#work and no reverse image searching worked. I would go into it but no one is going to read these tags

[summer-fire]

Aberration

[kyouka-supremacy]

Mmmhh...

[lonelysheepling]

Recently read @queenofthequillandink ’s DPxDC crossover fic Unearthed, Reborn

I got inspired to draw character sheets for Danny, Sam, Jason, and Jazz’s vigilante personas. Here’s a link to the author’s drawings of their outfits (these were a vital reference for me when doing this so thank you so much for sharing them Quill) More commentary (like 7+ paragraphs plus 2 images) about this project and the designs below the “keep reading” line.

None of these thoughts I have for each character are in order, but I have a lot of commentary for these since this project was a lot more conceptual than my normal work. I also just like talking about my art/design process. If you ever find yourself wondering at some point why an element from the original design wasn’t included, the answer is that the removal was completely intentional and part of my grandmaster vision for this work and wasn’t because I just forgot about it entirely during the design process.

————————————————————————

Aconite (Sam)

This was the first one I sketched out, I wasn’t even sure at the time if I was going to fully commit to drawing all of them. I thought that Sam was gonna be the hardest since her description was way longer than the others, but then bird boy beat her out. I took a lot of creative liberties with her design, the bag was added bc I couldn’t figure out how to add pockets to the skirt. I was trying to avoid a joker color scheme so I had a lot of ref images that I got by searching like “purple green aesthetic” on Pinterest. The dark purple and dark forest/blueish green won out in the end. I desaturated a lot of my colors for her just to get as far away from the neon Gotham rogue aesthetic. I also added the bdsm harness over the armor to add more punk elements to her design, I know that in real life that would be very uncomfortable to wear over scalemail armor but sometimes we take creative liberties when they look sick as fuck. Also, I didn’t realize until I went to look for a reference for aconite flowers that aconite is wolfsbane! That was neat to learn! Also, the font I used for Aconite is called “zai Art School Calendar 1931”, I’ve used this a few times for other projects, it’s one of my favorite fonts. The ‘zai’ fonts the creator has are all very good.

Shade (Danny)

There wasn't much to add to this page. His outfit is pretty simple (besides the patterning). I wasn’t sure how to pull of an optical illusion pattern but I was reminded how I sometimes get an eyestrain induced headache when looking at someone wearing a patterned shirt with really thin stripes so I just leaned into the idea of a small/detailed hard lined pattern. I originally made 5 separate patterns for him and then turned them into stamp brushes in procreate. I only ended up using three of them, the one on the chest, the one on the legs, and the one on his hand. But, I imagine the patterns fade and shift when he moves, sort of like a lenticular print. I gave him constellation freckles and stylized the hair’s fade into white. The hair was inspired by how time-woods draws Martin Blackwood’s hair (linked: time-woods’s fanart of Martin Blackwood). Also put way too much effort into the teeth on the mask. I just like the chunky teeth design. Oh yeah and the font I used for him is called “Typewriter_Condensed_Demi”

Erinys (Jason)

Repeatedly ran into the issue of not having enough canvas space bc of my fervent need to thoroughly document and plan out how the wings worked. I also reversed the colors for the bodysuit & armor so the under layer was black while the armor plates were red. I only realized afterwards that I may have been inspired by the red centipedes in Rain World (linked: gif of the red centipede, don’t click the link if you’re unsettled/afraid of bugs/insects), artists subconsciously draw inspiration from other artists all the time though so I’m not like upset about it. I stand by it because it looks sick as hell. Also leaned into the magpie theming for the wings. I think the vigilante form was supposed to be reverse magpie coloring? I can’t remember, but I stuck with normal magpie coloring. The anatomy of how the wings connected to the collarbone was inspired by JayEaton’s Magpie Bridge Project. Reference image link. Link to the article the image is from. I didn’t draw the wing armor because I couldn’t figure out how to would work with the wing anatomy and I ran out of canvas space. Finally, the font used for him is “DIN Condensed” this is a default font, I would’ve used something more punk but I needed the text to be legible.

Insight (Jazz)

I did Jazz after I’d already finished the initial trio, so I had to switch to a new canvas for her bc I’d hit the layer limit multiple times on the previous one. I really do love doing that spiked under-eyelash thing with characters. Don’t know when that started. Anyway, I added the shoulder pads to her outfit to help break up the empty space. The golden eyes were a nice accent color since her design is very overwhelmingly green. Honestly the braid hairstyle and gold eyes really do obscure her identity, multiple times when drawing her I was worried that she didn’t really resemble Jazz enough. There wasn’t a drawing from the author for her so I only had the text description to go off of. I just realized that she sort of reminds me of a forest ranger and I don’t know what to do with that realization. I copy/pasted my drawing of her eyes when gold and recolored them to match her normal eye color. There were two layers for that, a hue shift and a hard light layer to emphasize the shadows.

Here’s what it looks like without the hue shift: 

It looks really cool and I’m 100% that color combo in another drawing down the line. Oh yeah and the font used for this sheet was “Euphemia UCAS”. It comes with Apple’s operating system, I use it as a neutral default text most of the time bc it’s nicer than helvetica but not overly fancy like Times New Roman—and why am I talking about fonts. ——————————————————————— Anyway, this project was very fun to work on. The alt text for this was its own endeavor, hope the folks using screen-readers don’t mind 4-5 paragraphs of description text. Also, I cannot remember for the life of me if Dani got a costume description, but if she does I’ll make sure to update this image set with a sheet for her. And to the author, QueenOfTheQuill, if you’re reading this message that I’ve left at the very bottom of this post below a read more line, thank you for the fic. It’s very good and I’m glad I caught it during my slow decent into DPxDC brainrot. I love the interactions between Jason and Tim, it’s nice seeing a revived Jason that’s not bogged down by pit rage. They definitely seem like they could’ve been good friends if not for the unfortunate circumstances that led them to meet in canon. Also, I’m sure Jazz will love interacting with Batman and Nightwing. So much psychological & childhood trauma to unpack with them. Feel free to use/share these images if you so desire and thanks again for your work.

[therobotmonster]

Please don’t use midjourney it steals art from pretty much every artist out there without any compensation. I didn’t know this at first and tried it but then during the creation process i saw water marks and Getty image logos (though I’m sure they’ve hidden that now) so it’s definitely stealing.

No, it isn't. And you've taken the wrong lesson from the Getty watermark issue.

AI training on public facing, published work is fair use. Any published piece could be located, examined, and learned from by a human artist. This does not require the permission of the owner of said work. A mechanical apparatus does not change this principle.

All we, as artists, own, are specific expressions. We do not own styles, ideas, concepts, plots, or tropes. We do not even own the work we create in a proper sense. All our work flows from the commons, and all of it flows back to it. IP is a limited patent on specific expressions, and what constitutes infringement is the end result of the creative process. What goes into it is irrelevant, and upending that process to put inspiration and reference as infringement is the end of art as we know it.

The Getty watermark issue is an example of overfitting, wherein a repetitive element in the dataset over-emphasizes specific features to the point of disrupting the system's attempts at the creation of novel images.

No one denies that the SD dataset is trained on images Getty claims to own, but Getty has so polluted the image search functions of the internet with their watermarked images that the idea of a getty watermark has been picked up the same way the AI might pick up the idea of an eye or a tree branch. It is a systemic failure that Shutterstock and Getty can be so monopolistic and ubiquitous that a dateset trained on literally everything public facing on the internet would be polluted with their watermarks.

Watermarks that, by the way, they add to public domain images, and that google prioritizes over clean versions.

The lawsuits being brought against Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are copyright overreach being presented as a theft tissue. The facts of the matter are not as the litigants state. The images aren't stored, the SD weights are a 4 gig file trained on 250 terabytes, roughly 4 bytes per image. It runs local, does not reach out to image sources over IP. All you've got are mathematical patterns and ratios. I would go so far as to say that the class action suit is based on outright lies.

But for a moment, let's entertain the idea that what goes into a work, as inspiration, can be copyrighted. That styles can be stolen. That what goes in defines infringement, rather than what comes out. What happens then?

Well, the bad news is that if Stable Diffusion and Midjourney were shut down tomorrow, Stable Diffusion is in the wild. It runs local, it's user-trainable. In short, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. Plus, the way diffusion AI works, there's no way to trace a gen to its sources. The weights don't work like that. The indexing would be larger than the entire set of stored patterns.

Well good news, there's an AI for that. The current version is called CLIP Interrogator And it works on everything. Not just AI generated, but any image. It can find what style it closely matches, reverse engineer a prompt. It's crude now, but it will improve.

Now, you've already established that using the same patterns as another work is infringement. You've already established that inspiration is theft. And now there's a robot that tells lawyers who you draw like.

Sure, you can fight it in court. If it goes go to court. But who's to say they won't just staplegun that AI to a monetization re-direction bot like youtube has going with their content ID? Awesome T-shirt design you uploaded to your print-on-demand shop... too bad your art style resembles that from a cartoon from 1973 that Universal got as part of an acquisition and they've claimed all your cash. Sure you can file a DMCA counter-notice, but we all know how that goes.

And then there's this fantasy that upending the system would help artists. But who would "own" that style? Is that piece stealing the style of Stephen Silver, or Disney's Kim Possible(TM)? When you work for Disney their contracts say everything you make is theirs. Every doodle. Every drawing. If the styles are copyrightable, a company could hire an artist straight out of school, publish their work under work-for-hire, fire them, and then go after them for "stealing" the style they developed while working for said corp.

Not to mention that a handful of companies own so much media that it is going to be impossible to find an artist that hasn't been influenced by something under their control.

Oh, and that stock of source images that companies like Disney and Universal have? These kinds of lawsuits won't stop them from building AIs with that material that they "own". The power goes into corp hands, they can down staff to their heart's content and everyone else is denied the ability to compete with them. Worst of all possible worlds.

Be careful what wishes you make when holding the copyright monkey's paw.

[luigraphics]

How to have animated rentry graphics with semi-transparency!!

Have you ever had this problem? You find this super pretty clipping mask that you wanna use...

...But when you try to save it as a gif, it suddenly breaks the pretty blurring?

So, let's talk about APNG:

APNG (Animated PNG) is exactly what it sounds like: a png that can be animated, with all the benefits of our beloved png format!! Such as unlimited colours!! Bet you didn't know this could be done!

Actually, you probably didn't know that for a good reason: APNG does not work everywhere. For example, I&'m not using it in this post because the animation won't work on Tumblr. It also doesn't work on old browsers, which you can check here if yours supports it or not:

However, even if the animation doesn't work, it will show the first frame as a still image!! So even those on older devices will still get to enjoy the graphic!!! (unless like... you want to do a fade-into-existence animation where the first frame will have nothing... but those are uncommon anyway)

But for this post, what's important is where it DOES work, and that is image hosting websites like imgur or catbox. And so, by extension, it will also work on Rentry + its forks!!

So how does one actually make an APNG?

Ezgif:

Note: DO NOT CONVERT GIFS TO APNG! It's useless because the gif file does not store any information about transparency, has less colours/lower quality, and you'll be needlessly removing backwards compatibility.

Go to APNG Maker and upload your frames individually. Check "don't stack frames" and make your APNG.

Photopea:

Works normally same as if you would save a gif. File -> Export as -> PNG. (You do need to have the frames layers in a folder same as you would for a gif)

Photoshop and Ibis Paint:

Unfortunately, Photoshop and Ibis do not let you just export as an APNG like that. You'll have to save each frame individually and then import them into Ezgif or Photopea.

As you can see, it's that simple! If you'd like, you can see a rentry template I& made using this the example APNG I& was showing throughout the tutorial here. I& was not able to find who made the overlay mask in the first place but a frame version of the cherry blossoms there did show up on adobe stock when I& tried to reverse search it so all they did was fill in a circle in the middle anyway.

Lastly, I& wanted to address one more question:

Why not use WEBP and/or AVIF instead? They offer the same benefits!

Well for one, fuck Google and fuck WEBP all my& homies hate WEBP. But for two, APNG has the benefit of backward compatibility: it's older (supported by more browser versions) and if the animation doesn't work, it still shows the first frame of it. WEBP and AVIF, on the other hand, don't show up at all/show alt text.

That's all, happy APNGing!

[dionysism]

what are some of your favorite greek myth artworks? (doesn't have to be made in ancient greece i mean from any time)

oh i'm so thrilled you asked me this. buckle up though because i love way too many pieces just to pick a few so this may get long lol

starting with some john singer sargent paintings because man i love his mythos works i'm obsessed with his style i wish he painted odysseus

atlas and the hesperides by john singer sargent

perseus on pegasus slaying medusa & orestes pursued by the furies both by sargent

the judgement of paris & chiron and achilles by sargent

and also what my curent pfp is from:

apollo and the muses by sargent

circe by frederick s church

i posted this a few days ago actually but it is one my favs so i'll include it again here

the reconciliation of helen and paris after his defeat by menelaus by richard westall (right)

not sure where the variation from the left comes from, but i like it a lot too so i'm putting both

this is from ancient greece i'm pretty sure, but when i reverse image search it i don't get much. but i adore this pottery art her little puffed out cheeks she's so cute.... and why the dude to left side eyeing her!!! what a hater i bet she's playing a lovely tune!!

the judgement of paris by paul altherr

clytemnestra by john collier

bacchanalia, the battle of love by paul cezanne

bacchus, venus and ariadne by tintoretto

theseus and the minotaur by edward burne-jones

love theseus's cunty bob here and obsessed with how cute the minotaur looks they're playing hide and seek actually guys. they're best friends don't even worry

reunion of odysseus and telemachus by henri-lucien doucet

this one gets me so bad guys. just fucking look at them oh my godddd the way he;s holding him... the kiss to the cheek... i'm on the floor

the meeting of ulysses and penelope by john francis rigaud

odysseus and penelope reunited by newell convers wyeth

not a big fan of blonde odysseus but i do adore the penelope here and their pose

there's more i want to include but this is starting to get long so i'm going to add some statues and be done

this statue of orestes and electra. i admit i don't know who the artist is i just love the way they're holding each other and the fact that she's taller than him. and her short hair (which i know is because of mourning, they're infront of agamemnon's tomb, but also my butch elektra agenda... you get it)

apollo and daphne by bernini

i would kill to see this in person. like please gods if i could only see one more famous statue in person in my life time let it be this one

psyche revived by cupid's kiss by antonio canova

a basic answer but i mean come on. this statue is so fucking beautiful i might get it tattooed

sleeping hermaphroditus (artist unknown, mattress by bernini)

love this one the statue is actually from ancient rome while the mattress is from the 1600s

another one i've posted before but roman statue of odysseus escaping polyphemus' cave beneath a ram

hope this wasn't dreadfully long but thanks so much for this ask i love going into mythos art!! maybe i'll do a separate post for my favorite pottery arts made in ancient times at some point

[rockstvrdotcom]

Hi! I was the one who recommended the Toby story and I LOVED it! (You're definitely one of my favorites if not my favorite creepypasta writer atm) I was wondering if I could make another request? Y/N trying to top Toby (more in a bratty way than an actual wanting to top way) but little did she know how shitty the day has already been for him because of one of the missions slender had sent on him and he really wasn't in the mood for her shit. And things just get rough from there 🥰 Also if you start an anon list can I be 💤anon?

☆ // IM GONNA FUCK YOU UNTIL YOU'RE SORRY, SWEETHEART! ✿⪼

aww tysm for the sweet words! it really warms my heart knowing you enjoy my writing, and ofc yes i'll add u to my anon list, i never originally planned on making one so ty for the idea!!

im not sure who the artist of the image is, if somebody finds out please tell me so i can credit them! i tried reverse google search but it didnt work D: i found the image on pinterest

im also so sorry for the super late post, shit has been a lil wonky lately and i recently js got my shit together LMAO, ill be back to posting.

CW: rough sex, choking, also degradation, overstimulation, brat taming

you were sat on the couch in the living room of the mansion. the rest of the creepypastas were either out on missions, or doing whatever the hell they were doing. slender was visiting his brothers, so you were all alone, free to do whatever you wanted to.

you sat there, awaiting for a certain someone to return. your hands were inbetween your thighs, rubbing at your clothed pussy. something about the fact that you could possibly get caught by somebody, toby or not, turned you on. but toby was expected to return from his mission first.

right on cue, you heard keys jingling around in the knob of the front door. you quickly repositioned yourself, pretending you were watching tv. the door opens and you turn around, seeing none other than toby. you greeted him, on purposely bending over the couch a little too far so he could see a peak of your boobs, only to be met with a stone cold stare. you were planning to get him to fuck you some way and when you saw him walk past you and into the kitchen, you realized it may be harder than you thought it would.

you trailed behind him, following him into his room. he looked over his shoulder, grunting in annoyance.

you took his shoulders and held him to the wall, leaving gentle and lustful kisses on his neck. you could tell he was bothered by something, yet you decided to continue anyway. you kissed and kissed until you pushed him past his limits. he escaped from your grip, walking away. you could see how tense he was, holding back from lashing out at you.

"i'm not in the mood for your bullshit, (y/n)." he almost yelled, pushing you onto the bed. you flinched, unsure what he was gonna do next. "you want this dick so fucking bad? you're gonna get it. and i'm gonna fuck you so hard until you're really sorry." he growled, flipping you over onto your stomach. he pulled your pants down and you yelped. you could hear the sound of him unzipping his pants.

you whined as you felt him go inside of you with no prep, but it slipped in easy with how wet you were. he thrusted in and out of you, his chest heaved as he fucked the absolute shit out of you. you moaned with each time he went balls deep inside of you, your eyes rolling into the back of your head. this wasn't like the other times you had sex, it was full of anger and frustation, yet lust at the same time.

you clenched around him as you felt his hand wrap around your throat, he took your chin with his other hand and shoved 2 fingers into your mouth. he slammed into you repeatedly while you choked on his fingers. tears streaked down your cheeks. you could feel your orgasm come nearer and nearer, and you whined around his fingers.

you cried out as your pussy spasmed around his thick cock, you came so hard your vision began to become blurry, white spots everywhere. toby still hadn't came yet, fucking you at an even faster pace now. still sensitive from your orgasm, you sob. maybe this was your punishment for bothering him. he leaned over you, still fucking and choking you as hard as he was before. he bit into your neck, almost enough to draw blood, and left kisses around the mark he had left on you.

toby removed his fingers from your mouth and roughly gripped your thighs as he continued to fuck breathy moans out of your mouth. "toby i just came- slow down." you pleaded, eyes watering from the overstimulation.

"shut the fuck up, you wanted this, slut." you almost felt another orgasm come with his words. you whimpered, clenching around him. he grit his teeth, your warm pussy tightening around him was almost enough to send him over the edge. he leaned over you and gripped your cheeks, kissing you roughly as he pounded into you.

his tongue played with yours, he tasted the tears streaking down your face as he bit your lower lip. "fuck, your pussy is so good.." he groaned as he continued to kiss you. you felt him throb inside of you, and you knew he was close.

"shit-" he said between clenched teeth as you felt him release his load inside of you. your eyes rolled back as you both orgasmed simultaneously, his dick twitching as his thrusting came to a stop. he bit at your neck to stop himself from moaning. you buried your face into the sheets.

he lightly squeezed your ass, then put his dick back in his boxers. he picked you up bridal style then placed your head gently on the pillows, pulling the sheets over your naked figure. your eyes fluttered closed as he put his pants back on and left the room.

[ozzgin]

hi spousey. bit of a crack question but how would human costumes even work or be made out of?? some magical substance?? animal skin?? w a x ???

do rich human fucker monsters have better costumes or something

and is there like a cultural difference (like western furries vs chinese furries) depending on the type of monster/ what they consider attractive on the human spectrum??

We’ve reached a true meta level of reverse scenarios. 😭

I suppose monsters are a tad more varied than humans, so there’s a lot of possibility in there. Whether they just put on an oversized human suit, or they skillfully shapeshift into one…if you want to go for that capitalist spice, we could of course have human cosplaying contests where certain monsters with certain funds have an obvious advantage.

I also like your theory about monsters liking particular aspects from a human depending on their own background. We could conduct an imaginary study. Heh.

One anon just pointed out another interesting aspect of the whole human kink saga.

In the grand scheme of things, I would assume that humans first exist as fictional/mythical creatures, and then as something to be sexualized. But here we have another parallel to our own world.

If I recall correctly, there’s a guy online who searches random characters on Google images, and times how long it is until he stumbles upon sexualized fanart. Usually it’s in the range of seconds. So, you know, objectifying characters is an old tale we too are familiar with. That’s not to say all monsters would be like that.

Yet another opportunity for a large-scale social study, eh? We can coin the researched phenomenon after anon’s suggestion below.

[eemoo1o-animoo]

10 Grelle-based paraphernalia that I found on eBay, in no particular order but my subjective deeming of relevance or importance

Possibly part one of a series? Perhaps?

If so, then I probably won’t contain it to only eBay, and I’m going off of what comes up for someone who’s based in the UK, so maybe there’s more or less stuff available if you’re in other countries due to shipping limitations, etc.? But eBay at the moment is my main source, and I’m only doing this — work that anyone can do, nothing exceptionally thorough or insightful — because I’m just a little bored, and I know Grelle is the most valued in the fandom and TSOGTR hasn’t been writing itself for the past year and a quarter, so why would it start now?

This is written at 3AM-6AM on 29/8/2024, so if this is found long after this date then there’s a chance my sources have already been bought out or deleted for whatever reason.

1.

Grell Sutcliff Funko Pop 18 Kuroshitsuji Black Butler POP! Vinyl Anime Figure

At the time of writing this, there are no bids for this and so the price remains at £21.99 (item and shipping). The current bid is due to end on ≈1/9/2024. Wait for the last second to bid one pence higher than the asking price and you’re golden.

I actually have one of these, but it was gifted to me, and so I don’t know how much mine was sold for, but seeing as the four Black Butler Funko Pops have been vaulted and are sold for way higher in other places online, I think this is a pretty good deal.

(Fun fact, the person who gifted her to me as well as tracked down other cheap listings for the other three called her Greta. Consistently. So. Greta. Greta Sutcliff.)

As we can see from the item’s pictures, the figure has been taken out of its box, at the very least just to be show-cased or inspected, but it does appear to come with the box. Here is a listing on Amazon (9.99 GBP, excluding shipping) for 10 Funko Pop display sleeves that should match the item’s measurements.

The current conversions for this item’s price (18.99 GBP) are as follow:

25.06 USD

36.91 AUD

33.77 CAD

22.52 Euro

2,103.26 INR

855,31 Turkish Lira

39.92 NZD

3,623.33 Yen

Obviously I’m not including every conversion in here, only the most obvious/prevalent. If your country’s currency isn’t here, then my apologies, and feel free to bring it to my attention (with currency named) so that I may add it to any future episodes to this possible series, or to edit this post back with the conversions of that time.

2.

Black Butler PVC Keychain Grell

The description of this listing says that this is officially licensed and from one reverse image search to find a bunch of listings across several websites for it, I’m inclined to believe that this is actually an official piece of merch and not a fan-made item that is being resold as I had originally thought it to be. (Wow, I’m such a knowledgable Black Butler fan. I know, I know.)

There’s not much to say on this other than the fact that it’s cute and I think a few pence has been shaved off from the original selling price, though I’m not too sure. I imagine it would have easily gone for 8.99 GBP, but again I’m not too sure; it’s 3AM after all and this isn’t a serious project for me.

The current conversions go as followed:

11.87 USD

17.47 AUD

15.99 CAD

10.66 Euro

996.15 INR

405,49 Turkish Lira

18.90 NZD

1,715.62 Yen

3.

Grelle Black Butler manga plushie Anime Soft Toy

It’s not the best price, I admit. If you’re looking for something cheaper then maybe go for the 5" plush, and there’s another listing on AnimeWare, but once tax and shipping get evolved it ends up being more or less the same price, anyway.

I think this is under the same line as Plushlois comes from, and to that I say: if someone buys her, will that come back? Will Grelle’s face be remade by @fancymeatcomputers, as @nullbutler’s Plushlois once had?

Anyway, she’s super cute. Her hair is a bit too saturated, but that’s not much to lament over, and she’s pricey, but is still far less expensive than any available Plushlois listing I could find (£52!! Usually!!).

Here are the current conversions:

39.61 USD

58.30 AUD

53.35 CAD

35.58 Euro

3,323.16 INR

1,351.58 Turkish Lira

63.01 NZD

5,727.47 Yen

4.

Black Butler Kuroshitsuji Grell Undertaker Anime two sided Pillow Case Cover 250

I’d originally listed another pillow for listing number four, which goes for the same price, but decided not to as Grelle is more prominent on this one.

Not much to say about this other than as far as I can tell it’s just the pillowcase and not a case and a pillow, but if you want to add a lil extra something to your Grelle shrine or limit your chances of finding a normie partner by having this as the centrepiece to your 20-something pillow statement on your romantic four-post bed.

Here are the current conversions:

7.91 USD

11.64 AUD

10.65 CAD

7.10 Euro

663.67 INR

269.94 Turkish Lira

12.58 NZD

1,143.54 Yen

5.

Black butler Grell Sutcliffe figure Kuroshitsuji SEGA PVC Scale Anime s01

Another shambolic price, I know. But out of all the non-Funko Pop Grelle figures listed, this is definitely the cheapest.

Out of all of the non-Funko Pop Black Butler figures, it’s far from it. I think the cheapest figures went to Ciel and Sebastian, but with a massive gap between the cheapest Ciel figure versus the cheapest Sebastian figure (there’s a lot of listings for this particular figure, all with free shipping and of similar prices). There’s also a listing that sells Sebastian and Grelle together with free postage, which would value each figure as far less than what this one figure is being sold for.

The current conversions (of 130.22 GBP) go as follows:

172.00 USD

252.73 AUD

231.50 CAD

154.48 Euro

14,430.37 INR

5,874.98 Turkish Lira

273.31 NZD

24,865.90 Yen

6.

Black Butler Grell Sutcliff Cosplay Costume Red Death Men Full Set Outfits New

I’m not much of cosplayer or a cosplay fan, but from the few full cosplays I found that range from £40-50, this seems like a good price.

There’s also a good few listings for Grelle-style shoes? The cheapest of which would be here. And both the shoes and the clothing come in men’s sizes, so it’s a match if you ask me.

The current conversions of the cosplay’s price are:

23.76 USD

34.92 AUD

31.98 CAD

21.34 Euro

1,993.77 INR

811.52 Turkish Lira

37.76 NZD

3,435.09 Yen

7.

Kuroshitsuji Black Butler Madam Red Angelina Dalles Anime Figurine - Play Arts

Look. I know this isn’t a Grelle figure, but I assume that most if not all Grelle fans are also Madame Red fans. And you have to admit that this is a damn good price for a figure of this type. In fact, I’d say this figure is the second cheapest, right behind the aforementioned Ciel figure.

Also the seller has the username “welsh lady”. Surely it’d basically be treason if I didn’t promote it.

The conversions of the item price (6.99 GBP) go as follows:

9.23 USD

13.57 AUD

12.43 CAD

8.29 Euro

774.85 INR

315.29 Turkish Lira

14.68 NZD

1,336.09 Yen

8.

USED Dolk Black Butler Book of Circus Grell Sutcliff Cast Doll 700mm Japan RARE

This is a fucking awful price. It hurts just to imagine buying this. However, it seems like a rare or custom-made doll, in a fancy box, and it was the only listing I could find of it, meaning it’s not a re-sell.

There’s not much to say — as you can see I ranked it pretty low on the relevancy scale, but I don’t know: maybe someone’s into this sort of thing, especially if it comes to Grelle.

The item prices are converted as follows:

2,805.52 USD

4,123.16 AUD

3,776.66 CAD

2,519.24 Euro

235,385.31 INR

95,779.75 Turkish Lira

4,458.47 NZD

405,826.75 Yen

9.

1 x playing card Black Butler Anime Sebastian Michaelis - Jack of Hearts ZT 85

For one playing card, to me this price seems ghastly. There’s also a Sebastian variant for the exact same price, but that’s all I can find in this style. The other listings for Black Butler playing cards aren’t in this style, coming wholly in colour with patterned frames. As far as I can see, on eBay there are only two listings for this type of playing card, and I’ve already linked them both to this post.

The current conversions of the item price (2.49 GBP) are:

3.29 USD

4.83 AUD

4.43 CAD

2.95 Euro

276.04 INR

112,34 Turkish Lira

5.23 NZD

476.23 Yen

10.

Black Butler Ceramic Mug Grell, Sebastian

There’s a more expensive mug with just Grelle on it that I’d contemplated listing here instead. (And, hey! From Germany, too. The TSOGTR imagery just won’t quit.) But this one is cheaper.

Besides, enough scrubbing with some iron wool will get rid of that ugly demon mug (no pun intended) in no time, surely!

The current conversions go as follows:

19.62 USD

28.84 AUD

26.41 CAD

17.62 Euro

1,646.22 INR

669,76 Turkish Lira

31.17 NZD

2,841.32 Yen

[seaurchin0]

MAKE A FULL GUIDE BRO PLS PLS PLS PLS PLS I WOULD EAT THAT SHIT UP!! /nf

oh man, this gonna be a long one but ty for letting me infodump about my interests </3 my overall advice would be to be creative, and DON'T underestimate how intertwined social media is with everyday life. Experiment, see what works, and good luck <33

so a lot depends if you know the person in question irl or online and i'll go over both but first, here are some things that help in both cases: -names are not necessary to find people, useful af but info like what school they go to, class they're in, clubs they're in etc do better -look at their friends, their friends' friends, family, tagged photos, followers and following list (if they're active online), info doesn't just come from them, if you can't get in contact with them you can learn a lot from family, friends classmates etc

-intelius.com

-please PLEASE keep track of what info you found out and what they told you, don't accidentally drop that bombshell

-i have a folder where i keep my fp's information saved, all the "useful" images they sent me, link to their social medias, school website and more so i'd suggest making one of those

if you only know them online, here are some cyberstalking tips that don't rely on being close and location (all this assuming they're active online):

-look up their username(s) and variations everywhere. literally every platform you can think of, i had to sign up to 3 platforms i never used just for that

-look up their friends' usernames

-look at tagged photos, mentions and interactions they have with others in the comments under their posts to find out who they're friends with

-if you can see previous usernames (like on instagram) look up those too

-you might get lucky with wayback machine

-if you can find their reddit, twitter or any social media that shows their post and comment history study that shit

- if they haven't shown their face but have photos including any other part of their body that isn't usually covered up, even in colder climates (like hands most commonly) save those too, if you manage to find a school website or something later on that might have photos of their face you could match them up. it's difficult af but never give up, if there's a will there's a way

-reverse image search all the images they posted

-try images on geoimgr.com. photos taken on phone or camera will sometimes have GPS coordinates stored in the metadata of each file, but there are some websites that encrypt this

-anaylze the background of images, especially if they're taken outside

-trying to pinpoint a location (town or country they live in) would be good but not necessary: • if they posted screenshots that aren't cropped and include the time, it will be easy to figure out the general area because of timezones • use google maps to match up the background seen in images

if you wanna figure out an email or number: • log out of your account, put their username in in the login section, press "i forgot my password", the next part may vary from platform to platform but select the option for their the recover of their password to be recieved through email and it will display the first and last characters of their name, as well as what domain they're using. same with the phone number

next, in real life, i'm not really an expert in this since i've never stalked anyone irl for as long and as much as i have online but hope these help too!:

-eavesdrop

-if you're not close or to them (as in not in the same class, school, workplace etc) look for someone that knows them in any way.

-assuming you found that person, don't directly ask about them. let's say, your fp likesa art, so you ask that person about art clubs. chances are, they'll mention the one your fp is in. very vague example but it works with almost everything

-ask your parents about your fp's parents, works well if you're younger and still in school

-VERY carefully try to glance over at their phone's screen as much as you can, it could make finding social media accounts 10 times easier

-use all the info you manage to get for cyberstalking. don't follow them around, especially don't follow them home, you don't need to do that to figure out more about them. again, don't underastimate how ingrained social media is in our lives. Cyberstalking is much more easier and safer.

[outfoxt]

Another Käärijä Research Project

aka: käärijä style-shifting project

as a preface, here are my (non) qualifications for this project and the circumstances under which it happened:

I am a linguistics student, and this past semester I took a course on sociolinguistics. the goal of this project was to become familiar with the concept of and analyze style-shifting (it's more commonly known as code-switching online but theres a difference and this is style-shifting), specifically by analyzing the speech of one person. We had the option to study oprah or to have someone else approved by my prof, so you know I had to ask my prof if I could study jere. This project is solely my intellectual property; even though I had a tutor help me a lot, everything written in this paper and on this post was my work alone.

now, on to the actual findings! the full paper and transcripts will be linked at the end :D

the actual variables (words or sounds) that I studied were the pronunciation of r, and use of the word "the".

to make things a lot easier from the get-go, i'm going to introduce you all to one of my favorite websites, ipachart.com (the international phonetic alphabet [ipa] chart is a big chart with an entry for every sound that exists in a language. this handy dandy website has an audio recording for each one of those sounds).

go to this website, and then scroll down to the table. go to the column labeled "post alveolar" and then click on ɾ and ɹ. those are the sounds i studied in this paper! ɾ is the finnish r and ɹ is the american r :)

so basically what i did to find instances of my variable was i just looked up a bunch of esc interviews and listened out for use of the different r sounds. i also transcribed the entire dinner date live because i love torture apparently :) the specific interviews and lives/stories are in the bibliography of the paper :p

after i transcribed all the interviews and lives/stories i went through and highlighted every instance of the r sound. then i calculated the ratios of ɾ to ɹ based on the context they were spoken in. the two contexts i looked for were formal contexts (sit-down interviews) and informal contexts (literally anything else).

i found that jere uses ɹ WAY more often in formal contexts than he does in informal contexts, and the same in reverse with ɾ.

i then went back to the transcripts and looked for all instances of the word "the". i also looked for instances where i thought it should be present, but was omitted. i calculated the ratio of present vs omitted "the"s in formal vs informal contexts and made some charts.

the graph with the smaller black section is "use of 'the' in formal settings" and the one with the smaller green section is "use of 'the' in informal settings" (the images are transparent, sorry)

i found that jere uses "the" WAY more often when in formal settings! there were also some instances where he added a "the" where it was unnecessary, which is studied at length in this wonderful paper by @alien-girl-21

something i also noticed that i elected not to study because this paper took enough energy on its own was that in formal contexts, whenever the "or" sound came in the middle or at the end of a word, jere wouldn't pronounce the r. it stuck out to me mostly because i heard words like "performance" turning into "perfomance", which i thought was an interesting quirk.

unfortunately i was somewhat limited by both my brainpower and capacity to do more work on this paper in the relatively short timeframe i was given (2 weeks) and the fact that i was given a 5 page MAX for this paper (not including a bibliography). i had a lot of fun doing this though and am definitely planning on studying jere for for academic credit again in the future if given the chance!

also i would like it to be known that i spent an hour searching for that 5 second clip of the urheilucast where jere said that he used to sell kitchens and understands english better than he can speak it.

link to a google drive folder with the actual paper i wrote and the transcripts of the interviews with notation:

please feel free to send me asks and dms with questions or comments about this paper! i absolutely love rambling about linguistics :3!!

[doctorbunny]

The mission to track down (most of) the locations in Ai Nan Desu Yo!

Firstly, I want to thank @archivalofsins /Gunsli-01, this whole thing started because of us DMing, wondering if we could use the background images in Mahiru's first MV to guess which university she went to, that started this whole adventure. By the end of this saga, the process truly was a collaboration too and i would've given up much sooner (sorry for taking so long to write this up!)

It started here. The caption says Mahiru is sat on the 大学のテラス (University terrace). So we figured this was the best shot to find her uni. Gunsli tried reverse image search but it just kept throwing milgram back at us. So I got an idea:

The magic of photo editing! it worked too and I got this back:

That's right! This isn't a university but a pizza place! Specifically one called 800 ディグリーズ ナポリタン ピッツェリア (800 degrees Neapolitan pizzeria) It is right next to two universities however:

Of these two, I speculate Aoyama Gakuin University is more likely to be Mahiru's as they have a large humanities department and an option to take Chinese language classes (interestingly, it is also a Very Christian university and we know from question 19 of Mahiru's trial 1 interrogation, she believes people go to Heaven when they die. There is also a lot of focus on international students and the campus nearest the pizza resturant has a 'statue of Love' in the Majima Archives building)

Inspired by this fruitful discovery I decided to try my method on other photos:

I jumped all the way over to day 13 because I felt like the sign would aid in my search. Before I bothered with any photo editing I just did some google searches "Tokyo Marun-" I got the autofill result 'Tokyo Marunouchi hotel' after investigating it wasn't the right place but we had a location name "Marunouchi" Trying again I typed "Tokyo Marunouchi Street" Autofill gave me "Marunouchi Street Park": Bingo!

This must be some kind of iconic sign because there were a ton of results for it. The bad news is that the sign was portable and only placed out for special events. So I introduce the next weapon in my arsenal: Google Streetview With a street to work with I walked up and down Morunouchi Naka-doori avenue until I got to a building with similar square pillars to the one behind Mahiru

This place is the MyPlaza, it's got a couple different shops, but importantly there is a function room you can rent out for events just like the wedding reception Mahiru attended here. This one turns out to be further away than some of the other discoveries but it makes sense because Mahiru is travelling to an event, not on a date.

Back to photo editing! This is one of two shrines I'll identify, they become important as they get special icons on google maps, becoming landmarks to search around later.

This is the Meiji Jingu Shrine

I was on a roll so quickly moved to day 14, however, my editing trick wouldn't work here so it would only be later that I uncovered the location of the park

Searching for day 11 was much more fruitful

I was really excited to track this one as Mahiru mentions it being the filming location for her favourite movie. So I thought if we could discover that, then we may unlock more clues about her as a person

I got about this far before realising I could try a different tactic. If this was a well known spot, surely in my broken Japanese I could google it right? So with a little help of my dictionary I spat out "Tokyo red hand railing movie". Somehow this barely worked

The movie? Your Name

At this point I was rolling on the floor laughing because I had been expecting some Japanese cult classic romance movie or a domestically popular but internationally obscure rom com meanwhile Your Name was a massive box office smash hit in many places. One of the few anime movies that even non-anime fans will be aware of.

Despite this, I hadn't actually seen it myself and wasn't really in the mood to watch it (I had more locations to track down, dammit) but fortunately Gunsli came in clutch, having previously seen the movie and also in the mood to rewatch it for clues about Mahiru.

These stairs are actually at a place called Suga Shrine, making this our second landmark. (Fun fact: if you look it up you'll find pictures of movie fans recreating photos of the place)

We were starting to build up an idea of Where Mahiru's world was, the border between Shibuya and Shinjuku ward. There were several parks in the area, so I figured I'd set out to find the day 14 park location by searching through each one. I was worried this would take a while but when I started with the biggest park, Yoyogi, I basically hit jackpot right away. Immediately upon seaching it, google recommended me results for images of the park at night. It turns out that Yoyogi had a large area used for concerts (that also may have been used for movie nights). By chance, I found this image from the park at night

which looks awfully similar to the lamp/benches seen in the background of day 14... According to Gunsli, the nearby yoyogi station is featured in an important scene in Your Name, so that's another thing pointing towards them being in this park. It's not solid evidence but we'll come back to this later.

At this point I'm both hyped up and bored, so to amuse myself and just to see if I can, I decide to search for the place Mahiru's boyfriend is working at in day 8

At first I had written it off as pointless to even try searching, but Gunsli noticed that in the top left corner you can see a hint of the store's sign. It is the same colours as a Seven Eleven (a chain that exists both in the US and Japan) This greatly narrowed down my search, as it ruled out the many Family Marts and Lawsons in the area (I cannot stress how many convenience stores there are in Tokyo) Unfortunately, there were still many 7/11s to search through and thus leads to the several hours I spent on google maps, individually going to each 7/11 in Shibuya and trying to look for those bike racks, floor tiles and old security camera. It was demoralising. But when hope was nearly lost and I almost gave up (there was a heat wave outside so my brain was melting during this). Gunsli reminded me of something very important. On day 8 we get two images, the above of Mahiru waiting outside the 7/11, and one of her sat on a park bench. If we were right about the day 14 park being Yoyogi, then surely our 7/11 would be in walking distance? The search began again. The third 7/11 I found near the park was it.

In one fell swoop I had confirmed both day 8 and 14. In celebration I made a tumblr post

Now, at this point I'm running out of images to search for because a lot of the locations in Ainan are indoors, meaning they could be taken from a studio or even one of the milgram crew's homes (which isn't actually uncommon) and thus, not a relavent location. I did half heartedly attempt to look for the day 9 bar, but as you can imagine, without any external landmarks it was even more of a goose chase than the 7/11...

The last location I decided to look for was all the way back in day 5

This edit was pretty tough to make so i was very annoyed when it didn't work. By this time it was late at night, but Gunsli had a hunch that this would be a well known running route, so started looking for those. By the time I'd woken up, she got it down to a route called the Imperial Palace Running Route, which is very popular (especially with tourists, it is recommended to give it a go if you're in the area)

I found it on streetview by following road signs seen in a video of someone running the route Gunsli found (the part in Mahiru's video appears at about 1:35)

It's an area called Takebashi and here is a screenshot both of what we saw in ainan, as well as what Mahiru would've seen in the direction she ran (the route loops back on itself)

Ok I'm tired it's 1 am, finally here's a really rough map of everywhere in relation to each other

An interesting thread throughout is that many of these places are sort of tourist-y, suggesting Mahiru's boyfriend may not be from Tokyo either. The university (assuming I'm guessing the right place) taking in lots of international students and Mahiru's boyfriend working at a 7/11 (which Japanese people can do but is also Stereotypically the part time job of choice for people from outside Japan while studying) could perhaps even hint to him not being Japanese, but it's all speculation right now

I hope you enjoyed this long rambly mess, I'm so sorry it took me so long to write it all up....

[folatefangirl]

On The Darkest Corner of the Heart

A comment on how Booktwt, Booklr, and Booktok media reactivity has lost the plot

Or, I think y'all need to log off and touch some grass and think about your actions for a hot minute. Note: This rant is a tad long, because I'm fucking pissed.

Disclaimer 1: I don't personally know the author of this book or anyone screenshotted in the drama. We aren't friends. I have no reason to either defend nor criticize these people, except for the fact that I've been a primary reader of self-pub and indie books for almost a decade now, and yes, including romances that some people don't consider worthy of civility. I'm also a queer healthcare worker.

Disclaimer 2: I don't want anyone mentioned/screenshotted here to be spammed with hate. Please do NOT contact them, including any authors mentioned. I included the primary actors for the current drama primarily so people don't claim I'm talking out of my ass.

Book blurb:

Forbidden. That's what they are to each other. Maddie Stevens has never felt good enough. Not good enough to keep her parents’ love. Not good enough to be independent and stop being her brother’s problem. Not good enough to build the future she wants. When she injures her ankle before a ballet audition that could change her career forever, she’s convinced her life is over at twenty-one. What’s the point of having dreams when they can go down the drain at any moment? And because the universe has a cruel sense of humor, her physical therapist turns out to be a tank-shaped grouch who doesn’t even seem to like her that much. It’s totally unfair that, for six weeks, she’s forced to look at that handsome beard and listen to that deep voice that makes her head all dizzy. Top that with the fact that he’s ten years her senior, and falling for James Simmons is a recipe for disaster. But when their forced proximity makes the lines start blurring, the forbidden temptation becomes impossible to resist.

The Timeline:

Events preceding 2023: Lisina Coney, author of The Darkest Corner of the Heart, was born in 1999 in northern Spain. She worked as a translator prior to publishing books.

Initially I thought these books were only self-published, but in fact are published under the formerly indie publisher Page & Vine, founded by romance novelist Meredith Wild.

January 27th, 2023: The Brightest Light of Sunshine is published by nearly 24-year-old Lisina Coney. On Goodreads, it currently sits at 3.87 stars as of today, February 10th, 2024, with 27,727 ratings and 3,592 reviews. Note: For a small-time author, especially for a debut novel, these numbers are huge.

May 2023, Page & Vine announced that Big 5 publisher Simon & Schuster would distribute their books as an imprint beginning in summer 2023.

In mid-to-late 2023, Lisina's website and socials announced The Darkest Corner of the Heart, her second novel to be published with Page & Vine on February 20th, 2024. Note: This means the events below occurred BEFORE the book's publication.

February 5th, 2024: anaborbareads on Twitter/X posts the cover and other art of Darkest Corner with the text, "a forbidden romance between ballerina and physical therapist???? pls i need this book now 🥺✨💗🫶🏻"

February 6th, 2024: h0mmelette on Twitter/X responds to anaborareads with "the booktok genre of forbidden romance is hilarious. theyre straight… whats forbidden"

February 6th, 2024: a tumblr user reposts the twitter thread from above to tumblr. Other tumblr users reblog and add on, and it quickly goes viral.

February 7th, 2024: From what I can tell via reverse image searching, the first iteration of the fake ARC page that's going around appears to be from Twitter/X user queef1ng. About 4 hours later, the same fake ARC page was reposted on the tumblr post mentioned above. And from here, this story takes a turn from people wanting to feel like they're above a romance novel writer to potential legal territory.

Of the 122 ratings on Goodreads for Darkest Corner to date, 9 appear to be 1-star reviews and from what I can tell, most/all of them were only published since the events began on 06Feb2024. 71 are 5-stars and while some of those are ARC readers, many newer ones appear to be trying to counteract the review bombing from the fake ARC page.

As of today, February 10th, 2024, it looks like the book will still be published on February 20th as planned, but we'll see.

Wait, so how do you know the page is fake?

I can't believe people have been so gullible but fine, here's my analysis:

Lisina's real ARC readers have stated that it isn't from the book (not gonna document all of them in the screenshots but you can easily go to the book's GR page and see the ARC reviews there).

As other folks pointed out on the tumblr repost, no real ARC page does a weird review watermark like that. Speaking from my own experience in reviewing ARCs or beta-reading, I agree.

The font tipped me off because it looked like it had literally been written on a Fanfiction.Net page. Not that Verdana, font size 10, is unique to FFN, but it looks like fanfiction typed font. Which brings me to:

Literally how could you believe this author writes like this? You can read her website or preview her first book or just have the bare minimum common sense to understand what satire looks like. If you don't believe me (because I know framing a post like this will put a lot of people on the defensive), I've also included screenshots below. The prose and dialogue are COMPLETELY different from the alleged screenshot. The only thing that is similar is that both characters are ballerinas.

But wait, all of this doesn't explain why YOU, Cinnia, are so pissed about this?

You're completely right! It really doesn't. All of the above is mostly documentation so the naysayers can't say I'm just some silly fangirl of the author.

The initial premise of the drama is that you can't have "forbidden love" in an m/f relationship. First of all, William Shakespeare would like to have a word with you regarding Romeo and Juliet. Second of all, yes you fucking can. See also: Religious and cultural differences and human history for a starting point. I know it may be hard to touch grass and look at media that is not tumblr queer media-centric and understand that people who are NOT you might enjoy it very much. Note that I'm a queer person saying this and I do read or watch m/f media at times because I don't like limiting myself. Go watch Bajirao Mastani and enjoy one of the most beautiful movies about forbidden love ever produced.

The book itself falls into the medical romance subgenre. For those not familiar, these are romances (usually m/f) that often involve a healthcare worker and their patient. In the real world, where people touch grass, a healthcare worker like me having a relationship with their patient is such a huge ethical violation that it will get you fired. In Darkest Corner, James is Maddie's physical therapist because she's a ballerina with a sports injury and he is treating her. Ergo, it is forbidden for them to get together and the initial premise for mocking this book is on very shaky ground.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the folks mocking it seem to very likely not be familiar with romance novels and their subgenres at all, or else they'd be well aware of the concept of straight romances marketed as a "forbidden romance" because they're fucking everywhere on any place that sells romance books. I have a personal collection of over 14,500 kindle ebooks. While not all of those are romances, a good chunk of them are, so I think I can count myself as a bit of a source here, you know?

The fake screenshot and social media drama has spread to at least Twitter, Tumblr, and BookTok, which all have huge reader hobbyists. For a small-time author barely past her debut novel's publication, allegations of this sort tied to your author name and book titles can last on the internet and in web searches for a long, long time, hurting an author's career. Maybe you're like "boohoo, who cares about their careers, I pirate all my fiction books anyway" and well, a post like this was probably never going to convince you of anything. I'm talking to the folks who might still have a sense of shame and self-reflection. Authors, even authors tied to a Big 5's imprint, earn peanuts. This sort of manufactured "scandal" is not ideal when the book is weeks away from being published. In fact, if the book has fewer sales than the first book in the series, Simon & Schuster may have legal grounds to go after the person who made the fake screenshot. A smarter person would have kept that to the groupchat or posted it as a clearly marked fanfic on AO3.

As a reader, this also sucks because when shit like this happens, the reviews of a book are permanently biased by both the bombers and the fans of the author, no matter how good or bad the book ends up being. Do I know if this book will be a 1-star or 5-star now, based on the reviews? Nope. Will I read it? No, because I don't read medical romances as it's a squick for me. But I may read her first book, which has mercifully escaped most of the social media nonsense.

This isn't the first time booktwt/booktok/booklr has engaged in a similar mob mentality towards books they don't like and I doubt it'll be the last. See Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao and the allegations that turned out to be false then, too. However, I would like to ask y'all to please check your sources and not blindly accept what someone says on social media as truth. Get used to doing the research because manufactured misinformation is everywhere, and it's not gonna get better. (And for fuck's sake, not everyone is gonna like the same books and fandoms you like! It's not illegal to enjoy reading different things!)

Screenshots/Evidence (click for better resolution):

[crowandmousewritingco]

Taking Your Licks Pt. 2

Pairing: Frankie Morales x gn!reader

Words: 2.3k

Rating M: (18+ so much smut) No use of Y/N, sub!Frankie, praise kink (a lot of "baby" and "baby boy" used), kink exploration, impact play, spanking, the reader is referred to as Sir.

Summary: It's finally the night where you help Frankie with his new kink.

Author: Mod Mouse

Notes: This is very much a 18+ fic so minors DNI. If you continue past the "keep reading," just know that's what you're reading.

Frankie Masterlist

After your intrusion on Frankie a few weeks ago, you were determined to learn everything you could about impact play. Many hours of research was dedicated to searching impact play forums, different subreddits and many many video examples. This was something that was clearly important to Frankie and you were determined to make it so. Finally you deemed yourself ready for the real day. You waited until all the toys you ordered had arrived before setting a date. You told Frankie to clear his schedule for his next day off for a session day. The smile he gave you was the cutest thing, and the excitement was evident on his face. 

It was almost like Christamas day for Frankie when you told him that you had set a whole day for this. He was excited to try out his new kink. He knew you would be okay with trying this out, but he’d never had a partner before you who didn’t seem to find making fun of the kinks he had. But you had been more than willing to aid him in his exploration of kink. The night you walked in on him helped him realize how much he admired you. 

Finally the day arrived and you were excited. Before you returned from work you had texted Frankie to take his clothes off and be ready for you by the time you got home. The image of Frankie kneeling oh so nicely on the carpet, being the best and most obedient sub for you had you nerves firing all day. When it came time to finally go home, you had to keep yourself from sprinting out of your office. You raced home only breaking several traffic laws so you could get home sooner. 

You practically broke down the door, but you took a moment to calm yourself. After all you were the dom in this dynamic so you had to keep focused tonight. Though Frankie could loose as much control as he wanted tonight. Setting your bags on the kitchen, you peaked down the hallway seeing the light on your bedroom on. Just like that fateful night, you knew Frankie was in there. 

Quickly you made your way to the bedroom, and gently pushed open the door. The sight sent shocks down to your cock. There Frankie was naked on his knees, hands behind his back with his gaze on the floor just like the perfect listener he was.

“Oh baby boy you look divine,” You purred and Frankie’s big brown eyes looked up at you. They were already half lidded, and you could see that half hard cock poking between his legs. 

“Awwww has my pretty boy been thinking about today?” You asked gently, running your fingers through his curly hair. 

Frankie’s pretty pink lips were plump from biting and he nodded. “Yes sir all day. I want you to spank me so much.” 

“Mmmm fuck you ask so nicely. Well then I don’t want to keep you waiting. How about being a good boy and laying down on the bed for me?” 

Frankie quickly obeyed with a “Yes Sir,” and layed down on his stomach. Damn you would never get over this sight. You slowly sauntered your way to the side of the bed and took one of the many pillows and arranged it under his hips. 

“Such a pretty sight my love,” You praise as you run your hands over his back getting him used to the touch. Frankie’s muscles ripped under your touch and goosebumps ran along his spine. Your hands followed the curve of his back stopping just before the top of his perfect ass. You weren’t quite ready to warm him up so you reversed your hands flowing back up to his shoulder blades. Frankie’s breath hitched and he let out a soft whimper. 

“Oh baby boy you’ll get what you want, but Sir wants to take his time with you. You slowly tangle your fingers in his hair again and lightly pull bringing another whimper out of him. “Sir is going to take care of you, but baby boy is gonna have to be patient. Can you do that for me pretty boy?” 

Frankie quickly nodded the best he could and you let go of his hair. “Good boy,” You purred and you bring your hand up and down his back a few more times until you could feel the restlessness emanating off of him. 

What felt like forever to Frankie you finally let your fingers drift over one of his ass cheeks. Frankie rutted his hips against the pillow. “Oh you are so sensitive already my sweet.” You leaned down so you could whisper in his ear. “Well it only gets better from here.” Frankie shuttered again and you chuckle as you turned your attention back to his ass. 

“Now I’m gonna warm you up now so I can get to the fun toys I bought for this moment,” You stated as you applied small quick slaps to both cheeks making the pale skin turn a soft pink in color. With each smack Frankie slowly became more vocal which was music to your ears. Frankie tilted his head so he could see what you were doing to him. 

You looked down at him and smiled “Oh does my baby boy like what I’m doing to you?” You smirked and kept eye contact with him as you spanked him a bit harder. 

Frankie moaned and nodded quickly. “Yes sir it feels amazing.” 

“Good boy,” You praised as you continued at this harder pace. He was almost ready for the toys. You let Frankie bask in this feeling for just a few more spanks before you stopped. Gently you ran your hands on his reddened ass. “Oh baby boy you look stunning.” 

“Thank you Sir,” He gruffly replied his throat already becoming rough just from the start of this scene. 

You gave the skin a bit more attention before standing up. Frankie gave a soft whimper and followed you with your eyes as you pulled out the wooden box in the corner of the room. Opening the lid you rummaged through the toy box. You pulled out the tools you wanted keeping them behind your back. 

“Now for the main event my love. I have two types I wanted to play with.” You hold out both a large paddle. “This one was customed order because I wanted to see something special on your ass.” You turned the paddle over to show the holes. They read “Baby Boy” on them with two hearts on either side of the words. 

Frankie’s cock twitched at the sight. “Thank you sir that looks so pretty,” He bit his lip. 

You smiled when you saw the excitement in his eyes. “I’m glad you like it. I thought it would be perfect for tonight. But this will be the finale to our little show.” You leaned the paddle against the bed frame and pulled out the toys from behind your back. Dangling from your hand was a several pairs of handcuffs and a nice leather riding crop. “We’ll start with these.” 

Frankie’s mouth watered at the sight. “Oh fuck sir you didn’t have to.” 

You leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I wanted to my sweet boy. We will have many a night like this in the future.” The brought another whimper from Frankie’s lips and you lean down to share a few heated kisses. 

When you broke away Frankie whispered. “I love you so much.” 

You cooed at him and gently kissed his hair. “I love you too Frankie. Now splay your arms and legs out for me.” Frankie obeyed and spread his limbs out. Carefully you looped the handcuffs around each hand and foot and attached them to the bedframe. You quickly tested to make sure each was secured but also not too tight around his joints. 

Once you were satisfied with the results, you sat back up and grabbed the riding crop. You smacked it against your palm testing the sting of it. It did pack quite a punch and you were happy with the purchase.

“Okay baby boy, I’m gonna test how much you can take. I’ll smack you a few times each smack being harder and harder. You let me know what you limit is by saying yellow. Can you do that for me baby boy?” You asked softly. 

“Yes sir,” 

“Perfect,” You cooed and let the cool leather caressed his cheeks. You let Frankie stew in the feeling before you started. The first smack was light but still delivered a bite. Though there was no word from Frankie so you continued increasing the severity of the spank with a few more smacks. The handcuffs jingled from Frankie as he pulled against the restraints. You could see his arms muscle ripple from use. But still the safe word was still not used. So you continued a few more times. 

After one more particularly hard hit Frankie cried out “Yellow!” 

You were quick to lean down and kiss Frankie’s shoulder giving him some quick care as you whispered against his skin. “Good boy you did so well telling me your limits.” Frankie nuzzled his cheek against yours grounding himself and you let him. You took in the sight of his half lidded brown eyes just filled with lust and love for you. “Such a pretty boy.” 

After a few more minutes of checking in, you resumed your position. “Okay baby boy I’m gonna start again, but if it gets too much use the safe word again.” 

“Yes sir,” he answered again and rubbed his face against the cool surface of the pillow. 

With his affirmative response you started the smacks back up keeping at the limit that Frankie had told you. The squirming continued as you continued your ministrations. Frankie’s ass turned darker red as you smack him in a consistent rhythm. His cock was hard underneath him and a puddle of precum gathered below his hips. You moaned at the sight, and it gave you an idea. You continued the smacks for a few more minutes really making sure that Frankie was close to cumming. 

You knew he was ready when every spank made his cock twitch and his moans filled the bedroom. With one finally smack you finished with that section of the scene. Gently you set the switch aside and gently ran your hand over the warm skin. Frankie shivered under your touch and gently pushed his hips against your hand. 

“Awwww baby you’re so cute. Now I know my sweet boy is close so I have something I wanna try.” Frankie looked back over his shoulder and watched you grab the paddle you had shown off earlier. 

“Now I’m gonna spank you ten times with the paddle. You have to keep count and wait to till the count of ten to cum for me. Can you do that for me baby boy?” You asked gently rubbing his back. 

“Yes sir I can do that please I’ll be so good,” He moaned. 

“Good boy,” You praised and you positioned yourself beside him. You took a minute to take a deep breath before administering the first blow. 

Frankie moaned and pulled on the restraints. “O-One.” 

You paused in between smack letting him breathe. “Two….three!” 

“That’s it baby you’re doing so well.” The pattern started appearing on his skin and you moaned at the sight. “Such a pretty sight.” You praised and spanked him again. 

“Four! Thank you sir,” Frankie whimpered and you spanked him again. “Five!” 

“Halfway there baby boy. You can do it.” Frankie’s cock twitched hard at the praise and you spanked him again. 

“Six!” Soft tears started rolling down his cheeks and he was straining to keep himself from cumming. 

Smack! Smack! “Seven! Eight!” His cock was streaminig precum and you knew he was so close. 

“Almost there baby. Just two more,” You reassured him as you spanked him again. Frankie cried out the number as he panted. “S-So close sir!” 

“Good good boy you can cum after this last spank. You’re doing so well. Now cum for me,” You commanded as you spanked him one last time. That’s all Frankie needed as his dick spasmed and he came long ropes of cum against the sheets. The noises that Frankie made were like music to your ears. You gently rubbed you hand over the pattern as he came down from his high. As he panted beneath you, you took out your phone and took a picture of the sight. “Damn Frankie that is gonna keep me going for a long time.” 

Frankie whimpered and you quickly undid the restraints gently moving them to bring blood back to the area. You went to the bathroom and gathered the aftercare material you had gathered the previous night. Gently you sat down next to Frankie who hadn’t moved. 

“You there sweetheart?” You asked gently as you carefully applied aloe to the sore areas. 

“Mmmmhmm,” He mumbled and nuzzled into your legs. 

“Awwwww did I wear you out,” You smiled and gently kissed his head. 

“And them some,” He chuckled looking up at you. 

You smiled and ran a wet washcloth over his cock cleaning him up from his orgasm. Once you finished you set the toys aside for cleaning and laid down next to him. Frankie quickly clinged to you and cuddled his face into your chest. You kissed his head again and softly traced shapes into his back. 

The pair of you were silent for a long time before Frankie broke the silence by saying, “Thank you. I meant a lot.” 

“Of course my sweet I enjoy exploring kinks with you,” You grinned and twirled a bit of hair between your fingers. 

“You’re the first partner who allowed that,” He sighed. 

“Well there’s plenty more where that came from,” You reassured him. Frankie leaned up to kiss you softly. He settled back against your chest and soon the two of you fell asleep satisfied by your scene.

```````

Pedro Character Taglist

@littlemisspascal @burntheedges @carusolikey @morallyinept

@thebeldroramscal

[tangibletechnomancy]

How To Use AI To Fake A Scandal For Fun, Profit, and Clout

Or, I Just Saw People I Know To Be Reasonable Fall For A Fake "Ripoff" And Now I'm Going To Gently Demonstrate What Really Happened

So, we all know what people say about AI. It's just an automatic collage machine, it's stealing your data (as if the rest of the mainstream internet isn't - seriously, we should be using that knee-jerk disgust response to demand better internet privacy laws rather than try to beef up copyright so that compliance has to come at the beginning rather than the end of the process and you can be sued on suspicion of referencing, but I digress...), it can't create anything novel, some people go so far as to claim it's not even synthesizing anything, but just acting as a search engine and returning something run through a filter and "proving" it by "searching" for their own art and "finding" it.

And those are blatant lies.

The thing is, the reason AI is such a breakthrough - and the reason we memed with it so hard when DALL-E Mini and DALL-E 2 first dropped - is because it CAN create novel output. Because it CAN visualize the absurd ideas that no one has ever posted to the internet before. In fact, it would be a bigger breakthrough in computer science if we DID come up with an automatic collage machine - something that knows where to cut out a part of one image and paste it onto another, then smooth out the lighting and colors to make them fairly consistent, to make it look like what we would recognize as an image we're asking for? That would make the denoising algorithm on steroids that a diffusion model is look like child's play.

But, unlike the posts that claim that they're just acting as a collage maker at best and a search engine at worst, I'm not going to ask you to take my word for it (and stick a pin in this point, we'll come back to it later). I'm going to ask you to go to Simple Stable (or Craiyon, or the Karlo demo, if Google Colab feels too complicated for you - or if you like, do all of the above) and throw in a shitpost prompt or two. Ask for a velociraptor carousel pony ridden by a bunny. Ask for Godzilla fighting a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man. Ask for an oil painting of a capybara wearing an ornate princess gown. Shitpost with it like we did before these myths took hold.

Now take your favorite result(s) and reverse image search them. Did you get anything remotely similar to your generated image? Probably not!

So then, how did someone end up getting a near perfect recreation of their work? Was that just some kind of wacky, one-in-a-million coincidence?

Well - oh no, look at that, I asked it for a simplistic character drawing and it happened to me too, it just returned a drawing of mine that I never even uploaded, and it's the worst drawing I've done since the fifth grade even just to embarrass me! Oh no, what happened, did they change things right under my nose, has digital surveillance gotten even WORSE?? Look, see, here's the original on the left, compare it to the output on the right - scary!! They're training on the contents of your computer in real time now, aaaagh!!

Except, of course, for the fact that the entire paragraph above was a lie and I did this on purpose in a way no one could possibly recreate from a text prompt, even with a perfect description.

How?

See, some models have this nifty little function called img2img. It can be used for anything from guiding the composition of your final image with a roughly drawn layout, to turning a building into a dragon...to post-processing of a hand-drawn image, to blatantly fucking lying about how AI works.

I took 5 minutes out of my day to crudely draw a character. I uploaded the image to this post. I saved the post as a draft. I stuck the image URL in the init_image field in Simple Stable, cranked the init strength up to 0.8, cleared all text prompts, and ran it. It did exactly what I told it to and tried to lightly refine the image I gave it.

If you see someone claiming that an AI stole their image with this kind of "proof", and the image they're comparing is not ITSELF a parody of an extremely well-known piece such as the Mona Lisa, or just so extremely generic that the level of similarity could be a coincidence (you/your favorite artist do/es not own the rule of thirds or basic fantasy creatures, just to name one family of example I've seen), this is what happened.

So from here you must realize that it is deeply insidious that posts that make these claims usually imply or even outright state that you should NOT try to recreate this but instead just take their word for it, stressing ~DON'T FEED THE MACHINE~. It's always some claim about "ohhh, the more you use them, the more they learn, I made a SACRIFICE so you don't have to" - but txt2img functions can't use your interaction to learn jack shit. There's no new information in a text prompt for them TO learn. Most img2img models can't learn from your input either, for that matter! I still recommend being careful about corporate img2img toys - we know that Facebook, for instance, is happy to try and beef up facial recognition for the WORST possible reasons - but if you're worried about your privacy and data harvesting, any given txt2img model is one of the least worrying things on the internet today.

So do be careful with your privacy online, and PLEASE use your very understandable knee-jerk horror response to how much extremely personal content can be found in training databases as a call to DEMAND better privacy laws ("do not track" should not be just for show ffs) and compliance with security protocols in fields that deal with very private information (COMMON CRAWL DOESN'T GO FAR OUT OF ITS WAY, IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GET ANY MEDICAL IMAGES THE PATIENTS DIDN'T SHARE THEMSELVES HOLY SHIT, SOME HOSPITAL WORKERS AND/OR MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS DEVELOPERS BETTER BE GETTING FIRED AND/OR SUED) - but don't just believe a convenient and easy-to-disprove lie because it aligns with that feeling.

[creature-wizard]

"This Law of Assumption practitioner posted photos, doesn't that prove something?"

There's people out there claiming they've seen proof that the Law of Assumption works by way of photos posted by people who've claimed they've supposedly manifested their dreams.

So I'm going to talk about some of the ways that photographs can be misleading.

First of all, there are a lot of tricks people can use to make their bodies look different. If you watch how-to videos on contouring, you can see how people use makeup to give the appearance of drastic changes to their facial structure. Or heck, just search DuckDuckGo for "contouring before and after" to see what a difference makeup can make.

It's also very easy to fake before/after weight loss/muscle gain photos, even without Photoshop. Simply changing one's clothes, changing the lighting, and posing differently can make people's bodies look very different. People faking photos like this to promote weight loss and fitness products is actually pretty common. Go check out how Danae Mercer and Andrew Dixon demonstrated how easy it is. Go search up "how to look thinner in photos" to see just how many little tricks there are for this.

Photos can be misleading in other ways, too. One Instagram influencer - just as a prank, mind you - was able to pass off photos taken in an Ikea as a trip to Bali. Meanwhile, other Instagram users employ numerous tricks to make themselves seem more affluent than they really are, from using green screens to Photoshop to renting expensive goods to just posing with unbought merchandise at stores. One YouTuber, Byron Denton, spent a week manipulating his photos to make himself appear wealthy, and he was shocked at just how easy it was.

And of course, people can just steal photos or find them on stock photo sites. If you run a reverse image search, you'll sometimes find that the photos somebody posted came from somewhere else.

So yeah, photos don't necessarily prove that a Law of Assumption blogger has actually been manifesting. Photos can be misleading. (And this is why I challenge people who claim they can manifest anything to manifest and post photos of something that would be truly difficult to fake - like an ancient psychic tandem war elephant.)

For anyone reading this: If you are leaving or questioning the Law of Assumption and need help, please see this post.