#and can make an impact on someone else

[squidmaid]

sometimes I really MISS being young and feeling passionate about things like. I used to be so into writing and drawing and all these sorts of things and i could make myself work so much harder at them and nowadays I’m like. I would be content to be content at this point? like idk what I feel PASSIONATE about anymore I just aim to be comfortable but also sometimes that doesn’t feel like it’s enough. I miss that spark.

[abyssruler]

no thoughts. just zhongli’s territorial instincts rising up after you return from fontaine stinking of another dragon’s scent. and neuvillette nuzzling his face in your neck to scent you every time you have to leave for liyue.

[chirpsythismorning]

What they're saying is s5 is going to have Hawkins High School as one of the locations for the plot. What I'm hearing is jealous Mike opportunities...

[trans-cuchulainn]

had a really interesting convo yesterday about ethics and whether intent or results matters (eg if you tried to make an ethical purchasing choice but the business was actually exploitative as hell, does that "count") and very much came to the conclusion that sure, if you're concerned with your personal immortal soul, as a christian might be, then intention counts. but if what you're focused on is your impact on the world, then intention means nothing if the actions have negative results, right? (that doesn't mean you're to blame for them! you didn't know! but you also don't get "ethics points" for trying, you know?)

and this also got me thinking about the whole christian idea that sinful thoughts are as bad as sinful actions because. they're just not imo. maybe for the sake of your Immortal Soul they are points against you, if that's your jam. but in terms of putting good into the world, in terms of your impact on other people, the ONLY thing that matters is what you choose to do with those thoughts. there is no way that "was kind to someone who was pissing me off, for the sake of community harmony" or "helped an acquaintance with a task even though I felt resentful about the time spent doing that" is a Bad Thing for the world

and it made me wonder how much purity culture and thought policing is rooted in (mostly evangelical) cultural christianity and this idea that ethical choices are an individual thing because what matters is the impact of them on YOUR soul and not, you know, things we do because of what we owe the world around us / because of love for others / because a world where people are trying to put good into it is a hell of a lot nicer to live in than one where people are only worried about themselves

i grew up evangelical but like. fairly mild evangelical and even though there wasn't a big focus on hell and stuff, i definitely fixated on imperfect thoughts and behaviours that were putting absolutely no harm into the world, rather than focusing on what i could do to put good into it, and that individualistic vs outward-focused approach to morality has been something i've grappled with a lot as an adult. but i never really thought about it as simply as this and really that's what it boils down to. are you making the ethical choice because you're trying to put good in the world, or because it would make you a "good person" to do so? because the answer to that 100% defines whether it's the thought or the result that counts

[kyouka-supremacy]

Like technically I know chuuaku as a ship has a great angst potential too. Not to me though that ship is sugar spice and everything nice

[galezellybelly]

my friend has a pinterest board for me and it has very sweet but also very silly things on it and it makes me go "🥹"

[misclogarts]

why was citrus so popular it's ... there's better yuri out there 😭

[geospiral]

Moran doodle. Shout out to girls who are constantly contemplating their own mortality

[aroacettorney]

"🤓 ackshually, ludger is more likely to think of casey as his equal rather than his LI."

[age-of-moonknight]

“Under the Same Moon,” Vengeance of the Moon Knight (Vol. 2/2024), #6.

Writer: Jed MacKay; Penciler and Inker: Devmalya Pramanik; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit

[pa-pa-plasma]

one of the things that will always destroy me is people believing that good story = darker/more mature/more sexual. this belief has ruined so many stories that could have been amazing & has prevented almost everyone from enjoying other really good stories simply because the age range it's aimed at is one they believe can't have complex themes, characters, plot, etc etc. they don't believe they can be moved by something a publisher or studio decided is for kids & so write it off without even thinking about it. biggest curse of being a writer who actually loves stories & telling them is that literally no one else cares in the most pessimistic, higher-than-thou, capitalism brainrot way you can imagine. & it's all automatic. because that's just what you're taught.

[frogisakai]

Something something marcy watches anne and sasha's life through a screen now that she moved. How, in marcy's mind they're so much closer and she's happy for them, she really is, but she'd be lying if she said she didn't feel an itch of being sidelined. She shouldn't, she tries to reason with herself, because she knows they love her so very much, but there's a pit stuck somewhere in her heart whenever she sees a picture of them neslted close, wide eyed and beaming even if its once in a blue moon.

And she thinks it's bad and she thinks there's something wrong in thinking these thoughts that creep inside her and see tries to put them in words so she can at least understand herself. But it's so brief and fleeting that she doesn't think it's really all that big of a deal when it washes over.

And so when sasha picks her up that day at the airport, the words seem to seep out and lay there in the open after brewing and simmering for so long. And yet the answer she gets doesn't soothe her either and she doesn't know why. But that all is long and forgotten when they're all back together again in each other's embrace. Or something something.

[orcelito]

Wild that anytime I post an update a lot of people read it and are even excited about it and have their own thoughts and reactions to it that I'll never know.

Comments are only the very tip of the iceberg with it. And I am Very grateful to commenters for letting me in on it. But in the same way that I'll be excited with my friends when a fic we love updates, it's likely that Other people enthuse with Their friends when my fic updates. And it's just so strange. An experience I'll never have access to.

Everyone's relationship with my fic is unique. So many different people with so many different circumstances and preferences... and the number of people that have told me that my fic is one of their favorites, some even saying it's their Favorite favorite... every single one of them have their own relationship with my writing.

It's just interesting to me. I think and think and think on my writing. I have my plans for basically the entire fic, the way I want it to end already thought out, all the major plot beats and the relationship progressions, All of that thought out. I love my writing so very much, but I'm on the inside looking out. This is my mechanical horse, and I'm in here laying out the groundwork and pulling levers and constructing limbs, puttering away making the horse move. Forever and always, my relationship with it will be more intimate than anyone's, and yet more clinical. Because I know it better than the back of my own hand, but I'll never have the experience of reading it fresh. Of reading it without knowing everything that's going to happen from now to the end and beyond. I won't have the thrill of the plot twists I have planned, the delight at seeing things progress, the horror at seeing things go wrong...

This is my mechanical horse, and I'm making it move.

I just always wonder what it must be like to see it from the outside. I hope to others that it's a pretty horse.

[miraphoenix]

Right off the bean, this is not a callout post. I'd talk to the person this is about 1-on-1, but a) he's had me blocked for 4 years, and b) it's mutual. This is me venting on my personal blog, something that he decided to vague about me doing back when I had my first blog.

With that out of the way. I'm really fucking tired of people stealing from Valenth/Revecroir, and from its creator.

Years and years ago, when they were a literal child, my bff/queer life partner--for the purpose of this post, their name is Leupai--made lizard-critters with hands on their tongues and called them leupaks. Eventually, they ended up splitting off from Subeta where they worked at the time, making an affiliated petsite called Valenth where the leupaks featured quite prominently as creatures in a fantasy-meets-steampunk world.

Unfortunately, their boss was a piece of work, and following a rather large kerfluffle involving another petsite lifting other elements of my partner's work (namely, a dragon concept and a companion concept), my partner was fired by the Subeta head boss. The leupaks were renamed into leupai, and Valenth expanded into Revecroir. This was in 2014, give or take a few months.

Through about half of the Valenth era and into the Revecroir era, Leupai was dating someone else, who went by Sixar at the time, later Kismeti, and the two had a long-distance open relationship. Kismeti also did a fair amount of site art for Valenth, and described himself as Leupai's biggest fan; when he'd met Leupai originally, his username referenced leupaks, he had a bunch of leupak characters, and a leupak sona. I met both of them in 2013-2014, right around the close of Valenth, and started chatting with them both. Leupai was more responsive, Kismeti was more reserved, but I did the best I could.

Over the years, I kept trying to reach out to Kismeti, but found that Leupai was honestly more willing to talk with me, so I did become better friends with them. Note that I was friends with Leupai, and trying to be friends with Kismeti. We chatted, we sent memes, we played World of Warcraft, I bought folks pizza across the Pacific Ocean, you know the drill.

Through this, I became really familiar with Leupai's world, at that point named Revecroir. I got to know their lore, their worldbuilding, their current projects, and the leupai creatures themselves.

The leupai were--and are!--still fat lizards with paws on their tongues, who can open portals between worlds with acid in their claws, who transfer their consciousnesses to other bodies if one is destroyed, and whose strength comes from the realm of dreams and creativity. In the early days, in lore that wasn't publicized, leupai were roaming around to find a world to live on after Valenth. This was a project that was supposed to be worked on with Kismeti, but nothing really ever came of it. Eventually, Leupai kind of moved on from that storyline to write more about Revecroir itself.

At the same time, I tried asking Kismeti about his worldbuilding, because he had characters and allegedly a world of his own, but didn't really get a lot in the way of answers. I saw a lot of Sonic fanart, I saw a lot of homestuck, I saw a lot of MLP:FiM, I saw a lot of Captain Planet. Eventually, I kind of... Gave up asking? And that's on me, but frankly, if you ask someone to share their stuff and they don't share their stuff, I figure that's the signal to stop asking.

As time went on, though, I was seeing some cracks forming in the 10-year relationship between the two, and I was helping Leupai through a lot. I watched as he yelled at my best friend for not responding to messages fast enough. I watched as he made plans with Leupai and then fucked off to do other things for hours, leaving Leupai in the lurch and worried about his physical safety. I watched as he gaslit Leupai about their ability to use a computer. On one memorable instance, when Leupai's internet was unstable while we were all playing WoW together, Leupai left the voice call to go reset the router, and Kismeti decided that it was a great time to shit-talk Leupai's intelligence to me. For a half hour straight. Until Leupai rejoined the call.

Eventually, I visited Leupai in person and watched as they were broken down to tears by Kismeti failing to respect their boundaries for literal hours, until Leupai caved to Kismeti's preferences. That was a rough night, and I remember wondering why the fuck my best friend's partner was treating them so badly.

About a month and a half after I visited Leupai, they decided to break up with Kismeti, because they'd had enough of him verbally berating them for not responding fast enough to memes sent over instant message, among so many other things. He, to put it mildly, lost his shit.

(For the record, I know what went down, because Leupai had me read the messages sent back and forth, to make sure they were grounded, and were reading things right. I've seen logs going back 10 years. His original vague accused me of not knowing what I was talking about, but boy howdy I was either there, or have read the raw logs.)

Anyway, he begged for Leupai back. Leupai gave him a chance that he fucked up within a day. Leupai said goodbye and blocked him. He then started messaging me about this on discord, clearly trying to use me as a go-between to get to Leupai.

At the time, I was going through some Complex Feelings about my own abuse by various people in my life, triggered by his behavior, so was reblogging a lot of support stuff on my original blog. I guess he decided this was vaguing about him, because he made a vaguepost accusing me of not knowing all the details (unbeknownst to him, I'd read everything) and finally blocked me.

I figured this chapter in my life was done at this point, and moved the fuck on. Made a new blog because I didn't feel like getting all his shit off my old one, moved across the country, got a new job, the whole shebang. Leupai and I entered our odd QPP/partners/bffs/???? phase, and I genuinely didn't think much about him, unless I was helping listen to Leupai talk about stuff they'd gone through with him.

Until this year. When I saw some comment of his break containment and end up on my dash, under the name "riftclaw". I had a bit of an inkling, so I broke my "don't look" rule and looked at the linked toyhouse to confirm it was really him.

Turns out, riftclaws are... Lizard creatures. Who open portals between worlds with acid in their claws. Who are looking for a new world to call their own. And who have some divine properties, that may involve body switching.

And all of Kismeti/riftclaw's old leupai characters are now riftclaws.

Oh, and he was planning to make them into a closed species. To make money off them.

Now, leupai were decently popular back in the day. I still have leupai characters, and make some periodically from time to time. There's a tag on tumblr and everything; if you're reading this, there's a decent chance you remember Vee yourself, as a fair number of my followers were there too. People still talk about Valenth from time to time. Leupai still has a folder of old fanart from back in the day with some 800 pieces of art in it. They were, by all accounts, successful until they weren't.

But the height of popularity was back when Vee was still around, in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The only new stuff in the tags is from an archive blog of old Vee assets.

Despite that, though. And I know this from messages between the pair, I know that Kismeti tore into Leupai repeatedly for "being more popular" and "having more eyes on their work". Even though "those eyes" didn't keep Leupai fed or housed, or really give them any income. Even though "those eyes" meant getting 50 notes on a tumblr post as opposed to 20. Even though "those eyes" just increased thievery and the constant pressure to be a Content Creator(tm), and were a major part of what drove Leupai off the internet entirely starting in 2018.

So imagine. Imagine for a moment. Being so hungry for clout and attention. That you steal your ex-partner's species concept that they've had since they were literally 8 years old, barely file off the serial numbers, and then make that your entire online persona four full years after your partner broke up with your ass twice for being an abusive piece of shit over a 10-year timeframe.

To borrow my own tags from this post, which got me thinking about all of this again?

#This is all to say; if you're jealous of someone else's success? Fine. Go have your emotion. But don't lift their shit.#Your emotions are valid; your actions aren't.

(Oh, and this is the smallest thing in the world, the least important piece of this? Riftclaws are already a thing from a game released in 2016 called Grim Dawn.)

[mihai-florescu]

Hm... i do wish it was normalized to talk about how yes you can have an interesting meaningful story involving characters with ocd coded or intrusive thoughts towards younger characters and it can be an important character trait that doesnt define them or one that is indicative of a set of values etc but you as a fan need to simultaneously be aware of the context of the story. Why do you think i lament being forsaken to like gacha games stories. The choices are made with intent to sell and appeal to an audience that will pay. I just think it's important to keep it mind that, and it pains me to see people who express concern at intentionality being labeled "freaks cuz they thought of that in the first place" i promise you theyre not the freaks for being concerned. So while i do think HE is definitely trying to appeal to new younger audiences with modern teen characters and the use of tiktok, it is important to keep history, audience, and possible further interests in mind too. Well from the bottom of my heart i hope none of the new characters ever get cards like that one hyena aira 4* but it is always good to stay cautious. I dont understand how ppl parrot being "critical of the media we consume" but then not being ok with talking about such fanservice that is undeniably there. Yet i understand reluctancy to admit you're not the target audience, and the willingness to just ignore anything you dont like... i might've been guilty of it myself at points.

[suncaptor]

people sanctimoniously trying to explain US politics looking down or spreading vitriol towards anti-Biden people like you're not going to convince people upset about a genocide during an election year of a sitting president that they're just too stupid or evil to partake in harm reduction the way you want them to and advocate for the president arming Israel actively lmao.