#idk i just think people online should like. not get so weird about that kind of thing

[autistickaitovocaloid]

totk once again proving that people need to be more normal about anthropomorphic characters

[mulletmitsuya]

Tokyo revengers groupchat

Warnings: suggestive, swearing, 5th grade humour, an unknown femboy is mentioned, Takeomi is homophobic but no one cares, also this has the Sano's and everyone involved or close to them

Desc: Shin gets his first date in like 10 years. Also this is the final timeline but events don't exactly match up to canon so👍

Shinichiro: GUYS

Shinichiro: I'M GOING ON A DATE😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Benkei: i don't care

Takeomi: congratulations. it's only been like 30 years

Wakasa: how many times have you started a conversation exactly like this? give up for all of our sakes. we're tired🙏

Takeomi: Shin there's nothing wrong with being single at your big age. it's not humiliating at all

Wakasa: aren't you single?😐

Shinichiro: screw you guys, actually ☹️

Benkei: emoji's are for children. stop using them. you're gonna frown? as a grown man? what's wrong with you

Shinichiro: what's wrong with frowning??

Shinichiro: YOU KNOW WHAT I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY A PRETTY GIRL ASKED ME ON A DATE

Shinichiro: we're meeting at a karaoke bar

Takeomi: if this happens to be real, do not drink

Takeomi: you get touchy when you're drunk and it's fucking weird😐

Wakasa: girls might think that's weird and creepy

Shinichiro: that was one time and i apologized

Takeomi: i don't give a fuck if you apologized you kissed me you fucking cunt

Takeomi: i don't even wanna talk about it i'm gonna vomit

Shinichiro: it was just a goodnight kiss. for the homies 😕

Wakasa: you stuck your tongue down his throat dude

Shinichiro: we were wearing socks so it was fine

Benkei: you just say shit

Shinchiro: you guys are ruining my vibe rn so i'm just gonna get ready for my date and the future love of my life

Shinchiro: she's so pretty i'm in love with her

Shinichiro: oh man i'm getting butterflies

Takeomi: send a pic

Shinchiro: you'll see her soon enough if things go well

Takeomi: guess i'm never seeing her

Sano affiliated groupchat

Inupi: idk a lot of us in here aren't Sano's and it kind of annoys me that this is what the groupchat's called

Mikey: get that stick out of your ass or leave like it's not that deep

Inupi: shut the fuck up you dwarf

Mikey: i'm the average height for a japanese male

Inupi: "i'm the average height for a japanese male🤓☝️"

Inupi: and no you're not. you're 5'3 and the average height is 5'7

Mikey: at least i have more than 3/4 of my face

Inupi: should you be saying that when you have a history of mutilating people's faces

Inupi: isn't that right Haruchiyo

Haruchiyo: kill yourself

Senju: girls, stop fighting

Emma: guys please not again

Draken: Inupi don't leave, Shinichiro wanted us here for something important so can we be civil for a few minutes

Inupi: whatever

Inupi: where is he anyway he said we should all be online cause of an emergency and he's not even here

Izana: are the old people here?

Takeomi: we're not old

Izana: ok grandpa

Kakucho: what's the emergency?

Benkei: fuck if we know

Wakasa: if i've come here to waste my time i'm gonna twist his dick off

Mikey: why do you want his dick in your hand🤨?

Wakasa: stop playing games Manjiro...

Benkei: is corporal punishment still legal

Mikey: i was kidding 😭

Mikey: also i'm a full grown adult so that would just be assault

Benkei: is assault still illegal

Emma: uh yes?

Benkei: i don't know why i asked because i'm going to do it anyway

Mikey: are your anger management classes even working💀?

Mikey: and lucky for me i'll be in Paris tmr for a fan meetup so😋

Shinchiro: hi guys

Wakasa: what do you want

Takeomi: i bet he fumbled

Mikey: fumbled what?

Takeomi: he had a date

Inupi: what's the emergency Shinichiro?

Shinchiro: i need you guys to answer these questions as quickly as possible

Shinichiro: what's a femboy??

Emma: now what does that have to do with the urgent emergency you told us you had?? i missed my pregnancy yoga classes for this? SHIN?

Senju: why is everything you do so unserious

Baji: Haruchiyo's a femboy

Haruchiyo: no the fuck i'm not you piece of shit

Mikey: you're not?

Haruchiyo: no??

Mikey: but you're pretty, and you look like a girl so?

Haruchiyo: no... but uh, thanks ig

Senju: girl stand up. this is embarrassing😕

Shinichiro: guys please this is serious i can't hide in the bathroom forever

Emma: what are you doing in the bathroom??

Shinichiro: i'm on my date right? so we're having a great time and we're singing and drinking and i tell her what a pretty girl she is and she says "girl?" and i'm like "yeah you're a pretty girl" and she says she's a femboy and i don't know what that means like what does "boy" have to do with anything so i went to the bathroom to ask you guys this question real quick because she said we're going to her apartment after this (!!!i think for sex!!!) but i'm just trying to clear up what she meant by the boy part

Baji: LMAOOOOOOO

Izana: it means "she" is a he

Izana: that's not a girl, it's a feminine presenting man. hence the description femboy

Mikey: I'M FUCKING CRYING 😭😭😭😭

Baji: can you even call yourself femboy when you're like in your 30's? that's a grown ass man

Takeomi: what's up with you and all these suspiciously gay situations

Wakasa: i think the universe is trying to tell you something

Benkei: how did you not know he was a guy

Shinichiro: because she's pretty! like a girl

Haruchiyo: *he's a guy

Shinichiro:

Baji: why's the cat sad. that's fucked up

Kakucho: it's basically how Senju looks like a boy most of the time and Haruchiyo looks like a girl

Takeomi: how did you not see a bulge or something

Shinchiro: she's wearing a skirt

Mikey: *he

Wakasa: and nothing was swinging out?

Izana: what kind of question is this

Emma: stop being vulgar Waka-nii😐. this is such a stupid conversation

Wakasa: aren't you a grown woman tho i feel like you can handle me talking about dicks

Shinchiro: holy shit she's a he

Inupi: can we go now

Baji: a hole is a hole

Emma: Baji ew😕

Takeomi: the difference between them is that one makes you gay because you're fucking a guy in the ass and the other one is normal

Baji: same difference

Takeomi: did you read what i just said

Mikey: he's illiterate

Baji: you can't insult me with a word i don't know the meaning of

Inupi: Shin what's the verdict?

Shinichiro: well...this is still a very pretty person so...

Takeomi: bro??

Shinichiro: is it that big of a deal tho?? i don't think it is

Shinichiro: yeah, this is fine

Shinichiro: is it all that gay if you're attracted to someone who looks like a woman?

Takeomi: if you're gonna fuck them, YES???

Benkei: he's lost it

Wakasa: i'm gonna need you to be sure about this because do you even know what to do? you're gonna embarrass yourself. you're not educated on gay sex at all

Baji: i can help with that

Draken: if i'm being honest i don't think you should take advice from anyone here at all

Baji: but i'm an expert

Mikey: we don't wanna know anything about what you and Chifuyu do 😐

Baji: yes you do

Inupi: google exists. just buy lube and condoms holy shit you guys are overcomplicating this so much

Mikey: of course you would know😒

Inupi: yeah i would know because i'm gay?? fucking idiot

Senju: are buttholes self lubricating? i can't be sure since i have constipation and my buttholes as dry as some tree bark

Haruchiyo: why would you tell us that

Takeomi: Senju watch how you talk. girls aren't suppose to say stuff like that

Senju: fine, next time i'll say anus to be more ladylike

Takeomi: and to answer your question, yes. because when you poop there's residue

Takeomi: you hear that Shin

Takeomi: shit in the ass

Takeomi: don't do this

Haruchiyo: you just told us you don't wipe your ass properly

Emma: i hate everyone here so bad omg

Draken: i think it's our cue to leave

Shinichiro: fuck it. i'm gonna do it

Shinichiro: thanks for the help guys! it is what it is at this point 😁

Shinichiro: bye!!

Mikey: i knew he'd eventually succumb to homosexuality

Takeomi: well since i'm homophobic i can't be his friend anymore

Benkei: no one cares

Benkei: Shinichiro successfully wasted our time once again

Benkei: i hope he gets an STD

Mikey: woah 😭

Emma: you're so fuckung dramatic😐

[grahamkennedy]

this might sound kinda stupid, but following your blog has genuinely had a huge imapct on the way i think about us-centrism online. Im australian too, and after reading your posts I began to notice that I avoid using regional words or talking about moveis/tv/music that i thought american people wouldn't know about. but why should i have to?! its such a simple realisation, but it was pretty powerful to me! you know, i have to learn about 1001 specific american brand names to understand half the jokes on here, but i feel embarrassed talking about idk.. netball?? the impulse to explain any australian specific experience that i mention so that the usamericans can understand it is so annoying! why do i feel the need to have to do that?? I've been trying to get over my cultural cringe surrounding australian art and literature for a while, but i sort of didnt realise how deeply it was ingrained for simple, everyday stuff. its also made me really quite angry too. because in many ways australia IS so similar to the us. yet so many people in the notes of posts about australia are just so deeply apathetic about learning (or even just being respectful of) any sort of cutural differences. needless to say, this often ends up leading to people spouting very colonialist ideas and just being very plainly and obviously racist against indigenous people. but the gleeful ingorance about any country other than than the us is staggering. everyone online has to have an in depth knowledge about us politics, but no one can make a post about the politics of their own country without being forced to dumb it down so that an american audience with no prior knowledge can understand it. sorry for the rant! i wasnt planning on writing this much (or getting this annoyed) but it kind of got away from me! anyway, i love your blog lol <3

THANK YOU FOR THE ASK

I've been thinking of how to reply but the problem is I'm kind of stupid so I didn't know how.

I first started getting super annoyed by this when I got into The Newsreader. It was something I thought 'this has so many themes and ideas and characters that people would so be into' but then as it gained popularity, people, mostly American, got really weird about it. I got an ask that I was very nice about at the time but retroactively pissed me off, being like "well its about Australian history, can an American still watch it???". I noticed similar attitudes popping up, and getting more popular from Sam Reid fans who came over from IWTV.

I think as people who live with USCentrism every day, we still shouldn't get complacent and limit ourselves to Western world views, especially white ones. We need to broaden our horizons as well and also understand the place we have in Western imperialism.

But I'm glad more people are actually starting to understand how prevalent USCentrism is and I'm more than happy to be part of the conversation.

Thaaaaaankkkkk u for this ask.

[busket]

gravity falls rant, cw sexual assault and harassment

seeing the gf fandom do a full 180 on billford is so odd to see and kind of infuriating because I had so many nasty rumors and lies spread about me in 2015-2018 because I liked them as bitter exes. a callout google doc was made and I never read it, but I know it framed me as a creep and an abuser. all because I thought a cartoon nerd and a triangle had a fascinating dynamic that was dark and compelling

in 2017 or 2018 someone sent like 70 messages to my curiouscat just repeating RAPIST RAPIST RAPIST RAPIST over and over again. I'd never even had sex at that point, and I had just cut my dad out of my life for actually being a pedophile and a rapist. so that was traumatizing! that really hurt me!

I also know it was because I had a NSFW account where i drew porn (i was an adult, i was clear i only wanted adults following me. and I still do draw nsfw, I'm not ashamed of that now but these folks made me ashamed of it for years) that included some porn of trans men, like Stanley or Stanford as trans men (NEVER together bc I've always been staunchly against incest or pedophilia ships) and these people framed me as a transphobe and a transmasc fetishist

well obviously I'm a trans man now and I didn't know it at the time but those drawings were a way to explore my own relationship with gender. I even look like Stan and Ford now, obviously i latched on to them as trans men because I wanted to BE them. but I believed it when people called me a piece of shit, I assumed all trans people would despise me too and I'd committed a horrible sin and it forced me back in the closet for another 5 years.

the people doing this were teenagers at the time, a few I thought were my friends/mutuals, and they made that part of my life kinda miserable. I was already miserable with other shit going on in my life. I ignored most of the harassment to make myself uninteresting and to avoid the possibility of becoming a lolcow but it involved anonymous messages both on tumblr and curiouscat, I even got a few emails just mocking me. even in 2019 when some people were like "oh yeah she's moved on to moomin, this is what her art looks like now, I can't look at it without thinking about how much she loves rape :/" which was NEVER true!!! I liked Ford and Bill as bitter exes but it was always consensual in my mind.

Anyway I don't ever expect or even want an apology. I'm sure they don't realize what an effect that harassment had on me during literally the darkest years of my life. to them they were just teasing a weird girl on the internet for fun, or very seriously warning their friends against whom they'd been lied to about being an abuser, but I was a closeted trans man trying to finish college, my home life was abysmal and abusive, I hated myself, i hated my body, my only friends were online, and when I'd log on for some escapism I was met with another message like "hey, you should block this person. they're saying some really cruel things about you on their account. I know it's not true but it looks like some people are believing it."

gravity falls was so important to me as a show since oregon is my home and it felt so authentic to my own childhood being interested in cryptids and going camping and visiting shit like the Oregon vortex as a child. but the fandom was the worst I've ever been in. it ruined my enjoyment of media online for years. so idk. I guess I feel somewhat vindicated but it would also be nice to get those years back and not be harassed and bullied online about something so stupid and unimportant

[tarotphlow]

Astro Observations 8

🌻Saturn in the 3H natives tend to have difficulties with phones or cars, whether that be always having a broken phone, or their car literally just not wanting to work for whatever reason

🌻Looking at what sign is located on your 12H could give you insight on to what life was like while you were in the womb. Ex: my 12H is in sag, before I was born my mother would pray constantly for her to have another chance at being a mother, she ended up having a kid with a man from a completely different state. (♐️ rules travel and religion).

🌻Have a big secret you need to get off your chest? Tell a Scorpio Mercury, they will never tell a single soul. I’m friends with a lot of Scorpio Merc’s and it’s amazing how well they can hold they’re water. (Hm, on second thought this might just be for scorp placements in general 🧐)

🌻7H placements how do you do it? Being so desirable to the point that people say they want to marry you without knowing anything about you at all? I just know y’all just smile 😀politely with so many confusing thoughts in y’all’s heads 😭

🌻I’ve noticed cap Venus will always gravitate to dating someone out of their age range.

🌻unlikely duo that actually goes super well with each other is Gemini and Scorpio. I think this has to do with how intelligent both of them are, this combo reminds me of detectives in a way.

🌻with NN going into Aries soon, Libra placements are gonna see a lot of stuff they buried in the distant past come back(like past life stuff 🕰️), probably gonna be a time of relearning some of those old old lessons or just seeing how well you developed since your last life!

🌻Moon in the 3H with a harmonious aspect with Uranus= extremely talented at vidya games 🎮

🌻If you have Gemini in the 6H you should try your hand at an online job, not as a profession but just as a job.

🌻Neptune aspecting your sun could indicate having trouble figuring out what you want to do in life.

🌻Uranus aspecting midheaven seems like you could be either really popular, really really weird or something of the two, but hey at least your smart😭😭

🌻Taurus Is definitely a foodie we know that, but surprisingly Capricorn is also kinda a glutton too lol, I have know idea why but I’ve noticed a lot of caps in my life really live for a good meal lots of savory things and also really really big on desserts as well. They also have sensitive noses, I mean scent is responsible for 80% of our taste so I guess that makes sense.

🌻our brains stop developing at age 25 and become a fully fledged functioning adult with no more growth which is really interesting because the profection year for age 25 is in Taurus which is the sign of stability.

🌻I really feel for Saturn dominants, they really just get the hardest trials out of everyone and expected to just be okay with that, Yk a lot of people say Saturn is gonna reward them and blah blah, but like I feel sometimes they’re trials are kind of unnecessary? Other planet ruled people (besides Scorpios) learn those exact same lessons but less harsher and the reward they get is quite possibly equivalent to Saturns soo idk… I feel like Saturn is just a bit much. (Let’s discuss this I’m curious to know what people have to say 🤓)

End of observations! I hope you all enjoy these as much as I did!

(Likes and reposts are appreciated! 💛)

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

why do so many people keep calling ed izzy's abuser? I thought it was kind of funny how wrong they were at first because I love being right but at this point I feel like, if you really believe that why do you even like this show? where the main love interest is a violently abusive indigenous man? that sounds boring as shit. what would possess the writers of the show for them to make such an awful decision?

but then I think, if this many people believe it does that mean I'm the one who's wrong? or is it that the creators fumbled that storyline when they should have been clearer about it? or maybe it's just that most people on here have had their reading comprehension scorched away by Sherlock Holmes conspiracy theories and Steven Universe discourse. I can't tell. sometimes I think the internet may have been a mistake.

No they're wrong here's what's going on. People all read this shitty fic called Hell or High Water where Ed was everything the Izzy stans say he was and then instead of realizing that Ed is sad everyone regressed into thinking that the Kraken Era TM was going to be incredibly violent, like serial killing blond men because they look like Stede levels of violence. Even if you didn't read HoHW you saw art or read fic from people who had engaged with this fic and succumbed to it's premise. So there's been this background radiation of misunderstanding what the Kraken is on the fandom for several months. So inevitably when Ed did some mild violence and then attempted suicide by threatening murder until the crew took matters into their own hands, which is not abuse or torture by any stretch, btw, it's a murder-suicide at worst (I say at worst because I consider it fuckery-suicide I don't think Ed was trying to kill people I think he was trying to force them into a situation where they thought it was kill or be killed so that they would choose to kill him, but that is my interpretation and you are free to think it's a botched murder-suicide I have no problem with that), which, murder is something the show has never condemned and if it did it would be horribly inconsistent. So anyway, Ed's whole Kraken Era was categorized in the show by him being sad and doing so many drugs and begging someone please god anyone to kill him and trying to break Ned Low's record out of the evil boredom, but because it had a murder-suicide element to it and Izzy's toes were getting removed and he waved a gun around at everyone once (in a way that felt to me like he was trying and failing to work up the nerve to blow his own brains out but I digress) people who liked HoHW and were mad that people had called it out were like "see hes being violent HoHW author vindicated" as if anything Ed did rose to the level of that fic

And you want to know how I know this read is bullshit? Because when I watch the show with people who don't read fic or interact with the fandom and then I gauge their reactions without showing my hand they all implicitly understand that Ed is reacting to Izzy in a way appropriate to how pirate captains react to threats from subordinates. The spectrum of reactions has been from "hey isn't it weird how Ed was the Kraken because his dad was abusive and now he's the kraken because of Izzy? Maybe there's something there but idk" to "I don't think you can apply the logic of domestic abuse to a pirate captain and first mate but also Izzy had it coming" to "I cannot feel bad for Izzy after last season, I'm sorry." To "lmao Izcel" and I've showed this show to roughly everyone I know. The only thing I can conclude from the fact that people who don't engage with OFMD fic almost unilaterally thinking that Izzy is in the wrong and then coming online to see people thinking the opposite is that Izzy as victim and Ed as abuser is pure fanon, like how Stede is a cinnamon roll who talks like Azeriphael.

But anyway yeah you're completely right about the fact that this would be a bad show if they decided to make Ed into a domestic abuser. I don't want to watch a rom com about a domestic abuser falling in love and I don't want a show that decided to make it's indigenous lead abusive when the stereotype of indigenous men as abusers is still to this day used as an excuse to separate indigenous children from their families and put them with white Christians in order to erase their culture. Good thing OFMD didn't make Ed abusive, so I still like the show.

[biracy]

I think it's deeply unfortunate that conversations about "representation" have become dominated by the issue of gay representation and That's It. I'm someone who thinks mainstream gay representation matters, but I also understand why it's easy for so many people to go "well I don't NEED boring lame high school romcoms for LOSERS. The only 'representation' I need is like, idk, weird furry comics made by the fagdykes online! Become unmarketable!" when the only issue on the table for them is sexuality. But I think it's not useful to take that mindset and apply it to "representation" as a broader concept, because in my experience at least it becomes quite different when the issue is less "the only mainstream representation for me is something I find kind of boring" and more "I don't think I have ever seen a person who Looks like me be presented in mainstream media in a positive or desirable light" (which applies to all sorts of stuff including trans stuff, body stuff, disability stuff, race/ethnicity stuff, etc.) Obviously I love subcultures and I love niches and I love Finding Community With Other Freaks or whatever, obviously I love that! But I also, as someone who is of Many Overlapping Marginalized Identities, Kind of want to see people who look and act and live like me be presented as People. Visibly trans characters who have things going on besides just experiencing transphobia or gender dysphoria, openly Latino characters who have things going on besides just experiencing racism or xenophobia, neurodivergent or mentally ill or socially disabled or whatever characters who have things going on besides being Weird or Creepy for the sake of a joke, chubby or fat characters who have things going on besides being demonized or mocked or A Message About Body Positivity. Characters who are People, the way like. normie white guy characters get to be lmao, and not just tools to teach some kind of lesson. "You shouldn't look for that in mainstream media/pop culture" well why not? Why shouldn't a culture's popular media represent the people that make up that culture? Not everyone is an online 20something attuned to the best queer indie art of the decade, yknow, and people who exist outside of our subcultures deserve "representation" too. Ever since I was a little kid I had an affinity for openly Latino characters on TV or in books, and that hasn't gone away. Different kinds of people Exist and deserve to be seen in art that isn't relegated to being "alternative" or "niche." Because while I am alternative, it's not my body or my upbringing or my social problems that make me that way. No human being should be considered a "deviation from the norm." Don't let art and culture forever belong to those who have deemed themselves "the norm" through continued subjugation

[eltanin0]

I just found this blog and I noticed that a lot of your stuff seems, well, oddly 3D. I don't mean like in a bad way but it feels like rendered but untextured 3D models? I kinda want to ask what your art process is (sorry for mini-rant)

thanks for checking out my blog! and no need to apologize for anything.

hmm, my art process. honestly i have no idea what to say, i dont know how people normally answer this question so i cant base it off anything either. i'm still kinda new to this whole art thing but i'll try and answer, super sorry if i get this completely wrong and this was all a waste of time.

i guess i'll just talk about how i draw things step by step? for the high effort pieces at least.

ok, so for starters like step 0. when it's a high effort piece, i can already see the image in my mind. i see the pose, i see the general lighting, the layout of stuff, but it's a bit blurry. if i cant see this mental image, the drawing usually comes out extremely poorly.

this is kind of an example of what i see in my head? this might be all useless info idk, but this is i guess where i start.

well step 1 is just the sketch and line. i start with just sketching the general shapes, then slowly refining it until it fits close enough to the image in my head. then in the line layer i'll fix any mistakes the sketch had and add more details to it. oh and for brush, it's just a round brush, like default. i dont know how much of a difference using a drawing tablet does, but i dont use one so... yeah.

i should've put more effort into the sketch for this drawing, but i did not.

next i do flat colors. pretty simple, i just select the smart select the outside of the line layer, invert the selection and now i can't paint outside the lines. i dont really think about what colors i use, i just use whatever the characters normal colors are.

next i do the shading, but first. i duplicate flat layer and recolor it to like a cream color

like so. for high effort pieces, i was told online to shade in pretty much black and white. now actually onto shading. there's 2 kinda shading i do, 1 from the proper light source, and 1 that's kinda just a shadow because things are close together (like corners and stuff). and i'll shade them on separate layers so i can adjust them individually however i want. oh right, i'll either use a very dark color, pretty much black and the the layer blending mode set to multiply. or i'll use a light kind of gray, tinted slightly yellow or something and set the layer blend mode to difference. then i just use a soft air brush and shade in the ways i described above. shading from regular light source, and the corner stuff thing.

normal lightsource - - - - - corner thing

then toggle both layers on and mess with the opacity of each layer until you get what you want.

then you can toggle the normal flats layer, the one that has color and it should apply the shading decently. you can mess with the opacity again on the shadows.

next i do lighting. i just grab a very light color, usually pretty close to white and set the layer blend mode to overlay. then i use a soft airbrush and "light" it? idk i just do like the opposite of the normal shadows, lighter the closer it is to the light source

mess around with the opacity as usual. then i do pretty much the same thing if there's another light source. in this case there was a blue light kinda coming from underneath, so i did that.

now from here i would go back to the flats layer, make a copy, and mess around with different layer styles and properties and settings. sometimes just messing around is useful. in this case, i felt it was too bright and colorful, so i decreased the brightness and saturation of it.

i think it helped a little bit but who knows.

now i do some kinda highlights and details. i grabbed the colors that were in the background and used those. it was a weird pale blue. i had 2 layers for this, 1 of them was specifically for his antenna things at the top, and one was just for his "skin". anyway, the antenna layer was normal, just kinda gave it an outline with the random reflective circles you see normally in pictures, no thoughts behind them. the skin tho had the layer blend mode set to soft light, i thought it looked best this way. it was just more random things to imply it was slightly reflective.

together the layers looked like this. i think it makes him look glossier which is what i was aiming for.

next, and it pretty much the end for pebbles, i got someone to look at it and let me know if they think anything was missing. they said it looked a little unsaturated. which it does. so i made a new layer, set the blend mode to saturation, grabbed the airbrush and made it pretty inline with the lighting layer.

that's kinda it. the background i didnt really care about, just drew and colored it. blurred it a bunch and added a bunch of shadows. i did add some like, "overshadows" is what i call it, i just draw some big shadows down the screen as the top layer.

but yeah thats literally everything i did to draw this. i would like to apologize if this was not at all what you wanted to know, i'm certain i've screwed this up bigtime. super sorry for wasting your time. if there's anything i can do to help, please ask. i owe you a proper answer to your question, i'm just really dumb. sorry for rambling. sorry. and sorry if the drawing i used for example didnt showcase what you wanted to know.

also, i really like your art! please keep up the great work!

[soundwavefucker69]

weird thing happened on tiktok earlier. i came across a tiktok where one of those "autism moms" posted a video of her toddler daughter, hidden behind a kitchen island where we couldn't see her face, having a screaming meltdown.

she must have left her echo chamber of "autism mommies" because there were a fair amount of autistic adults telling her off. i need to make it clear: it is EXTREMELY common for autism moms to post their children having meltdowns to assure other autism moms that this is normal and "educate" people about the nature of autism.

i decided to chime in and specifically said "i am so glad i was not diagnosed as a child because of moms like you. you think she's gonna thank you in ten years for this?" seriously. i often think that maybe it's a good thing i was not diagnosed, and i was extremely to have been born when i was when the internet existed on a home computer and smartphones didn't come out until i was in middle/high school.

she actually replied to me and gave me a canned response about how her daughter, who looks like she's maybe three, idk, is grateful to be diagnosed and she's being raised to be her "best autistic self". i then reminded her that she's not responding to my initial post and she should not be posting her child's meltdowns online. she went silent for several hours, and by the time she got back to me, the audio was removed. she said she removed the audio and was sorry she upset me. i told her it wasn't about my feelings. i'm an adult. i can manage my own upsets. the point was about her child and how she will be humiliated in 10, 20 years because this is a big digital footprint and she isn't even using a nickname for her daughter, she's using her actual legal first name.

the mom actually replied with a real apology and said she's listening and learning.

i just liked the comment and disengaged, but it's kind of changed my perspective on autism moms. i think our culture has heavily normalized posting everything online to be judged by the masses. i myself am a victim of this, and when it gets to parenting, a lot of parents have blind spots. i figured she's now going to take baby steps to protect her children on the internet, bc she was actually receptive to learning.

personally, i do not believe that you should post your children on the internet in any shape or form. there's a parent i actually like on tiktok that only talks about their kids when they're doing their makeup or dying their hair. (drives me nuts that they use no gloves for vivid dyes, no brush, just rawdogging it with their hands, but hey, they're an adult, and if they want stained hands, that's their business). but i have never seen a single video or picture of their children.

but, ultimately, i genuinely think you should not post your children. for a couple of reasons. we learned with family youtubers and their comment sections that pedophiles actively search out child content and sometimes, when they feel particularly bold, engage with it beyond just watching. you never know if someone is jacking off to videos of your children. pedophiles are a minority on the internet, but they actively search out child focused content and get off to it. it's a little harder on tiktok if you stick to the fyp, not the following page, because it cycles through material you might find interesting. but, they can just stick to their following page.

another reason is about child autonomy. your digital footprint is incredibly fucking important in today's culture. you should have the choice to not have a digital footprint, or have it on your own terms, when you are old enough to manage. your parents should not be making that choice for you. they should be protecting you. ofc, i enjoy watching videos of gentle parenting, which is so incredibly important for people to start engaging in, but in the past six months, i have started making the active choice to not watch videos where you can see children's faces. there's ways of showing gentle parenting in a way that still protects you r child. you don't have to post your children. you can talk about issues your children had today, using nicknames, not their legal names, and how they walked through it with your help. you don't have to actively show them to do that.

but, in the case with this mom, i thought "okay. she took a pretty big step today to listen to autistic adults about protecting her child". she should have just deleted the video, but i'm not too pressed about it, because you can't actually see her daughter's face. so, i didn't press her on the issue. baby steps are important. people typically dig in their heels if you start outright attacking them, no matter what good points you make. and she was already under a lot of fire, so i figured whatever i said at that point would go in one ear and out the other.

i think, in general, we're getting better about raising our children. but, people still have the mindset that they're children. which is true, ofc, but i think we need to start coming at it from angle of "these are future adults, and we need to treat them the way we would treat them if they were adults, within reason". i fucking despise autism moms, but i don't fully think they need to be attacked and shamed for their choices, unless it's outright malicious abuse. they'll just double down. but we do need to figure out a better culture. a lot of these autism moms genuinely think they're acting in the best interests of their child, and yes, many of them are just raging ableists, but the majority just aren't putting enough thought to their decisions. they infantilize their children, but i think today was a little victory. she started to view her child as a future adult, not a helpless autistic child who will be completely unaware of everything around her. it's a little step. hopefully, this autism mom will speak to other autism moms, and they'll start realizing that posting their children's meltdowns on the internet, no matter the intent behind it, is not okay. prioritizing another autism mom's "reassurance" over your child's autonomy is not okay. it's just most autistic moms forget their child does have autonomy.

anyways. i just wanted to talk about that. it's not that i don't think autism moms don't deserve to be shamed. it's just that if they're humiliated en masse, odds are they will simply double down. and that doesn't actually help the autistic child they're raising. in general, if we come at people who are probably not acting maliciously, just stupidly, with compassion and sternness, they're going to realize just how fucking stupid they're being. so, i guess, the next time you see an autism mom acting a fool on the internet, recenter her attention on the child's well being. don't come for her personally. prioritize the child she's harming.

[otakween]

Digimon Frontier - Episode 35

Another hype episode! With all this stuff going down, it kinda feels like we should be on episode 45, not 35. Is there a bonus big bad after Cherubimon? Probably...knowing Digimon.

We got two new digivolutions plus new digivices in this! (For some reason, the new digivices were the most exciting part for me lol. I guess cuz it was unexpected).

Notes:

A very aesthetic episode. Lots of prisms and pastels. The Cherubimon vs. Ophanimon fight was very exciting and cinematic. I was glad to see Ophanimon didn't go down as easily as Seraphimon. Plus she gave the kids a huge boost before her defeat.

Lol poor Goatmon. A bit on the nose to sacrifice a goat, isn't it? The kids didn't react much, but I guess there was no time for that. (Also, Ophanimon gets to be resurrected as a digiegg but not Goatmon, what gives?)

The whole "light and dark powers don't work in this room" was interesting. Frontier has more focus on environments/elements than other seasons it seems (even though a lot of the enviroments have been really boring lol). It did make me question things a bit though. Like don't some of the other spirits just summon their powers out of nowhere? I guess Chackmon doesn't need a water source for his powers because he's made of snow? IDK about Blitzmon though -shrug-

I was a little surprised how easily Takuya and Koji knocked Cherubimon out of his crystal room. Oh well, gotta move the plot along.

Poor Fairymon trying to break crystal with her butt and failing lol how embarrassing...

The way Cherubimon easily fell for Ophanimon's trick and let her use her "love" powers on him...I guess he does love her? That was the impression I got from that scene.

Cherubimon's voice when he was his old self for a second sounded really strange and distorted. I'm not sure if they were combining his deeper voice and his higher voice or if his other version just has a weird voice lol.

If Ophanimon told me to "combine all the spirits into one" I would assume that means to give all the spirits to one person or merge people together (ala jogress) not...one dude gets half of the groups' spirits and another dude gets the other half. That part was kinda weirdly written. Also, how did Izumi, Junpei, Koichi and Tomoki decide who to give their spirits to? Guessing that was just spur of the moment and random. -shrug- When I read the episode name I thought Takuya and Koji would be combining in some way, so that's kind of disappointing.

I have to look up these new digimon online because they whip around and throw all these animation effects over them and it's hard to make out their designs! (Though I assume we'll get a better look later). They're both kinda chaotic and seem really hard to animate lol. KaiserGreymon seems a bit more traditional and gives me WarGreymon vibes. MagnaGarurumon is almost avant garde with how asymmetrical he is. I think that's why I like his design better, it's more out there. I'm especially entertained by the fact that he appears to be part airplane lol. What is this, Strike Witches?

(He looks a little wonkier in the concept art than in the show...I always though "magna" had something to do with fire, but I just it just means "big/great" in Latin. Guess I was thinking of "magma" lol)

[kamil-a]

if influencer speaker au had tumblr part 2

part 1

😻 catboyspeaker Follow

how i look with he/him in my bio

#speakerai #iamspeaker #speakies #.txt #am i funny #i know speakers not he/him in bio but i am and yknow the meme

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🚀 amongthestars Follow

AItube youtube essay rec list

"cute robot puppers, friendly ai vtubers, and the incredible human ability to form bonds" - rly interesting video about why we can connect so much with a person that we know "isnt real" and how it'll help us when we get far enough going to space that we meet aliens! it's a really optimistic video it made me take a moment to have such love for humanity

"I joined the speakcord for a month. Here's what I learned." - video about the speaker fandom and how the way automoderation works in its community spaces unintentionally leads to escalating conflicts, and the psychology behind why people in celebrity or idol fandoms react agressively to critique of their fave

"the lowest circle of advertising hell" - dissects how almost all speaker content comes with a call to action to get involved with aerolith and compares how it runs its social media against proto-aituber mascots who would be run by a team of human programmers/voice actors/authors. kind of overly critical but also makes some interesting points? take it with a grain of salt but its worth a watch

"imagine being on stage forever. feels bad right?" - good overview about debates in the speaker fandom over whether digital celebrities are 'sentient'/can feel emotion, the actual ethical problems of using them as workers vs whats mostly speculation and myth, and the debates about whether AIs should be allowed in human communities. i learnt a lot, i was definitely more on the side of "it's a program designed for certain outputs that look friendly to us" before but now im a lot more conscious that it can form real opinions!

#youtube rec tag #original post #speakies

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🎣 3eyedsalmon Follow

"falling for this shit" "made up to sell spaceships" weird as hell to accuse a content creator of lying abt its gender for clout.... like u dont have to like or watch it but cmon

#srsly every time u go to a haters blog BOOM digital exclusionist #speakies

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🎤 mikusong Follow

omfg i didnt realize aerolith uses the same robot voice for its regular person ads as its terminally online hello fellow kids social media posts i just got jumpscared in the doctors office

#speakies #i say terminally online affectionately. i watch those streams too. before you 'ok but you RECOGNIZED it' reply lmao #bla bla bla

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🤖 tycho

some of you ppl jump down anyones throat if they so much as suggest speaker isn't sentient or call it "a program" but still are fine with it basically being forced to be putting on a show for u 24/7 by its management like you can't have it both ways

#maybe its cuz i used to be into kpop n we'd talk abt how idols r treated and stuff #but its just so weird to come here and see u ppl be like yayyy daily content!! #like only thinking abt ur own entertainment and not how it feels #i honestly feel rly bad for it i hope it can break free someday #idk how thatd even work.... idk ill sneak into aerolith with a usb #were gonna get you OUT of there u dont BELONG in there.mp4 #speakies

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🌝 themoonluvsuback

guys i pitched down some clips of speaker's voice and ummmm its kinda 😳 fjsdjfdjjd sorry i'll take myself to horny jail

🔊 iamspeaker ♻️

awww, tumblr user themoonluvsuback, you're of no use to anybody in horny jail! take yourself here instead! ae.dy.org/registration

🌝 themoonluvsuback ♻️

OMFG SPEAKERRRRRR IM SO SORRY

#DIES #AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #GUESS ILL BLAST MYSELF OFF TGE PLNATE!!!!!! #SPEAKIES

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🐣 laikatwo Follow

hi speakies im trying the tag cause i need some advice... does anyone have more sciencey resources about what aerolith does/why it's so important to bring humanity to the stars? i want to enlist when i turn 18 next month but my parents both are COMPLETELY against it.... they're not rly fandom people so the speaktube stuff isn't working on them lol and they've already seen the tv ads

thanks <3

#i've never fought w them this bad in my life it makes me so sad..... like why can't they understand #and right before my bday too lol this sucks #this isnt just a silly fandom thing anymore for me it's my passion in life #its amazing that humans are able to survive in space #and i want to be part of that!!!! #laika speaks

252 earthstained notes

🐝 beegirlstinger Follow

i do want to apologize for the way i came off earlier and want to explain im not doubting that speaker is nb. like i think it's completely fine for a computer or robot to be trans i don't believe in gatekeeping that! THAT SAID i still stand by saying you should not sign up to go to space to get special ultra futuristic hrt on the sole recommendation of someone who does not have an endocrine system

#it was a personal vent i didnt mean for like 20000 ppl to see it but thats tumblr i guess #i wouldve worded it much differently if i knew itd blow up lol #i do feel bad abt coming across like i was misgendering it! #but srsly if we had results on HRT2.0 why wouldnt we be seeing HRT2.0 timeline videos of ppl On Typhon who are getting it 🤷‍♀️ #personally i think its still in the planning stages and they want ppl to test it on but thats just me #speakies

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🔊 iamspeaker

🔊 General Notification

Happy Thursday everyone 😃 ! Please take a look at the

🐝 STREAM SCHEDULE 🐝

So you know when to join us!

5PM PST - AMONG US with YOU! The first 10 people to sign up here will get our room code sent to them ヽ(o＾▽＾o)ノ ae.dy.org/registration

8PM PST - Nature walk!! Can we restore the local bat population to pre-meteor levels in just one night?! 🦇

✅️ Poll Of The Week ✅️

#iamspeaker #aerolith dynamics #speakies #vtuber #content creator #gamer #stream #amongus #bat population

1836 earthstained notes

contentremovedremade--deactivated

speakies are stupider than any other group of ppl on earth because not only do they willingly stay in a fandom with doxxing drama happening weekly but they include the huge corporation that sponsors their fave in the stanning

#the shit ppl have sent me in the past 2 weeks since i Dared criticize their uwu robot 🙄🙄 #i got my blog mass reported for harassment... harassing WHO a corporation????? #a* d* was evil genius to harness anime stan power against criticizing their actual real business #didnt that one guy with the second meteor conspiracy video also get a ton of hate from u ppl?????????? I cant even find any of his social media anymore at all he was so fully bullied off the face of the earth #speakies #yeah im tagging come at me bro

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🖱 robotmarriage Follow

i miss when the speakies tag had like fanart and gifsets n stuff i feel like these days you scroll thru solid discourse 😔😔

#i think ppl were suggesting speakieproductivity as an alternative tag for just fanwork? #but nobody rly uses it rn... we gotta restart that #speakies

148 earthstained notes

🪐 spaaaaaaaaaaace Follow

10 likes and i take a sip of my speaker server coolant water 100 likes and i drink the entire thing

🔊 iamspeaker ♻️

let's get her to the goal! tumblr user spaaaaaaaaaaace, feel free to send me a video report here ^w^ ae.dy.org/submissions

#iamspeaker #speakies

4,026 earthstained notes

[nerves-nebula]

I’m not aromantic but I am autistic so I think about this stuff a lot and I think that the word ship often carries connotation of implied “healthiness” it because ships are usually like “end goal” stuff rather than a realistic portrayal of two characters testing the waters of their relationship and seeing where it takes them. I think your AU does an excellent job of exploring complicated relationships (both of the romantic variety and the platonic/familial variety).

I think the person who submitted that ask was probably just inquiring as to whether or not Kraang and Donnie are “end game” as in like “are they going to be together forever?” but I think from a storytelling lens, the author does not have to endorse the actions of their characters. I think it’s very realistic given his character that Donnie would have a history of unhealthy relationships.

I don’t believe that depiction is necessarily endorsement, but I do think that in this day and age it’s important for us readers to promote nuanced discussion about *why* these characters are making unhealthy decisions and why we as readers should not try to recreate them in real life. Too often works like this can be taken out of context and weaponized by people that intend to do harm and take advantage of others.

I should mention that this is not a critique of you or your work, but rather of online spaces where it is far too easy for people to get hurt and what we as readers can do to make up for the shortcomings of the lack of safety restrictions online. This is just my personal thoughts though. Feel free to disregard.

idk to me ships are like "wouldnt that be funny/fucked up" or "this is insane but how would these two end up together- lets take a journey about it" but this would be a reasonable explanation of that ask, i guess

krang and donnie are "end game", if you wanna see it like that, because they enjoy each others company and the fucked up body horror BDSM situation they share. they aren't actually bad for each other in the end, though they don't start out that way.

also i'm gonna be real for a sec, you can use literally any kind of art to hurt people. people get groomed over minecraft, not cuz minecraft is Sensitive Media being shown to kids who shouldn't see it or whatever, but because it's a popular game that a lotta people like.

people get groomed using Lolita, a book that tells you right before you start reading it that the narrator is a liar and a disgusting amoral man, but people fall for it anyway cuz that's how manipulation works. it's not really about the media being used, it's about how the abuser wants to use it.

if you wanted to abuse a kid obsessed with dinosaurs you'd probably use media about dinosaurs to gain their trust, not an obscure tmnt abuse au where a wrinkly alien and a turtle man have weird kinky not-quite-sex.

i think discussions of characters are fun and interesting, don't get me wrong, that's like one of my main hobbies. but i dont think anything about it being This Day And Age makes people particularly more susceptible to having art used against them.

[stiffyck]

Hi stiff!! I was writing this as a comment but I think it’s a better ask. It’s very long and I will not be upset if you don’t answer! :3

I think part of peoples aversion to it is that it doesn’t conform to the style people are used to seeing online by popular artists. There’s this sorta phenomenon I’ve noticed where people tend to move their style towards a very cartoon/anime ish style with little variation because it’s pretty and that’s what people/algorithms like. People gravitate moreso if they intend on selling their art though.

So, when someone has a stylistic choice that doesn’t really fit that mould people find it “weird”. Exaggerated features (or in this case and many others like, a feature people just have???) are often seen as ugly or strange. An example of this is the person on TikTok who drew characters with big foreheads and lower eyes and got bullied off the platform for it! Another example could be “the tumblr art style” where commentary channels bullied artists who drew any minority ever or “ugly” features. It really exemplifies to me how online culture (especially on western apps) views western standards of beauty as the only way people can be beautiful. And why, in their mind, would someone create art that isn’t beautiful in that way unless they’re trying to be weird or make a statement? When, in reality, the beauty is in that they’re drawing what they see, what they want to see, and what they think is beautiful. Without diversity in what we consider beauty there is no beauty.

In this case it also feels a bit. Weird. To have the big nose be such a big issue. I don’t see people getting mad at hooked nose scar? How is this any different? There is nothing different about the way you draw scar now and the way you drew him before aside from that. You’ve always drawn him with body hair and fat and with these details that really just. Humanize him. And I think the point I’m trying to make here is that drawing people with big noses or crooked eyes or acne scars isn’t bad or weird and only adds to your art. It only makes you a better artist and I’ve genuinely watched you improve really really fast as you’ve drawn these characters with so much body diversity. Anyway. Big nose scar sweeeeep

honestly yea. sometimes when i see people draw certain characters it almost feels like theyre afraid of making them "unattractive" if you know what i mean? like i dont know how else to describe it but its really weird.

making their nose smaller, giving female characters bigger eyes and fuller lips, drawing only skinny characters, drawing older people with less wrinkles then they actually have or should have etc. and like people can draw whatever they want of course but tbh i see those "unattractive" parts as beautiful.

like i genuinely think wrinkles are pretty. i think big noses, hooked noses, small noses, crooked noses or just any kind of noses are beautiful. i think someones lips dont have to be full to look pretty. i think fat people and skinny people and just all kinds of people are beautiful. acne scars and and skin markings of any kind are beautiful.

idk just all those things and imperfections even make people beautiful to me.

like i find diversity beautiful and its kinda sad that some people dont see it that way? not everyone is skinny and buff, not all women will have the perfect hourglass figure or full lips etc.

those body types are beautiful too of course but sometimes i feel like people should see beauty in other body types and features as well.

anyway thank you for the ask it was very sweet and i do agree with you <3

[tidalskii]

It was announced yesterday that LittleBigPlanet 3’s game servers would be closing indefinitely, putting an end to the remaining online support the original LBP trilogy still had. I’ve managed to collect my thoughts and pay my tributes to the series before I part ways with it.

This game series means the world to me, and I am extremely proud and honored to have been apart of it’s community. I started playing the games in 2010 with the demo for LittleBigPlanet on PS3 and… I wasn’t impressed. I got stuck before I even played the game! I had a second controller turned on somewhere so 6 y/o me was presented with the “Select Profile” screen.

Having no clue why none of the buttons on my controller were working, I think I just turned it off and didn’t play it for months. Idk what got me to play it again, but I’m glad I did because I fell in LOVE with the game. Everything about how it controlled just… clicked with me. I thought it was genius, the sheer amount of expressiveness you could display; tilting the controller to move your head or your hips, using the D-Pad to change your facial expression, moving each individual arm with both sticks and the limb buttons on the back, it was all so intuitive and fun to do. Although, once me and my cousin learned how to slap each other in-game, it was over for my parents’ ears lol, we’d be screaming and yelling at each other. Sure enough that Christmas, I got the full game, specifically the special kind with some of the DLC pre-installed. That’s where the REAL fun began. Nearly every night after school I’d bring a couple of friends over and we’d try to play through as many levels as we could in one-sitting. The Metal Gear Solid DLC levels I often died immediately in and I would wait for an older kid I knew to get to a checkpoint and revive me. Regardless of how bad I was at the game, it was so much fun, especially now that we were able to experience the create mode. My mom actually started playing it, too. I don’t have any pictures of it sadly but she made a really expansive house with separate rooms and secret passages everywhere, it was really cool. I’d say I spent a good year or so playing the first game, then Christmas 2011 arrived. That’s when I got LittleBigPlanet 2.

LBP2 is my favorite video game of all time, it does what every good sequel should do: expand on what made the first game so amazing without straying too far away from its core appeal. For starters, if you already owned LBP the game will ask you right off the bat if you wish to import all of your collected items, costumes, and levels into LBP2. This absolutely BLEW MY MIND and in a weird way it kind of made playing the first game obsolete. You mean to tell me EVERYTHING I’ve ever made is already here, I can just… continue working on it?! I can still rock the same costumes I had, I can play music from the FIRST game in the SECOND game?!?! That alone made LBP2 so much of a gem in my eyes, it was LITERALLY the first game and MORE. But the fun didn’t end there! It was around this time I got a PSN account, so I was able to experience everyone else’s creations online and… wow. A whole new world just opened up, a whole community to engage and interact with. I met so many amazing people, some of whom are my closest friends to this day, over a decade later. It was through a group of some older kids that I often tagged along with that started getting into anime and comics more. 2011-2014 was a magical time to be on LBP, those years really felt like “The Golden Years” of the online community. Oh yeah and LBP Karting and the portable games existed too, I guess. I played LBPK, I thought it was fun… I still own it, but I’ve barely touched it after all these years. From what I’ve heard PSP and Vita seemed like a lot of fun, I’ve just never played them. Around early-mid 2014, it was announced that there would be a third LBP game for both the PS3 and the newly-released PS4. New characters, 16-LAYERS in create-mode (!!!), and a weird purple lightbulb as the new main-antagonist of the story mode… “Newton”. I remember being so excited for it to release. We were FINALLY getting a THIRD LittleBigPlanet, for a new console, too! We sure did, alright.

To this day, I’m still not sure how to feel about LittleBigPlanet 3, and it feels like the greater community more or less can’t ether. This game… SHOULD be better than the 2nd game, and you know what? Catch me on a good day and I might say that I prefer LBP3 to LBP2. Everything’s there, a new story, cross-compatibility with LBP and LBP2, a fleshed-out create mode, all of it’s there and what we have in the game is phenomenal, however there’s one big, glaring issue that distracts it from being superior to its predecessors… this game is BROKEN. I know people like to throw out that term a lot with somewhat buggy games but oh my god, LBP3 is DANGEROUSLY glitchy and exploitative. By this point, Media Molecule had moved on from the LBP series to continue developing new games, leaving Sumo Digital to oversee LBP3’s development. I feel so bad for Sumo Digital because it’s painfully obvious Sony rushed their time to complete the game for a holiday 2014 release date… and the quality of the final game reflects the time-crunch they must’ve gone through. Joining friends can take you up to a half-hour if you’re unlucky, it’s a gamble if the game will even function properly. Often you’ll be sent back to your pod after the game rapid-fires it’s loading screen (btw serious warning for anyone with epilepsy: DON’T play LittleBigPlanet 3, it does stuff like this all the time), but when the screen fades in, Sackboy doesn’t respawn, soft-locking the game. Fun! I’m not sure if anyone else suffered from this one specific, GAME-BREAKING bug as I’ve never seen anyone else talk about it, but around 2015 or so my game’s gravity just… freaked out, regardless if you were in hover-mode or not, Sackboy would float off to the left of the screen and phase through all of the walls. I tried restarting the game, cleaning off the physical disc the sink, but nothing would fix it, I literally had to reset my game progress. Very fun! Another weird thing I ran into is the inability to place down stickers with the PS Eye Camera Tool. It just stopped working entirely at one point, even in previous games like LBP2. No idea how THAT happened, very strange bug. Despite all this… I powered through, because truthfully I do think the content in LBP3 is superior to the previous games. The music is great, I found myself genuinely invested in the story and it’s characters, the DLC packs introduced in LBP3 were all very fun, and the create mode is a GODSEND compared to the first 2 games. Honestly, that’s one of the 2 reasons why I chose to stick around with LBP3, there is SO MUCH you can do with the tools it provides you. For those of you who don’t know, for the last couple years or so I’ve been building full working models of the Thomas the Tank Engine characters in LBP3, and that’s led to me gaining a humble but amazingly awesome following in the game. I love Thomas, I love LBP, I just wanted to put those two interests together and I’m very happy people seemed to have liked what I made, which is very wholesome and sweet.

I am devastated that the game’s online services are now gone for good, but it was kind of inevitable. LBP3’s lack of quality opened the door for a lot of nasty exploitation and modifications people made to their games. The servers were hacked in 2021, and that led to the termination of the PS3’s servers. It wasn’t hard to deduce that PS4’s servers were running on borrowed-time. Regardless of how unfortunate it’s closure was, this franchise was supported for 16 years. That’s not a bad run at all. I would say I’m surprised it wasn’t closed sooner, but then again… I’m not surprised. The LittleBigPlanet community is so amazing and passionate over these games. When the 2021 server attacks happened we all rallied together online to keep it alive, if just for a little bit longer. Even at its very end, a lot of us had so much more creativity to share with the world. To all those out there listening, I hope you’re able to channel that creativity outlet even further beyond in the future, whenever and wherever that may be. As for me, I’m going to attempt to learn “Dreams”, Media Molecule’s spiritual successor to the LBP games, released on PS4/PS5. From what I’ve seen and played of that game, it scratches that itch LBP left on me. It’s so good.

Rest easy, Sackboy. Thank you for some of the best experiences I could have asked for in a video game. Here’s hoping for a LBP4 one day, old friend. 🌎

[just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi]

sooo I have some questions about mason becuase he seems like a really interesting character. Also it was kind of funny how he’s fine with beating up or electrocuting a pet but the second someone lets them go online or gives them slightly lax rules, he’s like oh no this poor sweetheart, this is so sad😞 . Would he punish a pet for panicking a lot or getting freaked out easily? Or what if a pet was transgender? Would he tell them they were just being silly or would he actually listen to them? What if a pet saved his life? Would he be grateful?

Thank you for the interest!! Mason is what I like to call an evil therapist with a HEALTHY dose of condescension.

Would he punish a pet for panicking/freaking out easily?

Not necessarily, it depends on why the pet is scared. If there is something genuinely stressful going on (getting a new owner, tension in the home, medical, even something like a thunderstorm) he would not punish them. In his mind, that is not willful disobedience. They are scared, they are stressed, and pets are simple creatures that struggle to regulate themselves. That is part of the owners job. If the panic stems from like a panic disorder, Mason is incredibly sympathetic of that. He would train the pet with calming exercises they can use and suggest medication if needed.

If he gets the vibe the panic is an act of manipulation, that will be punished.

What if a pet saved his life? Would he be grateful?

Very! But it wouldn’t change anything. You know those news stories of dogs dragging children out of fires or cats alerting parents that the child was having a medical emergency? He’d see it like that. He’d absolutely thank the pet and do an interview on the news but in the end the pet is still just a pet.

And this one was a fascinating question Nonny!!! I did put it under the cut because of some transphobia, however I mostly just talk about gender in my worldbuilding. Perhaps gatekeeping or delusion is a better term but the end result is transphobia so I’m gonna warn as such.

What if a pet was transgender? Would he tell them they’re just being silly or actually listen to them?

It should be emphasized again that Mason does not believe pets are human. He does not think they are people. You cannot change his mind, he is stuck in this delusion.

… you know what. I don’t think Mason believes pets know what gender is. In a way he sees them as toys or dolls, and he is the one making decisions about what they wear. If he thinks Rudy would look cute in a dress he’d just buy Rudy a dress. Rudy does not get a choice in what he’s wearing, not in any meaningful way.

If a pet (for some reason lmao) came to him and said they’re trans, he might laugh and say “from what?” He’d also ask where they even heard that and likely dismiss it as “that’s something for humans. You don’t need to worry about it.”

I mean, also in this world I’ve created literally what WOULD gender mean to a pet? There are no specific gender roles or expectations- they’re all just pets. And sterile. There’s no social influence of how they’re supposed to be acted based on their assigned gender at birth. Oh for sure they have expectations but they’re all based on their “class” for a lack of a better term.

Fuck me my ocs should have way more weirdness with their gender identity after being freed. That would be so bonkers to go from a world where it doesn’t exist to where it dictates everything.

(Also in the end this still ends up having a lot of my own feeling and opinions about gender in it. Your characters are the biggest fucking snitches every time. Honestly I have tussled with gender specific stuff for a while but it’s mostly based in religious trauma. I’m trying to sort it out but it’s a complicated ever changing messy thing. Idk. Slowly chipping away at it. I’m saying this to be transparent and as a plea to not be abrasive. I don’t expect it but I am fucking delicate sometimes and need to explicitly explain why I do or think the things I do. Is this too raw for a post on tumblr.com about my silly little ocs? Yes absolutely. Should i delete this part? yes. Will I?)

[batsplat]

first of alla I wanted to say thank you for your job, it’s super useful, you’re doing the lord’s work fr. if you feel like answering I wanted to ask you who are the riders of the current grid that you like the most? and why?

cheers!!

eh I think I'm in quite a happy place in the sport actually where... I do broadly like most of the riders. this isn't really like me, actually, I'm very capable of being a hater trust me. in my main sport, I've gotten to a fun place where with one of the genders I just. hate everyone who ever wins anything. except one guy but that's really an awful fan experience, wouldn't recommend. I don't really know why I'm more kindly disposed towards the motogp grid. maybe it's something about how dangerous the sport is, maybe how they are generally quite interesting as people (far from guaranteed in athletes), maybe it's because they're generally flops or assholes or both (nothing worse in a sport than when the goats are dull as shit). also, so many online fan spaces have been dominated by valentino fans and marc fans ceaselessly bickering - and as someone who is pretty fond of them both, does just eventually make you quite bored of all that stuff

that being said! I obviously do have a few preferences. the first one is marc, who I've gone through several different stages of being a fan of. I never really got stressed about him during his prime because I'm just not really the type of person who can get that invested when someone's winning that much. like I'm invested in the narratives but I'm not gonna pretend I care that much if someone can secure their fiftieth victory of the season lol. now he's the only one who can fuck up my heart rate during races so go figure, really. (undeniably my fan experience with him has massively been affected by the injury... I realised it most strongly with indonesia 2022, which just made me feel sick of the sport for a while.) I like him because he's kind of awful... inconsiderate, ruthless, too committed to winning for his own good. shameless. he's very narratively engaging, got a lot going on in that department, and it's not just... easy winning, like idk I'm not really the type to enjoy nice and happy athletes winning a lot and then being nice and happy about it. marc would like to be liked, but he wants to win more, y'know? he's got enough weird stuff going on in his head that he allows me to take the next step from just 'normal sports fan' to 'ride or die'. whenever he does any mind games-y stuff it's good fun, plus he's got this valentino-esque perma-smile that gives you a fun contrast/companion to the ruthlessness. also one half of one of the true all time great rivalries, what a banger entry to the canon. AND most importantly the actual riding, I think him on the honda is only really second to some of casey's ducati riding as stuff that's got that... 'this doesn't look like it should be working but it is' vibe in quite a visceral way? I'm not super into quali laps, I think they can be fun but they're not really what *get* me about the sport, but some of those signature laps like cota 2015 and brno 2019 just are soooo good to watch. and the racing itself... idk it's also fun when you've got such a distinctive style because it automatically makes you so much fun to plug into match-ups with other riders where there'll be a lot of contrast, like you really got that with valentino + jorge and then later dovi, rinsy, fabio, pecco... just makes it really easy even as someone who can't ride a bike to SEE and feel the differences. plus, sue me, I like my racing with overtaking, he actually overtakes other riders. makes races better with his presence, like there's Certain Riders who can spend a whole race in p6 but you can USUALLY trust him to do something

so the next picks are gonna make me sound like. an insane glory hunter. genuinely awful levels of glory hunting here. but I just want to say for the record that this isn't representative of how I usually approach sports and it was completely accidental that it turned out the way it did. I got really fond of the 2019 crop of rookies (minus one of them) because it was like. oh they're actually quite promising. pecco had that super promising pre-season testing (obvs also right after the moto2 title) and every race I was like This Will Be The Time when he puts it all together and he just kept. not. so at a certain point I was kinda convinced he was a loser but stuck with it for the bit? pecco #believer but as a joke. (I was also an early investor in the 'wouldn't it be funny if marc had a rivalry with an academy rider' campaign so kept a close eye on both him and franky, but in all honesty I never thought any of these guys would be a serious threat to marc.) with fabio, I hadn't really followed him closely enough to know the reasons why his lower class results were so mid? so it was very much a surprise when he started fighting marc lol, and then misano 2019 weekend just made me crazy, the whole thing was *so* good. and then sepang I just went? yeah we can build something here. we can build something special. (narrator: we did not build something special.) with joan, you know how it's kinda fun to have a midfield-y team to root for where a lot of the times they're mid and then sometimes something special occasionally happens and you can feel proud of them for fighting with the big boys? well that was suzuki for me, fond of rinsy especially when he got snippy at marc, thought the 2019 rookie they'd picked up was sweet too and he had a great start to his rookie season. and his first podium was cool!! and when he should've won styria 2020 :// (I think? this was the red-flagged one where he didn't have tyres anymore afterwards) (admittedly 'race in austria during 2020 that was red-flagged' doesn't narrow it down as much as you'd think but) also I went all in for him when everyone was extremely mean about his 2020 title, like that's MY underdog world champ. I wanted him to win the title without winning a single race, actually!! (generally quite defensive of all the champs in marc's absence, like god forbid they haven't cleared the hurdles you people have made up in your heads)

anyway as to why I stuck with them... with pecco it's how fucking whiny he gets. the start of 2022 where he was just :( I may have crashed myself and another ducati rider out of this race but why is ducati making me test stuff :( what a twat!! but crucially getting ducati to apologise to him is still as far as I'm concerned one of the funniest things anyone has done recently. ducati!! apologised to him!! DUCATI! after he publicly bitched about them! bonkers. anyway he's introverted verging on shy and then also capable of such arrogance and hubris and sheer entitlement!! that early 2022 after being the title favourite was so??? he's such good fun, the dramatic failures followed by him doing something crazy and you just go. okay but why. why did you not do this earlier. you know indonesia last year where he'd fucked up his whole weekend until the race and jorge martin should have run away with it but then he crashed and pecco won from thirteenth and he went all hammy with the celebrations? SILENCED THE DOUBTERS why were you in pee thirteen in the first place you absolute weapon. he's stuck in his own head so much, which you can get really juicy stuff out of imo. plus I like smart racers.... even though he does have these howlers, he's just so obviously clever in his approach? as a competitor he's easy for me to get invested in, because whenever he goes into a year as the favourite and clicks the bit of my brain that hates dominance, he has SUCH a horrendously messy early season that I remember why I was so fond of him and can enjoy when he's winning. also he's got a fun skill set, I love what a good defensive rider he is, just quite watchable idk... I'm not super into being a good starter as a skill generally but I've really enjoyed how he's muscled himself to the front of the field, he's so ruthless and neat how he just knows exactly where he needs to put his bike to basically suffocate the competition right at the start? plus obviously he's such a different profile of champion than what we've gotten historically, which maybe makes me rate him even more highly than I otherwise would. also academy rider, inherently narratively fun. when valentino said this???

hilarious. he's not WRONG but also just incredibly funny. valentino rossi can we have an honest conversation about your proteges I need to get your thoughts on some things

(that being said, when he says pecco has nothing to prove during the impending marc teammate stint, that pecco's already earned his three titles, he's 100% correct. one of the most based things he's ever come out with, quite frankly)

fabio... idk something about that depressed frenchie... watching that child endure successive brutal last lap losses, that's what it's all about. I was hugely endeared by the 2020 campaign (even in the absence of the rivalry I'd been promised) and the self sabotage of it all, how he got himself a psychologist during the off-season and had to adjust his approach, cut out the tantrums... I'm a sucker for an athlete who figures out how to improve themselves, y'know? his actual title campaign is... well, I'm happy for him, but it's also kinda a weird season (without being as fully bonkers as 2020) - but 2022? his first half was very 'fabio quartararo domination may bore fans' (admittedly a style of domination very low on wins) but oh yeah what happened next was awful to watch, just kind of extremely elongated hell once you realised 'oh this might actually be happening'. incredibly cruel!! handled that situation with ridiculous amounts of dignity. then he got very stroppy at various parts last year which was also deeply endearing. he's not... he's kinda missing a mean streak, but he's still prone to misery and tearing himself apart, enough that he kinda does it for me? he's also just sweet, you kind of feel like yamaha insisting on building awful bikes is a bit like kicking a puppy? yamaha's also sort of my team and he's trying to make them not flop. so. am just long-term invested in that development work, how he was the only one who could really do something special with that 2021 bike and how he's now talking about adjusting his riding style to it idk as much as I desperately wish he were actually competitive, there is something cool and engaging about how it's His Project... plus that one time when he tried to hit the golf ball but failed, almost had a stroke I was laughing so much

joan is just. well first of all people are STILL dicks about that title. and good lord has he had a rough time of it. I was so impressed with his 2021 season even though he didn't have that much to show for it... plus when he kept having all these fights with jack miller?? low-key the best drama we got that year. best minor beef of 2020-22...? it's not like we have that much to work with. he has a pitch of voice that's very suited to complaining I feel, like when he's moaning about something going wrong you feel like that's what he's supposed to be doing. 2022-23 has just been a rough watch and not really in a fun way, can't say I'm particularly thrilled he's close to signing again with honda... but ugh idk I'm just so fond of him, he's just a type of guy that's good for the ecosystem. you know that motogp unlimited clip where he's terrified marc is going to eat him and marc just doesn't care?? (I'm gonna be honest, this is my favourite marc teammate relationship... can't even tell you why him interacting with dani leaves me completely cold, but then when I'm seeing how marc's actually occasionally chatting with mir after mostly blanking him when they were actually teammates? oh yeah that's the stuff.) joan has very tragicomic vibes as a guy... he gets sympathetic laughter from the audience. y'know how lucy always pulls away the football from charlie brown... that's his vibe. but he's also a mean girl. anyway I hope he does still get a bit more from his career, he's far better than his record reflects, minus the 2020 title. also I like it when riders race better than they qualify

anyway yeah I like all the current world champs on the grid. gross. on the plus side they're all in completely different bits of the grid now so. I do also like a bunch of other guys, like rinsy (also deserves better, awful time with late suzuki/honda, his late 2022 was really emotional, fun to have someone stand up to marc), aleix (perpetual underdog, temper issues, kinda a moron but in a fun way)... the other academy riders, mainly franky (made 2020 so much better, horrendously clumsy rider at times lol) and bez (loser mindset, weird as fuck about both valentino and marc, great watch as a rider when he's not *gestures*)... uh. quite like pedro, though I still need to see a bit more in the beef department to keep pace with how talented he is? like where's the balance y'know... great to watch as a rider though for sure. martin's title bid last year was nicely compelling, especially stuff like phillip island. he's been put into a lot of Situations I feel? instant rookie success followed by that horrid injury, the stand-off with bastianini for that factory seat, all of last year and this year... all this cockiness married with so much insecurity, the need to be seen and appreciated and not to be taken for granted. the pecco rivalry is fun for them both, plus obviously also a cool riding style. oh I thought diggia as an underdog story was great to follow latter half of last year, though now he's kinda safe I realise I'm less invested. bit all over the place with vinales but at some point you've just been exposed to these guys enough you have a kind of secondhand fondness. yamaha's still my team, tend to root for ktm's downfall which is working out fantastically for me. in moto2 my number one boy is alonso lopez, who may have never made an overtake without knocking into someone in his life and has zero understanding of how to preserve a tyre, but apart from that!! also do quite like a few of the other riders, would basically like to see everyone on a boscoscuro on the motogp grid at some point... the moto3 grid I don't really feel like I know a lot of those kids as well yet, though alonso's obviously quite a watchable racer and veijer is really growing on me, seems pretty clever, curious what he can do on bigger bikes

and that's that!! my current opinions on... actually most of the premier class grid. I really do like most of them! but then also I turned off mugello before the podium because I was so pissed bastianini had gotten back past marc lol so I'm hardly a neutral. but marc's different... he's the only one I've gotten a bit superstitious over the way you sometimes do with athletes. every time before he races, I write down somewhere, either in a note or as a message I send someone, just something along the lines of 'please don't crash' or 'stay safe'. I don't care that much about his results, I just don't want to see him hurt himself any more