#Manual labeling process

[eelfuneral]

How often do you suspect that Hunter was told that he was “just being dramatic” when he sensed something more intensely than others? Was he punished for “acting out” when he reacted to stimuli or for being noncompliant when he avoided things that made him physically uncomfortable? Did he learn to hide his discomfort to the point that his heightened sense mutation was so subtle to onlookers that Jesse had to ask “what’s so special about him”?

How often was Tech accused of being an arrogant know-it-all when he was just sharing information that he thought was interesting? Did he have an even more monotone voice and blunted affect as a cadet that got him accused of being an unfeeling droid? Did he have to manually learn to use facial expressions and vocal inflections? Was his speech about processing things differently in “The Crossing” one that he had to give variations on before?

Did Wrecker often hear about how he was “too hyper”, “too loud”, or “too much”? Was he given constant dirty looks for being loud and disruptive when in reality, he couldn’t modulate the volume of his voice very well? Did he learn to play up the “big, fun guy” persona to put people at ease lest they be intimidated by a massive, loud, intense man? Were others afraid of him growing up? Did that hurt his heart? After all, Wrecker is incredibly empathetic.

Was Crosshair rejected so intensely by his peers that he became terrified of rejection in general and obsessed with being seen as worthy? Did his sharp tongue come about because he unintentionally said things that were “harsh” as a cadet and he wanted to create a persona of indifferent sarcasm to avoid looking clueless and allowing people to come close enough to reject him?

Did Echo’s need for clear rules get him labeled as a boring stick-in-the-mud? Did others not want him around because they were worried that he would “tattle” or push back too much against rule-breaking? Did Echo’s desire for justice in a cruel galaxy ever get him labeled as a wide-eyed idealist who needed to become more grounded and just accept things as they were?

My God, none of these men are neurotypical!

[she-is-ovarit]

Wow.

"This tendency to misdiagnose victims was at the heart of a controversy that arose in the mid-1980s when the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association came up for revision. A group of male psychiatrists proposed that "masochistic personality disorder" be added to the canon. This hypothetical diagnosis applied to any person who "remains in relationships in which others exploit, abuse, or take advantage of him or her, despite opportunities to alter the situation." A number of women's groups were outraged and a heated public debate ensued. Women insisted on opening up the process of writing diagnostic canon, which had been the preserve of a small group of men, and for the first time took place in the naming of psychological reality.

I was one of the participants in this process. What struck me most at the time was how little rational argument seemed to matter. The women's representatives came to the discussion prepared with carefully reasoned, extensively documented position papers, which argued that the proposed diagnosis concept had little scientific foundation, ignored recent advances in understanding the psychology of victimization, and was socially regressive and discriminatory in impact, since it would be used to stigmatized disempowered people. The men of the psychiatric establishment persisted in bland denial. They admitted freely that they were ignorant of the extensive literature of the past decade on psychological trauma, but they did not see why it should concern them. One member of the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association felt the discussion of battered women was "irrelevant". Another stated simply, "I never see victims".

In the end, because of the outcry from organized women's groups and the widespread publicity engendered by the controversy, some sort of compromise became expedient. The name of the proposed entity was changed to "self-defeating personality disorder." The criteria for the diagnosis were changed, so that the label could not be applied to people who were known to be physically, sexually, or psychologically abused. Most important, the disorder was included not in the main body of the text but in an appendix. It was regulated to apocryphal status within the canon, where it languishes to this day."

Judith L. Herman, M.D., Trauma and Recovery.

[puck-luck]

one bed trope by design | dawson mercer

warnings: fwb but unspokenly more, eldest daughter vibes in the first paragraph, teasing & annoying your partner, pet names, oral (fem!receiving), fingering, heavyyyy making out, dirty talk (it’s pretty sweet, actually), possessive!dawson, unprotected p in v sex, creampie, cockwarming, whimpering man (slay), begging (only a little), mentions/allusions to consensual somnophilia, and a little bit of a fixation on spit (as i am wont to do) pairing: dawson mercer x reader summary: the one when dawson comes over to build a bedframe for your guest room, demands multiple rewards,  and pouts when you try to make him test it out alone. he ends up getting everything he wanted, though. wc: 4636

You have a bone to pick with anyone who writes furniture-building instruction manuals. After all the years of “building things” (holding flashlights, standing aimlessly for support, fetching beers) with your dad, you would think that you’d be able to build a bedframe. You would think that you could read the directions, screw in some nails, glue some pegs into place, and your guest room would be all set. In another world, you’re flying through this process and the bed’s already done. Here, in this world, the real world, all you’ve done is sort all of your supplies and read the first page of directions and it’s been shit. The wording is unclear, the pictures don’t make any sense, the bags of supplies aren’t clearly labeled in conjunction with the guide in the manual, and you’re at your wits end.

So you call Daws. 

Your best friend in the world, Dawson Mercer, has always been skilled with his hands. Never mind the double entendre, you’ve seen how deftly Daws can handle a stick and a puck, so he is surely able to handle a screwdriver and a drill. 

In fact, continuing with the entendres, you know Dawson can handle a drill. On top of being your best friend in the world, you two had started hooking up in his second season at New Jersey, after you’d gotten a job in New York City and relocated. With just thirty minutes between you two and a lot of pent up feelings on both sides, it was only a matter of time until one of you broke and jumped the other. It ended up being him, but it was your fault.

It was a late night and you’d been up working on a proposal for your boss. It was well past midnight and you had work the following day, but you were in a groove and you couldn’t stop until the task was done. It had already been a tough day and you started to feel better when your work began to flow, but then you forgot a word and could not find it no matter what thesaurus you used or what questions you googled. You knew it was the perfect word for this proposal and it sounded so intelligent in your head, but you could not fucking remember it. It might’ve been the sleep deprivation of it all, but this sent you over the edge and before you knew it, you were calling Dawson and tearfully explaining your situation. He couldn’t understand you through the hysteria and was at your door as soon as possible, scooping you up and taking your computer away. You had explained everything again through your tears and he had held you in his arms, tucking your head away in his neck so you could hide from the world. When your breath evened out, Daws had registered the flutter of your eyelashes against his pulse and couldn’t stop himself from kissing you. It had been sweet and it was a long time coming. Things escalated that night about as far as you could go for the first time, with Dawson treating you like something that would break if he held you too tightly or looked at you too long. You both were shy but cared so much for each other that it just felt right.

You hadn’t defined it in the year since, but you know and Dawson knows that there is something special between you. You’re best friends and maybe, one day, you’d both be ready to commit to more.

For now, though, Dawson is the guy who’s going to sit in your guest bedroom and build your guest bed and maybe you’ll repay him if you felt like it.

Dawson comes over as soon as you call and walks into your apartment sopping wet. When he walks into your space, he shakes like a wet dog and you shriek. He gives you a toothy grin, your heart fluttering with fondness like it always does when you see the space between his teeth. “It’s raining out there,” he says unnecessarily, walking over to plant a quick kiss on your lips. “Where’s this bed you need your big, strong man to build, baby?”

You scoff and roll your eyes. “Big, strong man,” you mock. “Where’s that guy? I don’t see a big, strong man here.”

Daws pinches your hip for your comment, but it doesn’t really hurt.

“I’m turning my office into a guest bedroom,” you continue. You lean up and give Daws another little peck. “The bed is in there.” You reach around and give him a pat on the butt. “Go on, get in there.”

“You’re not going to help me?” Dawson calls over his shoulder, teasing you as he walks down the hall towards his daunting task. 

“Darling, you’ll just get distracted by me,” you reply. “I’ll be in here if you need me.” You take a seat on your couch and pick up the book you’ve been reading. You drape a blanket over your legs and lean back against the arm of the sofa, finding your bookmark and opening the book to that page. 

You can hear the rain growing heavier as you continue to read, as well as the sounds of Dawson putting the new bedframe together. He’s making quick work of it and takes a break at his self-proclaimed halfway point. He wanders into the living room and washes his hands in your kitchen sink before joining you on the couch. He sneaks under the blanket and lays between your legs, resting his head on your stomach. His hand reaches up, comes out from under the blanket, and rests on your chest. He palms your breast, just holding the weight of it in his hand. You place your bookmark and close your book, setting it down on the coffee table to your left. You lift the blanket and make eye contact with Dawson. You can’t help but think of your friend’s cat from university, who used to cuddle on your lap under the blanket just like this.

“Hi,” Dawson greets, smiling wide.

“Hi, sweet,” you reply and card your fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face. “Have you given up on that bed yet? It’s impossible, isn’t it?”

“Mmm, no,” Dawson hums, purring like your friend’s cat used to when you pet him. He pushes into your hand just the same. “Just taking a break with my favorite girl.”

“Sweet talker,” you tease. Your hand moves to pinch his cheek like a grandmother would. “You’re trying to get in good with me, huh?”

“You always assume I’ve got an ulterior motive,” Dawson complains. “Maybe I just want to hang out with you.”

You give him an unimpressed look with a tilt of your head. 

Dawson snickers quietly, burying his head in your stomach. “No, you’re right.” He kisses your tummy, just next to your belly button. “I always have an ulterior motive.”

You spread your legs a little wider, allowing Dawson to fit his shoulders between your thighs comfortably. “What do you have in mind?”

“A snack,” Dawson replies in a cheeky voice, the smirk evident in his tone before he ghosts a fingertip under the hemline of your sleep shorts. 

Because you’re a brat, you twist away from Daws. You move to get up from the couch. “Shall I make you something?” You ask. 

Daws holds you down with his full weight, wrapping his arms around you until you’re effectively immobilized. You can’t see him anymore, having dropped the blanket when you moved to get up. “No,” he whines, drawing out the word and pulling you to him. He bites the side of your hip gently through your shorts. “Stay here, you’ve got what I need.”

“What you need,” you repeat, smiling to yourself. This is the side of Dawson that rarely anyone gets to see, even though he’s a happy-go-lucky guy most of the time. No one gets to see Dawson all whiny and eager to please, happy to get himself off by just getting his mouth on you. He’s sated like this, happy to stay between your legs for hours and make you come time after time, until you’re oversensitive and pushing him away. You’re happy to let him indulge most of the time, but that bed is still only halfway built. “Can you make it quick?” You ask. “Need you to finish building that bed for me.”

Dawson presses a kiss to your core, making you shiver. He hums in agreement. “Can we christen it after I’m done?”

You giggle and swat the back of his head under the blanket. “You wish.”

Dawson hooks his fingers in the waistband of your shorts and drags them down, removing them delicately and placing them on the ground next to him. He kisses down your leg as he does it and it’s even more arousing than it normally is, given that you can’t see him under the blanket and can barely guess his next move. “I do wish,” he agrees before moving onto your panties. “Can I earn it?”

“You can sleep in there by yourself and let me know how it is, since all my guests will be on their lonesome,” you say. You inhale sharply when Dawson dives in and flicks your clit with his tongue. “I think that would be more effective.”

Dawson bites the side of your thigh sharply and makes you jump. “Don’t wanna sleep alone,” he complains. “You’re mean to me.” He licks over your folds again, shifting to use both hands to spread you open so he can begin to eat you out properly.

“Fuck, Daws,” you groan, throwing your head back. You take a breath before continuing. “If I’m so mean to you, why am I letting you eat your snack? I could tell you no at any moment and make you go back to the guest room and work some more before kicking you out of my apartment and sending you home.”

“You’re talking a lot for someone who’s supposed to be enjoying herself,” Dawson mutters. You can hear his pout, not needing to see it to know that he’s annoyed that he hasn’t rendered you speechless. 

“Maybe you need to do better,” you breathe out, grinding down on the fingers that are slowly tracing your entrance, begging for them to enter you without actually saying it.

Dawson growls at that, taking it like a challenge and dipping his fingers into you and flicking his tongue against your clit quickly, giving everything he can to bring you to your peak.

You moan, reaching under the blanket to thread your fingers in Dawson’s hair. You tug at it and he moans, the vibrations making you shiver and bringing you just that much closer to your orgasm. “Dawsy,” you breathe out. “More.”

“Not much more to give, baby,” Dawson mumbles against your pussy, but pistons his fingers into you more quickly. “Giving you all I’ve got right now. Trying my best to make you feel good, sweet girl.”

“Feels so good,” you reassure him. “Need something else, need a little more.”

Dawson adds another finger, stretching you. He reaches up and pulling the blanket down so he’s not covered anymore. You can see your wetness dripping down his fingers and onto his wrist as he continues to move them inside you. You grip his hair as he brings his other thumb to your clit, rubbing in rapid circles. He spreads his fingers and leans in, doing his best to lick between them and get his tongue inside you. He looks up through his eyelashes at you when he does it and it’s that image, his wide eyes filled with so much admiration for you and determination to prove that he can make you feel so, so good, that makes you clench down and let your release wash over you. 

Dawson continues to thrust his fingers into you through your climax, mouthing over your clit and suckling at it until you’re squirming and panting. You pull him up your body by his hair, needing his mouth on yours. You keen into his mouth as he speeds his fingers up again. “Daws,” you gasp.

“Baby,” he replies, then kisses you again. He slips his tongue into your mouth and you two make out, movements lazy. He continues to finger you through it, unwilling (maybe even unable) to pull out of your wet heat just yet. He’s laying on top of you at this point and the weight of him is wonderful, always comforting you like nothing else could.

You kiss for what feels like ages, just feeling each other. Dawson grinds his hips against your leg, pressing his hardness into you, but making no move to do anything about it. It’s lovely, this moment, and comfortable like you two had been in love for years and you could do this every day. In the least cliché way, you knew that Dawson was your soulmate, the person you were meant to find in any universe at any time. He wasn’t yours, but he was. 

“Love you, Dawsy,” you tell him between kisses. 

He hums in agreement.

“Can you go finish building my bed now?” You ask, your one-track mind itching to get Dawson back on task. You really wanted that bed to be finished today, just so you didn’t have to think about it anymore.

Dawson pulls away and glares down at you. “Here I am, making out with you with my fingers inside your pretty pussy, and you’re going to make me work?” He demands. 

You giggle, leaning up to plant a wet kiss, a real smacker, on his cheek. “Yeah,” you say, shit eating grin on your face when you settle back onto the couch cushions. “Go on.”

Reluctantly, Dawson slides his fingers out of you and gets off the couch, licking his fingers clean and adjusting himself in his sweatpants. “So mean,” he reminds you with a cutting glance before he disappears back down the hallway and into the guest room.

You return to your book. “Holler when you’re done!” You yell to Dawson. 

“I don’t know why I ever do anything for you,” Dawson replies, voice floating down the hall with ire. 

You laugh out loud, loud enough for him to hear, and get comfortable with your book. You read for probably another hour before Dawson summons you to the guest room to inspect his handiwork.

When you round the doorway, Dawson’s eyes grow wide, noticing that you never put your panties or shorts back on. He’s standing next to the bed as you approach and he licks his lips. “You’re sure we can’t christen my handiwork?” He asks again.

“No,” you insist. “Merc, you already got what you needed.” You roll your eyes and flip the bird at your best friend, chastising him for being insufferable in his desire for you. “You’re such a horndog.”

Dawson shrugs. “Can you blame me? I’ve seen you how beautiful you are naked, I’ve heard how pretty you sound when I’m fucking you, and I’ve been loving you since forever. Just because we’re not dating doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to ask. You’re lucky I ask because you know I could pick you up and take you, and you’d love it”

“Do you want me to call you a wah-mbulance?” You retort, folding your arms over your chest. You glare at him with an eyeful of reproach, but he’s right. He’s taken you like that before and it’s been incredible, something you’ll even ask him for on occasion.

“Want you to let me fuck you,” he replies in the same tone, mirroring your actions.

You two stare at each other before bursting out in laughter. You walk over and loop your arms around Dawson’s neck, pressing your body against his and giving him a chaste kiss. His hands rest on your hips, holding you tightly. He kisses you again.

“Go to bed, Merc,” you say when you finally pull away. You step back. “Let me know how the bed feels.”

Dawson bids you goodnight and  turns around. You walk to the door. You leave the room and make it all the way to your bedroom before you hear a crash and rush back in.

Dawson is smiling, proud of himself as you take in the lopsided bed. One of the legs of the frame has been hastily removed and if you’re not mistaken, you can see it peeking out from where Dawson’s arms are crossed behind his back. “Oh no,” Dawson says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “It broke. I guess I have to sleep with you.”

Your mouth drops open in disbelief and you let out a laugh. “Dawson!” You exclaim, still giggling. “What’s the matter with you?”

Dawson shrugs. “Well, I can’t sleep on a broken bed,” he tells you. “That would be unsafe.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want that.” You play along, a small smile still written across your face. 

Dawson takes a step forward and bats his eyelashes at you. “I guess I have to sleep in yours.”

“You’re insatiable,” you tell him. You turn on your heel and leave the room, listening for the clatter of the leg of the bed before Dawson’s footsteps trail after you. Both sounds come, just as you expected, and Dawson’s hands find your hips again. He walks with you, pressed along your back, lips attached to the back of your neck. 

“I want you,” he teases, his voice light and melodic in your ear. He reaches his hand up and traces your neck. “Don’t I get a reward for building furniture for you?”

“You already got a snack.”

“Ugh, but then you took it away from me after I made you come,” he complains. “And you’re teasing me, not putting your panties back on before checking my work. It’s a little slutty, baby. Is that what you wear for all the people that come to work in your house?”

Now in your bedroom, Dawson turns you around and walks you back until your knees hit the edge of your bed. You fall down onto the mattress and bring Dawson down with you. He reaches up your shirt and grabs a handful of your tit, gripping it in a way that directly contrasts how he was just holding it on the couch. 

“No bra either,” he notes, nuzzling into your neck and breathing you in. “You give all these workers quite a show.”

“You know I only dress like this for you, Dawson,” you reply. 

“Wish you’d commit to the bit and just be naked all the time.” He kisses your shoulder, other hand sliding up your shirt to grasp your other breast. He kneads them both, rolling your nipples between his calloused fingers. 

“Wish you’d take an article of clothing off,” you retort. 

“I’ll take it all off for you if you want me to, baby, just say the word,” Dawson promises. “Can I take your shirt off? Wanna get my mouth on these pretty tits.”

“Only if you take yours off too.”

Dawson doesn’t waste a second, pushing up to stand over you. He grabs the back of the neck of his shirt and pulls it over his head, revealing his muscular body to you. His chain falls between his collarbones beautifully and it makes your breath catch in your throat. He unbuckles his belt and pops the button on his jeans, unzipping them and pulling them down his legs, leaving him just in his boxer-briefs. The dark gray briefs leave nothing to the imagination and you bite your lip, gazing at the wet patch on the front of the briefs, right at the tip of his dick. 

You reach up and Dawson grabs your hands, pulling you into a sitting position. You raise your arms and he kneels between your legs, pushing your shirt up and bunching the fabric in his hands before he pulls it over your head and reveals your body to him. 

Dawson kisses up your stomach, slowly rising from his knees. He lifts you up and gently places you down so your head is on the pillows at the top of your bed. He then leaves a trail of kisses down your neck, shoulder, collarbone, and sternum until he makes his way to your breast.

He takes your nipple in his mouth, flicking his tongue over it. He grinds down on the bed, rolling your other nipple between his fingers again. You moan and once he’s determined that your breast has received enough attention from his mouth, he switches to the other one. It’s slow and sensual, with Dawson taking his time and savoring the moment and the sounds that he pulls from your lips.

“Dawson.” You find your voice, signaling to him that it’s time to move on. 

“Mmm?” He continues to suckle on your chest, leaving a hickey on the side of your boob now.

“Fuck me,” you say. “Come up here and fuck me.”

“Yeah?” Dawson asks, pulling away from you to grin at you. “Need my cock, baby?”

You pretend to think. “Need is an exaggeration,” you tell him.

Dawson scoffs and leans down to kiss you, lining his cock up with your entrance. “No pussy gets this wet if ‘need is an exaggeration,’ sweet girl.”

You whine as he sinks into you and he lets out a breath that sounds like a groan, his head falling with the sensation. He presses his forehead against yours and bucks into you, holding back to take in the sensation of your heat around him. He always gets pussy drunk on you and goes too fast, loving the way you squeeze him and milk him for every drop. It’s only so long before he does it again and starts to really fuck into you, but he’s intoxicated now by the slow drag of your walls against his length.

“So warm, so wet,” Dawson groans. “All for me.”

“All yours,” you agree. You close your eyes and kiss Dawson, swallowing the moan that comes from his lips at your words. 

His hips start to pick up speed. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re mine.”

“I’m yours.”

Dawson’s hips move with desperation. It’s the easiest way to bring him to his climax, you’ve learned over the past year. He’s possessive over you and although you’re not boyfriend-girlfriend, he knows that you belong to him. When you admit it, when he hears those words come from your mouth, it squeezes at his heart the same way you clench down on his cock when he hits that spot inside of you.

“Dawsy,” you breathe out, clutching at his shoulders. “Feels so good.” 

With every thrust of his hips, he brings you closer to your second orgasm of the night. He thrusts forward and sucks at your neck, leaving wet kiss after wet kiss. His saliva cools on your neck as his wet, hot pants leave his lips. He grunts and kisses you deeply, his tongue filling your mouth as deliciously as his cock is filling your pussy. He pulls back and looks down, watching his cock disappear into your heat. 

“Fuck me,” he whispers, pressing a hand against your stomach and feeling himself inside of you. 

A wanton moan leaves your mouth, back arching from the pressure. Your mouth hangs open and Dawson leans up, biting your bottom lip between his teeth. 

“Feeling good, honey?” He asks quietly. “Love hearing you.”

“Yes, yes,” you chant, and you let out a squeal when Dawson reaches up to give your nipple a sharp pinch. “God!” Your stomach turns, so close to climaxing. With every light touch of his fingers and the consistent kiss of his cock to the spot inside you that makes you see stars, you inch toward your peak.

“Just me,” he says, cheeky but like it’s an afterthought. He soothes the pinch with a kiss before leaning back up to kiss you. His hips stutter and Dawson groans. “Gonna come, baby,” he says. “Gonna come with me?”

“Always,” you whine, voice high in the back of your throat but sounding far away, like Dawson’s fucked your soul right out of your body. 

“Come,” Dawson breathes out, hips stuttering as he moves them with abandoned fervor, chasing a high that’s just out of reach. “Come, baby, need to feel you. Need you to come on my cock before I do, please,” he begs. “Fuck!”

You can’t control the scream that bubbles in your throat as you let go, juices absolutely soaking Dawson’s cock inside you and the covers beneath you. It wasn’t often that he made you squirt, but tonight was one of those nights. Your release burst out of you like a dam and left you completely boneless on the bed. 

It only took a few more thrusts for Dawson to whimper and shoot off inside of you. You’re like a vice around him, clenching down so hard that it’s almost difficult to thrust in and out of you. “Sweetheart,” Dawson whines, voice dripping with emotion. “So tight, fuck, love your pussy.”

He collapses onto you, his head on your chest, his hands on your waist, his weight pressing you into the bed the same way he trapped you onto the couch earlier in the night. 

You trace the lines of his face with your thumb as your breath syncs with his and you both come down from your climaxes. 

Dawson hasn’t pulled out yet, his cock still half-hard inside of you. He moves his hips slowly, fucking his cum into you at an excruciating pace. 

You plant a kiss on Dawson’s head and hug him to your body. “We should probably get up, Daws.”

Dawson shakes his head. “Gonna fall asleep right here.”

You let out a chuckle. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Dawson looks up at you with tired eyes. “Gonna keep my cock inside you all night, wake you up by making you come again.”

You let out a breath at that, clenching down on him subconsciously. You can’t help it. He’s so honest and he’s unabashed about how he wants you. 

He smiles, almost devilish. “You like that idea, huh?”

“Gimme a kiss,” you request, puckering your lips and waiting for him to come to you.

He does easily, unashamed and eager. “Could kiss you all night long.”

“Don’t, I’m tired.”

“Just think,” Dawson murmurs against your lips. “We could’ve done all of this in your guest bedroom.”

“Well someone broke the bed.”

“I wouldn’t have had to break the bed if you had just slept there with me.”

You two bicker like a married couple before you remove Dawson’s cock yourself and swing your legs over the side of the bed. He trails after you when you head to the bathroom, brushing his teeth with your toothbrush as you use the toilet. It’s all very domestic and you argue with him about the toothbrush, too, because he has his own and knows exactly where it lives (next to yours in the holder). You steal the brush from his mouth and leave him to rinse his mouth of the minty substance. You turn your back to him to hide the satisfied smirk on your face when you pop the toothbrush in your mouth without rinsing it of his germs.

When you make your way back to bed after cleaning yourself up, Dawson lays behind you and plasters himself to your back. He slips his cock back into your heat again and sighs, settling into the comfort of your heat. He presses a kiss to the back of your neck and breathes evenly until he falls asleep. You fall asleep with him, and if Dawson makes good on his promise of fucking you awake, that’s nobody’s business but yours.

notes: don't ever put me in a room with dawson mercer because i will make it my mission to stockholm sydrome that boy. welcome to my longest fic yet and man, oh man, did i have fun writing this.

[midnight1nk]

...what. in the actual. fuck.

this is the most implausible statement I have ever seen, and I'm gonna debunk what Cube said (more below cut)

"doesn't mean anything significant" — if it were an honest mistake, then they would've changed it back to "SMG4" instead of "Not SMG3. Stop looking too deep."

The wording on that too, as in a warning/giant stop sign. Also it's giving off

[and a whole month in between these my god]

And ah yes, my dear enemy Flareglow. Time to Logic Chess.

The implication is that Cube (or someone on the Team) uploaded the song and didn't notice it was labeled as SMG4 (not a hack) — let's get the basics down. Yes, you can upload your own music on said platform for your use only, not on the artist page. HOWEVER, for it to be uploaded on MULTIPLE platforms and stay for 6 DAYS straight, now that's weird when you have two DIFFERENT processes for uploading songs.

If that person accidentally went through the public process, you would have to enter the credits manually (other than it needs to be approved by spotify ofc). That's when you are like "oops, looks like I was about to send this on the artist page lol". Even if you forgot how to do the private process, you can GOOGLE IT.

IF it was Cube, then it would totally contradict an earlier tweet "what the hell is flareglow?"

IF it wasn't Cube, it still wouldn't make sense. Ben was the first to point it out on Jan 4. Now you would think a discussion took place in their group chat as soon as Ben tweeted that and go something along the lines of:

"man this is sucks" [*posts a pic of the cover*] "wait is that on our page?" "yeah lol" "that shouldn't be there. who did that?" "oh sorry that was me, my bad" "let's just take it down" (before some fan goes insane over this, sorry what)

It wouldn't take Cube 5 days (Jan 9) to just notice that song to be on the artist page to then claim you are starting to fix it a week later

"Trying to fix that one" — now that is strange because as soon as Cube asked/pointed out about Flareglow, the song was suddenly taken down from multiple platforms (on the same day). If it was a mistake, then it should be all good. Hell, even the Spotify pfp is back to normal. Then tell me, Cube, what more do you need to "fix", hmmm?

(also that "lol" at the end of the sentence before it)

Yeah, i pronounce this as "deflection" and I'm still on to you, Cube. And no, I'm not gonna think about how this tweet was reposted by Shadow (no qrt), gotta focus here.

Maybe it convinced some people that there was nothing suspicious but I'll still be here in my seat with a bag of popcorn bc I KNOW this isn't the end of it.

i did not stare at this for hours for nothing, you hear me?!

[izasbjdphoto]

Iza’s Yearly Big BJD Lineup 2024 :: 72 BJDs from 81cm down to 12cm (+ pets!)

About time I posted my yearly big lineup of dolls from 2024!

This year the lineup expanded to 72 different BJDs, including pet and blind box dolls. I set up and photographed 13 individual lineups on December 29th, 2024, and spent the next day sorting the multitude of images, narrowing it down to the best ones, which I then edited (correcting lighting, lens warping, colors, etc...) and manually lined up and merged in Affinity Photo 2. I think what took the longest was the labeling of the sculpts, and I know there are still a few spelling mistakes in there, but I am not up for correcting them anymore. At least I finished it still in time for 2024.

I excluded 5 resin BJDs and like 90% of the blind boxones as they were either twins, or too similar configurations. We actually have a few other types of Blind Box BJDs, but I was too tired to keep taking pictures. Also my 6 year old niece was over and she was getting restless (she wanted to go to the park next to our building). She also kept bumping into my tripods, which lead to me needing to adjust those photos more in the post-edits. Love my niece dearly, and I got some cute pics of her in the Lineup too.

Anyway... if you want certain dolls compared from this lineup, please drop me a comment and I will do it, but only with up to 6 dolls as I am low on spoons. I can also undress them for the mini comparisons, I just can't and won't for the big lineup. Some of my dolls have to be unstrung to get out of their outfits, and I am not that dedicated to this lineup process.

Head and body sculpts are listed in the images under each doll, along with the height. I will just tag a few of the companies, but not the sculpt names.

[therethatstar]

i find it really fascinating that so many people are frustrated about phumpeem’s relationship label or the lack of it. when it’s evident that it’s not even bothering the characters themselves.

they never had a conventional start to begin with anyway so why did you expect their relationship to go step by step according to whatever manual you have about how a romantic relationship should work. and this also goes back to kissing someone doesn’t equivalent to liking them. same as being physically attracted to someone doesn’t mean you’re emotionally in love with them.

everything about phumpeem started out as physical attraction. peem kissed phum in ep 5 without even knowing whether he genuinely likes the dude or not, literally kissing for the sake of kissing. because he simply just wanted to kiss phum. and that is okay ! that’s fine. that’s normal. it doesn’t have to be that deep. things like this DO happen in real life and im baffled that most people just don’t get it.

and yes, it sounds silly that by ep 12, peem is telling phum to try to win his heart after EVERYTHING they have done with one another. but peem WANTS this. he didn’t get to have this prior to everything and he wants it. yes he’s clearly already in love with phum, he knows it, phum knows it, everyone and their mothers know it. but sue him for wanting phum to romance him up a little. a little courting. for wanting phum to woo him. sweeping him off his feet. for wanting all the cheesy cringey things that come with that early stage of falling in love.

and for phum, he knows that they had a rough start. fully aware that he wasn’t that nice to peem in the beginning and he clearly wants to make up for it. he openly telling peem how he feels now, he directly flirts and he tells peem that he’s flirting. all of his cards are out and they’re fully out this time. he’s not shy anymore, he’s not insecure about showing peem how he feels. he’s not taking two steps forward and one step back. he’s all in. and he’s happy to do all of that in order to attempt to win peem’s heart, just like how peem had asked him to do so. yes he KNOWS peem already likes him but that’s not gonna stop him from doing his absolute best to pursue peem. he’s not taking anything for granted. peem’s feeling included.

and i can not stress this enough so i will keep reiterating it, this process WORKS for them. they’re going so steady and they’re comfortable in this nest of a relationship that they have built for each other. so why are we as audiences so bothered by the fact that they haven’t called each other boyfriends yet ? when they’re clearly far passed that. they can do the boyfriend label this ep or they can do it in ep16. it’s clearly not a problem for them because they already feel so secured with one another.

so idk. sit back and enjoy the fucking show maybe ? it’s a cute little gay show about a bunch university gay boys in their early 20s. why does it have to be so serious for some of y’all?

[grizzcozine]

Shipping Update!

Our first few batches have been dropped off! All book-only orders and half-bundles have been shipped (250+ packages). Please note that due to the high volume of parcels during this time of year, your tracking number and travel time may take awhile to update.

With orders on the way, we encourage you to share your haul with us! Each package received a random bonus capsule, so let us know which color you rolled.

To ensure yours and our shipping mod's safety, do not include images of the shipping label, tracking info, or address.

And as one final reminder, digital copies of the zine will start being delivered via email, though please note this is a manual process. When a batch of digital copies are sent, we'll post a main announcement on social media so you can keep an eye out for your inbox.

[apeninastory]

ivan as a tragic-love character (pt.4b?)

first post HERE. i have been writing this thing since nowhere came out - 3 times listening to it and i was hooked and obsessed and you can't even imagine how much i'm dying to listen to it again.

anyway. wanted to get the preparatory posts out of the way before nowhere comes out again, so here, take part 2.

it was getting too long, so i split it. let's get going!

6] the making of ivan's character - a story by ivan

so, ivan as a social being functions thanks to his mimetic strategy, and with this, he starts to learn things on his own, of course. he probably puts labels on his emotions, one at a time, the more he experience and feels like he understands them. it's just that not all of them are correctly intended. let me underline this: ivan learns abt emotions from little kids, aliens, (alien? human?) classic literature, and absorbs it all through his own perception and understanding of them. no one tells him "this is right, this is wrong" (or those who do may not be super reliable?) + he is numb to most sensations, so not even the way he perceives them can be fully trusted in his learning process.

being unable to completely comprehend what he feels since he has no reliable models/source material, he can only: (1) trust what he does have and label his emotions accordingly, categorizing for examples things like friendship, satisfaction, hunger, vitality, tiredness, fear as "easy" to recognize, as monolitic and unchangable sensations following certain events/actions/reactions (2) stare at what he doesn't find in his "manuals" until it either goes away or becomes comprehensible or (3) he has to coexist with the unfathomable emotions and his inability to fully understand it, disassembling it slowly.

consequences: (1) emotions he has labelled are reliable only partially, as they may be more complex than he believes, so he files other traits under different labels without realizing that many feelings comes with multifaceted elements - so what he knows is not necessarily wrong, but may be incomplete. (2) what he doesn't understand elicits frustration, so he either misplace the emotions in his labelled list in his haste to categorize them or just... lets the be and avoids situations where he is forced to confront them (his rhetoric must be terribly good to fend off emotional attacks! i can see that in him). i kinda like this latter possibility better, maybe as an unconscious mechanism of ivan's part. (3) he is attracted by the idea of decomposing certain emotions he doesn't understand, even if it is not a pleasing experience.

all this makes ivan super good at reading the room, perceiving shifts in mood and behaving accordingly. it derives from his survival instincts + everything he learned to better adapt and survive at anakt. ivan is to me someone who prefers and is good at being in control/having control over himself and what surrounds him - not necessarily in a i-want-to-control-people-around-me way, but like, he wants to be sure that whatever surrounds him (people, things, event) has no secrets for him. he may have a... superiority complex of sort (?) derived by the total lack of control he had when he lived in the slums. the better control he has over things that influence him, the more stability he can achieve.

the art vivimeng posted abt ivan and sua's interaction, with ivan laughing at sua for being as twisted as he is and becoming a trauma for mizi? yeah. he talks as if he has it all figured out (and he is right, there is logic in predicting how sua's sacrifices will end up being a burden for mizi, in his eyes), but we are meant to perceive more. ivan affirming this with such certainty might mean he needs the affirmation, like he is rebuking sua out of spite for something - envy for being at the receiving end of mizi's affection the way he'll never be with till? mh. and of course, we know what he'll end up doing because it's different for him, since till won't miss him.

BOY.

ivan is a subtle, manipulative-freak with slight drama queen tendencies (only regarding more superficial, known-to-him emotions - the rest, he bottles them up reaaal good), so he carefully build his own character. a boy with a tactical, handsome smile, great student, good at everything, a bit annoying but funny to be around, diligent and a teaser, with big-brother vibes. someone who can be perceived as popular in anakt and can easily attract attention outside, a benefit for unsha's investment on him.

the facade works like a wonder - though, not on sua and till, in different ways. sua sees through it, and ivan feels they are similar, so it makes sense that it doesn't work on her. till ignores it and finds ivan unsufferable, probably prefers when ivan doesn't pretend, since he remembers how freaky he was as a child. we know they both enjoy the quite moments with no fights between them, something ivan thought of as one-sided, but it confirms that till likes (not intended in romantic ways) ivan when he stops being annoying and calculative, possibly kinda likes having him around and considers him a friend of sort - albeit a strange one.

ivan isn't quite aware of that, so he probably tries his hardest with till, and the way he is often seen orbiting around him tells us ivan knows that till at least tolerates his presence. after mizi, ivan is the one till grades with the hightest percentage among the people close to him, so even if ivan doesn't fully understand till and what he feels, till still regards him as a friend.

all the way through graduation, ivan cultivates his emotions, both fake and authentic ones. but as we can expect, this is bound to leave holes and discordances in this narrative he writes/lets others write for him.

friendship. he gets good at it, being a good people-reader, but many kids say they don't know much abt ivan. he probably is that type of friend that doesn't share abt himself, so people have the illusion that he is friendly and open and approachable, but when they think abt it, they don't know much abt him at all. ivan himself is surprised to be addressed as "the popular one", saying "it's a first" in his interview, and that he is getting used to the attention. he also says that back in anakt

I've been asked out a couple of times, but I wasn't that popular. I did have a lot of friends, though.

appearance. he is the one with the beautiful smile, but compliments regarding his appearance are strange to him. he doesn't rely on his charm, since "he thinks he has more flaws (ahah)", but instead studies abt the brand he has to work for - again, studying, reaching out for clear models, mimicking and replicating. conclusion: my baby is stunning and not even he can argue against me abt this.

love. he sees till loving mizi from afar and does the same with him, but his nature is far more obsessive and needy, so he orbits closely around till, who fails to understand what ivan's intentions are. and how could it be otherwise? ivan is unclear abt his own feelings without being able to address the existence of that unclearness (or not totally), so it is hard for him to convey them to others (you can't explain what you don't understand/don't know), let alone till, who's incredibly dense and biased (with reasons!) when it comes to ivan.

love pt.2. i've always found it curious that ivan doesn't mention love in black sorrow (i think someone hypothesized he may have not written the lyrics), since we can see how that sorrow may be intertwined with love. also, love is the most stereotypical of the labels he probably came across, and i guess he must have attached it to till, at some point. i can imagine ivan asking himself "what is love?" and looking for clues around him. growing up, he sees kisses, relays to till that everyone is doing that and he wants to try - half teasing, half curious himself, probably.

understanding of himself. he is naturally detatched. he mocks sua for her intentions toward mizi, but the moment he realizes (by observing and imitating) that what she has arouses envy in him, he probably understands he wants the same. he looks at mizi and sua being happy and wants that - though maybe he feels like he is not able to produce the same feeling within himself. does he understand that what he feels is envy? that he desires till's love? probably, but not totally. he acts like he has it all figured out and mouths poor sua for something he'll end up doing too. first step toward hypocrisy.

understanding of himself pt2. what i love abt his character is that despite this whiny, clingy self he decided to role as, he is incredibly closed off abt his emotions - i am very similar, as i tend to voice little things i find annoying and whine abt random stuff but gatekeep deeper, far more problematic emotions. his portray of himself is flawed - either because he can't look at himself objectively, he mistakes people's intentions/feelings toward him or is unaware of certain things. no matter where we put the origin of this, ivan can't be relied upon when he speaks abt himself.

7] the meteor shower thing and how it is a turning point in ivan's narrative

this is such a pivotal moment in kid-ivan's life.

imagine him training his smiles and trying to be more sociable and studying hard because that's what he needs to do to survive at anakt. imagine till being one of the first spontaneous, not-survival-related thing ivan wants for himself and trying to understand how to please till in order to become closer.

he sees till's struggle, his need for freedom, his fighting spirit against injustice. little ivan would have loved someone like him in the slums - a curageous hero, unafraid to vent and rebel, who could lift their sleeping, numbed spirits. till would have probably drawn more harm than good, though, and ivan probably finds him stupid and reckless, totally unable to be relied upon and ensure his own survival, so his days must be numbered, right? how can someone like till even exists in their world? either his light will stop shining or he'll die in an explosion so bright, he'll be forever remembered.

ivan can't help but be intrigued, so he follows till around. baits him into an alien's den and just can't stop looking at till's light. till is just like the meteors he saw when he was taken - he burns, he falls, all in repeat. beautiful.

so he offers till what he thinks till wants - a life far from the pain of anakt, far from fake walls and experiements and forced singing. a life where till can burn and fall to his own accord, a life full of stars, just like the metors witnessing their escape. did he know there would be a meteor shower? maybe that's what he wanted to do - share with till his most precious memory. sometimes i wonder if ivan had to prepare for a long time to make it happen - he probably studied the pattern of guards patroling and looked for safe exits and such, right? do you think he was something like hopeful the entire time, imagining how it would be?

i wanna kms

till rejects it. no hard blame on him *refrain from delving into till's character, hanji, refrain*, but what a hard blow must have been for ivan. maybe a part of him knew it'd end like that - depending on how much he had already figured abt till's kind personality.

ivan almost had him, but he slipped away. till's reaction makes sense to him, probably - why trade the total unknown, the instability ivan knows comes from living on the streets for something secure, even if fake and temporary? there is no guarantee they'll make it out there, either. beside, why would till want to stay with ivan? it all makes sense.

(NO BABY NO IT DOESN'T I'D RUN AWAY WITH YOU TO THE END OF THE EARTH)

but he can't help feeling resentful and angry and disappointed and sad. that's human, even if he doesn't understand completely, even if he thinks it doesn't make sense for him to feel negative abt till's reaction, given what rationality tells him. escaping without till makes no sense for him, either - escaping was for till, not for himself.

this is where the dissonance is rooted.

"ivan" splits in two: on one hand we have the character he has built for himself. on the other, the raw, unknown and unlabelled emotions he thinks he has under control/understands. love is the most emblematic, for us. in ivan's mind, love is the devotion in sua's eyes when she looks at mizi, mizi's blinding smile when she sings and play with sua, till's longing and artistic inspiration stemming from mizi. he observes and mimics and tries to be part of it all.

he does watch till from afar, but can't completely imitate till as he forces his presence in till's space far too often to abide to till's awkward circling around mizi.

his emotion is as twisted as sua's, who wants to gatekeep mizi for herself, but not as soft and innocent as her gaze on mizi. there is something darker and crueller and more violent and obsessive under ivan's controlled affection, something that is psychologically normal, given what he went through, but that fits none of ivan's labels and definitions.

after all, love is pure and light and vessel of beautiful and positive things. although what he feels for till partly adapts to what love is, it is not only that. it's more, it's less, it's bigger, it's hard to convey.

8] hypocrisy and how ivan signed his own emotional doom without really being aware of it

the dissonance grows, even if he doesn't actively address it. he probably forces it down, tells himself "let it be, just go on", like he did a million times in the slums in orderd to survive. it is a well-oiled mechanism. but he has grown comfy in his new life - a life where he doesn't actively have to fend off dangers, since they are inevitable but controlled, so he has time to think and desire.

Realising he loves till probably wasn't immediate - the feeling is there, it's unnamed, and I wonder if Ivan eagerly put the label on it or not (was he relieved? or was he burdened byt it? maybe a bit of both - like, "i am capable of love, but in this environment, where will this lead me?"), and how long it took. from his anakt profile, we know he dislikes ignorance and rudeness (he is so composed, when he has to play his role in society, so aware of what he has to do, so how could he not?), but we can find these traits in till - so it's not (only) that he dislikes them, these traits frustrate him because despite not liking them, they are part of a person he has deep affecton for. again, hypocrisy.

After the meteor shower, nurturing something that maybe was already there, the feeling grows with the dissonance, and with love comes hate. i like the idea of him (usually so in control) unconsciously taking his frustration out on sua in that scene where he accuses her of becoming a trauma for future-mizi, while silently, he wonders what will be of him and till if they will have to face each other.

PART 3

[ndostairlyrium]

OC Tag Game (part two)

I was tagged thrice, so maybe there will be three parts? lol nobody can't stop me from oversharing about my children

As for tagging: @melisusthewee @sparatus and @arcandoria 💛

Name: Ellero Cloris Ingellvar

Alias: Rook, Ellie, "Oh, no"

Gender: Cis male

Age: Mid twenties during Veilguard

Place of Birth: Unknown, but he will say he's risen from the grave if you ask - which technically is true

Spoken Languages: Other than Nevarran (mother tongue), he's fluent in Trade and he can read Orlesian and Tevene decently. Besides, he can recognize terms involving magic in other languages due to his studies. I imagine that the Mourn Watch has an extensive library with tomes written in different languages so there could be tools available, like vademecums on basic grammar. ALSO! I wouldn't call the MW cypher you can find in the Necropolis a proper language, with a grammar foundation and such, but it is a way to communicate among watchers so I guess that should be considered a language as well?

Sexual Orientation: He doesn't like labels and I don't even know what shape I'd give to his umbrella or what I'd put below. He just isn't straight, that's for sure :'D

Occupation: Mourn Watcher, and even if he can't watch over the Necropolis full time, he runs back home swiftly when summoned. I'd say "former" but a Mourn Watch never really leaves <3 Former Veilguard, when the Gods are defeated he helps rebuilding what's to be rebuilded by offering to escort people and move materials swiftly through the Crossroads. He would lend his expertise but he's not that much of an expert on anything except necromancy :'

FAVORITE:

Color: Sage green, royal purple, but also anything phthalo or metallic

Entertainment: Back at the Necropolis he would help fetch bones and "dress them up" with paint and jewels according to some wisps preferences. It wouldn't be really allowed by his superiors due to the fact that it could be considered disrespectful for the dead, but according to him, wisps like compliments and he's a great fashion designer

Food: He has extreme tastes, like cavity inducing sweet or extra sour aliments for example. He's partial to spices as well

Drink: Mint tea, sweet berry juices (like elderberry), mulled wine, and as of late: steamy hot chocolate with whipped cream and hazelnut syrup as a topping. He turns into a pumpkin spice latte girlie in Umbralis

Books: Anything the book club suggests him for the month, but he usually picks up manuals and essays for himself, along with newspapers. Not really a fan of fiction. Don't tell Varric, but he finds his books very long and very dispersive with a scandalous lack of pictures

HAVE THEY:

Passed University: Since the MW are an elite, I'd say the minimum requirement for having access to them is a solid academic preparation. So yeah, 110 cum laude and a pat on his back - with thesis discussion on degenerative stages of haunting and the sociologic correlation with the environment the spirit operates in. No phantoms were harmed in the process, but someone in the audience has fainted

Had Sex: Yes

Had Public Sex: Yes, and he says that sex inside caskets is not as cool as it sounds especially if you're bottoming

Gotten Tattoos: So many! He acquired the one on his back when he got his first salary

Gotten Piercings: Lobes only, but I would love to give him more :'

Had a Broken Heart: Romantically, just once in his teenage years, but the person he was with didn't have their priorities straight and hurt everyone in the process. Platonically, many times, because he tends to trust people on the get go

Been in Love: Yes, he's been in love multiple times, with Harding being the perfect match for him because love is not alone, there is more to their relationship

ARE THEY:

A Cuddler: Yes, he loves to just lay on people like an oversize cat until they give up whatever they're doing and pay attention to him <3

Scared Easily: No, but he pretends to be with spirits, so they can have fun at his expenses and be playful around him

Jealous Easily: Romantically, not really, but he can get real pissed when someones he's with doesn't respect his romantic boundaries. But! He gets comically jealous when his pets prefer other prople, there is that

Trustworthy: He tries his best, and please do trust him! He's just clumsy and sometimes lacks the spoons to act like a person but his heart is in the right place

FAMILY:

Siblings / Parents: The Watchers, basically. They gave him an education, food, and shelter. It's more than enough to call them family

Children: One, Hrildan "Hilda" Davrin. She's shaped like a Star Trek villain and has the energy of a cat when the 3am zoomies hit

Pets: Many cats and many chicken stolen from the Cullavellans but the main threat is what Cullen calls "EEEK" and it's just an undead skeletal cat with a cute lil bell on its neck - and an appetite for souls

-

Blank Template:

GENERAL

Name: Alias(es): Gender: Age: Place of birth: Spoken languages: Sexual orientation: Occupation:

FAVOURITE

Colour: Entertainment: Pastime: Food: Drink: Books:

HAVE THEY

Passed university: Had sex: Had sex in public: Gotten tattoos: Gotten piercings: Had a broken heart: Been in love:

ARE THEY

A cuddler: Scared easily: Jealous easily: Trustworthy:

FAMILY

Sibling(s): Parents: Children: Pets:

[mosspodge]

HELLO @okartichoke I AM HERE WITH MOSSY'S GUIDE ON HOW TO START SEWING: A VERY MESSY TUTORIAL

I am extremely self taught, so this is gonna be a lot of links and infodumping!!!! Hopefully this helps a even just a little bit :>

SO! I honestly got into sewing through youtube during covid, largely bc i wanted silly fun clothes! There are a loooot I could recommend to you out there, but I personally find that the more chaotic and learn-as-they-go people help me the best! Rachel Maksy and The Stitchery are, to me, some of the best to learn from! Which is honestly pretty funny since they tend to just fully wing it most of the time lol. While i could recommend excellent sewists like the amazing Bernadette Banner (who is actually the first sewing channel I watched!), I find that the more loosey goosey the process, the more i can learn, if that makes sense? I find it helpful to watch people trial-and-error their way through projects and show where they succeeded and failed since I get a better grasp on their process that way.

The best way to start sewing, in my humble opinion, is to grab whatever sewing machine you can get your hands on and play around with it! Read the manual, find a tutorial video on how to thread the machine, grab some scrap fabric and play around! You don't really need any special needles or feet (the little thing that holds the fabric down), unless you wanna get started sewing denim or velvet or something Speaking of which, learn about fabrics!!!!! I learned mostly by going to joanns, touching the fabrics, and looking at the content labels. Everything has different uses, and while two things might both be cotton, one could be knit while the other jersey (tshirt fabric). I like this video for learning the basics! Tbh this one took me a while. Usually patterns have recommendations for what fabrics to use, so that's always a good place to start!

Patterns. Ah my arch nemesis. Unless you decide to start drafting your own patterns (or get a mannequin and learn how to drape fabric), you're probably gonna need to use one. There's two major things i recommend for this: 1) Make sure there's a video tutorial online before buying, and 2) start with something you might actually use/wear. Pattern instructions are notoriously vague, but thankfully many wonderful people make video tutorials for them! And while you might be tempted to grab one of those beginner friendly patterns, they can sometimes be. real ugly and not well fitting. Also boring! Finding something you like will hold your attention better and make you actually wanna finish it!

Ok SO. getting into more of the cosplay sewing stuff. First things first my knowledge here is a bit more limited, unfortunately. Fortunately there are many wonderful people out there with tutorials!! So if you wanna learn more definitely look there!!! General tip for cosplays + more complex sewing: MAKE MOCK UPS PLEASE IT SUCKS BUT IT HELPS SO MUCH. Go find the ugliest fabric in the sale bin and buy a few yards, then use it whenever you wanna test patterns. It might be tempting to immediately start cutting and sewing the finished garment, but the truth is that patterns rarely fit perfectly well (especially if they're fitted/tighter on your body). Make an ugly, barebones version first with your bad fabric, take notes, and then start making the finished piece. It'll save you money and sanity.

As for cosplay youtubers, I heartily recommend Sarah Spaceman, since not only do her videos show her process, she also does segments teaching you more about sewing!! She tends to tackle more complex projects, and watching her take those on has helped me a lot :} For cosplay patterns etsy usually has quite a few! I like Indigo Patterns (they have a good array of loz patterns I need to buy) as well as Alice in Cosplay Land. Please note that I haven't bought from either, but both their etsy shops have wonderful reviews and I plan to buy from them in the future!

not gonna lie I am getting very sleepy so I'm gonna cut it off there for now! Hopefully my rambling helped lol. Feel free to ask me any questions or for any clarification!

[illmoraineakoi]

I had such a dystopian dream last night.

It was about a new product, a sort of 'smart plate', which was supposed to help you keep track of your nutrition and calories for dieting purposes.

The way it functioned was that you would put whatever food you were going to eat onto it, one at a time, and then bring up the connected app on your phone to scan the food item. The app would then identify, via AI, what the food item was (with about 40%-60% accuracy), and then prompt you to input the weight of the food item, which displayed on a screen on the plate itself bc the plate was a weight scale. The app would then calculate the calories/fats of that food item. You'd repeat for each additional food portion you wanted to eat, until the app told you you were at your calorie limit. If you went over the limit, it would tell you to remove some food or that you couldn't eat it, and refuse to let you calculate more. If you put too much food on the plate itself, it would begin beeping to signal there was too much food on the plate, and it wouldn't stop until you removed some.

The calorie limit acted on a slope: it would start off high, at what your current daily calorie intake was, but then it would steadily, over time, decrease, to facilitate weight loss. This, the company touted, was supposed to slowly teach people how to have smaller portions, and give them time to get used to eating less.

This Smart Plate very quickly became popular, becoming the new weight loss/dieting fad. So many people sung it's praises. Heath Guru influencers promoted it heavily, handing out affiliate and discount codes like candy. Doctors were recommending it. Heath nuts followed the Smart Plate's guidance religiously.

The rest of the world, however, mocked and rebuffed it as a stupid gimmick product. Moist Critical made a video making fun of it, viciously pointing out all of it's flaws and just how useless it really is. Critics slammed how unintuitive the user process was, how needing to use an app on your phone at dinnertime was obnoxious. Tech reviewers slammed how inaccurate the AI food identification feature was, and a lot of ethnic groups claimed the app was 'slightly racist' because it wasn't able to identify a lot of foreign foods, and didn't even have them in it's databanks for the user to manually label them.

But people kept using it, intentionally blind to just how awful and stupid the smart plate really was. Just haters being haters, hating on the big new thing.

And then years later the creator/CEO was put on trial after 4 women died after following Smart Plate's instructions so stringently they starved to death. And it came out that the Smart Plate and App was secretly preprogrammed to decrease the amount of allowed calories to much less than what the human body needs daily to be able to stay alive. The 4 woman had slowly, unknowingly, starved themselves to death because they'd not realized the Smart Plate had limited their calories so much.

The CEO 'sobbed' during an interview, complaining that everyone was being so 'abusive' towards her, that she was being attacked by the patriarchy (not wanting people to starve themselves to death is apparently anti-feminist?) and she only wanted to help people to be healthier. She then did a 180 and got caught slandering the victims, snarking that the four dead women must have been "r*tarded" to have done it to themselves, they must not have been using the plate properly, because SHE'D been using the Smart Plate for years and SHE wasn't starving. And then people found her second istagram account, where it was clear she was very much NOT abiding by her own product, instead splurging her newfound wealth on fancy restaurants and bars. She claimed she was being attacked by stupid Americans, who wanted to be fat and lazy so they could receive government benefits and not need to work, and that anyone who disliked or didn't use her product wanted to be a big fat whale who should go die on a beach just like a whale.

She was found guilty of criminal negligence, rather than murder, and after she got out of jail she launched a Smart Plate-themed cryptocurrency, which she promptly rugpulled for a truly pitiful amount bc it didn't do very well and got exposed by Coffeezilla.

And then I woke up, truly bewildered in a way I've never been before.

[hive-sight]

Delay 1

Sentients, Terran media is fascinating. By this one’s observations, it can be largely broken into two separate areas. This one would label them as: 

Fiction - A uniquely Terran phenomena, fiction encompasses stories and tales that are known to be untrue but are made purely to entertain. Media under this category often, but not always, imbues a select Terran with abilities that are extraordinary. This Terran, known as ‘the protagonist,’ is then placed in situations and conflicts that require their unique abilities to surpass. When the protagonists themselves are not extraordinary, the situations often are.

Non-Fiction - By conventional linguistic dynamics, non-fiction, meaning ‘not fiction,’ should encompass any media that does not fall under fiction. Non-Fiction media will be either reports on events that happened, or recreations of events that happened earlier in history.

Further than that the Terrans have a form of media that, to this one's knowledge, is also unique to Terra. Animation. Thousands upon thousands of images with only minute differences are played sequentially and at various speeds to create the illusion of motion.

The effect is too slow for the perception speed of this one unfortunately. More fortunately, the ship’s AI was able to artificially increase the rate and number of frames in the downloaded media for this one’s race.

The effect is quite astonishing.

---

This one observed Raxor moving through the halls of the ship this Lum. They appear… forlorn. Are they perhaps disappointed with the level of warfare shown by Sol-3?

---

Additionally, a delay has thrown our course off track. A large grouping of space debris was on a collision course with this one’s ship. A delay of approximately three Lums is expected.

As this post seems a bit short, this one will ponder on some aspects of Terran physiology.

At first glance, a Terran is relatively hairless aside from patches of hair covering the top of the cranium, under the manual limbs, covering the groin, and, on male specimens particularly, spatterings across the torso. As this one said, this is merely at first glance. Upon closer inspection of the data from their internet, the entire body of a Terran is covered in an extremely fine layer of hair. Function is unknown at this point.

Unlike many sentients in the Greater Galaxy, the Terrans have somewhat significant sexual dimorphism. Meaning the male and female specimens can vary greatly in physical characteristics. This dimorphism starts as largely insignificant in the Terran’s larval years, and stays insignificant for 1.1 to 1.5 Terran decades before a process called ‘puberty’ begins.

During puberty, the Terran’s brain begins to secrete various levels of hormones and the dimorphism progresses based on the levels of these hormones. The end results appear to vary among individuals, so this one will wait until the opportunity to interview a Terran becomes available.

The date is XD: 4682C 3A 24L, or the 13th of May in the Terran year of 2030. This is Elysia of Xyloptha, looking forward to learning more about Terran culture, and signing off!

[sarnai4]

Kindle Create

This is essentially me hyping up Kindle Create because I just started using it. So, if any fellow new authors are out there, this one's for you!

It. Is. So. Cool! Seriously. All you need to do is have your chapters labeled, then save as a Word doc. If you don't already have it that way, you can download a PDF off Google Docs as Word, then use that. It's that simple. Kindle Create will process every chapter and have a ready-to-go table of contents page for you if you decide to click that button. It even updates live.

And that's not all. Let's say you're like me and want to give shout outs to fellow writers, readers, loved ones, or anyone else who might have helped you. They have a dedication page that makes it all italicized and nice-looking.

There are more options, but let's go to the body. You can manually adjust the indent for chapters in case you accidentally had one indent go too far (caught that just in time for my sequel novel). You can also make the first letter of the chapter bigger. Heck, you can enlarge more than just the first letter. Do whatever makes you happy. The point is, you can make the start of each chapter stand out visually. You can also adjust the font and use bold, italics, underlines, and strikethroughs. You even get text options like if you want something to look like a written letter (something I do in fact want in the pirate fantasy I'm working on for May 2026).

Last but not least, let's go to the end of the book. You can also put dedications here if you'd prefer, but what absolutely sold me was that you get these two beauties: An option to show other books in the series AND other books that you have written. You get to include the link if they're already available, the title, and the description so that after people read your lovely book and are thinking, "Wish I knew what else they've been making," they can find out! It's so simple. I love it.

Was this post just to fangirl? Yes, but I did warn you. As of right now at least, Kindle Create has my heart. I can't wait to use it more and I hope that other authors who maybe are a little nervous about the publishing side of things will step out of their comfort zones and give this a try.

(If anybody's a Kindle Create pro, please share some tips and tricks in the comments or reblogs! I'd love for this post to help out fellow authors and I'm certainly willing to learn more myself too!)

Also, if you're interested, here is a link to my action-fantasy novel I was able to publish this year with Kindle Create. Changing Waters: Jiol

[winter-seance]

GIF Tutorial

This is going to be a long post, so I'm going to place the majority of it under the cut.

Disclaimer - There are many ways to make gifs, and this is just one way to make them - it's the process that I have figured out works best for me. I am in no way claiming that this is the "definitive" or "best" way to make gifs. There are probably other, better ways to do things, but because people have asked how I do it, I am sharing my process.

Introduction I use a Mac. I am assuming most of this will also be applicable to those of you using Windows as well. This tutorial is divided into three parts. Here is a video of the following process as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBRbWC-iMOM

Actions I use three Actions, that you can download here through my Google drive, if you want. A tutorial for how to install Actions in Photoshop can be found here.

Photoshop Layout I use Photoshop CC, but I used Photoshop CS5 for years, got used to it, so when I upgraded to CC, I arranged it to resemble what I was used to.

I have the following windows open:

And they are arranged like this:

PART ONE - CLIPPING Part 1 consists of using a screen recorder (i.e., Quicktime) to make short clips of scenes or parts of a scene that you want to make gifs of. I have a Mac, so Quicktime is what I use. For Windows users, I’m sure there are equivalent alternatives that are just as good. Years ago, when I was first starting to make gifs, I frequently heard people refer to KMPlayer as what they used, so that might still be a good option for you if you are a Windows user. The most important part is that it takes high-quality recordings, with as little detail and quality loss as possible.

With this screen recording method, you can make screen recordings of video files that are stored locally on your computer (I use VLC to play videos), or streaming on sites like YouTube, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney+, HBO, etc. No downloading of the video is necessary. For some of those websites, if you have trouble with getting it to work, you may have to disable your browser’s hardware acceleration. This process is described here (https://www.theverge.com/23715928/netflix-amazon-prime-screenshot-mac-windows-how-to).

I record the clips with sound, to make it easier to transcribe/write out the dialogue in Photoshop later. When I have recorded all the clips I want, I put the clips into my folder where I store all my clips, and into another folder that is labelled with the episode number so I can remember where each clip came from in order to properly label them later when the time comes to upload them to Tumblr.

Example: A folder containing clips from Good Omens 2x01

PART TWO: EXTRACTING/MAKING GIFS FROM THE CLIPS

Open video file in Photoshop To do this, click on File > Import > Video Frames to Layers

Use the markers to select roughly where you want the gif to begin and end.

With videos that have been clipped with Quicktime (not sure about other programs), the vast majority of the time there are twice as many frames as needed – every other frame is a duplicate. For a smaller gif size and smoother playback, I delete every other frame in the timeline box at the bottom of the screen. I used to do this manually (very time consuming), but now do it with the use of an action that I created that will automatically select every other frame. Downloads and installation instructions for all the actions I use are available above.

To use an action, click on the title of the action, then click the play button at the bottom of the window.

I often get an error message that says “The command ‘Extend Frame Selection’ is not currently available”, but it still works. Just click “stop” and every other frame will be selected.

Click the trash can icon in the timeline window to delete the selected frames.

At this point, you will have half as many frames in your timeline as you did before. You will also likely have extra frames at both the beginning and end of the timeline that you don’t want to be part of the gif – from the previous shot, for example. You can delete those now.

This next step is optional: There will still be some duplicate frames in the timeline that were not deleted earlier. It is not strictly necessary to delete these, and I see many gifmakers who don’t get rid of them. It’s usually not all that noticeable. However, because I’m a bit of a perfectionist, I always go through the timeline frame-by-frame and delete each duplicate. This ultimately will reduce the gif’s file size and make the movement in the gif appear much smoother. I usually find that every fourth or fifth frame is a duplicate. Unfortunately, it’s not always consistent, so using an automated action would not work to make this process go faster.

Cropping Once this part is complete, I select the crop tool. I usually make my gifs 540px wide by 350px high. You can change the height to whatever you want, but Tumblr’s max width is 540px. I find the aspect ratio of 540x350px usually allows gifs to feel large, while at the same time not cutting off too much of the sides. Depending on the type of gif I’m making I may adjust this, but generally, if I’m giffing a scene from a TV show or movie, I stick with my standard 540x350px dimensions.

Adding Text Next, I add text. Select the text icon. In the layers window, make sure the top layer is selected, otherwise the text will not show up when you start typing.

The top layer is selected

These are the font settings I currently use:

If I am just making one gifset, or one or two gifs, I’ll go straight on to the next steps. However, if I’m making a large amount of gifs, I save the gif right now, close out of it, and repeat the steps in this section for the next gifs, so I eventually have an entire folder of “raw” unedited photoshop files that have been cropped and captioned, and just need to be colored, have text effects added, and be sharpened. For me personally, I find I make gifs more efficiently by doing it in this “batch” style process.

All cropped and unedited gifs (psd files)

PART 3: COLORING, EFFECTS, & SHARPENING

Coloring I do plan on making a separate tutorial on this at some point, but will include a brief summary here. When it comes to coloring, I generally tend to go by a “less is more” attitude. I am not by any means great at coloring, but nonetheless I’ll explain the types of adjustment layers I typically use.

Note: Before making any adjustments, make sure you have the layer directly underneath the text layer selected, as shown in the screencap below, otherwise it will also apply those adjustments to the text, which makes it look weird.

I start with a Curves layer to change the overall brightness/contrast, then a Levels layer to adjust the shadows and highlights, and then a Brightness/Contrast layer to do some final minor tweaks. The only time I ever reuse gif coloring is when they are from the same scene with the same colors, lighting, backgrounds, etc. Every other time, I tailor the adjustment layers to the specific gif.

You can add adjustment layers by clicking the half light/dark circle on the bottom of the Layers window.

How the gif looks with both a Curves layer and Levels layer

Before adding the adjustment layers

After adding the adjustment layers

A lot of the time, I'll just stick to adjusting the lighting. However, if the colors look gross, or if they are over/undersaturated, I’ll add a Color Balance layer and play around with the settings on that, or use a Hue/Saturation layer and increase/decrease the saturation of specific color channels. It really depends on what you’re going for, and what you think looks good. There is no one “right” way to color a gif.

Text Effects If you are using the Actions I included in the download, you can just run the "Text Effects" action with the text layer selected, and it will do the following automatically. If not, you can do it manually by doing the following.

Right click on the text layer in the Layers window and click on Blending Options.

I use a stroke and drop-shadow on my gifs. Here are the settings I use.

Drop Shadow settings

Stroke settings

Next, to center the text, click on the text layer. With the text layer selected on the Layers window, Select All by clicking ctrl+a (Windows) or command+a (Mac). Then click on the "Align horizontal centers" icon in the “Move tool” option menu.

Important – in the Layers menu, make sure the buttons “Unify layer position” and “unify layer effects” are clicked an enabled for the text layer.

Sharpening Select all the frames in the Timeline window. Then in the lower left-hand corner click “convert to video timeline.”

In the Layers window, select all of the frame layers (do not include the text layer or adjustment/coloring layers in the selection) and right click on it. Select “Convert to smart object.”

Select Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. In the same way that coloring can differ depending on the gif, the ideal settings for sharpening can also differ from gif-to-gif. It can really depend on the quality of the source of the gif, like whether it’s HD or not. These are the settings I’m using for the current gif:

If you are using Actions, you can run the "Layers to Frames" Action. If not, do the following:

Click on the button circled in red

It will open up this menu. Click on "Flatten frames into clips"

Click the button circled in red, then click "Make frames from layers"

Delete the first couple of "junk" frames

Select all of the frames. Right click on the "0 sec." to change the frame rate. I usually use 0.05, but it might depend on the gif itself.

Exporting Click on File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)

I cannot add another screencap because I've reached Tumblr's max for this post, but here are the settings I use: Selective Diffusion 256 Colors Dither 100%

You may find that when you try to export your gif, the file size is too big. Tumblr’s gif file size limit is 10mb – try to make it under that – even anywhere in the 9.9mb range. As long as it’s under 10mb, it should work.

To get gifs that are too large to fit under the limit, I usually end up deleting frames from the beginning or end of the gif. If you’re using the 540x350px dimensions, I typically find that the average number of frames I can fit into one gif is between 80-90. Depending on the colors in the gif, it’s sometimes more, sometimes less.

[mariacallous]

On Monday, United States prosecutors in Sacramento, California, unveiled a 15-count indictment accusing Dallas Erin Humber, 34, and Matthew Robert Allison, 37, of serving as core members of a virulent neo-Nazi propaganda network that solicited attacks on federal officials, power infrastructure, people of color, and material support for acts of terrorism both within the US and overseas.

The group, known as the Terrorgram Collective, has produced four publications to date—a blend of ideological motivation, mass murder worship, neofascist indoctrination, and how-to manuals for chemical weapons attacks, infrastructure sabotage, and ethnic cleansing. The screeds have directly inspired a series of ideologically motivated attacks around the world, including a 2022 mass shooting at an LGBTQ bar in Bratislava, Slovakia; successful attacks on power infrastructure in North Carolina and similar failed plots in Baltimore and New Jersey; and a stabbing spree in the Turkish city of Eskisehir.

Federal prosecutors allege Humber, Allison, and other Terrorgram Collective members were in the process of compiling a fifth, yet-to-be-released publication devoted to a pantheon of “saints”—neofascist mass murderers like Timothy McVeigh and Anders Breivik. The point of this guide, prosecutors claim, was to “inspire Terrorgram users to commit acts of violence.”

Humber and Allison were both federal targets as early as early 2023, but authorities appear to have waited for a year and a half to compile evidence of potential attacks around the world, and for the British government’s decision this April to formally ban the Terrorgram Collective, before filing an indictment that could land the defendants in prison for more than two centuries. To date, American authorities have charged at least four individuals allegedly involved in the Terrorgram Collective with terrorism-related offenses.

While the arrests are not the first targeting the Terrorgram Collective—Slovakian Pavol “SlovakBro” Beňadik and former Atomwaffen Division founder Brandon Russell hold that honor—the charges against Humber and Allison represent a major change from how the FBI and US Department of Justice approach diffuse “accelerationist�� terrorism—the nihilist brand of neofascism that seeks to speed up societal collapse and the ascent of a Fourth Reich through mass shootings, bombings, and other acts of terrorism by “lone wolf” actors. Relying on the UK government’s April order declaring the Terrorgram Collective a banned terrorist group and a little-employed section of the “material support for terrorism” section of the US criminal code, federal prosecutors are finally taking an aggressive, whole-of-law approach to violent neofascist extremism.

“What it shows is exactly what I’ve been arguing for years: All the tools they need to do this work, they have,” says Michael German, a former FBI special agent and a liberty and national security fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, an NYU School of Law nonprofit. German points to years of arguments by the FBI and Department of Justice that they are hamstrung by existing laws when it comes to tackling violent extremists within the United States. “It also reveals the false separation that the government makes about international and domestic terrorism—white supremacy has always been transnational.”

In 2018, German coauthored a study of federal domestic terrorism prosecutions that argued existing laws were sufficient to tackle domestic terrorism, pointing to a particular statute used to charge Humber and Allison with material support. “It’s the material support statute the DOJ forgot,” says German.

The UK’s order against the Terrorgram Collective provided American authorities a basis for labeling a diffusive, ostensibly domestic propaganda group as a “transnational terrorist organization” in a detention motion filed on Tuesday, potentially opening Humber and Allison up to deleterious additional charges and sentencing enhancements. In other words, the US is treating Terrorgram in ways similar to how it has treated Islamist terrorist organizations.

“I would think of this case more like an old-school terrorism investigation, where you have a leadership cell that pushed info to followers and radicalized them into action,” says Seamus Hughes, a terrorism researcher at the University of Nebraska Omaha, of the indictment’s allegations against Humber and Allison.

The role of undercover agents in at least two of the Terrorgram federal prosecutions, the DOJ’s repeated citation of the group’s outlawed status in Great Britain as basis for labeling it a transnational terrorism organization, and the alleged targeting of power infrastructure by participants in the propaganda network, Hughes says, all point to US law enforcement taking a new approach to tackling violent right-wing extremism.

“The vast majority of material support cases are jihadi, but right here, they [allegedly] inspired an individual to plot an attack against a power plant,” he adds. “That’s critical infrastructure and is the lynchpin for the material support of terrorism charge.”

The power infrastructure plot Hughes references is the case of Andrew Takhistov, an 18-year-old New Jersey man charged in July with soliciting another individual to attack energy facilities. Court documents describe Tahkistov as a virulently hateful young man who fantasized about attacking a synagogue and participated in a March 2024 demonstration by an Atlantic City–based “active club” in support of jailed neo-Nazi leader Robert Rundo, was ever-present in the Terrogram Collective’s Telegram channels.

Along with allegedly circulating propaganda from the Terrorgram Collective and urging lone-wolf attacks, the feds claim in court records that Tahkistov bragged about participating in the production of the group’s “Hard Reset” publication, describing it as “the perfect starting guide” for a lone-wolf terrorist. “It has ideology, it has how-to guides, it has ideas for funny things, it goes into how you should plan it, it goes into the thought process,” Takhistov allegedly told an undercover FBI agent with whom he plotted the erstwhile attack on power stations near North Brunswick and New Brunswick, New Jersey.

These details were included in Tahkistov’s indictment, which also outlined his alleged plans to travel to Russia and join the Russian Volunteer Corps, a neo-Nazi combat battalion fighting for the Ukrainian military, which was founded by Denis Kapustin, an Azov Movement–connected extremist who tried to help Rundo flee the US in 2018, in order to gain weapons expertise and military training that would allow him to carry out more effective acts of ideologically motivated terrorism once back in the United States.

Takhistov is in custody and will next appear in court on October 9. He has pleaded not guilty.

Humber and Allison are longtime radicals. Humber’s radicalization appeared to start decades ago, per a report by extremism researchers at Left Coast Right Watch. Research obtained by this reporter shows Humber ran more than two dozen extreme right-wing propaganda channels on Telegram, which circulated the Terrorgram Collective’s material as well as other accelerationist content.

In recent years, aside from narrating audio books of neofascist manifestos and propaganda tracts, Humber also corresponded with convicted domestic terrorist Dylann Roof and with Atomwaffen Division founder Brandon Russell, who ended up joining their collective. “There’s no quitting our worldview. It’s a lifelong commitment,” Humber allegedly told Russell in a recorded jailhouse call following the latter’s arrest in February 2023. Her participation in the network, according to a March 15, 2022, Telegram post included in court filings by prosecutors, was to mold potential terrorists for action. “No military is fighting for us. No govt is protecting our people and defending our interests. The ONLY people fighting for us are lone wolves,” Humber wrote, in reference to a teenager she was trying to indoctrinate. “He’s like 18 yo and seems very impressionable, I’m trying to radicalize him.”

When the FBI raided Humber’s Elk Grove home last week, they recovered reams of Nazi propaganda, 3D-printed firearms—including a homemade AR-15 pattern rifle—a short-barreled rifle, a 3D printer, unregistered handguns, and high-capacity magazines, which remain illegal in California. She remains held without bail.

Allison, who was born in Southern California, lives in a high-end apartment building in downtown Boise, Idaho, and, according to court documents, does not hold a steady job. He doesn’t appear to have a criminal record, aside from a June 2022 misdemeanor. There are very few traces of Allison online, but details cobbled together by researchers indicate he drifted steadily to the right from 2018 onward, starting with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s content and then moving steadily in the direction of Timothy McVeigh, The Order founder Robert Jay Mathews, and finally, the skull-masked, nihilistic neofascism popularized by the Atomwaffen Division at the end of the last decade.

Under the alias “BanThisChannel,” Allison was one of the most prolific disseminators of Terrorgram’s propaganda materials and was prolific in extreme-right-wing Telegram channels, commiserating with other SoCal skinheads about racial attacks in days gone by and connecting other individuals to militant groups like the Atomwaffen Division. Research obtained by this reporter indicates he worked part-time as a video producer and was the editor who compiled a number of “sizzle reels” for the Terrorgram Collective’s propaganda output online, including a set entitled “The BTC Movie Trilogy” that Takhistov sought out for inspiration.

Nineteen-year-old Slovakian teenager Juraj Krajčík, the perpetrator of the 2022 Bratislava massacre, was in extensive contact with Humber and Allison for at least a year prior to the attack, and sent his manifesto to Allison after he carried out his mass murder, which explicitly cited Terrorgram Collective publications and thanked the group for inspiring him to act. Allison then circulated the manifesto through the group’s Telegram channels. The group proceeded to claim Krajčík as “their first saint.”

Allison’s commitment to neofascism and white supremacy appears to have run deep—“I won’t quit til I’m dead. my only goal in life is to fucking destroy the enemy,” Allison declared in a Telegram post cited by federal prosecutors. Both he and Humber, according to a government detention motion, sought to identify the informant in Brandon Russell’s criminal case. Allison advocated adding the suspected snitch to “The List” (a collection of federal officials, journalists, businessmen, and other perceived enemies circulated by the Terrorgram Collective as potential assassination targets), while Humber allegedly told Russell in a recorded jailhouse call in August 2023 that she had photographs of the suspected informant and was running them through facial recognition software.

When Allison was arrested last week, authorities say, he had a backpack loaded with what appeared to be a “bug-out kit” comprised of zip ties, a gun, duct tape, ammunition, a knife, lockpicking tools, two phones, and a thumb drive. When law enforcement searched his apartment, they turned up an assault rifle, two laptops, an external hard drive, and another “go bag” containing $1,500 in cash, clothes, a passport, ziplock bags full of pills, ammunition, a skull mask balaclava, sim cards, and a birth certificate.

In a videotaped interview following his arrest, Allison allegedly confessed to his participation in the Terrorgram Collective and “engaging in acts alleged in the General Allegations of the Indictment.”

Law enforcement consider Humber and Allison threats to their community, and to authorities as well: Humber allegedly worked with Russell to try to identify a suspected government witness in the Atomwaffen Division founder’s current criminal case in Baltimore, according to recorded jailhouse phone calls. Witnesses in Russell’s upcoming trial this November will testify in a closed courtroom to avoid being identified, a highly unusual precaution. In a sealing motion, prosecutors state that not only are additional arrests of Terrogram Collective members likely, but the group’s membership poses a severe danger to law enforcement and cooperating witnesses alike: “Defendants' many associates, both in the United States and internationally, may seek to harm perceived law enforcement or law enforcement cooperators in retribution for their role in this investigation.”

Allison is currently detained without bail and is set to appear in federal court in Boise on September 18 for a detention hearing.

The volume of evidence laid out against Humber and Allison in both the indictment and detention motion, says Hughes, shows the feds have significantly altered their approach to both far-right terrorism and particularly "lone wolf" accelerationists who have perpetrated massacres ranging from Christchurch in 2019 to Buffalo in 2022.

“When they go further than they have in the past to lay out the transnational connections and overlay a material support charge, it shows that either the feds are trying to make a point, or they were very concerned about these particular actors,” Hughes says.

Senior attorneys from the DOJ’s Civil Rights and National Security divisions are listed on the court filings in this matter, another indication that the top ranks of the Biden administration’s Justice Department called the shots on the Terrorgram Collective investigation.

“To build a case in this fashion is a decision that gets made at Main Justice,” Hughes says. “Someone high up decided to sign off on this.”

[piratesexmachine420]

For future reference (my own and others), if your TI SilverLink USB cable stops working and starts showing up as "TUSB3410 Boot Device" or similar under device manager (AKA this issue on TI's help page), this is how you can fix it:

Download the TUSB3x10 EEPROM Burner. This is a Windows-only program, but to my knowledge will work on basically any windows machine from XP on -- so long as it's got USB ports. No clue if it'll work in a VM. (You might want to consult this user's manual.)

Download the SilverLink firmware. I got it from here, and compiled it from their de-compilation. It's just a standard 'make' to build. The output file you're looking for is called "ti_graph_link_silver.eep".

Rename "ti_graph_link_silver.eep" to "ti_graph_link_silver.bin".

Open the TUSB3x10 EEPROM Burner, click on the options dropdown and click "Show the 'Program Full Binary Image' button". (page 7 of the manual).

Select the entry under "Computer" labeled "TUSB3410 EEPROM Burner Instance (1.00)".

Set EEPROM size to "64Kb".

Set "File Path" to point to "ti_graph_link_silver.bin". (The renamed .eep, not the original .bin)

I don't know if the VID, PID, Manufacturer string, Product string and Serial # need to be set manually or not with a 'Full Binary Image' burn. Just to be safe, I set VID to 0451, PID to e001, Manufacturer to "Texas Instruments", Product to "TI-GRAPH LINK USB", and checked "Not Serialized"*.

Click the "Program Full Binary Image" button (yellow triangle with the exclamation point), and proceed with the write.

Unplug and re-plug your cable, and it should show up as a SilverLink again!

Additional notes:

The reason that this happens is because the SilverLink cable (revision b, at least) is based on the TUSB3410 microcontroller. That microcontroller's boot process involves checking for an I2C EEPROM containing program code. If it finds that EEPROM and its contents are properly formatted, it'll copy that code into internal RAM and start executing it. If it can't find the EEPROM, or its contents aren't properly formatted, it'll fall back to looking for boot code over USB. Thus: "TUSB3410 Boot Device". Your cable has, in essence, forgotten who it is and and is begging for you to give it a purpose.

The default page-write buffer size (32 bytes) and I2C bus speed (400 KHz) in the burner app are already correct, so no need to change them.

*I don't remember exactly what the Manufacturer string, Product string, or serial number fields were set to pre-corruption. Likewise, no idea about the advanced descriptor options. If someone wants to send the output of lsusb -v -s [whatever their silverlink's bus/id numbers are], I'd really appreciate it!

You might be able to skip the header rigamarole by taking the ti_graph_link_silver.bin file directly ("directly coming from the compiler") -- but I again I don't know exactly what information is in the .eep file and what isn't. Are the PID and VID encoded somewhere in there? I peeked with a hex editor but have no clue. If someone has hardware lying around they're willing to experiment with/potentially brick, I'd love to hear your results!

If you mess up and accidentally forget to do a "Full Binary Image" write, or otherwise brick the firmware, you can force the TUSB3410 to fall back to USB boot mode by opening the plastic shell around the PCB (one Torx screw under the sticker, then just normal plastic tabs) and shorting the right-bottom (Vss) and right-top (SDA), or right-bottom (Vss) and center right-top (SCL) pins of the EEPROM (the chip labeled "24LC64") as you plug it into the USB port. You may need multiple attempts. This works because it temporarily convinces the TUSB3410 that the EEPROM is missing/corrupt, and thus it decides to fall back into USB boot mode -- until you reset it. It might be better to do this with a ~1k resistor instead of a jumper wire, but IDK I'm not an electrical engineer. All I know is that shorting Vss and SDA worked for me. Again, would love feedback.

No clue what causes the corruption in the first place, or how long this fix will last. It might be because the EEPROM's write protect pin is set to "write enable"? It could also just be degrading hardware, for all I know, so no idea how long the fix will last. All I do know is that everything seems nominal right now (immediately after performing this procedure).