#which is the whole reason i wanted to be on this site less in the first place but i was on such a good streak of not seeing it

[chiimeramanticore]

having like. objectively a godawful shitty fucking no good very bad day can u guys send asks

[flanaganfilm]

Mr. Flanagan, I’d like to ask a question and I deeply hope that it does not offend or upset you. I am strongly considering canceling my Netflix subscription due to their new password sharing policy. However, Midnight Mass is one of my favorite shows of all time and I know it isn’t available on DVD, and I’m also profoundly anticipating your take on my favorite Edgar Allen Poe story. So I wanted to ask your take on people accessing your work through, uh, other means. If it’s something that’s offensive to you or will harm you or the other people who work so hard on these shows, I’ll happily keep my Netflix just so that I can keep supporting your work. I respect you far too much as an artist to do otherwise.

Again, I really hope I’m not upsetting you by asking this question. Thank you for everything, and I hope you’re having a great day!

(NOTE 6/4/2024: I'm editing this entry because, well over a year since it was posted, some journalists dug this up and used it to create click-bait headlines that are misleading, out of context and artificially combative. While I was of course disappointed over the years that Netflix opted not to release my work on physical media, I never experienced any hostility or aggression in those discussions, and I sincerely regret the manner in which this post was used in the press this week.)

Hi there - no offense taken whatsoever, in fact I think this is a very interesting and important question.

So. If you asked me this a few years ago, I would have said "I hate piracy and it is hurting creators, especially in the independent space." I used to get in Facebook arguments with fans early in my career when people would post about seeing my work on torrent sites, especially when that work was readily available for rent and purchase on VOD.

Back in 2014, my movie Before I Wake was pirated and leaked prior to any domestic release, and that was devastating to the project. It actually made it harder to find distribution for the film. By the time we were able to get distribution in the US, the film had already been so exposed online that the best we could hope for was a Netflix release. Netflix stepped in and saved that movie, and for that I will always be grateful to them.

However...

Working in streaming for the past few years has made me reconsider my position on piracy.

In the years I worked at Netflix, I tried very hard to get them to release my work on blu-ray and DVD.

It became clear very fast that their priority was subscriptions, and that they were not particularly interested in physical media releases of their originals, with a few exceptions.

While companies like Netflix pride themselves on being disruptors, and have proven that they can affect great change in the industry, they sometimes fail to see the difference between disruption and damage. So much that they can find themselves, intentionally or not, doing harm to the concept of film preservation.

The danger comes when a title is only available on one platform, and then - for whatever reason - is removed.

We have already seen this happen. And it is only going to happen more and more. Titles exclusively available on streaming services have essentially been erased from the world. If those titles existed on the marketplace on physical media, like HBO's Westworld, the loss is somewhat mitigated (though only somewhat.) But when titles do not exist elsewhere, they are potentially gone forever.

The list of titles that have been removed from streaming services is growing.

I still believe that where we put our dollars matters. Renting or buying a piece of work that you like is essential. It is casting a vote, encouraging studios - who only speak the language of money - to invest more effort into similar work. If we show up to support distinct, unique, exciting work, it encourages them to make more of it. It's as simple as that. If we don't show up, or if they can't hear our voice because we are casing our vote "silently" through torrent sites or other means - it makes it unlikely that they will take a chance to create that kind of work again.

Which is why I typically suggest that if you like a movie you've seen through - uh - other means, throw a few dollars at that title on a legitimate platform. Rent it. Purchase it. Support it.

But if some studios offer no avenue for that kind of support, and can (and will) remove content from their platform forever... frankly, I think that changes the rules.

Netflix will likely never release the work I created for them on physical media, though I'll always hold out hope.

Some of you may say "wait, aren't The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor available on blu-ray and DVD?" Yes, they are, because they were co-produced with Paramount, and I'm grateful that Paramount was able to release and protect those titles. (I'm also grateful that those releases include extended cuts, deleted scenes, and commentary tracks. There are a number of fantastic benefits to physical media releases.)

But a lot of the other work I did there are Netflix originals, without any other studio involvement. Those titles - like Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and the upcoming Fall of the House of Usher - along with my Netflix exclusive and/or original movies Before I Wake and Gerald's Game - have no such protections. The physical media releases of those titles are entirely at Netflix's discretion, and don't appear to be priority for the studio at this time.

At the moment, Netflix seems content to leave Before I Wake, Gerald's Game, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight Club on the service, where they still draw audiences. I don't think there is a plan to remove any of them anytime soon. But plans change, the industry changes.

The point is things change, and each of those titles - should they be removed from the service for any reason - are not available anywhere else. If that day comes - if Netflix's servers are destroyed, if a meteor hits the building, if they are bought out by a competitor and their library is liquidated - I don't know what the circumstances might be, I just know that if that day comes, some of the work that means the most to me in the world would be entirely erased.

Or, what if we aren't so catastrophic in our thinking? What if it the change isn't so total? What if Netflix simply bumps into an issue with the license they paid for music (like the Neil Diamond songs that play such a crucial role in Midnight Mass), and decide to leave the show up but replace the songs?

This has happened before as well - fans of Northern Exposure can get the show on DVD and blu-ray, but the music they heard when the series aired has been replaced due to the licensing issues. And the replacements - chosen for their low cost, not for creative reasons - are not improvements. What if the shows are just changed, and not by creatives, but by business affairs executives?

All to say that physical media is critically important. Having redundancy in the marketplace is critically important. The more platforms a piece of work is available on, the more likely it is to survive and grow its audience.

As for Netflix, I hope sincerely that their thinking on this issue evolves, and that they value the content they spend so much money creating enough to protect it for posterity. That's up to them, it's their studio, it's their rules. But I like to think they may see that light eventually, and realize that exclusivity in a certain window is very cool... but exclusivity in perpetuity could potentially limit the audience and endanger the work itself.

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[smalltestaccount]

196 Migration

If you’re not aware, the subreddit r/196 is going offline tomorrow (the 12th) in a protest along with multiple other subreddits against a decision reddit has made to their API pricing. 196 is one of the largest LGBT centric meme subreddits. The deal being that 196 will be shut down until reddit backs down from their stupid decision. Other subreddits are only going to be offline for a few days. 196 held this massive decision to a poll where about 60% said the subreddit should be privated indefinitely. Despite what people say, this will be an almost certain permanent end to the Subreddit. I think that anyone who believes that the chance of 196 coming back after the 12th has not thought it through very much and I consider this putting this to a poll to have been very stupid on the moderators parts as a lot of people clearly do not fully understand the likely outcome.

In short, Reddit is going to win this no matter how it’s sliced. Reddit will only back down their decision if the money they can squeeze from API pricing is larger than the loss in ad revenue from the protest. Many large subreddits that are closing will only be down for a few days. This results in a small dip in site usage, yes, but it definitely won’t cause significant issue to Reddit. However when all these subreddits come back there will be an uptick in site traffic, generating Reddit more money. The only way Reddit will lose money is with a decrease in active users, which is why some people want the subreddit to go down indefinitely, they want to leave Reddit and take many 196 users with them. Reddit definitely will not be backing down, the chance of that happening is minuscule. Therefore 196 will not come back.

196 is a special community on Reddit as it one of the largest subreddits with a strong LGBT presence and unique culture. 196 leaving will have many negative effects on the Reddit ecosystem. There are other LGBT subreddits that will very likely be shutting down too (for other reasons) such as r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns which is one of the largest trans subreddits. 196 has a large overlap with circle jerk subreddits, over the past year or so the relationship between 196 users and circle jerk subreddits has been quite important as they essentially have formed their own ecosystem as a place that LGBT teens and young adults feel comfortable in when Reddit as a whole is more dangerous. When 196 closes some people will leave for Tumblr TikTok and Twitter due to their main source of posts going dry. Circle jerk subs will start to reduce down to the users that do not consume content from 196, a group of people that is on average more conservative than the subreddits as wholes are with 196 users. This political shift on circle jerk subreddits will cause two things, 1: lgbt people feeling less comfortable on circle jerk subs and 2: circle jerk subs doing less circle jerking, due to less users and also a reduced interest in calling out bigoted posts on other subreddits. That will very likely become a negative feedback loop where circle jerk subs become increasingly similar to Reddit as a whole. And the effect that this will have on Reddit is going to be a general trend to become more conservative as the socially progressive community on Reddit shrinks with 196s departure. It’s likely a new or existing subreddit will replace 196 (a subreddit with less moderation tools and none of the user blacklists from 196), but by the time that subreddit comes about it will not reach the size 196 did. 196 leaving will have a permanent impact on Reddit as atleast some people will be reducing Reddit activity of leaving permanently. Reddit likely won’t become a new 4chan, but I would not be surprised if it became more similar to Facebook.

And a trans woman I must also feel the need to say that with r/traa and 196 very likely closing a large community of transfems will be displaced online. In the past 6 years Ive been a trans woman on the internet I can say fairly confidently that Reddit has been one of the most popular sites for trans women to congregate at, along with discord. Trans women are very likely a majority of the trans community on Reddit however on other sites like TikTok and here on tumblr trans women are definitely a smaller minority of the community. I feel like I should’ve just put that out. Right now is a scary time to be a young trans woman and two of the largest online places of support for young trans women closing doors will have negative impacts on the trans community.

Many 196 users who are smart enough to see what lies ahead are finding ways of congregating outside of Reddit. Besides the small social media sites that will obviously die before getting off the ground, tumblr is the most recommended place to call a new home. I know this sounds familiar to what happened with twitter, and the idea of Redditors coming to tumblr is quite scary. But I assure that 196 users are not dissimilar to tumblr users.

196 users migrating here to tumblr are using the tags #196 and #r/196. I will be posting some of my 196 and old r/traa posts under these. As a pseudo archive. I’ll also reblog and post as some of my favorite posts I wish to remember. Hopefully a migration of 196 users to tumblr is successful (though unlikely), if that happens I will try to post memes in the style of 196 posts. I know that I am an incredibly small account that is mostly inactive, so neither this post nor future posts will get much visibility. But I want to be here to support those trying to migrate

[thatsveryvortex]

Writing Tools for Planning Your Story

I've tried tons of writing apps and sites, so you don't have to. Here's a list of free sites to plot out your novel, with my review and some images of how I use it.

Milanote

Milanote is like having a giant pinboard with folders. You can upload anything onto it [yes even your main doc] and then draw over it or connect things with lines and arrows

Milanote lets you add up to a hundred things for free, not including drawing. This is one of the downsides of the site as I've found myself reaching that limit recently.

For me, the best part is being able to draw over stuff, and the color swatches.

Milanote is a lot less structured than other sites I've used, and personally, I don't think their templates are worth using.

8/10 overall, Milanote is what I mainly use. Here are some pics of how I use it:

Miro

Miro is a flowchart website mainly used for corporate jobs, however, it can be a great plotting tool for that reason

Miro has a lot of great starter templates if you are looking for a more structured freeform experience. It also comes with a blank page as well.

Unfortunately, I'd argue that it's a bit of a hard tool for beginners to use without a template, I've learned copy-paste is my best friend with Miro the hard way.

It's much better than most platforms at making timelines though.

It has a limit of three boards which is a bit disappointing but overall, I think it's worth the try.

5/10 Miro is very middle of the road for me due to the limited ability to customize things and the free limit. Here are some pics:

[I wrote that part weeks ago, I am now fully using Miro and believe it's the best for making timelines and charts, I just wish it let me make more boards 8/10]

Hiveword

This might be someone's jam, I can't really say it's mine though.

First off, the unpaid version is really just a few boxes saying "Write a summary here." which makes it just not worth it in my opinion

There really isn't any way to customise things which is my favorite part of most of these softwares

I've barely used this, so maybe there's something I'm missing but

1/10, Just use Google Docs at this point, here's a couple pics

World Anvil

People like this software, it's mainly used for tabletop, which is just a different way of writing adventure, and I've seen it recommended by authors.

Unfortunately, I'm going to disagree with a lot of people and say it's hard to use and isn't even really good at plotting.

I may be biased on this one as every time I've tried to use it in the past I've struggled. However, it seems like another just write it in a document and create a folder.

I'd say it's closer to an organizing tool, but even then just use something else.

3/10, I have nothing to say about it but maybe you'll enjoy it, all here are two photos

Campfire

This is the one I think I've heard the most about, but have never actually tried.

right off the bat, I'm going to say this is 100% worth it, you'll see at the end with the photos but this is like if Miro and World Anvil had an organization baby.

It's extremely easy to understand, and it makes timelines, it's more for writing your whole book but idk about that yet.

7/10, its themes are really pretty but it limits how much you can do to 20 I believe. Here are the photos

That's all for now, honestly, I think you should use Miro if you are looking to plot things out, and Milanote if you want to collect and organize your thoughts for writing, as that's what I do. Obviously what I like won't be for everyone, but hopefully, this helped you see some options

[nyxshadowhawk]

A Retrospective on Harry Potter

Why did I like it in the first place? What about it worked? Where do I go from here?

I have decided to give up Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s reputation now stinks to high heaven. At this point, she is quite indefensible. And even if that weren’t the case, she is not someone that I would want to associate with anyway. Meanwhile, the internet has not only turned against her, but against Harry Potter itself. An innocent question on Reddit, about which Hogwarts Houses the ATLA characters would be in, got downvoted to oblivion. Innumerable Tumblr threads insist that fantasy fans should get into literally anything else (suggestions include Discworld, Earthsea, The Wheel of Time, and Percy Jackson). And now that Harry Potter is no longer a sacred cow, there has been a recent slew of video essays that rip it to shreds, attacking it for its poor worldbuilding, unoriginality, and the problematic ideas baked into the original books (like the whole SPEW thing), etc. Those criticisms always existed, but now they’re getting thrown into the limelight.

It pains me to see such an ignoble downfall of Harry Potter’s reputation. If Rowling had just kept her damn mouth shut, Harry Potter would have aged gracefully, becoming a beloved children’s classic. I'd still plan to introduce it to my own kids one day (after Rowling dies and the dust settles). It’s not surprising that not all aspects of it have aged well, since it’s been more than twenty years since its original publishing date, and everything starts to show its age after that long. I acknowledge that most of the criticisms of the series that I’ve seen lately are valid, and I’ve read plenty of better books. And yet, when I return to the books themselves, even with the knowledge of who JKR really is inside my head, I still really enjoy reading them! There’s still a lot about them that I think works!

None of the other things I’ve read have had as collossal of an impact upon my identity, my values, and my own writing as Harry Potter. It’s hard to move on from it, not just because it’s something I enjoy, but because I have to literally extract my identity from it. I don’t know who I’d be without Harry Potter. I don’t know what my work would look like without Harry Potter. I don’t know how to carry it with me as just another piece of media that I like, as opposed to a filter for who I am as a person. So, with all that in mind, I have to ask myself why I liked Harry Potter so much in the first place. If I’m going to move on from it, then I have to be able to define and isolate the things about it that I want to keep with me. Something about it obviously worked, on a massive scale. So what was it?

It’s not the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding is objectively quite terrible, especially in comparison to that of other fantasy writers who knew what they were doing. At best, it’s inconsistent and poorly thought-out, and at worst it’s insensitive or even racist. Is it the characters? The characters are, in my opinion, one of the stronger parts of the story. But I felt very called-out by one of the many online commentators, who said that anyone who identifies with Harry is too cowardly to write self-insert fic. (I do not remember who said it or even which site it was on, but I distinctly remember the phrase, “Reject Harry Potter, embrace Y/N.”) The reason why people get so invested in Harry Potter’s characters is because they’re easy to project upon, and it’s possible that my love of Harry comes more from over a decade’s worth of projection than anything else. The incessant arguments over characters like Snape, Dumbledore, and James Potter ultimately stem from the fact that these characters do not always come across the way Rowling wanted them to. As for the writing itself, it’s decent, but not spectacular. Harry Potter is something of a sandbox world, with less substance than it appears to have and a crapton of missed opportunities, making it ripe for fanfic. For more than ten years, I’ve been doing precisely that — using Harry Potter as a jumping-off point to fill in the gaps and develop my own ideas, some of which became my original projects.

So what does Harry Potter actually have that sets it apart? Why are people so desperate to be part of Harry Potter’s world if the worldbuilding is bad? What, specifically, is so compelling about it? I think that there’s one answer, one thing that is at the center of Potter-mania, and that has been the underlying drive of my love of it for the past decade and a half: the vibe.

Harry Potter’s vibe is immaculate.

You know what I mean, right? It’s not actually a product of any specific trope, but rather a series of aesthetic elements: The wizarding school in a grand castle, with its pointed windows and torches and suits of armor, ghosts and talking portraits and moving staircases, its Great Hall with floating candles and a ceiling that looks like the night sky, its hundreds of magically-concealed secret doorways. Dumbledore’s Office, behind the gryphon statue, with armillary spheres in every single shot. Deliberate archaisms that evoke the Middle Ages without going as far as a Ren Faire: characters wearing heavy robes, writing with quills and ink on parchment instead of paper, drinking from goblets, decorating with tapestries. Owls, cats, toads. Cauldrons simmering in a dungeon laboratory. Shelves piled with dusty tomes, scrolls, glass vials, crystal balls, hourglasses. Magical candy shaped like insects and amphibians. A library with a restricted section. A forbidden forest full of unicorns and werewolves. That is the Vibe.

There are five armillary spheres just in this shot. They are unequivocally the most Wizard of tabletop decor.

There’s more to it than just the aesthetic, though. The vibe is present in something that writers call soft worldbuilding.

There’s a phrase that writers use to describe magic systems, coined by Brandon Sanderson: hard magic and soft magic. Sanderson’s first law of magic is, “An author’s ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” A hard magic system has clearly-defined rules — you know where magic comes from, how it works and under which conditions, how the characters can use it, and what its limitations are. Examples of really good hard magic systems include Avatar: The Last Airbender and Fullmetal Alchemist. If the audience doesn’t understand the conditions under which magic can work, then using magic to get out of any kind of scrape risks feeling like the writer pulled something out of their ass. It begs the question, “Well, if they could do that, then why didn’t they do that before?”

You may come away from that thinking that having clearly-defined rules is always better worldbuilding than not having them, but this isn’t the case. Soft magic isn’t fully explained to the audience, but that doesn’t matter, because it isn’t trying to solve problems — its purpose is to be evocative. Soft magic enhances the atmosphere of a world by creating a sense of wonder. If your everyman protagonist is constantly running into cool magical shit that they don’t understand, then the world feels like it teems with magic, magic that is greater and more powerful than they know, leaving lots of secrets to uncover. Harry Potter, at least in the early books, excels at this. The soft magic in Harry Potter is what got me hooked, and I think it’s what a lot of other people liked about it, too.

The essence of soft magic is best summed up by this scene in the fourth film, in which Harry enters the Weasleys’ tiny tent at the Quidditch World Cup, only to find that it’s much bigger on the inside. His reaction is to smile and say, “I love magic.”

That’s it. That’s the essence of it. You don’t need to know the exact spell that makes the tent bigger on the inside. You don’t need to know how Dumbledore can make the food appear on the table with a flick of a wand, or how he can make a bunch of poofy sleeping bags appear with another flick. You don’t need to know how and why the portraits or wizard cards move. You don’t need to know how wizards can appear and disappear on a whim, or what the Deluminator is, or where the Sword of Gryffindor came from. You don’t need to know how the Room of Requirement works. Knowing these things defeats the purpose. It kills the vibe, that vibe being that there is a large and wondrous magical world around you that will always have more to discover.

One of the best “soft magic” moments in the books comes early in Philosopher’s Stone, when Harry is trying to navigate Hogwarts for the first time:

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk. —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 8

Many of these details don’t come back later in the series, which is a shame, because this one paragraph is super evocative! It establishes Hogwarts as an inherently magical place, in which the very architecture doesn’t conform to normal rules. Hogwarts seems like it would be exciting to explore (assuming you weren’t late for class), and it gets even better when you learn about all the secret rooms and passages. The games capitalized on this by building all the secret rooms behind bookcases, mirrors, illusory walls, etc. into the game world, and rewarding you for finding them. The utter fascination that produces is hard to overstate.

Another one of the most evocative moments in the first book is when Harry sees Diagon Alley for the first time, after passing through the magically sealed brick wall (the mechanics of which, again, are never explained). This is your first proper glimpse at the wizarding world and what it has to offer:

Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, “Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad....” A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever —" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon.... —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5

What works so well here is the magical weirdness of wizardishness juxtaposed against normalcy. Eeylops Owl Emporium is just a pet shop to wizards. A woman makes a very mundane complaint about the price of goods, but the goods happen to be dragon liver. Broomsticks are treated like cars. All of these small moments contribute to the feeling of the wizarding world being alive, inhabited, and also magical. It gets you to ask the question of what your life would be like if you were a wizard. What do wizards wear? What do they eat? What do they haggle over and complain about? What do they do for fun?

In Book 3, Harry enjoys Diagon Alley for a few weeks when he suddenly has free time, and we get to experience the wizarding world in a state of “normalcy,” when he isn’t trying to save the world. He gets free ice creams from Florean Fortescue, gazes longingly at the Firebolt, and engages with delightfully weird people. He’s a wizard, living a (briefly) normal wizard life among other wizards in wizard-land. And that is fun. It’s so fun, that people want that experience for themselves, enough for there to be several theme parks and other immersive experiences dedicated to recreating the world of Harry Potter.

One of the greatest things about Universal was its phenomenal attention to detail. You can hear Moaning Myrtle’s voice in the women’s bathroom, and only the women’s bathroom. The walls of the Three Broomsticks have shadows of a broom sweeping by itself and an owl flying projected against the wall, so convincingly that you’ll do a double take when you see it. Knockturn Alley is down a little secret tunnel off of the main street, and that’s where you have to go to buy Dark Arts-themed stuff. It’s really well done.

Another thing that contributes to the vibe, in my opinion, is that the wizarding world is slightly macabre. They eat candy shaped like frogs, flies, mice, and so forth, and they have gross-tasting jellybeans. In the film’s version of the Diagon Alley sequence above, there’s a random shot of a pet bat available for purchase. In the third film, when Harry is practicing the Patronus Charm with Lupin, the candles are shaped like human spines. In the first book, this is Petunia’s description of Lily’s behavior after she became a witch:

Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school, and came home every holiday with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 4

I remember reading this for the first time, and it just kind of made intuitive sense to me. I suppose it fits into the “eye of newt and toe of frog” association between magical people and gross things, but somehow it works. Unfortunately, this is retconned later with the knowledge that wizards can’t use magic outside school, but before that limitation gets imposed, the idea of Lily amusing herself by turning teacups into rats seems like an inherently witchy thing to do.

That association between magic and the macabre shows up elsewhere, as well. In The Owl House, Luz’s interest in gross things is one of the things that marks her as a “weirdo” in the real world. When she goes to the magical world of the Boiling Isles, weird and gross stuff is absolutely everywhere. That world’s vibe leans more towards the macabre than the whimsical, but it works because you sort of expect the gross stuff to exist alongside the concept of witches, and that they would be an intrinsic part of the world they inhabit. You don’t question it, because it’s part of the vibe.

(The Owl House is one of the few things I’ve encountered that has a similar vibe to Harry Potter, but it’s still not the same vibe. In fact, The Owl House outright mocks the expectation that magical worlds be whimsical, and directly mocks Harry Potter more than once. The overall vibe is much closer to Gravity Falls.)

The Harry Potter films utilize a lot of similar soft worldbuilding with the background details, especially in the early films that were still brightly-colored and whimsical. For example, the scene in Flourish and Blotts in the second film has impossibly-stacked piles of books and old-timey looking signs describing their subjects, which include things like “Celestial Studies” and “Unicorns.” When Harry arrives in the Burrow in the same film, one of the first things he sees is dishes washing themselves and knitting needles working by themselves, taking completely mundane things and instantly establishing them as magical. In that Patronus scene with Harry and Lupin, the spine-candles and a bunch of random orbs (and the obligatory giant armillary sphere) float around in the background. One small detail that I personally appreciate is the designs on the walls above the teacher’s table in the Great Hall, which are from an alchemical manuscript called the Ripley Scroll:

It’s all these little things that add up to produce The Vibe.

Obviously, much of the vibe is expressed very well in John Williams’ score for the first three Harry Potter films. The mystical minor key of the main theme, the tinkly glockenspiel, the strings, the rising and falling notes that mimic the fluttering of an owl, the flight of a broomstick, or the waving of a wand. That initial shot of the castle across the lake as the orchestra swells, as the children arrive at their wizarding school:

If you grew up with Harry Potter, just looking at this image gives you The Vibe. The nostalgia hit is definitely part of it, but The Vibe was already there, back when you were a child and you didn’t have nostalgia yet.

In my opinion, only Williams’ score captures this vibe — the later films, though their scores are very good, do not. But the soundtrack of the first two video games, by Jeremy Soule (the same person who did Skyrim) absolutely nails it. This, right here, is Harry Potter’s vibe, condensed and distilled:

This is why I feel invalidated by the common advice “just read another book.” I have read other books. I’ve read plenty of other books, many of which are wonderfully written and have left an impact on me. But there’s still only one Harry Potter. To date, there’s only other book that has filled me with a similarly intense longing for a fictional place, and that is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. That book deliberately prioritized atmosphere over everything else in the story, and actually lampshades this in-universe. The Night Circus has a plot and it has characters, but it’s not about its plot or characters. It’s about the setting and its atmosphere. It swallows you up and transports you to a fictional place that is so evocative and so magical that you just have to be part of it or you’ll die. And even then, The Night Circus has a different kind of vibe from Harry Potter. In this particular capacity, there’s nothing else like Harry Potter.

The thing is, I don’t think Rowling was being as deliberate as Erin Morgenstern. (In fact, given many of Rowling’s recent statements, I question how many of her creative choices were deliberated at all.) She was throwing random magical stuff into the background without thinking too hard about it, which works when you’re writing a kids’ story, but stops working when you try to age it up. Actually, scratch that — soft worldbuilding is definitely not just for kids! The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system, for crying out loud, and Tolkien is the original archmage of worldbuilding. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that prioritizing atmosphere over meticulousness is bad worldbuilding. That is a valid way to worldbuild! Not everything needs to be clearly explained, not everything needs to make sense. The problem is that Harry Potter doesn’t balance it well. Certain things do have to be explained in order for the magic to play an active role in the story (and the setting of a magic school lends itself to that kind of explanation), but no rules are ever established for the kinds of magic that need rules. When you begin thinking about the rules, you’re no longer just enjoying the magic for what it is. At worst, you begin running up against the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

It wasn’t actually the “aging up” of the story that did it in, per se, but rather, the introduction of realism. The early books were heavily stylized, and the later books were less so. A heavily stylized story can more easily maintain the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. That’s why, for example, you don’t ask why the characters are singing in a musical — you just sort of accept the story’s outlandish internal logic, and the inherent melodrama of it doesn’t take you out of the story. Stylized stories are more concerned with being emotionally consistent over being logically consistent. The later Harry Potter books changed their emotional tone, but without changing the worldbuilding style to compensate.

In addition to the more mature themes and darker tone, Harry Potter introduced more realism as it went, but Rowling did not have the worldbuilding chops to pull this off. There’s the basic magic system stuff: When you begin thinking about it too hard, something like a Time-Turner stops being a fun magical device, and starts threatening to break the entire story. Then there’s the characters: Dumbledore leaving Harry on the Dursleys’ doorstep in the first book is an age-old fairy tale trope that goes unquestioned, but with the introduction of realism in the later books, it suddenly becomes abandonment of a child to an abusive family. The exaggerated stereotypes of characters like the Dursleys become tone-deaf. The fun school rivalry of the House system is suddenly lacking in nuance. And then there’s the shift in tone: The wizarding world that we were introduced to as a marvellous place is revealed to be dystopian. You start thinking about how impractical things like owl messengers are, you start wondering if Slytherin is being unjustly punished, the bad history appears glaringly obvious, the quaint archaisms become dangerously regressive. Oh, and the grand feasts are made through slave labor! The wizarding world suddenly feels small and backward instead of grand and marvellous. J.K. Rowling’s bigotry throws it all into an even harsher light.

This is why I’ve always preferred the early books and films to the later ones. There’s a lot of things I like about the later ones, but they’re not as stylized — they don’t have The Vibe. Thinking about things too hard is just a necessary condition of adulthood, but it’s still possible to tell a dark, mature story that is highly stylized. I really think JKR could have better pulled off that shift if she was a more competent worldbuilder. But it is painfully obvious that she did not think things through, and probably didn’t understand why she had to. In her defense, she did not know that her story would end up being one of the most scrutinized of all time. As it stands, her strength in worldbuilding was in the softer, smaller, deliberately unexplained moments of magic that were there just to provide atmosphere. And there were less and less of those as the books went along.

Pretty much all the Harry Potter-related content released since the last film — including Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, Hogwarts Mystery, Hogwarts Legacy, Magic Awakened, and that short-lived Pokemon Go thing — have been unsuccessful attempts at recreating The Vibe. In fact, the only piece of supplemental Potter content that I think had that Vibe down pat was the original Pottermore, back when it was more of an interactive game. And of course that got axed. That was right around the time things started going downhill.

Some of the art from Pottermore’s original Sorting quiz.

So what now? Well, that’s the question.

I think I can safely say that The Vibe was the reason I liked Harry Potter. It’s the thing I still like the most about it. I’ve spent years chasing it, like an elusive Patronus through a dark wood. If I can capture and distill that Vibe, and use drops of it in my own work, then perhaps I won’t need Harry Potter anymore.

I'm gonna write the story that I wish Harry Potter was, and when I'm a famous author, I won't become a bigot. I'll see you on the other side.

[deantfwinchester]

Hands

Pairing: No-Outbreak!AU, Joel x Teacher!Reader as usual (let's just assume these No-Outbreak Joels are all the same couple tbh), established relationship

Summary: Friday nights are reserved for sweatpants and relaxation, of course. But when Joel's work week leaves his hands a bit worse for wear, the night may need to include a break for a little extra attention.

Warnings: extreme fluff once again. expect it at this point. i'm a one-trick pony, i fear.

A/N: finally got around to putting one of my many bulleted notes-app idea fics into paragraph form again! Will we get another one before the year's out? It's anyone's guess! -_-

——————

Friday nights are your favorites. No dinner to cook or rattling rolodex of tasks to come in the next twelve hours give you both a little room to breathe — to gently unwind from yourselves and into one another. It’s typically quiet, and when it isn’t, the volume is born of laughter from games or stories the three of you share.

Joel comes home from an exceptionally long week. You know he’s been on site every day—the whole team has—working longer and longer hours to wrap up the latest project before the client’s deadline. You’re pleased to hear his keys rattle in the door not long after five o’clock, and relieved because the air’s rapidly cooling earlier each night. Daylight Savings time is coming to an end, and today he barely beat the sunset getting home. 

You know the hour means little, however, and are less than astonished at the weary grin he bears on catching sight of you and Sarah on the couch when he walks in the room. She’s already got her purse on her shoulder, eager to head out when her friends arrive, and she’s excitedly recounting the events of the trailer for the movie they’ll be catching tonight. He stands idly in the doorway for a moment, just listening to the two of you chat. You make brief eye contact and smile back, assuring you know he’s there. Neither of you wants to interrupt her avid storytelling.  

“Well don’t you sound excited?” he says when she pauses to catch her breath. You both turn to greet him, and he moves more quickly toward you as you attempt to rise, gesturing to you to remain seated. He’ll come to you both.

He plants a kiss on top of Sarah’s head before leaning down to kiss you as he does each night. You place a hand on his chest and pause when he pulls back to get a good look at his face. You see the fatigue in his droopy-eyed smile, but can’t say anything to him. You already know it’s mirrored in your own expression.

The doorbell rings before either of you can speak again, and Sarah jumps up to head out the door. You wish her a good night, and he follows her to the door, checking for a familiar parent in the driver’s seat and seeing her off. You see him hand her some cash to go with his reminder to make good decisions, and he hugs her. You can’t help but giggle when she takes it with a wide smile.

He turns to you laughing when he sees she’s in the car, and shuts the door.

“What?” he asks, brow furrowed in confusion, but amused at the sound of your laughter.

“Smart girl. I gave her a 20 before you got home,” you grin back at him. He stills in understanding and rolls his eyes. 

“You couldn’t tell me that two minutes ago?” he asks you in mock exasperation.

“But it’s so much funnier this way!” you add, giggling again. You both know he’s wrapped completely around her finger, though she so innocently does not. It’s one of the first things you noticed about him. One of the first reasons you fell in love. 

He shakes his head fondly, and places a hand on his stomach, which begins to grumble softly at him. You raise your eyebrows and meet his gaze. “Any thoughts on dinner?” he asks, and you grin back at him in amusement.

“Handled. Pizza’s already on the way,” you respond and he feigns relief. 

“You’re brilliant.” he says, walking up and grabbing your hand on the back of the couch. You run your thumb in little circles on the back of his hand and give it a light squeeze.

“Duh. Now go get changed! It’s do-nothing time starting now,” you respond, patting the top of his hand in encouragement.

“You read my mind,” he says, leaning down for another quick peck before heading off into the bedroom to change out of his work clothes. Naturally, you’ve been in sweats for over an hour now, shedding your own outfit immediately, peeling the school day from your skin. The unspoken uniform for these Friday nights is extremely specific.

The pizza arrives before Joel can even return from the bedroom in a feat of incredible timing. You’re gathering plates and filling glasses with ice when he emerges ready for the night. He moves forward to help you grab the dinner, but you shoo him away to the couch. 

“Nope, I got this. You sit,” you say, lightly shoving his chest away. You leave no room for argument. He grumbles a bit and raises his hands, backing away to the living room. You follow behind him with the pizza and plates, and return once more for the drinks before settling next to him on the couch. He sits on one end, and you sit in the middle, leaving little room between you.

You lean forward, putting pizza on one plate you pass to Joel before grabbing your own, then settle back against the cushion, both sinking in so comfortably a nearly audible sigh fills the room. The comfort in this relief is palpable, and the decompressing can begin. You grab the remote and put on the series you’ve been binging together recently, more for background noise than anything else. 

A few slices and sitcom episodes deep, you’ve set your plates down on the coffee table. With your bellies comfortably full, you’ve somehow slumped deeper, though Joel into the couch and you into his side. His arm is draped over the back of the couch behind you, and you’re nearly laying on him, head propped against his shoulder. 

You hold his free hand in both of yours and absently play with his fingers for a second when you notice the aggressive wear this week has lent his hands. They’re a raw, angry red at the knuckles; his nails are cracked in some places and peeling in others. Moving your fingers gently down toward his wrist, you focus more directly on the state of his, catching sight of a few hangnails and stretched cuticles that can’t be comfortable. He looks down as you begin to worry them beneath the soft pads of your own fingers, and you meet his gaze, brows furrowed as you look between his face and hands. 

“Keep doing that, please,” he says with a sigh before closing his eyes, “I wait all day to feel your hands on mine. They’re so soft.” He lifts your hand to his lips before pressing a feather-light kiss to your knuckles. He loves the delicate, reverent way you play with his hands, like they’re small, fragile things in need of tender attention. You take his hand once again into both of yours and gently rub it between them, looking back up at him, concerned. 

“How do yours feel? They look like they’re hurting you,” you gnaw a bit at your bottom lip in thought, and he tries to assuage your worry.

“I’m alright, darlin’. Nothing worse than I’m used to,” he says. He knows from your deepening frown that you’re less than satisfied with this response.

You couldn’t care less if he’s used to it, he shouldn’t be. You know the protective callouses forged there don’t mean those hands are unfeeling in the slightest.

“Wait there. I’ll be right back,” you say, rising from his side and hastening to the bedroom. It’s his turn to frown now, both in confusion and at the sudden draft that’s appeared at his side.

You return not a minute later with a small tote around your wrist, and hands filled with half the manicure items you own. You sit down next to him and unpack, laying clippers, files, cuticle oil, and two different hand creams — a lotion he’s seen you use regularly, and a jar that must be a new addition — on the coffee table in front of you, along with the selected polishes and remover you had in the tote bag. You’ve been meaning to do your nails, anyway. 

Joel looks incredulously at you, unsure where this is going. Not that he’s a stranger to nail polish — he raised a little girl on his own long enough to have worn the rainbow on his fingers, but tonight? 

“Sorry, no color for you today, honey. Certainly not before these are healed,” you say. He’d chip half your handiwork away by Monday afternoon anyway the way he’s been working lately. Facing him, you cross your legs on the couch and smile, holding your hand out expectantly for his. He raises his eyebrows at you, but places his palm gently in your own. 

You grab the clippers and get to work on the hangnails first. Any peeling skin or cuticle right there at the nail you clip as gently as possible, making note of the reddened and slightly swollen areas at the base of his nail from which they protrude. Those will need careful attention at the end. He doesn’t squirm or react in any way, but you know they’re more sensitive than he’s letting on. 

Next, you clip back any breakages and unevenness in the nails themselves. You’d never find Joel Miller with dirty hands — he gets them clean as soon as he gets home, but all the scrubbing it takes to keep them that way takes its toll. A little trim at their length might help reduce the need for so much each day upon his return. 

After clipping, you grab his first hand again and rest it gently in the palm of your left while your right files steadily to even any rough edges left behind and prevent further injury. It won’t take much, but you’re sure to get them smooth so they won’t catch on anything or bother him later on. 

The cuticle oil is next. He looks at it questioningly, clearly a bit skeptical, only having seen it a few times when you or Sarah used it. He’s never ventured so far himself. While you brush it gently onto each of his nails, you explain its purpose. 

“This’ll just help your nails get a little stronger. It’ll get them hydrated a bit, keep ‘em  from peeling so much when your hands get dry. It’s kinda crazy how much better this stuff is for your nails than even water is. Water’ll make the peeling worse, actually. Weird, huh?”

He just nods along, listening to you, content to learn something new as always. Finger by finger, you massage the oil into his nail and nail bed. After the first round you go back through to massage again, both to make sure no oily feeling is left behind, and to prolong the rapidly concluding process. He could use the attention, anyway.

Finally, you pick up the jar he identified as a new addition: a canister of a hand repair cream labeled for “Healing of dry or cracked skin.”

“Never seen that one before,” he says, reading the label, “What d’ya need this for? Your hands are never dry! I think they’ve been soft every time I’ve held 'em since the day I met ya,” he smiles at you, and you bashfully brush off the compliment. 

“I don’t need it. I use the other one,” you say with finality, opening the jar and pulling the first of his hands into yours. You don’t grab a large dollop of the stuff. You don’t want him to feel a disconcerting weight, grease, or stickiness from this unfamiliar formula, so you get a little and begin. You add a bit more each time you reach a new spot on his knuckles, palms, wrists. 

You take your time, gently massaging into those roughened, tender hands far more than a simple healing salve. He understands why you have the jar now, looking at you knowingly, and you smile back. No words need be exchanged.

Once you’ve finished the last finger and the last stroke on his hands, you squeeze the one in your own, then pat it gently with your other, “There. Gotta feel better now, yeah?”

Joel stares at you like he just watched you reach up and place the moon in the sky, if for no reason other than to light his path. 

“Like you wouldn’t believe. Thank you sweetheart,” he says, squeezing your hand back and smiling reverently at you. You blush beneath his gaze and look away, unsure what to do with the admiration rolling off of him in waves. You lean back against the couch, file in hand as you start going at your own nails. 

“Good. Don’t let 'em go that long again, either. Where they start hurtin’ ya? Maybe we oughta make this a weekly thing. Manicure night? Been needing someone to do my right hand,” you grin, wiggling the corresponding fingers at him. He smiles back at you, then reaches over and pulls you toward his side, back to your original position laying against him, head resting once again on his shoulder.

“Sounds like a plan,” he says fondly into your hair, planting a kiss to your head in the process. You get comfortable once more, foregoing any plans to do your own nails tonight. You both know those “manicure nights” will be for him — and you’ve got Sarah to do your right hand already, when you do hers.

You grab the same free hand once again and admire your work, then lace your fingers between his own, and rest your twined hands on his leg. You’re satisfied knowing the hand behind you on the couch is comfortable now, healing from the week’s toils and melting into the comforting haze of the early autumn evening.

[ms-demeanor]

Hi, sorry to bother you, but we spoke a few months ago about Tumblr Support’s response to seizure and eyestrain inducing ads. And while it is good to report that they’ve added a feature to report those ads, I wanted to ask for some advice

I’ve messaged staff no less than ten times about this feature not working. The same ads show up on my dash, over and over again, no matter how many times I report them. I’m up to date with my software, and still I’m put in danger by being on this site, and I can only use mobile as I do not have a desktop

Should I just quit tumblr at this point? Staff really don’t seem to care. I tried my best to give them my patience, but this has been disappointing for months now, and none of it is getting solved regardless of how much people message them. Is there anything we can actually do about it? Nobody outside our sphere is taking notice

Some of this unfortunately just has to do with the way that ads are served. Reporting the ad will get that instance of an ad removed after a certain number of reports, but depending on how that ad is served, you might be seeing the same flashing visual ten times and the ad system considers it a different ad each time (think of it like ads on a bus - you are reporting the ad on bus 249, but not the ad on bus 250 even though they are showing you the same image; sometimes the flashing image will be one campaign - so all on bus 249 - and it won't get served to you again, sometimes the flashing image will be scattered in a dozen different campaigns with different names and metadata perhaps with the explicit purpose of getting past user reports because advertising is a garbage industry full of horrible shitheads). Unfortunately I'm not sure there is anything that can be done beyond reporting the individual ads in terms of getting them removed; online advertising is generally minimally supervised by humans, which is how you end up with things like starvation-bait diet ads getting blasted all over the site with a terrible history of pro-ana networks.

Since you're using tumblr exclusively on mobile, it seems like your two other options are:

Turn off autoplay which should (in theory) stop any video (including ads) from playing in the app unless you allow it. Here's how to do that on iOS and Android.

Use the app exclusively from your mobile browser with an adblock enabled (won't work for iOS, changes the user experience pretty drastically).

There's one possible other option that I am not *recommending* I am simply stating that it is an option to explore: you could look into an adblocker like AdLock that does global video blocking on a mobile OS. The reason I'm not recommending it is that these kinds of adblockers cost money and are not known for being very reliable. It is something to investigate more if you are out of all other options

It seems likely that you've already turned off the autoplay, so that's probably not useful advice. If you haven't tried using tumblr in a mobile browser with ads blocked, that might be worth giving a shot before you give up on the app as a whole.

It's a really shitty situation and I'm sorry you're dealing with it.

[apenitentialprayer]

i know that as a catholic you just have to believe with what the church says but i really dont like the belief of the original sin, i feel like its such a horrible thing to believe about yourself and about other human beings too

There are actually ways of legitimately dissenting from less essential Church teachings in a way that leaves you in good standing with the Church; I'm not sure if Original Sin is one of those things, though, to be honest.

But, anon, I'm going to offer another perspective here, starting from a quote (perhaps ironically?) from my favorite heretic. One of the things that James Carroll believes is that Original Sin has been given a bad wrap. In Constantine's Sword, he says:

I referred to Augustine’s assertion of the idea that the human condition implies a perennial state of finitude, weakness, and sin, all of which will be overcome, even for the Church, only with the end of time. [...] Augustine is thus regarded as the father of a severe, flesh-hating, sin-obsessed theology, but that dark characterization misses the point of his insight. His honest admission of the universality of human woundedness is a precondition for both self-acceptance and the forgiveness of the other, which for Augustine always involved the operation of God’s grace, God’s gift. Only humans capable of confronting the moral tragedy of existence, matched to God’s offer of repairing grace, are capable of community, and community is the antidote to human woundedness. Augustine sensed that relationship as being at the heart of God, and he saw it as being at the heart of human hope, too. This is a profoundly humane vision.

I wish I had understood the spirit of this quote when I was in high school. I remember learning in my World History class that Islam teaches that all children are born good, and then the world makes them evil. And I remember my teacher asking how that compares with Christianity, and I raised my hand and said that Christianity teaches that all of us are born evil. Because I believed that at the time. And, really, the whole framing of that question was wrong and gave really simplistic representations of what Islam and Christianity teaches, but I don't think we're alone in having internalized that understanding, anon. And that's a shame.

I thin it's important to remember the worldview that the doctrine of Original Sin is actively defending us against; there was an idea, that gets called "Pelagianism" (the poor guy it got named after may not even have believed it), that said that humans were capable of being saved on their own, by their own power. Someone on this site recently asked what people's thoughts on Pelagianism were, so you can read my thoughts here. But to keep it short and sweet, I think Original Sin is an important doctrine because it saves you from the need to be perfect.

There are ways to treat Original Sin that I think are certainly unhealthy, and I think the doctrine can be a source of anxiety and fear. But I also think, very deeply, that Original Sin should be a reason why we treat ourselves and especially our neighbor with kindness and understanding. I can look at myself and say "What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate. […] For I do not do the good that I want, but I do the evil I do not want" (Romans 7:15, 19). And I can say that because I know I am ontologically wounded; that all of us have our weaknesses. That while we may still be in the moral wrong for committing a morally wrong action, our wills are compromised in a way that causes us to incline towards the comfortable and the easy rather than the good.

I wish I could go back in time and tell that class that Christianity does not teach that people are born evil. I wish I could go back and tell them that it teaches that we are born in a state of dis-integration, that we are wounded beings yearning for wholeness; alienated beings seeking everlasting belonging; beings lost in darkness, seeking the light. But I can say it now: the doctrine of Original Sin doesn't have to be an occasion to think you're depraved and without value, but it can be an invitation to come to terms with your own woundedness, because doing that (to use the words of Lutheran theologian Nancy Eiesland) "opens a space for the inflowing of grace and acceptance."

[spooky-bunnys]

I have this angsty haikyuu request if you’re alright with writing it

So (name) has a crush on Ryu but the problem is that Ryu doesn’t return the feelings for (name) instead Ryu has his heart set on kiyoko which would send (name) in a unrequited love situation and trying to forget and get rid of his feelings for Ryu even though it pains him to see Ryu being happy with someone else. (name) knows he and Tanaka would never be together he struggles with dealing with it

The sound of volleyballs hitting the gym floor filled the gym. Sugawara frowned softly at site of his oldest friend looking so upset. (Name) had asked Tanaka if he wanted to hang out after practice, unfortunately he was ignored again.

Sugawara slowly placed a hand on his shoulder. "Why do you keep doing this to yourself?" (Name) didn't answer, just stared as the male he's grown to love, chase after the other manager. (Name)'s heart breaking more and more. He'd grown to love the rowdy male with everything he has.

Sugawara sighed and softly grabbed (Name)'s arm. Pulling him away slowly. Trying to get him away from the scene. Most of the other players watched in pity. Except Tsukishima who huffed and rolled his eyes. He was gettig sick of tired of the situation. Everyone knew how (Name) felt about Tanaka. Well everyone except Tanaka apparently.

He was tired of seeing this everyday. So when practice finished Tsukishima made his way over to where (Name) was picking up the volleyballs. "Why do you keep chasing that idiot? We all know he doesn’t like you back. So why? Why keep trying when you know you won't succeed?" (Name) dropped the volleyball and stared at him.

(Name) opened and closed his mouth a few times, but didn't say anything. He turned and looked at the said male who was chasing after Kiyoko. Yet again. (Name) sighed and looked back at the male in front of him. "I don't know. I've liked him for so long. I honestly don't know."

Tsukishima sighed. "Well find someone else to fawn over then. I'm tired of seeing this everyday. Just move on already." (Name) flinched and looked down. Playing with his shirt. "Move on to who? Nobody would want to be with me." Tsukishima frowned more before sighing. "I-I like you."

(Name) froze. Had he heard that right? "What?" "I said, I like you idiot." (Name) looked so confused. "Why?" Tsukishima blushed and looked away. "I just do!" (Name) frowned. "That isn't an answer Tsukishima." Tsukishima clicked his tounge and took a deep breath. "Y-You're a good guy." (Name) held his breath. "You're always helping the idiots. You don't give up on them, even if others tell you to."

"You always have a smile and you always make my day better. You've helped me find a reason to enjoy volleyball. You make me enjoy playing and you make me not want to give up." (Name)'s eyes filled with tears. By now the whole gym was watching. Tsukishima pulled (Name) into a hug, and whispered into his ear. "So give me a chance please?"

~

Its been a month since (Name) and Tsukishima got together. Almost everyone was happy for them. Well everyone except Tanaka.

As a laughing (Name) entered the gym, Tsukishima followed behind him. An arm wrapped around his waist and a soft smile on his face. Sugawara entered behind the two clutching his sides. The other third and first years followed through. The second years had already been in the gym. It looked like they were having a great time.

So why does Tanaka's heart hurt so much seeing how happy his is? Noya raced towards the new happy couple. Jumping around the two. Momentarily frightening (Name) who stumbled back into his boyfriend. Sugawara started laughing again along with everyone else. Tanaka couldn't move his eyes fro the scene.

When was the last time (Name) even talked to him? Much less even looked in his direction. Tanaka frowned. Grabbing at the shirt were his heart was. His chest ached at the scene. Tanaka went to talk to (Name), but was interupted when his uncle grabbed (Name) by the back of his shirt.

Kenshin gave Tsukishima a look to release his nephew. Which he reluctantly did, not wanting to run laps. Like he had to do last time he refused to give up his boyfriend. (Name) laughed at his boyfriends pouting face. He was so glad he gave the taller male a chance. He was so happy, the most happiest he's ever been.

Tanaka watched the scene with pain filled eyes. Ennoshita gripped his shoulder softly. "I kept telling you to stop ignoring him, and to give him a chance. Look where that got you. Kiyoko is dating Yachi. (Name) got with Tsukishima. This was your own fault you know." Then Ennoshita made his way over to the group and ruffled (Name)'s hair. Earning a groan and pout from the said male.

Tanaka thought for a moment. If he had given (Name) a chance, could he had made him this happy? Would (Name) still light up the gym with his smile and laugh? Tanaka's frowned deepened and he looke away from the scene. He should be happy, so why is he so sad and hurt?

[fireflysummers]

So a lot of you lovelies have probably noticed that I haven't posted a whole lot of art here for the last while.

The reason is that I'm actually one of the artists over @dappervolk, which is a pet collecting/dress-up/roleplay browser game. We've been working to properly balance the site (making it less grind-y), add new events, and fill out the pet/clothing catalogue with many cool things!

I've really, really enjoyed being able to work on a team with other artists, and have learned so much about both dev and collaboration. These are some of the clothing items that I've contributed!

It's free, so if you want to play you just head over to their website! Also send me a friend request at fireflysummers (#5967).

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I tried to find out different synagogues' general attitudes on Zionism before converting?

I (late 20s) was raised Christian, but moved well away from that faith after being berated by my homophobic preacher grandma for supporting gay rights (she didn't know I myself was gay at the time). Currently I'd say I'm mostly agnostic, I don't have any strong feelings towards things like whether god exists or what the afterlife is like or anything like that, mostly I am just curious.

I've been interested in Judaism for a while for a lot of reasons. Mainly because, as far as I can figure, the idea of asking questions and debating meanings and forming your own opinion on these topics is actually encouraged unlike in Christianity, where it was a lot of being told not to question god and all that. I've wanted to try converting and seeing if that all feels right to me, but haven't been able to because I don't live somewhere with much of a Jewish population or any synagogues. However, I'll soon be moving to a city that does have a few options for that.

Here's the question: I know that asking individual Jewish people their stance on Israel is inherently antisemitic. I know that just because someone is Jewish doesn't mean they're a Zionist. And I know there's been a lot of antisemitism lately among the discourse surrounding the ongoing Palestinian genocide. However, if I'm going to be joining a community of Jewish people who are gathering because of that, there could very well be some strong feelings one way or another among them. I've also seen a lot of "online conversion" sites (which I've been informed are not reliable) that focus heavily on helping converts Visit To Their New Homeland Of Israel which...again, I know these services aren't reliable, but the way it was emphasized as ~part of the process~ rubbed me the wrong way, and I have no idea how reflective these sites are of actual IRL Jewish communities in general.

Basically, I worry that in my pursuit of conversion, I'll end up within a community of mostly people who support Israel, and if that's the case I'd rather know sooner or later. I know (or, I suppose, people on jumblr have said) that it's practically impossible to get a whole group of Jewish people who agree on any one thing within their faith but I'm betting there are communities who more or less agree on certain things. So WIBTA (A for antisemite in this case ig) if, when speaking to different rabbis, I asked about the general attitude on Zionism within the congregation(? if that's the word for it??) Is there any way to go about it politely?

What are these acronyms?

[ark-fork]

💌Love letters; 👨‍🌾content farm

Recently, a situation happened to my blogger friend that really pissed me off. It took me some time to put my thoughts in order and think about what I wanted to convey in this "podcast".

(Yes, this column is back because you, beloved and dear anons and not only, are constantly doing something crazy)

To begin with, let's start with something less complicated and scary but just unpleasant.

🔴Declarations of love to bloggers \ flirting with them.

Okay, I think this already sounds crazy, for the simple reason that you confess your love to a media personality in their inbox.

To begin with, this is not just strange - but also rude to some extent because a blogger does not always want such attention to themself. Many of them already have their soulmate in life, which is why most declarations of love or flirting are considered ignorance and an unpleasant event.

But still, the prevailing part of them may simply not be looking for a relationship here. Therefore, the best solution would be NOT to TRY to impose your feelings on them and not talk about it.

(Considering that some of you actually write something like: "Haha, I'm obviously going to regret this decision later, but I'll do it anyway because I want to").

If you like this blogger and personality, keep your flirting and declarations of love to yourself. You will spoil your relationship with them in this way. It's stupid and embarrassing for both of you if you still admit your feelings to him. Damn it, there may be a hundred, a hundred, or more of you who want to confess to them!

Ahem, I hope the general point can be grasped because I'm not so good at talking about anything and simply expressing my feelings about the situation as a whole and, for the most part, being hot on the head.

🟠Accusing someone of making low-grade content.

This particular situation infuriated me the most.

Now, I want to talk about what "content farm" is and what they are eaten with.

To begin with, the content farms are YouTube channels that strive for more views on this site and get to the recommendation pages for your kids. These are common unflattering animated videos with questionable context contained in them.

Their distinctive feature is repeated stock images of characters, stolen pictures, and designs, interweaving characters from completely unrelated works with the one based on which they make their videos.

Well, I hope this brief description of what content farms are is enough.

I don't understand people who see the obvious, admiration for the author of any show and create their content with care and soul, investing ideas and efforts, and accuse them of being one of these pathetic bastards from YouTube who absolutely don't give a fuck what they release on the platform, caring only about views and clickbait.

Before you write insults to the author in the anonymous mode in their inbox, think a little, damn it. Just think how much you insult a person who is burning with their art and ideas by saying such words to them while under the guise of anonymity, a fucking coward.

[sequencefairy]

the bad takes i have seen today! like never mind the like, fully racist garbage, but like, just the idea that for some reason the fandom? is owed? this content? for free?

that watcher should what? just fuckin' go under and leave 30+ people unemployed because your sorry ass who probably only watches Ghost Files and hasn't ever given them one fucking red cent because you've bitched about the cost of tickets to the tours and the cost of merch and the cost of shipping and everything fucking else under the sun is mad that now you will have to cough up six whole american dollars to get access to every single Watcher video at any time?

(also i am going to continue to repeat this ad nauseum, but like, i dunno man, make a fucking friend and share an account. if six bucks is too much, then three is probably more manageable, or even less, if you share it with more people. this is not hard.)

so you wanna watch Ghost Files? you subscribe during the month(s) that GF is coming out, watch what you want, catch up on stuff you missed, and then you fuckin' dip. no one at watcher is forcing you to sign up for an annual subscription.

so you think buying merch supports them more? firstly, merch costs money to make. then it costs money to fulfill. then it costs money to host a site from which your fans can purchase it. this is not even considering paying the artist who designed the merch in the first place. all of those costs? money not going into watcher's pocket, keeping them from being able to afford to make more fuckin' videos.

so you think the patreon would solve this? the patreon doesn't keep the lights on. it never did. it was a stopgap and a way to create a bit of community that would help drive the adoption of the new channel. patreon skims a percentage off the top of what they on every month, as well. same as youtube. same as anything else.

you lot talk a big game about how mad you are about watcher selling out and being previously anti-capitalist but like, seizing the means of video production for themselves is actually like, vigorously saying fuck you to the system they have been forced to work within. they are going to make the content they want to make, and they will no longer have to whittle it down to being fucking palatable for whatever youtube advertiser or fucking nonsense product agrees to sponsor the video.

[rin-tezuka]

hello to the previous anons

i am one of the fabled "ex-4chan tgirls." i spent 15 years on there. oops!

i will not be beating the "loser" or "virgin" or "jobless" allegations. but other than that, i liked to post anonymously. that was it. its more fun to post when someone cannot try to pwn you with something you said three years ago. there used to be a whole slew of sites like this (420chan! ch6! bubblebbs! sushigirl! old saovq!) & i liked most of them for this reason

some time ago you were able to start a thread about whatever weirdo topic you wanted (eg photography or linux windowmanagers or low budget eastern european pc games) & people would see it and reply, provided u were on the right board. no need to spend weeks/months ingratiating yourself in whatever community surrounds it before you "earned" permission to have a little chat. it was Nice, much kinder to my agoraphobia than most pseudonymous websites. then august 2014 happened, then 2016, then 2019, then covid,,,,,, ah well

there are multiple people on /lgbt/. a good number of them are bad people but there are different kinds of bad people. extreme social isolation makes you an asshole. i will not try to disprove this - tumblr alone is evidence of it. but you can be an asshole hikikomori and also read your lenin! or at least listen to audiobooks while playing runescape or whatever... i dont understand why people think these are contradictory.

consider also that 4chan has better word filters than tumblr (full regex support w/ the normal browser extensions). for a long time if u played ur cards right u could spend a whole day on your favorite midtier boards and not see a single racist or *phobe (at least til past few years when some sharty dork found a trove of botched surgery photos & i finally had to leave). vs tumblr or twitter where u always end up seeing someone trying to epically dunk on a screenshotted terf or whatever. ofc this has changed over time and i find it unbearable now - the people i actually wanted to talk to/read posts from have gradually left as the soyjakparty+groyper generations moved in. theres nothing left of interest to me there. also, im old now. but i would like for people to recognize that "ex 4chan" does not mean "uses racism to cope" or whatever, the same way "i use tumblr" doesn't mean "i make homoerotic marvel movie gifsets and/or will kill you if you imply transmisandry isn't the defining issue of our era." conversation websites have multiple people on them. 4chan has multiple boards. each board has multiple people on it.

that said /lgbt/ is an extraordinarily bad board. transphobia from other trans people is laser targeted in ways mumsnet users cannot fathom, as i'm sure you're all aware. i spent less than a year there and im still paying for it psychologically. occasional cute screenshottable post aside it is functionally a proana forum, except your therapist has no chance of understanding what it is. +like proana forums it is almost more accurate to think of the people stuck in it as victims rather than criminals. you cannot understand what that shit does to your psyche until you are the one suffocating in it. only "worth" going there if you are doing shulginesque n=1 research on selfharming with the computer, which is not something you should ever do. but /mu/+/jp/ 10-15 years ago were Not like that. (i miss u /bleep/...) long post sorry thank you for reading death to israel i will get drunk now yay :)

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[gallusrostromegalus]

so if AEIWAM has Rukia starting off as lieutenant, what's the justification for sending her to the Living World at the beginning of the story?

(in the manga, she doesn't get the lieutenant's position until after the end of the Soul Society Arc, even though everyone agrees she's the obvious candidate for it. the position is left vacant after Kaien Shiba's death, with the actual duties being split between 13th company's two 3rd seat officers -- whose names ofc I don't remember, but one of them is Isane Kotetsu's younger sister?)

(I seem to remember Rukia initially not actually having *any* officer's seat because Byakuya wanted her kept away from the more dangerous missions. which is why she's on bog-standard Hollow patrol at the beginning of the series)

(idk if this throws a wrench in your worldbuilding, but you've got a whole construction site going on so what's one more trip hazard? 😅)

About four months before the canon series begins:

-----

Ukitake probably would have been less upset if he'd received the message at the office. Or in person.

Instead, the message had been delivered to him by private courier at his home, right in the middle of dinner. Interrupting his dinner after a long day was enough of a reason for Ukitake to read the boy the riot act, but the sheer- What the hell was he thinking? Was he thinking at all??

He squinted at the letter again. Technically, it was only sent to him on the order of "The Kuchiki Clan" so this could, theoretically, be the nonsense of several different people, and not necessarily Byakuya specifically.

"Best to go address them collectively." He sighed, folding up the letter, sticking it inside his robe, and getting up.

"Sentaro? Kiyone?" he called from the hallway, putting on his Captain's Haori, as this was Official Business. "I need to step out for a bit, you two are in charge until I get back."

"Sir!" Sentaro saluted with enough force that he winced from hitting himself in the head.

"Let me come with you!" Kiyone said cheerfully.

"No, this is a private matter. You stay here and make sure the Division doesn't catch fire." Ukitake said, tying Sogyo No Kotowari to his belt. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, but the average mule could learn a thing or five about stubbornness from Byakuya and a show of force might be necessary. He waved to his two third-seats, and stepped out the door.

It wasn't a long walk, but the cool night air gave him some time and space to think.

Someone in the Kuchiki clan had filed a Legal Injunction to prevent the promotion of one Rukia Kuchiki to any seated officer's position. It had arrived less than an hour after Ukitake had sent in the paperwork to finally fill his long-open lieutenant's position, and Rukia wasn't back from her patrol in the Rukongai, so it wasn't Rukia who had told them. Someone was keeping a much-too-close eye on the 13th's operations, and interference like this was dangerous as well as disrespectful.

There was a brief pause at the front gate of the compound where the new guard attempted to rebuff Ukitake by saying he needed to have an appointment.

Hm. I actually am angry. Ukitake decided, as the little prick went on about the importance of security to the clan. He turned away from the guard, squared up in front of the gate, and with a moment's concentration, he kicked through the bar and both doors to the gate neatly off their hinges, quietly enjoying the way one of them cartwheeled over the grounds and around the main building until it came to a stop with a loud splash inside the koi pond.

"Ah. Ukitake-Taicho is on his way to the main house." The guard said over his communicator as Ukitake strode into the compound, having done a very sensible about-face. "Perhaps open the main doors for him."

Indeed, he watched the servants scramble to open the main doors to the house, the maid taking her post to greet him and the others scuttling away at speed to not be on the scene, one of them going so far as to dive into a nearby bush.

"Welcome Ukitake-taicho." Bowed the maid. "The family is currently at dinner."

"Oh good I can speak to all of them!" He beamed, breezing past her and any pretense of etiquette and striding into the family home.

There was an ominous rustle of blossoms in the courtyard.

"I love him like a son, Senbonzakura, but he's behaving rather badly and needs to be corrected." Ukitake explained, not breaking his stride save to give the zanpaktou a sideways glance. "-Unless this is somehow Ginrei's tomfoolery, in which case your master will probably turn him inside out before I have the chance."

Satisfied, the ancient tree stilled.

"Thank you." Ukitake nodded, turning down the hall and came to the dining room, whose doors seem to have been surreptitiously left open rather than risk the wrath of his foot.

"Jushiro," Byakuya spoke calmly as though this were no more than a social call. "-this is a surprise."

"It is a surprise!" Ukitake agreed, voice strained as he tried to keep his tone lighthearted, tossing the legal injunction onto the table. "-I thought you all knew better than to try to tell me how to run my division!"

Byakuya, two of his uncles, a spare cousin and a handful of houseguests all stared at the letter.

"Sorry to interrupt dinner, but the letter only designates that the directive has come from a clan member so I'm not entirely sure whose nonsense this is." Ukitake explained, hands casually on his hips as he waited for an answer.

Byakuya took a sip of water, set his glass down, delicately dabbed his lips dry, and then stood up. "It is my directive, and no-one else's." Behind him, Ginrei reached over to swipe the document from the table and read it at speed. "I think that I've been quite reasonable, given the circumstances."

"Would you like to elaborate on your reasoning here?" Ukitake asked, a sentence that most people recognized as a giant red flag to about face on whatever they had been doing.

If Byakuya had a spiritual animal though, it was probably a Bull, and he interpreted the red flag as a signal to charge. "Given the paucity of heirs the Kuchiki Clan possess, as the head of the family I cannot allow any member to be exposed to an unnecessarily risky position. I am perfectly content for Rukia to be a shinigami but I cannot condone the additional risk of being a seated officer, let alone a lieutenant."

"Are you INSANE?" Hissed Ginrei, staring bug-eyed at his grandson.

"I don't see what all the fuss is about." Byakuya huffed.

Ukitake pressed his hands together in front of his face and sighed deeply. Ah. Yep. That's what I thought.

"Captain Kuchiki." He said, tipping his hands forward for emphasis. "Do you want to step out into the garden with me?"

"Not particularly. I am in the middle of-" Byakuya began and Ginrei grabbed the entire tablecloth in both hands and pulled, ripping the entire meal from the table with a loud shattering of dishware and even Byakuya flinched at the severity of the display.

"OH HOW CLUMSY OF ME." he snarled at his grandson, sauce dripping off his kimono. "Why don't you take our guest out to the garden while this gets cleaned up?"

"...Yes." Byakuya muttered. "I understand the Koi pond has a new architectural feature."

Out in the garden, it was darker, calmer, and easier to speak freely.

"Do you remember the oaths you took when you joined the court guard, and the additional ones you took as captain?" Ukitake asked as they stood in front of the Kio Pond and observed the actually rather aesthetically pleasing way the door had managed to land mostly upright with one end buried in the mud at the and then tipped just enough to be caught by one of the carefully placed standing stones in the middle of the pond, fish gumming at it excitedly.

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Citizens of the Soul Society against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Court Guard and None Other, that I take this obligation freely, without any compulsion, reservation or secret purpose, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter." Byakuya recited easily.

"Good, good- um." Ukitake rubbed his hands and grimaced as he tried to figure out how to put this "-That bit about 'allegiance to the Court Guard and None Other' You understand what that part means, right?"

"That I have sworn loyalty to the Court Guard and nobody else." Said Byakuya, still confused.

"Right. Right- you understand how 'Nobody Else' includes your own family, right? You're Captain first and Kuchiki second, and an injunction like this looks like the head of a Noble House interfering with the running of the Court Guard and that a hell of a lot like Sedition." Ukitake growled the last word.

Byakuya's eyes widened and he was silent for a long moment. "...Ah."

"Gods help me if Yamamoto had seen this- you understand why we have these rules, right?"

"The warring clans era-" Byakuya started.

"-was still going on when I was a boy!" Ukitake yelped. "It's not long gone-!"

"-Least of all for the Captain-General." Byakuya nodded, wincing. "I. Have made a mistake. I will withdraw the injunction immediately."

"Thank you." Ukitake sighed.

"Thank you also for your. Discretion." Byakuya said, carefully eyeing Ukitake.

"He won't hear about it from me." Ukitake put his hands up in disengagement, the major crisis averted but still- "Look. Is this about how I run my division or is it about you and Rukia?"

Byakuya watched a particularly round red carp swim by, knuckle between his teeth, before answering. "...The Latter."

Ukitake nodded slowly, and took off his captain's Haori and undid Sogyo no Kotowari from his belt, folding up the coat and setting it aside on the ground, sword atop it. "There. My Official Business is concluded. May I speak to you as a friend?"

Byakuya glanced up at him and nodded, turning to face his longtime friend-

The crack from Jushiros backhand rang out through the night loud enough to startle the fish.

"How DARE you disrespect Rukia like that? Do you think she's stupid? Weak?" Jushiro snarled, wide eyed and furious.

Byakuya didn't react for a moment out of shock. Some of his colleagues always had violence on the table as an option (Unohana could reassure someone they would be alive for a long while yet in a way that make one's blood run colder than a january morning), but coming from Ukitake was a nasty surprise, like being bitten by a previously friendly dog. Byakuya's cheekbone reddened and Jushiro tried to pretend his knuckle wouldn't be bruised in the morning, but eventually Byakuya closed his eyes, turning away from him.

"...No."

"Then what's this about?" Jushiro demanded.

"She has to do a tour in the living world to be a seated officer." Byakuya spoke quietly. "-And even someone like Kaien Shiba was killed by a Hollow."

"I know." Jushiro sighed, rubbing his brow in frustration. "I know." he repeated, softly this time, dropping his hand and grimacing.

Byakuya looked sideways at him, eyes shining.

"Believe me- I've done everything I can to prepare her for this and then some. She's as ready for this as anyone can be." Jushiro tried to reassure him. "...But you can't keep her locked away from the horrors of the universe. That'll kill her more surely than anything she might face in battle."

Byakuya sighed, rubbing his face, but nodded. "No. You're right." He mumbled, looking exhausted. "She needs to go, and I have no right to stop her."

Jushiro opened his arms, offering Byakuya an embrace, and to his surprise, Byakuya stepped in, leaning heavily on his friend's shoulder.

"It hurts." Byakuya mumbled.

"I know. Gods above, I know." Jushiro sighed, rubbing Byakuya's shoulder. "Can you believe what you just said?" Byakuya nodded into his shoulder.

"As in, can you believe it right now?"Jushiro asked, pushing Byakuya back upright and holding him by the shoulders. "Because Rukia is going to be here any-"

"NII-SAMA! NIIIII-SAMAAAAA!!" Rukia almost shrieked with joy, bounding through the house behind them and sliding onto the porch with such force that she actually slid right off it and into the garden lawn, quickly recovering and sprinting for them. "GUESS WHAT?! UKITAKE-TAICHO JUST NOMIN- oh hey Ukitake-Taicho! What are you doing here?" She started and stopped.

"I lightly misjudged your arrival home, but don't worry, I haven't told anyone yet!" he smiled cheerfully.

"Oh- Um- Ukitake-Taicho nominated me to be his Lieutenant!" She beamed, all brightness and joy at Byakuya. "This means I can finally take my tour of duty in the Living World! I know, I know it's a serious responsibility but- Oh come on! It's so cool! I'll get to see what's been going on in the human world- there's that magical Cocola Juice that Kira tried that almost cured his depression, and building with the Tests Of Skill Renji saw-oh! Maybe I'll learn how to drive an Automobile like Momo did!"

Byakuya managed to smile softly at her as she rambled about the other wonders of the living world, and put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm very proud of you." he said, and meant it, even if he was holding back the and I'm absolutely terrified for you.

Rukia sniffled, eyes welling up with tears. "R-really?"

"Of course. You've grown into a fine shinigami. Hisana would be proud too." he smiled gently, opening his arms.

Rukia's lip wobbled, and then she tackled him for a hug, sobbing into his chest. Byakuya stroked her back as she babbled her apologies about being so excited but she's waited AGES for this and she wanted Hisana to see and-

Byakuya looked up at Jushiro as she cried, looking on the verge of tears himself. Jushiro squeezed his arm to reassure him before putting his own hand on Rukia's shoulder. "Rukia! This is a happy occasion!" he teased.

"Sorry, Ukitake-taicho." she sniffled, almost rubbing the tears away on here sleeve before stopping and pulling out a handkerchief, a habit Byakuya had spent the previous forty years ingraining into her.

"Why don't you go tell Ginrei the good news and I'll see if the kitchens can whip up something celebratory?" Jushiro smiled and Rukia nodded, bolting off, nearly sliding off the porch again, and calling for her adopted grandfather.

"Thank you, again." Byakuya whispered. "I had been exceptionally foolish. If the injunction had gone through- even without the captain-general's reaction- ...I would have terribly hurt her."

"Yes. Yes you had." Jushiro nodded. "But I'm glad I caught you in time, for both your sakes. Let's go see about getting Rukia some cake, or should we break out the good sake?" ***

The following morning, Byakuya awoke to a bright light and a piercing headache.

"Nii-sama?" Rukia called softly, and once again, Byakuya was forced to wonder what God had blessed Rukia with an apparent immunity to Hangovers.

"Rukia?" he groaned.

"Can I ask you something? Well. Two things?"

"Sure, just- ow. Come in and close the door after you?" He groaned, sitting up. Six AM, barely four hours since the party had wrapped up. Rukia entered, shutting the door against the early morning light and sitting down beside his bed.

"I- it occurred to me while I was cleaning up and I couldn't sleep, but- I promise, I won't be angry, but I need to know-" She sighed. "It's been one thing or another preventing me from doing my required tour of duty in the living world for AGES, and- You didn't have anything to do with that, did you?" Byakuya was silent for a moment. "Some of it, yes." He admitted.

"...Why?" She asked, sounding pained. "I- I promise I've trained and studied as hard as I can-"

"If something happened to you, after I promised Hisana- I- I don't know what I would do!" He snapped, entirely too distraught for this hour of the morning. "I'm sorry, Rukia. You're my sister and all I have left but it was still wrong of me to try to hold you back, just because I was scared of losing you."

Rukia stared at him, stunned, before she tackle-hugged him again, slamming him back into the bed.

"...I love you too, Nii-sama." She mumbled from the middle of his chest. "-But you are so STUPID sometimes!" she groaned from his chest.

"My Apologies." he sighed, staring up at the ceiling. "It's genetic, so you need to watch out for it too."

Rukia tipped he head up, squinting at him.

"That is. A Joke." he smiled down at her and she groaned, rolling off his chest to lie next to him, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, enjoying her presence while he could.

"What was the other thing you wanted to ask?" he said after a few moments of pleasant silence, the morning chorus of birds starting to sing.

"Oh yeah!" Rukia sat up, gesturing out in the general direction of the gardens with her thumb. "What's the front gate doing in the Koi pond?"