#//mod is attempting to get back to posting regularly

[kitakami-zorua-kin]

[Audio Recording Uploaded: "Howdy y'all! It's been a minute buuut I figured if I was on Rotomblr while Russet was supposed ta be stayin' away it might be a little worryin', not ta mention the temptation..." Spitfire chuckles. "Anyways, I have a team of little monsters of my own now! I've got Brushfire, she's a Fennekin - a little fire fox! She's quite the cutie, and she has my temper!" Spitfire laughs fondly. "Supposedly she might evolve soon. Dunno, though - kinda like her bein' this size. Eh, not really up ta me though, is it? Her body an' all. I've got Bullet, a Skarmory, so - a big ol' metal bird! He's a hunter, like me - one of my fiercer fighters, I've found! Then... Well, the last lil' one ain't exactly like me, but... Uh, his name's Arbor. He's a sweet thing an' I really didn't have the heart ta leave him. Not too big on fighting, but... Yeah, that's my team!" Spitfire hums, and there's the sound of fabric moving like he's shrugged. "Honestly, I still don't quite get why you don't fight yourselves, but... Eh. New planet, new culture. Plus, I guess short-lived species are more protective of their youth...? I think? So teaching kids to fight themselves is probably more frowned upon... But hey, I like what I do!" Audio Recording Ends]

[deepdreamnights]

Tribute AMV for Dr. Underfang and Mrs. Natalie Nice/Nautilus.

From TyrannoMax and the Warriors of the Core, everyone's favorite Buzby-Spurlock animated series.

After all, who doesn't love a good bad guy, especially when they come in pairs?

Process/Tutorial Under the Fold.

This is, of course, a part of my TyrannoMax unreality project, with most of these video clips coming from vidu, taking advantage of their multi-entity consistency feature (more on that later). This is going to be part of a larger villain showcase video, but this section is going to be its own youtube short, so its an video on its own.

The animation here is intentionally less smooth than the original, as I'm going for a 1980s animated series look, and even in the well-animated episodes you were typically getting 12 FPS (animating 'on twos'), with 8 (on threes) being way more common. As I get access to better animation software to rework these (currently just fuddling along with PS) I'm going to start using this to my advantage by selectively dropping blurry intermediate frames.

I went with 12 since most of these clips are, in the meta-lore, from the opening couple of episodes and the opening credits, where most of the money for a series went back in the day.

Underfang's transformation sequence was my testing for several of my techniques for making larger TyrannoMax videos. Among those was selectively dropping some of the warped frames as I mentioned above, though for a few shots I had to wind up re-painting sections.

Multi-entity consistency can keep difficult dinosaur characters stable on their own, but it wasn't up to the task of keeping the time-temple accurate enough for my use, as you can see here with the all-t-rex- and-some-moving-statues, verses the multi-species effort I had planned:

The answer was simple, chroma-key.

Most of the Underfang transformation shots were done this way. The foot-stomp was too good to leave just because he sprouted some extra toes, so that was worth repainting a few frames of in post.

Vidu kind of over-did the texturing on a few shots (and magenta was a poor choice of key-color) so I had to go in and manually purple-ize the background frame by frame for the spin-shot.

This is on top of the normal cropping, scaling, color-correcting, etc that goes into any editing job of this type.

It's like I say: nearly all AI you see is edited, most of it curated, even the stuff that's awful and obvious (never forget: enragement is engagement)

Multi-Entity Consistency:

Vidu's big advantage is reference-to-video. For those who have been following the blog for awhile, R2V is sort of like Midjourney's --cref character reference feature. A lot of video AIs have start-end frame functionality, but being able to give the robot a model sheet and effectively have it run with it is a darn nice feature for narrative.

Unlike the current version of Midjourney's --cref feature, however, you can reference multiple concepts with multiple images.

It is super-helpful when you need to get multiple characters to interact, because without it, they tend to blend into each other conceptually.

I also use it to add locations, mainly to keep them looking appropriately background-painting rather than a 3d background or something that looks like a modded photo like a lot of modern animation does.

The potential here for using this tech as a force multiplier for small animation projects really shines through, and I really hope I'm just one of several attempting to use it for that purpose.

Music:

The song is "The Boys Have a Second Lead Pipe", one of my Suno creations. I was thinking of using Dinowave (Let's Dance To) but I'm saving that for a music video of live-action dinosovians.

Prompting:

You can tell by the screenshot above that my prompts have gotten... robust. Vidu's prompting system seems to understand things better when given tighter reigns (some AIs have the opposite effect), and takes information with time-codes semi-regularly, so my prompts are now more like:

low-angle shot, closeup, of a green tyrannosaurus-mad-scientist wearing a blue shirt and purple tie with white lab coat and a lavender octopus-woman with tentacles growing from her head, wearing a teal blouse, purple skirt, purple-gray pantyhose. they stand close to each other, arms crossed, laughing evilly. POV shot of them looming over the viewer menacingly. The background is a city, in the style of animation background images. 1986 vintage cel-shaded cartoon clip, a dinosaur-anthro wearing a lab coat, shirt and tie reaches into his coat with his right hand and pulls out a laser gun, he takes aim, points the laser gun at the camera and fires. The laser effect is short streaks of white energy with a purple glow. The whole clip has the look and feel of vintage 1986 action adventure cel-animated cartoons. The animation quality is high, with flawless motion and anatomy. animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, studio Ghibli, don bluth. BluRay remaster.

While others approach the scripted with time-code callouts for individual actions.

[halfcourtyeet]

This Week's News, 3/22 (And SRPG Dev Lore)

Hey. I'm going to try posting regularly on what I'm working on creatively. It's always very satisfying to show my friends, but now I'm wondering if I ought to keep a log of it.

We'll see if this pans out, but here's some stuff in the meantime.

I went to GDC

(pretend there's a photo here. I hit the image limit on Tumblr.)

It was awesome. Those who know me have probably seen the photos of me with Tarn Adams and Derek Yu. It was a seriously great event, much more chill this year than usual. I feel like I met less people, but made stronger connections overall.

If it wasn't 11:30 at night I'd draw a picture of bunny me with Tarn.. I wonder what Tarn Adams' fursona would be. Let me know if you're reading this.

I've really enjoyed getting to know devs in the Bay Area. Since I came home in September it's felt really lonely, but in the last few weeks, it seems like everything changed, and I couldn't be more grateful.

This DOOM level's coming along

This is like a 15-20 minute level. That's a pretty long level. If you look closely, you can see I'm revealing a secret to you when you play it.

I'll be releasing on Doomworld, most likely. It's not my first foray into DOOM either, as I made a 5-level WAD in 2020. As a summer project, it was really my first attempt at doing a somewhat long-term project in games, since it took (to my memory) 2-3 months.

Concept Album is coming along, too

Damn that's blurry lol. Sneak peek of some of the collage I'm doing for an album cover.

I didn't do much music work this week, but I am still working on my concept album. A lot of it was just talking to people about it at GDC, without revealing too much.

To be honest, I've been listening to a lot of great songwriters lately, and it's making me want to rewrite a lot of the raps on my album.

What is the album about? I can't say. It's very personal and introspective, and kind of about light vs. dark.

If it wasn't for the damn concept album I'd be working on my SRPG again

You go, girl!!

I learned so much over the past few weeks, not just from my new pal Nathaniel Jones, but from plenty of other people about Game AI and how to make a strategy RPG.

For context, when I return to this midway through the year (assuming things are still stable enough to just work on games), It'll be my... technically 5th attempt lifetime to make a Strategy RPG engine.

You know, I almost feel like showing you each of the 4 times I tried to make a strategy RPG. Next week's blog isn't gonna be nearly as long, I'm letting myself have that.

Attempt 0

So this all started when my Game Systems professor had us play a game called the Battle of Dan-no-Ura. It was an old Japanese electronic board game, and we were assigned to make mods for it. In many ways, it was like a strategy RPG. All units moved on one team's, then another. There were some really cool mechanics related to movement advantage based on turn (water flow) and zone-of-control. Our mods involved a "comeback" system and cards that increased the "drama" by having certain things happen.

But the whole project got me back into Fire Emblem. I played most of the remake of the first game on SNES on our apartment's big-screen TV, while my roommate watched. And to be honest? Aside from a few really tough missions, I felt like it super held up. The simple gameplay, vibrant graphics and strong cast of characters (now considered archetypal and serving as blueprints for many future characters in the series) drew me back into the series in a way I didn't know was possible. I had finished Fire Emblem for the GBA back in 2022, and always enjoyed Advance Wars as well... And spent dozens of hours in Final Fantasy Tactics, which is my favorite game of all time... Maybe I should have seen this coming.

Well, what came next was, my Game Programming Patterns professor wanted us to do some sort of topological grid-based game for a programming patterns final. It didn't even have to be a game- it just needed a few specific criteria like a domain-specific language (DSL) in the code (internal or external), and a few other features like on-the-fly translation. This build doesn't seem to have any of that, but you can see what started to form.

Attempt 1

Going into my capstone in the second of the 3 quarters of the school year, I really wanted to try to do an SRPG, but with in-battle gardening mechanics. Here's one of the only prototypes we made, and that it's broken should tell you something about how things were going otherwise.

Attempt 2

Started from scratch and achieved the most pedestrian gameplay in a 6-day solo coding marathon. Proud of how fast I worked, but it fell apart fast. This was in like, the last two weeks of that capstone class, which is not when you want to barely be getting something running based off of someone else's tutorial.

I have a lot of thoughts about these first two attempts, but it's getting late and I'll have to go over them someday. But yeah, overscoping and boilerplate and not knowing architecture or doing enough research on architecture, will burn you bad. Also burning out will burn you bad. I burnt out super hard in the middle of my senior year of college.

Attempt 3

This was after I got home in September, and is built out of Attempt 2's code. Okay, this also deserves its own like, separate article, because I started trying to do video devlogs during this time, but once again, burnt out hard. Still trying to do Fire Emblem with plants though.

Gave up, burnt out again, released a PICO-8 game on Steam, and now we're in the present.

Attempt 4

Yeah, they're from an asset pack- but man, do those characters look spiffy! And behind the scenes, started writing a story i was really excited about. But of course, things went south again.

The new issue I ran into on my latest attempt was trying to polish too much before I got the bread-and-butter (Enemy AI, pathfinding, equipment, etc) working. Also just did the architecture in ways that are really frustrating to debug. This is about when I met Nathaniel Jones from above, who has been absolutely cooking at making the same sort of game, and has been incredibly generous in sharing a dialogue with me, and giving me tips for how to code all these damn systems.

Lately I've been talking with Nathaniel about SRPG dev extensively. Since I'm on break from actually working on an SRPG right now, I've just been figuring out how to ambiently plan to do it next time, which will be technically the 5th attempt. But only once this album is done. So, that's where I'm at.

Thanks for reading through all that. Remember: Fall down seven times, stand up eight.

Let the sauce of the JPEG drape over your eyes.

[hanahaki-fiddleford]

Ah, hello, interdimentionet!

Important info:

Mod is a minor.

No DNI but will block if uncomfortable.

Main account: @animnightmare

a handful of my many many rp blogs: @pyramid-steven @papa-mcgucket @revityfalls @filbrick-pines @sophie-pines

Credit to @saradika-graphics (sorry for the ping) for the dividers, they are not mine.

Tags: #🌺Im okay🥀 (for Fiddleford), #💊no youre not💉 (for Stanford), #out of character (for ooc posts, obv) #asks (for answered asks), #not an ask (for original posts), #🌺responses🥀 (for RP threads with Fiddleford, mute if you dont want these filling up your dash!) #💊responses💉 (same thing but for Stanford), #🔁reblogs (for reblogs unrelated to RP- like art and memes and such.)

INFORMATION ABOUT THE AU:

While researching anomalies in gravity falls, Fiddleford and Ford discover somthing new. Not a magical monster, but a magical disease. Anybody exposed to the hanahaki virus will contract it if experiencing unrequited love.

Ford researches ancient cures, of course. The possible cures being:

A. Confess your feelings: if they reciprocate, you are free.

B. remove the virus by force, destroying the feelings you have for that person.

C. Demonic intervention

Stanford abandons all work on the portal immediately to help his friend. Bill abandons him in turn, deciding it'll be easier to either find another human partner to help him, or wait for Fiddleford to die and Ford to come crawling back.

Fiddleford refuses to get the surgery. He also refuses to tell Ford who it is he's in love with.

Ford dedicates his every waking moment to taking care of Fiddleford as he deteriorates, trying to find or invent another cure, and secretly trying to uncover who it is Fiddleford has feelings for so he can force the man to confess to them and attempt to cure him that way.

Fiddleford dedicates his time to resting, and enjoying life while he still can.

ABOUT THE BLOG:

Ford is using the interdimensionet (interdimentional internet-) he rewired scraps of the portal to acess a cominications service to hopefully find others who could help

Fiddleford is using it to...just talk to people. He has very little to do these days, after all.

DESIGNS:

Fiddleford is thin, weak, and sickly pale. He stays happy despite this. He is too shaky and tired to shave regularly, and has compromised to letting himself grow a small beard.

[lord-of-the-nemaverses]

It Was A Good Run, Everybody: An Open Letter to MTG Cardsmith

With the exception of this small segment here, and the occasional bracket making it clear I'm talking about MTG Cardsmith and not Tumblr, this post is, verbatim, a copy of a post I am making on the MTG Cardsmith Forums. I hope there's room for resolution, but I understand that may not happen, so I would like to keep this copy of my statement so that, if it's deleted over on the Forums, what I say can still be heard.

It's been years since MTG Cardsmith has received any significant front-of-house updates. When Grant left, he left a legacy that may not have been perfect, but the Forums crafted a tight-knit community that I eventually grew to call friends. [The] wonderful community has helped me through my hardest times, and despite several hiatuses brought on by personal struggles and writer's bloc, I still tried to hold [the] site close. Even after I stopped using the tools on the main site, I still ran Sagas and engaged regularly on the Forums. Unfortunately, it didn't last forever, and soon, things went silent, eventually leading to a monetization of the site, a change of ownership, and radio silence.

A few years pass. Many of us had moved on; we still kept in touch, but it was nothing most of us couldn't do offsite. It seemed like the main site was as good as dead; we still used the Forums, but we cared about MTGCS less and less, mainly using it to get more attention for our cards. Sagas steadily died, community projects were abandoned, and a lot of us branched out. In my case, I started a Discord server for my sets, starting using mtg.design (then MSE) for card design, and joined multiple other communities outside the site. I even began to contemplate making my own card game as the excitement towards MTGCS (and as a result, MTG itself) began to die, replaced by a feeling like no one was listening. And then, it happened. Suddenly, the site went down for maintenance. Despite nearly derailing the most successful Saga on the forums, the site was back, and changes were being made... but whoever's in charge now isn't here for the community. Despite engaging with them, that engagement has been... less than ideal, to say the least, with a major community member getting scapegoated by them to argue in favor of AI stealing from human artists. To add, my very first attempt to bring this to light resulted in my voice being silenced.

What did I do? I posted this message on the main site, a message from the official Discord mod, as well as a link to more context. Quite frankly, this wasn't even one of the more damning things said, and more just the specific instance where the member in question, Ranshi, was used as an example.

So, it's with a heavy heart that I do something I should have done a while ago. I don't have to be on [the] site to be with the community and express my creativity, and quite frankly as an artist, my talent doesn't belong on a platform where its community will be mistreated and suppressed. It does not belong on a site led by someone that believes reposting art for personal, nonprofit use only and crediting artists is comparable to stealing from thousands to train an AI, profiting off of it, and providing no compensation to the artists. That being said though, I'm not here to talk about if AI belongs in society, as that debate has not true answer; the facts stand, and that's as follows:

The mod in question singled out a member of our community to try and make them look bad, rather than trying to have a mature discussion or just letting things be. (Shown above)

The mod in question does not care about the moral implications of AI stealing from artists.

The mod in question disregarded a vocal majority to implement the new AI generation feature less than 24 hours after its announcement. (7+ people at the time [9+ total] argued against it before it was rolled out, and only 3 came to defend it besides the mod [2 of the people that made arguments for AI were still against it].)

The site is using a variant of Stable Diffusion. Stable Diffusion was shown to have been trained on art without permission, and made money off images generated based on that training.

If you would like to spread this message in case it's deleted, I'm sharing everything (that I can legally share) about this situation on my Tumblr.

Unless the [MTG Cardsmith] site lead releases a formal apology about this incident, makes amends to those impacted, and ceases the operation of AI on the site permanently, I am leaving the site. If I am removed or do leave, I would like all of my cards, images, and discussions from both of my [MTG Cardsmith] accounts (Tommia and AddGG) on both the main site and Forums to be permanently deleted from both the site itself and any local storage related to it. This especially includes anything of mine relating to Artful August or Stitia.

Now, given the nature of this situation, I know people certain people are going to try and pull a "gotcha" on me, to trying and find some fallacy to get me on instead of admitting that facts are facts and having a mature discussion about this. I also know the possibility of that discussion not being an option and this being instantly deleted is also an option. So, in addition, here's some added context.

AI actually isn't the main reason I'm leaving. However, the extreme stance taken on it and the use being for profit is certainly a factor.

Yes, I have used AI before. However, I changed my standing on it after factual evidence proved artists were being stolen from. I have deleted all local AI art on my system, scrubbed the AI art off any cards I've made locally, and avoid using AI when possible, even cancelling my plans to start using Photoshop.

There is a DMCA form on the site for any artist to fill out and have their art stripped from the site. With AI, this process is far harder; if someone discovers their art was used by it without their permission, it can't be dealt with so easily because the art is baked into the AI's training.

[plotbunnybreeder]

The Price of Free Will

Harry Potter/Teen Wolf crossover

Death's next mission is sent to its Master through oh-so-enlightening dreams of a tree stump. Harry juggles interpreting this new assignment with helping his recently-graduated godson find their purpose in life, when Teddy brings home a "muggle werewolf" who knows where Harry's mysterious tree stump is.

Pairings:

Harry Potter/Chris Argent/Peter Hale

Victoire Delacour-Weasley/Jackson Whittemore

Teddy Lupin/Stiles Stillinski

Bullet Point Plot Bunny Breakdown:

Through Teddy & Victoire's friendship (and after refusing to get back together with Ginny), Harry gets closer to Bill, Fleur, & Charlie over time

Harry is Master of Death and tasked with eliminating entities who attempt to maliciously defy Death aka Death-Defiers (Harry finds Death's targets to be subjective and primarily rooted in whether or not Death feels offended by them, and argues whenever he believes a target should be left alone)

When Jackson moves to London with his parents he's still not in full control of his two forms, wracked with guilt over the Kanima attacks

Teddy can tell Jackson is some kind of werewolf and convinces him to meet his Uncle Bill, a magically turned wolf (Teddy being a born werewolf/metamorphmagus hybrid)

Harry, from his experience helping Draco turn a new leaf post-war, helps Jackson get over his guilt (from being a bully and from Kanima attacks)

Teddy & Bill help Jackson get control over shifting into his two forms

Nemeton finally comes up and the group decides to go together and check out Beacon Hills

Charlie is a leather worker on the muggle side of things as a hobby outside of his dragon work, and has contacts in San Fran. Bill works with museums regularly so can travel in muggle world easily. Harry invests in child education & welfare programs around the world as both a passion and a cover for traveling for his MoD missions

Nogitsune is in Stiles and gradually taking over his body more and more often

Peter thinks something's wrong but Derek and Scott keep blocking Peter from checking on Stiles, thinking Peter's up to no good

Peter is slowly going Omega with how both Derek and Alpha Scott don't trust him, not helping the perception of him

HP & crew move into town, misunderstandings abound -- HP initially thinks he's supposed to take out Peter after he finds out Peter came back to life (and hearing of Peter's reputation) but he's actually supposed to go after the Nogitsune

Chris & Peter team up thinking HP & crew are supernaturals who want to take over the territory after getting insider info from Jackson -- also think HP is the reason oni start showing up in town

Scott agrees to help hand over Peter without telling the rest of the pack (in the hopes that will fix everything), Stiles finds out later and tries to intervene

HP meets Stiles and the Nogitsune recognizes MoD & panics, creating body double & fleeing

HP realizes true target of MoD mission, works together with Chris & Peter to take down Nogitsune

Stiles' soul is in new body, Teddy helps Stiles process and recover

HP unintentionally Alpha of his own pack (two part-Veelas, one turned werewolf, one metamorph-wolf, one kanima-wolf hybrid) so Peter is no longer Omega when he switches loyalty to HP over Scott

Chris likes idea of joining HP on MoD missions -- help relieve guilt of Argent family breaking the Code and being able to again use skills for good

Teenagers all graduate and move on to university/post-school career paths

[endlessbigbang]

Rules and Requirements 

General Info:

The Endless Big Bang is a fest for any and all pairings (or lack thereof) set in the Sandman universe, whether it is based on the Netflix show or the comics.

Not sure what a Big Bang is? Check Here

There are no prior requirements you need to meet – anyone is welcome to participate. If you are neither a writer nor an artist/podficcer, you could always sign up as an alpha/beta/cheer-reader. If you are a writer/artist but aren’t sure yet whether you’ll be able to make it, we will also be holding pinch-hitter signups!

Writers and artists are allowed to pre-match (agreeing to collaborate before matching/claiming takes place). There will be space on the signup form to indicate this – you both still need to sign up!

You are allowed to sign up as both a writer and an artist, but please make sure that you don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Collaborations between writers are allowed; each writer still has to meet the minimum word count of 15k words (so 2 writers = 30k; 3 = 45k, etc.). You will be eligible for artist claiming only once, no matter your amount of writers/word count.

We strongly advise both artists and writers to get a beta. We will be holding beta sign-ups too, so if you don’t know where to find one, be sure to check the list we will publish.

It should go without saying, but plagiarism will result in your ban from this and any future fests run by us. We consider both AI Art and Stories to fall into this category.

There will be a discord server for the fest. Participation is voluntary if encouraged; it is easiest to keep up with announcements and news there, as well as to contact the mods. All relevant information relating to the fest will also be shared on our blog and/or through emails, though.

Please make sure to sign up with an email address that you check regularly!

If you are under the age of 18, you will not be allowed to create explicit content for this fest.

Extensions are generally possible, and having to drop out happens – life happens. We do ask that you will let us know as soon as possible. If you ghost us (not submitting your work without notice to us) you will not be eligible to sign up for this fest next year. If you do not get back to us within a week for any of the check-ins, we will consider you dropped out.

You may be wondering, “Wait, hold up, isn’t there another Sandman Big Bang?” There is; we are not in any way affiliated with @/sandmanbigbang, and these are two entirely separate fests, run by different people. Unfortunately, the mods of the @/sandmanbigbang have decided to enforce content restrictions for their event, which is something we strongly disagree with. We have decided to run a bang that does not employ any methods of censorship; instead, we trust in asking creators to provide content warnings, as well as in people’s ability to curate their own fandom experience.

As such, this fest operates firmly under the premises of ‘don’t like; don’t read,’ ‘ship and let ship’ and ‘your kink is not my kink but that’s okay’ (if you’re unfamiliar with these concepts, see this post). We will not tolerate any shaming, harassment, or attempts to police content, and if you are found to participate in such behaviour, you will be banned from the fest permanently.

That said, we have no interest in starting or participating in fandom drama. People are free to run their events as they please, and fandoms profit from having different options. We wish the @/sandmanbigbang all the best.

Rules & Requirements:

Fics

Stories need to be at least 15k words long.

Fics need to be completed and able to stand on their own (meaning, they cannot be a sequel of an already existing fic or part of a series that would have to be read to understand your story). They also need to be completely new – no parts of your fic should have been posted publicly before.

Any rating is allowed. There are no content restrictions of any kind, and for posting we only expect you to adhere to AO3’s rules/tagging requirements. That said, for claiming you will be asked to provide content warnings so that artists may make informed decisions about the works they would like to create for.

Crossovers and fusions are allowed, as long as the main focus of the story remains on the Sandman universe and its characters.

RPF (Real Person Fiction) will not be allowed for this round. This includes ‘x Reader’ fic.

We ask you to keep your fic/title/plot a secret until artist-matching, so that claiming may take place without bias (the exception to this are, of course, beta/alpha/cheer-readers). There will be a space in the fest’s discord server for writers to share snippets and talk about their works!

As indicated in the schedule, you will have to submit a rough draft of at least 7,5k words or 50% of your estimated final word count at the halfway point of the writing period. If you are unable to meet this requirement by the deadline, you can still participate in the big bang, but you will not be eligible for artist matching. This means you can either post your story without art, or you are responsible for finding an artist to collaborate with.

All works must be posted to AO3. As such, you are required to have an account to sign up – if you do not have one yet, keep in mind that it may take a few days for AO3 to send you an invitation.

Art

Traditional/digital art: 2 finished pieces

Gifsets: 2 sets with at least 5 gifs each, tying into some kind of narrative/relating to the story

Moodboards: 3 boards with at least 5 images each, tying into some kind of narrative/relating to the story

Podfics: as time constraints are an issue and fics may get long, we are not setting fixed requirements for podfics. Instead, writers and podficcers are asked to agree upon something after matching.

Fanvids need to be at least 1,5 minutes long. They cannot include fanart that you did not create yourself.

Music, crafts, etc. (whatever you can think of) are principally welcome, if hard to establish minimum requirements for. Please reach out to the mods to discuss options if this is something you would like to create.

Claiming will be on a first-come/first-serve basis, and in the first round, you will be allowed to claim one fic only. If there are any fics left after this, we will open a second round of claiming where you are welcome to claim a second fic.

Artists are free to decide where to post their art (AO3, Tumblr, Pillowfort, etc), but if it is not as co-creator within the AO3 work, the art post should indicate clearly that it is part of 'The Endless Big Bang', and link back to the story. Vice versa, stories should link to the art. o   Artists and writers are of course welcome to post both art and story as one work on AO3, but this should be decided by both participants together.  

 Author/Artist Matching

Writers will be asked to submit a summary of their fic. This can, but does not have to be, the summary you will use to post at the end of the fest. Generally, it should give a good impression of what your story is about. Additionally, you will have to state the pairing/main characters, rating, relevant content warnings, your preferences for art, and your estimated final word count. More detailed information on this will be shared closer to the date.

Summaries will then be posted anonymously. Artists will have a week to view them and pick their top three choices.

Claiming will be on a first-come/first-serve basis. Artists will be required to name their top three choices, in case their first pick is already taken.

Once every artist had a chance to pick, we will open a second round of claiming if there are any summaries left unclaimed. In this round, artists are then allowed to claim a second fic if they want to.

We will send out the matches and contact information within 24 hours. You will be asked to confirm your match and contact each other within a week.

Writers cannot dictate which scenes artists create for; collaboration is great and encouraged, but ultimately the decision is up to the artists.

Posting:

All stories must be posted to the AO3 collection by July 2nd and, if the art is not included inside the work, link back to the art.

As stated, artists are free to decide where to post their art, but if it is not as co-creator within the story, the art post should indicate clearly that it is part of 'The Endless Big Bang', and link back to the story.

You will be required to send us a header containing your general story info (rating, pairings, summary, art and story links, etc.), which we will use to promote your work. We will send out a form closer to the posting period.

You will get assigned a posting date, during which we will reveal your work on AO3. We advise you to change your posting date to the respective day, as AO3 logs it as the date a work is posted to the collection.

Further instructions on how to post to a collection/to AO3 will be posted for anyone who needs them, once the dates come closer.

 Last but not least…

Detailed information regarding check-ins, claiming/matching, posting, etc. will be shared towards the respective dates.

The Discord server will be open for participants only; invites will be sent out with the sign-up confirmations.

If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out through asks on our blog, or send us an email to endlessbigbang@ protonmail.com

The mods for this fest are @queerofthedagger, @kairenn-n, and @magicinavalon

We can’t wait to see what everyone will create!

[thesims4blogger]

The Sims 4: Official “Sims 411” Recap

The Sims team has released a recap of Tuesday’s Inside Maxis live stream.

Hot Topics When will the ‘Simulation/Autonomy Lag’ be fixed?

We’re on it! Particularly, what we’re doing right now is identifying what the root cause of this issue is. That means, we’re investigating what specific actions during gameplay do lead to the lag? This is the first step we need to take because the simulation/autonomy lag is not the actual issue, it’s rather a symptom that can have dozens of different causes. If the lag has happened in your game, you’ve probably experienced the following most common manifestations of this symptom:

Sims standing around doing nothing

Sims not doing anything on their own (with free will set to max)

Sims take forever to do a given command

Time jumping backwards after fast forwarding to Ultra Speed. The Sims will usually freeze while fast forwarded.

Sims come home late from school

FPS Drops

Once we identify what specific actions and circumstances lead to the lag, we’ll know what we need to work on. And the best way to find out, is by analysing your save files! The more save files we can analyse the higher the chance we’ll be able to find the cause soon. That said, please continue your awesome support and keep sending us your save files whenever you experience the lag!

How to share your save files

Please provide the following information when sending your save files. You can send your info through this form or DM SimGuruNick directly on AHQ.

Basic Information about your computer (CPU, Operating System, Amount of RAM, Graphics Card, Hard Drive Space). This is not to blame your computer for the issue but to see what kinds of systems this issue is occurring on)

How big is your save game ?

Does the issue also occur on a new save for testing purposes

Video of the issue happening. Just upload to youtube and post the link in this thread. You don’t need to list it

Please add the following files to a .rar or .zip archive and share with QA These files can all be found in the following folder: Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\

lastException.txt (if it exists. If there is more than one, please include all of them.)

lastUIException.txt (if it exists. If there is more than one, please include all of them.)

Config.log

the entire saves folder

Things you can try in the meantime

Empty out your Sims inventories (all households you have ever played)

Reduce the amount of objects in your house

Play in a smaller house with less art pieces and stuff lying around

If you over-clocked your computer, check how it goes if you revert that.

Once the freezing occurs, try saving your game (save as), go to your options and back or press M or to go to the world map and back

Lower Graphics settings

If you play with higher resolution than 1920×1080, try lowing to 1920×1080

Go to the Audio settings and remove the check next to Enable Mood Sting

Make sure you fulfill the minimum requirements of the game

Reduce the amount of mods and cc you use

Start a new game (completely shut down the game, then restart it and start a new save game)

Move your Sims to a new game

Why is there no response to my ticket?

While there’s no guarantee that every post receives a response, we regularly review the forums, internal processes, and bug reports with the Quality Verification team. That way, we can sync across the business on what’s happening and what’s most important to our players. But AHQ is not just a tool for our teams! It’s also designed to support players helping players, and, fun fact, The Sims community is one of the most active and engaged on AHQ – so keep up the great work, Simmers! Still, we are here to help, of course, and a support ticket through EA Help is a player’s best friend for getting assistance with issues like account access, purchases, etc.

What personality traits were updated in the last patch?

Bookworm

Bookworm Sims will prefer to choose reading activities autonomously over other Fun actions.

NPC Bookworm Sims will be seen carrying books where possible.

Cheerful

When a Cheerful Sim socializes with a non-Cheerful / non-happy Sim, that Sim has the chance to get a Tense ‘Cheered to Death’ buff.

Cheerful Sims will autonomously try and perk up Gloomy Sims

Negative emotional buffs will decay faster than usual when Cheerful Sims are in a Happy mood.

Cheerful Sims have a greater chance of success with Friendly socials when in a Happy mood.

Clumsy

Clumsy Sims have a chance of failure when engaging in sporting activities like Using a Treadmill, Ice Skating, Snowboarding or Skiing.

Clumsy Sims have a chance of stumbling when walking around – this will elicit a response from nearby Sims.

Clumsy Sims with higher Handiness have a lesser chance of breaking objects.

Clumsy Sims have a small additional chance of breaking certain electronic devices like the Computer, Research Machine, Juice Fizzer, Cupcake Machine, Games Console, Arcade Machine and Popcorn Maker.

Genius

Genius Sims have a chance of a ‘Eureka Moment’ while showering or bathing that gives a small amount of skill for a random skill they already have,

Genius Sims get a new interaction ‘Solve Hard Problems’ that helps them build Logic skill.

Genius Sims get a new idle where they appear to be pondering / solving problems.

Genius Sims will prefer ‘cerebral’ activities like Chess over other more trivial Fun actions.

Gloomy

Gloomy Sims will choose to autonomously Mourn, or act in a gloomy way (like sighing to themselves) more often.

Gloomy Sims will get an Inspired ‘Spectral Influence’ buff when in proximity to Ghosts.

Gloomy Sims get Sad moods prolonged if they see Cheerful Sims doing cheerful things, and also react in disgust.

Gloomy Sims have an increased chance of waking up in a Sad mood.

Glutton

Glutton Sims will autonomously choose to grab snacks more often.

Good

Good Sims get a new interaction ‘Help Out’ that reduces negative mood duration on another Sim in a negative mood.

Good Sims have a lower chance of choosing to do Mean or Mischief actions autonomously.

Good Sims will autonomously choose to react negatively to seeing Mean actions being performed.

Good Sims are more likely to choose to do Friendly actions autonomously.

Goofball

Goofball Sims are more likely to autonomously choose Mischief or prank activities like Prank Toilet.

Hates Children

Asking a Hates Children Sim to ‘Try For Baby’ has no chance of success unless the Sim is Dazed.

Hates Children Sims will get Tense, then Angry around child Sims, and also move away when they get to the Angry stage,

Hates Children Sims will look annoyed when idling in the Tense or Angry buff stages.

Hates Children Sims get a Happy ‘Quiet Environment Child-free Zone’ buff if away from children for a time.

Hot Headed

Hot Headed Sims who get pranked have a greater chance of getting Angry.

Having other Sims Enthuse about things can make Hot Headed Sims Angry.

Hot Headed Sims get Angry if they lose career performance

Hot Headed Sims won’t be targeted by other Sims as for Mischief actions.

Hot Headed Sims get Angry at failed romance attempts (giving or receiving).

Jealous

Jealous Sims get a new interaction “Talk through issues” which gives a chance of a reduced duration of negative Buffs from less serious Jealous buffs

Jealous Sims get a reduction in the duration of less serious Jealous buffs

Jealous Sims are now less sensitive to time spent away from their SO.

Mean

Mean Sims will autonomously laugh at other Sims misfortune.

Mean Sims are more likely to choose to do Mean actions (like Kick Over Trash Can) autonomously.

Neat

Neat Sims are more likely to autonomously choose to do cleaning actions more frequently.

Neat Sims will try and clean things that aren’t dirty autonomously.

Noncommittal

Asking a Noncommittal Sim to ‘Try For Baby’ has a very low chance of success.

Perfectionist

Perfectionist Sims will get an increased chance of Masterclass crafted objects, and will react favorably when they do.

Perfectionist Sims may choose to autonomously repeat some crafting actions (like Painting) numerous times.

Perfectionist Sims who create any Masterwork have a high chance of gaining a Focused ‘In The Zone’ buff which has a chance to increase the quality of another crafting interaction.

If they do achieve a better quality during this buff, they gain an Inspired ‘Focused Payoff’ buff.

Ambitious

Ambitious Sims will autonomously mock Goofball Sims for Goofball actions.

Slob

Slob Sims will autonomously mock Neat Sims for cleaning things.

What’s On Your Mind?

What do you want us to talk about in the next Sims 411? We’d like to know what’s on your mind when it comes to The Sims, what topics you’re interested in, what your concerns are and what you’d like to chat about with us.

On May 6th starting at 6AM Pacific Time, we’ll be welcoming your comments during 24 hours in The Sims Forums. We’ll close the conversation after 24 hours. But don’t worry if you missed the window. You’ll be able to share any additional comments in the next Sims 411 forum thread that will be open before the next Inside Maxis livestream (our team is made of humans, and there’s only so many comments one human can read at a time… ).

Tell us what’s on your mind on May 6th, beginning 6AM PT on The Sims Forums here: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/989179/sims-411-forum-feedback#latest

Closer to the date, we’ll share the link to the forum thread again on The Sims Twitter account and on The Sims Forums.

We appreciate your understanding that:

This is not a wish list for content requests, but a place where we can listen to your thoughts without distraction.

This is not a guarantee we’ll provide an answer in the next Sims 411, but rest assured that your comment is being read and will be addressed whenever possible.

This is not a place to report bugs, but please continue to report bugs on AHQ.

THE GOLDEN RULE

We’ll only read comments that adhere to our Positive Play guidelines.

GUIDELINES AND RULES

We’ll only read comments that adhere to our Positive Play guidelines and our forum rules – here are some of the most important points when it comes to giving feedback:

Be respectful. We want to hear what you have to say but please be kind and respectful when posting here. Being mean or aggressive as well as cursing and swearing doesn’t help to bring your point across.

Keep it game-related and on topic. As we said before, this is not the place to post a wish list and bugs, or talk about all things The Sims 2 (even if it’s a great title!).

Don’t make things personal. It’s not cool to target other players who may have different opinions or attack SimGurus and other officials. This also means: please no mass taggings.

Don’t bully, troll, bait, or derail the conversation. This is never okay – which should go without saying! If you do this, you will be moderated as per our forum rules.

Don’t spam or flood this thread. Posting the same thing over and over will not get your question into the Sims 411 but it may lead to moderation.

We’re looking forward to your comments on May 6th on The Sims Forums!

Next Patch Sneak Peek

What’s coming

We’re including the updated retro style Large Afro and a new Short Afro into the next patch update. Both hairs will be available for adults, children and toddlers.

We’ll also add six new hair colors in a future patch. In our Inside Maxis livestream on 4/27 we stated the colors will be updated in the next patch. However, the update will not happen in the upcoming but in a future patch instead. We apologize for any confusion.

Last but not least, there will be new Asian eye presets that specifically are intended to bring in more options for east Asian representation. We’ve received some feedback from you about adding more diverse body features in CAS and this is part of our ongoing effort to continue updating the game to bring in more diverse content that allows users to re-create their authentic selves in game. We appreciate your ongoing and passionate engagement to support us in making this game the best it can be!

Our approach

We put a lot of effort into delivering the most authentic design to make sure we create hair and body features that are truthful to representation. We did loads of research and took inspiration from real world examples. But we also talked to a variety of people such as our ERGs (Employee Resource Group) and most importantly, to the Game Changers that consulted us on skintones.

Why is the hair red?

During the development process, we use a lighter color – red or orange – because it’s easier to better see highlights and shadows when designing the hair. Working with darker colors off the bat can be more difficult because noticing the contrast can be tricky. Once we have the hair completed, we translate it into the different colors and adjust the levels from there.

What will it look like?

Take a look at a selection of the concept art below. Please note,these concept arts are work in progress and do not necessarily represent what you’ll see in-game.

Retro Style Large Afro

Six New Hair Colors

New Asian Eye Presets

[vietzuko]

if we used to share a discord server, this post is for you!

hello! i am going to try to do this as anonymously and non-confrontationally as possible. i do not want this to be a spectacle or call out post, but i will say that i am quite disturbed by the way situations have transpired on the server. 

in case you didn’t notice, i left! when i left, i wrote a little goodbye post in #general, which has since been deleted. either the mods deleted my goodbye or they banned me from the server (which automatically would delete my message). in case you didn’t see it, here was my goodbye message:

hi everyone, i’m leaving the server. if you’re a POC who is interested in joining an ATLA server where POC can talk about ATLA and critically discuss race, feel free to PM me for a link! otherwise, this is goodbye. see you all around.

i won’t rehash everything that happened in the events leading to this, nor will i name names in this post. if you were on the server, you probably saw what happened publicly or you can message me personally, either here or on discord. if we know each other through the server and you want some clarity over names/events in this post, please PM me. 

if you are a POC in the ATLA fandom who is concerned by the events of this post and you would like me to clarify which server i’m talking about, please PM me.

i just wanted to share the very long message that i sent to the mods (on their prompting!) because i feel that it shows my perspective on what transpired.  unfortunately, this message did not result in any meaningful change, except for me getting banned/my messages removed from the server. i suppose that’s a type of meaning! haha. 

anyway. here’s the message. cw for racism, yellowface

hi MOD 1 (and presumably the other mods who will read this message)! thanks for reaching out. i’ve had some time to dwell on the situation and discuss it with other people in the server who witnessed it and reached out to me personally. this is going to be an unbelievably long message, so i apologize in advance and thank you for your time in reading it.

i think the first thing i’d like to do is give some context for the incident and to give my perspective on why i said the things i said.

i have PMed a mod about a racist incident in the server exactly once. it was when i first joined, and i saw a picture of a white person in yellowface in the cosplay channel. i didn’t know any of you personally yet (and this was before some of you even joined on as mods). i have since told SERVER MEMBER 1 about this incident and i’m pretty sure they mentioned it to you because i noticed you’ve changed the yellowface rule. but i think that the context of me pinging a mod about a racist incident and then witnessing another (although less egregious) instance of racism by the mods might explain why i am, in general, hesitant about talking to mods about racism on the server. i am just trying to live my life and experience as few micro-aggressions as possible.

i also think the fact that i regularly educate and push back against white people’s racially harmful messages in the server is also important context. i realize none of you likely know this, but about every two weeks i receive an unsolicited PM from a different white person apologizing/asking for forgiveness/asking for reassurance/asking further questions about their racism on the server. i’m glad people are learning from me, but this is a huge amount of emotional labor that i put into the server and its members because of course i have to reply and explain things and tell them not to worry and thank them for apologizing, etc. i know that these messages aren’t your fault, nor am i asking you to do anything about this. but it feels important that you know the price that i (and perhaps other poc in the server, although i can’t speak to that) pay in order to share space with you.

MOD 2 has even messaged me personally to thank me for educating people in the server and responding to racist messages, saying: “really appreciate how much effort you put in and everything, i was trying to type something up but floundering badly.” it was a nice message, and i appreciated it a lot! it also led me to believe that the mods would prefer if i engage with racist messages myself, rather than ping them, because it felt like i was just going to be more able/willing to articulate a response anyway.

so when SERVER MEMBER 2 messaged the zukka channel “thought that lives in my head rent free: Sokka's hairstyle in canon is just a warrior's hairstyle and has meaning because of that. Sokka wearing the same hairstyle in a modern AU is undisputably queer-coded” and nobody replied for a while, i assumed that it was because they had seen what i had seen-- a racially insensitive message that totally ignores sokka’s indigenous heritage and the history behind indigenous hair-- so i decided to step in with what i thought was a balanced response. 

SERVER MEMBER 2 then replied with a cheery “Fair enough! I will defer to your greater knowledge,” which i couldn’t tell was sarcastic or not, but i decided to be generous and to believe they were genuinely thankful for my reply, so i responded with a “you too can have great knowledge. i only know things because i read things. anyone can read things and learn,” which is something i firmly believe and also a way to divert the conversation away from SERVER MEMBER 2’s mistake, which i felt was the most dignified solution for them. i suppose this message could be read as aggressive because i didn’t use exclamation marks? but that feels unfair and ungenerous because i genuinely did not mean this message in a harsh way.

then SERVER MEMBER 3 jumped in and asked a few questions, which i read as a request for clarification, so i tried to continue to explain my point. it felt like SERVER MEMBER 3 wasn’t understanding what i was trying to explain, or at least i wasn’t able to articulate myself well enough, which was making me a little tired and stressy (and i was also thinking about my own race and queerness in stressful and triggering ways), so i decided to tap out of the conversation. 

me: dude i love u and i respect u and i truly believe that u are trying very hard to understand, but this conversation is making me kinda heated

SERVER MEMBER 3: I’m gonna step back from it because it’s not my conversation to insert myself into, which is what I did initially and apologize for

me: i think it's so important to engage + ask questions & i appreciate that u respect my opinions on these things, but i think i'm just. i have said what i need to say and now must sleep. much love to all.

to me, this felt like me expressing that i was feeling tired and upset and leaving the conversation, while still attempting to reassure SERVER MEMBER 3 that i still admired him as a friend. i felt like the conversation had ended peacefully!

i hope this helps explain why MOD 3’s message came as such a surprise. 

“the escalation to defensiveness and accusation regarding the original (relatively benign) statement was unnecessary and exaggerated. There’s an atmosphere of purity policing that’s been growing, which is why I took away the squick channel, as I assumed that a space that encouraged no repercussions was facilitating irresponsibility aggressive arguments. “

i truly didn’t believe i was being defensive. i was very careful not to accuse anyone of anything. in fact, i tried as far as i could to coat my language in “i” statements-- “i would personally not choose…”, “i would just. stay away from…” in order to avoid “accusations.” i was also trying very hard not to be aggressive, and i (and other poc that i have spoken to about this) believe that the idea that my messages were aggressive is racialized. just because a poc is upset about racism, it doesn’t mean they’re attacking you personally! 

i feel so hurt that my messages were wilfully interpreted in this way, instead of being read generously and from a more compassionate perspective, especially since i voiced my own upset and discomfort during the conversation. it distresses me to think that me expressing negative emotions is seen as aggressive, rather than a cause for empathy or care, and i do believe that this is because of my race.

if a mod had asked me to take the messages to the DMs or to squick or even just let me know that someone was interpreting my messages as aggressive, i would have changed my behavior. (like i said earlier, i spend a HUGE amount of energy coddling white people on this server. i am very used to it.) 

instead, i got the shock of 45 minutes after the fact, being publicly chastised and labeled as aggressive and being told that my conversation was “something nasty or unwanted.” 

the idea that SERVER MEMBER 3 was de-escalating a “clearly escalating situation” feels untrue to me. i was ready to move on after i sent my message to SERVER MEMBER 2, but he kept engaging me on the subject! (no hate to SERVER MEMBER 3 on this.)

i think one of the most painful parts of this whole situation is the implication that i was attempting to “purity police,” as though i am a person who picks fights just because i want to feel good about picking fights?? or to act holier-than-thou???? i do not do this. if you have witnessed ANY interaction i’ve had with a racially insensitive white person on the server, you will know this. 

i am simply a person of color trying to live my life. i do not want to fight about racism. i want to chill out and watch my cartoons. unfortunately, sometimes, someone will say something that i consider racially insensitive and i will do my best to engage and explain why i find this insensitive. that is all. (it is important to note that most of the time, when i see racially insensitive things on the server, i do not say anything because i am tired and it is a lot of effort to engage. i truly only engaged this time because nobody had replied to the message and i was just like, oh, fine, i guess i’ll educate, since no one else has!)

this whole incident has honestly made me really hurt and disrespected. i have enjoyed my time on the server and i have made some good friends there. however, it feels clearer and clearer to me that the server is a space where white feelings of safety (not being criticized for their racist content) are prioritized over poc’s feelings of safety (not having to witness and experience racist content). i sincerely considered myself to be an active and enthusiastic member of the server, maybe even friends with some of you, but it feels to me that all of our previous positive interactions have been displaced by this idea of me as an aggressive, overzealous purity cop who calls things racist for fun. 

i don’t even know how to repair my relationship with the server after this because i really do feel horrible and sick about the whole thing. i have spoken to other poc who also expressed their concerns about the way the mods handled the situation, even if these other poc weren’t directly involved, and some of us are considering leaving the server, if we haven’t already. (i would also like to note that these people reached out to me, unprompted, to make sure i was doing okay after what they and i interpreted as a micro-aggression by the mods. like, we independently read the situation in this way.)

(also, not sure if this matters, but i talked to SERVER MEMBER 3 the morning after the incident because i wanted to make sure he was okay, and we both ended up apologizing to each other and having a really good and productive talk.)

thanks again for reading this. i hope that you’ll be able to better understand my perspective on what occurred. i truly appreciate the work that you put into the server (especially as someone who also puts work into the server lol), and i know it’s difficult to mod a large server (i also mod an atla server!), but i continue to feel hurt about this. i know it’s hard to read tone over server messages, but i really wish that my (and SERVER MEMBER 4′s and SERVER MEMBER 5′s ) server messages had been read with greater compassion. 

...

and that’s all folks! i’m going to be remaking my blog soon, partially because this whole experience has exhausted me and partially because i have been meaning to anonymize my internet presence for some time.

[twistedsinews]

OC Profile

Tagged by @chyrstis

<3

Tagging: @rosewaterhag, @hunnybadgerv, @gatticus, @heywoodvirgin (for when you come back), @chyrstis, @ ... whoever wants to do it and hasn't yet!

V

General

Name: V. Literally. It's always been just V.

Alias(ses): Enough people assume that V is an alias, and it's difficult enough to track down in a database. However. She will use other aliases for one-off jobs when she needs the extra layer of security of not having someone track her down through street work, but none of them really get recycled.

Gender: Nomad. I jest, but I'm pretty sure she's somewhat off the binary even if she straddles the line.

Age: As of the events of C77, she'd just turned 29.

Birthdate: I don't actually have one for her. Possibly in January... I'm only saying that because I started playing Cyberpunk on my birthday but that's when she came into creation so why not.

Place of birth: The Badlands. I'm not sure where in the Badlands, but probably quite the distance from Night City.

Hometown: She grew up in a roving band of self-sufficient scavengers, so... everywhere. And nowhere.

Spoken languages: English. Bad English. She might've picked up a few scattered words of other languages, but she relies heavily on her translation software and that reliance has stunted her learning.

Sexual preference: Ladies and gentlemen, and Jackie Welles. She's not picky on the sex or gender front, but someone who can keep up with her, ideally.

Occupation: Street Ronin. Mercenary for hire.

Appearance

Eye color: Mid-light purple. Dark brown, prior to getting modded.

Hair color: Blue and red, although she'll change it from time to time. Black, prior to getting modded.

Height: 5'8"

Scars: She has a few. The healed slash on her face comes from her first real knife fight, and she keeps it as something of a memento. There are some newer scars on her hands. And let's not talk about that mess of scar tissue that is her heart, because ow.

Favorite

Color: I think she probably likes pink, red, blue, and teal about equally.

Hair color: Barring mods, probably dark.

Eye color: Sky blue.

Song: Favorite in the same way that pain makes you feel alive, I think, but post-Heist, she found a new appreciation for Never Fade Away.

Food: Marshmallows. City takeout, especially pizza.

Non-alcoholic drink: Soda, the sweeter the better.

Alcoholic drink: Nomad moonshine, but tequila can be fun. And then there's vodka.

Have they...

Passed university: Fuck, no.

Had sex: Fuck, yes.

Had sex in public: ...I mean. Not on the Main St. Sidewalk, but I'm... pretty sure there wasn't as much privacy in all those back alley trysts as you might want to believe. Also, do orgies and sex clubs count as public? ‘cause, uh...

Gotten pregnant: Nope. Cyborg birth control ftw!

Kissed a boy: Yes.

Kissed a girl: Yes.

Gotten tattoos: Several. All traditional, none of them are Light tattoos.

Gotten piercings: A few in her ears, the nosering, and the eyebrow thing.

Been in love: Yes. Not until she reached Night City, but then she kinda made up for it by falling in love a few times over the course of the game.

Stayed up for more than 24 hours: Pretty regularly, for business and for pleasure.

Are they...

A virgin: Ha. No.

A cuddler: Very much so. Even before the love part, she was always very tactile. (It confused the hell out of Jackie until he just accepted that being her best friend and go-to fling was about as intimate as some relationships he'd been in... prior to feelings coming to light, anyway.)

A kisser: Indeed.

Scared easily: In some ways, not so much others. On her own, she's pretty reckless and fearless. When she has people she cares about, she can fairly easily get scared of fucking up the relationship and also of outside harm coming to them if and when these things crop up on the horizon. However, it pretty much took coming face to face with death in a way she couldn't shrug off before she actually got traumatized to the point of being terrified.

Jealous easily: Under the right circumstances. She's less jealous of physical activity and closeness and more when it comes to feelings.

Trustworthy: She can lie and she can twist the truth, and she has no scruples against doing either. But when it boils down to it, if she's on your side she will have your back to the last cliff at the end of the world.

Dominant: She certainly can be. She can be hard-headed and stubborn, to add to it, and she has no second thoughts about stepping up and taking charge. Though if we're talking about in bed, she's drastically less so.

Submissive: To whom is the bigger question. If she likes someone, she tends to be a lot gentler and tries to be considerate. And again, if we're talking about in bed, well... yes. Pushy about it sometimes, maybe, but yes.

In love: Ha. Hahaha. Yes. With quite a few people.

Single: It's complicated (TM).

Random questions (tw for self harm/suicide mention)

Have they harmed themselves: In a manner of speaking. It's not a conscious/deliberate thing, the way most people think of self-harm, but she falls into plenty of behaviors that would qualify and definitely puts herself out there in harms way or restricts herself as a means of self-punishment.

Thought of suicide: Yes. Quite a bit, after the Heist.

Attempted suicide: Again, not in a conscious or deliberate way, but more of a sarcastic 'wouldn't it be a shame if these dangerous behavior patterns happened to have consequences' way.

Wanted to kill someone: Quite a bit! And has!

Have/had a job: Very many!

Have any fears: Losing the people she cares about, to negligence or outside influence. Not making any lasting impact. Dying, after viewing that BD, and double after reliving Johnny's memories, and triple actually doing it once or twice.

Family

Siblings: To her knowledge, she's an only child. It's plausible that her mother remarried after leaving the clan.

Parents: Her father is a Nomad. Her mother is City, though V never knew which city. She's not in contact with either. And so far, I haven't given them names.

Children: None and she's a little terrified of the idea. Not that she couldn't eventually change her mind - she never thought she'd be in love, either.

Significant other: Jackie. Misty. Arguably Panam and River. Saul and Placide she kinda wishes. Johnny she kinda wishes not, but they share a brain and that's pretty significant even if not in any traditional relationship sense.

Pets: One (1) sphinx cat she found and picked up that was hiding in the alleys of her MegaBuilding.

[digitised-celluloid]

what is online space? what is content? i update this blog that now somehow has 900+ posts semi-regularly but with nowhere near the fervour of the salad days of my tumblr posting. i consider this to be a ‘new’ blog yet it’s been here since i think 2014. it has thousands of followers yet that’s still a drop in the ocean compared to what other blogs of mine had. it gets a lot of notes yet i don’t know a single follower, have not a single mutual. i consider this a ‘space’ yet as spaces go the theme is 7 years out of date and tumblr has long broken the few pages i made. what sort of ‘space’ is that. yet if you go elsewhere the online platform is almost irredeemable and whatever enjoyment can be had is, imo, fleeting. i’ve moved to twitter got some bluecheck follows and yet they are less ‘prestigious’ or ‘interesting’ or whatever than sending asks to big users here and ending up respectful mutuals, and jesus christ if you haven’t been able to tell by now i can’t be doing with the tweet limit. i’ve modded a popular ‘in group’ subreddit and been popular on there myself yet there’s something so deeply impersonal and fleeting about that ‘space’ and so grubby about its dramas. as someone who had a main blog and then several sideblogs, i have ended up with my ‘main’ being one of those sides, with an actual main left comatose, on life support, so that this side doesn’t ‘die’. the content posted here is stills of an artist’s work. there is some sentiment that there’s an art to this art. the art of curation. curating for others. 100gb+ of stills on my hard drive, like a scrapbook - curation. no, more like a filing cabinet, more impersonal, and no romance. despite 95% of my mutuals leaving the site, and me myself not posting outside of this stills side, i check my dash every morning like i would in 2013. i can’t put my finger on why that habit hasn’t been broken. the content is gone, the space is empty. so again what is online space? what is content? why am i still here in an online space that as social media is now empty? why do i continue to screencap and post stills as if there’s any meaning to this curation? why am i writing this, my first text post in four years? why have i romanticised the process to the degree where i have milestoned stopping posting? why do i remember the theme, font choice, and palette of my ‘personal’ sideblog that i privated every post on and left in 2017? why does it feel submerged rather than absent? why am i seeing some mutuals slip back in and start posting again, looking for their old mutuals - some gone for good, some returned themselves, some never left and post with the same frequency they did in 2012. why am i both of those people, having ‘slipped back’ mentally to make this post as well as having never left in my own way. if i check the dash every morning and post here, on what level did i consider myself to have left? emotionally? i emotionally left tumblr? i met the ‘great love’ of my 20s on tumblr and as the relationship fell apart i ‘emotionally left’ the site - how hilarious, like this is a physical space someone was met in, like i vowed to never return to the cafe where our eyes by some miracle met. i remember when i broke up with my ‘first love’ as she had cheated on me, crying walking past the burger king where she’d first agreed to stay over at mine. so i have tumblr and paddington burger king as my spaces emitting a deep absence. i wonder whether if i went to the burger king, i’d do so having lost something, with a formality unfitting for fast food. madness have lyrics that go ‘although I've never been there I wish I was there stillI - stare out of this window - see the world go past - i've read and looked at everything - i know it off by heart‘ and i think that epitomises online spaces, specifically tumblr. there’s nothing new you could show me here, i’ve seen it all and seen nothing. i’ve been here so intensely yet not been here at all. yet when i’ve not been here at all i’ve also been here intensely. even though i’ve never been here i wish i was here still. there’s something so liberating about knowing 2,348 followers will see this yet none of them will read it, it’s like being naked at a nudist beach, you’ve stripped yourself bare yet nobody will pay any notice at all, because everyone is stripping themselves practically to the bone on this site. nudity is either deeply erotic or totally sexless and maybe that’s the same with content, something is either deeply contentful or totally contentless - and it’s often the same object through different eyes or in different spaces. like the warehouse that becomes the art gallery. this space, tumblr, is both gutted warehouse and social space, at the same time. what is posted is both dull plain almost vapid objects, and yet something enjoyable, sometimes even profound. i can only come to the conclusion that what divides tumblr in that sense from reddit twitter facebook and many more is that this is a deeply human space. perhaps it’s at least the pretense of all of this being blogging. or because it’s a deeply unprofitable busted attempt at social media that not only lingers but thrives even as others - me - say it is ‘gone’. this is the one space where there feels like there’s someone behind the account, even more so than first name last name facebooks and twitters. this is a totally worthless wall of text but it’s enjoable to stream of consciousness over 20 minutes isn’t it, in this space... is this content? i guess it is because you’ll see it, and not because you’ll not read it.

[gamma-cray]

16.11.20 / some old notes from talks I went to in the past (I collect most of them in a notebook)

I can’t believe I managed to post almost everyday this semester, for (?) 96 consecutive days:”) now that it’s more or less over, I guess I won’t be posting as much for the next few weeks. Some reflections/future plans after the break

Reflecting upon this semester, although results are not out yet, I’m glad these things kinda worked for me:

sleeping more regularly (reallY helped with overall wellbeing and ability to function;;; probably had.. less than half an all-nighter)

although not having all-nighters meant asking for deadline extensions, I learnt it’s actually !!okay to ask for extensions;; (afterall, especially after a few semesters, I know my own pace I guess)

clearing lectures more quickly (rather than hogging/accumulating pictures of slides and recordings? still can work on this tho)

using office hours! to clarify doubts! so I can move on and learn more effectively!

less is more: taking less physics mods (like 3, rather than 5), this allowed me to gain more from each rather than scramble to catch up in all of them

I still find that, yes, indeed, I freeze up and don’t absorb much content a few days before an exam. (I suppose this means I should continue putting in consistent effort during the rest of the sem so I have more to “fall back on”?)

! I gotta do my tutorials more diligently (sometimes I get stuck because I’d feel like I need to nail the content before attempting problems, but I guess that’s not optimal for progress during a busy semester. Would have to continue finding a balance between I need to get this content right and hell with it I’ll just whack the problem set first)

So I guess this is for future me to reflect/learn from? 

Also, since my exams were so early and I had no finals, I’ve got an extra 3 weeks of winter break:)) plenty of stuff I’m looking forward to this break:

starting discussions about urops/final year project (and perhaps start on urops?)

side job: coaching secondary students for a physics competition

having some time to do more in our science comm/outreach/demonstration “club”/organization thing!

time (and headspace) to learn things I didn’t get to effectively pick up during term time: LaTeX, coding for plotting, so on

hoping to get an interface and figure out how to connect my electric guitar to computers and mess around a little:^)

!! probably gonna update the theme/picture/stuff for this blog:))

general decluttering/brain dumping, at the end of this weird year

for now/for today, I’ll just be doing some light reading for tomorrow. Gonna meet the professors for the first time to kick off discussions about urops/fyp;; shall see if I have any questions/doubts to bring up?

to quote lyrics from The Who, I’ve got a feeling 21 is going to be a good year

but after 2020 I don’t think any of us have any much expectations so;;

anyway, next year/sem (second half of year 3), I’ll be on to start on urops, taking level 4k core modules, working towards finishing A2 German, and before I know it I’ll be in my last year of undergrad:”) time flies and life sucks sometimes but I guess there’s still things to look forward to!

[violentviolette]

sorry that my blog (and by extension this tag) has gotten taken over by such triggering content and this entire mess of a situation these past few days. I really appreciate people bearing with me while this all unfolded and came to light

now that Tony has deleted its blogs and the majority of the community here and on discord are aware of the situation, I hopefully will have to make fewer posts about this and we can get back to ur regularly scheduled content

I will be leaving ryos masterpost pinned for the next few weeks, and if anyone has any other questions or concerns please feel free to dm me or send me an ask. anon has and will remain on.

but make no mistake, just because i am not posting about this constantly does not mean I'm letting it go or shutting up about it. I will never ever shut up about this.

Tony is still an active threat, that 16 yr old is still being isolated in Tonys mod chat. Ive recently learned they also left other servers they were in because the people there objected to Tonys behavior, further isolating them under Tonys control. I have no doubt that Tony will attempt to remake with new blogs or resurface at some point once it thinks this has all died down.

please do not let it be successful at that. because I sure as hell won't. it doesn't matter how many times it runs away and hides like the pathetic coward it is, never let it forget that it has said absolutely nothing this entire situation. has done nothing but hide and make a 16 yr old child do its dirty work.

Tony aka your-aspd-dad is an abusive manipulative coward who grooms and emotionally abuses minors, and willfully endangers the welfare of children by exposing them to confirmed child rapists and pedophiles. do not ever let anyone forget that.

[solidssnakeass]

I didn't want to have to do this, because I hoped it would stop if I resolved it internally, but as of today (Oct 29th) it's been going on for a full week, and is showing no signs of letting up. CW for online harassment.

This is a "callout post" for @spaghetti-doodle413 AKA sMolBean413 AKA autiecon (and POTENTIALLY otacOnxmiku69 on AO3). This person changes their name any chance they get, and I have no doubt that they have more accounts than just this (on AO3 or otherwise). I've banned multiple accounts from them and they changed two of them shortly after.

For months, this person has been harassing people on AO3, and it appeared to be specifically targeted at the inhabitants of my otasune discord server. They were saying things like "If I ran the otasune discord, I wouldn't let you put out garbage like this" and offering (incredibly hostile, passive-aggressive) "constructive criticism" on fics. I had several members of my server come forward and tell me what was going on, and I banned them without confronting them directly.

The morning after that, I got this comment on my own fic. It was enough proof for me; who else would recall a conversation that happened back in June aside from the people involved?

After the ban, I naïvely believed that this whole issue would be put to rest, but I woke up to a TON of comments on my AO3 fics asking for me to DM them on discord and let them back in the server.

I obviously didn't let them back into the server, but I eventually did DM them, giving them an earful and showing the proof that I had gathered directly to them. I was then harassed by several of their friends on twitter, who, despite the plethora of evidence I had to prove it was them harassing people in my server, refused to believe me and instead accused ME of creating a fake AO3 account to harass myself on fics that are several years old and for a different fandom. They also messaged people I regularly interact with in the Yakuza fandom in an attempt to "dig up" proof that I would do something like this.

Now, aside from the fact that this is absolutely fucking ridiculous, I was streaming Persona 4 on my YouTube channel for 10 hours, while ALSO on discord voice chat with 5 of my friends. I was pinged by a mod in the middle of my stream about the issue, but didn't ban them until my mod Raz (Fred Beefurst) who I was on VC with mentioned it to me. You can see that reflected by the timestamps.

Fast forward a few days, and they ended up making several new accounts to rejoin my server. The first two screenshots were taken yesterday, but in the time between the whole thing happening and the time I took the rest of the screenshots today, they changed their name and pfp – you can see evidence of this in the first two pictures I gave).

Due to the fast-paced nature of the chat and everyone speaking at once, I have trimmed down the messages to focus on their reaponses (and mine, "Huey's Dead Body"). I've left the edges raw so that you can see where I merged them.

After this, someone in my otasune server who also shares another mutual server with the original "smolbean" discord account (#8379) privately DMed them, where they essentially 100% confirmed it was them. I take particular offense to them using the R slur, as I am autistic myself (smolbean also claims that they are autistic, but I believe that they are using this as an excuse for their toxic behavior, which was their excuse to ME when I called them out for this harassment).

Please be wary of this person, they are a manipulative liar, have harassed many of my friends over AO3, and don't appear to be stopping any time soon. If you receive a comment from them on your fics, DO NOT engage with them, delete it. They're looking for people to bully.

[tfwbigbang]

Team Free Will Big Bang FAQ and Rules 2021

Rules

You must be aged 18 or over upon registration in order to take part in this bang. If you lie about your age, you will be banned from all future TFW Big Bangs and other events run by this bang’s mods.

Authors, Artists and Betas will be sent a confirmation email within 48 hours of signing up. You must reply to this email to complete sign up.

What do I create?

Authors:

A story of a minimum of 15,000 words (big bang).

Or a story of a minimum of 5000 words (mini bang).

The story must feature Team Free Will (Dean, Sam and Cas) at the center of the story or Team Free Will 2.0 (Dean, Sam, Cas and Jack).

Or be a real person fanfic (RPF) featuring Jared, Jensen and Misha at the center of the story (Alexander Calvert can also be included as a central character if you so desire).

No story may feature anyone under the age of 16 in an explicit sexual situation, this rises to 18 for RPF.

Your story must be posted in full on your assigned posting day.

See further in the FAQ for more details.

Artists:

For a big bang: a cover and two pieces of art connected to the fic (cover can be derived from main art).

For a mini bang: a cover and a piece of art connected to the fic (cover can be derived from main art).

No art may feature anyone under the age of 18 in an explicit sexual situation.

No explicit art may be posted to Tumblr.

No art can be made of photo manipulations.

Note that this bang runs a no fic left behind policy.

See further in the FAQ for more details

Authors must not discuss their stories publicly on places like social media or Discord servers before claims, unless it is in vague terms to secure a beta reader. You may discuss your story with your beta reader and on the TFWBB Discord server.

All authors and artists must familiarize themselves with the bang schedule.

All authors and artists must make attempts to regularly communicate with each other once paired.

For those taking part, we have created a Discord server. Details about this are available upon bang sign-up.

For more in-depth information on how to be a good bang participant: check out this post on allspnships.

FAQ

What are the differences between mini and big bangs?

Basically how long your story is. The Big Bang has a minimum of 15,000 words, and will receive a minimum of two art pieces from the artist plus a fic cover, while the Minibang has a minimum of 5,000 words, and will receive a cover and at least one piece of art.

Do covers have to be completely separate pieces of art from the rest of the bang’s art?

Covers can be remixes of art already created for the fic. But they need to feature the fic title, the names of the artist and the author(s).

How/where do I submit my draft?

We will provide details about this directly to creators nearer posting time.

How long does my story need to be?

You have two options: for a Big Bang, you need a minimum of 15,000 words. For a Minibang, you need at least 5,000.

What does the focus of my story need to be?

Your story must focus on all three members of Team Free Will: Dean, Sam, and Castiel. This means the story can be Dean/Sam, Dean/Cas, Sam/Cas, Sam/Dean/Cas or gen. If you choose a two-person pairing, the third character must be an equal focus on the story.

We won’t be counting words, but please try to stay within the spirit of the challenge. This is about celebrating Team Free Will characters, so have fun with them.

Since 2018, we have accepted interpretations of Team Free Will that include Jack Kline (Team Free Will 2.0), but everyone must still have equal importance in your story.

Team Free Love (Sam/Castiel/Dean/Gabriel) is not accepted for this bang.

Reader inserts are not accepted for this bang.

We will allow pairings where the four are with other characters, such as Sam/Eileen or Dean/Gabriel, BUT that pairing cannot be the main focus of the story.

Are AUs, crossovers and fusions allowed?

Yes, all are allowed. However, the more obscure the other fandom, the harder finding an artist who knows both will be, so keep that in mind.

What about RPF?

RPF is welcome, but must focus on Jared, Misha, Jensen and (if you want) Alexander, and their relationships with each other. So any combination of these four is welcome, as is a gen RPF where no one’s together. Everyone of these three (or four) needs equal weight in your plot.

What about underage?

Please ensure that all fanfic doesn’t include under 16s depicted in sexual situations—this raises to 18 for RPF. Basically, off the page is fine, but not on the page. All explicit art can only feature characters aged 18 and upwards.

Is it okay to write a sequel or prequel to an existing fic?

No, it needs to be a completely new story.

Can I sign up as both an author and an artist?

Yes, but you cannot claim your own fic.

Can I create additional art for my fic/have other artists make banners and art?

Not until a year after your post date.

May I do photo manipulations for art?

Due to issues of quality with manips in previous years, we have decided that photo manipulations are no longer welcome in the Team Free Will Big Bang.

May I do paper art or use alternative physical mediums like textiles or clay?

Yes.

Covers—can they feature explicit art?

Due to masterposts being posted on Tumblr, covers cannot feature explicit imagery.

Will there be promos? Can I advertise my fic on my Tumblr, Pillowfort, Dreamwidth, Twitter, etc?

There will be a formal promo period available to you during August, once posting dates are known. Promos will be promoted on all our blogs and Twitter. Details on how to promo will be made available in August.

Please do not promote stories ahead of this. You will be welcome to reblog/retweet your promos from our official blogs and Twitter.

Where do I post my fic/art when it’s complete?

All fics must be posted to AO3 and made live on your posting date, with the art embedded in the appropriate scenes if the artist allows.

All art must have a masterpost on either Dreamwidth, Pillowfort, AO3, or Tumblr made live on your posting day. Remember that explicit art should not be posted to Tumblr, unless it is extensively censored.

On or before your posting day, both links must be submitted in a post to the TFW Big Bang Dreamwidth, Pillowfort community and/or Tumblr blog. We will share the posting format nearer the time of posting. We will check over the masterpost, and make it public on the appropriate day on all platforms.

Do I need to link back to my artist’s master art post on my AO3 story?

Yes, all stories must have a link that goes to the art masterpost made by your artist. We advise you add this link in your notes using HTML like:

Will there be an AO3 collection for posted fics and art?

You will be able to add your fics and art to the moderated collection via: tfw_bb_2021.

Do I need a Dreamwidth/Pillowfort/Tumblr/AO3 account to participate?

Artists should have at least one to post their art to, and authors should have at least AO3 to post their fic to. No account besides an email address is required for claims.

Masterpost submissions to Pillowfort or Dreamwidth will require an account on the service you want to use. Tumblr may be submitted to without an account. Submit the fic and art masterpost to your preferred platform and it will be crossposted by the mods.

Due to changes in LiveJournal’s terms of service in April 2017, the bang is no longer being actively run on LJ, though may be promoted there.

Can I write more than one story/collaborate on a story?

Each author can write only one story for this challenge. You are welcome to collaborate on a story, but that counts as your one story.

Can I claim more than one fic to make art for?

The first round of claiming will allow artists to claim only one story. If there are still unclaimed stories 24 hours after the claiming begins, we’ll open a second round for artists to claim a second piece or for artists who didn’t originally sign up to participate. If artists drop out after assignments are set, artists can pinch hit as well regardless of whether they’re already assigned one story.

What do I need to provide for claims?

Fic writers will need to provide drafts that are at least 80% complete (with a beginning, middle and (almost an) end) for claims, along with a summary. Specifics on how to do this will be shared via email ahead of the submissions date.

We will not accept drafts that fail to meet this criteria, as it’s not fair on artists.

What is “no fic left behind”?

If an artist fails to meet art draft check-ins, providing proof of art, when required: they will be removed from the bang and a new artist found for the affected bang story.

The only exception to this is those affected by extenuating circumstances who manage to communicate with their author or the mods—in this instance an extension will be given.

What if something happens in RL and I need to post on a different day or get an extension, or something?

Contact the mods, or get your teammate to contact the mods, or get a friend to contact the mods. Stuff happens and we don’t want our bang to be an extra stress, but you need to let us know that you need help so that we can help you. We can be pretty flexible, so please don’t worry and get in touch. You can reach us at teamfreewillbigbang(at)gmail(dot)com.

How will claims work?

There will be a preview doc with each summary posted at least 48 hours before claims and emailed to artists who have already signed up. When claims open, we will email a link to a Google Form where we’ll ask you to resubmit some of your artist details and your top five picks for doing art. We’ll update the preview summaries with notes on fics as they’re assigned.

Do writers need beta readers?

Yes, all fic needs to be beta read for at least spelling, punctuation and grammar.

If you don’t have a beta reader, you can try asking someone from our beta list to beta for you.

Ask on /r/fandomnatural or you can check out our list of beta readers for the bang. Details of this list will be emailed to authors once available.

May I post a WIP?

Works in progress (WIP) are not permitted to be posted for this bang. Fics must be posted complete (i.e. no serial posting).

You didn’t answer my question

Please contact hit_the_books,majesticduxk and fogsrollingin at teamfreewillbigbang(at)gmail(dot)com.

[true-sapphire-star]

Update (1/14/21)

Hi all. It’s been a while. Six months, I believe? Way too long. I’m alive and well. I haven’t been affected by CV yet, but I’ve gone through a whole bunch of life changes. I graduated college online, moved two states away, had to leave my job, got a new job and moved into an apartment. I just started my job a few days ago.  I will admit, I’m struggling. This is a whole lot of new things for me, being freshly out of college and now starting my first full time job. Trying to track down bills and utilities and groceries and bleh. I’m tired 24/7. My mental health could be much, much better. Granted, it’s a lot better than it ever was compared to my lowest, but I’m still struggling on a weekly basis to keep motivated. I’m probably going to seek help for it again soon.  I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this, but I suppose it’s to say sorry for how long I’ve been gone.  I know I said in the past that I would be back in x amount of time, months, etc. I will admit I have a hard time adhering to things like that. I am a bit of a fickle person in that sense. Regardless, that does not excuse my absence. I do still think about this blog a lot. I’m surprised my follower count has continued to increase in my absence. I expect it to drop after this post, at least a bit. It has been too long since I’ve posted anything solid and RP related.  I still RP as this muse, on a discord server in particular. Even that creative flow has become a trickle in the recent months. I enjoy building this muse, and the little quirks I have to employ when writing as them. I do want to come back to this blog.  I suppose, to put everything out in open air, I’m worried. Some part of me has a fear that I’ve failed those who follow me by not keeping up and posting semi-regularly. Maybe I have. I know I shouldn’t let this particular fear/worry get to me, but it gets under my skin a bit easier than most. In fact- it’s what killed my first RP blog so many years back. I started spending more and more time between updates, and began to worry about people judging me or thinking about me in a negative manner due to doing so. As such, it would take me longer and longer to type out responses to RP chains. And it just feeds into itself. I still have that mentality, unfortunately. I haven’t had the chance to break out of it via therapy yet. So... at this point I don’t know what I’m going to do. I would like to continue this blog. I just don’t have the ability to assess how much time and energy it would take out of me each day. Maybe I need to like.... Idk. Put out a couple of consistent updates a week. I don’t want to force myself to push forward when I’m feeling down though, since that just kills the desire to even try. And I know if I don’t set a hard limit, I’m just going to let it wait till the very end until I update, which brews stress and pressure.  I’m not asking for sympathy or understanding. I’m.... Just venting I suppose. Trying to let you all know what’s been going on and why I’ve been radio silent for so long.  In any case. Thank you all for supporting me and RPing with me. I greatly appreciate everyone in this community who has attempted to interact or read along to this point in time. You all bring a little bit of light to my days. I hope you all stay safe. - Safi Mod