#there are things i like about it but also a lot of things i'm very apathetic on hfhfhff

[mumblingsage]

i wonder how much this is a personality or intended audience thing, because I'm not sure I've ever taken "Don't use epithets" as a command on par with "Thou shalt not kill." The person recommending I don't use epithets has no authority over me. They can't take out a warrant for my arrest. They can stop reading if I write something that annoys them. So can every reader, whatever the reason for their annoyance. So it's not bad to know the kinds of things that often annoy or trip up readers (even readers who just read to enjoy themselves, without thinking much about the words used, can get tripped up by confusing phrasing, jarring word choice, or repetition, even if they wouldn't think to phrase it in writing-advice language like "use of epithets").

No piece of writing advice can cover every sentence you will ever pen in your life. For that matter, no piece of driving advice will apply everywhere, and driving well is a matter of life and death! "Don't stop at a green light" except when a fire truck is going through the intersection with sirens blaring. "Be judicious when you stop at a green light" is technically more accurate but not really more helpful because you don't want people to overthink the relationship of green lights and the brakes of their cars.

It's not that OP's point about deliberate choices is bad--it's very good--it's that I've understood "Only take this advice when it applies" as the subtext of most writing advice. Or the text. George Orwell's sixth of six rules for writers is "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous." (After phrasing the first 5 rules as "always" and "never" statements!) Anyone believing "this rule is universal, never ever break it" has themselves not read or written enough to encounter the exception.

I guess I will disagree a little, to the extent that I think, "Be deliberate about XYZ" is 201 or 301 level advice. To follow it, you need to know enough to fuel your deliberations! For 101 I'd just say "Here are some guidelines to know (at times you'll want to break them but try following them first)." I speak from some experience. I once shared this very good article about deliberate use of filter words (vs outright banning filter words) with a writer and got the feedback that the article was too confusing, the writer just wanted to know what they should or shouldn't do. At that point it's maybe easier to give them the "Do and do not's," remind them it's not life or death, and let them try following those rules until they hit a natural breaking point and figure out on their own, "Oh yeah, the rule usually applies but it doesn't work here. Let's do something else."

Or maybe, as we're dissecting phrasing: "Don't use epithets" actually means "The consequences of using epithets are undesirable to most modern audiences." But the latter sentence is going to confuse or intimidate a chunk of writing students, while the first gives them actionable advice to try out in three words.

My ideal writing advice leans more toward capability, of allowing writers to do things, so phrasing like "It's okay to use your character's name or pronoun a lot. It's clear for the reader to follow and this kind of repetition is rarely distracting or annoying" might be a healthy alternative to "No epithets." And "Passive voice is useful when you want to foreground the subject of an action and obscure the person who did the action" (since if that's not what you want to do, you'll chose to use active rather than passive voice, just as I don't squeeze a lemon into a recipe where I don't want lemony flavor).

There's also the school of hard knocks way, which is where your beta reader asks you "Which one is the blond second child of a mechanic again?" over and over until you realize the epithets are more distracting than they're worth.

I've already said that my number one piece of writing advice is to read.

But my number two piece of advice is this: be deliberate.

Honestly this would fix so many pieces of bad writing advice. Don't forbid people from doing something, tell them to be conscious and deliberate about it. This could help stop people from falling into common mistakes without limiting their creativity. Black and white imperatives may stop a few annoying beginner habits, but ultimately they will restrict artistic expression.

Instead of "don't use epithets": "Know the effect epithets have and be deliberate about using them." Because yes, beginners often misuse them, but they can be useful when a character's name isn't known or when you want to reduce them to a particular trait they have.

Instead of "don't use 'said'" or "just use 'said'": "Be deliberate about your use of dialogue tags." Because sometimes you'll want "said" which fades into the background nicely, but sometimes you will need a more descriptive alternative to convey what a character is doing.

Instead of "don't use passive voice": "Be deliberate about when you use passive voice." Because using it when it's not needed can detract from your writing, but sometimes it can be useful to change the emphasis of a sentence or to portray a particular state of mind.

Instead of blindly following or ignorantly neglecting the rules of writing, familiarize yourself with them and their consequences so you can choose when and if breaking them would serve what you're trying to get across.

Your writing is yours. Take control of it.

It probably sounds like I'm preaching to the choir here because most of my mutuals are already great writers. But I'm hoping this will make it to the right people.

[calla-lily-flower]

I'm not usually one to make a callout blog, but I don't think it's right to be silent any longer. I'd also like to say that I have no problem with tracing so long as it's transformative enough that no one can tell it's traced.

However, this artist is steadily gaining popularity in the Bloodweave fandom and the more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I get with the fact that this artist is popular. Why? Because they're tracing stock images and still frames from films, and instead of acknowledging this, they're passing off this work as their own original ideas. I know the correct thing to do would be to notify this artist before I go public with this information, but based on my interactions with this artist, along seeing other people's interactions with this artist, I do not think this is appropriate. This artist has a lot of friends who are also quite popular in the Bloodweave community, which is why I'm doing this on a burner account and not my actual account.

A few words of advice: to the artist's friends, if you dismiss this as drama, I will assume that you have not read this piece in full. I would like to restate I do not take this post lightly. If this was a one time thing, I would ignore it. However, this is not a one time thing, and you are tarnishing your own work by hanging around this artist. To the artist: you cannot delete your work to hide, as I have already saved the pieces to the Internet Archive. The internet is forever, my love. To both the artist and their friends: my understanding is that there are tensions between you and some other members of the Bloodweave community. I am not associated or affiliated with those members. I am a third party who became concerned once I saw this first picture, and things escalated from there. Similar to the drama comment above, if you associate this with the people you have friction with, I'll assume you haven't read the post.

Without further ado, here we go.

The artist I'm referring to is calolily. I hate that I have to make this post, because I was a fan of their work for a long time. However, in March, calolily posted this image:

As a certified horse girl, this image threw me off. For those of you who don't get what I'm saying, the issue is with the bit: the metal thing that goes in a horse's mouth. On a horse, it goes in towards the middle of their mouth, behind their incisors (which are the teeth you can see when a horse opens their mouth) into their interdental space, which is basically a long stretch of gum that's in front of the horse's molars. A good fitting bit should not be uncomfortable for a horse. However, this is where calolily has it positioned:

Right in front of the horse's incisors. Ignoring that there's no way the bit would stay in the horse's mouth at that point, if the bit was there, that would be a very unhappy horse. That bottom part is where some (not all, as most reins should sit at the bit) reins would sit.

Despite that, I didn't think the image was traced at first. I know bridles can be hard to draw, so I ignored it. That is, until I was looking for references images for my own piece of cowboy artwork, and found this:

You don't see the similarities? That's all right, I'll help you:

Now I'll admit, at first I didn't get too freaked out by this. Horses are a bitch to draw, so I'm not going to blame someone if they need help getting them done. Was I a little annoyed that calolily didn't say that they traced? Sure, but I thought it was a one-off.

That is, until I saw this:

The left image is calolily's drawing of Gale from their professor AU. The right image is a still from the movie "We Don't Live Here Anymore." Once again, I'm providing a side by side alongside an overlay.

(I am so bad at overlays, but I hope you see the point I'm trying to make.)

It's one thing to copy a picture from a stock artist. It's a little scummy, yes. It's definitely copyright infringement, but people turn a blind eye to it if you're a hobbyist. Copying a still from a movie without crediting it? Only making light changes, like swapping out the watch for a wedding ring and adding a periodic table to the background? Not okay. That's someone else's art you're taking away from them.

But it's whatever, right? It's not like calolily's making money off this, right?

Right???

The left image is a print from calolily's Inprnt page. There's a sale on right now, so you can purchase prints range from $6 (regular $8) to $78.75 (regular $105). The right image is a bondage ad.

I'm not going to point out the similarities on this one. I'm sure you can see how the arms and hands are positioned in the same way, how the only change is making the picture more "Gale" like. I've never purchased calolily's work, but if I was interested in purchasing a commission from them, I'd be worried. Would I get an original piece or would I get a traced bondage ad? Who knows.

Maybe this is a recent development though. Maybe calolily got inundated with requests and, not wanting to let their fans down, decided to take some shortcuts to keep their fans happy.

Ha.

On April 19th, calolily posted an "art improvement" post. Perhaps the improved post was traced, but surely the before was--oh, it was traced too? Alright then. The worst part is that this tracing was not from a movie or one of those giant stock image sites or even an ad. This one was from an independent stock photographer named Rob Lang, and as far as I can tell, he hasn't been licensed out to another stock site. He's freelance.

Unless this drawing was made in the past week, I'm going to assume that tracing has been a long time thing with calolily.

I don't get it. If they'd hidden some of the minor details like the shirt folds and the finger positions, I don't think anyone would've noticed. Hell, I didn't notice until I realized there was something wrong with that horse drawing. And I have zero doubt there's more. What's the old saying? Once is a mistake, twice is a habit? Seems like calolily's been on this habit for a while then.

I know some of you are going to brush this off as this not mattering because it's just stock images or that everyone traces, but the thing is, do you trace as noticeably as this? I don't think you do. And these are all someone's hard work they're passing off as their own, even the bondage ad, even the stock images, and I don't think that's right.

Where do we go from here? I have answers for two different groups of people.

For calolily's friends: Don't defend them. All of you are artists yourselves and surely none of you would do anything this blatant. If you still want to associate with calolily, then hold them accountable. Make sure they don't do this again. If you want to stop associating with them, then explain why. Don't be unnecessarily cruel, but be honest. If you were duped alongside the rest of us, post screenshots and get captures of any images you suspect are traced (because I know there are more) before calolily deletes them.

For calolily: Don't delete. Like I said, the internet is forever. Don't lie either. I know your favorite excuse is that you were an animator so you can draw from reference really fast, but does that explain the same shirt folds? The same finger positions? It doesn't. Instead, I recommend you come clean about all the pictures you traced and provide either links or pictures of them. Apologize to your fans. Apologize to the people you've hurt, because you've hurt a lot of them. Strive to do better.

Don't be a James Somerton.

And know this: if you try and hide this, know that it'll keep coming back. I think it'd be better to come clean now, don't you?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Every complex ecosystem has parasites

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me at NEW ZEALAND'S UNITY BOOKS in AUCKLAND on May 2, and in WELLINGTON on May 3. More tour dates (Pittsburgh, PDX, London, Manchester) here.

Patrick "patio11" McKenzie is a fantastic explainer, the kind of person who breaks topics down in ways that stay with you, and creep into your understanding of other subjects, too. Take his 2022 essay, "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero":

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/

It's a very well-argued piece, and here's the nut of it:

The marginal return of permitting fraud against you is plausibly greater than zero, and therefore, you should welcome greater than zero fraud.

In other words, if you allow some fraud, you will also allow through a lot of non-fraudulent business that would otherwise trip your fraud meter. Or, put it another way, the only way to prevent all fraud is to chase away a large proportion of your customers, whose transactions are in some way abnormal or unexpected.

Another great explainer is Bruce Schneier, the security expert. In the wake of 9/11, lots of pundits (and senior government officials) ran around saying, "No price is too high to prevent another terrorist attack on our aviation system." Schneier had a foolproof way of shutting these fools up: "Fine, just ground all civilian aircraft, forever." Turns out, there is a price that's too high to pay for preventing air-terrorism.

Latent in these two statements is the idea that the most secure systems are simple, and while simplicity is a fine goal to strive for, we should always keep in mind the maxim attributed to Einstein, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." That is to say, some things are just complicated.

20 years ago, my friend Kathryn Myronuk and I were talking about the spam wars, which were raging at the time. The spam wars were caused by the complexity of email: as a protocol (rather than a product), email is heterogenuous. There are lots of different kinds of email servers and clients, and many different ways of creating and rendering an email. All this flexibility makes email really popular, and it also means that users have a wide variety of use-cases for it. As a result, identifying spam is really hard. There's no reliable automated way of telling whether an email is spam or not – you can't just block a given server, or anyone using a kind of server software, or email client. You can't choose words or phrases to block and only block spam.

Many solutions were proposed to this at the height of the spam wars, and they all sucked, because they all assumed that the way the proposer used email was somehow typical, thus we could safely build a system to block things that were very different from this "typical" use and not catch too many dolphins in our tuna nets:

https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

So Kathryn and I were talking about this, and she said, "Yeah, all complex ecosystems have parasites." I was thunderstruck. The phrase entered my head and never left. I even gave a major speech with that title later that year, at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference:

https://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt

Truly, a certain degree of undesirable activity is the inevitable price you pay once you make something general purpose, generative, and open. Open systems – like the web, or email – succeed because they are so adaptable, which means that all kinds of different people with different needs find ways to make use of them. The undesirable activity in open systems is, well, undesirable, and it's valid and useful to try to minimize it. But minimization isn't the same as elimination. "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero," because "everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Complexity is generative, but "all complex ecosystems have parasites."

America is a complex system. It has, for example, a Social Security apparatus that has to serve more than 65 million people. By definition, a cohort of 65 million people will experience 65 one-in-a-million outliers every day. Social Security has to accommodate 65 million variations on the (surprisingly complicated) concept of a "street address":

https://gist.github.com/almereyda/85fa289bfc668777fe3619298bbf0886

It will have to cope with 65 million variations on the absolutely, maddeningly complicated idea of a "name":

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

In cybernetics, we say that a means of regulating a system must be capable of representing as many states as the system itself – that is, if you're building a control box for a thing with five functions, the box needs at least five different settings:

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/REQVAR.html

So when we're talking about managing something as complicated as Social Security, we need to build a Social Security Administration that is just as complicated. Anything that complicated is gonna have parasites – once you make something capable of managing the glorious higgeldy piggeldy that is the human experience of names, dates of birth, and addresses, you will necessarily create exploitable failure modes that bad actors can use to steal Social Security. You can build good fraud detection systems (as the SSA has), and you can investigate fraud (as the SSA does), and you can keep this to a manageable number – in the case of the SSA, that number is well below one percent:

https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF12948/IF12948.2.pdf

But if you want to reduce Social Security fraud from "a fraction of one percent" to "zero percent," you can either expend a gigantic amount of money (far more than you're losing to fraud) to get a little closer to zero – or you can make Social Security far simpler. For example, you could simply declare that anyone whose life and work history can't fit in a simple database schema is not eligible for Social Security, kick tens of millions of people off the SSI rolls, and cause them to lose their homes and starve on the streets. This isn't merely cruel, it's also very, very expensive, since homelessness costs the system far more than Social Security. The optimum amount of fraud is non-zero.

Conservatives hate complexity. That's why the Trump administration banned all research grants for proposals that contained the word "systemic" (as a person with so-far-local cancer, I sure worry about what happens when and if my lymphoma become systemic). I once described the conservative yearning for "simpler times," as a desire to be a child again. After all, the thing that made your childhood "simpler" wasn't that the world was less complicated – it's that your parents managed that complexity and shielded you from it. There's always been partner abuse, divorce, gender minorities, mental illness, disability, racial discrimination, geopolitical crises, refugees, and class struggle. The only people who don't have to deal with this stuff are (lucky) children.

Complexity is an unavoidable attribute of all complicated processes. Evolution is complicated, so it produces complexity. It's convenient to think about a simplified model of genes in which individual genes produce specific traits, but it turns out genes all influence each other, are influenced in turn by epigenetics, and that developmental factors play a critical role in our outcomes. From eye-color to gender, evolution produces spectra, not binaries. It's ineluctably (and rather gloriously) complicated.

The conservative project to insist that things can be neatly categorized – animal or plant, man or woman, planet or comet – tries to take graceful bimodal curves and simplify them into a few simple straight lines – one or zero (except even the values of the miniature transistors on your computer's many chips are never at "one" or "zero" – they're "one-ish" and "mostly zero").

Like Social Security, fraud in the immigration system is a negligible rounding error. The US immigration system is a baroque, ramified, many-tendriled thing (I have the receipts from the immigration lawyers who helped me get a US visa, a green card, and citizenship to prove it). It is already so overweighted with pitfalls and traps for the unwary that a good immigration lawyer might send you to apply for a visa with 600 pages of documentation (the most I ever presented) just to make sure that every possible requirement is met:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/2242342898/in/photolist-zp6PxJ-4q9Aqs-2nVHTZK-2pFKHyf

After my decades of experience with the US immigration system, I am prepared to say that the system is now at a stage where it is experiencing sharply diminishing returns from its anti-fraud systems. The cost of administering all this complexity is high, and the marginal amount of fraud caught by any new hoop the system gins up for migrants to jump through will round to zero.

Which poses a problem for Trump and trumpists: having whipped up a national panic about out of control immigration and open borders, the only way to make the system better at catching the infinitesimal amount of fraud it currently endures is to make the rules simpler, through the blunt-force tactic of simply excluding people who should be allowed in the country. For example, you could ban college kids planning to spend the summer in the US on the grounds that they didn't book all their hotels in advance, because they're planning to go from city to city and wing it:

https://www.newsweek.com/germany-tourists-deported-hotel-maria-lepere-charlotte-pohl-hawaii-2062046

Or you could ban the only research scientist in the world who knows how to interpret the results of the most promising new cancer imaging technology because a border guard was confused about the frog embryos she was transporting (she's been locked up for two months now):

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/horrified-harvard-scientists-ice-arrest-leaves-cancer-researchers-scrambling/ar-AA1DlUt8

Of course, the US has long operated a policy of "anything that confuses a border guard is grounds for being refused entry" but the Trump administration has turned the odd, rare outrage into business-as-usual.

But they can lock up or turn away as many people as they want, and they still won't get the amount of fraud to zero. The US is a complicated place. People have complicated reasons for entering the USA – work, family reunion, leisure, research, study, and more. The only immigration system that doesn't leak a little at the seams is an immigration system that is so simple that it has no seams – a toy immigration system for a trivial country in which so little is going on that everything is going on.

The only garden without weeds is a monoculture under a dome. The only email system without spam is a closed system managed by one company that only allows a carefully vetted cluster of subscribers to communicate with one another. The only species with just two genders is one wherein members who fit somewhere else on the spectrum are banished or killed, a charnel process that never ends because there are always newborns that are outside of the first sigma of the two peaks in the bimodal distribution.

A living system – a real country – is complicated. It's a system, where people do things you'll never understand for perfectly good reasons (and vice versa). To accommodate all that complexity, we need complex systems, and all complex ecosystems have parasites. Yes, you can burn the rainforest to the ground and planting monocrops in straight rows, but then what you have is a farm, not a forest, vulnerable to pests and plagues and fire and flood. Complex systems have parasites, sure, but complex systems are resilient. The optimal level of fraud is never zero, because a system that has been simplified to the point where no fraud can take place within it is a system that is so trivial and brittle as to be useless.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/24/hermit-kingdom/#simpler-times

[bunnwich]

Same anon about the Leona bf Hcs....I'm also curious, do you have any ICKS when it comes to how people portray Leona romantically? plspls, I wanna get controversial.

My Leona Boyfriend HC Icks

(This is subjective, but you asked! Idk why I wanted to answer this ask before your other one… I guess I felt some type of way. It's a bit more ranty/bitchy so be forewarned. I’ve been in the fandom since the ENG release, so I've seen a lot of stuff that personally icks me. Dw I’ll get to your other ask!!)

Btw, I know some ppl won't like some of these opinions, but it's just my personal preferences at the end of the day! Friendly reminder: I am not the authority on Leona Kingscholar nor do I claim to be!!!

STINKY (But not metaphorically)

Why? He is an athlete and a prince? All the athletes I know bathe MORE than other ppl bc they get sweaty.  Besides…we all have bad hygiene when we aren't doing well mentally? So, this HC at best is just gross, and at WORST is offensive.  Also, just a question for ppl who do STILL this: Why would you WANT him to stink??? I never understood this mindset, even if he WAS that lazy. I simply wouldn’t wanna HC that he stinks. I love myself. GFBHNJM (Idia seems to get this stinky boy treatment too WHYY??? Sorry, I choose to believe my man smells good.)

HERBIVORE. (The H-Word)

I think where people lose me fast in Leona fics is hitting me over the head with the word “herbivore.” Honestly…he doesn't use the word as much as people think?? And I don’t think he would call his S/O at all. I find it mean? Because of the Japanese context of this word, and just the literal meaning. I think of it as more akin to the word “whimp” or “weakling.” It's not…cute to me? He doesn’t even use it for the MC later in the game as much. So, unless you're a lion beastman or fellow carnivore, I’d expect prey nicknames. Kitten, mouse, bird, bunny, etc. He even likens the MC to a “kitten” in a few voicelines. Just makes more sense to me, idk. Think of the silly nicknames he has for the canon cast. That or you know…he’d just use your name.

BRUTE BOYFRIEND

He's rude, sure. But no…Leona is NOT beating anyone up for looking/flirting with you. Would he be annoyed, maybe even secretly furious? Sure. But, he's not a “brute strength" kinda guy who uses his fists. (It’s almost like it's his main battle line!) If someone truly hurt you or did something off-color, he’d probably send someone else to do the dirty work to intimidate or deal with them.  In a real fight, OFC he'd defend you, but fighting cause some guy winked at you? NO. I don’t personally believe so. He’s a grown man with high intelligence, so I think high school like beef would be a bit beneath him?? At least he'd have one of his goons go do it.

ALOOF BOYFRIEND

I think where a lot of ppl lose me is the “aloof/stoic” bf thing.  No doubt he would keep his distance at the first instance of catching feelings because he doesn't wanna be hurt. At first, he’s only batting at you to gauge how you feel for him. But if he becomes seriously interested, and then you begin dating, I just don’t believe he would care what other people think. Or try to downplay your relationship. He’d wait for you to make the first real move, sure…but YOU’D KNOW. I just think about how he acted toward Sally in the last Halloween event and how he was almost “uncharacteristically” sweet to her. I think because Leona isn't super close to anyone in NRC—beyond a few of his frosh or respect-based relationships (like he has with Vil), we don’t see this side of him often, and so it comes as a shock.  Without spoiling anything, let’s just say…he was VERY unbothered at everyone's reaction to his soft side. He was focused on Sally and being nice to her. And if we apply this to “bf status Leona,” I think he’d be too focused on YOU to worry about what other ppl think of him. I’ve been preaching for years that this part of him always existed, and that now he just chooses who sees it. He saves his softness for very specific people he deems worthy of his time. Period. You’ll have to play a bit of a game to get on his good side, but like the motto of Savanaclaw: PERSISTENTLY proving to Leona that you care for him despite his flaws, he’ll come around. And when you're together, well- (I'll save that for the other ask) Especially if you are in an established relationship. He clearly thinks the world of you. He doesn’t have many close relationships, so you think he’s wasting his time with someone he wouldn’t even bother to be nice to??? Besides, Leona later in the main story becomes quite self-aware of his inability to reach out to others, despite craving affection desperately. He knows it's his blind spot, SO he's putting effort into being a good bf to you!

HE'S 20 (45)

To further my above point, I think people forget he is a few years older than even the other 3 years, and…was raised by an old man? I think when ppl write him with low emotional maturity...it loses me. I get it, he's a brat. And often he CHOOSES to act like a petulant prince when it suits him. But, I think deep down esp in more serious situations, we’ve seen that he's wise, calm, and level-headed. Just some nuance, please.

“USING YOU AS A PILLOW”

Napping/cuddling together is no doubt one of the nicest things you can do with a partner. And I’ve even implemented this kinda thing in my writing. HOWEVER, there is a certain flavor of this I dislike. Esp when it’s “forced” on the reader/OC. Sometimes I find this is ALL ppl write about him in those HC posts, esp ones that aren’t Leona focused. That or “Leona dragging you off to be his pillow.”  (A bit of my life is taken every time I read this sentence now…) I know there are new folks coming into the fandom who may repeat old tropes, and that's fine! But, I STILL see this from people who have been here for yearssssssss. It's just cliche to me. I do believe he's a cuddly guy, EXTREMELY SO. It's just that specific phrase that icks me. Maybe it’s the implication that he does it against your will and is aggressive about it?? Just, no thanks.

"I CAN FIX HIM”

Okay maybe now we’re getting into the more controversial ones?? I think the idea of “tru wuv” fixing someone’s flaws is just unappealing as a concept to me and completely against what I think love is about. The “dragging him to class”, “making him dress up more,” or “forcing him to get along with his family” is not something I think he’d put up with. He’s grown, he's extremely stubborn, he knows he’s failing school. He doesn't need another person to nag him! Ruggie already does that! Plus, family relations are complicated. Idk…if someone I started dating tried to get me to talk with a family member who I felt genuinely hurt/neglected me, I’d be annoyed af??   I think he would find it all patronizing coming from a romantic partner. It's one thing if he chooses to be better himself or for his mental health to improve gradually, but forcing things on him and “nagging” him constantly about his behavior at school and at home is just what his family does so- He's flawed, VERY MUCH SO. But, I think when it comes to relationships…everyone has flaws they deal with easier in a partner than others. Like you can maybe deal better with someone being socially awkward, but can't stand your S/O having a messy room. Like if your “hard nos” are lazy people, your S/O dressing “sloppy,” or someone who can be petty and rude to others- Well, you get my point.  It's like....if you hate playing video games and wanna ship with Idia. My question is why?? I’m genuinely curious why you even like this character in the first place?? Hot take, (I guess) this is the reason I don't really ship LeoVil. It just rubs me the wrong way how it turns Leona into a “fix me” project thing. And not to mention how Vil talks to Leona canonically in a demeaning way. (I love you Vil, but you’re wrong.) Leona needs a kick in the ass for sure, all the twst boys do, but personally when a fic/ship leans too heavy on the dynamic of “I can fix/change him” it turns me off. As someone who's been in a long-term relationship… if your day-to-day lifestyles don’t align when living together…ya’ll are gonna be at each other's throats over the small stuff. That’s just how it works irl. And...I understand if everyone doesn't want to apply this logic to fictional ships.  I just personally am not fond of this dynamic. And with Leona being a beastman AND a POC, it often feels like a loaded trope to apply to him.

DISPOSABLE LION BOYFRIEND

Last one! (Maybe most controversial idk) I just think Leona is not good at being a romance rival, (assuming we're not talking about poly situation) despite him being competitive. While ofc I think it's possible for an MC or OC to have multiple crushes and things, I think Leona is someone who wouldn’t handle this well? Like, if Leona feels like he’s gotta compete for scraps of your attention, at a certain point...I'd think he’d just give up, or at least give you your space to come to him. He’s had to compete for attention his whole life, and I feel like he's too emotionally mature and ego-driven to put up with these kinds of games for too long? I DO think it's interesting to explore the dynamic of having multiple love interests!! I even do it for a lil drama! But…in gen I don’t prefer when it feels like Leona is just there to be the "the disposable love interest" considering all of his insecurities of being second. Honestly, in that case, I can see him giving an ultimatum? He's a grown man among...mostly teens, I PERSONALLY just can't see him being a love rival with a child. FGHJK

Anyways, I could go one. that's all I can think of for now!

AGAIN I WANNA STRESS THAT THESE ARE MY ICKS. And if you don’t agree or do any of these, that's okay! Everyone can play dolls how they choose, I’m not the HC or character police. ✌️✌️✌️

[thisflagmeanseverything]

Hello! I wasn't tagged but I love spreading positivity!! This is mostly OFMD but I want to send to all fandoms! (This is on my OFMD blog but for anyone)

1. The creativity of my fandom is amazing, there's lots of positivity, I met some of my favorite people through it. Also that it's still so active! And that we raised LIKE 80,000 DOLLARS FOR TRANS YOUTH? Like?!?!?

2. A headcanon I wasn't sure I liked at first was the idea of (honestly idk I will come back to this)

3. This is tough cause I love every single character. I guess the fandom just helped me love the characters more.

4. I love seeing people ship Fang with anyone, he's such a lovely character

5. I see a lot of people write about Stede leaving and coming back. I love how this event is written in different ways that never has it be boring despite having the same core beat.

6. I love seeing Mermaid Stede because it's such an important symbol

7. Second chance/friends to lovers trope

8. I hope more people come to appreciate Fang, he's a sweetie pie.

9. I enjoy all the other couples; Lucius and Pete, Garlic Soup, etc. Anything with Fangy.

10. All of the OFMD blogs I follow. Especially those I followed 2022-2024, they help me feel like there was a community here. If I had to only chose one tho, I would say @gentlebeardsbarngrill Abby ily ❤️

11. I'm proud of the Dracula fic I helped my friend make.

12. Wow it's hard to chose just one, I love all my people. Today I will compliment @thescarvedinsect on their awesomeness and friendliness. They have always made an effort to reach out to me on several different platforms

13. I love the Big Bang events! So many things to read and so many pretty pictures! I loveee seeing all the time and effort that people still put into our fandom and our boys.

14.Ed and Stede, of course. They always make me smile and feel better

15. Fang 💕

16. The way Ed grasps Stede's hand when he's down in the hold. It means so much to me and i totally melted the first time I saw that. ALSO Pete's saying about "you talk all the time how you almost died. But not that you lived" 😭

17. Its very hard to chose just one! I guess today I'll say.....the Sammy scene where Stede throws the sandwich and it hits Lucius. You can see Nathan crack.

18. #ourflagmeansdeath

19. Actively: Our flag means death, Psych cause I accidentally started a rewatch, Bollywood movies now apparently. Helluva Boss/Hazbin Hotel. Still in the fandoms but not as active: Haven, Warehouse 13. Once upon a Time. Doctor Who! Still into Sailor Moon. I know there are more but idk at the moment.

20. My first fandom was CSI. The original. FOREVER a Sandles girlie 🤗

21. Sherlock. Took up a good portion of my college years lol

22. My friend from England. We met on RuneScape and went from there, they were with me through all the fandoms . I think one of the first persons from OFMD to ever follow me and then I followed back was @jellybeanium124 ! And the first person when I came back to Tumblr was @jelly-of-many-ships 🤗

23. Everyone!

24. The current fandom I am in allowed me to find a piece of community I was sorely lacking. Not only did I find an online community but it's also led to an irl community. Because of this show I met my favorite people! I also got to go to Galaxycon with fandom friends! Like @captain-charlemagne ❤️ And I met some people near me who are in this fandom and had a chance to go out and be active again.

25. Not everyone will agree with your thoughts and feelings and headcanons about characters. And that's okay! Fandom is suppose to be a space for love of these characters and it's fun to share how you view them! But it's not worth attacking others; there are real life humans attached to these screen names seen everyday: the people in fandoms have real feelings, triggers, and feel real hurt when they are yelled at/attacked/etc. The way I've survived and thrived is by remembering this and acknowledging that not everyone feels the same and to not take their words personally.

tagging with no pressure: @gentlebeardsbarngrill @stedesbonnets @lunarcryptidz @dontyoulistentome @celluloidbroomcloset @greentea-and-cookies @xray-vex @crimson-phantom-designs @indigos-stuff @critterofthenight @blatterpussbunnyfromhell @virginiaisforhaters @buckley118 @shockingblankets @follows-the-bees @scribophile @xoxoemynn @crimson-and-clover-1717 @teeny-tiny-revenge

and like literally everyone else I follow/follows me/moots/people who stumble onto this! I think you all rock!!

✨ love your fandom asks ✨ 

Saw the opposite of this floating around and thought the reverse might be fun.

list 3 positive things about your current fandom(s)

a headcanon you weren't sure about at first but have come to like!

a character that fandom has helped you appreciate

say something nice about a ship you don't ship (it can be another ship in your fandom, a mutual's OTP, etc)

something you see in fics a lot and love

something you see in art a lot and love

your favorite tropes to read/write/draw

you hope more people will come to appreciate ___ (a ship, a trope, an episode, etc)

a ship that isn't your OTP but that you enjoy

a blog (mutual or one you follow) that has made your fandom experience brighter

if you're a writer or artist, what fic or piece of art are you proud of making?

compliment someone else in your fandom

your favorite type of fandom event (gift exchange, ship week, secret santa, prompt meme, etc)

the ship that always makes you smile

the character that always makes you smile

a tiny detail in canon that you want more people to appreciate

the thing in canon that everyone loves and that you also love

a fandom tag that you track

your current fandom(s)

your very first fandom!

a fandom you're not active in anymore but that you still really like

the fandom friend you've known the longest

the fandom you're curious about because of a mutual

how has fandom positively impacted your life?

a piece of advice for taking care of yourself in fandom spaces

[fragranticareviewers]

Question inspired by the recent compilation of Lust reviews! I have the "solid" (creamy) version of the fragrance and I've never smelled anything like the mouth/breath/bodily notes reviewers are mentioning. Does it just play well with my skin? Is it possible that the solid comes off totally different from the atomized spray? ....Are reviewers just talking out of their asses in order to have an opinion about a "controversial" scent? This is an interesting subject to me bc I'm a product development chemist but I don't work on anything remotely close to fragrances or anything used on the body, so I know very little about how these products work!

Love the blog, thank you for curating these really good posts!

thanks for the ask! this sent me on a fun rabbit hole.

it's probably a few different things:

you're right on the spray and solid versions being different. from what i know, it's a lot harder to control the dosage with the spray, so it's really easy to go overboard

lust is also a particularly indolic jasmine. indoles occur naturally in both human feces and jasmine flowers - however, the indoles in jasmine occur at concentrations of around 200 ppm, whereas the indoles in human feces vary depending on gut microbiome, but generally seems to sit at around ~2.59 mM. i'm having trouble finding sources on the concentrations between the two that even use the same measurement, but anything above 0.01% concentration of indole tends to give, to quote perfumerflavorist.com, "an aggressive, repulsive, overpowering fecal-decaying impression."

with the above said: i am awful with chemistry. just absolute dogshit. i haven't studied it since high school. if anyone wants to play with some numbers here or rip into my math, you have my blessing.

but basically, my understanding is: more fragrance = more indoles = more fecal smell.

i think there's also a social component to it, like you said. which happens with any controversial fragrance - people see other people writing funny reviews and want to write their own. this is something that applies to the whole blog, i think - my posts are carefully curated to be funny, but that also means you miss out on the majority of the reviews where people say it's fine.

& in case anyone wants to correct my work, my sources are as such:

perfumerflavorist profile on indoles, and a paper from 2015 on a method of measuring indole in human fecal samples

[so-i-did-this-thing]

How do I stop being anxious all the time in relation to being trans? I have an appointment to go on T in 2 weeks. I'm anxious about coming out. I'm anxious about someone figuring it out before I come out. Ahhhh. I have a therapist for anxiety but I don't think it's helping.

Hoping I don't make you even more anxious, but the bottom line is some folks *will* find out and you just gotta learn to roll with it.

What has helped me:

Getting good at identifying red and green flags in cis people

It's become a habit of mine to scope out people when I join a new community. I look at profiles, what people post, etc. It's a little tiring, but I try to find the allies and other trans asap in a new fandom or whatever.

Planning for the worst

To be trans is to always have a plan to Get Out of Dodge.

A lot of times, The Worst is really only temporary embarassment. I deal with this by keeping my head held high and leaning into the more "don't fuck with me, I am tired" part of my personality.

Fake it 'til you make it -- I used to have a paralyzing fear of public mortification, and over time have ripped that apart. Sticking to my boundaries helps a lot, and I am not afraid to say, "I will not answer that question."

Here's the thing, though -- people tend to be impressed when you weather the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, and you'll likely find yourself as someone to be looked up to. Cis folks routinely ask for my advice about their own Big Life Changes, because they have been impressed to see me go through mine. I've also helped crack a few eggs.

Sometimes The Worst is truly bad, and you should always be vigilant here. Again, I know it is exhausting, but always plan for your personal, emotional, and financial safety. Build an emergency cash fund. Cultivate friends who have your back. Always be looking for new job opportunities. Lots of stuff you can workshop with people.

Cultivating a very matter-of-fact relationship with Coming Out.

I focus on any relevant logistics and keep out my emotional backstory. Most people do not need to know how much of a mess I used to be. And I firmly state what I am doing with my future, rather than ask for permission.

My last HRT-related Coming Out email (to one of my orchestras, which is a very gendered biz) was essentially: "FYI, I am medically and legally transitioning from female to male. Just a heads up, as I'll look and sound a bit different at rehearsal -- I have a tux already for the concert. See you Friday!"

That's it. At a company, you can work with HR on your announcement, assuming one will even be necessary in your case based on your transition timeline.

When I changed my name years later, I was also direct:

"I am legally changing my name to Nicholas. It may take a while to update all my clients, so you're welcome to tell them, "Oh, [deadname] goes by Nicholas now. Thanks!"

And when I came out to my spouse in tumblr chat before our first date, it was literally: "Hey, jsyk, I am 35 and a trans man, in case that changes anything."

It takes a lot of practice to get to this point, and is something you can roleplay with your therapist.

Don't be afraid of your past

I am at a place where I will sometimes casually out myself to make a point ("No one ever needs to change the gender field for this form? I recently needed to.") or a stupid joke ("Ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to be...").

There is a lot of value in the trans experience. You can decide how much of it you want to casually share, but it does get easier each time.

I hope this helps. Being trans means you will be coming out for the rest of your life (obviously, there are times where stealth = safety), so cultivating a no-nonsense, and even humorous, approach will go a long way for your mental health.

[ooooo-mcyt]

I usually don't have all that many character headcanons of the domestic non-angsty variety, but for some reason I have, like, a Lot of specifically cooking themed Life Series headcanons (in the hypothetical scenario where they eat meals like normal human beings and not based on minecraft game mechanics), so I'm just going to leave them here:

Grian cooks. All the time. He makes every meal for his team, three meals a day, every day. It's Grian's thing, and he takes pride in it. Grian will cook if someone is lagging behind in their performance, he'll cook if they don't seem like they're feeling well, he'll cook before a fight, he'll cook before a long day of resource gathering, he'll cook when he's bored. If one of his teammates is gone for the day they'll come back to food left on the table for them. If one of his teammates is working on something he'll leave snacks in their workspaces or by their beds. When Grian has to join a pre existing team late in the series cooking will be one of his go-to methods for being 'useful' enough to earn his place with them. When Grian hasn't seen someone in a while he'll ask if they've been eating and then cook them something regardless. When Grian wants to win someone over or apologize for something it will be through gifts of little snacks or desserts. I just imagine Grian as someone who cooks for people and is proud of it. Ironically, I also imagine that when he doesn't have a team (on the rare occasions he doesn't) he won't eat very much because cooking would be more of a social/affection and personal pride thing for him than something he does because he particularly enjoys the act, so there doesn't feel like much point when he's alone (and i just don't think taking care of himself would be a thought, because grian has never been too concerned with his own general health).

I think Skizz is very similar to Grian in that he enjoys cooking for people, and is probably the 'designated cook' in pretty much all his teams. Unlike Grian, though, I think Skizz would really like the act of cooking itself and find it fun. Don't get me wrong, I imagine it can often still be a social thing and a show of affection for Skizz too, because Skizz is the kind of person who would be very happy to be able to see his teammates happy and well fed because of him. But I think enjoyment would also be a big motivator for Skizz and he'd still have fun with cooking for himself if he were alone.

I truly have to imagine Bdubs as being comically bad at cooking. I just have this mental image of Last Life Etho puppy eyesing Bdubs into cooking for him and then Bdubs just happily plopping down a block of nondescript inedible burnt mush right out of a kids cartoon storyboard trying to convey the concept of 'bad food' through design alone. And Bdubs just expectantly watches Etho who (without taking off the mask) unconvincingly mimes eating it and then tosses it out the window while Bdubs goes ":D" so glad Etho enjoys his cooking and already planning tomorrows meal. Bdubs does the same thing with every team he has to varying responses.

Jimmy started off Third Life not being able to cook at all, but has become quite good over time. I imagine Scott did all their cooking in the early parts of Third Life, but Jimmy's not the type to be content with letting someone else do labor for him with no reciprocation, so I think he very quickly started trying to cook too, literally corralling Scott out of the kitchen and not taking no for an answer. I think Scott would have playfully complained about Jimmy insisting on cooking when his food was literally inedible, but Jimmy is very stubborn, and Scott knows how to go with the flow with these things, so they'd probably end up taking turns with meals. I imagine Jimmy kept up the habit through the following seasons (when grian wasn't there to stake full claim over the kitchen and push everyone else out in last life and limited life) and has become quite decent at cooking, which always seems to surprise other players.

Tango would be a disaster in the kitchen. Like. I'm picturing fires and explosions (we can chalk it up to him being a fire entity if that makes it better). Usually Tango is just outright banned from the kitchen, but Double Life is an exception. Jimmy and Tango strike me as the type of people to cook together as a cute couple thing. Jimmy does most of their cooking at first until Tango jokes about how he can't cook and Jimmy's like "Well wanna try helping anyways?" and it just becomes something they do together with…minimal..fires and explosions, because Jimmy wouldn't mind, and cooking is fun, especially when you're doing it with someone you love.

I also feel like Pearl is someone who'd find cooking fun. She wouldn't necessarily take it upon herself to cook all the time, but she'd enjoy it when she does cook. It would start being a hobby in Last Life, though I think her enjoyment would take a massive dip during Double Life. I don't see Double Life Pearl as someone who really had the will to do many things for fun, or even to take care of herself, really. I imagine Pearl didn't put much effort into cooking in Double Life, understandably, and didn't find it fun anymore. Although I think she still probably kept up healthy eating habits solely because I imagine Tilly would remind Pearl to eat and Pearl would never purposefully worry Tilly. After Double Life, once Pearl started slowly feeling better and felt like she had real friends again, I think cooking slowly would have become a hobby Pearl was actually able to enjoy again and do for more than practical reasons, which is a habit I think has continued through Wild Life.

I'm gonna put Scott and Cleo together because I imagine they have very similar views on cooking and they've teamed multiple times so I can put them together here. I feel like both Scott and Cleo see cooking as a chore. They're both responsible people who are fully capable of cooking and do so with minimal complaint because it's a necessity. But neither of them really find it enjoyable, I'd say, and would rather not. If doordash existed in the life series, they would have gotten it frequently in Double Life, but alas, they are in a death game lacking most modern technology and are cursed to cook for themselves. They had an alternating day schedule, because it's more convenient than both of them cooking for themselves every night and also even if they don't like cooking admittedly I think Scott and Cleo just like doing nice things for each other regardless. When not with each other, I think Cleo is the kind of person who'd usually go "Okay I'm cooking for myself, you guys figure yourselves out" with their teams because they don't want to be stuck cooking for other people all the time and also don't entirely trust other people to cook for them (partially because some of the people she's teamed with are just bad cooks, partially because cleo has some trust issues generally and is prone to suspicions over their teammates potentially betraying her). Although I think Etho and Bdubs specifically could both probably puppy dog eye Cleo into giving them food sometimes, and while cooking for other people isn't a habit of hers, if Cleo really wants to be nice or suspects someone they care about won't eat enough on their own, she might make an extra plate of food for them. Scott, on the other hand, I think would prefer for cooking to be split evenly in his teams (and he certainly wouldn't complain if someone wants to cook for him all the time), but is also very much willing to do the majority of the cooking if he has a partner who can't or won't cook. Scott is flexible and very willing to compromise for team cohesion and morale, even if he gets the worse bargain. Fortunately, though, Scott has never teamed with someone who takes advantage of that. Scott started off trying to do all the cooking for him and Jimmy automatically, but Jimmy is a good husband- and a stubborn one- who shut that down rapidly with his active desire to contribute (also as a side note, i feel like scott literally did not eat a single thing in between jimmy's death and his own in third life). Cleo, Pearl, Gem, and Impulse were all more than happy to split cooking duties with him too. I don't imagine Scott and Martyn spent many meals together, so Scott was mostly just feeding himself in Limited Life, which was fine. Scott probably occasionally made Martyn something while he was cooking for himself if Martyn was around, just out of love, but it wasn't something Martyn really asked him to do.

Gem is also on team "Cooking is a chore that I don't really enjoy but I'm an adult so I am fully capable of feeding myself without complaining". It's not something that's especially fun for Gem, but I think she split cooking duty with Scott and Impulse without much complaint in Secret Life. That said, I do think she maybe convinced Joel (who i imagine is surprisingly good at cooking) to do most of the cooking during Wild Life, and Gem has probably also coaxed a few meals out of Pearl when things are okay/good between them. Gem is willing to contribute but she also won't complain if people are willing to be convinced to do things for her.

Impulse is my final "Cooking is a boring chore, but I'm an adult" guy who is a decent but not super impressive cook. Usually I think Impulse defaults to just cooking for himself, unless he has teammates who like cooking and want to cook for him, or who want to alternate cooking for the whole group. I see Impulse as fairly flexible in this regard.

Joel is a shockingly good cook and also enjoys cooking. Joel was pretty much completely alone for all of Third Life, and had very inconsistent companionship during Last Life, so it was pretty much a necessity to figure out how to cook for himself at least. And, well, cooking can be very calming, which I think is good for someone like Joel who is very high intensity all the time. I think this quickly turned into Joel cooking for other people too once he started getting more solid companionship. I mean, he's not necessarily the type to frequently do things for others just to be nice, but Etho's good at the puppy eyes act, and I think Joel quickly realized as well that it's an ego boost when people enjoy his cooking, which is always a bonus with Joel, so I imagine he's made a habit of cooking for his teammates.

Etho has never cooked a single meal in his life (/hj) and he doesn't have to. If his teammates won't feed him, Etho can go around to his other allies (because he always has alliances outside his main team, etho keeps his options open) until someone invites him in for dinner. Wandering the server stopping by with various allies looking pathetic is a huge staple of Etho in the Life Series, this man is absolutely a chronic dinner guest.

Scar isn't someone I think cooks consistently, or very well. Not that he can't cook at all, necessarily. I don't think he's very good, but he can make passable simple meals. It just slips his mind, really. I imagine Scar as someone who'll often honestly outright forget to eat for long periods of time if he's left to cook for himself until something reminds him he hasn't eaten in a while. Often Scar's meal plans consist of either being fed by an ally (grian cooks, as we've established) or using his patented Scar charm to convince random people to give their food to him when it does occur to him that he ought to eat. That being said, I do think Scar enjoys baking specifically. He's not good at remembering to cook for sustenance, but if he's bored or wants to do something nice for someone, he'll bake, and he does quite enjoy it (often the product is mediocre, but the actual taste of the food is not the point of baking for scar).

Martyn is another guy who I think forgets to eat. By no means is Martyn an 'all work' type of guy, and he'll stop to goof around plenty, but I feel like he categorizes self care acts specifically as a waste of his time. Stopping to cook and eat just feels like Too Much when there are so many other things to do. He cooks simple mediocre meals when he gets too hungry and snatches little bits of food from people when he's at their bases, just to be a nuisance, and that's about it. Luckily Martyn often has someone there to get him to eat. Ren in specific is really good at making sure Martyn has meals, he'll just make Martyn a plate of whatever he's having and Martyn's not the type to complain about free food with friends (he doesn't have anything against eating, it's just the taking time out of his day to make himself food when alone that's an issue with martyn). I also imagine Skizz cooked for the whole Red Army toward the end of Third Life. Martyn probably didn't have too much issue in Last Life either. Grian Cooks, and probably had the whole Southlands supplied, plus Lizzie served snacks at Shadow Alliance meetings. In Double Life Cleo probably would have made sure Martyn ate enough too, because while they might not be on great terms, Martyn's poor self care effects people outside of him while he's linked to Cleo. Limited Life was hard, I think, because he was really into Winning that season, and for the first time ever, Ren wasn't in the series at all. That said, I imagine Scott made enough food for Martyn whenever martyn was home around meal times, and I have a very vivid image of The Clockers frequently slipping Martyn food on his way out after visits (to varying degrees of appreciation. cleo hands him an actual plate of food occasionally, which is..nice. scar passes out slightly burnt cookies, which aren't as filling or well made, but they're yummy enough and something is better than nothing. and uh..martyn isn't sure what to do with the stuff bdubs hands him). In Secret Life Jimmy, who again, likes cooking and is decent at it, is probably more than happy to make enough for Martyn while he's alive, though I imagine the later episodes after Jimmy dies is the worst Martyn gets with his 'doesnt think about taking care of himself'.

Ren is admittedly a mediocre cook. His food isn't always bad, but it's also not usually great. That being said, I think he makes up for it in enthusiasm. I think Ren likes cooking for his friends, and I think he gets incredibly excited to eat his food. And, I mean, nobody turns down free food, especially when Ren's excitement is generally so contagious, even if it's sometimes slightly burned.

Mumbo can't cook. Luckily everyone very much wants to feed Mumbo. Grian absolutely made sure Mumbo had plenty to eat during Last Life and Wild Life, and Mumbo was on a team with multiple people who like to cook in Secret Life (plus grian probably showed up with food for mumbo a few times in secret life anyways because he really does adore mumbo). Mumbo honestly doesn't even have to ask, so far I feel like people have just been happy to feed him.

Nobody has ever seen BigB eat. He does eat, obviously. It's just that people don't see it. He'll sit down for a meal with someone and only take bites exactly in the .4 seconds it takes them to blink in very exaggerated cartoon fashion. I don't know, I just wanted to capture BigB's confusion strats because he's literally so funny.

Lizzie can cook, technically, but she does not want to. Luckily Lizzie is very very good at convincing people to cook her meals for her. Usually Joel. But sometimes Ren in early Last Life and also Jimmy in Wild Life. Lizzie does bake, though. Cookies, cakes, brownies, etc. Lizzie likes having sweet things to present at meetings and parties and traps.

[janus-cadet]

So, hm, I may have my attention span stolen by yet another god of Discord. Lux was absolutely amazing in his lil disguise, and, well- that leads to yet another tarot card.

But oops, I tripped! There might have been a slight addition to the card, in the form of three other gods of the Pantheon, and one very distressed Doctor.

(Don't be fool, I'm sure he's having a great time. We know how much he likes dangerous murderous people, especially the blondes one)

Why the Five of Wands, tho? Well, that's actually very easy to answer- because that's The card for Discord. What else than the Pantheon to represent it? It's a card that express conflict, as in, you're un the midst of a battle (poor you, Doctor) that you simply can't escape. Don't expect to solve it with nicey dialogues and come to any common ground: everyone is stuck on what they want and cannot be bothered to hear what the others have to say. Maybe they simply couldn't be bother to care, vast beings that they are; all the more frustrating, because you know that if you could have them hear you out, much good could come from an association. It's complete chaos and disorder, from the whole human race driven mad by a giggle, or an entire theater of missing people. All you can do is rise above the mess; if they won't listen to reason (or a proposal to go play among the stars, which may or may not be due to your inability to be normal about blond murderers), then, you'll have to take action. You have to try to LISTEN. If you really do, well- you might actually find a surpringly nice end to the conflict you brought. Looking at you, Toymaker. Gonna make you eat your "and yet", idiot.

The card also stands for change and instability, which is the very thing those gods stand for- as shown by the effect they have on your reality, and the consequences they can bring upon your world. Tho the change, sometimes, can be positive; every transformation is not from flesh to dust. Maybe, sometimes, you'll get to turn into infinite light or something (if you're lucky and don't end up eaten by your own piano, or origamied into your own realm made small). All in all, this chaos is ultimately the source of dreadful inner conflict for you. Your perspective is constantly challenged by someone else, by new informations, and your approach to the growing problem cause you a tone of moral dilemmas.

Unfortunately, it does not look like it's going to get better for you, Doctor. Oopsie!

And there we are, for the eleventh Doctor Who tarot card of the lots! To think that this all started with wanting to draw the Masters, and now, I'm sixty cards in. We're nearing the end....

[kathrahender]

Tired of seeing Strickler's hate from Blinky's fans so I'm making this post to say something (controversial or not): Blinky is not perfect. Strickler is not a perfect character, of course, but Blinky isn't a perfect character neither. No matter what you try to say about Strickler, or how much you hate him, Blinky also made mistakes.

Yeah, Strickler did a bad things in the show:

First, he worked for Gunmar. But while he could have decided other thing, he didn't serve Gunmar "because he wanted to" or because he hated humanity (like Gunmar and other characters did, who btw don't get as much hate as Strickler does), but because he needed to serve Gunmar. Trollmarket hated changelings and considered them "impures", and humans didn't even know about them. So it's not a surprise he and other changelings decided to turn to the troll who was going to "make it better for them" bringing the Eternal Night (and if they got deceived by Gunmar, it's not their fault. Everyone can fell for the lies of another person).

Second, yes, he fought Jim, and that was "wrong" because he could have decided to be on his side since the beginning. After all, Jim not only was a teenager, he was also his favorite student, so he could have supported him. Besides, telling someone "Don't you see? I'm only trying to protect you" and then throwing a knife at him it's not very protective but anyways- Strickler didn't try to kill Jim. He said "I'll kill you if I need to" in Recipe for Disaster, yes, and fought against Jim in season 1 part 1, but he had more fighting skills than Jim. If he had wanted to kill him, he would have done it. But he didn't. Because the only thing he wanted was to keep him out of his way. It was easy to kill Principal Levit, and he could have done the same with Jim if he had wanted to (and no, he didn't decide not to kill Jim because of the consequences, because in Bittersweet Sixteen the stalkling could have killed Jim and Stickler wasn't at all happy with the idea of Jim dying).

Thirdly, he woke up Angor Rot to stop Jim. He shouldn't have done that, and it wasn't "right" (Not only because of what he ordered Angor Rot to do, but because of how he treated Angor Rot), but it was perfectly understandable. Jim wanted to free the familiars of the changelings from the Darklands, and that meant the changelings would have had to keep being trolls forever -without being able to change to their human forms- so it wasn't a surprise Strickler tried to stop Jim (despite he could have chosen to talk to Jim instead of fighting him-).

And fourthly, he entwined his fate with Barbara's. Doing something like that it's horrible. And I'm not justifying what he did. But in that moment, when he was going to entwine his fate with Barbara's, for the first time in a lot of episodes, he showed a little remorse. And that means that he isn't the irredeemable villain some Trollhunters fans want him to be. He wasn't flawless, he wasn't perfect, but he worked to be a better person. He gave Jim Gunmar's eye, he came back to Arcadia in season 2 and helped Jim to defeat Gunmar in season 3, and he sacrificed himself in ROTT for him.

So yeah, while I kinda understand why some people consider Strickler's redemption arc "a bad redemption arc", I don't understand why he is hated by a part of the fandom so much. Specially knowing that some Trollhunters fans are also Star Wars fans and they don't hate Darth Vader as much as they hate Strickler. I also didn't like some things about his redemption, but again I understand that it was because of the lack of episodes, not because he was a bad written redeemed villain.

And it's funny how some people hate him, and adore Blinky, when he isn't perfect either. I can tell Strickler has a lot of flaws, but Blinky is not a troll without them.

Blinky was prejudiced about the changelings, and not just a little. He was very prejudiced against the changelings, and all because of what? Because the changelings were the product of troll babies being stolen and transformed into half-human half-troll creatures? Because they weren't full trolls? Because the human part of them made them impure? You know that sounds awfully similar to what the purebloods of Harry Potter think about halfbloods. That's not a very good reason to hate the changelings honestly. And it's not that I'm biased about Strickler (and want Blinky to be some things he isn't), because Blinky in the show talked about how "bad" changelings were when he told Jim they existed. Besides, even when Strickler came back to Arcadia, the first thing he believed was that Strickler was working with Gunmar. Even after he gave Jim Gunmar's eye in season 1. So yeah, he was definitely prejudiced against changelings and that's a fact.

Apart from that, he wasn't a good mentor at first. Yeah, of course, the destiny of the world was in Jim's hands and the weight of the world was on Jim's shoulders and all of that, but Jim was a teenager. He wasn't a troll like Kanjigar or like the previous trollhunters, who trained for decades after they were chosen by the amulet. Jim was a human. A teenager. A person with other worries: his mother, his friend, his grades. And one of the first things Blinky said to Jim when he talked about the school? "I assure you, the relevance escapes me". This only shows one thing: that Blinky at first only cared about Jim being the trollhunter, and that he probably wanted Jim to leave his past life behind and only care about the trollhunter' duties.

And while Blinky got over the second flaw, he didn't get over the prejudice about changelings. Strickler did fix most of his flaws during the show.

To end this post, I want to say that of course, you have the right to love the characters you want, and hate the characters you want, but don't be hypocritical about it. Yes. Strickler was a villain. Blinky was not. But both have flaws. Both made mistakes. Neither of them is perfect. So ackowledge the flaws of the characters you love when you need to, and don't act as if they did nothing wrong when they did.

[annahollinrake]

How do you talk about trying to brute-force a dream into reality? How do you talk about something you desperately need to make in a weird art-compulsion way whilst also REALLY TRYING to be commercially appealing for the people who fund games? The answer is: WITH DIFFICULTY.

HELLO I'M MAKING THE VIDEO GAME CRESCENT COUNTY

IT HAS BEEN REALLY HARD

Trying to be an artist making a gay witch video game about motorbike broom drifting and messy self discovery whilst ALSO trying to convince game publishers that there is a very specific audience for the game that I KNOW will love this has been akin to pulling teeth with tongs slathered in lard . Slippery, painful, and at a certain point you start wondering that there has GOT to be another way.

So we're doing a Kickstarter! It is very difficult to ask for things but I'm asking this from my favourite place on the internet; if you like video games and you like supporting queer art (I know you do) and you like making stuff a reality that otherwise probably won't exist, please check the Kickstarter for Crescent County out. Follow it, share it, pledge to it when it goes live next month if you can. Cause fucking HELL I need to make this game and our tiny tiny team has been working SO HARD, but the industry is on FIRE right now and we can't make this without your support.

LOTS OF LOVE, TIME TO DISAPPEAR INTO A VULNERABILITY PIT

[bananonbinary]

okay. everyone here, stop. forget about ai, forget about art, forget about copyright and plagerism. forget the wider context of this debate and focus in on this argument.

explain to me, from the start, how "lazy and incompetent" are morally bad things that aren't rooted in ableism. use your fucking words, and spell it out, in clear terms, that you think that people who struggle to do a task are doing so out of some personal character flaw rather than admit that sometimes people have shit going on that isn't fucking about you.

I'm going to say the same thing that I said when everyone was talking shit about "weaponized incompetence."

It is not your place to judge what someone else is or is not capable of. it's just not. you have no fucking idea what invisible disabilities they might have. "no disability actually prevents-" yes it does. sit down and actually look around, everything you find easy is hard for someone.

even if they totally don't have any disabilities at all, it still doesn't actually matter if people get accommodations they don't "need." partially because attempting to gatekeep who "really" needs help can only hurt disabled people, but also because. it doesn't matter. it's not hurting anyone.

laziness, as a concept, is not fucking real. it's just not. laziness is a diagnoses that looks at outward behavior (this person isn't doing what I think they should), and refused to acknowledge the actual internal reasons behind it. it is inherently dehumanizing and enormously self-centered. people do not self-sabotage for no reason. I have never in my life met someone who isn't doing something that they want/need because they...what, want to annoy me personally? even people that i think are doing objectively wrong things, it's not because they're evil, or stupid, or lazy, it's because they have shit going on that they are handling poorly. "they simply aren't putting in any effort" is a symptom, not a fucking cause.

we are talking about art. funny pictures and words and whatever. there is no moral imperative to make it "correctly." you can dislike it, you can even argue against it ("its plagiarism," "its bad for the environment," whatever the hell you want), but don't fucking imply that people who do not meet YOUR threshold of protestant fucking work ethic are somehow morally inferior to you. if you're going to argue about something being bad, pick an argument that isn't fucking bootlicking. work ethic isnt real. hard work is not virtuous. easy things are not sowing evil in people's hearts or whatever the fuck.

"oh sky you're overreacting that's not what they meant-" the person above me literally said in clear terms that sentence structure, vocabulary, and expressing yourself "adequately" are skills only someone lazy and incompetent would struggle with. AND that it's "not fine" to not be able to cultivate those skills. just say you hate mentally disabled folks and go.

PS just. all of my complete rage at seeing the words "lazy and incompetent" aside, this just...isn't true at all. you guys are not doing yourselves any favors by IMAGINING what the beloathed ai artist is probably like and then shitting on him. talk to people that actually make ai art. ask them questions. some people are making shitty art, just like some traditional artists. but some of them actually are very skilled at what they do and spend a lot of time on it. just because it's *different* skills doesn't mean the skills aren't *there.* i certainly wouldn't even know where to begin with a project like @infiniteartmachine.

PS PS the original example of chatgpt and education is irrelevant to the discussion of ai art. like, yeah, asking a robot for the answers prevents you from learning, which is bad when you are explicitly trying to learn and build those skills in school. its not bad like, conceptually. the more equivalent argument would be that it'd be fucked up to submit ai art to a still life class. which is true, but not because AI Art Bad. its just grossly inappropriate and kinda ridiculous in that context.

[andforyouevan]

bucktommy + accidentally falling asleep together

Yay! This ended up way longer than I intended, but I hope you like it!

"You guys have to stop worrying," Maddie insists as she holds Riley in her arms. "We've got two kids of our own and they'll all have so much fun tonight."

Buck bites his lip, feels Tommy's hand at the small of his back, rubbing soothing circles. If Buck didn't know any better, he'd think his husband wasn't affected by this at all, the first time their son spends the night away from them since the adoption went through, but Tommy's panic at not being able to find Riley's favorite stuffed animal this morning is proof of his unease. For all his parent's nerves, though, three-year-old Riley looks perfectly content in his aunt's arms.

"Chim's got the s'mores ingredients ready," Maddie continues. "All we need is this little cutie and we're all set, huh, Ri? You ready to go have fun with your cousins?" She tickles his tummy and he squirms as he giggles. Buck can hear Tommy release a slow exhale beside him. It's not as though either of them had thought that Maddie wouldn't take care of their son, but, well, Riley had had a tough time in his short three years and he'd become very attached to his new parents.

"We're just a little nervous," Tommy says sheepishly and Buck wraps his own arm further around his waist. "He's still got that little ear infection too..."

She holds up the little bottle of ear medicine. "We're all set. I promise you. But you guys have been running on empty for awhile now with the adoption and Tommy's promotion....you deserve a night with just the two of you, even if it's just a quiet dinner at home."

"Thanks, Mads," Buck says as he steps away from Tommy to kiss his son on the forehead. "Bye, baby. Daddy loves you."

Riley waves his hand to wave as Tommy moves for kisses too.

"Papa," Riley says cheerfully and Buck holds back a smile when Tommy all but groans.

"Don't be too cute, okay?" Tommy asks, kissing his little hands. "We'll see you in the morning."

They leave amongst endless goodbyes and soon enough, Buck is leaning with his back against their front door as he turns to Tommy, who is covered in...what looks like orange powder from the baby cheetos Riley is so fond of on one shoulder and the dark stain of Riley's favorite fruit punch juice on the other. It had been Tommy's turn to feed him dinner, so that tracks.

"You have never been more attractive to me," Buck says honestly, pushing off the door to wrap his arms around Tommy and lean into him. Tommy takes his weight without hesitation.

Tommy laughs and kisses the top of his head. "You were covered in sand from the park yesterday and I was very tired but also wanted to bend you over the nearest surface."

Buck throws his head back and laughs, so grateful for this man he's built a life with, the father to his son, his husband and best friend. "I've got the chicken casserole about to come out of the oven. Want to light a couple candles and we'll have ourselves a romantic night in?"

"Love to," Tommy says with a soft kiss.

Dinner is on the table inside ten minutes and they're seated across from each other. Tommy looks exhausted, the same amount of tired that Buck feels with how busy life at the 118 has been, even part time, and he knows the transition into Harbor's new captain has been wearing on Tommy, though he's never complained. This Tommy is so different from the one that had run from his kitchen five years ago, more relaxed, happy and forthright.

"I'm so tired," Tommy admits with a little smile. "But this looks and smells so good."

"You know," Buck says slowly. "We could just...rest our eyes for a second."

Tommy nods. "Just for a second. We're tired parents dealing with a lot right now right? There's nothing wrong with catching a nap where we can right now."

"Just for a second," Buck insists.

"Exactly," Tommy agrees. He squeezes Buck's hand and shuts his eyes. Buck does the same fingers curled around Tommy's.

The next thing he knows, his eyes are opening to the house completely dark, the candles nearly burned out and Tommy is snoring on his dinner plate. The casserole looks like a wash and Buck sighs.

He thinks about waking Tommy and just going to bed but...well, this is really nice actually, time with his husband. If dinner in with the love of his life includes sleeping over it, well....no one else needs to know.

[ducktracy]

i don't think i ever fully shared my Potential Bob Clampett Encounter on here, did i... probably because i was too embarrassed to. it probably is just a series of coincidences, but it's still neat to think about. tldr Cool Profound Stuff happened when i visited his grave and in the days following

[batking4342]

heheheh.... yeah... useless bisexual. other things that should have tipped me off. - How I'd hold their face and look at them longer than our other friend while doing makeup, my tone would also be a lot more gentle with them.

them having a weak moment of missing their ex and me getting jealous

their partner at the time not treating them right, and I thought a Bunch about how I could treat them right, and I'd do that just to show a friend how they should be appreciated and treated.

also in that joint crapping out, the next day I threatened to bite them if they moved from my bed because apparently their joints crapped out on the way the next morning. I made them breakfast, I made them tea in their very specific complicated way, but just because they were a friend, totally not anything different.

And trust me! I'm a useless bisexual in BOTH directions!

before dating @dinogods17 , he had a partner. and we had a plan of him marrying me, his partner marrying her Canadian friend. and then they'd get into the country, divorce me, and then they'd start their lives together. ....I thought it was totally normal just how down I was for that, and a little sad about the impending divorce. - after they had broken up, I was sitting around thinking "Okay, I want to date. But. *What* do I want out of dating. What is it that I want, what type of person do I see myself spending the rest of my life with". I said "I think I want to spend the rest of my life with someone like him!" It took me a full year after that to realize what I felt... maybe I realized before they broke up, but I still didn't clock it.

we had been roleplaying for like two years. Every Single Time, our characters would end up romantically and sexually involved. ... these characters were always self inserts.

I'd send posts about relationships to him and go "hahaha so us but like, just friends"

In conclusion... I am a disaster.

Overheard at the thrift store:

“Stop trying to hold my hand, people are going to think we’re lesbians.”

“We are lesbians.”

“Yeah but not with each other.”

“Ok, but we’re still—god, why are you so stupid?”

“Dunno. Why do you want to hold hands with a stupid person?”

“I don’t.”

“Evidence to the contrary.”

(Mocking voice) “Oooh evidence to the contrary.” (Normal voice) “such a fuckin’ smartass.”

“Oh I’m smart, now? Thought I was stupid”

*Slap fight ensues*

Anyway, I hope they figure out they’re in love soon.

[motsimages]

I really enjoyed Titan Takedown because they don't only work on TV, they basically roleplay for a living, on TV. While the Intrepid heroes are very familiar with the format of the program and also very much acquainted with TV/theater work (which is why it works so well), the righteous wrestlers have spent years playing out exagerated plots in front of a live audience and a non-live audience. They know how to work the camera, they know how to work the gestures and they know how to flow with whatever is going on in a way that not all improv actors can do, because it is a different medium with different rules.

Brennan could put both drama and a combat per episode because they follow him to wherever he leads. The only moment of doubt about it was on episode 1 for Bayley because she was still very confused as to how DnD works (which she solved superfast because by episode 2, she fucking knew her character sheet).

If you compare it with Dungeons and Drag Queens, who are also good performers in their own world and are also on a beginner side quest, you can see that they are not as comfortable with the TV (while still being comfortable), but also they get lost with NPCs or their own silly ideas and it takes a lot to get them back. Brennan had to skip to places with them because they didn't follow him as well, and I'm pretty sure that this is directly related to frequently working with narratives or not working with narratives.

It is true that Brennan simplified the world for the righteous wrestlers much more than he did for the questing queens, but again, Chelsea is the latest arrival to the wrestling world and she has been doing it for at least 10 years. That's 10 years of exagerated acting for a living.

I particularly loved Xavier because he was enjoying it like a child, while still giving the hell of a show, and Chelsea, who was on full performance mode since minute 1 with every single situation, character or conversation. Kofi and Bayley also gave a good show and had a lot of fun but it took them a bit longer to figure out how to mix it with the DnD mechanics.

Overall, I really liked it because I love to see people learning new things and having fun, and also because I just love it when people are skilled at performing.