#a neocities would be cool i would like to make one of those but it also requires me to learn an entire new skill LOL

[moonsidesong]

kind of thinking about trying to compile some kind of resource guide for existing english puyo fan translations .... cause like, they're all definitely Findable with a google search but i think for some people getting into the series would be less intimidating if they had their options laid out. it could also serve as a release timeline since.... puyo nexus doesnt... have. one of those.... idk if anyone would actually use it but boy do i love making lists anyway<3

[taffywabbit]

"why not just make your own website?"

with the announcement of cohost's death and amidst all the other tumultuous shit currently going on with social media as a concept (i am AMAZED twitter has survived this long given the circumstances), one suggestion that i've been hearing a lot is "we should just go back to the good old days of personal websites. let's all just make neocities pages!!"

(this is gonna be a long one sorry)

and like. idk! it's certainly something i've considered, i think it would be a fun thing to have, but it also feels like the equivalent of "capitalism sucks so let's all just run off into the woods and live in a cabin outside of society" to me. like it would be nice, it would be fun, but it doesn't ultimately solve the actual problems that are present with the modern internet, it just evades them. more importantly in my case and many others, it does not really help people who rely on the modern internet and the connections they're able to make there for their income. sure i can make a website and host my art and blog posts there, but who's going to see it? i can't build a consistent audience and make a living off of random passersby who peek at my website once, say "huh, neat!" and MAYBE add it to an RSS feed or whatever if they really like it. there's minimal potential for meeting and impressing new people outside my existing circles if i don't ALSO still have some manner of social media platform to promote the website on.

a lot of the "solutions" i see people proposing for the slow, painful decline of social media as a user experience keep coming back to old-fashioned, more isolated/insular systems. we miss forums, we miss personal webpages, we miss newsletters, etc etc. but like... those things were ideal in the "old web" because the old web was more about sharing hobbies and interests with whoever happened to pass by and check them out, and even just USING the internet was a niche hobby in and of itself for a lot of people. if you wanna be kinda cynical about it (and not unjustifiably so), web 2.0 is much more blatantly business-oriented, and its algorithms and carefully crafted UX's are primarily meant to funnel you towards viewing ads and spending money on products. looking at it that way, it sure does suck and Everything Was Better Before! but the modern web is ALSO more powerful than anything before it for just like. connecting people. spreading information and news. showing your art/music/writing/thoughts/etc to strangers who never knew you existed an hour ago. putting the tools to reach out to someone and tell them you think they're cool right there on the same website where their art is hosted, just a comment or a message away.

if you're able to avoid patterns of engagement-bait and obsessing over follower counts as a measure of self-worth (a big "if", i realize, but i view it like installing an adblocker - it's just kind of a basic prerequisite for modern internet safety and survival), a lot of these systems can genuinely be really positive and life-changing in ways that were simply not possible 20 years ago! almost all of my current closest friends are people I met through sharing our art on platforms like Twitter who were complete strangers at the time. all of the art clients that regularly pay my bills and support my work came from places like that too! the "social" part of "social media" is really what makes it ultimately worth keeping around in any form, and makes the pursuit of a Good social media platform still valuable.

there's a lot to love about the old web - its aesthetics, simplicity and freedom for personal expression - but every time someone says "just delete your socials and make a personal website" i am forced to confront the fact that i could never do what i currently do or be the person i am on the old web. if i was stuck hanging out in my own little space and only ever interacting with people who openly and loudly share my interests, i couldn't support myself with art full-time, i probably would never have met the kind and quiet strangers who are now my best friends and have made me who i am, and i'd just generally get a lot less insight into the vast range of experiences and perspectives that exist outside of my own. my life would be on a fundamentally different trajectory in countless ways without the advent of web 2.0.

and that's not to say "well twitter and facebook and tumblr all suck but you kinda still have to hand it to them" cuz you don't, obviously. they're corporations, and their job is to take the personalities and thoughts and art of the people who use their products and try to scrunch it all into something uninform and marketable that generates profit and pleases their shareholders. but like, you CAN still make a good thing out of them! these websites are tools just as much as geocities or myspace or IRC used to be. and the one thing these newer tools are pretty much all REALLY good at is discoverability. if you're just a hobbyist at the things you wanna share on the internet, then you likely don't have a lot of use for those tools, and perhaps you WOULD genuinely be happier just keeping a personal blog site or hanging out in private groupchats or sticking to specialized federated Mastodon instances or whatever. it just isn't feasible for me, and there are a LOT of people in my same situation. my entire industry of online freelance artists barely existed 20 years ago, and the web culture of that era is largely incompatible with my continued survival in the mid-2020s. i would LOVE to run off and live in the woods in concept, but all my survival skills are adapted for city living and i would just eat the wrong berry and die out there. i want- i NEED people to try and improve the spaces we're in, and support better forms of social media (like what cohost was trying and largely succeeding to do!) instead of just complaining that it all sucks, everything was better when we were kids, and digging ourselves little holes to hide in. much like all the other problems and frustrations and systemic issues of the world we live in, the modern web isn't going to go away if you just ignore it, so we may as well try to make it better for everyone.

anyways tl;dr i probably WILL make a neocities at some point. it could be fun, even if it doesn't help my career stability or whatever. but i do also need ALL THE SOCIAL PLATFORMS I USE FOR MY JOB TO STOP EXPLODING PRETTY PLEASE, and failing that, some actual half-decent alternatives that aren't going to fizzle out in a month would also be great thanks ✌

[versegm]

Coming out of my self-imposed tumblr ban cuz this is the third post I see along the lines of "man we gotta jump ship" so here are some other ways to be social/do fandom/ect. I'm not gonna call them "tumblr alternatives" because I won't lie to you these are gonna be very different experiences from tumblr. But if you use tumblr as a way to meet new people/post your thoughts/do fandom/keep up with folks, then maybe one of these is worth looking into.

COHOST

I don't use Cohost so idk if it's good or not, but all the people who use it tell me it's A Whole Lot Like Tumblr. Got pretty mixed reviews on this one, people seem to either love it or hate it, either way you could check it out it's free.

PILLOWFORT

My main bitch, so I can actually talk about it.

Pros:

Lots of cool privacy features

Porn is allowed

Website has been consistently getting updates and listening to the userbase

No ads because it's user-funded

Cons:

Being user-funded means the website is frequently struggling with money

NEOCITIES

This one isn't really a social media, it's a host for websites.

Pros:

You can do whatever the fuck you want here

Cons:

You have to code it all yourself

If you didn't immediately skip this rolling your eyes, here are some ressources to get a blog running with minimum efforts, and a cool zine to figure out what to put on your blog.

FANLISTING

Ye Old internet way to find new peeps in your fandom. It's a list of fans. I'm listing thefanlisting.org here because it's the biggest hub of fanlistings out there, but there are plenty that aren't listed so if you've got a topic dear to your heart it might be worth googling up "[fandom/ship/character] fanlisting" and see what turns up.

Pros:

It's literally just adding your name to a list of fans. Low spoon effort.

Cons:

If you want to talk to any of the people on the fanlisting you have to actually manually contact them via email or website or whatever they provided for contact. High social anxiety effort.

Anyways that's all I got chief. You probably already heard of half of those and the other half might have made you go "hey wtf that's not at all what I use tumblr for why would I need these" and the answer is it's not my problem. I discovered these when looking for ways for me personally to do social media so if you do social media differently sorry I can't help ya. But hey maybe you'll discover something new who knows.

Preemptive answers to things I am sure will clog my notifications for years to come:

None of these are like tumblr! Look bestie this is like the fifth time people consider abandoning tumblr at this point you have to make your peace with the fact that there is no other website like this one.

The websites you mentioned are nearly empty there's no one in my community here! Bro if you want a website with lots of people you don't need me listing off where you can go you already know where people are going (aka: Bluesky) If you're so scared to be alone then invite your buddies to move there together so you can chat together idk. Be the change you want to be in the world.

I'm not gonna use these. Then you've got my blessing to not use these. I assure you you don't need to reblog this post just to tell me you won't use these. I don't care.

Anyways. Peace. Dunno how many people this is gonna be useful to, but if you wanted to branch out of the usual reddit/bluesky/twitter, hopefully this will help.

Bunch of pillowfort invite codes under the cut since I got a bunch. Sorry I got no cohost as I said I don't use that one.

[mxbo]

So what are the stamps and user boxes actually used for other than just being silly and cute

IS THIS MY CHANCE TO INTRODUCE SOMEONE TO THE CULTURE OF THE OLD WEB AND PROFILE CUSTOMIZATION!?!?!?!?

OK, so other than being cute and silly their purpose is to uh… be um… cute and silly decoratio- who wrote this script?? Whoever did is horrible at its job, like yeah it's right but- let me just sugarcoat it a bit mor-

WHAT ARE USERBOXES

“Userboxes are boxes containing a little bit of information about someone! They originated from wikipedia and were meant to be put on people’s user pages, but here people either choose to reblog those that apply to them or put them on their about pages (or both!)”

—Definition stolen borrowed from Userboxed's FAQ

So, basically, Wikipedia had this little thing where NERDS would code* boxes of information and people said “HEY, THAT'S SO COOL WHY DO ONLY THE SMART PEOPLE HAVE THOSE” and said “IMMA MAKE MY OWN, SCREENSHOT IT AND PUT IT ON MY WEBSITE/PROFILE/PINNED POST”

*Zzz boring code (I have a website myself, I'm allowed to call it boring)

WHY I LOVE USERBOXES

✦ Most people won't read your pinned post in its totality, but will read the userboxes. ✦ They're colorful, have one or two sentences max per userbox and have an image on the side, so it catches people's attention more than just plain text. ✦ They get their point across: your personality, interests, sometimes aesthetics… ✦ MAKING YOUR OWN IS SUPER EASY!!

The standard size is 239px × 49px, but bigger/high quality userboxes can be found, always following that ratio, of course.

WHAT ARE STAMPS

Basically, just images/GIFs with a border resembling a real life stamp. These are called static or animated stamps, AND I'M IN LOVE WITH THE LATTER TYPE. I believe they come from Deviantart and serve a similar purpose to userboxes: decorating your profile.

WHY I LOVE STAMPS

✦ Collecting them is super fun!! It reminds you of which parts of the internet you have visited. ✦ Groups of stamps look super cool together. ✦ That thing about getting your point across but without text and writing AESTHETIC in bold red underlined text.

The standard size is 99px × 56px, but bigger/high quality stamps can be found, always following that ratio, of course.

BUT WHERE DO YOU PLACE THEM !?

You can have a couple on your profiles (Spacehey), pinned posts (Tumblr)… But where people COLLECT THEM is in

A CORNER ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE / NEOCITIES

EXAMPLES OF COOL NEOCITIES THAT WITH COOL STAMPS/COLLECTIONS

✦ Shishka ✦ Cinni ✦ Oddity Commoddity ✦ Ko's Crag! ✦ Cloud Cover ✦ Echo's Graphics ✦ silly zone ✦ Mad Paddington ✦ My own website lmao

THIS IS YOUR CALL TO MAKE YOUR OWN NEOCITIES !!

(Because it's my hyperfixation, topped only by TF2, and I MUST share it with the world) (I already convinced my light to make a neocities, YOU ARE NEXT.)

CONCLUSION

TL;DR: They're silly and cute BUT, they're also nostalgic and an important part of internet culture

I also recommend watching the next videos just because (you won't understand userboxes or stamps any better, but the culture around it)

✦ Whatever Happened to Profile Customization? ✦ Old Websites Were Cooler, Actually

I hope you found my explanation/yapping interesting and also answered your question (if you can find your answer, there's so much filler, god) HEHE

[olderthannetfic]

Tumblr seems to be sliding in a downward spiral, and it feels like the start of the end of a fandoming era for me. I've been through it before; platforms are born then die, and life fandom finds a way. I'm just not looking forward to floundering for a bit, and dreading what the next hub will look like.

AO3 isn't really a place geared or meant for the same thing, and that's fine. My only fandom-related activity took place on AO3 only for a few years between my leaving LJ and joining Tumblr, and I lived ;-) But during that time, I was my own little island in fandom. Reading, leaving a few comments, not being super active. It's only when I found a community again that I was back to being really active in fandom once more.

And it's not that I actually use Tumblr to post about myself, but I do use it to read and reblog cool things - art, gifsets, science stuff, discovering new fandoms, and the like. I'm not sure where else I could find my people, with sameish purposes. The other sites I've tried didn't fill that niche in a way that suited me, in part because of how they look and work, in part because of who and what is(n't) there.

I have DW & PF accounts just to be safe, but I'm not very fond of group chats Discord-style - and without Tumblr, IDK how I'd even hear of new communities where I might pop in once in a while, loins girdled and everything. The micro-blogging platforms are not what I'm looking for either. Sure, I can follow a few DW comms and blogs; I already occasionally do and I will be more consistent about it if I must.

But one of my greatest fear is that the next platform will be phone-based, app-only, or some such BS - and that is something I just won't be able to deal with. Phones are tiny, it's uncomfortable to write anything, I don't like touch screen and much, much prefer a proper keyboard and a mouse (copy-pasting on a screen? (x_x) << it me), art/pics are too small to properly appreciate, a phone isn't comfy to hold for a long time for me, and the app system means you have no control over anything as a user… and that anything there must be Apple Approved, dick-free, blood-free, and tasteless. And I say this as someone who's pretty much uninterested in sex IRL or in my entertainment ;-) I still support and want the tits, the gore, the everything, and as long as I have the tools to curate - oh, wait. Curate things myself? That's not something that's popular these days, is it? It's not going to generate money, if I'm happy ;-)

So… I guess I'll play some more on Neocities, and see if anyone wants to have webrings again? (it would be fun and nostalgic, but not really viable on a large scale; people who haven't known those would just laugh and point and go on the InstaTok of the time).

So here is my little cane-waving rant of the day! I know things evolve and change and that in ten years I'll be rolling my eyes at my moping. It's only that I feel tired of moving from one shitty platform to another, of fearing I won't adapt (or more accurately won't want to adapt given the annoyance/benefit ratio) to whichever new place things will move in a few years. It's saying goodbye to a former home, moving, and hoping you'll make another home elsewhere kind of sniffles today!

--

We already know the next platform. It has been Discord for a few years now.

If you want the one after Discord, I think you're looking at waiting things out for quite a few years (or until Discord makes a major misstep as a company).

True, real time chat is not for everyone, but small discords with well-chosen channels can operate more asynchronously. Just like a lot of people who hated the look of Tumblr early on eventually capitulated, a lot of chat haters have jumped ship to Discord already.

Realistically, 90% of fandom always goes where the action is, no matter how much they claim the features make that space impossible, and 10% disappears.

We might get the 10% back on the next platform or they might leave fandom for good. There were LJ-haters who resurfaced post LJ era.

But as for where you'll find out where people are... probably AO3 author's notes.

[gramophoneturtle]

Update/Pinned Post

Welcome to my art archive. I've posted a lot about my OCs, TWEWY, Persona 5, Xenoblade X and in other fandoms.

Unfortunately due to recent-ish changes on Tumblr I no longer feel comfortable posting here much or at all. I'll keep my blog up for the foreseeable future or maybe even forever because of how Tumblr stores data. I'd rather have the link back to the source.

Or if the other sites explode in the meantime.

This has nothing to do with the date sadly. I'm just at my limit.

Here's where you can find me:

Pillowfort: gramophoneturtle. The most artist respected place and a decent long form blogging place.

Neocities: I'm currently developing an art archive on neocities over here. This will be THE archive place, one day! With RSS, one day!

Bluesky: gramophoneturtle. Twitter replacement. I don't trust it but it's meshing with me more than mastodon. Stream announcements are here b/c I ran out of energy for crossposting.

cohost: gramophoneturtle. I don't trust it'll stay but it has both a draft system & can save alt text on draft edits. Wild stuff to praise but when porting art out of Tumblr, it's helpful to have new drafts.

Twitch & YouTube: I stream weekly on Twitch and store VODs on both. Twitch has all my VODs and YouTube has VODs from Fall 2023 and onwards.

More details, pros and cons about each site below for those who are curious. Thanks for sticking around and reading.

Pillowfort

It's user funded and transparent about the breakdown of funds

They're against generative AI. Their reinforcement came out around the time Tumblr's not-really-against-it stance came out. This is huge to me.

They're working on a PWA of the site so it will have a way to function like a smartphone app

Image post options aren't great but you aren't limited to 4 (unlike cohost - kinda, and Bluesky)

Alt text gets eaten if you edit a post currently which is awful. (Tumblr used to do this.) Alt text isn't an option for picture type posts but is for text posts with pictures. But hey at least you can include alt text!

Communities are nice for fandoms and stuff. You can search by tags but you don't follow tags, you join/watch communities.

They have funding for the next 6 months past any month that was fully funded. So as of April 1, 2024, funding should last until (the end?) of October if they were to not get any more donations/subscriptions from now on. Basically, they have a 6 month buffer and so far for 2024 they've been keeping it and maintaining their monthly funding goals

Neocities

Home page URL should not change but artwork URLs might

The artwork section is inspired by Tumblr's archive page/system. I don't think I want it to be exactly like it (might be a limitation of static pages re: tag filtering) but I want to try and partially make it

Artwork on there have been nightshaded and glazed. I would like to reglaze some pieces that are too glazed for my liking, now that I have a better computer for it (so it doesn't take forever). That's why not a lot of art is on there yet

I might go into detail about how I automated some of the web dev stuff to make my life easier on my my main blog. In summary: I'm using 11ty (eleventy), generating pages from data and templates, using github for version control and github actions for updating the site automatically

Bluesky:

Feeds are cool. I've found and made (through SkyFeed) a lot of Feeds. Feeds can look for text in posts and alt text, and/or specific tags. Can filter out reblogs or replies. Can work off of user lists. Can include/exclude specific posts - like Twitter Moments. There's a lot of flexibility and filtering.

Feeds can lookback anywhere from 25 hours to 1 week when not looking at one user. So when pulling from many users, you could just get the latest updates. For one user (say your own gallery of whatever) you're allowed to go back to the beginning, it can be your art gallery. And then people can just follow that feed so you don't have to worry about your art getting buried if people just want to follow your art

There's a setting you can turn on to warn and prevent you from posting until you add alt text. I love this. Especially since, like Twitter, you can't go back and edit a post

Forcing ALT text has the added bonus of leaving it last so I can double check tags and text in case I accidentally hit the post button before I'm ready

Twitch

There is art. And VTuber stuff. And life updates. Art/project updates. Lots of OC talk. Like I wish I could post more about Null considering how much stuff I've spoken about them on stream but freaking time! And energy.

YouTube

Used to do more Timelapses but stopped because laptop was not having fun with it. Now that I have a new computer it might be better!

Also has Twitch VODs because I want another place to back up VODs since local recordings take up a lot of space. And I can mark Chapters(/Moments?) timestamps to find stuff again.

Special thank you to those that made it all the way down here!

So what is the blog for now? Archiving, mainly, as I said at the beginning. I might link to my neocities page in maybe art updates or to pillowfort. And I might need a place to fall back to if the other sites don't last. I know bluesky and cohost are not much better/probably not better in other ways so I know that posting on them probably won't be good long term.

But that's why I'm working on the art archive site on the side. I'll always have a safe and controlled place where I can have all my art and details and stuff. It's gonna take a while and it's challenging but it's what I feel like I gotta do now.

I'm just so tired.

[tactician]

it's time for a reides update!!! this post is going to focus on reides the kingdra's generation 6 adventure!

first of all, you might be wondering why there's no post devoted to the ribbons of generation 5. like i mentioned briefly towards the end of my gen4 post, the gen5 pokemon games have no ribbons in them... not even one for entering the unovan hall of fame! thankfully, this weird lapse in the ribbon trend was relatively short-lived, as ribbons came back in earnest for generation 6! and so the grind continues...!

this generation of the pokemon games includes both the kalos AND hoenn regions. thanks to my friends and our shared memories of playing these games together, i have a whole lot of personal fondness for this generation - so i knew that i'd enjoy this segment of reides' journey. also, since reides hails from emerald version, it meant that he was going to have a bit of a homecoming.

of course, i gotta take a quick moment to mention my other ribbon master posts! they can all be found in my ribbon master tag or on my neocities blog.

now then, let's get started!!!

luckily, since i got my first file of y to the post-game and never replayed it, i was able to use playthrough from Way Back When in reides' ribbon quest. this saved a whole lot of time, of course! for those who don't know, gen6 of pokemon introduced a somewhat controversial decision. in an attempt to streamline the ribbon page, gamefreak consolidated all of the contest and battle tower ribbons into two fancy plaques. on one hand, this is kind of sad, as it meant that 48(!!!) ribbons were now just... 2. that meant for way less scrolling on the ribbon page. however, on the other hand, it's kind of cool, too, as the contest memory ribbon and the battle memory ribbon are both styled like plaques and are really, really gorgeous.

since reides managed to gather all of the relevant ribbons, he got two shiny gold plaques for his hard work. you can see those plaques in the bottom row of this picture, which i took upon his arrival in kalos.

it's worth noting that, in generations 6 to 8, the golden battle memory ribbon has a requirement of 8 battle tower-related ribbons. in these gens, if you have less than 8 battle tower ribbons, you get a silver plaque instead. a few months ago, however, gamefreak made a FANTASTIC decision and changed the golden battle memory ribbon's requirement to 7 ribbons! this was likely implemented to make up for the now-defunct gen4 wifi servers. it was great news for people who didn't have the means of connecting to the fan servers that i detailed in my gen4 post. regardless, i was still really happy to have the gold plaque at this part of my journey. i didn't regret my decision to take on the world ability ribbon in the slightest... even if the sight of a perfectly normal machamp now makes me tense up out of fear of dealing with a hacked no guard sheer cold user.

anyway, my first order of business was definitely opening up pokemon amie so i could FINALLY play with reides!

i was looking forward to this for such a long time!!! i immediately fed him a bunch of poke puffs and pet him a whole bunch. i would've done this even if i didn't have to do it to get a ribbon - but it turns out that maxing out your pokemon's affection in amie is, in fact, a requirement for one of the gen6 ribbons! namely, you need your pokemon to ADORE you for the best friends ribbon.

there's actually a way to grind for this ribbon so that you can get it pretty quickly! i'd feed reides pokepuffs until he was full, then i'd pet him until he started spawning music notes instead of hearts. at that point, i'd play three rounds of tile puzzle on easy mode so that i could get more pokepuffs, reset his appetite, and get my petting to spawn hearts again. each round of this puzzle game can be completed really quickly, so i figured it was the optimal difficulty for my purposes - but any minigame would definitely work! the tile puzzle game also gives you some cute little pictures of your party as you complete each puzzle, which i thought was a great added bonus! sometimes, additional pokemon would photobomb, too.

for maxing out reides' affection, i got a throne fit for royalty.

i then visited bonnie in lumiose city, where she was chillin over in prism tower. (apparently, she only shows up after you beat lumiose's gym leader - namely, her brother, clemont.) she was impressed with the bond that reides and i shared and we got the best friends ribbon.

we then scuttled on over to the pokemon league, which we challenged in order to get the ribbon for entering kalos' hall of fame. i'm still sad that we couldn't get one in unova, but i digress... maybe someday, be it in a remake or some sort of new adventure set in unova. (since we're going to unova for the upcoming indigo disc dlc, maybe it'll even be there!)

at any rate - i somehow forgot that kalos' league is absolutely amazing! each member of the elite four is so iconic, and they each have BEAUTIFULLY decorated rooms that reflect their respective personal styles very well. i had to take a photo of champion diantha's room; it was just so, so gorgeous. the stained glass flooring reminded me a lot of terapagos' terastal form! the place's aesthetics aside, reides was pretty much able to solo the league on his own... what a champ! even though he did most of the heavy lifting, my whole party (including this random gengar named gaspar that i got wonder traded way back when; he was in my party when i arrived so i decided that he could come along) got kalos champion ribbons.

it was then time to take on one of my favorite little mechanics introduced in the kalos games: super training! while ev training off wild encounters is my usual go-to nowadays, i really like this feature. back in the day, it pretty much introduced me to the concept of ev training, so i feel like it deserves a whole lot of my respect, haha. i had all of the courses unlocked thanks to my training in the past, but i still had to clear all 30 of them with reides. i got to work on that while i was doing some super training of my own - i.e. while i was walking on a treadmill. lmao.

eventually, reides had all 30 of the necessary medals for the training ribbon. i hopped in a cab to go see the character who'd give it to me and learnt that super training is a whole Thing in kalos; the term 's.t. meatheads' had me losing it.

though i put it off for as long as i could, it was finally time to face gen6's battle tower - the battle maison. thankfully, gamefreak realized that they went a little too wild with gen4's six battle tower-related ribbons and i only had to get two battle maison-related ribbons in gen6. the first of these ribbons would be from beating one of the normal battle modes (namely, emerging victorious against the chatelaine at battle #20 of it). the second one was for achieving a streak of 50 on one of the super battle modes, which would require beating the chatelaine at battle #50. i decided to take on the single battle mode for this ribbon master quest, which... may have been quite the choice. it was my first time taking the maison on, and i heard (both from friends and from various posts made by people online) that the single battle mode was the hardest one. you may be wondering why i opted to choose that mode, then. unfortunately, i don't really have an answer for that. I Just Did. HAHA. speaking more seriously, i'm generally more comfortable with battling one-on-one, so i opted to go with what was familiar to me versus what would be easier to me. as it turns out, the first battle maison ribbon (the skillful battler ribbon) was incredibly easy to get on reides. i used the same ol' team of albatross, origin and reides and yoinked it on my very first try. after breezing through it, i had one HELL of an ego. "gen4's tower was way worse," i told myself. "if my team got through that, they can get through anything." I WAS WRONG. AND THIS SMALL CHILD WAS RIGHT.

my streak in the super singles battle mode broke several times in the 30s; more times than ever before!!! my team was being hard-countered. even when i opted to replace reides with persana the suicune (you only need your ribbon master for battle 50; it's fine if you don't have them present in your party for the full streak), we were still having an incredibly hard time. i knew that i couldn't brute force my way through the maison if i wanted to get through gen6 in a timely manner. so i opted to try out a very, very popular little strategy for grinding wins in it.

this strategy involved none other than the cute steel bug known as... durant.

(fair warning: this part of my post is gonna get a little technical!)

wild durants typically have the swarm or hustle abilities. however, truant is available to durants as a hidden ability... and a truant durant is the absolute crux of this strategy.

truant is a strange little ability that makes it impossible for your pokemon to attack consecutively; your truant pokemon can attack on turn one but will then spend the entirety of turn two lazing around. this ability sounds like it'd be absolutely useless on a durant, right? it probably would be... if our awesome little bug didn't learn entrainment at level 44.

entrainment allows your durant to change its target's ability to match its own ability. this isn't permanent, of course - a pokemon who got its ability changed by entrainment gets its ability back to normal once it's switched out, or after the battle ends. but pokemon in the battle maison are very rarely switched out, so... you see where i'm going with this, surely!!!

the truant durant strategy basically relies on outspeeding your opponent and landing entrainment on them so as to pass the traunt ability to them. after doing that, you swap your durant out for another pokemon. it can't just be any pokemon for this strategy to work, though. you'd need one with the move protect, as well as a stats-boosting move, such as dragon dance or shell smash. by using protect on the turns that you expect your opponent to attack on and using your stats-booster on its traunt-afflicted turns, you can safely max out your pokemon's stats and proceed to sweep the entire enemy team. the general pattern is therefore as follows:

your durant uses entrainment, giving the opponent traunt

you swap to your stats-boosting pokemon*

your stats-booster uses protect, avoiding damage from the opponent

your stats-booster uses its stats-boosting move*

repeat 3 and 4 until your stats-boosting pokemon has maxed out stats

SWEEP!

* = your pokemon takes no damage, as it is a traunt turn for your opponent.

please note that this order shifts a bit if your durant gets knocked out on turn one! if it does, you get a free swap *into* a traunt turn, so your stats-boosting pokemon doesn't need to start off with protect and can get right to boostin'.

in order to get a traunt durant, i knew that i'd have to use sweet scent in order to spawn horde encounters. within hordes, pokemon have a small chance of having their hidden ability. however... i also needed that durant to have a speed boosting nature so that it could outspeed whatever enemies it faced. ideally, i wanted a jolly one; one that would have reduced special attack for increased speed. i COULD have simply caught a small army of truant durants, but i was wary of testing my luck like that and decided to test it in another way that was, hopefully, less time consuming. basically... i hatched ralts eggs until i got a jolly one with synchronize. with this ralts leading my party, the pokemon that i encountered had a 50% chance of being jolly natured, themselves - even while the ralts was fainted. i then grabbed my sweet scent user - a cute little spritzee - and got to challenging hordes of durants. after catching 3 truant ones, i finally managed to get my hands on a jolly natured durant with the traunt ability. i named her 'donatella.'

then came the matter of my stats-boosting sweeper pokemon. i went through my boxes and noticed that i had a ton of leftover pokemon from various breeding projects during my y playthrough. (just as this gen opened my eyes to ev training, it also opened by eyes to iv breeding!) i saw that i had an adamant dratini with perfect ivs, as well as its hidden ability. i knew that dragonite's hidden ability, multiscale, would give it some tankiness in the battle maison (it reduces the damage that the pokemon takes when its hp is full), and i also knew that dragonite could learn dragon dance (a move that increases both speed and attack) as well. i decided that it was finally this little dratini's time to shine after spending years and years in my pc. i named her 'venus.'

finally, there was the matter of my third pokemon. using one of my already-trained pokemon was definitely an option, but i saw a LOT of people online talking about how cloysters with the skill link ability can easily hard-counter the super single battle chatelaine's team. to employ strategy, you give your cloyster a focus sash and have it use shell smash on the first turn of the battle. the focus sash keeps your cloyster safe from being ohko'd on that first turn, and, after getting the shell smash buffs, it can outspeed most of the battle chatelaine's team. skill link allows cloyster to land the MAX NUMBER!!!! of hits for multistrike moves, giving its icicle spear attack a whole lot of power - enough power to k.o. the chatelaine's tornadus and thundurus. while the chatelaine's choice scarf-wielding landorus potentially poses a problem (as it may outspeed your cloyster and potentially finish off the last of its hp), you can easily circumvent this by using ice shard on it, instead.

this little strategy works consistently, so i figured i'd raise a skill link cloyster, myself... just to be safe. while trying to hatch a jolly ralts with synchronize, i actually hatched an adamant one with synchronize, too - so i used him for my little shellder hunt. i fished a suitable shellder up from the sea in no time at all and named her 'applause.' here is a picture of my new battle maison warriors, all ready for the training grind:

i ev trained this trio of pokemon by giving them power items (which boost the amount of evs that you get per battle) and by taking on hordes via sweet scent. since i had the same ev build in mind for all three of them AND since gen6 introduced the party-wide exp share, i was able to ev train them all at once. i took out weepinbells on route 19 for attack evs, wingulls on route 8 for speed evs, and hoppips on route 7 for special defense evs. you can make this process SUPER fast if you use a high-levelled pokemon with earthquake or surf, as you can take out all 5 members of the horde with one use of the move!

once everyone was all ev trained, i levelled them up by repeatedly challenging cafe le wow in lumoise city while keeping the party-wide exp share on. it was during this training-fest that reides finally hit level 100, too!

in the end, this was my battle maison team:

donatella the durant (choice scarf) ability: truant nature: jolly evs: 252 atk, 252 speed, 4 sp. defense - entrainment - toxic - x-scissor - iron head

venus the dragonite (lum berry) ability: multiscale nature: adamant evs: 252 atk, 252 speed, 4 sp. defense - earthquake - fire punch - dragon dance - protect

applause the cloyster (focus sash) ability: skill link nature: adamant evs: 252 atk, 252 speed, 4 sp. defense - shell smash - icicle spear - ice shard (for landorus) - protect

this team worked like a dream for the whole maison, and i was able to get my streak of 50 wins on my very first attempt with it.

admittedly, i kept applause the cloyster in my pc until the final battle, during which i swapped donatella the durant out for her and slotted reides in, as well - but i was just so relieved to maintain an unbroken streak. there were a few thorny situations, so i don't think this team is entirely unbeatable or anything of the sort, but i definitely recommend the truant durant strategy if you're struggling with the maison. it felt SOOOO great to finally get through it... i did NOT expect it to be as difficult as it was.

also, in hindsight, i could have likely sped this process up a whole lot more if i followed donatella up with applause the cloyster rather than venus the dragonite. i seriously underestimated skill link; that thing lets icicle spear hit like a TRUCK! furthermore, venus needed to use dragon dance 6 times to max out her attack and speed stats, whereas applause's shell smash would only need 3. so... you know. i do think that dragonite offered better coverage, at the very least, so all's well that ends well, i guess. while it may have taken longer to clear the maison with venus, i'm really happy that i was able to raise her properly. that alone is a huge reward, since i LOVE dragonite. more pals sharing in reides' ribbon master journey is always a good thing, too, right?

once i got those final two ribbons, reides' time in kalos reached its end. before leaving, i randomly decided to raise a kangaskhan, because i remembered how cute mega kangaskhan was and wanted one for myself. (shoutout to my friend, rachel, who traded me a kangaskhan with awesome ivs Way Back When and made it super easy for me to raise one of my own!) i named this new kangaskhan 'chips,' since i was snacking on some really delicious sour cream and onion chips at the time, and decided that she'd accompany reides on his adventure, too. (...along with her little baby, of course. that goes without saying!)

with kalos' ribbons handled, it was time for reides' homecoming! i plopped him back into pokemon bank and then booted up my copy of omega ruby. he was all ready to go home to hoenn. hilariously enough, i didn't have a file in the post-game for omega ruby. if this ribbon master challenge has taught me anything, it's that i have a shocking amount of pokemon games that i drifted from without ever completing. fake fan alert. (I'M KIDDING!!!!!) but, anyway... i only had to wrap up some wild plot cover-legendary-related business and nab my 8th badge, so it wasn't like i had to replay the entire game. i really enjoyed how everything played out, and it was also a treat to meet wallace again. he's one of my fav pokemon characters ever, and his oras redesign is absolutely incredible!

immediately after getting my 8th badge, i slotted reides into my team and rushed on over to the pokemon league. since my alpha sapphire file is currently devoted to my shiny badge quest (which will hopefully be a post of its own, someday!), it was actually my very first time taking on the pokemon league in the oras games. not gonna lie, i had low expectations, as i figured it'd be a simple 1:1 reskin of the rse league rooms - but it kind of took my breath away.

like the kalos league, the revamped hoenn league was utterly gorgeous. i tore through it with my team until we eventually faced the LEGENDARY steven stone. it was reides' first time facing him as a champion, as, in emerald, wallace was champion, instead. since he was a level 5 horsea while the rest of my team faced wallace in emerald, i gave him a shot at a hoenn champion battle and let him take steven on.

once reides single-handedly took down steven, my team entered the hoenn hall of fame. even though reides already had a hall of fame ribbon from hoenn, he actually got a second one for entering the oras one!

after weeping openly at omega ruby's beautiful credits, we then headed to lilycove city. once there, we took a bit of a break from the ribbon grind and paid a visit to the cove lily motel. it turns out that some small indie company called gamefreak had just checked in. i talked to the game director, who was amazed upon seeing reides. since reides was from emerald version, he noted just how far he had come and gave us the time travel award. as lovely as this award is (you can even put it up in your secret base!), it's worth noting that the art featured on it is inexplicably shiny locked?!?! so reides had his normal kingdra colouration in mine! it's still a beautiful award, though, so i edited it for the purposes of this post!

i put the award up in my secret base and focused on a much-anticipated part of reides' ribbon master quest: the hoenn contests (part two)! the contests on oras are similar to the ones in rse - however, instead of giving ribbons for each and every contest win, the oras contests give a brand new ribbon for each *master* contest win. this meant that reides needed to take on the master contests for each of the 5 contest categories (the same ol' cool, beautiful, cute, clever/smart, and tough ones). like i mentioned all the way back in my gen3 post, oras also took the sheen limitation away, so i was finally able to max out reides' contest stats. since his stats were already really good, i didn't have to feed him too many pokeblocks for him to have the perfect contest spread.

i was so proud of him for finally having everything maxed out!! it's truly what he deserves. the contests themselves were also pretty easy. i'm not sure if it was necessary or if having perfect contest stats meant that they hit a cap, but i went and picked up the red, blue, pink, yellow, and green scarves from the pokemon fanclub in slateport and put them on reides just in case. also, while i couldn't use the amazing rest + snore combination of rse fame, i used the double team + secret power one (which i learnt about thanks to this post on the ribbons subreddit). my general strategy was:

turn 1: double team for the 1st pumped-up star.

turn 2: double team for the 2nd pumped-up star.

turn 3: secret power! (big boost thanks to being pumped up!)

turn 4: double team for the 3rd pumped-up star.

turn 5: secret power! (for yet another big boost thanks to being pumped up!)

the audience wasn't too pleased about the repeated double team on turn 2, but that didn't matter, as reides was able to win each and every contest category on his first attempt.

since he got the 5 ribbons for winning each contest category at its master rank, reides also got the contest star ribbon as an added bonus!

this was the last ribbon that i needed in gen6, which meant that reides' time in hoenn had come to an end. after wandering around the region a bit, peeking into various friends' secret bases and seeing the sights... it was time to pack our bags once more and gear up for the next part of reides' adventure.

gen7 has even less ribbons than gen6, but i never thought that the battle maison would end up being such a big challenge in gen6 - so who knows how gen7 will go?! (...i do, actually, because i was slightly evil and grinded out gen7's ribbons before making this post. sorry. i won't spoil it, though.) regardless, i hope you enjoyed reading about reides' gen6 journey!

[woolieshubris]

hii alice! i'm very slowly trying to teach myself html/css by making a neocities, (what i have so far can be seen here, it's not much i know) and i was just wondering if you had any useful tips/resources? :0 your neocities is very cool (i was reminded by that other person that asked about it yesterday) so i thought i would ask <3 i'm already using mozilla webdocs and w3schools, but do you have any other recommendations?

i don't really know a lot about html/css yet, (i don't have a ton of coding experience, most of what i've done has been in python) and so i don't really know how html/css should be "structured", if that makes sense.

any help or pointers are appreciated! ty in advance <3 peace

Your neocities looks great! Especially for a beginner!

Things to look into:

For learning, I'd recommend learning more about semantic design- w3schools

Also, do some studying up on the box model! this website I found seems to have a lot of good information- box model

I'd also look into CSS classes- w3schools

Also, the fastest way for you to learn coding is to... look at other people's code! Go onto neocities, scroll till you see a page you like, and then inspect element the shit out of it >:3c Even if it doesn't make sense at first to you, looking at a lot of code can help you learn new ways of doing things!

blogs u should take a look at: Drakul78, moonview, twelvemen, and nyaa!

OK so for code analysis:

Overall: I like your website a lot! It's simple, it's cute, and it's functional. These are tips for when you want to "upgrade" your site, but as is, it works great :3c

I like to avoid putting traits other than background onto "body", since it severely limits what you can do with your website. (If you wanted to have multiple boxes on screen, for example, you can't do that...)

Also, the contrast between the background and the text is a little too low for my liking, but your text is nice and large so it's not too much of an issue. If you are going to make your text smaller though, you'll need to change those colors.

You already are using semantic design elements in your website, which is really good! Also, using style.css instead of putting it into the page itself is also really good practice.

Ideas for the future:

This is very subjective, but I feel like you are using your website like someone might use a caard. It's pretty, but each page is static, and links to another static page! You can merge a lot of this information into your index- such as credits/links :3c

FONTS! FONTS! FONTS! there are so many beautiful fonts in this world, and with google fonts, you can easily apply them all to your website!! ( •̀ ω •́ )✧ google fonts

also, since you mentioned you were a coder- I'd recommend setting up a way for you to use vscode to edit your page! One of my friends wrote some git code for me that makes it so I can edit my page without making a billion changes to it in quick succession. I'll ask them if I can share it with you if that would interest you, and I could make a separate post on my visual studio code layout if you are curious :3c

[acetaminophriends]

i saw ur laincat on ur neocities page, i thought it was really good :D

Thankyou ^_^ i was more into drawing anthros at that time... i made four+ sonas in a year and most of my art was really colorful. Two catyenas, a crawfish (or was it shrimp?) cat and another miscellaneous catthing. I guess cats resonate with me LOL but it's hard to blend it with a hyena and not just make it look like a dog... i really love hyenas as well, i like character designs with the neck emphasized and i guess hyenas hit that same spot for me. Also just kinda big mood. While we're on it i confess one of my favorite bugs is the mosquito, and i do live in a mosquito haven so I'm not unaware of the suffering they impose LOL

I drew a mosquito girl named Morgan tho she didn't get a lot of attention... the composition probably could have been better. Also wish i put those spiky hairs on her legs that would have looked cool.

[bloodmoths-archive]

Your neocities page is amazing! Sorry if this is a silly question, but do you have any tips? I want to make one of my own but it's a bit daunting to me for some reason

thank you so much! :D it means a lot to me that you checked it out! ❤

not a silly question at all. coding your own site really can be daunting, especially if you're only familiar with html basics, i tend to assume most "veteran" tumblr users are at least a little familiar tweaking html/css. but it's 10x more rewarding once you get the hang of it.

but, assuming you haven't looked at the internals of neocities yet, it's 100% coding. neocities reads the site data from files that you, the host/webmaster, have to manually edit. there's no built-in site builder like you'd see with carrd or other site hosts (a lot of those hosts only offer coding as a paid feature). the good news is, resources for html/css learning are abundant and everyone who knows about it is more than willing to share tips & help other people learn.

that being said, for beginners or anyone re-learning it, my advice would be not to try to build your site from the ground up, but to use a pre-built layout and tweak it to your liking to familiarize yourself with how things work.

another thing is, neocities is somewhere most people use as a "hub" for their own creations, thoughts, etc. you'd be hard-pressed to find a neocities that doesn't have an art gallery or some variant of a journal/diary. some people host information on their OCs, which is really cool. i've seen others use it as a log for things they collect, games they've played. or shrines to their favorite media/comfort characters/FOs, etc. of course, this is just a handful of examples of what many people use the site for.

sadgrl.online is one of the first places I'd recommend when it comes to resources and guides for neocities. they actually have their own layout builder! their HTML cheat sheet is also very helpful and simple and has tidbits of coding that explain what they're for.

when it comes to the coding process itself, I personally love the program Brackets (or its in-browser variant) - it shows you what your webpage looks like while you're editing (as opposed to edit code, save, refresh page in a separate tab, repeat.) i'd even say this program is a must with people new to site-building.

if you need help with anything specific, feel free to message me (preferably on discord, if you have it!) because there's too much to really go through in a single post 😖

here's another post to check out

[ink-flavored]

Kinktober2023 Day 11: Blood Kink

banner art by @/auroblaze

Fountain of Life contains: masturbation, fingering, finger sucking, masochism, cis/trans, angel/demon dysphoria warning: Pride is a trans man whose genitals are described with the following terms: folds, clit. Please use discretion if these words will trigger any dysphoria. Kinktober2023 Prompt List & Neocities Page Tips are appreciated!

Justice expertly julienned another carrot, metal of the blade flashing in his hand. He scraped the thinly sliced vegetables into a bowl, grabbed another whole carrot, and sliced it in half to begin again. Watching him from across the counter, close enough to reach out and touch, Pride sighed wistfully.

Even though he was banned from making meals for both of them, he made the effort to hover around while Justice cooked. Whether that meant gathering ingredients, giving unwanted advice, or simply standing around so Justice would have to acknowledge him at some point, Pride was there. He’d be eating half this dish, after all, so frankly he should be allowed to give some input!

Opposed to throwing together whatever happened to be in the fridge and hoping it was edible, Justice followed recipes to the letter. He kept the cookbook open on the counter even if he’d made the dish a hundred times, moving with practiced efficiency. Most of the time, Pride was distracted watching him work��especially when he got out the knives.

He couldn’t help himself, really. Justice was able to cut things quickly into evenly shaped chunks, and he made it look easy. Vegetable chopping prowess wasn’t the reason Pride had to stop and stare, though. Justice had a control, rarely utilized, that made him want to claw the walls. The way he gripped the handle, the confidence of putting his hand so close to the knife, how he slid his fingers down the flat of the blade to nudge any extras off. Pride swallowed hard.

“Are you going to help,” Justice asked, “or stand there?”

“Stand here,” he replied.

Justice glanced up from his carrots to eye him disapprovingly. Pride smiled back. Nothing would change his mind: watching Justice handle a knife was the most important thing he could be doing in the world.

“How many of these do you need?” Pride asked.

“This is the last one,” Justice said, “but then I have to dice the tomatoes.”

“Cool…”

He slid the first julienned half of the carrot into the bowl and grabbed the second. “You’re entertained by the strangest things.”

“Sure, ‘entertained.’”

“What would you call it, then?”

Pride tapped his cheek, pretending to think. “I guess I’d call it being ‘deeply aroused’ by—”

“Argh!”

The knife fell with a clatter onto the cutting board. Justice jumped back, clutching his fingers. Golden ichor stained the blade, along with the few slices of carrot he’d managed to chop.

“What happened?” Pride asked.

“Cut myself.” Justice rushed to the sink. “Can you get rid of those, please?”

“Sure, yeah.”

Pride reached across the counter and scooped up the sullied carrots. The ichor glimmered with power, radiating beauty. This was an angel’s blood—Justice’s blood. The inside of him was as bright as the outside, so pure his veins ran gold. Pride couldn’t bring himself to throw it away.

The ichor slid down the sides of thinly sliced carrots, threatening to drip onto the counter. Not thinking at all, he stuck them in his mouth.

It burned. As if he’d taken a bite of the sun itself, his mouth burned, rejecting the holy substance between his teeth. Down to his fundamental essence, his body revolted against it, setting every nerve on fire in an effort to get him to stop.

Pride didn’t stop. Through the pain, he admired the taste of the ichor—the taste of Justice. Somehow, it tasted like comfort. It was a warm hug. It was peace, one of the building-blocks of eternal rest. Heaven. It seared his tongue and gave him hope. Pride didn’t know what to do other than suck on them a little to—

“What are you doing?”

Pride jerked up. Completely baffled, Justice gawked from the sink. He clutched a paper towel around his sliced fingers, gold bleeding through the thin material.

“Getting rid of ‘em,” Pride answered, muffled by the carrots still in his mouth,

“I meant throw them in the trash,” Justice said. “Not eat them.”

“Too late now.”

Pride chomped down on the reject carrots, and Justice cringed the whole time. The ichor burned all the way down, fire racing down his throat. He shivered.

“Are you… okay?” Justice asked.

“You’re one who’s bleeding.”

“And I felt your pain. That’s technically a holy substance, Pride, do you need—”

“I’m fine.” It wasn’t a lie, he felt more than fine. “It’s okay, I—I liked it.”

Too shocked to reply, Justice sputtered at him, but he wasn’t paying attention. Pride circled the counter, came up to him, and took his hands.

“Can I,” he asked, “see it, for a minute?”

“See this?” Justice confirmed, raising his injured hand.

Pride nodded, swallowing thickly. He must have looked as desperate as he felt, because Justice unwrapped his hand and held it out for him. Two cuts, one on his index and middle finger, gushed shimmering gold ichor. It smeared over his skin, fingers slightly curled. He almost whined.

“Pride?” Justice asked, voice softening.

“Don’t—Don’t fuckin’ judge me for this,” Pride breathed. He picked up the hand and pointed the fingers towards his mouth. “C-can I…?”

It was clear in his eyes that he didn’t understand why, but Justice nodded. Pathetically grateful, Pride slid his fingers onto his tongue.

The ichor burned, but this time he moaned. It scorched his gums and made his teeth rattle, but the gentle aftertaste made all the pain worth it. Pride lapped up more, aching for the fiery calm. Dizzy from pain and pleasure alike, he shoved a hand down his pants, pushing past his wet folds to rub his clit.

“O-oh, okay,” Justice said, standing there with a dirty paper towel and an addled expression.

“Msorry,” Pride mumbled, between his whimpers. He didn’t know why he apologized. The comforting flavor of the ichor made him weak.

“No, no, if this is what you need, I’ll—I guess I’m already helping.”

Pride laughed around his hand, and moaned when Justice stroked his tongue. He sucked more ichor out of the tiny wounds, and Justice let him, the cause of both his aches. Already, his mouth felt raw, burned over and over. He didn’t stop, didn’t even think about stopping, sucking and licking and rubbing himself in frantic circles.

As much as he loved it, Pride hated it too. If the ichor had been painful and nothing else, he might have been able to salvage some dignity, but the softness was what brought him back. The tenderness wrapped around his chest and squeezed him tight, until he wanted to explode. Such a holy thing wasn’t meant for him, and he knew it. That was why he couldn’t get enough.

Justice stroked the inside of his mouth, bleeding all over it, and he nearly sobbed. The ichor coated his tongue, his teeth, his throat, setting it all on fire then kissing him with blessings he didn’t deserve. Pride bucked into his own hand, too overwhelmed to keep an even pace. His head spun with countless emotions, and then he really did sob, a single tear racing down his cheek.

“Oh, Pride, no,” Justice murmured, kissing his forehead. “I’m here, I’m right here.”

Pride keened for him, taking his fingers as far back as he could. He knew Justice was here for him, protected him, loved him, bled for him, and every mechanism of creation said he wasn’t supposed to. Pride was never meant to taste divinity again, so thoroughly barred from forgiveness that anything holy burned him alive. But Justice gave him anything and everything he could, just because he wanted it. Pride choked and whined and sucked and fucked his hand, because he knew this was the best he’d ever have. Sucking the blood out of an angel was as close to Heaven as he’d ever get again.

Seeing his dissolved state, Justice reached down to help in a second way. He joined Pride’s hand against his clit, rubbing him firmly. He moaned so loud, so needy, not even the fingers in his mouth could muffle it. The burn of the ichor faded in the face of it, replaced by a hot bliss. Pride jerked his hips against them both, racing closer to his finish every second. All he could taste was fire, all he could do was want it, all he could see was Justice, watching him with fond eyes.

“Love you,” Pride mumbled through his hand.

“I love you too,” Justice said. He still didn’t know what was happening, Pride could tell, but that didn’t matter. Justice loved him.

His orgasm didn’t happen at once. Instead, it washed over him like a wave. Pride arched against the counter, whimpering softly, and Justice guided him through it. He stroked his clit until the very end, when Pride went limp, and dropped his mouth. Justice took his fingers back, slimy with saliva.

“Well, I’m not bleeding anymore,” he announced.

Pride managed a dizzy laugh, mouth stinging. He slouched against the counter, staring off into space, for minutes.

At some point, Justice brought him a glass of water. “Go rest,” he said. “I’ll come get you when dinner’s ready.”

“’Kay,” Pride mumbled.

He waddled out of the kitchen, and collapsed on the couch. Later, they ate there together, and Justice had two small bandages around his fingers.

[lostcryptids]

have u ever thought about making ur own website.. i think u would rock a diy website so hard.!! i say this bc i got followed on neocities by someone whose site has a tubi horror recommendation page & a film log (she loved wonka) & i was like 'ah isabel..'

hhe thank you!!! that sounds like a lot of fun : D i think i would liek to one day but i might lose motivation. i actually used to make tons of free website with my friends back in middle school on those free website makers lol so i was kinda very into this type of thing. that sounds so cool toooooo. love that

[monty-glasses-roxy]

i'm all ears for the book idea homie

You would not believe the confusion of this ask because I completely forgot about that post lmao

Anyway, yeah I thought it would be cool if we, as the fnaf community, made our own fnaf short story series for funsies. I was thinking without considering how to do it, so in my head I was saying it would be dope as hell if a bunch of us writers and artists got together and did a little series of spooky horror story fnaf books that followed the same format as the actual books, but with more art stuff for the artists to join in and... better writing in a lot of cases lmao. I was thinking of physical books at the time like how I've seen some some of those big community zines that raise money for charity but I have no idea how to do that so...

Now that it's not stupid in the morning before I've slept, the easiest way to do something like this I guess would to like... make a PDF maybe? Three stories per 'issue' I guess and release it for free of course! (Unless someone knows how to make 'pay what you want' with any money gained going to a good charity? I dunno. This would just make it optionally free) Someone could do epilogues for each one, so one long story over however many we make, which could be fun.

Could put it on a Neocities (which is a free website thingo that's also free to view) or something too. I dunno, it could be fun though! One collaborative project, linking together writers from different corners of the overall fnaf fandom to do what the source material is doing but better... that'd be pretty fucking cool ngl

The overall idea of what's actually getting written and stuff is where I'd pobably lose people though. The idea is basically 'do what the books are trying to do but better', as in... 'expand on the fnaf universe in short, fnaf themed stories' and not 'Blorbo Adventures: The Twink Robots Kiss' kind of stuff. So like... new animatronics, new attractions, new Fazbear themed horrors, people dying or whatever, possessed robots, terrible business decisions, elaborate coverups and... I dunno I've not read that many lmao but you get what I mean. Basically, do what you want, go crazy, just don't write your Canon Blorbos as you normally would if you were posting on Ao3.

I suppose it's like... Fazbear themed original fiction? Kind of? It could include re-imaginings of stuff of course, since that's part of what's in these books to begin with, but I still think it's probably not fan community oriented enough to ever see the light of day, ya know? Would be really fucking cool though!

Could do an interest check on it I suppose? How many people hate the books so much or want to write general spooky stories enough to join a poject like this? I dunno. If this post gets enough traction, I'll do a proper interest check and we'll see about it.

Also if none of this makes sense, you can for sure ask for clarification my brain is... not braining today :(

[dgdraws]

My art year in review!

I learned so much this year and made a ton of cool stuff! These are my favorites from each month, but it was so hard to choose. A lot of stuff didn't even get posted--I'll be sure to at least post the ones that made it to this list!

It's amazing to see how much I've changed and learned over this year, and to see the things that are emerging as part of "my style."

Here's to another year of delight, creation, connection and fun!

Some monthly reflections beneath the cut, but here's the highlights:

I participated in 3 art challenges, Artfight, OC-tober and Huevember.

I made fanart for the first time!

I created a piece I conceived of before I started drawing

Made some big breakthroughs in techniques and skills in April, July and November

January: My first branch into full character design, Rodd is the culmination of training on Hero Forge renders to make dnd portraits! I was doing this cool thing with neon rim lighting, I should bring that back!

February: I saw a piece on here with this amazing glowing effect, so I color picked it and experimented to figure out what relationship between the colors was making it do that! The answer was saturation. This rose is meant to be glowing from within, and I think I did a good job for my knowledge level at the time! As Chuck Tingle would tell us, it's beautiful because only I could have made it in that moment on the timeline.

March: I spent a million years on every detail of this one, it has at least 5 clipping overlay/saturation layers for lighting, multiple line work groups and I want to rework that background but! I never felt more accomplished than I did when I finished this one. I learned a lot, especially about things I could skip or simplify. And the symbolism really pops off ngl

April: I read Gideon the Ninth for the first time this month and I immediately needed to draw Jeannemary Chatur, Cavalier of the Fourth House, the worst teen to do it. She's the first fanart I ever made and posted! I also discovered a new pen tool with this one, which CHANGED THE GAME.

May: This one is an idea I had written down before I ever picked up the tablet and stylus. I thought I might commission someone to make it, the image of it came to me so clearly during our VTM session I just had to make it real somehow. Well I did it! This is one I will come back to redraw in like 5 years bc I love the concept so much. Also rife with symbolism and inside nods to the Low Kings.

June: I made a bunch of ref sheets in the run-up to Artfight in July. Caleb hadn't even been in my plans to upload, but I had time and inspiration! I will be uploading this and a few more of him <3

July: This is one of my faves from Artfight! This character is Blueberry, by way of OrchidEatsBread on artfight. I have still never played... rainworld? But I love me a slug cat. In July I drew a TON of people, it really drilled anatomy basics into me and how to get clothes looking like actual clothes a bit more. Also solidified some things I would consider "my style" at the moment, like no irises, and my approach to noses and mouths and fingers!

August: Another fanart for the Locked Tomb series, I never posted this!!! Will be rectifying that soon.

September: I got really into javascript and css this month, and I made this to be a landing page image on my neocities website XD I'll get back around to that eventually...

October: At the last minute, I discovered OC-tober and the prompts from @/bweirdart, a worthy follow up to the rush of Artfight two months previous. I developed so much stuff for the Low Kings, including this drawing/character, Amayah/Girl-Z, who has been a figment of my pintrest board for 2+ years.

Huevember: Chasing that OC-tober high, I found Huevember! I did not expect to actually do every day, but it proved to be an amazing exercise! I learned so, so much about color, discovered amazing new brushes and techniques and found I really enjoy working in those one day capsules! I loved a lot of the stuff that came out of this month, including my highest note post ever!!!, but this one is still my phone background and I'm maybe developing an OC world around it. We'll see what happens in 2024.

December: I got hit HARD with the writing bug this month, so this was my only choice for this month but I WOULDA CHOSEN IT ANYWAY. I unlocked something here that I'm really excited to visit again, in fact I'm working on a companion piece rn! This is also fanart btw, prepare for me to get even weirder about this guy in the coming months.

If you've read this far, thank you so much! I have so much fun writing these little reflections and making my posts on here.

xoxo, wren

[neversetyoufree]

Heyo, I want you guys' feedback for something important!

Tumblr eating my post earlier got me thinking, and given the sheer amount of writing I've done on this blog, it would probably be a good idea to start backing up my meta somewhere that won't randomly make some posts (or even whole blogs) disappear out of nowhere. So:

I'm hypothetically down for any of these (or any combination thereof).

A few notes:

For those unfamiliar with Pillowfort, it does require either an invitation link or a $5 payment to join. I'm happy to send invite links, but this might be a limiter

If I start reposting (more) on Pillowfort, it'll probably be on my main grassbreads account. I already have a handful of VnC posts on there, including some that are reposts from this blog.

Please only vote for making my own website if you think you (or anyone else) would actually, like, visit it. It's a cool idea in theory, but I don't think it's worth the effort of making it if I'm the only one that ever goes there 😔.

[psywebcomic]

ahhh so glad i found your comic it's so cool and the art is wonderful 😍 i was wondering, if i may ask, if you have any tips for getting started on a webcomic? i've had ideas floating around for years but i've never seemed to be able to get started 😭

thank you so much!! we're so glad you're enjoying it!!! :D

the rest of the answer is under the cut 'cuz it got long 😳

okay so like.. we are not very wise with this stuff, we are really just starting out ourselves. i recommend going online and seeing what other people with more experience have to say, but here's just a few things that i've learned through this process so far:

something that i think really helps is getting your friends invested so they can motivate you. Psy was just an idea spinning around in Juice's mind for a few months before I was like DUDE you need to make this because I need to see it, so I started helping him make it. that's the thing is this comic would be nothing without teamwork, so I don't know what to say to someone making a comic on their own 😔

but definitely getting people you talk to a lot invested in your story early on does a lot. our best friend Bar is a huge reason why this comic exists, bc they care about the story as much as we do. you gotta have someone to get excited about ur comic with you!!!

another thing: for us, we are purely making this comic for ourselves, and we went into it with the idea in our heads that us and our friend would be the only people reading the comic and being fine with that. make ur comic for yourself and the people who are already with you first and foremost and don't worry about a vague faceless audience's perception. that's my advice. that mindset helps us get through so much during this process lol

sorry i don't really have any practical tips or anything cause like we really do not know what we are doing either. we've already learned so so much just with these first few chapters and we still have a looooooong way to go.

also i personally recommend hosting on your own website. you can do that for free with neocities, like we did! you can even use the same template! if you don't know how to code, they have lots of tutorials on there. i've been teaching myself to code a little bit for this thing, and it's so so worth it. (it is probably better for visibility to host ur comic on a site like tapas or webtoons, but honestly we don't really want the visibility that badly... we just want to tell a story to ourselves and our friends... that's all up to you! and even if you do host it on one of those websites, it's good to have a mirror of it on your own website for safety)

ok that's all i have to say, juice has a few more things to add so i'll let it do that

-cat

so something ive really needed to come over to even actually make this comic was to get my ideas out instead of letting them ferment in my mindspace. ive had this idea for a while now, but didnt make anything of it cause i had this desire to make sure i have every detail before starting, but if i did that, i would've never started it!! thats my only input like if ur the type to do this, dont let the perfectionist in u stop u from completing shit. there will be so many mistakes. u will want to go back to change them. just keep going forward :)

-juice