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We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

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I'm so glad to see AO3 making it absolutely clear that none of these things are allowed to even be HINTED at.

Here's some of the language from the new post about AO3's police on commercial promotion:

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There is a wide variety of things that are not allowed under AO3's non-commercialization rules.

Any other language which one might interpret as requesting or having requested financial contributions, whether for yourself or others. This covers indirect references, euphemisms, or other language intended to get around the TOS. Some examples of this include:

Thanks for the coffee!

My ☕ username is the same as my username here

This chapter is brought to you by my patrons

You know where to find me if you want early or bonus chapters

Check out my Twitter to learn how you can donate to me since I'm not allowed to discuss it here

If you want to hear more about my ideas, talk about fandom, or find more of my stuff for a coin, visit my Tumblr

Solicitation is not allowed, whether it's for yourself or on behalf of someone else.

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Fandom intertextuality is seeing the new Game Gyaru collection and having “Vacay to Bonetown” from Helluva Boss playing as the internal soundtrack to the collection, despite a real music video being made for the collection already :P

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(spooky scary skeletons trousling in the distance)

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i like how the ripped sprite reveals the silly ass leg configuration they've got going on. kris has to step on susie's knee and susie has to crouch to make up for the Juice Height Difference

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kris and susie playing fnaf

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Alright, finished chapter 4 and watched a video about the Snowgrave effects on chapters 3 and 4, and. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. I’m so confused XD the conversation with Noelle in her room on a Snowgrave route is SO jarring that I don’t know what to think except that there has to be some other sign of who is in charge of Kris’s body besides whether or not the SOUL is in it. The SOUL is most likely just the player, though I do think there’s evidence to suggest it was originally Kris’s SOUL that’s being co-opted for use by the player for some reason (lol so there’s even a game to play, for the Doylist reason). Kris does such weird opposing things when the player isn’t in control that I feel like there’s some sort of other sign that is being missed or misinterpreted. Maybe it’s that Kris and the player are really the only ones in their body and Kris just made a deal with a devil that keeps calling to collect on Kris’s promises. The way the Knight laughs when Susie says it can’t beat them in the Light world makes me think it’s taunting Susie with the dramatic irony of only it, Kris, and the player knowing that the Knight has Kris in its pocket somehow.

(Mini theory the Knight is Carol Holiday? Idk it has antlers and maybe it’s just to throw us off but I don’t trust that woman, and her saying “YOU are welcome anytime�� and calling Kris at the end of a Snowgrave chapter 4 instead of the shadow voice makes me very suspicious. But it could be a red (blue?) herring.)

(Gaster(??) calling either Kris or the player their Deltarune is trippy AF and surely means something, as the delta rune in Undertale is tied to meaning “the angel who has seen the surface” and refers to a being who has seen both worlds, so in the Deltarune world, someone who houses entities of both Dark and Light? Bc a lot of people have seen both the light and dark worlds at this point and Noelle has a lot of angel imagery and dialogue tied to her so I don’t even know at this point, this is reaching Homestuck levels of convoluted. Also, did the prophecy say that Susie has to die…or that they all do? Or that Kris does? Do we have confirmation?)

Thought percolating, though I haven’t finished Deltarune Chapter 4 yet: I think the discussion is more nuanced than “Kris is possessed by the player.” I think it’s trying to expand on what was only hinted at in Undertale: the fact that it wasn’t all Frisk or all Chara that determined a pacifist or genocide route; it was the will of the player acting through Frisk that determined what kind of run it was. There are three elements at play during every Undertale run (Frisk, the player, and debatably Chara but I believe they’re present even in a pacifist run tbh), and right now in Deltarune, there are three elements at play in Kris: Kris, the Knight (or a Knight’s agent, unsure yet), and the player. The player can influence Kris’s body towards leaning into the Knight’s will, but I believe now the SOUL is still Kris, rather than the player. Any time Kris’s body rejects the SOUL to scuttle around, it’s the Knight instead locking Kris out of their own body to use it to open fountains and do whatever else. The Knight and Kris seem to be diametrically opposed forces, or becoming that way. There is a lot of flavor text that suggests Kris isn’t happy with the arrangement of their SOUL and body being separated and control not being their own, no matter who is controlling them, the entity or the player. There’s a ton of evidence in the Snowgrave/Weird Route to back up that Kris is housing an unfriendly entity that isn’t them, and I don’t think it’s quite the player either. The player can align with that entity, but it IS a separate entity, a separate character. The player can lean either towards the Knight or towards Kris, but it still isn’t fully Kris in charge all the time. That’s the tension there within Kris’s journey as a character. And I’m rooting for them; hope we get to more fully meet them one day :P

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"If you use em dash in your works, it makes them look AI generated. No real human uses em dash."

Imaging thinking actual human writers are Not Real because they use... professional writing in their works.

Imagine thinking millions of people who have been using em dash way before AI becomes a thing are all robots.

REBLOG IF YOU'RE A HUMAN AND YOU USE EM DASH

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Thought percolating, though I haven’t finished Deltarune Chapter 4 yet: I think the discussion is more nuanced than “Kris is possessed by the player.” I think it’s trying to expand on what was only hinted at in Undertale: the fact that it wasn’t all Frisk or all Chara that determined a pacifist or genocide route; it was the will of the player acting through Frisk that determined what kind of run it was. There are three elements at play during every Undertale run (Frisk, the player, and debatably Chara but I believe they’re present even in a pacifist run tbh), and right now in Deltarune, there are three elements at play in Kris: Kris, the Knight (or a Knight’s agent, unsure yet), and the player. The player can influence Kris’s body towards leaning into the Knight’s will, but I believe now the SOUL is still Kris, rather than the player. Any time Kris’s body rejects the SOUL to scuttle around, it’s the Knight instead locking Kris out of their own body to use it to open fountains and do whatever else. The Knight and Kris seem to be diametrically opposed forces, or becoming that way. There is a lot of flavor text that suggests Kris isn’t happy with the arrangement of their SOUL and body being separated and control not being their own, no matter who is controlling them, the entity or the player. There’s a ton of evidence in the Snowgrave/Weird Route to back up that Kris is housing an unfriendly entity that isn’t them, and I don’t think it’s quite the player either. The player can align with that entity, but it IS a separate entity, a separate character. The player can lean either towards the Knight or towards Kris, but it still isn’t fully Kris in charge all the time. That’s the tension there within Kris’s journey as a character. And I’m rooting for them; hope we get to more fully meet them one day :P

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A Fizziepop Take: Let's talk about little orphan Loona

What came over Loona in this newest Helluva Boss short? And why did the reaction of a mortal fluster her the way it did? You know the drill, let’s get into it with another Fizziepop take:

Ok, so we all know Loona as a generally angry, hurt them before they hurt you type of girl; the type who does her best to make sure she doesn’t get too attached because she views needing people as a sort of weakness on her part…. But as the show has gone on, we’ve slowly but surely gotten to see Loona evolve. Are the changes dramatic? Aside from the changes that came directly following the events of the episode “Mastermind”, no, they aren’t, but if you look at the reality of human nature, changes like the ones we see in Loona tend to be small and slow, and given the way the demon world Vivzie has created mirrors real world themes, that makes sense… But in this Loona-centric short, why was this the way that she was portrayed?

I wanna start by first looking at the way Loona was portrayed in the beginning of the series. In the beginning, Loona was mostly a background character that seemed to be just the hot, take-no-shit adult daughter of our protagonist Blitz; she was sarcastic, strong-willed, and deeply protective of herself against any outside affection. We eventually learn through Blitz’s flashbacks while helping Stolas deal with his own daughter running off with no explanation,that Loona’s guarded behavior was the result of likely being in and out of a broken foster/adoption system for roughly the first 18 years of her life, and more than likely being abused verbally and physically by not only the staff in the Pound meant to protect her, but the other hellhounds in her same situation, and we get confirmation of Loona being returned to the pound on at least one occasion during her interaction with a hellhound she apparently lived with before her final adoption when she’s at Queen Bee’s party. Given the fragmented story of her life BB (Before Blitz), Loona’s guarded and aggressive behavior makes sense as an adult; after years living her life in survival mode, that switch wouldn’t just flip off when she’s in a safe situation because years of “safe” situations becoming unsafe or unstable quicker than she could process would’ve taught her that there is no other way to live but to be in survival mode constantly, that she had to stay ready for things to uproot of for people she was comfortable with to turn on her so she didn’t have to scramble to get ready when it happened… So even after Blitz took her in, fed her, clothed her, gave her a safe space with him, and gave her a job so she was able to take care of herself in adulthood, we still get that angry, hurt them first type of mentality from her when we’re introduced to her in the show.

Now, the Loona we’re introduced to in the beginning isn’t the Loona we’re stuck with, and we get to see her tough exterior crack every once and a while throughout the show, with her biggest change coming in the episode “Mastermind” when her adoptive father is set to be executed in front of her. At this point in the show, I believe Loona has been said to have been with Blitz roughly 5 or so years, which is why we get to see those small shifts in her demeanor through the series, but I don’t think Loona ever really sees him as a father figure despite seeing him and acknowledging his place as her father. Why? Because I think Loona sees Blitz the way a lot of us in the fandom see Blitz: as a big kid.

While Blitz is said to be in his 30s, his free spirit, fun loving attitude, inability to maintain most adult interactions, and deep-seeded unresolved trauma give Blitz the vibe of someone closer to mid to late teens, or the “still a kid” version of early 20s. Does the man try to be a good father to her? Absolutely. Does he know how? Not really. Blitz, still recovering from his own fucked up childhood, doesn’t entirely know what a parent (more specifically a dad) should be, he just has a vague understanding of what he doesn’t want to be based off of how his own father was with him, and while I think he did a pretty kickass job considering what he was working with, it’s likely that Loona still sees him as too immature to really be a dad despite knowing that he by technicality is her dad… Which bring us to the newest short in the series, “Mission: Orphan Time”.

In “Mission: Orphan Time”, Blitz brings his daughter into the field to assassinate a children’s entertainer by the name of  Mr. Wrigglers who happen to be doing children's entertainment at a charity for dying orphans and injured puppies… While Blitz brought Loona out with him for this because he had planned for there to be a day of bonding, Loona couldn’t bring herself to actually go through with the job because the man they had been hired to off seemed like a genuinely nice, caring man, and although she would probably never admit to it, I think the man she saw was reminiscent of what she wanted in a parent growing up; especially after seeing the man say goodbye to all of his children… All of his adopted children….. His adopted children who were apparently kids that were labeled too troubled or too hard to adopt out…. His troubled, adopted children who he seems to love unconditionally…… and that is all that I think Loona really ever wanted.

Loona, a child of adoption who had been given up on by the system in her home ring of Hell, looked at this man and his soft, gentle parent demeanor and the way he requested to say goodbye to every last one of his children, and how each kid seemed to have the relationship with him that meant losing him seemed like a shot to the heart, and saw the type of parent she had always dreamed of; a parent who would love, accept, and support her unconditionally and without a second thought. I know a lot of you will read this and think I’m full of shit, because “Fizzie, Loona already has a parent who loves, accepts, and supports her unconditionally: Blitz”, and everyone saying that would be right, but I think one of the things that drew Loona to this mortal man was that not only does he have those loving qualities, but he has the maturity and stability that Blitz has never quite shown her with his antics over the years.

I think that this short, though less than 6 minutes, was a peek into Loona subconsciously realizing that she wanted something and someone like this; someone steady and dependable and soft. As much as Loona has changed over the course of the show, and as much as she loves her adoptive father, I think that she hasn’t quite gotten to see the changes she’s needed to see from Blitz for her to fully recognize him as a fully safe place, and I don’t think Blitz really understands why that softness and security  is so important to her, or how he can become what she needs…. Will the pair ever get to that point? Will Loona ever not feel that sort of insecurity with Blitz? How will a single mortal's reaction to the real her impact Loona's mental health now?

We may never fully know, but regardless, I’m excited for Vivzie to keep taking us on this ride to find out.

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Listen. Listen. There are some wider and interesting discussions to be had about the soul mechanics of the Hellaverse, and the animation was beautiful, but. Like. This short is exactly why I almost stopped watching Helluva Boss. It’s just not my thing XDD

(Buuuuut I’m very aware that there are many people who wish the show had stayed exactly what this short is, and I know that crowd isn’t always very happy about the direction of the main show becoming more plotty (which I eat TF up), so. This wasn’t for me, and that’s okay :P)

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Yet another AO3 bot situation - please spread the word!

Hi, it's me again, the person who wrote that viral post about fanfiction plagiarism! Today I'm here to warn you about abuse perpetrated by bots who have stolen AO3 usernames.

There's currently an epidemic of bots going around leaving (apparently random) horrible, hateful comments on people's fics. This isn't the first time bots have invaded AO3, but the big problem with this wave is that they're using real AO3 usernames to do it.

I learned about this when another writer contacted me after receiving the following comment on their story:

Now, while that is my username, I DEFINITELY did not leave this comment (and anyone who would leave something like that on a fic should be slapped! What an awful thing to post). This fic is in a completely unrelated fandom that I have never participated in, nor has that author participated in any of my fandoms, so the probability of it being some intentional fandom drama thing to make me look bad is also low.

The writer whose fic the comment was left on enlisted the aid of some friends and tracked down other guest comments with unrelated usernames attached, which is pretty strong evidence that they are being left by bots at random.

The TL;DR: If you receive a cruel comment from a (Guest) with an actual AO3 username attached, it's most likely from a bot. Please do not lash out at or dogpile the AO3 user who owns that name, and who in all likelihood has no idea that their name has been hijacked for evil.

If finding this kind of comment on a fic, even left by a bot, is likely to upset you, I would recommend changing your comment settings so that only users who are logged in can leave comments. To do this, edit your story settings, and under "Privacy," select the radio button that says "Only registered users can comment," as shown below.

Please spread the word to other AO3 users! And if you see mean guest comments on other fics, maybe let the author know that it's probably from a bot and not a real person who thinks their writing is bad.