#comparison web sites

[oldbutchdanielcraig]

dearie. dearie. dearie. dearie. dearie. dearie. dearie. dearie. dearie.

[vib-ri]

digital mascot design by Reiko Chiba

[bf-rally]

so today i messed around with react and managed to get this navbar working:

i looked at a tutorial the other day and tried to actually apply it to today....idk how to properly style the navbar so gonna try to figure it out next time if possible!

[fruutbaag]

whoag almost at 200 followers. hi hellooo

[deityofhearts]

@goldensunset I fully believe ya!! I didn’t assume her to be not nice or anything, I don’t think any of the people I assume I’m annoying are like mean or not nice I just fear I’m so inherently irritating that I could make a saint hate me

i promise you starlight appreciates your tags wholeheartedly

YAYYYYY im glad Q^Q

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Hey Derin, can I ask you a question or two about publishing? (If no, close your eyes for the next bit and click near where you remember the delete button was.)

I'm writing something with the dream of publishing it one day and I'm considering all avenues at this stage. What led you to publishing serially online? What are the pros of your experience doing that?

Asking you because I was looking over your site earlier today and thinking about how comfortable a place the internet feels - less of a big step than traditional publishing, or even putting out a whole story at once for self-publishing.

I've never pursued trad publishing and have no plans to ever do so, it was immediately obvious that it wasn't for me, so I can't give you like, comparisons. I only even got into indie publishing because my readers were demanding ebooks and paperbacks so I just shrugged and got them made. Sometimes I get asked trad vs. indie publishing questions that I do not have the experience to answer.

This question, though, I can answer. I didn't sit down and go "how should I publish these? Online, or through a trad publisher, or what?" I approached web serial writing directly as a career without considering publishing my writing as books at all; that was never on the radar until the readers wanted them. And the reason I started writing a web serial was simple -- it was a hobby that suited my lifestyle.

I'd written serial fiction before; fanfiction, some r/hfy stuff, just whatever I felt like, and I had a serious problem experienced by many casual writers -- I tended not to finish stuff. The stuff that had never made it to the web was even worse; I had so many novels in progress on my hard drive that I'd gotten to the end of the first act of, before moving onto a new idea. I needed something to do with my time (I'd moved back to my hometown to spend time with my dying grandfather and was unemployed) and posting a web serial with a strict schedule and a patreon seemed like the best way to force myself to actually finish my stories. If a handful of people were giving me a couple of buck a month, I wouldn't be able to just drift off to something else; I'd have to finish the story.

And it worked. I got a new job and wrote Curse Words on my off weeks, then that job ended and my Patreon was paying my new mortgage and suddenly this was just kind of my job now. And then enough people were asking for ebooks and paperbacks that I had to figure out how to make those happen. And this is kind of my life now I guess.

In terms of pros I would say:

Low barrier to entry/small steps of progression: You can just start publishing on a website for free whenever you want. You can make your own website for free and publish on that (I did). It takes five minutes or less to learn how to do and you don't need to buy anything. Your time commitment is mostly Writing The Story, which is presumably what you want to be spending your time on anyway. If you do it for 2 months and decide you hate it? You can stop. No harm, no foul.

No boss: You're beholden to your patrons and nobody else. You can write whatever the fuck you want, wherever the fuck you want, however often you want. The only deadline is the schedule that you yourself set, and you can set it to suit your lifestyle.

Payment model: The patreon/ko-fi sponsorship model is vastly superior, in my opinion, to making money via book sales. There's too many factors involved to really say if you make more or less money on Patreon, but what it has is predictability. Patrons come and go, but slowly. I can predict my monthly income from my supporters to within a hundred dollars or so. This is a massive advantage when you have bills to pay. Book sales surge unpredictably, and while you can bank on things like advances if you go the trad publishing route, these are few and far between.

Time: There are minimal delays in web serial publishing. No waiting months or years at a time for your book to chew through the machinery of a publisher, no long delays as your agent works or contracts are negotiated. Indie publishing is faster but still has far more delays than web serial publishing; most notably, you have to write the entire book first, often with little idea of how well it's going to perform. I don't do well with waiting periods or having to coordinate timing with others, so web serial publishing works best for me.

Marketability: Web serials have a far smaller audience than books, but they're also easier to market to that audience. For one thing, they're usually free, and it's a lot easier to convince someone to try a free story instead of buying one. For another, their one-chapter-at-a-time nature feels like less of a commitment and less intimidating to some people, even though they are traditionally much longer than books tend to be. Also, their chapter-by-chapter nature allows speculation and jokes and fanart and stuff to be spread while the story is still going, which is great marketing, especially when readers end up talking about it far longer than they would talk about a book (because they're reading it chapter-by-chapter for far longer).

But the biggest advantage in marketability is what I call 'rolling weight enthusiasm'.

When you're pushing a cart or something, it takes a lot of effort to get started, but once you're cruising at a consistent speed, you can rely on momentum to do half the work for you. You can build more and more speed with the same effort, because a rolling weight is maintaining that momentum. Writing a web serial is a lot like that; the consistent release schedule means that if you can get people invested, it's much easier to keep them invested, because they're waiting a very short period of time (a few days to a week, depending on your release schedule) to get more of the story. If you're releasing books, there might be more than a year between releases; you can keep a dedicated audience interested for that long, but it's much harder to hold onto the casual readers. There are so, so many book series that I've only read half of because at some point a new book was released and I didn't notice. If you write and publish books, you have to do a big part of the marketing all over again to let people know that the next one is out. Web serials don't have this problem. When's the next chapter out? soon enough that the previous chapter is still fresh in your mind. soon enough that you probably don't have time to finish the fanart this one made you think of.

Immediate feedback: Another great thing about web serials is that you can watch the audience reaction in real time. Not only that but, unlike with a book that people read all at once, you get very detailed feedback specific to each chapter. I don't mean people telling you about the story; reader suggestions and 'constructive criticism' is almost universally useless and can generally be thrown out. If you trust somebody's writing and editing skills enough to take feedback from them, you should ask that person directly; random readers are unlikely to be experts and unlikely to have accurate advice.

Instead, watch them discuss it amongst themselves. What did they get right away, and what are they confused about? what did they react most strongly to; is the dominant emotional reaction to the various characters vaguely in line with what you intended? Check the theories; how well are they predicting future events? (If everyone is guessing the Big Twist, then you need to put more effort into selling it so that it's not a let down; the less surprising a twist is, the better the writing has to be to pull it off. But if nobody is guessing the Big Twist, then you have insufficiently foreshadowed it. You're looking for a very high population of readers being accurate about the information they're expected to have gleaned, and a small population being accurate about twists and stuff, and you want that small population to grow as they get closer to the twist.) Checking these reactions can give you a better idea of what you need to emphasise, clarify, or foreshadow in the text.

[taylor-titmouse]

a while ago i designed a sea serpent that would serve as the source for myrddin's blood, and then a little while after that i designed lindwurms and said they were related to sea serpents. i've now done a fair bit more development and design work for the lindwurms than i did for the serpents, so i thought i'd revisit these guys with that relation in mind. (and all of this is subject to change once i start actually writing the story that involves a serpent)

sea serpents are, predictably, dragons that live in the sea. evolution is debatable in a world where magic and gods measurably exist, but adaptation is adaptation. they've developed dorsal fins on their back and a large webbed tail to act as a paddle/rudder. they don't have gills, but have incredibly powerful lungs that can hold a breath for hours. their forelimbs are mainly used for climbing onto land to access nesting sites, and for carrying nest objects. they live in warm, coastal waters, and adults hunt seals and seal-sized critters, but will take anything they can fit in their mouths. they don't generally go after humanoids outside of mating season, when males are on the hunt for treasure to present to females. trade ships needing to pass through known serpent territory will throw a tribute over the side to appease males, who might otherwise knock the ship over in search of fine loot (and it would be a waste not to eat the drowned sailors).

like most dragons, the males construct nests of treasure for females, and will draw them there to see it. if the nest is to her satisfaction, they'll mate, and she'll move in to lay her eggs, while the male hunts to feed her. sea serpents are unique in their industriousness--given good nesting sites are hard to find and at the mercy of the tide, males will maintain multiple at once, just in case. this can lead to a lot of forgotten hoards, and outright property theft by opportunistic males (and treasure hunting humans). especially successful males may end up with multiple mates at different nests, and then he's on the hook to feed them all.

sea serpent mating seasons are dependent on mysterious influences in the tides, lunar cycle, and available foodstock, and so can have gaps of years between them. wurmlets are about a foot long when they hatch, and will be led by their mother to kelp forests, large sargassum mats, and coral reefs , where they'll be left to grow up on their own in the safety of the vegetation. juveniles will drape themselves in whatever is available for camouflage, until they're big enough to defend themselves. nesting females may adopt this strategy when guarding their eggs, if the material is locally available, leading casual observers to think females literally grow kelp for hair.

and here's a lindwurm for comparison

[wyrmarchives]

Main | Navigation | COD Writing | Send A Request

© @wyrmarchives

Nuclear

Simon “Ghost” Riley x Reader

Triggers: Non-canon, cursing/strong language.

Context of Soulmate AU: link

Oh fuck.

Really it all happened so fast. Him running to the chaos, civilians away from it.

The blast was relatively small in comparison to what it should’ve been. The bomb destroyed one building, the same one used as a lab; a parking garage, abandoned at that, but, it was still enough to cause panic to surrounding locals and tourists. It’s been like this for months. Small bombs, terrorist projects popping up around the world.

The 141 has been spread thin chasing the “experiments” down, but it’s been hard. It’s not just one organization; it’s multiple groups. Simon’s never been particularly good at science, and the height of his math skills is calculating the trajectory for a well placed bullet; but even he could see the appeal behind the mad scientist who sold a hypothesis on the dark web which kickstarted this shite.

“Polarized electrons and nuclei? (Hypothetical) Evolution of The Human Race and Advancement of Nature.”

That’s what Laswell read during the brief eight months ago. “They want to basically fry atoms in the air with nuclear radiation, and kickstart survival of the fittest to see what’ll happen.”

“So, mad scientists?” Price summed up with annoyance. Thumb drumming on the table as he leaned back in his chair.

“The hypothetical seems… Enlightenin’, ay?” Scottish brouge mocks. Voice grating as gum pops.

“Easy, Johnny.” Masked weight shifted in his chair, arms crossed; eyes glowered at the screen through balaclava. “We handle this like we handle the rest, aye?”

“Not exactly… It’s experimental right now.” Laswell gestures to the screen, click of the remote in hand; slide show flickering to the next page. Deleted and encrypted forums from illegal sites. “Intel managed to decode a majority, but compounds in the equations got scrubbed by the site’s moderator. We’ve got about half the equation on the board for bow, and it’s not pretty from what the Snoops gathered.” She glares at the formula on screen. “Basically, from what I was told, they charged the bombs with electricity by polarizing the nuclei before they split them. Kinda like forcing two magnets together until they shatter. Fortunately, because the shards after the explosion try to rotate and magnetize, we won’t see an explosion like world war two but it’s still pretty destructive.”

“Well, that’s assuring. Jus’ us against a clock then, no?” Gaz’s knee bounces; steady tap of heel dulls against the tile as his boot makes contact.

They found out later that the bombs were worse in other ways. The radiation had a larger area of effect; it started off with small reactions in people. Feelings of numbness in bodies, higher electrical conductivity that killed people with pacemakers and other assortments of medical devices… The bombs got more advanced with each “failure”; got more deadly… Then the narrative changed.

“Re: ‘Nuclear charged electrons and nuclei. Evolution of The Human Race and Advancement of Nature.’ What if we used 2 positive polars instead of 2 negative polars?”

Intel managed to scrub the site for the location of the new bomb, even though they didn’t get a time, it was still enough to deploy.

For some reason, his luck always seems to run out in the most inopportune moments; and his skin feels like it’s on fire as electricity chases up his veins… Shit.

They got there as the bomb had gone off. Landed not even 40 minutes prior, they’re lucky in all honesty that they didn’t make it into the garage; but that doesn’t stop the air that feels like bricks slamming through their chests, the impact after getting knocked off foot isn’t a new feeling… But the charged air is.

Thick, heavy, suffocating; it reminds him of Mexico, being buried alive- that’s not the jarring part… The electricity is; a dense charged fog that clouds around their feet in a dusty orange. A static shock with every ragged breath, every movement subtle or not. Slow electrocution, that’s what it feels like.

“Johnny?” Simon manages up to his knees, head tilted to glaze the Scotsman still laid out. He breathes despite the pain when the brunette groans, rolling onto his back.

“Aye, gona’ need ‘a pint aft’ this’, LT.” Soap mutters; breathing shallow and labored.

Price got the worst of it, always in lead. Gaz kneeling over him. “Broken, Cap’?”

“Not,” a huff, “yet, Sergeant.” He slowly sits up with help of the younger man.

“Never simple, ‘init?” Simon rumbles reaching his feet finally, head on a swivel; rumble, car alarms matching the ringing in his ears, civilians laid out. Some screaming, some silent; the consistency? Horror and shock, pain and fear. He huffs. “Orders, John?”

Deep breaths sound from the Captain as he catches air; trying to fuel his body past pain as he stands. Knee twisted no doubt by his limp, hand raising to his chest where his calloused hands grasp his radio. “Bravo Six to Watcher, do you copy? Over.”

“Watcher to Bravo Six, copy. Over.”

“Got a situation down ‘ere, Watcher. Timing was all off, bomb detonated. Over.”

A brief pause that Simon recognizes, no doubt Laswell cursing off comms.

“Copy, change objective. Aid and retreat. Clear site; sending EVAC. Over.”

“Copy. Over and out.” John nods. They have their orders; they organize and move.

It’s methodical. Swift. Local government doesn’t take long to send in guard and emergency personnel; code victims, organize, and aid.

Physical contact proves to be some disaster though after a few minutes of evacuation.

A shrill scream paired with a baritone cry; both dropping to ground where lightning seemingly struck between bodies… Then again, two men. Next an elderly couple who made it out alive on the sidewalk.

Blue. Purple. Gold. The light doesn’t discriminate, nor the order of choice to strike. It’s seemingly at random. Smell of burnt flesh, and angry scars…

“Bloody hell!” Price’s voice rings, dragging a body by vest away from a woman. Gaz, the first of the team to drop, out cold, but alive.

“Steamin’ Jesus!” Johnny, the closer of the two rushes to aid, med kit already out and open as his knees make contact with concrete. Torch in gloved hand checking the colored man’s eyes for dilation.

It’s enough to put pause on rescue. Everyone freezing in place as eight people almost simultaneously collapsed at first attempts to help.

Dark eyes scavenge for answer. The man and woman, the two men, the couple, gaz- gloves. Bare skin.

“Nobody touch anyone.” Simon’s voice carries. “It’s contact. Flesh.”

Orders, and people follow. EMS extra attentive; local forces grabbing gloves from pockets, police officers grabbing rubber gloves from kit.

Simon looks at his own gloves; the knuckles scuffed and tore from the blast when he landed in the street. Protective plating torn from the thick leather. Thank God for gear.

He has orders, his gaze lifts to John. A shared nod as they both move once Garrick coughs and wakes. Disoriented but fine otherwise by what MacTavish can tell. They have a job to do, no matter the circumstances.

Simon works alone, pulling people from rubble before handing them off to a medic/firefighter/cop on standby.

It was an accident when his grip slipped; his eyes meeting bleary pained ones, and Shit. He understands, eyes locked with yours as your hand wrapped around his in attempt not to fall back down, fingertips brushing against his bare knuckles.

Fireworks? No. Thunderstruck. That’s what the jolt feels like when electricity chases up his arm. Contact arcing like lava as the skin whelps instantly to scar. Like a knock to the jaw, stunning function of brain.

Yeah, he gets what that lightning means.

It means when he wakes up, he ain’t lettin’ you go, luv.

Tag List: @wickizer

Thank you for your support! ❤️

[otherkinnews]

Mississippi and Oklahoma propose laws against students who identify as nonhuman animals

This article was originally written by Orion Scribner @frameacloud on January 18, 2025 on the Otherkin News blog on DreamWidth: https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/95979.html

For the third year running, Republicans in the US have once again continued to write "anti-furry bills." On January 17, Republicans introduced Mississippi House Bill 1060 (MS HB 1060), which you can see for yourself on the state government's site, though you may need to enable Javascript if your web browser doesn't display it properly: https://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/2025/pdf/history/HB/HB1060.xml Currently, this is the bill's official description, as written by its sponsors:

"Gender dysphoria; require school personnel to notify parents of student who request to be referred to as different gender or nonhuman."

Emphasis added. Furthermore, the sponsors wrote it with this summary:

"An Act To Require School Administrators, Teachers, Counselors Or Other Personnel Of The School To Provide Written Notification To The Parent Or Legal Guardian Of Any Student Identifying At School As A Gender Or Pronoun That Does Not Align With The Child's Sex On Their Birth Certificate, Sex Assigned At Birth Or Using Sex-segregated School Programs And Activities Or School Facilities That Do Not Align With The Child's Sex Assignment At Birth, Within Three Days Of Becoming Aware Of Such Conduct Or Request By The Affected Student; To Provide That No School Personnel Shall Be Disciplined Or Suffer Any Unlawful Reprisal For Refusing To Acknowledge A Student By A Preferred Gender, Pronoun Or Animal Species That Is Inconsistent With The Child's Sex Assignment At Birth; To Prescribe The Legislative Intent; And For Related Purposes."

Emphasis added. Despite what the description and summary says, the bill text itself doesn't mention either of the topics that I emphasized here. This leaves it an ordinary example of legislature proposed to discriminate against transgender students in public schools. This is a common pattern in anti-furry bills, where an early version of the bill mentions students who identify as nonhuman animal species, to try to attract attention, and then the sponsors delete that part later so that the bill can focus on their real intentions against transgender students. Republicans mean for the temporary inclusion of that topic to satirize transgender students and make a comparison that they see as absurd. It's a reference to an urban legend that Republicans circulate, where supposedly schools that let transgender students use the restrooms they want are also providing litter boxes in classrooms for students who are furries. That urban legend has been debunked by the fact-checking sites Snopes and Reuters.

The bill was sponsored by these eleven Republican Representatives: Charles Blackwell, William Arnold, Randy Boyd, Larry Byrd, Carolyn Crawford, Jim Estrada, Greg Haney, Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes, Donnie Scoggin, Joseph Tubb, and Beth Waldo. These are some of the same authors as a similar anti-furry bill from last year, Mississippi House Bill 176, which was also written by the same Blackwell, Arnold, Boyd, Byrd, and Scoggin, plus Dan Eubanks and Jimmy Fondren.

[Edited to add] Another new one is Oklahoma House Bill 1327, by sole sponsor Justin Humphrey. This is basically the same as his bill from last year, Oklahoma House Bill 3084, still proposing that students who identify as animals should get picked up from school by animal control. He specializes in introducing bills that sound bizarre to attract attention, and later he cleans them up so they'll pass into law. He prefiled it on December 30th so that it will be introduced on February 3.

Anti-furry bills similar to this one began in 2023 with North Dakota House Bill 1522, Oklahoma Senate Bill 943, Indiana Statehouse Bill 380, and a proposed amendment to Montana Senate Bill 544. 2024 had Oklahoma House Bill 3084, Mississippi House Bill 176, and Missouri House Bill 2678. No anti-furry bills have yet passed into law as such. Fellow volunteers and I have been reporting on these in the Otherkin News blog all along, which you can read in the tag for that purpose. Don't like this bill? If you're a US citizen, voting is only one of your powers to shape the laws that you live under. In the recording of my polycule's panel about anti-furry bills, skip to the timestamp 23:44 to hear what ordinary citizens can do. In the written script of our lecture, see Slides 21 through 25.

[novantinuum]

Most Specialest Boy Ever Has Arrived! !!!

After years and years of Craving a Lorge Plush Lad, my dreams have come true and he is now home! ;www;;;;;

This truly just felt like the natural conclusion of my life after kickstarting Worm Theory™ on this webbed site back in the day.

He is very large and Distinguished- here is my Rose Quartz sword WIP as a size comparison, the guy's shockingly long! Perfect for lounging across a bed or a couch as my cartoon watching buddy.

This plush is a lovingly made one-of-a-kind from Elkkuvelkku (link leads to their Insta post about this boyo) on Instagram/Etsy- this seller doesn't currently have any other handmade plushies on their storefront, but they have a ton of cute Pokémon patterns if you're into that.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Humans now share the web equally with bots, according to a major new report – as some fear that the internet is dying. In recent months, the so-called “dead internet theory” has gained new popularity. It suggests that much of the content online is in fact automatically generated, and that the number of humans on the web is dwindling in comparison with bot accounts. Now a new report from cyber security company Imperva suggests that it is increasingly becoming true. Nearly half, 49.6 per cent, of all internet traffic came from bots last year, its “Bad Bot Report” indicates. That is up 2 per cent in comparison with last year, and is the highest number ever seen since the report began in 2013. In some countries, the picture is worse. In Ireland, 71 per cent of internet traffic is automated, it said. Some of that rise is the result of the adoption of generative artificial intelligence and large language models. Companies that build those systems use bots scrape the internet and gather data that can then be used to train them. Some of those bots are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Imperva warned. More and more of them come from residential internet connections, which makes them look more legitimate. “Automated bots will soon surpass the proportion of internet traffic coming from humans, changing the way that organizations approach building and protecting their websites and applications,” said Nanhi Singh, general manager for application security at Imperva. “As more AI-enabled tools are introduced, bots will become omnipresent.”

[quinton-reviews]

Quinton, the people must know: what is your opinion on Edward Cullen. Why is he your pfp on this Webbed Site.

Okay so two things. 1) I originally made a Tumblr as a response to other people who had made fake QR tumblrs using actual photos of me from videos. I thought it would be funny if the real QR Tumblr didn't even have my photo on it.

2) when I was young (and thin) people used to tell me I looked like Edward Cullen. These days, sadly, I rarely get these comparisons anymore because Shane Dawson and Dream are nearly universally the people I'm compared to. This has honestly been a big demotivator in terms of bettering myself because instead of being told I look like a hot vampire, I now get told I look like Shane Dawson when I'm at my peak health. Here's a big number:

6

[detailtilted]

New Enhanced Edition - Comic-Con 2007 with Jensen, Eric, Sera, and Ben

Direct link to video. Link to YouTube channel. (22 videos available.)

My latest video is up. This is the SDCC 2007 panel with Jensen. (Jared had been scheduled to be there, but he missed his flight because he was filming until 6am that morning.)

Additional Footage Found and other Ramblings

Some of you may have seen my pleas searching for anyone who'd downloaded (and still had) all of scaperanya's videos from this panel. I never did manage to turn up the missing files, but I received something better late last week! AgtSpooky dug up a nearly-complete video of the full panel that used to be on the now-dead WinchesterBros.com web site. The video quality was a little low, but the audio was glorious! I edited in all the audio to match up with the higher-quality video I used. Until then, I'd only had good audio for about half of the panel, and the rest of it was really, really bad. In addition to being easier on the ears, it improved the accuracy of my subtitles.

I also used several minutes from that video in the sidebar to give visibility to other speakers in a small window, as well as using a few other videos for the same purpose. My full credits are in the video description. The main part of the video uses a higher-quality video as much as possible (see comparison screen shots below), and that one was focused mostly on Jensen. As it should be. 😂 So I did something similar to what I did for SDCC 2008 a while back -- I tried to give visibility to other people in smaller video windows. You can see an example of it in the thumbnail above, top-left corner. They'll be more useful on larger screens -- probably not so much for viewers on a phone.

Sera gets the least coverage in the sidebar videos, but that wasn't an intentional slight. It was just difficult to fit her in because she was on the opposite side of Jensen from Eric and Ben. She wasn't talking or reacting as much whereas Eric was more actively engaged with most of the questions, so I felt there wasn't usually any justification to cram her onto the screen and I was afraid it was already too cluttered.

What's Next?

I've started the next chronological convention, which is Jared's panel from Fangoria in January 2008. With all the footage synced up, I have about 42 minutes' worth of coverage. There are two gaps of unknown length toward the end, but I ended up with more coverage than I expected when I first started. I'll post more details about that once I announce that video's publication.

Please bear with me if I'm slower than usual to get my next video out. This SDCC video presented a few challenges. I put most of my spare time into working on it and the end result was that I fell behind on both video editing and on general life.

Before/After Comparison Photo

Please join me in a sigh of relief that Jensen's head is finally getting unsquished after 18 years. 😂

Disclaimer: the entire video won't look this good. The below source makes up 88% of the video and I had to use some lower-quality videos to fill in the gaps in their coverage. I also chose one of the better-looking frames for my comparison. Most of it does look very good for a video from 2007 though, and I think with the enhancements it will look better than any version you may have watched before.

A recap for anyone not familiar with this project…

In December 2023, I started a project to enhance old convention videos. The project is mostly focused on Jared and Jensen, but there will occasionally be videos with other actors. I'm upscaling the videos and making other visual improvements, adding extra content to clarify various references, and adding human-generated, color-coded subtitles so you can better understand the sometimes-chaotic audio. The subtitles can be auto-translated to other languages via YouTube.

My goal is to publish the best, most complete, and most watchable versions of these older convention panels yet seen, but this is only possible thanks to the fans who captured the footage in the first place and were generous enough to share it with other fans. My video descriptions on YouTube will always credit my sources.

If you have any old convention videos you'd be willing to contribute to this project, please message me! I can also be reached at DetailTilted@gmail.com. If I can get them to upscale (I can't always), I'd happily send the upscaled files back to you for your own collection whether I use them or not.

[asterythm]

on the ending of in stars and time:

an essay from someone who couldn’t sit with it at first, & a love letter to the fic that brought me here anyway. (…spoiler warning for in stars and time, naturally, but you knew that!)

if siffrin isat has taught me one thing it's that vulnerability is cool, actually, and being forthcoming and generous with love when there is love to be shared is how the coolest kids do it.

so. hello isat nation of tumblr dot com. i'm here because even after cutting out several chunks to shorten this significantly, i busted through the ao3 comment section character limit and still had more to say, so i needed somewhere to put it all that would let me go longer.

i’m pretty sure this post is for, like, three people, one of whom is me. but look, it’s been moved here to the webbed site so if you wanna read it anyway i won’t stop you!

=====

i think what it is, ultimately, is this: the ISAT canon ending was beautiful. it was a wonderfully well-written ending with so much love and hope and thematic satisfaction.

it also left me, for a period, with a deep and unshakeable sense of dread.

:)!!!!

now enter @faedemon's "None Forward & Two, Two, Two Steps Back" (hiya, fancy seeing you here), a two-chapter alt act 5 in which siffrin finds a New, Worse way to break the loops.

despite being, as mentioned, a notably worse outcome for everyone involved, this alt end managed to cut straight to the heart of that dread and settle it — and not in the sense of "oh, i like this alt ending better", or “oh, the canon ending looks better in comparison against this worse alt ending”, so much as "oh, thanks to this alt ending i am finally able to sit in a place where it no longer feels like the canon ending, as a beautiful outcome which felt impossibly lucky to get, is the only outcome in which life can go on — and my ability to accept it, and the game as a whole, is elevated for it."

which!! i mean!! i don’t know that that’s exactly what you set out to do; None Forward is explicitly a tragedy!! and one, as your tags say, written because the canon ending didn't ring true for you.

but I realized that the thing that was stopping me from enjoying ISAT’s canon ending was that ugly hard core that was still so, so scared after the canon ending of every way we (that is, siffrin + i as the player moving in that incredible ludonarrative lockstep with him, holy moly the harmony in this game) had not yet grown to earn it. 

=====

(I’ll take a sec here under the cut to say that when I played ISAT, and then for much of the month that followed, my main reason for engaging with it and its related content at all was that it was a piece of media that came fervently recommended by my incredibly dear friend @iconocat , who it had massively, violently impacted and whose media recommendations in general I trust more than anything.

so i played ISAT, and it was incredible. but even though it's a piece of media that just about hit on every point on my list of Things That Set My Brain On Fire, it failed somehow to. well. set me on fire — at least to the extent I was expecting it to. I still enjoyed myself in the few weeks afterwards of running through fan content and intentionally plunging myself into media analysis, but I was never convinced that I would be engaging with ISAT to the extent I was if it wasn't for the sake of trying to intentionally hack my brain to the point where I could share with my friend something so important to her at the same level of genuine investment. 

I’m telling you all this because, legitimately the same night I posted “nothing but a dull ache” (ie, if you're not charlie faedemon and are somehow caring to read this anyway, the epilogue oneshot I started feverishly writing the morning after reading None Forward), I realized through my rambling in my friend’s discord dms that reading None Forward was the moment the fire finally caught. I spent a month burying myself in ISAT content and asking myself “Is this natural yet?”. after None Forward, the answer to that question finally became a sure, wholehearted yes.)

=====

so anyway, back to the essay.

don't get me wrong. it's really, really nice, to read a story where the moral is less “you should have asked for help", and more “there are people who will unselfishly give the gift of a love that saves even when you cannot save yourself".

but that whole ending also was only able to happen because 1. they broke in a way no one should ever have to break, and 2. everyone involved got lucky.

which, in media, happens all the time!! it is not inherently dissatisfying for a narrative to wrap by saving you with luck and love in the nick of time!! in fact it should be incredibly satisfying, after the unambiguously-negative downward spiral into Director Siffrin who had begun to learn what to say and do to make his family behave exactly the way he needs them to, for a stroke of unpredictable luck brought about by factors entirely out of his control to finally be what sets him free.

but like... I think it's because the story is set in a situation where it's no longer true that luck and randomness is a factor by which anything significant can change.

we're hammered over the head with it: until and unless you do something to alter the course of events, they will not be altered. when you are the only dynamic element the world is reacting to in an otherwise looping course of events, you don't get to rely, anymore, on the idea that at any moment something could happen to save you. you have to assume that nothing will happen unless you make it.

and siffrin?? siffrin's literal motto was "stick to the script"!! they spend the loops with a mouth that kept closing tighter and tighter and tighter until i got to act 5 and watched them implode. and then I’m saved, and I know I haven't earned this. I get to the end and I'm still not telling them anything!! I wasn't supposed to get the good ending!! but I get away with it anyway with open arms and acceptance and unconditional love, and it's. kind of nauseating?

how am I ever supposed to learn and grow, if I didn't manage to change my behaviour even then under the threat of Eternal Looping Torment, and still got the good ending anyway? how can I prove there was an alternative way I could have broken free if things hadn't turned out so lucky in that one terrible act 5 loop?

I can't. and that's terrifying.

(aside: I’m speaking in the first person here to emphasize that the thing that got in my way is not because I don't believe siffrin is deserving of this love — quite the opposite, I think the driving force behind the good ending is that siffrin went scorched earth and saw he was loved anyway — but because this is a game designed to frequently encourage the player to deeply feel what siffrin is feeling throughout its course and. well. as a thing to happen to a fictional character it's beautiful. as a takeaway for the player, it's... harder.)

and that's where None Forward comes in. (i’ve already written thousands of words in comments and epilogue fic declaring my love by now, but i mean. im hoping you won’t mind just a liiiittle more.)

None Forward shows a devastatingly written, all-too-believable version of what might have happened if siffrin didn't get lucky, and the loops continued, and they kept clinging to the script and refusing to Look At It and successfully stagnating and stagnating and stagnating as they were so determined to do. and it's bad, it's worse, it's way way worse — but there's no reliance on outside factors. it comes completely from within siffrin and loop, the only dynamic pieces in the world, finally breaking out.

it was the terrible, nightmarish unfairness of the loops brought to their natural, just-south-of-inevitable conclusion.

and yes, it's a terrible, unfair conclusion, but the loop still breaks.

in a roundabout way, it... gives me so much hope. if the outside factors were different, if the stars did not align just right to allow siffrin's family to get there on time to save them, if siffrin never learned to open their mouth, which by all means seems like the likeliest course of events... they'd still get out. worse for wear, and separated by a gap unbridgeable, but out.

there is a future. there is freedom.

=====

to speak more specifically on dull ache, if you'll forgive the indulgence, just since this was originally meant to be in a reply to the author in my own comments section:

I think I so desperately needed to write it with a focus on the family siffrin left behind because I wanted to prove, if just for myself, that in that barely-dodged alternative there still could be a future for everyone. (isabeau's just happened to be the voice in which dull ache came to me, but the point was to create an epilogue for all four.)

for the rest of the family, who was not quite so deeply ravaged but was still left in a bad way at the end of None Forward, and for whom randomness is not pretty much unequivocally good just by virtue of being better than the alternative like it is for siffrin and loop (more on that in a sec), I could see it mattering more to set specific pieces up precisely, and I could actually imagine the pieces I could set up that could have a meaningful impact in the immediate future.

so. y’know. I set them, in the way I happened to want to. granted, with some extra... divine indulgence, but siffrin's departure from their family's perspective at the end of None Forward was definitely Wrong but not so obviously wrong that I could believe that without it they wouldn't otherwise either (a) go hunting him down to force out the truth, which felt Worse, or (b) just "accept" that it was as simple as Siffrin not actually caring about them/brushing them off and thus intentionally fade him into the distance in their minds to deal with it. which felt like the WORST POSSIBLE THING.

you'd think it might make more sense to have done this for siffrin and loop, instead. they're arguably the ones who need it most, after all, so why not build them up from rock bottom as a sweeping show of "things get better"?

but... i think it doesn't need to be written to have faith that it will happen: the very fact that Siffrin is about to set out on a new journey in a reality where everything is a dynamic player just. immediately gives me hope all by itself. random lucky things that save you are so much more believable and wonderful when random lucky things in general are happening all the time, and you have all the time in the world for them to happen.

and anyway, I don't think this is the kind of future you’d write satisfyingly as a sequence of events at all. to heal from this is something that will take an incredible amount of time and nonlinear progress. 

until one day, through a series of disconnected small quiet gloriously-random lived experiences, without knowing when it happened or being able to trace it back, you realize, oh —

somewhere along the way, you came to know how to live again.

[s-lycopersicum]

I hate how some sites have to "boot" now, rapid opening a bunch of tabs and having to wait for them to load one by one drives me closer to mythologizing about the web of the past that, despite most certainly not being real, it definitely felt more responsive in comparison.

[3liza]

after my post yesterday about not sharing viral videos of "dancing dogs" because they're just videos of animals dying slowly of agonizing neurological disease I tried typing "canine distemper" into tumblr search and discovered another one of those weird little heatsinks of tumblr spam. 99% of the posts in the tag/search category (the latter actually, the tag itself doesn't seem to work/is blocked) were spam, mostly 0-note chatGPT rambling with unclear goals either for SEO or for sales. a lot of Indian spam in particular is on Tumblr, as well as either fake or real veterinary clinics posting filler articles about pet topics. none of this stuff gets any engagement and most of it seems to be referral dead ends, eg, it doesn't have any links out that are being clicked by either humans or crawlers, but I find it everywhere.

porn spam is very straightforward by comparison, porn bots are trying to farm leads in the form of live men who reply to them and can be added to databases of live leads, or they want conversions into account signups or sales off-site. sometimes actual adult content creators are doing their own marketing here and again the goals of their advertising is normal, and other times porn ads are malware or social account hijacking bait etc. but the generic marketing slop spam that comes up for terms like "canine distemper" is a little more puzzling.

I think some of these blogs are probably being used inside web templates off Tumblr to just host content elsewhere on the web, but as far as I'm aware thats not really a standard website building technique, most people just use a blog template or WordPress or something. if you go on the Black Hat World forum you'll find plenty of buying and selling of established accounts in good standing on various socials, either through hacked accounts or accounts that have been deliberately created and then farmed over months or years to look as real as possible, but Tumblr accounts aren't really in demand as far as I'm aware

I don't think it's particularly interesting and definitely not sinister, it's likely a case of lost automated processes or some sort of testing of marketing generators that's just using Tumblr as the planting bed.