#but right now the site isn't letting me upload so this will have to do!

[mollyjames]

One problem I've been slowly contending with as an artist who is attempting to make her living online has been this idea of Friction. In this case, Friction just means anything that gets in the way of a person reading my work or giving me money.

Strangely, these two things are about equally difficult. There are plenty of people who would very much like to give me money, just as there are plenty of people who haven't gotten around to reading my comics but would like to. And the only reason they haven't is because of Friction.

So let's quickly talk about points of friction. Let's say I upload a full comic book for free to itch.io, for anyone to download to any device, and then they can download it at their convenience. Sounds easy, right? Well, no. First, the way they heard about that book was most likely through my tumblr account, which means they first have to click on a link to leave tumblr and go to a different site. That's already a major point of Friction. If someone is browsing through tumblr on the bus on their way to work, or as a means to unwind from a stressful day, they are very unlikely to want to leave tumblr and commit an unknown amount of time to a separate activity. Then that person has to decide they are willing to download the files as presented on itch. If they have an account they have to login. (Although in many cases they will already be logged in.) Finally they will have the pdf, but then they have to open the pdf at which point they will see the document is 186 pages long at which point they might well decide actually this is too much trouble right now and do something else.

And this comes around to why tumblr is actually a pretty good platform for comic artists. If I upload a couple of pages in chunks at a time, people will read them as they scroll by. That's a point of Friction already mitigated. If they liked it, or their curiosity is piqued, there might be enough interest for them to click the link that takes them directly to the beginning of the comic (also on tumblr), and they can then read it from there. Or else they might make a mental note of it for later, and the next time they see a comic chunk might be the time they have a moment to see what my comic is about. All in all pretty painless.

Unfortunately, with money that's less the case. If you think about the first example, it's not hard to see why. First I have to get someone to click on my patreon link. Then they have to make an account. Then they have to add their payment information. All of these are points of Friction that exist. What's worse is the existence of Anticipated Friction, which essentially frontloads all of that work onto the first point. This makes it very very difficult to get someone to click on any external links in the first place.

This isn't like... a call to action or to shame tumblr users for not reblogging posts by the way. That's not something I can control. It's just an interesting problem to try and solve.

[dapg-otmebytheballs]

All or Nothing and lowave records

Strap in because this is gonna be a long one. This post will try to shed some light on how the whole lowave records thing works, how you can use this music, how it is being distributed, and what all a contract with lowave would include. All this and more below the cut!

Let us start with the basics: What is lowave records?

Quite succinctly summed up on their website as follows:

They make and distribute royalty-free music for content creators - specifically video-format content creators like Youtubers and streamers - they share some streaming revenue (30%, we'll get into that) with the creators who are labelled 'co-artists' and get promotion of their music through the content creators.

So, that brings us to the next big question: What is royalty-free music?

This is music that is free to use. Yes, by anyone, by Dan and Phil, by other creators, by you and me, any of us. This is by no means a new thing of course, anyone who has created content online would have come across other such services. just as an example, bensound.com hosts a large library of royalty-free music which you can use in any video by simply crediting the site in your description. Lowave works in a similar fashion. The music is not copyrighted. However, the rights to the music are held by lowave records and there are limitations on its use, which we will get into ahead.

How is the money working (preliminary edition)?

I will add details to this later when I discuss the contract, but let's see the info we get straight away from the FAQs: You do not have to pay them anything to make music for you

The money is coming in from the streaming platforms, depends completely on amount of streams, and is shared between lowave and the creators

Also from the FAQs: how can this music be used?

Anyone can freely use any of the music from lowave records, which means that yes, you can use any music from All or Nothing for your purposes with credit, it will not be taken down

Is this the only music we will hear on dapg now? Will there be more albums?

Not necessarily! This isn't an exclusive deal, DnP can use any music they want on the channel. As for new albums, seems like it depends on how this one does (and it seems to be doing quite well!) which will unlock future avenues for more collabs with lowave

Okay BASICS DONE if you're still reading you're probably here for the real meat so let us get into it

How is the money working (director's cut)?

Let us start with the terms on the partner agreement:

Content Creators get 30% of the 'remaining income'. This basically means any costs that streaming platforms are deducting, any processing fees, taxes etc will be deducted before the 30% share is calculated. The second point there basically means that the deductions here do not include business expenses of the label itself, ie when the label calculates its own profit production costs and various other expenses are deducted from the income, but these costs will not affect the revenue received by the content creators (You are probably already thinking 'how is this company earning enough to keep going?' and I will touch on that later as well)

Payment installments are simple enough but here we see a third party enter the chat: DistroKid. Who is DistroKid and why are payments going through them, Hazel? I hear you ask. Well I'll tell you dear readers:

It is basically a service that takes a yearly fee for putting your music on streaming platforms efficiently and then pockets 0% of the royalties. The royalties go from the streaming services (eg Spotify) to DistroKid who then send it to the rights-holders (in this case, lowave records). lowave records is using this service for a yearly fee to upload all their music through.

But wait! If DistroKid is working with lowave, and lowave owns all the rights, why is DistroKid making direct payments to the content creators?

Well, over the years they have offered a bunch of services:

I am guessing lowave is making use of the teams feature to send royalties owed to content creators ("collaborators") directly from Diskworld, which makes sense, the less people money goes through the less chances of mishandling.

People have of course been talking about what percentage Spotify even pays for many many years. The short answer: we don't know for sure because it is confidential, Spotify won't tell and artists aren't allowed to. The longer answer: people have estimated from a bunch of publically available data that the share seems to be 70-30 (rights-holders- spotify).

However spotify is not paying per stream anymore so that makes these figures harder to pin down. they are using a 'streamshare' system which is much more convoluted:

That was all about the money, now let's talk Licensing

Creators can use this music in any capacity, and do not have to share any of the revenue from their own content with lowave. They have put a stipulation that it may not be used in a way that is "illegal, immoral, discriminatory or derogatory to [lowave]" but what constitutes 'immoral' and 'discriminatory' is not really defined.

The other limitation applies to the contracted Content Creators only as far as I can tell: they are not allowed to remix, sample, or edit these songs without prior permission. This probably only applies to altering the songs and playing under the same name, so fan remixes should not run into issues here, as long as they are not monetised. (thanks kate @goldenpinof for making me think about this part a bit more, I think it should be safe, but even royalty free music cannot be transformed without permission at least in a commercial capacity)

They will also make more music free of cost if the streaming targets they set are being met by the albums produced. The process:

Other services they provide will be handling the creator's account which they set up (DanAndPhilBeats in this case) on streaming platforms and making changes as required, so the Cheeky Banter -> Project X thing was probably done from their end, possibly an older change that they forgot to update?

Also below are promotional obligations:

The promotion wasn't a one-time thing, it is expected to be ongoing, so we will probably be hearing about this in future videos as well. However, later in the partner agreement it is added that this has to be done as often as possible in a way that is "natural and appealing to their audience" which again, is pretty vague wording

Also the licensing goes both ways, so lowave can also use segments of the content DnP make that has the music in the background to promote their music:

Additional stuff from the contract:

lowave takes the guarantee of creating original works that it has the rights to and which do not infringe on copyrights, and the creators likewise take the guarantee not use the songs in content which infringes copyright. If there are any disputes regarding such infringement in the future the record and the creators have to back each other up (including sharing legal fees)

I mentioned before some parts of the agreement being written in vague language. There is also a clause that says if any provision ends up being illegal/not possible to enforce by a court (eg if a court were to it's impossible to say whether content featuring the songs was 'immoral') then only that provision will be removed, the rest of the contract stands.

The waiver part basically means that if any of the parties decide to not sue or forgo a complaint about breach of contract, that does not mean that those provisions are now unavailable, they can still sue later on or for some other breach if they wish.

That's the contracts done. Some of the framing there makes it seem to me like it's a pretty small company. The revenue they hope to generate does not seem to be very sustainable, especially since the revenue is being shared with content creators but the cost is not and they are additionally paying for other services like DistroKid.

So I looked more into this record label: they started business in 2022. If you go to their socials though, twitter and instagram they have followers in double digits and post very sparsely. Their tiktok seems to have nothing on it at all (thanks @lesbiandanhowell for the screenshot) and you may have noticed, Dan did not tag the lowave account at all when he announced the album on twitter

The agreement never mentions creators promoting lowave's social channels or tagging them either (and it is quite odd, I have worked with a bunch of organisations in their infancy and this is, now more than ever, a common requirement from collaborators). lowave records does not seem to be actively working towards promoting themselves on social media or building an online presence, even though they have been operational two years producing music throughout.

There are three people involved with the company on public record:

Benjamin Johnson listed as 'Head of Production' is probably the 'Ben' Dan has been talking about who made the songs. Seems like their scale of operations is not very big and possibly not a lot of producers in the records at all (despite the spotify page saying they have 'producers' plural, but that doesn't have to mean a lot many lol). Anyway, that would solve the mystery of 'how are they playing their employees?' if there aren't many employees to begin with (not even an intern to manage their social media it seems).

Look at the last person in the screenshots though: Robin. I looked at what other companies Robin is associated with and several of them - yeah several different operations that he's involved in - have the same correspondence address of '60 Thorpe Road...', so probably operating out of a ghost office (just to have a registered address and receive mail at etc). And one of these businesses that Robin is associated with is RWD, the business that made lowave records' website for them:

The no-cost production of royalty-free music, little attention to social media presence, vaguely written contract, seemingly small scale of operations with technical assistance like website design coming from an affiliated organisation makes me think that lowave records might be a side project. A labour of love, possibly, hoping to sustain itself enough to keep putting out royalty-free music in a time of extreme crackdown on copyrighted music use.

It makes sense to use content creators for promotion, gets you way more streaming than making your own music and putting it out. And the incentive of unique but guaranteed royalty free music at no cost is great for content creators of all sizes. It is far from sustainable on its own though, especially with streaming revenue being basically peanuts, and I do not think there's much interest in gaining a following or putting in that effort either, so it's probably a very small business by a few people. How long it manages to sustain itself as a project I am not sure, but it certainly isn't looking like something particularly geared towards profit and growth in its current state.

We are at an end! If you read this far, leave me like an A+ or a star for my essay so I can have academic validation from this please. Of course I probably have not covered everything possible in connection to this so if anyone has more info feel free to add on! And if this was all very long and there's something particular you wanted to know you can drop an ask into the inbox about it!

Thank you for coming with me on this journey! Back to the important things, which was your favourite song from the album? I think mine is Arcade Admission

[babacontainsmultitudes]

So you wanna sell your art on Redbubble but you don't know how?

(Or, I meant to write this months ago but better late than never lol)

OKAY okay. I have a bunch of friends as well as mutuals who have lovely lovely art and have considered selling it online (specifically on Redbubble lol that's what's being covered today anyways) but don't really have any clue how RB works, if it's right for them, or what to expect. SO I'M HERE TO GUIDE Y'ALL THROUGH ALL THE BASICS and hopefully, if I've done my job right, this tutorial will help you set up your RB shop and start selling your art online (or help you decide that RB isn't for you lol).

Table of Contents:

What the heck is RedBubble and should I use it?

How to make your account and set up payment

How to add a new work

Pricing? Markup?

Extra: Checking sales and payment history

Extra: Taxes and copyright, in case that scares you.

Extra: The Partner Program (or how to make "officially licensed" fanart)

What the heck is RedBubble and should I use it?

>> RedBubble is a site that allows you to upload your artwork and sell it on quite a variety of different products.

>> The main benefit of using RedBubble, aside from reach and visibility, is that RB handles *everything* when it comes to the manufacturing and shipment of your product. You are literally not responsible for anything other than making the art, uploading it, and deciding how you want it to look on different products. If there is any kind of problem with material quality or delivery (though in my experience they're pretty good with both of those things), it's not your responsibility to correct!

>> RedBubble does not charge you to sell on their site, but they do set a base price for all products to cover manufacturing and to ensure that they make some level of profit for each sale. We'll look into the specifics of this in a later section when discussing pricing and markup, but it would be considered pretty standard, for example, for an item to cost $20 and you to make $4-$5 upon making a sale.

>> At the end of the day, whether or not RB is right for you largely depends on whether or not you feel their pricing and payment is fair, and whether their available products correspond to what you wish to sell.

Okay, so how do I get started?

Well first you're gonna need an account!

>> Head over to the RedBubble main page and click "Sign Up"

>> Select "Artist Signup"

>> Fill in your email, shop name (this is your username also), and password

>> Click "Sign Up"

>> You will be brought to this dashboard page:

>> We will discuss creating products in the next section. Everything under "Set Up Shop" is optional and I'll let you explore that on your own so we can focus on the essentials. That just leaves... Getting paid!

>> First, check the email you used to confirm your email address. If you didn't receive an email to confirm your email address, don't worry, we can resend the form- keep going with the steps for now.

>> Then, under "Get Paid", click "Add your name & address". Note that all of the options in the "Get Paid" section actually lead to the same form, but selecting this option starts us near the top.

>> Fill out all the fields on this page. If you didn't receive the email to confirm your email address, click on this button:

Then check your email again.

>> Note when choosing your payment method: if you are from Canada, like me, then paypal is your only option. Same for parts of Europe that aren't in the UK. Otherwise, you also have bank transfer options:

>> Once you've finished filling in everything on this page, click "Save Changes" at the bottom and... That's it! Now you can get paid :)

**Note: I believe RB still requires you to make a minimum amount of money before they do a transfer (for me in Canada I believe it's $20 CAD?), so do keep that in mind!

>> Payments are made to your account monthly, generally on the same day every month (assuming you've made profits!).

How to add a new work

So you've made your account, fantastic. Now you're ready to actually add your works to RB and make them available for purchase to the wider public! To demonstrate the process, we're gonna use our pal Nicky here (who was a gift from my lovely friend @llumimoon) and pretend that we want to upload him:

Ain't he a doll? Anyways, let's begin.

>> Hover your mouse over your pfp in the top right corner to make this drop down menu appear:

>> Click on "Add New Work"

**On a new account with nothing uploaded, this will look a bit different. instead choose "Sell Your Art" from this dropdown menu, then "Add New Work" from the top right corner of the same dashboard page from earlier.

>> Click on "Upload New Work" (and note the file type and resolution requirements at the bottom. I always stick with PNGs, but in theory JPEG or GIF works as well.)

>> Select the file of the image you want to upload. In our case, that's Nicky.

>> Now write a title for your work, tags, and a description if you want. The tagging system is how people will actually find your work, it works a lot like Tumblr's! Try to choose things that are relevant to whatever your piece is. If you're uploading fandom-related art and aren't sure what tags are used for your fandom on RB, try looking some up and seeing what generates the most relevant results!

>> You may have noticed the "background color" section right below Nicky. This sets the default background color for your piece on different products. We're gonna keep this as the default white here, and I'll show you how to adjust this for individual products very soon.

>> Scroll down. This is where we decide what products we want this design to be available on and how we want Nicky to look on each thing we've enabled.

For example, if I were actually selling Nicky here (if that wasn't clear obviously I'm not actually selling my friend's art lol don't do that ofc) I would definitely want people to be able to buy him as a little sticker :]

>> In this case, "Stickers & Magnets" have been enabled by default. If you wanted to disable them, you would simply click that little "Enabled" button. Similarly, if we want to enable a product type that is disabled, just click that same button (which will be grey rather than green and say "disabled").

>> If a product is disabled and you are being prevented from enabling it, that's because the dimensions of your image are too small for the product in question! You'll wanna resize your image (preferably in a manner that retains its resolution of course) and come back.

>> Hm. Let's use the hats here as an example of how we might make edits to the layout of a specific product.

He's kind of cut off, as you can see actually that's pretty in-character, and I think I want this hat to be pink rather than this default beige-looking color.

>> Click on "Edit"

So, the first thing I'm gonna do here is use that "Scale Image" slider to scale him down a bit. I'm also gonna click the image and drag him up a bit to re-center him.

Next, I'm gonna pick from one of the default colors and choose the pink one.

>> Notice the two arrows beside the words "Bucket Hat"? This lets me go through the different types of hats available and change the background/base color for each of those, like the dad hat:

>> Before we apply our changes, click that little gear icon right under the pencil icon

>> This lets us adjust the markup price for each individual hat. It is 20% by default. Changing the markup percentage affects how much you will make off of a sale, as well as how much your product will cost. More on that in the next section!

>> Click "Apply Changes"

The "dad hat" was the last hat I had selected (when setting its color), so the display has changed to show that one in the preview. Here's our bucket hat from before:

Nice!

>> The specifics of how you can adjust your design will vary depending on the product. With pillows & totes, for example, the editing menu looks like this:

Using the "Choose pattern" option, I can make the Nicky image repeat as a pattern like so:

(note that I also scaled the image down a bit here too).

>> One last thing. See that "Replace Image" button near the top?

You can use this when you want to use a different version of your image altogether for a specific product.

>> That's the gist! Play around with the settings for each item as you see fit. You can always edit them again later.

>> Scroll down. Select up to 2 relevant media types.

I'm pretty sure this affects search results when users choose specific filters, but tbh otherwise I don't think it's all too important.

>> Let's look at what remains.

>> I have the "Who can view this work?" section set to "Only You"- THIS IS SO I CAN FINISH THE STEPS HERE AND SAVE THE WORK WITHOUT ACTUALLY MAKING IT AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC. In practice, you'd only use this option if you wanted to buy your own work on something but didn't want other people to be able to see or buy it. Otherwise, you're always gonna choose "Anybody (public)".

>> Collections can be created to organize the pieces in your shop (for example, by fandom), but we won't cover the specifics of how to do that here.

>> Set whether or not your work contains "mature content".

>> If you want, you can set which product shows up in the preview for your work when people view your shop. If you think your piece looks especially nice on a mug, for example, you can make sure that's what people see first.

>> Finally, agree to RedBubble's User Agreement (read that little blurble, since that's basically all you generally need to care about when it comes to what you can and can't sell on RB, but more on that later).

>> Click "Save Work" and voila! Your piece is now available in your shop, and can be found in the search results of whatever tags you left on it (this may take a few minutes to take effect).

>> If you want to check out your design in your shop, navigate to your pfp and click "View shop"

>> Don't fret if the design doesn't appear in your shop right away! Again, this can take several minutes.

>> To edit your design again (and to view/purchase privately uploaded designs like Nicky here), click the "Manage Portfolio" option instead:

>> Here is Nicky as he appears in my portfolio (again, your portfolio and your shop are different things- Nicky will not appear in my shop at all because he is set to "private")

>> You can click that little gear icon to do a variety of things, like return to the editing menu from earlier. The three icons below Nicky refer to the amount of comments, sales, and likes your design has received in total.

>> Click on your design either from your shop page or your portfolio page. Wow! Your cool art is now available on all the products you enabled. Be sure to look through them and make sure that everything is to your liking!

Pricing? Markup? What's that about?

Well good tumblr user, RB handles everything regarding the production (and shipping) of your product, which means that they set a base (minimum) price for every kind of product to account for materials and production, and of course make some amount of profit themselves. The *markup* is a percentage that you the artist set (see the previous section on how to do so), and will determine how much you actually make off of a sale. Note that increasing the markup price means that your product will increase in price as well!

>> An Example (using hypothetical but more or less realistic numbers):

Let's say that the base price (0% markup, i.e. no profit for you) of a phone case on RB is $15. You set the markup to 30%. 30% of 15 is 4.5, so the public price is increased to $19.5, and if anyone purchases this phone case with your design on it, you will make $4.5.

And that's really the gist! Ultimately the markup price is up to you and what you feel is reasonable, though RB sets it to 20% by default.

Extra: Checking sales and payment history

Eheh, unfortunately I've reached the image limit for this post but:

To check your sales:

>> Click on your pfp

>> Click "Account Settings"

>> Under "Artist Tools" (on the left side), click "Sales History"

To check your payment history:

>> From the same "Artist Tools" menu (see above), click "Payment History"

Extra: Taxes and copyright, in case that scares you.

>> Do I need to report the income I make on RB when I do my taxes?

Yup! But dw, it isn't anything special. I mean, I'm not here to do your taxes for you, but money you make on Redbubble counts as "Self-Employment Income", same as if you sold your art just about anywhere else really!

>> So what am I actually allowed to sell on Redbubble? Is fanart okay?

Generally speaking... Yes! Obviously work should be your own, and it should not contain any company logos or names that you don't have the right to, nor photos of actual people unless you have their explicit permission.

>> Hm, okay, but what if I *do* accidentally sell something that isn't allowed?

In most cases, it'll just get taken down 👍. And no, you won't be asked to pay back any profits you made off the work in the meantime.

**A more extreme case: Story time. So, years ago a friend of mine uploaded some official Rick and Morty art that he forgot to set to "private". Overnight he made... Let's just say he made quite a bit of money. RB responded by taking down the work and banning his IP address, effectively preventing him from ever selling on the site again. But they still let him keep the money he made, and he didn't get into any actual trouble outside of that. What I'm saying is, even if you really fuck up, it'll be alright. And again, this was a pretty extreme scenario.

***Note: if your work falls under one of the brands in Redbubble's "Partner Program" (see the next section), it will be temporarily removed from the search results and your shop while it undergoes review. So don't panic if you see your fanart suddenly disappear from your shop!

Extra: The Partner Program (or how to make "officially licensed" fanart)

Very briefly, Redbubble has their partner program, which I won't explain in full detail here, but basically it means that if you upload a work and tag it as one of these brands, it will be inspected for review and, upon passing that brand's guidelines, will be considered "officially licensed" merch for that brand. Just felt worth mentioning!

So that's really the gist folks! There's certainly much more to play around with when it comes to RB, but that's all you need to know to get started! Hopefully this was useful? Hopefully lol. In any case, good luck out there!

[alithographica]

Okay I've been offline for a few hours since the original deviantArt DreamUp kaboom happened so I'm trying to piece together the myriad of things that happened in the meantime. I'm now seeing people call everyone who got mad about the situation "overreacting" and "defaulting to outrage" and I don't think that's quite right. I think perhaps a few people misunderstood some wording or didn't get the full picture, but that the overall anger was entirely well-placed.

I might not have everything 100% correct here because I was offline for a bit of the action. If that's the case, let me know—I'd like to get the full picture because I'm still deciding what to do about my dA accounts too.

Disclaimer: This is not a discussion of whether AI art is art or is good or worthwhile. This is just about the dA situation.

(Long post under the cut)

The events as they happened until this afternoon:

AI generators have long been scraping dA, among other art sites, for images. Artists widely regard this as shitty. dA had no say in this either.

dA announced that an opt-out is now available (though everyone is opted-in by default, and opting out is a tedious manual process)

dA also announces their own ethical-er AI that credits artists

From that point I went offline for a few hours. I return to

News that the dA Twitter team was awful to some artists who were voicing concerns about this

People insisting it was an overreaction and dA isn't being scummy (the Twitter team sure, but not dA's site team) and

As a result of pushback, dA has now made all work default opted-out.

From where I'm sitting now catching up on the developments...I don't think we really misunderstood dA's original intentions? This sucks? I think some people are being too quick to defend dA here and point fingers at us for being reactionary.

Yes, our images were being used by 3rd party sites without our consent prior to this. Yes, it's nice that we can now opt-out, and I appreciate dA's efforts here. Genuinely, I do. I also appreciate the labeling of AI art and allowing users to choose whether they see AI art or not.

However, it blows that this was originally launched as default opt-in. Several people said "easier opt-out is coming, you're all being dramatic" but I think this was disproven by just how quickly that opt-out came. If they had always intended to make it default opt-out then they should've waited a few more hours or days for that to be done before launching this project/announcement.

I think the default opt-out only came because everyone spoke up and said "hey, wait—we knew AI engines were scraping us without your consent, dA, but now you've just said they DO have consent unless we say otherwise."

To repeat: This blows, and people were right to be angry! Even setting aside how long it would take some people to mark every one of their works as opt-out, even setting aside a single mass opt-out button, having it be default opted-in means that inactive and deceased artists are fair game, just because they didn't say no to a technology that popped up years after they uploaded their work.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate when someone says "mea culpa, we listened and corrected ourselves". We should adjust to new information! But I think it reveals their intent, which is still the core problem here. Prior to the backpedaling, why were things launched like this?

My guess: If I take dA at its word that deviations were not directly used to train DreamUp, then we have to look at how DreamUp WAS trained. dA confirmed it was trained off of Stable Diffusion which was trained in the usual way (that is to say, unethically by dA's own standards!) and dA was just telling us "hey we've been doing this anyway and now we're letting you know kthxbai".

dA wanted things default opt-in because—again, I'm guessing but it tracks—if they made things default opt-out, the field for future AI training (including updates to Stable Diffusion and therefore DreamUp) would thin, and they would come under fire for using so much provably-opted-out material in their training already (which has happened anyway with the new default). They were ensuring the field would continue to be seeded rather than making a very safe guess about how this would go over.

(Transcript in alt text)

I think it's fair to call that hypocrisy.

I appreciate that dA is trying to shift culture towards an ethical AI model that credits artists...though I believe only certain things will be credited, like if you were explicitly named in a prompt, so...ethical-lite, really. Despite that wrinkle, yes, I think other AIs should do this.

However this ignores the issue that I suspect many, many deviantArt users do not want their art being used in AI at all, even if credited. deviantArt saying "we're protecting you from outside AIs!" does not fix that the call was coming from inside the house this time.

THAT is what people are mad about.

Speaking of, how DID they think this would go over? dA dipping its toes into the AI scene with their own AI, a famously controversial topic amongst non-AI artists? Can't ignore that DreamUp is pay to play too—dA is making money off of DreamUp, just like the other AI engines.

If we shake dA's hand for speaking up for us, we also have to recognize that their other hand is going behind our back and taking a piece of the pie. If you can't beat 'em, monetize 'em I guess.

Also, you may see another opt-out form floating around: You can apply to opt out of having your specific name(s) allowed in DreamUp prompts, though it's heavily implied that they'll only be removing big name artists...Which I suspect is because those are the artists who are already in the unethical training set. Basically, "hey you might appear in this—let us know if you don't want that! But we're not going to tell you who's in there and who's not so just let us know if it might be you."

In my eyes this is (1) admission that yes, dA artists ARE in that set because of how it was originally sourced and (2) allows them a little wiggle room with that nasty default opt-out, because these artists were violated prior to the opt-out and are, in fact, what a substantial portion of the AI model is based on so any AI engine (including an ethical one!) would be reluctant to remove them.

Am I misunderstanding anything here? Because I'm seeing one clear fool at fault who was only cowed by the backlash.

As a final note, there's still one sticking point that is likely outside of dA's control: I suspect the new "noai" command, while a clear mark of non-consent, does not actually prevent 3rd party AIs from continuing to scrape deviations. It now violates dA's ToS to use a noai image, but does that have any teeth? Will dA go to bat for us if other AIs don't respect noai? (I don't think we have the answers to this right now, but it's something to keep an eye on.)

Anyway, I'll stop talking for now. Really feeling like an old timey blog here on tumblr dot com.

[bwobgames]

Previous First

The man makes a phone call

"Vivi! Turn on your location. I am coming over!"

"Wh- dont say it like that! No, we didn't do anything, just chatted"

"I wouldn't say disappointed. I mean, it's too early"

"That is an old nickname, and it does not reflect the man I am today"

"Lovingly: shut up, I am going there with him, so be nice"

"Yes, yes, bye!"

"... nickname?"

"Due to my poor decisions in previous years of my life that I do not plan on repeating, I was known as 'Goatman' for being 'Hornier than someone with horns'

I am now regretting giving her this information"

Oliver tries very hard not to laugh

"Ok, I know where she is. Let's go"

They get to a corridor

"Well well well, if it isn't Ángel and a little buddy, what bussiness could you two have with a lady like me?"

"So his name is Ángel"

"Job bussiness sadly"

"Man, and here I thought we would have a new person for our dnd campaign"

"That could be arranged"

"Before we start being boring, have any of you seen a photobook anywhere?"

"I wanted to take pictures of the storm, but without a photobook, they will get all crumpled in my pockets! I have been obligated to use my phone's camera like a measly instagram influencer, Do you see what that does to a vibrant soul like me? The pain? The shame??"

"I'm sorry, I'm sure we'll find it eventually"

"A lost photobook, that's another mystery.

Logically, I know it's probably just a misplaced item, but

Something feels bad about it

Dangerous

What if it was stolen?

By someone with bad intentions?

What if something bad happened?

What if something bad will happen?

What if it's happening right now?

Is there someone behind me?"

"No. Of course there isn't. I must be on edge from what Ángel told me. Ugh, this is not the time for new phobias to be created"

"Time to get into business"

"Excuse me, We were actually here to ask you about Eugene Coli's speedrunning incident. Do you happen to know about it? Why would he do that?"

"Yeaaahhhh no, I only know what happened afterward, I mean, I wanted to know! But the guy didn't want to give any interviews!

And then the guy went to jail for like, a week, only to disappear from public eye until this party, so he's probably here somewhere. If i find out, I'll tell you!"

"But you are then one who found out first, can you tell us about that?"

"It was an anonymous link sent to the place i work at. It led to a speedrunning website with the mans run in a video"

"Did you watch the video?"

"Yeah! It was taken off the site days later, but i managed to download it! It was like a tour to the man's factory. You could see him talking to whoever was recording. Although the sound was replaced with some techno music for some reason.

The video even had accidents! Like, blood and burns! I have no clue how the moderators accepted it, I'm blaming money"

"It was listed as a satisfactory gameplay ironically enough."

"Did you know that the guy used to be a speedrunner? He used the same account to upload this one"

"I don't have any knowledge on psychology, but maybe this guy is just obsessed with speedrunning"

"Well, this does tell us some things. Thank you for your help"

"Also, we must warn you, we think this event might be some kind of disguise for crimes that could hurt us"

"That blows"

"You don't seem very worried"

"I've reported dangerous situations live. This isn't my first rodeo, mister"

"Yeah, but this is more serious. You might be killed here"

"Well, if it's my time, then it's my time"

"Don't say that. You're sending yourself to an early grave if you're this careless all the time"

"Me? Aren't you the guy who can't be two days without injecting cancer gas directly into their lungs?"

"That's not the same"

"How is it not the same? Is that and your crazy stunts of dubious legality not also sending you to an early grave?"

"I quit that! And I can quit smoking anytime! I just don't have the need to"

"Right, right, of course, I'm just being careless unlike you, mature and responsible man"

"Is, is this a fight? A friendly fight? Should I intervene, or is it more like a sibling fight where this is a normal thing that happens. Can we leave?"

"Listen, I get it, I was stupid and unsafe, and I probably should've died thrice by now, but I don't want that life anymore!"

"I want to be safe now. I dont want any of us to be in danger"

"I don't want us to die"

"... It's going to happen eventually, you know this"

"I don't want it"

"Yeah, alright, I'm getting involved"

"...It is normal to fear death. It's unknown and out of our control, but only with death, we have life, yeah?

So let's not waste it by bickering, and let's keep going"

"I've never been good at pep talks, but if we really are in danger, then there's no time for existentialism"

"... Right, keep your location on Vivi"

"Maybe I will. Maybe I won't"

"... I'm sorry for calling you careless"

"...Ugh, Fine, I'll keep it on, stop looking at me with that mopey wet cat face and leave already"

"Well, we didn't find motive, but we have some information.

Do you know anyone else who might have something on the speedrunning stunt?"

"... Someone comes to mind"

"Alright, we'll go now, bye Vivi!"

"Yeah, yeah, run along, bunny boy"

"Did she just ...assign me a fursona???"

"She does that"

[northadawn]

NorthaDawn's Feb 2024 Update

Hello everyone, NorthaDawn here, and it's February here, I hope that your 2024 has been going great so far! Mine has been decent so far, and I wanted to write this important journal to give you some in-depth news into the latest happenings that I've been doing that I feel all of you deserve to know about!

1) PERSONAL HAPPENINGS

I'll get the elephant in the room out of the way first; on the health side of things, I've been doing much better and physically, this is the healthiest I've been in ages. Mentally? Let's just say that I've had to cut off someone really toxic from the community; they've caused a lot of trouble for me and my dear friends for months. I don't want to dive further into what happened to keep my friends safe, but I do want to say this: be there for your friends and stand up for them when they need you around.

Apart from that, I have been changing up things here and there and handling stuff in my university and in my family, but I do have some things cooking up for you guys that I'll share with you here later! But first, I want to go over my announcement from a handful of days back to clarify a few things.

2) THAT SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

You've probably already read my post where I announced my decision to continue making Titanic content in the future instead of retiring, but I think I should also explain why I contemplated retiring (again). To be honest with you, ever since my heart attack ages ago, things have gone poorly for me here; a partnership that wasn't meant to be, my ever-increasing workload in university, losing momentum and motivation for Titanic art in general, and feeling like a stranger here again has been a few reasons as to why I decided to quit once 2023 turns into 2024. However, a new partnership with smolnoodlekitty that soon turned into "Team Heartslash" (which includes people such as Matlock26th, caitlin._.art, Lacoeurdelamer, NWArtOfficial), getting more lovely people to voice act my characters, and the support from the newest batch of talented artists in the community made me rethink my decision to step away from doing Titanic art. That's why I decided to stay on! Unironically, I wouldn't still be here today without your support, so thank you all for continuing to support me even though I barely upload at all these days. I'm trying to work on that, I promise.

Speaking of characters...

3) MY FIRST OC: MASAKO HONDA

I finally made an actual original character that isn't a gijinka of some sort! I got the confidence to finally make a character that isn't limited to being a gijinka, and I'm happy with what I have. You've probably already seen her if you checked out my Twitter, but here she is: Masako Honda!

Masako Honda is a hyperactive, ADHD-ridden Japanese-Filipino girl who moved to the Philippines at the age of 10. Despite being a self-proclaimed nerd who is very geeky and hyperactive to the point where she can't stay still for 5 minutes, she is a very attractive girl who is way out of most guys' league. However, she doesn't have a boyfriend since birth. She took up the Game Development course in her university because of her self-taught ability in Unity and in C#. Just don't call her a Java developer.

That's a brief introduction of her, she'll soon have her place in my gallery, and I hope you'll be excited for that day to come as much as I am! The early reception I got from both my Discord server and my classmates has been insane and I couldn't be more thankful for the response I got for her!

4) SOCIAL MEDIAS (DISCORD SERVER + DA GROUP)

I've been going around and trying to update my social media pages and stuff, and I understand that there's a lot of links to keep up with, so I compiled them all in one page so you can quickly go to my profiles in certain sites! You can check them out right now through my Linktree here: https://linktr.ee/NorthaDawn

Speaking of updates, I've also been doing a little rebrand, which is why I've transitioned away from my old theme to the one I've had right now, I hope you like the new look!

I've also decided to take on a new tagline that I feel would represent not only me, but also all of you guys as a whole well. It's a simple line, yet it's a very motivational one, at least for me, and I hope it'll be motivational for you too. The tagline? "THERE IS STILL A VOYAGE TO EMBARK ON."

As a final reminder, I do have a Discord server up that also serves as a server for smolnoodlekitty and caitlin._.art! You can join through this link here: https://discord.gg/gsxGMPMPNb

5) VOICE ACTRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

Of course, I'd save the best for last. I'll keep it short and sweet...

RMS Olympic (Olyvia McLoughlin) - caitlin._.art

You probably know her as my Titanic's voice for a bit now, but she'll now be primarily voicing the Old Reliable now! She also did the absolutely gorgeous art for this announcement! As for who'll take her spot as Titanic?

RMS Titanic (Emily McLoughlin) - Lacoeurdelamer

She's the nice girl who'll play the Queen of the Ocean! If you've been around my Discord server, you know her as Maxine, and the amount of similarities she has to my Titanic is quite insane, which is why she's the perfect fit!

Masako Honda - moonglower.art + smolnoodlekitty

A 2-for-1! Weren't expecting that, were you? Either way, they're sharing duties to be the voice of the hyperactive college girl!

I hope you'll be looking forward to hearing them bring my characters to life!

FINAL REMARKS

Thanks for your continued support, and I hope that this has been a nice update so you're up to speed with what's going on in my end of things. Please do leave a comment, I'd like to know what you think! Also, go support every artist mentioned in this journal, they deserve it too! Have a wonderful day!

-Northa

THERE IS STILL A VOYAGE TO EMBARK ON

[omentranslates]

Villain - chapter 5 (first half) english fan translation

Howdy hi howdy hey look what I did. I swear I was checking on it properly this time I just didn't wanna get my whole laptop out at 4 am. Also to be clear, my title says it's part 1 bc the chapter itself is labeled as chapter "5 first half" on the site, I didn't split it into any parts so don't worry about looking out for that this is all that was uploaded last night.

Translation is text only as usual and if you'd like to see the pretty pictures the manga is still free to read here. The cover page for this chapter is "Even to those I don't even know, I'm already a...."

I didn't really know how to label the alternate self-monologue Azuru so I just called him Nega Azuru.

Anywho thanks for reading

Renri: Get your hands off me. You make me sick.

Azuru: ...wait, Ren-...

*SLAM*

Azuru: ....never seen that side of Renri before...

Azuru: Oh...I should clean this up.

Flashback Renri: Let's share it!

Nega Azuru: Thank goodness it turned out like this. It's a sad state of affairs, but you came here in the first place to say your goodbyes, didn't you? Not to mention that, even if this didn't happen, you would've hurt him eventually.

Azuru: But....I thought that by understanding him better than all the others, I at least could keep him close.

Nega Azuru: No shot.

Nega Azuru: You've got no idea about how others are hurting, so you can't expect them to return that favor. You should already know this.

Nega Azuru: You can't even manage it with your family, much less some other person.

Flashback Renri: BE A MAN OR BE A WOMAN, I'M ME. JUST ME.

Nega Azuru: There's no way you could hope to get it and yet you still want to keep him close...I don't know what to do with you

-- the what if sequence starts here --

Imaginary Azuru: WHAT'S SO WRONG WITH THAT!? THIS ISN'T PITY, I WASN'T TRYING TO DECIDE FOR YOU! I JUST WANTED TO PROTECT YOU, THAT'S IT. FROM THE PREJUDICE THAT'S BASCIALLY VIOLENCE. SO YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO LIVE IN A WORLD LIKE MINE.

Imaginary Azuru: Even if it's just me and me alone, I'm on your side. Please believe me...

Imaginary Renri: Well, did YOU trust ME? Would you show me your everything?

Imaginary Renri: I told you your jokes aren't funny! Get your hands off me. You make me sick.

Nega Azuru: You see?

Nega Azuru: It's no good. You can't help being scared, y'know? That's why you wanted to distance yourself from Renri, right? Because you don't want to get hurt anymore.

Nega Azuru: Let's go home. We'll go back to the way it was, to how it was before you met him.

*indistinguishable mumbling*

Random Person: ....Renri is?

Random Person: A fight, one on one with Ozamu? Right now, in the west side park?

Other Person: Yeah, that one! We should go watch.

Flashback Renri: I already told you not to come around here anymore, Orio Azuru.

Flashback Renri: It's fine to be the villain, just stay Azuru.

Azuru: I....

Azuru: I really won't ever be as strong as you.

Flashback Renri: Run for it, Azuru!

Azuru: But I still

Azuru: Want to be on your side.

Azuru: I might get hurt. And I might end up hurting you. But I still

Azuru: I still-!

Azuru: I love him. And that's all I need to not want this ending.

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

OKAY STORY TIME

So I woke up today at 6:30 AM with the following goal: Go to university, print out my a lecture reader before 9AM, have it bound at my university store that opens at 9 and then dedicate the rest of my day to going through the whole reader so I can start studying with it and practicing exercises tomorrow.

THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED!

so first of all, I fucked around a bit, and only actually tried to print my reader at 9:18. But we're still good, right? I purposely went to the campus where the store opens at 9 rather than 10 so I can get shit done faster. Except ERROR 404, when I uploaded the PDF to the printing platform, the printer couldn't "find it." I had had issues like this in December, and I knew that maybe a solution could be to try a different printer in a different building

I make my way to another building. It takes a while to track down the printer but soon I'm set up to print. YAY! except the printer is starting and stopping every 15 seconds and I have to print 242 pages!!!! help!!!! It ends up taking like 40 minutes during which I can't really be productive because I'm cooped up in this tiny printer room

Okay it's like 10:30 by now, but it's finally done printing (or so I think) so I head out to the store where I can get it bound.

MID-BINDING I NOTICE THERE ARE LITERALLY FORTY PAGES MISSING. JUST RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE. WHAT THE FUCK???

So I leave the store again and head out to a different building because I'm thinking, that last one can't be trusted. It's only when I reach this building I realize that building doesn't actually have a printer.

So I turn back around and end up in the first building, but a different printer there. I sit down, make a new pdf with just my missing pages. Try to print.

GUESS WHAT??? I'VE RUN OUT OF FREE PHOTOCOPIES! this has basically never happened to me. wtf! where did I go wrong?? ANYWAY I'll suck it up and add money to my account balance so I can make these last copies and finally bind this reader

WELL FUCK YOU FIONA BECAUSE THE SITE WHERE YOU CAN ADD MONEY IS DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE. UNTIL 5PM.

At this point it's 11:15. I haven't had breakfast so I throw my hands up and get lunch, figuring I'll add money to my balance in the evening and then finally bind it.

In the meantime, I text a groupchat asking if anyone is on this particular campus, because they could use their free photocopies. Everyone is like: no.

Then, after lunch I realize: Oh Shit! The store where you can bind closes at 4PM. I can't wait until 5 to add money to my printing balance!! I don't want to lose an entire day what the fuck

I hang around a fourth printer for a bit, and tell my sob story to two dudes who come to pick up a print job. One of them is like "how did you run out? Did you print that much? Or did you use colour" AND YES I FUCKING USED COLOUR. I FORGOT HOW MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE IT MAKES EVEN THOUGH THE MAJORITY OF THIS READER IS BLACK AND WHITE.

Anyways they feel bad for me but they don't have any balance left either rip

Suddenly, I remember a group of people I know usually study in this one specific building on the other campus, which is a 20 minute bus ride away

I decide FUCK IT and grab the shuttle and track down the nearest acquaintance and beg him to let me print on his account. it's 1PM by this point

IT WORKS!

The binding store on this campus isn't super close + I get myself a coffee because What The Fuck + I can't be bothered to walk back so I wait for a tram that isn't much quicker than walking so it almost takes me another hour after starting to print my last 40 pages to do the full back and forth + binding

So it's a little after 2 and I am FINALLY sitting down to do what I set out to do. Get through this reader. Highlight stuff. Add post-it tabs.

EXCEPT I'M AN IDIOT AND FORGOT TO PACK A HIGHLIGHTER AND POST-ITS. So I end up paging through it and just taking notes on my iPad for what I want to highlight and tabulate later lol. (Which.... I could have done with just the PDF probably. fml I guess.)

BUT: WORRY NOT! HAPPY ENDING!

Because, For The First Time In My Life, I have overestimated how much time a task would take. I get through the ENTIRE reader by 7:10PM.

OH MY GOD.

[eggman-is-fat-mkay]

Firstly, when you get this, you have to answer with 5 things you like about yourself, publicly. Then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool)

firstly i think i am very sexy. i've been going to the gym a lot lately and it's paying off! my personal trainer says i need to eat more, and he's right, but i'm still making very respectable gains. i've been holding a plank (hands on floor, not elbows) for a little bit longer every night, just before i go to bed, for a few months now, and last night i set a new personal record of 25 minutes! i was cheating a little bit, shifting side to side and lifting one hand up to give my abs a break, and my form was more than a little sloppy, but still! 25 minutes straight!!!! (the secret is music, and wear loose clothing -- you overheat *super* fast) i've definitely got the six pack to show for it too. and as a certified gay dude and muscle enjoyer i gotta say it is a huge confidence boost to be low-key attracted to the guy i see in the mirror

second i'd say i am a pretty smart guy. most programmers are. i *love* being able to think of something, go "hey, i kinda wish that existed", and then just build it. and then... holy crap, that exists now. and i made it happen. and that's just such a cool feeling that i think everybody should get to experience.

if i don't tell anybody about my current project i'm gonna burst so here we go. i've been browsing a certain monosodium glutatmate related site lately that lets you upload images, put tags on them, and then search for them by their tags, and i've been somewhat disappointed with it. like most boorus, its search feature is quite limited -- you can specify the results have all of these tags, none of these tags, and one or more of these tags, but that's it. if you want to search for one of these two but not both, or one or more of these AND one or more of those, you're outta luck. i thought that was kinda disappointing. fortunately, i'm a programmer, and, as it turns out, this particular imageboard provides a full database dump containing the URL, rating, description, full list of tags, upvote/downvote/favorite count, image URL, etc., of every post on the site, all in one gigantic 3GB .csv file. practically begging me to make a better search function with it. it didn't take me long to whip up a script in rust that could parse that .csv file and, given a search string like "fluffy 1{ cat dog } 2-{ a b c }" (meaning "must be tagged fluffy, either cat OR dog but not both, and two or more of a, b, and c"), spit out a list of URLs of posts that matched. running the script on my laptop, it took about 12 seconds to search through the whole database, 30 if running on my phone. i also thought that was kinda disappointing and i could do better. so i started looking into ways to speed it up. i loaded the entire post database into RAM for faster access (my phone's 6GB of RAM was not thrilled about this, but it pulled through), i used the excellent rust library Rayon to search in parallel across all available CPU cores, i downloaded a second database dump from the site matching each tag name with its internal tag number (storing those instead of the names greatly reduced my RAM usage, not to mention integers are several times faster to search through than text strings), and i wrote a modified version of the search algorithm that took advantage of SIMD instructions to compare four integers at once on a single CPU core. all together, those improvements got my time for a single search down from 30 seconds to 1 second on my phone, and from 12 seconds to 50 milliseconds (that's a 20th of a second!) on my laptop. that's over a 200x improvement! isn't programming cool!!!! also the drag-race linear search algorithm i came up with for searching through the tags faster than a binary search was no doubt come up with long ago by someone much smarter than me, but i don't care i'm still proud of myself for having come up with it. i'm currently working on hooking that search algorithm up to a discord bot and in the process learning the intricacies of using postgresql to keep track of who's looking at what and what they want to see next. i'm learning a ton and it's super fun!

i'm no super-genius, don't get me wrong -- especially that SIMD part was mostly me throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck -- but i definitely felt pretty cool after seeing the 10% performance improvement it got me :P

thirdly i can semi reliably get people to laugh. since i'm autistic this does not come naturally to me, but through many years of practice and a lotta misses i've figured out a system, there's three parts.

When someone asks a rhetorical question, answer it incorrectly. example

when someone else makes a joke, your job is to "yes, and". ex.: "eggman always likes sitting in the sun. like he's cold blooded. i bet he's a lizard." "it's true. zuckerberg's actually my cousin"

commit to the bit. pretend what you just said is true. what would that imply? zuckerberg's my cousin; i probably hang out with him a lot. is he normal for a lizard, and the rest of us are that good at pretending to be human, or is he weird even by our standards? what's lizardfolk physiology like? zuckerberg was acting really strangely in the 2018 facebook senate hearings -- he nearly blew our cover. hey, that's a joke right there. just keep these ideas going in your head and string them together with whatever you can think of. ex.: "zuckerberg's actually my cousin. he's a lot less awkward once the meat suit comes off. i don't know why he gets so nervous in front of humans. guess he's just camera shy. during the facebook senate hearings he was such a mess we had to spoon feed him lines through a transmitter in his fourth ear. i don't know how people didn't notice. swear that guy is gonna out us one day. don't know why they haven't given his meat suit to someone else yet. anyway i talked with him about the whole social media panopticon thing but he was kinda stubborn on that point." alternately: "is zuckerberg your cousin?" "no actually common misconception he's just about the only celebrity who isn't. the overlords keep trying to kill that rumor cause he's making us look bad. there was talk of installing a lizard as the head of facebook so we'd have control over social media but the higher-ups wouldn't sign off on it"

(i lied there's 4 parts) learn how to volley. "if zuck's your cousin, why don't you have a facebook account?" "zuck knows enough about me just being my cousin; i don't need him being able to look up all my browsing history and bring it up at family reunions." from here, if reaction is positive, you can run with the bit: "and you know he'd do it in the most well-meaning way too; he'd see me and immediately ask if i found those dildos i was searching for two weeks ago, and if not offer to help. bro has zero social awareness"

for skills i practiced in reddit comment sections, they translated to real life surprisingly well. of course, like anything, this takes practice. coming up with stuff like that on the fly did not come naturally to me at first, and unfortunately i can't really say for certain when or why that changed. i guess my advice would be hang around with people you think are good at making jokes, watch them, and try to figure out why what works, works, and when you think you've got something, try your hand with some friends. or you could take the autistic route of just saying something that wasn't intended to be funny, having people laugh, and laughing along with them while silently puzzling over why that was funny and how you can make a funny on purpose next time. something that's important to remember though is that if you can't think of anything, that's okay. jokes often make conversations more fun, but a lack of jokes does not often make them worse.

smart, handsome, and funny is a pretty good set, i gotta say. i'm not perfect -- no one is -- and i'm definitely not sure how many other people would agree with any of those three assessments of myself (my parents tell me i'm smart, but don't everyone's?), but i'm pretty happy with where i'm at life wise and the rate i'm progressing. you asked for five things i liked about myself; i'm a bit busy at the moment so i'll have to give you a rain check for the other two. but i will definitely be forwarding this ask to everyone i can think of who hasn't blocked me!

[crossfoxbuns]

Keep a Link Garden!

The Internet is Big

Like, REALLY big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is - or how much this intro has been overused since Hitchhiker's Guide has been a thing.

But it is big. Big enough that if you don't have some kind of system for keeping things you want to remember, there's no way in hell that you can remember it. What is a "thing you want to remember" though?

For me, it's everything from interesting blogs and webcomics, to YouTube favorites, to pin on Pinterest, to random shops I'd love to buy things from if I had money, to cool examples and inspirations - that kind of thing.

Each platform kinda has a way of letting you organize your favorite stuff - but it only works on that platform.

Enter the humble bookmark. Remember those? Before revamping my system I had nearly 1000 of them. YIKES.

But bookmarks are just SO GOOD at being the one thing that always works to save stuff for later. No matter the platform, every piece of content has a unique URL - that's how it has to be. And with unique URLs, bookmarks become the best way to save stuff in one place no matter the platform.

Personally this became a problem for me a couple of months ago. Because of my work and general techie interests, I switch web browsers all the time. I've used 'em all. Most recently I was trying out Arc browser. It's generally quite nice! It took the spotlight/global search sort of approach to literally everything, which tickles my brain in the right ways.

There's still a big problem with Arc though - no way to export stuff very well. (Pro tip: before you commit to a software, make sure you can leave the thing easily!) And because Arc's philosophy doesn't really do bookmarks (I just had a space on the side with hundreds of "pinned tabs"), when I finally found a stupid, roundabout way to get my list of bookmarks out, it was just that - a plain old list. The organization was gone. It was just hundreds and hundreds of links all piled together into a bin with no sorting whatsoever.

So I decided that this was the time to really start organizing this pile of links. It's like the inside of my brain, covered head to toe in random sticky notes, half of which don't make sense anymore. To start things off, I found Raindrop.

Raindrop is a place to put my bookmarks that, first and foremost, isn't married to a particular browser. Whether I'm using Arc, Firefox, Safari, on any device, doesn't matter - I get to my bookmarks the same way.

Another benefit is that Raindrop's app lets me share links and stuff to it using the phone's built-in sharing function, which makes saving the bookmarks way easier!

The icing on the cake? You can upload files to it as well. Images, documents, whatever. This got me thinking. I have a rather large collection of images saved on Pinterest...

By the way, Pinterest also sucks when it comes to exporting things. I had to use a downloaded tool that crawls the account and downloads the resources it finds, which felt gross. But with my stuff out of Pinterest, it meant one less corpo-site I relied on, so I'll take it. Uploading all those pins back into Raindrop was nice and simple. Raindrop even has a "moodboard" view mode, which looks suspiciously like Pinterest's masonry look, but without the ads and tracking scripts.

After adding my old pins to the collection, my bookmark garden is now just shy of 2000 links and images. I've been spending the past couple of weeks going through the giant pile and deleting old ones, sorting the rest into fresh categories, and giving things meaningful tags. That's another thing, I love that Raindrop uses and encourages tagging! Regular browsers take note - when there's a lot of something that someone will want to find again - support tags. Please. Not that I'll be doing that since I have transcended browser bookmarks, but you know.

Lots of stuff yet to sort and tag - about 600 links and 1000 images left to go - but it's coming along. And I'm tagging things as I continue to find links to add to the garden as well. Once that process is done, I'll have that nigh-perfect system - never needing to forget something again. If I want to browse some shops, I won't go to Etsy, I'll go the shops section of my private link garden. Carefully and lovingly curated. :)

Bonus points - if Raindrop gets enshittified, they have a couple of great exporting options, including a good old OPML file that every other bookmark manager can use.

[queen-ofthe-pumpkinpatch]

The Reluctant Countess: Chapter One

Story Summary: When another plague outbreak arrives on the shores of the Black Sea in 1667, wealthy merchant’s daughter Rosalind is forced to flee her comfortable life for the relative safety of a remote village in the Carpathian Mountains. But she soon finds the humble village harbors a sinister secret and a haunted past.

A “Beauty and the Beast”-inspired vampire story, rated T for some violence. (The romance itself is going to be rated PG.)

<< Previous Chapter

Two Weeks Earlier

Over her shoulder, Rosalind watched the city of Constanta, and the serene Black Sea behind it, slowly disappear. Dawn was just creeping over the horizon. The city would soon stir awake—the fishermen casting their nets in the harbor, the grocers and butchers setting up their stalls in the market square—but now it was drowsy, blanketed in shadow. All she could see distinctly in this light were the spires of the great basilica and the mosque piercing the sky.

The ships anchored in the harbor swayed like a line of trees in the wind. As a child, she had loved watching the merchant ships and imagining what cargo they brought—fine glass from Venice, perhaps, or spices from Aleppo, or even jade and silk from the Orient. But now Rosalind could only think, with a leaden heart, that her father's ship would never again be among them.

The horse-drawn wagon jerked over a rut in the cobblestone road, and she was forced to face ahead once more. She wanted to memorize the view, even though she had awoke to it every day of her twenty years, because it would be the last time. Her traveling companion, a middle-aged Turk in a saffron-colored turban, laid a hand gently on her arm.

"You will see it again someday," he assured her. "Take heart, my dear."

She swallowed hard and nodded. "Is it hard for you too, Faruk? Leaving Constanta?"

Faruk considered her question carefully. "This city has been good to me, but I was not born here, so it isn't quite the same. Leaving Istanbul, that was a wrench for me. I think of it still. And the family I left behind. It never leaves you, but the ache does fade with time. I promise you that."

She took a shuddering breath. She appreciated his empathy, but the wound was too raw and recent for her to intelligibly respond. He took one hand off the horses' reigns to squeeze hers.

"There was nothing you could have done for him, Rosalind," he said firmly. "Once the black marks appear on one's skin, death is inevitable. He will not suffer much longer, that I know. There will just be time to make peace with your god."

He waited for Rosalind to respond, but she couldn't. She still had not cried, but she felt brittle.

"Your father was a warm and generous man, a good friend. I do not pretend to be an expert on your Christian values, but I cannot imagine he will be given anything but peace in the life to come. And if it's any comfort—"

"Faruk," she interjected, "I know you mean well. But I'm not ready to speak of my father in the past tense. Can we talk about something else?"

He pursed his lips, watching the road in silence for a moment, seeming to search for another topic. "It's been some time since I've quizzed you on anatomy," he said at last. "Let's see how well you've retained my teachings. If a man were said to have an overabundance of the sanguine humor, what remedy would you suggest?"

Rosalind almost chuckled at his one-track mind. Faruk had been one of her tutors growing up, drilling her in astronomy, sciences, and algebra. Her father had wanted only the finest and most modern education for his only child. Faruk, having no family of his own, had acted as a sort of avuncular guardian while her father was away on his long voyages, and so the two had become very attached.

But it had been many years since Rosalind had studied such things in any earnest—of late, she had been too occupied with keeping her father's financial affairs in order.

Whenever one of her father's merchant friends protested or sneered at a young woman being trusted with such matters, he had simply replied, I have no son to carry on my name or my business, so why not my daughter? She's clever enough. Why should I marry her off so soon when she's of so much use to me here? And in private, he would then clasp her hands and reassure her, We'll wait to make a match for you, Rosalind. Not until we've found someone you like and respect. There's no hurry, my girl.

She took a shuddering breath. Anything and everything reminded her of her father right now.

"It means the patient has too much blood," she replied finally, modulating her voice carefully. "Application of leeches, or bleeding him with a knife, would bring his humors back into balance."

"Correct. And what celestial body is associated with a sanguine temperament?"

Rosalind found it difficult to concentrate on his questions, as she was tired and lulled into a stupor by the rhythmic rocking of the wagon, but those lessons were still firmly ingrained. "Jupiter," she said.

Faruk must have heard the drowsiness in her voice, for her put a hand on her shoulder. "I'll wake you when we stop, Rosalind. Sleep if you can, it will be a long journey."

Rosalind slept fitfully. It was difficult to stop replaying recent memories in her mind, and they bled over into her vivid dreams. It was so hard to accept that her life had turned upside down only hours before.

In the middle of the night, she had sensed that something was wrong. Usually Rosalind met her father at the docks to welcome him home, but this time his ship made port in the moonlight while she slept. What woke her was not an embrace from her long-awaited father, but rather the sounds of rummaging through drawers and trunks, and low mutterings coming from the room adjacent to hers.

At first, Rosalind feared it was a burglar, for it wasn't like her father to come home without even waking her. She threw off her blankets and crept out of her chamber with a heavy iron candlestick to confront the intruder.

Through the crack in the door, she spied a familiar stocky silhouette frantically throwing items into an open chest on the floor.

"Papa?" she murmured, still drowsy and confused. "What are you doing?"

He locked eyes with her, and she saw in them a desperate, hunted look like a fugitive.

"Rosalind. Stay where you are, my girl." When she ignored him and rushed forward to embrace him, he retreated, palms up as if to ward off an attack. "Come no closer, I tell you!"

Another man, who had been hidden from her view until now behind the door, gently guided her a few paces further from her father. It was Faruk. "He's right, Rosalind, we must keep our distance," he said apologetically.

"Papa, what…what's wrong?" she asked faintly, for now that she could see both men in the candlelight, it was clear that something was. Her father's dark unruly curls were sticking to his brow with sweat and he was breathing hard, as if he had just run a great distance. There was a chalky quality to his olive skin, and a horrible death rattle in his lungs when he coughed. Faruk's entire body was tensed.

"Sickness is coming to this city," her father said gravely, whispering as if he feared the authorities were listening on the street corner. "You must go, Rosalind, leave this place at once, before the magistrates issue a quarantine."

"What are you talking about, Papa, aren't you coming with—?"

"It's too late for me," he said, shaking his head in agitation. "I am already showing signs of the disease."

He rolled up one of his sleeves to reveal a blackened patch of skin on his forearm. Rosalind clapped a hand over her mouth in horror. She had never seen anything like it, but she had read enough medical and historical texts to understand the significance of his slowly deadening flesh.

"Unless you go now," he said, "they will lock up the sick and the well together, and you will have no chance either, don't you understand?"

Rosalind was reeling; she couldn't fully comprehend what was happening. "But where can I go?"

"Inland. To the mountains. There is a village two days north of Bucharest, high in the Carpathians. It is the place I was born. Your aunt Ioana lives there still with her husband, you can stay with them. It is a strange place but…you will be safe there."

He was then overcome with weakness, clinging to the bedpost to stay upright. Rosalind tried to reach for him to help, but Faruk caught her and held her back.

"Papa, please let me stay, you need someone to take care of you," she pleaded.

Her father didn't reply to her. "Faruk, remember your promise to me," he said, staring intensely at the old tutor.

Faruk swallowed hard and nodded. "I will keep my word to you, old friend," he said in a quivering voice, still holding fast to Rosalind's arm.

"Good man." He pushed the wooden chest across the floor toward them. "Take this with you, Rosalind. It's your dowry—I've been putting it away for you little by little—it's not as much as I'd hoped, but it may prove useful all the same."

Through her tears, Rosalind whimpered, "I can't, Papa, I can't just leave you to die."

"And I can't die in peace unless I know my daughter is safe." His breathing was labored. "Go. There isn't much time."

Faruk began to drag her from the room—he was no stronger than her, but Rosalind was too overcome with shock and despair to put up much resistance. She caught a few final words in her father's hoarse whisper.

"I love you, my child. God be with you."

Next chapter>>

[elizabethh1125]

{Eye for an Eye} William Afton x reader (apocalypse AU) -

An: (EDIT: I decided to repost this because I found a bunch of things wrong with it so sorry about that they should be fixed now!!!)

Yo guys! Welcome to my first multi part series!

I know it has taken a few weeks for me finish writing the prologue, but it's long as hell and I have been delayed by hefty school work along with my spring break vacation, so pardon that! Anyways hopefully I can get a schedule going here, so you guys don't have to be left waiting all the time. The prologue will be posted on both my ao3 account and also my tumblr, but the rest of the chapters will exclusively be on my ao3 account, just because it's easier to upload my long fics on one single site. Ty so much for understanding! I love y'all so much.

PS: keep a look out for the next 2 chapters soon, hopefully they should be posted in the next few days since I've had alot of downtime on my vacation!

As always reader is over 18-

Minors dni please!

(Please let me know of any grammar errors! There might be alot since I'm using my phone to write until I get home, so I haven't been able to use my usual spelling check!!!"

Anyways ty for reading, I hope you enjoy!

And have a wonderful morning/day/night!

(oh and one last thing! I apologise for no continue reading- I will add it when I can get back to writing on my computer)

You can read this fic in my ao3 account here:

https://href.li/?https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElizaSunshine

This work is Inspired by Adoste's- The silver state: it can be read here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36634924/chapters/91379950

-Eli <3

----------------

Prologue.

A wasteland,

That's all that was left.

Life before the sickness wasn't always cut and dry, but now… you were lucky to even find a place to sleep, let alone survive.

When the first few people died of it, nobody really thought anything of the illness. Just another flu or cold that would blow off by the end of the winter. But when folks began to drop in waves, the government knew something was wrong. Albeit, they tried there best to persuade the public into believing that nothing was wrong. They broadcasted all over that all we needed to do was quarantine for a few days to let the sickness run its course though the already infected.

What they didn't tell the country is that the sick never really died…

They just…

Changed.

Everything happened so fast that nobody really knew the exact story of how things spread so fast. But in the short time they had warned everyone to huddle inside for a few days, more than half of the population had already been infected.

Nobody knew how it was spreading so fast, and the CDC rushed to twitter and other social media sites to try and spread information as fast as possible.

But it was already too late.

You had to learn how it happened yourself.

When things had begun to look really bad, your roommate suggested that the two of you flee to a safezone in Atlanta before the sickness reached your town.

So, the two of you packed all of your shit into a little 2012 honda civic, and busted the fuck out of there.

Only hours into the drive the two of you came upon a blockage in the road.

“Woah, what the hell?” Your roommate stops the car and turns to you, but you're looking out the window at a fence topped with barbed wire wrapping all the way across the highway and into the tree line. It goes as far as the two of you can see.

“What should we do?” You turn to her.

Something isn't right here.

While sitting and trying to come up with a solution to get around and into the city, a group of people from the otherside arrived.

The man of the group seemed angry, kicking the fence and shouting curses. The woman, holding a small child, possibly only two or three years old, called for you to come over to the fence.

“What's going on? Why is there a huge fence blocking the way?” your roommate spoke to the woman as she wandered around the area.

“The military… They are locking us in the city.” a tear fell from her eye despite her straight face.

“What happened to the safe zone?” you questioned,

“There is no safe zone… they said that to lour all the surrounding cities into atlanta so they could lock us all in. we tried to leave when we found out, but clearly… we are too late.” the husband spoke as he eyed your roommate.

she had begun to mess with the bottom of the fence.

“We tried to leave by car, but they- were everywhere, we had to go on foot. But he's right… we are too late, there's no way out for us now…” her curly brown hair covered her eyes as she looked down to the pavement.

Her husband shook his head and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“No this can't be it honey, we at least need to get Ray out of here.” with his words your roommate pulled harder at the bottom until a small gap opened. Quickly you spoke.

“Quick! He can come under the fence!”

The dad jumped to help hold it up, but the mother hesitated. You looked at her with sympathy and pleaded with your eyes.

“I know you don't trust us, but I promise we will find a way to get you out-”

“Come on Maria! Give him to them! We don't have much time! This isn't going to hold for much longer.” the man called for his wife,

With his words she looked up to you, hot streams of tears falling down her sepia cheeks.

She turned to her child and gave him a tight squeeze and kiss on the face before rushing to the opening and passing the kid into your arms.

You used your hand to shelter his soft chubby cheeks from the ground as the mother pushed him under.

He began to cry as he left her arms and you held him to your chest to try and calm him.

“Its okay baby-” the mother cooed through the fence, trying to muffle her sobs. “Mommy is gonna find you, okay baby? You be good for your aunties.” your roommate and the father drop the fence when he makes it all the way under. The man is going to join his wife on the other side of the fence. “ Mommy and Daddy love you so, so much!” she fell into his arms, and he nodded with her words.

You brought the child up to hold its parents' hands though the fence.

“Please,” the father whispered slightly under his breath so Ray wouldn't be able to hear.

“Take care of him…”

You nodded and softly spoke,

“I promise I will keep him safe.”

The father swallowed as a tear fell down his cheek.

“Thank you.”

The three of you packed into your car again. Heading west, as the couple had suggested you go. Hopefully you could find an empty town or small refuge in the mountains, but it would take at least 2 days, or maybe even weeks if you had to go by foot, to reach Colorado.

They decided they would try to find a way around the fence somewhere else, hopefully trying to meet back up with the three of you out west, but when you had begun to drive, your roommate spoke,

“They are never going to make it.”

You wanted to retaliate.

You wanted to at least have a little hope for the toddler sleeping in your lap as you rode.

But you knew better.

Even the survival chances of the three of you were low.

“I know.”

The rest of the drive for that day was in almost dead silence, only broken by the shuffling of Ray in sleep, or by small conversation. Your mind was full of thoughts of what's next? Carefully plotting how you were going to navigate through the country with a child, with an illness you knew almost nothing about nonetheless.

As you drove you finally encountered your first sight of the infected.

They seemed to mostly consist of small trios or groups, and they mindlessly walked around in the road.

Some almost looked alive, although they were all easily identifiable by the fast growing fungus spouting from their bodys.

Some had large wounds, but you couldn't see what caused it due to the fungi pooling out from the openings.

Everytime you passed around a bunch of them you cringed.

“Don't stop. Whatever you do dont stop.” you begged your roommate.

“No way in hell… at first I was tempted, just to see what the hell is going on with them. But after getting a closer look as we passed… im to freaked the fuck out to even get close.”

“Plus-” you butted in. “ we have no idea how they actually got infected. What if its by air or something?”

“Oh gosh, don't say that.” your roommate shivered. “Lets just keep going.”

After the sun had gone down you and your roommate decided it would be a good idea to try and find a safe place to spend the night, and eventually pulled over into a rest stop.

You had made it a good 9 hours of driving, only stopping a few times to use the bathroom outside of the car while watching for the infected. But you at least had another 12 hours ahead before you reached colorado. And all you and your roommate had packed was a backpack full to the brim with clothing, a refillable water bottle, a few cans of food and snacks, flashlights, and toiletries. You had also packed your small battery powered walkman, along with a few extra batteries and cassettes. but other than that, you had no weapons, and not nearly enough food or water to keep a kid alive for more than a week.

You needed supplies.

And fast.

“Potty…” Ray mumbled into your shirt.

You hummed and turned to your roomie as you stepped out of the car.

“I'm going to take him to use the bathroom, I might even try and clean the dirt off him in the sinks.” you pondered outloud.

“Okay, I'm going to try and find a map. That would definitely help us tomorrow. After that-” she points to a glowing area of the stop filled with vending machines. “ We should eat, and take the rest for tomorrow.”

You nodded, but wondered,

“How are we going to break the glass?”

She chuckled and moved to the back of the car.

“Sorry , I forgot to mention earlier.” She opened the trunk and pulled out a crow-bar. “ I put this in our trunk before we had left along with one more thing.”

With that she reached inside and pulled out a wooden baseball bat. Tossing it to you.

You caught it with one hand and smiled brightly at her,

“Where the hell did you get this?”

“You know, around~” she closed the trunk and pointed to the bathroom side of the rest area. “ Go ahead and get cleaned up, I'll meet back up with you guys once I find a map.”

With that she headed off to the backmost building in the little rest stop marked ‘visitors center’ and you took little jay into the bathroom areas.

You had barely taken a step inside when you froze.

The lights had mostly gone out, and only one remained in the corner of the room.

But that's not what scared you.

What was under it did.

A woman,

Probably in her late 50’s,

Standing under the light,

Clawing at it.

The telltale signs of infection raked her form.

She was covered in fungi, and her shoulder poured blood where the mushrooms seemed to origin.

She turned as she noticed the light of your flashlight.

Shit.

You threw the light at her face and slapped your hand over Ray's mouth before he could begin to cry, harshly slamming the door and clamoring back away from the building.

You expect her to chase you, but through the window you can see her shuffle back with the impact of your light, then moving to try and attack the light coming from it as it rolls away.

You were confused, but not willing to stick around an experiment, especially since you had left the bat that was tossed to you leaning on the car.

Never again.

You sputtered to sit Ray in the car.

“Potty…” he cried again, tears welting in his eyes.

You shushed him and whispered.

“I know, I know, keep holding it bud. Stay here for just a moment.”

With that you shut the door and locked it, grabbing the bat and running after where your roommate had entered.

But you were halted by a horrid display.

Painted in blood?

Over the entrance to the visitors center.

It read.

“Do not enter! Infected inside! Don't let them bite you! Deaf and blind, but react strongly to-” the last few words are cut off by large splatters of blood.

Is she a fucking idoit!? Who the hell would walk into a building that says don't enter!?

You don't have time to think though,

Screams abruptly from inside the hall, and you rush with your bat inside the building.

Guess you just sound hypocritical now.

Inside you see your roommate running from the far side of the room. She is still holding her flashlight, and blood is pouring out of her arm. A map is clutched in her uninjured hand along with her bloody crowbar, and almost 7 infected are chasing her towards the door

She screams for you to run.

But you pause for just a moment as the puzzle pieces fit together.

Deaf and blind-

That's why the lady in the bathroom didn't chase after you. It's because she couldn't see, or hear you.

But, she was clawing at the light.

And then chased after you when you had the light, until you threw it at her of course.

Your eyes drifted down to her wounded arm.

She's holding her light

Blind and deaf, but react strongly to-

LIGHT.

“Drop your light! You scream at her mere seconds before she reaches the door.”

She does as you ask, tossing it to the side.

It diverts the attention of the infected and they clamor over to it.

You take your chance to grab her and slam the door behind you.

Fear turns to anger as you point to her arm and then the blood warning.

“Are you stupid?! Look at your arm! Do you know how to read?!”

She begins to cry,

“I know! I'm sorry god!” snot pours from her nose and her wound begins to sprout small mushrooms.

“Fuck!” you turn around and try to stop yourself from beginning to cry too.

As you slam the bat on the wall beside you in anger, she falls to the concrete.

You swiftly turn to look at her, dropping your bat on the ground and rushing over to her.

“I'm going to die.” she looks up to you, the dying sunset casting a soft glow over her face.

“No you're not!” you choke out, “ i'm not going to let you die! You can't die! Please!”

You bring your hands to her face, but your eyes are drawn to the bite.

Fungus crawls its way up her arms and out of the wound.

The infection is moving so fast, you know she doesn't have long left,

But what sense goes first?

“I don't have long left, please y/n. Listen to me.” she speaks softly as her eyes begin to cloud. “ take the bat, and smash my head in-”

“What!” you shout.

“Listen to me y/n! I killed one of them while I was inside. It's the only way for them to die. You have to destroy the brain. Don't wait for me to turn, y/n. You have to kill me and get the hell out of here.” she felt around for the bat and threw it at you.

“I- I can't do this! Please don't make me do this!” you shout but she stops you again.

“ Kill me, and Take the kid y/n! Take him and LEAVE! I'm not asking you again!”

You pause and sob for a few moments, trying to build up the courage to fulfill her wish.

But you can't.

You just can't.

“I can't do this. Can't there be another way?”

But she doesn't answer.

You look down to hope and see her alright,

But the fungus has spread to her ears, and she's struggling to breathe.

“Please” she whispers. “I don't want to turn…”

With that you bring the bat down on her head.

The first hit isn't enough.

So you bring it up again.

And again.

Squeezing your eyes shut, and white knuckling the bat.

“I'm sorry. God I'm so sorry..” you sob when you feel like enough is enough, not taking the time to open your eyes, but grabbing the map and bat, before heading back over to the car.

You throw the bat and crowbar in the trunk,

And Pausing before you get in the car to throw up on the grass beside where you stand.

You have until nothing's left.

Reaching back to take your water from your bag, opening the cap, and washing the horrid taste of acid from your mouth.

After Standing and taking a moment to catch your breath, you open the door to the passenger side of the car.

Jay is sitting in the seat, pants soaked.

“Shit.” You mutter softly

“I couldn't hold it.” He tilted his head down in shame, but you couldn't stay mad.

“It's alright. Stay here for just a moment, I'll be right back to get you cleaned.”

Shutting the door behind you again, you grabbed the bat and walked over to the bathroom.

Now that you knew how to get rid of them, your master plan was to take out the one in the bathroom, clean up Jay, spend the night in the car, and leave in the morning after looting the vending machines.

You wanted to stay for longer so you could give your friend a proper burial, but you weren't sure you could stomach seeing her.

It also wasn't safe to linger in the area for too long.

You had a kid to look after now.

And you were not going to let what happened to her happen to Jay.

When you entered the bathroom for the second time, the infected lady you had seen previously was still scrambling at your dropped flashlight.

She was facing away from the door and you took the chance to wipe your sweaty palms against your shirt. Taking the bat, and aiming it high over your head. being careful to not alert it of your presence.

You knew she couldn't hear you, but you still walked dead silent behind her.

You swallowed, and then before hesitating, brought the bat as hard as you could down onto her head.

The first hit was enough to do some real damage, but it still tried to turn around to defend itself. you swung the bat straight back over your shoulder and around again, this time smashing her skull enough that she went limp on the floor.

You did it.

she was dead.

You dragged the body out into a patch of grass outside, and then checked the rest of the building for any remaining infected.

Luckily she was the only one, so you rushed back to the car and pulled Ray out. Apologizing to him for taking so long, you took him inside of the building and washed him and his clothes in a sink.

After you had cleaned the two of you up, you brought Ray back out to the car, settling him in the back seat and pulling a jacket over his tiny form.

“Try and get a little sleep, bud okay? I'm going to run and get cleaned up, then I'll come right back, I promise.” you sat the map in the front, took some spare clothing from your bag, and hung Rays rinsed pants to dry.

You felt bad for leaving him once again, but you needed to rid yourself of the blood now drying and cracking on your skin.

You headed into the bathroom,trying not to look in the direction of the lady in the bush. It's deftly too dark to see that far, but the thought still sends shivers down your spine.

When you made sure the door was closed behind you, you began to walk over to a shower used for truckers that you had found earlier.

“Perfect.”

You striped yourself from all your clothing and started the water.

It was far from hot, but at least not cold enough to be uncomfortable. So you relished in what little time you had to clean yourself, before having to quickly dry yourself, and change.

When you had finished with your shower, you quickly brushed your teeth, and ran back out to the car.

The door handle was cold, and a sad sigh left your mouth knowing that tomorrow you would have to leave your roommate's body behind.

You promised yourself you would come back one day to properly bury her.

You gently opened the door, and closed it. Now sitting in the driver's seat, you made sure to lock the car doors before leaning back the chair and closing your eyes.

Your thoughts pushed to keep you awake, but the adrenaline keeping you awake was beginning to wear off, and the wave of exhaustion was steadily pulling at the lids of your eyes.

And eventually, you succumbed to the weight.

Falling into a deep slumber.

And for just a while,

You could forget the horrors of your reality.

The next morning was quiet.

The sunrise cast an orange glow over the horizon.

When you stepped out of the car you could hear the soft sounds of insects in the grass, and birds calling in the trees.

On a normal day, people would call today beautiful.

But it was a living hell for you.

You rushed and woke the kid so you could get him dressed and fed.

then looting the vending machines and using the bathroom, just like you had planned.

When all was done, you strapped the kid into the seat, and drove off.

For the next few hours you drove along the cross country highway, using the map to avoid large cities or blockades.

You gave the kid your walkman to keep him entertained for a while. And when that wasn't enough, you began to tell him stories, and sing songs.

When you decided it would be a good time to pull over and take a quick food and bathroom break, you checked the map and noticed that Colorado was only about an hour away now.

Your plan was to find a small town, hopefully not overrun by infected, and loot from a store.

Find stuff for you, the kid, and most of all , food for the both of you.

After that you would try and find a house to stay in, and try to find a way to contact other survivors.

So you did just that,

Funnily enough,

Finding survivors wasn't as hard as you thought it would be.

When you had found a store to get supplies from, a large group was already there.

They saw you had a child with you, and told you that they had a safe zone not too far away from where they were.

So you went with them,

And stayed.

At least for a while.

You see,

The first few months were fine.

You were safe,

The kid was safe,

You decided it would be best to give Ray to a mother who had lost her child. And being a kid yourself, you really felt like you couldn't take care of him the way she could.

You spend most of your time scavenging anyway, and learning how to defend yourself.

Your bat hat got a few upgrades along the way, and you had picked up a pretty sick knife to strap to your leg as well.

Most importantly though, you were taught how to shoot guns from a few of the adults in the community.

It took weeks to get the idea down, but eventually you began to pick up on it. You might even brag that you have quite a nasty aim.

When they felt like you were ready, you were gifted your very own revolver, adding to your array of wepons.

Things were nice for a while.

You made a few friends and really began to feel comfortable again.

You had even planned to go back and bury your friend.

That was, until they began to show up.

Not infected.

Worse.

The community began to call them “the ravagers”

When they first started to pop up around camp, only a few of them came at a time. They would try and steal our shit, or kill our people.

And of course,

That shit wasn't going to slide.

So you began to defend the community along with others who wanted to protect the people.

That's how the cycle began.

More and more kept flooding,

Until one day.

You were overrun.

The majority of the group had been out on a scavenge, so all that was left to defend was you and a few others.

To be fair, you held them off for a while. At least making it so families could hide the children.

But when they began to shoot machine guns at you,

You gave up on fighting back.

It was time to get the hell out.

They came in so fast,

Set the whole place of fire.

The holes in the walls began to be flooded by the infected but ravagers didn't seem to be scared at all.

And that scared you.

Before you knew it

They began to loot almost everything.

You weren't going to wait around for them to show up at your place. So you packed all of your essentials again, and left.

You were so scared, all you could do was run, and pray you wouldn't get shot.

You tried to leave from the south west, hiding behind trees and ducking in between houses. If you could reach your car you could just drive away. At least you would have a place to sleep-

“HEY!” your heart jumped to your throat.

“gwen!Come get a look at this sick ride!”

“Please dont let that be my car” You screamed internally as you peeked your head out to see a tall girl with bright red hair break into a car, YOUR car- fuck! turning on the engine like a pro thief. She waved the other girl, Gwen over to her, before hopping into the driver seat and honking the horn.

The other girl walked over, and tilted her head when she saw your car. You noticed she was shorter than the redhead, with thick black hair.

They were both covered in ash and blood, and you noticed a rife in the smaller girl's arms.

“bitch , that is the ugliest car I've ever seen. Get out and let's go shoot up some of these pussys, maybe take some shit while we are at it.” She paused to point her gun in the air and fire a few rounds. You flinched and steaded yourself quickly not to be caught. “if we are lucky, hopefully one of these fuckers will have some bleach to sniff. Or at least some licor.”

The two of them ditched your car and went back to doing whatever they please

You wait a few moments before dashing to your car. But the coast seems to be clear enough and you feel a wash of relief.

You hop into your car and lock the door, going to put your keys in the ignition.

“phew, maybe it will be easier to get out of here than I thought.”

They seemed to be so preoccupied in looting the place that they would be distracted long enough for you to get out-

“Who the fuck told you that?”

Your thoughts were interrupted by a mal voice, and the cock of a gun at your head.

Shit.

“Wow, you should see the look on your face doll. It's hilarious!” you could see him out of the corner of your eye.

Blond, missing a tooth, old. Ew.

You would usualy tell someone like him not to call you that, and to fuck off- but the gun against your temple made you feel like that probably wasnt the best idea.

How the hell did he even get in here?

Your fight or flight response began to kick in. and the adrenaline was making it hard to see or speak.

“What do you want?” your voice croaked out, a little shakier than you had meant it to be. Still you kept your face firm and looking ahead.

“Well darling~ boss told me to keep my eyes peeled for something interesting, and at first, I was going to snag this sick car. But when i saw you headed from the trees, I knew that this must be your car! And I though, HELL! Might as well get two portions tonight. So doll, you are going to put your hands behind your back, and shut the hell up. Because I don't want to have to lose my double portion- but, I might have to put a bullet in your pretty little head if you become a bother.” he smiled brightly and your stomach twisted.

He seemed two crazy to bargain with. So you complied, as much as you could.

Even if he was crazy. Or his boss was too. You aren't going to escape, or even get anywhere if you're dead.

The man hops from the car, introducing you to do so.

After you get you he waves his gun in a ‘turn around’ manor. So you slowly turn around.

Your hands are tied, and then he throws you into the passenger seat.

The next few minutes are a blur, but soon enough you find yourself back at the front gate of the safe haven. Over-run by the ravagers and infected.

The car comes to a halt and your yanked out from the car. Your sneakers drag on the rocky pathway as your bought through hordes of people to the top of the lookout tower.

On your way up the two of you are stopped by two men.

A shorter, slim redhead, with long hair and green eyes, a peice of his hair seems to be braided and anointed with ribbon, and a scar runs along the side of his left cheek. He has some type of small gun on his belt, but the rest of his body is anointed in massive daggers,blades, and knives. He’s scary, but not as scary as the man next to him.

The other man is much, much taller, with short blond hair and brown eyes. He's wearing a shark tooth necklace and what you assume is casual attire underneath all of his guns.

Even though the man is covered in weapons, it's not what haunts you. It's the fact that under all of his weapons you can make out the text on his shirt.

“World's best dad.”

With the photo of a girl peeking out underneath

The buff, tall man standing in front of you has a child.

And something about that makes you ill.

You wish you had time to wonder if he was just trying to provide for the girl, or if she might even be alive- but the smaller one speaks to the man holding you before you can analyze too hard.

“Hey, who the hell said you have permission to see the boss eh?” He had a thick Brooklyn accent as he spoke.

The blond man held his hand out to block the old man holding you and nodded his head towards me.

“Who's she?” his voice on the other hand was thick and dark, like warm chocolate on a cold day.

The shorter guy looked over in your direction and squinted at you.

The man holding you began to seem nervous and pulled you forward, slightly ripping your shirt.

“I got this girl and a nice car.” his sweat began to pool at his neck as he tossed you over to them.

They looked you over once before shrugging. The tall one motioned for the inside, and the small one rolled his eyes.

“Fine. double portions for you tonight. Now fuck off. I'll take her to the boss.`` The redhead grabs you by the arms, pushing you in front of him and guiding you up the stairs, and past 3 more men, and a woman sitting on the steps.

When you worked your way to the top another door stood in the way, and the man behind you paused to knock a few times on the covered glass, waiting for a firm ‘come in.’ before opening the door and pushing you inside.

Once inside you fell to your knees, and looked up to a group of six or so men, all dressed the same. They surrounded a man sitting in a chair, holding a cigar.

The room smelt like ash and whisky and it almost felt like a 1920s mafia movie.

A few more men stood on the side, held on the ground by gunpoint.

You could see they were the leaders of the sanctuary.

A few of the men spoke, but you couldn't seem to take your eyes off of one individual.

In one hand he held a glass of alcohol. In the other he held his cigar.

While the rest of his men wore all black. He wore a purple tie, and spoke with a thick, and eloquent british accent.

His mid length brown hair was perfectly fluffy, and pulled back half way to stay out of his face.

His eyes were a deep silver, and his skin lay pale as a ghost.

His presence was domantiang.

And you were sure that if this wasn't the apocalypse, he would have probably owned some large company. He was definitely that type.

The men seemed to be bargaining but stopped when the two of you entered the room.

Your heartbeat in your throat as the man looked down at you, meeting your eyes and taking a long drag of his cigar.

He paused for only a moment.

“Dagger. I'm in a meeting, who's this? And why is she interrupting us.?”

Dagger.

Fitting name.

“Don't ask me boss. Crazy Jim found her while snaggin a car. Came to us spouting some bullshit about giving her to you and getting second portion.” dagger pulled a toothpick from his pocket and placed it in his mouth, giving you a light kick.

Something clicked inside of you the moment daggers foot collided with your back.

Boss.

He was the boss.

This man is sitting in front of you.

it's as if he noticed you knew who he was.

His aura seemed to grow in that instant. And the room began to grow tight.

You are nervous now.

He seemed to scan your body for a moment, letting out a soft ‘hmm’ as he did so.

And when he seemed satisfied he looked up at dagger again and spoke,

“I think I'll keep her.”

And with that he waved his hand,

You were then dragged to the side of the boss by dagger, where he left you and headed to exit the smoky meeting room.

Oh hell no.

You began to shake and try to escape.

You refused to be taken by these people.

Lucky you managed to snag one of daggers small knives while he was pulling you around.

How he didn't notice was miraculous, but you didn't have time to celebrate.

You quickly slit the duct tape holding your arms together.

You would have no time to plan, no strategy.

You would have to just run as far and as fast as you could.

So you took off.

Surprisingly it took a moment before anyone noticed, and you actually managed to get to the door before a man in the shadows,

One you had not seen,

Grabbed your arm and threw you back across the room to the boss.

You grunt as you impact the ground.

Lucky nothing was broken, but your body would be sore for days.

A dark chuckle came from behind you, and suddenly dagger was back on your side, dragging you over to the boss, closer this time.

“You're a slippery one, aren't you darling?”

He laughs again,

“Tie her up, and you may leave.”

You try to continue to fight, but the redhead is much stronger, and he binds your hands with rope this time. It's tighter and you shuffle your hands in discomfort.

When dagger seems like it is satisfactory tight enough, he leaves you and goes to exit again.

But just before dagger exited, the boss called out,

“oh and that will be enough. Burn this place to the ground, I got what I want.”

Burn this place?

There are children and families here!

You've seen them, running around the safe haven.

Even seen a few babies be born.

And on top of that, so many innocent lives.

You spoke before you meant to.

“Wait.”

The boss and dagger both stopped for a moment before resuming.

Fire burned in your blood.

You should have stopped there but you couldn't let this happen.

“Wait!” You shouted this time.

In an instant the boss sat down his glass of whisky and grabbed your hair pulling you up to face him,

You rose to your feet and stood between his large slender legs.

From afar he seemed smaller,

But now that you were close he actually overtook you in size.

He looked down at your face with his silver eyes, shooting warnings down your spine.

“Please-” your voice shook.

You prayed you could seem brave enough to convince him.

“Don't do this to them. They have children and families here, please!” You try not to seem like your begging.

The bosses lips pull back into a twisted smile as he takes his cigar hand and sets it aside.

He brings his now free hand up to twirl his finger in your hair.

“What's your name?” He asks you softly.

“Y/n” you practically are whispering now.

“Y/n” he tastes your name as he speaks. “Darling y/n. Your so brave to stand up to the big bad wolf. Look at you~” he coos. “Do you think your going to stop me by trying to make me feel guilty?” He laughs again, this time dark and evil. “Oh sweetheart. I could care less about this place. Your heroic words are mere entertainment for me. Although your escape attempt was not appreciated. In fact, maybe I would have listened if you were a good girl~” he released your hair and went back to his cigar.

“Please.” Tears begin to fall down your cheek and he freezes.

“I'll do anything…” You mumble between sobs.

The bosses eyes widen and he sets his cigar down again.

His foot taps to get your attention, and when you look up teary eyed, you swear he looks insane. But when you blink he's back to just looking at you.

“You'll do anything?” He tilts his head at you.

And as much as it pains you.

“Yes” you nod.

“Good~” he purrs and forces you to stand all the way up again, holding your arm.

“I'll be honest with you. I like you. So, I'll make a deal with you. But-” he continued before you could say anything. “ If you don't like the conditions, i’ll burn this place to the ground, no second chances,” he paused to tilt your chin up at him. His smile dropped.“No negotiating.”

You're willing to take that risk.

You nod and he hums in satisfaction.

“Good~ I'll leave these people alone, I'll even leave all of their stuff. Well… Most if it at least” his grin returning. “ All you have to do is come with me. Just you. But, no fighting, no running away.”

Seems easy enough.

“Oh and-”

You should have known.

“You will stay by my side. Until I say otherwise.”

What?!

Was that like his weird way of asking you to marry him?

You don't even know this guy's name!

“make your choice. And quickly darling I don't have all night. You see, I'm losing a whole lot of good loot for you sweetheart, but an eye for an eye right?.”

Your stomach dropped.

Screw it.

“Fine”. You agree, and the boss clicks his tounge.

“Tsk- that wasn't a polite answer, try okay sir~”

You tried not to roll your eyes.

The hell was this guy's problem?

All sense of your pride was gone, but it still made your face burn in embarrassment as you spoke,

“Okay sir.”

He seemed pleased.

“Good girl."

[pens-swords-stuff]

UNDINE!! IT IS I, THE EVER LATE KEWPIE ANON!! Sorry to have left you hanging like that--my character flaw is my terrible response time to messages. I have 2 modes: now or never. And NOW, with updated ADHD meds, I AM IMMORTAL! Anyway, moving on.

1. Thanks so much for the link!! I had actually asked for it so that my mum could watch it, since she loves バライティー番組...but then it turned out that she already uses that site LMAO. She's a pro pirate.

2. Wow your JP school was much more professional than mine!! Hundreds of students??? We had, like, TWENTY!!! And that Chicago student...WOW!! That's super cool though; I love hearing about other community schools, since they're such a formative piece of diaspora childhood.

3. YOU LIKE OTOME GAMES TOO AHAHAHAH I LOVE THAT FOR US JHAJGJSGVH. Though, I've never actually played any voltage games! I'm more of a console otome gamer. ときめきメモリアルGS is the series that started it all...when the fourth game came out after an 11 eleven year hiatus I felt alive again. Also, 剣が君 is available on the JP switch eshop and it has a FREE TRIAL! It's super meaty too. If you have the time and interest, I def recommend playing the demo! Also undine I'm so sad. I bought an otome game on the English eshop because it was on sale and therefore cheaper than the Japanese one....but I can't play with JP text. I'm devastated. I didn't know this. I thought it would let me play in full Japanese but NOPE. English text baby. So, as I'm trying to kiss fictional hotties I am going to be constantly mentally correcting the subpar translations. I bought it months ago and I still haven't played it cause of this reason. WHAT HAVE I DONE!!

4. BABE FE3H IS MY MAIN FANDOM HAHAHAH. And yes that naming choice was bizarre. Just lacks any depth whatsoever that the original title had. Like three houses?? Are we talking fire emblem or the three little pigs fable here cause they too have three houses.

Oh fuck oh NO I JUST REALISED THE FE3H DLC INTRODUCES A *WOLF HOUSE* NOOOOOO AHAHHDSHFJFGJF. Man I guess the localisers took the name inspo from the three little pigs huh. It was literary ALLUSION!

(Also yes on JP to ENG title translation being whack as well!! Frozen to アナと雪の女王?? What a mouthful!)

Thanks for your lovely vibes and friendliness! You really make an introvert want to go off anon and reach out to you with a hesitant but genuine offer of friendship via DMs.....(and maybe one day I'll be brave enough to do so🥺 👉👈)

Have a good week! またね〜

In response to this post.

KEWPIE ANON MY DARLING HELLO 😍😍

You are always welcome in both my DMs and my askbox at whatever time you have the spoons for me, in whatever form is the most comfortable for you. I adore you and talking to you is the highlight of my life. I don't necessarily have the energy to answer asks promptly all the time, but I always get so excited when you visit that I have the energy and willpower to answer ASAP so I can make sure that you see it. (never mind that it takes me a long time to write because I am wordy,,,) I will always use the tag #kewpie anon when talking to you, so there's a surefire way to see anything I yell towards your direction. I might start just making posts with that tag @ you if I think of something I want to say. I've considered it. I also am not always the best at responding to DMs, but I'm sure that I'll actually be able to hold a timely conversation if it's with you.

1) My mom is the exact same way but with manga websites!! Right now we've both been using Manga Toro when she found it after Manga Hua went poof. Manga Hua/Toro have both been fantastic because they actually upload raw manga chapters in Japanese! The bad news is that the Japanese chapters haven't been uploaded in a while for the manga that we've been reading whereas the crappy English translations have 😭😭 I don't get it, isn't it so much easier to just upload the Japanese versions because you don't have to translate them???

We got a VPN to watch Japanese shows on Tver which has been nice, but we have not been successful in finding a way to watch 紅白 during お正月. We used to be able to watch it since we had TV JAPAN on our TV, and then we were able to find it uploaded somewhere but??? Not anymore. We tried doing paid subscriptions to some Japanese streaming sites but nooo you have to pay more to watch 紅白 and it's like jeez okay not worth it. We also used to watch Netflix Japan with it, but considering all of the bans that Netflix has been doing for people using VPNs, we've been laying low and have stopped doing that until that storm passes. And apparently hulu.jp is completely different from hulu.com in the US, so it's not even possible.

We've also been considering getting a Japanese Amazon Prime account since it's only like 5000円 for a full year, and then we get prime video, and I kinda wanna watch the Japanese Bachelor since 指原梨乃 is the MC for it and I love trashy reality TV.

OH BUT ALSO

we got like this chinese TV box thing??? I'm not actually sure what it is since my parents got it when I was away for college. But it's like this tiny little device that you connect to the wifi and to your TV via HDMI. It's all entirely in Chinese, but you know, it's possible to puzzle out what it says because it's super similar to kanji. Anyways, it's this thing that like... a bunch of anime, drama and movies uploaded to it so that you can watch it for free, in almost real time (it usually takes like a day or so to get the newest episode). It has a ton of shows and movies from not just Japan, but also China, Korea, India, all over the world, really and you can watch it for free. It also allows you to livestream channels from all over the world in real time, including all Japanese channels including the regional ones.

It's how I was able to watch あなたの番です　and 半沢直樹シーズン２ while it was coming out. It even had all of the hulu exclusive episodes!! It also has a ton of old dramas and movies too, including all the Ghibli movies, and all the クレヨンしんちゃん　movies.

The catch is: It's not always available in Japanese. Sometimes they only have a Chinese version, and it's impossible to turn off the Chinese subtitles. Also it doesn't have バラエティー unfortunately.

I can ask my parents about it if you want! My mom does a ton of research into these things and she was able to be fairly confident that it's not illegal in any way, but it sure is sketchy but really useful.

3) YES I LOVE 乙ゲー！I've never actually played them on my consoles (I'm a huge console gamer, but when I was younger my family had this really really weird rule of "you can only play video games during winter when dad is home from work". Which in theory was supposed to cut down on my gaming time and force me to play outside in summer, but all it really accomplished was that I did nothing but game in the winter when my dad was home and my mom got frustrated that we weren't doing things as a family and??? mom this is your own fault. Basically this is why I've never played them on my consoles; it's always been a me and dad thing when I was younger so it would've been SUPER weird). But I've heard SUCH good things about ときめも.

I'll definitely check out 剣が君!!! Super excited that it's on Switch.

Also on Switch is: スウィートルームで悪戯なキス, which is a Voltage game that goes on sale sometimes. It's not my favorite one, but hey if it's cheap on Switch I'm totally snatching it up. It's great and has a ton of content for a one time payment which is totally worth it!! Since you know, it does the thing where you have to purchase the 本編、 then the epilogue and the続編 are additional prices for their apps but you don't have to do that on the switch. It's a steal, honestly. And! You can play it in Japanese with the base game too, as long as your switch is in Japanese!!! The only downside is that although it has a ton of stuff and lets you follow the majority of the story, it doesn't have some of the later game stuff that I know the app does, but still, worth it imo.

BUT YES I TOTALLY FEEL YOU ON THE WHOLE JAPANESE LANGUAGE THING!! WHY AREN'T ALL GAMES WITH JAPANESE LANGUAGES ABLE TO PLAY IN JAPANESE????

I was actually crying about this a little while ago. I love playing games in the original language, and for certain games I even like playing them in English too (but I have to have the Japanese version too). I'm a huge Dragon Quest fan, and I have DQXI in English on my PS4, and the Japanese version on my 3DS. But I wanted to play DQXI S edition which is the complete edition and I thought hey I'll just buy the Switch version since I can play both! But no!!!!! Japanese version has to be bought separately???????? I want both but they're so expensive 😭 why are they doing this to us. Why??? This also happened with Great Ace Attorney and Super Famicon Detective Club too and I am so upset.

I want to play both languages, it's 2022 this should be possible! What's the point of having a region free console if you can't do that!! I'm betrayed, backstabbed, and left to expire. I was so excited that the Switch was region free, and this is how they betray me.

(but also I have two Wiis and two 3DSs, and multiple duplicate games on both so I can play the games in both languages (separately bought of course ;3;) so I guess it's getting a lil bit better,,,)

The best thing that ever happened in gaming history was the DS versions of the first 3 Ace Attorney games. They literally had a English version and a Japanese version on the game that you could switch between way back when we were still in the original DS era. It blew my childhood mind! And the Ace Attorney games are so clever and punny in both Japanese and English so it was absolutely amazing. More games need to do that 💔

also that bs about having Japanese voice acting but not the Japanese text??? absolutely criminal, have both you monsters.

English-speakers usually talk about how OTT anime/game dialogue is, or like how English translated otome games are so cringey but like... That's not the source material's fault. I feel like the Japanese language lends itself much better to more dramatic phrasings both culturally and linguistically and it sounds really natural in Japanese, though even the most accurate English translation sounds way too much.

Once I went through and translated some of my otome games for a friend because I was like "i love these games and you're going to love them with me", and it was relaly hard because like... The lines just wouldn't land in English. One example that really sticks out to me is this line in Voltage's bodyguard game. The stoic older man love interest was like 「私は大丈夫です。男ですから。」And it makes so much sense in Japanese, both language-wise and culture-wise because there's a more rigid gender roles and stuff, but translated into English I was like ????? this is not capturing this love interest's hotness.

4) I haven't played FE:3H in Japanese because I played it through with my extremely American, doesn't know how to speak Japanese boyfriend. I got burned out on playing it through because I was the one who grinded those extra battles to level, and got through the beginning Academy part after we beat the game the first time so he could just play through the second half of each route (to be fair, it was on my switch so he couldn't do that for me) but once I manage to recuperate from that I'm definitely planning to try it out in Japanese!

What's your favorite route on it?

My boyfriend and I started on the Black Eagles house and played through Crimson Flower for our very first playthrough, so we're pretty diehard Black Eagles supporters. Hubert is extremely underrated and he's our favorite character. He kinda resembled my boyfriend visually in some ways with the hair and the deepset eyes, so one of our dream cosplays is Edelgard and Hubert.

Initially my boyfriend was very anti-Dimitri/Claude but he ended up coming around on Dimitri and liking him a lot after we played through Blue Lions and we loved that one too. We haven't completed the Church of Seiros route or the Golden Deer route (I had grinded through the Academy part and burnt out. We recently tried to get back to it but realized we remember so little about everything and how to play so we're trying to start from the very beginning), and he's still very anti-Claude but then I was like "You hated Dimitri at first too, but then you liked him after we played through his story so you're going to like Claude too, you're just being judgmental" and he agreed so. I wish we could just speed through the process of playing it because from what little I know happens in the Golden Deer route, it sounds WILD and I'm so interested in seeing what happens in the lore...

I hope you have a wonderful week too kewpie anon, thanks so much for stopping by! I'll be looking forward to the next time you're able to drop an ask 🥰😘😍😊

[lavieenrosabelle]

[Desktop Setting]

I've been playing Breath of the Wild as a means of exploring and treasure hunting. ZeLink is probably one of the few ships I'm SUPER invested in. They're absolutely adorable together, I just can't imagine them not ending up together.

But for now, let's talk about this Rainmeter setup!

1. Visualizer - VisBubble by undefinist

One of my favorite things about this set-up is the Visualizer around the Lord of the Mountain. Luckily, VisBubble has ONE out of FOUR settings to choose from that gives this majestic horse a subtle, yet dynamic glow. The remaining choices feature different settings for stereo waves.

2. Music Player - Atome by DD-921

Atome's music player is just too beautiful to overlook. I'm personally not a fan of minimalist music players. However, the compact and responsive design of the Atome player would be great for any desktop setup. The scrubber is functional- but as you can see, it doesn't seem to respond to my Spotify application.

3. Quotes - MyQuotes by ninjaki8

This choice stands out as a clean and straightforward skin for quotes. Just enter your quote of choice through WordPad. No coding necessary! My only wish is to have the option to change the font! That's something I'll look into.

4. Upload and Download - SHADOW by DarkEagle2011

SHADOW has many other additional features that are good for tech/sport-themed desktops. The skin is a gorgeous burst of color with minimalist peripherals that don't distract the user from the system dock. I find the Upload and Download option to be of use when I'm uploading large files on Google Drive. For some reason, the site crashes on me when I try to upload crucial files.

5. Transparent Notes 2.0 by en-ryuu

Don't be fooled. Transparent Notes 2.0 isn't limited to the simple checklist I made there. While it's true that the space for the notes is rather small, this skin is one of the best note-taking choices for minimalists.

6. To-do List - SmartNotes by Tobilug

This to-do list stands out by deleting tasks you've finished. No unnecessary cross-outs or checks. If you don't see it, it's marked as done. Simple as that.

7. Everything Else- Sonder by MichaelPurses

Sonder is probably one of the most popular skins re-vamped for any setup. Can you blame it for being a crowd favorite? It has a clock and calendar that can be tweaked for a neon-themed desktop. Sonder also includes the responsive and interactive sets of buttons and weather widgets on the bottom right.

8. Wallpaper - サトリ山主様 by ALZi米

Need I say more? ALZi is one of the best ZeLink artists out there. Their work pretty much speaks for itself, so do give their Pixiv page a review. Short-haired Zelda is a testament to how excited this artist must be for Breath of the Wild two!

And that's it for this month's Desktop Setting. I'll see you next month for our new theme!

I figured Ivy by Taylor Swift (please do not copyright strike me, Queen Taylor) would be a great song to attach to this setup. I'll be making a separate post on WHY Zelda and Link would be great together, with Taylor Swift songs narrating their journey.

[timebuzzer]

Love Channels Chapter 5

Jamie's POV

We left the restaurant around 9:30PM and decided to get ice cream for dessert.

“What flavor are you getting? I already know mine.” I hurriedly asked him to which he responded with “Chocochip cookie dough, maybe. I really don’t have preference but I like that flavor. What will you be having?”

“I’m getting mint choco ice cream.” I told him with a bright smile on my face.

“Mint choco ice cream?” he confirmed with furrowed eyebrows. “Does it not taste like toothpaste?”

“It happens to be my favorite ice cream flavor and excuse you, it does not taste like toothpaste!” I argued as a lot of people have said the same thing, he’s no different.

“You should try it, I might change your mind?” I urged.

“I will but I am still going to get Chocolate chip cookie dough, I’ll just get from you.”

We got our separate ice cream cups and decided to walk around the complex, we still have time because this place closes at 11:30PM on Fridays/Saturdays and the trains still run until 12:45AM.

While walking around we talked about random things to know ourselves better.

I noticed though that he hadn’t really tried the mint chocolate ice cream, so I offered. “You promised you’d try, I am nearing half the cup and you haven’t.”

“I thought you wouldn't notice because you were enjoying your ice cream so much. That might not be enough for you if I got a spoonful.” he laughed while trying to get out of that promise.

I pouted and said, “Okay fine, don’t.” making it sound like I’m disappointed, which I was not really. I mean not a lot of people like choco mint ice cream and those who don’t, truly think it tastes like toothpaste. I beg to differ though.

“Hey, I was just teasing, here let me get some.” I sensed worry in his voice. I allowed him to get a spoonful and looked at how he tried to suppress his reaction to the taste. Poor guy, he doesn't like it one bit but he’s trying his best to appease me.

“How is it?” I probed, I already know though how much he disliked it by the way he looked.

“Uhmm.. it’s okay. I mean it could be better but it’s tolerable.” all he could muster to make it sound like he enjoyed it.

“You don’t like it right?” I laughed. Urging him to honestly tell me his opinion.

“I really don’t. I’m so sorry. But I’d stick to my choco chip cookie dough.” then he burst out laughing.

“I mean no offense, I respect your preference for ice cream flavor but I can only tolerate a spoonful or maybe two or three for you but that’s about it.” stating the fact while raising both his hands as if to surrender and he means no harm. I find the gesture and honesty quite charming.

“Aren’t you tired? We’ve been walking around for half an hour already, your feet must hurt?” he asked, a bit concerned.

“They don’t hurt, I’m fine. These are actually comfortable but if we’d walk for an hour I’m pretty sure I will start complaining and ask to sit somewhere.” I quipped but to be honest I had not noticed we’ve been walking around for 30 mins and did not mind that I was wearing heels.

“Well, you still have to sit somewhere, do you want to go to the arcade and play some video games? We still have time until the complex closes.”

I nodded in agreement and we headed towards the arcade. Never been to one for a while now so this is a welcomed detour.

“What do you want to play? Do you want to try that? This isn't too noisy for you?” he asked while looking around and pointing at one video game machine. The arcade was not too crowded even if it’s past ten in the evening.

“It’s okay, I like it here! I used to hang out at arcades and play with my brother or with some friends. Sometimes I’d blow up money on those claw machines just to get the stuffed toy I wanted.” I mentioned all too eagerly.

“So video game or would you like me to avenge you from those claw machines who took your money?” he offered and I decided on the latter because it was more fun.

After what seemed to be a few hundred bucks devoured by these machines and several curses uttered by this very annoyed and frustrated guy, I asked Sean to just give up that stuffed toy I wanted.

With the amount we are spending, we could already get one at a toy store. Winning a small item, one that you could use as a keychain, is good enough. Besides it’s getting late and we don’t want to miss the last train to my stop.

“How far are you from here, I’d like to join you to make sure you get home safe, if it’s okay?” Sean asked, expectant.

“I’m just two stops away from here. And yes, it’s okay you can take me home.” agreeing to his offer. Besides I still want to spend time with him anyway.

“Oh…. that’s just near.” Is that disappointment I am sensing from him?

“Do you live nearby?” I wanted to change the mood of the impending separation.

“Yeah, I live near Pete’s apartment. That’s not too far from here too.”

We started walking towards the train station while we continued our conversation.

We got off my stop and told him that we have to walk for a good 5 minutes until we reach my apartment.

He offered his left hand for me to hold while we walked and I took it. Walking silently, I processed how our date went and I knew this first date would be remarkable.

Nothing too fancy but was just perfect for me. It was what I hoped how the day would go, less pretense and just being ourselves.

I don’t really like grand gestures, I know they are needed too but most of the time it loses its charm for me, I like the ones that are connected to the small details we’ve shared. That means we listened to each other’s stories and picked up what we like and not.

This was such a relief and here we are, walking slowly while holding hands.

“Penny for your deep thoughts?” he prompted. I looked at him and smiled at how this guy can be sweet without even trying.

“Just thinking of how this day went. You know, making mental notes of what happened so that I will remember.”

“I wish this day would last longer.” He sighed.

"I wanted to give you flowers but decided against it because I knew we’d be watching a movie and I did not want you to be bothered carrying those flowers. Now I regretted not getting you some.” he said nonchalantly.

“Do you like flowers?” he continued.

“Yes I do. But it’s okay that you did not get me any today. You were right that it could be bothersome. You made the right choice otherwise I’d be walking around the complex with a bouquet of flowers on my arm and people will be looking at us.” I expressed assuring him that it was alright.

We reached my apartment door and both of us were hesitant to part ways.

“I should get going if I want to catch the last train.”

“Okay, be careful on your way home. Thank you for tonight, I had fun. Really.”

“I’d get the movie dvd or when it’s uploaded on streaming sites we can watch it properly.” We both laughed at what he said remembering what had happened inside the cinema and that we did not really understand the movie entirely.

I know I have to take my own step to cross a line so I bravely walked towards him and decided to give him a hug goodbye.

This startled him but welcomed it nonetheless. There are so many leaps made in the past 10 days. I hope we don’t fall into a dark abyss though.

“You should get going, you’ll miss the last train.”

“Yeah, I should. Thank you for tonight, this day has been extraordinary for me. I’ll call you as soon as I get home.” and went on his way.

Extraordinary? Indeed.