#and yes I keep using larger and larger text sizes

[wearecrowley]

good omens crack 2 of ∞

[gallusrostromegalus]

On God I was working on the AEIWAM Outline today but I also got "The AEIWAM cast, post-fic, go to the Aquarium" brainrot so have this:

It kicks off with Retsu seeing Kenpachi deep in thought for once and asking him what he's mulling over and after a moment he asks: "Are there zoos for fish?" "...Pardon?" "There are lotsa fish," he reasons, "-at least as many as there are land animals, but they're all really hard to see, because they're in the water." Retsu considers him for a moment before gently asking "Do you mean The Aquarium?" "The what?"

Retsu, texting Ichigo in the Gotei-13 Groupchat at 2AM: I need you to acquire tickets and human chaperones for a group field trip to The Aquarium Ichigo, who fears her above everyone else in soul society: Yes, Captain. Retsu: If it was just the SWA I'd only ask for tickets but you know what The Lads are like. Ichigo: Unfortunately, Yes. Ichigo: I'll bring the first aid kit, zip ties, duct tape and candy. Retsu: Good man.

Upon Arrival, Kenpachi has already been lectured about "You ARE NOT ALLOWED to fight and/or eat the fish, no matter how annoying and/or delicious they look

Turns out they were lecturing the wrong guy because it's Byakuya that develops a personal rivalry with a grouper ("It's smug expression disgusts me." "Captain that is a FISH.") and has to be talked out of climbing into the tank to fight it

after that he has to hold hands with Rukia or Renji.

Rukia discovers Sea Bunnies and ends up crying about them.

Yachiru gets to see them feeding the Piranha and it's a Spiritual Experience for her.

Later, she gets to see them feed the sharks and it's an EVEN BETTER spiritual Experience.

Hitsugaya learns Penguins are real and not just 'made up for christmas, like the flying reindeer and the guy with the suspect toy charity'.

Momo lights into him about "Penguins are my favorite animal, they've been my favorite animal for decades YOU THOUGHT THEY WERE FAKE?" Hitsugaya: "YOU ALSO USED TO LIKE UNICORNS!" Momo: "THOSE ARE ALSO REAL!" Orihime: "They are?" Momo: "...I keep forgetting they're extinct in the living world."

Tousen gets to experience the Touch Pool and the docents realize what's up so they start pulling out the cool stuff like sea hares and moray eels because he's an adult that can be trusted to pet things gently.

When the group comes back to collect him the staff is letting him hand feed a Pacific Red Octopus, and Yachiru immediately demands she be allowed to as well.

Retsu quietly releases Minazuki into the stingray touch pool so she can "go play with her cousins :)"

Kenpachi and Yamamoto asking "Can we eat it?" about every. single. animal.

The extremely dedicated docent that is *just* Psychic enough to know something is up with this group of chucklefucks so they're following them through the aquarium, but is also genuinely having fun answering every fucking insane question these guys ask.

Yoruichi was not anticipating there to be Tigers at the aquarium (they ARE semi-aquatic and part of a larger exhibit on Tropical Riparian Ecosystems) and she is SUPER NOT JEALOUS of how much Urahara and Baby Labcat like them.

There is also an exhibit with an Anaconda that the docent finds Rangiku staring at with a forlorn expression. Docent: "It's okay, not everyone is a fan of snakes." Rangiku: "What? Oh, no, I love snakes. They just also remind me of my Ex." Docent: *WomanTryingToDoMath.Meme* Docent: *Considers the size of the Anaconda* Docent: "...Ah. Yeah, I'd miss a man like that too."

Renji, Ichigo and Ikkaku going "Its YOU!" to each other over every single red, orange or round creature.

Kenpachi going "IT ME!!" about the black urchins before anyone can get him though.

Shunsui pointing at the sea otters that are holding hands and declaring, tears in his eyes "Jushiro! It's US!" Ukitake then prompty ruins the moment by telling Shunsui Fun Facts about Sea Otters like how they're basically giant marine weasels that will absolutely drown each other's young and maul anyone dumb enough to touch one.

The Dolphins all love Komamura and he is just a little bit smug about this.

Relatedly, not sure if its funnier for Komamura to show up in a Human Gigai, or as Tousen's "Service Dog"

Human Gigai: -Komamura is weirdly stony-faced and sort of intimidating and everyone thinks he's stressed out but really he's used to making micro-expressions and gesturing with his ears so he sorta just forgot how to move his face. -Still Nine and a Half feet tall and smacking his head on Everything

Service Dog: -"He's uh. A Shepherd. Mix." Ichigo says to the aforementioned Docent about what is very obviously a Bigass Timber Wolf. -Sajin doesn't give a rat's ass about his cover and keeps talking to Tousen while in dog form. If anyone looks at him funny he makes direct eye contact and says "Woof. Bark."

Yamamoto vs. Escalator. Catastrophic Beard Incident. 2 injured, 16 Dead but they were like that already.

Ukitake, Retsu, and Tama all Not Shutting Up With Facts About Every Fish Ever because they all share a Special Interest.

They briefly lose Byakuya in the Jellyfish exhibit because Rukia and Renji both thought the other one was holding Byakuya's hand and he is *enchanted* by the wall-sized tank of Moon Jellies.

Ikkaku attempting to talk Yachiru out of getting the ridiculously oversized Great White Shark plushie only for Zaraki to get it for both of them instead.

Everyone had a great time and is Very Tired and so they don't realize anything is amiss until they get back to Ichigo's place and the nightly news comes on. "Hey ichigo?" Yuzu calls. "Why is Ms. Unohana on TV?" The news has a story with a still image of Retsu on CCTV and "Authorities are looking for this woman who somehow ADDED a fully intact and highly venomous short-tailed stingray to the aquarium's touch pool" "OH MY GOD WE FORGOT MINAZUKI!"

[thesealantern]

Pink corruption headcannons! (Varying from nonsensical, angsty to silly, most of these are weirdly specific but stick with me okay?)

• Pentellow was completely illiterate for a good chunk of her life, Iris has taught her the basics of reading and writing and while she can read simple texts fairly easily she still struggles with writing. Every time she needs to write anything she has Iris do it for her, she walks around the room like an old military general while she’s dictating. (It helps her think)

• Occasionally, when Iris is particularly upset, frustrated or stressed, he’ll blurt out something his dad told him as a kid. No one ever takes it to heart and half the time it isn’t even something particularly offensive but every time it happens Iris feels terrible and I’m telling you this man sits on his bed staring at his hands like “I am no better than my father”, he can time all instances this has happened and yes they haunt him when he’s falling asleep.

• Anytime Pyrare tries to write a letter to the other caretakers it ends in catastrophe. He refuses to shrink for the task, so either he tried to just write in very small letters and the text is absolutely unreadable, he asks Gold to write it who then proceeds to shorten it and leave stuff out (and has occasionally just changed the contents of letters entirely, mostly when it’s someone he doesn’t like) or there was that one time he just sent Pentellow and Iris a monster sized letter. It was a pain to deal with, they still have it somewhere because Pentellow insisted they keep it.

• Iris has a weird hatred towards a very specific kind of cursive most of the people back at the palace (including his father) used. Anytime he sees it anywhere he just gets super irritated, it’s honestly kind of amusing. Is Iris aware that a grudge against a style of writing is stupid? Yeah, but he doesn’t care.

• Gold and Cyanide like to play chess together sometimes, they’re both fairly good at it and their games are super intense and take a long while. The other heroes all collectively suck at chess (Orange is mediocre, Tsavorite and Cyan are a lost cause) but join in if it’s at Pyrare’s place, though that usually leads to them using the ridiculously sized chess board to make up their own games.

• The first time Gold saw a non-monster shape he was absolutely flabbergasted, he did know of them, but for most of his life he hadn’t seen one (I imagine Pyrare and Gold lived a fairly isolated life for the most part) and Pyrare never made it sound like a big deal so he just kinda thought they’d be a bit shorter. The fact they had two eyes was also kind of weird, sure he has two eyes but he just thought that was a hero thing.

• Seeing the inside of a shape-sized house was even more baffling, Gold still hasn’t gotten over how tiny some things are.

•Every time they spend a long time in shape populated area Pyrare is just STARVING, there’s no way any of the inns they stayed at have portions close to what an adult monster needs. He never complains about it though. Honestly I think he would just pass out at one point, the lack of food mixed with so much travelling is bound to catch up to him.

• Kind of random but monsters probably have a much slower heartbeat than shapes. Since most large animals have larger hearts but they pump at a slower pace, I’m pretty sure it has to do with temperature regulation but idk man I’m no biologist.

[a-book-of-creatures]

The Deinotherium from Paris Avant les Hommes. Why does it look like a giant mole? Well, turns out this is reasoned out within the text, and since at least one person wanted to know it here it is (any translation errors are mine). @glarnboudin hope this answers all your questions!

...

"Since we are on the chapter of singular animals, I shall let you see another one from the quaternary epoch, whose history is no less strange. It shall serve as an introduction to antediluvian mammals, although it belongs, I believe, to the molasse which, according to Beudant, succeeded the Parisian chalk wherever it is missing. Look, there it is showing up; but it disappeared behind that hillock. Let's see, let us sit beneath this tree and it might come back. In the meantime, let us chat".

"Parbleu, I recognized it perfectly: it is the dinotherium giganteum. I had seen in the Rue Vivienne, its bones shown to the public for a bit of money, for scientists have to be industrious, one way or another, to avoid dying of hunger. Whatever the case, they showed me an enormous fossil head, 1.30 meters long and 1 meter wide, that is to say bigger than the biggest Indian elephants. It had two tusks located, against all analogy of what we know of animals alive or fossil, not in the upper jaw, but in the lower; not in the place of the canines, but in the place of the incisors; not pointing skyward, but lowered towards the ground; not sticking out of the mouth, but emerging from two holes that had to have been in the lower lip. Truly, I said to myself, this is enough to embarrass a wiser man than I, and, after many contradictory thoughts for half an hour, I finally took a side. Well, I said to myself, the die is cast: despite all my misgivings, one must have to make of this dinotherium giganteum a walrus or a seal, like Mr. Buckland said; or an elephant, as presumed Mr. de Blainville; a tapir or a pangolin, as G. Cuvier wrote; or a whale, as some German paleontologists think, and yet these animals have no analogy among them. Let's see, let's decide, I said to myself: this shall be…"

"A mole", said the genie in a small, acerbic, and mocking voice, and accompanied these words with a long peal of laughter that disconcerted me.

"A mole! But good sir, a mole hasn't the least connection, the least resemblance with a tapir, a whale, an elephant; and what would the authors I just cited say of this?"

"Your authors can say what they want; but I shall insist that the carcass that you had seen was that of a mole".

"That's impossible! See, here are the engravings they gave me at the door, judge for yourself".

The devil put his walking stick between his legs, put his glasses on his nose, took my images with his thumb and the other fingers of his left hand; then, running the index finger of his right hand on the figure representing the animal's head, he said:

"And first of all, my dear scholar, you will see that this head is 1 meter 60 centimeters at its greatest length, and 92 centimeters wide; so therefore it could not be less than 1.32 m long and 1 meter wide when it was covered with muscle and skin. But the average size of the head of a mammalian quadruped is at least a quarter of the length of its body. The dinotherium therefore was at least 5 to 6 meters long, which equals the size of the largest elephants. I am being conservative in choosing those dimensions; and I suppose that this carcass found on the banks of the Rhine by Professor Klipstein is not the biggest dinotherium the species provided, which is more than probable, since we have a few other fragments that are proportionally larger, and which suggest that the animal keeping us busy must have been longer than 6 meters".

"And you conclude from there that it should have been a mole?"

"One moment! Notice the enormous cavity destined to receive the bones of the nose".

"Yes, of the trunk".

"Who said anything about a trunk? Where do you see a trunk?"

"Scientists..."

"Why do you want to see a trunk instead of a nose? Take the skeleton of a pig or that of a mole, you will find at the same place enormous muscle impressions. Would you then conclude that the pig or the mole has a trunk? So the dinotherium has a nose, but a long nose, mobile, thick, powerful, good for searching in the earth; in short, a mole's nose. Do you deny that? Is it more unrealistic that an animal has a nose like any other animal's, than to have an anomaly instead?"

"It is true that by coldly calculating probability, one must believe more easily in analogies than anomalies, this seems more logical; but a mole!"

"Notice, my dear, that the orbits or holes of the eyes are extremely small in comparison to those of all known animals, and that they do not close in the posterior part; and, in fact, why would the dinotherium have eyes proportionally larger than those of a mole since, having to live in the darkness of a subterranean home, these organs would have been no more use to it than to the mole. As animals who are forced to push soil in front of them and by digging with their head, the frontal bones are short, but strong and very thick; the face of the occiput, of great dimension, forms with them a 130-140 degree angle, which you only see in whales. The prodigious muscles that move this colossal head gave it crushing strength. The chrysochlore, or Cape golden mole (talpa asiatica, L.) alone can offer you some analogy with the dinotherium in this aspect. You conceive that an animal forced to fray itself an underground passage, three or four meters in diameter, will need that prodigious strength in the neck muscles, strength that can conly compare, as I said, with that of a whale. And despite that it must have often encountered obstacles, stones, tree roots, despite living in the soft and deep soils, and the earth that the rivers, such as the Rhine, and the great flows of water carry and accumulate with the centuries in the basins that they run through and inundate every year. It would have been stopped dead in its tracks if nature had not given it a pickaxe to tear out those obstacles. This pickaxe, there it is: these are the tusks emerging from the lower jaw and directed earthward. They resemble, my word, those forked hoes that vineyard-keepers use in rocky or freshly cleared earth. There, look, they must have had terrifying strength, if we can judge by the deep depressions carved in the temporal bones to lodge the muscles that moved and directed the lower jaw. Besides, these tusks or teeth offered, relative to their shape, and especially in the place that they occupy, an example of a structure unique in all creation”.

“As for its other teeth”, added the demon, pointing his finger at the figure depicting them, “you will see that they are five in number. The first is cutting at its anterior part, the third has three hills, and the other two; from that one must conclude that the animal lived on roots, rhizomes, and tubers that lived underground. But, I ask you, what good would a trunk be for it? It would have certainly been a hindrance, and that is all”.

“I concede that this head is very good for digging in the ground, but that does not prove that the animal lived underground”.

“Let us examine the other fragments”, said the genie. “The scapula is long, narrow, and looks entirely like that of a mole. Observation has proven that all animals who have it in this shape use their forelegs in constant, painstaking motions, requiring great muscular strength. Thus this form of scapula, rare in mammals, is very common in birds, because the latter need great wing strength to remain aloft.

Now on to the second phalange of the front foot. You will notice that the articular facet of this bone is completely different from that of other animals. As an indispensable result of this very superficial articulation, the dinotherion could not walk on the tips of its fingers, and it would have to drag itself on the exterior edges of the hand, like the mole. This last animal is still is still the only one that presents in this phalange an analogy of form with our fossil monster”.

But here is an even more conclusive fragment; it is the first phalange, or inguinal phalange of this same front foot. Look how it is deeply notched in its anterior part. This incision exists in mammals only in three kinds of animals, all three of which dig in the ground and live in burrows; it gives their claws the prodigious strength that they need. The pangolin, the chrysochloris or Cape mole, and the common mole are the only living animals that have the same conformation, and, remarkably in the mole, the character is less pronounced than in the dinotherion.

And so, my dear, what must we conclude of all this? It is that, as naturalists have sworn, the dinotherion has no analogy with any animals other than those I have cited and, having the head of a mole, the scapula of a mole, and the hands of a mole, must, it seems to me, resemble a mole more than a whale. It is true that the great anatomist Cuvier made of it a giant pangolin, but he hadn’t seen the head”.

“I admit, lord demon, that most analogies are in favor of your opinion, and yet, here are teeth that…”

“That look nothing like a mole’s, I agree, because the jaws of the dinotherion lack incisors and canines, but they are no less suited for grinding roots and even mollusks and insects that it could find in its excavations. Besides, my dear, this anomaly, if it is one, has many examples in living animals. For example, if you ever go to New Holland, you will find a large family of marsupial mammals whose species have so many analogies that it is difficult to separate one from the group it forms, and who differ as much as possible by their dental system. Among these heterogeneously-toothed species, the opossum (the only genus not from Australia) represents insectivorous carnivores, like tenrecs and moles; the rat-kangaroo has teeth adapted for a frugivorous diet, like the hedgehog; the giant kangaroo lives on vegetation, lacks the upper canines that characterize the preceding and only has canines that are transverse to its jaws, which bring it closer to our herbivorous pachyderms; finally, the wombat is, like the hare, a veritable rodent by the teeth and by the intestines. And yet no naturalist has tried to separate these marsupials to put them in the great divisions where their teeth would have rigorously classified them. I intend therefore to make of the dinotherion, if it is not a mole, at least a related genus that I would place with the desmans, the moles, the chrysochlores and the tenrecs, all subterranean animals like it. And besides, if you aren’t content, you can place it elsewhere, but in this case you would have to, according to your principles, create not a genus, a family, or even an order, but a separate class that it would occupy by itself, and this necessity would be the bloodiest critique that you could make of the so-called natural method of your scientists”.

Despite the high opinion I had of my irascible demon’s merit, he had so filled my head with pangolins, seals, tapirs, whales, and elephants, that I could not in any way accept his mole, and a small smile of vanity and disapprobation came over my lips. He noticed, and cried out!

“Ah! Ah! Mister Incredulous! Have I not employed to convince you the same analogic arguments that your sagest paleontology professors use every day; but it will take more than reason to convince you, from what I see. Well then, morbleu! I will convince you with your own eyes or I shall lose my devilry”. He pounced upon me and seized me by the arm, which took away my desire to laugh; he threw me behind him astride his crutch, like a witch heading to the Sabbath on a broomstick, and together we flew into the air, we took off like a crossbow bolt. The speed of our voyage dizzied me so, that I cannot positively say how much time we took to make our way, nor where we passed to find ourselves on the borders of the Rhine, but what is certain is that we were traveling faster than on a train or on a steamboat.

When I came to, I was laid out on a bed of moss shaded by a tree at least thirty to thirty-five meters tall. I asked the genie which country we were in.

“We are”, he told me, “in this country that will be named, in a few thousand years, the Rhenish province of the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt. This great lake that you see there in the East will dry out, and on of the most beautiful rivers of Europe, the Rhine, will cross its ancient bed in its entire length. The place where we are now will be the burg of Eppelsheim and further the city of Alzéi. If you remember the first voyages we made during the other periods, you will notice how much the vegetation has changed, and you will recognize the tree under which we are as a walnut tree quite similar to the common walnut tree, but with more angular nuts that end in a sharp point”.

Suddenly a low but horrible roar made me shiver to the very bone. I looked around in fear, but saw nothing. This horrible cry resonated in my ears a second time and I felt the earth shake under my feet. The idea of underground noises that you hear before an earthquake or rather before mountain upheaval, following Élie de Beaumont, or the sinking of a province according to Beudant, brought terror to my heart, and I thought for a moment that I would be lifted up at the top of a new chain of Alps raising from the depths of the Earth, or sinking into the central fire of the globe in a collapse. I got up quickly and started to run as fast as I was able. But I hadn’t made two hundred paces before my demon grabbed me by my arm, sat me down on a fragment of rock, and, with his finger, indicated the place under the tree where I had been where the most extraordinary scene unfolded.

The earth shook convulsively, and its movement was communicated by the shaking foliage of the walnut tree, which shook and balanced in the air as if a whirlwind had gone into its thousand branches. The tree bent over and straightened several times, then finally, it fell over with a crash, and the earth rose in a great cone seven meters high, opening up at the top of this singular molehill.

“Parbleu”, I told the genie, “I could swear you’re showing me the formation of the new Pyrenees in miniature”.

“In miniature!” he answered, “by my word, that’s quite the miniature! There, there it comes out of its hole”.

Indeed, I saw, coming out of the hole that had opened at the top of the cone like a volcanic crater, a monstrous head three times bigger than a barrel, then an even thicker neck; then a massive body, about three meters in diameter, that is to say as big as the biggest elephant; and finally, a strange animal, five to six meters long, with a terrifying appearance, and dragging itself clumsily on four very short, very thick legs. Its whole body was covered in long, silky hairs, green and shifting in hue from copper to bronze, offering, like the Cape chrysochlore, beautiful metallic reflections. Its very large nose, about sixty centimeters long, ended in a sort of mobile snout, bristling all over with sharp and keratinous tubercles, suitable for opening up the inside of the earth. Under this nose was an enormous lower jaw, prolonged anteriorly in a long chin pointing downwards. At the end of this chin, two tusks almost touching at the base, more than two feet long, emerged through the skin of the lip and directed their points perpendicularly earthwards, yet with a light curvature towards the forelegs. I saw that this monster was using them to help it crawl, by stretching its head out, sinking them into the soil, and pulling its body forward. Its eyes were so small that you would not have seen them through the long hairs surrounding them, if they did not gleam with a dark and red fire like two sparks. Its ears were very small and the concha was barely apparent. Its hindlegs were rather short and armed with very strong claws, but its forelegs ended in two enormous hands absolutely similar to those of a mole, and they were used to push the earth to the right or left as it used its nose to dig an underground tunnel.

The formidable animal descended from atop the monticule it had created; with a lot of agility, it crawled a few meters, then made a cry so sharp, so noisy, so extraordinary that I cannot compare it to anything that human ears have ever heard. The demon saw me shudder and reassured me, telling me that it was calling another animal of its species, and it would move away from us if it heard a response. It continued to make a sharp cry from time to time, moving to the edge of a great forest covering the flanks of a hill, and where I saw a few monticules similar to its own. Meanwhile, I observed a few of those animals a bit smaller in size, and I pointed them out to the genie.

“You are not mistaken”, he told me, “for the paleontologists know in fact, under the name dinotherium bavaricum, another species of this kind, but a bit smaller. What is most unusual in the history of these two dinotherions is that the scientist, G. Cuvier, took the bones of the great dinotherion to be those of a giant tapir, equal in size to the greatest Indian elephant”.

[jiveyuncle]

Hey! Just found that physical fanfic, and got super excited. Planning on printing one of my fav klance fics as well, but I have a question - What did you use to format it?? When I download it straight from ao3 and upload the file, it makes the book extremely large. I’m talkin 8.5 x 11”, and I really don’t want a book that large. I’m trying to figure it out, as my fic is also from ao3. Any tips would be very much appreciated!!

Hello! It’s cool that you’re looking into giving this a shot!! I’m big on collecting physical media, so I’m always overjoyed when an author gives me the green light to do this with a story <3 I've had a few asks like this so I'll just kinda answer the formatting specific questions here.

Before I get started, this is just a reminder that anyone attempting this should always ask permission before printing any fics/art that isn’t yours! A lack of response is not permission - only a “yes” is permission. Someone else having permission is not you having permission. Always respect your creators by letting them keep control over their work - it’s the least you can do for the people who have freely given you something you love so much!

This is just a bit long and is largely technical, so I’ll leave the answer below the Read More.

Okay. The way I format a fic is through Google Docs, so you'll need to have a basic understanding of how to navigate that application (ex. insert page breaks, alignment, indenting, etc). To keep this from becoming a How to GoogleDocs thing, just know that in my copy all titles and headers are Georgia size 15.5 font and all notes and body text are Veranda size 9.5 font (though I should have probably made it size 9 font as it turned out just a tad larger than I anticipated (**edit: I have since printed another fic at size 9 font and it was perfect size!)). This is not what typical printed books do, but I wanted to keep things as close to reading on AO3 as possible to preserve my experience, therefore indentations and paragraph spacing reflects the website rather than that of a standard book edit. Below shows how that translates into the physical copy. For the sake of consistency with previous asks, I will continue to use The Raven Boys by Maggie Steifvater as the standard book format and there, nestled against his pulse by hiuythn as the printed fanfic so you can compare the two.

And since you asked a specific formatting question, I’ll show a quick step-by-step of how to change page settings to match that of a book below. *Keep in mind, books come in different dimensions, so you can easily change this to other sizes if you want a smaller/larger print.

I don’t have a computer, so the following is all done from my iPad. The placement of settings may be a bit different, but all of the settings will still be available on a computer. First, find this menu.

Navigate to “Page setup.”

Choose your “Paper size.” I set mine to “5.5 x 8.5.”

From that same “Page set up” menu, customize your margins. I set mine to 0.5 on top and bottom and 0.75 on the sides so that the text doesn’t get too close to the inner part of the page when printed.

And now you’re ready to roll! Hope this helps!

[thespiritofvexation]

Thåström live report 27/2:

After having watched a ridiculous amount of live videos of this man it felt surreal to finally see him live LIVE!

He is smaller irl (meaning he's just a guy-sized) than he appears in photos. I guess it's his insane charisma that make him seem larger than life

Very mixed crowd of people in terms of age which was fun to see. Ran into both a 19 y/o (f) co-worker and a 60 y/o (m) co-worker there! Also spotted one or two Ebba Grön and Imperiet T-shirts...

He started with Magiskt oändligt which set the tone for the whole show. Instead of going in full force he seem more interested in building atmosphere these days. Something he managed to accomplish, eternally magic indeed!

He's done some setlist changes during the tour and while I'm superhappy I got to hear Papperstunna väggar it seems he scrapped two (boring) songs for that one? Not OK, add something else or keep one of the boring ones!

I said before that if he didn't appear sufficiently miserable I would throw stuff at him, but I couldn't bring myself to do it even though he was uncharacteristically jolly. I confess I caved...

For instance during Jeffrey Lee Pierce he started laughing and gushing about the lightshow "Fantastic!", like sir this is a dark and tragic story this is no time for childlike wonder! You should know this, you wrote it

But to be fair he was right (as always) the lightshow WAS fantastic (as always)!

And he's absolutely mesmerising to watch with all his thåström-isms and signature poses in the light and smoke. Unbothered and so authentic yet fully aware, fascinating!

Centralmassivet - Idc that he's trying to gaslight us into thinking he doesn't write political texts anymore, yes we do be needing a miracle and yes it would be nice if it came right about NOW!

True to his habit of name-dropping random music genres he introduced Old Point Bar as "tonight's Boogie Woogie"...?

Det årets kallaste kväll - I have no words. A fav from the new album and live it's mindblowing. Tried to find a live video that reflected what I felt but I guess you just had to be there...

...And on that note, get you a bassist who also play the saxophone! I mean holy shit

I was pretty sure I was going to tear up at some point but didn't expect Flyktsoda to be the song to break me.

Often times when you watch these older legendary artists you sort of politely listen to their new stuff but what you're really after is the older stuff. And then you get a little sad because they can't sing the older stuff like they used to. But when people say this man just keeps getting better it's not just fanbehaviour. He really is that good still and some of the best stuff is from his latest album. He's got a very promising career ahead of him!

Don't get me wrong, he could definitely not sing Flyktsoda the way he used to, but back then he also couldn't sing it the way he does now. His voice isn't deteriorating, it just keeps evolving is what I'm saying.

Sidenote - I love his voice (all of them) so much it's going to give me tinnitus because I just cannot not turn up the volume to max and drown myself in it.

Re thåström-isms I also said I was going to riot if the mic stand remained standing for the whole show. It swayed precariously at many times but managed to somehow defy both gravity and abuse, until finally during the climax of Södra korset, he casually and unceremoniously kicked it over, then he smiled slightly and looked very pleased with himself. I too was very pleased.

He finished with Alla vill till himlen and I think he actually got the lyrics right? Amazing, it only took him 35 years!

Only took a few photos at the start to prove I was there and kinda regret not taking more, I probably won't get this close to the stage next time in Stockholm! Then again I'm glad I didn't let things like that distract me from the music.

TLDR: I saw Sweden's only true rockstar and greatest live artist and was not disappointed!

[cyncerity]

ok guys bit of a serious poll today.

don’t read if you don’t wanna think about or read about the controversy stuff rn (talking about mostly George and bringing up Wil a little bit)

i have a bunch of wips (like, a lot) that i’ve been looking to finish for a while. With my first year of college coming to an end next week (yippee!) i’ll hopefully have more time to write again and finish those. The downside here is that a significant amount of them involve someone who has had recent controversy. Not that one, but George’s.

If you wanna answer this poll without all the context (i’m physically incapable of writing a post without making it a wall of text), go right ahead, the tldr is that I believe the situation is extremely opinionated and there’s no right or wrong way to view it. With a community this size and the larger group of gnf fans so divided on how to feel, I feel it better to let you guys pick whether or not he should still be in stories.

context under the cut for those who wanna read everything before voting on the poll. I kinda wrote a lot tho so sorry lol

I wanted to give it time before I made this post given that unlike with the first situation, there are a lot more holes and a lot more nuance. I wanted to wait until both sides stated their cases and make my own decision from there. And in my opinion, this situation 1) should have been handled personally and 2) is entirely based on opinion. Both sides did right and wrong, but there isn’t a correct way to perceive this. Some people will believe one side while others will believe the other because the evidence presented can be taken in many ways. I know I personally lean one way, but this post isn’t about my own opinions.

I’m making this post to ask if people would still be ok with me using his character in stories. I’ll say it again: I haven’t really ever watched the DTeam so I do mean it when I say that I base what I write around a character and not him. I stopped writing for C!Wil because I am uncomfortable with writing his character interacting with the characters of people who have spoken against him, but so far most of George’s friends have defended him or stayed silent since this situation isn’t like Wil’s at all. It’s mostly all died down since both sides have moved on (i think?) knowing that they won’t agree on what happened.

I’ve already given my piece on You Know Who, and how numerous people spoke against him and many of his close friends dropped him. This post is not about him, I believe that there is no argument to be made for him. The facts are clear and the testimonies clearer: he is a bad person. As of right now and for the foreseeable future, I will not write him or his character, not unless he gets some serious help or makes some serious changes. I believe that people can change, but trust is easier destroyed than built. You shouldn’t forgive someone who doesn’t seek forgiveness.

anyway i know that this is a smaller community, so i wanna know how many people want me to just re-write things or feel uncomfortable with him in stories now. This isn’t asking if you think George is innocent or if you think he’s a bad person or anything like that, this poll has nothing to do with personal opinions of the situation itself. It’s simply asking if you would be uncomfortable with reading about his character because of the situation.

[thinkrp]

we are a mere three - count 'em t h r e e - days away from opening! our team can't wait to share with you the world that we've created and for y'all to join in and build upon it with your own characters, requests, locations, and lore! today we're giving a bit of insight to our application process with our full app preview under the cut. we also have created a gdoc of our application fields so you can get a head start on some of your app prior to being on site. some of you may have caught that we revealed our graphic dimensions in our guidelines preview, but for a quick refresher, these are the image sizes needed to complete a profile: • one 250px by 400px still image • two 100px by 100px images • one 150px by 150px image to be uploaded avatar (max 1024kb) in addition to the above, our profiles include up to two optional 200px by 250px still images. without further ado, say hello to the beautiful profile crafted by the talented, brilliant, incredible athena which has over 200 different freeform code options to enjoy!

✨ view more about our app below! ✨

something to note, right off the bat: you don't have to read all of this. i tried to be thorough and go over different options for everything, but if you just want the pictures, go ahead and grab them. the key part is filling out the nifty gdoc chels made with the fields, honestly. the rest is just an explanation at some of our optional additions, as well as how things will look.

first, our freeform section is optional. the way we handle our applications, we just want a good understanding of your character. we get that character applications are often something of a jumping off point, something that can be built off of. as such, if you don't want to do them and want to put the necessary amount of information to get that grasp of your character into your census, by all means that is allowed. if you do this, we just ask that you choose the "profile shipper" option. if you select yes to this dropdown, your census information will also show in your profile. keep in mind, our profile has no word count minimum or maximum, so long as you get that understanding across and have something in all the mandatory fields, we're good. that said, if you choose to do a freeform, here's an overview of the codes available to you to use in it.

first up, we have what we call our "sections." when using these, they add much larger components to our freeform area, and are their own profile segment codes. here, they add an additional section to your profile, instead of just text and designs inside of text. you can see some of the categories to choose from, but something to note for this part is as follows:

images are full page width, so if you use the long and wide one, we recommend the image being at least 1000px wide. there are smaller choices available.

our playlists & music category include codes where you manually put in the information, ones where you put in a spotify link, or ones that allow for a youtube link.

our other two categories are very development based. there's line breaks, percentage bars, search history, a more in depth interview option, aesthetic options, and more.

next, we have text. everything in this category is for how you display and style text. the text codes should be placed inside one of our text background codes, though some have been made to be used outside of them. here's quick run through on what we have here:

accents are stylings. we have two options for how you choose to accent font, notably divided by if you choose to utilize a gradient or not. each of these will have a different bold, italic, and underline. also in this section are options for padding text.

text breaks are options to break up text. some of these are lines based on your member group colors, some are roman numerals, some are font icons, and then some. it's just if you choose to have a formal break in the section.

images are image codes you can throw into the text backgrounds. these will have options of 1, 2, 3, or 5 columns, come in different optional color schemes (gradient, non-gradient, background color), and come in three different shapes (circle, square, rectangle).

playlists & music are all manual in this area, just because if you want to utilize a bigger playlist, we have those in the sections above. that said, there is a plan to further develop this section post-opening.

titles and subtitles for text are just, but with options for direct titles and subtitles, options for long text, and more. everything that encompasses your average fancy section division text is in here.

once again, our miscellaneous is some development codes. there are some aesthetic options, some zodiac options, just fun little extras if you choose to use them.

last up, we have our text backgrounds. these are the sections that house text, where you would use the codes in the previous category to style them. these come in eight different color options (two backgrounds, three accents, three gradient directions) and are broken up in a variety of ways, such as:

text background sections with two columns will house codes that allow for two text areas side by side, as well as text that flows into two columns. please note that some of these will have titles built in. additionally, while our coding may show with only two, they allow for any number of additional text areas so long as it's divisible by two. the more you add, the more it'll adjust to include.

similar to the above, text background sections with three columns will just instead add a column to this. same rules apply regarding titles and adding, but this time they should be divisible by three.

our basic background just means there's no columns. in here, you'll find some that are just singular sections you can post around each other, others have text areas that flow together within a section just in a way that stacks. even still, it just means it's all in one column spread entirely across the freeform area. as a note, as mentioned previously, this area is wide.

lastly, our titled backgrounds just mean they are one column text areas with a title somewhere. some of these have titles on a side column, some have a title that fits as a row above the text area. it just has a section for you to give that text area a title, or a question, or a year, or a decade. whatever you want to put there, basically.

whew! [spongebob_huff_meme.gif] all that said, a lot of our codes come in the same eight different coloring options, or a variety of those as well as our text color, mostly so you can choose how you want to do your freeform, if you even choose to do one at all.

when i was originally creating the profile, i put the text box i would want, and the gradient i would want, and i put the image and development codes i would want, and... you see the problem. our mission upon conception of the idea of maybe making this site a reality was always to make a site where people could have creative freedom and see their vision come to life. i added a lot of the exact same option, but in a different color, or without a gradient, or in a different shape, etc because i felt that if we only offered freeform codes to make applications the way i would make mine, that wouldn't be meeting that mission. so... use them how it makes sense to you, the ways you prefer, ignore the ones you don't like. whatever works for you, we support. and, if this somehow doesn't fit your needs, after we're open to taking suggestions and adding to the repository post-opening. i might not be able to get to it immediately or might not be able to add all things, but i can definitely try.

anyway, this isn't what you're here for, is it? some previews of our profile application are below. if you're reading this, remember to remind me in chat to talk about the user control panel so i don't have to make a second long post like this. you have permission to tag me (athena) personally. if no one asks, this will be a special little treat for opening.

✨ give us the pictures already! ✨

the top of our profiles feature basic character information as well as four custom links and icons.

next up is our character basics information. if you have warnings in your app, the trigger warning section will show up. if you don't, it won't. the chosen character rating will display, marking your comfort in this character's interaction with these topics and following the common rpg rating. this has four tabs, and four sections: about the character, about the relationships, about the author, and an automatic tracker.

after an aesthetic breaker, we have our freeform area. if you choose to include it, it will show up. if not, it won't. this example uses one of our image sections, and then a text background section with different accents, titles, and breaks.

this is one of our development miscellaneous sections.

here's one with a traits section and a 3 column text background featuring title.

this profile also utilizes one of our other miscellaneous sections, this time for an interview.

a couple different example of some of our trait sections with bars.

an example of one of our two column options, this time utilizing a text header and looking through the code bank to see what numbers correlate to which colors to have them show up different colors throughout. typically this is 1 for main background, 2 for accent 1, 3 for accent 2, 4 for accent 3, 5 and 6 and 7 for different gradient directions, and 8 for our alternative background, as a note to refer back to when you can see these.

an example of the aesthetic break that sections of the freeform if you have it turned on, as well as our large image option.

another miscellaneous section for development usage.

one of our manual playlist sections, so you can see both how it rests and how it looks scrolled.

if you elect to turn on your profile shipper, it'll start off with a section with your information, followed by a section for your character's information. as you can see, i am wordy. you do not have to write this much. that single first line would have been enough about me. i could have used a meme. unfortunately, i am a blabbermouth, and it is incurable.

unfortunately for you all, and for the space of this post, my fellow staff also have incurable blabbermouth. i love them for it. here's a preview of how that profile shipper option looks with just text filled in for the about and hooks. i will repeat, you do not have to write this much. we are just very extra, as if the number of codes for this freeform didn't give that away.

okay, i think that about previews a little bit of everything. if there's anything specific you would like to see that i forgot, throw me an @ in the discord. i have to stop typing now or chels is going to go through and make this sound more like a staff member giving an announcement (like how it started, how it was supposed to be) and less like a coder losing all grips with reality while trying to explain this without looking like the conspiracy gif. alas, i think i've fallen into the latter.

have a wonderful day, y'all. i hope you enjoyed this preview, even if it lost the bit somewhere along the way. from all of us behind #thinkrp, we absolutely cannot wait to see you all on the 18th, this saturday, when we open.

[iamvegorott]

Smitten and Gifts with Dapperstache!

“Apparently, Dark set up this whole big dinner for everyone at some fancy place for tonight,” Marvin said as he read the collection of texts coming through. He and JJ were walking through the halls of the Septiceye House. “The question is if he’s doing it to be nice or to make sure none of us go out and get into trouble.” 

“Likely the latter.” JJ silently chuckled, voice speaking into Marvin’s head. “Last year had some…incidents, and even Dark got into some mess with Anti.” 

“He has such a hard time telling him no.” Marvin clicked his tongue. “But we all know he’s not the only Iplier that’s been whipped by a Septiceye.” He gave a cheeky grin to JJ.

“I have no idea what you mean.” JJ played up his ‘innocent’ hum. 

“Oh, I’m sure you don’t-” Marvin stopped when the two reached the living room and found a man-sized teddy bear on the couch. The pink color of the bear and the note in its lap that said ‘Jamesy’ was more than enough to know who it was from and who it was for. “What was that about him not being whipped?” 

“Whipped or not, he’s a man of show. He’d do this regardless.” JJ protested as he went to the bear, picked up the note, and flipped it over to read the writing on the back. Marvin raised a brow as he watched JJ read and saw how his face slowly got more and more red.

“Well, now you have to let me see what he wrote.” Marvin teased, and JJ quickly tucked the note away into his vest.

“Absolutely not!” 

“And that tells me all I need to know~” 

“Oh, hush.” JJ scrunched his nose at Marvin.

“Alright, alright, I’ll be nice.” Marvin held his hands up in defeat. “You think if I bat my eyes at my boyfriend, he’ll get me a jumbo-sized bear?” 

“You say that like he’s not already planning on getting you something you’ll love,” JJ said as he looked at his new bear, trying to decide where he’d keep it.

“I mean, yeah, but a bear larger than me sounds nice too.” 

“You’ll forget about the bear as soon as you see him.”

“Fair point.” Marvin peeked over at the door when there was a knock. “And speaking of bears, Wilford’s here.” He gestured with his thumb and then walked off, allowing the two at least a bit of privacy. JJ went to the door, opened it, and chuckled at seeing Wilford standing there with the biggest smile. 

“Do you like my gift?” Wilford asked.

“Of course I do. How could I not?” JJ tugged on Wilford’s arm to get him into the House. “You know you don’t have to get me big stuff like that, right?”

“Yes, but I wanted to anyway. A bonus to what else I have planned.” Wilford added a wink to the end of his comment. 

“Marvin almost saw the note.” JJ lightly slapped Wilford’s chest.

“Whoops.” 

“You are so lucky, I love you.”

“I know~” 

[torreshalstead]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea - Chapter 6

Summary - Hailey’s US visa was due to expire, which normally wouldn’t be an issue as the CPD would get it renewed but due to a backlog of paperwork, this wasn’t possible. This meant Hailey was faced with the real possibility of having to leave the country, her job and everything she held dear. That was until Jay offered up a solution which would allow her to stay in Chicago, in Intelligence, with him - they could get married. Getting married was a good idea, right?

Chapters - 6/18

Chapter Title - The Written Proof

Notes - absolutely blown away by the response on the last chapter so thank you so much! I hope you enjoy this chapter! AO3 Link

‘Wait so let me get this straight,’ Mouse’s voice echoed through the speaker of Jay’s phone. ‘You, the law abiding cop, want me, your not so innocent friend, to change the metadata on some photos and edit your text and phone records? And you won’t tell me why?’

‘That’s about the thick of it, yes,’ Jay said with a sigh. He knew it was an ask and a half. It would have been a lot to ask of Mouse even if he gave him the full story but he was keeping him in the dark. Having Will know what they were doing was already a big enough risk, they couldn’t have their secret in the hands of someone who by his own omission was less than innocent. Jay trusted Mouse, he trusted him with his life and he had done so on more than one occasion, but this was something bigger. It wasn’t just Jay’s life on the line here, it was Hailey’s too. And it was Jay’s job to protect her.

He heard Mouse laugh down the phone, ‘I’m in.’

‘Really?’ Jay said, a little shocked with how easy his friend had agreed to it.

‘If you say you need it done, then you need it done,’ Mouse said nonchalantly. ‘Just checking, is this for a case or something else?’

‘Something else,’ Jay admitted.

‘Okay then brother, I’ll do whatever you need. Come over in an hour or so, bring both the phones and I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I’ll owe you one Mouse,’ Jay said, running his hand through his hair. This part of the plan was making him a little nervous, even if he’d admitted the opposite to Hailey this morning when she had asked. He had told her that it would all be fine, no problem at all. However his mind had been full of images of them both in cuffs being perp-walked out of the district. It wouldn’t get that far, and if it ever did, there was no way he was letting Hailey take the fall for it. It was his idea. This whole thing, it had been his idea.

‘I’m sure I’ll cash in on that someday,’ Mouse said with a chuckle before ending the call.

Before Jay had too long to spiral about the fact they were really breaking the law now, he heard the front door open and he greeted Hailey with a warm smile.

‘Hey,’ she said, her arms full of shopping bags. ‘I may have gone a little overboard but I thought better safe than sorry,’ she lifted both her arms to demonstrate and Jay chuckled.

‘Well we don’t want the apartment looking bare,’ Jay got up to relieve her of some of the weight. ‘Okay, maybe a little overboard,’ he said once she passed over a couple of the bags and he felt just how heavy they were. ‘Did you buy every frame in Target?’ He joked.

‘No, but I did go to HomeGoods as well just so we had a variety,’ Hailey dropped all the remaining bags onto the coffee table, rubbing her hand over her wrists where the bags had started to cut in.

‘And you got the photos printed too?’ Jay asked, starting to decant the bags and stack the frames according to size. There were some small ones with plain frames, some larger ones, a couple with different shapes for the photos, and one large one that he already knew was going to take pride of place on their shelves.

‘Yep, I just got them all and figured we could see which ones we liked?’

‘Sounds like a plan. Oh I spoke to Mouse,’ he added.

‘And he’s okay with helping us?’ Hailey asked, pausing from unpacking her own bags to glance up at him.

‘Meeting him in an hour,’ Jay nodded. ‘I just told him I needed a favour, he doesn’t know anything else.’ Hailey hummed in response, turning her attention back to the stacks of frames.

‘Sorry you have to lie to him,’ she said quietly after a moment. ‘I don’t like putting you in that position.’

‘Hails, we talked about this. It’s a necessary evil but if he knew, he’d understand. They all would, you know that,’ Jay said, taking a seat on the couch although Hailey kept her back firmly to him. ‘I need to bring your phone too, you going to be alright without it for a bit?’

‘Oh, of course, I hadn’t thought about that, but yes, I’ll be alright. I’ll get all of these put together and put up. Do you have any preferences about which ones we use?’

‘No, just leave me an empty one?’ He asked. They had discussed putting a photo on each side of Hailey’s bed, and Jay knew exactly which one he wanted on his side, but knew if he asked Hailey to frame it, she’d say no. When they had been taking photos on the dock of the lake house, it had taken him a couple of tries to get the timer set up properly so there were some candid shots of just her at the end of the dock. In one of them she had been laughing, he couldn’t remember what he had said or done to cause such a reaction but she looked so happy, so free. She looked beautiful in it, and he had known as soon as he had seen it, that that was the one he wanted in a frame. But she had blushed when she had seen it, it probably hadn’t helped that he had told her it was a beautiful photo. But it was, and Jay wasn’t in the habit of lying. Especially not to Hailey, not about that.

Hailey paused and turned to look at him before nodding, ‘yeah I can leave you one if you want.’

‘Thanks,’ Jay said, relieved that she wasn’t questioning him on it. ‘I’ll pick up some dinner on the way back from seeing Mouse?’

‘I’m feeling Thai if you are?’ Hailey suggested.

‘Thai it is then.’

——————————————————————————

Jay had been sitting in Mouse’s rundown studio apartment for over an hour, both his and Hailey’s phones were connected up to a number of monitors and goodness knows how many wires. He had no idea how Mouse was doing what he had requested and he really didn’t want to know how many rules they were breaking, or at least bending by doing what they were doing.

‘So I’m changing the dates on the photos to random days over the past 2 years? Or 18 months?’ Mouse asked, not looking up from where he was typing away feverishly.

‘18 months would be fine, maybe the ones at the lakehouse more recent, the ones at the Bean the oldest?’ Jay suggested. He knew the ones they had taken at the lake were the most romantic, and if they truly had been in a relationship then a weekend away wouldn’t have been something they had done right in the beginning.

‘I got it,’ Mouse said. ‘I’ve gotta say though mate, this girl. You’ve lucked out with her.’

Jay couldn’t help but blush slightly. ‘Thanks man,’ was all he could say. He knew Hailey was gorgeous, had known it for a long time, and he would be incredibly lucky to truly have her as his own. But he didn’t, not really, he was just her best friend. And as much as part of him may want something more, he loved being her friend. He wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardise that, she meant too much to him for that.

‘Don’t know what a girl like this is doing with the likes of you though,’ Mouse chuckled.

‘You almost done?’ Jay said, not wanting to acknowledge Mouse’s comment. It hit just a little close to home for him.

‘Almost with the photos, then I’ll need a little more instruction about what you want done with the texts.’

‘Great, I promised Hailey I’d get dinner.’

‘And you want to get back to your girl, I get it, I get it,’ Mouse chuckled. ‘Okay that’s the photos done. If anyone looks at these it’ll look like they were taken across the last 18 months and the data matches on ones on both your phone and hers.’

‘Thanks Mouse,’ Jay said with a small smile.

‘Sometimes I use my powers for good,’ Mouse said, taking a swig of the beer that Jay had brought him. Jay had offered to pay him for his help but Mouse had refused, saying he didn’t charge friends who needed help. But Jay had still brought him over a six-pack and if he was planning on leaving some twenties tucked down the side of the couch when he left, he would deny it if anyone ever asked.

‘So these texts,’ Mouse said, scrolling through the conversation between him and Hailey. ‘Not going to lie to you man, they are pretty flirty anyway.’

‘No they aren’t,’ Jay said, blushing slightly. ‘Strictly professional.’

‘Well I’d like someone to be this professional with me if you get my drift,’ he winked and Jay threw one of the pillows from the couch at his chair. ‘Hey, I’m just saying!’

‘Can you just add some love hearts or shit like that?’ Jay ran his hand through his hair, he hadn’t really thought this bit through. ‘Maybe some I love yous?’

‘I can definitely add shit like that,’ Mouse chuckled, turning his attention back to the screen. ‘I would ask why, but I know you’re not going to tell me.’

‘Wish I could man, but…’ he tailed off.

‘Need to know basis, I’m sure,’ Mouse shrugged. ‘Now when did you first tell Hailey you loved her?’

‘What?’ Jay spluttered on his own beer.

‘Well when did you say it and then I’ll add some in from that point onwards.’

Jay was glad that Mouse still had his back to him, he was certain his cheeks would be the colour of beets right now.

‘Oh umm, like 2 months in,’ he said, thinking quickly on his feet. ‘We had been partners for a while first so it didn’t take long.’

‘Halstead the hopeless romantic, who knew,’ Mouse chuckled as his fingers continued to work at breakneck speed on the keyboard.

‘Shut it,’ Jay murmured without much conviction. It was true, he thought, he was a hopeless romantic and his current predicament had done nothing to change that.

‘This Hailey must be really special if you’re going through this much trouble,’ Mouse said.

‘You have no idea,’ Jay muttered.

——————————————————————————

When Jay walked back into the apartment that evening, he’s struck by how different it felt. A good different. Hailey had finished putting all the photos in the frames and had scattered them around the room, it immediately gave the place a feel of a home. A home for two people who loved each other. He swallowed quickly, his throat suddenly hoarse before calling out.

‘Hey I’m back.’

‘Oh great, I was about to starve,’ Hailey said dramatically, appearing from her bedroom.

‘Because there’s no food in the cupboards for you to eat,’ Jay smirked as he started to place the take out on the counter.

‘Of course not,’ Hailey grinned as she jumped up onto the counter, swinging her legs happily as Jay passed her some food. Jay couldn’t help but smile, seeing Hailey happy and comfortable like this, it really felt like something special. Sure they had spent plenty of time together as partners and as best friends but sharing a space like this, it was like seeing her in a brand new light. And he wasn’t complaining.

‘So Mouse sorted out all of the photos and added some stuff to our texts to make them flirty like we were actually dating,’ Jay said as he opened his own order. He left out the bit where Mouse had stated that their texts were already a bit flirty, he didn’t want to make Hailey feel uncomfortable. Passing Hailey her phone, he turned his attention back to his dinner as she scrolled through the messages.

After a brief moment he heard her breath hitch, glancing over he noticed that her cheeks had reddened slightly too. It was quite embarrassing having someone else read through all your texts, he assumed that’s all it was.

She cleared her throat, ‘thank Mouse for me, these should be perfect.’

‘I will do,’ he smiled gently up at her.

‘So the next step is setting a date to have Trudy and Mouch round for dinner,’ Hailey said.

‘Still can’t believe you invited them for dinner,’ Jay chuckled. He loved Trudy as much as the next person but having her over seemed like a recipe for disaster.

‘It’ll be fine!’ Hailey responded. ‘But we should probably set some ground rules.’

‘For them or for us?’ Jay raised his eyebrow.

‘For us, if they are seeing us in our home then they are probably going to expect us to be a little more… umm… hands on than we are at the district or even at Molly’s,’ Hailey’s cheeks reddened as she spoke.

Jay choked on a piece of chicken at the thought of him and Hailey being hands-on, he tried his best to disguise it as a cough. ‘Umm, yeah I guess so. No different from being undercover right?’ He remembered her words when she had first mentioned the dinner.

‘Exactly but we should probably have some lines, what we are happy with and what we aren’t’, Hailey brushed a loose piece of hair that had fallen out of her messy bun behind her ear.

‘That sounds like a conversation that would be better with beer,’ Jay smirked when Hailey nodded and scooted down off the counter to fetch them both one from the fridge. As they both settled down on opposite ends of the couch, they took matching long swigs from the bottle before Hailey finally spoke up.

‘So holding hands and hugging, we are fine with that right?’ She asked.

‘Yep, I mean we hug anyway right so that’s no problem,’ Jay said calmly, wondering what else she was going to list off.

‘And small touches like a hand on a back or shoulder or something like we did on the photo day?’

‘Fine with those too,’ Jay agreed.

Hailey pauses before continuing, taking a long take from her beer, ‘but not kissing, I mean we wouldn’t be making out in front of Platt anyway would we?’ She chuckled, her embarrassment clear.

‘No I don’t think we would, I mean maybe on the cheek or something but not if it makes you uncomfortable,’ he said, running a hand through his hair as he spoke. Even the thought of kissing Hailey was making his heart quicken, ever since she had kissed his cheek at Navy Pier he had wanted to reach over and return the favour. His dreams had been a repeat of the same scene over and over, many a time she turned her cheek just as he was approaching and he caught her lips with his own.

‘That wouldn’t make me uncomfortable,’ Hailey said quietly, barely louder than a whisper but it was enough to wake Jay up from the semi-conscious dream he was experiencing. ‘If it was the right moment.’

‘Okay, we will just see how the evening turns out?’ Jay asked, hoping to put an end to this conversation quickly. Trying to list things he was uncomfortable doing with Hailey when it couldn’t be further from the truth was what was making him uncomfortable. He was also worried that she might be able to see through his facade, she could usually tell everything he was thinking. Lucky for him, she was clearly preoccupied with the current topic to notice.

‘Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. We are both good at thinking on our feet right? It’ll be fine.’ It sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than him at this point. This whole thing had been her idea but now it was actually about to happen, it clearly was fazing her somewhat.

‘Have you decided what you are going to cook?’ Jay asked in a subtle attempt to change the subject. It clearly worked as Hailey perked up as she answered.

‘I was thinking Spanakopita, it’s a classic,’ she smiled.

‘Sounds delicious, I can pick up some wine on the way home tomorrow if you want to invite them for like 7?’

‘Okay, and for dessert?’

‘I’m happy to make my Mom’s apple pie? It’s not Greek but it is really nice,’ he offered.

‘No that sounds perfect, you’ve never made me that before?’ Hailey’s head cocked slightly to one side as she asked.

‘No, it’s umm.. it’s a special one that I just don’t make often but this seems like the perfect occasion for it,’ he shrugged. Truthfully he hadn’t been able to make it for years after she passed, it would make him cry halfway through and it never tasted quite as good without having her to share it with. But in a way it felt like it was his way of introducing Hailey to his mother, he knew it was silly but he knew his mom would love Hailey, and he knew Hailey would love this pie.

‘Well then I’m honoured, and I’m sure Trudy and Mouch will be too,’ she smiled warmly, reaching out to squeeze his knee. He rested his hand on top of hers appreciating the support. Hailey knew how much he loved his mom and he could tell she knew how much it meant for him to share this with her, even if it was just a pie.

—————————————————————————

The evening was going surprisingly well, a slightly awkward start had melted into a lovely meal with good company. Platt gave Jay permission to call her Trudy which made Hailey give him a playful nudge with her shoulder as he had spent 15 minutes before they had arrived worried if he should call her Platt or Sarge and Hailey had laughed at him the whole time. Slipping into pretending to be dating Hailey was also very easy, just like it had been when they had spent time taking the photos round Chicago. It meant Jay didn’t have to second guess every time he was drawn to touch her whether it was an arm around her shoulder, a hand on her thigh or his hand on her back as he slid past her in their kitchen.

Hailey seemed to find it equally easy, she gravitated closer towards him than she usually did, leaning against him in the kitchen as he poured the wine, scooting her chair slightly closer to him when they sat down to eat, rubbing her hand across his back when talking about the trip they had taken up to Wisconsin. It was easy to forget it was all for show.

Jay almost forgot how to spell his own name towards the end of the evening. He brought out the apple pie for dinner, the one he had made earlier from his mother’s hand written recipe cards, the one Hailey had offered to help with and stood with him as he made it, listening to him telling stories about his mom and her famous desserts. She proudly told Trudy and Mouch all about it when he sat it down on the table and he couldn’t help but smile. He knew his mom would have done the exact same thing and that brought him such comfort.

When they all dug in and exclaimed how delicious it was, she leant across and kissed his cheek. He felt the warmth grow in his cheeks at the feel of her soft lips against his skin, it took everything he had not to close his eyes and relive it again and again. She’d kissed him on the cheek before, twice. Once during an undercover role and then once when they had been taking their photos the other week, he remembered both times vividly. But this was different, they were just quick kisses, mere pecks to be precise. This was a kiss. Her lips had grazed the corner of his, far closer than just a friend would kiss. She lingered longer too, he felt her breath on his cheek as she pulled back and felt the imprint of her lips. He knew he would feel it for hours.

‘It’s wonderful, babe,’ she said as she pulled back. It felt so natural, so right so he tugged her into his side in a quick hug before letting her go. If they didn’t have company he might have kissed her right there and then, just pulled her into his arms and tried to show her how wonderful he thought she was. But the realisation hit him - that if they didn’t have company, she wouldn't have done it. She wouldn’t be calling him babe, he wouldn’t be hugging her like that, she wouldn’t have kissed him. It was all for show. It wasn’t real.

After they had said goodbye to Trudy and Mouch, waving them off with their arms around each other, slotting together as if it was something they did all the time.

‘That went well,’ Hailey said as she pulled away and Jay tried to pretend that he didn’t miss the warmth of her body against his.

‘Yeah it did,’ he said, a fake smile fixed to his face. It wasn’t a lie persay, it had gone well, but it had also made Jay remember that it wasn’t real.

‘I don’t think they suspected anything,’ she said from where she had busied herself in the kitchen cleaning up and loading the plates into the dishwasher.

‘No not at all,’ Jay stood awkwardly by the door. ‘You can leave that, I’ll clear up in a bit, I’m just going to shower first,’ he said, heading towards the bathroom quickly before waiting for her to answer.

If he’d have turned back, he would have been met by a confused expression from Hailey. She had thought it had gone well, but maybe the kiss was too far. She hadn’t meant to do it, but it had just felt right but maybe she had crossed a line. She hadn’t meant to make him feel uncomfortable but by the way he scurried out of the room as quickly as he did, clearly she had. Seeing the words ‘I love you’ on the texts earlier from him, well edited to be from him, had lit something inside of her that she had unknowingly been ignoring but now it was bubbling right up to the surface. She just wished she hadn’t made him feel uncomfortable over something that wasn’t even real. Those words weren’t really from him.

[praebitorem-glaciei]

Yayyy slutty Grimshaw fic, gn reader

It wasn't that Achlys needed the money, he didn't. He was well respected and paid well at his job. Though his parents felt he was wasting two doctorates working in a lab, he liked the work.

No it wasn't about that. It was about the attention. Achlys loved the attention, craved being wanted by all sorts of people. It boosted his self esteem after the divorce, he and Vera had just drifted apart, but that didn't change his view of himself.

But this did. This attention did. And he got money for it too. It was a good deal for him. Feel good, feel wanted, get paid. Sure there were strange men, strange women. Some questionable people who wanted what he had to offer. But every single one was an experience he managed to handle.

On his hands and knees, face in the pillows, curly hair being tugged.

Sitting on a couch watching someone bravely ride him despite his size.

Using his much larger form to lean over somebody, hand on their abdomen as he took them from behind.

Achlys had experienced countless positions, countless bodies. He was safe, of course. But his hunger for being needed was rarely fully satisfied, even with these escapades. Still, he continued them, followed them wherever they brought him.

“Is this you?”

He looked up to stare at the phone shoved in his face, one of his many dating apps displayed on the screen. The short term fun for money part very visible. “Yes, why?” He questioned, lifting his head to eye his coworker with mild confusion.

“I'm just surprised!” She pulled the phone back, pocketing it into her lab coat. “Do you have a lot of time for dating with your custody agreement?” Achlys wasn't sure if he was being shamed or if the woman was genuinely just curious.

“Not very much, no.” He turned back to his lab work, putting a vial in the centrifuge. “But Vera has her every other weekend and for most holidays. So I find time. Don't you have two boys yourself?” Achlys smiled up at her and she returned the expression.

“I do yea! Dating is pretty hard with kids.”

But he wasn't dating, so he couldn't really relate. He went to strangers’ apartments and had sex and then he went home. Sometimes he met them at a hotel room, sometimes in a parking lot. But he wasn't dating, so he had more free time.

“Can you get this chart to Doctor Roberts for me?” He held up a clipboard and she took it, taking his obvious sign to end the conversation.

Once he was alone again he took his phone out of his pocket, he hadn't checked his messages all day. Achlys leaned on his arm, sighing as he swiped through some of his messages. None really caught his attention until.. Well, a bold offer was a bold offer. Things that didn't mean anything and paid. That was what he liked.

The compliments helped though. They really fed to his ego, commenting on his body, his eye, his face. Achlys responded quickly, awaiting a time and a place text. He got back to work, he only had a few hours left in his shift anyway. The doctor sighed softly, maybe his desires were a bit unconventional, but they were harmless.

Long hair cascaded down his shoulders and back, he brought his hand up to push his bangs out of his face, free hand on the mattress to keep himself pushed up. “How does that feel then?” He whispered in their ear, lowering his hand from his hair to trail his fingers up their abdomen.

“Good.. Good.” They gasped, lowering their face to the pillow in an attempt to catch their breath. Their legs shook with effort and exertion, but they couldn't just lay flat on the bed, held up by the man's body against theirs.

Achlys lowered his face to their shoulder, resting his forehead against their skin as he caught his breath. His hand trailed lower, fingers toying with their still sensitive flesh. “Ah.. Ah- Achlys..” Their voice muffled by the pillow as his sharp teeth grazed over their sensitive skin.

“Does it feel too good, dove?” His voice was teasing, light and airy. He hadn't even moved in a few minutes, his body only tightly pressed against theirs. No, just his hand, his voice, his fangs. It was all he needed to make them feel good. “I can stop if it's too much.” The doctor emphasized his words by beginning to separate his body from theirs, sizeable cock dragging along their inner walls.

They let out a choked sound, tensing and relaxing, their fingers dug into the sheets. “No! No.. It's fine. It's still good.” They clarified through soft gasps of air. Achlys got off on this, on being needed by strangers. Achlys exhaled softly, he didn't pull fully out, but he did pull further out before pressing all the way back in.

He couldn't contain his smile at the way their body shuddered beneath his. “There we go.. That's good..” He brought his hand back up to their abdomen, a good place to press when he slowly resumed his earlier pace. He had a solid amount of stamina, another bonus in this industry. And Achlys realised long ago he loved overstimulating all the precious people who came to him for pleasure.

Achlys waited for the tap out before he pulled out, gently stroking their back as they lay limp against the mattress. “Very good job, dove.” He praised in a soft voice as he got off of their bed. He looked around the room, disposing of the condom in the trash can before cleaning himself up with the wipes he brought.

The doctor carefully cleaned them up too, actions gentle, almost affectionate. If it weren't for the absolute lack of emotions involved. “There we go.. Do you want me to get you anything? Water?” Achlys asked in a soft tone as he got up to find his boxers.

“Sure, thanks.. Money's uh- it's in the kitchen on the table.”

“Thanks, I'll be back.” Aftercare was a given part of his work. He took the money, counting it quietly under his breath. Two hundred dollars wasn't too bad. He kept the money as he filled a glass of water. Achlys returned to the bedroom, tossing the money on top of his bag.

“Sit up, dove.” He sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for them to sit up. Once they did, he carefully helped them drink the water. “Anything else I can do? I can cook.” Achlys laughed quietly, amused by their smile and head shake as they swallowed the water.

They flopped back against the mattress, sighing with content. “I think I'm good, thank you, Achlys.” He placed the glass of water on the bedside table, running his fingers through their hair.

“Of course.” Achlys stood up and finished getting dressed, stuffing the money and wipes into the bag he brought with him. “Well, you have my number if you ever want to do this again.” He pulled his jacket on, watching them finish the glass of water with a soft huff.

They waved behind them at him and he slipped out of the bedroom to the entrance. Good sex and now he had spare change to spend on gelato.

[strobbylemonade]

explaining why this is poor design: new on left (light mode) and old on right (dark mode)

having tag thumbnails is quite ineffective when all tags have the same thumbnail

i don't know about other people but i personally prefer not to search by tag? i usually search by keyword because it gives me more varied content in my search. strange choice to prioritise tagging but lmk what other people think

"217 recent... 63K..." yeah this is sooo optimised for different browser sizes

when have follower counts for tags ever been important information that we need to know while navigating to a tag? on the website where "follower counts don't matter"??? this is useless information; i used to primarily use instagram, it was also useless there and mainly used to double check i didn't misspell anything.

the leading and vertical margins/padding are bad; not only makes the title and subtitles feel disconnected, but also makes it harder for your brain to distinguish between sections.

making everything larger makes it more cramped, and again, removes the spatial distinction between where one entry ends and the next one begins

props for making stuff more distinguishable for colourblind users and also easier to read from further away though. although uh some other website has done it better and... well... we'll get to that later

before we do, i had a search of what other people thought and stole this screenshot from @helpimstuckinafandom (ryuji image to stop the screenie from taking up too much space)

this is somehow WORSE - it's so cramped on the left side with so much empty space on the right, making it feel bloated and empty at the same time, the text in the different sections don't line up (they didn't used to either, i know), the enlarging of the icons reduces the negative space that was already lacking with my update, and somehow the bolded text of the search suggestions makes it feel even emptier compared to the cramped "tags" area. the good thing? less unnecessary information, like no tag follower counts, and no icons for recent searches.

alright. moving on, i sure do wonder where they got this idea for larger and bolder font choices from OH WAIT (roland image to stop it from being so damn large)

oh wait this actually looks pretty good though. so why does twitter's layout work? same reason why tumblr's old one was, frankly, pretty ugly but worked:

SPACING VS CLUTTER

there's no images for the tags / searches because there doesn't need to be! there's no information about follower counts because again, it's not important! notice their width is almost the same as tumblr's, but it still feels better because the content is smaller and the spacing appropriately allows your brain to digest things into smaller chunks.

it's also completely legible and comfortable to read no matter your browser size!!!!!!!!!!!! which tumblr fails to do! even when display names reach their character limits (see: PearlescentMoon) it's still completely legible and not confusing.

ok so if twitter's so good why do i hate it looking more like twitter? simple: brand identity. tumblr removing the stuff that makes it look like tumblr, is in fact, bad. having thick weighted, rounded fonts is not inherently bad. it's what twitter looks like, it's what apple looks like - they have a certain brand identity of legibility, professionalism, and cleanliness that they need to uphold. which is great. microsoft is straight edges and geometric shapes - utilitarian, functional, professional.

what i'm trying to say is this: if you want to keep branding tumblr as the stupid clown funny gay people ancient hellsite, then revel in the aesthetic. in the blatant html-ness of it all, it's unique, you can't get it anywhere else (you can but not on a site as popular). YES make it more accessible, YES make it more welcoming and easy to pick up and use for new users. you don't have to strip it of it's individuality to do so.

i was going to end it here but right before i hit post, i realised tumblr has a tumblr-looking, well spaced, organised and aesthetically pleasing suggestion-based navigation system already - right under the search bar. anyways. that's all. goodbye

[makangerous]

Ayumu Rank 2 (Fortune Confidant)

You receive a text message from Ayumu.

Hi Emi. I should really explain about auras more. I also need a hand coming up with ways to test my power. If you don't mind, can you come visit me?

You go to his place.

Thanks for coming. I'm still kind of amazed that I didn't scare you off last time. Then again, your aura suggests you're not easily thrown off by things others would be deterred by. I'm curious. What do you think your aura looks like, Emi?

>Red?

You're actually kind of right. Good guess. Most people's auras have red in them.

Let me describe how an average person's aura appears. That person is encircled by a swirling mass of colors, usually red and black. The size of the mass depends on the person, along with the speed of the swirling. People with fast auras seem to be preoccupied or distressed. And the larger the aura, the more their strife affects others around them. Yours is huge, but completely still. Because of you, I realized the auras are really windows.

>Windows?

Yes. When an aura is as calm and clear as yours, I can see through to the other dimension.

It was refreshing to find your aura. I've been detecting too many angry, distorted ones lately. I wonder what my own aura looks like… Now that's explained, I want to see if I can use these cards to aid you beyond simple gifts. I'll ask you outright. What do you need help with?

>My charm.

But you're already pretty! Oh, do you mean you want to improve your charisma? Hmm, let me find a good card for that… Okay, let's go with this one!

The Lovers! The magnetism that draws two people together. Spirits of the other dimension! Emi will feel more confident in her appearance and interactions with others, and her peers will take notice. Whether she tries a new beauty routine, practices social interactions, or whatever, the next time she does it will be a stunning success.

Let it be fate! …This is another test we won't know the outcome of until later. It really felt like the spirits were listening to me, so I think it should turn out well. Anyway, I'll repeat it whenever you like, if you have the cash. I'm feeling tired now. Didn't sleep much last night. You should head home and make sure you get enough rest.

''Your phone rings in front of Leblanc.''

Sorry, Emi. You know how if you think too much about falling asleep, you can't sleep at all? I think that's what's happening to me. So I've been trying to think of other things. Like how we should probably come up with a name for the other dimension, since saying “other dimension” all the time is a mouthful. Have any ideas?

>Mementos.

Ooh, I like that! Is it based on the word “meme”, or “memory”, or “memento”? All of them work!

I'm not sure what the connection between Mementos, these tarot cards, and my powers is. But we'll definitely figure it out together. I shouldn't keep you up talking, though. Sweet dreams!

[black-academia]

Tips on how to properly annotate a book/novel? I’ve seen pics all over tumblr and I’d love to know how to :)!!

Hi anon! Thank you for asking, I've done my best to write it out below 🖤

How To Annotate

First of all, ask yourself why you are annotating. It may be for academics, personal use, or to share with someone. There isn’t one most correct annotating style! I annotate differently when it’s for college, versus for my personal enjoyment, versus when I’m annotating a book as a gift for someone else. Feel free to experiment and find out what works best for you in a variety of situations.

Things you will need might like to have…

a pencil or pen (play around with colors!)

a little ruler (very optional)

a highlighter (or many)

sticky notes (i like to have different sizes and colors)

tabs (can be found cheap in diff. styles and material)

STARTING

The most important step is to start. Annotating still feels taboo to some people. Please remember: your thoughts and feelings don’t have to be “good enough” to justify annotation. You aren’t “ruining” a book, you’re augmenting it. Think of the millions of copies there are of this book… yours is now unique. Books go unsold in stores, end up in landfills, all the time. Not only have you fulfilled this book’s purpose by reading it, you have gone far and beyond to get intimate with the author’s words, conspire with this book, and join the author in the creative process. No matter how many words you misspell or cross out, how “bad” your handwriting is, how “dumb” your comments are… they are worth, at the very least, the paper they are written on. Yes, even if that paper already has words on it.

REMOVABLE

Tabbing; if you’re still not over your reservations about writing in your books, that’s okay! Using tabs is a fairly good way to keep track of the parts of the book you loved or despised, or have questions about, etc. Just remember that you from a year from now might not know exactly what the tab is keeping track of… you may want to augment with sticky notes if you want future you (or someone else!) to know exactly what made you feel something, and how it made you feel.

Sticky notes; sticky notes are a great way to add comments to pages you’ve tabbed. There usually isn’t much margin space for writing comments, especially if you’d like to add in depth thoughts. With sticky notes, you can place them so that future you can just lift them to keep reading (because they will likely obstruct the text) and they are removable!

PERMANENT (FOR THE MOST PART)

Underlining; if you really want to keep track of exact sentences and even words, I highly recommend underlining! You can do it in pencil if you’re still worried about making “mistakes,” however unless you realistically see yourself going through, page by page, erasing all your lines, I would consider this somewhat permanent. So in my opinion, if you’re going to underline, just commit and use your favored writing implement! Also, you can use a ruler (or anything with a straight edge) for straighter lines.

Highlighting; similar to underlining! You can also use different colors, for that, see the section on color coding.

Marginalia; like sticky notes, but more permanent and (usually) less space for writing. I rarely write in the margins, even though I love this word and the history of marginalia. I mostly use sticky notes for the larger writing space.

COLOR CODING

I love, love, love to color code. The downside is that you need many more tabs and highlighters and pens that you would without doing this. However, the upside is that meaning is added to everything you do. For example, I could underline something in Dead Poets Society, and all future-me might see is that that line meant something… However, if I underlined in green, for example, and had an annotation key, then every time future-me sees green she’ll know the past-me thought this was related to life and death. ALWAYS have a key if you color code. Your chosen colors might be perfectly sensible to you now, but future-you or someone else might just be lost without one.

GOOD PRACTICES

ALWAYS HAVE A KEY! If you use symbols, colors, anything that has meaning… write down the symbol and it’s meaning IN THE BOOK so you will never be wondering what the hell blue, or purple, or this star, or daisy, or skull means.

Always try to leave some indication of what any form of annotation meant. This can be through color coding, or a little heart, a sad face, a comment etc. You want there to be meaning, otherwise all you’re saying is “this is important!” but not why.

Start with annotating secondhand books, and always remember you can buy a new copy of most books, but unless you start annotating, your special edition is missing from the world.

WHAT TO WRITE/UNDERLINE/TAB?

Literally anything! But here are some ideas:

Track themes throughout a book (love, death, gender, etc).

Underline things that make you think or feel, or both, and then write down what you thought or felt.

Make a playlist for the book and add it to the beginning of the book, or of each chapter, feel free to write these on sticky notes.

Suggest books like the one you're annotating! You can add this on the last page or on a sticky note, etc. This is great if you're gifting a book.

But really... anything you add to a book is worth writing down. Annotating makes you read closely and engages your critical thinking. It's a great skill to practice.

Thanks for asking, and lots of love!

— Sai 🖤

[sys128]

Revolt!

I have found this wall of text that I made back on March 13, 2023. I want to update myself on how my experience with this app was so far. This was the text that I typed up originally:

I have been thinking about trying out this app called Revolt. It has been brought to my attention via a user on my Discord server that wanted me to have a Revolt server. (And bridge it to the Discord one.) Another reason why I think it would be worth my time is because it seems that Discord has been turning into one of those services where you are not as free to enjoy it unless you are subscribed to Discord Nitro. “Pay to enjoy” was it called? What it is called is not important right now. I have looked into information about Revolt, and this is what I was able to find.

The software is completely free and open source, which would likely eliminate the chances of the platform suffering the same fate as Discord, with all of the Nitro features.

Revolt has themes that are completely free to use! Discord once experimented with this, but it looks like not much can be done with it… unless you have Nitro of course. Technically, there is already a free way to get custom CSS themes on Discord, but that requires something like BetterDiscord, which of course, is against the platform’s Terms of Service.

Just like Mastodon, you can self-host your own instance of Revolt, so it will become harder to take down if something goes wrong with either Discord getting salty over its existence or some other reason.

The file size limit on Revolt is larger that what free users have on Discord. As you may know, on Discord, the max file size that you can upload per file is 8 MiB maximum. However, this is over doubled on Revolt, allowing you to upload files up to 20 MB / MiB (I am not sure what base they are using here. It is definitely either 1,000 or 1,024.)

I think the most important plus for Revolt is their goal to be user-first. A mentality like that is CRUCIAL for platforms to do if they want to have loyal users. Being there for your users whenever possible can allow you as a platform owner to add what the users want, while you still have the choice to comply with the demands of advertisers or colleagues. A happy medium is probably the best you can get.

Apparently, it is possible to bridge Discord messages into one of your Revolt servers. However, the program cannot be used to control your Discord account, which is a shame. It probably makes sense though because I don’t believe Discord would be very happy about it. Terms of Service would likely get in the way again.

These are some good things about Revolt that I found to be enticing to me, as a long-time Discord user. However, there are some drawbacks that do make me wonder about how long I will use it.

The main reason is because of how many of mutuals use Discord. I can probably convince a few to make a Revolt account but I highly doubt that they will be nearly as active, let alone keep their account active at all. Getting a good portion to switch would be a real pain.

I have been told that screensharing is not a feature that exists on Revolt. I know a few people that screenshare what they are doing in voice chats very often, and they may be deterred by the fact that it just cannot be done on Revolt directly. My friend group does have remote desktop software that we use for when we want to do collaborative work, though.

When I get the chance, I will totally play around with it, maybe get a few people on it, and see how it is. If I find it to be good enough to replace Discord, I will see what I can do from there to manage things. Here’s to hoping for the best with Revolt.

Update time! Yes, it is a pretty good app so far, but there are two main things that is stopping me from using it at the moment. One, I joined onto the site at a very bad stage – well, for audio anyway. Partaking in voice chats on Revolt the moment I was on it was pretty much impossible. The audio sources, input or output, both were not able to be detected and/or applied. It turns out that the Revolt devs were working on an entire rewrite of the audio functions of the app. I don’t think there has been any status on it since January 24, 2023 that I could find, but I could very much be wrong.

Of course, the second thing was getting my mutuals to be interested in it. I was met with immediate declines when asking people to try it out. That did not help towards how long I ended up being interested in Revolt. Maybe one day, when Discord REALLY falls off, something may happen otherwise. And hopefully, by that time, the audio will have been properly rewritten and working.

[blindtaleteller]

Not a great surprise they haven't come out of it either though; especially considering the site is on top of all that volunteer run with what equates to a less-than-skeleton crew for a site hosting more content than (using the example above though there are others too) place like wikipedia; never mind having an average user base as huge as AO3's is.

I used to beta test, and I've moderated on text based/forum sites in the past. Even with a decent sized moderation and dev team for the size of that user population who might be paid under that rule, and que programs to help that moderation along: dealing with every report given in a day alone is literally impossible for a user community of that size. And AO3 really does not have that.

$500,000 would not even cover a portion of the required number moderation employees' yearly salary, even if they weren't volunteer, and only hired a slew of them in at minimum wage.

Example math: rounded down 35,000-43,000 (depending on location) per year, per full time employee at minimum wage alone: BEFORE taxes, or any benefits like insurance etc taken out times only 10 employees equals 350,000-430,000: for a site that is yes open 24/7 and would need multiple shifts in several time zones to keep up with it in any other model.

$350,000 to $430,000 for just ten employees.

This does not include the costs of servers and bandwidth so users can continue to visit to read or post, any account for Dev salaries were they paid, any account for legal assistance including court filing and fees, or a user base larger than the optimum 50-100 users per moderator, which AO3 absolutely does have at it's size of more than 6 million+ works -- and 6 million+ comment sections with them, alone.

Beta testers are generally uncompensated even in the gaming communities (since that's brushed here,) but if you want to go through that comparison: alpha testers often are not when it comes to legitimately and morally run companies. (especially as some alphas in gaming in particular have and can render equipment if not operating systems they run completely unusable with one or two really bad bugs: this used to be true of beta testing too, though the severity has decreased since due to quite a few things including improvement of technology and baseline policies since; that would take an entire essay to explain but that's a whole other matter.)

Ultimately .. understand that, the point is on the flip side: that AO3 volunteers ARE opting on missing out on that pay for their time: in part so the money CAN go to portions of the site and community needed to keep it running. Complaining that the free-to-you-site that has no ads other than what bots invade to put in our comment sections, whose under-staffed moderators go unpaid in the total of more than $35,000 a year per moderator alone, asks for the users help to cover just the equivalent of the electricity used to allow them to stay open? And doing that further as an anti who probably doesn't use the site for it to affect them either, other than to be a douchebag in the direction of all those volunteers AND the user base who does actually use it and donate? Yeah that's pretty shitty.

I went scrolling through anti ao3 tags and blogs because I was bored and not doing the shit I need to do and you know for a group of people who every year twice a year throw such hissy fits you’d think they’d at least have a point, but all their arguments make no sense(except their one main one that they almost never use?--why??) Like ok, there is one argument for why people shouldn’t give money to ao3, and that is the argument that ao3 is bad website because it has bad policies and refuses to moderate. I disagree, but ultimately if someone thinks that ao3 should update the TOS and moderate what fan fiction they allow, it makes sense that that person would be against the site making money because… well they are against the sites founding principles, I’m not shocked they don’t want it to succeed.

But the rest of the arguments!? Man they make no sense at all

“They are scamming you there is no way they need that much money”, ”its immoral to give money to ao3 because they already have so much!”, “Even if ao3 was perfect, its ridicuslous to give 100K to a fan fiction site!” — like… maybe I’m the asshole here, but ao3 made about 250,000 this spring, so they make about 500,000 a year… that’s just not that much money! That could what, pay for 10-30 employees at best! And that’s not counting the actual cost of all the shit they currently spend their money on! I get that ao3 is run by unpaid volunteers so antis think that 500K is a lot, but that’s not true! That’s not a lot of money at all! It might be a lot of money for an individual but for a company that’s practically pennies. Wikipedia, which granted is a lot bigger than ao3, with 57,218,269 pages to ao3s 6 million works, makes 155 million to ao3 500,000. According to antis ao3 has over a million in reserve and well according to wikipedia they have net assets of US$240 million. One is clearly more than the other!

I saw someone say that servers should be 1K, which is so stupid and out of touch with eveything I almost died laughing. I had a project using firebase this semester, I created 2 projects within firebase one for my school project and one to dick around and figure out. I accidentally set my test database to a “pay as you go” version instead of a free version. And almost had to pay a thousand dollars for the month! I wasn’t even using that database it was just sitting there but I check my google billing to make sure I wasn’t paying anything and it turns out I was! 150 dollars actually so that sucks! (My fault though)

Also also I keep seeing that its ridiculous and evil to pay the much for a site that “doesn’t improve” but the “doesn’t improve” is referring to A) no changes in TOS, which I don’t want to happen any way so good. B) the fact that it’s still in beta, which I don’t give a fuck about and I don’t understand why I should care. I think antis are dont like that the layout hasn’t changed but I don’t want to the layout to change. Also things come out of beta because they are a commercial product to be sold(this is very simplified), which is why some things come out of beta to waaaay to early and are glitchy as all hell! Ao3 isn’t being sold to me its slowly being built and archiving things that would probably be lost, and it will probably technically be in beta forever, but it doesn't effect me and I don't care. Would it be better if it came out of beta only to continously updated like a lot other shit does. I don't really play video games but I know ppl that do so I know at least once a game came out that didn't really work and people needed to later update shit for it to function and I'd argue thats worse than a functional website just being in beta forever. C) The claim that it hasn’t changed at all, which is just not true! They added the exclude section and eventually added the blocking shit. The blocking took too long to come out, so I guess in this sea of dumb criticism theres at least 1 piece of critism that makes sense. And finally again I don’t want it to change! Every other week we are all bitching that Tumblr or YouTube or Instagram or any other app are needlessly changing the layout or adding shit we don’t want in order to keep up with latest trends, make it more marketable or try and attracted new users. Ao3 is great because its never going to change. Ao3 and Craigslist will always kinda look like ass and I’m ok with that. If it aint broke ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I could keep going but there is no point. I just think they are all so stupid.

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The thing about beta is the funniest because AO3, like oldschool shit from the 90s, has actual criteria for coming out of beta.

It's not "we've been going for 10 years" or "we want to sell the product": it's "we've checked off all the things on this checklist".

And they still haven't done them all, so it's still in beta.