#how many shitposts can you make?

[bird-inacage]

LITA Special Episode | Prapai’s Many Pesky Admirers

This entire episode was an absolute goldmine of shitpost material. This scene was also a hoot. Prapai rolling his eyes when yet another homewrecker steps on the scene is honestly the character development we love to see. He’s like ‘I don’t have time for this, I’m about to have lunch with my baby’. And when Sky shows up, he practically leaps out of his chair, hands up in surrender like ‘WASN’T ME’.

Now can you imagine a scenario where Sky is being hit on instead? Dear god, Prapai would likely go full idiot and yeet the poor man/woman across the room, any decorum be damned. (Someone write that shit please).

[shanksxbuggy]

Buggy really said if I can’t be Pirate King then my future husband has to be Pirate King 💅

[bombusbombus]

Just two clever, quiet men hiding in their own shadow

[thatmoththoth]

Garlic is a town in Italy. This is because garlic was actually imported by aliens into the town of Garlic, who used the garlic to make garlic bread. The aliens are also collectively known as the Garlic. My name is also Garlic by strange coincidence. There’s a ritual I often take where once a year I will go to Garlic from some garlic bread. I call this ritual Garlic.

So I, Garlic, garlic to Garlic to purchase Garlic-Garlic garlic bread, with extra garlic, as both the Garlic and the Garlic could use the extra funds to trade their Garlic-Garlic garlic bread..

[gothamcityneedsme]

god im thinking about furi again

[bluesunsdusk]

Support mains: I sure hope these DPS don't overextend and constantly nearly die.

Set, who is practically built to overextend and nearly die:

[giantsinthemist]

your half ass-ed layer cake is someone else’s shortbread

-my brain’s phrase choice to try to motivate at random hour

[guinevereslancelot]

crush's red flags coming at woman faster than she can rationalize them

[jonnywaistcoat]

What’s your opinion on the contrast between “silly” and “serious” spaces? Do you think people can have very serious interpretations about a genuine piece of media and also be goofy about it? I’m asking this particularly because I’ve seen people in the Magnus podcast fandoms fight about people “misinterpreting” characters you, Alex, and the many other authors have written. Are you okay with the blorbofication or do you really wish the media you’ve written would be “taken seriously” 100% of the time?

And follow up question, what do you think about the whole “it’s up to the reader (or in some cases, listener) to make their own conclusions and interpretations and that does not make them wrong”, versus the “it was written this way because the author intended it this way, and we should respect that” argument?

This is a question I've given a lot of thought over the years, to the point where I don't know how much I can respond without it becoming a literal essay. But I'll try.

My main principle for this stuff boils roughly down to: "The only incorrect way to respond to art is to try and police the responses of others." Art is an intensely subjective, personal thing, and I think a lot of online spaces that engage with media are somewhat antithetical to what is, to me, a key part of it, which is sitting alone with your response to a story, a character, a scene or an image and allowing yourself to explore it's effect on you. To feel your feelings and think about them in relation to the text.

Now, this is not to say that jokes and goofiness about a piece of art aren't fucking great. I love to watch The Thing and drink in the vibes or arctic desolation and paranoia, or think about the picture it paints of masculinity as a sublimely lonely thing where the most terrible threat is that of an imposed, alien intimacy. And that actually makes me laugh even more the jokey shitpost "Do you think the guys in The Thing ever explored each other's bodies? Yeah but watch out". Silly and serious don't have to be in opposition, and I often find the best jokes about a piece of media come from those who have really engaged with it.

And in terms of interpreting characters? Interpreting and responding to fictional characters is one of the key functions of stories. They're not real people, there is no objective truth to who they are or what they do or why they do it. They are artificial constructs and the life they are given is given by you, the reader/listener/viewer, etc. Your interpetation of them can't be wrong, because your interpretation of them is all that there is, they have no existence outside of that.

And obviously your interpretation will be different to other people's, because your brain, your life, your associations - the building blocks from which the voices you hear on a podcast become realised people in your mind - are entirely your own. Thus you cannot say anyone else's is wrong. You can say "That's not how it came across to me" or "I have a very different reading of that character", but that's it. I suppose if someone is fundamentally missing something (like saying "x character would never use violence" when x character strangles a man to death in chapter 4) you could say "I think that's a significant misreading of the text", but that's only to be reserved for if you have the evidence to back it up and are feeling really savage.

I think this is one of the things that saddens me a bit about some aspects of fandom culture - it has a tendency to police or standardise responses or interpretations, turning them from personal experiences to be explored into public takes to be argued over. It also has the occasional moralistic strain, and if there's one thing I wish I could carve in stone on every fan space it's that Your Responses to a Piece of Art Carry No Intrinsic Moral Weight.

As for authorial intention, that's a simpler one: who gives a shit? Even the author doesn't know their own intentions half the time. There is intentionality there, of course, but often it's a chaotic and shifting mix of theme and story and character which rarely sticks in the mind in the exact form it had during writing. If you ask me what my intention was in a scene from five years ago, I'll give you an answer, but it will be my own current interpretation of a half-remembered thing, altered and warped by my own changing relationship to the work and five years of consideration and change within myself. Or I might not remember at all and just have a guess. And I'm a best case scenario because I'm still alive. Thinking about a writers possible or stated intentions is interesting and can often lead to some compelling discussion or examination, but to try and hold it up as any sort of "truth" is, to my mind, deeply misguided.

Authorial statements can provide interesting context to a work, or suggest possible readings, but they have no actual transformative effect on the text. If an author says of a book that they always imagined y character being black, despite it never being mentioned in the text, that's interesting - what happens if we read that character as black? How does it change our responses to the that character actions and position? How does it affect the wider themes and story? It doesn't, however, actually make y character black because in the text itself their race remains nonspecific. The author lost the ability to make that change the moment it was published. It's not solely theirs anymore.

So yeah, that was a fuckin essay. In conclusion, serious and silly are both good, but serious does not mean yelling at other people about "misinterpretations", it means sitting with your personal explorations of a piece of art. All interpretations are valid unless they've legitimately missed a major part of the text (and even then they're still valid interpretations of whatever incomplete or odd version of the text exists inside that person's brain). Authorial intent is interesting to think about but ultimately unknowable, untrustworthy and certainly not a source of truth. Phew.

Oh, and blorbofication is fine, though it does to my mind sometimes pair with a certain shallowness to one's exploration of the work in question.

[yandere-daydreams]

Not-So-Scary Moments With The Yan. Genshin Boys (Sumeru + Fontaine Edition).

Characters: Alhaitham, Neuvillette, Kaveh, Tighnari, Cyno, and Wriothesley.

Word Count: 2.7k.

TW: Borderline Shitposting, Prolonged Imprisonment, Varying Levels of Emotional and Physical Abuse, Codependency, Mentions of Stalking, and Unhealthy Relationships.

Alhaitham

It took Alhaitham about ten minutes to drag himself out of bed, his staggered footsteps audible through the thin walls of his apartment.

It took twenty for him to haul himself through his morning routine – water running somewhere in the distance and porcelain clattering against marble countertops as he washed his face and tried to work some life into himself. Alhaitham usually wasn’t so lethargic, but he’d had a rough week. There’d been a sudden influx of paperwork for the Akademiya’s sole scribe, and every second he didn’t spend buried under new legislation and requests for increased budging was, instead, dedicated to one of his many personal research projects. By the time he’d gotten home last night, it’d been all he could do to make sure you hadn’t starved to death and drag himself to bed.

He usually would’ve kept you waiting for a few more minutes, but an agitated grunt marked an end to his normal patterns. In a moment, he was braced against the doorway to his own study, his eyes narrowed half-hearted towards where you sat in his leather-padded chair, your feet propped on his desk. There was an book open in your lap – one of his, something about metaphysics and ley line abnormalities and how both tied into the Inazuman politics. He eyed it wearily before speaking, his voice still deep with exhaustion. “Where did you put my hearing aids?”

His tone was accusatory, his irritation visible. You put on your sweetest smile. “Where did you put my novellas?” you signed, thinking for a moment before adding, “Bitch?”

“They aren’t ‘novellas’, they’re—” He cut himself off with a scoff. “They’re filth. I don’t want you rotting your brain with smut.”

“The plots are very—”

“The plots are half-baked excuses for paper-thin characters to fondle each other in locations you can tell the author didn’t take the time to properly research and—” His gaze flickered to you, his frown deepening. “Why are you smiling like that?”

“You’ve read them?”

There was a long beat of silence.

Finally, he let out a labored sigh. “The dozen or so I couldn’t be bothered to throw away are in a cabinet underneath the kitchen sink. It’s locked – the code is your birthday. Now, where are my aids?”

“You fell asleep with them on last night,” you said aloud, abandoning his glorified textbook and pushing yourself to your feet. His hand shot to the side of his head, finding the metallic cuff only slightly displaced by having spent the better half of the night on his head. As you passed him, you paused, pressing a kiss into the corner of his scowl and pretending to ignore the muffled groan he let out in response.

Neuvillette

Of all the sights you thought you might see after arriving in your wonderous new nation, the Iudex of Fontaine standing over your drained bathtub with a look of potent remorse written across his expression was not one of them.

You’d imagined yourself strolling through the walls of the Opera Epiclese in vivid detail, been able to picture exactly what you might’ve seen standing below the Tower of Ipsissimus or above the bottomless pit that was the entrance to the Fortress of Meropide, but even after you’d found yourself in the smothering care of Monsieur Neuvillette, you never would’ve been able to conjure this sight. He usually insisted that you bathe together, going so far as to have an in-ground tub that could’ve easily been mistaken for a hot spring installed in his (until recently neglected) personal residence to better indulge the habit. Thankfully, the trial he’d been presiding over had run long today, and you’d been able to save yourself an hour of his calloused hands running over your body, of his eyes burning into your skin with a nearly inhuman focus. You knew he’d be disappointed. Irate, even, depending on how his trial swung.

You hadn’t expected him to be so… sulky about it.

Half-lidded eyes, a slight pout tugging at the corner of his lips as he lingered idly in the doorway between your shared bedroom and the in-suite bathroom. Steam and silence laid heavy in the air – the latter you were eventually forced to break as you fiddled with the hem of your robe. “I’m sorry,” you muttered, hoping more to break the tension than to make him think you were genuinely apologetic. “It was getting late, and I didn’t know when you were coming home. I didn’t think you’d take it so personally.” When he didn’t respond, you braced yourself for the worst. “If you’re angry, please say so. I… I’d rather get this over with now, if it’s all the same to you.”

His expression softened. He let out an airy sigh and, with only a moment of hesitation, closed the space between you. “I’m not angry.” A pair of lean arms wrapped around your waist, his face soon buried in the crook of your neck. You heard him inhale, and did what you could to suppress the shudder that ran up your spine at the thought of him basking in your scent. “I’ve just been… looking forward to it, I suppose. Your taste relaxes me.”

Immediately, you went rigid. “My… taste?”

“Mhm.”

“Neuvillette,” you started, very slowly, giving your own mind time to catch up to the dread slowly building in the pit of your stomach. “Have you been drinking my bathwater?”

He was quiet for a not inconsiderable amount of time.

Finally, he pulled away from you just far enough to speak. “…no?”

For your own sake, you decided to believe him.

Kaveh

“Kaveh.”

“Not now, treasure.”

“Go to bed.”

“I will, in another hour.”

“You need to get some sleep.”

“I’ve already told you – I’m fine.” He narrowed his eyes, expression contorted by concentration. “Knight to B4.”

“Kaveh,” you repeated, leaning across the table. “You were showing me your blueprints.”

“Oh.” He blinked several times, looking over the sheet of blue paper marked with chalk drawings and near indecipherable hand-writing. “Were you impressed?”

Your frown irked, but you swallowed back your exasperation and pushed yourself to your feet. Slowly, you took him by the hand and, when he failed to protest, guided him out of his own seat and towards the room you were usually restrained to, when he wasn’t home. He’d kept himself awake for the past two nights, every moment of the past forty-eight hours devoted to finishing his proposal for a wealthy commissioner’s summer mansion before its upcoming deadline and, now that the coffee had been drained from his system and his adrenaline had been given time to fade, he was practically a shell of a man – all dark circles and hunched posture and disheveled blonde hair.

Sleep deprivation was, by far, the worst thing he could inflict on himself. At least he was happy after he drunk himself into oblivion. This was just depressing; as miserable for him as it was for you.

With a dutifulness you shouldn’t have had to show to your lover-turned-stalker-turned-captor, you brought him to his bed and watched as he collapsed onto it, what little strength he had to hold himself up immediately dissolving. With a sigh, a roll of your eyes, you turned to leave, but a hand lashed out from the crumpled heap and caught you by the wrist. “Stay with me?” His voice was muffled by layers of sheets and blankets, but clear enough. “Please?”

Usually, his bids for affection were met with bitter neutrality or, on your worse days, spiteful condensation. Usually, you would’ve torn yourself out of his hold and made sure he knew that he’d ruined any chance of living out his little domestic fantasy the second he decided his obsession was worth more than your happiness. Usually, you would’ve hated him that much more for daring to ask.

But, he could barely hold his eyes open and when you failed to immediately recoil, the sloppiest, most lovesick smile you’d ever seen plastered itself across his lips. It was his turn to pull you forward, this time; to drag you onto his bed and into his chest. With a satisfied sigh, he slotted his chin against the dip of your shoulder and draped his arms around your waist – an old position. A relic of better times you’d never been strong enough to completely dicard. “When it’s time to draw up the plans for our home,” he mumbled, only half-audible. “I won’t so much as breathe until its perfect.”

You opened your mouth, but didn’t say anything.

He’d already fallen asleep.

Tighnari

He glanced once at the thick packet of ink-marked parchment you’d slammed in front of him before looking back to you, his expression disparaging. “And this is supposed to be…?”

“A custody agreement,” you answered, grinning. “Alhaitham put it together during his last visit.”

“We don’t have any kids.”

“It’s for Collei. If I ever leave you,” and, to be clear, you would be leaving him, as soon as you figured out how to get away from a man who poisoned your tea whenever you so much as suggested entertaining a future that didn’t include him, “I want weekends and summers.”

“She’s nineteen.”

“Which is why we’re letting her pick who she wants to spend holidays with.” You tapped the front page with your knuckles. “Honestly, dear, if you weren’t going to so much as read the documents, we could’ve scheduled this for another day.”

His ears twitched, his tail sweeping across the floor in irritation. “Even if this was legally binding – which, by the way, something assembled by a scribe would not be – I would never give you weekends. That’d be too much travelling for a girl in her condition, and I don’t want her to feel like she comes from a broken home. Moreover, according to Regulation #531 as passed by the Grand Sage last year, you would have to get Collei’s signature before—”

“Check page twenty-seven.”

You watched him scowl as he thumbed through the pages. A second later, his ears flattened against his scalp, and he took to muttering under his breath. “Traitor.”

“If you don’t want your aggression towards the dependent party used against you in court, I’d suggest you sign on page four, seventeen, and thirty-two.”

You left his villa half an hour later with a with a new imprint of his fangs on the side of your throat and a signed document in-hand.

Cyno

“You have kidnapped me.”

“Technically, I was only—”

“You’ve blackmailed me, imprisoned me, and tortured me.”

“You can’t still be hung up on—”

“You’ve branded me with your name, forced me into your bed, and made me play out all your delusional, fucked-up fantasies—” You took a deep breath, pursed your lips. “—but if you show up to a black-tie event wearing that, it will be the worst thing you’ve ever done to me.”

He looked down, as if considering his attire for the first time. He was in his usual uniform – which was to say, shirtless and barefoot, his hair windblown and a fine layer of sand still coating what little he was wearing. You could only be thankful his polearm wasn’t slung across his back, but you knew he’d make it past the door without it. “The way I dress has never been a problem before.”

“There’s a difference between hunting down rouge scholars and going to a banquet being held by a literal god. Archons, Lesser Lord Kusanali herself might be there.” You gasped, dragged your hands over your face. “Everyone who’s ever gone to the Akademiya will absolutely be there.”

For all his many faults, he could never stand to see you in pain. There was a brief delay, a moment of unsure shuffling, then his arms were wrapping around you, his chest slotting against your back has he pulled you against him. “It’ll be alright,” he muttered, speaking into your shoulder. “If anyone so much as attempts to insult you—no, if anyone tries to talk to you at all, I’ll strike them down in the blink of an eyes.”

His comfort was stale, but you forced yourself to relax. At least enough to speak. “You know,” you mumbled, letting your hands drift to your temples. “Dehya was hired by an up-and-coming scholar, a few weeks ago. I’m not sure how long her contract was, but there’s a chance we’ll see her tonight.”

There was a beat of silence, then another.

“Cyno?”

“I’ll change.”

Wriothesley

You could hear him trudging up the metallic stairs to his office; his footsteps heavy enough to drown out the soft music flowing out of his century-old gramophone. His head emerged from the curving staircase, first – his hair somehow more disheveled than its usual state of barely-tamed chaos – then his chest, his tie undone and his collar terribly mangled, as if he’d spent all day indulging the worst of his nervous habits. He was baring his teeth, his pale cheeks flushed with anger and his eyes narrowed into a pointed glare. It wasn’t quite the reaction you’d hoped for (in your wildest dreams, he would’ve managed to sink his beloved fortress before he ever reached you), but it was close enough.

You moved to stand, to greet him with the warm embrace he usually demanded, but he was already in front of you, already pinning you to the back of the lounge you’d been splayed across with a single fist planted less than a hair’s width above your shoulder. “You,” he growled, leaning in close enough for his breath to fan over your skin. “Do you know how many journalistsI had to deal with today? They were everywhere. I couldn’t go a step without tripping over some— over some glorified tabloid.”

“So, your meeting with Monsieur Neuvillette went well?” His scowl deepened, and you let out your most faux innocent laugh – a chiming, bubbling thing he’d never been able to stand. “You shouldn’t scowl like that, love. All those photographers will have to find a new model if you manage to give yourself frown lines.”

He jolted, but forced himself to shut his eyes, to let out a long, ragged breath. When he did face you again, he’d regained a degree of his composure – just enough to meet your smile with his own tight-lipped grin, more teeth than anything. “I’ll let you off easy if you tell me how you did it now. Before I decide it’d be faster to strangle an explanation out of you.”

“I didn’t break any rules, if that’s what you’re worried about.” You paused, folded your hands over your lap. “It was all thanks to our great and benevolent duke. Contacting people outside of the fortress has gotten so much more efficient ever since you decided prisoners should be able to send letters without administrative vetting.”

He buckled visibly, his shoulders falling as he lean towards you, his face soon buried in the dip of your shoulder. “You’re gonna be the death of me, sweetheart.” There was a raspy chuckle, a hand on your thigh, squeezing just hard enough for his anger to shine through the playfulness of the gesture. “I think I’ve earned the rest of the day off, and I think you’ve earned—”

The door to his office swung open before he could finish, a masculine voice calling up from the voice below only a moment later. “Your grace, t-there’s a reporter here to see you! She says she’s been told not to leave until she speaks to your partner!”

“That’ll be Charlotte,” you half-sung. “She seemed like such a nice girl in her letters. It’d be a shame to keep her waiting.”

When he failed to answer, you brought up both hands and cupped his face, cooing as you used your thumbs to quirk the corners of his mouth upward.

“Just remember to smile for the camera this time, alright?”

[contact-guy]

watson's sketchbook

helloooo this is a MASTER POST of my Sherlock Holmes annotations, aka shitpost doodles of my favorite parts with occasional headcanons. I will pin this so it's available and update it as I go because this feels like it's becoming a full series, god help me.

I'm reading the stories in the order they occurred (according to Baring-Gould, who I am currently arm wrestling in the astral plane over how many wives Watson had) so that's how I will present them!

EDIT: decided to draw them in the order that makes sense to me, Baring-Gould you’re too silly

EDIT 2: this is basically a webcomic at this point, with ongoing continuity and a romantic storyline that can be enjoyed if you read in order. I did not intend this, but I have Sherlock Holmes disease and there's only one cure (doing this)

EDIT 3: content warning/advertisement depending on your temperament: this series gets into one of my big interests, historical queerness, period accurate homophobia, and how laws around queerness affected lived experience. it also has things that you can expect from a Sherlock Holmes story like: drug use involving needles, violence, flagrant use of old timey guns, and people dying in shocking and mysterious ways!

A Study in Scarlet 🩸

The Speckled Band 🐍

The Resident Patient 🩺

The Noble Bachelor 👰

The Second Stain 📮

The Reigate Squires 📝

The Dancing Men 👯‍♂️

Silver Blaze 🏇🏻

The Six Napoleons ⚫️

The Red Circle 🕯️🪟

The Greek Interpreter 🩹

Mycroft Interlude 🎩

The Beryl Coronet 🥪

The Yellow Face 🙂

The Hound of the Baskervilles 🐺

-Part One

-Part Two

-Part Three

-Part Four

-Part Five

-Part Six

-Part Seven

The Gloria Scott ⚓️

The Valley of Fear 🏰

-Part One

-Part Two

Shoscombe Old Place 🎣

Charles Augustus Milverton 💌

-Part One

-Part Two

-Part Three

-Part Four

-Part Five

The Copper Beeches ✂️

-Part One

-Part Two

The Sign of the Four 💉

-Part One

-Part Two

-Part Three

-Part Four

-Part Five

-Illustration

-Part Six

-Part Seven

The Cardboard Box 📦👂🏻

Second Interlude 💒

A Scandal In Bohemia 💃

-Part One

-Part Two

[insert-content]

a summar(ule)y of 196 culture

since the tumblr veterans have been kind enough to introduce us newbies to their site and culture, i think it is only fair that we explain the culture of our glorious former home to any tumblr users who might be interested in the #196 tag. keep in mind, all these things are based on my perspective of the situation.

first of all, some general information (that you might’ve already heard):

196 (r/196 on reddit) was a subreddit with only one (official) rule; "post before you leave." it was mainly a meme/shitposting sub, but it cultivated a large queer and left-leaning community. in protest of the recent api chances in reddit, 196 has shut down indefinitely until reddit reverts these changes.

now for some culture/references that you might come across

spronkus kronkus:

spronkus is this yellow, rabbit-like creature.

they were the mascot of our subreddit. their appearance can vary from images to image, but as far as i’m aware, their full outfit consists of a bandanna in the colours of the trans flag around their neck, a gun labelled as such (other wise you obviously wouldn’t know what you’re looking at), and an axe also coloured like the trans flag.

r/place:

this is a rare event on reddit where the entire website gets a huge white canvas and can start creating pixel art on it. 196 participated by collaboratively creating our mascot, spronkus with "196!" written next to them.

this version of the pixel art was recreated by me as i couldn't find a nice image of it. there were some changes between the first version and the end result, so this might not be exactly how it looked in the end

post titles/"rule":

reddit forces it's users to title every post they make. as most of the posts on 196 spoke for themselves, many user instead titled their posts "rule", to indicate that they followed the subreddit's only rule. some people also tried to make puns with the word or tried to include it in words that shared some letters (example: wor(ule)d).

anarcho-stripperism:

as the amount of cropped porn jokingly posted to the subreddit increased, the moderators decided that porn would be banned from the sub, with one exception: anarcho-stripperism. she made food fucking videos, in which she jokingly tested the fuckability of different food items (fruits, pasta, etc.)

bigotry showcase:

bigotry showcase was a post flair (basically the reddit equivalent of tags) on the subreddit and was later restricted to only be used on saturdays. under this flair people posted instances of different forms of bigotry to make fun it.

eating babies/hungryposting:

at some point, the subreddit started to pretend to like eating babies, which started a variety of memes regarding the subject. even a post flair called "hungrypost" was added because of this

goblinhog:

goblinhog is the most prominent and well-known member of the 196 moderation team. besides this, on 196 he was mostly known for changing people’s flair if you enjoyed him enough about it.

flairs:

flairs are little tags that are displayed under your name in posts or comments, they are also subreddit specific. most subreddits give their users a palette of preset flairs and the option to make your own custom flair. however, in 196 you only had the option to customize your flair during special events. if you wanted to customize your flair outside of those events (which was basically the entire time), you had to ask a mod to do it for you.

punching nazis:

from time to time, the same gif of a person with a nazi armband getting punched in the face, and promptly falling to the ground, was reposted to the subreddit. this became a sort of tradition.

discourse/drama

wasp discourse:

the wasp discourse was a one to two weeks long heated discussion that generally divided the subreddit into two factions. one side said that they were justified in killing wasps if they were attacked by them, while the other claimed that since wasps are just animals, they aren't aware of what they're doing in the same way humans are, and therefore should be spared.

drama about the british:

there was a time when jokes along the lines of "ew, british" became pretty frequent on the subreddit. as a response, some user claimed that this was akin to racism and tried to get others to stop with the jokes. a debate over whether or not it was important or necessary to stop followed afterwards.

pillar discourse:

this was a debate over which type of pillar should be considered the best (ionic; doric; corinthian). i have seen the question "which pillar is the best?" being used as a sort of greeting between 196 refugees on here.

related subreddits

195:

195 was the predecessor to 196, and also was a social experiment with the same premise as 196 (one rule, post before you leave). as the creators of 195 ended the experiment, the community wanted something with the same vibe to continue posting, and thus 196 was born.

197:

197 is another part of the 196 ecosystem and is commonly understood to be the more politically right-leaning and bigoted as 196, as some people who were banned from 196 continued posting there. besides that, the subreddits were essentially the same in terms of how they functioned.

19684:

this subreddit adds a second rule which banned all mentions of sex (that’s why it’s name is a pun on 1984). some people took this as banning all discussion of sexuality, which resulted in a community that was slightly less accepting of queer people. it is currently still up and running as the 196 moderation team wants a way to stay in contact with the community.

amendments to the posts:

u/femboy_expert:

another well-known 196 user. as the name suggests they're an expert on the subject of femboys, with their flair on 196 reading "phd in feminine boys". as the subreddit was somewhat obsessed with femboys, it's no wonder that they became popular.

u/shitcum_backup:

this was the main account of a pretty popular shitposter on the subreddit. although i didn't see them as much in the last few months, i remember them sometimes having a unique speaking pattern, in which they referred to themself in the third person.

u/monko74:

this user commented "Every day I thank god for not making me a r/196 celebrity," which led to many users of the subreddit treating them like a micro celebrity. there are even a few subreddits solely dedicated to u/monko74.

691:

a sister subreddit that inverts the rule of 196, here you would be (temporarily) banned for posting. some time ago the members of this sub initiated a rebellion/revolution against the bot who performed all the bans (roomba).

u/Smart_Calendar1874:

this wasn’t necessarily part of the subreddit, but it was a pretty popular meme. and since it’s getting posted on here again, and i know enough about it, i’ll add it to the post. this user made a post to r/AskReddit titled "How would you get a small cylinder (5.1in length, ~4.5in girth) unstuck from a mini M&Ms tube filled with butter and microwaved mashed banana? [sic]" it was pretty clear that they were referring to their penis, yet they continued to claim "it’s a cylinder," in the comment section. this lead to comments like "it is imperative that the cylinder […] remains unharmed," in response to people’s advice of cutting the m&m tube.

it's going to be very interesting to see which aspects of 196 culture are going to survive the tumblr migration, and which aspects won't be applicable on this site.

i'm obviously not the ultimate scholar on 196 lore. if i’ve missed or left out anything, or said something wrong, please comment it.

[evilwizard]

I do want to say, my views on AI “art” have changed somewhat. It was wrong of me to claim that it’s not wrong to use it in shitposts… there definitely is some degree of something problematic there.

Personally I feel like it’s one of those problems that’s best solved via lawmaking—specifically, AI generations shouldn’t be copywrite-able, and AI companies should be fined for art theft and “plagiarism”… even though it’s not directly plagiarism in the current legal sense. We definitely need ethical philosophers and lawmakers to spend some time defining exactly what is going on here.

But for civilians, using AI art is bad in the same nebulous sense that buying clothes from H&M or ordering stuff on Amazon is bad… it’s a very spread out, far away kind of badness, which makes it hard to quantify. And there’s no denying that in certain contexts, when applied in certain ways (with actual editing and artistic skill), AI can be a really interesting tool for artists and writers. Which again runs into the copywrite-ability thing. How much distance must be placed between the artist and the AI-generated inspiration in order to allow the artist to say “this work is fully mine?”

I can’t claim to know the answers to these issues. But I will say two things:

Ignoring AI shit isn’t going to make it go away. Our tumblr philosophy is wildly unpopular in the real world and most other places on the internet, and those who do start using AI are unfortunately gonna have a big leg up on those who don’t, especially as it gets better and better at avoiding human detection.

Treating AI as a fundamental, ontological evil is going to prevent us from having these deep conversations which are necessary for us—as a part of society—to figure out the ways to censure AI that are actually helpful to artists. We need strong unions making permanent deals now, we need laws in place that regulate AI use and the replacement of humans, and we need to get this technology out of the hands of huge megacorporations who want nothing more than to profit off our suffering.

I’ve seen the research. I knew AI was going to big years ago, and right now I know that it’s just going to get bigger. Nearly every job is in danger. We need to interact with this issue—sooner rather than later—or we risk losing all of our futures. And unfortunately, just as with many other things under capitalism, for the time being I think we have to allow some concessions. The issue is not 100% black or white. Certainly a dark, stormy grey of some sort.

But please don’t attack middle-aged cat-owners playing around with AI filters. Start a dialogue about the spectrum of morality present in every use of AI—from the good (recognizing cancer cells years in advance, finding awesome new metamaterials) to the bad (megacorporations replacing workers and stealing from artists) to the kinda ambiguous (shitposts, app filter that makes your dog look like a 16th century British royal for some reason).

And if you disagree with me, please don’t be hateful about it. I fully recognize that my current views might be wrong. I’m not a paragon of moral philosophy or anything. I’m just doing my best to live my life in a way that improves the world instead of detracting from it. That’s all any of us can do, in my opinion.

[xavieryaa]

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.

[prokopetz]

So, you've mentioned before that TTRPGs always have an expected "mode of play", that is, the basic concept from which the gameplay loop is derived. I admit I have little experience with this kind of thing, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the mode of play of Lasers and Feelings. Like, what's the unifying thread between Lasers and Feelings, Radical Catgirl Anarchy, and Lily is Girls With The Ability? Or between L&F and something like Speeding Bullets, for that matter? Is it just that they're all rules-light shitposts? Or is it based on, like, the tension between the two different ends of a dichotomy?

One-page games can be tricky in this respect because they just don't have the bandwidth to explicitly state many of their assumptions. They necessarily depend on the players (and the GM, if present) bringing the "correct" set of assumptions to the table regarding how the game ought to be played.

Still, there's enough there to draw certain conclusions. For example, in a typical Lasers & Feelings hack, rolling the dice gives a pass-or-fail outcome (with optional complication) for a discrete physical, mental, or social task. This frames a session of play as a sort of narrative obstacle course: the story consists of overcoming a series of well-defined obstacles in order to arrive at a particular goal. That might seem like a fairly banal observation, because that's how a lot of tabletop RPGs frame a session of play, but we need to make that explicit to contextualise the next step.

That next stop, of course, being the approaches.

One of the baseline assumptions of any tabletop RPG is that you're going to use it to tell the kinds of stories about which the rules have something to say – indeed, a tabletop RPG has to assume this, because if you're not telling the kind of story about which the rules have something to say, you're not playing the game!

To that end, a Lasers & Feelings hack is usually going to give you a pair of approaches to roll against, each consisting of a set of ways of conceptualising the obstacle in front of you. I'm not using the term "conceptualising" just to be fancy here; in Lasers & Feelings, the GM (if present) describes the obstacles, but it's on the player, not the GM, to decide "this is the kind of obstacle which can be overcome with [insert approach]", and nobody gets to tell them they're wrong.

Thus, a Lasers & Feelings hack assumes that the story of your game is going to consist of a series of obstacles (see above) which can usefully be conceptualised using at least one of the game's two approaches. A game where your approaches are "the power of friendship" and "the power of unimaginable violence", for example, probably isn't one that you'd want to use to play out a scenario inspired by Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, because those approaches aren't useful ways of conceptualising the kinds of obstacles such a story is likely to present – and if you used it anyway, the story would rapidly stop being a Pride and Prejudice pastiche.

All that in mind, it might be more accurate to state that Lasers & Feelings as a framework presents meta-expectations; the framework provides a set of mechanisms for a particular hack's chosen approaches to direct play, but you have to look at what that hack's chosen approaches actually are to pin down what that direction is.

[gothamcityneedsme]

tavon, who has personally fought both shae and heta: you know i just do not find myself overly impressed by either of you