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lananiscorner · 14 days ago

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I get where this post is coming from, but I think it is entirely unhelpful and underestimates just how bad the harassment can get and how much psychological damage it can do. ESPECIALLY if the harassmant and doxxing could lead to real life problems (e.g. if you are working in a public-facing position for a company). Not everyone has the spoons or the social safety net required to come out of this kind of stuff healthy and happy.

Also "and if you do get cancelled, ignore them! don't acknowledge them!! the people that matter will stay on your side." is really just "if you ignore your bullies, they will stop", which is... rarely how any of this works, lol.

One of the fandoms I am part of has a dedicated section of the fanbase who will systemically stalk and harass you if you so much as write a bad word about a certain character.

They are deliberately stalking tags *designed* for criticism of that character (so that people who want to pretend that she is a pure perfect bean who did nothing wrong ever can avoid criticism of her) and are then taking posts out of context to paint creators as pedophiles, holocaust deniers and I don't even know what else.

They managed to bully two creators out of the fandom completely, one of whom was honestly one of the most milk toast non-controversial peaceful people I had ever seen and hadn't even spoken ill of the character in question--they had simply disagreed with another take that was usually used by the same people. They had not even tagged anybody or anything. They had simply been minding their own business.

After said user deleted their blog, the ringleader of the harassers took over the URL and turned it into a mocking "Gotcha!" page, so that this creator could never come back under the same name.

These people have a dedicated Discord server for coordinating harassment attacks on targets across all social media. One of the members of that server threatened to find and lynch the mods if they interfered.

The mods on that Discord server then banned one of their own for speaking out against harassment and proceeded to let the harassment continue as usual, even when confronted with pages worth of evidence of harassment/doxxing by one of the victims.

They have multiple alts specifically to circumvent blocking and muting.

They will crop, edit and remove watermarks of posts to start harassment campaigns.

They have deliberately sent triggering material to a creator whose family are holocaust survivors.

They obsessively check every wiki (incl. TVTropes) related to the content daily and will reverse any changes that are not to their liking within hours.

They have been doing this for almost six years now and have shown no sign of stopping, even though the game this fandom revolves around has stopped being relevant to most people who played it more than two years ago.

We tried to ignore these people (the ring leader of which is a grown man in his 30s) for more than a year and it did nothing. It only made the harassment worse.

Like, this shit gets BAD. Really, REALLY BAD. "These people will drive you into suicidal ideation" kind of bad, and I think telling people to martyr themselves on the altar of creative freedom without at least some helpful advice is actually kind of horrible, so:

Here is my advice for people who are afraid of this kind of harassment, but still want to create (I am going to use writing as an example here, but it also works with fanart, etc.):

Step 1: Make an alt on the fanfiction platform of your choice (I recommend AO3 of course). Make sure that this alt follows proper "internet safety for alts rules":

Do not use any name you have already used elsewhere. EVER.

Do note use a name based on your real life name or other personal information (your hometown, your favorite sportsteam, whatever).

Do not use this alt for anything else, but especially not for posting any personally identifyable information. That includes personal anecdotes of your life. If a part of your fic is influenced by a personal event, it didn't happen to you--it happened to your sister/mother/friend/colleague/whatever.

Do not connect this alt to previous accounts in any way, shape or form. Do not use the same email address to make it. If you make a new tumblr account, make a separate account, not a sideblog. Do not promote your alt or crosspost/reblog from your alt on your main account. Yes, that means you will basically build your audience again from scratch, but it's better than getting harassed on main. Do not include your alt fics in any fic ask memes on main (e.g. "post a line from your current WIP").

Ideally, use two completely different color schemes/themes for your main and alt. You want to be able to tell immediately whether you are on your main or your alt. For example, I have a Discord alt that I rarely use, but when I do, it is for sensitive stuff. This alt is on light mode (I use dark mode for my Discord main).

Plant some false flags. Follow/bookmark some creators/fandoms that your main account has never been involved in. Ideally, you want to have a mix of same and different areas, connected by in-betweens. For example, if your main account is posting mostly Star Wars, but has never posted Star Trek stuff, make your alt follow/reblog/bookmark some Star Trek Stuff (same medium and genre) in addition to Star Wars, plus some Mass Effect (different medium, same genre) and maybe some Dragon Age (different medium and genre).

Make sure your alt is up and running at least a few weeks before you start posting. Nothing screams "alt account" more than an account that just pops up out of nowhere and instantly starts firing out content like they've been around for years.

Step 2: Write what you want to post on your alt. Do NOT publish it yet!

Step 3: Read your alt fic and one of your main fics back to back. Try to identify your own "unintentional signature", i.e. anything that could make people go "Oh, that's a [name] fic, alright!" and try to get rid of it.

Is there a certain phrase you love using? A certain kind of cliffhanger/twist or a certain specific combination of specific tropes that you use all the time? Well, now is an excellent time to expand your literary repertoire and find some good synonyms or tweak the formula a bit. That doesn't mean you have to go in a radically different direction, but the question you basically want to ask is "if I read an ALT fic, would it immediately make me go 'oh, that's not just a good fandom & trope fic, that's a MAIN fic alright!'" You ideally want to avoid that.

If you are having trouble with this, feel free to reach out to a trusted reader friend and ask them what they most strongly associate with your MAIN fics. Ideally, do not tell them you are making an alt, but if you feel like you have to, at least don't give them the alt's name.

Step 4: Be smart about what you post when. Most platforms will let you schedule content. This is a great way to make sure that your alt and main post at different times, which helps make them look like different people. If you are usually up and posting in the evening hours of Central European time, schedule your alt posts for the morning hours. If you usually post once a week, make your alt posts more or less frequent. If you are engaged in multiple fandoms at the same time, posting content for fandom B on your alt while your main is (to the unknowing observer) obsessed exclusively with fandom A can also help a lot. If your main doesn't usually post while on vacation, schedule some posts on alt for vacation.

Step 5: If people you don't trust fully (especially anon asks) speculate about it being your alt (e.g. because of similar style), either ignore or deny (e.g. "nah, I don't know who this is") with your main. With your alt, either ignore or redirect (e.g. something along the lines of "I wish lol, but I just really love MAIN's stuff, so I'm guessing some of their style rubbed off on me"). Ideally, the number of people who know, confirmed, that ALT is your alt should be 1--you.

Step 6: If/when you receive harassment on alt, delete the harassment immediately. Don't reply. Don't engage. Delete, block, mute liberally, and then hit up your favorite "feel good content" (kitten rescue videos or whatever) to wash that foulness out of your brain. Remember that you do not need to justify deleting/muting/blocking to anyone for any reason. This is where step 1 will pay off, because if you've done it right, the people harassing you will not have anywhere to harass you other than your nicely curated inbox/comment section.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

so oooo many people in so many fandoms are holding themselves back from the art they want to create because they fear The Discourse and it's the most depressing thing ever like PLEASE stop clipping your own wings and create whatever art you want to. whyyy do we have to live in a panopticon it's so frustrating just make whatever!! be free!!!!!!

#fandom #fandom wank #harassment in fandom #alt management

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8bitsupervillain · 1 year ago

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8bit Reviews: Pathfinder Kingmaker

The first five or six hours I was having a grand time with it. Just loving it from top to bottom, sure the combat was a bit clunky, but aside from that I was having fun. Then I unlocked the kingdom management section of the game and my opinion dropped sharply. The lie that you can set kingdom management to auto-resolve itself is a massive lie because if you leave this bastard alone for too long you will get slapped with an inevitable failure message and have to redo potential HOURS of stuff just to get back to before you doomed yourself. Nevertheless I stuck with it, maybe it'll get better, I thought as I was very thoroughly not having a good time. Twenty hours passed, then thirty, at forty I decided enough's enough I'm done with Pathfinder. So it went for a couple of months I played other better games I became mesmerized and spellbound by other stories that respected my time.

But eventually the bastard thought wormed its way into my head to give it another shot why not? You had time away, surely now's the time it'll be fun! You tried and bounced off some other CRPGs, so who knows, maybe Kingmaker has that secret something to get you back in. Fifty hours passed, sixty, and once again I vowed I would never return to Kingmaker, I uninstalled it from my laptop and desktop. I even went so far as to delete the saves off of my laptop (where I'd been primarily playing Pathfinder). September rolls around, I fall deeply, madly in love with Baldur's Gate III, but eventually I have to go back to work, and my laptop isn't quite the youth it used to be, and storage space is at a premium. Back to Kingmaker, I guess. Reinstalling it I find that because I never deleted my saves off of my desktop the cloud storage for GOG Galaxy kept my saves up to date.

What fun, now I won't have to redo a whole bunch of stuff or start from the beginning. Has the combat always been this aggravating? Be fair, you might just be unfairly comparing it to Baldur's Gate III, the Pathfinder guys did this at least five years ago, and had a fraction of the budget. Comparing the combat to Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny was similarly disastrous because I recall feeling the combat in those was a lot smoother than Kingmaker. Then, disaster strikes, sixty-nine hours into my save file the game declares that I've lost, and I cannot continue the game. Sixty-nine fucking hours down the tubes, nearly three actual days. Literal months of time wasted for this? FOR THIS?! No, NO! Fuck that! Fuck this! I'm done! I'M ABSOLUTELY DONE. FUCK PATHFINDER KINGMAKER, FUCK OWLCAT, FUCK EVERYONE WHO SAYS THIS GAME WAS WORTH PLAYING! And so I uninstall it, again.

Bullshit game, I hate it. The combat, trash. The characters, generally unlikable garbage! At least in other games when there are villains they're well-written villains, you might not like them, but at least they provoke a feeling other than vague irritation. Fucking game, absolute waste of my time. Why did I try to respect the game for so long as I had? What did I gain from it? Our antagonistic relationship was clearly one-sided, Pathfinder was never going to try to meet me halfway and be something decent.

Time passes, it's October and I'm looking at nexus mods. You should see if there's mods for Kingmaker, sure none of them will magically make the game good, but you know, just for a lark. Sure enough, there they are, the whole spectrum. What's this? Cheat mod, well with this I could theoretically reach an ending in Pathfinder. Wouldn't that be something? Get revenge on the game that pissed you off so? I could, theoretically, do that. But why? Why should I shove my hand back in the bear trap? Hadn't I suffered enough? Shouldn't I just leave well enough alone and move on and put Kingmaker (and Wrath of the Righteous) firmly in the rearview of memory?

So, once again, for the last time let's reinstall Pathfinder. This time I'm done pretending to care about beating the game honestly. I want it to be over with. Weight limits? Gone. Barony rolls? Win them instantly. Sure "I'm robbing myself of the experience" of finishing the game "legit," but I am so far beyond caring at this point. You know what the hell of it is? The thing that makes this all so very much unbearable? It wasn't worth it. Eighty-nine hours and seventeen minutes later I finished the game, I got my unsatisfying conclusion, and… that's it.

Back when it first came out I got very very annoyed with Bloodborne. I could not for the life of me get past Vicar Amelia, it got to the point where I stopped playing the game for months because just the sight of it pissed me off. But eventually I powered my way through it, and I now regard Bloodborne as one of the finest games I have ever played.

The sense of satisfaction I got from triumphing over it was exhilarating. Pathfinder Kingmaker gave me no such feeling. Yes I'd finished the game, but there's nothing there. Just another game to add to the list of games I've beaten. For all the self-inflicted agony I've put myself through I got roughly the same satisfaction as when I beat something completely forgettable that I played for roughly a week. I feel more satisfaction finishing Little Nightmares 2 than I do Kingmaker, and I didn't particularly care about Little Nightmares 2.

I guess what I got out of Pathfinder Kingmaker is I really need to get over my absurd feelings that I'm somehow letting the developers down if I don't play a game I hate to completion. Blackguards is probably a better game than this, and I don't particularly like Blackguards.

#8bit reviews #pathfinder #kingmaker #pathfinder kingmaker #review

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bananonbinary · 3 years ago

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What is the rusty quill situation??

okay so like i said, i am mostly very confused by everything, mostly because tma is a massive massive special interest for me and my emotional reactions are too Overwhelming for me to take an objective approach here. but as i understand it:

an article was posted two days ago titled "Who's Afraid of Alex J. Newall?" alleging that rusty quill very badly mistreats, underpays, and generally lies to it's employees, specifically favoring tma over literally everything else on the network. most of the fandom, including me, took this at face value and were horrified. a few others in the fandom have been doing some investigating of their own though, and it turns out the article was written by the marketing director of a different podcasting network (a fact which has since been edited into the article but was not disclosed at first), and generally is sus as hell. (i did notice when i first tried to read it that in order to keep all it's sources anonymous, it gave them all names of popular tma characters, which, no matter what else, is just. incredibly inflammatory and absolutely bonkers. my sibling called it "extremely tacky.")

the part that was extremely confusing to me, was that ben meredith shared the article on his twitter. although i didn't actually know until right this second when i tried to link it, he has since deleted that. idk what's up with that, if maybe he was just doing what the rest of us were and trying to show support for the alleged victims. and there HAS been evidence in the past that RQ can be at least incompetent at managing stuff, notably the official discord server that was modded entirely by unpaid fans and spiraled out of control before being shut down (i dont actually know this one first hand, i don't really discord much).

basically it seemed like RQ was doing some sketchy shit, but now it looks like it was a false alarm, but it all happened so rapidly i'm still kinda scared to actually make a definite call until everyone's said their piece and we can be sure the dust has settled. i've been through this song and dance in a few fandoms before, and it's always a fucking bloodbath before we figure out the truth.

UPDATE: RQ has posted a response. i think i might be comfortable putting this to bed unless anyone else speaks up about it.

#fan wank /#sort of #im not kidding about the emotional thing like. this is EXTREMELY hard for me to read about #no matter how it ends up #bc tma has just been a huge part of my brain for so long now #i cant even read the article in question all the way through without getting too upset #which is perhaps the point

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echoweaver · 3 years ago

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I’ve been working my way through @desiree-uk‘s Sims 3 Mod Organizer tutorial. It’s wonderfully detailed! I’m a long-time CC Magic user, and I have long wished to have a tool for organizing and merging CC that was a little more updated.

This led me into an extensive cc and mod review, which was probably good, but it took days. Why do I get myself into these things?

At any rate, I haven’t actually tried running my game using S3MO yet. I’ve just loaded it up and sifted through the conflicts.

A few thoughts:

1. CC Magic displays the thumbnail with each CC item. It even pulls thumbnails from the game’s thumbnail file in some cases. That’s invaluable for figuring out what you’re looking at.

2. It looks like a lot of default replacements contain extraneous image files that probably were included as part of a (deep?) clone in s3oc. I saw, for example, MsPoodle’s DR medieval beekeeper’s hats overwriting the same _IMG resource in at least half a dozen other packages. I opened the package and looked up the resource, and it was a field of red. That’s almost certainly some generic resource used for a whole bunch of things, and the fact that it’s in dozens of packages doesn’t mean that any changes have been made to it.

I know when I have cloned food items for custom recipes, I usually end up with the burned texture in my clone. I’ve never had the nerve to delete it. My stuff isn’t DR, though, so the fact that there’s yet another copy of that _IMG out there isn’t going to throw any flags. I’m pretty sure this is exactly what’s going on with these default replacements. That means that a bunch of the conflict flags for _IMG are red herrings. I haven’t looked to see if there’s a way to ignore a conflict once you’ve established it’s irrelevant. If not, that would be nice to have.

3. There really need to be tooltips on the conflict icons. I have no idea how I would figure out what they mean except from desiree-uk’s tutorial.

4. I’m seriously not thrilled with the way priority is managed. I don’t want to move entries up and down on the list of folders. I want them to stay in alphabetical order so I can keep track of them. I’d like to have a separate way to set priority.

5. Am I right in understanding that higher numbers are higher priority? Like mod folder priority 32 will overwrite priority 1? That seems.... counterintuitive. I may have this part wrong, though.

6. DANG. It seriously merged my medieval mods into THREE PACKAGES! Whoa.

7. I have a couple of mods that seem to benefit from not being merged. It would be nice to be able to flag those. Same with stuff that should go in Overrides. I know, for example, that the “rugs” used for toddler messes need to be in overrides, but doing so opts them out of the whole organizer.

#echoweaver #sims 3 #sims 3 utilities #sims 3 mod organizer

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lynbaccha · 1 year ago

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Before I go into details of my own experience, I want to say this;

DO NOT HARASS ANY PERSON MENTIONED IN THIS THING, CAPISHE?!

Idk how relevant it is, but I have a bad experience with the same user. Sure, I wasn't involved with anything in Per Aspera's creating process, never wanted to either as it wasn't my co-project. But I tried to talk to Lance and befriend him. His art was cool to me, and we created our then similar OC's around the same time (Koranus, who was originally evil little bitchboi and my still evil Umbra, whom I really need to use more.)

But me being a fan of Lance's work started with his Dewther-comic, Fade. I even bought it, bc I couldn't wait until Valentine's to see what would happen. And since I found out they were from Finland too, I followed Lance. And he followed me back.

Basically, it was saying stuff in an empty cave and cave answered. Our interactions felt so empty. Despite me trying to ask about Koranus, who I saw as an interesting character, and me dancing around with Lance's dislike towards heteroships - despite one of the main ships I focused were (and still are) Terzo/Omega/and my OC Freya. I know that I mentioned this, because I showed him mine and my good friends OC, Ursa, who's Omega's and Freya's daughter.

I also have hunch what concert we are talking about, and I'm still a bit salty. Basically, I asked Lance can I tag along with their group, bc I was there too, and I wanted to meet fellow ghesties. I asked three times, which I unfortunately can't prove, because I deleted my Twitter before all what was described above went nuclear, and we talked in there before Lance deleted his own. Basically, despite him saying he would ask, he didn't say yes or no to me. And I just found put from Ruska that it was supposed to be a gentle no... But I never got an answer.

Which, honestly, even no could have been 1000 times better than leave hanging.

Also, according to Lance, he himself couldn't manage to arrange it, and that "this child isn't spoiled with brain cells", or something like that, but in Finnish. Of that, I have a screenshot, but it's in Finnish, so idk should I post it here. And Lance apologized only when I reached him almost month after the said concert.

I stopped talking to him directly on around August, because I never felt welcomed in his DM's. And some time after The Thing happened, I unfollowed all the three blogs - Per Aspera, Lance's and Fay's, and I figured out that I would just leave them be. The story itself isn't bad, and I'm all for LGBTQ+-voices to be heard in creative spaces, I just couldn't support the project myself.

I could have blocked him, sure, but... It was a bit complicated matter

I was originally part The Infestissunam-zine, and I was supposed to do a piece for Monstrance Clock. However, my mental health was shitty all last year, so I shouldn't have continued in the zine as long as I did. I was thinking about leaving long and hard...

Lance was one of the mods. And while I was scrolling through "ghoul kits"-tag I noticed something was missing.

One of the Per Aspera posts. About what Koru and Astra looked like as kits.

After doing some research, I found out they both have blocked me from their personal blogs and from Per Aspera. And I was already thinking of leaving, I contacted the other mod and cited my mental health as a reason. However, there could be a possibility that Lance blocking me, and apparently some others, was made known by a third person.

But you unfollowed Lance, why are you so upset about that? Again, Lance was a mod in the zine I was a part of, blocking him wouldn't have made sense. And since Lance didn't spend much time on the server - I think he had one message in total in there before I left, but I might remember wrong - and since his Twitter was long gone by then, I could have only reached hin from Tumblr, as far as I'm aware, if I ever needed his help.

So, uh... That's my experience with this user. And it honestly made me feel a bit like an outsider even in here - I felt very ignored in the last fandom I was in, I was thinking that maybe my approach is wrong.

But, perhaps all the fault wasn't on me? The more these things come to light, the more it feels like that.

So yeah... That's my experience with this user.

why did you guys stop talking to lance and frey

after being ghosted for several weeks and then blocked, we couldn't. the one who wasn't immediately blocked had a few more days, most likely because his place was the bed and shower for a concert, and was then informed that "some friendships aren't built to last" before he was also blocked

he had a point, tbh, because you can't have a friendship with anyone when you push people away and don't communicate with them. one of them didn't say a word to anyone and let the other speak for him.

and the saddest part? it was over the stories and art, for the sandbox we were playing in together to be theirs and theirs alone. they seemed to not want our ideas filthying the pool of theirs. we went from a lively gc to a dead one that felt like we couldn't participate in without bothering them, then a truly dead one when they left.

i can't speak for the others, but i liked seeing their work. it was exciting watching the story change over time because they were my friends and i got to see something they made come to life, and they wanted me to see! do you know what it's like to be allowed behind an artist's creative process, to know that you're trusted enough to see the incomplete work? i loved hyping them up, because they were my friends and i loved giving them the support they deserved.

and they wondered to us about how hard it was to make friends. i really fucking wonder why, with this trail of dead friendships one has left behind, all with the same story as ours. the distancing, the latching on to someone new and shiny, the inevitable blocking because you're not good enough anymore.

if I sound angry, it's because i still am. i'm angry because lost two friends and watched two more struggle to cope with the devastation left in their wake. i'm angry because my stupid brain still makes me wonder if i could have done anything differently when i know they don't deserve a shred of my affection.

they're terrible people, and that's why we don't talk anymore

#per aspera blocking ghosting and avoiding

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daintymayhem · 2 years ago

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I could've sworn I added more context but I think I forgot. My bad.

There are people frequently mentioned on this blog that haven't done anything wrong except do Neurodivergent shit and are then called gross, weird, and annoying for it. It feels like you people ran out of actually problematic people to complain about and now shame ND people for what they can't control. Like that Lucien person or Vinny.

And it's not even just ND people you complain about. (Not you as in you specifically, Mod Croc, just in general). You complain about people like Pru being able to make a living off of their art. You complain about people's art styles like you're expecting everyone to draw like hyanna. And even I'm guilty of it, like, fuck, I'm complaining right now! And maybe I'm stupid, maybe I'm being illogical, but you people act like close-minded brainlets and it pisses me off. If you hate the species so fucking much, then just fucking leave? It's not that hard. And it goes both ways. Prucucks suck, and so do chronically online neets.

This turned into a rant, thank you for coming to my TED talk. Good day, and if I don't like you, kindly fuck yourself.

I appreciate the context now let's go down this line

I don't speak for what other people say, however As I do run this blog I will set a few things straight here. Being ND doesn't mean your actions are without consequence. Vinny is just in general a very cruel and mean person and plenty of people have had bad experiences with them, including me. And the first thing that comes to mind with Lucien is that he's literally tried to redesign a brown dainty to make them white, and only fixed it once he was called out on this blog. I will however start vetting asks more closely about whether or not a post is just complaining about someone exhibiting neurodivergent traits.

Your point about "not wanting people to make money off of art" however is completely null and void since you brought pajuxi into this. Pajuxi makes THOUSANDS of dollars by doing literally nothing but sending invoices. She's NOT using her art. She pulls a random number of slots out of her ass and charges people 35$ for a thing that doesn't exist. And she makes sure that slots are limited so people are constantly on the hunt for them. Her adopts outside of dainties barely sell because dainties is just a popular namebrand. That namebrand is why she can make her mods create a set of chibi base adopts that sell for 70$ each.If she dropped dainties right now and just started selling adopts i would support her 100%. However myo slots are a predatory scam, and that's where she makes her primary income. I do want people to make money off their art, key word being, THEIR ART. Not a magical permission slip that doesn't even exist. I am an artist myself. Seeing people managing to sell some of the lowest effort adopts I've ever seen just because it's a namebrand is what has stopped me from selling any of my own adopts. People don't want my stuff because it's not a fancy namebrand. So next time you want to complain that people are awful for "not wanting pajuxi to make money off her art" I want you to think about all the artists who can't sell shit because people like pru have popularized closed species, exclusivity, and general gatekeeping to incredibly unoriginal ideas.

While it has happened in the past, I discourage people talking about people's art quality and delete posts that are just making fun of people's art.

Also people are allowed to speak out about a community they're in. This idea of "can't say anything bad about this species because I'm in it" is stupid. Criticism and complaints are how change is made. Let people be unhappy with the circumstances. Like you coming to a blog meant for complaining about dainties and complaining about people complaining about dainties.

I also hope you have a good day, however if you send another message with something as aggressive as "go fuck yourself" in it, i will delete it. I would appreciate it if you tried to stay civil :)

#Sorry this got long

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calciumwitch-calcisoya · 1 year ago

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Hi hi, hello, randomly saw this in my feed and since my current obsession is 3DS modding and software, i thought I’d try to play tech support.

There’s a few ways to resolve your issues, since you still have the original device. It's gonna be a wall of text, so I'm gonna put it under the line. ^^

(Addendum, in the middle of fact checking, and researching to make sure I don't tell you stupid stuff, and like half this post already written, I thought I should add a disclaimer: The best places to ask questions like this is usually gbatemp net, usually under Pc, console and handheld discussion under the 3ds tab with the homebrew tab. A treasure trove of useful info and software. :> Anyway, hope step one works for you, because step B is a lot more risky and needs technical know how, I try my best to explain but it's past midnight so it might be messy.) (Addendum 2, found a thread that might be very useful to you, so just in case before you follow what I write, have a read here.)

My written instructions start below, if what the thread tells you to do works just ignore my part of the equation. They boil down to install homebrew (since it doesn't require a wifi connection on your 3ds itself, just on your pc,) and try a save editor to export the save files manually, or step B would be getting your movable.sed file, and then using the guide above. Hope I didn't talk too much nonsense, and I hope you have a nice day!

1) One of them is actually homebrew, because unless you broke the SD card slot, i do not think it’s impossible to install homebrew on it, since you can use the current method on the 3DS hacks guide website, which does not require a wifi connection on the device itself. - What you will need however, is a sd card which is compatible with the device, considering it’s an o3DS from what I’m reading in your message, it needs to be a normal sized (non micro sd) card which has been formatted with the FAT-32 setting.

You also need to have wifi on your computer of choice, or, if you don’t own one, an android phone or tablet.

Then just follow the instructions on the site, until you get to section II of finalising setup, usually i would not recommend not following the instructions, however seeing that your hardware has no access to wifi, this step is impossible to do without using alternative methods, if your system already has the version 11.17.0.50.E or similar, then you should be fine, however I’m unsure of how the last step would work on previous firmware.

You will probably need to install the homebrew launcher that comes with Luma3Ds and FBI on its own. /FBI was recently deleted from GitHub, so your best chance are the public archives of the latest build, you won't *fully* need it if you use the .3dsx files instead of the .cia files

Then, if you still have the save data on your system then you can use a save manager like Checkpoint, if not, then we will need to tab into the encrypted backups you made. You can get the files here, and there's also a guide on how to use the program

The above would be the easiest and best case scenario I can think of, it's getting a bit technical from here. B) To use your encrypted save data, you’ll first need to get GodMode9 onto your system, since you’re unable to install it using the finalise helper in the guide, (i think, i dont know if i can recommend doing so without the right system version.), so you will need to do so manually by downloading it from github.

Once you installed godmode, you'll need to look for a file named movable.sed, this guide should tell the rest of the process.

Sorry if this messy, it's like 2 am where I live, been writing, researching and fact checking this for like... 40-50 minutes? Whoopsie, anyway, hope I could help somewhat.

Needing help with 3DS files

I know there's likely no help but I'm hoping to get some help with this. Back in November I finally got around to putting homebrew on my 2DS XL & it was successful. I learned you can make/move saves & I have backups for my old 3DS I got before the 2DS I replaced it with after breaking it.

The problem is that I don't know what to do with the files, I did not setup homebrew on my old 3DS(didn't even know it existed at the time) so the files are not only encrypted to the specific system(I heard once the files are encrypted for the handheld they came from) but I don't have the ability to make saves I could use on another system.

Another issue is that while I still have the 3DS the backups are for(it's broken but still works, it can't fold) the way I broke it apparently made it so it can't use the internet anymore. I'm pretty sure I need the internet on in order to setup homebrew & get the applications to make this work. I also forgot which backup goes to the 3DS as I'm pretty sure I made a backup for my 2DS once.

It's really hard trying to lookup answers for doing anything about this & I don't know what to do. I really want to be able to rescue my old saves especially after mistakenly wiping my saves when I used the wrong type of micro sd card when I transferred my 2DS to my 2DS XL.

I'm worried about asking on reddit cause I got my post about a corrupted sd card cause deleted for being a commonly asked question.(I had looked around but since I didn't know what I was doing it likely was the issue) It's my fault for not knowing enough to realize it was a common question but I'm still worried about what'd happen if I asked on reddit. I'm not even sure what 3DS subreddit to ask anyway.

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saitoakirachan-fangirls · 4 years ago

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Y'all western Xiao Zhan fans make me so uncomfortable cause you guys probably have no idea how much Chinese netizens hate him and why

Just as a note, I have no idea how western fandoms work but Chinese idol fandoms are really structured and organized (Chinese people really DO love bureaucracy lmao). There is one official fan group managed often by the 'biggest fan' and a few big-name-fan moderators. You do not have to be extra popular to have a fan group. These people organize different events such as fundraisers to donate in their idol's name, visits to the set if their idol acts in something, and often create banners and lightsticks for fans to use during live events. They are powerful. Another thing is that the mods are often in direct contact with the star's manager and therefore have a huge influence on normal fans. The manager can also request them for help boosting stats on a post or hype up/restrain fan actions in some cases.

Now, coming back to Xiao Zhan. I'll have you know that, during the whole whirlwind of the AO3 incident, neither Xiao Zhan nor his manager nor his team nor his fan mods spoke up or tried to tame the situation. They had all the power to, but chose to attend a cricket concert. If you didn't know about the AO3 incident, fans of Xiao Zhan mass reported AO3 and all fan works involving XZ that they found distasteful (aka shipping stuff or lgbt+ stuff) and harassed/cyberbullied/doxed people who opposed them. Many people lost their personal accounts permanently on Weibo, the biggest social media platform in China, because of this. They also targeted a Chinese equivalent of tumblr (lofter) and basically destroyed fan circles en masse. Then Ao3 got banned in China.

Later, XZ's team said, guys, we love how much you love us and don't forget to be civil teehee and addressed none of his fans' actions and didn't apologize for causing irreparable damage to fan communities.

To this day, he hasn't said a thing about this event himself.

When his single Guang Dian (which I'll call Light in this post) came out, his fans peer pressured each other to buy extra copies. Now, that's actually kinda normal in fandoms, so I'll let it-wait wtf, they want all students to buy 105 copies and all working adults 1005 copies??? Many encouraged a student to starve to save up???? SOMEONE TOLD HER TO STEAL HER PARENTS' MONEY???? (the last thing is something I saw myself, so maybe not emblematic but... It was happening and nobody else seemed to care and that freaked me out. Expressed my concerns and got insulted for it lmao)

So you can see how, not long after the AO3 incident, people will not let go of such an outrageous thing. New hottest topic oh yeah!

Btw, it was discussed to the point that XZ couldn't have possibly not known such a behavior was being encouraged among his fans. Didn't say anything. As a result of this, his sales shot right through the roof on its first week, surpassing Micheal Jackson's "We are the world" in dollars earned and all other songs that debuted the same week added together

Cool, riveting stuff

Also, this is old news so I wasnt sure if I should add this but there's a disclaimer so, during his uni days, he said his female friends looked like a sex doll on Chinese FB (weibo) and didn't delete that even after he exploded in popularity. When asked about it a year or so back, he said, 'Well I'm just a normal guy, can I not just be a normal human anymore? You are all so unreasonable' instead of just, yknow, saying that he made a mistake and people shouldn't say this kind of stuff in public, especially since he's the hottest new star

All this and that's not even scratching the surface

Anyway, if you like his song, pls pirate it thanks

#Xiao zhan #My post #Akira original #Salt #Is this hate #Idk anymore #It's just so weird that most of this info doesn't make it to the western circles #So people have no idea #Who they are stanning #Xiao zhan hate #I guess #I don't even hate him #Just kinda dislike #So I got him blocked on my Chinese social media #Long post #Vent?

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little-red-toyota · 4 years ago

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Final good bye to the fandom

TW//Trauma, triggers, nsfw, sexual themes, rape, domestic abuse e.g.

This is gonna be a long ass post…

It has taken me a while to get emotionally strong enough to do this, as I will have to think back at some traumatic events from my past to address some of these things. That's why I waited until I got home from vacation with my family, as it will seriously affect my mood and mental health, and I want to be near my doctor and therapist, just in case.

And also, I know that the majority of those reading this will invalidate me and tell me I am making things up to clear my name. So, I literally have to torment myself to write a blog post people will just brush off as bogus anyway. But I will do it now that I am in safe surroundings. Then it will be off my chest, and I can finally move on. If people will continue stirring up the past, it will be their problem, not mine.

I think I should write one last blog post where I address everything. I have left the TTTE-fandom, but I will write that one as my final goodbye to the fandom. I just have to find out everything I've been accused of so I can properly address them all in order. I might leave out details of my life that is too hard for me to open up about. I know most of you will just invalidate me anyway.

1. The Stepney fic and glorifying rape.

2. My mafia-AU.

3. The Darin incident.

4. Being a pedophile. (Where do they get this from anyway??)

5. Running the NSFW-blog.

6. Drawing penises/boobs on trains. Drawing age-regression art.

Is there more?

Ah... yes! Faking my own suicide, of course!

7. "Faking" being suicidal.

8. Having the audacity to survive and go on living.

9. "Making up" my past trauma to justify writing fics to cope with it.

10. Being a nazi for being interested in WW2 history and for being Norwegian and having so-called nazi-letters in my last name (actual letters of the Norwegian alphabet).

11. Putting a white-supremacist flag (the actual flag of Norway) on my porch on family birthdays and our national day.

12. Being a danger to my daughter.

Anything else that needs to be addressed? What else am I being accused of? Send me a dm and I will add it to the post.

Okay, I will bump the Stepney fic down a bit as it is the most traumatic thing for me to address, I will save that one for last.

2 and 3. The dark au/mafia au where I gave some TTTE characters some rather dark and unpleasant character traits, and the whole incident with Darin and the pedo-Salty was addressed in this blog post written by my husband last year, so I am not opening that can of worms again: https://little-red-toyota.tumblr.com/post/623743183795470336/in-light-of-recent-events

Even the thing about Toby cheating on Henrietta is addressed there.

As for the au, I never fully explored it as I started losing interest in TTTE around the same time. I found other things to enjoy and TTTE faded into the background and the au was dropped before I even wrote any stories, apart from the one about Toby and Henrietta.

Some people claim, like this lovely individual, that most of the characters were rapists and pedos. No, not most. Only one of each. And I did not write more than one story about rape and suicide. Where does this person even get that from? Someone who told someone who had heard from someone who might have heard….?

Don't spread rumors unless you are sure that they are true.

Anyway, it's all addressed in that blog post in that link. I don't see how this mafia au is any worse than other dark post-apocalyptic or violent aus. It mostly was about the diesel mafia and their illegal businesses, not about sex, even if it did occur now and then. I find the substance abuse in it to be more problematic tbh…

4. Being a pedophile.

I don't even know how to defend myself against this one, as I don't even know why people think I am pedophile. They only throw the accusation out with no backing evidence, so I have no idea where it comes from or what it is that makes people think I am one.

Apart from one claim that I had faved "porn" alongside "strangers'" baby photos on DA. I addressed that earlier though. As DeviantArt doesn't sort what you click "like" on, it all ends up in the same folder unless you actively go through it and sort it into categories, which I don't bother most of the time. It also doesn't say WHEN it was added to your faves. So, I can have faved an artistic nude on Saturday, and then faved my friend's family photo on Thursday. It's not like I actively search for porn, get all steamed up and then look at pictures of children. WTF.

The few children I have faved are not from complete strangers, but long-term friends of mine. Yes, it is possible to have friends on the same website. I have actually met a lot of my RL friends through DeviantArt. I posted photos of my daughter when she was a baby, they would fave it and congratulate me. So, I did the same when they had a baby. As simple as that. Nothing weird or perverted about it. Due to people doxxing me last year however, I deleted the photos of me, my husband and my daughter from DeviantArt, so it's no longer there.

Porn isn't allowed on DeviantArt anyway. The nudes there are so-called artistic nudes, and for the most part I use them as pose-references when I draw as it is easier to draw a pose using a nude base and then dress them up once you got the pose right.

"The very naked" centaurs I have faved. Well, I like the mythological creature Centaur. And as far as I know… they do not wear clothes, so how are they NOT nude? Look it up, it's a horse body with a human torso instead of horse head. I don't see them as sexual, but what do I know? Maybe YOU do?

I have no sexual interest in children whatsoever.

5. Running the NSFW-blog on Tumblr and Twitter.

Yes. I was one of six people modding that blog. ONE of six, so I refuse to take the full blame here.

MerciResolution has openly admitted to being the founder, and she recruited me and some others to modify as the confession load became too heavy for one person to handle alone.

The original blog on Tumblr worked as follows: People would anonymously send a confession to our askbox, we would add a picture (sometimes photoshopped) to the text and post it on the blog. Always tagged as NSFW and with proper trigger warnings if necessary! The blog itself was also marked as explicit, so it didn't appear in searches and such.

For us, this blog was nothing but a joke. We did it for shits and giggles. If anyone took it seriously and thought we got off to the stuff that was posted, we apologize for that, but to us it was just for laughs. And we DID laugh a lot, you guys should have seen the weird shit people sent us sometimes!

We had fun and we never thought anyone would take it seriously, so we never thought of writing "joke" in the description or anything. It never occurred to us that it could be anything but a joke.

We also made a Twitter account for it, also locked for minors. But it was quickly hacked, and someone changed the password so we could no longer access it. We made another account and forgot about the old one…

After a while, the original mods started losing interest and the blog (both on Tumblr and Twitter) became less active. That's when a person I had known for years, and wrongfully trusted, came forward and wanted to take over ownership. So, the ownership was handed over to Russalita/Charlie.

That turned out to be huge mistake!

Me and the other mods had more or less forgotten that the blogs existed, when suddenly someone started bashing me and getting up in my arms over it. I got seriously confused as I hadn't been active on it in almost a year. But as it turned out, Russalita had removed the mature filters and made the accounts open for all the see. Even minors.

And as people knew I was one of the mods, they fired their guns at me. I can see why though, so I'm not pointing any fingers here.

I tried contacting her by phone, asking her to lock the accounts again, but she gave me a less than polite response, hung up and then blocked my number…

So, I decided to try to shut the blogs down on my own, trying the old passwords. It worked on the Tumblr-account, and I managed to password protect it, for some reason it couldn't be fully deleted. But the Twitter account had gotten its password changed by Russalita. I was however able to get a new password by logging into the e-mail we had used to create it. I deleted the Twitter blog fully. It can't be re-activated even if we wanted to. It's gone.

But it turns out the old, hacked one is still up and now open for everyone. And this one poses a huge problem as we have no way of getting into it to delete it. Only thing we have been able to do so far is reporting it and hope it will be removed by Twitter. So I only have one thing to say about it: report it.

I am no longer running any NSFW TTTE blog anywhere, nor do I have interest in doing so. So, if you come across one, claiming to be me or any of the other mods, it is false.

6. Drawing penises/boobs on trains. Drawing age-regression art.

People seem to believe I have drawn genitals on trains. I have never done such. Any art on the NSFW-blog with genitalia on the trains were sent in by confessors and was not drawn by me. Most of them seems to have been drawn by someone who goes by the name "The Lance".

I HAVE drawn things for the NSFW blog, but there were no genitalia in those drawings. I drew Frank of Arlesdale looking grossed out by (I don't know what the part is named in English, but it is connected to the brakes of the engine) that stick-like thing on his bufferbeam being wet from whatever the confessor did to him. I drew an over-exaggerated comical pic of a horrified Peter Sam getting his face licked by his driver, who had an enormous tongue. I also did a couple of manips. Mostly maniping engine faces on humans, like the one where Gordon's face is on a less than fit guy flailing his shirt around, and the Arlesdale smallies' faces on a movie poster from Magic Mike. One with Mr.Conductor in a giant bun while Pinchy is applying ketchup on him, for a confession about eating him, I think? I've done some more, but I forgot what it was, I only know I loved making them comical rather than erotic, as I saw the blog as a joke overall.

I HAVE also drawn aheago faces on engines because it looks hilarious. Though I have only drawn them on my OCs and the NRS engines, not TTTE characters.

Point is I have never drawn genitalia on trains. Ever. And I likely never will. It's not THAT much fun drawing NSFW stuff.

I see from this screenshot that a certain MK-Instrumentalist claim that all my personal art is age-regression art and infantilism…

Whose art have you been looking at? Because it's definitely not mine. I have drawn a couple of baby/chibi diesels… But claiming that all of my 700 or so artworks are depicting infantilism and age-regression stuff? I suggest people go have a look for themselves. I haven't drawn that. That MK-guy has been desperately trying to cancel me for ages for reasons only himself know. I don't even know the guy, and he doesn't know me, yet he wants to see me beheaded. Go figure.

I was for a long time bothered by some age-regressor on Tumblr who just wouldn't leave me alone with their weird asks, who tried to force themselves on me and some other artists here. They claim age-regression isn't a fetish, but the shit they sent to my askbox certainly looked like a fetish to me.

I don't want anything to do with that stuff. It weirds me out.

And no. I have never drawn pedophilia or rape art either. This guy can't even make up his mind on which one to accuse me of.

7 and 8. Faking suicide and having the audacity to survive and go on living.

As many know, after the intense shitstorm against me last summer, thanks to Darin, I attempted suicide. I didn't succeed as my husband came home early. I was gone for a few days but returned when a young boy reached out to me for help as he was being groomed and didn't know who else to turn to.

Recently I saw a screenshot where someone claimed me to have faked suicide, and that I just came back after a few days when everything had died down.

Wow.

I am truly sorry I survived.

I don't remember much from those days to be honest, but as the load became too heavy and the bullying too intense, piling up on 30 years of old trauma… I decided to end it. I must warn you guys who might get triggered now; there are detailed descriptions of a suicide attempt. Proceed with caution. People told me I was a bad mother among other things, having had those same thoughts myself (according to my husband, I am a good mom) and people just confirming them, I thought that my daughter would be better off growing up without me. I could have chosen a more effective suicide method, but I was afraid my daughter would be the first to find me, so I wanted it to be clean and look like I was just sleeping. That way it could be explained as natural causes.

So, I decided to overdose on pills. I downed all pills I could find in the house that had a warning triangle on it (strong pain meds etc.) and then went to my computer to delete my online existence, especially the personal data.

As a former paramedic, I should have known better. Because after half an hour, my body started reacting. But not the way I had hoped and wanted. I started retching and almost vomiting. That's when my husband came home from work and found me. He immediately saw the empty packages and knowing my past suicidal tendencies, he reacted instinctively. He put his fingers down my throat and had me puke everything up, then he called an ambulance and had me admitted to the hospital.

I don't remember anything from the days I spent there. But I have been told they emptied my stomach and gave me lots of fluids. I was then assigned a psychiatrist which I am still seeing today.

I was gone for those days because I was in hospital, not because I was pulling some kind of trick and pretending to have ended myself.

So… I am sorry I "faked" my suicide.

I'm sorry my husband saved me. I am sorry the medics and doctors succeeded in saving my life.

I am sorry I survived and proceeded to live on. If I ever make another attempt, I promise to do better.

Why are you guys so persistent in trying to push people to suicide anyway? Do you get a kick out of it? Why do people have to be pushed to that point before you care?

What did we tell our daughter? Simply that I got sick and had to go to the hospital. She took that well.

I've seen a lot of people wonder why I am still around. Why shouldn't I? Does my daughter deserve to lose her mother over some online crap she doesn't even know about? I owe her to live and watch her grow up, to help her with her homework and whatever else a parent needs to do. I also owe my husband to stay by his side, like I promised him the day we got married. Even if I do not wish to live.

I'm sorry I survived, guys. Really, I am.

9. "Making up" my past trauma to justify writing fics to cope with it. And 1. The Stepney fic and glorifying rape.

First… why would anyone make up trauma? It's not like it's a competition to have the worst life, is it?

Sadly, I don't have to make up anything. My life HAS been rocky up until the birth of my daughter. I have been through so much trauma I couldn't even fathom it myself before my therapist listed it all up to me. Until then, I had just been casually talking to her about it, like I would talk about the weather. I didn't cry or get in touch with my emotions even once while telling everything, because I was taught from an early age to never complain, to suck it up and go on. So, no matter what people did to me, I would just smile and go on, even if it killed me inside. I did not want to show any sign of weakness, because then they would attack me. A habit I developed through years of being bullied in school. Never show feelings, just pretend nothing could hurt you, then they would eventually grow tired of it and stop.

Except they never did. They kept going through all my years at school. To such an extent, my boyfriend didn't dare to show himself hanging out with me out of fear of being bullied himself… And as we grew older, he would start cheating on me too. And I kept smiling…

My next boyfriend was a bit older than me, and while that didn't bother me, as we were both well over legal age, it bothered him. We only lasted one year before he bailed out and ditched me out of the blue via an sms.

The next guy… was the one who scarred me for life. Both physically and mentally. A charmer at first of course, until I was trapped. He was unemployed, so he moved in with me, and I paid for everything from food to phone bills. All while he was dating several women behind my back, calling various pay-phone services and in general acted like a manwhore. As I worked as an electrician (also being subject to massive bullying and sexual harassment at work), he would be jealous of all my co-workers and if I ever came home late or worked overtime, he accused me of cheating and was extremely violent about it. He would also isolate me from my friends and family, making me think I couldn't get any other than him. If any of my male friends (almost all my friends are male…) came over, he would give me such hell afterwards, it was easier just to tell them it was a bad time to visit. And after a while, they stopped asking. This guy also demanded sex. Every single day. If I refused, he would punish me, mostly by flogging me with lampcords, belts or whatever else he had at hand. My back is a criss cross map of old, faded scars even now nearly 20 years later. I would have shown you a photo, but I am so self-concious about my body after all the bullying, I hardly even show my face in photos. Maybe one day… but I certainly need more therapy before being able to show naked skin to strangers, even if it's just my back. So I had non-consensual sex with him more often than consensual. It has taken me hours in therapy to even take the word in my mouth and call it by its proper name: rape. I was raped, almost every single day for little over a year, before I found the strength to break out of the relationship and finally throw him out of my house. It all ended when I found some revealing texts on his cellphone, which he was extremely protective of… Texts that revealed that he had engaged in a relationship with a 12 year old girl, and it had been going on for a while. Not only was he cheating on me, but he was a pedophile too. Needless to say, I didn't even let him pack his stuff before I fetched my shotgun and chased him out of the house. I don't know where I got the courage and strength from… but I was furious.

I thought I had gotten rid of him, but no. He started stalking me in public. Hiding behind shelves when I was shopping, his car following mine everywhere I went. I received weird letters in the mail with cut-out letters from newspapers, glued together. On top of all, his creepy, old uncle called me with some rather disgusting suggestions and tried to come on to me really hard. I had to change my phone number, and after coming home to my house and finding out someone had entered my home using a key, only to empty the drawer of my night table, I also had to change the locks of my doors as he had clearly copied the key.

He didn't stop until I got the police involved.

So, when I finally met the guy who would become my husband (or rather, we found out we were made for each other, we had known each other since we were 11 years old), I had major trust issues towards men especially and it took him endless patience and love to break me out of that shell.

But the trauma doesn't stop… or start there.

In the year 2000, on January 4th, I would experience something that made me unable to even look at a train for over 10 years. The Åsta accident (google it). I was a volunteer in the Norwegian Red Cross then, and a paramedic in training. Back then, you were allowed to start training the year you would turn 16. So, I was still 15 when I witnessed the most traumatic event of my life. The day started out calm, we were stocking up the ambulance after delivering a patient to the hospital when we got a call with the code "500", which means "catastrophe". Normally when we get that code it is a rehearsal… so we drove towards the coordinates with the thoughts that this was just an exercise, nothing real… we didn't prepare ourselves mentally… And we ended up in the closest thing to hell I have ever been… The sight of the burning trains, the smells, the sounds, the screaming… I still wake up by nightmares to this day. Though the moment that haunts me the most is when the screaming stopped… because we all knew why… I don't want to go into details, but 19 people died that day. But we also saved 67 people. I try to hold on to that thought. The age limit for starting paramedic training was raised after this, as I wasn't the only one who was too young for an accident of that scale. Today it is 18. A memorial stone has been placed on the site, but I still haven't been able to bring myself to visit it, even if we drive past the site every year on our way to visit family further north in the country. I needed hours of therapy to even be able to ride a train after this. To have gotten to the point where I now volunteer at a heritage railway and is in training to become a driver, is a HUGE step for me. My next goal is to visit the site of the accident.

On to next trauma… A previous employer, a rather large electric company in Norway, whom I worked for 8 years. The first five years were great, we were a close-knit bunch of electricians, and we had a great relationship with the bosses and higher-ups. Our labor union was strong.

It all started changing in 2009 when we got new leaders… and those decided to get rid of everyone who were a member of the union. One by one, they started harassing workers in various ways, trying to get them to quit. In Norway, they need a legal reason to fire you, it's not enough to not like someone. There has to be a good reason to fire someone e.g. theft, neglecting work… Since they didn't have any reasons to fire us, they started making our work lives gradually harder and harder until we would break and find another job. Sadly, one of my co-workers couldn't stand the pressure… He bid us all farewell as normal one Friday and hung himself the following day.. But as I was a girl in a male-dominated profession, I had been taught at an early stage to ignore anything that would hurt me emotionally, just arch my neck and plow through. I kept doing that, despite starting to feel more and more mental and physical pains… even my co-workers pointed out how I was being mistreated before I acknowledged it myself. I tried to tell my boss, but he reacted by treating me worse. So, I went to his boss… and that's when things went to hell. Instead of doing his job and listen, he started harassing me too. He deemed my over-weight a problem, and he started demanding I gave him detailed lists of what I ate and how much I worked out… Completely illegal of course, but by this point I was broken down to the point I thought I was useless and couldn't get another job… so I accepted. He started accusing me of lying about my exercise, so I started training at the gym in the basement at work instead. One day, while I was there, he locked the doors and turned the lights off. There were no windows, no cellphone reception and hardly anyone walking by in that part of the building… I sat there in the pitch dark for 3 hours before I was let back out. I still get badly triggered by narrow, dark rooms and rooms with no windows. To such an extent, I jumped out of a small window on the second floor of a gym when I was in boot camp. I was allowed to train downstairs in the bigger gym with windows on all walls after that incident…

The harassment at work went on for years until I finally snapped, ended up at the hospital and got into therapy for the first time. I don't want to go into depth about what more happened, I just can't… I can't bring myself to write it all. Luckily, I had gotten more education while working, so when I graduated, another company called and gave me an offer I just couldn't refuse. So, I quit my job and never looked back, even if the traumas I suffered there still haunts me to this day.

Sadly, even after switching jobs, now getting a safe job with sane leaders… I started to relax, and that's when all my past trauma came washing over me. And one day, on while driving to work, I had my first serious panic attack. It started as this feeling I used to have at the old company; getting sick to my stomach and having the sense of someone being out to get me… then it developed to breathing problems… and I had to pull the car over. I broke into tears, struggling to breathe, stumbling out of the car to read the logo on its side just to reassure my body and brain that I worked for a different company now and there was no reason for panic. I called my boss and let him know, because he also was a "refugee" from that other company, so he knew what me and several others had gone through. He managed to talk me down enough for me to come to the office to talk to him. That helped.

I got back into therapy. A better therapist this time. But sadly, it got apparent that I could no longer work as an electrician as there was too many triggers. I was diagnosed with PTSD, severe depression, and social anxiety. I'm still working on these and get better slowly.

I have been in therapy for a long time now, and it was my therapist that suggested I wrote fics to cope and "write it out". I tried to make up my own characters for this, but never felt any connection. I was by this time in the TTTE fandom and had met people with similar trauma and pasts like myself, and I started roleplaying with some of them. Me and a girl from UK then agreed to try to rp/co-write a fic to cope with our trauma. We both found it easier to write about pre-established characters we had a connection to, even if it was an au that made it barely recognizable from the original source material. Only the names and some minor things were similar.

That fic was Stepney's Virginity Gets Lost.

Do we regret writing it? No. It helped us write out our traumas and helped us overcome some mental obstacles in out therapy process. Our therapists cheering us on, because we finally managed to break through the hard shell surrounding us. We both cried for the first time in years while writing it, some of it through roleplay, because some parts were extremely graphic and brutal and very mentally exhausting. We had to take long breaks between each writing session, so the fic wasn't written in just a weekend. But we got a lot of darkness out of our minds by writing all this. And we were definitely NOT aroused by it, like this pervert here claims.

It's when you dare to touch and feel the difficult and dark emotions, you can finally move along in the grieving process.

Should it have been posted online?

In retrospect, no. But at the time, we thought it might help other trauma victims, as we also found reading about other people's experiences and fictions touching painful subjects helpful to ourselves. So, we posted it, never expecting it to cause such a controversy 3 years later. In fact, we had more or less forgotten about it until it came back to bit us in the ass. Or rather, bite ME in the ass, as I am getting the full blame alone.

Also, despite what people claim, it was not posted openly for children to read. It was tagged properly and hidden behind mature content walls. If a minor chooses to break that wall, that's not the author's fault. It's the same as watching a movie with an age restriction way above your age, not the filmmaker's fault.

I think MerciResolution puts it nicely here:

"If your problem lies with you KNOWINGLY entering adult spaces when you’re a minor, ignoring all mature warnings that are literally SCREAMING at you “hey, this is what you’re getting into. Are you sure you want to proceed?”

That’s ENTIRELY on you. YOU are the fucking problem.

We’re marking mature things as best as we properly can. If you decide to ignore them, that’s your own damn fault. We’re not your fucking babysitters."

Also, I never posted the story on Wattpad, so if anyone has done that, it's not me. I posted the story on Fanfiction.net, DeviantArt and AO3, that's all. If it's posted anywhere else, it's not done by me.

I had honestly moved on from it when people pulled me back into it.

Other people who have done questionable shit in that fandom are easily forgiven because "they have moved on" or "changed". Yet, nobody believes I can move on or change…?

I had moved on; my interests had changed. But people won't let me, so here I am… Having to defend some crap I did years ago. A fic I no longer have any interest in.

I'm not even interested in TTTE anymore. I have moved on with my own book project now and I would like to focus on that.

So, deleting my TTTE content, whether it was the SFW or NSFW stuff, didn't cost me a penny. It actually felt like a relief. The only downside with it is that people now can't read it and make up their own opinion about it, but will solely believe in what others say, and those things are often seriously bent out of shape and blown out of proportions to such an extent it's barely recognizable.

If people claim that Arry and Bert rape Stepney in the fic, they have never seen it or read it. That's not what happens. That's just an assumption made by looking at the title and knowing there is a rape/torture scene in it. But I'm not gonna tell who the victim is or who performed it, because this is the only way I am able to tell who has actually read the fic or not, who is just trying to spread bullshit and who is actually telling the truth. The person in that screenshot, has no idea what he's talking about.

Does SVGL romanticize rape and abuse?

No, not in the least. It's described as the horrible, heinous acts it is and is in no way meant to be cute or romantic and definitely NOT something anyone should get off to. If anyone finds it sexy, that's their problem, not the authors'. If anything, SVGL might romanticize suicide, because one of the characters isn't able to cope with his trauma and chooses to end their life. Which is something I considered doing myself when I was in the darkest pit of depression. So, I apologize for maybe romanticizing suicide. The following chapters describe how friends and family handle the loss and grief.

It also describes a toxic relationship, where one of the parts struggles to get out of it. They eventually manage to break free, but it is not easy. This can easily be translated to my previously mentioned relationship, as it was my way of writing out my experience about how hard it is to break out of a relation when your partner has broken you down to the point where you no longer believe in yourself and your self-worth.

The last chapters start to gradually become brighter, as both our lives started getting better too. But we never really wrote the end because we both lost interest in writing TTTE content by that time and just left it hanging.

I'm not the only one who has written NSFW TTTE fanfics out there. But it seems like violence and murder is more acceptable than sexual things? I do wonder how brutally mutilating children's show characters are more tolerable than sexually abusing them. Neither should be okay.

Some content creators hide behind "it was a joke". I have been told that such topics that SVGL touches upon shouldn't be joked about… so I didn't do that, and yet it was wrong? So how should such topics be treated? Be hidden like it's a shame, like in the old days when rape victims were told to suck things up and keep it to themselves? When those subject to abuse didn't dare to speak up because people would judge them?

I think it is important to talk about these subjects and why they are so problematic. Victims shouldn't have to hide their trauma; they should be allowed to talk openly about it without fearing judgement.

Some of you claim that writing isn't a good way to cope… You're trying to dictate how trauma victims deal with their trauma, and that's a dangerous path to walk down. Nobody handles trauma the same way. You might have your thoughts on how you would react, but you'll never know until trauma hits you… and you might not react the way you had expected or planned. Trauma messes with your head and you won't be able to think clearly. It makes you do thinks you normally wouldn't have done and can make you act out of character. So, do not judge people without having been in the same situation yourself. Ever.

Someone wrote that I have "more problems that just a rape".

Read that again.

Just a rape.

This person does not know how damaging a rape can be. And if you made it this far in this post, you know I didn't only go through one, but several. Not just by my ex, but also being ambushed while I was walking home from a party, and later; a co-worker forcing himself onto me at a building site. I can't go into depth about them all, I just can't.

Just a rape…

"Just" the feeling of not being in control of your own body and your own decisions. "Just" being robbed off your dignity and self-worth. "Just" having someone intrude into your private zone, tear your clothes off and claim your body against your will. "Just" feeling how your life force leave you as you realize that fighting against it won't help you, and you silently give up and just lay down waiting for it all to be over. "Just" spending hours in the shower, scrubbing your skin until you bleed because you can't wash the filth away and you keep feeling dirty no matter how much you clean yourself. "Just" waking up at night, after having relived the scene again in a nightmare. "Just" looking over your shoulder wherever you walk because you heard something or thought you saw something or simply because someone is walking behind you. "Just" the fact that you'll never feel comfortable walking alone at night again or have someone walk behind you. "Just" never being able to relax because your body constantly think you're in grave danger. "Just" a rape…

That's such a neck-beard thing to say. Someone who clearly think of other people's bodies as property or things. Not taking into consideration that we are living, breathing individuals with feelings. And that having another person violate us isn't something we like or that we'll easily get over. We want to choose who we give ourselves to, nobody should be forced. We didn't ask to be raped. We didn't want it. We didn't like it.

Rape is trauma.

Yes, we should have chosen other characters for the story, but we did what we did, and it cannot be undone now. So, if the only thing I will be remembered for in the fandom is that ONE fic, instead of all my other content, that's what it will be. That's what people chose to. I'm moving on.

10. Being a nazi for being interested in WW2 history and for being Norwegian and having so-called nazi-letters in my last name (actual letters of the Norwegian alphabet).

*sigh*

This is something that could only happen in America, isn't it?

Some people don't bother educating themselves. The "nazi-letters" you guys are talking about is actually part of the Norwegian alphabet and has nothing to do with Nazism or white-supremacy to do at all. The Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters, the three extra is æ,ø,å or in capital letters: Æ,Ø,Å.

We can't help it if some morons over in the US abuse these letters as symbol of their twisted mindset.

Yes, my name contains one of those letters. It is my name… and I didn't choose it. It is a common Norwegian name.

As for me being a Nazi?

Those who knows me knows that I am as far from a Nazi as one can get. I despise Nazism with all my heart.

But the reason some people choose to believe so… was that some guy who has no hobbies or life went through every single fave I've made on DeviantArt since I joined the site in 2006, which is well over 20000 faves. And he found a few Nazi-characters from a web series I was following about ten years ago. I am very interested in history and especially WW2-history, so I found that particular web-series interesting and faved some artwork related to it. What this guy failed to notice is that I also faved the Allied characters… That's ALL there is to that story.

I has also faved a pic someone made of Joseph Goebbels (I think it was?) as a Pixar Car. That's not because I have any nazi-sympathies, but I simply found the concept of turning historical persons, both good and bad, into Cars as an interesting project. I would have faved any other historical Carsified person as well.

As for me being a Norwegian and have a natural pale complexion, that's not something I can help. That's nothing I choose. And it doesn't make me racist or Nazi. Period.

11. Putting a white-supremacist flag (the actual flag of Norway) on my porch on family birthdays and our national day.

Again. Get educated.

This flag… is the actual flag of my country. The Kingdom of Norway.

There is nothing Nazi about it. It is not a symbol of white-supremacy. IT IS THE FLAG OF NORWAY.

During WW2 it was even illegal, so people would paint it everywhere in a protest against the Nazi-occpation and the SS. We even decorated our Christmas trees with it, and that is a tradition that has followed us into the modern day.

Again, if some idiots in the US choose to use it as a symbol for their disgusting logic, it is not Norway or the Norwegians' fault.

12. Being a danger to my daughter.

I need people to elaborate here.

What exactly do you think I do to my daughter? What is the cause of your concern here?

The fact that I have made NSFW content? How is that harmful to her as long as I keep it away from her? You DO realize that even authors, pornstars and moviemakers have children and that they can be good parents, right?

Do you think I read pornographic content for her as bedtime stories? Or show her porn instead of kids TV? How sick are you guys, really…?

Some people even wanted CPS to take my child away from me… Have a look at these screenshots…

You want a happy, healthy, innocent child to be taken away from a stable, safe home with loving parents just because you don't like the content the mother made? You want her to be placed in foster care, where there is no guarantee that she will have a happy upbringing rather than have her stay with her parents who love her and care for her, for reasons she'll never understand and wasn't even aware of?

"Think of the children!" a lot of you say when it comes to my content. May I ask why this doesn't apply to my daughter?

Why do some of you go as far as to wishing her dead or wanting her to be removed from the home she feels safe and loved in? How is that thinking of the children?

As for the douchebag in that screenshot. You claim that if your mother did something like that you would want nothing to do with her… I have a question: Do you know EVERYTHING your mother do? Does she include you in each aspect of her life? Even her sexual life? No?

How do you know she doesn't do thing you don't approve of when you're not around? She could be a rabid pornmag reader for all you know. But stuff like that is something adults hide from their kids. So, you wouldn't know, unless you go snooping around in her business.

Everyone is entitled to privacy. What I and my husband do when our kid is not around is our business, not hers, and certainly not yours.

Porn and parenting are to be kept separate from each other. Period.

And we do.

There is absolutely no reason to be worried about my daughter. She is a happy, healthy child in a safe, stable home with family that loves her and cares for her. Not just me and my husband, but also grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

If you want to remove her from that over a stupid fanfic behind a mature content wall, you're the deranged person, not me.

This is all I have to say about all this and my time in the TTTE fandom. I have left by my own, free will. Yes, I am aware that many people don't want me there. That's fine. I don't want to be there.

I am a bit disappointed in those people who just blindly unfollowed me and unfriended me without any questions asked, just followed the leader. Big users tend to dictate who and what is worth following in that fandom. They will even protect real predators, but I'm not going to open that can of worms now. I'm done with the fandom.

Some of those people, I have been talking to regularly, even supported when they faced hardships in the fandom themselves. But when I got in trouble, they ditched me without a word…

If anything, this whole ordeal showed me who to trust and not, and who were true to their word when it came to how deep our friendship was. True friends at least give you the chance to explain before they drop you. I hold no ill feelings to those who did, at least they asked me before judging.

And those who still stayed with me, are the ones who truly know me and who I really am.

Some of the worst libels posted about me might be reported to the police, but I haven't made up my mind yet. I am not mentally strong at the moment, so I don't know if I have the strength to legally follow it all up. I will ask the cops at work for advice on the matter.

All I ask for now is some peace.

You don't have to like me. You don't have to follow me. You don't have to like my content. Feel free to invalidate me, I know a lot of you will.

But please, stop bullying me and my family.

Please stop sending me horrid messages and death threats.

Please stop doxxing me and calling me.

Please leave my family alone. If you don't care about me, at least care about them.

Please just ignore me. I have already left the fandom, there is no reason to keep hunting me.

I just want to move on and go on with my life and the content I am currently working on. After years in therapy, my life has gotten better, and I want to move on.

Please let me.

#good bye to ttte #tw//suicide #tw//rape #tw// bullying #tw//depression #tw//ptsd #tw//ttte #tw//sex #tw//abuse #tw//domestic abuse #I'm done

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foulserpent · 5 years ago

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FRANCIS srry if this has been asked already but which mods did u use exactly in skyrim to give the player models like. Normal looking bodies. ive tried using some mods in the past but i could never figure them out lmfao

ok it was a pain in the ass but:

bodyslide

“calientes beautiful body enhancer”

the latter of which you need to delete some textures so it will be normal looking

as far as i understand, bodyslide doesnt let you just customize bodies on its own, you need an additional mod and a common requirement for other mods is CBBE so that might be the best choice. which is like a sexification mod which gives them the shitty flawless airbrush skin BUT just go into the female texture folder and delete anything in there (unless its from a previous mod) and that will restore the vanilla textures and it looks fine, while retaining the ability to edit shit

and anyway with both of those installed, you can mess around in bodyslide via vortex (nexus’s mod manager) to give your character a more or less normal body. its still kind of limited and wont look Great bc the model itself is supposed to be skinny and just with huge tits but its better than nothing

also in case youre interested, i edited an old body hair texture to be a little better looking . not perfect but its something. the file is in this folder (femalebody_1.dds), you just need to put it in data/textures/actors/character/female and its good to go

censored preview image under the cut, uncensored preview in the drive. it also doesnt have to be naked, vanilla stuff can override it

#crocutajaw #i had it uploaded on nexus for like a day bc i somehow forgot what that demographic is like and GOD #got fucking spammed with the most fucking vile comments imaginable #the og mod didnt get as many and it was on nexus too #anyway yeah its not a crisp HD texture and not stellar but for anyone not planning on characters frequently being nude its like good enough

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terrascookiejar-archive · 5 years ago

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Terra has a Chat with a REAL Moderator this Time

In lieu of my original post that gained a lot of traction, and me talking about being “contacted” by someone claiming to be a mod.

An ACTUAL mod from the Official Cookie Run discord managed to contact me and set the record straight on a few things, as well as discuss a few things regarding what happened. So it seems that this whole situation has indeed caught the attention of the mods of the Cookie Run Official Discord, and even MicMac himself. So what’s been done?

I do wanna talk about it in greater detail, so I’m gonna put everything in a cut, starting now. If you want the TL;DR version, skip to the second picture of Chestnut with Walnut at the end.

First things First, the person who I talked on the moderation team was someone by the name of Zayder, who contacted me on anon with their details. Using some help from friends We were able to background check and confirm, yes this person is actually legit. So I was reassured I wasn’t walking into some kind of trap.

(The photo given to me to prove authenticity by a friend. I blurred out their Discord number myself just for the courtesy of privacy)

What’s Being Done to Protect Artists on the Discord, Moving Forward?

I think this is the big question on everyone’s mind since I made my original post and all eyes are on the moderators and MicMac to make the change.

There seems to be a genuine admittance to the fact that the previous way fanart was moderated was ineffective and caused issues such as the theft and reposting to happen.

So they’ve gone ahead and added stricter measures to prevent this from happening again. Including preventing new members from posting until they get the “Cookie” role, a cooldown on the channel to allow for easier moderation and viewing of said artwork, and heavier infractions laid down for art theft.

I mentioned that the cooldown also allows for time for people to appreciate genuine artwork posted. So considering the magnitude of its members I’d say that’s a great first step in moving forward towards protecting community fanartists. I got confirmation from members in my own discord that the cooldown IS indeed already enacted and even increased from 10 to 30 minutes, so I have reassurance that what’s being told to me is true.

They DO have a report system on their bot, but it seems most people prefer just messaging mods so that system in itself is rather flawed, but only so much you can do there.

(^ This one’s my own artwork, btw!! ^) Zayder also asked me for my own feedback on what could be done to help protect artists, since I am an artist myself. It seems most of the moderation team are not artists and this probably lent itself to making moderation there so weak.

In summary my main suggestions that were noticed were being mindful of traced art, and a dedicated section or post explaining art theft and how it harms artists and the importance of crediting artists. As not everyone understands how it hurts us, some people genuinely are uninformed. Which Zayder stated he would forward to Mic Mac. (Not sure how I feel about my own suggestions going directly to MicMac himself, but you know!!)

Fawn’s Situation happened so Long Ago that most of it is Lost (or worst case scenario, was deleted by a member of the moderation team)

While the general consensus now is indeed “Yes, Fawn created Nutmeg Cookie,” there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of evidence towards who the perpetrator was (We had their username, hazbinalastor666, but not their ID and they’ve since changed it to cover their tracks) and the moderators involved with Fawn’s “Ban” to be found on the Official Cookie Run Discord. At least not anymore.

Zayder has confirmed that Fawn “left” the server in December of 2019, which lines up with Fawn’s own statements on the situation. However Zayder stated that whoever kicked her didn’t actually put her on the banlist. So either they kicked her manually, or they used the bot and then used it to erase all evidence of it and pretend nothing happened (which he certainly HOPES is not the case, and I do as well). It did not help that Trial Mods were not a thing yet by this time (They were not introduced until February of 2020), according to what Zayder told me. So things on that Discord were essentially pretty gun-ho. It’s not as simple as looking up a term and going to “Oldest” to track down stuff from the time. Plus a good chunk of it seemed to have happened through DMs so... Good Luck getting that evidence.

Zayder informed me that Fawn is welcome to come back at any time. Though speaking with her she’s chosen not to, and considering her situation I don’t think anyone can blame her. I would like to believe that the version of the Discord that Fawn had to go through is not the same as the one we have now but something like isn’t essentially going to wash away what happened.

As for evidence that Fawn created Nutmeg first? Yes I do have it. The original incident, hazbinalastor666 claimed that they created Nutmeg in November of 2019, However there’s evidence in our own discord showing Fawn creating Nutmeg as early as September of 2019.

As well as the day Fawn came forward on our discord about the situation after keeping quiet out of fear of backlash, ignited by seeing the thief get a commission of Nutmeg. However, I don’t plan to post that publicly unless I have Fawn’s okay.

Yes. The First “Mod” That tried to Contact Me was Pretty Undeniably Someone Posing as a Mod From the Official Discord

“I'm also really curious on what you found false on what the "moderator" said to you. Nobody on the mod team ever told us they were gonna contact you, so I wouldnt know who that is.”

So that was my first sign that clearly the original person who contacted me at least wasn’t doing so without the consensus of the other mods, and neither did they consult the mods afterwards... So very, very likely they were a fake from the start. Some of the things that were off that I told to Zayder, and that we found through conversation were as follows:

The first person contacted me on a throwaway and refused to disclose who they were. Zayder gave me the ID of his personal discord and we could verify who they were easily.

The first person blew off my own suggestions for helping improve the fanart channels with statements like “We’re already cracking down on it.” Zayder asked me for my own suggestions as an artist without even being asked.

The first person kept trying to get me to get Fawn to use a VPN in order to get back into the Official Cookie Run Discord. Despite being told repeatedly that’s not how a VPN works. That’s just fucking weird.

The first person couldn’t track anything down regarding Fawn’s situation years ago, Zayder was at least able to actually pinpoint the date in which Fawn was kicked, and rather quickly too I might add.

Zayder had pretty proficient knowledge on the bot the Discord uses for moderation and how it works. Which he explained to me a few times. The first person said to me at one point, and I quote, “For all I know the bot gives messages when infractions are laid.”

So seeing how talking with a real Moderator like Zayder was, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that someone was trying to dupe me here for some reason. Was it revenge? Did they want some sort of blackmail? Did they want me to proverbially “back off?” And if they ARE a mod why wouldn’t they give the info and such that I gave them to the other mods? Who knows.

TL;DR:

Long Story short, it does appear as if the Moderation Team and Mic Mac have heard the artists of the fandom and are going to be working hard to lay down stricture rules regarding posting and doing their best to make sure credit goes where credit is due.

Fawn’s incident happened so long ago there’s not much evidence to be found on the Official discord, but we DO have proof that Nutmeg Cookie belongs to UpsetFawn!

The First Person who claimed to be a Mod was a fake and talking with Zayder proved it.

Overall, my talk with Zayder was very pleasant and enlightening and I believe Zayder would say about the same! I never meant to cause such an uproar, but I’d like to think things will change for the better now that we’ve all spoken up on behalf of our fellow artist.

What we need to do now is watch how the Cookie Run Official Discord moves forward and if they’ll stick to their word towards protecting fandom content creators from theft and uncredited reposts. Though after my talk I’m certainly optimistic they will.

Always have your back for your fellow fandom artist, TerraTerraCotta

#Mun Updates #Mun Posts #Cookie Run #Cookie Run Official Discord #Cookie Run Ovenbreak #PSA #Signal Boost #Be sure to pass this along!!

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marcilled · 5 years ago

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5 years

It was 5 years ago today that a humble little minecraft server first opened its gates. 5 years ago, I started @quixol with a team of 8 friends. Today, only 4 of those original friends are still on our Staff team, and the server is a shadow of its former self.

There’s a lot I could talk about with Quixol, but before I get into it, I just want it to be known that this is a highly personal post from me. This isn’t an official announcement, but seeing as I’m an admin, it’s definitely of pertinence if you are someone who is a part of the Quixol community.

If you’re new to following me, or just don’t know what I’m talking about: Quixol is a trans-friendly minecraft server started by me and a few pals back on November 16, 2015. It’s primarily populated by folks from here on Tumblr, and is an LGBT+ only community. Over its 5 years, it’s gotten over 1600 unique players. And... Well, there’s a lot of history that took place during and after that, I can’t hope to summarize it here. You can see more on the about page on our blog.

So, yeah. Today is the 5-year anniversary of Quixol. Pretty big deal! And... we have nothing in store for today to celebrate that huge milestone. Pretty big bummer. The prior 4 years, the anniversary was the single biggest celebration of the year. We typically tried to schedule large server updates to coincide with the anniversary, just to make it feel that much more special. So, on the day that marks a whole half-decade of being online, why do we have no plans? It’s a long, complicated story. I’ll only be able to tell you my side of it. Everything written below is from my perspective, and doesn’t necessarily reflect how others think or feel.

Regardless of the lonely feeling on the server now, I just want to say, I’m really glad I could host such a fantastic community for so many years. Thank you everyone who has made the past half decade so special.

Long retrospective below (plus, discussion about Quixol’s future):

-----

Where to begin... All I can say at the start here is, don’t expect anything coherent, I typed this up while sleep deprived just the night before posting this, without much forethought of what I’d say in it. I just feel I need to get these feelings off my chest before I can mentally move on, you know.

Before I delve into this, I just want to put this sort of disclaimer at the top here: Despite how gloomy I make things sound throughout this post, Quixol is and was an amazing place, that I’m so glad to say I got to play such a pivotal role in. I wouldn’t trade my time here for anything. It’s been an honor to serve as an Admin over such an incredible community. I’ve seen countless new friendships forged, plenty of laughs and fun times to be had... I’ve even known several couples that met through their time on Quixol, I’ve known several people that came out or discovered more about their identity/gender/sexuality while on Quixol. It’s a great community, despite its flaws, and what we did over these past 5 years is nothing short of spectacular. I’m forever thankful for everyone who helped make this place as special as it is- you’ve all been such great friends. Thank you.

While I may speak a great deal about some of the lowest lows that happened on Quixol, you better believe it had some of the highest highs as well. Keep that in mind, so you know why I’m spending this much time and effort to commemorate this server that I’ve called home for so long.

I’ll start here with a rough timeline of Quixol... I’ll even include some screenshots for you all.

Old World (Nov. 2015 - Mar. 2017, mc 1.8 - 1.9)

Quixol began back in 2015 like I mentioned- whitelisted at first, but moved on to being unwhitelisted at a later date (I believe it was summer of 2016). Hundreds of people joined after the whitelist was removed, in just the first month or so. We owe that initial success to how much our blog post about the server got shared around, it served as a nice advertisement for the server. It was only posted to tumblr, so everybody who joined then was from the same sort of social sphere of 2016 tumblr. It was pretty lively, and we made lots of friends very quickly. A lot never logged in again after the first initial burst, but a fair amount stuck around.

The server started on minecraft version 1.8, which was before the end update that introduced elytra & all the controversial combat changes. Most people never even saw the server on this version, though, since it was still whitelisted when we updated to 1.9. The world we used back in 2015-2016 eventually got deleted at a later date, however we did provide an archive of this old world to download, it’s... somewhere on our blog, you can go find it if you poke around a bit. (Assuming the download hasn’t been removed from the website I uploaded it to, which would make sense since it’s just 20 gb sitting on some server doing nothing).

While there was plenty of merriment, there was also the fair share of drama. I can’t even hope to recall all the drama that happened in 2016, but one of our og mods got banned completely after the rest of the staff sort of woke up to the realization they were incredibly abusive. There’s lots of other stuff that happened then- I wish I could tell the “full tale” as it were, but it would be so long-winded that almost nobody would bother to read. Plus, my memory isn’t very good, so I would need to dig through old blog posts, discord messages, screenshots, etc etc to jog my memory... way too much work.

Protos (Mar. 2017 - Nov. 2018, mc 1.11 - 1.12)

2017 came around, and that’s when we updated the server to 1.11 and created a new world (Protos). That update happened on March 26, 2017- I remember because march 26th is my birthday, and the other staff made a cute little celebration for me on that day and I literally cried from how happy I was. It was the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in a long time. (God, I miss those times.)

A lot more happened during this time period, and honestly I’d consider the period in which Protos was our main, active world to be the most consistently active the server has ever been. It wasn’t always exploding with activity, but the people who joined and played during this time were consistent. And we had a relatively consistent influx of new players.

There was a lot more drama that happened during this time... More staff members left, mostly of their own accord (but never on a wholly positive note). Drama amongst some of the veteran/long-time players, arguments over how to interpret and enforce our rules.

Regardless of the troubles, I’d say this period was overall quite positive for Quixol. We even brought in our first batch of new staff members during this period.

Ghalea (Nov. 2018 - Present, mc 1.13 - 1.15)

I believe late 2018 was when we updated the server from 1.12 to 1.13. We rushed the update to this version quite a lot, which was a shame since it ensured the server had an egregious amount of bugs to work out, and lots of missing plugins/functionality. With this update, we made another new world (and, our current main world): Ghalea.

Regardless of buggy behavior, we managed to hit what I believe is the all-time peak concurrent player count we have ever gotten, which is something like 54-56 players playing at the same time. The server chugged so hard, I’m surprised it didn’t crash. All of those parties were so stressful to put on, but at the same time, incredibly fun and fulfilling to see when lots of people showed up and had a good time.

Funny, though: despite the success of the server, 2018 and early 2019 are the closest the server has ever gotten to absolutely tearing itself apart from internal staff drama. By early-mid 2019, several staff members ended up getting banned one after the other. So that left us with very few staff by that point (only 6 active staff, myself included, if I remember correctly).

2019 should have been a great year for Quixol, seeing as it was what many people referred to as the “minecraft renaissance”, “the great minecraft revival”, etc etc etc. However, the drama amongst the staff, coupled with drama in our personal lives, and just an all around lack of staff members to kick things into gear, resulted in a pretty lackluster year compared to the previous 4 years.

Despite all of that, we worked tirelessly to complete our greatest project yet, Chroma Park, just before our 4th anniversary on Nov 16th, 2019. It took a whole team of builders to complete, and several months in preparation/building.

With such a grand project completed, you would expect it would result in a flurry of new activity on the server... unfortunately, it ended up being almost the opposite. Because we called upon our “build team” to help with it, (several talented veteran players who volunteered their building skills), nearly all of our active players suffered some serious burnout after the major project they just completed. Lots of people just weren’t feelin’ up to minecraft anymore... And, that spelled the beginning of the end, really.

The culmination of this was that, going into 2020, activity on the server just... plummeted. Then, we all know what a shit year 2020 turned into. That just furthered feelings of burnout. I made another personal post about this, back in April- explaining why I had been relatively absent from the server for a while. It goes into more detail about the “hiatus” at that time, what caused it, why it continued so long, and how my personal feelings were at that time. Give it a read if you want. It even goes more in-depth about some of Quixol’s former staff, and how toxic behavior from them may have negatively impacted the community (especially in 2018-2019).

So, basically nothing has happened on Quixol in 2020... I took the time to update the server from 1.14 to 1.15 back in July, just so that the server was on a more stable version of minecraft- but all the effort poured into that resulted in basically nothing happening. Barely anyone even noticed, because it was such a minor update focusing on bug fixes. I hoped it would get the ball rolling again, but it just wasn’t enough.

While I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet, I decided it was for the best if I put any plans on the backburner for a while, and focus more attention on building infrastructure back up again. I spent some time researching sysadmin stuff, and looking into upgrading my PC. I set up a new discord bot that we’re currently using on Quixol, & have in a few other discord servers I’m active in.

Then, I got tossed one of the most difficult months of my life in a long time pretty recently. It’s very recent/fresh, but suffice it to say, a decent chunk of what made it such a horrible month was related to drama within the Quixol friend group, particularly... me being a shitty friend. I made another post about this a while back, but I won’t link it since it’s a bit vague and not super relevant to what I’m talking about here. Just know, September this year pretty much demolished any feelings of hope I had for continuing work on Quixol.

So, that leads us to... Today. The 5th anniversary of Quixol.

Where did it all go wrong?

Now that I’ve laid out as quick a summary of the past 5 years as I could, I want to talk about some of the mistakes we made along the way. The people that made Quixol what it is, and how that history always seems to tie me down.

To tell you the truth, saying that “it all went wrong” sounds horribly pessimistic to me. Sure, I felt pessimistic going into writing this, but... Just looking back on everything we’ve accomplished, there’s never really a point where it “went wrong”. Moreso, Quixol has had its fair share of flaws baked in from the very beginning. But, perhaps those flaws are what made it what it really is. I can’t go back and change the past, and neither can you. Perhaps the best we can do is just accept Quixol for what it is, and acknowledge its shortcomings while allowing ourselves to feel happy about the good memories we do have.

While I’m not going to cast away every pleasant memory I have of Quixol, I must admit I find so many of them tainted and forever changed, just because of how many people entered this community, made their stay known, then left or were cast away on a sour note. There are countless people that were a huge part of Quixol, of my life, my friends, that I don’t speak to anymore. People that hate me. Maybe even some that I hate.

If I go back and think fondly of those times, I remember how the people in those memories largely don’t think fondly of me anymore. I remember all of my mistakes, all of the ways I could have avoided that outcome. All the ways I could have worked with those friends, to work out our differences, to just fucking communicate. Sure... some of those friends, there was nothing I could do for them. Nothing I could do to make things work. But, all the same... it stings, thinking of everyone I used to know. Not knowing who is still a friend, or who simply has no need for me anymore...

So much of Quixol’s history is tied up in knots this way. Complicated webs of emotion, suffocating in the tethers to its past. So many things built on the server, just wasting away, never to be touched again... New players won’t even know it. They don’t know, can’t know the history behind those blocks that were placed. It sounds a bit silly talking about it this way, but that’s how it feels to me. There’s real history behind each of these blocks, all of the little farms and structures and silly signs. So much of it, nobody even knows. But it wears on my heart, knowing all of that history, and feeling so disconnected from it. Feeling cast away by the people who forged those memories.

It’s a disconnect that’s always hurt, to me. Maybe I’m just too sentimental, nostalgic. Maybe I cling to the past too much. But it feels impossible to ignore... So much of what made Quixol what it is today was left there by people who want nothing to do with me, us, anymore. What does that say about Quixol? About me...? About our group?

There’s a lot I could say about this, but it’s stuff I’ve mentioned before. I hang on too tightly to the past, and am often too critical of my own mistakes. But, sometimes the past is just the way it is, and there’s not much that can be done about it. Regardless, I find myself feeling regrets about every little thing that went wrong, and thinking about where all those people are now... Maybe one of them is even reading this right now. If you’re out there, hey. We can still talk. I’m not going to hold a grudge on you forever. It’s ok.

My influence

Since Quixol began in 2015, I’ve tried my best to be nothing more than an “Admin” of Quixol... not the “owner” or “lead admin” or “founder”, just “admin”. I hoped I could encourage the other admins to be leaders in their own rights. While each of the admins we’ve had has been great leaders in their own respect, I feel that every one of them has been, unfortunately, tied down by my influence to some extent.

In most aspects of life, I’m a very timid, indecisive person. I’m incredibly anxious, and lack confidence to a worrying degree. However, a different side of me can be seen in the safe, comfortable environment that Quixol provided for me. Surrounded by friends and people who I felt really got me, I became comfortable enough to show some level of confidence in myself... In all honesty, for a long time, I was never able to recognize this self confidence for what it was. I really was not, and mostly still am not, used to feeling confident in myself or my own abilities. Like, at all. So when I actually feel good about myself, like I actually know what I’m doing... Well, for a really long time, I didn’t even process it as such. I just felt like I knew the right answers, and that was it.

On Quixol, this often manifested in a specific way... Being proud of my own knowledge & skills with minecraft, I would insert myself into any discussion about Minecraft, the server, or just anywhere I could, and offer up my knowledge, opinions & help. This hardly sounds like a problem, but... The problem was just in my unwavering presence. I was everywhere on Quixol, you couldn’t escape me. I dominated the space with my presence. Not that I interrupted people (usually...?), I just would try to put myself anywhere a conversation was happening, assuming it was, like, appropriate for me to do so on some level.

Whenever I chimed in with my thoughts, eventually there became this sort of air of almost... superiority about it. This feeling that my word was “final”, or that I had some layer of expertise on everything, and that if I said what you said was right, that was a pretty good indicator you were on the right track. I didn’t pretend like I was infallible, and I don’t think anyone ever saw me as that. But the perception was generally that if Vivian says it, that holds weight to it. Perhaps this is somewhat unavoidable of a staff member, but... it was this way even amongst the staff.

I never really realized that I was creating this environment within the community, because it happened rather slowly. But as things moved along, other staff began to pick up on this (perhaps subconsciously). Including even the other admins. Quickly, my own insistence on doing things a Specific Way, became “the Right Way” to do things on Quixol... Whether I intended it or not.

Now, this is something I didn’t know until quite recently, but I actually have OCD (undiagnosed, but it’s glaringly obvious to me at this point). My ocd comes out in minecraft, and specifically Quixol, quite a lot. I have very ritualistic ways of doing things, whether it be while building a project in-game, to managing specific parts of the server- we have a very detailed format in which update logs are written, and I have very specific rituals related to updating plugins on the server, taking backups, etc. Even just the way I play survival minecraft has sorts of rituals in a way, like specific patterns in which I place torches. I’m not too educated on ocd, so excuse me if I’m using some terminology of this wrong, or if I’m spreading some sort of misinformation about it. This is just my experience.

Anyhow, with the extremely regimented way I manage things on the server, coupled with my constant presence in things, you can understand how this might lead to other admins, who have their own mental illness issues, to become very averse to doing a lot of admin-related duties. After months and months, years, even, of this sort of stuff... and... yeah. That leads to where we are now.

With my selfish behavior in the past, I’ve unintentionally created this staff environment where people are reluctant to make their own decisions, show their own creativity, etc. And that must feel incredibly frustrating if you actually want to do something to make a difference on Quixol...

I’m not even accounting for all the times I’ve butted heads with the other staff before, either. While much less frequent, I’ve definitely had arguments with folks in the past. And with the great amount of influence I hold over the server, it takes a lot of courage to stand up to what I say.

I’ve always resented that I hold this position of power over everyone else, and tried many times to address it. However, I don’t think I ever quite had a full picture of why things were this way. Now, I think I understand it better. Sadly, it feels too little, too late to make any significant changes without uprooting pretty much everything we have set in place already. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m being too pessimistic here... But, this is how I feel at the present moment.

I’m sincerely sorry to any current or former staff members, who have wanted to do something great for Quixol, but felt they could never convince me to go through with your idea... Or who felt pushed away from doing something they otherwise would’ve liked to, just because the attitude I gave, the environment my presence created, made you feel like you weren’t good enough or qualified enough to do it. You are good enough. I’m so sorry that my actions made you convinced otherwise...

I will say, this sort of mindset of mine, that I have to be the Most Right about anything relating to minecraft, or any hyperfixation/special interest of mine, has caused problems elsewhere, too. I talked about this in another post I made. I’ve only really come to realize all this stuff within the past few months, but I’ve been a really terrible friend to a lot of people. I never even realized until recently just how often I struggle with empathy, and how that’s colored so many of my friendships. Needless to say, it’s affected things on Quixol before, sometimes without me even realizing it.

My influence over the community also means if anybody’s relations with me in particular ever become marred, it must inevitably result in them leaving the community because there’s simply no escaping me. There’s not really anything I can do about this, though, aside from doing whatever I can to become a kinder, more

I’m far from a perfect person, and my imperfections seeped into so much of what made Quixol what it is. However, it’d be silly to suggest that I’m the singular reason that Quixol is flawed, if anything, that would be another form of arrogance- assuming that I singlehandedly shaped the way Quixol took form. No, it was always a team effort, and every single staff and community member held great influence of their own.

The Future

This part is probably why many of you clicked on this post... You want to know what’s going to happen to Quixol. You likely noticed I’ve been referring to Quixol in the past tense a lot in this post. Honestly, I’m not sure why I did that, it just felt the most natural to type it that way. But, I will be honest- the future of Quixol right now isn’t looking very bright.

This is a personal post, so I don’t want to deliver any sort of formal announcement about plans for Quixol here, especially since I haven’t run this post by the other staff before posting it.

For the past 2 and a half months, I’ve been taking a very long break from Quixol. Much greater than any previous break of mine... I’ve neglected to even log in for weeks at a time. I still keep an eye on the discord server, and check the mc <-> discord bridge channel to see which players have been logging in. But I have little to no motivation to play, even just casually.

While I’d love to give you some fun cool news about how this hiatus is ending soon and I have a million and one projects planned, that simply isn’t the case. I’ve gotten to this point where I’m rethinking everything about myself, who I am, and what I’m doing with my life. Surely, I can’t dedicate all my time and energy to running a minecraft server for the rest of my life, even though I do care deeply about this community. But at the same time, it’s not really my call to shut down Quixol, and I’d hate to pull the plug just because of my own lack of motivation.

So, for the time being at least, you can probably consider Quixol to be on a sort of “indefinite hiatus”. I am generally the one to update plugins, do major server updates, etc., and I likely won’t be doing any of that any time soon. I fully entrust the other staff to handle that stuff if they really want to, and I’ve expressed that to them already. But as things stand, nobody else seems to want to pick up the torch right now. Shit is rough for pretty much everyone, and we’re all equally burnt out. We’ve all grown up quite a lot since Quixol began, too. So... Don’t expect anything anytime soon.

If there are any updates, they’ll come in our Discord server first.

As for me, personally... I just need time away from all of this. It’s clearer than ever to me that I have a lot of personal problems I need to work on, and I think that the cozy safe environment provided by Quixol didn’t challenge me enough to really address those issues. I need time to focus on myself & my own growth. At the same time, I also feel like I need more experience being a part of a team, instead of just running the show. I’m not getting the kind of enrichment I need from running Quixol, so I’m trying to turn my attention elsewhere.

I’m doing this not because I want to abandon you guys, or because I feel like I want/need to move on from this community. It’s just... Something I need to do, for myself. And I’ll still be around, I’m still gonna be posting to my tumblr & twitter and stuff, and you can still reach me on discord. I’m just focusing my time elsewhere for once.

What does that mean for the future of Quixol? I don’t really know yet. But, for now, it’s not going anywhere. It’s just... also not changing anytime soon. Not even a little bit. I’m sorry to give you this disappointing news, but I hope you all understand.

I miss the good times on Quixol, too. I really do. Maybe we can share them again sometime? Who knows...

For now, that’s all.

It breaks my heart that we don’t have anything glitzy and glamorous to do to celebrate Quixol’s 5th anniversary... But it would be asking far too much of the staff to set anything like that up right now. Maybe we can have some sort of celebration later...? I dunno.

I hope you’re all staying safe & healthy out there. Thank you so much for reading this. I love all of you.

Happy birthday, Quixol.

#vivi bleats #txt #Quixol #long post

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