#fun with third party tools

[eorzeancryptids]

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[xavigav]

The Reddit Blackout, #196, And Being New to Tumblr

okay i've seen a lot of people in the past ~24 hours or so confused by everything going on with Reddit & Tumblr from both sides - people new to tumblr who don't know how to use it, and tumblr users who don't know what's going on with reddit and why many of its users have joined up here i know this isn't really related to my blog but fun fact about me: i was up until recently a very active reddit user and even mod a subreddit, but I've also been on tumblr for about 3 years now on different accounts, so I think I can see pretty well from both sides of this and explain what's going on this post will be split in 2 sections: what happened with reddit (and what #196 means), and a guide for new users

1. What The Hell Is Going On With Reddit?

The thing that's caused all this ruckus is a major change to Reddit's API, which is what Reddit provides to people so they can pull directly from Reddit to make third-party apps or tools.

The change is that Reddit is changing its previously free API to be paid. Which on its own kinda sucks for developers, but it's not unexpected. They need to make money somehow, right?

The problem is that the API pricing is WAY TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE. The developer of the most popular 3rd party Reddit app, Apollo, says it will cost him $20 million a year to continue running the app as normal.

Essentially, this pricing forces almost everything third-party to shut down, which causes 3 major problems:

Third-party apps cannot keep running, which sucks for normal users because Reddit's official app is awful. It's slow, its video player is a thing of nightmares, it doesn't have many useful features third-party developers have made.

It sucks even more for visually impaired users because they can't use the official Reddit app at all. Reddit's official app does not work with iOS's native text-to-speech function. Third party apps, on the other hand, often do. So Reddit is forcing blind users away.

Third-party moderator tools cannot keep running, which sucks for moderators because many rely on these tools to properly moderate their subreddits. And moderators are often necessary, because without them subreddits get banned and hate speech and even CSA can often run rampant.

So you see why this change is bad.

Reddit users were PISSED.

So over the past week and a half or so, they have been working on organizing a site-wide blackout. The majority of the most active subreddits have now gone private. Some are only doing it for 48 hours, others (such as r/196) are doing it indefinitely.

That's why you can't access most of Reddit right now, and that's why many users have come here.

You're probably still wondering, though - what is this #196?

Well, as you may guess, it's connected to that subreddit r/196 I just mentioned. r/196 is a subreddit which only has one rule: every time you visit, you must post before you leave.

That's it, that's the subreddit.

The thing about r/196 that set it apart from most other subreddits - and what lends the subreddit's users perfectly to Tumblr - is that it was dominated by queer and leftist users.

So now they've come here and set up shop in #196 and r/196 so they can continue their merry little shitposting.

There's a ton of lore related to r/196, actually, but this is already a long tumblr post and quite frankly I cannot be bothered to write about it at the moment.

2. I'm Here From Reddit, What Now?

Hello there, random new user. As a double-citizen of Reddit and Tumblr, let me show you around this place.

First off, there are some other people who are better at explaining that I am who have made some really helpful things. Watch this Strange Aeons video as a guide to Tumblr culture and functionality and read this post which directly compares Reddit and Tumblr.

Assuming you've done that, here's some additional advice of my own:

Do you miss sorting subreddits by top of all time/the year/the month? Well, you can do something very similar with tags! If you go to a tag at the top of the screen you can select top, and then at the dropdown that says "all time" you can select different time periods! Even 6 months, which Reddit hasn't ever had.

Tumblr has a lot of cool customization features! Even outside your icon/banner/bio, you can change you blog colors and on desktop you can have an html theme (which has its own thriving community here). That customization is part of what sets Tumblr apart from everywhere else - I think you'll enjoy playing with it.

Notes will probably confuse you at first. Unlike the different numbers for upvotes and comments, notes combines the total number of likes, reblogs, and replies into the same number.

Outside of organizing your own blog, when making your own posts tags are what help other people find your post. Use them! But don't abuse them, because then people will just block you.

There are three ways of people finding your post: if someone follows you, if someone follows the tag(s) assigned to your post, and if someone is just scrolling through the tag(s) assigned to your post (and also the secret 4th way no one uses, which is finding it on the trending page, but even if people did use it no one will find your post initially that way)

tumblr is no longer The Discourse Website. And unlike what Reddit wants you to believe for some reason, it is very much alive still. Most of the people seeking fights have moved to Twitter (though some have also moved back here again). You will not get any brownie points for being a dipshit like you do on some subreddits.

So there, welcome to the hellsite (affectionate), you'll pick up on all the in-jokes eventually, for now just try not to be a nuisance and soon enough this'll be your new internet home.

[karrakincavalrycollege]

How to implement new NPCs into Lancer's Shadow of the Wolf Module!

Vague, very minor spoilers ahead.

One of Shadow of the Wolf’s standout features is its colorful cast of premade NPCs, but of course there’s always that GM temptation of “but what if I add more of them…”, and I’m here to help with that! Because of Shadow of the Wolf’s structured tools for NPC interaction (which I have found very helpful), you’ll want to assemble a few elements before just dropping someone into the game. Now keep in mind that this entire post comes with the disclaimer of "Don't overuse this", there's already a big cast of NPCs to interact with in a relatively short module, so you shouldn't add a ton more in without really thinking about why they're good additions.

For the sake of having an example, I’ll be going through and creating a SotW style bio for the intern character I created for this blog, Lady Terese LaFleur of the House of Order.

Basic Bio

The first thing you’ll want to set up is a bio, which is a pretty common thing to do regardless of the type of game you run. In short, this should go over baseline information about an NPC, provide an example quote to set the tone for their dialogue, establish the character’s general appearance, vibe and basic personality early on, then go a bit into their history and connections. It generally should do it all in a relatively small space. For Terese, I’ll set up something like this.

Lady Terese LaFleur, Third Heir of House LaFleur She Her House of Order “Please stop damaging that statue! I’m pretty sure it’s against the rules…  … No I can’t make you stop if you don’t want to…”  Lady Terese LaFleur is a young woman with a neatly maintained, but relatively plain appearance. Whether wearing her school uniform or traditional House of Order administrative clothing, Terese seems to be trying to fade into the background at all times.  Being the third in line to a fairly wealthy family with connections to Archchancellor Zoeva, Terese has been able to secure a position as the Karrakin Cavalry College’s social media intern. While she is technically a pilot, she has very little focus on her piloting courses and prefers to spend time focusing on her Noble Studies courses.  It may not be the grandest of aspirations, but she clings to the position due to finding the options of joining The Second Suns, entering the Xenoglossary or getting a real job terrifying. Her nervousness about keeping a clean career track has also made her highly susceptible to intimidation and threats from other students.

Approval Clock

Up next, you’ll want to establish an approval clock! These are a fun narrative tool that Shadow of the Wolf uses to track each NPC’s relationship with the PCs, and whether you choose to track individual clocks for each NPC’s connection to each PC, or have a general “Party approval” clock for each NPC, you’ll generally want to determine where they start off. Someone more unfriendly like a mean teacher or cunning rival might start at a 2 or 3, while someone more friendly or outgoing might start at a 6 or so. For Terese, I’m gonna start this off at 5! She’s pretty neutral on the party and her approval can drop or raise pretty quickly early on depending on how they act.

Approval Rewards

Once you’ve sorted out the approval clock, you’ll want to pick a reward for the party to get from this NPC when that approval clock is maxed out! This can take a lot of forms like exotic gear, bonus reserves or even entire new mechs!

Because Terese is something of a bureaucrat in training, I’m gonna say that her reward is one use of the “Access” reserve per mission, essentially allowing the party to leverage their connection with her to get keycards, passwords and permissions that they otherwise wouldn’t have.

That covers all the basics that you need, but there are two other fun things that can be added in as well!

Combat Stats

There's always the fun opportunity to drop an NPC into combat as a bonus opponent, or allow the party to call upon them as an ally. When designing an NPC statblock, you should be mindful when creating something that the player characters may be able to secure as an ally in a future combat, so make sure they don't have anything too broken to function on a player-controlled side. They should generally be a Commander, Elite or Veteran in most cases, though when functioning as an ally, abilities that grant extra turns like Ready and Waiting should be removed when they act on the party’s behalf.

Because Terese has been pranked to deal with having a fucked-up HORUS technology mech, I’m going to be making her a Necromancer-class NPC from Enhanced Combat, then applying the Horror template from Dustgrave and the base-rules Commander template then giving her the traits Death’s Grasp, Abhorrent Redundancies, and Abominable. She hates this mech a lot.

Reference Image

Finally, I think its good to provide a reference image of the NPC you’re adding! Whether you use a picrew, draw something or commission something, it’s just nice to have a visual reference when interacting with these characters. I personally used this picrew to make a nice little example with Terese.

[teecupangel]

I don’t have the most complete knowledge of either piece of media, but my two most recent interests are Assassin’s Creed and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

I’m not sure how the standard Desmond Isekai would go, but I feel like Edward Elric as an Assassin would be nuts (regardless of if he can do alchemy or not).

It would be fun to make Edward an Assassin but, considering Desmond’s personality, Desmond would probably be more inclined to teach people who do not know how to use alchemy (or can’t use alchemy in general). They would become the basis of his Brotherhood because, once Desmond realized that he’s in another world, he’d definitely try to build his own network.

Especially once he noticed just how much power the military wielded in Amestrian.

And then he learns of the serial killer Scar and investigate why Scar was killing state alchemists specially which leads to him uncovering the truth about the supposed Ishvalan civil war.

And that’s how Desmond and his Brotherhood become a third party. Whether alchemist or not, they assassinate those who use their power to harm the innocent. This, of course, causes him to be in the opposite sides with the Elric brothers.

It doesn’t help that he taught his Assassins how to take down alchemists even though they themselves do not use alchemy (a combination of Assassin tools, skills of an Assassin and a bit of help from 21st century knowledge) but Desmond himself do not condone Scar’s more destructive way of doing things and it’s a toss up if Scar is meant to be an assassination target or a possible ‘recruit’.

Mustang himself believes that the Assassin Brotherhood (as they call themselves) would come for him sooner or later considering many of the assassinated alchemists also participated in the Ishvalan civil war.

That’s why there are rumors that Desmond himself is an Ishvalan (which isn’t true but a few Assassins in his Brotherhood is Ishvalan).

The Elric brothers only see him in the shadows but Edward tried to fight him because, as far as he knows, the Brotherhood was killing alchemists in general (there’s a lot of hushhush about the bad things the targets have done). Edward absolutely transformed his metal arm to a hidden blade once and Desmond took that as an insult while Edward only did it because he realized it was the best weapon at the heat of the moment so there's a bit of 'bad blood' between them.

And then there’s the homunculi who are interested in him but seem to not do anything but observe him.

They know he’s not of this world and there might be a possibility that The Truth led him into this world.

…

Or…

And Desmond is calling bullshit on this.

Lust may or may not have implied that Desmond is a homunculus by the name of ‘Acedia’.

[maximumzombiecreator]

What's your preferred system for megadungeon play? I tried to make one in 5e and while it was fun I really had to fight 5e's rules to make it work

Yeah, I had a similar experience when I ran a 5e megadungeon, and as I've mentioned in a few posts I've run Abomination Vaults in pathfinder 2e, and I think that system isn't good for megadungeons either.

Broadly, I think for megadungeons, I want a couple things from a system:

First, I want combat to be fairly quick. I think room restocking and wandering monsters are important, and I don't want to feel like I'm bogging things down with extra combat. I want easier combats to resolve in 5-10 minutes, not 20-30.

Second, I want meaningful attrition. If there are going to be easy fights, those easy fights still need to have stakes. The party should still want to avoid them if possible. This means resource management, difficult healing, injury systems, consumables, etc. Anything that is going to create a cost that small fights can incur even when death isn't on the table.

Third, I want good timekeeping. Making dungeon time matter is important. If dungeon time doesn't matter, it takes away a lot of decision points. When you're tracking every 10 minutes, the decision to stay in a room and rest / investigate / plan becomes significant, and that is going to drive interesting choices constantly.

Fourth, I want a good balance between the players having interesting tools to interact with the dungeon and the players being able to trivialize the dungeon. I like players getting access to spells like Spider Climb or Water Breathing that are going to allow them to interact with the dungeon in interesting ways. I do not like spells like Tiny Hut that take away interesting problems like finding safe places to rest. (And yes, I know that there's all kinds of advice on the internet for "dealing with" Tiny Hut, but I find most of it very adversarial in a way that I do not like at my table.)

I think any system that ticks those boxes is going to work fairly well. Most of my megadungeon experience is in AD&D 1st and 2nd edition, as well as OSRIC, which is just AD&D but someone has taken off its glasses and puts its hair down so you can see that it was beautiful all along. But I've done some megadungeoning in other OSR systems¹, and it always went well.

One thing I am actually eager to do is try out a megadungeon in a game that ticks those boxes but isn't a fantasy OSR game. NSR games, like Troika!, try to accomplish similar things to old school D&D but from more modern design sensibilities. I'd love to give them a shot. And I've been chewing on the idea of running a cyberpunk megadungeon in Cities Without Number for a while now.

But if I wanted to play it safe, I'd probably go with OSRIC or OSE. I know they'll do what I want.

¹ Old School Revival, a set of games and table practices focused on recreating the playstyle and vibe of OD&D / AD&D.

[caitchercatlady]

He'll Have to Go Through Me

-Heartslabyul Version

Riddle Rosehearts

Riddle is busy planning the next Unbirthday Party when he gets tired of seeing Ace and Deuce moping around the dorm. When he gets the "What's wrong with the both of you?" answer out of them, he's both confused and concerned about you refusing to visit the dorm as originally planned. This is indeed unusual.

He stops you out in the hall the next school day, hoping for answers. Riddle mentions how depressed your friends have been, praying that'll get you to say something. You finally reveal that. you can't go back to Heartslabyul because a second year student had been scaring you and stalking you when Ace and Deuce aren't looking. Riddle is not one to let an accusation like this go unchecked.

"Give me a day, and I will make Heartslabyul safe for you once more. Never fear, for I shall handle this the proper, Queen of Hearts manner."

The next day, as you are arriving to class, Ace and Deuce catch up to you in a better mood than they have been. Their snickering has you curious of what's going on. They tell you that Riddle would like you to come see him at Heartslabyul dorm after classes are over, for he has something important to discuss over tea. You're afraid, but you can't refuse Riddle's invitation unless you had a "valid" excuse.

After class, the boys take you to the dorm, and what washes over you is a strange sense of relaxing quiet. As you walk past the rose gardens, you see from the corner of your eye your bully with the recognizable heart-shaped collar around his neck, being watched over by a group of third years to paint every rose in the garden by hand, a painful chore experience. Once in front of Riddle, you notice he's giddier than usual. That's when everything clicks for you. Riddle tells you not to worry as the two week's worth of chores punishment should set your stalker bully on the straight and narrow. You can't thank Riddle enough for doing so.

Trey Clover

The Vice Housewarden knows a bully when he sees one, and with Riddle as Housewarden, he has been taught the tools on how to stop a bullying situation in its tracks. Trey notices that you're been less passionate about baking for the upcoming Unbirthday Party, and he presses why. You start to question if baking was really a fun activity or if it's just for "girls," and he pushes on where you got this idea from. You confess that a Diasomnia freshman saw you with the muffins that the two of you baked the other day and mocked you for it. You felt so bad that you were contemplating on quitting the hobby all together.

Trey tries to tell you not to give up hope. He'll see to it that there is worth in what you love to do after all. The next school day, you are in the cafeteria, studying and eating the leftover sweets you made at the same time. However, as you are about to indulge, trouble comes back a-knocking. The bully from Diasomnia crushes your sweets and starts bad mouthing until a certain Vice Housewarden comes from behind to stop the whole thing. Trey demands the bully to pay up for destroying the snacks they worked so hard to make. The bully snorts and guess that they cost like what...five thaumarks?

"Well, considering how much flour, milk, eggs, and sugar costs, our batch was worth 150. If we only account for the Prefect's batch, that'll be twenty. Considering how we get reimbursed by the dorm's treasury, either you drop the twenty thaumarks or you'll have to speak to Housewarden Riddle about repaying your debt. Which one is it?"

The bully quakes in his boot as he coughs up the twenty thaumarks from his wallet and leaves, swearing to leave you alone. You look at Trey and try to say that the cookies you guys made would never be so expensive. Trey smirks and tells you that you can buy whatever you want with your new twenty thaumarks instead. What a day, indeed!

Cater Diamond

MagiCam has not been an issue for you before since that's where you post all of your fun photos and projects for the Photography Club. However, for the past week, your posts have been receiving some not-so-friendly comments. You do your best to ignore them at first, but this troll has been nothing but persistent. You do the next best thing: Block them, but that doesn't stop them from making backup accounts to continue the torment.

This stress has caused you to take a massive social media break, which is only disappointing in regards to your favorite hobby. While alone in the library, Cater comes along, wondering why your MagiCam art has been absent from blessing Night Raven College. You show Cater the evidence of your stress, and nothing angered Cater more than a petty troll.

"You sit back and worry about you, Prefect. Cay Cay is on the case."

You're not sure what Cater meant by that, but surely you can trust him to get this troll off your back, right? At least that's what his clever grin is telling you. The next day, you walk from Ramshackle to the main campus only to see everyone gossiping about something. It's not until you get to Ace, Deuce, and Epel when you find out what happened. Apparently, your troll had been exposed an an Octavinelle student who had been axed from the school's art club. When Azul found out about it, the dorm's Housewarden wasn't pleased to hear about his freshman's trolling activities and chewed him out. Epel shows you what they mean, and. you can't help but smirk along with them.

You text Cater a thank you, and he replies that he doesn't know what you're talking about with a cheeky winking emoji at the end of his message.

Ace Trappola

When it comes to who's allowed to tease you out in public or private, it's always been Ace, and you've always been comfortable to let him know if a joke is too far, and criticism is always applied on his end. One day, you're out to meet up with your friends when Ace calls out to you with one of his many new nicknames he'd come up with to make you laugh. However, the moment you hear him call you "Maggy," you know it's a joke, but still, something in you snapped. Ace gets it out of you that someone has been taunting you in between classes for being magicless, and when he hears that it's been going on for the past two weeks, Ace won't stand by it.

Later in the day, you and Ace are in the cafeteria when your bully decides to act bold. The moment "Maggy" comes out of their mouth, Ace slips into the counter attack with how jealous the bully must be because a layperson knows more about magical education than he does. Ace and the bully go for a verbal smack down, and with each turn, Ace outdoes his opponent and himself.

"Even if my own Housewarden doesn't like me, at least I have family and friends to tell me never to try that hideous haircut."

The bully gets laughed out of the cafeteria and Ace is celebrated for the win, proving that even if Ace is a bum sometimes, his respect for you is no joke.

Deuce Spade

Deuce is always doing his best to be honor student material and leave his delinquent past behind. Still, deep down in his soul, he has to keep that part of him in case of "emergencies." One day, he catches up with you after class. You couldn't hear him calling you twice, so Deuce taps you on the shoulder. That causes you to have a spasm in a way Deuce had never seen you freak before. He demands to know who hurt you, and Deuce is not going to stand out you lying to him. You know Deuce is angry, but you don't want him to make your situation worse. You confess who this bully is to Deuce, but you make him swear to pretend that you didn't say anything. Deuce can't promise because this delinquent needs to be taught what for, and only HE can set things straight.

Dragging you along, Deuce stomped into the garden, where the bully and his cohorts were loafing around. Deuce challenges this coward to a fight if he was going to be so bold to lay his hands on the Prefect. The fight commences only for Deuce to overpower his opponent.

"If you wanna put your hands on me, do it all you like, but you will never EVER put your hands on them AGAIN!"

As you watch the coward and his friends make a run back for the main building, you are best assured that with Deuce proving a point, no one is going to mess with you again.

[l1v1ngd3dgrrl]

Lovers in the Backseat [Daisuke x reader]

an: I initially started this yesterday after i couldn't sleep and decided to continue it(also because I can't sleep) because I'm blanking on the other thing I'm working on. Also if you caught the little reference I snuck in here Ily, it's so stupid but I giggled at the thought of it. Reader can be read as whatever gender you want!

Word count: 1,719

Cw(s) Not beta read, unprotected sex, sex in a car, quickie,semi-clothed sex reader is slightly tipsy (but is still able to consent!) Daisuke might be ooc here?

MDNI banner: cafekitsune

You've been at this party for hours now. Daisuke had insisted that the both of you attend his friend, Jackson's party. This dude was pretty well known for having some off the wall parties, must be the wealth of his family or something.

The loud EDM music was starting to give you a headache, and the alcohol you were sipping on wasn't making things any better. You've had your fun and you were ready to go home. You push your way past the hoards of people and out towards the back patio.

You found Daisuke sitting with his friends around a fire pit laughing and chatting about who knows what. You walked up behind him and bent down to peck his cheek. "Ready to go?" you murmured quietly.

Daisuke hummed in agreement and reached a hand up to caress the side of your face. "Yeah, lemme tell the boys we're heading out."

You stood back up and finished off the last bit of alcohol that was in your cup, making a face at the burn as it went down your throat.

Daisuke said his goodbyes to his friends and places his hand on the small of your back as the two of you walk to his car. You chuck your empty cup into a nearby trashcan on your way out.

"Enjoy the party?" He asked as he started the route to his house. "Yeah actually, your friend always has something crazy going on." Daisuke chuckles a bit, "A couple of his bandmates were there so the turn out was a lot more than usual."

He was right about that, the last few parties you went to weren't as crowded. The amount of people you had to wade through tonight was kinda crazy. Especially to get some alcohol, seemed like that was the spot where everyone and their mama wanted to gather.

Speaking of, the affects of the alcohol were really noticeable now that you weren't overwhelmed by hoards of people. The heaviness of your eyelids being the main affect. You yawned and closed your eyes, not sleeping just resting.

The two of you hadn't made it far down the road when the car jolted suddenly. The loud popping sound that followed caused you to snap awake and audibly swear, Daisuke swore from the driver's side and pulled over to the side of the road. "What happened?" you asked frantically.

"I think we got a flat." He sets the car in park and the both of you get out to go inspect it. You turn on the flashlight on your phone on and walk with him to see which tire it was. You reach the rear left tire and he swears again.

Yup, it's flat. From the looks l of it a nail or something punctured it. He popped the trunk and swears for a third time under his breath. He did have a spare luckily, but there was something missing.

"I forgot to put my tools back after I cleaned my car yesterday." He runs a hand through his hair and groans. "I can't call my parents because they'll be pissed." His dad was the one who hounded him about always keeping the spare AND tools in the car. No doubt if he called him up he'd give him an earful.

"I can call my co-worker to see if she can come pick us up?" You offer. Daisuke gives the flat tire one last glare before shaking his head. "Nah don't worry about it. I'll text one of the guys and see if they'll help me get the spare on."

Wordlessly the two of you get back in the car. Daisuke flicks on the emergency flashers and starts texting his friends.

Twenty minutes go by and he finally gets a response. Leo, one of his friends who had left the party earlier said he'd be on his way shortly. Daisuke closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. "Leo says he'll be out here in like fifteen, twenty minutes-ish."

Both of you sat quietly, listening to the ticking of the emergency flashers and the occasional car driving past. Daisuke hummed in annoyance at the ticking and quickly grabbed his phone. The soft melody of some lo-fi filling the silence.

Eventually Leo shows up and honks his horn. "ah-he's here, you might wanna hop out with me." Daisuke says to you.

Both of you exit the car and walk over to the flat. The boys make quick work of getting the flat tire off, they ask you to hold the light so they can see what they're doing.

Something about seeing Daisuke in such a serious state-brows furrowed in concentration, his arms flexing as he fights with the bolts on the hubcap, maybe even the fact that he's pushing his hair out of his face every so often. It's hot.

After twenty five minuets or so the new tire is on and Daisuke is thanking Leo for helping. They fist bump and Leo gets in his car and leaves. "Now we can go home."

He pulls back onto the road, albeit with more caution this time. He says something else but you're too distracted to think.

Maybe it was hormones, or maybe it was the alcohol. Either way you needed him like, now.

"Babe?"

"Oh-sorry, yeah?"

"You're being quiet." He comments, turning down the volume of the music slightly. "M'sorry," You look him up and down "Just lost in thought."

"What's on your mind?" He asked glancing over at you briefly.

jumping your bones. "You."

"Oh yeah?" he asks with an amused tone. "What about me?"

You bite your lip slightly, fuck it might as well. "You looked really hot changing the tire."

He snorts and places one hand on your thigh and gives it a quick squeeze. You repress a groan.

He continues driving but keeps that hand on your thigh, every so often he moves it slightly closer to the inner part. You feel like your head is spinning.

"Daisuke-" You huff out finally "Quit teasing me!"

He giggles from the driver seat and pulls off into an empty parking lot. He turns the headlights off and turns his attention to you finally.

"So seeing me change a tire was hot to you?" he questions. You roll your eyes and cup the side of his face with one of your hands. "It's not the fact that you were changing a tire," you move your thumb over his beauty mark. "It was the fact that you looked really fucking good doing it."

Daisuke places his hand on top of yours and leans into your palm "Well, what's the move?"

"Hop in the backseat for me." you answer quickly.

Both of you awkwardly shuffle into the backseat. Daisuke sits in the middle, legs spread apart and motioning for your to come sit on his lap. You oblige instantly.

He looks up at you tenderly, eyes flittering all over your face. God he's gorgeous.

You make the first move and press a kiss to his lips, it's intense. Daisuke catches on quickly and matches your energy, he moves his hands to your waist, fingers sliding under your sweatshirt to caress your skin. You let out a contented groan into the kiss.

Beneath you, you could feel Daisuke's erection through his jeans. Guess you weren't the only one worked up.

You grind your hips against him briefly. He tightens his grip against your thighs and pulls you down against him again. Soon you're both grinding against each other frantically.

Daisuke pulls away from the kiss, huffing after every thrust of his hips. You still your hips and scoot yourself back. "Ready for the real thing?" he asks with a giggle.

You nod and start fishing around the middle console for the spare bottle of lube he kept in there.

If you ask Daisuke why he keeps it in here he'll just shrug and say it's just in case. You know this was a common occurrence so having this on hand was just the best option.

Triumphantly you hold the travel sized bottle in the air and hand it over to him. You made quick work of getting your pants off, struggling only slightly due to the limited space.

Once your bottom half was bare Daisuke coated his middle and ring fingers. He tried to let the liquid heat up a bit before he went to work on you.

You were back on his lap, hovering slightly. He starts working his fingers into your entrance, honing in on your gasps and moans every time his fingers curved in a way that you liked.

"Feeling good?" He purred, watching your face contort with pleasure.

"mmf-fuck yeah."

He starts to pick up the pace a bit causing you to let out a high pitched whine of his name. Once he felt you were properly warmed up he pulls his fingers out and gets to working on his own jeans. You help him shimmy his boxers down enough to let his cock free.

He coats the remaining lube on his fingers against it, a groan rumbling in his throat upon the contact. He strokes himself a few more times before lining it up against your entrance. "Ready?" you ask, bracing your hands on his shoulders.

"Fuck yeah."

You start to sink down on him, savoring the feeling of feeling full. Normally you'd give yourself a moment to adjust but you can't. You needed release now.

You start bouncing on his cock, rocking the car in the process. Daisuke hisses and moans your name, his hands finding purchase on your hips once more. You tilt your head back and allow the whines and moans to flow freely.

The windows by now are completely fogged up, and the car feels like a sauna. Both of you are sweating.

Soon Daisuke digs his fingers into your hips and gasps. "Oh fuck,I-I can't last much longer."

You move your hips faster, chasing your own orgasm. With a sharp whine of your name Daisuke cums, hips thrusting into yours the best he can from this angle. You soon follow suite, stilling as the waves wash over you.

After soaking in the after glow you two eventually get cleaned up and moved back into the front seats.

For the third time that night you made your way home. Maybe this time you'll actually make it there without any more distractions.

[cosmic-ghost-hermit]

Hello! The art on this reading is done by me! If yall wanna go check out my art blog its called @starlitghostfawn 🖤🩵🤍

Remember take what resonates, leave all the rest behind but always be open to new experiences!

PILE 1

Crystal: Green Fluorite

Astrology: Aries ♈️, Capricorn ♑️, Pisces ♓️, Virgo ♍️

Figurine: Blossom Bunny

Song: “Memory” by Toby Fox

Pile 3, your inner child has a pixie-like energy that makes them super hyper and happy. However, they have a huge complex about success. They are surrounded by expectations that were put upon them long ago. Now you are the only one putting those expectations on them. They need some time to play. Space to do whatever they please with no pressure to perform or to do your absolute best with no mistakes. Allow mistakes to be made. Allow yourself to be human. You are so hard on yourself and think yourself in circles over the littlest mis-step. Mistakes a part of humanity and being alive. Your inner child is an earth angel that is allowed to learn messily. You will make yourself and others proud even if you take time to let them free.

💚🩷🍡🍐🧚🏿‍♀️🧝🏽💗🌸🌷🪷🐛👛👒🧠🍀🍉💕🍣🍾🎀♻️🛍️🥝🍈🌳🐙🧚🏼💶💖📗🪴🐢

PILE 2

Crystal: Rose Quartz

Astrology: Scorpio ♏️, Taurus ♉️, Cancer ♋️, Aquarius ♒️

Figurine: My Melody

Song: “Wasteland, Baby” by Hozier

Pile 2, your inner child is congratulating and celebrating with you! They have this soft, shy energy. They have asked something from you and you gave it to them! Fantastic job, friend. I think what you have been working on is loving your inner child more actively. You worked through some emotional issues recently and met your inner child where they needed you. It has made your life different but happier! Maybe you showed them a love they haven’t felt before or at least haven’t felt in a long time. I definitely see maybe you did something new with your hair that your inner child finds so fun and fulfilling. I also see you could have worked through the root of an ED and are working on your recovery! Your inner child is so grateful to you. You are learning to love each other and trust each other. Which I see you have worked very hard on. You have been doing your shadow work and healing. It is time to take a break and pour yourself your favorite drink. Appreciate yourself for all the work you have been doing.

🤍🩷💛🐭🍯🥼🌸🩰🦢💑🎟️💒🔑🧺🛁🐰🌺👙🍰👻🌼🫀💅🏻🫖🧁💝⚜️⚱️💿🍭🍌🥞🐩

PILE 3

Crystal: Angelite

Astrology: Sagittarius ♐️, Gemini ♊️, Leo ♌️, Libra ♎️

Figurine: Cinnamoroll

Song: “always, i’ll care” by Jeremy Zucker

Hello, pile 3! Your inner child's energy is like a fire-cracker. They have a very spicy energy but it feels very tame. An outside force (probably a mother or another feminine role model) definitely shoved them in a box early on. Your spicy energy goes unappreciated by you because of how some of your inner child has been hidden away. Two things I think would be important for you to know about this. First, you are free of this third party who judged you. You don’t have them hanging over your shoulder anymore. You are free to let your inner child be themselves. Second thing, your inner child’s aggression is a very useful and protective tool. Let them get angry. Let them bark at people. Not allowing that energy out is less protective than relaxing and permitting them to protect you from people or things that you know hurt you. I know you’re scared to empower them. Their discomfort is worthy of being addressed. You don’t have to keep them away to remain safe anymore. You are 100% allowed to be a little brat sometimes and there is nothing wrong with that. Anger is part of the human experience and is important to keep some control over but not a total domination. Free the little one.

🩵🤍🌊⚗️📖🔪💦🏳️❄️🦋🛜💎🔭✉️🍚🪼👗🔂🛏️🗯️🧊💍📘♿️🪥💀🕯️🥶🫂👖🐋☁️

-ghost 👻🩵

[peakyrain]

So i just read your recent post and I do relate a lot actually..mostly the sabotaging part and being confortable in your own misery..being comfortable with being embarrassed hurt and abused how do i change

⭒ how can you reprogram and change your deeply engrained negative subconscious beliefs?

glad you asked! i’m gonna do my best to answer this as someone who took pleasure in feeling like a victim and drowning in my own misery

i: intention

firstly and most importantly imo, i would advise you to decide. decide that you're going to make a change and sit w/ it for a minute if you need.

set the intention by writing it down on your phone or on paper. write your goal and that you're going to successfully reach it—that you have no other choice but to succeed. this is important because when you set a goal for yourself and decide, you're less likely to back off than if you didn't set the intention.

once you get that checked off, continue by doing the following steps (some inspired by ahmadsstory on tt!!):

ii: journaling

i've talked about journaling on my blog before and how you should write down your desires and affirmations on paper, but in this case it's a little bit different.

the best way to fully understand yourself, your feelings and actions, you have to reflect thoroughly and understand why you feel the way that you do. following this, you assess your own situation as if you're a third-person party—step into your desired self for a moment and act like them.

what this does is that it makes you analyze and understand what was wrong w/ the actions you took, thoughts and steps that don't align w/ what you want out of your life. if your desired self is a confident person then they wouldn't be thinking thoughts like: "nothing works out for me" and "i'll never succeed"

iii: the many "why's"

this step is based on the previous—as soon as you list something that is emotionally charged, you ask yourself why, and you keep asking why until you uncover the deeply rooted things that are stopping you from being your desired self.

example:

-

i felt scared and anxious to raise my hand in class today

okay, why?

because i was scared i might give the wrong answer

why?

because last time i raised my hand i gave the teacher the wrong answer and i was laughed at and made fun of and it made me feel dumb

why did it make you feel dumb?

…

-

and then you keep going and going until you understand that it was never about anyone but you and your low self-worth. it makes you realize that the problem is never actually the problem.

this strategy really helps you get to the root of the issue and help you solve it. i've done this myself and i have to say, it really works wonders, especially when you take your time and write exactly how you felt using multiple pages.

i like to think of it as having a free therapy session w/ yourself :)

iv: visualization

sit w/ yourself and imagine your future self giving you advice. visualization is a massively powerful tool that can help you understand why certain things are happening in your subconscious.

also! imagine your desired self thriving and living the life that you dream of. what is this person doing? how do they look? how do they dress? etc. etc.

i recently made a post about how visualization is scientifically proven to help you achieve your goals and that it has a vast impact on you both physically and mentally. so use your mind to visualize a good life!!

v: distinction between the old you vs the new you

if you're someone who struggles w/ a bad temper and belittling yourself over small things, such a dropping something on the floor or making minor mistakes, you have to watch how you speak to yourself in those specific moments. is it a typical "ugh, i'm so stupid" or is it a "it's okay—happens to the best of us"?

you have to understand, speaking to yourself nicely and being gentle is so much more important than you think. your subconscious does not care or understand if you're joking or being serious, if you keep feeding it negative input about yourself, then it's going to believe that and support you in that assumption.

so stop playing the victim.

instead, you should begin w/ nice talk to yourself and look for it consciously. whenever you find yourself speaking negatively about yourself say: "no, that's what the old me would say and think, while the new me thinks this" no matter how small this action seems, you're telling yourself that you're not the old you anymore, and it starts the momentum towards your new self image, someone better—happier.

to add on to the fifth point!

whenever you start doing these micro actions, gather proof that you're a new version of yourself, document them and pay mind to them. "the old would do this, while the new me did this"

this gathers new data that your subconscious picks up and uses to determine your new self worth, because if you're someone w/ low self-worth, that data comes from somewhere, right?

it comes from proof you've gathered your whole life about shit going wrong and everything never working for you, but now you have the opportunity to change that and build a better self image.

vi: feeling bad for yourself + sad music

oh boy, how i LOVED listening to sad music and imagining sad scenarios. i know this is gonna hit someone hard, but i have to say—no more sad songs and imagining the most brutal angst.

you have to understand that dwelling on the past and feeling bad to yourself is never gonna stop if you keep finding comfort in it, and music is a primary reason why it feels so good. that's exactly why you need to completely cut out sad music or imagining angst while listening.

first, it's so unhealthy for you. second, if you want to change, you've gotta make sacrifices, and in this case, it's music. i know exactly how it feels, but it works. i haven't felt sad in so long since i cut out sad music and refuse to use it to imagine sad scenarios. you don’t realize how much misery music causes until you really sit and think about it.

⭒ the shift

once you start seeing a difference in your thinking and how you feel about yourself, you're going to realize that you are in fact worthy of success and your desires. you're automatically going to start helping yourself instead of sabotaging, because now you believe you deserve success, and your subconscious is now on your team.

nothing is keeping you from your goals anymore and you're free to have whatever you desire :)

[eorzeancryptids]

[empty-movement]

May I ask what scanners / equipment / software you're using in the utena art book project? I'm an artist and half the reason I rarely do traditional art is because I'm never happy with the artwork after it's scanned in. But the level of detail even in the blacks of Utena's uniform were all captured so beautifully! And even the very light colors are showing up so well! I'd love to know how you manage!

You know what's really fun? This used to be something you put in your site information section, the software and tools used! Not something that's as normal anymore, but let's give it a go, sorry it's long because I don't know what's new information and what's not! Herein: VANNA'S 'THIS IS AS SPECIFIC AS MY BREAK IS LONG' GUIDE/AIMLESS UNEDITED RAMBLE ABOUT SCANNING IMAGES

Scanning: Modern scanners, by and large, are shit for this. The audience for scanning has narrowed to business and work from home applications that favor text OCR, speed, and efficiency over archiving and scanning of photos and other such visual media. It makes sense--there was a time when scanning your family photographs and such was a popular expected use of a scanner, but these days, the presumption is anything like that is already digital--what would you need the scanner to do that for? The scanner I used for this project is the same one I have been using for *checks notes* a decade now. I use an Epson Perfection V500. Because it is explicitly intended to be a photo scanner, it does threebthings that at this point, you will pay a niche user premium for in a scanner: extremely high DPI (dots per inch), extremely wide color range, and true lossless raws (BMP/TIFF.) I scan low quality print media at 600dpi, high quality print media at 1200 dpi, and this artbook I scanned at 2400 dpi. This is obscene and results in files that are entire GB in size, but for my purposes and my approach, the largest, clearest, rawest copy of whatever I'm scanning is my goal. I don't rely on the scanner to do any post-processing. (At these sizes, the post-processing capacity of the scanner is rendered moot, anyway.) I will replace this scanner when it breaks by buying another identical one if I can find it. I have dropped, disassembled to clean, and abused this thing for a decade and I can't believe it still tolerates my shit. The trade off? Only a couple of my computers will run the ancient capture software right. LMAO. I spent a good week investigating scanners because of the insane Newtype project on my backburner, and the quality available to me now in a scanner is so depleted without spending over a thousand on one, that I'd probably just spin up a computer with Windows 7 on it just to use this one. That's how much of a difference the decade has made in what scanners do and why. (Enshittification attacks! Yes, there are multiple consumer computer products that have actually declined in quality over the last decade.)

Post-processing: Photoshop. Sorry. I have been using Photoshop for literally decades now, it's the demon I know. While CSP is absolutely probably the better piece of software for most uses (art,) Photoshop is...well it's in the name. In all likelihood though, CSP can do all these things, and is a better product to give money to. I just don't know how. NOTENOTENOTE: Anywhere I discuss descreening and print moire I am specifically talking about how to clean up *printed media.* If you are scanning your own painting, this will not be a problem, but everything else about this advice will stand! The first thing you do with a 2400 dpi scan of Utena and Anthy hugging? Well, you open it in Photoshop, which you may or may not have paid for. Then you use a third party developer's plug-in to Descreen the image. I use Sattva. Now this may or may not be what you want in archiving!!! If fidelity to the original scan is the point, you may pass on this part--you are trying to preserve the print screen, moire, half-tones, and other ways print media tricks the eye. If you're me, this tool helps translate the raw scan of the printed dots on the page into the smooth color image you see in person. From there, the vast majority of your efforts will boil down to the following Photoshop tools: Levels/Curves, Color Balance, and Selective Color. Dust and Scratches, Median, Blur, and Remove Noise will also be close friends of the printed page to digital format archiver. Once you're happy with the broad strokes, you can start cropping and sizing it down to something reasonable. If you are dealing with lots of images with the same needs, like when I've scanned doujinshi pages, you can often streamline a lot of this using Photoshop Actions.

My blacks and whites are coming out so vivid this time because I do all color post-processing in Photoshop after the fact, after a descreen tool has been used to translate the dot matrix colors to solids they're intended to portray--in my experience trying to color correct for dark and light colors is a hot mess until that process is done, because Photoshop sees the full range of the dots on the image and the colors they comprise, instead of actually blending them into their intended shades. I don't correct the levels until I've descreened to some extent.

As you can see, the print pattern contains the information of the original painting, but if you try to correct the blacks and whites, you'll get a janky mess. *Then* you change the Levels:

If you've ever edited audio, then dealing with photo Levels and Curves will be familiar to you! A well cut and cleaned piece of audio will not cut off the highs and lows, but also will make sure it uses the full range available to it. Modern scanners are trying to do this all for you, so they blow out the colors and increase the brightness and contrast significantly, because solid blacks and solid whites are often the entire thing you're aiming for--document scanning, basically. This is like when audio is made so loud details at the high and low get cut off. Boo.

What I get instead is as much detail as possible, but also at a volume that needs correcting:

Cutting off the unused color ranges (in this case it's all dark), you get the best chance of capturing the original black and white range:

In some cases, I edit beyond this--for doujinshi scans, I aim for solid blacks and whites, because I need the file sizes to be normal and can't spend gigs of space on dust. For accuracy though, this is where I'd generally stop.

For scanning artwork, the major factor here that may be fucking up your game? Yep. The scanner. Modern scanners are like cheap microphones that blow out the audio, when what you want is the ancient microphone that captures your cat farting in the next room over. While you can compensate A LOT in Photoshop and bring out blacks and whites that scanners fuck up, at the end of the day, what's probably stopping you up is that you want to use your scanner for something scanners are no longer designed to do well. If you aren't crazy like me and likely to get a vintage scanner for this purpose, keep in mind that what you are looking for is specifically *a photo scanner.* These are the ones designed to capture the most range, and at the highest DPI. It will be a flatbed. Don't waste your time with anything else.

Hot tip: if you aren't scanning often, look into your local library or photo processing store. They will have access to modern scanners that specialize in the same priorities I've listed here, and many will scan to your specifications (high dpi, lossless.)

Ahem. I hope that helps, and or was interesting to someone!!!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

If you own an Alexa, you might enjoy its integration with IFTTT, an easy scripting environment that lets you create your own little voice-controlled apps, like "start my Roomba" or "close the garage door." If so, tough shit, Amazon just nuked IFTTT for Alexa:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/25/23931463/ifttt-amazon-alexa-applets-ending-support-integration-automation

Amazon can do this because the Alexa's operating system sits behind a cryptographic lock, and any tool that bypasses that lock is a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that it's literally a crime to provide a rival OS that lets users retain functionality that Amazon no longer supports.

This is the proverbial gun on the mantelpiece, a moral hazard and invitation to mischief that tempts Amazon executives to run a bait-and-switch con where they sell you a gadget with five features and then remotely kill-switch two of them. This is prime directive of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

So many companies got their business-plan at the Darth Vader MBA. The ability to revoke features after the fact means that companies can fuck around, but never find out. Apple sold millions of tracks via iTunes with the promise of letting you stream them to any other device you owned. After a couple years of this, the company caught some heat from the record labels, so they just pushed an update that killed the feature:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/10/30/apple-to-ipod-owners-eat-shit-and-die-updated/

That gun on the mantelpiece went off all the way back in 2004 and it turns out it was a starter-pistol. Pretty soon, everyone was getting in on the act. If you find an alert on your printer screen demanding that you install a "security update" there's a damned good chance that the "update" is designed to block you from using third-party ink cartridges in a printer that you (sorta) own:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Selling your Tesla? Have fun being poor. The upgrades you spent thousands of dollars on go up in a puff of smoke the minute you trade the car into the dealer, annihilating the resale value of your car at the speed of light:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/how-to-fix-cars-by-breaking-felony-contempt-of-business-model/

Telsa has to detect the ownership transfer first. But once a product is sufficiently cloud-based, they can destroy your property from a distance without any warning or intervention on your part. That's what Adobe did last year, when it literally stole the colors from your Photoshop files, in history's SaaSiest heist caper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

And yet, when we hear about remote killswitches in the news, it's most often as part of a PR blitz for their virtues. Russia's invasion of Ukraine kicked off a new genre of these PR pieces, celebrating the fact that a John Deere dealership was able to remotely brick looted tractors that had been removed to Chechnya:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Today, Deere's PR minions are pitching search-and-replace versions of this story about Israeli tractors that Hamas is said to have looted, which were also remotely bricked.

But the main use of this remote killswitch isn't confounding war-looters: it's preventing farmers from fixing their own tractors without paying rent to John Deere. An even bigger omission from this narrative is the fact that John Deere is objectively Very Bad At Security, which means that the world's fleet of critical agricultural equipment is one breach away from being rendered permanently inert:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

There are plenty of good and honorable people working at big companies, from Adobe to Apple to Deere to Tesla to Amazon. But those people have to convince their colleagues that they should do the right thing. Those debates weigh the expected gains from scammy, immoral behavior against the expected costs.

Without DMCA 1201, Amazon would have to worry that their decision to revoke IFTTT functionality would motivate customers to seek out alternative software for their Alexas. This is a big deal: once a customer learns how to de-Amazon their Alexa, Amazon might never recapture that customer. Such a switch wouldn't have to come from a scrappy startup or a hacker's DIY solution, either. Take away DMCA 1201 and Walmart could step up, offering an alternative Alexa software stack that let you switch your purchases away from Amazon.

Money talks, bullshit walks. In any boardroom argument about whether to shift value away from customers to the company, a credible argument about how the company will suffer a net loss as a result has a better chance of prevailing than an argument that's just about the ethics of such a course of action:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Inevitably, these killswitches are pitched as a paternalistic tool for protecting customers. An HP rep once told me that they push deceptive security updates to brick third-party ink cartridges so that printer owners aren't tricked into printing out cherished family photos with ink that fades over time. Apple insists that its ability to push iOS updates that revoke functionality is about keeping mobile users safe – not monopolizing repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

John Deere's killswitches protect you from looters. Adobe's killswitches let them add valuable functionality to their products. Tesla? Well, Tesla at least is refreshingly honest: "We have a killswitch because fuck you, that's why."

These excuses ring hollow because they conspicuously omit the possibility that you could have the benefits without the harms. Like, your tractor could come with a killswitch that you could bypass, meaning you could brick it at a distance, and still fix it yourself. Same with your phone. Software updates that take away functionality you want can be mitigated with the ability to roll back those updates – and by giving users the ability to apply part of a patch, but not the whole patch.

Cloud computing and software as a service are a choice. "Local first" computing is possible, and desirable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

The cheapest rhetorical trick of the tech sector is the "indivisibility gambit" – the idea that these prix-fixe menus could never be served a la carte. Wanna talk to your friends online? Sorry there's just no way to help you do that without spying on you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/divisibility/#technognosticism

One important argument over smart-speakers was poisoned by this false dichotomy: the debate about accessibility and IoT gadgets. Every IoT privacy or revocation scandal would provoke blanket statements from technically savvy people like, "No one should ever use one of these." The replies would then swiftly follow: "That's an ableist statement: I rely on my automation because I have a disability and I would otherwise be reliant on a caregiver or have to go without."

But the excluded middle here is: "No one should use one of these because they are killswitched. This is especially bad when a smart speaker is an assistive technology, because those applications are too important to leave up to the whims of giant companies that might brick them or revoke their features due to their own commercial imperatives, callousness, or financial straits."

Like the problem with the "bionic eyes" that Second Sight bricked wasn't that they helped visually impaired people see – it was that they couldn't be operated without the company's ongoing support and consent:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete

It's perfectly possible to imagine a bionic eye whose software can be maintained by third parties, whose parts and schematics are widely available. The challenge of making this assistive technology fail gracefully isn't technical – it's commercial.

We're meant to believe that no bionic eye company could survive unless they devise their assistive technology such that it fails catastrophically if the business goes under. But it turns out that a bionic eye company can't survive even if they are allowed to do this.

Even if you believe Milton Friedman's Big Lie that a company is legally obligated to "maximize shareholder value," not even Friedman says that you are legally obligated to maximize companies' shareholder value. The fact that a company can make more money by defrauding you by revoking or bricking the things you buy from them doesn't oblige you to stand up for their right to do this.

Indeed, all of this conduct is arguably illegal, under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits "unfair and deceptive business practices":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

"No one should ever use a smart speaker" lacks nuance. "Anyone who uses a smart speaker should be insulated from unilateral revocations by the manufacturer, both through legal restrictions that bind the manufacturer, and legal rights that empower others to modify our devices to help us," is a much better formulation.

It's only in the land of the Darth Vader MBA that the deal is "take it or leave it." In a good world, we should be able to take the parts that work, and throw away the parts that don't.

(Image: Stock Catalog/https://www.quotecatalog.com, Sam Howzit; CC BY 2.0; modified)

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

[pangaeaseas]

for the ships game:

Percy/Rodolphus

Narcissa/Voldemort

Rita/Sirius

OH YEAH. thanks for the great ideas.....sorry I took so long th

Percy/Rodolphus is one of those ships where I probably would have been like 'what? no' about it except. except. there's a fic. And a good fic can convince you of anything. May I recommend Subluxation by @saintsenara to anyone willing to be convinced of the appeal of Percy weasley/random death eater shipping? (and like I'll go for a LOT of Percy/DE ships...)

Why do I ship it? Well: I read the fic, that's some part of it. And y'know what? I buy it! There's a dark side of Percy which Rodolphus allows him to explore and I am here for a good corruption arc. And you can do something super interesting with Percy being the overlooked one in his family where nothing he does is never enough and Rodolphus being the same way in his marriage/relation to the death eaters: always second best to bellatrix.

the way it reveals how even the most terrible people are still capable of love. and the way it could reveal how people can do the most terrible things they do for LOVE--percy feeling like an outsider only finally accepted and loved by someone who will cause him to lean into the worst parts of himself. delicious.

that it exists! also that like I can totally see Percy full on supporting the death eaters at some point with his appearance at the battle being an actual turn, or like even if he was privately against them he was probably complicit in a Lot as he was working for the ministry during voldemort's period. so that one action isn't the culmination of him being a resister--i don't think it was--but his first real act of resistance. and if he was fucking a death eater...that makes it even juicier.

Narcissa/Voldemort

I'm gonna go with yes. Would it be healthy? No. Would it come out of genunine attraction on either's part? Probably not. Would it be interesting to observe like bugs in a lab? yup. and would be very very dubcon.

It's a situation where I could see narcissa trying to seduce voldemort to try and get back into his good graces. or him sleep with her to fuck with Lucius/Bellatrix/both--totally in character for him to do considering I think he'd see her as an extension of them and he loves fucking with his followers bodies' and things (and narcissa is either Lucius or bellatrix's thing). and it's one of my fave kinds of fucked up ships where it's about a third party: like I don't think Voldemort cares much about Narcissa except as a proxy for the people he's really interested in, her husband and sister ---and the same goes for her.

i could see narcissa being able to manipulate Voldemort through this and that's a win for her. and just. the mutual fucked-upedness. there's no feeling, I don't think--but it could easily be seen as an expression of love for ANOTHER character like Bellatrix which is fascinating. Also I just love death eater infighting and this would cause that. it pushes narcissa to dark places but also gives her a twisted and very partial sort of power. maybe. which she doesn't want she doesn't want to be the cult leader's mistress but...if it saves her son or her sister....

that it would happen at all?? ig that Voldemort would sleep with someone other than Bellatrix but like I totally think he would in the right circumstance. or that I see narcissa as prioritizing 1.draco2.bella with Lucius as a distant third so this would be to spare Draco or bella before sparing Lucius.

Rita/Sirius....gotta say: don't ship. fun concept though.

I think he'd have a real hard time getting over her attacks on Harry. like he's not going to willingly associate with anyone who'd slander his godson publicly. so Sirius would not go for this at all. I could see Rita trying to seduce him as a source but he'd turn her down. and like I don't really see Sirius as someone who'd use sex as a tool to get someone on his side politically, I don't think he'd be super invested in like rita's moral development anyway and he's someone who has a strong sense of personal ethics who would look down on her amorality and not in an 'i could fix her' way in an 'im much better than this person and I don't want to associate with her' way even before she goes after Harry. I think he'd see her as symbol of everything wrong with wizarding society. that's generally not someone you're going to date! and she wouldn't hang out with someone who won't put out and who she will have a hard time manipulating--she doesn't know him well enough to manipulate him effectively idt. and so why would she waste her time? plus...post Azaban Sirius is NOT hot enough for her. sorry.

i guess maybe it could be a fling before he went to Azkaban, though I don't really see Sirius as a fling person. in some kind of situation where Rita never ran attack articles on Harry mayyyybe but I still don't think it would work.

I do think they would find each other funny, and them interacting could be really interesting.

[horsegamergirl]

Cheating Ban

We understand your concerns about third-party tools affecting the fairness and enjoyment of SSO. That’s why we’ve decided to ban accounts using these tools. We’re excited to announce that this change is coming soon!

A Safer Game for Everyone

Ensuring a safe and enjoyable experience for everyone in our community is our top priority. That’s why we’re moving forward with a zero-tolerance policy toward unauthorized modifications or tools that give players an unfair advantage. Good news—using Reshade is still perfectly fine!

For parents and guardians, this is especially important for protecting our younger players, who are more vulnerable to those trying to sell or distribute game modifications. These activities not only violate our terms of service, but also pose serious risks to players and their accounts, which we take very seriously.

What’s Happening Next?

Starting within the next few weeks, we will begin enforcing bans on accounts using unauthorized tools or modifications. This zero-tolerance approach will help create a more secure and enjoyable experience for everyone in the game. If you are affected by this ban, you will be notified by email.

We’re so grateful for the passion and dedication of our community as we work together to make SSO better. Thank you for your understanding as we take this important step toward ensuring fairness, safety, and fun for everyone!

FAQ

Will this affect those who have acquired unreleased items, pets, and/or horses?

Yes, using third-party cheat engines to modify our files in any shape or form is against our terms and conditions and can potentially put your device and personal information at risk. Therefore, proof that an account has used unauthorized third-party tools to obtain unreleased items will result in a ban. This also applies to horses acquired after their retirement.

There is a big community of people who offer services to give you unreleased items, horses, and pets. How will this affect those people who purchase it or are selling it?

Yes, this applies to accounts that use these services, as they use unauthorized external tools to do so. 

What if you used cheats prior to the zero tolerance, will your account be banned? 

Yes, if there is evidence of doing so, the account will be banned. 

Are you IP banning affected accounts?

We realize that players are able to make new accounts and new IP’s. Rather than IP ban, we will continue to ban offending accounts.

Why are these tools harmful?

Account Security: Some tools require sharing sensitive account information, putting players at risk of account theft or loss.

Safety Concerns: Downloading unauthorized programs can lead to unsafe software that compromises your security.

Game Stability: These modifications can break the game—not just for the cheater but for everyone they interact with—ruining the experience for all players.

[lostlibrariangirl]

Week 3 - 2025

I finish the Santander Cybersecurity bootcamp! I loved the Kali Linux labs, and learned a lot about cybersecurity tools I wanted to know more about.

There is just one last module of my MBA and the final project to finish, too, which will open more agendas for the CISCO Ethical Hacker course I started, the technical readings I must do, and learning Power BI, which I will need in my new role/job.

I am glad I could find time to go out with my husband, have fun, buy a few things we needed, and adjust some exciting plans.

Worked hard last week, as, due to internal changes in the company that is hiring me (the one I already work for, but through a third party), I will work with Cybersecurity more closely: performing the overview and data analysis of the vulnerabilities from a department inside the company. Isn't it crazy? It will be great for my career plans, as this will provide me Cybersecurity experience (FINALLY)... I am happy, anxious, nervous, grateful... so many mixed feelings.

Well, I will give my best, will keep studying, organizing my finances, and going for my dreams, as things are already happening in my life (´⊙ω⊙`)！ To wrap it up: the profiterole picture is a homage to Mashle! What a great anime!!! I was reading the manga, and loved it, but the anime is so funny, he is lovely, and his friends are amazing (laughed and cried watching it). Finished the first and second seasons, and I cannot wait for the third. Also loving Spy Family and My Happy Marriage ༼♥ل͜♥༽ Have a great week guys ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶