#i need a non-fandom icon

[piratefishmama]

okay but why a fish?

WELL, CURIOUS PERSON, apart from my name, which stems from

Pirate - my first fandom One Piece, and because i have a shitton of fish making me, the mother of fish, aka: a fishmama.

Back in the twit days when i was part of the MHA fandom, i had this lil guy as my icon.

it's Kirishima as a chain chomp. from a silly throw away line in a fic i wrote where Kirishima claimed Bakugou had "clearly never had an irrational fear of chain chomps"

when i eventually moved away from MHA to Genshin and beyond, I still kind of wanted a Chain Chomp for my icon, i loved my lil chomper and didnt wanna let him go, but i was trying to create sort of an online existance for myself so i needed something that wasn't owned by a big ol company lmao. A mascot if you will.

So.

I turned a chain chomp into a fish.

truly revolutionary, so very original, dont you think? 🤣

[vivitalks]

x

[jonnywaistcoat]

Hi Jonny, if you don't mind I have a question about the TMA TTRPG! So I noticed that on the player's guide there's this guy, who my friends and I assumed is probably Jon. If it is him, is this a canon design, or more like some of the non-canon stuff that's in the merch?

So, I hope you don't mind if i use this ask to go a bit off on one. I'm not specifically dragging you (I'm actualy glad you asked, as I've thinking about posting on the topic), but all the discussion around the RPG art and how "official" or "canon" it might be is, to my mind, slightly silly.

First up, is it "official" art? I mean, yeah, its art for the officially licenced Magnus Archives RPG. This means Monte Cook Games have commissioned someone to do a beatiful illustration broadly based on some aspect, episode or character from the podcast and it goes in the book. But that's kinda all it means. "Official" is a legal distinction, not an artistic one. The fact that it's in an official product doesn't make it any less one artist's cool interpretation of a character that has only been vaguely described in audio.

Second, is it Jonathan Sims the Archivist? I mean, it's probably based on the idea of him, but it's certainly not set in stone. When we were first discussing art with MCG, we advised that character pictures be more vibes-based and not explicitly tied to specific people (ie. a portrait inspired by Tim wouldn't be captioned "This is Tim" and wouldn't be placed opposite a profile for Tim Stoker, archival assistant.) This was mainly because we wanted the artists to have plenty of freedom to interpret and not feel too tied down by the need to know everything about the podcast. But, to be frank, it was also because we know that there are a few fans out there that are kinda Not Chill about what they've personally decided these characters look like and can get a bit defensive over depictions that differ.

It strikes me as particularly strange to be having this discussion about art that's for a roleplying game book. Something that's explicitly and solely designed to give you the ability to play in your version of the Magnus universe. The idea that this is the thing where we'd for some reason try to immutably establish unchangable appearances for these characters would be pretty funny if some folks weren't taking it so seriously. Similarly ridiculous is the idea we could reasonably have said to MCG "We'd love for you to make a huge beautiful RPG book of our setting... Just make sure you don't depict any of the iconic characters or events from it!"

But... is it "canon"? Now, to my mind, this highlights a real weakness in a lot of fandom thinking around "canon", which is that it generally has no idea what to do with adaptations. All adaptation is interpretation, and relies on taking a work and letting new creatives (and sometimes the same ones) have a different take on it. Are the appearances of the Fellowship of the Ring in the LOTR movies "canon"? How much, if at all, does that matter? Neil Gaiman's book Neverwhere was originaly a 90s BBC series made with a budget of 50 pence; is anyone who makes fanart of Mr Croup that doesn't look like the actor Hywel Bennet breaking canon? What about the novel that describes the character differently? Or the officially licenced Neverwhere comic where he looks like neither of them? Which is his "canon appearance"?

Canon is an inherently messy concept, and while it is useful for a creative team trying to keep continuity and consistency within a creative work, for thinking about anything beyond that it tends to be more hinderance than help.

Anyway, all this is to say that the above picture and all the others in the RPG are exactly as canon as every other picture you've ever seen of the Archivist.

[saintsenara]

Thoughts on Ron and Hermione as a ship?

thank you very much for the ask, @thesilverstarling!

i’ll state my position straight away: book ron and hermione are the best of the canon couples.

they will have a long and extremely happy marriage made rich by great and stalwart love, lust, fun, and faithfulness, rather than held together by duty and couples’ therapy like so many readers and authors (including jkr, who seems to have decided to spend the years since the conclusion of the series failing to understand anything about her own characters) tend to think.

i will state another position straight away: lest i seem like i’m just a fan with blinkers on, i think this even though hermione is, by far, my least favourite member of the trio. if she were real i would detest her, and i dislike how she is treated by the narrative as always justified in her negative characteristics. i like fanon hermione - perfect and preternaturally good - even less.

as a result, i think that it’s ridiculous that jkr has said that she thought ron needed to ‘become worthy’ of hermione. they belong together as equals - which is what they’re set up in the narrative as being from the off - and i hate seeing that undermined.

because ronald weasley? he’s an icon. and he doesn’t get anywhere near the respect he deserves in fandom.

there are multiple reasons for this - ron’s narrative purpose is to be the everyman sidekick, and so he is able to be less special than harry or hermione (the helper-figure); the amount of aristocracy wank in this fandom means that the weasleys’ ordinariness is less appealing to writers than making harry have twenty different lordships and call himself hadrian; the narrative interrogates ron’s flaws - especially his capacity for jealousy - much more intensively than it interrogates either hermione’s (cruel, inflexible, meddling) or harry’s (reckless, self-absorbed, judgemental) - but one i feel is particularly significant is that ron is such a british character that many of his traits are not understood as intended by non-british readers.

in particular - as is outlined in this excellent meta by @whinlatter - ron’s sense of humour isn’t indicative of immaturity or a lack of seriousness, but is, in fact, evidence that he’s the most emotionally aware of the trio.

ron is shown throughout the series to understand how both harry and hermione need to have their emotions approached - and i think there is no piece of writing which says this better than crocodile heart by @floreatcastellumposts:

That was what she liked most about Ron, she thought vaguely. He was very good at being suitably outraged on your behalf. For Harry, for her, for Neville. That sort of thing mattered, when you were hurt or embarrassed or wronged in some way. You needed to have someone else on your side, to be as emotional as you felt, maybe even more so, so that you might feel a bit more normal. It was very decent of him, and she was not sure he realised he did it.

ron’s inherent emotional awareness is an enormous source of comfort to other people. he does the work which isn’t flashy or special - he makes tea and tells jokes and is just there - but which is needed in healthy human relationships far more frequently than a willingness to fight to the death for the other person.

[as an aside, this normality - even though i think it is assumed rather than justified by the text - is also what ginny provides for harry. if you believe that hinny are a good couple but romione aren’t… i can’t help you.]

but let’s look at some specific reasons why ron and hermione belong together:

their communication styles mesh perfectly. ron is the only person hermione knows who feeds her love of being challenged and debated, and who is able to engage in this way of communicating without becoming irate when she refuses to back down. ron is good at picking his battles, but he’s also good at recognising that hermione’s tendency to argue isn’t intended to be confrontational a lot of the time - it’s just the way she works through feelings and problems. he’s far more easy-going about her tendency to nag, interrupt, try to provoke arguments, or speak condescendingly than he’s given credit for - and hermione evidently respects this, since when he does tell her not to push a situation (above all, when she’s trying to needle harry into talking about sirius), she listens to him.

that ron and hermione’s tendency to bicker is taken by fans to be a bad thing is because it’s something harry - from whose perspective the narrative is written - doesn’t understand. harry is extremely conflict-avoidant - he tends to take being pushed on views and opinions he has to be insulting; and he has a tendency to assume that he is right which is just as profound as hermione’s. he and ginny communicate not by debating, but by ginny having no time for his rigidity and refusing to indulge it - but ron and hermione bickering about everything is not a negative thing within their specific emotional dynamic.

[as another aside, this glaring chasm in communication styles is why harry and hermione would be a disaster as a couple.]

they each provide validation the other needs. it’s clear - reading between the lines - that hermione is a tremendously lonely person. the friendlessness of her initial few weeks at hogwarts seems to be a continuation of her experience as a child, and - outside of ron and harry - that friendlessness endures through her schooldays. i’m always struck, for example, by the fact that, when she falls out with ron in prisoner of azkaban, she has no-one else to spend time with, and that this is only avoided in half-blood prince because harry decides not to freeze her out. i don’t think her friendship with ginny is anywhere near as close as fanon seems to imply (ginny has no interest in being nagged either), nor do i think that she’s anywhere near as close to neville (not least because she is so condescending to him) as she’s often written to be.

and this loneliness seems to stretch beyond hogwarts. the absence of hermione’s parents’ from the narrative is - in a doylist sense - clearly just a device to maximise time with the trio all together, but the watsonian reading is that she doesn’t have a particularly good relationship with them. hermione’s obviously upper-middle-class background - the name! the skiing! the holidays in the south of france! - can be presumed, i think, to come with a series of expectations from her parents which she feels constantly that she’s not entirely meeting, particularly expectations attached to academic success.

[for example, the grangers - were she a muggle child - would undoubtedly have ambitions for her to attend an elite university and then go into a prestigious career. tertiary education of the type that they’re familiar with doesn’t seem to exist in the wizarding world - most careers seem to be taught by apprenticeship - and this, alongside all the other divides between the magical and muggle worlds which contribute to the distance between them, would be one very obvious area in which she felt the need to prove herself to them.]

ron, too, has quite a difficult relationship with his position in the family - voldemort’s locket is not wrong to point out that he seems to receive considerably less of his mother’s emotional attention than ginny or the rest of his brothers - and he too is constrained by expectations which he doesn’t know how to explain he has no interest in - above all, molly’s desire for her sons to achieve top grades and go into the ministry.

he also suffers while at hogwarts from being ‘harry potter’s best friend’, something which harry never appreciates. but hermione does. she recognises ron’s jealousy and never allows harry to minimise it (and she and ron are very much aligned on having no respect for harry’s saviour and martyr complexes). she appreciates ron’s strengths - above all his kindness and his sense of humour - and makes him feel as though he’s achieved things with them. and ron does the same for her; he is hugely observant when it comes to her, and he challenges and defends her.

the two of them clearly spend a lot of time together one-on-one while harry’s involved in his various shenanigans (including outside of school - hermione has often arrived at the burrow days or even weeks before harry, and they seem to write to each other frequently when apart). they do this within a relationship which is fundamentally equal. one issue with hinny is that, post-war, harry is going to have to get used to seeing ginny as a peer, rather than as someone he has to protect. but ron and hermione never have that issue - equality is baked into their relationship from the off.

because, to be quite frank, fandom overstates the role that jealousy plays in their relationship. it’s true that ron certainly doesn’t acquit himself brilliantly when it comes to hermione’s relationship with viktor krum (it’s because he’s bi and doesn’t know it yet), and a tendency to externalise his insecurity into trying to make others also feel insecure is one of his primary negative traits (hermione does this too, via her patented lofty voice when she’s trying to condescend to people). but this is often taken as the initial red flag for how the relationship would crash and burn, and ron’s toxic jealousy is often used in fan-fiction as the trigger for emotional and physical violence towards hermione which, frequently, seems to drive her into the arms of either draco malfoy or severus snape… who are, of course, the first people we think of when we hear the words ‘not prone to jealousy’...

but i think it’s important to point out several things in defence of ron’s jealousy over krum. firstly, hermione evidently regards his jealousy as ridiculous - she’s upset by it, yes, but her upset must be understood as being caused by the fact that she wanted him to ask her out. she doesn’t think he’s being possessive, she thinks he’s being stupid. secondly, hermione is equally as jealous over ron’s crush on fleur delacour and relationship with lavender brown. she behaves just as cruelly when it comes to lavender as ron does when it comes to krum - and the narrative only treats her actions as more sympathetic or justified both because harry dislikes lavender too, and because, by that point in the series, jkr has dispensed with any inclination to ever criticise her.

but, outside of this teenage pettiness, ron is never jealous of hermione over things which matter. he is never jealous of her intelligence or competence or ambition or success (indeed, he defends her constantly from attacks designed to undermine her in these areas). for someone who struggles with being overshadowed by harry, he is never upset at being overshadowed by her. he is clearly going to be happy to support her in any of the career ambitions she can be written as having post-war.

and, on this point, i think it’s worth interrogating why so many readers still seem to feel uncomfortable with the idea of ron and hermione having a dynamic where she is the more ‘powerful’ one. [it’s always a bit trite to say ‘but what if the genders were reversed?’, but actually that’s not irrelevant here]. if hermione ends up taking the ministry by storm and ron becomes a stay-at-home father or has a job which is just to pay the bills, what, precisely, is wrong with that? why, precisely, should hermione regard ron making that choice for himself as a negative thing? hermione so often seems to leave ron in fan-fiction because of a lack of ambition - something which seems to be particularly common in dramione - but, in canon, she is shown to not particularly care if ron and harry do the bare minimum when it comes to studying etc. she nags them to do their work so they don’t get in trouble. she doesn’t nag them to do it to the same standard that she would.

and, actually, i think that ron being less ambitious than hermione is something which is key to how well they work. because ron provides not only emotional support, but emotional clarity.

hermione is shown throughout canon to - just as harry does - have a tendency to become obsessive to the detriment of her own health. she is also often - as harry is - emotionally or intellectually inflexible, and finds it hard to move on when what she feels or believes is proven to be wrong. both she and harry are micro-thinkers, who lean towards knee-jerk assumptions and stubborn convictions (and, indeed, hermione has a remarkably hagrid-ish tendency towards blind loyalty).

ron is none of these things. ron is a big-picture thinker (it’s why he’s so good at chess). he’s a pragmatist. he’s the least righteous of the three. he understands that faith and loyalty are choices, and that sometimes these choices will lead to outcomes which are bad or hard. he is the one of the three most willing to own up to having made mistakes. he is the one least likely to act on gut instinct (and, therefore, the hardest to fool - i think it’s worth emphasising that he clocks that tom riddle is tricking harry immediately, the only one of the trio to do so). he understands that things are a marathon, not a sprint. he is the least obsessive.

and these traits contribute to aspects of his character which are underappreciated. ron worries about hermione making herself ill during exams, or when she is using the time-turner, and makes an effort to get her to set healthy boundaries and redirect her anxiety. ron stands on a broken leg in front of sirius or goes into the forest to fight aragog not out of righteousness, but out of choice. ron takes over the burden of preparing buckbeak’s defence when it is clear that hermione is approaching burnout. ron is completely right that harry hasn’t done any long-term planning for the horcrux hunt, and his anger does force harry to tighten up after he leaves the trio. ron has a clear head in the middle of battle. ron makes harry and hermione laugh. ron is unafraid of human emotion. ron arrests harry’s tendency to brood over the little things by looking at the bigger picture. ron will always come back.

ron is bringing his politician wife regular cups of tea and making sure she doesn’t work all night. he is helping his lawyer wife to feel less upset over losing one case by reminding her that she’s won ten others. he is noticing stress creeping in and whirling her off for a dirty weekend, or even just a takeaway on the sofa. he is teaching his daughter to be proud of her ambition and his son to treat women as equals and both of his children that all you can do when you fuck up is apologise and try to do better. he is making hermione smile on the worst days of her life. he is helping her strategise her long-term goals when she gets stuck on the short-term ones. he is telling her straight when she needs to get it together. he is seeing a misogynistic head of department call hermione a ‘silly little girl’ and choosing to tell him exactly what he thinks of that.

ron is the ultimate wife guy. hermione is a very, very lucky lady.

[destinysbounty]

A lot of people wonder why Zane's sixth sense became less prominent over time, and a number of theories have been thrown around without the fandom ever really reaching a consensus on the matter. So allow me to throw even more gas on the fire by adding my own speculations into the mix!

Looking at the timeline, Zane's sixth sense began to decline shortly after being rebuilt. Of course he did still experience visions for a short while thereafter - the vision of the titanium dragon being an iconic example of this - but then his premonitions gradually became a scarcity over time, to such a point that Jay straight up didn't believe him when he had that vision in s11.

So why did that happen? To answer that question, we first need to talk about Pixal.

In the season 4 episode "Versus", Pixal states that she is fascinated by Zane's ability to dream, and has "always wondered what that's like." Implying that at this point in the series, she wasn't able to dream.

However, her dream sequence in season 11 "A Cold Goodbye" demonstrates that at some point between s4 and s11, she eventually developed the ability to do so.

(Side note: it makes a a little bit emo how Pixal used to think dreams were an amazing thing that she longed to experience - but when we finally see her doing so, she has a nightmare instead.)

Within the context of canon itself, Pixal's dream in this episode is the only instance throughout the series of a nindroid having a non-prophetic dream.

...or is it?

Let's take a closer look at that dream, shall we? Most importantly, the part where Zane slips from her grasp.

Pixal is holding onto him, but she loses her grip and he falls into some sort of vortex/tunnel of light and cloud. And yes, of course, my Pixane-loving heart is aching at the sight of this - but pay close attention to the appearance of the vortex itself.

Look familiar? No? I'll give you a clue.

Yeah, you're seeing that right. The vortex from Pixal's dream is uncannily similar to the Never Realm portal that opens up at the end of that same episode.

For those of you who haven't seen s11 in a while, allow me to clarify exactly why that's so remarkable: Pixal had this dream before they opened the portal, before they even knew Zane was actually alive. Somehow, within her dreams, Pixal managed to construct a replica of the Never Realm portal without even knowing it existed.

Like, really sit and think on that for a minute. Pixal had a dream in which Zane falls into a strange vortex that just so happens to look like the portal to the Never Realm. Y'know, the same portal Zane got blasted through just an episode prior. Without Pixal herself being aware that this had happened to him.

Do I think it's a coincidence that Pixal's dream just happened to represent Zane's true fate with an eerie level of accuracy - that he hadn't died, but instead been lost in a portal to another realm? You're certainly welcome to think so, but I sure don't.

So here's what I think happened: in season 4, Zane placed Pixal's neural drive into his processor. From that point on until season 7, they effectively shared a brain. Maybe the experience of sharing the same mind for such an extended period of time caused them to inadvertently...share Zane's sixth sense as well . Maybe it slowly began to split between them. Zane's ability would slowly decline over time as portions of it bled into Pixal - while Pixal slowly developed the ability to "dream", unaware of exactly what that ability entailed.

This would explain a number of things:

Why Zane's premonitions become much more scarce from s4 onward.

Why Pixal is suddenly able to have dreams in s11 when she wasn't able to before - and why that dream is so uncannily prophetic.

Why the Scroll reacted to Pixal. Given the fact that it didn't react to Kai, we can assume it doesn't do anything when someone without any kind of power holds it. which suggests that Pixal has some kind of power (be it prophetic or otherwise).

(Of course, that last point is dependent on the validity of certain interpretations of how spinjitzu, forbidden spinjitzu, and elemental power work within canon. And yes, you can rest assured I have theories for that too. But I'm still fine-tuning the kinks to that theory, so don't ask me to explain just yet.)

If this is true, I highly doubt anyone has realized that this premonition-sharing happened at all. Zane probably just assumes his decline in prophetic ability was caused by the spiritual damage he sustained in his fight with the Overlord (which is another viable theory), and Pixal simply assumes that her newfound ability to dream is a result of her developing humanity. Meanwhile the rest of the team is none the wiser.

[badboyfriends]

Hermitcraft - Basic History of Teams!

Alright. Buckle in.

Only a few days from now, and Hermitcraft 10 will begin! If you're new, I hope this helps!

Hermitcraft has existed for over ELEVEN YEARS now! While very few have been here for every single season, with the exception of our lovely Tumblr Resident, and official Tumblr Sexy Man Joe Hills, and our derp Xisumavoid.

You are under NO obligation to watch every season. There are probably few, if any, active users in this community who have. It's just not possible to watch it all. You don't need to watch the previous seasons to enjoy our community space! While there are a lot of back-references, for MOST people, it doesn't extend to lore and actions any older than season 6.

Most of the Hermits are associated with specific other members, despite ALL OF THEM taking turns collaborating, interacting, and sometimes building whole new dynamics and factions in the process. Some of the team-ups that you'll see referred to in fandom-spaces and the occasional one-off mention from our creators, include:

(Season 5) NHO, New Hermit Order - Docm77, Ethoslab, Bdoubleo100, and VintageBeef. Living in a jungle while having "fights" with others. Attempts to tax those who enter their jungle, had traps around it, and criticized the then-popular AFK Fishing Farms. Bdoubleo100, or Bdubs, especially enjoyed stealing from these. (Season 5-6) Convex, or ConCorp - GoodTimesWithScar and Cubfan135. One group I am the least familiar with unfortunately. They built a brand around the Vexes, with their business having pretty extreme low-morals that includes pollution and war profiteering.

(Season 6) ArciTects - Very close to be naming "BuildStone", it was proposed by and founded by Grian to Mumbo, later giving an invite to Iskall85. The purpose of this alliance was for builders to help redstoners, and redstoner to help builders. It accumulated in the ATTEMPT of founding the "greatest shop in the history of Hermitcraft", Sahara. It was, hilariously, a very large failure. Grian miraculously managed to entirely ruin the system with a single baked potato. No, I don't know how.

(Season 6) G-Team & Team STAR (Superior Tactical Alliance for Retaliation) - The Hermitcraft Civil War, consisted of a long list of minor conflicts in which various members of Hermitcraft blamed other people for pranks they committed, eventually spiraling into the confusion that was The Civil War! G-Team: Grian, TangoTek, Iskall85, Joe Hills, ZombieCleo, StressMonster101, and iJevin. Team STAR: Docm77, WelsKnight, FalseSymmetry, ImpulseSV Xisuma, RenDog

Mumbo Jumbo acted as a mole in Team Star, for the G-Team. He created this commercial for Team STAR. Team STAR made a very iconic diss track, which was soon remixed. It is a...Very iconic piece of Hermitcraft fandom. The result was Joe Hill's Response, in his short video also remixed by the same creator. Albeit missing the additions of the totally real voices of the other G-Team members

(Season 6) Area 77 & The Hippies - (I didn't finish Hippies POV and i didn't watch anything of Doc or Scar's POV of this unfortunately) Area 77 was founded by (unsurprisingly) Docm77, and GoodTimesWithScar, where they were doing experiments and studying abonomalies. SOmehow, this lead into Grian, once again, turning against them and forming The Hippies with the help of Ren, with Impulse soon joining. The conflict primarily consisted of them griefing Area 77 with flowers.

(Season 7) Boomers Demolition - Early game business formed by TangoTek, Bdoubleo100, and ImpulseSV which consistedo f almost exclusively non-duped TnT demolition, and was very fun!!

(Season 7) The Mycellium Resistance/HEP (Hermitcraft Environmental Protection) Hermicraft 7 saw Grian introduce the Hermitcraft Mayoral Election, created with the idea of putting Mumbo in as a puppet-government. If I had a nickel for every time Grian tried to start a puppet government (at this point) I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice. Grian and Mumbo lost. In it's place was GoodTimesWIthScar. As Mayor, they had further control over the shopping district. Scar's promise was to replace the shopping district's Mycellium with grass. Despite very happily admitting that grass looked better, Grian, in a moment of nostalgia, decided to replace some Mycellium. Scar proceeded by putting caution tape around the area. This spiraled into The Turf War

Mycellium Resistance: Grian (Mother Spore), ImpulseSV, RenDog, XBCrafted, iJevin, Ethoslab, StressMonster101, Docm77, and Mumbo Jumbo HEP/Mayor Scar: Scar, Bdoubleo100, Keralis, Xisumavoid, TangoTek, Cubfan135, FalseSymmetry, Mumbo Jumbo, who joined due to them having the better vault. Etho had intended on being a double-agent, selling information to Scar. His information, however, was useless on purpose and decided to pledge full loyalty to The Resistance.

(Season 8) Boatem Hole - Grian, Mumbo Jumbo, GoodTimesWithScar, ImpulseSV and PearlescentMoon more or less stumbled and tripped into forming a group after innocently stacking boats and crafting tables and crystals on a pole, dubbed Boatem Poll. They then proceeded to create a hole down to bedrock, and eventually into the void, called the Boatem Hole. It was a large plains biome which was turned into varying mountain terraforming and the like from all of them and was connected in some small ways.

(Season 8) The Big Eyed Crew - Bdoubleo100, Keralis, and TangoTek. Tango did not, in fact, have big eyes and instead wore sunglasses to compensate. They had a town and shopping area and was occasionally dragged into pranks by the Boatem Crew.

(Season 8) Octogon/Goatem - Docm77 and RenDog! Main rivals with Boatem (thus the Goatem - pole of goats) had a mega business, game-breaking creations, and jaw-dropping spidery teal-and-deepslate creations. Weird Science!

(Season 9) Soup Crew - ImpulseSV, PearlescentMoon, GeminiTay. Made the CRAZIEST combo-base where all their different themes blended into a cohesive build

(Season 9) Buttercups - Grian, MumboJumbo, and GoodTimesWithScar. What's up, Buttercup? They formed after an incient where Scar and Grian blew up a massive, complex tunnel bomber in Doc's base. They could not understand how to repair it, and left a few diamond blocks before conflict started. They dragged Mumbo in, and had a robot fight with...

(Season 9) The Perimeter - Docm77 and RenDog. Doc's base, known as The Perimeter, teamed with Ren to attack the Buttercups using walking redstone creations to do a robot fight. Due to an issue with one of the server's plugins, they all re-logged, breaking one of the bots and ending with Buttercup's bot to do more harm to itself than the Perimeter's, but ultimately the destruction did prevent Doc and Ren from getting any further. Ren and Doc then launched flying TnT dupers, which looked like butterflies, towards all of the Buttercups' bases and camp. They stopped them both, with one butterfly destroying The Perimeter's own bot even further.

I am so sure that I'm missing some, but I am losing my mind with all this trying to remember them all!! I hope this could give people an idea of who they might enjoy watching!

[kaiasky]

Complete-ish Guide To Settings You Might Want to Change

These instructions will be for desktop, because the settings are easier to find there. You can do the same on mobile, but it might be in different places.

Dash settings

Your dashboard is broken down into several feeds, including "Following" and "For You".

"Following" is primarily the posts of people you follow, "For You" is algorithmic.

If you just joined, "For You" is default, if you're a longtime user it's "Following". You can change this in the settings on the right

A lot of longtime users will tell you that the Following feed is where we spend most of our time. But try out all the feeds, and see what you like most.

The settings that are settings:

To start, click the settings gear under the account icon (the abstract person head).

This should take you to the General tab. Key settings:

Community Labels: By default anything NSFW is silently hidden. You can change how each subtype is handled.

Hide Additional Mature Content: If you have an iPhone disable this or it'll hide every post from you on the off-chance it contains porn.

If you're under 18 as determined by the birthdate you entered on signup, you can't change these. (If you want them on, you'll have to make a new account and lie)

Under the "Dashboard" tab, you can enable timestamps, which is mostly just nice information to have. sometimes a post is from 2010 and you can be like wow.

The next four probably have the biggest impact on your tumblr experience, so I'm gonna do a breakdown.

Best Stuff First reorders your "Following" to have popular posts at the top. Disabling it makes your feed chronological. I like it off, but up to you.

Include Stuff In Your Orbit and Based On Your Likes put various content from "For You" into "Following". Personally, I disable them to keep "Following" purely posts by people I follow, and then switch between feeds to get what I want.

Followed Tag Posts will put content from the "Your Tags" feed into your "Following" feed. Since you can go to the separate tags feed, I usually turn this off (it tends to show me a lot of duplicate posts), but up to you.

Under the "Notifications" tab you can tell Tumblr to stop sending you emails.

I'd recommend disabling all the emails--if you get a bunch of replies, Tumblr will happily send you dozens of emails, and you don't need that.

Notifications is the push-notifications in-app/in-website. The mobile app, for some reason, has a much better interface for controlling these, including the option to only get activity-notifications for mutuals. You can leave these on, or turn them off if you find the flood of notifications is distracting.

Tumblr News is a newsletter, it usually just has content from @fandom and the other staff-run recap blogs.

Conversational notifications sends you more emails.

Under the "Tumblr Labs" tab you can enable a bunch of cool beta tests.

I particularly suggest Reblog Graphs, What you Missed tab, & Popular Reblogs tab, but they're all fun to try out. A lot of these are honestly better than the For You dashboard.

For each blog you have, you can customize it's Blog Settings. Beyond things like setting an avatar or description, there's a few settings that are fun.

Custom Theme gives you your own subdomain at [blogurl].tumblr.com.

This makes your blog easier to search, and a lot of 3rd party tools depend on you enabling it. It also makes it easier to link your posts to people who don't have tumblr accounts.

You can completely customize the CSS/HTML/Javascript. you can go legitimately crazy. It's not a requirement, but if you want unlimited flexibility, go wild.

On the contrary, if you wanna run a more private blog, you can disable this and then hide your blog from search results/non-registered users.

Likes and Following are public by default. I like to turn these off so I don't have to worry about like, "what will people think if they see i'm following [...] or liking [...]". But it's also fair to keep them public if you'd like.

The other Blog Settings are important but pretty self-explanatory I think.

Finally, there's some useful tools I like:

XKit Rewritten - A bunch of scripts (like RES for Reddit). The one I really like is "mutual checker", which shows at a glance which blogs you are in mutuals with. Which is such a good feature it's included in the mobile apps by default i think.

siikr.tumblr.com - Tumblr search is bad, and google's indexing of tumblr blogs is worse. Siikr will find any post you've made on your blog. Because disk space is limited, only use it to search your blog, and if you're tech savvy consider running a local copy from source.

[rwrbficrecs]

We’ll Invite Something In by @smc-27 (book-verse)

@dot524: This is a fandom favorite and for good reason. In this canon divergence AU, Alex is President, Henry is out, and they never got together in their 20s. Instead, they encounter each other in their late 30s and a very different type of relationship ensues. They still hide it at first, but there’s a lot of living that they both have done and need to work through. I really enjoyed the character dynamics here and how the premise changed both Alex and Henry, making them bolder and more mature. Definitely read this one!

Eyes Blue, Like the Atlantic by bleedingballroomfloor (book-verse)

@dot524: A Titanic AU! Adapted by an excellent writer, this one has suspense, action, romance, and intrigue. There is a MCD (Main Character Death) in here and some other tags to be aware of, but also vibrant scenes with dancing, chasing, art, and formal wear. I really enjoyed it!

Clean Slate by @smc-27 (book-verse)

@heysweetheart-writes: This was just so excellent. I devoured it in no time, couldn't put it down. I love the way Alex just slips into Henry's life like a silk glove even though Henry has his hesitations. There's abslutely no angst at all other than "you're too young for me" "no, next question" I love it. I love Henry finally feeling young for the first time. I think that is something that Henry generally feels after meeting Alex, like he's never been able to, no matter at what point in life he is. ANYWAY I'm talking about Henry way too much again for a rec. Read this.

Most People Exist by @sprigsofviolets (book-verse)

@na-dineee: Henry, 30, is a nurse on a cancer ward. From the very first moment he feels an intense connection and attraction to his newest patient, the one who has a brain tumor and is named Alexander Claremont-Diaz. - The tags say it all: "Falling in love, Slow Burn, Angst with a happy ending, Hurt/Comfort". After reading this story I am a whole new person. I laughed and cried, had butterflies in my stomach, I felt it all. Hands down one of the best fics I've ever read!

after hours by @dumbpeachjuice (book-verse)

@na-dineee: How much can happen in a few hours? stutteringpeach: Hold my beer. 😅🤝 Reading this was truly a roller coaster ride, my stomach was doing somersaults non-stop: On his last evening in New York, poet Henry meets bartender Alex and the two spend the night together - in true "Before Sunrise" style. To sum it all up: enchanting, sweet, phenomenal, iconic!

No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue) Oil on Canvas by @captainjunglegym (book-verse)

@zwiazdziarka: This fic is so twisted and surprising in the best way! The summary did not prepare me for all the action that comes after the initial relationship drama and I'd really like to fawn over it some more but I don't want to spoil the fun of figuring out what really is going on and what are characters' motivations. Just give it a try.

Meet the Parents (series) by @14carrotghoul (book-verse)

@dot524: I really enjoyed these thoughtful character studies of Ellen and Oscar. The two short stories are a series of canon vignettes from Oscar and Ellen’s POV. These glimpses of the Claremont-Diaz parents add heart and depth to the RWRB canon, giving insight about how Ellen and Oscar think about parenthood, power, family, and each other.

Leave The World Better Than You Found It: A BONES AU by @treluna4 (book/movie-verse)

@myheartalivewrites: I really enjoyed this FirstPrince meets procedural TV show fic! With Alex as Booth and Henry as Brennan, they learn to work together, solve crimes--and fall in love, of course. Plus take down a very satisfying book villain.

No Laughing Matter by @inexplicablymine (book-verse)

@suseagull04: This fic is absolutely hysterical- a must read if you need something to cheer you up! It's also very relatable for anyone who, like me, has said things they've regretted in all the best ways!

in summer air by @acdsbff (book-verse)

@na-dineee: I need a vacation and vitamin D - maybe that's why this series (both POVs are covered 🥰) captivated me so much?! It is set on a Greek island, where Alex, just cheated on by his boyfriend, meets hotel owner Henry. What follows is a whirlwind speedrun romance against a beautiful backdrop. Really therapeutic for the heart on dreary days!!

here is a map (with your name as a capital) by @alasse9 (book-verse)

@dot524: What an incredible surprise to have this entire 50k story drop at once. In this canon divergent story, Alex and Henry start getting to know each other in Rio, when Alex helps him recover from a panic attack. Their friendship, and later their relationship, is a delightful slow burn with funny moments, heartbreak, and steady support of each other. I thoroughly enjoyed this start to finish — the characterization of both Alex and Henry is on point and I really enjoyed how the writer changed some of the scenes from the book while keeping key callbacks. A delight.

Claremont 2008 by @happiness-of-the-pursuit (book-verse)

@suseagull04: This friends to lovers AU is done so well! Having Henry and Alex meet as kids means we get years of their friendship before they even start dating, and it gives every aspect of their relationship so much depth through this entire fic. It also gives some events only referenced in the novel a completely different perspective, which makes them even better!

keep me in the moment (don't it feel so real?) by @anincompletelist (book-verse)

@heysweetheart-writes: I absolutely love everything that comes out of Sarah's magic little fingers and this was no exception. Alex and Henry are best friends and pinning over eache other unknowingly and an accidental lil discovery turns their relationship upside-down (for the better) absolutely recommended. I honestly loved it so much.

you know i can't be found with you by @dumbpeachjuice (book-verse)

@heysweetheart-writes: This was SO much fun. Alex was RELENTLESS and I absolutely love an older Henry. It was also very fucking funny. 10/10

the great duck fiasco by @alexclaremont-diaz (book-verse)

@suseagull04: A spy AU, dating apps, and Alex's Texas roots combine in the funniest way possible- definitely read this if you want a good laugh!

[txttletale]

In what ways does undertale's themes drop the ball? I feel like they do as well, but I only really see the criticisms you mentioned in your post by the online fandom at large.

the sans fight is cool and fun and has a sick music track. it should have fucking sucked it should have been literally on the same level as the stanley parable baby game. it should have been impossible without an autoclicker and been super fucking tedious with one. it should have been desert bus.

like i don't think that what undertale is every trying to say is 'killing video game characters is morally wrong in real life'. i think it's clearly, in chara and flowey--who are obviously positioned as Players of video games--is trying to explore what (at least to toby fox) is an unhealthy and unsatisfying way of playing games. the need to maximize the amount of 'content', the need to experience everything in a game even when it's not fun anymore. i think the way that flowey talks makes this very clear:

like obviously diegetically this kind of stuff is meant to go towards making a point of how detached flowey is from his moral reality but i think non-diegetically this is pretty clearly speaking to a way of engaging with games that toby fox thinks sucks the fun out of them. flowey isn't connected to the contents of undertale because he didn't play it for fun, he played it to extract the maximum amount of Content, to see every possible combination of events, to get all the endings, etc.

the rest of no mercy route isn't fun. killing enemies once you've levelled up at all is boring and barely interactive, walking around in circles to spawn every single random encounter is boring, you miss out on substantial amounts of content--the humour and dialogue, etc. and that's the point! i don't think the intended emotional effect of the empty misery of the no mercy route is to make you think 'i'm a bad person for killing video game characters' it's to make you think 'is this even fun? what am i even getting out of this?' or in short--

unfortunatley i think the sans fight being very cool and becoming iconic of the game kind of fumbles that very very hard becaues it does make the murder everybody route ultimately rewarding--it gives players the Content that i feel like the entire writing and metanarrative of the game is setting up to not exist, and so i think it absolutely fails to stick the landing.

[leikeliscomet]

Racism in the ace community is seen as a joke from the outside and a confusing concept in the inside but it's pretty bait tbh:

Barbie, Wednesday and Elsa are ace-coded but not canon aces but they're widely accepted as ace icons in the community. Lacking genitalia, disliking romance and being single are not inherently asexual yet the community happily claims them as ace solely on those reasons. But Selah Summers? Nah she actually didn't say the words "aroace" even though the director confirmed it so she didn't really count. Abbi Singh? Nah she had a girlfriend and her superpower is being a succubus and it's not like the Imperfects actually addressed the themes of an asexual lesbian South Asian woman and her sexuality or anything. Fei Hargreeves? Well yeah the actress and producer confirmed it but she never said it on screen. Ace characters of colour always get held "screened" for approval to be "real rep" in a way white aces aren't its so weird (this also happens to gay aces but that's another post)

Almost anything involving Yasmin Benoit. The reason she's unacceptable ace rep is because of misogynoir. She's spoken so many times about never dating and not having sex (which mind you is none of our business and she shouldn't need to explain herself in the 1st place) and yet she's "too sexual" to represent the community. Again with the nitpicking, popular white ace accounts were so quick to dogpile her for not-so-good takes but when she speaks about racism? Crickets. When she spoke about sexual harassment? Crickets and not only that but they defended her harasser. The main ace activists that defended her were other Black aspecs.

Not understanding how desexualisation affects POC. Specifically, Black women are excluded from representations of love and sex because we're seen as undesirable. It's common for TV/Film to pair up everyone but the Black girl, or have a rebound Black partner for the non-Black main character who's disposed of when they're ready for their "real" non-Black partner again. This isn't done for Black aspecs benefit. It's a form of dehumanisation. Friendship especially in m/f is needed but exclusively pushing for friendship between Black women and non-Black men when there is romance coded or confirmed and shaming Black women in fandom or in show for shipping the Black female character is not doing what you think its doing.

Not understanding how sexualisation effects POC. Again linking to Yasmin, POC, especially Black people have been sexualised due to white supremacy. The "allosexual privilege" framework fails to acknowledge this because Black people's sexual attraction and sex is seen as aggressive and animalistic. Black people aren't "allowed" to be ace because of this sexualisation and why Yasmin regardless of what she wears or does is seen is too promiscuous.

Not acknowledging ace POC as ace rep. Again, where was the acknowledgement of Selah and the Spades as groundbreaking rep? The first aroace darkskin Black girl as a lead in any film? Sherronda J Brown spoke about Big Mouth's Black ace character and someone said it didn't count just bc they dislike the show. Again with Abbi and Fei the community didn't make noise for them like they did Todd from Bojack Horseman or Florence from Sex Ed (mind you the gap between how they did Florence vs O is jarring in itself) Isaac from Heartstopper was inspirational for many aspecs and I wont take that away but the way he's instantly credited for ace representation when he has so little screentime compared to the others is wild.

Just tired tbh. "Listen to POC aces!" "POC aces are valid!" Prove it then...?

[i-am-mldy]

Am I the only zutara fan who isn't thrilled by the subtle ship bait (if it even is) done by NATLA?

Am I the only one who wants Netflix's grubby little money hungry hands off of one of the most iconic non canon ships in cartoon history, just to pander to one of the more vocal sides of the fandom?

Because with the way they're characterizing Katara in this adaptation, I don't even want to see how they would pair her up with Zuko. It would only be a half-assed surface level attempt. Whatever Netflix concocts cannot hold a candle to the fan art and fanfiction the fandom has created and shared over the years. The ship as we know it has been ours and ours alone. I refuse to surrender it and see it bastardized. The last thing we need is for antis to have more ammo.

I would rather they stay consistent with canon and proceed with kataang and maiko. I would rather they improve and evolve these couples rather than pander to "popular opinion". Zutara has thrived with us, so it should just stay with us.

[purgatory-jar]

COMMISSIONS ARE OPEN ONCE AGAIN!

Guess who finally has some time for commissions after years? It me!

I am opening up 5 official commission sposts and 5 spots in the queue, and you can either send me a message here on tumblr or by email at elena.piergiacomi@icloud.com .

You can find other examples of my art here;

I can be commissioned to draw art for fanfics, covers, OCs, all ships/fandoms, small animations, comic strips, tarot cards, icon/headers combo and so on!

It's not just deancas. Hit me up with good omens, ofmd, heartstopper, the witcher, 911, ted lasso, your baldur's gate OCs, star wars, whatever you want! I am a huge nerd and 90% chance is I know the characters already :)

It would be amazing if you could signal boost even if you're not interested, every bit of sharing helps.

Full pricelist and rules under the cut :)

PRICE LIST

SKETCH FLAT COLOR

base price 45 $ 

+ each additional character 24 $

complex bg 24 $

SKETCH FULL COLOR

base price 50 $ 

+ each additional character 24 $

complex background 24 $

INKED 

base price 55 $

each additional character 27 $

complex background 27 $

FLAT COLOR LINEART 

base price 77 $

each additional character 38 $

complex background 38 $

FULL COLOR 

base price 110 $ 

each additional character 44 $

complex background 44 $

RULES

Want a commission? Write to me at elena.piergiacomi@icloud.com and describe what you would like me to draw!

-PRICE: the price is calculated on the hours of work I put on it, and it already includes ALL taxes. (45 % of the amount goes up in taxes, my dudes). It is based on the amount of characters, details and background you ask for. The more complicated it is, the more time it takes, the more it costs. Please explain in your email what you would like and your budget and we will come up with a suitable price for both of us! Animations and comic strips need to be discussed as their price depends on the style chosen. Don't worry if your budget is not much: just let me know and we can surely squeeze a drawing in there :)

-WHAT I NEED: photo references and information on what you want, the more the better. They don’t have to be super accurate! You can send ten photos and say: “I want this dress with this character with this other background etc.” You don't know what you want? no problem! we can chat and discuss it!

-WHAT I WILL DRAW: I am comfortable drawing nsfw, most kinks, and animals of all kind, real and fantasy alike. I also draw every ship, so don’t be shy in asking! I won’t draw underage nsfw, non-con or dub-con, domestic violence etc. If you’re not sure, ask!

-WHAT FANDOMS? All of them. Just provide references and I’m good. Also, I’m a huge nerd, so there’s a 90% chance that I already know what you’re talking about. I draw OCs too!

-HOW TO PAY: via Bank transfer. After we agree on a price I will draw the sketch, and after the you have approved of the sketch I will send the invoice that you will need to pay. The invoice will contain all the info for the payment (it’s pretty easy to do online) and it’ll be in euros, and it will obviously be the amount we agreed on. I will then proceed with the rest of the drawing once I receive the payment.

-TIPS: If you wish to leave a tip, it’s greatly appreciated! However, the invoice has to match the exact amount of money I’ll be receiving, so if wanna tip you’ll have to tell me before I send the invoice! Again, a tip is not necessary nor will I be mad or offended if it’s not there. Sharing my art and signal boosting my commission masterpost or recommending me to others means a lot to me too and it’s a great way to help.

-HOW IT WILL WORK: I’ll send you the progress AT LEAST three times: the sketch, the lineart, and the base colors, so you can see them and ask me to change what you don’t like. Do not worry about offending me! The key to a good commission is communication! Also, I won’t be able to change stuff if you don’t tell me in time, so there’s that too ;)

-CAN I SHOW THE DRAWING TO THAT ACTOR? Sure, as long as it’s not nsfw! Please let me know if you do, I’m super curious to know what they said ;)

-DEADLINES: Please let me know if you have any deadlines you want respected. If you want it ready in less than 10 days there’s an extra 10$ fee. If you want it ready in less than 7 days there’s an extra 20$ fee. Also, if you ask for a deadline please try to reply to emails as promptly as you can manage.

-LIVESTREAMING: I might livestream the last phase of your commission (the coloring) on my Picarto.tv account, if the inspiration strikes and time is there. If you don´t want me to, please say so in advance, even tho I usually ask for permission before I do it.

[elderscrollsconceptart]

This will be a long post but I've been thinking about this since last night.

I get a pit in my stomach when I think about the new Fallout TV show and the chance TES may get a show if the Fallout show is super successful.

I've been hearing the show has been pretty good, but ive also heard some grim rumblings and worries about certain directions Bethesda/Amazon are taking lore-wise in the Fallout show. Apparently Todd has said everything in the show is canon.

I've not watched it myself as I'm not a huge TV watcher in general, but I don't know if I want to see Bethesda or an outside studio make massive changes to TES lore which affect both past and future installments in TES purely for the sake of "making good TV".

I am most certainly not a "modern Bethesda" hater or of the opinion that modern TES/Fallout games are bad. I pretty much love them all. (I even enjoyed Starfield, huge glaring flaws and all!)

I genuinely believe they are trying their best to make fun games. I also understand they have had a lot of struggles over the past decade+, particularly in company direction and budgeting of necessary resources (pre-Microsoft acquisition).

The old Zenimax upper management was awful (Trumps brother was literally on the Zenimax board of Directors before he died). And infamously refused budget allocations towards serious game engine improvements that were desperately needed. Bethesda has had alot of struggles but I feel they have always tried to do the best they can, even if the final result is middling.

I am also not a Todd hater. Even if he's not necessarily the best game designer, he has a lot of heart and passion and seems to genuinely care about Bethesda and its employees. I am glad he seems to have a genuinely good relationship with Microsoft and I have high hopes for Bethesda's future in the long term.

All that said, there are just certain changes that can happen when "Hollywood comes knocking" per se., even if most of the main creative decisions still come from Bethesda. TV shows can be fantastic and lauded with praise but if they are based on an established property with established lore, they often ultimately go in creative directions which negates the lore and other non-TV entries in the series.

Just look at GOT. It started off amazingly, and GRR Martin had a direct hand in all the early series. It was the best show on TV until suddenly GRR was no longer involved directly and the show runners started making their own decisions. They started ignoring established lore and making "changes and improvements" which nose dived the series by the end.

Perhaps I am paranoid, but I can see something similar happening to Fallout if the show is big and keeps getting new series. Furthermore, I hold a deep dread that TES may be next. Just think, how many people talk about GOT anymore? How many people are hyped for the next book(s) in the series? The books didn't get bad right? Only the TV show did.

But that's my point. If Fallout or TES have these big smash initial hits on TV but begin to fail after a while, it damages the series as a whole, not just the TV show. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see TES/Fallout TV shows be nothing but great. I just worry as I've been hearing of major major lore changes being made by the Fallout show. These changes are irrevocable and utterly change the lore of that series, and not necessarily for the better. I'll try to refrain from further judgment on that, but I'll leave with this question:

What if TES had a super quality and popular TV show which negated large parts of pre-Oblivion lore? Suddenly, due to the show, innumerable people/places/things which were iconic to the TES series were no longer around or perhaps not even canon anymore? What if those things were just lost or written off for the sake of a TV show?

As a fan of TES, and maybe even of that TV show, how would that make you feel?

I'm am not trying to stir controversy here, but I think we as a fandom need to have more public discussions about this. We also need to be prepared to not dump on any new changes to the series or lore without giving them a fair shake. Something being "new and different" does mean its awful. Changes can be good or bad but they must be carefully considered.

I hope this new Fallout show's premiere will provide us a good chance to consider the future of TES media and lore outside the games before any changes are announced or made.

[pendragonsclotpole]

I need to preface this post with the fact that I’ve been aware of Supernatural for as long as I’ve known what the terms fanfiction and fandom mean. It’s one of those pop culture moments that’s existed on the periphery of my mind as something really beloved and bemoaned about by people on the internet, but it’s never been something I really cared about outside of some iconic memes.

For the past four days, I’ve been watching Supernatural non-stop in my free time. I think I sat through eight episodes straight on one of those days, and I just have to say, the show is phenomenal.

I don’t know where to start, I could make a dozen of these posts about various points throughout the first two seasons and it still wouldn’t be enough. I’ve now taken a break at episode one of season three, because now that it’s a weekday I have work and can’t dedicate the time I could on the weekend.

First, Jared Padalecki’s acting is so beautiful and poignant and emotional. He really makes Sam Winchester into the bleeding heart of the whole show, and the entire time he’s on screen I worry about Sam. His portrayal of Sam’s heartbreak and desperation at Dean’s impending death after the car crash, as well as Sam’s horror at the reveal of what John told Dean before dying held a tragic desperation and denial that really embodied what the character represented in the first two seasons. Even as a hunter and with his special abilities, Sam felt like a quasi self-insert for the audience. I don’t mean that in a bad or overly tropey way, but in the way that he felt robbed of a proper childhood in favor of his father’s crusade. Sam is the angry, indignant younger sibling who never bore the brunt of responsibility like the older sibling did and it shows. In some ways, it makes him more entitled—I don’t mean that Sam does not have the right to be angry with John Winchester. He does. Fuck John Winchester. I mean entitled in the unintentional, coincidental way that your little brother or sister always demands the things you never had or rebels against the authority of the parent without ever dealing with the consequences you did as the older sibling. It reveals the veneer of freedom he had and the protection he received by virtue of his place in the Winchester Family. For me, it made him unbearably real, and this feeling of realness was made worse by the genuine naivety and innocence he keeps even as he continually gets screwed over by the demons. There’s a steadfast belief in the goodness of others within Sam that often conflicts with the sense of goodness he believes he lacks.

Sam trusts so easily, but he understands people in ways that should be antithetical to his upbringing. It took me forever to reconcile why he seemed so familiar, until I realized that Sam Winchester, for all that he was one of John Winchester’s son, had received the unconditional love of an older sibling for his entire childhood.

I don’t mean the perfect, kind, healthy love that often exists between fictional siblings. Too often I’ve watched media that makes me wonder how siblings like that even exist, or conversely, made me glad my siblings weren’t so fucked up.

I mean the kind of platonic love that exists between siblings living in the liminal space of love and hate thanks to the single fucked up connection that draws them back together continuously out of some sense of duty or commiseration or the need to be understood.

I mean the kind of love between siblings that would wither away when in a perfect world that does not stake their survival on their codependence of each other, but that in an imperfect and real world is equated to familiarity. Sam and Dean against the world—against John Winchester.

Out of all of the episodes I’ve watched in the last day and a half, perhaps the one that struck me most was episode 20, Season 2. What is and What Should Never Be. Not only was the title a bit of emotional whiplash—the juxtaposition of Should and Never lending a finality or a sense of wrongness that can’t be replicated by the words “Could Never—but we see Dean and Sam in a world where their one connection, hunting, has completely vanished and at a high cost to all the people they’ve saved, but mostly to Sam and Dean themselves. They’re connection as ride or die brothers is gone, replaced by an ostensibly better, healthier, more normal future liberated from the expectations of the rest of the world.

Without the death of Mary Winchester, Dean and Sam are no longer Dean and Sam. They’re just two people, connected by the two people that raised them, and likely to drift apart after that connection dies—frayed ends of a tapestry pulling apart and unraveling. Dean gains a mom and a normal life, but metaphorically loses a brother and a sense of purpose. Who is Dean Winchester if he’s not a hunter and Sam’s brother? And the sad thing is, neither of these are traits Dean ever chose. They are conditions foisted upon him, perhaps not intentionally, such as in the case of Sam, but ultimately placed on his soul until they tethered themselves to the very core of what being Dean Winchester is supposed to mean. The end of the episode, and Dean’s choice to return to the real world, regardless of Sam waking him up, is Dean fully giving up his dream in order to save Sam and be a hunter. The fallacy of the episode is in the choice Dean makes, which the more I think about it, feels less like a choice and more of an inevitability but one compounded by Dean’s readiness and willingness to go with it.

This is where I get to the crux of my surprise with these first early seasons of Supernatural: Dean Motherfucking Winchester.

I don’t know what I was expecting from early seasons of Supernatural, especially with the context of the later seasons. Maybe an overly cheesy, early 2000s ode to roadtrip Americana with a self-reverential take on the classic gun slinging frontiersman of the Wild West and bad supernatural CGI. Not to say it isn’t that (shout out to Sam’s comment on Dean’s particular brand of butch), but what surprised me was how real the connection between the characters was manifested on screen and how much good will the show built up in the audience. There came a point where I sided with Dean so much in the events of the show that I felt like I was riding shotgun in the impala. I saw it with every compliant “yes, sir” he gave to John, with every teasing comment he threw at Sam, and with every act of selflessness he exhibited by protecting other people. This isn’t to say that Dean is perfect. Sometimes he doesn’t take things seriously enough, or he’s willing to sacrifice people for some misguided greater good, or he’s obsessed with saving Sam even when he wouldn’t be if it were anyone else, but Dean has a conviction so many people lack. He has the capacity to love at a great cost to himself, either because he believes himself unworthy of being loved or because he’s not used to anything else.

Jensen Ackles does such a good job at this portrayal and with such a different technique than Jared Padalecki. Ackles embodies the desperate need for self-assuredness that Dean breathes, as well as the genuine fear he has of being seen. I love laughing with Dean as much as I love screaming at him for how stupid he’s being. If Sam is the self-insert, then Dean is the tragic hero, although that comparison feels like a poor facsimile for what Dean Winchester truly is because I don’t particularly feel an overwhelming sense of pity at his state or at his hinted downfall with that demon deal. If anything, I feel a sense of indignation mixed with understanding and frustration that Dean can’t catch a break but at the end of it all, is just how he prefers it.

It shouldn’t be a shock to admit that even without knowing what happens from seasons 3 to 15, I know how Supernatural ends. Just thinking about the ending makes me wonder if I should even continue it past season 5, but that’s a decision for another time.

For now, there’s something unbearably tragic in seeing Dean Winchester so close to a chance of a normal life and apple pie happiness (something he really seems to desire no matter how much he denies it) and then having to give it up, not just because it’s not real, but because he believes it should never be real.

Dean Winchester deserves better.

[canonkiller]

Hi, I'm trying to do art commissions, but no one has commissioned me yet. Do you have any advice for attracting customers?

I wrote a lot of words for you in hopes that at least some of it will be helpful, so I'm putting the bulk of this answer below a read more to save people the scrolling. The quick and easy two tips that I find people forget to do the most are:

Is your art easy to find? Having a pinned post with a tag for your art, a link in your bio, or an art-focused / reblog-light blog (like this one!) make it so that people know you draw, and knowing you've been posting art for a while makes you less likely to be a scammer.

Is your commission info easy to find? People can't buy things that they don't know you're selling; clear and accessible links to your prices and terms are important.

Now for the real bulky meat of advice giving, where I say a lot of words that may or may not be relevant:

I have a lot of advice, but I do want to say before getting into it:

A lot of selling art (especially in a non-industry setting, like with social media commissions) is luck.

There is no one size fits all method for selling art, and it's best to go with what feels right to you (I'll go more into this later)

Tips for selling are not necessarily tips for creating, and there will be advice in here that I don't apply to myself. Determining what you do and do not implement is something you should decide for yourself and your work flow.

Your art not selling doesn't mean nobody cares about it.

Personally I think the idea of intentionally curating a single subject demographic of Customer and Consumer for your work is limiting and doomed to burnout in a non-industry space. I will also touch more on this later.

Now for the rest of it in varying orders:

✨ Attracting Customers

This one is going first because you mentioned it specifically. It is kind of vague though, by nature of the term, so what I advise doing is specifying.

When you are thinking of a customer, are you trying to appeal to:

People who will buy pre-made art products? (Pins, stickers, prints, etc)

People who will buy custom work? (Commissions for specific subject matter)

People who will buy art resources you've created? (Fonts, bases, texture packs, 3d models etc)

There's also frequency: a repeat customer of custom art will usually be appealed to more by a wide range of options (like illustrations), while you might get more single-purchase customers if you only offer a limited range of options (like only icons).

Demographics also, of course, play a substantial role in just custom art commissions; furries get lauded as high spenders, but they're also a huge community that is focused around OCs, so by statistics alone they will have more people with spending money and will be frequent customers of people drawing OCs. A narrower audience means fewer people, but often the spread of the people within that audience is the same - and at the end of the day, selling an art piece only requires one other person, it's just a matter of happening to find them.

The follow up question is of course the finding: the average artist in fandom spaces selling commissions does not have the platform or budget for an ad campaign. This, however, is also its own category:

✨ Posting Online

Right out the gate: anyone who has told you that just drawing x thing is the way to get easy money is wrong.

"If you draw more fan art, you'll -" wrong.

"Nobody cares about that, you should be drawing this instead -" wrong.

"if you need to sell fast, just sell porn -" wrong. And also re-evaluate your perceived lack of quality or value about the subject.

The things you will be able to create easily and consistently will be the things YOU, SPECIFICALLY, like to create. It is also entirely impossible that you are the only person on earth to have ever liked those things, which means that if you create them, there are people out there who will enjoy them.

It feels itchy to be like "and those people are Potential Customers", but it is true; your work will resonate with people. They will want you to create it. It is vitally important to your own well being that the things you create, that you want others to enjoy, are things you enjoy as well.

(This is also why the "just draw porn" joking advice that gets tossed around is particularly fucked up. You as the artist should not feel forced into drawing things you aren't comfortable with, and the vast majority of customers for explicit content also don't want the people making it to feel forced into doing so. It's basic consent. I have strong feelings about this.)

If you are creating things and putting them out into the world, they will find an audience. That audience may be one singular person! The number does not matter, because that's still a person who - again, sucks to frame ig this way - has the potential to buy things from you.

If you're constantly chasing a bigger follower count, more interactions, etc etc for the future, it can genuinely be pretty taxing on the people who want to support you in the present. When you enjoy someone's work, and want to support them, being told constantly that that support is not good enough is frustrating. Trying to follow your work should not lead to seeing more "likes are WORTHLESS and NOBODY reblogs my things" posts than it does art. You are a person making things to share with other people, and you have to remember it or you will burn yourself out into a desiccated husk.

TL:DR consistency is key and the easiest way to be consistent is to just draw whatever the fuck you live drawing in whatever ways you want to draw it, and then slap it on the internet somewhere and Keep Doing That

✨ The Actual Commission Information

this one is just factual really. A lot of artists have really shitty commission sheet layouts, because advertising graphic design and illustrative art are different skill sets. That's fine. You don't have to remake the wheel. A good commission sheet should include:

More images than text (if you can't see what the examples are when zoomed out, you have to rearrange or cut down on words)

Examples organized by price / type, and clearly labeled

Your personal favourites for examples - one really strong example piece is better than twenty tiny images of work you think is just "okay"

Contact information - having a method that works WITHOUT a social media account (email.) Is important and way easier to keep organized, imo

A SIMPLE list of strengths (the things you draw the best) and things you won't draw (common example: mechs). You do not need to list every fandom or subject matter. Limit yourself to a top five.

A clear and easy to type link for your terms of service. Carrd, and sites like it, is good for this. This will go into details about your process, what you will and won't do, permissions granted to the commissioner (like "no, you can't make an NFT with this"), your privacy policy (saying you won't sell commissioner details to third parties), and other stuff. You do not want to have all of this on your original post, because it should be thorough and you want your main post to be showcasing your work and not your legalese. Here's mine as a reference; if you have trouble writing your own, feel free to copy from it and make the necessary alterations for your work.

✨ There Was More I Was Going To Write But I Forgot

I have a different document of commission related talk here, which is also incomplete but in a different way. It's in my nature. Hopefully some combination of this and that can be useful to you. Sorry if they're not. I love you have a nice day

[foundfamilyhq]

Below is propaganda submitted in support of why this character should join the tumblr found family:

I don't actually go to this fandom but I thought everyone liked him??? Do people not like him anymore??? He looks sweet if a little crazy. I say give him another chance!

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He may be mean but he is a character with l a y e r s . He's rude on the outside but this man would do anything for his friends and is also an absolute icon.

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I need non/casual fans of this series to understand the past few years Bakugou has been genuinely reevaluating his ego and how he treats others. Instead of being the one to beat Izuku, he wants to be the one to support him. He apologized for everything he did wrong and now he deserves to be adopted in with Izuku. If nothing else, do it because Deku would want him in. He's grown so much and that needs to be recognized. Let this hero into the family 🫡