#i will get to my backlog of other submissions eventually!

[lowpolyanimals]

How are you doing?

hey! I am doing much better these days, PMDD is kicking my butt every month still but I am doing pretty well considering. I had to reduce my hours in work to help reclaim some of my life that PMDD takes but it helps a lot so I am very grateful I am able to do that. I got married last year and now am living with my spouse so that has been a dream come true and is such a big help too! I still have way too many hobbies and counting (thanks neopets) for my time available but I am slowly rotating them all and making the most out of my time finally!

I am really sorry that I was away for so long. At the time that I left, I was just so overwhelmed due to my PMDD getting worse and becoming unbearable, working whilst ill, trying to catch up on work / life missed due to ill health etc. and it all got a bit too much for me. Even the thought of coming back to the blog after a couple weeks was too overwhelming (because of how I was running the blog at the time). Later on I had also deleted Tumblr from my phone in an attempt to reduce screen time but it meant that I stopped using it completely and I regret that it largely contributed to me staying away for so long.

I want to give this blog a big old reboot and get it up and running again but I realised that I need to change the way that I run the blog. Previously I had this HUGE backlog of submissions that caused me to have to spend hours and hours one day of my weekend to get through so many submissions. I wanted to just power through until eventually I’d get to the point where I’d just be able to handle submissions as soon as they come in then and there but there was just too many and it took too much of a toll and I hit breaking point. :(

So I’ve decided to just run the blog now how I've always wanted to - by dealing with submissions as and when they come in and opening/closing submissions to keep it to a manageable level (I'm sure this is how other blogs do it, I think I am just dumb lol). I will also post them immediately as and when they come in and only use the queue if I’m going to be posting several posts in a row to avoid spamming. It just means posting will be a bit more sporadic sometimes that’s all. However, in order for me to do this, I am going to have to omit the backlog (for now). I can always go back to the backlog and shave some off if I can handle it (or please feel free to resubmit anything I've not already posted).

I’ll make a new pinned post in a couple of days explicitly explaining the new changes to how the blog will be run behind the scenes, although honestly it’s not going to affect much on you guys side of things, you will still see the same content and submit the same way. I just want to add a rule to say please do not submit more than one post a day and that I’ll open/close submissions to keep things manageable. Submissions will stay off until that post comes out so just bear with me (🐻) a little longer!

Just want to say before I end this really long post (they always get so out of hand lol) that I MISSED YOU GUYS TOO and I LOVE YOU ALL and your kind messages made me so very motivated to get this going again, thank you! 🥺❤️ I can’t wait to bring you more of these little critters we love so much once again :)

[byierficrecs]

when u go through submissions, do you read them before you make the graphics, post it etc? bc obviously some of these fics tend to be longer so do you have a backlog of fics you get through eventually and shorter fics to read/post if you havent finished any other ones? or do u post the ones with the most recs? is a combination of both where if a fic has more recommendations you dont read it vs if just one submission mentions it you read it? it im just curious as to how that works especially because you’ve mentioned that the graphics can take quite a while, which is pretty evident on account of how nice they look btw, so i was wondering how the reading side of that looked like !! (sorry in advance if i come across as rude or anything of the sorts in my ask, it genuinely wasnt my intention as i was just curious)

hello! anything under 40k i read in its entirety, anything over that (chaptered fics) i try to read a handful of chapters,,, maybe 10-15k to get a good idea of the vibe. it's also important to me because the submissions (and authors in ao3) sometimes omit relevant tags and it hasn't happened, but i'm scared i might at some point share something with some heavy warning that was not mentioned anywhere :S

(i've been in various fandoms and read a lot of fics,,, the amount of times i've read something with mcd that is not tagged or mentioned is unfortunately in the double digits ;-;)

in regards to the order in which i read the stories, it's the order in which they are posted! i try my best to do the submissions in the order in which they arrive, but i do switch things around depending on length (i try not to group long fics), author repetition and trope. for instance, domestic fluff tends to end up with pastel graphics and it'd be a bit much to post five thingies that look very similar in a row; so, i put other stuff in between.

sometimes, when i'm too tired or overwhelmed and don't want to read (it happens), i switch long stories for short ones on the go.

i've never just "trusted that a story is good", sort to speak. there are some authors i love so i know their stuff is good without reading it, but they also deserve to have their work read and i do still need to get the vibe right. fics that are shared more than once are rare (i think it's only happened 4 times in total), but i promise that is not a factor in how i organise or approach the stories.

(besides, if that were the case and i admitted it, then people would start spam-submitting the story so i'll hurry with the graphic and that would just make me sad and anxious)

i hope this answers your questions? i confess, i just woke up so this might not make that much sense x.x anyway, please don't worry about your tone, you didn't come across as rude whatsoever~ happy holidays!

[dead-malls]

From @turbomun: “Valley View Center in Dallas, TX. Opened in 1973, still (partially) open.

The mall was built up around a stand-alone Sears that opened in 1965. It was supposed to be demolished to make way for a mixed use development called Dallas Midtown in 2016, and again in 2017, but disputes between the land owner and the city have stalled redevelopment indefinitely. There are no anchors left, no food court, and everything is blocked off except for a third-floor AMC movie theatre that was added in 2003, and a small portion of the second floor with very few tenants. Between 2014 and 2017, the rest of the second floor was used as art galleries and artist studios, but those have also been closed and blocked now. There is a carnival held in the parking lot every summer that rarely has any visitors.”

Photos taken by @turbomun July 14, 2018.

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

ASKBOX IS OPEN REQUESTS ARE OPEN HERE ARE THE RULES

okay so requests/askbox is open and this means we gotta go over some ground rules:

1) Funny- the request needs to be humorous, memes usually the most popular but dnd in jokes and other shitpostery is welcome. i abide by the MBMBAM NO BUMMERS rule - there are plenty of sad/deep calligraphers out there who’d be happy to work with yall, but this isn’t that sort of channel

2) Length - no more than 75 characters a request, my cue cards are only so big so I can only fit so much on each one

3) Amount of Requests - I am trying to be fair but i am one person running this ENTIRE thing, logistics, tech, stream, merch etc, everything. In order to be fair, please restrict yourselves to 3 requests per person to let everyone have a shot, if you send in 5 i will ctrl-f your username and pick my favourites

4) Content - I will not do anything I consider under the umbrella of general assholery - this includes racial slurs, edgelord bullshit, exclusionist jackassery etc. Please be kind to each other. Please let me know if I’ve taken a request that is some incredibly obscure piece of assholery, someone once tried to slip a really obscure antisemetic piece of slang by me once

5) Repeats - I keyword tag EVERY SINGLE piece i’ve ever done on this blog, if you think I might have written smth already but aren’t sure, the /tagged is your friend, check if i’ve done your request before

the askbox is theshitpostcalligrapher.tumblr.com/ask, not a dm to the blog. I’ll close submissions too so people don’t get the boxes confused. DM me for any actual clarifications, kind words, etc so they don’t get swallowed up by the behemoth of my askbox for months

I’ll be streaming the entire time the askbox is open on twitch @ theshitpostcalligrapher, trying to get as many of these done today as possible live. Once 10PM EST hits, the askbox will close but if you get your request into the askbox by then, it will be done eventually I slowly do up all the cards as a backlog.

Here’s the link to my twitch, we’ll start a little after 3 o’clock.

Here’s the ko-fi link, but there is also a donation link directly on the twitch site that will fill up a goal bar for food and also for an eventual cooking livestream

[slugtranslation-hypmic]

mr slug when will your about be up

I am sorry about the slow speed on this. T_T

The past couple of months have been suuuuuuper hectic for me in my IRL situation, what with leaving a very exploitative job, hunting for a new job, unexpectedly going homeless for a few weeks before eventually finding and moving into a new place, finishing and graduating university, starting freelancing work, and having a minor surgery. Things have only started to calm down and become manageable in the last few weeks, and I'm slowly starting to adjust to the new schedule. Yet I still don't have an endless supply of free time and energy. On top of work, I'm doing a large amount of self-studying and classes to fix the gaps in my Japanese knowledge, all the usual things required for adulthood (errands, cleaning, exercise, worrying endlessly about lack of money, etc.), a time- and energy-consuming project I can't talk about here, and then trying to keep up on Hypmic stuff. What I'm working on atm for Hypmic (in roughly the order I'm prioritizing it):

The monthly manga summaries as they come out

A series of short fics for a Twitter event next week. Done with 6/7

A drama track translation. I'm maybe about 1/10 of the way done... ah ha ha... It's been moved down in the priority queue because of those fics

A zine submission I'm about 1/4 of the way done with

Several doujinshi I offered to translate, since the subject matter interested me

Fixing this blog up finally

The good news is that I'm adapting and starting to chip away at this backlog of things to work on. If I can stop taking on new shit (<- this is me chastising myself), I think I can get to a point in a few months where I can start running this blog to be something like:

A monthly essay or longer blog post related to deep diving some aspect of Hypmic. Might be kind of cringy, but people seem to enjoy these posts, and they're fun for me to write too

Weekly or semi-weekly updates to fics on Ao3 or Twitter, with links to them here

Accepting periodic small translation requests, particularly for freely accessible content

Answering misc. asks here and there

Which I think would be great! It's just going to require me to finish my other shit first... but the issue is, of course, that I only have a couple hours' worth of free time and energy per week, and I do sometimes like to do other things besides work on making content.

This is a really long way to say I don't know, and I am so sorry for not being more active. T_T

[remedythismemory-blog]

Big news! And lengthy update incoming! If the name you’re seeing on your dash isn’t familiar, that’s because I’m rebranding my old blog (nhithepoet) and transferring it to Remedy This Memory. I’ve been working on all of my poetry and books little by little so don’t you fret. I just felt that it was time for a big change in my focus.

As a writer, poet, artist, I’m sure many of you can relate to the feeling of being isolated or alone in your journey. Everyone’s always talking about what they’re working on, just shouting into a void and hearing back echoes just so they won’t go crazy with their own thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, I feel crazy blessed to have had all 17k of you here with me (that’s insane!) and I know Remedy This Memory will bring with it some new content that’s not strictly just my writing and photography anymore, but I hope that you will stick around for it. I would really love to be able to grow this community even further!

Part of the reason for me wanting to launch an online publication of short form fiction and visual media was because I felt and saw and heard that so many of you were so talented. There are so many people putting their heart and soul into their content and uploading it into the vast space of the internet and because many of them don’t have enough followers or enough of a platform, their voice gets lost over the white noise of other content on social media.

I’m really hoping that Remedy This Memory will change all of that. I hope to launch the site within the next few months so please stay tuned for more updates. We’re drafting up a 3 pronged approach to building a community of likeminded creators. On the first, we are focusing on frequent releases on the site and backlogging with as much content as possible. We really would love the site to be a constant source of inspiration. On the second front, we are focusing on community building and creating open dialogue through exclusive interviews with creatives just like you, advice columns, and other exciting content. On the last front, we eventually see ourselves taking on sort of an agency role, mediating between our contracted creatives and brands in order to get collaborations going that really work in favor of all parties, but mostly the creators because I’m a creator at heart and Remedy This Memory is a resource before it is a business.

I am so stoked for this journey and I really do hope you all will be here for the ride! If you have ideas for submissions, please shoot me a message! I’d love to chat with future RTM content creators ☺️✨

Thank you all for your continued support and patience! I feel so incredibly loved on this platform and I’m so happy for the voice that I do have here.

[fuck-customers]

Leave Mandie Alone

I can tell you why you should. I can speak from personal experience as to why you all need to take a huge step back and fuck right on off if you can’t handle a few mistakes.

Let me tell you my story.

I have a deviantart (DA) account. Many, many years ago, at least 5 or 6, I started working as a moderator in a group. Eventually, I ended up taking over the group and am now the founder, i.e, the owner, i.e, the boss, and I have been, for about… umm… maybe… 4 years now.

That’s all well and good, but I stopped using DA around the same time. That is to say, that this group is literally the ONLY reason I even bother to log onto DA anymore. That is literally IT.

And I get it… I could let the group die. Nobody could do anything, the old owner checks in sometimes and is still surprised it’s running. Really, nobody asked me to keep maintaining the group. But I feel obligated to, because I know people enjoy and benefit from it. Much like Mandie, I get no personal benefit for doing that. I don’t get paid. I don’t get any rewards. All I get in return is the occasional person commenting that they are glad the group exists. THAT IS IT.

That being said, however, I don’t owe anybody shit. And neither does Mandie. But people LOVE to act like we admins owe our patrons our ass on a silver platter simply for using our service, in this case the maintenance of a group/tumblr. Let me explain. 

In this group, because it’s on DA, it runs off of submissions. People draw art, post it, and submit it to my group for review. For the longest time, I did it all by myself because having extra mods wasn’t working out. This led to the backlog of submissions stretching out to a month behind schedule, and in some instances submissions would just expire because I didn’t get to them in time.

Additionally, because of how many deviations I had to review, it was easier and far quicker to just glance at the thumbnail and vote it through or deny it based on what I saw. There’s not a not of detail in a thumbnail, where the art is shrunk.

Oh, did I mention? My group is strictly SFW.

Things I have had happen in my group:

- One user absolutely flipped her lid and went apeshit on me because I had accepted a deviation of an MLP character where you could see the silhouette of a clothed nipple. Barely noticeable when viewed on the page, absolutely nonexistent on a thumbnail. Didn’t stop her from ripping me a new asshole over it. Apparently she had an issue with ANYTHING relating to sex - which is fine, I get it, I know why these things happen. Did not stop her from being a total bitch and telling me I had no business running the group. Ironically had a photo of a blue waffle as her profile picture - didn’t respond but did change it when I couldn’t resist informing her what it was alluding to (left a Wikipedia link as so to inform her as gently as possible).

- had another guy tell me how to do my “job”. Would constantly note the group with submissions he felt were unacceptable for the group. Some were justified, most not. He ended up running around to other users, mini modding them and telling THE ARTIST DIRECTLY on the “groups behalf” they had no business putting their art in my group. Had to run after him and clean up, apologize to the artists, told him not to mini mod, but he kept doing it. Would only stop and ended up leaving the group once I refused to remove a submission he didn’t like after repeatedly arguing with me over it.

- was having an issue with the old owner coming back and voting things through differently than the way I had run things now - ended up having an angry user in my inbox demanding to know why her submission was declined when similar ones had been accepted. Didn’t like my answer explaining that the others shouldn’t have been accepted either and that we were having admin issues. Left the group.

- had to close down the featured folder because people won’t read the rules, they’ll just constantly submit to it instead of the proper folder. Closing it was the only way to get people to pretend to read.

- people that constantly submit things that are clearly against the rules- it’s not even hard rules, it’s things like “no commission information, adoptables, or sales allowed!” And yet getting nothing but pages of YCHs.

Those are just the main stories that I can think of right now, over the years I’ve had so many I could write a novel. And that’s just a stupid group on DA.

You all that are whining about Mandie, and throwing nothing but complaints, I’m so tired of all of your ignorant, crusty asses. If you think things are wrong, leave. Nobody will miss you, just like nobody misses the customer that says they’ll never be back. You don’t need to stomp your feet and cry until you get what you want just because one thing is wrong.

If you think you can do better, create another blog and do better. It’s easy until you get popular and your volume of submissions explodes out the ass. It’s easy to sift through every submission until you have hundreds to look through, all the while you have a job/school/baby/etc AND while people are sitting there bitching your head off because “why wasn’t my story posted???? Weehhhhhh.”

Nobody owes you anything.

There’s a difference between making legitimate complaints and bringing legitimate issues to the admin. But here’s a protip for you - if you’re running the owner off the blog, you’re doing it wrong.

[rhythmharemcallout]

(sorry this is going to be a very long submission… this submission should also contain screenshots of one of our conversations, so warning in advance for that.)

tumblr user herntai (used to go by sen, teeth, and now june) emotionally manipulated and sexually abused me for… a long time. many months. possibly years (i cannot find all the logs of our conversations but i know i have known her for quite some time and the entire time i’ve known her this has been a problem) she repeatedly abused me and kept coming back to abuse me multiple times. i do not doubt that she would take advantage of other people if she could (and she has…)

to start, june knew that i was pretty severely mentally ill (bpd, avpd, dependent traits, at the time depression and anxiety (now i have a bipolar nos w/ psychotic traits diagnosis)), i was a previous sex abuse victim, that i had tremendous trouble telling people no, and that i crave validation/acceptance/approval and will do almost anything for it. im also hyperempathetic and am terrified of hurting peoples feelings or making them feel bad. she used all this to her advantage to seek out sexual favors from me, mostly in the form of nudes, sexual roleplay, sexual information about me, etc.

june had a pattern to her manipulation and abuse. she’s clever and knew how to play upon my weaknesses. she followed my blog and would see posts where i was talking about being depressed or lonely or scared, she would send me a message encouraging/supporting me in order to make me feel safe, then after talking for a while she would become sexual, even if i told her it made me uncomfortable. she did this almost every opportunity she had to talk to me.

every once in a while i would stop talking to her after becoming fed up with her treatment of me. every single time she would find a way to come back into my life and continue abusing me, under the guise of “being better this time” and promising extra hard to respect my boundaries (but never actually doing that)

one time when she was particularly upset she kept asking for nudes and implied that if she didn’t get any that she would hurt or kill herself. this was extremely distressing to me because i felt responsible for her wellbeing. i believed that if i didnt take nudes of myself and send them to her that she was going to hurt herself and it would be my fault. (i do not have screenshots of this conversation but it was incredibly distressing and something i kept in the back of my mind in subsequent conversations)

i remember several conversations where, at the beginning, i would tell her i was feeling very sex-repulsed and didn’t want sex mentions at all. i would practically beg her not to bring up sex. inevitably she would ask for nudes and keep bringing it up randomly and eventually when i would give in she would ask for more or implied it wasn’t enough for her. this happened so frequently that i think it’s telling that i would even have to give a disclaimer at the beginning of our conversations, telling her i didn’t want to talk about sex at all this time.

she would give me excuses like she was hypersexual and sex was the only thing that made her feel stable, which is, by itself, fine but does not excuse making unwanted sexual comments toward me (especially after i expressed i was uncomfortable or at least not giving my consent) or begging for nudes after i said multiple times pretty adamantly (compared to how i usually respond to people) that i didn’t want to send any.

one time i expressed that my fp (favorite person, someone on whom i focus most of my attention and look to for validation and acceptance the most) wasn’t talking to me. june seemed upset that she wasnt my fp and stated that she wished she was someone’s fp. especially considering her manipulation and abuse of me, this is really horrific.

i don’t have screenshots for the majority of this (we voice chatted a lot and it appears ive lost most of the conversations we had and i didnt save screenshots because i wasnt thinking that i would have to write something like this) but this is the exchange that i had before i stopped talking to her. please keep in mind that at the time i considered her my friend (hence the affectionate language because im like that with all my friends) and at this point i had become pretty good at coming up with excuses for why i didnt want to take nudes (like saying i had tried taking nudes that day already but didnt like it) because she asked me so often (also this is about the most adamant i ever got in my saying no because i was sick of her asking me so much even after my telling her i didn’t want to send any and didnt want her to ask anymore):

(these screenshots contain nsfw text)

(im the blue, june is the gray)

(the following happens a bit later on that night but notice that i did not actually consent to the first sexual action but she continues to escalate it. by the time i say “i’m uncomfortable now” i’m actually having a full-blown panic attack and having traumatic flashbacks but she is continuing to try to keep me in the conversation. this had actually happened multiple times in the past where she would try to calm me down so she could attempt it again later on after i’ve stopped panicking. it happened several times that she would make me very uncomfortable and i would say i had to go but she would convince me to stay and continue making sexual comments or ask for nudes again. at that point usually i was dissociating and more willing to just let things happen or make impulsive decisions, which she knew.)

(this is even more sexual than the last screenshots and might be more distressing, im sorry)

(she was very good at making me feel like she cared about me and wanted to make me feel safe, even though nothing could be further from the truth. i fell for it time and time again because i crave affection and support so much. i fell for it so easily and that’s why she kept coming back to me and convinced me to get close to her again even after i cut off contact)

(these screenshots are from our last conversation which was in mid december of 2015, which is a while ago but still something i believe people should be aware of, especially considering she’s still pulling this shit…)

i wanted to try going through more of my backlog for more screenshots but honestly just reading these and typing all of this is making me shake so bad, and the conversation i included isn’t even the worst one we had. i never wanted to think about this again and i hate that i had to write all of this but i really wanted to because i don’t want other people becoming her victim. please, please, please, steer clear of her.

if you need me to submit anymore information i’m willing because i really want people to be aware of how insidiously abusive she is… i’m sorry this submission was so long but i felt all this information was necessary to drive home how ugly her behavior was… and thank you for taking the time to read this, i hope this was written well enough to make sense.

(the email used for this submission is a throwaway, i dont want anyone being able to track me… sorry)