselves.

What inspired sweet to taste (saccharine)?

I hadn’t intended on continuing the story from hot (sticky, sweet), but once I had posted it I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I hadn’t really written a one shot like that before, where nothing actually happened between the characters and it was left hanging in the air with a “will they/won’t they”, and something about the one shot felt unfinished. But I also didn’t want to add another chapter, because I liked the standalone nature of the original and I wanted people who were happy with the ending to have the option to leave it as a flirty oneshot.

What was your favorite part to write from hot (sticky, sweet)?

The scene at the end of the story, outside Starcourt where Steve and Eddie are talking to one another was my favourite part to write. As much as the excess of samples scene holds a place in my heart, so many of my favourite lines are from that final scene. Eddie giving Steve his number by writing it on his arm and Steve sneaking Eddie into the theater really stick out in my mind.

How do/did you feel writing hold me now, i need relief?

The fic was originally inspired by the most beautiful piece of artwork by littleststarfighter on Tumblr, and from there the story really came together way faster than I was expecting. It was a harder fic to write than I anticipated. I wanted to explore a little bit of what Eddie’s life would be like if he survived, considering just how bad his injuries would have been. I have two conditions that cause chronic pain, and experienced an accident several years ago that exacerbated both of them to the point of not being able to get out of bed some days. Pouring a lot of those feelings into Eddie, writing the fic felt like a massive cathartic release and kind of a forgiveness to my past self for some of the things I had been hanging on to.

What was the most difficult part of writing seasons change (so do we)?

Right now, the actual writing part of it. I have the entire fic planned out scene to scene in a google doc somewhere, and this thing is fighting me every step of the way. Other than that, the hardest part of the chapters that are actually posted was probably getting into the heads of the characters from before we’ve known them, and making it seem realistic to who they are in canon. Writing bitchy Steve Harrington was a blessing and a curse, it was important to me to write him in a way that felt like he could connect seamlessly into S1 Steve Harrington without feeling disjointed.

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

Steve's final fight with his parents from A Sign of the Morning was in the works from the moment I started writing and when I finally got to it, everything felt perfect. The line where Steve asks his mother to let him leave is one I'm forever proud of. The final scene of a sign of the morning is another I'm partial to. Quiet, comforting love.

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

I'm getting back into writing! Slowly. Very slowly. I do have an ongoing Steddie WIP that haunts me throughout the day and I hope to update it soon.

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

So many people have reached out to me about a sign of the morning helping them come to terms with their sexuality, or that it helped them feel comfortable coming out, and for some others it even made them realize that they were in bad relationships with people around them and I am forever honored to have had something I wrote have that kind of impact. Fanfiction got me through some of the darkest times in my life and for anyone who is in a place like Steve, or Eddie, or even any of the other characters and they are fighting every day to just exist in a world that's so much harder than it needs to be- I'm so proud of you. So proud.

Thank you to our author, @toedenandbackagain, and our nominator! See more of ToEdenandBackAgain's works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

Can you elaborate about your perspective on AI/ChatGPT? Do you use it? I have knee-jerk negative thoughts about people who rely on it to write everything for them or who talk to it like a friend, but I don’t want to be reactionary

i don't use it and in fact have never used it for the very specific reason of i heard you had to make an account and i'm lazy lmao, so i would not say that i have a super developed perspective either way. i think some concerns about chatGPT and similar programs are pretty well-founded and of ones that i share i would say they fall into two buckets:

(1) people talking to it like a friend, as you say - on the one hand, as i've said before, i think people saying things like "chatGPT helped me more than my therapist ever did" mostly just points out that a lot of therapists are not very good at their jobs. on the other i do think that for some people in particularly vulnerable frames of mind, it absolutely can wreak absolute psychological havoc on them to interact with something that feels really human but isn't. the recent story about that kid who killed himself and also had a longstanding "relationship" with a character-based chatbot (not GPT, some other site/program/whatever) is a pretty clear worst-case scenario and while it's obviously impossible to prove he wouldn't have killed himself without it, and while in any case like this there are a lot of factors at play, i don't think it's being alarmist to note that a young, lonely person finding what they view as the deepest emotional connection in their life with a robot cannot possibly be good for their individual mental health or for their developing ability to make connections with other real people (which is ultimately related to their mental health as well). and even in situations where the "ultimate" outcome is less devastating, i think it's a pretty real possibility that someone not currently socially comfortable who interfaces a lot with e.g. chatGPT becomes less likely over time to develop the skills to forge real human relationships, because if you have an "emotional" relationship "with" something that never, ever, ever demands anything of you, it's going to feel like an uncomfortable and unwarranted friction when other people do ("demand" here being as simple as like "have a different point of view"). this is a belief i have based largely on my time working in private school where i absolutely knew kids whose parents went so out of their way to prevent them from ever feeling uncomfortable that they experienced any kind of encroachment on Whatever They Wanted as a personal affront lol. a recent reddit (iirc) thread that was making the rounds on my dash of people worried about loved ones having their delusions validated by chatgpt points to another really genuinely worrisome (IMO) scenario - one that's already "real" to some degree because you would not believe the amazingly delusional things people are saying back and forth to each other on the weirdest parts of reddit but i can totally see the relative frictionlessness of making a chatgpt account and getting as much interaction as you want (as opposed to a reddit post where maybe no one comments, you have to find a community where people are receptive to this, etc.) accelerating this/making it more common. recently actually i was on the openAI subreddit and someone there made a comment to the degree of "recently i had this really cathartic venting session with chatGPT and what it did was just reflect back at me what i had written in such a way that i had a really powerful response to it and could see it in a different light; i am an engineer and i understand that it's just pulling out what i put in front of it but it's easy for me to imagine that if i didn't have a decent understanding of how these things work it would be very hard for me to keep in mind that this isn't 'real'."

(2) education.... i don't know guys it's really grim out there. i'm pretty blackpilled on ed stuff in general but this doesn't help. and actually the specific concerns i have are pretty similar to the social concerns, which is that like... once a student has internalized how easy something "should" be it's very difficult to convince them it should be harder. this is something i've encountered a bunch in working on reading with kids/teens - there are some kids who do have the skills to read text written for the educated layperson adult (the kinds of passages the ACT uses and the SAT used to) who it's very very clear are just not used to having someone at their shoulder forcing them to work as much as they need to in order to comprehend it. i wonder a lot about what happens to those kids in college when they're reading stuff they can't read but no longer have me asking them constant comprehension questions that they need to actually do cognitive work to answer. and one of the recurring traits of poor readers in general is that they are not used to thinking as they read and don't really know how to do it. they're totally lacking in the instinct that says "wait, i zoned out this sentence, let me read it again" or "who's talking? let me read back and figure it out." assuming they don't have any major decoding problems (not always the case - but it's very possible to be a reasonably fluent decoder who still can't functionally read) they are often students who think of reading as like "saying the words in your head" without any additional cognitive effort and it's really, really, really, really hard to get them to break that habit. so, like, yeah, i think growing up with the understanding that using chatGPT et al. for schoolwork is potentially super damaging intellectually in the long run. and the students i am worried about here are also i think not prime candidates for teaching them better uses of chatGPT which as i understand it also require delayed gratification/effort on the front end, not to mention like... i think it's really different to use chatGPT as an adult who has a healthy understanding of like how to fact-check when appropriate and also a broad knowledge set that makes fact-checking more doable (even if you "know how to fact-check" it's still really hard to parse which facts are checkable if you just don't know a lot of stuff IMO), than as a child/teen of basically any age who does not have this and whose teachers are almost definitely not equipped to teach them. and actually i feel like this is the scenario where i most feel shame is appropriate in that the only prophylactic i really see is parents positively brainwashing their kids into internalizing the belief that using chatGPT for schoolwork is really really really bad, the way that one hopes at least some parents currently do for, like, cheating and plagiarism. like it has to be instilled as a value that students find viscerally abhorrent the way that parents try to convince their kids in general that school is good. that's probably my most reactionary ai related take lmao.

other than that i find a lot of AI discourse just kind of like... i dunno. logically lacking. the employment stuff, i just am no longer open to employment related arguments that don't boil down to "time for UBI." people who use it to write stuff for them, case by case basis for me. like do i really care if customer service emails that were probably already being adapted from templates are now being crafted by a robot? do i think it makes the customer service email jobs people stupid to do that? no i don't. i can't imagine caring about that at all. i'm not sure how much of your life you have spent interfacing with "emails from the average adult" but FWIW i can tell literally just by the ask you sent that you have better written communication skills than a lot of people... do i care that someone who finds it really painful to write a 3 sentence email that will come across stilted and awkward to the person reading it (which describes MANY ADULTS including SEVERAL teachers i have worked with) now uses a robot to do it? no. the one case of writing i can actually completely envision myself using chatGPT for is student reports, which in the schools i worked in were super formulaic anyway, and were also a huge pain to write for me, a person comfortable with writing, and like truly excruciating for many of my colleagues. do i think a teacher, who is already probably overworked and underpaid, inputting their observations about a student into a robot that saves them hours that they could spend on lesson planning, assessing student work, or having a fucking life outside the classroom i an idiot who doesn't deserve their job? i do not. is it concerning that the people to whom we entrust the literacy skills of the youth are often really uncomfortable with email-level writing? idk maybe but i don't see that chatGPT has any effect on that either way once you're dealing with people who already have masters' degrees. a while ago i saw someone being like "if you use chatGPT to write lesson plans you shouldn't be a teacher" and like i have some real bad news for that person about where the lesson plans of america are coming from (is chatGPT worse than dumb slop you found on teacherspayteachers? is it worse than some bullshit from the mind of lucy calkins lmao?) and also many of them are already bad and also the public school job i quit four months in was always on my ass about having a written lesson plan on my desk whenever admin dropped by even when i was working off a 165-slide deck that i had clearly spent hours on so like yes i also could have seen myself using chatGPT to appease that idiot administration so that i would have more time to (1) do my actual job and (2) sleep. (not to mention like i actually think in a best case scenario as far as what runs a successful school, teachers should be doing minimal lesson planning because they should have a good curriculum to work from, because doing actual high quality lesson planning and curriculum planning takes more time than it is physically possible to spend while also actually teaching.)

so, like, i dunno. i'm not like super pro any particular tool or pro the concept of AI in general and i think there are some real problems here (the ethical stuff wrt training corpuses is something i haven't gotten into that i do think is like bad but it's bad on a company level not on like the... concept of ai or a chatbot?) and reasonable actually quite grim concerns and yet also i find a lot of the specific complaints people make about it to be revealing in terms of the complainers' own ignorance of how the world works or else just preachy and dumb (again i literally can't imagine giving a shit that people are using robots to write professional emails when most professional emails are like already formulaic and generic and that's not even a bad thing, like i don't want william faulkner in my inbox if i'm complaining that my highlighters grew mold lmao). i also think that the fact that people now use "ai" and "chatGPT" interchangeably is bad for the discourse on all sides which is why i keep saying chatGPT (et al.) because the reality is i have no fucking idea what other AI shit is being gotten up to and i have a pretty strong suspicion that like... at least some recent AI "controversies" are about things that would have been considered completely normal 5 years ago, especially in the realm of film where i sort of doubt the line between "human using a graphics/audio program" and "ai robot" is quite as strong as people think (the brutalist accent controversy in particular strikes me as like... ok you guys cannot possibly think the same concerns about chatGPT apply to altering a few syllables of hungarian....) i don't know if that clarifies things but that's kinda what i got! you can feel free to ask for more clarification but i do not promise it will make any more sense than what i have here.

oh PS i personally would never use ai in a creative endeavor because that would destroy the whole purpose but i feel like "i don't care what people do in their free time to get their rocks off" also applies to people asking chatGPT to write them stucky fic or whatever lmao. like ok your taste is bad but ? this does not affect me at all... to some degree the idea of "if you never internalize the idea that it being hard is normal you will never develop your skills" applies here i guess but i'm not really worried about that in the context of Fandom, A Weird Goofy Thing People Do For Fun

[wisyhana]

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately

These past months have been, I don't want to say, rough, but I had to confront too many issues I have to deal with constantly. Some of those issues have to do with social media and fandoms.

Attention has become one of the most delicious traps. Being more known and people wanting to talk to me—all of that is amazing, and I appreciate it to no end—but I noticed that I'm not made for that. It's not that I don't like people; I unconsciously make it a big deal when it's just a simple interaction. It takes a big bite of me, and I start getting concerned about those around me. I can't stop thinking about how to fix things and take control over stuff I have no clue or power over.

Interactions in fandoms are some of the weirdest to me. I don't enjoy how people think, all those anti-pro shipping, all those odd names and tags, caring too much about what others will think of my opinion, and how people get so personal about ANYTHING. I'm not made for that. I don't want to care for these things, and the more I interact with the fandoms, the more I get influenced by them. And it makes me anxious, extremely anxious.

I have to stop myself.

The attention from others is excellent, but I keep ignoring my only and most important fan: me.

I need to feel fulfilled and complete with my own contempt. I can't keep looking for someone else to need me.

For that, I'll make some decisions, and that is starting to take a step back. I'll only show up on social media to share my art and recent works. I'll have to stop some interactions for my own sake, so notifications will be turned off.

I don't want to act like I'll disappear or not care for people anymore. That's my big issue, I care way too much. And it pains me; it makes me feel guilty that I'll practically ignore some people just because I need my space.

But I'm tired of running to people and asking if they need my help. I don't need to be needed; I need to heal.

This is not a goodbye post; it's simply the artist in me who wants to keep enjoying art and working for others while I enjoy my life as the person I am. Social media is my workplace, so I have to find a place where I can be a simple person.

So, if you ever want to talk to me, to the Wisydora who loves Yugi and Gandora, I'll be on Discord. My replies might take some time and take me forever, but please remember it's nothing against you; I'm simply healing.

And if I owe you something, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. My memory has been awful, and I keep forgetting important stuff.

Love y'all, I always do!

[ratherembarrassing]

2025: week 6 and 7

previously, on ratherembarrassing, our heroine was fleeing the mothercountry for the new world...

around the world in thirteen days: so all up, i made my way through every timezone in 13 days. i... don't recommend it, i don't think. it's possible that it was less good because, uh, i didn't sleep for 2 weeks, but who the fuck can say. in any event, onward to the ununited states!

newark!: the calmest airport in the entire country?! the cute little monorail to the train station?!?! the complete lack of signage about the two different train operators and the requirement to get a completely different ticket for each????? i will never fly anywhere else ever again if i can help it.

wet dream tomato: that congestion tax really is working because the streets of midtown were quiet at midday. the vibe was really off until hours before i departed when i saw what looked to be an eight year-old smoking. a shout out to myself for dropping a pin in the three theatres i was seeing shows in on maps and booking a hotel in the middle of the triangle, because that was, actually, sweet as fuck.

theatah!: oh, mary! (lyceum theatre, broadway). as previously said, laughed so hard i nearly peed my pants in a new york theater. as not previously said, i also sucked every bit of myself up and stage door'd in the rain and told betty gilpin, through the power of close proximity, that i love and adore her. go see this.

and then i bought a coat: this truly was an endeavour. the half abandoned basement of a macy's in brooklyn could well have been where i met my end, but i lived to see another h&m and the sweetest sales girl in the world found me the last remaining coat in all of the eastern seaboard. getting this home became a whole thing.

bagel bagel bagel!: so many bagels, the most enchanting of which was one filled with birthday cake flavoured cream cheese from a BTS (the band???) themed bagel store. new york, you are so weird and i love you so much. honestly, because of the weather i was really committed to just not leaving a 4 block radius if i didn't have to (alas, brooklyn) and just wringing the weirdest shit out of those four blocks was incredibly fun. i've been visiting new york for eighteen years and lived there for long enough to pay rent three times, and i've never spent so much time in times square, but i had a fun snowy time.

also, tho: you get mobile signal with data on the subway now?!?!?!?!

theatah!: sunset blvd (st james theatre, broadway). i actually have an entire post in me about this so i'm going to just say that you are free to picture me in the world's largest puffer coat, snoopy style, attempting to melt into the floor as nicole scherzinger said she liked my good luck babe hat as it quietly midnight snowed all around us. byeeeee. (go see this, oh my god go see this!)

theatah!: death becomes her (lunt-fontanne theatre, broadway). i did not know destiny's child's michelle williams was in this until she appeared and i very rudely said out loud, oh my god that's destiny's child's michelle williams. regardless, i was three for three with bangers on this trip. go see this.

go west! life is not peaceful there: absolutely nobody appreciated the moment we were all standing on line for an aggressive pat down by the tsa at jfk when wind beneath my wings started playing over the pa system. i was not amongst my people at all, so i had to leave. on the way, i visited texas for a grand total of 5 minutes. please picture me running off my plane, dashing 3 gates down the terminal, hugging @xactodreams, and running onto the next plane.

a brief interlude: once again they let me drive on the wrong side of the road. they probably shouldn't. why are the traffic lights only on the other side of the intersection. hertz does this thing now where you can just wander around the lot and take whatever car you want, which was more stressful than anticipated.

conclave conclave: this is, actually, the entry for @tgifemslash, my beloved little gay con that you too could attend if you want to do things like, uh, sit in a circle for an hour raving madly about the various wonders of 2024 movie of the year conclave. at this point in our story i had slept very little and was about to commence 3 nights of approximately zero sleep before 4am.

taco taco taco!: i admittedly have historically not been a fan of most mexican food, entirely because it's just not good in australia. in the hands of @wanderson20 mine eyes have been opened to the glory.

traditional shoutouts: clark street diner (my favourite place on earth). the grove (why do i always end up here) (i had to buy a suitcase). erhewon or however the fuck it's spelled (i joined a cult). the nice woman at the qantas desk (thank you for not charing me to check my second suitcase (see grove, the)). panda express (lax's international terminal's only good quality).

oh also: kbox karaoke in a deserted strip mall at 9pm on a sunday in an otherwise entirely empty karaoke place is, actually, it. were there other patrons for a brief window of time, howling on the other side of the wall, or was that the ghosts of patrons never.

SHE GETS THE JOB DONE: swerved 20 minutes out of my way and paid homage at the chappell roan billboard. shout out to the other person there doing the same thing. then i had to go home :(

and then a hero comes along: entire row of seats to myself, love of my life. it's such a rare treat these days to commandeer three tiny, shitty pillows and three gross blankets, strap yourself awkwardly to a bench slightly too short for even your shortass body, and drug yourself into unconsciousness for 11 hours. amen.

and then nothing good ever happened again the end au contraire.

cannibal club!: the yellowjackets is BACK, BABY! the severance/yellowjackets double feature is the only reason to get up in the morning, tbh.

a little brunch: little molli's (abbotsford). the smoked pork neck french dip is to die for, but the blood orange cream soda is to live for.

if anything else happened, i will never remember it, good night.

[julianplum]

The absolute weirdest thing about working on picture books (which is my main job, actually!!) is that I am making more art right now than I've ever made in my life and I can't put it anywhere or share it at all!

Which is, on the one hand, frustrating! As an artist on the internet, content output is sort of your lifeblood, and when I post new work, I notably get more traffic to my shop, which is great because making art is the only way I earn money.

On the other hand there's the thing of: art shouldn't be "content output," and there's no inherent worth difference to work shared now vs. later, and I shouldn't be prioritizing my output to match some social media algorithm or some notion I have in my head of what an "active artist" looks like. I'm a working artist, which is a different thing, I think??

The amount of work tee'd up for me this year also means that I'll have to put making new prints and stickers on the backburner for the first time since I started doing this full-time! Again, frustrating because I have a million ideas (snesbians......) and sort of a relief because it means I can step away and come back with only the best ideas having floated to the top. I hope!!

long post, ig, but I have many evolving thoughts and haven't reworked my newsletter enough / decided on a new home for it yet so they end up here. thanks for sticking with me in the secret work period, fam. I promise it'll be worth it when there are shiny books on the other side.

[mrs-gauche]

Hey guys! 🙂 It's the end of 2024 and I realized today I haven't posted on here since finishing Veilguard.

Well, to make it short.. since then, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, replaying it, watching my friends who are DA casuals and not into fandom play it (which was very enlightening but also hilarious 😂), so now.. I feel like I'm at a point where I know exactly what my issues with this game are and I've made peace with it. I still love Dragon Age! And I love parts of Veilguard and I had a ton of fun playing it (though probably for all the wrong reasons 🥲). When I first finished the game, I cried tears of happiness that after ten years my favorite character actually somehow got a beautiful Happy Ending and closure, but also tears of sorrow that this marks the end of the story that was set up back in 2009.. and tears of mourning that this story had all the potential to be so so SO much more.

Dragon Age is a very weird franchise in that all the games have been, in many ways, vastly different from each other and to be a fan of the whole series means to recognize all its flaws and changes, but still loving it because of its unique core elements that glue it together and make it so special. I could sit here for hours trying to put into words what I think went wrong with Veilguard, but I know many people have already done so far more eloquently than I ever could. This blog was always meant to be just a positive little corner to share my love for these games and silly VA stuff with other people and I'm sure I will eventually reblog all the two million posts I've liked over the past month, both positive and critical. But for now and the new year, I want to focus my time and energy on just being creative, getting back to drawing and trying to realize ideas about DA I've had for a looong time and that's my way of "emotionally recovering" (that sounds so dramatic 😂). 💜

With that being said... What a crazy decade year it has been for me personally in this fandom... So I want to look back at it, just some rambling under the cut, 'cause I'm a little sentimental now, I guess. 🥲

Before I created this blog, I was mostly just a lurker on here for many years, despite being a fan of BioWare games since.. uh.. forever? lol But I was always waaay too insecure about my English, let alone my own art. I also have social anxiety, so maybe that was part of the reason why I decided to finally create this blog at a time when the fandom was at its most dormant? lol (There is also a whole separate post for another day about how Mass Effect influenced me personally and how it made my biggest dream come true, the enormous honor to voice a few NPCs in (the German version of) Andromeda. Still the craziest thing to ever happen to me. lol)

So, seeing all the crazy excitement and the fandom fully revived this year and all these months leading up to Veilguard was both incredibly overwhelming, but also the most fun I've ever had as being part of a fandom! This year also marked the first time I posted my own art online and I can't even put into words how crazy it was seeing the response to that and I still can't believe that Trick Weekes not only commented on but also reposted it, that is still f*cking insane to me and I'll never forget the morning I woke up to see that. lmao

So yeah.. THAT happened. Followed by what I think has to be one of the weirdest, craziest marketing campaigns I've ever seen. lol Going back to 2022, we truly had it all...

A title announcement on a random Thursday that was probably done so that it would not be confused with the Netflix series announced a few days later. A tie-in comic more than a year before release that was... a little pointless? lol A vinyl collection that spoiled the composers a year before release. A title change literally two days before the first trailer. A reveal trailer that left many in shock because of its tone shift and complete lack of the former title character. A line of Game Informer articles that left us often times with more questions than answers. Every single article being deleted the very next month due to GI shutting down. An actor panel at SDCC happening right as Sag Aftra went on strike. A "fandom" party that had nothing to do with Dragon Age. Jason Derulo. An artbook that accidentally revealed the release date with its pre-order, which was then deleted. Twice. Memes about roadmaps. A second trailer that in hindsight probably should've been the first one. An audio drama by a different writing team with some baffling (but funny) lore mistakes. A combat showcase starting off with a disclaimer that "footage had been edited due to spoilers"... followed by THE biggest spoiler in literally the first ten seconds. The first IGN video with super spoilery dev commentary. A hand-on preview event with 140 people leading to spoilers galore... Did I mention spoilers? lol

That was when I stopped looking at stuff online, so I don't know what happened after that, but WOW, what a crazy ride that was. 🥲 Truly a DA4 Summer to remember and I'm unironically so grateful to have witnessed it in real time with all of you. 😂

Then finally, after ten flippin years of tinfoiling, speculating, reading crazy development stories and clowning around at every gaming live event, Veilguard was finally released and it will probably go down as the most emotionally charged Halloween of my life. lmao

Then it was time to actually play The Veilguard. Which took me about a month.

A month filled with what I can only describe as a crazy rollercoaster of conflicting emotions. Aside from everything having to do with Solas, I'd say my personal highlights of the entire experience was seeing Felassan (I screamed), the PHOTO MODE and even one hilarious "breaking the fourth wall" moment, where I would frantically run around in Elgar'nan's trap in "Blood of Arlathan", to a point where I would yell at the screen "SOLAS, I COULD USE SOME HELP NOW, HELLO???" and hearing his flippin voice literally two seconds later going "Yes, you called?" and I freaked out so hard I dropped the controller. 😂😂😂 Also, as someone who romanced Alistair in my first playthrough of DAO and brought him to the final battle not knowing he would sacrifice himself, you can imagine my flashbacks when I saw Davrin dying at Tearstone.. who I had romanced. 💀 Or the Dark Ritual flashbacks when I saw Morrigan wanting to talk to me right before the final mission. lol Getting the Felassan rune actually made me tear up a little. There are many little moments like that that I loved or that made me emotional, but ultimately.. Veilguard is a game that, for all the amazing graphics and cutscenes and flashy combat.. the more I think about the story and the lore (or lack thereof), the more I end up confused and trying to figure out what it is that's breaking the immersion to me in a way that the previous games didn't.

But anyway... I finished Veilguard, though the DA craziness of 2024 wasn't over just yet and I didn't know that the best was yet to come in December. lol

So.. Years ago, one of the main reasons I created this blog was to make silly "appreciation posts" about Solas' German VA and ramble on about my love for his performance.. I even remember making a post on here like three years ago talking about how I would sadly never EVER get a chance to meet his VA personally, because that man never ever goes to any fan conventions or public events. lol

Well... GUESS WHO I MET AT THE GERMAN COMIC CON EARLIER THIS MONTH!!!

YES GUYS, without sounding like a weirdo (because despite my obsession with voice acting, I don't care for VAs social accounts or anything beyond their work as a VA), but after years of jokingly referring to this blog as the "Ozan Ünal Appreciation Blog", and kinda the reason I made this blog in the first place, I finally met the man himself and it was probably the best friggin fan experience I could've wished for. 🥲🥲🥲

See, I've met a lot of different VAs at Cons before, who were all super nice and awesome to talk to.. but let me tell you, this guy has such an incredibly contagious positive attitude and charm!! lol Me and my friend were literally the last to stand in line at his booth before the event closed, there were TONS of people (there were quite a few VAs at the Con, but his booth had BY FAR the most people in line the whole day lol) and yet he made sure to take the time to talk with every single person, asking questions, was genuinely interested in our opinions, joking around and just generally SO FRIGGIN NICE. And he's just a very chill and funny dude? lol

And it was so funny, because there were SO many people and yet apparently I was the only person that day to talk to him about DA and Solas and he was SO excited about it 😂😂😂 (I bet like 90% of the fans talked to him about his VA work on Vampire Diaries, The Big Bang Theory, Gravity Falls and Nicholas Hoult lol).

And of course, because DA4 happened so recently, it was still fresh in his memory. He told us that he even watched some Let's Plays and asked what we thought of the game and I'm still laughing so hard, because he was literally like "Oh yeah, the lore is MASSIVE and it was so overwhelming and I could barely keep up with it, the whole time I had no idea what I was talking about.. like, what exactly IS Mythal??" LMAOOO His performance for Solas was so good and so convincing and now I'll always have to picture him standing in the recording booth, no flippin clue what he's actually talking about. lmaoo And then my friend was pointing at me like "She's actually a walking lore encyclopedia" and then he was like "Oh, you should've been in the booth then!" lol

And I'm actually quite upset on his behalf now, because he also told us how, when the English VAs were officially announced, he had actually made a post on social media about how he was returning for Solas in DA4 and how he got in so much trouble for that because EA told him they were going to make an official announcement.... AND THEN THEY NEVER DID??? Like, I was desperately waiting for an announcement about the German voice cast and they simply never made one, we literally had to wait for the credits to be published? (Also, the German and French version have only one female and one male voice for Rook and no one knows what happened there, we tried to contact them about it, but no response so far?? It's like they don't even care.) That's EA for you...

Anyway, we then chatted a bit more about his other work and stuff and he recorded an audio for me (I actually got him to say the "Vir shiral malasa, bellanaris" GUYS AND IT SOUNDS SO GOOD, like I was so nervous, asking "Could you do elven..?" and he was like "Sure, it's been a year, might be a bit rusty" and then he just knocked it out of the park?? lmao So I have both Lavellan's AND Solas' WEDDING VOWS NOW. 😭😭😭❤❤❤❤❤)

So yeah, that was my meeting with Ozan flippin Ünal and what an awesome guy and amazing VA and what an "epic conclusion" of this year of the Dragon (Age) 2024. lol And the timing feels so strange now, because, in a way, it feels kinda like coming full circle?

Like I said in the beginning, for years I was always mainly a lurker in the fandom and the reason why I created this blog was to join in on the hype/speculation train for DA4 and to talk about Solas' German and French voices and share my silly edits and gifs. And now I've played Veilguard AND I've met Ozan Ünal.. both things that, at some point, I wasn't sure were ever going to happen.....

So.. In terms of my fandom experience, this year was crazy and whatever 2025 brings and whatever happens with this blog or DA in general... I love this fandom (especially my little Solasmancer bubble <3) and I love Dragon Age and whoever's reading this, here's to 2025 and I hope you have a Happy New Year!! 💜💜💜💜💜

[aiyanakopa]

hi! for the art asks:

2) 5 favourites of your own work?

21) Weirdest thing you've ever drawn?

and for the fun of it: 25)Based on your recent reference searches, what would the FBI assume about you?

thank you! 😊

thank you for sending these! 💕

2. 5 favourites of your own work?

they always change tbh! but right now I'll go with these:

specifically this sketch of hange and nifa from my hange squad post

mildly spicy levihan

veteran trio riding their horsies

my first levihan sketch page (which is looking a little rough now but I hadn't had so much fun drawing in ages so it's very dear to me)

and to break up the aot brainrot a bit, daisuga with the karasuno first years

there's also a bunch I really like that I haven't actually posted yet 👀

21. weirdest thing you've ever drawn?

oh I've got plenty of weird stuff hiding in the deep recesses of my old hard drives, but mostly just in the sense that I drew it when I was 12 and now I find it cringe 💀 the most fun one though is a ponysona of robin lord taylor (the actor) that I drew as a gift for a friend from DA who really liked him (and from memory I think they ended up getting a plushie made based on it?)

25. based on your recent reference searches, what would the FBI assume about you?

I wish I had actual examples but my browser likes to clear my history after a while and I've been BUSY 😭 based on the references I had to search for my last post they'd probably assume I'm having a kid or that I'm getting into gardening

also it's very fun to look at my search history on my ipad specifically bc I only use it for art, so it ends up being like. 20 searches in a row of the same fucking 3 anime characters (I'm sure you can guess which ones) and looking at that you might also think I'm a little unhinged

[getvalentined]

I love when folks ask me Fandom Old questions and I get to be like "Yeah, uh, that's from my old online RP group, no it's not canon at all, yes we just made it up, no we did not claim it was canon but the mid to late aughts were a strange time."

It's honestly a shock to realize how often this has happened. I mentioned earlier that Reno's fanon surname came from this same group, but that's not even the half of it. I once made a bunch of screenshot manips based on the most ridiculous ships anyone could think of—someone slapped a random line of text onto one of them and to this day it's used as a "cringe FF7 fandom" meme. I saw it on the twits a bit back and almost fell out of my goddamn chair.

If you've ever heard Scarlet referred to with the surname "West," read about Tseng fighting with metal fans, seen Elena's older sister being called Anna instead of Emma, come across Vincent portrayed as having a PhD in spite of being a Turk, or caught references somewhere to Grimoire experimenting on Vincent as a child, that started with this group. That was us.

One of the funniest examples of this, for me specifically, is that we don't actually know which arm Veld is missing? The fandom generally goes with his left because that's how I drew him in the first picture of the guy ever posted on devart way back in 2005, but it may very well be his right. I've seen people offer "proof" that it's his right based on a scene in the opening cutscene, but you can't tell there either, and with BC's graphics there's literally no way to tell on his sprite.

Hell, this year we found out everyone's assumed timeline of the Kalm fire is wrong, and that's our fault too because we made some assumptions about Felicia's age for an LJ RP that were entirely wrong. She's around Zack's age, not Sephiroth's! She's old enough to run with a terrorist group in BC, but she was a child when Kalm burned, and that happened in 1997—we know this because NPCs in Rebirth literally refer to the fire in Kalm having happened "just ten years ago." Veld has only had his prosthetic for three years when BC starts. (This also implies that, contrary to popular belief, Veld may actually be younger than Vincent. Vincent may have been the senior partner, and that's why he was sent to Nibelheim alone while Veld was left at headquarters.)

We were really wrong on this! But we were working with what we had. There's no canon evidence for the vast majority of these things (the most notable exclusion here is Vincent being educated) but we weren't claiming there was. We were filling gaps, and canon was so sparse that we had a lot of gaps to fill. So if it turns out that Veld lost his right arm, then I'll just have to start drawing him that way—because losing his left was never canon.

Tragically, there's nothing any of us can do to make people stop assuming these things are canon at this point; there aren't a lot of us still in the fandom, and it's not like any of us have those old chatlogs anymore. People from this RP group have DIED since those days. It's been over 20 years since most of us met, and around 15 since most of us were in a public fannish space together.

"Prove it," people say, and I literally can't. Do you know how many computers I've been through since then? 75% of the platforms we used no longer exist. This all started on a BBCode forum! There is no proof!

But...there's no evidence any of these things are canon, either, so maybe think about that? The Kalm fire, Tseng's weapon of choice, Veld's arm, character surnames—none of these are retcons because there was no lore there to retcon. We made it up for our specific purposes, and it escaped containment in an era when there was really no way to do online contact tracing.

It's just one of the weirdest feelings in the world to see younger folk arguing about A or B point in canon, about X or Y retcon—referencing something my friends and I thought up at like 10 o'clock at night on a now-defunct IM client in August of 2005, because we needed something to refer back to for a specific scene in an RP and the source material had nothing to offer.

Absolutely fucking bonkers.

[frociaggine]

All your TLT posting is making me questioning if I should try it.. The only thing i'm worried is that I don't want to start a series and then finding out in the third bookthat the author made the antiheroic genderbent mao protagonist throw the metaphorical atomic bomb on the japanese because the author is an american descendent of a Chang Kai Shek general and wanted to absolve the yankees to grant herself a career (it worked greatly). So should i still try TLT as an olde commie? Love your blog btw, please continue reblog all those TLT fan art they look great! Thanks!

whew lowkey glad I couldn't get past the first book in that other series. anyway *clears throat*

If you like LESBIANS, Locked Tomb is the fandom for you. If you like BONES and FAILWOMEN and ARE ANGRY AT GOD, Locked Tomb is the fandom for you. If you like BAD JOKES and SHITTY MEMES, we have those in spades. If you love EXCELLENT FANART and DIVORCES that last TEN THOUSAND YEARS and LOCKED ROOM MURDER MYSTERIES, if you think EVIL COUGARS are SEXY, if you think PLUTO totally COUNTS as a PLANET, Locked Tomb is the fandom for you!!!!

[here's the rest of the tlt manifesto on ao3, podficced by @/wilfriede ]

On a serious note! I think TLT is definitely informed by leftist politics, and it has many themes that lend themselves to juicy interpretations on top of a really meaty worldbuilding and characterisation. Also the fanart SLAPS. And if you read the books you can check out my fics which, not to brag, are some of the weirdest I've ever written! featuring such tropes as: "bodyswapped man sucks his own dick" "vagina dentata" "ritual sex to have a baby during a mass death event" "in-universe academia" and "orphan girl meets her parents for the first time and they suck"

tldr please read the locked tomb <3

[confusedhummingbird]

I feel a little alone liking Starfire straight hair, but then it strikes me it's the post og comics that is this way lol Perez is unmatched everything about his design is the best her outfit, her hair, her face it's the entirety of his work that's just the best so when someone else try to do it simply will never be the same. I think there's other artists that do good but for Starfire I think they are unable to replicate Perez greatness maybe straight hair is easier for them to make so maybe that's why i like it better in "modern" works I also miss her original outfits it makes sense to show more skin and tbh her color palette works way better with her original-like outfit, it is so sad to see how little effort dc puts on her dc is very petty but ofc they overuse their shittiest writters tomtaylor and tomking, i swear theres a comic where they make everyone with a normal face and put the weirdest face on her I remember thinking this was so lame and on purpose they are pressed... They did it for just few issues thankfully, because my girl is canon-wise the prettiest, but I felt like an attack against her honestly anyway I won't forgive dc for being that nasty with her they are very pressed about her beauty and uniqueness and the fact people still love her! besides they can't write or keep good artists they only can maintain their same old bat family slop and jl lacking stories the fact they put the titans team down... i swear they are petty and they hate the titans not just Starfire but i feel with Star it is beyond acceptable, it is so bad

I'm right there with you.

Also don't worry I do like straight haired Kory(I grew up on the Teen Titans show) but I must agree that George Perez's version is the best ever! I think to me what made other versions not as good as they played too much into making Kory "sexy" and they tried to give her sharper angles and eyes for example to do it. I've seen plenty of panels where she gives constant bedroom eyes. But I think one of the best things about Perez's Kory was she was very pretty and sexy but she also had a girl next door charm to her. She was cute and bubbly and so passionate about everything. And this is shown in the way she's drawn where she's very expressive in her face and body language and her face and other features were soft.

I also agree Kory is the prettiest woman and one of the best heroes and the way DC treats her and the rest of the Titans will never fail to just make me groan and rage.