#turning on timestamps really is everything on this website

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Just curious...could this Sussex Squad thing turn into a legal investigation (if it's not already)? And what crimes would they be arrested for and what is the penalty?!??

The "general" stuff they do (for lack of a better word), like spread rumors about the Waleses and bully Kate's fans on social media, there's not a whole lot there. It's just seen as "coming with the territory" (also for lack of a better phrase).

Where the Sussex Squad could get into legal trouble is if or when they go after single accounts - doxxing them, dogpiling them, or escalating to death threats (or r*pe threats, threats of violence, etc.). All of that could qualify as stalking, intimidating, harassment, or incitement for violence for which there could be criminal charges levied. Depending on the severity and the jurisdiction, the penalty could range from slap-on-the-wrist fines to jail time.

Where it gets complicated is who reports these incidents and what kind of evidence or investigation there is to support the complaint. Usually the victim of a cyber crime has to report the incident (vs a bystander witness) and usually the onus on providing evidence to prove there's a case is on the victim - in most cases, the investigator (police, FBI, DHS, a lawyer) won't open a case unless the victim provides enough evidence to make it worth their time; screenshots of messages and usernames or phone numbers, IP addresses, voicemails, voice recordings. Which really sucks, but that's the grey area in a lot of cyber crime where the policies and practices are still being developed.

So for example, when Yankee Wally was doxxed and bullied off Twitter, only Yankee Wally could have reported the cyberbullying, the cyber harassment, the cyber stalking/intimidation and she would have had to provide evidence - e.g., screenshots of the tweets and the usernames/accounts who were harassing her. The rest of us wouldn't have been able to "call it in" for her. We could've helped take screenshots of any public messages she received or any posts/websites we saw where her PII published, but we most likely wouldn't have been able to report it to the FBI and have it taken seriously.

Which is why if you're ever the victim of a cyberbullying campaign, a doxxing, online harassment, it's super important you document everything. Take screenshots of all the messages you get (or see) and make sure all the identifying information is there like timestamps, usernames, account handles, and phone numbers. If you know how to get someone's IP address, grab that too. Save any voicemails or voice messages you get. If you answer a call that turns out to be harassment, document as much as you can; the number they called from, what time, what their voice sounded like, what they said. Have physical copies (printouts), electronic copies (screenshots), and backup copies.

If this is happening to you and you receive packages or letters in the mail from addresses you don't recognize, that are unusually heavy, or are leaking some kind of fluid/grease, don't open them, don't bring them inside, don't let children or pets near. Call the police to report it and follow their instructions about what to do.

[catierambles]

Null Ch.2

Pairing: Incubus!Charles Brandon x Anna Williams (OFC)

WC 2280

Warnings: Mentions of sex and sexuality. Minors DNI 18+ ONLY

@brattymum96 , @ouroboros113 , @peaches1958 , @summersong69 , @henryownsme , @fvckinghenrycavill

The dreams happened almost every night, each just as intense as the first, but there started to be another feeling in them, one she couldn’t place. The dream lover’s hands became needy, holding onto her tightly, his lips searching as they ran over her skin. It never felt…aggressive, though, or rough. Whenever a dream started to take a turn to the uncomfortable, it immediately corrected itself and whatever was happening to make it so never happened again. His kiss was hungry, the movements between her thighs relentless, and she came every single time.

After about two weeks of this, she was really reconsidering the whole “it’s just dreams not the ghost” thing. Don’t mistake her, almost nightly orgasms were nice and all, but could they ease up a bit? Another night, another dream, but this time as he grabbed at her, she forcibly woke herself up like she was able to get out of a nightmare, her mind going “nope, not doing this” and forcing her eyes open. There was a moment of disorientation from going from REM to awake instantly as there always was and she shook her head, blinking quickly.

“How did you--” She sat up, looking over and seeing someone sitting in the wingback chair that had come with the house in the corner of the room. Anna couldn’t see him fully through the darkness, but she knew just from the shape and the accented voice that it was a “he”. He noticed her looking at him and blinked out of being, the chair once again empty. Definitely, definitely haunted by a very horny ghost. Getting up, she walked down the hall to the study and went over to her computer, waking it up, the harsh glow from the monitor searing her retinas momentarily. Getting online, she searched for paranormal investigators or mediums in the area, feeling a bit foolish, but not foolish enough. She found a local team in the town over that included a medium and sent them an email, explaining her situation (but leaving out the sex bits), telling them she’s seen apparitions, heard voices, and felt contact. She also added, for good measure, that she didn’t have any medical history of hallucinations or schizophrenia, nor did any of her family members. Might as well cross that off the list now and save a conversation and possibly a doctor's visit. She added her cell phone number at the bottom of the email before sending it, putting her computer back to sleep. Should she have included everything? Probably, but she also wanted them to take her seriously and not think she was some kind of pervert. She’ll cross that bridge if she comes to it.

There were no dreams of a sexual nature when she finally went back to sleep. In fact, there weren’t any dreams at all, and in a way, she was almost relieved.

She didn’t have work the next day so she was on her computer just messing around when her phone rang and she looked at the screen, seeing the number she recognized from the website last night.

“Hello?” She asked as she answered the call.

“Is this Anna Williams?” It was a kindly woman’s voice and she was glad in a way.

“It is.”

“Hi, Anna, my name is Kimberly Marks. We got your email this morning and wanted to talk to you about it. Based on the timestamp, I’m guessing it’s quite urgent?”

“Yeah, you could um…say that.” Anna said, “I guess it’s kind of been ramping up in intensity since I moved into the house a couple of weeks back. Last night was the first night that I actually saw…it. Actually heard it talk. It didn’t stick around, but…yeah, kinda shocking.”

“I absolutely understand and based on what you described in your email and your provided medical history, thank you by the way, I usually ask that, I have reason to believe you are experiencing a genuine haunting. Of course, there are other environmental factors to take into account, electromagnetism affecting brain waves, possible natural gas exposure, those kinds of things, but my team and I can explore all of that if you would like us to come out.” Kimberly said.

“I would absolutely love that.” Anna said, “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want them to leave, this was their house too once upon a time, I just kinda want them to stay in their own lane and stop bugging me, I guess.”

“Again, understandable, and actually quite understanding of you. Most people who experience spectral activity want them gone as quickly as possible, regardless of the fact that the spirit considers them the trespasser.”

“I don’t mind coexisting, I really don’t. I just…ehhh leave me alone.” Anna said.

“When would be a good time to come out?”

“Um, how’s tonight for you? Based on the website, you guys aren’t too far away. Or is that too soon?” Anna asked and there was a pause.

“No, tonight is perfectly fine. I was going to suggest it myself just based on the fact that you reached out at 2 in the morning.” Kimberly said, “It will take us a bit to get our equipment set up, so how about 6 pm?”

“Works for me.” Anna said, “I’ll email you my address so you can copy/paste it into a GPS app.”

“Thank you, we’ll see you then.” Kimberly said and they said their goodbyes, the call ending. There were still several hours before they were due to arrive, and Anna had a feeling that she was going to be up late that night so she shut down her computer and went into her bedroom, flopping down onto the bed and curling up for a nap. Again, there were no dreams.

The team of five arrived just after six, and Kimberly introduced herself to Anna, letting her know that she was both the founder and the team medium. Anna noticed that they all paused in the entryway of the house, Kimberly especially still as she looked around with wide eyes.

“It’s warm.” She said and Anna made a noise, nodding. “That’s certainly different. I was expecting a coldness or heaviness to the air indicative of a haunting, but this is warm and welcoming.”

“Weird, right?” Anna asked, “Are you…picking anything else up?”

“Let me walk around a bit as the guys get set up and I’ll let you know.” Kimberly said and they decided to use the living room as something of a command center. Night vision wireless webcams were placed in every room as well as microphones to pick anything up the cameras couldn’t. Anna stayed out of their way, sitting in her study as they did what they needed to and coming down again as one of them let her know that they were ready to start. The sun had long since gone down and Anna turned off any non-essential electronic equipment as per instructions. “There is definitely something here.” Kimberly said and Anna looked at her.

“Any feeling as to what?” She asked, noticing that they were being filmed out of the corner of her eye.

“It’s definitely a male presence, I’m getting that right away.” She said, “It’s…intense. There’s almost a…hunger to it, but it doesn’t feel aggressive or malevolent. I’m not getting anger, I’m getting…confusion. This spirit is looking for something, or it needs something, but it’s not getting it and it doesn’t know why.”

“Um, okay?” Anna asked and Kimberly shrugged.

“Let’s start walking around and try to make contact with it, see what else comes to the surface.” Kimberly said and Anna stayed seated in the living room as they started wandering the house, asking questions into the darkness. She could hear them through the laptop they left in the living room, broadcasting back from the microphones, being monitored by a member of the team.

“What are you doing here?” Silence.

“How long have you been here?” Nothing.

“How did you die?” Still nothing, but that question was a bit rude, in her opinion. She wouldn’t have answered it, either.

“Do you know you’re dead?” A quiet sigh came through the speakers, and it sounded annoyed.

“Oh for the love of--”

“That got picked up by a microphone in the living room.” The team member said into the walkie-talkie and she heard them come down the stairs, grouping in the living room again.

“Yes, he is definitely here.” Kimberly said, “I didn’t feel him before, he must have come here when we started walking around.”

“Avoiding you, maybe?” Anna asked.

“No, nothing like that.” Kimberly said with a small scowl. “Can you tell us your name at least?” Nothing.

“What was with the dreams?” Anna asked and there was a pause before a low, rumbling chuckle came over the speakers. It didn’t sound nefarious, it sounded amused. “I mean, thanks, I guess, but really?”

“Dreams?” Kimberly asked, “You didn’t mention dreams in your email.”

“It’s embarrassing.” Anna said.

“What kind of dreams?” Kimberly asked and Anna pulled a face, shifting around the chair somewhat.

“They were…oh, fuck it. They were sex dreams.” Anna said and silence descended on the living room again.

“Sex dreams?” Kimberly asked, “As in you were having sex with…”

“Same dude every time.” Anna said, “Never saw his face because it was always buried elsewhere, but it felt like the same guy.”

“...I see.”

“And this is why I didn’t want to tell you.” Anna said, “It’s embarrassing and humiliating.”

“I think I understand now.” Kimberly said with a slow nod. “It would also explain the hungry feeling I got earlier.”

“Mind filling me in?” Anna asked.

“Anna, what I’m going to say next, I don’t usually say casually, because usually, it’s a cause for great alarm.” She said, “You don’t have a ghost. You have a demon.”

“I’m sorry, say that again?” Anna said, “I’ve seen The Conjuring, isn’t that a really, really bad thing?”

“Like I said, usually it is.” Kimberly said, “But this kind of…entity isn’t malevolent, it’s not going to harm you.”

“Okay.” Anna said, unconvinced.

“Between the dreams and the hunger and the warmth, I believe you have an incubus.” Kimberly said and there was a pregnant pause before Anna snorted, starting to laugh. “What’s…what’s so funny? I mean, no, this entity isn’t going to hurt you, but it’s still a demon.”

“A sex demon!” Anna exclaimed, doubling over in her seat with laughter.

“Anna?” Kimberly asked.

“Hoo boy.” Anna said, sitting up again, still giggling. “So let me get this straight, I have a demon…I dunno, infecting my house.”

“Yes.”

“A demon of lust, desire, sexual acts, and carnality.” Anna said and Kimberly nodded. “I mean, yeah that would explain the dreams, but those first two: lust and desire? I don’t…I don’t feel those.”

“Come again?” Kimberly asked.

“I’m asexual. I don’t feel lust, I don’t feel desire, my hormones don’t work like that. Can I have sex? Yeah. Have I ever had sex? Yeah and I’ve enjoyed it, but that’s all physical. That’s stimulation and nerve endings doing their job. I don’t feel sexual attraction.” Anna said and there was another pause before Kimberly started laughing too. “You see! It’s funny!”

“It would explain why he’s hungry. Incubi feed off of sexual desire, sexual emotion, and sexual energy. You don’t experience those things so you don’t give off that energy when having sex.” Kimberly said, “Well, Mr. Incubus if you’re still here and listening in, and I assume you are, there’s your answer. That’s why you couldn’t feed from her. She doesn’t give off the energy you need.”

“Thanks for the orgasms, though.” Anna said with a thumbs up, “What a champ.”

“Anna,” Kimberly started, “Normally I would tell you to be cautious, but incubi aren’t malevolent beings at heart. They’re more…playful, in a pornographic sort of way. Now that he knows he won’t be getting anything from you and why, he’ll lose interest and move on. They’re not evil, despite what the Church may have you believe. Then again, sex and sexuality itself are evil to the Church as a whole.”

“Truth.” Anna said with a snort. “So he’ll eventually take a hike.”

“Eventually, yes. Probably soon, if I’m being honest, now that he knows.” Kimberly said, “He’ll need to find someone he can actually get what he needs from.”

“Well, okay then.” Anna said, “Mind if I start turning on lights?”

“Not at all, I actually think we’re done here. Now that we know what’s going on and that you’re in no danger.” Kimberly said, “And that it’ll stop when he moves on.”

“Okay, Google.” Anna said, “Turn on living room lights.” The device by the router binged at her and the lights came on at a comfortable brightness. “Well, thanks for coming out and shedding some light on what’s going on.” Anna said as she stood from her seat and Kimberly gave her a small smile, standing as well as the others started to pack up their equipment, retrieving the cameras and microphones from the rooms they had been placed in. Once everything was packed, Anna walked them out, Kimberly reaching out and holding her arm.

“If anything else happens, don’t hesitate to let us know.” She said, “But you should be good.”

“Thanks again.” Anna said and Kimberly gave her arm a gentle squeeze before leaving, and Anna watched as they got into their van and drove away down the hill before closing and locking the door. “Oh, my god. A fucking sex demon.” She was still giggling to herself about that as she headed up the stairs, going into her bedroom.

“I’m sorry.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

[gmos]

i am so like. metaphysically exhausted i feel like im going thru so much rn i just need to vent with timestamps

like i have zero money so my card declined on my medical bill today and i have to make a bunch of phone calls to places that are only open on weekdays. and i have to prepare for a market but my heart is just not in it. plus ive been waiting to hear back about some other freelance stuff but it hasnt happened yet. so i just keep working on little bits and praying that it will work out. esp bc i have a tattoo appointment i made for my birthday to keep from totally spiraling but i obviously dont have the money for it right now.

and i have to go talk to bf's parents on monday and convince them that im telling the truth about anything w regards to moving. when they dont respect me and think im just some fairy trying to steal their daughter. and the thing is i am but its obviously for the best. and my parents are excited that im moving back but they cant really help me until july and mostly once we're already over there. and bc of how little money we have were gonna have to get rid of most of our stuff and either fly or drive a car across the country.

and all of this while i am getting sicker and sicker and ive just been getting sicker for years and usually it gets better in the summer but this year it isnt so im really worried about that. all i want is to sit outside in a pretty dress with a fun beverage and draw and write but the reality of my situation keeps creeping in. and its crazy bc the thing is pretty much everything aside from the medical bill is already sorted out and being dealt with and i just have to wait it out. i just cant get over how stressed out i feel and thats whats holding me back from fixing things, leading to them getting worse. they increased my ocd medication but the pharmacy hasnt called me yet even after two days when usually they have it same day.

what is going on. im exhausted. i havent slept properly in like two years. i survive off chocolate chips and microwavables and vitamin supplements. i spend most days alone in my apartment sitting by the window on the computer. this is not living. this is not living. i am supposed to be outside talking to strangers. i am supposed to be making the mistakes of a young adult. i turn 20 in 10 days. i have not been able to stay sober longer than 3 days in a row. i have near-constant short term memory loss. my vision is fading. i cant stand. once a week i go to the park and run until my ribs hurt, which is only about 3 minutes. i wear dresses over my hairy legs and combat boots. i get boba tea and coffee and ice cream when i have 10 dollars in my bank account. why isn't it worth it to live a beautiful life? why is responsibility the beginning and end of my life? when do i get to fuck up without being incessantly punished for the rest of my life?

when i was 17 i came to the startling realization that when something bad happens to me, that is the punishment. before that, and even still, i believed that i had to endure the bad thing and then be punished for the fact that the bad thing even happened. then one day i spilled olive oil all over the kitchen counter and my father helped me clean it up and asked if i was ok. to this day it sticks out as a dream, as if something so kind could ever happen to me. and yet i feel like if i had not been treated with so much hostility, i never would have been radicalized the way i am today. i cant prove either way, but i know that the hostility i am constantly faced with is unwarranted. yet it continues, so what am i doing wrong? the answer is obviously everything.

writing this has calmed me down. i am one of the few who benefits from journaling, even performative journaling, which is what this website is based on. one day when i die just a little bit before my time, my now-bf future-husband will compile my unpublished writing and art and notebooks and tumblr posts into a chronicle of my life, and then i will finally be beautiful.

[detectivenyx]

anyone telling you not to make fun of tiktok because you can ‘curate your experience to be how you like!’ is a fucking liar and has been completely suckered in by that godforsaken app.

a. even when my feed was ““perfectly tailored”“ to my interests (danganronpa, queer content, australian content, lolita fashion), it was just throwing whatever was in those tags at my face. a lot of this content was completely irrelevant to me - overdone danganronpa jokes that i heard told better on other websites, queer experiences of young kids i couldn’t relate to and felt creepy watching, stuff about australia that i was already observing for myself because i fucking live here, and largely the same 3 topics with lolita videos; ‘stop shopping on amazon for lolita’, ‘you can wear whatever you need to accomodate your disabilities with lolita’, ‘im tired of people assuming im a pedo for liking lolita’. these are all fucking things i agree with, but being repeatedly bombarded with just those and nothing else made it exhausting. this feed is supposedly perfectly tailored to everything i love, and yet even the addictive nature of tiktok wasn’t enough to keep me interested.

b. tiktok is deliberately designed to be as addictive as possible. similar to how the video game Civilization has that mentality of ‘just one more turn’ and suddenly it’s gone from 10am to 9pm, tiktok’s short video and scrolling design are created to ensure you keep going through videos for as long as possible - ‘just one more video’. when i had the app, i was aware of this, and yet would still lose 2-4 hours scrolling through the app regularly. the absolute cavalcade of shit, that would be largely ignored on other platforms, is part of the design of tiktok. you go ‘just one more video’, but the next video is total shit. you scroll to the next video, and it’s also fluff. you keep scrolling until you get to that one ‘good’ video - and you forget you were going to close the app in the first place. it’s the exact same design as games like candy crush, which a youtube friend of mine showed this video that goes into detail about how it creates an addictive environment - and even after he realised candy crush was insanely addictive by its design, he was completely aware of it, he was still suckered in and kept playing. tiktok is the exact fucking same. you can curate the experience however you like! so long as how you want to curate your experience is ‘lose 4 hours of your life scrolling through absolute bullshit vaguely related to your interests’.

c. why would i want a robot to curate my experience completely?! youtube, for all of its fucking garbage, at least lets me pick what i want to watch from its suggestions, and its suggestions are usually not total garbage. by now even my youtube feed is curated to my interests and it’s way better than tiktok ever was because i have more influence over my experience than just giving a robot a few topics and letting it choose videos to force me to watch. at least i can take a look at the title and see if it might be something interesting.

d. misinformation is really fucking easy to absorb on tiktok - there’s a reason it has its reputation for ruining things for the LGBTQ+ community, for the autistic community, for people with DID and OSDD, and many other communities. the fact that anybody can post any video, can post videos that seem legit on the surface, and are using the app’s design to their advantage, means it’s extremely fucking easy to spread and absorb misinformation - that can be fucking dangerous. unlike on a youtube video where i can just click a new firefox tab and look up whether what’s being presented to me as fake, tiktok makes you close its phone app and open up a new app to google it. then if you need to reference a certain point in the tiktok, it doesn’t have timestamps like youtube, and often resets if you minimise the app, so you have to watch the video again, and repetition bias sets in - stuff that’s all annoying to deal with, so your brain just decides it must all be true because it’s easier. and after tiktok is done ruining the reputation of these communities, it makes it even fucking harder than it already is for us to be taken seriously - and for once it’s not entirely the fault of the people who refuse to respect us, but it’s also the fault of people using this shit app to spread misinformation about us.

so yeah fuck tiktok, make fun of it all you want, i want this app fucking obliterated

[notebooknebula]

Improving Business Relationships Through CRM with Danny Johnson & Jay Conner

https://www.jayconner.com/improving-business-relationships-through-crm-with-danny-johnson-jay-conner/

Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner

It doesn’t matter if you are earning a million dollars a year unless you are enjoying the freedom that comes along with your business.

In today’s Real Estate Investing show with Jay Conner, Jay and his guest Danny Johnson talk about automation and organizing your business. How it will greatly help you build a real estate business that works for you and not you working the business.

Danny Johnson is a veteran real estate investor that has been flipping and wholesaling since 2003 having done nearly 1,000 deals. The financial and time freedom his real estate business created for him has allowed him to use his software background to develop the Forefront CRM for real estate investors.

He also hosts a new podcast called ‘Braver’ which is devoted to being honest about what’s holding you back so that you can transition from doing everything in your business to having the business work for you.

Timestamps:

0:01 – Get Ready To Be Plugged Into The Money

2:00 – Jay’s New Book: “Where To Get The Money Now” –https://www.JayConner.com/Book

2:41 – Today’s guest: Danny Johnson

5:17 – Getting involve in different Masterminds greatly affects the success of your real estate business.

7:25 – “ Flipping Houses Expose” – Danny Johnson

9:19 – What is your conversion now compare to when you started?

12:04 – Importance of attending immediately to a motivated seller.

13:30 – Danny Johnson’s different marketing strategies

16:17 – Significance of building rapport with your motivated seller.

18:16 – How Danny got into real estate?

21:39 – How did you transition from wearing all the hats to building a real estate business that’s working for you and not you working the business?

27:02 – The Forefront CRM for real estate investors.

29:03 – Connect with Danny Johnson – https://www.forefrontcrm.com

30:15 – Danny’s parting comments: Look at the next step that you need to do. Do it and take action.

Private Money Academy Conference:

https://jaysliveevent.com/live/?oprid=&ref=42135

Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now? It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book

Free Webinar: http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference

https://youtu.be/QyeBbDOF4wo

YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateInvestingWithJayConner

iTunes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/private-money-academy-real-estate-investing-jay-conner/id1377723034

Listen to our Podcast:

https://realestateinvestingdeals.mypodcastworld.com/11208/improving-business-relationships-through-crm-with-danny-johnson-jay-conner

Jay Conner and Danny Johnson

Jay Conner

00:00:30

Well, what in the world was I talking about a second ago on plugging you into the money? Well, you see back in 2003, my wife, Carol Joy, and I started investing in single-family houses here in Eastern North Carolina. The first six years, we relied on local banks and mortgage companies and institutional money. And you know what? In January of 2009, we were cut off, lost our lines of credit, no way to fund our deals. I was introduced to this wonderful world of private money. And since that time, we have not missed out on a deal for not having the money.

And when I say private money, I’m not talking about hard money. I’m not talking about brokers. I’m not talking about institutional money. I’m talking about getting funding from individuals right now. We’ve got 46 individuals investing in funding our deals. We haven’t missed out on deals since 2009. And guess what? You can experience the very same thing and be in control of your real estate investing business. So what am I talking about? I got a free gift for you. I just released my brand new book, “Where To Get The Money Now,” subtitled: “How and Where to Get Money for Your Real Estate Deals Without Relying on Traditional Hard Money Lenders.” It hit number one on Amazon just a few short months ago. And so I want to send this book to you, just cover delivery. I will tell you how you can get this brand new book for free. Go to www.JayConner.com/Book

You know that I have amazing guests on the show and today is no different whatsoever. My dear friend, my fellow mastermind member is a veteran real estate investor. I’ve been doing this for a long, long time. I mean, he’s been flipping, he’s been wholesaling all the way back to the very same year that Carol Joy and I started, back in 2003, and he’s done almost a thousand deals.  Well, the financial and time freedom that his real estate investing business created for him has allowed him to use his software background. Yes, his software background is to develop what’s called The Forefront CRM for real estate investors.

In other words, how do you keep up with all those contacts? How do you keep up with the buyers and the sellers and everything that’s going on? Well, he’s going to be telling us about that because I tell you what, I was still totally paper until about 4 years ago, maybe as recent as 3 years ago. So you want to organize your life. My guest is going to get to helping you on that in just a second. He also hosts a podcast that’s called, “Braver,” which is devoted to being honest about what’s holding you back so that you can transition from doing everything in your business to having the business work for you. And I tell you that reminds me of what my dad taught me years ago. “Make sure you get your business to where you’re running it and it’s not running you.” So we’re going to talk with my special guest right now about automation, organizing your business, and one of the best CRMs for keeping up with all your contacts, which he developed and calls, “The Forefront CRM.” With that, welcome to the show, my friend, Danny Johnson. How are you?

Danny Johnson

00:04:40

Doing great. Thank you for having me on, Jay.

Jay Conner

00:04:43

Absolutely, Danny. We’re glad to have you and tell everybody where you are speaking from today.

Danny Johnson

00:04:49

Well, I’m in San Antonio, Texas, and yeah, I like that, you know, we both started in 2003. And how you introduced me that way, that you didn’t just read the bio, like you really put it out there in a great way. It made it sound a lot more interesting. I was excited. I was like, “Who’s he going to be talking with?” But it was actually me.

Jay Conner

00:05:16

Absolutely, Danny. Well, you know, we are in a mastermind together and masterminds, being a member of a mastermind, has just been such a huge part of my real estate investing business. I really started getting involved in masterminds- Right now, I’m in 3 masterminds, got involved back in 2009. And so when you’re hanging around people that are of light minds and you’re helping each other and your business, it’s bound to grow, right?

Danny Johnson

00:05:44

Absolutely. I’m a part of 2, been a part of probably 6 in my investing career. And it was a pivotal moment in the first one that I joined where I was doing everything in the business. My ex-wife and I were doing everything in our business, wearing all the hats. We had contractors, we had an agent to sell properties, but beyond that, we did everything and that was 8 or 9 years. And it wasn’t until I joined a mastermind and hung out with people that were operating the business in a way that allowed them the time to actually work on the business more than they worked in the business. And having that firsthand experience with people that were doing it, showed that it was completely possible, and cut out a lot of time and headache and hassle and mistakes. So that was great.

Jay Conner

00:06:41

Well, I can certainly relate. I remember I had been in the business from 2003 until about 2008, five years. And I came around the corner one night and there was my Carol Joy sitting at the kitchen table, crying with 3 different checkbooks in front of her. And that was at 10 o’clock at night. And she told me she couldn’t handle it anymore. And I learned right there that you can be making a million dollars a year and it doesn’t really matter unless we are enjoying the reason we got into real estate and that’s to enjoy the freedom that comes along with it. So yeah, it took me an entire year to really hone in and start automating my business. So I can definitely relate to your story, Danny.

Danny Johnson

00:07:23

It’s interesting. I had a book that I put out a while back called “Flipping House Exposed,” and that was 34 weeks in the life of my business where I documented every single lead that came in. And basically week by week I was breaking down what I spent on marketing, where I put my marketing, the leads that came in, all that kind of stuff. But the thing that came out of that was out of those 34 weeks, I generated 495 motivated seller leads. So these are qualified leads where people called or submitted on my website that they wanted an offer on their house. Guess how many of those I turned into a deal?

Jay Conner

00:08:04

Probably less than you would have desired.

Danny Johnson

00:08:09

Right. I wouldn’t bring it up. But yeah, it was about 11 during that 34 weeks. Right? Yeah. So that’s about one out of every 45. And so a lot of people, got into this business after reading that book and were telling me it was so great because it showed me it was a numbers game, but it wasn’t until a little bit later that I realized looking back, it was like I was killing myself trying to have more success by doing more of the same thing that I had original success with. So it was okay when I was generating, doing maybe 20 to 30 deals a year. It was okay to be focused mainly on the lead generation. Right? If I want to do more deals, I’ve got to get more leads. I mean, in my mind, that’s how it was. I don’t have a business background. I wasn’t structured in business, and looking back in hindsight, it was treating it like a hobby. It really was just, “Hey, I’m having fun. I’m doing that,” which is great, but it comes at a price. And that price is that hamster wheel of having some success and trying to have more success by just doing more of the same thing without really dialing anything in, where I’m really looking at them.

Jay Conner

00:09:18

What’s your conversion now compared to when you started?

Danny Johnson

00:09:22

Well, now I’m actually back to operating as a solo-preneur with the real estate and just doing rental properties. But we did grow from that, we were doing everything and built a team and we got to the point with the team where we were getting about one out of every five leads became a deal.  

Jay Conner

00:09:41

That’s different than one out of every 40 or 50.

Danny Johnson

00:09:43

Right. So looking back, had we had the team, had we had the business dialed in and this doesn’t even require a team. It really just dials, it requires somebody to know what’s going on in their business and fix the parts that are broken because it wasn’t so much the leads were a problem. It was what we were doing once the leads came into our business. Right?

Jay Conner

00:10:06

And in addition to not only what you were doing with them, but what you were not doing with them.

Danny Johnson

00:10:13

But that’s probably the bigger issue. So what happened? What made the transition? Obviously the team helped because as a one-man-show, taking the calls, going on appointments, scheduling contractors, checking on jobs, you get to where you’re having a lot of appointments and meetings with different people. And when those motivated sellers are calling, if you can’t take those calls right away, number one, that’s a huge problem. Somebody has to live answer that call right away because that’s a truly motivated seller, the one that’s saying, “Hey, just get over here. I wanted this thing done yesterday. I’m just done.” If you’re not the first person that answers that call, whoever is, is getting the deal most likely. And so having a way, no matter what you do.

And I did this business 3 years part-time while I was a software developer working for a defense contractor where I couldn’t even have my cell phone with me at my job. I know it’s been long enough. I had it on vibrate and if it went off, I would run out into the stairwell and return the call right away because I didn’t want to miss out on those. Once you do that, make sure you’re answering all those calls, having those come in, what happens with the building of rapport, talking with that seller, listening to them, not just asking for all the details of the house and just being all about that and scheduling an appointment, just being done. There’s a lot that goes into building that rapport with the seller.  Almost all of my deals came from motivated seller direct to seller marketing. Just found that those were always the best deals and helped us actually get through that market correction back in ’07, ’08, but by just going direct to the seller and getting those great deals.

Jay Conner

00:12:03

Since you bring it up, let’s talk about it because this is a really important point. And that is, in my experience over the years, there are 5 key components to a successful real estate investing business when it comes to talking with and marketing to motivated sellers. And this podcast is about you. It’s not about me. So I’m only going to talk about one and you already said the word, and that is the word, “immediacy.” When a motivated seller, and of course we’re talking about off-market sellers, we’re not talking about sellers or bank-owned properties that are in the multiple listing service in this market, you can’t rely on that anyway. But when that call comes in, whether it’s from a Google ad or it’s direct mail, or doesn’t matter how you are getting leads coming in, it’s like the most important thing that could ever happen is for someone on the team, your acquisition is to ever to be talking to that person like right away.

And you know, it’s the age-old argument. Do you take the calls live? I mean, there’s an argument for that. Do you have them get an operating service? And then you’re like, get through the rigmarole of trying to get them back on the phone. So share with us your experience of taking the call live, wherein if you’re not doing it yourself, which I never recommend to people. So if you have an acquisition, do you answer the phone live in the morning to when at night?

Danny Johnson

00:13:50

That’s one of the big things that made a huge difference. So we had somebody come in as an acquisitions person to take that off of my plate. And they did take the calls for a while because it made it also seamless for when somebody is answering the phone, they talk to somebody and then that’s the same person that’s coming to the house. So that’s beneficial. As you grow, that’s going to be to where it becomes a problem because that person is going on appointments and they can’t take those calls while they’re at an appointment. And we don’t want them feeling like, “Oh, I’m going to miss a call or a call came in. I missed it. I need to wrap this appointment up.” Everything that we do, we spend so much time and energy looking at different marketing tactics, executing on those and doing all of that stuff to get those calls in and then to get to the appointment.

So all of that stuff to that point is to be at that appointment. And if we’re not spending the time that’s required at that appointment where we’re wasting all the rest of it, why are we doing anything else? So our acquisitions people, it was spend as much time as you need to at each of these, make sure that you’ve got at least 2 hours so that you can sit down on that gross couch or whatever it is, and have a conversation with the seller because this is what this is all about. It’s really getting to the bottom of why they’re selling, understanding their problem, and then showing them how we can help them. It’s not just, “Here’s the offer. Do you want it? Come on, sell your house.” It’s none of that stuff. So, in answering the calls, once you have that where you have the ability to bring on that lead intake person, then that person should be somebody that’s super friendly.

That’s easy to build rapport with. That’s the first person that they’re gonna interact within your business, right? They’re representing your business. And so if you can have somebody that doesn’t even have to be in an office or anything like that, this could be your mother-in-law, this could be your aunt, somebody that’s just at home all day that can take these calls. It doesn’t need to be a professional hire or anything like that. And just a part-time, “I’m going to pay you per call that you take,” or something like that. And you train them up just to be friendly. It really requires somebody that’s super friendly that’s not going to just go down the list of questions, ask them, get them answered, and then get off the call. Because we want the person saying, “Wow, that person, this company is great. I really liked that person I just talked to.”

Jay Conner

00:16:15

Building rapport is so important and people are gonna pick up on as to, do you really care about what they’ve got going on? As you say, if there wasn’t a problem with the property, if they didn’t have a personal problem or both, we wouldn’t be there looking to help solve the problems. For example, this past Friday, I was at a seller’s house myself, right here in Morgan City, North Carolina for 2 hours and 10 minutes. Myself personally. Most of the time that doesn’t happen because even with crazy times going on, I’m still traveling a lot or I’ve started traveling a lot. But something told me that I needed to go on this appointment. We were in a small market, only 40,000 people willing to do 2-3 deals a month, but the average profits were $70,000.

So not to get into the details of that visit, but I knew it was going to take an un-rushed amount of time, un-rushed. And when I’m visiting with a potential seller, I use a technique that I call, “awkward silence.” I ask a question and I just let them talk. And when they sound like they’re finished, I go, “Uh-hmm” and they talk more. And so I tell them right up front in the visit, I say, “You know what, there’s a good number of times I’m not able to help people. And the reason why is because every transaction I do, it’s got to be a win for you. It’s gotta be a win for your husband. It’s gotta be a win for me.” And so I go ahead and get the white elephant out of the room and just let them know that I’m not here to high-pressure you. I’m here to see what we can do to work together, to make things happen. And as you said, establishing a rapport is very, very important. So let’s get right into what your specialty is, Danny, and that’s the CRM keeping up with all the leads, right? That you developed from your background as a software developer. But before we jump into that, just tell us your background as to how you got into real estate.

Danny Johnson

00:18:33

So I got into real estate. I was going through college to get my degree in computer science. My father started flipping houses and when I was growing up, he was a contractor for a real estate investor. And so as a kid, I would go to the demos and I would have to haul out the junk and all this stuff from the demos of the houses. So I got an early taste of that, but my father was a contractor at that time. So in college, he began being mentored by the person he had done a lot of contracting work for in the past. And I just saw his joy. It was just like a whole new him, my father. I’d never seen him like this. He had always struggled in his life. He had always started in different businesses that didn’t succeed.

And we had to move year after year and sometimes getting evicted. And it was just a rough, rough time and I’ve got three other siblings, but in college, it just all broke loose for him. Like he was just having so much fun talking about the deals he was doing driving around town. And I just felt this surge with him. He was like, “Oh, I want to do that, too. That’s what I want to do.” So I started part-time, also getting into the business and he worked with small towns around San Antonio and I worked in San Antonio. So the relationship was really, “Well, you go find out how you want to invest, whether that’s fix-and-flip or rentals or whatever, you just go and learn what you want to learn. When you have an issue that you come against as you’re taking action, call me.”

So it wasn’t hand-holding, what-do-I-do-next? kind of thing. That relationship was like a mentor relationship. And then his mentor also was available to me, too, whenever I had questions, which was great because it forced me to take action and make mistakes. And I tell people that one of the first, I think it was the first contract that I did directly with a motivated seller, I signed the contract then I went to the title company and I was in the parking lot. And I had to, literally, call my dad and say, “What am I supposed to say when I bring this inside of here?” I didn’t even know that step of it, but the beautiful thing was I was out there taking action, right? And even though I wasn’t well-versed in all the different things, from putting a deal under contract to getting it sold, I was taking action.

That was the important thing. So I was in the business part-time for 3 years. I was making good money as a software developer, it was really hard to leave that steady paycheck. And they let me go, thankfully, I guess they caught onto the fact that most of my day was spent on real estate investor forums and things like that. But anyway, they let me go and I became a full-time investor and my ex-wife and I ran that for 8 or 9 years alone. And then we started bringing on a team which started with my brother-in-law. He was one of the first people to sign on. And we grew that team and learned a lot after we joined the masterminds. And that’s where we started really systematizing the business, and a great book called, “Traction” by Gino Wickman really showed us how to operate the business like a true business.

Jay Conner

00:21:38

You just mentioned the phrase of transitioning in your business. So walk us through that process. How did you transition from doing everything, wearing all the hats to really building a true real estate investing business that was working for you instead of you working for it?

Danny Johnson

00:22:03

Sure. And I’ll tell you what I did first really quickly so that people don’t do what I did first because it wasn’t the right way to go about it. So the first hires, how it went down was, “Hey, yeah, sure. That’d be great. Yeah, come on and help us out. You know, you’ve been on a couple of appointments with me to talk to sellers.” And they would come in and I would just say, “Well, shadow me for a week. That’s how you’re going to learn what you’re supposed to do.” That was not the way to set somebody up for success. And so everything that I had learned over the years and doing the business 8 or 9 years, wearing all the hats, that was all in my head, and I was expecting them by just shadowing me for a week to pick up on all of it.

So when it was time for me to not be there for them to go on the appointment, they were really not set up to succeed. And I was thinking, “Well, they’ll find their own way. Like I did,” right? Not a good way to do it. So I don’t recommend that. What I recommend is setting things up. There’s a good, really good book called “Work The System,” that I forgot the author’s name, but he talks about setting up your procedures. And I wish I had done this even before I planned on bringing people in because there were so many times where I came up against the situation that I had solved before, but I didn’t remember how I solved it. And so I had to go back and spend all this time trying to figure out the right solution.

Whereas if I had just documented what to do in this situation, I would have known. And the beautiful thing about when you do that is you realize a lot of times, even with the things that you do on a weekly or daily basis, is pretty inefficient. And when you document it out and you’re like, “Whoa, what am I? Wow, I’m-” and then you realize how much you’re doing as well, which will make you want to hire someone to take a lot of that off your plate. So getting all of that documented, I use a tool called “TETTRA.” It’s free. I think you get a free account and you can document your procedures there. And then whenever you hire a team, they have a place to easily find all of those procedures. And then they have a way to communicate and update those so that they’re living documents, they’re living processes.

And so when you set those things up like that, when you bring somebody on, number one, they’re going to have a lot more trust in your company because you don’t want to be starting a job where you’re feeling like everything is just shooting from the hip and nothing is structured at all. And job security might be in question. And so having all of that to bring somebody in, to follow what you’ve proven to work, and then they can just pick it up. And what that does is that truly does free you from having to interact as much, because they have something to go off of and they won’t be calling you every hour or 30 minutes, even asking you questions about things, making you question whether even hiring somebody was the right thing to do.

Because I found that I would get into situations where I would say, “What am I doing? I can finish this faster than it would take to explain it to them.” And you do not want to fall into that trap. And so documenting those processes is absolutely critical. The next thing I don’t want to spend too much time on is, but the next thing is really having that system in place where everything in the business is in, the data is there in a place that everybody on the team has access to it. And even if you’re a small team, even when it was my ex-wife and I, having that place where everything about the lead in the deal is right there in one place, keeps everything so much more organized and less communication needing to happen. I didn’t have to bug her to find out some situation about this deal because it’s all right there in the system, right?

Yeah. And things that you can do these days with what we’ve done with Forefront and several other systems out there, all the communication can be tracked within the system. So not only do you have the deal information for one of these properties, you also can have all your communication that was ever had with them within that same record. So you can see no matter who chose the call, who sent the text, who received the text, it’s all right there on a timeline. And the beautiful thing about that is when you do that, you start to get into things that really help you also dial in your marketing because you can track, you get a different phone number per marketing channel, or even campaign. So everything’s attributed properly and it’s really producing not just the leads, but the ones that become deals. And then the profit you actually get from those deals per campaign. Because if you’re not tying all that stuff together and figuring that out, how do you make decisions on where to put your marketing?

Jay Conner

00:26:56

I love the way you got that set up. So in your CRM, Forefront, if you can get the phone numbers to track all the marketing from that same system, right?

Danny Johnson

00:27:11

We actually integrate it right now with CallRail.

Jay Conner

00:27:16

I use CallRail, but I have a VA that I actually manually puts in the information. So it’s really cool for you to have a CRM that you develop that CallRail actually communicates and it goes straight into your CRM. Right?

Danny Johnson

00:27:33

Right. And then the text messages, everything gets routed through. So you can see and listen to those calls, listen to voicemails. That’s a good way to stay on top of your team, too, when you look at the KPI page and you’re seeing that, “Hey, for some reason, we’re having less appointments being set, even though our lead count is the same or better. What’s going on?” You can go into those records and listen to the calls. And there was a situation that we ran into where that happened. And it turned out that our lead intake person taking the calls was making assumptions about the seller’s motivation level. They had plenty of equity. They didn’t know much, but they were saying, “They’re not motivated. So I didn’t set the appointment.” It’s like, when did you decide to start doing that? Like, that’s completely against what we’ve trained, you know? But something happened maybe where somebody was angry or who knows, but you’ve gotta be able to see that kind of thing in your business.

Jay Conner

00:28:32

Well, you just told the story of, by listening to the calls, you’re learning that, “Oh, my lands, what in the world is this person saying?” which reminds me of a very, very important principle that I learned years ago. And that is you cannot expect anything in your business that you cannot inspect, so you can’t expect it unless you can inspect it. And one way that you’re inspecting is by actually being able to listen to those recorded calls that come in. Danny, let’s go ahead and let folks know how they can learn about your software, your CRM system, and keeping up with all the leads.

Danny Johnson

00:29:12

You can find out more at forefrontcrm.com. We’ve got it where there’s a button to book a demo, go ahead and do that if you’re interested in finding out more, and that way we can find out what you’re looking for, what you’re needing in your business, and then tailor that demo specifically to you to show you how it can actually help you with that and show you all the cool features, everything that we’ve built, but not spend a whole day running you through everything, but just showing the pieces that make sense and matter for you and where you’re at in your investing business.

I’ve been on a couple of interviews, but it’s quite a few actually, but the big thing that I’m seeing with investors wanting to get to the next level, even if you’ve gotten to a good level, is this thing where we’ve overcome some fears and got our comfort zone and got to the next level. But sometimes we don’t realize when we get to another plateau and there’s new fears that we’re not acknowledging. And so taking a look at, no matter where you’re at in this business, if you are avoiding things and doing things that keep you in your comfort zone, or even having false beliefs about what’s keeping you stuck. Looking at that, accepting it, and then just looking at the next step. What is the next thing that you need to do? And just do that. Don’t give it too much thought. Just do it and take action.

[felassan]

Gamers For Groceries 2 event

A Twitch stream event from a few days ago. It can currently be re-watched here (it was fun & interesting, so I do recommend to check it out direct). This post contains some notes on things of particular interest & relevant timestamps, in case this is useful to anyone (for example bc of accessibility reasons).

First up is the All About Animating panel, a series of mini-interviews with game devs (animators) asking what they do, how they got there, and advice for anyone interested in getting into the industry. Some or all of the devs that were interviewed are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and a lot about the craft of game dev animation in general. This segment runs from timestamp ~38 mins 40 secs to 1:07:50. Some notes:

[sounded like DA4] Right now the creature team are working on different creatures in a way which involves going through a lot of mocap data

At BioWare they have a pretty big technical animation team, to support their animators, so each tech animator has a different specialty. Tech anim involves animation support, character art support, and rigging the characters so that the animators can pose them

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] One of the featured animators’ area of specialty at the moment is faces and hair (building the control structure for face animations). First they had to decide how the face rig and its control structure would work. This involves a lot of performance capture of live actors for things like cinematics and gameplay animation, therefore the rigs for bodies and faces have to be able to accurately capture the full range of expressions and emotions that the actor is portraying. Right now the stage that this dev is working on most is setting up the heads that they’re getting through the pipeline from character art e.g. making adjustments based on feedback from the cinematics team. “Polish - just trying to get realism”

Hair tech has come quite a long way in the last few years [in the industry]

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] Hair is very complex to get right. “In the past most games have used card-based hair, which is basically like sheets of polygons with a texture on it that looks like hair, through layers of transparency. But real hair is strand-based, digital strands, so we’re starting to look into that kind of tech - try to get more realistic, more beautiful hair, but there’s always a performance cost to hair. Layers of transparent things are always an expense, they need to balance like, it looks good and moves well, but it doesn’t make your computer or console chug. [...] I guess we’re in the prototype stage but we’ve almost got a set pipeline. It’s always fun to experiment”

In Mass Effect 2 or 3, Miranda’s hair was as expensive as a whole character (!)

[on balancing hair costs/performance, general] It depends on things like character importance and how many characters are on-screen at the time. When you’re in gameplay fighting a bunch of monsters you’re not going to be giving full beautiful hair to all the characters and the monsters, as it will cost too much. (Having a helmet on is a convenient way to get rid of hair.) But if it’s a cinematic scene, with 2 characters talking to each other in a dramatic context, there’s a better budget for nice hair allocated

Some of the hair in Anthem was quite expensive in cinematics. They kept getting bugs from QA saying (for example) that a character’s hair was tripling the performance cost in the scene, so it would go back to character art so they could take away some of the hair cards. “Tough balance, quality versus cost”

“I wish all the characters could have beautiful strand hair”

For p-cap, a lot of the time they don’t want to be too prescriptive in terms of the direction that they’re giving the actors, as the actors know what they’re doing and have a lot of experience, so they give them vague instructions that they then riff off of

[sounded like DA4] They recently did a mocap shoot

[sounded like DA4] There’s a bit more productivity happening now in the pandemic situation; now that the animators are not all going to the capture lab in Vancouver in person for shoots, if it’s not their turn to direct a shot they can instead be working on something else on their computers (multi-tasking). ((Lead DA4 Producer Scylla Costa recently gave a talk at a games festival on the challenges of DA production during the pandemic. In part of this talk he talked about various benefits and drawbacks to the remote-working situation. He also talked about and showed some behind-the-scenes stuff for p-cap and mocap. Notes, images and link here))

[sounded like DA4] Special mocap suits were sent out that they can use with a laptop to go anywhere and shoot motion capture. It’s not as high fidelity as what comes out of the capture lab, but it’s really good for prototyping stuff. Before the pandemic they did some of this (going to a park and shooting some running around)

[sounded like DA4] In one of the shoots they had some actors who were really well-trained in dancing. They were trying to get them to do some combat stuff. This was a bit challenging in the pandemic situation as there’s only so much they can demonstrate/portray as an example to the actors from a distance on camera. “It’s hard to describe what a ‘dodge to attack’ is through the camera to somebody who has no idea what combat looks like in video games”

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] The pandemic has really affected performance capture for the face side of things badly, as in order to record, the actor gets dots painted on their face in specific locations by a makeup artist. They can’t do that right now because of social distancing/restrictions, so they haven’t been recording faces at the moment

The more detailed a face, the more joints it has, the more the cost to performance is

---

There was also the Writers’ Block panel, featuring DA writers Mary Kirby, Sheryl Chee and Patrick Weekes, and DA editor Karin Weekes. The timestamps for this segment are ~2:37:50 - 3:26:20. Some notes:

PW has never been weirder than when they were writing Cole on DAI

PW thinks that they accidentally wrote part of “Timber” by Kesha into Solas at one point and they were like “Well, okay, I have to stop listening to Kesha”

For Sheryl, after a while Blackwall’s VA always nailed doing his lines. She loved the quality of his voice and so after a while would always hear his voice while she was writing. This really worked out

^ Mary had this with Merrill. As soon as they cast Eve Myles she listened to several hours of her in Torchwood, and then just wrote to the way that she spoke as much as possible

^ PW had this with GDL as Solas and FPJ as Bull. As soon as they heard FPJ’s delivery, they were like “Oh, okay, I have to write some lines differently, because Bull is smarter than I realized”. With GDL they were like “Okay, he’s going to put poetry into anything I say, in the best way possible”. In early drafts of Solas lines there were parts where they [PW] wondered “Is this too melodramatic? Is this too tragically-angstful?” and then they would hear GDL and be like “Oh! [It’s fine] Game on!”

For localization, German words are often quite long so they often have to make sure that everything fits on the GUI

They think scenes like the romance scenes sound prettier in the Italian versions

Behind the curtain in creating the in-world languages: PW: “There are some awesome websites that have every elven word, like ‘Here are the translations and verb tenses and conjugations’ [etc], [...] and usually Mary and I get very sad slightly looking at those pages going like ‘Does that mean that we have to stick to that?’ [...] The rule is, if I’ve looked at the Wiki and the words, and I go ‘Here’s the correct grammatical way to do it’, and if that turns out to be too long or too many disconnected syllables and it just looks bad or sounds bad, then we shorten it to something simpler, because the key is we want to give the flavor of a foreign language, but we don’t have the world-building budget and capacity to make something that is going to be dictionary-real [in a way that] someone could go through and translate all the background things written on the old temple walls”. Part of the reason for this is the consideration for VAs, who already have to act while bearing lots of things in mind, like the cues in the script for each line

Mary: “For building a language, the first things that I started with for qunlat, elven and dwarven, was what words do we need to use the most? Greetings, farewells, words for friend and enemy, basic things that will come up easily in conversation. After that it’s ‘How difficult is this for other writers to use?’ Can they just pick it off the Wiki? Do they need just one word? Do they need to write whole sentences, and how does that work? Qunlat has almost no grammar to it because asking anyone to learn how to use Qunari grammar and conjugate verbs in a pretend language is impossible, and then once you’ve done that a human being has to be able to read it, while not knowing what any of it means”

PW: “One thing that I was really impressed with with Mary in particular doing, Mary was one of the big lore people across the entire DA series; I can look at a word and go like, ‘That has two A’s in a row, that’s definitely a Qunari word. That word is kind of long and maybe has some apostrophes and has a couple of flowy vowel sounds, that’s probably elven’, I think that’s what’s important. You want players to be able to look at a word, players want to feel smart, [like] ‘Oh I don’t know what that means but I totally know that’s a word from the Qunari people!’”. Mary: “Every language has its own set of phonemes, the sounds that they make, and the sort of word structure and spelling so that it gives a flavor to that language. Hopefully that is always chosen to be pronounceable, because again, very important that the words can be said by human beings :D”

Sheryl: “One of the fun things to do is to make up swear words in the fake languages [...] Recently Brianne wanted a word, I don’t know if she managed to find one”

The origin of bosh’tet in ME: it’s just saying “bastard” and slurring it

PW: “I feel like there are times when past writers kind of leave traps for future writers, where past writers will go ‘Okay, I’m going to write this detailed phrase in a codex entry but don’t worry, it doesn’t matter if it can never be said aloud, because it’ll never have to be voiced!’ and then, next game, guess what guys! Look what you have to make someone [a VA] say! And you’re like [facepalm], c’mon!”

Karin: “Now, four games in, we have pages and pages of all these examples, and I wanna say this, well that’s how we said something before, well that’s ridiculous, I don’t wanna say that, but now we’ve said it and it’s out there, so it’s like, how do we, y’know, how do we evolve, and sometimes we just go ‘Screw it! Languages are living languages! We’ll just say it like this now!’”

PW's favorite is the sarcastic Mythal’enaste, “Because it’s the sarcastic Mythal's blessing that basically means you’re getting screwed over somehow. I love it because Mythal nasty! Whoever wrote that clearly never thought that someone would have to say this out loud”

Sheryl wrote Bull’s joke icicles line. She also wrote Isabela’s big boats line - Jennifer took it out but then DG was like “No it has to come back”

They have a pun test, they get a few of them and have to allot them wisely so as not to oversaturate on the puns. “Is this good/bad enough to be one of the times that we pull the trigger? We did have one of those recently, I obviously can’t talk about it, but it was pronounced Okay to go ahead”

The ‘baby-est’ writer is Brianne, who’s been there 8 years

It makes PW sad that the players never get to see the writers’ temp-text [placeholder text when portions are a WIP]. “People have the best temp-text". Mary: “The number of conversations that I’ve temped in like ‘WELL. I hope nothing BAD happens HERE’”

Q. If you could bring in anybody from outside of gamedev, who would you like to work with and do a writer’s session with? PW: “I will say romance novelist Nora Roberts, she is really smart and also she knows how to write inside a genre, and do wonders within it. Her structure is so good. If you pick up one of her books, you know here’s when this is gonna happen, here’s when they’re gonna meet, here’s when this first moment will happen. We’re all experienced and I feel pretty good about that but I really like all of the things she does that way, and also I am a sucker for romance so I would love to bring a romance novelist in and just have them look at our scenes and go ‘Okay here, no, they should pull the tie so that the article of clothing comes open, we need a sense of how warm the skin is here’ - something like that. I’d wanna see what they could do with that”

“Luke writes the best worst lines”

“I’m always impressed with Mary getting away with lines. There are lines that I look at like, wow, you buried that one. [...] The only players who get that line, I feel like they earned it if they went that far into it. [...] And then Varric or Merrill says a ridiculous line in a one-time throwaway”

Karin: “The group dynamic, you’ll see conversations or snippets of a lunch chat or a thing we’ve been joking about and you’ll see it get pulled in, and how all of you [the writers] are able to take a normal kind of thing - as normal as we get as a group anyway - and then turn it into a moment, and use it to further the plot or use it to further a character. It’s just the cleverest thing and it happens in so many different ways. [...] The little snippet of life, then how you crafted it into this very cool thing”

Quartermaster Threnn was written by PW in half a day. “When I was writing Threnn, ‘Okay, this is a good-hearted [person], I was doing a little bit of Steel Magnolias, southern, no-nonsense, but like, blue collar Steel Magnolias’. This is someone accustomed to the ways of the world so she’s going to call a spade a spade. If you come up to her and you’re an elf she doesn’t recognize you and says ‘Buckets are over there’ because she thinks you’re there to clean, [but] ‘Anyone calls you a knife-ear you come to me I’ll take care of it’. It’s problematic but she’s trying - the good-hearted person rooted for the wrong group on every occasion. She was a proud Loghain supporter, she gets really exited if he comes to Skyhold.  That was a fun character for me to write because I had a viewpoint in my mind. I remember someone was like ‘Threnn is really important to me’. And you have to honor that, cause you’re like ‘Cool, it means so much to me that this connected with some part of you’”

---

Also of interest was the Mass Affection panel, in which BioWare devs looked back in over a decade of history to remaster a classic. It featured devs who worked on MELE. The timestamps for this segment are ~3:36:09 - 4:24:37. Some notes:

When the pandemic hit the MELE team were in a relatively awkward spot. They were really entering into what they consider full production and were on-boarding a bunch of teams, as well as training and on-boarding third-party external partner specialized teams worldwide. When the pandemic hit, BioWare and EA were super on top of it. They were tracking it weeks beforehand, getting everyone their computers ready, and getting everything encrypted. When the middle of March 2020 hit they were home rightaway. EA were nothing but supportive throughout the entire thing. They got money every quarter for stuff. It functionally ‘hit’ at 4-6 different times for them as the pandemic occurred in different places throughout the world at different times depending on each country’s response plan (and their external partners were in different countries). “So it was one of those things where it was just like, every day we’d come in like can we still work with this company anymore? Do we need to find someone else? Do we need to pull people in off the other projects at BioWare to fill gaps here and there?”

There was a bug on Virmire at the part when you’re coming into the STG camp. If the Mako had its new boosters on and you came hurtling in really fast, it cut to the cutscene, but the Mako hit a jump and when Ash was like “What do we do now?” the Mako ended up literally flying around in the background sideways and then crashing into the camp

Another bug: when they were re-tuning the guns, the physics force on some of the guns with Hammerhead rounds was so high that when you were fighting some of the Thorian Creepers, you could ragdoll them so hard that you could basically embed them in the roof. They’d be moving so fast that they’d penetrate all the walls with their legs dangling out. It was so easy to do and you could do it to everybody. You could launch a geth halfway across an Uncharted World

Another bug: with Shepard’s casual appearance in ME3, if you didn’t have it set up perfectly correctly it would default to Grunt for some reason. You’d be walking around as Grunt, going on dates as Grunt, and your face would be all scrunched up because it was all mapped to human bones still, so it was just, like, Nightmare Fuel of Grunt

Another bug: in ME2 on Illium when trying to recruit Samara, the Asari enemies just would not stop screaming - regardless of whether they were hit or not, it was endless screaming. Later one of the devs got an audio file of the scream, endless and looped, and now one of the devs has it on their phone and uses it for their morning alarm tone

“Shepard would come up to characters and they’d just be screaming”

---

There was also the Programming Variables panel, talking about what hurdles game programmers face. Some [or all?] of the devs that were part of this panel are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and about the craft of game dev programming in general. The timestamps for this segment are ~ 4:24:46 - 5:06:02.

[source]

[insights/notes from Gamers For Groceries 1]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[kweebtrash]

StreamHearts Timestamp 11:59pm

Title: Fuck It, I Love You

Pairing: Camboy!JohnnyxCamgirlOC (Rem)

Word Count: 3.1k

Genre: Smut/Fluff

Features: established relationship not a perfect sex life, heavy size kink, soft-ish dom johnny, petnames, teasing, fingering, unprotected sex, creampie.

Synopsis:

Though Rem is a smart business woman she hides behind a computer screen all day designing websites for large companies. However, when her day is done she’s still behind a computer screen but now showing the world how hard she can cum. She never wanted to be a camgirl but when financial duties called she took it upon herself to make it. The spotlight (and money) got to her and she expanded to showcasing her nerdy side; livestreams, lewd cosplay photoshoots, let’s plays, subscriptions, review, vlogs, tutorials, you name it. Her streams catches the attention of a fellow cammer, Johnny, who on a whim decided to message her. Both aren’t the sexed up dolls they pretend to be in the online life and instead ease their way into a relationship with not so perfect sex, mistakes, and total confusion.

A/N: This used to be on my Kofi which im closing down and just putting everything up on here. This isnt continuing.

Masterlist     Johnny Only Masterlist

~~

“I just want to tease the fuck out of you.” The words came out as as sultry whisper poured into my ear. His tongue trailed against the cartilage, leaving the skin heated and wet similar to the junction of my thighs. Johnny had been kissing me for god knows how long. I had become so lost in him; his words, his touch, his entire being beside me. I was helpless and unable to escape the intoxication though I never wanted to. His words, however, put me in a place of submissiveness where i feared his teasing.

“P-please don’t…” I whined as I chased his lips from a kiss he denied me. “Don’t tease me. I’ve been good.”

“Have you?” His eyes were heavily lidded, pupils dilated with oxytocin and endorphins. The thrill of my eminent destruction only added to the sparks between us yet I was dreading it entirely. “I saw what you were doing in your last stream. You got a bigger dildo, didn’t you?”

My face rushed with color as i averted my gaze. “W-well...i wanted to practice.”

“Practice for who, baby?” He smirked and pushed a few sweat drenched stray hairs away from my face.

“Y-you, of course.” We hadn’t fucked on camera yet. We had come to the consensus not to until we perfected the art of intimacy between us first. Though there was a small problem, or rather a large problem. The first few times Johnny had tried to penetrate me it was futile. The thickness of his head was no match for how small my hole was. No matter how many fingers he could attempt to fit inside me (barely two) to try and stretch me out or how much lube or cum i exerted helped. And so I took it upon myself to cast aside my six and seven inch dildos to try and accommodate for the moment where we would unite.

“Still too much, huh?” He chuckled lowly. I watched as his fingertips barely brushed against my skin as he made a ticklish trail down my stomach to the thin fabric of my panties. They slipped beneath the cotton and i instinctively spread my thighs. His middle finger pushed between my lower lips and circled my entrance languidly. “Why is my perfect princess so tiny?”

“I’m sorry,” I said with a heavy pang of guilt. I had constantly felt like I had ruined moments in our beds because my body wouldnt except him even if my mind and heart were yearning to have him so deep inside me that i could feel him in my stomach.

Johnny pressed a kiss to my forehead and smiled. “Don’t be. I love how fucking tight you are for me.”

I scrunched up my nose and pushed his face away playfully. “Don’t say such things. You make it sound pervy!”

Another chuckle. “I can’t help it sometimes.” He began to move his finger through me, gathering the wetness that had accumulated and spreading it over the most sensitive areas. “You know it turns me on to see how small you are.”

I pressed my lips together in an attempt to hide a mewl. I was lost on what I had wanted to respond with as my brain frizzled. “U-uh, um...I th-think your size kink is s-showing!” My stomach clenched when he dipped his fingertip in, alarming me. He shushed me gently, cooing at me to relax as he placed kisses and nibbles along the column of my neck.

“I got you, baby girl. You know i do.” I wrapped my arms around his torso and pulled him closer together so i could bury my face in his chest. His free arm snaked around me as well, settling on my shoulders as he gauged my reactions to his minuscule thrusts. I bit down on his collarbone as I rushed to rock my hips and let him know that I was able to take more. He pushed into me deeper, curling his finger quickly in an effort to make the sound of my natural lubrication bounce off the bright pink walls of my room. “Did you get all worked up just from me kissing you?”

He was proud of himself. I could always tell in the tonality of his voice. A certain cockiness that anything he did made me wet. It stemmed from the exchange of us watching each other’s streams. I had spent hours consuming video after video of him jerking off, fucking his own ass, and doing other lewd acts that got him tips in seconds. He, on the other hand, told me that he was more captivated by the faces and sounds I made and would prefer to just watch as he fucked me. It sounded silly to say since I had thousands of viewers and I masturbated on camera but I was still a shy person who preferred to metaphorically hide their head in the sand like an ostrich. Johnny intimidated me as many a times my face would be forced towards his and i was commanded to not dare look away. His deep brown eyes would peer into my soul, eating it up like a meal and leaving me an empty husk of a woman once I orgasmed at his hands. “Shut up.” I said through gritted teeth as he halted his vibrant thrusts.

His finger left me and instead disappeared into his mouth. With a slick pop he removed all of my taste from the digit and sighed as he gave me a once over. “Take these off.” He snapped at the band of my panties that he had stripped me down to during our initial makeout session. I hooked my thumbs into the waistband and wiggled them down before flicking them off my foot. Johnny spread my thighs wide, leaving me completely exposed. I went back to hiding in the crook of his neck, hoping he wouldnt notice if i distracted him with some bites. A harsh tap to my clit told me otherwise. I yelped and laid my own defensive slap against his chest. "Jerk!"

"Dont close your legs then." Johnny said sternly. I pouted, puffing out my cheeks as i rolled away from him, my arms across my chest. His large hand grabbed onto my hip and pulled me onto my back again. He didnt particularly like when i protested or became a bit bratty. A submissive princess was where he liked me to be at all times. Though now I wasnt even able to utter a word because he hooked his leg over mine, keeping my thighs separated while one hand grabbed both my wrists and pinned them above my head. His other hand was back to grabbing my face and forcing me to look at him. He'd be damned to hell if he didnt break that habit of mine. "The fuck did i just say?"

I flexed my fingers as i tried (and failed) to release myself from his grasp. "You said…" i looked into his eyes that had honeyed in the yellow glow of my bedside lamp. That was another weakness if mine, as if Johnny as a whole wasnt enough. His eyes in particular always destroyed me. I couldnt expressing the rest of my sentence, which was supposed to be a snarky retort, because of the intense hold he had over me. I was instead stuck nibbling at his bottom lip and whimpering for him to let me go. "I could touch you." I finally said in between small licks. "Youre hard."

"And? I get off on seeing you get off. I also get off on when youre a good girl for me."

"Liar. You love it when i misbehave. You always start moving the toys faster when i do." That was what he used when he really wanted to punish me; small dildos and vibrators in various settings and speeds, making sure i writhed and arched with every thrust.

"And what toy should i used on my babygirl tonight? What would get you all pink and squirmy for me?" He smirked and sucked my lips between his, lapping at the soft skin.

"I dont want a toy. I want you." I admitted.

Johnny sighed and pulled away from me entirely. "You know we cant. We've tried and we cant. I told you im not going to hurt you."

"I know!" I clutched onto his arm. "I know. But this time will be different. Im gonna do it."

He shook his head. "If i force it too much i could tear you. Rem, i'm seriously not going to try right now."

"Please!" I begged and looked up at him with puppy eyes. "Just one try, ok? Just one? You dont know how many times I've dreamt about you fucking me senseless. I just want you inside me so badly. I cant take it anymore."

He rolled his eyes, annoyed at my persistence. "Fine. Just one try. And i mean one."

I gave him a sweet kiss and pulled him on top of me. He settled between my legs which i laid on the outside of his thighs. He stroked the smooth and sensitive skin on my inner thighs as he trailed his thumbs upwards to spread my lower lips apart. His tongue darted out to moisten his lips as he drunk in the sight at my slightly flexed gape. "Are you sure?" He asked.

I pushed my hand between us and gripped the outline of his cock firmly. "Johnny I don't want you, I need you."

He went to say something again but snapped his jaw shut. Quickly, he discarded his boxer briefs and guided his swollen cock towards my entrance. Seeing him throb was another part of my guilt. He would leak and swell as we romped around and yet could only get off by a blowjob or a handjob. Sometimes he would thrust between my thighs or against my ass but I knew it was just barely enough for him. His cum didn't belong splattered across my skin; it belonged inside me, filling me to the brim and keeping me warm. I closed my eyes and let every bit of tension leave my body. If I could just get the head in, it would be smooth sailing from there.

A small push threatened the barricade of my tightness. The tension returned but only for a moment. I kept it shoved aside and focused on taking in the tip. I could feel centimeter by centimeter, gauging how far he could go, and when I found the glans stuffed inside me both of us shuddered hard. I covered my mouth as soon as I let out a sharp gasp. The feeling of being stretched burned and tingled and yet I took in the discomfort with a sense of gratitude. This was the farthest we had gotten and even if this was all he could get inside it was better than nothing.

Johnny's hands were trembling as he bruised my hips in the pattern of his fingers. "J-jesus...babe." He sucked in a harsh breath and swallowed hard. Beads of sweat had gathered at his brow and it was almost like he was losing control already. "God you feel so damn good. How are you even taking me?"

I held one of his hands and brought it to my lips, kissing the back of it. "You said it yourself. You saw me practicing on camera but you didn't see what I did when I was alone." I parted my lips then and ushered in two of his fingers, sucking slowly. I circled my tongue around the tips and swallowed all the way down to the knuckle all while perfecting by bedroom eyed gaze at him. His hips snapped as his body trembled, making me wince around his fingers. He had managed to squeeze in more of his cock and even produced some minuscule thrusts that had him looking like he was already prepped to go over the edge.

He gripped harder at my hip to the point where it hurt but I knew it was a sign of pleasure and that's all I wanted to give him. I mewled around his fingers and nudged my legs a little higher to rest by his waist. The adjustment built up pressure in the pit of my stomach and made my overstretched walls clench harder. Johnny groaned deeply and begged me to ease my hold on him but I couldn't. Even when I got used to the new addition of girth I was still suctioned around him. My face flushed as I heard his groans turn into growls. The muscles in his strong arms bulged as his shoulders caved in and an unexpected heat tsunamied into me.

My eyes widened at the revelation that he had cum inside me-the first time I had ever felt the sensation. It was strange and yet because it was Johnny it also felt...cozy in a way. A warm perfection that symbolized him succumbing to everything I had wanted to give him. Though one thing was for sure, I was surprised at how quickly it happened. I let his hand go and instead held onto my tummy that I swore was bulging slightly. Johnny ran a hand over his face and pushed his hair back but as soon as our eyes caught each other his face burned beet red even to the tips of his ears. "Do you...um, do you always cum that fast when you're in someone?" I tried to ask as politely as possible.

He pulled out of me and ran straight to the bathroom, slamming the door harshly. I frowned, realizing that the small comment had hurt his pride but I had to be honest that I wanted more from him. I sat up slowly and felt a rush of cum flow out of me, thicker than I expected. Him pulling out so swiftly left me sore and on wobbly knees yet I walked over to the bathroom, trying to keep my thighs pressed together so I wouldn't make an even bigger mess. "Johnny?" I asked as I knocked on the door.

"Go away." I heard him mumble.

"Johnny, why'd you run? Was it because of what I said? I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"Go. Away."

I huffed and grabbed a hold of the door. I was prepared to force my way through but it wasn't locked at all. I stumbled as I stepped in and saw Johnny sitting on the toilet cover, head between his knees and arms dangling by his feet. "Johnny." I sunk to my knees in front of him. "Look at me, please."

"No." He replied, muffled.

"Johnny." I repeated, sternly this time. "What's wrong?"

"'M embarrassed." He mumbled.

"Embarrassed? How come?"

"I've never cum that fast before. Ever. I feel like a loser."

I pushed his head up gently and sighed. "Guaranteed I did want it to last longer but this was the first time you were able to thrust inside me. Maybe it was because of all that pent up energy from when you couldn't do it before. Orrrrr," I nudged his arm playfully. "I'm just that damn good."

"I don't need your cockiness now." He pouted cutely.

"It's ok, baby, really. We're still finding each other out. This is the first time anyone has cared about not hurting me. I'd take that over some idiot that would barge in any day. Please don't be embarrassed."

"Easy for you to say."

"You think I want to be this tight? Sure it sounds like a whole fantasy but being tiny sucks. I want to get railed until I can't walk but I cry as soon as something big comes near me."

"You didn't cry this time." He pointed out and I perked up instantly.

"Hey, you're right. I didn't. That's progress!" I smiled and gave him a small kiss in an effort to cheer him up a little. "And you know what this means, right?"

Johnny sat back against the toilet tank and let out an exasperated sigh. "What?"

"We can keep practicing." I rose to my feet and straddled his lap. "I know you like practicing."

Finally a twinge appeared at the corner of his mouth. He couldn't resist the thought of more touching, groping, kissing, and grinding. "Well...I guess you're right."

I peered down at his still mostly hard cock as curiously got the best of me. "You came but you're still hard?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes it takes awhile to go down. Sometimes I can squeeze another one out."

I lifted my hips and slowly sunk down on him, catching him by surprise. He jerked suddenly and held onto me tightly. "Re-Rem!"

"Maybe we can work on me taking all of you this time. And making sure you last longer."

"I-its your fault for fuckin' suffocating me!" He said through grit teeth. "Just like you're doing now!"

I wrapped my arms around his neck and grabbed a handful of his hair. "Don't tell me you cant take it, baby."

He licked his lips and fluttered his eyes shut. "You have no idea what you do to me Rem."

"You're wrong." I wiggled down more on his shaft, now about a quarter of the way down before the tingling started again. "I know exactly how you feel because you drive me crazy too. Especially now."

He buried his face in my neck, splattering kisses here and there. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."

I giggled and squeezed him tight. "I love you, Johnny."

A silence fell over the room as that was also a first between us. I was afraid he wouldn't reciprocate the sentiment and felt my heart race. Now I was the embarrassed one yet I felt him smile against my collar bone. "Yeah?"

I nodded. "I-is that okay? To say that? I d-dont want to scare you off."

"I'm not going anywhere. Trust me. I love you too." I pursed my lips together to hide a squeal though I was too giddy to even think straight. I almost didn't notice Johnny standing up, myself now in his arms and our bodies remaining connected. "Can I show you how much I love you?"

"Please."

[sanshine]

Hey biba💛 I really wanna start making gifs but I dunno where to start what to use and ur like the best giffer?????? (dunno if that's a word lol) ik so can you please help

You don't have to but it would be nice if you could💛💛💛

hi cutie 💕💕💕 of course i will help!!!! im not sure if you're looking for some general tips or an actual giffing tutorial, so imma try making this as detailed as i can and hope it helps!!! this got a bit long so im gonna put everything under the cut <3 if you have any questions be sure to ask <333 and thank you so much for the compliment that really means a lot 🥺💕🥺💕

first of all you need to get your apps to make gifs! you will need a video downloader (i use 4k video downloader for youtube videos and a bunch of online converters for other websites and kpop24hrs.com for stage ts files, you will also find ts files uploaders on twitter though!! for specific groups dont be afraid to ask ccs where they get their files from, for atz i can recomend twitter users @/tamsaahj and @/bomhae0323), photoshop of course, you can find a bunch of ps files online if you google, especially linked in tumblr posts, and (optional) vapoursynth / avisynth preprocessor for stages!! i use vapoursynth and im super happy with it, you can get the files for it here <3

there was a great video that explained how to set vapoursynth up but i guess it got taken down or something?? so imma quickly explain it to you (assuming you have windows), if you don't wanna use vapoursynth you can skip this whole paragraph - download the portable zip file and unzip it wherever you want it and make a shortcut of the "drop video file on me" bat file on your desktop (for easy access). once you do that you can drop a video on it and a cmd window will open where you can put your timestamp and a resizer will open in your browser, as well as a vapoursynth editor window, which should be empty the first time it opens. you will have to navigate through file → open script → and open the script.vpy file in the gifs folder of your vs folder!! after that it's pretty straightforward, you work in the browser resizer to crop and resize your clip, you can use the klnm feature for denoising and the finesharp feature for sharpening and then you copy paste the top right script into your vapoursynth editor and go to script → encode video → set preset to MOV and you can press start!! your clip will be in the vapoursynth output folder <3

after that you can open the clip in photoshop and that's where the magic happens!! in photoshop you have to go to file → import → video frames to layers and find and choose your clip, either the preprocessed VS clip or your video if you skipped the vs part (note that photoshop cannot open some video formats, the most reliable ones are mp4 and mov!) and import the part you wanna gif. you dont have to be very precise as you can delete frames after you import the file too! <3

when you import your clip, you can either work in animation mode, or timeline mode. i prefer timeline mode bc i find it easier to navigate, timeline mode also allows you to use sharpening / denoising and other filters, which you cant do in animation mode.

if you're working with animation mode, you can start coloring straight away, playing with the adjustment layers and see what works for you! if you wanna work in timeline mode to use the filters, you will have to do the following:

1. select all frames

2. select all layers (select → all layers)

3. click on this menu icon (bottom left) under the first frame

4. go to filter and convert to smart filters

this will turn your clip into a smart object and now you can use any smart filter photoshop offers and / or proceed with coloring!!!

like i said, there are many possible ways of coloring your clips, you can play with every layer to see which one works for you best, i usually use curves, vibrance, selective color, hue / saturation, levels and exposure adjustment layers, but there are plenty of others that you might end up liking yourself <3

once you're happy with the clip, you will have to go to file → export → save for web and then you can save your first gif!!

these are my export settings if you wanna compare!

and then you just press save and you're done <3

last note: if you work in timeline mode, you will have to re-import your gif to change the speed of your gif as timeline mode only exports at 0.03 or 0.07 speed from what i noticed, simply click and drag your gif into photoshop (the tab section) and then select all frames and change the speed of your gif! for reference, for 60fps videos (stages) i go for 0.03 (so no need to reimport) and for other videos i go for 0.05 <3

i really hope this helps!!! if you want i can make a video tutorial for you too hshfvbdshvbs just lemme know if you have any more questions <3

[itsclydebitches]

I was wondering what your thoughts were on V8 finale’s warning. SLSH, like you, agreed that those are a good thing, BUT considering the series never warned for parental abuse and abandonment, systematic racism, domestic abuse, slavery, etc. More specifically, no warning for the gross level of torture Oscar went through, and Phoenix accused of it of self-aggrandizing, something to make the reaction channels go “oh shit a warning”. I agree.

Yeah, I always hesitate to attribute too much intention to the authors without hard evidence for it (like what they say in Q&As), but intention doesn’t erase the feeling the audience might take away from the act. Regardless of what the crew intended with that inclusion, how unlikely we might think it is that they’re plotting ways to drum up that shock value, or how likely, when a lot of your audience goes, “This feels self-aggrandizing, regardless of what you were trying to accomplish” then we’ve run into a problem. And the problem is, as you say, that RWBY has failed to provide warnings for some pretty heavy material in the past (minus our Volume 8 flashing lights warning). Combine that with the crew’s general tendency to talk up their show, we end up asking, “Why start providing warnings now? Eight volumes in, past the abuse, the torture, the dismemberment?” One possible answer is that as the show appears to struggle - criticisms of the company, Covid, being sold, etc. - this is indeed a good time to try and milk those “Oh shit!” reactions. And it’s a legitimate thing. I quite literally can’t tell you how many reviewers, both on blogs and various media websites, had some line along the lines of, “You know the finale is going to be big when there’s a content warning at the start!” That’s the kind of energy any company wants to generate about their material. 

Of course, the pushback to this is that they included it now because the scene in question is arguably more sensitive than the above examples. That’s obviously a pretty subjective call, but I can personally understand someone viewing the hero-assisted suicide of a fan favorite and thinking it needs more of a warning than the more generic violence and oppression we’ve become pretty desensitized to in media. My problem with this take is that if the purpose was to warn people about this specifically sensitive subject, why didn’t the warning do that? 

For the record yes, I know the suicide hotline is listed in the description, but - likely like many others - I didn’t look twice at that blurb before diving in. It’s the finale! You’re eager to get started, so this card is our real STOP sign. “Themes of death” doesn’t give us any hint as to what’s actually about to occur. “Themes of death” also covers Penny’s first death, Pyrrha’s, Qrow’s near death, Weiss’, a silhouette of past!Salem stabbing herself in the stomach... AKA, a ton of content that’s become commonplace for RWBY post-Volume 3. The viewer has no reason to think whatever death-related thing we’re about to see is in any way more distressing than everything else we’ve watched up until now. I certainly didn’t expect that. I just expect a character death, not a character death done that way. And the beauty of a webseries is that RT is not beholden to the constraints of television. That is, spoilers are not a go-to excuse here. Given the viewer’s ability to navigate the episode themselves, they could have done something like provide the warning and a timestamp at the end of the vid that will reveal what that “distressing” material is, so that those who want to prioritize their mental health over being surprised can. As it stands, this warning is pretty useless, beneficial only for those who know they’d be trigged by something and decided to wait until the community watched and could tell them if the episode contained their particular trigger. So if RT intended to provide the warning due to the sensitive nature of this material... they really failed to do that. 

The more general pushback is simply that they’ve realized warnings (even very generic ones) are important and have started implementing them as a general rule now. Eight years late, but better than nothing. And yeah, perhaps that was the intention. Idk. The point is, as said, that intention is bumping up against those feelings generated by the rest of RT’s choices across those eight years. When you’ve got a show that has never prioritized warnings before, is pretty self-congratulatory about their own content, and failed to appropriately warn their audience of the actual content... that warning does feel self-aggrandizing to a lot of people. I do want to emphasize that this isn’t a criticism of including content warnings. Even if they could have done better, I appreciate any company that’s looking to improve their work in this manner. Rather, this is a criticism of how this content warning and the way it was written intersects with RT’s specific history, its tendencies, and some in the fandom’s growing sense that they really only care about the views (the money) rather than their audience as people. That’s ultimately where the accusation stems from: a feeling that this content warning exists to generate that hype, which in turn will generate revenue... it doesn’t exist because the authors are truly concerned for anyone’s mental health. And that somewhat cynical view doesn’t appear out of nowhere. People don’t think the worst of the authors of shows they love (or did love) Just Because. It comes about from years of other problems that slowly but surely erode the audience’s trust and that then, fairly or not, colors new choices like this one. 

[shihozaki]

Heyo I would like to request a haikyuu match up❤️

General facts:

I'm luri a 21 old, female, hetero, ESTP/ESFP, aries, Gryffindor. I have an undercut hairstyle. (length kinda like ushijima so my profile picture isn't that accurate anymore)

Basically I'm a open and humorous person who likes to laugh :) I don't have a particular fashion style, I wear mostly everything from sweat pants and Hoodie with sneakers to mini skirt or rockabilly dress with high heals. I have no favorite color but I don't like pink...

Personality/character :

When you first meet me I am nice, polite but rather quiet. Knowing each other better I am very direct and straight out with my emotions of any kind. Whether I'm mad, sad or in a good mood. Even then I'm quite humorous. I am like an open book for most to read as you can tell by my nonverbal body language what I am like right now. I can get very aggressive and angry if someone is stupid towards me or starts a fight with me or my friends. On the other hand I speak before I think without any filter ... And I only notice that afterwards... But if someone points my inappropriate behavior out to me I would apologize immediately :)

- I'm a very helpful and nice person. I would do everything for my friends and family if they ask

- I'm a good listener. And because of my own family history I know If someone’s having a bad day and needs emotional support.

- I'm really good in organizing things

- I'm faithful and loyal. If you mess with me or my friends I will fight everyone.

- I'm to stubborn and straight forward. When I have a goal in mind, I don’t give up so easily. It can also backfire.

- I speak before I think. So I may say inappropriate in front of others...

- When I'm interested in something, sometimes I just focus on it and only want to talk about it, which can really get on others' nerves

Hobbies:

My hobbies are

producing my own little video clips or drawing,

I like to bake, and

practice my Krav Maga skills (Israeli Military Self-Defense Technique) :)

I can play violin but I don't get any lessons anymore :)

I am interested in technology especially IT and love to make, build and program things and websites myself.

I love helping with repairs on the house, but also building furniture, as well as electronics and electrics.

What I dislike about people:

-I don’t like being underestimated by my intelligence and physical strength and behaving towards me as if I were a fool.

Fun facts:

-I have an extreme visual defect (nearsightedness) + I can't see in three dimensions, so I'm kinda blind in some way xD

(if I don't wear glasses it's as if I see my surroundings as a picture...)

- so basically I'm looking for a guy who shares my humor and is able to handle/accept my flaws :) and he shouldn't underestimate me.

- I think I would go to Karasuno.

- in my opinion I'm a Iwaizumi kinnie :)

- I love movie soundtracks! the whole soundtrack, original music from the composer + epic soundtracks from two steps from hell, audiomachine, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Rachel Portman etc.  So they are my favorites(recently my favorite soundtrack is the whole haikyuu soundtrack!).

But i also have pop and rock on my playlist along with some electronic songs and classic music. So basically a bit from everything :) 

- I can't handle horror. I am a upfront person and straight forward but I'm such a softie BUT can't handle anything with horror (like movies or dungeons) xD

- in the HQ universe: I think I would be a senpai for the third years. I like the thought of visiting them for their weekend practice and film their activities :) and I'm kinda into being the older one in a relationship :) but I don't have to. But I also like the thought of being a third year and watch them play and record them. (I don't want to choose a high school, but my favorites are Karasuno, Shiratorizawa and Fukurodani. But I think I'm a Iwaizumi kinnie.)

Love language & what I look for:

- When I'm in a relationship with my boyfriend I would spoil him physically(massages) , with gifts and emotional equally (showing up ar his work place, preparing dinner, organize quality time in front of the TV with cuddling and watching favorite movies, etc.)

- I look for a guy who match with my humor or at least doesn't hate it

- I like it when guys handle my flaws and are ok with them

- I would take everything as a date. City trip, shopping if it is shopping for technology or Mangas, movie date (without horror), just stay at home :)

Soooo I hope that's not too much information, and I hope I included everything you need :)

Thank you in advance ❤️

I pair you up with Ushijima Wakatoshi!

- So you used to go to Karasuno High, becoming very good friends with the volleyball team. Even after graduation, you occasionally visited the team.

- One day, when you had visited the baseball team’s practice, Hinata and Kageyama had gone on a run and hadn’t come back for while. You offered to look for them and went on your search. You found them talking to the famous number one ace in Japan. He asked you for his number after you tried to drag the boys away.

- You started texting him after that, and surprisingly, you guys quickly became friends! He found your “wear your heart on my sleeve” personality very amusing, while you found his “I swear I’m laughing on the inside” personality amusing. You guys went into a relationship pretty quickly too

- He was surprised that you were older then him- he thought you were younger at first. In fact- that’s what his teammates thought too

- Adores your talking. Since Ushijima is a man of few words, he loves listening to you talk about your recent obsessions. He find you admirable for being extroverted and finding what you love.

- He doesn’t think you have any flaws? Like he doesn’t seem to find any but even if you do have some, why would that matter? He believes that humans were meant to have flaws. And he thinks “flaws” are just “special personalities”.

- He’s surprisingly very soft and warm towards you. He says it’s because he’s comfortable around you. He tries his best to be a good boyfriend too, by always trying to spend time with you. He gives you his full attention.

- He does have humour- but he just says them in a straight face. Which makes you crack up even more.

- Loves you taking care of him. Your little massages and your little gifts make him feel fluttery inside, and poor boy doesn’t know how to react. He gets so cute when he’s silently flustered.

Overall you guys are both very straightforward and dominating couple, where each of your teams make fun of you guys for being whipped at each other :)

Scenario: First meeting!

‘Where did they go?’ You thought as you wandered around the streets. You should have know that Hinata and Kageyama would get lost- they weren’t exactly the brightest. It was still odd, they couldn’t have gotten that far. ‘Don’t tell me…’ You thought before running to the Shitatorizawa school. You made your way to the field, and there they were. Hinata, Kageyama, and… Ushijima? They were standing beside the door to the Shiratorizawa’s gym. As you got close to them, you could hear Ushijima talking about someone named Oikawa..? It didn’t matter. “Hinata! Kageyama!” You yelled. “The team is waiting for you, what are you doing here?” Hinata and Kageyama immediately turned to you, there faces filled with determination. “We were talking to the ace!” Replied Hinata. You quickly bowed. “Sorry about them, I should have supervised them correctly.” You motioned for Hinata and Kageyama to follow you back to Karasuno. As you were about to leave, your hand was pulled. You turned around, your face meeting with Ushijima’s. “If it isn’t too much to ask… May I have your phone number?” Said Ushijima in a monotone voice. He looked away to the side after, as if he was embarrassed. It was surprisingly cute. You blushed, then took his phone and punched in your number. He quickly thanked you and went into the gym. You turned back, your heart beating faster and faster. “What- he- you can’t- why did you-“ Hinata stuttered while blushing and pointing at you. “Are you dating Ushijima now?” Asked Kageyama. You became even more red from the blunt comment. “No…” You replied, walking towards Karasuno high with the boys trailing behind. ‘Not yet.’ You thought with a smile.

Song: Miss Independant by Ne-yo!

Thank you for requesting, I enjoyed writing this. The episode this scenario is based on is episode 1 from Season 2 (Timestamp 13:30). Please let me know what you think about it, and I hope to see you again soon :)

[jlf23tumble]

My 1D-related fic faves of 2019

I've read a TON of great fic this year in all kinds of fandoms, Jeeeeeeeeeesus, there are so many talented writers out there, but I won't list it all here (or even list everything I bookmarked this year). Instead, I'm gonna stick with 1D-related works released in 2019 that pulled me in hard and made me stare at the wall and/or read again and/or scream about with other people, and I'll try to do it in cutesie number order because WHY NOT make it that extra level of arbitrary, lmao. I love fanfic because no matter what fandom I'm dipping in, something new is gonna jump up and kill me (this year in particular, I've subscribed to a lot of "new to me" writers that I LOVE, and I hope you know who you are [do you know who you are, etc.]). Thank you for the free gifts, for your time, for your blood, sweat, and tears! I owe you hugs, coffee, and my undying love, gratitude, and support! I'll put my list under the cut to avoid some v. v. real screen scroll rage--happy new year, y'all!

2 lactation kink fics

(aka the Jaerie category, nobody else is out there writing this even as Harry's tits get bigger and milkier and why am I the only one fully appreciating all of it?????)

I Think You're Already Home, by jaerie, Seeing Louis Tomlinson today, it would be hard to guess that he was ever once a member of the world's most famous boyband. These days he doesn't even the leave his own house. The truth is he can't leave his own house. (a December gift to remember for all of us! a/b/o dynamics, famous Louis, omega Harry--which is practically canon at this point--crippling agoraphobia, lactation-related sexiness, I would read at least ten (10) more chapters of this)

freaks from the internet, by jaerie. Harry sells his breast milk to freaks on the internet. Louis turns out to be one of those freaks. He also happens to be Harry's ex. (I legit can't believe this came out this year, I rec it all the time! it was anon for forever, and I was low-key obsessed because I just wanted mawrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr of it, and I got it, thank CHRIST)

3 fics for meeeeeeee

(These works were gifts to me, and I am so truly hashtag blessed to receive!!!)

I Just Wanna Taste It, by @homosociallyyours​. In his mind it's watermelon and sticky strawberry sweet, and he craves the feeling of his own round, firm belly warm under his hands on a summer evening. (Megan loves to kill me with Harry mpreg imaginings, and this one feels like canon to me!)

Powerless (and I Don't Care It's Obvious), by objectlesson/ @alienfuckeronmain​. He should not be getting turned on by Harry’s full-bladder discomfort, his little twitches, his hips-stuttering. And yet. (AND YET!!! I don't even know where to start with how much I love Phoenix, what a treasure her work is in ANY fandom, how shitty this particular fandom has been to her, how much I'm gonna miss harry/louis fic gifts from her in the future, how HOT this pee kink fic is in general, dot dot dot)

Tuxedo Classic Dance Party, by Blake/ @newleafover​. Instead of flying out to meet his touring boyfriend in Madrid, Louis sticks around to be responsible and do things like dance at Lady Gaga night at the gay cowboy club in West Hollywood. (Blake has written at least five fics in various fandoms that I would say are my favorite fics of all time, but they really topped themselves with this one!)

4 fic series

(I feel like there are probably loads more that qualify, but these ones grabbed me in their own particular way)

Not That Gone, by abrighteryellow/ @a-brighter-yellow​. Louis’s 20-year high school reunion takes a turn when a celebrity classmate – who also happens to be Louis’s long unrequited crush – unexpectedly shows up. (this was inspired by Chris Evans, and both parts stand on their own, tbh)

Maybe I Miss You, by 13ways. Louis is on his way back to London after the Hits Live Birmingham concert. Harry is flying to New York for the Met Gala. They connect. (from the very first story in this series, I was HOOKED, canon angst that builds up to something truly wonderful)

There's something I want to try..., by TheMagicWord. Harry wants to try something. Louis's not convinced. Until he is. (the installments are super short, super hot)

One More Time Again, by orphan_account. On the morning of his second sold-out performance at Madison Square Garden, Harry wakes up to find that he's sixteen years old, on The X Factor, and that he has a chance to make things right. (I'm sad that this author orphaned, but I seem to recall her getting a TON of shit, which is unfortunate because this is a great read, and part two is an imagining where Louis goes back instead)

5 fics featuring holidays

(These ones are basically from Christmas and Halloween of this year, so quite recent!!)

once bitten and twice shy, by @pinkcords​. In a rush of bravery only senior year can bring, Harry confesses his feelings in a letter to his neighbor and best friend, Louis, only for the entire school to hear it and laugh him out of their small town in Wisconsin. (the notes on this one blew me away: first-time author, pinch-hitting for a fest, and damn, a knock out)

you've set my soul to dreaming, by we_are_the_same. Thirty-year-old Harry Styles goes to bed single on Christmas Eve, only to wake up on Christmas morning with a husband in his bed and a son down the hall. (I'm not always into this trope, but when it's done well? NICE, and this one did it well)

when half spent was the night, by @juliusschmidt​. I’ve skimmed your website and am interested in hiring you to be my doula. I’m 7 ½ months pregnant and not keen to do this whole labor and birth thing alone. After looking around, I thought you might be a good fit. (girl direction advent fic with pregnant Louis that’s incredibly well done, especially given how short it is, I was so sad to see it end, but the author says something about act II coming??? YES!!!)

Fictober 2019 Collection, by flowercrownfemme/ @lesbianiconharrystyles​. Features lots of monsters and creatures and Harry Styles being a general nightmare as well as a few Girl Direction drabbles and a timestamp for Fool For You and one for Treat Mothman With Kindness. (Chloe's Halloween drabbles, each of which could outrival other stories 4x the length...she's a GIFT)

Cat & Mouse, by jaerie. It's the one day out of the year that Harry doesn't have to hide and can be himself — at least he thought so. Louis is just a little more observant than he anticipated. (I'm not a big hybrid fic fan, BUT GOD THIS STORY IS SO GOOD, it's so short I wanna cry, but so good!!!)

6 a/b/o fics

(I can handle "traditional" a/b/o if it gives me my dose of omega Harry, but I absolutely adore "untraditional" a/b/o, you know, where it actually is NOT about straight dynamics being put on a m/m or f/f couple (excuse me, a/a or o/o)...these ones NAIL IT, as did the entire gaybo ficfest)

violence of my own touch, by 14hrflight/ @silverfoxlouis​. Louis hasn’t said anything, but Harry knows something is wrong. Harry’s rut had ended a few days ago, and Louis had kept him under as best as he could. (whenever I read Chi's alpha/alpha fics, I find myself internally screaming "CHI!!!" god, do they Get It, and I really hope they continue this one!)

Amor Victorious, by HappyPrincess/ @pattern-pals​. Louis finds himself following Harry on a journey through Italy, complete with long train rides, greasy food, naked Christs, and too many lingering touches. They're definitely not like other tourists and he definitely doesn't have a crush on his best friend who happens to be an alpha, too. (this one came out during Thanksgiving week, so I held it to savor, and BOY, DID I SAVOR, it's so incredible, the gorgeous writing, the visceral, indescribable feeling of reading it, sighhhhhhh)

do you know me by heart, by HappyPrincess/ @pattern-pals​. Harry comes back wearing alphas' scents, a pleased smile and a lace dress. Somehow, Louis still ends up making him come until he cries. (for me personally, 2019 was the year of Nina: getting to know them, catching up on all their writing, falling in love with the way they can kill us all with beautiful angst and the hint and hope of redemption...here's a tissue, you'll need it!!)

the way that you're thrilling me, by @hereforlou​. Alphas were smelly and cocky and mostly arseholes, in Harry’s experience. Or at least they were at school. He didn’t understand how his friends—lovely, soft-skinned, sweet-smelling omegas—could actually want to touch them, or be touched by them. (this is just one of the many, MANY faves I had from the gaybo ficfest, A+ all around)

Constant Debauchery, by Blake/ @newleafover​. Harry is an alpha who loves getting his mouth knotted by other alphas. Louis is happy to serve. Fun smut! But also angst and sexual awakenings. (Blake knows how to sum up their writing, lol, but YEAH, me as at least one of the comments both public and private saying they'd want to read 100k more of this)

how many nights did I crash against the waves, by Blake/ @newleafover​ Louis is going into heat and Harry thinks it's hot. (the SKILL of writing something that's 1.7k, yet builds a complete--and v. v. hot--world)

7 fics with Harry and someone else

(I still have a few I need to read in this category--I'm getting there! But these are some from my fave authors that really had me pondering some walls [heh])

I Want Your Belly, by @glasscushion​. Harry wants Adam to knock him up. Inspired by on-stage thirst, the Instagram Stories Shirt, Watermelon Sugar, and Harry’s persistent baby fever. (Adam/Harry, mpreg kink of the finest order!!)

Rachel, Nevada, by @vondrostes​. Harry has a close sexual encounter of the fourth kind. (Jeff/Harry, Rachel/Harry, and I honestly can't even BEGIN to describe this, holy WOW)

Sea Salt, by @glasscushion​. Nick's drunk, and he can't avoid his feelings forever. Set in 2013 and 2019. (Nick/Harry, rip gryles...the grylers I know had an absolute field day in terms of angst, damn!)

all my lies are safe beside you now, by HappyPrincess/ @pattern-pals​. They both know what it was like to love Louis Tomlinson fiercely, irrevocably, ghosts of it on their skin, even if the traces were etched in vastly different ways. (Zayn/Harry, and FOR REAL, this is a huge ouch)

call me anything you like, but my name is, by @wishforwishes​. Some conversations are better left forgotten, some conversations are worth remembering, and some conversations you never get the chance to have. Featuring three mentors, two tea parties, one and a half recording studios, and a reference to Archie comics. (Harry/CHASM, essentially; LISTEN, I am obsessed with this fic, you don't need to read part one to really Get It, but the bits with Zayn, and James/Ben, and all the parts with Harry working through gender? SO GODDAMNED REAL)

Come Out and Play, by @dinosaursmate​. Harry and Louis discover a new kink in their relationship, and it brings all the boys closer than they could have ever imagined. (ot5 orgy, so not really Harry with anyone so much as everyone with everyone, and let's call this one canon)

Like a Rolling Stone, by @vondrostes​. By the end of it, Nick realised his tea had gone cold in his hand. He’d barely taken a single sip in the hour-plus he’d been sat there, unmoving, transfixed by Harry’s songs—haunted by the knowledge of what had inspired them. (Nick/Harry, rip gryles)

8 canon fics

(This was a VERY hard category to narrow down, but yeah, a big push this year from "newer" writers = lots of nuanced fic)

Per Aspera, by @sedfierisentio​. Louis’s throat feels tight, his heart like a hammer in his chest. You know my rot, he thinks, and I know yours. I love you still. (these achingly beautiful time stamps are centered around taste, and if this fic has taught me anything, it's that buying an author a coffee has a ripple effect)

A Nullo Amato, by @sedfierisentio​. Inspired by Harry carrying books around outside LAX, a canon-compliant, Canon AU fic set between 2014 and 2015; mostly, timestamps roped together by a common theme—literature. (this was removed four years ago and reposted, so maybe it's a cheat??? i don't care, it was brand-new to me and a lot of other people, I'm so glad the author shared it again!)

no love like your love, by @dykes4louis​. A collection of tumblr drabbles. (Hima is REALLY burying the lede on this one because each of these is short and SCORCHING, her skill, check out her other works, too!)

Dancing in My Dreams, by @kingsofeverything​. Louis doesn't mean to imply that Harry's too old to dance for him, but Harry takes it that way, and sets out to prove him wrong. (this is one that *could* go in the series pile, but I love it as a standalone...feels like canon to me, regardless!)

Sonic Sounds, by @glasscushion​. "Harry takes a deep breath, suitably embarrassed, “I’m just really...” and he can’t say the obvious. He can’t just say "really wet." Or Harry loves feeling embarrassed. Louis is happy to help. (I'll never look at those One Direction electric toothbrushes quite the same way again)

Bruised Fruit, by @glasscushion. Louis is obsessed with the way Harry smells in the heat of LA. (hey, you know what, me, too, bitch, you ain't special...the way this fic SMELLS, my god, I"m obsessed)

be my once in a lifetime, by HappyPrincess/ @pattern-pals. Just like there are only four other people who will ever understand what it’s like growing up in One Direction, there’s only one other person who knows what it’s like to find your soulmate just before you’re thrown into the spotlight and forced to acknowledge that the both of you have too many flaws and vices to make it through fame together. Or: It's all about having sex and being sad. And drunk. (can u believe Nina wrote this before Fine Line???)

in this dress, by cabinbythesea. Louis is so lost in his eyes and his words he feels if a step above heaven exists, it has to be Harry. Loosely inspired by Harry’s dress from the director’s cut of Lights Up. (I sure hope we see even more fic inspired by every bit of this album/every video it produces)

9 fics by Phoenix/ @alienfuckeronmain

(This fandom doesn't deserve her, and I hope everyone's reading her other works because they're all so amazing, she's such an incredibly gifted writer, my fave of faves, my life is so much brighter with her in it...I could rec her all goddamned day, and I do slash will!!! Here are nine she cranked out this year, each one a gem in its own way)

Silver White Winters. In which Louis catches a cloud and pins it down, aka, a Sound of Music AU (the shittiness in the comments underlines why we can't have nice things, but jesus CHRIST, this is so pure and good, and she cranked it out in, like, two hours)

I don't do that dance. Harry is easily the worst ballet dancer in her whole Intro to Ballet class. Except maybe Taylor Swift. (I adore how Phoenix writes girl Harry, but the way she writes Taylor? Unparalleled...nails her perfectly!)

magic, madness, heaven, sin, by @kerasines. It’s the flashing lights painting colors on her eyelids, it’s the drumming bass competing with her heartbeat. It’s the manic energy rippling through the crowd in waves, the deafening, frenzied passion filling the stadium that remind Eleanor that she actually used to like going to concerts. (technically, this one is FOR Phoenix, from Kim, but it takes a pairing that Phoenix is making her very own, so I'm counting it, lol)

Snakes and Stones. If you call a girl a snake enough, sometimes she becomes one. Her legs lengthen and fuse, her pupils shrink to slits. She gets colder and colder, until she has to spread herself on the warm cement beside the pool, soaking in heat, sipping gin and tonics to warm her blood so she does not turn to ice and shatter to bits. (god, I'm blanking on this ship name, but El/Taylor is such an inspired pairing, and I hope that P's drabbles make it over to ao3 in full)

Something good (will come from here). Taylor does not answer, because she is too busy licking her lips and pitching forward, as if Eleanor is the sky, or the sea. (you can practically SMELL this fic, El/Taylor drabble)

I Must Confess (I Still Believe). Harry is the new girl at an all girl Catholic Girl's School, and Louis is the unattainable, dashing senior who changes her forever. (this fic breaks my heart, the entire experience of its production and aftermath will forever be bittersweet, a gorgeous swansong)

Only One at the Finish Line. “I want to be another alpha’s omega,” is what he says, and it comes out like something reckless, something wild. Like he doesn't care anymore if Louis hates him or not, if Louis understands, he just needs to speak his truth aloud to darkness, to the slender pines that surround them like a jury panel. (Phoenix was the gaybo mod, and this was her contribution, and it is PERFECTION PERSONIFIED, fest goals)

The Pink Ghost of Princess Park. The thought of the vibrator does not go away. It’s sitting there collecting dust all through January, and every time Harry and Louis have to leave town for a press event or a show or to record or what have you, they come back home, and it’s still there, the Pink Ghost of Princess Park, the fucking glittery haunting that Harry cannot stop thinking of Louis stuffing up his arse. (a very good year in general for Princess Park clapbacks)

Life Saver. Louis is a sweetheart punk with a theater background and a heart of gold, Harry is an inexperienced nerd who plays by the rules. Classmates, lab partners, and eventually friends, what happens when Louis knows he’s in love, but doesn’t know how tell Harry? (this one came out a year ago tomorrow, and it had a tough birthing process, but it's so good, so hot, my love for virgin Harry gettin’ it on knows no bounds)

10 AU fics

(yes, yes, this could be LOADS longer, but I’m sticking to my theme!)

breathless for an eternity, by cabinbythesea. Harry conquers double duty on SNL and Louis wishes he was Nick Jonas. (dangggg, this came out too late for me to rec it along with my other snl-related fic, but it joins that lofty canon!)

Pretty Baby, by @littlelouishiccups. Louis helps Harry unwind after a busy week. (I was NOT expecting a new chapter in the iconic sugar baby Harry series, but HERE WE ARE)

into another (another) serotonin overflow, by @mercutionotromeo. Sweet first time sex wherein Harry's adorably awkward, Louis is achingly cool, and Harry rides Louis wearing his jersey. (this is one of my all-time fave fics, and I'm not sure what changed in it to get it reposted, but yeah, HERE FOR IT, THANK YOU!!!)

'Sup, by @mediawhorefics. All Louis wants is to finish the play he’s been commissioned to write, but one of the regulars at his local coffee shop keeps distracting him. ft. older larry, pushy gemma, harry being a disaster gay and silver fox louis. (this is so short but so tantalizing, GOD, DO I WANT MORE OF THIS UNIVERSE)

Tan Lines and Some Memories, by twoshipstiedup. Harry Styles is the indie movie darling he’d been avoiding ever since Louis saw his movie at Cannes and harbored an unreasonable grudge against him. A unicorn t-shirt finally brings them together in person. (I honestly thought we'd get more unicorn shirt fic, but this is a wonderful standard-bearer, banter city)

Bitter Tangerine, by purpledaisy/ @daisyharry. Nine months after they break up, a twist of fate brings Harry and Louis back together at Christmas. (so much ouch in this, but wow, do you feel like you're reading fully realized, realistic, growing characters)

We're Driving in Your Fast Car, by @sadaveniren. Harry felt himself light up - both with excitement and the thrill of getting what he wanted. “Really?” “Of course, anything for you." aka Louis and Harry are car thieves about to pull off a million dollar job. (another one I'd love to read more of...how did they get here, where are they going, etc.)

remember you well, by @fondleeds. Harry’s a criminal, Louis’ a cop, and they’re stranded overnight at the Motel 6. (what's with me and my love of heist/caper fics this year?)

Tied Down, by HamPalpert/ @ham-palpert. The most interesting case in Liam and Niall's careers falls directly into their laps, courtesy of an epic fuck-up of one Harry Styles, partner to the almost-infamous drug dealer Louis Tomlinson. The investigation yields an unexpected yet satisfactory outcome for Liam and Niall. For Harry and Louis, however, things are far more complicated. (SEE ABOVE, JESUS, I THINK ABOUT THIS FIC...ALL...THE.......TIME)

Harry Styles Cooks..., by sunsetmog. Louis owns all of Harry Styles’ cookbooks, and he never intends to cook a single thing out of any of them. (yeah, it's a wip, yeah, I flatline every time it updates, what of it, I'm living my best life vicariously through it!!)

[sternbilder]

just saw another one of those “oh no tech companies are watching everything you do” scaremongering megaposts

hi, person who works at Large Tech Company here, I can’t speak for every company and its policies but I have a little bit of experience with handling user data and hopefully whoever is reading this feels a little bit more at ease knowing that:

[[MORE]]

1) the myth that we can just collect and store whatever data we want about you is false, we have a rigorous review process for every feature we implement (involving engineers, security, legal, privacy) where any user data we collect, ESPECIALLY if it’s personally identifying information, MUST have a business justification. why is Website collecting the list of stickers I’ve sent in my chat? there is definitely a reason for this! maybe it’s powering a machine learning algorithm to recommend you new stickers it thinks you might like! maybe it just simply keeps track of the ones you use most frequently so that they can present them to you at the top and save you the time of scrolling through your entire sticker picker! but if it doesn’t have an explicit business justification we’re not allowed to collect it MUCH LESS store it unanonymized and unaggregated!

2) the fact that any employee of X company can just access user data for whatever purpose is....also false. you wouldn’t refuse to use a bank or file your taxes because some employee of the bank or IRS could see your private financial records, because that would be illegal as fuck?? it’s the same for the engineers etc at whatever Big Tech Company you think is secretly spying on you?? as part of aforementioned review process I have to document every piece of data I plan to collect and whether or not it’s sufficiently anonymized (most commonly this is just for logging purposes like “X button was clicked” or “Y message was posted” which are anonymized and analyzed only in aggregate to determine usage statistics and understand user behavior to influence product development). I also am not allowed to perform ANY sort of data analysis (even to look at aggregate data) until I explicitly request access to the specific logs that the data was stored in, which again, MUST include a business justification. any time I directly look at a particular user’s logs (which I sometimes have to do to debug incoming error reports) the fact that I’ve accessed these records is recorded, so if I’ve just been doing this to snoop around, somebody will know. my job is for all intents and purposes extremely stable, but this is one of the few ways I could definitely get fired immediately. also, even if I’m looking at these logs, they’re often obfuscated etc. so that your actual user generated content isn’t visible to me, just metadata like any user/data ids, timestamps, generic description of what actions were performed, etc. an employee could theoretically breach user data with malicious intent if they tried really hard, but not more so than at other institutions you already trust with your personal data

3) the fact that all your personal data is stored indefinitely without your consent is also false. it’s true that often when you “delete” your data it’s not deleted immediately; this is often to comply with legal restrictions. however, it is often the case that things like ad preferences are configurable by the end user with immediate results (e.g., if you don’t like your google ad preferences, I’m pretty sure you can delete them? and/or turn customized ads off?) it’s also a requirement that we allow users to export their data so that they have access to it, exactly as OP was doing. finally, even if it’s a long time (days, months, years, etc.) we do eventually delete your data for real. even sometimes when you don’t want us to! like have you ever tried searching for a really old email you haven’t touched in like 10 years? you probably won’t find it bc we only keep it around for so long to give you an adequate opportunity to archive it yourself IF YOU WANT, but the accusation that tech companies are building a longitudinal profile of every user’s entire life is a ridiculous thing for us to waste valuable storage space on.

TL;DR not to be on corporate’s side but I don’t want y’all to freak out more than you have to about the data we collect?? whatever company you’re condemning is Very Afraid of Lawsuits and I guarantee other people have thought about this much more than some rando on the internet and with more legitimate/comprehensive knowledge of the situation and it’s not nearly as bad as you think it is

[miraculouscontent]

Have you written anything about what specifically you dislike about Gigantitan? I tried searching for it on my own, but Tumblr Is Not A Functioning Website

I haven’t talked about it much at the time of posting, so don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything.

“Gigantitan” is my least favorite episode of Miraculous from a strict watchability standpoint, being the only episode that I wanted to quit watching outright (and would’ve had I not been watching with someone else). There are episodes that have worse writing from a plot/character view, but “Gigantitan” is the only episode that I firmly believe has no value whatsoever.

[Lolliplot]

I have no problem with filler in concept. Filler can actually be very important to a show’s runtime, letting shows rake in some more views for the more high-budget episodes by filling in story gaps with fun little snippets about nothing.

But this episode isn’t fun. It’s just nothing.

Let’s start with what this episode actually offers for future plot points. Firstly, it confirms JARM (Juleka, Alix, Rose, and Mylene) being already aware of the fact that Marinette has a crush on Adrien.

We didn’t need to know this. Everyone could’ve guessed that anyone in the class already knew. If I’d skipped this episode completely and seen “Frozer”, I wouldn’t have batted an eye at JARM already knowing and making suggestions about what Marinette should do about Adrien.

The other thing this episode does is show that an akuma can switch targets, which happens later in “Zombizou” anyway. Not only that, but I don’t know how genuine this moment even is, because it’s just a “comedic” ploy to get a reaction out of Hawk Moth. I can see the result in two ways: either this is relevant because this is going to happen later (actually making this episode pointless because it’s going to happen in a later episode) or this was a one-off and no one will ever know if it was a legitimate thing or a comedic detail.

It just leaves me confused.

Point being, I don’t want to hear brags from the writing staff about how this season has “no filler” because it’s a cheap way to generate hype when all they really did was sprinkle in crumbs of establishing plot into this particular episode. If one were to ask the question, “Why couldn’t it be established that they know about Marinette’s crush in a different episode?”, the only answer would’ve been, “Because this episode would’ve been filler otherwise.”

It’s lazy. Simple as that.

[Don’t Cry Me a River]

I don’t talk about myself often on my blog, but I’ll have to say a little bit to get my point across. See, some things I’ve never mentioned about myself before are that my ears are pretty sensitive, my eyes don’t like saturated colors, and I’m easily disgusted (not amused) by gross-out humor.

Already, my next problem with this episode is obvious.

I don’t like babies. I hate them, in fact. Don’t like looking at them, don’t like holding them, and every scream feels like sharp nails being jammed into my brain. They’re gross and loud and I have no maternal instincts whatsoever.

As a baby, August has no personality. He has no traits and his shtick is “he’s a baby.” That’s literally it. He cries, he screams, he’s easily distracted, and he’s completely unintelligent.

An akumatized person isn’t even supposed to be the same exact thing as the person they akumatize, but that’s exactly what Gigantitan is; August, but with powers.

And those colors blind me. The neon pink and green are hideous. One might say that it’s the idea because Hawk Moth akumatized a baby (and those akumatized might get to pick their looks), but that doesn’t change the facts that they didn’t have to akumatize a baby and that the design is still terrible to look at even if there’s a reason for it.

And the model is disgusting. I outright gagged at the scene with Adrien’s bodyguard and the saliva and just–EUGH, EW, GROSS!!

Once the timestamp hits the point where August turns into Gigantitan, it’s nothing by baby humor for eight straight minutes.

And Hawk Moth can’t just, y'know, release the akuma, because that would end the episode.

Hawk Moth’s even been shown to be able to torment his victims to some degree to get them to do what he wants but oh no we can’t have that because it’s a baby.

Personally, I would’ve drop kicked this obnoxious little menace into the Seine like a sack of rotten potatoes.

[Character Dos and Don'ts Except It’s Actually Just Don'ts]

No one has their head on straight in this episode. No one is safe from the “Gigantitan” go-with-what-the-script-says flu.

Alya setting up this huge elaborate plan instead of focusing on Marinette’s actual problems concerning Adrien.

Rose not understanding the flower naming theme despite being rarely shown as incompetent, which is also something no one does anything about because everyone’s so hooked on using codenames.

Adrien’s bodyguard calming down out of nowhere right when the akuma shows up.

Hawk Moth not just releasing the akuma and accepting that this was a bad idea.

Adrien brushing off all of Marinette’s stuttering despite this being a thing he should be concerned about by now and instead just being like “OKAY BYE YOU SEEM STABLE TODAY”

It’s all just set up so the episode goes exactly how the show wants it to and it drives me nuts.

Alya can’t be smart and realize that codenames aren’t a good idea (given Rose’s confusion) or the plan couldn’t mess up in “hilarious” ways.

Hawk Moth can’t do anything intelligent or the episode will just fall apart.

Even just the little things, like the fact that Alix brushes off Marinette’s fear that the boys know about her crush as “nah of course not because they’re boys.” That annoys me because I don’t like the suggestion that the boys are oblivious about love just because they’re boys. This escalates further in “Glaciator” with Ivan and I’m constantly frustrated about it because there’s already a logical, actually sensible reason for JARM to know and none of the boys to: them being closer friends with Marinette and thus seeing more of her than the boys do. I don’t mind specific characters gender-stereotyping, but not when it’s the show itself doing it and imprinting that on the characters themselves to make it true.

On another note, Adrien’s bodyguard is also extra infuriating because he has to get over his rage immediately or he’d be akumatized instead of the baby, which would’ve been actually fun. I’ve said it before, but one of the worst sins an episode can commit is presenting a more fun and/or interesting idea than what they actually go with.

Heck. Adrien’s bodyguard in general is pretty inconsistent. He gets upset about everything going wrong for him, then calms down almost instantly. You’d think the latter is because he sees Adrien, but when Marinette’s talking to him, Adrien’s bodyguard starts honking rudely at them instead of letting Adrien finish a freaking conversation. This is why I hate this guy so much; he’s so inconsistent and constantly swaps between caring about Adrien’s desires and just being irritating.

And, oh boy, that ending scene. I already complained about it in “Treatment of Marinette (Season 2)”, but it drives me up a wall.

Marinette stuttering was not her fault. It was the writing’s. It’s so blatantly obvious, especially on Marinette’s second attempt where she rejects riding home with Adrien.

Yet, the episode still has her friends get annoyed with her. There just comes a point where things stop being Marinette’s fault and start being the writers tripping her up and tugging at her pigtails because “No, bad Marinette, you’re not allowed to make progress even if it’s completely in character for you at this point.”

Marinette goes through this whole plan (and I frankly don’t care if the intention was to get Adrien’s bodyguard in trouble because screw him, honestly), even stopping at one point and almost ruining everything because she wanted to help a baby, and for what?

Nothing. Marinette embarrassed herself in front of her friends, embarrassed herself in front of Adrien, and she gets teased.

I don’t have to wonder why Marinette is constantly fumbling and afraid of screwing up, because her friends and others are always teasing her for being clumsy/stuttering/etc. Alya teases her at the end and Marinette looks so embarrassed at what she’d said, but then the end card just pops up as if we’re supposed to forget about Marinette’s issues and anxiety. They go completely unaddressed and this episode is the worst example I can think of when imagining episodes that try to brush off Marinette’s problems as “you just gotta get it right this time.”

And of course, Alix makes a comment about how Marinette knowing Adrien’s schedule is “creepy.” Like, ‘k, cool, so if she does believe that, what is she gonna do about it? Confront her? Just accept it because she’s her friend and saying anything would’ve forced this episode to not happen?

The is one of the few times Marinette’s schedule (that she has only ever used for purposes of confessing/taking a confession back/tracking down Adrien for crucial reasons) has been brought up, but the show doesn’t want to dwell on it. The show doesn’t seem to want anyone its audience to think about, but it still wants to crack jokes at Marinette’s expense.

And instead of addressing Marinette’s core issues, all five of her friends just waffle around them. If this was actually fun, I probably wouldn’t mind, but with this being the unpleasant experience that it is, I feel like the glaring flaws are constantly being shoved in my face.

[Predictakillity]

This is probably the fourth-ish time I’ve said this in my blog’s lifespan, but one way to send my interest into a downward spiral is when I can predict an episode. There are exceptions, like when I see a scene or hear a particular line and go “Yes! This is probably leading up to [x]”, but most of the time, it’s negative.

And, from start to finish, I could predict this episode. After every scene that happened, I could predict what was going to happen next.

The second I saw this elaborate plan, I knew it wasn’t going to work. Even more insulting was when they threw the fantasy sequence in, because that made it even more obvious. After all, why would they show us what’s going to happen later in the episode instead of building suspense and then having us see the happy moment when it’s actually real?

Not only that, but the fantasy sequence is doubly terrible because it was some top-tier Adrienette and it’s fake. It just brings down the next Adrienette scene that follows it in whatever future episode because now they have to beat “having ice cream together” or it becomes underwhelming.

And that’s exactly what it did, because “Glaciator” was the next episode with Adrienette in it and it had the gall to set up the exact same premise without even letting them have ice cream together. It tore me up too because I knew that’s what they’d do; I knew they weren’t going to show the audience what they wanted to see because the fantasy sequence in “Gigantitan” already showed it. I wanted to be wrong and I wasn’t.

Back to “Gigantitan” itself, most of the jokes and dialog are so drawn out that it felt impossible to not know where things were going to go. They hold on jokes for way too long and everything is so in your face that things become obvious.

The second Rose started messing up the codenames, I knew she was going to be a weak link in the plan.

The moment Juleka got stuck, I knew most of them were going to have to swap jobs and be stuck doing something they weren’t good at.

The instant August appeared on screen (with spoken dialog from the mom, no less), I immediately pointed and said, “That’s who’s getting akumatized.” No amount of Adrien’s bodyguard getting annoyed fooled me because I knew it would be a red herring.

At the very first mention of August wanting a lollipop, I knew that it was going to be important to take him down when he was akumatized.

When the akuma went into August’s bracelet, I knew Hawk Moth would just run with it and wouldn’t give it up.

Even with the lucky charm, which is typically one of my favorite moments in episodes because Ladybug always gets stuck with the most random stuff, I knew what it was for before Ladybug’s Lucky Vision even went off.

And at the final moments of the episode, where Marinette wanted to just get straight to the point, I knew; I knew she wasn’t going to be able to do it. I knew this episode wasn’t going to let her have her moment. I knew her friends would get irritated with her. I knew the writing would just brush it off.

When Marinette’s friends kept asking, “Is she going to do it?”, I was pleading for them to just be quiet because it made the outcome so obvious. Everything’s obvious. When I realized that August was the next akuma victim, I knew that this episode would be nothing but baby humor and gross-out.

I hated that I knew. I didn’t want to know. With every passing minute, I kept begging–hoping–that the episode would throw me some sort of twist.

One wrench in the predictability. One instance where something wasn’t what I expected. One nanosecond where all the characters just looked at each other and went, “Hey, maybe everything that’s going on right now is actually really contrived?”

I got nothing. Once the episode was over, I got into a three hour conversation on why it was the worst thing I’d seen out of Miraculous from an enjoyability standpoint.

And every time Gigantitan shows up as an akuma again, I feel all that annoyance come right back. A full 26 episodes haven’t even passed yet since his episode and Gigantitan has shown up three times.

I hate this episode so much. I hate it because it’s a combination of nearly everything I could hate in an episode.

Character destruction.

Gross-out.

Babies.

Obviousness.

Predictability.

And worst of all, the promise–the set-up–of progress that the protagonist deserves but doesn’t get in the end despite all the garbage they’ve been through and WILL go through.

I think back to this episode and I just find myself unbelievably frustrated. In a way, I feel like I should be glad about how pointless it is. After all, its pointlessness means that I have no reason to ever go back to it.

But also, it didn’t need to exist, and those 22 minutes could’ve been spent doing literally anything else that this season desperately needed.

Instead, it’s 22 minutes of nothing.

[arbitrarygreay]

Crunchyroll Expo 2019

This is mainly in response to the things I heard at the feedback panel. 1. I have so much sympathy for the staff who were the panelists. I also hope they don't give too much weight to the criticisms they heard there. The panel seems to self-select for the most obnoxious tone-deaf non-central attendees, given that the vast majority of attendees were enjoying themselves elsewhere, instead of bombarding the staff with their hare-brained suggestions. 2. From what I experienced, Crunchyroll Expo has a distinct identity as a large anime convention: succeeding strongly where Japan Expo USA failed, as a convention centered around professional guests, and even moreso around guests from Japan. I'd say all of the panels were associated with people working in the entertainment industry in some form. Thanks to the Crunchyroll origins, they had the connections to be credible to the Japan guests, the clout and name recognition to attract attendees early on, the capital to fund the production value, and very importantly, the local expertise to much better handle location logistics than JXUSA could. I quite like this distinct identity, and CRX shouldn't stray too far from that. It's not Fanime, PAX, or SacAnime, and it shouldn't try to be. There were lots of suggestions at the feedback panel for more community events, and I wouldn't want the con to go too far in that direction. Keep gaming centered on Japanese arcade stuff, with maybe some Japanese game E-sports, but don't go full LAN party with any games allowed. Add a tabletop room, but don't let just any American/US game be there, try to introduce attendees to specific Japan-associated games, like hanafuda, kabufuda, or karuta-based games, and the few translated Japan TTRPGs. The point is, CRX is a con where attendees are funneled towards learning new things about Japan's entertainment industry, through industry professionals, and to experience new anime. Don't let things non-central to that take up too much air. Again, the vast majority of people weren't attending that feedback panel exactly because they were enjoying all of the central content of the con, so the people complaining about the con not being about other stuff, trying to turn CRX into other cons, were atypical attendees. 3. On that note, I was very impressed by the breadth of industry aspects showcased. Previous cons tended to be actor-focused, both in guests and in which panels were popular with attendees. Thanks to work by sakuga enthusiasts, especially the folks behind Sakugabooru, lots of people are paying more attention to technical staff. CRX, too, did a great job making the case to prospective panel attendees why they should be excited to see these guests. The moderators would give the audience context, and the guests themselves would often be just as excited to see the clips of their own work, giving them inspiration for commentary to make, and the live drawings, of course, were just great. Major kudos to the moderators, in general. You could tell that they were all passionate about their guests, had thought really in-depth about the questions to ask, and they often had a nice chemistry with the guests, which helped bring out some less stiff answers than might be expected. (Translator quality varied as usual, but I know that the guests are usually bringing their own, and not something CRX can control. And there were certainly some stellar translators there, too.) But yeah, breadth. There were directors, producers, animators/storyboarders/character designers, mangaka, all sharing their special insights, and I was very pleased by how much music content there was, as someone who tends towards that part of the industry. The only aspect that was arguably underrepresented would be writers (script writing/series composition for shows, or LN authors). 4. I was also very impressed by the scheduling. Guests were almost all slotted for 2-3 events, and events overlapped so that if I missed a particular guest on one day, I could catch them at another event at least once on another day. As with the previous point, the way the breadth was overlapped was that even if I attended all of the music-related panels, I was still attending panels for all of the other aspects of the anime creation process throughout the day. Very excellent scheduling. The only panels that I missed (weeping for missing Junji Ito's kitties) were because I let my guard down after Friday, and didn't camp for some events that ended up full room. And even then, those few panels probably didn't need insane amounts of camping, either, just 15-30 mins. That's a heavenly amount of camping, when I'm used to having to block in 2 hours before anything I want to attend, at other cons. Thanks very much for the large capacities afforded to every panel. 5. Criticism: screenings, of all things, should not ever go off schedule. Panels, I can understand, because panellists might run late, but there's no reason for a screening to start late, unless there was technical difficulties. I had scheduled a particular screening which would end 15 minutes before the next panel I would attend. Instead, the screening started over 15 minutes late, and I missed a good chunk of the end because I had to leave for that other panel. Luckily this screening was for something already released in the US, so I'll be able to finish the movie, but there were a few unique premiere screenings at the con, and that room being off schedule could have soured other attendees' experiences a lot more than it did mine. 6. Minor criticism: The app wasn't accessible on my phone. I was able to get by with internet, as new schedule content was added on the website as well (and thank you for that!), but I wouldn't get updated time stamps as the app users did. Please don't assume that everyone has the newest OSes when writing the app in the future. My phone isn't even that old, only a couple of years. On that note, I wasn't thrilled with the format of the schedule. With the way everything overlapped in offset intervals, sometimes it wasn't obvious where events in different locations were in relation to each other, and I did miss some panel content once because I had misread the time, due to how the single-column scrolling obscured the amount of overlapping. The location filters do nothing to help with that. I understand that a traditional spreadsheet timetable (location columns, timestamp rows) isn't sexy aesthetics, and has very unsexy horizontal scrolling in a smartphone context, but that's actually where the oversized newspaper con guide could shine, or in a traditional booklet, a foldout insert. (Btw, I thought that the newpaper con guide was fine. It gives more space and bigger font size for reading accessibility, and was likely cheaper to print and assemble than a booklet, which needs glossy paper, more pages, stiffer folding, and required stapling.) 7. Very minor criticism that CRX may not be to control: as said before, I tended towards the music content of the con, but only Flow had their music on sale at the con. So there would be all of these artists promoting their work, and I'd be fired up about them after their panels...but there would be nowhere in the con for me to throw money at them. I understand that bringing stuff to sell is on the artists, but maybe coordinate some sort of "music guest merch" table somewhere, so that the logistics burden for selling products is lowered for all of them? Anime NYC did it for their Anisong Matsuri lineup last year, where there was a single merch table, manned by a few cashiers for all of the artists there, so that each artist didn't have to provide their own sales staff, and shipping costs of importing the stuff was also reduced because of consolidation. Even for artists who don't have physical CDs, they could do something like sell a code to redeem the purchase later. But yeah, overall, I had a great time at the con! I learned a lot, laughed a lot, danced a lot, and what more can you ask for?

[kweebtrash]

Streamhearts Timestamp 12:47am

Title: Nakie Stream

Pairing: Camboy!JohnnyxCamgirlOC (Rem)

Word Count: 4.2k

Genre: Smut

Features: recording sexual acts, daddy kinks, pet names (good girl, bunny, etc), Soft(ish) dom Johnny, use of sex toys, blowjobs, some finger sucking, anal/vaginal fingering, teasing/whining, shy sub OC, anal fucking, choking, swallowing/messy cumshot

Synopsis:

Though Rem is a smart business woman she hides behind a computer screen all day designing websites for large companies. However, when her day is done she’s still behind a computer screen but now showing the world how hard she can cum. She never wanted to be a camgirl but when financial duties called she took it upon herself to make it. The spotlight (and money) got to her and she expanded to showcasing her nerdy side; livestreams, lewd cosplay photoshoots, let’s plays, subscriptions, review, vlogs, tutorials, you name it. Her streams catches the attention of a fellow cammer, Johnny, who on a whim decided to message her. Both aren’t the sexed up dolls they pretend to be in the online life and instead ease their way into a relationship with not so perfect sex, mistakes, and total confusion.

A/N: This used to be on my Kofi which im closing down and just putting everything up on here. This isnt continuing.

Masterlist     Johnny Only Masterlist

~~

"It's time for Nakie Stream!" I giggled as I looked into the camera hooked up to my computer. Dozens of people had already logged on and the number was slowly creeping into the hundreds. I blew kisses and greeted the new arrivals as I showed off my boobs and bounced them a little. Even as I stood around and posed I was getting a few tips. This was all I did it for. I didn't really enjoy it nor did I want to continue doing it for the next ten years of my life. But for now it was another addition to my finances.

I slipped on my pink kitty headphones and connected the bluetooth. The ears lit up, twinkling neon. They were my favorite and I spent some time talking about the specs. Many people would rather just watch me fuck myself but some were actually interested in the fact that I was a "gamer girl™". I hated that title but whatever sold the aesthetic. The truth was that I was indeed a nerd. I had a master's degree in computer sciences and web design, I created websites for companies under an alias and different VPN so nothing would be connected to my other life. The other life, this camgirl/cosplayer/social media influencer/let's player, was my home. I wanted to travel across the country to show off the cosplays I engineered and get my foot in the door to speaking with video game companies through my let's plays. I could sail on that life and would never have to step foot in a retail store or office space again. I would have my own freedom.

I signed softly as a saw a drop in viewers and stopped talking about the headphones. This was the hardest part, being the stupid sex doll for the ones who were only interested in getting off. I turned on the video capture and started up the game so I could properly start my stream. I was just about ready to sit in my gaming chair when I felt warm thighs beneath me. I jumped up and turned quickly, surprised by my boyfriend. He pulled me into his lap, a poised erection parallel to his stomach. He had helped me gain confidence in performing on camera and he was my safety net when we made videos together. I was much more comfortable and relaxed when he touched me. "JJ is joining me today." It was his stupid online nickname because he couldn't think of anything else. "Hope you don't mind. He challenged me to a bet. If I win a few rounds while he's fucking me he will buy me whatever I want, no matter the cost. If I cum or get distracted too much and fail then I get punished in anyway he wants and he'll upload that on his page. I think I can win though. I've spent days awake during releases and playing games straight through so this is nothing."

Johnny scoffed. "You say that now, but just you wait." He set his hands on my hips and turned me away from the camera and let my ass be the center of attention. I bent over and cupped his face gently to plant kisses over his lips while his hands shifted to spread my cheeks apart and show off the heart shaped gem of the butt plug that was nestled inside me. He grabbed a hold of the gem and pulled the plug out slowly, not all the way but just enough to work up some thrusts. I moaned softly, the headphones capturing the sound loud and clear so I could hear it as well as the viewers. The familiar ping of a notification that I received a tip racketed one after the other and Johnny smiled before whispering under his breath. "Blow me for a bit. That'll stall us and give a chance for more people to log on."

I nodded, following his advice and kissed down his bare chest until I reached the junction of his happy trail to the hair above the base of his cock. He turned the chair slightly to adjust the view from the camera and used the small remote beside my computer mouse to move the lens and zoom in more to focus on my face. He was an expert on camera mechanics and even helped me get better equipment for my set up and I had seen my following grow substantially.

I lowered myself to my knees as he spread his thighs apart. Grabbing the base of his cock, he tapped the head against my lips a few times, chuckling on the outside but both of our eyes showed annoyance. We hated doing certain things for the camera but sucked it up anyway. He found the motion stupid while I found it to be a turn off but with my attraction to him outweighed all our discomfort. I parted my lips and slipped his head into the heat of my mouth. The soft moan he let out was definitely a real reaction and I instantly flicked my eyes up to his. His own had closed and his head leaned back against the chair. Gripping what I couldn't fit, I held him steady as I bobbed my head. I swallowed around him and tightened my throat as a slight buck of his hips moved him deeper.

Another moan came, this time from me that was muffled by the invasion. I upturned it into a drawn out exaggeration to add to the stream. Johnny set his hand on the back of my head and kept me close, forcing me to breathe through my nose. "More, baby girl. I know you can do it." He encouraged. I furrowed my brow and tried to calm my gag reflex as I wiggled down more of his shaft. "That's good." He groaned. "That's my good girl."

My cheeks tinged with rose colored fire at the compliment. I held on as he pushed his hips up, dictating a rhythm I was forced to follow as he fell into controlling the situation. I was at his mercy and he knew how to test my limits without going overboard. Deep throating was just another thing we were trying to check off our list but I still struggled to take down his length. He was so perfectly thick and long, nothing over the top or short of disappointment. It was enough to challenge my small body without me crumbling under intense pain. Our size differences, both in height and ratio of his cock to my hole, drove him absolutely stark raving mad. There had been plenty of times where he had to reel himself in before he devoured me completely in a rush of brutal thrusts. But that was exactly what I wanted.

He pulled out of my mouth just as I felt the first drop of precum fall on my tongue. I licked my lips to disconnect the saliva from us-another thing I hated but knew sloppy blowjobs were another aesthetic cash grab. "Get the lube." He commanded with a hard spank to my ass that made me squeak. I trotted away from my desk and rummaged through my nightstand drawer to get the large bottle of lube I had. "And your favorite toy." He added.

I smiled to myself as I pulled out the elongated orb shape of a vibrator that Johnny could control through an app on his phone. He disappeared from the camera view to retrieve his phone before taking his place back in my gaming chair. He guided me to sit on his lap, resting my feet on the armrests so I was spread open. I hid behind my controller a bit as I was too shy to be so splayed out with everything visible. Johnny shoved the controller down right away though, not letting me hide for even a second. I pouted and looked back at him, glaring. He only returned the stare, adding a "what did i tell you?" kind of expression. I exhaled through my nose and pressed start reluctantly. As I was flicking through the menu and character selection I found Johnny's long fingers creeping towards my mouth.

"Open." He demanded and my jaw lowered to accept him again. During a loading screen he thrusted his fingers, pinching at my tongue and stroking the sensitive area at the back of it. My toes squirmed as i wanted to gag but he pulled his fingers forward just before the sensation could worsen. A few more thrusts and he removed them completely, showing off the now glistening skin. He moved between my legs, stroking along my slit and just barely circling my clit. Small tingles started to form in my legs but i was able to concentrate as my battle started. It was nothing special as of now. He just wanted to work up one hole before the other so by the time he was shoved deep in my ass i would be more relaxed. The vibrator always helped in that aspect.

He squeezed a single digit in inside me, his honey eyes looking over me to gauge my reaction. My breath had sped up a little but i kept playing even when his tender lips began decorating my neck in the softest of kisses. I loved when he destroyed me but when he was so gentle it drove me more crazy. His kisses gave my tummy butterflies and I tried to squirm away. His finger only plunged deeper and his other hand gripped a fistfull of hair to keep my head straight, making me wince slightly. My eyes widened and brows furrowed just after as I dodged an attack that almost depleted my character's health. I grew irritated at my lack of assistance from the online players. "FUCKERS!" I shouted. "Do I have to do everything myself?!"

"You're so cute when you're irritated." Johnny chuckled.

"Oh piss off." I scoffed. I wasn't cute, I was dead set on capturing the target come hell or high water.

Johnny didn't seem to like my response as he shoved in another finger quickly. He curled them and fucked me faster then he had been and i almost dropped my controller. I swallowed back a moan and tried not to close my shivering thighs. He would hate that even more. "Make noises." He said into my ear. "Remember what I told you."

"Y-y-yessss!" I hissed. That wasn't faked at all. His fingers were magical and I dug my nails into my controller, scratching into the rubber hand grips.

"What was that?" He smirked as the sound of my wetness started to grow louder alongside the tip notifications. "Use your words."

"S-stooppp." I whimpered and paused the game as I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Giving up already? I've barely just started."

I shook my head quickly and renewed the game,keeping myself determined at the sudden reminder. I thought about what I wanted him to buy me, my end goal and reason for this stupid bet. "N-no. I-im not! I'm not giving up!"

"Oh?" He scooted the chair closer to my desk, still making sure to keep the camera poised perfectly. Reaching for the bottle of lube i had collected, he dabbed a little onto his fingertips. I barely noticed his movements until the cold gel was being circled and pushed inside me. I continued to command myself to ignore it. I had to. I exhaled slowly in an attempt to steady my breath but it hitched as soon as i felt the pressure of the vibrator slowly sink into me.

He didn't turn it on right away. Instead he wrapped his arms around my waist and squeezed me tight while he buried his face into my neck. It garnered more kisses and occasional nibbles that gave me just a few moments to get back to the game. Slowly, he moved his hands to cup my breasts, giving them both a good squeeze before capturing the nipples between his thumbs and index fingers. Gently, he tugged them into stiff peaks and rolled his fingers over the raised flesh to send small jolts of electricity down my neck. Quiet noises were held in by my lips pressed together though Johnny impatient at the fact i wasn’t letting them out. "You're still not making noises." He growled lowly.

"I can't help it! Im not loud!" I nudged my elbow back into his ribs, trying to squirm away as much as I could. He gave a light tap to my clit and pinned his arm around my waist again. I wanted to move now and I was too afraid to as i saw him make a grab for his phone. The familiar graph like control screen popped up and Johnny pressed his thumb to it. A cursor appeared beneath the pressure and at first he kept it low. That was simple enough for me to handle. He faced his phone to the screen, showing what he was doing to the audience. He chuckled as he read through some of the comments in the chat box.

"Even they think youre gonna lose." He said. "You're doing such a shit job, Remmy."

"Shut up! I'd like to see you try it! Maybe you should be the one trying to play while i fuck your ass." I pouted and crossed my arms as it took longer for my dead character to respawn.

"You're always wanting to fuck my ass." I felt the vibrator increase the intensity and my stomach clenched tight. "Maybe we could do another bet and that could be the stipulation but i don't really see you winning that one either."

"It's not over yet! I can still win!" I said with slight uncertainty.

"We'll see, bunny. I'm gonna take the plug out now." Johnny warned as he wrapped his fingers around the gem base. I nodded and leaned into him, begging for a kiss. He satisfied my craving as he slowly pulled the plug out of me, leaving my gape to flex around the emptiness. He tossed it onto the desk with a hard clunk before gripping my chin firmly. My jaw dropped open as he intensified the kiss, forcing his tongue to fill my small mouth completely. I held onto his shoulders to try and support myself as I got light-headed from the lust clouded thoughts that were spiraling in my head. He parted from me with a quick bite to my lip then reached for the bottle of lube again. He repeated the same motion of swiping it inside me as his fingers worked to stretch me even more.

I could relax around two fingers but he soon added a third which stretched me farther than the plug had. With his clean hand he increased the speed of the vibrator on his phone and I yelped helplessly. I saw him smirk through the video feed on my computer and wanted to wipe it off his face. With shaking hands I gripped my controller and resumed my pathetic attempt at playing the game. The vibrations would send sharper shocks throughout me every once in awhile as Johnny made sure i would feel comfortable taking his cock.

My bottom lip was starting to swell as my teeth kept digging into it. My toes were curling against the armrest and my controller vibrated with each bit of damage i was taking. The toys' own vibrations increased and I was nothing but a squirming mess on his lap. "Are you gonna give up, bunny?" He cooed in my ear. "Are you gonna give up and let daddy win? Please be a good girl for me, ok?"

"N-no! That's not fair! I d-dont wa-wa-nnghh-!" I clenched my teeth tightly as I felt a sudden urge to cum wash over me. He was being relentless with his thrusts now, plowing faster and making lewd sounds as the lube squelched against his fingers.

He made the vibrations spike again and I tossed my head back onto his shoulder, begging him to just slow down a bit. He nuzzled against my cheek and kissed my neck. "Look how loud you're getting for me." He turned my head to the computer monitor as he swiped his thumb across my clit. "Show the viewers how pretty my baby is when she wants to cum, hm?"

I flicked my eyes to the screen, embarrassed but wanting to comply so i could cum. If not i'd be stuck in this hell forever. Hundreds of comments were pouring in and i was able to see a number in tips i had never seen before. I swallowed hard and looked at Johnny. "It's going so well." I whispered.

"See what happens when you listen to me?” I nodded, upset that he was right but at least I could pay my bills with the money we earned. “Are you ready for me?”

I swallowed hard as my heart rate escalated. “I..um..” His erection pressed harder into the center of my back. He felt so swollen and even though I wanted to stay strong, the sub in me wanted to take care of my daddy. I nodded and felt his fingers slid out slowly. With his hands on my waist he was easily able to hoist me up with enough space to guide him towards my hole. Carefully, we worked together, me moving down while he thrusted upwards, to have him fill me entirely. My game kicked me back out to the menu screen as I had died again and it questioned if I wanted to continue. It stayed in limbo, not receiving my decision as my ass had touched the top of Johnny’s thighs and his lips had overcome mine. He scooted down in the chair, giving himself more ease of access to thrust.

The first few motions were careful, paired with a plucking of my nipples and an occasional clit rub. It wasn’t until I started grinding back on him did he increase his speed, pulling out almost completely before shoving himself back inside with a harsh speed. Our whimpers and groans were muffled by our tongues colliding over and over. In between the warm presses of his lips, his tongue would slip out to lap at mine or he would place love bites against my bottom lip. With dreamy and heavy lidded eyes I watched the small contortions of his facial features as his pleasure increased. When his mouth would drop open slightly to release nothing but a strained sound or when his brows furrowed with the intensity of my grip around him, i would drink it in, in love with everything about him.

As I squeezed my walls around him tighter, his hand ascended from the softness of my belly, to between my breasts, and finally to wrap around my neck. My muscles went rigid and my breath strangled. His fingers were formed into a grip that was growing tighter and tighter. I dropped my controller, letting it fall to the floor and found solace in dragging my nails into the plush pads of the armrests. The sound it created seemed to echo in the headphones as my mind transformed into lusty swirling thoughts. The dull burn of his girth inside me started to disintegrate but my stomach still churned with the fantastical feeling of his cock shoving against my insides. “Roll your hips.” He commanded me.

I couldn’t nod but showed my submission by moving my feet onto his thighs and lifting my body slightly. I circled my hips around the head of his cock, concentrating all the strength I could muster into the most sensitive of places. “Fuck, that’s good, angel.” His head fell back and his fingers pulsed their strength around my neck, giving me moments to hiccup in tiny breaths. My thighs burned and my knees buckled as my hold on the armrests made my knuckles splatter with the white color of straining. As he saw my body buckling he wrapped his free arm around me and hauled himself onto his feet. With the hand on my neck he tossed me into the gaming chair, making it skid across the floor a foot or two.

My eyes watered as i looked up at his; darkened and dilated with the idea of ruining me further. The veins in his arms dispersed beneath his skin, deepening into a soft blue hue as he clenched his fists around the armrests now, keeping the chair in place. He pulled the chair forward allowing him to slam back into me. The sound I left out was a mix between a squeak and a scream giving the satisfaction of me being loud on camera like he wanted. Ignoring the way a few tears streaked along the tops of my cheeks from the overwhelming stimuli, he rolled the chair backwards, repeating his motions of dragging me forward to fall into a pattern of ruthless thrusts. I had never regretted getting my gaming chair until this very moment. How he found the simplest household items to torture me with I’ll never know but he sure knew how to make sure I wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow. I held onto his arms as my back arched and body squirmed and I was unsure if I could hold back any longer. “Give up?” He chuckled darkly. “Just say the word. You’ve already barely played a round and kept dying so I think it’s a given that I’ve won.” he taunted.

If this was the torture during the bet I feared what his punishment for me would be later on. It was too late to change the way I felt and I was already falling into a subspace that needed to be filled with his cum. “D-daddy…” I cried softly.

“Say it.” He worked in another rushed thrust. “I wanna hear you say it.”

I pressed my lips together and clawed at his forearms. My stomach clenched harder and my toes curled, pulling the tendons taught and shooting cramps up my legs. “Fine! Fine! You win! Please let me cum!!!”

Johnny turned to the camera and stuck his tongue out, adding a peace sign, in victory. “Guess you guys get a little punishment video soon.” He leaned down and gave me a soft kiss. “Go on, bunny. It’s okay.”

I let out a small sigh of relief and imagined he would continue his thrusts but instead he reached for his phone one last time. He turned the vibrator up on full strength and I gave in then, growing louder as my cum showered the seat of the chair and onto the carpet below. The tense contractions of my orgasm caused the vibrator to crash to the floor, the buzzing rattling against it. Johnny shut it off completely and waited until i was curled up and suffering from aftershocks to grab a fistful of hair and pulled my head up. “Ahh.” He said.

“I want it in-inside.” I shuddered.

“Nope, that’s for girls who win bets. Open.”

I reluctantly opened my mouth, unhappy with his choice, and watched his large hand stroke over his heated skin just above my tongue. His fist worked faster and faster and his eyes fell shut. He kept my head in place and the sweet heat of his cum covered my tongue, sliding down my chin and dripping onto my chest. I swallowed and licked up as much as I could, even lapping at his slit to make sure he gave me everything he had. Once he relaxed, my hair was let go and i sat back in the chair. I swiped my finger across my chin and licked the last bit of cum that I missed. My legs fell as my body slumped; I better get a bath and cuddles after this, I thought, a pout sprouting on my lips. Johnny made up some quick exit greeting and shut off the cameras and bright ring lights. “You ok?”

“I’m sleepy and sore and want cuddles and a bath.”

He smiled and picked me up from the chair, wrapping my legs around him. “I will make you a bath and give you all the cuddles you want, okay?” I nodded and buried my face in his neck as he walked us to the bathroom. “But to be honest, you were such a good girl today. I’m proud of you for being louder and showing your face more.”

I squeezed my arms around his neck, trying to hide as much as I could for my cheeks were burning crimson. He could be rough but also sweet and docile when he took care of me. I loved him so much it almost hurt. “Can you say thank you?” he asked as if I was a child that had forgotten their manners.

“Thank you, Daddy.” I mumbled against his skin.

He rubbed my back before setting me down on the toilet seat cover. “I’ll let that one slide. I can tell you’re sleepy.”

“You’re gonna stay the night, right?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but with you.”

[uniformbravo]

every iteration of this website is so stupidly broken both desktop & mobile

app:

constantly goes “u h oh blOOp boOP where ht INTErnet go Bye ByewhOOPSie daisy!!1″ even tho every other app has No Problem w/ the internet, i literally have to restart this thing 20 fuckin times a day to get it to load basic ass shit like the fuckign dashboard & search & my notifications & literally every other function there possibly is

search on blogs is garbage & even if u go into an actual tag on a blog it won’t show everything in the tag bc fuck you

the dash randomly teleporting u to a different spot on it after reblogging smth sometimes, usually after u turned off ur phone screen & then went back to it later, even if u didnt leave the app (the same process is a source of the “bloop boop” messages)

the instant messaging thing doesn’t show u new messages sometimes even if u have the same convo open on desktop. in fact it works the other way around too. tumblr in general does NOT like it when u have the same convo open on different devices

sometimes straight up doesn’t give me notifications for conversations & i have to find out i was accidentally ignoring someone hours later when i get on my laptop (if i even decide to use it that day!)

the amount of storage this app sucks up is Annoyingly A Lot. constantly clearing the cache bc it’s usually like 80 fuckin mb

desktop: 

if u use pages instead of infinite scroll on the dash the previous page button straight up does not work & will just take u to the current front page no matter how many pages in u were

hitting the back button on ur browser (or at least on chrome) does the exact same thing, unless you 1. wait for the page ur on to finish loading, 2. scroll down a little bit (just don’t leave it at the top of the page), and then hit the browser’s back arrow, then there’s a better chance it’ll work properly (yeah that’s right it doesn’t even work 100% of the time u just gotta hope & keep going back until it works)

tumblr literally just randomly changing the page url from like “/dashboard/20″ to just “/dashboard” so that both refreshing & clicking the back button just take u to the front page again

related to the last one, if ur like 20 pages deep in ur dash & u leave the tab for too long that ur browser (or again at least in chrome’s case) has to reload the page, when u go back to it it just gives u the current front page bc it changed the url to “/dashboard” & now it thinks this is the front page (if u were back further than like page 2 u can try to fix this by hitting the browser’s back button & hoping for the best)

the fact that u can’t manually go to random pages on ur dash by typing “dashboard/[number]” anymore bc why would we hold onto useless functionality like that. so if ur rly far back in ur dash & u lose the page bc of any of the previously mentioned garbage ur fucked 

(unless u go into ur actual browser history & find the page w/ the correct url like “/dashboard/25″ or if u don’t know the specific number then usually the url w/ the biggest number. u can also kind of estimate by opening the page from ur history & hovering over the top right corner of any post to see what time in ur timezone that particular post was made/reblogged, that way u can find the page w/ the earliest or most accurate to your memory timestamp & assume that’s the right one. i just thought of this method today & i am very pleased with myself but also very annoyed that this website is so shitty i have to find such convoluted workarounds GOD)

search is just straight up garbage. the ONLY thing that mobile has over desktop is that the search actually shows the most recent posts w/o skipping any (any of the posts that actually Made it into search results, that is)

app-less mobile gets an honorable mention bc i don’t use it anymore & haven’t for years but 1. that thing where u try to like a post & it’s like “ohh you don’t have the app?? you fucking loser??? you fucking whiny ass child can’t even use our mobile app???? eat shit” is really annoying and 2. the dash has this header that’s like “open this in the app!” so one time i was like “ok” bc i had the app at that point & it didn’t even take me to the app it just opened up the tumblr download page on app store like fuckin. Ok

anyway theres so much more i could complain about especially on the topic of search but this is so much longer than i meant to go on for anyway so basically. the “this site is barely held together by glue & duct tape” sentiment is NO exaggeration, u couldnt make this shit up, jeez