#Contents May Vary

[angiefsutton]

J.M. Frey (@scifrey) is an author, screenwriter, and academic – and we talk over all three in this episode of "Contents May Vary".

[thelonelywhale]

I know there have been varying degrees of opinions regarding the appearances of C1 and C2 PCs (and NPCs) in C3, and I’ll admit my own opinion has wavered back and forth on this as well.

Ultimately I came to the realization that highly powerful former PCs like Keyleth, Percy, Caleb, and Beau interacting with the Hells feels very similar to the high level NPCs from C1 - Allura, Kima, Gilmore, Drake, Assum, etc. These were former adventurers with former lives whose past actions were influencing the events of the world, who interacted with the party and provided support and guidance. While their full backstories may not have been explicitly detailed on stream, it was very clear they were fleshed out people with past experiences, post-adventure lives, and ties to the plot. They just happened to come from Matt rather than the players.

And I think that’s SO COOL that this group gets to play in a world state they actively influence. They get to create characters that become the next Alluras and Kimas and Gilmores. To me as a player that feels like such an amazing reward, and shows a level of respect and understanding for collaborative storytelling and worldbuilding from both the DM side and the player side.

[tf2tomfoolery]

Spong bob 😔

Why does this look like that sad spongebob meme but in the amongus drip pose?

Was testing out some stylised looks on the mercs and. Uogh. Shape theory -> square -> SpongeBob -> scout's headset + bat. 😀

[palebloodpresence]

what if i said my genuine opinion of "rom the vacuous spider" is that she's actually not like, peaceful because she's stupid, she's just extremely fucking chill bc she's so enlightened. like she WILL defend herself but really she just wants to hide in her cool lake world and hide dark rituals

[mars-ipan]

being asexual is so weird sometimes bc i will have an experience or feeling that isn’t sexual or horny like i /know/ it isn’t but if i tried to explain it in words it would just sound like a sexual/horny thing. and like it is at first glance but it really isn’t at all

[little-poison-potapo]

The Fandom Rabbit Hole

Cool animatics/ edits

Amazing fanart

Well written fic

Hurt/comfort

Hurt/comfort with romantic interest

Smut

[thatfreakything]

Me while watching OFMD for the first time: Omg who’s this angry little fucker-- Izzy? Izzy Hands??? Lmao I hate him, hope he dies

Me, a week and three full sketchbook pages of the man later: Israel “Basilica” Hands, love of my life,

[girlbob-boypants]

Mmmmm reaching the point in wf where I know I need to do certain things before I continue the story or I'm gonna have a bad time but there's not really a good guide in game on What to do because the game is designed around dedicated players who already have everything they need for when the update drops

And thus I'm experiencing a burnout not because I'm not having fun but because having more fun requires pausing my entire experience to go and find every little thing I need to be acceptably stronger and spend like...several days of game time grinding for it

[ellie-tarts]

Hi ellieeee !! I wanted to ask if u have some book recommendations? You always have great taste :3c

hi ash hiiiiii

first off! the thief (1996) by megan whalen turner- gen is a proud thief, and his boasting lands him the impossible task of stealing an object of legends for the crown. but gen has his own plans, and perhaps the king is a fool to trust a thief this series is one of my favorites of all time. the first book is a fantasy heist novel set loosely in the byzantine empire, and gen is such a loveable rascal who i also want to punt across the room. and! after the first book of the series, political machinations start to come into play and things start to change as gen grows up and interacts more with the wider world around him. this series is a lot of fun, and truly some amazing pov work and dramatic irony happening as it unfolds

the left hand of darkness (1969) ursula k le guin- genly ai is a human sent as an ambassador to gethen, a planet where it is always winter (by his standards) and the people who live there do not have a biological sex the majority of the time and don't really have the concept of gender. however, ai definitely does, and it's a point of friction between him and the aliens. whether or not this is a queer story is a difficult question, but it is still a wonderful book about what it means to be human and what it means to be alien. and also what is a country and where do we owe our loyalties and! it is also a story about going on a perilous journey and coming out the other side with an understanding and an unbreakable bond

iron widow (2021) xiran jay zhao- i feel like i'm late to the bandwagon, but i just read this last month and loved it! and now i want heavenly tyrant so bad _(:3」∠)_ iron widow is a queer mecha scifi reimagining of the rise of the chinese empress wu zetian. zetian is such an outspoken character who won't stand for anything getting between her and her goals, and the book follows her as she carves a path through the society that raised her. she is a delight. i support women's wrongs

the traitor baru cormorant (2015) seth dickinson- baru cormorant is a young child when the empire of masks comes to her home. instead of conquest, they offer trade and money. educated in an imperial school, this book follows baru in her first posting as the imperial accountant in a country up north that has also recently been subjugated to the empire. as political unrest brews in the north, baru has to consider what choices to make and how far she's willing to go. is baru cormorant a traitor? i hesitate to recommend this book, but i sure thought about it for a month straight so i suppose it can go on this list. it's. kind of a slog to get through. life in the empire of masks can be a string of attrocities, and baru faces racism, sexism, and homophobia everywhere she turns. but also i do love baru bc she is messy and multifaceted and loves to lie 👍🏻 i wish life was kinder to her. im afraid to keep reading book 2 bc i know her life is just going to get worse

other things i have read recently and enjoyed: padawan by kiersten white and the new canon thrawn trilogies by timothy zahn. but these are star wars books, and probably not what you're looking for lol

anyways! thank you for asking mwah mwah. i hope you find something good to read even if it's not one of these. and possibly send some book recommendations my way 💕💕

[skyfcx]

     Spoilers for Sonic Frontiers btw. 

     During our time with Tails in Frontiers, he speaks on how he feels like a burden to Sonic, about how he’s worried he hasn’t changed, and how he’s wildly inconsistent with his heroic acts. And I absolutely adore this level of introspection for canon Tails, what with his character being a little all over the place in recent years. 

     But looping that back into my portrayal, I’m having a touch of trouble figuring out how to use all of this new information because... I sort of already had my Tails do that development. I like it much more when Tails is a sidekick second, he’s his own person with his own skillset and way of doing things first and foremost. And he realized this when noticing that trying to be just like Sonic wasn’t working. That’s when he set out to be more of his own individual, leaning into his strengths and doing things his own way. 

     So that’s why I’m thinking, maybe I can use Frontiers can be the sort of prologue to all of the development that my Tails goes through? He has that adventure, it’s eye opening, he goes off to do his own thing for a while as the ending implies the entirety of the team does, and that’s when he starts making inventions to help him hold his own, getting into his own adventures, meeting new people... 

     It could be the start of when he remakes his Blast Cannon in order to feel stronger on his own. Hell, he could’ve been inspired by Sage to make Nicole! By jove, if we’re crazy enough, we could even say that goddamn Tails Adventure takes place during this time and that’s when he builds T-Pup.

[angiefsutton]

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[royalreef]

      Do this to Miri.

[ampharos-posts]

sobbing and crying

[noriakicatkyoin]

The thoughts i hv about fujimoto and his characters one day ill be able to put them into words

[lackadaisycats]

I hope you know that literally nobody is going to be able to live up to the standard you, V*v, and Glitch have set and your arrogance and exploitation of your fanbase and connections has screwed millions of creatives out of their dreams because Hollywood is a joke that isn't worth telling and wealthy e-celebs like yourself have claimed the indie scene all to yourselves and moved the goalposts into the stratosphere.

Nope. This isn't a zero sum game. There is not some limited, prescribed number of indie trophy slots that a few studios greedily filled up, blocking everyone else out. That is not how it works. Nothing any other creator is doing - short of personally sending hired goons to your doorstep or stealing your credit cards - is taking anything away from you or preventing your success. In fact if an indie creator can manage to demonstrate that they've got something viable going, it may help to map out a pathway for others.

I think I'm not going to bother trying to address whether or not cartoons in return for support from fans - an entirely voluntary exchange - constitutes exploitation. And I'm living in the Midwest driving a 2007 economy car with 200k+ miles on it, but let's just skip past the assumptions that I'm wealthy and connected too.

Instead, let's get to the weirdly myopic notion that the indie scene is held captive by three studios. Maybe YouTube algorithms or Twitter bubbles are somewhat to blame, but in actuality there are so, so many individual people, friend groups, and small production houses out there making independent animation, I cannot possibly name them all.

Here are some anyway:

Far-Fetched Worthikids Satina | Scumhouse Noodle and Bun Punch Punch Forever Ramshackle Noodle Papajoolia | Pipi Angel Hare | The East Patch Jonni Peppers Salad Fingers Monkey Wrench Studio Heartbreak Felix Colgrave JelloApocalypse Odd1sout (started indie, got picked up by Netflix) Allie Mehner JaidenAnimations Lumi and the Great Big Galaxy Cloudrise | The Worlds Divide Telepurte RubberRoss James Lee ENA Godspeed | Olan Rogers Ollie and Scoops Meat Canyon Port by the Sea Kekeflipnote Boxtown Kevin Temmer Weebl Joel Haver CircleToons Long Gone Gulch Atlas and the Stars Animist Skibidi Toilet A Fox in Space Alex Henderson Talon Toniko Pantoja Sr. Pelo Hullabaloo Kane Pixels (started indie, picked up by A24) Homestar Runner Fennah Gods' School Alan Becker Dungeon Flippers JazLyte Psychicpebbles (started indie, Smiling Friends picked up by AS) Piemations vewn Metal Family Dead Sound chluaid Jacknjellify Betsy Lee | No Evil My Pride Cranbersher GeoExe | Gwain Saga Horatio the Vampire Mech West Playground | Rodrigo Sousa The Brave Locomotive Finchwing (+ many other Warrior Cats animators) Quazies SamBakZa Kamikaze: Trial by Fire

By no means a full list. That's just YouTube, and mostly just English language stuff, and I didn't even get to the multitudes of Warrior Cats animation collabs.

The point is, the indie landscape is vast and populated by creators new and old, making all kinds of animated media from skits, to shows, to ARGs, to films. Audience sizes vary as much as the content, stylistic approaches, subject matter, and budgets do. There are no compliance standards, no gateways to entry, no goalposts. There's not even any preset definition of success except what you decide for yourself.

Anyway, instead of nurturing your resentments, consider making something. I assure you, it's a far more rewarding use of your time and energy, and pretty much no one can stop you. ------------- EDIT- Made some additions to the list based on comments. Thanks!

[5ummit]

New Mature Content Warning Overlay (And How to Get Rid of It)

More fun community label "features"! Unlike the new mandatory label for #NSFW, this one is a bigger deal to me because it affects my entire blog and it can't be avoided by just using a different tag.

Apparently on custom blog layouts, if you happen to post or reblog even a SINGLE post that's been flagged with the mature content community label, a full-page warning overlay will appear blurring out your entire blog that must be manually clicked through every single time the page is refreshed. At first I thought this was just a bug due to my older layout but I've come to realize it's not. It's a feature (as confirmed by this recent changes post) that affects all custom themes. The formatting will vary based on your own theme but here's what it looks like on my blog:

I don't know about you but I find this is stupid and annoying. If it could be dismissed once and never seen again that might be one thing, but that's not the case. The vast majority of my blog is not "mature" enough to warrant such an aggressive and invasive warning. I also think pop-ups are obnoxious in general and I'll be damned if tumblr's going to force me to have one on MY blog.

After some desperate googling for a known workaround and being unable to find even a single mention of it, I decided to take on the challenge myself. I'm not a theme coder, so apologies if there's a better way to do this, but luckily it only took me like 10 minutes to figure out a simple fix, which I'm now sharing with anyone else who may want it:

.community-label-cover__wrapper {display: none}

Just copypaste that somewhere in your CSS and goodbye pop-up!

If you're not sure how to access your theme code, check out this help article. You can also add the code via the Advanced Options menu, which is actually even better (if you can get it to work, it depends on how your theme was coded), because it will then automatically be reapplied to a lot of themes without having to remember to manually add it every time if you change your theme in the future.

Obviously this will only remove it from your own blog for anyone who may visit it. If you never want to see this warning again on other people's blogs you can also add this custom filter to your ad block:

tumblr.com##.community-label-cover__wrapper

Unfortunately I do not have an easy tutorial on hand for this one as the method will depend on your specific ad block app or extension.

Some additional notes:

After adding the theme code and saving the changes, give it a minute to update as it sometimes takes a little while for the page to refresh.

The warning overlay only seems to appear if a "mature" post is on the FIRST page of your blog, which is still annoying and makes the whole thing even more pointless and stupid because what if someone visits any other page of your blog, and oh no, happens to see "mature" content they weren't warned about?!

The warning also appears on direct links to "mature" posts.

This hack has NOTHING to do with entire blogs that have been flagged as NSFW. It only works for non-flagged blogs with custom themes that happen to have individual "mature" posts.