#they added alt text! and the alt text says 'picture'

[snarp]

Current record-holder for unnecessary ebook font-embed bloat: this 23MB Arial is never actually used. But it appears in a couple unused classes in the stylesheet, preventing the Calibre autofixer from recognizing it as "not referenced" and removing it.

[caffeinewitchcraft]

WIBTA for going to my high school reunion even though the two witches I stripped of magic are going?

(Read for free on Patreon (X))

I (28 witch) was in a coven during high school. Not really even a coven. We weren’t recognized and there wasn’t a clear division of responsibilities. We did have a high priestess but she hadn’t Declared or been Initiated or whatever she believed. Looking back, her learning was all over the place (and a little problematic, honestly. I remember her calling a poppet a Voodoo doll before being called out by another member). Let’s call her Sarah.

Sarah was a year older than the rest of us (still the same grade though) and her mom was a witch so that made her the high priestess. She was the one who would organize all of our rituals and held the power of veto over any proposed spells. While you think that’d mean she’d provide the ingredients, she never did. She did tell us what to buy and, let me tell you, some of those things were expensive for a high schooler. We met in the park behind her house, and she demanded that at least one of us be in every one of her classes. If we weren’t, we’d be “cycled” out of the coven until our parents convinced the school to transfer us in.

Any alt kid knows what I’m talking about because they had a Sarah in their life. If she was angry, we had to be angry (and a little afraid of her). If she was sad, we were expected to ask why. If she was happy, we had to be even more happy. You get the picture.

The problem came when Sarah added Jess (fake name) to the Coven during the start of our junior year. It was the first time Sarah allowed someone else from a witch family to join. Jess was a transfer student from England. She told us all that that made her magic deeper and more powerful because she was a “daughter of the witches you could not burn.” When I pointed out that that statement is historically inaccurate, Jess called me a “pilgrim.” She tried to convince Sarah to blind me (take away my decision-making power in the coven), but I was the only one with reliable access to dried herbs (my mom’s a botanist and didn’t count her stores like Sarah’s mom did), so Sarah said no.

Jess’ dislike of me got worse when I actually did dress like a pilgrim for Halloween that year. And, if I’m honest, I did take it a little far. I was a hot-headed kid. I followed her around the entire day and had kids sign one of two petitions – “Burn” or “Not Burn.” When the Burn Petition won, I could tell I went too far (there were a LOT of signatures).  I tried to make it a joke and told her that now she really was a witch we couldn’t burn.

Jess and I got in our first physical fight. Sarah eventually broke it up, but not before Jess ripped out a good chunk of my hair, and I broke the tiger’s eye bracelet she wore.

 I later heard from another coven member that Jess tried to lay a curse on me that night. Unfortunately for her, I was pretty interested in defensive work and had a fresh witch’s jar buried under my window. Her curse got caught in it and rebounded. Apparently, that’s how Jess got pink eye, not from her younger sister.

We fought like cats and dogs. Any time Jess would talk about England, I’d make fun of her accent. When I brought up what spell I’d like to do, Jess would call me a juvenile pilgrim. Eventually, Jess got smart. She’d text me insults rather than say them to my face so that she’d have a chance to tattle to Sarah before I got the chance to hit back.

Sarah pulled me aside at least three times to “address” the fights. She basically said that I needed to respect Jess more because she came from a witch family, like her. She told me I could learn a lot from Jess if I stopped acting like a human. When I pointed out that we are humans, just humans who have elected to use magic, she got really mad.

And when Sarah got mad, she could make life really difficult.

My spell for luck on midterms got passed over for Jess’ jinx on our English teacher. The jinx worked and Ms. Edel tripped, but guess who still came to class with a broken leg? MS. EDEL. Guess who failed their midterm?

ALL SEVEN OF US.

Damn, I can’t believe I’m still upset by this petty high school drama. Therapy did not work.

So safe to say that Jess and I never became friends. I love magic now and loved it then, but she took it so seriously. I’ve always believed magic should be fun. All the spells she brought to the coven required a spirit element—blood, hair, sacrifice. One of the members was a strict green witch and had to drop out because of it. We missed two full moons until Sarah approved Eileen to rejoin after she woke up from her coma.

(And before anyone freaks out about the coma – we all ended up in comas here and there. We were a bunch of uneducated and untrained baby witches who all had different belief systems. The fact that there wasn’t anything worse than a coma is a miracle. She wasn’t traumatized by it any more than I was by mine.)

Jess and I mostly avoided each other for the rest of the year. We always voted against the other’s spell and I’m fairly certain she tried to trip jinx me in the hall as often as I tried to trip jinx her. Sarah never tried to diffuse the tension between us. She confided in Eileen that she was grateful we kept each other in check.

Things could have continued on that way until we all moved away for college (or repeated the year after failing all those midterms) if it weren’t for the vernal equinox. Or, as we inaccurately called it, the Spring Solstice.

The way it worked was that we all got to propose a ritual during equinoxes. They’re powerful magical events on their own and when you bring intent to the party? They were always our biggest, most successful workings.

Sarah always chose what we did on those days. She pretended like we got to vote, but we all knew she would never choose one of our rituals. My freshman year, she made us all do one for beauty. Because it was a “make real what is in the eye of the beholder” type, some of our transformations were a little…traumatizing. I’m only telling you this so you understand the power an equinox has, okay? I do not think this way anymore. Other members were just as extreme. Eileen went from a Wendy from Wendy’s to a Jessica Rabbit. And I…

Well.

I grew rabbit ears and teeth. That doesn’t make me a furry! Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was super influential on BOTH Eileen and me. I was a kid and didn’t understand my own concept of beauty. It took almost three months before I got the ears to go away entirely.

Suffice it to say, we were all excited and nervous for what ritual Sarah would pick, which is why it was a blow to find out that she had picked a ritual - Jess’ ritual.

A ritual for power.

I didn’t want to do it from day one, okay? My belief is that whatever magic comes to you naturally is what’s okay to take. I think if you rip magic up from the earth or the abyss, it’ll change you. Maybe even corrupt you or change your personality.

But I was a kid and didn’t know how to explain that. Jess and Sarah were both from witch families and they seemed to think it was okay. Even though I didn’t like Jess, I did see her as a more “authentic” witch because of that. I know better now, but as a kid seeing all of her grimoires, I gave her false authority.

Jess explained the ritual to us over the next month. She talked about how we were going to be “tested.” The ritual would pull our spiritual selves from our bodies, and depending on how long we chanted, we’d return to them with more or less magic than when we started. She said that everyone in her family did it when they turned 18.

It wasn’t until three days before the equinox that she told us what would happen if one of us were to be judged unworthy.

“Mostly nothing,” she said. I remember her exact words, how her black hair spun as she soared through the air on the swings. We stood in a half circle before her and Sarah as they swung higher and higher. An audience to their aerial court. She said, “Sometimes people lose some of their magic. When the ritual decides they don’t deserve it.”

Eileen asked, “When the ritual decides? It’s sentient?”

“There’s an overseer we’ll call on,” Sarah said. She’d been the only one allowed to read Jess’ grimoire. Her lip curled and she leaned forward so she could look down over Eileen like an avenging angel as she swung overhead. “An impartial entity.”

“I am not a deity witch,” I said. I had long ago committed that I would never call on a higher being in any ritual. Most of our spells had to be modified for me so that I could swear to the cardinal directions rather than to the Morrigan or Hecate. “You know that.”

“You’re not swearing to anyone,” Sarah said and rolled her eyes.

“Which means no one is swearing to us,” Eileen muttered under her breath. But I could tell she had given up by the slump of her shoulders.

“It’s only the unworthy who lose their magic,” Jess reassured. Her eyes flashed at me. “Scared you’re unworthy?”

Yes. I was scared. I know better now than to think lineage has any place in witchcraft. It’s about the magic, always just the magic. But months of hearing their rhetoric had worn at my self-esteem. It really felt like if I didn’t do the ritual, I was as good as admitting I wasn’t a witch. If I did do the ritual…

Well. Obviously, I did the ritual.

I was a hot-headed teen, okay? I felt challenged. I decided that I would wear extra protections. Tiger’s eye and quartz charged with intention. I picked out a silver locket my mother gave me, filled with belladonna. She told me it symbolized beauty and choice.

Now, here’s where I may be the asshole.

I can’t give you a play-by-play of the ritual. It was ten years ago, and calling on that much magic has a funny way of warping memory. But what I do remember is this:

We gathered in the park before sunrise. Seven of us in new colors – spring green, white, soft yellow and pink. Jess made us get rid of anything with a working on it – crystals, cards, and ladders. She collected them all in a linen bag and threw them into the woods. I couldn’t get away with my tiger’s eye or quartz, but she missed the pendant my mother gave me. It was a warm comfort against my chest as we began.

We lit the fire together, each of us frantically thumbing our lighter to make sure the sparks caught at the same time.

Jess brought the chalice. We all cut our palms and let seven drops fall into it. (No, we didn’t use a clean blade. My cut got infected as hell and it itches like a witch. I know better now!) She bade us drink, and we did.

“Now the magic will see us as equal,” Sarah said while Jess prepared the next step. She licked her lips as if savoring the blood. “It will only be our wills determining the outcome.”

Jess doused us with oil and herbs. It smelled sharp and uneasy. I had provided the herbs and knew all of them were either fresh or dried to perfection. But it was rancid. There was rot in the air, but I couldn’t place it then. I wrinkled my nose and took up the chanting with the others to distract myself from the smell.

If you’ve ever chanted before, you know the stages. First, you’re just talking. You say the words and they mean something, but you don’t feel them. Then your mouth gets tired. You start messing up the timing of the words. You stutter. You stumble. The words lose meaning. Most people stop there. They fall silent and sink into a shallow meditation with heads full of fog.

You’re only a witch if you can reach the next step. You keep saying the words. They become comfortable. You wear the words like clothes and feel your cadence curl through you like a companion. Your body goes on autopilot and your mind relaxes. The chant turns smooth as silk. Depending on the chant, you lose yourself to the sweetness of your coven singing. Sometimes, you sink into the earth with them. Other times, you ride the flow of the magic like waves.

This time, the words pulled us away from our bodies. Jess slowly introduced new words to our chant. Words of summoning.

We called upon the Overseer.

Pressure fell around me like a vice. I couldn’t breathe even as the ritual fell from my lips without breaking. Magic had, at that point, always given me control. This? This was a complete loss of it.

I felt myself compressing. Smaller and smaller in the face of the being that was rising in the middle of the flames. It was not an observer. The moment I “saw” it, its endless form writhing in the space between the smoke, I knew that. It was a judge and jury.

It was a spider.

We chanted. It grew. It pulled us from our bodies like spiderweb and spooled our essences onto its forelimbs. It was not what Jess described and, simultaneously, it was. We were being tested. Our psyches were being tested.

So long as we chanted, the being would be contained. However, the longer it was contained, the more of us it could take. If we let it go, what would it do? Would it return any part of our magic to us? Any part of who we were?

Or would it eat?

This wasn’t a test of magic. It was a test of faith. Faith in each other and faith in the ritual.

For those practitioners out there, you can see the problem. I didn’t enter the ritual with faith. My intent was flawed from the beginning. We’d had spells fail because of lack of belief. I had never been the person who didn’t believe.

Until then

My words wavered. The Overseer turned its eyes to me. I could see my magic like thread before it, shimmering against the backdrop of its maw.

Then another tremor. Eileen dropped a word. The Overseer split and looked at both of us. Someone else faltered. One of the coven – I couldn’t see them – fell and went silent.

The sky yawned overhead, empty and cold. The embers from the fire spun up into it and were lost. The Overseer rippled and I felt our coven shrink in the face of it.

I gasped around the chant and looked across the fire. The light licked Jess’ gleeful face. Her eyes hungered for my failure. I could see it. Through the connection of the Overseer, I could feel it.

Jess and Sarah changed the chant. To this day, I don’t remember if they taught it to the rest of us. There are so many parts of the ritual that I’ve left out or forgotten. But I remember them chanting different words. The circle grew discordant.

“I offer my magic so I may be unspun and woven anew,” they said. The words have imprinted themselves like bitters under my tongue. “I offer my magic so I may—”

Some of the other members tried to pick up the new chant. Their voices grew weaker and the Overseer’s limbs began to extend out towards each one of us.

I wouldn’t offer my magic to that thing. I wouldn’t be unspun.  Eileen was stuttering. I saw her fall to her knees. I was close behind.

I threw my necklace into the flames.

Belladonna. Beautiful and deadly. It has meant choice to many women and many of them have been from my own family. It's extreme and it’s final. An end that doesn’t always make room for a new beginning.

Pretty words that cover up what I meant when I threw it into the Overseer.

My intent was Death.

Entities never die. I’m sure the Overseer didn’t. It howled. The wind kicked up and brought the flames into a spiral ten feet tall. Its forelimbs shattered, and I reeled myself back together greedily.

Not all of us were safe from the Overseer’s desperate struggle against my death curse.

Sarah and Jess were alone in the third phase of the ritual. They had changed the chant. They had offered their magic and asked the entity to do with it what it will. They believed.

And because they believed, the Overseer took their magic with it.

I think it was the first coma Jess ever fell into. Her family certainly acted like it. They whisked her back to the East Coast before the end of the year. I heard from Eileen that she woke up shortly after I left for college.

Magicless.

Sarah too.

I fully own that I was responsible for the ritual failing. I panicked. I’ve gone through every excuse over the years. I didn’t know what the ritual really was. I was just a kid. I took magic too lightly. It was their fault for not letting us read the grimoire for ourselves. But, at the end of the day, the real reason the ritual failed was because I panicked and I let that panic break my belief.

I moved on to college and it felt like running away. I’ve never returned to my hometown. I’m happy with the life I’ve built. My magic summer camp gives me time to travel during the winter months, and I feel like I’m making a real difference in young witches’ lives.

Nowadays I teach young witches to never do a working without full intent. If they have doubts, they don’t do it. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way ten years ago. I tell them it can cost them more than their magic. It can cost them their lives.

Eileen is still back home and she says Sarah rarely comes out of her house. Sometimes she sees our former high priestess wandering the school grounds on nights of the full moon. I hear from other members of the coven that Jess’ family put out a bounty on me a few years ago. However, I never saw an assassin so I think that was just a rumor.

So, knowing that they’re still not over it, would I be the asshole for attending my high school reunion next month? I’ve been craving reconnection with my roots, but I’d be subjecting Sarah and Jess (though Jess marked Maybe on the RSVP) to my presence.

I know they must hold a grudge. If they were still witches, that would be a problem. I don’t think I’d be able to defend myself from one of their workings since I blame myself for what happened. But since they’re not, it’s not really a danger. That’s pretty asshole-ish, right? Ignoring their feelings because they don’t have the magic to back it up?

So WIBTA for attending my high school reunion even though the two girls I stripped of magic will be attending?

-----

Thanks for reading! It looks like I'll have quite a few updates for the anthology! I am still obsessed with this format and can't wait to share some of the updates over the next few weeks.

If you'd like to support me before the anthology, please consider supporting me on Patreon (X)! I post new stories every week and many of my patrons saw the above story a week early.

The current AITA story takes place in the same universe as our former Cryptid (X). About a poor, poor boy who is just proud to be a regional Nightmare. Why is everyone so mad at him?

See y'all next week!

[quettasecond]

[i.d: a picture of a cat with teary eyes. text is layered over it, saying "You are mean to me you insult me and you dont appreciate anything that i" the text is then cut off. end i.d]

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

Image Descriptions and Accessibility in General on Tumblr for New Users

What are Image Descriptions

Image Descriptions are text following a picture explaining what’s in that picture. They are primarily for blind/visually impaired people with screen readers and visually impaired people who can read text but have issues with pictures.

They also help people who have trouble:

focusing on/understanding a picture

reading text on images (ex low contrast, weird fonts, etc)

getting images to load

Without image descriptions posts are not accessible to many people, so if you can it's best to include a description or alt text every time you post an image.

Alt text vs image descriptions

Image descriptions are written in the body of the post itself, and have some kind of text before and after, to explain that what's coming up. They typically begin short and concise, but can expand to more detail.

Alt text is added to the image itself, and is what is read by screen-readers (which will otherwise just say "image"). There is no need to add any explanation before the description so you can just say "a description of the image". Alt text can only be added by the original poster, by clicking on the three dots in the bottom right corner of the image and clicking 'update image description.' It is typically short and concise.

On tumblr, alt text is currently available on web by clicking on the alt button (or via new xkit - accesskit - move alt text to captions below image). On mobile, alt text is available in some versions of the app through clicking on the alt text button. Image descriptions are visible on all posts, although if you put them under a read-more, that makes them less accessible. (Thanks to @911described for helping with this section)

How to Make Image Descriptions

Awhile ago I made this general guide. I learned from examples, so here are descriptions made by a bunch of different people. I've also made templates for a lot of common images you'll see on Tumblr.

Other Concerns

Gradient or all caps text make most screen readers read out the word one letter at a time. In addition, these plus text that is bold/italicized/underlined, in colors other than black, or in weird/fancy fonts are difficult for many people to read.

How Filtering Works

You can filter out both words/phrases and tags in the filtering section under the general section in the settings. When filtering out words from a post, it will look at both the text of the post/reblog chain and at the url of op and the rebloggers. When filtering out tags it will look at the tags of the specific post on your dash, and at the tags of the original post.

Tagging for Common Triggers

Don't sensor trigger warnings (for example don't tag suic!de) because then people who have them filtered will still see it.

Tagging for Flashing Lights

If you post a gif or video in a post that flashes, you should tag it with something like "flashing lights" and Not "tw epilepsy" because if any of the tags in the original post contains the world epilepsy it will show up in the epilepsy tag, which is dangerous. Check out this post from @photosensitive-despair for more info about tagging photosensitive content.

Tagging for Unreality vs Misinfo

Things that could trigger delusions/psychotic episodes/etc should be tagged with unreality. This includes:

content that has existential themes related to reality/things not existing (example: a philosophy such as solipsism, do not look up the term if unreality stuff is triggering for you)

extremely surreal content(example: sometimes content such as weirdcore/dreamcore aesthetics can fall under this umbrella but again this is very subjective)

content that reinforces or encourages common delusions(example: that one "im living in your walls" meme)

Things like rp blogs and fake/edited tweets should not be tagged with unreality, unless they contain triggering content. Consider tags like "fiction" or "misinfo." See this post for more info.

Edit:

Addition from @mindflamer

You can look through the reblogs of a post to see if someone's already written a description. There is a button to see just comments vs. comments + tags which makes it easier. Scroll through looking for brackets [], ID, or Image Description. This is great to do if you can't write your own IDs for whatever reason, so that you can at least spread the version of the post that's described if there is one.

If you're not able to write IDs consistently, some is better than none. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You can use the tag #undescribed to make it easy for those who need them to filter out those posts. Similarly, if you primarily tag triggers but can't for certain posts, you can use a separate tag on that to be filtered such as #untagged.

Please, if I forgot something, sound off in the notes and I'll update this post with it

[yeehawpim]

Hello!!!!!! I just wanted to let you know that your comics make me so happy!!!!! I really enjoy reading them so much, thank you for creating and posting them!!!!!!!!! I love every comic I’ve read of yours!!!!

As a side note, my sibling and i often send back and forth one of the drawings from your school comic of the two kids hugging — we don’t live close by eachother rn and the panels cheer me up and remind me it’s only so long until I’ll be one of the kids in the picture, if that makes sense. idk if this was weird to share i just wanted to tell you that your comics are really cool and both me and my sibling love reading them.

Your comics speak to me in a way that just makes me remember why I like living life, and I really appreciate that. Thank you for putting so much work into this!!!! Also, thank you for adding ids into the alt text for your comics!!

AW that's so good to hear!!! Thank you so much!!

That's really sweet, it makes me really happy that you guys use that panel. It's kind of funny to say since all my drawing in "we go together" is so rough, but I spent extra time on that one to try and get across the mood I wanted, so it's special to me.

[infiniteglitterfall]

the worst part about the i/p discourse

it's NOT the posters of Nazis with the swastikas on their flags replaced by stars of david. or the pages and pages of blood libel conspiracy theories in instagram posts about why local pride organizers are such big meanies. or the newfound insistence that jews just exaggerate and make up antisemitic incidents to smear the pro-palestine movement....

it's the fact that every. single. time. i try to post anything about any of these things, i end up in a rabbit hole SO DEEP IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO GET TO THE BOTTOM.

Yesterday, I saw a --

YOU SEE? I went to Reddit for a second to find the link to the post about the Melbourne protest this week that had people carrying the Nazi-star-of-David posters. But first, I saw a post that began, "All I see on social media and the news is more and more attacks. Who beat up a Jewish family here, who stabbed a 1 year old in front of a synagouge. Those are two examples, I've lost track of all of the other ones."

and I was like, SOMEONE STABBED A ONE YEAR OLD IN FRONT OF A SYNAGOGUE?!?!

And I started to look that up. AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Two days ago, I saw an article about Cincinnati Socialists setting up a table at North Kentucky Pride without asking, it sounds like, to hand out flyers saying the war in Gaza was Netanyahu's "Final Solution" for Palestinians. Cincinnati Pride organizers alerted the NKY Pride organizers, who kicked them out.

I was like, "okay, well, let's see what Cincinnati Socialists say about it." Then I discovered that their instagram not only "names and shames" the two Cincy Pride organizers and one NKY organizer. Which led to the Cincy ones getting so much harassment and violent threats that they resigned....

But also has a related post that goes on for pages and pages of pure blood libel.

So then I sat there fact-checking all their blood libel and finding out that not only was it untrue and impossible, but half the stuff they referenced didn't even exist.

Then I ended up fact-checking things in the "article" that they'd clearly used as their source. Fact-checking things I found while fact-checking those.

Trying to write a Facebook post about how fucked up it all was. Giving up on the Facebook post after several hours because it made more sense to write it on Tumblr, or at least to write it on Tumblr FIRST.

Then I'm also looking at the post they made "naming and shaming" the organizers, which is like... "the Cincy ones are partners! two days after Hamas's incredibly violent and brutal massacre, one of them changed his profile picture to a photo of them honeymooning IN ISRAEL two years ago! they did it through some group that COVERS A LOT OF THE COSTS FOR HONEYMOONS IN ISRAEL!!!!" and "the other one went to a protest of Hamas's massacre!!! with a sign saying to free the hostages!!!"

oh no. the fucking horror. truly how did these genocidal monsters even end up on the pride organizing committee. this is a shanda scandal.

then I'm responding to people's comments, trying to talk them down from horrible positions. telling people things like, "I know it's asking a LOT, but if people could grasp the idea that "going to Israel for your honeymoon" ISN'T "committing genocide," it would be really great. Or that wanting the hostages freed is actually something that both Israeli AND GAZAN protests have called for, and it's only Westerners who are opposed to it. Or that in fact, saying you "Stand with Israel," a few days after an incredibly brutal attack that burned multiple towns to the ground in one day, killed entire families and their pets, an attack which Hamas has promised to repeat "again and again and again" till Israel is violently destroyed... is opposing that attack, NOT calling for genocide."

then i'm like, "oh, i should edit these images to show the correct info, and i can explain that I drew arrows and added the correct info!" so then i'm doing that and working on writing alt text, and holy shit??? how many fucking hours??? did i spend on this?????? just because i read a frigging reddit post that linked to an article about it?????????

and like. i can go through and debunk all that shit in the comments. (and did. i responded to every single comment that believed this shit.) but ultimately, everyone who pulls this shit has way more reach than I do.

just. like. THAT'S ONE ORG IN ONE PLACE. And it was bad enough that I persevered and finished debunking it and commenting on it today and started telling people about it. Do you even know how many more of those I've seen?! How many I would see if I looked for them on purpose?!

The tsunami of deliberate disinformation is SO FUCKING BAD. All of it is SO FUCKING LAYERED. In any single bullshit post, there are SO MANY horrifically bad and wrong assumptions. So many of them are DESIGNED, BY HAMAS, to lead people down the path to "All Zionists should die! Israel should be violently destroyed!"

There were so many comments on a "Free Palestine Melbourne" group's instagram post (Sydney? Could've been Sydney) asking, pointedly, how many Jews are Zionists. What percentage of Jews are Zionists, again?

One (1) had a response telling them it doesn't matter what the percentage is, no percentage would justify collective punishment of Jews.

The rest all said things like, "Too many."

It feels like constantly being lied to. Just constantly being lied to about things I have looked up and verified myself from solid sources, now and in the past, by people I counted as my community.

Then just now I opened Instagram because I hadn't taken screenshots of a couple of the pics I wanted to add. And I'm hit with these:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by jewsinschool (@jewsinschool)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jewish on Campus (@jewishoncampus)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jewish and Proud (@jewishpridealways)

Then some brighter posts (including one of a baby bat!!) and then a post which sums up a lot of what I'm feeling right now.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jess Cook (@jessicagcoook)

It's like, yes, that, plus the uncomfortable sense that some people are getting thisclose to going, "Most Jews are Zionists anyway, so YEAH, I DO think most Jews deserve to die."

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Results: Dolthruk

More physical description than usual on this one, some of which I worry makes the creature a bit obvious, but we'll see how that plays out.

If you're not sure what any of this is about, please refer to https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.

To see the entry the artists are working from, click here:

To see the one we're doing for next week, and possibly contribute your own work, click here:

Art below the cut.

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) started with a platypus, then added some other influences to make the described size work. I think it came out quite well -- that is a solid depiction of what a platypus relative might look like if it were huge and terrifying.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) has also given us something quite frightening -- I don't think I'd want to get near this one. Or see it in person. The inspirations for this design are pretty interesting -- I'd recommend checking them out in the linked post. And, if that distinctively-patterned hide looks familiar to you, that is addressed in the linked post as well. (Also thank you for providing alt text.)

@citrvsdrake (link to post here) also has a quite fearsome rendition, this one almost draconic -- in their post, they mention that they originally thought of some sort of river snake, but with armor and legs this becomes more of a dragon. I think it's a good dragon, too.

@pomrania (link to post here) also started with the idea of making a large, dangerous platypus, but went in a different direction, emphasizing scales and spikes. I like the serrated bill here; that's a nice touch.

@wendievergreen (link to post here) has instead drawn something adorable, noting that they decided to go in the opposite direction of what they suspected the animal was. I think it's delightful. For explanation of the inspirations for this design, and a close-up of the image, see the linked post. (Also, thank you for providing alt text -- and I think the banana thing is still funny too.)

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) brings the Beast Vibe back to "frightening" with this creation. Some fantastic work with the faces on both the Dolthruk and the fish, and of course I love the Stylized Plants... listen. Does anyone else think this looks like the cover of a really wild album? (Also, thank you for providing alt text.)

Anyway.

Aberdeen Bestiary says...

... no picture for you. It's not been cut out this time, they just didn't draw one. This section is more or less without illustrations, in fact. Maybe they considered it less important -- according to the bestiary's categorization system, this is a fish, actually. Sure, it has legs, but it lives in the water, what else do you want?

The Ashmole Bestiary, my backup illustration source, makes the same decision, but Bodley MS 764, my backup text source, does provide an illustration (and doesn't call it a fish).

Okay, so that's not a hugely realistic depiction, but it's probably not completely shocking to say that this is the crocodile.

I was surprised not to see any reference to tears in the Aberdeen entry -- the concept of "crocodile tears" is popular in the bestiaries.

The bit about color that I redacted from the entry claims that the crocodile's name comes from crocus due to its saffron-colored hide (not in evidence in the above image). I don't think this is true -- both English words can be traced back through Latin to Greek, and they certainly sound similar, but it seems crocus is probably a loanword into Greek from somewhere in the Semitic language family (hard to say which language specifically), and thus unrelated to crocodile despite their shared elements.

[lurksunderthebed]

Major Spoilers MWIII (2/5)

Thoughts on Ghostsoap mwiii part 2 with pics

BEWARE THEM SPOILERS ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Adding because I have so many pictures that I need to separate out. But yeah the game Devs knew what they were doing dang it.

ON THE JOKES AND THE STARING™

I mean Ghost was the one joking every single damn time Soap looked to him in cutscenes. It's like my heart visibly clenched. And Soap dude. He was full blown ass staring in Ghost's direction all the time. No hiding it at all. If Ghost has a staring problem then whatever Soap was doing was idk an addiction.

↓ Soap doesn't pull his eyes away from ghost at all during this cutscene. Ghost noticed soaps attention on him and then had to make a joke. I SWEAR GHOST ONLY JOKES TO SOAP (AND MAYBE PRICE BUT THAT WAS ALSO FOR SOAP) ↓read the alt. Makes more sense haha

^ soap doesn't even look to be staring at price while SAYING that he was worried about price getting kod by toxic gas (awkward angle. Soap def is, but this framing ;0;). GHOST IS JUST AS BAD. LEGIT NOTICED SOAP BEING WORRIED, LOOKED AT HIM FIRST AND THEN MADE A JOKE TO LIGHTEN UP THE AIR. You bet he wasn't joking for price. That's for sure.

↓read the alt text. Tried to explain this one. But its hard without a gif.

^ so the whole thing was Soap making a remark and then ghost lit just zeroing in on soap. Gaz said smth and soap actually looked at Gaz while he said it, while ghost full on ignored Gaz while he was speaking. Gaz is so done with their bs lmaoo.

I can conclude they had major staring problems at each other. I don't think they even paid attention to Gaz.

Onto part 3.

[accessibleagere]

Accessible agere #2: image descriptions

Time to talk about image descriptions!

What are they?

An image description is using words to say what's happening in a picture. For example, a photo of a red ball would be described as "a red ball."

Why are they used?

Image descriptions help people who are blind or have low vision, as well as some people who have visual processing issues, to be able to know what an image is, the same way most people would with their eyes.

How do I write one?

I'm not the best person to explain, because my language issues make them difficult for me to do, so I'm using information from other websites (linked at the bottom of the post.)

Think about what's most important to you or jumps out right away when you look at the image you're describing. What is the main focus of it? If you were telling someone about it, what would you say to them?

Don't over complicate it! Use simple, easily understandable language and put the most important parts first and in the most detail. Try to keep it to 125 words or less if possible.

How do I add them to my images?

Tumblr has the ability to add descriptions to images! Click the three dots that appear on an image in a post you're making and select "add alt text." Pictures that have alt text added will have a badge that says ALT that you can click to show the text.

Can I add them to someone else's post?

You can't directly add them to an already posted image without editing the post, but you can reblog and add a description in regular text.

Do I have to do them for every image? What if I can't?

Ideally, every image would be described, but that's not always possible. You might not know how to describe something, or you might not have the energy for it. You can try reaching out to other people for help with it. If it's an image of text, like a interaction banner or a screenshot, you can put it through an image to text converter. If you can't describe it at all, tagging the post as "undescribed" can help people who need image descriptions to avoid it by filtering it out!

(Sources / recommended reading: https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-write-an-image-description-2f30d3bf5546

https://www.accessiblepublishing.ca/a-guide-to-image-description/ )

Thank you for reading! Questions? Comments? Requests? Feel free to reply or send asks, just keep things polite!

[trashpandacraft]

i really wish that people here on the 'accessibility is so so so important' website would figure out how to use alt text.

i know adding it is an additional barrier to posting, but i'm hard pressed to believe that 95% of people here are unable to ever clear that barrier. it's not that hard to add a brief description of the photo--imo anything is better than nothing, and for many pictures, brief is better than a ten-paragraph description.

i know for a long time tumblr was bad about supporting it, especially for photo posts, but they have pretty robust support since about when automattic took over, and it's a real fucking bummer to me that so few people have adopted it.

if you'd like to see alt text but you're not sure how:

on mobile: if an image has alt text, there's a little button that says alt in the lower left corner of the image. most do not.

on desktop: you can inspect image etc but tbh the modern web makes it a pain. xkit rewritten has a toggle that shows it underneath the image, though, which makes it very easy.

[trenchgardens-ooc-ooc-ooc-ooc]

i'm sure One Million Kazillion people have asked you this but if not Perpep for the ask game?

Just one more! This is specifically for Beforan Perpep. Not Bard's Collage or Alternia. Perpep

favorite thing about them Playing her is so fun. She's just a little guy. She is just a little guy, yknow? I also love how she talks. Its not the best transcribed on my part but its just cute. Her intonation is cute.

least favorite thing about them Probably just my... like. Inability to keep up with her timescale... I decided all my ocs have some time distortion shit going on with them because of my executive dysfunction. There are. several things in her drafts that are there because i wanted to draw a picture for it and never did. There are... so many...

favorite line Ok so if youve been here for a while, she once was really mad at Raveri, the other Raveri, and wrote a whole rant about him. That was funny I liked that. I also liked the time she was talking about the horrorterrors and drew one of them with her text.

brOTP Uhhhhhh I still dont really get this im ngl. An otp but platonic, so either a qppr or like... just being good friends? buddies? Well that'd've probably also been old Raveri. They were sopor chess buddies. They did sopor slime and played chess.

OTP Uh... Hm... Yknow, again, I don't really ship Perpep. I guess her alt!self Oftcas has an 'otp' with (B!)Detheo. Their wierd fuckin biuniversal asses. Postgame she has a pitch thing going on with Somati, but her whole situation makes it kind of... I think her intimacy is pretty heavily wounded. Yknow... from being a human pet. Being without a relationship after so long of it being the default is hard though. Something that happens during the game that makes this part easier, but she does feel it really intensely. It's why she gets with Somati actually. Its technically pitch and she thinks of it that way even if it resembles a pale relationship a little more because of how Perpep is. It's not entirely NOT pale on somati's part, but it is pitch. Not the angry kind of pitch though, the like... theyre two individually really chill people who start fucking with shit to compete when theyre together. Mentos and coke ship.

nOTP Shrugs. You'd probably think I'd say Perpep and her culler, but thats narratively interesting to me. Uhhh I guess she would be really bad with Alpha Detheo. Like they wouldn't mix at all and their preconceptions about the other would clash so bad i think they might just kind of avoid eachother a little bit. Curiosity on both sides, with fear twinging Perpep's and logical guilt on Detheo's. Logical guilt being like... not guilt guilt but like. Ah a version of me hurt this person in a very sick way. This has added a level of morality to my self image that is troubling and I will have to consider deeply what went wrong in my other life to ensure something like that does not happen in this one. Also I should stay away from Perpep because she definitely doesn't want any more Detheo in her life. (Not entirely wrong on that last count but not right either)

random headcanon Perpep is the cuddliest motherfucker on the planet. During her session, about from the Entering when she loses track of Cinimon to her death during the Among Us conference between her, Miyers, Respit, and Sphinx, she's really fucking nervous and crabby because of touch starvation. Thats actually part of why she throws so much shade during that little meeting. She's not got a lot of emotional skill, so when she feels negatively, those emotions leech into her other emotions like dye in water. She has a hard time distinguishing between different stressors almost. Like if her emotional state was a body, and her stress was caused by a horsefly biting her on one side, she would project the same anger in every direction. She's new to this, yk.

unpopular opinion uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh My unpopular opinion is you should go on her blog and look at the posts under #captures and appreciate those drawings :-)

song i associate with them Ohoho. Hold on let me get the Perpeplaylist Taroko by August Greenwood Death by Melanie Martinez New Normal by Jack Stauber Boys Will Be Bugs by Cavetown I Can Talk by Two Door Cinema Club Otherside by the Red Hot Chilipeppers Sports by Beach Bunny (Voiceclaim also) Wreckingball specifically the cover by The Orion Experience In that order. LMK if you have any guesses on how her timeline fits to those. I feel like its pretty obvious but I am also the writer so yk.

favorite picture of them

This is stil the funniest thing ive ever drawn i think. She flashbanged herself poor fishie.

This one which is still way detailed. Im kinda sad no one ever asked about the collar, to get a closer look at the picture, the bullet, the rook, the tiny grub hons, the necklaces, the bident, or . any of that. I also planned to have it be more obvious that those are *somati's* clothes. If you look in captures you'll see his dad's dead body. Thats where she got the sgrub disks. College and Exec disorder got in the way of the pictures of Snapdad i planned for Somati to post... I might end up redoing that though. Shrug.

And obviously this picture from her postgame band on Continua. LOOK At her. she is such a sweetie.

[citrusella-flugpucker]

An idea about ways to change the way the geoglyphs quest works which will Totally Please Everyone™

...What do you mean, you can't please everyone?

So, I said in December that I wanted to make a post about a game mechanic change in Tears of the Kingdom that could make everyone happy with regards to the delivery of the geoglyphs' story points.

I, for instance, liked finding them in whatever order and did not find it negatively affected my experience of the story, but some other people found they didn't like that the "correct" (read: chronological) order wasn't enforced.

I had an idea that could fix that, and it centers on a lot of conditionals, and to start off, I'm going to describe it using one already extant story progress condition a lot of people probably have never encountered. (But plenty of people probably have.)

You get this text box if you manage to arrive at the pedestal while having not started the regional phenomena main quest. (Even if you got the paraglider. It's linked to starting Regional Phenomena.)

(I spent two hours trying and failing to glitch into the room with a clip from above before finally giving up and trying precarious ascend instead because I didn't wanna steal a shot of this off a YouTuber. Everyone clap

Also, I was going to include other images but brain doesn't want to alt text right now so)

So, anyway, the idea I had is that you see this sort of text box (not that EXACT box, it's only an example), but only in certain scenarios. Imagine, if you will:

Prior to arriving at geoglyph #1, everyone--if they try to interact with another geoglyph--sees a message like, "You don't yet know how to interact with this." or something.

Then you get to #1 where Impa is waiting for you as she does in the actual game (this is where all the other images would have gone if I included them here XP). She gives you the spiel, you go up in the balloon, and some of her text is changed from the actual game in a way that suggests that when you examine again and actually have it work, you realize it involves recall, yada yada (the actual interaction with the tear doesn't change from canon, I just wanted the text to change so there's a story reason you "know" what to do now). Impa shows up after you view it, as she canonically does.

Here's where things are really changed up: While she still brings up going to the Forgotten Temple, she very much telegraphs to the player that if they go there, they will get answers as to the order, so that people will be even clearer than the actual game that they can find the map and order there (though maybe not being that direct about it when presenting this dialog to the player as it would be to say "there will be a map and pictures there"). Then, like in the real game, she suggests Link make his way there as well... BUT then a dialogue option comes up.

Will you meet me at the Forgotten Temple as soon as possible?

[Sure!] [I can manage on my own. 🅱]

And then, just in case you were spamming B, pressing that will trigger a confirmation.

Are you sure? I suspect there is important information about the geoglyphs there.

[Okay, I'll come.] [Maybe later. 🅱]

No matter which one you select, the quest is added regardless just like normal (albeit perhaps with slightly different flavor text depending on whether you agreed to the meeting or not).

If you hit B and reject all attempts to go "immediately" then the game works as it does currently: The quest is granted, all geoglyphs instantly respond to you in whatever order you approach them in, Impa goes to the Forgotten Temple, etc.

If you ever hit A on the top option, the quest is granted and you're not immediately transported there or anything, but until you arrive at the Forgotten Temple, a flag is set and all geoglyphs respond by producing a Not Yet box saying something like "You remember that you promised to meet Impa in the Forgotten Temple."

So you head to the Forgotten Temple. Regardless of whether you agreed to come or came later, just like in canon, Impa's there, you find the map and order on the wall. Some of the in-game interactions happen, but instead of Impa suggesting you take a picture (or perhaps, instead of her only suggesting you take a picture), she says something that allows you to have the order be enforced. Maybe it's writing from a book she read about the geoglyphs or something, since it's established in canon she read about the Dragon's Tears somewhere. Maybe it's connected to you taking a picture with a quest ❗ on it with the Purah Pad (though this would require you to have completed a different quest first to get the camera. oof.). But somehow, this order is imparted to you so that Link himself knows it in game.

If you reject the enforced order, you're still free to take a picture like in canon, but the flag preventing you from investigating geoglyphs is cleared and you can access them in any order just like if you'd rejected going to the temple immediately when Impa asked at tear 1.

If you agree to enforced order, the flag preventing investigating the glyphs at all is unset, and a different flag that says you chose to enforce the order is set instead. Then, if you approach a geoglyph that's not next in chronological order, the game presents a box saying something to the effect of "This doesn't look like the next geoglyph..." Maybe it's not a strict enforcement, and so when you get this box, you also get dialogue options of "Look anyway." or "Leave it alone for now." Just in case you agreed to the enforcement and then went "wait, I don't like this".

Also considered the idea that unlocking the sensor on the Purah Pad would grant you, in addition to shrines and compendium entries, the ability to track geoglyphs (maybe with changes in which geoglyphs it alerts to, dependent on if you're in enforced order or not--i.e. unenforced alerts to all, enforced only alerts to next). But that also felt like it might be too handholdy? IDK.

Anyway, this is my attempt at a best-of-both-worlds between people who want to be guided through parts of the story in a specific order and people who really don't care/don't think the variable order is a detriment and maybe just want to hit things efficiently while they're crossing the map doing other things.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk

[allthe-everything]

to all my babes out there trying to get a job, got some tips for y'all. i'm updating my resume and realised that what i do might help some people, and not everyone knows about ATS parsing. gonna be long, will add a tldr at the end

so, first things, instead of MS office, i use libreOffice as my document creator/word processor. stop giving microsoft your money - libreOffice is free and open source, and it's amazing. go get it. saves you money too and god knows we need that. but, i'm sure you can do this in publisher too, i just don't know all the buttons

onto techniques: instead of creating my resume in libreOffice's equivalent of word, i use the equivalent of microsoft's publisher - the thing meant for you to make cards and flyers and whatnot. essentially you just pick a size document, and get to throw things (pictures, text boxes, charts, whatever) onto the page where you want them. since it's geared more towards artsy things, it's a lot more flexible with formatting than word (moving images in word? just don't).

essentially, every snippet of information i put on my resume is one text box. each job with its description, each project i've worked on, etc gets its own text box. this is great in a couple ways: it means that if you want to change the formatting of your resume, you can just move around text boxes instead of fucking around with copy/paste all day. the second thing is that when a machine tries to read your resume, internally it'll read that pdf and see blocks of related information that's more precise than giant paragraphs you'd get in word. make your section titles their own text boxes (like experience, education, skills, etc) so they don't get lumped in with the real info.

i'm not gonna talk about "resume words" or "clean formatting" bc tbh i'm bad at that and i think recruiters are dumb sometimes for wanting "no templates, but only format it this one particular way". but get all your info there, arrange it how you see fit, and THEN. then we get sneaky.

in libreOffice, you can name and add descriptions to text boxes. "what!" i hear you say. "that's so weird why would anyone do that!". and i say "well, if a human is reading your resume, it doesn't matter what the text box thinks it is. but it's a machine reading your resume! you want to speak the machine's language." the name is less important than the description, in my opinion, but you can name the boxes too. what you're gonna do is select a text box, click on "format" at the top bar, then "description". and you're gonna add in the alt text box what this text box is. if it's a list of skills, write "skills". if it's education, write "education". this info won't show up visually to a human reading the doc, but it helps machines categorise the data, just a little bit better. in the description part of this, you can also try adding the key words from the job description so the machine sees them but a human really can't find it unless they really look. this isn't something i've been able to test thoroughly, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

i'm still working out all the kinks myself, and picking apart what the ATS does in terms of parsing your resume, but when i started doing this my resume was better parsed whenever i applied to jobs. which, bonus, less retyping your resume into the bullshit job app.

tldr; fuck microsoft, use libre office instead. use libre office's drawings app or ms office's publisher app for ease of use. in libre office, click text box, go to format -> description and add a description of what the text box contains. test and retest your resume in an ATS parser online to make sure the machine reads your resume correctly.

i wish this wasn't how things are, but since we're here might as well figure out hacks. if anyone else has info to add, please please do. it's rough out here.

[madworldmarvelareview]

my experience with extreme force shipping, anti lesbianism/sapphicism, and anti indigenous rhetoric on a roleplay server that claims not to perpetrate any of the above. 

i’m certain head mod summer will call this defamatory, as she did to the honest review (1 star) by my writing partner on disboard, so i’ve taken the time to include screenshots alongside my review below. any prospective members, current or past are welcome to message this account, or find me on discord @ dinahbabs.

marvelous mad world is a server that revolves around ass kissing the mod, summer, and her best friend, kelsey, while they berate you. the issues arise quickly when saying no, even nicely.. no is not an answer these two will accept, if they have their heart set on something.

to start us off, there was only 1 lesbian character on the server before i arrived, and i don't think they had any lesbian members. this will provide some context as we go along.

i first encountered lesbophobia when i didn’t want my lesbian (irene adler) in a throuple with a man (forge, married to mystique)— where the lesbian was treated as if she was an accoutrement to an m/f relationship, not a woman of her own. please note that i was never asked to be in this arrangement in any way, and i was also continuously told it wouldn't be an issue, i saw in character that two characters (raven and forge) were in a relationship (where raven says her heart has only room enough for him), leaving me open to do my own thing as the rules already state, and as one of the members confirmed in my dms. i was excited to go my own way and make something new.

the server's rules:

alt text: pressuring or manipulating others for ships or connections gets exactly 1 warning, and then a ban. absolutely no debate on this. you may ask, but do not under any circumstances pester, harass, or otherwise bug people about connections. no means no.

upon my exit, it was said that i “didn’t speak to the members in question” and went against server wishes. in the following screenshot you’ll see that i let moderators know i didn’t attempt to reach out yet because the person in question did not answer my past plotting dms, and the server policy clearly stated ships are free to create at your leisure as noted above.

before: pre acceptance screenshot.

after: summer lying about me asking to be told to speak to member kelsey, when i was accepted, knowing kelsey didn't answer. i reference here that i knew mystique was married, and made my other plans for a different ship.

member kelsey never answered my plotting dms, at which point i had made other plans, instead, she messaged me in character, which resulted in the following conversation between raven and irene:

irene telling raven she's moving on and did not have interest in a throuple.

when i conveyed my desire for my character to continue onto a new relationship, i was punished in and outside of character for doing so. 

where i make everyone clear i made other ship plans when i saw raven was married. (i would have told kelsey in dms, if she ever answered me, instead i noted their coparenting, that was shot down later.)

reaction from summer's forge: why would my lesbian character want a man in the first place?

reaction from summer's forge: irene never broke up a marriage, and sapphic characters are not property if you name a kid after them.

kelsey's raven and summer's forge reaction to irene not wanting to be their third?? i can't make this up.

mod summer's true intentions laid clear: irene never canonically said what was stated in the claremont run, raven hated forge after irene died, and raven/irene only recently defeating 40 years of homophobia to be together means nothing if summer can get m/f out of it.

the strangeness continues with anti indigenous behaviour, so much so that they named a child after my lesbian character (destiny), used a picture of an indigenous child, and coloured her pink/red, as if that isn’t added anti-indigeniety on display. 

indigenous child they coloured red.

later claiming to be purple after a review was posted.

hex coded proof, all red.

when i declined their ship, they said they were switching back to the child’s tribal name (the way it should have been!) “threatening” to refer to an indigenous child as her tribal name over a ship fallout feels so ugly. indigenous names are not a punishment. i replied to this blatant anti-indigenous and incel-like response with “my character would love that tribal name, actually!” to no response. 

proof of the change of name. after that, they only called this child "d".

that issue is further pressed with the demand of face claims, and yet mods use the wrong ethnicity or tribes for indigenous muses. it’s a shame with the amount of diversity, including a plethora of comic art, that they would not recognize that issue, and revert to art for characters that can’t be cast correctly. there is also a rule against problematic face claims but those with allegations of SA are still used as far as i can see. 

a few friends of mine were kicked the first day of pride, for a variety of things,

screenshot of the random group kick.

what i said back to it.

screenshot of the announcement after the group kick. two.

but the only ones i had anything to do was denying the mod and kelsey a ship, and asking for clarification about a comment made by another user. or maybe just being friends with them? who knows, since the ban message was for a group and not very specific. i remain not upset, since i stayed only to support my friends and am glad to be free of a place where female and non binary characters exist largely to be sexualized, but since there’s a one way narrative, it deserves to be cleared up as they beg their members for good reviews on disboard. 

the rules tell you not to only write ship things, but at least half of the server, if not more is all gratuitous and public (badly characterized, badly written) porn, or 2 line ship dialogue. all the conflict has been stripped away, and all that remains is love triangles, which the mod summer or member kelsey has placed herself at the center of for attention. thus, if your character if not in love with either’s roster, or are their “child”, you will be ignored and not privy to plots unless you invite yourselves to them. 

no villains are allowed, except the ones mod summer finds attractive, and then you have to stomach people writing rapists in group chats! lovely, and went dismissed when inquired about, since half of the villains on the ban list (like vulcan) have done less evil than the villains accepted (creed, canon rapist), or requested (like jason wyngarde, canon rapist). 

every other character by those two bears no resemblance to their canon iterations. 

mystique runs around calling her partner daddy, and is kelsey’s most sexualized character. she uses a black woman for raven while doing this, while her white roster is not treated the same. 

the server’s victor creed was said they removed SA from his history, but he threatens to seggsually assault mystique in a text thread. no action when this was brought up to staff, they said “raven wanting creed is a part of her marriage, so this (clearly worded SA threat while raven said no) was not actually SA. no offer to privatize the thread, or improvements on their tagging system to denote when there was blatant rape. 

server is also so low on lore knowledge they made jokes about scott summers and prof x having sex, as if prof didn’t meet scott as a minor aged child, and as if scott doesn’t see prof as a father figure! truly jarring to run a server without knowing base level info that results in grooming/incest jokes being made. 

when confronted with this triggering content, mods promised to implement a better spoilering and tagging system, and then never went ahead with it.  as of 6/19, has done nothing still.

the application demands a writing sample that showcases a lot of things, including dialogue, long introspection, but you won’t need it. the vast majority of what’s written here is 1 liner dms and smut. which really isn’t an issue, but if the average thread is two sentences, outside of their plot drabbles, which were admittedly nice by some members (when they made sense).

the server boasts two warnings, of which you will only receive none, if you nicely decline offers to ship with the mods. i would steer clear. the effort you have to put in to get approved is not worth putting up with the mods as they are. anyways big fuck you for trying to force me into a ship, expect my lesbian to be subsumed by your heterosexual pairing, and then be lesbophobic even after i left! lesbians aren’t side characters. you wouldn’t know that, or care, since i saw what you said after i left and it was heinous. as expected. 

as you can tell if you've been keeping up, i never had raven tell irene to fuck off. i was forced to say, in character, that irene was moving on, because member kelsey never answered dms.

lesbophobia post exit: one, two, three (discussing my writing partner's lesbian character).

so bad that they had to make an announcement about how lesbophobic their server was and how to behave. two.

classy party! on pride, to boot. no one in these screens is a lesbian, as you can guess, and the main perpetrators never apologized! not even to the server, who had to witness it all.

overall stop begging for server reviews, server likes, accept that you did things wrong, learn, private your server and enjoy your weird anti indigenous anti sapphic circlejerk! and never pressure people to ship again, you suck.

this next part is specifically for kelsey, who took it upon herself to be extra lesbophobic after my exit. no need to read unless you’re her. 

kelsey, you didn’t know i’d picked another ship because you never bothered to dm me back lol! not that i wanted to ship with you anyway after the way you treated me, and your atrocious characterizations, not just of mystique. i was also never demanded to contact you before apping, as evidenced below once more. 

link back to the conversation with gansey.

trying to accuse me of not reading irene comics (i have read all of her appearances over twice in their entirety), and that i didn’t “know her” feels nuts to come from a raven characterization with no depth except for her vaginal canal. maybe i just knew raven and irene well enough not to want to ship with a character written by you, whose most used words were “daddy” “fill me good” and who was so oversexualized as a black woman written by you, one as white as me, i felt so uncomfortable— and since i knew i’d read more raven than you ever will, would be wasting my time, and would derive no pleasure out of writing with a self insert. 

its bad when even your own friends joked about you killing your characters / banned you from doing it for attention when you weren’t getting enough. i’d tell you to log off and get some friends but get the sense keeping them would be a problem for you, you don’t seem like someone who puts the work into anything. 

your research about meg and i, who has only been writing for two years, confusing one sapphic for another, no doubt comes from your friend and server co mod “esther” formerly jackie, who was run off tumblr at least three times for derailing black lives matter discussions with white / personal issues and being anti romani, which she was in her server i was in too! she did a great job of pretending to hold herself accountable, but it all was told to us by a friend after. she’s now banned from a bunch of communities because of it. bet you didn’t know that, she’s tried to hide it quite well, but we all know who she is, and her life is largely a lie to rebrand after being run off multiple writing communities within the last 10 years. like you, she sexualized her characters that have been survivors of sexual abuse. i’m happy to be disliked by a person like that, and by you. 

i suspect you’ll continue to be friends with her because you’re twins, hiding behind online attention and praise because you’ll never have it in real life the way you dream of so badly, compensating by getting angry when someone doesn’t worship you. you crave the attention, and so i’ll make this the last time you ever get it from me. i’ll forget about you tomorrow, but you’ll always remember, won’t you? people like you always do. 

nothing but the best ahead,

liv

[antisyscourse]

hey we just wanted to let you know we cant read your "this blog is anti syscourse" userbox and we needed somebody to basically translate it for us,,, its super horrible for people like us with dyslexia or people in general with vision problems, just because of the font. just thought we'd let you know, buh bye :3

this has been brought to my attention previously!!! on computer, if you hover over the box, you can get the alt text that tells you what exactly it says!! i don't know how to access it on mobile, but i assume you can by clicking on it or something of the sort!! i make sure to add the alt text to every post so that people can properly read it. :)) nonetheless, i will start adding image descriptions underneath the picture to better help people who don't know about alt text or have trouble accessing it. i hope this helps, i'm so sorry it has caused you trouble!! :(

[ID: STOP! this is a syscourse free blog! it is a safe space for all systems, so please go away if you intend upon stirring up drama!]

[pikachugirltits]

Magic x Marvel: Idle Speculation

I have a lot of random thoughts about the upcoming Magic the Gathering x Marvel crossover, and I thought it would be neat to just ramble about them in a post, especially so I can hopefully find that post again later when the sets release and see how much I was right about. I'm just gonna bullet point this because this is kind of a stream of consciousness sort of deal:

We know that we're getting multiple "tentpole releases" a.k.a. more than one full set for this particular crossover. I'm thinking at least one is going to be a straight to Modern draftable set similar to the LotR set, but I don't think they're necessarily just doing that for all the sets. I speculate that the other (or one of the others if there's more than two) set is going to be a gimmick draft set, such as 2-Head Giant or Commander draft.

I personally am hoping one of the sets is a Commander draft set, and that our partner variant for the set goes the Stranger Things route and just creates a subset partner variant. I propose the name Team-Up, to represent the ubiquity of team up storylines in comic books. (I actually made an entire post about this but Tumblr's wonderful search function is choosing not to find it on my blog.)

Ooh, if they do go the Commander draft route they can make the Prismatic Piper equivalent a Skrull or something

I really, really want a Squirrel Girl card that makes squirrel tokens that I can jam into my Chatterfang deck. Squirrel Girl is my favorite superhero and I just want her on a card so, so badly.

I think it would be cool to have a Mjolnir equipment that in addition to its other effects also has a bit of trinket text along the lines of "equipped creature is a God in addition to its other types."

Thor and Loki and any other Asgardian that represents an actual god should have the creature type God. It already exists. Like sure, we could make Asgardian a creature type if we wanted to, but that's the coward's route.

I saw someone make a comment on Reddit about adding Hero and Villain as creature types, but I really, really hope that doesn't happen. It runs the risk of making the creature types in the set super repetitive, and we're already gonna see a lot of that from the sheer number of human characters. Sure, we'll have some mutants and aliens and robots to occasionally break things up, but it'll be much worse if the class types among cards aren't varied.

Like seriously, let's use the movie Avengers lineup. What's better...having four Human Hero cards, a God Hero, and whatever we do with the Hulk...or a Human Soldier, Human Scientist, Human Archer, Human Rogue, God Warrior, and whatever we do with the Hulk

Yeah, actually...what are we gonna do with the Hulk and related characters? In a vacuum, I would probably type the Hulk as Mutant Berserker...but for IP reasons I wouldn't be surprised if the Mutant creature type is reserved solely for characters with the X-Gene. I don't have an answer for this, just wondering...

Oh, and since I mentioned the MCU, I do want to say one thing, if they're smart they'll base the sets on the comics and not the MCU. Gives them a lot more material and characters to pull from

Booster fun treatment should lean into this and be comic book themed, but I think they would also be smart to offer some Secret Lair drops featuring alt art versions of the characters based on the MCU...if they're willing to deal with the likeness rights and whatnot.

Multiple tentpole releases does mean multiple commander precons. Some themes I could easily see them basing decks on: the Avengers, X-Men, Spider-Man/Spider-Verse, Guardians of the Galaxy+other space themed characters, a deck for a bunch of the more mystical Marvel characters probably led by Dr. Strange, S.H.I.E.L.D., A.I.M., Villains in general (from my memory Marvel doesn't really have a singular Legion of Doom type team up of its iconic villains, but I'm definitely picturing a Villains deck that tosses a bunch of iconic villains together in one deck...you could call it the Masters of Evil as a deep cut though.)

If Gambit gets a card, he should have an ability that lets you discard cards to deal damage to a target to represent Gambit throwing cards at his enemies. (This is the kind of wink at the camera stuff I love in UB products.)

Koi Boy should get a card purely because he's a canon trans man and Magic really needs some trans masc representation.