#experimenting with a layout for these kinds of posts

[roley-poley-foley]

Winged Insect, Funeral Pyre Chapter Two is up

Nicholas considers his next move.

Content Warning: rape aftermath, suicidal thoughts

Knowing the right doctors was the key to surviving this line of work. If you didn’t know someone who could patch you up quickly and quietly, you didn’t last long.

read it here

[beezusims]

havent updated my game at all…. also need to organize my mods folder 😵‍💫

[cozycottagetarot]

How You'll Know They're The One

🌸 Notes:

This reading focuses on how you'll recognize that your person is "the one". I tried to think of different ways people influence our lives to create this layout and settled on the below.

💐 Reading Contents:

The Energy of Your Connection

The Signs You'll Recognise

The Role They'll Play In Your Life (Extended)

Who You'll Become (Extended)

A Major Shift That Will Happen (Extended)

A pile in this reading does touch base on mental health. Please note that it is not meant to act as or substitute professional help or advice of any kind. Also keep in mind that this reading is based off of current energies and can change as you progress on your individual journey through life. Finally, this reading is for entertainment purposes only, please take only what resonates be it some, all or none.

LINKS: Reading Masterlist | Dividers | Ko-Fi

Personal Readings: Classic | $10 and Under - OPEN

Pile 1

The Energy of Your Connection

Cards: Two of Wands, Page of Swords, Knight of Swords, Four of Sword, The World

Your connection with your person or who you’ll consider the one will make you feel like you finally know what fulfillment is. You’ll no longer feel the need to keep chasing 'something more' constantly. You’ll finally be able to see your achievements and the beauty in who you are, who you’ve become and all that you have done. Your connection will feel like finally you’ve got a chance to rest. It’s a restorative connection, one in which you can finally find a sense of peace. But while you won’t feel the need to keep chasing something more, there’s still an energy of expansion, but this time out of a place of curiosity for what life has to offer. It’ll be a connection that not only fuels new ideas, but also gives you the courage to pursue them. It’s a whole new world has been unlocked for you.

The Signs You’ll Recognize

Cards: The World rev, Five of Cups,m The Star, Eight of Pentacles, The Moon

You could feel like you have unfinished business with this person, even if you’ve only known each other for a short while. It could feel like you’re meant to be a part of each other’s story. They might be holding onto a past experience in which you can see their sorrow. It could also be that they feel stuck or have a tendency to self-sabotage. But don’t take that as someone who is destructive and risk ‘destroying’ you. This person is also hopeful about the future and work towards it, even if their path isn’t linear. They might brighten your world— when life seems bleak, they’re the light that helps you find your way again. They are someone who is dedicated to what they do and I heard dedicated to you as well. Whatever they do, you can see they put effort into it. You might also recognize them intuitively, like there’s this nudge or inner knowing that they’re the one. They may be intuitive themselves or they could be someone who is mysterious… not intentionally but they have that energy to them.

Thank you for reading! 🫶 Curious about the role they'll play in your life, the person you'll grow into after meeting them, and the major shift their presence will spark? 🌟 Dive deeper with the extended version of this post, available in my Ko-Fi Shop as a keepsake, downloadable 15-page PDF. Explore all three piles in full detail and uncover the clues await you!

Pile 2

This pile mentions themes of mental health/well-being and could nod to physical ailments as well (specifically in the extended version). It was very difficult to read and interpret the messages, so this pile requires additional discernment on your end. 🙏

The Energy of Your Connection

Cards: The Chariot, King of Pentacles, Ten of Pentacles rev, Two of Cups, Knight of Pentacles

You and your person or the one are a good match, but not without effort. When you're cooking or baking, and you try to mix a fat or oil-based ingredient with a water-based liquid, they tend to separate. But when you emulsify them, you create a smooth, cohesive mixture that lasts longer until more ingredients are added or you emulsify again. You and your person are a bit like that. At first, it might seem like you wouldn’t go together, but with a effort and the right additions to the relationship, you can make it work. You both have to figure out how to balance and flow with each other in order to move forward. You may not have the ideal, picture-perfect, lovey-dovey relationship, but what you do have is something reliable—a stable foundation that grows stronger when you build on it. The effort it takes, brings you into sync with one another. It may require constant work, but the willingness from both sides to put in that effort is what makes it work.

The Signs You’ll Recognize

Cards: The Chariot, Seven of Pentacles, Three of Cups, Eight of Swords, Ace of Cups

You two could start off as friends or focus on friendship in your relationship. They’ll be patient but also persistent in getting to know you. Even when something might come up that makes you think, "Oh, we’re opposites" they’ll look past that to get to know you at your core and what you value, not just surface-level interest. They’ll be willing to try things you’re into and support you through your highs and your lows. They’re someone who is very loving and compassionate, emotionally open. I think you’ll recognize them by how they make you and others feel like the center of attention. *Post reading edit: I think you'll also recognize them by how they support you and give you unconditional love. It might be difficult for people to get to know you but this person sticks around and patient waits for you to open up.

Thank you for reading! 🫶 Curious about the role they'll play in your life, the person you'll grow into after meeting them, and the major shift their presence will spark? 🌟 Dive deeper with the extended version of this post, available in my Ko-Fi Shop as a keepsake, downloadable 15-page PDF. Explore all three piles in full detail and uncover the clues await you!

Pile 3

The Energy of Your Connection

Cards: The Fool, The Hierophant, The High Priestess, Judgement, The Lovers

You and your person are very intuitive and can understand and connect with each other on a subconscious level. You two have the type of connection where you’re always learning from one another. You two could have similar values, shared beliefs or generally just have a similar mindset or view on life. Your connection with your person is one that has an element of playfulness to it too. You’ll find that you can always laugh and joke around with each other. There’s also a lot of curiosity towards each other and life together. It feels like you’ll both feel like the connection marks a new beginning in your lives. You two could also have soulmate energy which by my definition is the strong feeling that two people were meant to be together. This connection also gives you a sense of purpose whether it's individually or together. You two may also inspire each other, cultivate a deeper awareness of yourselves and hold each other accountable for your intentions and actions. It very much feels like shifting into your ‘best’ or ‘higher’ selves together.

The Signs You’ll Recognize

Cards: Nine of Swords, Eight of Pentacles, Ace of Swords, The Hierophant, The Empress

They could be prone to overthinking or generally worry a lot. They may also be someone who struggles to sleep at night. A scenario I’m getting is someone who starts spouting all these “what ifs” in the middle of the night and you just have to tell them to stop worrying and go to sleep because during the day they’re not like that at all. You’ll recognize them as someone who is such a hard worker. It doesn’t matter how repetitive or mundane the work may be, they’ll put in the effort. They’re someone who you can see they’ll be successful if they continue to put in the work at the rate they do. I don’t think they’re all hard work though. They know how to pause, give thanks for and enjoy what they’ve achieved and what exists around them in the present. They could also be someone who’s always got a new idea for a project or concept, or consuming new ideas and information. Once again, they share similar values, beliefs or mindsets to you. Finally your person or “the one” is very nurturing or creative.

Thank you for reading! 🫶 Curious about the role they'll play in your life, the person you'll grow into after meeting them, and the major shift their presence will spark? 🌟 Dive deeper with the extended version of this post, available in my Ko-Fi Shop as a keepsake, downloadable 15-page PDF. Explore all three piles in full detail and uncover the clues await you!

[4-the-l0ve-0f-art]

"Caleb becomes a wet rat (and gets unpixelated?!)"

Chapter 6: Homecoming Wings

Pairing: Caleb x GN Reader

Word count: 1180

Genre: Reverse isekai, fluff, romance, comedy, supernatural, angst, slow burn

Rating: General Audiences

Triger Warnings: none

A/N: I recommend replaying through Homecoming Wing's first part of chapter 1 while reading this !! i've also made a tag for this fic called fic: wet rat caleb which will be used to post updates on the future chapters and bonus content related to this story, just for fun

<< previous next >> Tumblr Chapter List Ao3 Link

---

Caleb was knocked out of his thoughts by your excited chattering.

“Let’s goooo!!! Caleb’s chapter released!” His head whipped towards your direction.

You looked up, sensing the stare. “Oh, not you, Caleb. I meant, like, Caleb-Caleb, you know? The actual Caleb from the game.” You lifted up the ipad to show him your screen. It was only for a brief moment, and Caleb was unable to catch what was written on the screen.

Caleb’s eyes narrowed. This was his chance.

He walked over and jumped on the couch, sitting right next to you. He glanced at the ipad and then back to your face.

You were staring at him in shock.

Oh. Oh my god. He’s sitting next to me.

He blinked at you with his purple eyes, not saying anything. His tail flicked to his side.

Okay. Okay. Stay calm. You don’t want to scare him away by reacting too loud.

“You really are interested in Caleb, huh? I knew it.. Even cats are going to like him.” You turned your focus back to the ipad in your lap, which was currently on the chapter selection menu for the main story.

Are we really talking about me? This much enthusiasm.. It’s unsettling. 

Caleb was a bit confused. He knew for sure that the man on the screen was him, but he didn’t understand why you were so excited when you saw him. Both of you had watched the same video.

There was still a lot Caleb didn’t understand about the video. The man was him, but it wasn’t him. 

“Did you honestly think I would always be the kind hearted boy from your childhood?”

He was talking to someone. Someone from his childhood?

There was no one. No one worth remembering, anyway.

What disturbed him more was the experiment report.

[They are the optimal weapon for destroying each other. This experiment is never to be restarted.]

One thing he was sure about was that there was no one, absolutely no one, who had been turned into a weapon the same way he was. That is how he rose to the ranks of Colonel, and that is how it’s supposed to remain. There was no one who had been able to endure the experiments long enough to be as powerful as him. 

And that is why he didn’t understand what was going on in the video.

Or what was going on in general, to be fair. He had turned into a cat. A cat!

And here I thought things couldn’t get any worse when grandma was killed.

Snapping back to reality, he read the text on your ipad screen.

Homecoming Wings: Vanishing Skyward.

He watched your eyes twinkle.

“The background is so beautiful. That’s Skyhaven, I think..” 

You were right. It was a picture of Skyhaven from a distance. He could recognize the layout of that island anywhere, it was his base after all. Or his prison. Depends on how you look at it.

“Let’s find out what you’ve been up to while MC has been suffering, Caleb.” You poked his head gently.

He narrowed his eyes on you. It was amusing how you talked to a cat, but the cat was still him. The situation was somewhat laughable, he thought.

You tapped on the block titled “01 Story: Infiltration”.

He read the text on the screen alongside you. It looked like it was written from someone else’s perspective.

“She’s dreaming about the explosion?” You muttered, focused on the screen.

Caleb’s eyes widened as the words “Aether Core”, “Ever”, and Bloomshore District Explosion” appeared on the screen one by one.

The scene seemed to switch from an office to the scene of an explosion. 

Reporter A - “It’s been a week since the explosion in the Cascade District. The Farspace Fleet still has the region under lockdown.”

Caleb was baffled.

…

You stared at the screen in silence for an entire minute once the cutscene ended.

“Did you see that?” Caleb wasn’t sure if you were talking to him or yourself. Frankly, he didn’t care. He was just as shocked as you.

“I think infold really loves to introduce their characters while they kill someone.” You said, referencing a certain white haired man with a crow.

Caleb, on the other hand, was lost in thought.

The scenes that had just unfolded on the screen hadn’t happened too long ago to him. He had killed the man who had tried to sink his ship in the deepspace, on his first mission as Colonel. It had been a couple months since then and Caleb had adjusted well to the endless attempts at people trying to dethrone him, courtesy of Ever.

It was a weird experience watching it unfold from a different perspective, however. And even weirder when it’s from an ipad screen of a random person who didn’t know he was right there, next to them.

At this moment, his life felt like a fever dream.

…

Currently, you’re having the biggest crash out you’ve had since you started playing this game. And a cat was witnessing it all, sitting at his place next to you on the couch.

“Girl, oh my god..” 

“You did not just get drugged by that guy. You did not—” You cut yourself off.

You looked at the cat next to you.

“Caleb, Do you see this shit? Do you???”

Caleb did, in fact, see the shit. And saying that he was flabbergasted would be an understatement. 

“They deserved a better reunion scene. What the fuck was that?? “It really is me.” Who says that after being declared dead?” You mimicked Caleb’s voice line, clearly annoyed.

“And the MC just.. Accepted it? And then proceeded to stay at his home?”

That was not what Caleb was worried about. He was more so focused on the fact that he was a video game character in this world. And with a story which was eerily similar to his own, at that.

Just without the hunter.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Caleb continued watching as you ranted.

“There's so much shit going on in this story, man..”

Strangely enough, Caleb didn’t think that his actions in the story were out of character for him. He didn’t resonate with the need to protect someone like the MC in the game, but in the end, he had still ended up in the same position as the other version of himself, regardless of whether that hunter was in the picture or not.

He had been forced to survive on his own either way. The only difference was that he had no one waiting for him at the end of it all. His desperation was fueled by his need to feel even a semblance of control over his life, which had been thrown into disarray since he was young.

And it was happening once again. This time, with an obviously cat-shaped dilemma.

Yet, maybe, just maybe, he didn’t mind it as much.

A certain someone sitting next to him was altering his reality, oblivious to it all.

And he was starting to accept it.

---

Taglist: @roseapov @mangooes @zukini-01 @browneyedgirl22 @mavix @staristoo @hohoooowhy @pirana10 @lunia-likes-pomegranet @bertieorangy @heyimseli @xxnessinessiellexx @mcdepressed290 @mentaltrouble2201 @stardustsunflowers13 @I-lover9 @destheoren @ixloom819 @super-nerder @mazlodowki @friedmagazineprincess @celestialzdiviner @deadghosy @fishwasher8 @dummiebunny @etsuniiru @wegottastayfocus @astraecho

A/N: You can DM me or comment if you want to be tagged in this series and it'll be done in the future parts !!

[rainyatrium]

MOTH AND LOPER!! YEAH!!! ft. @heavenhearst under the goggles... The mindspike articulates and is motorized... it gave up the goat literally as soon as the cosplay contest ended, lol Did not get to finish the lenticular film glasses in time, but such is life!!!! We got 4th place honorable mention in the group costume contest so i am pretty happy :) further thoughts and WAY more images below!

loper thoughts we know from the game that Loper is in some kind of hazard gear, so i gave them the jumpsuit (in the tradition of ellen ripley, real astronauts, and ghostbusters) as opposed to a labcoat or anything like that. we took in the waist to make it fit better. i think with the mindspike on, it made the resemblance even stronger.... these ghostbusters did not quite get why i was so amused at taking a photo with them, but i think this is a pretty good image nonetheless.

observin' makes me feel good! and speaking of the mindspike: this is my first time working on anything to this level-- I am not a robotics person! hell of a learning experience & i already have plans for version 2. mindsci i am not but i think i did pretty ok... the spike has two controllers: a modified slotcar controller & a separate knob that sits in one of the pockets (controls left/right axis). the other knob is pretty discreet and allows for puppeting the spike without a bright yellow Device in my hands. the RCA jacks on the back hooked up to Moth's laptop, so for photos it looks like they are hooked up to the spike and taking readings.

the claw was made nearly 1:1 to the game model to save on time and weight. con crunch wahoo! some extras: i put together fake 'e-paper' displays for our ids. if you have seen my prior posts, these will look familiar! i had a blast designing a seal for the FBX and a layout for these ids. i wanted to give them a better finish (hide the obvious 3d printing), but.. time crunch.. oops... the Moth id also has a little incandescent bulb in it, though I have no photos of it active. for my gloves, i intended to use gloves for high-voltage electrical work, but i was allergic to the latex, so i grabbed some dishwashing gloves off amazon and glued the label to them, hehe.

shoutout to the tf2 medic who was wearing the same pair of gloves! moth thoughts for moth, we had the benefit of the wonderful official cosplay by Shaman-- which you can see all over corru.store! (thank you shaman for the pointers!!!) Heaven thought it would be fun to take him in a more "I'M IN!" direction, so our Moth has painted nails and fingerless gloves and a great big coat over his button-down and slacks. complimented with some pins from hot topic and i think he assembled a pretty comprehensive vibe! i made the goggles out of some blue LEDs, rice paper, and a pair of costume goggles off Amazon. they are entirely opaque. moth is just such a gamer he knows exactly where everything is anyway.

you can also see the FBX patch that is present on both our Loper and Moth!

everything else wtf you read this far? cool! i don't really have anything else to add... but maybe you will see Loper at Supercon Miami in 2025.... only time will tell.....

[k-hippie]

k-707 2025 BOLD UPDATE INSTRUCTIONS

Hello everyone :)

The new k-707 is going to be released in the coming days :D but as it is a kind of new experience, we have some kinda instructions in order to get everything working fine.

Step right up, folks, for the grand unveiling of our biggest project yet! The K-707 isn’t just a mod—it’s a green revolution. Taking on almost every flower, patch of grass, bush, and tree makes this even more massive than the K-505. And trust us, our brains are already feeling the strain! :D

But before instructions, let me tell you the k-707 story ;)

We really hope you'll enjoy it. We worked hard on it with 5 rules :

Replace EVERY tree of the game

NO overrides with crazy high polygons amount

Follow as much as possible the Maxis directions ( trees style )

Decrease amount of polygons where it is possible

No trees defying gravity and laws of physics

It took long for few reasons ...

At first, we always knew the first version was a vast experiment. When ea made its direct x11 update, it was time to make a bold update ... but we didn't want simply remove the non-strictly-dds-x2 images and replace them ... we wanted more. We always wanted more, even we are not kinda ea gurus :D ( hey EA ! don't you want hire some true creators with a long term vision of your game ? ) <- poll : would you like k-hippie as maxis creators or not ? :D

Joke apart, it was difficult. Almost 1 year long, we searched and searched solutions to get rid of all problems we met when replacing foliage on a debug tree, or modifying anything on a debug tree ( for info : we are not blender gurus nor sims 4 core users )

All we knew was few lines :

When cloning a tree, you cannot lose the any of the vert color data. I suspect whatever tool(s) you are using to do the cloning is losing this data, since this setup is somewhat unique to trees.

The vertex color layout for trees is as follows. Green and Blue are ignored for channels 1…4 : Color 0 RGB Surface color tint Color 1 R Rustle direction X Color 2 R Rustle direction Y Color 3 R Rustle direction Z Color 4 R Rustle phase ( game generates two wind scales that change over time, this term interpolates between the two )

The pipeline keeps the rustle information in a vertex color format for what the game engine will load, which means it’s in the range 0 and 1. The shader remaps this into a 0.5 to -0.5 range before scaling it and applying the offset to the leaves. Note that these directions are clamped but not normalized ( they’re allowed to be different lengths ) The WindMagnitude material parameter acts as a scaling factor.

So, we started with this information, begging in vain for some help, both inside the Sims community and outside ... but nobody helped us. And frankly, it interested no-one except us and our beloved followers :)

We found multitude of tutorials ( funny how many they are as soon as it is clothes related ) but nothing related to our specific target. We paused our research many times, made direct x11 updates for our other k-mods and so on. Until ... zaceitorius in July 13rd 2024

Who is zaceitorius ? We do not know. A simple member of sims4studio with 6 posts who gave us a simple bright clue which seems obvious after all, but yet very very precious indeed !

And here we are today. 300 trees and numerous plants later ... <- another reason why it took a long time :D

We made a lot of vertex experiments, we lost data colors, remade again and again some other experiments and well, we are still experiment, remake small details which seem important to us and so on ... And for now, it works :D And now you are warned : the k-707 is far from perfect.

And now, the instructions :)

The k-707 covers both trees & plants, both debug and lot trees & plants

What's new ? No more than usual. We tracked all the non-strictly-dds-x2 images, reshaped some trees ( such as the multitude of oaks ), added some flowers ( where we removed them in 2021 ) but kept many foliage we already did. We tried to simplify many details but added some others and replaced some plants.

How many stuff it represents ? We do not know. Many indeed. We stopped the count :D

Because of its size ( and our love for our sanity ), THE RELEASE WILL ROLL OUT IN PARTS ( not slowly but piece by piece ). If we waited until it was all perfect, you’d be seeing it around ( maybe ) September 2025 ... Let’s not tempt fate—or burnout! :D

The K-707 is neatly organized for your convenience :

Each DLC gets 2 folders : one for plants, one for trees.

The base game gets 4 folders ( a bit different since most of the greenery is drawn from there ) divided into lots and debug folders.

Expansions which have very few greenies ( City, Get to Work, University ) get the same folder named : k-hippie-k707-multi-greeny-2025

IMPORTANT :

Leave them in each of their folders ( or create your owns based on a similar methodology )

If you merge files : we can’t help troubleshoot if it doesn’t work anymore, so be smart ;)

You’re free to do as you like, but we strongly recommend keeping this tidy folder setup. If you need to troubleshoot down the line, it’ll save you a major headache.

And for the mavericks out there who love merging files—go for it, but know this : we won’t be able to help if things go haywire.

Now, we could wax poetic about how stunning the K-707 is, how every leaf, petal, and blade of grass is crisper, richer, and beautifully integrated into your worlds—but hey, we'll do it later, inside the release post :D

We could do more, more realistic trees and so on but we do not want integrate crazy high poly models. We do not want an unplayable game isn't it ? ;)

The k-707 is not yet finished. We got some more work to do on it, shape the last details, and some re-checks.

But here is what is new compare to the previous version : we kinda cracked ( a bit only ) the code. Trees swinging in the wind like it’s a dancing contest ? No more. Trees defying gravity and laws of physics by groveling into the ground ? No more. Just remember we do not have the hands upon the worlds construction, so, when trees are not into the ground, well, call your reseller aka EA itself ...

[nishayuro]

Dr.Stone Stanley Snyder’s S/O getting harassed by Ibara

A/N: I am back…? Idk i’m trying to get out of a writer’s block again. Been playing a LOT of Minecraft! Me and my friends made a Dr.Stone realms and I’m playing as Xeno lmaoo, we are recreating KoS and the American colony’s base (its big as fuck????) anyways, here’s the prompt I wrote and special thanks to @animeotakuf0rlife for sending in this ask and furthering the idea! I accidentally deleted the ask when I was layouting this post 😭

Genre: Fluff, Angst

Warning: Manga spoilers, harassment, Ibara himself should be a warning, violence, use of guns,

Fem!reader (or Fem presenting, reader will be called a girl, use of they/them is still present but Ibara will refer to reader as she/her)

With society back up and running again faster after the moon mission’s success, people have been getting revived left and right. You were part of the American colony back before the 2nd petrification happened and was revived to help out with the rocket for the mission. As time passed, you grew closer with the members of the Kingdom of Science, they’d tell you all about the adventures they’ve been on, sailing the world, and the fights they faced before they set foot to America. You learned that a lot of the kingdom’s members were once their enemy, like Tsukasa, Hyoga, Moz, Kirisame, and others. Quite ironic because at some point, you were also their enemy.

When the people of Treasure Island visited Japan, Kohaku and the others were furious to see a tall, middle aged man with a weird goatee. “Oi! What is Ibara doing unpetrified?!” Ginro exclaimed, pointing at the man with fear. “When did this happen?!” Chrome added, also shocked to see the guy. “Who’s that?” you asked Ryusui who was next to you in the docks, helping unload cargo. “Ibara. The biggest enemy when we were at Treasure island.” he said, voice was void of its usual cheer.

“I’m so sorry! One of the newly depetrified islanders thought he was another innocent person. He’s been tame lately after revival and kind of helping around. But we couldn’t leave him at the island, who knew what he’d do without us to guard him?” A bald man, who you presume is Soyuz from what the others have described, said. You looked up at this Ibara man and saw that he was already looking at you, for some reason, you felt a chill down your spine. “It’d be best if you stayed away from him, y/n.” Ryusui warned, you nodded. “Y/N! Xee needs you in the lab.” your boyfriend, Stanley called out to you. “Oh, alright. Bye guys! Doc called.” you bid farewell, glancing at Ibara who was still eyeing you.

Stanley, who decided to assist in the unloading of the cargo, was approached by Ryusui. “Hey, Stanley!” the sailor called, “I’d look out for that man, Ibara, if I were you. He doesn’t have a good track record.” Ryusui informed. “Huh, why?” answered Stanley. “He petrified their island’s leader and tricked everyone in the island. He has harassed multiple women when the “harem selection” was happening in the island. He’s not one to respect women. And from the looks of it, he has his eyes on Y/N. My sailor’s intuition is never wrong!” Ryusui explained. That made the soldier’s eyes darken. “I need info on the enemy.” Stanley said, to which Ryusui told him everything.

Ibara claimed to have changed his ways, now that everything was too much for him to understand, he claimed to not have interest in ruling the world anymore, which was met by doubts, yet he was still tasked to help around the area with small work. He seemed okay at first, no incidents, no bad things. Your interactions with him were normal to a fault; he seemed friendly, too friendly. You still kept interactions with him brief, remembering what Ryusui and the others told you.

One afternoon in the lab, the science team and Stanley were working on an experiment, Stanley there as the “bodyguard” and you as Xeno’s assistant, like you were back in the modern day. “Y/N, mind grabbing some materials from the storage? Here’s the list.” Xeno asked, handing you a piece of paper. “Sure, I'll be back shortly.” you said, walking out of the lab and towards the storage area, you didn’t realise that Ibara was near and saw you walk into an empty room and decided to follow you. As you were gathering the materials, you heard the door open, revealing the tall man. “Oh, Ibara-san? What brings you here?” you questioned, uncomfortable about the fact that he was in a room alone with you. “Ah, hello y/n-chan! I’m here to pick up some materials for the 3rd floor. “Huh? But you’re on the basement floor, each floor has its own storage unit.” you questioned, wary of his movement.

“The unit upstairs was out of the material, they told me to check here.” he answered, a smile on his face as he moved closer to one of the shelves. He looked to see that your cart was mostly ores, and jars. “They’re letting a pretty girl like you do the heavy lifting?” he asked, a shiver ran down your spine as you looked up to see him staring at you. “Wha- no, it’s normal. I’m working as Xeno’s assistant after all.” You answered, defending yourself. “You have a nice figure y/n-chan~ don’t damage it by carrying heavy things~” He said.

The man moved closer, you started to move farther, trying to focus on gathering your materials. In a flash, the man was directly behind you, body sticking to yours caging you between him and the shelf. He was reaching up the shelf, presumably also gathering materials. You tensed up, and Ibara took this opportunity to hold onto your shoulder. “Why don’t we get to know each other better, hmm?” he whispered into your ear. “Get off of me! I have a boyfriend!” you tried to pry him off of you, as you shouted, hoping someone would hear you. “Kukuku~ back on my island, it didn’t matter if the girl was married.” He said with a smirk as he gripped your arm. “Let me go!” you screamed, thrashed, and tried to move away.

When Xeno sent Y/N to get materials, he didn’t think much of it as it was a normal occurrence as Xeno’s assistant. However, the usual 5 minute wait time became 7, then 9, then 10 minutes. He got concerned, and told Xeno he’d go see what’s taking y/n long. As Stanley exited the room, he bumped into Tsukasa and the others, “Have y’all seen Y/N? She should have been back 5 minutes ago.” Stan asked, “Nah, we just got he-” “LET ME GO!” a scream was heard, a voice familiar to the group which made them run towards the storage area.

BAM!

The door flew open as another man entered the room, “GET AWAY FROM THEM!!” Stanley shouted, his voice booming as he rushed towards the man on you and yanked him off hard, followed by a punch, making Ibara land on the floor. A few other people reach the door, those being Tsukasa, Ryusui, Kohaku, and Sai. “Stan!” you exclaimed, glad to see your boyfriend here. “You dirty piece of shit!” Stan held Ibara down when he tried to get up. “Stan! Not here!” you shouted, holding onto him. “Bring him out of the room, please.” You asked the bystanders, Tsukasa coming in and restraining Ibara. “Bring him to the yard, I'm gonna teach that piece of shit a lesson.” Stan ordered, his commanding voice leaving no room for arguments. “All right, we’ll be waiting for you.” Ryusui answered, leading the group.

Stanley directed his attention towards you, holding onto you and scanning you. “You ok? Did he hurt you?” he started fussing. “Stan, I'm fine. You got here on time.” you said, hugging him with your face on his chest. He hugged you back. “Fuck, I’m glad you’re safe.” he muttered into your hair. “I’ll go back to Xeno, you go handle Ibara.” You whispered and he nodded, escorting you back to the lab door and giving you a kiss before you entered.

“What took you long?” Xeno asked, still focused on his work. You bring the materials to him, “Ibara cornered me in storage, Stan is dealing with him now.” your confession got Senku, Xeno, Chrome, and Suika to look at you. “Ah, well, I wouldn’t mind having a human guinea pig. That is if Stanley doesn’t break him first” Xeno said.

When Stanley reached the yard where they usually trained at, he saw Tsukasa and Ryusui there with Ibara tied up. “You dare touch my partner and think you’d get away with it? Let me get you off your high and mighty self throne. You.are.powerless.here.” Stanley’s voice was cold as he pointed his gun at Ibara, who recognised the item as similar to the thing that shot him back then. Fear crept up his whole being. “N-no! Don’t!” Ibara begged. BAM! Stanley pulled the trigger, but aimed it at the target just behind Ibara’s head. The other man looked behind and saw the bullet hole in the middle. “You see that? that will be you if you dare touch y/n again.” Stanley said. Ibara was panicking at this point, he doesn't want to die. “S-she was giving me signs!” He tried to reason.

That angered Stanley more, sending another punch towards the man, “signs…? SIGNS?! You dare blame them?!” Stanley raged, punching Ibara to the ground, and kicked him hard. He knelt down and gripped at Ibara’s jaw, making him look up at him. His eyes were clouded with pure rage. Not even Tsukasa would want to intervene with this. “You dare touch, talk, or even breathe near them again, I will offer you up to the science team as a gift. And I’ll tell you now, Xeno ain't above using humans for his crazy experiments.” He tightened his grip on the man, “understand?” he asked, Ibara was choking at this point. “un.der.stand?” Stanley repeated, to which Ibara forced a ‘yes’. He asked the others to lock Ibara up for the time being as he talks to the leaders about what to do with Ibara. Stanley let go of him and walked off, but not without his final words to the man.

“Just because you almost succeeded before with taking down the team, you think you’d succeed in taking it down again. I’ll kill you if you try anything else to harm us. And don't take this threat as a bluff, because I can.”

Masterlist

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[noimnotmae]

L O S T | Max Verstappen

pt3

summary: after getting lost in the city of Las Vegas a kind stranger offers to help her get back to her hotel.

max verstappen x female! CEO! reader

pt2 — masterlist — pt4

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[Instagram]

yn_suárez ✔

liked by urbff_user, danielricciardo, maxverstappen1 and 306,765 others

yn_suárez 😂🤣 . . . more

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urbff_user Max 🤨🙄

maxverstappen1 what did I do??

urbff_user win

yn_suárez I'm so sorry about her, max

maxverstappen1 It's all good

chsrleschicken I stan [urbff]

mamasuárez ❤️

yn_suárez miss you, mama

liked by yn_suárez

f1fan max what're you doin here? 🤨

ashkey67 max, liking and commenting on yn's posts won't get you your Noir leather jacket.

livelylope he's trying so hard

kiaanna I'm liking the max yn interactions

forzaferrsri55 YN, stop fraternising with the enemy in the comments!

urbff_user ☝️

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urbff_user ❤️❤️🏁

yn_suárez 😫

scuderiaferrari looking good in red

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carlossainz55 thank you ❤️

urbff_user please don't let max win 🙏

carlossainz55 we'll see

charles_leclerc Forza Ferrari

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yuukiyuukiyaya here comes the F1 drivers

livelaughlovealways yn confirmed Ferrari fan

landonorizzz08 Ferrari commented

maxverstappen1 😒

urbff_user 🙄

mywifeyyn [urbff] having beef with max is my favourite thing in the world

[story]

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the layouts for the chats and other social media sort of changed since I'm still figuring out what's the best looking ones. this social media au is sort of an experiment at the same time is just for funzies. hope you are all enjoying so far.

taglist: @stinkyjax @spookystitchery @marshmummy

if you want to be tagged in the next part, just comment.

[bambisnc]

     [the perfect pair] or, holding hands w riize!

PAIRING : ot7 x reader! GENRE : fluffiest fluff 2 ever fluff CW/TW : none! (some arent really hand holding tho im sorry guys ://) WC : 0.6k XOXO : haha. history textbook is calling out to me Please. </3 /lh... + the coloured text realllyy isnt visible on light screens huh. fml + changing layouts but this one is too perfect for me to even change a little </3 + [m.list]

seunghan : he's a simple guy but he's also a hopeless romantic; big sucker for interlinked fingers and all the symbolism that comes w it <3 his grip would be so, so gentle though.. unless on rare occasions you happen to trigger his slightly possessive streak where his fingers would unintentionally tighten around yours.. wouldn't hesitate to show off him holding your hands to the source of the jealousy~

wonbin : hand holding patterns would definitely differ but mostly he'd stick to the simplest kind : your hand over his (or visa versa if he's feeling particularly babygirl/wants to be comforted by you).. he's the kinda guy who'd gently stroke your knuckles with his thumb all the time but the second you do it to him he ends up so flustered.. (side note he probably swings your hands tgt when you're out on a walk or something ;-;)

sohee : i saw this one twt post where they said that he seemed to not be that used to physical touch and was slowly getting used to it with his members ... so i feel like he'd maybe be a bit hesitant, shy to initiate proper hand holding straightaway; but would still want to feel connected to you .. hence, interlocked pinkies <3 also whenever he can he'd raise your hands to his lips and place a lil kiss right on the tip of your finger,,

anton : hear me out - he gets kinda hyper excited when you're around him and because of both of you being busy with your respective works you don't really get a lot of time together.. but there's so much he wants to show you, to experience with you.. this is what leads him to grab ahold your wrist and almost feverishly drag you places + it gives him leverage to be able to casually bite your arm (it's his love language) once a while ._.

shotaro : prefers to keep his arm around your shoulder whenever he can rather than holding hands which is adorable but guys... he's a head bonker trust me..... likes to bump your heads together (like a littol bunny ;-;) when he has his arm around you. also it makes him feel overall really fuzzy and warm inside to think he's kinda "protecting you" and keeping your pretty head comfy as well,, adores the fact that this position more often than not ends with you having an arm around his waist >///<

sungchan : he's an all or nothing guy and if it's you he physically can't go nothing; therefore he must have one of your hands in his while your other rests on his arm. yes he knows that means your hands won't be free to carry/hold on to anything else but hey what else is he here for?? steals whatever your holding and holds out his hand to you like oh you want to hold something too? here, hold this for me please ^^. yeah i know it's my hand and what about it D: ?

eunseok : he's different he's not like other guys huge fan of wrapping a hand around your waist because he's generally not a huge fan of a lot of pda but this provides him a secure position right at the edge of casual affection, intimacy and can we go to the other room and makeout :/ please :/ this probably started out as just teasing you but he actually likes how he's kinda subtly making it known that you're each others' <3 oh and loves that he can tickle you whenever he wants :p

[@bambisnc] 2k24

[boxturret]

BMOP: A history of the Abandoned Koro

Now that things have all come out, and the project is well and truly over, I thought I'd take a moment to talk a bit about something I worked on in the game, the "Abandoned Koro" area, now that there's video footage of a playthrough I can easily reference.

I suppose as a quick primer, I was with the BMOP team from around March of 2021 to November of 2022, serving as both 3D art lead and Level design lead for a time. There's a post out there about my experiences with the leadership of the team that I mostly stand by still, I do feel bad for how the project ended, and I have come around a bit to remember the positive times more than the negative, but that doesn't erase what happened.

So to begin, when I came on level design was a fairly inactive sub channel of the game development discord, some ideas got tossed around occasionally, but not much seemed to be happening, before I'd joined there was a rough map drawn up by the then current level design lead.

It was very basic stuff, there was a version of this map in engine that had been extruded a bit to make it a kind of playable space, one area had some trees on it and some random platforms.

One area that interested me greatly was this part in the south, the so called "Abandoned Koro"

The rough idea being that it was the Le-Koro seen in the GBA game Bionicle: Quest for the Toa, that had been abandoned in favour of the one seen in the browser game Mata Nui Online Game and the cancelled PC game Bionicle: Legend of Mata Nui, as the one in QFTT had a lot of wooden structures while the one seen in the other two was more like a woven nest.

At the time I was just a 3d modeller, and had never really done any real level design, but the concept just really inspired me, so I went off and in blender sketched out a possible level layout for this area.

I made a bunch of renders and wrote out how I thought the level could work, which can be seen in this document HERE.

For a quick overview, the idea was you'd enter the area, the bridge would break, you'd have to clear a river to activate the water wheel on a large mechanical tree that would allow you passage upwards, and then navigate through the Nui-Rama infested ruins of the village before coming to a cave.

The tree was something I poured a lot of time in to, its worthy of its own post at some point in the future.

Now I'll be honest, I was super nervous about releasing this document to the team, I thought I was overstepping my bounds. I was just a relatively new 3d modeller on the team, I didn't have the right to be talking about level design, but to my surprise people were really receptive to it, and I very quickly got added to the level design team¹.

I ended up doing a rough blockout in engine. This was back in the time before Lewa had been chosen to be the main player character, so it was still Tahu.

This was the first time I'd ever touched Unreal, so it took a while. That's why the sky is black, I didn't know how to add a skybox.

I never got in to level scripting, but as a proof of concept, I think it was successful.

You can see that in this version of the level it had already progressed, now there was the idea of using the Pakari to break the dam, so finding it was the first task on the ground.

This version wasn't in the actual demo map, because as I said before the demo wasn't really very fleshed out at the time. One thing my map showed though was that the demo was way too big. The level design lead at the time had decided the size based on how long it took to get around the map as a perfectly flat plane with no terrain, at max run speed, with no obstacles. This is a very flawed methodology to say the least. Having an actual level with things scaled to the character really started to show the holes in this, and eventually, once I became lead, the demo area was massively shrunk.

Here's a version from just a month later. The version is now part of the new, more compact demo area, but its mostly barren at this point.

This version was actually completely rebuilt from the ground up because it had been decided to try out voxels as a basis². They were a pain to deal with and this was overturned eventually. I'd say in total, including the 3d sketch I did, I re-built this map maybe 4 times.

One benefit of voxels was it was trivial to have caves, so this is where the idea of the pakari being found in a cave started to emerge.

As I continued to play and refine the demo it became clear how much the movement systems would need to be tweaked. There seemed to be this idea in the team that everything could be done separately and bolted together later, so character moment was all handled by someone jumping around on some big blocks in a test map whereas level design was off doing their own thing, but it really wasn't working. So while the movement felt good in a vacuum, actually putting it in context really exposed a lot of issues. You could easily jump over any enemy you could come across, as said earlier maps had to be huge in order to make the world seem big while you were running at full speed, and after about 3 jumps you'd be 20 metres in the air.

At this point the idea still was to have the entire island of Mata Nui be one large open area you could freely explore, so the sheer size of the maps resulting from the over powered movement was a major issue. I lobbied very hard to have things pulled back and eventually they were.

its a bit out of order, but here's the demo area from closer to when I left. Its a fraction of the size of the original map

Here's another video from a month later.

As much as it pains me to say it, this is basically it in terms of meaningful development. By this point Lewa had been locked in as the playable character, and the movement had been dialed back to a more reasonable degree, so I was able to really start trying to refine the area. This is where I ran in to a fatal issue.

No one else wanted to play the game.

And what was worse barely anything worked.

The level is still in what I would call a grey box state. I used a couple tree trunk assets I'd made here and there, and put in a big canopy asset from one of the many asset packs we had for a bit of ambience, but it was all still very basic geometry, easily changed or modified.

Unfortunately, there's only so much you can do for playtesting your own area. You built it: you know where everything is, what's supposed to happen, where you're supposed to go. You can try to pretend to play it as a new player, but that only gets you so far. I was hoping people on the team would play it and provide feedback³, but outside of maybe one or two people a handful of times⁴, trying to get any really feedback was was a futile effort.

The thing was that this area was very complex. If the demo was a vertical slice of the game as a whole, this area was itself a microcosm of the demo⁵. It had platforming, puzzle solving, combat, mask powers, the lot. Now unfortunately for me, barely any of those systems actually worked.

As an example, this long ledge was for a long time a stand in for vine swinging, then rail grinding⁶, then was ultimately just replaced by a platform.

So things had kind of hit a wall. I couldn't properly design areas with combat in them until combat existed in a more stable state, I couldn't design platforming sections until platforming worked in a consistent way. I couldn't even adjust the overall flow of the level because everyone else basically refused to give feedback.

But the unfortunate thing is, in August of that year they'd released a teaser trailer.

And that trailer had gotten hundreds of thousands of views.

This is where the whole development of this game really went off the rails. Now there was this push to get things in a presentable state, start set dressing and making final assets so things could be shown off.

But I refused. Everything was too up in the air to commit to set dressing, this is why block out exists, if the jump changes height its no big issue to grab the couple cubes an area is made out of and shift them up or down, if combat is found to need more space its easy to make things bigger, or add or take away walls. If something is confusing things can be shifted. Once set dressing starts now you're dealing with dozens to hundreds of objects being scattered about, even the smallest tweak can lead to a mess.

Not to mention set dressing raised its own series of issues, from plants triggering the IK on the toa's feet, making their knees go up to their chin when walking through a bunch of ferns, to collision volumes being oversized or offset, meaning that big rock face they just added has now created a massive invisible wall in another area. Once the addition of some plants caused all ledges within a wide radius to no longer work⁷.

It was a miserable state of affairs. My mental state rapidly deteriorated as I fought against this, I became very short tempered and irritable, and eventually near the end of 2022 I was kicked from the team. It was such a relief honestly.

I think the tragic thing is, set dressing is actually quite a fast process. The starting area went from looking like this to something quite like the final in about a month?

But you can't show off the first screenshot on twitter⁸.

I guess I'll spare a quick moment to talk about the final version seen in the video.

Its at 46 minutes in if the link doesn't work

Its...fine? The assets they've made are all good, though I think they lost the QFTM inspiration along the way. The thing that stands out to me is just how...little its moved on from 2022. Just look how much progress was made in like 3 months, compare that to now, 3 years later. Temporary platforms I placed are still in the exact same spot. I do find the addition of a matoran with a key for the cave to be a not great addition, if only for the fact that you need to find a tiny green man in amongst the overwhelming greenery to proceed.

One part I found quite amusing was the final enemy encounter. It was supposed to be this large hut, probably Matau's, that had been completely overtaken by a hive, and Nui-Rama would spawn constantly from it until the encounter was over.

There were a lot of concepts drawn up, but I guess it just...never happened. I also don't know why there's waves of fikou there either, that was after my time I think.

So that's really all I have to say about that version, it looks okay. Its still clearly unfinished. It kinda works more than it did when I left, but its shockingly not that much different, outside of some new assets.

I'll be honest, I did intend this to be more of a happy, reflective post, but when watching part of the developer commentary a quote stood out to me.

"Traditionally you would kind of have really basic blockout for an environment and play test that to see how the level design is working. Because of the the situation we had we were kind of forced to just go ahead with set dressing and prettying it up and everything so if it were in a perfect world I would have loved to have gotten to do some more play testing early on but we did what we could with it. And I mean you basically had to just blindly trust the process because many systems weren't working at the time things were designed." -AN UNKNOWN BMOP DEVELOPER (2025)

And I just fundamentally disagree. This was a fan project, there were no deadlines but those that were self inflicted. This process they blindly trusted just lead to a thing that on the surface looks okay, but is still riddled with bugs that were well known for years. I've seen some people on the team say the game was 90% completed, feature locked, just 3 more months of polish and it would have all been working, but from what I've seen of the game I really doubt it. They say themselves in the commentary that there's bugs they've been fighting for nearly a decade still rearing their head.

So yeah, its not exactly a happy tale. I'm quite proud of the work I did, I learned a lot, and met a lot of people I'm still friends with to this day. Its a shame the project had to end this way, and I'm sad everyone's work has gone to waste, but I'm also not going to pretend this was some amazing project that was struck down right before achieving greatness.

But most of all: Fuck you lego.

If you're interested in seeing a few more of the things I worked on in my time with BMOP, go HERE. I may post more publicly about some of them in the future, who knows. I have a post about the regional Kini temple I designed and built for the game HERE. Also some renders I did for some of my game design reports HERE.

¹-I say team, it was maybe two other people who were barely around. ²-I'll be honest here: Some people wanted to have the entire map destructible so that they could have Bohrok dynamically destroy it. For the post game DLC after we'd finished this Zelda sized free fan game⁹. ³-💯👍👀 isn't helpful feedback at the end of the day. Its supportive I'll give you that. But sometimes you need more. ⁴-One person on the team even outright refused to play the game until final release, to "save their first reactions for their stream"... ⁵-idk if its clear at this point but the "demo" is, was, and now always will be the entirety of the existing game. Oh there were ideas for other things, but nothing concrete ever materialised⁹. ⁶-You know, like Sonic⁹ ⁷-The ledge's over sensitive detection for something blocking it is one of the most frustrating things about the game's development for me. ⁸-You absolutely can show off real development stuff, there are lots of people who find that fascinating. ⁹-This game was nothing if not ambitious.

You see that kind of mop is called a "Bee Mop", because of its sponge's resemblance to honey comb.

[thekoalapastriesbakery]

Oscar, Paul, Alex, (Big) Kimi, and Sebastian's reactions to a 'wheelchair friendly' cafe, or museum, or bookstore or smth that is actually very much not wheelchair accessible after trying to go on a date with wheelchair user!Reader

I'm in the middle of a flare up on a school trip and my teacher is an asshole if you can't tell :D

🦕

oof i'm sorry about your teacher (and your flare up) :( also i'm assuming big kimi is kimi raikkonen so apologies if that's wrong lol

alex albon:

acts goofy to try to keep your spirits up, even if you're kind of used to it

he'll inwardly be pissed off at the restaurant and the next time you're out of sight he'll make sure to leave an anonymous review on google, yelp, everything

saying something like "HEY THESE ASSHOLES SAY THEY'RE WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE AND THEY'RE FUCKING NOT"

which he knows most people won't care about

but he still thinks it's worth it

he'll also find a new place to take you instead

and push you if you start getting tired because the outing took more energy than you'd budgeted for

his main focus is on decreasing the inconvenience for you

anything else is nice but not as important

kimi raikkonen:

not happy with them

at all

most likely to ask to speak to the owner and then call them a fuckwit

along with a slew of finnish insults, probably

after you leave he feels a bit like an idiot and a lot like a bad boyfriend

he just wanted to plan one date with you and he couldn't even do that

remind him that there's very few ways to know that a place is just pretending to be accessible until you actually get there and can't access it

he'll get over it pretty quickly and find something else you can do together

even if that's just going back home and lying on the floor of the living room with a galaxy projector and pretending to stargaze

oscar piastri:

tries really hard not to get really mad with the cafe/museum/bookstore/etc

especially because he's very aware that most of the time the people working with the customers have very little control over the layout of the place

he's just frustrated because it feels like nowhere is accessible to you

which is obviously most important and more frustrating for you

but does have the overflow effect of it being really hard for him to go out on dates with his boyfriend

i mean he's already frustrated by the fact that the two of you can't safely act like straight couples would in public

he just wants to show you that he loves you and the world seems so reluctant to let him

regardless, he will find somewhere

and if he can't, he'll make somewhere

no matter what he has to do he'll make sure you know how much he loves you <3

paul aron:

pouts

he's a big pouter

will complain about the thing and lowkey get more upset that you're not as upset

it makes him sad that you're so used to being left out from the world around you

he loves you so much and he just wants to be able to go out with you and have fun like (what feels like) every other couple in the world

after that experience though he will be sure to do extra research and find actual wheelchair users to ask about accessible places

even if it takes him hours and hours and hours

he WILL find somewhere to take you on a date

he's quite stubborn about it actually

sebastian vettel:

will semi-calmly take the owner/manager to task over advertising as "wheelchair accessible" when they're not

also probably ends up posting a massive infopost about what makes spaces (generally speaking) wheelchair accessible

you two have your staple places that you know are accessible but you like to try new places when you can

so, while you're a bit disappointed, you've got backup plans to make sure you can still have an enjoyable date night

he's torn between laughing and being scared every time you have to wheelie over a bump/step

especially if you know that he's a bit scared when you wheelie and so you do/say something silly to distract him

would also probably try to jump over the bump/up the step using roughly the same movement as you do in your wheelchair

he just looks so silly it's adorable

[icewindandboringhorror]

Other Misc. Rambling Thoughts on the topic:

(~ !!!!!!!!! if you're just reblogging this post for the Poll section, please reblog the original post without this addition* lol. ~)

(*not that there's anything super personal or weird about the addition, just that it's meant to be kind of casual Side Commentary, not really part of the Main Point Of The Poll, so it would feel kind of weird for it to be emphasized by being included in reblogs unless the reblogs were explicitly about the side commentary, etc..... if that makes sense.. ANYWAY!)

It's neat to read the written descriptions that people are mentioning in the tags, since it's almost like I can see or conceptualize the idea as well, but it's just.. I'm not SEEING it.

Like for example: I can imagine a vase, it's a muted mint green and slightly translucent, elaborate golden birds sprawled down the side in streaks of thin rough watery paint, the base material shimmers gently in the light, there's a small chip where it's cracked on the handle, etc, etc. .. But as I'm thinking about this I see literally nothing.

It seems like perhaps some people can visualize an object first, and THEN describe what they see. But I sort of work backwards. I am building the object in my mind, I can never see it, but it's a collection of concepts. Rather than visualizing all details as a whole at once, I am adding each detail one by one, building onto the IDEA of the thing.

The vase doesn't have a crack on the handle because I just automatically visualized a vase with a crack. It was more that I cognitively understand the concept of a vase, what they tend to be made out of, how they tend to look and feel, the properties they have. So based purely on that knowledge, I can imagine "a chip is something that a vase could have, it would look this way and behave this way" - more like... I'm constructing a bullet point Fact List about the object rather than seeing it.

So if you tell me to imagine an object, I can, in a way, imagine that object in great detail, but it's just.. I'm not SEEING those details, more just knowing it's qualities in a purely conceptual way. Sometimes in the tags when people are like "yeah I can see the skin of the apple, texture, little dots on the surface" it's like… I can imagine that too, I can know it's there, but just with no visual attached.

I guess rather than SEEING something and going ''ah. I know what this looks like because I have seen it''. I more just skip that visual step entirely and go ''I know what this looks like, I just randomly have a list of information about the concept in my mind.'' etc. Maybe similar to how sometimes in dreams, even though a house may look completely different and be in an entirely fake 'dreamlike' environment, you just somehow KNOW intuitively that it's meant to be your childhood home or something. Even when it looks nothing like it in reality. There's a built-in base knowledge of the properties or information of some things within a dreaming mind, etc.

--

This also makes me wonder about like.. how storytelling and myth is so important to cultures all across time. Or how this could tie also into concepts of religion.. etc. etc. If so many people really can kind of conjure these vivid images in their mind, then maybe that's part of why certain things are so meaningful to them? Like a "religious experience" being something you can actually really SEE/feel/lingering with you in your head, rather than just abstract words on a page, detached purely theoretical ideas, etc... hmmm

.

Plus also just for average emotional stuff too, even outside of broader cultural conceptual attachments..

Like, I don't think there's a direct 1 to 1 link (obviously not all people with mental illnesses that significantly reduce their emotional or expressive capacity also MUST have aphantasia or vice versa), but it's interesting as someone who DOES also have a much more lessened emotional range/pretty flat affect/etc. etc. to think like.. Maybe I WOULD be more emotional, in a way, if I could have these vivid experiences..?

Perhaps memories would hold deeper significance if they could really stay with me vividly. Or storytelling would evoke more of a deep emotional reaction to me if I could really picture and feel the things that are going on. If things were more TANGIBLE in my brain, rather than always merely conceptual highly abstracted ideas.

Kind of like, it's probably easier to get over the death of a pet or something, if after not seeing them for an hour you already don't remember what they looked like (beyond just a vague fact list of traits), and you have no vivid memories or mental reminders of them (beyond just factual information stores). COGNTIVIELY you can appreciate the idea of their absence, of course, you still miss them, but there's just no remaining visceral sensory ties. A very "out of sight, out of mind" sort of thing in terms of attachments, memories, emotions, etc. Maybe certain things are easier to "get over", when you're not having constant mental sensory reminders that occasionally rekindle your feelings about the event or etc.??

(like for example, maybe someone could remain angry about an argument longer if they could vividly replay it in their head over and over again. VS just like.. 'Yes I can factually recall the fact I had an argument, and I do have knowledge stored about what precisely was said, but any sort of sensory data such as sights/smells/feelings, etc. from the actual moment of the event are long gone and can never be conjured again in my mind." etc.)

Which again, I think lessened emotional permanence and image permanence in the mind are NOT inherently linked, can all be caused by different things for different people. And, since I can't visualize anything in my head, maybe I'm misunderstanding how it happens and the effect it may have on stuff like remembering things you miss or replaying arguments, etc. etc. But it's still a little interesting to think about, if they could influence each other to some degree.... :0c --

Lastly, It's also weird because I'm actually pretty good at estimating distance and spaces? I can quickly assemble furniture without an instruction manual, pretty easily have a concept of how much space a chair may take up in a room, how two mechanical parts might fit together - BUT, I am literally not actually visualizing anything. I cannot see 3D objects in my mind at ALL. It's like.. just based on the pure List Of Facts About Things Which I Have Observed.. I can intuitively go "oh this works like this/this is this size" just because.. I know it's that size. I don't have to see anything to know..?

But then on the other hand, I'm terrible at directions without a map (I guess because a 3d outdoor environment has WAY more complexity than like.. "Will this square fit into another square?"etc. lol ).

BUT, I also draw/sculpt/etc. entirely without references, and seem to do mostly okay at that..? Like.. I can't even remember the last time I actually used a reference or looked at anything whilst drawing. It's all muscle memory, and me just adjusting as I go until something "looks right" on paper, I never have a set image in my head (or external reference) before hand.. Hrmm....

AND.. I used to say that I had a photographic memory when I was younger, which I know NOW is not true (I always thought it was just an expression, not that people could literally see things in a photographic way). But what I was describing is, I do often associate information with imagery, just... without imagery....

Like "Oh, I know that I took my medicine earlier today because I have a distinct memory, a snapshot of a moment in time, of me rattling the pill bottle in my hands as I looked up at a stop sign while in the back seat of a car". When I say this, I can't ACTUALLY see/feel/hear a pill bottle, or vividly picture a stop sign, but it's more just a factual recall, of. Even though I don't see these things, I know they happened, the information of them happening (me hearing a sound and also looking at a stop sign at the same time) has been stored in my brain as a memory, a collection of linked facts. --

As for other senses, I cannot taste or feel anything in my head AT ALL.. wild that some people mention that. I mean, again, I can have a purely factual recall as if reading a textbook, knowing the information of 'X item typically has X texture, therefore I can imagine what it may be like to feel it' or 'X usually has this taste' etc. - but I can never actually experience those senses in any capacity in my mind alone. I would say audio is my strongest mental sense (maybe a 2.5 or 3 (if it were translated onto the above scale where 1 is most vivid and 5 is nothing)), then visual (4.5 at most, usually 5), and then taste and smell and such are just complete 5, absolutely nothing, I didn't even know people could experience taste or feeling just in their mind alone.. lol...

I know this is just a silly bad quality random screencap of a screencap that I found on facebook lol, BUT it's a succinct enough image to easily describe the concept in a quick/accessible way hopefully :

-

(and of course, feel free to elaborate in tags, etc.! (especially elaborating about other senses as well.. can you "hear" in your mind just as well as you can "see"? taste? etc.) It's an interesting topic to me, as someone who's like a 4.5 at MOST lol. I'm curious what option will be the most common :0c )

[plural-rambles]

Hello! Welcome to Plural Rambles, a place where you can talk about anything any everything you want about your system and experiences with it.

Oftentimes you wanna talk about things but feel unsafe, uncomfortable or awkward talking about them on your own blog. This is a place where you can do that with hopefully a little less anxiety, especially since now anonymity is an option.

Credit to @wonderhorror-sys for the idea.

-

We are SOA, it/he, masc and non-human terms ONLY, NO they/them or it&/you&.

We also run several other blogs.

We are pro-endo; the blog has no DNI. Just don't be a dick.

Guidelines, tagging system and promo tagging under the cut.

-

Guidelines:

[PT: Guidelines:]

You can NOT post:

Discourse, fakeclaiming, blaming or bashing on any topics.

Anything advocating for external violence toward anyone.

Anything super explicit [sex or gore/violence].

Talk of being actively suicidal.

You CAN post:

NSFW in moderation. So, you can talk in some detail about what you do if it's relevant. But don't submit like, smut levels of detail? If you're unsure, feel free to DM it first for clarification. [Again this goes for both sex and gore/violence.]

As @fictive-culture puts it, "unconventional" in-sys relationships and experiences. We also recommend @fictionfolk-safehaven for this as well.

Vents, rants, trauma and negative experiences to your comfort level and appropriateness assessment.

IDEAS of what kinds of things you can ramble about:

Headspace! Layouts, maps, functions, in-sys abilities, etc.

Relationships! Talk about your people, talk about how relationships form, talk about dynamics, gush about how much you love your people.

Origins and syscovery

Roles and abilities

Identities of any kind

Theories and projects

Special mention of religion, you should join @the-haven-keepers-collective's Discord server to be part of an essay on religion and plurality 🤎.

Et cetera! Whatever else.

Reminder that your posts don't need to have form or make sense, you can just ramble and get it off your mind if you need to. If you've got word salad to any degree that's also fine, you're all welcome here 🤎.

Also, submissions can be as long or short as you see fit.

AND if your submission involves any pictures but you want to be anonymous, you can say so at the beginning and we will post it ourselves, just like on @syscord-out-of-context.

Any hate, jusgement or harassment anywhere on the blog will be deleted and blocked.

-

Tagging System:

[PT: Tagging System:]

'nsfw' but not 'nsft'. Will also have 'gore and violence' if applicable.

Rather than 'unconventional' we will tag 'taboo', alongside whichever taboo is applicable such as 'cw incest' or 'cw age gap'.

Other common or requested triggers will be tagged as [for example] 'murder tw' unless they also fall under taboo cw or 'gore and violence' tags.

'vent post' for any vents, rants, traumadumping or negativity.

'outreach' for if it's indicated some kind of response is wanted.

All of these will be added generously just in case. None of them are judgements, they are just to allow other people to filter.

Other tags include [but are not limited to]:

submission, ramble

not a ramble, maintenance, off topic

'-- Name || pro/nouns' for the headmate processing the submission

'anonymous', anon tag or username will also be tagged

fictive, factive, introject

'sysparenting' and 'natalgenic'

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Promo tags: Can we get a boost?

@funnier-as-a-system @funnier-as-a-fictive @funnierasafictive @intuspluric-culture-is @introjectheavy-cultureis @fictive-culture @fictionfolk-safehaven @plurality-culture-is @plural-questioning @plural-polls @pluralasking @thedailyheadmate

-- Avery (he/it)

[heretherebeturtles-comic]

How long does the process take you to get one (or more) comic page done? I love the idea of making comics but i suck at structure, you know with the script and posting/layout. I was wondering if you had any tips or what you wish you knew before you started.?

Sorry if this had been asked before

OOOooooo a fun question for me!! I love talking about comic creation :D

I do my best to keep the full process under 2 days (or 12-14 hours of work) per fully coloured page. I'm trying to get faster, but speed comes with time and experience.

Hmmm as for tips and things I wish I knew... so many things... I should let it be known that I am an artist and not really a writer, but your questions are focused on script/planning/structure, so I'm going to focus the advice on that.

Start with something small - Learn about making comics and find a comfortable style through making a couple smaller comics and then try your passion project. Writing and planning smaller comics with fewer pages takes a different kind of puzzle solving and thought process. Smaller page limits can force you to try new things which you can then apply to larger projects to save time; limitations breed creativity after all. Every attempt made (even an unfinished project) is knowledge gained that you can apply again for future projects.

Study comics! - It's hard to create if you aren't feeding the mind and giving it things to learn and create from. Read comics made by professionals and study how they handle pacing. How many pages are they dedicating to each moment? What do you think of their pacing and what would you change? Take a sketchbook and make small rectangles and draw out the panel layout from that comic. What are they doing that works and what don't you like about it? How would you do that differently? ... I think this is me assigning homework... i am so sorry.

Set a hard page limit - Try to get your story told within that limit, and then add more pages if necessary. More pages = more time you have to spend working on it. Most standard single issue American comics are roughly 24 pages. I try to work inside that limit using a rough 5 page per scene structure.

Condense or Cut - I struggle so hard with this one, but comics aren't written in the same way as a novel is. They have a slightly different plot structure and a much more limited amount of pages to tell the story in. Obviously it depends on the story being told, and what kind of scenes are important to that genre of story, but in general, unnecessary scenes should be cut out. examples...

CUT! Having the characters go out to get ice cream is cute, but you don't need to show them each ordering their ice cream unless the flavour they choose is an important plot point. Skip to the last one receiving their ice cream and turning to the others who already have theirs and are having that deep discussion. OR skip that scene entirely and have a quiet panel of them sitting in the park at sunset, already holding their ice cream, before delving into the deep emotional conversation they will be having.

CONDENSE! You can combine two scenes if you need to. If you have one scene where two characters are having a casual conversation and another where they are sneaking into a building? Stick them together. They can sneak AND talk and now you've only used up 5 pages instead of 10.

Comics take a LONG TIME to make!! - you have to make peace with that _(:Ⅰ」∠)_ Comics, especially full colour ones, are an extremely labour intensive and time consuming way of telling a story. If one page takes 1 day (8 hrs of work) and you have 24 pages, that is 24 days of working on one comic.

Thumbnails! - Draw the pages small and rough first! It's easier to plan things and mess around with the layouts when you don't have an emotional attachment to how the art inside looks. Once you have a layout you like, you can then draw it again in full page size and work on it from there.

Page and panel layouts are my favourite part of the whole process, I could talk forever about it, but I do not have the energy for it right now. I'll save panel/page layout for another time.

It doesn't have to be perfect!!! - IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT!!!! (shouted with excitement btw). Panels can be boring! A page can be extremely simple! The art can be messy! The dialog can be simple! The plot can go nowhere! In fact it is really really fun to make a messy imperfect comic on purpose. Destroy the perfectionist in you, because they will always and forever hold you back from actually creating things. "what if it's bad?" what if it's fun? what if you learn cool things?

Anyway, those are my tips/advice, idk if I actually answered what you were asking... sorry about all the time commitment ones, that is something I really wish I had figured out a few years ago lol.

Comics are fun to make and a lot of learning how to make them is just jumping in, encountering a problem, and then learning how to solve it.

[tonythr]

The Watcher's telescope view is a social commentary and here's why

Ok so let's set some things right first. City of Tears is amazing.

(Yes, Pale Court is also an amazing mod)

I've played Hollow Knight many times, and City of Tears is probably the one location I never get tired of. The scenery, the lore, the room layout, the music, the atmosphere - it's all perfect. It's the culmination of Halllownest's beauty, the peak of the game's art style, and the narrative's most essential location. City of Tears is the heart of Hollow Knight.

This game is a story about a Kingdom and its death, a tragedy of a society that was built on dreams of light but ultimately was consumed by the light so much that darkness became its only hope. And City of Tears stands at the center of this story. So it's fitting that the themes of corrupted dreams, society flaws, and dark hopes are what shape the lore and atmosphere of this beautiful, gorgeous location.

Did you ever notice that the tears of this Kingdom are dark despite them originating in a glowing blue lake, and the waters that flood the streets are almost as dark as the void in the Abyss? Do you ever think about how the vibrant blue color of the City is basically a culmination of how the color blue is presented in other locations (Howling Cliffs, Forgotten Crossroads, and later Royal Waterways being more of a remix of it), and how it's tied to the very essence of Hallownest (and how Resting Grounds, the location that contains Blue Lake and also uses a bright blue color, represent the very foundation of Hallownest's history, that being Seer's story about the Moth Tribe's betrayal that started the war between Pale King and the Radiance)? Do you feel like Soul Master basically represents the thunder and the lightning in this never-ending rain? Do you get it????

Anyway yeah, there are many things that can be said about City of Tears, and this is hopefully not the last time I make a post about it. What I want to talk about here is the City's society.

Basically, Monomon said it better than anyone could:

It's a very complicated topic. The narrative basically explores the inner mechanisms of a free mind, how its primary need is finding a purpose, and how its purpose turns out to be a constant need of... something. Anything. As long as there is something to want, a free mind will want it. As long as there is something to yearn for, something to enjoy, something to dream about, our minds are going to move in its direction, never wanting to stop. Because a stasis is worse than death. Because a world without dreams is an empty world.

But then again, isn't constant yearning another instance of, well, constance? If dreams never end but also never evolve, doesn't that create another kind of stasis?

Like I said, it's very complicated. Let's go back to what I was getting at in the first place. What I actually wanted to say is this:

Theese guys fucking fucked up as a society.

It's classic dystopian shit (or maybe I'm using the wrong word, but you get the point). Rich people are living in luxury while the rest are suffering. They're making gold a fucking religion and are seeing it as the only beauty in the world. The corrupt upper class are using heavy gatekeeping on the lower class.

Literally.

What's interesting is that, at first, we barely see any lower class bugs in the City. There's suspiciously few regular husks in this location, compared to how many rich guys are on the eastern side. But then we get to Soul Sanctum and it all starts to make sense.

There are no red cloaks in those corpse piles. Only the poor were killed for those experiments. It can't be a coincidence. It's straight-up elitism-based genocide (again, I don't know if I'm using the right terms, correct me if there's a better way to say that, but the point is clear).

Also, see how many streets are flooded on the western side in comparison to the eastern side.

Point is, the bugs that ruined the kingdom by always wanting more (what Monomon wrote about) are most likely theese rich ones. It's a very fitting thing for this dystopian narrative: neverending greed that leads to the downfall of a civilization.

There's a note in the Hunter's Journal that describes it in the best way possible:

For every location in the game, there is a place that functions as the center of its essence, its narrative heart, the culmination of its themes. For Queen's Gardens it's the White Lady's cocoon, for Greenpath it's the Lake of Unn, and for City of Tears (or at least its eastern part, the one with the upper class) it's the Watcher's Spire. The tallest building of the great capital. The home of (evidently) the most rich and influential bug of the City's high society. Literally the top of this social hierarchy.

He is also arguably the most mysterious dreamer out of all three. I mean, why does he have only one eye? What type of bug is he? How did he get this much power? Does he really have some kind of connection with the Collector? Is he a motherfucking fluke? Why does he seem to have an obsession with serving the King?

That last question is kinda answered by the cut content though.

That last sentence is kinda confusing. Is it regret? Is it humility? Is it pride in his sacrifice? In any case, here we see that Lurien actually knew that the Pale King was literally a god, and desired to worship him, like any other bug yearns to worship some kind of deity. So while other bugs of Hallownest worshiped PK because he was a monarch, albeit a godlike one (for all they knew he could be just an extraordinary bug, but a bug nonetheless), Lurien worshiped him as an actual god. And the intricacies of worshiping a god are one of the central themes of the game. From the moth tribe's betrayal of Radiance leading to the birth of the Infection to the Godseeker's shenanigans leading to the birth of the Shade Lord - the game makes multiple statements about gods, religious devotion and the semantics of divine power. Just that one idea that a god takes its power from the ones that worship it deserves its own post - heck, it deserves its own book.

So yeah, Lurien's devotion to the King is an important part of the story. He sure is an important character in this narrative. He also got a cool house. Being able to observe the entirety of the Hallownest's capital is badass.

But there's one thing I find odd about all that, and it's the moment we get to actually look through his legendary telescope.

Is it just me, or does this feel kinda... Underwhelming? Almost disappointing? I mean, don't get me wrong, I love this view, it's beautiful, and I would certainly love to be able to see something like this with my own eyes irl, but, looking at this picture, I can't help but wonder...

Did he actually see anything from up there?

In cut dialogue, Lurien talks about how he loves the City's streets, and his hidden lore tablet contains words about his love for bugkind, but... I see neither any streets on this image, nor any bugs (that are not vengeflies). Only spiked rooftops and rainy fog, clouding the view of the actual City.

And sure, the Spire has many windows and even had multiple watchers who were helping Lurien with overseeing the capital...

But his own spot was always this one.

His telescope was sealed in one place, letting him see only a small portion of the City and its life. Almost like his own worldview was stuck in one perspective.

Notice the wording here. It's not "The Seals must remain". It's "Bonds must remain". He's not thinking just about the Seals containing the Infection. He's thinking about the whole Kingdom needing to stay unchanged. His dream is the stasis that the Knight (and also Monomon, Hornet and, in a sense, even Radiance) want to end. The stasis that the Pale King wanted to create in order for his Kingdom (and therefore himself) to be eternal. The stasis that would allow for both Pale King and Lurien's worship of him to remain forever.

But there is always a cost to ascending higher than others, and it's that you can no longer see what's going on below or who's suffering down there. I think Lurien, sitting atop the tallest tower, was actually detached from the struggles of regular bugs. He and his Spire are the culmination of the City's upper class' ignorance towards the ones who were below them on the social hierarchy. A dreamer who dreamt of watching over the very heart of the holy civilization lived so high up he could no longer see his beloved world in its complicated, detailed entirety – and the tears of the stasis created by those like him only blinded him more.

All those flooded streets, those broken buildings, those empty halls, those starving bugs, those sealed doors - even though he watched over them, he couldn't see them.

I'm pretty sure Lurien didn't even know about the Soul Master's experiments, despite the fact that the Soul Sanctum was located right next to his Spire.

Or maybe he knew but chose to turn a blind eye to it (pun intended).

But it's kind of poetic, isn't it? It's the beauty of the tragedy of this game's characters. A Beast who had to surrender everything to the opposing civilization. A Teacher who could no longer teach. A Watcher who couldn't see the truth.

And all that makes me wonder... How much suffering could the Pale King see, standing on that platform at the top of the Abyss, facing away from the pit where his children died?

TL;DR: Lurien's point of view was too high up to actually see what was truly going on down there, both literally and metaphorically. His desire to worship the Pale King made him ignorant of the struggles of regular bugs. Similarly, the extreme elitism of the high society of Hallownest lead to ignorance, discrimination and greed, which ultimately caused the sprawl of the Infection. This side of Lurien's story might also parallel the Pale King's with his ignorance towards the discarded vessels.

TL;DR²: Eat the rich

[ms-demeanor]

since twitter has become actively hostile to its users, so they came to tumblr, and reddit has become actively hostile to its users, so they came to tumblr, what do we do now that tumblr is becoming (more) actively hostile to its users? i’ve been here for over a decade so i know tumblr users are the type to cling on despite everything and revel in undoing every change, but i’m so tired of the way this website breaks the way it fundamentally works in order to appeal to new users. the twitterfication of the site seems so much worse than when people jumped ship after the porn ban, and even then, only small communities (and twitter) cropped up as solutions. you might not be the person to ask for a definitive answer, but i figured a tech blog might be interested in considering - what do we do when there’s nowhere left to go?

Okay so, I mean this very seriously: how has tumblr meaningfully become like twitter?

I don't personally find the sidebar view obnoxious and it seems to me like just another layout change that's pretty typical to tumblr. New users are getting signed up with a bit more emphasis on algorithmic feeds, but that is still very easy to change (MUCH easier than on any other social platform) and the algorithm has been there for everyone for quite a while, we just typically don't notice it because a lot of long-term tumblr users don't go into the "for you" feed.

I don't think that tumblr *has* fundamentally broken the way that it works to appeal to new users. My dash now is still very much like my dash in 2019, and still very much like my dash in 2018 (though much less pornographic). Reblogs are still reblogs, likes are still likes. Replies, for all that they seem like they've been around forever, are new and good and I think they work well. I'm irritated that the notes menu doesn't have a "view all" option but I think that's a worthwhile tradeoff for an easy way to see tags.

I *do not* understand why tumblr has broken linking back to previous reblogs but I don't think that's out of an effort to act like twitter; it is a bizarre choice that I dislike and don't understand but I also don't think that it has fundamentally changed the way the site works and i mean you've been around long enough that I'm sure you've had the same experience I have of going into the notes of a post and randomly clicking until you found a version that you wanted to reblog without a bunch of bullshit at the bottom. Tumblr has always kind of sucked, this change DOES suck but it doesn't suck in a way that is particularly novel or insurmountable. (For instance, I think this change sucks MUCH LESS than when they made posts with links invisible to the search, that is something that is genuinely bad that has been long lasting but doesn't get brought up much in lists of the ways that tumblr has gone wrong)

Tumblr *is* changing, but I think it is changing more incrementally and less terribly than other parts of the internet. I also hate the floating clown, the login walls, the dash-only view for blogs (you can't archive it and I HATE that), and - to an extent - the new lightbox on mobile. And I dislike that less than I thought I would but I don't think it's a fundamental change that necessarily impacts my interactions with the site - it *adds* a feature that I don't care for but it doesn't *break* anything that I require to have a good time on tumblr - in that way I think of it very much like Live. People hate Live so much and I find that perplexing because it is so easy to simply ignore it.

But that's not really your question; that's just some stuff I want people to think about because as much as tumblr has changed in the last two years it is nowhere near as fucked up as the recent things that twitter and reddit have pulled.

So, as to your question: where do we go?

Well. Not to be an extremely old person on the internet, but damned if I don't miss email lists. And forums. God I miss forums. Neither of those things has all the bonuses of platforms like twitter or reddit or tumblr or facebook, but they were great ways to hang out with people you liked on the internet.

The internet is changing. I can feel it, you can feel it, I'm pretty sure we're all like cattle in a field lifting our noses and hearing some distant rumbling and becoming slowly aware that it's almost time to run. There's a coming stampede and it isn't here yet but you know it's on its way. You're not imagining that, that's how things feel right now and there are a shitload of things contributing to it.

Things like SESTA/FOSTA and KOSA (which has not passed yet but is a big red flag waving on the horizon) have been eroding away the way that users on various platforms can function. Some platforms have consolidated in ways that harm users; some new platforms have popped up and shaken up the map of the internet; some platforms are being torn apart brick by brick by owners who don't care about the users. It kind of seems like people are actually looking up and realizing that advertising is A) bad and B) doesn't actually work and I think we're running straight toward another advertising-based crash like we saw in 2017. It feels like all the desperate things that tumblr is doing is just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic as the internet as a whole starts to sink into the ocean.

Honestly, I don't think it's that bad. I think it *feels* bad, but I think we're looking at a slow whimpering death of the platforms, not a bang. I think tumblr is going to hang on at least for a few years and I think it's going to end up like livejournal and myspace, which both still exist as websites that are recognizable as updated versions of the sites they were in 2004-2010. The thing that I think would really, honestly hurt tumblr in a fundamental way is if it moved to a more algorithmic and data-sales based model of advertising, and I think that's still pretty distant. I think Automattic is aware that killing the chronological feed would be the one unforgivable sin that would cause a mass exodus and a final crash, and I think when we see that, when we can't just scroll through the feed and see what our friends did that day in order of when they did it, that's when the party is over here.

But that's still not answering your question.

So, where do we go? What do we do? Well, for now, I'd say it's a good time to get contact info for your friends across various platforms. Get email addresses, get phone numbers.

Now is also the time for you to set up a personal website. NeoCities is currently the best place to do this, though it takes a lot more effort than just starting a blog on tumblr. I think that various oldschool blogging sites like Wordpress and Blogger/Blogspot/whatever the hell the google one is are a better place to have your emergency backup than a more platform-y platform if you aren't up to doing something with NeoCities.

If you've got the ability to do so and a group of people who are interested in the same core subject, set up a forum. There's a decent amount of off-the-shelf forum software out there and a text-and-small-images forum isn't prohibitively expensive, but it's never going to be huge and you're never going to have the kind of spread and virality and random connections that you would on a platform with millions or billions of users.

If you can't set up a forum, setting up or joining a discord server for your friends is a decent enough option at the moment, and may be a very good option for people who are looking to keep their interactions more private.

But yeah i think right now is a great time for people to start setting up their own personal websites, to start visiting actual webpages again, to start bookmarking their friends' websites, and to start collecting contact info that isn't tied to platforms.