#and they're sO well structured and organized from my experience

[aroaceleovaldez]

what do you mean by fandom infrastructure?

Oh goody I get to rant about this. Definitely gonna need a read more for this one. There's gonna be a lot of general fandom thoughts here so I'll put a big title for when I get to the actual list and pjo-specific stuff for if anybody wants to skip. Okay, my anthropological fandom thoughts:

"Fandom infrastructure" isn't official terminology by any means, but as someone who's been in a wide variety of fandoms for like 15+ years and in varying stages of participating within said fandoms, I generally use it to describe the sort of environment created by a fandom that supports and sustains the ecosystem within it (and may also extend to what kinds of attitudes are fostered within the community). This obviously looks different for every fandom (and different per platform), but I think it's really valuable to break down what systems exist in different fan spaces and how those impact the community that utilizes it, and take lessons from different spaces about what those systems do and how they're effective or not.

General forms of fandom infrastructures have shifted over time - a lot of more recent formats, at least in western fandom, tend to be very reliant on source material and you rarely see a lot of sort of classic archetypes of "old fandom" like concepts such as "big name fans" (I partially blame social media platform drifts for this - I'll touch back on that later*). A fandom with more consistent infrastructure over time (plus just a general favorite fandom case study of mine) and just a general good example of fandom infrastructure is the Furry fandom. It's a bit of an outlier to begin with as Furry fandom doesn't have an actual source material, which means it's an entirely self-perpetuating fandom, and as a result you get some really interesting community structure! (I highly recommend the documentary The Fandom for a dive into the history of the Furry fandom and even some adjacent fandoms!) One of the number one things I always like to note with the Furry fandom particularly compared to other fandoms is it's a very easy fandom to join/integrate yourself into and become a part of the community - it's one of the few fandoms that has generally agreed upon written etiquette/guidelines for behavior in the community that is very easy to find (early 2020s MCYT fandom had a little bit of this as well, but most guides were specific to individual MCYTs rather than the community as a whole and difficult to track down) and a ton of guides explaining what the community is and ways you can begin exploring it. Not to mention the absolute plethora of resources available in the community for just about anything you could think of, and tons of community-dedicated spaces where people can get involved in various ways. The furries are a very well-organized fandom in general! They're also an older and very well-established fandom, so there is much to learn from them.

I like to consider fandoms that have good infrastructure to be fandoms where the fandom is self-reliant or self-perpetuating (not fully dependent to a source material - so the fandom doesn't experience total dry spells when there's no new official media.) and one that's easy to join and integrate into.

Tangent: I have this whole personal concept about "entry-level fandoms" particularly when it comes to the cosplay community. A lot of those fandoms tend to be the ones labeled as "toxic" but when you break it down it's actually that the fandom is just very easily accessible and for a lot of folks that is their first fandom and they haven't learned general fandom etiquette yet. For cosplay, entry level fandoms tend to be relatively mainstream or otherwise easy to access the source material for and then also easy to cosplay while also offering ample room to grow (doubly easily accessible while also not limiting) - usually that the main cast of characters have very casual every-day outfits that can be easily made with a closet cosplay (cosplaying using clothes from your closet or otherwise "normal" clothes) (low barrier to entry) plus more elaborate and evolved outfits for when new fans get comfortable enough to begin exploring further (niches to grow into). Also bonus points if people are able to use their natural hair at all because that makes it even easier. Another aspect that tends to be helpful is how much one actually needs to get into the source material to begin interacting with the community - if you can get the general gist/premise of the franchise pretty quickly and not have to actually engage with the entirety of the source material, that's way more likely to be an entry-level fandom (like, One Piece for example is not likely to be an entry-level fandom, lol). Homestuck is (or more was) an easily accessible webcomic, and despite it's length for the majority of it's run it was actively updating so there was no expectation to be completely caught up, plus it was extremely common to just fully skip over entire segments. Cosplay progression: human characters in basic outfits > trolls > god tiers/etc. My Hero Academia is a mainstream readily accessible manga and anime, particularly to western audiences, and the general premise throughout the series remains relatively close to the pitch from the beginning, alongside not shifting core characters too much. Cosplay progression: civilian outfits > hero costumes and more complex characters. Percy Jackson actually very much fits the bill for this as well - its a VERY popular book franchise to the point where most people have probably had to read it for school at some point, but also it's generally not expected you'll read past Blood of Olympus or any of the side series, if you even read past the first series (and you won't be super lost if you even don't read far past the first book). Cosplay progression: camp t-shirts > adding armor, props, or maybe trying to make goat legs or etc. A more recent and very interesting newcomer to the entry-level fandoms scene is Genshin Impact because it somewhat breaks the format - it's still easily accessible (free to play game) but the character outfits are all incredibly complex. But as cosplay becomes more mainstream and just in general as manufacturing techniques improve, it's suddenly become very easy and affordable to just buy a decent looking cosplay, which is very appealing particularly for a fandom like Genshin. You can have a very nice and complex looking first cosplay with little effort, similar to the effectiveness of closet cosplays in the other examples. As varying techniques improve, the barrier to entry becomes lower in more communities, and there are more opportunities for a wider variety of entry-level fandoms. Okay tangent over -

There's a lot of ways fandoms can be self-perpetuating, but some of the most self-perpetuating fandoms I see are ones that either have a lot of room for original characters, concepts, and similar (see: TTRPG fandoms) and/or fandoms that are heavily divorced from the source material (often due to the source material being widely deemed "meh at best" but having compelling base concepts) (see: Miraculous Ladybug) which is where you often see a lot of AUs - Warrior Cats fandom is a good example of both! I have not kept up with Warrior Cats in ages, but I'm still in the fandom. I have no idea what book they're on. If Warriors stopped publishing books tomorrow I genuinely don't think the fandom would even notice. They've been doing their own thing for ages. There's a ton of room for creating your own characters, storylines, and etc within the worldbuilding of the franchise where it never stops being identifiable as Warrior Cats, which means the fandom can basically do their own thing eternally without ever cutting off newcomers to the community.

The majority of this stems just from being able to not rely on the source material to drive the fandom. If the community inspires itself, then it's able to continue to sustain itself without outside reliance. But to do so indefinitely it will eventually need new fans. And this brings me to the whole "easy to join/integrate into the community thing" -

*It's later - Tumblr used to be a huge fandom hub in general, but the content bans around 2018 led to a giant migration of communities to other platforms. That 2016-2018 era is when we see a shift in fandom in general, with fandom attitudes shifting from old-era concepts like ship-and-let-ship, YKINMKATO/Kinktomato, use of "squick," etc (in general a major loss of old fandom linguistics and terminology - nobody even says OTP anymore!). There's a couple of reasons for this sort of multi-fandom cultural drift, but in general it seemed to widely be the combo of a new generation of younger fans entering their first fandoms all at once while simultaneously being cut off from learning established pan-fandom culture. Newer fans never learn about the old community, how it functioned, or how to upkeep it, and now the fandom is fully reliant on the source material and fizzles out almost completely in the absence of new official media. (Also I think somewhat the lack of BNFs/Big Name Fans can also contribute to this, as they are often the people new fans will look up to and emulate the behavior of when learning how to interact with a fandom - this can be good or bad, depending on the BNF! - alongside being able to learn about the community's history through them, since they're almost always older and well-established members of the community. In the absence of BNFs, the community often turns more towards the source material/creators and it can get Bad™.)

Tumblr as a platform, due to being a blogging and sharing platform, is inherently structured for long-form discussion, long-form text, documentation, and sharing concepts and ideas in nuanced ways. Also preservation - there's no time limit for when posts disappear, and there's no algorithms restricting you to only the newest posts. Tumblr's features even make it really easy to go back and find old posts, even despite the semi-broken search features. Tumblr creates environments where these types of communities absolutely blossom. There's a reason why it was the go-to platform for fandom stuff. Instagram is image-focused, actively discourages text, has a mediocre search, and no proper means of sharing except awkward reposting most of the time. Tiktok is even worse, being short-form video-centric (so even more difficult to repost in absence of sharing features) but otherwise similar (and even less text-friendly and more difficult to search, especially for older posts). Twitter has strict text and image limitations, heavily limited sharing options, and any attempts at threads get messy extremely quickly, so nuance is dead there. Reddit has long form text capabilities but no real sharing features and next to zero longevity. Facebook and Discord are locked behind requiring an account to even view it (instagram as well, to a point). And Youtube is right out (generally it acts as supplementary to other social media). Theoretically you could try to use Ao3 for that, but it's an archive, not a discussion board or social media - at best you'd probably just be going back and forth like scientific journalists which will not be easy for most people to follow. As far as mainstream western social media goes, Tumblr is the best place for "classic fandom" so-to-speak. There's a reason a lot of very established fandoms have built their own dedicated spaces - forums, art sites, etc (usually in combination) - the more splintered your community is, the less of a community it is. It's very difficult to build a community when you never know where the majority of your community is going to be at any given point! In most cases you'll still have the source material, but how is a new fan supposed to know if everybody's on twitter or instagram or tiktok at any given time? That uncertainty immediately cuts off new fans. And you need new fans to perpetuate a fandom (or in general, new people to perpetuate a community). Not every community is capable of having dedicated hosted forum boards and such (though GOD i wish,,,, i miss forum boards,,,, forum boards are awesome,,). Maybe there's a Discord, but discords are difficult to find, easily overwhelming if large, and often intimidating for new folks to join. Not to mention difficult to moderate and if they're busy then it's basically guaranteed most people are just going to get drowned out.

ALL THIS TO SAY: For a true fandom community to exist, essentially, it needs to a.) not be entirely reliant on the source material (instead being driven by activity within the community), and b.) have a cycle of new fans that can come into the community and take up the mantle of upkeeping that infrastructure and continuing the activity within the community, usually with low barrier to entry. This is where that fandom infrastructure becomes important, because that's exactly what supports and encourages that activity in the first place.

To begin with, you must have a community acceptance for deviating from the canon/source material. This is normal and fine and okay. This is what fandom is known for. This is exactly why we have the terms "fanon" (concepts largely agreed upon by the fandom but not officially canon) and "headcanon" (the canon that exists in your head/is personal to you) and AU (alternate universe)! You have to help foster this - you don't have to actively engage with every canon deviation you see, but respect when it is other people's prerogative to deviate from canon and don't shut them down just inherently for "daring to disrespect the sacred canon" or whatever. Remember the ancient fandom proverbs: don't like-don't read, YKINMKATO/Kinktomato ("Your kink is not my kink and that's okay"), ship-and-let-ship, etc. Cringe culture is dead, engage in some whimsy, and remember that ultimately you always are the one to curate your own online experience. Etc etc.

The other major thing is you need to foster spaces where new fans can easily enter and begin engaging with the community. These spaces are extremely important in fandom communities because it's what allows fans who are completely new to fandom to comfortably begin partaking in fandom at a level appropriate for them and without pressure. It's in these spaces that those whose who wish to can begin fostering skills that then leads them to engage with the fandom in larger and more complex ways, growing into different niches within the community and thus allowing the fandom to continue. (I have a whole little essay about this topic [here] which is extremely relevant to my major points here.)

"Alright so where's the PJO-specific stuff and actual examples?"

I'm glad you asked, theoretical reader. So, to answer the beginning question - what is some fandom infrastructure I've seen in other communities (and/or Riordanverse fandom, back when we had that kind of stuff)? These are generally types of blog or other niches that prompt activity, discussion, and other forms of interaction within the community. I have comprised many examples though forgive me if my organization is messy because these are somewhat difficult to categorize concisely: (Also if you do know of examples in the riordanverse fandom of any of my examples, like specific blogs or etc, feel free to comment them!)

- General community hubs and community spaces. I have these as two slightly different but adjacent categories since I think these things generally fall into one of two categories - spaces meant for general chatting and interacting with other fans (community spaces) and spaces more meant to find specific topics (hubs).

Things like forums, discord servers, group chats, etc - these exist in the PJO community but are far and few between and difficult to find. If you run one I highly recommend putting a link in your tumblr sidebar (enable custom theme > edit theme > new page [bottom of sidebar on the left] > there should be a little dropdown menu where it says "standard layout" - select "link" and plug in a discord invite set to never expire. there ya go). A couple I know of include my own (one for general riordanverse and one for my askblog), the Titan Army discord, these two, Riordanverse artists server, Nicercy (Percico) events, Jasico challenges, and Above The Clouds (also jasico). There used to be a big general PJO server but it's mostly inactive now (I affectionately refer to it as functionally a knitting circle these days, cause that's most of what's discussed there now, lol). There also used to be a well-known TOA-specific one and a general Riordanverse cosplay discord but both had problems and I'm not sure either still exist. I've heard there may also be a Percabeth server floating around somewhere? But I've never seen it.

"Hubs" is what I label things like blogs surrounding specific designated topics, usually consolidating stuff like general fanworks, specific fanfiction, fanworks of specific characters/groupings/ships, etc. I believe there might be one or two general riordanverse fanart blogs floating around. I'm not sure about blogs for specific fanfiction. A lot of ship-specific blogs went inactive by like 2017 but a couple are still alive like @solangelo. (I'll get into some other examples in a similar vein to this later*) We don't have a designated blog for keeping tabs on whenever there's a Riordanverse fanzine or similar project but some fandoms do (I would love this btw and i am almost tempted to do it myself) - an old pan-fandom one was fanzinewatch. I run a blog dedicated just to reblogging fanart (and occasionally other fanwork) of Hazel and Nico - @deathsibs. I don't know of any individual character-specific blogs off the top of my head unfortunately. Etc etc.

In general the purpose of these things is to help connect the community and make it easier to find and promote things or meet people. These are good places to ask questions, particularly directions or recommendations. That brings me to another one-

- Ask/Tag games and memes. Back in ye olde tumblr days there used to be TONS of fandom-specific inbox and tag games, or people would do milestone promos or etc and do these massive blog recommendations or literally just list everyone they follow or similar. This was a really useful way for people to find more blogs for specific topics and engage with each other in general. Here's an old one I found as an example. My friend has a nice tag with a bunch of old ask memes as well, and Hermitcraft-ask-games is a great example of a blog categorizing fandom-specific ones (Hermitcraft/adjacent MCYT in this case). Tag games can refer to both posts where you respond to the prompt in the tags while reblogging or a game where you tag other people - the latter has mostly fallen out of favor cause it can get very spammy and posts can get very long with it. Less spammy versions tend to be something more akin to an ask game or a follow forever, where you are responding to a specific question or prompt by tagging blogs that fit that, usually as a recommendation. It's a little nicer and more favored because then you're promo'ing other folks and usually it's not a long chain of reblogs, plus the posts tend to have dedicated formats so they aren't super messy.

- In another similar vein, Art games/memes. PJO fandom doesn't have a lot of these! These are your "Draw 6 Characters," "Character color wheel," etc prompts. The fandom I see this the most in is MCYT fandom, particularly Hermitcraft/Trafficblr! There's a ton of little variant prompts I see all the time there (not just for fanart! also fanfic and etc!) - Characters in your style, Fanon species swap, color palette swap, etc etc. (I am totally going to try and make one of these for riordanverse, give me a bit, lol)

- Prompt weeks/months. Also similar - prompt weeks/months/etc are pretty self-explanatory. They're events that give you a set of prompts to create/post fanwork themed to over that time period. PJO fandom used to have plenty of these, though I only see a couple floating around these days. I know Jasico Week/Jasico Challenges and Solangelo Week are still alive, and TA week happened recently. Fun fact, in some smaller/largely inactive fandoms I've actually seen prompt weeks DM active people in the community to tell them the prompt week is happening which I actually really like. In circumstances like that where a fandom is so small, scattered and inactive, it's a good means to get the word out.

- Headcanon/ship/"Imagines" blogs *It's later (again)! Headcanon blogs used to be EXTREMELY common back in ye olde days of fandom. Some of the most popular iterations tended to be ship-specific headcanon blogs. PJO fandom had A TON of these (and many are still up! They just haven't posted since like 2017 at the lastest. Quite the trip down memory lane though). They were generally formatted by people submitting their headcanons/"imagines" anonymously, which would then be formatted into an image to match the blog's general format (sometimes themed to specific characters or subjects, depending on the submission itself) and posted. A good example from PJO fandom I stumbled across the other day while looking at old askblogs is Percicoheadcanons. Absolute classic format right there. Also bonus time capsule points - the most recent post is from before Blood of Olympus was published. That's just particularly amusing to me given the ship in question here.

- Shortform Headcanons / Short Memes & Shitposts Helyeahmangocheese reminded me of this one in my previous post - shortform headcanons are essentially any headcanon thrown out into the world in a short format. So you're "headcanon that [x]" or whatever with no elaboration. Just quick little snappy things off the top of your head that people can pick up and run with. Sometimes there would be blogs dedicated to these, with people submitting them in blog formats like the above, and then shortform headcanons to be posted in that format. Short memes & shitposts are the exact same type of thing - just short little silly textposts and similar cracking jokes that the fandom can take and run with. Both of these are more important to the fandom than you'd think - a.) they have a very low barrier to entry, which means they're a great way for new fans to begin engaging with the larger community. b.) they circulate new ideas for other fans to build off of, creating collaborative concepts. These collaborations help build the community with giving opportunities for people to chat/inspire each other's work and can create iconic fandom moments or community references/in-jokes. And old one from PJO fandom that floated around was somebody threw out the concept of Will Solace's weapon being a lasso/whip (because cowboys/he's Texan/etc) made of light, which then got illustrated and elaborated on by many other fans such as Cherryandsisters and was very popular fanon for a time.

- Confessions Blogs These ones can be decisive in fandoms, depending on how they're run. Confession blogs in general are blogs where people anonymously submit fandom thoughts, opinions, etc (formatted similarly to HC/imagines blogs like above). There's also usually a decent amount of funny confessions like initial misunderstandings or confusion about things. Most well-run ones of these will have rules against negativity towards other fans and similar. When done properly these blogs can be a nice way for the community to have discussions about topics that they may be afraid to broach publicly, and easily can generate community in-jokes.

- Positivity blogs / Fandom voting Somewhat opposite to (at least, more negative) confession blogs, fandom positivity blogs are a very sweet way to spread compliments around the community. Sometimes they're anonymous, sometimes not. Generally though the format is people can submit compliments or kind notes to other people in the community and it'll get posted tagging the individual in question. Trafficblrpositivityproject is an MCYT example of this concept. Fandom Voting is a little bit more odd and varies a lot between communities. An old one PJO fandom used to do was PJO Prom, where people could nominate blogs for different categories, they would either accept or deny their nominations, and then folks would vote for their top favorite blogs of each category and winners would be announced (though the event also included more than just that - like blogs asking each other to prom and etc). In other fandoms I've also seen elections where various members of the community would jokingly campaign for election (including choosing other members of their campaign), people would vote for a winner, and then do it all over again. Fandom elections tend to be a lot more chaotic and silly, versus stuff like fandom prom voting is more geared towards just appreciation towards members of the community.

- Fandom Events / Community Projects Related to PJO Prom, (and prompt weeks/months) general fandom proms or valentine's events used to be pretty popular, especially amongst RP and askblogs. These weren't always strictly organized, but they generally involved asking other blogs to prom/to be valentines and then people would draw cute prom/holiday art or similar to celebrate. Some blogs would send out valentines to multiple blogs just as a nice cute lil treat in a similar vein to how some blogs still do trick-or-treating events. Trick-or-treating events have been a thing for awhile, generally following that same structure, but it's become significantly more popular in general now that tumblr has image embeds possible in asks rather than having to submit a post. Other fandom events can include fandom elections like mentioned before, or any number of things really, but the majority of regular ones will include gift/fanwork exchanges in some form. Secret Santa projects are very common (and PJO did have them! There isn't one singular PJO Secret Santa blog since it seems different folks did different years so I can't link it, but I participated in 2016 iirc. It looks like the most recent one was in 2021 - pjosecretsanta2021). I did find Rrversesummerbang as a recently active one as well. Zines and similarly collaborative projects are also common - PJO fandom does occasionally have zines but they aren't very frequent and generally don't get a ton of traction (which is very sad cause zines are very fun - most of it seems to be just the fandom doesn't have good ways of getting word out about events through the community). We've also had a couple of coloring book projects! I participated in the 2016 one and there was another in 2022. Some other fandom and pan-fandom examples of similar stuff is Mcytrecursive (Gift exchange for fic-of-fic, in this case MCYT-specific), Fic in a box, Mcytblraufest (AU fest), general holiday exchanges, etc. (A lot of my examples are MCYT cause man that fandom is active). There are a lot of pan-fandom ones of these, but usually involvement of specific fandoms is entirely dependent on sign-ups and it can be difficult to know or guarantee any specific communities participating. Fandom-specific ones are generally more well-known in their own communities for obvious reasons. In other projects, Riordanverse fandom even once had a Multi-Animator Project! These are more common in fandoms like Warrior Cats that are very artist and animator-centric, but the fact that we have at least one major one at all is pretty cool! Collaborate games in similar veins to big events/projects like this (see stuff like the art meme/games) can also be great ways to get the community active and engaged. Voting/poll stuff like character or ship brackets can be really interesting too and depending on how it goes down can become an EXTREMELY major event in the community (see: MCYT Tumblr Sexyman bracket). Very fun times.

- Incorrect Quotes / Text Post Memes / Chat Posts Rolling back to headcanon/imagines blogs, incorrect quotes for specific ships/character groupings used to be extremely common. And not even just dedicated blogs, but incorrect quotes/chat posts were pretty much the number one thing the average fan who didn't create fanart/fanfic/etc would post. I was actually quite surprised to see that Incorrectpercicoquotes is still alive. They post more than just incorrect quote/chat posts (not uncommon for blogs of those nature, especially back in the day), but still it feels like seeing a thought-to-be-extinct-species in the wild eating a bag of chips. Anyways, like shortform headcanons and memes/shitposts (of which these are somewhat a subcategory of), these are another low barrier to entry type of fandom engagement, which means they're great for new members of the community.

- Askblogs MY FAVORITE TOPIC. I have a list of PJO askblogs on my sidebar actually cause I'm very passionate about them and askblogs in general. For what an askblog is, my blog @askblog-index goes over that and also I answered some questions about askblogs recently, which you can find in my askblogs tag (also I'm always open to answering questions about askblogs please ask me about askblogs I love them so much). There's so many different varieties too - text, illustrated, cosplay, voice acting, combination, etc etc etc. Askblogs are a really fun means for collaborative storytelling in the community, especially with how much they tend to generate headcanons or put characters in silly little scenarios. Cherryandsister's Will Solace askblog is practically personally responsible for a solid 50% of all Will fanon. Photokinesis!Will was entirely popularized there. They're also a really great place for people in the community to build up their skills - yknow those jokes about "the best way to improve your art is to become obsessed with something and draw it one billion times?" yeah askblogs are that. My art improved so much by starting an askblog because it pushes you to draw things you might avoid normally or wouldn't expect to draw - or if it's not an art askblog, is just plain good practice for writing or voice acting or whatever. It's a regular outlet where you can build up your skills with not a lot of pressure but also outside encouragement and concepts to build off of. Character or fandom-specific daily art blogs and similar request art blogs are similarly also very useful to building up skills (and can be applied to other artforms like fic writing!) (Request blogs are not the same as askblogs though please dont send random art requests to askblogs just gotta put that disclaimer). I also personally consider them extremely vital to fandom ecosystems, though often overlooked - remember those old "ask the seven" posts that would be the terribly colored text in random fonts on a white or poorly-chosen-color background that'd just be random stuff and it'd get reposted absolutely everywhere? For a lot of people that's both some of the first stuff in a fandom that they might make, and also some of the first stuff people used to see in fandoms in general. With my whole silly theory of fandom ecological niches, those types of posts are your base of the pyramid, because it's where most fans are going to start out. It gives them a low-stakes place to begin engaging with the community and figure themselves out and begin exploring the characters and media on a deeper level. That's what fandom is all about! It's what separates fandom from just the general audience of any particular thing. Those types of posts were popular because they're just easy to make! All you need is mspaint, if even! They get across their concepts quickly and easily in an easily sharable format - that's exactly why they got reposted absolutely everywhere! The concept of those posts (and general character chat posts/incorrect quotes) still exist in other spaces in fandom communities, but in different formats - usually tiktoks, being spoken and acted out loud. The problem with that format though is it can't go anywhere - even in shortform video format there's no way to easily condense it down (and also they have a higher barrier to entry, as the format at it's simplest usually requires some aspect of showing your face/using your voice. This means you inherently have to sacrifice some amount of privacy to engage with the format, which isnt friendly to new/younger fans). Meanwhile these ask-the-seven posts are one jpeg that gets across the entire concept. And we've evolved! We have better technology! We can pick better colors and fonts and add image descriptions! We can bring the format back!

- Cosplay This one is pretty self-explanatory - just. Cosplays are a type of fanwork too! PJO cosplay used to be pretty common on tumblr actually! Particularly there used to be a decent number of cosplay askblogs (which are just askblogs where instead of responding to questions with text or a drawing, asks are answered with either a gif or image of the mun/mod in cosplay reacting in-character). Cosplay is cool! And in PJO fandom it's particularly easy!

- Roleplaying Spaces PJO fandom does have a pretty active tumblr RP scene as far as I've been able to tell, which is good! Also you can find people who want to RP pjo just about anywhere. It's just somewhat of a matter of giving them a space to do so. I talked about how to get into roleplaying recently on my blog as well. RP is also one of the forms of fandom infrastructure in this list that transfers well to other social media platforms, in large part due to social media RP making it a whole lot easier. The fandom is mostly just severely lacking in hubs to locate RPs and help people find ways to begin engaging with them.

- Public AUs / OCs Public AUs/OCs are a bit of a weird one to describe - they're basically any AU/OC that the creators (if there is a singular known creator of it) have given total free reign to people with. More often it's an AU that doesn't have a particular known creator but the fandom likes to run around with and do a lot with. In PJO fandom, the ye olde fandom OC was Peter Johnson, a son of Demeter. The AU generally was about how Peter Johnson was a new camper and Mr. D's favorite camper, and just generally a sweet lil guy while Mr. D proceeds to torment Percy because of the name jokes. A series of public AUs that's completely unique to PJO is Godswap aus - there's no one singular set godswap au, but the two most common swaps tended to be Demeter!Percy (in part due to Peter Johnson) and Aphrodite!Nico (admittedly this one was like 90% gay stereotypes/homophobic tropes and there's a reason why the fandom kind of dropped it. It was absolutely the most popular godswap for a time though, and some of the concepts from it have bled into general Nico fanon for better or worse). General pirate aus have also always been very popular in the fandom - there were some old ones back in the day, including local BNF (Big Name Fan) Saberghatz having at least one, maybe like two or three, including a cosplay. Pirate!Nico in particular was very popular. There was actually a slight resurgence of PJO pirate AUs on pjo cosplay tiktok in like 2020 or so I wanna say. Truly we came full-circle there. There's also just general popular AUs that fandoms like to run with. For awhile PJO fandom had a HTTYD au they really loved. The current fandom favorite AU seems to be Velinxi's Young Gods/Hades Game AU.

- Fangames This one might sound odd because Riordanverse fandom doesn't really have this, but fangames can be REALLY fun and cool. Fangames also often spark mini-fandoms in themselves and are just really awesome in general. There's a lot of different varieties of vastly varying complexities, but a lot of it is pretty much just "I made a game, it's about [fandom], here ya go." Some good examples from other communities off the top of my head are games like ClanGen or Untold Tales for Warrior Cats, or Featherbent from the Homestuck fandom which was a visual novel / AU fanfic. Btw, visual novels are actually not all that difficult to create. If you're interested in trying to make one I highly recommend checking out Ren'Py - it's basically a program to make visual novels with.

- Other project types / General Collaboration Related to community events, particularly Multi-Animator Projects (MAPs), AMVs/PMVs/Lyricstucks ("animated music videos" and "picture music videos" - lyricstucks are the same as the latter but usually in a scrolling tumblr post format with the song linked at the beginning rather than video format) are very cool and can be both individual or collaborative projects (in Riordanverse fandom most are probably very familiar with Viria's old lyricstucks - Nothing Left To Say and How Far We've Come). Some folks do dubs of fancomics (also used to be a thing in PJO fandom, particularly back when the PjoVoices group was active and the brief stint in the fandom when we had some Voice Acting askblogs) which can be a nice way to collaborate and engage with other fans in different mediums. "Aesthetics"/Moodboards (usually an arrangement of either 2x3 [former] or 3x3 [latter] grids of images) and the more recent "webweaves" also are a great low barrier to entry type of fanwork that has a lot of variety and versatility (just make sure to credit art/photos used) - especially if you make moodboards/webweaves inspired by people's AUs/fics/etc!

- Gifset Makers / Editors In Riordanverse fandom we don't see this often, because we're primarily a book fandom, but back in the days of the movies and more recently now with the show, editors and gifset makers are a very cool niche of fanwork creators. Gifset makers is pretty self-explanatory - they're people who make gifs. Editors can range from people who make edits of clips or put together clips of images or a whole bunch of very different things. Very wide range there. Edits (with credit to the original artists) can be a really fun alternative to AMVs/PMVs/etc if you don't draw but you have a concept (CREDIT THE ARTISTS - trust me, having your art used in an edit can feel super cool but ONLY IF IT'S CREDITED. IF IT'S NOT CREDITED IT'S NOT FUN. if you ask and credit people will probably be happy about it!). Edit blogs can also be very fun and are often a big hit in fandoms - "Where is [x]" and "[character] in places" are classics. Again just remember to credit artists appropriately and ask permission to use their work.

- Fanwork Promotion Blogs/Hubs PJO fandom does have a couple of these still floating around I think! I don't know them off the top of my head but I swear i've seen them recently. Regardless - these are any sorts of blogs that promote other fanworks. Maybe it's dedicated to just general fanart, general fanfic, stuff of a specific AU or concept. Going back to previous bullet points, character or ship-specific blogs are a form of these. They can range from elaborate and complex with how they promote or spotlight and recommend works, to just literally being random reblogs of stuff of a specific topic. These can actually also be a really nice if you're looking for a simple way to get more involved in the community, because chances are if you're on tumblr you know how to reblog things and that's about all it takes. These hubs can be really nice ways for more fans in the community to get spotlighted/recognition and become more well-known, and it also helps fans looking for specific types of fanwork. (The only caveat with these is if you are going to make a generalized hub blog, you have to actually make it generalized. You can't just exclude the things you personally don't like just because you don't like them - if you don't want to deal with that, make a more specialized hub blog for your more focused interests instead.) (Also personally I'd recommend if you're making one of these types of blogs that you're an adult, cause these blogs can require fandom tag-spelunking that may not be appropriate for all ages - ESPECIALLY if you run a fanfic hub.)

- General Resources This can look like a lot of things, particularly depending on what the fandom is about, but in general a lot of fandoms will have dedicated places to finding different types of information, and often important fandom terminology and sometimes fandom history. Fan Wikis may cover some of this, but not always (and depending on how the wiki(s) are run in a particular community, may not even have reliable information to begin with. I'm looking at you Riordanverse wiki). In furry fandom for example there's a ton of resources for how to get started in the community, commonly accepted community guidelines and general etiquette, fandom history and terminology, resources to find fursuit makers or other artists, various tutorials, etc etc etc. PJO fandom does not really have this! Like i mentioned in previous bullet points, while we have some hub/promotion or character/ship-specific blogs, they're relatively far and few between and commonly inactive, not to mention usually very specific in what niche they're focused on. The wiki only covers the source material (and is questionable quality at best most of the time) with there being next to no resources in the community in general for stuff like fandom history or terminology or etc. Did you know PJO fandom used to be part of the Superwholock of book fandoms (it was PJO, HP, Hunger Games, and Divergent. there was a whole symbol for it)? Did you know we used to have our own fandom lingo? Members of the fandom were usually called demigods or half-bloods, people would put their cabins in their bios (people would make little banners or other decorations to put on your blog themes to show your cabins or pjo stuff in general!), and we'd say stuff like "Spread this like greek fire" and "Amazhang" and etc. Those are actual things people said unironically very frequently. You're probably most likely to be familiar with "Persassy." We don't necessarily need to bring all of those things back, but point is we did use to have a community identity and sort of genuine subculture! And we lost that! There are so many community jokes and similar that most people have forgotten or at best kind of know of but don't remember the origins or contexts for. In other communities they have documentation for this kind of stuff - you should see some of the documentation that MCYT fandom does, particularly if the MCYT in question is a popular streamer or the SMP is primarily streamed content. Holy cow it's thorough. Resources and documentation are what help keep fandoms alive, because they give a means for new members of the community to learn the history of the community, learn established rules and etiquette, and just generally find their way around where they otherwise might be lost. It's really invaluable but often overlooked.

Okay, i think that's all the ones i can think of. This post has taken me over a full day of working on it, lol. Anyways i'm very passionate about fandom history and PJO fandom history/community in general so this was very fun for me to go on a deep-dive about. Also now i'm really tempted to put a lot of my old fandom knowledge and unnecessarily complicated lists/documentation to good use and try to help build up some of these bullet point concepts for riordanverse fandom myself because dammit somebody's gotta do it. But that's all i've got for now! As always feel free to ask me to elaborate on anything, or if you just wanna hear me babble on more about general fandom structures (i have another ramble about different types of fandoms relating to what fanworks they tend to exhibit the most!)/pjo fandom history/askblogs/RP community/whatever, I am always more than happy to talk!

[heartfullofleeches]

yes please dear god smile reader is baby

[Very baby. Here's how Yan Scientist and their slime formally met]

"Subject 43? Payment for yesterday's efforts."

"An apple....but you said I could go home."

Feeding day - as if their headache couldn't get any worse. Like common livestock, their possessions squealed and whined about the most senseless things. Pleading for testing to cease; begging to be returned to their families when it was their love ones who sold them to begin with. The scientist would sooner snip out their tongues if it meant a moment of peace, but they were not a tyrant - plus verbal records of their subjects experiences was easier to stomach at night than written. The audio logs had lulled them to sleep better than any pill or liquid could.

"I said it was a possibility - if you did what I asked properly. You may have killed your cellmate, but you did not bring me their eyes. A shame really. I took the time out of my day to prepare your meal by hand. Ah - well, there's someone who will appreciate my efforts more. Tell me, tuna or ham?"

A wet gurgle sounds from the scientist's pocket."

"Both? You greedy devil. I suppose you do deserve something special for putting up with the same pains that I do."

The scientist picks up two sandwiches and smushes them together as the mass in their pocket becomes denser; gooey tendrils slithering up the length of their coat and crawling onto their shoulder as they lift their hand. The blob sucks up the sandwiches into its gelatinous body, wiggling with delight as they're broken down and absorbed into its structure. The scientist pats the gel with one finger causing it to vibrate more violently resulting in a breathy laugh from its owner.

"Alright, we have more subjects to feed. Come on, You - you too."

The scientist snaps their fingers at the Henchman wheeling the cart who closes the cell door as they both exit. The slime creeps down their shirt and through their sleeve as they walk, resting in the scientist's palm. A marvel their little companion was. They wished they had the honor of creating it, but it's origins were a mystery even to them. The scientist found the creature munching away on the undissolved bones of a past test subject. From numerous experiments, the scientist discovered their new lab partner could not only breakdown organic compounds, but most non living object too and had a choice on what it consumed. It made for the perfect little helper to get rid of all the dead bodies and those who oppose them. The best part about the slime was that it had no mouth and therefore the most tolerable member of the team.

The scientist's smile melts as they enter the next cell. The stress that had fled them by the usage of their slime as a stress toy skyrocketed seeing the act of utter betrayal pointed at them. A lackey, standing over a motionless subject - gun raised at their employer. The scientist sighs.

"Please remove your mask."

The Henchman does as told. Figures - there was only one other person the scientist trusted with the codes. They supposed trying to make this a family business was a poor decision.

"Emery - this has got to stop."

A chuckle. "Does it really?"

"You won, just let him go. I know you didn't have the best upbringing, but he still your -"

Emery grits their teeth, squirming the slime so hard it slithers out of their grip. "You don't know shit. If it makes you feel any better, I haven't actually done anything to him - yet. Just locked him down here, with all the others nobody would care to miss. There is no persuading me on this. If you have nothing else to say - do it."

Their Henchman reaches for his gun, Emery rests their hand over his. Through clouded view and reasoning, the figure steadies their gun. They look away, unable to look as they pull the trigger on the once innocent child they knew. Emery doesn't flinch as it fires - a teal web covering the entirety of their chest and dissolving the bullet as soon as it hits. Their attacker looks on in horror, but before they can do anything Emery takes their henchman's gun as their own and fires back, bullet piercing their heart. Emery's head falls, expressionless eyes gazing out at the person left alive - mouthing two words.

"Your fault."

Emery exhales, placing a hand over their chest and gathering the slime into one ball. "One thing after another. Now I have to fire a new head. Eat your meal and return to me when you're done."

They lower the slime to the ground who plops out on the smooth surface - spitting an apple out that rolls at the scientist feet. They pick it up as they walk off, wiping away tears.

-

A picture frame shatters.

"Why would you choose him and not me. Why!?"

The picture holds a smiling, bucktooth child in the arms of their butler as they show off their award for the camera and all to see. The person who taught them everything, the only one there when they had no one. Emery throws an empty bottle at the image, sinking down at the foot of their bed - cradling their arms to their chest.

"why....."

The sound of wet suction weaves into their cries as the slime wrigglies itself beneath the crack in their bedroom door. It inches towards them, shaking violently before spitting up as locket on the floor. Emery goes to grab it, but as they do the smile shoots up their arm and spreads out, and puffs up over their shoulder like a makeshift pillow. Emery cards their fingers their hair, climbing to their feet and pocketing the trinket.

"I guess I do need some rest. Thank you, You. You seem to be the only one I can't trust."

More gurgles.

"I guess I should give you an actual name eventually." They sight - broken body collapsible on their bed and crawling under their blankets with the help of their aid. The slime hops up on their pillow as they raise their head - solidifying as they rest. "Goodnight, You."

That night - Emery had the worse night's rest they ever had in their twenty-seven years of living.

"You are my sunshine. My only sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are gray~"

Is someone ... singing?

"You'll never know, dear. How much I love you-"

The voice sounds so familiar....no... There's more than one. It's hard to remember something so sweet - when all those voices ever did was beg you to stop.

"Please don't take - my sunshine away."

Emery shoots up like a lightning bolt. Their hands search the bed for their glasses which had fallen - finding a squishy, but very real feeling hand beneath their grasp. Emery locates their glasses as the body's see through eyelids peel back.

"Goodnight, You!"

Emery screams - rolling out of the bed in a tanglement of their blankets and obscenities. The interior in the bed sits up, puzzled; bubbles floating through their translucent body as their anxiety peaks.

"Emery.....this you?" The figure points, noting the odd number of fingers on its hand as it looks at theirs. "Mmm wrong...."

Emery's eyes widen as the slime's sixth finger merges into the fifth. "Y-you?...."

The slime chirps. "Emery!"

Emery looks strength in their knees. "What? How?..."

"Ahhh.... You - eat meal... gr...ow better at shape. Too much at one time - hard to understand. Able to single out things Emery say - Emery is... the only one I can trust."

Emery clutches their head. "Ngh..."

"Help?" The slime lunges foward, reverting to its natural state as it crashes into the floor and forming back into its humanoid shell as it catches them before they stumble. It was hard to notice with half of them hanging off the bed, but the slime was massive - size their size if they had to estimate. They bury their face into their hands. "This can't be happy.

The smlie's droppy smile falters. "Wrong? Wanted to make you happy. I..will go back if it makes you happy. Sad Emery...makes me sad too."

Emery looks up at the slime. They raise out their hand, stroking the slime's cold cheek. It hums with a full body shutter - leaning into their palm until their fingers poke through the membrane. Emery retracts their hand, sliding it into their now empty pocket.

"It's fine. I guess we really need to pick a name for you now."

"Mm I pick?"

"Do you have something in mind?"

"Y/n!"

"Where'd you pick up that one?"

The slime points to their head. "Memories. I... like it the most out of them."

"I see... Y/n, it's cute. Alright, Y/n - let's go get some breakfast."

The slime spits a small bag from its stomach contents onto its hand, giving the trail mix too them. That's much more alarming when it's coming out a real mouth and tongue.

"Breakfast!"

Emery takes it with two fingers, holding the dripping bag away from their face. "Thank you, Y/n......at least I have you by my side."

[parageist]

MANY RAIN WORLD SPOILERS AHEAD

yknow, what really are these module things you see attached to iterators?

i always assumed they were steam vents and thus make the torrential rains you experience, as when its rain time, they start steaming. but as ive played through more campaigns and revisited old areas, ive noticed some strange things about them

like whats up with this one on the bottom? why is it cut in half like that?

and sometimes the lighting makes these circle things in the background look like theyre protruding, so I assumed they were just the same steam vent things but viewed face-on, yet in this image (and in a lot of others) the lighting suggests the opposite - they're indentations on the structure. perhaps the vent things can be retracted in/out of the base?

yet here in the outer expanse you can find them on train cars, and the lighting looks like they're protruding, which would either mean the train cars are extremely wide or theres an extreme amount of clearance between the rail and the walls of the tunnel.

and even if it was retracted into its shell, that would mean the shell itself is super wide to be able to house an object that long. also the retractable theory in general starts to fall flat when you never actually see them retract or extrude, which if they are steam vents, then shouldnt they pop out of their shells when its rain time? this makes me think the circles facing head-on arent the same vent modules we see. perhaps they're some sort of "socket" or attachment point for some other component? im not sure.

but anyway, back to the main point. what are these things?

well, an important peice of evidence completely changes everything.

YOU CAN FIND THEM (and the circle background thingies) *INSIDE* OF ITERATOR CANS

(they're in/on moon's can as well, so there doesn't seem to be a difference between gen 1 and gen 3 iterator designs in regards to these modules)

but anyway. why are there steam vents inside of their processors???

and you cant just deduce that they arent steam vents, cus they definitely are (as shown in this video)

but at the same time the ones inside their cans dont produce any steam. or at least, no steam that we can see.

but this leads me to a theory, once you keep in mind another major thing about iterators: they need a shit load of water to function, yet you never see any of the neuronflies, inspectors, or other organisms inside drink. so where the heck is all the water? (besides the lymphatic system)

this makes me think that the steam vents we see inside of iterator structures are indeed steam vents, but the amount of steam they produce is a lot less. i assume they are basically giant humidifiers, which would saturate the air with so much moisture that the neuronflies and what not wouldnt need to "drink" as they would just constantly be absorbing water from the air. the moist air could also improve electrical conductivity between neurons.

so yeah that's my theory! it is kind of uncomfortable to think about the inside of iterator cans being absolutely muggy and miserable from the extreme humidity, but it makes sense knowing that being inside an iterator is basically like being inside a giant living organism's body; of course it's gonna be wet and slimy in there. it would also explain how the water pumped through the lymphatic conduits gets distributed to all the neurons and other purposed organisms - instead of having a separate pipe connecting every little creature to the water supply, you just saturate the air with it so they can "wirelessly" get water!

[mothsakura]

Pssst, I really love your OCs and would like to know more about them 🐋

I AM VERY HONORED- hmmmm as for ocs let me think although i will give a small disclaimer: anything older than 3 months is most likely outdated lore, i update these dude's lore frequently if you have any specific ocs you have in mind then please tell me! but i'll ramble about my favorite: GRANDPA <3 <3 <3 (Rotting Balance)

(little icon i made for him <3) First off, Rotting Balance (ID: 0.2|000021) was made with the purpose to be able to neutralize rot, following the recent (at the time. this was around late prototype/very early first gen) case of an early prototype succumbing to the rot. His administrator, Reflections in Last Fracture, Speaks of Mirrors had planned RB to become the next major breakthrough. However RB's construction put the council in debt, as Fractures basically built RB behind the council's back while stealing funds. Yes, Fractures was politically powerful enough to do this (second highest ranking), no the council was NOT happy. Furthermore, Fractures had neglected to approve RB's model (he tried post-activation but failed). RB's model is not listed on any network either, he literally does not legally exist by the law (at the time. no this was not fixed). Neither did RB turn out successful at all, he failed to pass the rot trials, the rot had (ironically) rotted the R.N.C (rot neutralizer core) from the inside out. That and RB's severe dislike and distrust of benefactors (the dudes who built the iterators) made him very hard to work with :( I do have a post about this actually! The art looks.................. kinda goofy............ I was tired and this was a while ago so unfortunately it did not end up turning out well, I will link the post here if you want a more coherent ramble on his backstory.

His circumstances are nothing to be desired. He's rotting, he's restricted via protocol (he lashed out at Fracture, Fractures "taught" him a lesson on that. The protocol shuts down half of his structural water-collecting pipes, which leaves him unable to provide his structure with enough water to cool down.), and his tired old machinery is far from it's prime. But it isn't all doom and gloom tbh!!! He is very passionate about his work ....that being crazy scientist experiments with rot and whatever weird contraption he builds, usually nicknaming it "The Rot Wrangler"

his crazy scientist look on full display here <3 <3 <3 He does not trust people easily, but if you are one of the people he trusts, asking him about his work will practically have him rambling on for hours about his weird contraptions that fight the rot <3 Also hc but not canon: he adores common ferns. He thinks they're funky little plants. They do not grow in his district, but he'd definitely try to keep one. (and accidentally kill it....) He also has a purposed organism named The Mauler!!! Mauler lives up to it's name, as it is a mix between slugcat and red lizard, but it is pretty docile to RB. It has become sort of like a therapy dog to him?

he's practically a whole other hyperfixation at this point ......................................................... mad scientist grandpa ................................................ i adore him.................................. and his weird old machinery

This is one of his 4 cores! It is unfortunately waaay too hot due to the aforementioned issue with cooling his structure :( but despite that, it still continues to function. Iterators were built to last after all. I probably have more to share but unfortunately my brain seemed to leak out of my ears as of lately- i am not too good at rambling in public- but i do hope that this ramble was coherent enough!!

[lizbethborden]

i saw a post where someone described forced marriage as an example of the oppression of asexuals/aromantics and it's like.. . . no. it's an example of the oppression of WOMEN first and foremost.

It's interesting. I'm not going to tell people what to call themselves, but for the record, I am an ace truther you might say. I don't believe that 99.9% of the people identifying as such are asexual/aromantic--given how many complex and ever finer-grained micro-identities they've cooked up to explain how and why they do experience and enjoy sex and romance. Obviously I'm not going to kick down anyone's door and make them give the label back, but I'm providing that context for my interpretations.

The general critiques given for society--too focused on romantic relationships, undervaluing platonic ones, overemphasizing sex, and then, like in your example, the material criticisms, forced marriage, etc.--are worthwhile critiques. They're aspects of culture that have negative impacts for many people. But at the same time as "aphobia" seems to be doing political analysis, it's doing so with its eyes averted from the basis of all of these cultural elements, which is misogyny, the oppression of women. Society is designed to funnel women into heterosexual romantic/sexual partnership in order to keep the means of human reproduction under male control. Period. Rather than address the baseline motive, each element is decontextualized.

What's striking to me at least is how effective an "ace movement" could actually be in criticizing this structure. When Christianity first began to pick up converts in the Roman empire, there was a moral panic because men and especially women were removing themselves from the chain of reproduction by living chastely in anticipation of Christ's return. That's an aspect of the movement that died rapidly, since Jesus didn't come back and they had to make the next generation of Christians pronto. But the panic it produced spoke to the effectiveness of its criticism. Women were declining their social role. They were in some times/places believed to have spiritual equality with men (per Paul). There's evidence of women leaders in the early church. For a brief window of time this action seemed to facilitate an upheaval of the social order, at least within the context of the church.

But asexuality as it stands right now is, like many other identity groups, atomized in a way that it makes a bunch of little individual criticisms of society and culture, but not to a degree that it has meaningful effect. It's not about organizing, it seems, it's not about really doing anything. Because "asexuality" is framed as an internal ontological difference from other people, with a myriad of different possible definitions via micro-identities, there's no governing ideology except to ask for--what else, in this individualistic world? The right to do what one wants as an individual and not be bothered for it. Not organize around the wage gap or rent gouging or other barriers to comfortably living alone, et cetera.

It's kind of a band-aid on the larger social issues. Rather than look at the reality of oppression, it's easier to break down the, ummm, the wooden floor into individual planks and scrutinize each plank for its flaws and say that that's why your feet hurt when you walk on it. Well maybe it's actually the fucked up foundation, not the wooden floor, and you have to address the underlying cause. This is a dumb metaphor, but you get me.

[tigergirltail]

TIGER HRT CHAPTER 2 - MONTH 0 - EXPECTATIONS

First/Prev - Next

---

It's been six months. Six months since that weird doctor and his inane little test to prove I'm ready, or at least, ready enough. Six months since I signed a stack of liability waivers forfeiting my right to pursue legal action for any reason up to and including untimely death. Only DAYS left before I can finally claim the entire reason I was there in the first place.

I came home today to find an information package in the mail - things I need to know before making my final commitment to the treatment. It's somewhat reassuring, really. By the sounds of it, this guy has to deal with all kinds of odd requests - I heard a rumour that someone went to him for a chimera treatment at one point - which means that he has to do all this research into side effects personally. …Although there's no telling how much of this is speculation. Concerning.

The information package is divided into different headings, roughly organized by risk factor and how outwardly noticeable they are, as if he's right here with me, trying to scare me off from it.

I decided before I even went to him that I wasn't going to let myself be scared again. Let's see what I'm in for. I sit down and start reading…

SKELETAL STRUCTURE

"Subject's height will noticeably increase. Increase of six inches is expected, increase of one foot is possible."

Huh. I guess I wouldn't mind being taller, but that's definitely going to affect what kinds of clothes I can wear. And I guess I might also get a bit wider proportionally? I'm already plus-size, maybe it'll just level it out.

"Subject may experience a conversion from plantigrade (walking on soles) to digitigrade (walking on toes)."

That makes me stop and think. I'd basically have to re-learn how to walk, and no doubt there's going to be an awkward intermediate period. Will my feet get bigger as well? They're big enough to make me dysphoric as it is. I wonder if I can get custom footwear made… I wonder how much that will cost…

"Subject will experience a reconfiguration of fingers to allow for retractable claws. Persistent soreness is to be expected."

Bluh. I've bitten my nails too close enough times to know how much it sucks not to be able to put pressure on my fingers without pain. I wonder how long that particular effect will last. Due to the lack of timeframe, I can only guess. Months, maybe. Years, I doubt it, but possibly.

"Subject's cranial and facial structure will experience long-term reformation. The effect this will have on brain function is unknown.

And here we get into "you signed a waiver" territory. I had accepted at the outset that death was a possibility, but I'm not sure how to feel about the risk of permanent brain damage. None of the other accounts of therian HRT I've heard seem to mention this, though, so maybe it's just speculation? I move on to the next heading.

DIET

"Tigers, like all felines, are obligate carnivores. Subject will be required to eat real meat (no substitutions) at every meal, or risk symptoms of starvation."

This had already occurred to me, to be honest. Part of the reason a white tiger is my fursona in the first place is because I am an unrepentant meat enjoyer. Heck, maybe a feline body will make meat taste even better.

"Lingering human characteristics may make it possible to digest other food, but the nutritional benefit to subject will be negligible."

…Ah. This was less expected. Does this mean I'll have to start thinking of things like bread and fruit as basically candy? Worse, will I have to avoid it? I love me a good grilled cheese, and poutine is basically an addictive substance, am I going to have to swear off some of my longtime favourites? Out of all of the effects so far, this is the one to give me the most hesitation. Yes, I love food, I'm not afraid to admit it.

"Subject is likely to lose cravings for non-meat food entirely."

I have to sit back and process this one. Back when I started human HRT, one of the things that gave me pause was the idea of decreased libido. That was one of the few things about my body that didn't make me dysphoric, unlike a lot of trans people whose stories I'd read. In the first few months, though, I found it settled into a pleasant sort of medium, where I could have it if I wanted, but it wouldn't show up out of nowhere. Maybe this will be the same way? Maybe poutine can still be a sometimes food? Cats eat weird stuff that's not healthy for them sometimes, but it's fine, right?

Some part of me considers holding a funeral for the abstract concept of poutine.

On to the final heading…

SENSORY EFFECTS

"Subject will gain heightened night vision and hearing. This will cause sleep to become significantly more difficult."

Trust a doctor to find the one downside to one of the coolest effects of the treatment… Do you even know how much I want to hear every beat of the world around me? Do you even understand how useful it would be to be able to see in the dark effortlessly? Having a tiger's eyes and ears would be almost worth every single downside by itself.

Besides, I'm a very heavy sleeper.

"Subject's hearing frequency range will become significantly more broad than a human's. High-pitched noises such as dog whistles will be audible and painful."

Well, I'm sure that's going to suck sometimes, but I don't think I'm exposed to such noises on the regular. Although… I suppose I wouldn't know, with my feeble human frequency range. It's something that might be fine or might suck, I guess.

"Subject's sense of touch will be strongly affected by fur growth."

Sure, that tracks, but I'm kind of looking forward to it. Maybe it's comparable to wearing a full-body fursuit? I've actually missed having opportunities to fullsuit, and I've thought about commissioning a new one if I saved up enough money, but I suppose that won't be necessary now.

Much of the rest of the document is a reminder that everything listed is Permanent and Irreversible short of Major Surgery, with some reminders of the various rights to litigate that I've waived. Ultimately, it sounds like I've got some big changes ahead, but nothing I've seen here is a dealbreaker.

It's slightly terrifying, but I'm excited.

I can't wait to hear the rain through a tiger's ears.

[yersina]

a linguist plays chants of sennaar (pt 5)

[pt 1] [pt 2] [pt 3] [pt 4]

the home stretch!!

disclaimer: can't promise that i'll have any insights that a layperson wouldn't have, this is kinda just me thinking through the grammar of the language out loud haha.

this post covers the fifth and last language in chants of sennaar and will contain spoilers for both the language and the endgame! it also assumes you know what the symbols mean already.

i.... to be completely honest with you, i did not enjoy this language 😂 i think the experience of deciphering it got lost in favor of the storyline, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for everyone, but hey, i am the one going through each of these languages like a linguistic bloodhound here lol. because of that, i'm not as familiar with these words as i am with the other languages.

before we get into anything else, and also because i imagine that this will be a shorter post because the game itself tells you what patterns to look for, i do want to say that this language strikes me as being incredibly artificial. which is a good thing! it emulates the digital apocalypse vibe that exile gives. but a language that leans so heavily into being constructed and recombined and modulated so easily really gives me the impression that it was created and not organically developed. the only other irl example that comes to mind at the moment is korean hangeul, which was purposefully created by king sejong and is an alphabet, not a logography. like, this is a language that i would make for fun in high school (which is to say, it gives a kind of overly grammatically strict, awkwardly too regular vibe?).

it's kind of funny that this language is where i'm starting to get reminded of conlangs, especially when, well, everything in this game is a conlang. but if we take each of the radicals in this language as affixes/morphemes when they're being combined into one character, then this actually reminds me of a specific conlang (ithkuil, i think?) where you can convey incredibly complex ideas through very few words.

the language of the anchorites isn't quite this complex, but hopefully the comparison gets my point across?

i’m curious if only certain elements can be combined with each other or if there’s a certain order to them, but it’s hard to tell when there’s such limited evidence in the game. interestingly, i believe the anchorites’ language is the only one in this game that makes a distinction between “die” and “death/dead” by combining the noun with the verb “go”. not sure why the developers suddenly made that decision haha.

this language, like most in the game, is an SVO language, which we can see below:

but i think also they (the developers) were trying to convey more complex sentence structures than their language was designed to communicate??? so then you end up w smth like below:

which, if you translated literally, would actually be “you man i wait”. again, super interesting bc i think an actual, more accurate anchorite sentence should be “i wait you man”. they have a more complex sentence here bc of the predicate (“you’re the one”) and the dative (“for”), but really the sense that they’re trying to go for is “i was awaiting the one [who is you]”. i guess it’s possible that different grammatical cases are treated differently in this language, or that, like english, word order is occasionally variable (even tho that option seems iffy bc we haven’t really seen evidence of it before), but tbh i suspect that really it’s that the developers wrote the dialogue and then brute forced it into the anchorite language haha. no shade! (and also impossible to confirm either way lol) just kinda amusing and also it makes sense when it’s p obvious their focus shifted from the language to the story.

this trend continues throughout all of the anchorite dialogue (imo) and makes it kinda slow and awkward to read if you don’t have all of the characters translated. in my opinion, the way that the language functions in the last part of this game makes it pretty clear that the developers meant for you to rely on the given translations during this potion of the game, especially when the translation mechanic is mostly through the matching terminals in exile, rather than speaking with people.

annoyingly, the anchorites’ language is also the only one in the game that doesn’t have words for the other people/cultures in the game (demonyms), which also doesn’t give much to work off of in terms of cultural context, relationships, etc.

again, i’ve decided not to get into an in-depth orthographic analysis of this particular language bc the game itself introduces you to them. one that i noticed that wasn’t specifically addressed in-game is the similarity between “open” and “key”, which is something that i actually also noted before in the devotees’ language. i’m sure there are others, but i’m also sure you can find them yourself!

all in all, a strange ending to this game. if you’ve made it this far in all of my posts—thanks for hanging around! hope you were able to learn smth new :)

[bitsbug]

i have.. so many questions about / for your ocs (VERY POSITIVE) but i will utilize self-restraint and start with one. i am very curious if any of your iterator group has animal companions beyond the purposed organisms that more or less act as cells in their bodies- my best example is, of course, SRS and spearmaster but this could also extend to include like, scavenger pals? on the other hand do any of them have particular issues with the surrounding flora/fauna

FANTASTIC QUESTION! there are multiple!!!

Curtains hordes most of the animal/purposed companions of the group, since he personally designed them. He's got like, 3 different types of purposed organism he created from scratch (he thinks simply modifying creatures is stupid and inefficient) that inhabit his superstructure.

The main one is CC/Ceaseless Convection! They're the only one of their model, and definitely the most talkative of his creations. They're made to be a data courier, capable of traveling vast distances with vast amounts of information stored in their body's giant secondary brain, derived from the same gut-stuff in the Memory Crypt's boxes. They often need to take long trips away from home for their deliveries, but they're an optimist and enjoy the adventure.

MORE GUYS UNDER THE CUT THIS IS LOONG

There's also the Internal Engineers, which are made to maintain and help upgrade his inner components, as well as keep out intruders. They're made to be content with just doing their jobs & working constantly - listen ethics kinda died with the ancients - but each have their own personality. Also they talk exclusively in coding jargon. He has 3 right now.

Finally is his constructers, which predictibly also do construction and maintenance, but on his exterior this time. These ones are the most numerous, with 25 living on his structure. When they're not assigned anything they hang out in his abandoned city, which has been renovated to accomodate for them.

There's also Scribe but I might make a post dedicated to her -- the short version is that she's a wild animal that adventured into Curtains' chamber and demanded he teach her how to write. He complied for some reason and now she visits regularly for lessons.

condolences TBH

The only animal companion that isn't associated with Curtains is the Influence, who was created by Anxiety Practice. They were part of an experiment involving wheel flowers, being engineered to constantly produce the karma-affecting hallucinogenic compound inside them. Thing is, their body produces the compound in excess, causing it to leak out of their face orifices. It doesn't bother them too much, but does affect their senses.

As a result of the modification, they can't go down in karma, experience a time-slow effect like the one mushrooms cause, and are absurdly well attuned to the Cycle. They also do experience the uh.. psychadelic effects, but living with it their entire life has desensitized them. After AP finished data collection, xe didn't have any reason to toss Influence out, so they stick around as a lab assistant. They don't know how to survive in the wild, nor do they know any slugcat language.

thank you so much for giving me an excuse to infodump. good lird this post is long.

[strawberrymilk-sunshine]

What if Yuu/(Y/N) was from another world? Not in the sense that they're from a parallel dimension to twst- but in the sense that they're straight-up from another planet. I think that'd be cool

I'm gonna do the reactions of the octatrio to alien!Yuu (because I have Octavinelle brainrot currently) but if you want me to do the reactions of the other dorms I can do that!

Not sure how good this is, but I hope you like it!

Azul Ashengrotto

Huh? How have you never heard of a contract?

It's a fairly common legal term, is it not?

And why are you so confused about the anemones?

Is there something wrong with you? Do you have amnesia?

Come to think of it, you don't exactly look... human...

No, you definitely aren't human. You clearly aren't a mermaid or beastman either.

Perhaps you're fae? Though it's very unlikely.

He just can't figure you out. Nothing about you makes sense. Your existence defies all logic.

"What are you?"

Azul doesn't seem very hostile, you see no reason in hiding yourself from him. So, you decide to tell him.

Believe me when I say he is surprised.

Another planet? That's impossible.

It... is impossible, right?

Idia's been talking about aliens recently. This must be a stupid prank, right?! (It is not)

Once Azul finally comprehends and accepts that you are in fact an alien, his business mind takes over.

"Say, (Y/N)... why don't you work for me for a small while...?"

If he had a real, live alien working for him in his establishment, then... ooh, the possibilities are endless!

You declined, but he'll get you to agree eventually!

Surely there's something you want.

And he'll find out what that is, eventually.

You didn't see him as dangerous before, and you still don't, but you definitely get the feeling you should be cautious around him. "Oh (Y/N)! I have an amazing deal for you! Huh? Where are you going? Wait up! I need to discuss the terms and conditions of this contract with you~!"

Jade Leech

He knows what you are, he knew you weren't of this world the moment he met you.

No human, mermaid, bestman, or fae has features such as yours.

And he's definitely seen you do some unnatural things.

You can lift approximately five times what someone of your weight should be able to, you secrete a toxic substance when nervous, certain parts of your body glow when it's dark...

You really are a wonder.

Jade finds you interesting, so interesting...

"Greetings, (Y/N). I know we don't talk much, but would you like to come with me to have tea with me? I promise you a pleasant experience."

You think of Jade as someone who is potentially very dangerous, so you hesitate to accept.

But after some "convincing", you decide to go along with him.

Well, he wasn't lying about the tea, which is good...

And then, well, he drops the bomb.

"I know what you are."

You begin looking around for any way out of this situation but then he laughs at you

"No need to be so scared. I find you fascinating, and I simply want to know more about you!"

You don't exactly believe that he's doing this 100% innocently, but you don't think he's outright lying.

So, you decide to stay a while longer and answer his questions.

He asks you about your anatomy, your home planet, your family, your strange features, your bioluminescence, that toxic substance you can make, your bone structure, your organs, why your species evolved the way it did...

Jade is very curious about you.

Almost to a suspicious degree. "Is that right? How fascinating. Please continue, (Y/N), I would love to know more about you! Hm? No, of course not! Never in my wildest dreams would I blackmail you with this information! I'm simply asking out of my own curiousity."

Floyd Leech

"I'll be honest with you... I have no idea what a shrimp is, Floyd."

He is just baffled when you admit that.

How have you never heard of a shrimp?

Much like Azul, Floyd just assumes there's something wrong with you at first. Either that, or you've lived a life so sheltered you've somehow never heard of a shrimp.

Whatever the reason, the fact that you don't know what a shrimp is keeps him awake that night.

As he's thinking about that interaction, laying in bed, eating his snacks, he recalls the time you first saw his mer form.

Didn't you whisper something to Crabby? Something like "What's a moray...?"

Huh. That's a weird coincidence.

And... when Azul overblotted and reverted into his mer form, you also seemed super confused and freaked out...

And when you saw all the fish and coral in the Mostro Lounge fish tank you looked like you'd never seen anything like it before...

Those are some weirdly coincidental coincidences.

And, you're body's pretty weird too... you don't look like a human. You've got horns and weird looking legs, not to mention the fact that you glow in the dark like he does in his mer form... you're really weird.

But it's probably nothing.

After laying in bed for another hour or so, the realization hits him all at once.

He runs to Ramshackle dorm as fast as he possibly can, still in his pajamas, and pounds on your door until it opens.

"SHRIMPY, YOU'RE AN ALIEN?!"

You're still half-asleep, and not sure why this six-foot-tall merman was yelling at you.

Floyd barges inside, and sits down on the couch, insisting you tell him everything about you.

Again, you're half-asleep, and would much rather not be in this siituation.

"Aha~! Us merfolk don't exactly have any stories of life on other planets, so this is pretty exciting!"

He thinks you're super cool!

He also wants you to know about him, since you probably don't have anything like him back home! He'll tell you all about his funky eel biology!

Unfortunately for him, however, that just made you feel more scared of him. In your mind, nothing that has poisonous blood and two sets of teeth is harmless.

You politely ask him to leave.

It does not work.

"Y'know, now that I know what you are, I don't really thnk 'Little Shrimpy' suits you too well, ehe... howsabout Magnapinna?"

You try pushing him out the door to no avail.

"I've never seen a magnapinna myself, since they live suuuuuuper deep down in the ocean, but apparently they look a lot like aliens! Suits you, doesn't it~?"

You can't get him to leave.

Like his brother, Floyd finds you very interesting. He thinks you're really cool, and weird, and interesting, and- you get the idea.

And he bets you think he's really cool and weird and interesting too! You know, if you've never seen something like him, you're probably amazed at him, right?

Oh, you don't find him cool?

You find him terrifying?

That's fine! That just means he can have tons of fun scaring you! "Hah? What's wrong, Magnapinna? Ya scaaaaaaared of me~? Ehehe... that's fine, that's fine... I'm not gonna eeeeat you or anything, so there's nothing to be scared of! You know... unless I decide one day that you're kinda tasty-looking, ehe! Anyways, why don't you tell me more about yourself? I wanna know more about you!"

[saltygilmores]

Does Jess Mariano have ADHD or not? One neurodivergent's meager opinion, don't take anything I say too seriously.

I have seen some people (infrequently) try to armchair-diagnose Jess with ADHD. I was diagnosed around 7 years old in the early 90s with ADD, when ADD and ADHD were two separate diagnoses. I'm old? I realized, as an adult, that it was and still very much is common for women to go under-diagnosed well into adulthood, so for my school district to pick that out when I was in first grade shows they did at least one thing right, I guess? Or my ADD was so severe and blindingly obvious that it wasn't exactly difficult to notice. But I digress. What is my diagnosis? Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I'm only playing armchair therapist, as we like to do around these parts. I have no medical or mental health training and I can only speak from my own experience as someone with the condition. As we know, it's a spectrum, and it often presents differently for boys than it does for girls. With that out of the way, no, I don't think he has ADHD. A lot of people lean on the scene in Teach Me Tonight where he's not interested in Rory's tutoring. Or maybe that scene where he's bugging Lane for a pencil in class. (PLEASE, I needed to see more interaction at SHH!) So that's the Attention Deficit, but those two scenes really aren't enough to convince me. Some of other symptoms of ADHD (and certainly not all of them) and whether I think they may apply to him: Talking Excessively- No Fidgeting & Squirming-No Interrupting-No Restlessness-No Problems with Following Through On Set Tasks-No Mood swings- no impulsiveness- no Frequently loses items-no Disorganized- Maybe? (if we're going by his sometimes messy living quarters, but he also keeps a nicely organized dresser that Luke can snoop through) Forgetfulness-no Trouble Listening: Ehh? I don't think so. He just doesn't like listening to people who are transparent as a piece of plastic wrap with their bullshit (cough, lorelai) Trouble following rules: Yes, but see above A tendency to hyper-focus on a task he enjoys but he will become easily distracted if a task bores him: Maybe Problems with time management/lateness-nope Daydreams frequently- Yes, and getting lost in his books (wouldn't you do the same to cope if you were him though, let's be honest) Errrr, come to think of it, Lorelai might want to get checked out. Jess was highly intelligent and too smart for his own good. He loved reading and learning about subjects that actually interested him. Homework, tests, and studying likely bored him unless it was a subject or a specific topic he enjoyed and he felt this kind of work was beneath him. This is quite typical of those diagnosed with ADHD. He would be one of those kids (and I would know) whom the teachers describe as "Bright student, but he needs to apply himself/ not meeting his potential" I think he would have enjoyed the more rigorous academics of Chilton and the structure of a school like that could have helped him stay on the right path. It couldn't have been worse than Stars Hollow High, which failed him miserably. However I think that ultimately a place like Chilton would have felt too stuffy and restricting for him and he would be miserable being surrounded by all the rich snobby kids. Despite some road blocks, Rory survived and thrived being the "poor" transfer student, but it would have been much more uncomfortable for Jess (even with Rory being his classmate and having at least one person in the school he could lean on). Rory, at least in high school, is a lot more agreeable, docile, focused, and beholden to authority, has an involved parent and a stable home life. (I have a couple of weak theories about how he would get into Chilton and how he could even afford it, but they're really a stretch and unrealistic)

Imagine your troubled alcoholic mother dumped you on a bus to live in a weird town in another state, where you live with an uncle you barely know in an apartment above a diner where you have no privacy and said relative makes you work day and night in his diner and gloats about how he pays you in acorns, he steals your car, his most frequent customers don’t tip you, and that's on top of working a second job, there's this crazy random lady who is always getting up in your face about everything and she throws eggs at your car, the town holds an emergency meeting because you stole some spare change and drew on a sidewalk with chalk, you’re in a new school in a new state and this 6’4 diseased human pine tree named Dean Forrester tries to pick fights with you in alleways and probably tries to nail you with dodgeballs in gym class. Your dad left you when you were born and your Mom was a teenage mother who was deeply neglectful at best and abusive at worst and barely cares that you exist. Starting fom a young age you experience a revolving door of Mom's Boyfriends and Husbands, one of whom apparently died (and TJ was probably one of the best ones of the bunch, god help us all) who may or may not have been abusive to you and/or your mother. Would you be able to focus on school after all of that? He didn’t even skip school purely because he hated going or to play hookie and get into trouble, he was skipping school to work a job. If this wasn't a (barely) PG show he could have turned to drugs or alcohol (or real crime) to cope. (Oh, and all the stress of his relationship with Rory PLUS dealing with Luke, Lorelai, and Dean getting involved in that shizz too. You're not even allowed to experience the slightest grain of joy, like kissing your girlfriend without your relative breaking down the door and hauling you in for a talk on sexual impropriety. (also, your uncle thinks you're a drug dealer and an underage prostitute) There's also a lot more we still don't know about his childhood, he could have moved frequently with Liz, he could have spent time in foster homes. His education could have been interrupted on a frequent basis. He likely had a number of teachers who let him fall through the cracks or didn't believe in him or thought he was nothing but trouble wouldn't amount to anything and he lost trust in the educational system. He doesn't seem to be able to make friends in Stars Hollow (despite his declarations that he's playing sports "with the guys", lol) .It's canon that Liz drank while she was pregnant with him, which could have affected him neurologically.

His turbulent childhood likely caused him to act out at school before he arrived in The Hollow. His school district could have just slapped an ADHD label on him for his behavior. With that, I can’t imagine Liz putting in any effort into reading his report cards, noticing his grades were plummeting, seeking a diagnosis for him, taking him to counseling, trying to obtain any resources to help him, going to any parent teacher conferences, or even opening mail the school sent home. If he ever was diagnosed with a condition ike ADHD he surely had very weak supports.

I just think there are just too many external factors muddying the waters and many things that were not explored enough. I see someone who is very troubled emotionally but I don’t see many specific signs of ADHD, if any. I am much more convinced he has some social anxiety and most certainly some underlying depression and other emotional issues which are too heavy for me to try and armchair-diagnose, and I hope he will have sought some therapy once he was able to. By how much he seems to have grown by season 6, I think he did go to therapy. This concludes my diagnosis of The Boy.

[mariacallous]

The compliments start flowing as soon as she answers the video call. “Wow, you so pretty, honey,” says the man on the other side of the screen. His video feed shows he’s white, with short hair, likely a few years younger than her, and is sitting in front of his camera wearing a plaid shirt.

“You’re looking different with that beard and stuff gone,” the woman says in an American accent as the conversation gets going. The man doesn’t miss a beat. “I told you I was going to shave my beard so I will look good.”

Except, he isn’t who he claims to be. His videofeed is a lie. And—beard or not—the face the woman can see over the video call is not his: It’s a deepfake.

In reality, the man is a scammer using face-swapping technology to totally change his appearance in real time. In a video of the call—filmed by the scammer’s accomplice likely thousands of miles away from the woman—his real face can be seen on this laptop alongside the fake persona as he speaks to his victim.

This self-shot video is one of scores posted online by scammers known as Yahoo Boys, a loose collective of con artists, often based in Nigeria. The video reveals how they are using deepfakes and face-swapping to ensnare victims in romance scams, building trust with victims using fake identities, before tricking them into parting with thousands of dollars. More than $650 million was lost to romance fraud last year, the FBI says.

The Yahoo Boys have been experimenting with deepfake video clips for around two years and shifted to more real-time deepfake video calls over the last year, says David Maimon, a professor at Georgia State University and the head of fraud insights at identity verification firm SentiLink. Maimon has monitored the Yahoo Boys on Telegram for more than four years and shared dozens of videos with WIRED revealing how the scammers are using deepfakes.

A WIRED review of the videos and three associated Yahoo Boy Telegram channels shows how the con artists’ techniques have evolved as deepfake applications and artificial intelligence have improved. It is one of the first times the specific tactics and outlandish techniques of scammers using deepfake video calls has been documented in this detail.

The videos show Yahoo Boys using the technology on setups involving both laptops and phones. In multiple videos, the scammers often brazenly show their own faces, as well as those of the victims they are scamming. “I don't think they're doing this because they’re stupid,” Maimon says. “I think that they simply don’t care, and they’re not afraid of the repercussions.”

The Yahoo Boys are experienced scammers—and they openly brag about it. Photos and videos of their conning and recruitment can be found all across social media, from Facebook to TikTok. However, the cybercriminals, who have links back to Nigerian prince email scams, are arguably their most open on Telegram.

In groups containing thousands of members, Yahoo Boys organize and advertise their individual skills for a smorgasbord of scams. They’re skilled social manipulators, who can have long-lasting impacts on their victims. Business email compromise, crypto scams, and impersonation scams are all touted in hundreds of posts per day. Members claim to be selling photo and video editing skills and entire albums of explicit photographs that can be used to build a convincing persona. Fake IDs and legitimate-looking social media profiles are for sale. Scam “scripts” are free to download.

“The Yahoo Boys have elements of organized crime and disorganized crime,” says Paul Raffile, an intelligence analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute, who has investigated Yahoo Boys sextorting teenagers and driving them towards suicide. “They don't have a leader, they don’t have a governance structure.” Rather, Raffile says, they organize in clusters and share advice and tips online. Telegram did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about Yahoo Boys’ channels, but the three channels no longer appear to be accessible.

The digital con artists started using deepfakes as part of their romance scams around May 2022, says Maimon. “What folks were doing was just posting videos of themselves, changing their appearance, and then sending them to the victim—trying to lure them to talk to them,” he says. Since then, they’ve moved on.

To create their videos, the Yahoo Boys are using a handful of different software and apps. WIRED is not naming the specific software, to limit people’s ability to copy the attacks. However, the tools they are using are often advertised for entertainment purposes, such as allowing people to swap their faces with celebrities or influencers.

[defira85]

I have... thoughts about the first episode of the Veilguard podcast and I suppose one could call them critical but I'm having war flashbacks about the DA fandom in the 2010s so. This is going under a cut and I'm not going to tag it. Because I don't want to spoiler people but I also don't want to draw lots of attention

My biggest issue is that I don't necessarily feel like anyone on the writing team has specific experience with writing radio drama

Listen, writing specifically audio only narratives is a skill. It's a difficult one. It's not the same as reading an audiobook out loud, and it's not the same as listening to a recording of a live-play/improv group. It's not the same as a movie script. I've often thought that the closest comparison in terms of narrative structure and performance is live theatre, but even that has limitations to the comparisons

Exposition in radio drama is, by necessity, somewhat overstated. There's a lot of characters stating outright things that are happening, in order to convey that information to the audience, and sometimes that can come across as very... heavy handed. It's really hard to balance in a way that can seem like an organic conversation. They managed it relatively well at the start of the show when Nadia outright states that Elio has given her a ring - in a visual medium like a movie, we'd have a close up shot of the ring and maybe a close up of her shocked face, and they wouldn't need to explain it. But in the radio drama, we get the shock play out and then she confirms it's a ring thats upset her, because we as the audience need that explicit confirmation. It's the nature of the medium.

What isn't great, and this is where I think that it's obvious to me that the writers either aren't familiar with the medium or don't have a ton of experience with it, is the way that everything related to the conspiracy is laid out. Obviously, you don't want to info dump and ruin everything related to the conspiracy in the first episode, but it feels like this conversation happened at least 3 times:

"*gasp* what are you even saying?"

"... I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh, you never want to talk-"

"Now isn't the time!"

"It's never the time for you!!"

What did Neve know about the raid and what did she say to convince Elio? We don't know, it's more important to have five minutes of grunting as Nadia climbs walls. Did we learn some stuff about Nadia as a character through the grunting? I mean, some of her stuff with Vik at the start, I'd say yes, but then it just went on and on. Did Elio talk to Nadia about what Neve told him on the arguably days or weeks long trek from Minrathous south to the Silent Plains? We don't know, they had to have multiple arguments like the one above. Could some of it be solved by the presence of a narrator? Arguable. How did Elio know the chant to follow along with Solas immediately?

"But Defira, they can't drop all of their exposition in the first episode, they need to build narrative tension" I'm not really talking about the story so much as I'm talking about how it's conveyed, how it's presented to us as an audience and what they're choosing to offer as the most important pieces of information and world/character building in the limited time frame. Lots of screaming each other's names dramatically sounds exciting, but it doesn't tell me anything the 15th time around. Lots of grunting as they yell and run and fight over and over again and I start to tune out

What can I tell about this first episode? That they spent a lot of money on sound design, and it sounds crowded. Narratively, I have lore questions (complaints) but that's not the point of the post.

The actors were great. The music was pretty good, but was it really worth it forking out for Hans Zimmer? The sound design was messy and cluttered.

I don't know. I'll keep listening, and maybe the writing will improve. The story concept is exciting but the execution is weak

I did laugh at Solas immediately fucking up again though

[coinandcandle]

About the Divine Feminine

This was inspired by this post by @hiswitchcraft but I didn't want to possibly derail the post so I decided to make my own. Please go check out the original post!

This post mentions various sexual reproductive organs, if this makes you uncomfortable please scroll past.

What is the Divine Feminine?

Sometimes also called the "sacred feminine". What is it? Well, no one can really agree.

One website says, "The divine feminine is the spiritual concept that there exists a feminine counterpart to the patriarchal and masculine worship structures that have long dominated organized religions."

Another defines it as, "the feminine aspect of the divine power that connects and binds the Earth together. In other words, it is the goddess energy that exists within all of us".

Wikipedia tells us that "The term "sacred feminine" was first coined in the 1970s, in New Age popularisations of the Hindu Shakti. Hinduism also worships multitude of goddesses that have their important role and thus in all came to interest for the New Age, feminist, and lesbian feminist movements."

Obviously, I'm not here to dunk on Hinduism or the array of approaches to the religion, but rather to talk about the use of the term "Divine Feminine" and its context in New Ageism.

The idea of an overarching divine feminine is heavily flawed for all the reasons stated by hiswitchcraft and more. He says that it sounds good at a glance and I think that's often what happens, the concept doesn't get dissected nearly as much as it should. From a feminist pov it sounds rad as hell but once you actually look into it you'll find a lot of gaps.

First off, no one can truly define what feminine is because the definition changes depending on culture, religion, and even time (ex: pink used to be "masculine" but is now seen as "feminine"). The definition of feminine is:

marked by or having qualities, features, etc. traditionally associated with women

Even if you believe firmly that what makes something "feminine" is associated solely with cis women the idea is still riddled with holes. Cis women are vastly different for all of the reasons mentioned above: culture, religion, etc. Even a uterus can't be seen as solely feminine because there are those who are born without them or those with penises born with them!

We certainly can't say that estrogen denotes femininity since even those born with xx chromosomes have differing amounts of the hormone inside them and they eventually lose a lot of it as they age.

Speaking of sex chromosomes, we can't really attribute chromosomes to femininity since 1) they're much more complicated than freshman biology would have you believe and 2) even those born with xx chromosomes can have stereotypically "male" or "masculine" traits.

So, if what qualifies something as female or feminine varies greatly, how can there be an overarching divine feminine? Even if it encompasses all that is, has been, and could ever be deemed as feminine, what then differentiates that from androgynous or gender ambiguous?

Also, if we're being honest, the idea of a divine feminine is incredibly reductive. It has been used to reduce goddesses down to being parts of one whole being rather than them being whole on their own; which I disagree with fundamentally, though that is a theological/philosophical argument that I won't get into here.

~~~

Personally, I find divinity in femininity but also in masculinity, in androgyny, and in the fluidity between and around all of the above.

If your femininity, masculinity, androgyny, or fluidity amongst these concepts makes you feel more connected to the universe and the divine then that is wonderful!

Just make sure we're not projecting or enforcing our personal experiences onto others, eh?

[rageprufrock]

can you please share with us more about your experiences relating to your response to the post “if you wouldn’t go to someone for advice, don’t take their criticism either” ?

(asking for a friend who’s struggling at work re: wanting validation and receiving criticism instead)

Unfortunately, very different situation for me. I had a work colleague-semi-mentor who I'd known for a long time, so it took a long time before I could really reconcile that their behavior was completely unacceptable and manipulative. It was a necessary period at the end of an increasingly toxic sentence.

As for your friend re: wanting validation and getting criticism, I do have some generalized insight on that.

One of the most difficult things about a professional career is not having clarity on your performance. Most managers aren't trained on how to manage people, which feels counterintuitive and insane, until you think about how organizations are structured: we usually progress into management after exceling as subject matter experts, which makes sense in some dimensions of work, but is cosmically cursed in so, so many other dimensions of work.

With the caveat that I can only speak to a certain species of Western aligned office for a certain phylum of profit generating organization: something I talk about with a lot of my earlier career employees and colleagues is the deep frustration of feedback, because it's multifaceted.

For a lot of folks it's the frustration and hurt of your manager never providing positive feedback for good work, because the de facto behavior in a lot of workplace environments is that silence is the positive review. It can leave you toiling away without knowing if you did well, or, knowing that you did well and not getting any acknowledgement for it.

This isn't great! A better trained and better prepared manager is as forthcoming with praise and encouragement as they are with constructive feedback. But that's an idealized workplace that doesn't exist in reality, and I think the most important thing to take away from this is that you're not in school anymore, and you can't get your validation from work. Unless you're one of the lucky ones and you work for an organization that's really invested in leadership training, you're likely to have to learn how to cope with this on your own.

You cannot and should not rely on your job for prestige or emotional validation, you shouldn't be looking to build great friendships there, to fall in love there. To be clear: all of these things are possible to gain through work, but none of them are guaranteed or even likely, and no one should expect them. Your job is the thing you do for money, so that you can do other things in life that will validate you emotionally and bring you joy--the job cannot be the thing itself. We all know people whose jobs are their entire personality, and not only is it terminally miserable sitting next to them at dinner parties, it is also not great for the person inflicting it upon you! No job will ever love you back, and you cannot, under any circumstances, let it become the whole of you, or to rely upon it for your sense of worth.

That's a long and intense way of saying: depending on the type of manager and the type of work your friend has, they may never get any validation, and they have to find a way to be okay with that.

But they also need to be honest with themselves, because is it that they're not getting positive feedback when they're delivering great work, or is it the "I turned around this 50 page presentation deck to you in two days and all you did was say that there were typos on four slides" experience?

Given the way you described it in the ask, my guess, and this is a rough one, because there isn't a lot of context here, is that they're doing work they think is good and only getting feedback that focuses on the smaller things that are wrong with it.

Firstly: hell yeah dude that fucking sucks.

Secondly: that said, you did have typos on four slides.

One of the other most significant transitions you make that nobody talks about when you move into the professional sphere is that you're no longer evaluated for effort. That can be a great or terrible thing.

That you spent 100 hours killing yourself to put this project together doesn't really matter if there's something embarrassing and dumb on page 16 that makes your boss look like an idiot in a meeting in front of the clients. As far as they're concerned, you weren't being paid for the 100 hours of effort, you were being paid for delivering something that would make them look smart in that presentation.

By that same token, if you can do that same backbreaking work in 15 minutes with a bunch of Excel macros and fuck around the rest of the day? Who cares--it's getting done, and if it's getting done well, great. Jobs are not forcing you to show your work.

But that doesn't change the sting of how much it sucks when you've worked so hard on something, and at the end of the day, the feedback you get is over something that you perceive to be petty.

Now there are a lot of different influences here: you could have a shitty manager who is just an asshole, you could be working with a fucking weirdo who needed to be shoved into more lockers as a teenager, you could be working for a sociopath--these are all possible.

But what's more likely, from what I have experienced professionally, is that you're likely working for someone who is busy, who hired you to take on something and own it, end to end, and who wants--desperately--to be able to give you work, and never have to think twice about its quality and to trust it absolutely, because it would simplify their life in some way. I'm saying this from personal experience. This is what I want--desperately--from my team, even though I know it is not realistic, and it's almost never possible in a seamless way.

So this is where it's really important that your friend be honest with themselves and evaluate whether those criticisms are--however frustrating--legitimate. Were there issues with the deliverable? Should they have done something different? Should they have communicated better? And if there's smoke there, try to work on gritting your teeth through the knee jerk emotional response and put out the fire, however small, because that's the grit that's going to help propel you through your very long professional career.

It's so, so, so frequently the little things, the rough edges, that feel so unfair to have called out. The typo on page 76. The weird formatting. That one image that uses the wrong hex code for red so it's cool instead of warm tone and that's bugging your leadership team.

But also these small things stand out in the face of an otherwise well-done deliverable. They mar the final work. I'm not saying the weight that they're given is entirely fair--it's not. But don't undercut your own hard work by letting yourself get sloppy as you're dragging across the finish line. You've worked way too fucking hard not to get the credit you deserve for all the work you did to get here. Of course it sucks that this is what anyone is going to notice instead of the broader value, but you can't control that--what you can control is building in time for a last review. Using your network of colleagues to help you give things a proof. Ensuring that you're communicating clearly with your team and manager. Fully take ownership of the stuff you can control, because that's how you're going to get your work taken seriously.

If you can do that, and you can be self-reflective and also detached enough not to let your work performance be an analog for your value, that's going to be an incredible asset as you continue to grow in your career. People say unhinged things to me all the time, and I'm not going to lie and tell you that it doesn't bother me at all anymore, but I'm really good at giving myself the beat, taking five, and then coming back with less immediately murderous reactivity to evaluate things on their actual merits. It means people aren't afraid to be honest with me when there are issues, and it means that I learn about them early enough that I can remediate them and stay a trusted partner and advisor in the workplace.

(And then I go to training and pretend the fucking 20 pound ball filled with sand is my manager and I throw him into walls yelling, "FUCK YOU DUDE," because that anger still has to go somewhere.)

I know it's probably not the answer you or your friend would want to hear, but it's the truth. I try my best to gas up my people by shouting from the rooftops when they do good work, but God knows I also make them crazy when they've spent a long time working on something only for me to tear it to shreds in editing or say, "thanks but this needs another proofing pass," and I'm sure they're plotting my death in bars about it.

[southpark-trashfactory]

I wanna ramble about some Bunny thoughts that aren't necessarily very shippy but I guess are partially why I find them as a ship so interesting.

(CW: Child Abuse )

So, I'm of the opinion that none of the South Park parents are actually very good parents, that's the main reason I don't often talk about them, since I don't wanna let my own dislike for them as people come across like I don't appreciate them as characters.

That being said I feel like most people might hesitate to unanimously label the majority of the SP parents as outright abusive, minus for The Stotches and The McCormicks.

For me, this makes for a very interesting dynamic, because it gives Kenny and Butters some common ground that they don't have with most of the other characters.

Building off of that, their situations are similar in theme, but far from identical in execution.

Kenny is the middle child in a financially struggling household, his parents are constantly fighting and physically abuse each other as well as their kids, he's even been shown to be desensitized to his parents arguing. He's also been parentified in how he has to take care of his little sister, and is psychologically abused through his parents degrading him, either for refusing to go to church or for failing to bring home money when he got a job. (I mean forcing a 9yo to get a job in the first place is pretty yikes but you get what I mean )

Butters is an only child in (what I interpret to be) a fairly financially stable household, with parents who more often than not run their home like a well oiled machine together, they're also physically abusive but the abuse they employ the most frequently is psychological, enforcing very specific rules and very harsh punishments when they are broken. (Like when Stephen got mad at him for not organizing the pantry right, so he poured ricerroni into his coffee, even though he could have, looked at the box)

I sort of always interpret Kenny and Butters situations as a mirror of the other, with Kenny's household primarily employing physical abuse with some instances of psychological abuse, and Butters household employing primarily psychological abuse with strategic physical punishments.

Kenny's environment is chaos that he's grown accustomed to, there isn't any rhyme or reason to what he goes through, and the responsibilities he has are unfair for a kid his age. That being said, I feel like he at least has some peace of mind in knowing that it's his parents who are the problem.

Butters on the other hand, might be a different story. His environment is structured neatly and securely, or at least he's told it is, there's always a reason given for why he's being punished, even if he had no way of knowing beforehand, he's always informed of why exactly he is the one at fault. He's a very sheltered child, and though he may from time to time think he's being treated unfairly, he might hesitate to believe he could be being abused, because don't his parents treat him well outside of when he's being punished? You couldn't well say he's neglected, he plays multiple musical instruments, knows how to tap dance, and entered at least one dressage competition, all of which require lessons, so money and time from his parents. All of this considered would probably make Butters perception of his parents very confusing for him.

I know this post mostly comes across as me pointing at these two like "Hey, look how fucked up these kids are" and by no means do I feel like their shared trauma is the only merit to their dynamic being interesting, but it's something I often find myself thinking about, and rarely really see explored as in depth as I would like.

Like, to what extent do they know about each other's experiences? Could they maybe find solace in each other's experiences, or would they get hung up on the differences? Maybe a mixture of both where they find comfort in each other only after coming to terms with the fact they may never fully understand what the other went through, even if it seems similar? Idk man, I just like the idea that these fucked up kids could be happy together.

I like the idea that they might hurt each other accidentally because they're humans who have been hurt, but they make the effort to do better by each other because they care, and they want to be together for as long as it feels right.

I feel like this is just a bunch of random thoughts strung together but it's like almost 3 am

[oopsalltes]

WHAT THE HELL EVEN ARE BOMBERMEN? (AN IN-DEPTH REIMAGINE AU LOOK INTO BOMBERMAN ANATOMY)

ridiculously long text dump incoming but i figured i'd finally go over some more technical stuff about the au. ive seen other people talk about their headcanons for how the bombermen work in-game and got a bit inspired since ive mostly been going over lore with my comics!

SO, WHAT ARE BOMBERMEN? true to most of the games, they are still robots in the au! entirely mechanical with no organic components. the vast majority of them originate from the former planet earth, now called planet bomber, but some models have been integrated into different planets (planet scrapheap for example) for specific jobs.

all bombermen come from "the original", Shiro, who was built by evil forces lurking underground on planet earth before it was renamed planet bomber. during his tenure as a reluctant minion of evil, his purpose was to create bombs for their efforts of subjugating the remnants of humanity on earth.

prior to his escape from the clutches of the evil forces, he looked very much like how he is depicted in the games!

WHY DO THEY LOOK LIKE HUMANS NOW? in the original NES bomberman game, the plot revolves around bomberman's escape to the surface under the belief that he will become human. the AU follows this premise, but more literally: although Shiro doesn't actually become an organic human, he is rebuilt to resemble their appearance more faithfully! thus, all bombermen that come after him retain that human-like appearance.

this applies to the human experience as well. they can cry, taste food, live like humans even though they are artificial. they're aware of the fact that they aren't human, mind, but the line is very thin for some! Shiro goes so far as to say that he's just as human as any organic one because of his free will and his ability TO desire to be human. but most are pretty normal about it.

BASIC ANATOMY STRUCTURE bombermen possess an internal structure intentionally designed similar to that of humans. their endoskeleton is practically 1:1 of a human skeleton, the only difference being that it's obviously metal. they possess significantly less "organs", with most of their computer components centralized in a single case located where a human heart would be. their central processing unit and memory cards are located inside of the skull, reinforced by pure steel to prevent any potential internalized damage. while ripping off the outer layer of skin takes about as much effort as it would to a human, you'll be hard-pressed to actually penetrate their head/skull. pain receptors are probably the most complex and delicate in terms of structure, essentially microscopic detectors found across the body like nerves. the part of the processing unit that recognizes the feeling of pain can be manually turned off if needed, but is usually left on so that the individual is aware of damage or something malfunctioning.

all bombermen have an antenna attached to their left ear. this is used for communication with others across distance, and is also used to monitor their surroundings! it can pick up movement, energy, and other various things. it's one of their trademark identifiers, and can also be used as a sort of ID for other bombermen, so its very important to them! to remove their atenna is like declawing a cat.

don't.

like most computers, their capability of information storage is limited. although usually equipped with multiple memory cards, many bombermen elect to move data/memories they don't need all of the time onto items like USB drives so they don't need to outright delete things. their sleeping routines are the most effective way for them to undergo defragmentation.

with resources on earth having been very scarce, bombermen are equipped to run on multiple kinds of energy. like most computers, electrical energy is the most common and widely used, but their synthetic skin is capable of taking in solar energy and a furnace "stomach" can transform eaten foods into chemical energy - think of the latter as burning coal to fuel a locomotive. the one thing they DON'T use however is oil. its seen as very volatile source of energy because it's not renewable. this means they don't bleed! there's no need for them to have any liquid circulation, so replacing parts is also easier in that regard since there's no fear of losing any potential lifeforce.

ASIMOV? WHO'S THAT?? they do not follow the three laws. they are completely independent. most bombermen lean towards being good-natured (if not with their own quirks), so murder of organics/destruction of their own kind is HIGHLY taboo. this doesn't mean they're incapable of making that decision, though.

WHO BUILDS THEM? this answer is a little more complex. early in the timeline, the only way to make a bomberman was to build one yourself. this was especially apparent during earth's final years before being renamed, as most of humanity had abandoned the planet after the evil forces were reawakened decades prior. as such, bombermen were short in number because the few remaining humans that were technologically competent were the only ones capable of making them.

however, ALL bombermen are capable of recreating their own kind. this was information originally given to Shiro by the evil forces so that, for whatever reason, it would be instinct for him to prevent the extinction of his own existence. when more bombermen began to populate the planet, they started to do the creation themselves since they knew everything they needed in order to accomplish it. this is where familial relationships become possible! many bombermen who create their own kind view their creation as siblings or children, and this carries over further into the timeline even when a mother computer meant to mass produce models comes into existence.

WHAT'S IN A TITLE? "Bomberman" is both a species and a title. while most common bots will refer to themselves as "a bomberman", very few have the privilege of being called Bomberman. this name is reserved for particularly outstanding individuals who are responsible for the protection of planet bomber, meaning only a few of them exist across the timeline.

so far these include Shiro (the original), Ivory (Shiro's brother and the protagonist for most of the games that take place on Planet Bomber), and White (the sbr iteration - his siblings get privileges by association but since he's the only cracker white bomberman of the group he gets the official title). depending on how development of the timeline goes there might be more...

WHAT THE HELL ARE PSEUDO BOMBERMEN? I actually addressed this question on my twitter with a funny little comic but i'll go a little further in-depth with the discussion here.

as the name implies, these aren't considered to be "real" ones for various kinds of reasons. bombermen become very popular to imitate due to how (in)famous Shiro becomes across space, but building a robot might not exactly be conventional for some people. this is where pseudo bombermen come in. anything from bomber-cyborgs, organically made bombermen, etc are all considered pseudo bombermen. the general rule of thumb is if it isn't a robot, it's a pseudo.

notable pseudo-bombers would be Max (cyborg), Shirobon from Jetters (alien), and the Bomber Shittenou (made from elements).

ARE YOU GOING TO ADDRESS THAT LINE FROM YELLOW IN SBR2 sure they can have cock and balls why not. full human experience or something.

well that was long as fuck!! thanks for reading!!! if there are any questions feel free to leave them in my inbox and ill be sure to respond to them :)