#well now im adding it retroactively

[gin-juice-tonic]

Well... vegetarians might find it a bit harder to stick to their diets, but it's a step up from feeling tempted to eat humans.

[misersdream]

Slay the Prince - Happily Ever After

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Ever since they put Sam as Cap both in 2014 comics & setting it up in phase 3 MCU to now Marvel's been pushing really hard to "correct" Steve's legacy in only being Cap in name & being more of an anti-government rebel. With Sam as Cap they push hard to make Sam's Captain America a blaring patriotic jingoism ad with neoliberal representation... You'd never have seen Steve be the bodyguard of the president of the USA as a premise of a story 🙄

It's annoying in its own right because along with the America patriot propaganda it logically follows ofc for characters like Sabra & her terrorist actor to easily appear in these stories with some Zionist propaganda.

But it's just really annoying to put it lightly how much Marvel - ever since first putting Sam Cap to page in 2014 - worked overtime to undermine Steve's character making CW a de facto IM movie & painting Steve as in the wrong  for being against the US gov authority & overall stripping back & removing Steve's righteous anger at the US State for what they did with Shieldra, or how FATWS compares its enthusiastically patriotic protagonist to make Steve look retroactively worse

& likewise precluded Bucky's post-WS character arc entirely & retroactively demonized his character as the insufficiently patriotic & therefore untrustworthy one. His whole backstory setup in CATWS painted the US gov in a bad light & culpable via Shieldra, so ofc Bucky gets villainized in phase 3 & likewise FATWS paints Buck at fault for being a target of continuous state violence & institutionalization while Sam- an agent of the state, part of the literal USAF -is presented as moral center while telling Buck he deserves to be at the whim of the US state and blamed for WS crimes the gov funded via Shieldra. Bucky gets surveilled & arrested & monitored by the same US State which funded the supersoldier mindcontrolled assassin program they blame him for while Correctly Patriotic Uncle Sam is shown as a Good US Soldier by contrast while Bucky's story gets retconned & swept under the rug for being to inconvenient to the Patriotic direction they went in.

The propaganda really ramped up with the ink and pages of Sam Cap drying off & becoming their new brand, but marvel's audience who tbh enjoy lapping at the Mouse 's propaganda pool refuse to see beyond the superficial aesthetics which is WHY US media frequently & purposefully chooses these aesthetics & act like neoliberal representation in oppressive structures is radical or progressive.

Which makes all the performative shock over Sabra in BNW fall flat since Sam Cap as a Marvel rebrand is defined by doubling down on Cap as a patriotic literal agent & defender of the US government. Sabra's inclusion is entirely ideologically consistent with what Sam Cap is about FFS, in FATWS the only other character besides Bucky who was exploited by the US gov is Isaiah who CORRECTLY outlines the relationship btwn America & Black ppl & Sam wholly dismisses him as crazy! THAT is was SamCap is about: telling Black ppl to STFU & be patriotic Obama style, but ppl are acting like Sabra is "ruining" Sam's otherwise totally not at all propagandistic stint as a now more patriotic 🇺🇸flag laden hero while America funds multiple genocides as the USA has always done since it's inception.

I haven't watched the trailer (and tbh don't intend to... too depressing) so I can't really comment on specifics of this.

But I will say that I was thinking the other day how MCU's complete refusal to do any Cap character properly, but especially Steve, had the knock-on effect of making it impossible to do a SamCap well too.

Steve was supposed to be impoverished / multiply disabled / ideologically Antifa / feminist / pro-union / New Deal Democrat / Irish-Catholic / urban underdog, etc. And it would make perfect sense for a modern black man to accept the legacy of all that, if Steve had been adapted properly.

In deleting all that and assigning to the mantel what America represents instead, they've turned the shield from an honour into an albatross.

But it's still contradicting their own canon to do so.

Because even the de-yassified MCU Steve never embodied America; he merely set an example to America.

Isaiah should not plausibly believe Steve's shield represents something bad -- as someone who knows nothing about Captain America would -- as if MCU canon!Steve never did any of the good things he did with it.

(This could've been a beat addressed in the main Cap movies; eg. someone assumes Steve is a Republican and his baffled response is 'huh??!')

Following canon, Sam's logical response to that should've been 'wtf it doesn't mean any of that where did you get that from??' not 'yeah but I want to represent that anyway.'

Isaiah correctly lampooned what America's legacy is... but no one bothered to point out that's not what Steve and his shield have represented. Not even the landlord-white version of him we have in the MCU.

That failure makes a nonsense of Sam's entire friendship with Steve.

Why would Sam be friends with the willing bearer of America's bad legacy?

Why would a decent Steve be friends with someone who wants to represent a bad legacy (maybe EG Steve would!) and so on and so on.

Though I guess it's no dumber than Steve not killing Peggy on sight for colluding with Nazis for decades, huh? 😕

I'm looking forward to all the jokes Sam is going to make about Isaiah being a brainless killing machine (y'know, to show what bros they are?)

And when he comes out at the end of it and tells Isaiah he needs to "do the work" to apologise properly for what he did while controlled.

Or perhaps he will suddenly magically understand the concept of innocence, now? 🤔

Sam siding with the authorities might be sadly consistent with the spirit they've taken him in (I've pointed it out before, but it is IC for him to be, eg. a dick to Bucky. Yer man's been doing that since day one).

But it at the very least it contradicts Sam's canon to willingly guard Ross, a man who threw him in enhanced-people-Gitmo like a "common criminal," to paraphrase Sam himself.

(Hey, why would the man who threw Sam in prison later trust Sam to guard him? Is it just a set up to screw Sam over again? Okay, but why would Sam fall for something so openly implausible? Are they giving him the idiot ball?)

The MCU are masters of 'we don't understand what this action we've assigned the character actually shows about them.' Or when they are assigning character actions that contradict past actions.

And they sure as fuck don't know what made CATWS a good movie.

[lightnersdream]

CORGI

now im not a huge dog person and i dont think about corgis much so i cant say much on that front

the design is cute enough, nothing offensive

i think the face couldve standed to look a little "weirder", but the open mouth makes it distinct from the other dogs in a way i'm not sure how to feel about

model's all around well constructed, using more round shapes than other recent models have (i wish the ferret had more round shapes!!)

animations are all pretty decent, no obvious errors like improper loops and they're all pretty basic "doggy" actions, "play" action is a play bow, yknow

the default has a cropped tail, BUT there is a tail toggle!!! which i really like. it's in a floaty style which idk about, but atleast there's the option

almost every animal now has like, 3-4 custom unique patterns instead of the same 6, which is fun and theyre all really good patterns, even the ones that aren't unique like stars or hearts

the most notable thing though is THEY'RE BRINGING BACK BLACK EYE OUTLINES. I'VE BEEN WAITING.... the models look SO much more finished with it!! it looks so much better!!! it makes them look much more like "aj style animals" and the eyelashes don't look like theyre just floating there

this isn't the first time they've gone back and forth on it, they did in 2020 as well, but i hope they keep it. im sad the models from the previous year won't get that retroactively added onto them, because they'd look soooo much better with them

i noticed they also stopped giving every animal a drawn-on smile, they did that for a while last year and early this year and then just suddenly stopped for some reason, idk what that was about. maybe going off reference material like the cow?

other notes: mesoterra is open to all animals now (previously could only be accessed with dinosaurs) because the phantom dungeons have been relocated there, still playable on the new system. seems like darkseeds have been removed from the prizepool though with the end of the halloween event and the dungeon coin shop is still kinda lacking. honestly hoping mesoterra stays open for all animals because it's usually Extremely Dead due to only being accessible by dinosaurs

[blackbloodteeth]

just stumbled across your art for the first time & im very curious as to what exactly your starting point for creating soul variants was? by that i mean, what made you begin creating them in the first place, what served as the inspiration for all of this? id also like to add i scrolled your entire archive and i love how expressive your art is! apologies if youve already answered something like this as well. thank you, have a nice day!

Hey, thank you very much! I'm always so glad when people enjoy my varianting, and honestly that's really heartwarming that you went through my archive (especially since I still remember how long it took me to get all of my art up at the time onto here haha)

I've been asked similar questions to this before, but I don't mind it at all, it's always fun to answer even if the history on variants is actually a bit messy haha (to the point I had to kinda just pick a day for keeping track of the Variantverse's anniversary, which I actually use this drawing for reference since it's the first real time there were multiple AU Souls in one art haha).

I'm not joking about the history being messy by the way, you better strap in because this is not a question I'm usually able to answer in just a few neat sentences (for your time there will be art at the end though haha)

So basically, aside from the really old (I'm talking middle school old) AUs I had of Soul (which... don't really have updated art aside from being retroactively really important to Variantverse lore hah), variants initially started as me just finally joining the Soul Eater fandom and just doodling canon Soul in different ways. After that it basically went like I want to draw him in a different outfit, to I want to draw him as Pokemon (context like this involved Discord but that's another story hah), to okay, I want to draw him weird and no one can stop me, and then came one morning where I did a doodle session of drawing him in a lot of non-human designs for the fun of it.

This is the shortened version of it, because there were doodles in between including an entire comic saga and an entire AU that didn't end up on the Variant List (*until much later anyway) because the list hadn't been established yet. Have I mentioned the "List of Soul Variants," by the way? Some know way back when I used to keep a list of all the Soul variants I was making and even gave them all numbers (it was kind've a big deal to the point it was actual in-Variantverse lore), however shortly after it reached 1,000 variants the list went defunct (also a big deal) and I no longer keep track of how many there are. The numbers don't matter anymore, but it contextualizes some things haha.

Now to actually answer the question, where does "variants" start: #019. After the previously mentioned doodle session, I got a Thought™ after waking up to start a [secret project], however I needed a handful more variants for it, and ended up doodling some more. I honestly have no idea if I should still be calling it a secret considering it's been four years now and I never ended up drawing it up despite- Anyway, this is also exactly the point in time I started to call them all variants (theorized by me to be in reference to "regional variant" Pokemon, ones that take a new appearance when adapting to a new region).

So what inspired me? Simply because I just kept going. I started thinking of a reason the variants I'd made so far were all together during the events of [secret project??], I started thinking of a couple Souls watching over the event (that ended up becoming the main characters of the overarching story) and new unrelated variants that were goofing off in the background, I started thinking of an antagonist, not just tied to the events of this, but to the multiverse at large, and I started thinking up what happened afterwards. I ended up giving the first 25 variants lore when I wanted to flesh out their designs, I added new variants to interact with the overarching story, and I just kept doodling new variants for the hell of it, all because it was fun and even if I never really revealed what [secret project] was (at least to only more than a handful of people hah) people in the circles I was in really enjoyed seeing them. Need I remind you that I stopped keeping track of how many there were after about 1090 variants. So yeah, it just kept going.

I guess in a way this is more answering where does the Variantverse start, but it's such an integral core concept that I think is heavily responsible for this madness snowballing to begin with haha, and things like the "Soul Variant Emporium" (an entirely different inside joke) and different Souls interacting out in the multiverse still resurfaces from time-to-time in the little blurbs I give art. I'm just particularly fond of capturing variants from an angle as if writing Pokedex entries, which I think kinda loops back to that idea of where the word variant comes from.

Honestly I just really love character design, and Soul genuinely is my favourite character of all time, so it's very fun to combine the two (especially when integrating concepts I find I like, such as the mass amount of werewolves hah) and I couldn't be happier that people also get a kick out of it even if I feel just a little guilty I don't really draw non-Soul designs much anymore haha (and I will say the madness brought upon my ask box as been an absolute hoot). So yeah, to sum it up: It started because I just had doodle ideas, and I got inspired by never stopping having ideas and everyone unfortunate enough to be caught in my ramble radius happened to enjoy said ideas.

As promised (thank you for enduring, I hope this was at least interesting haha), here's the most notable early variants that got me rolling the snow around:

Awakened Soul is the one I mentioned starting off the later doodles with the idea of "variants" first in mind, but Trickster (giving Soul a new outfit), the Pokemon variants, and other Souls of other doodlings are also notable to the entire messy history as to where this all started. I'm still planning to continue trying to draw all of the 1000 variants of the old list eventually and I look forward to sharing all these silly Souls as always.

I swear I'll give the first AU Soul I'd ever drawn real art one day.

[lloydfrontera]

obsessed with this (and many others) story being so dead-set on two main guys and their just absurdly close relationship and then having the balls so say NO HOMO and being so scared of having an open end so it just had to follow the heteronormativity norms. im so sick and tired of it. it just cheapens the whole things. it cheapens whatever respect there was for female characters involved, which was already not a lot because well. lets be honest yeah. i just wish these stories were self-aware enough to leave the characters alone. no relationship is better than what usually happens in these stories :( that's why im so hesitant to read the novel because im not always able to ignore such stupid literary device. im ranting to your inbox because i think you'll get it and my god i was so bitter when i was spoiled about the story's ending and the violent need to have everyone married it's hhghgghhhnng

i get it yeah. i've been deep in fandom spaces for about ten years now, this is not my first rodeo, won't be my last and i'm already used to it. doesn't mean i'm not tired of it too tho kjasdasd

and yeah i agree, at this point i'm not even really asking for a ship to be canon, i truly do believe sometimes the better option is to just have an open ending and leaving things to the imagination, but the amount of times authors feel the need to shove a last minute het romance just so they can beat the queer allegations,,, is too many to count

i think what gets me with tged is that,,, you can really take away the canon romance and nothing changes. it adds nothing to the plot, it really was something bk moon added in the last chapters purely to make it canon at the end. you could erase those bits and the general plot and characterization remains the same. it is... bad writing to be honest. like. from a purely technical standpoint that's a bad relationship, that's not how you add a romance to your plot!

but! on the other hand! the fact that it can be erased that easily does make it very easy to ignore it and focus on the good parts of the plot which are truly worth everything else aksdhskaj

it's like,, the gay equivalent of that thing marvel does where it includes their 'diversity' moments in such a way that you can cut them off and the film is still perfectly watchable. here you can cut the straight bits and you still get an awesome novel with great characters and deeply moving relationships lmao

it cheapens whatever respect there was for female characters involved, which was already not a lot because well. lets be honest yeah.

and this. yeah. Yeah. i did my fair bit of ranting when the webcomic decided to make silurian javier's love interest, retroactively fridging her for his manpain and also straight up ignoring and erasing her arc in the novel about her not needing to marry to be made heir for the city. like. they just didn't mention it. at all. what the fuck.

and then there's alicia who. the more i think about her and the way her relationship with lloyd is handled the more upset i get. she was such a cool character, with her own thing going on, her own motivations, her own worries, her own deal. and then she becomes lloyd's love interest because. well, she's literally the only important enough female character who isn't related to lloyd or already married who can do it. like. that's it.

silurian gets an entire arc about why she doesn't need to marry lloyd, sherazade marries lloyd's brother, marbella is his mom, moira basically disappears after her introduction... and that's... it, i think?? who else?? emily? the mermaid queen? i for the longest time thought raphael was a girl and was sorely disappointed to find out he was not so. yeah.

then there's the "magentano carry" title effect thing going on and,,, that's a whole mess on its own. i hate it. there's literally an otherwordly power making alicia trust lloyd. let me rephrase that. they had to force the canon love interest into giving her full trust to the main character. the very foundation of their relationship is built on her being literally unable to mistrust him because there's an external force forcing down her suspicions and doubts about him.

and we have canon confirmation that if lloyd pushes hard enough when she's already paranoid because of other factors, that effect can break and all her mistrust and wariness about the potential danger he is to the crown come back with full force and she'll declare him a traitor and go to war against him. like. that's the state of their trust and relationship when the novel is 89% done. i'm not even slightly exaggerating i literally did the math.

it's. it's just bad. it's so bad. i'm. i don't know what else to say. she didn't deserve that. lloyd didn't deserve that. we certainly didn't deserve that either.

so like. after all of this it'll sound really hypocrite of me to tell you to read the novel but. i do think it's still worth it. everything i'm talking about is. such a small part of the entire novel. which is kind of the problem but also the very reason i still think it's worth reading it.

everything else makes up for it i promise akjshdjka

[badsithnocookie]

secrets of the enclave (dantooine fp/story)

Oh Boy another field trip with annoying sith

altho krovos is probably just grumpy she can't be with her gf so i'll let her off. rivix is on thin fucking ice however

with all the saboteur options in this story bit it's actually more frustrating bc i Just Know that nothing willever go anywhere with it

one thing i will say for swtor tho is their environmental artists are top tier.

WHY IS THE RAKATA TEMPLE MUSIC PLAYING. this is the dantooine enclace YOU EVEN HAVE THE RIGHT TRACK IN GAME ffs

oh krovos is convinced malgus gives even a single blue fuck about the empire this is adorable. babygirl you are not very smart are you

leeha :D

oh. oh rivix refuses to listen to you if you tell him to play nice. rare elusive bioware character with a spine. god dammit bioware stop making me like your characters

oh okay i guess leeha's in schroedinger's morturary as well now huh.

it's funnier tho than it has any right to be that krovos and malgus have a Force Bond. even if, granted, everything that would be needed for it was retroactively added with this story chunk, but. quality bioware storytelling

im assuming the same is also true of someone who babysits the pc pub side as well. really considering it's the pc who keeps having to spank him it's them he should have that bond with but i guess you have to include for non force users so

(nah im not even commenting on the revan stuff like. yeah i knew it going in and yeah its shit but at this point i cant muster anything much beyond tired disapproval)

i kinda don't. entirely hate the little thing where you're sending companions off on missions across the galaxy? but like. i dont love that it's filler cutscene content. a more involved mechanic along the lines of xiv's squadrons or sto's duty officer system where you can send npc parties out on missions for rewards/alliance xp could have been an interesting addition (kotfetet era mostly) if only bc it would. 1. give the illusion that you're actually Commanding shit and 2. some purpose to these npcs you're otherwise just collecting to take up space in your base, but. that would require like. effort and i don't think bioware broadsword have had the resources to add such a system since before f2p. (then again they're adding this new companion unlock grind with the current patch so idk)

but apparently this was the last real Content before lots which i dont have unlocked and. honestly part of me just wants to just sub for a month so i can gripe about how terrible it will inevitably be

i know that the launch stuff at least is largely considered underwhelming but like. my expectations for this game are somewhere in the gutter so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

but. i will revisit that thought in the morning lol

[little-klng]

im sure theres people in the reblogs whove described this before (more than likely me included, but its buried by now), but no this fact is simply not true </3 the original beanie babies are The Original 9, pictured below:

[Brownie the bear, Chocolate the moose, Pinchers the lobster, Spot the dog, Squealer the pig, Splash the whale, Patti the platypus, Legs the frog, and Flash the dolphin]

all nine of them were released in April of 1993 during the New York World Toy Fair, whereas Trap was released in June of 1994 in stores after growing popularity meant more designs being created and released publicly. The above commenter likely(?) misunderstood that Trap mightve been older than the Original 9 because a lot of resources put their release date at August of 1994 for some reason

However, what *is* true is that Trap on release was older than the concept of beanie baby birthdays and poems, which didnt begin until 5th generation releases in late 1997, more info on that, as well as example photos of what each generation of tag looks like here and here.

The concept of beanie babies getting their own poems and birthdays was actually created by Lina Trivedi, whos credited as the author of 136 original poems for the beanies, as well as the creator of e-commerce as a concept (she headlined the website design and concept behind the BBOC, where collectors would be able to order certain beanies/recreations of original older beanies instead of hunting down irl stores for them)

Before poems and birthdays, beanie baby swing tags just featured the beanies name, as well as a To ___ and From ___ space to write in, since they were intended to be cheap gifts for families, friends, and events. The change was made because Lina thought it would make the tags more interesting and fun (and she was right!!!)

A lot of older beanies however were re-released in later generations to have birthdays and poems added, such as the original 9 with their BBOC releases :3 Trap, however, is not one of those re-releases and therefore was never retroactively given a poem or birthday

Hope this helps and clears up any confusion!!!!!!

the saddest beanie baby related thing ever is still trap the mouse. no birthday

[lulu-nightbon]

@alienembers THIS MAY ALSO HELP WITH PLAYING SUBNAUTICA. mainly because in the second video one of the reapers glitched out and was stuck facing away from the player swimming into a wall. that shit's always funny, even in the poopy water. also its. it kinda hits you in the feels if you're not prepared, so props to the guy that made this, im impressed, it hits harder than the game on its own, and that's counting every time i lost a sub or saw (endgame and actual plot spoiler) also- idk if it'll help but i know for me part of what initially made subnautica terrifying was the thought of walking in blind, so i researched EVERYTHING not knowing what was/could be out there was absolutely terrifying, and yeah. i will admit that, in some cases, learning what actually was out there was worse. but there's another solution for that! aside from knowing your do's and don'ts and what they will/won't respond to and the behavior quirks coded in (you can check out the trivia section on each creature page), there's no shame in having your first save file be one in creative so you can explore and get used to the environment, and get used to telling the fish to SHUT THE FUCK UP IM TRYING TO GROW A GODDAMN TREE YOU SON OF A BITCH, that way slipping into a survival/freedom (or even hardcore, if you really wanna test your skills) is easier. there's also console commands, where you can make yourself invisible to the creatures, make it so you can ohko them, what have you. i can get you the full list if you like- plus they just made an update (which shows real dedication considering the game is 9 YEARS OLD NOW THIS THING IS ALMOST AS OLD AS MY LITTLE SISTER) that fixed a fuckton of frustrating bugs and retroactively added a few things that were in below zero, like the large room and the glass domes for the multipurpose room and large room. idk if this was part of the (i think it was called living large?) patch or a smaller one they did before, but they fixed a behavior glitch for a fauna that had been bugged out this entire time. the shuttlebug is called the jumper in the files because they were supposed to walk around on land for a little bit when they got tired of swimming and do a little jump to go back to swimming when they didn't want to walk anymore. iirc it was one line of code that fixed other issues as well, so! that's a thing too. there's also a mod that lets you just have leviathans pop into your pocket when they run into you- The Last Bacon has done a series of videos on subnautica mods, so check those out too. if you want ANY info on subnautica you need clarification on, cant find, or just dont wanna look up- don't hesitate to ask. im MORE than willing to brainrot over it, i love this game and definitely haven't been wanting to make a crossover au between it and lmk, nosiree

[rosepetalwings]

so me and my partner (@pcletteswcp; they dont rly have a main blog) have been Theorizing and they suddenly had the most genius revelation about spamton that they'd like me to share with you all and what his calls really are…

but first, let me back up for a moment.

so… the library dark world is… strange, right?? can we all agree on that? it only existed for a few hours and yet every library world darkner seemed to pop out of nothingness with set personalities and backstories and just the whole nine yards. the school dark world was just as strange to be entirely fair but with chapter 2, it set a(n at least, more obvious) precedent in that darkners just… suddenly exist in a sapient form with the creation of a dark fountain. 

now, what does this mean within the scope of this theory? darkners with these histories among them either have entirely fabricated backstories when they form as new beings OR they remember things from their lives as objects and that is translated into histories for their new form as living people. i personally think the latter is much more likely when we consider swatch and their dialogue

swatch was likely a paint program akin to MS Paint before the advent of a dark fountain bringing them and their surroundings into a sapient state of being and with that in mind, remember this dialogue?

with how closely the NEO body resembles mettaton NEO's form and how spamton NEO's theme "BIG SHOT" samples "Another Medium", "Power of NEO", and "Ghost Fight"/"Dummy!", we can pretty safely assume this was pre-perfect body mettaton that swatch "helped" in creating his most perfect body. (mettaton im care and lov u 🥺🥺🥺) swatch, being a personified paint program, likely helped mettaton in creating a mockup of his perfect body by mettaton literally drawing the body in the paint program swatch was.

putting obvious connections everyones made by now aside, this all supports the idea that darkners remember their lives as everyday objects… now. what does this have to do with spamton?

well, spamton is a darkner, just as everyone else in his world minus our lightner heroes. so… how was he getting phone calls? how can a spam email/ad get a literal phone call? that doesnt make much sense, right?

so okay, what if this is an abstraction? like how swatch helped create mettaton's dream? what else could these "phone calls" stand for?

shall we take a trip back to 1997? the year spamton, the self-proclaimed email guy, himself states was "a good year". 

presumably this was the spammy salesman's peak. his prime. at least a good enough year that he remembers and looks back on so fondly. now, what was the internet like in 1997?

oh yeah! we had… dial-up modems to access the internet. which used a phone line to do so. and… spam emails that commonly read like 'forward this to 10 of your friends!' interesting. very… very interesting.

so. what if we assume the "phone calls" were this: the mysterious contact (who we'll name X in this post for brevity) spamton was getting help from connected to the dialup internet and boosted a particular spam email for whatever reason and retroactively gave an e-manlet deep religious trauma when the emails started declining in popularity bc no one likes spam and

by the 2000s, dialup was on a major decline as broadband reigned champion in popularity. now, the phone in spamton's shop is still ringing. that's what stumped me for the longest time. if the calls stopped, why's the phone still ringing? and why is there "garbage noise" on the other end? the same garbage noise we can presume is like the sound that escapes kris's phone when we attempt to use it in the dark worlds.

what if spamton's decline AND the end of the phone calls coincided with the advent of the dialup internet in the library being disconnected in favor of broadband? what if X is still attempting to contact spamton but all that comes out is garbage noise as the way they were connected is gone? and what if that's the most tragic part of all; what if spamton was never purposefully abandoned? what if X never meant to leave him, things just… happened and X couldn't help him anymore. X was unable to help further. X's hands were tied, even.

and so came spamton's fall from popularity… and grace.

but thaTS JUST A GAME THIEORUIY

[quicksandblock]

speaking of c!techno and losses, cus I thought about it a bit in the shower, you know what I would've liked for techno to lean into? the loss of his allyship and friendship with c!tommy.

even though the relationship between them was completely dysfunctional and doomed to fail due to conflicting goals, they still CLEARLY cared for each other while working together. and c!techno was clearly very hurt and felt betrayed when c!tommy switched sides. that could've been a major loss for him, or prompt him to question his ideals and whether it was worth the people he hurt and lost.

that's really why c!technos response to c!tommys death later was disappointing. sure, you could argue that 1. c!techno isn't the type to grieve publicly and maybe he grieved privately "off-camera" 2. cc!techno obviously prefers a lighthearted tone and isn't gonna lean into angst.

but his lack of response obviously gives the audience the impression that he doesn't care. and im not sure if that was the intent, but if it is, that's disappointing.

there could've been subtle ways to show grief and regret (he's good at the subtle stuff anyway). he couldve subtly implied that he was covering up grief with humor. techno is not a bad actor or writer, he excels at subtle storytelling. but that whole thing really made me just. dislike and distrust his character, lol

-cube-cumb3r (thank u for reblogging my crit post earlier btw)

it was a good post lol, like I said you put it all very well

and yes!! all of this!!! like it would have been weird if he’d grieved too obviously, but we wanted something, and we didn’t get it, and now Techno’s character is starting to feel kind of flat. he’s losing a lot of depth he had at the start. like it’s still an interesting character, but more and more we’re having to read that in from possibly-unintentional clues rather than being able to analyze obviously deliberate character choices.

unfortunately I think the root of the problem is that Techno isn’t having as much fun on the dsmp anymore. he came in to play a cartoon villain and promote his channel, and suddenly everyone’s storylines are fucking dark and everyone has 15 different kinds of ptsd and his funny anarchist pig doesn’t really have a place there anymore. not to say his character hasn’t always had its serious moments - but like the dream smp itself, they used to be the spice that added significance to a mostly lighthearted story, not the norm. nowadays it feels like you have to be able to cry on command to even participate.

there’s also the fact that he doesn’t really like collaborative storytelling. he’s said this on stream before - I can’t remember exactly when, but it was when half the fandom decided that Ranboo was his son (?? why????) and he had to come in and clear that up. he doesn’t like other people being able to decide things about his character, and he doesn’t really like “yes and”-ing as far as I can tell. he prefers to have tighter control over his own story. which is valid - but creates some problems in a story built entirely out of collaborative roleplay.

unfortunately both of these lead him to clash with Tommy’s storytelling style pretty severely - Tommy loves the dark stuff, and he’s also more than willing to play off of people and let improv and chance have a strong influence on his character’s path. and Tommy does a lot of highly emotional improv acting, which Technoblade just Doesn’t (unless the emotion is anger).

Ranboo and Tubbo have been talking about the older “semi-lore” style of the smp recently, and I think that a return to that style would allow Techno to come back to participate more in the story. but overall I think the conflict here is going to remain until the current arcs, especially the Tommy and Dream thing, have been wrapped up. which is unfortunate because Techno is kind of an integral part of some of those arcs.

coming back to specifically his response to Tommy’s death... I kind of feel like cc!Techno is trying to retroactively make that relationship less important to his character in an attempt to separate himself from the grimdark stuff. but I honestly can’t tell. it could just be a manifestation of his tsundere-ness. I hope it is, because while I get not being interested in a darker story, it would be kind of disappointing if he just noped out of any story that didn’t fall in his comfort zone. I just wish he would fucking stream so we could have anything at all to go off of lmao

[emojitournament]

Prev: #bc they suck next question#for one thing they are all very similar and differentiated only by small details#for another theres almost never a scenario where i want to use them#and now that they each have 3 gender options scrolling through is just an insane block of#🤦‍♀️🤦🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️🤷👨‍⚕️👩‍⚕️🧑‍⚕️👨‍🎓👩‍🎓🧑‍🎓👨‍🏫👩‍🏫🧑‍🏫👨‍⚖️👩‍⚖️🧑‍⚖️👨‍🌾👩‍🌾🧑‍🌾👨‍🍳👩‍🍳#like. 3 barely different bald people? 👨‍🦲👩‍🦲🧑‍🦲#who needs it?#sorry im very passionate about the people emojis#specifically that section the emotions are fine most of the full bodies are fine#the different genders really annoy me because in most cases the only difference is hair length (and the men have eyebrows)#which like. formost of these things i think should just have one option thats gender neutral#like why would i ever want to specify that its a *female* zombie 🧟‍♀️#and like. what even is this 🧑🏻‍🎄#classic christmas character gender-neutral santa?#theres no reason to have three of these 🚣‍♂️🚣‍♀️🚣 theres no effective difference except color#like if your versed in emoji you can tell the color coding but why#emojis#some of them are fine btw im not against having emoji representation its just so excessive

As far as I can tell, Unicode seems to agree with you here! One of the official documents regarding the introduction of the gender neutral emoji options in 2020 actually says that "[i]deally this should have been the default emoji gender presentation for emoji representations of people from the start" (link in source field). The thing is that when a lot of the original emoji were introduced, they were intended to be gender neutral, but then the creators of the various emoji fonts (for example, Apple) gave them gendered designs anyway, and often in a stereotypical way (having noticeably more traditionally masculine-presenting designs than feminine-presenting ones, the few feminine ones tending to have a focus on appearances such as the haircut emoji, the kiss showing a straight couple, etc.). So then people brought up the issues with that, of course, and then when a big set of career emoji were introduced in 2016 (the scientist 🧑‍🔬, doctor 🧑‍⚕️, programmer 🧑‍💻, teacher 🧑‍🏫, chef 🧑‍🍳, etc.) they were explicitly introduced as ZWJ sequences with two versions each, so that you had to type them as either "male scientist" or "female scientist", doctor, chef, etc. This way the emoji designers would have to design both versions, and so Apple and co. wouldn't get the opportunity to decide which jobs should be men and which ones should be women, and probably do a bad job of it. So then, to be more inclusive and also because Unicode tries to make sure all of their little rules and systems are relatively consistent, this option was expanded retroactively to existing emoji (usually by adding sequences like "original emoji" + ZWJ (an invisible character that tells the characters on either side of it to display together as a combined form) + "gender symbol") and used for new emoji introduced going forward! The problem, though, was that now for some emoji it was impossible to use them without specifying a gender (if "male teacher" and "female teacher" are defined separately as emoji, you have to pick one or the other), while for others, the ones defined as a base emoji and a gender symbol, that base emoji still had to have a design to display if it was encountered without a gender symbol, and most platforms just picked one or the other of their gendered versions, and did this following the same stereotypical "men as default" patterns they'd used before. So to resolve these issues as well as to be inclusive to nonbinary people, the explicitly gender neutral versions were created. And so now we have all three! And they probably won't remove any of the variants from the standard because that would break compatibility for people viewing older documents, and compatibility is Unicode's whole deal and the reason emoji exist in the first place, so this is the system we have now.

doing a thesis study on why people-based emojis keep losing

Let me know what you come up with!

[newtedison]

my thoughts on the crank palace

i touched about this a bit on twitter (@newtedison_) but i figured i would Try and touch on my points more here (spoilers obv) again, its sort of lengthy

1. im gonna start with talking about the ending because i need to get it out of the way. either i havent read the books in a while and i forgot some canon (which could very well be true, i literally forgot that Bliss was a thing) or this ending makes no sense and is (somehow) setting up for a tdc sequel? so first off, newt was shot in the Head with a Bullet and somehow didnt immediately die? i know that that can happen in real life but it just seems so unlikely that not only would he not die, but he would survive long enough for someone from WCKD to transport him back to their labs and try to revive him. and who the fuck was he talking to? did thomas get newt’s journal at some point and i just dont remember? like i said, either im forgetting stuff or this ending doesnt make sense and is setting up a sequel which...i’ll get to later

2. why was this written? like, what was the point? i understand that this wasnt going to be all sunshine and rainbows but i feel like i was reading torture porn. like, literally all that happens is newt gets tortured (which is described in detail) by WCKD soldiers, has bouts of insane-fueled rage where he KILLS MULTIPLE PEOPLE, and then he dies. ??? what did this contribute to the canon? what was this trying to accomplish? truthfully, i never really wanted a newt-POV...well, anything except for maybe those little nuggets he wrote some time ago. but even if i HAD wanted a newt-POV novella, this is not what i would have wanted. he KNOWS that newt is almost universally the most loved character in this franchise. you can tell because he constantly uses him as a way to get fans in his good graces again. so why on earth would he take that character that so many people love and write a novella where its torture porn and a descent into madness before death? i am not interested in that At All. i’ve read fics (and even written a drabble) where newt is a Crank, and those were more respectful and easier to read than tcp. the parts where newt is having bouts of the Flare were literally exhausting to read; it was described in such vivid and torturous detail that it made me sick reading it. and it didnt help that newt is a character i care a lot about. i didn’t need to know what becoming a Crank felt like. the way it was described in the other books (and even the movies) told me everything i needed to know. the way thomas and everyone found newt at the crank palace in tdc and hes described as obviously not well, but not knowing what exactly happened to him...thats good enough on its own. the mystery of what exactly newt had to endure is part of what gives his journey more emotional depth. not everything needs to be written out and explained. not every gap needs to be filled in. 

3. me saying “the characterization felt off” is going to make some people roll their eyes because ‘duh, sami, the characterization will be off because he’s going insane’ to which i say...exactly. we weren’t really reading a newt-POV novella, were we? even if he isn’t past the Gone in the beginning, hes clearly not the same person we knew him as. the whole novella felt like an uncanny valley situation; i knew i was supposed to be reading about newt, but it felt like i was reading about someone else who looked like him. and that is part of what made this such a disconnect and made me lose interest at parts. not only that, but the world building and lore is inconsistent. newt makes a comment about how it used to rain in the glade, and apparently (as ive been told) that is simply not true. keisha having somehow working cell phone that magically connects her to her family also doesnt make sense. how would they have each others’ numbers? what are the odds that they BOTH found working cell phones in an apocalypse? i get that its a novella but you cant just throw something that crazy in there as a plot convenience. actually work on your plot and world building in a cohesive way, please. and another thing that doesnt make sense...

4. ...is newt finding out that sonya is his sister. if there was anything i would have wanted from a newt-pov novella, it would have been this. him finding out that not only is sonya his sister, but he already knows her post-WCKD. something that would have made this novella actually captivating, contributing something worthwhile to the canon that i would actually want to read, is if newt found out while in the crank palace that sonya was his sister; the Flare would remove that part of the Slice in his brain, and he would realize it was her. then, knowing that he couldnt go past the Gone before seeing her, he would try to find a way to get back to her. he could learn this after thomas and everyone originally see him, so it could match up with the canon. and then, by the time 250 comes along, hes lost all hope of that actually happening, and lashes out to thomas in a fit of rage. the journey of him trying to find his ACTUAL sister would have meant more to me than the story of keisha and dante. trust me, i love a found family trope as much as the next girl. but this series is FULL of the found family trope. it pretty much is the backbone of the franchise. so to see a blood family dynamic would have been a refreshing change of pace that i actually would have been interested in reading. also, the way that newt DOES find out about sonya is...underwhelming. he just randomly says “you remind me of my sister, sonya” to keisha in the WCKD truck. first of all, sonya is not the name you would actually know her by. you would know her by her birth name (which is lizzy? elizabeth?). second, why does he act like he didnt already meet her in the series? when the WCKD doctor tells him sonya is his sister and is alive, hes so surprised. wouldn’t he have known that already? why is there not more emphasis on the fact he already met her? that would have been a really interesting dynamic to explore, and im sad they didnt

5. the pacing and dialogue of tcp is so dragged out. i remember specifically there was a section where newt goes to talk to keisha after she starts abandoning dante, and i swear to god there was a page and a half of text before anything ACTUALLY happened or anyone ACTUALLY said anything. dashner described a launcher at one point as “the energy dependent electric firing projectile device.” that’s SIX words to describe a stun gun. a fucking stun gun! we know what it is! why did you have to use six words??? it just felt like everything was dragged and stretched to the longest it could possibly be and it added to the exhaustion i felt while reading it

6. okay i cant end it without talking about newtmas. its very obvious by now that newtmas is a VERY large part of this fanbase. its clearly the most popular ship and what keeps a lot of people interested in this series. even the marketing team for the MOVIES used newtmas as a advertising tactic (i.e.; using thomas and newt standing face to face as a thumbnail for the trailer, emphasizing newtmas based questions in interviews, even making a fucking facebook memories video for them. yes that last one is real). not only does dashner use newt as a way to lure fans in; he also uses newtmas. the parts that were sprinkled into this were so obvious that it didnt feel authentic. i cant speak for the original trilogy; i dont know the culture around ships back then, and i dont know how much it influenced his writing at the time. but the scenes in those books felt more genuine than tcp. by genuine i mean; he wrote scenes without a relationship in mind, but the chemistry had noticeable subtext that, while unintentional, was largely agreed upon by the larger audience. the parts of newtmas he added into tcp felt artificial and forced, likely as a way for people to take snippets of and use as a free marketing tool for him. one example you might have already seen; “he had already gotten used to his post-thomas, post-WCKD life.” the fact that dashner SPECIFICALLY used the phrase “post-thomas” rather than “post-his friends” or something similar shows that he is using newtmas as a hook on purpose. not only that, but to make newt’s last thoughts as he died “tommy. tommy will understand...” is...wow. first of all, i never wanted to know what newt’s dying thoughts were, but thanks, i guess? and second, when we all initially thought newt died underneath thomas with a gun to his head, i was pretty much inferred that newts last thoughts would probably be about thomas; they would sort of have to be, given the circumstances. so adding that in gives me the same feeling that “i’m coming for you, newt” at the end of the fever code gave me. not as offensive, but written very much on purpose. and the ending is implying that there will somehow be a sequel where thomas gets newt’s journal from...someone. at this point, i can only think that this sequel will retroactively make newtmas canon somehow. now that newt has been confirmed as gay, it could happen. which brings me to my last point...

7. hearing dashner confirm newt is gay was already mind-boggling before. now that i’ve read the crank palace...im angry. im very angry. i think its safe to say that newt is the character that suffers the most in this series. you can argue with me but hes definitely high on the list, if not #1. so; you take this character. you give him a horribly sad arc in the original trilogy, then decide to expand upon it and tell us, your largely QUEER fanbase, exactly how painful and torturous his last days were, in detail. and then you tell us he’s gay. something that is never mentioned in the canon, only in an offhanded reply to a tweet of someone calling you out. on a base level, i can understand why people would be happy. representation (i guess), seeing themselves in the character, having their headcanons be confirmed. great. but what i see is you telling your largely queer fanbase “hey, you see the only confirmed gay character? im going to literally write torture porn about him before killing him off and offer it to you like im providing a service to your community.” how fucked up is that? “hey, kids, if youre gay, you WILL be violently tortured and become violent and a danger to the ones you love. then you will die and your love will never be reciprocated.” what a message! and if he DOES end up retroactively making newtmas “canon” in some weird sequel...i will start foaming at the mouth. THIS is an example of how not all queer representation is good or genuine.

i’ve definitely forgotten some points but this is long enough already. let me know if you agree or if theres anything else you want to add! im interested in what you guys think

(8. I JUST REMEMBERED!!! if WCKD needed to study newt so bad bc sonya is his sister and is immune while he isnt, why did they let him run around the crank palace in the first place??? you cant test his vitals or anything you’re literally just watching him. what is the point????)

[ohsweetflips]

i have a genuine arcana question! I really want to play it and actually did part of it a while back, but i really felt like it was a bit of a money sink... it seemed really cool so i guess im wondering if its worth it?

i'm putting this under the cut just bc it got long!!! :D

okay so!!! i have honestly been thinking abt this a lot and, like, i will admit that i was kinda retroactively shocked by how uhhh quickly i spent like Real Money on the arcana? i think that's kinda like the kicker of having a lot of like $1/$5 options? to be fair as much as i am living in the arcana rn, it's whole play model Does seem to be based in, ah, microtransactions!

and like for a hot minute, i was quick to drop like small amounts on coins bc i do work, so i had the mantra of "well i'm getting paid in a week so-" but still i'd be careful with that!! like i've been playing for almost a month and it was really in that first week where i was like "well $1/$5... it's not that much" which like! tbh i don't wanna be like "no never spend money on a game ever" bc that'd make me. a hypocrite! and also to a degree, like, ik people talk abt microtransactions a lot in video games, but i don't think any in-game purchase at all is a bad thing, and i think it's fine to treat yourself once in a while! but also i am purposely replaying julian's route (and replaying it slowly) so that i can start racking up coins to carry over into the replay/the next arc i want to play (because you get free coins every day from the tarot daily section, and 40 coins per day by watching ads)

but also!! i think it's also good to just kinda think abt the kind of person you are when it comes to spending? like to put myself on blast, i have become Very Prone to impulse purchasing, especially when i'm in a rough patch, bc apparently retail therapy is a very real thing akjdsjksdkj so after i finished julian's route, i metaphorically sat myself down and was like "nope, no, this cannot become a habit!!! the coined options will still be there later, you can take your time and replay the game, which you want to do anyway"

but that is also bc i Know that i have... the type of personality that really latches onto stuff like that? like, little things that, on it's own, don't cost a lot of money, and it makes me feel happy, so i'm like "well, it's only X amount!" and then. yeah.

but also i have to be transparent here and say that i am also coming from a place of like. privilege, where i'm working full-time and i still live at home, so there is a degree of financial security that allows for me to have spending money. which is also why i don't want to uncritically be like "go ahead! treat yourself!" bc like, it might also be dependent on your current situation!!

and also my more harsher critique of the arcana Asides from the paywall is that like....... tbh the better scenes in the game Are behind the in-game coin paywall (and also tbh only 3 of the 6 arcs are enticing enough to me to consider grinding for coins to parry that paywall). and that tbh is def part of the business model bc, like, a lot of the free options cut off the chapters so quickly and that to me isn't worth it, like being very frank if i only chose the options that didn't use the coins, idk if i would have liked it nearly as much

so tldr (i'm sorry i ramble), the arcana has become what i have latched onto right now, and i love the story! however, i will be honest, most of that "worth" factor comes from the content behind the in-game paywall, which is then behind an actual real paywall. so if you're in a place where you have some spending money and won't blow a shit-ton of money on a game, then the choice is up to you! i don't want any of this to feel like i am Telling you what to do with your money, and at least how i see it, what helped me was essentially telling myself "you are forming a habit that will dig you into such a deep hole, just take your time, save up the in-game currency, and replay." so like!! i think the arcana as a game is very fun and i am fixating so hard on it rn, however whether it's Worth the paywall is dependent on your situation, i think

(and also just bc i'm Anxious, i would consider this less advice and more so "hey, i'm someone with an impulse spending habit and here is how i see/navigate the arcana paywall")

(edit: okay i'm rewording my take on the free arcana content, bc it's not that it's not good! closer to the end of julian's route, i started being a lot more picky with What coined options i used, and i still had a very fun time!! and tbh that gave me incentive to want to replay bc now i have new stuff to still look forward to!! it's more so that the scenes unlocked with the coined options are very fun, and i think they're a good incentive to save up for!!! :D)

[harpulator]

extra stuff post!!

what has wix always said in their sponsors? that's right! "something esomething html scale images? hard!! >:( wix scale images? easy!!" fellas.

this makes the image appear as it's original resolution. Now how to scale it:

pretty cool, eh? but there's a slight problem, our bird is a little, eh, stretched?

much better! now, the width will always be 700px, and the height will automatically scale with that. However, there's still an issue...

on smaller devices the bird gets cropped out of frame!! I dont want to scroll, nobody else does either. solution? vw!!

vw stands for "Viewport Width", and vh stands for "Viewport Height". This basically means the width/height of the browser window that you're using. 50vw would be 50% of the screen's width, so let's use it to our advantage to dynamically scale our image!!

pretty sick, eh?

hm, not so sick. what's a max-height? well, it's the maximum height that an element can be! so,

yes, it works, it doesn't stretch downwards but it also still stretches sideways. I'm sure you're thinking "this is a pain in the ass, I'll just use squarespace" but the huge benefit here is complete control. that's why anyone does this in the first place! these are the building blocks of any cool website you've ever seen! so, we push onwards.

now the issue with our code right now is that the width being set to 90vw, it forces the image to stretch to that. So, if we remove that, it will no longer stretch (obv). Also, im retroactively adding that I don't really remember why I did the other stuff, other than someone on the internet said I should, but this is what the code looks like now

eh? eh? we've done it!! let's add some flare now.

(jsyk i added two <br> elements which work as linebreaks. this fixes any text wrapping issues we coulda had up to now)

the transform property has a lot of little functions like scaling or moving things, so we're using that here to both scale the image to 1.2x on both axis and to move it 45px to the right and 30px down.

now when i hover over my bird it looks like this! (your page should look the exact same as before if you are not hovering over the image)

pretty cool!!

idk if i've already posted about how much i fucking hate website builders like wix and squarespace. they perpetuate the idea that coding is hard (which it is, but if you keep telling yourself that you'll never learn) and that NORMIES like YOU need something SIMPLER. Fellas, you can open notepad right now and make a basic html site, because a basic html site is literally just words.

from there, you can make a github account, create a new repository, and upload that html file. Then,

and you'll have your website be hosted for completely free and forever. that's a permanent link, and if it ever stops working (usually because of a lack of traffic) it is completely ok to just re-deploy it.

wanna make it pretty? a <style> element lets you embed CSS (a language exclusively for making websites look pretty) right into your html.

there's a shit ton of stuff you can do in css and html. like a lot of stuff. every single website you've ever been to has been made with html, css, and javascript* and they're all incredibly well documented. if you want to learn cool new stuff, there's a ton of sites out there, but the two I reccomend most are w3schools and especially MDN (Mozilla Developer Network). Stop giving Wix your money, you're better than that.

[bisluthq]

I’ve been really down over grammygate for all the reasons you’ve mentioned. I was trying to think of how people would react to other artists doing what she did and could you imagine if Kanye credited Kim on 33% of songs after it won a AOTY Grammy? Because I KNOW THAT would generate outrage. And people would say things like:

• Kanye is crazy (which is commonly said and unfair given we know he has mental health conditions, but in the colloquial way, he’d be said to be crazy) or dumb or whipped - because why else would Kim get a Grammy? /// and people should be asking why Joe got a Grammy

• people would question their relationship status and because they were known to have some messy moments , people would gossip that Kanye added Kim later on as a grand gesture of love OR he left her out in the beginning because they were fighting at the time of release but are back on good terms now

• heaps of people and media outlets would be questioning Kim directly with technical questions about producing and try to force her to say something that was musically smart, sit her in front of a board and ask her to prove she can do it, or try to trap her in her lie that she can do any of it

• people for sure would be more outraged that Kim had a Grammy for AOTY before Beyoncé. And that would show the sexism side more because we’d be comparing the talent of 2 women, Kim and Bey, compared to just going ‘oh yeah, Joe has a Grammy now’ - like no one is trashing Joe’s character when raising the issue that it sucks he has an AOTY before Beyoncé, but when women win over men, all the sexism (especially slut shaming variety) comes out

• neither Kim or Kanye would be “cancelled” because they seem invincible to that tbh, and eventually people would laugh over it being another part of the Kimye story...

I know what I said is all hypothetical and ok Kimye have split now, so it probably won’t ever happen. But I think the issues people would make over Kim getting a vanity credit/AOTY/ retroactive credit should still be discussed by joe getting one.... and instead people are making it more about “be a *good* taylor swift fan” or “it doesn’t effect you directly so why care?”

IM going in roundabouts and don’t mean to, but it feels like some people are missing the point or choosing not to listen to why some of us are disappointed - as you say - as a fan - in Taylor, and the RA but we already knew they were difficult. And as a fan of taylor, I think she’s compromised her entire musical legacy with this because it allows for debate to resurface if she had ghost writers since the beginning (which was based entirely on the idea that teenage girls couldn’t write that well) because according to this Retroactive Grammy, she DID work with a GHOST PRODUCER!

Ive LwYs Cared about her as a creator and that’s why this to me as a fan of her is all so disappointing now. And I’d have been disappointed tbh if he was credited as a producer from the beginning, but only in a way where it’s like “wow you really do think he IS EVERYTHING?!? You really believe you couldn’t work without him?!!!!” Now it’s like I partially think that, but I mostly think “you lied and probably cheated on the most prestigious award in music for him when you thought it was safe and sneaky???” She was canceled the first time in part “for lying” and it’s like the two biggest things that have plagued her career - is she really the one doing the work and is she a liar - she just did them in one go... I can’t express it clearly and I’m sorry this was so long. It’s just sad. But yeah, I agree with you about a lot of what you’ve said on this and it’s weird to think how differently the narrative would be if it were other people getting the award.

Sending love to you if you want it 💜

Good thoughts yeah I agree.