#anonymous informants

[assistant-emu-official]

in another universe you get to sing and do theater shows with her!!!

Emu is deep in thought for several long seconds.

Do you think An would get mad at me if I started trying to practice singing and dancing while doing investigations?

[incognitopolls]

For example, say you support the Big Milk agenda, and another pro-milk blogger posts "Schools should provide free milk to all students. Milk literally cannot hurt anyone." Even though you agree with the first part, you know the second part is factually untrue because severe milk allergies exist. Do you have a responsibility to correct the post?

(This is a somewhat silly scenario to illustrate a larger question that can apply to social issues, political causes, ethical issues, etc.)

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We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[cryptocism]

Do you mind explaining the "so much lead in here it probably killed beethoven" joke to a poor dumb anon like me?

of course!! uh i guess it's referencing a couple different things. but basically:

1: kryptonian x-ray vision can see through everything except lead, so kon can tell the candy dish is leaded, because he can't see what's inside

2: however! kon doesn't clock the lead as a red flag, bc it's vintage, and many many dishes pre-1970s were made with leaded glass/lead glaze/lead paint etc.

3: lead also blocks kryptonite radiation, so when the dish is closed kon can't feel the effects of the evil green rocks

4: Ludwig Beethoven famously died of lead poisoning due to the aforementioned leaded dishes he was drinking/eating out of

so the joke is Kon saying this candy dish is so old and lead-y that it was probably something Beethoven ate out of and was poisoned by, when in reality it's full of lead to conceal the evil green radioactive kryptonian trap inside

(Beethoven died pre-victorian era tho, so Kon calling it a victorian dish is breaking immersion i guess. for the nerds who care (me))

aaaand a google search is telling me that new research has come out! now they aren't sure if Beethoven actually died of lead poisoning or if he died of something else. so. APPARENTLY the joke has been rendered nonsense anyway

[ducktracy]

I can’t BELIEVE they’ve gone back to Porky living in a normal house and Daffy living in his bathtub. I have held “Porky & Daffy” in my heart for all these years as an ideal of portrayal. This is the happiest day of my life

SO NICE I'M POSTING THIS TWICE FOR CONTEXT just because i want to look at it again. ughhhhhhh the little bird on Porky's bedpost one of the photos released also has another, DIFFERENT little bird. if he's like Snow White or something i will cry. just don't let him around any dogs because he'll drop them from staircases or encourage them to jump off bridges

I MEANT TO ANSWER THIS WAY EARLIER, BUT IT WORKS OUT BECAUSE LOOK AT WHAT THE WARNER DEUTSCHLAND CHANNEL JUST POSTED TODAY:

I'M SO HAPPY TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO UGHGHGHGGHHG!!!! IT IS SUCH A GOOD PORTRAYAL ISN'T IT.. when LTC first came out i was very confident the opening to Firehouse Frenzy was a reference as well

I'M. SO. EXCITED. i know this needs to speculation like yeah no DUH. BUT AHHHHHHH. UGHHHHH I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE. i'm so excited to see what other homages to other shorts are in store. I'M SO EXCITED I CAN'T ARTICULATE MYSELF. i was gonna have some big eloquent explanation about how much i love Porky & Daffy (the characters too) but my words are stopping short because i literally cannot focus because i am just SHROUDED WITH EXCITEMENTTTTTT CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING!

since i am in a CARTOON SHARING MOOD, here is the opening to Porky & Daffy for those who have never seen it because i have no idea when else i would post the entire opening. it's so endearing!!! look at the shaky camera truck-in and dissolve to the house... back when they were still struggling with how to do diagonal camera pans and double exposure effects.. :'))) i miss reviewing this era of cartoons profusely

i have a deep fondness for stuff like the shot of Porky grabbing the paper, Clampett seemed to have a similar fondness of starting shorts out of this era with close shots like that (Porky's Party opens on a very synonymous shot of Porky lighting the candles on the cake). Bobe Cannon's animation of Porky is adorable. some really smooth and hypnotic Chuck Jones animation of Daffy boxing with the pillows (in Chuck's last short working for Clampett!). this entire exchange is adorable. i am so excited for anything that even entertains the idea of modeling itself after this. i'm so excited.

[destielmemenews]

Due to a lot of feedback on the nature of this blog, and how the meme format can come across as insensitive and shameless, I'm considering switching to a news only post format, without the use of the destiel meme. I greatly enjoy sharing information about current events, and would like to continue doing so in some way.

So I am making this poll to ask everyone their opinion on the way I do things, and for suggestions to improve my content.

[foldingfittedsheets]

My coworker is setting up a secret Santa and we’re building wishlists on Elfster and I was like -.- I don’t have any desires. All my desires are boring.

I was scrolling my Amazon wishlist being like these are all things I want but aren’t exciting in a gift exchange.

Then I remembered other sites exist and that there’s a bunch of cute stuff on Etsy and Redbubble that I’d be excited about and I had more fun after that. It’s nice to know that even if a coworker I’m not as close with gets me I’ll get something I’ll really enjoy.

[llovelymoonn]

hey sweet pea, can we have a complication of poems/excerpts that make you fall in love with love and all mushy and gooey inside?

casey reiland my boss informs me that moose are dying \\ james baldwin if beale street could talk (via @morepeachyogurt) \\ virginia woolf the years (via @weltenwellen) \\ keaton st. james rural boys watch the apocalypse \\ sayaka saeki bloom into you \\ james baldwin giovanni's room \\ peter gizzi lines depicting simple happiness (via @typewriter-worries) \\ @typewriter-worries \\ lizzie cernik how we met: 'it's like waking up to sunlight every day. i yearned for a soulmate - and i've found her' (via @havingrevelations) \\ jules ryan gravecleaner: "bloodwater" (via @springmyth) \\ @nobaracore \\ ladan lakshiri what does love mean? see how 4-8 year-old kids describe love \\ svetlana alexeivich voices from chernobyl (tr. keith gessen) [lyudmila ignatenko speaking about her husband, deceased firefighter vasily ignatenko] (via @papenathys) \\ aimee nezhukumatathil lucky fish: "baked goods" \\ thomas campbell \\ @soracities \\ vladimir nabokov in a letter to his wife véra, jul 8 1926 (via @saintesorciere) \\ anne carson recreation \\ victoria hannan kokomo \\ victoria hannan kokomo

kofi

[shkika]

Do you think W1 would love the super deep foam pits, or ball pits?

the dashcon baby...

OK but yeah it would. Like quite a bit. Like quite a bit a bit.

Since W1 is two brains and not one, I imagine they'd exhibit a lot more play behavior when left to do their thing and not seeking to feed themselves. Since they can literally entertain each other in that metal box head.

They like having a good time together!! They play and are more curious than your average machine.

[canisalbus]

What kind of clothes would Vasco wear after Machete's death? He tends to wear bright and warm colors, and I was wondering if he would start wearing dark and cool colors to reflect his inner state

I also had thought that he might start to veer towards more somber shades. In reality, late 16th century fashion was dominated by dark colors, if you look at portraits from late renaissance/early baroque eras you quickly notice that pitch black was the most fashionable color (compare that to early and high renaissance fashion from 1400 to 1550 which was visibly more vibrant and colorful). I might be bending the timeline a little bit by having him dress in vivid blues with gold accents, but it's his signature style and I think it mirrors his luminous, free-spirited and approachable personality well. After Machete's death he might've experienced a period where jewel tones had lost their luster to him.

[cripplecharacters]

how severe does visual impairment tend to be for those with albinism? I do have a character with albinism who does have poor vision, but I'm wondering if her visual impairment is actually severe enough for someone with albinism or not.

Hello, thank you for your ask! We currently don't have any active mods with albinism, so all the information comes from research, and if anyone with albinism would like to give their opinion feel free!

It depends on what kind of albinism your character has. For future reference please also include what symptoms your character has and their severity as well! The most common type of albinism is OCA, which has eight subtypes (though only the first four are common, and OCA8 is a more recently discovered type so there's very little information on it), but there are many more types besides OCA as well [this website has a pretty good list (not 100% complete but good nonetheless), though its symptom section is pretty hard to understand so I would also definitely google them]. OCA1a is what most people think of when they think of albinism, as it causes a complete lack of melanin in the skin and eyes, and tends to have the most severe eyesight symptoms for that reason. Other types of albinism have varying levels of melanin, and generally less severe visual impairment because of it. So while someone with OCA1 could have very severe blindness and photophobia, another person with OCA7 could have nearsightedness and nystagmus, as well as dark skin and hair. [Quick note, OCA1-8 isn't a severity scale or anything, for example OCA2 & OCA4 both tend to have very similar symptoms while OCA3 can have more melanin than either of them. Also the examples listed are just examples and don't fully show how OCA1 & 7 can affect eyesight!]

Symptoms of albinism can include nystagmus, photophobia, farsightedness, nearsightedness, strabismus, poor depth perception, refractive errors due to the shape of the eye, and more. It can also cause a lack of pigmentation in the retina, which affects the brain's ability to process visual stimuli rather than affecting how the eye itself sees.

Essentially the severity and symptoms of your character's albinism is going to entirely depend on what type of albinism they have. I would recommend doing some more research to choose a type, checking out our #albinism representation, #blind characters and #photophobia representation tags, and if you still have more questions feel free to reach back to us!

Have a nice day!

Mod Rot

[assistant-emu-official]

sliiiides a video of nene's starry sky melody alt vocal over to you

Emu is physically vibrating hard enough that if you held a glass against her it might shatter from the frequency the entire time she is watching the video, somehow managing to remain otherwise still and quiet for the entire duration before exploding back into motion.

AKAJDKSHKSHSKAJAJSJAHAKSKSJDLDKKAKSHSKEHSLSJEHEJBESHSJSKEHIWWISHAKKASJKAKASJAKAJKAAK

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HER VOICE IS SO WANDAHOI DOKIDOKI KIRAKIRA SUPER WANDAHOI IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO HAVE A VOICE THAT PRETTY I NEED TO ARREST HER IMMEDIATELY

She suddenly visibly has a realization and leans against a wall to steady herself.

Anon. Anon that is my girblfriebd. Thabt is my girbdkfrb that is thaj pttrey. Abnon I ma goig to cry. Abon I habe to arredt my girfbein fow beign foo pwberty… bcuse sbe is my gfirbebs…

[jojaxcola]

You've literally inspired me to wanna make my own OC mockumentaries I absolutely love your series so much 😭🙏🏻

So I wanna ask if it's alright with you, where do you get inspo for silly moments? How did you start? What are the little tidbits you've come to learn after making a few joja mockumentaries?

Awww thank you so much!! If you do end up making your own series, I hope you have a lot of fun with it, and I'd love to see it!!

(Sorry this post is late, I wanted to take my time with the answer below the cut!)

As for the "origin story" of the jojamart mockumentary and how i come up with ideas for the entries:

As for how the series started, the first time I watched The Office was on a really long flight this past October where the in-flight entertainment had all of season 3. After seeing it, it clicked why so many people loved it haha. So while riding out the rest of the flight (and for a few week after that) I thought about what it might look like if Stardew were to be adapted for television in a mockumentary-style format. (mainly just as a fun creative exercise.)

My first idea was to portray Lewis as producing an in-universe documentary to highlight Pelican Town as a whole, with the corrupting influence of Joja growing as time went on (No. 9 is probably the closest to the original vibe but I still wanted it to be a comedy). Morris, Sam, and Shane were going to be the main characters of the JojaMart plot. But I realized that the JojaMart plot thread was the closest thing to why I enjoyed The Office (being about conflicting personalities generating absurdity in a confined space). Plus Sam is my favorite character. So that's what I ended up drawing out.

I wanted the entries to look like subtitled screencaps of out-of-context clips, mainly because I see them everywhere on the internet and they're also very easy to draw:

I liked how these kinds of posts can still be enjoyed by people who have never seen The Office before (like me before October 2024) because the humor is very self-contained. So I started off making the JojaMart entries like that.

The first few were intended to still be accessible to people who had never played Stardew Valley before, sorta like they were watching a pilot episode. Those entries had to establish the basics (Sam is the cheerful, outgoing, and annoying janitor; Shane is the grumpy alcoholic shelf stocker, Morris is their boss who cares about them in a purely performative sense, etc.).

I think the general rule of thumb I follow when portraying a particular character is to write them like I have two people in my audience: one has never played Stardew before, and the other is the character's biggest fan. I don't know how well I've followed this, but it's what I have in mind when I'm writing up scripts.

Usually for inspiration I like to comb through the characters' wiki pages. I think it's useful to look at their quotes, their liked/disliked gifts, and their trivia to find little things that can be extended into a little story. For example, no. 17 was inspired by the fact that Jodi gives the player the ice cream recipe and says that it won first place in a cooking competition, and no. 18 (which followed up on 17) was inspired by a quote by Sam wondering if his mother was really happy with her life. I think it's really fun to try and combine different facts about the characters!

Some other sources of inspiration I have are:

Wanting to use a particular line of dialogue (e.g., "He kinda has this vibe that really screams 'divorced'" in no. 11)

Wanting to use a particular shot (e.g., Pierre being covered up with ads in no. 9)

Wanting to show a specific headcanon (e.g., Sam doing impressions in no. 5)

I hope this is helpful! Good luck with your work :)

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[luguangs]

wait wait, what’s the change tumblr did to the reblog chains ? 🥲🥲🥲 I’m so lost

okay so basically, let's say you see a post on your dash

before the update, if you clicked on a url, you could do 3 things:

view that specific reblog on the blog you follow (A)

view the previous reblog on the blog A reblogged it from (B)

view the original post on op's blog (C)

however, staff recently implemented an update where clicking on a url no longer takes you to that specific post. now, clicking on a url just takes you to the blog itself.

this means that you now get 5 things:

view ONLY that specific reblog on the blog you follow (A) -> changed location near header. also, you will now ONLY see that post and nothing else

view ONLY the original post on op's blog (C) -> changed location near header. you will only see that post and nothing else. and ONLY if the op hasn't deleted it, otherwise it just shows an error

view the blog of the person you follow (D)

view the blog of the person D reblogged it from (F) -> option B no longer exists

view the blog of the op (E)

you might be thinking: "cool! i get more options so that's good, right?" well, no.

there are SEVERAL things wrong with this and it goes beyond the prev tags issue

1) first of all, it's counterintuitive that A and C changed locations to the area near the header, especially if your userbase was already used to the previous functions. it just seems like horrible UX design to me but let's put that aside for now.

2) as you can see, option B which allowed you to see the previous reblog of a post no longer exists.

now, if you click on the previous url, you will just be taken to their entire blog. you can no longer view the post itself.

someone asked staff about this, and they replied in this post that the change was INTENTIONAL and if you want to view the previous reblog you would have to "go through the notes view".

to borrow what someone else said:

basically, this update just killed the prev tags culture in one fell swoop.

(sure, you can still use it to reply directly to the person you're reblogging from, but it's now literally useless to use "prev tags" for everyone else involved. sure, you can choose to copy tags or peer review them, but again, if people will have to copy them then the less people are likely to use them, and not every prev lends itself to peer-reviewing imo)

now, listen. i know not everyone likes the prev tags culture, but it just seems like such a poorly-thought decision to kill a culture that like... half of your entire userbase uses (see this poll as a quick reference) and that's UNIQUE to your site and sets you apart from other social media.

but it's also not even just prev tags. let's say you want to remove an annoying addition on a post's reblog chain? you can no longer do that.

however, i feel like this is the most important point:

regardless of how you may feel about the prev tags culture, the pure UI aspect of it should remain

what i mean by this is: even if you don't like prev tags, simply 1) being able to access the reblog chain, and 2) clicking on a post and actually have it take you to their BLOG (and not just a page with that one single post) is literally essential navigation.

this update threatens to drive down user engagement (which is already critically low) by making it harder to navigate. which is actually another point:

3) even if you click on A and C now to view those specific posts, it's NOT the same as it used to be.

before, you could view the reblog directly on the blog. so you could just scroll down and see the other posts leading up to it. now, you will be taken to a page where you will ONLY see that post and nothing else.

but also, you can no longer easily navigate other people's blogs.

you know how sometimes you would see like 50 notifications of someone going through an entire tag on your blog? that's going to happen a lot less, i'm afraid.

let's suppose you want to go to op's blog because they're an artist and you want to see more of their art. so you click on C and see that the tag they use for posts with their art is "#my art"

cool! before, you could just click on that tag and immediately view ALL of their art as long as the posts have that tag.

but now, if you click on that tag, it will take you to the ENTIRE tumblr tag with literally all the posts that everyone in the history of time has tagged with that specific tag.

now, to do the same thing that just took 2 clicks before, you would have to: click on C to view the post -> look for the tag you want to navigate -> click E to view their whole blog -> scroll and look for a post that just so happens to have that tag (the search function is literally useless) and hope to god that there's a recent one or you'll have to scroll for ages or simply give up -> if you happen to find it, click on that tag to navigate their posts.

you see how this is counterproductive, right? you see how this can literally drive down engagement with content creators, right?

if you make people's blogs harder to navigate, you will literally drive down the number of likes and reblogs on their posts, which have already been steadily declining for years now.

4) options D and E to view the blogs and not the posts are literally useless because you could already access other people's blogs before. you just had to click on their url to view their blogs starting from that specific post AND you could choose to just refresh it to view their newest posts.

either way, the change just seems completely unnecessary. and again, it's not just about the prev tags culture but about basic UI.

so what can we do about it?

i normally don't advocate for flooding staff with messages but i do feel like this is one of the worst updates staff has ever done (and that's saying something) and something needs to change.

even if they don't retcon the entire update, that's fine, but staff could at least add the option to view the reblog chain as a different feature (maybe even opt-in) for example. there are better ways to go about this than just axing an entire existing feature.

also, this same issue that makes it harder to navigate blogs needs to change. i feel like content creators will be especially affected by this unless this changes because you can no longer easily navigate their tags, so it will inevitably drive down engagement.

so please, contact staff and let them know we want a change.

you can contact support here!

here's a template for a possible message you could send, but feel free to edit it. (under category you can choose "Feedback")

Hi, I would like to politely request a change to the recent update that affects the reblog chain of posts. Regardless of the "prev tags" culture itself, the UI aspect of being able to view the reblog chain of a post is essential for navigation on this website. Even adding it as a separate, opt-in feature would be a huge help. Additionally, clicking on a post and then on one of the tags now takes you to the entire tumblr tag instead of the tag on that blog, which makes it harder to navigate blogs. Both of these issues have the potential to drive down user engagement by actively making it harder to navigate Tumblr, but especially for content creators. I hope you can do something to address these issues as soon as possible. Thanks in advance and have a nice day.

also, if you can and/or want, reblogs are appreciated to help spread the word!

that's pretty much the gist of the issue from what i've seen, but if anyone else has anything to add or a different way we could contact staff to make ourselves heard, please feel free to let me know!

TLDR: it's not just about prev tags, this update affects basic functionality and content creators as well

Update Sept 07, 2024: this issue was "fixed" a few months back, although with some caveats / downgrades. You can check out this post for how to view the reblog chain, but all the other issues addressed in this post still remain.

[wc-confessions]

PinkBunnyGirl43 forsaking art for ai is both disheartening and disappointing. The warriors fandom(and arguably the books themselves) have only been kept alive by the countless artists over the past 20+ years and the purposeful introduction of ai into our space is so disgusting.

Here’s the link to a Twitter post with screenshots of her doubling down with the excuse of being “for kids”

https://x.com/wc_hawkkz/status/1889688474803990718?s=46

ฅ^>⩊<^ ฅ

[meirimerens]

oh? can you please tell me more about what line has the You>you slip up english only having a formal pronoun really fuck with some dynamics sometimes and im so curious now cause i cant read russian

yessiREE okay so in the russian version, at some point, conversation goes like this :

Бакалавр … чудовищные смеси из толчёных таблеток, да! Они их называют «порошочки». [...] Да… я слышал. Более того… я проверял. Так что и вы не смейтесь надо мной, коллега. Как вас там… эрдэм. >Ты проверял?.. То есть… вы проверяли? >Я не эрдэм. Эмшен скорей -- но так не слишком скромно. Хирурга у нас называют «яргачин», как мясника.

this exchange, if you choose the first option, is followed by Dankovsky's:

Можно и на ты. Да, проверял. [...]

or, translated (through deepl, because, well. i don't read russian either Thumbs up emoji) as it stands, is:

Bachelor : …monstrous mixtures of crushed pills, yes! They call them "[shmowders]". [...] Yes… I've heard that. In fact... I've tested it. So don't make fun of me either, colleague. What's your name... Erdem. >You(informal, singular form) checked?.. I mean, uh... You(formal, singular form) checked? >I'm not an Erdem. Emshen rather - - but that's not too modest. We call a surgeon "yargachin", like a butcher.

and followed by Dankovsky's:

You can use you(informal form). Yes, I checked.

In the english translation this sentence of Burakh's & Dankovsky's response go as follow:

B: Holy shit… Sorry, excuse my language. So you've checked, then? D: You don't have to watch your tongue with me. Yes, I've checked. [...]

as you can see, in the original version, Burakh slipped INTO the informal, friendlier, and maybe less respectful "ты" FROM the more formal, respectful "вы". Since the english language has no distinction between a formal and an informal singular you/You, the translator had to go around it, and make it about cursing instead of the pronoun switching. on one hand, #respect because translation is a hard annoying hair-pulling job. on the other hand, i feel like this strippppsssss the scene of its...... tension. slipping from вы to ты is a way to show that burakh started considering himself real buddy-buddy with dankovsky. or maybe lost some of the (potentially convention-mandated) respect in speech he held for dankovsky. it's a hint that he had started to, subconsciously, see dankovsky as less Above him, keeping the formality by convention. AND, dankovsky telling HIM he can use the informal form, and doesn't have to keep using the formal one, is a way to recontextualize, and to reshape their relationship. he's shedding the distance of respect and and formality that was between them, he's actively telling burakh to forgo it.

in the english translation, i feel like this shedding of distance and formality is more accomplished in dankovsky's response alone: You don't have to watch your tongue with me. It's an authorization to curse, on this one, yes, but also to more openly discuss painful, annoying things, even if you gotta slip a fuck(THE CURSE WORD) in there.

i'll always be so so sad about the lack of english's formal/informal singular you distinction. makes for a very neutered language. the inherent closeness of accidentally calling someone ты/toi instead of вы/vous and not being called out on it............