#but i know there are no laws in mobile sometimes so like whatever

[photomatt]

Why “Go Nuts, Show Nuts” Doesn’t Work in 2022

For those who don’t know or remember, Tumblr used to have a policy around porn that was literally “Go nuts, show nuts. Whatever.” That was memorable and hilarious, and for many people, Tumblr both hosted and helped with the discovery of a unique type of adult content.

In 2018, when Tumblr was owned by Verizon, they swung in the other direction and instituted an adult content ban that took out not only porn but also a ton of art and artists – including a ban on what must have been fun for a lawyer to write, female presenting nipples. This policy is currently still in place, though the Tumblr and Automattic teams are working to make it more open and common-sense, and the community labels launch is a first step toward that.

That said, no modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007. I am personally extremely libertarian in terms of what consenting adults should be able to share, and I agree with “go nuts, show nuts” in principle, but the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible. Here’s why:

Credit card companies are anti-porn. You’ve probably heard how Pornhub can’t accept credit cards anymore. Or seen the new rules from Mastercard. Whatever crypto-utopia might come in the coming decades, today if you are blocked from banks, credit card processing, and financial services, you’re blocked from the modern economy. The vast majority of Automattic’s revenue comes from people buying our services and auto-renewing on credit cards, including the ads-free browsing upgrade that Tumblr recently launched. If we lost the ability to process credit cards, it wouldn’t just threaten Tumblr, but also the 2,000+ people in 97 countries that work at Automattic across all our products.

App stores, particularly Apple’s, are anti-porn. Tumblr started in 2007, the same year the iPhone was released. Originally, the iPhone didn’t have an App Store, and the speed of connectivity and quality of the screen meant that people didn’t use their smartphone very much and mostly interacted with Tumblr on the web, using desktop and laptop computers (really). Today 40% of our signups and 85% of our page views come from people on mobile apps, not on the web. Apple has its own rules for what’s allowed in their App Store, and the interpretation of those rules can vary depending on who is reviewing your app on any given day. Previous decisions on what’s allowed can be reversed any time you submit an app update, which we do several times a month. If Apple permanently banned Tumblr from the App Store, we’d probably have to shut the service down. If you want apps to allow more adult content, please lobby Apple. No one in the App Store has any effective power, even multi-hundred-billion companies like Facebook/Meta can be devastated when Apple changes its policies. Aside: Why do Twitter and Reddit get away with tons of super hardcore content? Ask Apple, because I don’t know. My guess is that Twitter and Reddit are too big for Apple to block so they decided to make an example out of Tumblr, which has “only” 102 million monthly visitors. Maybe Twitter gets blocked by Apple sometimes too but can’t talk about it because they’re a public company and it would scare investors.

There are lots of new rules around verifying consent and age in adult content. The rise of smartphones also means that everyone has a camera that can capture pictures and video at any time. Non-consensual sharing has grown exponentially and has been a huge problem on dedicated porn sites like Pornhub – and governments have rightly been expanding laws and regulations to make sure everyone being shown in online adult content is of legal age and has consented to the material being shared. Tumblr has no way to go back and identify the featured persons or the legality of every piece of adult content that was shared on the platform and taken down in 2018, nor does it have the resources or expertise to do that for new uploads.

Porn requires different service providers up and down the stack. In addition to a company primarily serving adult content not having access to normal financial services and being blocked by app stores, they also need specialized service providers – for example, for their bandwidth and network connections. Most traditional investors won’t fund primarily adult businesses, and may not even be allowed to by their LP agreements. (When Starbucks started selling alcohol at select stores, some investors were forced to sell their stock.)

If you wanted to start an adult social network in 2022, you’d need to be web-only on iOS and side load on Android, take payment in crypto, have a way to convert crypto to fiat for business operations without being blocked, do a ton of work in age and identity verification and compliance so you don’t go to jail, protect all of that identity information so you don’t dox your users, and make a ton of money. I estimate you’d need at least $7 million a year for every 1 million daily active users to support server storage and bandwidth (the GIFs and videos shared on Tumblr use a ton of both) in addition to hosting, moderation, compliance, and developer costs. 

I do hope that a dedicated service or company is started that will replace what people used to get from porn on Tumblr. It may already exist and I don’t know about it. They’ll have an uphill battle under current regimes, and if you think that’s a bad thing please try to change the regimes. Don’t attack companies following legal and business realities as they exist.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Christopher Brown’s ‘A Natural History of Empty Lots’

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Christopher Brown is an accomplished post-cyberpunk sf writer, a tech lawyer with a sideline in public interest environmental law, the proud owner of one of the most striking homes I have ever seen, and an urban pastoralist who writes about wildlife in ways I've never seen and can't get enough of:

https://fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/

All of these facets of Brown's identity come together today with the launch of A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys and other Wild Places:

https://christopherbrown.com/a-natural-history-of-empty-lots/

This is a frustratingly hard to summarize book, because it requires a lot of backstory and explanation, and one of the things that makes this book so! fucking! great! is how skillfully Brown weaves all that stuff into his telling. Which makes me feel self-conscious as I try to summarize things, because there's no way I'll do this as well as he did, but whatever, here goes.

Brown is a transplant from rural Iowa to Austin, where he set out to start a family, practice tech law during the dotcom boom, and write science fiction, as part of a circle of writers loosely associated with cyberpunk icon @brucesterling. After both the economy and his marriage collapsed, Brown started his restless perambulations around Austin's abandoned places, sacrifice zones, the bones of failed housing starts and abandoned dot-crash office parks.

When he did, something changed in him. Slowly, his eyes learned to see things that they had just skipped over. Plants, animals, and spoor and carapaces and dens of all description, all around him, a secret world. These were not pockets of "wilderness" in the city, but they were pockets of wildness. Birds' nests woven with plastic fibers scavenged from nearby industrial dumpsters; trees taking root in half-submerged tires rolled into a creekbed, foxes and rodents playing out a real-life version of the classic ecosystem simulation exercise on the edge of an elevated highway that fills the same function as the edge of a woodland where predator and prey meet.

As Brown fell in love again – with the artist and architect Agustina Rodriguez – he conceived of a genuinely weird and amazing plan to build a house. A very weird house, in a very weird place. He bought a plot of wasteland that had once housed the head-end of an oil pipeline (connected to a nearby oil-storage facility that poisoned the people who lived near it, in an act of wanton environmental racism) and had been used as a construction-waste dump for years.

After securing an extremely unlikely loan, Brown remediated the plot, excavating the oil pipeline, then building the most striking home you have ever seen in the resulting trench. Brown is a pal of mine, and this is where I stay when I'm in Austin, and I can promise you, the pictures don't do it justice:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/style/christopher-brown-edgeland-house-austin/

Formally, A Natural History of Empty Lots is a memoir that explains all of this. But not really. Like I say, this is just the back story. What Natural History really is, is a series of loosely connected essays that explains how everything fits together: colonial conquest, Brown's failed marriage, his experience as a lawyer learning property law, what he learned by mobilizing that learning to help his neighbors defend the pockets of wildness that refuse to budge.

It's an erudite book, skipping back through millennia of history, sidewise through the ecology of Texas, all while somehow serving as a kind of spotter's guide to the wild things you can see in Austin – and maybe, in your town – if you know how to look. It's a book about how people change the land, and how the land changes people. It is filled with pastoral writing that summons Kim Stanley Robinson by way of Thoreau, and it sometimes frames its philosophical points the way a cyberpunk writer would – like Neal Stephenson writing a cyberpunk trilogy that is also the story of Leibniz and Newton fighting over credit for inventing calculus:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/11/20/neal-stephensons-system-of-the-world-concludes-the-baroque-trilogy/

Brown is a stupendous post-cyberpunk writer, and also a post-cyberpunk person, which I've known for sure since I happened upon him one morning, thoughtfully mowing his roof with a scythe:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/46433979075/

You can get a sense of what that means in this lockdown-era joint presentation that Chris, Bruce Sterling and I did on "cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk":

https://archive.org/details/asl-cyberpunk

Brown is a spectacular novelist. His ecofascist civil war trilogy that opens with Tropic of Kansas got so much right about the politics of American demagoguery and was perfectly timed with the Trump presidency:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/07/11/tropic-of-kansas-making-america-great-again-considered-harmful/

The sequel, Rule of Capture, uses the device of courtroom drama in a way that comes uncomfortably close to the Orwell/Kafka mashup that the authorities have created to deal with environmental protesters:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/08/12/rule-of-capture-inside-the-martial-law-tribunals-that-will-come-when-climate-deniers-become-climate-looters-and-start-rendering-environmentalists-for-offshore-torture/

And the final volume, Failed State, is one of the most complicated complicated utopias you could ask for. This is what people mean by "thrilling conclusion":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/12/failed-state/#chris-brown

As brilliant as Brown is in fiction mode, his nonfiction is unclassifiably, unforgettably brilliant. A Natural History of Empty Lots is the kind of book that challenges how you feel about the crossroads we're at, the place you live, and the place you want to be.

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/17/cyberpunk-pastoralism/#time-to-mow-the-roof

[amageish]

Unpacking Kitty Pryde's Sexuality

Okay, I've done a couple posts like this before... Let's take on a big one, shall we?

In Maruaders #12, released in 2020, Kate "Kitty" Pryde kissed a woman.

This was reported on fairly widely as Kitty Pryde's coming-out moment. Many people across fandom and outside of it were celebrating the queerness of one Katherine Anne Pryde. After decades upon decades of queer-coding, it was official! Kitty Pryde is a bisexual woman! Let's all celebrate!

(I personally would not call queercoding "queerbaiting" when it was done at a time when sodomy laws were still being enforced in America, but whatever.)

And then... uh... nothing really changed?

Since then, she has returned to her usual status quo in terms of queerness and queer-coding. She has had plenty of cheeky moments, wink-nods towards her queer identity, but nothing as explicit as a kiss - and no explicitly romantic relationships of any kind.

Now, this headline-making kiss was, narratively, a foil to an earlier kiss - she got a tattoo and kissed her male tattoo artist, died, came back to life, and then got a new tattoo and kissed her female tattoo artist. The woman didn't really have a purpose in the story beyond tattooing Pryde, being kissed by her, and having a design which is strikingly similar to that of Magik, one of Pryde's gal pals... All that said, it wasn't exactly the type of thing that needed to be followed up on... but it is still odd that Pryde kissed a woman, was hailed as bisexual, and then Marvel corporate went silent on the matter.

For some backstory, Pryde has been queercoded more or less since her debut. She's had three roommate situationships which are widely discussed as her queer encounters, plus a handful of other ones - notably a period where she was manipulated by the seduction of Saturnyne.

One of these relationships, Pryde with Rachel Summers, was confirmed by Pryde's creator Chris Claremont via interview in 2016, which increased discussion of her potential queerness - though that discussion has been going on for a looooong time before then.

Now, personally, when I see queer subtext vanish suddenly, my assumption is typically that corporate got involved... which seemed more likely when she was teased as a potential new character in X-Men 97. Perhaps corporate doesn't want her to be queer in that show and so they don't want her to be queer in the comic books either. Corporations are weird like that sometimes.

HOWEVER. Everything is suddenly changing in June 2024? Four years after Kate Pryde smooched a tattoo artist, Marvel mobile games are suddenly really keen to remind us that Kate Pryde is, in fact, queer???

And look. This probably means nothing. It is likely that the marketing people who worked on these events had heard Pryde was queer and tossed her into their events... but it still feels notable to me!

With these mobile game promotions, the idea of Kate Pryde being a queer character is being put in more people's feeds and in more people's minds then ever before... While the kiss was viral, it was mostly viral in queer spaces (as well as the types of spaces vigilantly opposed to queerness in nerd culture media), while this is putting it in the hands of standard mobile game users... Plus it is using Marvel's marketing budget to promote them - Marvel isn't sponsoring posts to put screenshots of Pryde checking out Dazzler's ass in X-Terminators in people's feeds, but they are to let us know that we should log into Puzzle Quest to claim a gaudy outfit...

So I am happy to see this development happen... It does feel like a (however atypical) step forward and I hope it isn't too long before Pryde can get explicitly queer stories told about her on a regular basis... I mean, her name is Pryde, for crying out loud...

[max1461]

I don't really get why inflation bothers people so much? I mean isn't it just the received wisdom at this point that inflation is always happening no matter what, and that's why 2024 money doesn't have the same value as 1950 money or whatever the fuck? Like, growing up, before I ever knew the slightest thing about economics, I always just took inflation to be a kind of law of nature.

Obviously it's gonna bother people if things cost more over time, but like. Well I guess it depends on if you have upward mobility or not? Like if you're getting raises sometimes and overall you're keeping pace with inflation, then it's just like, it's a purely psychological complaint. "My raises feel like they should be worth more based on the salary numbers, but they aren't actually as big as I think because of inflation". That's just like, well, that's just equivalent to being upset that your salary isn't higher, reasonable but it doesn't have anything to do with inflation except superficially.

If you're not getting raises or your raises aren't keeping pace when inflation then yeah, inflation is basically fucking you, your income is basically going down over time. This is a pretty fucked situation. What percentage of Americans are in this camp? Like how common is this? Seems like vital information to know.

[my-castles-crumbling]

TO CAMP ANON

Hi love! Someone sent some advice to you, so I'm putting it under the cut because it's a bit heavy. I hope you're doing well <3

I’ve been keeping up with your tumblr and your asks and stuff, and I hope it’s okay but I had something to say to Camp Anon.

I sort of inferred the situation through your answers Cas. When I was a kid I was often in group at church with other “rebellious” kids. I know now that we were all the queer kids who hadn’t realised yet (credit to them, maybe some of them had) and then when I turned 16 and partly figured myself out I started getting invested in peoples stories.

By that point a lot of the kids I’d gone to church with were also closeted, and we started talking to each other about ourselves and our experiences.

And turns out a few of those kids went to conversion camps. The summers before and after I found out. 

One of the kids was a year older than me and is still a very close friend of mine. She’s actually taking a course to be a therapist now.

And there were a few things they said (and my friend still says when she decides to talk about it) that I thought maybe you should know. 

It seems like from Cas’ answers to the ask, that Camp Anon has been somewhere before and I presume is going somewhere else again this summer? (Parents don’t usually send kids the same place twice in a row)

Look, I have some advice that’s gonna suck but I think you should hear it. You need to know before you go to the camp what sort of level/type the camp it is. 

There are ways to find out and i’m gonna list some here and just do as much research as you can (safely) because if you’re unprepared it will be difficult to leave if you need to.

So the camp has to find away of telling parents what it’s like without directly saying it. It’s often found in quotes.

Theres a big difference between “helping your child” and “healing your child” and “fixing your child”. 

Helping usually means giving quotes and bibles and doing straight kid activities (whatever that means).

Healing usually means a lot of churchy sessions, “explaining” what’s wrong with you, being more delicate

And then fixing means being absolute dickheads. 

There should also be a website somewhere, or a form or something that your parents had to sign. Sometimes that can be over an email or sometimes it’s a letter. It’s just another way for the camp to cover their asses. Whatever is written inside it should give a vague message about the danger level, how many things they want to cover themselves for.

Also- about recording the camp. If you do decide to (no pressure, always prioritise your safety), focus on filming the other kids around you. If your phone is caught or found, if the videos start of silly with other kids in (as long as they know the risk of being caught with a phone too), it’s unlikely someone will scroll through all the videos, which will mean even if they’re deleted, you won’t rise too much suspicion. 

You can also hide videos in other places, like take a video you have and put it in a draft on your tumblr account, and then delete it from your phone. That can be done on Insta too. It does require internet but I assume you have mobile data.

Also camps without phones will still have wifi for adults, sometimes this is free wifi. If it is, don’t use it (if possible).

Also, sometimes the location of the camp on fliers won’t be the real location. For example, it might be the location of the church you go to, but the place you sleep might be one road over, so stay awake. Keep an eye on road names if you move from the location your parents dropped you off at (in case someone needs to come get you, and then can’t find you). 

It is illegal to say that being queer kids can be “fixed”. It’s against the law for camps to do this. Conversion therapy is illegal and wrong. Morally wrong and literally wrong. Not a thing. Doesn’t work. Total fucking bullshit.

And be careful. I know there’s a temptation to bring a weapon (like a knife) with you to these places, and it makes sense. But these kids have been through a lot, like you, and can be really depressed and have mental health issues. And you don’t want a kid to do something bad to themselves with a knife you brought with you to the camp. 

(Cas here: just remember if that ever happens, it's NOT your fault)

Just think it through. 

And be careful who you talk to, some of these kids believe the stuff they’re told. It’s not their fault but don’t assume everyone will agree with you about the situation. 

I don’t want to get too involved, I understand this is an overwhelming thing and reaching out just to talk about it was so brave. If you’d like I can ask my friend, who’s been to places like that, if there’s any personal advise she can give.  Or not, either way is fine. 

And finally, the area I grew up in had a terrible social services place nearby, and when you called the number for social services that school gave you, they’d just send someone from there. There was a kid I used to know who called social services on his family and the guy who showed up was friends with his dad. 

Idk if you have good social services or not but do some research first if you can ❤️

(Cas again: let me know if you want me to reach out to this anon to ask any questions or to get info from their friend! We support you <3)

[meimi-haneoka]

I am so sorry that I haven't been responding to your articulate and kind answers to my asks. Honestly, my professional as well as personal life in the last month and a half had been a complete mess (it would be more appropriate to call it a tragicomedy at this point) but I had been wrapped up in my exams even though I had tried to keep myself up to date with the announcements. From what I understand, no news of season 2 of CCS CC anime, right? In any case, it does seem that patience would be the best virtue for now. Sigh. On the other hand, I have come across some screenshots of a CCS CC mobile game from a few years back. From what I gathered, it had a scene where Syaoran teases Sakura by saying cheesy romantic stuff in English and then refusing to translate it for her. Lmao. This guy. I am beginning to see shades of Horitsuba's Syaoron and TRC's Li Tsubasa in him. Look at this formerly grumpy little brat being all sly and flirty. Plus I also saw screenshots of elementary school age Syaoran with Fujitaka at the latter's home, presumably discussing archaeology with interest and Sakura serving them sweets and mostly smiling indulgently from a distance. I really want to know the context of this one. Fujitaka and Syaoran's bond was one of my fave in TRC and to watch them in CCS, bonding over archaeology despite the different contexts and origins of this interest in this world would be a joy. You just know that Fujitaka's greatest fanboy is going to be his son in law. (Also, is it just me or is Li Tsubasa more of an anthropologist, like the cultural anthropology kind, than an archaeologist like Syaoran?)

Dear Aubretia, you don't need to apologize! I also don't always feel mentally available, or have time to answer to asks, so I might take some days too! But your comments and asks are always welcome here, whenever you feel like it!! I hope your situation got better in the meantime! 🙏

Yep, April 1st didn't bring any anime S2 news aside from CLAMP confirming in a Space that an announcement might take some more time, but it is surely on the way: now everything is basically left in Kodansha's hands, to make that announcement.

Ohohoh I know very well what you're talking about! The legendary (and defunct) Happiness Memories mobile game! I played that game myself for the one year it lasted, and sometimes I was literally shocked at how pertinent and relevant that game was to the anime (but also manga) storyline...so much that I wondered more than once if Ohkawa wasn't a ghostwriter for it or something... For example, in the game you could play a "photo story" where Akiho practiced with Kaito her introduction for her first day of school at Tomoeda...it was very sweet but I thought it was just "an invention" of the developers of the game... But when the two Drama CDs came out with the Special Edition of volume 7 and 8 of the manga, I was shocked to realize that Ohkawa wrote a line for Akiho where she recounts her first day of school to Kaito, and she says "I was able to greet everyone in Japanese, just like I had been practicing!" <- just like in the game!!! That felt too much of a coincidence (in a CLAMP thing?? coincidences don't exist!!) to me, so I lowkey consider whatever happens in that game "canon"! 😁

I had made some threads on my Twitter account, back then! And I remember I translated some of the content of that SyaoSaku Happiphoto here!!

I also remember the one about Fujitaka and Syaoran, I mentioned it in my Trivia post about all the literary references, because in that photostory Fujitaka mentions a particular book to Syaoran while talking about archeology...but unfortunately I didn't get to play that photostory, so I don't know many details about it!! But yes, I totally agree that Fujitaka's biggest fanboy will be his son in law (and this reminds me we didn't get an interaction between them in Clear Card!! This is totally one of those things they can feature in the anime, though! 😁)

Hmmm for Tsubasa and Syaoran, yes, it might be like you say! And it would make sense because despite one is the clone of the other, they are two different people and had different experiences, even their personality is sliiightly different!

[bandedbulbussnarfblat]

I had a rough week last week. Tuesday my dog gets sick, so I look up her symptoms. And bc I'm a crazy person, my mind automatically latched onto the worst possibility. So I spent three hours crying hysterically and having panic attacks bc I was so scared she would die. Then Wednesday I had to take my dog to vet and was still super stressed out. Thursday and Friday I have to deal with medicaid and disability paperwork. Saturday I had a panic attack so bad that I couldn't stop it and had to text my brother to come help me (he lives with me. we're too poor to live without a roommate, and we've basically lived together our whole lives, so it was whatever). Sunday morning I have a panic attack and can't leave my house to play my weekly dnd game bc the thought of spending hours with other people away from home was...bad. Sunday night, I got completely (and irrationally) terrified of being alone. I was so afraid that I called my mom, and of course she offers to come over. And I'm freaking out so bad I let her, even though it was late and I know she has to get up early for work. (She only stayed until my brother got back around 10:30)

BUT, today is a new day. I managed to get my blood work done today, and talk on the phone to my case worker, and pick up a pair of contacts from my eye doctor to wear until my order comes in. And I didn't have a panic attack. I mean, I still had to have my dad take me, bc leaving home alone isn't something I can do right now. (Mentally or physically. My brother's car broke down, and since he's the one who has a job, he's been using mine. i stg it's like a fucking family curse; every time someone is already in a financial bind, their car will break down.)

So I have decided to take the next few days to just relax. My two besties that I've been friends with since middle school both have kids with autism and they said I'm probably going through autistic burn-out. I'm pretty sure I'm autistic and my doctor thinks I'm somewhere on the spectrum, though on the lower support side. I'm gonna play bg3, and unwind. And try to work on some fic. (bc I have the next chapter of 16 Days damn near finished, and it's the last chapter that ties up the current plot, then there's an epilogue that takes place later that played out like a movie in my head, so writing it will be a breeze.)

Side note, did y'all know that some school systems still use 'high/low functioning'. I've had to say to my coworkers that autistic people would prefer not to use those terms. But it isn't surprising; one of my cousin's kids was literally diagnosed with Asperger's. Which has fallen under the autism spectrum disorder since like, forever ago. And also there was a TA in the autism classroom I worked in once who literally told me that autism was caused by demonic possession. I'm so glad I left the school system. Bc I eventually was going to fucking explode with rage after the way my kids were treated. (My students, not my actual kids. I don't have or want any)

Working in EC has really shown me how little the school system actually cares about helping the disabled; they will cut corners and do shit that 'technically' meets a kid's IEP, but doesn't do a damn thing to help them. And if you say something like, 'i don't think that counts' your coworkers will not be happy. But to a certain degree you can't be too mad, bc there is literally not enough time or resources to meet every child's needs, bc they cram as many kids in one EC classroom as possible, hire the minimum amount of TAs required by law and expect one teacher to be able to magically meet all their needs. My last job had 3 kids in wheelchairs in those tiny ass mobile units schools started using, that literally did not have room to move around, unless the other students stood up to let them get by, and sometimes even move their desk. We had multiple kids with autism. One of them stimmed by screaming, another was triggered by loud noises.

This post kinda went off on a tangent. Anyway, heads up to any parents who have kids starting school, make sure you get a copy of your child's IEP. If you think they aren't being serviced, contact your local Board of Education, and tell them that you have a child with an IEP who isn't receiving adequate services. Then threaten to sue them if they don't start providing your kid their services. It does not matter if you can actually afford to sue them or not, an IEP is a legally binding document. You have the right to sue, and most of the time the threat alone is enough to kick their ass into gear.

[exeggcute]

sometimes i get so mad about online advertising being so lawless compared to other mediums (ex. television ads occupying specific spots in programming or a small fraction of the screen while online ads can sprawl wherever the hell they want And bog down computer performance) i find myself wishing for someone to enact legislation leading to their regulation, but how likely of a possibility do you think that actually is?

it depends tbh. we do have related stuff like CCPA and GDPR (obligatory meme that I have saved on my phone:)

...so it's not impossible for further laws/regulations to crop up down the line. my main thoughts here are that (1) adtech changes so rapidly that I think any specific legislation is almost certainly doomed to become obsolete before long (compounded further by the fact that most lawmakers barely seem to understand the internet, let alone a fucking RTB supply chain lol), (2) enforcement would be a nightmare considering there are literally several hundred billion bid requests generated EVERY SINGLE DAY (googled this stat to make sure I wasn't misremembering and got another dr. fou link lol. can't escape this guy) and (3) believe it or not, the online advertising industry is largely self-governing... or at least tries to be.

an organization called the IAB (interactive advertising bureau) sets a ton of standards around not only the logistics of buying and selling ads (they are, for example, the creators of the OpenRTB protocol for real-time auctions), but also the quality of the ads and ad space being sold. there are tons of initiatives they've proposed that have widespread buy-in among the industry, like ads.txt, which everybody who's anybody uses these days.

you do, of course, have to buy in to what the IAB is metaphorically selling, but their decrees hold a lot of weight among all sections of the ads supply chain—both reputable buyers and reputable sellers regularly adjust their behavior based on IAB guidelines. for example, two of the things you mentioned:

"ads can sprawl wherever they want": the IAB has about a million guidelines for where ads can physically go on a page, how they can run (e.g., video ads must be muted by default or they aren't IAB compliant), and what percentage of the visual real estate they can use up. publishers obviously can and do violate these guidelines, but third-party tools exist to make sure your ads aren't running on pages that pull that shit. and as a rule, advertisers actively dislike buying ad space on awful cluttered pages because they know the pages are shitty and the impressions are less valuable.

"big down computer performance": people call those heavy ads! the IAB sets standards around ad performance (the lighter the better, basically) and google chrome even implemented a feature that automatically kills heavy ads before they eat up your whole CPU. some performance based-issues are also caused by malvertising which is uhhh a whole other thing but no one likes it and everyone who matters is trying to stop it.

which isn't to be naive here or an industry shill or whatever because Fucking Obviously these problems persist. I actually had to email the advertising division at conde nast recently because I kept getting malicious redirect ads on their mobile site (they haven't responded yet... return my calls bitch!) so clearly even well-meaning reputable websites and ad platforms and advertisers continue to have issues with IVT and whatnot. the struggle is eternal.

but arguably so is the struggle against basically anything that's legislated, like property crime or whatever. I'm admittedly not optimistic that formal laws would fix digital advertising, only put a slightly hotter fire under people's asses to clean up their respective acts better. which is certainly a good thing, it's just a rapidly evolving game where the bad actors are always coming up with new tactics.

fun and related example: I read a recent retrospective about the kids behind the mirai botnet, which originally started out as a DDoS-for-hire scheme but pivoted to ad fraud when it turned out that was way more profitable. possibly the largest botnet ever (don't quote me on that though) and it was spun up by three teenagers!!!

[childofthestarpower]

Internet Angels

Hey guys! Morin here! Today I've decided to do a post on some of my Denpa-esque thoughts ive mentioned, this post is going to be dedicated to Internet Angels, so let's get started☆

"What's an Internet Angel?"

Internet Angels are being who are what I'd describe as regulars on the Internet. They (most of the times) try disguising themselves as normal people, but not all the times they succeded, and as I mentioned, sometimes they dont even try at all.

Anyone can become an Internet Angel, but it takes effort, resistance and resiliance to ascend to that plane, and yes, you ascend.

Note: You can ascend to it at any age, but i don't recommend doing that at young ages. Because the brain is still in development stage, too much exposure of radio waves and Internet content can either cause brainrot or premature ascension, which is no good!! If you want a kid to ascend, please wait until they're around ages 13 and up, so if brainrot/premature ascension happends, at the very least its not so fatal.

"How does it work?"

It's simple! It all works in a video game like way. Everybody has an NetXP bar, that bar serves to track how much media you consume, and when you consume media, that fills the bar with Xperience Points (XP) and that's what used to track it.

The more media you consume, the more XP you gain, and at one point, if you consume enough media, you will ascend (level up) and become a 2G type Angel. Oh yeah, I didn't even mention the Giga Types..

"Giga Types?"

There are many types of Internet Angels, some more stronger than others. As scientists, programmers and what not find out and "create" newer mobile networks, more Giga Types are of Internet Angels are discovered, and as of now, we have 4 types.

2G - The weakests, when you ascend for the first time, you become this. 2G angels can blend in well among non-angels and they're like normal humans, just with a little above the average screentime. Oh, and due to that, they tend to be more hostile towards the other types.

3G - The most common ones, at this stage, the Angel will be a little more net minded, but still able to mask it, the most prominent feature about them is their interests, which are all sorts of unique and non-mainstream media, which they can ramble on about for hours.

4G - In this stage, the Angel has a mindset that a normie/2G type may call "chronically online", this Angel dosen't leave the house often and only rarely ever does, they are really net minded, with their brain already re-wired to think in the Internet way. But because of the fact they still leave the house and talk to other humans with that Netizen mindset, they come off as weird and offputting.

5G - The highest we know of. These Angels do not leave the house, and they can be smarter than a 4G type. They are your typical hikkikomoris/shut-ins and they have big knowledge of the Internet, it's history, the textese and laws. Some of them have seen things that only Angels of this type shall understand, and I've also never seen a 5G Angel younger than 18. Legend has it these angels only come out to do pilgrimage routes to the nearest internet poles... They stand there, just absorving the radio waves in, maybe to ascend to what could one day be dubbed as 6G Angels... But we're not there yet, so let's not get ahead of ourselves.

"Where do they live? What do they eat? What are some of their habits?"

1. Anywhere in the world, in any state and city, but they tend to live in big developed cities. I've never seen an Internet Angel living in rural area, countrysides or farms.

2. Unhealthy food, high energy level drinks (coffee, energy drinks, etc) and anything instant (mostly instant ramen, for whatever reason). That dosen't really mean some of them wont try diets or don't eat healthy food.

3. Long screen time, usage of textese and other internet languages, long time on social medias knowledge of Internet history, reference to medias they enjoy and more I'm probably forgetting.

"What powers does an Internet Angel posses?"

With the help of some supplements, they can enter in contact and channel with higher beings, deities and gods and etc, the higher the level, the higher the deity they can have contact with, I've heard of people even channeling God!

Guide lower types, newbies and humans through the Internet.

Guarding and protecting potentially dangerous media to beings with lower resistance.

Create Digital Cultures.

Withstand stronger radio waves

Influence the modern day world and politics as it is, although i think this needs more research on...

Questions with simpler answers

"What type are you?" Seeecret☆! ;;;;;;;;)

"Are celebrities Internet Angels?" Depends on who we're talking, but they're mostly 2G Angels, the celebrities with highest Giga Type I've seen are Jungkook and Jimin from BTS, I'd say they're probably 3G/4G Angels who mask it reaaaaally well.

"What are Digital Cultures?" Topic for another post! This one is long enough~

"Is this a cult thing?" No!!! These are personal beliefes!!! Not a cult thing!!! >:<

"Are you insane?" I dunno,,

Anyways, if you've read this far, thanks for giving this post attention and reading it! It took a little longer than what i thought to write it and i hope you enjoyed it!! If you have any questions, leave them below. For now, Morin signing off—☆!!

[missysotomeworld]

Collar x Malice Review (Non-Spoilers)

After a year of playing this game and after hearing so many things about it, I finally managed to play the game. Buying ten Otome games on the switch to get me started, since up until now all I’ve played were mobile games which I still play but I wanted to expand my horizons. I knew Collar x Malice is a “Big” Otome game which is a lot of people’s first Otome and I thought; let’s start with this classic game. Let’s see what I thought about this game.  

Plot  

Set-in modern-day Shinjuku, which once was a bustling city known for its nightlife, but that’s not the case anymore because of a terrorist group calling themselves Adonis. This group deeming themselves the true fighters of justice have taken it upon themselves to rid the world of its sorrows and for people that are suffering every second. So they've taken it upon themselves to kill those that are the very reason before they can cause the people's sorrows. Now it's December and the "Rebirth" of Japan is supposed to happen. On January 1st the day Adonis deems to be X-Day has caused Shinjuku to be under lockdown and no one can leave or enter the city and under strict protocols the police set up everyone on a curfew, those 18 and under must have a chaperon with them when going to school and home. The government redacted laws that had banned anyone from carrying a weapon, so now everyone over the age of 20 can carry a gun as a means to protect themselves. Now it’s December, the police are panicking as they try to crack down on these crimes and are having no luck. Sitting in the middle of all this chaos is 21-year-old rookie police officer Ichika Hoshino. One night Ichika is heading home when she gets a call from her superior that there's a disturbance and is told she needs to put a stop to it until he can come as backup.  She goes to Shinjuku Garden and gets knocked out and wakes up in a church with a poisonous collar attached to her neck and a voice comes from within the collar. Turns out the very organization that the police are trying to catch (Adonis) have given this collar as a way to experiment on her for them to see her "justice" and find out the truth of the crimes. She is told she must never tell anyone about the collar, especially not the police. Thankfully Adonis had the common decency to send assistance in the form of three ex-cops to rescue her. These men were tipped off when a letter from Adonis letting them know a "sympathizer" of theirs is at the church and to go get her. So now Ichika must work with these men along with two more allies.  

Company  

Collar x Malice is created by Idea Factory under the Otomate brand and is localized by Aksys games. It's rated M for its dark themes because we've got ourselves very detailed death scenes, violence, drug references, strong language, and mild sexual content. The game was originally released on the PS Vita in Japan in 2016 and later to the West in 2017 and became re-released for the switch in 2020 followed by its 2018 fandisk "Collar x Malice: Unlimited" only on the switch. I played on the switch and from what I understand there were a lot of grammar errors in the initial release that seems to be fixed for the  Switch re-release but then again, I'm not a huge stickler for these types of problems unless it's broken English and that is where I draw the line. 

Mechanics  

It's pretty rare for an Otome game to have gameplay mechanics so it's refreshing to take a reading break and do activities related to the task at hand and makes you feel like you are a real cop on the case.  There's three different mechanics in the game that will come up sometimes.  

Investigations: This happens when Ichika is investigating a crime scene to find clues to whatever month of Adonis' crimes, she ends up pursuing. You just click around the room when the red and black arrow turns into a target symbol and if you ponder too long Ichika will nudge you to move on.  

[Go to] Elevator: This happens when Ichika is traveling through the police station in the elevator to different departments to talk to someone on that floor.  

Trigger Mode: There’ll be times where Ichika will draw her gun, and this will make or break if you get a bad ending, if you make the shot or not. You cannot save during these events either save when you kind of see lines like "Ichika touches her gun" or if you don't make it you can rewind the conversation. The objective is to aim for the first inner circle of the bigger circle. If you are unsure, that's normal at first.  (Believe me I was confused sometimes if I did it right. I was told if you see a red outline, it means you did it if it's gray you missed or look at the log and it'll say so) If you aren't confident in your skills, you can always go to the shooting range in the police station, and it will show you how to do it without the tension.  

Extras  

There are two collectables you get within the game: there's the Dictionary explaining the police terms and other topics related to the characters and the Materials that you collect the evidence of the X-Day cases within the routes.  

After each Good Ending for each of the LIs you get a short story after the events of the route and once you collect all the CGs you get an extra CG of the guy. And at the end when everything is completed you get to read Episode 0 which tells how the members of Adonis were selected. 

Ichika Hoshino 

I liked Ichika. She's definitely one-of-a-kind type of Mc. She's one of those rare Mc who can think for herself. She's really not the type of Mc you can self-insert like other Mcs, more or less that you can simply put yourself in their shoes because they are more like a Lego piece and you can put yourself into the story, but the Mc usually doesn't have much personality. Ichika is her own character sure you are making the decisions, but they feel like her own thoughts rather than your input. She sticks with her justice and will stubbornly stand by it. She's a skilled marksman and is a smart lady. Of course, she isn't perfect (none of us are) and she's aware of her shortcomings. She's very realistic and when she's in a scary situation she knows much more is at stake, so she stays as calm as possible. That is a strength I don't think a lot of us could pull; most of us would be freaking out if we had a poisonous collar and we were told to follow whatever it says or our lives would end. She's also aware she's a rookie and naturally her department she works in the Special Regions Crime Prevention Office (SRCPO) isn't really in the field like the rest of the police station. The SRCPO handles the public's complaints and checks out disturbances they are called to. So naturally Ichika doesn't have the skills as one may have hoped for since her conclusions, she draws at are probably anyone else could come up with in the grand scheme of things if you want to ponder it. But that doesn't matter much to me since the game kind of makes you think as you play along and it's cool to think (even if I had a walkthrough but I did wonder about stuff). I will say it's thanks to her job she can communicate when the need arises and can gain some information that could be important. Though there's also a nitpick that kind of bothers me and that lies with her younger brother Kazuki, and her communication/listening skills go out the window when it comes to him. Like we get it Ichika it's a scary world out there right now but lecturing him isn't going anywhere and it'd help to just ask him and LISTEN to what he has to say. Now it's not just her fault Kazuki doesn't make it easier for her either like dude its a blessing you get to stay with her you could show some appreciation. Like she cooks for him, pays the rent, and he gets his own room, and he gives her attitude because he's in his "Teenage Rebellion" phase that's not an excuse! Kazuki's behavior depends on the route he's fine. In some other times he's just too cruel to Ichika. I mean eventually they come to some kind of understanding at the end. But these are just minor flaws. I had to sit back and think, and it didn't deter me from liking Ichika. I'd befriend her in real life. She's a breath of fresh air as someone who has her fair share of normal Mcs. Do I call her my favorite Mc? I don't think so, I feel like there'll be better Mcs better than her the more I get my feet wet in my journey of my switch journey. I feel she kind of blends into the crowd especially with the generic appearance, heck she and I could be twins because I have brown hair and hazel eyes as well.  

The Love Interests  

So how the routes split off is that Ichika will team up with one of the guys and investigate one or two cases with them. This game has an affection meter feature that is broken into two parts: Trust and Affection.  It makes sense for it to be like this since Ichika and LI are complete strangers and they need to learn how to work together. The first part is Trust which Ichika needs to build trust with her partner in a way that they can work as a unit. After the Trust meter is full it will restart and start the second part the Affection where the love grows between them. Fill the Affection all the way up you got yourself the Good Ending! There is a recommended order for this game since this game builds overtime and gets spoiler heavy the more you read it so it's nice slowly chipping away at this iceberg of a game in a way that has a natural flow to it. The route order I did was: Mineo Enomoto, Takeru Sasazuka, Kei Okazaki,  Kageyuki Shiraishi, and Aiji Yanagi. Mineo, Takeru, and Kei are the only three unlockable in the beginning. Shiraishi's route is locked until you play at least one of those three and Yanagi unlocks when all the other four boys have been completed since he's the "true" route that reveals all. I don't regret my order choices. I felt it built up nicely over time! But you can kind of choose however you like between the first three and that can probably be done in any order. With that said let's talk about my thoughts on our boys!

  

Mineo Enomoto (23): Mineo was a great first route to me since when I was deciding which way to play since the walkthroughs around said different route orders for the first three, but I ultimately saw someone say choose between him or Takeru. So I went with Mineo since he seemed nice enough since Takeru intimidated me a little. To me, Mineo's route seemed less about Adonis as a whole and more about his problems surrounding the particular case we were investigating because it was a personal thing for him. The whole route was basically him overcoming his problems with Ichika helping him through it. I did like his cute moments, and I chuckled at the banter with Ichika, and I feel because they were relatively close in age, they just got each other. I'm a big history buff myself so him liking Masamune Date (going as far as having an eye patch despite not needing it, now if that's not dedication I don't know what is) Though I've always been a Nobunaga Oda kind of girl (especially in Otome games some people have deemed me Lady Oda for my undying faithfulness to the Demon Lord regardless of game).  

Takeru Sasazuka (24): I feel like Takeru's route is a good explanation of Adonis' actions throughout the month of December since most of the crimes they do relate to the case Takeru and Ichika are investigating. We do get to learn a pretty decent sized spoiler in this route sure I was shocked but that didn't deter me at all but if someone is really sensitive then doing Kei's route is probably a good idea to do since I think Takeru and Kei's route are the most interchangeable out of the three. I did okay with Takeru himself who’s such a smartass and knows it (it helped to get used to the prickly genius because before I played this route, I was playing another character with a similar personality even down to the hair color and loving sweets). I feel he and Ichika really didn't fit well together since he never saw her as an equal and the whole Kazuki stuff was the worst here and Takeru didn't help things which probably made it worse. I know Ichika really did her hardest on this case, but he kept calling her a stupid cat, that doesn't sound encouraging. Like dude cut her some slack it's not her fault she works in a department where these skills are limited and so what if her thought processes are basic at least she is thinking and taking this seriously. I like tsunderes but there's a line that just shouldn't be crossed, like I don't get how they fell for each other. I guess if you buy him enough doughnuts, he'll fall for you. If this game were a visual novel it holds up pretty solid like his background and motives of why he wants to solve this particular case, make sense. But as a romance route I have to say no it's probably one of the weakest out of the routes here in terms of that it felt so thrown in for the sake of this needs to be an Otome game so romance needs to occur even between people that don't go well together. Like Ichika I feel wasn't at her finest like defend yourself I know you are capable of this as seen in other routes then this one. Once your mind is set you don't back down where was this in this route!?  

Kei Okazaki (25): The last of the initial trio definitely has some heavy weight compared to the other two which is why I thought Kei worked best for a third route for me. But I do see Takeru and Kei being interchangeable like I said before. Kei is the odd duck out of the love interests not just his airhead, liking weird snacks personality he displays but he actually works at the police station as an SP officer that's normally tasked with protecting VIPs at events but for some reason, he is tasked with watching Yanagi and the others to "protect" them. They don't know why as previously mentioned SP officers don't protect civilians like Yanagi and Co. so it's odd and it's dangerous since one of Adonis' demands was that police cannot know about the collar or her involvement in this investigation. And with Kei always showing up at random times to check on them it's frustrating and gets on their nerves especially Yanagi in particular. It's also hard since Ichika is a working police officer herself. It looks odd she always goes to the Detective Agency to consult with them on her findings. So, knowing this you may be asking yourselves how a romance would brew between these two and it's definitely an interesting one. Again, the same events that happened in Takeru's route, but they are just shown and kind of thrown away because it really didn't go anywhere for Kei's route. Maybe apart from one event but it was a minor part of the story. As for how I felt about Kei as a character, he really didn't appeal to my tastes. I'm aware he has quite the fanbase. His backstory had really given us some brain food for later when we started putting stuff together but once we figured out his motives throughout the route as to why he sticks by Ichika's side it really got so annoying. I was with Ichika through this. I just wish it was addressed earlier but at least she gave him a good grilling when she put together what he wanted to do. He's an amazing fighter, like he could whip my ass to the ground in a second. He may act like an airhead but that's such a trap that's how he gets you to reveal your secrets because he's way smarter than he appears to be. I guess he's cute with the liking weird snacks or sleeping wherever. But he just isn't my cup of tea. I was too busy frustrated at his antics, but other than those gripes it's an interesting route since it did give us something to chew on for the next two routes.  

Kageyuki Shiraishi (29): I beg of you please do this guy fourth before Yanagi is unlocked! You are free to choose whoever you want for the first three routes but PLEASE for the love of God DO NOT PLAY his route as soon as he unlocks. His route is spoiler heavy central! Everything you see in this route will change your outlook on everything you thought you knew about this game. This route is the perfect lead up to Yanagi's route after he's unlocked after this route! I won't say what this very important information is because it's best to find out for yourselves and just watch your jaws drop to the floor in shock once you learn what this key information is hehe. I absolutely loved this man and his route like Day 1 playing this game. As soon as his first scene happened, I was laughing and going "I'm in trouble". He had me at the teasing like ‘yes sign me up!’ As you can tell I love guys that tease! I love the fox, cunning type of character; the Kitsune in Ayakashi games are my favorite character/Ayakashi always! So, did he meet my expectations? YES! Oh my God Yes! It was pretty much a story of how their relationship changes over time, which I'm a sucker for (one thing to know about me is I love character development in my routes). Kotoho Sakuragawa and Eriko Mukai are Ichika's friends in all the routes and omg they were so funny in this route since they both hate this man with every fiber of their being! Ichika is at her finest in this route and it's exactly what someone like Shiraishi needs in a partner. This had my favorite case as well and sure I had my trusty walkthrough on hand, but I was actively trying to think of where the case was going to go with all its twists and turns! He is hands down my favorite route in the game and my husbando of the game without a shadow of a doubt! Love you my cat loving man hehe!

  

Aiji Yanagi (28): Ah the dad of the crew (though he won't admit it hehe) but he's literally husband/dad material he can clean, cook, and is a sweet guy. As for his role as the truth route we finally answer the undying question "What is the truth behind Adonis' actions?" Does it hold up as a route? Yeah, it does the job okay, but did I feel satisfied with it? No not really, I feel the writing lost momentum at the midway point and just rolled downhill from there. The plot twist they put to throw conflict for the sake of conflict because Yanagi is too damn perfect. Let's add this piece of information that came out of nowhere and make his only real weakness being a chain smoker. If you wanted this plot twist in this route it should have been implemented in passing in all routes it would have had a better effect of why Ichika and Yanagi are an OTP pairing not that they needed a reason they got along with each other from the get-go. The other downer was the ending showdown between the leader of Adonis and the good of the police to decide the fate of Japan! Who is going to win in the end? It was anticlimactic to say the least like it ended like that? I was expecting something more like we came all this way and we got this?  Other than those critiques I liked the relationship between these two like if this wasn't a final route, I may have liked it more. I teared up at the end of the good ending mostly because the music was swelling and the realization of my journey with this game is coming to an end! This route did a good job pulling together everything we learned including the other boys' pasts coming together beautifully! As for how I feel about Yanagi as a character he's just a nice/safe guy that is great to have around but that's just it he's kind of too plain for my tastes. Hehe he's the perfect guy for Ichika!  

Final Thoughts  

Overall I enjoyed my time with this classic Otome game and can proudly call it my first console game!  The story was compelling from beginning to end, always keeping you wondering what twists this game  will take you on. This game felt real looking at what’s been going on around me the past couple of years  like I feel if I played this game closer to its original release I don't think it'd hit as hard or make you think  like is Adonis wrong here? Their methods of showing the wrongs and killing those people isn't right but  what they say regarding the issues the game tackles is one for discussion. What's interesting is that this  game makes you question your own morals like who is really right here and which side should we be  siding with? And to rank the LI overall are: Shiraishi, Yanagi, Mineo, Kei, and Takeru. Out of five stars I  give CxM a 4.5/5. This game is flawless and the reason it's not a five is how the Good vs Evil showdown was a bit of a let down. This game is easily recommendable to anyone of any gender since there's  something about it that can draw anyone’s interests. The romance is low key and you kind of forget it's an Otome because of its level of crime drama aesthetics. So if you like crime dramas, strong female heroine, don't mind low key/slow burn romances, and like serious action packed, this is the game for  you! Thank you for reading this review! Maura out! 

[night-dark-woods]

YESSS another person out there who reads Mara Sov as autistic!

YES YES YES hope its ok i answer this publically if not not ill delete it as an ask and just post it BUT she is sooooo very much autistic to me like. i love her sooooo much and thats a huge huge part of it ESPECIALLY bc she gets to be SO delightfully complex and morally gray and a deeply sympathetic character who still is a bit of a horrible person sometimes which just ISNT something we GET a lot as autistic ppl like. augh!!! mara sov was constructed in a lab for me to care about.

anyway im not citing stuff bc im on mobile and copypasting to the tumblr app is Hell but i have fully read the marasenna like 4 times in the last 2 months so this is going to be rambly as all hell but:

-talk about fucking black and white morality. going back to earth is the Right Thing To Do and she will absolutely condemn* her entire colony ship to mortality for that.

-her conviction that she knows secrets and things no one else knows, that she is always in control in a way others arent, and her Need for that to be true, and her sense of herself as separate/better/other/above the rest and having a connection to a deeper knowledge. i feel like theory of mind gets tossed around as a dsm checkbox without people like. fully understanding the nuances of it.

-relatedly her... mercenary? approach to the social interactions and relationships she has (and her utter panic and confusion when she cannot use her models that she has, eg sjur). like she may not be able to Feel what other people feel but she can certainly pattern-match and manipulate.

-her absolutely oversized eldest daughter & gifted kid syndrome taken to absolutely absurd extremes (thanks osana and alis li!) bc of what authority figures told her to be true about herself at 19. (one of the times she had to dramatically readjust her model of How Social Interactions Work- the concept that how she is perceived is Her Responsibility which she immediately internalizes as Law). ALSO osana saying that mara never wanted to be her daughter like. ok we get it ur kid is strange and acts "older than her age" and is more self-possessed than a child her age should be except when shes not.

-god just. honestly everything about how shes written. idr if u have read seth dickinson's published books (the traitor baru cormorant) but baru from those books is SO SO SO similar like. ruthless in that the ends justify absolutely any means, self-centered, brilliant with a massive blindspot where it comes to emotions, manipulative bc she relies on a carefully constructed understanding of how social interactions work, most importantly disastrously world-shatteringly gay.

also i feel like part of it is that a lot of the traits and things that make me read mara as autistic are like... internal experience traits that arent easily recognizable by allistic ppl bc they dont Have a recognizably autistic-specific external manifestation and instead come off as like. being a bitch or selfish or stuck up or cold or Whatever. but are like immediately viscerally recognizable if u experience things the same way.

maybe at some point ill make an Actual Post abt mara sov, the travelers most autistic creature. but so much of it is Unexplainable Vibes. if u kno u kno. also thank u for sending this ask and giving me a chance to talk abt mara i love her SO much.

*i dont believe immortality is inherently good, so i dont think it was condemning is like, the right word, but in context of how characters see it.

[thegreatestjournalistofalltime]

In this post:

About the Muse (Freddie Lounds, NBC Hannibal)

About the Mun (Hi, I’m Casper!)

I’ll Write...

I Won’t Write...

Character Headcanons (HC’s and Canon-Divergent Ideas) 

RP Rules

This is my main RP blog, and Freddie is my main character. However, I also have a blog for Dr. Frederick Chilton, @b1oodandchocolate​ , on which I would also be thrilled to write with you if you’d like! Both are independent and selective.

I have the link to my RP Queue board on my side navigation, but for mobile users, you can click here to see all the stuff I’m working on.

All dividers used below were made by saradika. Please go check out her work. It’s all lovely.

Freddie Lounds is rude, brilliant, and damn-near fearless. She does whatever she has to do in order to get information for her tabloid site, Tattle Crime. Unfortunately, this often means breaking laws, manipulating people, or engaging in otherwise nefarious behavior. However, she has her moments when she shows that she does have a heart, and that she does care about other people... Sometimes. Depends on who it is, really.

Here’s Freddie’s Wiki Bio for more information if you haven’t seen the show ❤️

Hello, there! My name is Casper. I’m transmasc non-binary (my pronouns are they/them/theirs or he/him/his) and I’m over the age of 30. I’m neurodivergent as fuck, and, despite writing for shady characters, I’m a soft boi  😅 

I’m kind of the stereotypical introvert, so I know I can sometimes come across as standoffish (especially online), but I promise that I’m friendly! I just have a super low threshold for socializing, especially with people I don’t know or don’t know very well yet, which sometimes makes it seem like I don’t want to talk to someone, when the reality is that I just can’t at a given time. Especially since it’s super easy for me to hit “burnout mode.”

Anyway, I’m hoping that I can actually do something of substance with this blog this time around and stick around a while longer lol. Please don’t be afraid to say hi! Just please keep in mind that I may not be able to respond right away.

Lastly, this is my Ao3, collecting dust lol: casperlounds on Ao3

Fluffy stuff

Platonic relationships

Consensual NSFW stuff (please see rules below)

Violent or Dark Themes (please see rules below)

Canon-Compliant OR Canon-Divergent Stuff

RP with Non-Hannibal Characters from Other Shows/Movies

RP with OCs in OR Outside of Hannibal

And more...

NonCon/Sexual Violence

Various Kinks (please see rules below)

Varying Degrees of Gore (please see rules below)

And more...

Freddie actually comes from a fairly affluent family and her parents are proud of her (they just kind of overlook a lot of the less savory things she does).

She is an only child.

Her middle name is “Emily.” Her mother initially wanted it to be “Amelie.”

Bisexual in the sense that she doesn’t care about/isn’t repulsed by sleeping with men, as it was implied with Zeller. This is especially true if it means getting what she wants for an article (she’s canonically Machiavellian), but I definitely see her as homoromantic. She may have a fling with a man, but it will never be serious and she won’t grow attached, even if it’s just for fun and not as some means to an end. Though the likelihood of that in itself is low.

Has a crush on Dr. Bloom. 

Please read these rules before requesting to roleplay.

This blog is 18+ ONLY. Therefore, I will also only write with people over the age of 18. Minors, please DNI.

If you want to RP with me, please PM me and let me know what you had in mind. Please do not post a starter without discussing things with me first. That way, we can also decide who will start things off!

I prefer public RPs, reblogging each other with our responses. HOWEVER, if you’d like to RP privately, please tell me so and I will try to work something out with you. Preferably on Discord.

That said, I cannot do RP in PMs. I tried that once and it was a bad struggle for me. Which is why I suggest Discord.

I will only accept random starters from certain people. If I get comfortable enough, I’ll let you know if I’m OK with your doing that. However, please don’t take this personally! As I stated in the About the Mun section, I’m both neurodivergent and have trouble with social spaces.

That said, if I post an Open Starter that reads “(anyone may reply),” I mean anyone, even non-mutuals. Any Open Starters meant solely for mutuals will be clearly marked to avoid confusion. However, for those who do reply (thank you!), please be aware that I may not get to yours or it may or may not turn into a longer RP.

Please understand that I often struggle with burnout and extreme fatigue, as well as other symptoms stemming from ADHD. Therefore, there will be times when I write more and times that I write less. I also might find it easier to work on one thing over another at a given time, but that doesn't mean I don’t value the partner or the RP I’m not working on. If this doesn't work for you, that’s totally understandable, just please don’t start writing with me if this is something you think will be a problem. That wouldn’t be fair to either of us.

On that same note, please be aware that I will not be writing page-long+ replies. Some of my starters/replies may be longer than others, but I generally write two or three paragraphs. If you’re looking for someone who writes lengthy replies, I’m not your guy. Realistically, I also know I wouldn’t be able to read those lengthy posts, so it wouldn’t be fair to you, either.

Despite not writing ultra lengthy replies, I do put a lot of thought and effort into them. I’ve been made aware that some people have started to use AI generated responses in RP (what a time to be alive). This is a hard no from me. I may take a while to respond, but when I do, I do so to the best of my abilities. I’d hope my partners do the same.

I will only accept “pre-established relationship” OCs (i.e. your character is the romantic interest/mortal enemy/childhood best friend/etc. of my muse) on a case-by-case basis. As with the “romantic chemistry” rule below, if I’m not feeling the connection, or if I don’t think I’ll be a good fit as a partner for it, I will respectfully decline.

If you want to drop or rework/restart a thread or idea that we’re working on together, please let me know!

Please don’t message me asking when I’m going to get to your response. All that does is make me anxious. I’ll likely let you know, myself, when I can get around to it if you’ve been waiting.

Likewise, please don’t spam message me, especially if I haven’t responded. That makes me incredibly anxious and less likely to respond at all.

However, please do message me if you have questions or want to discuss an idea in the RP we’re working on!!!

I will not have exclusive partners for a given character (i.e. a single Hannibal Lecter that I write with and no other Hannibals). There may be people I write with most frequently for a given character, but I won’t exclude other people.

If you aren’t sure if I’ll be comfortable with something, please ask. This includes NSFW themes, dark themes, violence, and gore. I will do the same for you!

As a general rule, I’ll likely not be comfortable with most kinks. You can ask in PMs while we plan our roleplay, but please know that the answer will likely be “no.”

In the event that you want to RP NSFW stuff, please let me know at the start that this is something you'd like to explore. However, also keep in mind that if I’m not feeling the connection, if it it doesn't make sense for our muses after we get into the RP, I won’t force it. Likewise, I’m also aware that sometimes things will gradually, naturally lead to romantic or sexual places, so it’s fine if that happens organically as we go.

Also, please keep in mind, though I don't mind discussing more explicit NSFW stuff regarding characters, I may not want to RP super explicit stuff. Again, case by case and I'd prefer to discuss it first so that we're both comfortable.

This post and all its sections are subject to change or revision. If that happens, I’ll post that I’ve updated it.

[belovedcorvid]

“For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.” ♥

❣︎ 𝓑𝓮𝓵𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓭 𝓒𝓸𝓻𝓿𝓲𝓭 :: an independent, head-canon driven, semi-selective portrayal of Donquixote Rocinante - code name Corazón - from Eiichiro Oda's One Piece. 18+, please read rules prior to reaching out. Loved to Death by Rabbit / Rory (31, he/him). Explores themes of:

defining love and family; breaking cycles of violence; sacrifice for others; how trauma lingers; defining the self outside of the expectations of others; and careful plans breaking apart.

❣︎ EST October 2023 - Remodeled July 2024

❣︎ 𝓐𝓯𝓯𝓲𝓵𝓲𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓼 ::

gumpistol / cptnslog | mingos / code01746 | sleeplesswork | aamaranthiine | onepiecc | intothewildsea | ryathenautykitsune

❣︎ | Meme Tag | Verses ( Mobile Friendly ) | Portrayal Notes | Promo | Thread Tracker |

❣︎ 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓵𝓮 𝓡𝓾𝓵𝓮𝓼 𝓤𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻 𝓒𝓾𝓽 ::

| mun |

Rabbit (or Rory) :: he/him :: 31 :: someplace in the northern US Activity Level :: Low and Random ( medical field + chronic illness )  I’ve written intermittently on Tumblr for the last 10-ish(?) years, so if we’ve met before then it’s great to see you again! If we’ve never met, then it’s nice to meet you! I like getting to know the people I write with, so hit me up if you’d like. In my spare time when I’m not doing this, I enjoy TTRPGs and building miniatures.  I’m probably sick right now.

-

| speed and posting style |

Anyone who’s played with me before knows that I’m the slowest guy. I used to worry over this a lot, but this most recent bout with illness has made me re-evaluate how I want to look at time here and stress about this less. I’m going to answer things when I can and keep a tracker so I can see everything and not drop things on accident, but I’m going to treat it less like a deadline. If you want to carry on a thing and don’t mind if I take weeks, let’s do it! If you prefer a partner that’s quicker, I’m not the guy for you.

I tend to write multi-paragraph style, with small text but otherwise minimal formatting. I use icons sometimes, but not always. If you would prefer I use normal text size / no images / etc, let me know - I can accommodate these things. 

-

| breadth of work |

One Piece is huge - I’m not fully caught up, but I am through Rocinante’s bit! I’m still very sad we only got to have him around for a little while, and may or may not make verses to explore alternatives to that.

But! If you want to chat about the manga or the anime in general, I’m all about it.

-

| fundamentals |

I’m not even sure if it’s necessary to add any more, but of course: it’s not cool to godmod, control other people’s characters, kill each other without discussing combat first, badger people for speedy replies, engage in callout culture, etc. Please be a nice human.

Not interested in interacting with people that engage in racist or homophobic / aphobic behaviour. Also not interested in looking at ships for this character that involve incest or large age gaps. I will not write Doffy and Cora as a romantic relationship, and I will not write Cora and Law or any similarly aged characters that way either.

-

| tags and content warnings |

I will always, always, always tag triggers for you, especially if you list them in your rules page. If I miss one, or if you’d like me to tag something new, shoot me a message so I can add it to my tags! Violence and other NSFW content types will always be tagged and thrown under a cut.

Triggers for me: Please tag all images of dental injuries with ‘teeth tw’ or something similar. I have just about every iteration blacklisted. Additionally, please tag all content involving a/b/o threads/art/etc and, for lack of a less loaded word, ‘x humanoid character has/gets/is ‘cursed’ with x animal traits/whatever now’ threads/etc as well. I have just about every iteration of both of these blacklisted (I think). Any general a/b/o tag will work just fine; for the latter, I suggest ‘animal traits tw’ or ‘zoomorphism tw’. If you post this that’s fine, but I might not be able to follow you. Deeply personal reasons for me as an individual and as a professional / animal advocate - For clarity: hybrid or shapeshifter characters that actively deal with their hybridity and its consequences are not the same thing. I have a problem when humans put on animal characteristics like costumes for aesthetic purposes / kink / amusement / etc.

-

| shipping |

Writer and character are both of age, so shipping is fine as long as the other character and writer are of age as well. I will not write with underage muns at all, full stop.

I don’t really foresee myself shipping this character much, but if we’ve interacted and you ship a thing, whether it be romantic or platonic, you should let me know. I usually can’t see that sort of thing.

-

| asks |

Asks are neat. I try to answer them all, but again : I’m a slow guy and Tumblr eats them sometimes. If I can’t come up with a good response for what you sent me, I’ll let you know so we can do something else instead.

If I answered an ask of yours and you’d like to respond / make it a thread, that’s awesome! I just ask that you put your reply in a new thread and @ me rather than reblogging the original ask.

-

| memes |

I have a complicated relationship with writing games. I love them in concept and love getting to send my friends things and answer questions / draw prompts / etc, but the havoc they bring to my notes can make it impossible for me to run a blog. Please don’t reblog memes from me if you don’t follow me, or if we don’t interact - makes it too easy to lose replies when notes are a mess.

[pscottm]

That is true. It’s called Agenda 47, laid out in a series of videos on Donald Trump’s website. And the only parts that don’t match up with Project 2025 are even more extreme:

Abolishing birthright citizenship, and withholding passports, Social Security numbers and other government benefits from American children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States. So much for following the Constitution!

Deploying the National Guard against US citizens. Make America Kent State again!

Outlawing gender-affirming care for anyone at any age, passing a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the US government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth. Your body belongs to the government, and don’t you forget it.

Constructing “Freedom Cities” on federal land. Whatever that’s about. “These Freedom Cities will reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American Dream.” How would that work, who’s paying for it, who knows?

Death penalty for drug dealers and human traffickers.

Leaving abortion “to the states,” which is the same as leaving it to SCOTUS, and we all know how their majority feels. Trump’s also previously said that he would sign a national 15-week abortion ban, and that he has no problem letting states monitor women’s pregnancies to make sure they are not terminated, and supports “some form of punishment” for women who have abortions and doctors who provide them. Evangelicals are working really hard to get NO ABORTIONS EVER ANYWHERE SHUT UP FETUSES ARE PEOPLE in the party platform.

Replacing academic freedom with “patriot education.”

Using the Justice Department to go after his enemies. He’s very excited for military tribunals, especially for Liz Cheney.

Deploying “many thousands” of US troops to the southern border to wage “war,” and rounding up immigrants and putting them in camps. And Stephen Miller would allegedly like to bomb migrants with drones.

Flying cars, for some reason. “Dozens of major companies in the U.S. and China are racing to develop vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles for families and individuals. Just as the United States led the automotive revolution in the last century, I want to ensure that America, not China, leads this revolution in air mobility.” Isn’t that called a helicopter?

And there’s plenty of agreement between Trump’s agenda and the Heritage Foundation’s plans, too:

Censorship laws that ban teaching “critical race theory,” and reinterpret anti-racism protections to benefit white people, the real victims of racism. Eye roll emoji.

Giving Trump complete control of the FCC, so he can ban any platform on the internet that allows people to be mean to him or won’t publish his lies.

Giving Trump control of all the regulatory agencies, gutting them, and taking away their ability to enforce anything. (SCOTUS already gifted him that one!)

Redesignating as many as 50,000 civil servants as political appointees, and firing any of them that are insufficiently loyal to Trump.

Ending the Affordable Care Act.

Giving corporations our national lands so they can drill and strip the shit out of them. Fuck renewable energy!

Cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and working towards privatizing them. Trump’s been all over the place on this, sometimes claiming he won’t touch them, other times saying stuff like “there’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting” and “at some point [cutting entitlements will be on the plate]. [...] And at the right time, we will take a look at that. You know, that’s actually the easiest of all things.” That sentiment proved VERY UNPOPULAR, and he has since publicly backed away from it.

[cerealmonster15]

FUCK IT we BALL im posting more jamiazu fic here goodbye

https://archiveofourown.org/works/39577284

[scullysflannel]

i remember seeing your post about why bcs is better than breaking bad, with this last episode, how do you think it stands as an antithesis of breaking bad?

it's become even more obvious this season that better call saul is not at all the antithesis of breaking bad, even though it is the antithesis of the kind of antihero story breaking bad exemplified. both shows are about moral agency in the wild west. they assert choice as identity (you are what you choose to do) and ask whether those choices redefine you or just reveal who you are intrinsically. they're both about men who become the architects of their own destruction and about how one person's actions can trap others.

I think better call saul is doing it in a much sadder and richer way. jimmy is acting out of deflected love, in a system that gives him fewer options to succeed without bending the rules. walt is handed an out early on from his wealthy ex-partners, but he doesn't take it because of his pride. he does what he does for entirely selfish reasons: money, power, ego, control. I've seen some pushback against walt hate on the premise that it ignores the humanity in the writing or whatever, so let me be clear: walt sucks because he's written like a human being. he's terrible to his son and only dotes on him when he wants to feel like a big provider. he ignores and lies to his pregnant wife. his students don't like him. he thinks he cares about jesse, but he's manipulating him, and he's at his most affectionate when he has the most control over him. that's not real care. I do think in the later seasons it sometimes borders on ridiculous how loathsome walt can be, and he's not the best character on breaking bad (jesse, skyler, mike, and hank are all more interesting. marie and gus are cooler). but the writers took care to root the worst things about him in personality traits that clearly predated his little meth empire. this is not a good guy we caught at a bad time. this is a small man who's masked his bitterness in socially acceptable ways for years.

in better call saul the chain reaction is more tangled. jimmy takes the opportunities that he's given to change, and then he tanks them, and his self-sabotage is both a fatal flaw and a response to legitimate structural problems in the legal system. (the rules are harder to justify when those rules are designed to maintain a status quo that makes upward mobility so hard, makes forgiveness so hard. think of jimmy's speech in "winner": one teenage shoplifting incident will follow you forever. they are never, ever letting you in. he got a whole law degree, but it was from an online university, so should it count?) he's much more shaped by other people than walt is ("people tell me how they see me"). better call saul builds on the big ideas in breaking bad but really commits to making the world around the fucked-up guy fucked up too, and it makes the tragedy so much deeper. because ultimately it's still a story about personal responsibility, just as breaking bad is. even when you have no good options, you still have to live with your choices.

being a prequel pushes better call saul to be smarter (which is what I was saying in the post you mentioned). it makes the characters more reflective. shoutout to the new yorker article that pointed out what it does to the show that the actors look older, as if the characters are trapped reliving their pasts without the power to change them. jimmy believes his fate is sealed, and as a result we get to watch him seal it. it's agonizing. that's where better call saul diverges from the breaking bad antihero formula: there's no (lasting) thrill in watching him make bad choices because we know what they'll do to him in the long run. but rebuking the walter white problem doesn't make better call saul breaking bad's opposite; it just makes it a more fulfilling version of the same story.