#if it seems like there isn't a server like that or one that isn't mostly adults i might just end up making my own

[kenzan-kiwami]

everybody claims to be a kashiwagi enjoyer but the only time anyone ever talks about him is to say he's the hottest piece of meat in the series

[the-mushroom-entity]

Hey, is there a Golden Kamuy-centric discord server (or one that just has GK as a regular subject) anyone knows of that I could join? You can vet me first of course. GK reignited my desire to write fanfic and I really need people to discuss stuff with, like... what job Tsukishima would have in this very specific modern setting, for instance, and the reason why he and Chiyo would've gotten a divorce. And what kind of character Ogata would make for D&D, or how he might react in x or y situation.

[hexiva]

Roleplay Is Not Dead Nor Doth It Sleep

There's a post going around about how text-based, freeform roleplay is dead, and I was typing up a huge response to this, with an accompanying guide on how to find roleplayer in 2024, when I realized it might have a bigger reach if I made it its own post. So here's that guide.

I hesitate to say that there isn't a problem with the new format of social media making roleplay more difficult to find, but in the desire to make that point, the OP of the original post has left people with the idea that there's no way for them to get into freeform text roleplay in 2024. Which just isn't true! Here, look at all the ways.

Forums

The link to RPG-Directory to find roleplaying forums is a good start. Once you've found a forum RPG, even if you don't join, there's usually an 'advertising' section on that forum where other forum RPGs post their ads - this may help you to find forums that don't advertise on RPG-D.

Another really good forum to find roleplay on is Barbermonger. Barbermonger is focused on connecting people for one-on-one roleplays.

This last one's going to be weird, but it turns out that there are still people seeking roleplay on the Gaia Online forums after all these years. I think this is delightfully retro and then crowd there seems a little older than average. No pre-existing knowledge of Gaia required.

Tumblr

You can also find forum roleplay groups (as well as tumblr and Discord groups) right here on Tumblr. Usually, the thing to do is to use the search function - search for "[genre] rp" or "[fandom] rp" and sort by "latest." (If you sort by Top, you are likely to find dead RPs.) For example, here's fantasy rp, historical rp, and marvel rp. You can also try jcink rp, as most roleplay forums are hosted on Jcink these days, or discord rp, depending on your favored platform.

There are also tumblr blogs specifically dedicated to advertising roleplays. I'm not super familiar with these nowadays, but just in the process of searching those tags above, I found these:

Jcink Tinder

RPG Adverts

RPings

There are more, I just don't know them off the top of my head.

Reddit

Listen, don't run away, I swear it's good now - I swear Reddit is good now -

Reddit is a good place to find Discord roleplays. It's a little heavier on smut-only roleplays than other platforms mentioned here, but it's not impossible to find sexless, plot-based roleplay here either. Most ads are for one on one RP, but you can find groups mixed in here too. The big subreddits for text-based freeform RP seem to be:

r/DiscordRP

r/RoleplayPartnerSearch

r/roleplaying

r/Roleplay

Some of these have weird rules about what you can put in your ad, and I don't remember which ones, so read carefully and don't get discouraged if your ad is initially removed.

Discord

In 2024, Discord is by far the biggest and most popular platform for roleplay, and it has its own native roleplay advertising hubs. Here are a bunch:

roleplay partner hub

Rockin Roleplay

The Roleplay Garden

roleplay help

the roleplay connection

RP Central

Roleplay Central

Roleplay Hub

Barbermonger also has a Discord server

Roleplay Meets: Reborn

RP Hub

The Scribes Guild

DM Rp Village

cherry blossom! roleplay hub

DM-RP

Roleplay Round Table (21+)

The Historical Syndicate (specifically for historical roleplay)

The Roleplayer's Directory

If you can't find the Discord roleplay you want on here, you can also try Discord hub websites, like Disboard. These work similar to tumblr tags - search for [genre] rp or [fandom] rp.

Other

The original post specifically mentions that 'all the old "omegle but for role play" type websites died out ages ago'. This is mostly true, but not quite! There's still Rolechat. It's a little janky, but what it needs more than anything is a bigger user base. Their Discord server is also a good place to find one on one discord roleplay. It is, of course, free, but if you want to support its development, they have a patreon.

Please reblog this post, and add your own tips on how to find roleplay!

[theminecraftbee]

so, you've been considering getting into hermitcraft.

that's great! welcome! we are an extremely enthusiastic fandom, i admit, but we are very happy to have you watching the hermits! however, with over a decade of existence and twenty-seven current hermits, it can feel very intimidating to get into hermitcraft. luckily, as of the time of this posting--january 31st, 2024--it's also the BEST time to get into hermitcraft, because a new season starts on february 3rd! (and if you're reading this later: don't worry. this is ALSO the best time to get into hermitcraft. don't worry about it i'll get into that.)

the shortest version of this advice is: start wherever you want, with whoever you want. it doesn't matter, you can catch up.

still, it can seem like a lot. so, from someone who's been around since mid season seven, here is a more detailed guide on how to start watching hermitcraft!

what is hermitcraft?

hermitcraft is a collection of people who all play on the same survival multiplayer minecraft server. that server is a mostly vanilla minecraft server; i don't really call hermitcraft "vanilla" anymore, as they rely on a number of largely cosmetic mods, but the things they do on hermitcraft should, broadly, all be possible in vanilla minecraft, and the server still "feels" vanilla, so. vanilla minecraft. they do this in "seasons", which are periods of time between a year and two years, after which they reset and start on a fresh server.

in comparison to something like qsmp or even the life series, hermitcraft leans heavily on the "building cool things and hanging out" side of the spectrum as opposed to the roleplay side. however, at least once a season the hermits like to do a big storyline; sometimes, it's more frequent. many of the storylines are more natural escalations of things like server prank wars or a failing server economy, though, as opposed to things that are clearly in-universe roleplaying. don't worry, though; you'll know a hermitcraft storyline when you see it. by everyone's bad acting. also, by rendog putting on a silly accent.

if your only impression of hermitcraft has been from the fandom, you... probably have a somewhat mistaken impression. my bad. in my defense, i am a horror writer at heart, and in the fandom's defense, a LOT of crossover has happened with the life series fandom, which leads to both sort of leaking into each other. in general, expect things to be on the lighthearted goofy shenanigans side with very few exceptions when you're actually watching hermitcraft, despite the way the fandom tends to be.

where is hermitcraft?

broadly, youtube! hermitcraft is an almost entirely video series, and if you want to watch a hermitcrafter, you will almost certainly need to watch them on youtube. there are only very rarely streamed hermitcraft events, and these are normally announced ahead of time.

what if i prefer twitch?

skip the rest of this and just watch joe hills. i promise i'm not saying that because i'm a joe hills guy; i'm saying it because he's the only hermit that consistently streams from hermitcraft. impulse, tango, cleo, pearl, xisuma, iskall, and hypno all also appear to stream fairly regularly, but it's not always from hermitcraft.

where should i start?

now, that's the real question, isn't it? my answer is simple: start Now. if you're reading this as i post it, that means start this saturday on everyone's episode one. if you're reading this long after i post it, though, just... go ahead and start with whoever you want to watch's latest episode! the nice thing about hermitcraft is that you can GENERALLY jump in wherever you want.

but what about old seasons?

you do not need to watch older seasons of hermitcraft. unless you want to, of course; the world is your oyster and they are very good! however, there's also a LOT of old hermitcraft, and if you want to join in with what hermitcraft is doing now, old seasons aren't necessary. very little carries over from season to season. while sometimes old "lore" or recurring bits can carry references over, and the relationships between hermits will often carry over to some extent (if often not in the same patterns), it is never to an extent that you need the old seasons for context. each season is a clean new slate, and where "lore" carries over, the relevant hermit will almost always explain it to you.

what about helsknight/evil x/hotguy/boatem/convex/some other thing i've been hearing about?

i promise, if they are relevant to this season, they will explain it to you in the relevant episode and/or it will be easy enough to pick up. do not worry about it. each season is a soft reset for a reason, and one of those reasons is to make it easier on new viewers! and if you're here because you WANTED one of those specific things... ask an older fan! they'll be able to direct you to the places they're from.

do i need to watch all the hermits?

absolutely not! in fact, i strongly recommend you don't. there are going to be... hold on let me count... twenty-seven hermits? (i am bad at counting don't quote me on this) in this season alone. keeping up with all those videos is too much for basically anyone! instead, pick a few hermits that you like best, and if you want to keep up with everyone else, go to the hermitcraft recap youtube channel and watch that! it is a vital hermitcraft resource where pixlriffs, zloyxp, and lyarrah all watch every single hermit so that we don't have to. honor their sacrifice and don't try to watch everyone.

but how do i pick someone?

few ways! there exist, if you google, plenty of "choosing your hermit pov" quizzes; if you head over to the hermitcraft subreddit, for example, i'll be SHOCKED if they don't have one, and if you go over to the recap channel, they had one of those for a while too. this is the starting place for many people.

another way is to watch the recap and choose whoever's project interests you most. for early episodes, this may be hard, but since hermits tend to go hard for their first episode, you'll normally at least be able to pick up a sense of pace and build style.

just watching whoever it is your friends are obsessed with is also a tried and true method of finding your first hermit; frequently, like with the recap, this is a good method for then figuring out whose style you like best, and switching to them, if you don't end up clicking with the same people your friends click with.

finally, you can just... click a random hermit's channel! try a few out! maybe you heard about decked out and want to watch tango; maybe there's a storyline you want to start watching because the dash has been rambling about it; maybe you just want to know who this grain character is. clicking around until you find the guy whose editing you click with is a totally valid strategy!

that sounds hard. just pick someone for me.

if you like well-edited shenanigans: grian or mumbo jumbo. (these are also good starter hermits in general, i've found; if you aren't sure where else to start, start with one of them.)

if you like long background noise-type videos: docm77

if you like minigames: tangotek.

if you like a chill video: xbcrafted or, if the texture pack gets you, vintagebeef.

if you like storylines: rendog or grian, again. (i was trying not to double-up, but if you're here from an rp-heavy server, grian remains a great entry point in that regards.)

if you like to see something new and bizarre: zedaph if you prefer highly-edited videos, joe hills if you prefer lightly edited videos.

if you want the best building on hermitcraft: pearlescentmoon or bdoubleo100, special mention to goodtimeswithscar.

if you want someone as new as you: i'll come back and edit in whoever the new hermits are once we know! but them.

if you just want one of my favorites: zombiecleo or iskall85.

thank you! what if i DO want to know what the fandom is always on about?

that, i'm afraid, i don't know how to help you with. you'll just have to watch hermitcraft from here--and maybe read some of the fanworks that have intrigued you--and find out for yourself!

good luck out there, and i hope this has helped someone!

[antimony-medusa]

Okay so, one of my problems with creator boundaries as an event runner is that it's impossible to keep up with them all, because they're being updated, and because so much of the time you learn them when they're reported to you, you weren't in stream yourself. So it's a game of telephone, and there's a constant issue that the message gets garbled in translation.

So the stance that I've taken as an event runner is that I will not be enforcing boundaries, and everyone can decide for themselves what relationships they're comfortable with. This seemed like the best stance for me to deal with the beeduo /p /r wars, and then I have continued to see many other smaller or larger instances where I've gone "yeah, enforcing creators boundaries as an event mod is a nonstarter, I'm sticking with that".

And I've been mostly concerned about issues like— I am not an avid watcher of Gem streams! I might miss things that happen in Gem streams, I don't know what the creator's exact boundaries are for what's okay to do in her vision. But meanwhile I've been over here in Phil streams, and I've assumed that I have known Phil's boundaries, because they get repeated SO MUCH. Everybody knows— no nsfw, and then we argue about if the only shipping allowed is with Mumza (the dsmp stance) or if his continued gay flirting with men on QSMP means he's okay with shipping with them (he kissed a man on camera on QSMP, for example). That is the received wisdom about Phil's boundaries, we all know where we stand and how we're interpreting things.

And I have been like okay, Phil doesn't want to see NSFW, I don't think he's reading my Ao3 history, maybe I will read the occasional pissa fic for fun. There are some good fics in the tag, you know. I will just keep it out of his sight, and the streamer doesn't have to know, right?

Cut to today, where I'm being kicked out of a discord server for bookmarking one (1) Phil NSFW fic. They sent me a clip to prove that NSFW was against the rules and why I was getting kicked. So I watched the clip in the interest of completeness.

And guys, when I tell you my jaw fucking dropped, because I do NOT agree that anyone should have asked the streamer this, but someone got him to talk about NSFW fan work, "weirdchamp shit", and he explicitly with his mouth says that he "could not give a shit" and "everybody lets out their creativity in different ways", and "ultimately it isn't hurting anybody", and as long as he doesn't see it, he's fine with it. As long as it's kept out of his stream he's fine.

So uh, guys? I know it's not like we haven't been cautiously creeping this way ourselves, just keeping it out of the streamer's sight, but explicitly, word of god from the streamer, I think Phil NSFW has been legal this whole time.

[banmitbandit]

Pots 'N' Picks Week 2024: Day 7: Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner/Snacks/Dessert/Family/Goodbye

[Dungeon Meshi spoilers (with a big amount of canon divergence) and a long, long caption beneath the Keep Reading]

November 20th, 1484 Dear Senshi, It's been a little over eighty two years since you've been gone. In that time, Merrywinn, the newborn baby you held in your arms days before you passed, became a great-great-grandmother, and her funeral last week was as rancorous as every other half-foot funeral we attended. Soon, it will be my one thousandth birthday, and I can only hope that, like you and Marcille, that's when this curse will finally be lifted, and I can see you again. If that's true, then that means I'm the beginning of an end. Instead of twenty one years, Laios will only have to wait three until he dies after me, and Falin will only have to wait three after that. In twelve years from now, Izutsumi will pass on too, and the six of us will get to share a meal together once again. I've missed your cooking, sure, but most importantly, I've missed you. Do you remember when we first shared that bottle of wine in my new house in Kahka Brud, over nine hundred years ago, before we had the slightest idea that something was wrong? I told you that I didn't want to make you feel the way I felt when Fayfinn left me. You said you didn't care, that it was worth whatever small amount of time you had me. Obviously, it turned out that fate had different plans for us, that the Winged Lion had cursed Marcille too, that we'd each live as long as she would. It's been hard, but since then, you've been there for me every step of the way. When Fayfinn passed, when my girls passed, when their children passed, and theirs too. You've been there for everything, and I'm thankful for it, from the bottom of my heart. I knew I wouldn't be prepared to lose you, and I wasn't. But no matter how much I hurt, Izutsumi was worse, even if she'd never admit it, and I had to be strong for her, too. She's strong and independent, just like she's always been, since the day we met her, but you were the closest thing to a father she ever had. She loved you, Senshi. She said so herself at your funeral. I just hope she doesn't miss me enough to cry at mine. I don't care what dwarves or tallmen or elves think, you and I both know funerals are supposed to be celebrations. Fun is in the name, isn't it? I haven't been okay in a long time, but these days, I feel somewhat peaceful. I have lived my life to the fullest, like any good half-foot should. My birthday gets nearer and nearer with each passing day. Tomorrow, Lochlee, Merrywinn's great-grandson, is helping me collect my things so that I can return to Merini for Laios and Falin's birthday in a few days, and I plan to stay there at the castle until my time is up. I've packed the cheesecake recipe you perfected, and I'm going to sneak it to the cooks whilst Laios isn't looking. I'm sure he'll end up eating yours and Marcille's portions too, but I know you won't mind. After that, it's Marcille's birthday. Then Izutsumi's. Then mine. I'm looking forward to it; like funerals, birthdays are for celebrating. Even elves know that. I can't wait to see you again, Senshi. Yours, -Chilchuck Tims

An AU I proposed back in the Chilshi Nation server a while ago seemed to be a good way to break my heart when rounding off Chilshi week. A lot of people bring up the tragedy of Chilchuck and Senshi's lifespans being so different, and it makes me wonder what it would be like if Marcille's misguided wish had long term consequences.

This wasn't intended to be seven pages long with the lyrics to A Thousand Years by Christina Perri shoved in, but that's what it ended up being. The song seemed a little too perfect not to include.

All of my Chilshi posts were drawn up on the day, and I used them mostly as an excuse to experiment, whether it be posing, body types, shading, comic layouts... My later entries got to be a little more ambitious with what I wanted to do with them, so they're maybe not as polished as I would like them to be, but I hope you can enjoy them anyways.

Whilst I'm here, I'd like to extend a special thankyou to @dumblilracoon for dealing with my awful brainstorming and struggling all week. Couldn't have done this without you. And of course, the Chilshi Nation discord server for being so lovely! :)

If you reblogged or liked or commented on even one of my Chilshi week posts, thankyou so much! Chilshi week has been a blast and working on it and seeing all the lovely art and writing that's come up from it has been a treat.

Happy Chilshi Week, everybody!

[kiwi-cult]

PARSELSCRIPT!!

Hi. This is mostly for the people from Discord but tadah! I'm finally making that Tumblr post I've been talking about for months.

(Warning this will probably be very chaotic)

To anyone new who sees this: me and some friends made an alphabet for Parseltongue from Harry Potter, aka Parselscript. I'll take you on a little journey to explain my process and give you some tips, should you want to start writing it.

Disclaimer: I wanted to make this script usable for the writer I made it for so it's less of an actual language and more just some characters to represent the Latin (or ‘English’) letters. Like a cipher. It is not realistic. If I made this realistic I'd have to add all sorts of things to indicate body language and smell etc and also have to figure out what sounds Parseltongue actually has etcetera etcetera. No.

Alright.

It all started when we started talking about Parselscript in a Discord server and I asked my friend Ava to visualise the script because she seemed to have a clear vision of it, so I could use it to go from there.

That's how we got this.

I think we all wanted to go with something flowery for some reason, so we did.

After this I just messed around with brushes and shapes in Procreate for a while, tweaking things and trying to make it more writeable. I ended up with something like this (still a rough draft).

It may look a bit like random squiggles at first, and it kinda was at this point. As you can see there's also a lot of added dots and lines, which can be a bit hard to remember and I see you wondering what it looks like without them.

Well here it is.

I showed this to the people I brainstormed with in Discord and we decided to go with the more complicated version because it looks better lol.

This is one of the final versions.

It says: "Hello, my name is Kiwi Cult. I made this script after reading a fanfic called Terrible, But Great written by Isalise the loml on Archive Of Our Own."

Now, to talk about some of the (boring) logistics.

It is read from left to right, top to bottom.

Every separate combination of squiggles you see above is a separate word. Every word is made up of a starting character, one or more letter characters and an ending character.

The very first character you see in the top left corner, with the three petal looking thingies, is a silent starting character that indicates the start of a sentence. Not word: sentence. The end of the character, that little circle thingy, is a comma. So, the first combination says: "Hello,".

Then, the second combination starts with a kind of hook going down and right. This is also a silent character and more meant as an interpunction, that's why you don't pronounce it. It's kind of just a way to start the word when there isn't anything special about it (aka it's not the start of a sentence, a name, an exclamation or a question. But every character is special in its own right🥲). The same kind of hook can be found at the bottom of the combination, except going up. It has the same use, basically just a way to end the word when there isn't anything special about it. Now, you might ask: why does it go right and not left?

We talked about this a while, because I wanted the direction to have some kind of meaning. We wondered about gender, tone, blah blah all kinds of complicated things but in the end I just wanted this script to be writable so I chose to have proficient writers in Parseltongue make their hooks go left and beginners have their hooks go right.

Now, you might notice that I end my words with a hook going right. That is because I don't see myself as a pro in writing in Parselscript okay? It's hard!😭💀

Now, other than the character indicating the start of a sentence, the circle, and the simple hook, there are a few other characters to start or end a combination (don't worry I'll show them all to you at the end, you won't have to use your imagination for long).

We have a character to indicate a name. Now, the rule is: name indicator over start of sentence indicator. So, if you start a sentence with a name, you'll use the symbol to indicate a name, NOT BOTH. (That's not even possible but I don't even want to see you try and butcher my child).

There is a character to indicate a sentence that would usually be followed by an exclamation mark (!), but at the start of the sentence. Then you’d end the exclamated sentence with a period.

The same goes for a question mark (?): put it at the start of a question, not the end. Again, it wouldn't even be possible to use it at the end of a combination but I DON'T EVEN WANNA SEE YOU TRY.

Finally we have a period (.), which looks a bit like a flower with four petals. You do use this one at the end of a word, and it is always followed by a start of sentence indicator or a name indicator. I know people are rejecting capitals these days in their typing but I don't wanna see it. If you start a word after a period with a hook I will find you.

If a sentence starts with a name that is also a question or exclamation you’d use the question/exclamation mark above the name indicator, otherwise it would take away a vital part of the sentence while a name can still be read even if it doesn’t have its indicator.

So, to put it all next to each other, the symbols we have are: -start of sentence indicator -name indicator -exclamation mark (!) -question mark (?) -period (.) -hook (direction depends on efficiency) -comma (,) (direction depends on efficiency)

I didn't make adjusted characters to indicate a capital letter like we do in the Latin alphabet, meaning that the only things you can kind of 'capitalise' are the start of a sentence and the start of a name.

It is also slightly phonetic. Emphasis on slightly. I made separate characters for almost all letters in the Latin alphabet, so you can just write your word normally with Parselscript characters. The only difference is that I made only one character for the 'f/v' sounds and that there is no 'c' character. If a word has a 'c' in it, you'll have to use the character for a 'k' or an 's'. Also a ‘q’ can be made with ‘k’ and ‘w’ etc.

A few examples: -character=karakter -parselscript=parselskript -crazy=krazy -science=siense

-quiz=kwuiz

I know it looks a bit confusing, but I trust you guys' ability to read context clues and figure out what someone means when you try to decipher Parselscript.

Now, for a word like 'phonetic' or 'decipher' I don't really care whether you use the separate characters for 'p' and 'h' or just the one for the 'f/v' sound. You do you.

I also don’t use any double letters because they basically sound the same and it looks ugly but if you want to use double symbols feel free.

I also made some numbers that do not look like they fit with the rest of the script but I promise you that's just because you're not used to it yet. Our own numbers don't belong with our alphabet either because we nicked them from the Arabs (I think, don't quote me on this) but we don’t notice that either.

Tadah. (Yes I know it’s out of order I told you this was gonna be chaotic af)

Other than that, feel free to ask me questions if I've forgotten anything or if you're wondering about anything. I can't guarantee that I have a good answer because I might not even have thought about it myself, but I can always try to come up with something. I am one person, I'm afraid I haven't been able to take everything about a script into consideration.

Now, without further ado; here is the key.

No, your eyes didn't deceive you: there are two versions. The first has a bit more loose squiggles than the second one. I realised that when I was writing physically, the second version was much nicer to write, so it is kind of like Simplified Parselscript. I haven't decided yet if I'm gonna put some lore behind it or not yet. But I included the og one if you're a tryhard and wanna take it on.

Now, if you're gonna start writing it yourself, here is the stroke order.

I tried to make it as clear as possible but please ask me if you're confused on anything.

Red is the starting point of the whole symbol, the arrows indicate the direction to go in, x marks the start of the small extra's.

Now, I'd also recommend writing on some type of paper with vertical lines like this if you're gonna do it physically.

You can just turn a paper with normal, horizontal lines a quarter to get vertical lines. Also, do NOT write in between the lines. They are meant to help you keep the start and ending on the same line so you don't start going into crazy directions while writing. So, start your sentence symbol or hook or whatever in the middle of the line and try to keep coming back to that vertical line after every letter. As you gain more proficiency you'll probably go straight into the next letter without going back to the line all the time but I think this is a good starting point.

I also recommend writing with a fountain pen or something else that flows well because it’s easier to write that way.

Here is another rough draft I made on physical paper to get a feel for it. As you can see this draft had a lot more different starting characters and ending characters so just ignore that. Hope this motivates you a bit or smth.

Lmk if you want me to post a video of me writing in this Parselscript.

Also please let me know if you know of someone else who's also made a Parselscript because I tried to look for it on Tumblr and Twitter etc but I couldn't find anything.

I also feel like there’s a big mistake I made that I realised the last time I worked on this script but I’ve forgotten it now so if you find out please comment or dm or anything💀

Also feel free to use in your own fic, tho a little tiny shoutout in the a/n would be nice :) I’m @/kiwi_cult on Ao3, @/slvtr_ on Wattpad, @/kiwi cult on ff.net, @/slvtr.1 on TikTok and @/.slvtr on Discord.

Credits:

@natis-balamnimaja @asterialvia and @/zee (who unfortunately left the server and I don't know the Tumblr @ of) for brainstorming with me and @isalisewrites for inspiring us and making the server we discussed this in.

Okay bye :) tell me if I forgot anything.

🥝

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hey there sex witch! This one might be a little bit out of your wheelhouse, but I don't really have anyone else to ask 😅 and this seems mostly relevant to what you talk about.

So recently I (a very shy person for a long time) have gotten pretty active in some fandom discord communities, and I've been making a ton of friends. Which is great because I used to have social anxiety to the point where I could barely talk to people, especially online. The problem is that my new friends are all VERY horny, all the time. Which, great for them, I don't really feel the same way. They're also very interested in ERP and other varieties of e-sex and often ask if I want to join. I really don't, but it's fine that they're into that. One guy in particular is really starting to freak me out though. He's a semi-popular creator and a mod on one of the servers. He's becoming a pretty good friend of mine and I play online games with him and others a bunch. He, like the rest of the crowd, is also very horny all the time. He often makes sexual comments about me, sometimes very graphic ones. Stuff like telling me to take my clothes off IRL while on call with him or saying stuff like "I want to fuck you until you cry" or just dming me asking if I want to have sex with him. Sometimes he notices that his comments make me uncomfortable and he did reach out to sincerely apologize for it once, but he hasn't changed his behavior a whole lot.

The big thing that worries me about him is the fact that he's 28. I'm 18, just graduated high school. He knows this about me. He does a very good job of keeping his server 18+ and would never make a sexual comment about a minor, but is still comfortable doing sexual things with people ten years younger than him. Another thing is that even though I've told him I already have a boyfriend, he assumes I'm in an open relationship even though I never told him I was. My boyfriend also says this guy kinda freaks him out and that he's a little worried about me.

I know that age gaps between older people can be perfectly healthy and problems arising from them vary pretty heavily from person to person, but I'm not entirely sure if this is ok or not. This guy doesn't want to hurt anyone. Have I probably just not properly expressed my boundaries with him? It's not like he's targeting me or anything, he acts this way with basically everyone. I'm torn on what to do, he's still my friend and I like him otherwise. Should I just keep laughing it off? I am uncomfortable but I guess it's not a huge deal to me. Should I stop talking to this guy?? Help??

🐟🐟 So I can find this quickly if/when you answer it

hi 🐟🐟,

this guy fucking sucks and needs to be banned from interacting with maybe anyone until he learns what "no" means. literally every individual thing you've described him doing would be alarming in it's own, but altogether this man is a walking collection of red flags. this is not your friend and this is not a guy who cares about your boundaries or well-being; this is a man using his fandom clout to sexually harass you (and likely others). him being ten years older than you isn't even really the biggest issue here; all of this would be shithead behavior even if you were exactly the same age.

get out of there, double fish.

[alittlebitofwonk]

Etho is familiar with the weird rules that come with being a server admin. He’s known Xisuma long enough to know that being an admin comes with perks, but also sometimes just… weird shit. He doesn’t pretend to get all of it, but he knows enough.

So, when the admin of a completely different server suddenly drops into spawn, fighting with his com and cursing up a storm, Etho isn’t really that surprised.

What does surprise him is that the admin is… handsome. Really handsome. And also vaguely familiar, though Etho really only knows him through association. When you create one of the largest multinational, multilingual servers of all time, you gain a reputation.

“You alright?” Etho asks as Quackity (he’s pretty sure that’s his name) picks himself up, still muttering profanities as he dusts himself off.

“Yeah, just fine and dandy, if it weren’t for the fucking Hypixal transport fucking sending me to the wrong server again,” Quackity mutters, before pausing and sighing. “I’m… sorry. It’s been a long day.”

“Getting tossed into the wrong server must be jarring,” Etho says, sympathetic. It’s mostly admins that get that particular shaft, but it’s happened to him once, and it was… very confusing. “You’re an admin for the QSMP, right?”

Quackity looks up from his com, clearly trying to figure out where he is, and nods, smirking slightly. “I’m THE admin for the QSMP. The server has my name on it, after all.”

“I thought you were Quackity,” Etho mutters, watching as Quackity types a quick message, probably to Xisuma, before slipping the com away.

Quackity grins at him, leaning forward so he’s on the balls of his feet, honeyed wings keeping his balance, “Well, since you know me it would be a shame not to get myself acquainted with such a handsome man.”

It startles a laugh out of Etho, especially considering he was just thinking about how attractive the avian was. “Etho,” he says, awkwardly sticking out his hand, “Welcome to Hermitcraft!”

Quackity visibly relaxes as he shakes Etho’s hand. “Thank God this is Hermitcraft. I could’ve ended up somewhere so much worse.”

“You’re thinking 2b2t, I’m guessing.”

“Or any other anarchy server, they eat admins for breakfast,” Quackity says, repressing a shudder, and for the first time, Etho realizes his wings are clipped. Which is really odd, given that he’s, y’know, an admin. Maybe he clips them himself?

“Well, you’re in safe hands here,” Etho promises, and Quackity raises his eyebrow and smirks. “That’s not what I—“

“I mean, I’d hold your hand if you want,” Quackity says, and then laughs when Etho turns about five different shades of red in two seconds.

It's only then that Etho notices that it's beginning to get dark, the sun inching towards the horizon, and they're still at spawn. He gets the feeling that Quackity isn't going to be finding his way back anytime soon, so he turns to the admin and asks, "do you want to come back to my base with me?" Just as Quackity begins to snicker, something witty already on the tip of his tongue, Etho adds, "before it gets dark! To, uh, get away from the mobs. I have a spare bed."

"Damn, and here I was thinking I might bet to slip into yours," Quackity says, and damn he's smooth. Etho feels like an idiot with all his stammering and blushing, but Quackity doesn't seem to mind in the slightest. "Lead the way."

[quaranmine]

the here and now

After dying in Limited Life, Joel wakes up in his bed on Empires. Except he isn't alone when he does.

Words: 2312; Joel and Jimmy centric.

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

Joel wakes up thrashing, sitting straight up in his bed. It feels like breaking the surface after nearly drowning, lungs burning and filled with a desperation to live. He gasps for air, and finding it available in acceptable quantities, breathes it in greedily. 

It’s okay. He’s okay. He’s awake now. He’s awake now? Why is he awake? Where is he? 

His skin feels hot and clammy to the touch. His head is fuzzy and heavy. His rest was not restful. He feels like he has a fever that has just broken, or is about to break. Some sweat runs down the side of his face, and it’s warm. 

It takes him a moment to get his bearings, but Joel is actually well-accustomed to this feeling. He just isn’t red anymore, that’s all. Joel has been red enough times and for long enough periods of time to be intimately familiar with the feeling. And everybody wakes up like this, in the end. There is always an end, and even when you don’t remember it, there is always a bed to wake up in afterwards. 

Being dragged from red and dead back into the world of the living is like being yanked out of a bloody haze and splayed onto the ground. He’s still shaking. 

Joel blinks and takes in his surroundings. The room is mostly dim, but there’s a dusky slice of light coming in from partially ajar window shutters. He can see little bits of dust hanging in the air, almost like little sparkles in the golden sunbeam. 

He isn’t in the Bad Boys base. He’s not on top of the burned out and flooded mansion, or in his submarine, or alone and exposed on the rocks of spawn. Instead, he’s in a room he recognizes well, surrounded by massive pillars of regally carved quartz. The room is filled with marble and stone with intricate carved detail. It’s massively oversized too–fit for a god, and nothing less. 

So. He’s home.

So. That was the end for him, after all. 

He exhales slowly, letting his breathing steady out. The extra minute of thinking has graced him with a little more clarity. The desperation and madness he felt upon waking up–the desperation and madness of before, of ticking clocks and red names–is trickling away, slipping through his fingers like sand from an hourglass. He doesn’t feel the blood rushing in his ears anymore. He just feels tired. 

Something catches Joel’s attention suddenly, though. He’s not actually alone in this room. There, leaned up against one of the walls and sitting on a marble windowsill is the sheriff himself. 

Jimmy is here. 

Joel’s first thought is that Jimmy looks small. Well, that’s a given. He is small. He is a small little toy-sized man. Jimmy’s feet are so far off the floor that Joel wonders how he even managed to climb up onto the windowsill in the first place. After all, Stratos is sized for a god. 

But the thing about Jimmy is this: his presence is always large. When Jimmy enters a room, he is noticeable. He has bravado, and a healthy dose of unearned swagger, and certainly too much ego, but he nonetheless cannot be ignored. He’ll trip over his own shoelaces and then claim to be the most agile person on the server thirty seconds later, and his easy confidence makes you think he might actually believe that.

Sometimes, though, Jimmy fills a room with better things. He is often loud when he is agitated or indignant, but he is especially so when he is excited. His happy shouts liven up the atmosphere and his laughter fills a room. Jimmy is a presence unto himself, and somehow a magnetizing one. He’s easy to tease and somehow impossible to hate, even at his worst. Joel can never tell him that, though, or he’d be even more insufferable than he already is. 

But today Jimmy seems quiet and small. 

It looks like he might even be asleep. His head is tilted to the side, resting against the wall. Like he was trying to stay awake but drifted off. 

Joel swings his feet around and over the side of the bed, standing up quietly. He takes a step forward, but the room is large, empty, and full of polished stone, so his footsteps are louder than anticipated. Jimmy stirs at the noise, and suddenly sits straight upright. He always did react to the slightest of sounds, even when you thought he was otherwise oblivious. 

Jimmy startles upon seeing him. “Joel!” he yelps. “You’re–you’re here.”

“Hello, Sheriff,” Joel says. “Were you actually watching me sleep? That’s so weird.”

“No! I wasn’t watching you sleep!” Jimmy cries indignantly. The energy in his voice peaks at Joel’s jab, and all is familiar for a moment, before Jimmy suddenly gets somber again and his voice swings low once more. “I was…I was watching your bed, actually. You weren’t in it before.”

“That’s not any less weird,” Joel decides, but what he can’t admit is that he gets it. Joel was gone. He was in another server, another plane of existence. He was a different Joel. He wasn’t God Joel of Stratos over there. And then he died for good and when he respawned he woke up on his home server, just like Jimmy did. And…Jimmy knew that would happen.

It’s weird, but it’s no less weird than the way the Bad Boys slept in beds pushed up next to each other out under the stars, or the way they woke up in the mornings accidentally snuggled together. 

What comfort did Jimmy take in Joel’s empty bed? Comfort in seeing every minute that he lived longer? What disappointment greeted him when he woke up to see Joel was back so soon?

Jimmy looks concerned and gives Joel a once-over. “Why are you here?” he asks. His voice is earnest, urgently pressing him to answer. 

“Why aren’t you in Tumble Town?” Joel asks instead.

“No, you don’t get it, you don’t get what I’m saying,” he pushes, and stands up on the windowsill from his sitting position so he can look Joel in the eyes from across the room. “I’m asking you why you’re here.”

“I get it, Jim,” Joel says softly. “I got it the first time.”

“But you didn’t answer my question,” Jimmy demands. “Why are you here?”

“Why are you here?” Joel says. “Before everyone else?”

“You know why I’m here first,” Jimmy says bitterly. “I’m always here first. It was inescapable. But it wasn’t for you, you were supposed to live longer!”

“It didn’t have to be inescapable,” Joel whispers. “You could have lived.”

“I never live.”

“You could have,” Joel insists, and he crosses the room in a few long steps to look at Jimmy more closely. “I was going to sacrifice myself for you, you know. I was going to give you my time so that you wouldn’t be the first to die. It didn’t have to be like this.”

“But it did,” Jimmy says. He drags his eyes away from Joel’s. “And it was like this. Because it is always like this.”

“I was going to sacrifice myself for you,” Joel repeats, nearly at a whisper. “And you went and died anyway.”

“I didn’t–I didn’t ask you to do that,” Jimmy says. 

“It didn’t bother you with Scott or Bdubs. You took their time happily. Why couldn’t it be me?”

“They aren’t the Bad Boys,” Jimmy says. “They aren’t you or Grian.”

“It should have been me because we’re the Bad Boys,” Joel says sharply. “That’s what we do, we look out for each other. I was going to give you time. God, I wish I gave you time. I shouldn’t have waited.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Jimmy says miserably. “You couldn’t have saved me.”

“Ugh!” Joel throws up his hands. “You’re so–you’re so blimmin’ annoying! You’re impossible! Why do you keep acting like you wanted to die? Why do you keep arguing with me?”

“I didn’t want to die!” Jimmy cries. “I never do! But wanting to live isn’t enough in those games. You didn’t need to die instead of me, Joel. There was never a chance of winning if I was there, but I thought that maybe since I had gone…”

“Well, a fat lot of good that did me,” Joel snaps, gestures dramatically, “because as you can see, I’m dead anyway!"

“You were too reckless,” Jimmy says. “You were supposed to live.”

“Reckless? Coming from you?” 

Jimmy flinches a little, and clenches and unclenches a fist. “I tried,” he says, words clipped. 

“That’s what makes it worse, Jim.” Joel laughs, but it’s strangled. It’s cutting, and it sounds a lot more like the way God Joel of Stratos used to harass the Sheriff of Tumble Town, and not like a friend. 

“I don’t need your pity and I didn’t need your time,” Jimmy snaps. 

“It wasn’t out of pity, Jimmy,” Joel says. He runs a hand through his hair. “Maybe someone actually cares about ya a little, you know. For once.” 

Jimmy doesn’t speak. 

Joel shakes his head. “And I know you would have taken my time. Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t have. I know what you felt ‘cause I felt it too before I died. That panic just takes over and…yeah. You would have accepted my bloody time!”

Jimmy looks down. “I thought you and Grian would have lasted longer once you stopped having to worry about me.”

What Joel doesn’t say is that he was never going to have lasted without Jimmy. It was his plan from the start–play recklessly, lose a lot of time, and then donate the rest to Jim, thereby breaking the cycle and making Joel die first. He never planned to live a long time. Live fast and die young, yeah?

And without Jimmy, well–well Joel hardly remembers most of it, in truth. He went a little mad, maybe. He remembers Grian withdrawing a bit. He remembers bloodshed and TNT minecarts and the high adrenaline of battle. He remembers the desperation of the final minutes on the clock, how it felt like he was clawing for scraps that might let him hang on a few moments longer. And he remembers thinking that maybe he could have delayed this fate for Jimmy, just a little longer, if he’d only died earlier. 

But for the life of him he doesn’t remember a single thing about his thought processes from then. There’s only Jimmy’s death, and then a haze of actions he can’t quite rationalize. Probably because none of them mattered at all anymore. He should have been dead by then, anyway. He was never supposed to watch any of the Bad Boys die before him.

 “Jimmy,” Joel says quietly. “How long did you plan to wait on me?”

“The whole time, I guess,” Jimmy says. “I was hoping it would be a while.”

“That could have been more than a week. You were gonna watch an empty bed for days?”

“The longer the better,” Jimmy mutters. He’s embarrassed now, cheeks flushed pink and eyes averted from Joel’s. “Is Grian–because Empires isn’t his home server, so I can’t just check–”

“Grian was still alive,” Joel confirms. “At least he was when I died.”

He told me not to leave him alone. But Joel had left Grian alone, in spirit at least, from the moment Jimmy died. And Grian had known it, because he had already been making arrangements for a new alliance afterwards. 

Joel wanted to feel betrayed about that, but all he felt was emptiness right now. He's so tired. He's too tired to care about it anymore.

“Do you think he has a chance?”

“He had a lot of time,” Joel says. “I think he’ll be fine.”

“He could win it for the Bad Boys,” Jimmy says. 

“Since we couldn’t, you mean?”

Jimmy chuckles a little and ducks his head. “Well, I think expecting me to win for the Bad Boys was a little much.”

“Ugh,” Joel says. “I didn’t even want you to win, I just wanted you to not be out first.”

“I’m sorry.”

Joel rolls his eyes. “You’re fine.”

“You didn’t really do much better did you?” Jimmy says. “Like, I seriously thought it would take longer for you to get here.”

“You’re so rude, Timmy,” Joel says. He pauses for a moment to think. The name of the game is inevitability. Jimmy could have received more time, but he still would have died. Joel just wouldn’t have been around to see it. “There’s really no point though, is there?” he says after a moment. “To doing better, I mean. Dying just means we get to leave and come home faster.”

“It never seems like that though,” Jimmy says. “When you’re actually in the game, I mean. It feels like winning is everything.”

“So here’s to not winning, then.” 

Joel raises an invisible glass. Jimmy returns the gesture. 

“Here’s to not winning.”

Joel turns toward the door, takes one step, and then pivots back around to Jimmy once more. “Actually, uh, do you want to go to the tavern with me, the one in Sanctuary? El Caldero de Colores? We could get a real drink and maybe some food that isn’t bread for once.”

“Hey, what was wrong with bread?” Jimmy says indignantly. “Joel, get back here. Tell me what’s wrong with bread!”

Joel’s already halfway out the door, but he calls back over his shoulder. “Are you coming, or do you need help getting off that windowsill? Unfortunately, Stratos doesn’t make step stools, but I’m sure I could find something that works.”

“I hate you,” Jimmy calls back. 

“We’re not in our hater arc anymore Jim, can’t you read the sign I made for Tumble Town? Or do your schools not teach reading out there?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jimmy grumbles. “We’re best buds.”

[suzukiblu]

Ko-fi thank-you sentences for @qwertynerd97; Kara gets to Earth on time and the Kents get a two-for-one special on free kids.

Ma and Pa take them to . . . Kara thinks it's a restaurant, probably? Though that seems like an odd thing to have in a settlement this small. The menu has unfamiliar text and flat images on it–not painted, but recorded–and Kara is mostly certain that those images are of food, but entirely uncertain as to what kind of food. Ma and Pa point to a few different things with inquiring noises, but she has no idea what any of it even is and can't even begin to guess.

The tableware is white ceramic and a cheap but shiny metal and very plain. Kal nearly knocks over a cup made of that odd, clear material that isn't glass and Pa catches it just in time. There's small cubes of ice and cold water in it, or at least something that looks like water. There's also a wedge of yellow fruit speared on the rim, which Kara can't discern the purpose of. Flavor, maybe? Are they supposed to rub it along the rim or juice it into the probably-water? Or maybe it's a palette cleanser for between courses?

She has no idea. Ma and Pa don't do anything with the wedges on their own cups, so that doesn't help, but at least means she's not missing something she should be doing with it, she supposes.

Hopefully, anyway.

A server comes to their table. Maybe female again, which is making Kara wonder if everyone in this settlement is female. Even the more masculine-seeming aliens don't seem especially masculine to her, so it's hard to tell. And even Pa Jona-Than has a feminine name, so . . .

Well, there must be males somewhere on this planet, she supposes. The Jona-Than that sired Pa and the Mar-Tha that sired Ma, at least. But then again, depending on Ma and Pa's actual ages, their fathers might've passed on by now.

Might be as dead as her own and Kal's.

[myrmica]

mer my dear mutual mer i would like to ask you how do i get into lifesteal

HELLO FARLANDS!! you've come to the right place. Step into my office.

this is an interesting question with a variety of different answers. a lot of the time people seem to direct you towards videos rather than stream vods, which does makes sense, because they're more accessible and the barrier to entry is definitely less daunting.

but lifesteal videos aren't episodic, they're designed for a viewer to be able to jump in with little to no context at any moment. they throw a lot of information at you fast as hell, and events spanning hours and hours of footage are condensed down in ways where most of the meat gets cut off. i have a hard time absorbing information from or remembering what happens in lifesteal videos because of the editing styles... i don't claim that this isn't in large part a taste thing, but in videos you miss the complicated character moments, and the sense of pacing/chronology, and all of the things that happen that don't translate well to video logic. and you don't get to see (as much of) the dimension of things where the fact that everyone is trying to make videos can be character and story relevant information. all of these things are what make lifesteal season 4 my favorite minecraft roleplay ever in the world. i guess i would say that i do like lifesteal videos, but mostly in relation to the livestreams.

all of which means that while pretty much any lifesteal video ever produced can make for a perfectly serviceable starting point, it doesn't really get you any of the things about lifesteal --i-- care about. and you're asking ME. So.

what is the deal with lifesteal in general?

you probably know at least some of this already, but for the sake of the thing:

lifesteal is a server based around a mechanic where, upon killing someone, you gain one of the hearts off of their health bar up to a maximum of 20. if you lose all of your hearts you're banned, but this is temporary and players can be revived. it's also a server where you're free to steal and destroy builds to your heart's content, and people toy with breaking the rules they do have often. so it naturally follows that lifestealers are generally interested in pvp, and have a social system where the most important relationships are your teammates, who come before basically anything else. lifesteal IS roleplay but it isn't scripted, and what they mean by unscripted is that the outcomes of a conflict can't be predetermined, because that would defeat the point—if something goes wrong, it goes wrong. (and hopefully, it goes right for somebody else.)

why season 4?

short answer, because it's the one that has the guys i care about in the situations i care about. the long answer is at 9k words and not even close to done yet so you're gonna have to wait a bit on that one.

the medium answer: while you could go back and watch through season 3 in detail, or try to just start watching season 5 and keep up with stuff live as it happens, that's not what i did. i have it on good authority that the mer guide to lifesteal season 4 works, because i did that, and also because my friend whose initial reaction to lifesteal was "wow this subz guy is loud..." and then radio silence for months has since sat through 30 hours of princezam building stream of his own free will. see review below:

lifesteal can be sort of an acquired taste. i think a lot of the time it either clicks for you or it doesn't, or you have to see the right thing and then suddenly the appeal starts making sense.

luckily, the aftermath of zam betraying mapicc & ro in season 4 tends to have this effect on people, and it's a good jumping in point! i didn't actually start watching season 4 chronologically, i started by bouncing around the last couple weeks of the season and quickly discovering that it was bonkers fucking crazy and i needed to know more about this "eclipse federation" thing... so i don't really think knowing how it ends makes it less fun to watch, and if you wanted to just poke around at random and see what's up i wouldn't stop you. i went back and sat through everything between that aforementioned betrayal and the end of season 4 chronologically after i already knew how things ended up and it's thoroughly enjoyable that way. maybe even better than the alternative, because you're less likely to get caught up in how frustrating some of it can be. but if you would rather know as little as possible going in you can definitely give it a shot, and i do think there are parts that are probably even more fun if you don't know what's coming.

how do i do that though?

and here is my gift to you. when i watched through season 4 all i had to go off of was the vod archive spreadsheet, which is great & wonderful & awesome & the best thing ever, but it does kinda just have you clicking links blindfolded if you don't already know what's going on.

so eventually i started keeping track of vods as i watched, in a google doc. it has clips and/or timestamps and summaries for basically every vod in the second half of season 4. it's a little embarrassing because it records a bunch of my initial reactions to stuff but c'est la vie. it's also 85 pages long (it was 105! i edited my notes down!), but again you can jump around to get a lay of the land if you want, and how much stuff you skip is completely at your own discretion. have at it.

[sugahyeon]

All my heart goes to the admins

Unpaid artwork is theft.

Unpaid acting work is exploitation.

Some devs were barely paid, same for builders. Eggs' admins weren't paid for their rp job.

Translations? Unpaid.

Background checks? Never done.

People got fired for being burned out or not available due to personal issues. They were FIRED, from a VOLUNTEER post that was UNPAID for not being ''available enough'' (which doesn't seem to be a very defined criteria)

Lea got paid 169€.

The minimum wage in France is (very roughly) 1200€.

A plastic figurine isn't compensation for all of that unpaid work.

It's a nice gift, at most, and here, it mostly feels like a joke.

The admins are the backbone of the server, from lore planning, translations, roleplay, builds, devs, art, clips and art gathering, designs...

Without them, the QSMP literally wouldn't be able to function.

2.

That's the number of french admins on the mc server. There's only one left now.

Let's remember how the french ccs kept getting forgotten about. And now, let's realize that Lea said that multiple times, they had to quickly add stuff about the french because the others had forgotten.

It happened often enough to be noticed by the viewers.

It happened even more behind the scenes.

To say that i feel sick is an understatement.

Pay your artists.

Pay your employees.

Not allowing them to speak to each other only reveals how wrong you know you are: if there was nothing to hide, you wouldn't be scared to let them talk.

(oh and also: not allowing ANONYMOUS people to express themselves about ABUSERS? That's fucked. Support Shelby and all the victims, always.)

[jellieland]

Gem Cleo watches Scott leave. He's throwing wary glances over his shoulder at the tower that has what looks to her like a big red curly moustache on it.

It's always nice to see him, and this is a bit different to their usual encounters, which is really refreshing every now and then.

She pulls out the pufferfish he gave her and smiles at it brightly. "Hey there little guy!" She says. It stares back at her with unblinking black eyes.

"Dunno if you can call me a little guy when you're on a team with Bdubs, but sure, hey Cleo!"

She startles slightly. It's Martyn. He's not actively stabbing her, and apparently they're allies, so she turns to face him without much concern. "Hello Martyn!"

He's leaning against the rocky wall of the clock tower. He grins at her, and for a split second, his gaze flashes over to where Scott is disappearing into the trees across the river. "You still remember that thing I told you about last time, right?" He asks, giving her a meaningful look.

"Oh, yes, of course, absolutely!" She nods enthusiastically. "How could I forget!" It's funny, no-one else has really prodded at the details of Cleo's, uh, "amnesia cold", as much Martyn, although he's for sure just completely making things up to ask her about.

He looks highly amused. "Right, right, good. Just checking."

He glances over at the treeline again.

"So!" He says, and it's so very casual that it's a little bit concerning, "Don't suppose you'd let me know if Cleo's listening along or not?"

"Martyn!" She exclaims. "I'm-"

"Yeah, you are Cleo, I know, I know. Just." He pauses.

There's something in his eyes, suddenly, that gives Gem the impression that if she says the wrong thing here, something will be lost. She can't tell what, or why, or how. But it's a feeling she can't quite ignore.

After a second, Martyn shakes himself slightly and continues. "Actually, you know what, it doesn't matter. I-"

"No. She's not." Gem watches curiously as he goes very still. "I'm gonna tell her about it later, though."

"Huh." He says. It sounds very nonchalant. "Right. Well. Don't suppose I could tell you a secret, then?" He gives her a conspiratorial look. "Just you, I mean."

Gem leans in a little, intrigued despite herself. "I shouldn't..."

"Oh come on, you know you want to."

"Weeeeell..." She jumps in place a couple of times, and then nods quickly. "Alright, go on then!" He opens his mouth, and she quickly raises a finger to point at him, narrowing her eyes. "But! If it's something Cleo would want to know, I do have to tell them. It wouldn't be fair otherwise."

He considers for a moment, and nods. "Sure, seems fair enough to me. Trust me, though, Cleo would not want to be bothered by this. They have better things to worry about."

"I'll be the judge of that!" She pauses for a moment. "Because that's me." Another beat. "Because I'm Cleo."

He chuckles. "Well, Cleo, I just wanted you to know that I get it now." He says, lightly.

A few seconds pass.

"Um. Ok?" She says, because he seems to be waiting for her to respond. "Uh, I mean." She goes back to her perfect and beyond reproach Cleo impression. "Right. I understand what you're saying completely, Martyn."

He raises an eyebrow, grinning. "Well that's impressive. And here I thought I was being pretty cryptic."

"Oh. Um, I mean, what are you talking about? Explain yourself!"

He laughs, expression almost nostalgic. "Ah, I just meant I get why you chose him, last time." Once more, he looks over at where Scott disappeared from view. This time, he doesn't look back.

Gem frowns a bit, and stays silent. It feels wrong to speak.

"I wondered about that a lot, you know." He sounds vaguely wistful. "But I get it, now."

There is quiet for few more seconds before Martyn looks back at her, and the spell is broken.

He looks cheerful. There's nothing in his expression to suggest that he isn't.

"I think it's mostly that you and him are the only two on the server who have the slightest bit of common sense, honestly." He says. Something suddenly seems to occur to him, and he snorts. "Pretty sure he's alright at math, too."

"Oh, really?"

"...You know, I'm not sure actually."

He meets her eyes. His are just starting to turn the bright red of danger, the colour creeping in at the edges of the blue.

"He keeps his allies alive." He says. "For as long as he can. Even when it hurts him. Wasn't even a choice for you, really, when you consider that."

There's obviously something here she doesn't understand, but what exactly it is she doesn't know. "Good for him." She says awkwardly.

"It's not, really." He says.

"Oh. Um. Bad for him?"

He laughs at that. "Sort of, yeah." He looks down at the pufferfish she's still holding. "Alright for you though, right?" Before she's decided how to respond, he continues. "I just thought you'd like to know that if I were you, I would've chosen him too."

Gem frowns at him. There's something here. There's something here, but while she can certainly guess, she just doesn't have the context to know what that something is.

She listens to the noises of the river for a while before she speaks.

"Are you sure Cleo wouldn't want to know that?" She asks softly.

To his credit, he does appear to consider it, staring out over the river and frowning slightly.

After a minute, though, he looks back at Gem and shrugs. It almost looks resigned.

"Cleo already knows." He says.

She opens her mouth, but he keeps talking.

"Plus she would not appreciate being reminded of how similar we are." He grins, his expression suddenly sly. "And anyway, I completely made all that up. That was a test to see how good you were at being Cleo, and you failed."

"Hey!" She yells indignantly. "What! No! That's so rude!" She draws her sword and he cackles, dancing back.

"Ha, you should've seen your face!"

She glares at him. "Why are you so good at acting, huh?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Aren't we all?"

"No!"

He snorts. "Yeah, I guess not. Just pure skill on my part, then."

Gem shakes her head at him, exasperated. How much of that was true, she has no clue. But if that's how he wants to play it, that's ok. "How about this: I won't tell Cleo about any of that so long as you don't try and mess with me again."

"What?" He gasps and claps a hand to his heart. "I thought you were Cleo!"

She narrows her eyes and raises her sword, and he hurries to continue, holding up his hands in surrender.

"By which I mean yeah, sure, sounds good to me am I right?"

"Good." She nods firmly. "That's what I thought you meant."

He nods back at her a couple of times, then starts to retreat towards the river, still facing her. "Well. See you, Cleo!"

"Bye! If you see Etho tell him to be afraid!" She shouts after him.

"Will do!"

And he disappears into the trees after Scott.

What an odd man.

She wonders if he knows that she wouldn't have told Cleo if he'd just genuinely asked her not to, without the deal or the confusion or the trickery. She's genuinely not sure if he realizes that.

She still doesn't know how much of all that was genuine.

She wonders if he does.

For some reason, she suspects not.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not being entirely negative about AI?

05/16/2024

Just before anyone scrolls down just to vote YTA, please hear me out: I'm not an AI bro, I am a hobbyist artist, I do not use generative AI, I know that it's all mostly based off stolen work and that's obviously Bad.

That being said, I am also an IT major so I understand the technology behind it as well as the industry using it. Because of this I understand that at this point it is very, very unlikely that AI art will ever go away, I feel like the best deal out of it that actual artists can get out of it is a compromise on what is and isn't allowed to be used for machine learning. I would love to be proven wrong though and I'm still hoping the lawsuits against Open AI and others will set a precedent for favouring artists over the technology.

Now, to the meat of this ask: I was talking in a discord sever with my other artist friends some of which are actually professionals (all around same age as me) and the topic of discussion was just how much AI art sucks, mostly concerning the fact that another artist we like (but don't know personally) had their works stolen and used in AI. The conversation then developed into talking about how hard it is to get a job in the industry where we live and how AI is now going to make that even worse. That's when I said something along the lines of: "In an ideal world, artists would get paid for all the works of theirs that are in AI learning databases so they can have easy passive income and not have to worry about getting jobs at shitty companies that wouldn't appreciate them anyway." To me that seemed like a pretty sensible take. I mean, if could just get free money every month for (consensually) putting a few dozens of my pieces in some database one time, I honestly would probably leave IT and just focus on art full time since that's always been my passion whereas programming is more of a "I'm good at it but not that excited about doing it, but it pays well so whatever".

My friends on the other hand did not share the sentiment, saying that in an ideal world AI art would be outlawed and the companies hiring them would not be shitty. I did agree about the companies being less shitty, but disagreed about AI being outlawed. I said that the major issue with AI are the copyright concerns so if tech companies were just forced to get artist's full permission to using their work first as well as providing monetary compensation there really wouldn't be anything wrong with using the technology (when concerning stylized AI art, not deepfakes or realistic AI images as those have a completely different slew of moral issues).

This really pissed a few of them off and they accused me of defending AI art. I had to explain to them that I wasn't defending AI art as it was NOW, because I know that the way it works NOW is very harmful, I was just saying that as an IDEAL scenario, not even something I think is particularly realistic, but something I think would be cool if it were actually possible. The rest of the argument was honestly just spinning in circles with me trying to explain the same points and them being outraged at the fact that I'm not 100% wholeheartedly bashing even the mere concept of AI until I just got frustrated and left the conversation.

It's been about a week and I haven't spoken to the friends I had that argument with since then. I still interact on the server and I see them interacting there too but we just kinda avoid each other. It's making me rethink the whole situation and wonder if I really was in the wrong for saying that and if I should just apologize.

[osakanone]

UPDATE: The Destiel/Supernats aren't taking this well -- explaining my reasoning for the history I gave, and why Destiel is not the big bitch of shipping that it thinks it is

An update to THIS:

"This is just a marketing thing, Gundam is a giant robot show, only men watch it!"

Gundam's fandom is silent majoratively feminine:

"But its not gay, its about giant robots!"

Gundam is very gay. The entire climax of the first story is a riff of Yukio Mishima lmao

The climax of the Amuro/Char arc of Universal Century Gundam (expounding from first Gundam circa 1979), Char's Counterattack is somewhat on the history of Japanese disillusion with liberalism which notably climaxed with the life and history of Yukio Mishima.

You know. THAT Yukio Mishima.

The one who wrote FORBIDDEN COLOURS.

It was so gay that the fanfiction inspired by it became its own damn anime:

And that's just Charmuro, let alone Charma or a billion other ships just in OG Gundam alone.

We've got This is before we get to Guin Sard Lineford and Yamagi Glimerton (both verrrrry gay), Tieria Erde (a genderqueer trans-coded character who transcends gender entirely in their arc) and a bunch of others.

Gundam was always gay.

"I don't see the numbers"

"That doesn't seem like much, Supernat is at least 2x this"

Sooooo the amount of content you do see isn't representative of how much even got written, given FFN had a huge content purge.

First, let's start with the relative proportion of users: If we're analysing the concept of fandom, we first have to look at who had access to the internet in the first place to publish works.

Yeah that's a pretty sizable difference.

Wing's fandom actually exploded in 2000, but got capped VERY early, distributing itself to fansites when FFN fragmented and collapsed.

Why?

Content purges!

"Isn't there some sort of online archive of this stuff?"

Sure, if you wanna dig through tons and tons of Angelfire and Geocities pages which have mostly disappeared. Otherwise, no! There is no archive of this stuff?

"Why?"

They've since rolled back on this but it means there's a massive amount of lost media out there, including the discussions on it and thus there's an entire history you didn't get to experience.

Its actually very difficult to reach people who've been involved, since it was so long ago that very few people remember, and a sizable proportion of that population have actually died.

"But what about SF fandoms? We have ancient records of stuff like Spirk!"

See unlike physical media like zines, when a server goes offline or there's a data-loss, or something like that there is no surviving copy of the thing in question.

The net result is we have this weird hole where content just vanished, and its now considered lost media. The work of many artists, designers, writers, even videos of events are just lost media because we didn't have the archival mentality adults develop.

You're not gonna hear about all the X-Files stuff or Frasier fanfictions or GW stuff because of these purges and the lack of physical media. FFN users were teens, not adults with resources like US/EU/JP SF fans, who had archival tendencies due to their long history.

So there is this supermassive black-hole in the history of fanfiction running between 1998, and 2008 and some of the only evidence of it are worksafe works and fansites which the owners have long since forgotten about because folks moved on. Moving on is a normal part of fandom.

So to those of you just saying "supernatural is losing to a pair of dumb anime girls" or "urgh this is just a trend tumblr will get over it and go back to supernatural"...

Uhhhhh no they won't, actually?

Supernat's fans mostly seem to be waspy Americans. Gundam is kind of a global phenomenon, one which has traditionally had a silent majority female audience, a vocal minority male audience -- and every time that majority has spoken up, its coincided with a content purge, or a TOS change that mysteriously biases American derived fiction over Japanese derived fiction.

Funny that.

tl;dr:

NATURE IS HEALING