#using screenshots of comments

[kori-senpai]

I have never played smash bros in my life

(Edit: I did a part two ayeee ✨ you guys are persuasive (affectionate))

[tariah23]

This is but surprising since I’ve seen other accounts talking about this same shit, get snipped in real time

[kirkwallguy]

extremely funny coming from writers whose characters return and play major roles in more than one game. yeah sorry guys we couldnt do anything interesting with the game because we had to protect our fans from the conflict we would write if we did <3

[babychosen]

you want us to come... finger you?

[revenantghost]

L-LONGEVITY??????

[starswallowingsea]

"Colleen Hoover could write Crime & Punishment but Dostoevsky couldn't---" I am going to stop you right there. Colleen could never write classic Russian literature and I don't think Dostoevsky had an interest in writing trashy romance novels

[mxtwister]

Merline DLC please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please

[nafohcnis]

small comic based on a comment on this fanfiction on ao3 “he loves me not” by what.. orphan account.. no…

[bluespring864]

Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson win the 2024 US Open men's doubles

Bonus 1 - watching the replay of the winning moment on the big screen

Bonus 2 - okay boys

[slingbats]

just a reminder that I have this community going here on tumblr!

The header and icon are Gotham, but I really want this place to be able to open up to a lot more verses with more interpretations of the characters

as someone who doesn't delve into the tags/tumblr's search feature very often, I want this to be a place where people are encouraged to self-promo their works that they're proud of, or share works from others that they think deserve a spotlight

link to the community, for any interested

not spoiler free!

[dailydegurechaff]

ive been thinking about one of my fics/aus lately, so naturally i started drawing and writing about them again.

presented with bare minimum context: two members of the von Lergen family + something extra

[kristak-throwaway]

krisgoat = tiktak masterpost

CONTENT WARNING: tiktak requests no minors interact with her content. it is not a crime to have a nsfw account unrelated to your sfw community. don't be an asshole, and don't seek out or interact with her content if you are a minor.

THIS IS NOT A CALL TO HARASS KRISGOAT/TIKTAK.

21kkn/zoro, a former mod of goatlings, has recently spoken up about their time spent working for krisgoat. i would heavily recommend reading their own posts on the topic to learn about their experience working as a site artist. in one of these posts, zoro includes the following video, which has dropped a massive bombshell.

part 1: the video

21kkn has stated kris has since deleted her side of the conversation, but honestly, i think it's still damning even without any response that 100% proves it. there was clearly a conversation here. kris clearly had to have replied without denying the account was hers.

21kkn also pulls up krisgoat's account for proof, which does indeed share a joindate and unique @ with kris's actual discord.

part 2: the art

the next piece of evidence that points to krisgoat being tiktakvt is in tiktak's art. you used to be able to find tiktak's art on multiple accounts under the same name, including toyhouse, but she has since privated a lot of her art.

here are some examples that have been backed up:

compared to some goats drawn by kris:

part 3: the timing

tiktakvt also has had a few suspiciously-timed tweets that coincide with events on goatlings.

most notably, this recent one (from september 29th, 2024: before monster masquerade preparations began) that was deleted.

and then this one, which is still available to view as of october 10th, 2024:

citing "overtime at work" in between the giving tree update (april 6th, 2024) and the start of the jestling event (april 12th, 2024).

there is also this tweet announcing a birthday stream hosted on april 1st...

...while krisgoat's birthday, according to her deviantart, appears to be march 31st.

what does this mean?

well, on its own, having a sidegig as a vtuber (and making suggestive/adult content) is not a crime. this post wasn't made to say that krisgoat is a horrible person for having a hobby and spending money from her job on said hobby. kris is an adult who can do what she wants.

what it means for kris to be tiktak, though, is that there are serious questions to ask about just why kris has ignored requests time and time again for transparency on where money for the site is going.

we don't have money for a palestine fundraiser, we need money for the programmer (despite the only recent change, to my knowledge, being the addition of tabs), and we need a fundraiser at the end of the year to compensate the mod team, but tiktak had enough money to buy a full-body rig, which was bought from stardustgummy 3 years ago.

from there, it's easy to find stardustgummy's commission rates.

full-body rigs don't come cheap.

let's return to goatlings staff and 21kkn. while krisgoat seems to have been paying upwards of $800 for her full rig, her staff was initially being paid in virtual currency for their work.

the most commonly accepted conversion rate between diamond dust and US dollars is 100dd = 1usd. which means her art staff was being paid the equivalent of $15-20 per fully rendered fullbody piece for her site.

not to mention, from the mod behind mascot livechats' dev log post:

staff has a lot on their plate, and there is simply not enough staff onboard to cover everything.

(statement from 21kkn's post, linked above)

while staff is trying to juggle many different responsibilities all at once, kris has shown no interest in hiring more staff/volunteers. while i can understand wanting a more close-knit group of trusted people for your site, i strongly feel this preference should be reconsidered when staff is being given this much to do.

and while staff is juggling with site duties, kris has apparently been streaming roblox, doing personal commissions, and recording tiktok dances as tiktakvt.

we don't know for sure that kris is neglecting her goatlings duties/that she's underpaying her staff

that's true, and that leads into the final point: we don't know for sure because there is no transparency at all from kris herself regarding goatlings. if we had been given any hint in the past of where money spent on diamond dust is going, perhaps it would be easier to chalk this up as an innocent hobby on the side.

it is simply because kris has not been fully transparent about how things work behind the scenes, after months of users asking for it on "the state of goatlings" thread and beyond, that makes tiktakvt (and her actions) questionable.

what's the bottom line?

we want transparency. that's it. things haven't meaningfully changed onsite for years, we're backed up on updates that have been promised for who knows how long, the only statement we have about how kris pays her staff points to very suspicious business practices and use of funds, even if kris began paying her staff in real-world currency later on.

and again: don't harass krisgoat or tiktakvt over this. don't try to "out" her or do anything stupid like that. you are not helping, you do not look cool, you look like an asshole.

closing notes

mentioning this information onsite or in the discord may lead to the termination of your goatlings account. be very cautious.

consider donating to a family found on gazafunds.com.

if you have any information/screenshots on kris's poor handling of resources for palestine as it relates to tiktak's streaming gig, please contact me. thank you.

[lavenoon]

“Your kindness is imprinted upon us. You are entirely brave and brimming with love when there is fear and malice roaming this world. We profoundly care for you, sweet heart.”

@naffeclipse CAN YOU HEAR ME SCREAMING?

comic callbacks: three names, clever heart, oops trauma

[seventh-district]

7am, eating cold leftover teriyaki stir-fry for breakfast and crying over blorbos

[batsplat]

follow up to this post that provides the context of the donington 2008 race, and also some photos with more than three pixels of valentino and casey with their arms around each other

so. *cracks knuckles*. let's talk about jorge and valentino. if you want to understand the texture of the early years of that dynamic, there are worse places to start than checking out the bit of jorge's biography where he talks about valentino attempting to calm down the crowd at misano 2009

the post about that rivalry linked to above doesn't go into much detail about this passage, mainly because that thing was quite frankly getting long enough as it is. but the passage really does capture some key elements that give you a sense of what the vibe was like back then - including jorge loving the donkey ears and needing the world to know how much he loved the donkey ears. you've got jorge's desire to learn from valentino, acknowledging the skill with which valentino bounced back from a disastrous weekend, talking about how he can orchestrate a crowd. jorge's professed belief that there is nothing wrong with the crowd reaction as they are simply backing one of their own. this intense preoccupation with public personas, with fan perception, with what constitutes acceptable standards of conduct within a rivalry, how to engage in honourable combat, man to man and all of that... the air of pompousness, of earnestness verging on self-seriousness that is so central to young jorge's whole deal. and on valentino's end, it is important to pay attention to how he is willing to make gestures in the name of keeping the rivalry civil. in truth, he knows that he can still rely on the public sphere to make jorge's life rough. let's not forget, after all, that the way-too-online jorge was far more affected by spaniards talking shit about him on the internet on valentino's behalf - italians just don't matter as much because their partisanship is essentially already factored in. unlike at certain other stages of his career, however, valentino can throw in these little symbolic acts to calm the waters, to show he doesn't actually want to be jorge's enemy. they're just rivals, after all; they can behave respectfully towards each other. below all the sturm and drang and drama, valentino's approach to managing rivalries in that era involves a general reticence to allow things to get too nasty between himself and his new rivals. that will not always mean that the non-valentino side of those rivalries perceived valentino's behaviour that way - but obviously they are not applying the same standards. valentino's points of comparison are fist fights and curses. what feels excessive to him is rather radically different to where some of his younger rivals would draw the line

while jorge will at least outwardly claim he takes no issue with the hostility of the fans, casey takes a rather different approach. it is one of the biggest themes of his rivalry with valentino: casey having an awful time with the public and resenting valentino for it. valentino will not have been the only reason for how poorly the fans received casey - there are elements of casey's personality that would probably have always made him a tricky sell to the fanbase. still, the extent to which the public adored valentino and wished him to win above all others obviously and undeniably contributed heavily to the vitriol with which casey was met. (to return to jorge, he is the more clear cut example where his lack of popularity was a combination of different factors - plenty of fans already hated him for his antics in 250cc well before he was anything approaching a threat to valentino.) abusive fan mail, fans physically assaulting him when he was riding around on scooters, booing... the main country casey associates with that hostility is england. italians specifically don't actually ever really come up - probably in large part because there were plenty of ducati fans in italy who supported him even when fighting valentino. but the english fans? no such conflicting loyalties whatsoever. obviously, they loved valentino - and the sports culture in that country being what it was... well, that love could easily get ugly for anyone who posed too great a threat. (not to get into the ins and outs of british vs european identity but it is funny sometimes how casey talks about english speakers in the paddock As Good - "I only speak to english-speaking riders" he says in 2009 - and also european fans As Bad, but then the only specific european fanbase he ever properly complains about is the english. casey radically pro-european in essentially separating out the concept of 'english-speaking' from The English and also then treating The English as like... quintessentially european. anyways.) and for whatever reason, they had it in for casey in a way they never quite seemed to for any of valentino's other rivals. there's obviously also the deeply personal element where he has family in england, he moved there directly from australia as a teenager... on paper, this should have been a country that offered him support, or at the very least didn't actively hate him. it felt more like a betrayal - it's a similar dynamic to why jorge was particularly frustrated by the spanish fans not backing him. the english fans being so unkind to casey was a particularly bitter pill to swallow because he never would have expected it from them

casey obviously feels quite strongly that valentino should have done something about this behaviour and didn't. depending on how much stock you put into certain write-ups of races in britain over the years, it is at least possible that valentino quite deliberately made casey's life more unpleasant in britain. all of which would make it particularly interesting if valentino did go for a little bit of a symbolic gesture with casey too, like he did with jorge. during the race weekend of donington 2008, casey was having a rough time of it (well, outside of the actual racing, where he was slaughtering the field lol) and was as ever outspoken in his irritation. he tended to have plenty of complaints about donington whenever he went - not just with the fans but also the track and just, like, the vibe being off, wasn't really ever enthusiastic about the place. none of this stopped him from winning the race by a country mile, of course. back then there were still track invasions after races, which is a safety nightmare at the best of times - but it was worse for casey, who talks afterwards about the "abuse" he got from the crowd on that lap. which does make you pay closer attention to how valentino catches up, darts ahead of casey, and basically leads him quite closely through the worst bit of the crowd to parc fermé; it's something that is remarked on in the commentary, how valentino has essentially gotten casey to follow him on their 'shaky' cooldown lap

here you have the traditional post-race thumbs up and shake of hand

and then a few moments later, the densest part of the crowd

deliberate gesture to ward off the worst of it by essentially providing a line to follow to casey, or just a coincidence?

then you have the podium, where... well, you can barely ever actually hear booing on the broadcast for any race lol, dismal sound quality, casey definitely complained about it after the race so we know it happened. but having turned up the volume all the way, in the process permanently damaging my hearing - I'm fairly confident I can hear something that sounds vaguely like jeering and boos turn into what is definitely louder cheers when valentino puts his arm around casey, as depicted at the top of this post. I have watched way too many valentino podiums over the years, and I will say that a full arm around the shoulder isn't exactly common from him. amateur body language analysis corner, but there's something interesting in how valentino doesn't actually meet casey's eyes while he's doing it, looks straight ahead at the crowd while putting his arm around casey - there is obviously something quite performative about it, something quite pointed, something the crowd immediately picks up on and responds to... hold, hold, hold as they get the photos done, pat pat on the back, and then valentino lets his arm drop. casey of course reciprocated with his own arm vaguely around valentino, and he does also bust out the full grin right at valentino at the end there (you can see it if you lean really close to your screen). which the amateur body language analysts might conclude indicates appreciation for the gesture

now, look, I have fuck all reporting and only a few forum posts to back up what essentially amounts to squinting at footage of a race you've watched for the nth time in order to induce motorcycle racer-themed hallucinations. I'm about 50/50 on the cooldown lap, that might just be reading too much into it, but the podium does feel a lot more clear cut - and the combination of the two (plus jorge's testimony establishing that this sort of behaviour might be something valentino is vaguely inclined to do during this specific time period) is JUST enough to make me buy there's something deliberate there. your mileage may vary. also important to note that valentino's actual response in 2008 to casey's english fan situation was a big old shrug - aka some talk about how casey did complain rather a lot about everything to do with this race and also rumination about the ancient hatreds still raging between the anglo nations of the world to this day. he certainly was not willing to go on the record and admit to any responsibility for the animosity. given that valentino is not an idiot, he did obviously know that partisanship in his favour was in large part to blame for casey's reception in britain - not something, at the end of the day, he's going to be losing too much sleep over. still, he's aware of it, which is why the arm around the shoulder works the way it does, right? because he knew the crowd would respond to it. and it's just... these little symbolic touches that do matter when establishing the tone in 2008. valentino was willing to use pretty much the whole toolkit against casey to crack the toughest of nuts - hell, give him two more races and he'd bust out a hithertofore unseen couple of tools - but it was not quite the ugly fervour of past feuds at their peaks. instead, here we have someone simply playing the game and trying to judge how far to push things at any given moment, when it made sense to twist the knife and when it was better to play nice. valentino didn't actually want casey to hate him. given what valentino was willing to do to win motorcycling competitions (including not stepping in more firmly against his own fanbase, yes), casey coming to hate valentino was very much the end result of valentino's actions in those few years. which still does not mean that this was the intent behind valentino's actions; there are feuds of his where he is actively attempting to provoke his rivals, but this was not one of them (during the years where they were meaningful on-track rivals, which is just a blanket caveat I'm applying to the rest of this post). if casey came to hate him, then of course that was a price worth paying - but given a choice, valentino would generally opt for the cordial approach

this preference is reflected in the way he generally talked pretty positively about his dynamic with dani and casey in 2008, e.g. "the relationship between me, casey and dani is more normal, whereas biaggi was always saying bullshit". it's there in the descriptions of valentino using charm with his rivals, being free in his compliments ("when rossi gets beaten he makes sure to praise whoever has defeated him"). and, look: valentino was skilled at being a gracious loser, he did tend to throw some pretty effusive compliments especially in casey's direction when he lost to him, always preferring to bite his opponents harder from a position of strength etc etc. (still fond of this line from the guardian article about catalunya 2007: '"truly, casey is riding like a god," said the italian, who is rarely guilty of making an understatement.' please allow him. also, what if casey is just riding so well that this actually IS an understatement, what then.) yes, casey felt like valentino wasn't being particularly complimentary, that the compliments had dried up by the end of 2007. that's the thing about this rivalry, right, like you do have to remember that casey obviously isn't able to perfectly read valentino's intentions lol. valentino did still lob plenty of compliments casey's way - and actually said in 2009 that casey had started criticising valentino more when casey started winning after having been more complimentary before that, which is such a lovely example of both of them just being so fundamentally at odds that their grievances perfectly mirror each other. but the problem is that even if valentino was still saying nice things about casey, 1) it's human nature to pay more attention to one insult than nine compliments - and casey is particularly susceptible to this, and 2) what valentino considers 'keeping a rivalry civil' looks completely different from casey's understanding of that concept. (at times casey would probably be better served applying a generational lens than a cultural one lol - there's a reason why some retired racers found it remarkable how nice valentino was about his opposition.) valentino cools off towards casey interpersonally as part of his working process in title fights, doesn't go out of his way to provoke casey but does want to apply pressure wherever possible using all the little tricks he can along the way. which is understandably received as active hostility by casey (who is also still extremely young at this point) - but that doesn't necessarily mean this was actually the intent. when valentino wants to make an enemy out of you, typically you do notice it pretty quickly

see too how both of them are willing to engage in the song and dance of calling a truce at brno 2008, with only a couple of barbed comments attached from both sides. casey had given valentino grounds to escalate the conflict in the aftermath of laguna (including obviously the 'I'm faster than him and he knows it' thing), but valentino more or less refrains from doing so. an arm around the shoulder to get the crowd to give it a rest, accepting an apology without too much fuss... smiles and jokes and plenty of civility in-person... there have been valentino feuds that are considerably easier to spot at a distance, such is the interpersonal rancidity. all this while valentino is concurrently stepping up the on-track intimidation, but to him there is no contradiction there. valentino wasn't provoking casey for shits and giggles - he believed he had to do something not to lose the title that year. and... well, you can find his actions morally questionable, but it's a bit tougher to argue with the actual logic underlying valentino's behaviour. laguna 2008 isn't a case of valentino's need to create enemies expressing itself in attacks on his rivals for no good reason - it's a case of valentino being willing to do whatever it takes to win, even if it ends up making a new enemy. again: valentino is certainly using his entire playbook to exert pressure on casey - but at the same time, casey is not being treated like an actual enemy. at times, casey will have read a little too much outright animosity into valentino's approach... even though by his standards, valentino was trying to keep things reasonably cordial. it's just that he had a comically different understanding of what that looked like from casey. to understand that rivalry, you do have to get that a part of valentino's toolkit in those years was the interpersonal friendliness - a public willingness to perform civility. all you need to do is compare how the pair of them act around each other in the aftermath of that rivalry's biggest flashpoint (aka laguna '08) to how things play out in literally every single other valentino feud. (I know I started this post off talking about jorge and broadly speaking valentino does adhere to the same approach in 2009. but, 1) his relationship with jorge was a lot icier than his relationship with casey right from the start, partly because valentino just flat out disliked jorge, and 2) 2009 might star that rivalry's best duel but does not feature its major flashpoints, cf motegi 2010 and *checks smeared notes* something about a spanish conspiracy? - so it's not quite as notable jorge and valentino keep it vaguely polite.) from valentino's perspective, he escalates only as far as he has to. he's not emotionally invested enough to be all that offended by casey's response to laguna 2008, if anything can derive additional satisfaction from it... the race did what it was supposed to - he'll gladly accept a handshake of apology in its aftermath

sometimes, hygienic rivalry management involves giving off some mixed signals to confuse the opposition, to keep them guessing. it's a more uncertain situation than being outright enemies, one that makes it a little trickier for the opposition to parse how to approach that rivalry going forward, how nasty to be in response... valentino is happy enough to play this game when it comes to casey. the compliments, the public cordiality, the little gestures when he's feeling like it... charming off the track and vicious on it - all while dripping a steady dose of poison into the public discourse, attempting to make casey's life as difficult as possible. casey is the worst victim out of any of valentino's rivals of this two-faced approach, this disconnect between person and character casey himself is well aware of. even when the feud on paper should have been at its worst, valentino does not feel the need to cut casey off entirely. usually valentino does skew more clearly one direction or the other at any given time - usually he's at least a little more willing to show his hand, not mix pleasantries with cruelty quite so liberally. but he does not want casey to be his enemy. what a nuisance, right... can't like him can't loathe him certainly can't get rid of him

[zadz0]

anyone want to euthanise me